by J Glen Percy
The greatest swordsman’s arm was a finch to a falcon next to the trained mind, Wyn had instructed once. Emotion could help, sharpening perception and opening channels of thought, but it could also hinder by clouding purpose and judgment. A clear mind was best. With the song of Ceres’ moon-marked blade calling to Breccyn, his dead brother and lifeless sister sitting in his skull, and the faithless brother who had instructed him in all this residing there as well, a clear head was nigh on impossible. How long before his cluttered mind had him missing the steps? How long before there were more brushstrokes than he could possibly keep track of?
Sides stacked as they were, the thunder of battle should not have sounded for more than a few intense moments. Breccyn half expected Wyn to retreat and watch, such was his opinion of the liegeman’s feelings for his sister. The Fellsword did not. As the horde worked to divide the three, Wyn fought gallantly to keep their tiny island above water. One after another – and many at the same exact moment as one another – the prince’s guard fell. Jealousy and a sincere desire for this battle to be Wyn Fellsword’s last struck Breccyn suddenly. Perhaps Wyn’s head was more on Aryella than on the battle. An errant blade or a stray pike jab would do. Breccyn could then bury the pain and the secret alongside the ghostly figure.
No sooner had the thought completed than Breccyn found himself on his backside, the rear of his leg bleeding liberally just above the knee. A bearded Lancer chopped downwards with a wide short sword and Breccyn prepared to meet his youngest brother. Brilliant blue flashed with a ring, deflecting the blade at the last possible moment. Another instant and the bearded face lay next to him, eyes open and unseeing, no body attached underneath.
Wyn’s head was very much in the fight, or wherever it went when the man was about such business. Death in the flesh, he stood over Breccyn like a sow over her injured cub. A dozen red-cloaks charged in, a dozen red-cloaks fell victim to Wyn Fellsword’s perfectly honed talent. The blue metal sliced through air like lightning, the after-image lingering in Breccyn’s vision far longer than the ancient blade itself. Wyn did not inflict disabling wounds. He inflicted death.
Breccyn struggled to his knees through tremendous pain, locating the prince and the other moon-marked blade on the battlefield. As fluently as Wyn fought the fight, he was only second best on the field this day.
Many years back, Breccyn had asked his father why his sword went without a name. Ryecard had explained that with the exception of the eight ivory-pommeled moon blades, most men that named their weapons were better at exercising their egos than their combat prowess. This morning, Breccyn saw that his father had no more reason to name his sword than he would his legs or arms. The lord steward did not know his sword. He was his sword.
Ryecard Starling was a man possessed, managing outsiders with a fluidity hitherto reserved for the steady wind and flowing streams, all the while balancing the counters and advances of the expert prince. One Lancer dropped, then another. Two became three, four, five, and still he managed the prince. Breccyn witnessed Ceres’ profound skill as well, and in that moment recognized the prince’s blade as unreachable. As Ceres had argued his entire life, his inheritance of the blade from the First King had no bearing on his worthiness to carry the thing. Ceres was a giant among peers, a true Fellsword, and Breccyn himself a child fending off grimlings in the courtyard.
A heady mixture of pride and shame lifted Breccyn to his feet again, and inserted him back into the battle. Wyn, his father, and himself spilt blood like three twirling drunkards holding brim-filled wine flutes. Still, the foe should have been too many. That’s when Breccyn noticed a full score of the prince’s men grappling with a mob at least three times in size. Commoners, merchants, innkeepers, tradesmen; more and more joined the fray with every passing minute, makeshift weapons brought to battle as varied as the men themselves. Many fell to the disciplined Lancers and many more took their place. At the fringe, banners began appearing, the banished blue and green of old Braemar visible in two or three places. The golden stallion of his father joined too, some fool waving the cloth from a shovel handle like he was signaling for reinforcements of heavy cavalry. In that moment Breccyn could have laughed.
