The Red Knight (50 page)

Cora kissed her tears from Master Tomas’s cheeks and half-fell into a curtsy when Captain Stenna barged in. The knight looked as done in as all the others who’d come to pay their respects. But Cora would have been hard pressed to say Captain Stenna felt anything close to the same measure of grief as the rest of them. Hulking great knights had wept like babes when they’d said farewell to Captain Cassian, but that Stenna was as hard as iron. Cora scrubbed a tear away and rocked baby Tomas as much to comfort herself as him.

After not long at all, the knight hobbled out, and not a word of condolence offered to Lady Vorsten. She’d just saluted and left.

Maybe that’s how they were up north, but it was cold, and plain bad manners if you asked her. The knight well deserved her reputation of being as hard as the steel she wore. Cora felt not a twinge of guilt when she considered that it was the wrong captain who lay dying.

Frozen with fear, Beria had watched the surgeon work on Cass and when he finished, he destroyed her.

“He is dying,”
he said. He continued to speak, but his words thereafter were inconsequential.

Hours later, with death drawing closer with every heartbeat, she could still hear the leaden echo of the surgeon’s pronouncement:
He is dying, he is dying, he is…
Dying. She cried quietly and continuously as she gently combed out Cass’s braids and washed the blood from his face.

She wanted to wail her grief to the heavens, to scream like a beast until her lungs bled and she could scream no more, but she couldn’t do that. Cass would be embarrassed; he wasn’t one for loud, emotional displays.

He hadn’t woken since they’d brought him back to her, but she was sure he could hear her. So she held his hand and quietly berated him for being a stupid, wonderful man and told him how very much she loved him, her heart breaking with every word.

When Ali Stenna came to say farewell, Beria was struck by a sudden and unreasonable flash of anger. She knew she was being unfair, but she couldn’t even bring herself to look at Alyda. She kept her head down and willed the knight to go, and leave them in peace. Not long after she’d left, Cass opened his eyes.

Beria bathed his icy cheeks with hot tears. “Hello, my love,” she whispered.

He smiled weakly and mumbled something, but she couldn’t make out what he was trying to say.

“I understand my darling, it’s alright. Tomas and I are safe. You can let go now, Cass. My beloved, my heart…”

He must have heard her because he smiled. A breath later, death stole the light from his eyes.

Several large boulders had smashed through the ceiling of Cassian’s office and lay scattered across the floor. Bone weary, and sore, Alyda righted a chair and sat down. She tossed her sword on the table and put her head in her hands.
We can’t beat them, not even with the help of a fucking dragon! We’ve lost…I’ve lost.
That was the cold hard truth she couldn’t stomach. She’d never lost a battle while she’d been in command. She didn’t know what to do.

Failure had never been an option, now it was almost a certainty. She’d been so sure they could win, so sure help would come, but that had been before Cassian had died, before Rann, before Nev and Lyco. Her world, everything she had been so sure of, was suddenly as solid as smoke and all her plans seemed as fragile as glass…

Enough!
She surged to her feet, snatched up her sword and hammered blow after blow into the table. She hacked chunks out of the wood until she was too tired to lift her sword.

Her anger spent, she leaned against the table. Her knee hurt worse than ever and she’d added a dozen new notches to her blade, but she’d thrown off the black wave of doubt that had threatened to overwhelm her. Her mind was once again focused on the task in hand.

Hope might fade, but she could always rely on bloody-minded fury to keep her going until the job was done. Talin and his family would get away and she would save the garrison from being slaughtered by that pig-fucker, Thorgulsen.
It will work.
She had to hold onto that thought, even as everything else crumbled.

Night’s shadows were kind to the Arth and hid its terrible scars, but darkness couldn’t mask the stench of death. Smith was on corpse clearing duty with another blacksmith—a woman called Kater who’d come from Galegallen. She moaned a bit, but at least they understood each other. They’d tied scarves over their faces but the fatty, sweet stink of rot still managed to worm its way into his nostrils.

“I don’t see why we’re doing this,” Kater grumbled, angrily shoving a dangling leg back onto the cart that they’d piled with bodies. “I mean, who’s gonna bury us?”

Smith shrugged. “Someone…or no one. Does it matter? An’ we’re doing this because we aren’t dogs waiting to die. We go on; we do what decent people do.”

“I’d rather be getting pissed. Look at this one.” She dragged a huddled body from between the buttresses of the keep tower and dropped it by the cart. Smith toed the corpse onto its back. He was a short, dumpy fellow, dressed in a shabby robe. There didn’t look to be a mark on him from what he could see. The only thing of note about him was the feather clutched in his hand.

“Must have died of fright,” Smith offered, “weak heart or something.” Even with the scarf he could see Kater’s face twist into a sneer.

“Bloody coward if you ask me. He could have died on the walls, taking a few of those bastards with him, instead of down here.”

“Aye well, it takes all sorts. C’mon—let’s get him loaded. I want to get this lot into the pit and limed before the rats get at ‘em.”

As they loaded the body, the feather fell from the dead man’s hand. Smith went to grab it, but a sighing breeze snatched it away and tumbled it playfully across the bailey.

“An elemental or a dragon?” Garian asked again. Pytre wasn’t being clear; he seemed to be using the terms interchangeably.

The shapeshifter gave a lazy smile, displaying the over-long canines. “Forgive me Garian. ‘Tis an elemental whose essence has been woven into the pattern of what you think of as a dragon.”

Garian still wasn’t sure he understood. “And it just flew off? Did you see where it went?” He pressed. He’d work out what it was later; all that mattered right now was that something with a taste for Guthani was loose in Antia.

Pytre smiled, obviously amused. “It went up, quite high.”

