Room after room continued, each of them decorated with the art and artifacts from a different country. After that first room and a couple of pieces of art that Styke recognized from visiting the Landfall museum a decade ago, nothing was familiar. It was foreign to him, strange and exotic, and he wondered why such a collection would catch the imagination of any man. Ego, he supposed.
The whole place smelled of sorcery to him – a biting, metallic flavor that reminded him of a Palo bone-eye he’d met on the frontier, though not exactly the same. It grew stronger as he proceeded.
He heard a crash from the second-to-last room in the long hall and stalked toward it, sword at the ready He put his back to the wall just outside the door, listening for further sound. There was an odd noise – a crack, followed by number of fast clicks. Styke stepped into the doorway and raised his sword.
A string thrummed, and something struck Styke full in the chest, producing a meaty thwap at it impacted. He staggered back several steps and looked down, the breath knocked out of him, and stared at the short, feathered bolt sticking out of his chest just an inch or two above his heart.
He looked up, blinking through tears, pushing away the pain, to find Sirod cranking a winch on an old crossbow. The smell of that metallic sorcery filled Styke’s nostrils, and he saw that the room behind Sirod was filled with suits of ancient armor displayed on mannequins, and that the walls were decorated with literally thousands of weapons.
Sirod himself wore one of those suits of armor – though only the breastplate, hastily buckled, and the helmet with the visor up. Sirod’s eyes were wide, his expression one of sneering anger, as if he was offended by the very act of having to defend himself.
Sirod began to crank faster. Styke put one hand on the crossbow bolt but thought better of pulling it out himself. The pain was intense, the muscles of his breast and shoulder crying out with the slightest move. He shook his head, tears streaming down his face, and gave a groan as he stepped forward.
Click, click.
Styke took another step, more painful than the last, then another, then another, until he had halved the distance between himself and Sirod. The crossbow string clicked into place, and Sirod fumbled with a bolt. Styke took a sharp breath, pain lancing through his body, and dashed forward, swinging his sword with his remaining strength.
The sword slammed into Sirod’s breastplate, enough power behind the fine steel to cleave through ancient armor. Instead of shearing through, however, the weapon bounced off the breastplate as if it were an anvil, the clang of the metal on metal ringing through the hall.
Sirod dropped the crossbow, stumbling backward from the force of the blow.
Styke struck again and again, slamming the sword against Sirod’s armor until he could barely lift it, then stumbling forward and colliding with Sirod. Styke fell, twisting to land on one shoulder and letting out a gasp of pain. He watched Sirod wobble, then crash to the floor beside him.
“Enchanted armor?” Styke asked, considering the metallic smell of sorcery that permeated the building.
“You’ll never cut it,” Sirod exclaimed, climbing to his feet and heading toward the display of weapons on the wall.
Styke managed to swing his sword around in a final arc, neatly severing the tendon of Sirod’s right foot. The governor screamed, slumping to the floor midstep. He continued to wail as Styke laboriously lifted himself to his knees and crawled over. Using Sirod’s breastplate as a crutch, he got back to his feet.
“You shouldn’t have burnt down Fernhollow,” Styke told him.
Sirod looked more angry than hurt. He hyperventilated, spittle on his lips. “Why aren’t you dead?”
“I get asked that a lot.” Styke stepped over the governor, his big legs straddling the man. He took Sirod’s helmet between his hands and lifted it so that they looked eye to eye. “You’re a piece of shit. Do you know that? Do you have any idea?”
“I,” Sirod screamed, spittle flying from his lips, “am the governor of Landfall, and you will unhand me!”
Styke jerked his hands in a circular motion, twisting Sirod’s head around so that he was staring at the back of the enchanted helmet. The body beneath him spasmed once and then slumped. “Enchanted armor or not,” he said, rapping the helmet with his knuckles, “all men die.”
“I’ve heard of this place,” Jackal told Styke a few minutes later, looking around the museum’s vaultlike armory with a kind of casual examination that did not suggest Styke was bleeding out slowly from a crossbow wound a few feet away.
Styke grunted, hand on his heart, just below the bolt, keeping pressure on the area and hoping it didn’t pull out anything vital when he finally removed the damned thing. He stared at Sirod’s body, which was still wearing the armor, and wondered how long it would take to strip the armor and impale Sirod on one of his own stupid collections of pikes. He could leave the body just outside the museum, where everyone could see it.
Right now, that seemed like a lot of work.
“This is cavalry armor, you know,” Jackal told Styke.
Styke was surprised Jackal could tell. “Yeah, I know.” He scowled at a nearby set, examining the fine lines, wondering when it had been made and enchanted. Modern Privileged, he understood, could still accomplish such things but almost always thought of enchantment as beneath them. It simply wasn’t worth their valuable time. The fact that these enchantments were still potent meant that they had been done by a powerful Privileged.
“Give me that breastplate.”
Jackal took a few moments to unbuckle the breastplate from Sirod’s corpse, then brought it to Styke. It hurt even to lift his hands, but Styke took the plate and examined it. Not even a scratch. This, he decided, could be useful.
The sound of boots on stone floors turned his head. He reached for his sword but gave up when he saw a familiar face in a sunflower-yellow cavalry jacket appear in the doorway. It was one of his lancers, a soldier named Petyr, and he skidded to a halt at the sight of the carnage.
“Report,” Styke managed.
“Sir, heavy losses, but we think we’ve cleared out most of the governor’s bodyguard. We can’t find the governor or his Privileged anywhere, but…” he trailed off, looking at the body with the turned-around head. “Is that Sirod?”
“Yeah. Round up whoever is left. We want to get out of here before the whole Landfall garrison comes after us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Find me some horngum. This hurts a damned lot.”
“Immediately, sir. I might have some in my saddlebags.”
“Good. Oh, and search the grounds for wagons. We’re going to steal everything we can get our hands on. Start with this armor.”
“Blye is dead.”
Styke sat on a stump, two days after killing Sirod and about two dozen miles northwest of the governor’s mansion. Wagons filled with treasures and supplies lined the road, quickly being unloaded onto a number of keelboats that his lancers had managed to commandeer from a nearby town. For two days he hadn’t heard word of a small group that had gotten separated during a fight with the governor’s bodyguards.
Jackal stood next to him, his expression placid as he gave the news. Styke had sent him looking for Blye and the thirty-odd men who’d disappeared.
“Any survivors?” Styke asked hopefully, a hand on his chest, trying to ignore the pain of the bolt wound Sirod had given him. He’d been chewing on horngum and rubbing it in the wounds, which dulled the pain enough to ride. Barely.