In a Time of Treason

by David Keck

  “Berchard . . .” said Durand.

  Berchard was making a vow, hand raised. “It’s the truth as I was told it. The man was called Kausi. We shared his hut and my wine. Up on the Red Winding.” He peered at the ring of pale knights. “When the knights started up, our little Kausi Charcoal legged it.”

  “I wonder what the Rooks have fixed for them.”

  Durand had already limped by tent sites enough for a thousand men. He peered through the murk, guessing that there were as many more matted patches ahead. That was one question answered: Radomor was outnumbered by a thousand men. Now, Durand wondered where they had gone.

  “Well, I’ve heard some tales about these Ghosts that would—Uh. Yes.”

  Berchard stopped, straightening suddenly. “And I suppose these campfires will tell us when the devils left camp. Maybe.”

  Durand glanced up at this sudden change of direction to find that Lamoric’s officers had joined the examination while the halted column looked on—the stony Marshal Conran among them.

  “Aye,” said Durand. He stooped painfully by the nearest fire pit, sliding his hand deep into the wet ash and feeling heat tingle in his finger bones. “This morning. They’re still near.” He pictured the hideous Champion and could almost feel the Rooks prowling in the shadows of the tents. They would be somewhere within a few leagues.

  When he looked up, he found Lamoric staring down. Conran and Coensar stood at his side.

  “Is this what’s left of Radomor’s trap?” Lamoric asked. He looked hard in Durand’s eye. “I think it is. I think he had his dogs. He had his lovely ambush just as you said. But, Durand, we have slipped both.”

  Durand climbed to his feet, not sure what to believe. “Perhaps, Lordship.”

  The young lord turned from his commanders to gaze down the neat slope that ran to the dark curl of the Rushes. “I wonder what the battle would have been called. Radomor has left no fields to name it by.”

  Durand opened his mouth, but it was Conran who answered. “By my reckoning, they will name it Ferangore.” His glinting eye did not bother with the valley or the trap. He fixed his gaze on the western horizon.

  “Hells,” said Durand. He had seen and done dark things in Ferangore, but one man’s private dread was nothing compared to what an army would face. A half day west, Ferangore stood behind high earthworks, ranked walls, and a moat of rivers that would hold them for seven moons.

  “If Radomor shuts his gates against us,” said Coensar, “we’ll be hard-pressed to open them without engines or supplies.” It was time to go. They would turn back.

  “No,” said Lamoric. A light seemed to dawn in his features even as Durand peered up from the mud and rain. “I read a different doom in these signs. Here we have Radomor’s trap, abandoned. He meant to catch us here—pinning our column against the Rushes, charging from the heights and raining missiles down—but he’s left it behind and flown for his walls. Radomor doesn’t like the look of us—not without his tricks and traps.” He flashed his teeth. “I say Radomor’s lost his appetite.”

  Durand became conscious of the great cavalcade of men, splattered and exhausted, but gathered like a tournament crowd, every one of three thousand watching. Radomor’s camp was Lamoric’s stage.

  “We will feed our Radomor what he’s so hungry to escape. These fires were burning this morning. If we set out now, we will catch him before he makes the walls of Ferangore.”

  Durand saw hard grins spread among the multitude of splattered soldiers. And Lamoric stood taller, spreading his arms. “Men of Gireth, we have flushed Duke Radomor from his hiding place and now we will ride him down! His rebellion ends today!”

  With force enough to wobble Durand and Berchard where they stood, three thousand soldiers roared.

  Durand scanned the vague region where the rain obscured the more distant hills, and wondered if Radomor could hear them. Part of him hoped the whoreson could.

  FROM THAT SPECIAL misery of riding with half-broken bones, Durand watched the gloom twist thicker around the column as they lurched deeper into Radomor’s ruin. Carrion birds tumbled through the rainy dark, and the dogs played at the limits of vision. But, all along the men flashed wolf’s grins, for they stumbled over wrecked carts and helmets left in the clay by their enemy. Could he truly be on the run? It seemed so.

  Though the signs were fresher with each hour, every man knew they had little time left. Somewhere in the rain, the ramparts of Ferangore were perilously near.

