Gryvan’s sword rose and fell. He felt the shiver of its impact upon bone tingling up his arm. He felt the breaking of bodies that went down beneath his huge horse. A thousand voices, crying out in anguish, or anger, or pain, or terror, washed over him and he revelled in the fierce noise. He cut and slashed and barged his way to the heart of the square. A youth was standing on the rim of the well, lashing out with a length of wood. Gryvan cut his legs from under him, sent him tumbling back and down into the dark, stone-clad gullet.
The crowd fell away beneath the onslaught. What the city’s Guard had been unable to quell, the hundred trained warriors on their warhorses snuffed out quickly and brutally. The passions that had burned in the breasts of the rioters twisted into terror. They scattered, and the riders went after them and cut them down in side streets and doorways. Gryvan sat astride his mount, sword still naked in his hand, surrounded by gore and corpses.
Kale dismounted and tore something from the neck of one of the bodies. He held it up to the High Thane.
“Most of them are Craftsmen, sire. Apprentices, at least.”
He dropped the clasp into Gryvan’s outstretched palm. It bore the impressed image of a tiny hammer and scales.
“Goldsmith,” Gryvan murmured. He was weary now. Drained.
“Yes.” Kale nodded. “Many bear the same badge, or that of other Crafts. A number of their buildings were amongst those burned last night. They seek those responsible, perhaps.”
“And they think that gives them leave to run rampant through my city?” Gryvan growled.
“There are too many who think they need no longer ask our leave to do anything,” Mordyn Jerain said, coming-now that the slaughter was done-to his master’s side. “The world ever seeks to test the will of great men. Now is the time of your testing.”
“And you’ve a thought on how I should meet it. Is that it?”
Mordyn Jerain dipped his head in knowing assent.
“Very well,” Gryvan said, casting a last, simmering eye over the bodies littering the market square. “All of this must be answered. I’ll hear you.”
“No.” Gryvan shook his head. It was part denial, part disbelief, part astonishment at the thought that what his Shadowhand was saying might be true.
“Yes,” insisted Mordyn quietly. “Have I ever failed you, sire?”
“Not in anything of consequence,” Gryvan muttered.
“Indeed. Then trust me in this: a corruption has entered the heart of your domains. That which threatens to consume us comes not from without, but within.”
Gryvan paced up and down over the thick mottled rug. The beaker of wine in his hand was forgotten.
“Why did you not tell me all of this at once, immediately on your return?” he cried.
“I doubted it, sire. How could I not? Such things strain the sinews of belief. I thought it prudent to conduct certain investigations of my own. Now I have the sad proofs.” The Chancellor unfurled a roll of parchments from a tube at his belt. “Copies of letters I was shown in Anduran, during my captivity. messages the Black Road discovered there. Others I have found for myself since my return. And all sing the same foul melody, sire.”
Gryvan slammed his cup down on an ornate little table. He ignored the manuscripts that Mordyn held out to him.
“I’ll not trust a single word that comes from the mouth of the Black Road,” he snarled.
“A wise precaution.” Mordyn nodded placidly. The tumultuous emotions that raged within Gryvan found no reflection in his Chancellor. There was a calmness about the man that would better suit reports of the weather. “They no doubt take delight in pointing out the rot within our own house. Yet whether or not you choose to trust their intent in sharing their discoveries with me, there is a truth to be discerned. A pattern.”
Gryvan threw himself down into a chair so violently that it rocked back on its legs.
“Conspiracy against me? Against Haig?”
The Shadowhand rolled the parchments up once more and slipped them back into their tube. He set it down beside the High Thane’s discarded wine cup.
“I will leave these for you to examine at your leisure, if you see fit. But yes: conspiracy. The Crafts conspired with the Dornach Kingship, promising to deliver up the Dargannan Blood even as they were trying to buy its future Thane. They urged Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig to throw off his duties to you, and he in his turn promised them free rein if they could foster war between us and Dornach, and raise him up to be High Thane in your stead.”
“This is insanity,” breathed Gryvan.
“Of a kind,” the Chancellor nodded. “Madness born of hatred and ambition and greed. We have been slowly, quietly betrayed, sire. For many years. Until the Black Road entered the fray, the treacheries were discreet and careful. Now… now, our enemies have been intoxicated by the chaos, mistaking it for our weakness. They become incautious. Aewult’s every effort against the Black Road was hindered-blatantly, fragrantly-by Lannis and Kilkry.”
“I thought his accusations absurd,” Gryvan growled. “Flailings born of humiliation.”
“As might I, sire, had I not witnessed some of it for myself. You know I would not absolve the Bloodheir of blame had he earned it. He did not. I saw the contempt, the defiance, with which he was treated. How else but by treachery can we explain his defeat, when he had ten thousand of your finest warriors at his back? And you’ve heard the same tale I have, of what happened to Aewult’s messengers when they sought out the Lannis boy?”
“In Ive. Yes. Murdered.” Gryvan rubbed his brow. He felt overwhelmed. And his head ached.
“Indeed. Neither Lannis nor Kilkry Bloods has ever acceded, in their hearts, to your family’s rule. And the Crafts… well, your rule has swelled their coffers, yet they have learned not gratitude, but ambition. Arrogance. The Goldsmiths stir up discontent; they send their mobs raging through the streets of your city like wild animals. My people have already heard it whispered in taverns and workshops that the Crafts set those fires themselves, as pretext. But a man whose enemies assemble to assail him is as much benefited as beset, for they reveal themselves.”
Gryvan frowned at his Chancellor.
“You begin to see, do you not?” murmured Mordyn, stepping closer. There was an eager edge to him suddenly. His eyes burned with a passion Gryvan had not seen there since his return from the north.
“See what?” the High Thane asked.
“A thousand years of history have taught us that it takes great men, strong men, to impose order upon this world. It takes men with the will to seize whatever opportunities chaos offers up; the will to bend events to the shape of their own desires. Grey Kulkain did it, forging the Bloods from the horrors of the Storm Years. Your own family has done it, rising from the disasters of the Black Road’s very birth to overthrow Kilkry’s dominion. Such momentous times are come again, sire. Your time.”
Gryvan rose once more to his feet. He clasped his hands behind his back and went to the nearest of the tall windows, through which a bleak light fell. There was his city, his precious city, arrayed before him in all its expansive wonder. His gaze fell upon the gaudy tower the Gemsmiths had recently chosen to adorn their Crafthouse with. A prideful statement, that. Perhaps one of intent also. He chewed his lip.
“The opportunity is here,” he heard Mordyn saying behind him. “If we but have the courage to imagine it.”
“You doubt my mettle?” Gryvan asked darkly without turning round.
“No, sire. Never.”