Blood of Heirs

by Alicia Wanstall-Burke

  Ran tightened his belt and pushed his dark, tangled hair from his eyes. ‘We can turn them back, Father, we just need to form the lines again.’ His study of hundreds of years of battle tactics and wars across Coraidin bubbled to the surface of his mind amidst the disaster of the attack.

  ‘No, Ran. You have to go.’

  ‘No, Father, you need—’

  Duke Ronart shook his son violently and Ran swallowed his objection. ‘You can’t be here, son. Not my heir; not here, not today. I won’t do to you what was done to my brother. You need to get back to Usmein and raise the alarm. Get the court in order and sort out your mother and sisters. I’ll turn this herd of cats around, but you have to get home.’

  Ronart glanced around as if searching for his next move in the chaos and blood. Soldiers roared around them, the deafening crash of blades shattering the morning amongst the screams of frantic horses. The stench of voided bowels hit Ran like a punch in the face, his eyes watering and his stomach lurching.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, I haven’t a squad to spare.’ Ronart whistled and waved at a soldier, aged in his twenties, holding the reins of a few wide-eyed horses. ‘You! Report!’

  ‘Brit Doon, sir!’ The soldier gave a sharp salute. ‘Watcher, Duke’s Guard.’

  Ronart propelled Ran towards the soldier and the waiting horses. ‘Take him to Usmein as quick as these beasts will carry you. Do not stop, not for anyone or anything. By the gods, I’ll use your skull as an ale mug if he doesn’t make it.’

  The soldier gave another salute and without a word, grabbed Ran by the knee and hoisted him into the saddle. The mount shied and threw its head, the chaos too much for it to abide. Despite his terror, Ran’s blood ran cold at the idea of leaving his father in the thick of a battle. The Empire had never broken the lines like this, not in all the decades since the war began. And sons weren’t meant to abandon their fathers when things turned sour and the fate of the duchy hung in the balance.

  ‘Aye there lad, let’s do as the duke orders, eh?’ Brit Doon said and Ran jerked from staring at the fight to see him already atop another of the horses. Brit gave him a quick, reassuring smile and snatched the reins of Ran’s horse. ‘I don’t fancy my skull filled with ale I’m not alive to drink.’

  The watcher kicked his steed and shouted above the battle’s roar. The horses didn’t need any extra encouragement and flew into a barely controlled eastward gallop. The last Ran heard of the fight was the hiss of an arrow over his head and the thwack of several more hitting the dirt beside the horse’s flashing hooves. After that, there was nothing but his breath and the hammering beat of his frenzied heart.

  *

  Brit forced Ran to ride until he thought his body would collapse in on itself, pushing the horses to the edge of what was considered a reasonable pace if you wanted the beasts to survive. They kept off the road, travelling the quiet lanes and tracks that farmers used to move between their fields and villages. At nightfall, Ran hoped they might rest awhile, but Brit wasn’t interested. He led the horses onward, leaving Ran to doze in the saddle.

  ‘We should stop,’ Ran suggested for the fourteenth time since sunset. The hard ride from Signal Hill the previous day had left him saddle-sore and extraordinarily fatigued, and he ached to rest, even for a moment. His backside had gone numb, along with the insides of his thighs. His ankles burned from holding the same angle in the stirrups and he hadn’t felt his toes in a long while.

  ‘You heard the duke. No stopping.’ Brit spat in the dirt and ducked under a low hanging branch.

  Ran screwed his face into a frown. Surely his father hadn’t meant for them to ride through the night! ‘The horses need a break. If they snap an ankle in the shadows–’

  ‘They’re fine at a walk,’ Brit cut him off without even turning his head.

  This time Ran swallowed his dissent and glared into the evening. The cold bit into his hands despite the gloves he found in the saddlebags and the north wind had begun to cut through the fabric of his trousers. If he did eventually convince Brit to stop for the night, there was no guarantee he could actually climb down or walk away from the horse. He might manage it at a crawl, but only with his elbows—there was no sensation left in any of his fingers. They would stop soon, even if Ran had to order the soldier to do so.

