Chased By War

by Michael Wolff

  She is strong. The thought thrummed true despite the evidence. There was everything to say that Shayna was just another servant broken by the inhuman hell that was servitude. Her eyes, though, were not those of a broken peon. They flashed with an intelligence and patience only saints could match. Mykel felt for her as he joined her on the rafters. The more resiliency servants shown, the more eager the blueblood seemed to break that spirit.

  The knights came soon after. Their horses trotted back and forth at the first row. Sometimes they threw a bronze image to the girls with large doe eyes. Others had their squires race through the rows to offer a silken handkerchief or a long petaled rose. No matter the prize the girls always giggled at the knight’s smile. Mykel could have told them to mark their eyes instead. Each knight latched fiery lust for those girls with round breasts, or those with a love of fucking.

  “Robert Le Qyuri, son of House Qyuri!” A herald boomed. A wiry man in a golden suit of armor, he hefted a shield that carried the vague shape of an A, wreathed by herds of horses, both speeding and prancing. He was a visiting emissary from an Amdenion colony on the Syhracui lands, Mykel explained to Shayna. The “A” meant his House claimed descent from the lineage of Alexander, an ancient and great king.

  “A king if he had lived to see his empire grow,” Mykel continued in rankled bitterness. “He died before he could rule it.”

  “Howard Nebu, son of House Nebu!” again the herald boomed. This time a thick-faced man came into view, his silver visor drawn back on his brow to reveal pug nose and dank teeth rotting in his gums. Through a veil of lank auburn hair two bright eyes gleamed. He carried no shield but there was a fat cross decorating his horse’s flanks, silver upon the verdant linen on the horse’s rump, surrounded by a field of stars.

  “Another throne-catcher,” Mykel murmured under the throng’s approval. “His ancestor’s from after Alexander died. The one who razed Jael to the ground.” The others came streaming out to the crowd. Mykel murmured names as each suit of armor came forth, though there was a hint of unneeded contempt for most of them. “Sword of the Noon?” he grumbled. “If he isn’t careful he won’t live to be Sword of the Zenith.” Then Mykel twitched as one body the crowd gasped and rose.

  At the opposite end of the square another knight came on a horse. Mykel knew who it was. Sutyr. The red helm, crowned by a gold trident stiffed upright. The T-visor that imprisoned a dark void. A spiderweb of black-lined diamonds traced a pattern upon the crimson helm, as though to add another mystery from its design. A gray cloak hid everything from the shoulders down. With distance lessened everyone saw the cloak was smoke, roiling and churning against invisible prisons. The mount that carried him was adorned the same: blood red with armaments shifting from gray to black and back again.

  It wasn’t long before gossip darted back and forth across the populace. They thought it a game. They thought it entertainment. Mykel traded glances with Lazarus, and was surprised at the other’s shake of the head. No. Do not act. It would be suicide to confront him. Grudgingly Mykel nodded. Only the fool would act against the odds that towered against him.

  Out on the field, the knights raised their lances to lord and maiden before assembling to the far end of the field. Directly opposite were the challengers. While the first party of knights was the sons of blueblood, the challengers were a rag-tag group of third sons and just-blessed knights. Most looked green to the gills. They had a right to be. They didn’t have the luxury of battle. Should a twist of fate bless their weaponry, the champions could utter a word, and the challengers could find themselves forgotten within a dungeon cell for the rest of their years. A blessing? It was more of a curse.

  The trumpets sounded, the arena came alive with the thunderous pounding of horse-hooves, and the mighty crack of wooden lances against fresh-forged armor echoed into the ranks of on-lookers. Those knights still on their horses were given new lances by squires and ran the gauntlet again. Those unhorsed were battling each other with sword and dagger and mace. The battle was generous with the lesser brood, until some of the higher blood joined in the melee. The contest ended there. No one would dare touch a royal-born. The blueblood knew this, and took great sport from beating the shit out of their bastard-born cousins.

