55

Sergeant Bamran Gamble drew the Alitaeran longbow with the broad muscles of his back. It didn't matter if you were as strong as an ox; you couldn't draw an Alitaeran longbow with your arms. This bow was thick yew, seven feet long unstrung, and it could punch through armor at two hundred paces. He'd heard of men hitting a four-foot target at over five hundred paces, but thank the G.o.d, he didn't need to do that.

He stood on the roof of the guardhouse in the castle yard. They'd been barricaded in by a traitor, but the coward had either not had the stomach or not had the torch to set fire to the guardhouse with them inside it. Gamble's men had knocked a hole in the roof and lifted him out. not had the torch to set fire to the guardhouse with them inside it. Gamble's men had knocked a hole in the roof and lifted him out.

The wytch's first bolt had flown high past the sergeant's head before he'd even strung his bow. The wytch was the only meister in the yard, stationed to keep an eye on things, evidently. From Gamble's perch, he could see that more troops were streaming over the East Kingsbridge even now, but he had eyes only for the wytch. It was a woman, her hair red, skin pale. She was breathing heavily, as if the last bolt had taken something out of her, but she was already pulling herself together, chanting, the black vir on her arms straining.

If he missed, he wouldn't get a second shot. The wytch would aim this shot low, and it would set fire to the thatch roof of the guardhouse. More than forty of Sergeant Gamble's men would die.

His back flexed and the broadhead slid back. Three fingers slid toward his face; the gut string touched his lips. There was no aiming. It was purely instinctive. A ball of fire ignited between the wytch's palms. The broadhead jumped right through the flame, and the power that would have carried the arrow through armor had no trouble piercing ethereal flame or a young woman's sternum. She was blasted off her feet as if tied to a horse at full gallop. The arrow pinned her body to the great door behind her.

Sergeant Gamble wasn't conscious of having drawn another arrow. If he'd had a choice, he would have chosen to get off the roof and let his men out, but suddenly, battle was singing in his veins. After seventeen years as a soldier, he was fighting for the first time.

The arrow touched his lips and leapt away. This one hit another wytch leading a file of highlanders across the bridge. It was a brilliant shot, one of the best shots of Gamble's entire life. It flew between three rows of running soldiers and hit a wytch in the armpit as she pumped her arms while running. It blew her sideways off the edge of the bridge. She tumbled, limp, into the waters of the Plith.

The highlanders didn't even slow. That was when Sergeant Gamble knew they were in trouble. Two archers and a wytch peeled off from the group and began looking for him, but all the other men proceeded across the bridge. As the archers drew their arrows, the wytch touched each and fire attached to each arrowhead.

Gamble slid down the roof and dropped into the yard as two burning arrows sank into the thatch. The fire spread unnaturally fast. By the time he unbarred the door, there was already smoke pouring out of the inside of the barracks.

"What do we do, sir?" one of the men asked as they crowded around him.

"They can't take us all at once, so they're trying to separate us. I'd guess there's two, maybe three hundred of them. We gotta get to the lower barracks." There would be two hundred men there. That would be even odds, at least, not that Sergeant Gamble thought even numbers would even anything, not against Khalidoran highlanders and wytches.

"To h.e.l.l with that," a young guard said. "I'm not dying for Niner. We still got East Kingsbridge. I'm outta here."

"You head for that bridge, Jules, and it's the last thing you'll do," Sergeant Gamble said. "This is what they pay us for. Anything less than our duty is betrayal, just like Conyer locking us in the barracks to die."

"They don't pay us s.h.i.t."

"We knew what they paid when we signed up."

"You do what you gotta do, sir." Jules sheathed his sword and turned confidently. He started jogging for the bridge.

Every man of his thirty-nine was looking at Sergeant Gamble.

He drew, whispered a prayer for two souls as the string touched his lips, and sent an arrow through the back of Jules's neck. I'm turning into a regular war hero, aren't I? Skilled at killing women and my own men. I'm turning into a regular war hero, aren't I? Skilled at killing women and my own men.

"We're going to fight," he said. "Any questions?"

Kylar sprinted through the servants' quarters unseen. Still no soldiers had come running. Things had to be bad somewhere for the soldiers not to have organized any resistance.

