The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  Swallowing an oath, Humbert turned. “It seems he did. But—”

  “So you admit your duke’s treachery!” said Balfre, spreading his arms wide. “And his intent to murder innocent men!”

  “I admit no such slander,” said Humbert, seething. “Roric of Clemen is no more a murderer than I am. There’s a mystery here, Balfre, and I’d delve it to the dregs before—”

  “And give you time to catch your breath, to further muddy the waters? Even send some sly man of Clemen into the shadows with a sword?”

  “Clap tongue, boy,” Humbert growled. “I warn you.”

  “Or what?” Balfre taunted. “What would you think to do to me, old man, you and that broken limpjack by your side?”

  “For one thing beat your insolent arse bloody, as your fucking father never did, to his shame!”

  Wincing with the movement, Waymon unsheathed his dagger. Its blade showed dull in the sunlight, sticky with the dead man’s blood. “Hold, you Clemen cur! One step towards my duke’s son and I’ll—”

  “Murder!” a Clemen man-at-arms shouted. “Murder! The bastard Harcians would kill Lord Humbert!”

  Mayhem.

  Seeing the vicious glee in Waymon’s face, Vidar grabbed Humbert’s arm and yanked him backwards. As the letter slipped from his fingers Humbert roared in protest and pulled free, groping for his dagger. Vidar tried to hold him.

  “No, Humbert, don’t—”

  And then three men-at-arms, swearing and slashing, thumped into his treacherously weak side and knocked him off his feet. One trod on his hand, another kicked him in the belly. The third one, stumbling, dropped both knees on his injured hip then pressed him face-first into the road. His good eye was full of dirt. He couldn’t see a fucking thing. Somewhere close by he heard Humbert bellow again, half in anger, half in pain. He tried to regain his footing, but the blow to his hip had ruined him. On fire with agony, all he could do was wallow in the mud like a pig waiting for slaughter. Dagger clashed against dagger as the fighting rose fast to fever pitch. Men screamed. Shouted. Fell. He could smell piss and shit, fresh blood: the mingled stench of desperate battle.

  At last he managed to flail himself upright. Smear the dirt out of his eye. Everywhere he turned men were fighting, some with daggers, some with fists and feet, slashing and stabbing and punching and kicking. At least a half-score were down already, wounded or dead. One of them was Wido. He looked for Humbert. Couldn’t see him. With a grunting, sweating effort he stood. Looked again, heart pounding. Four grappling men–two from Clemen, two Harcian–tumbled apart panting, and there was Lindara’s father, one hand fisted in a Harcian Marcher man’s torn tunic, the other slapping the fool silly, snapping his head from side to side. The old bastard had lost his dagger, his doublet’s left sleeve was ripped and soaked with blood.

  On his blind side, sudden movement. He heard it, felt it, the old instincts bludgeoned awake. Slewing round, he saw Waymon. Face bloody, hand bloody on a blood-stained dagger, the Harcian was pushing through knots of furiously fighting men, making for Humbert. He shouted but his voice was lost among the chaotic sounds of battle. Then a scream louder than the rest and almost in his ear swung him rightwards in time to see Balfre, his back turned, almost close enough to touch, drop a Clemen man with one wild slash of his blade across the face. The count’s foot slid in the bloody mud and he went down on one knee.

  Wrenching his dagger from its sheath, Vidar leapt for Aimery’s son. Pain shot through his body, brilliant and scarlet. Stinking air rasped in his throat. His empty hand reached, caught hold of Balfre’s hair. Pulled the Harcian bastard backwards, off-balance, and braced himself to take the weight. His damaged hip screamed a protest.

  “Waymon!” he shouted, dagger-point pricked to Balfre’s straining throat. “Hold, Waymon, and drop your blade–or see me kill your duke’s heir!”

  The bastard heard him. Even as his scarlet-streaked fingers closed on Humbert’s upraised arm, he turned. Saw his precious Balfre a heartbeat from having his throat cut. The look on his bloodied face blinked from rage to terror.

  He dropped his blade.

  The bloody skirmish’s aftermath saw the Pig Whistle’s public room fill near to the rafters with wounded, moaning men from both duchies. Its forecourt was crowded with dead bodies, three of them Marcher lords. And the fourth, Lord Jacott, was like to die of his injuries. Too stunned for scolding, Molly did what she could to save those men most grievously hurt.

