Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  The Archioness turned to Allystaire, flushing in, he supposed, shame that her acolytes had betrayed her without her knowledge.

  “Is this more of your temple politics, Cerisia?” Allystaire prodded the acolyte till he stood next to Joscelyn, and kicked him in the back of the knee, not as hard as he might have, but hard enough that his legs folded and he fell hard to the ground next to her.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Cerisia replied. “Such coup attempts are not unknown among Fortune’s clergy.” She watched her acolyte pick himself up and start to stand, and she snapped, “Kneel next to your companion in treachery, Gerther.” He did as commanded, all the fight having gone out of him. Cerisia’s anger and fear had subsided, pressed below the demeanor of self-assurance and power that she typically assumed, and she eyed Allystaire, frowning. “You need not resort to abusing him now that he has surrendered.”

  “He is lucky to be alive.” Allystaire’s fist tightened around the haft of his hammer. “As will any of your guardsmen be who do not disarm themselves, instantly, and till my curiosity is entirely satisfied.”

  Iolantes raised his sword, his grim mouth opening to speak, when Idgen Marte seemed to simply appear next to him, her sword held along his throat. “We’ll start with you,” she said, reaching for his weapon. Wisely, he let her pry it from his hands and drop to the grass with no resistance.

  “Is this how a paladin negotiates? With a blade to the throat?” Iolantes’s voice, even with the edge of Idgen Marte’s curved sword held against his throat, was all calm.

  She snorted before Allystaire could answer. “He’s the paladin. I’ll cut your throat in payment for the deception you’ve wrought and the danger you brought to this place. And I’ll sleep well tonight after I do it.” Idgen Marte swept her sword away from his throat and shoved him with her free hand, then leveled the blade at Cerisia. “Tell them to disarm, before I take literally your forfeiture of guest’s right.”

  Cerisia’s lips furled into a scowl, but she spoke in a commanding voice that filled the air. “Drop your weapons, all of you, and step away from them if you wish to live.”

  With Iolantes already disarmed and surrendered, the other three guardsmen surrendered their weapons and then stood, uncertainly, hands at their sides.

  Finally settling his hammer back into its ring and slinging his shield over his shoulder, Allystaire took a deep breath. His heart still thumped in his chest and his muscles seemed to quiver with unspent energy. He stripped the glove off of his right hand, tucked it behind his belt, and unceremoniously seized the Archioness’s arm.

  He sought eye contact, wished for a moment he hadn’t. It was a moment’s chore to tear his concentration away from Cerisia’s startlingly pale eyes and to look deep within himself to find the compulsion to lay upon her as he spoke.

  “Did you know anything of armed men on our borders?”

  “No,” she replied simply. Her arm hung lightly in his hand, and he could feel that her pulse beat faster than her expression would’ve suggested.

  “Did you suspect anything, any plot on the part of your acolytes and guardsmen in reference to the Church of the Mother or the people of Thornhurst?”

  “No.”

  “Did you—”

  She sighed, and closed her eyes in frustration. When she opened them again, they were fixed not on his face, but the ground. “Allystaire, the answer to the question will be no. I have been duped. I did not know the extent of Joscelyn’s ambitions and I underestimated her resolve to see them realized. As I have said, I came here as an advocate of peace. Mine is not a vengeful or a jealous Goddess—at least not as I came to know her.”

  Without seeking to compel her answer, Allystaire asked, more from pity than anger, “How were you duped? How did you not know that a body of men larger than that of your own party was shadowing you?”

  “Why should I know? I am from Keersvast. The first time I saw an inland wood I was past twenty summers.”

  Allystaire let her arm slip from his hand and turned for Iolantes. Unceremoniously, he grabbed the captain by the throat. Iolantes tried to pull away, but Allystaire’s grip was firm, and Idgen Marte was suddenly beside him, her sword poking into his armpit.

  “What was the plan? I want every detail.”

  “My man slips back into the village today. Depends on what went on at your meeting last night. Most like, they come on in the night, try and kill you, her, the dwarf first. If we could get even one of you as you slept, we figured that meant better odds to take the village.”

