Conrad wrenched the trapper’s lank hair, pulling Fotter’s ear to his mouth. ‘Try to remember that we are the law,’ he scolded, twisting the greasy locks.
‘Sorry, sir.’
Conrad had collected many things as taxes, little of which ever made it back to Kraljevic. There was an abundance of silver, livestock and sexual acts on offer. But beyond those mundane transactions Conrad was building a little empire of his own within the south, claiming property, land and militia. He was accumulating his own small sovereignty. But when the ache was painful, only a girl would do, and when the Accord had been betrayed, a strong display of discipline was essential.
As Conrad and his men reached the crumbling place, a figure emerged tentatively from the tower’s gloomy alcoves. Hesitant to face the crowd, she lingered by the tenebrous vines.
‘That’s Daimonia, my lord.’ Scir Wendel’s voice was pathetic with regret.
‘Come forward, girl,’ Conrad commanded.
The girl emerged, all hair and unconscious womanhood, and stood wondering at the sight of the gathering. It was easy to see she was healthy and of good stock, but more than that she appeared curious and interested.
The Afreyan mercenary grinned approvingly. ‘In my homeland we call such girls little fish,’ he told Sir Conrad.
‘I’d stuff ’er,’ the brutish Cain added bluntly.
‘Quiet, men!’ Conrad was reminded of the goddess statues in Kraljevic: implausible beauty in the form of youth, mother or destroyer. But the ancient artists had no sweeter muse than this one and a sweat of desire flooded his crotch, lust threatening to destroy his command of the moment. He calmed himself; she was his for the taking. He need only will it so.
The crowd began chattering loudly, inexplicably enlivened by a second presence stalking out from the tower. Although visibly drunk, this old wretch presented himself with firm confidence, glaring at the villagers, who nodded in fearful deference. His scowling black brows were perhaps something to be avoided.
Conrad found the old a horrible generation. The elderly had an acute awareness of their own entitlements and a morbid attention to the manners of others. Conrad predicted a loud outburst of some sort before the girl would be handed over.
‘You,’ he told the old man. ‘Your name is Vornir?’
The old man levelled an accusatory look at the crowd. This was too much for some who turned and walked away. No doubt they knew better than to antagonise a raging drunk.
‘I am Jhonan Vornir.’ The old man’s voice was substantial and resonant. ‘As everyone here can attest.’ He glared again at the villagers, who seemed entranced by the whole performance.
‘By the authority of the Geld,’ Conrad declared, noting how nasal his own voice was by comparison. ‘I enforce a proxy tax for the treason of your grandson, Niklos Vornir. I hereby claim your granddaughter as my property. She will become a servant of the Geld for as long as I see fit.’
The old man looked completely unfazed by the announcement and it dawned on Conrad that the senile fool had not understood it.
‘That girl’ – Conrad pointed violently – ‘belongs to me now.’
‘As a Knight of the Accord, I assert my right to dispute your claim by combat.’
There was a great swell of noise and laughter from the crowd. Some threw their hats in the air. The idiots were cheering the old fool on and revelling in his defiance. Conrad realised their interest in this affair was to see an old man slaughtered. It was understandable. There was no appeasing the desire for bloody spectacle among the powerless. Such things gave them an illusory rush of potency.
‘So granted.’ Conrad suffered the old knight’s request.
‘I’ll kill him,’ offered the eager youth Scorcher. The youngest enforcer was keen to please but had precious little decorum.
‘No, I will,’ Conrad decided.
Daimonia had been sent to the tower but now returned hefting an archaic sword and a mail shirt, with which she prepared her grandfather for battle. It struck Conrad as a strange moment. She neither pleaded nor wept, but almost with relish dressed her grandfather for death.
‘I like this girl,’ Conrad told himself. The moment held a fascinating innocence. It reminded him of the old poem:
No one spoke to the old man
Once his wife had died
Only a child, strange with grief
Echoed lost beauty at his side.
Where had he heard that? He remembered his fair sister singing in the golden fields as a child. They had filled those summer afternoons with a wealth of songs and tales, Isabelle’s voice rich with naive joy. The recollection was warming, a brief radiance from the time before their parents’ death. Conrad sniffed. A melancholy had snuck up on him, making him whimper involuntarily. How old would Isabelle be now?
