The Sword Saint

by C. F. Iggulden

  The thought galvanised him. It had been moments since Nancy had gone in and he’d stood watching her like a fool. He could feel exhaustion making him slow and stupid, but he had to keep moving.

  ‘Regis!’ Tellius called along the line. ‘Regis and De Guise here!’

  He heard it taken up and an answering shout in reply. Regis was coming. Tellius knew the man would not be far off.

  As he had the thought, one of the black-armoured things climbed over the wall where he stood, facing him. Nancy was too far away to call. Tellius could only stare in sick fascination as the creature looked for other threats or targets. He was just one old man and it darted its head back and forth, discounting him. There was awareness there, judgement, some sort of mind. When it caught sight of Nancy, the thing froze and began to go after her.

  Tellius hacked his sword with both hands against the creature’s neck. As he did, he felt a pain across his chest and down his left arm. Something clicked under his blade, as if the metal had cracked. He felt it run right through him.

  The beetle tried to turn back, but he had damaged something. Its head grated and dipped to one side. It lived, even so. He understood it would rush him, the eyes gleaming like black glass.

  Regis arrived at a run, the shield of his family held before him. He cracked it into the black figure and knocked it over the wall to the plain below. He turned in delight to Tellius, but his grin faded when he saw the man’s grey expression. Lord De Guise had come with Regis, carrying the family sword. The younger man was quick enough to catch Tellius as he fell and laid him down on the steps.

  Below their feet, a great crash sounded. The wall around the gate had given way and one of the massive iron plates had been smashed back, yawning open. The city was falling and on the plain the army of Féal roared victory, their voices like the sea. Tellius could not take a breath for the pain that tore into him. He was going to die without her!

  ‘Find Win, would you?’ he tried to say.

  He did not know if De Guise had heard. The young man was saying something to Regis, already looking away. They could not stay, of course, not with those creatures leaping and scuttling along the wall, killing as they went. Tellius understood. Yet the thought of dying without having the chance to see Win Sallet again was almost worse than everything else.

  ‘You, boy. Sit with Master Tellius, would you?’ Lord De Guise said.

  Tellius felt himself raised to sit and dragged against the inner lip of wall. He was grateful for it. His strength had gone and his chest seemed to have a piece of broken glass in it that tore at him with every breath. He looked over, expecting Donny. He was surprised to see the face of Henry Canis instead. The boy was weeping again. Why was he weeping?

  ‘You should not be up here,’ Tellius told him, his voice a whisper.

  The boy patted him on the shoulder, in clumsy mimicry of something he had seen.

  ‘They are fetching Lady Sallet,’ Henry Canis said.

  Tellius shook his head. He tried to push himself up, but the pain surged immediately and made him gasp. Breathing was getting harder, he realised, trying to control panic. He did not want to die choking. He’d ask Regis to kill him first, to make it quick.

  ‘I liked your father,’ Tellius whispered. ‘He was a good man.’

  He watched the boy’s eyes fill with new tears. Goddess, he was always weeping!

  As Tellius looked away, Henry Canis reached into his pocket and pulled out a flat, black stone, flecked in gold. He reached out with it and felt his arm gripped in Tellius’ right hand.

  ‘No,’ Tellius said.

  ‘I can save you,’ Henry Canis said.

  ‘It would not be me,’ Tellius replied, though he spoke through agony. His eyes were wide, with longing and desperation, but he still held the boy tight enough to hurt. Henry Canis scrambled back with a cry then, breaking his grip and running off along the wall.

  ‘Tellius?’

  He heard a voice he knew. A voice he loved. Tellius tried to turn his head as a green gleam lit that part of the wall. She had come. She had brought her two remaining Sallet Greens and she had come. He felt himself lifted away from the wall and then settled back into her arms as she knelt on the sand and dust and looked into his eyes.

  ‘Didn’t want to go … without seeing you,’ he said.

  She kissed him on the cheek then, a touch that was surprisingly warm. At her side, a little girl settled down, her eyes wide. Elias’ daughter, Tellius recalled. There were so many things he had to do, still.

