Honor among thieves

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Dead bodies littered the forecourt of Easthull manor. Not a single one of them had been a soldier, but the Baron’s servants and those few peasants he’d kept to work the last of his fields. Croy saw no weapons in their cold hands, no sign they’d put up a struggle at all.

The roof of the manor had fallen in, and the entire south wing was rubble.

He’d come too late.

He’d ridden his horse until it died, and then he had walked. Through mud and fens up to his chest, he’d walked. He’d shed his armor as it became too heavy. Thrown away everything but Ghostcutter. He had not slept, nor eaten, since the berserkers took away his army.

He could barely stand. Yet he walked into the forecourt, sword in hand, just in case Morgain had left behind anyone to watch the place. Anyone to pick off stragglers foolish enough to return.

Inside the house, birds lifted from a sodden floor and dashed past his face. He waved them away. Found the hearth cold. All the food gone.

He would not have eaten, even if he could. Not until he knew for sure.

In the apartments of the Baron he found blood everywhere. The wooden door to the receiving chamber was scarred by axe blows, and the lock had been hacked out of its mounting. He pushed open the door, which squeaked noisily on its hinges. Inside something moved furtively.

Croy crouched low, Ghostcutter held before him. He stepped inside, into shadows. He saw the Baron’s desk. The maps were gone, as were all the reports Easthull had gathered. Whatever the Baron had known about the defense of Skrae was old news now to the barbarians.

A beam of yellow light came through a stained-glass window at the back of the room. It fell on a scrap of cloth stained dark with blood. Croy stepped closer and picked it up. Linen. It was wrapped around a severed finger. Croy guessed the signet ring had been hacked off the Baron’s hand.

Behind him something stirred. He swung around instantly, ready for a fight.

One of the Baron’s hounds came limping toward him. The animal was unkempt and mad with fear. It bared yellow teeth and snarled.

There was fresh blood on its muzzle.

Croy pushed past the dog. It whimpered and snapped at him, but he ignored it and headed back out toward the kennels at the rear of the house. He found the Baron there. Easthull had been butchered and fed to his own pack. The dogs had not finished with the head yet, or Croy would not have been able to identify the nobleman.

He could only imagine what the barbarians had done to the king. Or Bethane, the king’s daughter. Morgain had no love for princesses. Thinking about what Bethane might have gone through before she died, Croy began to weep.

Sharp iron touched the back of his neck.

Croy wheeled about, and Ghostcutter sliced through the wooden haft of a bill hook. The blade clattered to the ground. Croy started into a second stroke, one that would cut his attacker in half.

He barely managed to stop when he saw it was no barbarian who had accosted him, but an old woman in a russet tunic. A peasant. How had she even possessed the strength to lift the polearm?

He supposed that if the need was great enough, the strength could be found.

“Are you the one they call Croy?” the woman asked. She did not seem frightened, even though he had disarmed and almost killed her. “Answer me, lad, or it’ll go hard for ye.”

Croy almost laughed. But then he bowed his head. Sheathed his sword. “I am he.”

The old woman nodded and turned away from him. She started walking, and he followed, because this felt like a dream-or an enchantment-and there were rules about such things. When a guide presented itself, you had to follow. All the stories agreed.

Stories. Malden used to laugh at the old stories of gallant knights and noble crusades. The stories that had nourished Croy in his infancy, as surely as his nurse’s milk. He had always believed the stories held a deeper truth, a layer of reality beyond the gray banalities of the mundane world. He had always thought a man with a pure heart and a good cause really could prevail, no matter the odds.

Yet here he was. Doubly masterless, a knight errant without so much as an old story to lead him onward any longer.

Perhaps… perhaps the Lady would let him see Cythera again now. Perhaps he would see his beloved again before he died at the end of a barbarian’s blade.

The old woman led him into a copse of trees not quite deep enough to be called a forest. A wood lot, really, a place for the Baron’s men to collect firewood. Deep in the shadows of the naked branches lay a cottage, a sawyer’s hut. Croy had never seen such a crude dwelling. Its roof was moldering thatch, its walls made of wooden withes smeared with horse hair and dung to keep the wind out. It had no windows and its door was a simple plank that the old woman lifted free of its frame. She couldn’t even afford hinges.

Inside was a room that smelled of old fires and rotten vegetables. There was a fireplace Croy could not call a hearth. Most of the room was so thick with shadows he could see nothing. The old woman stepped inside and replaced the unhinged door, leaving him in darkness broken only by the dull light of the coals in the grate, and those illuminated nothing.

“You saw his face?” the old woman asked in the blackness. She wasn’t speaking to him. “It’s the one you wanted?”

Had he been led here by assassins? Brigands who would take his sword and trade it for a jug of wine? Croy wondered if he had the strength left to fight them.

“I saw it. Make a light, goodwife,” a new voice said. A voice Croy recognized.

Still-he could credit it not, until the old woman lit a stinking rushlight and he saw. There was no furniture in the tiny house, but a pile of straw had been shoved into one corner to make a pallet. Ulfram V lay upon it, sleeping.

And standing next to him was his daughter, Bethane, who would be queen hereafter.

Croy dropped to his knees. He had only the strength left to utter, “How?”

“When they came we had very little warning,” Bethane explained. “A man came running down the road, screaming. It was enough. I dragged Father back here. Baron Easthull sacrificed himself by staying behind. He knew Morgain would not rest until she’d found a noble who’d dared to stand up to her. He died swearing he was alone in the house, and I suppose she believed him.”

There was no passion in Bethane’s voice. Her words were as flat and uninflected as those of a parish priest reading a very dry passage of the Lady’s word.

“I saw much of what happened, though I dared not go so close as to help. I saw them die,” Bethane went on. She did not weep. “I saw my country dying. Before it was over I came back here, and knelt by my father’s side, and prayed the Lady would take him into her bosom before ever he awoke. I do not want him to know what has become of his kingdom.”

Croy lowered his head in grief.

“It was not good for him, to be dragged through mud so far, nor is the air in here fit for royal lungs. Come, Sir Croy, and listen. Tell me what this sound means, though I know it too well already.”

Croy moved to kneel over his king. Ulfram lived still, but the breath that came in and out of his lungs rattled and choked. A sound that could have been mistaken for snoring, if Croy had never heard it before.

“It is his death rattle,” he agreed.

“Sit vigil with me tonight,” Bethane said, and he obeyed. They knelt together, deep in prayer and meditation. Time went away.

In the morning the old woman rose from the pile of blankets she had instead of a bed, and she stirred the fire. “I need to get some water on, if we’re having pottage,” she said. Neither Bethane nor Croy responded. The old woman went out, letting light into the room when she moved the door.

The sunlight fell across Ulfram V’s face, and showed it pale, and the eyes empty, open, staring upward.

Croy broke his reverie long enough to place one hand against the king’s neck. There was no pulse, and the skin was cold as ice.

“The king is dead,” he whispered. “Long live the queen.”

It was only then that Bethane allowed herself to cry.