We have escaped as a bird
from the snare of the fowlers;
the snare is broken,
and we have escaped.
—David, King of Israel
The harvest moon had come and gone, leaving only a failing crescent of light to guide them along the river. The air was chill and rife with the smell of leaf mould. The two wherries were now the sole craft on the water, their oarsmen riding the current downstream. Of the river wardens there was no sign. They were busy elsewhere, drawn away by rumours of a planned attempt to break into Tower Dinas. In the stern of the larger of the two boats, Frysan remained alert, for it would be bloody work with sword and dagger if they did chance to meet with one of their patrols. Pulling his ermine-edged cloak more tightly around his shoulders, the slight man peered into the darkness and shivered, steeling himself for the desperate night's work that lay ahead.
The boatmen passed the Hangtree, the city's notorious place of execution. In the freshening wind, the corpse of the river pirate that dangled from the weathered crossbeams began to clank in its shroud of chains. Downriver, in grim keeping with the mournful music of the gibbet, the distant bells of Tower Dinas tolled their final warning. It was curfew time.
By now, the patrons of the Three Cranes in the Vintry would long since have left the tavern to avoid being caught abroad beyond the curfew hour, which was being strictly and oftentimes savagely enforced these days. Besides being their favourite watering hole, with all its hustle and bustle, it had proved an ideal meeting place for Frysan and his men in these perilous times. Earlier this evening, in fact, they had launched their dangerous venture from the quay below the tavern.
Not to mention that the Cranes was a good spot in which to spark gossip and foster hearsay—the useful rumour, for instance, that had distracted the river patrols from their normal duties. It helped, too, that the tavern's owner was a trusty highlander, a loyal King's man, although Frysan fervently hoped that they had covered their tracks well enough that no suspicion would later attach to him. Otherwise, like themselves, the man could find himself dangling like rotten fruit from the Hangtree's frame.
Frysan stirred to ease his stiffness and glanced at his broad-shouldered companion. He smiled gravely to himself. Here was Cammas, who was the brawniest jolliest soldier in Frysan's troop of elite Life Guardsmen, dressed in plain coarse-grained trousers and tunic, like one of the many watermen who ferried passengers back and forth along the Dinastor River. Catching Frysan's eye, Cammas swung the oar blades onto the gunwales for a moment and kicked at the lumpy pile of canvas at his feet, where two other comrades lay hidden.
"Ruddy hard work it is making headway with this load of fish bait. Even on a downstream drift."
"It's your own fault, Cammas," humoured a voice from under the canvas. "The ham-handed way you sweep them oars, you'll have sprayed half the Dinastor River aboard before we berth, and the worst of it is, we don't have bailing cans."
"Maybe we can use our scabbards."
"Better your empty heads," Cammas said, poking the canvas again.
For a while Frysan let them banter back and forth, even after Cammas laid his back into the oars again, for such was the timeless custom of fighting men before battle, a way to ease the tension.
The great pile of a building loomed indistinct on the promontory to their right, overtopping the river. They were approaching the extensive grounds of the Silver Palace, which housed the royal apartments. At a signal from Frysan, the second wherry, which although smaller also carried four men, pulled away and beat fast to the shoreline, following a line of rocky bluffs until it came to a halt beneath them.
Some minutes later Frysan could just make out a straggled line of four figures spidering their way on climbing ropes along the face of the rock towards the top of the bluffs. His eyes scanned the brink, probing the scrub brush. Eldor had better be there, else it would be a measure of linked iron chain as a winding sheet for each of them before the night's business was done. But then again, Eldor was the deadliest fighting man in his charge, which was saying a lot, for even a run-of-the-mill highlander was worth at least two lowland rogues.
Now he had Cammas redirect their own wherry across the current towards the rugged heights along the water's edge. The plash of the oars echoed and grew louder as they turned aside from the broad reaches of the dark-flowing river and nosed the boat into the narrower channel of the water gate that cut through a beetling wall of rock. Frysan stared grimly ahead to where the King's Stairs descended to the sheltered moorage. Better to call the place the Mindal's Stairs, he mused, since it was the Royal Council that had a dire chokehold on the city. Here, at the foot of the Stairs, the royal barge was made fast, below the gardens and grounds of the palace.
Even before they reached the quayside, which was well-lit by becketed torches, Frysan could see, in the gloam above, three archers on a landing stooping to span their crossbows. These were men, handpicked by the Mindal, deadly earnest about their duties. That was how the Royal Council always did its business—with ruthless efficiency.
"All right, you two in the boat, in the name of the Mindal, ease up on your oars and state your names. What business brings you here at this hour? Quick now or we'll play it safe and pin you in place with a bolt to the chest." On the alert, the archer had begun descending the stone stairs, his weapon raised to cover the unexpected intruders.
"Ship your oars, Cammas," Frysan whispered to the oarsman facing him. "Dock the boat on this riverward side of the royal barge, if you can . . . My name's Dorassy, Elzemon Dorassy of the Drapers' Guild." Frysan hailed the crossbowman over the water, hoping he had managed to purge his speech of its telltale highland burr. He had even chosen a false identity riddled with perilous "r"s that he had polished well by practice. "By warrant of the Mindal, I'm here with an urgent message for the Captain of the Guard. It's a matter of the highest importance. I must see him. Immediately." He struggled to his feet in the bobbing wherry. "This is Cammas, a most obliging waterman," he said, throwing off his cloak so they could fetch a look at him in his finery: a doublet with embroidered sleeves, a long-skirted jerkin, topped by a linen ruff and a low-brimmed velvet cap, inset with the jewelled emblem of the Drapers' Guild.
"Come then, Master Guildsman, and we'll have a look, but mind you make no sudden movements, not you nor the water rat! No, no . . . Not there, this way. Dock the boat here on the port side of the royal barge, where I can make certain of you."
With a grimace, his back to shore, Cammas edged the wherry up to the quay, allowing Frysan to reach out and clamber to his feet onto the firm ground of the landing. He too climbed out of the boat and made it fast to a mooring post.
"Now both of you stay right where you are. Easy now, not a step further. You'll have your chance to see the Captain of the Guard all right enough. But it'll be the mountain coming to you, not you to the mountain," said the nearer sentry, and snickered. The man had come to a halt just above the landing. Keeping his crossbow trained on the two of them, he looked them over. His comrades remained rooted in place on the level ground above. There were three of them spaced neatly apart, making four sentries in all. Frysan had not noticed the additional man. He had been hidden from sight before, or else he had come up at a signal from one of the others, his crossbow still unspanned. Instead, the fellow had begun to lift a small hunting horn to his lips. Frysan cringed.
"Never mind the horn, man. We're not under attack," said another guard. "We'll hold them here, and you go fetch Captain Baldrick. You know how he is. You'll catch more than just the edge of his tongue, if you rouse up the whole garrison merely to bid welcome to an unlooked-for messenger from the Mindal."
"Still and all, you know his orders, 'Anything out of the ordinary and—' "
"Aye, dolthead, but use your sense. There's no need to go wasting your breath and blowing a great alarm just for a lone unarmed guildsman and his boatman. Get on with you now and fetch the Captain."
The man put away his horn and marched off, grabbing hold of a lantern as he went. At first the minutes spent waiting for him to return dragged on in awkward silence. The tension that had settled over the whole city was at its thickest here at the Silver Palace. These days there was no place in all of Dinas Antrum that was more strictly off-limits and more apt to be tightly guarded. It was here that King Colurian lay comatose and dying, his Queen and infant son gathered to his side, under close watch.
Frysan could make out the winking approach of lantern lights and the dim figure of a huge tun of a man, lumbering his way towards the top of the stairs like an unchained bear.
"Where in creation did he come from? I could fit two of me in his breeches!" Cammas said under his breath.
A mountain indeed, unnerving too, for Frysan remembered vividly that he had met this Captain Baldrick one time before—on parade four years ago when he had been inducted into the ranks of the Life Guardsmen, just before they were disbanded and banished from their barracks, forced to reassemble their ranks secretly in the countryside outside of Dinas Antrum. It was this Captain Baldrick who had personally welcomed the new recruits for King Colurian, taking their oath of fealty on his behalf.
The occasion stood out in Frysan's mind. He had been a smooth-faced nondescript youth then, slighter and less muscular, but hampered by a noticeable limp, for he had badly torn a tendon in his heel during a training session in the tiltyard the day before. When his name was called, he hobbled up to the dais. There had been a moment of discomfort when their eyes met and Captain Baldrick asked gruffly what ailed him, since all the other newly minted guardsmen were stepping up smartly to receive their commission. Frysan's answer was brief—no more than a phrase. The big man nodded and then Frysan placed his hands between the Captain's and swore his oath. He withdrew to let the next man in line do the same. It had been a long and tedious ceremony. There were many that had pledged their fealty that day, including soldiers from other regiments, a great number of them already in the direct employ of the Mindal. Now Frysan hoped he was a long-forgotten face to Captain Baldrick.
