Beyond the Hanging Wall (24 page)

This was going to go to an ordeal, and suddenly Cavor was very, very afraid. Just for a moment he thought he heard ghostly echoes of the fourteen-year-old Maximilian’s screams reverberate about this square as they had once rung about the forest glade.

The Manteceros had appeared in the very centre of the crowd, although how he had displaced none in his sudden appearance no-one knew.

The crowd rippled and murmured in startlement, if not surprise. This had been a day when beliefs and loyalties had been turned on their heads, and the appearance of the legendary Manteceros only underscored the feeling of unreality and enchantment hanging over the square. As the ungainly blue beast stepped forward, the crowd parted before it.

Cavor bowed low in his saddle as the Manteceros approached. “I greet you well, Manteceros, if in some surprise. Has this pretender deceived you as well?”

The Manteceros came to a halt, its mournful face resolute. “He has claimed, Cavor, and that I must respect. Now he has challenged your right to the throne. That also I must respect. I might wish he had done neither, but his claim might be justified, and so I judge neither right nor left until the ordeal has been decided.”

“And the ordeal?” Cavor asked, his voice tight with nervous anticipation. “What form will it take? Will you administer it to the victor of the challenge, or to us both?”

The Manteceros sighed. “No, no, Cavor. I think you both misunderstand the nature of the challenge. Maximilian only needed to speak the challenge for me to appear and administer the ordeal—and that in itself will threaten no-one’s health. There is no need for a clashing of swords and a spilling of blood.”

Cavor’s lip curled—this ordeal sounded like a tame thing—and he looked back at Maximilian. “I see you have corrupted the Manteceros with your cowardly concerns, pretender. If you have no stomach for a challenge—a duel—then speak so now. I’m sure those here to witness will understand.”

Maximilian risked a quick look at the faces about him. If he backed down now yet still won whatever kind of ordeal the Manteceros thought to administer then he would never gain their respect. They would always remember him as the man too cowardly to take on Cavor. Too afraid to risk trial by sword.

“I had no other intent than to follow the speaking of my challenge with the sweep of my sword, Cavor. A duel to the death it is.”

“Oh,” the Manteceros exclaimed, angered by the two men’s stubborn desire to settle this with swords rather than words. “I really don’t know about—”

Maximilian looked at the Manteceros. “Don’t you see why I have to do this?” he asked softly. “I offered the challenge. I cannot back down now.”

The Manteceros held Maximilian’s gaze, then acquiesced with a curt nod. “I cannot approve,
but I do understand.” Its blue eyes flickered over both Cavor and Maximilian. “But so too must both the claimants understand that as they refuse to be persuaded from this duel, neither will I be persuaded from administering the ordeal. Do
you
understand?”

Both men nodded, their actions as terse as the Manteceros’ voice.

The other cloaked figure who had stepped out behind Maximilian now moved to the Manteceros and stroked its neck soothingly. The creature relaxed, and Cavor spared the figure a curious glance.

But he had no time for an overlong look. “You challenged me,” he said to Maximilian, “and thus I hold the right to name the weapons.”

Maximilian inclined his head.

Cavor smiled. Maximilian had only been a boy when he was thrown into the Veins, and would have had only limited training before that. And seventeen years in which to lose what training he
did
have.

“I name the long sword, wish-hunter.” Cavor grinned in triumph. The long sword not only took extraordinary strength, but also required finely honed and practised skills. Even if Maximilian could lift his weapon, he would not have the skill to survive Cavor’s first thrust.

Maximilian accepted the decision, knowing why Cavor had chosen that weapon. “Then it rests to me to name the place,” he said, and Cavor nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes.”

Maximilian smiled, as cold an effort as any managed by Cavor. “Then I name the Veins, Cavor. Beneath the hanging wall.”

Silence.

Silence, and then Cavor spoke, his voice as harsh as an arctic dust storm. “I name Egalion as my companion.”

Startled, for Egalion knew that Cavor should have good reason to be enraged by his earlier refusal to seize Maximilian when ordered, the commander recovered quickly. Best he be there. He nodded.

Maximilian thought, but he did not have to think long. He raised his head towards the platform and smiled with genuine sweetness, incongruous in this atmosphere. “Garth, will you stand at my back as companion?”

Even more startled than Egalion, Garth similarly nodded. Then he laughed. “
If
I still have a head.”

Before either Cavor or Maximilian could respond, the Manteceros stepped forward. “Cavor, you have tried and condemned these two men on the assumption Maximilian is merely a pretender. Until the issue is decided they must be released.”

Cavor shot the two Baxtors a look of pure hatred, but he agreed with a brief nod of his head.

