by Dave Duncan
“This is true, but I merely wondered if you could tell which are genuine, and which ought to bear my likeness instead of your late husband’s?”
Her eyes flashed with delight, and something like her old smile returned. “I certainly can not! But others more skilled than I will surely examine what we offer.”
“I have a friend who is an expert in money, ma’am. He lends it, so he must be careful that what he gets back is of true value. I asked him the same question, and he had to admit that he could not tell the real from the false.”
Her smile grew even brighter. “And anything that can fool a Jew will certainly fool a rabble of greedy Germans?”
“A reasonable hope.”
“You truly made some of these by your magic?”
“A little magic, Your Grace, and a great deal of hard work. I had to mold a freshly minted coin, and those are not easy to find. Then I had to make the necessary stamps, and melt metals in a crucible. As a child I used to watch my father at work—he was the farrier in Pipewell Abbey—so I am familiar with forges. Those six took me almost a month, so to make a large number will require a team of skilled workers. Even imitation pennies have a cost, although they come much cheaper than real ones.” Mostly they were composed of lead, which is much cheaper than silver, with a proportion of tin, and enough magic to give them the right glitter and ring, because every type of money has its own voice when dropped on a hard surface. I had rewritten several incantations to create the effect I needed.
The queen asked no more questions about sorcery. She spread her fingers to inspect her manicure. “This was prettily done,” she said in French. “Go now and find Francois and tell him I need him.”
As the Moor left, the queen gathered up the coins and turned back to me. “How many of these six are fakes?”
“Five, my lady. I marked the real one with a scratch so I could know it.”
She laughed. “You truly must be Merlin Redux! Here, take them. You have my royal permission to spend them, but you must break your stamps and make no more. I could appoint you a moneyer, Baron Durwin, and let you take over one of the king’s mints. The one in the Tower would be the most suitable, I should think. Because,” she added with a mischievous smile, “if you got caught counterfeiting, a dungeon would be ready to hand! But no, we must not do this. If it ever became known that my son had been paying off his ransom with false coin, he would be both furious and chagrined. He would have your head, and perhaps mine as well.”
I bowed. “I confess that I am relieved by your decision, Lady Queen, and my wife will be even more so. She knew what I was doing, and despised it.”
I was genuinely happy, yet I could not but think, as I took my leave, that queens never go hungry, never have to walk behind a plow in leaky shoes, never have to listen to their children crying themselves to sleep on empty stomachs. Let the people pay the ransom. He is their king, after all.
The next day I rode home, eager to tell the news to my wife. Knowing how much it would please her, I did what I had not done in nigh-on twenty years—I rode the whole way in a single day. I changed horses at every posting house, of course, so I did not have to exhaust a single mount, just myself, and it was midsummer, when the days are long. The sun was resting on the horizon as I rode up to the Oxford post. After so many hours in the saddle I would have enjoyed a walk to my door, but I had baggage, although not much. So I accepted the normal offer of an escort, and a groom rode alongside me for the short journey across town to Beaumont Palace. I dismounted at the gate and shouldered my bag. As he led my weary horse away, I felt a sudden flash of warning, like the silent flicker of summer lightning.
I paused, looking around. There were no lights in windows yet, no children still playing on the palace grass, and the streets of the town had been deserted. Most people would already be in bed, if not asleep. Nothing seemed wrong, but . . .
“Myrddin Wyllt?” I whispered. No one answered, yet I felt even more confident that danger was lurking somewhere close.
I think I mentioned earlier that I had learned long years ago never to travel without a few defensive spells, usually memorized Release spells. I had none stored in my head that day, but I did have a few parchment incantations at the bottom of my pack. I knelt, scrabbled through my laundry, and found what I wanted— the Præcipio tibi that had served me so well on my travels in Germany. I read it through quickly. Then I rose and banged on the gate with my cane. In a surprisingly short moment, a youthful but whiskery face appeared in the grill. It belonged to no one I recognized, so I leaned close and softly spoke the charm to enslave him. His eyes iced over.
