The Fell Sword (44 page)

Mortirmir decided after a moment that the Etruscan didn’t mean his raillery to be offensive. The social acceptance from his classmates came at a price – now he had to pay attention to what they said. He’d been distancing himself from them for so long . . .

‘After a little consideration, I’ll keep my access to Power and go work on my memory,’ he said, as if he’d really considered ridding himself of Power.

Baldesce slapped him on the back and laughed.

I really can do this
, Mortirmir thought.

‘Going to the palace today?’ Baldesce asked. It was clumsily asked, and his face told them both he knew it.

But Mortirmir was starting to like the other boy, so he shrugged. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

Mortirmir stopped and picked up Anna’s things, and carried them to the palace, where he wasted an hour waiting because the watchword had been changed. An enormous Galle stood by the gate, watching with his hands on his hips, and Mortirmir, feeling hurt and angry, locked eyes with the man.

‘Who is this little lordling?’ growled the giant to the gate guards. But he spoke in Alban, and the guards spoke only Archaic. Mortirmir thought it might be too foolish to translate.

So he bowed. ‘I’m Alban,’ he said to the giant.

‘Hah!’ said the giant. He had black hair and a nose as big as a horse. ‘I’m not, little man.’ He looked down. ‘What’s your business here? Pimp?’ He eyed the armful of woman’s clothing.

Mortirmir considered a range of responses. ‘No,’ he said sullenly. ‘I brought these for a friend.’

‘Why are you standing here, then?’ asked the giant.

‘I had the password but it has been changed, and now I’m waiting for my friend to come to the gate.’ Mortirmir looked around.

‘Who gave you the password, then?’ asked the giant with a wicked smile.

‘I did,’ said Harald Derkensun. He was obviously off-duty, and wore plain clothing, a long tunic with a fancy soldier’s belt, and a short sword. ‘He brought us food – before you came and defeated the Duke.’ Harald grinned. ‘Before the new Duke defeated the traitors,’ he corrected himself.

The black-haired giant shook his head. ‘You’re the loon who killed all the assassins and cleared the throne,’ he said. ‘And found the doctor who helped the Captain. Which is to say the Duke.’

Harald spread his hands. ‘I had help.’ He smiled. ‘And this young man fetched the doctor.’

The other man bowed. ‘I’m Ser Thomas. You are in my “above suspicion” pile, and so is your friend. Now.’ He took a playing card out of his purse. ‘Name?’

‘Morgan Mortirmir, of Harndon.’

‘Well, Master Harndon, the password is
Parthenos
and the countersign is
Athena.
Your name will be on the guardroom list.’ He nodded to both men and walked rapidly away to look into a wagon led by a pair of palace Ordinaries, fresh from the butcher’s market.

‘What an arsehole,’ Mortirmir said.

Harald shook his head. ‘I disagree. He was as courteous as he needed to be. He made no threats. And these mercenaries have made the gate much safer. Twice now they have taken spies. I think you were close to being taken yourself.’

Behind Mortirmir a vicious-looking Alban with red hair said, ‘Let’s just see your bill of lading, then, laddy,’ and a young Imperial messenger translated for him. Four men began to take the wagon apart.

‘I brought Anna’s clothes,’ Mortirmir said. In fact, he realised, anyone who looked at his bundle of faded silk would know his errand.

Harald led him into the warm darkness of the Nordikan barracks, where he was jostled repeatedly by much larger men who seemed to converse by shouting at the top of their lungs. He looked into the mess hall, where two men were rolling on the floor, locked in what appeared to be mortal combat, and he looked in wonder at the magnificent carvings – knights, dragons, wolves, irks – that festooned every beam and every wooden surface.

Anna was sitting on a bed reading by the light of a pair of glassed windows set high on the wall. As soon as she saw Mortirmir, she bounced to her feet. ‘Clothes!’ she said. She came and kissed the young man, who felt himself blushing to the tips of his fingers. Anna didn’t give a chaste kiss. Even her kiss on the cheek carried a world of meaning.

When he had told them all the news he knew – the new Duke of Thrake had moved a permanent garrison into the old naval yard and the word on the street was that he intended to build ships there – he’d gone in person to visit the University . . .

‘He’s just a barbarian,’ said Anna. ‘He won’t change anything.’

