It turns out that wetting yourself is quite difficult, going against a number of key instincts as it does. Even so, with enough time you’ll get there. I was on the point of soiling myself when one of the Slavs got up and took a peculiar metal hook from his pocket. Without warning he grabbed the back of my head with one arm and forced the hook past the gag, snagging me by the corner of the mouth like a fish. Then, preventing my struggles simply by holding the hook, he took out a funnel and jammed its point into the end of the hook—which turned out to be a hollow tube.
“.” He reached for a water skin and started to fill the funnel. From that point, until he stopped, the business of not choking to death kept me fully occupied. The incident made two things clear—firstly that they didn’t have the key to the mask, and secondly if I were ever going to be fed again it would be after we reached Vermillion.
The “watering” solved the other problem I’d been having, my bladder losing all its shyness as I choked. The effect was at first a not-unpleasant warmth, fading fairly quickly to the less pleasant sensation of cold wet trousers.
The sun set and though I imagined Aslaug whispering amongst the dry voices of the corn I couldn’t make out the words and she offered no help. In fact, it sounded almost like laughter.
Two brothers settled down to sleeping, leaving the third to watch me, and eventually I lay down on the bed of flattened maize stalks to try to sleep. My finger, or what I imagined might be left of it, pulsed with hurt, and without being able to bring my arms forward I could find no position in which they didn’t ache, the mask was a misery and bugs emerged in the darkness to explore every inch of me. Even so, at some point in the night I passed out, and ten seconds later, or so it seemed, my captors were shaking me awake with the sky hinting grey above us.
I watched them break their fast, choked down more water, and was hoisted onto Nor’s back once more. We resumed our journey toward Vermillion, clattering along at a gentle pace past the day-to-day traffic of wagons, messengers, carriages bound for distant destinations, and peasants making shorter visits on laden carts or leading over-burdened mules along behind them. The road rose among some stony ridge of hills that I didn’t recall from my outward journey, and farmland gave over to a dry forest of cork oaks, beech, and loose-limbed conifers. The morning haze burned away and the sun beat down again, seemingly harder than before, raising a stink from the manure piles punctuating the Appan cobbles and making me yearn unexpectedly for the cool clean winds of a Norseheim spring. I lolled in the saddle, sweating, thirsty, and wretched, wondering how many flies were clustered around the aching ruin of my finger and laying their eggs in the glistening wound.
“That’s him!” A man’s voice, strident and triumphant. “Or at least it’s his horse. Certain of that. Look at the flash.”
I unglued my eyes and tried to focus. Four men on horseback had moved to block our way.
“It can’t be him.” A different man, dismissive. “A prince of Red March wouldn’t—”
“Check him, Bonarti.” This from the man on the largest horse, a real monster.
The last of them urged his steed toward me. The Slav brothers tensed but made no move to prevent his advance.
“Definitely his horse.” The first man, daring anyone to disagree with him.
Relief flooded me. If I’d not been gagged I would have shouted for joy. Every ache vanished in the instant. Grandmother, Martus . . . someone . . . had learned of Maeres’s intentions and sent out a rescue party. A rescue party including a man who’d taken note of Nor’s peculiar markings—that jagged white flash down the velvety blackness of his nose. His distinctiveness had drawn me to buying him—I’d wanted to look good riding back into my hometown and, even though a connoisseur of horseflesh like myself shouldn’t be guided by such frippery, I had let it guide me. And it must have guided Maeres’s men too. If I’d only chosen a plain dun nag and worn a hood I would have been crossing the border into Florence instead of a day’s hard ride from Vermillion and neck deep in the mire.
The thin man closing in on me leaned forward in his saddle to peer at me, his eyes narrow, one with the red stain of a birthmark just below it. It was Bonarti Poe! I’d last seen him at the Grapes of Roth just before Maeres showed up to ruin the evening. He might be an oily fellow with a pointy face that seemed to beg for slapping, but at that moment I’d never been so pleased to see anyone I knew. I didn’t even begrudge him all the Rhonish red he’d swigged at my expense that night.
