by Anna Thayer
“They will not pass the blockade even if they find a vessel,” Hughan answered.
“They’ll regroup for a last stand,” Feltumadas added. “Likely at the palace.”
“I would not make it the site of my last stand,” Eamon gasped, appalled at the idea. Defence of the palace, even with its great gates, would be difficult and bloody, and there was nowhere to run to in the case of defeat.
“Yet that is where the Hands have been pressing the men to go,” Feltumadas replied.
“And that is where we must go,” Hughan told them.
“Many more flee south and west.”
“They must be pursued and pinned down until they surrender.” Hughan looked across at the Easter lord. “Detail more men to round up the defectors and stragglers and contain them. Then follow us to the palace.”
Hughan raised his sword high. The King’s men followed him as he turned from the circle of the Four Quarters and up along the Coll. The sun flashed on the King’s helmet, a golden strike on a silver crown. Eamon followed.
They went up the Coll, past the gates of the Crown where more great stone eagles stood. Eamon’s thought turned for a moment to Ilenia and the players. Did she, or any of them, live? Had they been drafted into the thresholders? He tried to imagine Shoreham wielding a blade against the blue banners, but could not.
Up the Coll advanced the men who fought beneath the banner of the King and his allies. The shrieks and cries of Dunthruik echoed all around. Eamon felt the fear of those who hid and those who ran, and the desperate courage of those men who were even then preparing their hands for their final stand. Perhaps the Gauntlet would, of their own accord, have surrendered, but those Hands that lived would rather drive them on to death for the Master.
As they passed the Brand and the West Quarter College, Eamon caught a glimpse of several men – evidently runners, for as soon as the King’s banners came into sight they tore off towards the palace by ways known only to Dunthruik’s men. Some of the Easters tried to take the runners down with their bows, but to no avail; the arrows split uselessly against the walls of the narrow streets. Eamon mused that it was hardly a secret that the King approached. What kind of last stand were the Hands preparing at the palace gates? What else lay in wait for them – for Hughan?
Where was the throned?
Hughan looked to the gates. For a moment Eamon thought that he discerned a troubled thought on Hughan’s furrowed brow. A chill realization drenched him. The hardest battle would be fought not on Dunthruik’s plains or in its streets, but rather in a room where King and throned would strive against each other for the right to claim the land.
Eamon shivered.
The palace walls came into sight before them, the gates firmly shut. Eamon knew that bolts and bars strengthened them from within. Behind them voices called to each other, the cries of Hands and Gauntlet. As they approached, defenders on the gates began a desperate volley of arrows. The King’s men easily took cover, either at a safe distance or in the nearby streets, while they waited for the rest of their number to reach the palace. As they waited, Hughan stood watching the gates and its defenders, deep in thought. The arrows clattered harmlessly against the stones. Eamon wondered how many arrows the defenders could possibly have, and whether they realized that they used them on an enemy whom they could not hope to hit.
They waited on Hughan’s command. Feltumadas paced impatiently for a time between the King and the men near him, then rounded on Hughan.
“Let us take them!” Feltumadas cried, slamming one palm against another. “We have taken the Blind Gate and the South and the North; Edelred’s palace gates shall be no different.”
“We can break these gates,” Hughan agreed quietly, “but in so doing many men inside will lose their lives. There is enough blood on the streets of this city, Feltumadas, and I would not add to it where I have no need.” Eamon was relieved to hear him say it.
Feltumadas sighed. “Yes, Star.”
They all three looked to the palace gates again. The rain of arrows from the walls halted. For a moment all that could be heard was the sound of the men within.
“Regardless of bloodshed, we must do something,” Feltumadas told Hughan fiercely. “They are doubtless preparing more trouble within, and the longer we leave them –”
“Let me speak to them,” Eamon said suddenly.
Feltumadas gave him a strange, rolling look. “Do you think that men who barricade themselves behind palace gates and rain arrows down on those who come to them are willing to surrender?”
