Take the body and give me the rest (26 page)

‘You can’t kill
me yet. One, I have too many guards loyal to me. They might stand
by as you continue to rule, but if you kill me they will fight back
and you know it. Two, you can’t kill me until he gets here. He
wants to take what I have, not just kill me.’

‘You know so
much, sister. Well, he is coming, and your Northern friend and his
little army are going to get caught between a wall of swords and an
army five times bigger than them from behind. Then he’ll take what
you have and I will finally rule this place and become Second
Brother.’

‘He’ll kill you
too,’ she said firmly.

‘No, he won’t.
You know everything I do and so very much more.’

Chapter 29

The troop of
the Cold Death was marching at a fine pace. Stephan the General was
extremely impressed with this force. It actually filled Seth with
even more confidence. Sure, they were going to face a standing army
of double their size, but they would make it work.

Night had
fallen for the second time since they left Pellotina, and the army
was only an hour’s quick march from the Black Rock Keep. The
soldiers had dug trenches, set guards, kept fires low, kept aware,
but Seth knew that his enemies wouldn’t be leaving the safety of
the walls to come down and battle him in the field. At best, he had
to scout the woods for spies and people reporting their position.
It was clear that Lord Renton was aware of the attack; scouts had
reported back many more guards at the gate and walls, lanterns lit
all along the moat and a sense of wariness you could almost
taste.

The night
before, Seth had had a strong feeling of someone coming. He almost
felt Elizebetha’s hand in it. He knew without a doubt that someone
was coming from the east of Pellosi and he was bringing an army
five times the size of Seth’s to crush them against the walls.
Getting past the walls was the easy part, he’d said; now it was his
turn to see if he could actually deliver.

The moon was
high in the sky and he picked his path easily through the field at
the roadside. It was a sparse country. He stood in the sand, next
to a small outcrop of trees and brought his dagger from the sheath
on his left side. Rolling up his sleeve, he brought the silver
blade this time along the inside of his arm, cutting a short but
painful cut that quickly started to run and drip with dark
blood.

Seth started to
murmur to himself, then sing. It was a song he knew well, though
his lips had never sung it before. Not like the chant of his own
for the Wolvern, but something different. It was a song of longing
and human loss. In the dark night, Seth couldn’t see any thickening
of the air, but he felt a faint crackle and saw a silver line where
the rift opened in the air. With his will and thoughts focused. He
pulled through the creature that he sought.

He looked so
very different to when Seth had first seen him. Pitch black eyes,
sharp teeth, pale skin and the smell of rot and death, very much
the picture of what it was: a sea Captain drowned with a few
Pellosi arrows in his back. Seth held his blood dripping arm in
front of him and spoke softly. ‘Hallo, Captain. It’s me, Seth. Do
you remember?’

The Captain had clumsily taken Seth’s arm in his teeth and
started to suck, bite and lick the blood welling up, gold tooth
gleaming. Seth did his best not to cry out in pain as its teeth
sank deeper. ‘It’s me, Seth, do you remember? The Young
Master
who wanted a ride of
The
Fleet
?’ he asked again.

Slowly, as the
creature drank, he saw the eyes start to cloud white and then brown
human eyes appeared, his skin started to take a weathered tan and
the rancid smell of rot started to depart, locking eyes with him
while still drinking and biting. ‘Can you stop?’ Seth asked,
starting to feel faint. It stopped.

It let go of
his arm gently and stepping back actually took a breath. ‘Do you
remember me?’ Seth asked.

The Captain looked at him clearly. He appeared just as he had
on the dock a few long months ago when he had directed Seth
to
The Opulent
and
to safety.

‘I think so, lad,’ he said clearly. ‘You wanted a trip
on
The Fleet
, but
we were full up on Northern landsmen. Could have used a few more
fighters, it turns out.’ It would have been years to him; Seth had
forgotten.

‘That’s right.
How are you?’ he asked.

He started
laughing. ‘I’m dead, lad. Those Pellosi bastards killed me and a
better part of my men.’

