by David Keck
All the while, the Septarim prayed even as arrows struck them down and the shadowy glyphs writhed upon the walls, bearing eager witness.
Behind the scrambling men of the vanguard, Durand staggered at Lamoric’s side, trying to keep up as pain snatched his breath away. He carried a great shield he’d stolen from a dead man and the thing now kept Lord Lamoric safe from the hail of arrows—Lamoric cared little for his own safety as he watched the upper gate stand invulnerable while Coensar ranged about the narrow battlefield throwing men into the fight like a madman. The street between those upper and lower ramparts was like a canal. And they threw wave after wave into the same slaughter.
“You can’t break iron bands with axemen, Durand,” Lamoric howled in the midst of the maelstrom, his voice loud under the arrow-studded shield. Radomor’s bowmen nailed helms to living skulls. “I’m a fool. I drove us in here. I rushed and roared and spurred us every step from Acconel. And I should have heard you when—”
A feathered creature checked its flight in both men’s faces, the snap of its feathers spraying live flecks in their eyes. “Devils!” Lamoric spat. He struggled for air, smearing his face with both hands as birds tumbled in rapture everywhere. “We’re caught, and we’re not going to tear free. Mornaway should be on our backs already. It’s all—” Lamoric railed and the men in the back ranks turned—catching their master’s despair.
Before another head could turn, Durand took Lamoric by the coat and threw him back into the shadow of a blacksmith’s shop. “What does any of that matter now? You reckon Radomor will stop? He’ll come whether we fight or lie down, Lordship. We cannot stop. You cannot.”
He had the man by the collar and, for an instant, Lamoric looked like a green pageboy, gulping at the reeking air.
“Right,” he said. “God, let me go.” The man shook the clouds from his skull. “So where is Mornaway? Why don’t I answer that before I run shrieking through the streets, eh?”
Suddenly, Lamoric was on the move once more, pushing past Durand, nearly shoving his way out of the shelter. “Where’s our bloody lookouts? There!”
Across the road, one-eyed Berchard clung, tucked up an alley under a bit of roof where he could look down over the lower battlement. The Rooks’ sooty glyphs bent and stretched up the wall like slow black flames reaching for his backside.
“Berchard! Berchard? Are the devils still down there?”
The man twisted a fraction—careful, lest some archer skewer a precious haunch or shoulder. “Aye, they are, Lordship! Great mute ranks. Battalions numbering in the thousands. A good deal of praying.”
“Prayer? What Powers would answer them? They refuse every call to parlay. My wife’s people! The devils are bent on slaughter. What are they waiting for?” Lamoric demanded.
“Can’t say, Lordship. Moryn himself ain’t out there; could be they’re waiting on him.”
Lamoric spat a curse. “And there’s the mystery. Where is the man?”
Berchard knuckled his bad eye. “I see the old duke plain enough. Poor man’s like a rake the way the armor swings from his bones. But there’s no sign of the son.”
And Durand began to wonder. The man had never seen the Mount of Eagles. And there were Deorwen’s dreams of the man trapped. . . . What had happened to Lord Moryn?
“They’re all in the saddle down there, whatever they’re up to,” said Berchard.
Lamoric smeared palms over his features. “I cannot fathom this: it can’t be the old Duke of Mornaway. Durand, you know my wife. We’ve both seen what Moryn’s like. Could the man who raised them turn traitor? Could old Severin—”
“Lordship!” Berchard called their attention back to the rampart as a hundred dull-throated trumpets moaned. “This’ll be it!” The old campaigner scrambled to curl tighter under his corner of eaves. The trumpets bleated.
“Damn me. I must see!” said Lamoric, and he bolted for Berchard’s spot, Durand chasing him with the big shield bouncing over their heads.
In a jostling instant, all three men crammed the sheltered corner to look down on their new enemy. Upon the fallow apron below the walls, old Severin of Mornaway’s commanders held their swords high, calling their vast army to a stillness as tight as a bowstring. There were so many; more than Durand had ever seen in one glance. Helmets and blades glinted like waves on a solemn ocean. And Berchard’s little hidey-hole was where they would strike first.
