Dark North

by Paul Finch

  Urgol turned back to find Trelawna. She had got to her feet and tried to retreat, only to slip in a puddle and fall onto her side. But someone else now blocked the creature’s path to her.

  Lucan.

  The filth of battle had washed off him in the rain, but he looked bedraggled and weary, and confused.

  THE THUNDERBOLT THAT had blown the facsimile of his father to jellified fragments had seared every one of the facsimiles, all over Castello Malconi. Simultaneously, they’d collapsed on themselves, the writhing tentacles blistering and bursting; the shredded, smouldering remnants whipping in a frenzy, hissing and half-melted as they withdrew to the depths of the fortress, from which a stench too foul to breathe now rose.

  Lucan had seen it. As he’d descended to the courtyard, he’d trudged through the smoking, semi-liquefied husks, among fragments of burned tentacles which could do no more now than twitch feebly.

  He understood how this had happened. But why?

  Urgol’s scornful voice brought him out of his reverie. “Well... if it isn’t another warrior of Christ. Here to collect souls for his master.” The woodwose bared his fangs. “I go one better... I collect souls for myself!”

  His club crashed down, and Lucan had to duck aside. He hefted Heaven’s Messenger, but it was nothing more now than a cindered cross-hilt. He threw it away, casting around for another weapon. The pole-axe stood in the foot of the shaven-headed bravo he’d slain earlier; he yanked it free and dodged as another massive club-stroke was aimed at him.

  Trelawna watched the combat, terrified.

  Urgol struck again. Lucan parried, the impact jolting his body with nauseating force.

  “Not yourself, sir knight?” the woodwose rumbled. “What would the Lord say?”

  Lucan responded by kicking at the club to try and dislodge it, and slamming the pole-axe haft down on Urgol’s naked foot. Urgol took a step backward, but then lurched in with another overhead buffet, which again almost knocked Lucan from his feet. They circled each other warily. The only sound in the castle yard was the heavy rasp of their breath, the scuffing of their feet, the crash of steel on timber.

  Lucan still had the deadlier weapon, but the extra weight of Urgol’s club, with his mammoth strength, was telling. When the woodwose set about him in a flurry, it was all he could do to fend off three blows, before taking the fourth – a huge thrust – in the chest, hurling him off balance. He slashed back with the axe-head, but the woodwose smashed it aside and threw a ham-fisted punch. It caught Lucan square on the cheekbone and rang his skull like a bell.

  Lucan hit the ground hard, but retained just enough of his faculties to roll away. The woodwose followed, club raised, so he kept on rolling, blow after blow striking clanking concussions from the flagstones. And then a corpse – another of Lucan’s victims from earlier – barred his way, and Urgol caught up and stood astride him. This final blow would have pulverised Lucan’s face, had he not heaved the pole-axe to the horizontal, fists gripping its haft one to either end.

  With a massive CRACK, the axe-haft shattered, but the blow was absorbed. Lucan kicked upward, couching his mailed foot in the leather-clad sack between the woodwose’s thighs. Urgol doubled over and staggered back, and Lucan again rolled away. The beast swung around in pursuit. Lucan tried to stand but slid in a puddle; again he rolled. Urgol followed sluggishly. Even should the knight get to his feet in time, he had no weapon – there was nothing with which to fight back.

  “Lucan!” came a desperate voice. “Lucan!”

  Lucan glanced to his left. Though Rufio lay prone, his face the colour of slate, both legs twisted at awful angles, there was something in his outstretched palm – a gladius.

  “Take it...” he gasped.

  Lucan scuttled forward, snatched the blade and veered to one side as the mighty club sailed down after him. It hit Rufio full on the forehead, crushing his entire skull to mulch. But the knight was now, at last, on his feet; he twirled, gladius in hand.

  Urgol came with a roar. The club descended in a blur, but Lucan spun from its path. As he did, he cut down, carving deep into the woodwose’s thigh.

  Its bellow of rage became a howl of anguish.

  Lucan continued to spin around the beast, and then he was fast on its back, his arm locked around its brawny neck. With a single thrust, he drove the gladius deep to the left of its spine, twisting it to a chorus of cracking vertebrae.

