Honour Among Thieves

Book Three of

The Ancient Blades Trilogy

David Chandler

Dedication

For J.R.R.T. and G.R.R.M., the Epic Overlords.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication Page

Map

Prologue

The Free City of Ness was known around the world…

Part 1

Under the Flag of Parley

Chapter One

On the far side of the Whitewall mountains, in the…

Chapter Two

There was a mountain, and then there was no mountain.

Chapter Three

At dawn—as promised—Croy returned, looking a little tousled after riding…

Chapter Four

On a map the fortress of Helstrow would have resembled…

Chapter Five

Inside the common room of the inn, food and wine…

Chapter Six

Bursting out into the sunlight, Malden turned his head wildly…

Chapter Seven

The marketers all fled or pressed into the doors of…

Chapter Eight

When Malden burst out of the inn, Cythera leapt to…

Chapter Nine

They dragged Malden through the gate to the inner bailey,…

Chapter Ten

“This way, sir knight, milady,” the castellan said, and ushered…

Chapter Eleven

Ulfram V was a year younger than Croy, but the…

Chapter Twelve

“Is this true, Croy?” the king demanded. “Did you—in fact—make…

Chapter Thirteen

Instantly Ghostcutter came to Croy’s hand. Beside him he saw…

Chapter Fourteen

After Mörgain left, no one spoke for some while. Croy…

Chapter Fifteen

After darkness fell, Malden and Croy headed back into the…

Chapter Sixteen

He made a point of saying no more until they…

Chapter Seventeen

Cythera stood by the window in their room at the…

Chapter Eighteen

Malden never actually lost consciousness, but between the pain in…

Chapter Nineteen

The bridge across the river Strow began and ended within…

Chapter Twenty

In the king’s own chapel in the keep at Helstrow,…

Chapter Twenty-One

The day after the gates of Helstrow were sealed, the…

Chapter Twenty-Two

Malden put his hand on Acidtongue’s hilt, but kept the…

Chapter Twenty-Three

T he woman from the milehouse turned out to be…

Chapter Twenty-Four

Croy’s rounsey whickered and bucked as he climbed onto its…

Chapter Twenty-Five

The king walked his horse up to where the two…

Chapter Twenty-Six

The king of Skrae spluttered in rage. Croy didn’t blame…

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Behind the portcullis, soldiers shouted at one another and men…

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Berserkers crashed up against the gate, straining and howling as…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Where do we take him?” Orne asked, when they were…

Part 2

The Sleeping King

Interlude

There was a place in the Free City of Ness…

Chapter Thirty

Helstrow burned for days. The barbarians were too busy celebrating…

Chapter Thirty-One

Just outside the gates of Ness a recruiting serjeant had…

Chapter Thirty-Two

Cythera found her mother down in Swampwall, where the river…

Chapter Thirty-Three

After Cythera went to find her mother, Malden led Slag…

Chapter Thirty-Four

“That’s ridiculous,” Malden said. How could he be Cutbill’s most…

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Alright,” Malden said. “Well, that’s got me up to date.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Croy brought the whetstone carefully up the iron edge of…

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Through the stout oak door, Croy could hear the voices…

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The river Skrait twisted through Ness, carving its way between…

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Walking through the brambles surrounding Coruth’s shack was disincitement enough,…

Chapter Forty

Malden moved out of the way as Coruth swept into…

Chapter Forty-One

When dinner was finished Malden took his leave. He was…

Chapter Forty-Two

The thieves of Ness gathered just before midnight, when the…

Chapter Forty-Three

A few murmurs drifted up from the crowd regardless of…

Chapter Forty-Four

Perhaps there was a second reason why Cutbill had chosen…

Chapter Forty-Five

“I have grand plans for the people of Skrae,” the…

Chapter Forty-Six

The sky glowed a deep blue-black that made Malden’s head…

Chapter Forty-Seven

The air in Coruth’s house felt like it had been…

Chapter Forty-Eight

Mörget whirled his axe through the air and brought it…

Chapter Forty-Nine

The bandit camp proved a sorry affair. Two dozen men…

Chapter Fifty

Barbarian pickets controlled the road between Helstrow and Redweir, but…

Chapter Fifty-One

The Baron sighed and looked down at his maps and…

Chapter Fifty-Two

Money kept coming in, as it always had, and that…

Chapter Fifty-Three

It didn’t take long for the thief-takers to make their…

Chapter Fifty-Four

Slag followed Malden all the way across the Sawyer’s Bridge…

Chapter Fifty-Five

“Protection?” Malden repeated, when Herwig had told him what she…

Chapter Fifty-Six

Croy knelt low in the brambles by the side of…

Chapter Fifty-Seven

I didn’t want this job, Malden thought. I never asked…

Chapter Fifty-Eight

It wasn’t easy getting the word out so late in…

Chapter Fifty-Nine

An old fishwife with a face like a rotten parsnip…

Chapter Sixty

Coruth did not wait to hear if he would follow.

Chapter Sixty-One

In a muddy field just off the Helstrow road, Baron…

Chapter Sixty-Two

Mörgain’s barbarians were distracted by the archers and turned outwards…

Chapter Sixty-Three

Spittle flecked their red-painted lips. They came running with blood…

Part 3

A Change of Station

Interlude

“Halt, here,” Mörgain said, and the paltry remnants of her…

Chapter Sixty-Four

Malden grabbed onto a window ledge and hauled himself upward.

Chapter Sixty-Five

Malden leaned down and kissed Cythera gently. She wrapped her…

Chapter Sixty-Six

Loophole would never walk easy again. When the mob seized…

Chapter Sixty-Seven

He already knew what his Helstrovian second-in-command wanted, but still…

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Dead bodies littered the forecourt of Easthull manor. Not a…

Chapter Sixty-Nine

“The king is dead,” Coruth said, plucking at long blades…

Chapter Seventy

A thousand barbarians marched north, pulling wagons full of books…

Chapter Seventy-One

“The Godstone is cracked. The cracks need to be repaired.

Chapter Seventy-Two

“Be of good cheer, lad,” Slag said, as he led…

Chapter Seventy-Three

Croy kept his horse to a walk as they crept…

Chapter Seventy-Four

Malden reached up and grasped the snout of a gargoyle.

Chapter Seventy-Five

Malden lowered himself through the trap door by his hands.

Chapter Seventy-Six

Malden’s candle fell from his hand and flickered out instantly.

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Malden closed the door behind him and bent low to…

Chapter Seventy-Eight

“Malden, no one loves me,” Cutbill said. He poured two…

Chapter Seventy-Nine

“The barbarians will arrive within the week,” Cutbill told Malden.

Chapter Eighty

Mörget tramped up the frost-crackling hill, naked axe in hand,…

Part 4

The Siege of Ness

Interlude

In theory there were no officers in the Army of…

Chapter Eighty-One

North of Helstrow, Croy took to the road.

Chapter Eighty-Two

“Nock! Draw! Fire!” Herwig the madam shouted, beating time against…

Chapter Eighty-Three

“Halloo! Halloo! Ness! People of Ness! Is someone in charge…

Chapter Eighty-Four

“Get me out of this ridiculous stuff,” Malden growled, trying…

Chapter Eighty-Five

Malden hurried through the streets, headed for the bridge to…

Chapter Eighty-Six

“Fascinating. In the space of one night they built three…

Chapter Eighty-Seven

Bethane slumped down to sit on a rock and rub…

Chapter Eighty-Eight

The whispers became murmurs. The murmurs became disgusted looks in…

Chapter Eighty-Nine

The rocks kept coming, though not as frequently as when…

Chapter Ninety

The rider had come very close, now. He could descend…

Chapter Ninety-One

The Skilfinger knight wore a byrnie of chain mail that…

Chapter Ninety-Two

Mörg was no fool.

Chapter Ninety-Three

The workshop stank of brimstone and urine, enough to make…

Chapter Ninety-four

“They’re scaling Ditchwall now, and there’s no one to stop…

Chapter Ninety-Five

There seemed to be no end to the berserkers willing…

Chapter Ninety-Six

Malden followed the dwarf down a flight of stairs to…

Chapter Ninety-Seven

Croy could stand, and if he used Ghostcutter as a…

Chapter Ninety-Eight

A single trebuchet stone arced over the city that day.

Chapter Ninety-Nine

Malden wrapped a loaf of bread in a silken cloth—the…

Chapter One Hundred

The Lemon Garden could no longer hold all the supplicants…

Chapter One Hundred and One

The wailing of Mörgain’s female warriors set Mörget’s teeth on…

Chapter One Hundred and Two

“Come forth! Step up, and receive Sadu’s bounty! Food for…

Chapter One Hundred and Three

Croy rode at the head of an army of two…

Chapter One Hundred and Four

Mörget raced back into the camp, Balint at his heels,…

Chapter One Hundred and Five

Malden ordered Velmont to search for other survivors in the…

Chapter One Hundred and Six

Malden looked to Cythera. She was drained, and worse than…

Chapter One Hundred and Seven

In her bed, Coruth struggled for every breath. Her hair…

Chapter One Hundred and Eight

On the march, it is far too easy to slip…

Chapter One Hundred and Nine

There was no time to think on all that had…

Chapter One Hundred and Ten

“Get that iron off him,” Velmont commanded. His eyes stayed…

Chapter One Hundred and Eleven

An hour before dawn, the snow burned a deep blue.

Chapter One Hundred and Twelve

As soon as Malden could stand on his own two…

Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen

The crowd of devout citizens gasped and ran as a…

Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen

Croy brought Ghostcutter around and disemboweled a gray-bearded reaver, then…

Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen

When Ryewall collapsed Malden was thrown from his feet. He…

Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen

“What in the Lady’s name was that?” Hew asked.

Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen

Slag crowed and danced and shouted up to Malden where…

Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen

Mörget shouted in pain and for a moment froze in…

Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen

Smoke from the explosion of Slag’s weapon hung in the…

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty

The Lemon Garden was far enough from Ryewall that Malden…

Epilogue

He’d made his decision. He’d been forced to pick between…

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books by David Chandler

Copyright

About the Publisher

Map

PROLOGUE

The Free City of Ness was known around the world as a hotbed of thievery, and one man alone was responsible for that reputation. Cutbill, master of that city’s guild of thieves, controlled almost every aspect of clandestine commerce within its walls—from extortion to pickpocketing, from blackmail to shoplifting he oversaw a great empire of crime. His fingers were in far more pies than anyone even realized, and his ambitions far greater than simple acquisition of wealth—and far broader-reaching than the affairs of just one city. His interests lay in every corner of the globe and his spies were everywhere.

As a result he received a fair volume of mail every day.

In his office under the streets of Ness he went through this pile of correspondence with the aid of only one assistant. Lockjaw, an elderly thief with a legendary reputation was always there when Cutbill opened his letters. There were two reasons why Lockjaw held this privileged responsibility—for one, Lockjaw was famous for his discretion. He’d received his sobriquet for the fact he never revealed a secret. The other reason was that he’d never learned to read.

It was Lockjaw’s duty to receive the correspondence, usually from messengers who stuck around only long enough to get paid, and to comment on each message as Cutbill told him its contents. If Lockjaw wondered why such a clever man wanted his untutored opinion, he never asked.

“Interesting,” Cutbill said, holding a piece of parchment up to the light. “This is from the dwarven kingdom. It seems they’ve invented a new machine up there. Some kind of winepress that churns out books instead of vintage.”

The old thief scowled. “That right? Do they come out soaking wet?”

“I imagine that would be a defect in the process,” Cutbill agreed. “Still. If it works, it could produce books at a fraction of the cost a copyist charges now.”

“Bad news, then,” Lockjaw said.

“Oh?”

“Books is expensive,” the thief explained. “There’s good money in stealing ’em. If they go cheap all of a sudden we’d be out of a profitable racket.”

Cutbill nodded and put the letter aside, taking up another. “It’ll probably come to nothing, this book press.” He slit open the letter in his hand with a knife and scanned its contents. “News from our friend in the north. It looks like Maelfing will be at war with Skilfing by next summer. Over fishing rights, of course.”

“That lot in the northern kingdoms is always fighting about something,” Lockjaw pointed out. “You’d figure they’d have sorted everything out by now.”

“The king of Skrae certainly hopes they never do,” Cutbill told him. “As long as they keep at each other’s throats, our northern border will remain secure. Pass me that packet, will you?”

The letter in question was written on a scroll of vellum wrapped in thin leather. Cutbill broke its seal and spread it out across his desk, peering at it from only a few inches away. “This is from our man in the high pass of the Whitewall Mountains.”

“What could possibly happen in a desolated place like that?” Lockjaw asked.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Cutbill said. He looked up at the thief. “I pay my man there to make sure it stays that way. He read some more, and opened his mouth to make another comment—and then closed it again, his teeth clicking together. “Oh,” he said.

Lockjaw held his peace and waited to hear what Cutbill had found.

The master of the guild of thieves, however, was unforthcoming. He rolled the scroll back up and shoved the whole thing in a charcoal brazier used to keep the office warm. Soon the scroll had caught flame and in a moment it was nothing but ashes.

Lockjaw raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

Whatever was on that scroll clearly wasn’t meant to be shared, even with Cutbill’s most trusted associate. Which meant it had to be pretty important, Lockjaw figured. More so than who was stealing from whom or where the bodies were buried.

Cutbill went over to his ledger—the master account of all his dealings, and one of the most secret books on the continent. It contained every detail of all the crime that took place in Ness, as well as many things no one had ever heard of outside of this room. He opened it to a page near the back, then laid his knife across one of the pages, perhaps to keep it from fluttering out of place. Lockjaw noticed that this page was different from the others. Those were filled with columns of neat figures, endless rows of numbers. This page only held a single block of text, like a short message.

“Old man,” Cutbill said, then, “could you do me a favor and pour me a cup of wine? My throat feels suddenly raw.”

Cutbill had never asked for such a thing before. The man had enough enemies in the world that he made a point of always pouring his own wine—or having someone taste it before him. Lockjaw wondered what had changed, but he shrugged and did as he was told. He was getting paid for his time. He went to a table over by the door and poured a generous cup, then turned around again to hand it to his boss.

Except Cutbill wasn’t there anymore.

That in itself wasn’t so surprising. There were dozens of secret passages in Cutbill’s lair, and only the guildmaster knew them all or where they led. Nor was it surprising that Cutbill would leave the room so abruptly. Cautious to a nicety, he always kept his movements secret.

No, what was surprising was that he didn’t come back.

He had effectively vanished from the face of the world.

Day after day Lockjaw—and the rest of Ness’s thieves—waited for his return. No sign of him was found, nor any message received. Cutbill’s operation began to falter in his absence—thieves stopped paying their dues to the guild, citizens under Cutbill’s protection were suddenly vulnerable to theft, what coin did come in piled up uncounted and was spent on frivolous expenditures. Half of these excesses were committed in the belief that Cutbill, who had always run a tight ship, would be so offended he would have to come back just to put things in order.

But Cutbill left no trace, wherever he’d traveled.

It was quite a while before anyone thought to check the ledger, and the message Cutbill had so carefully marked.

CHAPTER ONE

On the far side of the Whitewall mountains, in the grasslands of the barbarians, in the mead tent of the Great Chieftain, fires raged and drink was passed from hand to hand, yet not a word was spoken. The gathered housemen of the Great Chieftain were too busy to gossip and sing as was their wont, too busy watching two men compete at an ancient ritual. Massive they were, as big as bears, and their muscles stood out from their arms and legs like the wood of dryland trees. They stood either side of a pit of blazing coals, each clutching hard to one end of a panther’s hide. On one side, Torki, the champion of the Great Chieftain, victor of a thousand such contests. On the other side stood Mörget, whose lips were pulled back in a manic grin, the lower half of his face painted red in the traditional colors of a berserker, though he was a full chieftain now, leader of many clans.

Heaving, straining, gasping for breath in the fumes of the coals, the two struggled, each trying to pull the other into the coals. Every man and woman in the longhouse, every berserker and reaver of the Great Chieftain, every wife and thrall of the gathered warriors, watched in hushed expectation, each of them alone with their private thoughts, their desperate hopes.

There was only one who dared to speak freely, for such was always his right. Hurlind, the Great Chieftain’s scold, was full of wine and laughter. “You’re slipping, Mörg’s Get! Pull as you might, he’s dragging you. Why not let go, and save yourself from the fire? This is not a game for striplings!”

“Silence,” Mörget hissed, from between clenched teeth.

Yet his grin was faltering, for it was true. Torki’s grasp on the panther hide was like the grip of great tree roots on the earth. His arms were locked at the elbows and with the full power of his body, trained and toughened by the hard life of the steppes, he was pulling as inexorably as the ocean tide. Mörget slid toward the coals a fraction of an inch at a time, no matter how he dug his toes into the grit on the floor.

At the mead bench closest to the fire a reaver of the Great Chieftain placed a sack of gold on the table and nudged his neighbor, a chieftain of great honor. He pointed at Torki and the chieftain nodded, then put his own money next to the reaver’s—though as he did so he glanced slyly at the Great Chieftain in his place of honor at the far end of the table. Perhaps he worried that his overlord might take it askance—after all, Mörget was the Great Chieftain’s son.

The Great Chieftain did not see the wager, however. His eyes never moved from the contest. Mörg, the man who had made a nation of these people, the man who had seen every land in the world and plundered every coast, father of multitudes, slayer of dragons, Mörg the Great was ancient by the reckoning of the east. Forty-five winters had ground at his bones. Only a little silver ran through the gold of his wild beard, however, and no sign of dotage showed in his glinting eyes. He reached without looking for a haunch of roasted meat. Tearing a generous piece free, he held it down toward the mangy dog at his feet. The dog always ate first. It roused itself from sleep just long enough to swallow the gobbet. When it was done, Mörg fed himself, grease slicking down his chin and the front of his fur robes.

A great deal relied on which combatant let go of the hide first. The destiny of the entire eastern people, the lives of countless warriors were at stake—and a debt of honor nearly two centuries old. No onlooker could have said which of the warriors, his son or his champion, Mörg favored.

Torki never made a sound. He did not appear to move at all—he might have been a marble statue. He had the marks of a reaver, black crosses tattooed on the shaved skin behind his ears. One for every season of pillaging he’d undertaken in the hills to the north. Enough crosses that they ran down the back of his neck. Not a drop of sweat had showed yet on his brow.

Mörget shifted his stance a hair’s breadth and was nearly pulled into the fire. His teeth gnashed at the air as he fought to regain his posture.

Nearby his sister, herself a chieftess of many clans, stood ready with a flagon of wine mulled with sweet gale. Mörgain, as was widely known, hated her brother—had done since infancy. No matter how hard she fought to prove herself, no matter what glory she won in battle, Mörget had always overshadowed her accomplishments. Letting him win this contest now would be bitter as ashes in her mouth. Nor did she need to play the passive spectator here. She could end it in a moment by splashing wine across the boards at Mörget’s feet. He would be unable to hold his ground on the slippery boards, and Torki would win for a certainty.

“Sister,” Mörget howled, “set down that wine. Do you not thirst for western blood, instead?”

Mörg raised one eyebrow, perhaps very much interested in learning the answer to that question.

The chieftess laughed bitterly, and spat between Mörget’s feet. But then she hurled her flagon at the wall, where it burst harmlessly, well clear of the contest. “I’ve tasted blood. I’d rather have the westerners alive, as my thralls.”

“And you shall, as many of them as you desire,” Mörget told her, his words bitten off before they left his mouth.

“And steel? Will you give me dwarven steel, better than the iron my warriors wear now?”

“All that they can carry! Now, aid me!”

“I shall,” Mörgain said. “I’ll pray for your success!”

That was enough to break the general silence, though only long enough for the gathered warriors to laugh uproariously and slap each other on the back. The shadow of a smile even crossed Torki’s lips. In the east the clans had a saying: pray with your back turned, so that at least your enemies won’t see your weakness. The clans worshipped only Death, and beseeching Her aid was rarely a good idea.

“Did you hear that, Torki?” Hurlind the scold asked. “The Mother of us all pulls against you now. Better redouble your grip!”

The champion’s lips split open to show his teeth. It was the first sign of emotion he’d given since the contest began.

And yet it was like some witch’s spell had been broken. Perhaps Death—or some darker fate—did smile on Mörget then. For suddenly his arms flexed as if he’d found some strength he’d forgotten he had. He leaned back, putting his weight into the pull.

Torki’s smile melted all at once. His left foot shifted an inch on the boards. It was not necessarily a fatal slip. Given a moment’s grace he could have recovered, locking his knees and reinforcing his strength.

Yet Mörget did not give him that moment. Everyone knew that Mörget, for all his size and strength, was faster than a wildcat. He seized the opportunity and hauled Torki toward him until the balance was broken and the champion toppled, sprawling face first on the coals. Torki screamed as the fire bit into his skin. He leapt out of the pit, releasing the panther skin and grabbing a mead jug to pour honey wine on his burns.

The longhouse erupted in cheers and shouts. Hurlind led a tune of victory and bravery against all odds, an old kenning every man and woman in the longhouse knew. Even Mörgain joined in the refrain, Mörgain of whom it was said her iron ever did her singing for her.

In the chaos, in the tumult, Mörget went to his father’s chair and knelt before him. In his hands he held his prize, the singed pelt. Orange coals still flecked its curling fur.

“Great Chieftain,” Mörget said, addressing the older man as a warrior, not as a parent, “You hold sway over the hundred clans. They wait for your instructions. For ten years now you have kept them from each other’s throats. You have made peace in a land that only knew war.”

Ten years, aye, in which no clan had feuded with another. Ten years without warfare, ten years of prosperity. For many of those gathered, ten years of boredom. Mörg had united the clans by being stronger than any man who opposed him, and by giving the chieftains that which they desired. Instead of making war on each other, as they had since time immemorial, the clans had worked together to hunt such game as the steppes provided and to raid the villages of the hillfolk in the north. Yet now there were murmurs in the camps that what every warrior wanted was not ten more years of peace but a new chance to test their mettle. Mörget had been instrumental in starting those murmurs but he had only fed a fire that was already kindled by restlessness. Eastern men, eastern chieftains, could not sit all day in their tents forever and dream of past victories. Eventually they needed to kill something, or they went mad.

Mörg the Great, Mörg the Wise, had pushed them perhaps as far as he could. As he turned his head to look around at his chieftains, how many eyes did he meet that burned with this new desire for war? Now that the mountains lay open to them, how long could he hold them back?

“All good things,” Mörg said, looking down at his son again, “should come to an end, it seems. Just as they say in Old Hrush. You’ve won the right to make your say. Tell me, Mörget, what you wish.”

“Only to stand by your side when we march through this new pass into the west, and crush the decadent kingdom of Skrae beneath our feet.”

“You lead many clans, chieftain. And I am not your king. You do not require my permission to raid the west.”

It was true. It was law. Mörg was the Great Chieftain, but he ruled only by the consent of the clans. “I have the right, aye, to raid the west. But I don’t wish just to scare a few villagers and take their sheep,” Mörget explained. “For two hundred years that’s all we’ve done, ever since the Skraelings sealed off the mountain passes. Now there is a new pass. Once, long before any of us were born, our warriors spoke not of raiding but of conquest. Of far greater glories. I wish, Great Chieftain, to make war. To take every mile of Skrae for our people, as has always been their destiny!”

Alone in that place, Mörg carried iron, in the form of a sword at his belt. All other weapons had been stacked outside, for no warrior would dare bring a blade into the house of the Great Chieftain. Should he desire it, if his wishes countered those of his son, Mörg could draw his sword and strike down Mörget this instant. No man there would gainsay him for it.

They called him Mörg the Wise, sometimes, when they wished to flatter him. Behind his back, they called him Mörg the Merciful, which was a great slander among the people of the east. If he struck the blow now, perhaps those whispering tongues would be silenced. Or perhaps they would only grow into a chorus.

The chieftains wanted this. They had made Mörget their spokesman, and sent him here tonight to gain this audience.

