The Long War 03 - The Red Prince

by A. J. Smith

  Fallon limped over to the general, feeling strange amid so many knights and clerics. At least a dozen men of the White and several of the Black mingled with the knights, angrily assessing the situation and shouting at their subordinates to stand ready.

  Malaki Frith was pale and his hands shook. Two White clerics crouched over him and a third said prayers nearby. A chunk of his neck was missing and his words were gargled through his blood. His eyes were wide and flecked with red. His face was flushed and he gritted his teeth, vibrating with anger. ‘Fallon!’ he shouted again.

  ‘I’m here, my lord, but you should stop talking until they’ve healed you.’

  A White cleric nodded at him and tried to hold the general still. They could help, but Frith was trying to stand, relying on anger and adrenaline to keep him alive.

  ‘Knight general, you need to lie still,’ said a cleric. ‘You are dying. Let us work.’

  ‘See to the king before me,’ choked Frith.

  ‘He is being seen to,’ replied the cleric. ‘As is Commander Tristram.’

  It began to snow, a steady and swirling mist of white coating hundreds of tents. The flurry was sudden and large flakes fell on Fallon’s boots, mingling with the blood from his thigh.

  ‘Move the wounded into the pavilions,’ commanded a White cleric, waving to bound men to assist him.

  Frith moved reluctantly, conceding only when loss of blood stopped him from standing upright. Tristram wasn’t moving and was on a stretcher. The king was carried, his arms and legs dragging limply along the grass.

  ‘I’m not wounded, but can I come too?’ asked Vladimir.

  ‘Just shut up and get over here,’ replied Fallon.

  Knights looked at them, whispering about who they were. Many knew Fallon of Leith and were confused by his lack of a uniform. Some knew the Lord of Mud and started gossiping about what had happened before the Red army arrived from Ro Arnon and why the Darkwald yeomanry were so few.

  ‘Is the stand-off over?’ asked Vladimir, wincing as Fallon’s wounds were being cared for.

  ‘I should imagine so,’ he replied. ‘Regicide has a way of galvanizing people.’

  ‘Theron?’ asked the Lord of Mud.

  Fallon shook his head. ‘Dead.’

  ‘At least he didn’t die on that bloody wooden stake.’

  ‘Still dead.’

  ‘And the king?’ he looked at the motionless body being carried into a tent.

  ‘Dead,’ Fallon repeated. ‘That’s what regicide means.’

  From his left, a triumphant caw signalled the return of the raven’s shade. He turned to see Torian standing in the open, framed by curtains of falling snow. The ghostly bird sat on his shoulder and flapped its wings playfully. All around, knights and clerics of Tor Funweir moved past the apparition, ignorant of its presence, as they collected the riderless horses and assisted the wounded men.

  ‘Fate is a strange thing, exemplar,’ said Torian, the words echoing in Fallon’s mind. ‘For those who understand it, the future is irrelevant. For the gods, fate is all there is.’ The shade smiled again. ‘This is what you must do...’

  CHAPTER 8

  TYR NANON IN THE CITY OF RO WEIR

  HE WAS TIRED. His head hurt. He had not slept or rested for days. Even the slow meditation of the Dokkalfar did nothing to ease his mind and Nanon could not put into words how he felt. He had avoided the multitudes of men sent after him by taking the shape of a black hawk and nesting atop the small Brown chapel.

  Rham Jas Rami was dead, Dalian was captive and undergoing torture, and Kale Glenwood was enchanted. By any measure, they had failed in spectacular fashion to kill the Mistress of Pain. As the only member of their group still free, Nanon was alarmed by the fact that he did not know what to do. He knew that he could not abandon Dalian, and that Rham Jas’s daughter was still a dark-blood, but the old Tyr had been badly shaken by his friend’s death and he couldn’t think clearly. What to do?

  Flying over the knight marshal’s office, he had seen much of the enemy’s movements during the past week. The endless procession of Hounds, the Ro nobles begging for the favour of the enchantress, none of it gave him any useful information. The idle chatter of the wind claws had told him of the Kirin’s death and helped him fill in the blanks of what had happened in the catacombs, but he didn’t know where they were holding Dalian or whether Keisha knew that the dead man was her father.

