The Sword and the Sorcerer (19 page)

“But, sire,” he had implored the king, “they are your generals and, for such an important move, they would feel better if you personally sanctioned it. It is imperative that you preside over the conference!”

“It is imperative,” Cromwell bellowed back, swinging away for a moment from the window he had been staring through into the spreading dusk, “that you obey my orders and stop questioning my will
—if
you wish to live! Now get out!”

Machelli retreated, bowing all the way out. He knew the reason for Cromwell’s baleful state, for word of his ignominious encounter with Alana had already spread throughout the castle like wildfire. Actually he was delighted that the king had not deigned to attend the conference. With him representing the king’s wishes he could make sure his own private designs would be executed.

The moment Machelli entered the vast beam-ceilinged room he sensed the restrained anarchy in the air. The three generals sitting at the huge round table did not like the plot Cromwell was cooking but they would stir it nevertheless because they were dutiful if dull soldiers. They gloried in conceiving stratagems for an honest battle. Trickery, court intrigue and the machinations of politics were alien to them.

Machelli took a seat at the head of the table. Except for the warm glow of a single lantern on the table the chamber was dark but alive with weaving shadows.

“Where’s the king?” General Rumbolt grumbled. He was an unpolished man who had come up from the ranks and he was infamous for his bluntness and skill with a mailed fist.

“Pondering affairs of state. He has given me charge of the army until further notice.”

The generals glowered with this news. They didn’t like Machelli and made no bones at showing it. They looked upon him as an oily diplomat, not worth a candle beside a simple foot soldier.

“Let’s get on with the report, Generals.” There was no point on wasting the niceties of protocol on these uncouth louts. “What from you, General Thogan?”

The man in question had an ugly sword scar across his right cheek. “My knights will seal off the exits from the feast. No one will be able to get out.”

Machelli turned to Rumbolt again. He was sitting to his right, heavy with thought. A man spends forty years shedding pints of blood for his country and he winds up taking orders from a slimy politician. “When the signal is given, my archers will kill every person at the feast.”

Machelli looked to General Renquo to his left. The nervous tick under one eye was more fitful than ever. “You will see to it that all the bodyguards belonging to the kings and lords are dead a minute before the mass assassination begins.”

General Renquo nodded.

Machelli addressed the three men collectively. “The instant Alana gives her vow to the king—kill everyone!”

The generals exchanged incredulous looks. As distasteful as Cromwell’s gilded death-trap was to these more honest warriors, none could deny the scheme was dastardly clever. General Rumbolt was the first to break the silence that had enveloped them. And when he spoke, in spite of his personal bias against treachery of any kind, he was unable to keep the admiration for the audacity of Cromwell’s plot out of his voice. “Imagine. All the nobility of Eh-Dan plus the kings of six great empires all wiped out in one fell swoop! There’s no denying the king has genius of sorts.”

“Which is why, gentlemen,” Machelli exultantly proclaimed, “in three hours, Cromwell the King will be the most powerful man in the world!”

The three generals stared at the eelish chancellor, puzzled. Machelli’s words glorified the king but somehow he made them sound as if he were really glorifying himself.

TWENTY-ONE

he evening was as transparent and sparkling as the waters of the blue lagoon. On a perfect evening like this under normal conditions the six kings assembled in the castle garden would have enjoyed taking a stroll along the flower-lined walkways, pausing perhaps to appraise the plethora of white and pink marble statues of voluptuous nymphs, leering satyrs, and gods and goddesses of Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Babylonian origin.

But the purpose of their imperial summons to the castle was so fraught with suspicion and doubt that it spoiled their appreciation of these truly resplendent grounds.

Dressed in their lavish tunics, capes and light armor beaten from precious metals, the six kings stood together before the garden fountain, its steady plume of water shooting a good ten feet high. Forming protective wings on either side of the solemn kings—but far back enough not to overhear their conversation—were the bodyguards, dressed in the different colors of their respective nations.

“This treaty is worthless,” said King Leonidas. He was spare of build, forceful in speech and known for his quick and invariably right decisions.

While Leonidas was dour by disposition, King Charles had a penchant for seeing some degree of humor in almost any situation. “If that be so, dear Leonidas, why have you chosen to leave your well-known harem girls to journey here?”

The kings laughed mildly.

“I believe the treaty to be worthless too,” said King Ludwig, bringing them back to the gravity of the situation. “But I feel Cromwell will respect it so long as he has troubles within his own kingdom.” He was as elegant in his demeanor as he was deadly with the sword.

“You are right,” King Sancho grudgingly conceded. He was a man obsessed with having not only the last word but the first one too. “As long as Cromwell is faced with internal strife he cannot afford to alienate us. One day he might need us.”

King Anthony, a boyish-looking man in his fifties, seldom had an original idea, and when he thought he had one he glowed with excitement in telling it. “I’ve got it! How about an alliance to crush Cromwell? If he’s so weak now, it might be a good time to—”

The disapproval on Leonidas’ face dropped Anthony’s words in flight.

“Bah!” Leonidas jeered. “How many times have we tried to form alliances among ourselves and not kept them? Let’s be honest, my lords, we don’t trust Cromwell but we don’t trust each other either.”

“But the fact that Cromwell combines his wedding with the signing of the treaty is a positive sign,” King Louis interjected. “Surely the King would not stain his own wedding night with an act of treachery?”

“Taking that poor girl Alana to bed,” King Charles quipped, “will be the biggest treachery of his life!”

The kings were still laughing when Louis pointed to a tall, rapier-thin figure swiftly moving towards them.

“Careful,” the portly Louis admonished. “Here comes the snake Machelli!”

