Deathknight

by Andrew J Offutt

  “What man do you serve?”

  “A Son of Ashah serves no man. A Son of Ashah does not serve himself,” Falc quoted, “or even the Order Most Old, or even the Founder. A Son of Ashah serves the social order.”

  Those preliminaries out of the way, the Messenger at once delivered the news in that hollow, echoic voice:

  “Five new brothers have been admitted and two applicants have been turned away. Those latter are called Sak of the Berger Steppes area and Sendaven of Darsin. Your brother Ashamal has terminated Contract and will seek another. Your brother Vennashah cannot be contacted. Last contact was somewhere near Silkevare, and we worry. Be alert. The Master and the High Temple abide well. On those occasions when you despair that you are only a chesspiece of the cosmos, consider the despair of the player! May you be granted a morrow no worse than this day.”

  “And thou,” Falc said, an instant before the Messenger vanished, but he thought he was not heard.

  Falc of Risskor did not question that the Messenger was the spirit of Sath Firedrake, keeping watch over the Order he had founded and appearing to the sons of Ashah. Always at night, and only when an omo was alone. Falc was sure that the Founder’s spirit was with the Master of the Order, and that he donned those relics of the Founder in order to make these periodic appearances to the Sons of Ashah. Since this was invariable, Falc knew that the god was with the Founder and thus with the Master, for how else could he know when the Sons afield were alone and no others would hear the Messenger? Yet he could not see, Falc thought. If any person outside the Order knew of the Messenger by which one-way contact was maintained with those who were afield, none had ever mentioned it. Not to Falc’s knowledge.

  It happened, and only the Sons of Ashah knew. It happened, and a Son of Ashah did not question the Order Most Old. The Order and its ways were an arcanum that raised cogent questions, which were not to be asked.

  Falc was unable not to think about Vennashah, a knight of the Order Most Old now out of contact with the Temple, meaning that the Manifestation could not find him as tonight it had found Falc, in a barn on a nameless farm. Trying not to worry, he composed himself for sleep in the pleasant silence of the barn, redolent of hay and manure. And then he was interrupted again.

  Someone was moving toward him, with care for quiet.

  Without moving from his supine position, he grasped the hilt of his sheathed sword. He sat up, arm poised to sling the sheath off the blade in a way that would create a noise well away from him and was profoundly disconcerting to any stalker by night. This figure was rather ghostly too, in the darkness, but it was not at all like the Messenger with its strange surrounding glow. Falc made his voice worse than dour, and his question held no sound of query:

  “Who is it.”

  “We are not wholly ignorant of the ways of cities and of Holders, Sir Falc,” the voice of Jinnery said, softly. “Querry has sent you companion, in love and friendship.”

  The omo was astonished. He thought of her antipathy for him, her sharp tongue and looks, the other look he had caught. He thought of how she had listened... and then he realised how long ago he had left the house. Long enough for a thoroughly weary Querry to have gone to sleep, while his very young woman waited.

  “Querry is kind,” Falc said very quietly, not believing her at all. “I would consider him brother, and I would not accept from my brother the companionry of his woman.”

  He waited, in the silence of the barn aromatic of hay and manure. She said nothing, and he knew he must be even more direct.

  “This is no personal rejection of you, Jinnery. Return to your home and your bed.”

  She stood a while in silence, and Falc sat in silence, and then she turned and left the barn, almost as silently as she had come. He watched the appearance of the sliver of light as she opened the door; saw it close on the interior darkness that shrouded him. Still astonished and rather scandalised, Falc put aside his sword and lay back.

  She is years and years younger than he, and than I as well, and she does share his bed, niece or no. And she is no happy woman. Still, I would fault her and not care to be called to attest either to her honour or her discretion.

  And he thought, Ah, Falc! ‘Do not make value judgments. The darg is a gentle and hard-working creature who serves men and kills only to eat. Is a darg better then than a man?’ Than a lonely woman with the cusp of romance on her? Perhap it is her time of year and Querry too weary! Shame, Falc. Tomorrow you are denied a midday meal, for this sad lapse into the Sin of Judgment-alism.

