Heirs of the Demon King: Uprising (14 page)

Hampton Court

England

T
HE
K
ING HAD
not slept well since his return from the ‘hunting trip,’ days ago. His restlessness had driven his wife out to sleep in her own chambers, and he was oddly grateful that she was not close to him. The first night, he had dreamed of strangling her and hanging her body from the rafters. The second, he had smothered her beneath the pillow in her sleep. Tonight, he woke bathed in sweat from a particularly potent nightmare. So powerful had the images in his dreams been that he had woken convinced that she would be lying beside him, her belly torn open and her bowels spilled across the bed. He could even taste the copper of her heart’s blood in his mouth.

Richard shuddered and closed his eyes to block out the moonlight that stole into the chamber through the small window. He felt terribly sick; cloistered and oppressed. He knew that these dreams were being visited upon him because of his reluctance to bring his son before Melusine. He didn’t know how to begin to broach the subject with the boy; the thought of it made him ill.

The voice, when it came, caused him to cry out briefly but a soft, ethereal hand pressed across his mouth, stifling the sound.

‘Hush now, my love,’ came Melusine’s voice. ‘Do not be afraid. No harm could befall you in your own bedchamber, could it?’ Her voice dripped with poisoned honey, sickly-sweet and fatal. ‘Why do you refuse me what was promised? Have I not given you everything you desire? Have I not given you and your line power beyond measure?’

Richard looked down and realised that the taste of blood was real; scarlet drops ran from his lip and pattered into the blanket. Melusine had summoned herself.

‘You have.’ His voice was hoarse, dragged from a dry throat like thorns through his skin. The idea that the creature could control him through his dreams, even to the extent of making him summon her, appalled him. ‘But... he is my son.’ He lay back, exhausted by her toxic presence and the effort of giving voice to his defiance. Her longfingered nail traced the line of his sternum, and although he could see nothing of her but her eyes, glinting in the moonlight, he knew she smiled.

‘Richard,’ she breathed in her sultry voice. ‘He is
our
son. Without me, he never would have been.
You
never would have been. The line of your family would have been ended by Henry Tudor and would be rotting beneath the earth in a forgotten field.’ Her voice transformed from liquid purr to bestial snarl as she spoke, and her ephemeral form flickered in the darkness. Richard cringed back, the buried memory of what he had seen in the forest resurfacing. When she spoke again, it was once again in soft, womanly tones. ‘A boy should not be without his mother. You should not worry, my dear Richard. I have no intention of harming him. His care and comfort are foremost in my thoughts. You
will
give him my regards, won’t you?’

He nodded. He had never been so deeply afraid of his future, nor so deeply ashamed of his family’s past, as he was in that moment. A hundred of years of rule. A century of comfort, of belief that no ill could come of their bargain. War. Execution.

Because a fearful man was too proud to admit defeat.

‘I cannot hear you,’ she said sweetly. ‘I want to know you will bring him before me.’

‘I... I will speak to him,’ Richard forced himself to say, with a sob. ‘It will be as you wish.’

‘Do not sound so despairing, dear one. You are so close to greatness. Those that have come before you could never have imagined the heights to which you have climbed—and your son will be greater still. He will herald a new age for your people. What more could parents ask for than the success of their children?’

Images of people enslaved, caged in black iron, tormented by unseen horrors, filled the tortured king’s mind. He cried out in despair and the door to his bedchamber burst open. Two of the Royal Guard barged in and cast about, alert for any intruder. Apart from the King, the room was empty.

‘Your majesty, are you well?’ One of the guards asked the question carefully.

‘It is nothing,’ Richard replied, his face pale and drenched with sweat in the moonlight. ‘Just a bad dream.’

Mahón

Spain

T
HE MAN HAD
never had a particular fondness for the middle of the day. Usually, he kept such late nights that he rarely surfaced before noon anyway. Night time was when he did his best work. With the night came the darkness, and a thief’s best cover had ever been the mantle of darkness.

