Janny Wurts - To Ride Hell’s Chasm

Mykkael stopped. He regarded his most stalwart sergeant’s dismay with a dawning spark of grim interest. ‘You’re suggesting I might change my clothing?’

Sergeant Cade gave way and threw up his hands, harried at last to despair. ‘You won’t get the chance. Devall’s heir apparent sent an accredited delegate with five servants here to receive you. They’ve been cooling their heels with bad grace for an hour. Since the wardroom’s too noisy to keep them in comfort, we put them upstairs in your quarters.’

The effort of dragging his game knee upstairs, weighed down by waterlogged boots, destroyed the lingering, last bit of relief bestowed by Jussoud’s expert hands. Mykkael reached the landing, streaming fresh sweat. As his hip socket seized with a shot bolt of agony, he stopped and braced a saving hand against the stone wall by the door jamb. There, wrapped in shadow, reliant on stillness to ease his stressed leg, he all but gagged on the wafted scent of exotic floral perfume. The fragrance overpowered even his soiled clothes. Mykkael’s first response, to indulge in ripe language, stayed locked behind his shut teeth. Cat-quiet, not smiling, he took pause instead, and measured the extent of his violated privacy.

Devall’s servants had disdained to use the clay lamp from his field kit. Accustomed to refinements and lowland wealth, and no doubt put off by fish oil, they had lit the garrison’s hoarded store of precious beeswax candles. The chest just ransacked to find them was shut, the lid occupied by a liveried adolescent, who buffed his fingernails with the snakeroot cloth Mykkael saved for polishing brass. More effete servants perched on his pallet. The largest pair had appropriated his pillows for backrests. Another one snored on the folded camp blanket, his pudgy hands clasped on his belly. The last rested boots fine enough for a lordling on Mykkael’s straw-stuffed hassock, uncaring whether the bronze caps on his heels might scratch the painted leather.

The captain might ignore those self-absorbed oversights. But not the barebones necessity, that the high stool by the trestle he required to relieve his scarred knee was currently unavailable. The Prince of Devall’s accredited envoy sat there, an older man with the arrogant ease ingrained by born privilege and crown office. His back was turned. The furred hem of a costly, embroidered robe lapped at his neatly tucked ankles, and his barbered head tilted with the air of a man absorbed by illicit reading.

The pain hounded Mykkael to a split-second choice, and efficiency overrode nicety. He drew his sword.

The grating slide of steel leaving scabbard whipped the dignitary to his feet. His raw leap of startlement whirled him around as the captain limped into the room, then sent him in stumbling retreat from a weapon point dulled by hard use.

Each dent, each scratch, each pit etched by weather lay exposed in the flare of the candles.

The servant on the stores chest gave a shrill squeak and dropped the polishing cloth in his lap.

‘Not to worry.’ Mykkael flashed his teeth, not a smile, snapped the cloth off the boy’s trembling knee, then hooked his vacated stool just in time. Since his last, staggered stride towards collapse would be seen as a loutish breach of diplomacy, he turned the effect to advantage. ‘This is a northern-forged longsword, as you see. Not a shaman’s weapon, that must be appeased by the taste of living flesh when it’s bared. I’ve only drawn it for cleaning, besides.’

While the High Prince’s delegation eyed his bared blade with incensed apprehension, Mykkael met and searched six flinching glances one after the next, without quarter. ‘Relax. Ordinary steel means nobody bleeds.’

As the dignitary smoothed down his ruffled clothes, and the servants nursed their shocked nerves, the garrison captain granted them space. He looked down, let them stare as they pleased while he scrounged after his oil jar. The interval confirmed his suspicion that his papers had been disarranged. So had his quill pens, the keep’s books, the ground pigments for inks, and his boxes of spare fletching and broadheads. Every belonging he kept on the trestle had been callously fingered and moved.

In deflected pique, Mykkael dipped the cloth and began to attack the rust on his weapon. The white snakeroot fibres quickly turned colour. To the untutored eye, the stains would appear indistinguishable from dried blood.

Soon enough, he was gratified by excitable whispers behind the servants’ cupped hands. While the dignitary dared a mincing step forward and floundered to salvage diplomacy, Mykkael scarcely regretted the uproar aroused by his ornery leg. Dog-tired, in itching need of a bath, he allowed his ill humour to ride him. ‘Since you didn’t come down from the Highgate for tea, what can the garrison do for you?’

Gold chains flashed as the foreigner peered down his cosseted nose. Mykkael captured the moment, as the watery, pale eyes flickered over his person, and dismissed him. The man’s shaved, lowland features showed his transparent thought: that Devall’s greater majesty owed no grace of respect to desert-bred stock, bound by poor fortune to accept the paid service of an isolate mountain kingdom. Devall’s suave overture would be dutifully delivered, though every word would ring hollow.

‘His Highness, for whom I stand as crown advocate, wished to offer his assistance with the search to find Princess Anja. Armed men can be spared from his personal retinue, and gold, as need be, to loosen those tongues you might find reluctant to talk.’

Mykkael raised his eyebrows, his attention apparently fixed on his work with the sword. ‘They’d crawl through the sewers at my command?’

The advocate stiffened.

The movement snapped Mykkael’s head up. His brown eyes shone like hammered bronze in the excessive flood of the candlelight. ‘Ah, there, don’t take affront. Gold braid and velvet won’t suit, I do realize. Why not offer Devall’s guardsmen to Taskin?’

Unfazed by the servants’ skewering regard, Mykkael watched, unblinking, while a man who was not thinking civilized words maintained his mask of state dignity. ‘Commander Taskin has been offered assistance as well. In his Highness’s name, I can say that gold braid and velvet are of trifling concern beside the royal bride’s safety.’

‘I agree.’ Mykkael raised his sword, and swung towards the nearest candle to sight down the business edge. He set down the rag, then recovered the whetstone he also used as a paperweight. ‘Tell your prince his generosity has my heartfelt thanks. If Sessalie’s garrison requires his assistance, his men, or his bullion, I will inform him by way of Commander Taskin.’

Devall’s envoy pursed sour lips. ‘You don’t care for her Grace’s security, outsider?’

Mykkael took his time, primed the whetstone with oil, then ran it in a ringing hard stroke down the length of his blade. ‘King Isendon, her father, cares very much. I work in his name.’ Another stroke; the battered weapon’s exceptional temper sang aloud with ungentle warning. ‘Better that his Highness of Devall should be reminded not to forget that.’

‘You were a mercenary, before this,’ the delegate observed in contempt.

‘Proud of it,’ Mykkael agreed, reasonable. Proud enough to know, in Sessalie’s case, that the keys to a kingdom were not in his purview to sell. ‘Are you done here?’

‘Apparently so.’ The royal advocate snapped irritable fingers and rousted his bevy of servants. The industrious one elbowed his fellow awake. The others rose, yawning and scattering the pillows. As his indolent retinue assembled about him, the dignitary bestowed a crisp bow, then gathered his robes and swept out. The ruffle of air stirred up by his exit streamed the candles, and wafted the sickly sweet odour of hyacinth.