“Make no curse or oath in this place,” Croy chided.
Hew laughed as he led Croy out of the chapel and down toward the armory in the cellar of the keep. They passed down a long stair, their weapons and armor clattering in the enclosed space. “The same old Croy, I see. Most devout of us all—and the most trusting. Are you sure this Malden is worth your faith?”
“He’s a good man. I’ve seen true honor in him, though he denies it if he’s asked.”
Hew scowled. “If I find him down by the gates trying to bribe his way out, I won’t ask your permission before I have him beaten. What were you thinking, giving Acidtongue to that boy?”
“He saved my life, and my honor, which I value more,” Croy told Hew. He needed to change the subject. If Hew found out he’d sent Malden away, there could be real trouble. “What work do you have for me today?”
“I want you fitted for a proper suit of armor.” Hew slapped Croy’s ribs. “What are you wearing, a brigantine? That’s infantry stuff.” He pushed open a door at the end of a dim hallway and gestured for Croy to go through. “Here, meet Groomwich, our armorer. He’s a dab hand with a hammer and tongs, no matter what he looks like.”
The armorer bowed low as the knights entered his domain. He had the permanently blackened skin of a metalsmith, save on the left half of his face which was a horrid expanse of burnt tissue, white and rugged in the light of his forge.
“Get this one in a proper coat of plate,” Hew commanded. “And ready another suit, for a boy the same height but about half his size. You stay here, Croy. I’ll go roust out Malden. After you’re done here you need to go down to the archery butts and say some inspiring words to the new recruits. That’s what the king feels we Ancient Blades are best employed at—rousing speeches.”
Croy frowned. “He’s never had faith in our strength of arms. Not since our father died. I worry he won’t use us to best advantage.”
“Well, I suppose our time will come soon enough, to show him what we can do.”
Hew left him, then. The silent armorer got to work right away, fitting various pieces of steel to Croy’s body. The work required Croy to stand perfectly still for long stretches of time, and wasn’t that different from the vigil he’d just completed. As each piece was measured and marked, Groomwich would hammer it into the right shape and size. He never said a word. In the heat of the armory, Croy soon found himself falling asleep, rising only when he was called upon to stand and be measured again.
It must have been hours later when Hew came back, his face red with anger, to say that Malden was nowhere to be found—nor Cythera. How they had escaped the fortress of Helstrow was a complete mystery, but Hew did not hesitate a moment to blame Croy for what he considered a crime of the first magnitude: Malden had taken Acidtongue with him.
“The thrice-damned barbarians already have two of the seven,” Hew said, spittle leaping from his teeth. “Now some frightened boy has another—Croy, how could you let this happen? How could you give such a treasure to someone so clearly untrustworthy? If it were anyone else, I’d have you drawn and broken as a traitor. If it was anyone else I’d think you were trying to undermine us! But I know you too well, Croy. I know you’d never be capable of such folly. If only you had as much brains as you do honor!”
Croy stood there and listened with a contrite expression. After a while he heard none of the words. He stopped hearing the endless pounding of Groomwich’s hammer, and no longer felt the heat of the forge on his skin.
In his mind’s eye he only saw the Lady, dressed in green and white. And wearing Cythera’s face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The day after the gates of Helstrow were sealed, the town moved quickly to a war footing. Wagons full of men streamed toward Helstrow from a hundred villages. Croy and Hew stood on horses near the main gate, watching as each new consignment was checked in and sent to be armed and trained. These were farmers, men—boys—who had never been more than a mile outside their homes. They all had the same goggle-eyed expression as they first took in the colors and chaos of Helstrow. They’d never seen a town before, but even if they had, they couldn’t have been prepared. The outer bailey was packed now from side to side with humanity, every house a billet and every tavern an arsenal. Men in formation marched everywhere through the streets, while serjeants in kettle hats screamed orders at them and beat those who failed to keep in line.
The few dwarves who hadn’t packed up and fled for their own kingdom in the north were working day and night to make weapons and rudimentary armor. They worked side by side with human blacksmiths and the night rang with hammer blows and was lit by great gusts of sparks shooting out of the chimney of every forge. Fires broke out constantly, but at least there were plenty of men ready to hold buckets of water and sand. The iron flowed, and piece by piece the city was armed—with bill hooks, halberds, axes and swords. With lances and flails and maces with grotesquely flanged heads. With leather jack, and ring mail, and chain hauberks, and coats of plate.
On the third day Sir Rory rode up to the gates, and beat on them with the pommel of Crowsbill to be let in, and another Ancient Blade took the king’s colors. Sir Rory was the oldest of their order, running a little to fat, and he rode with his wife and six children all on horses behind him. He brought a company of volunteers, as well, which the king was happy to receive. Anyone who actually chose to fight for Skrae was automatically commissioned as a serjeant and given the best pick of the weapons.
“They’ll fight to their last breath,” Rory promised, as his men marched up toward the keep in a semblance of good order. “Though perhaps not well.”
Croy clasped the old knight’s vambrace and said, “Well met, my friend. Any word of Sir Orne?”
