The Traitor's Heir (15 page)

“You cannot take her,” Eamon replied, knowing how stupid it sounded. He wished that she could know he had only ever wanted to help her. If only he had done something sooner. He fixed his gaze on his captor. The man dwarfed him. “I beseech you,” he said, “let her go freely.”

Giles roared with laughter.

“Now there's a word! Beseech! You make me laugh, Lieutenant Goodman!” he said, wiping an imagined tear from his large eye. “But not enough, I'm afraid, to earn your keep.” His voice went cold. “I grant none of your requests,” he pronounced, turning his drawn sword and watching how torchlight sparked down the crimson blade. “But, in recognition of the kindness you have shown me, I will kill you before the others. Thus perish the throned's bloody Gloves!” he yelled, and struck.

Aeryn screamed. Eamon clenched his eyes shut and felt every muscle of his body tense in anticipation of the falling blow, knowing it would not shield him.

But the pain never came. What he felt instead was the weight of a warm body staggering onto him. Opening his eyes, he had the sense to catch Grahaven; Giles's blade had punctured the cadet's side. As the boy fell, Giles cruelly twisted the blade, ensuring a devastating wound. He yanked his weapon free.

Horrified, Eamon took the boy's weight. They slid down to the ground and he tried to staunch the bloody rent. How had the cadet found the strength to pull away from his captors in time to take the blow?

All Eamon knew then was hot blood round his fingers and fear that the blade would come back for him. In the awful moment that followed he saw Aeryn grabbing Giles's hand. Her lips moved to words that he could not hear. Time slowed.

Mathaiah was choking in his arms. Desperately Eamon tore off his jacket, crumpled it together in his hands and forced it down hard on the boy's side. Moments later its red was saturated with a brighter one.

“
Murderer!
” Eamon screamed.

“No less than you,” Giles replied evenly.

“This isn't the way, Giles!” Aeryn yelled, struggling to hold back the man's hand. Eamon saw that in moments Giles would shake himself free; then the blade would have nothing between it and its helpless goal. Instinct told him that he had to do something, but there was nothing to be done.

Mathaiah began coughing, his lips rimmed with blood. Eamon tried even harder to staunch the wound, but it was beyond any skill. Had the blade not been twisted there might still have been a chance… but the masked man knew his business.

Robbed of strength the boy's head lolled back and his eyes began to assume the vacant stare of death. It was plain that his spirit fought to stay in its house and also that it could not cling much longer to the threshold. Sobbing, Eamon gathered the young man against him.

But as Eamon held the dying boy, his vision changed. He saw a field, strewn with broken bodies, shattered spears, and splintered shields. A mournful wind moved over it; at its heart a man held his hands over a dying woman who was dressed in finery all covered over with a dark cloak, her arms curved protectively over her womb. Eamon knew instantly that he beheld a queen, beautiful beyond compare, from a time of long ago.

As he watched he saw the man drawing breath. Strange light shimmered about his hands – light like the blue bolt that had surrounded Aeryn in the prison. Eamon saw what the light did, and he somehow knew that he could ask it to do for him what it had done for the man he saw.

The vision faded. He saw Mathaiah's chest falling in what he knew to be a final breath. The time was now.

He hurled aside his jacket and pressed his hands to the pulsing wound. He felt raw flesh beneath his fingertips and nearly jerked back, but his nerve held. Shouts rang out around him; he knew the voice was Aeryn's and that Giles's hand was free and swooping down. But he knew, somehow, that he had the time he needed.

Gone was the pain in his back, gone the pain in his hand. It was all swallowed by the calm he had seen in the light on the battlefield. He saw it again but now it was real light, cool as a dawn breeze and with music in it like the song that had created the world. It danced before him in his mind and when he opened his eyes he saw that it danced about his hands, too. For a few seconds, it hovered; then with the surge of an ocean wave it left him and spread over Mathaiah, breaking like water across sand.

Then it was gone.

Suddenly time went at double speed. The voices over him became distinct and all the calm he had felt in the lull vanished.

With a cry Eamon flung himself over the cadet's body.