"You may lower your weapons and unspan them, men, but stand ready. We mustn't make the mistake of being too trusting. There's an old fool within who could tell you all about the pitfalls of being too trusting, a right royal fool." The big man gave vent to a ferocious burst of laughter, then shed his mirth as suddenly.
"You, Master Draper, come along, step up to me here. We'll speak our business in a better spot, where the light's brighter and I can see what kind of face you have, whether it's honest or sly. Sly, I'd say, at a venture, for I've never yet met a bearded man who didn't have something to hide. Like the esteemed members of the Mindal. Have you noticed? Every last one of them sports a bird's nest—the bushier the beard the greater the scoundrel." He guffawed again, stroking his own vast comet's tail of whiskers, which swept down to the barrel of his chest. "What did you tell my men your name was?"
"Elzemon Dorassy, Captain. Elzemon Dorassy of the Drapers' Guild. I bear an urgent message for you from the Mindal under seal." Frysan climbed the stairs two steps at a time with scroll in hand. He moved away from the area of the quay, where the rowboat bumped against its moorings beside the royal barge, its dangerous cargo still hidden and undiscovered.
"Hold it! You too, waterman, don't you slip away on me!" bellowed Baldrick, as Cammas made to turn back to where his boat was berthed. "You may wait for us here with my men, while I consider Master Dorassy and this urgent message he brings for me from the Mindal."
Frysan stepped up from the stairs into a large circular area paved with cobbles, from which footpaths led in various directions fingering their way into the splendidly groomed grounds of the palace. To his right, lurking somewhere amid the grove of trees that crowned the edge of the escarpment above the river, waiting and watching, crept Eldor and his men.
At the centre of this open area above the King's Stairs stood a large summerhouse hung with a battery of shining lanterns both inside and out. Trailed by two mail-clad pikemen, Baldrick and Frysan strode towards the structure, leaving Cammas with the sentries. At least Baldrick strode, while Frysan found himself having to feign a light step. The tendon injured four years ago was tightening up again. It pulled like a drawn bowstring against his heel, burdening every step he took with a sharp twist of pain, as it was wont to do whenever he found himself tired or pressed, or when the weather was damp and cold, as it was tonight. The summerhouse lay close at hand. Baldrick ushered Frysan through the entrance, a doorless opening in the circular half-walls, which stood at waist height, allowing the royal family and their guests to look out over the river and enjoy its summer breezes. Light fell from a large lantern suspended from the open beams.
"Here now, let me have a look at that precious missive of yours." Baldrick reached a thick hand out to snatch the sealed page, as he dropped himself heavily into a high-backed chair behind a stout oak table in the middle of the summerhouse. The Captain broke the wax seal. Knitting his brows, he began reading the document they had so carefully forged. Frysan gathered the skirt of his jerkin behind his knees and seated himself across from Baldrick. He let his eyes wander over the sparsely furnished interior of the summerhouse and the thick darkness outside until he ventured a closer look at the man he faced. From the corner of his vision at first, he noted the man's balding neckless head fixed like a tattered bolster on massive shoulders. There was the smell too. He wrinkled his nose at the sour sweat-mingled stench of the wine that flushed the soldier's cruel snub features.
"So they've had some trouble at Tower Dinas?" Baldrick looked up at last from the scroll, regarding Frysan with small piggish eyes.
"Yes, serious trouble, Captain."
"The clay-brained fools, I warned them they'd need to post more men there. Although the plain truth is that it wouldn't make a jot of difference how many men you posted there so long as they insist on retaining that foppish thin-faced charlatan they've put in charge of the place. Why, I wouldn't trust the man to clean a latrine."
"You may rest easy on that point, Captain. After tonight the Mindal has seen fit to withdraw his commission." Frysan lied glibly. Better to make it seem like the Mindal was bowing to some of Baldrick's suggestions—it might make him more pliable when the question of evacuating the King and Queen was broached.
"Plague on him! It's about time, seeing as it's all our necks that are like to get stretched if we let the old-guard rabble take Tower Dinas."
"The situation would be even worse if they took the Silver Palace. Precisely the reason why it's you they've put in command here." Frysan leaned forward in his seat. "Let Queen Asturia and her son manage an escape and you'll ignite whatever resistance there remains in Arvon, like pouring oil on fire. As far as the Queen and baby are concerned, the Mindal's taking no chances."
"No chances! How do you mean no chances?" Baldrick struck the table with his fist. "If they were serious about taking no chances, they'd be coming to me with the order to blood their throats!"
"Not yet, Captain, you know the time isn't ripe for that yet."
"So instead they want me to move the wretched termagant and her whelp to the Summer Palace and hold the both of them there together with the King. If he survives the trip. 'Take the royal barge,' they say—" He lifted the document and let it drop onto the table. "—'And a dozen of your best men for escort' . . . with Elzemon Dorassy of the Drapers' Guild to hold her hand and humour her."
"If you wish to put it that way, Captain, yes, precisely. Now that you have some idea of the arrangements, perhaps we can move along now to the royal apartments and collect the royal family. The sooner we set off upriver the better."
"Very well, Master Dorassy," said Baldrick, as he steepled his fingers, flexing them, his elbows on the table. "One last question. Why you? How is it they've sent you to fetch this pestilent battle-axe of a woman? I don't know that I've ever met you or even heard mention of your name. And it's my business to know all the scavenger fish that feed on scraps from the Mindal."
"Because they needed someone who'd not raise the Queen's hackles. Someone not known to swim with the scavenger fish, as you call them, but trustworthy all the same and sympathetic to their designs. It so happened that I had been invited to their meeting tonight for the first time, and they asked me to undertake the task. I'd had some friendly dealings with the Queen when I was but a journeyman draper newly arrived in Dinas Antrum from my hometown."
"What hometown is that, may I ask?" Baldrick had unsheathed his dagger and fell to paring his nails with its razor-sharp edges.
"Woodglence, on the upper Dinastor."
"I thought I noticed a touch of an accent . . . almost took you for a highlander for a moment there." He looked up squint-eyed at Frysan. Light perspiration began to gather on Frysan's brow. His foot began to throb. He knew the heel was soon bound to hurt worse.
"No, I'm from the marchlands this side of the Radolan Mountains, a lowlander when all is said and done."
"Good, come along then," said Baldrick, as he rose. He held out his dagger pointing to the doorway, then slid the blade into its sheath. "We'll let you wheedle the woman with your soft graces, Master Merchant, although if it were up to me, I'd not stand on ceremony but bind and gag her and throw her into the boat's bilge, her and her whining imp. And I'm willing to bet you a full month's wages you'll be hard put to get her to agree that her husband should be moved in his death pangs."
Baldrick and Frysan left the summerhouse and turned onto a flagged footpath towards the buildings of the Silver Palace itself. The two pikemen provided them with lantern light, one ahead and one behind. They threaded their way across the grounds, where the sculptured hedges threw strange shadows in the flaring light, past flowerbeds and terraced gardens, their plants now faded with the summer's passing. Wincing at the surging stabs of pain, Frysan started to favour his left foot, lagging a step behind the Captain, who more than once cursed and prodded the pikeman who led the way in an effort to quicken their pace. Without warning Baldrick turned his head.
"What ails you, man?" he asked, stopping to regard Frysan with a narrow eye. Frysan's heart skipped a beat.
"Oh . . . nothing, just turned my ankle when I jumped onto the wharf from the boat, that's all."
"Aye, it can be hard to find your footing in the dark. Those stones are slippery, awful slippery. A man can't be too careful, can he?"
"No, never too careful," echoed Frysan, stiffening at the remark, which had been delivered with a wry smile, almost a leer. The Captain was reputed to be the Mindal's spymaster, deeply involved in their scheming and intrigues. Ah well, there was no going back now. All he could do was grit his teeth and carry on, although suddenly he found the feel of the sheathed knife resting between his shoulders profoundly reassuring. He cast a glance upward, as they neared the shadow-draped face of the grey-stoned palace building, to where its turrets and chimney stacks stood lost in darkness.
At the postern gate they came to a halt, facing a massive oaken door with heavy steel hasps and rivets. Over the door, which stood flooded by light from two torches fixed in wrought-iron cressets, there curved a stone arch adorned with the royal coat of arms. Overhanging the arch was an embrasure that bulged out from the wall, its floor and each of its three sides having grated openings, which afforded the guards inside an unencumbered view of anyone who might approach the palace seeking entry. Baldrick pulled on a rope that dangled down from the embrasure. From within they heard the harsh clang of a bell, followed moments later by a clipped voice that challenged them from behind the crisscross grillework.
"Password!"
"Terrible trials trouble robin redbreast's roosting rest," Baldrick replied in his rough baritone.
Frysan smiled. A curiously whimsical kind of password, as well suited to the stalwart Captain as a girl's lace-edged frock.
