Blood of Ambrose (24 page)

But when he awoke the next morning, just after dawn, he was sure something was wrong. His intuition was ringing like a bell. He threw on some clothes, grabbed a sword from his weapons closet, and pulled open his door.

Wyrth was standing in the hallway, a troubled smile half-hidden in his beard. “Say, maybe there is something to that Sight business. Do you know what's up?”

“Just that something's wrong.”

“There seem to be Protector's Men loose in the castle. I saw them in a courtyard—have no idea how they entered. But we have to get you to a safe place.”

“Let's find Ambrosia.”

“First things first. We'll get you safe—”

“Wyrth, Ambrosia's safety is first. Without her, we don't have a chance and you know it.”

Wyrth twisted a knot in his beard. “I never did understand this politics stuff,” he admitted.

“Besides: ‘blood has no price.’”

“She'd deny that,” Wyrth said, grinning now. “But then, we're us, not her. Let's go.”

They were lucky with their first try: Ambrosia had just risen, and was ringing repeatedly for a hallway servant who didn't appear. When Wyrth and Lathmar explained what was happening, she turned to the dwarf and hissed, “And you brought
him
through open corridors.”

“Royal orders, Lady Ambrosia,” said Wyrth, with a straight face.

“You sop, he doesn't have any authority to give orders. I'm the regent.”

“Ah, well, madam, I'm afraid I never understood the technicalities of your laws very well. The salient issue, though, seems to be—”

“Yes, yes—what do we do now? First we put the King in the hidden passages. Then you and I, Wyrth, will nose about and see what has happened to the royal soldiery. There's something funny about this.”

“Where's the nearest entrance to the passages?”

“Not near here. The bolt-holes are for royal persons, not ministers.” She thought for a moment. “Come,” she said at last.

They ran like thieves through the empty corridors until they reached the corridor above the audience hall. “There's one in here,” Ambrosia muttered, and opened a chamber door.

She froze.

“That's right, Lady Ambrosia—come in,” said Steng's voice.

Surprisingly, she did, drawing the King with her. Wyrth followed.

There was a company of Protector's Men in the room. Four of them were holding a man against the far wall of the room, while Steng held a knife to his throat.

“Come in, come in,” cried Steng genially. “I suppose you were wondering where your brother had gotten to. Well, here he is!” And he took the knife and slashed Morlock's face.

orlock's jaws clenched, but as far as the King could see, he hardly reacted otherwise. Steng flourished the bloodstained knife (blood spattered his ropy pale fingers also) and then put the edge against Morlock's throat.

“You see, Lady Ambrosia, you must make a choice,” the detestable poisoner was saying. “You must choose between your distant descendant, whose presence lends a fictive legitimacy to your rebellion, or your brother, whose skills are necessary if that rebellion is to succeed. The shadow or the substance, Lady.”

Ambrosia laughed. “Steng, you must think me as much a fool as yourself.”

“Exactly as much, my lady—that is: none at all.”

If your offer was a real offer, you would be giving up what you consider substance (in the overrated talents of my brother) for what you call shadow—the fiction of legal status.”

“Why not?” Steng's wide rubbery lips bent in a grin. “Why not? Your brother is no use to us.
He
will never serve
our
purposes. The real substance, the military power of the empire, is ours already, and I frankly concede that we consider Morlock as nothing against it. All that we lack is some shadow of legitimacy. It is a trivial thing, but if we can buy it with the nothing of your brother's life, why should we not?”

“The event will answer you,” Ambrosia said, with real grimness. “You were, I repeat, a fool to enter here, Steng. When you, and that traitor who employs you—”

“The Royal Protector, madam.”

“Regicide and attempted regicide are treason for every subject. This detail is no doubt inessential to a poisoner's education, but I assure you it is so; I wrote it into the code myself, about the same time as Ambrose's first foundations were being laid. When that traitor and coward whose spittle you lick (yes, I do refer to the Lord Protector) held this castle with all his military power, I managed to take it from him. You won't escape it if you harm my brother.”

Steng's smile became one-sided and derisive. “Yet I do expect to escape, no matter what I have to do here. By the same route I entered.”

That sank in, the King could tell as he shifted his gaze to his Grandmother.

How
had
Steng and a squad of armed Protector's Men entered Ambrose? The King was at a loss, and he supposed Ambrosia and Wyrth were as well.

