In a time when plague rules the land, a surviving rogue masquerades as Death itself, but discovers the extent of his rule and the power of his fright does not extend as far as he had thought . . .
The stately parade wound its way through the green shades of Cannock and Longforest.
A galaxy of radiant colors—blues, oranges, purples, pinks—shimmered from the heraldic flags and banners, from the gaudy canvases that roofed the carriages and carts, from the lavish, ermine-trimmed robes worn by the lords and ladies riding therein. The horses—for the most part strong, splendid beasts, hunters and palfreys, milk-white, roan, chestnut brown—walked resplendent in hooded coats emblazoned with baronial devices. Gilded spurs glinted in shafts of September sunlight; polished saddles gleamed; the tapestry curtains bedecking the elegant chaises were embossed with golden rays.
The handsome vehicles trundled in slow but steady cavalcade, their beasts moving at sedate pace, wending idly along the wooded trail. Yet there was no sound of merriment—just the creaking of wheels and woodwork, the gentle jingle of harness; no gay chatter, no laughter, no harmonious singing in chorals. Not a single jongleur—for gentlefolk rarely traveled these days without minstrels or songsters—plucked at his gittern or blew on his reed-pipes. There was no shouting of orders from the staller or the groom, no cracking of whips, no panting as liveried servants scampered back and forth with brimming wine-cups and ribald messages. And yet the retinue passed in regal fashion, the animals treading slowly, softly, nodding with contentment.
Because their masters and mistresses were dead.
All here were dead.
Save one.
A lone knight—dressed all in black, reined up by the roadside.
His name was Rodric, and he had witnessed many horrors over the last year, yet there was something especially odious about this. The combination, perhaps, of rich awning, elaborate fashion, opulent garb—with the caked blood and seeping pus of a thousand plague sores, with the drone of feeding bluebottles.
How long had these dead folk been on the move, he wondered? Hours? Days? Where were they traveling from, and where to? No one would ever know now. The stench was hideous—the stomach-turning fetor that hung over everything in these unhappy days, yet swam in waves from this grisly spectacle, this mobile feast for crows. Much good they’d drawn from the sachets they’d adorned their carriages with—the elf-wort, the honeysuckle, the lavender and thyme—the so-called “herbs of healing.”
The cavalcade swung past, and, at length, Rodric spurred his horse forward. Despite all, there were rich pickings here. Forty or fifty corpses cluttered the carts and wagons—most huddled together, the dead eyes bulging in their raddled, rotted, pulp-apple faces. There would be treasures if one was prepared to look: strings of gems, brooches and clasps, jeweled drinking-vessels, ouches of solid gold. Many of the horses were riderless, the men-at-arms who’d accompanied their masters having fallen by the wayside; though at least one, his foot caught in a stirrup, dragged in the dust. However, their bolsters would be full—with inedible food and stagnant drink, but also purses. Even the pay of the common soldiery—a handful of copper coins, a rosary or a ring of service—was a haul in times like these.
Had Rodric the stomach for it, there was more than even he, with his team of pack-animals, could carry away. The clothing alone, an assortment of taffeta, satin, velvet, fox, and miniver, would bring dividends in due course. But, immune though he now fancied he was to this pestilence—for everyone he knew had died, even women he’d bedded and bosom friends he’d shared cups with, yet, somehow, he lived, unscathed by boil or tumor—even he would balk at rummaging among garb so stiff and sticky with the humors of corruption. But the jeweled vessels, the coin, the silver plate—in the absence of anyone else, they were now his.
It was the twenty-second year of Edward’s reign—Edward, the third of that name—and England was a desolated wasteland.