“Whose man are you?” I asked.
“Lord John’s, master.”
“Tell me where Lord John is right now.”
“I don’t know, master. The captain didn’t tell me.”
“Tell me what the captain did tell you.”
“He told me to mind the gate, and be sure to admit an old man with blond hair and a limp, wearing a faded blue jerkin, who would be arriving shortly.”
I had already assumed that Bran of Tara must have been spying on me, to have foreseen my all-day trek and late arrival. That mention of my blue jacket confirmed it.
“Tell me where are the real guards are.”
“In the guardhouse, master. Asleep, but not harmed.”
So I had Bran himself to deal with here, plus an unknown number of others.
“And who is in charge?”
“Lord John, master.”
“Let me in!”
I told him to leave the gate open and precede me to the guard room, a few paces away, where two men I did know lay prone and unconscious. I told my temporary slave, “Now lie down beside them and sleep until dawn.”
I might have tried to waken the two genuine guards, but that would take time I did not believe I had, and might not succeed anyway, because I knew my opponent was a very powerful sorcerer. The man from Tara and the Plantagenet monster were in control of my house, my servants, and worst of all, my wife. Leaving the sleepers in peace, I rummaged in my pack once more, until I found a parchment scroll bearing a spell I had never used. The glosses on the original had warned that it was hugely dangerous, even to read aloud. I had chanted it once, and the acceptance alone had scared me so much that I had never spoken the release, letting the power die away over the next couple of days. It was listed in my files simply as the Achilles.
Peering in the fading light, I read it over in a soft whisper, and was appalled again at the violence the words threatened, but I felt no acceptance. I took some calming breaths and tried again. This time acceptance came in a rush, speeding my heart, banishing the fatigue of my long day’s ride, and making my whole body quiver with a lust for battle. I sent a quick prayer to Heaven that I would not need to invoke this monstrous incantation.
I hobbled swiftly through the dusk to my front door, which was unlocked, contrary to all my standing orders. Fearlessly I went in, dropping my pack and shouting as one does on returning home after an absence. Nobody answered, but there was light in my workroom, so I headed that way. The door stood open; in I went.
Only three candles lit the long chamber. The first thing I saw was Lovise in the center, gagged and bound into a chair with ropes like those we used in our stable. Her gown had been ripped open to expose her breasts. Her eyes were wide with horror at the sight of me walking straight into the trap. Behind her stood Lord John, clutching a gleaming knife long enough to carve meat off a roasted ox.
A few feet to their left, my right, was the portly shape of Sage Bran, leering at me through his forked beard. I did not doubt that he had foreseen my arrival and had some deadly spells ready to cast. The rest of the big room was crowded by seven or eight men-at-arms holding naked blades—swords or pikes—and two more who were aiming spanned crossbows in my direction. I barely noticed any of them. They would do nothing until the order was given. John and Bran were the danger.
“Welcome home, Baron Durwin,” the prince s
aid, unable to resist a slight sneer.
“Get out of my house and take your dogs with you.”
“Watch your tongue, Saxon. First, you will give me the stamps you used to make those coins you tried to bribe my mother with yesterday.”
“I threw them in the Thames. Go and look for them yourself.”
John pouted. Without taking his eyes off me, he said something in a language I did not know. Bran replied briefly, but he also shook his head, so he had probably been asked if I were lying.
“Foolish of you,” John said. “You will have to make replacements for me. You clearly do not understand the gravity of your situation, Durwin. In the short term, I have your wife here, at my mercy, such as it is. She’s too old for my taste, but my gallant lads, here, would enjoy sharing her. In the longer term, I have Father Ferdinand. You do remember Father Ferdinand? A very large man—wasted as a priest, ought to be a woodcutter or a blacksmith. He has already described for us, in writing, the elderly blond minstrel with the crippled right leg who sold King Richard to the duke.”