Durand glanced up and down the wall. Wherever a rooftop gave shelter from Radomor’s archers in the upper city, a paltry knot of Lamoric’s archers fitted arrows to their bowstrings, muttering charms. Here and there, swordsmen, knights, and plowmen-soldiers spit in their hands, making ready. But there weren’t nearly enough, not by thousands. And the tide of Mornaway’s ocean would carry every man before it.
“I had best not tell you what I’m thinking,” Lamoric breathed. “You’ll have me by the collar again.”
“Not this time,” said Durand. But as Durand spoke, he happened to glance into Lamoric’s face—where he saw a strange glow. A hundred shimmering sparks glittered in Lamoric’s wide eyes. “That devil!” he said.
Durand twisted in time to see torches tumbling down over the street behind them, bouncing upon thatched roofs. A blaze was already crawling in the thatch of the blacksmith’s shop.
“Hells,” said Lamoric. “With all the burning in this dukedom, he ought to be out of torches! It’ll be a furnace. And I’ve got Coensar rushing from gate to gate, trying to hold both doors to the oven. We must break out.”
A hiss from Berchard snapped their attention back to the field below the wall: the blades of Mornaway flashed down in a blaze of mirrored fire. And the Host of Mornaway advanced.
“Durand,” said Lamoric. “Get to my wife. Watch over her. God. I’ve never been much good to her, she won’t die for my damned foolishness here.”
Above them, the flames leapt over themselves, already sealing the street under a vault of fire.
“Lordship—” Durand protested.
But Lamoric caught him by the back of his neck. “I won’t have her held ransom by my own men! I won’t have her dead. Who can I trust if not you? Save her if you can. Swear it!” And, when Durand could only gape at his lord: “Go! Durand, go! I have business at the gates!”
Lamoric snatched Durand’s shield and leapt into the alley, darting uphill.
Berchard’s eye was on Durand’s face—with more grim scrutiny than a man could endure.
“By Heaven, Lord,” he called, “I swear it.” And, half in horror, he threw himself from Berchard and lurched into the street.
Who can I trust if not you? He flinched from the bloody words.
Once more in the street, Durand threw himself into motion. Beasts and cinders, birds and soldiers, churned in the narrow channel, but he fought toward the potter’s shop where he’d last seen the girl. Tall men stood along the battlements, sweeping attackers down with huge blows of their axes or swords. The fire at their backs snatched arrows away like straw in a furnace.
“Deorwen!” he shouted.
The Rooks’ sigils slithered in the parching heat like a crowd pressing in and rubbing its paws. The army was set to tumble down the Hells already aflame.
“Deorwen?” he called.
“She’s here!” It was Coensar who answered as he pitched through the chaos of beasts and cinders. “Durand, where’s His Lordship?”
Durand could hardly meet his captain’s eyes. “He’ll be at the upper gates,” Durand said. Smoke boiled, and horses charged in circles, vaulting over one another and leaping at the walls. “He’s sent me for Deorwen.”
Coensar cursed. “That potter’s shop. Here!”
In a few moments, they made the shop, Durand catching hold of the door frame and spotting a crowd of priests, pages, cooks, and grooms—all wavering between the crushing violence of the horses and the heat of the mounting fire. Deorwen stared back at him, frantic and only half-disguised.
“I’m to watch you,” Durand s
aid.
“I’ve been a child,” she said. “How did I ever think to find poor Moryn?”
Durand had almost forgotten.
Abruptly, Deorwen’s eyes widened. “Where’s my husband?”
“He’s gone to the upper gate,” said Durand.
She touched her face. “And he’s sent his shield-bearer to me?”
Before Durand could answer, another pack of mad horses bolted through, buffeting him against the storefront—and against Deorwen. For an instant, he balanced between agony and—he wanted to hold her; he wanted to carry her from this burning world. But he pushed himself back. The effort of will nearly shut his eyes. Coensar was looking on; Durand could only guess at what that gallant captain saw. Lamoric deserved better than a faithless servant groping his wife.
As Durand rallied his muddled thoughts, a soldier barged in among the muleteers and camp followers cowering all around. “Bastard cowards! Every man with ballocks and backbone to the walls!”
It was Badan.