Today, however, he needed to be outside. Today, he needed to be
seen.
This late in the year the cabin was pleasantly warm, stirred by a gentle breeze, the last breath of what had been a long summer. Motes of dust danced in a shaft of pale sunlight spearing through an open porthole, and the sound of water lapping gently against wood murmured outside. This had been a good season. Long and extraordinarily lucrative. It was because of this good fortune that Giraldo de Luna heaved a sigh, prising himself out of his bed after only a couple of hours sleep.

He disengaged himself from a tangle of lily-white limbs—no fewer than three girls had shared his bed that night—and none of them made any effort to recall him to their soft-bosomed midst. He gazed on the delightful scene as he tugged on his clothes. Life, he decided as he straightened the heavy frock-coat and tightened the belt around his narrow waist, was good.

On the wall of the cabin was a slightly tarnished looking glass, and he paused to check his reflection as he passed. He had heard that vanity was a sin, but then, so were many of his other pursuits. He turned his head this way and that, ensuring that the neatly-trimmed beard set off his high cheekbones and rugged jawline to maximum effect. Emerald-green eyes twinkled with inner mischief, and from time to time, he had to push back the sandy blond hair that artfully flopped into them.

He looked to be in his mid twenties, but he had looked that way for a long time. The styles and fashions might have changed, but the man beneath was the same. Unable to resist, he winked at his reflection. The glass rippled slightly and the reflection raised an eyebrow in mock-despair. ‘You, Giraldo,’ he said in his musical lilt, a voice that could lull people into a hypnotic state, ‘are a handsome man.
Bueno. Bueno!
’

He stooped to pick up his hat from where it was casually discarded on the floor, among the clothing that had once adorned the three sleeping women in his bed. He carefully straightened out the plume set into its brim before placing it at an appropriately jaunty angle on his head. The hat defined him; people saw the hat long before they saw his face, and they knew who came their way. Giraldo de Luna. The self-styled but greatly admired Pirate King.

He needed to stoop before he could exit the cabin, not just because of the ludicrous hat, but because he was at least six and a half feet tall. He was lean with it, which appeared to draw his height out still further. He unfolded on the other side of the door, stretching his long limbs with unfettered delight in the warmth of Mahón’s morning sunshine.

‘Captain,’ came a voice, and Giraldo glanced across to nod gravely at Tohias, his longest serving first mate. Sailors came and went under the Pirate King’s command. Very few of them left his employ in what was seen as the ‘traditional’ way—dying on boarding actions or raids. Usually, they worked for him until their aching bones would no longer allow them to live the hard life of a pirate. When that happened, Giraldo paid them handsomely, thanked them for their service and set them ashore at a port of their choice.

He commanded absolute loyalty from his crew. He instilled fear into his enemies, and yet Giraldo de Luna did not take a life unless it was absolutely necessary. He took money and possessions and he shared the wealth generously with his crew. As long as he had wine in his goblet and women to share his bed, he was the easiest captain any of them ever worked for.

‘Tohias,’ said Giraldo. ‘Has there been any word from our expected guest?’

‘Nothing, Captain.’ Tohias shook his head, his wobbling jowls stopping a few seconds after his head fell still. ‘What makes you so sure he’s coming?’ The question drew a smirk from Giraldo.

‘Call it intuition,’ he said. ‘A change in the tide. I can smell the forest in the air... he’s coming, even if he doesn’t have the good manners to let me know. He always was an animal.’ He moved to lean on the rail of the ship. The
Hermione
was a stunning specimen of her kind. He had taken her as a prize only a handful of weeks earlier and happily moved himself and most of his crew across. The old ship, whilst it had served him well, was now in the possession of another. Giraldo’s taste for ships was as changeable as the tides.

He watched the busy people on the dock for a while. They had been in port for a few days whilst necessary repairs were made to the
Hermione
. ‘Necessary repairs’ was, of course, Giraldo’s term for decorating his cabin with the most beautiful women he could find. His appetite for the opposite sex was quite insatiable and always had been.

‘We should head to the market,’ he said, his eyes still ranging over the bustling quay. ‘There is a promise to be kept.’ He pushed away from the rail and stretched out his shoulders. He patted the basket hilt of the sword he wore at his waist and nodded to Tohias. ‘Let’s go. The Pirate King does not want to keep his subjects waiting, does he? Does nothing for the reputation.’

