The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1)

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The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1) Page 31

by Peter Morwood


  Kalarr buckled his war-mask into place then took up a counter-guard and crabbed sideways, watching Aldric’s response, waiting for an opportunity. Then with a shout to overawe his youthful opponent, he sprang forward and cut all in the same instant.

  Aldric wasn’t overawed. He sidestepped, deflected and returned a cut of his own, the swords ringing together in a series of blurred strokes before both men separated. When they closed again it was with more caution and a tentative scissory touch of edge on edge, before another explosive exchange and a chance slash drew a glistening scarlet ribbon from between the armoured plates of his left wrist. When Widowmaker braced in Wolf’s Guard, the levelled point trembled and lowered out of line as if the injured wrist couldn’t support it. A lesser swordsman would have missed the error, a better one would have suspected the trap.

  Cu Ruruc fell between the two.

  He took one quick pace forward and slashed viciously towards the opening, only to see it close and Widowmaker’s point come back up to stab at his throat. Kalarr charged onto the waiting point, jolted to a stop and lurched sideways, clawing at the steel through his neck until it pulled free.

  Then instead of falling dead to the floor he regained his balance and made a thrust in turn, so fast, so ferocious and so unexpected that though Aldric twisted aside he couldn’t avoid the point that scored across his hip. As wave of black and crimson sparks threatened to swamp his senses as he jerked away, but he would have been skewered like meat on a spit without that partial evasion. He wasn’t dead yet.

  Neither was Kalarr cu Ruruc. His mangled throat closed, ripped flesh running like hot wax, until in seconds only the torn coif showed any damage. He laughed at the shock on Aldric’s pain-blanched face, said half a dozen harsh words under his breath and resumed his attack. Soon more blood spurted onto the black armour and smeared the tiled floor underfoot. It came from small cuts, wounds without importance, but receiving them when he should have blocked or sidestepped every single one was an omen of how this fight might end.

  Gemmel knew those sluggish reactions came from the sense-dulling charm created by Kalarr’s words. It was an invocation like sorcery-induced drunkenness, and in normal circumstances an attempt to disrupt the magic from a distance would enhance instead of cancel it. Kalarr knew that before he cast the spell. He must also have known the Dragonwand could focus any counter as accurately as a telek-dart, yet he had dismissed its presence despite the way it had impressed him. That might have been arrogance, contempt for Gemmel’s ability, distraction at the sight of Isileth or simply a mocking reliance on Aldric’s sense of honour.

  The reason didn’t matter, and the result was immediate.

  This time the light from the spellstave was no more than a flicker like distant lightning, yet Aldric twitched as if stung and the fog cleared instantly from mind and eyes. He enveloped yet another thrust in a circular block bringing both swords hilt to hilt, trapped cu Ruruc’s blade in the loops and bars of Widowmaker’s guard, then wrenched it from the sorcerer’s hand. A kick from one booted foot sent the weapon skidding out of reach with Kalarr hard after it.

  Aldric turned the other way and caught the Dragonwand in his left hand as Gemmel hurled it across the hall. If he had expected his wounds to heal the instant his fingers closed on it he was disappointed, but the frantic dismay on Kalarr’s face was fair compensation.

  “Odds more even, yes?” Aldric was done with old words and accents, and he levelled the carved dragonhead at Kalarr’s face. “You have magic. I have magic.” Even if I still hate it and don’t know what to do with it. “Come on, you scarlet bastard. Let’s dance. Come on!”

  Kalarr whirled his sword in a blow to shatter armour or cleave flesh and bone, but the cut never landed. Aldric sidestepped just far enough as momentum carried his opponent past, slewed around with him despite the injured hip, and stabbed with Ykraith. Its crystal flame punched through the lamellar scales of Kalarr’s armour as if they were thick parchment, and the Echainon stone’s glow became so blue and vivid that for an instant it cast shadows.

  Then its light went out.