Abruptly, he was on a fight. At least one detachment of highlanders must have come in another way, because twenty of them were busy slaughtering twice as many Cenarian soldiers.

The Cenarians were on the verge of breaking, even as their sergeant was bellowing orders at them. The sight of the man's face stopped Kylar. He knew that sergeant. It was Gamble, the guard who'd come into the north tower the day of Kylar's first kill.

Kylar joined the fray and killed Khalidorans as easily as a scythe cuts wheat. It was simple labor. There was no joy in killing men who could barely see him.

At first, no one noticed him. He was a smear of darkness deep in the bowels of a castle constructed of dark stone and lit with flickering torches. Then he saved Gamble's life, beheading one Khalidoran and eviscerating another as they cornered the officer.

Kylar didn't even slow. He was a whirlwind. He was the first face of the Night Angels; he was vengeance. Killing was no longer an activity, it was a state of being. Kylar became killing. If every drop of guilty blood he spilled might blot out a drop of innocent blood, he would be clean tonight. state of being. Kylar became killing. If every drop of guilty blood he spilled might blot out a drop of innocent blood, he would be clean tonight.

The feeling of mail parting, of leather parting, of flesh parting along the icy judgment that was Retribution was the best feeling in the world. Kylar was lost in a madness, a kind of bizarre meditation, spinning, thrusting, lunging, cleaving, piercing, battering, smashing, ruining faces, snuffing futures. It pa.s.sed all too quickly. For in what couldn't have been more than half a minute, every last Khalidoran was dead. None was even dying. The killing wrath was nothing if not thorough.

The effect on the Cenarians was monumental. These sheep-in-guards'-armor stood, gaping, at the ragged darkness that was Kylar. Their weapons weren't even raised. They didn't stand in ready positions. They just marveled at Death's avatar among them.

"The Night Angel fights for you," he said. He'd already paused too long. Logan could be dying right now. He ran deeper into the castle.

All the doors were closed, and the halls were eerily quiet. He could only a.s.sume that the servants were huddled in their rooms or already fleeing.

The pounding of many footsteps keeping time brought him up short. Kylar sank into a shadowed doorway near a corner. He might be safe from the eyes of men, but there were things more dangerous than men in the castle tonight.

"There must be a good two hundred of their soldiers trapped downstairs," one of the officers was saying to a man whose narrow build gave him away as a wytch even though he wore armor and a sword. "It'll hold for maybe fifteen minutes, meister."

"And the n.o.bles in the garden?" the wytch demanded.

His answer was lost in the tramp of the highlanders' feet as they wound past Kylar and into the distance.

So the n.o.bles were trapped in the garden. Kylar had never been to the garden before-indeed had avoided the castle as much as possible-but he'd seen paintings of the garden, and if the artists hadn't taken too much license, Kylar supposed he could find it. He guessed that was as good of a place as any to look for Logan and Durzo.

As he wound deeper into the castle toward the garden, dead men began to clutter the halls, their blood slickening the floors. Kylar didn't even slow as he ran past. The dead were mostly n.o.bles' guards.

Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Kylar didn't have much sympathy for men who took up the profession of arms and then didn't train themselves, but these men had been ma.s.sacred. Well over forty guards were dead and dying, kicking and frothing in pain. Kylar only saw eight highlanders dead.

Following the blood and the corpses led Kylar to double doors of walnut, barred from the outside. He lifted the bar and eased the door open.

"What in the h.e.l.l?" a gruff voice with a Khalidoran accent said.

Retreating from the crack to stand behind yet another picture of Niner standing in a heroic pose, Kylar saw several highlanders guarding a room full of n.o.bles. There were men, women, and even a few children in the group. They were disheveled and frightened. Some were crying. Some were throwing up, poisoned.

Footsteps tapped across the floor from beyond Kylar's line of sight, and the highlanders he could see readied their weapons. The point of a halberd hooked the corner of the door and pulled it open, revealing a squat Khalidoran officer as thick as he was tall.

The officer pulled the other door open with the halberd, then he beckoned and two men jumped into the hall, back to back, swords raised. They looked right at the statue, right at Kylar, who'd pressed himself against the statue's back, putting his arms behind its arms, his legs behind its legs.

"Nothing, sir," one said.

