by Ian Whates
Her anger flared, fuelling a blistering series of attacks that cleared the area around the gate, allowing the holy knight to push forward to the threshold again. It was so stupid that she had ended up here. She should have left the brigand and the barbarian to their own devices and trusted to her own instincts and abilities.
Naldros spat a curse at her attackers and the words seemed to form a ripple in the fog, sending the spectres reeling. She swore by the Creator to end their miserable existence and this too sent eddies of power roiling through the fray.
But it was still too little against the monotonous, determined assault.
Misery.
It flowed around her as a tangible wind, suffusing Osdrik’s Cursed. They had been damned to haunt these hills until they atoned for their betrayal, never knowing one spark of mercy or gratitude or love ever since. Their damnation was utter, a torment of the soul that outweighed any physical malady a thousandfold. Looking into the glowing eyes of the dead, Naldros could see they were not mindless but fully aware of their horrific fate. In the face of such hopelessness her anger couldn’t be sustained.
She felt a moment of pity for them.
The closest spectres reeled back as if struck, but did not disappear. They stumbled and staggered, flowing into and around each other. Naldros thought she heard a sob of relief.
She definitely heard Calgallun fall to his knees with a last gasp of effort, knife clattering from his exhausted grasp.
The spirits were in disarray, reaching out with clawed fingers, not in threat but entreaty.
‘Forgive...’ they rasped. ‘Forgive...’
She glanced down at the fallen brigand and remembered the thought that had caused her to spare the outlaw. Naldros was Redeemer as well as Castigator. As a deadly warrior she had the power to end life, to mete out punishment and bring vengeance to those that deserved it. But the power of the Redeemer was to withhold such ability, to spare life, to value it above everything else. It took a lifetime of hardening heart and self-discipline to be Castigator, but it took only a heartbeat of compassion to be Redeemer.
The dead were recovering, their plaintive looks turning to anger and hatred. They massed a few paces from the doorway, glaring at Naldros as though to dare her to step out. It would be easy to match their scorn with her own, to lift spear and short sword once more.
“I forgive you,” he said.
She felt the stones around her lurch as she tapped into the power kept within the keep. She recognised it now, counter to the despair that fuelled the spectral host. It was hope. Like the last candle in the night, the ancient fort, citadel of their treacherous chieftain, held the last shreds of hope for the army of the damned.
“I forgive you,” she said again, casting aside her weapons and lifting his hands with palms held towards the Cursed.
“Are you mad?” shouted Calgallun, grasping at the hem of Naldros’ scale robe.
“I forgive you.” Naldros spoke loudly, feeling the sentiment strengthening in her soul. The words reinforced the feeling, lending power to her mercy, drawing the old energy from the ground beneath until it flowed out from her like light from the sun. “By the Creator, be damned no more.”
Calgallun was not sure what happened. One moment he was almost blacking out, the next he saw the priestess-soldier dropping her weapons and holding up her hands as though to give a blessing.
A white flame burst forth from Naldros, expanding out through the spectral host, lapping up the broken stones of the ancient keep. Where the fire touched it seemed to Calgallun that all was repaired. In the near-blinding flicker of the light he saw battlements raised as they had been three thousand years ago. There was an oak gate within the towers and banners of black and red fluttered from poles atop the walls and outer defences.
And the traitorous dead were alive again; men and women and children, of flesh and blood, going about their lives without care, not knowing the doom about to be laid upon them. In that instant Fordrik’s Keep was a place of toil and hardship but also laughter and love, family and companionship.
Surrounded by armoured warriors, their chieftain rode back through the gates, a bear of a man in thick furs and studded leather, a spiked helm upon his head. His coming brought consternation; Calgallun could feel the unease of the people at their master’s untimely return.
The fires flickered away and the scene faded, leaving nothing but starlight and moonlight shining on pale stone and grey moss.
Calgallun looked at Naldros, mouth agape. The priestess lowered her arms and turned, a calm smile on her lips, eyes moist with tears.
The army of the damned had disappeared.
“Look,” said Naldros, pointing to the east. The first glow of dawn smudged the sky with purple. “A new day comes.”
“What did you do?” asked Calgallun as Naldros helped him to his feet. “I thought you’d lost your mind.”
“I gave them that which they had craved these last three thousand years. I remembered what it was like to live in misery and hopelessness and I gave them what no other has been able to give for three millennia, the gift I received from the order. I gave them forgiveness and love.”
“You lifted the curse,” said Calgallun, still not sure he believed he was still alive. “But why? It was a desperate gamble. If daybreak was so close, we could’ve lasted a little longer.”
Naldros looked east and her smile faded.
“The Bleak Valley was cursed, my friend. There would have been no dawn while the undead remained. Only the acknowledgement of their suffering and atonement could break the hex placed upon these hills.”
“Keldrik seemed certain.” Calgallun had almost forgotten the other warrior. He looked across the hall towards the steps but there was no sight or sound of the other man. “Do you think he survived?”
They moved to the steps, calling the warrior’s name but no response came up from the lower levels. Naldros led the way down the steps, taking them into a corridor lined with cellars for stores. At the far end was another stair, narrow and straight. Calgallun fetched a simple rushlight from his belt and by its dim glow they continued into the depths.