  Kalarr cu Ruruc chuckled as he reached behind him to pluck the Dragonwand from his flesh like the sting of some small, irritating insect. There was no blood either on its point or on his back. Aldric made a small shocked sound under his breath as the sorcerer turned to face him with sword and spellstave raised. When he saw the young man’s startled, disappointed face, cu Ruruc laughed aloud.

  “I knew how to use the Stone of Echainon before your ancestors built this place,” he said, and laughed again.

  He was still laughing when Widowmaker scythed down onto his helmet, splitting its vermeil metal and the coif beneath, silencing his laughter and shaking the brain within his skull. The impact’s echoes rang down the pillared hall. Kalarr reeled, and the weapons slithered from his nerveless fingers onto the floor. A thin trickle wandered down his face, vivid crimson, as if the battered helmet bled.

  Aldric looked at the blood, the shock-pale skin, the dark, unfocused eyes, and drew a long breath deep into his lungs. His armoured fingers clenched the wire and leather of Isileth’s long hilt, tighter and tighter until the blade trembled and his energy came boiling up as it had done against Duergar. Aldric fought it down again. Despite his hungry sword, despite the enchantments thrumming in the air, he would do this thing the kailin’s way with the clean steel of a taiken, free from the Art Magic.

  “Oh, my son!”

  Aldric winced as memory and loss drove their twin daggers into him and he stared as Kalarr’s features blurred and shifted, becoming between heartbeats a blue-eyed, white-bearded, lovingly remembered face that had been dust and ashes these four long years. His throat grew dry and choked, making the name he spoke just a muted whisper:

  “Haranil-arluth?” A throbbing, persuasive pressure in his brain made him want to believe. “Oh, father…”

  The wise, dignified face smiled from inside its vermeil war-mask, and the figure wearing it leaned forward to lift something from the floor. There was a faint sound of steel.

  The glamour broke.

  Haranil’s face crumpled, became cu Ruruc’s face grinning past a raised longsword, then collapsed again into a smear of ruptured tissue. For all his brag about the spellstone, cu Ruruc had taken three wounds which would have killed any man not bolstered by sorcery. His last, desperation-invoked spell was no illusory disguise, but a true Shaping which drew more power than he could spare. Kalarr still hadn’t recovered from the great spell used against Lord Santon’s legion, and more High Magic was too much for his injured body.

  He paid the price.

  Then Widowmaker blurred out in a single thrust with years of grief riding on her blade, and Kalarr cu Ruruc paid again.

  The sword burst between his armour’s scarlet scales, punched through mail and leather, skin and meat and breastbone, and severed the great blood-vessels above his heart before it wrenched free. This time blood spewed from the wound as it would from any ordinary man and spattered on the floor with a sound like rain, laying ruby droplets over Baiart’s shrouded face.

  Aldric backed away, wondering even as he did so why he hadn’t taken off cu Ruruc’s suppurating head. To leave it on was to invite a dying curse, but the sorcerer looked beyond the power of speech.

  He wasn’t. Even as he slumped to his knees, Kalarr’s lips tried to shape words that refused to come.

  “Misjudged you, Talvalin,” he croaked at last. His mouth twisted as a spasm ripped through him, then relaxed and even tried to form a smile. “Should have known. A better killer. Than myself.” He coughed and bloody bubbles trickled down his chin. “Foolish. I’ll not make. That mistake ag—”

  The smile went fixed and his body sagged, still kneeling upright though all life had fled.

  Aldric stared at the corpse for several seconds, oblivious to gore that puddled boot-sole deep. Oath kept, vengeance complete, and all done with a blade as tradition required. Did it taste any sweeter than when he blas
ted Duergar with magic? He didn’t know. All he could taste was fear and sourness and the metallic tang of his own blood.

  A single double-handed sweep lopped off Kalarr’s once-handsome head, but Aldric didn’t bend to pick it up. Instead he made a small sound lost between a snarl and a half-stifled sob, and kicked the grisly trophy out of sight.