“Stop!” Aeryn screamed. “He is a King's man!”

This alone of all the powers on the earth could stop Giles's hand. Slowly, the sword sank down to his side and he gazed with contempt at his intended prey. Eamon felt his chest heaving in terror as the man paced to within a foot of him.

“He bears the throned's mark,” Giles spat, stabbing at Eamon's hand with the tip of his blade. Eamon didn't even dare to look up; he gripped Mathaiah's body feverishly tight.

“He is a King's man!” Aeryn cried again, angrily. “Don't pretend you didn't see it, Giles!”

“Prove it!” Giles snorted, kicking Eamon once for good measure. Eamon took the blow on his side. It was crushingly painful, leaving him struggling for breath.

Suddenly Aeryn's voice was at his ear. “Eamon,” she said. “Eamon, you have to get up.”

He did not know if she meant it kindly or not. He slowly lifted his head to look at her.

“I need to look at the cadet,” she said softly.

Eamon matched her gaze uncomprehendingly. She nodded once to him. He sat up, pulling ruddy hands from Mathaiah's side. He knew that there was more blood on him than should give cause to hope. But, like Aeryn, he looked.

Then he stared. What had he done? He wrung his hands as hideous uncertainty came over him. The face below him was still pale, but its eyes were open.

“Sir?” the boy whispered.

Fearing the worst, Eamon reached out and took the cadet's hand. “I'm here,” he said. “I'm sorry –”

But he could not finish. No sooner had the boy felt the thick blood on the hand that grasped his own than he sat up in terror.

“Sir, you're hurt!” he cried, and it was clear to see that, bar a stain that spelled doom for his jacket, the boy bore no wound. The blood was all on Eamon's hands.

Staggered and speechless, Eamon stared. Mathaiah saw his face, looked at the blood, and seemed suddenly to remember that it was his. He touched his side in amazement.

“Sir?” he breathed, trembling.

Eamon was no less astounded.

Suddenly Spencing screeched a damning howl across the deck: “Traitor! Snake!”

Whatever reprieve they might have won from Giles they lost in that moment.

“Bind the lieutenant and the boy,” he barked, “and take them to the boats. Kill the others. Burn the holk.”

“No!” Eamon screamed. But his voice was lost in the panic that suddenly smote every man on board. He saw cadets, ensigns, and sailors, bound though they were, leaping to their feet and hurling themselves overboard, determined to face the River rather than Giles. Most were not so lucky and many never even reached their feet.

Eamon struggled forward and reached for his sword before he remembered that he had surrendered it. He heard Mathaiah's voice calling out in warning, but it came too late. The next thing he knew was a blow that forced him to his knees, and the screaming faded away.

C
HAPTER
VII

H
e did not know how much time had passed. Unconsciousness clawed at him as he struggled to drag himself back into the world.

A face bore down on him with a vile, empty smile – a face with a burning mark on its brow more threatening than any instrument of torture. A hand reached towards his and to the flaming mark upon it. Eamon writhed to escape his tormentor and suddenly realized that it was a dream.

He shuddered and forced himself awake. Choked with nightmares, his back burnt, he drew a deep breath and opened his eyes. He found the world around him quite different from the place in which he had been held in his sleep.

To begin with he was in a bed. Warm sheets and furs lay about him and sunlight came shyly in through a shuttered window. Outside he could hear the sounds of life in a small village: grocers harping, pigs squealing, and… was there a fishmonger? His heart ached briefly at the familiar smell of scales and dirt.

He was in a small room – there was barely space in it for anything but the bed and a chair – which seemed to be in some kind of wooden lodge. Furs were neatly laid on the floor to provide further insulation. Clean clothes lay on the nearby chair: warm woollen britches and a plain shirt. He did not know where his uniform was, and didn't really care until he realized that he was naked in the bed. He soon chose not to worry about that; his back felt horribly sore and left occasional marks of blood and pus where he leant. As he took in the room he found that his hand still pulsed dully. What had happened to him?

Overwhelmed and exhausted, he sobbed.

Pieces of his memory returned. He clearly remembered the blow. After that his recollection was vague, and he had trouble distinguishing what he might have seen from where he had wandered in his troubled sleep.

