He’d planned to
break the man’s jaw, punish him for what he’d caused both inside and outside
the tent, but instead shrank back.
Ibn-al-Yed was
without features: eyeless, mouthless, lacking any characteristic belonging to a
human face.
Gil struck the
thing before him, hard. He knocked it to the ground with a fury that did
nothing to relieve his revulsion.
When the troops
of Ibn-al-Yed, having seen their field commander fall, witnessed the
humiliation of the scorpion symbol of their supernatural leader, they began to
run or fight free of the conflict and fly in the direction of Earthfast.
Gil was joined
at that sad pavilion by such of the victors as had survived.
It’s none
of your nobility impelled me on my way.
It’s guilt
and hate, and love and fear; these roused me forth each day.
Nor had I
any righteousness, no heaven-sent commission;
A man’s
the sum of circumstance, of training, times, position.
The
greatest burdens I have known, and conscience can’t ignore
—
I’ve
bolstered men unto their deaths, I’ve led them into war;
And am
sustained by just one thought: I heard and did respond
And taint
myself to drive the shadows out from Coramonde.
“VIRTUE ABANDONED,”
The
Antechamber Ballads
BULF had been the only fatality
among their leadership. His nephew Sordo, barely more than a boy, assumed the
Dukedom on hearing of his uncle’s death, as was the custom in their family,
although Sordo hadn’t been due to advance until his majority. He was the last
of that high pedigree, save only his recluse grandfather. All addressed Sordo
as Hightower, and he did his best to project the dignity his predecessors had.
With him came
Springbuck, Sordo’s uncle Bonesteel, Reacher and the rest. The Prince was
quiet, appalled by the sight of so many brave and earnest men put low, their
lives wasted.
When Sordo saw
the woman lying in shock on the ground, he gave a cry. Casting aside his
helmet, he threw himself down at her side and wept. “Oh, Mother! My father
they’ve slain and his brother, and now this third and worst calamity of all!
Surely the foe exacted the bitterest measure of hurt from us!”
Bonesteel, too,
wept to see his sister so.
Sordo’s
grieving subsided as he turned from his mother and spied the writhing thing
that had been Ibn-al-Yed, its featureless face and cringing form a study in
anonymous fear. It tried to drag itself, leg bleeding badly now, from the fury
of the victors. Sordo sprang to his feet and shook a gauntleted fist at the
anome.
“You are not
the source of all our hurt,” he choked, fighting to master the racking sobs.
“But much of it issued from you. Would you go now, crawl from your wages? No,
don’t stir until I make this day dearer yet for you!”
He snatched a
short, heavy mace from his belt and rushed to the creature’s side, looming over
it like an avenging demon. Before anyone could speak, the boy swung the mace
over his head and smashed Ibn-al-Yed’s unwounded leg at the knee, pulverizing
the bone.
An inhuman
scream of agony was torn from the innermost depths of the blank head. Such was
the pain it felt that the thing pitched forward unconscious. Sordo broke into
hysterical laughter and bent over the sprawled body, so wild a look on his
countenance that no one could move or speak for fascination of it.
“No swoon will
save you from me,” he whispered. “I’ll kill you by inches.”
But Springbuck,
nearby, took his armored shoulders in his hands and brought the boy’s eyes up
to his own. There were only a few years between them, but the Prince looked
much the elder, wearier and hardened to mastery of self.
“This one is
not for you,” he said. “Now go see to your mother. Don’t fall to his level by
doing his own sort of deed to him. We mustn’t become the things we despise; in
that lies their surest victory.” Sordo stared for a moment, biting his lip,
then turned again to his mother.
None of the
besieging force could be seen; they’d all been routed when their leaders were
thrown down. None, that is, except the dead and wounded who still lay on the
bloodied field. Already the injured from the Hightower and the allied
expedition were being carried back to the fortress and the dead gathered for
their final journey. The victors were preparing to slay their fallen enemies,
but Springbuck ordered them to be spared.
“These, too,
are my subjects, though they follow false colors,” he said. “So let those who
are able leave and tell people the true
Ku-Mor-Mai
is come again to Coramonde.