  He glanced up as Arthur knelt on the muddy ground at his side then. The news was spreading and though the battle raged further along the wall, others were coming in to that spot. Tellius looked at Micahel from the Mazer school as he too knelt, and then at Donny as the lad skidded and dropped alongside them, his mouth twisting. Tellius felt his breath growing shallow and the pain in his chest only increased, never giving him rest. He saw they needed him to speak to them and so he did.

  ‘I never had … children. I was never a father, but …’

  ‘Yes you were,’ Arthur said. The others nodded. The king’s eyes shone and tears spilled down his cheek.

  ‘Please don’t go,’ Win said. ‘Please. I love you.’

  He did not want to, but he had no choice. His head sagged and life went out of him, leaving him less. Tellius felt the pressure of her final embrace and then he was gone.

  25

  Broken

  Nancy fought to control the power that boiled in her. She seemed to draw the beetle figures like iron filings, as if they remembered her from the camp, or sensed she was the greatest threat. As soon as they saw her coming, they broke off their attacks on the wall regiments and scuttled in her direction.

  She walked on dead things and bloodstained sand as she moved along the wall, trying to check over her shoulder as she went until Lords Regis and De Guise came at a run and took station there. She’d faced a swarm of the things at that moment and barely had time to shout for them to keep their distance before she’d triggered a ball of light that left stones a fading gold. Sand crunched underfoot, cracking like ice on a pond. Yet there were still hundreds of them and they were determined to bring her down. The light she brought cracked out again and again, though good men died in it. She could not save them, though she cried out for them to get off the wall. Their duty and their beautiful stubbornness held them there – and she brought death as she went.

  Every step was a struggle for control as power flowed from the Sallet Stone and out through her. She could feel it like a river of acid and, after a time, it seemed to burn her as well, so that she hurt, worse and worse. Still they came – and she made ash of dark shells.

  She held up the stone like a shield and felt her fingers digging into it, so that she gripped it like a bar of soap, leaving deep marks. Another blast of white heat tore through three of them as they flung themselves towards her. One had a grip on her neck and was bringing a sword down when she charred it. Regis was battering another pair further back, while De Guise aimed his sword at the things, spearing them in dark light.

  Nancy felt the stone fail as her grip collapsed. She was left with stiff fingers and a handful of pale dust. As she gaped, it began to blow away. No more magic roared through her in a torrent. She had used it all and her first horrified thought, before even her own safety, was how she would tell Lady Sallet.

  The remaining black creatures clustered before her, expecting death from her hand. She could only gape at them, helplessly. Slowly, they began to unbend, to stand tall. They were still suspicious, she could see it, but they would attack.

  ‘Regis?’ Nancy called without turning away. She heard running steps behind her, but she dared not take her eyes off the beetle things that could move so frighteningly quickly. It was with fear and confusion that she felt her sleeve tugged and looked down to the upturned face of a little boy.

  ‘No! Get away from here!’ Nancy said. ‘You’ll be killed.’ They would all be killed, she realised.
There were still too many of the things alive.

  ‘Here,’ the boy said. He pressed a stone into her hand, the same shape and size as the one that had turned to dust, but black and flecked with gold in its depths. ‘Use this. For my father.’

  He was pale, but determined and he did not look afraid. Henry Canis patted her on the arm then and walked back the way he had come, past the astonished figures of Regis and De Guise.

  Nancy turned to the beetles. She felt the power in the stone and let it fill her, like water into a dry well. The creatures froze for a moment, understanding that something had changed. White threads cracked out from her once again and her hair writhed a deeper red.

  ‘How dare you threaten my people,’ she said to them. She blinked at that, as she had not meant to say the words aloud. Whether they understood or not, they rushed her and she burned the air itself as her response.

  Elias stood on a street that had previously been cobbled, but had then lost those stones in great swathes, torn up all around the gate. Within a short time, the sandy base beneath had been churned into the thick muck he’d known on his first visit to the city, when Darien had been a strange and frightening place. In some ways, it still was.