“On the walls, they’re butchering men on your account,” he said, throwing boys and old men into the cauldron of fire and wild horses. “Find what you can and mount the bloody rampart or I’ll gut you sure as ever will Mornaway or Yrlac!”
Old men and boys scrambled as Badan darted back and forth, barking and snapping. Suddenly, the fool was snarling at Deorwen’s arm. “Come on you! You’ll fight or I’ll—”
Though Coensar moved to stop the man, Durand was quicker—in an instant, he’d sent the whoreson sprawling. “Get your bloody hand off!”
Badan swarmed up with bare steel already in his fist. “I’ve had a bellyful of your shoving, mooncalf! Host of Hell, I have!” And there was Durand squared off with the whoreson, a crowd on one side and the churning street on the other. And Deorwen looking on.
In pain and fury, Durand snarled, shoving the point of his sword flashing at Badan. “You’ve had your own back for that push, haven’t you? Your bit of petty vengeance! There’s Lamoric sprawled on the stones! Me, half torn to pieces!” His broken teeth, his hitched shoulder, his battered face.
Though Badan ought to have been distracted, he found a moment to peer closely at the supposed stranger Durand was shielding. And, in an instant, his baffled anger had hitched itself into a leer. “Oh!” His gaze darted over hidden curves, spotting the dark eyes of Lamoric’s lady looking back at him. “I see now, I think. Who’ve you got under your wing, Sir Durand, eh?”
The answering flash of Durand’s blade sent Badan skittering back across the burning storefront, dancing clear.
Durand ignored shouts and reaching hands, stalking Badan through the flying cinders. “The damned city might have fallen for your vengeance. Your pride nearly put Radomor in Gunderic’s Tower!”
He swatted Badan’s shield, two-handed, once and twice. “Did the Rooks give you silver? Or did you do their work without fee?”
Coensar shouted; he had Deorwen by the arm. But, fighting at the limit of his strength, Durand could not answer. Every switch of Ouen’s old sword was nearly enough to tear the thing from Durand’s grip. The blade struck rust and sparks from sword and shield and iron mail as he battered Badan back.
Then, at the door of the potter’s shop, the fool slipped. His bald skull cracked from the door frame and Durand made to finish him.
But as Durand lunged over the threshold, the fire had finished its work among the upper floors of the shop. And, somewhere in the heart of the old building, a great beam gave way in the heat. In a crashing instant, the weight of four floors thundered down, the blaze shuddering through the wide door, filling Durand’s throat, the street—and searing the faces of the crowd.
As Durand tottered, eyes stung, the black shape of Badan bulled from the wrecked door. Durand swished Ouen’s sword high, hoping only to—
But suddenly Coensar landed on Durand’s shoulders. Upon the burning doorstep, the master swordsman grappled with Durand like a child, saving Badan for the moment, and leaving Durand to stagger free, facing both men. Deorwen looked on. “What do you mean by—?”
“Durand,” Coensar reasoned, “you cannot kill a—”
“This thing is no peer! What liegeman seeks to slay his lord? What do I owe him?”
Scarcely clear of the fire, Badan capsized.
“He’s thrown his master in the street before his own citadel.” Durand hoisted the point of the sword up, angling toward the wretched traitor. “What pain does the devil not deserve?”
Hands caught hold of Badan, pulling him free of the inferno’s verges. The man’s head lolled and Coensar grimaced in the chaos of the street. All the while, Deorwen was watching.
The fierce captain squeezed his eyes tight. “God, boy. The fool did none of those things!”
Durand wavered, his glance flickering to the dome of Badan’s lolling head.
“What?”
The captain covered his face. The childish gesture shot through Durand like ice and premonition. “He’s not the man!”
Durand shook his head. “What do you—?”
“Host of Heaven, you fool boy!” the captain shouted over the firestorm. “There was nothing else. . . . Half a thousandmen I’ve fought.” The words had him twisting. “Then, Radomor’s fiends took Geridon.” The Champion. “Not since I was a boy had such a chance fallen within my grasp. Not in a lifetime. And I was the hero of the hour, remember, scattering that nest of archers above the city! Freeing our last hope from Radomor’s bloody trap. There were smiles on a hundred hard faces looking my way, and I was Champion, near as damnit. But when I wheeled about, there you were: you had our Lamoric slung over your saddlebow and you were riding. Snatching him from death. Hells, you were on bloody Geridon’s own horse, Durand!”
