In Siege of Daylight

by Gregory S Close

  Foss was a barrel-chested man, and his deep voice carried in the still cold air of the empty baily as he barked out orders. The men selected for Calvraign’s first command were efficient, if not especially excited about the mission, and they were swift and precise in response.

  A chill touched Calvraign’s spine, and he turned to peer behind him. He expected to see Greycloak lingering in his wake, but the shade had yet to appear. Instead, it was the bridge that again drew his attention. A Border Knight crossed the parapet of the bridge house, ever watchful.

  “Osrith?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How is the bridge garrison deployed?”

  “On the bridge?” Osrith scratched at his beard. “Well, they’ve got at least a dozen men on station at each gatehouse, and a few towers along the way, at the pylons. I think, at the least, Willanel leaves a pair on watch with a signal fire. Why?” he added, sarcasm seeping in to his voice now. “Are we going to search the bridge next?”

  Foss snorted in wry appreciation, but Calvraign ignored the small affront. “No,” he said, “but if we find this thing, we may need all the help we can get.”

  Foss and Osrith shared a quiet smirk.

  “If we find this thing, we’ll be in more trouble than an extra squad of men will fix,” Osrith predicted. “No one expects us to find it. They just want us out of the way. If we do find it, we’d better hope Kassakan can hop back through a rainbow before it rips us all to bloody shreds.”

  Calvraign noted there was no amused snort from the sergeant this time. “We’re going to find it,” he said with a certainty he couldn’t quite explain. “Or it’ll find us.”

  Osrith grunted. “Don’t be in such a hurry for Pheydryr’s kiss, boy. She’ll take a fancy to us soon enough without your help.”

  The ground floor of the central keep revealed an angry Markus and a busy kitchen, but it held no secrets. Calvraign found much to learn about the soldiers from their search, however. They were professional, methodical, and quick to obey if not always eager to please. Foss wasted no words, and his men wasted no time.

  I might tell them what to do, but it’s the sergeant that leads them, he noted.

  The search of the second, third and fourth floors revealed nothing. The exercise was devolving into a chore. The soldiers remained thorough, but grew less guarded with each empty room they left behind.

  Sergeant Foss’ curse changed all of that.

  “Demons Above!” he screamed, sending a dozen swords singing from their scabbards in a heartbeat. “On your guard, one and all!”

  Osrith shouldered closer to Calvraign, his blade bared. Most of the squad was in the long hall on the fourth level, but Foss and a few others had just ascended the stairs to begin the search of the central barracks above. The sergeant appeared at the base of the steps, his face pale and drawn.

  “Sir Calvraign,” he reported. “Looks as you were right. They’re all dead, sir. The whole watch killed in their sleep. Bloody mess.”

  “They’re all dead?” Calvraign repeated. “How?”

  “Throats slit, mostly. Some guts torn out here and there – those that woke up, maybe.”

  “Tighten up!” Osrith barked. “Something’s here. Or was. Let’s not let it catch us sleeping.”

  “Mullen’s going on up to check the other barracks. Could be it got the morning watch before they woke and the night watch coming back for sleep.”

  Osrith tugged at Calvraign’s elbow and brushed past Foss to head up the spiral stair. A soldier Calvraign assumed was Mullen met them at the landing, his face ashen.

  “All dead,” he choked out.

  Osrith ignored the shaken soldier, examining the carnage in the barracks. Calvraign put his fist to his nose, trying to ward off the smell, and clenched his teeth. Everything was strangely in place, showing little sign of a struggle, but blood and viscera painted the floor and walls and soaked the mattresses.

  “Don’t fight it,” Osrith advised, pacing down between the row of bunks and checking the wounds on the corpses. “Give it a good heave and save your energy for fighting.”

  Calvraign shook his head, though he thought he could smell that Foss’ men may have had less luck keeping down breakfast. He felt light-headed, slipped as he turned, and fell to the floor inches from a lifeless body and the stench of blood and bowel. He twisted away, but his resolve fled, and he retched.

  Osrith sighed. “Damn,” he said, strangely calm to Calvraign’s ears. “Got the lot of ‘em. This ain’t no shadow beast, either. Prints in the blood look like boots, and more than one tread.”

