Gregory Keyes - The Briar King

“That’s the end of your advantage,” Erren said. “Now you must go, and swift, before he returns with more.”

“It may be that he has no more.”

“The changeling Vargus still lives. That makes at least two, but we must assume more.”

She rapped on the queen’s door, three soft taps, a pause, then two harder ones. Neil heard a bolt draw, and then the door cracked inward. He saw the queen’s eyes beyond.

“Sir Neil is here,” Erren said. “He will stay with you.”

“Erren, you’re hurt,” the queen noticed. “Come inside.”

Erren smiled briefly. “We have more visitors for me to receive. Sir Neil will take you to the garrison. You’ll be safe there.”

“My daughters—”

“Your daughters are already safe,” Erren replied, and Neil felt her hand touch his back in warning. “Now you must go with Sir Neil.”

“I won’t leave you.”

“You will,” Erren replied simply. “I will join you at the garrison.”

A noise sounded near the end of the hall, and Erren spun in time to receive one of the three arrows that sped through the door. It hit her in the kidney. The other two thudded against the wall next to Neil.

“Erren!” the queen screamed.

“Sir Neil!” Erren reminded, in a tone of cold and absolute command.

Neil was through the door in an instant, shouldering the queen aside. He slammed the portal behind him, just as several more shafts thocked into the other side. He bolted it.

“Do not open it,” Neil told the queen.

“Erren—”

“Erren is dead,” Neil told her. “She died so you might live. Do not betray her.”

The queen’s face changed, then. The confusion and grief fled from it, replaced by regal determination.

“Very well,” she said. “But whoever did this will have cause to regret it. Promise me that.”

Neil thought of Elseny, dead in her bed, all her laughter and whimsy bled into her sheets. He thought of Fastia, and nursed a terrible hope that she still lived.

“They will,” he said. “But we must survive the night.”

He went to the window, sheathing Crow as he did so. He’d examined the room earlier, of course, and even without the moon he knew the tower wall dropped some five yards to the wall of the inner keep, where he had stood earlier that night watching for ghosts. A glance showed no one without. He returned to her bed and began knotting the sheets together, tying one end to the bedpost.

The door shuddered beneath repeated blows.

“Finish here,” he told the queen. “Tie them well. When you’ve fixed two more together, start down. Do not wait for me.”

The queen nodded and went to the task. Neil, meanwhile, pushed a heavy chest to add weight to the door.

He wasn’t in time. The bolt suddenly snapped open, as if pulled by invisible fingers. Neil leapt to it, drew Crow, yanked it open, and slashed.

The pale face of a Sefry looked at him in surprise as Crow split collarbone, heart, and breastbone. Neil didn’t let the malefactor drop, but with his other hand lifted him by the hair, using him as a shield against the inevitable darts that flew from the darkness. Then he shoved the body away and slammed the door again, drawing the bolt firmly into place.

A glance behind him showed that the queen had already begun her descent. He went to the window and watched until she reached the stone cobbles, and was turning to follow her when the door exploded inward.

Neil slashed the sheet at the bedpost and leapt to the windowsill, dropping to hang by his fingers as two arrows hummed by and a third glanced from his byrnie. Then he dropped.

A fall of three yards even in half armor was easily enough to snap bones. He hit the cobbles and collapsed his knees. The air blew out of him and glimmer-lights danced across his vision.

“Sir Neil.” The queen was there. On the horizon a purple sickle was rising. For a moment, Neil did not recognize it as the moon.

“Away from the window,” he gasped, reaching up to her.

She took his hand, and they ducked around the curve of the tower, away from any sharp-nosed arrows that might scent them from above.

“This way,” Neil said. They started along the battlements toward the stair to the courtyard, glancing behind them often. Neil made out at least one slight figure dropping from the tower in the moonlight. He hoped it wasn’t one of the archers.

They reached the steps without incident, however. Once down them, they needed only to cross the courtyard and open the gate that led through the old wall and across the canal to the garrison. Last Neil had seen, that yard was empty of the living, and he hoped it still was.

They had taken only a step down, however, when the queen suddenly jerked away from him and started back up.

“Your Majesty—” he began.

“Fastia!” the queen shouted.

Neil saw Fastia, turning the corner of the battlements perhaps twenty yards away, still wearing the same blue dress he had seen her in earlier. She looked up at the sound of her name.

“Mother? Sir Neil?”

“Fastia. Come to us. Quickly. There is danger.” She started toward her daughter.

Neil swore and started after her, noting the three figures closing rapidly from the way they had come.

A fourth appeared silently from the shadows behind Fastia.

“Fastia!” he shouted. “Behind you! Run toward us!”

He passed the queen an instant later, his heart roaring, watching Fastia’s face grow nearer, confusion mixing with fear as she turned to see what he was yelling about.

“Keep back from her!” Neil thundered. “By the saints, keep back from her!”

But the black-clad figure was there, moving terrifically fast, a sliver of moonlight in his hand, lifted and then buried in Fastia’s breast, two heartbeats before Neil reached her. The man danced back and drew a sword as Neil howled and drove in, hammering Crow down with both hands. The man parried, and cut back, but Neil took the slash on his hauberk and crashed into him, bringing an elbow up into his chin with a hoarse shout. The man went down but was already bouncing back up when Crow split his skull.

The queen was kneeling with her daughter, and the men approaching from the tower were nearly upon them. They could never make it to the stairs and down before the men arrived.

Fastia looked up at him, blinking, hiccuping.

There was only one way, and Neil took it.

“Over the wall, into the canal, and swim to the causeway,” he told the queen. “I have Fastia.”

“Yes,” the queen said. She never hesitated, but jumped.

Neil lifted Fastia in his arms.

“I love you,” she gasped.

“And I you,” he said, and leapt.

The wall here was seven yards high, and the water felt like stone when he hit it. His hauberk dragged him straight to the bottom, and he had to let loose of Fastia to shuck it off. For a panicked instant he couldn’t find her again, but then felt her arm, got his grip, and brought her up. He found his bearings and struck toward the causeway that led to the garrison. It seemed impossibly far away. Ahead of him, the queen was already swimming. Fastia’s eyes had closed, but her breath still whistled in his ear.

Two loud splashes sounded behind him. He struck harder, cursing.

He emerged onto the causeway at almost the same time as the queen. He lifted Fastia into a cradle-carry and they ran for the garrison gate, keenly aware that the gate to the other courtyard—and those who probably now occupied it—lay behind them.

The garrison gate was open, too, the bodies of perhaps ten soldiers crumpled beneath its arch.

In the darkness beyond, something growled, and Neil saw glowing eyes and a shadow the size of a horse, but shaped like no horse he had ever seen.