today, and we'll see how we are feeling tomorrow."
One or both of them might be feeling very dead
tomorrow. Obviously the doctor--his face was
familiar but his name was still at large--was not in on
the plot. His life might be hanging by a fine
thread at this very moment, depending on what
instructions had been given to Sir Torquil.
As if he had read those thoughts exactly,
Bowman spoke from somewhere overhead. "Lord Roland
will confirm for you, Doctor, that his presence here at
Falconsrest just now is a confidential
matter."
"Yes, indeed," Durendal said. "His
Majesty is most anxious that it not be known. Could
cause a great deal of trouble at this juncture."
"Certainly could," Bowman agreed.
The medic scrambled to his feet while spewing
out protestations that of course he understood
perfectly and had never doubted what the Commander had
told him and as a court physician he had always
observed the strictest discretion--blah, blah,
blah. He was hustled away by Sir Torquil.
The room brightened and then dimmed as the door opened
and closed. A gust of cold air swirled
smoke and flames in the fireplace.
The ensuing silence felt ominous. Boards
creaked upstairs, and logs crackled on the
hearth. The wind rattled a window somewhere.
"Flaming idiot, that one," Bowman said.
Sparing his left arm, Durendal heaved himself
up to a sitting position. The room lurched
sickeningly and then steadied. He saw tables,
chairs, a couple of chests, but all the bedding that
had cluttered the guardroom on his previous
visits had disappeared, other than the pallet he
was sitting on. Inevitably everyone except the
conspirators would have been banished from the lodge.
The King and the Blades would be living here now,
probably Kromman, not likely anyone
else.
He peered disbelievingly around the circle of
faces--six young men staring back at him as if
they wanted his funeral to be the next item on the
agenda. Fire! These were Blades! These were
Ironhall boys, like him, brothers. Never before
had he seen the King's defenders from the outside,
as it were, and the revelation was chilling. As
enemies, these youngsters were terrifying. For the first time
since childhood he was without a sword, and he
had fallen into a den of lion cubs.
Bowman was in charge. When and why had he been
brought from Greymere? His presence was unwelcome
news, because he was a lot more subtle than
Dragon. Any swordsman who moved as if
he had spastic palsy and cracked jokes with the
solemnity of a professional mourner was certainly
paradoxical and probably capable of being
deliberately devious. Durendal had always
rated Bowman far ahead of the Commander. Bowman was
saying nothing, waiting for him to speak first.
If his head would stop spinning, he might try
a bluff ... think up some reason why he had
come to Falconsrest, ask after His Majesty's
health. ... It wouldn't work; they would merely
wait for the inquisitor to return. So let them
say something. He waited.
Before anyone said anything, the door from the kitchen
was flung open and a young man came hurtling into the
room as if he had been thrown out of a tavern by a
squad of bouncers. His doublet and britches were
blackened by dried blood from his chest to his
knees. He tripped over a chair and for a moment
seemed to hang there, arms out flung, chalky
face twisted in terror, then he sprawled on the
floor with a scream of agony. He curled himself
up in a whimpering knot. He was the second
casualty, the second patient to be enchanted.
But he was not Quarrel.
Two more Blades followed him in. "Where do
you want this scum, sir?" asked one of them,
closing the door. Inexplicably, all the
burning anger in the room, which a moment earlier had
been directed at Durendal, was now aimed at
the boy on the floor.
He wailed into his knees, "Why didn't you
let me die!"
"Because you'll keep better this way till the
Fat Man's ready for you!" said the other,
Before he could deliver, Bowman
snapped, "That'll do, Spinnaker!"
"Just tenderizing the meat, sir!"
"I said that'll do! Get upstairs, Lyon.
And you," he told Durendal. "You'll be safer
up there."
Safer for whom?
One question was now answered--Ambrose was not in the
lodge, or no one would be talking about the Fat
Man.
Another remained: Where was Quarrel?
Durendal made a performance of struggling to his
knees, then to his feet, although this required no
great dramatic ability. The young Sir Lyon
took even longer and could not manage to straighten
at all, keeping his arms wrapped around his
belly. He was obviously still in terrible pain.
The onlookers made no effort to help either of
them. Side by side, they hobbled toward the stair.
That cloak draped over that chair ...
That was Quarrel's cloak. Durendal had
helped him choose it and had spooned out an
absurd number of gold crowns to pay for it, because
Quarrel had displayed both a grandiose taste in
clothes and very exalted ideas of what the Lord
Chancellor's Blade ought to wear. He had,
admittedly, looked exceedingly good in it all.