  He flapped his wings and cawed in frustration. Time was running fast now. Somewhere to the east, in the depths of the Fell, Vithar Loth was preparing his people for mass suicide. With no way to kill the enchantress, he felt defeated. He didn’t like losing. It was a rare feeling, to have been out-thought and out-manoeuvred. If he were human, Nanon would have been swearing and pledging vengeance. As it was, he cawed. He could barely feel his brethren, they were so far away. All that remained of them was a dull thud in his mind, a suicidal impulse that was growing stronger.

  It was twilight in Ro Weir. He had sat still, with barely a flap, for at least two hours. The fools that were searching for him had no idea that he could turn into a bird. A patrol of wind claws had now been circling the Brown chapel for a few minutes and Nanon decided to hop down from his perch and see what he could find out. They were nearing the end of their working day and they slumped around, throwing disinterested glances at anyone within view. Their talk was of bed and sleep, with occasional references to alcohol.

  A gust of wind lifted him above the chapel and he angled his wings to catch a steady air current. The marshal’s office was a huge building with many and varied structures jutting out from the central stone edifice. Nanon had little knowledge of human architecture and the strange logic that drove them to build in blocks and straight lines.

  The building was an administrative centre – at least it used to be – as well as a home for affluent citizens, a store for Weir’s winter needs and probably all sorts of other things. There was definitely a dungeon in there somewhere, but he couldn’t identify where.

  Castellations, walkways, balconies and exposed staircases dotted the stone, patrolled by guardsmen or Karesian flunkies. There were several dozen entrance points and hundreds of areas for exploration, but without a clear idea of where to go he would simply be trusting to luck. But Dalian’s survival depended on him being lucky.

  As frustration began to take hold and the wind picked up, Nanon glided to a low balcony protruding from a squat tower. Two Karesians mounted a lacklustre guard, surveying the empty street below, but neither noticed the hawk. For a moment he remained still, letting the wind flow over his feathers.

  A thought occurred. A strange thought of reclining on a beach with the waves lapping at his toes and his friends seated round him. Rham Jas sat to his left, Dalian to his right and Glenwood played happily in the water. The thought was not his own. Somewhere, deep within the stone of Weir, Dalian Thief Taker was dreaming. The world-weary Karesian had been healed and Nanon could sense a great internal peace, as if Dalian was praying. Being able to sense him in this way was unexpected. Although they had spent time together, his mind had always been hard and unyielding, not allowing Nanon to share his emotions. Perhaps impending death was softening the man’s mind. Where are you, Karesian man? he thought.

  Nanon hopped forward, landing on the balcony floor. The two Karesians, startled by the large bird, took a step back.

  ‘Can you eat hawks?’ asked one of them.

  ‘Dunno,’ replied the other. ‘Not much meat on ’em.’

  The door behind them was closed and the balcony relatively isolated. Nanon shifted back into his normal form and elbowed one of the men in the throat. The other gasped, fumbling for his sword, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Nanon kicked him in the crotch and rammed his head into the stone wall.

  He paused. The first man was alive but struggling to breathe through a crushed windpipe. Nanon crouched beside him.

  ‘Somewhere beneath us is a Karesian man called Dalian. Where exactly is he?�
�

  The man’s eyes were bulging. His mouth was open and his tongue moved violently from side to side.

  ‘Sorry, I seem to have hindered your ability to speak.’

  He stood and glanced across at the second man. He was lying motionless on the floor of the balcony, a small pool of blood spreading from his skull.

  ‘I forget my own strength,’ he mused. ‘Or maybe I forget the weakness of men. Or maybe I’m angry and you two are an outlet for my anger.’

  He crouched down again.

  ‘Just nod. Do you know where Dalian Thief Taker is?’

  The man slowly stopped trying to breathe and his eyes relaxed. He was dead.

  ‘Shit!’ grumbled the forest-dweller.

  He stepped to the edge of the balcony and looked down. He was at a corner of the knight marshal’s office, two storeys up from the street. The front of the large building was a distance away and he couldn’t see any more guards close by.

