The Wheel of Osheim

SEVENTEEN

I approached the great portcullis. Along with the gatehouse it sat in it was perhaps the only military element of the palace. The main wall stood barely twenty feet high and no thicker than a sword-length. Further from the gatehouse it dipped to fifteen foot in places.

Martus had said Hertet would never release the guard.

“I know cowards! I’ll find a way!” Spoken to myself, my brother now beyond earshot.

I hadn’t spoken of Darin. Perhaps I wasn’t brave enough. The words hadn’t wanted to come and even if they had I wouldn’t have trusted myself to speak them. Maybe none of us would survive the night. If we did there would be time to mourn in daylight.

Closing on the main gate, I saw no guards on the walls, none in the sentry boxes to either side of the gates, no sign of activity at the arrow slits or murder-holes. I drew my sword and banged its pommel against the metal boss where two timbers in the portcullis intersected.

“Open the gate!”

Nothing for a long moment, then a shape broke from the deep shadow on the far side of the entry tunnel and ambled across to face me through the grid of oak and iron, unhooding a lantern as he came. A scrawny fellow in the grey-greens of the Marsail keep, toting a spear over his shoulder, on his head an iron skullcap that looked older than the Red Queen.

“Open the damn gate.” I banged again.

“Don’t rightly know how, yer worship.” He didn’t seem too bothered by the fact, and given that he should properly be stationed out of sight guarding prisoners in the Marsail’s cells he was likely telling the truth. “Your name, guardsman.” A demand, not a question.

“Ronolo Dahl, if it pleases you.” He clicked his heels together-albeit without any actual click.

“It doesn’t overly please me. Now, Guardsman Dahl. Open. The. Gate.” These fellows rarely had contact with royals and had little notion how to conduct themselves. How Ronolo came to be guarding the main gate to the Red Queen’s palace, apparently all by himself, I had no idea, but it didn’t bode well.

“Can’t, yer worship. King’s orders. Nobody in, nobody out.”

“Sorry?” I cupped my hand to my ear, and leaned in close to the heavy timbers.

Ronolo echoed me, leaning in and raising his voice, “Nobody in! Nobody out!”

I snaked an arm through the small square hole between verticals and horizontals, catching him around the back of the head and hauling him up against the portcullis. With my other hand I reversed my blade and set the point against his neck.

“I am the marshal of this city’s armed forces. I am a prince of Red March, grandson to the Red Queen, and I have lived in this palace for over twenty years. Believe me, Ronolo, when I say that I have walked the paths of Hell itself, and the things I will do to you if you fail to obey me will make Satan’s devils weep.” I let him go. “Now. Open the gate.”

Fear can be an excellent tutor and, although Ronolo had no real cause to fear me given that he was out of reach of my sword, he scuttled to acquaint himself with the complexities of the winding gear. The two minutes that passed before the gate began to rise were very long ones, in which I considered the highly probable eventuality that Ronolo had just kept running. Staring into the darkness of the courtyard beyond the gates I found myself haunted by visions of a baby, soft and pink in her crib, fast in sleep while with slow intent a mire-ghoul crept through the nearest window. Foolishness, of course. Darin’s little Nia would be safe in Micha’s arms with the household guard tight around her in Roma Hall. I thought of Lisa too. Pacing her rooms in Grandmother’s guest wing, waiting for Barras to return. I wondered if I saw her-would I have the courage to tell his fate? I know cowards. I knew I wouldn’t.

The portcullis lurched into motion, making me flinch. It ratcheted up a whole inch before stopping. Then another one. I imagined Ronolo labouring at the great winch all by himself. Another inch. I sheathed my sword. Carrying bare steel within the palace compound would be foolish at the best of times. That said, I felt instantly vulnerable the moment the hilt hit home against the leather of the scabbard.

I rolled under the gate as soon as the gap would admit me. My armour colluded with gravity to make rising to my feet quite a struggle. Reminded just how cumbersome a chainmail shirt can be, and lacking Murder’s four swift legs beneath me I decided to lose the extra weight. I pulled the mail over my head, taking a knife to the straps rather than wrestling with buckles in the gloom. I let the chain shirt fall to the ground, a heavy metallic slither.

