Gregory Keyes - The Briar King

The Briar King turned to Fastia and blinked, slowly, then shifted his strange eyes back to Muriele, narrowing them as they came mere fingers from her own.

Her vision dissolved in those eyes. She saw strange, deep woods full of trees like giant mosses and trunked ferns. She saw beasts with the eyes of owls and the shapes of mastiffs.

He blinked again, slowly, and she saw Eslen fallen into ruins and swallowed by vines of black thorn with blooms like purple spiders. She saw Newland beneath the stars, covered by dark waters, and then those waters dancing with pale flame. She saw a vast hall of shadow and a throne of sooty stone, and on it a figure whose face could not be seen but for eyes that burned like green flame. She heard laughter that sounded almost like a hound baying.

And then, as if in a mirror of polished jet, she saw her own dead face. Then it was again the face of the Briar King, and her fear was gone, as if she really were dead and moved beyond all mortal thoughts. As in a dream, she reached to touch his beard.

His face contorted in a sudden expression of pain and rage, and he howled, a sound with nothing human and everything wild in it.

Aspar was too far from his bow. The greffyn would reach Winna and Ogre long before he could fit an arrow to string. He did the only thing he could do; he threw his ax. It struck the greffyn in the back of the head and bounced, leaving a gash and drawing a thin train of ruby droplets.

“So you can bleed, you mikel rooster,” Aspar snarled in perverse satisfaction.

The greffyn turned slowly to face him, and Aspar felt the fever from its eyes strike straight through to his bones. But it wasn’t so bad as before; his knees trembled but did not betray him. He gripped his dirk as it came, but he did not watch it. Instead he focused on Winna, on her face, for he wanted to remember it.

He couldn’t quite remember Qerla’s face.

It was luck to find love twice in one lifetime, he decided, and luck always came with a price. It was time to pay it, he supposed.

Give me strength, Raver, he thought. He’d never asked Haergrim for anything before. Perhaps the Raver would take that into account.

The greffyn came, then, almost faster than sight could follow. Aspar turned just slightly, striking the beast above and between the eyes with the iron hilt of his dirk. He felt a terrible shock in his arm and knew he was already dead.

He heard Winna scream.

Incredibly, the greffyn stumbled at the blow, and Aspar took the only chance he had. He threw himself upon the scaled back and wrapped one arm beneath the hooked jaw. The creature screamed then, a shrill cacophony that almost overshadowed the rising sound of the horn.

He guessed where the heart might be and drove his dirk there, once, twice, again. The greffyn crashed into the courtyard wall, trying to dislodge him, but for the moment his arm was a steel band. Aspar felt larger, like one of the great tyrants of the forest, his roots sinking deep, pulling strength from stone and soil and deep hidden springs, and when his heart beat again he knew he was the forest itself, seeking vengeance.

Motion blurred everything. He caught a brief glimpse of Winna’s anguished face, of Ogre, proud and fearless, rushing to his aid. There was air, and then water, as they plunged into the canal beyond the gate.

Close the gate, Winna, he thought. Be the bright girl. He would have shouted it, but the water was wrapped too tightly about him.

All the while his dirk was cutting, as if the Grim had indeed taken Aspar’s hand for his own. The water of the canal burned like lye.

Cazio stood unsteadily at the entrance to the wine cellar, but when he raised Caspator, the weapon did not waver.

“Hello, my fine casnars,” he said to the two armored men. “Which of you do I have the honor of killing first?”

The knights had just dismounted. He noticed one of them had more ornate armor than the other, all gilded on the edges. That was the one who answered him.

“I know not who you are, sir,” the fellow said. “But there is no need for you to die. Leave here and return to a life that might be long and prosperous.”

Cazio looked down the length of Caspator. He wondered if his father had felt this way at the end. There was certainly no profit in this fight. No one would hear of it.

“I prefer to live an honorable life to a long one, casnar,” he said. “Can the same be said of you?”

The knight regarded him enigmatically for a moment, and Cazio felt a brief hope. Then the man in gilded armor turned his head toward his companion.

“Kill this one for me,” he said.

The other man nodded slightly and started forward.

He doesn’t have a shield, at least, Cazio remarked to himself. The eye slits. That’s my target.

The horn in the distance grew louder. More knights, probably.

The knight came hewing. Cazio calmly parried the blows, though Caspator shivered from them. He riposted at the steel visor, but the fellow stayed out of distance, and Cazio didn’t have the footing needed to lunge. They fought for several long phrases before the heavy broadsword finally smashed down onto Caspator’s hilt, shocking his already numbed arm enough that the weapon clattered to the ground.

It was then that a cascade of mortar and brick fell on the knight’s head. Dust and grit followed, stinging Cazio’s eyes. Masonry tumbled past him down the worn stairway, and he saw the knight collapse, his helm deeply dented.

The gilded knight—who hadn’t been beneath the fall of rubble—looked up in time to receive a brick in the face, and then another. Stunned, Cazio bent to retrieve Caspator as z’Acatto dropped down from above the arch of the cellar door.

“I told you, boy,” the swordmaster grunted. “You don’t fence knights.”

“Granted,” Cazio said, noticing that the gilded knight was regaining his feet. With what little remained of his strength, Cazio leapt forward. The broadsword came up and down, but he turned and avoided it, and this time Caspator drove true, through the slit in the helm and further, stopped only by the steel on the other side of the skull, or the skull itself. He withdrew the bloody point and watched the knight sink first to his knees, and then to a prone position.

“I’ll follow your advice more closely next time,” he promised the older swordsman.

“What have you gotten yourself into, lad?” z’Acatto asked. He looked past Cazio, then, and shook his head.

“Ah,” he said. “I see where the trouble is.”

Anne and Austra had come to the top of the stair and were staring at the tableau.

“There will be more,” Cazio said.

“More women?”

“More trouble.”

“The same thing,” z’Acatto remarked.

“More knights,” Cazio clarified. “Maybe many more.”

“I’ve two horses,” z’Acatto said. “We can ride double.”

Cazio crossed his arms and gave his swordmaster a dubious look. “It’s fortunate you brought horses,” he said. “Also very odd.”

“Don’t be an empty bottle, boy. The road to the coven goes near the well at the edge of Orchaevia’s estates. I saw them arrive.”

“What were you doing there?”

Z’Acatto grinned and drew a narrow bottle of green glass from beneath his doublet. He held it up to the light.

“I found it,” he said triumphantly. “The very best year. I knew I would smell it out.”

Cazio rolled his eyes. “At least we were saved by a good vintage,” he said.

“The best,” z’Acatto repeated happily.

Cazio made a weak bow to the two women.

“My casnaras Anne and Austra, I present to you my sword-master, the learned z’Acatto.” He hesitated and caught the old man’s eyes. “My master and best friend.”