I felt a chill and, at the same time, a rush of fury that almost overcame my grip on the incantation I was holding in. Obviously, Bran of Tara had been spying on me for a long time. I ought to feel flattered, but for the first time in my life I was seeking violence—deadly, personal violence. I seethed with it.
“If Father Ferdinand’s affidavit is not enough,” Lord John continued happily, “then his bishop and Duke Leopold have given permission for him to travel to England to testify at your treason trial. He will be accompanied by some other witnesses. You made a fool of the duke, and Leopold is a very touchy man. Now do you understand your problem, Durwin?
Had his knife been under my throat instead of my wife’s he couldn’t have frightened me by that time. I was infused with the soul of Achilles, and Achilles never knew what fear was.
Biting my words, I said, “I understand more than you do, Lackland. I order you to leave my house at once and take all your flunkies with you.”
John considered my defiance for a moment, then asked Bran another question. Again the answer seemed to be negative.
“First,” the prince continued, “I want the password to release those.” With a nod of his head he indicated the wall of scrolls where I stored my collection of incantations.
“You shan’t have it.”
“I will count to three and then cut off one of your wife’s nipples. If you still refuse—”
This had gone far enough. I could no longer resist the raging of the Release spell still throbbing in my head. I spoke the trigger words, Magna qualis Achilli, and at once it made me, as directed, more terrible than Achilles.
If you are reading this, I assume that you are familiar with the hero of Homer’s Iliad, the greatest of all war stories, so you are already aware that “Fast-footed” Achilles was not only the swiftest warrior in the Achaian army, but also the greatest of all human killing machines, unmatched and utterly ruthless. I spun around and went for the nearest of the men-at-arms, a green youngster whose chain mail hauberk looked too big for him; he also held his pike as if he’d never touched it before. That was not what made him my first victim, though, but the fact that he was standing in front of the wall of scrolls, so when the ferrule of my cane stabbed him in the eye, he fell back against it.
The resulting flash of lightning and clap of thunder almost drowned out his scream. He dropped the pike, which I caught before it hit the floor, discarding my cane. At a length of eight feet, it was clumsy for indoor fighting, but it had both a stabbing blade and an ax. In two unequal steps I reached Bran of Tara, who was not wearing armor. I cut his throat with a single slash. Sharp cracks indicated that the two crossbows had loosed, but both quarrels missed me by a yard. The next to die was the other pikeman, who hadn’t even started to react.
The two crossbowmen to my left had barely begun to reload, so I rushed them while they still had their mouths wide open, which made good targets for my stabbing blade. That left the swordsmen, and by then they had awakened to their peril. They all tried to flee. I got two of them before they reached the doorway and the rest jammed in it. The last one standing did turn and try to parry, but he was far too slow, and my weapon had much greater reach than his. I stabbed him right through his chain mail, which broke the point of my blade, but by then I had no more need of it. This slaughter could hardly be described as a battle. Achilles had merely executed a dozen or so sluggards. I ended where I had begun, with the pikeman who had been felled by the wards on my library. He was starting to sit up, so I cut his throat also.
To Lord John, the only survivor, my move along the big room must have seemed little more than a blur. I slowed down to human speed and came at him with my pike leveled.
“Cut off a nipple, would you?” I roared. “Guess what I am about to cut off?”
He screamed, slashed Lovise’s left breast, and fled, howling in terror at the miraculous change in fortune and leaping over corpses, some of them still twitching.
I let him go because attending to my wife was far more urgent than trying to curb a cur like John. I had never intended anything else, because nothing would save me if I were convicted of injuring the king’s brother. After half a year in the Holy Land, I knew the enchantments for wounds by heart. The spiteful gash was not deep, so I easily closed it and stopped the bleeding. Then I took up Lord John’s knife and cut her bonds. I pressed down on her shoulder when she tried to rise.
“Sit a moment,” I said. “Take some deep breaths. There may be a slight scar, I’m afraid.”
“But you will be the only one who will ever see it.”
