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No enemy troops hindered the progress of the invaders as they moved forward to attack Holt Mallburn. They surged through the open gates to the outer ward and then the inner, and only Baron Catclaw’s men, assigned to take the gatehouse towers and the troops garrisoned within, knew early on of the appalling massacre perpetrated by the spunkies. Beorbrook’s followers, along with the knights and thanes loyal to Conistone and Silverside, charged about on horseback, pursuing and cutting down any castle inhabitants who dared confront them with weaponry in the open courtyards between the three great wings of the sprawling pile.
The barricaded towers in the curtain wall were the objective of Ramscrest, Bogshaw, and Cloudfell. Under cover of their shields to avoid the rain of arrows, their warriors blasted open the tower entryways with tarnblaze shells. Smoky fires set at ground level soon routed out the beleaguered defenders, who were rounded up and placed under guard.
Conrig, the Companions, Beorbrook’s thanes, and the fighters following the Virago of Marley attacked the main keep, where resistance was expected to be most fierce. Surprisingly, after a brief but ferocious skirmish on the broad stairs leading to the great hall, the palace defenders seemed to lose heart.
“Companions, to me!” Conrig shouted. “Forward to the royal chambers— but remember that Achardus Mallburn is mine!”
Following him, a mob of Cathran nobles, knights, and thanes went howling along the carpeted corridors of the keep’s upper floor, kicking in doors and using tarnblaze on those that were barred. Most of the Didionites they encountered fell to their knees and begged mercy. Those who fought were swiftly overwhelmed, and there were few casualties among the invaders. It soon became evident to Conrig that the huge palace was largely empty of non-combatants. He discovered the wives of Honigalus and Somarus and their tiny children cowering in a wardrobe and set two Companions to guard them. Princess Risalla, the king’s daughter, was found with her ladies in her bedchamber, waiting calmly by the fire. She greeted the bloodstained Cathran Prince Heritor with dignity, but refused to say where her father Achardus might be hiding.
A shout rang out as Conrig quitted Risalla’s apartment. Feribor Blackhorse and Sividian Langford were ascending a staircase giving access to the southeast tower. “Your Grace! There’s a locked iron door up here. Perhaps it leads to some strongroom where the royals have taken refuge.”
Baroness Zeandrise Marley lifted a baldric with a pendant pouch from her mailed shoulder and handed it to Conrig. “I still have my small bombshell. Take it with my compliments.”
The prince grinned at her, snatched the baldric, and ran to join his friends at the top of the steps.
“Hang it from the latch, right on top of the lockplate,” Count Sividian urged excitedly.
The prince uncovered the neck and wick of the iron sphere and arranged the leather baldric against the door. “Who has a tarnstick to light the bombshell?” he asked. But neither man did. “Never mind, I’ll find one somewhere. Go down again, both of you, out of danger.”
When the pair were below in the corridor with the others, all looking up in anticipation, Conrig knelt and struck a light with his talent, as Snudge had taught him. A tiny flame sprang from his fingertip and ignited the fuse. He ran down the stairs, reaching the bottom just as the explosion flung him onto his face and filled the place with smoke.
Someone screamed, “Your Grace!”
“I’m fine, not a scratch.” He got to his feet, drew his sword and felt his way up the stairs. Feribor, Sividian and the Virago were at his heels.
The door was open. Torchlight from within illuminated the clouds of smoke in a confusing manner, reflecting from countless objects of polished gold and silver. The place was clearly a storeroom for the palace plate and other precious items. The gigantic king of Didion stood there among the treasure chests and laden shelves, barefoot and in his black-and-white striped nightshirt, holding the five-foot-long Sword of State in a two-handed grip. The sword hilt blazed with jewels, but the blade, wavy-edged and etched with intricate designs, was of the finest Forailean steel. Behind him, in the shadows, stood a wizard in black robes and Queen Siry, wrapped in a voluminous cloak of snowy fur.
Achardus roared, “Bastard son of a Cathran sow!” He moved forward as Conrig advanced, swinging his long blade in a heroic arc. The prince skipped aside, ducking beneath the stroke, and upset a spindly stand holding a tray of gem-studded golden goblets. The cups went bouncing and clanging over the wooden floor.
