Honor among thieves abt-3

by David Chandler

  Occasionally she struggled, as if trying to break the grasp of some unseen monster. Occasionally she cried out. Sweat ran in thick rivulets into her hair though she shivered with cold.

  “I see the old man with the lantern,” she reported at one point. “His light shines on a forest. He is so very lonely-he wants a kiss.”

  Malden glanced up at Coruth. The old witch shook her head.

  “No, I understand now,” Cythera said. Malden had a feeling she wasn’t talking to anyone in the room. “His vigil can’t be interrupted. I’ll go down to those woods, in case he tries to follow me- Oh. Oh! The trees are-the trees are alive. They’re so… alive.”

  “Where is she?” Malden whispered.

  “It’s not so much a place,” Coruth told him. “It’s a path between two places. It only exists in a relational sense.”

  “Ah,” Malden said, as if that explained everything.

  “There are two paths through the forest, but which is the right one?” Cythera asked. “The path on the left is so straight. It goes right to the end of the forest. It’s paved with gold, with… with power and… fame.”

  Coruth leaned close to Cythera’s ear and shouted, “What of the other path?”

  “What? Someone… someone is whispering… I- Oh, the path on the right looks so hard. It bends and curls back on itself, and there are so many thorns. I don’t think it even goes where I want to go!”

  Malden would have told her to take the easier path, to get out of those woods as quickly as possible, but Coruth silenced him with a glare.

  “Choose wisely,” the witch shouted. Then she nodded at Malden.

  This was the moment. The moment when she would tell him to stab his lover through the heart. He couldn’t-there was no power in the world, not god or man or witch, that would make him do that.

  But then he understood exactly what was at stake. It was like he gained the second sight himself, if only for a moment. Cythera could choose the path of sorcery, the path of demonology and pure will, which way lay madness and deformity and evil, but also great power. Or she could choose the path of the witches-magic that she herself could not control but only influence, magic that came from the world around her. Magic with rules.

  If she chose sorcery, he would be asked to kill her on the spot.

  And still he knew-he would not do it. Even if she was to become like her father Hazoth, wicked and cruel and utterly without sympathy, he would still rather have her alive.

  Coruth disagreed.

  Luckily for them all, she chose the path on the right.

  Her suffering was terrible. “The thorns tear my skin! My feet are bleeding,” she moaned as she writhed on the pallet. “Where am I headed? I can’t see anything-I’m blind! I’m dying!”

  There was more-much more-and Malden could understand none of it. There were trials for Cythera to face, gates for her to pass. She met every trial with fear and pain but passed them all because she’d been trained how.

  Eventually her voice trailed away into raving syllables that failed to form words at all. Malden worried that some deadly test had been failed… but Coruth sank back in a chair and closed her eyes. Soon she began to snore.

  He threw the dagger on a table and knelt by the pallet, clutching at Cythera’s hands. Her fingers were limp in his and he doubted she could even tell he was there, but still he clung to her. For hours he waited by her side. He understood now that Coruth hadn’t just wanted someone to hold the dagger. She had brought him here-though he thought he’d come of his own will-to comfort Cythera. To comfort himself.

  The day wore on. Once, Malden heard a great stone crash into the city, but for the first time he didn’t care where it landed. He had no thought but for his love.

  Who was his no more.

  Eventually Cythera’s eyes fluttered closed and she slept. She stopped shivering and her body relaxed. Malden pulled the sheet up over her form. It was cold inside Coruth’s shack. It was wintertime.

  When she woke, her eyes were bleary and she lacked the strength to even sit up. But she smiled at him and placed one warm hand against his cheek. They began to whisper to each other, saying nothing at all, really. He didn’t ask what had changed, because he already knew. She made no promises, nor did she need to.

  They let Coruth sleep.

  In time, when Cythera rose from the pallet, she wrapped her arms around herself, hiding her nakedness. Malden rushed to find one of her velvet gowns so she could be clothed, but she shook her head. Instead she took a shapeless robe from a chest in Coruth’s bedchamber. The robe of a witch. She pulled it over her head and lifted the hood over her sweat-greased hair.