The level beneath the cellars was more roughly fashioned, with archways sealed with unkempt stonework and plaster, and upon each lintel a heavy inscription.
“Tombs,” said Naldros, running a hand over the runes carved into the grave markers to either side of the nearest barrow door. She looked along the tunnel. “Seven generations, from Fordrik who raised this keep to the chieftain that betrayed Osdrik.”
At the end of the passage they came to an open barrow, and looking within they saw a body laid out for burial on a stone slab. There was no coffin here and no marks upon the clay plates at threshold. Stepping inside, Calgallun could see that the skeleton was of a large man – the chieftain he had seen in the moment of vision. His furs had mouldered to nothing and only scraps of his armour remained, but in bony fingers he clasped a weapon.
A long relic sword, with hilt and crosspiece of entwined serpents, their eyes fashioned from faceted emeralds.
“I don’t understand,” said Calgallun, moving aside so that Naldros could see. “Did this revenant slay Keldrik and take his sword? Where’s his body?”
“You are a simpleton, Calgallun,” replied the priestess, her smile returning. “The name on this tomb... Keldrik. Our companion was no more flesh and blood than the spectres we fought at the gate. He brought us to this place in the hope that I would free his people. That is why he rescued me, and saved you. An act of contrition and another of mercy.”
Calgallun looked with astonishment at the old bones, and only then recognised the similarity between the warrior who had interrupted the ambush and the chieftain in his vision.
“The name should have alerted us to his nature,” said Naldros. “And the accent.”
“A northerner? Why?”
“Not from the north, though that is where the last of the original people of the Scatha Vale now remain. Even you are not a
true highlander, but a descendant of the plainsfolk that moved into these parts after Osdrik and his kin were driven out. Come, let us leave these remains in peace.”
Calgallun lingered a moment longer, not sure if he believed any of what had happened in the last day. Perhaps, he wondered, he was in a fever dream, dying on the road in Bleak Valley, and all of this was unreal.
A call from Naldros snapped him from his thoughts and he realised he was alone in the tomb with the chieftain’s corpse.
He hurried after Naldros, and the two of them ascended to the main hall. The priestess did not stop but walked straight for the doors.
“What about your weapons?” Calgallun asked, pausing beside the priest’s foot lance and sword. “Won’t you need them?”
“In time the order of Erod will grow again, and I will bear the spear and sword, but those belonged to the bearer of a title I no longer desire,” Naldros replied, not looking back. “Each order is founded not by the Castigator, but by the Redeemer.”
The priestess stopped outside and turned, one hand outstretched to Calgallun.
“We all need to seek forgiveness for something. Will you join me?”
Rescue
Mark Lawrence
“I spent a year hunting down the men who burned my home. I followed them across three nations.”
“I see.” The old man laid down his quill and looked up across the desk at Makin.
Makin returned the stare. The king’s man had a long white beard, no wider than his narrow chin and reaching down across his chest to coil on the desk before him. He’d asked no question but Makin felt the need to answer.
“I wanted them to pay for the lives of my wife and my child.” Even now the anger rose in him, a sharpness twitching his hands towards violence, a yammering in his ears that made him want to shout.
“And did it help?” Lundist studied him with dark eyes. The guards told Makin the man journeyed from the Utter East and King Olidan had hired him to tutor his children, but it seemed his duties extended further than that.
“Did it help?” Makin tried to keep the snarl from his voice.
“Yes.” Lundist set his hands before him, the tips of his long fingers meeting before his chest. “Did taking your revenge ease your pain?”
“No.” When he took to his bed, when he closed his eyes, it was blue sky Makin saw, the blue line of sky he had watched from the ditch he had lain in, run through, bleeding out his lifeblood. A line of china blue fringed with grass and weeds, black against the brightness of the day. The voices would return to him – the harsh cries of the footmen set to chase down his household. The crackle as the fire found the roof. Cerys hid from the fire as her mother had told her to. A brave girl, three years in the world. She hid well and no one found her, save the smoke, strangling her beneath her bed before the flames began their feast.
“…your father.”
“Your pardon?” Makin became aware that Lundist was speaking again.
“The captain of the guard accepted you for wall duty because I know your father has ties with the Ancrath family,” Lundist said.
“I thought the test…”
“It was important to know that you can fight – and your sword skills are very impressive – but to serve within the castle there must be trust, and that means family. You are the third son of Arkland Bortha, Lord of Trent, a region that one might cover a fair portion of with the king’s tablecloth. You yourself are landless. A widower at one and twenty.”
“I see.”Makin nodded. He had disarmed four of Sir Grehem’s men when they came at him. Several sported large bruises the next day although the swords had been wooden.
“The men don’t like you, Makin. Did you know that?” Lundist peered up from the notes before him. “It is said that you are not an easy man to get along with.”
Makin forced the scowl from his face. “I used to be good at making friends.”
“You are…” Lundist traced the passage with his finger. “A difficult man, given to black moods, prone to violence.”
