Count Scar - SA (44 page)

His voice trailed off. I took a deep breath, glanced at Thierri, who had taken several startled steps back, and reached for the telesma. It seemed to weigh a hundred pounds as I slowly lifted it, the
forces within it buzzing all up and down my arms. Melchior cried out as I took it from his head, gestured wildly, then fell back limply. I set it carefully on the flagstones, staring at it with awe.

The power within it seemed to be seething and stirring, like a wild animal anxious to escape, heretic power imbued with the evil mind of the old great Magus who had commanded and concealed
it.

Amid the rubble that had been the gatehouse there suddenly appeared armed men. I reached desperately for where my sword no longer was, then saw that it was Duke Argave and his knights.

He crossed the courtyard in long strides, his cape tossed back, then stopped. He looked from Melchior to me, at the glowing scorpion shape of the battle telesma, and around him at the ruined walls
and empty courtyard. For a long moment he said nothing, and his face, pale in the moonlight, seemed as I watched to grow older and more lined.

"Well, Count Caloran," he said at last, in what was clearly meant to be his ordinary good humor but did not ring true, "I would say that the two of you looked terrible, but then your opposition
must be even worse off, for I do not see them at all! I should never have doubted you, though I must say that if you'd told me you two were going to retake the castle by yourselves, I would scarcely
have credited it." He seemed then to notice Thierri for the first time. "Oh, I see you are here too, Lord Thierri. What happened to your cloak? I missed you a short while ago; if you were in at the
end, observing, perhaps you can tell me what happened, as these two heroes seem little fit for speech."

Thierri squirmed, but the duke turned back to me. "We found this as we were coming up the mountain, Count, after we heard your horn blast and the roar of the walls coming down. That must
have been a feat like Samson's! At any rate, I would like to return it to you."

I peered at him, uncomprehending, then realized he had two swords at his belt. One he drew and presented to me, hilt first. It was the sword I had received from the emperor's hands, which I had
last seen going over the wall in the body of the bouteillier.

"There doesn't seem to be any doubt that the traitor Raymbaud is now dead," the duke said dryly. "Is there any doubt about any of the other defenders?"

As I took back my sword with trembling fingers, Melchior roused himself enough to lift his head. "Most of the heretics are trapped on the upper floors of the keep, my lord, including their leader,
Gavain. But there may well be a few others still loose in the castle."

"In the keep…" said the duke slowly. Others were hurrying up now, Prior Belthesar among them. He took one horrified look at the telesma, spoke a rapid series of words that seemed to lessen its
evil glow, then bent over Melchior, murmuring either prayers or more incantations.

But I was watching Argave. All the years that had seemed to descend on him a minute before were gone as he straightened his back, his eyes flashing. "All right, then!" he snapped to the knights
who had begun to gather around us. "Start an immediate search of the castle! Anyone you find, disarm and bring here."

"Excuse me, sire," I said with a slow smile. "This is, I believe, my castle, and my knights certainly know it better than yours."

He turned in surprise, then laughed and slapped me on the back. "Quite right, Count. You give the commands here. Once we're sure we've rounded up all the loose heretic scum," and as he spoke
his expression began to darken again, "we can decide how to get the main force out of what's left of the keep." And he went off himself with the first expedition.

For the next hour knights scoured the castle, finding and capturing half a dozen heretic warriors who had not made it into the keep with the rest, and gathering up the remains of the dead. I was
impressed at what Brother Melchior must have done—I had killed but one man, while the priest evidently had killed a number, and quite horribly. Prior Belthesar insisted that Melchior be put to
bed at once, and I sent the two off with several knights to guard them, making very sure the great battle telesma went along.

Arsendis was not among those now swarming through my castle. The duke, I gathered, had left her in the siege camp below, with half a dozen knights as guard. I wondered with mild curiosity if
they were supposed to protect her from enemies or to prevent her from coming to join us in Peyrefixade.

I leaned, half dozing, against the windlass on top of the covered well, pushing back exhaustion at intervals to issue more commands or to hear reports. I would send a message to the Convent of the
Holy Family in the morning, I decided, to tell my Great-aunt Richildis what I had learned of my cousins death: certainly not an accident, but the result of the combination of the bouteillier
wanting Peyrefixade empty and the seneschal wanting Lord Thierri dead. Since Seneschal Guilhem was dead now, too, I didn't want to implicate him in this, but I kept losing my concentration
as I tried to determine how to explain all this delicately to the abbess. All that kept me awake was the throbbing of my leg and the stinging of the new burns on my face and hands. The moon was
setting when Duke Argave came back.

"The castle is free of heretics now, Count," he said, "except for those in the keep." His expression was grim, and he seemed to be waiting for me to say something. When I did not immediately
answer, he added, speaking carefully as though not wanting to give anything away, "The archbishop will doubtless arrive in the next three or four days. When he comes—" for a second Argave
seemed to hesitate, then continued smoothly "—he will have the Inquisition with him."

Peyrefixade was my castle, and through the fog of pain and exhaustion I realized that the duke was confirming this. But if I did nothing about a nest of heretics still holed up in the central keep,
heretics who included the duke's son, then Argave would be compelled to lead the attack himself.

"I am not," I said as clearly as I could, "going to allow the Inquisition to set up stakes in my courtyard at which to burn heretics to death. Let's see if we can talk to them."

The duke's men set up camp chairs in front of the keep and lit flambeaux on either side. Argave, with a powerful hand under my elbow, helped me from the well to a chair.

I looked through the gaping hole in the wall into what had once been my great hall and thought gloomily that I would need an army of masons to repair the damage Melchior and the Magus's
battle telesma had done. Maybe the Order of the Three Kings, or my aunt, the abbess of the Holy Family, would be willing to lease or buy a piece of property from me for enough to pay for all that
stonework.

