“They have done nothing. They’re innocent of my crimes.”
“You can save them,” Thornto offered.
“How?”
Thornto could hear the desperation in the earl’s voice. The pathetic lie of hope.
“You will go before the prince, at court, and you will confess all your sins,” Thornto told him. The earl nodded, eager to please. “And then,” Thornto continued, “in front of the court, you will castrate yourself.”
The earl stared at him, all the blood drained from his face. He started to shake his head.
“No, please...” he moaned.
“I have people watching. I will know if you do not do as I have instructed and then every sin you and your men have ever committed will be revisited on the flesh of your family.” Strictly speaking, this wasn’t true; despite what he’d become there were some things that just weren’t in Thornto’s nature. “Your wife will see her children consumed, still living, by my ghoul.” This also wasn’t true. The earl’s family would die hard but their broken bodies would be prominently displayed so the earl could understand the price of his disobedience.
Thornto made to leave the tent.
“Please!” the earl begged, “take my daughter, have your revenge on me through her but let my son and my wife go.”
Thornto turned to stare at the earl. In some ways he was impressed that Lord Philippe, given his starting point, had found new depths to plumb.
“The girl and my wife then!” the earl pleaded. “Just give me my son back!”
Thornto walked out of the tent to the sound of weeping behind him. The deserters were looting the camp. Those who remained were doing little to stop them. All of the soldiers gave him a wide berth.
Eight:
The Murders
The Red Earl was smart enough not to send anyone to look for his wife and children. He must have realised that Thornto would kill them first; after all, he wasn’t the idiot villain in some chivalric romance, and Lord Philippe was far from a hero regardless of his tourney reputation back on the Iron Island. So Thornto waited with Gritcham and Cross, making sure the prisoners were fed and watered but otherwise trying to ignore the venomous glares of mother and son and the daughter’s constant crying.
It was the second day after Thornto’s meeting with the earl that the Ponce appeared on the muddy track that wound its way through the trees to the woodsman’s hut. He was being pulled along in a donkey cart, his finery gone and replaced by the clothes of a country serf. His disguise would have been more convincing had it not been for his obviously luxurious girth. Thornto was leaning against the wall of the tiny hut close to the door as the cart pulled up and the Ponce, with some difficulty, managed to extricate himself from the contraption. Thornto couldn’t read the expression on the Ponce’s face. It had rained recently and the browning leaves were still dripping with water. Cross came out to join them, closing the door behind her.
“Let’s talk away from the house,” Thornto said. He didn’t want his captives hearing anything that might make them difficult to control.
They walked into the woods where the ponce found a fallen tree to rest his bulk. Cross was leaning against another tree, arms folded. Thornto stood before the Ponce.
“Well?” he asked.
“What did you expect?” the Ponce said.
“What happened?” Thornto demanded.
The Ponce’s eyes narrowed it was clear the beggar king didn’t like being spoken to like that.
“What about the captives?” the Ponce demanded.
Thornto frowned, momentarily confused.
“They’re back at the house, other than Lady Imelda missing a finger they’re all fine. I’m true to my word. If he does what he’s told I’ll set them free. If not...” Thornto told him. He was aware of Cross staring at him. The Ponce’s features hardened.
“Not those captives,” the Ponce said. Thornto had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. “The slaves taken by the Crimson Companies, the children sold to them by the Hierophant.”
It must have been clear to the Ponce from the expression on Thornto’s face.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” the Ponce managed through a clenched jaw before glancing at Cross.
“All will be settled,” Thornto tried to reassure him.
“It was the reason I... we agreed to help you.” With some difficulty the Ponce pushed himself onto his feet and started waddling back towards his donkey and cart. Thornto caught up with him quickly grabbed the Ponce’s shoulder and spun him around.
“I asked you a question!”
The Ponce just stared at him. Suddenly Cross was standing next to them, her hands on the hilts of her shortswords.
“We had a deal,” the Ponce said. “You didn’t live up to your part of the bargain. I see little reason to live up to mine.”
“You’re considerably less likely to rip open my belly and strangle me with my own intestines,” Thornto pointed out.
Cross started to move but the Ponce motioned her to stop.
“Tell me!” Thornto screamed. The Ponce actually flinched, a look of profound distaste spreading across his face.
“The Red Earl publically castrate himself? Are you a fool? Few men have the will for such a thing, let alone someone as weak and venal as Lord Philippe Duranton. You horribly miscalculated. It is something a child would come up with.”
The Ponce, Cross, the hut, the woods all of it seemed to recede. Thornto could hear a rushing in his head, a noise that drowned out everything else. He was only vaguely aware that the Ponce was still talking.
“According to my spies, Lord Philippe made a fuss at court. He admitted his crimes, all of which his fellows would have been aware of already, and had presumably done likewise themselves. Then he fumbled with his dagger and his trews for a bit. Exposed himself, before collapsing, weeping, and had to be escorted from the chamber. Prince Sieber apparently followed him out.”
