“We know what you are, Falc of Risskor,” Altmer said. “How can we accept your word?”
This time Falc was shocked and showed it. “Man, man, I see that your purpose is to provoke me, but why?”
After a few moments of silence he said, “Once, in over two hundred years of the Order’s existence, one man of the Order Most Old swore falsely; once, since Sath Firedrake ended the rein of the tyrant Sai MaSarlis and dedicated his own battle scar and the tyrant’s head to Ashah. You know that. All know it. Only one man of the Order has sworn falsely, ever. That forsworn Son of Ashah was slain, slain by members of the Order, and his weapons, clothing, and scar removed before he was hurled into the sea where no god or man could find him. We swear, and we fear only ourselves. And the penalty for even minor transgression of our oath is removal of the Sath-scar.”
Falc shot forth his right arm with a susurrant flutter of black sleeve and watched the instant tensing of three men of weapons. He showed them an empty fist; no open hand to these three daggertongues!
“Here is the scar, on the right wrist. How can it be removed? A scar cannot. Its removal means taking off hand and wrist, above the scar. You know this, Prefect Altmer. Your stance and tongue and that suggestion insult both you and your master. I will pass now. Stand aside.”
“No.”
O Ashah, is this a test of Thine? Falc slid his left hand and wrist through the broad sheathing strap inside his cloak’s lining. Can these men want me to act, as ever, in Thy name?
Yet Falc walked farther on the desert, for those of the Order were taught control, and reinforced it daily to keep it sharp as their blades: “Shall I go then to another Holder of great Lango, and have word sent to Holder Chasmal that his hirelings have insulted Kinneven and the Order by insulting the emissary of both?”
“No. You will not pass, darkling, and you will not leave this chamber either.”
“Ah.” Falc understood, and saw no reason to say anything more.
The three had begun drifting apart, and the omo felt something akin to joy come upon him. At last this tense exercise of his ever tenuous control was ended. At last he was sure as to what was expected of him; what they wanted. Now he knew that these three “peacekeepers” were here to kill him. They had meant all along to kill him. They merely had hoped to gain his weapons first and thus have the ease of slaying an unarmed man!
Sath Firedrake had said it long and long ago: “He who seeks advantage only to slay is not worthy of life.”
Falc murmured the rite-words “For Ashah, honour, and Sij,” while the three achieved a distance of more than a meter between each, and set hands to hilts. Altmer’s went to the handle of his pistol. When they began to draw their weapons, Falc moved.
While his left hand thrust the cloak to that side and began wrapping it over the arm, his right hand rushed straight up to his right shoulder and the sheath behind it. That hand snapped straight forward toward Altmer and without pause continued the same motion down and across Falc’s belt to his hilt. He was charging the prefect before he had the sword out. That drew the man on Altmer’s left to turn that way, blade sweeping out. The automatic reaction of the left-handed peacekeeper presented his left side, as Falc had intended. (Altmer had jerked into stiffness and begun to shiver.) Falc ended the feinting charge by swerving at the man he had intended all along to attack. The fellow did not turn quite fast enough to bring his blade into line and the omo’s chopping slash took him just behind the left shoulder, deep.
Falc had to pause long enough to twist the blade free before he raced leftward. He passed behind Altmer, who was just sinking to his knees, shaking all over as if with a severe chill.
The third keeper was badly shaken by the sudden attack and its awful effectiveness. Still he readied himself and met Falc’s rush with a broad slash timed to intersect the dark man’s charge. Falc did not duck; he preferred the shock of a fall to a tendon-pulling dodge that might not save him anyhow. Instead he aborted the charge by slinging himself to the floor. Even then his arm swept out. His sword was a horizontal blur a hand’s breadth above the beautiful mosaic. The blade entered the guardsman’s ankle just below the greave and cut well into the bone.
In that instant of agony the young keeper was rendered ineffectual now and, as a weapon-man, forever. He did not grunt; he screamed. Falc was up by the time the fellow’s collapse was completed.
“I’ll give you the gift we of the Order pray Ashah for,” he said: “a swift death. But you can wait for it.”
