To Ride Hell’s Chasm

Mykkael released a deep sigh in relief. ‘Benj, you’re a hero.’ While the wife scoffed at the untoward praise, the captain accepted the buttered bread set out by the towheaded daughter. He broke the hard crust between his scarred fingers, then raised eyes grown suddenly piercing. ‘Listen to me, Benj. This business is dangerous, more than I ever imagined last night.’

The wife snorted again, bent to poke up the coals. ‘Huh. What else is new? Benj has lived with the threat of the noose all his life, and damn all to sate his taste for the king’s summer venison.’

But the captain shook his head, the bread chunk between his deft hands all at once a forgotten afterthought. ‘No, Mirag, believe me. A hangman’s rope would be merciful beside the perils that stalk Sessalie’s princess.’ His edged words cut the quiet like fine, killing steel swathed out of sight under satin. Without warning, his lean figure seemed set out of place, a jarring wrong note amid the fragrance of sweetfern brought in by her husband’s jaunt through the brambles.

The small daughter retreated and clung to her mother’s flax skirts. Mirag folded the child into a wordless embrace, and regarded the creature who ate bread on her settle, his poised calm transformed to a predator’s stillness, a heartbeat removed from raw violence.

Mykkael made no effort to dismiss the fresh fear blown in like a chill wind between them. ‘Already, two people have died for far less than your husband knows now. Keep your family at home. Talk to no one. Leave your son in the hills, under cover, and for your life’s sake, hold to the very letter of my directions.’

‘So long as I can sleep off the whisky that’s pounding my brain to a pulp,’ Benj said, wise enough to pretend to complacence before the wide eyes of his child. He tipped back his head, hands laced in his lap. ‘That boy on the run, that’s made off with the horses? He’s somehow involved with the fate of the princess?’

‘Her life may depend on what happens to him,’ Mykkael admitted, unflinching.

Benj nodded, satisfied. ‘Then I’ll be here, for when you have need of me.’

By the time the water boiled, he was out cold and snoring. Mykkael snacked on bread and honeyed tea while his meat cooked, and Mirag badgered him to part with a chunk to enrich her stewpot for supper. The girl-child slipped out to play with the dogs, while Benj twitched in whisky-soaked dreams. Mykkael sat in thought, the odd finger tapping, while time fleeted past, and the sun slanted gold through the shutters.

‘Meat’s cooked almost through,’ Mirag said at last. Since she had successfully cadged the best portion, she helpfully wrapped the remainder in yesterday’s bread heels, then tied up the package with cheesecloth.

Mykkael arose. He extracted a filled purse from under his cloak and solemnly exchanged bundles. ‘Here’s compensation for the burst shutter, and the fee for Benj’s tracking. There’s more added on to cover additional service. Mirag, listen clearly. The coin stays in your hands until I send you word, do you hear? No drink for Benj. Keep him home and cold sober, with the dogs close at hand on their chains. I’ll come back tonight with instructions.’

This once, the shrewd matron hesitated before she tucked the silver away under the lid of her milk crock. ‘Captain, the danger to us has always walked with the power of your crown authority. I won’t see my man hang for coursing royal game. Promise me this! Whatever happens, though you face your own downfall, you won’t expose Benj’s name, or say that he had any part in this.’

Mykkael pulled up his hood. ‘I doubt that King Isendon would value a few deer above the murderers your Benj has helped the garrison bring back to justice.’

But the poacher’s wife remained adamant. ‘Captain, your promise! For my son’s interference with Taskin’s lancers alone, we could all lose our heads for crown treason.’

Sober now, sharply aware the woman before him was trembling, Mykkael reached out and gathered her clasped hands. ‘You are brave as a tigress, and for that, on my honour: there is no act of treason in safeguarding the king’s daughter’s life.’

When Mirag’s fear did not settle, Mykkael bowed his head briefly. Then he laid the chapped skin of her knuckles against the sword belt slung over his heart. ‘Madam, hear my oath. No man in Sessalie knows your husband has ever worked with me in liaison. Nor will they, I swear by the blood and the breath that keep the life in my body’

The Seneschal of Sessalie received no warning beyond the desperate string of entreaties from Collain Herald, outside. Made aware he confronted an imminent invasion, but given no chance to order the scatter of state documents under his hand, he turned his head, lips pursed in harried forbearance. Then the latch tripped. The door to the chamber reserved for the king’s private consultation wrenched open with a force that snuffed all the candles.