Makin shrugged. It wasn’t untrue. He wondered where he would go when Lundist dismissed him from the guard.
“Fortunately,” Lundist continued. “King Olidan considers such qualities to be a price worth paying to have in his employ men who excel at taking lives when he commands it, or in defence of what he owns. You’re to be put on general castle duty on a permanent basis.”
Makin pursed his lips, unsure of how he felt. Taking service with the king had seemed to be what he needed after his long and bloody year. Setting down roots again. Service, duty, renewed purpose after his losses had set him adrift for so long. But when he had thought himself cut loose once more, bound for the loneliness of the road, he had, for a moment, welcomed it.
Makin stood, pushing back the chair that Lundist had directed him to. “I will attempt to live up to the trust that’s been placed in me.” Makin thought of the ditch. Cerys had faith in him, a child’s blind faith. Nessa had faith, in him, in his word, in God, in justice… and her trust had seen her pinned to the ground by a spear in the cornfield behind her home. He saw again the blue strip of sky.
Lundist bent to his ledger, quill scratching across parchment.
As Makin turned to go, the tutor spoke again. “The need for vengeance feels like a hunger, but there is no sating it. Instead it consumes the man that feeds it. Vengeance is taking from the world. The only cure is to give.”
Makin didn’t trust himself to speak and instead kept his jaw locked tight. What did a dried up old scribe know of the hurts he’d suffered?
“There’s a gap between youth and age that words can’t cross,” Lundist said. He sounded sad. “Go in peace, Makin. Serve your king.”
“The Healing Hall is on fire!” A guardsman burst through the door into the barracks.
“What?” Makin rolled to his feet from the bunk, sword in his hand. He’d heard the man’s words. Saying ‘what’ was just a reflex, buying time to process the information. He glanced at the blade in his grasp. An edge will rarely help you when fighting flames. “Are we under attack?” No one would be mad enough to attack the Tall Castle, but on the other hand the queen and her two sons had been ambushed just a day from the capital. Only the older boy survived, and barely.
“The Healing Hall is on fire!” The man repeated, looking around wildly. Makin recognised him as Aubrek, a new recruit, a big lad, second son of a landed knight and more used to village life than castles.“Fire!” All along the barracks room men were tumbling from their beds, reaching for weapons.
Makin pushed past Aubrek and gazed out into the night. An orange glow lit the courtyard and on the far side tongues of flame flickered from the arched windows of the Healing Hall, licking the stonework above.
Castle dwellers scurried in the shadows, shouts of alarm rang out, but the siege bell held its peace.
“Fire!” Makin roared. “Get buckets! Get to the East Well!”
Ignoring his own orders Makin ran straight for the hall. It had once been the House of Or’s family church. When the Ancraths took the Tall castle a hundred and twenty years previously they had built a second church, bigger and better, leaving the original for the treatment of the sick and injured. Or more accurately, to repair their soldiers.
The heat brought Makin up short yards from the wall.
“The devil’s work!” Friar Glenn’s voice just behind him.
Makin turned to see the squat friar, halted a few yards shy of his position, the firelight glaring on the baldness of his tonsure. “Is the boy in there?”
Friar Glenn stood, mesmerised by the flames. “Cleansed by fire…”
Makin grabbed him, taking two handfuls of his brown robe and heaving him to his toes. “The boy! Is Prince Jorg still in there?” Last Makin heard the child had still been recuperating from the attack that killed his mother and brother.
A wince of annoyance crossed the friar’s beatific expression. “He… may be.”
“We need to get in there
!” The young prince had hidden in a hook-briar when the enemy came for him, more than a week earlier. He sustained scores of deep wounds from the thorns and they had soured despite Friar Glenn’s frequent purging in the Healing Hall. He wouldn’t be getting out on his own.
“The Devil’s in him – my prayers have made no impression on his fevers.” The friar sank to his knees, hands clasped before him. “If God delivers Prince Jorg from the fire then –”
Makin took off, skirting around the building toward the small door at the rear that would once have given access to the choir loft. A nine-year-old boy in the grip of delirium would need more than prayers to escape the conflagration.
Cries rang out behind him but with the roar of the fire at the windows no meaning accompanied the shouts. Makin reached the door and took the iron handle, finding it hot in his grasp. At first it seemed that he was locked out, but with a roar of his own he heaved and found some give. The air sucked in through the gap he’d made, the flames within hungry for it. The door gave suddenly and a wind rushed past him into the old church. Smoke swirled in its wake, filling the corridor beyond.
Every animal fears fire. There are no exceptions. It’s death incarnate. Pain and death. And fear held Makin in the doorway, trapped there beneath the weight of it as the wind died around him. He didn’t know the boy. In the years Makin had served in King Olidan’s castle guard he had seen the young princes on maybe three occasions. It wasn’t his part to speak to them – merely to secure the perimeter. Yet here he stood now, at the hot heart of the matter.
Makin drew a breath and choked. No part of him wanted to venture inside. No one would condemn him for stepping back – and even if they did he had no friends within the castle, none whose opinion he cared about. Nothing bound him to his service but an empty promise and a vague sense of duty.
