Chapter Twenty-Eight The Cobra and the Duke
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Cobra and the Duke
“‘By the sword, I swear to be loyal and true, to love all you love, and hate all you hate. You will feel no rain, as I will be a shelter for you. You will feel no hunger or thirst while I have food to give or wine in my cup. When my name is in your mouth, I will always answer, and your name will be my call to arms. I will ever be a shield for your back, and the story told between us will be true. Everything agreed between us, I will carry out. For yours is the will I have chosen.’” The Oracle looked at Lord Marius with eyes that encompassed many worlds. “That is the oath you wish to take?”
“It is,” answered the White Knight.
“And you do not wish a will of your own?”
He replied, “I do not.”
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
It was disgusting how lax the ducal guard around the manor had become over the last seven years. These men had the most sacred duty in the kingdom: to protect Marius’s lady mother and sister. They needed to be the best.
Worse still, neither the city folk nor the bandits Eric had senselessly adopted possessed any formal training in arms.
Marius had the matter in hand. Captain Diarmat’s forces were each assigned a squad. When they reported a soldier was prepared for the next stage, that soldier would spar with Marius. Once Marius put that soldier through his paces, the soldier would be officially under Diarmat’s command.
One of the bandits, a young man by the unfortunate name of Sparrow, was selected by Diarmat himself. Trusting Diarmat’s judgement, Marius favoured Sparrow with special attention in the training yard.
On the whole he agreed the young man had promise, though as the spar went on Sparrow grew slow with his parries. Endurance was key in many fights. Marius gave him a cold look, and Sparrow lifted his quarterstaff, though not as steadily as Marius might wish.
Marius lunged. Sparrow stumbled backward, guard down, and Marius dealt him a few blows with the quarterstaff to provide a hard lesson.
A walkway spanned the training yard, providing an easy route from east to west wing.
A walkway stretched from the north to the south tower, too, the walkways together casting an X-shaped shadow across the rectangle of the grounds at the manor’s heart when the sun sank in the sky.
As the sun was doing now, seeming a bright coin tossed and hanging suspended behind one tall tower.
Mingled darkness and illumination set fire to gold embroidery on fabric, a brief flare that turned Marius’s head without his mind agreeing.
Sparrow whirled his staff and caught Marius with a heavy blow on the arm.
Shocked and mildly impressed, Marius beat him back with a flurry of blows so he wouldn’t become arrogant. Overconfidence could get a man killed.
“Marius, can you spare me a moment in between torturing my bandits?” asked Eric. “Give that poor boy a break.”
“Would you prefer I broke his arm or his leg?”
Eric laughed, brighter than the glow of the sun behind the manor. “Don’t be hilarious, he’s a wreck.”
With his usual carelessness about his own wellbeing, Eric moved between them. Marius didn’t enjoy seeing weapons in proximity to the Cobra, so he confiscated Sparrow’s quarterstaff, and saw with surprise that Sparrow’s legs were trembling.
Possibly he had been working the boy too hard.
The Cobra patted Sparrow’s back. Sparrow immediately collapsed against this golden tower of defence, and Eric made soothing noises while the bandit burrowed his head into his shoulder. Outrageous behaviour in the training yard!
“I think I love you,” mumbled Sparrow.
Marius grasped the bandit’s collar and hauled him backward like the unruly puppy he was. “You do not love him. Cease bothering the marquis and shirking your work. You’ve barely been training six hours.”
“Don’t listen to the tyrant,” said Eric. “Go to the kitchens and have a soothing cup of tea.”
The man rolled an eyeball in Marius’s direction like a panicked horse. Marius sighed, nodded permission and let go. Sparrow dropped to the ground, scrambled to his feet and ran for the kitchens.
Marius squinted after his retreat. “Must be fond of tea.”
He expected the Cobra to scoff and reprimand him for being harsh to his precious bandits. Instead, he found Eric studying him with narrowed amber eyes and an air of concern.
Fear for what that concern could mean struck Marius’s defences like a battering ram. Eric was here, so it was someone else Marius loved. “What is it? Caracalla? My mother?”
“Marius.” Other people had said Marius’s name, but none, until Eric, with tenderness. “Your dead friend’s at the door of the manor.”
