Knight's Shadow (3 page)

Hells. We never should have stayed in the village. I know they were hoping I would get better rather than worse – so was I, but you don’t need to be a grand military strategist to know that when you’re fighting a force fifty times your size you don’t stay in one place too long.

As I ran through the mist, filled with ever-growing anger and frustration, I tripped over a body on the ground. As I caught myself, I looked down and through the smoke I saw the still-bleeding corpse of a young girl in a bright blue dress, her arms crossed over her face as if she were still cowering from the blow that had already killed her.

Chapter Three

The Dead Girl

The harsh sound of my own ragged breath filled my ears as I stood over the girl’s body, trying to steel myself for what I was about to see. S
aint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears, please, no, not now . . . Let it not be her
. I knelt down and prised the girl’s arms away from her face.

As I forced the arm aside, I saw the child’s wide eyes, her mouth frozen in a distorted mixture of fear and agony from the blow of the blade that had cut so deeply into her skull, the blood seeping from the wound staining red hair to a deeper crimson.

Red hair
.

Thank the Saints. This girl had curly red hair, not the straight, mostly brown tresses that Aline had inherited from her father. The rapture of unexpected relief soon turned to a grinding, sickening guilt. This girl whom I had so easily consigned to irrelevance had done nothing – less than nothing – to deserve this end, this way, alone. When the blade had come for her, had she cried out for her mother, or her father?

A choking scream reached my ears and I turned to see a figure running towards me, the nightmist clinging to his outstretched arms. It was one of the village men – Bannis? Baris? All I could remember was that he grew barley in a small field and made beer with it. The locals liked it.

‘Celeste!’ he screamed, ignoring my swords and pushing me out of the way. He fell to his knees and cradled the girl in his arms. ‘I told her to stay in the mountains!’ he cried. ‘I
told
her . . . I went back but she was gone – she must’ve followed me. You—! This is because of you and your damned Greatcoats . . . you damned . . . damned . . .
Trattari
!’ He sobbed as he yelled at me then, accusing me of terrible crimes, saying the things a man says when his child is dead and he needs someone to blame. I wanted to shout right back at him: to scream at him that if he and his thrice-damned mates hadn’t betrayed us, his child would have had a chance, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so because he was right, in a way: had we not been here, he wouldn’t have had to betray us, and maybe then none of this would have happened.

On the other hand, this is Tristia.

I clenched my hands tightly around the grips of my rapiers. Grief passes faster than it should when there are still enemies in the field, and rage provides its own kind of clarity. I would find Trin and make her pay for this: not just for the men, women and children dying in villages and towns across the Duchy of Pulnam as she kept up pressure on Duke Erris to swear his support for her, but for the murder of Lord Tremondi, and most of all for what she was trying to do to Aline.

The sounds of steel-on-steel broke through the mist and guilt gave way to fear.
Move
, I told myself.
Don’t sit here wallowing. Aline is out there, alone, waiting for you to find her
. I ran towards the noises in the mist.
I will find her
, I promised myself. Aline’s a smart girl and she can be brave when she needs to be – hadn’t we survived together for nearly the entire Blood Week in Rijou before we’d been caught? She was hiding now, I was sure of it. She’d’ve found a place to wait for me, and now I would find her before Trin’s men did and I would pick her up and get to my horse and take her fast and far from this place. The daughter of my King wouldn’t die because of me.

*

I found Brasti some fifty yards away, near one of the village’s two wells, nursing his hand while sitting on the corpse of his opponent’s body, which was lying face down in the mud.

‘The son of a bitch got me,’ he said, showing me a wound barely deeper than a shaving cut.

‘You’ll live,’ I said. ‘Get up.’

‘It’s my hand, Falcio,’ Brasti complained, rising to his feet. ‘I’m an archer, not a swordsman. My art requires finesse and skill; it’s not just swinging a pointy bar of metal around like a doddering old man waving a stick.’

‘Remind me to kiss it better for you later,’ I said, hauling him up by the shoulder.

We took off at a run and headed into the mist, ignoring the bodies of villagers, Greatcoats and Trin’s warriors littering the ground. There was still no sign of Aline, so I gave a short prayer to Saint Birgid-who-weeps-rivers that one of ours had found her.

‘Where’s Kest?’ I asked suddenly.

