In the Red Lord's Reach Page 26

  Certainly, by the time they arrived, the Red Lord's men were not surprised to see them. It was nearly full dark by then, and torches were blazing to either side of the open portcullis. In that flaring light, a dozen soldiers in chain shirts and dark leather waited, their hands resting casually on the hilts of their sheathed swords.

  One of them stepped forward. "Pilgrim's bound where?" he said.

  Alaric recognized the man from the previous year, and fought an impulse to pull his hood farther over his face. No one would know him now, Kata had said, and he clenched his teeth, hoping it was true.

  "They say there's a shrine to the Pole Star in the north," Simir said easily. "Where the land of ice begins."

  The soldier eyed them. "That might be a very long walk."

  "We are not afraid of walking."

  "There are bandits along the way."

  "We have nothing to steal," said Simir.

  The soldier smiled just a trifle. "And you won't find any castles beyond here, to give you a night's hospitality."

  Simir bowed to him. "All the more reason to seek it here."

  The man nodded. "Then come inside for a meal and a decent bed. You must be weary of sleeping out in the mountains."

  Simir bowed again, and all twelve guards stepped aside to let him and his companions pass through the gate. Then they formed up into an escort for the group, with the one who had spoken leading the way.

  The torchlit courtyard was as Alaric remembered it—the low sprawling barracks on one side, a few sentries inside the gate and at other scattered posts, and many more unarmed idlers taking their ease everywhere. The central hall of the keep was the same as well, with its ancient faded tapestries, its line furniture rubbed smooth by the touch of many bodies, its flagstone floor worn in a path to the Red Lord's chair by the tread of generations. Nothing had changed, nothing.

  Except the Red Lord himself.

  Just the year before, he had sat straight and tall in that chair, and his eyes had been gray and cold as the winter sky, his voice commanding as a drum. But no longer. Now the great Red Lord slumped in his seat, as if the weight of his crimson clothing, or of his own gaunt body, were too much for him to bear. Now his eyes were rheumy, and his voice issued from a throat grown corded and thin, a voice that quavered with every word.

  "Pilgrims," he muttered, as if unsure of the meaning of the word. "Is there truly a shrine in the north? I do not recall it."

  They had knelt with their escort some half-dozen paces from the chair, and he had not given them leave to rise. On his knees, Simir said, "My lord, we have been told it is a very holy place."

  "I've heard of holy places in the south. But the north… the north, you say?"

  "Not far beyond the mountains, my lord, so we were told."

  "Beyond the mountains?" In a peevish tone, he added, "Where is he? He knows the north. Has no one called him? You laggards, call him now! We know how to punish laziness! Where is he?"

  "Here, Lord," a voice called from behind the nomads.

  Alaric felt his whole body stiffen. He knew that voice. He reached for Simir's arm and felt the tension of the muscles: he saw his own alarm mirrored in the high chief's face as it turned. He heard steps coming near, heard boots on the flagstone, and saw the quivering, torch-spawned shadow fall across Simir's body. And at last he, too, twisted round toward the unexpected presence.

  "Hello, Father," said Gilo.

  He was gaunter now, strong, new hollows showing in his cheeks, but the old familiar arrogance lingered in his eyes. He wore a tunic of the Red Lord's own crimson above his dark leather trews; he was the only other man in the room who wore that color, and he carried himself as if it meant a great deal.

  "Pilgrims," he said, and he smiled a hard, cold smile. "My lord, you know well what that betokens." His eyes flicked to the leader of the soldiers. "Seize them."

  At once the soldiers sprang to their feet, swords gliding from their scabbards. Seven of them took a nomad each by one elbow and dragged him upright. From the stone stairway at the far end of the room, half a dozen more men stepped forward, pikes at the ready, to form another circle about the prisoners.

  Gilo crossed him arms over his broad chest. "You shouldn't have waited, Father. You weren't going to get any closer to him than you are now. You see, he doesn't let travelers kiss his ring anymore, not since I told him about your plan."

  "These are the proper pilgrims, then?" the Red Lord said in his quavering, cracking voice.

