by Lee Ramsay
“Run,” the young man panted over Brenna’s head to Rathus. “No telling how long he can last.”
“Brenna?”
“I can make it,” she said, dashing aside tears with her hand.
They all but carried her; their sword belts jingled with their long stride, and the rucksack with herbs, medicines, and bandages jounced on her back with their pace. Unable to adjust the hatchet’s sling to her smaller size, the axe smacked her hip with each step.
Breath coming in irregular gasps, their boots pounded the road’s hard-packed dirt. Rathus winced as each running step jostled his still tender shoulder, and he tossed his rucksack into the drainage ditch; the flap’s lacing broke, spilling apples and a round of cheese into the freezing water. Brenna pressed her hand to a cramp stabbing her side. The scar in Tristan’s thigh stretched, the muscle beneath spasming.
The sounds of fighting died away behind them. Fresh adrenaline flooded Tristan’s blood, and he wondered if Groush had survived. It did not seem probable; he knew Urzgeth’s ruthless focus and held no illusions that the Hillffolk still breathed. Aged though he was, the huntsman had outlived his pack and caught up with them.
The young man and the bard traded another glance over Brenna’s head and lengthened their stride to open the distance between them and the Dushken. Tristan did not know at what point they would be beyond the huntsman’s ability to catch them, but he had no intention of stopping until his heart burst or he crossed into Wenggen’s relative safety.
Thunder rumbled, faint enough at first that the rush of blood in his ears drowned it out. He glanced at the low sky, eyes burning as sweat dripped into them. Rare though it was, Anthoun had told him cold air could become unstable enough for electrical storms to occur. He wondered if such an occurrence was imminent.
Brenna dragged him off-balance as Rathus stopped running. Too breathless to speak, he rounded on the nobleman with a scowl. The bard failed to react; his green-flecked brown eyes stared off into the field to his right, and the young man’s blood ran cold as he followed nobleman’s gaze.
It had not been thunder he heard, but the pounding of hooves. A line of ten soldiers, clad in gleaming steel cuirasses over maille hauberks and astride warhorses the color of fresh-spilled blood, rode along the trees separating one farm from the next. Each wore an open-faced helmet; a raised fin swept along the centerline of the skull, and chain veils protected the men’s faces beneath the eyes. Sabers hung from their hips, and each rider carried a short spear with a barbed head.
An eleventh horseman rode at the head of the line. Steel-shod hooves rang against packed dirt as the rider guided his destrier onto the road as the other riders fanned out behind him. Dense maille covered arms as thick as the young man’s thigh. Brigandine, dyed a purplish red and shining with brass studs, protected the man’s chest. His cape was violet, edged in gold-embroidered vines, and fastened to his shoulders with broaches of black-enameled steel inlaid with gold wreaths. Steel greaves encased his legs to the knees, matched by vambraces over brass-studded gauntlets.
He knew this man was the warlord called the Horned Knight without being told more than the barest description. The man was a giant, but more than his size and armor, it was the warrior’s head that made Tristan’s blood run glacial.
He mistook it for a helmet shaped to be a skull at first, a ghastly design meant to strike fear in any who viewed it. As the warlord drew closer, he realized bone grew from the man’s flesh, which puckered where it erupted from waxy skin. Winter-gray eyes gleamed within shadowed orbits. Through the hole where the nose should be, glistening membranes shifted with each breath. The skull’s mandible protected the man’s jaw, meeting a ridge of bone growing through the upper lip – the whole lined with sharpened teeth more suited to a dog than a man.
Twisting lengths of gray-white ram’s horn, from which the warlord took his name, curled from the skull’s temples and around the gaps where the ears should be. Points enameled in onyx, the horns brushed the grisly mask’s cheeks before curling outward.
“So, Troppenheim is left with nothing but children to roam the countryside,” the warlord said in a sepulchral voice, reigning his horse to a stop a handful of yards from the trio. The mandible of his grotesque helm opened to reveal wasted, pale lips hidden beneath the bone.
Throat and tongue dry, Tristan released Brenna’s arm and slid his sword from its sheath. Rathus drew his blade as well, his eyes searching for an avenue of escape as the Anahari woman fumbled for the hatchet’s handle.
