Gaius and the guard arrived, not an instant too soon, and such a battle ensued as would echo down the ages at Din Guardi. The numbers stood more or less even until Art’s soldiers began to pour in through the gate. Some of Coel’s men had switched sides: the fight became sharper as their comrades discovered which. Excalibur moved like a scythe through harvest, and Lance continued his methodical dispatch of anyone who entered sword or dagger’s reach.
Prince Garb was nowhere to be seen, but must have been watching from somewhere—when the army began to turn the tide, he appeared on the far edge of the melee, ducked down and started to run low along the courtyard wall. Catching sight of him, Art made a grab at Lance’s shirt. “There he is, the weasel. Get him! I’ve got my hands full.”
“Leave him to me,” Lance said grimly, thinking of the butchered guards, and the poor old king whose heart would surely be broken by this. He dodged out of the fray and ran.
Garb was hard to follow. Born and raised within Din Guardi’s walls, he knew its every bolt-hole, and terror had made him swift. Lance tailed him as he would have done a deer in a deep hungry winter—single-minded, remorseless, not dismayed at losing sight of him, every sense alert for the marks of his passage. A door left ajar, a dying patter of feet, a scrap of rich fabric left torn on a nail... Skidding into a wine vault, Lance cornered him, desperately trying to raise a trap-door by its iron ring.
As soon as he saw the game was up, he left off his efforts and straightened, backing away, both hands held in front of him. “Ah, it’s you, Lance! Don’t hurt me!”
Despite everything, Lance was reluctant to finish him off. Weasel or not, this was the heir to Bryneich, the last of Coel Hen’s dynasty. Lance had never killed a surrendered man. “Why not?” he demanded. “You’ve betrayed your own kingdom. Your father!”
“I didn’t mean it! I swear, Lance, right up until the last minute, I only meant to make peace. And then… Then yesterday, a boatload of pirates made it ashore a few miles south of here. They’d been raiding. They were dripping gold. They got a message to Oesa somehow, and he offered me so much money to open the gates…” Garb shook his head at the memory, eyes gleaming feverishly. “So much, I could barely imagine it. You could barely imagine it! We could go—we could find him. He needs men like you.”
“Oesa is dead.”
“Then… if you get me out of here, I’ll take you down the coast with me to the pirates’ camp. I’ll speak for you, don’t worry…” He tailed off. Lance of Vindolanda, so grave in the debating chamber, had leaned a shoulder against the wall and started to laugh. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to be rewarded?”
“Was Oesa paying you from the beginning?”
“Oh, what do you think?” Garb dropped the pretence, and dared a couple of steps toward Lance. “You think I ran about for months between Coel and those Anglian brutes for nothing? For the sake of some idiot’s dream of peace? I did it for gold. And then I got a better offer. I’m trying to share it with you.”
“Shut your traitor mouth.”
Garb’s face twisted. “Ah, that’s right,” he snarled. “You do it all for the honour, don’t you? Honour and love. What do you think your honour will buy you, when you’ve trailed your sacred king around the country for ten years, spilled out your life in his service? Will his love warm your bed for you then?”
Lance went still. Laughter ran out from him like grain from an upturned sack. He reached out and grabbed Garb by the arm. “You’re not worth my blade,” he said hoarsely. “Come on. Your father can choose your reward for this night’s work.”
Garb was a carrion bird, not a killer. He never should have got a blow past Lance’s guard. But Lance was suddenly tired and sick. Garb writhed back and struck at him like a snake.
Lance felt the blade enter his side as a thud, a strange inner punch. Why had his grasp loosened on his prey? One leg folded beneath him and he seized at the rim of a barrel for support. Garb was retreating backwards, pale with disbelief. He took a few uncertain strides, then turned and ran for his life.
***
The kings of Bryneich and Britannia stumbled away from the end of their separate battles, and met in the courtyard, bloodstained and weary. Lance had made it back there too, but only as far as the shadows of a tumbled archway, where his legs had turned to water and he’d fallen to his knees among the stones. The strange thing was that he couldn’t bring himself to care, or draw breath to call to Art, who was only a shout and a gesture away. A massive indifference was filling him. It almost felt like relief.
Coel looked more cheerful than Lance had ever seen him. Lance guessed the old king’s world had been restored. Art’s, as well: Briton versus Anglian, blood on the turf. Grinning, propping his hands on his knees to catch his breath, Art nodded to Coel. “We made a good try for peace, sire.”
“Aye, and bloody tiresome it was. I'm almost grateful to my vermin son for ending it. I suppose I do have him to thank?”
“It looks that way. We saw him bolting when my army turned the fight. I'm sorry.”
“Don't be. Best I know. Where is he now?”
“Lance went after him.” Art straightened up and looked directly at him, but Lance was only part of the broken darkness now. Fires had started here and there, and Coel's servants were dashing around putting them out. “Our household priest used to say hell would look like this. And I was destined to go there, if I didn’t leave off the girls and the boys and get myself to his church.”
“Aye, ours said the same. Where do they get their ideas, these frock-clad fools from Rome? Fanciful, it seemed to me, the dreams you’d have after an over-rich feast. But you’re a Christian king, Artorius. Don’t you believe in hell?”
“Not the lurid tale of it that priest told. No man of common sense could swallow such fantasies. I got a second opinion from another priest.”
“What did that one say?”
“He was more of a philosopher. He told me hell was the knowledge of being forever alone. And that did put the fear of God into me.” He wiped blood and sweat from his eyes and scanned the flame-lit dust clouds anxiously. “Where’s my Lance?”
“I’m here,” Lance said, but the words had no sound, no force. He was less badly hurt than he’d thought. He was bleeding, but couldn’t tell how much in the flickering light, not with so many other bloodstains daubing his shirt and hands. He was neatly punctured between two ribs, he thought, but that was all. He couldn't believe in the wound. His whole side was numb. Apart from that, he was fine.