The king trod on one, lost his balance as the thin metal buckled beneath his great weight, and crashed onto his back like a felled oak. But he still grasped the jeweled sword in one hamlike hand, and as Conrig sprang at him he aimed its point at the prince, intending to spit him as though he were a charging boar.
“Con—no!” Count Sividian leapt at Conrig, bowling him aside. Both men fell to the floor beyond the reach of Achardus, who bellowed like a bull in torment, rolled over, and attempted to regain his feet. But long years of feasting and indolence had weakened the leg muscles of the mountainous body. It was too ungainly to rise without help.
Conrig was upright again in an instant, stamping the king between his shoulder blades with one thick-soled boot. Achardus gave a great whooping exhalation of breath, like a surfacing grampus. The blade fell from his fingers.
In one swift movement Conrig straddled the king’s head and lowered the point of his own sword into the thick roll of fat hiding the neck of Achardus Mallburn.
“Yield, Didion! Yield to my Sovereignty!”
“Go to hell,” said the king wearily “and take the Mossland witch with you to the Cold Lights.”
Conrig thrust downward with all his strength. The steel passed through flesh and spine and into the planks of the floor, where it stuck fast.
Queen Siry uttered a piercing scream, throwing off her fur cloak as she rushed toward the man who had slain her husband. In her right hand was a rapier, and in the left a misericord, one of the thin elongated daggers used by plate-armored combatants. Momentarily overcome by surprise, with his weapon immobilized, Conrig hesitated. Feribor and Sividian seemed equally dumfounded and stood as though turned to stone, as Siry came at the prince with both blades.
It remained for the Virago of Marley to take a great running leap, her varg a shining blur, and sweep off the Queen of Didion’s head with a single blow.
thirty
In mid-morning of that Leap Day of the Boreal Moon, when the tumult of battle had subsided, Cathra’s wounded received succor and her dead were wrapped in shrouds and laid out on individual funeral pyres in the palace’s outer ward: nine knights from various households, the two nobly born armigers slain at Mallmouth Bridge, and twenty-two thanes.
The low-riding sun shone brilliantly and the air was very cold. Snudge stood among the other squires of the royal cohort assembled to pay tribute to the fallen. When the alchymists had completed their prayers and the flames were leaping high, the boys and the Heart Companions gave a final flourish of swords in tribute and prepared to accompany Conrig back into the palace, where he would hold audience and deal with necessary business devolving upon the conquest.
“Deveron, you are excused from attending.” The prince spoke privily to the boy as they ascended the great staircase leading to the presence chambers of Didion. “Rest and recover in the apartment set aside for me and Vra-Stergos in the west wing. My trussing coffer is there. Take fresh clothes for yourself. Later, if you have the strength, undertake a windsearch for Princess Ullanoth, whose whereabouts are still unknown, and then attempt an overview of events taking place at sea off Cathra’s southern coast. My brother has been unable to obtain any detailed information from the windvoices at Cala, nor do we know how the Tarnian mercenary fleet may be faring.”
“I’ll find out what I can, Your Grace.”
“Await my coming. Tell no one else what you discover.” He pulled a distinctive sapphire ring from a finger of his right hand. “Show this to Lord Bogshaw’s men, who secure the door to my rooms, and they will admit you.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The palace was now surprisingly quiet, with tired-looking sentries standing guard in critical areas. A few servants with haunted faces crept about the corridors on domestic errands, shepherded by armed Cathran thanes. Only sanded-over stains on the floor and occasional piles of broken furniture and other debris pushed into corners gave evidence of the fighting that had taken place during the night. Didionite prisoners of war had removed their own dead. On Conrig’s orders, the wounded defenders were being given the same care as his own men.
At the opulent guest chambers the prince had appropriated, Bogshaw’s men recognized Snudge at once as the hero of Mallmouth Bridge. The young knight in charge of the guards smote his breast in an affectionate mock-salute as the boy showed him the ring, then admitted him to the royal suite. The sitting room and two adjoining bedchambers were deserted, but quaint tiled stoves standing in all three rooms contained briskly burning fires, so the place was warm, in contrast to most of the rest of the palace. Conrig’s armor and coffer had been left in the larger bedroom. The boy helped himself to a set of fine linen smallclothes, a simple black tunic, a pair of scuffed leather trews, and thick wool stockings. He stripped naked and washed his bruised and battered body, then dressed in the fresh clothes.
