The Best Weapon

by David Pilling

  Fulk had never felt so small, so powerless. "I don't know what is true," he said hopelessly, "sometimes I think I have gone truly mad. Or perhaps this is all just a foolish dream, and I will wake up back in my dormitory."

  The Oldest One hissed, like an angry snake. "Half-demon you may be, but you think like a cowering, foolish ape," it snarled, and the smooth voice had a ragged edge to it now. "Clearly, harsher methods are called for."

  Fulk blinked, and found himself back in the cavern. The monstrous silhouette of the Oldest One had shuffled closer and now loomed over him. Its stench, like an over-full privy stuffed with rotting body parts, made him gag.

  "Look well on me, No Man's Son," it boomed, "for I am the last thing your human eyes shall ever see."

  Twin rays of pale greenish light shot forth from the Oldest One's single eye and broiled Fulk's eyeballs in their sockets, like eggs in a pot.

  Fulk collapsed, shrieking and clawing at the burning holes in his face even as the jellified remnants of his eyes dribbled down his cheeks. The Oldest One's voice whispered and murmured soothingly in his ear, like a mother trying to calm a hurt child.

  "There, there," it cooed, "do not fear, all pain is transitory...I have suffered far worse agonies than you do now ..."

  Still Fulk writhed, and howled, and clutched at his face. His screams went on for a long time.

  5.

  The streets of Hope were, for the first time in many years, a scene of joy and celebration. People had turned out in their thousands to greet the arrival of Baron Clifford and his troops, cheering and applauding the long lines of knights and men-at-arms as they tramped through the Wayfarer's Gate. All the gates and outer defences of Hope had been abandoned by the Palace Guard, who chose to retreat behind the high walls of the palace rather than risk being caught between the Northerners outside and a hostile population in the streets behind them.

  Baron Clifford had never been showered with petals before, and it was a long time since any young women had thought him worth blowing a kiss at. Both occurred as he rode through the Avenue of Lions at the head of his troops. Colourful banners and flags waved above the heads of the crowds lining either side of his route. Fathers hoisted infants onto their shoulders to give them a better view of their deliverers, priests in the multi-hued robes of various High gods cried out blessings, and one bold child escaped her mother's arms to offer up a bundle of pale blue flowers to the Baron as he trotted past. Laughing, Clifford reached down and scooped up the gift.

  "I can't remember ever feeling so loved!" he called back to Sir Jean Deyville. The big knight, forbidding in his black armour, scowled into his beard.

  "Never trust a Southerner," he growled, "that's what my father told me, and I hold to his words. This lot could easily turn on us if we show any weakness."

  "Nonsense, man, they absolutely welcome our presence! Have we not come to free them from a tyrant?"

  Deyville nodded towards the grim pile of the Founders' Palace rearing above the city on its crag. "The tyrant is still alive, and he's dug in up there like a toad in a hole. It could take weeks to prise him out."

  "It's a strong palace, right enough," agreed Clifford, "and never been taken by storm or siege. But there's a first time for everything, and I'll sit outside it for ten years if I have to. Let us hope the garrison sees sense."

  In the event, the garrison offered no resistance at all. The Baron sent a herald to offer terms, promising to spare the lives of everyone inside if they surrendered immediately. Everyone, that is, with the exception of Archpriest Flambard. The herald had hardly finished speaking before the banners on the gatehouse displaying Flambard's white wolf and the green and gold of the Royal Family were hauled down. Moments later the great gates swung open.

  * * * *

  Captain Trajan stood on the battlements and watched a group of knights led by Sir Jean Deyville cautiously ride through the open gates. Trajan knew they wouldn't encounter any resistance, for he had given his remaining men permission to lay down their arms and seek what terms they could. There was barely a hundred of the Palace Guard left anyway, stubborn veterans and a few idealistic loyalists who had refused to desert like the rest, and he saw no reason to waste their lives in a lost cause.

