Chapter I
Stand Off
Blood mingled on the floor between the bodies of the treasonous and the loyal. It made barely a sound as it trickled down stone steps, following the tiny canals that lay between the throne room's large ornate tiles. Eight bodies lay warm and motionless thereabouts, being the origins of the pooling rosy liquid, three of them with armour and purple favours, that of the kingdom of Aestha. The other five wore leather, though not that of a peasant's jerkin, but rather of a tanned, tarred and hardened nature, thick enough to dull a sword's blow, if not pause it altogether. Amid them stood a woman, sword drawn and menacing as she strode about, snarling condemnations at her captive audience.
To the north end of the room, where two huge thrones adorned all about with silver stood between giant drapes of purple, with a regal bronze sparrowhawk emblazoned upon each of them, the Prince Regent sat. He was a young man, a half-formed brown beard barely grown on his troubled face. His features were set in what appeared to be a mix of fear and a halfhearted attempt at courage in the face of danger, which was slowly fading, mostly due to the tip of a crossbow quarrel not an inch from his temple. Beside him, smiling, crouched a roguish man who would occasionally turn and whisper something into the Regent's ear, which caused the captive's face to turn paler with each repetition.
"Not only," the woman at the centre of the room spat, "did your foul country order its legions upon my homeland without the
least provocation, but you also instructed them to sow salt in our fields. You ordered them to kill our women, and take our children as slaves! It is in repayment of these despicable deeds that we stand here today, ready to end this war with a clear display of our superiority, and your crippling weakness."
Her eyes had a vicious gleam to them as she glowered triumphantly at those Aesthans watching her: five remaining guards, who were incapable of movement without securing the death of their liege, and behind them the elderly queen, looking livid. With every step their eyes followed her movements, and she felt truly righteous, certainly victorious.
Nisus - for that was the name of the man whose execution was now in play - opened his mouth slightly, but a slight prod of metal to the side of his head reduced any protest to a hiccough and a quiver. Several of the four other men standing by with swords drawn seemed amused by this, one of them making a gawping fish movement with his lips. Such ridicule would normally have been enough for him to have them in chains for a month at least.
"You are not fit to speak, having lived as a pig," the leader of the group snapped, "drinking wine you have not worked for, feasting upon that which is not due to you. You will die here, and be remembered as a nothing more than a half-king, useless and meaningless. Your legacy will be one of shame, and you will be no martyr for a true cause, such as ours!"
She swelled with pride, raising one hand skyward to give the order. One of the soldiers made as if to move, but caught his step as the tip of a sword moved quickly towards his throat. The man squatting beside Nisus stood gripped the Regent's throat, forcing him upwards and preventing him from trying to move at the last second. The woman held her arm for a few seconds, savouring the moment and the taste of success, and all that could be heard was the fluttering of cloth, and a soft muttering sound coming from the queen's direction. There was the snapping sound of a tightened string being released, and the loud thud of a body hitting the floor.
But the fluttering had not come from the throne room's banners, nor had the thud come from a dead Prince's body. Rather, it had come from a new figure standing almost next to the speechmaker. The woman with her hand in the air was now lacking in her sword, and her right hand was bleeding profusely from the bolt embedded in it. The man holding the crossbow was the one gaping now, too suprised by the suddenness of the attack to think to pull the trigger when it was most needed.
The entrant was a tall man, wellbuilt, with blond wavy hair. No sooner had he landed from his fall than he was in action, shoving the woman to the ground and drawing one of the two blades strapped to his back with his other hand, quickly pressing its blade to the back of her neck. The room was immediately silent as he viewed those around him with two dark brown eyes.
"Move an inch, or even a
quarter of an inch, and she dies now," he growled to Nisus' executioner.
Below him, the woman had slid both palms to the ground, and now attempted to push back against the hand on her back keeping her down. It was, however, more than strong enough to resist this, and the blade's edge cutting slightly into her flesh made for a good deterrent for a second attempt.
"You have a choice," came the man's voice, quiet and calm, "and I must emphasize how important it is that you act rationally and without folly and make a good decision. If you kill that man today, your people will most likely be
more than obliterated in vengeance. Any who you hold dear will pay
twice the price you would with your lives today."
He was cut short of another sentence by the outraged cry from his captive.
"How dare you interfere with a rightful punishment for the crimes your craven kingdom has commited? What sense of true justice could you possibily understand, dog," she snapped, and would have continued had she not been silenced by a sharp thrust downwards to her back, and the sword digging a little deeper. Furious as she was at her sudden loss of power in what had been her moment of glory, the trickle of blood running down her neck had an effect unnerving enough to quell her uprising.