He grinned, the morning sun glinting off a gold-capped front tooth. Just another day of keeping the peace amongst the thugs of the Mediterranean.

Bavaria

Germany

A
FTER THE FIRST
two hours of running, Mathias found that his thoughts skipped easily between his life as a man and this new form. The longer he stayed in the form of the long-limbed animal, the more he found he was thinking like a horse. He relished the feel of the breeze that rippled through his mane as he and Warin galloped across the German landscape. They had left the confines of the forest behind not long after setting out, and the land had become rolling, grassy hills. The sense of freedom that came with once more being out in the open air was intoxicating. He pushed himself as hard as he could, and his heart sang with the sheer pleasure of being alive.

Tagan rode astride the Shapeshifter’s broad back with selfconscious uncertainty. She was a capable rider, but the fact that she knew the horse she rode was also a man, a hound, a wolf, a rabbit... was somewhat unnerving. Still, it felt good to throw off the uncertainty of the previous night and to actually be
doing
something. She tried to set aside the fact that where they were heading, and what they would be doing, remained a mystery.

She could not help but smile every time she thought of her betrothed as being somewhere in the mind of the small horse that charged gamely a few feet behind them. Warin’s stride far outmatched that of the piebald, even when he was consciously attempting to keep pace.
What a marvellous thing,
she thought.
To take on the shape of another living being
.

Warin’s constant insistence that her own talent was every bit as worthwhile did not really do much to alleviate the faint air of jealousy. She and Mathias had been raised not to use their magic talents too much. Whilst the community in which they had grown up had encouraged magic and embraced its practical applications, the threat of the country’s laws still hung over them with dark menace.

They continued to run for a while, and eventually Warin began to slow his pace and came to a halt beneath the shelter of a large pine tree. He lowered his neck and whickered softly. It was not hard to interpret his request, and Tagan slid ungracefully from the animal’s back. Only once she was standing on solid ground did the first aches start to hit her. She knew that more hours of riding lay ahead and set her jaw determinedly. She would
not
complain. She was
not
the kind of woman who demanded sympathy and coddling.

Warin adopted his human form once more and she saw, in his stern face, the joy that being the horse had brought to him. The pony trotted up a few moments after she had dismounted and, without Warin’s finesse, also slid back into a human form.

Mathias had given up correcting Warin. In fact, he was in no real state of mind to do anything but talk at great length and with great energy about the experience he had just undergone.

After he paused to take a breath, Warin interjected, amusement sparkling in his brown eyes. It seemed to Tagan that the man was more alive now than he had been in the oppressive confines of the Black Forest. ‘Breathe, Mathias. Breathe. You are having fun, then?’

‘It’s the most incredible thing. I was... a
horse
.’ He waved his hands in his excitement and Tagan laughed at his animation. He caught her hands and looked at her. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said, earnestly. ‘I
was
the horse. There were moments when I forgot I was anything but. It was the most amazing thing! I never...’

‘That is precisely why we have stopped.’ Warin’s tone grew solemn. ‘To remain in one form for too long—especially at the start? Is bad.’ He shook his shaggy head. ‘Very bad.’

His words punctured a little of Mathias’s enthusiasm, but he paid close attention regardless. Warin nodded, pleased. ‘It is easy to fall in love with something you are not,’ he explained. ‘Many animal forms are so much more suited to life than the human. But it is wrong to be forever stuck in the wrong body. Eventually your mind will get sick. Drive you mad. I knew a man who took the form of a fox and never changed back.’ Warin shook his head sadly. ‘Even though he wanted to. The body holds onto the new shape and refuses to listen. So we must take care.’

Tagan nodded. ‘I don’t really want to marry a horse,’ she said solemnly. ‘So be careful.’ Her words brought a smile back to Mathias’s concerned face. Warin stomped away from the pair for a while, scanning the horizon.

‘We can get several more hours in today before we should rest. Take time now to eat and drink, and to remember what it is to be human. We will continue south. De Luna should know we come to him soon. If he does not already. I hope he has the sense...’ Warin paused and snorted with mock-laughter at his choice of words to describe the erratic Pirate King. ‘I hope he has the sense to put his ridiculous boat in a place where we can find him.’