They were hiding in a copse on the west side of Gallen Arth. Before them, the Galerun flowed unsullied by the filth and debris that clogged the moat on the other side of the huge outcrop of rock. Suli finished coiling the rope, and handed it to Garian. Now that night had fallen it was time for him to scale the curtain wall.

“Suli, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but are you sure this,
‘secret place’
of yours is safe enough to take the Queen?”

She smiled, but something was troubling her. He knew how to read people and it was obvious that she was keeping something from him, and that was worrying. In the short time they’d known each other neither had kept anything from the other, at least, he hadn’t kept anything from her. She smiled nervously and flicked a strand of sun-kissed hair over her shoulder.

“Oh, it’s very safe, but I fear I might be endangering my own people by helping yours.”

“You know I’d never betray your secret,” he said. “The Queen and her sons don’t need to know where we’re taking them—in fact it’s probably better if they don’t know.”

She shook her head. “You might not be so sure when I tell you where it is, but promise me you’ll give me chance to explain?”

He nodded. “Of course, my love.”

She took a deep breath. “Our sanctuary is in the Void.”

“You’d better explain.”

It was fully dark by the time she finished telling him about the place she called the Valley of the Moon.

“So, if this place is part of the Fey realm, does that make you…?”

She smiled. “Fey? It’s such a poor description, like ‘the Void’—and it will take much longer than we have right now to explain it to you. I’ll tell you everything I know when this is over, I promise.”

“Very well, but it’s a lot to take in. You said there are sanctuaries like this all over the world, so how is it they haven’t been found?”

“People have found them; they just keep quiet so that they don’t get burnt for being sorcerers or demons. Which is why you must keep our secret.”

Garian gave her a reassuring hug. “I’d rather tear out my tongue than betray you, love. Trust me; I’m very good at keeping secrets, it’s what I do.”

Lhazinia returned from scouting the Arth. She told them there were only two groups of six patrolling this side of the keep.

“I doubt they’d hear an angry bear crossing the meadow, given the noise they’re making themselves,” said the shapeshifter.

“That’s something, but there’s every chance they’ll see me when I’m climbing.”

Lhazinia and Pytre exchanged a knowing look.

“Leave it to us,” said Pytre, and they slipped into the darkness.

About half an hour later, they returned.

“It is done,” said Lhazinia. “We’ll keep watch in case more turn up, but you’d better get going now.”

Suli squeezed his arm. “Are you sure you’re going to go in alone? They might kill you before you get the chance to tell them who you are. Let my cousins go with you.”

Garian shook his head. “No. If Pytre or Zia come with me, they’ll set the Ward off.”

“I can climb, let me come.”

“No. I don’t know what’s happened in there, which is why I need to go alone. You and your cousins have led us safely to the King and back, already more than I could ask, but sneaking in and out of places like this is what I’m good at. I’ll be alright, I promise.” He smiled and flicked a strand of hair from her eyes. “Wait here, I’ll be back before you know it.”

“You’d better be, or we’ll come looking,” she said, and kissed him goodbye.

The icy waters of the Galerun froze the marrow in his bones, but he warmed up quickly once he got out and started climbing. The stone at the base of the wall was smooth and tightly jointed, but higher up, where wind and rain had nibbled at the edges of the blocks there were abundant points of purchase.

Being short had its advantages and disadvantages when climbing. He had less weight to carry, but sometimes he had to overreach to find a decent hand or foot hold. He only slipped once, after mistaking a bird’s nest for a handhold in the poor light. Hanging from one hand gave him an excellent view of the surrounding countryside, but it wasn’t something he wanted to make a habit of.

A huge hall had been built directly against the curtain wall. Once he was over the parapet he was on the roof, or what was left of it. The slates on the northwest end were almost intact, but nearer the south end there was more hole than roof, which forced him to pick his route carefully across the bones of what remained.

The stench emanating from the Arth made his stomach lurch—and he’d waded through the sewers of Weyhithe. He stopped breathing through his nose and crawled to the edge of the roof.

Lime dusted grave pits shone in the darkness, and dozens of horses roamed loose amongst the rubble. Most of the buildings at the south end of the Arth had suffered heavy damage. Great bites had been taken out of the curtain wall on the south and east sides of the keep. The outer gatehouse was little more than rubble, but the inner barbican looked surprisingly intact.

Beyond the Arth was the pyre that the shapeshifters had mentioned. It was surrounded by flickering torches, but was as yet unlit. The unlikely sound of singing floated across the black gulf between the Guthani camp and the Arth. Garian had read about the elaborate funeral rites of the Guthlanders, he’d just never imagined they’d perform them in the middle of a battle. Whoever they were, they must have been important.

He’d seen all he could from the roof. He had to go down and find Stenna or the Queen, or whoever was in charge if Stenna was dead and hope they gave him the chance to explain who he was before they killed him. Hyram’s ring and the letter he carried should be enough to convince her Majesty he was who he said he was, if he could get to her.

He climbed down the side of the building furthest from the barbican. When he heard the tell-tale sound of people clanking towards him in armour, he flattened himself against the curtain wall. He stayed in the shadows, partly from habit, and partly because he didn’t want to be killed by a nervous sentry before he had chance to explain himself.

He recognised Stenna straightaway, she was limping heavily. The knights halted by a well. Garian sheathed the knife that had found its way into his hand. As he did, one of them looked in his direction and drew his sword.

“Who goes there?” the knight demanded.

Garian raised his hands and stepped from the shadows. “Captain Stenna—it’s me, Garian Tain. I have a message for the Queen.”

The spy was less than forthcoming, if not exactly evasive, but Alyda let it pass. She was anxious to find out what was in the damn letter Tain had given to the Queen, desperate to know if reinforcements were on their way.