Prince Thief (23 page)

“I saw how you looked at the woman there,” said Panchessa, pointing towards Estrada. “I saw it from the moment you entered this room. Do you think you’re the first man to try and throw his life away over love?”

Mounteban’s face purpled. His obsession with Estrada was old news to me, but I’d never heard it phrased quite so bluntly. For a moment, I thought he really would try to charge the King and strangle him with his bare hands. Ludovoco, tensed in the background, already had his sword half free of its scabbard.

Perhaps Mounteban really might have lunged then; maybe Ludovoco would have cut him down just on the off-chance. I never got to find out. For there came a sound from my left that froze both of them in place. I couldn’t identify it first, except to say that it was chilling as the blackest winter’s night, knife-sharp, and from its first note it made me shudder down to my boots.

I realised, finally, what I was hearing. Kalyxis was laughing.

All eyes were on her now, and Panchessa’s in particular were snagged upon her face as though by invisible chains. Kalyxis’s laughter choked away to nothing, like poison bubbling into a drain. “Love?” she said. “What could you possibly understand of love?”

“Kalyxis,” said Panchessa, pronouncing the word as if it were the name of some particularly malignant disease, “you have no part in these proceedings; you were allowed here because I wish to talk with your grandson. If you dare to speak before your king, it had best be with good reason.”

Kalyxis offered him the peculiar smile that I’d come to associate with her, the one that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the slit lips of a snake. “Oh, you’re right,” she said, “I care nothing for Altapasaeda, nothing for your petty squabbling. Let me tell you, Panchessa, before these gathered witnesses, why I’m here.”

She paused – and it struck me, as it should have from the first note of that terrible laughter, that whatever she was about to say, it meant trouble for every one of us.

As usual, my ability to spot approaching danger was only exceeded by my knack for underestimating it.

“Panchessa,” Kalyxis said, “when I was a young girl, freshly married to a man of good and upstanding birth, you came to my land and you raped me.”

The room went silent – deathly silent, as though all the air had been sucked from it. Certainly, I found I could no longer breathe at all. Panchessa took a step towards Kalyxis, another – and from the shadows at the back of the chamber, I heard a soft hiss, as Ludovoco’s sword finally left its scabbard.

Mounteban, realising himself caught now between Panchessa and Kalyxis and his own anger suddenly irrelevant to the proceedings, hurriedly stepped aside. Kalyxis moved to fill the gap and glared at Panchessa defiantly. She was almost his equal in height, but seeing them so close together she seemed taller, as though her presence detracted from his.

“It was no rape,” said Panchessa darkly.

Kalyxis paid him not the slightest notice. “By the time I realised I was with child,” she continued, “it was too late. I begged the wise-woman of my husband’s tribe to help me, but it had gone too far. The herbs she gave me made me sick for a week, but in the end my belly was still swelling. I couldn’t hide the truth from my husband anymore; he spat on me, called me a whore and sent me back to my own tribe. So my child was born there... born a bastard. I named him Moaradrid, which means ‘birthed in hate’ in the old tongue of Shoan.” Kalyxis’s smile had vanished as she spoke; now it returned, more pitiless than ever: “I’m sure you’ve heard the name,” she said.

Even from a distance, I could see that Panchessa was shaking; faint tremors ran up his arms and legs. Was it anger? Was it palsy? His fingers twitched spasmodically, perhaps imagining themselves around Kalyxis’s throat. “You birthed a mad dog,” he said. “Or if he wasn’t born mad, you made him that way, spitting your venom in his ear.”

“My son was a good and a brave man, who fought to free his land from tyranny. But he was born from bad blood, under bad stars. It should be you dead now and not him.”

“If he’d been any true son of mine,” Panchessa said, “I
would
be dead, and he’d be sitting on my throne... not feeding fish with his marrow at the bottom of the sea.”