And Mörg was no king, to thwart the will of his people for his own whims. That was the way of the decadent west. Here in the east men ruled through respect, or through fear, but always honestly—because the men who served them believed in them. Mörg was no stronger than the chieftains he’d united. He lived and died by their sufferance. If he did not give them what they wanted, they had their own recourse—they could replace him. And that could only be done over his dead body. Great Chieftains ruled for life, so murder was the sole method of their impeachment.

On his knees, Mörget stared up at his father with eyes as clear and blue as a mountain stream. Eyes that never blinked.

Mörg must decide, now. There was no discussion to be had, no council to call. He alone must make this decision. Every eye watched his face. Even Hurlind had fallen silent, waiting to hear what he would say.

“You,” Mörg said, rising and pointing at a thrall standing by the door. “Fetch boughs of wet myrtle, and throw them on the fire. Let them make a great smoke, that all will see, and thereby know. Tomorrow we march through the mountains to the west. Tomorrow we make war!”

CHAPTER TWO

There was a mountain, and then there was no mountain.

It had been called Cloudblade, for the way its sharp summit had once cut through the sky, and it had possessed a long and storied history. It stood at the eastern frontier of the kingdom of Skrae, tallest of the Whitewall Range. Beneath it, in centuries long gone, the dwarves had built a city they called the Place of Long Shadows. Later on, elves—the last of their kind—had moved into that hollow below the world. For eight hundred years they had hidden there, unknown to the humans above.

Then five fools from the west came along and ruined everything.

Cythera climbed up a high pile of rubble, picking her footholds carefully, testing each rock with her hands to make sure it was stable before she put her weight on it. She was sweating by the time she reached the top. There she could see the new valley that lay where Cloudblade once stood. It ran as wide as a road right through the Whitewall, and a constant chill wind coursed over the endless field of stones like a river of air. Over there to the east lay the great steppes where the barbarians ruled. Behind her, to the west, lay Skrae, the country of her birth.

“How many years did Cloudblade stand? When we first saw it, I would have thought it could last forever,” Malden said, coming up behind her.

She turned and saw the thief leaping from one rock to another as nimbly as a goat. She couldn’t help but smile at the ease with which he moved. He was a small man, and skinny as an alley cat, but he had an effortless grace that always made her gasp.

“Cloudblade stood longer than you can imagine,” Cythera said. She was the daughter of a witch and thus privy to some of the secrets of the universe. She knew if she tried to explain to Malden just how long an eon was his eyes would simply glaze over. Which was not to say he was a simpleton. He was bright enough in his own way, if reckless. “Here,” she said, and held out a hand. He took it, holding her fingers as delicately as he might a bundle of flowers. When he had climbed up beside her he kissed her fingertips, one after another.

“Don’t,” she said, though her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted to embrace him, to drag him down behind these rocks and … well. She had to be careful now, at least for a while. She took her hand back and turned to face the west. Down there below the foothills of the Whitewall she could still see the column of elves as they made their way toward a distant forest. They were on foot but they moved quickly, desperate to reach any shelter from the blue sky. They found the broad stretch of the heavens terrifying, for none of them had ever seen it before. “Do you think they’ll make it?” she asked. The forest they headed for was only the first stop on a long journey.

“Their ancestors ruled this land before we came along and took it from them,” Malden pointed out. “They’re tougher than they look. And they have Slag to guide them.”

Cythera nodded. She’d been sad to see the dwarf go, but the elfin queen wouldn’t have followed anyone else.

“Croy will ride ahead of them for a while, to make sure they aren’t spotted,” Malden added. If any human authorities saw there were elves abroad in the kingdom again it could only end in bloodshed. There was a reason the elves had hidden so long under Cloudblade. “He told me he won’t be back until tomorrow dawn.” Malden’s eyebrows lifted in what he must have thought was a suggestive leer. “It’s just the two of us left here now. I’m supposed to look after you while he’s away.”

He moved closer and reached out one hand to touch the small of her back.

For the second time she shied away, despite what she might have preferred. “We need to talk,” she said. “I’m still betrothed to Croy.” That had been the whole point of this adventure. The whole reason she’d left the Free City of Ness. Croy—Sir Croy—had made her promise to marry him. She’d demurred and evaded him as long as she could, but eventually the appointed day had come. At the last minute she had decided she needed to see some of the world first, before he took her to his castle and she had to spend the rest of her life birthing his heirs. She hadn’t expected Malden to come along—frankly, he’d been a temptation she was trying to escape. Life, it seemed, could never be simple. “I made a promise to him—a legally binding promise.”

The expression on his face shifted through a complicated series of emotions. Everything from hope to fear to deep confusion. But then his eyes narrowed and he nodded sagely. “I see.”

“You do?”

Malden dropped his hand to his side. “Down below the mountain, when you thought I was going to die—when we thought we were all going to die—you told me you loved me. Sometimes people in dangerous situations will say things that they wouldn’t, otherwise.”

“You think me so inconstant?” she asked, hurt despite her better judgment.

“I’m trying to be noble,” he told her, in that frank way he sometimes had. Another endearing quality—a man who could speak honestly to a woman was as rare, in Cythera’s experience, as a hen with teeth. “I’m trying to give you an opportunity to change your mind.”

She smiled at him. His love for her came without conditions. He would never want to take away her freedom. It was why she had come to love him back. “Croy won’t be back before dawn, you said.” She looked up and saw the sun was still well above the horizon. “We have all that time?”

Later, in the dark of a night with no moon, he kissed the sweat from her cooling body, while she simply tried to get her breath back. She knew she was playing a dangerous game but she couldn’t help herself. “Do you still think I want to change my mind?”

“You frightened me with all that talk of betrothals,” he said.

“As I meant to.”

He drew back a little. In the dark she couldn’t read his face. “Tell me you’ll break your promise to him. Tell me you love me. Please.”

“I do,” she said, and there was no part of her that disagreed. “And I will. But you know it can’t be so easy. From the moment I tell Croy about us he’ll be determined to kill you.”

“You think I’m afraid of him?”

“I think you should be.” Croy had trained all his life in the military arts. He would be one of the most dangerous men in the world if he wasn’t bound by an iron code of honor. Which in itself was the problem. “He won’t want to do it. He thinks of you as his best friend. Honor will require it, though. And you know how he is about anything that touches his honor.”

“Let him try me! I can’t stand the idea of you marrying him. Not anymore,” Malden protested.

“I’ll tell him everything. I’ll renounce the betrothal and beg his forgiveness,” Cythera said, rearing up to kiss his cheeks and chin. “I swear it. But Malden—I’ll only do it when we’re back in Ness. And when I’m sure you have a generous head start.”

CHAPTER THREE

At dawn—as promised—Croy returned, looking a little tousled after riding in the woods all night. He was all blond hair and muscles and stupid grins but Malden did his best not to hate the man. After all, Croy had already lost the game for Cythera’s heart—he just didn’t know it yet.

The three of them returned to the abandoned hill fort where they’d left their horses and their prisoner. Balint the dwarf looked angry enough to spit blood, but they’d kept her bound and gagged so she couldn’t get into mischief. They threw her over the back of Croy’s saddle and headed out, toward Helstrow. Balint was the last errand they had to run before they could finally head back to Ness.

Riding west toward the king’s fortress proved far less tedious than the voyage east had been. Back then they’d had to ford the river Strow at one of its wilder bends but now they could approach the fortress directly. The sun had not even reached its apex by the time they saw Helstrow’s towers rising above the rolling hills.

Malden was thrilled by the prospect of returning to civilization, but just outside the gates Croy called a stop. The riders stood their horses in the road so they could watch a field full of archers lift bows all at once and take aim.

Bowstrings twanged and a hundred arrows lifted into the sky, the thin shafts spinning and tumbling, some clattering together in mid-air. Others flew true and arced downward to slam into a pile of rusted armor on the far edge of the field. Their wicked points cut through the old iron as easily as through parchment and lodged in the earth below.

Watching from a safe distance atop his horse, Malden jerked back in surprise.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“Practicing, I think,” Sir Croy replied, bringing his rounsey up level with Malden’s jennet. “There was a time when every male peasant in the kingdom was expected to know how to draw a bow and hit a target at one hundred yards. The law required them to practice for an hour every day, to keep their arms strong and their eyes true.”

The line of peasants—villein farmers, Malden judged, by their russet tunics and the close-fitting cowls they wore—each nocked another arrow and drew back on their strings. A serjeant in leather jack and a kettle helmet shouted an order, and once more the bowmen let fly.

Most of the arrows landed well short of the target. One, knocked off course in mid-air, came directly for Malden. He flinched, but its momentum was already spent and it landed twenty yards from his horse’s feet. The jennet didn’t even look up.

Cythera shielded her eyes with one hand and looked at the pile of armor. Only a handful of arrows had reached the target. “They’re … not very good.”

Croy shrugged. “The law requiring them to practice every day was repealed a long time ago. Before these men were born, in fact. Most of them have probably never seen a bow before. And no archer hits the mark on his first try.”

“Why did they stop the practice?” Cythera asked.

“No reason to keep it up. In the early days, Skrae was always at war with one enemy or another—first the elves, then with upstarts who would seize the crown. Skrae always prevailed. The Northern Kingdoms were beaten into submission, turned against each other until now they only fight amongst themselves. The barbarians were forced back across the mountains, sealed behind the two mountain passes. Now there are no enemies left to fight. Skrae hasn’t gone to war in a hundred years. There’s been no more than a border skirmish in the last ten,” Croy explained. “The king’s grandfather saw no need to keep a cadre of trained bowmen around. The peasantry were better used by spending that extra hour a day in the fields, feeding a growing populace.”

Malden frowned. All that was probably true, but he could guess another reason. He’d seen what the longbows did to the armor when they actually struck home. No knight in shiny coat of plate would ever really be safe with such weapons arrayed against him, not if the aim of the archer was skillful. He imagined the king had been more afraid of an insurrection of highly trained peasants than a foreign invader.

So why was the practice being resumed? This wasn’t some bit of makework to keep idle peasants from getting into trouble—the training was in deadly earnest. When they’d shot a dozen arrows each, the hundred men standing on the field were replaced by a fresh hundred, with more waiting to take their turn. Clearly every villein in the environs of Helstrow was to be given a chance to learn this skill.

Something was up.

As the three riders headed up the perfectly straight road toward the fortress of the king, they passed through the village where the prospective bowmen had their houses. The three on horseback drew more than the usual stares. Women leaned out of the doors of their cottages, distaffs and kitchen knives still in their hands, to get a good look at the riders. A reeve carrying the white wooden baton of his station leaned on the signpost of a tavern and watched them with wide eyes. Children dashed out of the street as they approached.

These people were afraid, Malden saw. Afraid someone was going to come along at any moment and take away the pittance they had, the tiny scrap of safety and wealth they’d managed to accumulate. Even the village blacksmith closed the shutters of his shop as they drew near, though the heat inside his forge made the autumn air shimmer.

What had them so scared?

Of course, they might just have been surprised to see Balint roped and secured atop Croy’s palfrey. It wasn’t every day you saw a dwarf trussed up like a bird in a roasting pan.

Balint would draw stares in any human village. Dwarves were a rare enough sight outside the big cities, and female dwarves almost unheard of—most of their women remained in the north, in the dwarven kingdom, while their men traveled south into Skrae to make their fortunes. This one stood out on her own merits, too. Balint was accounted a great beauty among her people, but then dwarves had a different notion of loveliness than humans. Balint stood just under four feet tall and was as skinny as a starveling dog. Her hair stuck out from her head in thick braids that looked like the spikes of a morningstar. Her eyebrows met above her nose in a thick tangle of coarse dark hairs and there was a sparser growth of hair on her upper lip. Her eyes were squeezed down to dark beads, the lids pressed tight. As a nocturnal creature she found the sun unbearable.

Even if she’d been more pleasing to the eye, she still would have drawn attention by how she was bound. Once dwarves and humans had been vicious enemies, but a treaty between their two kingdoms had changed that long ago. Now by law no human could touch a dwarf in an offensive manner—not unless the human wanted to be tortured to death. The dwarves had proved too useful as allies to risk the peace between them and humankind. They were too valuable to the king, as they were the only ones who knew the secret of making good steel for weapons and armor and a thousand other uses. That a dwarf should be tied up and brought to justice like a common criminal was unthinkable.

Yet Balint was a criminal, and a particularly vile one. The same treaty that ended the war between dwarves and humans included another law, one that said no dwarf was allowed to use a weapon inside the borders of Skrae. Not even in self-defense, not even one they’d made with their own hands. Balint had broken that law without compunction or remorse. Sir Croy had been quite adamant that she be brought to Helstrow and made to account for her crimes. In all likelihood she would be banished from Skrae—and maybe even exiled by her own people. Where she would go at that point was not to be guessed.

Malden liked it not, even though he was the first person Balint had assaulted. She’d struck him across the face with a wrench with clear intent to kill him and he wanted revenge badly enough. Yet he was a thief by trade, a flounter of the law himself. He lived by a certain code of dishonesty, and the first rule in that code was that you didn’t betray another criminal to the authorities, ever, under any circumstances.

She had turned Malden into a snitch. And for that, he would never forgive her. What if word of it got out? His reputation would be dashed on the rocks of gossip.

He tried not to think about it. Ahead of them lay the first gate of the fortress, a massive affair of stone and iron that towered over every house in the village. Guards in studded leather cloaks stood there blocking the way with halberds. High above, amidst the battlements of the gate house, a pot of boiling oil was prepared to spill down hot death on anyone who attacked the guards. A dozen loopholes in the gatehouse wall hid crossbowmen ready to pick off anyone who even dared approach.

“I had expected a friendlier reception,” Croy called out, as the guards refused to stand aside to let him pass. “Though of course, I’m not flying my colors today. Perhaps you don’t recognize me. I have been gone for a long time. I,” he said, placing one leather-gauntleted hand on his breast, “am Sir Croy, a knight of the realm. With me are Cythera, daughter of Coruth the Witch, and Malden, a—well—a—”

“His squire,” Malden announced, patting the sword tied to his saddle. He couldn’t very well announce himself as Malden the Thief here, not and expect to pass the gate. More than once Croy had offered him the position of squire, and though Malden could imagine few things he’d less rather do for a living—collecting dead bodies for mass graves, perhaps—it was a simple enough ruse.

“Yes. He’s my squire,” Croy said, and it barely sounded at all like a lie coming out of the knight’s mouth.

“Bit old for it, ain’t ’e?” one of the guards asked, studying Malden with a yellow eye. But the guards weren’t there to challenge subjects of Skrae. They were waiting for something else. “That dwarf ye got,” the guard went on. “Is she—”

“An oathbreaker. I’ve come to present her for the king’s justice.”

There was a great deal of murmuring and surprise at that, but the guards stood back and the portcullis was raised. The three of them—plus one disgruntled dwarf—passed through without further incident.

CHAPTER FOUR

On a map the fortress of Helstrow would have resembled an egg cracked open and let to spread across the top of a table. Its center, its yolk, was the inner bailey—the center of all power in Skrae. Inside a stout wall lay the homes and offices of all the court, as well as the keep and the king’s palace. The buildings there stood tall and crammed close together, some so near that a man could reach out of a window and shake his neighbor’s hand. The white of the egg—the outer bailey, which had its own wall—sprawled in all directions. The houses and workshops and churches there weren’t as tall or as densely packed, yet twenty times as many people lived there, commoners for the most part, all the servants and tradesmen and merchants who fed and clothed and tended to the highborn folk of the court. Malden tried to imagine the place in his head, to secure his first look at it so that he could start to assemble a mental map of the place.

Once they were through the gate, into the outer bailey, any thought of orienting himself was forgotten. The three riders and the dwarf were funneled into a narrow street that curled away ahead of them into a marketplace of countless stalls and small shops. Half-timbered houses loomed over it all, their upper stories leaning out over the streets to shadow the ground level. Malden was thrust immediately into a chaos of color and life, wholly unlike the placid farm country they’d traveled in for so long. His senses were assaulted and for a while all he could do was stare and try to get their bearings.

Smoke from braziers and open fires sent gray tendrils seeking through the crowded, close streets. The horses picked their way through ordure and startled a covey of pigs who went scurrying down a dark alley. Malden wheeled his jennet to the side as a merchant in a russet jerkin went chasing after the pigs with a stick. He nearly knocked over a noble lady, fat and scrubbed pink, as she was carried past in a litter, a pomander of lilies held close under her nose. Malden could barely hear himself think. Everywhere there were the cries of barkers and hawkers, beckoning those with a little coin toward stalls where could be purchased roast meats, fresh apples, fine fabrics, measures of barley or flour or ink or parchment or wine.

“Ah,” Malden said, sighing deeply. “Civilization! It’s good to be back.”

Cythera laughed. “You didn’t enjoy your time out in the countryside? All the fresh air? The green hills and the quiet of the forest?”

“You mean the endless rain and the constant itching from insect bites?” Malden asked. “You ask if I enjoyed sleeping on the cold ground with a rock for my pillow, or perhaps eating meat cooked on an open fire—burned on one side, half-raw still on the other? No, a place like this is where I belong.”

It was true. Malden had spent his entire life until recently in the Free City of Ness, a hundred miles west of here. He’d grown up in twisting cobbled alleys like these. He knew the rhythms of city life, knew where he stood in a crowd. His recent adventures in the wilderness had left him saddle sore and weary. To be back in a city—any city—was a great relief. It would not be long before they left again, and headed back into the farmlands, but he planned on enjoying this brief respite in a place that felt familiar.

The riders made their way carefully through the crowd, headed deep into the maze of streets. The going was slow and they had to stop and wait many times as traffic surged across their path. At one point Croy’s horse pulled up short and Malden’s jennet obediently fell into line. Malden wasn’t ready for the stop and he crashed forward across his horse’s neck. He had only just recently learned to ride, and was far from proficient at it yet. He saw why Croy had halted, though, and was glad the jennet was wiser than he. A procession of lepers was winding its way through the street ahead. They were covered head to toe with cloth, as the law demanded, and carried wooden clappers that they flapped before them in a mournful rhythm. Croy tossed a gold royal to their leader, who caught it with unthinking ease and hid it away instantly. The hand that had emerged from the leper’s robe had only three fingers, and Malden was glad he could not see the rest of the man.

When the lepers were past Croy got them started again, but they didn’t go much farther. He took them down a lane that curled up toward the wall of the inner bailey and ended in the wide, muddy yard of an inn. There a stable boy took their horses, and welcomed them with honeyed words.

As Malden slid down off the jennet’s back, he groaned for his aching muscles and his bowed legs. He’d never gotten used to riding and he was glad to be on his own feet again, even if he felt decidedly unsteady. The whole world still seemed to rock with the swaying gait of the jennet.

All the same, he was surprised by their destination. He had not expected them to spend the night in Helstrow. He would welcome a night in a real bed stuffed with straw, true, but he was more interested in getting to Ness as quickly as possible. He and Cythera would never be alone together again until they were back home, after all. “An inn?” he asked. “Must we spend the night here? I thought we had only to turn Balint over to the local constable and then be on our way again.”

Croy leaned backwards, stretching the muscles of his back. “We need to make sure she receives justice from the king’s own chief magistrate. It may be many days before we can gain audience with him.”

“Days? How many days?” Malden demanded. “Two? Three? As many as a sennight?”

Cythera reached over and brushed road dust off his shoulders. She gave him a knowing look. “Are you in such a hurry to return to Ness? What’s there, waiting for you?”

Malden said nothing, and kept his face carefully still. She was teasing him—after all, she knew exactly why he longed to be back in Ness, where all secrets could be revealed. Yet he had another good reason to return home as quickly as possible. He could not help but reach up to the front of his jerkin and touch a piece of parchment folded carefully and held next to his heart. The others did not need to know what was written there, or the betrayal it tokened. The message on the parchment must remain his alone, for now.

CHAPTER FIVE

Inside the common room of the inn, food and wine was brought to them before they’d even asked for it. Malden was sure they’d be charged for it whether they wanted it or not, so he ate greedily of the cold meat and fresh bread he was served, and drank his first cup of wine down before it touched the table. Riding had left him with a deep thirst.

Croy lifted Balint up onto a chair and let her sit upright, though he left her hands bound. The innkeeper stared but said nothing as Cythera drew the gag away and held a pewter cup toward the dwarf’s mouth.

Balint stared at the cup as if it held poison. “Aren’t you all going to take turns spitting in it first, before I drink? Not that I could tell the difference, not with human wine. I’ll bet it tastes like something you drained from a boil off one of those lepers’ arses.”

There was a reason they had kept her gagged.

Cythera started to take the cup away, but Balint’s head snaked forward and she grabbed at its rim with her lips. She sucked deeply at the drink, then leaned back and belched. “I’ll take some of that food, now.”

Malden frowned at her but he broke off a crust of bread and held it so she could take bites from it. “If you bite my fingers,” he told the dwarf, “I’ll pick you up by your feet and shake you until we get the wine back.”

Something like grudging respect lit up Balint’s eye as she chewed. Curses and oaths were all the dwarves knew of poetry. They competed with each other for who could be more vulgar or rude, and counted a good obscenity as a fine jest. Clearly Malden had scored a point with her.

Cythera didn’t seem to see it that way. “Be more kind,” she said, “please. Balint may be guilty of much, but she still deserves some respect.”

“Ask the elves how much,” Malden said.

“The elves,” Croy said, shaking his head. “That makes me think—when we meet the magistrate, what do we tell him of the elves?”

“If he’s to know of her crimes,” Malden pointed out, “we’ll need to say something. After all, it was their city Balint toppled—nearly killing all of them in the process, not to mention us.”

“Once the king knows the elves are at large in his kingdom, though, I shudder to think what he’ll do. Send his knights to round them up, surely, and then—no. No, I won’t even think of that.” Cythera put her head in her hands. “Can we not just tell him that the elves all perished when Cloudblade fell?”

“And get me cooked for mass murder?” Balint said, her eyes wide. “You know that’s a lie. The elves survived. Most of them, anyway.”

“A blessing you had no hand in achieving,” Croy said. “You did not seem to care if they did all die, when you toppled Cloudblade.”

Malden shook his head. “It matters little. Our king has no authority to have you hanged. The worst he can do is send you north,” he pointed out, “which he’s bound to do anyway, no matter how many of them you killed. So it doesn’t matter what crimes we heap upon you, since the punishment will be the same.”

“I’ll take my lumps for what I did. I acted in the interest of my king, that’s all,” Balint insisted. When the humans didn’t relent and free her on the spot, she shrank within her ropes. “It’s been a long ride and I need to make water,” she said, then, looking away from their faces. “Which of you brave young men wants to pull down my breeches for me?”

Croy recoiled in disgust. That was what Balint had wanted, of course. She smiled broadly and tried to catch Malden’s eye.

It was Cythera who responded, however. “I’ll take her to the privy,” she said, rising from her seat. Once standing, however, she let out a gasp.

Malden spun around in his chair and saw a pair of men coming toward them, pushing their way through the common room. They were not dressed in the cloaks-of-eyes the city watch of Ness wore, but he knew immediately they were men of the law. Each wore a jerkin of leather jack with steel plates sewn to the elbows and shoulders, and each of them had a weapon in his hand. They had gold crowns painted on their cloaks as insignia of office.

Even without their uniforms he would have recognized them as lawmen, just from the smug looks on their faces. They were bigger than anyone else in the room and that look said they knew it. Their rough features and tiny eyes marked them as men who wouldn’t back down from a fight, as well. Malden had spent his whole life learning how to recognize such signs—and learning how to avoid the men who showed them.

“Good sirs,” Croy said, rising and spreading his arms wide in welcome. “I thank you for coming. We’d planned on bringing her to the keep directly, but perhaps you can save us the journey.”

One of the kingsmen—the one who still had most of his teeth—stared down at the dwarf and frowned. “What’s this?”

“Nobody said nothin’ ’bout a dwarf girl,” the other one said, looking at his comrade. A bad scar crossed his neck, just one side of his windpipe.

“This,” Croy said, “is Balint, late of the service of the dwarven envoy at Redweir. She’s broken her oath, and—”

“We didn’t come for a dwarf,” the first one, the toothy one, told Croy.

