Page 48 of The Devils

Pride

For the first time in a long time, Alex was smiling as she stepped through the gateway.

The Abbey of Saint Demetrius looked different by sunlight. A little less fortress of nightmares, a touch more tumbledown charm. Dew glittered on the cobwebs among the leaning grave markers like a hoard of diamonds, fallen stones shining with damp, birds twittering in the trees that hemmed in the overgrown road.

She hadn’t asked for any of this. To be heir to an Empire. To be hunted by beast-men. To catch monks coupling with werewolves. To punch conceited magicians and kiss invisible elves. But she was starting to wonder – in her wildest moments – if it might not turn out too bad. Beat Bostro’s pliers, anyway—

Brother Diaz shot out a hand to grip her wrist.

Which is when Alex saw him. Superbly mounted, nobly handsome, like a crown prince waiting for the horn to blow on the royal hunt, his gilded cloak gathered up high above his shoulders and spread across the hindquarters of his horse.

Alex’s smile died the usual quick death, and as the corners of her lips sagged, the corners of his twitched up, as surely as if their mouths were linked by lines and pulleys. If Marcian’s smile had been all rage, and Constans’s had been all greed, then this was a smile of pure pride, and it managed somehow to be the worst of the three.

He nudged his horse forwards. ‘Allow me to introduce myself—’

‘There a way for me to stop you?’ Alex muttered.

‘—I … am Duke Sabbas.’ He said the name like it delighted him afresh every time. ‘Lord of Mystras and Iconium, Admiral of the Cretan Fleet, Warden of the Royal Stable, and Master of the Imperial Hunt, son, and grandson, and great-grandson of Empresses.’ He spoke towards the sky, as if for the benefit of a wider audience, in the tone of a man who’d never had to ask for anything twice.

‘I’d guessed,’ said Alex.

‘And you …’ He slipped out another of those damn scrolls, and let it unroll by the weight of the ever-so-predictable seal that ended up dangling from the bottom. The Papal bull confirming her identity. Seemed everyone with an interest in the Throne of Troy had got a copy. ‘… according to the infant Pope’s pet clairvoyants, must be my cousin. The exalted Alexia Pyrogennetos!’

Alex winced. ‘If I said I never heard of her?’

‘I’d have to call you a liar as well as a pretender.’ He tossed the document down and nudged his horse forwards, trampling it into the muck. ‘Can you really believe that you , so short , so shabby , so lacking in any mark of distinction,’ and he curled his lip in disbelieving disgust, ‘have a better claim to the Throne of Troy than I , simply because of the room you were born in?’

Alex glared back at him. ‘This from a man given all his fancy titles by his mummy.’

Sabbas paled with the special fury of those born with everything when they’re told they haven’t actually earned it. Brother Diaz pulled gently on Alex’s wrist, edging back towards the gate. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t rile him …’

‘This prick was born riled,’ muttered Alex, but seeing nowhere else to edge to, edged with him.

‘It’s getting late.’ A woman rode up behind Sabbas. A woman with a shaved head looked like it was hammered from bronze, a chain of many metals looped around and around her neck.

Another woman followed, so like the first they had to be twins, the links of her chain made of different-coloured glass. ‘We thought you’d never get up.’

‘You likely wish you hadn’t.’ A tall man with a face like famine brushed from the undergrowth on the right side of the graveyard and leaned loose and easy on a spear with a forked end. Alex had seen its type before. Made to catch a man around the throat and hold him helpless at arm’s length. It likely worked on princesses, too.

‘Or at least …’ A growling voice with a strange accent, and its owner stalked from the trees on the left. Alex had seen him before, lit by the fires of that burning town, but he looked even bigger by daylight, coat hanging open to show a patch of musclebound, hair-covered chest and belly, dark with tangled tattoos. Pointed fangs showed in his beard as he grinned. ‘You soon will.’

More people crept from the woods all around the graveyard, with the hungry look of hunters who wrung out a living catching the thieves, killers, and heretics less ruthless folk couldn’t. A diverse crowd, with swords, with axes, with bows, with strange weapons hooked and barbed and chained that made Bostro’s pliers seem quite comforting in hindsight. A pack of manhunters, a crew of land pirates, the bastards were everywhere.

