The Demon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  “Do you know what they say in the Empire about the warriors of Alba?” asked Rynert. Aldric didn’t, and shook his head to prove it. “They simplify—” The king hesitated, correcting himself. “They oversimplify our Honour-codes, all the duties and obligations which make us what we are.” He didn’t mention how Aldric had stretched those duties and twisted those obligations almost out of recognition. “They say if his lord commands a kailin to kill, he kills – and if his lord commands him to die, he dies.”

  “Stripped to the bones, Lord King, but correct enough.”

  “So you accept this, Aldric-an? You accept the bare simplicity of kill and die?” Uneasy now, not liking the trend of conversation, Aldric nodded once.

  “I’ve seen both sides. I can do nothing but accept it. What I did myself, what Lord Santon did, and… And my own brother.” The recollection hurt like an open wound and his voice faltered into silence.

  “Their honour commanded them to die, and they died,” said Rynert. “The oath made to your father commanded you to kill.” He paused in his incessant pacing and gazed at the wall, looking beyond it to the battlefield of Radmur Plain and the great funeral pyres which still smouldered there, streaking their smoke across the sky. “And you fulfilled your oath. Oh, yes. No man can deny it, least of all Kalarr cu Ruruc.” His voice hardened. “And Duergar Vathach. After the way you dealt with him…”

  So that’s it, thought Aldric grimly. Use of sorcery. A clan-lord might be expected, or indeed ordered, to turn his tsepan dagger inward as recompense for flouting the cold laws of the Codes. Santon had done it. Baiart had done it. Did Rynert intend him to follow them along the self-same self-made road?

  “What is your command, mathern-an?” he said, breaking the silence and the gathering tension more loudly than he had intended. “Die?”

  “Kill.”

  “Do I know who?” Unease shifted in his stomach like a drowsy snake, a fear the answer would be yes.

  “I doubt it.” That gave Aldric less comfort than he hoped. “Crisen, the son of Geruath Segharlin. An Imperial Overlord. The father is an ally, the son… Not. It is time to close the account. I hope he finds the gold he stole was worth it.”

  “Gold?”

  The king may have caught the subtle nuances of that single word, but missed the flicker of disgust on Aldric’s face at being commanded to kill a stranger for the sake of money. A moment earlier he had been steeling himself to his own suicide for such an intangible thing as honour. And he would have done it.

  Probably.

  Perhaps.

  Aldric was no longer the honour-besotted boy who had spent so many hours reading the Books of Years in Dunrath’s library and dreaming of great deeds. He had seen what Honour could do. He had smelt it, and tasted it, and slept badly afterwards. This was another matter, and he had to say something even though he didn’t know how to begin.

  “I, I am kailin-eir again, Lord King,” Rynert’s head jerked round at the betraying stammer, “and you yourself said I am ilauem-arluth Talvalin. But I can’t—”

  “What?”

  “Can’t…” Aldric hesitated again before the words came out in a rush. “I can’t be your executioner, or your assassin. Not for the sake of gold. That would make me no more than a—”

  He all but bit his tongue before it could betray him. Less than four weeks past, he had been accidental witness to an exchange no other man apart from Rynert’s bodyguard, Dewan ar Korentin, was meant to see. His king, his honourable lord, had given money to a Drusalan taulath mercenary, and within half an hour this same king had informed his High Council that the Drusalan Emperor was dead. Maybe the two events were mere coincidence, or maybe not. He had drawn his own conclusions. Most contracts, for houses or holds or swords or armour, had the usual term of half on commission, half on completion. What he had seen was payment of the second half.

  Aldric knew little about tulathin – Shadowthieves, they were called, on the rare occasions when decent men spoke of them – but he knew enough. They had no honour, and respected only the gold which hired their unique talents: subtlety and secrecy and ruthless violence for anything that ambition, politics or simple hatred required. A taulath would spy on, steal, kidnap or kill anything or anybody for anyone who could pay the price, and a king could pay that price without a second thought.

  “It would make me no more than a man without Honour,” he said, and let Rynert take what he would from the stumbled words and toneless voice.