* * *
To Ryecard’s mind, the prince moved as if every limb was shrouded in chainmail and caked with mud besides. He could see it in the prince’s face. Ceres knew it was lost, and not solely the improbable outcome of the battle. The duel was nearing its end.
“A Feral sacked a farmstead not two days from here,” Ceres said, exertion staggering his words. “On the Somerset Road.” Blades met and withdrew again and again. Perspiration coloring his walnut hair black, a pasty beaded brow like supple leather left out in the rain, the prince was not too distant from a Feral in appearance. Colored eyes were a notable difference, as was the fear. “I finished the creature. Burned the bodies.”
The news troubled Ryecard. So too did its timing. “A final boast or a chanced reconcile?” he asked. Sweat trickled down his taut forearms onto his hands, yet his grip was never threatened. How could it be when the steel was a perfect extension of his body?
“My father has need of you Starling, as my grandfather had need of you. To the north and the east, beneath our very feet, the realm has many adversaries. You know the West cannot stand against Rosemount. How long can Rosemount stand without the West?” Ceres words were filled with concern that despite their timing, Ryecard took as genuine.
“The West is resilient. We have climbed far higher cliffs, traversed far rougher waters.”
Ceres sneered. “Just like a monger to find achievement in the labor of others. The West will fall, if not to my father’s armies then to the Gray’s. Unity was ever our only hope, misaligned as it was. You believed that once. It remains your only hope, or face conquer.”
“Have you forgotten that Unity came at the hands of a conqueror? Can you not see that its laws and stipulations subject the unmarked thusly? Tell me Prince, when our property is stolen without recompense, our women taken without consent, our very lives and honor trampled beneath a walking collection of filth with a rose at their wrist, how is this favorable to the Ferals? How is an invasion from the Drab not seen as liberation? I will consider a new offer of Unity, but gone are the days that we cower and crawl beneath the capital. The West will stand!”
The battle was fizzling all around, and many present paused to hear the impassioned words. Ryecard did not pause. The flow of oncoming Lancers had ceased, allowing him to channel every ounce of focus into the prince’s movements. He waited patiently for an opening and found it in a lazy incoming slash. Blocking the blow with his cross-guard, Ryecard slid down the length of moon steel, capturing his opponent’s hand. At the same moment he stepped into Ceres, jerking the prince’s face into his shoulder with a vicious crunch. Along with separating his nose, the blow sent Ceres reeling without his weapon.
Ceres dropped to his knees in the trampled grass, his own blood adding to the day’s stains. Ryecard stood over him. “Any words for your mother?” Ryecard asked.
“A prince’s first duty is to his sisters, she always said,” Ceres muttered exhaustedly. He spat a large gob of red. “I failed her. See that Cecily is cared for, that suffering is not allowed. Cinsey, Cauril, Chiara.... Send my regrets that I will not be able to shelter them either.”
“Anything else?” Ryecard prepared his final swing.
“I am truly sorry for your son, Starling.”
Like his concern for the welfare of the kingdom, the prince’s sorrow was sincere, but his actions betrayed it. In one final desperate ploy, Ceres retrieved the ornate red and black dagger from beneath his doublet and lunged. The lord steward’s reaction was instant; the move was fatal. Dropping his longsword to the earth, Ryecard caught Ceres’ hands in his own. A hard twist, a pop, and a low moan from the prince gave Ryecard control of the dagger. The blade spun in his hands, then drove point-first into the side of Ceres’ head. Ceres Romerian, Prince of Cairanthem and only son under the Rose C
rest, had received the Unity colored blade on his name-day from his father’s dearest friend. The blade was bestowed once again by the very same man on the morn of his death. He collapsed dead, the red and black handle his own personal banner of Unity.
Ryecard took in the field, chest heaving like he had just finished a foot sprint. It was not dew droplets that sparkled in the grass. The butcher’s bill, the reaper’s receipt, Null’s harvest; however it was said across the land, the cost was steep that day. The stories would have cheers rising from the gathered victors at this moment, but the locals who had joined were not soldiers. They had paid for the fact in blood, and in many cases appeared more defeated than the scant handful of Lancers who kept their feet.
