“The general—”
“What?” Martus cut off his adjutant as he ducked out of his tent, helm under one arm, old gore drying on his breastplate. He saw me as he straightened, belligerence warring with guilt—unusual for Martus: normally there was just belligerence.
I jumped down from Murder’s back and pushed through to confront him, immediately regretting losing the height advantage. “What the hell are you doing here? Didn’t you get the messages? You can see the fucking smoke!” I pointed just in case he’d missed it rising above the fire-glow in the distance. “There’s a full-fledged battle at the gates . . . and we’re losing!” I glanced around. “And where in God’s name are the rest of your men? Get them moving to the Appan Gate—right now!”
Martus squared up to me as he had so often before, normally a prelude to flattening me if I proved too slow on my feet to escape. “Hertet has ordered that we stay.” Angry but with the tone of a man caught doing something that he shouldn’t be doing. “My command is patrolling the streets around the palace, in eight squads of fifty.”
“Who gives a bucket of elephant dung what Uncle Hertet has to say?” An anger rose in me, one I hadn’t felt in years . . . perhaps since I was seven and Martus used a head-butt to take me out of the last battle where I stood my ground. “I’m the Marshal of Vermillion—I have command of its armed forces, and you, General, answer to me!”
Martus surprised me then. He let out the air swelling his chest in a sigh, first exploding from behind teeth clenched in his own rage, then trailing off into a long slow exhalation. “There’s word the Red Queen has fallen. Some report about the army in Slov being encircled . . . an arrow . . . Hertet has declared himself king.”
As Martus’s shoulders slumped I remembered Darin, lying pale against the Appan Gate. They could almost have been twins: of a height, Martus a little broader, his features less fine. I saw Darin dying and his name fought to escape the tight line of my lips. I saw, perhaps for the first time, Martus as both man and boy, not a rival, not a bullying brother, but a son like me, competing for the affection of a father who had nothing left to give. When Mother died it had been as if the stopper had been drawn from Father and all that she had seen in him had run out, any drive, passion, that vital interest in the world that makes us alive, leaving him empty.
“Gather your men, Martus, and get to the Appan Gate. If we fall there, we fall everywhere. If we can’t hold the city walls then the palace walls will not hold. If he truly is king then better an angry king than a dead one?”
Martus nodded. “I’ll send runners.”
“Have my man.” I gestured at the surviving soldier who’d come with me from the Appan Gate. “He can ride as fast as your soldiers run. Almost.”
Martus gave an absent nod, looking out along the dark length of Kings Way, barely a crack of light from any shutter. “But king or not, idiot or not, I don’t think our uncle is entirely wrong—there is something out there, coming this way . . . I can feel it. And close. Not your battle at the gates . . .”
“Maybe.” I felt it too. “But we can’t let the city fall.” I set off walking toward the main gates. “We need the palace guard too!”
“He’ll never let you have them!” Martus called at my back.
“Got to try!” I waved him off and strode on toward my meeting with Vermillion’s new king.
SEVENTEEN
I approached the great portcullis. Along with the gatehouse it sat in it was perhaps the only military element of the palace. The main wall stood barely twenty feet high and no thicker than a sword-length. Further from the gatehouse it dipped to fifteen foot in places.
Martus had said Hertet would never release the guard.
“I know cowards! I’ll find a way!” Spoken to myself, my brother now beyond earshot.
I hadn’t spoken of Darin. Perhaps I wasn’t brave enough. The words hadn’t wanted to come and even if they had I wouldn’t have trusted myself to speak them. Maybe none of us would survive the night. If we did there would be time to mourn in daylight.
Closing on the main gate, I saw no guards on the walls, none in the sentry boxes to either side of the gates, no sign of activity at the arrow slits or murder-holes. I drew my sword and banged its pommel against the metal boss where two timbers in the portcullis intersected.
“Open the gate!”
Nothing for a long moment, then a shape broke from the deep shadow on the far side of the entry tunnel and ambled across to face me through the grid of oak and iron, unhooding a lantern as he came. A scrawny fellow in the grey-greens of the Marsail keep, toting a spear over his shoulder, on his head an iron skullcap that looked older than the Red Queen.
“Open the damn gate.” I banged again.
“Don’t rightly know how, yer worship.” He didn’t seem too bothered by the fact, and given that he should properly be stationed out of sight guarding prisoners in the Marsail’s cells he was likely telling the truth. “Your name, guardsman.” A demand, not a question.
“Ronolo Dahl, if it pleases you.” He clicked his heels together—albeit without any actual click.
“It doesn’t overly please me. Now, Guardsman Dahl. Open. The. Gate.” These fellows rarely had contact with royals and had little notion how to conduct themselves. How Ronolo came to be guarding the main gate to the Red Queen’s palace, apparently all by himself, I had no idea, but it didn’t bode well.
“Can’t, yer worship. King’s orders. Nobody in, nobody out.”
“Sorry?” I cupped my hand to my ear, and leaned in close to the heavy timbers.
Ronolo echoed me, leaning in and raising his voice, “Nobody in! Nobody out!”
I snaked an arm through the small square hole between verticals and horizontals, catching him around the back of the head and hauling him up against the portcullis. With my other hand I reversed my blade and set the point against his neck.
“I am the marshal of this city’s armed forces. I am a prince of Red March, grandson to the Red Queen, and I have lived in this palace for over twenty years. Believe me, Ronolo, when I say that I have walked the paths of Hell itself, and the things I will do to you if you fail to obey me will make Satan’s devils weep.” I let him go. “Now. Open the gate.”
Fear can be an excellent tutor and, although Ronolo had no real cause to fear me given that he was out of reach of my sword, he scuttled to acquaint himself with the complexities of the winding gear. The two minutes that passed before the gate began to rise were very long ones, in which I considered the highly probable eventuality that Ronolo had just kept running. Staring into the darkness of the courtyard beyond the gates I found myself haunted by visions of a baby, soft and pink in her crib, fast in sleep while with slow intent a mire-ghoul crept through the nearest window. Foolishness, of course. Darin’s little Nia would be safe in Micha’s arms with the household guard tight around her in Roma Hall. I thought of Lisa too. Pacing her rooms in Grandmother’s guest wing, waiting for Barras to return. I wondered if I saw her—would I have the courage to tell his fate? I know cowards. I knew I wouldn’t.
The portcullis lurched into motion, making me flinch. It ratcheted up a whole inch before stopping. Then another one. I imagined Ronolo labouring at the great winch all by himself. Another inch. I sheathed my sword. Carrying bare steel within the palace compound would be foolish at the best of times. That said, I felt instantly vulnerable the moment the hilt hit home against the leather of the scabbard.