Within the Hollow Crown (25 page)

Chapter
70: The Duel

“I don’t understand,” Jareld said. “I thought you said we wouldn’t be killed.”

“Nay,” Corthos corrected, “It were only a way to delay our deaths.”

Jareld, Corthos, and Thor had been returned to their little corner of the dungeon, under the singular but watchful eye of Eye-Patch. Corthos explained, once the jeering and insults had died down, that Jareld was supposed to have challenged the King to a duel by insulting him. If he had done it correctly, he could have chosen the time, the place, and the stakes. He could even have chosen a champion.

Unfortunately, Jareld had insulted the King’s mother. In pirate code, that meant he had to fight the King, himself, and on the King’s terms. Jareld felt foolish, of course, since he was only trying to show off that he knew the Kahlerian word for “mother.”

“Well,” Eye-Patch said, “The time has come. Up ya’ go, maggots.”

The trio was led down a series of corridors, entirely new to them. Finally, they arrived in a large room, similar in size to the scorpion pit. It was a theatre in the round, with a raised platform, a stage, upon which the duel would happen. Already, the Twenty-Seventh stood waiting with a rapier.

“Welcome, insulting sun-walker!” the King bellowed at Jareld. A woman yelled from the crowd, to which the King turned and said, “Mom, I’ll handle this.

“Now, you seem to think that my mother is very, very bad. I am going to prove you wrong.”

“By killing me in a duel? What does that really prove?”

“Yes, yes, you’re right. Fighting doesn’t really prove anything. For all we know, my mother is everything you say, and I could still win the fight. In fact, I probably will win, since I am a strong fighter, and you look like a puny runt. So, really, it’s only going to prove that I’m better than you at swordplay. But that’s good enough for me!”

That last line got a resounding cheer from the crowd, even from the Twenty-Seventh’s mother, who for a brief moment was reminded of her dear, late husband, the Twenty-Sixth.

“Jareld,” Thor said, “I’m going to suggest something to you that I would never have suggested. Not ever. Not even during our 2
nd
Century Art History exam.”

“What’s that?” Jareld said, as his hands were unbound.

“Cheat,” Thor said.

Jareld was handed a rapier and shoved up the stairs to the raised platform.

“Now,” the King said, “We must set the stakes. If I win, well, you know, you’ll be dead. Also, I will kill your friends.”

“And if I win?” Jareld said. Immediately, the entire auditorium laughed. Even Thor, who didn’t understand the language.

“Alright, fine,” the King said, “If you win, you and your friends can go free. Pfft, if you win…”

The crowd giggled again in unison. Jareld looked around the crowd. He could barely see how many there were; There wasn’t much light. There was one torch at each stair to the stage, and then only half a dozen torches, evenly spaced, all around the room. The smoke barely cleared the room.

Which gave Jareld an
idea
.

“Thor,” Jareld called, “Creosote.”

“What?” Thor said.

“You know, Creosote,” Jareld said, “Like in chimneys.”

Thor turned his head from side to side, and saw the same thing Jareld did.

“Enough of your sun-talk,” the King said. “Prepare to die.”

The King launched forward in a display of bladed artistry. He would have been no match for Vye, or Halmir, or even for Corthos, if Corthos had been lucky enough to insult the King. However, against Jareld, he looked like an expert. Jareld stood, stiff, in the middle of the ring, barely fending off the King’s attacks. Finally, the King swiped his rapier against Jareld’s right arm.

“Oww!” Jareld cried. The King took a step back and nodded for the approval of his crowd. “That really hurts!” Jareld continued. His arm was bleeding.

“Thor,” Jareld said, “Do something…quickly.”

Thor had not, in fact, been idle. He had strolled, very cautiously, closer to the stage. His guards had been too involved in the fight to pay close attention to him. Corthos had also moved closer, at Thor’s request. Thor whispered instructions to Corthos while Jareld was impaled in his right shoulder.

