on, politely clapping and cheering when either knight scored a palpable hit. Calard hardly glanced at the
two combatants as he pushed through the crowd, his gaze locking on a figure on the opposite side of the
circle.
Merovech stood engrossed in the contest, arms folded across his chest. A full head taller than any
other knight in the room, he was armoured in archaic, fluted armour of such dark metal it was virtually
black, its edges serrated. His face was handsome and cruel, and as white as the palest marble. He
appeared not to have aged at all from the last time Calard had seen him, six years earlier. His pure white
hair was long and straight, hanging halfway down his back.
‘This is where I leave you,’ said Raben under his breath. ‘I wish you luck.’
Calard ignored him, completely focused on the duke. Raben backed away into the crowd, and was
gone.
Moving slowly, like a man stalking a wolf, Calard closed the distance with his prey.
CHLOD RAN AROUND the corner, breathing hard, and leaned back against the wall. His heart was
thumping loudly, and he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to control his breathing. From beneath his
shirt he pulled a rat skull attached to a string. Lifting it to his lips, he kissed it, whispering a prayer to
Ranald, before tucking it back into place.
Glancing back around the corner, Chlod saw a pair of guards marching down the hallway towards
him, their movements unhurried and perfectly synchronous. Each held a large double-handed sword, and
was armoured head to toe in black plate armour.
Cursing under his breath, Chlod broke into an awkward run, moving as quickly as his ragged breath
and uneven legs would allow. He ducked into a side-passage, and loped through a storage room packed
to the ceiling with dusty casks and wooden pallets.
He was five levels below the ground. The nobility clearly rarely came down this low in the palace, for
the passages were narrow, cluttered and bereft of the opulent ornamentation of the upper levels. This
was the domain of the duke’s servants, though he had seen far fewer of them down here than he had
imagined were needed to service the daily running of the palace.
Rounding a corner, he came upon the kitchens, which were utterly deserted. Rats and spiders
scuttled across the floor, and everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. Chlod judged that no one
had used them for decades. There were four kitchens all in all, connected by low arches, and there were
enough ovens to feed an army.
Hearing the clomp of armoured feet behind him, Chlod bolted, running through the kitchens and
passing through a host of empty walkthrough pantries.
A pair of closed double doors loomed ahead of him. A rotten chair and a desk were tucked into an
alcove alongside them. A skeleton was slumped in the chair, a quill pen still clasped in its hand. Chlod
could see what looked like a ledger upon on the sloped desk, its paper yellow with age. Neat
handwriting could still be discerned on the pages. Evidently, this was the post of the larder-master, whose
job it was to keep a tally of all goods taken in and out. Chlod had worked for a time in a middling-sized
castle in Carcassonne, and he had made an art out of deceiving the larder-master there. It had been a
good life, that, and he had not felt a moment’s remorse when the man had been hanged for the
irregularities in this ledger.
A dark shadow seemed to hover around the skeleton slumped in the larder-master’s chair, and it
coalesced into a roughly man-like shape as Chlod drew near. It solidified as he got closer, turning from
an indistinguishable vague shape to that of a portly man with huge sideburns.
It opened its mouth to speak, but no words came out. It seemed angry, gesturing insistently at Chlod
with its ghost quill, and it radiated a deadly chill. He had no wish to pass near this restless spirit, but he
could already hear the sound of armoured boots closing in behind him.
Taking a deep breath, his blood running to ice in his veins, Chlod hurried to the double doors. The
spirit became more agitated, shouting soundlessly at him and pointing at its ledger. The doors would not
give, and he rattled them as he struggled to turn the rusted handles. He glanced over his shoulder and saw
the two black-armoured guards marching towards him.
The shade of the larder-master was incandescent with rage, bellowing at him silently. It came out
from behind its desk, separating completely from its skeleton, and hovered towards him. Chlod quaked,
fighting with the double doors vigorously as panic set in.
The ghost reached for him. Chlod recoiled from its touch, but there was nowhere to go, and he was
backed up against the closed doors. The shadowy form touched his face, and he screamed. It felt as
though needles of ice were penetrating his skin, and the left side of his face went numb. He saw the
ethereal shade of the larder-master smile.