Seth felt such
a wave of a pity for the gold-toothed Captain, who still looked
like a smuggler in the night. ‘I’m sorry you met your end.’

‘Never mind
that, now. At least I died at sea. Where am I now?’ he asked.

‘We’re in
Pellosi, and I need your help,’ Seth said.

‘I always liked
Northmen. I’ll help you; just tell me what needs doing.’

‘We’re at Black
Rock Keep. I want to get in and the gate’s shut,’ he said.

‘You and who
else is going in?’ he asked.

‘Me and my
army,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s
all very interesting, I’m sure. Fine, I’ll help you, if it means
killing some Pellosi. What do I need to do?’

‘I’ll summon
you just like now but inside the gate, and you’ll open it up for me
and the boys.’

‘What
boys?’

‘Flint, Stone,
Goldie and Grimm.’

The Captain
smiled truly this time and laughed. ‘Ha ha, my Northmen! Glad to
hear they made it out of that mess and truly. Now I’ll help you for
sure. When you’re ready, you call me. I’ll kill some Pellosi
bastards and open up the gate for you.’

Seth pulled a
thin and well-made long sword with a silver handle from behind his
back and, along with the scabbard, placed it in the Captain’s hand.
‘Here you go.’

He looked at
him and it strangely. ‘A sword?’ he asked.

‘Of course,
it’s easier than using your teeth. I’ll call you. It will be a long
time for you,’ he said.

‘All I have is
time.’ Swinging the sword back and forth, the Captain walked back
into the rift, which closed behind him.

The fire
crackled and burned low. The camp was quiet with readiness. Seth
strode in from the darkness and, seeing Dagosh, Rosen and the boys
around the campfire, he smiled in the firelight.

‘Dagosh, get
the troops ready; tonight is the night,’ he said.

Dagosh got to
his feet quickly. They had banned all spirits and wine and not
brought any with them. They had planned for a quick attack but even
so the speed of this was surprising. Dagosh spoke. ‘Of course I can
have them ready within the hour and we’ll be at the gate well
before the sun even thinks about rising. But Seth, what are we
going to do when we get there?’ he asked.

Seth spoke to
them all. ‘The gate will be opened for us.’

Rosen gasped.
‘You’ve got a man on the inside? You never said you had a man
inside!’

‘Good one,
Boss,’ said Grimm.

‘Something like
that. But that gate will be swinging in the breeze. When we hit,
most of them will be asleep. I know this is a battle, but I want
the killing to be a few as possible. A lot of these are good men.
We’ve met some. They will join our side once we get rid of Lord
Renton.’

‘I’ll ready the
men,’ said Dagosh, turning to go.

‘I’ll leave
with the boys now, you follow behind us when you’re ready. Send out
one scout when you’re within a sprint of the gate, and I’ll get
that gate down,’ Seth said. He motioned to Grimm, Goldie, Stone and
Flint, and had turned to walk into the darkness when Rosen took his
arm. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

Seth just
laughed. ‘You’d better hold back now, friend. It’s about to get
bloody.’

Just the five
Northmen again now. They walked quietly up the road from the
campsite, swords sheathed but bows drawn with arrows loosely held
in position. Ripped pieces of canvas were tied around their feet to
cut down the crunch of stones and all weapons were tied tightly to
their bodies to cut down the sound of metal on metal. Surprise was
their major weapon. Seth knew that coming in while everyone was
asleep was the only way to prevent this turning into a
slaughter.

They could see
the Keep and made their way slowly towards it. There were no scout
patrols yet, but, as they had heard, lanterns lit the moat, the
gate was up and four guards stood on outside at the gate’s
base.

‘Sorry boys, I
will have to get as close as that.’ He gestured to where the guards
were now standing in the bright lantern light, hopefully not being
watched by the guards in the turrets and towers. The Northmen were
crouched in the wooded darkness twenty strides back from the main
entrance. If they spoke too loudly, the guards would hear them.
They waited now. After a short while, Seth heard a very short and
soft whistle. He knew one of the scouts, and thus the force, was
somewhere very close by. He whistled back softly. ‘Okay, boys, show
me how good you are at this archery, then.’