  “My lord Talvalin, your Honour requires obedience above all else. Obedience to duty. Obedience to obligation. And obedience to me! So obey!” It wasn’t the reaction Aldric had expected.

  “Mathern-an, why pick me to be your murderer?” That was when Rynert stopped pacing at last.

  “You speak as if you had never killed before. I choose you because I choose you!” His taut, almost-angry face relaxed, and he flung both arms wide in a helpless gesture. “And I choose you because I must.” The king stalked to a chair, sat down and leaned back, interlacing his fingers and staring at them through hooded eyes before touching their steepled tips thoughtfully to his mouth. One booted foot hooked another chair and dragged it closer. “Aldric-an, sit down,” he said. “You and I must talk.”

  For the duration of an indrawn breath Aldric almost asked how that differed from what they had been doing, then perched on the edge of the seat in a nervous way that ill-suited the third most powerful lord in the realm. He could see how Rynert studied him, noting stance, posture, expression and the more involuntary betrayals of wary eyes and bloodless lips.

  “You have something of a reputation already, my lord. A reputation for strangeness, one that borders almost on eccentricity. You are… Unusual. And you dismay people.”

  “Which people?”

  “The ones who matter.” Aldric wondered if that proved he didn’t. “My other lords. The way you fulfilled the oath to your father and reclaimed this fortress was unconventional. You have, and I quote—”

  Quote who? Quote what? A report from that prying bastard Dewan ar Korentin?

  “—An unsettling aptitude for sorcery and no compunction about using it. And you are a wizard’s fosterling.” Aldric’s eyebrows drew together and his mouth opened. “That was no insult, so think before you say something you may regret.” Aldric closed his mouth again, but made sure there was an audible click as his teeth met. “It means that this past four years you lacked the support and protection of your clan. You learned to think for yourself, and the uncharitable see a clan-lord who owes his king nothing. No obligation, no duty and perhaps no loyalty.” Rynert’s statements were logical, reasoned and, coming from a king, beyond argument.

  “It doesn’t explain why you chose me for this assassination.”

  “To prove your loyalty to those other lords. To incline them to accept you as an equal. And because you have a better chance of success than any other man in my domain.” This time there was enough warmth in the statement to make it an undoubted compliment. “The reasons which require me to choose you also incline me to choose you. Your actions were not that of a clan-lord, not even a kailin. But you hold to your Word of Binding once that word is given, even if it has little to do with what my lord Dacurre regards as Honour.” Dacurre, eighty years old, opinionated and inflexible, was a by-word in his own lifetime for blinkered conservatism.

  “What if I refuse?”

  “You would forfeit…” Rynert gestured at the hall, and by implication at the fortress and the wide lands which surrounded it, “Everything. For the sake of the men killed here keeping faith, I would not permit you to keep this. It would be unfair.”

  By which he meant it would be hazardous, and might give other lords ideas. Aldric shrugged, but said nothing. There was nothing more to say. Rynert relaxed after that shrug and laid out the rehearsed reasons Aldric would publicly offer and he would publicly accept: a lack of preparedness for lordship, and the unhappy memories within the fortress. He didn’t elaborate on how slight an
d selfish they might sound to men whose friends had died in battle, and Aldric didn’t say so either.

  Not until he had talked to Gemmel.

  But Gemmel wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. Enough people said they had seen him, but always somewhere else and some time ago, until it seemed as if he was deliberately avoiding his fosterling. At last Aldric gave up and played his assigned role for Rynert’s selected audience, Dewan ar Korentin and several other clan-lords. The Albans greeted his speech with dismay and even anger, but from the look of him the Vreijek bodyguard was both amused, unimpressed, and unconvinced.

  Rynert’s make-believe hadn’t worked in that quarter, and Aldric wondered if it had failed in other places too. After all he had gone through to achieve his revenge and recapture Dunrath, it must seem improbable that he would put all that aside. At best unlikely, at worst false cover for something else. There were no questions asked aloud, but plenty for discussion later behind closed doors, if what he was being asked to do gave him any ‘later’ in which to do it.

