David Chandler - Honour Among Thieves

The oldest of the Ancient Blades had slumped against a wall not ten feet away. Crowsbill dangled from his gauntleted hand as if he might drop it at any moment. Croy took it from him and put it in its sheath on Rory’s belt.

“Thank you, brother,” Rory said. He slurred the words as if he were drunk. Croy checked his wound and saw gore clotted and thick under the gap in his steel armor. What kind of man could cut through steel plate and chain mail with an iron axe? The berserkers must be stronger than giants when they entered their trance.

“How is it?” Rory asked. For a moment his face showed no courage at all, just the desperate fear of a man who knows he will die soon. Then his lips pressed together under his mustache. “It doesn’t feel too bad,” he blustered.

Croy nodded slowly. Even if Rory survived, even if the wound didn’t fester, he’d never use his arm again. “It’s just your left arm,” he said, knowing what Rory needed to hear. “You can still wield your Blade.”

“Hah!” Rory said, and tried to laugh. Mostly he just wheezed. “We’ll show ’em yet, won’t we, Croy, we’ll—”

He was interrupted by a sudden blare of noise. Trumpets sounding the retreat—but there was no need. A crowd of soldiers was already rushing up the high street toward the inner bailey, many of them throwing away their weapons as they ran.

“Cowards!” Sir Rory said, spitting up blood.

“Villeins, most of them,” Croy observed. Conscripts. Until ten days ago, for such men even holding a weapon was a crime. Now in less than a fortnight they’d been told they would have to take up arms in defense of their king. They hadn’t been given enough training. They had never fought before. “They’re scared.”

“We should hang every last one of the rotters,” Rory insisted.

Croy said nothing but started to head up the high street himself, one shoulder under Rory’s good arm. He didn’t get more than twenty feet before Hew grabbed his sword hand.

“Croy, the king—”

Croy shook his head. “No one seems to know where he is.”

“We must find him. He could be under the feet of this mob. He could be wounded and dying even now.”

Croy grimaced at the thought. “I’ll find him. You take Rory and get to the keep. Orne! Orne, are you here?”

The doomed knight came running.

“Orne,” Croy said, “we need to find the king.”

Orne sighed. “Yes, we do.”

Hew grabbed the side of Croy’s helm and pulled it around so they were looking in each other’s eyes. “Get him to safety. At any cost. That’s my command.”

“And I shall obey,” Croy said. Then he broke away and started running.

Panicked men were everywhere. Only a handful still carried their weapons. Some had even torn off their canvas jack and their kettle hats, perhaps thinking they would not be slaughtered if they didn’t look like soldiers. Croy tried to grab a few of them and tell them to get to the keep, that the only safety available lay there, but none of them listened. They were crowding into cellars or the upper floors of houses, barricading themselves in as if a few pieces of furniture or a locked door could keep out the barbarians.

It was tough going to move through the fortress-town against the flow of that crowd. Once Orne had to draw Bloodquaffer and wave it over his head to force the fleeing men to make room.

Before they had covered a half dozen streets, they heard a rumbling groan and a shriek of tearing metal, and knew the portcullis had fallen. The barbarians had entered Helstrow.

“How long do you think Hew can hold the keep?” Orne asked.

“I don’t know,” Croy said, between clenched teeth. He stepped out of the way of a cart full of men still holding their bill hooks. The men looked scared but they hadn’t deserted yet, so maybe they were headed for the fighting. “There’s food in the keep for months, and barrels of arrows, and the smithies … but this isn’t a siege. It’s a direct assault. If Hew gets enough men inside and locks the gates before the barbarians get to him, maybe a few days.”

“What of the queen, and their children?”

Croy pushed his way through a knot of soldiers on their knees, begging the bloodgod for help. “They were sent to Greenmarsh days ago. You,” he shouted, and grabbed one of the praying men. “Did the king come through here?”

The man wouldn’t stop praying until Croy shook him. “I’ll ask again. Have you seen the king?”

“He’s not with you, sir knight?” the man asked, and his face dissolved in blubbering terror.

Croy pushed the wretch away and started to storm off when a woman leaned out of a window above his head and shouted for his attention.

“They went down there,” she said, and pointed to a narrow lane between two houses.

“Milady,” Croy said, “you have my thanks.”

“I’m no lady! But if you’d repay me, tell me—what should we do? I have six children up here and they want to know what all the noise is.”

Croy looked back toward the eastern gate, where he knew the fighting would be hot and desperate. For the moment at least his view was blocked by the intervening houses, but any minute now the berserkers would come flooding through this street, destroying everything in their path, murdering every man, woman and child they met. He looked up again at the woman in the window and thought of what advice he could possibly give her.

“Please, sir knight. For my children’s sake?”

He closed his eyes and looked down. “Get to the keep, if you can. Stick as close to the western wall as possible—if you see anyone bloodied or screaming, run away. I’ll pray for you, goodwife.”

She slammed the shutters of the window closed without another word.

Croy and Orne hurried down the lane she’d indicated and saw a serjeant with an arrow sticking out of his back. He was breathing heavily and looked as pale as a sheet, but he waved them over when he saw them.

The serjeant led them down into a root cellar, where the king lay on a bed of sack cloth. His eyes were closed and there was a bad bruise on his left temple. “Hasn’t … woken since I … brought him here,” the serjeant gasped.

Sir Orne grabbed the arrow in the man’s back and twisted it free, then shoved a piece of cloth into the wound. The serjeant winced until tears came from his eyes, but he would not cry out.

“You’re a good man,” Croy said, and put a hand on the serjeant’s shoulder.

“Get him … to Sir Hew … he’ll …” The serjeant said no more. He sat down on the close-packed earth of the floor and just stared at the ceiling.

Croy ran back up to the street and sought about until he found what he wanted—a pair of bill hooks with long enough hafts. With these and a bed sheet from an abandoned house, he made a litter that he and Orne could carry between them. They put the king on it and started to carry him up the stairs. “Come with us,” Croy said to the wounded serjeant.

But the man was dead, his eyes rolled back up into their sockets. Croy closed his eyelids, then went back to his burden.

“Where do we take him?” Orne asked, when they were back in the street. “The keep? Or the western gate?”

Croy tried to think. He must keep the king alive, at any cost—that was Hew’s order. But where did safety lie? It was impossible to say without better information.

Lady, he prayed silently, give me a sign.

He got it—though he would gladly have taken her silence instead.

A berserker came howling down the street toward him. The man was naked and covered in wounds—shallow cuts across his face and chest, deep gashes in his legs. He held an axe in either hand.

Perhaps the berserker hadn’t even seen them in his fury—he didn’t turn to engage them, instead looking as if he would run right past the two knights in his fury. Croy whipped Ghostcutter from its sheath and cut the barbarian’s throat without resistance. The berserker fell, but behind him, perhaps only a street away, Croy could hear more of them whooping and laughing for the joy of battle.