Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

“Don’t even think you’re going to disarm me, Habrak. Not tonight.”

  Habrak, like any sane man, was bone-deep leery of Count Berne’s erratic temper and lightning blade, but he’d been sergeant of the guard here in the Imperial Donjon for five years, and he felt he was on firm ground. “This is, er, standard procedure, m’lord. Security.”

  “You think one of your starving pukes down there is going to take this sword away from me?”

  Either answer to a question like this was liable to hook more trouble, so Habrak sidestepped. “The Emperor hisself leaves his weapons here with me, before he goes through that door. It’s by his word that only the guards bear arms in the Donjon. If y’think he’s wrong, y’oughta take it up with him.”

  Berne gave in with a snarl, unbuckling the sword belt and throwing it into Habrak’s hands as though daring the sergeant to drop it. Habrak, gratefully, clung to the scabbard like a leech and gingerly hung it on the rack behind his desk.

  “And you’ll be wanting a lamp, if y’re going past the Pit. Patrol snuffs the last torch at midnight.”

  Berne looked, if it were possible, more angry now than when he’d entered. He took a lamp in his white-knuckled hand and waited by the door. He stared downward as though he could see through the door, down through the living stone from which the Donjon had been carved, and there found the face of a man he despised.

  Habrak unlocked the door and held it for him as Berne descended the long, narrow shaft of stairway, down deep into the darkness. The hot reek of fermenting shit and unwashed bodies, air that had been breathed too many times by men and women with rotting teeth and decaying lungs, boiled up out of the stairwell in Berne’s wake; Habrak was as glad as ever to shut that door and move away from it, back to his desk.

  The Imperial Donjon of Ankhana lies in a series of tunnels cut into the limestone of Old Town beneath the courthouse, excavated over decades by teams of convict stonebenders. The central common room, known as the Pit, had been shaped from a natural cavern three stories high; twenty feet above the floor, it is girdled by a ledge that forms a natural balcony, which is patrolled by guards bearing crossbows and iron-bound clubs.

  The Pit is always crowded with men and women awaiting trial—some for months, even years—and those convicts who have already been sentenced, who are awaiting transport to a frontier garrison or the eastern mines. It is the only area that is permanently lit, its ceiling blackened by decades of smoking lanterns. Sloping tunnels carved into the living rock radiate outward from the Pit’s balcony like spokes in a wheel, at intervals connected by narrow crossways. These tunnels lead to the private cells, which are inhabited by minor nobles and members of Warrengangs and any others who have the money or influence to bribe their way out of the Pit, and only those.

  Solitary confinement is a luxury in the Imperial Donjon; prisoners who cause trouble are condemned to the Shaft.

  The Donjon is a place of deep shadow and bad air; the bitter, bloody smells of despair and brutality thickly struggle with the reek of human shit and rotting flesh. The sole entrance or exit is the single flight of stairs down which Berne now strode, from the courthouse cellar to the Pit balcony; a prisoner in the Imperial Donjon has as much chance of escape as does a damned soul in Hell.

  Suspicious, hard-eyed guards squinted at Berne as he stalked past them around the arc of the balcony; they trusted no one but each other. He spared them not even a passing glance.

  The doors to the private cells carried two locks: heavy beams mounted on pivots, and smaller keyhole locks. The beams could be swung swiftly into place to bar the door against a prisoner’s rush; the keyhole locks were there against the occasional prisoner who did manage to get free of his cell, to prevent him from running along the corridors freeing others faster than the guards could put them away again.

  Berne had his own key to the door he wanted. He turned it and slapped the beam to vertical, yanked the door open, and went inside.

  This cell was well appointed; by the standards of the Donjon, it was sumptuous: a feather bed with clean sheets and a blanket, a small writing desk, a comfortable chair, even a rack of books to pass long hours of waiting. The cell was clean, and on the desk lay a tray covered with the remnants of a pork shank, some potato, and a bit of gravy-soaked bread. The prisoner on the bed stirred reluctantly out of sleep, drawn up toward consciousness by the noise of the door and the sudden light of the lamp that Berne now set on the desk.

  The prisoner rolled over and shaded his bleary eyes. “Huh? Berne?”