"The Aesthan King clashes with your country's armies 'pon their homeland, and if there is a place or a time for justice, it would be dealt upon
those battlefields. Nisus has not harmed your country in any way, shape or form. Killing him would not be seen as just even by your
own people," he replied, a slight note of irritation sounding in his voice, though held in check.
"Nisus is now ruler of your cowardly country, and he shall take a monarch's reponsibility for its actions in death," she retorted. She paused for a second, and then looked, wide-eyed, directly at the man beside. "Kill him, Sion," she screeched to him, and then gasped as she was forced fully down onto the floor. Her face hit cold stone and the blood of those already fallen stung her eyes. Her neck felt as though it was burning, as sharp tendrils of pain marked her opponent's sword entering deeper still.
Sion, as much as his other four comrades, had frozen, and was as still as a statue, though the crossbow was still held to Nisus' head. Their victory over the guards, and their prolonged certainty in success during their commander's speeches had dimmed their readiness for any new opposition, and their preparations for such an eventuality. Gone had been the thoughts that should anyone attempt to interfere, they were to kill the Regent at all costs. Instead, they had been replaced by ones of fear: the Justiciar of Son, one of his land's most noble and praised warriors, was inches away from dying a death without honour, put down in captivity, and not the glory of valiant combat, a true death, one found only in the fury of battle. Such an event would have been an unspeakable insult had he been to say it in her presence before now, and its transition to reality had paralysed him, much as it had done the others.
Her scream, however, jolted him out of the reverie of terror, and he now realised once again what it was his duty to do. Clutching the Regent's throat so tightly as to strangle him, and nodding his respect to his his leader, he pulled the trigger: even in death, they would be victorious in their mission. The familiar jarring sensation, the release of the missile, and the shockwaves travelling up his arm: they did not come. Almost at the same moment as he spun his head to look at what on earth could have stopped the shot, a rough blow came to his back, and he was hurled forward onto the ground, dropping the weapon and letting go of Nisus too in his suprise. The crossbow bounced down to the floor in front of him, the quarrel no longer in its groove, and the string broken. He had kept it dry: it couldn't have frayed or snapped.
"How," he mouthed, utterly confused, and not even knowing why he was on the ground now. Turning his head, he saw the answer to both questions: a woman, with ash brown hair tied up in a ponytail, in closefitting black attire, stood smiling, a pair of knives in her hands behind where he had stood. She hadn't been here when they had stormed the throne room, and neither had the knave now holding the Justiciar to the ground. There was nowhere to hide! Where could they have come from? His head buzzed with questions - and pain from hitting the hard floor - but there were to be no answers.
"Die!" screamed the Justiciar, and her four stunned subordinates suddenly became alert warriors once again. Two headed for Nisus' rescuer, who dropped the knives and drew a sword from the scabbard at her hip as they raced toward her. The other pair ran towards the man, who leapt back from the woman he had been pinning to the ground, and assumed a defensive stance with his own blade. Almost immediately, the Aesthan royal guard moved as one as the battle broke out.
The fight was quick, eight on four as it was. The man dodged left of the first assailant's blow with ease, and skewered him as he overreached, before blocking attack of the second on a metal armguard that ran up to his left arm's elbow. This one had only a second to try and draw back and defend his failure before he was run through by a guardsman's halberd. Near the thrones, the woman parried both blades at once with her own, and kicked one swordsman back. She pushed the remaining Sonian's blade off to the side and drove her weapon up into his stomach. Tugging it free quickly, she narrowly sidestepped a thrust aimed for her head, and slashed back. She was rewarded with a spurt of blood from the man's chest, and he too toppled.
For a second, she relaxed, thinking it over, but a scream of rage drew her attention to the man on the ground, who had drawn a dagger and was too close now for her to block. He lunged at her side with the blade, and for a second, she was in fear of death as it sought her. Instead of stabbing her, however, he suddenly convulsed, and then crumpled to the floor. The rear end of a quarrel was protruding from his back, and she breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief, looking up to the rafters and smiling at the darkness, wherein her second companion hid. Behind her, one of the guards brought the butt of his halberd hard down upon the Justiciar's head, knocking out the woman, who was attempting to make an escape.
There were a few moments of silence in which the fighters caught their breath, and Nisus and the queen looked on at the morbid scene. Then, the Prince Regent, finally rising from his throne, and rubbing his neck ruefully, coughed slightly, and spoke.
