Once Skandar levelled out, she relaxed a little. She could do this.
As the dark griffin began to fly south toward Malvern, Skade wondered briefly whether she should have told the others where she was going. She dismissed the thought almost instantly. They didn’t matter. Only Arenadd mattered, and she vowed to herself now that she would have him back or die in the attempt.
O
n the night before his execution, Arenadd tried to rest. He was too tired to sing any more, so he stayed huddled up in his corner and did some counting.
How many meals had he eaten here? Ten? Twelve? They usually brought in soup for every other meal—if salty water with uncooked vegetables in it counted as soup. Maybe the soup was breakfast. How many bowls of the stuff had he choked down so far?
He spent far too much time trying to work this out. Anything was better to think of than tomorrow.
Eventually, he decided that there had been about seven bowls, maybe six. That meant six or seven days here at most. A week in prison.
Not the first time he’d been locked up but definitely the longest. He growled to himself. Prisons, prisons, always prisons! Was he going to spend the rest of eternity running from one kind of captivity to another?
Still, he supposed he didn’t have much right to complain about it. He had committed enough crimes in his life to earn this cell a hundred times over.
Trying to ignore the throbbing agony in his hand, he made a mental list of all his bad deeds over the years. It was longer than he had expected. Theft. Bribery. Poisoning his old master—but that didn’t count, he added hastily. It had been the old man’s life or his own. What else had he done? Abducted a griffin chick, broken out of gaol.
Murdering Lord Rannagon and his partner Shoa, burning down the Eyrie at Eagleholm and going on the run with a man-eating griffin were probably a lot worse.
Arenadd counted off on his remaining fingers, muttering to himself. “Then there was stealing all those slaves and using them to massacre everyone in Guard’s Post, along with two griffins and two griffiners. Oh, and that man I killed up at Taranis’ Throne. And then I tried to kill Rannagon’s bastard . . . hah.” He spat. The arrogant bone-headed Southerner had got away from him once, and that was one time too many. Arenadd had a score to settle with him.
Still, he looked back over his list of misdeeds with a kind of wonder. He had to admit that hanging was probably too good for him by now.
The thought of his impending execution rose up horribly in his mind. Without thinking, he wrapped his good hand around his throat. The same throat that had been cool and lifeless for months now, the same one he had touched obsessively every day ever since that night.
Once again, he asked himself the one question that had yet to be answered. The question whose answer would change everything.
Can I be killed?
E
rian woke up early on the day of the execution. He had slept badly the night before, but anticipation woke him up like a slap to the face.
He rolled over in bed, feeling as if his stomach was being wrung out. It wasn’t excitement, and it wasn’t fear; he probed for both emotions while he got dressed.
He smoothed down his new blue velvet tunic and tried to flatten his hair, doing his best to ignore the fluttering in his chest. He could hear Senneck moving around in her nesting chamber and hurried to get her some food before she came to complain.
Half a carcass had been hung up the night before in a cupboard used for just that purpose. He lifted it out one-handed, holding it away from his body, and carried it through the archway.
Senneck crouched in her big untidy nest, busy grooming her chest feathers. She didn’t look up when Erian came in and only moved when the meat was in front of her, hooking it toward herself with her beak.
Erian left her to eat. He felt too queasy to bother with his own breakfast. How soon would it be? When would they bring the murderer up out of his cell to face the noose?
To distract himself, he looked up at the sword that hung over the fireplace. His father’s sword, lost for all those months but now back with its rightful owner.
Erian lifted it down, admiring it yet again. A two-handed weapon, meant for battle, its bronze hilt decorated with griffin designs. On the blade just below that, the name had been etched.
Rannagon Raegonson
.
The blade itself was a little rusted now, from when it had fallen into
his
hands. Who knew what it had been used for in that time?
Erian grimaced and clutched the hilt more tightly. It made him furious to think that his own father’s sword, the sword of the great hero Lord Rannagon, must have been used at the massacre at Guard’s Post. A beautiful sword meant for a mighty griffiner lord, turned into a murder weapon.
Not for the first time, Erian wished he had used the sword to cut Arenadd to pieces the moment his father’s murderer had given it back. And he probably would have if he’d had the chance.
Still, he would go and watch the filthy blackrobe hang, and that would be enough. Lord Rannagon’s murder would be avenged.
Senneck entered to interrupt him. “I have eaten, and now I am ready to leave. I do not want to miss this day.”
Erian clumsily put the sword back onto its hooks. “Let’s go, then.”
Senneck had brought her harness; she dropped it at his feet. “Put this on me, and we will fly.”
Erian strapped it on over her head and neck, where it would provide handholds for him. She walked back through her nest and onto the balcony beyond, and he climbed onto her back, holding on awkwardly thanks to his wounded shoulder.
She must have been in a daring mood that morning, because once he was safely on she moved forward to the edge, which had no railing, and stepped off into space. For one long, screaming moment they were falling, headfirst. Erian wrenched at the harness, yelling something completely incoherent, but Senneck ignored him. Her wings opened, and with one quick blow she lifted herself out of the dive and flew leisurely down toward the open space outside the Eyrie gates.
There were other griffins already there. She landed a short distance away from them and allowed Erian to get off. He hit the ground and nearly fell over, but managed to recover himself—more for fear of looking stupid in front of the other griffiners than anything else.
Senneck didn’t seem to notice. “Come now, let us find a good place to stand,” she said, already walking off.
