The Charnel Prince (66 page)

Cazio scrambled up, and so did Euric. From the corner of his eye, Cazio saw three of the monks running toward him with ridiculous speed, and knew he had only a heartbeat left to act.

“You won’t escape,” Euric promised him.

“I’m not trying to,” Cazio said.

And so—as he had practiced with z’Acatto only a few days before—he flung himself forward like a spear, his body nearly parallel to the ground. Euric’s eyes went wide, and he threw his own blade up in defense, far too late. Caspator’s point hit Euric’s teeth with the full weight and momentum of Cazio’s body behind it. They shattered, and the steel continued over the tongue and through the brain. Euric blinked, clearly puzzled by his death.

“
Z’ostato
,” Cazio grunted.

Cazio had barely hit the ground before someone struck him from behind and caught him in a wrestling hold. It felt like an iron yoke around his neck. Then he was yanked roughly to his feet, and he found himself surrounded. One of the crowd was the fellow in the noble clothing.

“That was extraordinary,” he said. “At least we can be certain that you are a true swordsman, now. But now we need a new priest and regal. My wife seems to have had an accident.”

Cazio looked up at the mound and saw that the woman had somehow fallen off her perch and been hanged. He hoped he hadn’t done it in the struggle.

“We have to hang you all together, you see,” he said.

Cazio spat in his face. “You sacrificed your wife, you rabid dog?”

The man wiped his face without any other obvious reaction. “Oh, I would sacrifice much more than that to bring this faneway alive,” he said. Then he laughed, a bit bitterly. “I suppose I will have to, actually—I don’t have time to find my son, and I’m the only one here with royal blood, I think.”

“No,” a familiar voice called. “There is one more here with noble blood.”

They all turned, and Cazio saw Anne standing at the edge of the woods. Her voice rose in a commanding tone Cazio had never heard her use.

“I am Anne Dare,” she said, “daughter of the Emperor of Crotheny, Duchess of Rovy. I command you all to lay down your arms and release these people, or I swear by Saint Cer the Avenger, you will all die.”

For a few heartbeats, the clearing was silent except for the crackle of flames and the moans of the dying. Then the nobleman next to Cazio uttered a single barking laugh.

“You!” he said. “I’ve been looking all over for you, you know. All over. Slaughtered an entire coven to find you. My men told me you were dead—and now you walk right into my arms. Outstanding. Come here, girl, and give us a kiss.”

“You will not mock me,” Anne said steadily. “You will not.”

“I think I will,” the man replied.

Anne stepped steadily nearer to the man. “You are Roderick’s father,” she said. A part of her was trembling with fear, but that part of her seemed to be sinking away, melting like snow in spring. “Of course. Roderick’s father and his Hansan knights. And why did you chase me over the great wide world, Duke of Dunmrogh? What fear was in you that made you do that?”

“No fear,” the Duke said. “I was doing what my lord commanded.”

“Which lord is that? Which lord commanded my death?”

“How foolish of you to think I would ever name him,” Dunmrogh said.

“Foolish is the man who does not ask what his lord fears of a single girl,” Anne spat. She felt, suddenly, the sickness around her, a pulsing fever in the very earth itself, and something turning slowly in the dirt, opening one eye. It was like that day with Austra, in the city of the dead, when they had escaped the knights, but stronger. She took a breath and felt herself expand with it.

“He only fears a queen in Eslen,” Dunmrogh said, suddenly sounding the slightest bit uncertain.

“No,” Anne whispered. “Like all men, he fears the dark of the moon.” She took another breath and felt it turn as black and thick as oil in her lungs.

“Hang her,” Dunmrogh said.

She let the breath out—and
out
, feeling the Worm pull up through her feet and flow through her. Dunmrogh screamed like an hysterical infant, but she did not stop with him.

She sent it on—through the monks, through the men in armor, shuddering, hearing herself laugh as if she were mad.

Dunmrogh bent double and vomited blood. Some of the monks started toward her, but it was as if they were moving against a wind too hard to overcome. She spared Cazio and the fading z’Acatto, but every other man was her slave, bowing to her power.