Thornto was trembling with rage. He could not believe that the earl had disobeyed him, defied his obvious power over the other man. Thornto turned and started back towards the hut.
“What are you going to do?” the Ponce called after him.
“I am a man of my word,” Thornto growled.
Suddenly Cross was in his way, blocking his path to the house.
“What does this achieve?” she asked. Her voice was dry and cracked. It belonged to someone unused to speaking.
“It’ll teach him a lesson,” Thornto snapped.
“No, it’ll ensure that he has nothing to lose. He’s broken. You’ve won. Kill them and you give him something to live for. You remake him anew,” Cross told him. She didn’t add: ‘like you.’ She didn’t have to.
Thornto leaned in close to her.
“Then it will at least make me feel better.” He tried to walk around her but she blocked his path again. “Move!” he snapped.
“They’re innocent,” Cross pointed out.
It was too much for Thornto.
“Nobody’s innocent!” he screamed at her, drool running down his chin. He pointed towards the hut. “Do you really think that conniving bitch didn’t know what her husband was doing? Didn’t profit from it? Have you seen the look on that evil little shit’s face? He is the next Red Earl in waiting!”
“And the girl?” Cross asked.
He hesitated but only for a moment.
“Whatever she is now she will only grow up to be one of them,” he told her.
“Like you?” she asked.
Thornto wasn’t so foolish as to be blind to the parallels that could be drawn between the Red Earl and himself. He had few illusions that he was anything other than a monster, except that those he tortured and killed were bad people who deserved his attentions.
“She’s not getting much of a chance, is she?” Cross asked.
“Her death is a good thing, a just thing,” Thornto told her. It rang hollow in his own ears but he was too angry to care. He tried to go around Cross aga
in, but again she moved.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded.
“Because they murdered me and dumped me in the bodypits to be consumed by ghouls. Because they are murderers, torturers, rapists and worse. Because they are slavers in league with anointed pederasts! How many fucking reasons do you need?”
“Why did they murder you?” Cross asked more quietly.
Thornto had to stop and think for a moment.
“Because I tried to stop the earl from raping someone,” he all but whispered, but even as he said he wasn’t sure that was true. He had objected, but had he really tried to stop it?
“What did she look like?” Cross asked.
“Wh-what?” Thornto managed.
“The girl. What did she look like?”
Thornto thought and thought. He could not bring her face to mind.
“I can’t remember,” he finally said. Then he stared at Cross, suddenly appalled. “Was it you? Is that why you’re helping me?”
The smile on Cross’s face was bitter and utterly without warmth, one hand coming up to unconsciously brush her face.
“These are old scars,” she told him. Then she took a step towards him and Thornto took a step back. “Do you think you’ve changed, m’lord?” she asked. “You think your rebirth has made you any different from the spoilt little lordling, crying because war isn’t the grand adventure he’d hoped it would be? Do you think your revenge is anything other than a temper tantrum?”
Thornto stared at her. It felt like he’d been slapped. He knew he should be furious to be spoken to like this, by a peasant, by a woman.
“But you helped me,” he said: a lost little boy’s words from a dead throat.
“Because it suited our purpose, but you let us down,” the Ponce said from behind him. Thornto turned to look at the beggar king, if only because he could not look at Cross any longer. “And the funny thing about that,” the Ponce said, “is that had you saved people the Crimson Companies had enslaved, then in some ways you would have been more of a knight than you ever had before.”
Thornto heard movement from the house. He saw Gritcham making his way through the woods. He was carrying Cross’s repeating crossbow. Thornto wanted to shout at him to go back and watch over the prisoners but he kept quiet. The ghoul came to stand by Cross and handed her the weapon. Thornto saw fear on the creature’s face, but again he saw resolve there too.
“You’re turning on me as well?” he asked.
“I don’t care how repellent they are. I’m not going to let you kill those people,” Gritcham told him and Thornto was reminded of what the ghoul had said about how hardy his people were, and he’d seen first-hand how strong.
“If you try and hurt them I will kill you,” Cross promised him.
His first instinct was to bandy threats with her, as he had with Lord Philippe, but it seemed somehow hollow here and, ultimately, he believed her.
“So now what?” he managed.
“That’s up to you,” the Ponce said, but Thornto heard something in his voice. He turned back to look at the beggar king.
“What?” he asked.
“I have debated as to whether or not I should show you this.” The Ponce produced a folded but blood-stained piece of parchment from within his tunic. “I found this nailed to a little girl not yet six years old. Another victim of our vendetta.”
Thornto was pathetically grateful that the ponce had said ‘our’ vendetta, rather than ‘your’. The beggar king handed him the letter and he unfolded it. It was addressed to Sir Thornto Jenness. He looked at the name at the bottom of the letter, the wax seal. Cross took it from him and read it as well.
“You could finish this clean,” the Ponce suggested.
“Will you still help me?” Thornto asked Cross.
The meeting point was little more than a dirt track running through a gulley, a muddy slope on either side. The treeline started at the top of each of the slopes. It was raining hard now. Thornto knew that his pistols would be useless here.
