The Black Prince: Part II (12 page)

H
art strode down the hall, sword out.

Servants were fleeing right and left, like so many chickens with their heads cut off. One woman, seeing him, screamed. He ignored her. She responded like he’d cut out her liver, hyperventilating as she flapped her hands. Somewhere else, another person screamed.

Hart couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

The torches flickered in their brackets. All lit, all well maintained. The floor was likewise smooth and scrubbed, square terra cotta tiles with a grout mixed from their dust. The walls were stone. No wainscoting, no decoration. Nothing compared to Caer Addanc’s finely colored tile and recessed paneling, but worlds apart from what he’d grown up with in Enzie or seen anywhere in the Highlands. House Salm, indeed, looked like it had all just been given a bath the day before.

So where was everybody?

The castle might be beautiful, but it felt like a ruin.

A door opened, a head peeked out, and the door slammed shut.

Hart ignored them, too. He had no business with somebody’s ancient nurse, hiding in the family’s chambers. But let them think he did. Let them think that he was here to rape and murder them all simultaneously, using nothing but one sword and one cock.

House Salm was built on a courtyard pattern, with no central keep, reminiscent of those less fortified manors further south. Enzie Hall had once been similar, before time had taken its toll and half the wings fallen into ruin. Although Enzie Hall, at its finest, would have only been at most a quarter of the size.

House Salm was huge.

From the guard tower Hart had turned left, passing through a hall that connected the tower to the rest of the castle and then turning again, onto the hall he was traversing now. Rooms opened from either side, those belonging to lesser members of the household abutting the curtain wall and the others looking out onto the courtyard below. Hart counted fully twenty doors, ten on either side and more than well spaced, before reaching the end and a fortification for archers.

To the right was another hall, which opened onto the upper gallery of the chapel.

Gods, where was that accursed chamberlain.

The murmurs of prayers, along with open weeping, drifted up from the chapel. The kitchen staff, Hart guessed. Regardless, what he wanted wouldn’t be down there.

He turned and began pulling open doors. Nothing in the first room, a simple chamber with white plastered walls and beams overhead. Between each were wood panels. Simple but, like everything else, well maintained. The room though was empty, save for a square bed with no linens.

Hart slammed the door shut and moved on.

The room adjacent looked much the same. Only here the bed had curtains, and they were drawn tight. Hart strode forward and pulled them apart. Revealing the castellan.

“Where,” he grated, “is Owen Silverbeard.”

The castellan opened his mouth. Judging, by the expression on his face, to protest that he knew of no such person. Hart raised his blade, forestalling further comment.

A drop of blood appeared at the man’s throat.

“Your information is your only use to me. So choose your next words wisely.”

The castellan swallowed. “He’s…in the guest chambers to the other side of the chapel. In the first bedroom.”

Hart’s eyes bored into his. “And where is everyone else?”

“I…I don’t know!”

Hart lowered his sword slightly, allowing the man to speak without exsanguinating himself. “What?”

“I don’t know I swear I don’t. They all just…left.”

“Left?”

The castellan shook his head. He looked miserable. So miserable that Hart was certain he was hearing the truth. “The earl. He sent most of the men south, to serve Maeve. That wretched woman. Silverbeard was supposed to bring more men, when he came, but he didn’t.” He blew his nose on a sleeve. “That worthless, useless coward. He’s the reason you’re here now and I’m undoubtedly about to die.” He turned woeful, red-rimmed eyes on Hart. “I hope you kill him.”

“I intend to. And the rest?” Because there was more. Hart could sense it.

“The earl and his son—and his son’s a monster, by the way, even worse than you—thought you’d never show up. And that even if you did, you’d go away shortly.” His tone had turned peevish. He wasn’t letting the specter of death slow him down. “Balzac said he’d bested you before, and that you were nothing to be alarmed about. That your name, the Viper, came only from the unnatural thinness and limp curl of your cock.”

What, was this man in a confessional?

“His father—who’s known here as Henri the Fat, incidentally—said that Maeve’s forces would come to our defense so it didn’t matter. All we had do to was wait. Because—because you were just some upstart bastard leading a rabble of Northmen.” He sniffed. “A bunch of savages with sticks.”

“How many men are holding the castle?”

The castellan twisted his chubby hands together, like he was wringing out a cloth. “If you mean guardsmen, a score. If you mean all able-bodied men, twice that.”

Hart wasn’t concerned about the second twenty. Not if
able-bodied
meant men like the one before him. Who was as massive about the middle as a woman about to give birth and attired in a sort of suit-like item that Rudolph would love. It was all a most peculiar shade of powder blue.

“So few?”

“The earl refused to speak with you, his son also, because he said you were—beneath him. And now we’ve come to this pass!” He blew his nose again. “The savages with sticks are among us!”

Hart had to know. “Why do you serve him?”

Hart understood so little of the people he’d once claimed as his own. The castellan clearly had no respect for his lord, and yet he continued to do that man’s bidding. Even as he foresaw that doing so would cause his own ruin. He might bemoan the fact that Hart had taken the castle, but he clearly wasn’t surprised. Nor had he taken up arms, although he just as clearly loathed his current predicament.

“It’s my lot in life.” The castellan held his gaze. “Don’t you see I have no choice?”

Hart shook his head. More Southron stupidity. Better to support what the church called the natural order than to create one’s own. Even though the natural order, as Hart understood the term, meant that those most gifted survived. Not that hopeless incompetents were supported in their error at the cost of those more valuable lives. He saw echoes of his own father, here. And understood that lurking beneath those pretty speeches about
divine right
was something much blacker. More insidious. Guilt. Hart, too, had felt responsible for his father. Once. Had allowed his own guilt to trap him in a place, and a life, that he hated.

