Chapter Four The Cobra and the Traitor
CHAPTER FOUR
The Cobra and the Traitor
The audience grew quiet as Lord Marius took the field against the foe.
The hush was deeper than applause, for the capital might worship gods, but they knew the Valerius heir of old.
All justice and no mercy, all high beauty and no love, he forswore the bloodstained legacy of his forebears and lived the narrow ascetic life of a scholar, forbidden to touch wine, women or weapons.
Nobody had believed a Valerius could keep those vows, but Lord Marius was ever faithful.
All admired him from a distance, and none would ever draw close.
He came cloaked in snow and silence, his raiment shining beneath the full moon. Their White Knight, their own and very Last Hope.
The people firmly believed Lord Marius would not draw his sword for any reason but to defend the innocent, and battle a terrible enemy.
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
He was free.
It was the strangest sensation. Marius didn’t recall ever feeling that way before, other than on a handful of occasions when he, Octavian and Lucius were young squires together. Marius would beat both his friends in the training grounds, yet they weren’t afraid of him. They had fun together.
Marius knew he should be worried about how much better he felt, now he was killing again. The Valerius curse burning in his blood, the Valerius sword singing in his hand, and all doubt, all thought lost in the sweet oblivion of dealing death.
It was wicked to feel that way, but Marius was already deserving of death for his crimes. So he could smile, and smile, and be a villain.
Marius accepted evil, but he drew the line at foolishness. He could not let Eric risk his own life for a feather bed.
“There’s a very comfortable inn a few miles away,” the Golden Cobra insisted.
“We are traitors fleeing the Crown’s justice, in company with a rabble of defecting soldiers and common criminals. The invading army may distract the king for a time, but Octavianus will hunt us down.”
Marius honestly couldn’t believe he had to keep reminding Eric of this.
Their party had left the war-torn city far behind, riding deep into the Waiting Elms woods where moonlight, filtered through leaves in patterns like intricately wrought steel, turned dark green on the shadowed floor.
This far into the forest felt almost like being underwater, the murmurous treetop waves above their heads, air rippling cool around them.
Moss and boughs heavy with leaves muffled sound, but not much dimmed the senses of a Valerius.
He and Eric rode ahead of and slightly apart from the group, so they might exchange confidences, but Marius could hear every footfall in the forest. Carts rattled behind their horses, foot soldiers defended the rear, soft chatter mingled with the bustle and jingling of their progress, and Marius knew their people were safe. For now.
“I’m not a Boy Scout, I won’t go camping. I’m an artiste. I enjoy nature only when framed in a window or a painting.” The Cobra guided his steed around a fallen tree with a casual expertise belying his complaints.
“You pretend to be spoiled and outrageous to conceal your true nature, so you may help others unsuspected,” Marius observed. “Do you also find the pretence amusing?”
Eric’s mouth curved. “I do.” He glanced warily around the trees, as if suspecting owls of eavesdropping.
“Very well, I have a reason for wanting to visit inns on our way. There’s a minstrel journeying towards the capital who will be important in later books.
I don’t want them caught up in this war. ”
Important minstrels indeed. Performing artists were people of loose morals, and the whole court knew the Cobra took his artistic protégés to bed.
Since Marius was sworn to serve him, he no longer had any right to judge the Cobra’s disgracefully long list of romantic entanglements, but there were limits.
“We cannot put everyone at risk to locate some minstrel.”
Marius knew that pointing out the danger to others would work. Appealing to Eric’s sense of self-preservation would not: sadly, Eric didn’t have any. Marius waited until Eric sighed and relented.
“Fine. But you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not pretending to be spoiled. I genuinely wish to be spoiled,” Eric claimed with a huff.
His words reminded Marius of another night, when wicked Lady Rahela’s wicked guard was put to death, and Eric almost wept.
Marius had asked what he could do. Eric had snarled back, Kill the king!
Marius was terrified, not of Eric or for Octavian, but by his own response to the words, the dark animal uncurling, ready to leap.
Desiring nothing more than to violently obey a vicious order, to a violent consummation.
His king was far away, but the king’s men would catch and kill them soon.
Marius hoped they would make it to the manor first, so Eric’s people would be safe.
