The King’s Justice

by Katherine Kurtz

  For nearly an hour, they galloped like men possessed, playing a deadly game of evasion, not slowing until the horses were nearly spent and Dhugal knew he had eluded the last pursuing Mearan skirmish band. But when, as they pulled up in a defile to let their horses blow, he threw away his targe and even his MacArdry tartan and ordered them to do the same, he almost had a mutiny on his hands.

  “Just do it!” he snapped, stripping off his earl’s belt and the badges of his chiefship as well. “We’re not out of this yet. If a Mearan patrol catches us, and thinks we’re important, this will all have been for nothing. We’ve got to pass as common soldiers.”

  “You insult the term, laddie,” Ciard muttered, though he dutifully removed his plaid with the rest and tossed it contemptuously across a bush. “Even the commonest solider will not leave his commander to his death, if he be a man of honor!”

  The remark wounded Dhugal, already feeling lower than the dust beneath his charger’s hooves, but he made himself harden against reacting as he peered back the way they had come and saw their chance to ride on.

  “I can’t discuss it now, Ciard,” he murmured. “I’ll try to explain later. Are you coming or not?”

  “We ‘common’ soldiers will stay by our liege,” Ciard said, “even if he doesn’t deserve it.”

  “I said later!” Dhugal snapped, eyes flashing warning.

  They followed again as he led them cautiously out of the defile and toward the south again, but he could feel their loathing like a physical pressure at his back, beating against the growing numbness of not knowing what had happened to Duncan. When they reached a place of greater safety, if he could get them to listen, he really would try to explain. But meanwhile, he must decide how he was going to stretch his untrained powers far enough to obey his father and warn Kelson—which was out of the question until well after dark, when the sleeping king might be more accessible to his inexpert probe. And he did not know whether he could stay alive that long.

  His most immediate duty, then, was to stay free until it was time to try. Until then he could only keep riding, closing the physical distance between himself and the king—and putting more distance between himself and the man who, unknown to the men who followed him, was his father as well as his commander.

  His father, meanwhile, was in more desperate straits than even Dhugal dreamed. Duncan was not dead, but he almost wished he were. His first awareness, as he fought his way back to consciousness through the red fog of pain reverberating inside his skull, was of hands plucking at his body, removing his weapons and armor—and someone forcing his jaws apart.

  “Make sure he swallows,” he heard a familiar voice say, just behind his head, as bitter liquid sloshed into his mouth.

  Gorony! And there was merasha in the drink!

  Sheer survival instincts jolted Duncan instantly back to full consciousness. Despite the pounding in his skull, he threw his head violently to one side and spat out what was in his mouth, at the same time arching his body in a desperate effort to break free.

  Rough hands only slammed his shoulders back against the ground and pinned him. All he could see, as he thrashed and struggled to escape, were hard-eyed men in mail coifs and blue-crossed white surcoats, and hands bringing a cup toward his face again.

  “No!”

  He sprayed his captors with the next mouthful, but they only forced another past his lips. He tried to close his throat against it, determined not to swallow, but someone jabbed him expertly in the solar plexus. His reflex gasp sucked part of the drink into his windpipe, setting him to choking and hacking, but some of it went down. He gagged and tried to bring it back up again, but a gloved hand clamped across his mouth and nose so that he could not even breathe, another clamping down on carotid pressure points.

  He was still fighting them as his vision began to go grey and his limbs started twitching. Worse, he could feel the merasha extending its insidious tendrils to undermine his control.

  “One more time, I think, Father,” the hated voice said in a mocking tone, as hands once more forced his jaws apart and bitter liquid filled his mouth. “You’re going to swallow it.”

  And with perceptions blurring from the drug, and his nose pinched shut as they continued to pour, he found himself helpless to resist. His body was convinced that he was suffocating. To his horror, his throat contracted several times in painful swallows. The drug in his stomach was an icy serpent, relentlessly extruding coils of disruption into his system.

