Falconfar 03-Falconfar (44 page)

Dreel inclined his head politely. "Just this: what place will I have in your Galath?"

The lordrake frowned. "Place?"

"Reception, then. Rest assured I have no intention of dwelling in your kingdom, holding any rank in Galath, or challenging your authority, Lord of Maurpath. Yet I should like to know if I'll be denounced as a foe of King Halamaskar, a man to be hunted—or a resident of a land Galath is likely to invade as its new king casts about for some tasks for its more warlike nobility."

"I have no intentions of denouncing or attacking you, Lord Wizard. Nor eliminating you to conceal our agreement, in future. For one thing, Galath will care not, and for another: if half my fellow highborn react as I think they will when I proclaim myself king, I may soon have need of you again. I am not so foolish as to mar or cast aside a weapon I may soon sorely need."

"Good. Your wisdom outstrips your reputation, Lord Halamaskar."

The man in the chair stiffened. "I am glad to hear it," he said shortly. "We have agreement, then?"

"We have agreement. If you'll prick your finger."

The lordrake frowned. "Just what magic... ?"

The bodyguard stirred, but fell still and silent again at a glare from his master.

"A simple blood-binding," the wizard replied curtly, plucking a needle-like spike from his belt buckle and sinking it like a dart into his own forefinger. He held up the bleeding digit.

And waited.

Slowly, his eyes never leaving Dreel, Halamaskar drew his belt- knife and did as he was asked.

Dreel nodded, murmured something—and a streak of blue flame briefly flickered between the two fingers, causing the lordrake to curse and snatch his hand down to clutch it, and the bodyguard to glare at the mage and start to move again.

Both wizard and lordrake raised hands to stay him.

"We are now bound," Dreel said flatly. "If my blood spills, so does yours. If mine boils, yours suffers the same fate. If you fall enspelled, so do I. You might say we can now truly trust each other—which will probably prove a novel experience for you, as it would any lordrake of Galath."

Halamaskar stared at the wizard, frowning. "Your words scorn both my kind and this great realm—"

"They do nothing of the sort. I but speak plain truth about Galath. And in the continued spirit of doing so: when you venture outside, you'll discover certain of your men now lack swords— and hands. They presumed to raise their blades to me."

The wizard turned away, then looked back over his shoulder and added, "I'd kill them, were they mine, but I've noticed many nobles of this land seem to enjoy keeping fools as servants. Presumably to make themselves feel more competent. So I spared yours. This time."

Dreel inclined his head in farewell, and strode towards the door—but faded to nothingness long before he reached it.

"JUST BUCKLE IT on over your leathers," Taeauna directed calmly, adjusting the buckles of her codpiece. Rod looked down at his own, shrugged, and started to cinch it tight around his waist. Turn back one spell and melt away, huh? He could live with looking a little more like an idiot, for that.

"If you've finished sitting on your helms, that is," she added calmly. "It might be a fair while before we have leisure again to squat anywhere—or dare to leave behind anything1 a tracking- beast can smell."

"Tracking-beast? "

"Many of the nobles of Galath enjoy hunting men. And women. Some of them have bred or had wizards twist beasts to help them in their hunting. And we're walking straight into where the nobles are all gathering."

Resplendent in her codpiece, the wingless Aumrarr strode across the armory to take Rod firmly by the elbows and gaze into his eyes. She looked calm, but fiercely determined.

"Lord Rodrel, please heed me, and stop wandering about like a man with no wits. Our lives will depend on doing the right things, quickly and quietly. I'd rather not die because you feel the need to play the idiot."

Rod grinned wryly. "Hey, we all play to our talents."

"Indeed." Taeauna drew her sword, plucked an oddly shaped token of metal from a row of them hanging from hooks beside the door, and looked back over her shoulder.

"Ready?" she asked. "New sword and daggers and all?"

Rod nodded. She gave him a withering look.

"What? Oh." He drew his own sword. She nodded briskly and waved him up to stand beside her.

"Stand there," she ordered, "so you're not right in front of the open door. Keep your sword up in front of you, but don't move until I call you. I'm going out first."

"You're making this sound like we're the last survivors of a platoon, deep in enemy territory," Rod muttered.

Taeauna gave him a level look. "We are."

She kept on staring at him until Rod looked down. "Ready, Lord Archwizard?"

"Ready," he murmured, hastily stepping away to the spot she'd indicated and holding up his sword in front of his nose, as if he was an officer on parade.

Taeauna took a dagger from her belt, bent, and laid it silently on the floor to the right of the door. Then she straightened up, put her sword between her teeth, clamped the token-thing between two fingers, and used both hands to slowly and quietly lift the heavy metal latch of the door. All around the door, a framework of other latches lifted, connected to Taeauna's by metal bars.

When the door was unlatched, the Aumrarr hauled the door open, leaning a half-step to the side as she did so—and kicking the dagger out into the huge pillared hall beyond.

Swords whirled up from the floor in a sudden storm, as the dark, shaggy shapes waiting outside the door roared and charged—and Taeauna drove her shoulder against the door and closed it again, bare moments before something crashed heavily against it.

There were two more blows, lower down the door each time.

When she opened the door again, the floor outside was awash with blood. The swords hovered and circled like wasps, trailing a bloody mist. The air reeked of fresh butchery.

