Warlords race for power while the final battle looms! (Swords Versus Tanks Book 4) (7 page)

"Ranulph!" She shook his shoulders. If he did not complete his confession, then she could not shrive him, and he would go to Purgatory at best, Hell at worst. She turned to Thorolf. "The grimoire! Give it to me."

She fumbled with the pages, the pounding in her ears now louder than the sounds of battle. Her cold fingers might as well have been toes for all the use they were. Finally, she levered open the
Divers Remedies
section and found
For a mortal wound
. She blinked the tears from her eyes and read the instructions.

She shuddered. If she invoked these Powers, nothing short of the life of an anchorite, walled up in a cell, would save her from damnation. A smile flitted over her lips. She probably didn’t have the patience to convert King Hjalti’s people anyway. "Bring me…" said. "Bring me the hand which caused this wound."

She tore open Ranulph’s shirt, spraying herself with his blood. The stench of gut-wound defied the sea breeze. His once-mighty chest rose and fell in tiny, quivering movements.

Nearby, swords rang. Then came the crack of blade on bone.

Shutting it all out, Maud began to chant Words she prayed she would one day forget. She dipped her finger in Ranulph’s gore and used the warm ooze to draw a pentagram around the wound. The pressure made the slit gape and dribble like a weaning infant. Ranulph’s chest was still now, any movement imperceptible. "Hurry!" she shouted, without turning her head.

Thorolf crouched down beside her. There was blood on his face, more than you’d get from a dead man’s limbs. He cradled a severed hand, not unlike her own except its calluses and the ducal ring.

The…
thing
was heavier than she’d expected. With infinite care, she arranged it over the wound, pressed her palm to its back as she had never done while her father was alive and continued her chant. The power welled through her, forcing its way into her secret places until every nook brimmed with tingling magic. It jolted down her arm. The hand squirmed, twitched and went still.

Sticky fingers fastened on her wrist.

She screamed.

Ranulph laughed and loosened his grip. His voice came out normal, and strong. "God's teeth — this must be Valhalla."

Maud glared at him. "I all but damned myself so that you can finish your confession."

Sir Ranulph sat up. Behind him, the legs of the warriors were like a stockade – the barbarians had formed a defensive ring so that she could work in safety. He drew her to him. "Then I confess that I love you Maud Clifford."

Sounds of sporadic fighting came from beyond the shield wall. Maud let Ranulph draw her down. As she squirmed across his body, the thought came to her that it was — at least theoretically — possible for them to take each other here and now, with the pebbles for a couch and the battlefield as a bedchamber.

Ranulph rolled her over. His face descended on hers. She parted her lips in expectation, strained her body against his bulk…

From beyond the shield wall came the King’s voice. "Enough!"

Ranulph rolled to his feet. "His Grace needs me."

The barbarians trailed after Ranulph, leaving Maud lying on the pebbles, skirts hiked up over her thighs. A wave lapped at her feet. "Damn them all!"

She struggled onto her knees. There was some sort of commotion in the dunes around the Royal Stand, but the beach was deserted except for the dead, and the gulls settling like flies. Nearby, a great white seabird worried at her father’s hand.

Maud let out a sob. How could she have let herself fall so easily? God was all-loving, but not all patient. She would mortify her flesh by remaining on her knees until the tide forced her to swim. Then it would be up to God whether or not she drowned.

Her position seemed somewhat uneven, though. It would be undignified to be cast sprawling by the first proper wave. She shifted her weight. Something was trapped under her right knee.

The grimoire!
Before
she mortified herself, she was going to rid herself of that damning book once and for all.

#

Somebody rubbed at Tom's wrists, forcing life back through his veins.

"Do not think to leave me now," hissed Edward. Then, louder, "Help him stand."

More hands hauled him upright. Tom found himself leaning on two Royal Knights. The other red-tabarded men stood shoulder-to-shoulder, creating a haven against the front of the Royal Stand. From beyond came the sound of a brawl in a mechanic's workshop — screams and roars interspersed with the clang of sword on sword.

Edward wrapped a cloak around Tom then kissed him hard on the lips. "You are safe now, my love."

"You’re covered in blood."