The doors gave way behind him suddenly, ripping free of their hinges, and Chlod crashed through.
Weevils and rot-worms writhed in the splintered chunks of rotten wood, and he scrambled backwards
through the debris.
The shade stared down at him from the open doorway. Its image wavered, like a mirage, as the two
black-armoured guards marched through it.
Chlod clambered to his feet and ran. He staggered through storerooms stacked with empty shelves
and others hanging with meat hooks, until he came to the very back of the larder. Here, a heavy wooden
crane was positioned above a large wooden trapdoor in the floor. A thick, corroded chain was spooled
around the crane’s mechanism, and a massive hook hung at head height from the end of its length. The
underside of a further trapdoor was positioned directly overhead, leading to the upper levels of the
palace.
It was through these trapdoors that the palace’s stores were replenished. Branches of the Grismarie
had been redirected beneath the palace in centuries past, and in times gone by, barges laden with
produce were poled up the wide tunnels from upriver. Casks of wines, pallets stacked with meats and all
manner of goods and foodstuffs from all across Bretonnia and beyond would have once been hauled
directly into the palace from the canals below without the Mousillon nobility ever being forced to witness
their arrival.
Chlod turned around on the spot, eyes darting around frantically for a way to release the trapdoor,
before his eyes settled on a rusted lever set in the wall. A spider the size of his hand had constructed an
intricate web between the lever and the stone wall, and it turned towards him, a myriad of eyes glinting in
the darkness. He slapped it away, and took hold of the lever’s handle.
The lever was ancient and rusted, and had clearly not been used for decades. It resisted him, and he
closed his eyes as he strained to move it. He planted one foot against the wall and bent his back against
it, groaning with the exertion. It did not budge.
The guards closed towards him unerringly, hefting their heavy swords. They were less than ten yards
away.
‘Come on!’ shouted Chlod, tugging frantically on the lever.
With a horrendous screeching of metal, the lever gave way and Chlod fell to the ground. There was a
grinding of gears and the two halves of the trapdoor swung downwards, like the floor beneath a hangman
’s noose. They struck the walls of the vertical shaft with a resounding boom, and at the same moment, the
chain from the crane began to unspool. The heavy hook rocketed down into the darkness, and the sound
of the chain unravelling was deafening.
A cloud of bats erupted from below, screeching and clawing. In their midst, eyes tinged red and their
flesh covered in open sores and filth, the most devolved of Grandfather Mortis’s children burst from the
darkness. A narrow staircase descended around the edge of the vertical shaft leading down to the canal
fifty feet below, and dozens of wild-eyed, emaciated figures appeared, crawling over each other in their
haste.
One of them was cut almost in two by a black-armoured guard, the heavy blow splitting him
diagonally from shoulder to hip. Then the two armoured figures disappeared beneath the feral tide, borne
to the ground with a crash.
The chain had come to a shuddering halt, and after a pause, it began to reverse, hauled back up by
toothed cogs and immense counter-weights hidden behind the stone wall.
Chlod lay still, breathing heavily, as he watched the demise of the two guards. Rocks pounded their
helmets until the metal buckled inwards, and knives were slid between gaps in their plate. Finally, the two
armoured figures were still. One of their visors had been wrenched completely out of shape and torn
loose, and Chlod hurriedly looked away as he saw what was contained within. If ever the suit of armour
had ever been worn by a living man, that time was long past.
The chain continued to recoil, clunking loudly as each link was reeled in. Finally, the massive hook
reappeared. Four iron rings had been attached to it, each hooked into smaller chains that were orange
with rust. A loading pallet was hauled into view, carrying the smiling figure of Grandfather Mortis, who
was standing with his arms raised above him like an ascendant god.
A cluster of filthy peasants manhandled the crane, swinging it away from the gaping trapdoor, and it
settled to the floor with a final groan.
‘Excellent, excellent,’ said Mortis, stepping away from the platform and rubbing his skeletal hands
together.
He moved towards Chlod, still lying against the wall, and lifted him gently to his feet. He stroked
Chlod’s cheek with the back of one grey, wrinkled hand. ‘You have done well, my child,’ he said. ‘The
sins of the past are forgiven.’
