The Jack of Souls (58 page)

Kogan peered over the edge. Too far down in shadow to see where they landed. “Rearguard secure, Will.” He frowned. “Wait a shake. That wasn’t using my noggin. Shoulda pumped ’em first for information!” He slapped his head, then dismissed the criticism with a wave. “Bah! That ain’t my way. The information won’t get where it was headed, and there’s an end.”

He took a wine bottle from the saddle of one of the horses, and retrieved his ax from the squat hole. From the bend he peered back at the fort. No more riders.

He took a deep draft of the wine bottle. Then took another, draining it, and tossed the bottle after its late owners. Still no riders for the rearguard. But with Bannus there, the army would not be still. To be a useful rearguard, he’d need to advance.

“Ain’t my way to wait for crumbs from the table, neither,” he said, resuming his jog. “Rearguard advancing, Will. I aim to do you such service that this time it’ll be you what owes
me
.”

Arkus’ hallowed isle.

Revenge he vowed

On Willard proud

Who bested him with guile.

—From “Bannus’s Bane,” Arkendian heroic song, late reign of Walren III

Sir Bannus

H
arric heard the
crossbows fire—two, three, four at once—and the sound of hissing bolts. None of them struck the corpse beside him or anywhere near him; they’d gone hissing down at some target near the head of the stairs to thump dully into wood or crack off the cliff.

“Run!” Caris yelled.

Harric twisted his neck to the side to see Caris crouching well behind him on the ledge, sidestepping in his direction with a quarrel-riddled shield held in both hands before her.

“Run!” she yelled. “They reload!”

A spitfire popped, and Caris dove forward to crash on her armored belly on the stone. A gout of white fire sprayed across the wall and ledge where she’d been. “Run!”

Harric ran. Five running strides—almost halfway to the fissure before someone on the tower cried, “There!”

He concentrated on placing one foot before the other on the ledge, for his legs felt so weak he feared they’d fail to respond quickly enough, and he’d stumble. Six, seven strides, and still the crossbowmen loaded their weapons. Then a bolt cracked against the wall only a handbreadth before his nose, spraying rock fragments into his mouth and eyes. He cried out in pain, blinded, and stumbled, his arm scraping along the cliff. His boot caught the stone and he fell hard to his knees. A bolt hissed by and slammed the rock above his head. He scrambled blindly on hands and knees. Tears flooded his eyes as he tried to blink out the shards.

Pounding boots behind him.

“Run!” Caris yelled, and the sound of her voice was loud in his ears. She bumped his back hard with an armored knee. He heard her grunt as a bolt hissed into a wooden
thunk
beside him. She shoved him in the back with her knee. “Run! You’re almost there!”

Before him, the blurry fissure rose like a sanctuary. He scrambled forward and threw himself on his belly, then rose again onto hollow-sounding planks. As an eye cleared enough to see he’d made it, he dove into the farthest reach of the fissure.

A flurry of bolts clattered around the mouth of the fissure. One struck wood, and one struck metal with a dull
plink
as another ricocheted around the stone walls to land beside him on the planks. Caris piled over him and crashed onto the planking. An armored knee stove a plank in two, and her leg disappeared in the hole. A spitfire splashed the entrance of the gap with burning resin. Smoke filled the chimney, but none of the fire reached where they lay.

Caris was cussing like a raftsman. Tears cleared from Harric’s eyes. He watched as she flung her crumbling shield aside and fought free of the hole in the planking. Staggering to her feet, she doffed her helmet and beat at one of her boots, which was on fire.

Harric propped himself into a sitting position and grinned around gasps for breath. “Gods leave me, that couldn’t have gone better if we’d planned it.”

Still cursing, she socked him in the arm, hard. “Yes, it could have.”

He didn’t even grunt. “Okay, maybe I deserved that.”

She socked him again, harder, and this time he winced.

“Ow. Okay, I’m sorry. You made your point.”