"I, ah," he began, and faltered, unsure of himself, before starting again.
"Marie. Devlin. I cannot say how grateful I am. Had you not arrived when you did, I would most certainly be-"
"Quiet, boy, your speeches are as pathetic as you are!" came the harsh call of the queen, now on her feet, and looking as though she were wrath incarnate.
"Guards! Take her," she pointed one bony finger at the Justiciar, "to the jail, and see she remains there for the Sixth. I want him summoned this
instant, and I shall be most put out if he is not here as soon as possible."
She paused, and strode up to Nisus - who quailed visibily at her approach - and turned to the pair who were now both on their knees before her.
"Devlin, Marie,
and you Andrion, skulking up there," she added slyly, "you have once again done your duty before the Crown. We see fit as to reward you for your actions of course, should there be something within reason that we may do for you."
The woman, Marie, stood up, and gave her black shirt a slight tug, looking with distaste at several new bloodstains. Giving her companion a quick grin, she turned to the queen.
"Right about now, your highness, I wouldn't mind a warm bath."
Chapter II
Commence
"Your highness, I am here as you have commanded."
The Queen surveyed the Sixth with regal disinterest. He was a slim man, not particularly muscular, and even under his long indigo Inquisitorial robes, this showed. Still, she thought, what he lacked in build, he just about compensated for in his understanding of what pained and terrified most men. It was for the former disability, rather than the latter talent, that he had been left behind when the King had led the army, and the other members of the Committee of Inquisitors. She would complain most strenously when her husband returned at this lack of resource, the Queen decided.
"As you should be aware, we have a captive," she spoke steadily, her tone impassive, "from tonight's debacle. I want information, precise and detailed, on everything preceeding the attempt on my son's life. You are to follow up each line of information. If there are others involved still at large, you have my permission to locate and detain them."
"The usual
brute," she said the word with unmasked disdain, "squad is at your disposal."
"It shall be as you request, your highness," he bowed deeply, and backed out of the room with head still lowered. There was a great deal of the night left, he smiled, and insomnia had always been his favoured instrument.
"I'm simply saying, we were more than lucky tonight, Devlin!" Marie was reaching the point of exasperation as she and the warrior walked down the corridor towards the kitchens. Devlin shrugged, and gave her a mischievous grin.
"Knew those rafters were up there th'whole time," he winked, "and I knew they led int' th'antechamber too. 'sides, I thought we'greed not t'go over matters wit a fine pick comb, few days back? Wha 'appened to tha' now?" he said, in his lazy, deep bass voice. It was all the more infuriating that he was probably telling the truth, and she gave the matter up as a lost cause. The two had been arguing over it almost as soon as they'd met each other in the passageways, and he was as muleheaded as ever. They walked on in silence for a few minutes, or would have, had he not started whistling. Marie felt it was rather tuneless, and soon found herself frowning at the ditty.
"Where do you pick up these whining little airs anyway," she growled eventually.
"Why, this 'un's from me hometown, m'darlin'. Y'wouldn't dare say ought bad o' that swee' abode, would y'now?" he said, snickering a little, before resuming his melody.
"And I thought," Marie retorted quickly, glad for an opportunity where he couldn't back down, "that we agreed you weren't going to call me your 'darling' any more, either. There was a punishment, too, now wasn't there?" She smiled, in a distinctly sadistic fashion, and raised her eyes to the ceiling, and her finger to her chin, as if trying to remember exactly what.
"Now, it wasn't the hand, because you need that to fight with, though it's not as if you ever help in that area," she spoke with the air of a child delighted by an assortment of brightly coloured confectionary, "and it wasn't the ears, because then you wouldn't be able to hear your betters telling you when you're doing something stupid. What could it have been?
Oh," she exclaimed, eyes gleeful, "it was the tongue! Not as if you ever say anything of worth, now is it Devlin?"
"Your harsh words wound me sorely, m'darlin'!" he gasped, in mock fear, though she noted with some satisfaction that his pace quickened ever so slightly. She was about to draw her dagger, and give it a little test on her fingernails when someone shouted her name from behind them. Devlin whirled about, and grinned more widely than before.