  “Now, my lords,” she said sternly, once the first desperate rush was done, and pointed a sharp finger at Balfre, then Humbert. “I’ll do what I can to bind up the rest. But ye’ll need to leave yer dispute outside. Seems t’me there’s been enough blood spilled for one day. Iss?”

  The lords stared at each other, simmering with resentful rage. Around them their broken men whimpered and groaned. She held her breath, waiting. From the corner of her eye glimpsed stealthy Iddo behind the bar, reaching for his cudgel. Then Lord Humbert nodded.

  “No more trouble,” he grunted, his grizzled, blood-flecked beard not hiding his pain.

  Count Balfre said nothing. He just stalked outside.

  Mindful that once the muck settled she’d have to deal with Clemen’s great men, Molly offered Humbert a curtsey. “Thank ye, m’lord. Now best ye take a seat while I see t’yer arm. Ye look fit to fall over.”

  Humbert grunted again. “I’m blade-tickled, Mistress Molly, not dying.” He jerked his beard at the wounded men laid head to toe on the floor. “See to them first.”

  And that surprised her. “Iss, m’lord. If ye say so.”

  Leaving Humbert to suit himself, she picked her way to the bar, and Iddo.

  “Moll…” He pulled a face. “We can’t be leeching all these men. If one dies, d’ye think his lord won’t blame us for it?”

  “That Humbert won’t,” she said firmly. “Besides, Iddo. What d’ye think they’ll do if we don’t lift a feggit finger and one of ’em dies?”

  She had him there, and he knew it. They got to work.

  Gaping dagger slashes were poulticed then bound with strips of torn sheets, and finger-stumps dipped into the stinking tar Iddo heated in the kitchen. Broken bones Molly splinted, as best she could. At first the pitiful cries of pain scraped at her nerves but after the first hour she hardly heard them. Even so, the task was a bloodsoaked, waking nightmare. No matter how many wounds she bandaged, the number of men needing her never seemed to shrink.

  When Izusa rode by the inn, saw the shambles and stopped to offer help, she near collapsed weeping on the woman’s neck.

  Izusa cast one long, steady look around the ghastly public room, then patted her shoulder. “Not to be cackled, Moll,” she said in her oddly accented deep voice. “I’m on my way to leech a goatman at Crookleg farm, but he can bide a while. I’ve a fulsome herbary bag with me. You and me and Iddo, we’ll see these messy men put right.”

  Molly closed her eyes, drowning in relief. To think she’d resented Izusa, for taking poor dead Phemie’s place.

  Another three hours it needed, to properly clean and stitch and poultice and splint every wounded lord and man-at-arms. Two men died while they waited, but it couldn’t be helped. When at last they were finished, Molly walked Izusa out to the forecourt. It had been emptied of corpses. The dead from each duchy were piled into carts. The wounded who could ride sat subdued in their saddles. Those who couldn’t ride waited in their own carts. An exhausted melancholy muffled the dusking air.

  “I can’t thank ye enough, besom,” she said, pressing a hand to Izusa’s arm. “Me and Iddo, we’d have been pickled for certain if ye’d not stayed to aid us.”

  Izusa smiled her crooked smile, gaze resting on stormy-faced Count Balfre. He stood in the skirmish-scarred, bloodstained road, beside the cart loaded with the Harcian dead, listening to Lord Waymon’s urgent whispering. Not a nice man, that Waymon. He’d cursed foully while his wounded side was being poulticed.

  “Of course I helped, Molly,” the healer sa
id. “Leechwork is my calling. It’s only a pity I couldn’t have done more.”

  Molly snorted. “The pity is these lords can’t keep their feggit daggers sheathed. Can ye believe it? Wido, Bayard and Egbert perished! After this muckle I’d not pay ye a copper nib for a Crown Court. Not in the Pig Whistle or anyplace else. Poor woodsman Gannen won’t see justice in this life.”

  Shrugging, Izusa looked away from Balfre. “Isn’t that the way of it, when nobles come to blows?”

  “Surely, and there be a right disgrace. I tell ye, Izusa, we’ll have no peace in the Marches for—”

  “Mistress Molly.”

  She turned. Humbert, his arm stitched and bandaged and bound to his barrel of a chest, stepped into the forecourt. Behind him limped crippled, half-blind Lord Vidar–and what a surprise he’d ’scaped with no worse than kicks and bruises. A just reward for bringing the bloodshed to an end, even if he was one of the reasons it started.

  “Iss, m’lord?”