  He saw more Northerners approaching the gates, beckoned inside by their comrades who had already entered. Baron Clifford was at their head, and made a great show of accepting the keys from a downcast officer of the Palace Guard. The officer and his men, all of whom had thrown down their weapons, were rounded up, their wrists tied, and bundled away. Similar treatment was meted out to the rest of the guards and servants as they came out and offered their surrender. The Founders' Palace, for centuries an impregnable fortress on which one army after another had broken its teeth, had been conquered without a blow being struck.

  Trajan left his vantage point and hurried down the steps to the inner ward. The great keep stood in one corner of the hexagonal ward, and to the right of the gate stood a grand two-storey building. It had once served as the Royal family's private hall and apartments. Now the family were extinct, but the building still had an important role left to play.

  As he ran, Trajan exchanged salutes with the grey-haired sergeant guarding the door of the hall, who stepped aside to let Trajan through.

  The interior of the hall had been cleared of the usual tables and long benches, and there was no fire lit in the massive stone hearth. All the bright tapestries, decorated with hunting scenes and the exaggerated exploits of successive monarchs, had been torn down and packed away. Stripped of its rough adornments, the hall was a cold and cheerless cave, with shadows lurking in the corners and the occasional rat scampering across the bare stone floor. But it was not quite empty.

  Archpriest Flambard had been carried into the hall in a litter. The stench of his bodily decay infected the place, filling it with a vile sickly-sweet odour, and Trajan was hard put not to gag. A cloud of flies hovered about the rotting heap of bandaged flesh that was Flambard, descending to suckle on his weeping sores and the horrid yellow pus that seemed to ooze from his every pore. Trajan felt an unaccustomed throb of pity for this man, still alive in the middle of his own decay, his mind whole and calculating even as his body fell to pieces.

  "Captain," whispered Flambard, his voice muffled by the cotton mask that now covered his face. Steeling himself, Trajan snatched off his helmet and approached the litter.

  "They are coming, lord," he said. Trajan felt an illogical love for the ruined bully lying in front of him, even though he knew the Archpriest had been a bad man. An oppressor of the poor, a tyrant to the rich, a cynic and an opportunist who had flaunted the rules of his own church, who had used men and women and heartlessly tossed them aside when they could do no more for him. But a dog, as Trajan was well aware, did not question the morals of its master.

  "You are prepared?"

  "I am, lord. Everything is ready."

  "Then goodbye, Captain Trajan…but before our ways part, take this. It is my gift to you, the last and most loyal of my servants."

  Flambard's bandaged right hand held a roll of parchment. He tried to hold it out, but his strength failed, so Trajan gingerly reached over and plucked it out of his feeble grasp.

  From outside came the sound of raised voices and jingling harness. Trajan stuffed the parchment into his belt and hurried towards the door at the far end of the hall.

  Beyond was a staircase leading to a gallery that overlooked the hall. Trajan heaved the door shut, slammed the bar down and raced up the steps. Mid-way through the gallery there was a wheel, like the steering wheel aboard a ship, with several thicknesses of chain wrapped around it. The chain, taut as a bowstring, ran from the wheel up into a hole in the ceiling. Trajan stopped next to the wheel and peered through a curtain into the hall below.

  He could see Flambard and hear eager footsteps getting louder as they approached the hall. Angry words were exchanged outside the door, and then the brief rasp of steel and a man's scream, bubbling aw
ay into nothing.

  Trajan clenched his fist in anger and thumped the wall. The Northerners had murdered his sergeant.

  The door flew open, hitting the wall with a crash, and the Northerners spilled into the hall. A group of younger men at first, three with the stooping black hawk of House Clifford emblazoned on their surcoats. Trajan guessed that these were the Baron's sons. After them came the Baron himself, stocky and bald and bow-legged, and then the rest of the Northern lords crowding after him. Trajan had never seen the men before, but he recognised the colours of House Gisburne, D'Auney, Deyville and a score of others, rough-hewn men with craggy weather-beaten faces and swords in their grimy fists.

  "Gods above, what is that stench?" cried one of the Clifford boys, clapping a hand to his face. Other men sensed it too and made similar exclamations of disgust, but not the Baron. He walked slowly towards Flambard's litter, grinning and rubbing his hands together like a greedy shopkeeper anticipating a sale.

