by KJ Charles
“De Gautet, de Gautet, man!” Hentzau shouted, cheerily inconsiderate of any sleepers. “The drawbridge is to be raised. Unless you want a bath before your bed, come along!”
I slipped back down to the lower room, and jumped when I heard gunshots a second later, but the raised, laughing voices told me that it was Hentzau and de Gautet playing the fool shooting at something in the water. If we had not been acting a part I would have had harsh words for them both, since they sounded somewhat tipsy. I hoped Hentzau was, once again, in better control of himself than he seemed.
They sauntered over; the bridge was drawn back, isolating the Tower. De Gautet clattered up the stone stairs to bed, Hentzau assuring him he’d lock the door. I slipped softly out of the room where Bersonin snored and went lightly up to the main door.
Hentzau was there, his coat stripped off, a dim figure in the light of a single candle. He looked round sharply when he saw me, then raised a finger for my attention. I lifted a brow in question. He pointed at himself, then the door, then mimed putting his hands together, paddled his arms, and then moved them up and down.
What? I mouthed.
He rolled his eyes and beckoned me over. I came close, inhaling his smell: wine, candlewax, the faint scent of him.
“Flavia wrote,” he breathed in my ear. “The child is found, and safe.”
I clenched my fist; I should have liked to shout aloud. Antoinette would have her Lisl back, Michael could now be killed without a moment’s concern, and I was ready to take on every overbred bastard in Ruritania and win. I gave Hentzau a fierce grin in lieu of saying all that, and saw his eyes sparkle with the same immense satisfaction in victory, before he pulled my head close again.
“I’m going over. Swim and climb. I left a rope and she’s expecting me. I’ll wait for Michael and take him.”
“No,” I said, equally soft. “I’ll go.”
He shook his head. “You’re de Gautet’s master; I’m only his match. You need to be on this side to make sure Rassendyll lives. You must, for Flavia. I can take Michael.”
“What about all Rassendyll’s men?”
“I’m planning to avoid them.”
I gave him a look. He shook his head, lips obstinately pressed.
I would be on this side of the moat, facing de Gautet and Bersonin, plus presumably Rassendyll and perhaps others of his party. Hentzau would be on the far side, fighting for Toni and Flavia against Michael’s men and the player-king’s forces, however many that might prove to be. Each of us would be everyone’s enemy. Together we might have stood a chance; fighting separately we were probably so buggered it made the eyes water.
But I had no doubt of what Michael would do when he realised Toni had betrayed him, and every day I had lived past my appointment with Madame la Guillotine was thanks to her. Hentzau had no such obligation and no reason at all to increase his own risk tenfold on her behalf; I found myself stunned and shaken with gratitude that he would do so for her—or even, perhaps, for me.
There was much I could have said, with time and space. As it was, I confined myself to, “Thank you.”
He smiled, wry and amused and wonderful. “Be ready. Good luck.”
I unlocked the main door and let him out as quietly as possible, then locked it once more behind him. I fancied I heard a faint chuckle and a soft splash.
I retreated to my proper place in the outer room of the dungeon, and wondered what Rassendyll was up to at this moment.
Silence reigned for perhaps fifteen minutes. The clock chimed half past one. Half an hour to go, I remember thinking, and at that very second, all hell broke loose.
“Michael! Michael! Help me!”
It was Antoinette, audible all the way from the chateau even in my low dungeon room, screaming her lungs out in good earnest, half an hour too fucking early. What the hell, Toni? I thought, and a second thought followed on its heels, a bitter one: surely Hentzau could not have truly intended the villainy he was to be accused of, surely he could not have betrayed us both . . .
“Help, Michael! Hentzau!” Toni shrieked, and then, “Murder!”
Bersonin sat up, blinking. I couldn’t hear anything from over the moat except Toni’s screams, certainly not a yell of men, or any sound of attack. Above us, de Gautet gave an exclamation, and there was a clatter of footsteps on stone as he ran downstairs and into the hall. “Treachery!” he shouted. “Hentzau attacks the duke!”
The key rattled in the great lock, and a sudden increase in the volume of shouts and screams from the chateau told me de Gautet had flung open the door. “Ho, the bri—” His words were cut off with a scream, a gargle, and a heavy thud.
