Briar King

by Keyes, Greg

  “Fastia!” the queen shouted.

  Neil saw Fastia, turning the corner of the battlements perhaps twenty yards away, still wearing the same blue dress he had seen her in earlier. She looked up at the sound of her name.

  “Mother? Sir Neil?”

  “Fastia. Come to us. Quickly. There is danger.” She started toward her daughter.

  Neil swore and started after her, noting the three figures closing rapidly from the way they had come.

  A fourth appeared silently from the shadows behind Fastia.

  “Fastia!” he shouted. “Behind you! Run toward us!”

  He passed the queen an instant later, his heart roaring, watching Fastia’s face grow nearer, confusion mixing with fear as she turned to see what he was yelling about.

  “Keep back from her!” Neil thundered. “By the saints, keep back from her!”

  But the black-clad figure was there, moving terrifically fast, a sliver of moonlight in his hand, lifted and then buried in Fastia’s breast, two heartbeats before Neil reached her. The man danced back and drew a sword as Neil howled and drove in, hammering Crow down with both hands. The man parried, and cut back, but Neil took the slash on his hauberk and crashed into him, bringing an elbow up into his chin with a hoarse shout. The man went down but was already bouncing back up when Crow split his skull.

  The queen was kneeling with her daughter, and the men approaching from the tower were nearly upon them. They could never make it to the stairs and down before the men arrived.

  Fastia looked up at him, blinking, hiccuping.

  There was only one way, and Neil took it.

  “Over the wall, into the canal, and swim to the causeway,” he told the queen. “I have Fastia.”

  “Yes,” the queen said. She never hesitated, but jumped.

  Neil lifted Fastia in his arms.

  “I love you,” she gasped.

  “And I you,” he said, and leapt.

  The wall here was seven yards high, and the water felt like stone when he hit it. His hauberk dragged him straight to the bottom, and he had to let loose of Fastia to shuck it off. For a panicked instant he couldn’t find her again, but then felt her arm, got his grip, and brought her up. He found his bearings and struck toward the causeway that led to the garrison. It seemed impossibly far away. Ahead of him, the queen was already swimming. Fastia’s eyes had closed, but her breath still whistled in his ear.

  Two loud splashes sounded behind him. He struck harder, cursing.

  He emerged onto the causeway at almost the same time as the queen. He lifted Fastia into a cradle-carry and they ran for the garrison gate, keenly aware that the gate to the other courtyard—and those who probably now occupied it—lay behind them.

  The garrison gate was open, too, the bodies of perhaps ten soldiers crumpled beneath its arch.

  In the darkness beyond, something growled, and Neil saw glowing eyes and a shadow the size of a horse, but shaped like no horse he had ever seen.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A LESSON IN THE SWORD

  CAZIO WOKE, wondering where he was, chagrined that he had dozed. Without moving more than his eyes, he quietly took in his surroundings.

  He lay in a small copse of olive trees, through which the stars twinkled pleasantly in a cloudless sky. Not far away reared the shadow of the Coven Saint Cer.

  He sat up, rubbing his eyes, reaching instinctively to see if Caspator was there, and felt reassured to find the familiar hilt next to him.

  What had wakened him? A familiar noise, it seemed. Or had it merely been a dream?

  Memory came lazily, but there wasn’t much to remember. When the girls left Orchaevia’s fete, he’d taken a walk into the countryside. He’d never been afraid of the dark, and felt learning to move in it, to sense the unseen, could only improve his fencing skills.

  Why and how exactly his footsteps had taken him to the coven, he couldn’t say. He’d just looked up and there it was. Once there, he’d pondered what to do; it was too early and would have seemed far too eager on his part to try to get Anne and Austra’s attention. So he just stared up at their tower for a while, finally rationalizing that the best hunter was the one who knew the habits of his prey. That being the case, he would observe and perhaps catch a glimpse of them. And after all, it was a pleasant night—not a bad one to spend beneath the stars. No doubt z’Acatto was wandering drunkenly around the triva, spoiling for an argument, and if Orchaevia found him, he would be forced to report on his success or failure with Anne. Avoiding that conversation was one of the reasons he’d gone on his nocturnal stroll in the first place.