The Horned Knight laughed and tightened his grip on his mount’s reigns as the warhorse tossed its head with a jingle of barding. The sound started low, seeming to rise from the ground and draw an edge from the chill air. His mount shied away as he dismounted with preternatural grace. “Foolish. The wiser action would have been to flee.”
Tristan stood shoulder to shoulder with Rathus in front of Brenna. “You would have ridden us down.”
“Perhaps. I had not decided. Betimes it is more useful to let a few live to sow terror.”
“Then let us drop our swords,” Rathus said, “and we’ll be on our way.”
“It is too late for that, I’m afraid,” the warlord said as he swung down from his mount’s saddle. He drew the saber strapped to his hip with a smooth pull; the blade’s curved, serrated edge gleamed as he swept the point over the companions. “You have drawn against me, but I make you this bargain – strike me down, and my men shall let you go unmolested.”
Tristan’s arm ached with his sword’s unaccustomed weight. “Let my companions go. It is I who drew against you first.”
Brenna stared at him in disbelief. “Are you mad?”
The knight shook his head, his saber cutting the air as he rolled his wrist. “One boy is no challenge.”
It was the response he expected, and he stepped away from Brenna. “Back away, Brenna. Rathus, get him between us.”
The bard muttered something inaudible but did as he was bid.
Tristan’s remembered what Dougan had once said about fighting with swords. While skill was essential, it was often lucky openings that were the difference between winning and losing a sword fight. He had seen the warlord’s easy movements, noted the casual way the man held his sword, and doubted that the Horned Knight would provide many opportunities to strike.
Then fight dirty, the veteran’s voice said in his mind.
Ignoring the line of soldiers arrayed behind the warlord, he crossed one foot over the other in an attempt to position the man between himself and Rathus. Now that he was closer to the warrior, he could make out gold-enameled glyphs scratched into the bone mask and caught the musty stench of moldering wool and leather. Gray eyes bored into his, and he realized the warlord had yet to blink.
Rathus waited until he and Tristan framed the knight before lunging at the man’s flank. The warlord twisted aside, his saber sweeping against the bard’s thrust with a clang.
Capitalizing on the distraction, the young man leaped forward and brought his sword down in a vicious two-handed swipe. The blade struck nothing as the knight shifted away with a swirl of his violet cape. The saber licked out with three swift slashes, which he parried with desperate twists of his blade. Pain flared where his finger had been as scar tissue split open beneath the crashing impacts.
The Horned Knight shifted away with disdainful ease as the young man’s blade swept a useless lateral cut, then ducked a swipe from Rathus’s sword. Metal clanged as he spun on the ball of his foot to catch Brenna’s chopping hatchet on his vambrace; he answered the strike with a slap across the cheek that sent her stumbling.
A downward sweep of the young man’s blade deflected a saber thrust aimed for the young woman’s back.
Freeing his blade with a skirl of steel, the knight rolled along the outside of Tristan’s blow. In desperation, he threw himself to one side to avoid being beheaded. Leather split beneath the warlord’s serrated saber, and the blade opened a line of fire across his shoulder. Breath
coming in panting gasps, he staggered away as blood ran hot down his back.
Cheek bleeding from a gash opened by the studs on the warlord’s gauntlet, Brenna chopped for a gap in the knight’s guard. The Meridan sidestepped her hatchet’s clumsy chop and swept a kick into her belly. Stumbling backward with a violent exhalation, the young woman crashed into Tristan and nearly sent them both to the ground.
The distraction allowed Rathus to strike from the warlord’s rear with a fencer’s thrust. However, the warlord anticipated the blow and sidestepped; the bard’s sword caught in the man’s violet cape and tore it as it drove into a gap in the warrior’s brigandine – but the strike sank no further, and the blade bent beneath the thrust’s force.
Fabric ripped as the knight pivoted inside the bard’s thrust and stepped back with his left heel. The vambrace on his left arm pushed the bent sword aside, and his armored knee rose in a sharp blow. Rathus’s breath exploded out as he caught the strike in the gut and collapsed backward. Prone on the ground, he was vulnerable to a saber thrust as the Meridan stepped in.