  "Well, well, my lord Archpriest," he said in a light conversational tone, "and here we both are. I heard rumours that you were not well. What a shame."

  Flambard uttered a feeble coughing noise as he tried to speak. Clifford cupped a hand to his ear. "What's that?" he said with theatrical concern, "I'm afraid I can't hear you. It seems you are robbed of the powers of speech. Who would have thought, back in our younger days, when you were the rising star at court, that Guillaume Flambard would ever be lost for words?"

  A chuckle rippled through the men behind him, though most were still trying not to vomit at the appalling smell permeating the hall. In his moment of triumph Clifford seemed immune to it.

  "The question is, my lords," he said, turning to address his followers, "shall we bother to hang this diseased hulk, or simply wait for him to burst? Myself, I am inclined to have him drowned in a vat of wine, though the gods help any man unwise enough to take a sip from it afterwards."

  "More to the point, father," said one of his sons, a sullen-looking youth with a tangled thatch of red hair, "who will rule the land after he is dead? Will you make yourself king?"

  Clifford laughed. "Robert, would you make a usurper out of me?"

  Sir William Burun shouldered his way through the pack of armed men. "There is nothing left to usurp," he said forcefully, "the Founders' Line is extinct, save for a few distant cousins that need not be considered. The Realm needs a king. Why not you, Clifford?"

  This met with a few murmurs of approval, though many stayed silent. Suddenly there was an unpleasant atmosphere in the room, and it had nothing to do with Flambard.

  "We have not previously discussed the succession," said Baron D'Auney, "but I see no reason why Clifford should have it. He is not of the blood royal, while my great-grandfather was husband to a princess of the Line."

  Another of Clifford's sons rounded on him. "Our sister was Queen Mother, in case you had forgotten," he snarled, baring his teeth, "and our niece was the Queen, before their murder."

  "Before their shameful murder," D'Auney corrected him with a smirk, "I wonder if a family who cannot protect their own should be entrusted with the protection of an entire country."

  "Here is one who will support them, D'Auney!" cried Baron Gisburne, a sandy-haired little fox of a man, drawing his dirk. D'Auney looked at him with distaste, and two lesser barons standing behind him, tenants of his House, drew their swords.

  "My lords, please!" cried Baron Clifford, putting himself between the rival parties, but his sons ignored him and with a great shout rushed at D'Auney. The Deyville clan drew their steel also, and an overexcited minor Baron named Pagnell decided that now was a splendid moment to run up behind Gisburne and stab him in the neck.

  Gisburne fell, a look of surprise on his face as he choked on his own blood. This was the signal for every man in the room, save Baron Clifford, to draw his sword and attack his neighbour. The Northern alliance, always a loose and uncomfortable confederacy of men divided by ancient rivalries and blood feuds, unravelled in the time it took for Flambard to utter a final, wheezing laugh and raise both his hands as high as he could.

  This was the signal for Trajan to act. He grasped one end of the crude bolt holding the chain on the wheel fast, and heaved. The bolt came free and so did the wheel. It spun and released the chain with a metallic slithering noise, allowing it to run through the hole in the ceiling.

  The other end of the chain was wrapped around a keystone in the centre of the false ceiling hanging over the hall. Flambard had spent the last of his gold persuading a team of labourers to stay long enough to create the ceiling in a matter of days, but the result was worth it. With a grinding roar and a shower of dust, the chain holding the gigantic square piece of masonry in place went slack. It tumbled down onto the heads of the men below, swiftly followed by the rest of the ceiling.

  Trajan watched, fascinated, as the ancient hall of kings disappeared in a storm of falling blocks, muffled screams and a mighty shower of dust.

  When all was quiet, Trajan took a step back and rubbed his face, trying to come to terms with what he had just witnessed.

  The death of Archpriest Flambard, the death of Baron Clifford and his sons, the death of every major lord in the North…all of them buried under a sheet of masonry, just as Flambard had intended.