  From the back of his high-stepping gray, Lamoric spat curses into the rain. “Where are the devils? We must overtake them before they reach Ferangore.”

  “We’ll smell the city in a heartbeat,” muttered Coensar. “We’ll come up against the army or the walls soon enough. It can’t be long.” As Durand looked on, the man pulled his hood over his face.

  “Hells,” said Lamoric. But there was nothing the man could do. Ox carts and footmen could go no faster. “They’ll have bolted every door in Ferangore, and we’ll be caught under his walls, half-provisioned with our backs to a wasteland. It is no good.”

  Lamoric turned to Marshal Conran. “And surely,” he said, “it is plain folly for Radomor to seek the throne after all of this.”

  “Lordship?” said Conran, his bristling brows climbing.

  “Should he best us here. Should he rally all the dukes to his cause. Should he ride through Eldinor to the sanctuary itself. All of these shoulds. How can he face the rite? His lands are steeped in the blood of the blameless. He has turned these necromancers loose upon the land. How can he lie his three days under stone and join the kings of Errest the Old?”

  “Some men do not know their own hearts, Lordship,” rumbled Conran. “But there exists another possibility: the wards are breaking. One after another, they fall. A moment may yet come when a devil can take the throne. But I fear that it is a game that risks the prize. For the realm may not endure defenseless. It was no whim that pushed the Ancient Patriarchs to set their wards upon Errest the Old.”

  “I had half thought of letting the fool have his coronation,” said Lamoric. “Now, I see we’d best not risk it.”

  “When my brothers and I rode to Silvermere, the denizens of the byways prattled of the Banished. Pale figures moved beyond the borders of the Still Kingdom. Riders from the mists of Hesperand. Green hags teeming in the millponds. A worm in Heronleas. A giant of the Halls of Silence prophesying the doom of men in the tongue of priests.”

  “Hells,” said Lamoric.

  After flinching at Conran’s mention of Hesperand, Durand searched the gloom for the devices of the enemy. He peered into the torn clay of their enemy’s path, and shot long looks at every hill and ditch they passed in the dark.

  With the wrist of one long gauntlet, Sallow Hythe smeared a bit of muck from his brow. “Lordship, if this is a race we must lose, we might rest the men. This is a killing pace. There may yet be store houses beyond this wasted path. If a siege must come, we must prepare.”

  “Radomor will have burnt everything within leagues of the bloody city,” declared Lamoric. But for the sodden wasteland grasses, they’d seen nothing green in Yrlac. “We must catch him before he can reach the city, or we will pay with blood. I will not let cowardice or despair give Radomor a chance to rally!”

  “If we must besiege Ferangore,” Sallow Hythe reasoned, “the few barrels of bacon we are dragging behind us will do us little good, Lordship.”

  Lamoric twisted to retaliate, but stopped. Some inspiration dawned in his face. “Then let us be rid of them!” said Lamoric.

  The older, wiser men around Lamoric leaned in their saddles for a good look at their lord. The animals tramped up spray.

  “What nonsense is this?” spluttered old Swanskin.

  Lamoric wiped mud and spray from his face. “If our barrels are too few, then leave them! The dogs can have our pack train. We will run the devil down. I say, every man who does not wish to stay with the dogs should march with the army. Every knight wil
l put his palfrey into common hands. And the rest can run!” His grin was fierce. “We will catch him yet!”

  Despite Deorwen and the Rooks and all, Durand grinned at this.

  _________

  WILD-EYED COMMONERS CLUNG to the last palfreys and cart horses as the company spurred itself away from the howls of their own oxen and the Queen’s savage Tears swept down on the poor devils.

  The host rode in a storm of flying mud. They blinked at it. They felt it in their teeth. And they could see little but blinding mist and clay.

  On their left hand, the valley slope dropped away, leaving a steep precipice, and the wild host of Gireth careered along the brink, hooves tearing clods from the cliff’s edge to fall from sight into the Rushes.

  Durand couldn’t breathe for agony. Big Pale bounded by a set of huge crescent gouges in the edge where some beast in Radomor’s Host had plunged from the bank only moments before. Just as Durand flashed by, something jarred Durand’s hip, and Pale’s hooves chopped sickeningly at the brink.