  They let go of him at that, laughing cruelly among themselves as he curled, coughing and choking, on his side, cradling his forehead in his hands. As his perceptions blurred worse with every heartbeat, scenes of another dealing with Gorony and merasha rose in his clouding memory.

  Gorony in a burning chamber beneath Saint Torin’s Abbey. And a stake set ready to burn any Deryni heretic hapless enough to fall into his clutches.

  Only it had been Alaric who was Gorony’s helpless prisoner that time, and Duncan who had managed to save him from the fire. Even drug-fogged, Duncan knew that there would be no reversal of roles this time, with Alaric to save him. Unless Dhugal somehow managed to work a miracle, Alaric would not even know about Duncan’s predicament until Duncan was dead.

  Hands rolled him onto his back at that, efficiently stripping him to his breeks and twisting his bishop’s ring off his finger. He was helpless to stop them; could hardly even turn his head without being overcome with waves of nausea and dizziness. They did not even bother to restrain his arms as a new white-clad figure stepped into his range of vision at his feet and stared down at him. Wispy grey hair showed around his head like a halo, and his blue eyes blazed with triumph above the blue cross on his breast. He smiled as Gorony handed him the bishop’s ring, turning it several times in his fingers before slipping it on his hand next to the one he already wore.

  “So, my elusive Deryni priest,” Edmund Loris said quietly. “I believe it is time we spoke of many things. You and your Deryni colleagues have caused me a great deal of trouble. I intend to return the compliment.”

  “I don’t much like what I had to do today,” said one of those Deryni colleagues.

  Morgan was standing in the doorway of the tent he and Kelson shared, where not so long before he had finished interrogating the last of the forty Mearan officers. Across the square, the fruits of his labor dangled, still twitching, beside the long motionless bodies of Ithel and Brice.

  Kelson, picking joylessly at his sparse camp fare at the table behind Morgan, pushed his plate away with a snort of disgust.

  “Do you think I did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Kelson repeated, aghast.

  Morgan glanced aside at the king’s reaction, then coolly returned his gaze to the gallows tree outside, where a burial detail was waiting to cut down the four executed officers. No one knew better than he that those particular men had deserved to die for their excesses against the Mearan citizenry, but he resented the fact that Kelson had forced him to judge them.

  Kelson caught an echo of that resentment and stood up abruptly, crossing to pull a curtain angrily over the opening, shutting out the sight.

  “Does that really help?” Morgan asked.

  Kelson wilted visibly, clinging to the edges of the closed curtains and bowing his head.

  “I should have let Ithel and Brice see a priest first, shouldn’t I?” he whispered.

  “It would have been a noble gesture,” Morgan answered.

  Kelson sighed miserably and raised his head, eyes bright with tears he refused to let himself shed.

  “Henry Istelyn was not allowed that grace,” he said, not looking at Morgan. “Do you—do you think he will go to hell because he died unshriven?”

  “Do you think that a just and merciful God would condemn His faithful servant, simply because he was not permitted to observe the outer form required for salvation?” Morgan countered.

  At Kelson’s quick headshake, he went on.
/>   “By similar reasoning, I think we can safely assume that if Ithel and Brice were truly contrite over the crimes for which they were executed, God will not condemn them wholly out of hand.” He paused to take a cautious breath. “In the future, however, and just in case I’m wrong, I might suggest that mercy is as admirable in a king as it is in Our Lord—and mercy need not clash with justice. It would have cost you nothing to at least give them a few moments to prepare for death—though I know why you refused, in the case of Ithel and Brice.”

  “Would you have?” Kelson asked.

  “I don’t know,” Morgan said honestly. “That was not my decision, so we shall never know.”

  “What about the other four?” Kelson asked, clasping his hands behind his back and awkwardly turning halfway between Morgan and the curtained entryway. “I should have allowed them the last rites. You would have.”

  “Yes. And, in fact, I did allow it, since that was my decision—though I would that no part of the decision had been mine.”