But no use thinking about masonry until the castle was firmly in my hands again. I made myself sit up straight, cleared my throat, and shouted. My voice echoed around the courtyard. "Gavain,
heretic and dog! You have one chance to parley for your life and those of your men. This is it."

There was a long pause during which I was afraid he would not answer. But then I heard his voice, a veneer of banter lying over the intense strain beneath. "You don't want to have to destroy the
rest of your castle, is that it, Count? So you're trying to lure us out with soft words, instead?"

I couldn't see him, but he must be standing by one of the arrow slits on the second storey, from which one could command most of the courtyard. I realized with an itchy feeling that sitting here,
torch-lit, the duke and I made excellent targets. Men who thought of themselves as already dead might well decide to take some of us with them to Hell. I glanced at Argave, but his face was
expressionless as stone.

"You're not thinking this through, Gavain," I replied, trying to force my own brain to function. "You've lost. Raymbaud, who was supposed to infiltrate our plans and relay them all to you, is
dead. We have the great telesma the Perfected have spent the last forty years hoping to recover. You may be safe from us for the moment, but only for the moment. Either we can bring down the
keep— and you in it—with the same forces we already used to destroy the gates, or we can wait a few days and starve you out. You can't have more than a minimum of food and water up there
with you; the keep's storerooms under the great hall are no longer accessible to you."

"You spoke of a parley, Count," came Gavain's voice out of the dark arrow slit. "But this sounds like boasting."

"Only making sure you understand your situation." I took a deep breath. "Now I'd like to tell you about mine."

"You have your problems, too, Count?" Gavain jeered. "Then I must offer my sincere condolences."

The duke at my elbow gave an angry mutter, but I refused to let myself be drawn. "As you have pointed out yourself, I have no desire to finish the destruction of my own castle, so the quick way
to get you out of it is closed. And so, I'm afraid, is the slow way. Your damned Perfected beliefs probably make you think that dying in my keep of hunger and thirst would propel you straight
into Heaven, but it won't be that simple. The Inquisition is on the way. In a few days, when you're too weak to offer resistance, we'll burrow through the stone you used to block the stairs inside
the keep, or put the scaling ladders against the outside and pluck you out like apples from a tree. The inquisitors will give you a final chance to return to the True Faith, but most of you will be
burned to death right here."

"I'm still waiting, Count, for you to tell me something I don't already know." The underlying strain in Gavain's voice was becoming stronger than the mocking note he was desperately trying to
maintain.

"Then listen to this." There was still smoke in my lungs, and I had to stop and cough for a minute. The castle was perfectly still around me. "I have no intention of letting the inquisitors in to
judge you. They may be upholders of the True Faith, but as long as I am Count of Peyrefixade I am the only one here who will pass sentences of life and death. If I sentence you to death myself, I
either have to use the terrible destructive forces of magic to kill you immediately—which you cannot deny I have the ability to do—or else starve you out, by which time the inquisitors will be
here, impossible to ignore as I value my own salvation. You leave me no alternative, Gavain. I sentence you to life."

Duke Argave jerked in his chair but did not speak. I heard indrawn breaths all around the courtyard but no word was spoken. Gavain waited thirty seconds before answering himself. "Life is
given by God, Count. It is not something to which one man can sentence another."

I was suddenly sick of him and all his men, his supercilious tone, their pestilential beliefs, and especially their presence in my castle. "Then let me put it this way," I said roughly, "if you can't
understand anything except in the plainest language. Get out. Right now, all of you, get out of my castle. You can even take your horses. I don't care where you go or what you do when you get
there, as long as it's very far from Peyrefixade. Starting from right now you have seventy-two hours. No one will impede you, no one will pursue you. After seventy-two hours, you'd better be far
away from here, because then the amnesty ends and Prince Alfonso and the Inquisition arrive."

As I spoke I realized I should probably have cleared this with the duke. I could declare an amnesty in my own county, but a lot of these mountains were under the duke's authority, not mine. But
looking at him from the corner of my eye I did not think he would object.

"One condition," said Gavain.

"One condition!" I exploded. "I give you a chance to get out of here with your God-forsaken skin still attached to your God-forsaken rear end and you speak to me of conditions?!"

"I misspoke," he said, and for once he sounded deadly serious. "My men trust me, and if I come to an agreement on their behalf I have to be absolutely sure I am not leading them into
destruction."

I nodded reluctantly; a good leader has to think of his men first. "If you're wondering if you can trust me, I give you my word before God that no harm shall come to you from me for seventy-two
hours —a word I would not break even when given to a heretic." And I had already saved several heretics from the stake once; I hoped he remembered that, because I wasn't going to remind
everyone on my own side about it.

"And I give you my word as well," rasped out the duke, so abruptly it made me jump.

Still Gavain did not agree. "That infidel Magian priest," he said at last. "Melchior. I have to talk to him."

On this point he would not budge. Telling him that Brother Melchior was too ill with mage-sickness to speak to anyone only made him more stubborn. When at last I agreed that Melchior would
be brought out, we met heated objection from Prior Belthesar. I left the duke to deal with the prior, leaning my head on my hand and closing my eyes. Finally, over the prior's continuing protests,
my knights brought Melchior down from his chambers and out into the courtyard.

Melchior had the battle telesma clutched to his chest. He managed to lift his head and smile at me groggily as the knights set down his litter.

"This is a disgraceful way to treat a priest devoted to God's service," the prior said to me, low and angry, "one who nearly lost his life in serving you as well."

"How about the heretics' Magians?" asked the duke, with the hint of a sardonic smile. "Are they standing by serving Lord Gavain, in spite of their wounds suffered tonight?"