Taeauna swung the door wider and looked out, then nodded as if satisfied, and tossed the token out into the lake of blood. It landed with a clink—and the swords all fell to the floor in a collective clatter.

Her sword in hand, Taeauna ducked low and darted through the door. A moment later, she looked back in and said to Rod, "Take one of those tokens—just hold it in your fist—and come."

Rod obeyed. The gore was slippery underfoot, and sticky at the same time, and the smell was stomach-turning, but Taeauna was ignoring it, so he did, too. The armory door clanged shut behind them of its own accord, making him jump.

Taeauna took the token out of his hand before he could drop it, thrust it down one of her boots, and waved at him to follow her.

Swords drawn, they walked down the hall. Rod looked back. Yes, they were leaving bloody bootprints.

"I know," Taeauna murmured, before he could say anything. "We'll stop at one of the pumps before we go to the gate."

She led him through another side-door and down a dark stair, going first and indicating that he should keep a firm grip on the cold stone stair-rail with his free hand, and look back behind them often. "Keep close," she whispered in his ear, "but don't run into me, if I stop suddenly."

As they turned on a landing, a level down from the armory, Rod looked back over his shoulder into a vast hall, and saw dark shapes gliding through the air, like long-tailed, headless bats larger than horses.

As they left the stair, he hissed, "Tay, there were flying things back there—"

"I know. They'll head for the slaughter in front of the armory, though. We'll soon be long gone."

Then she ducked through another archway and into a room that smelled of mildew, a room where water ran down a wall and across the floor.

"Stand in that," the Aumrarr murmured in Rod's ear. "We won't have to work a pump after all. Looks like one of them's leaking."

Rod nodded, and stood in the water. "Less noise than pumping, right?"

She nodded, putting a finger to her lips, set her sword point-down on the stone and bent to rinse the soles of her boots. Repressing a shudder, Rod did the same, straightening when Taeauna did and silently obeying her wave to fall in behind her, as they went on.

Back out of the pump-room, into deeper gloom, and down a hall to a place where Taeauna stopped him, and carefully led him down three steps. She then sheathed her sword, took hold of his belt with one hand, and led him slowly forward into the darkness. Rod felt her hand slap something more than he heard it. As they passed, he reached out and felt what she'd struck: the cold, smooth curve of a pillar.

Taeauna found another pillar, and then another. When she reached the fourth one, she drew Rod right against her, hip to hip, and said into his ear, "Put your free arm around me, and hold your sword out behind you. We're about to end up in a closet in Galathgard, and I'll need you to be very quiet, no matter what we find there."

When he'd done as she'd directed, Taeauna did something to the pillar right in front of them and stepped forward. Rod found himself stumbling along with her as his arm around her waist carried him forward.

It seemed as if they were falling, then, through a silent but star- shot emptiness. And then, quite suddenly, they were stumbling against and falling onto something heaped underfoot. Rod didn't need the lines of light coming through a pair of narrow closed— but ill-fitting—doors to tell him what they'd both just landed on. He could feel, and he could smell.

The closet was full of dead men. Very recently dead men.

Outside the doors, they heard shouts of alarm.

"There they are!" someone cried.

Oh, shit.

Rod swallowed—and promptly dropped his sword with a clang.

KLARL ANNUSK DUNSHAR spun around. He had heard something, after all.

Men in full plate armor were streaming through a far archway into the High Feasting Hall—or what would be the feasting hall, once the chairs got done and the tables set up. Right now, all he had were a score of crude log benches, and he couldn't think of a single Lord of Galath who'd want to sit on them.

Men in plate, with visors down, waving swords and handaxes, and not a badge or blazon in sight. Motley armor, too, of all ages and conditions. Hireswords.

"Rondarl! Bresker!" he bellowed, whipping out his own sword. "Stand guard in yon arch, and hold those men back! Cathgur, sound the war horn! I'll be wanting every man who's not up a ladder or hefting stones here, right swiftly, with whatever weapon they can find! Galathgard is under attack!"

The war horn promptly howled, a blatting call that echoed around the high vaulted ceilings in a horrible cacophony.

The advancing intruders slowed at the sight of men arrayed against them, some of them turning to wave spearmen up through their ranks.

And every Falcon-glorking one of them visor-down, menacingly anonymous; fourscore of them, at least, with more still streaming in...

Dunshar cursed bitterly. There were enough of them to butcher all of the men at his command, and quickly—perhaps too fast for him to flee, if Rondarl and Bresker went down right at the first clash. Glork it all! He'd expected no end of trouble from nobles, right enough, but—

Hold! Someone was shoving his way through those ranks, face uncovered and a rich cloak streaming from his armored shoulders. A noble, right enough, though it was no one whose face Dunshar knew.

Faces... all he could see, whenever he took this thoughts away from what was right at hand, was the Lady Talyss smiling languidly at him, hair flowing freely over her bared... bared...

He swallowed hard and shook his head as he hastened forward, hefting his sword. A few strides took him to where he could peer over Rondarl's shoulder and get a better look at the man, who saw him, pointed, and shouted, "And who by the spewing Falcon are you?"

"Klarl Annusk Dunshar, of Galath. Seneschal of Galathgard, and commander here until King Brorsavar himself sets foot in this castle," he snapped back, matching the man stare for stare. "So in the King's name I ask in turn: who are you, to come striding in here arrayed for battle?"