  “What?”

  Kelson looked up in shock.

  “You told me to select the guiltiest four for execution, my prince,” Morgan said quietly. “I did so. But when you gave me their deaths, you also gave me the authority to determine the circumstances of their deaths, within certain limits. I gave them five minutes with Father Laughlin. Then I had them hanged.”

  “As I should have ordered,” Kelson added, biting at his lip. “You don’t have to say it.”

  “Have I said anything, my prince?”

  Kelson swallowed hard and bowed his head again.

  “You do right to reproach me,” he whispered. “I let vengeance impede my honor. I was so elated to have captured Ithel, and—oh, God, I wish Father Duncan were here!”

  “Is Duncan your conscience?” Morgan asked, not ready to let up until he was sure Kelson understood his mistake.

  “No, of course not, but he helps me listen to my conscience,” Kelson replied. “I should have been more merciful! By giving Ithel and Brice the same as they gave Istelyn, I lowered myself to their level!”

  “It is an understandable failing in one of your years, my prince,” Morgan said softly.

  “Kings can’t have the luxury of falling back on that excuse!”

  “But young men can,” Morgan replied, “at least so long as they learn from their errors. Not a man alive has but made his share of youthful misjudgments as he grew to manhood.”

  “The men will hate me,” Kelson insisted, flouncing into his camp chair.

  “The men understand,” Morgan countered. “This was a very emotion-wrought situation. Henry Istelyn was well respected in all of Gwynedd. He did not deserve the fate the Mearans gave him. Further-more, all of your own officers know what we found at Saint Brigid’s and elsewhere, and the brutality that was done and permitted by Brice and Ithel. Nor do they blame you for reacting more with your heart than your head. All of them have wives or sisters or mothers, Kelson. You will find little sympathy for Ithel’s and Brice’s fate.”

  “I would have done the same to the four Mearan officers,” Kelson said, making a last, halfhearted attempt to continue berating himself.

  “Perhaps you would have. But you did not.”

  “No. I made you do my duty for me. I shouldn’t have done that, either.”

  Morgan sighed. At last they had reached the final point he had wanted to be sure Kelson understood.

  “That is true, my prince,” he said quietly, resting a hand on Kelson’s nearest shoulder and kneading at the taut muscles beneath. “But I accept that burden, knowing that you have learned from my labors. Next time, you will do better. Meanwhile, there is no great harm done. Believe me.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Kelson allowed.

  Exhaustion began to take him soon after that, and he gratefully let Morgan’s physical ministrations shift to more esoteric ones, finally surrendering to the sweet oblivion that Morgan urged upon him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Behold, I know your thoughts, and the devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me.

  —Job 21:27

  By the time Dhugal and his sullen escort pulled up in a sheltering grove of trees, it was nearly full dark and Dhugal was weaving in the saddle, both from physical exhaustion and from the more draining emotional trauma he had suffered since abandoning the field at Dorna.

  Only Ciard and three others had managed to keep up with him. Their reproach lay around him like a pall, stifling and oppressive, and he could hardly blame them. They did not know of Duncan’s orders to leave him and ride for help; only that their young lord had deserted his commander in battle and ordered them to do the same. Nor could they guess what obedience had cost Dhugal, or how the cost had multiplied each time he tried to cast his mind back to Duncan, and encountered only deadly silence.

  Fighting back the despair born of his own bereavement, Dhugal slid to the ground and loosened his horse’s girth, crouching to glance under the animal’s belly for Ciard as his horseman’s hands slid automatically down sweat-sleek legs and fetlocks to check for injuries. The gillie’s silence of the past four hours hurt almost as much as his father’s. Ciard and the other three men had taken their horses far to the other side of the clearing to unsaddle, vague shadow-shapes in the forest gloom, but Dhugal did not need to see them clearly to read their contempt. And he had never known Ciard to be so angry with him.

