by Brian Daley
Springbuck watched in horror. The match between Hightower and Synfors had been one thing, a bout between men by challenge given and taken. The assault of Archog was something else—a deliberate, merciless executioner about to do his work. The Prince’s impulse was to go to the Duke’s side and stand with him. Yet that impulse was drained, and the heir of the Ku-Mor-Mai immobilized at the ogre’s terrifying aspect. His mouth had gone dune dry and he realized that to oppose Archog or, in his killing rage, even to impede him, would mean death. What would it profit to die?
But for a scant second, Hightower tore his gaze from the creature tramping to confront him and fixed the Prince with his eye. That look said nothing of expectation or resentment; there was no bitterness because Hightower had come to help him only to lose his own life. It was, Springbuck saw in that one instant, the Duke’s way of ensuring that the Prince would see and understand. It simply said, “I am Hightower. This is how I live, and how I can die, if it comes to that.”
And that stark message came through so well that the Prince lurched forward to join the Duke, and in the impact of the moment, none noticed the sob that escaped him. But he was seized from either side by the guardsmen and held fast in armored hands; in a moment the eight archers had leveled unswerving arrowheads at his breast. He stopped struggling to watch as the ogre closed with Hightower.
The Duke waited, perhaps bitter with himself for leaving his own liege men outside Earthfast; he exhibited none of the confidence he had shown with Synfors. He shifted his grip on his sword and, uttering a piercing war cry, threw himself forward at his new enemy, swinging a savage blow.
But Archog met the Duke’s weapon with his own with such terrific energy that the man’s sword broke in two. Stunned, Hightower fell back on one knee, holding the useless quillons and stump of his blade before him as if his sword were still whole.
With a scream that had no message but animal anguish and loss, the Prince, beyond any care or caution for his own life, shook his captors loose and fumbled at the ranker’s belt for his sword. The captain should have jumped back and let the archers do their work, which would have pleased his Queen well; but in the heat of the moment he instead brought down an iron-girt fist and dashed Springbuck into semiconsciousness.
Archog advanced and swung again, this time knocking aside the Duke’s sword stump and beheading him. The ogre stood over his victim’s body, which streamed its hot life’s blood across the floor, and his bone-chilling gaze lifted slowly to Fania, no trace of elation or rancor in it, awaiting further instruction.
Fania, whey-faced and glassy-eyed at the ghastly scene, tried to find her voice but couldn’t. Again she turned to Yardiff Bey, and once more appeared to summon composure from that source.
“Take the . . . remains of the traitors away,” Fania managed at last in a subdued tone.
Archog stooped and straightened, to move toward the portals, the Duke’s body under one arm and the head cupped in the other gauntleted paw. Synfors’ body was carried away, too. Finally the Prince was lifted by the two guardsmen.
In the whirling haze that had settled around him, Springbuck shrank back before the realization of his failure to aid Hightower as before the heat of a bonfire.
Chapter Two
This before all else: be armed.
—Machiavelli
Nervous, whispered conversations sprang up among the courtiers. Fania glanced about her in sudden, imperious anger.
“Where are my stepson’s mentors, Eliatim and Faurbuhl?” she demanded.
The majordomo, resplendent in filigreed cloak and bright sash, carrying his staff of office, stepped forward and bowed. “Your Majesty,” he intoned, “Eliatim accompanies guests of state home to their embassy houses and the philosopher Faurbuhl seems nowhere to be found.”
“In that case, have the Prince taken to his rooms and left in the care of the Lady Duskwind.”
Springbuck was hoisted and carted away as she turned to the Court.
“Have the servants rinse clean the floors. Fetch drink and chargers of food and let the musicians strike up.”
As the Prince’s bearers exited the Court, he groggily heard the crowd call tentatively for an air wherewith to dance. In quick fashion the arena was changed back to a ballroom; delicate feet would soon mince where the blood of men had been but a short time before.