Tristan dumped Brenna to the ground and lunged, leading with the sword despite his uncertain, left-handed grip. The blade bit deep into the underside of the Horned Knight’s forearm, missing the hauberk’s sleeve and catching a gap in the vambrace. No sound passed the warlord’s lips as he shrugged off the impact and turned to the outside of the blow. His off-hand grabbed the overbalanced young man’s wrist and jerked him forward to expose his flank.
The saber pierced Tristan’s back with a queer vibration through his chest as the blade’s spine slid along the underside of his rib. Blood darkened his shirt as the point emerged beneath his chest; wiped clean by his shirt, the steel point gleamed. His sword clattered against the dirt as his hand went weak.
The saber’s serrated edge chewed through his flesh as it withdrew. The young man’s strength fled as blood spilled down his side, and he collapsed to the ground. Brenna’s horrified shriek came from a distance as his cheek smacked the road, though the throbbing of his heart oddly muted the sound in his ears. Breathing hurt, and bright red sprayed the dirt before his eyes. His lips were gummed and salty as he struggled to breathe around the constriction vicing down on his chest.
So, this is dying. Tristan’s graying vision fixed on the leather-wrapped hilt of his sword. Snowflakes collected on the grip as his body curled around its hurt. The irony of the situation did not escape him. He had wanted to learn to live by the sword, and now was dying within reach of one. More ironic, he had wanted this moment to come since his mad leap over the waterfall; now that it was here, he realized how much he wanted to live.
As his eyes drifted closed, he saw Jayna’s face as though she were with him rather than in Dorishad. His fingers twitched with his desire to reach for her. For a brief moment, the road’s cold roughness faded as the young woman brushed her fingers across his cheek, her soft skin smelling of wool and dye. Pain receded as the world grew warm and green around him. Her touch lingered for several heartbeats, giving him respite from his misery.
Then, with a wistful smile on her lips, Jayna’s hand withdrew. The feel of her fingertips lingered as she faded into the summery shadows beneath the trees. Cold agony devastated Tristan’s senses as it crashed over him once she vanished. Blood fouled his lips as he reached for the fading illusion, and his breathless voice emerged as a croak. “I’m so sorry.”
Chapter 72
Agony and dizzying blackness lanced his swirling senses. Fire burned in his chest and belly. Something supported his back and legs, leaving his arms drifting and head lolling. Vertigo struck as his eyes fluttered open. The world was inverted and too bright; it swelled close, then receded.
Blackness. Consciousness remained elusive, though he was somehow aware of it, which made him question if it had escaped his grasp.
Pain blazed through his chest as air, sweet and sustaining, flooded his lungs. Iron saltiness frothed on his lips. A pale face framed in black, lips smeared in blood, hovered in front of his face. Ankara was not dead; she was here in front of him, his life filing her, his seed stolen from his loins—
No, it was Sathra, come to pervert his memories. Hands grabbed his wrists, tearing his fingers from his tormentor’s throat. He tried to scream his frustration but vomited blood instead.
COLD. SO COLD.
“Tristan!”
Pain rippled through him in waves. Snow stung his cheeks, or perhaps it was the hand slapping him as a shrill voice shouted. He was not Tristan, and did not want to be. Tristan hurt, and was nothing but a pathetic failure. He wished the woman would go away and let him sink back into the soothing blackness where blood rushing through his ears reminded him of the summer winds blowing through the orchard.
“Tristan!” a dog barked. Odd. He had never owned a dog, much less one that could say his name.
Air swelled his lung as lips pressed against his, and a hand caressed his abraded, tender cheek. More pain came with the rush of air, and with it some clarity of thought – enough to see Ankara once more looming over him, mouth bloody as his body twisted from her latest abuse.
Thrashing against Urzgeth’s iron grip, Tristan extended claw-like fingers to dig the unborn child from Ankara’s – no, Sathra’s – swollen belly. His pulse drummed in his head with a staccato beat of kill, kill, kill.
