by Phil Tucker
Tiron wanted to take her in his arms, to hold her close, and an outpouring of words rose to his lips, a desire to tell her how the empire had never made sense, how this madness had always lurked beneath the surface. But movement caught his eye, and he looked to the Bythian.
Asho had drawn his blade. The runes caught fire, and waves of impossible heat radiated from the sword. His hair began to shift and interweave as if he were underwater. “Makaria may be a Virtue, but he is also mortal.” He climbed two more steps and then turned to address the small group. Tiron could sense how much his news had shaken the guards. Even the stalwart Brocuff looked uneasy. Asho stared at them, face grave, his pale silver-green eyes flat and determined. “You all know I was fighting beside Lord Enderl when he died, that the Grace himself knighted me for my valor. But what you don’t know is that the Grace was mortally wounded that day. I saw him fall with my own eyes. He should have died. Instead, he took a black potion from an Aletheian advisor. He magically healed and rose to flee the battlefield.”
“What?” Brocuff’s face darkened with anger. “You’re lying.”
“No!” Asho pointed at the constable with his blade, the black, cruel length of it glimmering with hellish intensity. “I swear it by my hope for Ascension. I don’t know what’s going on in the halls of Aletheia, but I know this: the Grace is but a man, and he is weak. He turned away from his destiny and betrayed our deepest beliefs. Now he sends a Virtue to do Lord Laur’s dirty work. Maybe once the Virtues and the Grace were holy men, but now they’ve become pawns in mortal politics. That man upstairs may be worth ten knights, but he’s just a man. Noble as he may seem, he’s become the enemy. Our enemy. He’s come here to kill Lady Kyferin, and I for one don’t intend to let him succeed. Do you?”
There was a minute of silence, and then the guards drew their swords, first one, then two more, then all at once. Brocuff growled beneath his breath and drew his wide, chopping blade.
Tiron watched Asho grudgingly, with newfound respect. The Bythian bore no resemblance to the sullen squire he’d once been. He was no war leader like Enderl or Jander, but here and now, in this cramped, dark room with his fiery blade and demons above and a Virtue opposing them, he managed to stir even Tiron’s heart.
Tiron grinned nastily and turned to the others. “Come on. Let’s go show them what happens when they arouse the ire of the Black Wolves.”
The guards turned to him, wide-eyed. “Ser, we’re not—”
“Tonight, you are!” Iskra’s voice rang in the small room. “Each and every one of you! Tonight you are Black Wolves, the Black Wolves of Lady Kyferin! Tonight you hunt, tonight you kill, and tonight we all will show Lord Laur what happens when he places his hand in the wolf’s maw!”
The guards growled their assent. Before Tiron’s eyes they seemed to swell, growing in confidence and lowering their heads as they broadened their shoulders.
Asho reached his hand into a worn pouch by his belt and pulled free a folded crimson cloth. He let it unfurl, and Tiron felt a sudden pounding in his chest.
“The Everflame,” he whispered.
Asho bared his teeth in a feral smile. “Come, then. Honor to Lady Kyferin! Honor to the Ascendant, to his truth, and death to those false ones who oppose us! Let us hunt! Follow the Everflame to war!”
He turned and ran up the stairs, and with a roar the others followed right behind him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Kethe felt herself a fell queen of war as she watched Kitan’s men march to their doom. Their armored shapes looked small on the causeway below, which pointed accusingly at the Hold like a dwindling finger. Standing high up the slope on the mainland behind them and surrounded by the Hrethings, she knew deep down in her bones that not one of those knights would return from that causeway alive.
This had been the most dangerous part of their plan; had a single knight noticed Kethe’s force high up on the mountain slope, then battle would have been joined immediately and without the choke point that was so necessary to their victory. But they hadn’t. Tiron’s tale had lulled their senses, and they’d been taken by the mystery and horror of the Hold.
Perfect.
Turning, she nodded to Elon, who grunted and began to haul the branches off his pride and joy. All week he had labored at his forge, directing others as they worked against the clock to repair and strengthen and improve upon the ancient ballista. Now it was crouched on the mountain slope like a massive predatory bird, its arms thick and broad like the wings of an eagle, its hammered black iron body riveted and exuding a lethal power.