All Alex could do was keep edging back, and hope Sunny could see a way to get them out of this.

Sunny could see no way to get them out of this.

They were outnumbered ten to one and the odds kept getting worse. There was a werewolf, so she had to keep well downwind of him, and not one sorceress but a matching pair, so she had to keep well out of sight of them, and she didn’t care one bit for all the room under that great cloak Sabbas wore, it felt to her like there might be a surprise there, and not a nice one like a birthday cake. Not that anyone had ever got Sunny a birthday cake. Not that she even knew when her birthday was. But she’d heard of them and thought it must be nice to get one. Something to work towards, maybe.

If she lived out the hour.

She’d healed some since getting horse-kicked, but her ribs still stung when she held her breath, and her head throbbed from hunger and her guts ached because with classic timing these bastards had arrived just as she was squatting for her daily business. She’d even had a few nice shiny ivy leaves lined up for the wipe.

Ivy was her preference, so smooth but so tough to tear.

Sunny could see no way to get them out of this, but she did her best work blowing with the wind, so she took a breath, and winced as she held it, and slipped out around the edge of the graveyard looking for chances to take.

The first hunter she came to had a crossbow, loaded but lowered, so she leaned over a gravestone and eased the bolt from its groove with a fingertip, so the string was against the flights. The next man had a curved sword with a big leather loop over the hilt. As he stepped forward, he eased the loop back with his thumb, so Sunny knelt beside him and eased it straight back on.

‘You’ve led us quite the chase!’ Sabbas was gloating. ‘I hoped to be back in Troy weeks ago, claiming my birthright, instead of slogging through this godforsaken armpit of Europe.’

‘Haven’t you heard, you gilded turd?’ Vigga swaggered through the archway and slapped a weighty hand down on Alex’s shoulder. ‘It’s her birthright.’

At the sight of her the Dane began to make a throbbing growl so deep Sunny could feel it in the soles of her feet, tattooed warnings squirming on the backs of his great fists as he clenched them.

‘And as a point of theological fact,’ Brother Diaz peered over Vigga’s shoulder to hold up a lecturing finger, the way he did when he corrected Alex’s writing, ‘God is generally agreed to be everywhere.’

Sunny had slipped behind a tree to grip her ribs while she caught a couple of shallow breaths. Now she clenched her jaw against the pain as she dragged air all the way in and slipped back into the open.

A portly man in a jacket with polished brass buttons had ridden up beside Sabbas, his horse laden with packs, including several hunting spears in fine leather cases. He slid one out now and offered it eagerly, silver-chased butt first.

‘Spear, Your Grace?’

‘No need.’ Sabbas waved towards Brother Diaz the way you might brush crumbs from a tablecloth. ‘I have exceedingly little interest in the rest of you.’ His horse stirred uneasily as Sunny crept up beside it, but Sabbas stilled it with an impatient yank on the reins, which she quite appreciated as getting horse-kicked again really would’ve capped her morning off. ‘By all means we can kill you, if you’d prefer,’ like he was offering the choice between salt and no salt, ‘but you’re welcome to piss off and live.’

Brother Diaz grimaced as if stepping into a storm. ‘I’m afraid …’

‘I wouldn’t blame you,’ said one of the sorceresses.

‘… we must decline.’ And he eased in front of Alex, half-shielding her with his body, which likely wouldn’t achieve much as he was quite a narrow man, but Sunny still appreciated the gesture.

‘Papal binding.’ Vigga held up her wrist as Sunny, with a painful effort, worked the pin from the first buckle on Sabbas’s saddle girth and carefully slid the strap through, leaving it loose. ‘But there are four other reasons.’

The horse stirred again, again Sabbas yanked at the reins. ‘Pray enlighten us.’

‘I haven’t had breakfast,’ growled Vigga, curling in one finger. ‘I don’t like being told what to do,’ curling in another, ‘and I don’t like your fucking face .’

Silence stretched. A silence in which Sunny dragged the stiff strap from the pin on the second buckle then bent the pin out of the way.

‘That’s only three reasons,’ said the other sorceress.

