Honor among thieves

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 Morg’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 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 his 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, and fingers bounced and spun in the air as Bloodquaffer took its due. But with every barbarian 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, Morget came to challenge Orne.

“No,” Croy said, staggering under the weight of the king.

No, it could not be. Morget could not still be alive. He’d been under Cloudblade when it fell. It was Morget’s own hand that set off the explosion that leveled the mountain. Not even Morget could have survived that.

Yet here he was.

Morget-the biggest man Croy had ever seen. The fiercest warrior he’d ever known. The son of Morg, and himself a chieftain of many barbarian clans. Morget’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 Morget brother once. They had fought together against a demon, and Croy had marveled at the strength in the barbarian’s massive arms and the sheer delight Morget took in hacking and slashing and killing. The man had terrified him even when they were on the same side.

But Morget had betrayed him-had betrayed everyone who went into the mountain with him. Even before the barbarians declared war on Skrae, he and Morget had become sworn enemies. If he’d thought Morget still lived, he would have been honor bound to do nothing until he had tracked him down and slain him in single combat. Slain him and taken from his treacherous hands the sword called Dawnbringer.

Morget waded into the fight, an axe in one hand, the selfsame 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 torn from his head. But Orne’s face was perfectly calm, resigned to his fate.

He brought Bloodquaffer up, ready to parry Morget’s axe stroke.

Morget was as big as a horse and his arm was like a tree trunk. The axe came around in an 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 Morget’s intention. Instead it cut right through Bloodquaffer’s blade.

The end of the serrated sword spun in the air for a moment, then dropped to clatter in the street. Orne was left holding a hilt and a foot of severed iron.

Impossible, Croy thought. Swords could be broken, of course. A strong enough man could shatter even dwarven steel, and Morget was the strongest man Croy had ever seen. Yet-Bloodquaffer was no ordinary sword. The Ancient Blades were eight hundred years old. They had been forged by the greatest smiths of their day using techniques long lost to modern metalcrafters. They had been imbued with potent magics and blessed by priests of both the Bloodgod and the Lady, back when the people of Skrae worshipped them both equally. The swords were sacred, and they were supposed to be eternal. In all those centuries, none of them had ever been broken. Yet Croy saw it with his own eyes. Bloodquaffer shattered as easily as a piece of poorly forged iron, and with it eight hundred years of tradition.

It was like the world had come to an end.

It was like everything he had ever known was proved wrong.

Even Morget looked surprised at what had happened. But he did not slow his attack. The axe smashed against the cobblestones, carried onward by its inexorable momentum, and then Morget’s sword arm swung around, his own Ancient Blade held straight outward in a perfect form.

Orne did not flinch as Dawnbringer’s chopping stroke took off his head.

His time, at last. As had been foreseen.

Croy longed to howl out in injustice, to call to Morget to try his hand and his axe against Ghostcutter next. He burned with the need to avenge Orne’s death and strike down the barbarian as his vows required. Every particle of his being and every shred of his soul needed that, needed to see the battle through.

Yet he had taken a vow, another vow he could never break. He must save the king, no matter what he personally desired. His battle with Morget would have to wait.

Croy did not waste another moment. He hurried through the open gate and pushed it quietly closed behind him. If the barbarians had seen him, they would come howling for his blood next. They would give chase.

They would kill him, and the king.

He could do nothing but keep running.

He tried to be quiet, willed himself not to be seen as he hurried down the road to the west, outside of Helstrow’s walls. He did not stop until he reached a copse of trees well outside the fortress-town’s precincts, a place where he thought he might hide long enough to catch his breath. He laid the king down in a sward of soft grass and looked back the way he’d come, his eyes unblinking.

Looming above the walls of Helstrow, he could see the keep and the palace. Both of them were burning.