  ‘Right, you’re somewhere down there,’ he stated, peering at the stone floor. ‘Just soften your mind and I’ll find you. I can’t promise I’ll rescue you, but I will find you.’

  For the time being, though, Dalian’s mind had hardened. There was a slight trail, a silvery path downwards through the stone, but not much to follow.

  Nanon ghosted to the door and pressed his ear against the wood. Silence. The iron handle turned easily and he stepped into a dark corridor leading to a spiral staircase.

  ‘Come on, Dalian, where are you? I can’t just wander around in here.’

  On light feet, he skulked to the stairs. A guard stood looking down at the stone, with his back to the forest-dweller. Nanon smiled at another opportunity to garner some information.

  He wrapped an arm round the guard’s neck and tensed, restricting the man’s breathing. ‘Hello,’ he said, pulling the man’s head back. ‘I know you can’t breathe, so don’t try to talk. I need you to help me and I won’t kill you if you do. Okay?’

  The man spluttered against Nanon’s arm, flapping his hands around in a feeble attempt to free himself.

  ‘Listen!’ he snapped, relaxing his arm slightly. ‘I can be the worst thing you’ve ever met. Or I can be an interesting footnote to your day. Your choice.’

  The man stopped spluttering. ‘What do you want?’ he whispered through a quivering mouth.

  ‘Where’s Dalian Thief Taker?’

  The guardsman raised his arm and pointed a shaking hand down the spiral staircase.

  ‘Yes, thank you, I already knew that,’ said Nanon. ‘Where precisely?’

  ‘The hanging cells... above the catacombs.’

  Nanon tried to smile but grimaced instead. He loosened his grip and punched the guardsman at the back of the neck, rendering him unconscious.

  Flickering torchlight came from up and down the spiral staircase. The way up led to a higher balcony, the way down to the catacombs.

  ‘Talk to me, Karesian man.’

  He closed his eyes and let his mind drift downwards. He seeped into the brickwork, flowing through stone and mortar. Many guards stood below, casually patrolling the lower levels. Through chambers of rich hangings and corridors of carpeted opulence, he followed the echoes of Dalian’s mind. He reached a sloping corridor, plunging into the catacombs. The bloody stone was being cleaned. Men of Ro scrubbed the floor and tried not to look into the darkness. He grimaced as a katana appeared. A pool of blood and torn clothing. The leather armour was in tatters, but there was no body. He felt great pain emanating from the stone. Rham Jas had died there. He had died looking at his daughter, but he had not been at peace. Something had happened to him in death, something vile.

  He pulled his mind back, away from the central chamber. Back in the stairwell, Nanon dropped to his knees. The bastards had killed him and defiled his body. He deserved more. Or maybe he didn’t. He was an assassin, a predator stalking other men. But he was Nanon’s friend and he would be missed. He wanted to cry out and let the universe know that Rham Jas Rami was dead. The universe wouldn’t care, but he felt it should know. The Kirin had no gods, no Giants to miss them or priests to mourn their passing.

  ‘Focus!’ Dalian was still alive and needed his help, if only for a final conversation. Nanon liked talking to the Karesian man and he hoped they could at least say goodbye.

  He let his mind drift again. He stayed clear of the Kirin’s blood, delving into the rest of the catacombs. Chamber after chamber, down dark, forbidding corridors, he searched. The contortions of religion taking place in the bowels of Weir were jarring to his eyes, but he forced himself to continue. Hundreds of swaying sycophants danced to the Sisters’ new song. They chanted and cavorted, pledging themselves to a new era of pleasure and blood, abandoning their morality and wilfully following an abomination.

  He felt Dalian again. The Karesian man was slipping into a peaceful acceptance of death. Nanon doubted that he was conscious, but he was still alive and his mind still churned.

  ‘There you are!’ Nanon smiled.

  He returned to his body and nimbly sprinted down the stairs, making no sound and letting Dalian’s thoughts guide him. He ghosted past side passages and patrolling soldiers, sticking to the darkness, until he emerged on to another wide balcony. This one looked out over a large underground chamber, well below the city streets. Men and women writhed on the floor of the balcony, engaging in human coitus.