  “You haven’t been giving me the whole story, Lamorak,” Berne said. He shifted his Buckler to his feet, short-stepped, and kicked Lamorak’s bed to splinters.

  Berne’s foot exploded through the mattress, and a blizzard of swirling chicken feathers filled the cell. The kick slapped Lamorak bodily into the air, his arms flailing helplessly. Berne’s hand struck with the speed of a stooping falcon and snatched Lamorak’s ankle.

  He held Lamorak out, head down, at arm’s length and struggling. This strength, this power that Ma’elKoth granted him, he reveled in it. Being able to lift a bigger man, straight armed and one handed, and never feel the strain—it shortened his breath, and brought living heat to his crotch.

  “Just imagine,” he said thickly, “what a kick like that will do to your head.”

  “Berne, Berne don’t . . .” Lamorak said, arms crossed in front of his face in futile defense—those muscular golden arms would splinter more easily than the bedslats had.

  “Can you smell me?”

  “Berne . . . Berne, calm down . . .”

  With a flick of his wrist, Berne battered Lamorak against the stone wall of the cell. Lamorak left skin and blood behind, smeared across the stone, and rose-white bone peeked through where the impact had split the flesh over his elbow. Lamorak grunted, but did not cry out. For a long count of ten the only sound within the cell was the drizzle of his blood pattering onto the floor.

  Berne said, “Let’s try this again. Can you smell me?”

  Lamorak nodded with difficulty, his face becoming puffy with blood. “What . . . what happened?” he asked hoarsely.

  “What part does Pallas Ril play in this?”

  “Berne, I . . .”

  Berne flicked him against the stone again, this time face first. Lamorak’s scalp split at the hairline, and blood slicked down into his long, golden hair.

  Berne didn’t have time to play at this; the rock of the Donjon impedes Flow. Though Ma’elKoth had gifted him with the splinter of griffinstone that he carried on a chain about his neck to power his strength in situations like these, down here it would not do so for very long.

  “How many times will you make me ask this question?”

  Lamorak said something that Berne didn’t quite catch; his mind had drifted away to the humiliation of the beating his Cats had taken at the hands of Pallas Ril and her goatfucking beggars.

  After the shocking indignity of having a building knocked down on his head, digging his way out had taken him only a minute; with his superhuman strength, he had shrugged aside foot-thick beams the way an ordinary man would handle bundles of straw. Raging, he’d led the Cats charging after her, through the streets of the Industrial Park and into the Warrens.

  And the beggars had thrown shit at them.

  There was no one to fight, no one to kill, just clods of flying shit spattering them from all directions. Soon the Cats were entirely disorganized, chasing after this beggar or that as they disappeared into the crowded maze of backstreets without a trace.

  Ma’elKoth had refused Berne’s call for firebolts to scatter the crowds. “Wanton slaughter in the streets of the capital is counterproductive. Perhaps your attention would be more valuably spent ensuring that the Aktiri you located do not escape while you are chasing about the Warrens.”

  Cursing, Berne had sprinted back to the abandoned warehouse and broken into the cellar, ready to kill them all on the spot—but the cellar was empty. They’d gone, somehow, in the bare
quarter hour their bolt-hole had been unwatched. It was as though Pallas Ril had led the Cats away to accomplish exactly this. If, that is, the Aktiri had ever been there in the first place. But she was involved, here, somewhere, somehow, in with Simon Jester, and now so was Caine, and Berne was not fool enough to believe in coincidence.

  Perhaps Simon Jester . . . perhaps he was Caine!

  Berne’s mind boiled; Lamorak dangled forgotten from his fist. It was possible, he decided, all too possible. Never mind that he was no thaumaturge—he had Pallas Ril for that. It even made a certain hideous amount of sense; Caine was notorious for burrowing his wormy way into the confidence of his enemies—look at what he’d done to Khulan G’thar . . .

  And Ma’elKoth had invited him into the palace, had fed and armed him, had seated him in Berne’s chair. . . !

  Caine had to die.

  Right now. Tonight.

  “It’s useless,” Lamorak was saying miserably.

  “What?”

  “Why won’t you understand me? Why can’t you hear what I’m saying to you?”

