Master of Chains - Jess Lebow [106]
If Baron Purdun was upset by the outburst, he didn't show it. "By whom?" he asked.
"Undead, my lord," said Beetlestone. "Vampires are attacking the citizens of Ahlarkham."
The baron turned to Liam and Knoblauch. "I'm about to put both of you in harm's way," he said very matter-of-factly. Then he turned and headed for the door. "Captain Beetlestone, collect your men. Take them out of the rear gate and circle around to the front of Zerith Hold. I want you and your men to flank the Awl."
"Yes, my lord." The captain and his entourage left the room.
When Lord Purdun got to the double doors, he drew his saber from his hip. "We're going to the aid of the citizens," he said, looking back at Liam and Knoblauch. Then he turned and headed down the stairs. "And we're going out the front gate."
The half-giant bodyguards leaped up from their positions in the corners, striding quickly across the room and down the stairs after their lord.
Liam looked to Knoblauch.
"Guess that's it," Liam said.
Knoblauch sighed. "Yeah."
Then both men took off after the baron.
Lord Purdun knew the corridors of Zerith Hold so well that Liam and Knoblauch didn't catch up with him until he was walking out into the open air of the courtyard.
Liam stopped and looked out on the chaos before him. Everywhere there was shouting. Hundreds of flaming arrows sat lodged in the gravel at extreme angles, their shafts still flickering. More came zipping over the stone wall.
On top, behind the crenellations, men ran back and forth, firing down on the drawbridge, trading arrows with the archers outside the Hold. But it was what Liam saw inside the wall that made his jaw drop.
On the raised archer platform above the courtyard walked a beast of a man. He strode not around the soldiers between him and the front gate, but through them. This creature was more than a mere man, he was a force of darkness, and his very presence cast a pall over Zerith Hold.
Though he was no taller than a regular man, he was nearly twice as wide. But it wasn't his flesh that gave him this girth. It was a collection of jangling chains. They hung from his head and shoulders like matted, tangled dreadlocks. They wound around his chest like a cross-bowman's bandoleer. They dangled below his knees like an overlong chain mail tunic-but these were not links from an armorer's anvil. These were the chains meant to imprison criminals. And they were being used now to protect the man who had come to kill Baron Purdun.
"Ryder," whispered Liam, recognizing his brother.
As Liam, Knoblauch, and Baron Purdun watched, the chain-covered man rattled his way along the archer's platform, knocking soldiers off its edge with little more than the flick of his wrist.
Archers took aim at him and let fly, but their arrows seemed useless against such a man. The chains on his body danced and writhed like serpents. When an arrow approached, it was simply batted away or deflected by the shaking mass of dangling metal. Those men not defeated by the master of chains fled before him, as if they had seen an apparition or been ensorcelled with fear.
Ryder made his way to the mechanism that operated the portcullis and the big wooden door. Grabbing hold of the crank, he turned it. The portcullis began to lift, and the huge wooden doors swung partially open. The rain of flaming arrows showering the courtyard stopped, and from outside the men and women of the Crimson Awl squeezed through the now-breached front gate.
With the way open, Ryder turned from the crank and stood on the edge of the archer's platform, looking down into the courtyard. He raised his arms over his head, the links of his chains clanking together, seeming to move with his body as if they obeyed his thoughts.
"It is time the people got back that which has been taken from them," shouted Ryder. "In the name of the Crimson Awl and the innocent victims of Baron Purdun, I now claim Zerith Hold."
"The hell he does," said Purdun. "To the gate!"
A battle cry went up from the elite guards on the wall, and they followed their baron into the teeth