With the last of the branches tossed aside, Elon took up a rope as thick as his wrist as seven other men moved into place to do the same. This procedure had been rehearsed time and time again. Each wrapped the rope around his forearm and then looped it around his waist. They were the strongest men of their group, each built like a bull, broad-backed and barrel-chested. Even amongst such company, Elon stood out like a giant. Once they were all ready, he nodded to two other men who were waiting with mallets. They raised them high, then swung and knocked the wooden wedges out from the ballista’s two great wheels.
The massive construct lurched forward and stopped as the eight men leaned back against the pull. Sinews corded and muscles rippled as they arrested the massive machine’s descent down the slope. They’d spent several mornings clearing and beating down the earth, laying down flat rocks and building as smooth a ramp as they could to the platform below. Now they fought to lower the ballista slowly, foot by foot, the wood creaking as it descended ten feet, then twenty, then came to a stop on the cunningly disguised earthen platform that stood just fifteen feet above the causeway itself.
Kethe watched the distant Hold. A group of some twenty or thirty knights had remained to plug the entrance to the Hold, while others had swept out and around on both sides. A central force had plunged into the Hold proper, and any moment now they should hear the explosion.
Everyone held their breaths and leaned forward, waiting, watching. Staring into the gathering dusk as if they could pierce the stone walls of the Hold into the storage room itself.
But nothing happened. Had Tiron been caught? Had the barrel failed to ignite?
Sweat prickled Kethe’s brow, and then, suddenly, they all heard it. The explosion was muffled, a flattened crumph that sent ravens cawing into the air, but still Kethe felt a thrilling surge of excitement. It had worked!
She raised her hand and pointed down the slope. Seventy Hrething bowmen rose from where they had hidden behind rocks or lain in depressions to descend to a point ten feet above the ballista. They each stabbed five arrows into the dirt and then knelt so that they would be right at hand.
Kethe heard the first cries and roars. The madness had to be total. She was the sole remaining fighter left this high up on the slope, but she was loath to abandon her vantage point. She stared into the night, where the high peaks were now deep purple and glittering ice. Night had nearly fallen. Voices were echoing across the waters in their panic and fury. She saw movement at the Hold’s gate and heard an indistinct command being yelled in anger. The knights on the causeway hesitated, then turned to race back to the shoreline.
Below, she saw Elon and the second strongest man slide their oak staves into the hubs of the ballista and crank them down. Even in the dusk she could see the effort it took both men to draw the thick rope back along the main groove. The huge arms bent back, an inch at a time, and still Elon drew back the cord. It had taken Elon and his team a full day to disassemble the ballista and carry its parts out of the Hold and up to this height, another day to assemble it and run tests. Now she shuddered to think what that massive spear would do to the knights racing obliviously toward their deaths.
There was a final, straining crank, and then Elon released his oaken spar with a gasp. A massive spear was dropped into the groove. It was three yards long and two inches thick, with a leaf-bladed head six inches long. Elon sighted down the groove, watching, waiting, hand on the
catch that would release the cord.
The knights were pounding toward them, forty, fifty of them. Kethe felt like crying out with impatience, but she bit down on her tongue. On came the men who had sworn to murder her and her mother and their followers. They were killers all, cold-blooded monsters. They deserved no mercy. Still, Kethe dreaded what was about to happen to them.
“Fire,” whispered Elon, and pulled the catch.
The ballista convulsed, jumping in place with the violence of its release. The spear simply vanished. There was a high, keening sound, and then the knights in the front simply lifted off their feet and flew backward with a scream. Six of them fell to the ground, with many more tripping over their bodies.
Elon wasted no time. He was at the cranks, working his stave in and out as he drew the cord back. Another spear was dropped in.
The knights at the fore had frozen in shock in the middle of the causeway. Shouts came from the back of the group as more of them fled the Hold. Those in the front were at a complete loss as to what had happened. They knelt by the fallen men, then leaped to their feet in alarm.