  Berne’s mouth twisted with revulsion as he looked down. “The way you whine, it makes me sick. They weren’t there, you stupid goatfucker. The Aktiri were not in the warehouse cellar. Either you lied to me, or you truly don’t know, and either way you’re no fucking use anymore.”

  “I’m telling you,” Lamorak said, clutching for Berne’s knee. “Berne, I swear to you, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m telling you Pallas Ril . . .”

  Berne lost the thread of his meaning again, imagining the smooth humming slide of Kosall into Caine’s body. Where would he cut Caine first? Sever a leg? Perhaps only take an ear? Maybe a low stab, into his groin—Berne felt stirrings in his own as he imagined this. Maybe he’d finish it off by jamming Kosall up Caine’s ass until the point came out his mouth . . .

  “. . . our deal,” Lamorak was saying. “Berne, we have a deal.”

  Berne shrugged and opened his hand. Lamorak barely got his arms around his head in time to avoid braining himself on the stone floor. Berne watched dispassionately while Lamorak slowly picked himself up.

  “Tell you what,” Berne said. He held out the key to Lamorak’s cell. “I’ll give you a chance. Jump me, take this key, and I’ll let you go.”

  “Berne—”

  Berne pivoted into a low-line roundhouse kick that brought his shin against Lamorak’s golden thigh with crushing force. Lamorak’s femur snapped with a wet, meaty pop and he fell to the floor, clutching his broken leg and biting his mouth to hold in a scream.

  “Too late,” Berne said. “Had your chance. Sorry.”

  He dropped to one knee and rolled Lamorak roughly onto his stomach; Lamorak groaned as Berne forced his legs apart, using his strength to spread the thigh muscle that cramped hard around his broken bone. Lamorak’s breeches tore like tissue beneath his fingers.

  “Don’t,” Lamorak pleaded, hoarse with the strain of holding in a scream. “For the love of god . . .”

  “Which god?” Berne asked, digging his fingers into Lamorak’s ass cheeks, but then he stopped, and he sighed. This wasn’t what he needed. This wasn’t even what he wanted.

  He wanted Caine.

  And Pallas Ril. Together. Strapped to the tables in the Theater of Truth, their eyelids pinned back by Master Arkadeil’s silver needles, so that each must watch what he did to the other.

  Sadly, this was not to be: he’d better kill Caine tonight. That slippery little goatfucker was just too dangerous to leave alive.

  Berne left Lamorak lying there on the floor of the cell, his face white with pain and shock. He locked the door behind himself.

  On his way up into the night-darkened courthouse, he stopped at the upper gate to retrieve his sword. He buckled it over his shoulder and said to the sergeant, “Habrak. Send a man to Master Arkadeil. I want Lamorak in the Theater of Truth tonight. If you hurry, Arkadeil can use him as the subject for his midnight instructional. Tell him to try to find out what he can about Simon Jester, but it’s not too important—I don’t think Lamorak really knows anything he hasn’t already told. Tell Arkadeil to take his time, enjoy himself, and there’s no need for Lamorak to live through it.”

  Habrak saluted. “As the Count orders.”

  “You’re a good man, Sergeant.”

  He left, pausing only a moment in the courthouse above to dismiss the Cats who had accompanied him; he needed no entourage to protect him on these streets.

  He left the courthouse and stopped in the street to inhale the night. A great breath of darkness filled his chest and teased his lips toward a curving grin.

  He spread his arms, smiling up at the brilliant stars. This was his favorite time of day, this still emptiness of midnight; the sleepy hush that spread its blanket over the city, the crystal chill in the air, all the city folk behind their shutters, dreaming of the day. They slept secure in the knowledge that nothing of any importance in their lives could happen from midnight to dawn.

  They were wrong, of course; especially tonight.

  Berne could happen.

  He hooked his thumbs behind his belt, ambled down the street, and thought about it.

  He picked out windows as he went along, picturing the solid citizens that slept behind them. Those shutters there, with the patch of silvery weather stain—behind them, he decided, could be a young family, a serious-minded tinker from the smithy down the street, his lovely young wife who took in washing for a couple silver a week, and their precious daughter, now turned six. Maybe her birthday is tomorrow; maybe she lies in bed right now with her eyes open, breathless, praying to the gods for a real dress this year.