Bertarra charged in, turquoise skirts spread like sails, and her round face flushed with agitation. ‘Guards, guards, guards, guards!’ she burst out. ‘Can’t step an inch without tripping over the boots on their blundering feet.’ Unabashed by the presence of four more men-at-arms posted by Taskin’s select order, she marched hellbent towards the table where the seneschal marshalled the sheets of the afternoon’s sensitive business.

‘A waste of crown effort, guarding the barn door after the stock has been stolen,’ the late queen’s niece ranted on. ‘I’ve counted a dozen or more brutes standing idle who ought to be outside the gates, scouring the countryside for kidnappers.’

The seneschal knew when not to waste his breath, arguing. He pushed up the spectacles slipped down his beaked nose, while the lady rocked into a belated curtsey before the chair that supported the king.

She addressed him at an ear-splitting shout: ‘Your Majesty!’

Fortunate among men, King Isendon kept snoring, his eggshell-frail head tipped backwards against the throne’s tasselled headrest. A bead of drool clung to his ruffled state collar. The thin hands on the chair stayed motionless, the sparkle of rings frozen still as jewellery set on a corpse.

The realm’s seneschal fell back on longsuffering patience. ‘Lady Bertarra, as you see, the day’s trying events have left King Isendon overcome.’

The court matron narrowed her blue eyes and peered at the slackened face of her sovereign. ‘His Majesty’s fallen witless again?’

‘Fast asleep, lady’ The seneschal sighed. ‘He was wakeful, last night, fretting over the fate of his daughter. If you care to entrust me to deliver your message, I’ll try to address his Majesty on your behalf when he wakens, if he is lucid.’

Bertarra sniffed, the jutted flash of her diamond combs lending emphasis to her disdain. ‘No need to speak. Just give him this.’ She uncurled the arm tucked over her bosom and slapped a rolled parchment on to the tabletop. Then, her errand accomplished, she spun and marched back towards the doorway.

At the threshold, she was jammed on her thundering course by the inbound arrival of Taskin. Fast on his feet, the commander nipped past her without snaring himself in her acres of ribboned petticoats. Before Bertarra regaled him with carping, he caught her plump elbow in a steering grasp, and murmured a gracious good afternoon as he backed her bulk clear of the chamber. Then his neat, swordsman’s reflex closed the door in her blustering face.

Leaned back on the latch, one imperious boot heel wedged to jam the shut panel, he ignored the pounding commotion that ensued on the opposite side. His steely glance first raked over the king, then settled in nailing regard on the seneschal. ‘You look like a pulped rag. Isn’t Prince Kailen fit to relieve you?’

The seneschal poked up his spectacles again, and peered down the pinched flange of his nostrils. ‘His Highness is closeted with the Prince of Devall, a wise enough choice, for the moment.’

Taskin folded his arms, a curt snap of his head indicating the rumpus that shuddered the wood at his back. ‘What pearl of wisdom did Bertarra deliver?’

‘Let’s see.’ The seneschal unfurled the parchment with fussy precision. ‘A petition, signed by prominent court ladies and a select circle of merchants’ wives. They send an appeal for a royal writ, demanding Captain Mysh kael’s arrest.’ A blink of myopic, watery eyes was hard followed by the accusatory tap of a finger. ‘You know the talk brands the man as a murderer.’

‘Talk is not proof,’ Taskin stated. The assault on the door at his back stopped abruptly, replaced by a furious screech. The commander laid a testing palm flat on the panel, too wise to shift his braced weight prematurely. ‘She’s broken a thumbnail, or bent one of her rings. Care to speculate which? We could wager.’

But the seneschal declined the diversion. ‘We have a woman dead of a sorcerer’s mark. Such a horror has never happened in Sessalie. The people are demanding to know what’s been done in response.’

Tired himself, Taskin looked hackled. ‘I don’t arrest anyone for the clamour raised by hysterical servants. Nor will I act on the demand of an outcry that’s fuelled by unfounded gossip.’

The seneschal squared off in earnest. ‘Well, this particular document cannot be taken as hearsay’ He lifted a parchment from the welter of papers, one bearing an imposing wax seal and ribbons in Devall’s crown colours.

‘Diplomatic complaint, for Captain Mysh kael’s misbehaviour?’ Taskin pushed erect. His clipped signal summoned one of his guards to stand by the doorway in case the Lady Bertarra renewed her attempt at forced entry. ‘I know about that one. It’s being addressed. Be assured that my own hand will administer the punishment. Its severity will justifiably match the offence. This concerns an offender under my right to remand into discipline. Not even for Devall will I subject a man to the lash without weighing his word on the matter beforehand.’