The young king grinned. "Not my own."

The sensation returned to his limbs, everything began to hurt. But so close to Edward’s safety, Tom could not afford to surrender to pain and fatigue. Ruthlessly, like at the Sandhaven Institute, he detached his mind from his body. "What’s happening?"

The young king adjusted the cloak. "We are having perhaps the most foolish civil war in history."

"You must let me slip away," said Tom.

"I am King and I shall be damned if I do not keep you at my side."

Tom wracked his brains. There had to be some way of saving Edward from himself.

"Then take charge."

Edward nodded. "If you promise not to desert me?"

Tom smiled. "Look at me Ned – I’m not going anywhere fast."

Edward vaulted up onto the rail of the Royal Stand. Holding onto an upright one-handed like a movie pirate, he turned to face the melee. Tom saw right through to the youth inside – he was scared... scared that Edward would open his mouth and everybody would just ignore him.

"Enough!" bellowed Edward, and somehow the beach fell silent except for the cries of seagulls, the swish of the waves and the whimpers of the wounded and dying.

Then somebody shouted, "Damned Sodomite! The Invaders are God’s judgement."

"Sodomite yes, but also your King."

The murmurs died away and Tom realised he was holding his breath. The crowd was too shocked to respond. It was a brilliant gambit – distracting them from the fact that they'd been trying to kill each other up until a few moments before – but insanely risky. Edward had just a moment in which to say the right thing.

"Who are you to judge me? A priest, I see," continued the young king. "If I am damned, then what of the Church? The Invaders tested your powers, and found you wanting. Now your Archbishop Grossi helps the enemy, and the loyalty of every priest is suspect."

The crowd stirred. Somebody at the back shouted, "Kill the traitorous God-botherer."

A man screamed.

"What does your honour tell you?" asked Edward. "Bow your neck under the foot of the Church and the Invaders, or follow a damned sodomite king to victory?"

The crowd muttered. Tom winced. Edward had gone too far.

A blood-drenched giant broke free of the throng —

#

"He can fuck goats for all I care!" roared Ranulph. "I’ll send to Hell any man that says ill of him!" He drew Steelcutter. Before the Royal Knights could react, he dropped to one knee and — with a great sense of relief — offered his sword hilt-first to the King. "I will follow you in peace and war."

Now the crowd cheered, as if that was all it took. They had not seen the engines of the Invaders, thought Ranulph, nor the destruction they could wreak.

King Edward sprang off his perch and crunched over the sand.

The knights parted and Ranulph glimpsed an almost naked man, his borrowed cloak too short to conceal rope burns on his wrists and ankles. The King’s Catamite – with all the influence that entailed. Ranulph winced. But the man didn’t seem to see him. Instead his eyes followed Edward as he stepped forward. His expression was almost identical to Albrecht's "My Lord Is Crazy" face.

Ranulph's cheeks burned. The look held more than just an intelligent man's amused indulgence for his rasher friend.

Now Ranulph understood why a talented young artist had been happy to squire for an impoverished knight.

And now he knew what it was that Albrecht had tried to say to him when they parted company in the shadow of Clifford's burning siege tower.

The King stood over Ranulph and put a hand on Steelcutter’s pommel. The gesture seemed to rob the crowd of its collective voice. King Edward’s voice rang out above the slow heartbeat of the turning tide. "And I will be your good lord in peace and war."

Ranulph relaxed. Now, at last, he could stop floundering at diplomacy and get back to fighting.

But the King was still speaking. "The Dacre titles and honours are restored – though you will have to help me win back the lands that go with them."

Not much of a joke, but the crowd laughed.

Ranulph looked up at his liege lord and felt as if it was for the first time. King Edward Lowther had shrugged off his cowed youth like an old cloak. But there was a light in his eyes and a flush in his face. It was love which had finally given him a backbone.

"It is time to end the faction fights," continued the King. "All charges against Lady Maud Clifford are declared false. Her rank and titles are restored. As the heiress of a deceased magnate she is a Royal Ward and her marriage is in my gift. And I give her to you, Sir Ranulph Dacre."

"Thank you, Your Grace," managed Ranulph. But his voice was lost in the cheering. He glanced around. There was no sign of Maud.

