Janny Wurts - To Ride Hell’s Chasm

‘What if the sly lizard scales the stone of the belltower?’ the sergeant objected, taken aback.

But Taskin had already matched that contingency with a shocking array of brute force. ‘I have the remainder of your company of archers posted outside to prevent him. If My sh kael bids for escape down the wall, he’ll hit the ground as a riddled corpse.’

‘What does that leave you?’ the squad sergeant pressed.

‘Your duty comes first,’ the king’s commander declared. Then he set off through the belltower’s entry without second thoughts, or a pause to look back.

Taskin mounted the winding stair, careful to measure his pace and arrive without being winded. He had cut off the bell ropes, two storeys up, the foresight an act of solid good sense, or a move made in rampant paranoia. The debate was moot: the desert-bred he proposed to meet on equal footing posed too dangerous a cipher. Even a minor misjudgement might trigger a deadly reaction in consequence. If the crown’s first commander chose to risk his own person, he would not hazard the wellbeing of the realm. He backed his position. No man set to flight could jam the rope and climb down. If he tried, he would find himself stranded.

Yet even the most stringent set of precautions failed to ease Taskin’s nerves. Like a cat caught mincing across a hot roof, he wrung small assurance from logic: that if the war-hardened creature Sessalie’s need must put to the test had not asked in good faith for this conference, he would scarcely have consented to be trapped like a rat inside a cordoned keep.

The closed granite gloom of the stairwell gave way at due length to the airy, gold slant of the westering sunbeams that pierced through the tower’s cupola. Taskin emerged on the landing beneath the last risers that accessed the trapdoor to the belfry. Ruled by ruthless caution, he stashed the shackles and whip. Then he squinted upwards, letting his eyesight adjust to the flood of the outdoor light. No sound came from above, where Mykkael awaited. Taskin surveyed the gaps in the planked platform tied into the brick walls by hewn beams. The lit cracks showed no telltale shadow to reveal where the desertman might stand to meet him.

Warning gooseflesh prickled across Taskin’s skin. The hitched breath caused by smoke touched his senses that half instant too late. Before he could react, a blazing frond of evergreen plummeted downwards and landed, shedding sparks at his feet.

He yelled, leaped forward, and stamped out the blaze before the dry boards ignited.

Coughing through clouded fumes, he scrambled up the last steps and snapped hoarsely, ‘What damn fool act of idiocy was that?’

Mykkael was seated above, on the brick sill of one of the arches. His back to the sheer drop outside, and an insolent foot dangling over the beams that hung the brute weight of the bells, he answered, ‘I don’t trifle with foolery. Forgive me. There’s a sorcerer’s minion at large, and no space left for mistakes. That sprig of lit cedar was my act of surety, to test beyond doubt you’re not one of them.’

‘And are you quite done?’ Taskin grated, irritably slapping out the live cinders that seared holes through the hem of his surcoat.

‘You still have your archers,’ said the desert-bred, reasonable. ‘Call out the order to shoot, as you wish. But I had to be certain the commander who can order me killed is one I can trust, and not tainted.’

Taskin rubbed at his neck, found the muscles strained rock-hard with tension. ‘You realize you’re treading on dangerous ground, soldier.’ Irate enough to attack out of hand, he planted his stance on the platform and regarded the deadly creature above him. ‘Nor have I posted my bowmen at whim. Jussoud warned straight out you could drop me.’

Mykkael faced him, not arguing. His defenceless back stayed presented towards the open arch of the belfry. An archer’s prime target, in his sunlit white shirt: the only assurance in his power to offer, to back the credential of Taskin’s security. One that, even still, fell woefully short. Keen hearing would warn if a shaft launched to take him. The steep arc as it flew would grant time for evasion, long before its flanged point could strike home.

His dark face turned downwards, unreadable, Mykkael stated, ‘We all tread upon dangerous ground.’

‘Then are you the snake set into our midst?’ Taskin ripped back in blunt challenge. ‘Have you failed to notice that’s what the court factions are claiming? No one holds any scrap of hard evidence against you. But you realize, at this point, that’s not a clear-cut reason for me to stand down the outcry for your arrest.’

Mykkael snapped an oath in some guttural dialect that ground on the ear like scraped gravel. ‘Let me say what I know. Your princess is in dire peril this moment . For her sake, hear me through. As we go, you can ask me whatever you wish. I will answer as your subordinate.’

‘You can spare me my reasonable doubts on that score!’ Yet Taskin stepped back. He braced his squared shoulders against the brick wall, still flushed with fury. Only his gesture suggested the chance he might balance his options by listening.

‘All right.’ Mykkael expelled a stiff breath. ‘Protections, first.’ He shut his eyes, turned his face away to disarm any inference of threat. With placating, slow movement, he untied a wash-leather bag from his belt, then removed something strung on a stained rawhide tie. He dropped the object with a metallic clink on the platform at Taskin’s feet.

The commander dragged the thong close with his boot toe. Still without touching, he examined the queer pattern of geometry etched into the green copper disc. ‘What’s this?’

‘A talisman,’ Mykkael answered. ‘You’ll wear it next to your skin night and day, do you hear? Ignore what I’ve said at your peril.’

Taskin looked up, his eyes like forged steel. ‘Where did you get such a thing? Whose hand made it?’

‘That’s the vizier Perincar’s working.’ Mykkael swallowed. As though the words burned him to undying bitterness, he answered as he had promised. ‘The artefact came from the wars with Rathtet.’

Taskin raised startled eyebrows. ‘But I thought no survivors—’ His breathing hitched through a disastrous pause, as the most likely bent of plausibility ran a grue of dread straight through him.

‘No!’ Mykkael shook his head, looking anguished. ‘I never fought for Rathtet! No mercenaries did.’ Again, he closed his eyes; not to blunt hair-trigger reflexes, this time, but visibly wrestling an unutterable weariness. As though the forced explanation seared him to inward pain, he met Taskin’s bidding and qualified. ‘Eighteen of us lived. I fought at the side of Prince Al-Syn-Efandi. He died with his head in my lap.’

Merciless, the commander snatched the opening to interrogate. ‘If that’s the truth, then what were his last words?’

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