Falc turned from the man in time to see Altmer complete his fall. The prefect lay twitching. Less than a minute had elapsed since Falc had begun moving. Nor yet did he pause, but pounced to the sprawled Altmer. He wiped his blade on the prefect’s skirt before turning him over. He had to grip the light hilt tightly and slap Altmer’s forehead with the heel of his other hand to get the throwing knife out of his eye. Prefect Altmer had died on his feet, instantly or almost.
While he wiped that blade in the prefect’s hair, Falc looked beyond the corpse to the youthful left-hander. On his knees, the fellow had tucked his left hand into his belt. He clutched his sword with his right, and Falc respected such persistence.
“Forget that,” the omo said as he rose. “You know you cannot win. Cling to the sword and you discard your life. Discard the sword and clutch that shoulder, man, and you may avoid bleeding to death.”
He knew there was no danger of that if the Langoman would just be still, but Falc did not wait to see whether he was heeded. He swung back to the downed man he had left in agony, and kept his promise to him. Even as he drew his sword out of the young Langoman, his lips moving in rite-words, Falc was on the move.
He sped, cloak a great swooping bat some would have seen as a dark shadow of death, to the door through which the trio had entered to challenge and murder him. In Chasmal’s name? He doubted it. As he ran, he slipped the throwing knife back into its mailcoat sheath behind his right shoulder and shook folds of shielding cloak off his left arm. Beyond the door lay Chasmal’s audience chamber. As Falc had expected, Chasmal was not in it. Nor was anyone else — almost.
Across the impressive room, some seven meters away, a man in a robe of House Chasmal green was just rushing through a doorway. The door was set for Chasmal’s convenience: it opened out of the audience chamber, not inward.
He watched his three bravoes until he was certain they had failed, then he fled, the omo thought, and knew the motherless cack would close and bar that door against him.
Falc did not try to reach it first. He was a fighter who never paused until a combat was done with, but he was not the speediest of runners. Instead he began his charge by whirling up a side-chair and letting fly at the door with both chair and sword. They hit the floor and then the door with a frightful series of bangs, thuds, and clangs. The door was arrested in its closing, and forcefully knocked open as well.
The dark man ran on. He slowed briefly to snatch up his sword and left-hand the chair out of his way. His shoulder-ramming the door wide apprised him that the robed man had not got away; Falc felt resistance and heard a groan. He pounced within the small third room and looked down at the sprawling man struck twice by the door.
Sheathing his sword, Falc grasped Alazhar by the back of his robe’s neckband. The short man made a gagged noise when he was jerked to his feet. Two fingers drove into the back of his hand, hard, and the little electric pistol fell with a clatter. Falc gave it a good kick as he drew his dagger and showed its dauntingly broad blade to the Housechief.
“It is over. Where is your master?”
“Listen... name a price... gems, melts... land — a title!”
“Thoroughly rotten alley-rat!” Falc shook him. “How could a Son of Ashah be bought so? Nine of us could take Lango if we were so minded! Speak or I will begin with a small but very painful cut: your left nostril.”
“We will give you this entire house, Falc! Think; you cannot continue this wandering life forever! What, when you are older
and are slowly d — uhhh!”
Falc had not sliced Alazhar’s nostril. Instead he gave him the other end of the dagger, in a jerk, just below the centre arch of his chest. The dagger’s hilt was char-hued horn; pommel and hilt were of iron. Alazhar was instantly bereft of breath.
“Where, I asked, is Holder Chasmal?”
“He... guests this... evening with an... the Holder Brostaval.”
“Oh does he. And was he here when I arrived? Speak”
“Uh-oww! No, he was not here — don’t break my arm!”
“Alazhar, I am going to stand beside you with my arm behind you. Feel the point at your back? Try to bolt or say a wrong word and I will stick you. Now summon a slave. Ask for the ajmil you sent to fetch me. Her name?”
“I... I will not tell you.”
“Do you fancy that to be bravery? Alazhar, traitor, I will not kill you. We both know that I prefer you alive for a time. Yet I am a cruel man. I enjoy it; hasn’t Sereah told you? I will open the back of your right upper arm. Then an incision, carefully under the bicep, if you have one. Then —”
“Simayil! Her name is Simayil!”