Springbuck ascended slowly from his bodiless fog, jounced along, slung over an armored shoulder for a trip that seemed endless. Then there was the sound of a discreet knocking, the officer’s respectful voice: “My Lady Duskwind?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Captain Brodur, and we have the Prince with us, my Lady.”
What odd inflection was that in Captain Brodur’s voice? Springbuck wondered dazedly. Was it urgent, almost nervous? His wits were beginning to return and he felt a growing desire to vomit.
“He is somewhat, umm, incapacitated,” Brodur continued, “and the Queen instr—”
“Oh! Bring him in and leave him on the bed. I shall attend to him. Only wait a moment when I unbolt the door, then you may enter.”
The enlisted man made a rude, whispered jest at the Lady’s expense and was rebuked by his officer as the two brought their burden into the room and dropped him onto the brocatelle spread of his wide bed. He bounced once on the soft mattress and lay in a sprawl, holding down bile.
The instant Springbuck heard the door close, he vaulted clumsily from the bed to stand and take his bearings, bracing himself both literally and figuratively. With Eliatim, his instructor-in-arms and warfare, away, he wouldn’t be under the close scrutiny he’d endured lately. Had the captain left for good, thinking he’d be unconscious for a while? The certainty was suddenly in him that his chance to escape had come on this least likely occasion.
He couldn’t see Duskwind and so assumed that she was in the bath chamber. Crossing to one of his wardrobe chests, he extracted three broad, silken headbands, then leaped back to stand beside the door leading to the bath. Watching it carefully, he groaned as realistically as he could.
“Coming, my love,” Duskwind called from the next room. “You drank overmuch, perhaps? I’ll ease your sufferings; we’ll see what steam and massage can do to help it.”
So saying, she opened the door and walked into the bedroom. She must have been preparing to bathe when the guardsmen had knocked, he reflected in the brief moment in which she stood with her back to him, puzzled by his absence. She was naked, her honey-streaked hair unbound and the big knuckle-shield rings missing from her slim hands.
He pounced on her from behind, snatching her wrists from her sides and drawing them together at the small of her back. She gasped in surprise but couldn’t turn around, as he confined her hands with two deft loops of a headband.
“Springbuck, is that you? Stop it! This is no time for drunken games, you idiot!” There was a strange, sharp note in her voice that he’d never heard there before. She squirmed and struggled in his grip and he couldn’t have answered her if he’d wanted, because he held the remaining two headbands in clenched teeth.
Tightening the second loop, he whirled her around, tripped her and lowered her to the thick carpet on her stomach, straddling her.
Alarmed now, she shrilled, “You mustn’t do this! Listen to me—”
He’d used the second headband as a gag. The third he fastened around her vigorously kicking legs, fettering her at the ankles. Lifting her as carefully as he could manage under the circumstances, he carried the wildly protesting Duskwind to the bed. Even then he found himself marveling at the warmth of her smooth, brown-gold skin and the fragrance of her, as he threw her across the covers. As a precaution to her thrashing efforts to free herself, he added extra bindings and, out of modesty, pulled the covers over her, leaving only her head and graceful feet exposed.
He bent to peer into her gray eyes. “I’m sorry,” he told his lover, “but I’m leaving and I’ve decided that there’s no place for a highborn and gentle Lady on the journey I
mean to make.” At this her eyes went wide and she began to shake her head violently, attempting to speak through the gag.
He nodded sadly. “Yes, I must go and I cannot take you, though life will be desolate without you.” This last was rather an exaggeration; he looked forward to going forth a free agent. But he was fond of her, had been happy with her. She had even consoled him against his pending combat with the vague reassurance that something would happen to prevent it.
Well, now something would.
Duskwind shut her eyes tightly in exasperation, then stared imploringly skyward. Perplexed, he nevertheless decided that he had spent enough time with her. He went to another chest, dug under some robes of state and drew forth the things he had assembled for flight. He unlaced his buskins and threw them to one side, took off his tunic and removed his copper bracelets and bandeau. These he kicked into a corner, done with them for all time. Turning then to his preparations, he was arrested by a glimpse of himself in the cheval glass which stood against the wall. He moved closer and regarded himself, an open-faced young man in his nineteenth year.
