The Briar King (5 page)

But these weren't smugglers or highwaymen. Lucoth had heard murders plotted before, but never that of a queen. Excitement
replacing fear, he listened as another of the men spoke.

“The queen,” he sighed. This one had a deeper voice, with some gravel in it. “Is the prophecy so clear?”

“In all ways,” the first man replied. “When
he
comes, there can be no queen of the blood in Eslen.”

“What of the daughters?” the final man asked. His accent was strange even to Lucoth, who had heard many odd ones. The town of Odhfath was at a crossroads: Take the eastern way, and you came in time to Virgenya. West lay the port at Paldh. North brought you to Eslen and finally Hansa. The south road met the Great Vitellian Way, with its colorful merchant caravans.

“The daughters may not succeed to the throne,” the second man said.

“There is movement afoot to legitimize their succession,” the first man replied. “So they must all die, of course. The king, the queen, their female issue. Only then will our plans be assured.”

“It is an important step,” the third man said reluctantly. “A step that cannot be taken back.”

The first man's voice dropped low and soft. “The Briar King wakes. The age of man is ended. If we do not step now, we will perish with the rest. That will not happen.”

“Agreed,” the second man said.

“I'm with you,” the third said. “But care must be taken. Great care. The time is coming, but it is not yet here.”

“Of course,” the first man said.

Lucoth licked his lips, wondering what reward might come from saving a queen. Or a whole royal family.

He had always dreamed of seeing the wide world and seeking his fortune in it. But he was wise enough to know that a fourteen-year-old boy who went on the road with no coin in his pocket would meet a bad end, and likely sooner than later. He had saved over the years—almost enough, he reckoned, to make a start of it.

But this—he almost saw the gold before his eyes, heaps of it. Or a barony, or the hand of a princess. All of that.

Hostler MaypCorgh wouldn't know about this, oh no. Odds were too great he'd try to blackmail the men below. That wasn't the way to do it. The way to do it was to lightfoot out of the loft, wait till tomorrow, and get a good look at the men so he could describe them. Then he'd take his earnings, buy a donkey, and set out for Eslen. There he would find an audience with Emperor William and tell him of what he had heard.

He suddenly realized the men below had gone silent, and left his imaginings to focus on them.

The first man's head moved, and though Lucoth saw no eyes through the shadows, he felt a gaze burning on him.

Which was impossible. He held his breath, waiting for the illusion to fade.

“You have a loud heart, boy,” the man said. His voice was like velvet.

Lucoth jerked into motion, but it was the motion of nightmare. He knew the rafters of the inn like he knew the inside of his palm, but somehow it seemed all alien to him now, the few yards he had to cross to find safety a distance of leagues. Still, the thinking part of his mind told him,
cross the wall, drop down. They'll have to go around, by the door; that will put them long moments behind, plenty of time for a mouse to find a hiding place in the town of his birth.

Something smacked him on the side of the face, not too hard. He wondered what they had thrown at him, but was relieved it wasn't something more deadly.

Then he understood that whatever it was, was still there, resting against his cheek. He didn't have time for that, though. He went over the wall—it did not extend into the rafters—and dropped down into the next room. The open window was there, waiting for him. He felt dizzy and tasted something strange. For some reason he wanted to gag.

Only when he had reached the street did he feel to see what was stuck to him, and then he didn't quite understand it, because it was the hilt of a dagger, which made no sense at all …

Then he realized that it
did
make sense if the blade was in
his throat. Which it was. He could feel the tip of it inside his windpipe.

Don't take it out,
he thought.
Take it out, it'll bleed …

He started running down the street, but he couldn't take his hand away from the thing in his neck, any more than he could wrap his mind around what had really happened to him.

I'll be fine,
he thought.
It must have missed my veins. I'll be fine. I'll just get old Horsecutter to take it out. He'll sew the wound. I'll be fine.

Something thumped onto the street behind him. He turned to see a man-shaped shadow.

It started toward him.

He ran.

He could feel the pulse in his neck now and something clotting in his throat. He vomited, and that brought agony that sheeted down the whole left side of his body. He stumbled a few more steps.

Saints, please, leave me be, I'll never talk,
he tried to say, but his voice was pinned inside of him by the dagger.

Then something cold punched into his back. He thought it was three times, but maybe it was four. The final touch was faint, like a kiss, and right at the base of his skull.

“Sleep tight, boy,” he heard someone say. It sounded like a saint, which made him feel a little better.

CHAPTER THREE
THE SQUIRE

NIGHT-WINGED CLOUDS RUBBED AWAY the moon, and a freezing sea wind bittered the darkness. Neil had almost no feeling in his toes or fingers. He could smell nothing but brine and hear nothing but the wind and waves savaging the shore. But he could imagine much more: the breath of the foe, somewhere out there in the night. The clash of steel that would greet the dawn. The droning dirge of the cold, restless
draugs
beneath the waves, dead yet alive, shark-toothed mouths gaping in anticipation of the meat of the living. Of Neil MeqVren's meat.

“Dawn's almost here,” his father murmured, lowering himself to lie next to Neil on the sand. “Be ready.”

“They might be anywhere,” someone else said. Neil thought it was probably Uncle Odcher.

“No. There are only two places they could have put their ships in. Here, or on the Milkstrand. We're here. They must be there.”

“They say the Weihands can march at night. That they can see in the dark, like the trolls they worship.”

“They can't march at night any better than we can,” Neil's father said. “If they aren't on their ships, they're doing exactly what we're doing—waiting for the sun.”

“I don't care what they can do,” another voice muttered. “They never reckoned on meeting the men of clan MeqVren.”

What's left of us,
Neil thought. He had counted twelve, last time the sun went down. Twelve. The morning before, they had been thirty.