  Weary and grim-faced, Humbert gave her a nod. “We’ll leave now. My thanks for your good services. And yours, Izusa. Duke Roric will hear of them. I’ll send men in the morning to fetch our other horses. You’ll be paid for their keep.”

  “Iss, m’lord,” she said, standing back so they could pass.

  She and Izusa watched Humbert exchange some last, cold words with Count Balfre, then swing himself stiffly onto his waiting horse. Lord Vidar, who’d been handsome before his face was ruined, struggled onto his own fine palfrey, then the two lords rode away. The men-at-arms who could ride, and the carts filled with Clemen’s dead and wounded, followed. A sad procession.

  “I must go too,” said Izusa, as one of the stable boys appeared leading her plain nag. “Or the goatman won’t pay me.”

  Count Balfre didn’t bother to offer his thanks. He was too busy staring after Izusa as she jogged her horse into the dusk. Not to be wondered at, really. She had a look about her, did Izusa, though she were thin and foreign, with that wildly curling, foxy hair.

  “And I b’aint sorrowed to see the back of him, Moll,” said Iddo, coming out to join her as the Harcians departed. “A right cruel one, Count Balfre. He fair makes my skin crawl.”

  Denno Culpyn had said the same, and she had to agree. Would’ve told Iddo so, too, but before she could say a word all thought of Balfre fled. Because it was then her boys came home.

  When the fighting started it was Alys’s notion to run with them into the woods. She’d said yes, not wanting Benedikt and Willem in harm’s way, or frighted by the screams and the hot, spilling blood. But now here they were at last, grubby with playing and not a scratch between them, clamouring to know what happened while they were gone.

  “Never ye mind on that, ye ructious imps,” she said, tweaking their ears. “Ye’ll eat yer supper now, and then go to bed.”

  “Why the frowning, Moll?” said Iddo, as she watched Alys chivvy her protesting scamps indoors. “The girl b’aint what I much like, but she took good care of them boys. First thing she thought of, keeping them safe.”

  Was that true? Or was Alys’s first thought for herself? It was hard to forget the look on the girl’s face when she saw Lord Vidar. Faery-struck, she’d seemed. Heartshot and trembling with fear. It made no sense. Why would the girl be frighted by a man she’d never met? Her fear woke memories of the night she and baby Willem turned up on the Pig Whistle’s doorstep, a shadow of that same fear darkening her eyes.

  But there’d be no mentioning that to Iddo. He was prickly enough about Alys already. Instead, she kissed her man’s bristled cheek. “What a feggit day. Go fetch them lads from the stables, Iddo, so ye can scrub the blood out of the floorboards and put the room to rights. I’ll feed them impish boys, then we’ll feast ourselves on chicken pie. The spirits know I baked enough!”

  Later, as Iddo and the stable boys drank cider and drowsed and played leap-button in front of the fire, she left them to their laughing, took a lit lamp and climbed the stairs to speak to Alys, who’d taken herself to bed. For until she had the truth out of the girl, the reason why she’d so feared the sight of Lord Vidar, she knew she wouldn’t rest.

  The attic chamber’s door was on the latch, candlelight showing under it and down its slivered edge. And murmuring through the crack, Alys. Telling Willem a story when he should be fast asleep. Molly drew her breath to scold, raised her fist to rap the door. Keeping the boy jiggety when he needed his rest? What was the girl thinking?

  And then she heard what Alys was saying… and the blood in her turned to ice.

  “So that’s who you are, Liam. Great-grandson of Berold, son of poor slain Harald, and the rightful duke of Clemen. And once you’re a man grown, my lamb, what will you do?”

  “I’ll find that bastard Roric,” said Willem, so bold. “And I’ll cut off his feggit head.”

  “Exactly right, my lamb. That’s what you’ll do. But can you tell anyone about it?”

  “No,” said Willem. “Not even Benedikt. It be a secret. Yours and mine.”

  For a long time Molly stood there with the raised lamp, hardly daring to breathe, biting her knuckles till her tongue tasted blood. Little Willem? That imp? Son of Clemen’s duke that was killed? How could that be?

  But then she remembered again the look on that wicked girl’s face when she saw crippled Vidar… and knew, sick with terror, that it was the dreadful truth.

  Willem’s the proper duk of Clemen. Not that bastard Roric. And if Clemen finds him here, they’ll take him. If he’s found here, they’ll kill us all.

  Kill Benedikt. Kill Iddo. Burn the Pig Whistle to the ground.

