The Bloody Quarrel (The Complete Edition) (26 page)

“So all those missing children?” Fallon asked, his throat almost closing off at the thought, but the men around him were relaxing as he did not react to the presence of the Fearpriest and he could sense the tension that had been there the moment he stepped through the door vanishing like the smoke from the braziers.

“Some were needed for power. Some were sacrifices,” Aidan said carelessly. “Zorva requires a symbol of dedication before he grants his power to you. Every man here has had to sacrifice one of his children to be given this wondrous power. They pretended those children were missing, when we all knew where they were. Of course, my foolish son Cavan had to get involved, running around, trying to solve what he thought was a mystery. Every time I thought I had calmed him down and convinced him to keep quiet, he did something else!”

“And then I came along to help him,” Fallon said, remembering again his horror as he turned over what he thought was Prince Swane, only to reveal Cavan’s face.

“Indeed you did. I thought you might be a problem, then I discovered you could be an asset and now you are my champion,” Aidan said with a smile on his face. “If only I had known how ruthless you could be! Kidnapping the wife and children of Prince Kemal and sending him scuttling back to Kotterman. I take it you intend to make him exchange your families for his?”

“That was the plan, yes,” Fallon admitted.

Aidan nodded approvingly. “And a good plan as well. But when were you going to tell me?”

Fallon felt the tension level in the room rise again. “Sire, I was trying to keep you out of it. I had to threaten Prince Kemal that I would skin his sons alive in front of him before he agreed to my demands. He hates me with a passion now. But I am not Gaelland. If he thought
you
were holding his family, then he would not rest until Gaelland was a smoking ruin. Instead, his vengeance is focused on me.”

Aidan clapped his hands together and pointed at Swane, then at Londegal and Meinster. “This is what I am talking about,” he exclaimed. “So many of you do not think far enough ahead. But Fallon can see through to the end of things, just as I can.”

Fallon saw the room ease further and he smiled as he planned their deaths.

“Still,” Aidan continued. “Were you really going to hand them back over to Prince Kemal in exchange for your families?”

“Of course not, sire!” Fallon said with a snort of derision. “The moment I did that, Kemal would be after my head. I would use them to keep him here in Gaelland, a hostage to his father’s good will.”

Aidan clapped his hands together. “You see?” he said to the room at large. “I told you, this is a man we need to have on our side. He understands that you have to make sacrifices to succeed. He knows you have to get blood on your hands sometimes.”

Fallon said nothing, but his eyes were watching the men around him. The Guildsmen and nobles were sheep, of no account, but the Fearpriest and Kelty were the real dangers. Take them both out, get his hands on Kelty’s shillelagh and then take the other guards out. Once he had freed Kerrin and the others, he had to find a way out as well. He could see another door at the opposite end of the chamber and wondered if that led to the corridor he had stumbled upon with Padraig and Rosaleen. That took him back into the castle kitchen garden and maybe that was a better way than back up the stairs, although stairs were easy to defend …

“Speaking of sacrifices, sire, what happened to the men who were guarding Prince Kemal’s family?” he asked.

Aidan glanced over towards Kelty, who nodded.

“They are still alive of course,” Aidan said. “A little bruised, I understand, but they should not have refused an order from a King’s man. Consider that a just punishment.”

“They were only obeying my orders,” Fallon said.

Aidan waved a hand at him. “And I understand that. Loyalty to you is important. But loyalty to me is more important. Anyway, as we are speaking of sacrifices, we come to the real reason why we are here.”

“Sire?” Fallon asked innocently but the blood was pounding in his ears now and he itched to free his knives. “Surely you cannot mean Prince Kemal’s family? If they are alive, they are a valuable weapon we can use against him. Dead, they will merely enrage him and bring an even bigger Kottermani army to our shores.”

Aidan straightened up, arms clasped behind his back and all the warmth was gone from his voice. “We no longer need such things. There is no need to bargain with Prince Kemal. He will bow down before us or he will be destroyed. The blood of these Princes, as well as Kemal’s Princess, will deliver us more power than any advantage we can wring from Kemal. Brother Nahuatl cannot wait to feel that power. I have had to prevent him from sacrificing anyone since he was captured by you and Prince Cavan, as a punishment, and he longs to feel power once more.”