From the high Cheviots to the Cornish moors, from the Fens to the Irish Sea, it was the same. The orchards and cornfields slipped into rack and ruin for want of someone to reap them, the highways lay deserted, the villages in dereliction, the wolds and cots in eerie, sepulchral silence. And then there were the bodies—always the bodies: thick as autumn leaves on the fields and roads, moldering in the ditches. Even Rodric, a veteran of Halidon Hill, where six-thousand Scots fell to English arrows in a single afternoon, and Crecy, where twice that number of French were slain, had no memory of such carnage. And all, it seemed, were fair game. He’d seen peasants littering their roods, priests draped across altars, monks over half-finished manuscripts, merchants withering amid their produce. In the towns, rats ran riot across the husks of beggars and aldermen alike. The greatest magnates, he’d heard, had been struck: bishops and abbots, earls, dukes, even princes—cast like rubbish into the same stinking charnel-pits.
It was truly a scourge, a malediction of the worst kind.
Everything he saw, as he rode from one part of the kingdom to the next, bore the marks of cataclysm; not just death, but the wretchedness that went with it: the grief of loss, the agony of starvation, the wailing of hopeless prayers, the gasping of the cathedral flagellants, lashing themselves till they dropped insensible from blood-loss, the robbery, pillage, and chaos that resulted when sheriffs died in their castles, reeves in their jails, and justiciers in the very carriages that took them from one court to the next.
Yet, bewilderingly, he—Rodric—was spared.
He didn’t have the faintest idea how. Even more puzzling, perhaps, was “why.” He wasn’t the most deserving specimen of humanity. Had he simply been overlooked? Was the obliteration of one worthless flyspeck deemed irrelevant after so many other, better ones, had gone before it? But these weren’t his only questions. The disaster had become incomprehensible to him. When had it all started? He wasn’t sure any more. How long had it dragged on for? Again, he couldn’t calculate.
He knew only that it was here now. That it had arrived overnight, exploding across the realm with horrific speed. It rose to zeniths of destructiveness in the summer, but though it retreated again in the winter, it did so slowly, grudgingly, leaving waste and wreckage in its wake. The free-company of which Rodric had been part had died to a man during the plague’s first few months, including its captain, Richard Warbeck, even though they had all remained ensconced in the Warbeck castle in Kent. After that, Rodric, the sole survivor, had made for the wild country, only to find that the wild country had come to him. One by one, the great estates, depopulated and collapsing under their own dead-weight, were reclaimed; tilled land disappearing beneath meadow and pasture, greenwood re-invading orchard and coppice.
Of course, it hadn’t all been misery. Suddenly, Rodric had been able to take fish from the rivers, hare and squirrel from the hedgerows, even deer and boar from the chase, without fear of the verderer. On one occasion, a warden had shown himself, but Rodric had killed him, knowing there would be no retribution. Brief luxuries in the midst of catastrophe, but in truth, these were small consolation. Even Rodric—for all his military skills—was a stranger in this land that had once been his home. A power he might be, a force to be reckoned with—not just because he was alive, but because he actually made this calamity pay—but who knew what would follow in the ensuing months? Who knew what could follow? This wasn’t just a changed world, but an alien one. There were times when even the most hardened outcasts yearned for things they found familiar.
He stood up beside his campfire on the ridge, stretched and gazed down onto the great plain. At first glance, it was glorious: unspoiled grasslands rolling from the Derbyshire hills to the wild Welsh borders. Directly below there was a narrow river-valley filled with ancient oak-woods. It was a great irony that only Man should be stricken by this torment; that the land remained verdant, that animals could wander freely.
Abruptly, Rodric’s reverie was broken. He spotted movement, and dropped to a crouch. Below him, someone was making unsteady passage along the footpath beside the river. Rodric snaked to the edge of the ridge, and peered down. It was a boy, not yet begrimed by rough living, wearing quality clothes rather than scraps, which suggested he was attached to some great household, though walking drunkenly as he was, bowed by grief or sickness, or maybe both, that household was no more.
Rodric tarried a moment, to ensure nobody else was with the lad, then hurried down into the hollow where his horses were tethered. There were six of them, laden with sacks of loot. Some items were of outstanding value: goblets and crucifixes encrusted with gems; others—leather-bound books or reliquaries filled with bones—would be worth a tidy sum in due course. In addition, he had gold and silver—more than enough to set up his own house when the time was right. Under normal circumstances, to carry such wealth openly would invite attack. Not so now. Through a clever ruse, Rodric defended this hoard by the same means with which he had amassed it. He passed himself off as a knight, though in truth he had not been ordained into the equestrian order, having never been part of any noble or meritorious clique. He hadn’t even served a squiredom, though for the knight whom Rodric masqueraded as no squiredom would have sufficed in any case.
