by C. S. Pacat
James looked up. His blond hair was mussed, and he was breathing unevenly. He looked spent. But his eyes were furious, full of barely repressed emotion.
With those deadly blue eyes, he looked right across the docks at Will.
“They’re here,” said James.
“Go,” said Justice.
They ran—scrambling over the crates and boundary walls toward the street. Justice ran swiftly, and Violet kept up with him, sure-footed, sailing over the detritus of the shipyards. Will struggled to match them.
His last glimpse of James had been to see him sharply giving orders to the three men with the disturbing pale faces, who had mounted smoothly, their dark horses wheeling and turning in Will’s direction.
Now he could hear hoofbeats, and when Justice pulled them all out of sight into a doorway for a moment, Will fought to catch his breath.
“Who are those men?” said Will, chilled by their too-pale faces and sunken, unblinking eyes. “They’re dressed like Stewards.”
“Those are no Stewards,” said Justice grimly. “They’re Simon’s creatures. . . . He calls them the Remnants. Each of them wears a piece from an ancient suit of armor, once worn by a member of the Dark King’s Inner Guard. Simon excavated the armor near a ruined tower in the Umbrian mountains, at a small village called Scheggino.” Justice kept his voice low. “The Remnants used to be men. The armor changes them. Do not let them touch you.”
Will shivered, thinking of that ancient guard, rotted away underground until all that was left was a few fragments of his armor. He didn’t want to think about that armor being worn by someone else, or that remnants of a dark guard might be hunting him.
The hoofbeats were louder. The moon passed behind a cloud, and they used the cover to run across the open street, toward the mouth of another, smaller and narrower. But there was no way to outrun a mounted guard. Will scoured the street for a place that a horse couldn’t follow, a doorway or an opening that would not also be a dead end, a trap—
“Here!” called Justice, using the hilt of his sword to break open the lock of a small loading yard. Inside was an old hauling cart, its owner gone for the night. But the cart remained, with its workhorse still in part-harness. Justice strode inside.
“Can you ride?”
Piling into the yard, Violet and Will looked at its single, shabby inhabitant, neck lowered past bony shoulders, hooves splayed.
“An old cart horse?” said Violet, with disbelief.
Justice put a hand on the horse’s neck. He was a poorly kept gelding, his black coat shoddy, his mane muddy and clumped. “He is a cart horse, but his breed traces its line past the Middle Ages. His ancestors were warhorses. He has heart, and he will run.”
And indeed, there was something in the tone of Justice’s voice that seemed to stir the horse. When Justice touched him, the horse lifted his head.
Will looked at Justice and Violet. Justice was offering him the horse because he believed Will was somehow important, and that he would make better time on horseback than on foot.
He also knew that Violet and Justice could get away if Will rode out on horseback, drawing the Remnants away from them.
The Remnants would chase him. Simon’s men always chased him. They’d ignore Violet and Justice and come right for him. He thought, an old cart horse, against the three fresh glossy steeds he’d seen wheeling on the riverbank.
“I can ride,” said Will.
Uncoupling the horse from the cart shafts, Justice looked up, his hands on the buckles. “We’ll split up and meet at the Hall. The three of us.”
Will nodded as Justice led the horse out by its bridle.
“You’ll need to cross the Lea,” said Justice. “It’s three, maybe four miles from here—at least half of that through open countryside. After that, it’s the Abbey Marsh, treacherous going for horses. The abbey was torn down a hundred years ago, but the gate still stands. Make for the gate.”
The gate, thought Will, fixing the idea of it in his mind.
Justice used the top three inches of his sword to cut through the longer driving reins of the cart’s bridle, then tied them off, shortening them enough for makeshift riding reins. As he did, Violet touched Will on the arm, drawing him away to one side.
“I know you’re only agreeing to ride alone to keep them from coming after us,” said Violet.
Will looked quickly at Justice to make sure he hadn’t heard. “They’ll follow me no matter what I do.”
“I know that, I just—” She broke off.