‘What about this, then?’ The seneschal passed across another state document, also set under Devall’s royal seal. The writ underneath framed a formal request to King Isendon, asking grant for the High Prince’s honour guard to exercise autonomous authority to conduct a private search for Princess Anja.

Taskin glanced at the king, still asleep, his circlet tipped askew over hanks of thinned hair, and his wristbones poked like bleached sticks from the glitter of his elaborately embroidered sleeve cuffs.

Sorrow and regret softened the response the commander returned to the seneschal. ‘Lord Shaillon, don’t set Sessalie’s seal to Devall’s request, not just yet. At least hold off until after I’ve had the chance to question the Captain of the Garrison. Although you hold the man in contempt, Mysh kael may have had a sound reason for drawing his steel on the high prince’s advocate.’

‘No reason can excuse a rank breach of manners,’ the seneschal fumed. ‘Let me remind you, the official your desert-bred cur has insulted is an accredited royal ambassador! The wrist-slap penalty you’re proposing is child’s play! In Devall, by law, for the same offence, the wretch would lose his right hand.’

Taskin contained the quick flash of his temper. ‘I’ll remember, some time, to show you a man whose back bears healed scars from the whip. No pretty sight, I assure you, Lord Shaillon, with the sensible benefit that afterwards, the soldier can still bear arms in the kingdom’s defence!’

‘We speak of an outlander,’ the seneschal bristled. ‘Not one of our own, but a mongrel of low background, and questionable habits. Since when do we look to a desert-bred’s brawling to conduct our affairs of state? How dare you suggest such a creature should taint a decision concerning a prince who stands to become our pledged ally, joined to our kingdom by the kin ties of wedlock!’

Yet even for royal protocol, Taskin refused to back down. ‘Captain Mysh kael is a red-blooded man, invested by oath, and in service as one of Sessalie’s crown officers.’

‘A mistake we should rectify. Should have done so, and long since. Shame on us all, that a penniless adventurer should be allowed to take rank advantage of the opportunity presented by our summer tourney. We cannot afford to risk a misjudgement. Not when the man might be the paid agent for some unknown enemy’s plotting.’ As Taskin took umbrage, the seneschal raised a stabbing finger and ranted straight on. ‘We are faced with a crisis! At the least, such a foreigner ought to be set aside under lock and key. He must be removed from his post at the garrison, and a trusted man set in his place.’

‘Fury and rhetoric will not grant Devall your endorsement, Lord Shaillon.’ Taskin’s gaze flicked past the seneschal’s shoulder, towards the sovereign slumped in the state chair. ‘The command to discharge Mysh kael must arise from the hand of King Isendon himself.’

‘A mumbling dodderer who drools in his sleep,’ huffed the seneschal. ‘When his Majesty wakens, confused, be sure I shall get the permission I need to set Sessalie’s seal on these edicts. I’ll have others drawn up in sensible language that will take steps to protect our security.’

Taskin gave back a wolfish smile, his posture held at smart attention.

‘But I’m not asleep,’ interjected King Isendon. ‘Nor am I drifting, just at the moment.’ He straightened his trembling shoulders, imperious, and snapped his fingers sharp as a whip crack. ‘Give over those documents held in dispute. Yes. Set them in Taskin’s hands. I leave the matter of Devall’s complaints in his charge to address as he sees fit.’ The damp, weary eyes tracked the seneschal’s sullen capitulation until the requisite papers changed hands.

‘That will do, Shaillon,’ said the king, dismissing all argument.

‘Commander,’ he continued, ‘you have mentioned a forthcoming inquiry over the conduct of Captain Mysh kael? That is well. Treat with him fairly. If he brings any news of my daughter from the garrison, I expect an immediate audience.’

Taskin bowed. ‘Your Majesty.’ He tucked the state documents under his arm. By the time he turned in smart strides towards the doorway, the king’s gaze had already lost focus.

The seneschal surged at the commander’s heels in a bothered flutter of velvets. Ever determined to snatch the last word, he found his officious presence impeded by four immaculate crown guardsmen.

‘Bertarra is right,’ he snapped under his breath. ‘All these sentries are a nuisance in the royal chamber.’

‘Necessary every man of them,’ Taskin retorted as he breezed on his way down the corridor. ‘King Isendon’s safety is my bailiwick, Seneschal, and no subject for you or Sessalie’s chancellors to lay open to mauling debate.’