“I think that men with the throned’s mark upon them and a Hand behind them will do many things that they would not do otherwise,” Eamon answered, “even barricading themselves behind palace gates and loosing at kings.”
Feltumadas snorted. “Then try to speak to them,” he said, “but I hold little hope for your success.”
Eamon looked across at Hughan. The King nodded to him. “Try, First Knight.”
Eamon drew a deep breath and went firmly up to the gates. An eerie silence was behind them; a stinging, acrid smell emanated from there that Eamon could not place.
The gates were tall and strongly wrought. As he went to stand before them it occurred to him that, in all his long months in Dunthruik, he had rarely looked at them. They were broad and deep, painted red and gold, and bore two posterns, one to each side. Eamon knew the guardhouses to either side of the gates well. He remembered the first time he had taken his turn to watch them. It had been on that night that he had met Alessia.
He looked up at the gates. “Send forth a speaker!”
For a long moment there was no answer. Eamon stared up at the walls, willing someone to respond, wishing for the name of just one man inside on whom he could call.
His wish was granted.
“What would you, traitor?”
A darkly garbed figure stood on the wall. He knew the voice, though it took him a moment to remember the Hand’s name.
“Lord Brettal,” he called, “I am glad to see you.”
“I cannot return the sentiment,” Brettal replied. “If it lay within my power, both you and your Serpent would lie dead before me in an instant, and I would offer up your heads to the Master!”
“Yet you cannot,” Eamon called. “Just as you cannot hold these gates, Lord Brettal.” Eamon watched as an angry look passed over the Hand’s face. “There is no need for you or the men with you to die. The King desires your surrender, not your lives.”
“My orders come from the Right Hand,” Brettal snapped, “and surrender does not form a part of them.”
“I gave no such commands, Lord Brettal,” Eamon answered, “and even had I, I would rescind them, and do so when I say to you: let you and your men come forth and live.”
Brettal laughed. “Do not take airs to yourself,” he spat. “My orders were not from you.”
Eamon’s blood chilled.
Arlaith.
“You need not follow his commands,” Eamon said earnestly.
“Is that your counsel?” Brettal demanded. “That I play traitor with you?”
“Let the Gauntlet choose for themselves.”
“The Gauntlet’s choice is made by their duty,” Brettal retorted, “and they will be constant in it – unlike you!”
“Then let the Gauntlet know,” Eamon yelled, hoping that the men on the other side of the gate would hear him, “that the King does not consider them enemies, and that their oaths will not bar them from his service!”
Brettal’s face waxed livid. “Go and counsel your hooded Serpent, Blight of Dunthruik!” He spat at Eamon with a hissing scowl, and left the wall.
Moments later the Hand howled words of threat and scorn at the men behind the gates with him.
Eamon returned to Hughan, downcast. “They cannot surrender,” he said. He wondered how many of them wished to. “We must take the gates.”
“Then we will take them,” Hughan replied.
“We will not have to open them!�
�� cried Feltumadas. He pointed ahead.
Eamon turned to see the palace gates yawn open. Ranks of Gauntlet were arrayed in the plaza. In the middle of the square sat a long, dark, raised metal tube. Eamon had never seen its like. He stared at it. As the gate opened wider, a second tube came into view. Behind both were lines of Hands, going back and forth between the tubes and great barrels. The Hands seemed to be feeding the tubes.
A Hand behind one of the strange tubes spread his palms – red light appeared. The Hand set fire in some part of the tube. The Gauntlet braced themselves.
“This city has artillery…”
Suddenly Eamon understood.
“Fire!” Eamon yelled. “Fire!”
And then it came: a great sweep of flame roared forward, fuelled by the red light. Smoke followed it in clouds as the ballast shot out of the gates and down the Coll.
The King’s men fled to the side streets just before the metal beast gorged its mass of flame. As they sought refuge, the Gauntlet cheered and the Hands snapped further commands.