  That was then. This was now, and for good or ill he was the king’s messenger delivering a fatal message. He could be an assassin, or a landless exile whose life might be longer if he never came home again.

  The choice was his.

  *

  Evthan had watched while the man in the clearing worked his fingers into plated gauntlets and settled a helmet on his head, harnessed his horses, mounted the black and nudged it with booted heels. He had crouched out of sight as the man rode past, and remained there until well after the beat of hoofs faded to silence. Then he straightened and scratched his head in confusion, for there were many questions in what he had seen but not a single answer.

  Behind him, someone cleared his throat.

  The armoured man stood there with sword drawn, its point glittering bright and sharp a bare handspan from Evthan’s throat. He could see a gleam of teeth in the face shadowed by the peaked helm and the war-mask over cheeks and chin. It might have been a smile, or it might not. Probably not, for when he dropped his bow in token of surrender, that unwavering point advanced with disturbing eagerness until it rested in the soft spot where his collarbones met, using the convenient hollow to push him backwards. The blade was sharp indeed, for it needed only the pressure of the first goading jab to send a thin trickle of blood down his chest.

  The wound wasn’t over-painful, but the situation lacked dignity. Evthan stood a good head taller than his captor and could have knocked him flying with one hand. At least, with no weapons involved. As it was, he backed up as required. When they stopped the armoured man took a long step sideways, out of Evthan’s reach but not beyond the measure of his longsword’s sweep. Evthan’s rage – and yes, his outrage – at being stalked better than he could do himself was clear on his face, and needed little more provocation to let it loose. That ready sword was a warning to keep it in check.

  “What are you doing here?” The man spoke clipped, correct Drusalan, but with an unfamiliar accent that was neither Vreijek nor Jouvaine and certainly not Drusalan itself. It was nothing Evthan had ever heard before, despite all the hunting-parties from across the Empire he had guided through these woods. They had all treated him with courtesy and respect, so he frowned at the impudence of this demand.

  “I am forest warden,” he said, pulling his authority around him like a cloak. “And I should ask the questions.”

  *

  “This says otherwise.” Aldric rested his taiken in the crook of one arm, where its blade clinked against the mail-rings of his sleeve and its edges gleamed threat. It would be so easy to resolve the situation with a single cut, that gleam suggested, so easy to remove any risk that this forest warden might report his presence. He had learned to recognise those deadly suggestions over the past few months, and to ignore them. “Now, again, who sent you?”

  “Sent me? Nobody sent me, unless you mean my village headman.”

  “And what would he send you to find?” Evthan’s lips compressed and at first he said nothing. When he spoke at last his voice was low, and thickened by shame.

  “Another hunter.”

  “Better than the one who lets an armoured man walk up behind him?” Aldric selected the barb with care and saw the Jouvaine’s face twitch as it struck home. Either the man was a consummate actor, or he was what he claimed to be. He even spared a fraction of a second to regret the accuracy of the guess, but at least he knew the man’s hostility wasn’t only for him. “Another hunter, to hunt what?” There was no reply. “A wolf, perhaps?” Evthan flinched, as if expecting the word to summon its owner from the forest.

  “Not a wolf,” he whispered. “The Wolf. The Beast!”

  Aldric hesitated, considering. He needed somewhere to lie low for a while, in case there were more not-bandits wandering the woods, and he had heard of such troublesome wolves before. Northern Elthan sometimes suffered from them when the winters were hard, rampaging animals notorious enough to deserve a name and fame. Like certain weapons. He glanced at Isileth Widowmaker as he ran the longsword’s blade back into her scabbard. There was no resistance to being put away unused and he wondered, as he often did, what he would do if one day there was.

  “I can’t just call you ‘forest warden’, man.” He spoke Jouvaine now, with a better accent and a crooked grin to take the bite from his words. “Say your name.”

  “I am Evthan Wolfsbane, hlensyarl. I am Geruath of Seghar’s warden here, and…” he stumbled on the required courtesy, “and in his name I greet you.”