  “Lord Sutyr and Lord Robert Le Qyuri!” Mykel perked. He watched Le Qyuri making his way to the pavilion’s end. He was a good warrior, winning nine fights out of nine. It was said he was generous and chivalrous to his foes. Mykel hoped the day had bled his virtues dry. They would only hamper him with this opponent.

  The trumpet sounded, horse and rider bled in watercolor, their charges like thunder upon the ground. Mykel watched Le Qyuri’s lance remain steady. Almost there. Almost there. Come on! You can beat him!

  Mykel should have known better. Le Qyuri’s lance smote the demon knight to no avail. The wood splintered into sharp fragments against the cloak suddenly made steel. Le Qyuri’s eyes bulged as the other’s hand took to his throat, drove him off his horse and into the dirt. A dumpy little man hurried to Le Qyuri’s side, yelped when the young knight shoved him away. A gold hilted broadsword. Finely crafted, but forged by mortal hands.

  Sutyr cocked his head to one side, and a hilt exploded from a brimstone shoulder. With the slurp of leaking blood Sutyr pulled free a massive grotesque sword, gripping it by a prong from the hilt. Rekka. Pity welled up in the librarian. The battle was over. The fools just didn’t know it yet.

  Le Qyuri was the most foolish of them at all. The gold-hilted broadsword made patterns in the air from quicksilver wrists, ending at a downward angle across the torso. It was a stance meant for continuous offense. With a roar the princeling charged, blade flickering from side to side to confuse the opponent...to no avail. A crash of steel twisted daggers in the ears, wrenched gasps from the pavilions. Sutyr had moved only an inch, and that only an inch of the slivered steel. The broadsword shattered against the impact.

  No one was more surprised than Le Qyuri. Again, the dumpy man ran to the field, again a broadsword was pulled free. Rage boiled the young knight; one had only to imagine the steam hissing from his frame to complete the spectacle. No. The insanity of the first failing, from a world of privileged victories and unabashed praise, shook the blueblood with fear; and then anger that the fear was even there to begin with.

  Again the charge. Again the slight motion. Again the wrenching clash of steel. Le Qyuri found himself holding a bladeless hilt, screaming as the threads of molten steel hissed down his fingers. Somehow the foot-long blade had been melted.

  Dark laughter rang across the pavilion, mingling with the clenched grunts as a host of squires cleaned hand from molten steel. The hand was an ugly red, but at least none of the fingers had been fused together. Le Qyuri’s eyes shot daggers at the bumbling squires, ripped the offered sword from their calloused hands. A rapier, this time. Not a broadsword, no. Not a weapon of strength. A rapier. A child’s toy. A woman’s weapon.

  “You want to play? Fine. Let’s play.”

  The two charged. Steel sang on steel. The onlookers watched, hopeful that combat matched would be a battle of skill. But anyone versed in the art of steel knew from the katas that the brimstone knight was merely playing.

  Rift of Struggling Demons. Laughter of A Dead Dragon. Games of Steel.

  Squire Gives Mocking Bow. Frenzy of Anger. Madness of Inferiority.

  Master Before Pupil. Victory Before First Strike. Hungry for Conquest.

  Le Qyuri’s face was white from both fear and exertion. Mykel could read the princeling’s thoughts as though upon a book. Impossible. I am of noble blood. The finest masters of weaponry were summoned year-round to train me. Victory was a sweet wine; he had drunk enough to think himself a demi-god of legend. Never once had he saw himself as the fallen in battle.

  There’s always som
eone stronger.

  Sutyr stepped forward and casually swatted at the other’s sword. There was the hiss of coals upon a furnace, and the sword was without a point. Another swat came, and another, chopping the sword piece by piece, until there was only a hilt in Le Qyuri’s white-knuckled fingers. Le Qyuri staggered back. “Squire! Squire!” Another squire came onto the field, only to find the demon knight’s butcher-sword three inches from his back. The fool was dead before he hit the ground.

  Le Qyuri dashed for the weapon and twisted as he slashed, adding more force to the intended blow. Sutyr easily evaded the deathblow, spinning a counterstroke that damn near tore the blade from Le Qyuri’s fingers. Again, the blueblood came around for the deathblow, and suddenly found the crescent sliver bare inches from his throat. No cries of mercy, as the audience chanted for. Mykel felt his flesh grow cold. There was no mercy within the brimstone warrior. None at all.