Wait, Kethe urged them. Waste more time. Just stand right there.
Sweat gleamed on Elon’s bare arms. He grunted and locked the ballista in place and checked the sighting. The knights were running around their fallen companions now, swords catching the moon’s first light in quick flashes like a fish spied briefly in the depths of a pond. They ran on, yelling their war cries at an invisible foe, and again Elon whispered to himself.
The ballista launched its second spear.
Another half-dozen men were abruptly knocked back, but this time Elon’s aim had been a little high. He caught the front three in the head, bursting helms and shattering skulls before the spear punched into the men behind them. Down they went, like puppets whose strings had been cut. More men tripped over them, but this time nobody stopped to ponder their sudden deaths. On they came.
Elon and his men got to work, cranking back the ballista. They’d have time for one more shot, thought Kethe, just as the lead knight passed an innocuous marker that stood erect beside the causeway.
“Draw,” called out Kolgrímr. The seventy Hrethings drew their arrows back, the air growing taut with tension. On charged the knights, and then Kolgrímr cried out, “Fire!” and as one the archers released. A dark cloud sprang forth into the night sky, darker even than the purples and slate blues overhead, and fell amongst the knights.
Kethe had examined one of the Hrething arrows before. As thick as a finger and fletched with goose feathers, they were used to hunt the large cliff goats or turned toward grimmer purposes when monstrosities descended from the slopes. They hit with terrible force, and the leading knights crumpled under their onslaught. Kethe tried to guess the number of dead. Thirty or forty knights lay still on the bloodied causeway. Another twenty or thirty were still pounding forward, shields raised now to ward off any more arrows.
Something caught her eye. A single man was walking down the length of the causeway, his white armor glowing like the moon. He exuded a sense of purpose and calm that chilled Kethe even at this distance.
She slid down quickly to where Elon was working. “Your next bolt. Take out that man at the back.”
“Just the one?” Elon hesitated, but nodded. He cranked the hub one last time and then jumped back to align the ballista. The spear was dropped into the groove.
They had precious seconds left. She had to run down and lead the attack, but she waited, frozen.
Elon angled the ballista with great care as the man in the white armor continued to walk unhurriedly toward them. Elon hesitated, exhaled, then released the catch. The ballista leaped again with a crack. Kethe’s stomach clenched as that high, keening sound filled the air. The bolt sailed over the knights, almost too quick to follow, a fleeting shadow.
The knight in white armor strode forward, seemingly oblivious. Then, impossibly, alerted by some sixth sense, he brought up his shield with inhuman speed and twisted his body. The great spear smashed into his shield and shattered, fragments spinning away into the night.
Kethe gaped. Her tension curdled into disbelief and then fear. The white knight looked up at where the ballista was placed and she felt his gaze fall upon her. Her fear turned to terror, which finally sparked her fury.
Kethe drew her sword. “For Lady Kyferin!” she yelled. “For the White Gate!”
She ran nimbly down the slope and threaded a path through the archers and the band of men who stood awaiting her with Ser Wyland. She sprinted past them, sure-footed, down the last slope and across the beach to smash into the knights just as they were about to step off the causeway.
The bottleneck was key. The first four enemy knights charged off the causeway and into a wall of waiting swords. They screamed their defiance and swung their blades, but were parried even as others stabbed past their shields. The knights screamed. Two fell, one pressed forward his attack, while the fourth tried to retreat.
Ser Wyland wielded his blade with both hands, eschewing his shield, and he roared as he swung, hammering his opponents as Kethe darted forward behind the guard of one knight and slid her blade into his armpit as he raised his blow to parry Ser Wyland. The man grunted and died and another stepped into his place.
The ground around the choke point became slick with blood. A number of the enemy knights abandoned the causeway to wade knee-deep through the shallows and gain the land. The Hrethings fired a hail of arrows down upon them, and while some cried out and fell back into the water with a splash, many more reached the shore.
“We’re being flanked!” Ser Wyland cast wild looks in both directions.