For the first time I could see that something had barbed beneath Kalyxis’s surface calm. There’d been hate in her face from the moment she’d set eyes on Panchessa, but it had been controlled, like a serpent kept in a basket. Now it was free, and in control of every muscle of her face. “You wish to negotiate, do you, King Panchessa? Well, here are
my
conditions. You’ll declare the land of Shoan a free territory, to be ruled by its own people, and never again pillaged under the name of taxation. And you’ll agree for this boy, Malekrin, who is your grandson and the blood of your blood, to rule in your stead when the time comes.”

It was Panchessa’s turn to laugh then – though the sound was every bit as far from humour as Kalyxis’s acid cackle had been. “You’re as mad as your damned son was. What makes you dream you can make demands of me?”

“The fact,” said Kalyxis, “that without an order from me, the fleet of Shoanish warriors that have navigated their way around the Castovalian mountains, who are presently sailing up the Mar Paraedra and will soon be occupying your great capital while your army wastes its time here, will never let you enter Pasaeda again.”

The fleet.
How could I have forgotten the fleet? How many boats had chased us from that barren Pasaedan shore; how many men? Under normal circumstances, I couldn’t believe they numbered enough to take so vast and well-defended a city as Pasaeda. If its defences were severely depleted by the King’s hurried march south, however...

“You lie,” said Panchessa. “I don’t know what you hope to achieve, but you lie.”

“Oh, don’t take my word. I’m sure a messenger will be along presently. And
you
saw it, didn’t you?” asked Kalyxis, rounding upon Estrada. “You had the good fortune to witness the glory of Shoan.”

Estrada’s pursed lips told me she recognised a question with no right answer. “There were ships,” she agreed. “They chased us from a beach off the coast of Pasaeda.”

For all Panchessa turned the full force of his rage on her, Estrada might as well have admitted to single-handedly building the Shoanish fleet. “So you knew about this all along, did you?” he roared.

“That’s ridiculous! We didn’t... I mean, we thought...”

Alvantes put his hand on Estrada’s arm. “We’d assumed that Kalyxis’s forces were waiting at anchor,” he said. “We believed she’d come here to recover her grandson.”

“Ah yes,” said Panchessa. “The boy.” I realised just too late that his gaze was about to turn in our direction, so that his first sight was of me trying discreetly to cower behind Malekrin. I supposed I should count myself fortunate that, amidst all the dire rhetoric and decades-long vendettas, my past indiscretions were suddenly looking very insignificant. “The boy,” Panchessa repeated. “The skinny little abortion who thinks he should be king.”

I couldn’t see Malekrin’s face of course, so I had no idea how well he was holding up before the contempt in his new-met grandfather’s eyes; but his voice was steady as he replied, “King Panchessa, I have no interest in your or any other throne.”

“No?” Panchessa chuckled, a horrible, rattling sound.

“No,” said Malekrin. “My grandmother doesn’t speak for me.”

“Malekrin...” Kalyxis’s tone was rich with threat. However, when Panchessa held up a hand to quiet her, I was amazed that she did in fact drop silent.

“Whatever my grandmother has said,” continued Malekrin, “whatever she’s done, it has nothing to do with Altapasaeda. Whatever mistakes their leaders may have made, they have nothing to do with the people of Altapasaeda. That’s all I came to say. I have no quarrel with you. Neither do the men and women behind those walls. Can’t they be left in peace?”

Panchessa nodded thoughtfully. “An interesting idea, boy.” For one ever so brief moment, I wondered if Malekrin might really have got through to him. Then Panchessa said, “Remind me, what is it they call you?”

“My name is Malekrin, sire.”

“No. Not that. The
other
name.”

Malekrin tensed. “I’ve heard they call me the Bastard Prince.”

“And tell me this, bastard,” said Panchessa, “what makes you dare to dictate to me?”

Finally, Malekrin faltered. “I came...” he began. “I just wanted...”

Fortunately, hiding behind Malekrin had placed my mouth close to his ear. “Let it go,” I hissed. “
Let it go!
”

The half-finished words in Malekrin’s mouth dissolved to nothing, but I was certain it was too late, that Malekrin had just damned himself to unspeakable tortures, and me along with him...