Vigga frowned at her hand, and saw she was pointing at the sky. ‘Ah. Well, my thing isn’t so much counting … as killing.’ She curled that last finger in to make a fist and gripped it with the other, cracking her knuckles. ‘So which o’ your fucking clowns’ll fight me first?’

‘I’ll be first.’ The Dane shrugged off his coat and let it drop. ‘And last.’

He was every bit as covered in tattoos and scars as Vigga, but even more with dark hair and twisted muscle. The rest of the killers shuffled back, so Sunny had to hop out of one woman’s way, perch on a gravestone, biting her lip, then whip her legs clear and drop down behind it to catch her breath. Here was a bastard even these fearsome bastards were scared of, and who could blame them? An angry werewolf would as happily rip apart friends as enemies …

Which gave Sunny an idea.

She slipped around the gravestone, breath held, and slid a dagger from the sheath on that woman’s hip in passing. The blade was cruel and thin with a jagged edge. The very sort to make a werewolf properly furious if it got jammed, say, up his arse. Hadn’t worked on that crab-man, but maybe she’d have better luck this time.

‘I’ve had your stink in my nose for days,’ the Dane was snarling at Vigga, drool dangling from his mouth.

‘You’ve something of a whiff yourself.’ Vigga sniffed thoughtfully at the air. ‘Smells like … piss and cowardice .’

The Dane sank into a quivering crouch, lips curled back. Sunny tiptoed closer, ribs aching, face burning, the grip of the knife slippery in her palm, her eyes fixed on the worn seat of his trousers. Like a diver for pearls, holding her breath just a moment longer, knowing she had to keep a bit for the swim back to the surface and not sure she’d have enough, except it wasn’t an oyster she was after with her knife it was a werewolf’s backside, and not a pearl she’d win but a berserk rampage.

‘Werewolves, I swear.’ Sabbas wearily rolled his eyes. ‘Very well. Get it done quickly.’

‘Oh, don’t worry.’ Vigga bared her own fangs in a mad smile as Sunny gritted her teeth, pulling back the knife. ‘This’ll be over in no time.’

With a roar the Dane sprang forward, one heel spraying Sunny with dirt as he tore across the graveyard. Vigga rushed snarling at him at the same moment and they caught each other with a thud like two bulls clashing, hit the ground, and rolled snapping through the wet grass in a cloud of flying leaf and dirt, shattering two headstones and knocking three more flat.

Sunny crouched, knife frozen, face spattered with mud. She did some of her best work without a plan. But this was not a good example.

She backed towards the trees, slipped the knife into the woman’s sheath where she’d found it, then, since her attention was fixed on the duelling werewolves, slipped the knife back out and sawed through the back of her belt to leave her trousers hanging dangerously loose.

Vigga came up on top, lovely hot jolts up her arms as she rammed his skull into the dirt. She screamed as she punched at him, but he caught it on one great arm, flung her off with the other, and she rolled through the wet grass and came up grinning, forced one fist open long enough to beckon him on.

He sprang at her so fast leaves whirled in his draught, caught her jaw with a glancing blow made her ears buzz, her blood surge.

There’s nothing like a good fight. No maze of arguments to stumble about in, no flitting memories to slip through your fingers. Only you, and your enemy, and your breath and your hands and your strength.

Her fist sank into his gut, hot breath on her face as he grunted, her other fist thudding into his ribs, twisting him. He was bigger, heavier, a woody mass of tattooed muscle. She’d fought a bear once and it had been slower and less angry. She smiled, saw him smile, too, a crescent of bloody fangs, eyes shining with love of life, love of death.

Her fist glanced off his shoulder and he wrongfooted her, caught her, hoisted her into the air, hair whipping in her face as the graveyard turned upside down, a blur of trees and crumbling walls and gawping faces. He brought her crashing down through a tomb lid, rattling the teeth in her head, but she kept her grip on his back and brought him down with her. They wrestled among the graves, and the wreckage of the graves, skin against skin, breath against breath, heaving and clawing and twisting, straining to tear each other apart.

Her heart hammered with the effort and the fear and the joy of the great gamble, the great ordeal in the eyes of the gods, the final test of grip and backbone, sinews threatening to rip with the effort.

She got one leg under him and had just the breath to kick him off, send him reeling back into a tree, little men scrambling out of his path. She punched at him but he ducked, her knuckles smashing a great wedge out of the trunk, filling the air with splinters.