The trickster chuckled as he readied himself. He was clad in a snug-fitting suit of black mail, but now donned his black plate as well, strapping rambraces, rerebraces and elbow-guards to his arms, greaves and knee-cops to his legs.
He was peasant-born, but had given up the rake and hoe in early youth to join a band of men-at-arms who, in times of war, served with the king’s infantry, and, in peace, rented themselves out as mercenaries. His normal weapons were the dagger, the ax, the longbow, but after brutal years on the bloody fields of France and Scotland, he had collected all manner of arms and regalia. He pulled a studded leather brigandine over his hauberk, followed by a surcoat of black linen, and a massive, weather-stained cloak of heavy black wool. His gauntlets were of articulated iron, also black. His helmet was a visored bascinet fixed with a chain aventail. This too was black, and on the front of it he had painted the grinning visage of a skull. The same ghoulish device decked his wood and canvas shield.
Rodric slid a longsword into the scabbard by his waist, and selected the horse he always chose for these occasions; the pale one, Harefoot. Hanging by its flank was a huge scythe, which he’d found in a rotting hay-rig. Once mounted, Rodric put the scythe to his shoulder, hefted his shield, and spurred his animal over the ridge and down the slope.
The boy had made little ground. In the cover of the oak-woods, Rodric was able to overtake him unseen, and suddenly to emerge in front, stopping the lad dead in his tracks.
There was a tense, awesome silence. Rodric knew exactly what the boy was seeing, and how he would interpret it. He, himself, drew quick conclusions from what he was seeing. The boy was perhaps eight years old, and wore his fair hair in a fashionable bob, which suggested he had only recently come to destitution. He wore a tight, hooded tunic, which was parti-colored, one side green one side red. His hose, which extended into long spiked shoes, were of a similar pattern, one leg green, one red, creating a harlequin effect; a current fashion in the great country houses. Though the boy’s hands were dirty, the rest of him was clean, which meant he hadn’t come far. For all this, his face was drawn and waxy-white; his eyes were haunted holes of sorrow.
The duo stared at each other, Rodric sitting tall on his horse, shield-device fully displayed, scythe held outwards so that its full curve of razored steel was clearly on view. The boy held his ground, but wobbled back and forth, enfeebled by hunger.
“Don’t you know me?” Rodric asked, his voice rasping and tinny through the visor.
“I think, sir . . . I think that you are Death.”
“King Death!” Rodric asserted. “I am King Death! This realm belongs to me.”
The boy clearly had no mind to disagree.
“Well?” Rodric demanded. “Do you not cower? Do you not quake in my presence?”
The boy worked dry, cracked lips together. He gazed at the nightmarish figure with vague wariness, yet such was his extreme of fatigue that he seemed almost indifferent.
“Good sire,” he finally said, “it is an honor to make your acquaintance. But I can not fear you. For I have no fear left inside me.”
“No fear?” Rodric was astounded. Whenever he’d presented this grim pantomime before, the least he usually received from the credulous fools still wandering the devastated land were shrieks of terror, or frantic flights to safety.
The boy rubbed a raw, red eye with the heel of his palm. “Everything I had is gone, my lord. My mother and father, my aunts and uncles, my brothers and sisters. There is nothing left for me.” He sniffled. “No work to earn my keep, no roof for shelter. When the plague first came, I heard whispers that those who lived through it would come to envy those who did not. I understand that now.”
“You haven’t lived through it,” Rodric reminded him. “Yet.”
“And I would that I won’t, sire. Might you strike me now? To end this pain?”
“First I have need of you.”
The boy looked surprised, even puzzled.
“You say you have no lodgings,” Rodric said. “Yet your garb tells a different tale. Aren’t you enthralled to some master of note?”