As another strike boomed over their heads and out of the gates, Eamon was flung back against a wall; the explosion reverberated through his armour and ears. A biting smell filled the air. Eamon suddenly realized he had smelled it before: standing by the burning remains of the Easter bridge that he had been accused of destroying.
He gagged on the stinging stench.
“They had the same kind of artillery at the Blind Gate,” Feltumadas cried. The Easter was by Eamon’s side.
“How did you get past it?” Eamon spluttered.
“With difficulty.” Feltumadas’s face was grim. “We shot the crew and charged it before they could reload. We cannot do the same here.”
Eamon grimaced. He suspected the Hands were already reloading. Though some of the King’s men tried shooting into the yard, he doubted they would have much success.
He glanced across the square and froze. “Where is the King?” he cried suddenly.
Feltumadas only looked at him. “I do not know.”
Eamon looked in anguish across the square before the gates. The King’s men were gathered together out of the line of fire, but a score had been hit in the blasts. Oddly twisted bodies lay on the stones and Eamon could not tell if any of them was Hughan’s.
Then suddenly he saw him. The King stepped boldly back into the great gap before the gates.
“Hughan!” Eamon gasped.
“What is he doing?” Feltumadas hissed.
But Eamon had no breath to answer: he was in thrall to terror.
The King stood before the gates of the palace. He went alone, and a strange silence fell about him, for he looked back at the fire and might of Dunthruik with quiet assurance.
“Stay your fury, Hands of Edelred.” His voice seemed as loud as thunder and as sweet as a summer rain. How could any man gainsay it?
“Fire!” yelled a voice within the yard.
Another heap of flame bounded from the gate towards the standing King. Horror etched the faces of the King’s men. The King’s name leapt to Eamon’s lips. He started forward, but he knew that he could do nothing.
Hughan neither flinched nor moved as the flame howled towards him. He faced it silently. Suddenly the air about Hughan rippled. The King held the gazes of the Gauntlet and the Hands as the shot fire met a living, shimmering shield of blue light which flashed with fearsome brilliance, dousing the striking flames.
The fire was gone. The King stood untouched before the gates.
All was silence.
Hughan drew a deep breath. “I will pass,” he called.
In that moment Eamon’s legs carried him to the King’s side, though he scarcely knew how he could dare to stand there. None opposed him, and none spoke until he, reaching Hughan, called to them:
“King’s men!”
They came to the King in silence, forming up behind him. The gaping Gauntlet were paralysed with awe and terror.
“Receive the King’s mercy!” Eamon called.
“Never!” screeched Brettal. He stood by one of the great artillery machines; the Hand’s contorted face was malice. His hands seared with red light that grew until it nigh engulfed him. Another Hand went up to him, adding more powder to the artillery and light to the gathering orb.
“Never!”
The Hands’ motion freed the Gauntlet. They threw down their weapons and bolted forth from the gates, spreading in all directions. All the while, the light over the machine darkened. Some Gauntlet ran to the King’s lines, their hands thrown up in surrender. Others disappeared into the city streets as the red light consumed the artillery.
“Stand, King’s men!” Eamon cried. As if by premonition, he knew that their lives depended on it. “Stand for the King!”
As he cried, an arrow hissed by his ear as the King’s men loosed arrows. The arrows flew with terrific accuracy through the air into the plaza. Brettal gave a choking screech and spun backwards, an arrow in his throat. As he fell, the light in his hands turned towards the great pile of ammunition behind him.
There was not even the time to scream; the light careered into the machine’s food. Then a blast filled the air and a resounding crack shook the world. When next Eamon could see, it was through a veil of blue light which surrounded him and all the men who stood with the King. Gazing about himself in surprise, Eamon saw that the protective light emanated from Hughan. He looked back to the gates.
The machine and Hands were gone, replaced by a blackened husk of metal and charred flesh. Great swathes of the plaza’s walls tumbled into cascades of broken, smoking stone. The stones of the great yard cracked. Debris hurtled in every direction and waves of fire went with it as the whole front of the palace collapsed, its gaudy innards revealed to every watching eye in spews of red, like the ribs and blood of a living man torn open. The towering arches crashed and tumbled, the great balcony was cast down, the stone turned black, and the halls filled with wolfish flames.