Smiling experimentally at the mirror Springbuck was rewarded with a totally unremarkable smile. He was positive that he would attract no attention or recognition as the Prince. He felt stirrings of confidence that his escape would be successful.
He abruptly remembered the door and whirled on it in apprehension. It was closed but unlatched. Thankful that Duskwind’s one outcry had elicited no inquiries, he darted to the door and shot the bolt to, congratulating himself on his luck and, at the same time, feeling a growing knot in his stomach, fear reaction from the events in the throne room and an ache to be away.
He knew brief regret that Faurbuhl was not to be found. He had considered taking the old philosopher with him, though he had revealed nothing of his plans to his teacher. Indeed, the idea had come full-blown a week before, in the strange period between waking and sleeping when the mind was most flexible and receptive. A whisper of a suggestion was enough, and he knew that he must escape, and in that same moment was glavanized to search out the magician Andre deCourteney and the madman Van Duyn.
Forcing himself to matters at hand, and putting Faurbuhl out of his thoughts, he looked to his equipment. He had decided upon and surreptitiously collected the costume of a bravo of Alebowrene, subdominion of Coramonde. Though he knew there would be several of such men in Earthfast during the High Durbar preceding the death duel for the throne, the clothing of a servant or merchant would have been less conspicuous, so that Springbuck approached his adventure with perhaps more romantic notions than he admitted to himself.
He donned the brief cincture, comfortably supple and, in his opinion, overwhelmingly preferable to stiff, heavy robes of state. He then strapped to each forearm the leather demisleeves which guarded against wounds from wrist to elbow. It was difficult work manipulating the numerous buckles on each leather with one hand, hampered in fastening the second by the hand-cupping cuff on the first. Still, these were an infighter’s defense he’d used before and he knew their value well. He pulled on high cavalryman’s boots and picked up his sword, his newfound sword.
A curious weapon. He’d come across it poking around in the older, ignored rooms of the armories at Earthfast. Basket-hilted, it was much like a cavalry saber except that the blade was only slightly curved and a bit lighter than that, made of some unfamiliar, pewter-looking metal. On the pommel was struck a single complex glyphic which the Prince with his sketchy knowledge of such things, found undecipherable. On either side of the blade, just above the narrow fullers, was written the name Bar, an odd-seeming name for a sword, evocative of defense rather than offense. Its most puzzling aspect, however, was that even after obvious long neglect Bar was bright, and its edge sharper than any he’d ever thumbed. Convinced he’d found a weapon of some special property, he’d kept his discovery to himself. Its scabbard had been unserviceable with age, and so with some difficulty he’d procured another to accommodate it, of black, polished fish skin with bindings and fittings of white brass, and a belt to bear it.
He buckled the belt about his hips and fastened the tie-down around his leg. Then he slipped his parrying dagger into the sheath stitched inside the top of his left boot. Its hooked pommel rode just high enough to protrude from the boot top below his sword, ready to be seized at need in his left hand.
He’d thought of wearing a helmet and his fine chain mail, but discarded the idea of several accounts. For one thing, both of his suits of mail were known in and around Earthfast. The risk of recognition would be increased, even if he were well cloaked and hooded. For another, he didn’t care for its weight, since he wished to travel as lightly as possible. And lastly, he’d never grown to like the burden of armor as had his half brother Strongblade. Though trained as most young nobles were in riding, running, jumping trenches, climbing and fighting encased in mail or plate, he had always hated its hindrance. He much preferred to be free of its encumbrance like the Alebowrenian or the Horseblooded of the High Ranges.
Almost ready to leave his ancestral home, he thought that his renowned forebear Sharplance might have felt just so, fleeing the distant East in the dim past. He went to fetch the cache of coins secreted behind a carven ivory panel in the bathing chamber, stopping first to check the bonds of the still-furious Duskwind. He strode into the next room, anxious to be away, but stopped in midstride at the sight which greeted him there.