  Mykel knew the outcome before the newest squires took a single step towards the duelists. Quick as a snap of embers Rekka plunged into the hapless Le Qyuri’s throat. One twist to hack out blood, two to rip the Adam’s apple out with Rekka’s point. A final gesture, almost an afterthought, and the princeling’s head rolled to the edge of the joust’s wooden fences.

  A thousand words exploded from the crowd, from maidens covering faces with lily-white hands, from veteran knights who saw Sutyr’s blighted arrogance from the start and knew Le Qyuri’s fate against such a monster. Loudest of all was an old man at the royalborn’s pavilion. With face creased and hair a shock of silver it was easy to name the man Le Qyuri’s father. A cough rattled him from head to toe. Somehow the words were forced through the phlegm. “Kill that son of a bitch!”

  No one moved. The squires had seen their fill of their brethren’s fate; no order was worth a bloody death. Not even the knights, who felt ten-years old from the roiling malice within the T-visor. “Fine!” From his waist, the elder Le Qyuri ripped a broadsword free, though it was a struggle to carry with cursed, brittle fingers. Again a gesture, like swatting a fly. The father’s head joined its’ son.

  Amusement drained, Sutyr met Mykel’s gaze, and words unspoken crackled between them. You know what you face now, librarian. You cannot protect what you would have yours. I shall not be so merciful upon our next meeting. With that the demon knight returned to a pavilion no one really noticed and was met with little concern when it vanished.

  Mykel rose to offer Shayna a hand only to see she was no longer sitting aside him. Warnings flared in the librarian’s mind. A lowborn squire, with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. A smile for Shayna; the prey of a sexual conquest. Before anyone noticed Mykel disappeared like the ghost he’d learned to become.

  Where? The lust. He knew that lust well. It was the kind of lust that would not wait. The squire wanted it now, in the open; the rules of tradition be damned. Within minutes he heard a scream. It broke the miasma of mutters and gossip, yet no one moved a step to discover the source. Mykel found the tent and ducked inside.

  For a moment, he paled. He was too late. Shayna’s skirts were already ripped from her thighs. The nameless squire’s small member bludgeoned her with each savage thrust.

  Kill him.

  Somehow, he threw the fool off Shayna. The blueblood snarled and earned a bloody fist in return.

  Son of a bitch deserves it!

  Mykel’s fist rose and fell like a hammer. Bone cracked again and again.

  He.

  Deserves.

  To.

  Die!

  When it was finally over, when the battle-lust was spent, Mykel found a dull gaze staring up at him. The blood on his hand burned as though afire. Damn. Not again. Mykel turned only to find his arms filled with a sobbing Shayna. For a moment he lingered in the embrace, offering soothing sounds to the chambermaid.

  “Lad.” The librarian all but leapt from his skin. Lazarus gave him a look that was part pleased and part weariness. Poking heads over his shoulders were two boys clothed in white, a contrast from the tanned skin of working grueling hours under the sun. “In five minutes, the body will be discovered. I must be there. These two will take you to my private chambers. Do not look as though you’re trying to flee and you should be fine. Afterwards you will meet me at the stable-yards. Is this clear?”

  Mykel could only nod, then started as the other white-cloaked boy took Shayna’s arm. “Where are you taking her?”

  “It has to be this way, lad. It’s disaster to have the two of you together. Don’t worry. You’ll see each other soon enough.”

  The librarian nodded, and then ripped his arm free of the youngling’s touch. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you even dare touch me.” The poison was so deep in his eyes the healer took a step back at its sheer loathing. Lazarus said something calming. Mykel would have none of that. First, they make you walk in smallclothes, then they bleed you with leeches. Not again, the librarian vowed. Never again.