  "Oh, very proper, my lord," said Gilo. He scanned the dark-stained faces. At Alaric's he paused, his eyes narrowing, and then his mouth twisted into a sneer. "I see you brought the best help you could find." He stepped closer and took hold of the minstrel's tunic at the throat. "I have a debt to pay to you, my brother."

  Alaric looked into his eyes and saw the hate there, dancing like reflected torchlight. "Have you?" he whispered. "It seems to me you've come out of it all well enough."

  With a jerk of his powerful arm, Gilo threw him to the floor. "Yes," he said, and his teeth showed for a moment, like a snarling animal's. "And you will be the first to see just how well." He looked up to the Red Lord. "This one to the tower," he said.

  Of course, thought Alaric; he doesn't know about me.

  The old man rose from his chair, his legs unsteady beneath him. With one hand, he gripped an armrest, and with the other, which shook like a storm-blown leaf, he touched his neck where the pale scar showed above his collar. The scar that Simir's knife had given him. "No," he said, his voice suddenly strong, as if all the force of his body were being focused in it. "Your father and I have an older debt between us."

  Gilo's mouth tightened for an instant, and then he stepped back, away from the prisoners. "As you will, my lord." He gestured sharply to the soldiers. "Take the big one to the tower. Carefully; he's as strong as three men."

  Three guards prodded Simir toward the stairway.

  The Red Lord eased back into his seat, his breathing heavy. "I'll go to the tower as well," he said weakly.

  "My lord…" Gilo began.

  "It will give me strength." He made a small, beckoning sign with one hand, and the two largest pikemen went to him and slid their pikes through slots beneath the seat of his chair; standing one before and one behind him, they gripped the pikes and gently hoisted the sedan thus created. As they started toward the stairway, he made another small gesture and said, in a voice barely audible, "Take the rest to the cells for now." He did not look back to see that the remaining soldiers glanced at Gilo for a confirming nod before they moved to obey.

  ****

  WHEN THE IRON-BANDED door had shut behind them, the prisoners huddled together in the farthest corner of their cell. Their only light came through a small, barred window to the corridor outside, scarcely enough to show the dimensions of the chamber. Shoulder to shoulder, with their cloaks drawn about them, their hoods up, the nomads resembled nothing so much as a huge pile of dirty laundry. No one glancing through that window could have guessed that where there had been six men huddled, now there were only five.

  The weapons they had left behind lay wrapped in leather on a night-dark mountainside. Alaric scooped the waiting bundle into his arms and, a moment later, spread it before his companions, exposing lightweight swords, unstrung bows, and quivers packed tight with arrows. When the others were all armed, he strapped his own blade to his waist, and Simir's beside it, and then he vanished once more.

  He had guessed that enough time had passed for even the Red Lord's sedan chair to reach the tower. At its summit, he recalled, was a ring of four small wedge-shaped rooms, each accessible only from its immediate neighbors—individual storerooms, for silver, gold, jewels, and ravaged human flesh. He appeared in the first, the silver chamber, ready to leave instantly if anyone were there. It was empty, save for its many chests of silver, but the sound of human voices, of shuffling things and the rustle of metal against metal, told him that people were near. And one was in shackles.

&nb
sp; He pressed himself to the nearest wall and edged quietly to the open door of the gold storeroom. Peering in, he saw no one there and flitted inside. The next door, which also stood open, led to the jewel room; it, too, was unoccupied; but standing in its farther doorway, the one that led to the final bloody chamber, was a man-at-arms. He was a pikeman, his weapon tipped back against his shoulder, its point barely clearing the lintel. His back was to Alaric. From beyond him came Simir's voice, proud and challenging. Alaric could not make out the words, and did not stay to try.

  In the cell, the men were ready. One after the other, they threw off their cloaks, and then Alaric carried each of them to the gold room, scarcely pausing for breath between trips. When all were in place, ranged on either side of the farther door, they looked to him; five pairs of eyes, five swords, awaiting his signal.

  He set his teeth together and gave a nod.