  Tellius had told him to stay close, to wait until he was called. ‘There is always more than one plan,’ the man had said. Elias had seen only glimpses of him after that, running up and down the steps, marshalling the resources of the city and sending them where they were needed most. Whatever those plans had involved, he had not yet called Elias on deck.

  Elias looked up when light flashed on the crest of the wall, recognising instantly that Nancy was up there. He clenched his fists, feeling useless for the first time in years. He was no good to anyone on a defensive wall, not really. For all the extraordinary power of his knack, he could not stop the massive guns arrayed out on the plain, nor scratch the beetle creatures he’d seen in the Féal camp. It hurt to admit, but his knack was good for murder and his own protection, more than war. As Elias watched Tellius race back up the steps, he thought it seemed a selfish thing.

  The speaker for the council did not come down again and Elias waited while the gates were hammered. He saw the wall the men were building, though without Nancy there to warm the mortar, the new sections would be weak. Elias winced with the others as strikes hit the gates at the same time, in twos and threes. The men there cringed away from the impacts and some of them were flung aside with killing force when one of the gates slammed open, smashing through part of the wall they had built.

  Elias looked up as he heard the roar of the army outside. They knew what it meant. He heard, too, the tramping feet of the regiments stationed around that gate. They were coming up to defend the breach, readying weapons to repel the assault.

  He heard a low whistle behind him and turned sharply to see Bosin and Hondo, Taeshin and Deeds. Elias knew Basker as well and was somehow unsurprised to see the big tavern-keeper with a sword in one fist and a pistol in the other.

  ‘Evening, meneer,’ Basker said, cheerfully.

  Elias nodded to him.

  ‘Tellius told me to be ready for orders, but he’s been up on the wall for an age.’

  ‘Then we should go up,’ Deeds said. ‘Let the men see me, that sort of thing.’

  ‘He is right,’ Hondo said. ‘We can be useful.’

  Elias smiled in relief, pleased to have someone break through his indecision. He trotted to the stairs and the group followed him up.

  They found chaos and blood on the sand. In the east, the grey light known as the wolf dawn was showing, a smear across the horizon that seemed to make the world colder. Lady Sallet knelt near the top of the steps, with Tellius across her lap. Elias could see the man had died and his heart went out to her.

  Standing at her side was a figure Elias recognised. A pair of royal guards stood ready to defend the king of Darien, wary of armed men appearing. Elias felt his knees buckle for a step and he froze, glancing over his shoulder. Deeds had also met Arthur, when the boy had stood like a statue in the old king’s palace, with flames licking up the walls. Elias felt his eyes widen further as he recognised his daughter kneeling straight-backed alongside Lady Sallet, in skirts like a lady-in-waiting. Jenny looked up at her father in a mixture of nervousness and defiance he knew very well.

  ‘Your Majesty, Lady Sallet,’ Elias said, recovering from his surprise.

  Sounds of fighting still dragged at his attention along the wall. In the presence of the king, Elias dropped to one knee before rising. At his back, Hondo did the same. Arthur looked up at them and Elias saw bright tears in the boy’s eyes. Four years before, Arthur had spent a month of summer with him in his village, part of their family as he healed and recovered, before returning to Darien to be king. Elias put out his arms and both his daughter and Arthur came to embrace him in the same moment. He put one arm around each and held them tight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Elias said over their heads. ‘Tellius was a good man.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lady Sallet replied. ‘And he pushed himself to this. I don’t know if I can forgive him for that.’

  Elias hesitated, unsure how to go on. Hondo saw one of her servants was standing nervously nearby, without the authority or nerve to break through to his mistress. Hondo nodded to him. He understood.

  ‘Son, this is a dangerous place,’ Hondo said firmly. ‘You should take your mistress to safety.’

  ‘And my daughter,’ Elias said. ‘And the king.’

  As he spoke, Win Sallet glanced up, understanding his fear. Smoke drifted along the wall like morning mist. The battle still crashed on below, so that stones trembled and dust danced. She laid Tellius gently down and placed his hands over his chest. Without a word, she reached down and kissed him, then rose to her feet. She looked worn, her eyes red and swollen.