"'ello Andrion. We're almost at th'dinner table now! Would y'lordship care to join us?" he gave the other man a sweeping bow. Marie scowled slightly. Andrion, whose form was mostly hidden under a long brown cowl, hood down, was not a lord, and didn't appreciate the little jibes, even though they were never ill meant. He was simply the sort of man who did not abide fools gladly, and being stuck with Devlin for the last few years had done nothing if not given him an iron grip on his temper. His hair was mostly a dark grey now, but rather than letting it grow down to his shoulders as most Aesthans did, he had it cut quite close. Her companion, of course, took this as a sign of excess piety, since generally only the nobility could afford a regular visit by a barber, and none of the three were born to riches.
Andrion frowned, but ignored the title.
"Our presence is required in the Queen's chambers," he said simply, and turned to walk away, but paused slightly and looked over his shoulder at Devlin. "And by that, I mean
now." Devlin opened his mouth as if to protest, but before he had the chance, the crossbowman was around the corner.
"
Well," he said indignantly. "Well! And there were I, lookin'
forward t'me chicken, and he has t'go and ruin't!"
"Oh, stop your bawling," Marie teased, as the two quickly set off in the footsteps of their companion.
"The matter is being overseen by our remaining Inquisitor," the Queen replied to Andrion's question. The three were alone with the monarch, but for the guards beyond the room's sole door. It was a distinct sign of their trustworthiness, marked moreso by the fact that this was the Queen's personal study, and not the throne room. Although it bore the usual decorations of the reigning family's colours and crest, most of the wallspace was taken up with bookshelves and bronze framed paintings. The aging monarch sat behind a wide desk in the centre of the room, hands steepled in front of her as she looked at the three knights.
"Even so, your majesty, ten men and one
woman managed to penetrate five floors up into the castle. That's over seventy guards they passed by! Surely one man alone cannot handle-" Andrion protested, but was cut short as his liege raised a withered hand. Marie, behind him, was scowling slightly at his emphasis on the word, 'woman.'
"The Sixth is quite capable enough, sir D'Arcy. I am assigning
you to other matters because they need
your attention. You are not suggesting, I hope, that my judgment is in question?" It wasn't a threat, but Andrion looked immediately mortified at the notion, and sharply bowed his head in apology. The Queen sighed, and stood up from her chair, crossing the room to a bookshelf. She browsed the tomes for a while, drawing a pale fingertip along their spines, before taking a deep breath.
"All of you are valuable to the Kingdom, doubly so after tonight. But you must accept that despite your knack for being in the right place at the right time, you
cannot be a part of everything. Given the miserable remainder we have left, the task I have here needs your skills. It would require
twelve lesser men to amass the experience you three have." She turned away from the many volumes of bound papers, walking back to the oaken desk, and leaning heavily on with both arms.
"I accept that the circumstances of this intrusion have many confusing layers to them,
but," she cut off Devlin as he sought to interrupt, "I cannot use all of our dwindling resources on a single task. Do not think I do not see that this needs more than one man: of course I do! But I have a limited taskforce here, and
you are required at the stronghold! Fifteen score loyal Aesthan soldiers dead. As if that alone weren't bad enough, there was barely a sign of battle."
Marie groaned inwardly. Three hundred was a now great number of soldiers, and the war had stretched forces thin around Aestha already. Rioting and public disorder was rife in several areas, and lawless territories were beginning to go unpunished. They probably had maybe two thousand armed men left across the land, and over half of those were garrisoned in the capital city where they were now. Unlike Devlin and Andrion, she understood the Queen's situation perfectly: it was a matter of delegation and unhappy necessity, not neglect or ignorance. The aging woman would not have denied their request for aid in the inexplicable breaching of the castle without good reason.
"You will have a full division to command: forty men, armed and armoured, including a captain and standard bearer. I think the 30th should be suitable: Andrion has had experience with them before now. I've freed five scouts from their duties to accompany, and the stablemaster has warhorses and messenger hawks awaiting your arrival." Her tone was harder now, words spoken quickly and precisely: no member of the Aesthan royal family went uneducated in the matters of leading an army, be they male or female. The Queen had stood in battles more than once in her youth, and the fiery determination of war had hardly burnt out in the time since. There was a sharp knock at the door, and a tall muscular man entered, eyes to the ground, and knelt.
"Ah, General Steed. One moment." He lowered his head in understanding, but did not leave the room. Marie wondered inwardly whether he should really have stayed. She preferred their meetings with the Queen to be private matters: his presence was like rapids in a river, disrupting the natural steady flow of water.
"You'll be joined by Bethryn and Tristan. They are presently on duty in the Archipedes, but should join you en route to your destination. I'm sure you'll be happy to see them again." Her assembly nodded their acceptance of this, and the Queen breathed out reassuredly.
