The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [205]
When Aspar went for the archers, Neil and Cazio charged the swords-men. Neil reckoned if he was in close enough combat, the archers would have a harder time making a shot. He wasn’t sure what Cazio reckoned, but it didn’t matter. Within a few breaths they were fighting shoulder to shoulder. The feysword was light and nimble in his hand, and he killed four men before the press bore him down. Then someone struck his head, hard, and for a time he didn’t know anything.
A man’s voice woke him. Neil opened his eyes and saw a troop of mounted men. The leader had his visor pushed up and was staring down at him.
He said something Neil didn’t understand and gazed around the clearing, face aghast.
“I don’t understand you, sir,” Neil said, in the king’s tongue.
Behind him, Anne moaned.
“What in the name of Saint Rooster’s balls is happening here?” the horseman demanded.
Neil pointed to the man’s tabard. “You’re a vassal of Dunmrogh, sir—you should know better than I.”
The knight shook his head. “My lord Dunmrogh the younger, Sir Roderick—he brought us here. I thought he was mad, the things he told us, but—sir, you must understand that I knew nothing of these events.” He held up both hands as if somehow to include the mutilated corpses that hung on the stakes and the general carnage scattered about the clearing in a single gesture. His roaming eye settled on the corpse of the Duke of Dunmrogh, and his eyes tightened.
“Tell me what happened here,” he demanded.
“I killed Dunmrogh,” a weak female voice said. “I did it.”
Neil turned to see Anne standing, supported by Stephen and Winna.
Her gaze touched him, and her mouth parted. “Sir Neil?” she gasped.
Neil dropped to his knee. “Your Highness.”
“Highness?” the mounted man echoed.
“Yes,” Anne said, turning her attention back to him. “I am Anne, daughter of William the Second, and before Dunmrogh or any other lord, you owe your allegiance to me.”
It sent a chill up Neil’s back, how much she sounded like Queen Muriele in that moment.
“What is your name, sir?” Anne demanded.
“My name is Marcac MaypCavar,” he replied. “But I—”
“Sir Marcac,” one of his men interrupted. “That is Princess Anne. I’ve seen her at court. And this man is Neil MeqVren, who saved the queen from one of her own Craftsmen.”
Sir Marcac looked about, still plainly confused. “But what is this? These people, what happened to them?”
“I’m not certain myself,” Anne said. “But I need your help, Sir Marcac.”
“What is your command, Highness?”
“Take these people down from those stakes, of course, and see that they are given care,” Anne said. “And arrest anyone not nailed to a pole or in my present company. Take control of Dunmrogh Castle, and arrest any clergy you find there, and keep that place until you have heard from Eslen.”
“Of course, Your Highness. And what else?”
“I’ll want horses, and provisions, and whatever armed men you can spare,” she replied. “And carry my wounded to a leic. By tomorrow’s sunrise, I ride to Eslen.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CANDLE GROVE
THE CANDLE GROVE WASN’T a grove, and though there were lanterns aplenty, there weren’t properly any candles. When Leoff had first heard the name for Eslen’s great gathering place, he’d imagined it to have been named in some ancient time, when bards sang beneath sacred trees in the fluttering light of tapers, but in his reading about its history he quickly saw the foolishness of that.
The first Mannish language spoken in the city had been that of the Elder Cavarum, then the Vitellian of the Hegemony, Almannish supplanted at times by Lierish and Hanzish, and most lately, the king’s tongue. Areana called the place the Caondlgraef in her native tongue, and readily admitted she had no idea what it meant. It was just an “old name.”
Still, whatever its origin, Leoff liked the appellation and the images it evoked of an older, simpler day.
Structurally the Candle Grove was a curious hybrid of the ancient amptocombenus of the Hegemony, the wooden stages traveling actors threw up in town squares to perform their farces, and the