“Do as I said.”
They were in Chasmal’s office, a warmly panelled room in which Holder Chasmal saw to his Holding, transacted business, and prepared for audiences in the adjoining chamber. A few feet away stood a statue of the demigod Markcun. He wielded both sword and sickle, for weapon-man and farmer, against the creature whose talons clung to his chest: a vulture, symbol of death. All around them the walls of wood veneer were set with brass sconces bearing the lichen lights from Drearmist. The Housechief indicated the bell-pull adangle beneath one of the amber-hued pillars. Falc accompanied him to it. The bell chimed beautifully, in a sustained middle C.
The ajmil tapped and entered before the two men were back in the centre of the room, boots silent on the richly patterned carpets and smaller rugs from Morazain. She showed some small surprise at sight of the large, dark and darkly clad man standing so close on Alazhar’s left hand.
At the last instant the omo stole the initiative: “Where is Simayil?”
Slave looked at Housechief, who experienced a little nudge at his back and knew it was sharp. He nodded.
“She waits in your apartment, Master Alazhar. She —”
“Send her to us,” Falc said.
“Bid her come hither,” Alazhar swiftly said.
“Do not tell her that the Housechief is not alone,” Falc went on, “only that he wants her here.” When the ajmil had made standing obeisance and departed at speed, he continued to Alazhar: “She will knock before she enters?”
“No.”
“Then I shall stand just beside the door, and you right here, in the centre of the room. Observe, Alazhar: the doorjamb.”
Housechief Alazhar felt the movement, heard the sound of impact, and saw the dooijamb sprout a slim knife. The message was clear.
“Tell Simayil to submit, Alazhar, and then come and bind her wrists behind her, or you will surely be sore hurt. You must have been peeking at a door not quite closed when I put that knife into Altmer’s right eye.”
“Is... is that what killed him!”
Falc did not waste breath on unnecessary replies. Cloak and surcoat rustled. Alazhar had a vision of what seemed a great black bird, a crawk sweeping from him. Then the dark man, sinisterly slender throwing knife poised in upraised hand, was facing him from beside the door that led out into the corridor. His face was composed, his midnight eyes staring, his mouth dour.
“Do remember, Alazhar. And try to give her orders firmly, just as if you were a man.”
Alazhar stood considering. Weighing the possibilities. By the time Simayil entered, he had decided. Sternly he bade her submit. She showed her surprise even as she went to her knees, head bowed in the demanded posture. A moment later he was behind her, demanding her hands. She did not question the command. Alazhar bound her wrists.
Within a minute the Housechief also wore his wrists behind him, secured. Soft boots kicked the door shut. Soft boots paced past the kneeling, bowed Simayil from behind, and the pointed hem of a crawk-wing cloak brushed her arm. That put goose flesh on her arm and brought her head up sharply.
“Wak!” After that involuntary ejaculation poor Simayil could only stare and shudder when she saw that she and the Housechief were captives of the Deathknight she had guided into a trap.
Beside the statue of Markcun Deathslayer, he wheeled.
“Both of you turn, on your knees, and face the door. You need not have to look at ugly Falc.” When they had done so, he added, “Nicely done, Simayil. Now straighten up on your knees and try to imitate a woman.”
She did, teeth chattering. Falc stood still. He folded his arms with his cloak drawn about him, and closed his eyes to breathe himself into relaxation and calm. Alazhar offered, then threatened, then offered again. His captor seemed not to hear. The three waited, the napes and armpits of two of them all aprickle.
After many minutes the door to the audience chamber opened and a household peacekeeper staggered in. He was very pale and clutching his left arm, which was soaked with red-brown. It dripped.
“Hou — Housechiefff...” he said, and collapsed.
“This man I respect,” Falc of Risskor said, and soon the left-handed keeper, unconscious from shock and loss of blood, had his arm bound up with a strip of green from the shuddering Alazhar’s robe.
Several minutes later Alazhar suggested, “The House physician,” in a small and tentative voice.
Falc’s voice sounded surprised: “I do not respect this fellow that much.”