"That will be all. Marie, Devlin, Andrion." She gave each of them a nod of respect and dismissal, and whispered, "stay safe," under her breath when their backs were turned.
"Now, Steed. I'll be taking some of your troops, it seems," she began wearily, as they left the room.
"Good grub, this's," Devlin said, though his words were mostly mangled by the meat filling his mouth. Marie rolled her eyes in digust, and resumed the laboursome process of carving the fowl, serving Andrion some when she had finished. He gave her a respectful, "thank you," which was more than she'd received from her other companion, and walked away to the far side of the hall, no doubt to be away from Devlin. What irked Marie most about the blonde man opposite her, whose attention had been drawn away from the meal by one of the serving wenches, was that he was more than capable of decent manners, and yet preferred a rude demeanour. His slurring accent and slouching, messy habits were traits he only really displayed when he was with Andrion and her. He showed eloquence and properness at other times, such as during the furor in the throne room, but only on his own whim. She despaired of making conversation with him at times like this, and instead focused on her own plate.
They ate in silence for some time, Devlin occasionally making lewd gestures towards the maids, one of whom was so bold as to give him a sharp slap for his arrogance. Marie smiled slightly between bites, but he seemed unperturbed by such rejection, and continued with his games. They had almost finished the meal when Steed eventually sat down beside them, and helped himself to some of the chicken.
"Evening," the man scowled to each of them, and Marie replied in kind. Devlin, unsuprisingly, had his mouth full, and thought better of attempting speech, nodding in greeting instead.
"So you're the ones dealing with the business over at the Dreads," Steed said, running one large hand through thick, dark brown hair. "Can't say I'd like to be in your boots. The area's had two uprisings earlier in the summer. Without the troops stationed there, there could be more this autumn."
"We've a history there, General," Devlin said, his earlier mannerisms and accent vanishing as though they had never been there. "We've leverage with the mayor, and we might be able to make some leeway with the miners, too."
Steed seemed to think this over for a moment, finally giving them a weak smile, and beginning to eat. Devlin, similarly, began helping himself to a second portion, and Marie was relieved to note that he ate it in a rather less piglike fashion than before. The locals' troubles didn't concern her that much. They were a minor inconvenience at most. And with Tristan and Bethryn joining them, she doubted there'd be a problem, even if the peasantry did take to arms. Something from earlier in the evening still troubled her.
"What's happening in Son, at the moment, General? Whereabouts are our forces?" She inquired, when he had finished his mouthful.
"There's about two thousand spread out keeping the peace in the areas we've already moved through. The other ten thousand, mostly encamped around the capital, Shee. It's turned into a siege already. They won't hold out long," he said, firmly, though there was something in his tone that changed subtly in the last sentence.
"You've cut off their food supplies?"
The general gave her a suspicious glance, and she realised the question had been too obvious for someone who had been stationed in the homeland for the last two years. However, Steed gave a quick glance left and right, and then leaned in closer to her.
"That b*****d Millant isn't planning on conquering, he's just razing the land. He's nothing more than a common southern barbarian. There
aren't food supplies: the fields were torched and salted during the summer campaign." Millant was Steed's superior, and Marie would have hazarded a guess that the general's quick return to the kingdom was linked in with the matter. It appeared the Justiciar hadn't been lying, then, during her righteous speeches.
"And the women and children?" The look on his face told her the answer at once.
"Were used to destroy their morale. Once Millant had devastated a few towns with his methods, most of the militia began to fall apart. And the Sonian army was never up to much anyway." Steed pushed the rest of his plate away, and after another quick cast about, whispered quietly. "How'd you learn all that anyway? There shouldn't be a line of communication back here, even to the Queen."
Marie shrugged, but it was Devlin who spoke.
"Our royal guests earlier tonight had something to say about it. Quite a bit, in fact." He, too, seemed to have given up on eating any more after the revelation, and all three stared at the table for a moment. Their silence was broken by Andrion's arrival, as the tall man laid his empty plate on the wooden surface.
"The stablemaster has our horses ready, and the division is prepared. I'll see you down there." He turned and left, and the other two rose to follow, Marie giving the general a weak smile as she did so.
"Take care, both of you," Steed said, quickly, "because whatever happened at the Stronghold isn't to be taken lightly. Three hundred men don't just up and die without reason."
"We know," Devlin grinned, and gave him a quick salute, before resuming his tone-deaf whistling as the two walked away.
