Death Knight

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Clawmen,” Gavin said.

  “Why not bring us the head of one?”

  “We barely survived the swamp, your lordship. I’m afraid we weren’t thinking so far ahead.”

  “At least you didn’t slay a wolf and chop off its head and try and convince us with it.”

  “I don’t need fraud, your lordship. The truth is hideous enough.”

  “The truth that simpleton told us?”

  Gavin’s eyes tightened. “Perhaps in the heart of Banfrey, home to sophistication and cleverness, grimiest evil seems but a fancy.”

  The High Priest laughed. “Oh, you’ve a quick tongue, sir, and you sling words like arrows. And even though you know that I need merely snap my fingers and my soldiers will rush in to slay you, you dare bandy words with me. Yes, you are likeable if what one desires is a rogue. But to ask me to believe these visions…” The High Priest shook his head. “No. I simply cannot do it. For you must understand, sir, that I—er, the King drew up the Anno Charta for a reason. No baron or mayor may raise a host without express permission from the King. South Erin is restless, and the Duke of Glendover plays a cagey game against King Egbert. Now it is said that you traveled first through the Duke’s fiefdoms.”

  “We landed on Erin at Glendover Port, yes, your lordship.”

  “Perhaps the Duke has hired you and this maid.”

  “If you believed that, your lordship, you would already have had us slain.”

  “After you stirred up the crowds with your performance? No, I don’t think so.”

  “Swan isn’t from Glendover Port, your lordship, but from Forador Castle. What then would be her sense in lying to the King?”

  The High Priest’s false smile vanished as his eyes became predatory. “That is why you’re here, Sir Gavin. You have roused my curiosity. Yes, I admire clever ploys. That wound on her cheek, for instance. It was artfully done. I congratulate you.”

  “Far better, your lordship, if you lent us a thousand men-at-arms and we razed Forador Castle to the ground.”

  “Ah, not only are you a keen lancer, schemer and orator, but now you prove to be a jester, too.”

  “Surely you must realize that this is no jest, your lordship.”

  The High Priest nodded. “Quite right, sir. It is time for truth.” He pursed his thin lips. “I know your type, Sir Gavin. Handy with a blade, quick-witted and graced with handsome features, you believe yourself a match for anyone. Then you find a raving girl and decide: Yes, I believe I shall become King Egbert’s Constable. I’ll trick him into giving me an army and then I shall rule Erin.”

  “Before long, your lordship, there will be nothing to rule. The darkspawn will see to that.”

  The High Priest drummed the table with his fingers. He studied the top of the tent, staring for a time and then shaking his head. “You have played your role well, and I suppose you realize that. You have roused the city with your prattle. It seems therefore that I must enter into the lists, so to speak, on your terms. Very well, I accept the challenge.” He picked up a bell and rang it.

  Gavin twisted around, wondering if men-at-arms might rush in with swords drawn. He tensed when the tent flap drew back and the Matron Innocence, an even older Wisdom in a coarse cloak and Swan entered. Men-at-arms followed, carrying chairs and placing them beside Gavin. The men-at-arms then retreated outside.

  Gavin let out his breath, letting go of the dagger hidden under his jacket.

  “What do you think, Inga?” asked the High Priest.

  “Swan has the power of Hosar,” said the Matron Innocence. “We know the Lord of Light safeguards humanity from the powers of Darkness. At times, some are touched by visions in order to help us in this grim struggle. It seems to me that Swan truly is a seer.”

  “Seems?” asked the High Priest.

  “It isn’t wise to be hasty in these matters,” said the Matron Innocence, “although I am quite unwilling to say she lies.”

  “How did you come to be imprisoned in your liege’s dungeon?” the High Priest asked Swan.

  She told them the story of her accusing Leng of sorcery and Baron Barthek counter-accusing her of witchery.

  “How do we know that she isn’t a witch?” asked the High Priest.

  Gavin was surprised when the ancient Wisdom spoke up. She was toothless and shook with age. “I listened well as she told us her story, your lordship. This one is no witch. A seer, I believe, as Sir Gavin’s esquire says and our Matron Innocence suspects.”

  “You are quick with your praise, Wisdom,” said the High Priest.