He wondered if she was concerned about being left alone with Justice. He was opening his mouth to reassure her when she reached out and knocked his shoulder with her fist, a gesture of solidarity.
“Good luck.” It was all she said, brown eyes serious in her boyish face. Unused to fellowship, Will nodded wordlessly.
There was no saddle, and no stirrup to push himself up with, so Violet made a stirrup with her hands and Will took hold of a clump of mane and hoisted himself up and onto the horse’s warm, broad back.
Justice was at its neck, murmuring to it in a strange language. Will found he could understand the words: “Run, as your ancestors ran. Do not fear the darkness. You have greatness within you, as do all your kind.” The horse tossed his head as if something in him was responding; his black mane was tattered but he had a brave look in his eye. Looking up at Will, Justice said, “Ride fast. Do not look back. Trust the horse.”
Will nodded.
Skittish with new energy, or alarmed at the darkening of the shadows, the horse was hard to hold. Will had ridden in his youth with his mother, but never bareback with only makeshift reins. He drew in a shaky breath, then he drove the horse out into the center of the road and called out.
“Hey!” he called. “Hey, I’m here!”
The three men rounded the corner on horseback, and Will’s skin went cold. The Remnants were like the vanguard of a nightmare. The shadowy ground beneath them seemed to move—hunting dogs were sliding in and out of their horses’ legs like a roil of snakes. This close, the single piece of armor each Remnant wore gave them asymmetric silhouettes: one wore a gauntlet; one a shoulder piece; and one a broken shard of black helm that covered the left side of his death-white face. The sight of them was like looking into an open tomb.
They were just men. Just Simon’s men. But even as Will told himself that, a Remnant stopped in front of an ivy-covered wall, and the dead of its eyes seemed to spread to the vine where the Remnant’s armor brushed against it, the green leaves withering, desiccating and darkening, the blackness spreading like rot. Do not let them touch you.
Sensing these cold fingers of danger, his own horse reared up on its hind legs and let out a cry, then sprang off down the cobbled stones of the road. Will clutched on, his heart pounding.
Ride fast. Do not look back.
He didn’t have much of a head start, but he knew the best paths, and he gained at first. He kept off the straight roads, where his slower horse would be at a disadvantage, turning instead into the twisty lanes he’d traversed on foot. His pursuers lost seconds pulling up and turning, and their swarming dogs clogged up the narrow spaces. It gave Will hope that he could stay ahead.
But the straggling outskirts of the shipping district quickly gave way to open countryside. In the distance, Will could see the outline of sparse cottages. To the north, the low smocked windmill was a collection of strange dark shapes. To the south was Bromley Hill, a shallow rise scattered with black trees and a lone farmhouse.
In front of him was a mile of flat commons, with nowhere to hide until the river.
He burst out into the open with the dogs streaming behind him, their baying a terrible, hungry sound. Bred to rend flesh and bring down large prey, the hunting dogs snapped and snarled toward the vulnerable legs of his horse. And even on the muffling grass, Will could hear the threefold thundering of the Remnants, shaking the ground.
They were gaining. His horse was not a hotblood built for sprints
across a flat. But its great heart gave its all, driving its heavier body on. “Run!” he called out to it. “Run!” His words were snatched away by the wind, but he felt his horse respond and gather itself beneath him, felt its stride stretch out longer.
Run, as your ancestors ran. Do not fear the darkness.
Trust the horse.
They raced across the flat, barely two strides ahead. He didn’t even hear the water before it was suddenly looming in front of him, a rushing black channel, as far across as a wide street, cut into a dark grassy bank with an unknown drop. Cross the Lea, Justice had said.
His horse launched chest first into the river. Will felt the bottom drop out from under him and the shock of freezing water as the horse swam with head extended, hindquarters lower than its churning shoulders. He clutched two handfuls of mane, clinging to the horse’s slippery neck and back.
He looked back, a single glance, and saw the shearing spray of water as the Remnant in the shoulder piece galloped powerfully into the river. In front of it, like a stream of rats, the dogs were swimming, clambering over each other to reach him. “Up!” Will called. “Up!” His own horse heaved itself up onto the opposite bank, its haunches bunching as it propelled itself for the final leap up the bank slope.
