Iome could see that each was elegantly carved and painted, like some gift that a foreign dignitary might offer a neighboring lord.
Yet impaled upon each of these stakes was a human form. The bodies were not just thrust through. Instead, the victim’s hands and legs had been tied, and the stakes had been driven up through their nether regions with great care and threaded upward until the lances’ points broke through their mouths, like trout upon a skewer.
The soldiers rushed forward and shoved the stakes into the ground so that the bodies were raised up high. Then they stood beneath, waving their torches so that Iome could see the identities of their victims.
What she saw shook her to the core of her soul. Among the impaled were Jaz’s personal guard Daymorra. Next came Iome’s childhood friend, Chemoise. And last of all was Gaborn’s uncle, Duke Paldane, the man that she had planned to place in charge of her kingdom as regent.
Iome gaped in amazement. Of all the dark deeds she had ever witnessed, none struck her with as much force. It wasn’t that she couldn’t imagine such evil having been done. It was that she couldn’t imagine how it had been done so quickly.
All three of these people had been under Gaborn’s protection, and he had been dead for only a few hours. Chemoise had been in Heredon, hundreds of miles away, in the Dedicates’ Keep. Paldane had been in his own castle. For both of them to have been abducted and put to torture-it could only mean that Asgaroth had known for weeks that Gaborn would die this day.
How can I fight such foreknowledge? Iome wondered.
“So,” Iome said, looking at the grotesque forms on their splendid skewers and trying to remain calm. “I see that you have made an art of murder.”
“Oh, not just of murder-” Asgaroth said, “of viciousness. ”
There was a soft moan from Daymorra. Paldane moved an elbow. Iome realized to her dismay that both had survived the impalement. The stakes had been threaded past vital organs-heart, lungs, liver-in the most ghastly manner.
Through the haze of shock, Iome registered a movement at her side. She glanced down, becoming aware that her sons had come up to the parapet despite the fact that she had ordered them to stay in her rooms. Iome felt angry and alarmed, but she understood how hard it was for the boys to restrain themselves. Now the boys leaned over the merlons to get a better look.
Fallion seemed to stare calmly at the impaled, as if he would refuse to be intimidated, while Jaz gaped in shock, his face leeched of blood.
Iome feared how such a sight might scar the boys.
The shadow man shifted his gaze slightly, stared hard at Fallion, and Iome suddenly realized that this demonstration had not been for her benefit as much as it had been for Fallion’s.
For his part, Fallion could almost feel Asgaroth’s eyes boring into him. It was as if Asgaroth looked into Fallion’s chest, into his soul, and everything was stripped bare to see, all of his childhood fears, all of his weaknesses. Fallion felt that he had been weighed and found wanting, and now Asgaroth scorned him.
Fallion’s knees trembled no matter how hard he tried to stand still.
That’s what he wants, Fallion realized. My fear. That’s why he did this. That’s why he brought the strengi- saats.
And with the realization, Fallion suddenly felt a sullen rage blossom, one that left him in a numbing trance.
There is an end to pain, he realized. There is only so much that he could do to me.
Fallion said steadily, and not too loudly, “I’m not afraid of you.”
The shadow man made no move. But as if at some hidden signal, Asgaroth’s soldiers went to the impaled victims and clubbed their shins with the torches so that Fallion heard the snapping of bones, and then held the torches to the victims’ feet. Both Daymorra and Paldane cringed and writhed, and Fallion could hear them choking back sobs, but neither gave in. Neither of them cried out.
Fallion saw Asgaroth’s game. He would try to enlarge his realm through intimidation.
Fallion reached down to his sheath and pulled his own dagger, then held it up for Asgaroth to see.
“Is that the worst that you can do?” Fallion asked. He stabbed himself in the hand, drew the dagger across his palm, opening a shallow wound. He raised his palm in the air so that the blood flowed freely. “I don’t fear pain,” he said, then added calmly, “Is that why you fear me?”
Asgaroth trembled with rage. He sat upon his destrier, clenching the reins, and Fallion looked over to his mother’s soldiers on the wall, many of whom were staring at him in open amazement. Fallion curled his bleeding hand into a fist, and drew it down quickly, as if striking a blow, and against all of the rules of parlay, he shouted, “Fire.”
Fallion had never ordered a soldier to kill. But in an instant, every archer upon the wall let fly an arrow, and the marksmen fired their ballistae. It was as if they had been aching for permission.
Arrows swept down in a dark hail. A dozen cruel Runelords were slaughtered in an instant, and many others took wounds. Horses screamed and fell, bloody rents in their flesh. Fallion saw dozens of men, arrows lodged in them, turn their horses and beat a hasty retreat.
But Asgaroth went unharmed. Before the command to fire had even left Fallion’s mouth, the shadow man reached over with his left hand and grabbed the fat old Olmarg, lifting him easily from the saddle, and threw him upon his pommel, using the warlord as a human shield.
It happened so swiftly, Fallion barely saw the movement, attesting that Asgaroth had many endowments of both metabolism and brawn.
Then, as Olmarg filled up with so many arrows that he looked like a practice target, Asgaroth raised his left hand and a powerful wind screamed from it. In seconds every arrow that flew toward him veered from its path.
Fallion could hear the twang of bows, could see the dark missiles blurring in their speed, but Asgaroth tossed Olmarg to the ground and then sat calmly upon his horse, taking no hurt.
Many an arrow landed nearby, and soon Asgaroth’s victims, impaled upon their stakes, had each been struck a dozen times, putting an end to their torment.
And though the archers kept firing, Asgaroth gazed hard at Fallion and shouted, “If viciousness be art, then of you I shall make a masterpiece.”
Asgaroth calmly turned his blood mount and let it prance away, its hooves rising and falling rhythmically as if in dance, until it rode off into the darkness. The shadows seemed to coalesce around the rider, and in moments he became one with the night.
He’s coming back, Fallion thought. In fact, his men are probably surrounding the castle now as they wait for reinforcements.
Fallion looked up at his mother. Her jaw was clenched in rage, and she looked at the blood dripping from his palm. He thought that she would scold him, but she merely put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, pride catching in her voice, “Well done. Well done.”
Iome strode from the castle wall, hurrying down the steps. At her back, she heard an old veteran soldier telling Fallion, “You ever need to go into battle, milord, I’d be proud to ride at your side.”
It was a sentiment that Iome suspected more than one man shared at this moment.
A healer in a dark blue robe, smelling of dried herbs, brushed past Iome on his way to bandage Fallion.
Sir Borenson met Iome in the courtyard, rushing up as if to ask orders.
Iome said swiftly, “How soon can we leave?”
“I need only to get the children,” he said.
Iome had not packed a bag, but it was not a hundred miles to the Courts of Tide, and the heavy cloak and boots that she wore would suffice until then. She carried a sword beneath her robe, and a pair of dueling daggers strapped to her boots, so she would not lack for weapons.
“Get your family then,” Iome said, “and I will meet you in the tunnels.”
Borenson turned, racing toward his quarters, a small home beside the barracks, and Iome hesitated.
After what she had just seen, she felt certain that Fallion was almost ready to receive endowments.
It isn’t age that qualifies a man to lead, she thought. It’s an amalgam of traits-honor, decency, courage, wisdom, decisiveness, resolve. And Fallion has shown me all of those tonight.
But dare I take his childhood from him?