  As if it were a psalm, he muttered that threatening, yearning second verse of “Destiny Wears a Black Cloak”:

  Pitfalls and treachery and call of lechery!

  How these conspire to firm my desire

  To seek a different road!

  Ashah accept me!

  Ashah guide me!

  Ashah deliver me!

  Sath inspire me!

  And Falc of Risskor went to sleep, mentally muttering the Way of the United Man.

  THREE

  The head of a Son of Ashah does not succumb to passion.

  That is to say, he does not lose his control.

  That is to say, among other things, that a Son of Ashah does not lose his temper.

  To act based on lack of control, in passion, in anger, is sub-human.

  — The Way of The Order

  *

  Sench got himself out of the Dancer’s Luck inn as swiftly as he was able, trying not to groan or stagger. These confounded ever-so-manly Missentians just could not be allowed to know his discomfort. He and the Order just could not lose so much face. He stepped down into the street with care he tried to conceal, suddenly feeling like an old man.

  He should never should have eaten simiselpis Missentian style. Even having done, he certainly should have known better than to compound the error by dumping down three mugs of ale. It was hardly in accord with the Way or the ascetic dignity of an omo. Worse, it was far from in accord with the way Sench’s stomach cared to be treated. Even worse than that would be showing it, in Missentia.

  Cloak fluttering black as a rain-laden sky about his heels, Sench made his way along the street as swiftly as his discomfort allowed. He headed for the alley he had noted earlier. His stomach roiled and rumbled, thrusting painfully against his weapons belt. Its sounds were a pleading for relief.

  Missentians were not known for high culture, but they did take pride in their vaunted manliness. Accordingly they were not known for fancy cookery, but for tongue-numbing stomach-burning concoctions the eating of which they fancied proved something about their manhood. Not enough that their simiselpis contained three kinds of pepper, along with onions and those confounded red longbeans; this confounded innkeeper had just had to double the amount of sage as well, in addition to adding radishes which he had first fried.

  Sench had been stupid: he had succumbed to the marvellous aroma. Worse, he had not limited himself to smelling, but had eaten. Then, seeking to alleviate the burning of mouth and stomach, he had poured in all that ale. Beans and onions gratefully began to swell. So did the stomach of Sir Sench of Southradd. It no longer pleaded for relief; it demanded it with increasing stertorousness of complaint.

  Swinging around the comer into the alley nearly as black as his attire, Sench allowed a groan to escape. Yet he moved along another ten paces before he gave way to the first burst of the wind that demanded release from his body. The sound was not quite so thunderous as he had expected. He kept moving, getting away from the odour. Again, without even a grunt and no effort, he released.

  The voice came from behind him, effluvious wake notwithstanding: “Not man enough for our cooking, hmm gas-bag? Here, let me help you loose some of the gas.”

  Caught by surprise as no omo should be, Sench moved and knew that his meal and his discomfort slowed him. He had an instant of realisation that his monumental wind-breaking had covered whatever sound the voice’s owner had made in coming up behind him. Hand rushing acros
s his middle to his hilt, Sench spun around just in time to take the follower’s swordpoint in his own forearm. It was across his belly, fingers clutching his hilt. Sench groaned and the fingers flexed. Even then his gaze caught the outline of a second man.

  The first twisted his blade, yanked it out of the omo’s forearm, and drove it in again, under the wrist. It skewered into Sench’s guts.

  “Here’s another, Deathknight!” the second man sneered, already driving his long dagger through the omo’s cloak and in, between Sench’s fifth and sixth ribs.

  They stabbed him again, each of them. His face ceased writhing in pain and seemed frozen in tetanic agony as his legs jellied and he sagged to his knees. By then Sench had realised that they had been waiting for him or had followed him from the inn.

  Assassins. They have no other purpose. They are here solely to kill me. He was wondering muzzily why when he collapsed and his legs began twitching.

  They took his equipage and his clothing before they left him, dead and naked in the alley in Missentia.

