Count Scar - SA (40 page)

"Still care to match swords with me, Count?" Raymbaud shouted. A high squeak came from within his hostage's hood as he tightened his grip. "This is my castle." His face was white in the
moonlight, and sweat ran glistening down his forehead, but he seemed to have thrown off his fear of the apparitions in his fury against me. "I turned the castle over to Gavain's warriors only
because they are my allies, and I will demonstrate that I am still the master here by killing the infidel claimant—you!"

What in the name of Almighty God was Arsendis doing here? I stood paralyzed, fifteen yards away, my sword dangling. She always wanted to be at the center of the action—why else would she
have come from the ducal court along with the reinforcements for which Argave had sent? I still had the postern key in my pouch, but there must be another one which she had quietly borrowed—

perhaps from Lord Thierri, who after all had lived here until recently, or even her own father.

But standing here gaping would do nothing to save her. "Don't try to bluff, Raymbaud!" I shouted, attempting to cover slightly too long a pause by projecting brazen confidence. "I know even
you, traitor and heretic that you may be, with the countess's death on your soul, are still too much of a gentleman to kill a helpless woman with your own hands!"

Raymbaud frowned, his head cocked—he must not have expected this reaction. I started a slow advance across the terrace, my sword ready. "Let her go, traitor," I said firmly. "She has no part in
our quarrel." High, wordless squeaks, from a throat constricted by the bouteillier's arm, seemed to agree with me. "Harm her and I run you through at once. Let her go and I'll give you one more
chance to defend yourself."

His sword clattered at his feet, and for a second I thought he had surrendered. I should have known better. The arm not holding his hostage shot toward me, and in his hand was the fire telesma.

I sprang backwards instinctively, the wound in my leg throbbing painfully as I landed. Flames filled the center of the terrace, their brilliant orange dimming the moon. But Raymbaud's fire held
no fears for me now, I told myself firmly. My hand felt again the solid shape of the quenching telesma, made by a heretic who had himself been burned to death but whose arts were now practiced
by his grandson in the service of God.

I held it out before me. "Hoc est hora!" I cried, and waited for the magic within to extinguish the fires again.

And nothing happened.

I shook the ivory telesma wildly and tried the incantation again. Still nothing. My fingers tightened around it until it seemed it must break. Melchior had told me he had not had a chance to
recharge this telesma completely. He had used all the stored magic in it to quench the pain of his arrow wound, and he had not had his full strength back since to finish restoring it. The telesma's
power was all now exhausted.

Raymbaud thrust the scarlet-cloaked figure from him, straight into the center of the flames, laughing the laugh of a demon from Hell. "Afraid of a little fire, Count? Not quite so bold now, with
your one magical trick not working right?"

This was it. My only way back was an archway behind me which the flames had not yet reached, though they were already close enough that I could feel their heat.

But the scarlet cloak was already ablaze. The heavy wool would protect the wearer for only a few more seconds. All I could see were the desperate flailings of someone trying to put out flames
without knowing how to do so, while convulsed with desperate terror.

This was not Gertrude. This was Arsendis, whom I loved even if she would never have me. Gertrude I had not been able to save though trying had scarred me for life. Arsendis might still have a
chance.

Every nerve in my body screamed for me to flee. Instead I ripped off my own cloak and leaped forward, into the heart of the flames.

If this was a preview of Hell, then I can only hope for God's mercy on the final day of Judgment. All the hairs on the back of my hands immediately were singed off. Tongues of fire reached toward
me, so hot that I felt that in another moment my eyeballs must melt. I flung my cloak completely over the figure before me to muffle the flames and squeezed my eyes shut. Arsendis seemed
heavier than I expected, but with a strength born of desperation I heaved the struggling form over my shoulder. Three long strides and I was out of the heart of the fire, four more, my eyes open
again, and I was through the archway.

My bad leg collapsed beneath me, wrenching all the tendons in the ankle. I rolled us both on the floor to smother our burning clothing, and beat out the remaining flames with the tail of my cloak.

No time to check how well Arsendis was; at least I could hear guttural moans from inside the cloak. I pushed myself up on my remaining good leg and stumbled back to the terrace.

My sword was still where I had dropped it, and I snatched it up at once. No sign yet of heretic reinforcements. Raymbaud stood staring from behind subsiding flames. With half my hair and beard
burned off I must have seemed another ghastly apparition coming at him, walking with a pronounced limp but moving without hesitation through knee-high flames that scorched my boots.

He realized just too late that he was backed against the wall over which the countess had fallen when she died.

"You killed Bruno in trying to kill me," I rasped through a smoke-hoarsened throat. "You were responsible for the death of my cousin, Countess Aenor of Peyrefixade. You have betrayed me, your
sworn lord. As rightful Count of Peyrefkade, with the right and authority invested in me by Duke Argave and, through him, by the king, I sentence you to die."

For a horrible second I thought he was going to shoot fire at me a third time. But that telesma too must now all be exhausted. He snatched up his sword and tried to dodge past me.

Bad leg or not, I was too fast for him. He only avoided being immediately spitted by springing backwards again. My next sword stroke he parried, and the next, not getting in any good return
strokes while his eyes grew wider and wider.

He was looking somewhere past my shoulder. I was much too old a soldier to fall for a trick like that, even when he started to point with his left hand. A sharp blow which he barely deflected sent
him staggering backwards, fetching up against the parapet. He cried out in fear and what might have been a much too tardy plea for mercy.

I sprang after him, all the weight of my body behind the blade. My sword stroke went straight and true into his throat, and the force of my leap carried him, my sword, and nearly me over the
edge.