  "I shall take them with me, captain," the dying man had confided, shortly before sending Trajan to defend King's Crossing.

  Trajan swallowed, unable to imagine what would happen to the Winter Realm now it was shorn of any obvious leaders. He remembered the parchment in his belt. With trembling hands he took out the crackling sheet of vellum and unravelled it.

  "To the Barons, Lords and Knights of the Realm (it read), Archpriest Flambard sends greetings. Know that it has pleased me, in the last moment of my power and the last effort of my will, to renounce my title of Regent and pass it, with full authority and chattels appertaining, to my faithful servant Marcel Trajan. And know that he is to be confirmed in his title and authority in the immediate aftermath of my death."

  The words swam before Trajan's eyes, and he clutched at the wall to steady himself. Flambard's last instruction had been to make him, Marcel Trajan, third son of a penniless wine merchant, the most powerful man in the Winter Realm. The late Archpriest may have meant it as a joke, but even so the document bore his (extremely shaky) signature and was sealed with his wolf's head crest.

  Trajan thought quickly. Right now, the document wasn't worth the parchment it was written on. No one would take such an order seriously, and the palace was still crammed full of Northerners who were likely to go blood-mad once they discovered what had befallen their leaders in the hall below.

  Nevertheless, if he could get out of the palace, out of the city, there may be people out there willing to follow him. He could raise his banner and scrape together the remnants of the Palace Guard. Maybe even seize a castle or two. And that would be just a beginning. In a few years he might be able to enforce the title Flambard had left him.

  Trajan folded up the parchment and crammed it back into his belt. Then he hurried away, his scheming mind alive with possibilities.

  6.

  Fulk screamed and screamed, but the pain wouldn't go away.

  Gods help me, help me, help me, I am blind!

  The gods didn't answer, but the Oldest One's voice sang constantly in his ear, making soothing noises like some hideous mockery of the mother Fulk could barely remember.

  He could have died there, overwhelmed by pain and shock, and perhaps the human part of him did die. Certainly, there came a point where he stopped shrieking and writhing, and took his hands away from the bleeding holes that had once housed his eyes.

  A tremendous awareness filled him, pushing the pain and horror away until it was a mere nuisance in the background. His first instinct was to try and look on the world as he had always done, through his eyes, but that way lay nothing but darkness. He was forced to turn inward and reach for another source of light.

  Like an acolyte who
spends two-thirds of his life striving for enlightenment before realising that all he has to do is relax and let it come to him, Fulk realised that the source of his power had always been there. It was a part of him, alive in every element of his being, coursing through his veins, as vital to his existence as his heart's blood.

  Where he could only brush his fingertips against the source before, Fulk discovered he could now seize it with both hands and mould it like clay. He needed to see, so he could see. The cavern flashed into existence again, along with the long-dead men strewn about the floor and the monstrous creature that had taken his eyes.

  "That's it," the Oldest One's voice purred approvingly, "that's the way. I have anticipated your coming for centuries. Take a look at my friends."

  Fulk knew he referred to the dead knights. The walls of perception melted away, and the lives of the dead men lying in the cavern passed before him like a moving tapestry.

  He saw them board their ship in the Winter Realm, a hundred knights in all, brave, young and stupid, and set sail across the Founders' Channel to the shores of the Old Kingdom. There they had fought anything that got in their way, hideous beasts and savage tattooed Godless Ones, in a doomed bid to reclaim the lands of their ancestors.

  "The First Reconquest," Fulk muttered he watched the unfolding of long-past events that he had no means of influencing.

  He watched as the knights were whittled down in number, falling one by one in the endless battles, and marvelled at their endurance and fighting prowess. At last there were only thirty of them left. He saw them hold a council and resolve to destroy the source of all evil in the world, or die trying.

  "The source of all evil was me, or so they thought," the Oldest One said, sounding amused, "they found ancient paintings of my kin in the walls of caves, and assumed we were demons. Perhaps they were right. They ventured down here and tried to slay me with their swords. Incredible, foolish apes! Stabbing and prodding at me with bits of shaped metal!"