The crossroads market outside the town wall was a noisy, sprawling event that bloomed on a patch of packed earth with each dawn, and melted away every sundown. The throng of itinerant pedlars, freebooting hucksters and farmwives who traded the odd head of livestock held no crown licence to sell. Too shiftless to maintain a stall in the town, they simply gathered and spread out their wares, or pounded in stakes for their picket lines. The result clogged the verge where the trade road met the cart track which snaked down from the alpine vales.

The regulars hunkered under rickety awnings, an ill-fashioned jumble of pegged burlap and canvas that fluttered and snapped in the breeze. Packs of raggedy children screamed and ran wild, through the singsong patter of the hawkers. On fair days, the blind beggar who told stories spread his blanket under the shade of the ancient oak that also, infrequently, served as the royal gallows. The dented tin bowl he set out for coppers always sat on the plank where the hangman’s stair mounted the scaffold.

The hour, by then, approached mid-afternoon. Slanting sun fell like ruled brass through the branches. The odd scattered dollop licked the head and shoulders of the man in the hooded penitent’s robe. He sat, one leg crossed and the other extended, in the dust at the storyteller’s feet. The pair of them shared companionable talk, and a meal of bread crusts and boiled beef.

‘Ah, then it’s horses, now?’ the beggar said, his rich voice slipped into the broad Trakish dialect learned from his mother in childhood. ‘You’re wanting to bet? That was the hot topic, rightly enough, until this sad tale of the princess overshadowed all else.’ Paused for a sigh, he rubbed grease from his fingers, then recovered his dauntless, sly smile. ‘Do you fancy the races, or maybe the outstanding team for the match of steed wickets next month?’

‘Perhaps both, maybe neither,’ said Mykkael in the same tongue. He folded the last slice of meat in a bread chunk, and laid the offering into the storyteller’s outstretched palm. ‘If I wanted to locate an animal of a certain description, perhaps to inquire if it was for sale, who would be likely to know where to look?’

‘A rascal.’ Moved to bursting laughter, the storyteller turned his face, sightless eyes bound with a scarlet rag to keep his affliction from upsetting the children. ‘Vangyar, the horse thief, could answer your question. Knows every creature with hooves in this valley, and speaks like a breeder’s textbook. Won’t be so easy for you to approach him.’ The beggar rapped the scaffold post at his back. ‘Crown law sends his sort to dance with the rope.’

Mykkael shrugged. ‘I don’t know of any man or woman in Sessalie who is forced to steal out of hunger.’ Hands clasped over his tucked-up knee, he waited until the beggar stopped chewing before he finished his thought. ‘I’m seeking a horse with particular markings, not pursuing a writ for arrest.’

‘Fair enough.’ The storyteller dusted crumbs from his lap. ‘Vangyar often drinks at the Bull Trough, by Falls Gate. One of the girls there’s his favourite. If you can corner him, he’ll know your horse. But I’ll lay your king’s silver against one of my tales, you don’t catch him to pitch the first question.’

‘Oh, you’re on.’ The garrison captain grinned under his hood. ‘But I’ll need a forthright description to have a fair shot at the take.’

‘From a blind man? That’s a joke.’ But the storyteller delivered from the stock of detail he was wont to pick up from overhearing stray talk.

Mykkael listened, his sharpened gaze caught by the sudden moil of activity that swirled through the gaggle of potters, the stacks of grass basketry and the hunched cluster of women who laced oat straw into cheap pallets.

When a shout punctuated that burst of disturbed movement, the captain uncoiled to his feet. ‘My friend, we have a sealed wager between us. For now, I regret, I must leave you.’

The beggar returned a companionable nod, content to resume spinning tales from his dusty blanket.

Mykkael strode downhill. With brisk hands, he peeled off the penitent’s robe and flagged down the man from the garrison, just reined in from a gallop, and towing a second mount on a lead rein.

‘Captain! Thank the powers that be, the gate watch said you might be here.’ Sergeant Cade spun his snorting, bald-faced gelding, and tossed Mykkael the bridle of the riderless grey.

‘What’s amiss?’ Mykkael settled the reins and vaulted astride without touching the stirrup. Wheeled back towards the town, he heard out his sergeant’s breathless report.

‘Physician from Fane Street’s showed up at the keep. They’ve got him in your private quarters, you asked that?’

‘I sent him.’ Mykkael pressed the horse from a walk to a canter, then dug in his heels for more speed. ‘Only one man? The apothecary’s not with him?’

