The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  He grinned at his brother. “I be rosy, Benedikt. You?”

  “Rosy enough,” Benedikt said, running a finger round the throttling neck of the mail beneath his leather jack. “But I’ll be glad to get started.”

  And so would he.

  Their wish was granted soon enough. At Balfre’s command the huddle of lords and serjeants broke apart. As they went about mounting their horses, Balfre’s destrier was brought to him by a liveried squire. A magnificent beast, black as pitch, with a bloody flame of rage in its eyes. Balfre swung himself into its saddle with enviable ease and pranced the animal closer to his gathered men-at-arms so he might be more easily heard. Harcia’s duke lifted a gauntleted hand, and all the muttering conversation in the ranks ceased.

  “Faithful servants of Harcia,” he said, his raised voice carrying clearly beneath the lightly clouded spring sky. “I have but two words for you before we ride out to crush treacherous, warmongering Clemen, whose lies and deceit hastened the great Aimery’s death. No mercy!”

  His eager men-at-arms took up the cry. “No mercy! No mercy! Avenge Aimery! No mercy!”

  “No mercy!” Liam shouted, thinking of Roric and of Humbert, who’d helped put the murdering bastard on his throne. He glanced sideways at his brother, lustily shouting with the rest. Caught Benedikt’s eye and laughed, feeling his horse quiver with stirred excitement, and his own hot blood rise. “No mercy!”

  Balfre’s warhorse reared once, hooves raking the air. Then the serjeants joined their assigned men-at-arms, and Waymon and the other Harcian lords, their armour far short of Balfre’s splendour, fell in behind their duke as he spurred his destrier into a knee-snapping prance and led them, and his men-at-arms, towards the manor house gates.

  Harcia was going to war.

  They crashed through the Clemen Marches like a river in full flood. Ordered by Balfre to seek out Humbert’s men-at-arms in Bell Wood, and from there chase their Clemen prey as they saw fit, with a steady push through Humbert’s territory towards the border with Roric’s duchy, Serjeant Eadin led his close-riding score of men-at-arms into the woodland at a brisk trot.

  With a glance and a nod at Benedikt, Liam eased his horse stride by stride so the other men-at-arms could go by him. Benedikt did the same until they were bringing up the rear.

  After that, it was just a matter of waiting.

  Though they searched from side to side they found none of Humbert’s men-at-arms skulking in Bell Wood. Furious, Eadin cantered them out of the newly budding woodland, over empty Bluebell Meadow and into straggling Tadpecker Copse. Not even ten strides deep into the trees they heard the steel ringing of blade against blade and the shrill shouting of men who were fighting for their lives. Another four strides and their horses were startled by a half-dozen riderless mounts come bolting out of the copse’s heart.

  “For Harcia!” Eadin bellowed. “No mercy!”

  They spurred their horses, plunging into dappled shadows and the madness of bloodshed. A good thirty men were skirmishing among the spindly trees, swords rising and falling, nearly a third of them unhorsed and Harcia’s red-sashed men-at-arms outnumbered. Howling, Eadin barrelled his horse into the nearest of Clemen’s mounted men. More shouts, some alarmed, some relieved, as the rest of Eadin’s men joined the fight. Trusting Benedikt to look after himself, Liam charged an unmounted Clemen man pulling his bloodied sword from a burst Harcian eye. Rode his horse right over him, heard the cracking of broken bone beneath iron-shod hooves and the muffled shriek of agony as the injured fuck went down beside the man he’d killed. There was too much blood to see who it was. Then a blow to his back had him hauling his horse onto its haunches, wrenching around so he could slash his sword across his mounted attacker’s throat. Blood spurting, the Clemen bastard toppled from his horse. Catching his breath, he saw Benedikt lean sideways to stroke his sword’s whetted edge through an unmounted Clemen man’s face. More spurting blood. Another corpse. The air stank of fresh blood and horse shit, shivered with the screams of the wounded and dying who littered the grassy, crimson-splashed ground.

  He looked around. No sign of that treacherous bastard Humbert.

  Then three Clemen men-at-arms spurred their horses clear of the frantic violence, trying to escape before they were cut down too.

  “Benedikt!” Liam shouted, pointing. “After ’em!”