CHAPTER TEN

Maud struggled to her feet and faced the fog-shrouded ocean. The water soaked her shoes and swirled around her ankles. She gripped the grimoire one-handed. She twisted away from the sea, then whipped back, her long sleeve trailing like a pennon. The weight dragged her hand out until her arm extended with a jolt. Somehow, though, she could not unclench her fingers and let the grimoire go.

Of course.

Discarding the book of necromancy would merely enable the Devil to put it into the hands of some other innocent. The hateful volume must be properly destroyed before it seduced yet another soul, not just into Necromancy, but also into the wild harlotry which seemed somehow to be the consequence of consorting with the spirit world.

She flipped the volume open at "
Onanistic Cantrips for those Thwarted in Love
" and took a handful of pages. She hesitated. It was hard to damage any book, even one so evil. But the cold wind at her back was there to remind her of Hell.

She tore at the parchment then let the breeze scatter the fragments over the water.

A spell offered her
Discovery of Treasures Beneath the Earth
. Her gaze flickered over the text. An easy spell, if she could find a mandrake root. A twitch of her arm sent the page into the wind.

Another tempted her with the
Vision of the Sylph into All Privy Places
, and the possibility of the sight of Jasmine wherever she was. She balled the parchment, trampled it against the pebbles, then kicked it into the waves.

And there was the spell which had almost killed her.
Conjuring an Aerial Spirit as an Assistant Daemon
. There was nothing in the text to warn that the sylph would, in the end, turn on the magician. No more than a trap then.

She tore a strip from the parchment, then another, slowly shredding the fatal page and revealing the words on the next:
A spell for banishing the aforesaid spirit on completion of its three tasks.

Maud smiled despite herself. If she had bothered to read the next page, she would have been spared her near fatal flight over the Rune Isles. A simple error in craft had saved her soul. "God works in mysterious ways."

She tore out the banishing spell, then saw the next page:
"Invocation for Restraining the aforesaid spirit, should the Banishing be interrupted."

She had to read the familiar words twice: "Harm me not, vile spirits, for I am in the embrace of the God of the Elements."

#

"Lady Maud!" Ranulph’s voice boomed across the pebbled beach.

Maud didn’t look up from her grimoire. Here was a prayer straight out of the Scripture, provided without comment, listed as if it were just another spell.

The big knight crunched closer.

Of course,
"
The Devil lays traps for the clever."
She frowned. It would be a lot easier to redeem herself if only the Creed were more logical.

Ranulph arrived in a clatter of pebbles.

Maud rose, brushed down her skirts, and looked seawards. The scattered fragments bobbed and swirled with the movement of the foaming, icy water. "There is something you need to tell me, is there not?"

Ranulph flushed the colour of his blood splattered shirt.

"No, not about lying with Jasmine — "

Ranulph gaped. "How did..?"

" — I mean, whatever it was you were trying to tell me when you abducted me."

"I — " Ranulph crashed into the shallows. "God's teeth, Milady!" He stooped to snatch at the floating sheets. The position drew his hose tight across his muscular rear. "Good men will die because of this."

Maud’s face warmed despite the cold air coming off the Ocean of Thule. Her eyes narrowed. Was such lust a temptation, or a gift of nature? It all depended on your theology.

Ranulph straightened and held up the wad of parchment. The salt water had made short work of the ink. "Well, you certainly are following in saintly footsteps. Saint Guthrum stole the Great Runes. Saint Ignatius stole the Tolmec magic. Now Saint Maud does away with what’s left."

"What?"

He waded back towards her. "The grimoire’s wrecked, so
now
she decides to listen!" A wave caught up with him and swirled around his boots. He didn't seem to notice. "The Tolmecs – the people of the Land of Black Glass? – had high magic until Saint Ignatius stole it." He stumbled, righted himself. "No Rite of Incineration. Our priests took notes, went home without a captive sorcerer to burn, and the Tolmec magic just… stopped."

The sheer magnitude of the deception hit her and she laughed. Illogic was one thing – Maud had to admit that she herself did not always behave with… perfect rationality. A downright untruth was another.