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Authors: Sebastien De Castell

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BOOK: Knight's Shadow
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‘Yes, and if we’re all lucky, that’s just what Trin will think.’

‘But—’

‘You want so badly to be a hero like these fools?’ the Tailor asked, pointing at Kest, Brasti and me. ‘You want to die thinking you saved Aline; that your life was worth more in the end than it was in the beginning? Fine. Do what I ask and go with them. Go and take the blade in your gut and know that in some small way you’ve helped protect her. Let’s hope Trin’s hatred of you will prompt her to waste resources chasing you. You’re useless to Aline here, except perhaps to get in the way of those with the strength and skill to keep her safe.’

The anger drained from Valiana’s face, along with her pride. She’d been clinging so desperately to the oath that she’d made to Aline because she needed to believe she stood for something, for
anything
, so that her life could have some meaning. She was just like I had been, years ago, when I first met the King. He’d believed in me, and he’d made me believe in myself. King Paelis was an idealist and a romantic and a dreamer. But the Tailor was none of those things.

‘I’ll do what you ask,’ Valiana said finally. She turned and walked away from us towards the horses.

The callousness of the Tailor’s words, the way she discarded all of Valiana’s pain and sorrow – all of the pain each of us had experienced in our lives – burned in me. I needed her to know how much I hated this, all of it: her cold, calculating strategies, the way she planned and plotted: she wasn’t much different from the Dukes we all despised.

The others were looking at me, waiting to see how I would react. I didn’t want to be an angry, petulant child. I wanted to be noble and brave and all the things I’d tried to be since the day the King had shaken me out of my madness. But I couldn’t. I simply didn’t have it in me. ‘You’re a fucking bitch,’ I said.

The Tailor smiled. ‘Aye, I am. I’m exactly what the world needs me to be – what my granddaughter needs me to be. Now go and be what she needs
you
to be. Get me the support of the southern Dukes so we can win this damned war before the girl we’ve both sworn to protect gets killed.’

Chapter Seven

 

The Mask

 

The ancient trade route known as the Bow was our means out of Pulnam. When trade was good, as it had been during King Paelis’ reign, hundreds of horse carts and caravans would travel its three-hundred-mile length each year. Roadside inns and taverns had made good business off the success and heady optimism of travelling merchants and those seeking their fortunes in the eastern duchies. Now, five years after the King’s death, the cobblestones laid down centuries before were gradually becoming covered in sand and dirt. Hardy desert brush the colour of burnt leaves worked its way slowly from the sides of the road, worming in between the stones. Brigands outnumbered honest travellers now, and even they had trouble making ends meet.

We rode hard during the first week, reasoning that a fast-moving target is harder to hit than a slow one. This turned out to be true, and I thanked Saint Gan-who-laughs-with-dice for the good fortune that helped us survive those first few harried hours after leaving the village. Just before we’d reached the Bow we were set upon by six of Trin’s scouts. They were armed with crossbows and hiding in the brush, leaving us no choice but to run their gauntlet rather than let ourselves be caught in the open grass and sand. We knew they’d have fresh horses ready to pursue us should we somehow evade their bolts, so the moment they’d finished firing their crossbows, we’d turned on them.

Adding a new fighter to a team is a dangerous business. Kest, Brasti and I had a kind of rhythm, a flow that allowed us to sense each other’s movements. We were fortunate that Dariana fit into the mix so quickly and so well: Kest would immediately identify and attack the strongest fighter of the group and while Brasti sent arrows flying at those trying to outflank us, Dariana snuck along the edge, slitting throats and stabbing bellies before her enemies knew she was even in range. It took only a few moments for the three of them to kill all six scouts. For my part, I spent that battle, and those that came in the days after, trying to keep Valiana from getting killed.

‘You stay at the back,’ I said every time. ‘You don’t try and engage with the enemy, got it? Not until you’re trained and ready.’

‘When will that be?’ she said every time.

‘Sometime after I’ve died peacefully in bed from old age.’

We were attacked twice more during that first week, and it became clear that the Tailor’s ruse had worked: Trin believed Aline was with us, and her scouts did indeed mistake little Dariana for the King’s heir. Her favourite tactic at the beginning of each attack was to put on a show of running in terror, screaming as one of Trin’s men pursued her, only to turn and smile as she drove the point of her sword into his neck. Brasti took to calling her ‘Deadly Dari’. She in turn took to threatening to eviscerate him anytime he used that nickname within her hearing.

Dariana’s sheer joy in battle unnerved me, but it was Valiana’s recklessness that terrified me. In one encounter, the last of our attackers, having seen Dariana kill two men, had figured out that she couldn’t possibly be Aline, so he went after Valiana instead. She could have run or simply backed away and let me deal with him. Instead, she attacked him ferociously, getting in my way with all her thrusting of her long thin blade, always trying for the kill-shot without bothering with any of that old-fashioned parrying of the man’s attacks. She fought as if she were in a fencing competition, where the sword tips were blunted and the deadliest outcome was a nasty bruise.

