The Last Benediction in Steel

by Wright, Kevin

  “Hold!” I roared.

  The scrum as a whole turned at my approach. Twenty-five-some-odd men.

  Grinning slick through shiver, Von Madbury drew a dagger from behind his back. “Willing to bargain now, eh?”

  “No, I just came out to cool off.” I tugged open my collar and fanned myself. “Too damned hot in there.”

  The look on their collective faces? Almost worth it. Squire Morley hammered Stephan again and Brother Miles and Harwin let go of him, crumpling forward to the frozen ground.

  I tensed but didn’t move. “You ever get sick of playing the damsel in distress?”

  Stephan muttered something but the puke and loose teeth made it tough to discern.

  Von Madbury came up behind him, yanked his head back by a fistful of hair and pressed a dagger to his throat. “Don’t you fucking say nothing.”

  “That’s a double negative,” I said.

  “What?”

  Bile ran down Stephan’s neck as von Madbury’s dagger shivered raw at his naked throat. But Stephan blinked. Once.

  “L-let us i-in,” von Madbury spat, drool coursing down his blue lips.

  I ignored him. “Did you see the fucking tent city?” I pointed off toward its ruins. “What these blackguards did?”

  Another blink. Yes.

  “I’m talking at you!” von Madbury screamed. Brother Miles and Sir Roderick and the others started forward, spanning out like the horns of a bull. I took a step back. Then another. What time and space it bought me was fair on nil.

  “And you still fucking came?” I screamed.

  Another blink. Yes.

  “Shut your bloody mouth!” von Madbury screamed.

  King Eventine raised his voice but the Queen drowned him out, “Seize him!” as she scrabbled like a madwoman from the chapel.

  “Are you fucking daft?” I yelled above the gale, taking another step back, raising Yolanda to the high guard. Poised whistling in the wind, I felt it gripping her edge, tugging, pulling, turning her blade ever just so. Brandished on high, gleaming in the storm, Yolanda halted them all a pace. They’d seen me down Gustav. Were calculating their blackguard-math. Twenty-five to one was a massacre five times out of four. But here? Now? Them wooden-stiff with cold and me still spry? Holding the high ground? And two crossbows covering my flanks?

  Stephan blinked twice. No.

  “Shit.” Stephan wasn’t being a bloody idiot. He was doing what he always did, which was worse. He was being a bloody martyr.

  “Shut your yap!” von Madbury screamed.

  “Is he dead?” I fixed Stephan an eye.

  A reluctant pause, followed by two more blinks. No.

  “Shit.”

  “I’ll do it!” von Madbury foamed at the mouth.

  “Let him go.” Turning on heel, I headed back toward the Schloss. “He said what he needed.”

  “I said ‘I’ll slit his throat!’” von Madbury stamped his foot.

  “I heard you,” I snarled over my shoulder. “So get to it. Cause he ain’t worth shit in a fight. And I’m hoping you and yours might be.”

  Von Madbury straightened, his arms going slack, dagger hanging.

  “We’ll call an accord until the siege is through,” I said. “Your King’ll need you manning the walls.”

  “Siege…? Huh? What?” von Madbury said. “Us?”

  “You?” I spat. “Jesus Christ. No.” I pointed south toward the leper-house. “The bloody Nazarene. He’s coming, and his lunatic horde’s coming with him.”

  …along with any unnecessary weight we had cast aside weeks past, we bore on through the endless forest, bellies rumbling, belts tightened by degree, daily, hourly…

  —War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg

  Chapter 42.

  OUTSIDE THE GATES of the Schloss von Haesken, the mob chanted. Like they did. Pounding the walls. The gates. The ground. Hurling curses. Rocks. Fistfuls of garbage. As mobs do. Whether they lug the garbage specifically for said purpose or scrounge for it along the way’s always been a mystery to me.

  Stephan and I stood atop the ramparts at the gates.

  “Watch it,” Stephan grabbed my collar and yanked me aside.

  “Whoa—”

  A nail-ridden board flipped end over end past my head. It landed in the yard, sticking upright in the mud, crooked as a pauper’s tombstone.