Malden slowly pushed his chair back from the table. He tried not to make a sound as its legs dragged across the floorboards. So occupied, he failed to notice that he was backing up into a wall. When the back of his head struck the plaster, he looked to either side, searching for windows he might jump out of. He found none.

The scarred one spoke next, saying exactly what Malden expected—and dreaded—to hear. “We’re here,” he announced, “for yer thief.”

Malden jumped up onto his chair. He looked up toward the rafters and saw they were too high to reach, at least ten feet above his head. The two kingsmen had by reflex moved to flank the table on either side, blocking off his escape that way, as well.

“Hold,” Croy said, rising to his feet. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“He was spotted comin’ in through the gate today under false identity. Somebody knew his face, and passed along the particulars. Now we’re to take him in.”

Malden had thought he would be safe here. Though he was well known in Ness he was a stranger in Helstrow. He’d assumed no one here had so much as heard of him. That foolishness had made him lax, made him forget his usual caution.

Cursing himself, he tried to decide which way to run. Normally when he entered a public building like this he would take a moment to memorize all the exits. This time he’d been so tired from the day’s riding he hadn’t bothered.

“But what’s the charge?” Cythera demanded.

Toothy looked at Scar, who looked back at him, as if they couldn’t decide between the two of them which one should answer. “Suspicion of bein’ a thief,” Toothy said, finally. “Now, which one of ye is called Malden?”

Balint began to laugh. Croy started to turn to look at Malden, giving him away.

Malden dropped his hand to his belt, where his bodkin used to be. It hadn’t been a good knife, really, but it had been his. Now it was gone—and in its place was a sword. A sword that should never have been his, a sword Croy had given him under false trust. A sword, more to the point, that he’d never learned how to use.

“Look out, Halbert—he’s got a cutter,” Scar said.

“Hand it over, boy,” Toothy—Halbert—said.

“What, this thing?” Malden asked. Then he drew the sword from its scabbard and let it taste the air. “It’s harmless.”

The sword had a name. It was called Acidtongue. The name came from the fact that while the blade looked like an old piece of iron, pitted and scored by age, it was in fact quite magical—on contact with the air, it secreted a powerful foaming acid that could burn through just about anything.

In olden times when demons walked the land, the sword had been made to fight against them. It was one of the seven Ancient Blades, brother to the one Croy wore at his own belt, and it had magic woven into its very metal. It could sear through demonic flesh that would resist normal iron weapons and cut through even the thickest armored shell or matted, brimstone-stinking fur. Malden knew from personal experience it worked just fine on more worldly substances as well.

With both hands on the hilt, Malden brought the blade around in a tight arc. The blade passed through the middle of a pewter tankard as if it were made of smoke. The top half of the tankard fell to the table with a clink—even as the wine it had contained splashed out across the table in a hissing wave.

Halbert and Scar both jumped back as if he’d thrown a snake at them. They also jumped a little to the side—Halbert to the left, Scar to the right.

Malden split the difference and dashed between the two of them, headed straight for the door.

CHAPTER SIX

Bursting out into the sunlight, Malden turned his head wildly from side to side, looking for any avenue of escape. His foot slipped on a pile of horse droppings and he slid wildly for a long second before he got his feet under him again. Scar and Halbert were already emerging from the inn’s door when he finally spotted his next move.

A low wall ran along one side of the innyard, a pile of unmortared stone attached to the side of the stables. It sloped gently upward toward the thatched roof of the stables and to one as fleet as Malden it was as good as a staircase. He danced up the rocks, hearing them tumble and crash as Scar tried to follow him. It was hard to be light-footed when you were covered in armor.

Malden grabbed a double handful of thatch and hauled himself up onto the roof. From there he looked out on a sea of rooftops belonging to the half-timbered houses he’d seen on the way to the inn. Most had slate shingles—which were hard to run on, as they tended to crack and shift under one’s feet. Far to his left, though he could see the lead-lined roof of a church.

If he could reach the church he could make some real speed. He jumped across a narrow alley to the top of the house nearest the inn and landed on his feet on the sloping roof. He’d come down hard on his left ankle but Malden merely switched his weight to his right foot and kept running. He heard the watchmen shouting for him to halt, but paid no mind. He’d yet to meet a watchman anywhere who could run along roof ridges as nimbly as he.

He was wise enough, however, to know he wasn’t free yet. As he jumped to the next roof he passed over an alley choked with workmen and beggars—and two more kingsmen, who gestured upward with their weapons as he passed. Up ahead he could see a public square where women were gathered around a well, washing clothes. More kingsmen were stationed there.

By Sadu’s eight index fingers, Malden swore, how many men had they sent for him? But then he saw other figures mixed in with the kingsmen. Smaller men, wearing no armor—their hands tied together before them. They had bruised faces and some were limping. They looked broken, and Malden understood.

The local watch wasn’t just after one thief who had entered the gate under false pretenses. They were sweeping up every criminal they could find. He had seen it happen before, in Ness, when the Burgrave of that city wanted to convince the populace of the grip he held on the streets. There was no better way to show one’s passion for law and order than rounding up a dozen thieves and hanging them all together in the market square.

He’d stumbled right into a mess, coming to Helstrow when he did. What an ignominious way to end his career. He hated to think he’d be brought down by something so crass.

Malden had no intention of being taken by the law, especially by the law of a town where he’d never actually committed a crime. He knew exactly what he would have to do, and having a plan put him a little more at his ease. For a while he would have to abandon his friends. He would have to find a cheap hostelry where he could lie low for a few days, then meet up again with Croy and Cythera once their business was done. He could join up with them after they’d dropped Balint off in front of a magistrate, when they were ready to leave again. Croy would probably urge him to turn himself in, but Cythera would smooth things over and the three of them could make a discrete exit from Helstrow fortress. If things got too hot in the meantime he could always climb over the wall and hide among the peasants outside.

But first he had to actually get away. Looking back, toward the inn, he saw that Scar and Halbert had procured a ladder and were even at that moment preparing to come up and catch him.

Had this been Ness, Malden would have known instantly which way to turn. He would have known some blind alley where he could lose his pursuers, or where the nearest bridge might be found so he could leap into the river, or he would remember the location of a root cellar where no one would ever think to look for him. But this was Helstrow, which he knew not at all.

The church he’d been running toward was out of the question. It fronted on the square where the kingsmen were gathering their catch. So he turned instead and headed north, toward the wall that separated the outer and inner baileys. It was the highest point he could see, and he always felt safest up in the air.

Leaping to a thatched roof he tucked and rolled, knowing the tight-packed straw would offer only spongy, uncertain footing. Spitting dry husks from his mouth he started running toward the rough stones of the wall—and then stopped in his tracks.

Up on the wall, between the crenellations, he saw royal guards in white cloaks looking down at him. One of them had a crossbow and was busy cranking at its windlass. In a moment the weapon would be ready to fire.

Crossbow bolts were designed to penetrate steel armor and pierce the vitals beneath. At this range, the shot would probably skewer Malden—who wore no armor at all—like a roasting chicken.

Backpedaling in horror, Malden dashed to the far side of the roof and grabbed its edge. He swung down toward the street and let go to drop the last few feet. He landed in the stall of a costermonger, amidst barrels of apples and pears.

The merchant shrieked and pointed at him.

“Good sir, I beg you, be still!” Malden said, leaning out of the entrance to the stall and looking up and down the street. “The kingsmen are after me, and—”

“Thief! Thief!” the coster howled. He plucked up a handful of plums and threw them at Malden with great force. Sticky juice splattered Malden’s cloak and the side of his face.

Holding up one arm to protect his eyes, Malden ran out of the shop and into a street full of marketers. They turned as one at the sound of the costermonger’s shout and stared at Malden with terrified eyes.

“Murder!” the fruit merchant shouted. “Fire!” The man would say anything, it seemed, to get the blood of the crowd up.

Malden had made a bad miscalculation. Had he dropped into a similar stall in Ness, he would have received a far warmer welcome. The coster would have shoved him under a blanket where he could hide until the coast was clear. But Ness was a Free City, where it was a point of civic pride that no one trusted their rulers. Here, in Helstrow, every man was a vassal of the king—his property, in all but name. And Malden knew from bitter experience that slaves often feared their masters more than they loved freedom.

“Thief! Fire! Guards!” the cry went up, from every lip in the street. A dozen fingers pointed accusingly at Malden, while shopkeepers rang bells and clanged pots together to add to the hue and cry.

“Damn you all for traitors,” Malden spat, and hurried down the street as women pelted him with eggs and rotten vegetables and children grabbed at his cloak to try to trip him. He thrust his arm across his eyes to save himself from being blinded by the shower of filth and ran as fast as he dared on the trash-slick cobblestones.

But just as suddenly as it started, the cry ceased. Malden was left in silence, unmolested. Had he escaped the throng? He’d taken no more than a dozen steps away from them, yet—

He lowered his arm, and saw a knight in armor come striding toward him, sword in hand.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The marketers all fled or pressed into the doors of shops where they could watch from something like safety. Malden was alone with his enemy in a wide open street, alone and very short on options.

The knight clanked as he walked. He wore a full coat of plate that covered him from head to toe. Even his joints were protected by chain mail. The visor of his helmet was down and Malden could see nothing of his face.

Such armor, Malden knew, had an effect on the mind of the man who wore it. It made him believe himself to be invulnerable. Which was true, for all practical purposes—no iron sword could slash through that steel. Spear blades and bill hooks would simply clash off the armor, at worst denting its shiny plates. Protected thus, men tended to think that their safety meant they were blessed by the gods, and that whatever they chose to do was also blessed.

Such armor was a license for cruelty and rapine.

Yet there were weapons that could pierce that protective shell. The bodkin Malden had once carried was designed to pierce even steel, if driven with enough force and good aim. Battle axes were designed to smash through armor by sheer momentum. An arrow from a longbow, as Malden had seen, could cut through it like paper.

And then there was Acidtongue, the sword at Malden’s belt. If he could strike one solid blow with it, the sword could cut the knight in half.

Yet that might be the stupidest thing Malden ever did. Atop the plate, the knight wore a long white tabard that hung down to his knees. Painted on the cloth was a golden crown. This wasn’t a knight errant like Croy, but a knight in full estate, a champion of the king of Skrae. Most likely he was the captain of the watch, superior in rank to all the Scars and Halberts in Helstrow.

If Malden got lucky and cut the man down, he would be pursued unto the ends of the world. You did not kill a nobleman and get away with it, not ever.

He could, of course, run away. The knight seemed agile enough even weighed down with so much steel, but Malden would undoubtedly be fleeter and the chase would not go far. He turned around, intending to do this very thing, only to find he had hesitated a moment too long.

Coming down the street from the other direction, a pack of kingsmen were advancing on him steadily. Their weapons were all pointed straight at his belly. They held their ground, not advancing with any kind of speed—clearly they intended to let the knight handle him. Yet there was no chance of getting past that wall of blades. Malden’s only possible escape was to get past the knight.

Malden wasn’t the type to pray, even in extremity, but he called on Sadu then. Sadu the bloodgod, the leveler, who brought justice to all men in the end, even knights and nobility. Then he drew his magic sword, and wished he’d bothered to learn how to swing it correctly. Or at least to hold it properly. Acid dripped from the eroded blade and spat where it struck the dusty cobbles.

The knight swore, his voice echoing inside his helmet. “By the Lady! Where’d you get that treasure, son? Did you steal it from Sir Bikker?”

Malden’s eyes narrowed. How could the knight know who had first owned Acidtongue? “Bikker is dead,” he said.

“But yours wasn’t the hand that slew him, I warrant. You’re no Ancient Blade.”

For the first time Malden looked on the knight’s own sword. No jewels decorated the pommel, and the quillions were of plain iron, though well polished. The blade was not even particularly long. Yet vapor lifted from its flat to spin in the air, and patterns of frost crackled in its fuller.

“Do you recognize my sword?” the knight asked.

“Judging by the fact I’m still in one piece, I think it’s fair to say I haven’t made its acquaintance.”

The knight laughed. “This is Chillbrand,” he said. “You’d know that, if Acidtongue was rightfully yours. No Ancient Blade is handed down to a new wielder until he’s been trained by the man who wielded it before him. He’s taught its proper use, and about the history and powers of all seven. None of us would ever let one of the swords fall into the hands of one who didn’t appreciate their traditions.”

“I’m still being trained,” Malden said, which was true enough.

The knight shook his head, though. “If you don’t know Chillbrand, you have no right to bear Acidtongue. I must assume you stole it from Bikker—or looted it from his dead body. Put the sword back in its sheath, now, and lay it gently on the ground. That’s a good boy.”

Malden’s lips pulled back from his teeth and he roared as he ran at the knight. He brought Acidtongue up high over his shoulder—vitriol pattered and burned holes through his cloak—and then swung it down hard.

The knight laughed, and easily batted Acidtongue away with Chillbrand.

“It’s not a quarterstaff, son,” the knight said, taking two steps to Malden’s right, forcing Malden to whirl around to face him again. “Don’t swing it around like a stick. That’s a waste of its strength. Cut with it. Like you’d chop the head off a fish.”

“You’d teach me to fight, even as I’m trying to kill you?” Malden asked.

“Judging by your skill it’ll take you quite a while to do that,” the knight responded. “I have to find some way to pass the time.”

Malden seethed with rage. He tried a stroke he’d seen Croy make a dozen times—feint quickly to the left, then shift all your weight to your right side and on the follow-through, bring the blade around to—

Iron clanged on iron. Chillbrand slid down Acidtongue’s blade and its point was suddenly at Malden’s throat, while Acidtongue was thrust harmlessly to one side.

“A swordsman,” the knight told Malden, “trains every day of his life. He sustains himself on wholesome food, to build up his strength. You’re puny, boy. You’ve gone to bed hungry one too many times. You’re quick on your feet, I’ll give you that, but the muscles in your arm are soft as cheese. I can feel it.”

“Will you insult me to death? Stop toying with me!”

“When two knights meet, swords in hand, they call it a conversation, because of the way the steel sounds its joy, back and forth. But you’d know that, too, if—”

Without warning, Malden brought Acidtongue around with his weight behind it, intending to run it straight through the knight’s body. Acidtongue flickered in the air it moved so quickly. Yet the knight was as ready for the blow as if he’d read Malden’s mind. Chillbrand came down from overhead and turned Acidtongue to the side like earth off the blade of a plow.

“Cut me down or let me pass!” Malden shrieked.

“If you insist,” the knight said.

Yet he would not even grant Malden the mercy of a quick death. Instead he just lunged forward and slapped Malden across the forehead with the flat of his blade.

Ice crystals grew and burst inside Malden’s brain, exploding his thoughts and freezing his senses. He felt every shred of warmth sucked from his body, drawn into the freezing sword. He started to shake and his teeth clacked together like the wooden clappers of the lepers he’d seen. His body convulsed with the cold and suddenly he could not control his fingers, and Acidtongue fell from his hand to bounce off the cobblestones.

Desperately Malden tried to wrap his arms around himself, to stamp his feet—anything to get warm. His body had rebelled against him, and he could not stop shaking.

It was the work of a moment for the kingsmen behind him to grab him up, and bind him, and haul him away. He could offer no resistance at all.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When Malden burst out of the inn, Cythera leapt to her feet fully intending to follow him. People pressed in on every side though and she just could not match the thief’s speed or nimbleness. Still she tried to push her way through the crowd—until Croy grabbed her arm and dragged her back.

“If they have a warrant for his arrest,” Croy said, “we must—”

“He’s our friend,” Cythera said, staring daggers at the knight errant. “I’m going after him!”

“If you must, then at least let’s do it the right way. We’ll speak to the proper authorities, and find out why they want him and how he can be freed. Just let me settle up our bill here, and—”

She stared at him with wild eyes. “I’ll go alone. You keep an eye on Balint.” She twisted her arm out of his grip and ducked under the elbow of the taverner, who had come to see what all the fuss was about. The people in the inn drew back when they saw the look in her face.

She would not lose Malden. Not now, when she’d just realized how she felt about him. That fate should take him away from her now was unacceptable.

Outside of the inn she sought wildly through the crowded streets, having no idea where she should look for Malden first. She knew he would likely have taken to the rooftops but she wasn’t as nimble and couldn’t follow him that way. When she heard the hue and cry go up, though, she knew to head in the direction of the shouting—and raced around a corner just in time to see Malden struck down. She called out his name in horror but couldn’t move from the spot, paralyzed in terror. She thought for certain he was dead, his head caved in by the blow, but instead he merely collapsed to the street, quaking like a man in the grip of a terrible seizure.

She wanted to run forward, to grab him up and take him away, to rescue him. But the square was full of kingsmen and the armored knight stood watchful and ready. There was no way she could help Malden now, not directly. There must be something she could do, though, something to—

“Daughter. You have been gone too long.”

Cythera’s jaw dropped. “Mother?”

Creeping dread made every muscle in her back ripple and tense. Slowly she turned around, expecting to see Coruth the witch standing in the alley behind her.

Instead there was a boy there, a little peasant boy with a dirty face. And several hundred birds.

Rooks, starlings, pigeons and doves all stood on the cobbles, or perched on the timbers of the houses on either side. More of them came down to land around the boy as Cythera watched. Some fluttered down to land on his shoulders, others to perch atop his head. The birds were all staring at her.

The boy, in way of contrast, looked at nothing. His eyes were unfocused and looked like they might roll up into their sockets. His arms hung loose at his sides and the muscles of his face were all slack, so that he slurred his words as he spoke to her again.

“You are required in Ness. You must come home immediately.”

Cythera knew what was happening. That didn’t make it any less unsettling. Her mother had set her spirit loose upon the ether, let it drift with the movements of birds, as was her wont. It allowed her to see things hidden from human eyes and to keep a watch on the entire kingdom of Skrae at once. Yet birds could not convey proper messages—their beaks and tongues were ill-formed for human speech. So Coruth must have overridden the boy’s consciousness with her own. It was a cruel thing to do and Cythera knew Coruth would only have turned to such magic if she had no other choice.

“Malden’s in trouble, mother. You and I both owe him a great debt—I can’t go anywhere until he’s safe. I just watched him get struck by an Ancient Blade.”

“Chillbrand,” the boy said. He did not nod. Coruth was controlling only enough of his functions to speak with. That was the difference between witchcraft and sorcery, sometimes. A sorcerer would have taken the boy over completely—and left him mindless and half-dead when the sorcerer was done with him. “One of the seven. Strange. I can see them all now, all seven of the swords. They are coming together, as if drawn by a magnet.”

“The swords are coming to Helstrow?” Cythera asked, intrigued despite herself.

“For a brief while. Hmm. This could be trouble. The future is not entirely clear right now. What is clear is that you must return to Ness. We must speak, you and I. Great events are unfolding. Some we care about will be brought low, while others are lifted to the heights. What was solid and eternal will become mutable. Malden … did you say Malden was in trouble? But that’s impossible. He has—he will—”

The boy’s lips pressed tightly together, and one of his hands twitched. Coruth was losing control of him.

“Mother? Mother, what are you talking about?” Cythera demanded. Coruth could see the underpinnings of reality, she could even glimpse the future, but often what she saw was so cryptic even she could make no sense of it. Cythera understood maybe one part in ten of what Coruth told her of those visions. “Mother, please. I need to know more—if this will effect Malden, or Croy, I need to know!”

But Coruth had released the boy. His eyes slowly focused and his face regained something like normal muscle tone. Cythera knelt down to put her hands on his shoulders and help him return to full control of his body by stroking his forehead and rubbing his back. “Mistress,” he said, and blinked his eyes rapidly. “Mistress, I beg your pardon—I must’a come runnin’ down here and bumped you, and scattered me wits for a moment. I—I—where am I? I was s’posed to do somethin’, but I can’t rightly recall what. I can’t remember much, tell the truth. My head aches somethin’ awful.”

“You were supposed to give me a message. You did just fine.” Cythera took a farthing from her purse and pressed it into his hand. “You do look like you’ve had a shock. Best run home now and lie down.”

The boy took the coin and headed off, scattering the birds that bobbed and scampered around the alley. Cythera hoped he would do as she’d said—the spell he’d been under would leave him drained and scattered for days, and she would hate to find out he’d come to some mischief just for helping Coruth.

Slowly she rose to her feet again. She would return to the inn and find Croy. The knight-errant was Malden’s only hope, now. Before she headed back, though, she waited until one of the birds was turned away from her. Then she darted forward and grabbed it with both hands. It was a pigeon with iridescent wings and it was not so frightened as it should have been. That meant some piece of Coruth’s mind was still inside its head. “Mother,” she whispered to the bird, “you could have been more helpful. I got your message but all you’ve achieved is to scare me a bit. If you have any idea what I’m supposed to do now, I’d love to hear it.”

The bird struggled in her hands, and she released it. Without even looking at her it took to the air and flew away.

CHAPTER NINE

They dragged Malden through the gate to the inner bailey, then up a hill to the keep. No one spoke to him, and he was still too blasted with cold to ask any questions. When they arrived inside the thick stone walls of the keep he expected to be thrown into an oubliette and forgotten. He had, after all, threatened a knight of the king. Instead, however, he was taken into a spacious feasting hall where an iron collar was locked around his throat and then chained to a staple in one wall. The hall was already full of men, mostly young, mostly with the scrawny, shifty-eyed look of dire poverty. Malden thought he recognized a few of the faces—he had seen them being rounded up in the square. These, it seemed, were his people. Thieves and beggars, the seedy underbelly of Helstrovian society. Not that this knowledge was likely to help him—they didn’t know him from the Emperor of the South. Nor was he in any shape to introduce himself. He could barely keep his teeth from breaking, they chattered so much.

For a great while, Malden curled himself about his stomach and just shivered. He felt like all of winter’s chill had gathered in his bones. He felt his heart racing, booming in his chest. His fingers turned bright red as if they had been frostbitten. A fire burned in a hearth at one side of the hall, and he longed and dreamed of going to it, of shoving his hands directly into the flames, simply for the warmth he would feel before his flesh singed and burnt. Luckily the chain around his neck kept him from doing so.

In time, the supernatural chill withdrew from his bones. He doubted he would ever truly feel warm again, but his teeth stopped knocking together so much.

Blowing warm breath on his fingers, he struggled to sit up and look around. Nothing had changed over the last hour, save that more men had been brought into the hall. Very few of them were talking to each other. Mostly they sat in dull silence and stared at things that weren’t there. They came and chained up a man next to Malden, a middle-aged starveling whose eyes were quite mad. He stared at Malden without speaking until Malden turned to the man on his other side.

“You,” Malden said, to the surly fellow. He needed information and no other source provided itself. “What did they get you for, then?”

“What’s it to ye?”

“I’m a scholar of justice,” Malden told him.

That elicited a brief laugh, though little humor. “They never said why. Just grabbed me up outta me bed. Mind, I suppose I deserve to be here more’n some.”

“You’re a thief, then?” Malden asked. The other bridled so he held up his hands for peace. “I’m in the trade myself,” he explained, “and will say as much to any man who asks.”

“Alright, then. Call me a thief, if ye like.”

Malden nodded eagerly. Then he ran his hands across the rushes on the floor. As expected there was a thick layer of dust underneath. He cleared some rushes away, then drew in the dust with his finger, sketching a heart transfixed by a key.

The other thief stared down at the image. Malden knew right away that the man recognized the symbol—he knew it for the mark of Cutbill, the master of the thieves’ guild in Ness. He had worried that the symbol might not be known in Helstrow.

The other thief slid one foot through the drawing, obliterating it before anyone else could see. “You’re his man?” he asked.

Malden nodded.

“We got our own boss here, though I shan’t say his name out loud, not in this place. You can have what they call me, though, which is Velmont.”

“Malden.”

The two of them clasped hands, but only for a moment.

The thief made a point of looking away as he spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Now maybe my boss has heard o’ your boss. Maybe they’s even friends. Well, men of business will come together, eh, and find ways to help each other out, from time to time. Still, I don’t know what you’re after, showing me that.”