  Nanon paused, tilting his head and watching the bizarre display. The sweaty ritual had no love or tenderness, just a euphoric repetition of movements, as if they were acting out of compliance. Saara kept her followers lost in shallow sensation, the better to control them.

  It took a few moments for Nanon mentally to untangle the mound of naked bodies and count the participants. There were six of them, three men and three women, their blank, deathly eyes conveying pain and pleasure but no thought. There was no way stealthily to pass by the cavorting humans. Their addled minds had not registered his presence, but that would change if he advanced beyond the shadowy doorway.

  He could still feel Dalian. He was close by, hanging in the cavern beyond. Chains slowly rippled in the black air, attached to cages, suspended over catacombs. Nanon wasn’t close enough to see into the cages, but the Karesian man’s thoughts were now more forceful. His mind had left the beach and his friends, and Dalian now wandered through fire. It was cleansing flame and Dalian believed it to be a gift of Jaa. A way of lulling him into peace before further torture and death. Nanon hoped he was right. That his Giant watched him, and that his thoughts were not merely illusions.

  ‘Who are you?’ snapped a voice from the stairs.

  He swore under his breath. He had been foolish and dwelled too long in the doorway. He turned sharply and saw an armoured Ro guardsman with an ample belly and unfocused eyes. Nanon skipped forward, kicking the man in the face and sending him clattering into the solid stone wall.

  The guard was unconscious but the commotion had alerted others from below. Mumbled words of alarm travelled up the stairs and the grunting of coitus from the balcony ceased.

  Nanon reacted quickly, dancing through the doorway and on to the balcony. He kept his face low and sprinted past the naked worshippers, leaping over the railing and into the darkness beyond.

  A surge of energy, a flap of his wings and he glided to a stop against the far wall. He could see further as a hawk, but fine detail was lost. The balcony opposite was now full of soldiers, waving away the participants in the orgy and scanning the catacombs. No one had seen his face or witnessed his transformation. They’d heard a commotion, and some had seen a running figure, but nothing clear or definite. The unconscious man would be out for hours and he had not clearly seen who had kicked him.

  He clamped his talons against an empty torch emplacement and waited. Further along the cavern were the hanging cells. They stretched into shadows, creaking in the gentle wind that whistled past. The first few were empty. Only one cage was occupied.

  When he judged that the guards had l
eft and the orgy was back in full swing, he hopped from the wall and flew to the cage. He let the wind take him and tried not to flap his wings.

  He was weary of being a hawk. Shape-taking was not to be undertaken lightly and the past few months had demanded much of him. Soon he would need to rest in his natural form. To push things too far could cause him to lose focus. But that didn’t matter now.

  He fluttered to a stop on top of the cage. Below, a bent figure sprawled across the steel bars, a mound of limbs and black fabric. Difficult to see where the head was. Nanon pulled in his wings and squeezed through the bars, dropping to the base of the cage. A gap in the blanket revealed a sliver of skin. A forehead, a nose and a mouth. Dark skin, mottled with blood. Dalian Thief Taker was a broken man. He had lost most of his strength. What age could not take from him, the Mistress of Pain had all but destroyed.

  Nanon couldn’t risk turning back into his normal form. The extra weight would create too much noise or cause the rickety cell to break and tumble down. Instead, he hopped across the cage and used his beak to pull back the blanket. The Karesian man underneath was unconscious, his chest barely moving.

  Nanon tried to speak directly to Dalian’s subconscious. The Thief Taker had briefly opened his mind before, unknowingly sharing a dream with his friend, and that was all Nanon needed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Karesian man. I’m sorry we failed. I’m sorry Rham Jas is dead. I’m sorry Glenwood is enchanted. I’m sorry you’re in a cage. I’m just sorry.’

  ‘You have done nothing wrong,’ came the reply.

  ‘You’re not Dalian!’ said Nanon.

  The voice was hollow, echoing with more powerful resonance than a human voice. ‘And you should not be able to talk to me. That privilege belongs to one man.’

  ‘I am not a man,’ replied Nanon.

  The strange voice didn’t respond. It came from the Karesian man’s mind, but it was not Dalian. It was not an unwelcome voice and he could sense that Dalian was comfortable with its presence.