  Across the yard, beyond the breaking-wheel, the once and future king and procession in tow entered the chapel. It was a small procession, the casket leading, borne by King Eventine, Father Gregorius, and Sir Alaric, each one staggering along under its noble load. Queen Elona came next, looking austere and regal as she strode through the churned mud, clutching her skirts up, past a skewered corpse propped against a fence. Prince Palatine labored alongside, using his cane to lever his clubbed foot sucking through the muck.

  Stephan crossed himself, muttered a prayer, staring off after the procession. “May God rest his soul.”

  “How long you think it’ll take? Assuming the mob doesn’t storm in and slaughter everyone during intermission.” I drew the string back on my crossbow. “They have intermissions at funerals?”

  “Only for kings,” Stephan said.

  Across the yard, Saint Gummarus’s dullard expression, patron saint of hoary old woodcutters, stared back, frozen in stained glass. “Jesus.”

  “What?” Stephan asked.

  “Even their saints are second rate.” Scowling, I slid a bolt into the groove. “He looks like a cross between a shitty hermit and inbred groundhog. Have you ever even heard of Saint Gummarus?”

  “Well, no, but,” Stephan glanced askance as I finished loading, “is that necessary?”

  “Mocking made-up saints?” I turned. “Absolutely.”

  Stephan winced as something heavy struck the wall, shivering its timbers. “I meant the crossbow.”

  I shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.” I thumped the parapet with a fist. “These walls are shit.”

  “And the crossbow makes you feel safe?”

  “No,” I patted the stock, seeing in my mind’s eye a dark shape lumber through yellow smoke, “I just ain’t going alone.”

  Before the chapel’s door shut, I made out Father Gregorius’s voice droning on from within, unintelligible gibberish distorted by wind and distance.

  I glanced back out as a rock sailed past. “Fucker.” Teeth gritted, I gripped my crossbow and brought it to bear, drawing a bead on the blackguard who threw it. A skinny, wasted bastard, with more space than teeth in his scowl, but he had an arm.

  “Good thing they haven’t brought anything more robust,” Stephan breathed.

  “Yeah.” My heart beat through my hands, pumping my crossbow up and down, point bouncing, ever so slightly. “Like ladders.”

  Thing about mobs. They’re generally unprepared at first. Get worked up and move and grow like some raucous beast in snorting heat. All balls and no brain. Like these fellas. I recognized a few faces amongst the press, a tall lumber-jack, a woman from the old keep, the girl von Madbury had been leering after. Lianna. Figured her father was down there, too, somewhere, if he wasn’t behind, lying face down, sucking in the muck.

  “Let them blow off some steam,” Stephan said. “Then they’ll leave.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Maybe…”

  Stephan said nothing. He just nodded.

  I followed suit, kept my yap shut and crossbow leashed.

  Dealing with mobs is tricky business. If they’re set on violence, the only thing you can do is get the hell out of the way. Or join them. But if they’re teetering, unsure, on the fence, just throwing rocks and jibes, let them. Let them do whatever the hell they want shy of clambering over the walls.

  I glanced down the eastern section of wall. Harwin and Brother Miles manned it along with a small contingent of new troops. Von Madbury and the rest of his ilk, both new and old, held the west and north. Thankfully — for them — the mob only had eyes for the gates.

  The
funerary dirge trickling out from the chapel was half-assed at best, but musicians were probably fair scarce at present. Someone was scratching at a lyre with what sounded like a rusted fork. Palatine’s voice sounded strong, though. Eventine’s? Not so much.

  “Open the gates!” someone bellowed below.

  “Go home!” I hollered back.

  “We ain’t got no homes!”

  “There’s plenty of vacant ones!” I barked. “So pick one!”

  “Please, good folk!” Hand and hook raised, Stephan stepped out from behind the crenel. “I beg of you, disperse, for your own good.”

  “Watch it—”

  A rock thudded into Stephan’s side, folding him in half.

