Rebellion: Tainted Realm: Book 2 (76 page)

Neither could Rix sleep that night. The reappearance of the mural had so unnerved him that he had returned to the observatory to scrape off all the white paint. He then chiselled away the painted stone until all trace of the mural was gone.

What would the morrow bring? The bloody end of Garramide, most likely. He looked over the edge. His guards were on duty in the sentry boxes on the towers, and further out the enemy’s campfires were blazing. All was still. What were they waiting for? More reinforcements?

He directed his lantern beam to illuminate the wall, drank some wine, dozed in his heavy coat, woke and had another glass, dozed again. The hours passed. It must have been 4 a.m. by now, the darkest time before the dawn, not that there was any difference in the winter night here, with the sky so overcast and the snow falling.

He was watching the wall, dreading that his mural would reappear from the freshly exposed stone, when Tali came stumbling up in her nightgown. Her eyes were raw, her pale skin looked as though it had been scrubbed with a brick and her blonde hair was all a’tangle.

She stared at the bare wall, looked around wildly, then located him in the darkness ten feet away. “Rix?”

“What?” he snapped. Why could he never be left alone?

“I’ve been a fool.”

“You’ve been a fool, Tobry’s been a fool, I’ve been a fool. Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“I’m a bigger one,” she wailed. She sank to the snow-covered flagstones, put her head in her hands and wept.

Rix stared at her, unnerved. Tali had suffered more and endured more than anyone he could name, yet of all the women he had known, she was the only one he had never seen cry.

“What is it?” he said, falling to his knees beside her.

He held her while she gasped out the dreadful story, covering the front of his coat with tears, and mucus from her running nose.

When she finished, he let out a strangled bark of laughter.

She thrust him away furiously, sure that he was mocking her, and stood up. Rix landed on his back, suppressing the urge to roar like a madman.

“We’re a trio, no doubt about it,” he said. “Here I am, desperately hacking my mural off the wall, terrified it’ll reappear out of nothing and call me to serve a dead man. While, downstairs, you’re carving up the man you love like a beast for slaughter.”

“It’s not funny,” she said, still sniffling.

“Our stupidity is hilarious. How could you imagine it would succeed? Any threat to a shifter always makes them shift to the more deadly form.”

“It started to work back in Caulderon.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Back then, Tobry had only been a shifter
for an hour
; the curse wouldn’t have taken properly. And he was fully conscious, the rational man in control. And,” Rix said pointedly, “you weren’t hacking a bloody great gash in him with your knife.”

“Had to try,” she said, almost inaudibly.

“No, you didn’t. Tobry refused you more than once. He explained why it couldn’t work, and so did Holm.”

“How do you know?”

“I make a point of talking to the people in my house. Why won’t you ever listen, Tali? Tobry’s shifted too many times; he’s run with the beasts and been one of them. His nature is fixed and can’t be changed, so promise me you won’t try again.”

“I promise.”

“No, look me in the eye when you say that.”

“I won’t try to heal Tobry with my blood again.”

“Do you think I’m stupid, Tali?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Say it properly, without leaving yourself an out – like healing magery.”

She swallowed, looked down. He caught her jaw in his big hand and tilted her face up. “Look me in the eye.”

She did so. “All right. I won’t try to heal Tobry again – with blood or magery.”

“Or anything else.”

“Or anything else,” she repeated.

“I still don’t trust you, but let that be the end of it.”

“You’re not angry with me?”

“I’m furious. You could have been killed or turned into a shifter, trying to do something that never had any hope of success.”

“It’s over,” she said bleakly. “He would have killed me, Rix. Tobry would have killed me – perhaps
eaten
me!” She shuddered.

“It’s not him. It’s the shifter madness.”

“I know, but it’s still over between us. My love wasn’t as strong as I thought it was.”

She shivered. “I’d better go down. I’m freezing.”

He took off his coat and put it around her like a cape. It reached all the way to her feet. “Wait a minute. I’ve got something for you.”

“What?” she said dully. Tali sat in one of the chairs, pulled her feet up and wrapped the bottom of the coat around them.

Rix unwrapped a little flat parcel and handed her the miniature of Lyf. “I cleaned it up.” He brought the lantern close.

“Thank you.”

She studied the miniature. The young Lyf could be seen clearly now, dressed in kingly robes that were a little too big for him, and wearing a simple circlet of filigree silver around his brow. His face wasn’t rendered perfectly, but it made him seem younger, more vulnerable and human.

“Does it tell you what you want to know?”

“Not immediately.”