He thought he’d see his destination then. Cross the Lea, then make for the gate, Justice had said. He thought he had made it, that reaching the gate now really was possible.
But when his horse crested the bank slope, Will turned cold at what he saw.
There was no gate, only endless flat marshland, where long streaks of black water flowed around islands of grassy earth. A vast, harrowing landscape full of sucking mud and slimy ground where a horse’s hoof would sink or skid.
He had no choice but to drive his horse into it. He tried to keep to dry land, avoiding the glinting water between the patches of long grass. The footpads of the dogs were lighter, and they raced over the top of the marshland without miring. As his tired horse labored in the swampy earth, the dogs swarmed toward him, narrowing the gap.
The gate, he thought. Make for the gate. But there was no gate; he was alone on an empty marsh with the three Remnants behind him closing in.
How close were they? Could he hold a lead and find his way to cover? Will twisted his head, risking a second look behind him.
The gleaming black gauntlet was stretching out, about to close on him.
Will hurtled himself sideways. His horse screamed and veered with him; the reaching hand closed on air. A second Remnant reached out before he’d even righted himself. He could feel the hot breath of a third’s mount to his right. If he looked sideways, he would see them drawing alongside him.
He called on his horse one last time, a new sound of hooves swelling and breaking around him, his own breath sobbing with the need to escape. His horse gave its last burst of strength as he looked up through the haze and saw that the sound of hooves was not coming from behind him. It was coming from ahead.
Out of the white curling mist rode the Stewards.
A charge of light: twelve Stewards on white horses were galloping hard toward him. They wore the star and carried winged spears like lances, their silver armor glinting in the moonlight. Will gasped as they swept past him, heading right for the Remnants in their black armor.
“Back, darkness!” he heard the foremost Steward call, raising a staff with a stone set in its top that seemed to radiate a shield of light. “The Dark King has no power here!”
Will turned his horse in time to see the rushing dark of the Remnants seem to hit the barrier that the Stewards drove before them—and break, like a wave smashing against unyielding rock, the horses of the Remnants rearing and cowering back, the tendrils of the dark vanishing.
“I said back!” said the Steward as the three Remnants whipped their horses, trying to rally. Unable to pass the barrier, the Remnants were forced to drag at their horses’ mouths with their reins and turn to canter impotently back to the river. Reduced to faltering whimpers, the dogs milled uncertainly with their tails between their legs before finally following the riders, silent shadows moving along the water’s edge.
The Stewards were swerving, surrounding Will, twelve radiant white horses circling around his exhausted black gelding, who trembled, its neck and haunches lathered in sweat.
“You have trespassed on Steward lands,” said their leader, a Steward with a commanding voice and a jagged scar stark across the brown skin of her left cheek and jaw. She was hardly older than the others, but marked out by the insignia that she wore on her shoulder, like a captain’s badge. “You will tell us the interest those dark creatures have in you before we escort you out of our territory.”
“A Steward sent me,” said Will. He thought of the three Remnants riding back to London, where Violet and Justice were alone and vulnerable. “He’s still in danger. You have to help him—Justice.”
“What do you know of Justice?” said another voice. A younger Steward in pristine armor was pushing forward, his eyes full of hauteur. “Have you taken him? Have you taken him the way that you took Marcus?”
The young Steward dismounted, and in the next instant was pulling Will off his horse. Wet and sopping, Will slid off and hit the ground. “Cyprian!” the Steward captain called, but the young Steward ignored her, grabbing Will and pulling up his sleeves roughly. Will barely realized what he was doing until Cyprian made a stymied sound when only Will’s thin wrists were revealed.
“I don’t have Simon’s brand,” said Will, revolted.
Cyprian didn’t seem to believe that, his hands pushing up over Will’s wrists as though searching for the truth. In the next second, he took hold of Will’s shirt and ripped it downward. The wet, abused fabric tore open, jerking Will forward. The medallion swung away from his body, exposed. Will let out a cry and clutched at the medallion while his other hand braced in the mud.
