Briar King

by Keyes, Greg

  “But we just got here,” Elseny protested. “Cal Azroth is so unutterably dull.”

  “Yes, it is,” Muriele acknowledged. “Pack your things.”

  Despite himself, Neil felt only relief. War was less dangerous than Glenchest.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MEETING ON THE HEADLAND

  THE SUN ROSE SMOTHERED IN FOG, paling the headland of Aenah with the color and feel of frost, so that William pulled his cloak tighter, though the sea breeze still had summer in it. His gaze searched restlessly down the cliffs to the shatter of rocks there, and beyond to the unsteady lines of water and sky. Around him, fifteen knights sat their horses silently. Robert, his face creased in unaccustomed severity, had dismounted. He, too, gazed out at the sea.

  “Where are they?” William growled.

  Robert shrugged. “You know as well as I that the sea roads are uncertain,” he said. “Saint Lier cares little for the punctuality of mariners.”

  “And even less for that of pirates. You are certain this is arranged? Lesbeth will be returned to us?”

  “We’ve kept up our bargain,” Robert replied. “They will keep theirs. Austrobaurg knows he has extracted all he can from us by her captivity. That’s been made clear.”

  “But why this clandestine meeting? Why insist that we two come along?”

  Ananias Hargoln, captain of the lancers, spoke up. “My very thought, Sire. This seems most transparently a trap.” His blue-steel eyes traveled the line of the coast suspiciously.

  “We’ve covered this ground before. My spies have secured the region,” Robert stated tersely. “Does Sir Ananias doubt his prime minister?”

  Sir Ananias shook his graying head. “Not in the least, my prince. But I do doubt the duke of Austrobaurg. First he takes captive one of the royal family, and now he will exchange her only in the presence of the emperor himself on this saint’s forsaken heath of a headland. Though we agreed to allow only fifteen men apiece, the emperor has it right. This is king-slaying begging to happen.”

  “Austrobaurg will have only fifteen men, as well,” Robert pointed out.

  “So he promised. That does not make it so.”

  Robert pointed to the winding cliffside path that led up from the sea. “We shall have ample time to notice if he brings more. No, Austrobaurg’s motives are far less clandestine. He wants to throw his piss in our face and laugh when we can do nothing in response.”

  “Yes, that fits,” William muttered. “I remember him all too well. A puffed-up fellow, a braggart.” He leaned in close to Robert. “Let him enjoy his moment,” he whispered. “But when this is done, and Lesbeth safe in Eslen—then, Robert, we shall discuss Austrobaurg again.”

  Robert arched his brows. “Indeed,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll make a politician of you after all, Wilm.”

  “Assuming he comes at all,” William added.

  But Robert was nodding at the waves and lifting a finger to point. “There,” he said.

  William’s eyes weren’t what they once had been, but only a few moments later he made out what Robert had seen—the long silhouette of a galley cutting through the whitecaps toward the stony shingle below. Over the crash of surf, he began to make out the pulling chant that went with the long, even strokes of the oars.

  “How many men do you make?” William asked Sir Ananias.

  The knight leaned his lanky frame forward in the saddle and studied the approaching ship.

  “Narry more than fifteen, Sire,” he said at last. “Same as promised.”

  “Might there be more belowdecks?”

  “That there might be, Sire. I advise you stay here on the clifftop whilst I make certain there’s no trickery. Let me keep you safe as I can.”

  “Sound advice, brother,” Robert said.

  “Very well. Meet them on the landing. Tell them you’ve come to insure that the terms of the meeting are kept—on both sides. Tell them they may send an emissary to verify our numbers, as well.”

  He watched as Ananias wound down the narrow trail cut into the white face of the cliffs, shrinking in perspective until he and his mount might have been a silver beetle. He reached the shore just as the ship was beaching, and a figure in gold-chased armor stood in the prow. They spoke, and a few moments later, the knight boarded the galley. A horse was brought up from the hold, and soon a knight of Austrobaurg’s was ascending the headland. As he did so, more horses were brought from the ship to the shore.