The sheer number of the enemies had become apparent. A score remained on the causeway, stepping over the bodies of their fallen to clash with the defenders, but the enemy knights were now moving in to envelop them on both sides. Ser Wyland grabbed the ram’s horn that hung around his neck and put the tip to his lips. A moment later the dusk was rent by the clear call of the horn, and was answered on the slopes above by a ragged cry from the archers.
“Charge!” Kolgrímr’s voice was faint, but the sound of seventy men racing down the slope, hatchets and stabbing blades in hand, filled the air like a small avalanche.
The pressure that Kethe’s group was feeling from the sides and even behind suddenly lessened as Kitan’s knights turned to face the new onslaught, and Kethe laughed and plunged forward, feinting high and then bringing her blade in a sweeping cut across her enemy’s thighs. She didn’t stop. She was the flickerflash of lightning in the belly of a storm cloud, light and free to dance and whirl amongst these tottering and stumbling men. Each was ponderous and slow in his armor, their swords coming at her as if they were moving through water.
Something was burning within her, a white and banishing flame that fed on her soul even as it gave her wings. She felt alive, truly alive, as the darkness seemed to lighten around her and details became almost painfully salient. Wide eyes within polished steel helms. The cold, mineral tang of the lake water mixed now with the coppery taste of blood in the air and the churned-up silt. The raw, ragged sound of men killing each other all around her. The sharp, harsh clang of blade on blade, the wet, sucking sound of flesh being opened. Screams. Curses. Pleas for mercy. The mix of sand and gravel beneath her boots. The burn in her arms, in her throat, in her lungs. Her blade was a serpent’s tongue, darting here, stabbing there. Not for her the fixed combat, going toe-to-toe with a foe till one of them died; she dealt blows and moved on, slipping and leaping and ducking and spinning. Brocuff would have groaned at the number of times she showed her back, but nobody was fast enough to deal her a blow.
Kethe pressed deeper into the ranks of the enemy, leaving Ser Wyland and their guards behind. They constrained her. Here, with knights on all sides, she could truly relax and flow. The last of her fear receded, and she found herself relaxing, sensing her enemies as they moved around her. She didn’t fight to keep them all in sight; instead, she sim
ply kept moving, stepping and twisting, never remaining in one spot for long. Men turned away from the fight in a vain attempt to follow her, to strike back at her lithe form, and in doing so blunted their own charge off the causeway.
Suddenly she was through, out the rear of their pack, with the Hold rising before her in the gloom of dusk, its upper towers illuminated by the soft light of the waning moon.
The white knight was striding down the causeway toward her. His plate armor was beautiful. It seemed to glow with a soft, silver light all of its own, and his blade was a shard of starlight. His shield was shaped like a kite, its tapering point nearly reaching his shin, and on its front was emblazoned the ancient rune for Happiness.
Kethe stood still, chest rising and falling as she regained her breath. Behind her the melee continued, a sinkhole of violence and blood. The causeway, however, gleamed like a road of bone, strangely pure and simple. It was here that she would fight this Virtue. It was here that he would kill her.
Makaria lifted his visor. He was a handsome man, dark skinned, with a manner both solemn and grave. “A clever plan.” His voice carried almost eerily over the sound of battle. “Was it Ser Wyland’s?”
“No,” said Kethe. “My mother’s and Asho’s.”
“So, she still lives. Your Ser Tiron is a most convincing liar.” He smiled sorrowfully. “Good. I grieved when I heard she had been slain in prayer.”
Kethe fought to regain her breath. “What are you doing here? Why?”
Makaria’s sorrow seemed to deepen. “We must secure the Hold. There is a danger in these mountains that we must counter, and the Grace has accepted Lord Laur as the rightful lord of Kyferin Castle. I wish that it were otherwise.” So saying, he raised his blade, presented himself at a three-quarter angle and began to approach her, sliding his feet forward. He was as relaxed as she had been but a moment ago, but now Kethe found that her fear and bewilderment were making it impossible to grasp that joy. This was a Virtue. How was she supposed to fight him?