When he looked up, he saw Cyprian’s immaculate silver armor and his drawn sword.
The Steward captain’s expression changed. “Where did you get that?” Her eyes were fixed on the medallion, which dangled on its leather tie.
Justice had warned him not to show it to anyone. Now all these milling Stewards had seen it. He hesitated for a moment, unsure what to do.
“My mother,” said Will, remembering the familiar face of her old servant Matthew, holding the medallion out to him in the rain. The bright star holds, even as the darkness rises. He pushed himself up to his knees in the mud. “Her old servant gave it to me. Matthew.” Matthew’s dead eyes staring sightlessly in the rain— “He told me to come here, and to show this to you. He said it belonged to my mother.”
His eyes met those of the Steward captain. The look on her face was one of shock, with a flicker of fear. “We must take him to the Elder Steward.” Her words echoed Justice’s, but she said it as an order to the others.
The other Stewards looked stunned, sharing glances that were openly disturbed. Cyprian gave their feelings voice.
“You can’t mean to take him inside the walls,” said Cyprian. “Captain, no one not of Steward blood has ever stepped into our Hall.”
“Then he will be the first,” said the Steward captain.
“And if it’s a ruse? What better way to get inside our walls than to play a victim evading capture? Our most sacred oath is to protect—”
“Enough,” said the Steward captain. “I have made my decision. What will be done with the boy now is not for you but for the Elder Steward to decide.”
Cyprian shut up at that.
“Bind him,” said the Steward captain, wheeling her horse. “And take him into the Hall.”
Chapter Nine
WILL TRIED TO get her to listen. “Justice is still out there.” The Remnants galloping behind him, the outstretched gauntlet reaching for him—“There’s a girl with him—both of them are in danger—those things that were chasing us—” Black rot spreading across the leaves of a vine— “I saw a vine wither when they touched it—”
“Justice knows his duty” was all the Steward captain said, ignoring him as Cyprian stepped forward. “Tie his wrists, novitiate,” said the Steward captain.
Will had to force himself not to jerk back as Cyprian lashed his wrists together in front of him. His horse had no saddle to bind him to. Instead, Cyprian tied his ankles together by a length of rope that passed under his horse’s belly, so that if he slid off he would be dragged. Will gripped his horse’s mane awkwardly, his lashed wrists making it hard to move his hands. His black gelding was roped to the white horses of the others, and they set off in a procession of twos, six Stewards ahead of him and six behind.
Being restrained made Will’s heart pound in his mouth, a fine sweat breaking out over his skin. If they were attacked, he couldn’t run. If they were surrounded, he couldn’t fight. He clutched his horse’s mane with every instinct at screaming alert, the marsh stretching out, a shadowy, alien landscape, the pairs of Stewards like strange glimmers in the dark.
The captain rode ahead, her expression forbidding. Leda, the others had called her. The discipline in her bearing reminded him of Justice and was echoed by the others in the procession. But she lacked Justice’s warmth, her eyes impassive on the marsh ahead.
Cyprian was too perfect, riding straight-backed in garments that seemed to repel the mud of the marsh. He was one of two Stewards who were younger than the others—Will’s age—and he and the girl were dressed differently too. Their surcoats were silvery gray instead of white, and their armor was simpler, like that of a Steward in training. Novitiate, the captain had called him.
Will’s tension rose as they rode through the night. His mother’s old servant Matthew had told him to come here, but what if Matthew had been wrong? What did he really know about these knights who rode white horses and called themselves Stewards? Will wanted to believe that he was riding toward answers, but he felt as if were traveling to a strange, unknown country, leaving everything he knew behind.
As they rode in a long column, Will could hear all the night sounds of the marsh, the rhythmic creak of frogs, the soft, distant splashes of small creatures, and the wind over the grassy water, its gusting sound like the roll of ocean waves. The occasional calls of “All clear!” and “Ride on!” rang out from the Steward captain at the head of the column.