  Heedless of Serjeant Eadin’s bellowed protest, they spurred their own horses in pursuit. Changed direction as soon as they were out of his sight, letting Clemen’s men go their own way while they trotted cautious to the eastern edge of the copse.

  “So,” Benedikt said, panting, once they’d looked hard at each other to make sure any blood splashed on them wasn’t theirs. “Now we find Humbert, iss?”

  Liam tucked the hilt of his sword under his thigh, then dragged his forearm over his face to wipe away the sweat. “Iss,” he said, taking his sword back. “And we’d best get a move on, afore someone else finds him first.”

  After that it was cat-and-mouse, cat-and-mouse, playing hide-and-seek with every man-at-arms in the Clemen Marches. Five more times they were tangled in a bloody skirmish as they criss-crossed Clemen land to find Roric’s Marcher lord. The second time, not far from the burned remains of the Pig Whistle, Benedikt caught the trailing edge of a Clemen dagger down his right cheek. The wound wasn’t killing deep but he bled like a stuck hog till it clotted. Battling their way through Clemen survivors at corpse-choked Crooked Creek, Liam had his left thigh sliced by a wildly swung sword. The blade opened his horse’s side down to a rib, but neither wound was mortal.

  Pretending he wasn’t half-scared out of his wits, Liam bound the wound with a strip cut from his red sash, then put the pain out of his mind. He and Benedikt made a ragged escape, spurring their tired horses without mercy, and kept on hunting. Hoped with every freshly slaughtered Clemen man they stumbled over that they’d not found Humbert. That the old rump yet lived, could be found and taken prisoner, and they weren’t risking their lives for naught. Once, on the edge of sour-salty Badger Pond, they caught sight of Balfre on his destrier, close enough to see that none of the men-at-arms he harried was Clemen’s Marcher lord. They saw Serjeant Grule, too, in Farmer Spurfield’s rye-patch, battling Clemen men-at-arms alongside the grizzled old lord that someone in the barracks had said was famous Lord Terriel of the Green Isle. They saw the old man cut down, his hamstrung horse falling on top of him. But Humbert wasn’t there either so they rode on quickly before someone looked up from the slaughter and saw them watching, not fighting.

  “Fuck, Willem,” Benedikt muttered, his voice slurry because of his slashed cheek, as they jogged their tired horses away from Spurfield farm. “D’ye think we’ll find Humbert afore dusk? Or afore there b’aint no more Clemen shites to be killed and Balfre calls victory? Harcia’s lost men but Clemen’s lost a sight more. The skirmishing’s got to end soon.”

  Feeling an unwelcome clutch of nerves, Liam glanced at the late-afternoon sky. Benedikt was right. The day was dying and his chance to gift Balfre with Clemen’s Marcher lord was dying with it. The thought of failure nearly had him snivelling like a babe.

  “Willem?” Benedikt prompted. “What d’ye want to do?”

  Gritting his teeth against the throbbing pain in his thigh, the ache in his shoulders and back, crushed by the weight of his mail and leather jack, feeling his leather skull cap like a lead bowl, he pressed his spurs once again to his horse’s scored flanks.

  “Ride on to Spindly Copse. We haven’t looked there yet.”

  “And if we don’t find him, Willem?”

  Hating his brother for the difficult questions, for being right, Liam glared. “I don’t fucking know, Benedikt! Let’s just ride to Spindly Copse!”

  “Fine,” said Benedikt, sulky. “If that be what ye want.”

  What he fucking wanted was to find that fuck Humbert. He spurred his horse again, urging it into a reluctant jog, leaving Benedikt to catch up as he pleased.

  CHAPTER FOR
TY-TWO

  Just like Bell Wood, they heard the fighting in Spindly Copse before they saw it. The clashing of swords. The muted metal thumping of blade against iron mail and boiled leather. Harsh breathing. Grunts of pain. The deep, raw bellow of a wounded horse. Fingers of fading light reached down through the undergrown trees and their branches, gilding the spreading tangles of bramble bushes just coming into bud.

  Another wounded horse bellowed, higher-pitched this time. A horrible, skin-crawling cry. Liam felt his own horse shudder and prop, ears flattening, haunches dropping beneath him as it baulked at what lay ahead. Benedikt’s horse baulked with it, resentfully swishing its tail.

  “Leave ’em,” Benedikt whispered, sliding his feet out of his stirrups. “The poor shites have had enough.”