The King backed off again, waving to the crowd. The crowd was going crazy, yelling, cheering, slinging insults like so much mud. Thor finally stood at the lantern, right next to the stage.

“Come on,” Jareld said to the King, seeing that Thor was in place “What’s taking you so long? I’ve never held a sword before and yet you can’t seem to finish me.”

This earned a long, ooooooooooooh, from the crowd. The King smirked.

“Very well,” the King said, “Have it your way.”

The King made a loud cry, held his sword up, and charged at Jareld. Jareld did what came naturally and curled up into a little ball. The King tripped over the ball and went tumbling head first off the stage and into the crowd.

“Now!” Jareld called.

As soon as Jareld had given the signal, three things happened over the next three seconds:

First, Jareld swung his sword down into Corthos’ wrists, cutting his bonds.

Second, Thor reached up to the lantern and grabbed the torch.

Third, Corthos back-kicked the nearest pirate guard, and did a forward roll onto the stage.

Thor handed Corthos the torch. Jareld waved his sword around like a crazy man, keeping the pirates from using the stairs to get onto the stage.

“Throw it!” Jareld said to Corthos.

Corthos wound up and pitched the torch as hard as he could. It spun, end over end, over all the heads of all the pirates in the auditorium, until it hit the far wall, only three or four meters above one of the torches.

The torch broke up on impact, leaving only a couple of embers burning against the rocks.

Then, the wall caught fire.

Creosote, Jareld and Thor had learned in their Alchemy class, was the residue left by burning fuels over a long stretch of time on a sedimentary surface. This was why chimneys needed sweeping. It wasn’t to keep up appearances for persnickety squirrels. That build-up, the soot, was highly flammable. In a dungeon such as this one, with those torches burning for long stretches of time, and without ever cleaning the walls, the soot had saturated the walls.

And while the pirates could handle torchlight to a limited capacity, they were useless once the wall caught fire. The flames spread around the walls, blinding all the locals.

Of course, Jareld, Thor, and Corthos also suffered, but their eyes were prepared to adjust. They had seen much brighter lights in their lives. Smoke was filling up the room, but nobody could see the way out. Except for the surface folk.

“Run for it!” Jareld yelled.

Corthos led the way, sweeping the sword (which Jareld had let him borrow) left and right, clearing a path. Jareld and Thor followed, bracing themselves.

It was a gauntlet of bodies. Jareld had never played rugby, but if he had, he would have been reminded of a game at this point. Even with Corthos trying to clear a path, Jareld and Thor still had to lower their shoulders into the onslaught of pirate bodies, all shouting and flailing in random directions.

The air was thick with smoke. The door seemed impossibly far away. Jareld got spun around, and almost couldn’t reorient himself. But he could hear Corthos swinging matching rapiers, and he charged in that direction.

Just as Jareld’s vision was going red, they burst through the crowd. Jareld opened the door while Corthos fended off a few of the more aware pirates.

They got out of the room. Jareld and Thor slammed the double-doors. Corthos slipped one of the swords into the handles, locking the pirates in. Without a word, the trio turned back up the hall and ran to freedom.

Chapter 71: Attack on the Queen

Vye recovered her strength, sitting quietly with Halmir as the other nobles traded stories of the recent attacks, the wedding, the jousting tournament, everything. Halmir smiled.

“What is it?” Vye asked.

“I wish my countrymen could see this moment,” he said. “I wish they could see how you truly are.”

“We aren’t perfect.”

“Nobody is. But if I tried to convince the Turin that you would spend so much time trying to make peace, nobody would have believed me. I wish...”

He paused, lost in a thought. Vye let him come around.

“I wish we had met in another time. Another place. Different circumstances.”

Now Vye smiled, “Then you’d never know how good a duelist I am.”

“You owe me a rematch.”

“Anytime.”

“Maybe when--”

But then he grasped his head with both hands, collapsing into a fetal position on the floor.

“What’s wrong?” Vye said, coming to his side.

“He’s here,” Halmir said, his voice laced with terror.

“Who?”