Malden frowned. “Just a bit of knowledge, really. The watch here—the kingsmen—are rounding up every scofflaw in town, it seems. I’ve never seen such a complete sweep before. Unless you tell me this is a common occurrence in Helstrow—”

“It ain’t.”

“—then I can only wonder why they’re being so thorough. There must be a hundred men in this room. And why here? This looks like a banquet hall, not a dungeon. The only reason to put us here is if the gaol is already full. And that means there must be plenty more of us stashed in other places, too. Maybe hundreds of men. Surely the king doesn’t intend to hang us all. He wouldn’t need to slaughter so many just to improve public morale.”

Velmont scratched himself. “It started just a few days ago. Folks that’d been in the game far longer’n me—folks that shoulda been untouchable, like—got scooped up in the middle o’ the night. Then they started raiding the gambling houses and the brothels at dawn.” He shrugged. “No one tells us anything, o’ course. We’re just peasants, what do we need t’know? But ’twas at the same time, that all the honest men in town got taken outside the wall to learn how to shoot a bow.” The thief shook his head. “You just in town today? Your accent says you’re from Ness, is that right?”

Malden assented with a nod.

“You picked a lousy time to come see Helstrow, friend. Now, I don’t think we’re to be killed. No, not as such. But I’ve been wondering ’bout what they’re up to meself, and there’s only one conclusion I can draw. Conscription.”

“They’re going to press us into military service?”

“Give us a choice, like.” Velmont smiled wickedly. “The noose or the army. Well, I know my answer already.”

“I suppose we all do. That must be what they’re counting on. By law they can’t force freemen to fight for the king—”

“But a prisoner’s another story, aye.”

Conjecture was all Velmont had to go on, but what he said made sense to Malden. Why the king wanted an army now, of all times, Malden had no idea. The two thieves discussed various theories for some time, without coming to any further useful ideas.

They were still talking when the sun went down and darkness filled the hall. The only light they had came from the fire in the hearth. All around them men laid down as best they could and curled themselves in sleep. Those who still spoke softly amongst themselves all seemed to agree that they were to be kept in the banquet hall overnight at the very least. So when someone entered the hall with a lantern and started shining it in the faces of the imprisoned, everyone sat up and looked. Velmont and Malden fell silent and tried to look as if they’d never spoken to one another. They were in enough trouble as it was and didn’t need to be accused of conspiracy.

The lantern moved up and down the hall. The guards never spoke, just played their light over each face and then moved on, clearly not finding what they sought. As the guard with the lantern came closer, Malden somehow knew they were coming for him. When the light hit his face, he refused to blink. The guard beckoned to someone else—a kingsman—who came rushing up out of the darkness. Then the guard pointed one accusing finger at Malden. “Him.”

CHAPTER TEN

“This way, sir knight, milady,” the castellan said, and ushered them inside a low-ceilinged room. “Please wait here until you are officially presented.”

“What are we waiting for?” Cythera asked. “I don’t understand. We wanted to talk to the magistrate, so we could find out where our friend is being held.”

“I was bidden only to bring you here, where you may await your audience,” the castellan told her. Then he stepped backward out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

Croy stared at the doors, wondering exactly what was going on. Why had they been brought here, of all places? Why now?

Cythera turned to him and asked, “This doesn’t look like a law court. Where are we?”

The knight cleared his throat. “The privy council chamber. This is where the king consults his closest advisors.”

“And—our audience? Who have we been summoned to see? One of those advisors?”

Croy could barely speak for the emotion he felt. This room—this very room. “I don’t know why we were brought here,” he said at last.

Cythera sighed deeply and went to sit down. It had been a very long day for her, Croy thought. They’d had to run from office to office in the inner bailey, looking for anyone who might tell them where Malden might be, or who might take charge of Balint so they didn’t have to keep looking after her. They had at least succeeded in the latter goal. They had been allowed to turn the dwarf prisoner over to the king’s equerry, of all people—the official in charge of the royal stables. It seemed there was nowhere else in the inner bailey that wasn’t already full of prisoners.

No one could tell them anything about Malden. But after they had approached the keep, where they were told some prisoners were being held, the castellan himself had come looking for them, and he had brought them here.

Here. To this room.

Croy had been inside the privy council chamber before, many times. There had been a time he had stood in this room every day. The Ancient Blades had been forged to slay demons, but by the time Croy received Ghostcutter from his father there had been too few demons left to justify having five knights just for that purpose. Instead the bearers of the Blades had been commissioned to be the personal bodyguards of the king—the previous king, Ulfram IV.

It was in this room that Ulfram IV had died. A villainous councilor had slipped poison into his mutton. The Ancient Blades had caught the councilor before he could escape but it was already too late. It was also in this room that his son, Ulfram V, current sovereign of Skrae, had blamed the bodyguards for his father’s death, and stripped them of their commission. He would have done far more to them, if he’d been able to prove they had anything to do with the assassination, but everyone knew the sacred honor of the Blades. All he could do was send them forth from Helstrow in disgrace.

Croy remembered that day very well. It had been the worst day of his life. In some ways he would have preferred to have been hanged rather than face that shame. That was the day he became a knight errant—a servant without a master.

He had never expected to enter this room again.

He looked around him and saw how little had changed. The shields hanging on the walls were a bit rustier than they had been. The upholstery on the chairs that lined the walls had been changed from red to green, that was all, really. Then he spotted the one significant change.

A tapestry map covered one wall of the chamber, a cunning depiction of the natural and political features of Skrae picked out in minute embroidery of silken floss. The Whitewall—the mountain range that formed Skrae’s eastern border—had been stitched from thread of silver, and it glittered in the firelight. Except for one dull patch.

Croy approached the map and looked more closely. It was as he expected. Someone had used the point of a knife to pick out all the threads that had made up the image of Cloudblade, the kingdom’s tallest mountain. Which only made sense, since the mountain wasn’t there any more.

Croy blushed to think of the part he’d had in that.

“Croy,” Cythera said, turning to him to speak in a hurried whisper, “I don’t know what we’re doing here. But I’m certain that once it’s done we should leave Helstrow as soon as possible. My mother sent me a message today, telling me to come home.”

“She sent a message here? How did the messenger find you?”

“She didn’t send me a letter,” Cythera pointed out. “She has other methods of getting her point across. It doesn’t matter how it was done. She said that things were about to change, that all seven of the Ancient Blades were coming here. She said many things I didn’t understand. We need to find Malden as soon as possible and—”

She stopped because there was a knock on the door, and then two prisoners were brought inside. Balint and Malden, both of them in chains. Croy rushed toward Malden’s side, intending to ask his friend what had happened, but he was not given time. The same guard who brought in the prisoners had an announcement to make.

“All bow for His Majesty Ulfram Taer, Fifth of that Name!”

It was to be a royal audience, then. They had been brought here to wait for the king himself. It made no sense. Yet Croy knew exactly what to do. He drew his sword and held it before him with the point on the floor, then knelt behind it. He lowered his head as far as it would go.

“Oh, do stand up, Croy,” the king said. “And put that thing away before you scratch up the floorboards.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ulfram V was a year younger than Croy, but the strain of ruling a nation had aged him prematurely. The hair on his chin had turned gray since the last time the two had seen each other, and a constant diet of rich foods had swollen his belly. It was held almost in check now by a steel breastplate and gorget that he wore over his state robes.

When Croy saw the king’s armor, he knew at once the explanation for many of the strange things he’d seen since coming to Helstrow. The king of Skrae only wore such protection in times of war.

“My liege,” Croy said, “I beseech your mercy, and honor your rank, for—”

“Shut up,” the king said, in a tone that could not be argued with. “I told you never to come back here, didn’t I? Don’t bother answering. I know I did. But here you are. I could have you hanged, right now. Unfortunately for me, however, it turns out I have need of you, Croy. So I’m going to let you live.”

Croy said nothing, only lowered his head further.

“I have very little time for this audience, so we’ll dispense with formal salutations, I think,” the king told him. “I seem to recall that when I took away your commission, you said some pointlessly devout thing about never forgetting your vows anyway. Is that right?”

“It is,” Croy said, and dropped to one knee again. “The vow I made to you is a sacred bond. I swore it on the name of the Lady, and to break that promise would cost me my utter soul. I will forever be your vassal, your majesty.”

The king sighed and waved for Croy to stand again. “Very well. As of now you’re reinstated as one of my knights. I suppose you’ll want a ceremony for that or something, but I don’t care. You’ll report immediately to Sir Hew at the gatehouse. He’ll give you your orders. You may leave me now—I have these others to account for.”

“Majesty,” Croy said. He almost knelt again, but thought better of it. “I came here for a reason. It’s of these two prisoners I wished to speak.”

The king had started to turn away, to address Balint. Now he stopped and for a long moment he stood in silence, a confused expression on his face. “I beg your pardon? You wished to speak to me?” he asked. He seemed more surprised than angry. “You have been errant a long time, knight. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that a vassal does not speak to the king unless he is bidden.”

Croy lowered his head. “Your forgiveness, Majesty. Yet you must know of the crimes of this dwarf, and the innocence of this man. Justice demands that I speak.”

The king crossed over to one of the chairs against the wall and sat down. It was a chair like any other in the room, but by virtue of Ulfram V’s presence, it legally became a throne at that moment. Croy knelt before it.

“Just make haste,” the king said. “I’m quite busy at the moment.”

Croy kept his head bowed. “This dwarf is an oathbreaker. I’ll bear witness to the fact, in any court you decree. She is a murderer and a despoiler. A … poisoner,” he added. Ever since his father’s death, the king had been especially frightened of poisoners. It was cruel of Croy to even speak the word in this room, but it was the truth, and it needed to be aired. “She took up arms against humans and … others. She laid waste to an entire city, by deceit, by design, and by use of weapons.”

Ulfram turned to look at the dwarf. “Is this true?” he asked.

“Every fucking word of it,” Balint told the king. She rolled her eyes. “Do your worst, and send me on my way. I’ve an itch on my buttocks I can’t scratch, not with my hands tied like this.”

“Another pointless delay!” the king screeched. Pressing his fingertips against his temples, he called out to his servants in the hall. “Fetch a scribe! Have him bring parchment and ink. And someone unchain her. What is your name, dwarf?”

“Balint.”

Croy glared at her. “When addressing the king, you will call him, ‘your majesty’, or—”

“Or not. I certainly don’t care,” Ulfram said. Croy’s shoulders tensed. He’d always thought kings should be slightly aloof, detached at least from the lesser folk they governed. Ulfram V clearly thought otherwise—he’d always disdained the careful phrases of court etiquette and spoke plainly as a peasant. That was his right, of course—the king could speak how he chose to whom he chose. If Croy found it unseemly that was his own problem.

“It seems I’m to be merciful today,” the king said. “Believe me, it’s not by choice. Any other day if you came here under these accusations I’d exile you on the spot. I have very little patience for those who won’t do as they’re told.”

Balint said nothing. Her face was a mask of nonchalance, though Croy could see her bound hands were trembling.

“Tell me,” Ulfram said. “Can you repair a broken ballista?”

“Any dwarf could do that,” Balint assured him.

The king nodded. “And you laid waste to a city. That’s what Croy said. He does tend to exaggerate, but you don’t deny the charge. So you know how to conduct a siege. Do you know how to defend cities, too, or is it just destroying them you’re good at?”

“I’m trained in all manner of siegecraft,” Balint said. “I can work either side.”

“Sometimes the Lady drops Her blessings right in our laps.” The king reached down and put a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. “I’m going to give you a pardon for all crimes you may have committed in the past,” he told her.

Croy’s jaw fell.

“I assume that will earn me some gratitude. Perhaps,” the king went on, “you’ll consent to come work for me. I am in desperate need of sappers and engineers. Are we agreed?”

“Do I have to kiss your royal fucking codpiece or something to seal the deal?” Balint asked.

The king studied her carefully, then raised one eyebrow. “No.”

“Then I’m all yours.”

“Your majesty!” Croy objected. “I—I can’t believe that—”

But then he stopped. He couldn’t finish that thought out loud. He wasn’t a knight errant anymore. He had lost certain freedoms the moment he was recommissioned. Questioning the king’s word was one of them. “I beg your pardon, Majesty. I will be silent now.”

“That’ll be a nice change of pace,” the king told him. “Very good. Milady Balint, you’ll report to the keep. Sir Goris is the master of the armory there—tell him I want a full inventory of every trebuchet, battering ram and mantlet in our possession, and how many more of the same can be constructed in short order. Goris is a fool of parts. He knows the difference between a besagew and a rerebrace, but I’m not sure he can tell his hundreds from his thousands, so double check every number he gives you. We’ll have much to discuss later, so stay close by.”

Balint bowed low and said, “Your majesty.”

“One thing,” the king said, before dismissing her. “Sir Croy may be an idiot but all the same if he says someone’s not to be trusted he’s probably right. Serve me well and we’ll forget about your indiscretions. Betray me and I’ll send you back to the dwarven kingdom sealed up in a barrel like salt pork. Do you understand?”

Balint nodded agreeably. Then she marched out of the room with her chin up. She couldn’t resist giving an evil snicker as she walked past Croy.

“Now, this one—your name is Malden, is that right? And you’re a thief?”

“My name is Malden, your majesty,” Malden said, glancing over at Croy and Cythera. He pleaded silently with his eyes.

Yet what could Croy do? If he tried to free Malden now, he’d be breaking his promise to the king. And that was unthinkable.

“Sir Hew took you into custody this morning. Ordinarily he would have sent you to the magistrates, but he told me there was something special about your case, and of course, my time is valued so little around here that he insisted I judge you personally. Apparently you were in possession, at the time of your arrest, of one of the famous swords. The blasted Ancient Blades.”

“The one called Acidtongue, highness,” Malden confirmed.

“A rather valuable piece of iron.” The king frowned. His eye took in Malden’s cheap cloak, the lack of flesh on his bones. “Look, lad, it’s clear that you stole the blade. You’re no more a swordsman than I’m a fishwife. So I’ll give you the same choice I plan on giving every criminal and vagrant in this city. You can go back to the gaol and wait until I have time to hang you properly. Or—if you prefer—I can enlist you in my army as a foot soldier, and you can earn forgiveness through military service. Assuming you survive.”

“Begging your majesty’s pardon, I like neither of those options,” Malden said.

“No, I don’t suppose you would. But that’s what I’m offering.”

“To a guilty man, yes. But I am innocent. I did not steal the sword. It was given to me freely by its rightful owner—Sir Croy.”

Every eye in the room turned to stare at the knight.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Is this true, Croy?” the king demanded. “Did you—in fact—make a gift of a priceless and irreplaceable, aye, a magical sword … to what is clearly a piece of gutter trash from the most base dungpit in Ness?”

Croy was still on his knees. It was not appropriate to drop prostrate before the king, but he considered it. “It is true,” he said.

The king frowned. “I was under the impression that you already had an Ancient Blade. Yes, I see it there on your belt—Ghostcutter, I believe. Hmm. The last time I saw Acidtongue, it was in the possession of Sir Bikker. Wasn’t it?”

“Sir Bikker is dead, Majesty,” Croy said. He had to swallow thickly before he could go on. “I slew him in a duel of honor. With his dying breath he gave Acidtongue to me, and bade me find another to wield it. That is the way of our order, that we each choose our successors. And I chose this man—Malden—as the next to wield Acidtongue.”

“There weren’t any better candidates available? I have a nephew, for instance, who is absolutely useless at organizing his farms, but who loves nothing better than to whack away at the quintain all day with a wooden sword. He reminds me of you quite a bit, Croy. His head’s just as full of fancies and notions of honor and chivalry.” The king sighed. “Absolutely bloody useless. You can’t give Acidtongue to him?”

Croy couldn’t just say no. One did not gainsay the king. Yet he certainly could not say yes, either. He knew the nephew in question. Like every knight in the kingdom, he was distantly related to the king himself, and the nephew was his second cousin, once or twice removed. He couldn’t remember which. The boy had always struck him as a simpleton. Then there was the fact that Croy had already given the sword to Malden. Once an Ancient Blade passed to its next wielder, it could not be taken back. The only way that could happen was if Croy decided Malden had broken his vows as an Ancient Blade. Then Croy would be required to kill Malden to secure the blade. The king might demand he do just that (and Croy would be required to comply), but even there was a problem. There had been no time for Croy to train Malden as an Ancient Blade—and thus Malden had never taken the sacred vows. He couldn’t very well be said to have broken them since he had never even heard them spoken, much less repeated them.

There had to be a way to convince the king that Croy had made the right choice. “Your majesty, Malden may be lowborn, but his heart is strong. He is a natural wonder at footwork and quickness. I believed that with a few years of proper training and a strict physical regimen, he could be made into a swordsman.”

Malden’s chains rattled. Croy looked over and saw the thief pointing at his own face. He mouthed the word, “Me?” as if he couldn’t believe it. Yet surely, when Croy had given him the sword, Malden must have understood that this was to be his destiny. Surely …

The king rose from his chair and strode briskly across the room. Going to the door, he waved one hand into the hallway. In a moment Sir Hew came in, carrying Acidtongue in its special glass-lined scabbard.

“You heard something of this?” the king asked.

“Yes, your majesty. I heard all. And I’ll swear all of it is true. I’ve never known Croy to lie, not even to save his own skin. Much less that of a street rat like this Malden. The boy is a weakling, but he’s quick on his feet as a tomcat. As for his heart, Croy would be the best judge.”

The king pulled wearily at his beard. “Fine, fine, give the boy his sword. Unchain him. Then the three of you go stand against that wall. If I’m to be beset by three Ancient Blades at once, at least they can make themselves useful.”

It was done quickly. When they were against the wall, Croy and Hew grasped forearms with great fondness. It had been a long time since they’d seen each other. “You wear the king’s crown on your chest,” Croy said, looking down at Hew’s tabard. “I am so glad to see you, old friend—yet not a little surprised!”

Hew shrugged. “After we were disbanded I tried being a knight errant for a while, just like you. Running about the countryside slaying goblins and brigands, burning sorcerers at the stake, you know. All the usual thing. I found, however, that I couldn’t take being my own master. So I came back here last year and begged for my old job back. His Majesty took pity on me and let me captain his watch. Now the worst thing I face most days is a starveling who’s snatched a loaf of bread, but I have honor, true honor.”

“I am so glad to hear it,” Croy said. A tear had formed in the corner of his eye.

“Me too,” Malden said. Croy hadn’t even realized he was standing there.

Sir Hew turned to look at the thief with disdain. “You’re not one of us yet, boy. Not just because you hold a sword. Don’t forget that.”

Malden laughed. “I’m just glad to not be hanged. But take a lesson from this, sir knight, and mark it well—not every street rat is what he seems to be.”

Hew bridled and looked as if he was about to say something sharp in return, but his imprecation was cut short when the king cleared his throat. Remembering their instructions the three men lined up against the wall, Malden trying to ape the posture of the two knights.

“One last order of business,” the king said, “and then we can move on. Who’s she?”

The king had turned and pointed at Cythera.

“Your majesty,” Cythera said, and made a proper curtsey. “I am Cythera, daughter of Coruth. With Croy and Malden I brought Balint to you so that—”

The king waved on hand in dismissal. “You should have stopped at ‘daughter of Coruth’. So you’re a witch?”

“Not exactly.”

The king gripped the bridge of his nose. “Can you do anything … witch-like?”

Cythera blushed. Then she put her hands in front of her, a few inches apart. Bright sparks burst between them.

The king nodded eagerly. “Good, good—keep doing that! It’s almost impressive. Now, you four—your job in the next few minutes is to stand there, looking menacing. That is all. I don’t want you to speak. I don’t want you to move at all. Just look dangerous. Can you do that?”

“Certainly, Majesty,” Croy said, “but for what purpose?”

“I have a guest I need to entertain.” It was the only explanation the king would give. He hurried to the door again and nodded to someone outside. “Send her in, now. I haven’t got all day.” Then he hurried back inside and took a seat in one of the room’s chairs.

A herald in bright green livery strode into the room and made an elaborate flourishing bow. “Your majesty,” he announced, “I must present the lady Mörgain, princess of the eastern steppes!”

The woman who came through the door wore very little other than a cloak of wolf fur. She stood taller than anyone in the room and broader through the shoulders than anyone but Croy or Hew. Her face was painted to look as if the flesh had been stripped from her skull, and her hair was hacked short and stuck out in wild bunches. If she was the daughter of Mörg the Wise then that made her the brother of Mörget, whom Croy had once called brother. Mörget was dead now, a fact that made him secretly breathe easier—he had no desire to test his prowess in a fight against Mörget. But by the look of her Mörgain would be nearly as deadly.

In her hand she held an iron axe, and she brought it round in a powerful swing that struck the herald in the small of the back. The small man went flying and crashed against the side of the hearth.

“No man calls me princess,” Mörgain said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Instantly Ghostcutter came to Croy’s hand. Beside him he saw Chillbrand appear in Sir Hew’s grip. Croy glanced over at Malden and nodded at the thief’s belt. Malden made a rather clumsy draw of it, but he got Acidtongue into the air.

Cythera drew her hands apart, and light jumped between her fingers.

Yet even before Croy could take a step toward the barbarian, Mörgain had drawn her own sword and dropped into a defensive crouch. The sight of the blade was enough to make even a disciplined knight take pause.

Croy had seen longer swords, but never any so massive. It was longer than Ghostcutter by a good six inches and the blade was broader than his palm. The sword had no quillions, nor needed any, for the blade was far wider than the grip, and only tapered near its point. It looked not so much like a sword as a grotesquely large kitchen knife. The iron had a perfect fibrous grain that spoke of master craftsmanship, but no matter how well balanced it might be Croy knew most men would never have been able to hold its weight in both hands.

Mörgain held it in one of her own, and the muscles in her bare arm showed little strain.

Sir Hew spoke the name that echoed inside Croy’s own skull.

“That’s Fangbreaker.”

Fangbreaker—one of the seven Ancient Blades. Made eight hundred years ago, at the same time as Ghostcutter, or Chillbrand, or Acidtongue, and sworn as they were to slay demons and defend humanity. Fangbreaker and another Ancient Blade called Dawnbringer had been lost to the people of Skrae centuries before in the final terrible battle they’d fought against the barbarians—the battle that had pushed the horde back beyond the Whitewall. The knights who wielded the blades perished in the fighting up in the mountains, and their swords were lost to Skrae. It had long been conjectured that they had ended up in the hands of the barbarians. Croy had confirmed the truth of that—he had seen Dawnbringer in the hand of Mörget, and now Mörgain held Fangbreaker. He wondered if Mörgain was as untrustworthy—and as unworthy of carrying an Ancient Blade—as her brother.

Maybe it was time to take the sword back for Skrae. He lunged forward, bringing Ghostcutter up from a low quarter. Mörgain moved faster than Croy expected and swept down with Fangbreaker so the two swords rang and grated along each others’ edge. Croy sensed Sir Hew coming up from behind him on his left, his weak side. Together they could make short work of this defiler—

Except that just then the king called, “Hold! Hold, all of you.”

Croy leapt back and shot a quick glance toward his liege. Ulfram V was crouching by the hearth, one hand pressed against the neck of the fallen herald.

“This man’s not dead. Just stunned. I will not have blood shed in my privy chamber. Not in this room, where my father died. And you, Malden—put that blasted thing away. You’re spilling acid on my good parquet floor.”

Croy kept his eyes on Mörgain. Her painted face showed nothing, though her eyes were on fire with bloodlust. If he or Hew wanted to continue the conversation, she would be happy to oblige, he was certain.

“Stop. Put away your weapons. All of you!” Ulfram demanded again.

Croy met Mörgain’s eyes, then slowly nodded. She nodded in return. They both sheathed their swords at the same time. Croy knew he could count on Sir Hew to do the same.

“As long as you do not use that filthy word again,” Mörgain announced, “I will remain at peace. I am no princess. Princesses are vain, idle things, good only for sitting in towers waiting to be married off to the richest man their fathers can find. I am a chieftess of the eastern clans. Thousands of men obey my command.”

