by Dave Duncan
The bloodlord had been a handsome man in his youth. As he advanced into the candlelight, Dantio recalled faint memories of him on the day of the fall, mostly of how big he had seemed. He still did. While he was not battle hardened into bestiality as his brothers had been, he was not a normal human, either, standing over eight feet tall and massive in proportion. Wearing only his brass collar and a black loincloth, totally hairless, with skin as white as granular ice and a head like a boulder with ears, he resembled some oversized statue come to life.
He had not visited Celebre in ten years. The elders shrank away from his glare. He peered down at the doge’s corpse and spat on it. Then he located Oliva.
“So, now you’re a widow. Want to come back to me?”
“Never,” she said, with admirable calm, but her internal hate was almost unbearable.
“Wouldn’t want you anyway. But you, now …” He had just noticed Fabia. “Who’re you?” He licked ice-white lips with a long red tongue.
“Fabia Celebre.”
Amazingly, she was almost as calm as she looked. Oh, sister! Was she counting on Orlad to protect her from the monster, or relying on her own chthonic powers?
The Fist glanced at his attendant seer, who stayed silent behind her veils. There were, Dantio noted, definitely some Florengian Werists coming over the palace walls now, Cavotti’s men. How could he let Orlad know that help was on the way? Would that information make him wait for reinforcements? No, it would just drive him on. He would not want to share the Fist’s death with anyone.
The bloodlord had realized that all was not right. “When did you get here? Who brought you?”
“I arrived this evening.” Fabia’s voice rose. “My brothers brought me. Your sister tried to, but she was on the wrong side of the Fist’s Leap when we burned the bridge, so I wouldn’t wait up for her if I were you.”
“She is lying, isn’t she?” Stralg asked his Witness.
The answer was a shriek of triumph. “No, she’s not!”
He roared and swung a fist to smash her, but the old woman anticipated the move and dodged back.
“Stralg Hragson!” Compared to the great pillars, Orlad was only a tiny shape against the fires in the city behind him, but he had amplified his throat and lungs so his bellow carried even over the roar of riot and trumpets. “I am Orlad Celebre, Doge Piero’s son and heir. I killed your brother Therek on the hills above Tryfors. I helped kill your brother Horold on the Milky River. And your sister, also, trapped in the Edgelands without food or shelter or any way to escape. They are dead, Stralg, all dead! You stand alone, last of that vile litter, and you are about to pay for your crimes.”
The elders would not have understood the Vigaelian words, but the smell of challenge was obvious. They quickly shuffled around behind the catafalque, clearing the battlefield.
“True!” screeched the seer, scampering to safety also. “He speaks the truth, monster!”
Stralg turned his great head to look at the north door. His bodyguard was out there. He started to move that way and Orlad ran forward, with Waels at his heels. Stralg stopped and spun around to face them again. They stopped also. It was a standoff. But they were closer to Stralg than he was to the door.
“Coward!” Orlad yelled. “When I was three years old I had more courage than you have now. You held out your hands to me and I went to you! You lifted me up and threatened to smash my brains out, I’m told. Try that now; I’m bigger.” He stretched out his arms. “Come to me, coward.”
Stralg must weigh more than the two younger men put together, but he had not lived so long by accepting personal combat against odds. They would certainly be on him before he could reach the north door and open it.
Orlad moved one pace closer. “Therek is dead!” he mocked. Pace … Waels followed, still his shadow. “Saltaja is dead! Horold—”
Stralg blazed rage and hatred. He lowered his head like a bull as he watched the two of them come. It seemed to Dantio that the man’s legs were growing and his arms shrinking.
Pace …
“Hostleader Arbanerik!” Orlad chanted. Pace … “Remember Arbanerik? And Nils Frathson?” Pace … “They’ve been stealing your recruits, Stralg!” Pace … “They have forty sixty now, the largest horde in Vigaelia. They killed Horold, Stralg, with a little help from us Celebres. They took Tryfors, Stralg. The garrison switched sides rather than fight.”