Mahón

Spain

T
HE
P
IRATE
K
ING
had matters to attend to. Today, his most pressing concern took the form of a grim-faced, dark-skinned man who was not in the slightest bit impressed with Giraldo’s easy charm. Even after a round of drinks, compliments and casual jibes, Captain Bachir simply shook his head.

‘Your pretty words do not impress me, de Luna. I came here to talk business. To talk money. But I have no wish to waste my breath with...’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘A strutting peacock.’

Tohias bristled at the insult to his captain, but Giraldo laid a steadying hand on his first mate’s arm. ‘Peace, Tohias,’ he murmured. ‘It seems that Captain Bachir needs to get something off his chest. Why don’t we just let him talk?’ His smile was warm, friendly, dazzling.

Hypnotic.

‘We will just let him talk, Captain,’ said Tohias.

‘Do continue, Captain Bachir,’ said de Luna, turning his attentions back to the other man, who raised one shaggy eyebrow. Bachir reached over and caught de Luna’s right hand, stopping its slow, languid movements. De Luna stared down at the huge, filthy paw grasped around his own and then raised his head to consider Bachir with a new level of wary respect.

‘Let go,’ he said. Now the charm left his voice, and a tone of quiet command took over. To give Bachir his credit, he resisted the order for several moments before his fingers released, leaving marks in de Luna’s flesh. Giraldo rubbed at his wrist and resumed his friendly, open expression. Approachable and genial. It usually worked, although it wasn’t going so well today.

‘Your magic is strong, Captain de Luna,’ said Bachir, shaking back the dark, braided hair that fell into his eyes. ‘That is impressive. But I’ve spoken with my boys, and some others, and we are all agreed. It’s time for a new King.’ He smiled, showing broken teeth that did little to improve his already unattractive face. This was a man who had risen to his position by brute strength and intimidation. Magically, he was completely barren. Giraldo had sensed that the moment the captain had stamped into the room. Easily as tall as the Pirate King, Bachir was broader and stronger by far. Muscles rippled beneath the surface of his swarthy skin, and the tell-tale grazes on his knuckles told of a man to whom the first rule of discipline was violence.

For the first time in years, Giraldo de Luna felt a ripple of uncertainty. He looked Bachir up and down. ‘Your message suggested you wanted to talk ways in which we could work together for the good of both. I agreed to meet you. You seem over-aggressive to me.’ He offered a carefully-selected dazzling smile. ‘We take too much, attack the wrong place, and we will upset someone important, tip the balance. Then one of the navies will be all over us. Maybe
all
the navies. And that’s not good for anybody.’

‘We are
pirates
, you spineless fop.’ Bachir’s meaty fist pounded down on the table, setting the tankards jumping. Neither man had taken ale. For de Luna it was because even
he
had standards and did not drink before noon; for Bachir, it was clearly so he could maintain at least a modicum of control. ‘We should take what we want, when we want it, and to Hell with those who say otherwise!’ His broken teeth parted in a leer. ‘It’s time we started taking!’

‘Ah,’ said Giraldo, nodding sombrely. ‘Of course. I start to understand you.’ He crooked one finger at Tohias, who rose from the table and disappeared from the tavern. Giraldo was left alone, a fact which did not go unnoticed by Bachir’s retinue. ‘You want a return to the old ways, am I right? Plundering, looting, burning and murdering?’ He waved a hand vaguely. ‘All that sort of messy business?’

With every word, the light in Bachir’s eyes grew brighter, and a palpable lust began to expand from him. He even licked his lips.

‘But that approach never ends well for anybody,’ continued Giraldo. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his long legs in front of him. Even his boot-tops were immaculate, the leather as shiny and perfect as the day they had first been worn. Although the few who could have seen beyond the veneer of glamour that Giraldo cloaked himself with would have seen a very different picture. ‘You have a brief, good run, but then some governor or officer out to make a name hunts you down and sinks your ship. Or hangs you. Probably both. Sometimes at the
same time
. And death is so messy, and often remarkably unnecessary. No, my way is better. We get the plunder and the loot, most of the people get to live and we get left alone.’