Trin’s man wasn’t especially fast, but he was sure-footed and used a series of feints to catch her off balance. Valiana stumbled back and her sword point dropped – which at last got her out of the way and gave me the opening I needed. I slashed the man’s exposed sword arm with my left rapier and thrust the right one into his side. As he slid to the ground I withdrew my blade and readied it in case he had any fight left in him, but he fell unconscious and began the steady process of dying as blood welled from the wound.

‘I can fight my own battles,’ Valiana said angrily.

‘No, actually, you can’t, not until . . .’ My eyes were still on the dying soldier, but then I noticed out of the corner of my eye that she had a hand on her chest. ‘Hells,’ I said, and sheathed my rapier so that I could see to her.

‘It’s barely a scratch,’ she said, pulling away from me before I could examine the wound. That’s when I realised she’d left her coat unbuttoned during the fight.

‘You forgot to close your damned coat properly,’ I said. ‘You practise your swordwork for hours every day and yet you forget to do the one thing that will save your life!’

Kest and Brasti knew not to get in my way but Dariana came over and pushed me aside. She examined Valiana’s wound, then announced, ‘It’s not so bad. It’ll leave a pretty little scar you can show off.’

I pulled a small black jar from my coat and held it out to Valiana. ‘Just put on some damned salve,’ I said. ‘Even a shallow wound can become infected.’

‘You’ve only got a small amount,’ Valiana replied angrily. ‘What happens if one of you gets hurt? Aline needs all of you alive.’

‘I imagine she’d appreciate it if you stayed alive too,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t matter what happens to me.’

Part of me knew I should deal with these feelings of worthlessness she carried with her, coax her into talking about it and find a way to change her thinking, but I wasn’t a healer. Hells, my only qualification in even discussing diseases of the mind was the fact that I’d spent a good many years being insane myself. So instead I said, ‘If you won’t do it then take off your bloody shirt and I’ll put the salve on you myself.’

She grabbed the small black jar from my hand and walked a few yards away towards the brush by the side of the road. ‘If it’s all right with you I’d just as soon not parade shirtless in front of you, Kest and Brasti.’

Damn me
, I thought.
I should have forbidden her from coming and to the hells with the Tailor’s orders.

‘She needs training,’ Dariana said, ‘and she needs it now, not in some imaginary future where you get over yourself.’

‘I’ll train her,’ Kest offered, kneeling to wipe the blood from his own blade on the sparse brush by the side of the road.

Dariana laughed. ‘You?’

‘He
is
the Saint of Swords,’ Brasti said, not that he or I – or Kest himself, for that matter – knew exactly what that meant yet.

‘He’s also twice her size and probably three times as strong,’ Dari argued. ‘What good will his methods do her?’ She walked over to where Valiana was putting her coat back on. ‘Come on, pretty bird, I’ll show you how you kill a man properly. You need to be able to size up your enemy and find their weaknesses. Every once in a while you need to know how to stay out of trouble in the first place.’

Valiana looked uncertain at first, as if she wasn’t sure if the other woman was making fun of her. Valiana had a coat she hadn’t earned and a sword she didn’t know how to use, and she knew that everyone else could see it too. It didn’t help matters much that the most powerful woman in the world longed to see her dead. ‘Just teach me how to fight,’ she said. ‘I’ll figure the rest out for myself.’

As she led Valiana out a few yards into the desert I said to Kest, ‘Somehow the prospect of Deadly Dari teaching her to fight doesn’t reassure me.’

‘Do you think she’ll hurt her?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t
think
so. Dariana certainly knows how to fight. But she’s so damned
eager
in battle. I don’t know how to place it. It’s like she’s—’

‘Fucking insane?’ Brasti suggested.

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, if it makes you feel any better, Valiana’s going to do a lot better studying under Dari than with her last teacher. She looked up to that man like he was a Saint and yet he completely ignored her.’

‘Who was that, then?’ I asked.

Brasti patted me on the shoulder. ‘You.’

*

The next day, our tenth since we’d left the Tailor and her Greatcoats, started without incident. Despite the Gods and Saints having graced me with a lifetime of advanced warning, I allowed myself to hope that we’d evaded the last of Trin’s scouts. The further south we went, the more side routes and horse tracks from outlying villages appeared, providing more and more opportunities for us to still get to Aramor without using the main trade route.

I’d been looking for a suitable place to leave the Bow to set up camp when I saw a girl in a pale yellow dress crying by the side of the road.