  “And you believed your orders came from the Archioness?”

  “I did, though she left the details to me to plan,” he replied. His voice grew a little hoarse, and Allystaire realized his hand had been slowly and steadily squeezing the man’s throat, so he relaxed it incrementally.

  “How many men are out there?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Swords-at-hire or temple guards?”

  “Mostly the first.”

  “And you were willing to proceed with this plan simply because you were ordered? You thought what, exactly, of the people here?”

  “Seemed a chance to profit. What is this village to me but more dirt and more peasants scratching at it?”

  Allystaire gave Iolantes a hard shove, and, stumbling backwards, the man tripped over the acolytes, both of whom knelt in silence.

  “Your mercenaries have one of my men. If he dies, this place will be something to you—it will be the spot of your grave—unmarked, unvisited, unmourned. You, you, and you,” Allystaire said, stabbing a finger at the acolytes and at Iolantes as he started to get to his feet, “will be bound and held till I decide otherwise. And it may be a long frozen time before I do.”

  Silently, Allystaire pictured Torvul, imagined him kneeling atop his wagon, crossbow sighted carefully on the tableau of betrayal and recrimination. Indeed, if he concentrated, he could feel the distance the dwarf was away from him—and atop his wagon seemed a sharp guess. Torvul, Renard should be rallying men. Get them. And rope. Then we have a day to make plans. Let us make the most of it.

  He felt a confirmation, a kind of mental nod, and Torvul drifted from his perception. Allystaire turned to the remaining guardsmen, who had retrieved their bloody-faced compatriot and were walking him, slowly, towards the pavilion.

  “Do you mean to damage all of my guards?” Cerisia asked with a frown as she grasped the injuries of the man being helped to the pavilion.

  “Are you sure they are your guards any longer?”

  That hung awkwardly in the air for a moment, Cerisia tight-lipped in anger, and Allystaire took the time to try and center himself, to expel the energy and the fury that had built up in him.

  He took a step closer to Cerisia, and pitched his voice low, turning his head and murmuring for her alone to hear. “We are going to need to talk about what happens to those who plotted against my people.”

  “Fortune’s Temple has its own way of dealing with those who fail in their bids for power.”

  “I do not give a frozen damn for Fortune’s Temple, its ways, or its justice. They plotted against the Mother’s people. For that, they will face the Mother’s justice.”

  “What would you do? Hang them? Take their heads?”

  “If I decide that is what their crime warrants.”

  “Do you not see how that would only hasten a declaration against you? It would prove to my fellow Archions that you are anathema in need of suppression. They will come in numbers—”

  “And do you not understand that enemies are going to come no matter what I do?” Allystaire’s voice rose in volume till all heads turned towards them. “As I see it, Cerisia, letting them go is only delaying the inevitable. They will come marching back and I will have to kill them then.” Even as he spoke, the realization of this truth settled heavily on Allystaire’s mind, a nearly physical weight
dropping to the pit of his stomach. They will come, with flame and fear and steel and proclamations and the rule of their own precious law, his detached and cynical side told him.

  He shoved the thoughts away and stifled a sudden yawn. Further conversation was delayed by the arrival of Torvul and Renard, along with a pair of villagers carrying spears, with handaxes thrust through their belts that looked more likely to chop wood than flesh. The dwarf had several coils of rope and he set about binding the guards and the acolytes with a grim efficiency. The guards he shoved to the ground alongside the acolytes.

  He turned to Allystaire, holding up a loose coil and, loud enough to be heard by everyone, asked, “You want to tie the noose, or shall I?”

  Allystaire was briefly taken aback, till Torvul’s voice sounded in his head. Play along, boy. We scare ‘em enough, maybe we don’t have to hang ‘em.

  “You have a better hand with the rope than I do,” Allystaire said, forcing an affected nonchalance into his voice. “More likely to make the drop quick and clean.”

  Torvul nodded. “You’re right. Better you do it, then,” he said, and tossed the rope to Allystaire.

  One of the guards, suddenly wide eyed, leapt to his feet and started a panicked run. One of the two village men with Renard raised his spear as if to throw, but a sharp command from the bearded soldier and the tip was lowered again.

