The Sword and the Sorcerer (6 page)

Cromwell was smirking. After he had made so many unsuccessful incursions into Richard’s rich kingdom, the jewel of the western world was finally his!

“Over a hundred thousand warriors killed in a single battle! Incredible!”

The gruff exclamation came from General Quade. And the savage glee on his rough-hewn features was that of a man who would rather spill blood than make love.

“Aye,” Malcolm concurred, pausing to swig a mouthful of wine from the goatskin flask he had pulled from his saddle. “Xusia is mighty indeed.”

“I think perhaps
too
mighty,” Cromwell replied ominously. “We have awakened a sleeping tiger . . . and who knows when a tiger will decide to devour its keeper?”

“When do we destroy him?” Malcolm asked, shuddering at the prospect of having to face the disquieting presence of the sorcerer again.

“I ordered him brought here but a while ago.”

General Quade was disturbed. Destroy Xusia? Perhaps the most powerful weapon a general could ever hope to have? “We’re going to kill the sorcerer now? But what of future battles with Richard’s soldiers?”

Cromwell looked impatiently at Quade. “There will be no more battles. Richard is finished. We have destroyed his army.”

Quade was still reluctant to lose the sorcerer. As an ally Xusia was invaluable. “But the commoners are fiercely loyal to Richard! They will rally to his aid!”

“Stop opposing me, Quade! We can deal with the rabble without the aid of an unpredictable wizard. And now is the ideal time to be rid of him. He is weak from the exercise of magic he has performed today. When I saw him last he looked like a vampire bat perishing from lack of blood.”

“Our king is right, Quade. If we wait and his powers are restored, we might never be rid of him, and he might use his sorcery against us.”

The sound of clanging chains, breastplates, swinging swords and mail distracted them. When they turned toward their tied steeds, they saw ten of Cromwell’s Black Klaw warriors approaching, pushing a man in leg irons and shackles in front of them. Cromwell instantly recognized the prisoner to be Richard. Not even the swelling bruises and smears of blood on his face could conceal those noble but detested features. Cromwell puffed up and flushed with the heat of victory.

“Richard! What a surprise!”

The mockery in his voice amused Quade and Malcolm while lifting Richard’s drooping head defiantly.

The Klaws tossed the captured king at Cromwell’s feet.

“How did you manage this?” Cromwell ecstatically addressed the Klaws.

The senior officer stepped forward, pointing to Richard. “He and a handful of knights were trying to free our prisoners. We killed the knights when they resisted and thought we had better bring the king to you, sire.”

Cromwell beamed approval. “And well you did. Now leave us.”

The Klaws walked away, heading for the sea of tents behind them.

Cromwell now stared disdainfully at the bedraggled and defeated king, who lay in a heap before his feet. “A king risking his neck for his lowly scum,” he jeered. “How noble!”

Richard glared at his tormentor. If only he had his sword and was alone with the tyrant! “If you mean to kill me, devil, do it now and be done with it!”

Cromwell crouched beside Richard and looked close into his face. Daggers gleamed in the eyes of both men. “Order your subjects to lay down their arms,” Cromwell baited, “and proclaim me king! Do that, Richard, and you and your family go free!”

Before Cromwell realized what Richard was about, the shackled king took aim and spat into Cromwell’s face.

“Dog!” Cromwell bellowed, wiping the mess off his chin and lashing the back of his hand across Richard’s face.

The slap stung terribly but it was worth it to see Richard humiliated before his men. “Free my hands, you son of a dog-faced jackal, and I’ll varnish the ground with your brains!”

Still on his knees, his face inches away from Richard’s, Cromwell dropped all pretense at civility and sneered. “At this moment, Richard, my agents are preparing to murder your family! Only by your agreeing to what I say can save them! The right words from you and—”

Before Cromwell finished the sentence, Richard lunged at him and wrestled him to the ground.