Sathra became Esra, her face shocked and an arrow buried in her chest, then twisted into Nisha’s waxen face smeared with blood from her severed arm. Jesta gazed at him with defeated eyes, vanishing into the darkness to be savaged by unbranded Dushken. The choking voice calling his name rose from Kayla’s swollen lips; her face purpled, and her tongue wagged at the corner of her mouth as she convulsed at the end of a rope.
He changed his mind; he wanted to die. He had failed too many people, disappointed too many people. He hurt, and was tired. Senseless oblivion, where his sole companion was the pain of his dying body, was what he deserved.
Brenna’s dirty face loomed in his vision as she pried open his eyelid. Blood smeared her mouth and trailed from a gash in her cheek; her eye was red and swollen. He flailed as her lips pressed his and forced air into his lungs.
Rattling. Lurching. Worried voices. Loud shouts. Hands held his wrists as Brenna forced more air into his lungs. He coughed more blood as darkness swallowed him.
THE WORLD STOPPED SPINNING. Oppressive silence made the blood rushing in his ears and the throbbing of his racing heart all the louder. Murmurs and rustling cloth told him people surrounded him. Something hot trickled down his side, seeping from the abnormal pressure and tearing feeling in his chest. Blinking his eyes against the glare of a room filled with candles, he lifted his head and looked down at his naked chest. His skin had been cut open, baring the blood-speckled white of bone. A man hunched over his abdomen with his pale hands sunk into his belly.
Tristan jerked and screamed as adrenaline flooded his veins. Blood foamed on his lips as panic spiked his heartbeat. A jet of bright red splattered the face of a man leaning over him. Fine steel scissors clattered against wood as they fell to the accompanying cry of, “Bloody fuck, he’s awake!”
Shadowy figures, their faces obscured by swaths of bloodstained white cloth, loomed over him. Hands pressed against his shoulders and pinned his legs and arms to the wooden table on which he lay. He thrashed, bloody breath frothing his lips and nostrils. Another set of hands trapped his temples and lifted his head. A cup pressed against his lips, something sticky and sickly-sweet flowing across his tongue.
“Drink, Tristan,” a woman’s voice said, rich and soothing. “Drink. It will all be over when you wake.”
Tristan tried to spit the liquid out. His mouth went numb where the liquid touched, flowing past his teeth and down his throat. He swallowed and struggled to gasp for air against the pressure in his chest.
“Drink, Tristan,” the woman’s voice repeated. A memory of Karilen flit through his mind from when he was younger, abed with a fever that replaced his bones with iron b
ars drawn from the hamlet’s forge. She had spoken to him in the same tone and wiped his brow in the same manner. Tears rolled down his cheeks. His body shuddered with the violence of wanting to hear Karilen’s soothing voice.
“It’s alright, Tristan,” the woman’s rich voice said as the cup pressed against his lips. More of the oversweet liquid flowed past his lips. “You’re safe, but you need to drink.”
He drank. A numbing sensation not unlike rishka swept down his throat, stealing away his ability to move. Fresh panic swelled as numbness spread through his consciousness.
The cup moved away from his lips. A hand brushed against his forehead, mopping it with a cool, damp rag. A lock of ragged auburn hair tickled his cheek as it slid from his forehead. “Sleep, Tristan. Everything is going to be alright.”
He slept.
TRISTAN’S CHEST FELT as though Groush was sitting on it.
The thought coursed through a void of semi-consciousness, joined by other disjointed fragments of awareness. His nose itched, as did his thigh, but he could not move to scratch either spot. An odd gurgling sounded every time he took a breath, each of which was halting and too shallow. The skin on his left side and stomach had a terrible ache and itch. Wool, warm and scratchy, kept the front of his body warm, but there was a draft on his backside.
Opening his eyes took effort. A warm gloom surrounded him; the fire crackling in a massive stone hearth to his right cast dancing patterns of light and shadow across the oak beams supporting the ceiling. The bed he lay on was smoothed wood, canted at an angle that kept his head elevated. The hole through which his buttocks pressed was too small to slip through, and padded cloth kept the edges from digging into his skin.