One down.
Bersonin flung me a wide-eyed look. “Hold the door!” he barked. “I’ll—” He darted through to the king’s chamber.
The outer door was locked, which did no good since we all carried keys. De Gautet’s killer must have found his, for he came down the stairs and I heard the scrape as the key turned.
I took a pace back, blade in hand. The door was thrown open and Rassendyll burst in, bloodied sword in hand. His clothing was soaked, his red hair plastered to his head, and he was shaking—doubtless from cold. It was a warm summer night, but he must have swum the moat and waited for however long outside, seizing his chance when de Gautet opened the door.
We both dropped into fighting stance. “Detchard,” he said, eyes locked on mine. “Surrender now. Drop your sword and you may live.”
A likely story. “I fear not,” I said, and engaged his blade with mine. He disengaged deftly enough. I feinted to the other side, watching his footwork; he realised a little too late, stumbling to catch up. We exchanged attacks and ripostes, testing one another in silence but for the scrape of feet, the clash of steel, the faint screaming from the chateau.
He was a decent swordsman, no more, but he had one great advantage: I didn’t want to hurt him, whereas he very much wanted to kill me. He fought with the savagery one might expect, given he was fighting for not just his life, but a crown, and with the desperation of a man who knew that one misstep would be his last.
I upped the tempo of my own movements, pressing him harder but not too hard, needing to conceal that I wasn’t trying to finish him. Rassendyll moved back, towards the door that led to the stairs, as though he had it in mind to run; I moved clockwise, forcing him round and away from his chance of escape, wondering what the devil I could do.
I needed to lose this fight without him realising I had chosen to do so, and without giving him a chance to end me. He wore a dagger in his belt and had already cut the throat of a sleeping man, so I did not dare simulate an error and surrender. And whatever I did needed to be done quickly, because he was tiring visibly in his wet clothes and already gasping for breath. He’d had too many State dinners, I concluded.
There was a burst of noise from outside: screaming, excited shouts, and a familiar grinding, screeching sound. Rassendyll evidently recognised it as I did: the drawbridge was being lowered. Soon the Tower would be open to anyone who chose, yet there was still no sound of his men outside. He gave a furious bellow and attacked, a wild slashing frenzy that left him wide open. I set my teeth and let myself be driven back towards the staircase.
“Hold!” Bersonin cried from the king’s cell. I had forgotten he was there, and I jumped almost as much as Rassendyll, who swung round, trying to get his back to a wall, his eyes still locked on me. “Hold, I say! I have given the king a drink, Rassendyll.” Bersonin’s voice was laden with sinister significance. “Only I know the antidote. It will start working in ten minutes. Drop your sword now, or Rudolf dies.”
Rassendyll’s eyes widened at the threat, but he did not drop his sword, and as the seconds ticked by it became very clear that he was not going to. The player-king had made his decision to play the villain, no excuses or pretences left, and he saw that I saw it. His face reddened visibly, and he let out a cry of rage, and lunged at me with a furious oath.
If he couldn’t t
ake Bersonin in that mood, I mistook my man. I attacked without reserve, sending Rassendyll staggering back and stumbling under my onslaught, and used the distance I’d gained to leap away. “Damn your king; I am for Michael. Deal with him, Bersonin!” I shouted, and I fled, slamming the door behind me, turning the key, and leaving it in the lock for good measure.
That was how I left them, the true king, the false, and the poisoner who could be blamed for any villainy, and what Rassendyll did then is a matter for the reader to decide.
The drawbridge had thumped into its resting place as we fought. The door of the Tower was held open by de Gautet’s fallen body, and I could see out.
Over the moat, a group of Michael’s servants stood in a gaggle by the chateau door. Two or three carried lanterns, illuminating the scene; three or four held pikes, but not in a martial way. They were huddled together behind their weapons, faces agitated, and they gazed at the man who stood in the middle of the drawbridge, sword in hand.