  He shivered and pulled back his Deryni perceptions, unable to bear their psychic isolation along with their physical withdrawal. When he had pulled the saddle from his stallion’s sweaty back, staggering a little as he eased it to the grass, he began rubbing the animal down with twists of grass, scouring the sweat and grime from the once-silky coat and losing himself, at least for a few minutes, in a different kind of physical exertion than had already left his body aching. The stallion’s pleasure in the simple procedure, and the affection displayed in the gentle buffet of sweaty head against ministering hands, welled into Dhugal’s mind like soothing balm, helping him shut out the hostility of the others performing similar functions across the clearing.

  He had no idea what he was going to do when he was finished. He knew he had to try to contact Kelson, as his father had ordered, but he would not let himself think very much about the man who had given him that order. Enough to acknowledge that if he had not been able to reach Duncan, who had been far closer physically, at least in the beginning, he probably had little chance of reaching Kelson. But he had to try. And if he had to try it alone, with his men still radiating their disgust and anger all around him.…

  He lingered over his grooming task until all the others had gone. Then, while he let his horse drink sparingly in the little stream, he sluiced cold water over his face and forearms, even dunking his head for good measure. He was going to need all his wits about him if he hoped to win his men back to his side.

  He shook the water out of his ears like a wet puppy as he led the horse back to graze with its fellows. He still felt grimy and exhausted, but the water that ran off his braid and inside the neck of his brigandine was blessedly cool. Gathering his courage, he hefted his saddle over his shoulder and carried it, staggering, to the tiny fire that old Lambert had kindled in the lee of a rocky outcropping.

  The others were already there, reclining on their saddles and sharing meager provisions: Lambert, Matthias, Jass—and Ciard. No one even looked up as he put down his saddle and sat among them, though Lambert did pass him a cup of ale and a hard chunk of journey bread. Ciard actually turned his back. He could feel the rest of them pointedly not looking at him as he ate and drank, and the food lay in his stomach like lead. Nor did the fire warm the chill radiating from the four.

  None of them had spoken to him since well before dusk, other than to acknowledge his orders. Ciard was a glittering point of fire and ice, barely contained; the usually ebullient Jass MacArdry, who was hardly older than himself, looked as if he might cry at any minute. Matthias and old Lambert simply ignored him, a
lways looking to Ciard for confirmation before following his own instructions.

  Yes, Ciard was the key—and the one man among them who might be able to understand and accept the full truth. And if Ciard could be won over, the other three probably would follow without question.

  Dhugal set down his cup and dusted crumbs from his fingers, all appetite fled.

  “Please don’t do this to me,” he said softly. “I need your help.”

  Ciard turned his grizzled head dutifully toward his young master, but his eyes reflected only pain and bitter disappointment.

  “You need our help. Aye, laddie, you do, indeed. And Bishop Duncan needed yer help. But he didna’ get it, did he?”

  “If you’ll only let me explain—”

  “Explain what? That The MacArdry turned tail and ran? That he left his commander t’ be cut down or captured by the enemy? Thank God yer father didna’ live to see this day, Dhugal! He would’ve died o’ shame.”

  Dhugal started to blurt out that Duncan was his father, and that he had fled at Duncan’s order, but he made himself bite back his words. This was not the time to tell them of his true parentage, when they believed he had disgraced the MacArdry name.

  But he needed desperately to get them back on his side. He had not turned craven! Perhaps a part of the truth would satisfy them.

  “My father would have listened to my side of the story before condemning me,” he said coldly. “Things are not always as they appear.”

  “Perhaps not,” old Lambert said, speaking for the first time. “But it appears that ye got scared an’ ran, Young MacArdry. Not much other way t’ look at that.”

  Dhugal flushed, but he refused to back down from their accusing looks.

  “It’s true that I ran,” he said unsteadily, “but it was not by my choice.” He drew a deep breath to brace himself for their reaction. “Bishop Duncan ordered me to go.”