"And what about him too, the fancy-dressed gentleman behind you, sir?"
"He's with me, soldier, can't you see?"
"Aye, but orders is orders, sir. We ain't supposed to open the door for nobody who ain't said the password. You said so yourself, Captain. Not even if Lord Gawmage hisself was to come and beg admittance, him and all the Mindal."
"Very well done, soldier. I am impressed." Baldrick's words were cold, spoken with steel-edged menace.
"Th-thank you, sir. Now you, gentleman, you've got to give the password."
"Now surely Captain, there can't be need—we've orders from the Mindal—let's move along, it's late enough as it is." Though he feigned impatience, a chill passed down Frysan's spine. It was clear to him why they had resorted to such a password. No highlander, no matter how long he had been resident in Dinas Antrum, could pronounce "r"s like that without giving himself away with some hint of a telltale burr.
"But it's just a short phrase, Master Draper Dorassy, ever so short and easy. And I mustn't always be overriding my orders. Not good for the men. I can't have them getting the notion that when I issue an order I'm not serious, dead serious."
Frysan stiffened. His foot ached.
"Here, I'll make things easy for you. I'll speak the password again and you can say it directly after me. That way you won't tax your memory. We all know how you merchants feel about taxes. Come now, repeat after me, 'Terrible trials trouble robin redbreast's roosting rest.' "
"Very well then, Captain, since you insist," said Frysan with an air of gracious resignation. If he made some move now, he might still escape, especially if Eldor and his men lurked anywhere nearby. The mission, however, would be ruined, Arvon's last hope gone. It would be best to play along, to play mouse to Baldrick's cat for as long as he could, biding his time, waiting for a chance to salvage his mission. He must let Baldrick admit him into the palace first, to the Queen's apartments, if possible, and then he'd deal with the man—somehow.
Taking a breath, Frysan repeated the tongue-twisting syllables of the password phrase. He had been in Dinas Antrum for six years now on and off and had always possessed a good ear for language, passing for a lowlander readily enough with most of the people he encountered in the city. But that slightest bit of a brogue, he knew he'd always have it in a pinch. It stuck to him like burdock seed. Here it was, dogging him again, putting his very life in the balance. He stumbled pointedly, trying to unclick his tongue and round out the sounds. He cringed at the reaction he expected from Baldrick as he finished.
"Oh mercy on me, you can take the boy out of Woodglence, but you can't take Woodglence out of the boy!" Baldrick guffawed, pulling at his beard. "Come, soldier, open up. We'll let him pass. It's just his marchland accent." Again there appeared a gleam of mockery in his small sable eyes, but no longer as veiled as before. They waited for the huge door to be unbarred and unbolted by the sentries on duty within. The Captain bade the pikemen resume their post as guards outside the gate. The door swung open.
"After you, Master Draper Dorassy," Baldrick trilled with leering gusto.
The door banged shut behind Frysan. He was now sealed into the Silver Palace.
Frysan swallowed hard and fell in behind Baldrick, nursing his limp. He followed the big man's swift step down a barrel-vaulted corridor of rough-hewn stone, glancing at the guardroom adjacent to the great oak entrance door where the two gatekeepers had returned to their game of dice. From this passageway he and Baldrick emerged into the heart of the Silver Palace, an enclosed courtyard lit bright by lanterns fixed atop fluted stone posts. These were spaced at even intervals around a magnificent fountain in the shape of a harp that splashed crystal jets of water from its forepillar into a wide marble basin. They reached a covered portico at the far end of the courtyard, where a doorway opened into an elegant parlour with a lofty ceiling that rose into one of the palace's turrets. They passed through this room, then turned in to another hallway with smooth marble floors and elaborately wainscotted walls that boasted beakhead mouldings in silver leaf beneath a frieze of river scenes.
They had reached the royal lodgings. Baldrick had remained silent, almost pensive. Frysan would need to take some kind of decisive action fast, but it would have to wait until he gained admittance to the Queen. No other way.
Midway down the passage, hazy with the soft light of low-trimmed oil lamps, two guards dressed in the livery of the Mindal stood before a closed door marked with the royal insignia, a rampant stag clutching a golden harp between outstretched hoofs. The armed men at the door slipped smartly to attention as their superior officer approached. From within could be heard a baby's restless wailing.
A nod from Baldrick permitted the guards to stand easy.
"On my word, sir, but the brat's been mewling the whole day long. And most of the evening too," said the huskier of the two, rolling his eyes.
"Oh, it's a hard life of plaguing mischief you've got, soldier, but it's his mother the Queen that spoils my nights with her colic spite. In any event, it won't be long before we're quit of the woman and her bawling babe, isn't that so, Master Draper?"
Frysan cursed the man's hard-nosed insolence.
"You, soldier," he continued to the same man, "go find Sergeant Cuff and bid him meet me here on the double!" Baldrick turned to the remaining guard. "Now stand aside and let us enter. Leave the bolt of the door unshot."
Without ceremony Baldrick wrenched the door open and stomped into a large antechamber. Hung with fading old tapestries, its walls were lined with richly upholstered chairs. The figure of the Captain of the Guard seemed outlandish in the room—brute and uncouth, a formless lump of tallow encased in armour. He closed the door behind Frysan.
"Woman, are you in your chamber? I've brought you a visitor. A friend of yours, or so he claims," he barked above the baby's crying and swaggered towards the velvet curtain that covered the entrance to the royal bedchamber itself. For a brief moment Frysan considered pulling out his hidden dagger. The temptation was strong to plunge it full into Baldrick's back—or his neck, if he could find it. With all his girth this man would not die quickly or easily. The blade would have to cut through the chain mesh of his hauberk and mounds of flesh to reach the vital organs. All the man had to do was cry out once to pull the whole garrison down on Frysan's head. Better to wait until they penetrated farther out of earshot into the royal apartments.
"Come along now." Baldrick craned his head back and scowled at Frysan, as he parted the curtain before him, revealing a large bedchamber. Stepping in, he moved aside, distancing himself from Frysan.
He was being careful all of a sudden. Frysan would have to show his hand and strike soon or risk being taken.
At the far end, before a bed that was recessed into the wall under a splendid tester, there knelt a woman stooped over a cradle, rocking it gently and crooning a lullaby, her face hidden by a cascade of auburn tresses. The wails of the baby who lay in the cradle had subsided to pitiful wheezes. The woman lifted her head and recoiled at the presence of Baldrick, who obviously frightened her, although she made a brave attempt to hide it. Now a look of puzzlement crossed her face at the sight of an unknown stranger in the garb of a merchant. The closely guarded confinement was taking its toll of her, streaking her hair with grey and adding careworn wrinkles to her finely chiselled features.
Frysan felt an upwelling of pity. Clearly the Queen was reaching the limits of her strength. The weary days had stretched into weeks, into months. It had begun with the hunting accident in the Deer's Slunk. The King had been gored by a stag, an injury from which he never recovered. He had grown steadily worse. Now he lay dying. Dinas Antrum was awash with rumours, dark hints from the Mindal that the day of reckoning was at hand. Rumours that soon the Queen would consider herself fortunate to be sharing a small cell in Tower Dinas with her daughters and the infant Crown Prince. Rumours that by one means or another the King would be dead.
Frysan stepped past Baldrick to approach the Queen, who lifted her hands from the cradle and rose, straightening herself to full height. It was the first time he had seen her at close quarters. No diamond-studded tiara or beautiful gown set her apart. Instead she was dressed in a loose blue smock embroidered simply at the neck and girdled with a narrow white belt. Her baby began to whimper again. She picked it up, kissed and soothed it, clutching it with both hands to her bosom. Frysan made a courtly bow.
"Your Highness, your humble servant, Elzemon Dorassy, Master Draper, as ready to be at your service as ever I have been all those many occasions in the past. The years since we last met have not dimmed your splendour," he declared, seeking to lock eyes with hers. He winked. She stood there baffled. Again he winked.
Everything within these walls smelled of a closing trap. He chafed at the unbroken tension, calculating his chances if he were to wheel around and close with Baldrick all of a sudden, armed only with a dagger. Frysan resisted the impulse to look over his shoulder. The Queen remained wary. He had come to her with the Captain of the Guard. She must suppose he was one of the man's cronies. A wise assumption, but a very awkward one at the moment.
"I don't understand." Ignoring his pleading face and gestures, she looked past Frysan to Baldrick for an explanation.
"Oh, but you will, you will, Your Highness," he said with an unusual deference. He edged his way to the curtain, resting his left hand on the pommel of his sword. The fingers of the other caressed the dagger strapped to his belt. "I'll leave you now with Master Dorassy for just a wee bit of a moment. Don't go away, he'll answer all your questions quite handily, I'm sure." Baldrick smirked as he backed his way out of the bedchamber past the drawn curtain and then disappeared. They could hear a scuffle of sounds and then the faint rattle of the door latch. Queen Asturia retreated a step or two from Frysan, holding fast to her baby, all swaddled in blankets.