Shock sent his mind reeling, and sent an unexpected pang of sympathy through him for the poor young bandit. Marius had never experienced being defenceless in the training yard before.
Shamefully, Marius needed to swallow before he asked, “Which friend?”
He’d only ever had two. He thought the three of them would be companions until death. He supposed, in a way, they had been. Marius was the only friend left.
“I’m so sorry your life means you have to ask that question,” murmured Eric, as sweet and low as he’d spoken to the bandit, though he didn’t attempt to take Marius in his arms. “Lord Lucius is asking to see you. He says a god sent him.”
That was not the friend Marius had expected. He had imagined for a moment… If Key the gutter guard could rise from the dead, perhaps Octavian could too.
Sin always came to find you. Marius had chosen the Cobra over his king. He had broken his vow and betrayed his liege. Marius deserved his monarch to rise from the dead, demanding his guilty blood.
Lucius had been dead for years and years. He and Marius had never so much as quarrelled. You couldn’t quarrel with Lucius, who charmed all the world.
Lucius had died when Marius was away studying at the Ivory Tower. Octavian never explained exactly what had happened: only that he had perished in a failed attempt to serve the king. Octavian seemed certain he was dead.
Eric sounded certain Lucius was dead, too. Dead, and at the door. Dead, and speaking. Asking to see Marius.
“If you don’t wish to see him,” said Eric, with steadiness you could turn a whole world upon, “I will send him packing.”
“How do you intend to send away the dead?”
“Trust me,” Eric told him. “I make the way when there is no way.”
Marius had heard Eric say that before, in the caressing tone in which he spoke of his favourite books.
Marius read many of Eric’s favourites, trying to understand an incomprehensible man, but he had never discovered those words in print.
Unlike most of Eric’s favourite lines, this one made sense to him.
If there was no way, still a way must be found.
When the dead came to call, it must be a signal to face your fears.
“I will see Lucius,” Marius decided. “First, I must go to the east wing and attend my father.”
The sun dipped below the towers, its light hidden by the looming bulk of the manor.
Marius swallowed down pride as well as fear. “Will you come with me?”
Eric said, “I will.”
The east wing was the darkest part of Ancilley Manor, designed to be the most defensible. The windows were slits from which arrows could be fired, not intended for scenic views. They offered only glimpses of the dusty training ground.
Marius had grown up here, raised alongside his ducal father and the duke’s most ruthless warriors. Away from women who would spoil him with gentleness, or books that might teach him there was any other way to live. For a Valerius, there could be no other way.
Like an animal raised for the fighting pits, though these fighting pits were decorated with dark magnificence in mahogany and orichal gold and steel.
It was still darkness, in which only viciousness was nurtured, the best part of every feeling brutally docked like a pit dog’s ears and tail.
While rage was sharpened to razor points like teeth, and a furious creature launched at the throat of the world.
The duke’s cub, his father’s men called him long ago. The duke’s heir.
Seven long years since he walked these halls. The duke’s cub was grown now.
Cobwebs hung from the swords and shields of Marius’s ancestors.
Dust had turned silver even the golden hilt on the orichal blade Keeping the Faith, taken from the Second Duke’s hand by the First Duke when his son disappointed him.
Every mirror on the walls was smashed to empty frames, and fragments like fangs.
The portraits of his ancestors wore grey veils, ice-pale eyes glimmering briefly under the dust as they passed.
From the open mouth of the cellars issued a foul, charnel-house smell, but the scent had lingered there since Marius was born.
The blood of years had seeped through the stone and couldn’t be scrubbed out.
His grandfather had kept the brides who displeased him in the chamber below, following in the tradition of who-knew-how-many Valerius dukes before him.
They said when the First Duke built the manor, he designed the dungeon with orichal chains upon the wall and a door none but he could break down. A chamber for his beloved.
Marius had been put in the chamber for disobedience as a child. When the door was shut, you saw the words. Do Not Dream Of Escape.
He heard Eric’s voice in his mind, asking: Why would you dream of prison?
No Valerius could escape the Valerius curse. Marius glanced apprehensively in the Cobra’s direction.
Eric looked around with the expression he wore when subjected to amateur dramatics. “The ambiance is rancid.”
Marius’s laugh seemed to disturb the cobwebs. He could imagine his ancestors beneath the dust were startled, too.