‘Are you all right, Sir Conrad?’
‘Of course I’m alright, Fotter.’ Conrad wiped innocuously at his eye, recovering himself. ‘Is the old man ready yet?’
Ravens circled overhead, quietly soaring around the tower.
Jhonan stepped forth and saluted with his sword. The old man looked as if he were already dead, but he was ready to fight anyway. In his left hand he held a jagged dagger pointed away from Conrad. Ceremonial details were clearly of great significance to the retired knight, but Conrad merely tipped his head in slight acknowledgement.
The crowd fell quiet once the preparations were done. They had formed a semicircle around the killing ground and a look of fevered anticipation filled each stupid face.
The enemies closed in on each other, circling carefully for the first opening. Despite the infirmity of his opponent, Conrad felt a rush of trepidation excite his body. His face burned and his heart raced involuntarily. It belatedly occurred to him how the formal duels of the academy were his only direct experience of combat. He had performed adequately in that arena, albeit often by deceit. Nevertheless, the old knight was best put down quickly.
Jhonan Vornir was smiling as he circled with sword and dagger. He looked as if about to cut up and eat his dinner. Vornir’s confidence made Conrad hate him and want to see those hard eyes weeping blood.
With a rush Conrad lunged at his enemy. His form was excellent and the piercing blow would have driven through a horse. But Jhonan was at his side, stabbing swiftly at Conrad’s unprotected armpit with his dagger. Conrad ripped himself away, convulsing at the galling pain and the tremendous amount of blood let loose.
Cheers rose among the villagers. Their local bastard had almost ended the fight with a single blow. Conrad seethed at the crowd’s excitement, feeling mocked by their pleasure. It dawned on him that they expected Jhonan to win and blatantly wanted to see the Geld humiliated.
With roaring rage he ran at Jhonan, hacking and stabbing. The excruciating soreness in his armpit made each thrust agony, but the pain spurred him on. The Geld Enforcers cheered with cries of ‘come on, Sir Conrad’ and ‘gut ’im!’
Sir Conrad was wasting himself in his temper. Jhonan backed away, parried then rushed in again. The Geld Knight’s shield intercepted the attempt, slamming the old face with a satisfying crunch. Vornir staggered back spitting teeth. Conrad pressed the moment; he chopped at Jhonan’s neck, but a hefty parry met the strike. The swords clanged apart with a shudder.
A swift kick caught the old fool, but Jhonan seized Conrad’s ankle and dragged him hopping through the slushy muck. The crowd laughed raucously.
Conrad caught himself trying to smirk away his own awkward predicament. A momentary setback, his expression seemed to say. A crowd-pleasing amusement before I piss all over the old man’s corpse.
The enforcers were visibly appalled at the ignominious state of their illustrious leader. They were bristling to get stuck in, desperate to cut Jhonan down themselves.
Sweat drenched Conrad’s brow. He wrenched his foot free, falling flat on his back. Mud spattered everywhere. He recovered quickly, trying to remember the old tricks. He pretended to drop his weapon, but Jhonan did not
take the bait. He feigned a retreat, but his enemy would not be fooled. The Geld Knight’s courage was being eroded by the old man’s wolfish cunning. The truth of it was plain: Jhonan Vornir was a raven of war, a true killer who meant to wear him down and destroy him.
Jhonan charged, forcing the Geld Knight to slide uncertainly in the mud. The old man broke through sword range and hacked again with the accursed dagger. Conrad lost his sword and attempted to stem the attack with a grapple.
The clamouring voices mocked Conrad’s predicament as the fighters wrestled furiously. He glimpsed their jeering faces and wanted to stamp on each one.
Locked in intimate combat, the men snarled and spat at each other. Such close quarters were terrain Conrad knew well, but Vornir’s strength was oppressive. Conrad felt a flash of gratification as he swept Jhonan’s ankle and sent the bastard toppling haphazardly. Before the old man could recover his weapons, Conrad was on him, squeezing the strong old neck, forcing wheezing breaths from the warrior’s throat.
