Den of thieves

Chapter Fifty-Three

Despite the cool day, the palfrey was panting and its flanks were dripping foam by the time Croy thundered up the Cornmarket Bridge and through Market Square. At the main gate to Castle Hill, a guard waved his pikestaff in the air to demand that Croy halt, but the man was wise enough to stand back rather than be trampled as Croy shot through the gate at full gallop and passed into the bailey. Workmen threw down their tools and jumped out of his way as he leapt the pile of broken stone before the tower. He didn’t slow the horse until he was right before the main door of the palace, and then only long enough to jump down and send the horse wheeling away, headed back to its master as promised.

For a moment all was stillness in the courtyard. No one dared move, for they did not know why he’d come or what he wanted. If he had sprouted horns and bat wings in that moment, he doubted the watchmen and the guard would be more surprised by his appearance there.

He was thankful for their caution. It gave him a moment-the space of a few breaths-to make his demand.

“Anselm Vry!” he shouted, throwing back the hood of his cloak. He reached back and untied his swords, just in case.

He could hear the palace guards rushing into place behind him, their mail clanking and the butts of their weapons sounding on the flagstones. He did not turn to look at them. “Vry, come out, I would speak with you!”

There was much confusion and raised voices shouted at him, but he could barely hear them. The blood was pounding behind his eyes and the world was tinged with red. If Vry would not come out and speak, then he would go in-and the Lady help any man who stood before him.

But in the moment before he began to cut his way into the palace, Vry appeared, standing on a second floor balcony. “Sir Croy, this is too much,” he said. “I’ve tried to turn a blind eye, I’ve tried to earn you mercy with honeyed words, but-”

“Your men-they came and they went. Without-Without it!”

Vry looked around at the throng of people in the courtyard and then glared daggers at Croy. “Watch your tongue.”

“They searched the right house. They were unopposed. How could they fail? There is only one way. Sorcery.”

“The men of which you speak have not yet returned. I have not heard their report. There is no point to this chaos and nothing to discuss.”

Vry looked peeved, but he made no order for the guards to attack. For the nonce they held their places, weapons ready. Perhaps none of them wanted to be the first to attack-they knew what Croy was capable of. Once the first of them moved, though, Croy knew the momentum would shift and they would all be upon him.

This was the moment, then. He would make his plea, and Vry must be convinced.

Croy drew Ghostcutter and heard the people around him gasp. Some screamed. He dropped to one knee and held the sword before him, point down to touch the flagstones. He bowed his head before it like a knight standing vigil in a chapel. Like the champion of the kingdom that he was. “Give me every man in the watch. Give me a company of them, at least. I’ll tear that house down stone by stone. I’ll carve it out of the magician’s heart, if that’s where he’s hiding it.”

“I can hardly do as you ask,” Vry said.

“Don’t take me lightly,” Croy insisted.

“Believe me, I don’t. If any man could do it, I believe it would be you. But don’t you understand? My hands are tied by laws and customs. I’m not a field marshal to make war inside the city walls. I am bound to protect the citizens, not slaughter them based on unproven information and the fervor of your belief.”

“A crime has been committed! Your city demands justice!”

“I’m afraid that’s true,” Vry said in icy tones.

Croy stared up at him without understanding.

“I’ve done all I can for you, Sir Knight. My duty requires this. Croy, you are under arrest. You have violated the terms of your banishment, and by remaining within the walls of the Free City of Ness you have invoked the punishment of death. Guards, take him-alive if you can, dead if you must.”

And with that, Anselm Vry turned and went back into the palace.

Croy had failed.

“Drop that steel,” someone said from just behind him.

“Get down on the flagstones with your arms spread out.”

“Hold where you are or be cut down.”

Three of them, then, of immediate concern. Doubtless there would be more behind them. Croy’s heart, which had been burning with unquenchable fire a moment before, turned cold and froze over with ice. His brain quieted for the first time in weeks. Every instinct, every reflex he had spent years training and honing, came alive in him.

And he realized-even as he jumped up and spun around to face his foes-the horrible mistake he’d made.

The appeal he’d made would have brought tears to the eye of a general. But Anselm Vry was no warrior. He was a clerk. An administrator. For him the rules, the numbers of life, were everything. It didn’t matter what was just or right. Only what was formally allowed.

Ghostcutter came around in a broad arc, Croy’s hand loose on the hilt. He didn’t need fine control for this stroke. The wooden haft of a halberd was cleaved in twain as the iron edge of the sword whistled through the air. A guardsmen’s cloak was shortened by several inches. Even as the stroke came around, Croy reached behind him and drew his shorter sword. It fit his left hand just fine.

A halberd point jumped at his face. He parried with the shortsword and metal clanged off metal, not the ring of a hammer on an anvil but the nerve-wracking noise of blade grinding off blade. A pikestaff with a leaf-shaped point came jabbing in low, aimed at his groin. Croy side-stepped the attack, then tipped the pike up and away with Ghostcutter’s foible.

The masters-at-arms who taught these guards had convinced them that polearms were superior to swords. That swords couldn’t parry halberds and pikes because swords didn’t have the reach.

That notion was based on the speed of an average swordsman. For an expert at blades like Croy, who spent every waking moment of his youth practicing ripostes and reprises, lunges and ballestras, the theory fell apart.

Which was not to say he was invulnerable. When a guardsman came up behind him and brought the axe blade of his halberd down toward Croy’s unprotected skull, Croy didn’t see the blow coming. He only heard it whistling through the air.

So he barely had time to lean back and let the blade slice down in front of him, while the haft of the weapon clouted him across the ear until his head buzzed and rang and his vision swam.

They would encircle him and bind him in a forest of wooden poles, he realized. He could only fight a few of them at a time. No matter how good he was, he couldn’t hold off every guard in the castle. In time they would whittle him down, get him with near misses and grazing cuts. If he bled enough he would die, no matter how many men fell with him.

There was a part of him that thought it good. That dying like this, in Cythera’s name, was worthy. Had he been a younger man, he might have given in to that death wish, that dream of honor and glory.

But he was older now. He knew what was truly important. If he died here, Cythera would remain a slave forever. As easily as that the bloodlust fled from his veins.

He waited until a polearm came down just before him, its blade cutting deep into one of the soft shale flagstones. Then he put one boot down hard on the polished wooden haft. Swinging Ghostcutter behind him to deflect an attack, he jumped forward and got his other foot on the shoulder of the guardsman before him. The man grunted in pain as Croy levered himself up and over the circle of attackers, jumping free of their ring of death. He came down hard on the pile of broken stone and rolled, tucking his swords in so they wouldn’t fly loose from his hands.

Rolling to his feet, he looked around, breath heaving in and out of his lungs. He saw guardsmen everywhere-and more, watchmen streaming in through the gates to aid in the attack. Dozens of men, all of them armed, all wearing coats of mail beneath their tunics and cloaks. Croy had no armor at all.

Someone jabbed at him with the curved blade of a billhook. Croy deflected the blow easily with his shortsword with barely a glance. Guards were starting to scramble up the pile of stones to get at him, though. He needed to move.