by Brian Daley
Springbuck and Strongblade confronted each other for the first time in months. Seeing his “brother” again, the Prince knew a twinge of doubt. Here was Strongblade, who had ever been his master with a sword. Springbuck thought he could win, but was he overestimating himself?
Then, with a rush, determination came. He’d returned with the mightiest warriors in the world at his back, graduate of battle and rightful Ku-Mor-Mai.
He addressed himself to Strongblade. As they came en guarde to decide the fate of the suzerainty, he sent the heavy knife singing into the ornate wood of the throne.
“As it was written before our births,” Springbuck said, “let us measure swords, one weapon apiece, and the winner wear the crown.”
Strongblade was still as capable a swordsman as Springbuck had ever met, but he also had to move Flarecore, a heavier sword, and the Prince felt that this gave him an advantage. For a moment he experienced the fear he’d always felt of Strongblade, of his primal ferocity and cruel strength, then dismissed it resolutely. Carefully preserved memories of his antagonist’s favorite attacks and advances rose before him like an invisible chart of the duel’s possibilities. He tried not to become preoccupied with them.
The match filled the entire field of his senses, hypnotizing him so that he forgot the fierce contest around him and coolly worked with a sword as he never had in his life. And if his ancient blade didn’t blaze angrily against its rival, that was the impression it gave those who saw it then.
Strongblade was surprised by Springbuck’s new virtuosity but not distressed by it, as they fought back and forth before the throne, neither gaining nor giving up more than a pace or two. Strongblade made a semicircular parry, moving from a high to a low line of engagement, and Springbuck threw all his sinew into a bind that drove his foe to the very edge of the dais. When he had the Usurper at the brink, the Prince stopped and stepped back, sweat running from his face, and permitted Strongblade to return to the center of the platform.
“I’ll end your reign here, so there’s no uncertainty about it,” he said.
The other, outraged beyond anger, intoned in a low voice, moving Flarecore in slow passes. The Prince’s eyes went wide as the sword’s blade grew bright, passing through red to white, and ran with coursing flame.
Flarecore burned! Strongblade had been given its activating spell. Gritting his teeth, Springbuck began the duel anew.
At their first tentative touch, black sparks jumped from the blades. The Usurper’s gauntlets protected his hands. The Prince was thankful that he wore the leathers that covered him from knuckle to elbow, and for Bar’s belled hilt. The conversation of blades was a shower of dark fire-specks and they were both burned, though Springbuck, with chest and upper arms bare, fared worse.
His opponent’s swordsmanship was, as ever, excellent, barren of any frivolity or excesses. It seemed, as it always had to the Prince, a stern sermon in motion and steel against others’ overindulgence in flourish or bravado.
Meanwhile, Ferrian could no longer hold against the advance of Archog and made to back away. But the creature blocked his sword and reached out for him with its free hand; in a moment both lost their balance and rolled on the floor. Ferrian, having lost his sword, snatched a long knife from his boot top and pushed up the visor on the ogre’s helmet as the creature gathered him in a terrifying hug.
The man’s knife was coated with the poison that his people used, so deadly that it would have killed even the ogre quickly. But Archog released its hug and seized each of Ferrian’s wrists in one of its own hard hands. With a ferocious caricature of a laugh, it lunged forward and clamped its wide, fanged mouth over his right arm, biting through flesh and bone and severing the limb that held the knife. Then it flung the man from it and howled in maniacal glee.
His right arm gone from midbicep down, Ferrian groped in some half-mad attempt to continue the struggle. But Van Duyn was at his side and stopped him, then used his belt as a tourniquet. He thought the wound too terrible for Ferrian to live, as the Horseblooded collapsed. Andre came to help, laying down his sword.
Kisst-Haa, who’d seen all this but hadn’t been able to strike for fear of hitting Ferrian, gave a bellow of sheer animal rage at this ruthless display and threw himself at the ogre. They tumbled together on the paving stones, tearing chunks of flesh from each other and snapping savagely. The reptile-man grabbed the ogre’s wrists, just as Archog had done to Ferrian and, powerful as it was, the ogre was no match for infuriated Kisst-Haa, who thrust his great muzzle against the open visor of the other’s helmet. With a merciless bite, he took away most of the exposed face.
