Speak to the Devil

CHAPTER 11

Wulf uttered a last, gurgling scream and went limp, toppling both brothers out of limbo. Anton landed on a patch of dirty wet sand, with Wulf slamming down on top of him. Had he not been wearing armor, the impact might have broken his back, and it did knock all the breath out of him, but he still managed to rip off a barrage of oaths as he struggled free. They had landed on a roughly made trail, most of which was heavily rutted and surfaced with sharp rocks. A small freshet from a recent rainstorm had spread out a patch of silt and fine debris, and it was the only flat place in sight. Either Wulf or his saints had chosen the target carefully.

“Wulf? Wulf! ”

No response. Anton rolled him over and stared in horror. The kid’s face was all swollen and discolored as if he’d been worked over by a whole team of prizefighters. How could that happen inside his armor? His lips were swollen and bleeding, and he had probably bitten his tongue, for he began to choke on the blood. Anton hastily rolled him facedown again and felt for the pulse at his wrist. He found it eventually, but it was faint and much too fast. The boy needed help, and soon.

Anton was not in the best of shape himself, but he struggled to his feet and looked around. The track was bounded on one side by a near-vertical bank of moss and boulders, tufted with a few grimly clinging shrubs, and on the other by a steep drop; he could hear a river grumbling down there. The valley was about a mile wide but it widened southward into a forested plain. The far wall was a mixture of rocky and thick forest, too steep to be any use, and dusted with recent snow higher up. The near side seemed no more cooperative. The trail on which he stood had been hacked out of the cliff by hand and was barely wide enough for a single wagon.

A sizable company of men had walked over the mud not very long ago, going downhill. A mile or so away, he thought he could make out a settlement, not a village, but a military camp for three or four hundred people, perhaps. Uphill…

Uphill his view was blocked by a slight bend in the road. He clumped over to the far edge and found himself looking up at a magnificent fortress, the original for the engraving the cardinal had given him, and not a hundred yards away. Done it! He had managed to arrive at Castle Gallant, his castle for as long as he might live. He ran back to make a quick check on Wulf, and then set off to fetch help.

The high curtain wall of reddish stone stood on top of a matching cliff, curving away out of sight. He could see how Castle Gallant had come by its reputation of impregnability. Certainly it could not be undermined, and no ladder ever built could reach from the valley floor to the top of the walls. Old-style siege engines-trebuchets and mangonels-were too inefficient to do much good unless a large number of them could be brought to bear, and here there was simply no room to site them.

Yet, however secure that formidable barbican must have been in its day, now it would be vulnerable to modern gunnery. The bend in the road would be a godsend for attackers, who could work outward from its shelter, building a redoubt of stonework to block the defenders’ archery and shelter the gunners as they dug in their bombards. They would have a clear shot at the gates. Fortunately, this wasn’t Spain or Italy. Large-scale artillery hadn’t arrived in Jorgary yet.

This was certainly the Jorgary side of the fortress, and the Wends would be coming from the north. It was Anton Magnus’s job to keep the Wends out.

The gate was closed, which was an unwelcome surprise. That implied a state of war, and perhaps even that the castle had already been seized by the Wends-why else close the gate on the Jorgarian side? It also meant that the garrison would be keeping a lookout, so he would have been seen already. He unlaced his satchel to find his baldric and baton. More than hard exercise was making his heart pound now. The castle was farther away than he had thought, uphill was uphill, and armor was damned heavy.

Last night he had imagined himself riding in on Morningstar’s back, a gallant, handsome young nobleman sent by the king to take charge. In reality he was arriving as a sweating, breathless vagrant, muddy, bedraggled, and without as much as a sword. Wulf had slobbered blood down the left side of his surcoat. Still, Anton’s appearances would matter very little if the porters were Duke Wartislaw’s men and not King Konrad’s.

The gate was a portcullis that could probably be closed in an instant, tons of ironbound timber falling free. Gasping for breath, Anton arrived at a grilled window off to one side and stared at a stubbled face framed by a mail coif. A closed gate and men-at-arms instead of porters definitely indicated a state of war.

“Declare yourself!” The words were garbled by a guttural Northern accent.

“I…” Anton paused to think. Had Count Bukovany died? If he hadn’t, Anton must not announce himself as the new lord of the marches. He would have to be Marshal Magnus, come to direct the defense of the fortress, and his other documents would have to remain out of sight. If Bukovany was dead, then why was the new count arriving alone and on foot instead of with a train of at least a hundred knights?