"No, no don't be afraid, Your Highness. Don't worry, I'm not here to hurt you. Listen closely, we haven't much time," he whispered, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder in the direction of the antechamber. "I'm Frysan Wright, Captain of your highland Life Guardsmen, loyal to a man." He had slipped into his highland brogue. It seemed to reassure her, just as it had betrayed him to Baldrick. At once he could see the painful look of doubt begin to lift from her eyes. "My men and I—we're here to set you free, to take you and the Prince to safety, and the King too, but our ruse has failed. Baldrick has sniffed me out. There, the open door there, where does it lead?" He pointed with his finger to the looming darkness that lay beyond a door that was flung wide open on its hinges, two lamps on either side.
"It's another bedchamber. It's where the King lies, close so I can tend to him. The windows have bars just like this room. There used to be another door in that room, but they've bolted it fast."
Frysan flung aside his draper's cap and his cloak and reached back over his shoulder to pull the dagger from out of the sheath next to his skin while he kicked off his boots with an inward sigh of relief. They had pinched and hobbled him, making his aching tendon worse. Now in stocking feet at least he could fight and manoeuvre.
"There's no way out except the way I've just come?"
"Yes. But wait, put that weapon away. It won't do you much good against a sword. I can give you something far better. Here, hold my little Starigan for a moment." She entrusted the child to him, while he managed with one hand to slip the dagger back into its hidden sheath. She hurried over to the bed and began feeling with her fingers at the base of one of the elaborate spiral posts that held the canopy.
"Hurry, please hurry, as you value your life, somebody's coming." Encumbered by the child, Frysan made shift to lay it on the bed, but stopped short.
"There!" she said.
There had been the slightest of clicks and then half the bedpost flew open on unseen hinges bringing to light a superbly tooled leather scabbard, open end down so that it rested against the quillions of a sword laid upright. It was made of steel so finely tempered and so sharp that she had to take care not to nick herself as she drew it forth from the scabbard and held it out to Frysan, glinting in the lamplight. The thing was marvellously wrought.
"But m-my lady . . . th-this sword?" he stammered. His eyes gazed upon the strange runic characters scored across the length of the blade.
"Don't ask questions, Master Guardsman. Here, take it quickly."
No sooner had they exchanged sword and baby between them than Baldrick burst into the bedchamber and pushed past the curtain, sided by a tall rangy soldier with a dour face. Both wore helmets and had entered with swords drawn. Baldrick's was a great double-edged broadsword that he held lightly before him, two hands on the grip.
"On my heart! Look what our limping young Guardsman found for himself while we were gone. Very naughty of him, wasn't it, Cuff? Good way for a fellow to get hurt. And his manners too! Imagine that? Strewing the floor with his draper's rags. And worst of all, lying to his sweet uncle Baldrick, who's been the soul of kindness, who's done everything he can to make the lad's visit to the palace such a pleasant one. Tsk, tsk, I am disappointed, nephew, gravely disappointed." Baldrick laughed without losing any of his steely aspect, for he stood ready, regarding Frysan with chill eyes.
"Oh, strange. Look at the sword he's got. Not your everyday blade, is it?" the sergeant said.
"Aye, so the rumour was true. They'd found it."
"What do you mean, sir? Who found what?"
"Never mind. You'll learn in due course, once we nail his hide to the floor."
"Shall I call out the garrison, sir, now we see he's a fighting cock and armed?" Cuff looked askance at Frysan, as the Guardsman sliced the air, measuring the heft and feel of his new weapon. The Queen, clutching her baby, who had begun to whimper, backed off towards the door of the King's sickroom.
"No, no. Are you daft, man? Spoil a perfect chance to be rid of the witch and her spawn. As for her husband, we'll speed him on his way too. The beauty of it all is that they're going to think it was done by this fop of a draper—or Guardsman. And death gnaw our bones, if the two of us can't carve him up and lay him in his grave."
Frysan leaped forward to the attack, slashing at Cuff's shoulder, forcing him to parry backhanded. He wheeled back, feeling the wind of Baldrick's great blade, which came crashing down on the spot he had just vacated, even as Cuff swung his sword around, regaining his guard position. Cuff was a warier fighter. Frysan made to lunge at Baldrick, but pulled back when he saw how quickly the man had managed to recover. He backstepped to the centre of the room.
Frysan's neck hairs prickled and he could almost hear his heart thumping against his rib cage. Baldrick advanced. Here was a more dangerous adversary than he had expected. For a man his size, armed as he was, he was showing himself to be amazingly sure-handed and nimble on his feet. He would have to use his own speed and footwork to good advantage if he were to stand a chance against this deadly pair.
His opponents separated, trying to circle him. Baldrick moved in directly upon him, his face cut by a cruel mocking smile, while Cuff stalked his way sidelong, weaving his sword, forcing Frysan to divide his attention and shift his eyes back and forth from one man to the other, even as he continued to retreat before them. If he could find a corner, he could at least cover his back. He would have to dispose of one of them quickly—probably Cuff. He appeared to be the lesser swordsman. Otherwise he had no doubt they would be feeding the dogs with his carcass.
Catch him off balance and run him through, that was what he had to do. Then somehow he would tackle Baldrick. Overconfidence would be his weapon. Lead them on a bit, make them think he was easy pickings, and that they had as good as finished him, and then strike back, fast and hard, before they knew what hit them.
Without warning he took a quick flurry of steps backwards as if seeking to escape, sidling to his right, which brought him in line with Cuff. Without thinking the two soldiers were drawn into his wake, their first instinct being to match the pace of their lone opponent and keep up the pressure they were exerting on him. Cuff stood closer. He was caught leaning forward, slightly overbalanced, when Frysan stopped short and sprang to the attack once more. A quick feint to the head brought Cuff's arm up, exposing his side. Before he could recover, Frysan slipped below his guard and thrust his sword point full into the man's ribs, skewering him through from side to side.
Cuff groaned and collapsed, looking dumbly at the red pool of blood welling from his side onto his quilted tunic. Frysan pulled his sword clear and leaped back stumbling, tripping over the leather boots he had cast off earlier. He scrambled to regain his footing, relieved to have trimmed the odds. Baldrick stepped in with a slashing side cut that would have sliced him in two if he had been just a moment too slow in reacting. Again Baldrick moved in, this time with a downward clout, grunting loudly as he delivered it. He missed. He brought his sword up from where it had thudded into the floor and tried again. His stretched tendon forgotten in this fight for his life, Frysan ducked and dodged the blows, scrambling over the Queen's four-poster bed to evade his big assailant. Baldrick was puffing now and so drenched with sweat that he flung away his helmet and mopped his brow with his free hand.
"Why, you little dog-fox, you'll get tired of dancing your little jig, and I'll split you open from crown to groin!"
"You'll have to catch me first, you boorish hell-kite." Frysan returned to the middle of the bedchamber, watching for some opening in the man's defences. He was a formidable adversary, no doubt about that, quick and strong for all his suet-like girth. And no fool, for he paused now to catch his breath and marshal his thoughts, a smug smile playing on his lips.
"Very well, then, a thousand plagues on you, dog. You can go on playing soldier with your toy sword and marching backwards when you fight . . . Like a true and trusty Life Guardsman. That's all the energy I'll spend on you now that I've limbered up the old sword arm. My men will be more than pleased to take care of you . . . after I've finished the business that you, my friend, will take the credit for. Imagine your fame in the chronicle books of Arvon . . . Mighty Slayer of Kings, Queens, and baby Princes," Baldrick said, still catching his wind.
Half-turning, he backed his way to the lamplit entrance of the King's sickroom. All that could be heard now was the snorting wheeze of the heavyset man's breathing. For all his taunts, Baldrick was playing things very carefully, never letting his eyes stray from Frysan.
A flicker of movement erupted from the shadows of the sickroom just inside the door. Someone lurked there, creeping up ever so silently behind Baldrick. For the briefest of moments Frysan's eyes widened in surprise. Then shifting his gaze, he narrowed them again to focus on Baldrick.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Queen and what she intended. With her hand extended to the right side of Baldrick's waist, she was reaching for the hilt of the dagger sheathed at his belt. She had moved so close to Baldrick that Frysan saw her wince at the sour reek of his unwashed body. She had the dagger, was lifting it free. The slightest of steps backwards and he would stumble on her. He would cut her down without hesitation. The Queen would not stand a chance.
"Come then. Bodes well for the Mindal, putting its trust in a hedge-born fishmonger like you," Frysan said. It was now or never. He had to close with Baldrick. Anything to move him away from the Queen back into the open area of the bedchamber. "Come get me. I'll wait for you on this spot—right here, like a rooted tree," he shouted, brandishing his sword, tight with the expectation of combat.
