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As he raced toward the Keen Keengs, he saw Chorti grip his attacker by the throat and lift him from the ground. The wild man bared his metal claws and slashed the bat-man’s right wing, shredding it entirely. The Keen Keeng reached for Chorti’s eyes, trying to gouge them out, and the wild man plunged metal claws into its chest and, with a splintering of bone and wet ripping of flesh, tore out a handful of pink organ flesh.
The one with the cracked skull leaped toward Cheval. Again she kicked it. This time when it stumbled back, the Grindylow caught it in his arms. Blue Jay took flight, feet sweeping above the ground though he maintained a vaguely human form. The trickster was disappointed that he would have to kill the amiable bogie.
Grin reached up, wrapped an arm around the Keen Keeng’s head, and with a swift jerk broke its neck. He dropped the dead thing to the ground.
CHAPTER 9
The castle of Otranto stood on a hillside above a broad lake whose calm, silvery surface reflected back the image of the castle. It was a grim, practical structure built for the glory of war rather than pride. Round towers marked each corner and the outer walls were windowless. Near the top they were lined with iron spikes to prevent climbing. Even in peacetime, there were soldiers on the battlements and sentries on the tops of the towers and at the gate.
Hunyadi’s flag waved in the breeze from a post atop the gatehouse.
The king was in residence.
Oliver rode alone toward the castle on a road that curved northward through fertile farmland. Men and women worked the fields, harvesting everything from berries to barley. In the distance, the span of two entire hills displayed an orchard full of fruit trees. Pickers carried barrels to wagons drawn by horses, and children ran amongst the trees. Despite the distance, Oliver fancied that he could hear their laughter.
Small rowboats drifted on the lake, each carrying fishermen who had poles and nets. On the far side of the lake there grazed herds of sheep and cattle. Beyond that, near the forest, he saw several farmhouses spaced quite far apart, complete with barns and pens. There would be chickens and pigs and the like, he presumed. Oliver had the strangest thought—that this thriving community existed only when the king was in residence. Absurd, of course, that these people would simply disappear when Hunyadi was back in Perinthia.
In truth, it was alive with more vigor and honest effort than any place he had seen on this side of the Veil. Rather than a step into another world, it felt to Oliver like a step back in time, to a simpler era. To a man willing to put in a hard day’s work, Otranto might have been paradise.
Oliver rode on, toward the gatehouse. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the land, and stretched the dark silhouette of horse and rider so that they were unrecognizable. The Sword of Hunyadi hung in its scabbard at his side. The letters for the king were in the saddlebag. He rode now toward a castle full of soldiers who had orders to execute him on sight. Oliver no longer bore any real resemblance to the man he once had been, but he wondered if that was because he had changed so dramatically, or because his true self had at last been given free rein.
A lawyer who buried himself in paperwork and lived in the shadow and the grasp of his father—that had been the way the world knew him. But this was a different world. The concerns that had governed his old life were no longer valid. He was desperate to save his sister, and to find his way back to Julianna. But all of the yearnings that had made a New England attorney seek out the freedom of the stage, to indulge fantasy as an actor no matter how foolish his father deemed it, had formed the basis for his survival here.
Now, once again, the actor in him had to take the stage. In order to get in to see the king, he would have to create a character, and his performance would have to be perfect. But Oliver had always felt most confident on the stage. As an actor, he could be anyone and do anything. There was freedom in that.
Kitsune had ridden behind him on the horse and had been as good as her word, guiding him along the path to Otranto. They had passed farms and residences, ridden through two small villages, and no one had attempted to question them—or even stop them—about their identity or destination. At a river crossing they had stopped at a grist mill and gratefully accepted bread that the miller’s wife had made with her own grain.
When at last they had come over a hill and seen the towers of the castle in the distance, Kitsune had tugged his sleeve and told him to stop. She had dismounted and instructed him to wait half an hour, to give her that time to slip into the castle if she could. He’d rather not have had to ride up to the castle alone, but if he had any hope of going unrecognized, he could not approach the king’s men accompanied by a Borderkind, and by Kitsune in particular.