  XVI

  In the end, it didn’t make much difference. The battle-fire thinned out, leaving Mykel boneless. The first step was a near-collapse, but there was a second step after the first, and then a third. By the tenth the librarian still wobbled, but he was standing, and that was the important thing. Mykel smiled as he passed guards asleep on their heels. It was a small victory; all the same the librarian nurtured it. He needed all the help he could get.

  Ultimately, he came across a balcony hidden in shadow. Mykel stared at the snow, though he did not see it. Instead he saw the ghosts of memories long since passed. A man grown and he might as well paint a bull’s-eye on his chest. Jests and jeers, games of cruelty, a source of fun for all to enjoy. See the cripple. Step right up and make him cry. Always a good source of fun.

  A fiery glow roiled at the edge of vision, pulling Mykel around the balcony, through some chambers and many windows, all the way to the ledge suspended above the gardens. There was a great bonfire in the center, and from the people arranged about it Mykel guessed he had stumbled into some sort of ritual.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Mykel near jumped out of his skin. I’m really getting tired of that. Worse was the fact that it was Matt, not John this time. Really, really tired of that.

  “You know what’s going on?”

  “Just watch.”

  Down below the rhythmic hum died down at the presence of a peasant stepping to the head of the fire. “For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Vincent MacIlvain. I’ve been Lazarus’ blacksmith for thirty years. Most of you know I was not a native citizen. I came from the North seeking fortune and adventure. Instead I found a wife and three beautiful children. They...They didn’t make it. I don’t know why God saw fit to bring my children to His side. What I do know is that I wouldn’t be here if not for Lord Lazarus. If he says the Coicro are hell-bent on conquest, then they are the devil incarnate as far as I’m concerned. Which...Which is why I’m joining the Captain ‘s crew. Those bastards won’t get a victory on my watch. I won’t let them.” Not an eye was dry when the blacksmith stepped down.

  Almost immediately another peasant took MacIlvain’s place and told his story, followed by another, and another, all the way down to the last, a widow with two small children at her skirts. She didn’t say much, but she didn’t need to; everything had already been said. The servants gathered her up in their arms, and for a moment everything was all right.

  “I bet you the whole lot of them volunteers for the army after this is done.” Tolrep sipped whiskey from a small wine cup. “Look, Myke. You should know it wasn’t Stromgald who didn’t involve you with the Slayers. It was me.”

  A flash of equal parts frustration, rage and curiosity almost overwhelmed the librarian. “Why?”

  “Because I
thought a cripple would just fuck things up. But I saw you with that thing. That woman...that illusion...she was yours. You could have let me or Stromgald deliver the deathblow. But you didn’t. You took charge. Looking at her eyes must have been hell, but you met her eyes and did it. And then you spared Shann when you had every right to kill him. Anyone who has that kind of courage...well, I was wrong. I was a jackass, I was wrong and I’m sorry.”

  Mykel nodded. He could rage against the privateer’s bias, just as he smoldered at the unending marathon of second glances and false smiles growing up in the Fenrir household. It didn’t seem right now, holding this grudge. It served no purpose, so the librarian offered thanks and a handshake to seal the matter.

  “Hello. What’s this now?”

  Shayna had climbed the faux-alter. For a moment, she struggled with speech at the sea of grimed faces, struggled not to inflame an already tense situation with her intrusion of a local rite. Quite the balancing act, Mykel knew, and found himself teetering with anticipation on what she would say.

  “My name is Shayna Kae. I was an acolyte of the Citadel. It was...It was my home. It’s where they taught me that I had a purpose. I was trained to be the advisor of the royal bloodline. I would be the ear of the Queen. I would be the one to remind her that she was mortal, just like the servants they ruled over. And then...the Queen I served is a malignant bitch who saw me a burden. Everything I had been trained for...My entire life...It’s a lie.”

  Deafening silence as the chambermaid fought through her tears. “There were nine hundred people in the Citadel. All of them died when the Citadel was torched. Everyone save me and the Queen.” Again, she paused. “You don’t know how many times I wanted to kill her. I would kill her a million times if it brought my friends back. I know your call. I know it to be true because your pain is the same as mine. We will find you a new home. I promise you that.” Drained, Shayna lurched from the fire and back into the dark.