But for the grace of the Gods, he might have been the one on this bed.

“Your master’s title and lands are forfeit to the king.”

“I suppose you’re the new master now.”

“Yes.”

“How fortunate for your men.”

Hart arched an eyebrow.

“They may serve a madman, but at least they’re all alive.”

“Most of them.”

The castellan waved one of his fat hands in a dismissive gesture. He was staring out the window now, just another narrow slit that let in nothing but night. His rings glinted in the weak light cast by the room’s single candelabra. A ruby. Some sort of pale blue stone. All set in gold. “Alright, then,” he said. He sounded tired. “Get it over with.”

The castellan was no man at arms, true. But there was more than one kind of warrior, and more than one kind of fight. “Or,” Hart replied, “you can survive this.”

The castellan’s head turned sharply.

“Serve me.”

“Make a deal with the Dark One.” For someone who’s just been offered a chance at life, the other man was surprisingly dour.

“Or not. Your fate is immaterial to me. I merely assumed that you might have some small stake in the matter. But if not….”

“Why?”

“Because,” Hart replied, “rare is the man with cods so massive that he can tell the truth about a man to his face, when that man has a sword at his throat. And while men with swords are a copper a dozen, true courage should not be wasted.”

“Well,” the castellan conceded, apparently still not impressed, “my oath was only to serve the earl. No provision was made as to which earl that might be.” And then, considering his own words, he smiled slightly. Not at Hart; Hart interested him about as much as the average dung heap. But at a new concept entirely. Freedom.

Hart thought he understood.

He put up his sword. “Now show me the traitor.”

S
ilverbeard had been hiding in style. The rooms he’d taken for himself upon his arrival at House Salm were those reserved, clearly, for the most significant of visitors. A group to which some upstart tribesman from the North clearly did not belong. Especially in Southron eyes. But who would tell him no? This was the man who, at their behest, had delivered Hart into enemy hands.

Into
their
hands.

They first entered an antechamber, well furnished and warm, off of which Hart could see two massive bedrooms. An equally massive fireplace dominated the wall between the doors, carved into fanciful gryphons. The fire within had been tended recently.

Hart looked around. This room alone was grander than the grand salon of many a fine house, with its tapestries and its vases and its rugs strewn carelessly about. Goodwife Hamel, he found himself thinking, would be envious. Particularly of the couches. Which, like everything else, seemed to come in a matched set. Velvet the color of new grass, on a walnut frame.

Perhaps he’d send them to her.

“What are you thinking?” the castellan asked.

That Silverbeard is here.
“That I’d like to impress my mother in law.”

“I see.”

Hart turned. “She thinks I’m crazy.”

“Oh.” The castellan was completely deadpan. “I can’t imagine how she got that idea.”

Hart studied the fireplace. There was no hidden chamber there, as had once been the fashion to include. He dropped down and, pressing his ear to the floor, peered under the furniture. “My value to the household is also greatly reduced by the fact that I haven’t actually married her daughter.”

“That would upset the average mother.”

Hart stood. Walking over to the main door, he barred it. “Stand here,” he told the castellan. “Call out if Silverbeard appears, or if there’s resistance from the other side.”

“What?” The squat little man looked mortified. “As I’m being run through? What am I supposed to defend myself with?”

“Try using your dry wit.”

And with that, Hart disappeared into the bedroom. Like a larger version of the castellan’s, and much nicer. He glanced up at the ceiling, and from side to side. He’d had bandits drop down on him out of trees, before, and learned then to never underestimate a man’s resourcefulness.

He ripped the linens from the bed, curtains and all. He opened the doors to the wardrobe. Nothing. He checked the garderobes. The changing room. Nothing.

He strode back out into the antechamber and into the other room. He ignored the castellan’s squeak of protest. There was noise outside but so far no one was pounding on the door. He’d be fine. Especially if he didn’t stand within distance of an axe cut.

The second bedroom was identical to the first. Pairs, pairs, everything in pairs. He hated it. Found it disorienting.

He gave it the same treatment. And nothing. The bedroom, the changing room. Each of the bedrooms also had a fireplace, built into the corner, which shared the same chimney with the one outside. Nothing in either of them, either.

Which left the garderobes.

In some houses they were simple things, recessed directly into the wall of a bedroom or sometimes hall. There were no doors, or even curtains. Privacy wasn’t as valued in the South, and a man squatting down to do his business mid-conversation was typical. If he bothered to use the garderobes at all. More often than not, especially in winter, most men pissed into the fireplace. Although there was, now, a fad among Southrons for storing one’s chamber pot in the linen closet if one didn’t have garderobes or, conversely, airing one’s fresh linens as near them as possible, ever since the church concluded in its wisdom that the stench of rotting urine banished evil humors.

But House Salm was far enough north that different sensibilities had informed its building. The garderobes were each contained in a separate, small chamber, with a door. Hart pulled it open.

And inside, cowering on the bench, was Owen Silverbeard.

“Don’t hurt me,” he said.

He was filthy. And not just from his choice of hiding spot. Here he’d been, in rooms almost as luxurious as Hart’s sister’s, and yet he looked as though he hadn’t bathed in moons. His beard and hair were matted and crawling with lice. One of the creatures jumped out and began investigating his shoulder as he sat there.

“Gods, man.”

“I’ve been too afraid to leave,” the tribesman blubbered.

“Leave—the garderobes?”

“I knew someone would—hurt me. Poison me. Stab me in my sleep. Everyone here hates me.”

Hart just stared.