He was rubbing his hands to try to warm them when a fist closed over his fingers. “You ready, son?” his father whispered.

“Yeah, Fah.” He couldn't see his face, but what he heard in the voice made his scalp prickle.

“I shouldn't have brought you on this one.”

“I been to war before, Fah.”

“Yes. And proud I've been of you. No MeqVren—nor no man of no clan I've ever heard tell of—ever killed his first foe when he had only eleven winters, and that's been a year gone for you, now. But this—”

“We going to lose, Fah? We going to die?”

“If that's the way the saints want it, damn them.” He cleared his throat and sang, very softly,

Neil shivered, for that was part of the MeqVren death-chant.

But his father clapped him on the arm. “I don't intend for us to die, lad. We'll catch 'em off guard.”

“Then the lord baron will pay us a pretty penny, eh, Fah?”

“It's his war. He's a man of his word. Now let's be still, for here comes the dawn.”

The sky lightened. The twelve men of the MeqVren clan crouched behind the dune, motionless. Neil wondered what the baron or the Weihands might want with this wretched island anyway, with it so rocky and hard it wouldn't support even sheep. He turned to look back at the sea. The sky had lightened enough so he could make out the prow of their longship, a horse-head silhouette.

And down the beach, another. And another.

But the MeqVrens had only one ship.

He tugged at his father's sleeve.

“Fah—”

That's when something hissed along and thumped into his father's back, and his father sighed strangely. That's when the shouting started, and the MeqVrens rose to their feet in a
shower of arrows, to face three times their number coming up the strand. Neil closed his eyes, then jumped up with the rest of them, his hands too cold to feel his spear, but he could see it, clutched in his hands.

Then an arrow hit him. It made the same sound as the one that had hit his father, just a little higher in pitch.

Neil jerked awake and found himself clutching his chest, two fingers below his heart, breathing as if he had just run a league. He felt like he was falling.

Where am I?

The confusion lasted only a few heartbeats, as he recognized the rocking of a ship, the furnishings of his cabin. His breathing slowed, and he felt the small puckered scar.

Eight years, but in his dreams it hadn't faded at all.

Eight years.

He sat there a few more minutes, listening to the sailors on the deck above. Rather than trust himself to sleep again, he rose to shave. He wanted to look his best today.

He stropped his razor and brought its keen edge to his cheek, then down the square lines of his chin, whisking off the stubble with sure, steady motions. He finished without a single scratch, and with the same blade he trimmed his wheat-colored hair well away from his eyes.

The Black Mary of that day on the beach faded, and his excitement grew. Today! Today he would see Thornrath!

He splashed water on his face, blinked it from his blue eyes, and went above decks.

They reached the Cape of Rovy by midafternoon and sailed with the alabaster cliffs on their left hand for another bell. There, clearing the headland, they turned into Foambreaker Bay, a wide haven in the shape of a moon two-thirds full, circumscribed on the north by the Cape of Rovy and on the south by the Craigs-Above-Ale. West was the open sea, and east, where
Saltspear
's prow now pointed, stood a marvel so awesome Neil thought his heart would crack. He almost welcomed it, if he could die with this much wonder on him.

“Saints of Sea and Thunder,” he managed weakly.

His earnest thanksgiving was all but swept off by the wind buffeting the deck of the
Saltspear
, but the old man who stood beside him, Fail de Liery, heard and bit a fierce grin into the westerly. Hair streaming behind him like a banner of smoke, Fail glanced over at Neil, and though his face was pitted, scarred, and wrinkled by threescore years of life, he still seemed somehow youthful when he chuckled.

“There she is, lad,” the elder said. “That's Thornrath. Does she measure up?”

Neil nodded his head dumbly as the cape dropped farther behind them. The eastern sky behind Thornrath was as black as coal smut, and above that darkest lens piled curtains of spume-gray clouds that broke at the meridian. But from the clear western sky, the sinking sun slanted golden light to blaze the bay and the mightiest fortress in the world against that storm-painted canvas.

“Thornrath,” he repeated. “I mean I'd heard—you'd told me—” He paused to try to understand what he was actually seeing, to understand the size.

If Foambreaker Bay was a moon two-thirds full, the entire eastern third of it—perhaps four leagues—was a wall the hue of ivory. Seven great towers of the same stone jabbed at the sky, the centermost rising to such a high sharp point it was dizzying.

As Neil watched, a man-o'-war sailed through one of six arched openings in the wall. He reckoned its masts at more than twenty yards high, and they were in no danger of touching the top of the arch. And the arch was only half as high as the wall.

“Saints!” Neil breathed. “Men built that? Not the
Echesl
?” He crooked his finger and touched his forehead, a sign against the evil of that name.

“Men built it, yes. They quarried the stone in the Eng Fear mountains, two hundred leagues upriver. It was sixty years in building they say, but now no one can come against Crotheny by sea.”

“It is a wonder,” Neil said. “Proud am I to serve that.”

“No, lad,” Fail said gently. “You don't serve a thing of stone, no matter how grand. Never that. You'll serve Crotheny, and her king, and the royal line of Dare.”

“That's what I meant,
Chever
Fail.”

“They call a knight
sir
, in the king's tongue, lad.”

“
Sir
Fail.” The word sounded awkward, as did every word in the king's tongue. It lacked music, somehow. But it was the language of his lord, and he had learned it. Practiced at it as hard as he had the sword, the lance, and the mace.

Well, almost as hard.

“
Sir
Fail,” he said again.

“And soon Sir Neil.”

“I can't believe that. How can the king knight me? It's no matter, I'll be proud to serve him, even as a footman. Just so long as I can serve him.”