"Crows and daws! You're looking at a fellow that's not stirring an inch. If you think I'm playing your game again—I've given you enough chances to oblige me. You come here to me! Come fetch your treat from Uncle Baldrick, or shall I tell Their Royal Highnesses you've wet your breeches and are indisposed?" Broadsword held with two hands before him in a guard position, ever watchful, Baldrick made a little half-turn and lurched back a step.
"What's this?" he exclaimed in mid-stride, his progress blocked, feeling the jab of the dagger as nothing more than a pinprick at first, a tear in his hauberk. Thrust into his side by the Queen, the keenly sharp dagger sliced viciously through the protective chain mail. Baldrick's own momentum helped drive the thing into his flesh hilt-deep. Groaning with pain and rage, he twisted, tore free of the blade, and caught sight of the Queen, still clutching her bloody weapon and wide-eyed with horror. Not wanting to lay open his back to an opponent like Frysan, he resisted the impulse to lunge headlong after her, even as she withdrew, back-stepping out of his reach towards her husband's sickbed in the corner of the room. Frightened by the fresh outbreak of noise, her baby started wailing again.
"Why, you grey-coated leprous witch!" Baldrick roared, ignoring the blood that oozed from his wound. He backed his way into the bedchamber, pivoting around in order to cover Frysan while he advanced on the Queen, his eyes glaring deadly hate.
"Now I'll fix you and yours for good. Blood for blood, my Queen."
Frysan kept pace and stepped warily into the sickchamber. The King lay on a simple bed, his infant son swaddled at his feet. With Baldrick's gory dagger held before her, the Queen took her stand by her lord, like a cornered animal, mindful only of fending off harm from her husband and child. Now her baby had worked himself into a frenzy of crying, letting loose at the top of his lungs, as if he sensed his mother's fear and the imminence of the danger.
"Stand off, get away! Help, someone, help, for the love of heaven! You, Guardsman there, do something, stop him!" Her voice quavered, while Baldrick came on slowly, holding his broadsword at mid-body, seeming to take gruesome relish in prolonging her horror and fear.
Frysan moved closer, calculating his chances of evading that wicked blade in these smaller quarters, making ready to feint and lunge—one last desperate bid to save the royal family.
"Aye, come, my light-footed friend," Baldrick beckoned, a scowl on his face. He stopped for a moment, shifting the point of his weapon, lifting it to shoulder level. "Let's see what you can do on a smaller dancing floor. A dashing figure wouldn't you cut with a peg leg, my limping Guardsman?"
Quick as a coiled snake, he sent the blade of his broadsword whistling through the air in a deadly arc that would have severed Frysan's knees had he not leaped aside like a cat. As he fought to regain his balance, his feet shot out from under him on the polished marble floor, slipping on a small pool of Baldrick's blood, as slick as mutton grease. The shock sent Frysan's sword flying out of his hand right to Baldrick's feet, who stopped it with his boot. No way could Frysan retrieve it. Grinning mirthlessly, Baldrick kicked it behind him, like a bull pawing the ground. It rattled to a stop under the window of the sickroom, its dark steel bars visible in the dim light. Frysan rolled to evade the big man as he closed, skittering across the floor spider-like. The baby's cries grew shriller yet. Baldrick swung his body around, aware of the Queen's deadly rage behind him, fearing yet another cold prick of the dagger.
But it was not the Queen that met his eyes as he turned. The King himself in nightshirt tottered towards him gaunt-faced, his cheeks sunken and right eye drooping. With two hands he bore the sword lost by Frysan.
"Stand, Asturia . . . Back, Guardsman . . ." commanded the King, his voice weak and breaking.
Baldrick froze in place. From the King's sword there emanated a faint glow. The soldier rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. He took a deep breath. Then again his eyes narrowed as a cruel grin played across his face.
"Why, if it isn't our anointed sovereign of sighs and groans come back to life. Arvon's very own lump of gilded clay ready for battle! And most becomingly dressed. I'm shaking in my boots, sire. Well, we'll just take care of first things first, kings before commoners and all that." Despite the jeers his eyes betrayed a hint of doubt. His face grown pallid, he winced at the searing pain of the knife wound. The advancing sword kept its glimmer.
"For all that, I am King."
Fear shadowed Baldrick's face. King Colurian shuffled closer. Baldrick raised his broadsword over his head, preparing to throw all his might into one lethal swing, a blow so powerful no smaller sword could hope to parry it, one that would cleave the frail King's torso in two.
The King closed with him.
Frysan edged his way towards the unevenly matched combatants, his own dagger now in hand. He found himself assailed by questions, entranced by the unearthly gleam of the King's sword, now grown more luminous still. Queen Asturia cried out.
Looming over the King, Baldrick abandoned all thought of subtlety. He roared, his rage boiling over, and down fell the broadsword like a bludgeon.
Up came the King's sword to block, his arm slow and palsied, but quick enough to meet the blow. Frysan tensed for the brief clang and the murderous cut that would follow, ready to leap to the attack and plunge his knife into the king-killer.
His ears filled with the sound of shattering glass.
The King reeled, his sword unscathed, even as Baldrick stared dumbly at his own weapon, now reduced to a mere hilt. Shards of the blade lay strewn across the chamber. The big man's knees buckled and he slumped dazed to the floor. The trickle of blood from the wound in his side now became a flood.
Frysan sprang forward with his knife.
"No, Guardsman, stay your hand. I'll not pass from this world in a welter of needless slaughter. Leave the man be! He's dying, as am I . . . Come, help me to my bed." The King's voice slurred like that of a drunk man, weaker now and cracking with strain, as he too sank to the floor, letting his sword fall with a clatter.
Queen Asturia rushed to her husband's side, but by the time Frysan laid him on his mattress, the King was dead.
It was dusk, and damp too with a raw edge which boded the coming of winter. Sharp-set to reach Ashwood Hall before nightfall, Frysan pushed on numbly through the Deer's Slunk, leading the party down the lonely stretch of royal forest. This had been the king's chase. Threaded with tangled thickets and beaver meadows, it was a well-favoured refuge for game.
Frysan lapsed into a daydream, his senses lulled by weariness and hunger and the confident knowledge that they had come almost to the end of the first and most critical leg of their journey. One night's welcome rest in Ashwood Hall and then tomorrow they would set out again, taking backcountry trails in order to achieve safe haven in Arvon's highlands.
Frysan stifled a yawn. Getting away from the Silver Palace with the Queen and Prince had been surprisingly easy and uneventful. Between Eldor's modest detail of men and the Life Guardsmen hidden under the tarp in the wherry, they had managed to overcome the small contingent of soldiers placed by Baldrick on night watch in the grounds above the King's Stairs, taking them unawares. The only casualty was that headstrong fellow who had ignored Eldor's call to surrender and had brought the horn to his lips to blow an alarm. Eldor had choked him of his wind with a well-placed arrow. Determined to play the hero, that one. Cost him his life. Frysan shook his head and grimaced. And the two men-at-arms who controlled the postern gate, they had shown precious little fight, letting themselves be locked into a small armoury closet with scarcely more than a murmur. Hard to blame them, faced as they were with the naked steel of Lightenhaft—a sword with a highly persuasive edge, even when it did not glow.
Frysan's left hand slipped to the pommel of the blade that hung by his side, his fingertips tracing the finely tooled leather and metal of the hilt. A wonderfully wrought piece of work. Like any Arvonian, Frysan knew the ancient lore attached to Lightenhaft, that it underwent a transformation only when wielded by one of royal blood and anointing. The King had found it by chance just over a year ago. Frysan recognized the sword for what it was as soon as he laid eyes on it.
It had been a great discovery, to find the sword of Ardiel, the first High King of Arvon, when for countless ages it had been thought lost. Queen Asturia had explained the story of the sword in detail to Frysan earlier. The times being what they were, the Queen bade her husband tell no one, but to keep the famous weapon hidden, a secret shared between the two of them. Better to hold it in reserve, she had argued, depending on how events unfolded. Thankfully Colurian had been content to heed her advice. It helped matters that by that stage even he, for all his earlier blindness to what was happening in Arvon, had begun to suspect that the Mindal harboured treasonous ambitions.
Frysan fought to stay in his saddle. Exhaustion swept over him in waves.
The worst part of the escape from the Silver Palace had been having to hoist the body of the dead King over his shoulders and carry it out of the bedchamber to the royal barge even as he kept a firm grip on Lightenhaft in readiness. He had laid down the King's body only for the few minutes it took to deal with the guards at the postern gate.
Once he and his fellow Life Guardsmen, together with the Queen and her infant, had all boarded the barge moored at the King's Stairs, they eased the high-prowed craft out into the wider reaches of the river. More than once they had been forced to douse their torches and sit at anchor in a reedy bend of the Dinastor in an effort to evade the Mindal's patrol boats. They manoeuvred the barge upriver by slow stages under power of its oars as far as the Queen's Hythe, a sheltered landing in a calm sidewater. There the party disembarked amid fields and forests well outside the city of Dinas Antrum. They were met by their escort, a troop of Frysan's comrades led by Mactrin, Eldor's second-in-command.