  *

  “He’s dead, Lord King. By his own hand and his own choice. By my own choice, I didn’t witness it.”

  “I see.” Rynert looked beyond Aldric’s bowed head and caught Dewan watching them with an odd expression on his face. Almost like a smile. “You’re aware,” the king continued, “that Baiart’s death forestalls any seizure of Talvalin lands? If I had intended such a step, of course.”

  “Of course.” Aldric looked up with all the stiff-lipped pride of past generations frozen on his face and his eyes unreadable. “Yes, Lord King, I’m aware of it. If I said otherwise I’d be a liar or a fool. But my concern was with my brother’s honour. Believe it or not, as you wish. I care neither way.”

  “I believe you, Aldric-arluth.” Rynert watched for a reaction as he used the title. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

  “I plead exception from lordship for a while, mathern-an,” said Aldric. “I was never trained for it, and this fortress holds too many memories. In a year, maybe. Or two. Appoint a castellan to hold it for me, until I come back.”

  “Come back from where, Lord King? Valhol, perhaps?”

  “The memories are there too.”

  “Then perhaps a journey to the Empire?”

  “Mathern-an, why should I do that?” Aldric’s tone of voice suggested the question wasn’t as naïve as he made it sound, and Rynert let a faint smile cross his face.

  “As a favour to, let’s say, a high-ranked friend whose friendship should be valued.”

  “I may indeed visit the Drusalan Empire after all. At some time or other.”

  “When you do, I would have you convey messages of a certain delicacy to my allies there. Emperor Droek’s death has changed our rather awkward situation. Many high officials are more concerned by affairs within the Empire than with wars of conquest. To that end they need assurance of my neutrality.”

  “And a promise there’ll be no more shipments of roofing lead?” It might not have been the wisest thing to say, but Aldric was growing tired of scheming. The king tried another smile. This time it didn’t work properly.

  “Just so.” Rynert cleared his throat. “You now have sufficient rank to carry such assurance.”

  But not enough importance to be missed if things turn ugly. This time Aldric didn’t say it aloud. Better not to tempt fate more than once a day.

  “I will have certain phrases encharmed here,” Rynert touched one fingertip lightly to Aldric’s forehead, “where they’ll lie forgotten until the counter-charm releases them. Do you understand?”

  Aldric understood well enough, and didn’t like it. Taking secrets into the Drusalan Empire was bad enough, taking them under sorcerous lock was much, much worse. Yet it was all of a piece with everything else Rynert had been willing to do: things like the privateers on Techaur Island, the smuggled gold aboard En Sohra, the Shadowthief and Emperor Droek’s timely death.

  “Is that all?” he asked in a voice sharper than usually addressed to kings.

  “Not quite. If you have any other opportunity to prove my friendship, I expect it to be done. As a token of good will, of course.”

  “Of course.” Aldric rose, bowed and limped from the room, wondering whether a blunt refusal would have been more hazardous than this half-hearted agreement. Then he shrugged. One way or another, the thing was done.

  *

  It was cold in the courtyard; the sun hadn’t yet risen and a thin layer of night-mist still hung in the air. Aldric rose to his saddle and with packhorse in tow rode east from Dunrath to join the Radmur road. From the ramparts of the donjon, three people watched him go.

  “Hold this place till I come back.” King Rynert sounded dubious. “Now we’ve let him go, will he come back at all?”

  The distant rider crested the eastern slope just as the sun rose above it, and he vanished in a glare of white light. Gemmel leaned against the battlements, gazing over them though there was nothing even he could see. He made no reply to Rynert’s question, perhaps not even heard above a bell on the fortress walls ringing to announce the dawn.

  “He will,” said Dewan ar Korentin. “Duergar and cu Ruruc learnt that much. Aldric Talvalin always comes back. When it suits him, and in his own good time.”

  Warmed by the sun, a last skein of mist thinned from the empty ridge, then faded and was gone.

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