“I was first-page to Sir Richard Bollinbeau, of Thorby.”
“Thorby?”
“You must know it, sire. For you have been there. A fine manor, with many hides attached. Lord Richard held it as knight-vassal to the Abbott of Shrewsbury. Now it is a sorry place. Everyone who lived there has perished, my master and mistress included, the chamberlain and seneschal, the maids and porters . . . there was no reason for me to stay.”
So the manor-house at Thorby stood empty.
It was difficult for Rodric to conceal his glee. “And you set out to make your fortune elsewhere?” he said.
The boy shook his head solemnly. “No, sire. As I say, I set out to find . . . you.”
Rodric was briefly unnerved by such fatalism, but he kept his composure. “You have succeeded. And your wish will be granted, but not yet. First, you will be my servant.”
If the lad felt this odd, he didn’t question it. In fact, he made an effort to stand up straight, striving to adjust his clothes and wipe the tear-stains from his cheeks.
“Was Thorby a wealthy lordship?” Rodric asked.
“Middling to wealthy, sire. Many tithes and rents were attached, and a goodly herd of cattle. There was a wide acreage of plough-land too, fish-ponds, woods filled with game.”
Rodric’s appetite was whetted just to listen. “And is it far from here?”
“But you have been there, sire. Your mighty fist descended . . . ”
The black knight exploded with suitably godlike wrath: “Don’t bandy words with me, boy! I have visited numberless places! Even a king cannot remember everything he sees!”
Abashed, the boy hung his head. “It is half a day’s march, my liege.”
“You will lead me there. I am the conqueror of this land, and have booty to claim.” As an afterthought, he added: “Your help will not go unrewarded.”
“I seek only death, sire . . . to join my kin.”
Rodric pondered this. “If death is what you seek . . . death you shall have.”
It was late evening when they reached Thorby. The avenues of the forest, already turning russet and gold, were lit flame-red by the dying sun. Again, everything was pleasing to eye and ear. A pair of stags crossed the path; from somewhere in the spinney came the call of a nuthatch. A breeze blew from the west, rustling the ferns and thickets.
But then there was the stench.
Always these days, the stench. It lingered even in these fair woods. In fact, it grew denser, more cloying, until it didn’t so much taint the air as saturate it.
Even Rodric, who’d known no other smell for twelve months or more, felt his eyes begin to water. Shortly afterwards, the trees parted and they found themselves on the outskirts of Sir Richard’s holding. And what a sight greeted them.
The pestilence had come here like an army, first of all attacking the serfs in the outer villages, for here the victims had died without having a chance of burial. They strewed the fields and the narrow lanes between their hovels as though they had expired in the midst of their everyday chores. That most were little more than bones and tatters already indicated the length of time they had laid undisturbed.
Closer to the heart of the demesne, on the richer land where the sokemen dwelled, there had been more opportunity to prepare for the apocalypse. Again, the hamlets and their connecting roads were carpeted with corpses; nothing stirred save the rats and ravens, but red crosses were visible on cottage doors, grave-pits had been dug, and even carts—laden with limp, rag-bound figures—sat motionless, their horses cropping the cud, awaiting drivers who now would never come. In the center of one village there was a timber chapel with a thatched roof. Its front door stood open on blackness, from which came a monstrous buzzing of flies. Rodric didn’t need to enter to know what he would find in there: bodies piled seven or eight deep; when all else failed, holy sanctuary would have been the only place left where the dying wretches could imagine they’d find solace or comfort, or—laughably, he now realized—refuge. Doubtless, the priest lay among them, maybe buried at the bottom of the putrefying mound.
The manor house had apparently been the last bastion to fall.
It was an imposing granite edifice, and it stood on a green hillock overlooking the surrounding weald. A low earthwork encircled it, and on the top of this a wooden palisade had been constructed. It would be difficult to assault such a structure, but this new enemy had made short work even of these defenses. Mailed serjeants still kept watch from the parapets, their gaze leveled across the landscape. They would shout no challenge, however, sound no alarum. When Rodric drew close, he saw that the faces under their wide-brimmed helms were clusters of black and purple boils; their staring eyes were glazed and lifeless.
