The High King's Vengeance

by Steven Poore

  Rais had forced his tired mount into a canter, approaching them with one hand firm on the hilt of his sword. Cassia took an instinctive step backwards, and to her relief Hetch did the same.

  “I should crack your heads together,” the prince said. “This is neither the time nor the place for any kind of argument. If you have to fight each other to the death over some ridiculous point of honour, at least have the good sense to do so from behind the safety of those walls.”

  Cassia glared at him, unwilling to admit that he was right, but Rais stared back until she dropped her gaze. “As you command, my prince,” she muttered.

  Rais sniffed. “And I should think so too. Bloody stubborn Northerners.”

  Hetch had already stalked away, following the ranks of shieldmen towards the fortress. Cassia watched him go. “Why did he come, Rais?” she asked at last.

  The Galliarcan exhaled, shaking his head softly. “He’s scared, Cassia. Like all of us.”

  “Then . . . why?”

  “What else can any of us do?” Rais sorted, a self-deprecating laugh. “He’s looking after his interests, Cassia. Now, let us see what hospitality looks like in Caenthell.”

  24

  Is this what you expected?”

  Cassia shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought . . . I don’t know,” she repeated.

  All the spirits that had perished here while defending her – somehow she had thought there might be some remnant of that battle still visible. It had not been so long ago, after all, that she had stood with her back to a fire, side by side with the wraiths of long-dead soldiers. Yet though the yard was scarred by debris, and the slate roofs of the buildings that hugged the inner walls seemed to have collapsed even further since her first visit, there was no real sign that a battle had ever been fought here. Only the dried-out remains of the fire Malessar had built to sustain him as he sought a solution deeper inside Caenthell showed that anybody had been here since the warlock first laid his curse upon the land.

  Rais stepped away from her, peering up at the two smaller towers that flanked the gate, and the main keep at the narrow end of the yard. “They built this well. I would not have expected it to last so long against Peleanna’s caprices.”

  “I think part of that is due to the curse,” Cassia said. It was good to be able to talk of something other than the futility of the task before her. She noticed Rais had contrived to place himself between her and Hetch, and her appreciation of the prince’s abilities was raised another notch – not only was he keeping them apart, but distracting her with conversation, too. If she would let herself be distracted. “Malessar said the land was warded. It was sealed away like something in a great chest, left to fester and grown in upon itself.”

  “Like a pressed flower, or an insect preserved in amber,” Rais mused.

  Cassia frowned. “Not quite like either. I cannot explain it any better, because Malessar himself never explained it fully to me. I am no sorcerer.”

  She could not read the expression on his face, but she was quite certain he did not believe her.

  Attis was directing the company into the corners of the yard, the outbuildings and up the crumbling stone steps onto the battlements above. There was a fresh energy to the men, now they had gained their first objective at last. A determination to hold this place. It was something familiar, when all else around them was strange, battered by sorcery.

  Ultess, ever the quartermaster, had gone straight to the burned-out fire pit and now crouched to sweep it clear with his hands, while Arca pulled bundles of firewood into a pile next to him. At the far side of the courtyard Lissus and Hetch had gone to examine the ancient door that led into the sealed lower floors of the keep itself. Already there was an air of life about the place that Cassia did not remember from her previous visit. With the scouts and men of Guhl’s Company on the walls, she could hardly imagine the wraiths she had summoned standing there instead.

  They talked to each other in low tones, pointing out loose stones and uncertain footings. Sound echoed in the yard below. Even the presence of the shieldmen – or half of them at least, since the fortress was not that large, and the stone soldiers had also formed a cordon outside the walls as a first line of defence – added to the illusion that Karakhel was inhabited once more.

  Cassia glanced up at the very top of the keep. She half-expected to see a wraith at the battlements there, or a banner of some kind. Instead the sky was empty.

  “The door will not give,” Lissus reported, coming back towards her. It seemed that nobody wanted to raise their voice too far.

  “There’s a trapdoor on the roof,” Cassia told him. “You can use that, though you will need a torch or two.”

  Lissus looked up as if judging the route. Behind him Hetch muttered something about breaking his neck in the dark. Cassia ignored him. “You think to use the keep as a last retreat?” the scout commander asked.

  Cassia nodded. Over the short time she had known him she had come to appreciate his cautious nature, and now she was sure Lissus was the right man to hold this place for her.

  “I would rather the door stayed in place,” she said. “If Jedrell did not – or could not – break it down last time, then perhaps it will stand this time as well.” She did not add that she was still unsure if the lower floors of the keep were actually empty. If they were not – if something lurked there – she did not want to risk disturbing it too suddenly.

  Lissus barely hesitated, taking her word as if it was an order from Havinal himself. He took a pair of scouts, and Hetch, up onto the walls to make the ascent onto the roof of the keep. Hetch was plainly less than pleased to have to join the detail. But he had chosen to join the reformed Guhl’s Company, Cassia thought, though she still could not fathom his reasoning.

  Rais stood by her, watching the shieldmen as they took up their positions. “It is as if they were supposed to come here,” he said. “They suit this place. You say Malessar fashioned them himself? I wonder if he did so with this task in mind.”