  Calvraign spit out the foul residue on his tongue and wiped his lips on the corner of his tunic, then regained his feet. His stomach was still sour and his legs a bit shaky. He saw the smeared tracks, and tried to make sense of the comings and goings.

  “Does Inulf have a battle party of some sort within the keep?” he asked.

  Foss entered behind them. His men kept a wary guard on the stairwell and the doors. “But that, that’s impossible,” he stammered.

  “Yeah,” Osrith growled, “it’s a pisser when the impossible grabs your goolies and gives ‘em a good yank, huh? Them being dead is just half the problem.”

  “Half?”

  “If they killed all of the guards,” he explained, “who was it out there on watch, exactly?”

  “Blood and ruin!” Calvraign’s eyes shot wide open as the icy itch between his shoulders returned, and it all made sense. “The bridge!” he yelled. “All of you to the bridge, now.”

  They descended two floors before a tremor shuddered through the stone and timber of the keep, scattering some to the floor and a few down the steps with a loud clamor. Strange battle cries rang out from below. Calvraign felt fear seep into his certitude even before he heard the man at the window shout, “The bridge, sir. They’ve fired the bridge!”

  “Bloody hells,” Osrith growled. “Now we’ve stepped in it.”

  Calvraign edged to an arrow slit and saw black smoke billowing into the sky and a growing blaze at the bridge house tower. Knights were running through the bailey. Screams and clashing blades echoed up the spiral stair from the kitchen, and a rush of panicked servants tried to flee to the upper floors, tangling with the guards as they pushed past.

  “Find a door and lock it!” Osrith yelled after them.

  “They’re in the kitchen!” Foss bellowed at his men. “Get in there and push ‘em back!”

  “Watch the rear,” Osrith advised. “They’ll try to pinch us from top and bottom if they can.”

  “We need to regroup with Sergeant Faeldor,” Foss said. “If we’ve any chance at all, it’s with numbers.”

  “No, sergeant,” Calvraign said. “We need to fight through to the garden. We can lose the keep, but we can’t lose that – if we do, we lose the city as well.”

  Foss gave him a long look, but nodded.

  They found Markus and Dar in the kitchens, barricading the door to the bailey. Calvraign counted three servants dead and one of his own men, with one knight in armor lying headless and spewing thick, dark blood from its gaping neck. It was the head that caught Calvraign’s attention. Knocked from its helm by the deathblow, it had rolled close to the fire pit, and it snarled at them in defiance, mouth agape.

  It wasn’t human.

  Hrumm! Calvraign realized.

  A low throaty howl reverberated from the upper floors, followed by the sound of armored feet on stone, descending fast. Another howl answered from behind the blocked door, punctuated by relentless pounding.

  “Well,” Osrith said, rolling his shoulders and shifting the grip on his axe, “first things first.”

  Seth pushed Iaede through the concealed door after Braede, and then followed through into the scurryway himself. Seth and the sisters were crowded between the narrow walls of the accessway that connected the baron’s bedchamber, his sitting room and the outer hall. It wasn’t a secret passage so much as an unobtrusive way to deliver wood to the ceramic heating
stoves, but Seth hoped that whoever these knights were butchering the baron’s men, they wouldn’t know of the ways between the walls.

  The sounds of pitched battle echoed beyond, drawing ever closer. Deirdre was still behind him, and Seth waited for her with the door cracked. A man screamed, and there was a clank of something heavy hitting the floor. An orphaned sword clattered through the doorway.

  Deirdre stopped running and stood frozen for a moment, staring at Seth in terror, still halfway across the room from safety. Heavy footsteps approached, and she waved him away, turning to slide under the edge of a trailing coverlet on the bed.

  Seth closed the door with a muted click, but winced at even that slight noise. There was no more screaming to hide the sounds of their escape. He didn’t want to move – he barely dared breathe at all. He was scared even to look through the small peephole in the wall for fear the sound of his eyes moving in their sockets might bring their pursuers down on them.

  Not for the first time, he hoped that Callagh was safe, wherever she’d gotten to. No one had seen her since the middle of the night, from what the sisters said. With any luck, she was visiting Calvraign where someone like Osrith could protect her.