  Nodding, Liam looked around to be sure they were alone. Then he dismounted, hissing as his wounded thigh threatened to give way when his boot touched the ground. Ignoring Benedikt’s anxious glance, he secured his reins to a sturdy sapling, then made certain of his sword and his dagger as his brother did the same.

  “Ready?” he said, when Benedikt was done.

  His brother shrugged. “I s’pose.”

  With all the stealth that was left to them, they crept towards the ugly sounds of increasingly desperate battle. A few moments later came upon nine men in a clearing. Five were Harcian. Four were Clemen. And one of them was Humbert. No sign of the wounded horses, but scattered around them, eight bodies. Five of the dead were wearing a crimson Harcian sash. Liam felt a wave of blinding relief crash over him, and his hand went to the hilt of his sword. At last. Here was his prize. But then Benedikt took hold of his arm and pulled him down behind a wild tangle of brambles that edged the clearing.

  “Wait,” his brother hissed. “We can’t fight nine men. Let Humbert kill a few more first. Ye’ve seen him fight, ye know he will. Then we’ll have him.”

  It wasn’t a risk he’d have taken by himself. But Benedikt had made the choice for him. They’d have words on that later. He pulled off his skull cap, desperate to ease the pounding pain in his head.

  Humbert and the other eight men-at-arms were bruised and bloody, dirt and leaves and sweat plastered to their stained faces, their stained armour and boiled leather jacks and mail. No elegance to their sword and dagger-work, only a grim determination to kill first before being killed. Their footwork was clumsy, more a stagger than a dance. It was clear they were exhausted, worn to near-collapse by the day’s relentless fighting. The cool, moist air heaved in and out of their lungs in shuddering gasps.

  One of the Clemen men turned, awkward, and tripped over a dead man’s leg. A Harcian man-at-arms–like the others his face was unfamiliar, they must have ridden in with Balfre–saw him off-balance and moved in for the easy slaughter.

  Alerted, Humbert lurched round. Saw the Harcian’s raised sword and raised his own. “Roric! Roric! ’Ware behind you!”

  Liam forgot his resentment, hardly felt Benedikt’s digging elbow. Heart thumping, fingers clenching, he stared in disbelief at the man who’d murdered his father. His mother. Who’d tried to murder him and had stolen his duchy. Tall and strongly built, closer to plain than handsome, with close-cropped greying chestnut hair and blood splattering his cheeks. He was dressed like a common man-at-arms. Looked nothing like a duke.

  The bastard Roric’s lunging blade took the Harcian through his throat, even as Humbert’s sword slashed the back of the man’s thighs. Then Humbert was turning again to block a new Harcian blade, and Roric was close-grappling with another of Balfre’s men. The fight was evenly matched now, four against four. Liam watched, breathless, willing Humbert and Roric to prevail, for the other two Clemen men-at-arms to fall. Then he and Benedikt could take the last two Harcians, gulling Roric and Humbert into thinking they were saved. And then–and then–

  A crashing through the trees on the far side of the clearing. Raised voices. Drumming hooves. Three sweat-soaked mounted horses burst out of the gloom. Not a rider among them wore a red sash. Hard on their heels, five more horses. The rider in front was Waymon, his darkly bronzed armour painted lavishly with blood.

  Madness. One of the Harcians brought down the first Clemen horse, then severed its fallen rider’s head with a single swing of his sword. Blood gushed like a wellspring as the wounded horse thrashed itself to death on the ground. Its wild throes frenzied the other horses, sent them rearing and spinning and trampling in panic.

  Graceful as a jongler despite his armour, Waymon vaulted out of his saddle. He had eyes for no one but Humbert, who’d been knocked off his feet and was struggling to rise again. Struggling for breath. As Roric and his men-at-arms battled Harcia’s swords, oblivious, Waymon hurdled the dead horse’s twitching carcase, closed on Humbert in three swift strides and slit his throat with a dagger.

  “Your Grace! Your Grace! Lord Humbert, Your Grace!”

  So cried a Clemen man-at-arms. His horrified shout froze every blade mid-swing. Roric whipped round. Saw Humbert dead in a pool of blood, saw Waymon grinning, and beneath his mask of blood and sweat turned white as fresh chalk.

  “Roric!” Waymon echoed. “At last. A face to put with the name.”