He had no classes on Friday, so he went out to the ruins of the Temple of Athena and worked on his memory palace. He walked the ruins and then he began to sketch, drawing each pillar from different angles. He worked all day, filling sixty sheets of heavy papyrus with charcoal sketches that weren’t very good – but would serve as aide-memoires, and the very act of drawing them seemed to improve his mental image of the place.

His drawing didn’t seem to disturb the middle-aged man who was sitting with his back to the easternmost column, watching the old harbour. The Temple of Athena was ideally situated to watch the old harbour – high on its own acropolis, which the history master said predated the Archaic occupation.

‘Would you care for some cider?’ Mortirmir asked the man.

‘I’m partial to cider,’ the watcher admitted. He rose, dusting off his green gown. ‘Stephan,’ he said. He drank off a cup of cider and gave Mortirmir a very good piece of bread in return, and went back to his watching.

Mortirmir was sketching the capital of his nineteenth column when he saw the man stiffen like a pointer seeing its prey.

Mortirmir followed the man’s attention to see the approach of two lines of galleys with three tall round ships between them.

He didn’t believe what he was seeing. Or rather, he was surprised to have such a very good view. His fellow students – Baldesce especially – had predicted an attack by the Etruscans, but this was somehow balder and more real than he’d expected.

The Etruscan squadron bore down on the old naval arsenal at the speed of oarsmen rowing at a regular cruising pace. The attack was unhurried, despite the lateness of the hour.

At the distance of several hundred yards, it was difficult to see exactly what had gone wrong. But suddenly the lead galley’s bow fell off course, and the next ship in line collided with it – not heavily, but hard enough to make the other man wince.

A third ship carried on, straight for the gap between the two moles that guarded the entrance to the ancient naval yard.

Even across the distance, the massive volley of arrows was visible – rising like pinpoints of red light in the sunset. The third galley in line seemed to strike a barrier.

The other ships turned away – all of them, including the first two galleys and the round ships, which had to carry on into the current of the strait and then turn almost glacially to port. But the former third ship was struck – appeared to be struck – by another massive flight of arrows. The man who had shared his cider groaned aloud at the sight.

The injured ship behaved a like a hunted whale, wallowing broadside to its tormentors on the wall, oars thrashing the water like the flukes of a wounded sea-beast, unable to muster enough speed to get clear of the merciless raking of the arrows from the sea wall.

The current pressed it closer to the land.

Something grabbed it, like the hand of God, and began to pull it inexorably into the naval yard. Mortirmir found that he was standing, fists clenched, like a man watching the end of a foot race. He didn’t even know which side he supported – although now that he had time to breathe, he decided that he sided with the city and the new Duke.

They had grappling irons set in the Etruscan galley. That’s how it was being dragged into the yard. But
potentia
played like fire and lightning in the
aether
, and even at this desitance Mortirmir was aware of the point at which the hermeticist on the galley was overcome and died.

Dark trickles had become visible where the scuppers opened. Men were dying on the oar benches, and their blood ran down the sides of the ship. Yet not a scrap of the sound carried to the ancient acropolis, and instead he heard a girl singing an Archaic song.

His companion spat angrily. ‘Idiots!’ he said aloud, and he gathered his pilgrim’s scrip and walked away, his booted feet crunching on the ancient gravel. He was still shaking his head when he walked down the ancient acropolis.

It occurred to Mortirmir, at about the moment when the middle-aged man in green vanished through a city gate, that his presence was possibly suspicious.

Tyrin, County of Arelat, South-Eastern Galle – Clarissa de Sartre

Few things are as difficult for a young adult as a retreat to the nest.

Clarissa de Sartre was a descendant of the now lost kings of Arelat. Her father was one of the greatest lords of the mountains, with four hundred knights at his back and nine great castles.

So it did not please her particularly to walk through the gates of the family’s great winter hold at Tyrin, in the relative warmth of the great highland valley of the Duria. The gates were as high as six men, and bound in iron; the road entered the castle through a massive double barbican that was viewed by the count’s neighbours as impregnable.

Clarissa had walked almost a hundred leagues through late autumn into early winter. She had huddled twice under ledges with no fire, and had spent one night in a camp of men she distrusted deeply, but they had offered her neither leers nor violence. She was filthy; she had not had her mouse-brown wool kirtle or her linens off since she escaped the nunnery. Her breath stank inside her stolen wool scarf.