“Prepare wagons to carry the wounded to Shorefeld,” Ryecard ordered those nearest the remaining Lancers while cleaning his blade on a crimson cape. “The king’s men will receive the same treatment without fear of reprisal and then be released. Understood? The rest of you, one pile of the red-cloaks and one of our own. Set fire to both of them.” Without counting the dead, it was obvious the fire set to the commoners would burn the higher.
Ryecard had not given such commands since the Feral Wars, but neither did he doubt Ceres’ claim of the Feral; his own experience at the aqueduct would not let him. Somehow the creatures had survived. Somehow they were returning. Were corpses left about, chances were good the villagers would be fighting the same men again on the morrow. Only, the dead were much harder to kill than the living.
“It was a coward’s move,” Wyn stated, referring to the prince’s desperate attack. The man’s composure suggested he was strolling through gardens and stepping over daylilies as he joined. Not a single drop of blood marred his snowy skin and black leathers. Ryecard himself looked as if the sparse morning clouds had dumped buckets of the sticky red fluid.
“And still he died better than he ever lived,” Ryecard responded. “Are you well?”
“I’m afraid so, my lord.” There was a hesitation in Wyn’s tone that did not touch his characteristic tranquility. What did he mean by that? Before Ryecard could ask, Breccyn limped over looking more as Ryecard would have expected from a combatant. More like he himself felt.
“Riddance,” his son said, spitting at the earth.
“Let us not shame ourselves by shaming the departed. They feel it not,” Ryecard chided. “You are hurt.”
“I am fine, better than many good men here today. Better than Mykel.”
“Better than Cecily?” Ryecard added deliberately.
“The prince thought he had killed master Gabryel,” Wyn pointed out before Breccyn could answer for the princess.
Ryecard nodded sullenly. “Would be an easy mistake, though I am thinking he cared not for who it was. More curious and less eager am I to hear Princess Cecily’s part in this tale, a tale that has cast a web over each of my children. You seem the only one to remain free of it, Wyn,” he muttered with a resigned chuckle. “Though you and I have seen our fair share of trouble, to be certain.”
A silent exchange passed between Breccyn and the Fellsword.
“What is it?” Ryecard asked. The motionless dead were louder. “Well?”
“I am not free of trouble, my lord-” Wyn began.
“Wyn fought the King’s Lance today,” Breccyn broke in hurriedly. “He killed more than any one man, every one of them Rosemarked. What he means to say is that Preeminence demands his blood no different than mine or yours.” Again, Breccyn and Wyn settled something between themselves without a word.
“Preeminence is no more,” Ryecard stated, eyeing his son and then Wyn. “I suppose you are right nevertheless,” he sighed, then added grimly, “Traitors and insurgents, we have all earned a place at the headsman’s scaffold this morning. Should we organize, perhaps the West will stand long enough to allow for one last meal before keeping the appointment.”
Ryecard hadn’t noticed his liegeman bending to retrieve Ceres’ sword. Head bowed slightly, Wyn extended the weapon towards him. “We will give them what war we can behind your banner, my lord. Behind your blade.” Ryecard had been at Cairan Romerian’s side as the man defeated an undefeatable foe and forged one nation out of many with this very sword. The First King had shattered all rules, and broke one more in passing it to his grandson. The weapon was breathtaking both in history and beauty, and Ryecard’s face spared only disgust.
“What do I want with the sickle that harvested my son?” he asked.
“Tis but a tool, my lord, and you its rightful owner. It is yours whether you would have it or not,” Wyn replied.
“I would not,” Ryecard said simply.
“Think of the good, father,” Breccyn pressed with marked eagerness. “Two of the three known blades backing our cause, perhaps we live to see more than a single meal.”
Ryecard’s old comrade and present Lord Captain of the King’s Lance, Ozias Stellen, was the third known Fellsword of course. It would be a shame and a tremendous task to face that man, and face him they would. If the dead red-cloaks did not inspire Lord Ozias’ wrath, the man’s staunch loyalty would. First King above his old badger, Erick’s crown above his own pursuits in the South, what Ozias wouldn’t sacrifice for the Romerians was beyond Ryecard.