Lathmar had a sinking feeling that Steng's argument was perfectly tailored to his Grandmother's instincts, as a ruler and as a sister. He decided he wouldn't be surprised if he ended this day in the Protector's power once more—

Morlock stepped through the open door behind them.

His sister glared at him. “You took your time getting back.”

He shrugged his crooked shoulders. “I had some trouble at Lonegate.” His eyes narrowed as he saw the Morlock against the far wall with Steng's bloody knife at its throat. “What is that?” he asked. “A joke?”

“A poor one,” Ambrosia agreed.

Irritation twisted Steng's unlovely features as he took his knife from the Morlock-thing's throat. It looked at him suspiciously, then glanced at Ambrosia, but did not otherwise move.

“A joke that fooled you properly, Lady Ambrosia.”

“Only a fool would think so. The thing does not
act
like Morlock. It hasn't grunted once in my hearing, at any rate. Further, you have had its blood on your skin for some time now without any evidence of pain or harm. But the blood of Ambrose burns, Steng—as you have cause to remember. I let you live then, but I see no reason to do so now.”

The memory was clear on Steng's face. “Then we will take the King—”

“Try it!” shouted Ambrosia exultantly, and brandished her sword. “Wyrth—get Lathmar out of here. Find some royal troops.”

“My lady, with respect—”

“Wyrtheorn,” said Morlock flatly, “take the King and go.”

Wyrth turned to Lathmar, who said, “No, I want to stay.” He was fascinated by the change that had come over his Grandmother when Morlock entered. Wyrth did not bother to listen to the King's protests, but knocked the sword out of his hand, picked him up, slung him over his shoulder, and darted for the door behind Morlock.

Morlock moved forward to stand beside Ambrosia, and she clapped her right hand on his higher shoulder. “It will be like that day above the Kirach Kund—eh?”

“Yes,” Morlock said flatly. Clearly Ambrosia had referred to some specific tactic, and was not just engaging in nostalgic banter. The King caught a glimpse of the two crooked figures, dark against a bright thicket of advancing swords, and then Wyrth's foot kicked the door shut behind them, narrowly missing the King's nose.

The dwarf's short legs blurred as he dashed up the corridor. Lathmar knew he was headed for the guard station at the base of the next tower. “Wyrth!” he said. “Put me down! It will look better to the soldiers.”

The dwarf complied without comment, and they ran up the hallway side by side. When they reached the guard station its hall door was closed, against all usage. Grimly Wyrth kicked it, shouting, “Awake! Awake! Intruders in the castle!”

The door opened. They saw that no one inside was asleep. There were, perhaps, a dozen armed men within, three times the complement for this station. Word of the breach had spread, clearly, and the soldiers were debating their best course. In their midst was Karn, recently promoted to the rank of secutor.

“Secutor,” said Wyrth, addressing Karn as the senior soldier present, “a squad of Protector's Men—”

“We know,” said Karn, interrupting. “I'm glad to see the King is safe.”

Wyrth stared at the men in the room. “You
know?
” he demanded. “Did you know that this squad has the regent and Morlock pinned down in a chamber up the hall?”

The King was sorry to see the weakness he had suspected in Karn's character rise to the surface. The secutor licked his lips and said, “If—”

“Karn!” Lathmar interrupted. “Need is present. Bring your men at once!”

Karn's eyes shifted to avoid the King, and he said, “It may be better if—”

There was a clatter of armor and the thunder of booted feet in the hallway outside. Wyrth calmly knocked a soldier down, took his sword, and stood between the open door and the King.

These days Lathmar was considerably taller than Wyrth. Over the dwarf's head he saw the squad of Protector's Men stumbling down the hallway, Steng in the lead.

A moment later he saw their pursuers: two dark-cloaked, crooked figures, their eyes cold, their swords red with blood. One glimpse and they were gone, silently running down their quarry like wolves hunting deer.

“Those two old fools will get themselves killed,” Wyrth remarked in a level tone, not as if he were discussing anything important. He turned to address the soldiers. “Secutor Karn, I trust you will have no qualms against intervening now? Excellent. A remarkable display of nerve.”

Wyrth, the King, and the Royal Legionaries charged down the hallway after the Ambrosii. The King soon fell behind, and Karn paced him.

“Get up with Morlock and Ambrosia, Secutor,” the King commanded irritably.