  ‘Here, this is a decent place to camp. There’s probably a stream nearby,’ Ran suggested, taking one last stab at subtlety before he had to resort to pulling rank and issuing an outright order. He was a prince of the realm and a captain, after all.

  The watcher coughed and spat. ‘Can’t stop here. No one stops here. Besides, Duke’s orders. No stopping.’

  Ranoth narrowed his eyes at Brit’s swaying back in the dim moonlight. ‘What are you talking about? There’s nothing here but trees and hills.’

  ‘Why’d you reckon that is?’ Brit glanced back at the prince. ‘Not bad land around here. Not too rocky even though we’re near the quarries and the gold mines are off to the south there. Not bad here at all, but there’s nothin’. Just these trackways and the road to the Territory.’

  Passing through the area on his way to the front, Ran hadn’t taken much notice of the surrounding countryside. To him, one farm seemed identical to the next, and for miles and miles, that’s all he’d thought there was to see. Now it was dark and the only faint light fell from the moon, filtered through bands of high cloud and treetops. If anyone lived nearby, their location would be marked by the glow from a farmhouse hearth, or the soft sounds of grazing animals, or working dogs barking in the distance. A bird or two, owls by their screeching, lifted off from nearby branches. Besides the whisper of their wings in the cool air, there was nothing.

  Except…

  ‘There’s a house!’ Ran pointed at a shadowy structure of large square stones on a cleared hill crest a few hundred yards from the road. He jerked on the reins and kicked his horse harder than the animal deserved. Why spend a freezing night in the saddle when succour was so close?

  ‘Oi!’ Brit’s curse echoed in the silent valley. ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Getting us a bed!’ Ran shouted back without looking. Even a pile of hay in the barn would be enough. The tenants would surely lend the duke’s son some hospitality, especially on such a frigid night. A chill in the air promised the road would be icy by morning.

  At a short stone fence before the house, he swung down and stumbled through a weathered gate jammed open on the path. No light shone from the uncovered window, and Ran reasoned the owner was likely preparing for bed in another room. He rubbed his numb hands together and reached to bang on the door.

  ‘No!’ cried Brit.

  Ranoth’s fist hit the timber panel with a boom.

  The door fell inward, splintering on the flagstone floor and the air in his lungs vanished. The impact should have echoed with an almighty crash, but Ran heard nothing. Stunned and wide eyed, he dropped to his knees and stared.

  Human skeletons filled the room beyond from floor to ceiling.

  There was no telling if a hearth or more rooms lay further in. Mounds of bones and skulls clogged up every available space, brilliant white and dull, dusty grey in the moonlight.

  ‘Shit…’ whispered Ran.

  ‘Come back towards me, lad.’ Brit’s hushed command reached him and he obliged, shuffling backwards.

  ‘What is this place?’ His voice broke.

  ‘Come on! This is no place to have a chat!’

  Deep in the shadows of the house, the hollow eyes of a thousand skulls scrutinised his retreat. Did they wonder where he was going? Did they think he’d come to join them in their lonely countryside tomb? Ran knew the souls once dancing in those black voids were with the Dark Rider in the Underworld, but the fact didn’t ease his hammering heart or settle his quivering lips. The eyes of the dead glared, unmoved by his fear, and Ran gave a startled squeak when the gate pressed into his back, barring his way.

  He blinked and she appeared—white blonde hair and skin as pale as the m
oon, translucent enough to see through to the heaps of skeletons. She lay unmoving across the doorway, between the threshold and the bones, long naked limbs pressed against the floor, her back exposed to the bitterly cold air through the fabric of a shredded shift. Her dead eyes stared into the space between them, unseeing, empty.

  A shiver prickled across Ran’s skin. His heart hammered against the wall of his chest and his throat contracted around a scream, choking him as his mouth gaped at the body in the house.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  She’s in my imagination… She’s not real… Get a grip on yourself…

  His eyes opened and hers blinked, now clear and blue. She paid no attention to Brit, the soldier was close to losing his wits as he screamed at Ran to get out of the yard. He had seen the ghost and the bones and was howling curses, promising to feed Ran his sword if he didn’t move. But his voice sounded far away, as if he were shouting across a yawning abyss.