The king stood up to his full height. The king might be overly familiar with his inferiors and he might fail to understand the value of the Ancient Blades, but Croy knew that Ulfram V did not lack for courage. “You’re in my land, now. I don’t see these thousands of men in this room. You’ve already given me offense. Did you come all this way to insult me? It’s a long voyage from the eastern steppes.”

“Not anymore,” Mörgain said, and smiled to show her teeth. Matched with the painted teeth on her lips, they looked like vicious fangs. “I rode here, driving my horse to the point of death by exhaustion. It took me two days. My clansmen are coming on foot. It will take them a little longer. But only a little.”

“So it’s true, what my scouts have told me,” Ulfram said, his voice hollow. “When Cloudblade fell, it cleared a new pass through the mountains.”

“One near as flat as the plains of my birth,” Mörgain agreed.

“And you’ll cross that pass to invade Skrae. For conquest.”

“As is our right. We are stronger than you. We’ve always been stronger than you,” Mörgain said, “and the strong should rule the weak. For centuries now you’ve hidden behind those mountains, just as you hide behind the walls of your cities. It seems even mountains can fall. Where will you hide now, little king?”

Ulfram bristled but he was enough of a statesman not to rise to an obvious taunt. Mörgain might be bigger than him but he didn’t have to fight her himself. “This is an act of aggression. A bald-faced move of conquest.”

Mörgain shrugged. “I am to let you know we were provoked.” She reached inside her wolf-fur cloak and took out something round and coated in tar. She turned it around and Croy saw it had a face on one side. A human head, hacked off and preserved in gruesome fashion.

It was enough to churn his guts. Even worse, he recognized the face. It belonged to a holy man who had once lived in an old fort just west of the Whitewall. Herward was his name, and he was one of the gentlest souls Croy had ever met.

“This one crossed the new pass a week ago. He came to where we were camped for the autumn and spread lies amongst my people. The Great Chieftain of the clans considers this an act of invasion on the part of Skrae.”

“Herward? An invader?” Croy cried out in disbelief. “He was a devotee of the Lady! Perhaps he was not entirely sane.” In fact the hermit had been driven mad by visions and black mead. Still—“He was no threat to you.”

“He spread lies,” Mörgain said again. “He spoke of a god called the Lady. He demanded we give her our worship. In the east we have only one deity—Death, mother of us all. We will not be converted to your decadent religion.”

The king went and took the head from her. He looked down into the distorted features. “This is base rationalization and you know it, Mörgain. One crazed preacher is not an invasion force.”

“I have come for two reasons only,” Mörgain said, “and they are both now achieved. I came to give you warning, for among my people, only base cowards attack without warning. We are coming. You have been warned.”

“And the other reason?” Ulfram asked.

“To prove I have more courage in my heart than any man.”

The king nodded sadly. “I imagine you must. Because you would make an excellent hostage. I could seize you right now and force your clansmen to return to their steppes in exchange for your safety.”

Mörgain laughed.

Croy knew that laugh. He’d heard a deeper, slightly louder version before. Mörget had laughed like that. It was the laugh of one who found violent death to be the ultimate jest.

“Any man who touches me will die. Perhaps some man will kill me, or even take me alive,” she said. “But he will still die. I will be avenged, even if it takes fifty thousand warriors. If it takes every clan of the east, their bodies piled up outside these walls to make siege towers. If it takes the last drop of blood in the last vein of my people, the man who touches me will die. Now. Dare you take me hostage?”

Croy turned to watch the king’s face. There was no fear there. He refused to be intimidated—or at least he refused to let Mörgain see that her threats had worked. Croy felt a certain pride at that. This was the man he served.

“Not when I have a better use for you. Go from here in peace,” Ulfram said, “and take word to your Great Chieftain. I’ll meet with him under the flag of parley, in a place and time of his choosing. Go. I will not stay you. Frankly I don’t want you in my home another second.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After Mörgain left, no one spoke for some while. Croy grew uneasy, standing against the wall with his hand on his sword hilt. The king, his liege, was clearly distressed—Ulfram sat in his chair, chin in hand, deep in thought.

“It’s far worse than I thought,” the king said, at last. “I thought they would give us a chance to pay tribute in exchange for peace.” He shook his head. “Croy—Sir Croy. You were there. You saw the mountain come down. How wide is this pass? How many men can march abreast through it?”

Croy’s brow furrowed as he considered that. “When the mountain fell, it wreaked terrible damage on the surrounding land. The pass is perhaps a quarter of a mile across.”

“That big? That big!” Ulfram got up and ran to the door. He waved outside and Croy heard footsteps in the hall. “My scouts told me it was passable, but they forgot to mention it was wide enough to march an entire army through. Incompetence everywhere! A hole that big in my kingdom. The barbarians will flood through. There’ll be no stopping them.”

“Your majesty,” Sir Hew said. “I suspect you knew this was coming.”

The king looked up at his Captain of the Guard. “I knew they were massing the clans just east of the mountains, yes.”

“Already you’ve begun the process of conscription. We’ll have an army ready before they arrive,” Hew went on.

“An untrained rabble,” Ulfram told him. He waved one hand in frustration. “And only a few real knights to lead them.”

“We could send to the northern kingdoms, to hire more soldiers.” The kingdoms of Skilfing, Ryving, Maelfing and Anfald were constantly at war with each other, and in times of peace they hired their soldiers out as mercenaries.

“Already done,” the king said. “Skilfing has promised to come to our aid as soon as they’re finished making their own war on Maelfing. They won’t arrive for many weeks, though—and the barbarians are only days away.”

“What of the Old Empire?” Croy asked.

The king shook his head. The first settlers of Skrae had been exiles from the continent across the southern sea, a land ruled for thousands of years by a grand imperial court. “I sent an envoy as soon as I heard about the new pass, of course,” Ulfram said, “but the Emperor there has no love for us, not even after all this time. And I wouldn’t trust him if he did send us troops. They’d probably beat the barbarians, then stick around to conquer us as well. No, we’ll have to rely on the army we have. But we’ve had too much peace, for too long! Barely any man in Skrae remembers how to lift a sword. We’re fat and soft. The barbarians—if they’re anything like her—will run roughshod over us.”

One by one, the king’s councilors filed in from the hall. The exchequer, the seneschal, the chancellor, the Duke of Greenmarsh, the Archpriest of the Lady, many more Croy had never met. The Baron of Easthull nodded in a friendly way to Croy, but was quickly drawn into conversation with a man who wore the golden chain of the keeper of the royal seals. These were the most powerful men in Skrae—and unlike their king they all looked terrified.

A table was brought in and maps unfurled across its surface. Croy was asked a thousand questions, very few of which he could answer, but he did his best. Cythera had a few more answers, but she lacked any military training and couldn’t speak to strategy. Yet the need for information seemed endless. Even Malden was interrogated about what he’d seen of the land near Cloudblade’s ruin.

Everyone crowded around the maps, working out where the invasion would come from. “The forest—here—will slow them down a bit, but we can expect at most ten days’ grace before they reach the river Strow,” Sir Hew said.

“If we could only hold them off until winter,” the king said, wringing his hands. “Just a few months. No army can march properly through a bank of snow. They’d have to either make camp where we could harry them, or, more likely, withdraw into the mountains and wait for spring. By then we could fortify the pass and seal them back where they belong.”

“There might be a way to slow them at least,” Croy suggested. “Here,” he said, pointing to the map, quite near where the new pass lay, “there is an old fort. It’s where we met Herward. It’s half in ruins, but the walls still stand. My liege, give me five hundred men, and I’ll hold it for a month, though it cost me my life.”

The king stared at the map. Then he took a step back from the table and shook his head. “No,” he told Croy.

“I beg you, Majesty! Allow me this chance to prove my honor.”

“I said no, Sir Croy. Your five hundred would be overrun, eventually. Every man of them slain, and still you wouldn’t buy us enough time. I can’t sacrifice that many on a noble gesture. No, we will make our defense here, at Helstrow.”

Sir Hew cleared his throat but the king shot him a piercing glance. “I have spoken,” he announced.

Silence fell across the room.

“When word of this gets out, everyone in the outer bailey will try to flee. I can’t allow that. Seal the gates of the outer bailey—all of them. No man will leave Helstrow, not until I bid it,” Ulfram declared. “Redouble our efforts to conscript the population. I want every soul within these walls dedicated to preparing for the attack. As for you three Ancient Blades—go now, and make yourselves useful. Train as many of the rabble as you can. My councilors and I have a great deal of work to do, and you’re wasting our time.”

Croy’s cheeks burned. His heart raced in his chest. He bowed deep and said, “My liege.” Then he nodded at Cythera and Malden and hurried them out of the chamber.

It was not until they were beyond the gates of the palace that any of them spoke again. It was Cythera who spoke first. “I can’t believe he just let Balint go like that—after all she did!”

“We cannot gainsay him,” Croy told her. “He is the Lady’s appointed sovereign, and his word is law.”

“He’s a man. And any man can be a fool,” Malden insisted.

Croy’s blood surged to hear the slander, but he knew better than to take Malden’s words too seriously. The thief didn’t understand what he was talking about. “He’s a king, and that’s all that matters. It is his right to do as he sees fit, for all our sake.”

“Not mine. I know nothing of war,” Malden admitted, “but he’s making a mistake, isn’t he? Sir Hew seemed to think your strategy could have worked. It could have kept the barbarians bottled up. Instead he’s going to just let them march up to his gate so he can have a nice chat with their king. Or whatever it is they have instead of a king. He’s going to talk to them, when all they want is to destroy us.”

Croy’s honor wouldn’t allow him to agree. But he knew enough of military history to say, “If the barbarians come through the pass unhindered, they’ll have time before the first snow falls to establish a strong foothold inside Skrae’s borders. Once they’re here, it’ll be a hard thing to drive them out again.”

The thief placed a hand on Croy’s shoulder. Croy could feel Malden’s fingers shaking. “I—I’m not good enough with this sword to fight in battle,” he said. “I can’t stay here. I can’t stand beside you.”

Croy closed his eyes. Cowardly words, but truthful ones. “No, Malden, you can’t. Which is why you’re leaving Helstrow tonight—and you’re taking Cythera with you.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

After darkness fell, Malden and Croy headed back into the outer bailey. The air was crisp with autumn’s chill, but Helstrow’s streets were full of people heading this way and that, as if they didn’t know where to go but didn’t dare go to their homes. The kingsmen were out in force, hauling away anyone they could find who could be legally conscripted. Even the slightest offense was enough to get a man arrested that night. Public drunkenness, failure to keep a pig off the street—things that were commonplaces in peace time had become hanging offenses, it seemed. Nor were the women of Helstrow left unaccosted. They were herded toward churches and public houses, where they would be put to work making bandages and bowstrings.

Malden still wore his old green cloak, but Croy had put on a tabard with the colors of the king, green and gold, and the people they passed gave them a wide berth. The swords on their hips probably made room for them as well.

The two of them passed a bloody-handed preacher standing on the lip of a well, shouting for all who would hear it the old religion of the bloodgod—heresy in a fortress-town dedicated to the Lady. More than a few young men had stopped to listen, perhaps thinking Sadu could save them from the coming barbarians. When the crowd saw Croy’s colors, though, they ran off into the night.

“They’d do better putting their faith in the king,” Croy said, through clenched teeth. He found the piglet the holy man had sacrificed hidden in the well’s bucket. He tossed it angrily into the street.

“They’re terrified,” Malden told him. He could sympathize. “They’ll turn to anything that offers some hope.” He looked ahead into the dark street, lit only by the moon. “Is it much farther now?”

“The conscripts you want are being held in a churchyard by the outer wall,” Croy told him. “It’s only a few streets from here. Once you find these men—”

“It’s better if you don’t know what I’ll do after that,” Malden told him. “We’ll part ways as soon as they’re freed.”

Croy nodded. “Malden,” he said, “this may be the last time I have a chance to talk to you about … something that has been troubling me.”

Malden tensed, wondering what the knight was talking about. Was he going to change his mind now, and demand that Malden stay and help with the defense of Helstrow?

“There is no time for Cythera and I to be wed before you leave,” Croy went on, looking away from Malden’s face. “I have her promise, but … Malden. I’ve never doubted your friendship. Yet I saw something, under Cloudblade. Something I cannot explain.”

Malden’s heart stopped beating for a moment. “You saw her kiss me.”

Croy couldn’t seem to speak.

This might be the moment, Malden thought, when he tells me he’s going to have to kill me. He considered which way he would run.

But Croy lived by a code of honor. And that meant he had to give a man a chance to defend himself. “Why did she do it?” he asked.

The thief licked his lips. What he said next was going to have to be very carefully worded. Cythera had said she would tell Croy everything when they returned to Ness. Implicit in that was that he shouldn’t tell Croy himself. He couldn’t tell Croy that he and Cythera loved each other. That the betrothal between the knight and Cythera was already broken.

There was good reason for that silence. Still, Malden burned to have it all out in the open. It would make life so much simpler. In all likelihood, it would also make his life much shorter. Yet he found he couldn’t quite lie. “Allow me to explain. At that moment—the moment of that kiss—I was moments from certain death. The assassin, Prestwicke, was going to kill me. I was a condemned man and I had no hope of survival. I begged her for that kiss, as the last request of a dying man. In such a case, what woman could refuse?”

Croy’s eyes were wide and his face had turned bright red. He was embarrassed, Malden realized, to even have to ask. If another man had caught Malden kissing his betrothed, a lesser man than Croy he doubted that explanation would have sufficed. Yet Malden saw other emotions in Croy’s face. Gratitude. Relief. Croy had wanted so badly for there to be a simple, innocent explanation that he probably would have accepted anything Malden said. Anything other than the full truth.

“Surely you don’t doubt her constancy,” Malden insisted. “Her honor—”

“Her honor is my honor, and I would die to defend it. And you’re right, she could not refuse you in a moment like that. She is such a compassionate woman. You see why I love her? Do you understand the strength of my feelings?”

“I think I do,” Malden said, softly.

“But that very quality I love makes her vulnerable. Men can be schemers. They can take advantage of woman’s gentler nature, and women aren’t always wise enough to resist their charms.”

Not for the first time Malden remembered that Croy had never spent much time around women. Malden, who had been raised by harlots, thought he might know the female mind a little better. He also knew just how well women could resist men’s charms—when they chose to. He decided not to share this knowledge, just then.

“Someone else, someone with a less noble heart than yours, Malden, might have taken advantage of that situation. They might have asked for more than a kiss. If she were in a situation where she had to compromise herself, she might question the promise she made to me.”

“Put these thoughts from your mind! Croy, you have enough to worry about!”

Croy shook his head. “I need to ask your aid, Malden, and please, don’t refuse this. I need you to watch her. Make sure she stays safe. And … and pure. I—” Croy let out a little gasp. His fists were clenched before him. “I would die, my soul would shrivel, if I ever learned she did not love me any longer. It would pain me more than arrows through my vitals, Malden!”

“I swear this, Croy,” he said. “No new lover will come near her. I won’t so much as let her be alone with any man but me.”

There were tears in Croy’s eyes when he grasped Malden in a crushing embrace. “You are my friend, after all. I doubted it sometimes—but you are my true friend.”

“Put all your trust in me,” Malden told him. And for the first time in his life, he felt the pangs of conscience for deceiving someone. But he knew he would feel pangs of another sort—the sort one feels with two feet of steel shoved through one’s belly—should Croy ever learn the truth.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He made a point of saying no more until they reached the churchyard.

It was a gloomy place for men to sleep, even thieves. Yet the conscripts would have been disconsolate even if they’d been billeted in the courtly homes of the inner bailey. To a man they looked beaten and exhausted. While Malden had been brought to his audience with the king, these men had spent the day training. Shouting serjeants had put them through endless paces, teaching them the basics of how to use a bill hook as a weapon or how to march and even run in heavy leather harness. The reward for all that hard work was that now they were chained together in groups of six so they could not run away, given a bowl of thin pottage each to eat, and then utterly ignored by their captors.

Malden supposed it was better than being hanged in a public square. He wondered how many of the groaning men would agree. Well, at least for one of them the future held a little more promise. He scanned the crowd among the graves until he found Velmont, his friend from his own previous confinement.

“That one,” he told Croy.

They approached the chained men and Velmont looked up with half a smile when he saw Malden. Then he glanced down at the sword on Malden’s belt and his face fell. Malden realized he must be wondering if the man he’d spoken to while chained up in the banquet hall had in fact been an informer for the kingsmen. He had to admit to himself that if their positions were reversed he would have a hard time of trusting Velmont. “Just keep quiet, and this will go well for you,” he whispered.

“You had me good, didn’t you?” Velmont asked, ignoring what Malden had said. “All that talk o’ being brothers in the trade.”

“Be of good cheer, Velmont,” Malden told the man. “I’m not here to do you any harm.”

“You’re no thief, are you?” Velmont asked. He spat into the weeds between two graves. “What is it you want now, more o’ our secrets?”

“These others with you—are they part of your crew?” Malden asked.

“You want me to start giving up names? You’ll have to beat ’em out of me.”

“Listen to my proposal before you reject it,” Malden told him. He put his hand on the iron collar fastened around Velmont’s neck, but the thief jerked away from him. “I’m going to free you, you fool!”

“Oh, aye, free me from me mortal station, I’d reckon. With all I told ye … I gave out plenty enough to end up swingin’ from a rope.”

Croy bent to study the chains holding Velmont, and drew his belt knife to break the lock. Malden looked up and saw they’d been observed. The guards set to watch the conscripts had been huddled around a fire near the church, but now a serjeant in a rusted kettle hat came running toward them. He had a green and yellow ribbon wound around the brim of his helmet, and a thick truncheon in his hand.

“Saving your grace, sir knight,” the man said, addressing Croy, “but may I ask exactly what you think you’re doing here?”

Malden’s hand dropped toward the hilt of Acidtongue, but Croy stepped in front of him and leaned close to the serjeant’s face. “The king’s work,” he said. His voice was hard—harder than Malden had ever heard it before. “I’ve been sent on this fool’s errand by Sir Hew himself, the Captain of the Guard. I want it done quickly so I can get back to more important things. Now, release these men.”

“But—they’re criminals!” the serjeant protested.

“They’re wanted at the keep for a special detail. We need laborers to oil and clean every piece of iron in the armory before morning. Of course, if you’d prefer, I can take you and your men instead.”

Malden’s jaw dropped. He’d never heard Croy talk to anyone with such an air of command—or threat. Nor had he ever heard Croy lie. He would have thought the knight incapable of dissembling. It seemed the knight had hidden depths.

The serjeant shook his head hurriedly. “No, no sir. I’ll fetch the keys.”

In short order Velmont and the five men he’d been chained with were free. The serjeant offered to bind their hands. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Croy told him. “The two of us are armed well enough to control a half dozen dogs like this.”

“As you’d have it, sir,” the serjeant said. When he was dismissed he went gratefully back to his fire, glad to have escaped Croy’s attention. There would be no more trouble from that quarter.

Malden and Croy led the six conscripts down an alley and around a corner before they spoke again. Croy clasped Malden’s hands and said, “It’s done. I’ll make sure Cythera is waiting for you at the inn, with full packs and some food. Malden, if the war goes poorly, or I am killed—”

“We’ll meet again,” Malden told him. “Get back before Sir Hew wonders where you’ve been.”

Croy nodded. “Lady speed you on your path,” he said, and hurried off into the night. Malden watched him go for a moment, then turned around to face the conscripts.

Before he could say a word to Velmont, however, a hand reached across his front and slipped the buckle of his belt. Acidtongue fell to the cobbles and Malden, too surprised to think clearly, bent to retrieve it.

A stone came down on the back of his head, hard enough to send his brains spinning.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cythera stood by the window in their room at the inn, watching the street through a narrow gap in the shutters. It was near midnight, but the fortress city still rumbled with activity, and a fair amount of traffic still moved through the narrow lanes. Groups of men—soldiers, or simply men who had gathered together for security—hurried this way and that on errands, their heads down, their voices low, showing few lights. All of Helstrow was terrified of what was coming.

Coruth had tried to warn her of this, she was sure. Of the coming invasion and the war that would follow. Cythera tried to remember the words the boy had spoken in the alley, words sent across a hundred miles. Surely this was what Coruth had meant. The swords coming together, men brought low or carried to high station. What else could it mean?

A knock at the door startled her. She hurried across the room and reached for the latch, but hesitated before opening. Croy had been quite clear in his instructions, and for once she’d agreed with him. They could not be too careful now. The king was unwilling to let anyone leave Helstrow, whether or not they could fight. If his agents found out that Cythera planned to escape they would try to stop her. She did not call out to ask who was at the door, only waited a moment, her nerves jangling.

A second knock came after a short pause. And then a third right away. That was the signal.

She opened the door and saw Croy there. He pushed past her into the room without speaking. He held a pair of heavy packs which he set down on the bed. “It’s done,” he whispered. “I can’t stay long.”

She nodded, understanding. The less said the better. No one in Helstrow was sleeping now, and it was impossible to know who might hear them.

Croy lifted one hand as if he might touch her cheek. Instead his fingers moved to her lips. She blinked, unsure of what he was trying to communicate. “I’ll come to Ness as soon as I can,” he whispered. “If I can.”

Cythera closed her eyes. If he lived through the invasion, he meant.

Cythera didn’t know if she’d ever truly loved Croy. When he’d asked for her hand in marriage it had seemed like a way to escape her father. Later it had sounded like a grand adventure. Now she knew she could never be happy as his wife, that only Malden could give her life she wanted.

Yet she had never doubted Croy’s love, or his kindness. He had been so good to her and her mother—she owed him far more than she could repay. And here she was, betraying him. She opened her mouth, absolutely convinced she had to tell him the truth. She would tell him everything about Malden. She would beg his forgiveness. It was the right thing to do.

“Don’t speak,” he told her. “Just listen. When we meet again we’ll get married, right away. I won’t worry about the banns, or about all the formalities and niceties. I’ll take you to the Ladychapel in whatever clothes we’re wearing, day or night. If we must we’ll wake the priests and force them to perform the ceremony. I’ll kneel with you before the altar there and take your hand and it will be done. It will be forever.”

She had to tell him. It was unthinkable cruelty not to.

“I can see it in my mind’s eye, even now. The candles. The golden cornucopia above the altar. I can smell the incense. Yes,” he said, and he leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers. “Yes. That image is going to get me through anything that’s to come. I don’t care about the bloodshed. I don’t care about the danger. I will see only your face as you give yourself to me. As I give myself to you.”

“Croy,” she managed to say, though her voice cracked. “There’s something—”

He wasn’t finished, though. “I had a teacher once, a fencing master, who told me there were only two ways to ride into battle. You could go in expecting to die, but wanting to die honorably, and the Lady would favor you and you would live. Or you could go to war with a reason to survive, a reason to keep going—and the Lady would make sure you were victorious. He said the latter was always better. I’m going to fight for you, Cythera. I’m going to fight to make sure I get that moment in the Ladychapel.”

“You,” she said. “You should know that … you should …”

The words were there in her throat. She could no more have conjured them forth, though, than she could fly to the moon. She opened her eyes to look at him. Perhaps that would help her summon up the strength to do what was right.

There were tears on his cheeks, but he was smiling.

If she told him now she would destroy him. It was wrong to keep this secret all the same. She still felt that way. It would have taken a saint to say the words, though, and Cythera knew she was no saint. So she did what a witch would do instead. What her mother would do.

“You’ll be a hero then,” she told him. “You’ll be a champion of Skrae. What woman could resist that?”

He laughed, a sound of happiness in that dark hour. He kissed her on the cheek, and he left her there. Hurried back out into the night, to do what he must.

When he was gone she shivered for a while, though she was not cold. Then she went back to the window to continue her vigil—this time, waiting for Malden to come and take her away.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Malden never actually lost consciousness, but between the pain in his head and the fact that he was shoved through the dark streets by a group of angry men who beat him every time he faltered, he had little idea where he was taken. He saw torches and doorways pass by, now he was looking down at cobblestones, now up at an empty, cold sky. He was bounced down a flight of stairs and thrown onto a surface of packed earth in a place that smelled of old mildew. He was turned on his side and he saw a wall of stone, criss-crossed with the glittering tracks of snails.

