“And let me guess,” she said, “this place is a cul-de-sac. There’s no other way out.”
“Rather like our affair,” he grunted, which floored her, given everything she’d surrendered for him.
Before she could muster a reply, there were voices in the adjoining passage. Bishop Malconi appeared in company with Urgol, both apparently en route to the lower levels. Trelawna shrank back at the sight of the woodwose, who waited in the doorway as Malconi addressed his nephew.
“It seems your mother is finally in need of my advice,” he sneered. “How the world turns. This time, at the very least, I shall exact the price of a better bedroom.” His gaze shifted to Trelawna, but now there was no warmth or pleasantness there. “Well, well… if it isn’t the little whore who has caused all our woes. My, what a beauty. Daughter, you are the very reincarnation of Eve. And thanks to your predatory cunning, good men who otherwise would not have strayed will once again face the fury of God.”
And he was gone in a flurry of Episcopal purple, Urgol lumbering behind him.
Rufio stood to one side, lost in thought. When Trelawna finally spoke, it was with trembling voice. After everything that had happened in this hellish place, it was only now that she almost crumbled. “Could you… could you not have said something on my behalf? Not even then?”
“What’s that?” Again Rufio seemed distracted, and then he became wildly angry. “Good Christ, woman!” He stormed from the room. “Very shortly I may die for you!”
Thirty-Four
“We proceed,” Lucan said, after they’d stood for several minutes on the wind-blasted ridge, perched above the abyss where their friends had disappeared.
“We should at least stay and say a prayer for them,” Alaric protested.
“Why? Will it bring them back?”
“My lord, there are only two of us left… and one prisoner who is badly wounded.”
The deep lacerations across the back of Maximion’s neck and skull still wept bloody tears. As they’d used up all their medicinal supplies, there’d been little Alaric could do to patch them adequately. Despite this, Maximion glared at the lad, eyes fierce in his grizzled face. “Don’t cry on my account, little paladin. I’ve been wounded many times. There’s nothing your dark lord or his enemies can throw at me that I can’t recover from.”
“There you have it,” Lucan said. “We proceed.”
But they didn’t proceed much farther that day. As they were now almost out of food and water, the spare horses were cut loose and left behind, along with the archery machine. But still the narrow track was difficult; they only just made it off the ridge-way before darkness fell, at which point they were confronted by a narrow cleft, which meandered through towering crags. According to Maximion, this cleft was miles long, but it led directly to Castello Malconi. As night was now falling, Lucan opted to camp, which they did on a ledge beneath an overhang, on the edge of a terrifying precipice. There was nothing on which to tether the horses, so they needed to take it in turns, one man sleeping while the other stood watch. Maximion, for his part, was simply happy to lie on bare rock and fall into a deep, exhausted slumber.
With no fuel to make a fire, and the temperature dropping below freezing, all Lucan and Alaric could do was pull up their coifs, put on their helms and huddle inside their cloaks. The overhang would have provided shelter against rain, though none came — instead, there was mist: thick and probing, filled with twisting eddies which looked like incorporeal forms standing far over the gulf, mocking and beckoning to them. They heard screams from high places: perhaps the wind shrilling through nooks, perhaps something more ominous. If the Stymphalianus was still alive, they would be easy meat for it. All kinds of horrors plucked at their minds during those long, torturous hours.
At first light, Maximion was surprised to be woken, not by Lucan, but by Alaric — very haggard and sallow-faced. He put a finger to his lips and gestured for the prisoner to leave the shelter of the overhang and move into the cleft, where the horses were now waiting. Maximion rose stiffly, cramped with hunger and fatigue, and a deep chill which set his joints aching. As he went, he saw that Lucan still slept in his bed-roll.
“You should leave now,” Alaric said, once they were out of earshot of the camp. “Before Earl Lucan wakes.” He had already re-saddled Maximion’s horse, and offered him the reins. “You’ve discharged your duty.”
“And that’s it?” Maximion said dully. “After everything that’s happened, you point your finger and say all is now well, I can go?”
“Short of summoning a Persian carpet, I’m not sure what else I can do for you.”
“It’s hundreds of miles back to civilisation. I have no weapons, no supplies and only the clothes I’m standing in.”
“If you say here, Earl Lucan will kill you.”
“And you, who have been so insolent with him?”
Alaric adopted a philosophical air. “I will die when we try to take Castello Malconi. Probably alongside my lord, which will be the best outcome possible.”
“You think he came all this way to die, young knight?”
“Either way, it makes no sense you waiting here to find out.” There was a distant rumble of approaching thunder. “If you go now, you can be down past that exposed ridge before the storm breaks.”
Maximion saw no sense in arguing further. With the lad’s help he swung up into the saddle, turned the animal around and set it walking. Alaric watched as the mounted figure, still wrapped in his bloodstained cloak, headed off along the ridge-way road.
When Lucan woke, Alaric had prepared breakfast. A few strips of salt bacon from their last knapsack, berries and nuts that he’d gathered en route, and a salad of bitter greens collected from chinks in the rock; it was barely sufficient for two men, but was better than nothing. He’d also located a fissure from which a natural spring flowed, so at least he’d been able to refill their water-skins.
Lucan grunted his thanks as he sat and ate.
“The meat is cold,” Alaric said, “but I didn’t want to risk a fire.”
“They already know we’re here,” Lucan replied. “They may even be wondering where our friend Maximion has gone.”
“I released him. With your best wishes.”
“Indeed?”
“His job is done, my lord. You said he had no role to play when we arrived here.”
“I gave no order for his release.”
Alaric scraped his plate. “I know. You would have released him into the afterlife, and I can’t allow that.”
“This is the second time you have defied me in almost as many days, Alaric.”
The lad glanced up. “I fear it won’t be the last. If we manage to enter Castello Malconi, I will prevent your anger falling on Countess Trelawna. Even if it costs my life.”
“How noble that would be.” Lucan eyed the lad, briefly intrigued, and slowly a light of understanding dawned in his eyes. “Or would it? What exactly do I see here? A stranger… who was never content with the bangtails and doxies, because he was too busy stropping his goskin over the chatelaine of his house? Is that the truth?”
Alaric didn’t flinch from the metal-grey gaze. “It’s cruder than I would have put it.”
“So you’re another who’s in love with my wife?”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“Surprised?” Lucan stood up and adjusted the saddle on Nightshade’s back. “Every man who meets her loves her. I’ve borne that curse since the day I took her to the altar. But you’ve been wasting your energy, lad — as this episode surely proves. When Trelawna chooses a man, all the others can die and rot in their own filth.”
“That’s no excuse to kill her.”
Lucan regarded him with icy amusement. “You tragic young fool. You came all this way… and for what? An impossible love. Oh, they’ll write ballads and chansons about you, Alaric. The boy who wanted to be a suitor but settled for being a traitor.”