  “Begging your pardon, your lordship, but I saw her sincerity and the urgency of real fear. And she is a virgin.”

  The High Priest grew thoughtful, rubbing his jowls.

  “She is not playing us false,” said the Matron Innocence. “I believe her.”

  “Are you a witch?” the High Priest snapped at Swan.

  “No, your lordship,” said Swan. “We must halt the darkspawn. I beg you to unleash your hosts and ride to Forador Castle while there is yet time.”

  “Not my hosts, girl, but King Egbert’s.”

  “Yet he has entrusted them to you,” said Swan. “You are his head councilor, the chief servant of the kingdom.”

  The High Priest drummed his fingers on the table. “You spoke of an ancient sorcerer…”

  “Yes,” said Swan. “Zon Mezzamalech.”

  “He’s the one who imprisoned you?”

  “No, your lordship. Leng did that.”

  “Who exactly is this Leng? You’ve given us very little to go on.”

  “Leng is not of Erin, your lordship. He comes from across the sea.”

  “Just like your Sir Gavin has done,” pointed out the High Priest.

  “Leng comes from farther away, your lordship, from the evil land of Muscovy.”

  The High Priest nodded as if that were as it should be.

  “But that isn’t the worst of it, your lordship,” said Swan. “Like Zon Mezzamalech once did, Leng defies time. He’s lived longer than his normal span by using foul arts and by making a pact with Old Father Night. With those extra years Leng has gathered much dark knowledge, including the location of Zon Mezzamalech’s amulet.”

  The High Priest peered at Swan as if looking at a new animal, at something he had never seen before. He shook his head, turning to the Matron Innocence. “Do you believe all this, Inga?”

  “I do.”

  “And you?” the High Priest asked the ancient Wisdom.

  “With all my heart, your lordship,” she said.

  The High Priest sat back, soon smiling bleakly. “I shall grant you your request, Sir Gavin. You will be allowed to travel with Sir Ullrick, the King’s own champion, as he rides to Forador Castle on royal business.”

  “May I ask how many men you intend to send?” asked Swan.

  “Fifty riders should be sufficient,” said the High Priest, “along with whoever else you two can connive.”

  Swan, already pale, grew whiter yet.

  “Fifty is a joke,” Gavin said, regretting letting Hugo talk him into this foolishness. “We shall all be killed.”

  “Nonsense,” said the High Priest. “Fifty doughty warriors a-horse should easily be able to capture enough darkspawn to convince all Erin to go crusading.”

  “You were not in Forador Castle’s feast hall, my lord,” Gavin said. “You are unaware what it is like in the swamps with howling darkspawn on your trial.”

  The High Priest sat forward. “Fifty or none at all, sir.”

  Swan signaled Gavin to accept. He bent his head in thought.

  “Do you truly think that will that be enough men?” asked a troubled Inga. “I think you should send more.”

  The High Priest smiled smoothly. “That will be enough for the moment. Sir Ullrick will be instructed to make a quick strike, thereby upsetting the enemy’s plans. Remember, Inga, these are not just fifty peasants I’m sending, but fifty knights. Believe me, they will keep the darkspawn
busy—if darkspawn there really are—as we ready Banfrey and warn the rest of the kingdom. Or are you unwilling to go?” the High Priest asked Gavin.

  “I will ride,” Gavin said, thinking himself a fool.

  “Excellent,” said the High Priest.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The crusaders thundered out of Banfrey, following the King’s Highway and the Fangohr upstream. They traveled fast because of Swan’s urgent premonitions. In his saddlebags, Sir Ullrick the Bear held a writ from the King demanding aid from the baron of Wyvis Keep: the closest baronial neighbor to Baron Barthek.

  Sir Hunneric and his small company from Albion rode with them. Gavin had convinced the rich knight that he could win more glory killing darkspawn than he could on the jousting field. None of the other gentlemen adventurers had been convinced likewise. Hugo had also roused a few men-at-arms in a tavern. Otherwise the troop was composed of Sir Ullrick’s retainers and mercenaries paid by the High Priest. Those were hard-bitten warriors, killers for hire, with well-worn harnesses and a handy way with weapons.

