Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

“Isen is against my uncle?” That sounded promising. Count Isen was madder than a bag of ferrets but very capable and with a standing army of his own.

“I’m sure the count’s loyalty is beyond reproach,” Poe replied. “But he cannot yet have expressed an opinion on the matter. Even with the swiftest of messengers and leaving his hall immediately the count can’t be anywhere near Vermillion. I fear the king has simply anticipated defiance where I’m sure none exists.”

I was far less sure, but the count’s opinion didn’t matter one way or the other if he was still down at his holdings in the south. “So we’re doomed to live out the rest of our lives in this damn awful dungeon then?”

I sunk further back into the chair and smiled at the maid standing attendance between two guardsmen at the door. A pretty girl with red curls. “They’ll move us to the Marsail cells come morning.” An ancient, crumbling lord I recognized but couldn’t name. “That silly boy’s too scared to spare the men right now.”

“Hmmm.” I tested my chain. It turns out that heavy chains are just for show. A light chain will hold a man. I had more chance of breaking off the chair leg that the other end was wrapped about. Actually, if not for the half dozen guards stationed around the walls, I could just turn the armchair over and slip the chain free. But with my sword gone, my knife confiscated, and the fact I had no intention of pitting myself against six trained guards, with or without a sword, my options were limited. “They seem to be having fun.” The sounds of conversation just reached us from Hertet’s court, a low continuous rumble interspersed with the occasional shriek of laughter or outburst of applause. “Scared out of their wits, most of them.” The Baron of Strombol, a portly but fierce little man governing a sizable territory in the mountains to the north. “Terrified of whatever is at our gates, frightened that the Red Queen won’t come back to save them, frightened that she will.”

“She isn’t dead?” I hadn’t believed it, not truly. I didn’t think she could die. Not a woman that tough. And the Silent Sister . . . she always seemed too old for death to bother with.

The baron threw up his hands, chain clattering. “Who knows? Hertet says she is, but I’ve had no word of it save his. Wishful thinking?” I pursed my lips. It was perhaps the best chance the heir-apparentlynot was ever going to get to wear the crown. Maybe he just decided to gamble. We both shared that weakness. I understood gambling. We sat and time passed. I took a goblet of wine and picked at a bowl of olives. I smiled at the maid and earned a scowl for staring. A few parts of me even stopped aching, though I knew I’d be walking like an old man tomorrow, if I could even stand. It would have been quite pleasant but for the nagging of an unwelcome conscience. I’d left Darin’s wife and child in the care of a necromancer and sent just a dozen men under the command of a shiny knight to save them. Along with a barbed conscience I also had “overwhelming terror” to spoil the evening for me. The certain knowledge that the forces at the Appan Gate would soon crumble if they hadn’t already, and the tide of dead citizenry would then swamp the palace walls and kill us all.

I had less than an hour’s uneasy rest before the screaming started. I recognized it immediately despite the sound reaching only faintly through the curtained windows. The death-scream, issuing from the mouths of corpses all across the palace compound.

“What the?” The baron shifted his bulk around in the narrow confines of his chair.

“The lichkin is here.” I’d intended it to be a resigned announcement but it emerged more as a squeaking whisper.

“The what?” Bonarti Poe looked as frightened as a man could be of something he knew nothing about.

“A bad thing,” I said.

By the sound of it the lichkin hadn’t come at the head of a breakthrough from the gate. The death-scream was too scattered and too quiet for that. Even so, there were many of the dead and the lichkin on its own was a thing to fear. In Hell a single lichkin had defeated Snorri ver Snagason in moments.

My chair seemed suddenly less comfortable, more like an anchor holding the lamb for the slaughter. The illumination from the new king’s candles and lamps seemed to grow more dim by the moment, as if a second sunset were upon us, one that cared nothing for the works of men, only that the light must die. Shadows lengthened and grew darker, twitching with possibility.

And then the lichkin drew near. I could almost taste it through the outer wall of Milano House, stalking the night. Colours died, shade by shade, leaving the room subdued, and a great sorrow fell across us, blacker than the blackest of black dog days-the certainty that joy had fled and nothing would ever be right in the world again.

It lasted an age, but at last the sensation lifted by degrees. Poe’s weeping quieted to a deep heaving. The oppression eased enough for me to wonder how bad it must have been for the men out there in the dark with just the feeble illumination of torch and moon between them and that stalking horror. It had been terrible even when safe in the light, comfort, and security of the house.

A death-scream right below the window answered my question and made me lurch in my chair so badly it nearly tipped over. Men had died out there from sheer terror, and now they tore at their living comrades, spreading horror and panic.

Glancing about me, I saw that the curtains had developed grey patches where the material had rotted. The brass handles on the doors held a tarnished look. All of us, prisoners and guards alike, looked aged, as if we’d spent a week without sleep.

“We need to get out of here. We need to get out of here. We need-”

A skinny lord with a wispy moustache leapt to his feet, yanking at the chain restraining him. He’d turned the chair over and had managed to tug the chain from the leg before the guards beat him down. “Shut it! Just shut it!” One of the guardsmen in the struggle gained his feet, raw-knuckled from punching Lord Wispy in the jaw. He looked more scared than the fallen prisoner, the deep-set eyes in his piggy face as haunted as if they’d seen the butcher coming for his bacon. The sounds of fighting and panic reached us from outside. Screaming, both from the hungry dead and the terrified living, rang out toward the front of the house. We heard shutters splinter in the chamber next to us. “The windows! Barricade the windows!” I stood up, lifted my chair, releasing the chain from around its leg, and walked with it toward the curtains. None of the guards moved to stop me: instead they looked about for anything that might aid the effort.

I reached to help two guardsmen struggling with a heavy cabinet, the treasured pottery within spilling from its many shelves. Nobody commented on the fact that the chain on my wrist now hung loose, no longer tethering me to my seat. I helped with a suit of armour and its stand then moved off to get something else to use . . . and carried on going.

The sounds of the fight outside were terrifyingly familiar. If I closed my eyes I could have been back at the Appan Gate. New sounds close by of breaking glass and splintering wood lent a little more pace to my escape. I wasn’t sure quite how far I’d been dragged after being taken from the throne room, nor in which direction to head in order to leave the building. I wasn’t even entirely sure I wanted to go outside. I opened one door onto a library, not huge, but lined with books from floor to ceiling. The windows were uncurtained-half a dozen tall, narrow arches, each sealed with a dozen plates of puddle-glass, leaded together. As I moved to pull the door closed blood splattered the entirety of each window, save the top-most panes. A wave of it breaking against the building.