The Spark

by David Drake

  “That’s it,” said Jacques. “That’s the Roost.”

  I looked back along the Road. I could see only three of the gang behind me, though one was the warrior Severin. Two more appeared as I watched, though.

  “All right, Jacques,” I said. “You come in but don’t come any closer than where you can watch me. One-Eye, you stay here at the fork and keep the rest of the army together. And when Jacques tells you that I’m in the Roost’s gateway you come running. Understood?”

  “Sure,” One-Eye muttered.

  “And Severin?” I said. “If I don’t get back-up, then you better hope that I’m really killed. Because I’ll be looking for you, and I’ll tell you right now that your shield isn’t going to last long.”

  “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar,” Severin said. “I never minded a fight.”

  He looked back. About twenty more of the gang had arrived, but the other warrior wasn’t among them.

  Severin shrugged and grinned at me. “Neither does Roush, but he’s a slow git for all that.”

  I grinned back. “C’mon, Jacques,” I said. “Time for me to show you folks why I’m here.”

  Except for the moment when I saw Lang on his chair and thought of cutting him apart, I couldn’t remember the controller doing anything to me. Rooting out a nest of robbers was exactly the sort of thing I’d expected to do when I became a Champion. I hadn’t expected to be doing it on the orders of a man like Lang, if he was even a man, but I was comfortable with the job.

  The grass of the Roost’s landingplace was waist high and going to seed, though there were was a well-trampled path through it. I figured I’d have chiggers in the morning, but getting to the morning was the problem right now.

  There were cows on the rolling ground to the left of the castle. I wondered how big this node was. I hadn’t thought to ask.

  Buck and I were coming on alone. Jacques was waiting just off the Road like he was supposed to. I was feeling pretty lonely, even though everything was going to plan.

  The castle itself was two stories of stone, but there was a brick watchtower on top of that and a man in it. I heard the lookout shout something down into the castle, though I couldn’t tell what the words were.

  A minute or so later—I was near up to the big wooden gate—a fellow came out to meet me. He was wearing what must’ve been a pretty good suit once, but I doubt it’d been washed since he got it and he was a messy eater. He wore crossed shoulder belts, and I swear there must’ve been a dozen knives hanging from them. He held a big one in his right hand with notches in the edge like a saw.

  “Whoa, buddy!” he said. “Who’re you and what d’ye think you’re doing here?”

  “My name’s Pal,” I said, “and I’m here to sign on with Lord Charles.”

  “Are you now, bucko?” the guard said. “I suppose you think he takes just any riff-raff that stumbles in off the Road. Do you have any money?”

  “If I had money,” I said, stepping past the fellow, “I wouldn’t be here. And I don’t know who Lord Charles takes, but I figure to ask him.”

  I was within two paces of the gateway. My right hand was in the tunic pocket.

  The gates were swung outward. A six-by-six-inch timber leaned against the wall just inside. That five-foot bar would slide into staples to lock the gates closed at night. I could see the spikes of the iron portcullis in the ceiling inward of that, ready to drop and keep the passage closed even if the gate itself was broken open.

  “Hey!” the guard shouted. “You take another step and I’ll cut your bloody head off!”

  I brought my weapon out and turned. I had my left hand up to grab his right wrist if he tried to cut at me, but he just stared in amazement. My weapon ripped his belly, spattering blood and I suppose other things over the ground beyond him, but I could’ve killed him just as easily with the knife dangling from my belt—just like the one every farmer wore.

  He wasn’t a guard: he was a bully and a thief, or he wanted to be. But I had to get him out of the way.

  I scrambled into the gateway. I wasn’t thinking about what I’d done though I would be, sure enough, as soon as I had the time to.

  I switched off my weapon, but I didn’t have time to put it away. Gripping with my left hand and right wrist, and pushing with my booted foot, I slid the cross-bar—still upright—into the track where the portcullis would fall, then stepped further into the passage and waited with both my shield and weapon ready.

  “C’mere, Buck!” I said. He came bounding to my side.

