Gregory Keyes - The Blood Knight

A wry smile appeared below the black mask.

“Anne, I don’t think you appreciate how important it is for you to take the throne: the literal throne of Esien and the eldritch one that is beginning to appear. We have tried to explain to you, but at every turn you have jeopardized yourself by giving in to selfish desires.”

“I wanted to save my friends from certain death. How is that selfish?”

“You know how, yet you refuse to admit it. Your friends do not matter , Anne. The fate of the world does not rest with them. After everything you’ve experienced, Anne, you are still spoiled, still the girl who fought to keep her saddle in a place where she had no use for it simply because it was hers . A little girl who will not share her toys, much less give them up.

“You almost ruined everything at Dunmrogh. For right or wrong, we decided you should be parsed from your friends so you could see things more clearly. Yes, we have followers—”

“And bloody wonderful ones, too,” Anne snapped. “One of them tried to rape me.”

“Not one of ours,” the honey-haired faith said. Her voice, too, was honeyed. “Someone our servants hired without knowing enough about him. In any event—”

“In any event, you proved to me that I can’t trust you. I never really believed I could, but now I know for certain. You have my thanks for that.”

“Anne—”

“Yet I’ll give you one more chance. Do you understand my predicament? Can you see that much?”

“Yes,” the palest Faith answered.

“Well, then, if you’re so interested in my being queen, can you show me a way out of this that doesn’t involve freeing the Kept?”

“You can’t free him, Anne.”

“Really? And why is that, pray the saints?”

“It would be very bad.”

“That’s not an explanation.”

“He is a Skaslos , Anne.”

“Yes, and he’s promised to mend the law of death and die. Is there something wrong with that?”

“Yes.”

“Then what is it?”

But they didn’t answer.

“Very well,” Anne said. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do what I must.”

The golden-haired Faith stepped forward.

“Wait. The woman Alis. The two of you can escape.”

“Indeed? How?”

“She has walked the faneway of Spetura. If you augment her power with your own, you can pass through your enemies unseen.”

“That’s the best you can do? What about my friends?”

The women glanced at one another.

“Right,” Anne said. “They don’t matter.” She turned away.

“Farewell,” she said.

“Anne—”

“Farewell!”

With that, the glade shattered like colored glass, and the darkness returned.

“Well,” the Kept said. “You’ve compared the wares. Are you ready to deal?”

“Can you lift the glamour on the passage? The one that makes them unknowable to men?”

“Once I’m free, yes. But only once I’m free.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear it.”

“Swear that once free, you will do as you’ve promised: mend the law of death and then die.”

“I swear it by all that I am, by all that I ever was.”

“Then place your neck at my feet.”

There was a long pause, and then something heavy struck the floor near her. She raised her right foot and brought it down on something large, cold, and rough.

“Anne, what are you doing?” Alis asked in the blackness. She sounded frantic.

“Qexqaneh,” Anne said, lifting her voice. “I free you!”

“No!” Alis shrieked.

But of course, by then it was too late.

Their mounted foes were all dead, and now the remaining defenders of the outer waerd were swarming to protect the gap opened by Artwair s ballistae. The hole was almost near enough for Neil to touch when something struck his shoulder from above so hard that it drove him to his knees.

Neil looked up dully at a man standing over him, lifting his sword to deliver the death blow. Neil cut clumsily at the fellows knees. His weapon was too blunted from slaughter to slice through the metal joint, but the bones within snapped from the impact just as the strike from above glanced hard from Neil’s helm.

Head ringing, he rose grimly to his feet, put the tip of Battlehound on the man’s throat, and leaned.

He had no idea how long they had been fighting, but the early culling had been done. He and the eight men he had left standing were pitted against perhaps twenty warriors with sword and shield and perhaps another five defenders on the wall who had the proper angle to shoot at them. Reinforcements trying to reach them across the causeway were still being ground up by concentrated missile fire from the waerd’s engines.

He dropped down among the bodies and held his shield over his head, trying to catch his breath. The defenders were being smart and conservative, staying in the gap rather than rushing out of it.

Neil glanced around at his men. Most were doing as he was, trying for a rest despite the rain of death from above.

He reached to feel his shoulder, found an arrow jutting there, and broke it off. That sent a sharp, almost sweet jag of pain through his battle-numbed body.

He glanced at the young knight Sir Edhmon, who crouched only a kingsyard away. The lad was bloody head to toe, but he still had two arms and two legs. He didn’t look frightened anymore. In fact, he didn’t look much of anything except tired.

But when he glanced at Neil, he tried to grin. Then his expression changed, and his eyes focused elsewhere.

For a moment Neil feared a wound had caught up with him, for those who died often saw the Tier de Sem as they left the world.

But Edhmon wasn’t looking beyond the mortal sky; he was staring over Neil’s shoulder, off to sea.

Neil followed his gaze as a fresh rain of arrows fell. He was greeted by a wondrous sight.

Sails, hundreds of them. And though the distance was great, it was not too great to see the swan banner of Liery flying on the leading wave steeds.

Neil closed his eyes and lowered his head, praying to Saint Lier to give him the strength he needed. Then he lifted his eyes and felt a sort of thunder enter his voice.

“All right, lads,” he cried, swearing he heard not his own voice but his father’s exhorting the clan to battle at Hrungrete. “There’s Sir Fail and the fleet that’ll put the usurper to his heels if we do our jobs. If we don’t, those proud ships will be shattered, and their crews will go down to the draugs, because I know Fail well enough to tell you he’ll try to get through, no matter the odds, whether Thornrath is in Bloody Robert’s hands or no.

“It’s not far we’ve got to go. We’re eight against twenty. That’s hardly more than two apiece. Saint Neuden loves odds like that. We’re all going to die lads, today or some other. The only question is, will you die with your sword rusting in a sheath or swinging in your hand?”

With that he rose, bellowing the raven war cry of the MeqVrens, and the other seven leapt up with him, some shouting, some praying aloud to the battle saints. Sir Edhmon was silent, but his face held a grim joy that Neil recognized as his own.

They marshaled shoulder to shoulder and charged up the slope.

There was no great shock of contact this time; the shields bumped together, and the defenders pushed back, cutting over their rims. Neil waited for the blow, and when it hit the edge of his battle board, he hooked his sword arm up and over the weapon. Edhmon saw that and cut the arm Neil held thus trapped, half severing it.

“Hold the line steady!” Neil shouted. The warrior in him wanted to surge over the fallen man, deeper into the defenders, but with numbers against them, that would be foolish. Their line was their only defense.