However, Panchessa merely returned his attention to the others, seeming in an instant to forget Malekrin and their entire conversation. “This meeting is over,” he said. “You should never have brought that...
woman
here. Because I’m a man of my word, I’ll give you time enough to leave my camp, but once you’re inside the walls of Altapasaeda, my armies will pick them apart brick by brick. Do you hear me? Fight hard, Castovalians. Because when we meet again, your deaths will not be quick.”

Estrada and Alvantes led the way. I wanted to scream at them to hurry. Didn’t they see how every eye was trained on us, how every Pasaedan hand hung close to a sword hilt or held an arrow ready to be nocked? That I kept my mouth firmly closed had nothing to do with faith in Alvantes or Estrada; it was simply the certainty that all of our lives hung on a knife’s edge just then, that any noise would shatter the fragile armistice. Even our footsteps sounded too weighty.

Yet we were moving. The remnants of the Suburbs were drawing closer. Once we reached them, we had a chance. If we made a run for it in those close streets, maybe one man in ten might make it as far as the gates – and a thief of some small competence could surely find a shadowed cranny to hide himself in.

From all around, however, there came a sense of unrest, and though it seemed impossible that the Pasaedans could know what had taken place between us and their king, I was sure they were pressing nearer. Perhaps it was only that, like a dog held back from a bone, they saw what they wanted and were frustrated not to get it.

Nevertheless, we were
still
moving – still approaching the verge of the camp. So long as nothing stopped us, so long as nothing went...

I should have known I’d never finish the thought. For ahead of me, Kalyxis had come to a halt, had turned around, and her two bodyguards were looking nervously after her, hands already hovering near swords. I thought again about running. Maybe whatever was about to happen would be distraction enough for me to make it to that wretched line of shanties. But the Pasaedans were poised ready to close the gap; we were already trapped. I turned instead.

There, approaching rapidly, was Panchessa, ringed by half a dozen of his guards – who looked as though they’d willingly have dragged him back inside his tent like some errant child. Panchessa was pacing towards us in their midst and they were hurrying to keep up, whilst striving to maintain a fitting distance from the common soldiery nearby.

When Panchessa was nearly upon us, one of the guards finally snapped, and hurled himself in his king’s path. He probably thought it would be the last thing he ever did, but Panchessa barely seemed to notice. I doubted he was aware of anything, just then – anything except for Kalyxis. His eyes bored into her remorselessly.

“I never raped you, woman,” said Panchessa. His voice was a rasp, yet it carried as well as any crow’s caw. “I barely even had to
ask
you. It wasn’t enough for you to be the wife of a lord amongst savages. You dreamed of being a queen.”

Kalyxis took a step towards him. I thought there was something almost longing in the way she did it. It was like the motion of a lover kept apart from their paramour for too long, or a warrior ready at last to confront their ancient foe – or perhaps it was both at once. “You are a pig of a man,” Kalyxis said, “and I will spit on your corpse if it’s the last thing I do.”

She said it softly, almost affectionately – but so very clearly. I had no doubt that those words had reached to every corner of the camp.

I heard the first sword rasp from its scabbard.

But I couldn’t say where it had come from, their side or ours, because in an instant the sound was everywhere, and the ring of metal scraping free from metal was all I could hear.

The air was rich with tension. No one on either side seemed quite certain what had just happened. Were we fighting? No blow had been struck. Words had been exchanged, and they’d been sharp to be sure, but the Pasaedans were soldiers; they fought for orders, not insults.

Yet it was clear they could hardly let us go. Already the ranks ahead were drawing together, tightening like the neck of a drawstring bag. Behind, Panchessa had disappeared from view, shielded from our tiny band by row upon row of protectors. Ahead, the Suburbs seemed infinitely more distant than they had a minute before. Alvantes was still leading us forward, but his steps were halting. What would happen when someone finally tried to stop him?