Orlad stopped his slow approach. “You’ve lost Vigaelia, Stralg! And Cavotti has taken Veritano, Stralg. The game is ended, Stralg!” He beckoned mockingly. “Your turn now. Come to me, coward.”
Stralg charged. As he moved, he battleformed, ripping off his covering. His face bulged into a huge fanged muzzle, his legs stretched. He leaned forward to balance the thick tail he was growing, and his arms shrank to white claws.
“Speed,” Orlad said.
He and Waels threw off their chlamyses and shapeshifted. As Stralg’s monstrous jaws slammed shut where Orlad’s head had just been, Orlad was landing a dozen paces away. Waels slashed at Stralg’s ribs and vanished before Stralg could turn to deal with him.
Then Orlad leapt to the attack.
The contest pitted one giant white biped against two smaller black things shaped like frogs. The bloodlord spun and dodged on great taloned feet, swinging his tail like a club and snapping giant jaws. Two identical warbeasts leaped around him, all legs and black fur, bouncing up and down, making yattering noises and waving their front limbs at the giant. Soon even Dantio lost track of which was which. Their hands and feet were clawed and they moved in blurs, but their blows failed to penetrate the Fist’s scaly hide. It was as tough as chain mail and he was too enormous to wrestle.
The battle was a stalemate—he could not catch them and they could not hurt him.
Being the only other man of fighting age present, Dantio grabbed the sword of state from his father’s bier and ran forward to see what he could do to help. The first problem was going to be getting close enough. He was restricted to human speed, while the three contestants were a single black-and-white whirlwind. Waels and Orlad kept trying to come at Stralg from opposite sides, but he was armed at both ends, and his talons tore the floor tiles as he pivoted and dodged. To a seer’s senses the two smaller men were consumed with bloodlust, solely intent on the immediate fight, great waves of hatred and little else, but the wily veteran Fist retained enough tactical sense to keep edging closer to the north door.
Dantio hovered on the outskirts, seeking an opening. Again and again Stralg snapped and grabbed and failed to connect. The youngsters were everywhere except where he was, bouncing, mocking, dodging, occasionally slashing. At last Dantio thought he saw his chance and dove in, driving his sword hard into the Fist’s ribs. It slid off without making any impression at all. Stralg’s tail caught him with a glancing blow and hurled him halfway across the hall. His sword clattered away across the tiles.
He could not have been stunned for more than a few heartbeats. When he came to, Oliva was kneeling beside him, wiping blood from his face and making anxious noises in Florengian. He seemed to be thinking only in Vigaelian. He struggled to sit up and screamed at the agony in his left shoulder. It was shattered. Some ribs were cracked, too.
Witnesses should not meddle in events.
“Lie down!” his mother said. “We’ll send for Healers.”
No! Every Sinurist in town would be overloaded already, and he was going to see the end of this battle if it killed him. His mother stopped resisting his struggles and helped him sit up.
The fight was slowing. The younger men might wear Stralg out eventually, but he was perilously close to the north door now. Did they even remember that danger? Dantio tried to locate the Florengian warbeasts he had detected in the grounds earlier, but his head was spinning too fast to register anything beyond the pillars. There was a fight of some sort going on out in the corridor, too.
Disaster! One of the Florengians either dropped low to come in under the monster’s guard, or
just slipped … and in that instant Stralg closed his great reptilian jaws on the man’s skull. Growling triumph, the bloodlord jerked him clear of the floor and shook him as a dog would, snapping his spine like a biscuit. His buddy, whichever he was, leaped up on the Vigaelian’s back—and promptly started to slide off again, unable to find purchase on the scaly surface.
The Fist reared, spitting the corpse away like a grape seed and simultaneously trying to dislodge his burden. In the nick of time his assailant managed to stretch one front paw high enough to hook claws into Stralg’s collar. Unable to reach back with arms that had shrunk almost to nothing, the blood-lord twisted violently, swinging his passenger out like a flag and very nearly catching him with a snap of his great jaws. But then the Florengian had both front paws on the collar and could pull himself up and brace his back feet on Stralg’s shoulders. Holding the collar like reins, the rider heaved. The metal stretched and stretched again. He worked his feet inside it, and still he pulled until he was standing almost upright, cutting ever deeper into the bloodlord’s throat.