  A bell was clanging in the watchtower. I figured the people I really had to worry about would be inside the castle, but I had to be ready for somebody coming from the other way too. There might be guards with the farmers and herdsmen.

  All somebody’d have to do was kick the bar out of the way and the portcullis could block the passage again. That would give Lord Charles as long as he wanted to deal with me.

  There was a rattle and shriek as the portcullis slid down its track—and a bang! as it hit the timber and stopped a good four feet from the floor. The weight of the heavy grating would make it hard to move the timber even if I weren’t in place to protect it.

  Three soldiers halted at the far end of the passage, ten feet from me. One had a crossbow. I saw them distorted and blurred by my shield.

  “Well, shoot him!” said the man holding a broad-bladed spear. The bowman obediently shouldered his weapon and shot. The bolt’s iron head sparkled as it struck the shield; it dropped to the floor.

  I laughed. I wasn’t sure they could hear me, but when I feinted forward as if I was charging them, they scattered away.

  I backed to where I’d been standing before, just ahead of the half-lowered portcullis. I glanced behind to see if anybody was approaching from the outside end, but there wasn’t. The guard was sprawled right in front of the opening, which was likely to put off anybody who wasn’t real committed.

  I’d remember in my dreams the way his eyes had rolled up. He was a nasty bully and I didn’t regret that he was dead. But…

  A warrior appeared at the end of the passage. “Come on!” I shouted. “I’m waiting for you!”

  He doesn’t have a dog, I thought. The fellow didn’t come on.

  Buck growled. A second warrior appeared beside the first one. Seeing through Buck’s eyes, I couldn’t be sure of the colors, but the new opponent wore a lighter garment.

  I heard dogs barking. A third warrior—in black—appeared behind the first two. With this one were a pair of hounds and a handler who slipped their leashes and scrambled away. If they were led on leashes they couldn’t be well-trained, but I no longer had the huge edge over my opponents that I’d hoped for.

  I couldn’t handle three warriors at once, but here in this stone tunnel I didn’t have to. There was only room for one at a time to fight comfortably, though if two warriors were used to working together they could manage it.

  The three argued—or more likely, the one in black harangued the other two. He was waggling his weapon in a fashion that looked more threat than encouragement.

  The first two warriors turned toward me. Then my lighter-colored opponent rushed. The darker one kept a half step behind and to his right.

  To Buck and therefore to me, it was all in slow motion. I stepped forward and drove the leader’s stroke right, into the path of his partner. As the two of them fouled each other, I slashed for the leader’s ankle, below his shield. It was the stroke I’d found that did best for me, using Buck’s motion-sense to give me an advantage.

  It worked this time too: the warrior toppled backward, his severed right foot on the stone floor. His partner slashed down. I took the blow on my shield and thrust for the center of his chest.

  His shield was better than I’d expected—his weapon had barely flashed sparks when my own shield stopped it—but not good enough to save him. His shield failed in a bright flash, and my weapon drove on, burning a black hole through his chest and heart.

  I
heard my men behind me, shouting as they ducked under the portcullis, but I ignored that and lunged toward the warrior in black. He hadn’t entered the passage to support his men. That didn’t make him a coward: he couldn’t have done them any good, and maybe he just wanted to face me where he had room to maneuver.

  I jumped over the body of the warrior I’d wounded, but I tripped and almost fell. He’d lifted his torso to grab his right stump with both hands and I kicked his forehead. The blackened ends of the leg bones stuck out from where the flesh had shrunk back from the cut.

  The warrior in black used my stumble to thrust. I was way out of position for blocking it with my weapon, but I’d kept my shield up. There were a lot of sparks but the shield held. I’d want to look at it when this was over because Black’s weapon was a long sight better than those of his two supporters, but for now I could still trust my shield.

  I cut at Black’s head to see how good his shield was. He didn’t recover his own weapon in time to deflect mine, and his shield was decent but not good enough for this fight.