“Prince Jalan?”
I nodded vigorously making gurgling noises that I hoped sounded affirmative. Bonarti continued to peer at me closely, shifting his head from side to side as though it might help him see past the straps across my face. “It’s him all right!” Then in a quieter and puzzled voice. “Prince Jalan, why are you—”
“He’s hiding, obviously! A ruse to smuggle himself back into the city unobserved.” The man on the enormous horse cut across Bonarti’s question. My attention though was on the Slav brothers—given half a chance they’d cut my saviours down and carry on to Vermillion as if nothing had happened. I gestured urgently toward them with my head making gurgling noises that I hoped sounded a strong note of warning.
“Stop this foolery! Get down from there, sir! And face me like a man! Face me as you should have had the decency to do when you first received my challenge!” The man on the big horse had my attention now, his face red with fury around a neat grey moustache and the narrow slit of his mouth.
“His hands are bound, Count Isen!” Bonarti, leaning around me.
“Prisoner!” the Slav brother closest to me declared.
“Nonsense!” Count Isen—the real article this time—was having none of it. “Enough of this farce. Cut him loose and get him down. I’ve no time for such foolishness. A day wasted on the road when I could have been doing something useful . . .”
Bonarti took his knife, a small bejewelled thing, and cut my wrists free.
“Prisoner!” the Slav repeated but with no small amount of the traffic having stopped to watch the entertainment the brothers would be fools to try anything.
I brought my hands forward, rubbing both wrists and making a close study of my mutilated finger. It proved less injured than I’d imagined, with only the nail ripped away and the exposed flesh crusted over with black scabs. Part of me was pleased the damage wasn’t irreversible, the other part horrified that so much pain had come from so small an injury. Even with the Count of Isen ready to slice me into quivering chunks I managed a shiver at the thought of what Cutter John could achieve given his leisure with a man.
“Get down, sir! I mean to have my satisfaction without delay!” And Count Isen swung himself from the saddle of his vast horse, to vanish entirely behind it. He emerged from its shadow, hands on hips, glaring up at me. He was as small a man as I’d seen in my months on the road, with the exception of Dr. Taproot’s dwarf, dressed in the finest possible travel attire and trailing a sword at his hip that might have scraped the floor even if it hung from my own.
I reached up to my mask and tugged at it, pointing at Bonarti then at the back of my head.
“Yes, I bought Bonarti as your second. Mine’s Stevanas over there.” Isen waved a hand at a solid warrior glowering toward me from his horse. Sir Kritchen here will adjudicate to ensure fair play. Now get down, sir, or so help me I’ll have you dragged from the saddle.”
I met Isen’s stare for the first time. Beneath neatly barbered hair and well-manicured eyebrows the eyes of a maniac stared up at me. A small maniac, granted, but somehow scary as all hell even so. I got off Nor’s back sharp enough, tugging at the mask and discovering the heavy lock at the rear. Dismounting wasn’t an act of bravery. The thing about horses is that they’re great for running away once you’re actually running away, but they lack a touch of initial acceleration so if you’re right next to a threat and looking to escape, you may well find you’re better off
on foot. By the time Nor got up to speed and broke clear of my various captors, enemies, and would-be murderers, a least one of them would likely have stuck a sword through some part of me that I’d rather keep. Instead I tugged meaningfully at the straps and pointed at my mouth.
“Enough of this mummery! Defend yourself!” Count Isen drew his over-long sword and pointed it my way.
I held out my empty hands. “I haven’t even got a sword you tiny madman!” is what I tried to say, though it emerged as a long string of “ung” sounds.
“Sir Kritchen.” Isen kept those little black beads of insanity fixed on my face. “Give the prince his sword. I see the fellow behind him has two blades.”