Strangled, Stralg dropped to the floor with an impact that made the candles flicker. If he hoped to crush the Florengian by rolling on him, he was too late. Stretched out to wire, the brass collar snapped with a twang. The younger Werist fell clear, still holding it. Deprived of his god’s blessing, Stralg gagged and thrashed and went into convulsions. And died. And retro-formed.
The black frog was suddenly Orlad, dancing around him like a mad thing, whirling the brass string overhead in bloody hands and yelling his triumph. “I won! I won! I am the winner!”
FABIA CELEBRE
knew how to bandage a broken shoulder, for she had watched while they took care of Paola. She grabbed a black sheet from the throne and ran to aid Dantio, arriving at his side just as yells of triumph from the north end of the hall told her that Orlad had won.
“Lift his arm!” she told her mother.
Dantio screamed, but that was to be expected.
Then another scream echoed through the hall, a howl audible over all the rising babble.
Oliva said “Oh, dear! What’s that?” in the tones of someone who could not stand any more surprises.
“Orlad.” Fabia was concentrating on working the sling under her patient’s arm. “He’s found Waels, I expect. They were very close.”
When the bandaging ordeal was over, she helped Dantio to his feet—this was definitely not the sort of night to be sitting around immobile. Only the gods knew who or what might invade the Hall of Pillars next. The elders were fussing around Stralg’s corpse. Other people were oozing in between the pillars, reluctant to enter the hall but being pushed by the press behind. The news of the Fist’s death would be everywhere in no time, so which horde controlled the city?
“We’ll sit you on the throne for now,” she said, supporting his good arm as much as she could. “This is an exciting homecoming, isn’t it? Is Celebre always this busy, Mama?”
Her mother blinked and sniffled, half-laughing, half-weeping. “No. I haven’t come to terms with it yet. I feel old and confused.”
“I’m young and more confused. We were told you’ve done an incredible job of running the government for the last year.”
“Oh, how I wish your father could have been here to meet you!”
“We all do. But we just put on the funeral games, didn’t we? Orlad slew the dragon and we can lay it at Papa’s feet as an offering. Celebre will survive and the Hrag horrors are over—thanks to your children! We got our revenge, Mama. We won in the end! Everything … oh, bless my fangs and talons!”
That had been one of Waels’s sayings. It was provoked in this case by the sight of his body, which Orlad was carrying in his arms toward the catafalque. No one spoke as he solemnly laid the corpse alongside his father. One of the elders—Somebody Giali—had retrieved one of the dropped chlamyses, and now handed it solemnly to Orlad, who snatched it from him with a bad grace and wrapped himself to hide his nudity. Candlelight shone on his tears.
But Waels had not retroformed, so what lay beside the dead doge was a furry animal, something between a frog and an ape, its head mangled and bloody. Where was his beauty now?
Oliva saw desecration and protested. “No!”
Fabia said, “Let him be, Mama. It was Waels who won the victory. He let Stralg catch him, so that Orlad would have his chance.”
“No!” again.
“I saw it.” In that battle of instant reflexes, the momentary delay needed to kill Waels had made the difference. She helped Dantio to the throne, the only place to sit. He was very pale and obviously in great pain.
“We must find a Healer,” Oliva said. “Or a Mercy. You should be in bed.”
He grimaced. “And miss all the fun? I think the Good Guys have won the palace, at least. I can’t tell what’s going on out there … the city, I mean.”
Fabia hugged Oliva again. “All these years with only one of us to mother, and suddenly you have four. We did tell you Chies is safe, didn’t we? It will take years to explain all this!”
“You met Chies? You’ve seen him?”
“Yes, Mama. The Mutineer had him kidnapped, but he’s been well cared for and he was being very brave. They had not broken his spirit. You would have been proud of him!”