Let those who’ve been killed be buried with respect and not left to rot. If a
man cannot go, put him in the fortress and let him be cared for as we care for
our own. When this war is over and my reign is come, there will be enough
wounds to bind in Coramonde. I’ll open no new one with the killing of more of
my subjects than must be; who can make the dead alive once more and placate
those who loved them?”
All were taken
back by this. It wasn’t their experience in war to let live a downed
antagonist, who might come after revenge. But Gil nodded in agreement and they
knew this was another unusual notion learned by the Prince from the American.
When they’d thought it through for a time, most decided it was a good thing.
Then the numb
tranquility of after-battle was snuffed out as a low, chilling laugh filled
their ears. The golden mask of Ibn-al-Yed was its origin, though it had been
ripped from its owner’s head. It rang hollowly and its dark eye sockets
appeared to them to hold tiny points of light that brought vivid dread.
“King of
fools!” it reverberated. “Princeling of tosspots and strumpets! Do you posture
already? No, no, it is too early; you’ve interfered with the least of my
affairs.”
Springbuck’s
hackles rose. He recognized the voice of Yardiff Bey and knew that the sorcerer
spoke from afar. The mask of Ibn-al-Yed was obeying its true owner.
“You have my
let to kill the mindless thing that wore this false face I forged,” it
continued, staring upward to a wind-scoured sky. “Ibn-al-Yed became too ambitious.
In this way I converted him to a container for my will, another slave for
Yardiff Bey.
“Do you think
well of yourselves, little warriors? Ah, stand your ground then; you’ve only
met the vanguard of the first of the armies I’ll send against you. Its main
body is not far behind. I think it will be more than adequate to deal with this
children’s outing you call an army. I have the might of all Coramonde to throw
at you. It would seem you’ve abused my calling knock, but that won’t discourage
my visit. Yes, lock yourselves up in that pitiful stone sty and say farewell to
your gods. Your time to fight and fall is now well-nigh.”
The mask spoke
no more, for Kisst-Haa lunged at it with a hiss and stamped on it with his
horn-skinned foot, flattening it under his weight and puncturing it with his
murderous claws. The mask could make no other sound after that, even at the
behest of its creator. But news of the approach of another army galvanized the
allies into action. They quickly organized evacuation of the wounded and
removal of the dead. Springbuck yielded on the disposal of enemy slain insofar
as to permit their cremation atop a hasty pyre. As the balefire rose, foot
soldiers and others from the Hightower came to aid in gathering up weapons,
provender and other useful items from the emptied camp. Stray mounts and
deserted picket lines were rounded up.
When Gil and
Springbuck saw that all particulars of the mop-up had been established, they
rode to the castle, where Sordo had taken his slain uncle and his mother. The
Hightower was in an uproar like an ants’ nest when its home log is ripped open.
But these ants were preparing to fight, not having heard the threat of the
mask, and didn’t know the new odds they faced. The respite before a renewed
siege was to be exploited to the fullest. Foraging parties were sent out to
seize any supply or baggage trains left straggling behind, and to exhort the
locals either to bring family and flock within the fortress or seek shelter in
the deep forest.
Sordo took
determined control of his family’s liegemen and put them under the direct
supervision of his uncle, Legion-Marshal Bonesteel. Then he drew the Prince
aside.
“I must go now
to my grandsire and tell him that his second and last son is dead,” he said.
“And while our sorrow is our own, and our loss prideful, I know that he would
wish to salute you, however infirm he is.”
“Of course I’ll
come, Hightower. It’s your grandfather and the other men of this place who
deserve my own tribute.”
At this Sordo clapped
hand to hilt and bowed. Then he led Springbuck up a broad staircase.
Gil, having
seen this and heard it, inquired of Bonesteel what the two had been talking
about.
“I thought all
Hightowers were dead except Sordo and his mother, no? If there’s a grandfather,
how’s come we haven’t seen him before?”
The
Legion-Marshal turned from supervising the positioning of a liberated mangonel
and looked to one of the castle’s lesser towers, pointing at its pinnacle.