  They burst through the doorway, the last man heaving the door shut and throwing the heavy inside bolt; by then the first of them had stabbed the pikeman through the back and charged ahead. Alaric took in the scene forming beyond the last doorway—the falling man, and past him the startled guards, just turning toward their attackers; the Red Lord, his whole attention still focused on his captive; and Simir chained to the far wall, every line of his body shouting defiance. In the next instant Alaric was beside Simir, grasping the high chief about the thighs, lifting with all the strength he could muster, moving them both out, away.

  They appeared just beyond the locked door, in the gold room, and Alaric staggered as he let his burden drop. One glance told him that, in spite of his haste, Simir was whole; even the shackles had come with him, as well as a large chunk of the stone to which they were bolted. Alaric grasped a wrist cuff in each hand, moved a pace away in his own fashion, and the high chief's arms were finally free.

  As Simir slid his sword from Alaric's belt, the door made a soft noise, and the high chief leaped to one side, motioning sharply for Alaric to do the same. The heavy panel opened just wide enough for a pike head to slip through, like some strange iron viper giving challenge. Simir's hand shot out and grabbed the shank as he lunged against the door, forcing it inward.

  Alaric had raised his blade like an ax, both hands on the hilt. His palms were clammy, and the sweat poured down his face and neck and spine like a freezing rain. As Simir pushed into the jewel room, Alaric braced himself to meet anyone who might rush past the high chief's bulky frame.

  But the men beyond the door embraced Simir. They were his own.

  Only the Red Lord was alive in the final chamber—alive and still seated in his chair, with a dazed look on his face and a gag torn from his own red tunic sealing his mouth. Four of his men lay crumpled at his feet, their blood smeared darkly across the stone floor. The other—the first pikeman—was sprawled like a shadow at the threshold; one of the nomads kicked his feet aside as they all stepped back into the torture room.

  Simir stood before the master of his youth, and as he looked down into that gaunt, pale face, there was contempt in the set of the nomad chief's mouth. "It's good that you know me," he said, and with a single thrust of his blade, he pierced the Red Lord to the heart. "I wish there had been time to give you a taste of what you gave so many others," he added, wrenching the blade free and wiping the blood on his trews, "but we must not be fools." He signed to the others to follow as he started toward the door.

  They were just entering the gold room, Alaric only a step behind Simir, when they saw Gilo through the opposite doorway. And he saw them.

  He was alone, and he came to a halt as if striking some invisible barrier, his face betraying his astonishment. Then he turned abruptly and ran, shouting an alarm. Simir started after him, the others at his heels, but Gilo reached the door to the silver room, pulled the massive panel closed behind him, and turned the key before they could get there.

  " Alaric !" said Simir. " Stop him!"

  Alaric took a deep breath and leaped to the other side of the door. Gilo was already bounding down the stairs, still crying for help, and from far below there came the sound of soldiers running to meet him. Stop him, Alaric thought, and abruptly he was on the stairway, and Gilo was crashing into him. The impact bowled them over, and they fell a dozen steps, clutching each other.

  They came to rest on a narrow landing, Gilo on the bottom, his back to the cold stone. He caught Alaric's wrists, one in each hand, his grip tighter than any rawhide. His face and lips were bloodless, and all the arrogance was gone from his eyes, replaced by terror. "What are you?" he whispered hoarsely.

  "Don't you know, Gilo?" Alaric said softly. He glanced down the stairway; he could hear the soldiers climbing fast, their chain shirts jingling. He hooked a leg behind one of Gilo's knees.

  "Wait," Gilo said, his voice breaking. "Let me go. I'll leave now. You'll have the castle, the treasure. I'll never bother you again. I swear it!"

  Alaric looked hard into those wide eyes, once so full of malice. "Too late, my brother. Much too late." And with these words, he saw the old Gilo slide back into those eyes.

  Suddenly Gilo twisted, releasing his grip on Alaric's left wrist, and scrabbled for the knife sheathed at his waist. Alaric knocked his hand away from the blade and, before he could try again, swept the two of them up to the silver room. They dropped a hand-height, landing with a thump on the stone floor. Gilo froze, and Alaric used that instant of astonishment to ram a knee into his groin and roll free.