She was kneeling awkwardly on the ground about a hundred yards ahead of us, and her hands were raised, covering her face. Behind her was a small stone building with a circle of stones laid around it, which I took for an old church. I signalled the others to stop.

‘Do you see anyone other than the girl?’ I asked Brasti.

His eyes narrowed as he peered across the distance. ‘No one.’

‘How old would you say she is?’

‘I’d make her to be five feet tall. Maybe twelve or thirteen?’ He glanced back at Dariana. ‘Unless she’s stunted.’

Dariana stayed silent, her eyes focused on the road ahead of us.

‘Any signs of a trap?’ I asked.

‘Nothing I can see,’ Brasti said. ‘There’s no evidence of hoof-prints or footsteps going into the trees by the side of the road. She could have swept them, I suppose, but then there’d be some sign of the sweeping itself. There’s not much holding the walls of that old church together, either. If there were more than a couple of men inside I could see them from here.’

Kest looked behind us along the road. ‘No sounds of anyone coming from behind.’

‘No signs of danger at all,’ Brasti said.

I loosened both my rapiers. ‘So, definitely a trap, then.’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Brasti said, and motioned for me to go forward. ‘I imagine you’ll want to walk right into it.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Valiana said.

‘No, you stay here. Brasti, give Valiana your quiver.’ When he’d unslung it and passed it to her I said, ‘Your job is to hand him arrows as quickly as he fires them. It sounds simple, but you have to keep up. If there’s a horde of Trin’s men hidden nearby I’ll need him to take out as many as possible.’

‘What about me?’ Dariana asked.

‘You stay here too.’

‘And do what?’

‘Try to look helpless. You’re supposed to be Aline. If it
is
a trap I don’t want to take a chance on anyone finding out we don’t really have her.’

‘The girl’s seen us,’ Kest said, looking towards her.

I looked back down the road. The girl’s dark brown hair hung loose and unkempt. She was too far away from me to make out her features or expression, but now that she was facing us I could see a kind of thick oval band that went around her face from the top of her head down to her chin.

‘What’s that thing she’s wearing?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Brasti said. ‘Looks almost like the frame from an oval mirror. Not exactly flattering, but maybe she works for the local cleric and this is the latest in ecclesiastical fashion? You can never tell with religious people.’

The girl held up her hand and waved to me. When I didn’t wave back she turned and ran into the small stone building.

‘She might have some kind of crossbow or even a pistol in there,’ Kest cautioned.

‘Or maybe she’s an innocent girl who’s been attacked and is now scared for her life,’ I said.

Dariana snorted. ‘Do you really believe that?’

‘No. I’m fairly sure it’s a trap.’

‘Then why go in?’

‘So I can find out—’

‘Because that’s what he does,’ Brasti interrupted. ‘He asks himself what the dumbest possible thing to do would be in any given situation and then he does it.’

‘Let’s go,’ I said to Kest.

He drew his warsword and followed me. I left my rapiers in their sheaths and pulled a throwing knife from my coat. I’m terrible with the bow but I have good luck with throwing knives now and then, and if the girl somehow did have a pistol, I wanted something that could bridge the distance between us before she fired.

As we neared the entrance to the little church Kest put a hand on my shoulder. ‘There’s something wrong.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. His forehead was slick with sweat.

‘Then—’

‘I can’t go any closer,’ he said.

His eyes were wide and his jaw was clenched tight, as if he were trying too hard to swallow. In my entire life I’ve never seen Kest show fear for himself. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘I don’t know. I . . . I can’t go in there.’

I looked again at the little stone building. There was nothing special about the tiny church – you could find dozens like it along the length of the Bow. When I looked down at the ground where some of the blocks had fallen I saw the wide circular ring of stones around it were still largely intact. ‘It’s just a broken-down old Saint’s temple,’ I said. ‘You’re not getting religious on me, are you?’

‘I . . . I seem to be . . .’ He tried to take another step towards it and I saw his leg shaking as he did. With a massive effort his foot finally came down, but then Kest sank down to his knees, his head bowed.

‘Kest, get up,’ I said.

‘I can’t.’

‘He’s telling the truth,’ a woman’s voice called out from inside the church.

I looked into the small building to see the girl in the yellow dress standing in the entrance. Brasti had been right: she was perhaps five feet tall, her ill-fed body that of a girl no more than thirteen years old. Her face though, was a few years older, that of a full-grown young woman. Big dark eyes looked out at me beneath thick lashes. Her nose was straight and delicate and her cheekbones chiselled like a sculpture of the Goddess Love. The skin on her face had a golden tone to it at odds with the pale arms and legs of the girl’s body. Full red lips decorated a mouth that was just slightly wide and yet somehow perfect. Her face held the kind of sensuality that troubadours sing about.

Trin
.

BOOK: Knight's Shadow
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