The Wheel of Osheim

SIXTEEN

“Marshal!” Renprow at my shoulder. “You can’t go alone!”

“We need every man here.” I really didn’t want to go alone, but we really did need every man at the breakthrough.

“I’ll come too. Just let me gather a squad.” He caught hold of my arm. “A squad who can ride? And have horses?” My stallion and the mounts of the men who had ridden from the Morano Bridge had been stabled at a tavern a hundred yards along the Appan Street. It would take an age to gather those riders together, if they still lived, and many of the horses weren’t the sort to take kindly to a new rider.

“I’ll come.” He reached out and took two soldiers by the shoulder. “And these men can ride with us. There are messenger horses in the stables.”

“You know more about this city’s defences than anyone else, Captain.

You’re needed here. These two I’ll take.”

Coming to the edge of the press of soldiers and wall guards I found myself suddenly reluctant to leave. Stepping beyond the crowded bodies, out into the dark, seemed like a very bad idea indeed. The men huddled together as sheep will in the pen, so tight I’d had to force a path through them. Fear bound us close, herd animals before the predator, though it appeared that only I had truly appreciated the nature of the threat haunting this night. The dead had fallen silent. That meant the lichkin had left. I would have liked to think it had retreated back over the wall to some devilry outside amid the firestorm. But looking at the dark I knew.

The lichkin was in my city now. Out there in the streets. Loose among the innocent, and believe me when I say that before the ancient malice of the lichkin we are all innocent.

Leaving the shelter of the men took all my meagre reserves of courage. Once out in the open, with the pair of guards following, pride kept me moving. Pride has always been my most lethal character flaw. Worse even than being cursed through my grandmother’s blood with the tendency to infrequent berserker rages when pushed to the edge. Pride lets a man be skewered on the point of other people’s expectations. How often had I walked into the proverbial, and sometimes literal, fire with Snorri watching on, my justifiable instinct to run in the opposite direction crushed under the weight of his confidence in me?

I collected a lantern hanging from a pastry stall abandoned when the crowd panicked and led the way across toward the stables, the light jittering in my grasp. I hurried across Appan Street in the dark with the two soldiers at my back.

Appan Street lay eerily quiet, no sounds but the distant cries from the fighting at the wall. Tell-tale cracks of light at upper windows and the occasional shadow moving behind closed shutters were all that betrayed the fact the city hadn’t been abandoned.

“Easy now.” I held up a hand to stop the soldiers and drew my sword.

The stables’ door stood ajar. I could hear the stamps and whinnies of the horses inside. “Something’s got them spooked.” Any number of dead men could have broken away from the battle by the gates-one of them could be lurking in the darkness behind the door, bloody and silent. I raised my lantern. “You go in first.” A nod to the larger of the two soldiers, a sturdy fellow though still lacking a good few inches and pounds on me. “Sir.” He gave me a “why me” look but since it wasn’t actually possible to find two men in Vermillion whose military ranks stood further apart than mine and his, he stepped forward. I handed him my lantern and he prodded the door open with his sword. He edged in, reluctant as a man dipping a hand into a jar full of spiders.

“All clear, Marshal.”

“You’re sure?”

“Just horses. Must’ve been the smoke that spooked ’em.” I followed him in. He wouldn’t be safe to lead Murder out, otherwise I’d have stayed in the street.

Within two minutes we had Murder and two of the messenger horses out in the road. I swung into the saddle, feeling slightly better as I always do with four legs under me. It was probably a good thing for my honour that the city was besieged on all sides, because if I’d known there was a gate open then I might well have been overwhelmed by the temptation to gallop out of it and ride off until I found somewhere safe. “The palace!” I pointed my sword in the appropriate direction, gripped the reins in my lantern hand, and clattered off.

Even in dire straits there’s a certain joy in riding hard through the empty streets of a city that is never empty. In my whole life, no matter how late the hour, I had never been able to let a horse have its head along Evening Way or the West Star Parade. I’d never once seen Evening Way without at least a dozen drunks, a city watchman or two, perhaps a young lord in pursuit of a young woman who was no lady . . . and by day there was never room enough to pass without scraping elbows with half of Vermillion. The din of Murder’s hooves echoed off the walls as we shot through.

By Thread Needle Corner a woman’s cry caught my attention. I looked up to see her at a high window, the uppermost floor of Melican’s, a fine tailor’s in which I’ve disposed of at least a modest fortune.

“Prince Jalan!”

I pulled on my reins. I’d out-distanced the two sluggards Captain Renprow had picked to accompany me and being hailed at least gave me an excuse to let them catch up. A quick glance around for lurking dead men or mire-ghouls creeping along the rooftops, and I called out, “Yes?” I’d expected to have more to say but “yes” seemed to cover it.

“You-you’re going to the palace? Take me with you . . .” She seemed to know me. She did look vaguely familiar-at least young and pretty.

“I’m in haste . . . good woman.” My lips wanted to say “Mary” but I settled for “good woman” rather than guess. I hoped that was how marshals talked.

My escorts clattered up, reining their steeds in with a distinct lack of expertise.

“Wait for me!” The good woman pulled back from the window then, as if in afterthought, thrust her white face back out. “There’s a horror in the Shambles. Killing people and making their bodies dance.” With that she withdrew, presumably headed for the stairs.

“Ride!” I set my heels to Murder’s ribs and he leapt forward. I didn’t even feel bad about it. I’d been charged with saving a city, not each citizen individually. And besides, Mary-I dimly recalled something about squeezing into a fitting room with the girl and finding her most accommodating-would likely be far safer hidden above an anonymous tailor’s than in the palace.