There came a noise from behind me: a silvery chime that turned straight away into a metallic rasp, and ended viscous and wet. Any sound would have been shocking just then, but there was something particularly awful about this one.

The sight was worse. I turned to see one of Kalyxis’s bodyguards flailing his enormous scimitar, sending Pasaedans tumbling aside; it would have been alarming enough even without the great gash in his side, which had all but opened him entirely. He had no right to be standing, let alone moving – and as I watched, he realised as much himself. Still swinging, he pitched forward. He chopped at chest height, at thighs and then at ankles, and managed one savage stroke towards the churned muck of the ground before the last strength left him.

Who had struck first? Had someone moved upon Kalyxis, or had her protector simply lost his fragile calm? I’d never know, and nobody else seemed certain either. Even as the barbarian twitched out the dregs of his life in the mud, a vestige of our tenuous peace held: a moment’s sizing up of opponents, of calculating odds, considering positions.

This time it was Alvantes who broke the stillness – and for all that I thought I’d grown used to his unorthodox strategies, his command was still the last thing I expected. “Charge!” he roared.

I doubted the Pasaedans had seen it coming either. When Alvantes flung himself forward, a few even struggled to get out of the way. Immediately Mounteban was there to fill the briefly opened gap – and as he pressed forward, sword sweeping, I saw him draw something from his belt. When he put it to his lips, I recognised it for a horn, hardly bigger than his hand. The note it produced was shrill, improbably loud. Mounteban gave two more quick blasts and then let it slip from his fingers, as he dodged to counter a blow aimed at his off side. Even as he swept the opposing blade away, Alvantes had lashed to cut down the man wielding it.

“Push back! Keep close!” someone called to my right, and glancing back I recognised Gueverro, one of Alvantes’s sub-captains. He had taken command of our small entourage, forming them into a tight-clustered oval.

Whatever outcome Alvantes had hoped for, he’d planned for the worst. Probably only half of those under Gueverro’s command were guardsmen, but I could tell that the remainder had been carefully chosen. Men who until recently had been on opposite sides of Altapasaedan law covered each others’ backs like seasoned soldiers, keeping pace despite the fact that most were moving sideways or even backwards.

They’d drawn bucklers from under their cloaks, and were already fending off a hail of blows. The small shields were worthless against arrows, but just then our enemies’ numbers were working more to our benefit than theirs. Disorganised, fighting without order or instruction, the Pasaedans were pressing too close; any archer fool enough to fire was as likely to skewer one of his own side.

The clamour was deafening. I felt as if I was at the centre of the fiercest of storms, fenced in by lightning and hammered by thunder. Panic was rising in my gullet, and I had no argument to talk it down. The Pasaedans were so close; everywhere I looked, hard faces glowered back. It was impossible to imagine that our thin line of Altapasaedans could be holding them back.

I went for my knives, realised that in the excitement I’d forgotten to recover them from outside Panchessa’s tent. Well, maybe it was for the best; I couldn’t have hoped to defend against a sword, so why attract attention? Then again, there were fifty of us, hundreds of them. Attention was going to find me soon, whether I was armed or not.

Even as I thought it, someone stumbled hard against me. I caught a fragmentary look at his face, streaked in red, saw enough of his uniform to recognise him for one of ours, before he landed in a tangle at my feet. Backing up, I jarred the man behind, heard him curse revoltingly. Ahead, our line had already clenched to fill the gap – but only in time for another Altapasaedan to be cut down, this one with blood coursing prodigiously from his stomach.

I danced aside as well as I could, desperate to keep up with Alvantes and our advancing front. Only now, we
weren’t
advancing; our momentum was lost, and not even Alvantes could regain it. It was all he could do to hold the ground he’d already made. In fact, it was probably all he could do to stay alive, for I’d never seen him fight so desperately. Alone, even that might not have been enough, but I was astonished to note how Mounteban was risking himself to shield Alvantes’s left side, compensating for his old enemy’s one-handedness.

