Too aware of the range of hideous consequence he had once spared the Efandi princess, Mykkael gave Anja his straightforward warning. ‘If you succumb to this sorcerer’s blandishments while asleep, I can do almost nothing to save you. Awake, aware, rely on this much. If I win through with the salt-trapped remains of the shape-changer’s minion in hand, there will be a chance to enact a full banishment. That is your brother’s sole hope of release, and your lasting promise of safety. Without trained assistance, Kailen’s spirit can never be freed from demonic enslavement. If Tuinvardia has no skilled vizier to achieve this, there are others among the wise who would help in my name.’ Mykkael’s resolve rang through like sheared steel as he committed his heartfelt will. ‘Princess Anja, if I ask, and I will, take my oath at this moment: all that can will be done to redeem your lost brother from darkness.’
Awareness touched through, of a grief locked inside him, a pain raw and deep as an unhealed canker kept wrapped and hidden from view. ‘Whom did you lose?’ Anja whispered.
He turned his face, sharply. She held, expecting the burn of his tears to spill through her pillowing hair. Yet no moisture came, no release. His voice remained dry as the desert that birthed him, a lonely phrase fashioned of wind. ‘No one you know of.’
Yet the impact of that prior loss branded in him the imperative need not to fail. He would not yield a life he had sworn to defend, though the brute trial of Hell’s Chasm made his task a hopeless mockery.
Anja turned in his arms. She tilted her head, kissed the hollow of his throat with all of her passion unleashed. ‘Let there be an hour of joy before death. Mykkael, I beg, let me give this for both of us.’
His hands caught her shoulders, cupped her form as though precious. Then, speechlessly shaken, he slipped his fingers upwards and cradled her face. He stared down at her, stripped by a turbulent distress that cut through to his well-guarded heart. ‘On my sword, Princess, you are not going to die. Nor am I free to accept such a terrible gift.’
Anja gripped him. ‘For all I know, Sessalie has already fallen to sorcery!’
Mykkael shut his eyes, shook his head. Not untouched, nor inhuman, he was trembling also. ‘No, Princess. Anja, please, no. End this folly. You know by the voices you heard in your dream that Isendon’s rule is not broken. Witch thought shows me Taskin, on guard at the king’s side. Your sire’s charge of protection still binds me to your defence.’
The brave words were sincere. Yet the wrenched conflict in the captain’s expression firmed Anja’s resolve by the honest force of its agony. ‘You are more than the warrior, Mykkael! Just as I am human, and not immune to love behind the state mask of the princess.’
His hands tightened. ‘If that’s true, Anja, then you will wait! Survive Hell’s Chasm. If we win through, if I bring you into Tuinvardia unscathed and living, only then can I set down my sword. Give your heart as you wish, and to whom you wish, then. But until you have reached a vizier’s safe haven, I remain bound to your service.’
The gist of his earlier words by the marsh resurged with uncompromised clarity: that the honour of kings stood or fell by the hand of the warrior entrusted to bear arms on the field.
Mykkael’s strength was unimpeachable and his gentleness beyond protest, as he eased himself clear of her offered embrace. There, he paused. Her trembling hands remained clasped in his own. He sustained her filled eyes without flinching. ‘Your Grace, you are beautiful. I have seen no woman whose generosity can match your magnificence. But my pledge has been sworn. I can accept nothing of personal ease until my crown oath to your sire sees closure.’
She smiled through the spilled blur of her tears. ‘No princess has ever been served with so bright and cruel an integrity. Nor, if you die here, has any crown in the nations ever commanded as steadfast a champion. You are not surpassed. That becomes your last epitaph. Should you starve for a line that is destined to pass out of living memory with me?’