  “They remind me of the blackhearts,” Hugo said one evening while on night watch.

  “No,” Gavin said. “They are men the High Priest knows will obey him no matter what sort of ugly orders he gives.”

  The next day Hugo said, “I think the High Priest means to secretly put us down in the swamps, to do the deed far from prying eyes.”

  Knight and squire rode in the vanguard. They cantered past tall beech trees and their saddles creaked as the river gurgled beside them. The Fangohr had become much narrower and flowed faster here and the land had turned hilly. Fewer cultivated fields were spotted, although more deer, wolves and rabbits ran wild.

  Hugo pointed out a lean knight with dark hair, bright mail and weapons of wonderfully crafted workmanship. No one rode near this knight, and his long, lean face seemed strangely blank. Gavin had watched him once or twice during their nightly stops as the man practiced his swordsmanship. That one had terrible quickness and intensity. At those times, the blankness left the thin face and man’s eyes gleamed with something akin to murder-lust. The knight seldom spoke, and if he did, his lips remained motionless. The other mercenaries feared him, growing silent if he happened by.

  Hugo said, “Do you know how Sir Josserand gained his knighthood?”

  “I’ve not heard,” Gavin said.

  “He was a clerk from France, come to Banfrey to see the Shrine of Tulun.”

  “A clerk?” asked Gavin. “How did he become a knight?”

  “Several years ago, according to one of his men, Josserand came to Banfrey and rented a room in the outer town and at the shoddiest inn. By day, he went to the Shrine of Tulun, using charcoal and parchment. The Wisdom from his city wanted to build a similar shrine. At night, Josserand sipped wine, studying his drawings by the inn’s fireplace and making cryptic notes along the margins. Then one day before dusk, three of the provost’s thegns who frequented the area, supposedly as guardians of the King’s peace but actually as robbers, stealing from drunks and the unlucky, came upon Josserand with his parchments tucked under his arm. According to the man who told me, Josserand wandered home with a distracted air. He only noticed the provost’s thegns when their swords pricked his chest. The three robbers took his drawings and stripped him of his clothes, laughing as they let him go. Speaking not a word in reproach, Josserand went back to his lodging while dressed only in his shirt. He snatched up a crossbow and ordered a child to carry his sword. He longer had a belt or breeches to hold the scabbard. He soon caught sight of the thieves and shouted that he planned to kill them. As they ran, he aimed the crossbow, shooting one through the heart. Then he took the sword from the child and gave chase. One thegn tried to crawl through a hedge in a garden. Josserand severed the man’s legs at the knees and then skewered him. The other hammered at a door to a house of strangers. Josserand slew him as the man of the house opened the door.

  “The next day the provost of Banfrey captured Josserand and threw him into the White Tower’s dungeon. He was to be hanged. But the High Priest heard of the case, and he sent his men and took Josserand from the provost and to his palace. There, the High Priest offered to have Josserand knighted if he agreed to serve him. Soon thereafter Josserand won his spurs, and it is said that now he will do anything that the High Priest bids.”

  Gavin grew thoughtful.

  “What I wonder,” Hugo said, “is why the High Priest would send such a one crusading? The likeliest answer is to murder us in the swamps. Or more to the point: to kill Swan and have done with the visionary.”

  Gavin grinned.

  “I find nothing humorous about that,” Hugo said.

  “No?”

  “They wish harm to our Seer.”

  “Of course,” Gavin said. “So we must stay alive long enough to meet the darkspawn. Then we’ll be glad to have one such as Sir Josserand.”

  Hugo pondered that, muttering, and from then on kept a closer watch on Josserand.

  ***

  Gavin grew uneasy as they approached Wyvis Keep. He recognized the fortress, the strangest he had seen in Erin. It had been built with mountain and masonry married together with uncanny skill. Turrets topped rocky ridges. In places, sheer drops were better protection than any wall. Beyond the keep, a brick road ran to a toll bridge in the distance and then to a forest beyond that that would merge later into Forador Swamp. Gavin hoped the forester he had once robbed was away on other business. And he brooded on the fact that if he had slain the man—if he hadn’t been merciful—that none of this could pose a problem.