  Idgen Marte was in front of the man in a flash, one hand held out, the heel of her palm extended. He ran straight into it and flew, heels up. His head struck the cold turf with a heavy thud. As he lay gasping, Idgen Marte looked over at the rest of the prisoners and suddenly produced a knife, protruding from her fisted right hand.

  “Anyone else thinks they can outrun me finds a knife at the end of their trip.”

  She hauled the stunned guardsman back to his feet and shoved him back towards the rest.

  “If everyone is finished testing our resolve,” Allystaire said, turning angry, but weary eyes on the bound acolytes before finding Renard. “I want every single one of these prisoners out of sight and under guard, and I want them held in separate places. Scatter them.” He knelt and seized the guard captain by his arm, lifting him to his feet. “Once they are in place, I want their ankles bound and secured to their wrists.”

  None too gently, Allystaire walked Iolantes to his tent, and tossed him through the flap, sending him careening over a stool and falling onto his face. Allystaire followed him inside and was pulling his gloves on without realizing it. He was upon the other man before he could even roll over and stagger to his feet, one fist upraised, leather creaking, the iron rings along the fingers of the glove pressing into his flesh.

  He is helpless, came the sudden thought. And this is not knightly.

  With a wordless shout of barely checked anger, Allystaire pounded his fist into the ground by Iolantes’s head, and leaned over him. He read the scars in the captain’s face, the cold set of his eyes, the lips drawn in a fear that was well hidden.

  “I ought to kill you,” Allystaire growled. “By all rights of hospitality, and all common sense, I ought to string every single one of you up, and let your bodies hang for the crows.”

  “Yet you aren’t,” Iolantes replied, trying, and halfway succeeding, to force some confidence into his voice, “elsewise you’d be doing it already. Is it t’be ransom, then?”

  Even as he’d punched the ground instead of the man, Allystaire knew a plan had formed in his mind. His strategies often seemed to come to him thus, seemingly instantly, but only after he’d set some part of his mind working at unpicking the knot.

  “I have less use for gold than I do for the satisfaction of hanging you. And yet that satisfaction would avail me nothing, if Cerisia is correct, and she may well be.” You should kill him. One less sword when the time comes, came another thought, unbidden, less knightly. “If I can have peace, I will,” he said aloud, as much to his inner voice as to the captured guard captain. “And Thornhurst will have no peace if I kill the lot of you.

  “Yet there is a way, one way, and only one, for you to buy your life, and the lives of your men, back. Listen. And listen well.” He stood up, turning his back only briefly to Iolantes, righted the stool he’d knocked over by hurling the man into his tent. “I need to know all of it: sign, countersign, the duress sign, for your communications with your other detachment. They need to think everything is proceeding as planned.”

  * * *

  Allystaire knelt in the stubbly field, his knee starting to ache, his lower leg going numb. The weight of hammer and shield, though comforting, did not make up for his relative lack of armor. Gideon squatted behind him, along with Torvul. Renard, the Ravens, and such of the village men as Renard judged ready—not even a half dozen—were spread out in three clusters where Henri’s farm met the edge of the wood.

  Somewhere in the distance, growing slowly nearer, he could feel Idgen Marte’s presence, knew that she was calm and unhurt. If it was all freezing over we would know it by now, he silently told himself, not for the first time.

  He wondered whether any of this was wise, whether a murderous ambush in the woods, a simple, brief cascade of blood and death, wouldn’t have been better. Easier, maybe. Not better, he thought. Not knightly. Certainly not worthy of us now.

  Behind him, he felt Gideon shift from one knee to the other. He resisted the urge to take a backwards look for fear of shaking the boy’s confidence.

  Then the first figures began to break from the treeline. The moon was slight, a slice of dim autumn orange in a clouded night sky, but thanks to a drop of Torvul’s unguent rubbed around his eyes, he—and everyone else lying in wait for the incoming bandits—saw as though it were the bright, early part of the twilight turns.