‘A sorrowful blessing,’ Mykkael acknowledged, no less gruff as he released her at last to resume the dropped charge of his weapons. ‘Forgive my ingratitude. Tonight must stay desolate. I do know your worth. If I fail to deliver the free gift of tomorrow, or if I win through, there can be no reprieve from this quandary. Better by far, Anja, to have witnessed your political marriage as Sessalie’s princess. My name has no meaning, apart from my sword. I should have beheld nothing more than the dream painted into your portrait. Best, if your Grace had never known the nature of my close company’
The channel conveyed desperate word back to Anzbek, that the emperor’s Grand Vizier had perished while striving to fashion a pattern to guard Tuinvardia’s threatened north border. The tribe’s dreamer garnered more in his wandering sleep: of cedar fires burning an unconscionably foul spell line, and a fair-haired princess’s tears. The warrior still lived, enveloped in the silver-edged shadows no scryer’s talent could pierce. When the shaman’s circle had shared these grim tidings, Anzbek spoke. ‘The signs all converge. Hope lies in the warrior’s wardings. He carries the songs to secure our salvation. This princess, by blood, holds the key to alliance that can bind Sessalie’s ground under Tuinvardia’s protection. Our future now hangs on the thread of two lives. Sing for mercy and strength, that they might survive…’
XXXVI. Ordeal
THE NIGHT SLOWLY WANED. ANJA STAYED WAKEFUL, TOO HARROWED TO RISK THE DANGERS THAT MIGHT STALK HER IN DREAMS. MYKKAEL’S adamant service constrained him from comfort. He kept his strict distance, engrossed with a contrivance fashioned from tied rope and wing leather. Twice more, his sword’s wardings clamoured in warning. Each time, he hazed off the renewed assault. The sorcerer’s minions were held in lurking retreat by clouding the cleft’s entry with cedar smoke. The evasion was stopgap. The enemy need do no more than keep them pinned down. A blind fool could see the fuel of evergreen would scarcely last beyond daybreak.
Light-headed from hunger and too little rest, Anja donned her cleaned clothes and huddled in silenced misery. Though she made no complaint, her gloomy despair did not escape the captain’s keen vigilance.
‘We’ll be leaving at dawn,’ he ventured at due length, returned on what seemed a routine trip to build up the failing fire.
Anja gave a dispirited poke at the coals with the stick lately used to hang laundry. ‘You’ve designed us a plan.’
Mykkael’s pause suggested the unusual weight of his reticence. ‘I’ve mapped out a tactic’ His innate honesty would not let him mask the bald truth. ‘If the odds aren’t encouraging, they’re not suicidal. I have measured the risks the best way I know, with the outcome by no means a sure failure.’
‘I trust you,’ murmured Anja. ‘How could I not?’ Yet his reluctance continued to burden the stillness, and his glance bent aside in avoidance. She drew a tight breath. Her own nerve faltered before broaching the obvious necessity. ‘If we’re climbing, I realize, my horses can’t go.’
‘We’re not climbing.’ Busy reclaiming his last treated arrows, Mykkael smoothed a marred fletching between competent fingers. ‘To try such a feat in this warren of kerries would be irredeemable folly.’ He confronted her squarely. ‘Your Grace.’ Reclad in the tattered cloth of his surcoat, with his harness in place, he should have worn the guise of the captain, invincible in his field-battered trappings. Instead, he appeared uncharacteristically irresolute. Despite this, his phrasing stayed swift and direct. ‘The horses can’t go. Princess, you must choose the fate that your absence bequeaths them.’
Here, Sessalie’s royal demeanour outmatched him. King Isendon’s daughter had been raised and tempered for the hour she must decree life or death for the weal of a sovereign nation. Crown blood to sworn captain, she responded. ‘I would not have the animals suffer. Please grant them the mercy you gave to Fouzette. Only this time, I would stand at your side and hold their heads through their moment of crossing.’
‘Princess.’ Mykkael bowed to her. He fetched his strung bow, selected three arrows, and doctored the points with the dart ven
om kept in his scrip. Ready too quickly, he faced her with an expression like hammered iron. ‘The act should be done near the mouth of the cavern, where kerries can clean up the carrion.’
Through her glass-edged onslaught of grief, Anja was nonetheless able to follow his cold line of reasoning. The ugly practicality Mykkael suggested would spare the remains from falling to usage by demons.
Her words emerged as a tortured whisper. ‘Let’s have this over with.’ She managed the courage to lead the first step, and unfasten the horses’ hitched lead ropes.
Even starving and worn, the three animals raised their heads, and whickered their acknowledgement of her presence. They followed her, trusting. Covette’s lurching limp and Kasminna’s mild lameness clopped a ragged refrain to Stormfront’s almost unimpaired stride. The slight stiffness that lingered from last night’s rough flight scarcely marred his panther-smooth grace.
Anja arrived at the site the captain selected. Her ravaged heart let the horses nibble the dry grass, while her numbed mind scarcely noted the laced bundles of wing leather left snugged in a niche to one side. Dead to curiosity, she had no attention to spare for Mykkael’s nightlong hours of endeavour. She had no eyes to see past the proscribed lives of her beloved horses. Ripped to the verge of unquenchable tears, she bundled her chestnut mare’s blazed head against the front of her jerkin. ‘Covette first,’ she said, all but strangled. ‘The cracked hoof pains her worst. She is suffering.’