Rupert Hentzau was in his trousers and shirt, both wet; the linen was stained with blood, but his easy, buoyant pose told me that he was either not touched at all or merely scratched. There he stood, holding the bridge with sword in one hand and revolver in the other, and he laughed as he spoke. “Come, now. Any takers? Or will you send Michael out so I can finish the job? Michael, you dog! Michael! If you can stand, come on!” He was blood-drunk, I thought, dizzy with the wild joy of battle. “Michael, you bastard! Come on!”
In answer, Antoinette’s voice came, a wild scream. “He’s dead! My God, he’s dead!”
“Dead!” shouted Hentzau triumphantly. “I struck better than I knew! Down with your weapons there! I’m your master now! Who will gainsay me?”
“Detchard!” Antoinette shrieked. “Detchard, Hentzau has killed your master! Kill him!”
Hentzau swung round to see me, and we faced one another on the bridge in the moonlight as we had once faced each other under the sun.
I attacked hard, coming up fast and careless, as though driven by anger. Hentzau parried and riposted in turn, shouting with joy. He had learned well from my teaching, because this was the best match he had ever given me, and this time we fought with sharp and naked swords. Nobody interrupted us; nobody fired a gun. The watchers stood rapt as we fought in savage silence for those few, brief perfect moments, bathed in shadow and moonlight on the bridge: hero, villain, henchman, lover.
Hentzau gave a slight jerk of his head, telling me, Come closer. I pressed forwards, and then struck, using the flaconade manoeuvre he had tried on me in our first engagement, so long ago. I made my movements obvious enough that he saw the attack coming, and a wild grin dawned on his face. He parried to the outside, stepping in as he did so, and grabbed my wrist, every bit as brutal and graceless as I had once been with him. The blades grated against one another, and we stood locked together, motionless in a battle of strength, faces close enough to kiss.
“Michael’s dead,” Hentzau murmured.
“And de Gautet. The player-king is alive.”
We pulled apart, spun, attacked again. It felt as though I could read his mind, as though one intelligence choreographed us both in perfect harmony. This was better than fucking, I thought, and would have liked to shout that aloud and watch him laugh.
He met my eyes, a clear message in his own, and we stepped into another close stance, swords locked almost at the hilts. “Under your left arm, over the side,” Hentzau said, voice low, eyes full of light. “Play dead. I’ve a plan. Trust me!”
I leapt away with a cry. Hentzau gave a crow of triumph and attacked furiously.
Our swords clashed, both of us fighting with a wild, reckless glee, awash with all the vigour of victory even as our lives hung in the balance. I wanted to say the hell with it all, to stand side by side on the bridge with my Rupert, my glorious villain, and take on any man who dared oppose us, and it took all my will to keep control. I needed to be seen to die: Rassendyll could not let me live, not having seen him in that moment of self-betrayal. I hoped Hentzau’s plan was a good one.
There was a faint sound of shouting and hammering from the other side of the chateau. It must be Rassendyll’s men, I realised, arriving at last. Time to go. I met Hentzau’s eyes and gave him an opening—not much, but he didn’t need much—and his sword shot through my lax guard, sliding under my arm, tearing my coat. Antoinette shrieked from the bank. I froze, let my sword drop from my fingers, took in a long, deep breath to fill my lungs, and toppled sideways over the edge of the drawbridge.
The water was exceedingly cold, and I was hard put not to struggle and splash. I swam deeper instead, expelling a little of my precious air. Nobody would be looking at me with Hentzau making a show of himself on the bridge, the moat was dark under the night-shadow of the Tower, and if I could swim some reasonable distance without breaking the surface, I should be able to escape unobserved. I kicked myself onwards, and something heavy and warm hit my back with an oddly soft impact, knocking me downwards. I flailed in shock, thinking absurdly of dolphins or sharks, and as I struggled I felt an arm across my chest. Legs tangled with mine, and I realised there was a man pulling me down into the depths.
I kicked frantically to turn myself, forcing my eyes open in the sting of the water, and saw a dim white face in the green-black light. It was Rudolf V of Ruritania, a weight attached to his legs, his pallid body sinking into the moat.