But now that costly, sable-trimmed cloak was a
mud-splattered, blood-soaked discarded ruin, so
the urgent question was answered. It should have been
obvious that no one could treat a Blade's ward
as Durendal was being treated unless the Blade was
finally, definitely, permanently ... dead.
Like the guardroom, the dormitory had been
tidied since Durendal had last seen it. Although
a Blade rarely slept, he shared other men's
need for a place of his own--to store his kit, to be
alone, to take a woman. Only the King could be
alone in the lodge at Falconsrest, but each
Blade had a token bedroll, sixteen of them
laid out in neat military rows, filling the
room. Sir Lyon hobbled over to one that must be
his, as far from the fireplace as any. He lay
down painfully and turned his face to the wall.
Durendal crouched close to the smoking embers
on the hearth, looking up expectantly at
Bowman, who had followed them upstairs and now
stood awkwardly slumped against the door
frame, deceptively boyish despite his
fringe of sandy beard and habitually morose
expression.
"What's for breakfast tomorrow?" asked the
uninvited visitor.
Bowman's gaze wandered briefly in the
direction of Lyon and then back again. "Whoever was
on that horse of yours--Martin's gone to bring him
in."
"You mean he escaped?"
The Deputy Commander cocked a tawny
eyebrow. "We heard you bound a Blade a few
days ago."
Who must therefore have been his lone companion.
"Name of Quarrel. Good kid."
"Well, then."
Well, then he's dead. Escaping wasn't
something Blades ever tried to do. "How?"
Bowman's shoulders twitched in an
uncoordinated shrug.
"Flames, man!" Durendal shouted. "What
happened?"
"Torquil got him as he jumped. The
horse ran away with him. He must have bled to death
right after--he was leaving a trail a foot wide.
Don't worry, we'll find him."
What they would do with him did not need to be
asked. The Guard's overriding concern now must be
to find a fresh body every morning. Durendal fought
a tide of nausea. Oh, Quarrel!
"Where's Kromman?"
"Grandon."
"And the King?"
"Gone for a gallop. He likes the
exercise. And there's a shepherd's daughter up
in the hills who struck gold a few days
ago."
Durendal gazed into the fire for a moment, trying
to think. Nothing much happened, except he
decided that a decent man like Bowman must be under
enormous strain. He jabbed at that weak spot.
"How do you feel about all this?"
The only answer he received was a mawkish,
pitying smile. How Bowman felt didn't
matter. He was ruled by his binding to save the
King's life, and now the King was in deadly peril
every day at dawn. His Blades had no choice
except the one Lyon had tried and botched.
Durendal gestured inquiringly in the direction
of the smothered sobs.
"That was your doing, I reckon, my lord."
"Mine!?"
"When he saw who we'd brought down. That was the
last straw. He fell on his sword--he just
wasn't man enough to do a proper job of it."
Death and fire! "And was he the first to do that?"
Bowman shook his head reluctantly.
"Volunteer breakfasts? Fire and blood!
If more of you were man enough to do it, then this evil
wouldn't prosper."
Bowman colored and straightened up. "That's
easier for some of us to say than others, your
lordship. You're special. Suppose the King
gives you a choice? Which end of the spoon will you
choose?"
For a moment, that simple question left Durendal
speechless. He had not considered so appalling a
possibility. He licked his lips. "I
believe that immortality on such terms is
utterly evil, Sir Bowman. If I am
given a free choice, I hope I will have the
courage to refuse it. If I am forced
into accepting, I hope I will have the courage
to kill myself at the first opportunity, so that I do
not go on extending the evil. But a good friend of mine
was trapped into accepting and was not the same person
after, so I do not know if I shall be able to do that."
"I think you have the courage, my lord."
"Thank you."
Bowman chuckled hoarsely, but his gray eyes
gleamed like steel. "Don't thank me, my lord--
it's my job to identify the King's enemies. I
know where you stand. You stay in this room, Lord
Roland, and behave yourself. No talking, no trying
to escape. Understand? I'll tie you up and gag you
if I have to."
"I understand perfectly. Just one more question?"
"What?"
"Do the Blades on the menu qualify for the
Litany of Heroes?"
The Deputy Commander bared his teeth angrily
and went slouching back down the stair. As he
disappeared, he began shouting names.
Durendal rose and limped across the room to the
prostrate boy. He eased down on one knee.
"Sir Lyon?"
The kid looked up. His eyes were red, his
lips almost blue.
