The knight looked pained. He turned to Lythian. A voice spoke behind him. “My lord, perhaps on this one occasion…”
“No,” Lythian said, resolute. He met the eyes of young Rodmond Taynar. “No, my lord.” Loath as he was to command a greatlord, he spoke here with the king’s voice, and outranked him on that basis. “We cannot make exceptions. He must die along with all the rest.”
“I know, my lord, but…” Rodmond looked out into the crowd, concerned. “If we follow through, we may start a riot. The men…”
“Cannot rule us, Rodmond,” Lythian cut in. “They cannot rule our course.” He looked back at Sir Guy Blenhard and gave a stiff nod of the head. “Kick the stool,” he commanded.
The knight stepped a little closer, to better hear him over the clamour. “My lord?”
“I said kick the stool. He has had his chance.”
“You hear them…” raked a voice. “I said you’d regret it…wasn’t lying, was I?” Lythian spun in anger upon the weasel Lord Kindrick, but this time the man did not draw back. “You have a chance here, Lindar,” he said, emboldened by the crowd. “You let that boy go free, and maybe you’ll get the men back onside. Show mercy, as they say. I can help.”
“Help?”
He smiled. “All this about Eldur. I’m sure there’s a good explanation. Let me hear it. Let me speak it to the men. You let that lad go and I’ll help smooth it all over.”
Lythian was half tempted to accept, but for that nagging doubt that this lord was behind it all. I will not accede to him. I will not give him that power. “No,” he said, firmly. “It cannot be one rule for him and another for everyone else. He is old enough to take a wife and sire a son, to work a farm and fight a war. Then he is old enough to answer for his crimes.” He turned back to Sir Guy, who cringed at the look Lythian gave him. “See it done,” he said.
The knight obeyed with great reluctance. He stepped back to the wailing boy. “I’m sorry. I…I have no choice, you understand? Your own actions got you here.” There was a final pause, a last intake of breath, and then Sir Guy Blenhard kicked away the stool. At once the boy’s wailing was caught in his throat, his body jerking horribly from side to side as he fought against his own bodyweight, eyes bulging from his skull, veins swelling in his neck.
The sight was as ugly as the din. Lythian watched the boy wriggle, watched him struggle, watched him die. Something inside him was dying as well. Or perhaps it was already dead?
How had it come to this? How had he become so hated? There was a time when Lythian Lindar was amongst the most beloved men in the north, unimpeachable in his honour, near-peerless with the blade. There was no man in the world more proficient in the art of Strikeform, no man so well regarded for his staunch commitment to the chivalric ideals. I am still that man, he told himself. It is the world that has changed around me.
He had been mocked and locked up in Runnyhall, put on trial when he arrived at Redhelm, questioned and queried relentlessly over what happened to him in the south. The lies and half-truths and secrets had eaten away at him. Now this. Commanding an army of the hungry and the hateful. Lingering here with all his failed schemes, his hopes of unity crushed.
He could not stand here any longer. The youth was giving his last jerks and twitches and the noise was dying with him, the crowd growing quiet. A lull lingered, for a moment, another. Then someone shouted out, “Bastard!” and that set them off again, the calls of ‘mercy’ and ‘save him’ turning to heckles and shouts of ‘traitor’ and ‘dragonlover’ and ‘scum’.
Sir Adam Thorley stepped up to his side. “My lord, we’d best go. The crowd is getting ugly.”
Crowd, Lythian thought. It was meant to be an army, not some baying mob. He turned on his heels, brushing straight past Lord Kindrick as he left. Sir Adam’s men fell in around them, and Sir Oswin and Sir Stroros and Sir Ralf as well. My allies, he thought. But for how long? How long before they turn against me as well?
He walked in a state of funereal gloom, his face a mask of sombre dignity, his boots sucking and pulling at the mud as he went. Behind, the men were screaming their obscenities, and on the battlements above he could see them looking down at him, silent. He imagined their faces, twisted in contempt, imagined the grunts and mutters they were sharing, the curses whispered beneath their breath. Sir Ralf had told him that it wasn’t so. Many of the men still admired him, the old man claimed, and respected his drive to seek unity. Not just men among the Brockenhurst banners, but hundreds of good men from the Ironmoors too, even those serving under Kindrick and Barrow. Sir Adam had said the same. The Pointed Watch were with him, he assured the First Blade. They would not waver in their allegiance and would follow him until the end.