And then a bucket of stagnant water was dumped across his face, and he fought and spluttered and shouted as he desperately tried to sit up. The wooden bucket bounced off his shoulder and he drew back in fresh pain.

But suddenly he could think clearly again. He could hear many men grumbling all around him, and see them silhouetted against a fire at the far side of the room.

He could hear their voices just fine.

“Slit his throat. Bury him down here, aye. But what of his fuckin’ sword? Can’t sell that, any fence’d known it for a Ancient Blade, jus’ lookin’ at it. And then we’d have every bleedin’ kingsman in town down here, wantin’ to ask questions and crack heads.”

“I say we cut off his fingers and toes, ’til he tells us who he really is.”

“And I say—and my word is law, yeah?—I say, we don’t got much time ’til that knight comes lookin’ for him. So we settle this now, we do it quiet, and we all find someplace else to be ’til it blows o’er.”

There were more grumbling protests, but the voices never grew too loud. And then a man with a knife no longer than his thumb came toward Malden, his free hand out to grab the thief’s hair and pull his head back. The size of the knife was not reassuring. They were going to cut his throat. It didn’t take a very big knife to slash a man’s windpipe.

Malden scuttled backwards, until his back hit a wall. He was out of options. “Don’t you lot practice the ancient custom of sanctuary?” he demanded.

The man with the knife stopped where he was.

A much bigger man, with a head as bald and round as the moon, came stomping forward. “What’re you talkin’ about?” he demanded.

“I’m assuming that Velmont brought me to the local guild of thieves. I very much hope I’m not mistaken. In Ness, where Cutbill runs the guild, we practice the custom of sanctuary. Any thief, no matter where he’s from, can demand the right to hide out in one of our safe houses, and he cannot be denied. As long as his dues are paid up.”

The man with the knife turned to face the bald one. In silhouette, Malden could tell it was Velmont who’d been about to slit his throat.

“He’s speakin’ true, boss,” Velmont said.

“Aye, save for one thing. Sanctuary’s for thieves. And you ain’t no thief, kingsman. Now be quiet while we murther you.”

“Velmont,” Malden insisted, “tell them. You and I spoke of many things this morning. Things only a thief would know. And tonight, after I’d engineered my own escape, I came back for you. If all I wanted was to make trouble for you, why would I loose your chains? Why would I be so stupid as to put myself in your power? I’m no kingsman! I’m just a thief, like you.”

Velmont lowered his knife hand, but he didn’t back off. “I saw that man you were with. For a thief, you’ve got some pretty funny friends.”

“I tricked that knight into helping me,” Malden told him. “I stole that sword and everyone just assumed I was one of them.” That made a certain degree of sense. No man in Skrae who fell below the class of freeholder was allowed by law to even touch a sword. Wearing one on your hip would automatically convince a lot of people you were of a certain social level, and deserving of a certain level of trust. “It was a long shot, but it was my only chance of getting out of the fortress alive.”

“But e’en then, why would some blasted knight help the likes o’ you?” the boss inquired.

“Because he wanted someone to smuggle his betrothed out of here, before the fighting starts. A woman named Cythera.”

The thieves looked at each other skeptically. There was some grumbling, but the boss cut it off with a gesture.

“A woman, I might add,” Malden went on, “who I’ve already swived.”

Laughter erupted amongst the gathered thieves of Helstrow. The boss tried to silence it but every thief enjoyed a good jest at the expense of a landed knight. By besmirching Cythera’s honor—though not by lying—Malden had just scored a point with the crew.

He needed to win over their leader, though. The boss went to one corner of the room where a thickly recessed window was set into the wall very close to the ceiling. They must be in a cellar, Malden realized. Probably beneath a tavern or a gambling hall. The boss stared up through the window as if expecting to see a kingsman staring back down at him. Then he hobbled back over to Malden. Malden saw that the man had a wooden leg. It would be difficult to convince a man like that to take a journey of a hundred miles on foot. Yet that was exactly what he needed to do.

“I need to get out of here. Tonight, with the woman. I’ll pay handsomely to anyone who can help me with that,” Malden said, softly.

Malden knew that in Ness the possibility of money changing hands never failed to get a thief’s attention. The Helstrovian crew seemed no different.

“The walls are sealed,” Malden went on. “And I’m a stranger here. I don’t know the secret ways of this place. But the man who does could be very rich once I’m free.”

“Mayhap I know a way out,” Velmont said.

“Shut it, Vellie!” the boss thundered. “I’ll hear no more o’—”

“Ye’ll hear what I have to say, by the bloodgod’s guts,” Velmont shot back. “If there’s silver to be had—or at very least, the promise o’ silver—I’m listening.”

Malden nodded. He had no money to give these thieves, not now. But at least they’d stopped talking of slitting his throat. It also sounded like there was still a chance at escape. He’d hoped for this—that Velmont or his organization would have some secret route out of the fortress. “I’m glad to hear it. Maybe it’s good for you, as well. Maybe you should come with me when I leave. By tomorrow it’ll be too late. Every one of you will be conscripted. Forced to fight. And believe me—you don’t want to face what’s coming for you. The barbarians are only ten days from the river, and coming fast.”

“Barbarians?” one of the thieves asked, and suddenly the clamor in the cellar made Malden’s ears hurt. He realized with a start that the thieves had no idea why their king was girding for war. Most likely no one had bothered to inform the populace of the news from the east. “How many of ’em? Are they on horseback? I’ve heard they got witches that can curdle a man’s blood with one nasty look!”

“There’s still time for all of us to flee. It must be tonight, though. If we do it now, we’re refugees. If we do it tomorrow we’re deserters, and they hang deserters,” Malden pointed out.

“Why don’t you just tell me where your lady’s at,” the boss asked Malden. “I’ll make sure she gets where she oughta be, eh?”

“Do you think me such a fool? I leave with her—and any of you that want to come. Any of you who want to live through the next fortnight, that is.” Malden shook his head. “The barbarians are fearsome enemies. Some of them paint their faces red, to show they’ve drunk human blood. Their women paint their faces like skulls, because they say it’s the only way to get the men to kiss them. Come with me, now, and we’ll travel together to Ness. There Cutbill will grant you more than sanctuary. He’ll make you full members in our guild. He’ll shower you with gold.”

Malden was barely aware of everything he was saying and all the promises he’d made. He would have said anything to get the thieves on his side.

“Listen, boss,” Velmont said, “I think he’s tellin’ the truth—”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Vellie,” the boss told the thief. “It’s my decision to make. And I say we stay put.”

The crowd of thieves fell silent. Dead silent. Malden felt the blood in his veins jumping as his heart sped in his chest.

“I lived right here me whole life, and I ain’t runnin’ now,” the boss said. “War’s good for our kind. They send all the kingsmen out to fight, and leave us here, alone with all the pickin’s. No, we’re not leavin’. And if he won’t tell me where this lady is, and this knight’s pile o’ gold, I’ll find ’em me own way. Now. I believe I told you once already. Cut ’im.”

Velmont looked down at the knife in his hand.

“Sorry ’bout this, but it’s hard times,” he said.

Malden flattened himself against the wall. There was no escape.

Then Velmont took a step to the side—and slashed his knife across the throat of his boss. Blood flew from the wound and misted the far wall, as bright as the snail tracks there. The boss clutched at his neck but made no sound whatsoever as he collapsed. The other thieves drew back in terror, pressing themselves up against the far wall. They didn’t shout or make a peep of surprise or fear, though. These were men who’d seen murder before, men who knew when to keep silent. For a while the only noise in the cellar was the drumming of the boss’s wooden leg on the earthen floor. Eventually that, too, stopped.

Velmont turned to face his fellow thieves, gory knife still in hand. “He was a good boss, in ’is way, but he was gonna get us all killed. I’m sidin’ with the fella that wants to save our skins. Any man of you have a problem with that?” he demanded.

His question evoked more silence.

“Good.” He put his knife away. Then he bent down to offer Malden a hand up. “Now. Let’s talk about how I expect to get us all out o’ Helstrow, without marchin’ us through the front door.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The bridge across the river Strow began and ended within the walls of the outer bailey. No one crossed the river without the king’s approval—at least, not from above.

Underneath the bridge a complicated sparwork of stone beams held up the road surface. An agile man unafraid of heights could cross from one end to the other without having to climb up top.

Malden had both those qualities. It didn’t bother him in the slightest to hang from his hands by a stringcourse of granite, thirty feet above the foaming waters of the river. Velmont and his crew took their time about it, but managed to make the crossing without slipping. Yet when Cythera began to climb across, she made it a third of the way and then stopped, clinging hard to a stone pillar, her eyes clenched tightly shut.

Malden looked up. He could hear horses drawing heavy loads across the timber surface of the bridge. It creaked and rattled under the strain. He swung back over to where Cythera waited and put an arm around her back. Slowly, unwillingly, she opened her eyes and looked at him.

“This is your stock in trade, isn’t it?” she asked him, in a very small voice. “I thought I would be fine. I’ve been on rooftops before, climbed towers—”

“This is different. I understand,” Malden said, in a soothing voice. He looked across the underside of the bridge and saw Velmont staring back at him. The Helstrovian thief made a pushing motion with both hands.

Malden tried not to take offense at the notion. They were, in fact, pressed for time. Dawn was only an hour away and they needed to be outside the walls by then, outside and well clear of the eyes of Helstrow’s kingsmen.

“Take it slowly. Don’t look down,” Malden said.

“I can’t move my arms. They won’t let go,” Cythera told him.

Malden fought down the impatience and fear in his heart. He thought of what he should say. He couldn’t very well carry Cythera across. Perhaps he should coax her on like a stubborn mule, or a frightened child, or—

—no. This was Cythera. She was no blushing virgin, afraid of specters in the privy and spiders in the basin.

“You are the daughter of a sorcerer and a witch,” Malden said.

“I can’t magic my way over there!” Cythera shouted at him. Her voice was nearly lost, all the same, in the rushing of the water. She looked down. “If I fall from here, how far do you think my body will be carried before the current before I wash up on some distant bank, my lips blue, my eyes cloudy, my bones shattered by rocks?”

“You are the daughter of the witch Coruth,” Malden said again. He was sure he was on the right track. “You went willingly into the Vincularium. You fought demons and elves and undead things there. This,” he said, carefully, “is a very sturdy bridge. Stonemasons work tirelessly to keep it from falling down. Now. Come with me. I expect you to follow my every step.”

Then he turned away and jumped to a ledge of stone no more than three feet away. With one hand on a beam for support, he used the other to gesture for her to follow.

And she did.

Moving carefully, one step at a time, they swung across the beams, jumping where necessary, walking sideways on thin ledges, always moving forward so momentum helped carry them along.

Cythera did not fall.

At the far side, a thick pipe stuck out from under the bridge. It drained the dungeons and cellars of the keep into the river. An iron grate covered its end, but Velmont already had that unlocked and pulled back on its hinges. Inside they had to crawl a ways before coming to a wider space. It was so dark inside Malden felt the blackness pressing against his eyeballs. He reached back, and Cythera took his hand.

This was the perfect place for a betrayal. If Velmont wanted to kill him, it could be done with no trouble at all.

Instead the Helstrovian made fire and lit a torch. Malden saw that they had come to a junction of many pipes, some no wider than his fist, some high enough to walk through. “Smugglers use this route all the time,” Velmont explained, gesturing at one wall. Hundreds of marks and sigils decorated the bricks, names and columns of numbers scratched into the niter-thickened stone of the walls. It looked like whole generations of thieves had been through this way. “There’s an outflow pipe what fetches up at the base of the outermost wall, just o’er here.” He pointed down a broad pipe that led away into darkness. Malden started to lead Cythera toward its mouth, but just then Velmont grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

“Your Cutbill,” Velmont said, “had better come through for me and mine. I ain’t leavin’ behind e’erything I ever knew, just to end a beggar in some pisspot o’ a free city.”

Malden nodded, but said nothing.

It was not long after that they pushed open another iron grate and stepped out into moonlight. Above Malden’s head the wall of Helstrow stretched high. He was outside that wall, out in the country beyond the king’s fortress. Free.

Looking up he could make out lights among the battlements. There were guards up there, keeping watch. They’d crossed an important barrier, but this was no time for exultation. Not yet.

Velmont extinguished his torch and gestured for Malden to keep moving. The outflow pipe emptied in a narrow ditch that ran straight away from the fortress-town. Malden didn’t look back until they were a quarter mile away. Then he looked to see lights burning in the keep and palace. He looked to see the sealed gates of Helstrow, and the empty villages that stood outside each portal. No lights there—the people who lived in those villages had all been herded inside the walls—either for their own safety, or so they could be conscripted.

He saw Velmont looking back, too. He wondered if Velmont had ever in his life been beyond that wall before. It could be a terrifying experience, first setting foot in a countryside of which you knew nothing. Malden should know—until his recent adventure, he’d spent every day of his life in Ness, and the first time he’d left he’d felt like he’d been picked up by a great wind and thrown out into the middle of the sea. He’d never quite gotten used to country life. “In a few months,” Malden told the Helstrovian thief, “the war will be won. You’ll return richer than when you left—and you’ll like Helstrow all the more for the money you bring back.”

“Assumin’ your barbarians don’t stink my city up too much, after they turn it into one o’ their tent camps.” Velmont’s face contorted through a variety of emotions. “There’s a piece of me, not a big ’un, mind, but a piece—wishes I could stay to see what’s goin’ to happen.”

“You want to remain here and fight for your home?” Malden asked, a little surprised. Thieves as a rule were not known for their patriotic sentiment.

“Nah,” Velmont said, with a chuckle. “I kinda wanna stay and watch it burn.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

In the king’s own chapel in the keep at Helstrow, Croy knelt before the altar of the Lady, hands clasped in supplication. He did not see the burning censers set all around him by the acolytes, or smell the pungent incense they contained. He did not see the golden cornucopia that hung on the wall before him. He saw nothing but the Lady in his mind’s eye, a woman of supernal radiance clothed all in green and white. His ears heard nothing but the whispered prayers that came from his lips, faint rustlings barely recognizable as sounds after a night without wine or even milk to sustain him.

He did not hear the clank of Sir Hew’s armor as the Captain of the Guard entered the royal chapel, nor the polite clearing of Sir Hew’s throat. Nor even his own name, spoken in hushed tones, as Hew tried to get his attention.

It was not until Hew’s hand fell on his shoulder that his vigil was broken.

“It’s dawn, Croy,” Hew said, not unkindly. “You’ve been here long enough.”

Croy blinked and looked up. He saw everything, heard all. His senses felt tuned to an agonizing pitch.

Slowly he shifted on his knees. Brought one leg up and put his foot on the floor. His knee joint popped and clamored in pain. Every part of his body was stiff as he rose carefully to his feet.

There had been a time when he could kneel in vigil for days on end, and leap to his feet when he was done, without so much as a groan or an ache. There had also been a time when he could meditate on the Lady for just as long—and not see Cythera’s face when he looked into his goddess’ eyes.

“I’m getting old,” he said to Hew, with a weak smile.

The Captain of the Guard clapped him on the shoulders. “Knights so rarely do. Ancient blades even less often. Take it as the Lady’s blessing that she let you live this long.” Hew steered him toward the chapel’s door. “Don’t complain overmuch, man. We have a full day ahead of us, and I don’t want to catch you napping. Where’s your squire—what was his name, Malden?”

“He should be here attending me. Perhaps asleep in one of the pews,” Croy said, looking around as if he expected to see the thief at once. “That’s odd. I don’t see him here anywhere.”

Hew raised one eyebrow. “I knew that boy was no good. If he’s run off—with an Ancient Blade on his belt … I’ll have the guard look for him. Damn my eyes. He won’t get far.”

“Make no curse or oath in this place,” Croy chided.

Hew laughed as he led Croy out of the chapel and down toward the armory in the cellar of the keep. They passed down a long stair, their weapons and armor clattering in the enclosed space. “The same old Croy, I see. Most devout of us all—and the most trusting. Are you sure this Malden is worth your faith?”

“He’s a good man. I’ve seen true honor in him, though he denies it if he’s asked.”

Hew scowled. “If I find him down by the gates trying to bribe his way out, I won’t ask your permission before I have him beaten. What were you thinking, giving Acidtongue to that boy?”

“He saved my life, and my honor, which I value more,” Croy told Hew. He needed to change the subject. If Hew found out he’d sent Malden away, there could be real trouble. “What work do you have for me today?”

“I want you fitted for a proper suit of armor.” Hew slapped Croy’s ribs. “What are you wearing, a brigantine? That’s infantry stuff.” He pushed open a door at the end of a dim hallway and gestured for Croy to go through. “Here, meet Groomwich, our armorer. He’s a dab hand with a hammer and tongs, no matter what he looks like.”

The armorer bowed low as the knights entered his domain. He had the permanently blackened skin of a metalsmith, save on the left half of his face which was a horrid expanse of burnt tissue, white and rugged in the light of his forge.

“Get this one in a proper coat of plate,” Hew commanded. “And ready another suit, for a boy the same height but about half his size. You stay here, Croy. I’ll go roust out Malden. After you’re done here you need to go down to the archery butts and say some inspiring words to the new recruits. That’s what the king feels we Ancient Blades are best employed at—rousing speeches.”

Croy frowned. “He’s never had faith in our strength of arms. Not since our father died. I worry he won’t use us to best advantage.”

“Well, I suppose our time will come soon enough, to show him what we can do.”

Hew left him, then. The silent armorer got to work right away, fitting various pieces of steel to Croy’s body. The work required Croy to stand perfectly still for long stretches of time, and wasn’t that different from the vigil he’d just completed. As each piece was measured and marked, Groomwich would hammer it into the right shape and size. He never said a word. In the heat of the armory, Croy soon found himself falling asleep, rising only when he was called upon to stand and be measured again.

It must have been hours later when Hew came back, his face red with anger, to say that Malden was nowhere to be found—nor Cythera. How they had escaped the fortress of Helstrow was a complete mystery, but Hew did not hesitate a moment to blame Croy for what he considered a crime of the first magnitude: Malden had taken Acidtongue with him.

“The thrice-damned barbarians already have two of the seven,” Hew said, spittle leaping from his teeth. “Now some frightened boy has another—Croy, how could you let this happen? How could you give such a treasure to someone so clearly untrustworthy? If it were anyone else, I’d have you drawn and broken as a traitor. If it was anyone else I’d think you were trying to undermine us! But I know you too well, Croy. I know you’d never be capable of such folly. If only you had as much brains as you do honor!”

Croy stood there and listened with a contrite expression. After a while he heard none of the words. He stopped hearing the endless pounding of Groomwich’s hammer, and no longer felt the heat of the forge on his skin.

In his mind’s eye he only saw the Lady, dressed in green and white. And wearing Cythera’s face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The day after the gates of Helstrow were sealed, the town moved quickly to a war footing. Wagons full of men streamed toward Helstrow from a hundred villages. Croy and Hew stood on horses near the main gate, watching as each new consignment was checked in and sent to be armed and trained. These were farmers, men—boys—who had never been more than a mile outside their homes. They all had the same goggle-eyed expression as they first took in the colors and chaos of Helstrow. They’d never seen a town before, but even if they had, they couldn’t have been prepared. The outer bailey was packed now from side to side with humanity, every house a billet and every tavern an arsenal. Men in formation marched everywhere through the streets, while serjeants in kettle hats screamed orders at them and beat those who failed to keep in line.

The few dwarves who hadn’t packed up and fled for their own kingdom in the north were working day and night to make weapons and rudimentary armor. They worked side by side with human blacksmiths and the night rang with hammer blows and was lit by great gusts of sparks shooting out of the chimney of every forge. Fires broke out constantly, but at least there were plenty of men ready to hold buckets of water and sand. The iron flowed, and piece by piece the city was armed—with bill hooks, halberds, axes and swords. With lances and flails and maces with grotesquely flanged heads. With leather jack, and ring mail, and chain hauberks, and coats of plate.

On the third day Sir Rory rode up to the gates, and beat on them with the pommel of Crowsbill to be let in, and another Ancient Blade took the king’s colors. Sir Rory was the oldest of their order, running a little to fat, and he rode with his wife and six children all on horses behind him. He brought a company of volunteers, as well, which the king was happy to receive. Anyone who actually chose to fight for Skrae was automatically commissioned as a serjeant and given the best pick of the weapons.

“They’ll fight to their last breath,” Rory promised, as his men marched up toward the keep in a semblance of good order. “Though perhaps not well.”

Croy clasped the old knight’s vambrace and said, “Well met, my friend. Any word of Sir Orne?”

Rory drew his fingers through his thick mustache. “Last I heard, he was up north, hunting some centuries-old sorcerer. I’m sure he’ll hear the call.”

Croy hoped so. Orne had more military experience than any of them—after Ulfram V had discharged them all, Orne had gone north where there was always fighting to be done. Endless skirmishes with the hill people there had turned the knight into a master strategist—something Helstrow needed more than iron or steel.

“There are only four of us now, I hear, for Bikker’s dead, and Acidtongue’s in unknown hands,” Sir Rory said, and made the sign of the Lady on his breast. “Against two.”

“I’m not so worried about the barbarians holding Dawnbringer and Fangbreaker,” Hew insisted. “They haven’t had our training. They never took our vows. And one of them’s a girl!”

“You saw Mörgain, though,” Croy told him.

“She’s a woman. I don’t care how big she is, no woman has the stomach to cut a man from crop to crupper.”

Croy wished he could share the sentiment. He’d met more than a few woman warriors in his time, and they’d been fierce enough. Woman who chose to take up swords had to constantly prove themselves, and it made them more driven and more dangerous than any man. And Mörgain had seemed altogether too much like her brother, Mörget—the strongest and most dangerous fighter Croy had ever known.

“The Lady will sustain us,” he said, more for his own sake than the others.

On the sixth day Balint showed herself in the courtyard before the keep. Croy had managed to avoid her so far but that evening, as she wheeled a train of ballistae out of the armory cellars, a great cheer went up from the people and the Ancient Blades had to be on hand to do her honor.

The dwarf rode high on the bolt of one of her great contraptions as it was pushed through the streets, kicking her legs and waving a wrench in the air. The war machines were dragged by conscripts down through the gate into the outer bailey, and then across the Strow bridge, where half the city waited to cheer them on. The king showed himself at a balcony atop the palace while his heralds waved pennons and sounded great trumpets. As Balint came even with the knights on their horses, she gave Croy a long and triumphant look.

“When they see my babies here,” she told him, “the barbarians will turn around and run so fast we’ll send bolts straight up their arseholes.”

“I have no doubt of it, dwarf,” Croy said, his mouth tasting of gall and vinegar. “You have shown yourself a genius at shooting men in the back.”

Balint crowed in joy—she loved a good taunt, whether she was giving it or receiving it—and rode on toward the eastern gate, where she placed the giant crossbows high atop the wall.

On the eighth day the conscripts tried to revolt. A rumor had been going about that only one man in two would be armed with iron when the battle came, and the rest would be given nothing but shields, their lives to be thrown away blunting the barbarians’ first charge.

“Who told them any of them were going to get shields?” Rory asked, his voice little more than a whisper. From atop the wall of the outer bailey, the Ancient Blades watched the conscripts strive against their serjeants, pushing the shouting officers up against the wall.

“We should be down there imposing order,” Croy said, through gritted teeth.

“You heard the king. He has a better way,” Sir Hew told him.

And the king, in fact, did. Making no show of aggression, he appeared before the crowd at the head of a train of mules, each pulling the largest a giant hogshead of ale. Bungs were thrown open and foaming brown liquor streamed into the streets. The conscripts forgot the serjeants immediately, lest the ale go to waste.

In the morning not many of them felt like renewing their rebellion. It was the quietest morning Croy could remember since the gates were sealed. He was able to walk the wall nearly halfway around the town without hearing a curse or a profanity uttered. Not much work got done, either, but at least Helstrow was at peace.