Leaping up and standing astride the ogre’s convulsing body, Kisst-Haa shrilled a steam whistle of victory, then wheeled to help Reacher and Katya hold the endangered doors. One of the archers had fallen and another was wounded.
Gil and Hightower had broken the sword wall at the foot of the dais and the fighting in general subsided as they all turned to watch the duel that would decide their fates.
Springbuck couldn’t afford to meet the strokes of Flarecore squarely on, less so now that it burned with occult flame; step by slow step he was being driven to the edge of the dais behind him without even the hope of the mocking courtesy he had extended his opponent.
Think, think, he exhorted himself. You can’t stand against this sword; it’s probably only Bar’s enchantment that keeps it from being severed or melted to slag. You can’t beat the sword; beat the man!
Then it came to him. He backed carefully until he was nearly off the dais, but not quite. He was, however, off the embroidered carpet on which they’d stood and fought. As he parried in quinte a stroke which would have opened him from crown to crotch, he knelt and grabbed the end of the carpet with his free hand and yanked it.
But the trick wasn’t successful. Though Strongblade went down on one knee, he kept his balance and retained Flarecore. Springbuck desperately looped the end of the carpet over Strongblade’s sword and right arm. The material immediately burst into searing flame and the Usurper fell backward with a cry of woe, trying to extricate himself but only managing to drag the carpet around and with him, entangling himself in it still more as he fell down the steps of the dais wrapped in a sheet of crackling death. His clothes were alight; and as the Prince watched in horror, Strongblade died with his lungs filled with the were-fire of Flarecore.
Even as Springbuck called for those standing near to extinguish the flames, the light in the sword was no more and the fire was gone. They knew that Strongblade’s short, violent life was over.
Gil laid down his sword and went to see if he could help Andre and Van Duyn with Ferrian. Reacher and Dunstan stood away from the door they’d been warding and the King of Freegate put aside the bar. When an officer of the guard entered at the front of his squad, the Wolf-Brother said in a loud voice that all might hear: “The true Ku-Mor-Mai is back and the false one dead. Bow your heads and ask his amnesty, that you ever conspired with traitors.”
The officer, not slow of wit, took in the scene quickly and, seeing which way events were moving, did just that, bending his knee. So did his men. Instantly all the courtiers and nobles still able to do so followed suit, paying homage to their new ruler.
Dunstan, who had some of the Berserkergang in him yet, was roving the crowd with his eye. Suddenly he cried, “There!” He sprang forward, charging in pursuit of Yardiff Bey, who’d slipped from the genuflecting throng at the side of the room, Fania beside him. The sorcerer was moving toward the staircase which would take him back to his sanctum. Van Duyn moved to block his way, raising his Garand, but the magician pulled the Queen from behind him and a bullet meant for the heart of the sorcerer found Fania’s white breast moments after her son had died.
Yardiff Bey brushed the appalled Van Duyn out of his way and dashed up the staircase, but Dunstan was right behind like a coursing hunting dog.
“Don’t let him get to the roof!” Gil shouted, snatching up Andre’s sword in the heat of th
e moment and coming after. He was winded by the time he came to the sanctum, but the sight that greeted him in that chamber made him forget his condition.
Yardiff Bey had drawn Dirge and was fighting madly with Dunstan. Their blades licked at each other and Dunstan, the better swordsman, pressed the sorcerer hard.
Then Dunstan disarmed Bey with a quick twist of blades. Bey held his empty right hand out toward Dunstan, and from his voluminous sleeve came a spurt of yellowish smoke or fine powder. Dunstan fell to his knees, choking.
