throat as he sucked in a great breath and held it, then threw himself sideways and tumbled from the saddle. Over the batter of hooves, the clatter of metal, the rushing of wind he heard Monza’s sharp cry.
Then the dirt struck him, jarred his teeth together. He rolled, grunting, over and over, took a mouthful of mud. The world spun, all dark sky and flicking soil, flying horses, falling men. Hooves thudded around him, mud spattered in his eyes. He heard screams, fought his way up as far as his knees. A corpse dropped, flailing, crashed into Shivers and knocked him on his back again.
Morveer made it to the double doors of the barn and wrestled one wide enough to stick his head through, just in time to see the Osprian soldiers rise from behind the farmyard wall and deliver a disciplined and deadly volley of flatbow fire.
Out in the grassy paddock men jerked and tumbled from their saddles, horses fell and threw their riders. Flesh plunged down, ploughed into the wet dirt, limbs flailing. Beasts and men roared and wailed in shock and fury, pain and fear. Perhaps a dozen riders dropped, but the rest broke into a full charge without the slightest hint of reluctance, weapons raised and gleaming, releasing war cries to match the death screams of their fallen comrades.
Morveer whimpered, shoved the door shut and pressed his back against it. Red-edged battle. Rage and randomness. Pointed metal moving at great speed. Blood spilled, brains dashed, soft bodies ripped open and their innards laid sickeningly bare. A most uncivilised way to carry on, and decidedly not his area of expertise. His own guts, thankfully still within his abdomen, shifted with a first stab of bestial terror and revulsion, then constricted with a more reasoned wash of fear. If Murcatto won, her lethal intentions towards him had already been clearly displayed. She had not balked for a moment at engineering the death of his innocent apprentice, after all. If the Thousand Swords won, well, he was an accomplice of Prince Ario’s killer. In either case his life would undoubtedly be painfully forfeit.
“Damn it!”
Beyond the one doorway the farmyard was rapidly becoming a slaughteryard, but the windows were too narrow to squeeze through. Hide in the hayloft? No, no, what was he, five years old? Lie down beside poor Day and play dead? What? Lie down in urine? Never! He dashed to the back of the barn with all despatch, poked desperately at the planking for a way through. He found a loose board and began kicking at it.
“Break, you wooden bastard! Break! Break! Break! ” The sounds of mortal combat were growing ever more intense in the yard behind him. Something crashed against the side of the barn and made him startle, dust filtering down from the rafters with the force of it. He turned back to the carpentry, whimpering now with fear and frustration, face prickling with sweat. One last kick and the wood tore free. Wan daylight slunk in through a narrow gap between two ragged-edged planks. He knelt, turning sideways on, forced his head through the crack, splinters digging at his scalp, gained a view of flat country, brown wheat, a stand of trees perhaps two hundred strides distant. Safety. He worked one arm through into the free air, clutching vainly at the weathered outside of the barn. One shoulder, half his chest, and then he stuck fast.
It had been optimistic of him, to say the least, to imagine that he might have effortlessly slipped through that gap. Ten years ago he had been slender as a willow-swatch, could have glided through a space half the width with the grace of a dancer. Too many pastries in the interim had rendered such an operation impossible, however, and there appeared to be a growing prospect that they might have cost him his life. He wriggled, squirmed, sharp wood digging at his belly. Is this how they would find him? Is this the tale that they would snigger over in after years? Would that be his legacy? The great Castor Morveer, death without a face, most feared of all poisoners, finally brought to book, wedged in a crack in the back of a barn while fleeing?
“Damn pastries!” he screamed, and with one last effort tore himself through, teeth gritted as a rogue nail ripped his shirt half-off and left him a long and painful cut down his ribs. “Damn it! Shit!” He dragged his aching legs through after him. Finally liberated from the clawing embrace of poor-quality joinery and riddled with splinters, he began to dash towards the proffered safety of the trees, waist-high wheat stalks tripping him, thrashing him, snatching at his legs.