  Shivering, she watched her bitten knuckles tap lightly on Alys’s door. Heard herself say, kindly, “I need ye a moment, Alys. Can ye come back downstairs?”

  She waited. The door opened and Alys slipped out, her nightdress half-covered in a woollen shawl. The girl was cross, but trying to hide it. “Is something wrong, Molly?”

  She shook her head. In her veins, the ice crackled. “No. Go on, now. I promise it won’t take long.”

  She let the girl go first. And as Alys’s bare foot touched the third worn wooden tread from the top, shoved hard between her shoulders and sent the girl tumbling down the rest.

  Thud, thud, bang, crack. Alys sprawled at the foot of the stairs, twisted on her side. Ice-cold, Molly followed until she was halfway down. Then she clutched at the banister and drew in a sobbing breath.

  “Iddo! Iddo! Come quick! That Alys, she’s fallen down the stairs!”

  A gasp from above her. Turning, she saw Willem–Liam–Harald’s son, the spirits save them–standing at the top of the stairs with his chestnut hair tousled and his amber eyes wide enough to pop. His nightshirt was patched and darned, and barely came to his knees. He was growing so fast. He’d be a tall man, one day.

  “Back to bed, imp!” she told him, and tried to shield him from seeing Alys.

  But Willem–Liam–ignored her. “Ellyn!” he cried. “Ellyn!”

  She caught him with one arm, held him kicking and struggling. “Ellyn? Who’s Ellyn?”

  For a heartbeat he slumped limply against her. Then he started struggling again. “Nobody. She’s Alys. She’s hurt. Let me go!”

  So. Even the wretched girl’s name was a lie. Everything about the little bitch had been a lie. And if Iddo ever found out—

  Thudding on the lower stairs, and then there he was. Seeing Alys crumpled on the shadowy landing, he hesitated.

  “Be she dead, Iddo?”

  He held his calloused palm in front of the girl’s face. “No, Moll. She be breathing. But I fear she’s mortal hurt.”

  Not dead? She swallowed a curse. “Best ye get her into bed. I’ll sit with her. Ye can take Willem afore the fire.”

  He frowned. “I don’t like to move her, Moll. Could be she’s got bones broke.”

  “Ye have to move her, man. She can’t stay—”

  A low, faint moan. The girl’s hand twitched. And then, in the lamplight, Alys–Ellyn
–slowly opened her eyes.

  “Willem.”

  The boy was struggling so hard she was going to drop the lamp. No need for Clemen to burn down the Pig Whistle. She’d do it herself.

  “Here, Iddo! Take him!”

  She stumbled down the rest of the stairs, poor distressed little Willem slipping from her grasp. Iddo snatched him free, whirled him away.

  “Wait, Iddo. Keep him by a moment.”

  Putting the lamp down, Molly knelt by Alys’s side. Even in the rosy light the girl’s skin was sickly pale. Her eyes had drifted shut. A thread of blood trickled from her nose and over her parted lips. Another thread dribbled from her ear, staining the neck of her nightdress. Such a bloody day, they’d had.

  She leaned close. “Alys. Can ye hear me?”

  Another faint moan. A flutter of lashes. “Molly? Where’s Willem?”

  “He’s here, girl. I’ve got him.”

  Alys breathed in, a raw, shivering sound. Her fingers twitched again. “Molly…”

  The girl’s voice was failing. Molly touched her cheek. She was cold. Another shivering breath, then she opened her eyes. They were already starting to cloud.

  “Willem,” she whispered. “I risked my life for him, I did. I killed for him, Molly. I’d do it again. Keep him safe. Don’t let… don’t let…”

  The girl died.

  “Here, Iddo,” Molly said, and held out her arms. “Let Willem come. Let the poor mite say goodbye.”

  It cracked her heart wide, to hear Willem sobbing over Alys. Or Ellyn. Or whoever she’d been.

  Killed for him, did she? Well. And so did I.

  “No, no,” Willem hiccuped, clutching the girl’s lifeless hand, his face hidden against her breast. “Don’t be dead. Ye can’t be dead.”

  Remembering how she’d grieved for Diggin, Molly pressed trembling fingers to her lips. She wanted to weep too, though Iddo was dry-eyed. But she’d not whip herself. She’d done what she’d done and she couldn’t undo it. Wouldn’t if she could. Willem was her family, just like Benedikt and Iddo. She’d never beg pardon for keeping her family safe.