Rebellion

CHAPTER 78

“Ahh! That was glorious,” said Grandys after Castle Rebroff had been secured. “I love the smell of blood on the battlefield. It makes me feel so alive.”

Rix’s mood broke. He had fought beside the man like a barbarian of old, glorying in his own ability to face seasoned warriors, yet survive. He had felt the euphoria of fighting against impossible odds, of being part of a team that had pulled off an astonishing victory.

Now vomit rose up the back of his throat as he walked past the heaps of butchered men. Men like himself. Good, decent men, most of them, he felt sure. They were the enemy, but had they deserved to die this way?

Grandys was obsessed by winning, by proving himself the best, over and again, and war was just a game, one where his strength and magery gave him an unfair advantage. He did not care how many men died, on the enemy’s side or his own. The more bloodshed, the better he liked it, and his own men were just ciphers. All that mattered was that he prevail where no one else could have.

No, there had to be more to it. Grandys was here for a reason. What he really wanted was the Promised Realm — though how did he plan to set it up? There was only one way to find out; by spying on him.

Rix fought the spell and felt it slip a little, though it still bound him. Would it allow him to spy on Grandys? Or would it lure him in, only to betray him?

“Hoy, you!” Grandys said to a tall young fellow from the town of Swire, a lad who could not have been more than sixteen. “I’ve got a job for you. Come in here.”

Grandys put an arm around the young man’s shoulders and led him into the Great Hall. Rix followed, curious to know what he was up to. He looked around the hall and lost his breath for a few seconds.

Though the enemy had only held Rebroff for a month, the hall had been beautifully decorated in the Cythonian manner, with paintings large and small, wall carvings, vases and sculpture, and simple but exquisitely carved tables and chairs. Their art was vital to them and Rix wanted to see more of it.

He turned, gazing in wonder at a wall sculpture in a niche, a leaning, weathered tree carved from stone. It was astonishing.

Crash! Crash!

Rix turned as Grandys thrust Maloch through a lovely painted vase. Two others like it lay shattered on the floor.

“What are you doing?” Rix cried.

“Disgusting, decadent rubbish,” said Grandys, smashing another vase, and another. He tore a tapestry off the wall, a woodland scene in scarlet, blue and gold that must have taken a team of weavers months. He threw it over a table and hacked it to pieces.

“Get a gang in here, lad,” said Grandys, “and destroy the lot. Take nothing; leave nothing; hide nothing. Understood?”

“Yes, Lord Grandys,” the boy whispered.

“You know what happens to people who disobey me, don’t you?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Of course you do,” said Grandys, smiling menacingly. “Run! The Great Hall must be cleared before the feast, and that’s only two hours away.”

The boy ran. Rix went up to Grandys.

“Lord,” he said, though the title was bitter in his mouth, “these are priceless works of art.”

A thin smile stretched Grandys’ bloated lips. “You think so? You know about art?”

“Yes, I do. And I — ”

The blow came out of nowhere, driving so hard into Rix’s belly that the air was expelled from his lungs. He hit the floor and lay there, gasping. In all his life he had never taken such a blow. It felt as though a stone pile-driver had been driven into him.

Grandys picked up Rix’s sword, which had gone skidding from his scabbard, then methodically smashed every pot, vase and sculpture in the Great Hall, before tossing it back at Rix’s face. He stopped it with his dead hand, only inches away.

The spell slipped a little more. Damn you, Grandys. I’m not serving you a minute longer. Again Rix tried to break the command, but it had been created with magery and would not release him.

“There’s only one sort of art worth having,” said Grandys. “Herovian art is simple, hand-made, abjuring all polish and ornamentation. Once the enemy are vanquished, which will not take me long, all art in Hightspall save our own will be destroyed.”

He looked down at Rix’s furious, impotent face and laughed.

“I’m going to put you in charge of its destruction — assuming I allow you to live that long.”

All the art in the Great Hall had been smashed, hacked, burned or defiled by the time the feast was ready. The last tragic threads and shards were being barrowed out and dumped in a corner of the castle yard as Grandys’ victorious troops marched in.

At least, the elite among them, those of Herovian descent. The common soldiers were holding their own feast out in the yard, by a bonfire fuelled by the furniture from Castle Rebroff. Grandys would allow nothing to remain that had been made by the enemy — save the drink in the cellars.

Nor their cooks, serving gear or eating utensils. The victors would feast the Herovian way, on beasts roasted over an open fire and vegetables cooked in the coals. The only implement permitted was a cutting knife. All eating was done with the fingers.

And all drinking, of which there was a great deal, was from two-handled tankards brought with them. They held half a gallon each and passed continually along the tables, and woe to any man who handed on the tankard untasted.

“You!” bellowed Grandys at a thin, unhealthy looking fellow who had only pretended to sip, then passed the tankard on. Grandys’ eyes were everywhere and nothing escaped him. “You didn’t drink.”

“Lord,” the man protested. “I sipped, I really did. But I got a bad liver — the pain, it’s chronic — ”

Grandys stalked across and dragged the fellow up by the front. “Damn your liver. Are you Herovian or not?”

“Yes, Lord. You can ask anyone.”

“A Herovian soldier drinks with his comrades. To do otherwise is an insult to every man who fell today. Hold him down.”

The unfortunate man was pinned down while a funnel was fetched. A flagon of red wine was poured down his throat and he was dragged into a corner, where he twitched for a while, then slumped, unconscious or dead. It didn’t matter to Grandys either way. Not even his own people were immune from his brutality.