When he reached the northernmost point on the wall, he lingered, and looked out across the rolling farmland toward the distant northern forests. But it wasn’t until the ninth day that Sir Orne finally appeared, standing his horse in a field half a mile away, Bloodquaffer held high over his head. The sword’s edges looked fuzzy in the distance, as if it were glowing with its own light. For hours he stood like that, the horse’s head lowering occasionally to graze on field stubble.

When the sun set Orne lowered the weapon, then slid from his saddle to kneel on the earth. He left the horse behind and crawled the rest of the way on his knees.

It was an act of devotion to the Lady. No one dared rush out to help him or speed his way. It wasn’t until well after midnight that he was brought inside the walls of the fortress.

Croy was there to receive him. As Hew helped the knight to his feet, Croy tried to take Orne’s free hand in hearty embrace—only to be rebuffed after a very short clasping of wrists.

“Do not take offense, I beg you,” Orne told Croy. The knight was the youngest of the four, yet his dark eyes hid an old and unhealed pain. “It’s for your own sake I am so cold. I do not wish to pass on my curse.”

“Curse?” Hew demanded. “We heard you were chasing a sorcerer up north. Did you get the bastard?”

“I did,” Orne said. He looked as if he would gladly have said no more. Croy and Hew stared at him until he relented. “With his last breath, though, he laughed in my face. And told me how I am to die.”

None of them missed what the knight was not saying. If he was this afraid to come to Helstrow, it could only mean one thing. The sorcerer’s dying prophecy must have told Orne that he would die here, inside the fortress.

Hew looked to Croy with eerie dread in his eyes. Croy shook his head. “You came,” he said, bowing to Orne. “That’s what’s important.”

“I took a vow,” Orne told him. “I took a vow.”

They took him to a bed, and posted a guard on his door—not for Orne’s own sake, but to keep away the curious, who heard the knight screaming in his sleep, and wished to hear the prophetic words he could not speak while wakeful.

On the tenth day after the gates were sealed, the barbarians arrived.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Malden put his hand on Acidtongue’s hilt, but kept the sword in its sheath. It was a ridiculous weapon for a thief to use—once drawn, it began to foam and spit, and its acid dripped on everything and made a hissing noise. Noise that could be Malden’s downfall.

Moving by nothing but starlight, he came around the corner of the milehouse and looked out into its dooryard. He saw nothing—no movement, save a wisp of old smoke that trailed away through the weeds.

By law, a milehouse stood every ten miles on the road from Helstrow to the Free City of Ness, and was required to stay open to common traffic at all hours. They were places where weary travelers could spend the night, or buy new horses, or simply choke down the dust of the road with a tankard of cheap ale. Malden and his crew had passed most of them by on their way since they had no desire to be seen. This one, however, had drawn the thief’s interest, because it had been burned to the ground.

The stone walls still stood but the roof had collapsed inward. The stables were empty and there was no sign of human life anywhere nearby.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to pass this milehouse by as well, but Malden didn’t like what he saw. He thought it might augur trouble for them further down the road, and he wanted information.

Velmont had laughed and said he was welcome to go and check it out—alone.

Moving with the silence of a hunting cat, Malden dashed into the shadows below the milehouse’s empty doorway. Inside he smelled ash and burnt hair. The stars winked on a pool of water in the center of what had been the common room. Maybe the proprietors had tried to put out the fire, or maybe it was only rainwater that had collected since the roof fell in.

Malden slipped inside, keeping close to the soot-blackened walls. He heard nothing, sensed no movement in the place. But he liked to be careful.

A spot of the floor had been cleared of ash and debris. A pile of clay bottles stood to one side of the remains of a campfire. Bits of rag had been gathered together to make crude bedding. So someone had been there since the fire. Malden chanced detection by slinking out into the light, just enough to pick up one of the bottles and sniff at its mouth. He smelled old, sour wine. The bottle had been emptied down to the lees.

Then someone moaned in the dark, and Acidtongue flashed out of its scabbard.

“No, I beg you, not again,” a woman croaked.

She was covered in soot that hid her nakedness. Her hair might have been blonde once but was so smeared with ashes it looked white. Only her eyes reflected light as she held one hand up, trying to fend him away.

“I’m a friend,” Malden whispered to her. “Are you alone here?”

“Friend? What friend have I?”

He saw her lips were badly chapped and her tongue dry and white. Searching through the debris, Malden turned up a bottle that had survived the cataclysm—and whatever had come afterwards. He dug out the cork with his belt knife and brought the bottle to her lips.

She sucked greedily at it like an infant at the teat.

“What’s your name?”

She only stared at him, still lost in terror.

“Alright,” Malden said. “I don’t need to know it. There were others here, earlier,” he went on, looking back at the pile of empty bottles. “I’m guessing they weren’t paying guests. Bandits?”

She nodded, careful not to take her eyes off of him. “Six of them. Some of them came back for seconds.”

Malden took off his cloak and draped it over her body.

“After the recruiting serjeants came, and took away all the men, there was no one but me to run the place. The law demands we stay open,” she told Malden.

“They conscripted your … husband?”

“My father, and all my brothers. They came through taking every man they could find. All the farmers from the local manor, all the villagers. Most women fled to wherever they had family or friends to shelter them. I had no one. I knew it wasn’t safe, but … ’tis the law. And I thought every man was gone, so what was there to fear? But it seems a few stayed behind. The sort that would refuse the call. There were six of them, still, six who kept their freedom. And I was all alone here.”

Malden closed his eyes in horror.

“Do what you must to me,” the woman said, her voice a resigned whisper. “Just please … I’m hurt. I’m hurt down there and I don’t think I can anymore …”

Malden strode out into the dooryard, wanting to spit with anger. He stood in the brightest spot before the door and waved one arm in the air. Soon Cythera and Velmont’s crew joined him. He only wanted Cythera. “There’s a woman in there who doesn’t need to see another male face for a long time. Can you try to comfort her?”

“Of course,” Cythera told him. She hurried inside.

He turned next to Velmont. “From now on, we stay off the roads. This whole county has been stripped of able-bodied men. That doesn’t mean the recruiters aren’t still looking. Worse, there are bandits afoot.”

Velmont shrugged. “That’s the way of it, in a war. Just lads havin’ a bit o’ fun while they can. And you shouldn’t get your blood up, seein’ as you’re about one peg up from them as did this.”

Malden’s face burned as he stared at his fellow thief. “I take money from fat merchants and fools who don’t know to keep their hands on their purses. But I don’t hurt anyone, not if I can help it, and I never—never—harm a woman. If you’re working for me, now, you’ll follow the same code.”

“Do I, now? Do I work for you? Or for meself?”

“You’d better decide soon,” Malden told him. Careful of his fingers, he put Acidtongue back in its sheath.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T he woman from the milehouse turned out to be a homely girl of sixteen named Gerta. Once Cythera had seen to her hurts and washed the soot from her hair, she was able to rise and walk under her own power. Malden was glad for that. He didn’t know what he would have done, had she been unable to care for herself.

Gerta was happy to travel with them—the thought of staying behind all alone visibly terrified her. After a while Velmont tried to talk her up, telling her how pretty her hair was, offering her his manly protection. Malden put a stop to that right away.

The next night they found a holdfast on the grounds of an abandoned manor. Not much to it, just four stone walls and a locked door, but it offered more safety than the thatch-roofed cottages they’d seen along the way. A score or so of women from the local villages had sealed themselves inside. They wouldn’t open up for Malden or his crew, but they agreed to take Gerta in once all the men had gone away. Cythera stayed with Gerta to make sure the women kept their promise, then rejoined Malden and his crew as they headed south, away from the road.

Getting off the highway slowed them down considerably, but they spent all that day without seeing another living soul. They crossed through stubbled fields turning into patches of mud, well out of sight of any village or manor house.

Cythera stopped, once, to pick up a stray shaft of wheat that had been trampled into an irrigation ditch. “We won’t starve this winter, at least,” she said.

Malden pursed his lips. “How’s that?”

Cythera sighed and dropped the stem to flutter on the air. “The wheat’s all been taken in, probably milled by now, too. It’s harvest time. If this war had begun in mid-summer, and all the farmers pulled away from their labor, the wheat would have been left to rot on the ground.” She shook her head dolefully. “I’ve read of wars in the north where more men died of starvation and disease than ever could have been slain by steel. I worry what will come in the spring, if this war drags on—there will be no one here to plow or plant.”

Malden had never really thought about where the food he ate came from. Grain appeared at the gates of Ness twice a year, and was somehow turned into bread. Livestock were driven through the streets to great slaughterhouses, and steaks and cuts came out to be sold in the shops of butchers on market days. It all went on without his knowledge or labor, and so he’d assumed it always would continue the same way.

He had gone hungry many times, of course, but only for lack of coin—not because there was no food to be had. The idea of reversing that situation, of having plenty of coin but no grain to spend it on, made him feel a bit queasy. He could hardly raise his own food—that was a skill he’d never learned, nor wanted to. How many citizens of the Free City had the secret of it? How many of them would starve before they learned how it was done?

“That’s a problem for a future worry,” he told Cythera, because he didn’t like to think on what Ness would be like if there was no food in it. “Right now we need to make our rendezvous. We’re already a day late.”

They made camp that night in a deserted barn. They dared make no fire, but the walls kept some of the wind out. Malden made sure Cythera was awake enough to stand guard—he would never leave her sleeping alone with Velmont and his thieves around. Near midnight he slipped back out into the cold.

A mile away, at a place where two roads crossed, stood an ancient gallows. It had been built on the site of an old and desecrated shrine of the bloodgod. Once the Lady’s church had taken over this land, it had been turned into a place of punishment.

Normally no thief in his right—if superstitious—mind would get within a half mile of the place. Even Malden found it nigh unbearable to listen to the crosstree creak above his head. Hanging was the penalty for thievery, and he had lived his whole life expecting to end suspended from such a beam. In that flat land, however, it was the most convenient landmark available. Malden lit a single candle that guttered in the night breeze, and sat down to wait.

Nothing moved in the cloud shadows. Nothing stirred. He heard an owl hoot from miles away, a low, mournful sound almost lost under the noise of his own breathing.

He waited.

He took the scrap of parchment out of his tunic and unfolded it against his leg. In the light of the candle he could just make out the words, and the symbol at the bottom of the page—a kind of signature.

“What’s that, lad?” Slag asked, stepping into the light.

Slag stood no more than four feet tall. He was as thin as a rail, and as pale as moonlight on snow. His dark beard stuck out in wild profusion and his keen eyes glimmered in the candlelight, but in the dark his clothing made him nearly invisible so his face seemed to float in the light. He might have been a specter of vengeance, bound to the place where he’d been killed.

For Malden, he was a sight for sore eyes.

The thief rushed to his old friend and embraced him warmly. He hadn’t seen the dwarf since they split up outside the ruins of the Vincularium. Not since before he’d gone to Helstrow.

“A love letter from your leman?” Slag asked, tapping the parchment.

“Not exactly,” Malden said, hurriedly folding it up again.

“I thought not. I saw you pull it off of Prestwicke’s body, way back,” Slag said. “I’ve been wondering about it since.”

Malden shook his head. He wouldn’t speak of the parchment, not yet. Not until he had a proper measure of Slag’s loyalties. “How are the elves?” he asked, instead.

“Squared away, neat as nails in a fucking drawer,” Slag told him. “I took ’em up to the Green Barrens, where at least they’ll have trees for company, and bade ’em to be fruitful but keep their heads down. The desolation of that place, and their natural mistrustfulness, will make sure the humans never know they’re there.” The dwarf sighed deeply. “Though they threatened to follow after me, and would not sit still, not ’til I promised Aethil I’d come back for her. She’s still besotted with me.”

Malden laughed, though he kept his voice low. “Maybe she just likes short men.” Aethil, the queen of the elves, had been given a powerful love potion that would make her give her heart to the first man she saw. Unfortunately for everyone involved, that had been Slag. According to Cythera—who knew about such things—the effects were permanent.

The fact that the elves and the dwarves were bitter ancestral enemies had made no difference. The last time Malden had seen them together, Aethil was still under the impression that Slag was just a very short human.

“But enough of my love life,” Slag said. “Tell me about the paper. Have we got fucking secrets between us now?”

Malden glanced down at the creased parchment in his hand. He’d hoped to distract Slag, but dwarves had keen and penetrating minds and he knew Slag wouldn’t give up until he’d learned the truth. “It’s a contract for an execution. Mine. It just describes me, gives information on my favorite haunts in Ness. There’s no price named, but considering that Prestwicke crossed an entire kingdom to fulfill it, I can assume the bounty was high.”

“Is it signed?” Slag asked.

Malden frowned as he unfolded the parchment. “In a fashion,” he said. He held the paper where Slag could see it. At the bottom of the page was a crude sketch of a heart, transfixed by a key.

Slag’s eyes went wide.

“The boss sent an assassin after you?” Slag asked.

Malden watched the dwarf’s eyes. Slag was a fellow employee of Cutbill. Malden wasn’t sure if he’d made the right decision showing Cutbill’s mark to the dwarf.

“But for fuck’s sake, why? You’re one of his best earners.”

“Maybe that’s reason enough. Maybe he was worried I was too good at my job, and that made me a threat.”

“To Cutbill? Hardly. I’m sorry, lad, but you’re no kind of match for that villainous bastard.” Slag pulled at his beard. “I can’t figure this at all.”

“I was never supposed to see this. I was just supposed to die. Cutbill doesn’t know I have it.”

“What’ll you do now that you know?” the dwarf asked, quite carefully. “If you plan to move against him you’d better do it quick. He’s smarter than you. If he gets any idea you’re coming for him it’ll be over before you can fucking blink.”

Malden stood up slowly. If Slag decided that his allegiance to Cutbill was worth fighting over, this conversation could end very badly. “Slag, I need to know—”

The dwarf waved away his concerns with one hand. “Cutbill’s my employer. You’re my friend. Dwarves count those things different. I don’t know how humans rate them.”

Malden nodded carefully. It was a kind of reassurance, and it would have to do. He could never hurt Slag, he knew that much. They’d been through too much together.

“You’re still headed to Ness?” Slag asked.

Malden filled him in quickly on the barbarian invasion. Slag had already known some of the information.

“Aye, sounds like Ness is the safest place in the storm of shit. When we get there, I don’t want to know what you have planned,” Slag told Malden. “Maybe you’re not going to do anything. Just play along like you never saw that parchment. Maybe you’re going to forget the whole fucking thing. That would be pretty smart. Smarter than most humans I’ve known. Maybe you’re going to try for something else. Don’t tell me, and I can’t tell anyone else, alright?”

“I think we have a deal,” Malden told him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Croy’s rounsey whickered and bucked as he climbed onto its back. “Gentle, there,” he soothed, and rubbed the horse’s neck. It wasn’t used to his weight in full armor. Neither was he, for that matter. He was already sweating under the quilted gambeson he wore next to his skin. With the hauberk of chain over that and the whole covered with his full coat of plate he thought he might broil in the warm sunlight.

A serjeant handed him up his great helm, which he tucked under his arm. Finally he was given his shield—painted black and silver, Ghostcutter’s colors, and thus Croy’s as well. He goaded the rounsey over to where the others were assembling. Sir Orne already had his helmet on and Croy was glad for it, as he had no wish to see the knight’s doomed eyes. Sir Hew had been ready for an hour and looked impatient to make a start.

Sir Rory’s children polished his greaves and cuisses with rags, while his wife, up on a stepladder, fed him morsels of chicken. “That’s enough, woman,” he said at last, and rode away from his family. Together the four Ancient Blades made their way down to the eastern gate.

And there they sat, staring at the lowered portcullis for the better part of another hour while they waited for the king.

They said little in that time. The horses stamped and were shushed. The men-at-arms gathered around the gate leaned on the hafts of their bill hooks and made quiet jokes with each other to ease the tension.

When the king came on his massive destrier, he came alone save for his herald, who carried his banner. The gold and green snapped in a stiff breeze as the gate was drawn open.

“None of you speak, no matter what the provocation,” Ulfram V instructed. Someone handed him his crown, a massive piece of gold worked with emeralds. He put it on his head and adjusted its level while he spoke. “This is to be a parley between myself and the Great Chieftain. Do not draw your weapons unless I give direct command. Do not make any sudden movements, and do not—under any circumstances—offer me counsel. You are here to be my honor guard, and nothing else.”

“Of course, your majesty,” Sir Hew said.

Croy spurred his horse forward to keep pace with the king’s enormous warhorse. As he passed through the gate he lifted his helm over the chain hood of his hauberk. The eye slits narrowed his vision to only what was directly in front of him. Once outside the gate, he had to turn his head from side to side, just to see all the forces arrayed against them.

Ten thousand barbarians had come through the pass. They’d been sighted that morning, marching without any sign of lines or formation. Nor had they formed up since. They stood like a great rabble of giants on the grassy field east of Helstrow. Only a very few of their number sat on horses, and nowhere did Croy see any sign of organized archers, nor any siege machines. Ten thousand foot soldiers against a fortress—it made no sense to Croy’s classically trained military mind. Where, even, were the serjeants, where the drummers, where the flags? Many of the barbarians had tired of waiting on foot and had sat down in the sward. Some had started up games of dice or bones.

At the head of this—army, for lack of a better word—a line of firepits had been dug and fed great blocks of peat. Around the fires, the biggest of the barbarians danced wildly, throwing their arms up to the sky at random intervals, stomping down the grass with their massive feet. The dancers all wore the same markings Croy had seen on Mörget’s face—everything below their eyes was painted a bright, blood red.

Alone among the barbarians, these dancers didn’t look up as the king of Skrae came riding toward them.

As the royal party closed the distance to the firepits, only one barbarian stirred. A man who had been in the throes of a dice game slowly stood up. He looked older than the rest. His hair was longer than most—the barbarians cropped their hair, or shaved their heads entirely, and this one had a mop of gold and silver atop his head, as well as a full beard. He also stood out a bit for the fact that no visible part of him was painted. He was dressed in furs no finer than the others wore, however, nor was he possessed of any jewelry or harness. He had a single broadsword strapped to his back and when he rose a mongrel dog stood up beside him and trotted along at his heels.

A second man got up from where he’d been lying in the grass, drinking wine. This one looked more like the others—his hair was cut very short and he had a mocking smile painted over his own lips. He followed the golden-haired oldster past the firepits and up to a point just far enough from the walls of Helstrow to be out of longbow range. The two men—and one dog—raised no banners or flags, nor did they call out.

Ulfram’s herald raced forward on his horse and shouted down some words to the two barbarians. The golden-haired one nodded and then looked up and beckoned to the king of Skrae with one arm. There was a warm smile on his face.

The king approached warily. Hew brought his horse close to Croy’s. “I half think we’re being made sport of,” he whispered.

“It’s just their way,” Croy returned, just as softly. “East of the mountains they treat their inferiors like equals. There are few divisions between the classes.”

“But how do they know their proper place, then?” Hew asked. “Are they even men, like us? Or some hairless kind of ape? They’re big enough for me to believe it.”

“They’re men. Don’t underestimate them,” Croy told his friend.

Hew turned his helm from side to side as if he were counting the vast number of the horde. “No fear in that.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The king walked his horse up to where the two barbarians stood. The four Ancient Blades kept close position behind him.

It was Ulfram’s herald who spoke first. “Hail and well met under the banner of parley! King Ulfram, fifth of the name, lord of Skrae, master of the fortress of Helstrow, protector of the people, favored of the Lady—”

“Owner of a very nice horse,” the barbarian with the painted smile said. “Can I have it?”

His golden-haired companion chuckled.

Ulfram’s herald went white with rage, but he finished his announcement. “River warden of the Strow and the Skrait, lord protector of the dwarven kingdom—may I present to you the Great Chieftain Mörg of the eastern steppes?”

“Ha! Don’t forget me!” the barbarian with the painted smile insisted. “Hurlind the scold! Ah, is it my turn to speak? This fellow went on so long I completely forgot my lines. Oh great Mörg the Wise, this is … some king or other, I believe you heard his recommends already.”

Mörg laughed openly. “Aye, I did. And well met, I say.” He shot out one hand to clasp the king’s.

“And the dog, Skari, what is it, the fifteenth of that name?” the scold went on.

The dog looked up on hearing its name, then flopped down on its side in the grass and panted.

“You dare introduce your dog to the king of Skrae?” Ulfram’s herald said, his face turning purple now.

“He’s not my dog,” Mörg said. “Sometimes I feed him, that’s all. More than once, when I was starving, he fed me. Sometimes I think I’m his man.”

Ulfram’s herald began to complain again, but the king stopped him with a gesture. “That will do, I think. Ride back to the gate now, and tell them I’ve been met with the required civility. Go on, man.”

The herald glared down at the barbarians one last time before he left. Ulfram sighed deeply once he was gone and then dismounted so he could face Mörg man to man. “I’ll choose not to take offense at the jests and boasts,” the king said. “It is my understanding your man there—your scold—is trained to taunt and provoke, rather than to offer your own thoughts.”

“He’s not my man,” Mörg said. He waved behind him, toward the rabble. “None of these are. They let me talk for them, that’s all. That’s what a chieftain does. A Great Chieftain just talks for a lot of them.”

“But you are invested with the power to make terms, today?” the king asked.

“I am. Should we sit? This might take a while.”

“I’d rather not soil my robes of state,” Ulfram said.

“As you wish.”

Ulfram nodded gratefully. “I understand you believe you were invaded first, by one Herward, a lone, insane religious hermit. Who you slaughtered without trial.”

Mörg waved a hand in front of his face, as if dismissing a fly.

“To show my contrition for this grave offense,” Ulfram said, “I am willing to offer you tribute—one hundred chests of gold coin. Once the exchange is made, I will expect you to lead your people back through the new pass to your own lands.”

Mörg sighed. “I already have a lot of gold.”

Croy could see Ulfram trembling. The crown rattled on the king’s head.

“What I’m really looking for is land,” Mörg went on. “We have plenty of that, too, in the east, but it’s no good for farming. My people need to eat. I’ve spent my life trying to convince them there’s more to life than just looting and pillaging, but when I can’t grow good wheat, it’s hard to get the point across. Now, personally, I’d prefer to avoid bloodshed today. I don’t like watching men die.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Ulfram said, softly.

“Unfortunately, that makes me a rarity among my people.”

The scold laughed. “For us, the sound of dying men screaming their last is sweet music! We love the ring of iron on iron. Some like to drink hot blood, and others—”

Mörg punched the scold in the side of his jaw. His fist was like a hammer’s head, and it sent Hurlind sprawling into the grass, clutching his face as if his bones were broken.

Instantly Croy’s hand dropped to his sword hilt. It was all he could do not to draw Ghostcutter and race forward to cut down the golden-haired barbarian. But he had his orders.

“Sorry,” Mörg said. “He annoys even me, sometimes. As I was saying—the clans want to go to war. It’s what they love best. I might be able to convince them to let you live. But they’ll want something good in return.”

“Such as?” Ulfram inquired.

“A grant of all the land east of the river Strow, and every one living there now as our thralls.”

Croy couldn’t help but gasp. That was a third of the entire kingdom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The king of Skrae spluttered in rage. Croy didn’t blame him.

“Thralls,” Ulfram finally managed to spit out. “You want thousands of my subject reduced to thralldom. To slavery.”

Mörg shrugged. “I need people to teach us how to plant, and how to tend crops.”

“We know already how to reap,” Hurlind the scold said, still rubbing his jaw.

“Anyway,” Mörg went on, “thralldom’s not that bad. Our laws say a thrall has the same rights as a chieftain, and he can even buy his freedom if he works hard for twenty years or so. You have villeinage here in Skrae, yes? Tell me something—if a reeve beats a villein for some offense, what happens to the villein if he fights back?”

Ulfram glanced back at his knights as if expecting them to explain to him why he was being questioned on the finer points of the feudal system. “He’d be placed under arrest, of course, and tried for assault. Most likely he’d be hanged, as an example to others.”

“I thought so. Yes,” Mörg said, nodding. “I’d much rather be a thrall. If a thrall’s master beats him too severely, and he breaks his master’s neck, most of us would cheer.”