Except one. One man was still coming for her; the knight, the one who had cut Sir Neil. Her will sleeted through him as if he wasn’t there, and the Worm would not know him. He quickened his pace, drawing his sword. She was dimly aware of Cazio trying to stand, raising his own weapon.

Then something in her twisted and diminished, and she felt as if she were falling. The last thing she saw was the knight, charging to take her head.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

Cazio saw Anne fall, even as the knight came into striking range. He wasn’t sure what had happened, wasn’t sure he wanted to know. The only thing he knew was that he was free, and Caspator was in his hand, and there was an enemy in front of him.

Unfortunately, this one had his helm on, and his sword was the weird, flickering, glowing one he’d seen shear through plate armor in z’Espino.

Cazio thrust into the knight’s downward cut, parrying and attacking with the same movement, but his blade scratched only the steel of a breastplate. The knight reversed, slicing back up from the downswing, trying to split Cazio from crotch to shoulder, but Cazio was already moving aside and punching his hilt into the knight’s visor, trying to knock it off.

His adversary whirled and his weapon soughed a third time, and though Cazio managed to get Caspator up to meet it, the force was square on, right on the strong part of his blade, and his knees buckled from the strength of it. The knight’s mailed foot came up and kicked him under the chin, and the bright smell of blood exploded in his nostrils as he flopped onto his back.

The knight turned away, ignoring him, moving back toward the prostrate figure of Anne. Cazio struggled to his feet, knowing he would never make it in time.

Then two arrows spanged into the armored man, and he staggered. Cazio looked in the direction the shots had come from and saw a man on a horse charging toward them. The arrows hadn’t come from him—he carried a sword in one hand and a wooden shield in the other. They came from another pair—a slight, hooded figure and a rangy-looking man in a leather cuirass.

Cazio tried to use Caspator to push himself up and noticed, with a shock, that the strong part of his blade had been notched halfway through by the weird knight’s weapon. Caspator was made from Belbaina steel, the strongest in the world.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

The nauschalk was stooping toward Anne’s motionless body when Aspar’s and Leshya’s arrows found him. The pause gave Neil just the time he needed to reach him. He cut hard with Cuenslec, and felt the solid, satisfying shock run up his arm. He didn’t understand why the rest of the men in the clearing weren’t fighting, or even on their feet, but he wasn’t going to question it. Some of them were starting to get up, anyway, and when they did, he and his newfound companions would be very much outnumbered.

His horse reared and shied, so Neil quickly dismounted, facing the knight as he rose back up, wielding the arcane blade.

“They say Virgenya Dare’s warriors had weapons like that,” Neil said. “Feyswords. Weapons for heroes, weapons to fight evil. I don’t know where you got that, but I
do
know you aren’t fit to carry it.”

The nauschalk pushed up his visor. His face was pale and pink-cheeked, and his eyes were as gray as sea waves.

“You,” he murmured, almost as if in a dream. “I’ve killed you once, haven’t I?”

“Only almost,” Neil replied. He lifted his shield. “But by Saint Fren and Saint Fendve, this time
I
will die or
you
will.”

“I cannot die,” the man said. “Do you understand? I can’t.”

“Forgive me if I’ll not take your word for that,” Neil replied. All along he’d been shuffling forward, finding his distance. Now he slowly began to circle, his gaze fixed on the eyes of the nauschalk, a red fire kindling in his belly as the rage began.

Then the nauschalk blinked, and in that instant Neil attacked, leaping forward and cutting over the shield. His enemy replied with a swift thrust from a stiffened arm to Neil’s shield, a good fighter’s instinct, for it should have stopped Neil’s attack by keeping him at sword’s length.

But the feysword sliced through the shield just above Neil’s arm. He still had to arrest his blow to keep from impaling his face on the glowing weapon, but he twisted the shield down, taking the stuck feysword with it, and chopped a second time. Cuenslec rang against the armored joint of neck and shoulder, and Neil felt the chain links part. The visor clanged down with the force of his blow, and once again Neil’s enemy had no face.