  When she kissed him, it felt wrong. Like being kissed by a statue, perhaps.

  “Marry me,” he begged. Desperation overcame him and it felt just like fatigue. “It can’t be too late. Give this up and marry me.”

  She placed a hand on his cheek. She neither smiled nor frowned. “It’s forbidden of a witch,” she told him.

  “By whom, damn it? Is there some council of covens I can appeal to? Is there a witch queen somewhere who makes these decrees and tells you all what to do?”

  She shook her head. “Hardly. There are so few of us in the world

  … no, Malden. We have no laws, only vows that each of us must take. A witch can’t marry because she must remain above worldly concerns, that is all. She has to make decisions on the behalf of other people. She must not be attached to one person-not when so many others depend on her.”

  Malden cast about for any way to save what they’d had. To keep the love he’d found, even though he knew it was already gone. “Your mother and Hazoth were lovers,” he pleaded. “There is no rule of celibacy that binds you now, is there?”

  “Their union was all about power, not love,” Cythera said. “Nor did my mother consent to it.” Her smile was so sad. “I can’t belong to you, Malden. I can’t belong to anyone, anymore.”

  “You never did,” he told her, his voice very small.

  Chapter Ninety

  The rider had come very close now. He could descend upon Croy and Bethane in the space of a moment and run them through with his lance. A quick death might be the best they could hope for.

  “Your majesty,” Croy said, “when I tell you to run-run fast, and do not look back.” He drew Ghostcutter from its sheath. He could hear Bethane gasping for breath already. She must be terrified.

  If he could, he would spare her what was to come-but not yet. Not when they still had some slim chance. Croy had been in this position before, on foot and facing a man on horseback. He knew how it was done.

  He only wished he could see the others.

  He knew he was being guided by the horseman, driven toward some ambush up ahead. There would be footmen there waiting for him, ready to encircle him, to stop his flight. He did not know how many there would be or how well armed they would prove. He would have to improvise and use his best judgment.

  Croy could barely walk. His feet were numb, his legs just blocks of wood that he could still command but not rely on. His left arm was useless, and the wound in his side had stopped throbbing-always a bad sign.

  But he was an Ancient Blade. He could still fight.

  “Var!” the horseman called. Croy didn’t recognize the word. “Var uit!”

  Was he calling to his prey, or to his fellow predators? It didn’t matter. The rider had driven them along a high ridge, a rocky escarpment with only one clear way down. Up ahead on the path the rocks fell away from a narrow cut, perhaps the remnant of some long dry creek bed. Walls of stone rose on either side. It was the perfect place for a trap.

  Croy looked to his left, away from where the horseman ambled toward him. That way lay a treacherously steep slope of broken rock. He could break to the side and run that way but it meant hurtling down a hillside of loose scree. The grade was too sharp for him to climb down-at best he could manage a controlled fall down the slope. A few withered trees stood up from the slope, little more
than skeletal bushes. Even if he could get Bethane safely to the bottom of the hill, there was precious little cover there.

  He looked again at the cut, at the place where the footmen would surely be waiting. There was no longer any choice.

  “Run,” he shouted, and pointed with Ghostcutter’s blade. Bethane hobbled forward and at once started skidding down the loose stony soil of the hill. She screamed as her feet flew out from underneath her and she kept sliding. Croy threw himself after her, his feet barely touching the ground as he danced down the hill. He reached out with his left hand and tried to grab at one of the tree trunks, but he lacked the strength to get a proper hold on it. The rough bark tore at the skin of his palm and only slowed him a little.

  “Sir Croy!” Bethane screamed as she slid on her back, small stones bouncing around her face.

  He bent his knees and jumped, arcing through the air to hit the ground again just next to her, rolling and bouncing as he tried desperately to slow his descent, to regain any kind of control on the steep slope. Her hands grabbed at his tunic and she pulled herself toward him just as he saw a tree coming straight at them.