  “Baum said they were made to defend Hellea against a risen North,” Cassia said. But it was difficult now to trust any part of what Baum had told her. And then there was what Malessar had said, on that rare occasion he had opened the shutters to his long-darkened soul. “It could be . . . it could be that Malessar thought of this. That he thought this day would come. He could never undo what he had done – he made that clear enough to me, even before this . . . before I caused this – but he might have guessed what would be needed once the curse was overturned.”

  “As my tutor, he always encouraged me to explore all possibilities,” Rais said. “As brilliant as my mind undoubtedly is, even I could not have foreseen this one.”

  Cassia frowned at him, but the prince appeared to be completely serious. She resisted the temptation to punch him and settled for ignoring him instead.

  “Well,” Rais continued thoughtfully. “We are here. Caenthell. The kingdom of the North, brought to life from all the grim stories of Fahrian Square. What do we do now, Cassia?”

  “We?” She shook her head slowly. “We do nothing. You hold this fort against all attacks. And I will go to destroy the High King.”

  It was a simple idea. So simple as to be stupid. That was what Rais and the others focused upon as they took it in turns to argue against her. The rest of Guhl’s Company stood in the shadows and watched. Already within enemy territory, they had no wish to go any further, and Cassia would not make them do so. Firelight flickered over their faces, along with those of the nearest shieldmen, and some of the men were so solemn that they could not be distinguished from the stone soldiers.

  There was fire in Rais’s eyes, however. Not fear, Cassia thought. Or at least, not fear for himself.

  “You cannot walk down into that desolation and search for a sorcerous High King on your own!” Rais punctuated his words with extravagant and violent gestures, forcing Lissus and Attis to dodge out of his way once more. “This is a whole kingdom, Cassia!”<
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  He had a point. But he did not have the advantages Cassia already knew she possessed. “I can find him,” she said, deliberately keeping her voice quiet and level. “There is only one place that he will be.”

  “The castle,” Attis said. Her grandfather sounded even wearier than he looked. Cassia could hear the age in his voice.

  “My point stands,” Rais insisted. “If you do this alone then you will die within the first half mile. Your High King is no more than a foul spirit, but he is not stupid. He will not allow you to overthrow his rule. And if you must die so wilfully, then everything we have done here is wasted.”

  She had never heard him so angry. The force of his words silenced her for a moment. She took an unconscious step backwards, suddenly reminded of how close she still was to the naive girl who had left the North on a wild adventure to change the world and make her name. She had been wrong before; she could still be wrong again.

  Rais appeared to know he had the upper hand in this argument. He rolled his shoulders, pointed to each of the small group of men in turn as he continued. “You might not have wanted us to come all this way with you, but you would not have got here without us, Cassia. You cannot just dismiss us and call the job finished, not now.”

  “It isn’t about that,” Cassia said. “Do you think I don’t know what kind of risk I am taking?”

  “And you think that we do not either?” Rais asked. “Do not treat us as fools, Cassia. We are not that.”

  “I don’t think of you as fools,” she said. “Never that. Not of any of you. But neither do I want to see you hurt. Or killed. Not if I can prevent it.”

  “At the risk of your own life?” Attis shook his head. “Dear girl, we were soldiers. We are still soldiers. This is our choice, far more than it is yours.”

  Arca nodded his agreement. Hesitantly at first, then more firmly, as if the very act stiffened his resolve. The others followed his lead, Ultess last of all, ever the reluctant rearguard.

  “There is nothing you can teach us of risk,” Attis told her. “And you do us a disservice if you try to save us from it.”

  Cassia hissed her frustration through her teeth. “But I am not doing this to insult you!”

  “Of course not,” her grandfather said, in exactly the sort of tone he must have used to placate Hellean nobles and merchants over the past few decades. “Of course not.”

  She flung up her hands in despair. “Oh, for all the gods . . . how can I make you understand?”

  “You don’t have to,” Rais said. His smile was that of a terrifying warlord, resolute in victory, yet bitter at the cost. “We already do.”

  Arca coughed and spat into the dirt. “If that’s all decided then, there’s only one more thing to say. Just as we always did.” He looked around at Guhl’s Company. “All you young upstarts might not have the education to know it.”

  Cassia nodded resignedly. She remembered the words he had quoted to her back in Lyriss. Proud, stirring words, worthy of soldiers entering battle. In many ways they were better than anything else she could think of to say, but they also reminded her that this was the last, desperate throw of the dice. The final act of her tale. And the fact that they came from the Fall of Stromondor only underlined the stakes at play.

  “Thus assembled, now we are numbered,” she said, and Arca’s rasping voice echoed the line. “Let our foes count our blades and linger in leisure at their cost, for we are more than the mere metal and wood of our weapons.”

  By the end of it, Attis and Ultess – and even Rais and Lissus – had joined in. “We are steadfast and strong, and armies shall break upon us like waves on the shore, and the only thing greater than our reach will be the shadow we cast down the ages of time.”

