Gregory Keyes - The Briar King

Then Muriele doubled over, the muscles of her legs cramping and fever burning in her veins. She collapsed next to her daughter and reached to touch her, to comfort her, but Fastia’s skin was cool and her heart beat no more.

Unable to do anything more, Muriele lay, and wept, and waited for death.

Neil swayed against the door frame, his vision blurring. Where had the monster gone? It had been only footsteps behind them. Now it had vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.

Not for the first time that night, he began to wonder if he had lost his sanity. His legs were shaking, and a hot, sick feeling twisted in him.

“I’ve failed, Father,” he whispered. “I should have heeded the warnings. I never belonged here.”

In Liery he’d known who he was. In Liery he’d never failed in anything. Here, he’d made one misstep after another, each worse than the last. His feelings for Fastia—feelings no true knight ever would have had—had cauterized his conviction and drained his confidence. He flinched, he hesitated, and now that lack of surety had killed Sir James and Elseny. He had failed the queen, his sworn charge, and even now a part of him knew he would do it again if it would save Fastia. Despite his vow, despite the wrongness of it.

He didn’t deserve the breath in his lungs.

An arrow chirruped against stone, and he realized he had all but forgotten his mortal antagonists. Yet another failure. Cursing, he took what cover he could behind the gate frame, trying to see who was without. He made out two, perhaps three of the Sefry archers on the causeway. Another had come through the gate from the inner keep and was under cover of the now open door.

Striding toward him was the armored figure of the man who had once been Vargus Farre. When he saw Sir Neil he bellowed and increased his pace, drawing the greatsword from his back.

Neil, barely able to stand, grimly summoned all of his strength and stepped out to meet him.

“You aren’t Ashern,” the false knight said, when he drew near.

“I don’t know who Ashern is,” Neil replied. “But know this: I am the hand of death.”

“You are sickened from the gaze of the greffyn. You are weary from flight and battle. Lay down your arms and accept the inevitable.”

To Neil’s horror, it sounded tempting. Lay down his arms, let the enemy strike off his head. At least he’d make no more mistakes, then. At least he would be at peace.

But no. He should die like a man, however little that might mean. “When the sea falls into the sky, that will be,” he said.

“That day may not be as far off as you might think,” Farre replied. He lifted his sword and struck.

Neil parried the blow but staggered beneath it. He replied with a cut to the shoulder joint, but missed, his weapon clanging harmlessly on steel. Farre swung again, and this time Neil managed to duck. The blade missed, but he went dizzy, and before he could recover, a reversed blow caught him on the back. The chain mail hauberk took the edge with a snapping of rings, but it absorbed none of the force of the attack, which drove him down to his knees. Sir Vargus kicked him under the chin, but Neil manage to wrap one arm around the armored leg and stab upward with Crow.

It was not a strong jab, and again Crow screeched in frustration as it scored across armor but did not harm the man.

The hilt came hammering down toward his head, but Neil twisted so it took him in the shoulder instead. Agony ruptured along his clavicle, which he distantly reckoned was probably shattered.

Farre kicked him again, and he went back like a rag doll into the horz. The knight stepped through after him. The saints, it seemed, did not care what might become of Neil MeqVren.

Spitting blood, Neil climbed slowly to his feet, watching the changeling come forward through a red fog of pain. He seemed to come very slowly, as if each blink of the eye took days. In a strange rush, Neil heard again the sound of the sea and tasted cold salt on his lips. For an instant, he was there on the strand again with his father, the older man’s hand gripping his.

We goin’to lose, Fah? We goin’to die?

And then, so plain it might have been spoken in his ear, he heard a voice.

You’re a MeqVren, boy. Damn you, but don’t lie down yet.

Neil straightened and took a breath. It felt like a burning wind.

Muriele managed to raise her head when she heard the song. It started weakly, barely a whisper, but it was in the language of her childhood.

It was Sir Neil, standing before Vargus Farre.

He sang, though it seemed impossible he could even stand. Sir Vargus swung a great two-handed blow at the smaller man. Almost laconically, Sir Neil parried the weapon, and his voice grew louder.

Suddenly Sir Neil’s sword lashed out, all out of keeping with his demeanor, and there came a din of metal. Vargus staggered back from the stroke, but Sir Neil followed it up with another that seemed to come from nowhere. He was shouting, now.

Sir Vargus rallied and cut hard into Neil’s side. Chain mail snapped with bright ringing and blood spurted, but the young knight didn’t seem to notice. He kept chanting, beating a rhythm of terrible blows that rang against plate mail.

Neil was shrieking now, and Muriele understood. He had a rage on him. Vargus Farre never got in another blow. He stumbled and fell beneath the onslaught, and Neil pounded him with his blade as if it were a club, shearing sparks from the armor. He chopped through the joint of Farre’s arm at the elbow; he crushed in his helm. Long after there was no motion, he hacked into the steel-clad corpse, screaming the death song of his Skernish fathers. And when he finally stood and his eyes turned to her, she thought she had never seen a more terrifying sight.

“The gates are open,” Stephen murmured, as they rode over the succession of drawbridges that led to Cal Azroth.

“I reckon I can see that,” Aspar grunted. “Quiet a moment, and listen.”

Stephen nodded, closing his eyes. The only sound Aspar could make out was his own breath and the labored panting of the horses. Winna was a welcome weight against his back, and a fear, as well. He had her back. He couldn’t lose her again.

But Fend was here. He could smell him.

“I hear steel meeting steel,” Stephen said, after a moment. “And someone singing, in Lierish, I think. That aside, it’s quiet.”

“Fend is quiet,” Aspar murmured. A wind blew from Cal Azroth, and autumn was on it. “You’ll both stay here and wait for me.”

“We’ll do nothing of the kind,” Winna replied.

“There’ll be fighting,” Aspar said. “You’ll hinder me.”

“You need Stephen’s ears and my sense,” Winna replied evenly. “We’ve both saved your skin in the past, Aspar White. There’s nothing to say it won’t need doing again.”

Aspar was figuring a reply to that when Stephen made an odd sound.

“What is it?” Aspar asked.

“You don’t hear it?”

“Ney. I’ve only the ordinary sort of ears.”

“The blasting of the horn. It’s returning.”

“Maybe another horn.”

“No,” Stephen said. “The same.”