  For once he was glad for the numbness in his legs. He slammed into the tree with his left foot, hard enough to make his bones rattle. Somehow he got his knees around the trunk so he could hold on. Bethane whipped past him, her momentum pulling one of her hands free of his tunic. His left hand couldn’t grab her, not in time, and it certainly couldn’t hold her. The sword in his right hand had to go.

  It felt so wrong-but he let go of Ghostcutter and watched it slide down the hill away from him as his right hand grabbed for the collar of Bethane’s dress. The sword was his soul-but she was his queen.

  He managed to snag her garment with two fingers. His knuckles turned white as he took her weight. “I have you,” he called. “I have you, stop struggling!”

  He glanced down at the bottom of the slope, looking for Ghostcutter. Without it he was defenseless. His fingers ached abominably but he cast this way and that with his eyes, seeking the blade.

  Instead he saw the footmen. They were down there already, at the bottom of the slope. Waiting for him. Two dozen men carrying polearms. Their faces were hidden by the steel helmets they wore.

  “Croy,” Bethane said, “please-please hold on-I can feel you letting go!”

  Croy glanced at his right hand and saw she was right. His fingers were shaking. Little by little they uncurled, loosening their grasp. He was too weak to hold her weight.

  “Croy, you are my champion,” Bethane said. “You are my protector, my-”

  His fingers lost their grip and she slid away from him. Right toward the footmen.

  He shouted her name and pulled his legs away from the tree trunk. Let himself fall as well. He would be by her side down there at least. He would fight those footmen with his bare hands, if he must. He gritted his teeth as he rolled end over end down the slope. He would fight to his last breath, to his last ounce of strength A rock slapped him across the temple and his vision went blurry. For a moment he was blind and his ears rang. He fought to regain his senses, fought to clear his head, but he was rolling, rolling out of control, and he couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t At the bottom of the hill he smashed into a boulder, right next to Bethane. His bones jumped inside his flesh and new agony erupted down his injured side, but he managed not to cry out. He was too busy looking at Bethane. She was unconscious but seemed not to have sustained any mortal injuries.

  A clatter of steel made Croy’s heart leap. Suddenly the footmen stood in a circle around the two of them, polearms ready to skewer them. Croy tried to jump to his feet and found he could barely move his head.

  He heard hoofbeats and then the rider came galloping around the side of the hill. The horseman slid out of his saddle and came running over. The footmen made room for him-was it to be his right, his honor, to kill a queen and a knight?

  The rider came and stood over Croy, peering down into his face. His eyes were wide, as if he were surprised at what Croy had just done. “Var aus,” he said, as if Croy should know what he meant. “Var aus gevuirten, ha?”

  “Give me one chance to stand up, and fight me like a man,” Croy howled. He tried to spit in the rider’s face but he couldn’t work up the saliva.

  The rider shook his head and pointed at his ear, then his mouth. He shook his head again. He was trying to convey a message-that he couldn’t understand what Croy had said. Then he pointed at Croy’s chest. “You Skraeling,” he said, and nodded as if Croy had agreed with him. Then he placed his hand on his armored chest. “Me, Skilfinger.” Then he reached down as if he would take Croy’s hand. As if he would help Croy sit up. “Skrae ut Skilfing,” the rider said. “Skrae ut Skilfing friends.”

  Chapter Ninety-One

  The Skilfinger knight wore a byrnie of chain mail that fell in long triangular tappets around his knees. Strips of steel hung from the chain links across his chest and jangled merrily as he rode. “You. Come,” he said, for the hundredth time, gesturing westward with his lance.

  Croy grunted but kept walking after the horse. On either side of him the knight’s retainers-rail-thin men in boiled leather armor, carrying poleaxes like the one he’d found on the trail-jogged effortlessly along. They didn’t seem to mind the slow going, but the knight seemed impatient with their progress. He had to keep his horse to a deliberate walk so Croy and Bethane could hope to keep up with him. Croy had asked a thousand times that the knight let Bethane ride behind him, but apparently that was forbidden. The knight practiced a severe religion that would not allow a man and a woman to touch each other unless they were married.

