Chapter 40
Besieged
One must wonder, of course, how long such beings have persisted in the world—these fae and fiends which defy classification, which may predate the First Folk themselves.
‘We should be doing more,’ Siwan said.
She leaned at the windowsill, holding the spellpapers Fola had given her flat across her stomach. The sounds of the battle were muted here, on the rear side of Glascoed’s keep. Still, the distant screams of the dying, the clash of steel and the roar of small cannon set Llewyn’s teeth on edge.
How long could they wait? They ought to make use of those spells and flee the battle before it reached them. Thoughts that roiled continually in his mind, but which he would not speak.
Siwan felt responsible for all the horrors that had befallen Parwys—the haunting, and now this civil war.
Foolishness, by Llewyn’s reasoning. But he had decided, with Afanan’s death, that his role had changed.
Siwan had been no more than an object to the people of Nyth Fran, a means to appeasing the raven fiend they worshipped.
And for years she had been little more than an object to him.
He wanted to protect her, as he wished his own mother and father had protected him.
As though he could reach back in time and right the wrongs done to him, through her.
But that was not fair—to either of them.
She deserved to live her own life, on her own terms. That was what Afanan had wanted.
He would do what he could to protect and guide her, but the choice, ultimately, had to be hers.
If this was the path she had chosen he would not turn her from it, however dangerous, however misguided.
‘We’re not fighting folk,’ Spil said firmly.
He sat in one of the two high-backed chairs opposite the window, his face lined with worry while he watched Harwick, who sat in the other.
The strongman held a hatchet across his knees.
A round shield rested against the wall, near to his hand.
He stared at the door, but did not seem to see it.
Llewyn had observed the same hard expression on Harwick’s face the few times his past had come up in conversation, only to be quickly elided.
‘By rights, we should be in some far-flung hamlet, putting on a show to half-drunk farmers,’ Spil went on. He touched Harwick on the forearm. The strongman did not seem to notice. ‘We’re not fighting folk,’ he said again, more softly this time, as though to reassure himself.
‘It’ll be all right, Siwan,’ Damon said, pausing in his pacing by the door to flash her a smile and a salute with Ynyr’s sword.
The boy acted like two days of practice had made him the hero of a romance.
And such was his talent on the stage that Llewyn almost believed him.
‘They won’t need us, honestly. I wager Ifan and his fighters already have the prince’s army on the run. ’
‘Ifan didn’t seem so confident—’ Siwan was interrupted by a sudden shout from beyond the doorway, much louder than the clamour through the window.
Llewyn stepped in front of the door and motioned for Damon to move behind him. ‘Quietly,’ he murmured, and levelled his ghostwood blade. At a motion of his will it flattened and sharpened, its edge keener than any steel.
The fighting still sounded distant, through the window. What is this, then? An opportunist, caught in the act of stealing from his master in the chaos of battle? Or an assassin, slipped through the castle’s defences to strike some hidden blow?
Silence held but for the creak of Harwick’s chair as he stood, took up a position beside Damon, and tested the weight of his hatchet.
‘Wait,’ Siwan hissed. She darted forward; Llewyn’s hand shot out, ready to stop her, until he saw the paper in her hand.
She flattened the spellpaper against the door, studied it for a moment, then made a single stroke with the strange cylindrical pen Fola had left her.
The paper burst into silver flame—silent, thankfully.
The lines of fire stretched out across the door, then faded, leaving no visible sign that anything had changed.
‘I thought that was the right one,’ Siwan muttered, then reached for the other two papers. ‘Bleed it, did I mix—?’
Another shout from the hallway. Siwan backed away from the door. The spellpapers rustled in trembling hands.
‘Which one made the vines?’ Llewyn snapped.
She looked at him, then at the runes Fola had written. ‘I …’
A blow shook the door on its hinges. ‘A-ha!’ a woman’s voice called from outside. ‘That weasel wasn’t lying after all.’
‘Your butchery of the castle servants makes a mockery of our order,’ said a second voice—a man’s, uptight and condescending. It drew closer. ‘Well? Sealed by magic, is it? Break it down.’
Another blow. The wood splintered, but held—thanks, Llewyn was certain, to Fola’s spell. There was no telling how much it could endure.
Damon levelled his sword at the door. Fool of a boy. Llewyn grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him back. ‘Go! Get her out of here!’