“Argos,” Halmir whispered. “He’s attacking me.”

“He’s trying to read your memories?” Vye asked.

“No,” Halmir said, “He’s just attacking…”

Halmir’s face scrunched up, his hands covering his temples, trying to force Argos out. Vye looked around the room. Why was this happening now? What was going on?

The others were so caught up in their own conversation, finalizing the details of the annulment.

“Where has Eric gone?” Castor Rone said. “That scribe is never around when we need him.”

“There he is,” Timothy Brimford said. “Wait a minute, I didn’t know he was a Turin!”

In one motion, the entire room turned to Eric. He stood in the door, his true nature showing, and not the illusion he had maintained all these years. His sword was at his side, and his badge, the badge of the Turin-Sen, was pinned to his cloak.

There was a familiar, deafening sound. Not actually a sound, but a lack of sound. A pop of silence. Everyone was knocked back, dizzy, disoriented, experiencing various stages of vertigo.

Everyone except Vye.

Eric either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He immediately swiped his sword across the throats of the nearest two guards, then impaled Castor Rone on the floor where he lay.

Vye leaped into action. She drew her sword, put one foot on the arm of a chair, then launched herself over the furniture to the far side of the room. She landed on her feet and struck in the same motion, forcing Eric to engage her nose-to-nose.

At first, Vye held the advantage. Eric had the same training as Halmir, so he was prone to the same attack patterns that Halmir had used.

But he was also older and more experienced than Halmir. Vye was doing everything she could to keep up, and Eric knew that he just had to throw her one unexpected maneuver and she would lose her edge.

He tried a little trick he knew, twisting his blade right after a parry. He lost almost all the leverage of the sword, the weight. But he sliced across her arm. He missed the arteries, but Vye had to recoil. He kicked her, center mass, sending her reeling across the room.

That’s when he fired his death spell. The light embraced Vye, flickering shadows across the walls. But the energy dissipated, and Vye was still standing.

“Yeah,” Vye said, “I can do that.”

She leapt forward and struck hard again, attacking in a frenzy. Her arm was that much slower, but her hits were that much harder. Eric parried her off, breaking even in the fight, while he tried to figure out how she had survived his spell.

Finally, he caught his footing and returned the attacks, putting Vye on her guard again.
He lifted his hand and caused the plushy armchair to go flying across the room, barreling for Vye’s head.

Vye shielded her body, raising her left hand up. To her surprise, the armchair stopped in midair, obeying the movement of her arm. Eric was using the distraction to slit Timothy Brimford’s throat. She wanted to fling the suspended furniture at Eric, but she had a higher priority.

She swept her arm at the exit. The armchair blasted through the wooden door, crushing itself against the hallway’s far wall.

Eric moved to Halmir. Halmir was either fighting the same vertigo that had hit everyone else, or he was still fending off Argos’ long-distance attack. Either way, he couldn’t stand, let alone put up a fight.

Eric raised his sword, ready to chop down on Halmir’s neck. Vye bull rushed him, forcing him to abandon the easy kill for a fair fight. But Vye was done fighting fair. She reached out, with her mind, to the bookshelf, toppling it over her enemy.

Eric
had to deal with the distraction, which gave Vye enough time to jog over to
Emily Brimford
,
hoist her over her shoulder, and dash to the door. Or where the door used to be. A few guards were just arriving, probably having noticed that an armchair had been forcefully ejected from the room.

“Take her!” Vye said. “Don’t argue, just take her. Run, as fast as you can! Get out of here!”

The guards gave her a confused stare.

“There’s no time!” Vye said. “She’s your Queen. Protect her. Run!!!”

They grabbed the disoriented Queen and carried her away. Vye turned around just in time to stop Eric from planting his sword in her heart.

The vertigo was beginning to wear off. Michael was regaining control of his faculties. He was still dizzy, and couldn’t hear too well, but he was getting up to his knees. Vye noticed this out of the corner of her mind. If she could keep Eric busy for just long enough, maybe Michael or Duke Avonshire could enter the fray. And end this stalemate.