  The Austrobaurg knight introduced himself in stilted king’s tongue as Sir Wignhund Fram Hravenfera, and proceeded to search the headland for any troops William might have concealed there. It didn’t take much of a search; the headland was where the plain of Maog Vaost stooped to the sea. It was sheepland, clear of trees and gently sloping, with no concealing ridges or crevasses in any direction.

  Ananias returned presently.

  “They are as agreed,” Sir Ananias said. “Fifteen, no more and no less.”

  “And Lesbeth? She is well?”

  The knight’s long face pinched into a frown. “I did not see her, Sire.”

  William turned to his brother. “What’s going on here, Robert?”

  Robert shrugged. “I do not know. More posturing, no doubt.”

  “I don’t like it, Sire,” Sir Ananias said. “I suggest a withdrawal. Let the prime minister ask the questions.”

  “Indeed,” Robert said. “Let someone with a full set of stones do the talking with this ‘puffed-up’ fellow.”

  “I am thinking only of the emperor and his safety, Prince Robert,” the knight said stiffly.

  “No one is withdrawing,” William said. “I want to speak to Austrobaurg myself.”

  He sat impatiently as the opposing company drew nearer. They were caparisoned in high Hanzish fashion, silver and gold bells jangling on the manes and saddles of their horses, horsehair or feathered plumes streaming from their helms. William had kept his company plain, to avoid recognition on the ride to the cape. But Austrobaurg was shouting to the world who he was, knowing only William and his knights would see.

  Robert was right—it was a boast, salt rubbed in the wound by the duke of a small province who had made the emperor bend to his will.

  The humiliation of it tasted like rotten meat and sat sour in William’s belly.

  The duke of Austrobaurg was a thick, short man with a brushy mustache and eyes as green as a sea swell. His long black hair was streaked gray, and his expression was imperious as he drew rein a few yards away.

  One of his knights raised a hand and spoke.

  “The Duke Alfreix of Austrobaurg greets the empire of Crotheny and wishes well-meeting.”

  Robert cleared his throat. “The emperor—”

  William cut him off, speaking in Hanzish. “What is this, Austrobaurg? Where is my sister? Where is Lesbeth?”

  To his astonishment, the duke appeared puzzled.

  “Lord Emperor?” he said. “I have no knowledge of Her Highness. Why should you ask me of her?”

  William tried to count to seven. He made it only to five.

  “I have no patience for this nonsense,” he exploded. “You have what you wanted: twenty Sorrovian ships lie at the bottom of the sea. Now you will return my sister, or by Saint Fendve I will burn every one of your cities to the ground.”

  The duke shifted his gaze to Robert. “What is His Majesty talking about?” he demanded. “We had an agreement.”

  “You know very well what my royal brother speaks of,” Robert snarled.

  “Your Highness,” Austrobaurg said, looking back to William, “I make nothing of this. I am here at your behest, to settle the matter between Saltmark and the Sorrows. This war benefits no one, as we agreed in our letters.”

  “Robert?” William asked, turning to his brother.

  Robert cackled and kicked his horse to full gallop. William watched him go, his mouth gaping.

  And as he stood confused, and his knights began to shout and reach for arms, the earth vomited up death.r />
  At first William thought it a strange flock of darkling birds, winging up from some subterranean nest, for the air was full of black flight and fearsome humming. Then the part of him that had once—so long ago—been a warrior sorted it out, as an arrow pierced Sir Ananias through the eye and pushed its blood-head through the back of his skull.

  Twenty yards away, a trench had appeared as the archers hidden there pushed up its coverings of cut sod. They were clad in raven black, like the arrows they shot.

  “Treachery!” Austrobaurg cried, desperately trying to wheel his mount and find cover behind his men. “Crothanic treachery!”

  “No!” William cried, but the Austrobaurg knights were already engaged with his own, and swords were spilling blood. Only he seemed to notice that both sides were falling from the deadly aim of the archers.

