Honour Among Thieves

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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