It would have to happen soon, she thought. Vye had now swung her sword sixty times as the fight reached its third minute.

Vye and Eric kept battling, matching stroke for stroke in a melody of armored percussion. Neither could land a solid hit, but Eric was in just enough control to dictate their footing. They were moving, step by step to Michael.

Michael, still on his knees, grasped his sword, but he held it with the strength of a child. If someone in the room sneezed, he would drop it. Vye and Eric were moving inexorably closer and closer. Vye’s swing count raced past eighty.

Eric swept wide, his sword ringing out against Michael’s. Michael dropped his weapon, the blade clattering to the ground, sliding across the room. He was defenseless. Even Vye’s relentless attacks couldn’t keep Eric from slashing Michael apart on his next swing.

Vye held out her left hand, taking control of Michael’s sword. She lifted it, sweeping her arm across her body...

Eric’s sword came down on Michael’s chest. But his stroke was parried by the airborne rapier. The weapon collapsed to the ground, but Eric was too stunned to try hitting Michael again.

Instead, he just went berserk on Vye. She was feeling the burn, not only in her arm but also in her legs, her heart, and her mind. Just keeping her footing was a challenge as she raced past one hundred and ten swings. And then she noticed that Eric was mumbling again, quietly under the din of the chaos.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Vye said.

Vye didn’t plan it. She wouldn’t have been able to repeat it. But at that moment, she was so fatigued, so worn, so frustrated, that she shouted out with her mind. Yeah, she also shouted with her voice, but that’s not what made the difference.

A charge of electricity ran up her arm and along her sword. As her swor
d came down for the one hundred, twenty-fifth time, the charge ran down his sword, and shocked Eric in his arm and torso.

He staggered back five steps. Glaring at Vye with malice. The room was absolutely still and silent as the two faced off. Deadly, frustrated, worn-out mortal enemies.

And then there was a single, clear sound. A sword had been drawn. Eric turned to see Halmir, standing tall, shoulders broad, eyes narrowed, and sword in hand.

Vye charged in. Halmir charged in. Even Michael and Duke Avonshire, barely able to keep their feet, charged in. Eric fled through the doors, waving his hand behind him to block the doorway with crumbled stone. By the time Vye cleared the obstruction, they could see Eric’s Gate spell dissipating.

“Where did he go?” Michael said, getting to the doorway.

“It doesn’t matter,” Halmir said. “No doubt he has already told Argos everything. The important thing is that the Queen is alive.”

“Where is the Queen?” Duke Avonshire asked.

“I sent her out, with some guards,” Vye said.

“Guards!” Michael shouted into the hall. Flopson arrived at the door, holding a toy dagger as a prop.

“Did I miss all the good fighting?” he said, before his dagger drooped forward.

“Go find the Queen and bring her back here,” Michael demanded.

“Yes, Your Stinkyness,” and the jester was gone.

Michael went to Vye, who was holding her right shoulder.

“How’s the arm?” Michael asked.

“It burns.”

“That’s my favorite arm in the Kingdom,” Michael said.

“You’ve saved our lives,” Duke Avonshire admitted.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save everyone,” Vye said, seeing the Duke cradling Castor, his brother, dead from Eric’s attack.

Timothy Brimford had also died, a fact that hit Queen Emily harder than she had expected. She had never been happy with him. But she never would have wished for his death.

But the annulment was complete, one way or another. Michael would return to Hartstone and muster as many soldiers as he could. Emily and Duke Avonshire sent out orders immediately to cease all fighting between their camps. They would unite those armies and send them to Hartstone, the next, best fortification to defend the Kingdom.

Michael pulled aside Vye, Halmir, and Flopson.

“Alright,” he said, “Let’s go home.”

Vye was still. Well, almost still. She was shaking.

“Lady Vye?” Michael said.

“Michael,” Vye said, dropping rank for the first time between them, “My Lord, there’s something I have to tell you.”