I will admit I kicked him off with some urgency. He stared open-eyed at me, arms reaching, and I do not know to this day if he was alive or dead, if it was merely the turbulence of the water moving his limbs, or if Rassendyll had weighted him and put him down the pipe to sink without the courtesy of a coup de grâce. My mind was filled with a half-remembered ghost story of a murderer bearing the corpse of his victim on his back and the dead man slowly strangling him, and the seconds stretched like hours as I pushed the drowned king away from me.
My lungs were burning now, and I swam like hell around the corner of the Tower, swam until my chest felt as though it were caving in and I had to come up for air. I made myself do it slowly and silently, which gave me plenty of time to imagine a man with a gun tracking me as I rose, but I kept my silence, and tried to control my heaving breath as my head broke water.
I could hear the sounds of shouts and arguments now. Antoinette shrieked, voice high and shrill; Hentzau replied, laughing, and then two gunshots rang out in quick succession. Hentzau gave a cry of pain, and something heavy hit the water with a splash.
I made myself swim silently on as the noise from the bank rose. There were shouts and the banging of doors, and now faint gunshots. The king’s men approached at last, and we in this damned moat were sitting—or swimming, or drowning—ducks.
I reached the wall of the moat where my black cord dangled and heaved myself out, dripping and shaking. I knew I had to run. I would waste everything Hentzau had done if I turned back to help him now and thus showed I was alive. If he had been fatally, or even badly shot, there was damn all I could do about it. Rassendyll’s forces had arrived with firearms, and I had only a couple of knives. And, most of all, I am a mercenary, a henchman, cannon fodder for those whose battles make up the pages of history. Men like me skulk away into the darkness, or die in it. Heroic rescues are for heroes.
And with all that, I did not flee into the woods. I shook the water from my hair and started to run back around the edge of the moat, my inadequate knives in my hands, entirely out of ideas but knowing there was, in the end, nothing else I could do.
I’d taken perhaps three strides when I heard the splashing. Hentzau came around the corner of the Tower, swimming in a thrashing, sideways doggy paddle with nothing like his usual grace, face set and looking very pale against the dark water. He looked up at me with wide-eyed fear that turned to relief as he recognised me, and I ran back, unlashed my cord, and brought it up to the moat’s edge as close to him as I could.
He reached the side a moment later and grasped the rope one-handed. His left ar
m hung uselessly; his feet scrabbled against the slimy bricks, but he could not lift himself as he needed with just one arm. I knelt on the side, reaching down, set my teeth, put my back into it, and hauled him up that steep side of the moat, pull by painful pull.
He collapsed onto the earth once he managed to get onto the bank, but we had no time to lose. I could hear what sounded like dozens of men on the far side of the Tower, shouting at Michael’s servants to put down their pikes, and Rassendyll’s voice over them, bellowing orders. They’d start looking for bodies soon.
So I grabbed Hentzau’s good arm, and we ran like hell. We ran through the shadows and into the forest, ignoring his wound and our heavy dripping clothes, soaked, silent, and cold, without guns, swords, or supplies, hearing the shouts from Zenda castle for far too long and straining our ears for pursuit. We ran, and when Hentzau could no longer run we walked, I supporting his weight as he stumbled on, he holding my balled-up shirt to his shoulder to staunch the bleeding.
It was a damned long ten miles to the border.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The trick to running for one’s life is thinking ahead before it becomes necessary. We had not had much opportunity to do that, otherwise I would have had two horses with saddlebags conveniently waiting in the forest. I had, however, made very sure over the months that I sent most of my generous wages across the border, to my bank and to other locations, and had also left a small bag of necessities at a certain inn (three in fact; I like to hedge my bets). Thus I looked reasonably respectable and had money in my pocket as I hunted up a doctor to remove the bullet from Hentzau’s shoulder. The quack advised bed rest; I agreed solemnly, hired two horses, and dragged Hentzau another thirty miles before we next stopped.
It was not a pleasant period all told, particularly not for him, but these things must be endured, and eventually they pass. Three days after the events at the castle, we were comfortably accommodated at a country inn a substantial distance from the Ruritanian border. Hentzau’s shoulder had been examined and bound up once more, we had had the extremely large hot meal and two bottles of wine to which we had both been looking forward, and we were at last able to talk of anything except wounds and escape.