  It was an irony that now she had agreed to put her friends in harm’s way, the preparations for the last part of the long journey passed quickly and without incident. Initially Cassia was reluctant to delay long enough to eat and rest, but she discovered she needed little persuasion to shrug off her weapons and doze against the cold walls of the fortress while Ultess wrangled the last of their food into one final, almost edible meal.

  Hetch had explored the interior of the fortress much more thoroughly than Cassia had on her previous visit, though he possessed advantages she had lacked at the time – torchlight and company, without which she had not dared creep into the lower levels. Malessar’s appearance as a wraith from the past in the main chamber had effectively robbed Cassia of any remaining courage on that occasion, and this time she dared not even enter the building for fear of what may stir there.

  But if the fortress still housed any curse-wrapped spirits they remained quiescent now, as Hetch and a few of Lissus’s scouts descended through the dark and murk-laden rooms and cellars of the lower levels. They were as sparse as she had expected, to judge by his descriptions of them when he returned, blackened with ancient webs, but the long centuries of confinement within the curse wards had evidently preserved what little furnishings remained. Hetch and the scouts hacked down and dismantled the heavy wooden doors they found, as well as the table that dominated the commander’s chamber. As they levered the pieces out onto the roof of the tower and tossed them down into the yard below, Cassia wondered if the spirits were aware of her presence. Would they approve of what she set out to do here?

  The other scouts chopped the wood and stacked it near the small fire next to the old stables. Cassia was relieved that her fire would burn much longer than Malessar’s had, but that relief was short-lived when she remembered how fiercely the fire had raged as Malessar drew upon the sorcerous energies that had sustained it. This was where her plan would stand or fall, and she could barely admit to herself that it might not work.

  Rais brought her a bowl of some food that thankfully had very little taste. Perhaps it had been affected by Caenthell’s life-sucking weight. She had no appetite, but she sensed that Rais was going to wait until she had finished the entire bowl.

  “What made you think you could order us all to remain here without any form of protest?” the prince asked after a while. His tone was light and conversational, as though he asked about the weather, or the condition of the roads.

  Cassia considered her answer, all the while watching her grandfather and Lissus, who stood in the open gateway looking down into Caenthell and discussing the terrain. Despite the difference in their ages, the two men no longer looked dissimilar. They were both veterans of the legions, shaped by long experience; they were rocks upon which the tides of the enemy should be broken.

  “I was looking after my own interests,” she said at last.

  Rais’s lip twitched, and he nodded. “Perhaps I deserve that. But I think Galliarca has refined the stubborn streak of the Northerner just enough to listen to reason.”

  “Are you determined to leave this place with a blackened eye?” Cassia retorted.

  He laughed and settled into place against the wall, next to her. “I dare not suggest that you over-estimate your abilities,” he said. “Not any more. And if I did possess such temerity, your shieldmen would certainly not hesitate to hold me down for you.”

  “You make me sound like some terrifying warlord bent on domination.”

  Rais sighed. “No, you are hardly that.” Then, after a moment, his tone changed and became more formal. “Cassia, I would ask you a question, if I may.”

  She studied him closely, sensing he had at last come to the point. “I am no dragon,” she reminded him. “My answers are given freely.”

  A shadow flitted across his face at the mention of the dragon and Cassia gestured quickly for him to continue, unwilling to tackle the question of Craw’s motives. Whatever they were, she could not change them now.

  “Ask,” she prompted.

  Rais nodded again, more slowly this time, but his smile was gone. “You say that you are looking after your own interests. I would like to know . . . if I am among those interests.”

  Cassia felt herself colour, her cheeks burning wit
h sudden embarrassment. She wanted to look away, to break the close contact and simply dismiss his question as irrelevant, the brazen assumption of a lordling who was used to getting his own way in all things. But she couldn’t. This was . . . different. Rais himself was different. As she stared back at him she realised there was no expectation in his eyes. For once he did not appear to be weighing her, measuring her as though she was a commodity, or a novelty.

  On the March, before Cassia had fled to Lyriss with Arca, Rais had seemed to judge her worth by what she represented – the power of the North, of Caenthell itself; perhaps not so innocent as she had once been, but still pliable. A means to an end.

  No, she thought, he was not judging her. If anything their positions were completely reversed. Rais was looking for her judgement on him. As if he needed her approval.

  For a long moment she did not know what to say.

  “I knew a prince before,” she told him at last. “A prince who I believed would inherit a throne. He was everything I thought he would be: strong, brave, handsome and raised so far above other men that sometimes I thought he held up the sun. I learned too late that he was none of those things, not truly, and it hurt.” She heard her voice begin to crack, and she paused to draw breath and calm herself. Rais was silent beside her. “I am no queen. I have no need for castles, or palaces, or grand feasts with dozens of courses and tables the length of a street. I have no desire to rule, or to fight for one god against another over ancient grievances. I have broken my heart against a stone prince who pretended he was a man. I cannot do that again.”

  She felt Rais’s hand press upon her own, and she linked her fingers with his gratefully.

  “Nor would I ever ask you to,” he said softly.

  Cassia let his warmth spread though her hand. “I’m sorry. You did not want to hear that.”