“But what of my wife and my men’s families?” Fallon persisted, to cover the relief he felt at the Fearpriest not having his full power. The only thing worse than failing to wipe out these vermin would be failing and be forced to watch as Kerrin was killed. “Prince Kemal will take his revenge on them!”

Aidan shook his head. “He will give everything up when we see him again. You have not seen the true power of Zorva. Even the might of the Kottermani Empire cannot stand against it.”

“What do you want of me?” Fallon asked. He had to hear it all, then he could unleash himself on these bastards.

“I am not so foolish as to hand over my army to an Unbeliever. After all, I know you have a priestess of Aroaril among your followers. I am delighted with what you have done with training the men but I need you to show your devotion to Zorva to go any further. Of course, once you are part of my inner circle, then the rewards will be great. Whatever you want, you get. And what do you owe Aroaril? All your prayers and going to church, what have they brought you? You and your wife have lost endless children. Zorva just wants one.”

“My son Kerrin?” Fallon asked, his voice a husky whisper.

“It does not have to be him. Perhaps there is another you wish to sacrifice instead. Obviously I did not offer up one of my sons but instead a girl who was carrying my child. Do you have one like that? Kelty can fetch her for you while we watch Brother Nahuatl sacrifice the Kottermani Princess and her brats.”

“Kerrin is all I have,” Fallon said.

Aidan shrugged. “Then it must be him. But Zorva will grant you many sons, as many as you want. And they can be as strong as you like as well. Look at what has happened to my boy Swane!”

“What about Kemal’s sons, the princelings? Can I not sacrifice one of them?” Fallon asked. He looked over to where the three of them were strapped down over stone tables, eyes wide and terrified, faces pleading with him.

Aidan shook his head. “They have no blood relation to you. That is the key for Zorva and for myself. Give up something you love and we will give you everything you need.”

Fallon looked around as the Fearpriest Nahuatl drew a long knife with a curious blade with a strange sound. Instead of the expected steel blade, this knife had some sort of dark, jagged stone.

“You must use the obsidian blade,” he said, his accent grating foully on the Gaelish words.

“Obsidian?” Fallon stumbled over the strange word.

“Some type of rock. Sharp enough to shave with,” Aidan said conversationally. “It’s the strangest thing. Where the Fearpriests come from, there is no metal, so they use that. Metal is the only thing they cannot affect with their magic. That is why you were searched before you came down here and why Kelty and my other guards just have shillelaghs. He hates metal weapons.”

Fallon nodded, following Nahuatl over towards Kerrin, forcing Kelty to step back.

“You will speak the words after me, offering your soul to Zorva then, when I give you my blade, you will cut the boy’s throat,” Nahuatl said.

Fallon glanced at Kerrin, seeing his terror, the way he was trying to control his breathing, and he could take it no longer. He dropped to one knee in front of Nahuatl. The Fearpriest smelled like an old corpse and his rust-red robe was marked with bloodstains and worse.

“Rise, my friend,” the Fearpriest said with a laugh. “Zorva is not like the foul Aroaril. He does not require you to bend the knee to him. He wants to raise you up.”

Fallon kept his head bowed, then raised it and looked right into Kerrin’s eyes, seeing the tears trickling down his face, the way he was trying desperately to say something behind his gag, while thrashing in vain at his bonds. He absorbed that, used it to feed his rage, then released it.

He rose to his feet, smoothly palming the throwing knives from his boots into his hands, as he had intended all along. But he did not want to throw it at this stinking Fearpriest. Instead he rammed it into the man’s stomach, feeling it tear through the cloth and punch through the skin beneath. He twisted his wrist and ripped upwards and across, feeling the spray of hot blood spurting over his arm and the sudden release as the blade bounced off his ribs before tearing back out, followed by the horrible slithering sound as Nahuatl’s guts slid out of the terrible wound and the hideous, high-pitched scream of the Fearpriest.

Fallon turned from the stricken Fearpriest, who collapsed on the floor, fighting to pick up his intestines, looking instead at Kelty. The captain of the King’s guard raised his shillelagh up but Fallon’s arm rose and fell and the throwing knife, covered in blood, spun lazily through the air to slam into Kelty’s throat and send the burly captain crashing to the ground.