‘We don’t want to be left alone.’ Bachir released a wheezing laugh, polluting the air around him with abominable halitosis. ‘We want to be
feared
. We aren’t merchants, we’re the wolves of the sea. Murderers. Robbers. Rapists.’ He leaned forward. ‘We
get
what we want by
taking
what we want.’

It was a truth that caused Giraldo’s heart to sink. This was a man that could not be reasoned with through words or glamour. It was possible that Bachir entirely lacked the empathy required for even the smallest manipulation. He had encountered others like him over the years, but he had won them all over in the end. This time, it seemed, it would be different. He heard several swords being pulled; the rasp of steel against leather and the unmistakable click of a crossbow being readied. His crew was still on board the
Hermione
. He was alone against a group of very angry men who wanted his blood. He was outnumbered sixteen to one.

The odds, he mused as he slowly lowered his feet to the floor, were not good at all. Sixteen to one.

For a moment, he came uncommonly close to feeling sorry for them.

The road to Strasbourg

France

T
HE CART HORSES
they had taken from Troyes were weaker than the war horses on which they had begun their journey. The land over the last five leagues had become more rugged, the fields and grasses giving way to hills as they pushed ever eastward. Weaver estimated that within a day or so they would leave France behind.

Knowing that they were closing on their objective, the Lord Inquisitor eased the pace, if only a little. The horses would not last much longer, and farms were becoming more scattered, sometimes with leagues between them. By the time the sun set on their second day, both the men and the horses were barely coping. The knights had only managed a couple of hours of rest in Troyes before Weaver had kicked them awake and moved them on. None of them questioned the growing inferno spreading throughout the town. It was no great struggle to fathom what had happened, and none of them cared to question the actions of the Lord Inquisitor.

Near dusk they came upon a substantial farm with a stable and several large barns. To the relief of the party, Weaver called a halt. The men gratefully fell from their saddles, stumbling into the nearest building, too weary to chase the residents from their home. They sprawled in the hay and dropped into dreamless sleep. Even the Lord Inquisitor could feel the compelling lure of rest and the ache in his bones.

Tired as he was, he still forced his way into the house and put the family to flight, sending them running into the gathering gloom with bellowed curses and a shot from his pistol. It did not matter that they would return. By the time they did, Weaver and his men would be long gone.

The Lord Inquisitor sank onto one of the recently-vacated straw pallets and lay back. He only intended to close his eyes for a moment, to rest his back and his throbbing legs. He had been troubled of late, and true sleep had been elusive, but the constant travel, the alchemical potions and the lack of real food finally conspired against him and he was asleep within seconds.

When his eyes opened, he was in another place, an unfamiliar place. The sky above was a deep, rich blue, and smeared with unfamiliar stars. There was no moon, but the landscape around him was clearly visible. The tall, tawny grass in which he lay seemed to glow softly. Weaver got to his feet and looked around, perplexed by his surroundings.

Grassy, rolling plains stretched away in all directions, rippling in a wind he could not feel. Trees dotted the landscape, but they were unlike any trees he had ever seen before. They were incredibly tall, their slim trunks towering over a hundred feet into the sky. Skeletal limbs drooped from them, tapering into twigs heavy with clusters of pale, pearlescent fruit. These too were surrounded by a faint luminescence, like the gas bulbs developed in the workshops of London.

In one direction, the horizon was a mass of knotted black spires, darker still than the sky. In the other direction, at the top of a hill, stood a figure clad in a mantle of white fire. Weaver squinted and managed to make out hints of silver amidst the light, and as many as six arms. The figure was much larger than a man; it would have towered over him, were he stood beside it. The Lord Inquisitor raised his hand in greeting, without fully understanding his own actions. Instantly the thing was gone, faster than he could blink, leaving nothing but wavering grass in its wake.

A painfully discordant wail came from behind him.

Weaver turned to see a fleet of winged shapes spilling across the sky from the direction of the spires, and a terrible sense of foreboding filled him. He looked toward the dark horizon, and to his horror, something looked back.