“Every man held his ground ’til the last,” the boy wept. “Sir Richard issued orders they should shoot at plague-carriers who came close.” He indicated several husks of arrows half-buried in the grassy slope. “But still you came, overwhelming us in the heart of our stronghold.” He trailed doggedly up the stony path to the outer gate.
This already stood open, presumably where he’d unbarred it, himself, and exited earlier that day. He passed through it, beckoning Rodric to follow. The knight glanced again at the ghoulish sentries, who would guard this place now until their flesh and muscle fell to carrion, then cast down his scythe, dismounted and followed.
Beyond the gate, the bailey, which might ordinarily be muddy and trampled and overrun with geese and pigs, was bare of life. More bodies lay here and there: servants—a couple beside the well, one in the entrance to the grain-house—and several men-at-arms who had tumbled from their gantries. The implacable silence was haunting. It was a listening silence, Rodric fancied, an eavesdropping silence—it made him feel that someone was watching him. He appraised the manor house warily. With its cruciform arrow-slits and high, castellated frontage, it was a brooding presence. Its great front door, a colossal slab of wood studded with iron nail-heads, was firmly closed, as though someone might still be inside, seeking to keep out marauders.
For long moments, Rodric was unnerved by this. Even in the Valley of Death it was a difficult thing for a low-born like he to overcome the age-old strictures that forbade him to approach the houses of the mighty, much less assault them. He knew it was nonsense to think that way—the old order no longer existed—but instincts, it seemed, died harder than men. He threw off his cloak—suddenly it felt hot and cumbersome. He was inclined to throw off his helm as well, to finally give up this charade. What was the point of it? He was here, he could sack his gold, finish off the witness, and flee—but some uncertainty, maybe the innate sixth sense that had kept him alive not just through war but now through plague, coaxed him continue the deception.
He strode to the manor house door, putting his shoulder to the wood and attempting to push his way in. There was no give; the door held fast even under Rodric’s prodigious strength. He stood back. There was no ring-handle, only a large key-hole, which significantly had no key inserted. There’d be no other means of ingress, no tradesman’s door or undercroft. The outbuildings in the bailey were adequate for those purposes, acting as servants’ quarters and storerooms. This main building was purely the residence for the lord and his family, and, of course, for their trove.
He turned to the boy. “This place is locked, whey-face!”
The boy nodded. “Lord Richard’s final instruction. Someday his heirs—for he felt certain they exist somewhere—will come and claim it.”
“Lord Richard has no heir but me,” Rodric replied. “You know that, for you have seen my power. Bring me a key. Unlock the door, so I may claim what is mine.”
For the first time, the boy hesitated to obey. He glanced up at the house where he’d served for so long. Rodric lurched towards him, crouched and brought the full ghastly visage of his skullish helm to bear. “Do you refuse me?”
He made sure to sound shocked rather than angry, but the boy flinched backwards all the same. “No . . . sire,” he stuttered. “The key is in the stable.” He indicated a ramshackle structure, with two heavy wooden doors. “I put it there for safe-keeping, along with my own family. They too were servants here.”
“You left your family in the stable?”
“To preserve them,” the boy explained. “Laid them under straw to save them from scavengers. Though I worry the rats may still feast on them.” He grimaced, new tears glimmering in his swollen eyes. “The rats own much of England that once was Man’s.”
“The rats own nothing,” Rodric assured him, standing again. “England is mine. All of it. Now do as I command.” He took the boy by his arm, turned him about-face and propelled him across the yard with a firm push.
The boy staggered off to do his new master’s bidding. Rodric followed him part of the way, stopping once to survey his surroundings. The ember of the sun rested on the western parapet, and though long shadows now stole across the yard, it bathed the main building with a sultry, orange glow. Rodric had raided many houses and castles during his time in arms, and the scene here was depressingly familiar. There was ample evidence of last-minute preparations to withstand siege. Provisions had been brought from outside—logs and kindling, bushels of corn, sacks of nuts and fruit; all now stacked against walls, though many of these had been kicked and spilled in the chaos; the animals and fowls were noticeably absent—no doubt they had all been slaughtered, salted and put into stock. Elsewhere tools and weapons lay discarded, jobs were half-done, there’d been a general neglect of menial chores—the autumn leaves lay unswept, household rubbish cluttered every corner.
