The White Robe (2 page)

PART ONE

Pieces in Play

Aftermath

Gartnor crawled out from beneath the remains of his horse pushing the decapitated head from his chest and crawling over the stiffening legs which had crumpled beneath the animal when the demon’s tail had sliced through its neck. He reached the nearest body and pulled the young soldier over and then vomited as the top half rolled towards him whilst the bottom half remained where it was. There was blood everywhere, dark and thick on the black rock, pooling in cracks and crevices and splattered up the walls of the magician’s tower. He was soaked in it, mostly from the horse but a little of his own where he had cracked his head on a rock as the toppling horse had pushed him over. All around him was carnage; ripped and torn men and mutilated horses far worse than on any battlefield he had ever seen.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand smearing blood across his face as he staggered to his feet. His head swam from the blow he had received and his legs shook but at least he was alive, unlike the rest of the troop which had accompanied him and Sarrat to the magician’s tower. If it hadn’t been for Sarrat ordering him to give Maladran his horse he too would have been dead; ripped apart by the demon’s spiked tail or its sharp talons without having had the chance to pull his sword to defend himself. At the thought of his king he looked around wildly and then started to stagger from body to body searching for him. He hadn’t seen Sarrat fall so perhaps he still lived. Maladran, in the moments before he changed into a demon, might have remembered his loyalty to the king and spared him.

Gartnor turned bodies over, scaring away the carrion eaters with their graveyard feathers which had started to feast on the dead. They didn’t go far and as soon as he moved onto the next corpse they returned, picking at the torn flesh and covering their sharp talons and curved beaks with gore. When he had identified the last body and there was still no sign of Sarrat he turned his attention back to the magician’s tower standing starkly against the gathering darkness. He remembered Maladran coming out of his tower and stopping in the doorway when he saw his king waiting for him. Perhaps Sarrat had taken refuge inside when the demon attacked.

Taking care where he was putting his feet, Gartnor picked his way across the sharp black rock until he reached the closed door of the tower. He had been inside the tower several times before when he had accompanied Sarrat on his visits to the magician’s tower although most of the time he had only ever gone as far as the kitchens. Only on the day Sarrat had ripped the torc from the magician’s throat at the beginning of his long exile had he been into his private rooms and then they had left Maladran a weeping, shaking heap on the floor. The place gave him the creeps and as he reached the door he stopped to pull his courage together before he put his hand on the dark, solid wood.

As he touched the door, pain shot through his hand and arm and his mind exploded into a kaleidoscope of images; stone creatures with tusks and horns, sly hunters devouring human remains, rotting bodies, demons and dragons. Gartnor screamed and pulled his hand away from the door and fell to his knees. The last image, imprinted on his mind, was of the demon flying towards the forest with Sarrat’s body gripped in its talons.

He clutched his head and squeezed his eyes shut until the image faded and then rose unsteadily to his feet. In the distance, close to the forest edge and in line with where the demon had flown, a sly hunter called, followed by another and another. He started to run towards the call and the forest edge, stopping only once to pick up another sword from the hand of a mangled body.

The forest was dark and full of noise and tree leapers jumped out of his path as he bludgeoned his way through the undergrowth. Sky flyers shrieked as he disturbed them from their roosts in the tree tops and in the distance sly hunters called back to their pack leader. When the moon came out from behind the scudding clouds, Gartnor could see animal pathways through the forest which he followed as far as he could, tripping over tree roots and stumbling on loose stones, his breath ragged in his throat. He used his two swords to keep himself upright and to thrash at shrubs and briars that edged the narrow paths, making what he hoped would be enough noise to scare away any large predator.

To the right of the animal track he was following, the call of the sly hunters was almost continuous. As he careered forward he caught sight of the pack gathered around a tree out of the corner of his eye and he changed direction, charging through the undergrowth and screaming at the top of his voice. He had fought in a number of battles at Sarrat’s side, the most recent against Sandstrone’s desert nomads, and compared to them the sly hunters posed no threat at all; their growls and snarls just spurred him on with the need to get to his master before they did.

Before they could turn to face him he was amongst them slashing with his two swords at the lithe grey bodies as he fought his way through. Two collapsed as he cut their legs from beneath them and a third went down with a severed spine. He reached the centre of the pack and turned to face them, his back protected by the spreading everleaf the pack had been gathering around. There was no sign of a body but blood had run down the trunk of the tree and stained the roots at its foot.

Gartnor screamed something incomprehensible in fear and frustration and lashed out at the nearest animal, slicing through its jaw and sending the mutilated creature staggering back into its pack mates. The smell of blood from the freshly slaughtered sly hunters and the horse’s blood which soaked his cloak and clothes sent them into a snarling, snapping frenzy but when his sword ripped out the throat of the pack leader they quickly backed away out of sword reach. In relief he dropped the tips of his swords to the ground and relaxed his burning arms for a moment taking great gasps of breath to ease the pain in his chest and the pounding of his heart.

Bloody hellden,” he muttered to himself. “What the fuck am I going to do now?”

Around him the sly hunters snarled and paced back and forth but always just outside the reach of his swords. As long as he kept his back to the tree, his swords ready and himself awake he knew they wouldn’t attack but it had been a long day riding to Maladran’s tower from their last camp and before that, there had been endless days fighting the nomads.