  “Jesus.” I dragged him back behind the blessed crenel where he crumpled, tongue lolling as he puked into the courtyard.

  “Anything broken?” I patted his back. “Besides your dignity?”

  Stephan gasped, eyes bulging, drooling, and croaked, “Don’t… Think… So…”

  “Good.” I turned back then froze.

  The mob’d gone silent.

  I peeked round the crenel.

  A slit unraveled through the mob. Just a nick at first, it slopped open til the mob fissured in twain. A hooded bloke stood at the far end. A big bloke.

  My legs wobbled. I grasped the wall and nearly joined Stephan in feeding the grass.

  Towering over the crowd, the Nazarene shambled forth, ambling onerously, like every inch of him was raw nerve.

  “Krait…” The Nazarene’s voice was a scratched rasp from a hollow cask.

  I clutched the wall. Swallowed. Speechless. Legless. Useless.

  “What is it?” Stephan pawed at my leg.

  Down the wall, Brother Miles and Harwin gawked over, frozen.

  “Open the gates, brother!” The Nazarene’s voice cut through me. “We bear corpses of the fallen. Those consumed by the conflagration. The assassination. All on the word of your King.”

  Behind him, a procession of scourgers wormed their way through the parted halves of mob, bearing corpses slung between them. The pallbearers strode to the gates pair-by-pair and laid them down, one-by-one, side-by-side. There were men. There were women. There were children.

  “I wish to speak to the King,” the Nazarene bellowed.

  “King’s busy,” I bellowed back.

  “And what is more important to a king than learning the heart and will of his people?”

  “He’s dead.”

  The Nazarene halted at that. “The new King, then.”

  “He’s burying his father.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Hoping to keep it to one funeral today.”

  The Nazarene waved an ostentatious paw over the dead. “These souls weigh upon his.”

  I lifted my crossbow, aiming it dead-center at the Nazarene’s chest. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t shy. I didn’t expect him to. What’s a stick to the chest to the man whose skull’s been bashed by an axe?

  “There shall be more, brother,” the Nazarene bellowed. “An ancient evil festers within this land.”

  “And I’m looking right at it,” I said down the length of the crossbow.

  “An evil with a hunger for flesh, for blood, for soul. You asked a question before. Would you not hear my answer?”

  I fought dry-mouth to swallow. “Get the hell out of here, whatever you are.”

  “Aye, brother, that we shall, as a show of faith to your new king.” The Nazarene offered an awkward nod. For a second, I thought his head might fall off. Plop in the mud. But I wasn’t so lucky. “That he might take a stance more germane to the survival of his folk. But we shall send a message to remind him.” He glared up, and my bowels lurched. “A message slathered in ash and flame through the night. To remind him. To remind them all. And then shall we return. Tell him he had best get his house in order ere we do.”

  …write what might be these last pages of this journal, these last pages of my story, of my life, in my own life’s blood.

  —War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg

  Chapter 43.

  THE CHAPEL of Saint Gummarus lay barren, empty, cold. The Queen-Mother Elona sniffed and dabbed her nose with a handkerchief as she glanced up from prayer. Darkness encroached from on all quarters, held at bay by the dying light of a single candle set atop King Eckhardt’s casket, its flame upright and still as a corpse soldier at attention. The Queen-Mother took a surreptitious nip from a flask. “Shouldn’t you be guarding the gate?”

  “They’re gone,” I said, “for now.”

  “And what is it you want?” She shifted her rosary a bead.

  “To pay my respects.” I raised my hands. “Won’t take long.” It wasn’t a lie.

  “And what do you care?”

  “I could ask you the same.” I laid a hand on the casket, bowed my head, mumbled some hollow verse. “But the truth?” I looked up. “I don’t. Not even a little. I just want to get out of this God-forsaken town in one piece.”

  “I could say the same.”

  “Then why not leave?”

  “Everything I have. Everything I know is here. My sons. My…” She still didn’t turn from her penitent prayers. “Why is it you insist on insinuating yourself in our troubles? First, you barge in with your problems and dump them upon our very doorstep. Then you incite a war with those … those savages.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” I rapped my knuckles on the pew. “I’m the source of all your troubles.”

