Best not to think about that. He kicked the dying man in the ribs and then left him to get on with it. Over on the far side of the clearing, Rider Hahzyan and the Picker had another pair of sell-swords and were stringing them up to one of the trees. As he drew closer, he could clearly see that the sell-swords were dead. One of them had had his belly slit open and his guts were trailing all over the ground, dirt and pine needles sticking to them. The other had had his head hacked half off. Hyrkallan was about to ask Hahzyan what he thought he was doing when another figure emerged from the nearby trees. Kithyr. The blood-mage. Hyrkallan stopped. He gave the mage a long hard look and a chill ran through him.
Evil. We’re driven to this
. No wonder they were turning away from him. Now he turned away too. Best to let the mage get on with his business. Best not to watch.
Hahzyan clearly thought the same. Only the Picker stayed. The Picker was another strange one. Not a rider, like the rest of them, but he’d shown his mettle on the Night of the Knives. Hyrkallan had seen him kill two Adamantine Men. No mean feat for a man who didn’t even have a sword.
He shuddered. The Picker was one of Knight-Marshal Nastria’s curiosities. So was the blood-mage, and now the old knight-marshal was gone and
he
was left to pick up the pieces. Both the good and the bad.
They’d all fought and fled together. The Picker was a killer and the blood-mage was an abomination, but they were
his
killer,
his
abomination, and he was in no position to be choosy, no position at all. Except . . . except, did it matter any more? The last news from Evenspire warned that the Usurper had called a council of kings. Zafir was putting King Valgar and Queen Shezira on trial. Hyrkallan had done what he’d done and changed nothing. He’d already failed, hadn’t he?
The blood-mage set to work. Hyrkallan turned away and looked for a more comfortable face.
‘Jostan!’ Rider Jostan looked on the outside the way Hyrkallan felt on the inside. Disturbed. That came from spending too much time around Semian.
Jostan hurried over and gave a cursory bow. ‘Knight-Marshal.’
‘Take three dragons and search the area. There might be more of these shit-eaters. Take Semian and Nthandra up with you and keep your eyes peeled.’ There. That would make life a little more pleasant for the next few hours. A few months ago, Semian had been one of those riders who had his head stuffed so far up his arse that he could see out of his own mouth. And how Hyrkallan missed that Semian. The last thing they needed on top of everything else was a madman
.
On the surface Semian had been quiet in the weeks since Drotan’s Top and his flogging. Done as he was told and not spoken out of turn, but he still had the insane fire in his eyes. He had his converts now too. They gathered around when they thought Hyrkallan wasn’t watching.
The Red Riders weren’t doing any good. That was the long and the short of it. After the Night of the Knives they’d been heady with amazement at being still alive, flushed with the success of spiriting Queen Almiri out of the palace and back to the safety of her own eyrie. There was rage too, rage at the Usurper who wore the Speaker’s Ring, her and her scheming lover Jehal. Justice needed to be done and they’d sworn, as riders of the realms, to do it. And what had they done? Nothing
.
Burned a few soldiers, stolen a few wagons and spent most of the time hiding. Drotan’s Top, was that really such a victory? They weren’t even worth the trouble of hunting down properly. Did Zafir the Usurper send riders? Did she dispatch the Adamantine Guard? No, she sent shit-eaters, and poor ones at that. That’s what Hyrkallan’s riders were worth. Nothing.
Because that’s what we’ve done. Nothing.
Nothing. Not because they were impotent, but because he didn’t dare. Because Shezira was still alive, and he was too afraid to tip the balance of her fate.
He watched Jostan and the other two jog out of the trees towards their dragons. Semian was limping, almost hobbling. Someone had stabbed him in the leg. Quite a wound by the looks of it. He had been the only one hurt, but then, when they’d engaged the shit-eaters, he’d led the charge.
Hyrkallan sighed. The sell-swords hadn’t had a chance. If it had been otherwise, he wouldn’t have fought them on the ground. If they’d been at all dangerous then he’d have burned them from the air. They hadn’t been anything more than sport. He clenched his fists. Maybe he should have burned them anyway. It would be no more than they deserved. But he’d needed something to fight and burning them from the air would have been too distant, too cold. He’d wanted to feel his steel crunch on the bones of his enemies for once.
Because you sold your swords to the murdering bitch who calls herself the Speaker of the Realms and I wanted to see your faces before you died. Because I’m mad. Table-pounding, chair-smashing, see-red mad, and Drotan’s Top was three weeks ago and now Zafir’s winning and I need to do something, anything, to feel like we have a purpose.
They’d have to move their camp again. A nuisance but hardly a chore. With dragons to ride, they could find another place to hide that might be a hundred miles away. The Maze was huge, the Worldspine endless, and after a while all the mountains looked the same. No one would ever find them. They’d still be every bit as useless, though.
When the blood-mage was finished, Hyrkallan pretended he was too busy with his other riders and sent Hahzyan back to see what the mage had to say. In truth, he didn’t know what to do with the abomination. Most likely what he ought to do was kill him out here in the woods. That would be the right thing to do with one like him, and most likely he was going to regret that he hadn’t. The magician had been with them on the Night of the Knives but did that really give them anything in common? Likely as not he’d take the Usurper’s gold if he knew what she was offering.
‘What’s the blood-mage got to say for himself?’ he asked when Hahzyan returned. The rider looked pale.
Was it bad then? Glad I sent someone else.
‘The speaker has increased the price on our heads. Enough to draw in every sell-sword across the realms. She now offers her own weight in gold for every one of us. These are only the first. The Maze will be swarming with them before long.’