The point of Durand’s sword touched the mud; the thing might have been leagues from Durand’s hand for all he felt it. He could scarcely see the mad street around him. “No.”
But the fires flashed in Coensar’s eyes. “Look close, Durand.” Durand saw gray hair, bruises: an old man. “A duke cannot cast his champion out, lame or broken. Not with honor. How many other chances would I have before it’s too late?”
A chained flail was twisted in Coensar’s belt, the spines of its urchin head matching the marks in Durand’s bones as neatly as the teeth of a key. It had always been there.
Over the man’s shoulder, Deorwen wavered, her eyes wide with God knew what. The street burned. Wild horses crushed men or carried them into the ranks of the enemy. Axes clopped in helms on the ramparts and every man would be dead before the Eye could burn another hour. Durand found the captain’s soot black face. Badan hung between a muleteer and a priest, an arm over each shoulder. The blackened cloaks of the whole lot struggled as if to fly.
In the Heavens, Radomor’s sanctuary spire stood like a blade in the maelstrom’s heart. Durand pictured the Rooks laughing in the empty sanctuary while the storm of wings and the fire churned round and round.
He pictured the ribbed darkness of its vaults high above the mad house city.
And his mouth opened. The image brought back a memory; a memory of Deorwen’s dream. Here was Deorwen watching him. And before his eyes was the ribbed darkness she’d seen. Cackling. Where would the devil Rooks be but in the high sanctuary, defiled? What had they said in the muddy Gulf of Eldinor when he’d been half-dead on the deck of a stranger’s ship and they had croaked down from the masthead? “Hostages.” They had laughed—hostages who made enemies of friends and friends of enemies. Now, here was Mornaway, playing friend to the devils. “How else could they have brought old Duke Severin to their side?”
For an instant and without meaning to, he met Deorwen’s eyes.
“I will end it,” Durand rasped, and, without one word more, he lurched from girl and frozen men.
There was rope among the horses. Some must have belonged to engineers. He found a grappling iron and he pitched down the burning street, his eyes on high gaps between the rooftops—past the gawking shadows of the Rooks�
� dark sigils where Radomor’s men walked the battlements. Wild horses darted round him.
Finally, Durand staggered between two burning houses. He’d seen an empty parapet. Radomor’s fools would all be at the gate.
Deorwen nearly skidded past him and the alley.
He seized the woman’s arm. “Go back.” There was hardly room for two people to stand in the narrow alley. Around him, the plaster walls were as hot as fresh loaves. She was too close. His bent back had them standing nearly eye to eye.
“It’s the sanctuary, isn’t it?” she said. Smoke boiled around them.
“No.” But he wasn’t sure what question he was answering. Deorwen could not be in his mind. Not now.
“He’s there. And you’re going for him.”
Durand gulped a breath of air and mashed his eyes shut. “You must stay. Stay with bloody Coensar.” He turned from the girl and swung the grapnel slithering to the battlements. The first ten feet were a high slope, the rest was an old wall. He stamped one boot on the bank and started to walk himself up the line. He breathed in gulps. To end all this, he would pull the city down with his hands.
She called from behind him. “Durand, you can’t—”
“Leave me.” His back and shoulder twisted as they took his weight.
“No,” she said. But Durand was gone.
Hand-over-hand, he climbed the mud slope and then started on the stone wall atop it. The Rooks’ devil figures pressed shadow faces against the stone, but they smeared and eddied at the touch of Durand’s boots, erupting into flies. The nearby fires licked his coat of mail. But he reached, wrestling with the parapet’s overhang and, finally, heaved himself through an embrasure with pounding blood ready to burst from his skull.
Coensar and Lamoric and the whole world were below him now. The city was above. He could concentrate on Moryn and the Rooks.
Only as he spilled onto the parapet and his shaking hands and knees did he notice Deorwen: nose to soot-blackened nose with him. She’d slithered up behind him. “By God, how did—” he began, but an inexplicable terror flashed over her face.