“You tyrant! You scum! You—” He stopped reaching for Cromwell’s throat at the flash of a dagger in Quade’s hand.

“Die, Richard!”

“Not yet!” Cromwell screamed.

But Quade’s four inches of blade was already plunging through Richard’s throat with the ease of a knife going through butter.

Richard toppled off Cromwell’s chest and fell to the ground, a fountain of blood gushing from his neck.

Cromwell jumped to his feet and violently shook Quade. “Jackass! You killed him too soon! I had plans for him!”

“Cromwell—look!”

It was Malcolm, tilting his chin in the direction of Xusia, who dragged his bent figure towards them. Cromwell released Quade’s shoulders, used one booted foot to roll the lifeless body of Richard over the edge of the cliff, and faced the exhausted sorcerer.

In his voluminous black robes and cowl Xusia’s wasted form seemed lost. And the sluggish movements of his whole being reaffirmed how debilitating his work in Cromwell’s behalf had been. Even the gleaming intensity of his reptilian eyes had faded, leaving opaque orbs, swiveling laboriously.

Cromwell vibrated with grisly excitement. The time to scotch the snake was when he was weak, not when he was in full striking force.

“Thou hast sent for me?”

Xusia’s voice was funereal, hoarse, in keeping with his deathlike appearance.

“Behold our hero!” Cromwell mocked.

“Get to the point, king! I’m weary from labors in your behalf!”

Swiftly and stealthily was the way to catapult this half-human, half-ghoulish creature into eternity. Using his cloak to conceal the action, Cromwell deftly unsheathed his dagger and held it hidden at his side.

“Weary you are, sorcerer? Then you should rest—forever!”

Bemused and befogged with tiredness, Xusia did not see the knife but felt it ripping open his belly. “Oh treachery most foul!” he shrieked, reeling backwards as he tried to clamp the eruption of blood with both hands over the wound. Before he could cry out again the scoundrel Quade drew his sword and sliced him across the back and chest. Dizziness blinded him but he felt the cruel shove and kick from someone and a darkness darker than the darkest night enveloped him as he careened headlong over the cliff.

Cromwell, Quade and Malcolm stood watching Xusia soar downward until he hit the ground, hundreds of feet below. Surely every bone in his body must have been broken upon impact.

Cromwell looked over his shoulder at the fading Klaws. “Several of you fetch the sorcerer’s body below!”

The cadre of soldiers heard his booming command and immediately started running down a twisting path that led to the bottom of the cliff.

“Well, that’s that,” Quade said, sorry to have lost so potent a weapon as Xusia.

“Not quite,” Cromwell hissed, pushing the general also over the cliff. Quade’s trailing scream sounded like a falling meteorite.

“He was a coarse man,” said Malcolm.

“His breath always bothered me,” Cromwell quipped. “But his willfulness and covetous looks at my crown bothered me even more.”

The Klaws who had been ordered to recover Xusia’s smashed body used the vulture hovering in the sky as a beacon to where the sorcerer lay.

“We should have brought a shovel and bag,” one of the soldiers remarked. “Surely after that fall the sorcerer will be more mush than solid.”

“Look!” Another Klaw pointed to the vulture they had been following and who was now flying away from the site where they estimated Xusia lay. “First time I ever saw one of those scavengers fly away from a waiting dinner.”

When the Klaws arrived at the spot where they expected to see the repulsive remains of Xusia they froze in their tracks.

The sorcerer was gone.

In the clean white sand was a bloody outline of where a man had recently lain—but there was no sign of Xusia anywhere. Nor were there any footprints to indicate that someone had retrieved Xusia’s body before they could.

A chill went through the soldiers as they looked questioningly from one to the other. Finally the senior officer articulated what was on all of their minds.

“Black sorcery!”

SIX

t precisely the moment that a knife sliced through King Richard’s throat, a drawbridge at a secret castle exit fell over the moat surrounding the castle. The next moment four robed figures galloped across it into the still breaking day, headed for the green-gold cool lushness of the forest in the distance.