Without waiting for Ronolo’s reappearance I hastened into the compound. Several of the lanterns that should light the archways leading from the grand courtyard had burned out and those passageways yawned like dark mouths. My feet made too loud a noise on the flagstones. I felt like an intruder in a mausoleum rather than a prince returning to his home. Many nights I’d staggered through this compound while the palace slept, almost too drunk to stand, but tonight the Red Queen’s house held a different quality.

“Fuck it.” I drew my sword and ducked into the inky passage that led to Victory Square. I drew breath again once I emerged. Across the breadth of the square the lanterns burned on their poles before the steps to my father’s house. Lights showed in several of the upper windows and I thought of Micha with her child. I quickened my step, hoping she had bolted her doors.

To my left I passed the Adam Barracks, home to the grounds guard, the structure dark-eyed and silent. To my right the guard stables, looking equally deserted though I could hear the nervous whinnies of the beasts within, the chargers stamping as if sensing the night’s tension. I could smell the smoke of the outer city even here. The moon rode higher, still bloody with the burning. My boots rang out too loud on the flagstones.

The east and west wings of Roma House both lay quiet and unlit, the servants’ quarters and kitchens on one side, the palace church, Saint Agnes, on the other. I focused on those lanterns, the pool of light about the doors of my home. I could gather some guards together there and get a fuller picture of events. I started to run.

The dead men came from the church. The great oak doors slammed open on their scrolling hinges of black iron, and bursting from the inky interior came the corpses of two priests, three young novices behind them. Swift as the quickened dead at the city walls they saw me immediately and started to sprint. I glanced at the sword in my hand, the image of Darin’s child in my mind, and for a moment I held my ground.

The thing that followed in the clerics’ wake had been a man once- a huge one. A necromancer must have been at work on it for hours, perhaps hidden away in the crypts beneath the church. How long had death-sworn been waiting within Grandmother’s walls? A week, a month, years? Hidden in plain sight, no doubt. Maybe even as one of Father’s servants or guards, maybe the serving maid who had brought hot water for my bath . . .

Slamming my sword into its scabbard once again, I turned on a heel and ran for my life. The man must have stood taller than Snorri in life and near as broad. Now he wore additional muscle, heaped atop his own, the raw meat of other men somehow tied into his own flesh and bone. The glistening red slabs over his arms looked like both the thigh muscles of a grown man.

All of them ran swift and silent, the only wailing coming from me as I rocketed by the Adam Barracks, keeping well clear of any doors for fear of what might burst out of them as I passed.

My main rule of running, after “don’t stop” and “go faster” is “go high or go to ground.” Hiding is always good, unless you’ve got somewhere you really need to be, but if you can’t hide-go up. I’ve occasionally met a runner whose foot speed exceeds my own, but I’ve yet to meet one whose eagerness to catch me exceeds my eagerness to escape. Once I get to the rooftops I inevitably find a leap that my pursuer is not prepared to make, or a ledge along which they are not prepared to run. As always, it helps to know your ground, and fortunately the palace had been my playground for years.

I skittered around the back of the barracks block, hopping at the extremity of the turn, and spotted a cartload of water barrels standing close to the outer wall. I made directly for it. The sound of pounding feet behind me told me my pursuers were just as fast as I’d feared.

The stays of the cart provided a ramp and at the top I vaulted onto the tall stack of barrels. The walkway around the outer wall is supported at regular intervals by square beams which stand up from the ground rather than being braced lower down the wall as they would be if it were taller. Halfway up each beam are two brackets for torch or lantern, one to a side. I leapt toward the nearest beam, aiming a kick at it, my foot hitting just above the bracket. Kicking off as I started to slide, I boosted myself up and leapt at full stretch for the edge of the walkway, making it by fingertips, and hung, gasping and dangling. Given that the walkway stands about sixteen foot off the ground my feet were at a tempting height for any dead man down below wanting to jump up and grab my ankles.

“Fortunately” the corpses running me down had followed my path. The first priest threw himself off the barrels, his face twisted with awful silent rage. I tried to swing out of his path. Fingernails scraped my side as he shot past me, his priests’ robes fluttering like the wings of some great crow. I hauled myself up as the second priest leapt. It’s no easy thing to gain a ledge that only your fingertips have hold on, but terror lent me strength. I drew my chin level and swung a foot up onto the parapet. Somehow fear propelled the rest of me over the lip. The second priest brushed the sole of my trailing boot as he passed by on his short trip to the flagstoned yard.