The chancellor gave this august body of men his most unctuous bow and made a grand sweep of his hand toward the courtyard entrance. “Your Royal Majesties—the feast begins! And what a sumptuous banquet of food and girls, plus an assortment of entertainments, the king has prepared for you!”

The six kings looked from one to the other and, in spite of their misgivings, they got behind the unfathomable Machelli.

“I’ve been waiting all day for this!” King Charles sarcastically quipped, evoking another round of mild laughter from the others. If Machelli heard this he acted as if he hadn’t.

The castle courtyard had been appropriated for a gargantuan feast of food, drink, song and dance, in
a
twofold celebration of the royal wedding and the signing of the peace treaty. It was gaily decorated with multicolored banners, luxuriant sprays of flowers, burning urns of incense, barrels of wine and grog, dozens of blazing torches, and a raised dais upon which four musicians filled the limpid night air with the erotic melodies of flutes, a harp and an Italian lute.

With eighteen jaded and corrupt-looking lords and barons sprawled with their whores and wives around the main table—impatiently waiting for the arrival of the kings so they could attack the overflow of food and endless flasks and bowls of wine—plus half a dozen smaller tables where the less important knights sat with their mistresses and bugger-boys, the courtyard was bursting to maximum capacity. The laughter and ribaldry was continuous but there was an underlying restlessness for the feast to start.

The plaza was square of shape and encircled by two stories of the huge, castle complex, with an entrance at each end and a massive oak door in the middle. It was through these doors that Machelli led the six kings, to the sudden blare of eight trumpeters announcing their arrival from a high balcony.

A roar of welcoming cheers went up from the guests as, to the joyous peals of the clarion trumpets, the kings marched to their special place at the head of the food-laden table. One of the first discordant notes they noticed in this festive atmosphere was the unfestive looking Black Klaws lining the second-floor balcony, which overlooked the feast and wedding area on the balcony below.

The second disquieting element in this flamboyant scene of opulence and jollity was the macabre centerpiece of the long, wide table to which Cromwell’s puppet led them. Stripped to a mere dirty loincloth was a magnificently built young man in spreadeagle position, with iron stakes driven through his palms and his feet, tied to the table. His deeply tanned body and face were drenched in perspiration, as was his coal-black hair. Blood oozed from his ankles where the ropes cut in, as well as from his hands where the pinlike stakes were lodged. His soulful blue eyes blazed with pain and rage and, were not his mouth gagged with a steel plate, surely howls and shrieks of pain and denunciation would erupt from him so loud and horrific that the noise of the revelers would be diminished.

Once again the six kings exchanged looks of grim wonder. Was this poor wretched creature in the middle of the table, whomever he might be, Cromwell’s perverse idea of entertainment?

The cheering and blare of the trumpets did not desist until the kings were seated at the table by fawning and scantily clad slave girls. “The whole thing smacks of an orgy—not a wedding and treaty celebration,” King Charles whispered to King Ludwig.

Machelli excused himself on some pretext of conferring with the king again and left.

Now that the feast was officially launched the dissipated noblemen and painted ladies fell upon the cornucopia of food with the rapacity and indifference to etiquette of common peasants who hadn’t eaten in weeks. The fact that they often had to reach across the young giant’s pilloried body to grab for the platters of roast pig, duck and beef did not seem to lessen their appetites one whit. On the contrary, the unbridled sensualists appeared to derive fiendish pleasure every time they dripped juices and gravies on his body in helping themselves.

To add to the pathetic captive’s humiliation the celebrants laughed and poked fun at him, occasionally spitting undigested morsels of food on his mammoth chest. Flushed with wine, the women and homosexuals at the table were the worst offenders, for they would joke about the size of the man’s organ, which was so clearly defined through his rags. Some of the bolder wenches reached over and groped his member or pinched one of the nipples of his swollen pectorals.

Fully engrossed now in satiating themselves with food and drink, the kings huddled as close together as the table permitted to discuss the identity and purpose of having the crucified young man at what was supposed to be a joyous occasion. King Leonidas had been eyeing the captive with the most scrutiny. He had not been able to either eat or drink in the light of the young man’s agony. Slowly he realized he recognized him.

“My God!” he declared under his breath, tilting toward King Ludwig. “Isn’t that Talon—the leader of a band of mercenaries? I once had secret cause to use him and his men.”

Ludwig’s eyes narrowed on the pilloried giant, “I did too, Leonidas. Hmmm. He certainly is big enough to be Talon. But I seem to remember some kind of a steel gauntlet on one of his hands.”

The other kings had similar experiences with Talon. They liked him. He had been as brave as he was fair about the fee he exacted for his mercenaries. What’s more, on several occasions he had done favors for them and had not charged a talent. Talon and his men had always been a good emergency squad to hold in reserve.

Leonidas rose off his pillow and whispered to the others, “I must get a closer look to be sure it’s him.”

The guests were so busy swilling wine and gorging food that no one paid attention to the spare king threading his way through the milling guests to the spreadeagled young man. When he was directly behind the head of the prisoner he looked deep into his eyes. There was no mistaking those singularly blue orbs or the unique combination of princely gentleness and savagery on those chiseled features. The light of recognition also seemed to beam in Talon’s eyes. And the longer he studied Talon’s pain-racked face the more furious the king became. To have done anything as vile as crucifying this selfless and noble free spirit was the epitome of inequities! He couldn’t and wouldn’t stand by and let Cromwell maim another inch of the good mercenary. When he thought no one was looking, Leonidas bent forward and whispered in Talon’s ear, “Have courage! You are not without friends here!”

He returned to the table. “It’s him!” he said, sotto voce.