Kurun sprinted up beside this man — a stocky hufsan in a leather cuirass — and stabbed up, beneath the waist of the armour, feeling the blade go deep, deep, until his very fingers were in the wound.
He pulled the knife out with a grunt, and then stabbed again, and again. He punched the knife into the man’s flesh in a silent frenzy, and as the hufsan sank to his knees, he shifted his grip on the blade, and stabbed down into the side of the man’s neck. The hufsan collapsed like a puppet with slashed strings, ripping the knife out of Kurun’s nerveless fingers.
He ran to Roshana, but was kicked aside. A curved blade licked out and took him in the ribs, the blow not a sharp thing, but like a solid punch. He clasped his side, gaping like a landed fish, and went down with his head resting at Roshana’s feet, his face half-buried in water. It was raining again, and he could feel the drops strike his cheek, but from his breastbone down, there was no sensation at all. It was as if his legs had suddenly disappeared.
A foot flipped him over; a shadow looked him in the face, and then ran on. There was a chaos of shouting. Roshana was dragged limply away. But he could still hear swordplay, the clack and ring of steel.
‘Kill them, master,’ he whispered. ‘Save her.’
Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he no longer felt anything, and the red moon made a bone- carved mask of his bloodless face.
The horsemen choked the lane, a stamping cavalcade of them. Kouros cursed and swore and lashed out with his riding crop as he strove to get to the forefront of the crowd. He had brought too many, and had not thought about deploying them, merely told his guards to charge hell-for-leather towards the house in which Kuthra had finally cornered his half-brother. A dead horse in the lane had brought down two of the lead riders, and the rest was chaos. Some of them were bearing lit torches, and the fitful yellow light almost made the thing worse.
The Niseian under him remembered its training. It shouldered the other horses aside, biting and kicking with the fury of its rider. A wild leap, and it was over the bodies on the ground — a surprising number of them — and then Kouros was galloping alone up the track. He cast aside the whip and drew his sword.
Another horse. The Niseian crashed into it deliberately, the big warhorse knocking the smaller animal clear off its feet. But the shock shook Kouros in the saddle. He dropped his sword, gripped the pommel of his saddle with both hands, and struggled to stay on the wild warhorse’s back. The reins now loose, the Niseian lifted its head and screamed out a challenge to the blank darkness of the house looming under the moon. There were more bundles underfoot, and it danced over them; like all horses, it was unwilling to step on a body.
Kouros roundly consigned the animal to Mot’s shadow, and leapt off. It sprang away. Now he saw that the girth had slipped and it was trying to kick the saddle free. The iron-shod hooves went by his head so close he felt the wind. He dropped to the ground, scrabbling for his sword, a little incredulous that his moment of triumph should have taken such a turn. He came upon a warm body lying in the rainwater, a boy’s face that seemed familiar. He could not find his sword, and splashed through the puddles while the rain grew colder on his back. At last he found a hilt to hand. A long kitchen knife, bloody to the handle — it would do; it would have to do.
He stood up. ‘Kuthra!’ Where were his men? He looked back down the track leading from the house, that tree-dark tunnel, and saw shapes milling there, shattered torchlight, a meaningless melee. What were they at?
No matter. They would be with him by and by.
‘Kuthra!’
He ran forward, wiping the rain out of his eyes, puffing. Bushes and undergrowth everywhere, a veritable jungle out of which the dark bulk of the house rose like some lightless monolith, and behind it the red moon glowed in a speeding welter of broken cloud.
‘Here, brother,’ a voice said. And there was a dark shape sitting at the wall of the house, like a man taking his ease. Kouros sprinted to it, cursing the heavy cuirass he wore and his water-filled boots that sloshed at every step.
Panting, he knelt, and saw Kuthra’s pain-racked face, a smile guttering across it like the last flicker of a spent lamp.
‘Almost on time, Kouros. But not quite.’
‘Where are you hurt?’ Kouros felt a thrill of shock and grief blast through him.
‘He gutted me. A good swordsman, our brother. I did not know that.’
‘Where is he?’ Kouros was weeping soundlessly. He tried to clasp Kuthra’s hand but could not pry the other’s fingers from the great wound in his belly. The very leather of Kuthra’s cuirass had been slashed through, and there were nameless shining things bulging between his straining fingers.
‘Oh Kuthra, my brother.’ He wept like a child. ‘I will take you out of here. My father’s surgeons — ’
‘I am a dead man, Kouros. Rakhsar has done for me in fair fight. Do not trouble yourself.’
Kouros leaned until his forehead and Kuthra’s were touching. He kissed the dying man on the cheek. There was nothing else in the world but that face he loved. The one person in creation he trusted.
‘Kill him for me,’ Kuthra whispered, blood on his teeth. ‘I should have lived. I wanted to see you King.’
‘I need you, Kuthra.’
‘You must find someone else to trust, brother. Your mother’s people are here also. That was the problem — we brought too many to this party.’
‘Roshana?’
‘Here somewhere — she may be dead. I made a mess of things, right at the last. Forgive me, Kouros.’
‘I love you, my brother. There is nothing to forgive.’
Kuthra smiled. ‘You are a better man than you know. Be a good king. Remember me, Kouros.’ He struggled, as though he had one last thing to say.
‘ Kouros — ’
But there were no more words. Kuthra sighed, and his face took on a look of mild surprise, as though things were not quite what he had thought. His head tilted to one side and came to rest against his brother’s face, so that Kouros’s tears were on both their cheeks. The straining hands relaxed.
Kouros took one hand in his own, the blood gluing their palms together.
‘Goodnight my dear brother,’ he whispered, and bent his head. He knelt there beside the body in the soft rain, and above them both the Moon of Wrath beamed full and bright in the cloud-streaked sky.
It was Barka who found him, and knelt beside him in the rain. He took one look at Kuthra’s waxen face, and set a hand on Kouros’s shoulder.
‘My prince.’
‘Get your hand off me.’
‘There is work to be done, Kouros.’
‘Find Rakhsar. I want him alive, Barka. The man who takes his life will lose his own.’
‘We have found the lady Roshana.’
At last, Kouros raised his head. Barka recoiled from the look on his face.
‘She lives?’
‘She lives.’
Kouros rose to his feet. He looked down at Kuthra’s body.
‘Give me your cloak.’
Wordlessly, Barka handed it over. Kouros took it and laid it over his dead brother’s body.
‘He will come back with us, Barka. We will bring him back and give him a funeral worthy of a prince. What was denied him in life shall be given him in death, I swear it.’
He raised his head. His eyes shone with a vulpine light.
‘Now, take me to my sister.’
They had fanned out and were beating the bushes in line as though flushing out a boar for the spears of the hunters. Torches had been lit here and there along the rank, and by these they kept their intervals and advanced through the forgotten fields and choked thickets of the estate. There were dozens of them: Kuthra’s men, Orsana’s men, and Kouros’s personal guards.
