Gregory Keyes - The Charnel Prince

“You!” he said. “I’ve been looking all over for you, you know. All over. Slaughtered an entire coven to find you. My men told me you were dead—and now you walk right into my arms. Outstanding. Come here, girl, and give us a kiss.”

“You will not mock me,” Anne said steadily. “You will not.”

“I think I will,” the man replied.

Anne stepped steadily nearer to the man. “You are Roderick’s father,” she said. A part of her was trembling with fear, but that part of her seemed to be sinking away, melting like snow in spring. “Of course. Roderick’s father and his Hansan knights. And why did you chase me over the great wide world, Duke of Dunmrogh? What fear was in you that made you do that?”

“No fear,” the Duke said. “I was doing what my lord commanded.”

“Which lord is that? Which lord commanded my death?”

“How foolish of you to think I would ever name him,” Dunmrogh said.

“Foolish is the man who does not ask what his lord fears of a single girl,” Anne spat. She felt, suddenly, the sickness around her, a pulsing fever in the very earth itself, and something turning slowly in the dirt, opening one eye. It was like that day with Austra, in the city of the dead, when they had escaped the knights, but stronger. She took a breath and felt herself expand with it.

“He only fears a queen in Eslen,” Dunmrogh said, suddenly sounding the slightest bit uncertain.

“No,” Anne whispered. “Like all men, he fears the dark of the moon.” She took another breath and felt it turn as black and thick as oil in her lungs.

“Hang her,” Dunmrogh said.

She let the breath out—and out , feeling the Worm pull up through her feet and flow through her. Dunmrogh screamed like an hysterical infant, but she did not stop with him.

She sent it on—through the monks, through the men in armor, shuddering, hearing herself laugh as if she were mad.

Dunmrogh bent double and vomited blood. Some of the monks started toward her, but it was as if they were moving against a wind too hard to overcome. She spared Cazio and the fading z’Acatto, but every other man was her slave, bowing to her power.

Except one. One man was still coming for her; the knight, the one who had cut Sir Neil. Her will sleeted through him as if he wasn’t there, and the Worm would not know him. He quickened his pace, drawing his sword. She was dimly aware of Cazio trying to stand, raising his own weapon.

Then something in her twisted and diminished, and she felt as if she were falling. The last thing she saw was the knight, charging to take her head.

Cazio saw Anne fall, even as the knight came into striking range. He wasn’t sure what had happened, wasn’t sure he wanted to know. The only thing he knew was that he was free, and Caspator was in his hand, and there was an enemy in front of him.

Unfortunately, this one had his helm on, and his sword was the weird, flickering, glowing one he’d seen shear through plate armor in z’Espino.

Cazio thrust into the knight’s downward cut, parrying and attacking with the same movement, but his blade scratched only the steel of a breastplate. The knight reversed, slicing back up from the downswing, trying to split Cazio from crotch to shoulder, but Cazio was already moving aside and punching his hilt into the knight’s visor, trying to knock it off.

His adversary whirled and his weapon soughed a third time, and though Cazio managed to get Caspator up to meet it, the force was square on, right on the strong part of his blade, and his knees buckled from the strength of it. The knight’s mailed foot came up and kicked him under the chin, and the bright smell of blood exploded in his nostrils as he flopped onto his back.

The knight turned away, ignoring him, moving back toward the prostrate figure of Anne. Cazio struggled to his feet, knowing he would never make it in time.

Then two arrows spanged into the armored man, and he staggered. Cazio looked in the direction the shots had come from and saw a man on a horse charging toward them. The arrows hadn’t come from him—he carried a sword in one hand and a wooden shield in the other. They came from another pair—a slight, hooded figure and a rangy-looking man in a leather cuirass.

Cazio tried to use Caspator to push himself up and noticed, with a shock, that the strong part of his blade had been notched halfway through by the weird knight’s weapon. Caspator was made from Belbaina steel, the strongest in the world.

The nauschalk was stooping toward Anne’s motionless body when Aspar’s and Leshya’s arrows found him. The pause gave Neil just the time he needed to reach him. He cut hard with Cuenslec, and felt the solid, satisfying shock run up his arm. He didn’t understand why the rest of the men in the clearing weren’t fighting, or even on their feet, but he wasn’t going to question it. Some of them were starting to get up, anyway, and when they did, he and his newfound companions would be very much outnumbered.

His horse reared and shied, so Neil quickly dismounted, facing the knight as he rose back up, wielding the arcane blade.

“They say Virgenya Dare’s warriors had weapons like that,” Neil said. “Feyswords. Weapons for heroes, weapons to fight evil. I don’t know where you got that, but I do know you aren’t fit to carry it.”

The nauschalk pushed up his visor. His face was pale and pink-cheeked, and his eyes were as gray as sea waves.

“You,” he murmured, almost as if in a dream. “I’ve killed you once, haven’t I?”

“Only almost,” Neil replied. He lifted his shield. “But by Saint Fren and Saint Fendve, this time I will die or you will.”

“I cannot die,” the man said. “Do you understand? I can’t.”

“Forgive me if I’ll not take your word for that,” Neil replied. All along he’d been shuffling forward, finding his distance. Now he slowly began to circle, his gaze fixed on the eyes of the nauschalk, a red fire kindling in his belly as the rage began.

Then the nauschalk blinked, and in that instant Neil attacked, leaping forward and cutting over the shield. His enemy replied with a swift thrust from a stiffened arm to Neil’s shield, a good fighter’s instinct, for it should have stopped Neil’s attack by keeping him at sword’s length.

But the feysword sliced through the shield just above Neil’s arm. He still had to arrest his blow to keep from impaling his face on the glowing weapon, but he twisted the shield down, taking the stuck feysword with it, and chopped a second time. Cuenslec rang against the armored joint of neck and shoulder, and Neil felt the chain links part. The visor clanged down with the force of his blow, and once again Neil’s enemy had no face.

He dropped the shield before his opponent could carve the deadly blade through his arm and drew back for another blow, but the feysword whirled up too quickly. Neil let the assault come but faded back from it, so the attack missed him by the breadth of a hair. Then he made his own counterattack.

He had reckoned on the knight having to recover the momentum of his attack before making the backswing, but he’d reckoned wrong. The weapon must have weighed almost nothing, because here it came, shearing up into his attack. Only by scrambling quickly back did he avoid being gut-sawed.

Neil’s breath was coming raggedly already, for he was still weak from his last fight with the fellow.

The nauschalk, seemingly not tired at all, advanced.

“What’s happening here, Stephen?” Aspar asked as he got Ogre still and took aim at a monk. The churchman had been down on the ground when they arrived, and was now rising shakily to his feet. Aspar let fly. The fellow never saw his death coming; an almost motionless target, the arrow took him in the heart and he sank back to his knees.