The large pool contained no water, but rather the body of Faurbuhl the philosopher. His face was blackened, eyes swollen and darkened tongue bulging from his mouth, hands still clawing in death at the garrote yet inbedded in his neck. Springbuck experienced momentary dizziness and a refusal to absorb the death of his would-be companion, who stared sightlessly at the decorative water apertures above his head.
A moment only, and the Prince realized that the Lady Duskwind had been in this room when the guardsmen entered but had made no outcry and thus must be implicated in—perhaps had committed—the gentle old man’s murder. Springbuck’s lips drew back in a soundless snarl.
He prized loose the panel and retrieved his wallet; then he took out his sword and, gripping it so tightly that his hand shook, returned to the bedroom. Through hot tears forming, he saw a bundle lying behind the door and opened it with a vicious kick to survey its contents, Duskwind’s traveling clothes and accouterments. He moved to the bedside, glaring down at the bound girl, his face fell to look upon, until she consigned her soul to the gods of her house.
But they had been lovers; she had meant a great deal to him in that time, and he could not bring himself to kill her. Shame at events in the throne room and his growing impulse to be away, coupled with grief for Faurbuhl, numbed him and drained his thirst for revenge; he’d shown no merit himself in the night’s tragedies. He searched her imploring eyes.
“What reward did they offer you?” he wondered aloud. “What wages to slay my friend and then flee? Was it to be blamed on me? Is that why Captain Brodur left me here so handily? Be still! I’ll not kill you, though I ought to; I give you your life and leave you to your own devices. But I vow, the next moment that I see you will be your last.”
And because he wouldn’t have her see a Prince of Coramonde weep he sheathed his sword with a clash and took up the brightly lacquered war mask he’d obtained, with its colorful crest of plumes. He set it on his head, covering all of his face save mouth and brimming eyes. Tying the wallet to his sword belt, he fetched his long cloak and swirled it around him. Concealed from throat to heels, plumes bobbing behind, he drew back the bolt and let himself into the corridor. There were no guards in that part of Earthfast, nor were any needed since Fania’s own picked men manned the gates with orders not to permit him egress, and they were under the impression that he was in custody and under guard.
But of this he cared little; he simply wanted to leave Earthfast forever.
Chapter Three
They all hold swords, being expert in war; every man hath his sword u
pon his thigh because of fear in the night.
—The Song of Songs, Which Is Solomon’s
He’d readied a story against being stopped by the port-glaves, of being confused and lost in looking to rejoin his “master,” the envoy from Alebowrene, the sort of thing that happened often in Earthfast with so many visitors and their retinues quartered there. Crossing the open exercise areas he came to the stables, filled with the ceaseless sounds and thick smells of horses of all sorts: brave coursers and glum-faced palfreys, massive destriers, well-formed jumpers and the enormous draft annuals that pulled the war drays of the entourage from Matloo.
Springbuck had planned to take his own horse, Fireheel, but found the big gray gone from his stall and was afraid to inquire after it with a groom for fear of recognition. Instead, he selected a light reconnaissance cavalryman’s saddle and began to ready a swift-looking roncin bearing the markings of the High Ranges on its flanks and Earthfast’s croppings on its ear. The horse proved balky though, shying from him and whinnying softly. His warmask, light as it was, yet made things more troublesome, and so he removed it and set it aside. He finished quickly and turned to reopen the stall door, to find himself faced with a figure from his past.
The light was poor but he still knew his old playmate Micko, stableboy now, but close companion back in the days when rank meant less and larking was the order of the day. Micko was at one with animals, just as his father was, though he hadn’t inherited his sire’s affinity for forest and field, and was most at home in kennel, aerie or barn. But even Micko, never one for insight or subtlety, knew the drift of things at Court and must know it was his obligation to raise the alarm on pain of a traitor’s fate. Springbuck could only wait and taste bitterness. But Micko, a sorrowful expression on his grimy face, said only, “Do not let him take his head, as he likes to; he will wear himself out early in the ride.”