“Up there is
Hightower the First, builder of this place,” the old soldier said. “He was one
of the principles of the second coagmentation, a wanderer and a warrior whom
any man might admire. He came to Coramonde from sojourns in the far south and
made his home here, after swearing allegiance to Springbuck’s grandfather. Many
battles he fought, and many enemies he slew for Coramonde. He was quick to take
anger, but quick, too, to forgive and benevolent to those under him.
“Age never bent
his spine. He’s the last pureblood of a gifted line of men, blessed with
vitality and vigor well beyond the years of us common men. He had entered his
sixth decade in power and grace over twenty years ago when gods or demons
afflicted him with blindness—no one knows the full story save him, I would
guess. He renounced his rule in favor of his eldest son Rolph, who was only
eighteen then. Hightower had married late in life. Then he shut himself away in
yon tower. His family and some few servants have seen him since then, but no
other, I think.”
The walls of
the stairwell spiraled up the tower and were damp and cold, poorly illuminated
by occasional slitted windows. Springbuck scarcely noticed this; it was the
usual way in the great castles he’d seen, Earthfast and Freegate being
exceptions.
They came to a
halt ten steps from where the stairway apparently met the ceiling. Sordo
stepped to a fixture on the wall, a fish-head of copper long gone green, mouth
agape, looking as if it were swimming toward them out of the very stone. He
spoke into the hollow mouth.
“Grandfather?
It’s Sordo. I must speak with you.”
The Prince had
heard tales of the eldest Hightower’s hermitage and was fully prepared to be
told to leave, but to his surprise the ceiling over the stairwell slowly swung
away with a grinding of ancient gears. The newest Lord of the Hightower waited
a moment, then led the way up the steps into a large, airy chamber.
At the four
points of the compass were wide windows fitted with hinged shutters—an
indulgence in a frontier fortress, the Prince thought. Though the day wasn’t cold,
a fire burned in the hearth. The floor was covered with deep furs and all the
walls were hung with tapestries. The windlass which had raised the lidlike
stone door covered the stairwell was now unattended, and Springbuck couldn’t
see its operator at first.
“Grandson, come
here,” said a deep voice. With a start the Prince looked to a high-backed chair
drawn up close to the fire.
They crossed to
it and stood before Hightower, a man of imposing appearance and a rare warrior.
He sat upright, a giant whose frame was utterly unbowed with the eighty and
more years weighing on it. Time had been forbidden to steal his strength or
slacken his belly, although the hair that grew down past his shoulders and the
flowing beard and flaring mustache were purest white.
He wore
glittering mail and heavy greaves, carefully maintained through years of
disuse; through his belt armored gauntlets were tucked. Across his knees was a
plain broadsword in scabbard, of such size that the Prince doubted if many men
could handle it at all, much less carry it to war. Springbuck studied this
tragic man, the massive architecture of chest and shoulders, the still-strong
hands idle in his lap, eyes staring blindly into the fire. Here was a mountain
among men bested by a foe he couldn’t put down with hand strokes.
Seeing him,
Springbuck understood why the old man had, with indomitable pride—some would
call it vanity, and be wrong—yielded up his rule and gone into seclusion when
he no longer found himself whole.
“I heard the
sirens of war in the keep,” the giant said, face still turned to the fire.
“Then yesterday the distant sounds of preparation for siege, and today the
clamor of an army deploying and later the drumming of hooves, the battle horns
and the din of the melee, mixed with the screams of the dying. So, I put on
this armor I haven’t worn since before you were born and waited in the dark to
learn what lesson the gods had for us this time. But you have come to me, and
another with you, and so I know that the banner of the Hightower still flies
over us. Well, that is good; I did not intend to be turned out of my home like
a beggar, nor let our enemies kill me easily, but it was hard to wait in the
darkness and not know what was to be.”
He thought for
a moment. “Yes, that was by far the hardest part,” he added.
“Grandfather,”
Sordo began, head high and face set against what he must say, “we’ve beaten the
troops sent by the Usurper Strongblade with the help of the King of Freegate
and Prince Springbuck, but your other son fell today and will not rise. Yet he
lived to see it a victory, and the other with me is none other than the
Prince.”