“Some of the paint had flaked off,” said Rix. “I had to touch it up here and there. Had the devil of a job matching the colours – especially on the silver circlet —”

Tali jumped up and ran on tiptoes to the top of the stair, her head cocked. She had acute senses: her hearing and sense of smell were better than anyone he had ever known. Survival attributes, for a little slave in Cython.

“What is it?” said Rix.

“I heard a cry.”

“Someone hurt?”

“Possibly. It was wild, savage. I… I think it sounded like Blathy.”

“Then it’s on.” Rix ran across and put himself between her and the stairs. “Are you armed?”

“No.”

He pulled a knife out of a sheath and handed it to her.

“Do you think it’s mutiny?” said Tali.

Rix slid on his steel gauntlet, drew Maloch and headed down. She followed.

“I’d say so. My informant didn’t think it would come while the enemy were outside, and neither did I. But if you were seen trying to heal Tobry, you’ve probably precipitated it.”

She stifled a moan. “I’m really sorry. I’m such a fool.”

“If so,” said Rix, taking pity on her, “you’ve done everyone a favour. If we were in our beds, they might have cut all our throats as we slept.”

She gave him a tremulous smile. “What are you going to do?”

“They’ll try to kill you, me, Tobry, Holm and Swelt first. Then everyone else known to be loyal to me. I’ll have to play it as it comes. Run and warn the others. Be careful.”

“Don’t worry,” said Tali. “In Cython, I was the best of all the slaves at not being seen.”

“To survive this, you’re going to need all the skill you have.”

Far below, the clock in the hall outside his room bonged five times, its deep note echoing up the stairwell. If I were bent on mutiny and murder, Rix thought, this is the hour I’d do it, while the overworked household lies in an exhausted sleep. More than two hours of winter dark remained to do the bloody business, gather their plunder and get away.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs on the second level, Glynnie screamed. Pain stabbed through his heart. He’d taken her for granted for so long, and had been so busy fretting about Tali and Tobry, that he hadn’t given a thought to the young woman who had served him so loyally and quietly.

The girl who had been picked on since the moment they arrived in Garramide, because no one dared to have a go at him. The mutineers could be cutting her throat right now.

Rix raced down the stairs on tiptoes. At the bottom he took off like a thunderbolt, hurtled the corridors to his chambers, then froze. The guard who had been stationed outside his doorway lay dead on the floor, blood spreading from a ragged wound in his side. The blow must have come without warning, from someone he had counted a colleague, if not a friend.

Rix sprang over him and through the door. He moved into his chambers, Maloch extended. His steel gauntlet was clenched into a fist that could have broken the granite jaw of the legendary Hero, Syrten. Two minutes had passed since Glynnie’s scream, and two minutes was a long time in a bloody mutiny.

The inner door stood open, a foot away from the wall. Rix pushed it closed. If anyone was behind it he would keep pushing until he crushed them, but he felt no resistance.

A furious rage was growing in him. He had made mistakes, plenty of them, but he had also done everything he could for the hundreds of people who called Garramide home. To have them threatened and murdered, while the enemy were camped outside the gates, was the most monstrous betrayal he could imagine.

His salon was dark. Someone could have been hiding there but his senses suggested otherwise. The same went for the other business rooms of his chambers. That left only his bedchamber, the second-largest room and the one most suited for ambush because of its myriad of hiding places.

He stopped at the door, his night-sensitised eyes sweeping the room. The lamp beside his bed had burned down to a flicker. There was no one on the bed, or behind it that he could tell. What about underneath?

No, Blathy would not hide under the bed, and as he had that thought he knew she was here. She had sworn revenge after he’d killed Leatherhead, and Blathy was not the one to deviate from her purpose. She was a big, vengeful woman, not far short of his own height, and she was here to let every drop of blood out of him.

Yet his chivalrous instincts, and his upbringing, meant that he could not kill a woman. He would have to disarm her, put her to trial and let the judges take care of her. Unless she killed him first.

He moved in, sweeping Maloch from side to side as he searched along the tops of the wardrobes and in the spaces between the furniture. If he saw her, he would strike her down with the flat of the blade, then overpower and bind her.

Blathy was too cunning for him, too quick and too quiet. She must have been lying flat on top of the eight-foot-high wardrobe, out of sight. Her weight landed on his shoulders and a knee drove into the back of his neck, dropping him to the floor beside the bed and paralysing him.

Maloch went skidding and under the bed. She tore off his steel gauntlet and tossed it aside. Rix twisted his head around and caught a glimpse of her – wild-eyed, savage, blood seeping through a bandage on her left shoulder. So he wasn’t her first victim.