And while I made further protests Sir Kritchen, a tall elderly fellow I remembered from somewhere, dismounted to retrieve my sword from one of the Slav brothers. With the gathered crowd growing by the minute the man had little option but to hand it over. He didn’t look happy. Probably wondering if his homeland was far away enough to avoid Maeres’s wrath if they didn’t get me back to him in Vermillion as charged.
Sir Kritchen, immaculate despite his long and dusty ride from the city, wrapped my right hand about the sword’s hilt. The last time I’d swung the weapon in earnest had been at the Aral Pass. The notches told a story that I’d largely forgotten and wasn’t keen to relive. Somehow terror had pushed me into a berserker frenzy that day. Even if I could repeat the feat here on the Appan roadside it would do me little good. Battle madness doesn’t make you the better swordsman, it just stops you caring whether the man you’re facing is the better swordsman.
I stared stupidly at my blade a moment, dazzled by the sunlight flashing from it. Dehydration and hunger had left me slow-minded, not quite connecting with the events unfolding around me.
“Clear a space! Stevanas—make some room!” Isen swung his sword in wide and dangerous circles.
“Wait! Get this thing off me first!” I tugged ineffectually at the mask, the words emerging as gurgles. A moment later I realized I was holding a sharp edge and with great relief turned it against the straps. Unfortunately it didn’t seem possible to hold the sword far enough away to get the point to my face. I tried instead to saw at the straps with the length of the blade but they were so tight I couldn’t get fingers beneath them, and so bedded into my flesh that cutting away at them blind and clumsy would inflict horrible wounds. Seeing Isen turn my way and knowing he intended to inflict rather more fatal injuries on me I started to cut at the most prominent strap, albeit somewhat tentatively. It hurt.
The highborn, barking as highborn are trained to, made a hole in the crowd quick enough. The onlookers were eager to see a show in any event and keen to help.
“Defend yourself, man!” Isen stepped toward me, his sword leading the way, point held steady and level with my heart.
“Stop!” I yelled. “I’m being held prisoner!” Or more accurately, “Gogh! Mmm meen meld mimimer!” My fingers were slick with blood or sweat or both but the strap seemed to be giving.
“It’s better I don’t have to listen to your lies, Prince Jalan, and better you don’t have to shame yourself before these witnesses with excuses for your cowardice.” The count’s eyes burned with an insanity I couldn’t quite place . . . perhaps three parts homicide and two parts absolute certainty that every word ever to pass his lips was God’s own truth. “Have at you!”
“I’m not going to fight you!”—“Mmm mot mowing moo migh moo!” I resolved to make no move to defend myself and to rely instead on the count’s honour to save me, or at least his fear of having his honour called into question.
The first strap gave. And with that he lunged.
Despite my conviction that I wasn’t going to react I found myself leaping back and swinging my sword to deflect his. Whether it had been an earnest attempt on my life or a ruse to goad me into action I couldn’t tell, but my body had made the decision for me and now he attacked with a flurry of blows very definitely intended to disembowel me.
My sword arm moved instinctively, following the patterns beaten into it over the course of so many long and miserable hours training in the weaponmaster’s halls at Grandmother’s insistence. The clash of steel on steel is always frighteningly loud and a helpful hint of the agony that being hit will involve is transmitted through the hilt, driving shards of pain through palm and wrist and making you want nothing more than to drop the damn sword.
For the first . . . well it felt like an hour but must have been considerably less than a minute, the tempo of Isen’s attack left no fragment of a second spare for thinking. Instinct and training actually served me pretty well. I defended well though made no counter-attacks. The idea of deliberately slicing my sword into flesh—even the flesh of an odious dwarf like Count Isen—turned my stomach. It’s not any sort of compassion—I’m just squeamish. I couldn’t even contemplate it. Like sticking a needle into my own eye I found it something I just couldn’t bring myself to try. Besides—I was busy.