  Getting in would be easy. With his enchanted strength, he could leap to that window from here; with Kosall he could slice away the hasp. A warm squirming began in his belly—he could see, as though they lay before him now, the restless stir of the tinker’s wife as Berne slipped into their bedroom; he could see the slow dawning of light in the tinker’s eyes, only a glimmer that would fade swiftly away as Kosall silently drank his life; he could feel the frail terror of the wife’s heart beating against his chest as she tried to pull her hips away from him, as he fucked her in the pool of her husband’s blood.

  And the little girl, the daughter—orphaned at such a tender age, in such a brutal way. He could see the approval on the faces of the respectable townsfolk as he offered to adopt her. He was nobility, after all; no one would think to deny him. And she’d be his, all his, to raise and to train, to perfect her body and her mind, to bend her body beneath his, to enter her virginity with his power as he finally revealed to her how her parents had died . . . and her arms would snake around his back, and she’d whisper in his ear, “I know . . . I’ve always known . . . I’ve always loved you, Berne . . .”

  Berne chuckled and shook his head. He would do no such thing, tonight.

  The point was that if he wanted to, he could.

  Tonight, he’d let them go. Another night, he might make another choice.

  He felt good, now, really good, for the first time since, oh, since he’d killed those two gladiator brats in the Warrens. He felt free, and full of light.

  It was because he’d finally made the decision: he’d decided to go ahead and kill Caine. Only now could he feel how much Ma’elKoth’s command to spare the life of that treacherous little snake had weighed upon his spirit; he recognized the weight by its absence.

  Oh, Ma’elKoth would be angry, sure, at first—no one likes to be defied—but in the end, he’d forgive Berne, even thank him.

  He always did.

  Ma’elKoth always forgave, always accepted, always valued Berne for precisely what he was. He asked only that Berne exercise restraint, never asked that he change. This was the difference between Ma’elKoth and every other living being that Berne had ever known.

  Ma’elKoth loved him.

  Berne stretched like a cat, and his loosening joints shifted and popped beneath his skin. He grinned into the moonl
ight, measuring the towering black-shadowed wall that enclosed Old Town. In the next breath he burst into a sprint along Ten Street, the wind of his passing sizzling in his ears. Twenty paces from the garrison stables he bounded into the air, his enchanted strength sending him soaring up to the stables’ roof; then without even a pause he sprang upward again, to the rooftop of the officers’ barracks and from there to the top of the wall. A triple bound had taken him up ten times the height of a man.

  Standing openly upon the battlement, he threw his arms wide and shouted, laughing, “Lord, my aching balls! I love being me!”

  A pair of nervous sentries from Onetower, the massive keep that defended the downstream point of the island, came toward him hesitantly with leveled crossbows. “Don’t move!” one of them called. “Identify yourself!”

  In answer, Berne unslung Kosall and laid it on the battlement. “I am Count Berne,” he said, “and this is my sword. Don’t touch it while I’m gone.”

  With that he threw his arms wide once again and leaped high into the air, an arc of perfect grace as he dove toward the Great Chambaygen; he shifted his Buckler into his hands as he cut the water and slid into its depths with barely a ripple. The stones and mud at the river’s bottom bothered him not at all, and he passed a happy interval playing in the water, letting the river wash away the shit that had caked his clothes and the last of the knots of anger that had tied themselves in his back.

  This was the great gift of Ma’elKoth. Nothing was denied him. He did as he chose, when he chose, and there was no one with the power to say him nay. Only Ma’elKoth himself could stop him—and he never did. He looked upon Berne’s excesses as a proud father looks upon the exuberant youth of his favorite son—with tolerance, and only occasional gentle correction.

  Berne’s real father, a dour and ascetic Monastic official in a small southern town, had raised Berne with the kind of iron hand only a fanatic can wield. His father had been posted there, in a tiny backwater, at the behest of the moderate Jhanthite faction that had, in those days, largely controlled the Council of Brothers; they’d wanted him far enough away that his extremist views wouldn’t trouble their relations with the subhumans.