All day Rix had been trying to make allowances. The Cythonians had done equally terrible things, he knew. Worse things, perhaps, and if they won, or if the war dragged on for years or even centuries, as the first war had done, it would ruin Hightspall. Perhaps it was for the best if Grandys, swine though he was, had a swift and total victory. The destruction would surely be less in the long run.

But when he ordered the best looking of the enemy dead brought in and their bodies hacked and despoiled in the middle of the Great Hall, and when the helpless prisoners were tormented for the amusement of the Five Heroes, Rix could endure no more.

“Enough!” he cried. “What are you, Grandys? A man or an animal?”

Grandys turned, his bloated face red from drink. His mouth set in a snarl. “Are you speaking to me?”

“You know I am,” said Rix, shaking inwardly but determined not to back down. “Leave them alone. If you must fight, pick on someone your own size.”

“Since you’re my only living descendant,” said Grandys, “and you fought beside me with courage and skill, I’ll assume you can’t hold your drink. Sit down, have another mug and keep your mouth shut.”

It was a way of saving face for both of them, and Rix wasn’t having it.

“As it happens,” he said through his teeth, “I can hold my drink. Better than you can, I’m thinking. Leave the prisoners be.”

“Why?” said Grandys coldly. “Are you a friend of the enemy? Or are you in their pay?”

The room went still. The accusations were insults no man could tolerate.

Rix had no choice now. He had to fight Grandys, bare-handed. And though he had never lost such a fight, he knew he was going to lose this one. There was not a man in the Great Hall who would back him against the First of the Five Heroes. Whatever they thought of Grandys, deep down, he was their master and they would support him all the way.

Rix drew his sword and put it on the table in full view, so everyone could see he was unarmed. His eyes met Grandys’, challenging him to do the same, though there was no reason to assume he would. Grandys might draw Maloch and hack Rix to pieces. He might do anything.

But not this time.

Grandys laid down his own sword and stepped forwards. He had taken off his boots at the beginning of the feast, but even in bare feet he was inches taller than Rix, and broader. He had drunk an enormous amount of wine, at least a gallon, enough to put a normal man on his back.

But Grandys was no normal man. The only symptoms Rix noticed were a slowness to his speech and a slight unsteadiness on his feet. There was still stone in him, and perhaps it stiffened him in other ways, too. The battle had exhausted Rix, yet Grandys had seemed as strong and energetic at the end as he had been at the beginning. Rix had to win the bout quickly, or Grandys would wear him down and batter him to death.

He glories in being unpredictable, Rix thought, so I must do the same. What’s the most unpredictable way to start the bout? Don’t think about it, or his magery might read it. Just do it.

Grandys stepped forwards, raising his fists. Rix did too, alternately watching Grandys’ fists, then his eyes. The eyes often gave a feint away. Grandys was doing the same. Rix gave a little, stifled jab with his right, and at the same time glanced down at Grandys’ groin, then away.

Grandys threw his right leg forward and bent the knee, instinctively trying to protect his groin, and Rix jammed his boot heel down on Grandys’ bare toes with all his weight, shattering the opal armour and grinding it into flesh and bone. Grandys reared back, his teeth bared, and Rix brought his left hand up from floor level in an uppercut that would have knocked any normal man onto his back, unconscious.

Grandys rocked backwards, his eyes glazed, and for several seconds Rix thought he was going to topple. But he remained on his feet and Rix made his fatal mistake. He acted honourably to a man who lacked all honour.

He should have gone on the attack, battering Grandys about the head until he fell senseless. Foolishly, Rix allowed him a few seconds to recover.

He was watching Grandys’ fists when he should have been checking his feet. Grandys’ right foot struck Rix in the groin so hard that tears burst from his eyes. Before he could see again, Grandys punched him in the mouth, the nose, the throat, then so hard over the heart that it missed a number of beats and for several seconds he wasn’t sure it was going to start again. Rix swayed like a drunken man, took another blow to the chin, landed flat on his back and could not get up.

He lay there, expecting to die. Every man in the Great Hall was on his feet, and it was clear that half of them wanted to see Grandys finish Rix. Lirriam was licking her plump lips. Rufuss’s eyes pierced Rix like black beams.

Grandys might have killed Rix, had the whim taken him. Perhaps he didn’t know what he was going to do until he did it. But after a minute or two he let out a roar of laughter and hauled Rix to his feet.

“Well done, Ricinus,” he said clapping him on the back and nearly driving Rix’s backbone through his lower intestine. “Stamp on my toes — I’ll make an innovator of you yet. If I don’t kill you first.”

He picked up Maloch and raised it. Again the room held its breath.

“What are you doing?” said Rix, thinking that he was going to die after all.

“Promoting you to my first lieutenant, of course.”

He tapped Rix on the right shoulder with the blade, then added quietly, “Clearly my command spell has been slipping. You won’t find this one so easy to fight. Back to your bench now, lad, and we’ll toast your promotion with another flagon.”

No sooner than Rix had regained his seat than Grandys walked up to the first prisoner, General Rochlis, put Maloch’s tip against his chest and, ever so slowly, pushed it in. He watched Rochlis die, then strolled around the hall, putting the remaining prisoners to death with no more concern than if he had been dicing carrots. After each man he put down, Grandys turned to study the expression on Rix’s face.

Rix tried to remain impassive, but inside he was screaming in outrage. Grandys was a brilliant, ruthless leader, but he was thoroughly evil and would not rest until he had brought Rix down to his own level.