  Urgol’s eyes rolled white, and a spume of blood burst from his mouth.

  “My Lord would say,” Lucan hissed into his ear, “consider yourself collected!”

  The woodwose gave a faint mewling sound as it crumpled into a lifeless heap. Seconds passed as Lucan stood over it, every muscle taut, his body rank with the stench of sweat and blood, and yet so doused by rainwater that steam rose off him. Slowly, stiffly, he looked around him. No-one else in the castle yard was alive except Trelawna, who sat where he’d last seen her, head slumped to her breast.

  When he finally limped towards her, she glanced up and regarded him with a strange indifference. Though still a beauty, her eyes were bleak holes in a face made haggard. Her expression didn’t change when she glanced down at his drawn gladius – not until he tucked it into this belt, and she spotted the ragged scarf knotted around its hilt, and a strange mirthless smile came to her lips.

  DUCHESS ZALMYRA WATCHED these events from the driving-bench of her coach, every terrible incident playing out in the green scrying-orb. Now it was over, and she was impassive. The death of her son, Rufio, meant no more to her than the death of her servant, Urgol; in fact, it probably meant less. Rufio had been a failure, a weakling – like his father before him, unfit to head the Malconi clan. His fate had been the same, and was equally deserved.

  Zalmyra touched her belly before taking up the reins. She was still ripe enough to produce more sons. All she needed do was entice a strapping young man, and she had never had a problem with that before.

  She lashed the team of horses away.

  LUCAN KNELT BESIDE Alaric’s splayed corpse, and after straightening his limbs and planting a kiss on the young man’s alabaster brow, laid the sodden wolfskin over him. At the same time, Trelawna crawled to the broken form of Gerta. The old nursemaid was pale, but at least unmarked. Like Alaric, she looked as if she was sleeping.

  Very softly, Trelawna wept. Minutes passed, in which the autumn chill leached into their bones.

  “Quite a refuge you chose,” Lucan finally said, “the Malconi clan.”

  Trelawna wiped away her tears. “Gerta said the same. If only I’d listened...”

  “Gerta was your voice of wisdom. Alaric was mine. We both chose to ignore them.”

  “Then we both should have died.”

  Lucan glanced towards the high parapet, which was still wreathed in acrid smoke from the lightning strike. Again, he felt only fear and confusion. “For some reason... it was God’s decision that we shouldn’t.”

  Trelawna wept again, and at last he moved across and joined her, placing an awkward hand on her shoulder, which he was grateful that she didn’t shrug away.

  “So what now?” she sniffled. “We go home... we realise we love each other after all... and these many deaths are forgotten?”

  “No,” he said. “We just go home.”

  Epilogue

  DUCHESS ZALMYRA MADE good speed along the canyon road, her tawny furs billowing as she drove the black coach at full force, her whip cracking on the horses’ flanks. Not far to the east, another thunderhead was rolling over the jagged mountaintops. She must clear the ridge-way before the next storm struck. Not that this had prevented her halting briefly in the canyon to apply her green-orbed wand to the skull of the black warhorse tethered there, causing such pain inside its head that it shrieked and bucked and hurled itself against the canyon walls until it had smashed its own bones and torn its flesh to unrecognisable pulp.

  Once on the exposed ridge, her own horses became skittish. She whipped them all the harder. Though it wou
ld have been more prudent to walk along the knife-edge track, they all but galloped. The carriage jolted and bounced. The duchess cut her tawny robe loose, and freed her hair to blow behind her in a rippling, blue-black plume. She struck and struck at the horses’ foaming, bloody flanks, screaming curses. And then, to her astonishment and dismay, she spotted an obstacle ahead, and was forced to rein the frantic brutes in. It took her fifty yards to stop, the horses puffing and sweating.

  Zalmyra rose to her feet in disbelief.

  A great crossbow, laid across a horizontal frame, blocked her escape. A bedraggled, mailed figure was hunched behind it, clearly taking shelter, but with one hand clamped on the release-lever. Maybe twenty extra-large bolts were loaded into the machine; a ray of sunlight broke from the gathering cloud and embossed their needle-tips.