“And you two,” the Manteceros continued. “If you are released, will you promise to submit to Cavor’s judgement if he wins through?”

Joseph let himself relax fully for the first time in days. “Yes, Manteceros. We will.” Then he looked at his son and grinned; nothing could blunt the exuberance and sheer joy of life snatched back from the very edge of the executioner’s axe.

“Well,” said the Manteceros to Cavor and Maximilian. “Don’t think you two will be going off without me. If I have to duck sword strokes to
administer the ordeal, then so be it. Now,” and he turned to the cloaked figure by his side, “Ravenna, everyone else seems to have picked a companion for this nonsense, and so shall I. Will you accompany me?”

“Gladly, sweet creature,” she said, and kissed the Manteceros’ nose, the hood falling back from her head as she did so. “Gladly.”

It wasn’t until early evening, when the date for the duel had been set and well after the crowd had dispersed to discuss the day’s events about fires and ale jugs, that Cavor and Maximilian independently realised that neither yet had any idea what type of ordeal the Manteceros meant to administer.

Cavor spent an hour frowning into the ashes of his fireplace; in his chair in the order’s headquarters, Maximilian turned his head aside…and smiled.

They had a week to prepare and travel to the Veins, and each man used that week as best he saw fit to ensure his triumph.

Maximilian spent the nights sleeping soundly and long, while the days he spent on his knees in prayer or meditation, or speaking gently with Ravenna, whose conversation he enjoyed.

Cavor spent time doing none of these things, but he did spend many hours closeted with Fennon Furst—who left for the Veins two days ahead of either Cavor or Maximilian—or in the palace courtyard at weapon practice, his long sword whispering viciously through the air.

No-one saw the Manteceros, but no-one doubted that it would appear as needed.

Four days after the aborted execution in City Square the two men made final preparations to travel
(independently) to the Veins. Cavor left early one morning, escorted by the larger portion of Escator’s standing army.

Maximilian left at noon, his escort consisting only of those who had believed in him enough to rescue him from beneath the hanging wall, while the majority of the Order of Persimius followed Maximilian’s party in several well-appointed wagons.

Behind them, at a respectful distance of some two hundred paces, came the first in a column of almost fourteen thousand people from Ruen and surrounding districts. They could sense that not only would the duel in the Veins decide a throne, it would also birth a legend, and they wanted to be there to witness.

And all this time laboured thousands of men in the Veins, their bodies glistening with sweat and gloam and despair, and they had no idea of the drama about to be played out in their midst.

Along the coasts and in the underground caverns and chasms, throbbed the sea, watching, wanting, probing…seeking, seeking, seeking…

Myrna was overflowing with people, loud conversation and whispered rumour. The dreary town had never felt so alive: Anya and her girls locked the front door—who could think of business when such events as these beckoned?—and leaned from windows thrown wide open, eyes and voices wondering, their bright smiles and scarves drifting in the breeze blowing in from the sea.

The army lay encamped and encircled about Myrna and the Veins; beyond them sprawled the makeshift
camps of the thousands who had walked from Ruen, their numbers swelled by further hundreds who’d come east and south from the northern countryside. When he arrived, Cavor and his immediate entourage accepted Fennon Furst’s hospitality; Maximilian, with the Baxtors, Ravenna and three or four of the Order of Persimius, made full use of the physicians’ quarters.

On the second day after all had arrived, mediators from both groups made arrangements for the duel; on the third day Cavor and Maximilian prepared to go down the Veins.

Cavor allowed Egalion to buckle on his weapon belt, then asked the man to wait for him outside. As Egalion left the room, Cavor made a show of checking the straps on the light armour he wore, then adjusted the weapon belt about his hips. The long sword felt satisfactorily weighty swinging against his left leg, and Cavor’s mouth curled in a tight smile. For almost forty years he’d trained with this weapon, and he’d never been fitter; since Maximilian had made his claim in the Pavilion the mark on his arm had healed completely. Cavor felt nothing but strength suffuse his body. Even if he would be fighting in the stinking cloyness of the Veins, he would prevail. His smile widened.

From his shadowed corner Fennon Furst saw the smile and stepped forward. “You
will
win, sire.”

Cavor’s face hardened. “In whatever manner I have to, Furst. Have you…?”

Furst bowed slightly. “All is prepared, sire.”

Cavor relaxed slightly. “Good. Then let us go and dispose of this wishful dreamer once and for all.”

Maximilian prepared in much the same ritualistic manner that he’d made his claim. Attended only by Garth, he spent an hour in prayer after he rose, breakfasted lightly, then bathed and dressed in nothing but linen breeches. Even his feet he left bare.