“We are not playing at Force and Fortune. Whether the gods hammered its steel with thunder and honed its edge with legend, no single blade will prolong our efforts. Many men with many swords is our only hope. Many more than we have at our call.”
All three were silent for a moment, mention of Mykel’s favorite game tugging their thoughts in that direction. Ryecard’s hopelessness weighed on them as well. He turned.
“Think of those the blade will draw,” his son began, but Ryecard was no longer listening.
Lore lay on the grass, dark rusty legs folded beneath, her head held as high as she could manage. The stray crossbow bolt was lost entirely within her flesh, and the clean hole perforating her breast trickled fluid over her sleek hide. Labored breaths caused her sides to heave sporadically. Proud even at death’s doorstep, she had less hope surviving the day than the West had surviving an engagement with Rosemount.
Grim and utter despair filled the cavity Ryecard had been funneling his emotions into. Was it not enough to lose a son? Was it not enough to lose a daughter? A king brother? A prospering kingdom? No amount of peaks in his life could ever fill the affliction carved valleys of the past few weeks. When would it end? How much bitterness could he swallow before the cavity ruptured from within?
Ryecard knelt beside his longtime friend, stroking her muzzle. His father killed in the Feral Wars, his mother many long years before that, and an older sister who had disappeared in between, Ryecard had been the last of his name. Arriving in Shorefeld to assume a new life and the lord stewardship, it was his relationship with Lore that ultimately had him adopting the Stallion Crest over his family’s traditional perching bird. An animal as magnificent was not likely to be seen in his lifetime, nor a bond between man and beast forged so strong.
Whispering his final farewells, Ryecard stood over his ruined companion. Suddenly he noticed one of his boots was planted on the Unity Banner of Cairanthem. The morning air was still as pond water and the half disassembled camp – the certain source of the cloth – was located on the far side of the killing ground. How had the thing come to be here? Ryecard’s world crumbling around him, he wondered how he had come to be here. He had helped raise this banner, prospered under its colors, and now he cringed at the very sight of it. The crimson and black coloring was brighter, more distinct than on his dying mare, but he could not help but notice the similarities. This was Unity’s end as assuredly as it was hers. He ground his heel hard into the earth, a heel that would never again find Lore’s flanks, and extended an arm out to one side. “Hand me the moon blade, Wyn.” Born anew as Ryecard Starling Fellsword, his dear friend Lore was to be his first victim.
CHAPTER 32
“You can see the seas, and please the seas, and reason with
them too,
You can reason for a season, yet the seas will still seize you.
Men leave their wife to take a life of strife and adventure some,
It’s glory and a story craved, not children and old mums.
They roam from home upon the foam, no concern for want of matter,
Through seas and breeze and wondrous trees, caring not the spawn they scatter.
Now the morn will come you’ll want your son and the brood you never owned,
Too late you pull from the cry of gulls, your bastards have all grown.
‘Twas glory sought yet shame you wrought, your story is yours alone,
With you it lies, your story dies, to no one else it’s known.
You can see the seas, and please the seas, and reason with them too,
You can reason for a season, yet the seas will still seize you.”
“Cheery,” Queen Willa remarked dryly as the man called Allis drew to a close. For such an ill-looking, foul-speaking man, his voice was wondrously smooth and rich. That was the only compliment she would pay him, and only in her thoughts then. “Quite cheery.”
“Bloody crows, not all is bliss in the world, highness. For most of us anyhow,” he added, taking a long pull from the flask tied round his neck. The man did not wear the telltale garb of the King’s Lance and neither did he address his superiors as a disciplined soldier would. As any monger with a lick of manners would. Sure, highness was there in plenty, but his bluntness and often blatant vulgarity paved right over any formalities. She had no doubt the last of his words were meant expressly for her.
