Fortune's Fools

by Paul Tomlinson

  Before she was aware what was happening, Edison had lifted her from her feet and heaved her over the harbour wall and dropped her into the cold dark water.

  She came to the surface gasping and spitting.

  “If you would allow yourself to notice the fact, I spoke of this matter only because I fear for your safety when you carry this explosive cargo,” Edison shouted down at her, his face flushed, angry. “It matters to me that you put your life at risk,” he said. “Or I thought it did. I was wrong. Sail your little boat out to sea with its hold full of gunpowder, I will not worry on it. Take a lighted taper and blow yourself to hell, I do not care! But do not expect the fish to feed on your corpse: they will find you too bitter!” He turned and stalked away.

  “Edison!” Meg called after him. “Edric!” Her curses echoed around the dark harbour as she swam towards the steps and heaved herself up out of the water.

  Chapter Five

  Anton paced the length of his room and back, gnawing at a fingernail. As the sun had gone down he had grown more and more anxious. It wasn’t too late for him to walk away and forget this ridiculous plan he’d hatched with the old thief. Over a few drinks, the whole thing had seemed entirely plausible, but he was beginning to suspect this might have been due to the wine.

  Aside from the idea of sneaking into a heavily guarded castle being both dangerous and stupid, there was the fact that he could not trust Fergus Copthorne. If he was who claimed, the old man was a celebrated swindler and thief. There was every chance Copthorne would try and make off with both the Skullsplitter and the reward paid for its theft, leaving Anton to take the blame for their disappearance. Knowing this, he felt he ought to plan accordingly.

  Walking away did not appeal to him. If Copthorne really was the Scarlet Hood, Anton now had a unique opportunity – a chance to match wits with the legendary outlaw and double-cross him. This appealed to him almost as much as the reward for the theft of the axe. Almost.

  “I might possibly be paid twice for this Skullsplitter,” he mused. “Once by the man who asks me to steal it, and again by the man offering a reward for its return.”

  Returning to the castle with the axe he had already handed over to Copthorne should not prove too much of a challenge: Anton would simply steal it back from the old man.

  Anton lay Varian’s scarlet uniform tunic out on the bed and tried to stretch some of the creases out of it. He had taken it from his friend’s room this afternoon. If it had been a matter of Anton seeking out the young guardsman’s company with the sole purpose of stealing his uniform, Anton might have abandoned the whole idea. Or so he wanted to believe. But Varian had sought him out, and practically dragged Anton back to the Guard House. The decision had been made for him. And having borrowed the tunic, he would later need to return it, which would require another assignation with the blond guardsman, and that was reward in itself. Fortune really did seem to be favouring him. He folded the tunic, which bore obvious signs of having been worn. The smell of it meant no one would mistake it for freshly laundered; but there was a familiarity about the scent he found reassuring. He placed the folded garment in a small sack: he could not be seen wearing it until he was well clear of the inn where he was already known.

  It was a little short of midnight when Anton set out with the sack slung over his shoulder. The moon was again bright in the sky, providing enough light to see by, and shadows deep enough to hide in. He glanced about, wondering if Copthorne was watching him. He stopped in a dark alleyway a few streets away from the castle and pulled the red Guardsman’s tunic over his own dark clothes, adjusting a wide black belt around his waist and smoothing out the uniform as best he could. Hopefully in the dim light no one would notice his dishevelled appearance.

  Anton passed through one of the lesser gates in the curtain wall, normally used to accept delivery of produce into the kitchen. The key he used to unlock the gate had been borrowed from the sleeping head cook earlier.

  Varian knew nothing of Anton’s plans. He would be on duty in another part of the castle well away from the great hall, and away from suspicion. His friendship with the guardsman would never be revealed, even if Anton were to be captured.

  The kitchens were manned at this late hour only by the local youths who were employed to wash the pans and pots, and clean the kitchen now that the evening meal was finished. The air was still hot and humid from the cooking fires that had been used to heat the water for cleaning. None of the kitchen staff paid any heed to the uniformed guard passing through: the whole castle was crawling with such men at this time of night as they patrolled the castle and made sure it was secure for the night.

  Anton had timed his arrival so the great hall would be empty, the tables cleaned and new rushes spread on the floor. Lord Eòghan and whatever guests he might be entertaining would have retired to one of the more intimate reception rooms to tap a cask of beer or wine. The doors to the hall were locked when he got there, which he took to be a good sign.

  “You there, what are you doing?” A voice behind him.

  Anton turned and found himself facing a guardsman whose scarlet tunic was embroidered with the crest of the Eòghan family: obviously a more senior officer. Anton stood smartly to attention. “Checking the door was locked, sir.”

  “Hurry up about it, that should have been done half an hour since. Get on with it!”

  “Yessir!” Anton wasn’t sure whether he was meant to bow, salute, or curtsey, so he turned quickly and rattled the door handles loudly. “All secure, sir,” he said without turning, hoping the man would be satisfied and go on his way.