Mykkael stepped in close. His back turned to her shoulder, he ran a fierce hand down the chestnut mare’s crest. His resolute body shielding, that she would not see his arrow as it struck, he bent the bow, held his breath and released.
No kindness could mask the snick as the point punched through living flesh. Covette jerked in startlement. The spider venom worked mercifully fast, masking the bright edge of her agony. The mare jerked again as the shaft lodged and settled. She swayed on her feet. Then with a mortal, shuddering spasm, her hindquarters crumpled. Mykkael steadied her shoulder as she went down. His hand, unerring, felt for the raced pulse in her neck. Head bent, he waited through the hung moment of passage. As the valiant chestnut’s heart slowed to ragged rhythm and finally stopped, he straightened, still wordless, and signalled the bittermost end.
On her knees by the side of her stricken animal, Anja wept, unable to move.
Mykkael caught her up, eased her back to her feet. ‘We must hurry,’ he said, softly urgent. ‘Although there’s no blood, the kerries won’t be far behind us.’
He positioned himself at Kasminna’s shoulder, viced to patience as Anja responded. She let the inquisitive mare lip at her sleeve, not minding if she was bitten. Yet her indulgence passed unrequited. The next arrow bit deep. The proud sorrel grunted. Ever the rebel, she would not yield her life lightly. Her braced forelegs resisted the drag of the poison. Nose to the ground, her dark eye wide and puzzled, she trembled. A dribble of foam slid from her slackened muzzle. She folded at last. Anja crooned nonsense into her ear, while her noble frame quivered and sighed out her final, warm breath.
Wretchedly sobbing, Anja shoved off Mykkael’s touch. She thrust to her feet unassisted, and stood before Stormfront on the visceral blast of her anger. What was her worth, as princess or as human, that these dumb, trusting beasts should give up their lives for a horror outside their natural understanding? They had served her, unstinting. Where came the right, to demand of their grace the ultimate, ruinous sacrifice?
‘Shoot quickly,’ gasped Anja, wrenched to ragged self-hate. ‘For I can no longer endure this.’
Craven, she buried her face in black mane, her arms locked to her gelding’s scabbed neck.
Time stretched, hung, spun out with the wind a soughing whisper through standing evergreen. ‘Shoot,’ Anja said, tortured. ‘End this, I beg you.’
She heard, at her back, the slight rustle of cloth. She braced, heart torn beyond bearing. And still, nothing happened. Mykkael had lowered the drawn bow. ‘I can’t.’ His voice sounded seized, as though he fought tears. ‘Mehigrannia show mercy, I can’t.’ As his hand failed him, he let go of the arrow that promised Stormfront a clean, painless death.
Anja spun on him, wild. ‘Did you think I loved Covette or Kasminna any less?’
He shook his head, speechless. Her attack scarcely fazed him. Had a kerrie descended, it might have taken him uncontested in the shock of his deadlocked reaction.
‘I can’t finish this.’ The admission ruffled his skin into gooseflesh, while the sound of his own utterance seemed that of a displaced stranger. He gestured, struck helpless. Before Anja’s betrayed pallor, he forced out the raw speech to explain.
‘This animal is not crippled or impaired by hurt. His spirit is that of a fighter, like mine.’ Arms crossed at his chest, as though to bind up his faltering will, Mykkael stated, ‘My instinct implores me to let this brave creature stay on his feet. His will is all fire. Can you not see? This horse should die fighting, as I would.’
Anja glared, shaking, her regard without quarter. ‘You would risk my best gelding to demons?’
Mykkael stared at his hands, which were trembling. ‘Even so. I can’t kill him. Not without wounding a part of myself.’
Gripping the lead rope in white-knuckled fists, Anja straightened. With her disordered hair and her ragged, boy’s jerkin, she was no less in that moment than Sessalie’s ruling princess. ‘What would you do if I granted you Stormfront’s fate? Look at me, Captain!’ Firm in her right to wield royal prerogative, she waited until he obeyed her. ‘Answer my question!’
Mykkael matched her demand. If he shed no tears, his eyes showed an anguish that ripped through all pride and pretence. With his human soul stripped woundingly naked, he still answered without hesitation, ‘I would rub his coat with cedar ash and entrust him to meet his own fate.’