As Gil rushed forward to help, Yardiff Bey stepped back and made a Sign with his hand. Hellish flame leaped up in a ring, for Dunstan was in the center of the pentacle. Trapped in the circle, Dunstan leaped up to hurtle through it to his enemy, but something bounced him back. He tried to cut through it, but though his sword passed it freely, he himself could not.
Gil tried to pull him out by means of the blade, cutting his hands in the doing, but couldn’t. Then the American realized that he had Andre’s sword with him. He tore at the pommel knob and pulled out Calundronius.
He tossed the negator at the invisible wall and gave Dunstan’s sword another tug. Bitter cold and searing heat seemed to travel down the blade and enter him, and stars exploded in his brain. Both he and Dunstan tumbled headlong, the Berserker free of the pentacle.
Gil sat on the floor, dazed, but Dunstan raced after Yardiff Bey again. The American staggered to the door and saw them both wrestling out on the broad flat terrace there, near Cloud Ruler. Though Dunstan still appeared to be in Rage, Bey held his own somehow. The sorcerer contrived to take the Horseblooded in an odd, choking hold. Then he struck him on the side of the head, knocking Dunstan senseless.
Gil pushed himself through the door, but before he could get to them, Yardiff Bey had taken Dunstan over his shoulder and disappeared into a hatch.
The blast of Cloud Ruler departing knocked Gil sprawling again, and the accumulated punishment he’d taken blacked him out.
Chapter Thirty-One
And all should cry Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
“It’s difficult to tell just what happened,” Andre said a few moments later, when several others joined Gil in the tower. The American had just recovered consciousness.
“But Bey is gone,” Andre continued, “and Dunstan with him. He obviously couldn’t use any sorcery on you; he didn’t have time, because Calundronius was near. It’s our bad luck that you didn’t get closer to his demon ship with it.”
The wizard tugged his lip in thought as Hightower growled, “Is there no way we can stop him, that treacherous he-witch?”
“There is a possibility. Somewhere here is stored an artifact, a crystal which imprisons a supernatural being of great might. One could exact a service for releasing it; it might intercept Bey for us. I shall have to contain Calundronius before we search it out.”
Reacher interrupted. “No, there is something else that we must demand of this entity if we find it. I want to be taken back to Freegate as quickly as possible to carry word of our victory and end the siege.”
“Then it will have to be that instrumentality,” Andre said, “for my sister and I are both exhausted.”
* * * *
Yardiff Bey sat within his ship, the least part of his power used to control it.
There was no sign of it in his features, but he, who had long since mastered pain and exterminated any gentler emotion in himself, was in agony.
His supreme Design shattered beyond recovery! Decades-long efforts brought to nothing! The completion of Shardishku-Salamá’s most intricate plan had been torn from his fingers. His minions and allies would founder, rudderless, in his absence.
As Cloud Ruler sped from Earthfast, a new thought pierced the darkness that threatened his mind: where to go? Mercy was unknown to his masters. He shuddered as he thought what forms their retribution could take. He saw with an awful clarity that there could be for him nothing but unending exile and the bitter sustenance of ruined aspirations.
Then he thought of Dunstan, whom he’d taken prisoner on the spur of the moment, thinking that a hostage might be useful; the man seemed a close companion of the hated Gil MacDonald. Might that fact hold some promise, or was he deluding himself?
He sighed and hung his head, almost torpidly, and tried to decide if he wished to continue to live.
* * * *
In the throne room, Springbuck had taken the Crown from his adversary’s brow and, wiping it carefully on the dead man’s cloak, placed it on his own head. The raiders stood silently while household troops, nobles and the rest of the courtiers knelt.
When he’d given them leave to stand, the Ku-Mor-Mai looked out at them, squinting a bit at indistinct features in the middle distance and beyond.
“It’s been the subject of some humor in Court before-times,” he said, his voice firm and full, “that my eyesight is not all it might be. Know, then, that today I see well enough to reckon who is here and who is not, and who stood beside my brother and who didn’t. You in this room and the others who conspired with Strongblade are well known to me.”