I took off at speed, preparing to congratulate myself, when a glance back-seldom advisable when running along a narrow walkway lit only by the light of the moon-revealed the white-robed form of a novice half on the walkway, boosting himself up with both arms.

“How . . .” Then I saw. Revealed by the curve of the wall I could just make out the huge form of the giant, balanced on the cart and already lifting a second novice toward the parapet. Cleverer dead men than any I’d yet encountered!

I ran counter-clockwise, up over the deserted gatehouse. An ancient scorpion sits toward the front gatehouse wall and for a moment I considered wrestling it round and skewering my pursuers. Sanity prevailed-it would take four men five minutes to do the job, and in any event a spear through the chest might not make a noticeable difference to the corpses chasing me. Instead I sprinted on and out the other side.

The roaring of a great wind or fire turned my head as I ran. Over the wall I could see the streets leading away from the palace and, despite my extremity, something caught my eye. A gyre of dust and rags scoured its way over the broad, empty space before the palace. Like the rag-a-maul I’d seen on my ride from the Appan Gate this one had hollowed and hag-ridden victims around its margins, but that one had been little bigger than a man and had just a couple of possessed in thrall to it. This whirlwind blew taller than the gatehouse, the moonlight glittering on broken glass braided through its storm-cone, and scores of citizens, torn and flayed, wandered about it, bright-eyed, their riders visible as faint and ghostly forms upon each back, devilish and horrific in their variety.

Perhaps twenty soldiers of the Seventh emerged from the cover of the wall, Martus at their head. Where the rest had gone in so short a time I couldn’t say. Martus had his sword drawn and looked to be about to lead the charge.

I glanced back, and seeing the swiftest of the novices still a hundred yards back, stopped. You can’t hurt rag-a-mauls. You keep the path clear and let them blow out. The small ones last an hour or so. I had reports of a nine foot one blowing for half a day . . .

I snatched a breath. “Run, you moron!”

Martus looked back, finding me on the walls. Even at a distance his face told the story I knew it would. He was General Martus Kendeth, head of the house now that Father lay in ashes. He stood before the walls of the Red Queen’s palace and-though fear might knot like a cold fist in his guts-he would not be running in any direction except toward the enemy.

“You can’t hurt it, you stupid bastard!” The novice had cleared the gatehouse and now sprinted toward me, careless of the drop to his side. Two more ran behind him, and then the giant himself.

“Shit.” Without letting myself think I pulled Edris Dean’s sword clear and with an oath flung it over the wall. “Use that! It destroys the dead!” And I was off and running. I regretted the gesture before I’d taken two paces- not that I had any intention of standing and fighting. Damned if I liked Martus but we had both loved my mother and there’s a bond there . . . something . . . I wasn’t going to lose two brothers in one night. Besides, one can run away all the faster without the encumbrance of a longsword.

About three hundred yards on from the gatehouse the wall curves close to a building where cured hams and other smoked meats are hung, ready for the kitchens. I know this because I once had occasion to battle my way through the main store after falling through the roof. It’s a hell of a leap from the wall, but if you get a good speed up and manage to convert it into the required direction then you’ll make it.

An important element of landing on roofs is knowing where the rafters run so they can take the impact of your arrival. I landed sprawling and immediately started to slip. A spot of frantic kicking while trying to heave some air into my evacuated lungs saw me gaining traction while showering the ground below with terracotta tiles. I had a hand on the roof ridge when the first novice slammed home behind me. I pulled myself up as he slid and fell without a scream, taking more tiles with him. The second novice went straight through the roof as I gained my feet on the roof ridge and started to advance along it, arms spread, fast as I dared and faster than advisable. The third novice hit the roof above a rafter and managed not to slip.

The building I was on adjoined another taller building whose contents, by virtue of a stronger roof, were a mystery to me. I jumped, caught the next roof ridge, and hauled myself over it, losing all my buttons along with considerably more skin than I had to spare. The leading novice almost caught hold of my dangling foot. I had the satisfaction of hearing his fruitless charge smack him face first into the wall. A quick glance revealed the giant halfway along the first roof ridge, showing an unreasonable degree of balance for something so large and crudely made. One priest trailed in his wake, his left arm at a broken angle. I knew the man, one of Father’s more regular assistants, but his name eluded me-doing a better job of escape than I was managing.