  Zalmyra pondered her position very carefully.

  The archery machine was forty yards in front of her; already she and her team were in range. There was nowhere else she could go; the warrior didn’t even need to take aim. If she drove at him hard, she wouldn’t get within ten yards before her horses were bristling with shafts. The only possible alternative was to retreat, but she could not turn the carriage around. She would have to walk, which would make her easy prey for the Black Wolf of the North.

  It was strange that the mailed figure had not triggered the device already, though perhaps he was unsure of her intentions. Might she charm him – as she had charmed so many men in the past before killing them? By his aspect, he was frightened. He had likely been through agonies and despair just to get this far. Not just frightened therefore, but maybe mad with fear.

  Zalmyra was coldly furious to have been thwarted in this way. How could a simple man-at-arms with a brutish weapon like this put paid to all her plans?

  She took the wand from the chain at her waist. Its orb began to glow with an intense aquamarine lustre; she still had credit with the dark powers. In her mind she incanted, and as she did she stood, spread her arms and closed her eyes. The air swirled around her in a vortex. She felt her body tightening and contracting: her skull, her ribcage. Her inner organs were squeezed, as her joints contorted out of shape. The pain was horrific, but she bore through it.

  DESPITE HIS TERROR of the unholy adversary he was facing, Malvolio rose slowly to his feet. His hand slipped free of the Scorpion’s release-lever, his weariness from the long, arduous climb back to this high ridge forgotten. The tall woman on the driving-bench no longer looked so tall. In fact she no longer looked like a woman. The thin black gown she was wearing suddenly seemed to consist of black feathers, and her outstretched arms had become tapering, bony appendages, sprouting yet more feathers. She was shortening, shrinking inward, while her neck was extending to impossible length. Where once she’d had a nose and mouth, he saw the glint of an orange bill.

  “A swan, by damn!” he whispered.

  Whoever this woman was, she had changed her form into that of a large, black swan. Almost lazily, the great fowl took wing, lofting its way along the path towards him.

  Malvolio grabbed hold of the release-lever again. But the swan veered away to the west, allowing the breeze to carry it. Its wingspan covered maybe six feet or more. It was beautiful, framed on the clouds behind. A voice inside Malvolio told him that he still must shoot at it; that this gorgeous thing was a façade, and inside it beat the heart of a devil. But it was already out of the Scorpion’s sights. The weapon’s undercarriage was steel and timber, and far too heavy for him to shift on his own. In any case, the swan rose upward, soaring into the sky, so even if he could have turned the machine around, he could not discharge his missiles at such an angle. He tried anyway, grunting, feeling like a dumb ox who had just squandered a great opportunity.

  “Loosen the pivot!” a voice said.

  Malvolio spun around, astonished to see Tribune Maximion alongside him.

  The Roman was ragged and grimy, but had approached from behind him, as if he had journeyed some distance along the ridge-way road while Malvolio was down on the lower slopes and now, for some reason, had returned.

  “Loosen the pivot!” Maximion said again, reaching to a nut located low in the weapon’s frame, and turning it.

  There was a mechanical clunk, and suddenly the upper section of the machine swung freely on its base.

  “Here, you fool!” Maximion said. “Do they teach you nothing useful in the ranks of chivalry?” He rotated a crank-handle, and a shining steel screw ascended, raising the bow by several inches. Malvolio could now swivel or pivot the weapon in any direction, and up and down as well.

  Malvolio swung the mechanism to the west and levered it upward. The black swan still rode the wind, maybe thirty yards away, soaring steadily and gracefully. He struck the trigger, unleashing a hail of bolts which rattled away like a flock of metallic hawks, flying straight and sure.

  There was an explosion of feathers, but no sound.

  The swan dropped from the sky, turning over and over.

  As it tumbled, it reassumed the dimensions of a human female, the rags of its black garb trailing behind it. Its only feathers now were those of the many shafts, maybe ten or twelve in total, transfixing its head and body. Malvolio leaned dangerously out to track its progress. Far below, maybe four hundred feet or more, the grisly figure struck the boulders, rolled a few yards and then lay, mangled and motionless. He watched it long and hard to ensure it remained still. When he eventually turned back, Maximion was leaning tiredly against the Scorpion.

