To Ride Hell’s Chasm. Janny Wurts
included a robed dignitary and six servants clad in Devall’s formal livery. They would be bound for the Lowergate keep, bearing the high prince’s offer of funding and men to further the search for the princess.
The gesture was a breach of crown protocol, and a slight against Sessalie’s aged king. Taskin assessed the move’s brazen overture, then measured its impact against the desert-bred captain he had just given high-handed dismissal. The upright seneschal would have flinched to imagine the course of the coming encounter. Devall’s smooth, lowland statesman might well fall prey to the brunt of Mykkael’s outraged temper. The ex-mercenary was seasoned. He had demonstrated his astute grasp of royal hierarchy. Even disadvantaged and set under pressure, he had handled his share of political byplay down to a subtle fine point.
Devall’s embassy was likely to suffer an unenviable reception down at the garrison. Not worried, his mouth almost turned by a smile, the commander slid the list across his marble-topped desk for dispatch through the messenger relay.
The aide left on that errand, and all but collided with an officer inbound through the alcove doorway. The arrival was early to be bearing word from the riders who quartered the riverbank. Taskin met the man’s urgent salute, braced for bad news and already up on his feet.
‘Report!’ he demanded.
The breathless newcomer wasted no words. ‘The palace drudge who discovered the sorcerer’s mark? We’ve found her. She’s dead.’
Taskin paused only to shout over the spooled rail of the gallery. ‘Captain Bennent! Get me a task squad. Now!’ To the winded officer, now forced to flank his commander’s clipped stride towards the stairwell, he added, ‘Take me there. I’ll hear your details on the move.’
The hollow report of the destriers’ hooves thundered over the planked drawbridge spanning the lower keep moat. To the rag men who netted for salvage on the bank, the noise posed a shattering break in routine. The Lowergate garrison were a division of foot. They used horses only for transport.
Not only the poor recognized the departure. As the breveted officer left in charge of the garrison, Vensic knew what his recent promotion was worth. By now made aware of the upset at the palace, he was at hand as the riders emerged through the dank swirl of fog at the gate.
The sultry glow from the bailey fire pans revealed them: two lancers leading in their immaculate palace surcoats, and a third man, cloaked and hooded, on a restive chestnut, whose slouched posture was not Mykkael’s.
Vensic surged forward. He caught the bridle of the ornery horse before one of his horseboys got mangled. ‘Where’s the captain?’ he demanded as the rider dismounted.
The palace guard escort startled, then stared at their charge, who flipped back the cloak’s cowled hood to expose the light-skinned, wry face of the Middlegate’s watch officer.
‘When the captain stopped to take reports and give orders, we changed places,’ the imposter confessed. His shrug as he slipped the cloak from his shoulders offered no grace of apology. ‘Mykkael’s habits force a man to stay keen. You’ll learn, if you’re here to serve under him.’
‘We’re Taskin’s, assigned to the messenger relay,’ one of the palace men rebutted. ‘Where’s your captain?’
‘Had business, an errand,’ said the officer, laconic. Then, to Vensic, ‘Mind that rogue’s ugly teeth. I’m told we’re to keep him. Remember the drover that Jedrey caught trying to pilfer the stores? Mykkael says that one’s appointed to tend him.’
Vensic laughed. ‘That’s just as likely to break his right hand as any formal sentencing.’
‘Won’t blight a man’s conscience, that way, Mykkael said,’ the gate officer explained in admiration. ‘Captain wished that hooved snake all the wicked joy of war. Hopes it can scare better sense into yon light-fingered misfit.’ Wary of the chestnut’s lightning-quick strike, he surrendered the reins, relieved to let the keep’s officer take charge, and muscle the brute through the bailey.
Vensic’s brisk shout pulled a man from the muster gathered to relieve the street watch. ‘Find a diligent boy who will keep the grooms clear,’ he instructed, then secured the surly chestnut to the hitching post with the sturdiest rope and shackle. ‘Someone from the armoury can have that pilferer brought up. Aye, the thieving little creep’s to meet his punishment.’
To the Middlegate officer still beside him, Vensic said, ‘Is the princess truly missing? Sorry prospect. What else did Mykkael give you?’
‘A right mouthful of orders.’ No smile, this time, as the Middlegate man assessed the yard’s milling industry, orange-lit by the cinders whirled off the fire pans. ‘First off, he wants you to double the street watch. No one’s pulled from patrol on the walls. Mykkael’s adamant, there. Draw a full reserve company, send them out straight away. I’ll tell you the rest when we’re settled inside.’
Vensic flagged the outbound sergeant, then belatedly noted the palace guards, who still trailed astride, looking miffed. ‘Why not get down? Come into the wardroom and breakfast on cider and sausage. Captain Mykkael will be back on his own, before long. Slip in when nobody’s looking, if he can, just to test if the men keep sharp watch.’
‘Slinks like a desert cur,’ agreed the guardsman on the grey, handing his mount off to a horseboy.
Vensic looked back at him, sober. ‘He can, when it suits him. But be careful how you say so. Our garrison has a healthy measure of respect for the captain’s outlandish habits.’
Mykkael, at that moment, was outside the town wall, standing knee-high in drenched grasses. The velvet shadow of spring nightfall masked him, heavy with mist, and the stench wafted up from the tannery. First overt sign of his presence, his sharp movement silenced the shrilling of peepers. The hurled flake of granite left his opened hand, sailed up in an evil and accurate trajectory, and cracked into a latched wooden shutter.
A painted slat splintered. The clatter of fragments wakened the dogs, kennelled in barrels behind him, and launched them into a frenzy. Chains dragged. The night quiet shattered to a chorus of barking.
Mykkael smiled, and waited. A moment later, the shutter slammed back and disgorged the irate face of a matron. If her hair was tied up in curling rags, her tongue was not bound. Keen as a troutman’s flensing knife, her curses shrilled over the racketing hounds.
Mykkael winced. Since the misty darkness no doubt obscured the falcon device on his surcoat, he half-turned, resigned, and uttered the yip the steppes nomads used to round up their wandering stock. The barbaric cry transformed the dogs’ snarling into yaps of riotous welcome.
‘Fortune’s pink, naked arse, it’s yourself!’ huffed the matron. The damaged shutter clapped shut.
Shortly, the downstairs door cracked, and a towheaded child admitted him. Mykkael ruffled her hair, then stepped into gloom redolent with wet hound, and the rancid aroma of ham and boiled onions. He said gently, ‘I’m sorry. Tonight, I haven’t brought butcher’s scraps.’
The upstairs voice shouted down and upbraided him. ‘You’ll pay for that burst shutter in coin, if the silver comes out of your pay share.’
Then the house matron shuffled down the beam stairway, mantled in mismatched wool blankets. The feet under her night robe were callused and bare, with the lumps of the curling rags hastily stuffed under a drawstring cap. Worse than mortified, she appeared outraged enough to snatch up a game knife and geld the importunate male who had rousted her.
Well warned as the spill of her pricket candle unveiled her purpled complexion, Mykkael spoke quickly. ‘Crown business, madam. Your husband is needed.’
‘Well, your murderer’s bound to evade the law, this time. Benj is no use.’ The woman plonked her broad rump on the settle, while the dutiful girl shoved the door closed. To Mykkael’s raised eyebrows, the matron admitted, ‘He’s drunk. Flopped in a heap in the smokehouse, with my oldest son snoring off whisky beside him. They sipped their fill off the crown’s largesse.