  Seth wasn’t sure exactly how he stayed still, or quiet, or conscious, in the aftermath of the attack. Perhaps the fact that the girls maintained some semblance of composure lent him strength, or shamed him into stoic bravado. Likely as not, he decided, it was just paralysis from fear. He was becoming well acquainted with that condition.

  Seth dared a glimpse through the peephole into Baron Ezriel’s quarters. The bedchamber was still empty, but the sound of heavy footfalls echoed from the adjoining room. He could hear voices too, but couldn’t recognize individual words – or even the language, he realized.

  “Did they see us?” whispered Iaede.

  Seth turned back to hush her with a finger to his lips. Her expression reflected his fear and uncertainty. A crash from the room beyond snapped his attention back to the peephole.

  One of the killers was in the doorway, but he may as well have been an army for all Seth was concerned. The interloper advanced into the room, the torchlight a ruddy glow like blood on his breastplate and full helm. The sword in his hand was wet with a less metaphorical stain. Seth had seen at least three of the household guard cut down and assumed the fourth had fallen as well. He wondered whose blood adorned that blade: Tierry or Filchen or Makomber or some nameless face he’d seen but never met.

  The knight cocked his head, as if listening intently.

  A bead of sweat trickled from Seth’s brow.

  The knight twisted his head around again, taking a step forward. Seth started to ease the wooden plug into place over the peephole when the knight ripped the full helm from his head and threw it with a ringing clatter against the stone floor. Seth froze in place, unblinking. He stood transfixed by the creature’s horrible tattooed visage, as if trapped in a nightmare from which he couldn’t wake.

  Is that a hrumm? he marveled. He could not even imagine how such a thing could gain access to the city, and to King’s Keep, even dressed up in the garb of a Border Knight. This isn’t possible. He was proud, at least, that this time he hadn’t wet himself.

  The hrumm sniffed the air, nostrils flaring as it sucked in the scents of the room. Its eyes were inhuman, like a mountain cat’s, and Seth was sure it could see straight through the hidden door panel to find its prey.

  But it didn’t charge. The hrumm prowled across the floor, sniffing, sword at the ready, closer by inches, slow but certain of the scent.

  It smells us.

  Seth’s heart pounded as he realized there was nowhere to run. The slightest movement, the barest hint of noise, anything could bring it straight to them – anything at all. He was afraid even to replace the peephole cover.

  The hrumm was mere feet away – and it was worse by far than any of the stories.

  Deirdre sprang from her hiding place, running for the door. Seth didn’t know if she meant to distract it, or to escape herself, but Iaede and Braede ran then, too, sprinting down the scurryway for the exit at the main hall, and he followed. The hrumm barely looked in Deirdre’s direction. Instead, it leapt forward, crashing through the thin sliding door in a shower of splinters.

  Iaede was directly in its path. She shrieked as it fell upon her. Its sword drove through her chest, chipping the stone behind her. A small sound popped from her throat, and a tear ran down her cheek, and then the sword was through and through once more. Seth fell to his knees as Iaede crumpled at the hrumm’s feet. He watched the light and life fade from her eyes. A tiny, sad mewling passed her lips before her breath escaped forever, and the girl was still.

  It was the second time he’d stood by and watched someone’s murder. Seth felt a sick helplessness in his bones. The monster turned away from him, to chase down Braede, but it stumbled backward. A glittering point of steel poked through its shoulder blade. Then another ripped through its neck, spraying blood in its wake. The hrumm careened off the wall and fell face first a few feet from Seth, clawing at the floor as thick blood pumped from its opened throat.

  The sound of battle again drifted from the baron’s rooms, but this time the voices, and the language, were familiar. Seth looked through the shattered door in a daze. Another hrumm lay dead in the bedchamber, and a king’s man slumped against the door clutching his gut, looking grey. Deirdre was there, too, her broken body splayed on the floor. Her throat was a mangled mess of flesh. Her glassy eyes gazed unseeing at the rafters.

  “Seth!”

  Seth turned at the sound of his name, surprised to see Callagh Breigh, bow in hand and her face smeared in blood, crouching in the scurryway in front of him.