They wondered at the rustling of his clothing and the creak of leather. Wondered, and feared. Well-trained, Simayil knelt erect and stared at the door. The Housechief could not stand it. He had to twist around and look. Their captor was exercising, slowly and with seeming calm.
3
Much time had passed and all three were more than ready for him when the door opened to admit a portly, homely man in a rich robe of woods-green piped with gold. He entered the office chamber that was his. He halted abruptly to stare.
“Alazh — S’r Falc...?”
“Holder Kinneven of Lock sends a greeting and best of portents to his friend the lord Chasmal,” Falc said formally, quietly. “With Holder Chasmal’s indulgence I will hold my lord’s message while I present my own.”
Again Chasmal glanced at the others. “Excellent idea.”
“This swine considered me fool enough to believe that my lord Chasmal was here in his House, and sent this to fetch me to the anteroom where Prefect Altmer and two others waited to slay me. I much regret their blood on the floor of Lord Chasmal’s anteroom, but I make no apology for their deaths. This one is only unconscious. I bound his arm with some cloth Alazhar kindly provided. To my knowledge, my lord, no one else in your House knows of these happenings.”
That was a good deal of compressed information to be assimilated by a man who had been out drinking with friends. Falc was impressed by the fact that Holder Chasmal’s face showed surprisingly little in the way of change, aside from a widening of the slits of his pupils. Chasmal stood in quiet rumination for some time before turning and calling for a cold basin. Then he addressed the omo across the two bound and kneeling members of his household.
“Between us kneels a worthless bit of flunderpuff known as Simayil,” he said in the rather high-pitched voice he controlled by speaking softly. “Kindly pare off one of her breasts. Your pref’rence as to which, excellent Falc.”
Simayil’s lungs, mouth and memory were instantly vitalised. Wailing and pleading, she assured that she knew only what Alazhar told her. It was Chasmal’s desire that he capture this omo, whom, the Housechief had said, Chasmal suspected; and Alazhar sent her to fetch him. What choice did a poor girl have when so ordered, and warned to say naught to the dread Deathknight?
“Barga!” Alazhar snarled, and if looks could have killed, Simayil would have toppled over.
Chasmal said only, “Alazhar?”
Alazhar neither spoke nor met the eyes of his lord employer.
Chasmal nodded with a sigh. “All is true, then. I see that I owe you much, esteemed Falc.”
“Might I suggest that we allow this worthless creature of Silkevare to retain her uninteresting dugs — if not, as Lord Chasmal sees fit, her life — and question the user, rather than the tool.”
“An excellent suggestion,” Chasmal said. He paused then, to bathe face, wrists, and the back of his neck in the basin brought him by a visibly pregnant ajmil. “Ezalil: what does my son?”
“My lord Master, he has spent the evening in his own quarters, with —”
“Ne’mind who accompanies him, Ezalil. Take this to him and say only these words: ‘His chamber,’ and nothing more. Then send the physician here, wi’ knowledge that yon former guardsman is to be guarded while he is tended. Next, send the chief ajmil here. Tell her that Simayil is t’ be gagged to wide distention and kept so, while she is punished. And Ezalil: if your lips are not sealed and your eyes not blind, you could accompany Simayil to Drearmist.”
“Ezalil is deaf and mute, my good lord Master,” Ezalil said, while Simayil fell into renewed gulp-weeping and shuddering. Ezalil, with the basin and the ring Chasmal had handed her, departed at a swift pace.
“Simayil,” Chasmal said in that soft yet still rather high-pitched voice, “kindly shut up. I cannot keep you here, wi’ your knowledge. Can you write?”
She shook her low-bowed head, gulp-weeping and unable to speak.
“Hm, well then, I suppose we could merely cut out your tongue. Try to decide whether you prefer that t’ the lichen mines of Drearmist. Sir Falc, I am sure she and that boy will excuse us while we escort my former Housechief to my privy quarters.” When Falc started toward him, Chasmal added, “I now find m’self ‘thout the services of both Housechief and Prefect of the House; a straining position. Have you another of your excellent suggestions, excellent Falc?”
Deathknight Page 3
