The messenger’s journey was not yet done. He climbed a broad flight of steps that led to the main doorway of the Central Keep. Through this door was a vaulted stone hall, unadorned other than brackets for oil lamps set every few feet into the wall. A dozen doors branched off the hall and the messenger took the nearest on the right, coming to a narrow spiral staircase. He rose up the outside of the keep, the stairs dimly lit by arrow-slits that flashed past every dozen steps, until he came to another door some four storeys up. On the other side was a corridor, and at the end of the corridor was Helmec. The messenger tried to stride past him, but was halted by a firm hand on his chest. He spoke with the guardsman for some time; the messenger shrugging at last and turning away. Helmec watched him go, and then turned to knock on the door behind him.
“My lord?” Helmec peered around the door. “A message from Uvoren. He says there is something outside the Great Gate that he needs your authority to deal with.”
Roper was tending to his equipment in his quarters. His cuirass gleamed from the table, and the room smelt of oil and beeswax. He looked up at Helmec, dropping the oil-soaked rag he held and on his guard at once. “He’s going to try and embarrass me.”
“I don’t know, lord.”
“Ask him to provide more information.”
“The messenger was quite insistent, lord,” said Helmec, apologetically. “Said it must be as soon as possible.”
Roper wondered whether he could refuse. It could be the wise course, but he still hoped that there might be a genuine need for his presence. He had few enough opportunities to lead without turning them down when they presented themselves. He bade Helmec accompany him and together they took a pair of horses from the stables below the Central Keep. They clattered out onto the cobbles, riding for the Great Gate. Helmec, prodded by a question from Roper, began chattering about where his two daughters were. “They’re both working in the freyi, lord, teaching medicine to the young girls there. I had word from one of them yesterday. She said the usual plants they use at this time of year are nowhere to be found: everything has been covered by the flood waters.”
Roper was not really listening. As they reached the gatehouse, he spotted Uvoren atop it. He was leaning against the battlements and laughing raucously with Asger, the Lieutenant of the Guard. Uvoren saw Roper and waved at him before pointing at something that Roper could not see behind the gate. “Have a look!” he shouted, before gesticulating to a guard that the gate should be opened. The locking bars grated backwards and the counter-weight was released so that the gates ticked open.
Roper, still mounted, could not immediately see anything through the gateway. The great grass plain before the fortress appeared to be deserted, which was in itself strange. For weeks now it had been home to the thousands of refugees who fled the Suthern invasion, but now only their meagre possessions were in evidence. Their owners seemed to have scattered. Roper rode forward, straining his eyes and casting around. He half expected the joke to be that the gates would shut behind him, so he left Helmec behind to guard against any inclination that Uvoren might have to lock him out. Then he spotted it: an upright stake of some kind, planted in the earth fifty yards away. There was a dark mass on top of it.
Roper had realised what it was long before he reached it. The stake was a spear, butt-spike planted in the ground and there was a helmeted head impaled on top of it. Roper’s face was drained of colour by the time he reached it, moving more and more slowly the closer he got. He stopped at last, a few yards short of the head. It was suspended at his eye-level. He stared at it for a long while and his father stared back.
So this was what Uvoren had wanted him to see. He turned to look back at the gate and saw that Uvoren and Asger were still watching him, though he could not make out their expressions. He turned back to the head. “Hello, my lord,” he said, softly. A single tear welled over his eyelid and splattered onto his armour. An expulsion escaped his lips; the plosive sound of the letter “p.” He took a sharp breath and straightened his back. “I’m glad you’re here.” His father just stared, eyes half-open, as if in a drunken stupor. Roper leaned forward and tried to pull the head from the spear, but the vomit rose in his throat and his hands felt so weak that he could not do it. He tried until he retched. He pulled back, trembling and panting. The head reeked.
“So what do I do now?” he asked the head, voice quivering a little. “Almighty god, what do I do now?” The head looked at him blankly. “I have an enemy, my lord,” Roper continued. He spoke haltingly, as though he were talking to the living Kynortas. He would have had little patience for these emotions. “It is Uvoren and I think he is going to kill me. I want to die on the battlefield. Please, let me die on the battlefield. He could do it now and I don’t think anyone would stop him. But he’ll play with me more.” Roper took a deep breath again and blinked. For the first time, the thing before him appeared dead. “And I’m going to kill him first. Do you hear me, Father?