  2

  Falc awoke and was up before the sun. A look through the crack between the barn’s vertical planking showed him the blue dark before dawn, lightly washed in palest rose-orange over to the west. He did not look at the muddy rintfield, but Walked the Way. By the time he finished, the sun was a full disk and all three dargoni were restless. No one had come to the barn; perhaps they thought he wished to sleep. Surely such conscientious farm-folk as Querry’s family were awake.

  He went up to the house to effect his leavetaking and was fair ordered to sit down for breakfast. He did, his midnight eyes only brushing Jinnery’s gaze in a single moving glance. They were washing down puffed rint and a little summer sausage with mugs of hax when they heard the dargs and voices outside. Jinnery was by the door, and opened it.

  “Well!” a male voice called, all dissembling phoniness in its assumed joviality and friendliness. “Now here’s an attractive greeting to start a man’s day off aright! Got something for us for breakfast, dear?”

  Laughter rose, in three male voices. Falc put a hand on Querry’s wrist as the man started up from his stool. Querry looked at his visitor, who stared his question.

  “The Arlord’s peacekeepers,” Querry muttered, through tight lips.

  “Have they business with you? Do you owe tax or tithe?”

  “No.”

  Querry tugged at his wrist, and Falc rose, sliding his hand into his gauntlet. Querry rushed to the door then, stepping out to where the overlord’s trio of soldiers still amused themselves by throwing remarks at Jinnery.

  “Ah, a man comes. Older, I see. Your daughter, farmer?”

  “I am Querry. This is my niece. What can we do for you today, so as not to hold you from your business?”

  Nicely said, Falc thought, easing around the low table.

  “Why,” one of the men said while another giggled, “you can paint a pleasant look on your face, farmer, and go finish your breakfast while we visit with your youthful niece.”

  A small hand touched Falc’s cloak and a small voice quavered, “Falc?”

  Falc turned to see the nervous expression on Chalis’s face. “Please stand where you are for a drip or two, Chalis.”

  Falc swung to pace to the door with a rustle of dark, dark cloak. He emerged behind Querry and Jinnery, who stood close. He stepped to their right, beside them. The trio of mounted men, all in their early twenties, wore flattish but spike-topped casques with neck-guards of shingled lacquer. Simple leather hauberks, russet, were decoratively armoured with various square placks of lacquered wood. The lacquer was yellow into which a bit of red had been mixed, so that they had somewhat the appearance of gold. All three wore swords and the two just behind the first held dragonels.

  Falc wore a face carved from solid rock and hooded eyes that stared without any hint of friendliness or humour. “The Arlord surely does not send forth his brave peacekeepers without letting them first break their fast — and we all eat together, here.”

  The trio stared at him. The two rearward glanced at each other and one suddenly began blinking rapidly. Their leader’s swallow was visible.

  “Who... are you?”

  “I am Falc of Risskor, knight of the Order Most Old. Who are you?”

  “We... we are the Arlord’s men,” the fellow said, hiding behind the plural “we” and the name and station of another as such tiny people always did; what else were they but servants of a Name? “What is your business here, Sir Deathknight?”

  “I told you my name, which is more than you have done,” Falc said in a quiet and equable tone. “Mine is not ‘Deathknight.’ I doubt whether you are empowered to ask my business here, but I will tell you before our breakfast grows cold-er. This is my cousin Querry and his niece my cousin Jinnery. I am visiting them along the way from Lango, through Zain to Secter. I have no business with your lord, though perhaps now I might stop and pay my respects.”

  “Your cousin!” That from one of the two rearward men. Falc gazed in blank-faced silence at the fellow, just long enough to make him uncomfortable. Then he said pleasantly, “Even we of the Order have cousins.”

  The leader said, “Have you, ah, is everything — is everything all right here, Zainman Querry?”

  “Yes,” Querry said, after a moment of regaining his equilibrium. “We just got in the rint crop before the rain, thanks to Falc.”

  The three men blinked, one continuously and rapidly, and Falc turned to Querry. “We’d best get that last wagonload unloaded too, cousin, so that we can resume our weapons-practice.”