He glanced back at the house, wondering where the lord and his lady, themselves, were. Probably in their bedchamber. Often before, when he’d broken into plague-stricken houses, he’d found the master and mistress tucked up in bed. For all the gore and pus-clotted sheets, quite often they’d be clinging together in a final embrace. They might even be clasping a crucifix between them, seeking to sanctify their marriage in death, in a way they’d never managed to in life.
At first, when he’d seen such things, Rodric had felt—maybe not pity, but sympathy. It must have come as a terrible shock to these wealthy, commanding folk—the men often cold and ruthless, the women haughty, disdainful—that they could despair and die like the most downtrodden villeins. Little wonder, in the light of such revelation, they had shown a last a flicker of humanity, had made a final desperate gesture to win favor for their wretched souls. That was how Rodric had felt. Now, of course, he scoffed. He’d seen too much pain and sorrow. Why single the nobility out for sentiment? This callous, authoritarian breed; these overbearing braggarts; these cruel and arrogant sots who felt the world owed them position, who felt they were born to wealth and privilege while others must swim and wallow in cesspits of degradation.
“I don’t care about you,” he said, as he stared up at the house. Even louder, he added: “Do you understand . . . I don’t care about any of you!”
“I know that, my lord,” the boy said from the direction of the stables.
Rodric turned and saw that he had opened the two doors, revealing a dark and dusty interior, but also a hefty contraption of some sort, a great mechanism draped with a canvas awning.
“What’s this?” Rodric asked impatiently. “Is the key under there? I need the key, damn you!”
The boy answered by tearing away the awning, sending plumes of dust into the air. Beneath it there was an infamous piece of battlefield ballistae: the dread scorpion, or archery-machine. In essence, it was an immense crossbow mounted on a wheeled base, but fitted with many springs and levers and two outspread arms of hugely-tensioned wood, so that it might hurl twenty cloth-yard bolts in a single volley.
Rodric’s jaw dropped.
He’d seen these devilish devices cut swathes through lines of infantry, bring down entire companies of galloping knights. Even now, this one appeared to be fully primed. Maybe a dozen missiles were loaded into its central grooves, their needle-sharp bodkin tips glinting in the sunset.
By accident or design, he was standing directly in their line of flight.
“I know that,” the boy said again. “It’s why I must do this.” Once again his eyes were sodden with tears, but his diminutive fist was clenched determinedly around the handle that served as the scorpion’s trigger.
“What do you mean?” Rodric tried not to show the dull fear creeping through him.
“I put my family here, in this stable . . . because this machine was here. I thought I could use it to protect them, should the wolves come. But now I have a better use for it.” Then the boy bellowed—in a raw, hoarse voice: “I will save my people!”
Rodric hardly dared move. “Don’t be foolish. You can’t save them, you know that.”
Tears streamed down the boy’s hollow cheeks, cutting tracks through the encrusted dirt. “You took them away. You can give them back.”
Rodric shook his head. “Who do you think I am, God?”
“I know who you are. You are . . . ”
“Don’t be a dolt! Whatever I told you is nonsense! You surely realize that?”
He slammed open his visor, to show that the lean bearded features beneath: pock-marked, criss-crossed with old scars—very human, very mortal. It was never pleasant to reveal that you were a fraud, but on this occasion he felt he could live with the shame.
The boy remained solemn; his grip tightened on the archery-machine’s trigger. Many times in this blighted land, Rodric had encountered folk so deranged that they’d believe almost anything. Apparently, here was one more deranged than most.
“You cannot lie to me,” the boy stated. “I remained here for days after everyone else died. But it was hopeless. You didn’t come for me, so I went looking for you. I prayed that I might find you. And I did! At first I was going to plead, to beg for you to show pity . . . just a little pity. But I see now that begging and pleading falls silent on ears such as yours. So, instead . . . I demand!”