Garth eyed him with some concern. “Maximilian, er, Prince…” Garth had still not quite worked out what to call the prince.

Maximilian paused from rubbing a light oil into his arms and shoulders. “Call me Maximilian, Garth,” he said with a grin. “You of all people owe me no title.”

“Ah, yes, well…Maximilian. Are you sure that I’m the best person to act as your companion down the Veins? I would have thought that one of the guards…someone familiar with weapons…”

Maximilian ran his hands back through his hair, binding it in a short tail in the nape of his neck. “I need a friend at my back, Garth. Not someone shouting terse instructions about how to swing a sword.”

Garth’s eyes slipped to the long sword lying in its scabbard on the table. “Maximilian,” he said quietly, “
can
you use that?”

Maximilian sobered, and his hands dropped loosely to his sides. “It’s been years, Garth. Years, and at fourteen I’d only just begun my training with the long sword.” A wry expression crossed his face. “I wish Cavor had chosen mine-picks to fight with.”

Despite his concerns, Garth broke into laughter. “I doubt he even knows what one is, Maximilian. He’s probably no idea how the prisoners worried the gloam from the rock-face.”

Maximilian stepped over to the table and picked the weapon belt up, holding it in his hands for a long moment before buckling it about his hips. Then, without any apparent effort, he lifted the heavy sword and scabbard and slipped them into place. “Cavor will soon find out more about the Veins than he ever would have wished,” he observed.

Garth eyed him, sober now. Even dressed only in a pair of breeches, Maximilian looked every inch the king. His aquiline face was composed, almost grave, and his bearing proud. His skin glowed ivory in the soft light of the room, the blue-engraved Manteceros rippling across his right upper arm and catching the glints in his blue-black hair. Despite Maximilian’s years apart from the sword, he appeared to move at one with the weapon.

Without knowing why he did it, Garth offered Maximilian his hand. The prince grasped it with both of his, and their eyes met.

“You have my faith,” Garth whispered, letting his Touch burn fiercely through his hand, “and my belief.” There was no healing in that Touch, only pure emotion, and Maximilian’s eyes misted.

“I know it,” he replied, “and it is why I chose you for my companion. To have faith at my back today is more than I could ask for.”

For a moment longer they stood, then both let their hands drop, slightly self-conscious at the emotion each had revealed to the other.

“Well,” Maximilian said, “shall we go?”

Garth gave him a confident grin and waved that he should precede him through the door, but privately he wondered how Maximilian felt about going back
beneath the hanging wall. Then he shook his head, and followed Maximilian out the door. For Maximilian to go back beneath the hanging wall demonstrated a courage that Garth found almost impossible to comprehend.

They met at noon by the main shaft. It was a bright and sunny day, yet the greyness of the Veins so pervaded the air that it seemed cool and dreary. At a distance of fifty or sixty paces stood guards and soldiers at stiff attention; behind them thousands upon thousands of the ordinary folk of Escator.

All were quiet and solemn.

Garth and Ravenna walked quietly behind Maximilian—Vorstus and Joseph were waiting at the first ring of soldiers. They shared a nervous glance—where was the Manteceros?

Cavor, waiting by the shaft, didn’t care. He had almost forgotten the Manteceros and its annoying insistence on administering its curious ordeal. All Cavor wanted, all he had on his mind, was that finally he was going to run Maximilian through with his sword. And then, he knew,
knew
, that his mark would never trouble him again.

He grinned coldly at Maximilian as he, the Baxtor youth and that curiously beautiful girl stepped underneath the ironwork surmounting the shaft—what’s the fool thinking of, dressing only in breeches? Cavor almost laughed. This was going to be easier than he thought.

“Summon the cage,” he said tersely, and behind him Egalion, dressed only in a short tunic and breeches himself, nodded to Jack, who stood by the controls.

Garth ran his eyes over Jack. He was newly stooped, and fresh scars littered his body; the guard avoided his eyes and threw a lever.

Deep in the yawning shaft at their feet came an answering rumble, then a frightful screeching as the cage rushed towards the surface. Garth forgot Jack and looked anxiously at Maximilian. The prince’s face and body was apparently relaxed, but Garth thought he could see some tightness about his eyes.

The screeching increased, and now seemed overlaid by some ghostly wailing. Fennon Furst, who neither Garth nor Ravenna had noticed to this point, emerged from behind an iron strut. His red hair was oiled down so tightly it clung to his skull in a shining cap. “Welcome home, 859!” he jeered.

Maximilian could not help a flinch spasm across his face, and Cavor roared with confident laughter. “This time I will make damn sure you won’t escape, pretender!”