All four of
them stood as quietly and quickly as they could from the wooded
protection. They still stood in the darkness but looked down the
roadway to the guards at the main gate. Arrows to strings, they
pulled back all within moments of one another and let them fly.
Seth was already running up the roadway as the first arrow hit,
then the next and the next and the last. All of them found the left
eye of the guard they were aimed at. The guards dropped to the
stone roadway much more loudly that Seth would have liked, with a
clatter of steel on stone.

Seth reached the bodies and the area across from the moat
where the bridge would descend to. A good distance to the other
side of that gate, but he tried to imagine what it looked like.
Luckily, he’d seen it with his own eyes just a short few days ago
and imagined the small guard shack, the wheel and counter weights.
Singing the song in his mind only and thinking of the Captain
of
The Fleet
again, he imagined the rift, imagined him coming through. Then
there was silence. He had no way of knowing if it had worked. As he
crouched in the lamplight next to the fallen guards, he expected a
cry to be raised at any time. All he heard was a scrap of metal on
stone from the gate and then a slight cracking as the gate started
to lower over the moat. It had worked. The Captain had done
it.

Seth looked
back into the darkness and could see his army making its way slowly
and quietly up the roadway as the gate descended at a painfully
slow pace. Dagosh had briefed each Captain and his Northmen had
already taken spots with one of the troops to make sure all went
well. The archers were the first up the road, standing in the dark,
waiting for Seth to lead them. They had changed their own long bows
to short cross bows for what was going to be close quarters
fighting. Dagosh appeared with his first troop of pikeman and gave
a short whistle from the dark. They were ready and only a very
short run into the Keep.

The gate was
now fully down, and Seth looked to see the Captain finishing the
last turns of the large wooden wheel. There were four guards on the
inside of the gate, all dead. His sword was thrust out from one’s
chest as he lay there, sticking into the air. The Captain turned
from the wheel, gave Seth a mock salute, plucking his sword from
the dead man and disappeared into the rift. Seth quickly ran back
into the darkness, finding his archers, Dagosh and his men.

‘Let’s get this done,’ Seth said. ‘Archers with me,’ he said,
drawing his broadsword to give them some armed cover. They
suddenly
heard a loud yelling and screaming from all the way up the line of
his men in the dark: a horse, the rider holding a flaming torch
came screaming. It was Rosen. His horse flew past Seth and was soon
halfway across the bridge with him screaming at the top of his
lungs, ‘Traitors at the gate, men to arms, Black Rock to
arms!’

Seth just shook
his head and started running across the bridge. So much for
surprise, he thought. He could hear the feet of the army running
across the bridge behind him. He shouted out loud and the others
carried his cry: ‘Elizebetha, Elizebetha, Elizebetha!’

Leading an army
of mercenaries was different from leading a ducal army. Before they
had made the attack, Dagosh had taken Seth aside and got him to
speak to the different troops. He told them exactly what he wanted
them to do, how to act and finally about revenge. A lot of these
former slaves had a reason to hate Lord Renton and also hate his
guards and even the people of the city. Former cruel owners and
slavers were to be found amongst the people here. He’d told them
that he need them to focus on the battle, but once they had won it
he would be glad to hear any case against the people left and would
want to know which of the guardsmen left were to be trusted.

He’d also asked
about the troop he’d be leading, the female archers. He found out
that they had separate barracks that were almost exclusively run
away pleasure slaves. Seth was stunned but Dagosh just laughed.

‘You find the
right ones, with anger and revenge in their heart and not defeat
and you’ve got a born killer’

Seth dashed up
the main street screaming, the troop of Pellosi women archers at
his back. Ten to his left and ten to his right, with the leather
armour and vambraces of their trade. He had a new deadly respect
for these kinds of troops after watching them train with the
crossbows. The weapons were built lighter for women but held large
dagger blades at the front for stabbing attacks. He held his sword
low, knowing he’d have to do most of the close quarters fighting,
and that they would protect him from a distance. Seth headed
towards the main Keep and where he knew Renton’s room to be.