Erian followed, light-headed.
There were more griffiners here than he would have expected, and even more griffins. He wondered why. They couldn’t know the murderer as well as he did, and there was no way they could hate him half as much. Griffins were almost indifferent to this sort of thing.
Senneck had chosen a place near the edge, keeping her distance from the larger griffins nearby. Erian came to stand just in front of her, beneath her beak—the traditional place for a griffiner to stand, under his partner’s protection.
Ahead of them, downhill from the Eyrie gates, the platform stood. It had a clear space in front of it, where the common people of the city had gathered. Most of them were Northerners, all black-haired and black-eyed. For some reason Erian’s tension increased at the sight of them.
Foreboding,
he thought.
That’s it
.
The platform itself was almost featureless. A lever stuck up at the centre, below a wooden beam.
The noose dangled in between.
Erian’s foreboding increased. He stared at the noose, unable to stop himself wondering what it would feel like around his neck. He wondered how long it would take the murderer to die and how painful it would be.
He thought of his father’s death and hoped it would be as painful as possible.
His bravado dribbled away when Arenadd finally came into sight. Two guards appeared, having emerged from the Eyrie somewhere behind the crowd of griffiners. Two more walked behind them, weapons drawn.
The first two were on either side of Arenadd, whose hands were tied behind his back, and they held on to his elbows and pushed him along. Both of them had their own weapons close to hand.
When Erian saw them, a queasy jolt in his stomach brought him back to reality. He tried to fight down his fear, struggling to replace it with something braver, such as hatred. He shouldn’t be afraid of this man, not any more, not now when he was helpless.
Arenadd’s head turned toward Erian, and his heart froze.
In daylight, the murderer’s face looked even worse. Pale, like any Northerner’s, but the features that had once been angular were now swollen and ugly. One eye had disappeared under an eyelid that had turned purple, and the cheek below it bulged as if he had something in his mouth.
The other eye stared straight at Erian. An unreadable Northern eye, fixed on his face.
For an instant Erian was paralysed, but in the brief moment that stare lasted, his fear finally swung around into rage. This man, this wretched, broken
blackrobe
, had taken his father and destroyed hundreds of lives. He had no right to make Erian afraid, not now.
Without so much as a thought, Erian broke away from the crowd. He ran past the guards and headed them off. They halted, instantly pointing their weapons at him.
Erian ignored them. He faced Arenadd, breathing hard through his nose. “I swore I’d see you brought to justice, blackrobe. Now I have.”
Arenadd gave a lopsided sneer. “If you say so,” he said, slurring a little.
The guards tried to move around Erian, but he sidestepped. “This is for my father,” he said, and punched Arenadd in the stomach as hard as he could.
Arenadd lurched backward and would have fallen if the guards hadn’t pulled him back. They shoved Erian out of the way and hauled their prisoner toward the platform. He struggled along between them, wheezing.
Erian let the little group pass and fell into step behind them. They didn’t stop him; they all knew who he was. This was his right.
As Erian reached the top of the stairs, he heard someone coming up behind him. He hopped up the last few steps and turned, backing off to get out of the way.
“Elkin!” he blurted.
She offered him a faint smile. “Good morning, Lord Erian.”
He could feel himself blushing. “I, uh, I . . .” He coughed. “I want to see this properly. If you don’t mind.”
“Of course you may,” she said briefly, and walked toward the front of the platform.
Erian stayed where he was and watched her. He had never felt so awkward in his life.
The Mighty Kraal hadn’t come up onto the platform; there was no room for him there. He had stayed where he was at the forefront of the assembled griffiners, watching in silence.
Erian couldn’t see Senneck from here.
Arenadd had been taken to stand just below the noose. Two guards kept hold of him, while one of the others took up his station by the lever.
Elkin stood at the front of the platform, to one side so the crowd could see the condemned man. “Arenadd Taranisäii,” she began, “also known as Arren Cardockson of Eagleholm, you have been found guilty of the following crimes.” She began to list them all, patiently reciting each one from memory.
“. . . treason, sedition and consorting with rebels,” she finished eventually, her quiet, clear voice carrying over the crowd quite well. “For these crimes, the Master of Law for the territory of Malvern, acting under authority from myself as Mistress of Malvern’s Eyrie, has laid down the sentence of death by hanging.” She glanced at Arenadd. “Under our laws, as a former griffiner you have the right to speak before the sentence is carried out. Speak now, or I will assume that you have waived that right.”
Arenadd’s pale face had turned even paler, but his open eye was alight. “I swear,” he said. And then again, much louder: “I swear. I swear on my dead heart that no Southerner will ever have power over me again.”
The crowd was staring at him. Nobody spoke.
“And the same goes for the rest of you!” Arenadd yelled. “You cowards! Will you let the Southerners grind you into the mud forever? Or will you do something about it?”
The eerie silence broke, and the crowd of Northerners began to shout. In anger or agreement—who knew?
Elkin had already nodded to the guards. One of them took the noose and put it over Arenadd’s head, pulling it tight. He fought back then, hurling himself bodily at them and head-butting one in the face. He kicked the other one in the kneecap before both men retreated out of his reach. There was no need to hold him any more.
Elkin didn’t wait for things to calm down. “Sentence will now be carried out,” she said, her voice lost in the uproar.
The crowd had not stopped shouting. Erian thought he could make out one thing, repeated by many voices.
Dark Lord, Dark Lord, Dark Lord
.