She pulled him up to his feet, fury contorting her pretty face. “Now it’s their turn to panic.” She strode to the edge of the gap and peeked out at the tower. No bolts answered the gesture. The men in the tower were in full flight down the ladders.

“Someone’s won the gap!” they cried. “Move! Clear out or we all die!”

Harric looked about the fissure, searching for the resin charges. The space behind the tower of rock was narrow, with a plank floor above a deep wedge of space. At the back end of the chimney stood a tall ladder that reached to a higher, deeper ledge in the cliff above the leaning tower.
The escape route
, Harric realized. And through the gap left by the broken plank he saw where the resin charges had been laid—deep in vertical drill holes in the rock. Wax-covered fuses ran up from the drill holes to a box upon the plank at his feet. He opened the box, breaking the wax seal. Inside, a simple flint wheel rested in a nest of resin and fuse ends.

Caris peered over his shoulder. “Do it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You want to blow up with it?” He indicated the ladder. “When you’re up, I’ll light it and follow.”

She hesitated, as if suspecting it might be another trick to abandon her, then evidently decided there was nowhere for him to go, and climbed the ladder. The rungs creaked under her armored weight, and the top rungs split, but she managed to put enough of her weight on her arms to keep it from breaking. Harric steadied the ladder as she reached the top and crawled over the rim of the bedrock.

Outside the fissure in the roundabout, men shouted and horses whinnied.

Bannus roared, “Cowards! Return to your posts!”

Sir Willard answered him from somewhere on the battlements. “Leave now, Bannus, and we will let you live. Take Gygon and return to the Isle of Phyrosi. This is your last chance. Your time here is done.”

“He lives!” Caris laughed. “Harric, Willard lives!”

Harric grinned. “Let’s give his words a little punch.” He dashed to the box and turned the flint wheel with his thumb. The wheel spat orange sparks into the resin, which went up in a brilliant flash that lit up the chimney like lightning and sent spots through Harric’s vision. The fire raced through the wax and disappeared down the drill holes.

“Shit!” Harric dropped the box and leapt onto the ladder. “Shit, shit, shit!” He climbed as fast as he could, his legs still sluggish from his time in the Unseen.

The sound of steel on steel from the roundabout. Men cried out in pain. “Back to your posts!” Bannus roared. “Bring me the milk boy! I will slay every coward among you!”

Two rungs from the top, the one Caris had split gave way. Harric caught himself, but the sudden jerk of his momentum sent the ladder sliding sideways, carrying him out toward the mouth of the crack and over the void.

“Harric!” Caris lunged for the ladder, but it slid out of reach.

Harric thrust himself up one more rung as it tipped, which brought him within reach of the ledge, even as the ladder tipped sideways out of the crack. Harric grabbed the rim of the cliff with one hand. Caris seized his sleeve. He had no strength to raise himself, but Caris did not let go. Grunting, she clamped her other hand on his wrist, got her knees beneath her, and hauled him over the rim of the bedrock.

Before his legs cleared the rim, a deafening concussion shook the cliff. The force of it flung Harric’s legs up and dumped him onto Caris. He scrambled off, and then belly-flopped to the edge of their ledge to see the leaning tower come loose of its moorings and descend upon the siege tower and road with a titanic boom and backwind of dust.

When the smoke cleared, the siege tower was gone, buried in a pile of boulders the size of coaches. The trio of yellow-plumed squires stood staring in disbelief, their equipment and companions—their immortal leader—quite gone. Nor could they cross that stupendous rockfall. Not for a long time. The collapse left a treacherous wall between the road and gatehouse. To pass they would need charges and toolers to rebuild the road, and by then the Blue Order would have come. By then, the Queen would send reinforcements.

The trio mounted two horses picketed on the road, and galloped away. Absurdly, one blew a silver-throated horn in sound of victory.

A cry of triumph burst from Harric’s lips. His ears rang from the blast, but he thought he heard faint shouts from the wall. Looking over, he saw Willard on the battlements with several cheering guardsmen. Brolli leapt up and down at the edge of the gatehouse, waving his long arms. Harric waved his arms back, and turned to Caris to embrace her, but she reflected none of his triumph.