  “There’s our enemy!” he shouted, drawing his sword and waving it toward the trench. “The enemy of us both!” Robert has betrayed me. He tried to fight clear to charge the archers, gasping as a shaft glanced off his breastplate. He watched as Sir Tam Dare, his cousin, made for the murderers, and saw him fall, quilled like a hedgehog.

  An Austrobaurg knight went down in the same fashion. The head flew from the shoulders of Sir Avieyen MaqFergoist, cut by the sword and arm of a knight wearing the crest of house Sigrohsn.

  A horse screamed, his own, and William saw an arrow in its neck. It reared so as to take another in the belly, then crashed to earth, twisting as it went. William twisted himself, felt a brief, grinding snap of bone as the beast covered him. The horse writhed off, kicking. A hoof—maybe that of his own horse, maybe another—struck William in the head, and for a time he knew nothing.

  He came back to the sea wind, and a view over the cliffs. He was propped sitting against a stone, feet facing the water, and his head hurt terribly. He tried to rise and found his legs wouldn’t work.

  “Welcome back to us, brother.”

  William turned his head, sending splinters of pain down his neck. Robert stood there beside him, looking—not at him—but out toward the horizon. The sun had clotted the mist into clouds, and the waves danced now in fitful sunlight.

  “What has happened?” William asked. He wasn’t dead yet. Perhaps if he pretended continued ignorance, Robert would choose another course. “The ambush—”

  “They are all quite dead, save me.”

  “And me,” William corrected.

  Robert clucked his tongue. “No, Wilm, you’re merely a ghost, a messenger to our ancestors.”

  William looked at his brother’s face. It was quieter than he had ever seen it, almost serene.

  “You’re going to kill me, brother?” he asked.

  Robert scratched his neck absently. “You’re already dead, I told you. Your back broke when you fell from your horse. Have some dignity, Wilm.”

  Hot tears started in William’s eyes, but he held them back. The very air seemed unreal, too yellow, like the colors in a dream.

  He pushed down his fear and dread along with his tears. “Why, Robert? Why this slaughter? Why murder me?”

  “Don’t worry,” Robert said. “You’ll have plenty of company on your journey west. Muriele dies today. And your daughters. Lesbeth is already there, awaiting you.”

  “All of them? All of them?” William could move his hands, he found, though they shook as if palsied. “You filthy beast. You’re no Dare. You’re no brother of mine.”

  A touch of anger at last entered Robert’s voice. “But you’d already decided that, hadn’t you, Wilm? If you thought me a brother, you would never have betrothed Lesbeth without asking me. I could never forgive you that.”

  “You killed her. You killed her and cut off her finger so I would think— Why? And my children? My wife? All for a single slight?” He had his hand on the hilt of his echein doif, now, the little knife every warrior kept concealed in a special place.

  The knife of last resort.

  “And for the combined thrones of Hansa and Crotheny, and one day Lier, as well,” Robert said absently. “But the slight might have been enough. I have been too often neglected by this family. Too often betrayed.”

  “You are mad. Crotheny will not have you, not for long. And Hansa—”

  “Is almost mine already.” He smiled. “There is a secret I have. It will stay so, for now. There are ways of talking to the dead, and even though your spirit will wander far from the houses of our ancestors, I am not so foolish as to take that risk. But I will thank you for your help, brother.”

  “Help?”

  “I could not have sent our ships against the Sorrows. You did that. Did you know that the lords of Liery have discovered the identity of those ships? Had you lived another few days, you would have had an earful, I’ll tell you. You should thank me for sparing you the righteous pomposity of that old de Liery fool, Fail.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Can’t you just think for once, Wilm? The sea lords discovered that we’ve been aiding Saltmark against their allies. I let slip the hints that led them to know.”

  “But I agreed to that only because I thought Lesbeth—”

  “Hush and listen. They’ll never know that, of course. Everyone who believed the story of Lesbeth’s kidnap is dead. The hue and cry over your policy is already begun, and now you and Austrobaurg, dead, in the midst of trying to conclude a lasting peace. Very suspicious. Especially since you were slain with Lierish arrows.” His smile was ghastly.