  Black retreated. There were at least a dozen people in the courtyard, but only Black was a warrior. My soldiers—Lang’s soldiers—were rushing in behind me; I figured they could handle the locals.

  I swung down at Black. He got his weapon up this time, but he wasn’t able to block me completely. His shield sparked furiously, losing at least a third of its coverage.

  Instead of hacking again, I thrust for Black’s face. He didn’t raise what was left of his shield high enough. His head burst as my weapon turned his brains to steam.

  I backed to the nearest wall and leaned against it. My legs were wobbly and I was sucking in air through my mouth.

  With my shoulders against the stone, I took a look around. Since nobody was near, I shut down my shield to get a better view. Yeah, there was a chance that somebody with a crossbow was going to pot me, but there was a chance that a block was going fall off the wall above and bash my brains out. You can’t spend all the time thinking about how to stay safe and still live what I’d call a life.

  The fight was over. Severin and Roush, Lang’s two warriors, didn’t have great shields, but they’d stop crossbow bolts and slow a spear-thrust to harmlessness. The Roost’s fighters were surrendering now that their leader was dead.

  Or they were trying to surrender. The Farandol troops were cutting the throats of all those who’d thrown their weapons down.

  “Stop that!” I shouted, no longer feeling exhausted. “Stop killing prisoners!”

  Jacques withdrew his butcher knife from the belly of the man he’d just stabbed. “The boss told us to kill everybody in the castle!” he said. “Lang did.”

  “Well, I tell you not to!” I said. I tried to switch on my weapon. I would’ve stepped toward Jacques, but the wash of cold slush descended on my mind again.

  My body didn’t obey my will. I put my equipment in my tunic pockets. All I could do was turn away so that I didn’t have to watch the slaughter.

  There was worse in the other direction.

  The warrior in black tunic and tights was a man of about fifty. There was gray in his blond hair but his beard was a dark russet. Lord Charles, I supposed. He’d died quickly.

  So had the warrior in walnut brown, the fellow whom I’d seen through Buck’s eyes as my darker opponent. The hole burned in the center of his chest would’ve brought death almost before the first flash of pain from the wound. He lay well within the passage.

  The remaining warrior, the first to rush me, wore yellow. She was a woman. Somebody had cut her throat, probably One-Eye since his big knife lay gobbed with blood on the stone beside her.

  One-Eye was raping the corpse.

  I grabbed One-Eye by both shoulders and jerked him upright. “You scum!” I shouted.

  “It ain’t natural!” One-Eye shouted back, meaning something different from what I would’ve with the same words.

  I wasn’t thinking. I slammed One-Eye against the stone wall of the passage. He went limp and dropped like spilled intestines when I took my hands away to reach for my weapon and shield.

  I didn’t draw my weapon after all. I’d flattened the back of One-Eye’s skull. There was a smear of blood and brains on the stone where he’d hit.

  Lang’s controller would’ve stopped me from interfering while One-Eye was murdering the wounded warrior, but apparently it had no objection to my killing gang members after the massacre. I wondered how far I could take that.…

  Buck smelled how I was feeling. He rubbed his head against my knee and whined.

  I stroked his ears. Screams occasionally drifted from the interior of the castle.

  After a while—a minute or two—I realized that my job here was finished. I clucked to Buck and we headed back to the Road and Farandol. The others would follow when they chose to.

  If that was “never” I’d be pleased, more pleased than I would be with any other answer.

  CHAPTER 29

  A Change in Circumstances

  “Lang says he’ll let me out of here if I’ll agree to work for him,” Baga said.

  I shrugged. “Maybe he will,” I said, because that was the truth.

  Lang had let me carry food from the boat’s converter to Baga. I’d found a bowl in the castle’s outdoor kitchen and scoured it with sand and dry dirt, then washed it in water. What I’d seen in the kitchen made me even less likely to want to eat anything coming from it.

  “But you don’t think I should, do you?” Baga said.

  “No,” I said. That was the truth too.