  “Of course it is, I locked it myself. Now come with me, I want you to help me move a table in his Lordship’s office. They brought in the new one this morning, and the imbeciles placed it two feet shy of where I asked them to position it. Specific instructions, I left them… should have supervised it myself! Come along.”

  Anton realised that the coat of arms on the man’s breast meant he was part of Lord Eòghan’s household staff – a glorified housekeeper. But the man obviously outranked him all the same. He had no choice but to follow the man up onto the next floor, and spend the best part of half-an-hour shifting the heavy oak table this way and that until it was precisely as the housekeeper wanted it.

  “Don’t just stand there, boy, get off about your duties!”

  Finally dismissed, Anton left the man polishing the top of the table, and tutting to himself.

  The Skullsplitter was a weapon from an earlier age, an age when dragons terrorised mountain villages, and when a weapon-smith could call on the services of a mage to imbue a sword or axe with powerful magic to protect its bearer in battle. Or so legends told. Such weapons were rare and expensive items, even then, available only to kings and lords, and heroes well-respected – and rewarded – by their communities.

  Such a man was Fedor the Fearless, who was said to have been the protector of the town of Sangreston in the days long before the King’s Guard were stationed there, and when the hilltop castle was timber not stone. In those far-off days, the hills above the town and the forest around it were home to roving bands of outlaws who would send raiding parties into Sangreston, to carry off food, clothing, ale, and women. Fedor was the only man who stood against these ravaging hordes, if his chroniclers were to be believed. A giant of a man with a great blond beard and a stride twice that of any local man’s. Where he came from the stories did not tell, but they painted a picture of him standing atop a heap of bloodied corpses, his axe and his face running with the brigands’ blood.

  The axe was reputed to have been forged in a far-away land across the boiling sea, and it was inscribed with symbols from a language long-dead. The weapon had been passed down through the hands of many heroes, whose individual exploits had passed into legend told by father to son. But no matter what the period or the story told, always the axe was described as having magical properties: it would protect the bearer against any assailant, allowing its owner to sense any attack f
rom behind without turning, and imbuing his skin with such resilience that arrows and swords could not penetrate it.

  Fedor himself was said to have lived into old age and to have spawned a vast family of robust children and grandchildren. Accounts vary as to his longevity, anything from ninety years to a hundred and twenty-one, but upon his death he was interred in a large barrow in the hills above the town, the mound still visible, and of a size befitting his heroic status.

  Ask any of the elders of Sangreston, particularly those who claimed to be descendants of Fedor or his people, and they would tell you the Skullsplitter had been passed down through the generations, passing from the hand of Fedor to his successor, and so on to each new protector of the town.

  Lord Eòghan was the current holder of the axe, a symbol of office now, displayed on the wall in the great hall of the castle and wielded only on ceremonial occasions. But if anyone cared to check back through the written chronicles, they would learn that Lord Eòghan’s great, great grandfather had claimed the axe as his own on a battlefield some twenty miles to the west of Sangreston, and that he had prised it from the cold fingers of a headless corpse.

  The legendary powers of the Skullsplitter, then, were of dubious provenance.

  Anton Leyander’s interest was in another property of the axe altogether: its selling price.

  Having made his way back down to the doors of the main hall, Anton drew two small metal tools from his tunic, and set about opening the lock. Being an internal door, the lock mechanism was old and fairly simple in design. All of the locks in the castle were well maintained and oiled regularly, a fact that worked in a thief’s favour. This one opened with only the gentlest snick after a couple of minutes, and he was inside. Anton took a moment to relock the door behind him, just in case another young guardsman came along to check that the hall was secure.

  There were no candles lit in the great hall, and fire in the massive hearth had died to a mound of glowing embers. What light there was came in through a row of small windows that ran the length of the east wall, just under the vaulted ceiling. The soft moonlight gave everything a bluish tinge.

  Anton’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and he could make out the main features of the long, wide hall. The ceiling was high, and tapestries covered most of the available wall space, except for the far wall opposite the entrance. In front of this a dais was raised about a foot and a half, and held the table where Lord Eòghan and his most honoured guests would be seated. A minstrels’ gallery was above. Two huge tables ran the length of the wall on the left and right, where lesser guests would be seated. The whitewashed wall behind the dais held a single door, through which his lordship might enter and exit. Fixed to the wall above and behind Eòghan’s seat was a brightly painted family crest on a metal shield which must have been wrought for a man nine feet in height, or perhaps it was only for decorative purposes. Or perhaps the shield had been made in proportion with the axe, the Skullsplitter, which was usually fixed to the wall directly above the shield.

  Usually, but not tonight: the axe had been removed.

  Had another thief been here before him? The sheer coincidence of the timing, not to mention the knowledge and skills required, made this unlikely. Perhaps it had been removed for cleaning. Or perhaps it had simply fallen from its mount? This seemed equally unlikely, but in a desperate attempt to prove to himself that his efforts had not been for nothing, Anton walked to the end of the hall and looked behind the dais. And made a grisly discovery.

  A man lay in the gap between the dais and the white wall. He was almost invisible in the shadows, but there was no mistaking the fact that the ceremonial axe was lodged in his skull. It did not seem likely that he had been standing under it when it fell from the wall.