Frysan had never understood what Eldor saw in the fellow—a brooding grumpy soul with mutton-chop whiskers and a dogleg nose in a furtive cockeyed face, always disgruntled about something or other, forever cursing the air blue under his breath.
Mactrin's troopers, in all a good score of them, were mounted on horses and dressed unobtrusively in leather jerkins and leggings, like simple men-at-arms. They had brought a covered wagon, so crude, with its ill-greased wheels and rickety side panels, that it seemed hardly fit for a woodcutter or charcoal burner, let alone the Queen of Arvon and her newborn son. Still, it had allowed the two Life Guardsmen who had been charged with procuring it to slip out of Dinas Antrum in disguise and make their way to the Queen's Hythe without drawing unwelcome attention to themselves.
And the wagon would hold together long enough to bring a woman and her child to the Summer Palace, even on this stretch of ill-kept trackway—a less frequently used approach to the palace grounds, one normally reserved for the King on his hunting forays. It had been decided that, as they drew nearer to their destination, they should swing off the main road and take this route northwards into the Deer's Slunk. That way Frysan and his men could make a discreet reconnaissance of the Hall first, check to see if it was all clear, starting with the abandoned gamekeeper's cottage nestled in a coppice on the edge of the Slunk, where if all went according to plan Wilum would be waiting for them.
Frysan rode ahead in advance of the escort. He made yet another effort to stave off sleep, straining to keep his eyes open, fighting to remain alert. The trouble was that, after the tumult and strife in Dinas Antrum, the wooded depths of the Deer's Slunk in their shrouded fall colours reminded him too much of his home far away in the highlands of Arvon. He thought of his wife and infant son. It took the edge off his watchfulness, gave him a deceptive sense of security.
Otherwise he might have noticed with alarm the weasel on the moss-grown log preparing to spring viciously on a hapless rabbit that stood mute, too frightened to squeal or run from its doom. Or the sudden absence of birdsong. It should have filled the thick veil of brush crowding the trackway here on either side, which was carpeted with a ghostly profusion of corpse plants, an ill omen, their creamy paleness like a winding sheet in the lengthening shadows cast by the trees.
Frysan glanced back wearily at the slow-moving wagon as it clattered over stone and root, its driver slumped with fatigue, while a packhorse plodded alongside. Smiling to himself at the thought that they had kept one step ahead of the Mindal and its armed thugs, he felt his roan gelding misstep and lurch out of control. He heard a crack as he whipsawed forward, like dry kindling being snapped. Something sped at him, flew past him, brushing the nape of his neck.
Pitched out of his saddle, he tumbled headlong into the thick clump of bushes crowding the edge of the pathway. Had his horse not stepped into a frozen rut and stumbled just at that moment, the arrow would have ripped a hole in his face instead of crackling to a stop in the brittle autumn foliage of the trees beyond.
"To arms! To arms! Ambush!" Eldor's shouts were the last words he heard, before a sharp blow to the head stopped him short and sent the world around him spinning into darkness.
* * *
The moans of wounded men . . . his fellow Life Guardsmen . . . and others at hand too, a great many voices, speaking harsh words in a strange tongue. Swords being slid from scabbards . . . men trampling the undergrowth . . . the hustle and bustle of movement. A baby crying. And cold, how he was stiff and cold.
Groping his way as through a slowly thinning mist, Frysan struggled to lift himself up on an elbow, dazed and groggy, so deep in a laurel thicket that he felt smothered. The stiffness. It was all he could do to summon any real response from his limbs. And the jabbing pain in his ribs. The hilt end of Lightenhaft. He was sprawled awkwardly over the sword. Shifting his weight with a grunt, he moved the weapon. His head throbbed.
How long had he been unconscious? A few minutes maybe? Couldn't be hours . . . He should have worn a heavier cloak.
They had been attacked. That much was clear. He shivered.
The ambushers had carried the field. Torches and lanterns everywhere. Too close.
He sensed danger and stifled a groan as fresh throbs of pain flooded his wakening brain. Gingerly he touched a gash just above his temple.
"So what is the final count? Have we caught them all in our net, your comrades-in-arms? Good fighters. They mounted a stout resistance, it must be said to their credit."
Frysan tensed. Someone stood near, his words carried by the stiffening breeze. Strange sort of accent. A cultivated, formal Arvonian garnished with a sinister oiliness. He could not place it, although in his mind's eye he imagined the speaker as a slender elegant figure—but dangerous, smoothly dangerous.
"Not surprised. I trained most of them, never got no credit for it." It was Mactrin. "As for netting them all, there's one man missing."
"Which one is that?"
"Frysan Wright. Wee Tot I calls him."
Never to my face, you snivelling piece of worm meat. Frysan bit his lip.
"Aye, Wee Tot, the esteemed leader of our happy little troop of loyal Life Guardsmen. The one what donned the draper's rags and snatched away the woman and her babe. He's got to be hereabouts. Can't have gone far, what with the lake and a pond blocking his escape on either side. Not to mention them guards of yours—"
"It was an ideal location that you chose for us to make the ambush, Guardsman."
"Didn't I tell you it was near perfect?"
"Nevertheless, if this captain of yours did manage to escape?"
"No, impossible, he's still here right enough. Must be dead or wounded for him not to be showing his face. Either way, it don't matter. We'll find him. Puffed up young woodcock he may be. A perfect little eight-penny counterfeit, taking it on himself to be captain over us older men and him but an unlicked lad. All the same, one thing's sure, he'd never take flight to save his own hide. Not our Wee Tot. Leave the Queen and her princeling to their own? Not on your life. Not a fellow like him, what with his self-important notions of honour and duty to King and country. Knowing Wee Tot, I'd lay heavy odds he's dead or wounded mortal."
"We must find him, Guardsman, else the agreement we have between us stands null and void. There must be no witnesses. There will be no witnesses if all these brave comrades of yours lie silent in their graves. The Mindal, astute men they are, will suppose the obvious, that it was your stalwart companions that stole away the Queen and her son. Oh, how they will fret and fume, the petty burghers of the Mindal! We must cover our tracks and bury their bodies where no one will ever discover them—"
"The Charnel Pit. So I said, right by here. A place so deep that no one's like to find their bones in a thousand years."
"The survival of even one man could spoil it. It would make all these elaborate arrangements of mine pointless or doubtful at best, something I will not tolerate . . . You are right, I am certain. No doubt the fellow is near. All the same, my men will find him. I will have them scour every inch of the area until they root him out."
Frysan hardly dared to breathe, let alone move. Where were the Queen and Prince Starigan?
Again he considered the weird accent, so overlaid with a sneering contempt for Mactrin, the foul traitor. He could almost picture Mactrin's shifty-eyed smugness. The intonation and colour of the other man's voice struck Frysan as enigmatic, archaic somehow, but with a creeping, shadowy quality. Different from anything he had heard in Dinas Antrum, one of the great cosmopolitan cities in Ahn Norvys. His mind fumbled and groped as he tried to place the oddly formed syllables. The frustrating thing was that there was a thread here—something tantalizingly familiar in the accent. The man's words carried a recognizable ring. If he could just make the connection.
Like the tumblers of a lock falling into order, his thoughts slipped into place. His mind flashed back to his days as a schoolboy learning the Old Tongue. This fellow talking to Mactrin, he was like . . . like someone from Ardiel's time all those centuries ago coming back and trying to speak present-day Arvonian. Hard to explain, but that was the impression the man's voice gave—of someone ancient and not only ancient but anciently cunning. Deviously, malignantly cunning, with a mind that bore the long subtlety of a time span calculated in centuries, not years.
"First I shall have my men finish piling the rest of the bodies onto the wagon," the stranger said. "It will not take but a few more minutes. A tidy load of offal to tip into the pit, once we have found your Guardsman friend."
"He ain't no friend of mine!"
"Good. I would scarcely have guessed it. In the meantime, I shall take a moment to see to the comfort of the dowager Queen and heir apparent, such important royal personages. We must take care to make certain they are properly prepared for the long journey ahead and not too severely inconvenienced by the conditions of their capture."
"How about I have a look around for him myself while you're doing what you're doing? Starting in the bend of the road there in all them bushes. He might have crawled in there if he was wounded."
"By all means, Guardsman, make yourself useful until my men are ready to hunt."
There was a further brief exchange of parting words that Frysan could not make out, as the wind had shifted.
Frysan struggled to his feet, slowly pulling Lightenhaft from its scabbard. Not fifty yards off in either direction, armed men clustered the road with lanterns that cast a flickering glow into the darkness. Frysan stood silent for a moment.