He was standing about halfway down the gulley, his halberd in one hand, the ends of three ropes in the other. The ropes securely bound the countess’ and her children’s hands. At least the little girl had stopped crying.
They didn’t have long to wait. Three horsemen appeared at the southern end of the gulley. Thornto recognised all of them. Lord Philippe was slumped in his saddle. Everything about him suggested that he was well and truly broken. The second rider was more of a surprise, a surprise accompanied by a thrill of anger as Thornto recognised Faecal the Fool. His mummer’s makeup was running in the rain. The third rider and the author of the letter was none-other than Prince Sieber.
The prince was tall and thin. His prominent hooked nose made him look like a bird of prey. He sat ramrod straight in the saddle. He had thick but greying shoulder-length hair, was clean-shaven, and the expression on his craggy features suggested that he was far from happy at the current state of affairs.
Their horses started to shy as they closed with Thornto so the three riders dismounted.
“Now you’ll be taught a little something about suffering,” the Countess Imelda whispered. Thornto found himself wishing that he’d gagged the prisoners.
“Daddy!” the little girl cried and tried to run towards Lord Philippe but the rope brought her up short. The earl stared at his daughter hollow eyed. He had to be pushed forwards by Faecal.
As the prince came forward, the expression on his face deepened when he got a better look at Thornto.
“So you’re the creature who betrayed your queen and country?” he asked.
“I merely took revenge for wrongs done me,” Thornto told the prince, though the confrontation with Cross had somewhat taken the wind out of his sales as far as vengeance was concerned.
“Such considerations are subordinate to the requirements of the crown. Any justice required would have been meted out by myself, my brother or my sister, the queen.”
“And you would have had supported the earl,” Thornto said.
The prince sighed.
“Obviously, he has the rank.”
“That would have been unsatisfactory to me.”
“Your satisfaction is irrelevant, justice would have been done as ordained by the Light in the divine right of kings and queens to rule. I shouldn’t have to explain this to someone who has sworn his vows,” the prince said, meaning Thornto’s knighthood. “Vows that you have broken.”
Thornto smiled.
“That too is irrelevant,” he said.
A shadow crossed the prince’s face.
“I am not one for repartee,” he warned, and held up his hand. Men appeared in the treeline at the top of the slopes on either side of the gulley. They were lightly armoured and carried longbows. Thornto counted twenty in all. He’d been expecting something like this.
“Now, let the countess and her children go, surrender yourself, and we can see true justice done,” the prince told him. He made it sound as though this was nonsense that was disturbing his already busy day.
Thornto moved his halberd from side to side. A crossbow bolt, quickly followed by a second, thudded into the mud at the prince’s feet. Faecal flinched, the earl let out a little scream. Thornto even heard the countess’s sharp intake of breath but the prince just looked down at the bolts and then back up at Thornto. The longbowmen were busy notching arrows, however.
“She’ll put the next one in your face and each bolt-tip is coated with the most horrific venom my alchemist ghoul companion could concoct,” Thornto told him.
“One woman against all my men?” the prince asked.
“Wet bowstrings, wet flights, I’ll take my chances. The countess and her children are certainly dead,” Thornto replied.
“I think you overestimate how much that means to anyone here,” the prince told him and the countess flinched.
The earl’s face crumpled as he started to sob.
The prince looked at the earl, an expression of prof
ound disgust on his royal features. Then he sighed.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
Thornto looked at the broken husk of a man that had once been the Red Earl. He looked at the terrified little girl. The hate filled boy and his equally hate filled mother, and then dropped the ropes.
“Nothing in your power to give,” he said and turned his back on the man who had once been his prince, expecting an arrow to be put through it at any moment. Thornto was a little comforted that Cross would kill Sieber if the prince ordered his men to feather him.
Behind him he heard the Countess and her three children running through the mud as fast as they could. Then he heard low angry words followed by the sounds of a scuffle. Thornto didn’t even look over his shoulder.
“Thornto Jenness!” An unmistakeably royal command. Thornto wanted to ignore it, but instead he turned around. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see but it hadn’t been Faecal with his dagger at the sobbing earl’s throat.
The look on the countess’s face was almost hungry. It appeared she had little use for her husband now. The boy was watching intently as well. The countess had her hand clamped over her daughter’s mouth. Tears streamed down the little girl’s face, as her mother forced her to watch Faecal saw through her struggling father’s throat. Thornto tasted cold bile.
“I despise weakness,” the prince told him. Faecal let the earl’s body slide down into the mud. “This ends now,” the prince continued. “Do you understand me?”
Thornto started walking back towards the prince’s party. In either tree line twenty bows were raised.
“I wouldn’t do that if you want your prince to live!” Thornto called.
Faecal stepped back from the dead body he’d just made and drew a second dagger, but the prince raised a hand, signalling the fool and his bowmen to hold.
Thornto had almost reached the royal party when the crossbow bolt flew through the wet autumnal air and imbedded itself in the countess’ chest. She staggered back and collapsed into the mud close to her husband.
Chivalry Page 8