  ‘Go,’ said the dead girl, blue lips moving in a whisper.

  A cold hand reached inside Ran’s head and wrapped bony fingers around his mind. He shuddered and winced, pain lancing through his eye sockets.

  ‘Go, before they find you. They take all they find. Run…. Run! RUN!’

  Ran’s jaw and body tensed then the grip on his consciousness eased and the girl’s eyes faded back to stone dead. Without warning her body lurched to the right, jerking and scraping across floor as if dragged by some unholy beast, before disappearing into the house.

  Ran finally found his voice and screamed.

  His legs scrabbled against the cold dirt of the pathway and a pair of hands snagged the back of his coat. He struggled but the grip was tighter, stronger, and his arms were unfit to fight the doom waiting in the house of bones.

  ‘Stop flapping about and get over the fence! By the Dark Rider’s balls, let’s go!’ The hands heaved him over the low wall and dumped him on the ground. He looked up and Brit gripped his jacket by the collar. ‘Up, now!’

  Ran didn’t need to be told twice. He sprinted wildly for his unimpressed horse and collected the reins, his weariness banished by fear. Brit sprang into the saddle and spurred his mount, not waiting to see if Ran followed.

  Chapter Seven

  West of Usmein, Orthia

  Two days of riding brought Ran within a stone’s throw of the city of Usmein, his home and the seat of his father’s duchy. Unless asking for the water bladder or suggesting a camp for the night, barely a word passed between the prince and the watcher, and Ran wasn’t inclined to change the situation. He spent the remainder of the journey trapped in his head, replaying the scene from the house.

  In his memory, it seemed more like a tumbledown old shack than the sturdy farmhouse he thought he saw from the road. Perhaps his eyes played a trick that night, or perhaps something called from within the dim structure with an ulterior motive. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the image of the bones and the skulls; hundreds, possibly thousands stacked one upon another. Only the gods knew how deep they went into the house.

  Questions cascaded through his mind. Had they died all at once in a bloody massacre, or been picked off one by one? And how long had the bones been there? Who had taken the time to put them inside the house, instead of leaving them for the birds or burning them in a pyre to remove the evidence? Someone had gone to a great deal of effort for that little house of horror and it turned Ran’s stomach to think what kind of person could do such a thing.

  Then there was the girl—porcelain pale and as dead as midwinter. She stuck in his mind, so clearly she might as well lie before him; her neck torn open by a gruesome, gaping wound. Her arms stretched languidly across the floor, chest down, her hips turned away and her legs wound around each other. Ran hadn’t seen a lot of the world in his short life, but he knew that girl had suffered at the hands of a monster.

  Beside a gurgling stream he managed to wash most of the gore and grime from his face but his tunic and leathers needed boiling to remove the stains of the Woaden attack. He didn’t want to ride into the palace courtyard and greet his mother covered in another man’s blood, but he didn’t have much choice. His father was relying on him to prepare the city for, at best, the return of weary, retreating Orthian soldiers, or at worst, an invading Imperial Army, hungry for the spoils of a generations-long war.

  But what in the name of the gods was he going to say to his mother? She’d been hard pressed to let Ran go to the front in the first place, but she’d had no say in the matter once the duke had made his decision.

  Late on the third day, the hills flattened and the road dipped into one final valley before crossing the farmland surrounding Usmein’s walls. Concentrating on staying in his saddle despite his weary body, Ran started when Brit pulled his horse to a halt and blocked the road. The man’s eyes settled on Ran for a moment as they sat in uneasy silence. Brit seemed to chew his words over before he let them out, as if unsure he wanted them said.

  ‘What happened… At that house… I’d rather it wasn’t spoken of.’ The older man glanced at the fields and lowered his voice as if someone might be eavesdropping from the hedgerows. ‘I’m not proud of how I reacted, and I’d rather this little episode didn’t make the rounds of the city taverns, if you get my meanin’?’

  ‘Brit, I’m fifteen and the duke’s heir—I don’t go to city taverns.’

  ‘Aye, but all the same…’

  Ranoth nodded and wondered why Brit needed to be so explicit. ‘I don’t know if anyone would believe such a story anyway.’