He considered the situation. Behind and ahead, the attackers choked his routes of escape. They had been set on by a small army, first-rate fighting men who made no mistakes and knew exactly how to plan an ambush. Besides that, they plainly outnumbered the convoy of Life Guardsmen. Cammas, Eldor . . . they had not stood the ghost of a chance. Frysan fought back tears of grief and rage. If only his longbow had not been strapped to the saddle of the roan! He would have no trouble sending at least one or two of these villainous wretches to a well-deserved grave. A light bobbed close along the roadway. No mistaking that gait. Skulking slowly, his sword drawn and lantern in hand, Mactrin probed his way.
"Come, come, my triple-turned knave . . ." Frysan whispered to himself, dropping to a crouch, waiting for Mactrin to approach nearer. Before drawing level with Frysan along the road, however, he stopped for a moment, then turned into the woods, wading through the undergrowth, so close that Frysan might have run him through without warning.
"Psst, psst, here."
"Who-who's that?" Mactrin rounded toward the voice, but too late to bring his own sword into play. "Why, Captain Frysan, you're alive. I've been looking—" he stammered, staring at the blade tip poised at his unguarded chest.
"Cut the drivel, you double-faced botch of nature," hissed Frysan through clenched teeth, "or, I swear I'll fillet you right before your eyes."
"B-but I—"
"By the glence, man, you'd better shut your trap!"
Mactrin recoiled and shook his head.
"That's good. You're not nearly as lean-witted as you look. Now let go your sword. Just open your fingers and let it drop."
Mactrin's sword fell from his right hand.
"There's a smart fellow. Now then, we'll have our talk. To begin, tell me who these men are, where they're from, how many of them there are. Loosen your tongue, man, or I'll gladly loosen it for you."
"I-I don't know. They all jabber in a language I've never heard, on my life, maybe a hundred of them or even two. It's difficult to tell on a dark night like this."
"All right then, let's take another tack." Frysan fought to restrain his anger, trembling as he nudged his sword point deeper through Mactrin's leather jerkin, forcing him back against a large boulder, where the lantern he still held clanged against the rock.
"Stop, stop. You're drawing blood . . . I'll tell you everyth—"
"Their leader, that strange-talking fellow you were just talking to, he speaks our language well enough. Who is he? What's his name?"
"I swear to you, I don't know. Gives me the creeps. He's played it tight-lipped, never named himself, not that I dare ask him. Ain't healthy to know too much—"
"It's not healthy to know too little either. Now tell me straight, how did you turn traitor? Where did you make contact with these men?"
Mactrin let out a sigh of resignation.
"All right, all right. It all started with a chap in the Cranes about a fortnight ago. I'd seen him before in the place, nursing his ale and sitting real quiet and contented like mine uncle on a bench by the hearth. A foreigner, you could tell from the cut of his cloth and the broken manner of his Arvonian. If he was a spy, I thought, he'd have made a better effort to blend in. Anyway, now and again he'd flash me a smile and tip his cap like we was mates from way back. Made me think he was a pleasant sort of chap. All the same, I didn't pay him no heed 'til he and I, we happened to stumble out of the Cranes together one night. As we was making our way down Limehouse Alley, we was set on by four or five footpads. This fellow, Delyddlo's his name, or so he claimed, a mason by profession, he fought them off right handily, almost before I could get my own weapon free. Body o' me, he knew how to fight. A man could see that. Why, he sent them lice-ridden cutpurses scrambling for their lives.
"Well, after that, I'm full of warm fellow feeling for the man, like we was comrades-in-arms, and he gets real friendly, says he's from Sifadda, a stranger to these parts, and wouldn't I stop by with him at his place for a nightcap, meet his fellow countryman who craved company but didn't like going to drinking holes, didn't like jostling with all them hordes of people. So this fellow Delyddlo brought me up to his garret, and it didn't take but a moment for me to get the notion something's out of kilter, for his friend turned out to be the very fellow you inquired about a moment ago, the leader of this gang of men. He's a fine-baited talker who comes right out and says to me with that fleering face of his that he's heard all about me, about what a fine soldier I am, and that he knows full well us Life Guardsmen are busy hatching some plot or other to snatch the King and Queen out from under the very nose of the Mindal."
Frysan, standing easier now, retracted the point of his blade from Mactrin's chest. His anger had lost some of its white heat.
"Listen close, you'd scarcely believe what he told me next," Mactrin continued, his voice grown solemn.
"Go on, then. What did he tell you?"
"Well, he said . . . Do you know what he said? He said . . . He said, you was a dead man!" He yelled, defiant, even as he swung out with the lantern he still held gripped in his hand, knocking Frysan's sword aside while he leaped clear before his captor, reeling and off-balance, could recover.
"To me, to me, I've found him! He's alive! He's here! To me!" Mactrin screamed at the top of his lungs, fighting free of the bushes, heading towards the road, where already the bobbing lights loomed closer, coupled with rising shouts of alarm and command.
For a moment Frysan stood rooted to the spot. Pursuing Mactrin was out of the question.
It was this pause that allowed him to hear it—just the lightest of footfalls rustling in the underbrush at his back. As he whirled around, he raised Lightenhaft point forward at mid-body and lunged with it at a dark figure coming at him in a blur, like a moving fragment of the night, clad wholly in black, a long knife gleaming faintly in the starlight. Frysan felt his thrust connect, tearing through flesh and bone, and quickly pulled his sword free, as he hovered over the body.
He looked back over his shoulder. From every direction armed men were converging on him from the roadway, chain mail glinting in the light that spilled from their lanterns, their swords drawn, egged on by Mactrin's shrieking voice. A glimmer of light caught him, followed by fresh shouts.
Only one way to run—towards the beaver pond. He turned from his pursuers into the woods, tearing through the alders. An arrow swished through the air overhead, rattling branches and twigs—archers. They had brought on their archers.
On he fled, scratched and torn, slashing at the undergrowth with Lightenhaft. He summoned the knowledge about the lie of the land that he had gained from the times his company of Guardsmen had been stationed at the Summer Palace, assigned to watch over King Colurian as he indulged his passion for the hunt.
If he could just skirt the ramparts of the beaver dam, he could lose himself in the woods beyond, or have a fighting chance at any rate.
The ground grew spongy underfoot. He had reached the outlying margin of the sprawling beaver pond. Soon he was pushing aside the withered stalks of cattails and crunching through shallow puddles of half-frozen water. He stopped for a moment to recover his breath. He had outpaced those who followed behind. Their lights shone dimmer in the distance.
To his right sloped a wooded ridge that overlooked the pond. Lots of cover, but too much uphill slogging. Veering left, he found it did not take long for the terrain to rise clear of the sodden bog, becoming more firm. Somewhere ahead—not too far ahead, he hoped—a wing of the beaver dam met the higher ground and closed the outflow of the pond. If he could just turn the corner of the dam and escape the confined stretch of ground between the pond and the road. A tight-sprung trap if there ever was one.
As he topped a small hillock and cleared a belt of trees, a phalanx of armed men with lights came into view. They had plugged the gap, blocking his escape in that direction. The young highlander stopped in his tracks and scrambled to retreat, outpacing the hail of arrows that thudded into the ground at his heels, as the enemy caught him in the outer range of their lantern light.
Panting, he retraced his steps only to find that the original group of pursuers had made up for lost ground. Once again they bore down on him. Running an erratic, darting course, he felt an arrow tear at his leggings and he winced. He stared around wildly. Before him loomed the ridge overlooking the beaver pond, which lay to his left. He scanned its reedy margin. No place to make for but the ridge . . . Or else . . . The idea struck him with sudden force as he ran . . . the beaver lodge, a dark mass of thickly plaited sticks and mud a good twenty-five paces out from the shoreline.
But to what good? Even if he did manage to swim out to the lodge through the ice-cold water, once there he would freeze to death, dripping wet and exposed to the cold. Besides, it would be a dead giveaway where he had headed, leaving a trail of broken ice.
He clambered across the shoulder of the ridge and entered a spinney of oak that fell away to the banks of the pond, so dense he was lost to sight, although those who hunted him washed the heights with their lantern light. Pausing to recover his wind, he glanced upslope and his heart dropped—more light poured onto the crown of the ridge from the other side, casting a crisscrossing maze of lights through the woods below.
The noose was tightening. Unless he found a way to evade them, to escape them as they beat the bushes, he would die this very night.
A kind of madness swept over him, clouding his mind. In a panic he floundered forward through the underbrush.
The ground underfoot changed, becoming clear of vegetation, smooth and well-trodden—a path. Now he broke into a run, until he reached a small clearing fringed with aspens, some of them felled, with stumps that bore the distinctive marks of beaver teeth. He had descended almost to the pond, which lay at the foot of the clearing, its icebound surface pricked with the stiff dry stalks of reeds and cattails—except for a channel, made clear and straight over time by foraging beavers, which led underwater to their lodge offshore.