She was more than a little proud of having made it home, alive and unraped. She had stolen food, and noted the places from which she had stolen.

None of the gate guards knew her. Pierro, one of her father’s hard men, patted her bottom absently as he reached into her scrip for a donation
.

He looked at her, his watery blue eyes devoid of malice. ‘A girl has some options,’ he said with a smile that reeked of garlic.

Clarissa decided that she’d reached the end of impostature. She put up a hand. There were merchants behind her – the scene was public enough. ‘I don’t think the count would approve,’ she said in her mother’s tones.

Pierro stiffened. ‘Oh, if you plan to be difficult—’ He leaned forward, the vacant eyes suddenly focused. ‘Saint Maurice! By the Virgin’s cunt, Giacopo!’ he shouted, and rang the alarm bell.

Clarissa sat amidst her mother’s ladies. Her father was wearing hunting clothes – a quilted green pourpoint in deerskin, boots that went all the way to his hip and buckled on the sides – and her mother wore the woman’s equivalent: a neat mannish cote that she rendered feminine, a pert green hat and long skirts. She wore a sword; the count wore a long knife and held a whip in his hands.

‘They told me you were
dead.
’ The count was not a dull man, but he said the words for the sixth time.

His wife, Anne, watched him carefully. ‘We are not about to declare war upon the King of Galle. However much he may be a fool.’ She was Etruscan – a cousin of the Queen of Galle. She had the long straight nose and imperious eyebrows of her line.

‘They told me you were dead,’ the count said.

‘Please stop saying that, Papa,’ Clarissa said.

He came forward suddenly and threw his arms around her. ‘Jesus and Mary, my little buttercup! We thought you were dead! And you are not! This is the best news to come to me in my life!’

Anne’s brow cleared. She joined the embrace, and the three of them sat for a while as the ladies shifted around them. Off in the yard, dogs barked. A trio of local noblemen, all dressed for the hunt, were nervously fidgeting in the doorway to the main hall.

Anne smiled at her husband, usually so reserved and now weeping.

‘My sweet, go and see to your dogs,’ she said.

He stood up from where he’d knelt by Clarissa and relinquished her hand. ‘Of course, love,’ he said. He took a handkerchief from one of Anne’s ladies and wiped his face and beamed at them all.

‘Come, gentlemen. Forgive me – it is not every day that a lost child returns.’ He bowed, his gentlemen bowed, and they were off to the yard.

‘Out,’ Anne ordered her ladies.

They fled, after pouring hippocras and providing a tray of delicacies.

Anne sat in a cushioned chair and folded her booted legs on a stool. ‘So,’ she said.

Clarissa met her eye. Her mother had always been her favourite. But they fought like cats, which was one reason her doting father had sent her to court in the first place.

Anne took her hand. ‘I have guesses, my dear. I grew up at court. But you do not seem . . . broken.’

‘The King tried to rape me,’ Clarissa said. Her voice caught on the word, but she managed to go on. ‘Uncle saved me, but then arranged that I be dismissed from court.’

Anne nodded decisively. ‘This much I have in a dozen letters from supposedly helpful
friends.
’ She sneered. ‘Your father will not let me send them poison.’

It was difficult for Clarissa to know how much to believe her mother, who spoke as if she was as bloodthirsty as some Wild creature.

Anne leaned forward. ‘We are told you attempted to seduce the King.’ Anne put a hand on her daughter’s hand and clasped it. ‘Sweeting, I am a woman. I know that these things can happen—’

‘Mama!’ Clarissa didn’t quite shriek. ‘I was playing music and he tried to throw me to the floor and put his knees between mine!’

Anne sat back and smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘He smashed my best—’

‘He is, for good or evil, the King,’ Anne said. ‘Why Galle, which should be the greatest land in all the world, has to have a line of fools as kings . . . Well, it has been discussed by greater heads than mine or yours.’ She leaned forward again and kissed her daughter. ‘I didn’t see you as much of a seducer, my love.’

Clarissa could writhe even at that. But the incident itself was still so sharp – so clear – that she ignored her mother’s words. Her mother seemed to believe that only she, Anne of Soave, had ever possessed the ability to charm men, but Clarissa steadied herself.
My mother is trying to be on my side.