Inside the garden, which wasn't nearly as grand as it looked in the paintings, were ten guards and forty or fifty n.o.bles-none of them armed. Mercifully, the highlanders had no wytches with them. Kylar a.s.sumed wytches were too valuable to be wasted guarding prisoners.

The n.o.bles included some of the highest in the land. Kylar recognized more than a few of the king's ministers. That they were all here meant that Roth believed he would take over the castle quickly, and he wanted to be able to personally decide whom to kill and whom to add to his own government.

The men and women looked dazed. They didn't seem to believe what had happened to them. It was beyond their comprehension that their world could turn so completely upside down so quickly. Many were obviously ill. Some were torn and bloodied, but others were absolutely untouched. Some ladies whose hair was still perfectly coifed wept while others bearing gashes and torn skirts seemed poised and calm.

Behind Kylar a soldier said, "Bleeding mercy, Cap! It didn't just unbar itself!"

"We're here to guard this room, and we stay here."

"But we don't know what's out there... sir."

"We stay," the squat captain said in a voice that brooked no argument.

Kylar almost felt bad for the young highlander. The young man's instincts were right. One day he'd have been a good officer.

But that didn't stop Kylar from dropping the shadows a pace away from him.

He told himself he wasn't becoming visible to be fair. He'd need his strength later.

The young Khalidoran's sword had barely cleared its scabbard when Kylar disemboweled him. Then he danced past the man, throwing a knife with his left hand, parting hardened leather armor and ribs with an upward cut, and guiding a sword hand past his side and the sword into another soldier's body in a smooth motion. Kylar jerked his head forward into a highlander's face and spun with the man quickly. The man's back absorbed the captain's halberd with a meaty crunch.

Kylar dropped under a slash and stabbed up into a highlander's groin with his wakizashi. On his back, he knocked the man backward with a kick, and used the force of the kick to spring to his feet.

Six men were dead or down. Four remained. The first was impetuous. He charged with a yell, something about Kylar killing his brother. A parry and riposte, and brother joined brother. The last three moved forward together.

A quick cut deprived one of sword and sword hand, and the next crossed swords with Kylar five times before he didn't dodge back far enough and fell eyeless from the slash across his face. Kylar jumped over the sweeping halberd and turned to face the officer. He reversed his grip on his sword and stabbed behind him, impaling the one-armed soldier.

The officer dropped the halberd and drew a rapier. Kylar smiled at the extremes of the man's weapon choices and then looked over the officer's shoulder. The man started to turn, frowned, and didn't look back.

A pretty n.o.blewoman smashed the back of his head in with a planter. Flowers and soil flew everywhere, but the planter itself didn't so much as crack.

"Thank you for saving us," she panted, "but d.a.m.n you for looking at me. You could have gotten me killed." She was one of the women whose hair and makeup hadn't been the least disturbed by whatever violence had brought her here. She looked completely unruffled by having just crushed a man's skull. She merely brushed dirt from her dress and checked to see if she'd dragged it through any blood. Kylar was surprised that she hadn't spilled out of her low-cut dress when she'd run. He recognized her.

"He didn't look back, did he?" Kylar asked Terah Graesin, glad for the black silk kerchief over his face. He'd worn the mask out of habit, but if he hadn't, some of these n.o.bles would have recognized him.

"Well, I never-"

There was a knock on the door, and she and everyone else froze. Three knocks, two knocks, three, two. A voice called out, "New orders, Cap! His Majesty says to kill 'em all. We need your soldiers to help quell resisters in the courtyard."

"You need to leave immediately," Kylar said loudly enough that all the n.o.bles could hear him. "There's at least two hundred more highlanders coming over West Kingsbridge. They're probably the ones fighting in the courtyard right now. If you want to live, collect whatever weapons you can and free the soldiers who are trapped downstairs. Others are already heading there. With them, you can make it out of the castle. You can start a resistance. You've already lost the castle; you've lost the city. If you don't move fast, you'll lose your lives."

The news. .h.i.t the n.o.bles crowding around Kylar like cold water. Some of them shrank even more, but a few of them seemed to find their backbones as he spoke.

"We'll fight, sir," Terah Graesin said. "But some of us have been poisoned-"

"I know those poisons. If you've lived this long, you've taken a small enough dose that you'll recover within a half hour. Where's Logan Gyre?"

