Gregory Keyes - The Charnel Prince

Aspar kicked Ogre into motion, determined to make what use he could of the distraction. He was halfway to them before they started firing. He saw black blurs, and a shaft thumped hard into his cuirass, driving though his shoulder and out the back, leaving him dimly curious as to how many pounds these fellows could pull. It didn’t hurt yet, though.

Another hit him along the cheek, cutting deep and taking part of his ear with it, and that hurt quite a lot. Then Ogre screamed and reared up, and Aspar floated for an instant before slamming into the ground.

Stubbornly, he pushed himself up, yanking out his throwing ax, determined to kill at least one of them before becoming porcupined.

But they weren’t paying attention to him anymore. Some twenty horsemen thundered out of the woods, armed and armored except for the fellow leading them, a young man in a fine-looking red doublet and white hose. He had his sword drawn.

“Anne!” the lad screamed. “Anne!”

He only got to shout it twice, for an arrow hit him high in the chest, and he did a backflip off the horse. The archers scattered with saint-touched speed, continuing to shoot at the horsemen. Aspar chose the nearest, threw his ax, and had the vast satisfaction of seeing it buried in the man’s skull before his knees gave way.

When Aspar went for the archers, Neil and Cazio charged the swordsmen. Neil reckoned if he was in close enough combat, the archers would have a harder time making a shot. He wasn’t sure what Cazio reckoned, but it didn’t matter. Within a few breaths they were fighting shoulder to shoulder. The feysword was light and nimble in his hand, and he killed four men before the press bore him down. Then someone struck his head, hard, and for a time he didn’t know anything.

A man’s voice woke him. Neil opened his eyes and saw a troop of mounted men. The leader had his visor pushed up and was staring down at him.

He said something Neil didn’t understand and gazed around the clearing, face aghast.

“I don’t understand you, sir,” Neil said, in the king’s tongue.

Behind him, Anne moaned.

“What in the name of Saint Rooster’s balls is happening here?” the horseman demanded.

Neil pointed to the man’s tabard. “You’re a vassal of Dunmrogh, sir—you should know better than I.”

The knight shook his head. “My lord Dunmrogh the younger, Sir Roderick—he brought us here. I thought he was mad, the things he told us, but—sir, you must understand that I knew nothing of these events.” He held up both hands as if somehow to include the mutilated corpses that hung on the stakes and the general carnage scattered about the clearing in a single gesture. His roaming eye settled on the corpse of the Duke of Dunmrogh, and his eyes tightened. “Tell me what happened here,” he demanded.

“I killed Dunmrogh,” a weak female voice said. “I did it.” Neil turned to see Anne standing, supported by Stephen and Winna.

Her gaze touched him, and her mouth parted. “Sir Neil?” she gasped.

Neil dropped to his knee. “Your Highness.”

“Highness?” the mounted man echoed.

“Yes,” Anne said, turning her attention back to him. “I am Anne, daughter of William the Second, and before Dunmrogh or any other lord, you owe your allegiance to me.”

It sent a chill up Neil’s back, how much she sounded like Queen Muriele in that moment.

“What is your name, sir?” Anne demanded.

“My name is Marcac MaypCavar,” he replied. “But I—”

“Sir Marcac,” one of his men interrupted. “That is Princess Anne. I’ve seen her at court. And this man is Neil MeqVren, who saved the queen from one of her own Craftsmen.”

Sir Marcac looked about, still plainly confused. “But what is this? These people, what happened to them?”

“I’m not certain myself,” Anne said. “But I need your help, Sir Marcac.”

“What is your command, Highness?”

“Take these people down from those stakes, of course, and see that they are given care,” Anne said. “And arrest anyone not nailed to a pole or in my present company. Take control of Dunmrogh Castle, and arrest any clergy you find there, and keep that place until you have heard from Eslen.”

“Of course, Your Highness. And what else?”

“I’ll want horses, and provisions, and whatever armed men you can spare,” she replied. “And carry my wounded to a leic. By tomorrow’s sunrise, I ride to Eslen.”

The Candle Grove wasn’t a grove, and though there were lanterns aplenty, there weren’t properly any candles. When Leoff had first heard the name for Eslen’s great gathering place, he’d imagined it to have been named in some ancient time, when bards sang beneath sacred trees in the fluttering light of tapers, but in his reading about its history he quickly saw the foolishness of that.

The first Mannish language spoken in the city had been that of the Elder Cavarum, then the Vitellian of the Hegemony, Almannish supplanted at times by Lierish and Hanzish, and most lately, the king’s tongue. Areana called the place the Caondlgraef in her native tongue, and readily admitted she had no idea what it meant. It was just an “old name.”

Still, whatever its origin, Leoff liked the appellation and the images it evoked of an older, simpler day.

Structurally the Candle Grove was a curious hybrid of the ancient amptocombenus of the Hegemony, the wooden stages traveling actors threw up in town squares to perform their farces, and the Church pestels where the choir sang or performed in acts the lives of the saints. Carved into the living stone of the hill, it rose in semicircular levels, each tier being one long curving bench.

A large balcony jutted out from the middle of the lowest three levels, forming a separate platform for the regals. There were two stages—one wooden and raised, with space beneath it for trapdoors through which actors and props could vanish and appear—and a lower, stone one where the musicians and singers were situated. The upper stage, following the usage of the Church, was called Bitreis , “The World,” and the lower stage was named Ambitreis , “Other-world”.

Those were the two worlds Praifec Hespero wanted to keep separate. He was going to be disappointed.

Above both stages rose a half-hemisphere ceiling painted with moon and stars and appropriately called “The Heavens.” The royal seating was covered, too. Everyone else risked rain or snow.

But the sky was clear tonight, and though it was chill, there was no dampness in the air.

Around the Candle Grove—above the seats, stage, and even “Heaven”—stretched a broad green common, and since noon it had been a feast-ground. Leoff thought the whole city and many from the countryside must have been there—thousands of people. He himself had sat at a long table with the regent at one end and the praifec at the other, and between them the members of the Comven, dukes, grefts, and landwaerds.

He’d made his excuses and come down early to make certain that all was ready. Now it was; the seats were filling with bodies and the air with the murmur of thousands of voices.

Not since his first performance, at the age of six, had he felt such a trembling in his limbs and such profound unrest in his belly.

He looked down at his musicians.

“I know you can do it,” he told them. “I have faith in all of you. I only hope to deserve yours.”

Edwyn raised the bow of his croth in salute, but most of them spared him only a quick glance, for they were furiously studying their music which was almost—but not quite—what they had been rehearsing.

The praifec had monitored his rehearsals, of course, and approved them, because Leoff had rewritten the work to the churchman’s ridiculous specifications. The instrumental pieces were played as introduction to what the vocalists would sing, and then the vocals were done unaccompanied. He had added the material the praifec wanted, and cut parts he had written.