Grandfather Mortis continued to stroke Chlod’s cheek for a moment, then he grabbed him tightly
around the neck, his thumbs pressing hard into his throat. Chlod gaped like a landed fish, his eyes
boggling.
‘But don’t even think about leaving us again,’ said Mortis. ‘You belong with us, and I will not tolerate
any disobedience from you again.’
From somewhere distant, there came a ferocious roar, booming up through the lower levels of the
palace. Mortis released Chlod, a look of rapture upon his face, and Calard’s manservant fell to his
knees, gasping for air.
‘Harken, my children!’ said Mortis, lifting a hand to his ear. ‘Hear the call of our beloved lord!
XI
HIS FACE A mask of grim resolve, Calard slipped through the braying crowd. His gaze did not waver
from Merovech. Calard was some ten people back from the edge of the fighting circle, and was making
his way steadily through the press, closing the distance to the albino duke. His fist was clenched tightly
around the hilt of the Sword of Garamont, sheathed at his hip.
There was a grunt of pain and a splash of blood in the fighting circle below, and the crowd roared its
approval. Merovech alone made no reaction, his expression cold and detached. Calard ignored the
glances he received from knights and ladies as he pushed his way through the onlookers, drawing ever
nearer the butcher responsible for the sacking of Castle Garamont.
‘Kill him!’ shouted a woman wearing a spidery lace ruff around her slender neck. Her powdered
cheeks were flushed and her pupils dilated. Her cry was echoed by dozens of others, all crying out for
blood.
Calard was now directly behind Merovech, and he began to work his way forwards, shouldering
through the crowd.
The duke stood alone, aloof and distant from all those gathered around him. No one came within arm
’s distance of his person, possibly out of respect, or perhaps more likely out of fear. Merovech was a
motionless island amidst a braying sea of humanity, yet far from making him appear unthreatening or
calm, his utter stillness was deeply unsettling. It set him apart from those around him, perhaps even more
so than his alabaster countenance, making him appear inhuman and alien.
Calard’s gaze never wavered. Cold fury burned in his eyes. He was only yards away now, only
seconds from attaining his vengeance. His whole being became utterly focused, his senses heightened to
unsurpassed levels in anticipation of this final confrontation.
He could smell the sickly fragrance of the scented perfumes and oils worn by the courtiers, which did
little to mask the excited sweat exuded by those watching the brutal contest below. He could taste the
metallic tang of blood in the air. He could hear every grunt and grimace of the two duelling knights, the
scrape of their boots upon the grooved floor of the killing circle, and the sharp clang of metal on metal.
He could feel the reassuring weight of the Sword of Garamont beneath his grasp.
Calard stood directly behind the duke now. All he had to do was draw his blade and run the fiend
through. No one, not Merovech nor any of his gathered knights would be able to stop him. He started
drawing the Sword of Garamont before he regained control of himself.
Cutting an enemy down from behind, even a monster like Merovech, was an honourless, dog act,
and one that would lessen him in his own eyes and the eyes of the Lady. And besides, Merovech was
only one half of the murderous pair that had butchered his nephew and laid waste to his castle. Before
Merovech died, he was honour bound to discover the identity of the second fiend, so that he too could
be brought to justice.
The duel came to a sudden, brutal end. It was a shockingly one-sided affair, with one knight clearly
toying with the other. Finally tiring of the game, he struck his opponent a vicious blow to the neck. The
knight dropped to one knee, sword clattering from his grip.
Calard saw all this only dimly, the action taking place in his peripheral vision, his gaze still locked on
Merovech.
The crowd hollered and stomped their feet, and Calard heard the fallen knight begging for mercy.
The other knight turned his back on him, lifting his sword high into the air, accepting the roar of the
crowd. The beaten warrior lowered his hand, and his head dropped in defeat. There was a lot of blood,
but the wound was not fatal.
With inhuman speed and savagery, the victorious knight swung around suddenly, sword blade
flashing. The defenceless knight was decapitated, and a fountain of blood erupted from the stump of his
neck. The head bounced and rolled across the floor, coming to a halt against the lowest curved step of