  The shadows over Brit’s face, the fingerprints of fatigue and stress, suggested he thought otherwise. The watcher shook his head. ‘Did you ever hear of Lackmah? I’d guess not, given that you trotted up to that house all bright and cheery without a care in the world… If all goes well and we’re not bending a knee to the Empire by the time the snows hit, ask your old man about Lackmah. If he won’t tell you, ask around ‘til someone will.’

  A chill clutched at Ran’s heart and an uncomfortable, hot tingling burned in his fingers. He tightened his grip on the reins and wished it away, not convinced he wanted to hear about Lackmah or what it had to do with the house of bones. ‘I’ll have to tell my father what we found, though. I can’t keep it from him.’

  ‘Oh, by all means, Highness. By all means…’ The watcher turned his horse towards the city and they continued in silence.

  *

  Brit vanished in the commotion of their arrival at the duke’s palace before Ranoth had a chance to climb from the saddle. A runner from the gatehouse heralded his return and, as expected, his fraught mother dashed from the garden’s hothouses, abandoning her inspections of the season’s crops. She oversaw Usmein’s supply of fresh food during winter, and without the hothouses dotted across the city’s common greens and lining the palace’s western wall, there was no chance of that.

  ‘Ranoth, where, in the name of the White Woman, is your father? Have the snows come early?’ She slowed her approach and scanned the gathered crowd of curious palace staff, squaring her slight shoulders and straightening the apron she wore over her deep green gown. Girls peered from the doors and windows of the kitchen and laundry sheds, men and apprentices in the forges holding their tools still, intensifying the silence. Duchess Merideth frowned at her son. ‘Ran, where are the marshals?’

  ‘Only one escort could be spared, Mother.’ He climbed unsteadily down, helped by a farrier, and relinquished the reins. The news he carried was hardly appropriate to discuss in public, but the onlookers’ expectant gazes bored into him like a carpenter’s hole saw. Equally, he couldn’t refuse his mother’s question without sparking a wildfire of rumours. He had no choice but to make some sort of statement, as ugly as the truth was.

  The highest vantage in the palace’s cobbled forecourt was atop the entryway stairs, so he gave his mother’s hand a gentle squeeze and took the steps two at a time, then climbed onto the wide stone balustrade. Nerves set his heart thumping wildly and
blood rushed in his ears. An uncomfortable tingling rippled through his fingers and his neck began to ache as his stamina waned. With any luck, he’d finish without fainting and pitching over the side from exhaustion.

  The duke’s chancellor, Lithor, slipped through the crowd and stood breathless beside the duchess. He was a weathered old soldier with sandy blond hair who had reluctantly retired to the palace after losing his hand at the front. Chancellor Lithor panted as though he’d run full speed from the garrison in the south of the palace grounds, but squared his shoulders and tried not to let it show. He fixed Ran with deep brown eyes under his permanently furrowed brow, and Ran felt the weight of the man’s regard as he prepared to address the crowd. Anticipating an announcement, the gathered staff and officials closed in around the base of the stairs.

  Ran cleared his throat and tried to throw his voice. ‘Three days ago, the central Orthian camp was attacked in a dawn raid.’

  A buzz of muttering rose and he held out his hands to plead for quiet.

  ‘When I left at the duke’s order, our troops were regrouping to stage a counter-attack. I returned to bring word and prepare the reserves; however, I must urge calm. The Empire attacks our lines daily, and never come further into our lands than they can spit. Rest assured, Duke Ronart and his men will return when the first snow halts the battle and all will be as it should.’

  Even as his voice echoed across the courtyard, greeted by cheers and applause, Ran doubted his words. The gathered staff took them at face value, not having any reason to doubt him, but the chancellor and the duchess stood motionless, staring at Ran with barely disguised horror. They knew what this meant. They knew the fate that would befall the city if his father failed to halt the advance.

  He met their gaze and jerked his head towards the door. Any further discussion could not happen in the public courtyard—they needed to call the government’s ministers for an emergency council. Duchess Merideth met her son at the top of the stairs, her hands balled into fists as Ran climbed down off the balustrade and the gathering dispersed. He already stood equal with his mother’s height, but he had a long way to go before he matched the duke.