  A moment later, the nomads were crowding close, their swords making a palisade about the high chief's eldest son as he lay curled on the floor, gasping. Simir himself stood by Gilo's head. He. glanced at Alaric, just a flick of the eyes. "Never hesitate," he said, and he thrust his blade through Gilo's throat.

  Gilo made a gurgling sound, as blood frothed and spewed from the wound. It might have been any word at all, or none. Then he lay still.

  "Where's your sword?" Simir said to Alaric.

  The minstrel tore his eyes from Gilo's body. "I must have lost it on the stairs."

  They could hear the thumping of dozens of boots on the steps now, a thumping muffled by the heavy door. Simir strode to the door and threw the bolt. "They'll waste plenty of time trying to open that." He pointed toward the torture chamber with his blade. "Get yourself a weapon, and let's go elsewhere while these rooms attract so much interest."

  Alaric took a sword from one of the bodies. Its hilt was bloody, but he wiped it on his tunic. Then he wiped his own hands as well, though they seemed just as slick afterward.

  "The courtyard," Simir said to him. "Find us a shadowed place."

  Alaric nodded and was gone.

  He appeared beside the soldiers' barracks, its stone wall to his back, its overhanging wooden eaves making a pool of darkness in the torchlit yard. Immediately, he stepped deeper into that shadow. Before him, in the open space between keep and castle wall, the men who had been idling not long ago were beginning to cluster and to murmur inquiringly among themselves. Word of some disturbance in the keep had reached them, but no one seemed to know what it was. A few of them drifted toward the keep's main entrance, while others were moving uncertainly toward the barracks, where their weapons were stored.

  Alaric returned to the tower. "Thirty or forty men in the yard, but most still unarmed. I've found a good spot, though I doubt it will stay so for long."

  Simir nodded. "Take me first."

  When all of them were there, shadows among shadows, Simir pointed to the sentries at the winches for portcullis and drawbridge; they were no more than two dozen paces away. Then he gave the signal.

  Six nomad arrows took down the winch guards, while a seventh, Alaric's, its oil-soaked, cloth-bound tip lighted at the nearest torch, was shot straight into the sky. As the flaming arrow reached its zenith, a wild howling commenced in the darkness beyond the castle walls—nomad warriors rushing to the fray. Simir's party slipped from the shadows to encircle the winches, and though there were shouts from the ramparts concerning the brid
ge and the portcullis, no one seemed to notice that the men who might have done something about them were lying in the dust. Only when the first company of northerners sprinted across the bridge, rough wooden shields held above their heads against a rain of arrows, did the defenders' attention truly turn to the courtyard. As those first invaders fought their way through the guard at the gate and rushed to the winches to reinforce their comrades, the Red Lord's men ran to engage them from their posts at the base of the wall and the doorway of the keep, and those newly armed flooded from the barracks.

  Alaric moved through the chaos like a ghost, now here, now there, dodging and feinting in his own special way. He never paused to strike a mortal blow, but still he was worth a dozen men to the nomad side, in startlement, confusion, and distraction. Twice he slammed the barracks door in the faces of men about to dash out with drawn blades. Then he caught up a fallen pike and swung it wide at ankle height as he flitted from place to place across the yard, tripping soldier after soldier. By the time he lost the pike in the melee of scrambling feet and falling bodies, he had lost his new sword as well. He pulled another from a mail-shirted corpse, but his hands were now too slippery with sweat to hold it fast; a soldier, turning suddenly, struck it a powerful blow near the hilt and knocked it spinning. Alaric leaped away, his whole arm burning from the impact.

  He flattened himself against the shadowed barracks wall, his breath coming hard and fast, the pain pulsing from wrist to elbow. The confusion of the courtyard seemed to waver and blur before his eyes. Bitter bile rose in his throat, and he fought it down. He knew he mustn't stay long in one place, and with an effort, he focused his eyes on a shadow on the opposite side of the yard and moved to it. He was farther from the fighting there, and he leaned against the cold stone of the castle wall, shaking his head to clear it. He rubbed sweat from his forehead with the back of his left arm and squinted toward the winches. He could just make out Simir, taller than most of his opponents, his sword rising high for every stroke.

  Then he heard an odd sound, as of a heavy weight falling from a great height.