The whole area of the clearing resembled a sloping shelf, dropping off sheer into a steep ravine along two sides, an ideal spot for the beavers since it afforded them natural protection from their predators while on land. He, however, was trapped in a dead end. No time to backtrack either. His pursuers had drawn too close in the precious moments he had lost, swarming across the flanks of the ridge, hunting for him. Already he could make out the faint glimmer of their lanterns even through the screening trees.
He would run no more. A peace came over him. He had tried escape. Let them come now and he would sell himself dear, as befitted a highlander, one of the King's Life Guardsmen. He stood resigned, his back braced against the trunk of a huge linden tree, as he flexed and turned his wrist, testing the feel of Lightenhaft in his sword hand and steeling himself for the shock of battle.
He looked out over the pond again and regarded the dim mass of the beaver lodge whimsically. He sighed, savouring the calm before the storm.
But wait—
Frysan bolted to attention, abandoned the linden tree, and strode to the lip of the clearing. There had to be a plunge hole on a ledge like this, otherwise the beavers would have no easy way down to the water. It had to be around here—here in line with the channel. Poking through the tall grass and gnawed aspen branches by the faint light of a slender moon and stars, he looked for the opening the beavers used in order to swim back and forth to their lodge. Glancing up the path, he saw that the enemy's lanterns winked brighter. Where could it be? He grew more frantic. He quartered the ground like a confused hound, then finally discovered the hole, almost falling flat on his face as he stumbled on it. Scarcely more than shoulder width, it was tucked beside a rotting stump, its edges trampled by the coming and going of the beavers.
Here was his sole remaining hope of escape, a way to evade the murderous hue and cry behind him. He did not have the leisure to hesitate, to wonder if the plunge hole would prove broad enough all the way to let him squeeze his body through.
The surface of the water lay some three feet down the hole, yet unfrozen. He slipped Lightenhaft back in its scabbard and knelt at the edge of the opening, which sloped gently to the water. He sucked large drafts of air, priming his lungs for the ordeal ahead.
He launched himself headfirst, every nerve set tingling by the icy shock of the water. Scrabbling with both hands, he pulled himself through the submerged elbow of the passage and gave an inward sigh of relief. The hole's curve downward into the pond was not too narrow or sharply angled. Otherwise, he would never have negotiated it with Lightenhaft belted to his waist—wedged, trapped, unable to retreat, left to drown. He drove himself forward and headed desperately for the pond.
He entered the channel leading to the lodge. He could tell by feel from the cattail stalks on either side of him. Every fibre of his body strained to traverse the space between him and the lodge. So near and yet so far, so measurelessly far. Above him stretched the icy rind of the pond, but to Frysan it was simply a part of the enveloping blackness. Blind, he propelled himself forward through the canal, the supply of air in his lungs affording him less than a minute to make the lodge. He felt his body heat seeping away, his air dwindling, as he swam underwater along the muddy bottom.
The reeds and cattails gave out. He could no longer feel their stalks on either side of him. He felt the grip of panic. He had reached the deeper water. What if he missed the lodge? He was approaching the limits of his endurance. Frysan longed to break the surface ice and take a breath—the sheer bliss of it, one more breath before he let the vengeful cold cradle him in death, even if it meant the hot sting of an arrowhead. He could not hold out much longer. His mind grew fuzzy.
As in a dream, his fingers touched the fretted branches, a large pile of them. Now to find the opening. But how? Should he give up and surface? Only seconds of air left, and cold—cold settling in his bones and sinews like lead. He could barely move his arms and legs. Groping feebly, he sought the submerged entrance to the lodge, willing himself to dive deeper as he felt for the gap, so numb he had almost lost his sense of touch.
Then there came no resistance to Frysan's listless, delving hands. Here was a break in the solid bulk of the structure. He summoned up the last traces of his slackened strength to push his head and shoulders into the opening, driving himself up from muddy footholds within the slanting, water-filled passage, so tight a fit that its side walls tore at his clothes and chafed his insensible body, snagging at his sword belt.
When his head broke the surface of the water, Frysan was nearly unconscious. Sputtering, he gulped the air, sour fetid air rank with the heady smell of beaver musk. He coughed, pushed himself forward. The acrid air burned his throat. The utter darkness of the lodge closed on him—trapped by ice, now trapped by mud. In a delirious attempt to free himself he thrust Lightenhaft once and again and again through the walls of the lodge. It caught and he shook it free. A wisp of cool air came through the holes. His chest heaved and he heard a chittering bark of alarm.
"Stay back . . . stay back . . . must hide here." He was so cold he could barely frame the words.
Shivering, he slashed blindly through the air to keep the animals at bay. With his second pass the tip of the sword made light contact, producing a whimpering squeal of pain.
"Now stay back!" Frysan hissed, hoisting himself out of the bone-chilling water onto a shelf, its bed of dry bark and wood chips only two or three feet from the dome-like roof of the lodge. For a moment he simply lay there, rubbing the circulation back into his legs and relishing the snug warmth of the place.
Without warning, a dim half-light grew in the chamber, allowing him to make out where the beavers had retreated—five or six of them—a huddle of fur and frightened eyes on a ledge-like platform directly across from him, but on a higher level within the lodge. One of the beavers advanced, chittering with agitation, a big buck, threatening. Brandishing Lightenhaft, Frysan prepared to defend himself. Then, to his bewilderment, quick as a flash, the beaver turned and dove into a second plunge hole followed by the others in immediate succession, skittering over the latticework of wood strips and branches.
Darkness filled the inside of the lodge again, as deep as the grave. Were those shouts he heard? Once more a feeble light filtered into the place—from the outside—it came from the outside through the sword holes he had made. Now it faded. In the blackness his teeth chattered as his body adjusted to the stuffy warmth of the place.
Again the light came. His pursuers. They had arrived at the pond, flooding its frozen surface and the lodge with lantern light. Could they know? No, they were just looking, searching.
Frysan listened closely, holding his breath. More cries. Again the light, but coming from the opposite part of the chamber, from where the beavers had huddled. They were checking all approaches to the dome-shaped structure, making certain he had not reached it somehow. They must be standing on that other promontory beyond the ridge, which faced the back of the lodge. Its position in the landscape would allow them to check the whole lodge area for sign of their quarry. Well, they were not going to see much except for unbroken ice and the vault of the beaver dwelling intact.
The darkness returned to envelop him. He could hear nothing more beyond the walls of the lodge. Cramped as he was, he undressed and wrung out his dripping breeches and tunic. Slowly he revived, no longer chilled to the marrow and shivering. After a while he put his clothes back on. No sign of the beavers he had driven from their lair. They had probably retreated to another of their dens.
For what seemed like ages he lay there recovering his strength, Lightenhaft reassuringly at hand, while his clothes turned dry from his own returning body heat. It was a waiting game now. He would have to be patient and allow them time enough to give up their search, clear out, presume he had sneaked past them somehow—at least until nightfall of the next day. No sense in hazarding his new lease on life.
Still he champed at the bit, rehashing the audacious escape he and his men had made from the Silver Palace and their bitter betrayal by Mactrin. Finally, exhausted, he drifted off to sleep, a long sleep ridden by nightmares, haunted by ghostly piteous images of his dead comrades and also more sinister phantoms—Baldrick's evil scowl, Mactrin's sulky face, his nameless enemy's shadowed visage . . .
When he awoke he knew for certain it had to be time to break out of the lodge, its stuffy darkness now oppressive and stifling as a tomb, no longer a haven. Grabbing hold of Lightenhaft he began to hack away at the roof of the chamber, pulling at the roots and branches as they broke free from the frozen mud.
He had waited long enough. Night had fallen once again, the position of the stars showing him that it was close to midnight. He crawled out onto the roof of the structure and recoiled at the chill blast of wind that met him cloakless.
It was a cold night, much colder than the night before. Perhaps it had thickened the ice. At the base of the lodge he tested the surface of the pond warily with the partial weight of one foot, then, finding it held, with both feet. Slowly he ventured another step, then another. The ice started to crack, its hairline fractures spreading in a widening circle around him. Frysan bolted, outrunning the ice as it broke, until he clambered up the bank of the pond and fell sprawling onto grass thick with hoarfrost.
Only then did his eyes stray to the lifeless figure—Mactrin's body, clean without a mark, lying sightless almost next to him on the grass, his face horror-stricken. The abductors of the Queen had gone their way. Frustrated in their search for the sole survivor of their ambush, they had left behind this grim token of their disappointment.
Frysan felt an upwelling of pity, pity for Mactrin and pity for his guiltless comrades—Eldor, Cammas, and the other Life Guardsmen, stalwart friends all, who through no fault of their own had paid the price of another's treason.
After lingering for a moment, Frysan broke his gaze from Mactrin's stiff features, pushed himself from the frozen ground, and sped on his way.
It was time to seek out Wilum.