"Excuse me, I'm Terah Graesin, now Queen Graesin. If you-"

Kylar's eyes narrowed. "Where's. Logan. Gyre?"

"Dead. He's dead. The king's dead. The queen's dead. The princesses are dead, all of them."

The world rocked. Kylar felt as if he'd been clubbed in the stomach. "Are you sure? Did you see it?"

"We were with the king in the Great Hall when he died, and I found the queen and her younger daughters in their chambers before I got caught. They were... it was awful." She shook her head. "I didn't see Logan and Jenine, but they must have been the first to die. After the king announced their marriage, they'd not left the Great Hall ten minutes before the coup started. The lord general took men to try to save them, but he was too late. These men were just bragging about how they slaughtered the royal guards."

"Where?"

"I don't know, but it's too-"

"Does anyone know where Logan went?" Kylar shouted.

He saw from the looks on their faces that some of them knew, but they weren't going to tell him because they were afraid he would leave them. The cowards. He heard a moan further back in the garden and he pushed through the standing n.o.bles to see a pasty pale man sweating on his back. His mouth was crusted with froth and there was a puddle of vomit near his head. He looked so bad that Kylar almost didn't recognize him. It was Count Drake. head. He looked so bad that Kylar almost didn't recognize him. It was Count Drake.

Kylar knelt by the count and grabbed leaves from his herb pouch and began stuffing them in the count's mouth.

"You have an antidote?" one of the sick but standing n.o.bles asked. "Give it to me."

"Give it to me!" another demanded. They began pushing forward. Kylar whipped Retribution out and put the point on a n.o.ble's throat.

"If any of you touch me or him, I'll kill you. I swear."

"He's only a count!" a fat, quivering n.o.blewoman said. "He's poor! I'll give you anything!"

The hard, vengeful part of Kylar wanted to withhold the antidote just to repay their meanness, their pettiness. Instead, he grabbed the bag of antidote and tossed it to Terah Graesin. "Give it to those who need it most. It won't save anyone who's already unconscious, and anyone still standing doesn't need it."

Her mouth opened at being so frankly commanded, but she obeyed.

Time was slipping through Kylar's fingers. He was here. He was in the castle, but he had no idea where in the castle he needed to be. He looked down at the count, wondering if he was too late to save him.

The count stirred. His eyes opened, slowly focused. He was going to make it. "North tower," he said.

"That's where Logan went?"

The count nodded and then lay back, exhausted.

"It's too late for them," Terah Graesin said. "Fight with us. I'll give you lands, t.i.tles, a pardon-"

But heedless of the n.o.bles' gasps, Kylar wrapped himself in shadows and ran.

Roth's men pounded up the stairs and kicked open the door to the bedchamber. Roth and Neph Dada followed as the eleven men pressed into the room amid grunts and cries. Even though the double doors were wide enough for three abreast, with four ranks of men in front of him, Roth couldn't see what was happening, except to know that it wasn't good. There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh, the sound of a sword cutting through mail, the sound of a skull bursting like a melon.

Beside him, Neph Dada had extended his vir-marked arms. He muttered and a quarter of the vir wriggled. An eerily silent concussion blew men in every direction. Even Roth's men were blasted off their feet.

The three directly in front of him hurtled backward, but as Roth braced for the impact, they smacked against an invisible barrier Neph had erected to protect him. for the impact, they smacked against an invisible barrier Neph had erected to protect him.

Neph spoke again and the room filled with light. Roth stepped inside with Neph as everyone recovered.

Logan tried to jump to his feet, too, but his limbs were anch.o.r.ed to the floor as if by a great weight. He was naked and furious. Roth sheathed his sword as eight of his men collected their scattered weapons. Six men lay on the floor, all bleeding from deep wounds. Three of them were dead, three would be soon. Apparently Logan Gyre was no slouch with a sword.

On the bed, wearing a hiked-up translucent nightgown, lay the princess. She was thrashing, terrified, but she couldn't cover herself. Neph had immobilized her, too.

Roth sat down on the bed next to the girl and let his eyes roam over her nubile body. He licked a finger, put it at the base of her neck, and traced it down her body.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," he said.

Jenine Gunder's eyes flashed. She was blushing from his casual perusal, but she was furious, too.