  With those thoughts in mind, he’d found the olive grove and waited. A lantern eventually brightened the tower, and he watched the shadow play of the two girls at the window— discussing him, no doubt.

  Then the light had gone out, disappointingly soon, and he’d closed his eyes for a moment—

  And slept, apparently.

  He congratulated himself on avoiding a close call. How foolish he’d have seemed if he’d slept until morning. Anne might have seen him and thought him become what Orchaevia claimed he was, a lovesick fool.

  Even thinking the word startled him. He, Cazio Pachiomadio da Chiovattio, lovesick.

  Ridiculous.

  He glanced back up at the tower. No light showed in the window, but then why should it? It must be well into the morning by now.

  The noise that had awakened him repeated itself, a bell ringing, and with sudden interest Cazio realized that something was going on at the coven. He saw torches all along the battlements, most of them moving at what must be a frantic pace. He thought he heard horses, too, which was odd. And faintly, ever so faintly, shouting, and what might be the occasional sound of steel.

  He sat up straighter. No, by Diuvo, he did hear steel. That wasn’t a sound he was likely to misplace.

  That took him straight from muddled to wide awake, and he sprang to his feet with such haste that he bumped his head on a low branch. Cursing, he found his hat and donned it, took the cloak he’d been using as a bed and pinned it back on.

  Who was fighting in the coven? Had bandits attacked the place? Crazed rapist vagabonds from the Lemon Hills to the south?

  He had to know. He began striding toward the left, where he supposed the gate was. If it was naught—some strange exercise to celebrate the Fiussanal—the worst they could do was turn him away.

  He’d gone no more than fifty pereci when he heard the drumming of hooves in the night. He stopped, cupping his ear and turning this way and that until he determined that the noises came from the very direction he was going—and they were getting louder. He watched for torches—who would ride at night without torches—but he saw none. A slice of moon was half risen, the strangest color he had ever seen, almost purple. It seemed to him he’d heard that meant something, but he couldn’t remember where. Was it a verse?

  The shadows of two, perhaps three horses appeared against the paler walls of the coven. They rode at full gallop, and there was much metal in the sound, by which he reasoned whoever it was wore armor. They passed nearby but did not stop.

  Rapist vagabonds from the yellow hills wouldn’t wear armor. Only the knights of the meddisso were allowed armor.

  Or knights from an invading army, who did not care what the meddisso allowed.

  More intrigued than ever, Cazio changed his direction, setting off at an easy lope after the horsemen, Caspator slapping at his thigh.

  “I’ve always wanted to try one of these vaunted knights with their great clumsy swords, Caspator,” he confided to the rapier. “Perhaps tonight I’ll find my chance.”

  The riders were easy enough to follow, for they soon entered the wilder growth around the hill, where he had first met Anne. There they were forced to slow their mounts, which fact Cazio could tell from the frequent crashing and breaking of limbs. Now and then he caught the sound of some outlandish tongue.

  A new suspicion took root in him, an exciting one. Perhaps Anne’
s foreign lover had come for her after all. Cazio knew the girl must have some secret way in and out of the coven, near the pool where he had met her—and that was the logical place for a rendezvous. If such was the case, this might indeed prove amusing.

  He checked himself, realizing that the horses had stopped, and that he had almost walked right into them. He could vaguely make them out—two of them—through the trees, the purple light of the moon reflecting from burnished armor.

  “Unnut,” one of the men said, in a clear baritone. He sounded bored. “Sa taujaza ni waiht,” he added.

  “Ney,” the other replied, in the same ugly, incomprehensible jargon. “Wakath! Jainar, inna baymes.” He pointed as he said this, and in the next instant they spurred the horses into motion again, but this time going in different directions. Furthermore, Cazio saw what the man had been pointing at— two slim figures in robes crossing a clearing in the moonlight.