“Your Majesty, with respect—”

Lathmar glared at him. Karn turned away and trotted to the head of the Royal Legionaries, just behind Morlock and Ambrosia. They passed by a castle servant, fallen in the hallway. One of the soldiers stopped to attend to him.

“Don't bother,” Morlock called back. “He's dead.”

The soldier rejoined his troop. But Lathmar had already fallen behind, and anyway needed a rest. He knelt down by the servant, and found that he was still breathing.

Still, Lathmar knew almost instantly what Morlock had meant. The servant's eyes were open, but seemed to see nothing. There was a terrible sense of vacancy. The King wondered what he would see here if he were in the rapture of vision. He shut the servant's eyes, wishing he knew his name, and hurried on to keep up with the others.

They ran a twisting path right through the body of Ambrose, dead-but-breathing bodies of castle servants and Royal Legionaries littering the hallways.

The King began to see red. How had they done it? He demanded of himself over and over, but there was no answer. Had the intruders somehow killed everyone in Ambrose? Clearly not—they themselves were still alive. The King guessed that they had killed everyone in their path on the way in, and were taking the same path out.

That path, Lathmar realized, must lead to the Lonegate. They were headed away from the City Gate, and they were too far away from the Thorngate. Then, Morlock had said something…. It didn't matter. What did matter was: Lathmar knew of a secret passage that led almost straight there. If he took it, he might catch up with the Ambrosii (now out of sight in the corridor ahead).

On his next chance he swung left and found an entrance to the passage he wanted. Then he sprinted and walked as fast as he could until he reached the corridor outside the inner guardhouse on the Lonegate bridge.

He poked his head out, but there was no one in the hallway. He stepped out, breathing heavily, and went up the hall toward the inner guardhouse, wondering if he had missed everybody. Then he heard the tramp of many booted feet behind him in the corridor.

The King gulped. He wondered if, rather than missing everybody, he had beaten everybody to the goal. That was extremely inconvenient, since it meant that his enemies were between him and his defenders. He glanced up the hallway, but decided he was too far from the entrance to the secret passages, and ducked instead into the guardhouse. Royal soldiers lay scattered about the floor like dolls, dead but breathing. He ground his teeth, but there was nothing he could do for them. He ran up the stairway to the upper level, hoping the Protector's Men wouldn't trouble with it, but simply rush past toward the bridge and escape.

At first he thought his plan had worked. Steng and the Protector's Men burst into the guardhouse, and began to stream out toward the bridge. Then they began to shout and scream, and there were other noises the King couldn't understand. Drawn by an irresistible curiosity, he crept toward one of the bowslits in the chamber wall. Peering through, he saw a black charger was rearing up in the middle of the bridge, deftly kicking a Protector's Man with his right front hoof. The bodies of others were scattered around the bridge's wooden surface.

The remaining men of the squad and Steng stumbled back into the lower chamber of the guardhouse.

“What do we do now?” one screamed.

“We go upstairs and fill that damn horse with arrows,” said Steng's voice.

The King glanced around frantically, but the place wasn't designed with any convenient nooks for hiding. He sat down on a stool and breathed deeply and calmly. A shred of a tactic occurred to him. It was unlikely to work, but the thought pressed itself on him with peculiar urgency.

Steng and a few Protector's Men appeared at the head of the stairway and paused, gaping, as they recognized him sitting there.

“But we left you back there!” Steng gasped.

“There are many of us,” the King said carelessly. “Didn't you know?”

There was no way he
could
have known it, since it was what Wyrth would have delicately called “a damn lie,” but the bit of misinformation seemed to impress Steng very deeply. His eyes grew round and he took a step backwards.

The King turned his head to one side and said, “Ah! There come Ambrosia and Morlock now—I assess their talic halos,” he said, lying wildly but (he hoped) plausibly.

The Protector's Men vanished from the stairwell. Steng paused for a moment and met the King's eye. His face looked puzzled.

“You could try to take me by yourself,” the King offered. “It would be easy—if I were who I seem to be, and if I were truly alone.”

That was enough. Steng fled also down the stairs. Peering through the bowslits, the King saw him follow the Protector's Men over the side of the bridge into the green water of the Tilion.

He dashed down the stairs and out toward the bridge. He paused where the stone gave way to wood. The Protector's Men and Steng were floundering downstream, nearly around the bend.

The black horse looked at him with a silvery eye. He felt no threat, but then he hadn't tried to cross the bridge yet, either.