  Of course, by right of precedence, the knight should have dismounted and given Bethane the horse. In the days since their capture, Croy had attempted to tell the knight who Bethane was in several different ways. Yet among the score of Skraeling words the knight possessed, and the half dozen or so of the Skilfinger language Croy understood, “queen” was not among them.

  “It’s all right,” Bethane kept saying. “At least we’re safe.” She gave him one of her small treasury of smiles and he nodded back.

  They had recovered Ghostcutter from the scree of the hillside and let him put it back in its sheath. That was something. Other than that, however, Croy wasn’t sure what the Skilfingers intended. He knew he had no choice but do as they said.

  His strength was at its very ebb. The wound in his side was getting worse. Every time he lifted the bandage there, the smell nearly made him swoon. The old wound in his left elbow made it impossible to even close that fist. His feet felt like raw stumps.

  Had the Skilfingers intended to slay him or Bethane, he would not have been able to resist.

  Yet it seemed that was not the plan. Instead, the knight herded them westward, along the border rather than across it. The knight seemed uninterested in telling Croy where he was taking them. If they kept along this course they would soon reach the shores of Lake Marl. The fishermen who lived around the lake traded with Skrae, and surely someone there would speak his language. He would be able to find someone to translate and he could tell the Skilfinger knight just how important it was that Bethane be taken to safety.

  Yet he had a sinking feeling they would not be going that far.

  And he was right.

  That night they camped in a box canyon with the wind whistling by high overhead. The knight gave them food and comfortable bedrolls but made sure they were watched at all times by at least two of his retainers. Croy was allowed to keep his sword, but he knew if he tried to draw it they would just take it away from him. So little strength remained to him that he doubted he could fight off even one of the well-trained soldiers.

  Croy and Bethane had slept curled up together for warmth when they were alone in the hills. Now the custom of Skilfing demanded they sleep at least six feet apart. Croy found he missed the human contact more than he’d expected.

  In the morning he woke with a fever. His vision swam and
he could barely swallow the thin wine they poured down his throat. In a daze he watched Bethane argue with the retainers and then with the knight until some kind of agreement was reached. Bethane knew even less of their language than Croy did but somehow she got her way. He supposed that was part of her inheritance as a daughter of a long line of kings.

  Croy was lifted by the retainers and then tied to the back of the horse. There was no law against two men riding together, it seemed.

  All that day he drifted in and out of consciousness. His wounds pained him grievously when he was awake, and when he slept he was plagued by horrible meaningless dreams. He saw the hills flashing by, now as if the horse were galloping, now as if they moved more slowly than a cloud across a summer sky-trees, rocks, everywhere lichens sprouting, he could almost see them grow as he watched — and then they rode up a long promontory of rock, a kind of natural highway flanked on either side by high walls of stone. They came out on the side of a hill overlooking a valley swaying with dead yellow grass. It hurt Croy’s head to watch it bend and shift in the wind, so he focused instead on the shapes that didn’t move.

  Tents, he saw. Hundreds upon hundreds of tents. Not the crude animal-skin tents of the barbarians either. These were neat pavilions, organized in militarily exact rows and columns, and each had a standard in front of its flap. Every standard flew the black and yellow colors of Skilfing, except for one. One especially large tent near the mouth of the valley flew green and gold.

  The colors of Ulfram V, and now the colors of Bethane I.

  The queen came running up to grab at Croy’s dangling chin and cheeks. “Croy!” she said, with excitement so long buried it cracked the wind-chapped skin around her mouth. “Croy, do you see it?”

  He could not answer. The Skilfinger knight took him down the hill, the horse picking its way with excruciating care. They rode up to the large tent flying the royal colors and then, finally, they stopped. The knight’s retainers lined up in perfect order. The knight dismounted, then untied Croy and lowered him carefully to the cold ground.