I was reassured that her ordeal had not driven her out of her wits. My gentle wife was as tough as any veteran campaigner, a descendant of Danish raiders. “I hadn’t expected such a welcome.”
She leaned against me. “I wish you hadn’t had to kill them all, but I know you had no choice. I am enormously proud of you, dear Durwin, my most perfect knight.”
“I am just as proud of you. Most women would still be screaming their heads off.”
“I just have to catch my breath first.”
Then she did rise, and we embraced. I led her off to bed, for she had lost blood and endured a traumatic experience. I cast a gentle relaxation spell on her, one I often used to help patients sleep.
Then I went downstairs to see what other trouble I had. My alertness and general well-being surprised me, for marginal notes on the Magna qualis Achilli scroll warned that it was always followed by a major reaction. I found our servants on the dining room floor in the same sort of induced coma as the guards at the gate, so I left them to sleep it off. I still had to decide what to do with the bodies in my workroom, and the ghastly pools of congealing blood. Strangely, I felt no guilt and no regrets. That was Achilles’ doing.
The prudent Lord John, I assumed, would certainly have kept a saddled horse handy, so he was doubtless fleeing away under the stars, faster than a terrified owl. There was no moonlight, so I could only hope that he would fall off and break his neck. I wasn’t about to twist his luck—not yet, anyway, but clearly our feud was not over.
Killing people was against the law, usually, and major crimes were the business of the sheriff. I knew that Baron William Brewer, then high sheriff of Oxfordshire, was currently on his way to Germany to help negotiate the king’s ransom and release, but he would have left someone to look after his larceny business while he was away, so I strolled over to Beaumont Palace itself, which was where he was most often to be found. A few windows were lighted and the lantern by the door was lit, so I applied the knocker with some vigor.
The shutter opened and a frown appeared behind the grille. “Yes?”
“Fine evening. I am Baron Durwin.”
“Oh! What can I do for you, my lord?”
I held up a bloody hand. “I’ve just killed some men, and I’d like the bodies removed, please.”
That brought me to the attention of the deputy sheriff, Sir Richa
rd Brewer, son of the high sheriff, a fat-faced youngster with a straggly mustache and an air of horrified desperation at having to deal with a peer of the realm come to confess to a major crime. Worst of all, I even seemed to be sober, which precluded the most obvious excuse. He wasn’t stupid, though, and as soon as he recovered from his initial disbelief, he acted as reasonably as possible under the circumstances.
He gathered some men with lanterns and a cart. I noticed a blanket tossed into the cart and guessed that it probably concealed chains, in case I turned violent. I led him and his helpers to the main gate to see the two supposed guards fast asleep, and the snoring stranger, whom I identified as the only one of the gang I had spared. I insisted that he could be safely left there in the meantime, and he would probably turn out to know nothing.
Then we went to my house. Even I was appalled when the lanterns revealed the abattoir that I had made of my workroom, with a dozen corpses lying in a congealing lake. I warned everyone not to touch the warded wall of scrolls. Of course Brewer was strongly disinclined to credit my story.
“You expect me to believe that you slew all these men singlehanded?”
I was old, and a cripple.
“I expect you to believe that I am the king’s enchanter. The spell is mightier than the sword.”
He again surveyed the carnage. “Who’s the unarmored one?”
“Bran of Tara. He was a sorcerer in the service of the man who initiated all this horror, the man who led it.”
Young Brewer thought for a moment, detecting more trouble in the guarded way I had spoken. “So who was this leader?”
“The one who wounded my wife? He escaped, unfortunately.”
“His name, my lord?”
“You are happier not knowing his name, son. Let’s just say that in the poor light I did not recognize him, but don’t ask me to repeat that under oath.”
At that point young Brewer decided that he had both a duty and the authority to perform it. He flared. “I ask you again— who led these men when they invaded your house? I am aware that you both are a nobleman and a royal confidant, my lord, but you are not above the law!”