He had progressed no further than five wobbly strides when he fell headlong, sprawling in the damp crop with a squeal. He struggled up, cursing. One of his shoes had been snatched off by the jealous wheat as he went down. “Damn wheat!” He was just beginning to cast about for it when he became aware of a loud drumming sound. To his disbelieving horror, a dozen horsemen had burst from the trees towards which he had been fleeing, and were even now bearing down on him at full gallop, spears lowered.
He gave vent to a breathless squeak, spun, slipped on his bare foot, began to limp back to the crack that had so mauled him on their first acquaintance. He wedged one leg through, whimpered at a stab of agony as he accidentally squashed his fruits against a plank. His back prickled as the hammering of hooves grew louder. The riders were no more than fifty strides from him, eyes of men and beasts starting, teeth of men and beasts bared, brightening morning sun catching warlike metal, chaff flying from threshing hooves. He would never tear his bleeding body back through the narrow gap in time. Would he be thrashed, now? Poor, humble Castor Morveer, who only ever wanted to be The corner of the barn exploded in a gout of bright flame. It made no sound beyond the crack and twang of shattering wood. The air suddenly swarmed with spinning debris: a tumbling chunk of flaming beam, ripped planks, bent nails, a scouring cloud of splinters and sparks. A cone of wheat was flattened in one great rustling wave, sucking up a rippling swell of dust, stalk, grain, embers. Two not insignificant barrels were suddenly exposed, standing proud in the midst of the levelled crop, directly in the path of the charging horsemen. Flames leaped up from them, black char spreading spontaneously across their sides.
The right-hand barrel exploded with a blinding flash, the left almost immediately after. Two great fountains of soil were hurled into the sky. The lead horse, trapped between them, seemed to stop, frozen, twist, then burst apart along with its rider. Most of the rest were enveloped in the spreading clouds of dust and, presumably, reduced to flying mincemeat.
A wave of wind flattened Morveer against the side of the barn, tearing at his ripped shirt, his hair, his eyes. A moment later the thunderous double detonation reached his ears and made his teeth rattle. A couple of horses at either end of the line remained largely in one piece, flapping bonelessly as they were tossed through the air like an angry toddler’s toys, one mount turned mostly inside out, crashing down to leave bloody scars through the crop near the trees from which they had first emerged.
Clods of earth rattled against the plank wall. Dust began to settle. Patches of damp wheat burned reluctantly around the edges of the blast, sending up smudges of acrid smoke. Charred splinters of wood, blackened chaff, smouldering fragments of men and beasts still rained from the sky. Ash wafted softly down on the breeze.
Morveer stood, still wedged in the side of the barn, struck to the heart with cold amazement. Gurkish fire, it seemed, or something darker, more… magical? A figure appeared around the smouldering corner of the barn just as he wrenched himself free and dived into the wheat, peering up between the stalks.
The Gurkish woman, Ishri. One arm and the hem of her brown coat were thoroughly on fire. She seemed suddenly to notice as the flames licked up around her face, shrugged the burning garment off without rush and tossed it aside, standing bandaged from neck to toe, unburned and pristine as the body of some ancient desert queen embalmed and ready for burial. She took one long look towards the trees, then smiled and slowly shook her head.
She said something happily in Kantic. Morveer’s mastery of the tongue was not supreme, but it sounded like, “You still have it, Ishri.” She swept the wheat where Morveer was hiding with her black eyes, at which he ducked down with the greatest alacrity, then she turned and disappeared behind the shattered corner of the barn from whence she came. He heard her faintly chuckling to herself.
“You still have it.”
Morveer was left only with an overpowering-but in his opinion entirely justifiable-desire to flee, and never look back. So he wormed his way through the gore-spattered crops on his belly. Towards the trees, inch by painful inch, breath wheezing in his burning chest, terror pricking at his arse all the long way.
No Worse