‘Now you die, you old relic!’ Conrad’s eyes were bulging with madness. ‘Join your grandson among the traitorous dead, for all to spit upon and despise.’
Jhonan Vornir was growling and gasping. He had too few full fingers to break the strangulating grasp. His face boiled red and he sank his irregular teeth into Conrad’s wrist with a gnashing, chewing spite. Conrad staggered away, his face aghast with an excess of pain.
Jhonan struggled after him, his beard thick with sweat and slivers of flesh. He dragged Conrad down, pressed the Geld Knight’s head into the muck and knelt on it. Forcing his hand up under the illustrious codpiece, he grasped Conrad’s testicles. Clenching with abrupt strength, he crushed his hand into a fist. Conrad pleaded, but there were no cunning words that would overcome Vornir. This was a master of violence and cruelty.
Suffocating in waves of excruciating pain, Conrad began to fade from the moment. His body jarred as his mind fell into the stained pit of memory.
Orphaned as a child, Conrad had been separated from his sister to become an initiate at the Exalt Temple. He had been a beautiful boy then, although that innocence seemed a stranger now. He had dreamed of becoming an adjurator and administering all the rituals of life.
One night while bathing, he had been stroked and probed by the High Adjurator, cupped by those cold and veiny hands. ‘You are the one,’ the Adjurator had croaked, ‘the special one.’ Yearning to be loved, Conrad had surrendered his will to the powerful old man.
The following years had been humiliating and dark. The High Adjurator was insatiable and cruel whilst regarded as saintly and benevolent. He stripped the boy of all dignity and taught him what it was to be utterly at the mercy of another’s power. But the terror of this subjection produced a revelation.
The intimate encounters confirmed Conrad’s conviction that he was indeed special, a favourite of sorts and better than others. He was convinced that in the end everyone would come to understand his superiority in some profound way. His fellow students at the academy had laughed when he tried to explain it to them. But Conrad knew the truth. There was a Secret God, never spoken of by the priests, who would revenge every slight and injury.
He returned to his pain as the villagers of Jaromir became a cheering, roaring army, an overwhelming force riding on the back of Vornir’s triumph.
‘You leave Jaromir now.’ Jhonan’s dominance had made a subjugated boy of Conrad again. ‘Taking not a whit more than is owed you.’
Voices from the Dust
‘The dead teach us all things,’ Adjurator Ivan told the village mourners with practised solemnity. ‘They teach us the future and the past. They teach us how to live and how to die.’
Daimonia had heard this recitation many times; death was common as birds in Jaromir. The coast was beset by Baoth raiders and war loomed for young men recruited to the garrison. Mothers often died in childbirth, children rarely lived beyond infancy, and the infirm were claimed each winter. Now death had seized her brother too.
Every member of the community was present, with one notable exception. Jhonan had been drinking constantly since his duel with the Geld Knight and Daimonia had been forced to leave him and come alone. Nevertheless the fight had enlivened the villagers, reminding them of the power of resistance. Perhaps they were all just a little more stubborn, ever since the night of the inspiring play.
The adjurators had cleaned and dressed her brother for the burning. These were men of the Order of Life, husbands of the Goddess, who lived in a chapel with the local orphans. The adjurators administered all village rituals: the rites of birth, marriage and death.
Despite the adjurators’ best efforts, Niklos looked like a badly made effigy of himself. His body was a husk devoid of kindness, arrogance or foolish bravery. Whatever the essential Niklos was, it was absent from this flesh.
As they carried her brother to the pyre, Daimonia wondered if she too were dead. Her skin was stone pale and she shivered with a nightmarish chill. Her eyes were frozen and tearless, seeing everything yet nothing. Her feelings had become elusive, glimpsed imperfectly through fractured ice.
Even travellers mourned with the community as if the loss were their own. If strangers can weep at the sight of my dead brother, then why can’t I who loved him?
Niklos was laid down and a torch-bearer stood forth, ready to ignite the pyre. An orphan had been chosen for the honour, a strange youth whose mind was broken. Villiam the Fool was bigger and older than Daimonia but would never be able to leave the adjurators’ care as he was too dangerous to look after himself.