Cavor had been forced to shout to make his voice heard above the impending arrival of the cage, and the instant that he had finished the cage crashed into the iron framework. Above their heads massive wheels ground reluctantly to a halt, and great chains twisted and shrieked with the shock of the cage’s arrival.

With the cage had arrived the dreadful sulphurous stench of the Veins; it hung about the cage like a fog.

Garth shuddered, and wondered how Maximilian could bear it.

Furst stepped forward and swung open the door, then stepped back in hasty shock.

Standing inside the cage was the Manteceros, its face wrapped in an expression recalling the darkness below.

Ravenna stepped gracefully inside the cage and stroked the creature’s nose. “Skip, trip, my pretty man,” she smiled, and the Manteceros’ face lightened slightly.

“It is time,” it said, shifting its eyes to those waiting outside. “Finally, it is time.”

“More than time,” Cavor said roughly, and pushed past the Manteceros into the cage. Egalion, then Maximilian, Garth and Furst—who announced loudly that he would operate the machinery and wait with the cage, crowded into the small space.

Ravenna found herself squeezed between the thick, rusty wire netting walls and Cavor, and she suppressed a grimace of distaste as the man pressed against her body even more than he had to.

Then the doors closed, and the silent group plummeted to their fate.

Furst let the cage descend, not to Section 205, where Garth had expected them to go, but to a section several levels lower. As soon as they stepped out of the cage—Furst remaining behind—he realised why. The initial cavern, then the tunnels opening off it, were much higher and wider than those of Section 205.

Here the combatants would have room to move; to swing their swords.

“Are you ready, pretender?” Cavor asked belligerently, a note of tension creeping into his voice. He could hardly believe the stench of this forsaken hole in the ground.

Maximilian stared at him a moment. “Not here,” he said calmly. “In the Veins, Cavor, not in their foyer.” He set off without a backward glance down one of tunnels, forcing the others to follow him.

The Manteceros, Ravenna at its shoulder, brought up the rear.

As they went Garth was shocked, deeply shocked, to realise that men still laboured down the Veins. Surely Furst could have called a halt to work for this one day?

But apparently Furst was committed to meeting his quota of gloam, and challenge or no challenge, the men still worked and died silently and hopelessly. Successive gangs watched silently, their bodies hunched, their eyes devoid of any expression or any hope, as the strange procession passed them by.

Ignoring the gangs he passed, Maximilian walked until the party was deep into the tunnel. Gloom surrounded them, torches sputtered fitfully but cast little light, and the blackness of the tunnel walls reached out hungrily for those who dared to pass within it.

“Here,” he said eventually, some minutes after they’d passed a group of prisoners huddled against the floor of the tunnel in an infrequent and inadequate break from their labour.

Cavor glanced about. If he had any doubts then they did not show from his face—barely visible in the pressing shadow. “As good a place to die as any other, pretender. Are you ready?”

Cavor’s sword rattled out of his scabbard, and Maximilian drew his to meet him. Egalion and Garth hastily moved back two or three paces behind their respective combatants.

“Gentlemen,” said the Manteceros, ignoring the danger and taking a shuffling step forward. “There is still time to reconsider this ridiculous duel. A simple tale will suffice to determine who—”

“Be quiet, you irritating lump of morose flesh!” Cavor snarled, and lunged with his sword at Maximilian; Ravenna clutched at the Manteceros’ stiff mane and hauled the creature back a pace or two.

Maximilian surprised Cavor. The prince’s body was lean compared to Cavor’s well-muscled frame, but it belied a strength that had been built over seventeen years of back-breaking labour in the Veins. He met and parried Cavor’s first thrust, then drove home the attack himself. But Cavor met attack with vicious determination, and soon Maximilian found himself retreating first one step, then another, then three more.

Cavor grinned.

Yet if he had won an initial advantage, soon Maximilian’s knowledge of the Veins came to his aid. The gloom was his friend, the hanging wall his ally. He knew the darkness with a lover’s intimacy, and he used it as an additional weapon, melding with shadows one moment, rushing out of them the next, stepping lithely over rocks that Cavor stumbled—and once almost fell—over, letting the darkness envelop him, comfort him, hold him as it had for so very many years.

He merged with the gloom and the shadows, became one with them; Cavor fought them and cursed them, and then had to spit out the choking dust that filled his mouth.

Soon he realised why Maximilian had only worn light breeches. Sweat trickled down his body, collecting in small pockets underneath his armour, rubbing, chaffing, irritating. Cavor was a strong man, and used to fighting in full armour, but soon even this light plate he wore felt as though he had rocks strapped to his back, his shoulders and his arms.