The end, he thought. Perhaps this day is the start of it.
He passed through the River Gate, across the dirty cobbles of the square, and made for the sanctuary of his tent. The others did not follow him through. He could hear talking outside, hear the strains of debate, and then old Sir Ralf entered through the flaps. “I told them you would prefer to be alone, my lord. If that includes me, by all means, tell me to go.”
“No. Stay.” Lythian removed his cloak, unbuckled his swordbelt, and took his seat, pouring two cups of watered wine. He invited Ralf to sit, and the old man settled down, his posture upright and neat. A long moment passed as Lythian digested what had just happened. “Did I make the right choice, Ralf? Tell me true.”
“You did,” the knight said without hesitation. “A true lord does not bend to the bleating of the sheep. The boy…the drawn lots. I do not believe it was by chance that he was last. Nor that all of those soldiers calling for mercy were so perfectly spaced apart.” He paused to check Lythian’s eyes. “Perhaps you did not notice? There were calls coming from every corner of the crowd. That was arranged, my lord.”
Lythian nodded, pondering. “Kindrick?”
“I would think so. He and Sir Fitz. Of Lord Barrow I am not so sure. He is a decent man and a calmer head. I do not doubt that some of his captains will have contributed their men, however.”
This was a riddle Lythian could not puzzle out. “What am I do to, Ralf? I look into the crowd and see an enemy behind every hood. No matter who they are, or what they’re truly thinking, I see hate and anger.”
“It isn’t so,” Sir Ralf assured him. “I was watching the crowds as well, and many were there to see justice be served. They agree with what you did.”
“Then I’m growing paranoid,” Lythian grunted. “This hate I see, this anger…” He gave a sigh and shook his head. “I don’t just see it. I feel it too.”
The old knight crossed one leg over the other. “In yourself?”
Lythian drank his wine. Even now the anger was in him, bubbling up through his veins. “I have never been a hateful man, nor one given to rage. Only recently. Since Amron left, and…” He knew the cause, as did Sir Ralf of Rotting Bridge. “The blade,” he said. “Having it at my hip all day and beside my bed at night…that constant connection, the growing bond…” He looked at it, resting by the table. “It is trying to lead me astray, Ralf. And a part of me…a part of me wants to be led.”
“You cannot allow it…”
“I know. I know my role. I speak the words Amron taught me. I recall his lessons. But it is a double-edged sword. To guard the blade I must keep it close, and yet keeping it close…it makes me vulnerable. And now, with all this brewing dissent…” He blew out a breath once more and drank a gulp of wine. “We all know what happened to Janilah Lukar. Are they trying to make me do the same? Are they so desperate to see me fall?”
“That was different,” Ralf told him. “The Warrior King was following a dark path, and it led him to that dark day.” He had slaughtered dozens, it was said, when he went on a rampage through Galin’s Post in Ilithor. Not only men and women, but children as well, some as young as three or four if the rumours were true, cut down in their mother’s arms. It was the baying of the crowd that sparked him, they’d heard. The jeers and accusations and pelted fruit. They had scant stocks of fruit here in the ruin of King’s Point, and what they did was not to be wasted. Elsewise I’d have received my measure as well, the First Blade thought.
“My path is righteous,” Lythian said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“You know it is,” Sir Ralf told him. “Perhaps the most righteous of all.”
Lythian did not know how the old man had come to that. “I have the rule of a ruin, Ralf. Every scheme I try ends in failure and death. Tell me how my path is more righteous than the others.”
“Because you carry the blade only to protect it, not wield it. You bear it for a single function, and outcome.”
“Amron and Elyon walk toward the same outcome.”
“But by a different route. A route that takes them through battle and glory. You have no such outlet.” Ralf uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “The blade must yearn for blood and battle. It cannot be easy keeping those instincts in check.”
Like the gruloks, Lythian thought. Hruum had torn that dragon limb from limb even though he’d been told to restrain it. The same was true of the blade. Ralf was right, it wanted blood. And every day Lythian denied it that impulse, the blade’s grasp upon him tightened, swelling his rage.
“It may be time to put it back into the vaults,” he decided. “It can be protected there.”