  Before Malvolio could say anything, they heard a hoofbeat.

  A small party had arrived on the far side of the black coach: Earl Lucan, pushing a two-wheeled handcart, three forms shrouded in black fur lying atop it. Countess Trelawna was behind him, seated on Alaric’s horse and wrapped in a shawl, her head hung low.

  Lucan, looking more than a little puzzled, sidled around the stationary coach and proceeded along the road to the Scorpion, where Malvolio and Maximion awaited him. The squire pointed down into the gulf. Lucan focused on the inert form at the bottom.

  “You?” he finally asked.

  Malvolio nodded warily.

  Lucan turned to Maximion, a querying look on his face.

  “My horse died on me,” the Roman explained. “I managed to climb off before its carcass fell down the south face of the ridge.”

  Lucan’s brow furrowed, as if he was debating some complex issue with himself. Finally he said: “Climb aboard the coach. You too, Malvolio. But... first, help me place these bodies on top.” He led them around to where the handcart awaited. “I’m sorry to say this, Malvolio, but one of them is Alaric.”

  The squire merely nodded again, and wiped his runny nose. His eyes remained dry; as he would later tell folk, he had no more tears to shed. One by one they moved the fur-wrapped bundles, and bound them in place on top of the coach. The other two were Gerta and Felix Rufio. Lucan said that all three deserved better than slow corruption in the now derelict Castello Malconi.

  “Vae victus,” Maximion replied with a shrug.

  Lucan glanced at him. “None of them perished the way you suspect.”

  “Does it matter?” Maximion wondered.

  “Perhaps... if you count chivalry a virtue.”

  Maximion smiled to himself. “Your way of life is so much simpler than ours, Earl Lucan. And there are doubtless benefits in that. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it will last forever.”

  “What way of life is this?”

  “Honesty and straight-talking, instead of intrigue and treachery. Powerful lords who exactly match the image they present to the world, with no attempt at pretence. All the powers under Heaven compressed into the hands of a few, and all the rest complying like sheep... or dying. It’s an efficient way, if not a kind one, but ultimately it will fail. You may have an enlightened king now, and great knights to enforce his rule with impossible feats of courage. But that won’t always be the case, and in due course, as your world crumbles, you will look to the Roman way
.”

  Lucan’s lip curled. “You think, in destroying Emperor Lucius, we missed a chance to improve our world?”

  “You missed a chance to learn from the mistakes of others, my lord. And I fear that you, and more like you, will miss that opportunity again and again... until the end of your days.” Maximion sighed. “Though I concede that time will not come along soon.” Fresh thunder rumbled overhead; once again rain began to fall. “Bah! More wretched precipitation! I take it you wish me to ride on top with the dead men?”

  “No,” Lucan said. “I will ride on top.”

  Maximion looked surprised, and even a little grateful.

  “Don’t get me wrong, tribune... it’s merely that I doubt your foppish Roman constitution can endure much more, and you’re the only item of value I’m taking home.”

  If Trelawna heard this, she didn’t glance up. She didn’t even flinch as the icy droplets struck her uncovered head.

  While Maximion climbed inside the coach, Lucan took hold of her bridle.

  Her empty eyes raked over him. “If I’m no longer your prize, why not leave me here?”

  “Don’t be foolish,” he said. “There’s a place for you inside the coach.”

  The rain hardened, sweeping over them. The wind strengthened.

  “Erm... my lord?” Malvolio wondered. “Am I to ride inside the coach too?”

  “Don’t be absurd, boy.”

  “No, no. Of course not.” Malvolio smiled at his own foolishness as he climbed up to the bench, ensuring to leave a place from which his master could take the reins. He pulled up his coif, though it did nothing to stop the rain. “How, erm, how far are we going?”

  “Home to Penharrow,” Lucan replied. He glanced back at Trelawna, who had now climbed from her horse. “Though in your case,” he told her, “home to Camelot.”

  She didn’t react, so he took her by the hand, and led her to the open coach door.