  With Sir Ullrick holding his writ, the troop clattered up the mountain path to the main portcullis. A short, hard debate took place between the Wyvis seneschal behind a parapet and Sir Ullrick in his saddle, angrily shaking the parchment with the King’s seal. Reluctantly, they lifted the iron grate with a rattle of chains.

  As the trail-weary crusaders entered the main cobbled courtyard, Gavin understood why. A small army bivouacked here, one obviously formed against the rules of the Anno Charta.

  Tents rose everywhere in the huge courtyard. The ring of blacksmith’s hammers told of repaired mail-links, new shields and re-forged swords. To the sides, men-at-arms practiced their swordsmanship and others their archery. Puffing pages carted sloshing buckets to new-built troughs so the many horses could drink. An angry knight marched up to them, shouting at someone else about where to put all these extra men and mounts. The castle was too crowded as it was!

  “A hosting,” muttered Hugo.

  “One many times larger than what Ullrick has brought with us,” Gavin said.

  Squires and pages ran to help them with their horses, taking the mounts around a huge hay pile that must have been recently dumped into the courtyard.

  Once it was learned that Sir Ullrick the Bear from Banfrey had come, a herald ran out to beg them to join Baron Wyvis for supper.

  They washed away the trail-dirt in a cubicle to the side of the feasting hall, rinsing their hands in washbasins and combing dust out of their hair. Chainmail harnesses and swords were divested in a side room. Gavin, however, had taken to wearing the silver sword wherever he went and thus kept it with him.

  At the head table of a feast hall much larger than Forador Castle’s, sat a bent and trembling ancient with withered hands. He bid them welcome, old Baron Wyvis. He told them that strange trouble brewed in Forador Swamp, the reason for this feudal call-up. He had of course sent word to King Egbert. After sipping wine, Wyvis begged Ullrick, when he went back to Banfrey, to reassure his Majesty that they were loyal to the King. This host was simply to garrison the keep and protect the surrounding fiefs from increasingly strange depredations.

  Ullrick rose from his table and ran thick fingers through his beard. “Let us eat before we speak of this further, milord.” The Bear was known for his prodigious appetite, and the boar roasting in the fireplace on a spit smelled delicious.

  Gavin piled up on potatoes and peas and slapp
ed on thick slabs of pork. He quaffed ale and felt his warmed stomach stretch comfortably. A knight was judged by the extent of his hearty appetite. Here, however, unlike the jousting field, Ullrick proved the victor.

  By the time Gavin slipped scraps to the hounds milling about the tables, an intense whispering campaign finally came to a head.

  The feasting hall was packed shoulder to shoulder with men and women. Not as many torches blazed upon the walls as had in Forador on that awful night. Instead, flickering light came from a roaring fireplace and from several cunningly placed mirrors.

  “Sir Wyvis,” said Ullrick, belching into his hand, “I thank you for that excellent meal.”

  The old baron struggled to rise before sinking back with a wheeze. His younger and amply endowed wife rose in his stead. She had gray hair, wide hips and brawny arms. An axe in her capable hands could surely have dashed many a smaller knight to the ground. Her fine linen dress and broad golden jewelry did nothing to soften her features, although it showed that she loved the riches her old baron had bestowed upon her. Over dinner, Gavin had heard that a costly clothing allowance had been part of the marital agreement, which had only been signed last winter.

  “We thank you for your kind words, Sir Ullrick,” Lady Pavia said in a loud voice. She paused as a priest beside her tugged on her vast, linen sleeve. Behind a cupped hand, the priest whispered into her ear. She nodded, then said to Ullrick, “I notice one in your train who bears a strange sword.”

  “Ah,” said Ullrick. “You must mean Sir Gavin.”

  “I do not know him by name,” said Lady Pavia.

  “Then let me present to you, Sir Gavin the Knight-errant, from Ulm of Bavaria, one wise in the ways of chivalry.”

  Gavin stood, bowed and made ready to say something witty.

  “That’s him!” shouted a green-cloaked man, leaping up from a table lower down the board. “It was a silver sword! I’ll never forget it!”

  To Gavin’s dismay, the forester he had once robbed pointed a shaking finger at him. Confusion abounded in the hall, until Lady Pavia’s shouts brought everyone back under control.