We rode on through dark streets, occasionally breaking into squares where the moon, now edging above the rooftops, washed the flagstones with silver. In Reymond Square, less than a quarter of a mile from Grandmother’s iron gates, a sharp wind blew up suddenly about us, whipping dust and stinging grit into the air. Dry leaves spiralled around in the dust-devil’s grip, old rags too, grey tatters lifted in the gyre.

“Rag-a-maul!” The man behind me.

“Ride!”

Something sliced at my cheek. I dipped my head and galloped, hearing the scream of one of my soldiers, and the thud as he hit the ground. More screaming, a torn and hideous gabbling, growing fainter as we pulled away. Thundering toward the mouth of the street opposite I saw a man walk out into the road, and turn toward us, arms wide. What remained of his skin hung in tatters from wet and dripping arms. Closing the last yards, I saw the faintest outline of what rode him-a skeletal thing, some awful grinning devil with more than a touch of insect in its mix. The man opened his mouth to speak, grinning in an echo of the devil’s mirth, but I rode him down before his first word.

A cold shudder ran the length of me even as Murder bore me away. The spirit from the whirlwind had been riding its victim much like a lichkin must ride its host, though the lichkin achieve a far more intimate union, burrowing within the unborn flesh to release its potential in hideous new ways. I dug my heels in and we reached ridiculous speed, hooves nearly slipping out from under us as we took the next corner. I couldn’t be away from that thing quick enough.

A minute later and I rounded a corner to the sight of the palace walls. The moon rode on the shoulder of the Genoa keep now, a blood moon, reddened by the smoke of ten thousand burning homes. I cantered on, my remaining soldier far behind. The palace walls, ever my sanctuary, had never been such a welcome sight. Nor, sadly, had they ever looked so low. For once I shared my grandmother’s disappointment that history had furnished the Red March monarchy with a luxurious seat, steeped in arts and culture, rather than a grim fortress menacing the surrounding city.

Almost immediately I spotted Martus. His command pavilion, pitched just a few yards before the walls, sagged drunkenly, there being few places a tent peg could be driven between the flagstones. A force of a hundred or so soldiers stood arrayed in the street, wide eyes searching the night as if they knew just how haunted it was. A couple of grooms stood with Martus’s horse close by the pavilion, along with two messageriders in their saddles and a trio of drummers bent under the weight of their instruments. Two minor officers stood at the pavilion’s entrance.

“Martus!” A roar as I rode through the infantry ranks. “Martus!”

“The general-”

“What?” Martus cut off his adjutant as he ducked out of his tent, helm under one arm, old gore drying on his breastplate. He saw me as he straightened, belligerence warring with guilt-unusual for Martus: normally there was just belligerence.

I jumped down from Murder’s back and pushed through to confront him, immediately regretting losing the height advantage. “What the hell are you doing here? Didn’t you get the messages? You can see the fucking smoke!” I pointed just in case he’d missed it rising above the fire-glow in the distance. “There’s a full-fledged battle at the gates . . . and we’re losing!” I glanced around. “And where in God’s name are the rest of your men? Get them moving to the Appan Gate-right now!”

Martus squared up to me as he had so often before, normally a prelude to flattening me if I proved too slow on my feet to escape. “Hertet has ordered that we stay.” Angry but with the tone of a man caught doing something that he shouldn’t be doing. “My command is patrolling the streets around the palace, in eight squads of fifty.”

“Who gives a bucket of elephant dung what Uncle Hertet has to say?” An anger rose in me, one I hadn’t felt in years . . . perhaps since I was seven and Martus used a head-butt to take me out of the last battle where I stood my ground. “I’m the Marshal of Vermillion-I have command of its armed forces, and you, General, answer to me!”

Martus surprised me then. He let out the air swelling his chest in a sigh, first exploding from behind teeth clenched in his own rage, then trailing off into a long slow exhalation. “There’s word the Red Queen has fallen. Some report about the army in Slov being encircled . . . an arrow . . . Hertet has declared himself king.”

As Martus’s shoulders slumped I remembered Darin, lying pale against the Appan Gate. They could almost have been twins: of a height, Martus a little broader, his features less fine. I saw Darin dying and his name fought to escape the tight line of my lips. I saw, perhaps for the first time, Martus as both man and boy, not a rival, not a bullying brother, but a son like me, competing for the affection of a father who had nothing left to give. When Mother died it had been as if the stopper had been drawn from Father and all that she had seen in him had run out, any drive, passion, that vital interest in the world that makes us alive, leaving him empty.

“Gather your men, Martus, and get to the Appan Gate. If we fall there, we fall everywhere. If we can’t hold the city walls then the palace walls will not hold. If he truly is king then better an angry king than a dead one?”

Martus nodded. “I’ll send runners.”

“Have my man.” I gestured at the surviving soldier who’d come with me from the Appan Gate. “He can ride as fast as your soldiers run. Almost.”

Martus gave an absent nod, looking out along the dark length of Kings Way, barely a crack of light from any shutter. “But king or not, idiot or not, I don’t think our uncle is entirely wrong-there is something out there, coming this way . . . I can feel it. And close. Not your battle at the gates . . .”

“Maybe.” I felt it too. “But we can’t let the city fall.” I set off walking toward the main gates. “We need the palace guard too!”

“He’ll never let you have them!” Martus called at my back.

“Got to try!” I waved him off and strode on toward my meeting with Vermillion’s new king.