Harmodius was stroking his beard. ‘You are taking all the risk, lad,’ he said aloud.
The captain gave them all a lop-sided grin. ‘A single, perfect sacrifice,’ he said.
The Abbess rolled her eyes. ‘Sometimes your blasphemy is just banal,’ she said. ‘Try not to die. We’re all quite fond of you.’
Amicia met his eye and smiled at him, and he returned her smile.
‘I have many things to prepare,’ he said. He bowed to the company, and went out into the night.
First he walked to the northern tower and climbed the steps to the second floor. He climbed softly, his black leather boots and smooth leather soles giving nothing away. The card players were attuned to the sound of sabatons.
Bad Tom was playing piquet.
‘A word,’ he said.
Tom raised his head, pursed his lips, and put his cards face down with a start. ‘I can leave cards like this any time,’ he said, a little too carefully.
Bent was hiding something under his hand.
Given the circumstances, the captain didn’t think he needed to care.
Bent shrugged. ‘They’ll be the same when you come back,’ he said.
‘Better be,’ Tom said. He followed the captain out onto the garrison room’s balcony over the courtyard. ‘My lord?’ the big man asked, formally.
‘I’m going for a ride tonight, Tom,’ the captain said quietly. ‘Out into the enemy. I’d like you to come.’
‘I’m your man,’ Tom said cheerfully.
‘We’re going to try and take him,’ the captain said. He made a sign with his fingers, like antlers or branches growing from his head.
Tom eyes widened – just a hair. Then he laughed. ‘That’s a mad jest,’ he said. ‘Oh, the pleasure of it!’
‘Forget the watch bill. I want the best. Pick me twenty men-at-arms,’ the captain said.
‘’Bout all we have on their feet,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll get it done.’
‘Full dark. You will have to cover me when I- Tom, you know that I will have to use power?’ the captain said.
Tom grinned. ‘I guess.’ He turned his head away. ‘Everyone says you used power against the daemons.’
The captain nodded. ‘True. If I have to cast, I need you to cover me. I can’t fight and cast.’ Then he grinned. ‘Well. I can’t fight and cast well.’
Tom nodded. ‘I’m your man. But – in the dark? After yon horned loon? We need to bring a minstrel.’
The captain was lost by the change of subject. ‘A minstrel?’
‘Someone to record it all, Captain.’ Bad Tom looked off into the dark. ‘Because we’re going to make a song.’
The captain didn’t quite know what to make of that. So he slapped the big man on the shoulder.
Tom caught his arm. ‘You can’t be thinkin’ we can take him with steel.’
The captain lowered his voice. ‘No, Tom. I don’t think so, but I’m going to try, anyway.’
Tom nodded. ‘So we’re the bait, then?’
The captain looked grim. ‘You are a little too quick, my friend.’
Tom nodded. ‘When there’s death in the air, I can see through a brick wall.’
Near Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn had everything he needed to proceed. He’d built his two most powerful phantasms in advance, storing them carefully in living things he’d designed just to store such things – pale limpets that clung like naked slugs to his mossy stone carapace.
He didn’t bother to curse the wyverns who had failed him. It had been, at best, a long shot.
But now it was down to him, and he didn’t want to do it.
He didn’t want to weaken himself by taking on the fortress directly.
He didn’t want to expose himself to direct assaults from his apprentice and the dark sun. However puny, they were not unskilled or incapable.
He didn’t want to fight with her. Although his reason told him that when he killed her, he would be much stronger for it. His link to her was a link to his past life. A weakness.
He didn’t want to do this at all. Because win or lose, he’d engaged forces that forced his hand. Made him grow in power. In visibility.
Damn them all, the useless daemons most of all. It was their fortress, and they were all busy watching him to see if they could bring him down, instead of helping.
And Thurkan had failed to take the dark sun.
Thorn was not without doubt. In fact, he was full of doubt, and again, for the hundredth time since the siege began, he considered taking his great staff and walking off into the Wild.
But without him the Wild might fail. And that would be catastrophic. At best it would be fatal for his long term plans.
He extended his hands, and power flowed smoothly. A cloud of faeries began to gather, so great was the power concentrated in a few yards of air.
He tried to imagine what it would be like when she was dead. He would miss her. She had once been the standard by which he measured himself. But that self was largely gone, and it was time he did without her.
And the apprentice. It is a weakness, to miss the company of men.
The Wild had to win. Men were like lice, undermining the health of the Wild.
It was time to act, and he could imagine all of his actions, a fugue of them extending back to his earliest conscious thoughts, culminating here.
He surfaced from the tide of his thoughts and looked around, unhampered by the darkness. He looked at Exrech. ‘Your people must storm the trench,’ he said. ‘And hold it. By holding it, we separate the fortress from the Bridge Castle.’
‘And then we dig,’ Exrech said.
Thorn bowed assent. To Thurkan he said, ‘The dark sun will come for me.’
‘We will lay in ambush for him,’ the daemon promised.
Thorn looked at the trolls – mighty creatures which he suspected had been created in the distant past by magi. As bodyguards. He had now acquired two dozen of them, as was the way when one became a power. He was like a beacon, and so they came. He no longer saw them as horrible. Instead, he saw them as beautiful, the way a craftsman views his perfect chisel, the one that fits his hand as if made for it.
Thorn tapped his great staff on the ground. ‘Go,’ he told his captains.
Lissen Carak – The Abbess
The Abbess felt the spells he cast. She had lain down to rest, but it was happening sooner that she expected and she sat up, her mind reaching for the threads of power that bound her to her stone.
She felt him, in the darkness out there, planning the ruin of her home, and she narrowed her eyes and reached down the link they would always share.
Traitor! she said. She flung the word with a woman’s contempt.
Sophia! He cried into the Aether.
She hurled her defiance at him and she felt her venom strike home, and in the moment of his startlement she read him, and saw that he had a trap prepared – that she had a traitor in her midst, as she had long suspected.
Then she was running, her bare feet slapping the stone floor, her unbound hair trailing behind her like the tail of a comet, running for the courtyard.
She felt him respond, and she had her defences up. She felt his come up – slowly, but when raised, as strong as a wall of iron. She couldn’t even sense him through them, merely that he must be behind that veil. She prayed as she ran – prayed for his ruin.
The young captain was standing by his destrier in the courtyard, with twenty knights behind him.
‘You cannot go out there!’ she screamed. ‘He is waiting for you! It is a trap!’
The captain gave her an odd smile, and waved to Michael, who had his bascinet. ‘He’s coming already, is he?’ he said to her. He turned to his knights. ‘Mount!’ he shouted.
She grabbed his bridle, and his great war horse – quick as lightning – bit at her hand, and only his instant reaction saved her. The Red Knight slapped his hand at Grendel’s neck, and the war horse took one step, and tossed his head, as if to say ‘could have, if I really wanted.’