  Roric leapt for him, his eyes savage, tears washing through the scarlet on his face.

  “Shite!” yelped Benedikt.

  Hidden behind the brambles, they watched Waymon and Roric fight like men possessed by goblin-spirits, heedless of the bodies they trod on and tripped over and ground to mincemeat with their boots, of the blood-soaked grass and dirt they were churning into stinking mud, and the blows they landed on each other’s straining bodies. Watched the men-at-arms of Harcia and Clemen try to hack each other to bloody bits. Screams and curses and shit and death. A nightmare vision worse than any skirmish they’d ever seen or fought in.

  Liam felt a chill rattle his bones. Fuck. Fuck. Never mind the men-at-arms. Waymon was winning. Any moment he’d have Roric on the ground, he’d have Clemen’s bastard duke spitted and dying on his sword. And if Roric died now there’d be no Falcon Throne for murdered Harald’s son.

  “Willem, no!” Benedikt grabbed him. “Willem don’t, ye can’t–don’t—”

  Sword unsheathed, wrenching his arm free of his frantic brother, Liam flung himself over the brambles and into the fight. He had one chance to take Waymon by surprise. To kill Balfre’s trusted friend before the bastard killed Roric and with him any hope he had of reclaiming Clemen.

  Roric saw him running, sword drawn. Let his own sword drop, startled. Distracted, Waymon hesitated. Glanced behind him, recoiled, then turned.

  Liam struck him with all the speed and strength he could muster. The blow knocked the wind out of him. Knocked Waymon off his feet. Ignoring the shocking pain, bracing himself for more, he dropped to his knees on Waymon’s armoured chest, raised his sword to his arms’ length and plunged it into the bastard’s gaping mouth, through the back of his skull and into the bloodied ground beneath his head.

  Stillness. Muffling silence. A peculiar kind of calm.

  Looking up, Liam met Roric’s shocked stare. The bastard’s eyes were the colour of warm amber. Seeing them, he remembered that this man was a kind of cousin. That they shared more than a bloody history. He remembered they shared blood.

  “But–you’re Harcian,” Roric said, dazed. “Why would you—”

  And then his face changed. His sword came up. Liam heard the thud of approaching footsteps, tried to pull his sword free of Waymon. Grunted as Roric roughly shoved him down and aside. As he tumbled off Waymon’s body he saw a silver flash of swords, heard the clash of blade on blade, heard an agonised grunt then felt a spray of something warm and wet across his face and hair. He smelled the iron tang of fresh blood.

  Fuck. Don’t let it be Roric’s.

  The muffling silence vanished, and he was once more battered by the clamour of battle. Shouts and screams and ringing steel. Men were fighting almost on top of him. Sword lost, he pulled out his dagger. Smeared the blood from his eye
s and looked for Roric. His father’s murderer was struggling with another Harcian. The man-at-arms’s sword-hilt struck Roric hard in the face. The bastard went down like an axed sheep. Following him, the Harcian struck again, then again. Another blow and surely he’d crack Roric’s skull. Cursing, Liam scrambled to reach him. Then a shout went up and for a moment he thought he could hear thunder. But no, it was only more horses, Clemen and Harcian, thrusting and stamping and crowding into the body-strewn clearing. Cries of “Clemen! Clemen!” and “For Aimery! No mercy!” drowned out the other sounds of bloodshed and mayhem.

  Buffeted by horses, he lost sight of Roric. Lost his dagger as it was knocked out of his hand. His grand plan was in a shambles. He’d be trampled to death any moment.

  And then something struck him a violent blow from behind. The last thing he heard, as darkness claimed him, was a voice saying Sorry… and the thundering of hooves.

  When he came back to himself it was night, and he thought he must have been sorely injured because the ground beneath him was gently rocking, and all he could smell was wet salt. His body was an argument of many different pains. Hurting worst of all his head, pain like the blade of a sword driving through it from side to side. He moaned.

  That’ll teach me to take off my skull cap.

  “Hush, Willem,” Benedikt said softly. “Sound carries over water and we’re not so far from land.”

  He had a fearsome thirst. Swallowing, he tried to sit up. His battling pains defeated him.

  “Stay still,” said Benedikt. “That were a mighty crack to yer noggin. Ye didn’t ought to have pulled off yer cap.”