Damon opened his mouth to protest, met Llewyn’s eye, and nodded.
‘Come, Siwan,’ he said. ‘To the rooftop.’
Llewyn watched long enough to see Siwan bend through the window.
He could almost feel her fear, thrumming in the ghostwood of his blade, from the fragment that held a part of both their souls.
He turned back to the door. Planted his feet.
From old habits, not yet forgotten after almost a decade, he reached to his belt and pockets for an onyx, an anatase.
Nothing, of course. And useless to him, even if he carried them, without the Grey Lady’s power.
Her ring hung heavy in his pocket. Taunting him. Reminding him that he had been powerful, once. Power he had sacrificed—to save Siwan, to save himself. Power that might have saved them both, this day.
He had made his choices. They had brought him here. And they had been his, for the first time since his mother had led him out of their little house in the woods and pale, rough-skinned men had taken him away.
A blade carved into the door, its tip bursting a jagged gap in the wood. It was wrenched free and fell again with a burst of splinters.
‘I’d thought to outrun it all,’ Harwick murmured. ‘But if it comes, it comes.’
‘Go with them,’ Llewyn said.
The strongman shook his head. ‘There are at least two, Llewyn. I remember well enough how to do this, I think.’
Spil set his jaw. He seized Harwick around the waist, spun him, kissed him. ‘You’re a circus performer, you idiot, not a hero,’ he snarled. ‘Don’t forget that.’
Harwick nodded, smiled, kissed him back, and watched as he followed Siwan through the window.
‘We’ve been lucky, you and I,’ Harwick said. ‘To know some peace.’
Llewyn could only nod at that. Peace had been Afanan’s gift to him. Now, he would give it, insofar as he could, to Siwan, to Damon, to Spil—to Harwick, if he could manage it.
A third blow from the blade shattered the door in half.
Twisted splinters of wood clattered to the floor.
A woman, as broad as the doorway—broader, even, than Harwick—stepped over the ruin.
Tongues of flame like blazing horns surrounded the crown of her head.
She wore a white tabard trimmed in red and gold over iron chain mail—raw iron, if Llewyn had to guess, as was her blade, if it had carved through Fola’s magic so easily.
Her boots and the fringe of her tabard were soiled with brown, reeking muck.
The woman surveyed the room with a bemused smile.
‘No sorceress, eh?’ she said. ‘Tell me, little twig man, where she went.’
Another figure, tall, slight and wan—younger than the woman, with wild hair and a darker complexion—appeared behind her.
He was armoured in much the same way, though his robes and mail hung looser on his frame.
A single point of white fire burned from his forehead.
He pointed to Llewyn with his shortsword and said something in a foreign tongue.
An eagle’s scream, high and piercing, sounded from the window. Siwan’s call for Fola’s aid. Poorly timed.
Llewyn tightened his grip, feeling the ghostwood deform to fit his fingers. The swordswoman smiled, wolfish and greedy.
‘Good,’ she said, an excited hum in her voice. ‘Torin, you’d best go after the rest of them. If this one’s half the fighter that woman in Parwys was, I may be here a minute.’
A third figure appeared in the doorway. No light burned around his head.
He wore no armour, only a clerical robe of pure white, stained below the knees, marked at the breast with the emblem of the Mortal Church.
Llewyn knew it well, from the Grey Lady’s warnings, and from run-ins with the rare churchman in Afondir while in her service.
The man flexed his hands and muttered something in his own tongue.
The words rose in volume and intensity until flames whirled to life around his head.
He issued an order and made a sudden, sharp gesture with his right hand.
The air burned, as it did some nights in the north of the Greenwood, when green and blue flame danced with the stars. First, in the trail of the churchman’s hand. Then, around Harwick’s shield, tracing the iron rim.
Metal screamed as it tore. The shield exploded, needling Llewyn with splinters. Harwick tumbled onto the floor, dazed, still clinging to his hatchet. The younger churchman stepped towards him, shortsword poised for a killing thrust.
In a fight like this, someone who fell was as good as dead.
Llewyn gritted his teeth, moved his will through his ghostwood blade, and attacked.
The swordswoman roared and swung her sword.
It hummed and blurred through the air. Llewyn ducked under its arc and felt the thud as her blow bit the floorboards.
While she wrestled it free, Llewyn stabbed at the younger church-man, driving him back a step towards the door, buying Harwick enough time to recover to his feet.