Durendal squeezed his shoulder. "You've got
more courage and honor than the rest of them
put together, lad. Don't worry, we'll find
a way to stop this."
The boy whispered, "Sir ... my lord ...
they don't trust you!"
"Never mind me," Durendal said. "I can
look after myself. Don't give up yet!" and
headed back to the fireplace. He had never
congratulated a would-be suicide before.
Moments later, Spinnaker and two more men
came in to guard the captives. The stair was the
only way out, and there were more men down in the
guardroom. When Durendal tried to talk, he
was again threatened with being bound and gagged.
By Bowman's estimate, he would not be eaten for
at least two days--Quarrel first, then Lyon,
then Lord Roland. He would prefer that fate to being
forced into the conspiracy and made to eat part of his own
Blade. Whether Kromman would agree with either of
these programs remained to be seen.
It was odd that they were taking so long to find
Quarrel's body. There could be no doubt that he
was dead, after all. He would have crawled back
into the fight on his belly trailing his guts if
he weren't. Gone to organize a rescue? No
hope of that. Even if a Blade could act like that,
the lodge was guarded by the world's best swordsmen.
They could hold it for weeks against any force
except the Royal Office of Demolition, and
that would be no rescue. The rest of the Guard,
back at Grandon, knew nothing of what was going
on, would not believe it anyway, and was equally
bound to the King.
Durendal stretched out on the nearest bedroll
to wait upon events, but however hard he sought
to make plans for his own extremely precarious
future, his mind kept wandering back to Quarrel,
that fresh-minted Blade, that meteor who had
flashed through his life and vanished before he could know
it. Had he been like that boy once--sharp and
sparkling diamondlike, not counting costs or
weighing alternatives? He could not remember.
So much promise wasted.
He was hard on his Blades. Wolfbiter had
lasted two years, and Quarrel only five
days.
QUARREL
VII
Quarrel parried a slash from the Blade on his
right, half dodged and half tried to fend off a
cut from his left. He felt a searing pain in his
shoulder, but before he took time to worry about that, he
put Destrier at the gate and was flying.
Wonder horse! Again a voice yelled,
"Take them alive!"
Destrier came down with perfect grace, and
then it was reaction time. Spooked by the scuffle and
smell of his rider's blood, he laid back his
ears and fled off along the track as if all the
spirits of fire were after him.
Quarrel must put Reason back in her
scabbard before he dropped her. He mus
t do something
about the bleeding, or he'd never get back into the
fight. He must turn the horse, or the fight
would be over before he did get back to it. He
looked behind him just in time to see Gadfly tumble and
Paragon thrown free. By the eight, that was disaster!
Even Paragon couldn't jump up from a fall like
that and fight off nine Blades. Oh, turn,
blast you! But Destrier hurtled along the
track, heedless of reins and heels.
First he must stop bleeding. He needed his right
hand for the reins. His left hand wasn't moving
properly. Spirits, but his shoulder did hurt now!
He let Destrier have his head for a moment while
he grabbed the left side of his cloak and tried
to pull it tight to staunch the bleeding, but then a
swerve by his horse almost threw him. His cloak
caught on something, tore its pin, and was gone.
Let it go. Forget the blood--he was going to die
anyway. He had to get back in the fight and
die there. No Blade ever ran away. Not one
single Blade had ever run away, not in almost
four hundred years.
A wagon loomed up unexpectedly,
blocking the trail, its two ponderous cart
horses looking almost as astonished as the driver.
Destrier slid to a halt and reared, bucked a
few times and spun on two feet like a cat.
He took off again. Somehow Quarrel stayed on,
although by all odds he shouldn't have, and every impact
jolted fire from his wound. Now they were going back
to the fight. Except there wouldn't be a fight.
Paragon would have been stunned by the fall
at the very least, if he hadn't broken his neck.
Dragon had shouted to take them both alive, but
a Blade must never let his ward be taken alive
while he lived himself.
He had failed horribly. Only five
days ago he had been bound to Paragon himself--the
second Durendal, Earl Roland, Lord
Chancellor, the greatest swordsman of the century,
perhaps the greatest ever, Ironhall's most
celebrated son since the first Durendal. Not
since he had been the Brat had he ever dreamed
of an honor like that--Paragon's Blade! He
still had a very clear mental picture of all those
green, green jealous faces at his binding, from
Hereward all the way down to the sopranos, just
drooling at the thought of being bound to Durendal
himself. After only five days he had let his ward
be killed or captured. Back into the fight!
He must die. There could be no life with such