‘I’m not sure. He took off after some spectacularly big armoured bastard who’d just made short work of two of the Tailor’s Greatcoats. I told him we needed to stick together but he started glowing red and ignored me.’ Brasti’s expression became grim. ‘He’s still doing it, Falcio. He just—’

‘I know,’ I said. Ever since Kest had defeated Caveil-whose-blade-cuts-water and taken on the mantle of the Saint of Swords, something had changed in him. Whenever we got into trouble he went straight for the strongest fighter,
only
the strongest fighter, as if compulsion had overtaken reason.

‘Falcio, we need a plan. We don’t know how many of Trin’s men there are here. They could outnumber us ten to one, for all we know – and they’re wearing armour.’

There was something shockingly unsettling about the fact that Brasti Goodbow, a man who’d never met a plan he fully understood, never mind liked, was the one reminding me we needed a strategy. But he was right: as Greatcoats we were trained for duelling, not facing armies, and the dark grey cloth Trin’s Knights were wearing combined with the nightmist made it even harder to find the weak spots in their armour. We needed an advantage: a trick that could surprise them when the moment came . . .

‘Brasti, I need you to get Intemperance and get up to the rooftops.’

‘That won’t work. It might be clear up there but I can’t make out friend from foe in the mists – I’m just as likely to hit one of ours as one of theirs. Why can’t they run around with their armour all shiny like they usually do?’

I reached inside my coat to a tiny pocket – one of the dozens that held a Greatcoat’s tools and tricks – and found three pieces of brittle amberglow. ‘Leave that to me,’ I said. ‘You just make sure you’ve got those bloody long ironwood arrows of yours and get up top.’

‘Fine, but don’t blame me if I end up shooting you by mistake,’ he said, and turned to run back the way we’d come, towards the centre of the village.

I resumed my search for Aline, and a few moments later the mist shifted again and a figure appeared in front of me: a woman with dark hair, too tall to be Aline. She was looking off to the side and I could make out the elegant, sensuous lines of a face for which most men would do just about anything.

Trin
.

Hate and fear mixed inside me like the ingredients of nightmist, filling me with swirling desire. I tightened my grip on my rapiers.
She hasn’t seen me. She hasn’t even drawn her sword
. Part of me wanted to call out her name, to hear it drip from my lips, to see her face as I finally put an end to her. But I kept silent. Capturing Trin would have given us a huge strategic victory but if I challenged her or tried to take her alive there was too great a chance of her men being close enough to hear me and I couldn’t risk a dozen Knights swarming over me before I’d dealt with their mistress. Brilliant heroics are nice, but when you’re still partially paralysed and terrified a dirty win works just fine.
It won’t be assassination if I simply kill her, will it? This is a battle – we’re at war
. Even the King would have understood that. Wouldn’t he?

I let the point of my rapier drift into position and began the three steps it would take me to reach Trin and take her from this world. All the rage and frustration I’d felt these past weeks ignited inside me like a bonfire. A few seconds more and she would join her damned mother in whichever hell was reserved for those who would murder children. The skin on my face felt tight and it took a moment to realise I was smiling.

Just as I was in striking distance of her, she turned to see me. Her eyes went wide as the light glinted off my rapier, but when she saw my face the look of fear changed instantly to relief. ‘Falcio!’ she said.

I barely stopped my blade in time, stumbling to a halt and barely keeping my balance.
Valiana. It’s Valiana, you idiot!
She and Trin looked enough alike that in the fog my hunger for revenge had overtaken my senses.

‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded.
Damn you! Damn you for not being her
. ‘Get inside one of the cottages and hide before you get yourself killed.’ My rebuke was harsher than she deserved, and aimed at the wrong target.

‘I’m . . . I’m a Greatcoat now,’ she said, with as much defiance as an eighteen-year-old girl who’d never fought a duel in her life could muster. ‘I’ve got to find Aline and protect her.’

Valiana’s determination was the only thing that was truly her own. Her life as a princess had been a ruse, a cruel joke perpetrated by Duchess Patriana, devised not just to amuse herself with that cold, calculating cleverness that only the very rich and very evil find amusing, but also to hide Trin, her true daughter, in plain sight. Now Valiana had a sword in her hand and a Greatcoat made for her by the Tailor in exchange for her vow to throw herself in front of any blade coming for Aline.
And your name
, I reminded myself.
You gave her your name. She’s Valiana val Mond now and as close to a daughter as you’ll ever have.