He disappeared with a dying scream, and I crumbled at the base of the wall, listening. After what seemed a very long time I heard the splat of flesh and bone hitting stone below. At the same
instant, a skeletal rider shot overhead and, trailing sparks, galloped away through empty air.

So he had seen something. Melchior's magic had served me again. Trembling all over, I groped for my knife. My sword was gone, the good Allemannic steel blade I had carried up and down the
Empire. At this point, even if I had it, I wasn't sure I could have used it.

The fire too was gone, leaving the stones of the terrace darkened and hot. I tried standing and ended up crawling instead, on hands and knees now painfully sore, back toward the archway.

"Caloran?" That wasn't Arsendis. That was a man's voice—someone extremely familiar, although I could not at the moment place him.

Someone was standing in the archway, someone wearing the burned remains of a scarlet cloak. As he stepped forward, the moonlight hit his face and I finally placed the voice. It was Lord Thierri.

"You aren't Arsendis," I said stupidly and subsided to the flagstones.

"No," he said, approaching and looking at me critically. His red hair had been burned off close to his head. "I saved your life down in the duke's court, and now you've saved mine. You look
terrible."

"It was you the whole time," I said slowly, as my brain refused to accept the obvious. "Raymbaud was trying to use you as a hostage. You got caught in his magical fire. But what are you doing
here? And why are you wearing the young duchess's cloak?"

"This is my cloak," he said with a sudden smile as he realized my mistake. "Perhaps you've seen her wearing a similar one—one I arranged for my tailor to make her as a gift after she admired
mine. As to what I'm doing here, when I realized you and that half-heretic priest had disappeared from camp during all the excitement, I had a good guess where you had gone. So I waited until
things were calmer and used the key I'd kept when Argave unceremoniously turned me out—never can tell when a quiet entry will come in handy! I didn't trust what the two of you might be
doing, and I was proven right when I arrived to see the castle engulfed in flames!"

I rose to my knees and seized him in a bear hug, laughing so loud it should have brought all the heretics down on us at once. He tried to pull back, the same scheming, ineffective Thierri as ever,
who now on top of everything doubted my sanity. My legs might be wounded, but there was nothing wrong with my arms. I clung to him even tighter—he was going to be my friend now
whether he wanted to be or not.

"My sister died in a fire when I was just a boy, Thierri," I said, my voice still rough with smoke—and certainly not emotion. "I couldn't save her, and my brother didn't even try. Now that I've
saved you, you'll have to be both brother and sister to me." He looked at me with no idea what I was talking about, but I didn't care. "I don't think I can walk unaided, but Gavain and all his
knights may be here in a second. You'll have to defend me, though here against this wall may not be the best place—"

I was interrupted by a great roar that shook the castle, a roar of rending timber and falling stone.

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I stood motionless in the shadows for some moments after the count was out of sight, probing with my second ear for any sound indicating unease either among the guards on the wall or
elsewhere in the castle. But there was nothing. Well, if Count Caloran was making for the gates, it made excellent sense for me to go in the opposite direction. If he succeeded in getting the gates
down, it would be best to be out of the way of the melee that would doubtless follow when the duke and his men charged in. And if he failed, it would be equally well for me to be hidden where I
could devote myself to our only other, hope—finding the great telesma, and quickly. Besides, working from a place of concealment I could create diversions that could help the count evade capture.

And luckily we had entered not very far from the best such spot.

The count, long a soldier, was doubtless well practiced in the arts of scouting and ambush; he could probably creep about the castle for a long time without being discovered. But my case was
different. Now that I was not discorporate, I would need to employ magical aid if I hoped to move more than a few yards without being detected.

Reaching inside my cassock, I felt along the special belt that held all the things I'd brought from the House of the Order, each hung in a carefully memorized sequence.

I felt my box of divination supplies, then a little further along the sack containing powder of blindness (I still had more than half left), the conviare, the parchment and dust for far-writing,
powders and devices for causing fire, fog, light, and the phial containing the potion of discorporation. My fingers recoiled when they touched the little bag containing the terrible pulvis
potentissimus, and I recalled the terrifying moment when the Count had briefly held it in his hand on the mountain. Then I felt the thing I wanted: a small flat packet of parchment that gave
slightly when I pressed it, containing a magical object supplied by Prior Belthesar.

I drew it forth, broke the prior's wax seal, and shook out the soft stringy bundle within until I was holding a fine net of black mesh. I draped this over my shoulders like an old woman's shawl and
fastened it at my throat with the clasp I found at the bottom of the packet. Immediately, I felt the lines of magic begin to stream from the clasp through the cloak of shadows. Kneeling by the wall,
I murmured a prayer for the counts safety and followed with another: that if possible I be spared having to use the more terrible sorts of magic now at my command. Then I rose and started along
the wall, toward the doorway to a passage that would take me to the tower at the rear corner of the castle, perched where the mountain fell away.

I hadn't covered three yards when a man with a gleaming halberd came out of that door, looking straight in my direction.

My fingers clenched around the powder of blindness, which I'd vowed to use in any emergency before anything more deadly. But then the man looked away and walked across the terrace and along
the base of the tower opposite, calling out somebody's name. Now I knew the cloak of shadows really worked. Still, I remained quite still until the guard was out of sight, recalling that its magic
could not render me actually invisible, merely very hard to notice.

A voice answered from the tower, and the guard called up, "No sign of anything from the rear ramparts. How do things look down toward the siege camp?" Without staying to hear the answer, I
slipped into the passage and hurried through.

When I emerged into the moonlight again, I was high on the rear ramparts, above the low courtyard behind the keep where the men sometimes practiced swordplay. Sixty feet ahead loomed the
squat square bulk of the back tower.