Hyrkallan nodded, frowning. He wasn’t really interested. ‘That’s a lot of gold. Too much to be true.’ But then this was Speaker Zafir. Going back on her word to a shit-eater was hardly likely to trouble her.
‘They have to find us first.’
We should give it up. Go home, go back to our eyries.
However much he tried to hide it, he’d lost his heart for this the moment Almiri had told him about the trial. Or perhaps it had gone when he’d lit the pyre to burn his brother. He could only see one future now. The Usurper would have her way. His queen would die and there would be war. He didn’t belong here any more. None of them did.
Hahzyan seemed to read his mind. ‘We’re not wasting our time, Knight-Marshal. Every day, word of the Red Riders spreads further.’
‘And so what if it does?’
Red Riders. How I regret wearing that name.
‘Others have already come to us: Semian, Jostan, Nthandra . . .’
‘Three riders, Hahzyan.’
Two of them mad, the third fast heading towards it.
Still, Hyrkallan had to smile, if only at the blind enthusiasm. He too had been young and bright-eyed once. A long time ago, before he’d come to see the full measure of spite in the lords and ladies that he served.
‘Three is more than none, Knight-Marshal.’
‘Semian and Jostan should have been with us in the first place. Semian has also quite possibly lost his mind.’
‘But he is a leader. Like you.’ And it was true. The more weary and cynical Hyrkallan became, the more Semian burned. When the time came, and it would be soon, he would tell the other riders what they wanted to hear. They would listen to him. That, if nothing else, was a good enough reason to end it while he still could.
They don’t need me any more.
‘There is GarHannas.’
‘Aye.’ That there was. GarHannas, who’d served Speaker Hyram.
GarHannas was, when it came down to it, Hyrkallan’s one cause for hope. An experienced rider, well known, well respected and well liked. There was always the dream that others would follow, that GarHannas was the first, that the trickle would become a flood and riders from across the realms would flock to the Purple Spur to bring Zafir down. Not much of a hope, but it had given him something to cling to. For a while.
Who am I fooling? Kings and queens tear down speakers, not riders. I should fly home. Give up on this charade.
Deremis haunted him. His own brother.
Killed because of this folly. My folly.
He wouldn’t fly home though. They were all too young, these riders. They needed wisdom. If he left them and Zafir wiped them out, they’d be nothing except more souls on his conscience. So instead he watched them pack up their meagre belongings and mount their dragons and then he led them as he should, between the mountains. He took them north this time, away from the majestic dead canyons of the Maze. That’s where the sell-swords would assume he was: on the south side where he could easily reach Drotan’s Top and the edges of Zafir’s realm. A dragon-knight would know better, but the sell-swords would think only of feet and boots and wagons and wheels, not of wings. Maybe that would buy him another week or two of peace and quiet. Long enough for the Usurper to have her council of kings and its aftermath. Long enough to see if anyone else would follow GarHannas. And when they didn’t, long enough to talk Hahzyan and the others into going home.
So he took them away, a dozen dragons streaming in a line behind B’thannan, up into the high valleys where the pines grew thicker, higher still towards the snowline, skimming the treetops, keeping low to avoid the eyes of Zafir’s scouts; then the dive over the Great Cliff, the mile-high sheer walls of stone that made the northern edge of the Spur, down into the valley of the Silver River below. Hyrkallan had been flying dragons for thirty years. He’d been to every part of the realms. He’d spent half his life soaring high above the endless Desert of Stone and among the dead peaks of the far north of the Worldspine. Even so, crossing the Great Cliff still took his breath away. The sudden
absence
of the world below gave him vertigo and in the dive that came after, the wind roared so fast it seemed it would tear him out of his saddle. Even behind his visor, he couldn’t open his eyes but had to trust to B’thannan not to simply plough into the ground. B’thannan loved to dive, loved the speed. All dragons did.
He almost blacked out as B’thannan pulled out of his dive and arrowed above the water of the Silver River leaving a shock of spray in his wake. And then the moment was gone, the magic and the wonder, and he was left as he’d been before. Old and bitter. He led the way down the valley, back to a place they’d been before Drotan’s Top, hardly even noticing the hills turn to mountains as they drifted past. He took them to the far end of the Purple Spur, to where it merged with the immensity of the Worldspine. Far enough away that the Adamantine Palace was a full day’s flight away. That was enough. So distant that they were hardly a danger to anyone but themselves. Then he watched them make their camps there, walked among them, helping them where he could. He’d keep them here, he decided. Waiting, watching, listening until they got bored. It was all in the hands of kings and queens now. Another week or so and he could put an end to this mistake and they could all go home.
He hadn’t even put his tent up, hadn’t even washed the sell-sword blood off his gloves, when the revolt began.
‘Marshal.’ Hyrkallan closed his eyes and wished for strength. Rider Semian.
‘Rider.’ He didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to even
see
Semian.
‘Marshal, I think it’s time you went home.’
Now Hyrkallan did turn around. His lips curled and he laughed bitterly. ‘Really, Semian? You might be right, but you’re the last person I expected to say such a thing. So what do you propose? Should we wait a little while until the others see the light, or has your little coven discussed this amongst yourselves already. Shall we all pack up and leave right now?’
Semian shook his head. ‘No, Marshal.
You
should go home. The riders who followed you here hunger for justice and vengeance. That is what you promised them. Yet you have not led them against the speaker. We have done nothing except except flap our wings. The speaker barely knows we exist. Drotan’s Top should have been a beginning and you have made it an end. Since then we’ve done nothing but wither.’
‘And you propose?’ Why was he asking? Semian was as transparent as glass.