Miles Cameron - The Fell Sword

The Duke’s son, Demetrius, Despot of the North, interposed his horse between the knight and his father. ‘You’ll be paid at the end of this parade. Ser Raoul, you are dismissed without pay. If you don’t like it, I will have the skin stripped from your back and I’ll sell your useless carcass into slavery.’ The younger man’s voice cut like a whip. He had the over-eager aggression of a young man who likes to throw his weight at obstacles.

Ser Raoul’s breathing came very fast. His hair was wild – he was missing teeth and his nose had been broken many times. It was the bulbous red nose of a heavy drinker which suggested where his pay would go if he were given any.

He reached for his sword.

‘Raoul!’ Bescanon snapped ‘Don’t do it!’

Behind the Despot, two blank-faced Easterners had their horn bows at full draw. The Despot never went anywhere without his bodyguard of blood-sworn foreigners.

Horses’ tails swished, and spring flies droned.

Raoul sighed. He reached behind himself and very carefully scratched his arse. Turned his horse. And rode off the grounds.

Half a mile to the east of Ser Raoul, Harald Derkensun stood tall in the sentry box at the gate of the city.

Nordikans almost never served as gate guards. They were far above such things. But the Logothete of the Drum had ordered that the gate guards be changed a week ago.

He had further ordered that the Nordikans stand guard in the plain tunics and cloaks of the City Militia.

Derkensun thought it was all foolishness. He was head and shoulders taller than almost any Morean and he suspected that every man passing the gate knew him for what he was, but that was the way with Morea. Wheels turned, sometimes inside wheels, and sometimes for no other reason than the turning. There were plots, and plots to cover plots, and some men, Derkensun had discovered, would plot merely to hear themselves talk.

This morning, however, the Logothete’s precautions showed some sense, as Derkensun had enough experience of the palace to know that the party riding towards him was led by the Emperor. He drew his sword, and held it before his shield.

The Emperor reined in his horse. Just past him, Garald Gurnnison, the most dangerous man in the Guard, met his eye and gave a very slight nod.

The Emperor knew him immediately, of course. He knew all his guard. His fingers moved. He said, ‘Good that you are on guard here. Be wary.’ Then the Emperor returned Derkensun’s salute. ‘Guardsman Derkensun! Are you being punished for some transgression?’

Behind the Emperor, Derkensun saw the Logothete. The slim man raised an eyebrow. Derkensun allowed himself to look embarrassed. If the Emperor hadn’t been told about the heightened security, it was not Guardsman Derkensun’s job to inform him.

The Emperor laughed. ‘Poor Nordikans. Too much discipline.’ He raised his riding whip in token of farewell, and rode through the gate.

Ser Raoul was still scratching – mooning the Duke – when he passed the Emperor riding well out of the city without an escort. Out of habit he stopped scratching and bowed in the saddle. The Emperor gave him a little wave.

Behind them, the Despot turned to his father. ‘Where are the Vardariotes?’

The pride of the household cavalry, the Vardariotes were Easterners from across the ocean, and further yet. They were a remnant of a bygone time, when the Empire ran from the steppes of Dacia across the sea all the way to the mountains of Alba and beyond. No Emperor had ridden the steppes in twenty generations, but young men and women still left their clans and came to the Emperor as their kin had done half a thousand years before. Like the Nordikans, they were loyal.

The Duke watched the Emperor approach. ‘The Vardariotes were not interested in my muster,’ he said mildly. ‘So I ordered them to stay in their barracks.’

The Despot turned to his father. ‘What are you doing?’

The Duke shrugged. ‘Something that should have been done a long time ago.’

‘Pater!’

The Duke whirled on his son as a tiger turns on wounded prey. ‘It is now , you little fool. Comport yourself like my son, or die here with anyone who will not support me.’

The Despot looked for his bodyguard, and saw them fifty horse lengths away, surrounded by his father’s household knights.

Father and son glared at each other.

‘I’m doing this for you ,’ the Duke said softly.

The young despot met his father’s eye and held it. His own eyes narrowed. He loosed a long sigh – and grinned.

‘Then I want the Lady Irene. As my wife.’ The Despot looked at the Emperor.

‘Done,’ said his father. That would have complications, but he was happy – truly happy – to have his son beside him.

The Despot shook his head. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

The Duke raised his hand. ‘I didn’t tell anyone. That’s how you keep a secret.’

The magister watched them carefully as they rode up to the Duke. His men were well arrayed in ranks, their armour polished, and their pennons flapping in the late spring breeze.

Duke Andronicus’s eyes met the magister’s.

The magister rose in his stirrups, extended his wand, and blew the heads off two of the Emperor’s guard. They continued to sit on their horses, headless, as he turned, pointed his wand at the two junior Nordikans and struck them – one with a massive kinetikos blow to the chest that shattered the man’s ribs through his breastplate, and the other with a neat cut that opened his neck. He was showing off for his new master, and wanted the man to remember exactly what he could do.

The skill he couldn’t display in the real was that every attack had to overcome the complex, layered, and in some cases quite brilliant artefactual defences that the Nordikans carried. The lead Spatharios, for example, had tattoos that should have defended him – which would have, against a lesser caster.

As far as Aeskepiles knew, no practitioner had ever succeeded in killing a member of the Guard by the art – much less four in ten heartbeats.

He allowed himself a moment of triumph, and took a dagger in the side as a result.

The Logothete.

The magister had never imagined him a man of blood. He produced a sword – quite a long one – from the air, and rode to the Emperor’s side.

Aeskepiles raised a series of shining shields – too late, as the dagger’s bite was deep and his side was growing cold. He could feel the poison on the blade.

It was like getting a test back in Academy and finding that he’d forgotten one small thing and, as a result, all his answers were invalid.

He knew counter-spells for poison. He just had to stop panicking for long enough to think of one . . .

The Despot saw the Logothete bury a slim dagger in the magister’s side and draw a sword from the air. In the same breath, the Duke’s household knights made for the Emperor’s reins, and an unarmoured man sitting on a fine Eastern horse behind his father raised a light crossbow. He took a shot – and it went right past the Emperor.

The Logothete seemed to flow under the crossbow bolt. It should have been impossible.

His slim sword cut through a knight’s vambrace – right through his wrist, so that the man’s reaching hand dropped into the grass. The Logothete’s back-cut took out another knight’s eyes. He screamed.

The Emperor backed his horse – obviously uncertain what to do.

The Guardsman whose chest had been shattered by the showy sorcery was not dead. Somehow, he got his axe up – one-handed. His blow cleaved the helmet of another of the Duke’s knights, spattering every man present with his brains.

The Logothete got his hand on the Emperor’s bridle. He made a parry with his sword, turned the Emperor’s horse-