Брайан Макклеллан - The Mad Lancers

“What are you doing?” Sirod demanded of his Privileged.

“I’ll deal with it, my lord,” Bierutka said, his voice sharp. “Go to the museum for the night.” Bierutka stalked into the kitchen, tugging angrily at his gloves as Sirod made his exit. “You’re a nuisance, Major Styke,” Bierutka said.

The next bit of sorcery took Styke by surprise – a gust of wind punching him in the stomach hard enough that he swore a rib cracked. The frying pan flew out of his hand, and Styke bounced off the stove and fell to the ground. Flailing for purchase, Styke caught himself on one of the big iron pots, the kind that cooks used to make soup for the entire household staff.

Bierutka, clearly frustrated, closed the distance between them at a quick stride as he shook out the fingers of both hands.

Styke gathered all his strength and lifted the immense pot, standing up and swinging it as Bierutka rounded the preparation table. He stumbled forward into Bierutka, and the Privileged’s hands rose in defense. Styke felt the pot impact with something before it suddenly shot out of his hands and flew across the room, raising an enormous racket. Styke reeled backward into the stove.

Bierutka stared at his left hand. The pot had slammed into his fingers at the same moment his sorcery sent it flying, leaving the hand bent at an odd angle, the knuckles bashed and bleeding through the white gloves. He blinked in shock. “You’re beginning to–”

Seeing double and barely able to stand, Styke snatched up a frying pan and staved in Bierutka’s head before he could finish the sentence.

The Privileged crumpled, leaving Styke alone in the room, choking on the spreading smoke. He dropped the frying pan on top of the body and lurched out into the hallway, looking for Sirod. He found Jackal instead.

“What’s going on?” Styke asked.

“I fired the carbine, but you didn’t hear it,” Jackal said.

“And?” Styke demanded.

“Sirod is fleeing.”

“Shit.” Styke fought through the pain and the confusion and forced himself to run toward the front door, only for Jackal to catch his arm. “He’s headed toward the museum.”

Styke reversed direction and followed Jackal back down the east wing, stopping to rest every few dozen yards. Servants rushed to and fro, a general alarm going up over the fires in the kitchen, and no one seemed to pay Styke any mind as he burst from the garden door and headed toward the grove where they’d hidden the horses. Jackal pointed into the darkness as they ran, and Styke could make out the silhouettes of a few riders galloping toward the museum in the corner of the property.

Styke untied Deshnar and pulled himself into the saddle, and within moments they burst from the grove and galloped through the darkness after Sirod.

Styke leaned down, urging Deshnar on and then turning control over to the horse. The ground seemed to disappear beneath them, Deshnar’s legs a blur, flying over the surface of the earth as if he sensed the sudden urgency swelling in Styke’s chest. The hot night air whipped at Styke’s face, forcing tears from his eyes.

In his dazed fury, realized that Rezi’s knife, the only thing he had kept of hers, was now gone. She was nothing but mist in his memory, and he could do nothing to change any of it. He wondered, as Deshnar barreled forward, if there was any point to this – if Rezi would care what he did or didn’t do. If perhaps he should turn Deshnar and disappear into the night forever, leaving Sirod to wonder about the man who’d killed his brother and his personal Privileged.

Styke thought of the lancers he’d sent out to draw off Sirod’s bodyguard, and he wondered if Blye, Cardin, and the rest were even still alive. Styke banished all of these thoughts, leaning further still against Deshnar’s neck, and feeling the powerful muscles of the warhorse roll beneath him. He breathed in Deshnar’s scent, drawing strength from it, before focusing his mind and unlimbering his lance.

He caught up to Sirod and his few bodyguards less than fifty yards from the torches glowing in the high windows of the museum. Styke left his lance in the back of one of the bodyguards and slashed his cavalry sword across the spine of another. The second man’s scream alerted the rest to Styke’s pursuit, and three more soldiers turned to fight him.

He was through them in moments, taking off the hand of the first as he drew his sword, slashing the neck of another, then letting Deshnar’s powerful shoulders bowl over the horse of the third. Deshnar barely broke stride through the whole thing, and within moments Styke was at the thick, ironwood door of the museum as Sirod slammed it in his face.

Styke smacked the butt of his saber into the door, then his shoulder – again and again. It refused to budge, even with all his strength. He could feel his frustration and that sense of urgency growing, and he choked it down and returned to the saddle, backing Deshnar up to the door.

It took two mighty blows of Deshnar’s steel-shod hooves to splinter the door, and Styke dismounted once again to use his sword to clear the remaining fragments. He stepped inside, looking for Sirod.

The bastard was alone now.

The museum had been built to replicate the ancient keeps of the Nine, and nowhere was that more apparent than in the front entry. The walls were thick stone, the ceilings fourteen feet high, and full suits of armor paraded along the length of the hallway like a king’s guard waiting at attention. The area was lit by gas lamps that had been crafted in bronze to resemble torch sconces. Styke had the distinct impression that this was what an architect thought a keep looked like, rather than an actual replica.

Styke continued down to the first door, glancing inside to find a long hall, lit similarly, with twenty-foot ceilings and walls covered in art. Pedestals with ancient busts marked the spots between each piece, and the shadows played long behind them. The hall appeared to end in thirty yards, so he moved on to the next doorway.

The second hall had a different motif – something distinctly more foreign, with ancient stone slabs and a dozen sarcophagi lining each wall. There were even bones on low platforms, and the room seemed to smell of sand. Styke moved on, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other to keep from stumbling, feeling his strength ebb with each step.

Room after room continued, each of them decorated with the art and artifacts from a different country. After that first room and a couple of pieces of art that Styke recognized from visiting the Landfall museum a decade ago, nothing was familiar. It was foreign to him, strange and exotic, and he wondered why such a collection would catch the imagination of any man. Ego, he supposed.

The whole place smelled of sorcery to him – a biting, metallic flavor that reminded him of a Palo bone-eye he’d met on the frontier, though not exactly the same. It grew stronger as he proceeded.

He heard a crash from the second-to-last room in the long hall and stalked toward it, sword at the ready He put his back to the wall just outside the door, listening for further sound. There was an odd noise – a crack, followed by number of fast clicks. Styke stepped into the doorway and raised his sword.

A string thrummed, and something struck Styke full in the chest, producing a meaty thwap at it impacted. He staggered back several steps and looked down, the breath knocked out of him, and stared at the short, feathered bolt sticking out of his chest just an inch or two above his heart.

He looked up, blinking through tears, pushing away the pain, to find Sirod cranking a winch on an old crossbow. The smell of that metallic sorcery filled Styke’s nostrils, and he saw that the room behind Sirod was filled with suits of ancient armor displayed on mannequins, and that the walls were decorated with literally thousands of weapons.