Whilst running away is a great strategy, a good coward always takes the unfair advantage. I backed along the higher ridge, staying low, and swivelled around, drawing my dagger, already missing Edris’s sword. Two pale hands grasped the roof edges to either side of the capping tiles. I brought my dagger down on all four fingers on the right, gripping the hilt with both hands and applying my weight. A moment later the novice’s snarling face thrust into view over the ridge, his eyes empty of any holy intent and full of that unmanning hunger that drives the dead. I left off the attempt to trim his fingers and swung my doubled fist into his face. He dropped away and I took off running again.

Any man fool enough to run to the end of the second building’s roof is met by a yawning chasm and the possibility of leaping it to the broad, sloping roof of the royal stables. Forewarned, I sped up and left the roof with a mighty scream, legs still kicking, arms pinwheeling. I hit the stables’ roof with the sound of cracking tiles and possibly cracking bones, smacking my face and, by the feel of it, breaking my nose yet again. It took a moment before I regained enough of my wits to realize that I was rolling. I splayed my limbs starfish style and slid to a halt a few inches from the guttering.

Fifty yards back I could see the giant vaulting onto the roof ridge that I’d thrown myself from. The broken-armed priest had the lead now, the novice with the sliced fingers behind, both presumably lifted up in advance by the augmented corpse. I scrambled up the side of the stables’ roof, blood falling from my nose in a steady stream of fat drops.

Escape needs to be a pure and solitary goal. Images of Micha and her infant kept complicating the current chase, and as I gained the roof ridge it occurred to me that in times of trouble the DeVeer sisters would seek each other out. Had Lisa joined Micha in the Roma Hall? Because if so then whatever butcher had put together the thing chasing me was undoubtedly beneath the same roof as both women. Slowly my “escape” route had been curving around on itself, back toward Roma Hall, and leading me to a series of increasingly death-defying jumps that the dead seemed to be defying better than I was.

I lay panting for a moment, exhausted. The priest crashed into the roof a few yards below my position, thrown bodily by the giant. Somehow he clung on with one hand and looked up at me, moonlit. He snarled, with a depressing amount of energy for an elderly cleric who I recalled as walking with the aid of a thick stick or thin choirboy. Up close his name came to me at last. Father Daniel.

The novice crashed home beside him, failed to keep a grip with his bloody hand, and fell away to the distant ground. My cue to run again.

Ten yards shy of the end of the stables’ roof I veered left, racing down the incline at an angle. Five yards from the lowest corner of the roof I put on the brakes, going into a prolonged skid. By the time I reached the corner I’d slowed from breakneck to breakleg and dropped off with a wail that was half-prayer and all hope.

The trick to hitting the ground is to roll. Well, mainly it’s not to break. But rolling helps. My legs crumpled beneath me, resisting my momentum as manfully as they could and pitching me forward, already rolling as I fell. I smacked into the flagstones far harder than anyone should and went arse over elbow, coming to a halt in a groaning heap several yards on.

Father Daniel landed a short distance back from me, shattering both ankles. He continued to crawl after me, sparking memories of several old nightmares, but now reduced to an even slower pace than he managed in life.

I staggered up and limped away. The thud behind me as the giant landed nearly stopped my heart. With a groan I increased the tempo of my limp, cursing my right knee, which seemed to have become filled with broken glass. By the time I reached the side of the Poor Palace, gasping out cries for help, I still hadn’t seen a single person other than Ronolo who wasn’t dead and trying to kill me.

I followed my childhood route to the roof of the Poor Palace, windowsill to window arch, two gargoyle heads-mouths gaping and ready to vomit foul water from the privies within-another sill another arch and the tricky matter of clambering over the lip of the roof from an underhang. That had been a lot easier when I weighed a quarter of what I do now and had yet to realize that I wouldn’t just bounce if I fell.

How the giant was following me I didn’t understand. It sounded rather as if it were tearing handholds out of the sandstone walls. I gained the dark slate slope of the roof with the dead thing reaching for my heels.