He dropped the shield before his opponent could carve the deadly blade through his arm and drew back for another blow, but the feysword whirled up too quickly. Neil let the assault come but faded back from it, so the attack missed him by the breadth of a hair. Then he made his own counterattack.

He had reckoned on the knight having to recover the momentum of his attack before making the backswing, but he’d reckoned wrong. The weapon must have weighed almost nothing, because here it came, shearing up into his attack. Only by scrambling quickly back did he avoid being gut-sawed.

Neil’s breath was coming raggedly already, for he was still weak from his last fight with the fellow.

The nauschalk, seemingly not tired at all, advanced.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

“What’s happening here, Stephen?” Aspar asked as he got Ogre still and took aim at a monk. The churchman had been down on the ground when they arrived, and was now rising shakily to his feet. Aspar let fly. The fellow never saw his death coming; an almost motionless target, the arrow took him in the heart and he sank back to his knees.

Around the clearing, more and more of the formerly motionless figures were rising again. Aspar aimed at the most active.

“I don’t know,” Stephen replied. “I felt something as we were approaching, something strong, but it’s gone now.”

“Maybe they never got the instructions from the praifec,” Leshya guessed. “Maybe they did something wrong.”

“Maybe,” Aspar allowed. “But whatever happened, it seems to be to our advantage. Stephen, you and Winna go get the princess. Hurry.”

Neil’s battle with the armored knight didn’t seem to be going that well. The knight’s sword flickered like the knife Desmond Spendlove had planned to use to assassinate Winna, the one—he now recalled—the praifec had confiscated for “study.”

He shot a man and selected another target, but this one saw him in time and dodged the shaft. Then he was running toward them, faster than an antelope. To his left, on the other side of the clearing, Aspar saw another.

“Leshya, take the left one,” he grunted.

“Yes,” she said.

Aspar took careful aim and fired again, but the monk spun aside without stopping, and the dart just grazed him along the arm. He was closing the distance so swiftly, Aspar figured he had only one more shot coming.

He released it at five yards, and still the man nearly dodged it. It hit him in the belly and he grunted as he took a wild, unbalanced swing at Aspar with his sword. Aspar wheeled Ogre and avoided the blow, then spurred the beast to give him distance to shoot again, but the monk kept coming, much too quickly, leaping through the air. Aspar managed to deflect the sword with his bow. But the force of his antagonist’s leap knocked him out of the saddle.

Aspar managed to untangle himself from the monk and kick clear to draw his dirk, but even as he regained his feet he found the sword slashing toward him, a bit slower than Aspar was used to from the warrior-priests, whether due to the belly wound or whatever had gone on just before their arrival, he could not say. He managed to duck the blow and step in, grabbing the swordsman’s wrist and slashing viciously at his inner thigh with the dirk. A spray of blood hit him in the face, and he knew he’d got the knife where he wanted it.

The monk didn’t know he was dead yet, though. He grabbed Aspar by the hair and kneed him in the face, and as the holter fell back in sudden agony, closed his hands around his throat and began to squeeze. Aspar stabbed the dirk into his ribs and twisted it, but he felt something cracking in his throat, and black stars blotted out the mad green eyes glowering down at him.

Then the strength went out of the man’s fingers and blood poured from his mouth, and Aspar was able to push him off.

Just in time to see another of the fratirs, only a yard away, sword raised for the kill.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

The nauschalk came at Neil, and it was all he could do to evade the blows. Fighting in plate armor was less a contest of sword-skill than it was about who had the best armor. Fully armored knights didn’t really parry; they just took blows and gave them. But in this case, Neil knew from experience that even the superior armor he’d worn in z’Espino was no match for the glistering feysword. And though Neil had spent most of his fighting life in mail or leather hauberk—and thus knew full well how to parry—he didn’t really dare do that, either, not when each blow against his weapon of mere steel left it diminished.