Marius could see his family for the last time.
He hoped to make what peace with them he could.
When the king’s men came, Marius would kill as many as possible, and take joy in the slaughter.
Even a Valerius couldn’t withstand an army, not since the days of their famous ancestor the First Duke.
The blood has grown thin, Marius’s father used to say.
Eventually the king’s men would cut him down.
Marius would die before he had to see Eric killed.
He would die knowing he had bought Eric a little more time.
That would be worth it. He glanced over at the wicked Marquis of Popenjoy, the infamous Golden Cobra, debauched leader of the effete artistic set of the aristocracy and proprietor of the Golden Brothel.
For all his show of dissatisfaction, Eric watched the forest with the same appreciation he gave to a play, wide golden eyes drinking in silver moonlight.
Long black braids tied up, brightly ringed hands light on the reins and occasionally gently patting the neck of the horse he complained incessantly about.
A sinner who cared nothing for common decencies or the king’s laws, so shameless in his wickedness that he made wickedness seem bright, and kind, and lovely.
They would be dead soon. It could do no harm to indulge Eric in the meantime.
Marius delighted in his liberty to say, “What do you wish? I will grant all things save what might harm you. Come. Bid me do anything for you.”
Eric blinked, as if startled. “Anything? Oh, well. I want world peace, air conditioning—”
Marius warned, “I have asked you repeatedly not to make up nonsense words and phrases—”
Eric was distracting. A second later, Marius remembered why he couldn’t afford to be distracted.
A scream burst from the stragglers around the carts. “’Ware the dead!”
“Excuse me.” Marius turned his steed about, jumping the fallen tree and drawing his sword. Starving for Blood hummed through the air, gleaming dark red even in this underwater light.
By the eldritch glow of dark magic, Marius saw his prey. He dismounted in one movement, prowling forward.
Once upon a time the ghoul had been a lady.
Snarled hair flew about her discoloured shoulders as she snapped at the scattering throng.
Tattered silk skirts swept the leaves as she lurched inexorably forward.
The dead thing advanced on a young girl who had fallen helpless upon the forest floor.
A couple of soldiers held bared blades, but hung back either from fear or hesitation at the ghoul’s shape.
Chivalry didn’t apply to the walking dead.
Marius wouldn’t permit their people to be harmed.
He lunged, walking soft on the fallen leaves, night air a cool relief on his skin as his blood burned as hot as wrath with his target in sight. Marius was as hungry as any of the dead, and far more dangerous.
The fallen girl scrambled up from the forest floor and clutched at Marius’s sleeve as he went by. She was clearly one of the many Themesvar citizens who had fled her home in fear of the raiders. Marius had shielded her in the bloodied city streets, so the poor thing had clung close all night.
People did look to him for protection occasionally. That never lasted. Marius tried to play the sheepdog, but he was born a wolf. Sooner or later, whoever drew close to Marius saw the truth and rage of the Valerius legacy, and ran as though from a burning house.
For now, Marius disengaged the girl’s clutching fingers from his once-white, now ash-grey garments with a murmured courtesy, and engaged battle.
The Valerius blade Starving for Blood turned moonbeams red as it sliced the night air, a few passes driving the dead thing back.
The ghoul’s attention snapped from the trembling girl to the steady point of Marius’s sword. The dead creature suddenly went still.
Usually, ghouls were so eager to taste and rend living flesh that they never stopped coming at you, no matter what stood in their way. No fear showed on the blank, dead face, yet some sense of strategy meant the ghoul didn’t fling itself on the blade.
Unfortunately, on this night of the overflowing abyss and a crowned shadow outlined against the clouds, it appeared the dead had grown cunning.
Marius gestured for the others to fall back. He didn’t even glance to see if they obeyed. There was no need: he could hear the Cobra’s footstep behind him, the way Eric moved different from anyone else. Eric would not let their people be harmed.
The dead woman’s chin lifted, her gaze no longer reflecting the glitter of the sword. Instead, her empty eyes found another target: the brightest thing in the deep, dark woods.
The ghoul hurled herself directly at the Golden Cobra. She didn’t reach him. Marius’s thoughts went away as his blade came down. He left her in too many pieces to crawl after them.