Paul Finch - Dark North

Zalmyra rose to her feet in disbelief.

A great crossbow, laid across a horizontal frame, blocked her escape. A bedraggled, mailed figure was hunched behind it, clearly taking shelter, but with one hand clamped on the release-lever. Maybe twenty extra-large bolts were loaded into the machine; a ray of sunlight broke from the gathering cloud and embossed their needle-tips.

Zalmyra pondered her position very carefully.

The archery machine was forty yards in front of her; already she and her team were in range. There was nowhere else she could go; the warrior didn’t even need to take aim. If she drove at him hard, she wouldn’t get within ten yards before her horses were bristling with shafts. The only possible alternative was to retreat, but she could not turn the carriage around. She would have to walk, which would make her easy prey for the Black Wolf of the North.

It was strange that the mailed figure had not triggered the device already, though perhaps he was unsure of her intentions. Might she charm him — as she had charmed so many men in the past before killing them? By his aspect, he was frightened. He had likely been through agonies and despair just to get this far. Not just frightened therefore, but maybe mad with fear.

Zalmyra was coldly furious to have been thwarted in this way. How could a simple man-at-arms with a brutish weapon like this put paid to all her plans?

She took the wand from the chain at her waist. Its orb began to glow with an intense aquamarine lustre; she still had credit with the dark powers. In her mind she incanted, and as she did she stood, spread her arms and closed her eyes. The air swirled around her in a vortex. She felt her body tightening and contracting: her skull, her ribcage. Her inner organs were squeezed, as her joints contorted out of shape. The pain was horrific, but she bore through it.

Despite his terror of the unholy adversary he was facing, Malvolio rose slowly to his feet. His hand slipped free of the Scorpion’s release-lever, his weariness from the long, arduous climb back to this high ridge forgotten. The tall woman on the driving-bench no longer looked so tall. In fact she no longer looked like a woman. The thin black gown she was wearing suddenly seemed to consist of black feathers, and her outstretched arms had become tapering, bony appendages, sprouting yet more feathers. She was shortening, shrinking inward, while her neck was extending to impossible length. Where once she’d had a nose and mouth, he saw the glint of an orange bill.

“A swan, by damn!” he whispered.

Whoever this woman was, she had changed her form into that of a large, black swan. Almost lazily, the great fowl took wing, lofting its way along the path towards him.

Malvolio grabbed hold of the release-lever again. But the swan veered away to the west, allowing the breeze to carry it. Its wingspan covered maybe six feet or more. It was beautiful, framed on the clouds behind. A voice inside Malvolio told him that he still must shoot at it; that this gorgeous thing was a facade, and inside it beat the heart of a devil. But it was already out of the Scorpion’s sights. The weapon’s undercarriage was steel and timber, and far too heavy for him to shift on his own. In any case, the swan rose upward, soaring into the sky, so even if he could have turned the machine around, he could not discharge his missiles at such an angle. He tried anyway, grunting, feeling like a dumb ox who had just squandered a great opportunity.

“Loosen the pivot!” a voice said.

Malvolio spun around, astonished to see Tribune Maximion alongside him.

The Roman was ragged and grimy, but had approached from behind him, as if he had journeyed some distance along the ridge-way road while Malvolio was down on the lower slopes and now, for some reason, had returned.

“Loosen the pivot!” Maximion said again, reaching to a nut located low in the weapon’s frame, and turning it.

There was a mechanical clunk , and suddenly the upper section of the machine swung freely on its base.

“ Here , you fool!” Maximion said. “Do they teach you nothing useful in the ranks of chivalry?” He rotated a crank-handle, and a shining steel screw ascended, raising the bow by several inches. Malvolio could now swivel or pivot the weapon in any direction, and up and down as well.

Malvolio swung the mechanism to the west and levered it upward. The black swan still rode the wind, maybe thirty yards away, soaring steadily and gracefully. He struck the trigger, unleashing a hail of bolts which rattled away like a flock of metallic hawks, flying straight and sure.

There was an explosion of feathers, but no sound.

The swan dropped from the sky, turning over and over.

As it tumbled, it reassumed the dimensions of a human female, the rags of its black garb trailing behind it. Its only feathers now were those of the many shafts, maybe ten or twelve in total, transfixing its head and body. Malvolio leaned dangerously out to track its progress. Far below, maybe four hundred feet or more, the grisly figure struck the boulders, rolled a few yards and then lay, mangled and motionless. He watched it long and hard to ensure it remained still. When he eventually turned back, Maximion was leaning tiredly against the Scorpion.

Before Malvolio could say anything, they heard a hoofbeat.

A small party had arrived on the far side of the black coach: Earl Lucan, pushing a two-wheeled handcart, three forms shrouded in black fur lying atop it. Countess Trelawna was behind him, seated on Alaric’s horse and wrapped in a shawl, her head hung low.

Lucan, looking more than a little puzzled, sidled around the stationary coach and proceeded along the road to the Scorpion, where Malvolio and Maximion awaited him. The squire pointed down into the gulf. Lucan focused on the inert form at the bottom.

“You?” he finally asked.

Malvolio nodded warily.

Lucan turned to Maximion, a querying look on his face.

“My horse died on me,” the Roman explained. “I managed to climb off before its carcass fell down the south face of the ridge.”

Lucan’s brow furrowed, as if he was debating some complex issue with himself. Finally he said: “Climb aboard the coach. You too, Malvolio. But… first, help me place these bodies on top.” He led them around to where the handcart awaited. “I’m sorry to say this, Malvolio, but one of them is Alaric.”

The squire merely nodded again, and wiped his runny nose. His eyes remained dry; as he would later tell folk, he had no more tears to shed. One by one they moved the fur-wrapped bundles, and bound them in place on top of the coach. The other two were Gerta and Felix Rufio. Lucan said that all three deserved better than slow corruption in the now derelict Castello Malconi.

“ Vae victus ,” Maximion replied with a shrug.

Lucan glanced at him. “None of them perished the way you suspect.”

“Does it matter?” Maximion wondered.

“Perhaps… if you count chivalry a virtue.”

Maximion smiled to himself. “Your way of life is so much simpler than ours, Earl Lucan. And there are doubtless benefits in that. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it will last forever.”

“What way of life is this?”

“Honesty and straight-talking, instead of intrigue and treachery. Powerful lords who exactly match the image they present to the world, with no attempt at pretence. All the powers under Heaven compressed into the hands of a few, and all the rest complying like sheep… or dying. It’s an efficient way, if not a kind one, but ultimately it will fail. You may have an enlightened king now, and great knights to enforce his rule with impossible feats of courage. But that won’t always be the case, and in due course, as your world crumbles, you will look to the Roman way.”