Diminishing instantly to the shape of a fox, she gazed up at him with those jade eyes and then dashed down the hill and into a small copse of trees. She would work her way toward the castle and within its walls, if possible. Oliver would not know if she had succeeded until he saw her.
He rode toward the main gates. The shadows grew longer and the horse snorted with exertion.
On the shore of the lake, Oliver saw several fishermen pause in their work to watch him ride to the gate. One of them had waded up to his waist in the water and held his fishing pole with a singular nonchalance, as though catching fish was entirely beside the point and the simple act of fishing was enough.
Oliver tore his gaze away from the lake, and he slowed the horse so as not to unduly alarm the guards. As he rode toward the gatehouse—the front gates open and the portcullis within already raised—the two guards in front were joined by two more. All four wore a heavy brown leather armor adorned with the insignia of the king, and helmets of leather and iron that were unlike any he had seen before. The iron was both cap and frame, and the leather hung down on either side and buckled at the throat for protection.
The soldiers put their hands upon their swords but left them undrawn.
“Dismount!” one of them said, stepping forward.
Oliver presumed him the captain, or at least the ranking officer. During their ride, Kitsune had familiarized him with some of the general protocol of the Two Kingdoms. When he had first crossed the Veil with Frost, he hadn’t any reason to need to know such things. Now, though, he was quite glad that he did. He summoned all of the arrogance he could muster, slipping into character just as he would have on the stage.
“I dislike your tone, sir,” Oliver declared, glaring at the soldiers from the superior position of his saddle. “My name is Gareth Terlaine and I ride from Perinthia with letters for the king. Letters that bear the royal seal. Matters of government are not for soldiers or couriers. We do our duty. Mine is to deliver letters. Yours is to stand aside and make way for one who bears them, as well as the colors of the king. ”
The soldiers all glanced at the banner tied around his arm, just as the real courier had tied his own. Kitsune had stolen the armband and Oliver thought it was the only thing that gave them even the most remote chance of success.
“Those are the king’s colors,” said one of the men.
The officer sneered him into silence.
“You’re dressed oddly, courier. Like a peasant, more like, or a village merchant. Aside from the royal banner, you’ve no uniform to speak of. ”
Oliver smiled. They weren’t entirely stupid. “Indeed, gentlemen, when your uniform is having horse shit cleaned from the breast and the seat of your pants is being stitched and you’re called up suddenly as the courier on duty has fallen ill, you wear the best you have to hand, and the colors of the king. No shame in that, I hope. ”
Still the suspicion lingered in the officer’s eyes. He held out a hand. “The letters. ”
“Not on your life or mine,” Oliver replied gravely.
No courier in service to the king would hand over letters bearing the royal seal to anyone but the king himself, or his servant in the presence of the king. Kitsune had spent several months at court—or rather, in bed with a king—t
hough that had been a very long time ago. Oliver hoped that customs had not changed since, but he had faith in Kitsune. She was a trickster, after all. A cunning creature.
The officer drew his sword.
Metal singing, the other soldiers followed suit.
The officer barked an order and there was a ruckus above their heads. Oliver glanced up, pulse racing, to see half a dozen archers leaning over the battlement and drawing their bowstrings back. The arrows were all aimed at his chest.
“Now,” the officer commanded.
Oliver put one hand on the leather saddlebag, the courier’s pouch. “I cannot place letters to the king into the hands of one of his subordinates unless in his own presence. If you’d kill me for loyalty to Hunyadi, then I suppose I shall die. ”
“You may at that, in a moment,” the officer said. He pointed to the bag with his sword. “Take out a letter, only one, and show me the seal. You will not have to surrender it to do so. ”
For a moment Oliver was at a loss what to do next. If he complied, would that be a breach of protocol? Kitsune had learned some of the court customs, but hardly all. By doing so, he might well be revealing himself. But it did seem a way to follow custom and still prove the provenance of the letters he carried.
He took a breath and nodded. “Of course. ”
The long shadows performed a hideous pantomime of the events playing out there at the castle gates. The breeze was cool, though dusk was still a couple of hours away, and hinted at a night that would be chilly indeed. The life of the community of Otranto continued to unfold all around the castle, but here in this one spot it had come to a halt, as taut as the bowstrings of the king’s archers.