“What’s wrong?” He followed her gaze. “Willard lives. He is on the battlement. Look! We beat them.”

Caris shook her head. “She’s gone,” she murmured, eyes still searching the rubble. “That woman, the one the boy was supposed to… I think she told him to be brave. I think she tried to encourage him to do what he had to do. In that horrible scene she was the only one with any guts.”

Harric bowed his head. “We took away her suffering. She’d have asked for that very thing if she’d been rescued.”

Tears streamed down Caris’s face. She nodded. “Oh, Harric, it’s happening again—the Old Ones. They’re back. The Queen has to fight them. We all have to fight them.”

“We will. We are.”

She turned to gaze down at the wall. Willard and Brolli had disappeared. “What if Brolli’s people go to war with us? What if Brolli doesn’t trust the Queen, and recommends his people go to war?”

“How could he?” He touched the side of her face and locked eyes with her. “He just saw an Old One in action, Caris. An Old One in all his twisted, mad-brained horror. Brolli may not like our queen—she may allow hanging of witches and brutal justice—but that’s nothing to what the Old Ones bring if she falls and they rise again. There’s no way Brolli will recommend war. He needs the Queen to keep the Old Ones at bay.”

A spark of a smile lit behind her eyes, as well as something else that might have been admiration. She nodded. “That makes it even more important that we get him back to his people, so he can tell them what he’s seen.”

Harric’s face grew serious. “And we’ll get the ring off.”

She dropped her eyes, then glanced up again.

“Not that I don’t want you to love me,” he added. “But you never bargained for a love charm on your finger.”

Caris’s brow furrowed. She opened her mouth to speak.

“Girl! Boy!” Willard’s voice drifted up the cliff to their resting place, startling them both.

“Lovers! Matings!” Brolli shouted. “You live, yes?”

“I’m a hairy pizzle if they both survived,” Willard growled.

Caris blushed. She stood, and Harric rose beside her. They walked to the edge of the cliff to peer down to the ledge below them, where Willard and Brolli and several beaming guardsmen stood gazing up at them. Willard had not removed his armor to climb the stairs, and his face was flushed with the effort. So were the faces of the guardsmen, who likely had helped him every step of the way in addition to carrying a ladder between them. A fat roll of ragleaf jutted from Willard’s mustachios. When he saw Harric and Caris, a flicker of relief passed behind his eyes.

Caris waved. “We’re here.”

“We did it,” said Harric.

The guardsmen let out a “
hurrah!
” in unison.

“Ha-ha!” Brolli echoed. He turned to Willard. “You are a hairy pizzle.”

Willard glared up at them. “You’re bloody well going to pay for that little stunt,” he growled. “The both of you.”

“But we’re bloody well glad for that stunt,” Brolli added. He laughed his barking laugh, and Willard smiled in spite of himself.

“Glad you made it,” Willard admitted. “I’m tired of losing squires.”

The guardsmen brought the ladder forward and propped it against the cliff so the two could climb down.

When they stood again on the ledge, Brolli pressed himself against each in turn, with a strange no-armed hug.

Willard pointed imperiously back to the stairs. Harric examined the narrow ledge and the knight’s protruding belly, which left no room for slipping past him. Willard, seeing his error, frowned. “I’ll be waiting at the foot of the stairs.”

“This is the thanks we get for destroying Sir Bannus?” said Harric, arms crossed.

Willard’s brows shot up. A cloud of ragleaf gusted from his nostrils and set his mustachios to fuming. “You didn’t destroy Sir Bannus,” he said, not unkindly. “He and Gygon leapt from the cliff to avoid the rock.” He grinned, square teeth flashing. “I thank you for that memory. But it takes more than a bad fall onto a boulder field to kill an immortal. You may rest assured that neither is terribly comfortable at this moment, but they yet live. And if it were not for the rubble now blocking the pass, we might expect them again this night.”