‘I need you to get inside one of the cottages,’ I said, more gently this time. ‘I need to know that you’re safe.’

‘I swore an oath to protect her,’ Valiana replied, her voice stronger now, and more sure than she had any right to be. ‘If I die doing so, then so be it.’

I considered knocking the sword out of her hand and dragging her to safety. She’d been trained in fencing the way all sheltered nobles were: as if it were all a game, with points scored and style applauded. Out here in the real world it was a recipe for a quick death.

‘Falcio!’ she screamed.

I’ve learned over the years – often the hard way – that if the face of the person in front of you suddenly fills with terror and screams your name, it generally means something unpleasant is about to happen. I ducked even as I spun around and saw the spiked iron ball of a flail fly past the spot where my head had been an instant before. I brought my rapiers up in front of me just as the man wielding the flail prepared his second strike.

I’ve never understood the flail as a weapon: it always feels slow and cumbersome (and aptly named, as far as I’m concerned). But my enemy was quite determined to prove me wrong. His fast, precise swing sent the small spiked metal ball on the end of the chain hurtling towards me: an overhead attack this time. I sidestepped it, expecting to see it hit the ground and pull my opponent off balance, but instead my opponent used the momentum of the swing to bring the weighted ball back and straight around again, this time on a horizontal axis towards me. I’ve seen the impact of the spiked-ball end of a flail break the ribs of an armoured opponent. The bone plates in my greatcoat were strong, but so far I’d managed to avoid finding out if they could resist a flail and I didn’t think now was the time to start. I brought my right rapier up so the point was aiming straight up to the sky and, stepping back, leaned away just enough that the ball missed me but the chain wrapped around the blade of my sword. I yanked on it as hard as I could, pulling the man towards me, driving the point of my rapier into the vicinity of his armpit, where the gap in between his armour would be. My thrust missed and once again I cursed the dark grey cloth.

Valiana tried stabbing at the Knight with her sword but she didn’t have the training to deal with an armoured opponent and her light blade did little but annoy him. For my part, I hung onto his weapon arm for my life and kept stabbing my rapier as quickly as I could, trying to find that damned gap. It was hardly the kind of swordsmanship they sing about in the sagas, but most of those sagas aren’t about Greatcoats anyway. After three tries my tip found a spot between his helm and the top of his neck. He dropped the flail and fell to the ground.

Before I could enjoy a well-earned sense of relief, Valiana shouted and I turned to see a gaggle of Knights coming for us.
Hells!
I thought.
Had I been a little faster, we might have been able to escape before they found us.

Three were brandishing swords and the other two had maces. I couldn’t hope to take two opponents right now, never mind five.
Kest could have done it
, I thought. I cursed my black luck and the damned nightmist and the fact that Kest wasn’t here when I needed him. ‘Run!’ I shouted to Valiana. ‘Run and find Kest and stay with him.’

She didn’t obey but took up a guard position next to me that would have made a lovely painting in the hall of a Duke’s castle but wouldn’t be the slightest help when our enemies attacked.

‘Falcio!’ I heard Brasti call out from somewhere behind and above us. ‘Where the hells are you?’

‘I’m here,’ I yelled back.

‘I can’t see for shit. I can make out shapes but I don’t know which ones are you and which ones are the damned Knights!’

‘Too bad for you,’ one of the Knights said. He looked at Valiana. ‘Duchess Trin will find special favour for the man who brings this one back in chains.’ There was a hunger in his voice that filled my mind with images of what they would do to her.
No
, I thought,
stay here. Stay calm. You won’t win on rage alone.

An arrow whizzed through the air and very nearly clipped me in the arm before hitting the ground.

‘Did I get him?’

‘Don’t go by the sound of their voices!’ I shouted. ‘The nightmist distorts the way we hear noises.’ Somewhere in the world lives a God or a Saint who took it upon himself to invent magic. I plan on killing him some day.

‘Then how—?’

As the first Knight came for us, I reached into my pocket and found one of the pieces of amberglow. It’s a lightweight, brittle substance that glows just enough when you crush it to let you mark the spot where a piece of evidence is found. I hurled it at the Knight’s chest. At first it didn’t look like anything had happened, but a few seconds later a small spot on his clothing began to glow, almost as if it had caught fire.