Oliver unbuckled the pouch and reached in. When he withdrew a single letter, all of the soldiers tensed, prepared to fall upon him. At first only the face of the letter showed, but quickly he turned it over to show them the wax seal.
They visibly relaxed. The officer shook his head and gestured to the bowmen to withdraw. From below, Oliver could hear the strange twang of bowstrings slowly being released, arrows being returned to their quivers.
“You understand, courier, that these are strange times. Rumors are rampant of rebellion and some of the legendary conduct a crusade against their own kind. Nothing is to be taken for granted these days. ”
Oliver let out a long breath. He nodded, reassured by the knowledge that the king and his soldiers had far more to worry about than a single Intruder.
“I do understand. Had I any other choice than to ride here without my uniform, trust that I would not have done so, if only to avoid such suspicion. ”
The officer gestured to the others and they stood aside to allow Oliver to ride through the open gates and the arched passageway of the gatehouse. Two remained outside on guard, but the officer and one other, a stout, broad-chested fellow whose nose was flattened and scarred, walked alongside the horse, escorting him onto the grounds of the castle of Otranto.
A stable boy appeared, running to stand beside them, dutifully waiting for the horse to be turned over.
Oliver climbed down from his mount, then reached up and slid the saddlebags from the horse. He slung them over his shoulder and patted the horse on the side before handing the reins over to the stable boy.
“Take good care of the animal,” the officer told the lad. “It’s a long ride back to Perinthia. ”
Within the outer curtain walls of the castle, several young men worked at swordplay, parrying and dodging with a grace hard to achieve amongst those actually trying to kill one another. An old woman sat on a stone stoop outside a heavy wooden door off to one side, peeling potatoes and rattling off profanity at a cluster of pigeons who paraded nearby, pretending to be aloof while obviously expecting her to provide them with some kind of treat.
The guards led him across the grounds toward a tall, arched doorway that showed a surprising hint of Moorish influence. The wall all around the door was covered with tiny tiles that created a mural image of a one-eyed warrior standing on the body of a fallen giant, and out of the giant’s flesh grew fruit trees. A naked, winged woman had plucked a yellow fruit from one of the trees and bit into it.
Oliver stared at it, trying to decipher its meaning or connect it to a specific legend, but it seemed a strange mélange of mythical elements.
The scar-nosed guard went to the door and grasped an iron ring. He hauled the heavy door open, hinges shrieking. The officer nodded to Oliver to indicate that he should enter. Oliver glanced back across the grounds and saw that most of the archers on the battlements had vanished, though several still remained. Two stood talking to one another, but the others were watching him curiously.
“Thank you,” he said.
An old man dressed in midnight blue, with the seal of the king upon his breast, appeared suddenly in the doorway to block their entry. His face was so thin he looked inhuman, and adorned with a wisp of white beard.
“What is it?” the old man said, brows knitted in consternation, lips pursed in disapproval.
“Courier, Master Hy’Bor, with letters for the king. ”
The old man arched an eyebrow. “Really?”
A tremor of dread passed through Oliver. The old man, some advisor to the king or court, had a stare that felt as if he could see right through him.
“Indeed,” Oliver said, inclining his head respectfully.
The old man pointed a long finger at Oliver’s side. “That’s a fascinating sword, courier. An antique, if I am not mistaken. Indeed, I’d venture to say it is one of a kind. ”
Oliver held his breath, searching the man’s gaze. His eyes were the same midnight blue as his robes, but there was a luminescence there that was anything but human. What was he, if not a man?
“What are you talking about, Atlantean?” the officer said, his voice not quite a sneer. Soldiers never liked interference from politicians, and that was clearly the case here.
But…Atlantean?
They were advisors to the kings—sorcerers and scholars—and they were supposed to be neutral. In another age they had brokered the peace between the Two Kingdoms, a third, objective party. But the Falconer had told Frost that Ty’Lis, an Atlantean, had sent the Myth Hunters after the Borderkind. So he had to wonder about Master Hy’Bor’s true loyalties.