  The knights were trying to circle their quarry. With horses and armor, they had a harder time in the trees than those on foot, but it would be only a matter of time if the knights knew what they were doing.

  Cazio heard one of the running figures gasp, a distinctly feminine sound.

  He drew Caspator and ran, tearing a straighter line through the brush than the horsemen. In a flash of moonlight, he was certain he saw Anne’s face.

  One of the mounted men tore from the trees right on top of him. The smell of horse sweat filled the swordsman’s lungs, and for the briefest instant the very size of the beast touched a tiny chord of fear in his heart. Incensed that he should be made to feel so—and angry that the knight didn’t even seem to have noticed him—Cazio leapt up and struck the man high in the chest with Caspator’s hilt, holding it two-fisted. It felt like slamming at a run into a stone wall, but the knight yelped and rolled back off the horse, falling with one foot still in the stirrup. His helm knocked hard against a rock, and the horse slowed to a stop. The man groped feebly.

  Cazio reached down and yanked off the helmet, spilling out long hair the color of milk. The face seemed very young.

  “My apologies, casnar,” Cazio said. “If you wish, we may duel when I’ve finished with your friend. For the time being, though, I must assure honorable conditions rather than assume them.” With that he struck the man a blow with his hilt, rendering him unconscious.

  Pleased with himself now, Cazio continued after the girls.

  He caught up with them as they hesitated at the edge of the trees, probably trying to decide between cover and a run across the open country.

  “Anne! Austra!” he hissed.

  The two spun, and he saw it was indeed them.

  “Cazio?” Anne asked, sounding hopeful. Then her voice sharpened in pitch. “Stay away from me, you—what have you to do with all of this?”

  That took him flat-footed. “What? Why, you—”

  But in that moment the second knight broke from the trees. Cazio tossed Anne a contemptuous glance as he planted himself in front of the mounted man. He was emerging from between two trunks, so he would have to come through Cazio to reach Anne and Austra, or else back out and try another way.

  “Will you fight me, casnar?” Cazio shouted at the knight. “Do they make men where you come from, or just rapists of helpless women?”

  The knight’s visor was up, but Cazio couldn’t make out his features.

  “I don’t know who you are,” the knight said in an accent that suggested he was trying to swallow something and speak at the same time, “but I advise you to stand aside.”

  “And I advise you to dismount, sir, or I shall impale your fine horse, something I do not wish to do. You may continue to wear your turtle shell, for I would not disadvantage you by asking you to fight fairly.”

  “This is not a game,” the knight growled. “Do not waste my time, and I will let you live.”

  “A lesson in dessrata would not be a waste of your time,” Cazio replied. “At least you will have something to mull over, whiling away the long hours in hell or curled weeping on your mother’s couch—depending on how merciful I am.”

  The knight didn’t say another word, but dismounted, taking a shield shaped like a curved triangle from the side of his horse and drawing an incredibly clumsy-looking broadsword with his free hand. He closed his visor and advanced toward Cazio at a walk. Cazio grinned and settled into a broad dessrata stance, making passes in the air with his blade, bouncing on his knees a little.

  The knight didn’t salute, or strike a stance, or anything of the sort. When he was within two pereci he simply charged with the shield held in front of him and the sword cocked back on his shoulder. That startled Cazio, but at the last instant he did a quick ancio, swinging his body out of the way and leaving his point in line for the knight to run into.

  Caspator slid over the shield and arrested against the upper part of the breastplate, where the steel gorget stopped the point. The knight, unimpressed by this, swung the shield backhand, forcing the rapier up and slamming Cazio’s forearm into his chest with such force that he left the ground. He landed on his feet but nearly didn’t keep them under him, stumbling back as the knight quickly overtook him, sword still cocked. Cazio found his balance just in time to parry the overhand blow, which came with such force that he nearly lost Caspator, and his already abused arm went half numb with shock. Without thinking, he riposted to the thigh, but again all he got was the sound of steel on steel. It gave him time to recover, however, and he danced back out of range while the knight brought his sword back up.