At this many in the chamber went sickly and pale. At least one pair of knees gave way, those of an aging merchant who had to be steadied by his trembling wife.
“But you have a hope. I want no more strife and partisanship in Coramonde. Therefore, let any who wish to gain royal clemency throw themselves with a will to ensuring justice in the realm, and healing the hurts of war. A time will come soon when I will personally look into the affairs of each and every one of you; let none be slack or miserly. Now go, leave me. Spread the tidings: Springbuck has taken the throne and a new day is come in Coramonde.”
* * * *
The besieging army at Freegate was mounting a major assault. A great sow had been built, a ramming gyn covered with sturdy wood structured by iron and protected against fire with layers of clay. They were pushing it onto the bridgeway in front of them as the sun peered over the horizon.
Then a dark figure passed across the sky and fear went through them, as a bat-winged shape, manlike but larger than any man, alighted on the bridgeway before them. The demon’s pinions swirled for a moment as it deposited its burden, carried these many miles from Earthfast, and was away with a victorious scream, free at last of indenturement to mortals.
Legion-Marshal Novanwyn, directing the advance, recognized Reacher, King of the free city, standing in their path with a long bundle over his shoulder.
“Strongblade is dead,” the Wolf-Brother said in a voice extraordinary, in him, for its weariness. “And Springbuck is Ku-Mor-Mai.”
So saying, he flung his bundle out and unrolled it. There was the charred body of Strongblade, burned ghastly but recognizable in death. Word spread like sheet lightning through the ranks. Novanwyn said nothing.
“You are commanded to give up this siege and return to Earthfast,” Reacher continued, “and to lift, too, the siege at the Hightower.”
The Legion-Marshal had no intention of returning to answer for his conduct to a new sovereign. “What illusionist’s foolishment is this? Whatever trick has brought you here has mystified our eyes and caused us to imagine the body of the rightful Suzerain. But I say we’ll never abide by your word. Freegate will fall to us, fall to us this very day, and you’ll answer up to our questioning when my inquisitors have their way with you.”
He was about to say on when he went rigid and his eyes widened in surprise. He pitched to the ground and from his back there stood the hilt of a long dagger. Behind him was Midwis, his second-in-command, Midwis whose sons Kanatar and Deotar had been incinerated on this same bridgeway by Yardiff Bey and who wanted nothing more to do with the sorcerer’s affairs.
Midwis
turned to the deputy commanders. “Pull back the sow. Form the hosts for march; we are for the Hightower and Earthfast as soon as we are able.”
* * * *
In his new quarters—formerly his father’s and briefly Strongblade’s—Springbuck toyed with the bowie knife he nowadays wore under the bothersome robes of Court. His Alebowrenian gear stowed in a chest, he still felt uncomfortable in fine raiments.
Across from him sat Gil MacDonald, nursing a tankard of thick beer, his face still carrying a puckered, healing scar from the explosion of his carbine, and his cheek was tattooed from the powder burn. He was meditative, often his habit these days, searching down inside himself and examining feelings and thoughts.
On a small study desk were quills, inks, paper and items of reference with which the new Protector Suzerain was—partially at Gil’s instigation—working on journals and poetry tentatively called The Antechamber Ballads.
Part of his latest poem ran through Gil’s mind:
Now hurting others never was my pleasure, Nor causing wanton cruelty my aim; But if what’s worth preserving has a measure, It’s our willingness to see it through the flame.
Gil rather thought it showed promise. It was a prejudice of his that introspective writings be required of anyone in authority.
But just now Springbuck was pacing the floor.
“So,” he was saying, “I have decided to send Flarecore back to Veganá. There’s more than one war being fought, and Flarecore may well spell victory or defeat away in the south, at the tip of the Crescent Lands.”
His gaze suddenly went far distant. “We barely know what’s happening there. What battles are being fought that might bring safety or peril to Coramonde? It’s a formidable mission, going well beyond our better maps. It may be the linchpin of any further war with Shardishku-Salamá. Andre and Gabrielle agree it’s the thing to do.”