Rodric was now calculating the distance he’d have to run to put himself out of range. He was about twelve feet from the row of arrow-heads, which meant that scrambling backwards was out of the question. A quick dash sideways might suffice. Most of these heavy war-machines were mounted on a pivot so they could be swiveled, though he doubted this emaciated stripling would have the strength to do that. Even so, it would be a risk. Just for the moment, he opted to keep talking.
“Listen to me, boy . . . what I did to you was cruel, despicable. But it’s . . . ”
“You’ve got to give them back!” the boy shouted. “All of them!”
Rodric was stunned to silence. Frantic thoughts raced through his head. The scorpion looked old; almost certainly it was ill-maintained. Maybe it wouldn’t work? But could he take that risk—wouldn’t it be better to pre-empt the situation and try to hit the boy with his throwing-dagger? But no—these were gambles; wild, desperate gambles.
“You must know that I can’t give them back,” he said, in a firm but fatherly tone. “In your heart of hearts, you must know. No one can do that but Our Lord.”
The boy chewed his pale lip. “If you can’t return those you have already claimed . . . you must at least spare the rest.”
“I cannot spare them.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“I cannot.” Rodric made a friendly gesture. “We cannot. Understand me when I say that . . . we. It’s you and me now. We’re practically all that’s left. But at least we’re together, and we should stay that way . . . ”
The lad’s youthful brow darkened; his tear-bright eyes narrowed to slivers. “It isn’t we! It isn’t we at all! You’re not my friend, you’re my enemy! And If I can’t save or spare my people, I’ll do the next best thing, and avenge them . . . ”
“No!” Rodric shouted, seeing the muscles bunch in the small shoulder. He grabbed for the dagger at his belt. “You damned village-idiot, what good will it do you . . . ?”
The lever clacked backwards. There was twang, a violent recoil and a tumult of hissing air. Rodric was struck several times with battering-ram force.
He tottered where he stood, but managed to remain upright—just.
Seconds of dizziness passed. The air cooled as the sun slipped down over the top of the palisade. Through it all, the boy stayed in the doorway to the stable, the eyes wide in his white, ghost-like face. Rodric wanted to laugh at him, to nod and wink, to say: “You see . . . I told you this was pointless. That you and I should be companions . . . ”
But it was difficult to concentrate on words when so many parts of his body felt as if they had all been caught between hammers and anvils. It was difficult even to hold the dagger, let alone throw it—not that throwing it would serve any purpose now. The weapon slid through his fingers and dropped to the floor. Rodric wanted to drop after it, but an inner voice told him not to, told him to stay on his feet and go and seek for help.
He nodded, as though receiving useful advice.
Help would be a good idea.
His armor was robust; it would have protected him to some extent, but several of the arrows had penetrated. He understood that without needing to glance down.
He stumbled back to the gate, and out through it. Beyond the palisade, Harefoot was grazing by the roadside. Far beyond the faithful brute, the last rays of blood-red sunlight were flooding across the land, the last spark of daytime about to wink out—and with it what remained of the late summer warmth, for a bone-numbing chill had come rushing in and wrapped itself around Rodric. He tried to ignore it, but it was a difficult task. Suddenly he was shivering. Even the hot fluid gurgling inside his armor failed to warm him.
He strode towards his horse, but when he got there found that his strength had drained to such an extent that he couldn’t even mount up. His mailed foot was too heavy to lift to the stirrup. Then there were the feathered shafts; they got in the way, kept pushing him backwards from Harefoot’s flank.
Rodric leaned sideways against the horse, exhausted. At first, he didn’t notice the figure step up behind him. He only realized there was anyone there at all when a hand came to rest on his shoulder. He turned to look—and saw eyes that were rotted holes in green parchment, a curved mouth full of peg-teeth, and over the top of it all, a head-dress made from twisted iron barbs.
A crown, no less.
Rodric chuckled hoarsely.
King Death.