  He might have thought the change of Aldric’s expression came from being called outlander, the word was Drusalan and insulting, but he would have been more worried had he known the true reason for that bloodless compression of lips.

  A lord’s-man, Aldric thought. Haughty, and proud of his rank. He let the subtle insult pass for the sake of peace, more concerned by the coincidence – if it was merely that – of meeting such a man as Evthan. He sensed the hunter wanted him kept distant, almost as if fearing what closer acquaintance might bring. It didn’t surprise him. He had been speaking the Empire’s language and if Evthan believed he was an Imperial, then with the Empire’s reputation the man might think him worse than any wolf.

  Even this Beast he seemed to fear so much.

  “I thank you, Evthan Wolfsbane, forest warden of the Jevaiden.” Aldric judged his bow to a nicety. “I am… Kourgath-eijo, late of Alba.”

  The deliberate, delicate pause allowed Evthan to question its purpose, and when he didn’t, Aldric settled onto the trunk of a fallen tree like the kourgath wildcat that was his crest and current name. A whistle summoned his black courser to the far end of the clearing, with the pack-pony still attached by its tether. The animals watched for a few moments and then, with nothing else to do, lost interest and began to crop the grass.

  “I’ve hunted wolves before, Evthan. Tell me about this one.” The hunter picked another deadfall to sit on, a well-judged two sword-lengths distant. Not as far away as insult, not close enough for friendship.

  “The Beast came to the Jevaiden forest at the end of winter. Four months past. He preys on more than Valden – my village – because for weeks on end we hear only the small wolves and what man cares for them? Yelpers at night, runners after sheep. They are nothing. And we forget. Not the Beast, but his speed, his silence, and above all his cunning, so much more than any other wolf. Until he returns.” He fell silent, and as a token of trust Aldric took off mask and helmet, unlaced the mail and leather coif beneath, slipped it from his head and waited for more.

  “The elders held a meeting, this new moon,” Evthan said at last. “They came from all the villages. It’s now known, since he came among us, that the Beast has taken thirty people for his food.”

  “Thirty?” Aldric echoed, not believing. Not wanting to.

  “My wife and little daughter were among them.”

  “Mollath Jowl,” the Alban breathed, his oath half a prayer. “I’m sorry.” Even as the words left h
is mouth they sounded hollow. He had sensed a tingling of tension since riding into the forest country five days before and had thought it a reaction to his own narrow escape, or maybe the proximity of the Empire. Now he knew otherwise. But how could there be so many deaths and the killer still at large, in this land famous for its huntsmen?

  The thought rose unsummoned. Might this Beast be more than it seemed? He wondered why Evthan hadn’t voiced the same suspicion, for the hunter was no fool. But he was superstitious and feared to name the Beast aloud except by its title. To speak of evil was to risk inviting it, and once invited… Aldric knew the consequences of an unwise invitation all too well. If Evthan shied away from calling this one ‘wolf’, he would never dare to mention – Aldric didn’t complete the word himself, even in the privacy of his own head – whatever other horror roamed the forest after dark.

  “So brave, this Beast of ours,” he heard the hunter say. “Women, old folk and children. Never a full-grown man to make him earn his meat.”

  “Not brave.” Aldric’s voice was flat and toneless. “Clever. Too clever.” He tightened girths, set boot to stirrup and mounted, then swung in his saddle to stare down at the Jouvaine. “I think it’s time this wo—, this Beast was dead.”

  Evthan bowed, accepting the unspoken offer. He had seen something bleak shadow the young man’s grey-green eyes, like unexpected clouds across a summer sky. They made him shudder.

  After a time Aldric glanced down again. Evthan was striding beside Lyard, matching the black Andarran charger’s haughty pace with ease, but with the look of someone in a daydream more than half a nightmare. He saw a sheen of perspiration forming on the Jouvaine’s long-jawed face, much more than justified by the mild day or this brisk walk through the woods, and was uncertain whether he should interfere or wait and hope to learn something new. When thatched roofs appeared between the leaf-thick branches he found an excuse to speak.