For one second more, Anja weighed his resolve. Then she passed magisterial judgement. ‘So be it.’ She handed over the black gelding’s lead rein. ‘I make you the free gift of him. Stormfront is yours. Treat with him as your conscience dictates.’
Mykkael crossed his forearms and bowed to her. Then he caught up her icy, numbed fingers and closed them back over the gelding’s headstall. ‘Take this prince of horses and lead him inside. Dust him down with the ashes in my stead, your Grace. Cover him well. I require that help if I am to finish what must be done to deliver you from Hell’s Chasm.’
As Anja froze, unable to act, or face the pitiful forms of the mares now sprawled in limp death on the rocks, Mykkael caught her rigid shoulders. He dealt her a bracing, light shake. ‘Your Grace. Go. Now. I have ugly work to complete, and I implore you to leave. Trust my word when I say that you don’t want to be here to watch what has to happen.’ He gave her a firm push towards the cavern.
Forced to step forward, or fall on her face, Anja unlocked planted feet. Stormfront followed. His blazed head turned once, a puzzled inquiry to see why his companion mares were not following. His desolate whinny broke Anja’s heart. She took charge, caught his silver-bossed cheek strap, and led him away. Through blinding tears, she did not look back. She did not see Mykkael draw his skinning knife and kneel down on the ledge beside the slain hulk of her sorrel.
The captain was forced to work swiftly, because of the blood. His hands knew their task well. The brutal experience of hard campaigns had well taught him how to gut a dead horse, and clean out its entrails and viscera. Befouled to the elbows, Mykkael dragged out his prepared cache of wing leather, then lined the emptied cavity of the mare’s abdomen. He punched the holes between ribs that would bind up the carcass with improvised lacings of rope.
He well understood he had no time to spare. Kerries were bound to descend, any moment, to drag off the carrion. A fast rinse sluiced the gore from his fingers and wrists. Resolute, he moved on to fetch Anja.
Mykkael found her crying, her face buried in Stormfront’s ash-streaked mane. ‘Come away, Princess. Our moment can’t wait.’ He used his knife to slice through the lead
rope. Once the horse was set free, he bundled the princess’s grieving form to his side, then steered her ahead without compromise.
Her stumbling steps reached the mouth of the cavern. Anja smelled the blood first, then the stink of spilled viscera. Jerked back from his hold, she beheld her brutalized mare. The intelligence that framed her most difficult asset grasped the gist of his chosen intent.
Her face drained to white ice. Yet the impact of her shocked disbelief stunned her for only a moment.
‘No! No!’ She spun and slammed into him. ‘No, Mykkael, I can’t do this!’ She pounded a fist against his unyielding chest, heedless of the flesh wound her fury might savage. ‘Put me down without pain as you did for my horses! Don’t risk me, oh, merciful grace, Mykkael! I beg you, don’t even think to expose me as kerrie bait!’
The captain locked his arms. Beyond pity, he pinned her frantic struggles against him. Head bent, trained hands too quick for her thrashing fight, he caught her face in a vice grip and kissed her.
Startlement hurled Anja into wild confusion. In the unguarded moment while sense and reason stood diverted, he betrayed her young trust. The duplicitous finger he stroked at her neck pressed down and pinched critical bloodflow. Lips still pressed to hers, he allowed her no quarter; gave her no chance to fight the enormity of what was happening. While her eyelids fluttered and her pupils dilated, he held on, trained to sense the forerunning tremor as her limbs slackened. Then he released the pinched arteries. He tapped his clenched knuckles in a precise blow at her nape with just enough force to fell her.
Unconscious, Princess Anja of Sessalie sagged into the clasp of his arms. Time fleeted. Above, Mykkael sensed shadows slicing the grey pall of daybreak. Interested kerries were already circling. Spurred by straight fear into barqui’ino reflex, he bent and tucked Anja into Kasminna’s gutted abdomen. Nestled into his improvised lining of wing leather, he prayed to his goddess that Sessalie’s princess would stay reasonably safe. Outside the dire mischance of a fall, no encounter with kerrie fire should harm her. When she wakened and struggled, no matter how dreadful her panic, she must not tumble out. Mykkael whispered a plea for her royal forgiveness, while his flying fingers threaded the readied ropes tight. In moments, he had the princess secured inside the laced ribs of the carcass.