Meanwhile, despite both their efforts to keep her back, Estrada had joined the front line. At that moment, she was fencing expertly with a soldier fully a head taller than her. Close by, Kalyxis had her peculiar long knife in hand. As I watched, she stepped to where her surviving bodyguard was clashing with three Pasaedans and dug it halfway to the hilt in the nearest man’s side. He hardly had time to look at her with wide-eyed horror before her bodyguard had sheared his head from his body, sending his corpse tottering into the other two.

Was I the only one not fighting? But the question had hardly crossed my mind before a colossal Pasaedan smashed with a roar past the men ahead and charged straight for me. Giants aside, I’d never seen such a monster; his neck alone was wide as my waist. My only thought was to get out of the way. I ducked, drove my weight left, felt my ankle catch on something I only recognised for a corpse as I stumbled over it. The bullish Pasaedan struck my leg with such force that I thought he’d take it with him. What little balance I had vanished and I went flying, as he plunged on, to crash into his own side with another bellow and the force of an avalanche.

I was halfway back to my feet when a sword whistled close over my head. Giving up standing for a bad idea, I tried instead to roll into a ball, but someone’s heel smashed hard into my ribs and I flopped with a sob onto my back. I had a moment’s dizzying, inverted view of the battle raging: swords whirling and men clashing and everywhere very much blood, with the sky an incredible, untainted blue above.

Then a Pasaedan fell towards me, using both hands and his last breath to try to hold his own guts in place, and that was enough to get me back on my feet. However, there was little enough room left to stand in; I couldn’t so much as edge in any direction without meeting someone’s back. Our small circle was shrinking fast.

“Hold! Hold the line!” cried Gueverro, at once swiping his sword towards a Pasaedan and dashing first one strike and then another aside with his buckler. Then he jerked hard to the left, as though someone had yanked him by the hair. He just barely kept his balance and tried to look round, seemed puzzled that he couldn’t.

I hadn’t seen where the arrow had come from; only a lunatic would have fired in the midst of that dense combat. Yet there it was, jutting from Gueverro’s neck, half of its length sunk inside him. I thought he was trying to say something, but of course there was no way he could. Understanding dawned in his eyes, as terrible a sight as I’d seen. Then Gueverro hurled himself forward, thrashing his sword about as though trying to beat out a fire. The Pasaedan lines opened for him, closed, and he was gone.

I’d already watched many strangers die that day, but Gueverro had been the first whose name I’d known. I’d spoken to him; in so much as I’d considered it, I’d liked him. And there came over me then something deeper than fear. It might have been resignation, or merely understanding. What it told me was that I was going to end up face down here, bleeding my life out in the mud. We weren’t moving, we were being cut down, and the Suburbs were far too far away.

Only... wasn’t there one slender hope? I’d already guessed that Mounteban’s horn was a summons for aid, prearranged for just such an emergency as this. I hadn’t expected it to help. Yet, though it was barely possible to make out anything over the tempest of shouts, metal chiming on metal, cries of pain and feet slopping in mud, I was aware that somewhere beyond those sounds was another, rising out of the distance. It
had
to be Mounteban’s relief.

I was hardly keeping count, but I thought that at least half our number were gone, dead or curled in the muck nursing awful wounds. Probably they’d each taken their share of Pasaedans with them, for these men were the best Altapasaeda had to offer, but what difference did that make? If they each killed ten, or twenty, or fifty, it would never be enough. Even if our tiny troop were invulnerable, they could hack and slash all day and never reach an end of the Pasaedan numbers.

Yet the horses – as I felt sure now they must be – were getting closer. I could make out the pound of hooves, the rattle of gear, the scrape of metal on leather. Nor was I the only one listening; if the fighting hadn’t stopped, its tempo had slowed, some of the savagery gone from it. Glimpsing Pasaedan faces, I could see that they were asking the same questions I was. What was coming? Was it a few reinforcements or the entire Altapasaedan strength? Was this a rescue attempt – or the beginning of the final battle for the city?