Rory drew his fingers through his thick mustache. “Last I heard, he was up north, hunting some centuries-old sorcerer. I’m sure he’ll hear the call.”
Croy hoped so. Orne had more military experience than any of them—after Ulfram V had discharged them all, Orne had gone north where there was always fighting to be done. Endless skirmishes with the hill people there had turned the knight into a master strategist—something Helstrow needed more than iron or steel.
“There are only four of us now, I hear, for Bikker’s dead, and Acidtongue’s in unknown hands,” Sir Rory said, and made the sign of the Lady on his breast. “Against two.”
“I’m not so worried about the barbarians holding Dawnbringer and Fangbreaker,” Hew insisted. “They haven’t had our training. They never took our vows. And one of them’s a girl!”
“You saw Mörgain, though,” Croy told him.
“She’s a woman. I don’t care how big she is, no woman has the stomach to cut a man from crop to crupper.”
Croy wished he could share the sentiment. He’d met more than a few woman warriors in his time, and they’d been fierce enough. Woman who chose to take up swords had to constantly prove themselves, and it made them more driven and more dangerous than any man. And Mörgain had seemed altogether too much like her brother, Mörget—the strongest and most dangerous fighter Croy had ever known.
“The Lady will sustain us,” he said, more for his own sake than the others.
On the sixth day Balint showed herself in the courtyard before the keep. Croy had managed to avoid her so far but that evening, as she wheeled a train of ballistae out of the armory cellars, a great cheer went up from the people and the Ancient Blades had to be on hand to do her honor.
The dwarf rode high on the bolt of one of her great contraptions as it was pushed through the streets, kicking her legs and waving a wrench in the air. The war machines were dragged by conscripts down through the gate into the outer bailey, and then across the Strow bridge, where half the city waited to cheer them on. The king showed himself at a balcony atop the palace while his heralds waved pennons and sounded great trumpets. As Balint came even with the knights on their horses, she gave Croy a long and triumphant look.
“When they see my babies here,” she told him, “the barbarians will turn around and run so fast we’ll send bolts straight up their arseholes.”
“I have no doubt of it, dwarf,” Croy said, his mouth tasting of gall and vinegar. “You have shown yourself a genius at shooting men in the back.”
Balint crowed in joy—she loved a good taunt, whether she was giving it or receiving it—and rode on toward the eastern gate, where she placed the giant crossbows high atop the wall.
On the eighth day the conscripts tried to revolt. A rumor had been going about that only one man in two would be armed with iron when the battle came, and the rest would be given nothing but shields, their lives to be thrown away blunting the barbarians’ first charge.
“Who told them any of them were going to get shields?” Rory asked, his voice little more than a whisper. From atop the wall of the outer bailey, the Ancient Blades watched the conscripts strive against their serjeants, pushing the shouting officers up against the wall.
“We should be down there imposing order,” Croy said, through gritted teeth.
“You heard the king. He has a better way,” Sir Hew told him.
And the king, in fact, did. Making no show of aggression, he appeared before the crowd at the head of a train of mules, each pulling the largest a giant hogshead of ale. Bungs were thrown open and foaming brown liquor streamed into the streets. The conscripts forgot the serjeants immediately, lest the ale go to waste.
In the morning not many of them felt like renewing their rebellion. It was the quietest morning Croy could remember since the gates were sealed. He was able to walk the wall nearly halfway around the town without hearing a curse or a profanity uttered. Not much work got done, either, but at least Helstrow was at peace.
When he reached the northernmost point on the wall, he lingered, and looked out across the rolling farmland toward the distant northern forests. But it wasn’t until the ninth day that Sir Orne finally appeared, standing his horse in a field half a mile away, Bloodquaffer held high over his head. The sword’s edges looked fuzzy in the distance, as if it were glowing with its own light. For hours he stood like that, the horse’s head lowering occasionally to graze on field stubble.
When the sun set Orne lowered the weapon, then slid from his saddle to kneel on the earth. He left the horse behind and crawled the rest of the way on his knees.
It was an act of devotion to the Lady. No one dared rush out to help him or speed his way. It wasn’t until well after midnight that he was brought inside the walls of the fortress.
Croy was there to receive him. As Hew helped the knight to his feet, Croy tried to take Orne’s free hand in hearty embrace—only to be rebuffed after a very short clasping of wrists.
“Do not take offense, I beg you,” Orne told Croy. The knight was the youngest of the four, yet his dark eyes hid an old and unhealed pain. “It’s for your own sake I am so cold. I do not wish to pass on my curse.”
“Curse?” Hew demanded. “We heard you were chasing a sorcerer up north. Did you get the bastard?”
“I did,” Orne said. He looked as if he would gladly have said no more. Croy and Hew stared at him until he relented. “With his last breath, though, he laughed in my face. And told me how I am to die.”
None of them missed what the knight was not saying. If he was this afraid to come to Helstrow, it could only mean one thing. The sorcerer’s dying prophecy must have told Orne that he would die here, inside the fortress.
Hew looked to Croy with eerie dread in his eyes. Croy shook his head. “You came,” he said, bowing to Orne. “That’s what’s important.”
“I took a vow,” Orne told him. “I took a vow.”