  Cazio recalled something z’Acatto had told him once, something he hadn’t paid too much attention to at the time.

  “Knights in armor don’t fence, boy,” the old man had said, after taking a drink of pale yellow Abrinian wine.

  “Don’t they?” Cazio had replied diffidently, whetting Cas-pator’s long blade.

  “No. Their swords weigh eight coinix or more. They just hit each other with them until they find out who has the better armor.”

  “Ah,” Cazio had replied. “They would be slow and clumsy, I imagine.”

  “They have to hit you only once,” z’Acatto had replied. “You don’t duel knights. You run from them or you drop something very heavy on them from a castle wall. You do not fence them.”

  “As you say,” Cazio had replied, but he hadn’t been convinced. Any man with a sword could be beaten by a master of dessrata. Z’Acatto had said it himself, in his more sober moments.

  The thing was, this knight wasn’t nearly as slow or clumsy as he ought to be, and he did not fear being struck by Caspator in the least. Cazio kept dancing out of range, trying to think. He’d have to hit him in the slit of his mask, he decided, a challenging target indeed.

  He tried that, feinting at the knee to draw the shield down. The armored man dropped the shield incrementally, but brought it back up when Cazio lunged, pushing the rapier high again. Then that huge cleaver of a sword came whistling around the side of the shield, a blow aimed to cut Cazio in half at the waist. It would have, too, but Cazio coolly parried in prismo, dropping the tip of his weapon perpendicular to the ground with the hilt on the left side of his head, guarding that entire flank.

  Another rapier would have been deflected harmlessly, but not eight or nine coinix of broadsword. It beat Caspator into him, and all of the air out of him. Cazio felt and heard ribs crack, and then he was off his feet again, this time flopping painfully onto his back. He grabbed his side and it came away wet; some edge had gotten through. The cut felt shallow, but the broken ribs hurt so badly it was nearly paralyzing. The knight was coming toward him again, and he didn’t think he could get up in time.

  It occurred to Cazio that he might be in trouble.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE RAVEN’S SONG

  AS MURIELE STARED AT THE THING from Black Marys and children’s tales, darts of fever seemed to pierce her lungs. For an instant, they all stood like statues in some strange pantheon—Neil MeqVren with her dying daughter i
n his arms, the beaked monster, herself.

  Wonder is a terrible thing, she thought. Her mind seemed to be drifting away from her.

  Then she saw Neil reach for his sword.

  “No!” she shouted. “Do not!” It felt like shouting in a dream, a sound no one could hear.

  But the young knight hesitated.

  “I am your queen,” she cried. Terror was a tiny voice in her now, nearly silenced by madness. “I command it!”

  That seemed to get through to the young knight. He turned on his heel and, still carrying Fastia, followed Muriele at a staggering run back toward the inner keep they had just abandoned. The gate was shut, however, and barred from the other side. There was no escape for them there.

  Muriele glanced back. The monster was padding softly toward them, in no great hurry. Why should it be?

  In sudden epiphany she understood that the entire world— Crotheny, her children, her husband, she herself—existed on the edge of a vast, invisible pit. They had trod its upper slopes, never recognizing that it was even there. Now they were all sliding into it, and the beast behind her was at the bottom, waiting for them.

  Waiting for her.

  Almost as unhurried as their pursuer, she looked around and saw there was only one place left to go.

  “The horz!” she said, gesturing.

  The horz occupied an area between the keep and the garrison. The doorway was only about ten yards away. Muriele ran toward it, and the greffyn followed, increasing its speed a little. She felt its eyes burning into her back, imagined its breath on her neck, knew by her renewed terror that she wasn’t yet entirely mad. She ran toward the arched gate of the sacred garden. Perhaps the saints would protect them.

  As they crossed the threshold into the horz, Sir Neil seemed to get his senses back. He quickly but gently placed Fastia on a bed of moss near the central stone, then drew his sword and turned quickly. The gateway to the horz had no door, but was open to all.

  “Hide, Your Majesty,” he said. “Find the thickest part of the garden and hide there.”