  “It’ll be war,” William groaned. “By the saints, it will be war with Liery.”

  “Yes, especially when Muriele’s death is discovered. Her family will not take that lightly.”

  “Why Muriele? Why my girls?”

  “You killed the girls when you legitimized them to replace you. Muriele had to die, of course. She is beautiful, and I would not mind making her my queen, but she is too strong in temper.”

  William understood suddenly. “Charles?”

  “Exactly so. Your poor idiot son will be emperor, and I will be his prime minister. The girls—even Elseny—might have developed minds of their own. Too much of their mother in them. But Charles—never.”

  “I see,” William murmured dully, willing Robert to draw nearer. “But if you plan to rule our country, why do you court war with Liery? It makes no sense. It will only weaken you.”

  Robert laughed. “Exactly so. Hansa could never have triumphed over a strong Crotheny that maintained Liery as an ally, not even with a bumbler like you on the throne. Your generals, after all, have great sense, some of them. But now—at the very least, this will drive the sea lords from our side, if not provoke them to war. Either way this gives Hansa the advantage in the coming war.”

  “The coming … You want Hansa to conquer Crotheny? Are you completely mad?”

  “You see?” Robert whispered. “Even you can learn to reason, if only a little. Too late, I think. And now, dear brother, it’s time to bid you farewell.”

  He walked to William’s feet and bent to grasp them.

  “Wait. How did you kill Muriele?”

  “I didn’t, obviously, since I’m here and she’s at Cal Azroth. Indeed, it isn’t even through my agency that she shall die. Others have seen to that.”

  “Who?”

  Robert looked coy. “No, no. I can’t tell. Just some people with whom I share common goals, for the time being. Only for the time being.” He licked his lips. “They desired Muriele dead for … superstitious reasons. I made use of their credulity. Now, if you’ll just bear up with a little of that famous Dare stoicism …”

  William saw Robert grasp his ankles, but felt nothing. Robert tugged him a few inches toward the cliff’s edge.

  “Tell me where the key is, by the by,” Robert said. “You aren’t wearing it.”

  “What key?”

  “William, please. Don’t be petty, now of all times. The emperor must possess the key to the cell of the Kept.”

  A brief hope intruded on William. “I can sh
ow you where it is,” he said. “But I will not tell you.”

  Robert stroked his beard thoughtfully, then shook his head. “I will find it. Likely it’s in the coffer in your room.”

  He returned to his task.

  Saint Fendve give me the strength, William prayed.

  “Tell me one last thing, Robert,” he asked. “What did you do with Lesbeth’s corpse?”

  “I buried it in the garden on the point.”

  William’s feet were almost dangling over the cliff, now. Robert frowned, seeing that he couldn’t drag his brother straight off. “I see how to do it,” he muttered, more to himself than to William. “Less dignified, but that’s how it is.”

  He pulled William’s dead legs, changing his position so that he was parallel to the edge. William heard the gulls below. If Robert threw his legs over now, the weight would take the rest of him.

  “I didn’t mean where did you bury her, Robert,” William said. “I meant what did you do with the body before you buried it, besides cut off the finger? A clever man like you, surely there must be some fun to be had with a sister’s corpse, especially a sister you so unnaturally desired—”

  He was cut off by a kick in the head, and the bloodred flash that blinded him.

  “I never!” Robert shrieked, his calm shattered like brittle glass. “We never! My love for her was pure—”

  “Pure rut-lust, you loathsome shit.”

  The foot came again, but this time William caught it and drove the sharp of his echein doif into his brother’s calf. Robert shrieked at the unexpected pain and fell with his knee on William’s chest. With an inarticulate cry, William rose up and drove the knife at Robert’s heart.

  It sunk in to the hilt.

  Then Robert gave him a great shove, and he was in the air, without weight. He clawed for a handhold, almost found one … and then there were no more to be had.

  The rocks caught him, but there was no pain. The spray of the sea, the salty blood of the world, spattered on his face.

  Muriele, he thought. Muriele.