“Oh.” Oliva seemed to be at a loss for words. She was not as tall as Fabia, but broad and imposing. Care lines marred her face and her hair was streaked with silver, yet the resemblance was strong enough that Fabia could almost believe that she was viewing herself in a poor quality silver mirror.
“Chies certainly looks like Stralg,” she said. “But that isn’t his fault, is it? And it wasn’t your fault. You and Papa raised him and he’s a credit to both of you. We made him welcome, Mama, all three of us did.”
Oliva stared hard at her, searching her eyes for evidence of false comfort. “You are very kind. He was all we had, you know—after you had gone. He has been difficult these last few years.”
“What boy is not, at his age? His position cannot have been easy. Look after Dantio while I see to Orlad.” Fabia started in his direction, but Orlad was striding back to the bloodlord’s corpse. He pushed some gawking elders out of the way, took it by the ankle, and began to tow it. Evidently he had the same idea she had, of laying the carrion at Piero’s feet. More and more people were plucking up courage to enter the hall. Both doors were open, admitting Florengian men wearing brass collars—and in some cases nothing more, save bloodstains. Cavotti must rule the palace, as Dantio had said. She wondered when the Mutineer himself would appear.
There were at least four big fires burning across the river and she had a view of less than half the city. What an incredible day!—the drive from Montegola, entering Celebre by the Cypress Gate, the cloak-and-dagger meeting with Cavotti’s mother and later the justiciar; the news that Piero had just died. She had walked with Dantio along Pantheon Way and Goldbeater Street and other great avenues that he had told them about during their crossing of the Edge. She had admired buildings far grander than anything Skjar or Kosord had to offer. Some of them would be gone by morning, although the rain should help limit the fires’ spread. It was the Day the Lost Returned. The Day Doge Piero Died. No, history would remember this day as the Fall of Stralg.
Servants were trying to clear the hall. One accosted her officiously. “You, girl! You must leave now.”
She told him who she was and he fell to his knees, stammering a horrified apology. She wandered back to Oliva and Dantio at the throne. They had serious company—senior-looking Werists, some priests, palace officials wearing black robes of mourning and carrying staffs of office. The woman barking orders at them all was Speaker Quarina. She was being obeyed, men scurrying to do her bidding.
Order was being restored. Flunkies were replacing the mourning drapery on the throne, stools had been brought for Dantio and Oliva.
“Speaker!” barked the old Giali man. “What is going on here?”
Quarina said, “Pray
take a seat, my lord. I am about to explain.”
What was going on, or about to go on, Fabia realized, was a meeting. Servants were setting out stools in a horseshoe facing the catafalque, ringing them with tall silver candelabra to lift the darkness. Eighteen stools and one chair? Quarina was convening the council. Curse of Xaran! Fabia had not expected this to happen for days yet. She was not ready.
A portly herald began bellowing. “My lords and ladies!” He bade elders draw nigh and all others disperse. Now a double row of stools was being laid out facing the mouth of the horseshoe; Dantio and Oliva were going there. The four in the front must be intended for the family, so Fabia went to join them. She sat next her mother and a moment later Orlad slumped down at her side and put his face in his hands.
“I am very sorry about Waels,” she whispered. “He was a wonderful man and a great Hero.”
Orlad paid no attention. There had been so little love in his life! Small wonder if he felt the gods had betrayed him in his moment of victory.
Palace officials were still jostling for places in the row behind, with angry whispered arguments about precedence. Behind Speaker Quarina, cross-legged scribes were hastily laying out their tools. She did not wait for them.
“Honorable elders, by the authority of custom and in my office of justiciar, I hereby convene this meeting. I see fifteen of you present. There are eighteen elders on the council, so any vote of ten or more carries the weight of all.”
“Protest!” The big old man was on his feet, face scarlet.
“Lord Giordano Giali?”
“No meeting of council should be held without the doge except the meeting to elect the next doge, and that is never held until the day after his funer—”
“You are overruled. I can quote at least nine instances where the election was held on the day the doge died, or even before he died. The city is in flames, there is fighting in the streets, the bloodlord’s corpse lies at your back with his death unavenged, and a hostile army lurks outside the walls. We must have a doge!”