Fallon changed hands, moving the left-hand knife into his throwing arm as he turned, seeking the King. Aidan was staring at him in shock, eyes bulging and mouth opening to deliver a scream of fury. Fallon intended to stop that before it began and hurled the knife with all his hatred. But his bloody hand slipped a little on the hilt and his anger did not help his aim. Instead of driving home in the King’s throat, it slipped up and sliced the King’s cheek and ear.

Aidan howled in pain and outrage but Fallon was already moving.

The nearest brazier was but a pace away and he was there in an instant. It was a tall metal stand with a shallow dish at the top filled with red-hot coals and he grabbed it around the middle, grunted a little at the weight and swung it around as if it were a staff to his left. Red-hot coals sprayed out in a wide arc, driving back the nearest men there. A Guildsman bawled as a coal hit him in the face and then Fallon hurled the empty brazier to his right, stopping those advancing there and leaving the Count of Londegal crying out as his leg snapped from the impact.

Two more steps and Fallon picked up Kelty’s shillelagh, grabbing it out of a growing pool of crimson as Kelty choked on his own blood. Fallon reached down and ripped out the throwing knife, hastening his end.

The two guards were charging forwards, shouting war cries, while several nobles were hovering, ready to dart in and grab him if he showed any hesitation. Swane was at the back, supporting his father, screaming at the men to close in and take Fallon out.

But his fury was too big to contain. He hurled the knife, the slender blade vanishing in the eye socket of the nearest guard, then he sprang to meet the other, shillelagh already whirling around his head. He blocked one blow then punched out with one end, breaking the guard’s nose and snapping his head back, then brought the other end around in a huge blow that crushed the guard’s throat and left him choking to death on the ground.

“Get him! Drag him down!” Aidan was bellowing and the other men pressed in, a little hesitantly because they were Guildsmen and merchants and nobles, not soldiers.

There should have been more than enough of them but Fallon was not looking at numbers. Did the wolf fear a flock of sheep or the shark a school of fish? He had thought he had felt fury while confronting Kemal but that was nothing to what he felt now.

He kicked over another brazier, driving back the men on his right, then charged into the others. His shillelagh spun in his hands, propelled by a massive anger, as he waded into them. He punched the ends out, almost too fast for the eye to follow and certainly too fast for the Zorva-worshippers to stop. He pulped an eye, broke a jaw, smashed a nose and crushed testicles, leaving a trail of groaning and screaming men behind him.

The others were hanging back now, hoping another would tackle him, but he was not having that. He sprang at a pair of Guildsmen, shillelagh whirring. He broke one’s elbow, cracked the jaw of the other and then turned back to the first, driving the end of the staff deep into the plump man’s ample stomach. The Guildsman folded over, whooping out a giant scream and Fallon brought up his knee, feeling the man’s nose mash under it.

“Stop him!” Aidan roared but the men who were left were the older and more timid ones and they backed away as Fallon rampaged through the room.

A man turned to run but Fallon slammed his staff into his kidneys then, as he arched his back in agony, grabbed him by the back of the head and smashed his face into a stone pillar. Once, twice, then a third time, until his skull came apart.

The Earl of Meinster picked up a fallen shillelagh and took a swing at him but Fallon locked staves, used brute strength to spin them and flick the Earl’s away, then struck with both ends, punching them out hard to send the Earl spinning away to crash into a column and collapse to the ground. Fallon grabbed the brazier beside the column and dropped its contents onto the stunned Earl, who began howling as red-hot coals burned his face and set his hair on fire. The Earl tried to get up but Fallon slammed the brazier down repeatedly, smashing knees and elbows then dropped the brazier on to him and left him there, pinned under their weight, screaming as the coals burned him slowly to death.

That was enough for the others and they turned and raced for the doorway to the stairs back to the King’s rooms.

“Cowards! Stop him!” Aidan yelled at them but the room was filling with smoke from all the braziers Fallon had knocked over and Fallon was advancing through it, blood spattered over his face, lips drawn back from his teeth in a snarl of hatred, destroying any stragglers. There was no thought of mercy in his mind. Those trying to crawl away had the shillelagh smash into their heads and faces. The Count of Londegal tried to drag himself to safety but Fallon grabbed his head and ripped it up and back until his neck snapped.