Blathy knelt on his back, her knees pressing excruciatingly into his kidneys. Her left hand burrowed into his hair, jerked his head back, and her knife rasped as she drew it from its sheath.

“You killed my Arkyz,” said Blathy. Her husky voice was trembling with emotion. “You cut off my man’s beautiful head and threw it in the offal heap, and I’m going to do the same to you. I’m going to rub your dead face in it.”

He could smell her pungent sweat, read the blood lust in her face. She was a strong, coarse woman, and the reek of her would be the last thing he experienced in this life. He was still paralysed and could do nothing to save himself. He could not even speak. All he could do was watch the knife as she brought it slowly and lovingly towards his throat.

S
mack!
It came out of nowhere, the unpleasant, pulpy sound of metal pounding into flesh and breaking bone. Blathy went over backwards, the tip of the knife raking across Rix’s left cheek as she fell.

His paralysis had eased enough for him to roll over, though not enough to get up. Behind him, Blathy was on hands and knees, blood streaming from her broken nose, holding the steel gauntlet that had done the damage. But who had thrown it? She tossed it aside and crawled towards Rix’s exposed throat.

Glynnie came out from under the bed, on her knees, swinging Maloch in both hands. She swiped at Blathy, the blade passing so low over Rix’s head that he felt the wind. He tried to bury himself in the carpet.

Blathy lurched to her feet, her proud nose dripping blood, and blood running down her arm from the bandaged shoulder wound. Glynnie sprang to her feet and struck upwards, aiming a ferocious blow at the older woman’s neck. Blathy leaned backwards to avoid it, then laughed mockingly.

She was almost a foot taller, twice Glynnie’s weight, and with the long knife in her hand she had the same reach as Glynnie swinging Maloch two-handed. And Rix could tell she had fought many a battle with that knife. She was fast, skilled and driven by malice.

He groaned and tried to get to his feet. Blathy kicked him in the back of the head, knocking him flat and renewing the paralysis. Clearly, she knew all there was to know about dirty fighting.

Blathy slashed at Glynnie, who avoided the blow with a dexterity Rix would not have thought possible. Blathy struck again; again Glynnie wove aside. They danced their way around the room, past the end of the bed and down the other side.

“No,” cried Rix. “She’ll pin you in the corner.”

Blathy drove Glynnie backwards with a furious set of blows, only ending when Glynnie, with a wild slash, almost took her opponent’s knife hand off at the elbow. Blathy drew back. Glynnie leapt up onto the vast bed, rolled across it and landed on her feet beside Rix. She ran around the end and now Blathy was pinned against the wall, though only for a minute. She drove Glynnie backwards again.

They fought up and back, up and back again. Blathy was tiring now, her movements slower. It was always the legs that went first, and she was much older.

The big woman tensed, and Rix could read her plan. Blathy was going to attack in a furious onslaught that would drive her small opponent backwards against the bed, and then she would cut her open.

Glynnie went backwards until her back came up against the side of the bed. Blathy rushed her. Glynnie ducked a savage slash to the throat, raised her sword at the perfect moment and Blathy drove herself onto it, all the way to the heart.

Blathy’s eyes were wet. She reached out, as if to her dead lover, and smiled a sweet smile. “Arkyz,” she whispered. “At last.”

It was over.

Glynnie left Maloch in her opponent’s chest, stepped around the body and came across to Rix, wobbly in the knees. Sweat was running down her cheeks, her face was scarlet and blood dripped from her elbow from a gash on her upper arm. He got to his knees, tried to pull himself up on the bed, but failed.

Glynnie’s breast was heaving. She looked him up and down.

“Help me up,” said Rix, his voice hoarse and crackly.

She put a small hand on each shoulder, holding him down.

“What is it?” A sudden terror struck him; had she joined the mutineers? No, the thought was preposterous.

“Anything you want to say while you’re on your knees?”

He swallowed. “Only how desperately ashamed I am. I’ve treated you badly.”

“Abom —” She stumbled over the word. “Abominably.”

“Yes. Abominably. I’m deeply sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

“I have to think about it. Can you get up?”

“I don’t think so. My neck —”

She went around behind him. Her damp fingers probed the back of his neck, down the vertebrae. The little hairs stirred there. She shoved hard with her thumbs, he heard a small crack and the numbness faded. He lumbered to his feet, looking down at Blathy. “You were right.”

“What about?” said Glynnie.