  The men sneaking from the woods came slowly, professionally, with a creeping vanguard of four men leading the way, bows in hand, arrows nocked but not drawn. Always the worst part of an ambuscade, Allystaire thought. Waiting for enough men to come into the trap to make it worth springing.

  More men crept into the field, so that the initial four were well within the circle of ambushers hidden behind hay bales, a fence-line, or as in Allystaire’s case, simply behind a fold of earth below the field. Nearly half a score now in his vision—and from the corner of one eye, a blurred, fast moving outline that the would-be reavers entirely failed to notice, a silhouette that he could see less of the more he looked for it: the Shadow of the Mother upon their flank.

  Not all of them are out of the woods, he thought, having made a quick count. Yet they showed no sign of emerging, and given too long, those who’d already come forward would stumble into their positions.

  Now! he thought, making the command into a mental shout.

  I hope they remember to close their eyes, Torvul replied, even as there was a rustling movement, a hiss as a bottle was uncorked, and then the rustle and clink of leather and metal moving as the dwarf stood and threw.

  You have a good throwing arm, Allystaire thought as he watched the bottle sail into the night, saw it describe a graceful arc of several dozen yards, and remembered almost too late the dwarf’s injunction against watching. He shut his eyes and tucked his chin against his chest, heard the hissing rise in intensity, then felt, and even saw behind his eyelids, the brief but intense burst of light and smoke.

  There were too many uncomfortable seconds of waiting, crouched, eyes closed, before Torvul’s voice came rumbling over the night. “Now!”

  Allystaire sprang to his feet. The better part of the enemy who’d crept out of the woods to ambush them now knelt or laid upon the ground, clutching at their eyes. Hefting his hammer and trotting a few steps into the field, his boots sinking into the soft, cold earth, he filled his lungs with chill night air and bellowed.

  “MEN OF FORTUNE’S TEMPLE, YOU HAVE BEEN DECEIVED AND YOU ARE UNDONE.” He paused, sucked in another huge breath, feeling every year of his age, every
battlefield order and yell. “SURRENDER AND BE TREATED FAIRLY. RESIST AND BE DESTROYED.”

  A few men threw down their bows, still rubbing at their eyes, while others staggered uncertainly. The Ravens, the village men, Renard, and Idgen Marte had left their positions, weapons out, and loosely surrounded the enemies.

  Even as three or four complied with his commands, a final four emerged from the treeline, one of them drawing his nocked arrow.

  “Gather yourselves, lads,” yelled the would-be archer, as he sighted down his arrow at Allystaire. “He’s a hangin’ bastard and would see us all dance the short drop!”

  The string drew back to the man’s cheek. Allystaire sighed. There’s always one, he thought.

  Then before the arrow could loose, a giant stepped out from behind Allystaire and into the night.

  This was no Gravekmir, no giant of flesh and bone, of bloodlust and savagery. In fact, it doubled the height of the only giants Allystaire’d ever seen, reaching a score of spans into the sky. It was all of a color, a soft, radiant gold that shed light in a wide pool around it as it moved. A single step carried it towards the suddenly terrified archer, and a quick open-palmed swing later, the man flew several yards in the air, his bow tossed aside, bones rattling as he landed hard against a tree.

  For good measure, the giant swung his other arm and knocked aside the rest of the men.

  Then, turning monochrome golden eyes set in a plain, blandly featureless face over the rest of the men, the giant spoke.

  “I am the Will of the Mother,” it said, and for all that its tone was soft, the power and volume of the voice shook Allystaire’s chest. “Lay down your arms, or face me in my wrath.”

  The last word the giant roared, shaking the very ground. When it spoke, its face and form suddenly erupted in livid flames, and men cowered. Somewhere, deep within Allystaire, the urge to bolt, to seek refuge, cried out, though he knew very well he had nothing to fear.

  Allystaire risked a look back over his shoulder. Torvul stood with his crossbow, a bolt nocked, in the cover he himself had recently abandoned. Hidden and sheltered from bowshot by Torvul, Gideon knelt, eyes shut, hands fisted, intense concentration writing lines on his face and drawing droplets of sweat onto his forehead.