He was exhausted and starting to feel the ache in every muscle as the adrenaline slowly left him. He needed a fire but dared not put his swords down to use his tinder and firestone. Instead he decided on a diversion to give him some room to move. It could only be a small one but it might give him enough time to find another way out of the dire situation he had managed to get himself into.

Carefully he propped the sword from his left hand up against his thigh where he could grab it in an instant if the pack regained its courage and attacked. He held the other sword out in front of him as far as it would reach, the tip wavering menacingly in the faces of the snarling sly hunters. With his free hand he unclipped the clasp on his cloak, pulled it from his shoulders and bundled it into a rough ball. It was still damp and stank of blood and dead horse. With a scream he took two steps forward and threw the balled up cloak as far over the heads of the sly hunter pack as he could manage. As he hoped the pack turned as one and fell on the bloody cloak, ripping it to pieces and snapping at each other over the scraps.

The diversion lasted only seconds but it was long enough for him to take another two steps forward, swap his swords for the knives at his belt and take a run at the tree. Everleafs had a smooth bark with a soft wood underneath and a hardwood heart. Their branches, two arm spans above the ground, spread wide with solid limbs more than able to take the weight of a man without breaking. This one was no exception and as Gartnor sprinted forward and leaped for the tree, he swung his arms and hands forward over his head and buried the two daggers into the trunk of the tree with all his force. It was a trick he had practiced as a boy but he had never tried it as a full grown man. His body slapped into the tree with a wallop and he gave an explosive grunt as the air left his body.

It was a desperate gamble and below him the pack snarled and snapped at his trailing legs. One of the sly hunters jumped and caught the heel of his boot so that he had to kick at it with the other leg to release the grip of the animal’s fangs. The movement loosened one of the blades buried in the bark enough to make him drop a finger’s length and making his heart skip a beat in panic. He scrambled to get some purchase with his knees and feet on the smooth bark in a desperate attempt to heave himself upwards out of the reach of the pack. As he increased his grip and started to squirm higher he looked up towards the branches he needed to reach and nearly lost his hold on the knives as a trailing hand reached down towards him.

“My Lord!” he gasped with relief as he recognised the royal signet ring on the calloused hand.

He hauled himself upwards and with a powerful heave dislodged the loose knife and grabbed the proffered hand instead. It was stone cold and slick with blood but he hung onto it whilst he pushed himself up with the other hand, every muscle straining and the sinews of his neck standing out like knotted rope. Balanced on the handle of the remaining knife he released his grip on the king’s hand, grabbed his shoulder and pulled himself into the branches where he looked into the dead eyes of his king.

Gartnor rolled over the body and propped himself up between the forks of two branches where they met the trunk and stared at Sarrat’s remains. There was no doubt that he was dead. Two holes in his chest and another in his abdomen, where the demon’s talons had snatched him from his horse and pierced him through, had bled out. His body, which had wedged in the lower branches of the tree when the demon had dropped him, was bent backwards and his head, which rested on a branch, was twisted at an unnatural angle.

The Guardcaptain swallowed a sharp lump in his throat and his vision blurred. Sarrat hadn’t been an easy man to like but he had served the king faithfully all his life and had been at his side the night he took the throne. He had always followed his orders and had done his best to protect the man but now Sarrat was gone and he was alone. Gartnor wrapped his arms around his bowed head and wept.

*

He awoke to the sun’s early rays filtering through the canopy overhead, that and the sound of some large creature moving below him. Gartnor moved slowly, every part of him aching from the previous day’s exertions and stiff from the awkward position in which he had spent the night. He didn’t recall falling asleep and counted himself lucky that he hadn’t fallen out of his perch. Next to him Sarrat’s body lay cold and unmoving and even the blood had stopped dripping from the gaping wounds. The noise of movement below him prompted him to full wakefulness and being careful not to slip from his precarious position he stretched across the prone body to part the screen of leaves so he could see how many of the sly hunters remained.

The sight of a fully saddled and bridled horse standing beneath the tree took him by surprise and he managed a grim smile. It must have been one of their own horses that had unseated its rider and bolted when Maladran transformed into the demon. The reins were broken and brambles and twigs were caught in its mane and tail but other than that it appeared unharmed. The horse was startled and threw up its head when he commanded it to stand, but apart from a nervous flicker of its ears, the horse did as it was trained to do whilst Gartnor climbed out of the tree onto its back and then onto the ground. Closer to, he could see that the horse was covered in dried lather and was missing a shoe so he guessed it must have been galloping around for half the night before coming to rest where it felt safe in the company of men.

He took the trailing reins, tied them to a bush and checked through the contents of the saddle bags which were still slung across its withers. There was hard dry travel bread, dried meat and a few wild onions that the horse’s previous owner must have gathered on their journey back from Sandstrone. There was also a half skin of wine which he gulped down greedily. It wasn’t the wine that officers drank but the harsh acid red which was issued to the fighting men.

The rough liquid hit the back of his throat and burnt his stomach like fire causing his head to swim enough to make him stagger. He put the stopper back on the skin and hung it on the saddle pommel whilst he rummaged in the other saddle bag and pulled out the change of clothing he knew would be there. The shirt was crumpled and stained red from the desert sand and the breaches stank of beer and piss but they were in a better condition than the bloody rags he wore.