“The day we came, you said Blathy was one of those women who would only ever have one man. Now death has reunited them.”

Distantly, he could hear the sounds of fighting now. “Glynnie, it’s mutiny.”

“I know.”

She jerked the sword from Blathy’s chest and handed it to him, then the steel gauntlet, which was covered in Blathy’s blood.

His hand shook as he drew it on. “Stay here.”

Rix ran out and down, towards the yelling and the sound of blade on blade, which seemed to be coming from the dining hall. Glynnie followed, carrying Blathy’s knife. He burst in. The hall was lit only by a couple of lanterns and it took a while to make things out.

Holm had been backed up against the wall. He had a sword in his hand and was fighting two men at once, the brothers Hox. Rix could tell them from behind by their stubby legs and long, rectangular torsos. They weren’t skilled swordsmen, though they were tough and tenacious. They ought to be able to take down one old man.

Yet they were the ones flailing away, their wild blows striking sparks out of the wall, while Holm was moving back and forth like a fencing instructor. He was light on his feet for an old coot, using no more energy than he had to and defending effortlessly, though he had passed up several opportunities to kill his opponents. Surely he wasn’t a pacifist?

But he hadn’t seen the whippet-thin fellow with the strangler’s fingers sidling along the wall in the shadows. The long, greasy hair told Rix that he was the aptly named Rancid.

“Holm! Beware on your right.”

The brothers Hox turned in identical movements and rushed Rix as though glad of an excuse to get away. Had they ever seen him fight, they would not have been so eager to take him on.

“Rix?” Glynnie choked. “Please be careful.”

He did not propose to give any sword-fighting lessons, nor take any prisoners. Mutineers threatened the whole fortress. They were worse than murderers.

He slashed the left-hand brother, Rasti Hox, across the throat, then danced sideways so the dying man would not fall on him. The other brother, Narli Hox, howled like a beast and threw himself at Rix, who killed him with a blow through the chest.

As he turned to scan the hall, Rancid sprang at Holm, six feet into the air, a manoeuvre Rix had never seen before. He had a dagger in each hand and was stabbing downwards, intending to drive them through the top of Holm’s head.

But Holm wasn’t where he should have been. He ducked low under the flying man, spun on his feet and put his blade in through both of Rancid’s kidneys.

“I thought you were never going to move,” said Rix. “What took you so long?”

“Used to be a surgeon,” said Holm. “It’s decades since I practised, but I still prefer patching wounds to making them.”

“You don’t fight like a healer.”

“I had a good instructor.”

“You fight as though you
were
an instructor.”

“I’ve done a bit in my time.”

“Anything you haven’t done in your time?”

“Not much.”

“Rix, Holm?” Tali shouting. “We need help.”

They ran downstairs and into the main hall, swords at the ready. Glynnie followed, still carrying Blathy’s long knife. Tali and half a dozen of the kitchen women were barricaded behind a wall of tumbled tables and chairs. Four mutineers, three men and a woman, were flinging kitchen knives at them. Five bodies were scattered about.

Rix picked up a fallen chair and hurled it at the mutineers, cracking a short, nuggetty man over his shaven head and bringing him to his knees. The others whirled, and their hopeful looks turned to blank despair when they recognised Rix.

“Blathy is dead,” said Rix. “Also the brothers Hox. And Rancid. The mutiny is over. Surrender or die.”

“Going to die either way,” said a giant of a man with biceps the size of Rix’s thighs – the blacksmith, Tiddler. “Might as well take you with me, you shifter-loving swine.”

He lumbered forwards, swinging a monstrous double-headed war hammer, a terrible weapon in the hands of a strong man. A direct hit would smash Rix to pulp. He dared not take the risk that he might slip on the bloody floor, or stumble over a piece of broken furniture and allow Tiddler to get in a lucky blow.

The war hammer had a major weakness, however. It was so heavy that a blow could not be changed in mid-swing, and it took a long time between swings. Rix watched his opponent, followed his first blow until it had gone past, then killed him the way he had cut down Leatherhead.

The body went one way, the head another, and it took the fight out of the remaining mutineers. They knew they were going to die traitors’ deaths but they surrendered anyway. It was over.

“I’m so sick of killing,” said Rix, the sleepless nights suddenly catching up with him. “How much longer is it going to go on?”

No one answered. Too damn long, he thought. Until one side or the other is no more.

Glynnie put an arm around his waist. He looked down at her gratefully. “Did I thank you for saving my life?”

“Not adequately, but you will.”

“What’s the toll down here?” said Rix.