The moment the solemn riders touched the other side of the moat two guards rushed out of the castle to wrench the creaky drawbridge in place.

“God save the queen and her brood!” one of the guards exclaimed, watching the riders fade across the plain to the forest.

“And blessed she is to have General Karak at her side to protect her!”

For Talon a presentiment of doom seemed to thump in time with the horses’ hoofs. Ever since his mother had awakened him, Natalia, and his younger brother in the middle of the night—telling them that the castle was soon to be besieged and they were to join their father—Talon sensed a danger other than the one Cromwell’s troops posed. And when he discovered that Karak was leading them in this early morning flight, Talon grew more apprehensive.

Although Karak had always been respectful towards him, and he had never heard the king disparage him, there was something about Karak’s cold marble features and sparseness of speech that made him feel uneasy around the general. And now this same inscrutable person was bringing them to the king. Surely his father would never entrust their lives to a man he didn’t have absolute confidence in. And yet—

Talon’s snorting steed vaulted a racing ford, the impact on landing jogging him back to the reality of where they were.

For several hours they had ridden hard through the forest and streams galloping for long stretches but walking the horses through the thickets. The sunlight spilled through the leafy trees and giant foliage like a steady rainfall of gold coins. He could hear the rush of the river nearby. He knew the river and this whole forest as well as he knew the streets of Elysium. His father had taken him to hunt deer and boar here many times. If Talon had to he could spend days in the dense forest and not get lost.

“Soon, Karak?” his mother asked, her soft, silvery voice tarnished with worry.

“Ay, my queen. The river is just beyond that large grove of trees.”

“I’m hungry!” Natalia whined, sitting in front of the queen in the saddle.

“Stop being a baby!” Henry chided, trying to sound grown-up. “Soon we’ll see Father and then we’ll all eat.”

The queen beamed love at her nine-year-old son. So tender of years and yet already so responsible and stout of heart!

Talon deliberately lagged behind the others. That way he could be sure no one from the rear could harm the queen, Natalia, or Henry. This position also enabled him to watch Karak’s every move—just in case his feelings about him were correct.

The low overhanging branches and tangles of bushes forced them to thread slowly through the forest now. And the crunch of twigs and decaying leaves under the horses’ hoofs sounded like popping and crackling fire. Except for these noises and the chirping of birds and the clicking of crickets, the air was charged with an electric stillness.

Suddenly they entered a clearing and there, no more than two hundred yards away, was the leap and flash of the river. Karak brought the party to a halt. The horses shook their huge heads and snorted in appreciation of the rest.

They were on a bluff overlooking the riverbank, where a small ketch was moored, guarded by what appeared to be two of the king’s men.

As Karak dismounted he touched the handle of the sword hanging at his side and Talon instinctively gripped the handle of his newly acquired tri-bladed sword.

Karak approached the queen and her daughter, who were sitting astride a handsome white stallion. Without asking permission, he lifted Natalia out of the saddle and placed her on the ground.

“The king awaits you on the boat, your highness. Leave the horses with me.”

He offered the queen his hand, the pasty, strained smile on his face bothering Talon more than his usually unreadable face.

Malia took Karak’s hand and allowed him to help her to the ground, her long billowy robes and cape getting in the way.

“You’re so kind, General,” the queen said, affectionately touching his arm. She glanced in the direction of the boat. “My heart thrills at the prospect of being with the king again!”

Henry jumped out of the saddle on his own and with no small flourish of manly independence.

The queen, Henry, and Natalia walked a few yards towards the river and stopped, realizing Talon was still aloft his mighty steed, tense, expectant, battle-ready. Karak approached the young prince and offered him his hand too. Talon observed Karak’s flinching jaw muscles and a twitch around his eyes. He had never seen Karak this nervous and he declined Karak’s extended hand.