  “Just keeping you awake, Moonface!” shouted Badan. The man rode close at Durand’s side, his flail jangling from his fist as he barged through.

  Nearly, Durand caught hold of the fool.

  But then, the whole track plunged from the high ridge and Durand could do nothing more than hold tight while he bowled down into the valley with three thousand others, all on the verge of tumbling. Before them, the Valley of the Rushes opened like a cavern of clear air under the cloud. And, on the broad floor of that valley, struggled a sprawling darkness. This was Radomor’s army. Durand saw flags and limp banners bobbing above the mob as it fought to cross a long stone bridge.

  “We have them!” shouted Lamoric.

  Beyond it, Durand saw green ramparts rising: moments beyond the bridge, the city of Ferangore mounted into the clouds.

  “Come on, lads!” howled Lamoric. “They’re caught and can’t turn! To the bridge!”

  The whole of the army set its spurs, surging down the valley wall like all the charges of all the tournaments in the Atthias together. Badan’s flail shrilled near Durand’s ear, while Durand hauled his own blade into the thundering air.

  They could have been a wave falling. As Durand and the first lancers swept down, they leapt the carts and slaughtered mules left to foul their hooves. They crashed down on the bridge, flinging the last rearguard aside. Durand gaped in joy and wonder; Radomor’s rebellion would end in moments.

  But then, just as Durand and Lamoric and every man he knew exploded onto the bridge, a second thunder roared up far louder than the storm of their hooves.

  Pale skidded.

  Durand felt great blocks sliding in the bowels of the bridge. While Lamoric and half his barons looked about in horror, columns of water exploded above the bridge all around them.

  Durand glimpsed huge stone rollers bounding out over the waves, launched by the sliding weight of the span.

  Someone was screaming: “Miners!” The whole bridge had been transformed into one enormous pitfall.

  Durand saw Lamoric, Coensar, Berchard—all within an arm’s reach and all a moment from a dragging oblivion of water and stone and iron mail. The bridge was collapsing into the Rushes.

  Then, impossibly, the stone caught—it held.

  While men and beasts gaped, wide-eyed, the thunder rolled out under the low sky. Foam closed over the great blocks that had fallen beneath the span. And the bridge hung naked, swaying like a thing of ropes.

  It was impossible.

  Radomor’s host stood with their cheers caught in their gullets, and both armies held as still as painted figures.

  Above the eerie stillness, Durand heard voices—chanting.

  Hardly daring to turn his head, he spotted Conran’s Holy Ghosts. Each pale knight stood stiff as a forked branch, head back and palms up. Some stood in their stirrups; others swayed in their saddles. The sound of their chanting seemed to twist the air around the bridge into something like thick glass. It boiled with warmth and cedar oil.

  In the face of this miracle, no man dared move—until Lamoric shifted. Across the bridge, Durand finally caught sight of their enemy: Radomor of Yrlac sat a tall warhorse, his bald head bare—he’d snatched off helm and mail hood to gaze at the hanging bridge. This was no fool’s gaping, but an inward look that Durand could not read.

  On the bridge, Lamoric stood a dozen paces from his foe—this man who has slain his sister, his brother, his nephew. And countless friends. With a call to charge, the Host of Gireth could crash down on Radomor’s force. They could win.

  If the bridge held long enough to let them over.

  Coensar caught his lord’s arm. “This can’t last: any moment, the bridge’ll fall as it should have done. Radomor’s been waiting. The mad flight, the axemen, it’s all been a game. We won’t get an army over. If the bridge falls, Radomor has us.” With a nervous glance at Holy Ghosts and Heaven, he finished, “Miracles or no, you must turn back.”

  Lamoric met Radomor’s stare. Durand half expected the force of Radomor’s attention to stir the air like a storm.

  But a man could feel the strain in the Septarim’s chanting. And the scent on the shivering air had twisted from cedar and sweetness to something scorched like incense. Debris sifted into the Rushes.

  “Lordship,” said Coensar. “We retreat or we put our heads on the block. Forward or back. It must be now.”