“At least three of the servants were murdered in their bunks,” said Holm, “and another four, maybe five, died in the fighting. And I don’t think poor old Swelt is going to make it.”

“What happened to Swelt?” cried Rix.

“He took up a sword. Said he wasn’t going to stand back and see innocent people die. He knew how to use it, too. He fought bravely and gashed Blathy on the shoulder…”

“I saw the wound. That must have been the cry Tali heard.”

“But he was a fat, tired old man,” said Holm.

“Where is he?”

“In the rear corridor where he fell,” said Holm. “We couldn’t move him.”

Rix turned and ran across the bloody hall, out the rear door, then stopped, looking left and right.

Down to the right in the shadowed corridor he made out a still, arching mound. He raced down and went to his knees beside the old man. Swelt’s eyes were closed, his flesh sagging.

“Swelt?” whispered Rix. “Don’t die. Please.”

A small breath sighed out of the old man. He wasn’t dead.

“Healer! Light!” Rix yelled. “Quick!”

“No… use,” said Swelt.

“Where are you hurt?” Rix couldn’t see any blood, any wound.

“Stabbed in the back. Noth – nothing anyone can do.”

Tali came running with a lantern. Glynnie followed.

“You can’t die,” said Rix, choking. “How can I ever do without you?”

Swelt smiled, and for a moment he was again the handsome young man he had been so very long ago. “Nicest thing – anyone’s ever – said…”

“They say you fought like a hero.”

“Fought – for my house. What anyone – would do.” Swelt’s right hand rose. “Come – must pass – secret.”

“It’s all right,” said Rix. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

The pudgy hand caught Rix’s shirt and pulled him down. Swelt’s slitted eyes were fixed on Rix’s face. “No one knows – you must.”

“Knows what?”

“Passed down – great dame – me – now you.”

“What is it?” said Rix.

“Grandys – sterile. Daughter – not his. Adopted.”

“Why is that important?” said Rix.

Swelt’s fingers slipped free. His hand hit the floor with a small thud. He was dead.

Rix took the old man’s hand and knelt beside him, remembering all Swelt had done for him and for his beloved Garramide. Had he not marshalled the support of its people behind Rix, he would not have been here now.

“Why did he waste his last breath telling me that?” he said, rising wearily.

“Maybe he wanted you to know that Grandys wasn’t your ancestor,” Glynnie said quietly.

“No, for such a secret to have been passed down for two thousand years,” said Tali, “it must be important – and not just to you.”

Rix could not focus. “Poor old Swelt. No more loyal man has ever been. And to think I judged him, when we first met, on his appearance.”

“He’s at peace now,” said Glynnie.

“And will be buried with the highest honour,” said Rix, “next to the great dame herself.”

“He killed that swine Porfry,” said Tali. “And died a contented man, knowing he’d always done his duty.” She looked around. “Where’s Tobry?”

“I haven’t seen him. I thought he’d be with you.”

She blanched, then bolted for the door. Rix plodded after her, down the steps to the basement level and along to the black hole. She burst through Tobry’s door and stopped, staring at the blood-covered bed and floor, the bed clothes in disarray and the knocked-over table.

“No!” she whispered. “No, no, no!”

“They were all against him,” said Glynnie, from the door. “They must have killed him first, in his sleep.”

“But where is he?” said Rix. “Where’s the… the body?”

“Maybe they took it out and burned it,” said Glynnie.

Tali looked as though she was going to faint. “And I gave him the sleeping potion. Everything that’s happened to Tobry since I met him is my fault.”

“They’d hardly burn bodies in the middle of a mutiny,” said Rix.

“He was a shifter,” Glynnie pointed out.

Holm pushed past. “You’re taking on more than your due, Tali. And you’ve got a short memory. The blood is yours and his, from when you tried to heal him.”

She looked up at him. “But where’s the body?”

Holm sauntered across, flipped the hanging bedclothes up onto the bed and said, “Right here.”

Tali looked down. “Why would they dump his body under the bed?”

“They didn’t,” said Holm. “I did.”

“Why the hell would you do that?” said Rix.

“He was sleeping so soundly after Tali’s failed healing that I knew he’d be helpless if there was a mutiny. I shoved him under the bed and pulled the bedclothes down so he couldn’t be seen. It must have fooled the mutineers, too. Guess they thought someone else had killed him first.”

“You mean he’s not dead?” Tali scrambled under the bed and took Tobry in her arms. He let out a great snore, but did not wake.

“No,” said Holm, “but he’s going to murder you when he wakes up.”