Morgan Rice - A Clash of Honor

The man went hurling through the air, screaming, tumbling end over end, until finally he landed on the ground below with a thud, just a few feet from his master.

As Erec looked out the window, he saw a site he did not like: dozens of knights were charging across the bridge, for the castle, pouring in from all over the countryside. They were already beginning to pry it open, to make their way inside. Clearly, this lord had powerful vassals, and they were showing up as they had sworn to.

“There’s another way out,” Alistair said, coming up beside him, watching his gaze. “I noticed it when they brought me here. There is a back way.”

“Show me,” Erec said.

They ran down the corridor, all the way to the opposite end of the castle, and she led them to a corner room, where they looked down out the open window. Erec saw the back of the castle, leading to an open meadow, with no knights in view. She was right. The back entrance was also blocked by an iron gate. Erec realized that if they could get down another way, beyond the gate, they could flee for the countryside and avoid a confrontation with scores of knights. He might win such a confrontation, but there was no way he could keep Alistair and himself safe at the same time. He had to choose the way of least confrontation if he wanted her to survive.

Erec reached down into his waist and pulled out the long bunch of wire he kept tied up. It was a long wire, maybe twenty feet, with a spike at the end of it, which he kept for special occasions, to trip up opponents’ horses. He’d never used it for a purpose like this, and he realized it would not even be long enough to reach the ground-and that it would be a long, hard fall. But he had no choice.

Erec scanned the stone walls outside the window, spotted a metal flag post embedded in the wall, wrapped the metal ball around it, and threw the wire out. It dropped down the castle wall, landing about ten feet short of the ground, and landed on the other side of the castle, beyond the metal gate. If the fall didn’t kill them, it could get them out.

There came the sound of soldiers coming down the hall, and he knew they didn’t have much time.

“But what about our hands?” Alistair said. “That wire will cut right through them.”

Erec had been thinking the same thing; he scanned the room for something, anything, to protect them.

“Take this,” Alistair said.

She took off her fur cloak, and Erec gratefully took it and wrapped it around his hands, again and again.

“Get on my back,” he said.

She jumped onto him, and with her on his back, he stepped on the window ledge, grabbed the wire, tested it, and lowered them down the castle wall.

They slid faster than he could control, too fast, and he could not stop the sliding. They went flying down, to the point where the wire ended, and then fell another ten feet through the air.

They landed hard on the ground-too hard-and Erec turned at the last second to cushion Alistair’s fall and take the brunt of it himself. As she landed on top of him, he felt a rib cracking.

He was winded, and he got to his hands and knees, seeing stars, and turned and looked at her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded back, and he could see that she was dazed, but unhurt, to his great relief.

Erec heard a crash of metal, and knew the army had broken into the castle, and was charging inside up the stairs for them.

Erec got up and whistled, a distinctive whistle, one that only Warkfin would hear and understand.

Moments later, Warkfin came charging around to the back of the castle, and Erec stood and threw Alistair up, then mounted himself. She held on tight to his chest, as he kicked Warkfin to a gallop.

They charged away from that place, the sounds of the warriors crashing into the castle becoming more and more distant, as they rode.

Feeling Alistair’s hands wrapped around his chest brought him more comfort than he had imagined possible.

She was safe. Finally. She was safe.

Andronicus held a flaming torch as he galloped out in front of his army, then leaned over and lit the thatched roofs of the McCloud houses as he rode through the village. In a matter of minutes he had managed to light the entire village on fire, and he galloped through the streets, circling again and again, through the roaring flames, as the screams began to rise up all around him. He smiled with satisfaction. This would teach that McCloud king. This would teach these McCloud villagers to hide inside their homes, to think that they would ever be safe from him or his men. He would destroy every last one of them before he left this town. Not a single soul would survive. That had always been his motto.

In all the countries, in all the territories of the world that he had conquered, Andronicus had always followed one simple rule: crush and kill and destroy everyone and everything in sight. Leave no survivors. Take no prisoners. Burn everything down to the ground, so that there would be no one left to try to resurrect the old way. There would only be the new way. His way.

And it had worked. They had conquered city after city, country after country, and his empire had grown to millions. His soldiers were in the millions, and his slaves were millions more, all of them obedient to a fault. He could dispatch armies simultaneously to any corner of the world to crush anyone who dared to rise up against him. Nothing gave him more joy.

Now it was time to make this McCloud king pay. McCloud had made the grave mistake of crossing Andronicus, of refusing to cooperate with him when he’d had the chance. Of course, Andronicus’s offer had been a duplicitous one, and if McCloud had allowed him to cross the Canyon, he would have taken his first chance to destroy all that was McCloud’s. But at least he would not have done so right away. He would have given McCloud a little bit of time to think he was free, before he ambushed and butchered him and his family.

But McCloud had not gone along with it, and that put Andronicus in a rage. Now, to send a message to the rest of his empire, he would not just destroy McCloud and his loved ones, but torture them first. He smiled as he imagined dismembering them slowly, carrying their body parts to all four corners of the empire. Yes, he would shrink their heads and preserve them, and maybe even replace his current necklace with McCloud’s shrunken head. He reached out and fingered the shrunken heads dangling at the base of his throat, and he enjoyed the thought immensely. He already started to imagine the type of chain he would bore through McCloud’s head.

Andronicus’ men caught up to him, fifty paces behind, charging with a scream into the village of flames and slaughtering the villagers who ran out of their homes. Andronicus looked back and smiled, as he could already see blood filling the streets. It was gearing up to be a fabulous day.

This was the tenth McCloud village they had ravaged today, and the second sun had barely risen in the sky. They had landed earlier in the morning on the McCloud shore, Andronicus leading a fleet of ten thousand ships. As his feet had touched down on the sand, he’d marveled that he was back here in this place, on the outer shores of the Ring, twice under a single moon. This time, though, he had come prepared for war, not for talk. He had brought along the McCloud prisoner who held the key to breaching the Canyon. This time he would not meet with McCloud. This time he would lead his men across the fifty mile wasteland of the McCloud’s outer territory, ride right to the Canyon itself, and use the McCloud prisoner to show him how to breach it. His men would cross the Canyon, onto the other side, and he would surprise McCloud and burn his court down to the ground. He looked forward to the look of surprise on McCloud’s face when he saw Andronicus in his own backyard, across the Canyon. It would be priceless.