  “Well, ah, we’ll be on our... our way.” The leader’s gaze flickered to Jinnery, across Querry to Falc. He started to turn his darg, then realised what he’d heard and spoke almost hopefully. Perhaps in the omo’s last words he had found his excuse after all: “You have weapons here, Zainman Querry?”

  “Since the Zainer sword-hunt of three years back, known to all men on the continent?” Falc said smoothly. “You know better, Arlord’s nameless man. I, who am eternally sworn to defend my cousin and his family, of course have weapons. Several.”

  The man nodded. His face twitched. He nodded again, turned his darg. They left by the road, and one of the trio was scolded — loudly — for having let his mount step off the track into squishy soil “of value to that good farmer and our lord.”

  “Our cousin!” Chalis said, hardly so loudly.

  “Hush now, Cousin Chalis. Let them hear nothing. O Ashah, how many such little men have I seen, all big because another employs them! They bask and exult in reflected power. Now listen to him take out his frustration on his own comrade! I doubt that they will return here, Querry, but... Jinnery? Their lord may uphold them if they should catch you afield. ‘Outrage rules amain and men seek only gain...!’ Avoid the circumstances.”

  “You give me orders, cousin?”

  “Jinnery!” Querry said, which Falc had observed was about all the man said to his sharp-tongued... niece. “Falc has jus...”

  She turned with a swish of skirts and went into the house. The two men looked at each other. Suddenly Querry grinned boyishly.

  “What fun you Sons of Ashah have!”

  “Oh yes,” Falc said without expression. “Querry: give me a coin.”

  “A coin?”

  “A coin.” Falc nodded. “Any old melt or shaveling will do. And have you writing implements?”

  Querry stared, then laughed aloud. “No!”

  “Do you fetch the coin,” Falc said, quitting the porch and seeing that his cloak’s hem stayed clear of the mud. “I have quill and paper in my pack. Does Jinnery read?”

  “Why... yes,” Querry said, obviously wondering how Falc might have guessed that. But the other man was walking to the barn and Querry went inside. He soon had a piece of minglemelt betwixt thumb and forefinger.

  “Querry!” Jinnery said. “The man asked for a coin and you don’t even know why! I heard him say any coin, even a shave! That’s one of the n
ine true, shaped coins we have!”

  Querry gave her a long look in which he let show some pain. Without otherwise replying, he went out onto the porch. Falc wrote, dusted the ink, moved the bit of reed-paper through the air, and handed it to the farmer. At the same time, he took the coin.

  “What — what is this? What have we done? Sir Falc? what means this?”

  “The nameless men of the Arlord might question your possession of a new darg, Querry, and I have one too many. That is a bill of sale. It does not mention an amount, but does say ‘melts of good bronze.’”

  While Querry stood with his mouth open, Jinnery spoke from the door. “That coin contains some good silver!”

  “Yes,” Falc said, “but it seems unwise to let such men as I have seen today know that Querry possesses not only a niece they find attractive but formed minglemelts as well. The darg I leave is unnamed. I suggest that you give him a nice short name that can be uttered or spat in one breath. That way it is easy to train him to come when he is called.”

  “Falc —”

  “Wak!”

  Falc waved a gauntlet in a vague upward gesture. “Querry, I cannot be burdened with a darg I do not need and have not trained. Do me this service and keep the beast. I would say that he has never known the whip and will serve you better if he never does. Now I have to be about business that I have interrupted long enough. Farewell and Ashah grant you many good morrows... cousin.”

  “Falc —”

  “Harr!”

  “Falc, I cannot take such a —”

  Harr came waddle-hurrying squishily in rain-soft ground. Falc swung into the saddle he had adjusted in the barn. He extended a bare hand to Querry and his family, palm down in the sign of peace. Then Falc turned Harr and rode along the muddy two-rut to the main road.

  “Falc!” Chalis called.

  “Falc!” his father called, a bit querulously, in helplessness. The knight of the Order Most Old rode away. Father and son stood staring, while Jinnery read what Falc had written. The gift-darg of a Holder of Lango was theirs. Its value was at least a score of such coins as Querry had handed the omo. Jinnery looked up. She stared after the man in black.