Then, as the approaching racket gained the precise tone and volume of a rockslide tumbling towards us, the fighting really did slow to a halt. The Pasaedans, without any sign of unanimity or instruction, backed off to create a perimeter around us.

Without the imminent threat of a sword through my innards, I dared to focus on the nearest exit from the Suburbs, a plank-lined way that seemed to be source for the greatest concentration of noise. Whatever happened in the next moments would decide our fate. If Mounteban had planned a paltry rescue force, they might buy us a few minutes before they were cut down, and we with them. If he’d summoned every man, woman and child in Altapasaeda capable of holding a sword, we’d probably still be dead before sunset – but at least we’d have a chance.

I stared at that skewed alleyway so hard that my eyes watered. How many men were making that cacophony? How many horses?

Then they plunged into view – and it wasn’t horses. It was giants.

But I could easily see how I’d been mistaken, for they were dressed like no giants I’d seen. They wore makeshift armour, as during the fight for the northwestern gate. This time, however, the emphasis was different; their torsos were scantily defended, while their arms and legs were buried in a patchwork of metal and leather. The explanation for that lay in the final detail of their outfits: colossal rectangular shields lashed to their arms and each almost as high as its bearer, planks that must have exhausted entire trees bound together by bands of iron.

These giants were familiar, too – the same ones who’d defended the gate. Was this a resumption of that day’s violence, or could it be some sort of penance? Because I couldn’t help but recognise their leader as well: even if I hadn’t learned those lumpish features by long acquaintance, I’d have known the glinting circlet hung once more around his neck.

I didn’t want to believe it. It was one thing to accept that Saltlick was on his feet, even running in armour – and the raw cuts lacing his flesh, the bandages still tight around his arms and thighs and waist, and the way that he still favoured his good leg, all testified to what the exertion must be costing him. But I knew Saltlick was brave beyond reason; that he’d wade through fire to save his friends if need be. That he would fight, though, against his most ingrained beliefs? Even to save Estrada, let alone myself? No, I wouldn’t accept that. In fact, I realised I’d sooner die myself than watch him draw blood in my defence.

Only – he
wasn’t
fighting. He was drawing nothing but confused stares. All he was doing – in fact all any of the giants were doing – was moving. And that might not have meant much were it not for the fact that they were giants. They were armoured, they were shielded, and their strength was prodigious. Their gentlest effort was enough to drive the Pasaedans back – for who was about to plant himself in their way, to try to halt their relentless progress? They might only be moving, but moving was enough.

Before them, the Pasaedan lines were in disarray. Yet at first it seemed that all Saltlick would achieve was to herd our enemies over us, so that I’d die in a stampede rather than at sword point. However, Alvantes had recognised the danger, drawn our survivors into a narrow wedge. The fleeing Pasaedans flurried around us, like gale-driven snow about a stubborn crag – and in their wake came the giants, visible now only as a solid, moving barrier of wood and iron.

For a terrifying moment, it seemed that we too would be swept before those colossal shields. Only at the last instant did the giants raise them, and we scrabbled hastily into the space they’d cleared. It was an outpost in the heart of enemy territory; through every chink, I could see the Pasaedans gathered beyond the shield wall. It was a fort – except that its ramparts were made as much from meat and muscle as from metal and timber.

Suddenly I wanted urgently to know what Saltlick was doing here. It had to have been Mounteban’s doing, had to relate to their mysterious meeting – but how? “Saltlick,” I bellowed. “Saltlick!”

But either he didn’t hear me or he chose not to answer.

“All right,” cried Mounteban. “Back, now... quick as you can.”

A
moving
fort. I couldn’t begin to guess how Mounteban had persuaded Saltlick to go along with this, to pitch himself and his fellow giants into such hopeless danger. Yet there was no denying it was a brilliant plan – and this time, Saltlick
did
respond. I heard him utter one harsh syllable of giantish and the giants were in motion again, edging back towards the border of the Suburbs with their shields ploughing before them.