“Open in the… name of the… king!”

He held up one of his scrolls to let the sergeant see the royal bear and the king’s seal.

It worked. The man’s eyes widened in astonishment. They took in the seal, his youth, the baton he held in his other hand, the golden baldric. He saluted.

“Master Sergeant Jachym, your servant, my lord. Open the sally port!”

Bars and bolts thumped, hinges creaked. The narrow sally port door swung open and Anton stepped through to face half a dozen grinning guards.

“There is a man…” He pointed. “Just around the corner. Badly hurt. Um, had a bad fall. Horse dragged him. Have him brought in and cared for. Well cared for! He is my brother!” he added menacingly. “See to that first, Master Sergeant. Now! ”

Jachym barked. A trooper ran into the castle.

Everyone was waiting for more orders. Anton tucked his baton under his left arm and twirled his mustache with his right hand. “The count?”

The sergeant’s first reaction was to cross himself, which answered the question even before his mumbled prayer for Bukovany’s soul.

“Amen. Then I need someone… lead me to…” To whom? Cardinal Zdenek had warned him against the constable. If Anton dropped in on him he might find himself bouncing straight on into a dungeon- “…the countess.” She was the least likely to be involved in the treason that Cardinal Zdenek had suggested.

Jachym frowned. He was a bull-necked man with a ruddy face and hard, searching eyes. So far he was reacting well to this sudden emergency. “Countess Edita is reported to be grave afflicted, my lord. Lady Madlenka, her daughter? Seneschal Jurbarkas? Or… of course… Constable Kavarskas…?”

His mouth said that. His face, his stance, his phrasing were all screaming, “Not Constable Kavarskas!” And yet Kavarskas was his superior! His other men’s expressions flickered, but there were too many for Anton to read individually. He registered only that even the garrison had doubts about their commander.

Four men came running out and sped off down the hill, two of them carrying blankets and poles to rig a stretcher. Anton had done as much as he could for Wulf. Meanwhile he must make a choice. Lady Madlenka was certainly tempting, but he would have to delay the pleasure of that meeting.

“…to the seneschal,” he said. It was he who had sent the report to Cardinal Zdenek.

At least a dozen more Cardice troopers had appeared in the barbican, while in the shadowy background lurked a trio of very different warriors, resplendent in the spectacular garb of landsknechte. Otto and Vlad often entertained landsknecht friends at Dobkov. These three were observing, not participating. Their leader would want his own reports on anything that happened at the gate.

“Llywelyn!” the sergeant said. “Take your squad and escort His Lordship to the keep and find the seneschal for him. You are under his orders.”

Llywelyn was a man of around fifty, with a lethal, case-hardened look to him. He lined up his squad behind him with a few sharp words in another accent altogether, then indicated that Anton should head toward the far side of the barbican. He had enormous arms and shoulders; no doubt his armor was hiding a twisted spine.

“You’re no crossbowman,” Anton said. “The English longbow’s your weapon.”

Llywelyn beamed at this display of expertise. “It used to be, my lord.”

Baroness Pavla had died when Wulf was born, so all Anton’s life the table talk at Dobkov had been of military matters-from Father and his guests, and later from Ottokar and Vladislav. Anton had known an arquebus from a halberd and a ravelin from a trace Italienne before he wore his first pair of shoes. It couldn’t hurt now to demonstrate that he was wise for his years.

“Can’t manage a hundred-and-fifty-pound pull now?”

“No, my lord. I plays with crossbows now, see. Like toys, they are.”

“Tell me what’s happened since Sir Petr was killed by the boar.”

Llywelyn drew a deep breath and spewed out a torrent of singsong that sounded somewhat like, “That was Saturday see and the count may God have mercy on his soul died on Monday see so they were buried side by side on Tuesday see and the Heavens wept for it and they say the poor woman hasn’t stopped lamenting ever since and this morning the count of Pelrelm him they call the Hound of the Hills came a-calling and there’s rumors that he’s brought a son to marry the child Madlenka see and be the next keeper begging your pardon my lord.”

“Good report, Sergeant.” So Havel Vranov was-

“Sarge?” said one of the bodyguards at Anton’s back. “I heard just now that they’re gone to St. Andrej’s.”

Anton spun around, walking backward so he could look at the rest of the men. “Any of the rest of you heard that?”

“Aye,” said two.

“A church?”

“The cathedral, my lord.”

Anton completed his rotation. “To St. Andrej’s, Sergeant. At the double.”