“Against two.”
“I’m not so worried about the barbarians holding Dawnbringer and Fangbreaker,” Hew insisted. “They haven’t had our training. They never took our vows. And one of them’s a girl!”
“You saw Mörgain, though,” Croy told him.
“She’s a woman. I don’t care how big she is, no woman has the stomach to cut a man from crop to crupper.”
Croy wished he could share the sentiment. He’d met more than a few woman warriors in his time, and they’d been fierce enough. Woman who chose to take up swords had to constantly prove themselves, and it made them more driven and more dangerous than any man. And Mörgain had seemed altogether too much like her brother, Mörget—the strongest and most dangerous fighter Croy had ever known.
“The Lady will sustain us,” he said, more for his own sake than the others.
On the sixth day Balint showed herself in the courtyard before the keep. Croy had managed to avoid her so far but that evening, as she wheeled a train of ballistae out of the armory cellars, a great cheer went up from the people and the Ancient Blades had to be on hand to do her honor.
The dwarf rode high on the bolt of one of her great contraptions as it was pushed through the streets, kicking her legs and waving a wrench in the air. The war machines were dragged by conscripts down through the gate into the outer bailey, and then across the Strow bridge, where half the city waited to cheer them on. The king showed himself at a balcony atop the palace while his heralds waved pennons and sounded great trumpets. As Balint came even with the knights on their horses, she gave Croy a long and triumphant look.
“When they see my babies here,” she told him, “the barbarians will turn around and run so fast we’ll send bolts straight up their arseholes.”
“I have no doubt of it, dwarf,” Croy said, his mouth tasting of gall and vinegar. “You have shown yourself a genius at shooting men in the back.”
Balint crowed in joy—she loved a good taunt, whether she was giving it or receiving it—and rode on toward the eastern gate, where she placed the giant crossbows high atop the wall.
On the eighth day the conscripts tried to revolt. A rumor had been going about that only one man in two would be armed with iron when the battle came, and the rest would be given nothing but shields, their lives to be thrown away blunting the barbarians’ first charge.
“Who told them any of them were going to get shields?” Rory asked, his voice little more than a whisper. From atop the wall of the outer bailey, the Ancient Blades watched the conscripts strive against their serjeants, pushing the shouting officers up against the wall.
“We should be down there imposing order,” Croy said, through gritted teeth.
“You heard the king. He has a better way,” Sir Hew told him.
And the king, in fact, did. Making no show of aggression, he appeared before the crowd at the head of a train of mules, each pulling the largest a giant hogshead of ale. Bungs were thrown open and foaming brown liquor streamed into the streets. The conscripts forgot the serjeants immediately, lest the ale go to waste.
In the morning not many of them felt like renewing their rebellion. It was the quietest morning Croy could remember since the gates were sealed. He was able to walk the wall nearly halfway around the town without hearing a curse or a profanity uttered. Not much work got done, either, but at least Helstrow was at peace.
When he reached the northernmost point on the wall, he lingered, and looked out across the rolling farmland toward the distant northern forests. But it wasn’t until the ninth day that Sir Orne finally appeared, standing his horse in a field half a mile away, Bloodquaffer held high over his head. The sword’s edges looked fuzzy in the distance, as if it were glowing with its own light. For hours he stood like that, the horse’s head lowering occasionally to graze on field stubble.
When the sun set Orne lowered the weapon, then slid from his saddle to kneel on the earth. He left the horse behind and crawled the rest of the way on his knees.
It was an act of devotion to the Lady. No one dared rush out to help him or speed his way. It wasn’t until well after midnight that he was brought inside the walls of the fortress.
Croy was there to receive him. As Hew helped the knight to his feet, Croy tried to take Orne’s free hand in hearty embrace—only to be rebuffed after a very short clasping of wrists.
“Do not take offense, I beg you,” Orne told Croy. The knight was the youngest of the four, yet his dark eyes hid an old and unhealed pain. “It’s for your own sake I am so cold. I do not wish to pass on my curse.”
“Curse?” Hew demanded. “We heard you were chasing a sorcerer up north. Did you get the bastard?”
“I did,” Orne said. He looked as if he would gladly have said no more. Croy and Hew stared at him until he relented. “With his last breath, though, he laughed in my face. And told me how I am to die.”
None of them missed what the knight was not saying. If he was this afraid to come to Helstrow, it could only mean one thing. The sorcerer’s dying prophecy must have told Orne that he would die here, inside the fortress.
Hew looked to Croy with eerie dread in his eyes. Croy shook his head. “You came,” he said, bowing to Orne. “That’s what’s important.”
“I took a vow,” Orne told him. “I took a vow.”
They took him to a bed, and posted a guard on his door—not for Orne’s own sake, but to keep away the curious, who heard the knight screaming in his sleep, and wished to hear the prophetic words he could not speak while wakeful.
On the tenth day after the gates were sealed, the barbarians arrived.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Malden put his hand on Acidtongue’s hilt, but kept the sword in its sheath. It was a ridiculous weapon for a thief to use—once drawn, it began to foam and spit, and its acid dripped on everything and made a hissing noise. Noise that could be Malden’s downfall.
Moving by nothing but starlight, he came around the corner of the milehouse and looked out into its dooryard. He saw nothing—no movement, save a wisp of old smoke that trailed away through the weeds.
By law, a milehouse stood every ten miles on the road from Helstrow to the Free City of Ness, and was required to stay open to common traffic at all hours. They were places where weary travelers could spend the night, or buy new horses, or simply choke down the dust of the road with a tankard of cheap ale. Malden and his crew had passed most of them by on their way since they had no desire to be seen. This one, however, had drawn the thief’s interest, because it had been burned to the ground.
The stone walls still stood but the roof had collapsed inward. The stables were empty and there was no sign of human life anywhere nearby.
Perhaps it would have been wiser to pass this milehouse by as well, but Malden didn’t like what he saw. He thought it might augur trouble for them further down the road, and he wanted information.
Velmont had laughed and said he was welcome to go and check it out—alone.
Moving with the silence of a hunting cat, Malden dashed into the shadows below the milehouse’s empty doorway. Inside he smelled ash and burnt hair. The stars winked on a pool of water in the center of what had been the common room. Maybe the proprietors had tried to put out the fire, or maybe it was only rainwater that had collected since the roof fell in.
Malden slipped inside, keeping close to the soot-blackened walls. He heard nothing, sensed no movement in the place. But he liked to be careful.
A spot of the floor had been cleared of ash and debris. A pile of clay bottles stood to one side of the remains of a campfire. Bits of rag had been gathered together to make crude bedding. So someone had been there since the fire. Malden chanced detection by slinking out into the light, just enough to pick up one of the bottles