  Anton straightened and looked around the hall, fearing that the murderer might still be in the room, but nothing stirred. A shiver ran the length of his spine and he tried to shrug off the feeling that he was being watched from the shadows. He knelt beside the corpse seeking some clue to how long the man might have lain there: certainly no longer than an hour. Positioning himself so as not to block out the moonlight, Anton leaned closer. The man’s face was a mask of blood, and the mask was still viscous, its spilling recent. Anton stood and took a step back. He was in danger here. It could not be coincidence that this corpse lay here tonight. The whole situation seemed to have been arranged so he would be caught at the scene of theft and murder.

  This fear was soon reinforced when one of the huge iron candle holders by the main door crashed loudly to the floor: it could not have happened by accident. Almost immediately the sound of running feet could be heard in the corridor outside. The door handles were rattled loudly, and then muffled voices: someone being instructed to fetch the key.

  Anton knew he had only a few seconds before they were upon him. His options were limited: he might be able to pick the lock in the door in the back wall, but this would probably take him too long. Or he could try and make his way up onto the minstrels’ gallery and escape through the open archway onto the first-floor corridor. But how to get up there?

  After a moment’s hesitation, Anton turned and gripped the handle of the axe, placed his foot on the dead man’s chest and pulled. He closed his eyes so that he might not see the blade pull free, but he could not close his ears to the sound. He shivered again.

  “I am sorry, my friend,” he whispered. “If I am able, I will avenge your death, with this weapon or another.”

  Anton took the axe, despite its weight, because he had no other weapon except his dagger. He had not brought his sword because it would have hampered his climbing abilities. Now he found himself carrying a far more cumbersome weapon. The Skullsplitter was a double-bladed battle-axe. The blades were each easily ten inches in length, and the head was fixed to a stout three-and-a-half-foot oak handle. The engraving on the head was almost invisible in the darkness, but even in daylight it would be indistinct, close examination revealing an inscription in a dead tongue, and the stylised outline of a human skull among the traceries. It was perhaps not as heavy as Anton had anticipated, but still he needed both hands to lift it. He took off his belt and wrapped it around the axe, making a sling which he could put over his shoulder to carry the heavy weapon behind him, settling the weight of the blade between his shoulder blades.

  More shouting in the corridor outside.

  Anton crossed to one of the tapestries nearest to the back wall and gripped the edge of it, giving it a sharp tug. He dislodged a cloud of dust and soot, but the tapestry remained firm on its iron hangers. Using the edge of the tapestry in place of a rope, he climbed up the wall until he was level with the balcony of the minstrels’ gallery. He paused for a moment to survey the gap he had to cross to reach the balcony, and at that moment he heard the key being fitted into the lock of the main doors.

  Anton pushed himself away from the wall with his feet, twisting in mid-air to face the balcony and throwing his arms out towards it. He hit the balcony with his chest hard enough to force the breath from his lungs, but he managed to hook his arm over the top of the balustrade and haul himself over onto the floor of the gallery just as the door opened below and four guardsmen rushed into the hall, swords drawn.

  Anton crawled into the shadows in the back corner of the gallery, not daring to move further for fear of attracting the guards’ attention. He looked down at his hands, realising for the first time that blood was still tacky between his fingers: if he was found now, he would be caught literally red-handed.

  The guards in the hall below righted the toppled candle-holder.

  “Probably just the bloody cat,” one of them muttered.

  “Search the hall anyway,” said another. The markings on his sleeve identified him as a lieutenant, and probably in charge of the evening’s watch. He was a head taller than the other men, and looked more like a gangling teenager than a military officer. There were pink patches on his beardless cheeks, and his forehead was smooth despite his frown.

&n
bsp; Perhaps, if their search was perfunctory, they would not discover the corpse behind the dais, and the search would not be extended to the rest of the castle, Anton thought. Then, there just might be a possibility of him escaping the castle walls.

  “There’s nothing here, lieutenant,” another of the guardsmen called back as he walked the length of the hall, glancing occasionally under tables.

  “Check the door at the back,” the lieutenant insisted. He looked around the hall, and for a moment glanced up towards the minstrels’ gallery.

  Anton feared that he had been spotted, but the man looked away again.

  “There’s something wrong here, but I am not certain what…” The lieutenant said, almost to himself.

  “Lieutenant Walcott, this door is open,” the guardsman said. He was below the gallery, unseen by Anton. If he’d know that the door was unlocked, Anton might have made his escape. Unless whoever arranged these circumstances had lain in wait in the corridor beyond, in which case he might well have been lying dead in a pool of his own blood by now.

  “It should be kept locked,” Lieutenant Walcott said.

  “It was locked when we checked it not half an hour ago,” said another of the guardsmen.

  “Then someone has been in here,” Walcott said.

  “To what end?” asked the guardsman closest to him.

  “Thievery or worse. You two, get out into that corridor and check in both directions, see if anyone is there.”

  “There’s nothing to steal here except furniture and tapestries, all of it too heavy for a man to carry away,” said the guardsman on the lieutenant’s left.