Villiam wore a crooked smile as he put the torch to the kindling. He was so proud to be helping that he shook his fist in triumph when the pyre took flame. Some of the villagers scowled at his impiety, but Daimonia kissed him on the cheek.
‘Thank you, Villiam,’ she whispered.
‘I will be your brother now,’ he declared innocently.
Daimonia let out a surprised laugh. Villiam had sometimes nuisanced her grandfather by imitating Jhonan’s gruff mannerisms and following him around the village. She wondered if there was something of the divine in his play.
Adjurator Ivan put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Come along, Villiam,’ he encouraged. ‘Leave Daimonia be.’
The boy went compliantly, his face rearranging into a faraway stare that better suited a wise man than a fool.
With all her heart Daimonia longed to see her mother here. Closing her eyes, she imagined the resolute woman stood among the mourners in her impenetrable armour. How magnificent and untouchable she would try to be, her chin lifted high with pride, brandishing the impervious expression of a Knight of the Accord. Or would she be broken, wailing and screaming at the body of her dead son? Would she be devastated at having ever left her children?
Daimonia caught herself clawing at her own arm in agitation, a habit she had long been rid of. Then came the moment she was anticipating with curiosity and dread. Adjurator Ivan made the sign of the star as he began the ritual. He stared directly at Daimonia with the merest suggestion of a smile. Then with a slow intake of breath, he closed his eyes and his face became completely relaxed, vacant of any expression. When he next spoke, his voice took on gentle tones that approximated those of her dead brother.
‘I came into the world without fear and I leave it the same way,’ Adjurator Ivan began, speaking for Niklos by the power of the Goddess. ‘To my family and friends I wish a life as free as my own.’
The channelling complete, Adjurator Ivan blinked and seemed to become himself again.
‘Niklos’ soul has passed to Mother Cerenox,’ old Frater Moss announced dutifully. He had recorded the adjurator’s sayings in the Book of Dead Words.
Is that all? Daimonia wondered. Niklos’ last words seemed trite and vaguely familiar, like an old adage. There was no mention of Niklos’ turmoil with the Accord. There were no special words for Daimonia, nor hint of the childhood secrets they had shared. There were no words for their absent
mother.
Daimonia eyed the adjurators sharply and wondered whether the whole Order of Life was a sham. Frater Moss was old and miserable, but Adjurator Ivan’s expression was so open she found it hard to imagine him with anything but the kindest intentions. Observing the gathered community with curiosity, she gauged their credulity. From venerable Scir Wendel to the youngest child, everyone had a look of satisfied trust.
Villiam the Fool had wandered from the crowd and fallen; Daimonia saw his terrible writhing shape and ran over hurriedly. Villiam convulsed horribly in the thick mud, his broad shoulders twisting and his legs kicking violently against the earth. His mouth was wide with an unspoken scream, mucus drizzling from his nose. He spread his fingers like the tips of a crown around his head.
Daimonia approached cautiously. She was aware that the Goddess sometimes troubled Villiam and it was best to make sure he didn’t hurt himself. But he was saying something, forcing out words in a familiar voice.
Daimonia drew closer, careful not to be struck by the lashing of Villiam’s arms and legs. She observed his neck straining, his head turning towards her with painful effort. Seeing her, Villiam’s face became earnest.
‘I will be avenged a thousandfold,’ he vowed.
It was the voice of her brother.
A raven broke abruptly from the trees and took flight, circling the mourners. Black wings against grey sky. The raven glided toward Vornir Manor, where shadows suggested skull-like hollows amid the decaying stone.
Within those sepulchral walls old Jhonan crawled drunkenly towards the fire, clinging to the stone as if he might fall from the floor. The warrior had made a fiery memorial of his grandson’s old possessions: a Book of the Accord, a birth-rite bell and a wooden training sword. He spat and snarled at the flame, seeming poised to throw himself in it.
Jhonan cursed the Goddess and plunged his hand into the fire, searing his own flesh. Her shadow fell upon him as he roared and clenched his fist against his chest. He trembled and shrank from the dreadful figure, recoiling from her vindictive presence.
The Way Knight: A Tale of Revenge and Revolution Page 6