  “You murdered Sir Gustav. The very cream of our knighthood.”

  “That’s one hell of an indictment against the rest.”

  “They listened to him. They followed him. He acted as some counterbalance against…” The Queen-Mother turned and rose, dressed in mourning-black. “And now you’re here for what? And don’t tell me again it’s to pay last respects.”

  “I promised your sons I’d take a look into the matter.” I stared into her eyes. “I’m looking now.”

  “I…” the Queen-Mother rose, “I’ve never swung a sword in my life.”

  “Didn’t think you did. And it wasn’t a swing. It was a stab. And that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Then…” The color drained from her face. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  I shook my head. “Please.”

  “And what conclusions have you drawn?”

  “Just one. And you know what it is.”

  The Queen-Mother drew herself up. “Just who do you think you are?”

  “No one special, I’ll grant you, but I’m all you’ve got.”

  “You? No, I think not. And on the contrary, von Madbury—”

  “Is only proficient at sowing discord to his own advantage,” I finished for her. “And Brother Miles can only do what others order him to. And your sons? The one that should be ruling’s been crippled by fate. And the one that is? Crippled by something else. And all the others?” I shook my head. “Axes, spears, and swords. Little else.”

  “My father—”

  “Is a good man, but like you said, he’s broken,” I said. “You could do something to mend it, yeah? Go talk to him about whatever it is split a void between you two. But then, I suppose he could get off his arse, too. Well, not currently, but like I said, I’m standing here cause I promised your sons I’d help. And I’m offering my help to you, too.”

  “Well, how very gallant of you,” she sneered.

  “Even a stopped clock, Elona…”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Was a time not long ago you wanted me to.”

  “Oh?” She adjusted her dress. “You bought that? You believed me?” She shook her head slowly. “Your trouble is you all think you’re something more. And you’re not.” Prim and proper, she rose from her cushion, brushing the lace veil from her face, and strode toward me down the aisle. I enjoyed her walk. Her lips pursed, hips swaying, murder blazing plain and naked her eyes. “And just who do you think holds power here?”

  “You’re not queen anymore.�
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  “And you’re but a bloody hedge knight.” She drew herself up. “And a crown is a piece of metal. It’s the person beneath who holds sway. And do you think I hold no sway over my son?”

  “I’d hazard you do, but he seems bent on finding the killer.” I offered my best haughty smirk. Truth was, though, she was right. King Eventine was nigh on as spineless as his father, and I could easily see her sticking her hand slick with crimson, puppet-wise up through his back, pulling sinew like strings, forcing his every motion. “At any cost. His words, not mine. Can you guess where all eyes are pointed?”

  “You’re a bastard.”

  “And then some,” I laughed. “But please, don’t high-horse me. If I’m wallowing in shit, you’re knee-deep right alongside me.”

  Her eyes quivered.

  “You hated your husband,” I said. “That scene at dinner? Bear-baiting him? In front of his entire court?”

  “Bear-baiting?” she scoffed. “No. I think not.”

  “Squirrel then,” I conceded, “but he wouldn’t take the bait.”

  “Once again,” she bared her teeth, “you don’t know what you saw.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “You should leave.”

  “Maybe he finally grew the stones to confront you about von Madbury?” I shook my head. “Gave you an ultimatum? Told you to stop or … I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “What is it you want?” She swallowed.

  “I want to know what happened. I want information. Specifics. Coin of the realm to lord over your son’s head til I get me and mine free and clear.”

  “You want me to confess? Well, I confess. I didn’t love him. How could I? How could anyone? And yes, I loathed him. But that hardly set me apart. My father is the only one who held him in any esteem, and then only because he thinks duty, and honor and oaths still mean something.”

  “The fool,” I quipped.

  “Precisely.” She spat back. “Any man living by such archaic standards can only be considered such. Anywhere else and he’d have been a hedge knight. A nothing. A nobody. Just like you.”