Eamon stared as Edelred’s gates and walls fell, crushing the scores of screaming Hands beneath them. Destruction rained down in smoke and a hail of scathing stone. Yet apart from its entrance, the palace still stood. Though veiled by the falling rock, the West Wing was unscathed.
Still the stone and fire fell, but the King’s men were untouched.
The fall of debris lessened into clouds of dust and the blue light fell away. Waves of heat engulfed Eamon. He choked on the air, which reeked of burnt and burning bodies and timbers. The remains of Hands and some Gauntlet men lay among the shattered gates and walls.
Hughan surveyed the destruction before him. Pity touched his face. “Lord Feltumadas.”
The Easter came to him at once. “Star,” he answered softly, his eyes wide.
“Take charge of those men surrendering here. Detail others to search the rubble for survivors. First Knight.”
“Sire,” Eamon breathed.
“We must enter the palace.”
Eamon looked at the rubble of the broken gates, walls, and palace entrance, then back to Hughan.
“I will lead you,” he answered.
Hughan gathered a group of King’s men. When they had prepared themselves, they turned to Eamon.
“We are ready, First Knight.”
Eamon clambered forward over the rubble of the gates. The ground was hot beneath him and his armour conducted that heat into his weary limbs. He picked his way through the Royal Plaza, followed by the King.
The palace’s entrance hall and the corridors leading to the throne room had been destroyed when the balcony crashed down. As Eamon threaded his way through the hot stones towards the East Wing, he prayed that the damage was not more extensive.
He hastened to the wall and to a broken arch. The palace’s windows had shattered, spewing forth hundreds of grim shards which littered the ground like daggers. Carefully, Eamon crossed the glassy debris of talons and peered through the arch. There were shafts of light beyond it. His instinct told him that the hall was passable.
He pressed himself in through the narrow opening. The room beyond was dark and breathing was difficult; clods of dust and stone fell from the ceiling, but the doorway beyond was whole.
“This way!” he called.
The King and his men came one by one after him.
The great banners and emblems were scattered on the ground, torn down and crushed beneath fallen stones. Pillars and beams had boomed forward under the weight of what lay above them, and Eamon had to pick his way carefully to the end of the corridor.
They passed by several rooms in the gloomy darkness. In one, Eamon caught sight of the remains of an owl and ash painted on the wall. His heart stilled as he realized that it was the Hands’ waiting hall – he remembered its splendour. But his vision of it faded away as he looked at it, for now it had been reduced to splintered stones. Of all the emblems in the room, only the Right Hand’s black eagle survived, its face staring grimly down from the cracked ceiling.
They came to the throne room. The great doors stood intact. In the gloom of the dusty corridor a figure lay on the ground, crushed beneath a fallen beam. Edelred’s doorkeeper. The man held a sword in his hand. His back was horribly arched, snapped in two where the beam had struck.
Eamon stepped back. The sight was loathsome to him.
Steps approached from behind. Hughan emerged through the darkness. He looked at the fallen man and sighed.
“This is the throne room,” Eamon said, gesturing to the door. “There is a way into his quarters from within.”
“Very well.”
Eamon hesitated, remembering the many times he had knelt in the hall beyond before a false master. As he thought on it, he saw again with horrid clarity the paintings that hung on the walls.
His hand faltered at the door. He looked earnestly to the King. “I cannot go in there,” he whispered. “Not with you.”
Hughan laid his hand on Eamon’s where it held the door. Eamon swallowed. He searched the King’s eyes. “Hughan, the shame and guilt of Dunthruik is seen no more clearly than beyond these doors.”
“I do not fear to see it.”
The King set force against the door, and Eamon joined him in it. The great wooden panels opened, swinging back on damaged hinges to reveal the long, red floor of the throne room.