  “Ca… Callagh?” he sobbed, ashamed of his fear but unable to hide it.

  “I brought help,” she explained, her voice as gentle as her countenance was fierce. “You’re safe for now.”

  Seth shook his head. “Deirdre,” he moaned. “Iaede.”

  “I know,” she said. The steel in Callagh’s eyes flickered for a moment, but she blinked away the sentiment as fast as it came upon her. “None of that matters now. All that matters is Calvraign. Where can I find him, Seth? Where’s Cal?”

  Seth stuttered nonsense, trying to collect his thoughts in vain.

  “Ah, bloody hells,” said Callagh, squinting at Seth. “I’ll just have to take ye’ with me.”

  And she dragged him, protesting, out into the hall.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  THE KING’S LANCE

  AEOLIL assessed the champions with a wary eye. Suspecting attack, but not knowing from whom or whence it might come, the knights provided her little comfort. The pale fire of a hundred glow lamps shimmered in the gilt of their armor as they saluted the king and the royal pavilion. Even Artygalle was resplendent in his reworked mail. The kin had somehow repaired and refashioned his kit, and though it was not ornate, its craftsmanship was undeniable and beautiful to behold.

  Artygalle was the only new face in the Champion’s Melee. House Tirea had not sent a champion in the past few years, and ironically, Artygalle was here officially only as the champion of the Opening Melee, rather than Elvaeir’s chosen man. Semantics aside, all knew he stood for Tiriel, win or lose.

  The other Houses sent familiar faces. Chadwick represented her own family, and her eldest cousin Niklhas, for the House of adh Boighn. Calamyr and Grumwyr tilted for their respective Houses, Nevanne a’Cwille for Myrtma, and Ashgar Tremayne for Malminnion. The duchies each sent a champion, Mellieux for Aeyrdyn, as always; and the archduke’s own daughter Jocelin stood for Mneyril. Lastly, Derrigin Sinhd represented Holy Mother Church and the lancers. As tradition warranted, the House Royal sent no champion to its own tourney.

  With a rustle of heavy robes, Archbishop Renarre rose to his feet behind her. The dour mood of the pavilion had not improved on account of his presence. He crossed the short distance from their seats to the edge of the pavilion’s balcony and faced t
he assemblage. Three acolytes were seated under the lip of the railing, hidden from those below. Each young boy cradled a scabbard and sword in his lap.

  “Behold!” Renarre commanded, and the droning susurration of a thousand voices quieted to expectant silence. Aeolil was always astounded that somehow, within the cavernous confines of this living tree, a word spoken from any of the scattered pavilions could be heard clear and strong by the multitudes, no matter their seat or station.

  Renarre reached for the first offered hilt and drew a shining sword of deep orange-red steel. Its length rippled in waves of subdued light like captured dawn. He extended the bare blade toward the knights and commenced the Consecration of Battle.

  “Calàthiél Nahaviir,” he intoned in Old Dacadh, officious and even, waving the weapon in a slow arc from left to right, “you are the edge of dawn’s awakening, the Light that sunders Dark. It was with you that Irdik smote Gulgazamoun and severed the chains of the Ivory Throne. May you bring us the Wisdom of Irdik, this day.”

  Aeolil felt her lips moving in the appropriate response, efficient if thoughtless after years of rote training. The arena reverberated as thousands joined her.

  “Irdik, First Sword among us, may your Wisdom guide us.”

  Renarre sank the sword point-first in its place behind the ceremonial kite shield that served as coat-of-arms and centerpiece of the royal pavilion. The shield was mounted on the outside edge of the balcony, and the sword crossed it from the top right quarter to the lower left. Once sheathed in the display, the only portion of the weapon still visible to the honored occupants was the protruding pommel.

  Renarre withdrew a slender, silver long sword next, again extending and waving the blade left to right. It had a simple design and crossbar, but where Calàthiél smoldered, this blade shone. A pure silver light illuminated the somber expression on the archbishop’s face as he continued the ancient ritual.

  “Elèndere,” he said, “you are the bright moonlight that assuages Shadow. It was with you that Illuné revealed and dispelled the Accursed. May you bring us the Honor of Illuné, this day.”