He had dim memories of being dragged from the holk, struggling as much as he was able in his semi-conscious state. It was cold as he was walked down the plank to land and thrown roughly into a boat. He remembered the heat as flames licked up around the
Lark
's mast like an enormous stake, the sails tearing before turning to ash and smoke. And Aeryn's face, covered with tears, watching him as he faded in and out of consciousness. He remembered seeing stars overhead while he lay crammed in the hull of the tiny rowing boat, being periodically knocked by the rower, and a dark figure, standing at the stern of the blazing holk, watching him as the boat in which he lay was rowed into the night. But none had been left alive, not Hill or Spencing or Farlewe, or the doctor…

Grimly, Eamon tried to master himself; tears hardly befitted a grown man who languished in a perfectly furnished bedroom. He slipped carefully out of the sheets, shuddering at the sudden cold, and felt the fur at his feet. It was a luxury he had not known since his family had lived in Dunthruik. His mother had never held with putting good furs on the ground but had conceded it to his father. Eamon remembered the cold night when his mother had died, the feel of the fur about his knees as she had laid her hand over his and kissed his forehead one last time.

He dressed slowly. He was not bound or restrained in any way, though his wrists were cut where ropes had chafed him. The plain clothes felt comfortable, especially compared to the rigidity of the uniform he had lived in over the last few years. He wondered if professional clothes were intentionally tailored to be unbearable.

It was then that his memory of what had happened on the holk fully returned to him. His thoughts turned to the strange light that had filled him, and to Mathaiah whom it had covered. What had happened to the cadet? He knew that they had both been bound and taken from the holk, but what if Giles had done something terrible since then?

Unable to bear the thought he strode to the door and pulled at the handle. He turned it hard, but it would not open. Then he noticed a collection of things on the floor next to it, cast in alternating light and darkness by the window's shutters. Meticulously arranged on a plate were a small beaker, a jug of water, a loaf of bread, and some slices of cold meat and cheese.

Eamon stared at them dumbly, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. In some ways he had preferred the certain terror of his dream to this strange hospitality.

Slowly he sank down onto the furs. Only after staring at the food for long minutes did he reach out to touch it. The first bite of bread reminded him that he did not know how long it had been since he last ate. He gulped ravenously. When nothing but drops and crumbs were left he returned to the bed and wrapped himself in its covers. All he could do was listen to the noises beyond his unconventional cell door, and wait.

He had not even realized that he had fallen asleep again when the sound of the door opening wakened him. He struggled to sit up.

A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway; her thick hair was pulled back and her sleeves were rolled up as though she had just finished a morning of housework. There was a concerned look on her simple face – probably elicited, Eamon realized, by the astonished way in which he stared at her.

“Are you well, sir?” she asked.

“Yes,” Eamon replied after an uncertain pause. He supposed that he was, all considered.

“I heard shouting, you see.” The woman brushed the thought away. “I expect you were dreaming.”

“I…” Eamon frowned. He didn't remember any dreams and did not want to mention the one that he did remember. “I don't know.”

The woman bustled in and cleared the ravaged plate and beaker. Then she disappeared through the door. Eamon stared after her, wondering what to do, but a moment later she came back.

“Come,” she said. “He's to see you now.”

“He?” Eamon asked. Something about the word filled him with fear. “Who is ‘he'?”

“Stop your fussing and follow me,” the woman repeated. “There're boots under the bed. Put them on. It's too cold now to go about without them.”

Eamon quietly did as he was bid. Like all the other strange garments that he had been left, the boots fit well and soon he was following the woman from the door.

He saw that his room was one of several similar rooms in the same building. The three other doors were closed, and all four doors faced onto a small corridor. He followed his guide to the lodge's main entrance, shielding his eyes as bright sunlight blazed down on him. Stepping onto the porch he looked about.

He was in a small village, much as he had first supposed. Other buildings were made of wood and carefully thatched. There was a well and a speaking platform in the centre of the dwellings. To the east were open fields, while circling round from south to north were the eaves of a dense forest.