Running up a forty-five degree slope feels like climbing a cliff at the best of times. After the chase I’d been through the best I could manage was a steady crawl. Behind me it sounded as if the monster was breaking through the eaves of the roof rather than attempting to circumnavigate them. I found a loose slate and turned to hurl it at the dead man’s head. It sliced past his ear and arced out into the night.

I reached the base of the west spire as the giant pulled itself onto the roof, its skinned face glistening in the light of the rising moon. My brain had no advice to offer but “up” and I followed it. There’s a point where exhaustion settles in so deep that it leaves no room for new ideas. I climbed by instinct, hands finding the familiar holds that had led me up and down these spires for a decade and more. It’s an easy climb and one that offered little hope of defeating my pursuer, but I’d run out of places to go. I grabbed the first of the gargoyles and drew myself up. Technically they’re grotesques, given that they don’t spout water, but large ugly stone monsters will always be gargoyles to me, also I’m not one to care about the niceties of architecture when being hunted down by a skinless horror. Or when I’m not.

I climbed and the monster climbed beneath me.

In truth, though I had climbed down this particular tower I had never ascended it. I relied on the fact that it was twin to the east spire that stood on the other side of the grand portico, which I had scaled many times when visiting Great-uncle Garyus. The window directly above me was in fact, of all the palace’s many windows, the last one I would choose to clamber through. Only the certain knowledge that the Silent Sister was in Slov, combined with the presence of a huge and gory corpse following me up the wall gave me the impetus to keep going.

I got one hand on the windowsill, one foot on the back of the last gargoyle’s head, one moment when I thought I might make it, then the monster’s fingers closed on the heel of the boot on my dangling leg.

“Oh, come on!” It seemed so unfair.

I braced my leg against the gargoyle and heaved with all my might to break free. I hadn’t a chance but I’d try anything in desperation.

The gargoyle gave way with a shockingly loud crack. The dead giant hung on for a split second even as the man-sized statue hit him square in the face. In the next heartbeat both were falling. A second gargoyle interrupted the drop to the roof of the main entrance far below. The dead thing became momentarily impaled on stone horns before the weight of the first statue tore it free and both punched a hole through the flat roof of the portico and, slamming down to the entrance steps, created a stonedead flesh-stone sandwich.

I hung there, gasping, so nearly torn away with the pair as they fell. Time passed and at last the thunder of my heart ceased to fill the world. I stared at the raw stone where the gargoyle had broken away from the wall. It had been waiting to fall since before I was born. Sometimes the difference between saving a life and taking one is just a matter of timing- the right moment and the wrong.

Dry-mouthed, I struggled up through the Silent Sister’s window, trembling in every limb.

I saw nothing until I stepped to the side and let the moonlight flood in after me. A small and empty antechamber. The dark steps spiralling down to the foyer below. The door to the Silent Sister’s room stood closed, one tall-backed chair beside it. A second chair, twin to the first, had been moved to the middle of the antechamber, halfway between the door and the arch to the staircase. On it rested a goblet, moon-washed and silver, a strip of linen, and a boot.

“What the hell?” I staggered forward, my left leg hurting unaccountably and my right foot cold against the stone floor. I looked down. The giant hadn’t released his grip on me-the sole of my boot had torn off in his hand. Blood ran freely down my left leg from a gash above the knee- one of the gargoyle’s horns must have torn me as it came free.

I took the linen and bound my leg. The boot looked suspiciously like a new version of the one I was wearing. Ridding myself of the remnants of the old boot I slipped the new one on. A perfect fit. The goblet stood three-quarters full of water. Some must have evaporated in the two weeks since my great-aunt placed it there. A black fly floated in it.

“I’m not that thirsty!” A hoarse dry whisper. I took the goblet and flicked the fly corpse clear. I wasn’t even fooling myself, and I’m good at that. I drained the cup and wiped my mouth, wondering if the old witch had weakened the joint that held the gargoyle to the wall. I felt weak and dizzy, sweaty with exertion and fear.

How much had she seen? “Do you ever get it wrong, old woman?” A short laugh burst from me as I wondered if there were other such tableaux set against foreseen events that never happened. If I’d never climbed the tower I wouldn’t know she got it wrong . . .

At that point another wave of dizziness swamped me and my legs gave out. I collapsed into the chair, placed in just the right position to receive me.

“Show off.”