Exhausted though he was and aching in every muscle, he knew that the last thing his royal master really expected was for him to take his ease. He pulled a truckle-bed out from beneath the prince’s own canopied bed, sprawled on it fully dressed, and undertook a windsearch for the Conjure-Princess. In spite of her promise to meet Conrig, no one had yet laid eyes on her, nor had she bespoken either alchymist since giving notice that the gates to Holt Mallburn were open to the Cathran army.
Snudge’s first cursory search revealed no trace of Ullanoth, which did not surprise him. Nevertheless, he felt certain that she was still in the palace and began a more methodical inspection of the huge fortress, beginning with the central keep, scrying every room, closet, and cubbyhole. He forced himself to persevere in the tedious work until his fatigued brain would have no more of it. The reality of his task changed into a dreary dream of it, and dreaming passed in turn into welcome oblivion.
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It was only a matter of convenience that Conrig Wincantor sat upon the throne of Didion during his first official audience following the conquest. Honigalus, the new king, had thus far refused to respond to Cathran windspeech, and there could be no capitulation of Didion to the Sovereignty unless its legitimate ruler formally submitted.
Conrig’s invasion of the enemy capital had succeeded, but the war was not won—and the fact that King Achardus had chosen death over the Sovereignty of High Blenholme had been a severe blow to the Prince Heritor’s overall strategy. His small army could not possibly hold Didion over the winter; there was not enough food. Unless Honigalus was quickly defeated at sea or persuaded to accept vassalage, the Cathrans would have to withdraw ignominiously, with their tails tucked between their legs.
None of his lords had voiced this unpleasant contingency to Conrig, but all of them knew it to be true. The prince had yet to decide what he would do next; nevertheless he showed a confident face to all of those assembled in the throne room, and commanded Earl Marshal Parlian Beorbrook to make the first report.
The marshal informed Conrig that the toll of mortality among the combatant warriors of Didion was unexpectedly modest. Those slaughtered by the spunkies might have numbered in the thousands, but no one could now say for certain. By dawn, when all traces of the uncanny fog had melted away, the terrible little creatures had disappeared—and so had the remains of those they had feasted upon. Nothing was left of the victims but the empty garments and armor they had worn, lying in drifts of dust.
“We will speak no more of those slain by the Small Lights,” Conrig told Beorbrook quietly. “Few of our people witnessed the blood-drained bodies last night, and in time they may come to believe that the awful sight was only imagined, not real.”
“Or that the wasted corpses were merely those who had starved to death in the famine,” Beorbrook suggested. “I’ll deal with any who persist in saying otherwise.”
“I place the military occupation of Mallburn in your able hands,” the prince told him. “Ramscrest will serve as your principal deputy, arranging for the defense of the city against any Didionite forays from the countryside. Somarus and his force at Boarsden probably pose the only serious threat against us. Persuade members of the late king’s Privy Council to tell you how many warriors he has under his command. Their lives depend upon their cooperation. When your plan of occupation and defense is complete, come and inform me of the details.”
“Very well. But before I go, Your Grace, I think you should interview the Didionite archwizard. My men have him here in custody, and he’s given his parole not to attempt any magical mischief. He says he has a message from Honigalus.”
“Bring him forward,” the prince said.
Ilingus Direwold stood defiant before the conqueror, his hound-dog features radiating something very close to triumph. “I have recently bespoken King Honigalus. Even as we speak, his armada is engaging your own navy in a fierce sea-battle east of Cathra’s Vigilant Isles. Your ships are strongly outnumbered and are in the process of being defeated.”
Those standing close to the throne uttered gasps and cries of consternation.
“Go on,” Conrig said flatly.
“After his victory is accomplished, King Honigalus will be reinforced by over two dozen heavily armed frigates and corvettes commanded by Continental corsairs. They’ll make short work of the rest of your navy and then commence bombarding Cala Palace without mercy. King Honigalus invites you to transmit word of your surrender via my windvoice, at your convenience. If you do so promptly, he will spare the lives of King Olmigon, Queen Cataldise, and your wife Princess Maudrayne.”