  ‘He is right,’ she said to her servant. ‘Take Master Tellius down. Go with him, would you, Jenny? To look after him. Fetch a couple more of the lads to help you.’

  A young man neither Hondo nor Elias knew stepped closer then.

  ‘I’d like to help carry him, my lady, if you don’t mind. My name’s Donny. He was kind to me, when I was a kid. To be honest, he saved me.’

  ‘Why thank you, Donny,’ she said, though her vision swam with tears and she could hardly see. She watched as Donny and Micahel and then Arthur took position around the man she loved still. One of the king’s guards stepped in to help, but Arthur waved him back.

  She could not bear it. Lady Sallet turned with an effort of will and looked over the army of Féal outside the walls. They were pressing closer than they had before, pushing in through the breach. Below their feet, pistol fire erupted in massed crackling, with grey smoke rising through the air. It was the smell of war and the city would bleed out those trying to bring it down.

  ‘Do you see there, Master Hondo?’ Lady Sallet said suddenly, pointing. ‘On the plain. Do you see those swirling banners, those horsemen?’

  ‘Yes, my lady. I can make them out.’

  ‘That is where he will be,’ she said. ‘The king of Féal. He waits for his men to establish a safe boundary inside the walls. Like a cancer growing inside us, Master Hondo.’

  She looked past Hondo to the others clustering in that spot. Deeds was there, with a pistol in each hand. Taeshin stood with Hondo, a dark and troubled young man who had never been at home in Darien. Win Sallet knew Patchwork as well as anyone alive. She had been the one to allow Bosin the use of it earlier that night, when he’d arrived panting at her estate house. Elias was known to her only from planning sessions with Tellius.

  ‘Tellius sent you all against the Féal camp,’ she said. ‘He sent you out to try and stop this from happening. And it failed.’

  ‘We reached the king,’ Elias said. ‘But I could not cut him down.’

  ‘He has some sort of protection,’ Hondo murmured. ‘Though Deeds shot him in the head.’

  ‘And drew blood with it,’ Deeds said. ‘If Nancy hadn’t been ruining my a
im with her fire-starting, I’d have taken him down.’

  ‘Nancy was close to you?’ Lady Sallet asked. ‘When you shot the king?’

  Her eyes widened as she understood. She looked over to Tellius as Donny and Micahel and Arthur lifted him up, gripping folds of his clothes. He was no great weight. Elias’ daughter went with them, though she let her father draw her into another embrace before she descended the stairs. Win Sallet wanted to call out and stop them, to go with him. And she would, she told herself, just as soon as she had pulled the bow back and sent these people against her enemy. There was a season for grief. There was a season also for vengeance.

  ‘Nancy draws magic in,’ she said. ‘It is her “knack”. If the king was injured while she was close, it is because she was draining his protection. Ruining it.’

  ‘Permanently?’ Deeds said. He looked over the walls to where the king of Féal sat surrounded by horsemen, his banners like fluttering shadows. The gunman’s expression was wolfish as he smiled.

  ‘If you had fired a second shot, he would be dead,’ she said, wiping the grin from his face. ‘But take her with you.’

  ‘Sorry, what? Take her with me where?’ Deeds asked.

  Hondo pointed over the wall.

  ‘Lady Sallet is sending us out, one more time,’ he said.

  ‘One last time,’ Win Sallet added.

  Deeds looked from face to face, frowning. Basker spoke before he could.

  ‘You did say you wanted to be a hero, son.’

  ‘I wanted to be a live hero, with women and free beer. Not to charge an army in the dark again. The old Goddess doesn’t like me testing my luck like this.’

  ‘The sun will be up any moment,’ Hondo said. ‘Would you rather charge an army in daylight?’

  As one, they all looked to the east. Already the light was changing.

  ‘If we’re going, it has to be right now,’ Hondo said. He could see Nancy coming closer, summoned by one of Lady Sallet’s men.

  ‘How, though?’ Deeds said, peering over the inner wall. ‘There is an army down there, all pushing to get in our gate.’