  I wondered why Lang hadn’t tuned a controller to Baga. Maybe the controller would interfere with a boatman’s use of his boat, though it didn’t keep me from using my weapon and shield normally. I didn’t know whether I could work as a Maker, though. The fact I hadn’t had any urge to try since I’d been captured suggested something had happened besides not being able to attack Lang.

  Or maybe Lang just didn’t have many controllers. I’ve generally found that the simplest answer is the right one.

  Baga sighed. “Guess I’ll stick it out,” he said. He handed me back the bowl and the mug I’d brought wine in.

  Jacques glowered as he locked the cell behind me. Lang had only laughed when Jacques told him how I’d killed One-Eye, but he must’ve adjusted the controller because I felt cold wash over me again when I’d seen Jacques kick Baga.

  The controller hadn’t kept me from grabbing a club from another guard and tossing it to Baga, though. Since then Jacques hadn’t tried any tricks, but a broken forearm hadn’t made Jacques like me any better.

  I started down the corridor, planning to go back to the boat. The Beast stood at the door of an empty cell. “I came to visit you, human.”

  “Your controller works perfectly,” I said. “I’m sure Lang would tell you so.”

  “If I had been concerned,” the Beast said inside my skull, “the fact that Lang is still alive would have told me so. I did not doubt my skill. Sit down in this room—”

  Blackness flowed from the larger blackness, toward the open door.

  “—and tell me about the capture of Rowley’s Roost, human.”

  I stepped into the empty cell. The Beast followed and closed the door behind us. I sat on the wooden bench that doubled as a bunk for prisoners.

  “You see into my mind,” I said. “You know what happened.”

  “Yes,” said the Beast. “But tell me, and I will know how you feel about it.”

  I snorted. “About the fight, I feel fine,” I said. “Neither of the first pair was as good as most folks I sparred with when I was an Aspirant. The one’s shield was stiff in the center but really narrow. I found after the fight that she was a woman; maybe that had something to do with it.”

  “And Lord Charles himself?” the Beast asked.

  “That was more of a fight,” I said. “He had good equipment, not as good as mine but decent. His trouble was lack of training. He didn’t respond quick enough when I did someth
ing. He just wasn’t used to fighting somebody who knew how to fight. I felt good about beating him, but I had the advantages.”

  “And then?” said the Beast.

  “Then I wished I’d never come to Farandol,” I said. “Well, I sorta wished that already, or anyway that I’d known what was going on here before I arrived. This is exactly the sort of place Jon is trying to stamp out.”

  I remembered turning away from the massacre that I couldn’t stop and seeing One-Eye on the warrior’s body. I felt myself tense as I had when I jerked the scum off her and bashed him to death on the stone. At least I’d been able to stop that.

  “The massacre of prisoners bothered you,” the Beast said. “Even though you believe those being killed were as bad as those killing them. And as for the dead warrior—she was dead before your victim degraded her.”

  “The massacre bothered me,” I said. “A lot. I don’t care who they were and I know they were the same sort as the ones from Farandol. I’d made it happen, and then I couldn’t stop it.”

  I thought and added, “That’s what really bothered me. Not that it was happening, but that I’d made it happen. I had.”

  “Is it the same sense that caused you to kill the Shade and free my kin, human?” the Beast asked. “This is a sense that I do not have and none of my kin have.”

  I got up and paced to the side-wall, a step and a half. “I don’t know!” I said. I was angry from talking about that business, thinking about it. “I just know that it was wrong and it was happening because of me. And as for One-Eye, he was a filthy little turd and not worth burying!”

  “Yes,” said the Beast. “I am sure that’s correct.”

  “The Beast I saved on the Road?” I said. “Was he part of your family?”

  I felt the Beast’s laughter in my mind for the first time during this conversation. “That juvenile was of a clan at feud with mine for a thousand years,” the Beast said. “If I had met that pair on the Road, I would have killed the young one instead of the Shade. I am not like you, human.”

  I didn’t say anything. I’d never given any thought to Beast families or towns; or to Beasts generally, I suppose, except to worry about meeting one on the Road.