Sergeant Cade spurred his lathered mount to keep pace. ‘The apothecary’s dead, and your physician’s not coherent. No one’s been able to get him calmed down to explain how the tragedy happened.’

Mykkael swore. His face drained to a queer, greyish pallor, a precedent no man from the garrison had seen through any prior disaster. ‘No help for the setback, I’m going to be late for my promised appointment with Taskin.’ He hammered his dappled horse to a gallop, still shouting his fast-paced instructions. ‘Go through the Falls Gate, pick up a task squad of eight men. I want the apothecary’s house sealed off. No one goes in, do you hear me? No matter what seems to have happened inside, I want nothing disturbed by the ignorant.’

‘Too late for that,’ the sergeant yelled back, his words breathlessly pitched over the rolling thunder of hooves. ‘There’s been a small fire. Burned like merry hell. No brigade dumping water could douse it. Went out by itself, finally, and left an unnatural, smoking crater that destroyed the back wall of the house.’

‘Get the bucket brigade out.’ Mykkael leaned over his mount’s wind-whipped mane, still urgently snapping directions. ‘Take a list of their names. Round up each one. Force them to step through the smoke of a cedar bonfire, then bathe head to foot in salt water.’

Sergeant Cade stared. ‘Have you gone mad?’ The cost of pure salt, this far inland, was extortionate.

‘No, soldier. Forget about questions. Just follow my plainspoken order!’ Mykkael balanced his horse, then changed its lead to sweep right at the moat and take the main road through the Lowergate. ‘I’m off to the keep to settle the physician and secure his immediate safety. If you can, dispatch a rider to Highgate. Tell Taskin I’ll be delayed.’

‘Done, Captain.’ Cade veered his mount and set off.

Mykkael urged the grey underneath him still faster, railing at fate in snatched curses. Beyjall’s sudden death carried damnable timing. The chance was slim to non-existent that a message passed through the watch at the Falls Gate could be relayed uptown in time to defer Taskin’s rendezvous. Mykkael resigned himself. The reprimand he would earn for the lapse seemed hellbound to become an ordeal of savage unpleasantness.

IX. Late Day

HOT, SOAKED IN SWEAT, MYKKAEL FORCED HIS GAME KNEE AT A RUN UP THE KEEP STAIR, THEN BURST THROUGH THE DOOR TO HIS QUARTERS. He swept the chamber with one raking glance and fixed on the forlorn figure perched on the edge of his pallet.

Sadly rumpled, the physician slumped in his shirtsleeves. He looked like a fluffed robin blown in by a storm, elbows set on his knees, and hands pressed to his brow.

The scuff of the captain’s lame step aroused him. He bounded upright with a cry, palms raised in startlement. Behind the skewed glass of his spectacles, his china-blue eyes were dilated to black from the adrenaline jolt of his terror.

Mykkael stepped back. Checked to thoughtful calm, he tipped his head past the lintel and directed a shout down the stairwell. ‘Vensic! Send one of the armourer’s boys up here at once with a torch!’

Relief suffused the physician’s blanched face. ‘Light of deliverance!’ he gasped, all but sobbing. ‘On my soul, now I know you’re not one of them.’ His wobbling knees gave way all at once. Dropped back to his seat on the captain’s coarse blankets, he rushed on in breathless hysteria. ‘At least, the word goes that most sorcerers’ minions will avoid the sight of a natural fire.’

‘Some will flinch from an unshielded flame,’ Mykkael agreed. He watched with the fixated stare of a lynx, his wary hands poised at his sides. ‘Except for the oldest, and most powerful. But even ones bound to the dark arts for centuries can’t abide the smoke from green cedar.’ Cued by the tap of the boy’s running footstep crossing the landing downstairs, the captain spun and moved back past the threshold. He returned in an eye blink, a lit torch in hand, which he touched to the frond of cut evergreen, stashed out of sight on his hurried way in.

Smoke billowed as twigs and needles ignited. ‘Forgive me,’ Mykkael snapped, as the resinous fumes caught the draught. The scented blue smoke billowed up in a cloud and wafted over the rattled physician. ‘I had to make certain you carried no taint.’

‘No bother at all,’ croaked the neat little man, lightly coughing. ‘Precautions are nothing but rock-hard good sense. Dear me. Until now, I thought Sessalie lay too far north to be threatened by demonic plotting and craftwork. That’s why I chose to retire here. Very peaceful.’ But horror had shattered his idyllic complacency. He trembled to realize that his days of tranquil practice might be for ever undone.