We clashed our way in mostly one direction, me backing, scattering the crowd. Isen advancing with a small grimace of satisfaction on his face as he cut and thrust. It felt like battling someone standing in a hole, an uncomfortable sensation that left me worrying about a different set of vital organs than usual. I left the road, nearly tripping in the ditch and retreated across uneven ground, scrub catching at my feet.
All this for Sharal DeVeer’s honour? For bedroom antics that happened long before he’d laid an eye on her . . . or perhaps the old goat had laid both eyes on her years back and had simply been waiting for her hand to be old enough for his ring, or maybe he’d had to wait for her over-protective father to die before forging a marriage deal with the new and less scrupulous Lord DeVeer?
Instinct and training served me well and it wasn’t until the raw terror of it all caught up with me that my mind started interjecting and causing mistakes. The tip of Isen’s blade scored a hot red line across my shoulder. It wasn’t pain so much as shock . . . and horror. I knocked his sword up, sprang back, turned on a heel and ran flat out for the trees.
The surprise of it gave me a good head-start. I’d opened a lead of twenty yards before Count Isen’s roar of disbelief caught up with me. I could hear the pursuit begin before I made it halfway to the tree-line but few men are gifted with my particular turn of speed and none of those I’d venture to say stood eye to eye with little Isen.
I passed between the first two elms with what would have been a wild grin, but for the mask. I could lose myself in the forest, be rid of the gag, sort myself out a safe passage to Umbertide and damn their hides. The Slavs would swear it wasn’t me and I would, in the fullness of time, deny the whole thing. “You must be mistaken. Me in a liar’s mask? How can you even tell who the wretched traitors wearing those things are? You should have taken it off—then it would have been obvious. Lucky Isen didn’t murder the poor fellow!”
Panting, scratched and sweaty I paused, lost among the trees, mostly tall copper beeches. The ground beneath them lay thick with the rustling remains of last year’s leaves, overgrown with brambles. I set my back to the thickest trunk in sight and started to work on the leather straps around my head again. This time wedging my sword hilt between my feet and going at it with considerably more care.
Applying a sharp edge to your face with sufficient force to cut old leather whilst trying to preserve your boyish good looks is a tricky business. In fact the task took up so much of my concentration that I almost missed the faint crunch of dry leaves beneath approaching boots.
Somehow the need to be able to talk over-rode the sudden rising panic and I kept sawing just long enough to break through the last of the straps. I pulled the damn thing free, working my sore mouth but careful not to spit or make any other sound that might draw attention.
“Stevanas? Poe?” More rustling, a muttered oath. “Sir Kritchen?” Count Isen’s voice booming out far deeper than might be ex
pected from so small a man, and far closer at hand than I’d thought he was. “Jalan Kendeth! Show yourself!” He sounded rather hoarse, as if he’d been shouting quite a bit.
With agonizing slowness I set the mask down and started to turn my sword around so I could grasp the hilt. Despite the utmost concentration my hands, slippery with sweat and blood, managed to do the exact opposite of what I asked them to and dropped the weapon. It landed with a muffled crunch among the dry leaves.
“Ah ha!” Count Isen appeared, rounding the bole of the forest giant next to mine, arriving from a completely unexpected direction and turning out to be far closer than I thought he was—the tree he skirted stood so close to the one at my back that their lower branches interlocked above us like the fingers of praying hands.
We both froze for an instant, eyes fixed to each other’s, me sat on my arse with my sword on the ground before me, the silent forest all about us, lit here and there by irregular patches of sunlight, golden in the dappled gloom. Without further warning Isen charged, some wordless and murderous battle cry on his lips. I dived for my sword, shrieking that I was unarmed.
Just two yards short, with me still rising from my roll, the count’s foot snagged on some hidden root and his lunge, intended to skewer me, became an ungainly thing, jolting with those overlarge strides we take in such circumstances to avoid falling on our faces. He ended up impaling the beech tree, his blade buried two or three inches deep in the exact spot my head had been resting against the trunk.