Dave Duncan - When the Saints

And the youngest, Wulfgang. He looked small and babyish alongside the other two, but was neither. He was a superb horseman and packed a punch to fell oxen, as Anton’s sore jaw and loose tooth reminded him. No longer the amiable varlet who had tended his brother’s boots and clothes and tack without complaint last week, he was now a killer, as dangerous as a lightning bolt. Furthermore, he lusted after the Ice Maiden, and she craved him too, although she staunchly denied it. Shining like gold sequins, his pale eyes stared fixedly at Anton; his face was unreadable and almost frightening.

The absence of middle brother Marek meant that this was a military emergency that did not concern a renegade monk.

“Please sit!” Still shivering, Anton squatted before the fire to hog the heat. The others were all well swathed in furs and hats. Otto took the stool by the dressing board, Vlad and Wulf folded down atop clothes chests.

“You picked the worst possible time to interrupt,” Anton grumbled, carefully not looking at Wulf. Let him yearn!

“Oh, did we?” im we? Vlad growled. “Well, let me tell you, Count, that while you’ve been sarding your brains out, we three have been doing your work for you. None of us has been to bed even to sleep, let alone getting any of what seems to be your only interest in life.” Always the soul of tact, was Vlad.

“Sorry,” Anton said airily, not meaning it. “Didn’t know that. Explain.” Outranking his two most senior brothers, so that they must report to him, was a pleasant novelty. In three centuries, no Magnus had ever risen to the rank of count.

“It’s like this,” Otto said. “The rain stopped in the night, although later we had snow. The pickets on watch saw fires down at High Meadows. They woke Dali Notivova and he came and told Vlad. We doubled the guard and began reinforcing the south gate, stockpiling weapons and arrows, and so on. Didn’t think you’d want your married life interrupted.”

“Who is it?” Anton demanded, although he could guess.

“Havel Vranov.”

“Sure?”

“At first light I went and looked,” Wulf said quietly. His boots were muddy and had blades of grass stuck to them.

“I gave orders,” Anton barked, “strict orders, that the gates were to remain shut until I said otherwise. You have no authority to overrule me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh!”

“Arrghem!” Only Vlad could clear his throat and make it sound so much like mockery. “He says they’re flying the Hound’s pennants.”

The Hound of the Hills, Havel Vranov, lord of the Pelrelm march, and thus a neighbor-but now a traitor to his king.

“How many?”

“Didn’t try an exact count,” Wulf said, his face still wooden. “Many hundreds. At least twenty knights’ pavilions. They have closed the road, of course, which is why no one got through to warn us.”

So now Castle Gallant was truly under siege. There were only two ways in and out. The Wends held the road to the north gate, and now their lackey Havel was at the south. Not that any Magnus in history had ever dreamed of running away from danger.

Anton turned back to Vlad. “You’re the expert, Brother. What happens now?”

The big man laughed. “We have unlimited water, unless the enemy breaks in and takes the Quarantine Road, and even then we can lower buckets to the river. So far I’ r Ive tracked down two weeks’ rations, which could be spread out to four or five weeks, but only four days’ fodder for the horses, so we’d better start eating them while they’re plump. We can get by until mid-November, more or less. By then the Wends are going to be freezing their pretty little butts, sitting out there in the hills while the lake ices over behind them.”

“But what do we do?”

Vlad leered through his wilderness of beard. “You’re giving me overall command?”

Anton restrained his temper, never an easy feat early in the morning. Vlad was notoriously prone to speak his mind, but having to accept orders from a younger brother who had been promoted to the giddy rank of count while he was still a mere knight must be straining every fiber of his self-control.

“Vlad, I am trying to apply your renowned expertise in warfare and siegecraft. I already appointed Dalibor Notivova constable. To reverse that decision after two days would not help the men’s opinion of their new count.”

“Dalibor Notivova doesn’t know a halberd from an arquebus.”

“He lacks your experience, yes, but he’s a local, the men like him, and obviously he’s been deferring to you already. What more do you need?”

“Dali’s a good man,” Wulf said softly.

Vlad glared down at him as if about to ask how a boy knew what a good man was, and then, surprisingly, agreed. “Yes, he is. We can expect the Wends to appear at the north barbican any minute. You need to issue a proclamation that we’re under siege and all able-bodied men are to report for defense.”

“Do it,” Anton said. “Sound the tocsin. Tell Dalibor that you speak with my voice. He won’t argue.”

For a moment Vlad looked mutinous again, but Otto said quietly, “That sounds like a fair compromise.”

A satisfied leer parted the big man’s beard. He nodded but did not rise. “I need weeks and we may not have an hour. We’ve got a few pathetic old firearms but almost no powder. There are emplacements on the roofs of the barbicans to anchor trebuchets, but we need timber and ammunition. I’ll have to tear down houses.”

“Many people fled town,” Anton said. “Take their homes.”

Showing his teeth in a ferocious grin, Vlad rose to his full, enormous height and marched out, leaving the door ajar. Wulf went and closed it, then returned to his seat on the chest.

“Is that all?” Anton said. “Can I go back to what I was doing?” That was a second jab, but again he did not look at Wulf as he sai-bolf as hd it.

“No,” Otto said, frowning. “More bad news. Marek has been taken from us. He was murdered last night, just after you went off to bed.”

Dead? Marek? No! It was too early in the morning to deal with that. Anton whispered an Ave and crossed himself. Marek, Marek! Marek had always been the brother who mattered. Their mother had died bearing Wulf, and in Anton’s earliest memories, Otto and Vlad were already adolescents in weapons training. But Marek, just three years older than he, had been a brother to love and follow and look up to-though not literally, for even as a child Anton had been the taller. Five years ago Marek had been taken away and locked up in a monastery. Only yesterday he had come back into Anton’s life, arriving here in Castle Gallant, his smiling little self again… They had barely had time to exchange a dozen words. A long chat with Marek, getting to know each other again, had been the top item on today’s agenda. Murdered?

“By whom?” Anton had already hanged one man in his fiefdom, and he would certainly hang this one.

“I’ll let Wulf tell you,” Otto said.

Oh, it was like that, was it? A cold shiver of fear prickled down Anton’s back as he turned to meet Wulf’s wolfish yellow eyes. He still had not adjusted to the dramatic transformation of his dreamy younger brother. An affable, soft-spoken youth had become a sinister presence; everybody’s friend, a minion of the devil. He killed men in cold blood.

But now he was strangely downcast. “Last night, when I went over to Long Valley to kill Havel’s in-house Speaker, Marek not only insisted on coming with me, he begged me to let him pull the trigger. He wanted to prove to us that he was still a true Magnus, I think. So I opened the gate through limbo for him, and Marek shot the bolt into Father Vilhelmas. It was Marek the witnesses saw. And it turned out that Havel had another Speaker there with him. A short while later, after you left us drinking in the solar, that one turned the tables. He appeared in our midst and cursed Marek for killing Vilhelmas. And then Marek fell back in his chair, dead.”