  Lamoric closed his eyes. “Give the order,” he said. “Back us off.”

  Radomor watched them go, holding his army like some monstrous huntsman with a pack beyond counting.

  With Lamoric’s vanguard safe on the far bank, everyone made ready to retreat from Radomor’s glare. Just then, Coensar caught Durand by the surcoat for it seemed that the Septarim had not moved. The lot of them were frozen where they had first begun their chanting while the wavering air above the bridge darkened like honey over a fire.

  Everyone else was safe when Coensar stepped back on the bridge. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get them off!”

  Durand slung himself from the saddle—feeling the deck of the old bridge give under his limping steps. But knights from the vanguard and common men all round skittered out, catching hold of bridles to lead the wild-eyed horses of the Holy Ghosts from the crumbling span.

  Radomor watched in silence.

  And, for a moment, bent Durand was the last on the deck—but for the marshal himself. Durand tottered out to the man. The scalded air stung his eyes and the stones revolved under his soles, but he took hold of the great man’s bridle and led the giant toward the far bank. The strange man’s rigid face could have been the axle around which the Eye of Heaven turned, but the bridge dropped away stone by stone as they left it.

  When Conran’s horse left the bridge, the marshal’s head sank with an ox’s loose sigh and the last cobbles thundered into the water.

  Across the river, Radomor and his two thousand men turned from their foes and resumed their retreat. The ranked earthworks of Ferangore loomed through the fog. A man could just make out the stained dagger of the sanctuary spire above the coiled walls. Just then, Durand could not imagine that men could build such a mountain.

  “Now we must prise them out of their shell,” Lamoric said. He eyed the feeble glow of the sinking Eye of Heaven. “And we have neither time nor means to do it. . . .”

  NIGHT DESCENDED AS Lamoric drove them to a sprawling ford a few hours back up the Rushes. In the coal-sack blackness, the exhausted army blundered through the icy spring flood and its invisible stones, knowing that some splashes meant that men were tumbling off into the black torrent to pass lifeless below the ramparts of Ferangore—or to lie pinned to the bottom by the weight of armor. It was pointless to reach or hope.

  The Holy Ghosts seemed to walk under a moonlight that touched them alone, and, in the depths of the night, the watery glow of their backs was the only light bobbing in a black Creation. The bleary soldiers marveled.

  The traps were finished now. That much
seemed clear to Durand on that blind night of weary agony. Neither army had a trick left worth playing. Lamoric was simply going to throw his force at Radomor’s and hope that courage and numbers could break the devil’s walls. Radomor would sit grimly in his city, waiting for the men of Gireth to starve.

  Somewhere in that great shifting column, invisible between the Holy Ghosts, Deorwen would be riding. He could not search for the girl. His only hope to find her would be to call out: to call out for his master’s wife hiding in a hostile land. And he could not. So he set his broken face against Pale’s neck and prayed she had not been among those to fall in the black Rushes.

  27. The Empty Storm

  With the return of light, Ferangore appeared from the gloom like a monstrous thunderhead. The city’s ramparts mounted where the River Rushes and Bercelet roared together as the mighty Branche. And, somewhere beyond the thickest walls were Radomor, his Rooks, his Champion, and an unknowable throng of sellswords, liegemen, and rebels from across the kingdom, sharpening their blades.

  Below the lowest rampart, the Host of Gireth stood in long dark ranks, shivering only a bowshot from the city while Creation stood as still as a sickroom.

  Durand peered up from the back of Lamoric’s guard, big Pale shivering like a drawn bow. The beast was mad. Durand could make out the needle of Ferangore’s black spire high above them all—while his breath whistled at the iron face of his helm. Around him, the barons wrangled over the last plans, but Durand only wondered where Deorwen had gone.

  Lamoric was throwing everyone at the city, leaving not a soul behind. Where could Deorwen go?

  Risking a painful twist in his saddle, he searched the ranks through the slits of his helm. Lamoric’s footmen stood at the front of the formation, dark, drenched, and facing the city with their knuckles shining white against the spears and axes in their fists. She could not be among them, surely.