“We do love a good avenging,” Hurlind affirmed.

Mörg smiled. “I imagine more than a few of your villeins would prefer thralldom if they had the choice.”

“They don’t,” Ulfram pronounced. “The people of Skrae will never be sold as slaves. Only the Lady can assign a man to his station—that lies outside my power. So the answer is no. I will not grant you that land, nor give you my subjects in tribute. If that means war, then so be it.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Mörg stretched his arms over his head and arched his back. “Well, I gave it my best shot.”

Ulfram sneered at the barbarian. “Did you really expect me to take what you offered, or was this just another naked ruse to justify mass slaughter?”

“Actually,” Mörg told him, “it was mostly a play for time. It takes a while for the berserkers to get good and hot.” He turned and looked toward the firepits, where the wild dancers gyrated at a frenzied pitch. He threw them a simple hand signal, and they all stopped on the instant, freezing in place.

One by one the red-painted men started trembling. Even from a distance Croy could see how they shook. Their teeth chattered in their heads and their eyes waxed red with blood. It looked like they were suffering from some kind of mass apoplectic fit.

“Your majesty,” Sir Hew said, his voice taut as a bowstring.

“I told you not to speak,” Ulfram snarled at the knight.

The berserkers picked up axes and shields from where they lay on the grass. Their faces were as red now as the paint across their mouths. One of them started gnawing on the wooden rim of his shield as if he would take a bite out of it.

“Forgive me, liege,” Sir Hew said, “but get on your damned horse right now!”

The king was not blind. He jumped up into his saddle. Yet before he turned the horse back toward Helstrow, he glowered down at Mörg. “You dare to sully the sacred rite of parley,” he said. “No violence offered, no treachery brooked!”

Mörg laughed. “That’s your custom, not ours. Ours is to cheat every way we can. We win a lot more battles, our way.”

Sir Hew dashed forward and kicked at the haunches of the king’s horse. Croy didn’t need further provocation to wheel his rounsey about and get it moving.

“Guard me,” the king shouted. “On me, all of you!”

The Ancient Blades moved swiftly to box him in, even as the berserkers started to howl and chase them on foot. They ran far faster than any man should, their axes waving high over their heads, their shields bashing forward at thin air.

“The gate! Open the gate!” Sir Rory called. Up ahead Croy could see soldiers desperately trying to get the gate open before their king reached it.

“The ballistae!” Croy shouted. Up on the battlements above the gate, the giant crossbows were slowly cranked to tension. “Shoot over our heads—do it now!”

The horses thundered toward the gate, throwing up great clods of earth as their hooves pounded at the soil. The gate was still a hundred yards away.

The berserkers were gaining on them. And behind the running men, ten thousand barbarians were rising to their feet, their weapons already in their hands.

A ballista fired with a twang like the world’s longest lute string snapping in the middle of a chord, and an iron bolt six feet long flashed over the top of Croy’s great helm. It passed through one berserker, leaving a hole in his chest big enough to put a fist through. It impaled the man behind him, too, before plowing deep into the earth without a sound.

The first berserker died before he hit the ground, his axe slashing again and again at the yellow grass. The second berserker, the one who had been impaled, took longer about it. Incredibly, as Croy watched over his shoulder, he saw the berserker try to pull himself forward, attempting to drag himself off of the ballista bolt that transfixed him.

Step by excruciating step, the berserker forced himself forward. There was no pain written on his face at all. Had he made himself totally insensate with his wild dancing? The berserker took another step—and pulled himself free. The ballista bolt thrummed as it came clear from his back.

The berserker laughed—and then died, as blood erupted like a fountain from his wound.

Behind him fifty more of them were still coming.

“The gate! Open the gate!” the king screamed, and Croy looked forward to see that the gate was in fact open—but the portcullis behind it was still lowered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Behind the portcullis, soldiers shouted at one another and men ran back and forth as they tried desperately to get the gate open again. It was designed to be dropped in a hurry, to fall its full length in a split second, but as a result it took far too long to raise again. Men working at a pair of windlasses had to strain and strive to lift its massive weight inch by inch. Croy jumped down from his horse just as the iron bars began to lift—but slowly, so slowly it was like watching death come creeping. Croy yanked off his gauntlets, then grabbed the bars with his bare hands and heaved at them, trying to help the soldiers manning the windlass behind the gate.

“Your majesty!” Sir Hew shouted. Croy turned to look—and saw a flight of arrows, dark in the air.

He’d seen so few bows among the barbarians that he’d assumed they disdained their use. But now a hundred arrows or more were hurtling toward him.

Sir Hew grabbed the king off his horse just in time. He pulled the monarch down behind the destrier’s flanks, just as the arrows struck home. A dozen points clattered against Croy’s armored back, bouncing off harmlessly, but the horses screamed and some of them bolted.

And still the berserkers were coming, howling, cutting themselves with their own weapons to add bright streamers of blood to their already red faces.

“Your king is in peril,” Croy shouted through the bars of the portcullis. The wicked spear points at the bottom of the gate were only a few inches off the ground.

Sir Rory drew Crowsbill and strode out toward the berserkers. The fat old knight struck left and right as the first of the manic barbarians came upon him. The blade looked like a normal sword until it struck, when its metal flowed and curved like quicksilver, reshaping itself even as Rory swung it about. Crowsbill twisted like a snake as it sought out their vital organs, guided by magic to always strike the most tender spot, just as a crow on a battlefield will pluck at the liver and lights of a dead man. The berserkers showed no sign of fear or pain as the blade curled again and again toward their bellies, their hearts—but one by one they went down. Sir Orne rushed to help, drawing Bloodquaffer from its broad sheath. The blade looked fuzzy even close up, but nasty all the same. Its two edges were viciously serrated—and the teeth of the serrations were themselves serrated, and those serrations as well, and those, until the serrations were too small to see with the naked eye. When it struck even the lightest of slashing blows, it cut down to the bone and its wounds bled violently. Orne had learned to use his Blade to maximal advantage, whirling about reaching only for the fastest, most shallow cuts. Light as they were Bloodquaffer’s strokes always sheared flesh down to the bone. Blood hung in the air all around Orne like a red fog as veins burst open and arteries pumped blood out onto the grass.

The berserkers didn’t stop coming, though. They seemed wholly ignorant of the numbers of their dead that piled up before the gate under the constant attacks of Rory and Orne. The berserkers ran pell-mell right into the teeth of the fight and they struck with an inhuman savagery, driven by their trance to strength and speed no normal man could match. The heavy armor that Orne and Rory wore turned away most of their axe blows, but one cleaved right through Rory’s left pauldron and bit deep into the flesh below. His arm went limp and he dropped his shield—even as Orne stepped in to cover his friend’s left with his own shield, and took a barbarian’s head off with a backhanded slash from Bloodquaffer.

“Get the king through—get him inside,” Sir Hew shouted into Croy’s ear. Croy looked down and saw the portcullis had lifted a hand’s breadth from the ground. “Shove him in there, if you must.”

Croy grabbed Ulfram’s robes of state and pulled the king to him. The man was unconscious. It looked like an arrow had struck him a glancing blow on the temple. His crown was gone, lost somewhere out on the field. Croy had no time to find it. As the portcullis lifted another jerking inch, Croy picked up the king and stuffed him through the opening. The points of the bars tore at Ulfram’s silks, but Croy could only hope they hadn’t snagged his royal skin as well.

Once the king was past the bars, soldiers on the other side grabbed him and pulled him through the rest of the way, then lifted him off the ground and carried him off.

“Now, you,” Hew told Croy. Hew started to draw Chillbrand.

“No,” Croy told him, putting a hand on Hew’s wrist. “He’s in no state to give orders. You’re in command now—you go through next.”

Hew didn’t waste time arguing. He dropped to his belly and crawled through the gap, the points of the portcullis shrieking against the steel on his back.

Croy rushed to Rory’s side just as the old knight began to droop. He propped Rory up while Orne defended him from axe blows, and shouted into Rory’s great helm, “You go next, brother.”

Rory nodded gratefully and hurried to clamber under the bars.

Bloodquaffer came down in a wild slashing stroke that cut a berserker’s face in half. Another barbarian replaced the dead man, and it was all Croy could do to bring Ghostcutter up and parry a whistling axe blade. The berserker lunged forward and Croy was suddenly face to face with his foe. He saw the wildness in the red eyes, the exultant rage in the red-painted face. Spinning around, Ghostcutter an extension of his arm as he whipped it up and in, he gutted the man, but even that wasn’t enough. The axe came up again like the berserker was chopping wood.

Before it could cut down into Croy’s neck, Bloodquaffer took off the berserker’s arm. Orne bashed out with his shield and broke another barbarian’s nose.

“Orne! Is this what the sorcerer foretold? Is this your time?” Croy demanded.

Orne twisted at the waist and Bloodquaffer slid across the ribcage of a berserker. Blood jetted from the wound and bathed both knights.

“Not yet,” Orne said.

“Then get inside—until we’re both through, they can’t lower the portcullis again,” Croy insisted. He brought his shield around and pushed Orne back, toward the gate. He did not look to see if Orne obeyed his command or not—a dozen berserkers were right there in front of Croy, and he had to duck and weave to avoid being cut to pieces.

One of the barbarians threw his shield at Croy. It bounced pointlessly off Croy’s legs. Croy kicked it upwards with one foot so it tripped up two of the berserkers, then he lunged outward with Ghostcutter and stabbed a barbarian in the throat. Yanking his blade free, he swept it through the crowd, cutting ears and eyes and noses. Normal men, men who could feel pain, would have danced backwards from such an attack, terrified of being maimed. The berserkers didn’t even flinch.

A man could be the ultimate warrior—he could be a consummate knight—and still that wave of unwashed barbarian flesh would crash down on him eventually. Croy knew he must retreat or be slaughtered where he stood.

An axe came down where Croy had been a moment before. He bashed out with his shield, not caring if he connected or not, then threw himself backwards and rolled under the bars of the portcullis.

On the far side he jumped to his feet just as three berserkers came crawling after him, their heads and arms already through the gap.

“Now,” Croy shouted, “drop it now!”

A block was knocked free from where it held a windlass, and a chain rattled as the portcullis came crashing down. Its points impaled all three berserkers, but still they tried to drag themselves forward, still they tried to fight.

Croy left them to die, and went running to find Hew.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Berserkers crashed up against the gate, straining and howling as they tried to bend the bars of the portcullis with their bare hands. Croy was afraid they just might do it, even though those bars were solid iron two inches thick.

High above his head he heard the ballistae twanging and jumping. They were too slow—barely able to get four shots off in a minute. “Archers!” he shouted. “Get longbowmen up there—drive the host back.” He glanced at the berserkers at the gate. “And men with pikestaffs. Clear the gate!”

Sir Hew was a dozen yards away, bellowing his own orders at a huddle of serjeants in leather jack. When Croy came running toward him, the knight dismissed the serjeants and shook his head. “Most of the men are still in their billets, and will be until someone comes to collect them. We weren’t ready—didn’t expect the attack until tomorrow’s dawning.”

“No time for cursing fate now,” Croy said. “We need to—”

An arrow came down from straight above and knocked Chillbrand out of Hew’s hand. Croy looked up—it was as if the arrow had been dropped from the clouds.

A hundred more of them appeared as he watched.

“They’re lobbing arrows over the wall, in the hopes of hitting anyone defending the gate,” Croy said, as the shafts twisted down toward him. He ducked down and threw his shield over his head. The arrows struck him like wooden raindrops, with about as much effect. He started to laugh, thinking the barbarians had wasted their ammunition. Then he looked up and saw a soldier in canvas jack standing before him. The man looked deeply confused by the three arrows that had transfixed his chest. The soldier took a step toward Croy and started screaming.

Croy grabbed the man and laid him down on the side of the road, out of the way of trampling feet. Not that it mattered. The soldier was dead before Croy set him down. All around, other soldiers were screaming or running willy-nilly, trying to get out of the barrage.

Up on the wall one of the ballistae slumped over on its side. Its master fell from the battlements, an arrow through one of his eyes. Balint watched him fall, then screamed for a replacement. “One that can fucking aim properly!” she added.

“Archers!” Croy shouted again. “Where are our archers?”

He heard a great crash and a noise like a bell falling from its tower. He looked up and saw the barbarians had a battering ram in the shape of a giant iron skull and they were slamming it again and again against the portcullis.

“Hew,” Croy shouted.

“I know it, brother. Back! Everyone get back—retreat to the inner bailey. We can’t hold the gate. Retreat! Sound the retreat!”

Sir Orne was suddenly at Croy’s elbow. “The king? What of him?”

Croy could only shake his head. He didn’t know where the king had been taken.

“He can’t be lost yet. I am certain he’ll outlive me, anyway,” Orne said. “Help Sir Rory—he looks like he can barely stand.”

The oldest of the Ancient Blades had slumped against a wall not ten feet away. Crowsbill dangled from his gauntleted hand as if he might drop it at any moment. Croy took it from him and put it in its sheath on Rory’s belt.

“Thank you, brother,” Rory said. He slurred the words as if he were drunk. Croy checked his wound and saw gore clotted and thick under the gap in his steel armor. What kind of man could cut through steel plate and chain mail with an iron axe? The berserkers must be stronger than giants when they entered their trance.

“How is it?” Rory asked. For a moment his face showed no courage at all, just the desperate fear of a man who knows he will die soon. Then his lips pressed together under his mustache. “It doesn’t feel too bad,” he blustered.

Croy nodded slowly. Even if Rory survived, even if the wound didn’t fester, he’d never use his arm again. “It’s just your left arm,” he said, knowing what Rory needed to hear. “You can still wield your Blade.”

“Hah!” Rory said, and tried to laugh. Mostly he just wheezed. “We’ll show ’em yet, won’t we, Croy, we’ll—”

He was interrupted by a sudden blare of noise. Trumpets sounding the retreat—but there was no need. A crowd of soldiers was already rushing up the high street toward the inner bailey, many of them throwing away their weapons as they ran.

“Cowards!” Sir Rory said, spitting up blood.

“Villeins, most of them,” Croy observed. Conscripts. Until ten days ago, for such men even holding a weapon was a crime. Now in less than a fortnight they’d been told they would have to take up arms in defense of their king. They hadn’t been given enough training. They had never fought before. “They’re scared.”

“We should hang every last one of the rotters,” Rory insisted.

Croy said nothing but started to head up the high street himself, one shoulder under Rory’s good arm. He didn’t get more than twenty feet before Hew grabbed his sword hand.

“Croy, the king—”

Croy shook his head. “No one seems to know where he is.”

“We must find him. He could be under the feet of this mob. He could be wounded and dying even now.”

Croy grimaced at the thought. “I’ll find him. You take Rory and get to the keep. Orne! Orne, are you here?”

The doomed knight came running.

“Orne,” Croy said, “we need to find the king.”

Orne sighed. “Yes, we do.”

Hew grabbed the side of Croy’s helm and pulled it around so they were looking in each other’s eyes. “Get him to safety. At any cost. That’s my command.”

“And I shall obey,” Croy said. Then he broke away and started running.

Panicked men were everywhere. Only a handful still carried their weapons. Some had even torn off their canvas jack and their kettle hats, perhaps thinking they would not be slaughtered if they didn’t look like soldiers. Croy tried to grab a few of them and tell them to get to the keep, that the only safety available lay there, but none of them listened. They were crowding into cellars or the upper floors of houses, barricading themselves in as if a few pieces of furniture or a locked door could keep out the barbarians.

It was tough going to move through the fortress-town against the flow of that crowd. Once Orne had to draw Bloodquaffer and wave it over his head to force the fleeing men to make room.

Before they had covered a half dozen streets, they heard a rumbling groan and a shriek of tearing metal, and knew the portcullis had fallen. The barbarians had entered Helstrow.

“How long do you think Hew can hold the keep?” Orne asked.

“I don’t know,” Croy said, between clenched teeth. He stepped out of the way of a cart full of men still holding their bill hooks. The men looked scared but they hadn’t deserted yet, so maybe they were headed for the fighting. “There’s food in the keep for months, and barrels of arrows, and the smithies … but this isn’t a siege. It’s a direct assault. If Hew gets enough men inside and locks the gates before the barbarians get to him, maybe a few days.”

“What of the queen, and their children?”

Croy pushed his way through a knot of soldiers on their knees, begging the bloodgod for help. “They were sent to Greenmarsh days ago. You,” he shouted, and grabbed one of the praying men. “Did the king come through here?”

The man wouldn’t stop praying until Croy shook him. “I’ll ask again. Have you seen the king?”

“He’s not with you, sir knight?” the man asked, and his face dissolved in blubbering terror.

Croy pushed the wretch away and started to storm off when a woman leaned out of a window above his head and shouted for his attention.

“They went down there,” she said, and pointed to a narrow lane between two houses.

“Milady,” Croy said, “you have my thanks.”

“I’m no lady! But if you’d repay me, tell me—what should we do? I have six children up here and they want to know what all the noise is.”

Croy looked back toward the eastern gate, where he knew the fighting would be hot and desperate. For the moment at least his view was blocked by the intervening houses, but any minute now the berserkers would come flooding through this street, destroying everything in their path, murdering every man, woman and child they met. He looked up again at the woman in the window and thought of what advice he could possibly give her.

“Please, sir knight. For my children’s sake?”

He closed his eyes and looked down. “Get to the keep, if you can. Stick as close to the western wall as possible—if you see anyone bloodied or screaming, run away. I’ll pray for you, goodwife.”

She slammed the shutters of the window closed without another word.

Croy and Orne hurried down the lane she’d indicated and saw a serjeant with an arrow sticking out of his back. He was breathing heavily and looked as pale as a sheet, but he waved them over when he saw them.

The serjeant led them down into a root cellar, where the king lay on a bed of sack cloth. His eyes were closed and there was a bad bruise on his left temple. “Hasn’t … woken since I … brought him here,” the serjeant gasped.

Sir Orne grabbed the arrow in the man’s back and twisted it free, then shoved a piece of cloth into the wound. The serjeant winced until tears came from his eyes, but he would not cry out.

“You’re a good man,” Croy said, and put a hand on the serjeant’s shoulder.

“Get him … to Sir Hew … he’ll …” The serjeant said no more. He sat down on the close-packed earth of the floor and just stared at the ceiling.

Croy ran back up to the street and sought about until he found what he wanted—a pair of bill hooks with long enough hafts. With these and a bed sheet from an abandoned house, he made a litter that he and Orne could carry between them. They put the king on it and started to carry him up the stairs. “Come with us,” Croy said to the wounded serjeant.

But the man was dead, his eyes rolled back up into their sockets. Croy closed his eyelids, then went back to his burden.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“Where do we take him?” Orne asked, when they were back in the street. “The keep? Or the western gate?”

Croy tried to think. He must keep the king alive, at any cost—that was Hew’s order. But where did safety lie? It was impossible to say without better information.

Lady, he prayed silently, give me a sign.

He got it—though he would gladly have taken her silence instead.

A berserker came howling down the street toward him. The man was naked and covered in wounds—shallow cuts across his face and chest, deep gashes in his legs. He held an axe in either hand.

Perhaps the berserker hadn’t even seen them in his fury—he didn’t turn to engage them, instead looking as if he would run right past the two knights in his fury. Croy whipped Ghostcutter from its sheath and cut the barbarian’s throat without resistance. The berserker fell, but behind him, perhaps only a street away, Croy could hear more of them whooping and laughing for the joy of battle.

The choice was made for them. There was no way they could reach the keep, not if they had to hack their way through Mörg’s entire army to get there. Instead they must make for the gate and leave Helstrow behind. Croy and Orne picked up the litter and hurried as fast as they could for the western gate. It wasn’t far, only a dozen streets or so, but in full armor and carrying the king they made slow going of it.

Before they’d covered half the distance, the barbarians had spotted them. A great howl went up and the knights had to duck down a side passage or be overrun.

Taking a winding route, trying to stay ahead of their pursuers, they covered the distance somehow. Croy was past rational thought at that point—he was only aware of his feet, and of the sounds of murder and butchery all around him. He had to do everything in his power to save the king. That was his duty. If he was cut down before he reached the gate, the Lady could ask no more of him. But he would not stop. He would not consider the possibility of hiding or of not taking another step.

When the gate appeared before him, he realized he had a new problem. It was sealed. As it had been for ten days.

“Put him down over there,” Croy said, and when it was done he went to the massive bar that held the iron gates closed. There was no portcullis on this side, but the wooden doors closing the gate were made of massive planks of age-hardened wood reinforced with thick metal fittings. The bar of the gate was a rod of iron thicker than his wrist. “Help me,” he said.

“No,” Orne told Croy. “You have to get it open yourself.”

Croy turned around in a rage, but then he saw Bloodquaffer in Orne’s hand—and a crowd of barbarians in the street behind him. Orne ran to meet the invaders, his Ancient Blade whistling as it swooped around and around in the air.

This was it, then. This was the foretold moment—the moment Orne was to die.

Croy decided he would make that death mean something, at any cost. Struggling with the iron bar, he put all his muscles into moving it until he felt something tear in his back. The bar came loose from its brackets and crashed to the ground with a noise so loud it jarred Croy’s bones. He pushed hard on the gate until it started to swing open.

Only then did he look back.

Orne was lost in the melee, but he could see Bloodquaffer rise and fall and slash and spin. Never had Croy seen a man fight so desperately, never had he watched a sword move so fast. Heads, arms, fingers bounced and spun in the air as Bloodquaffer took its due. But with every barbarian that the sword cut down, a dozen axe blows came at Orne, while spears jabbed at him through every opening and arrows seemed to float on air above him. The barbarians didn’t seem to care if they struck or killed their own numbers in the confusion, only that they took down the doomed knight. Blood pooled between the cobblestones and ran in the gutters, but they fought on.

Croy longed to go and help his friend—but he dared not. He bent to pick up the king and throw his sleeping form over one shoulder.

It was then he heard a booming, horrible laugh that he knew all too well. Striding through the crowd of barbarians, Mörget came to challenge Orne.

“No,” Croy said, staggering under the weight of the king.

No, it could not be. Mörget could not still be alive. He’d been under Cloudblade when it fell. It had been Mörget’s own hand that set off the explosion which leveled the mountain. Not even Mörget could have survived that.

Yet here he was.

Mörget—the biggest man Croy had ever seen. The fiercest warrior he’d ever known. The son of Mörg, and himself a chieftain of many barbarian clans. Mörget’s face was painted half red like those of the berserkers, but he was more dangerous than any of those insensate warriors.

Croy had called Mörget brother, once. They had fought together against a demon, and Croy had marveled at the strength in Mörget’s massive arms and the sheer delight Mörget took in hacking and slashing and killing. Mörget had terrified Croy even when they’d been on the same side.

But Mörget had betrayed Croy—he had betrayed everyone who went into the mountain with him. Even before the barbarians declared war on Skrae, Croy and Mörget had become sworn enemies. If he’d thought Mörget still lived, Croy would have been honor bound to do nothing until he had tracked down Mörget and slain him in single combat. Slain him and taken from his treacherous hands the sword called Dawnbringer.

Mörget waded into the fight, an axe in one hand, the self-same Ancient Blade in the other. The throng of barbarians drew back and Croy saw Orne in the sudden clearing. The knight had lost half the armor from his left arm and his helm had been torn from his head. His face was perfectly calm and resigned to his fate.

He brought Bloodquaffer up, ready to parry Mörget’s axe stroke.

Mörget was as big as a horse and his arm was like a tree trunk. The axe came round in an unstoppable arc, a blow as fast and inescapable as an avalanche.

Orne took the perfect stance and gripped Bloodquaffer’s hilt in both hands. He braced himself in perfect form. How many times had he stood like that, ready to take a blow that could have killed a normal man? Orne was a knight and an Ancient Blade. A warrior of incomparable skill.

He could no more have stopped the axe blow than he could have held back the ocean at high tide. The axe would have cut him in half if that had been Mörget’s intention. Instead, it cut right through Bloodquaffer’s blade.

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