Her wolf was awake and bristling, all snarl and slobber ’cause it could smell his wolf, so close it could be bitten, and tasted, and gnawed on, and swallowed.

She sprang on him, hard to make fists for the claws popping off her fingernails, hard to swear for all the tongue and teeth and bony jaw she had, her maw hanging open and dripping hot slobber on his hairy snarl.

‘Our Saviour …’ Brother Diaz clung so tightly to the vial of Saint Beatrix’s blood the chain bit into the back of his neck. ‘At God’s right hand …’ He knew he’d lost any right to ask for himself. ‘Hear my plea …’ But Alex seemed a halfway decent human, which made her the best within some considerable distance, and deserving of a chance at redemption. ‘Deliver us from evil—’

Cut off in a gasp as the Dane rammed Vigga into a statue of a miserable angel, showering chunks of mossy stone.

He couldn’t have said which werewolf had the upper hand. He could hardly have said which was which, they moved so fast, a whirlwind of tattoos, hair, ripping clothes, and flying fists, or perhaps not even fists, as it seemed their transformations into something less than human were both well underway.

‘What do we do?’ whispered Alex, who kept jerking this way and that as she followed the fight.

‘What can we do?’ muttered Brother Diaz. One of the hunters had already been ripped wide open by a stray claw and he had no desire to be next.

He pressed himself into the gate as they rolled to a halt nearby, the Dane on top, his right hand on Vigga’s throat and his left gripping her wrist, her right hand clawing at his face and her left gripping his wrist, both covered in blood, sweat, dirt, leaves.

Then Vigga twisted up, fangs bared, and Brother Diaz winced as they spat at each other, tore at each other, bit at each other’s mouths … or …

‘Oh,’ said Alex.

‘Ah,’ said Brother Diaz.

They were still fighting. Sort of. But they were perhaps, also, doing something else.

‘Are they …?’ One sorceress turned her face sideways.

Her sister wrinkled her nose. ‘Ugh.’

It couldn’t be denied that their movements had taken on a certain savage rhythm.

Sabbas rubbed at his temples. ‘For pity’s sake …’

They rolled once more, Vigga’s legs clamped around the Dane, shedding what clothes they still had, hair sprouting from tattooed skin, joints popping as limbs twisted, each writhing about the other so it could hardly be told what was wolf and what human.

One unfortunate hunter was forced to dive aside as the two beasts tore hissing past him, in the midst of transformation, in the midst of coupling. The sounds of them ripping through the undergrowth faded, there was a distant simultaneous howling, then an awkward silence.

The eyes of the manhunters swivelled back towards Alex and Brother Diaz, huddled in the empty gateway on the other side of the battered graveyard.

Sabbas sighed. ‘Werewolves, eh?’ He waved to the nearest crossbowman. ‘You can kill them now.’

Brother Diaz heard the twang of the bowstring, flinched in anticipation of the searing agony, but instead of punching through his ribs, the bolt shot diagonally from the bow and went twittering end over end to bounce harmlessly from the ruined walls ten strides away.

It seemed, in spite of Brother Diaz’s manifest sins, the Saviour hadn’t yet abandoned him. ‘A miracle …’ he breathed.

‘What the fuck?’ said the archer, frowning baffled at his weapon, then stumbling back in horror. ‘What the fuck ?’ An arm was clutching at him. A blackened, bony arm covered in clods of earth. Nettles thrashed beside a gravestone, soil humping then bursting open to reveal more clawing hands, catching at the horrified man’s legs.

‘All of you!’ snarled Sabbas. ‘Get—’

His horse reared with an outraged nicker, straps flapping loose from the saddle as a decomposing body clutched at it from behind, sinking decaying teeth into its hindquarters. There were corpses everywhere, slithering from the buckled ground, wrestling with the hunters.

The sorceress with the metal chain stepped forwards, fingers pressed into a diamond. She spoke a word and the earth jolted, broke apart, rising up in two trembling mounds full of roots and broken stones. They fell together like waves in the sea, catching a dozen corpses between them, crushing them back down into the earth. One blundered free, its jaw and one of its arms falling off, reaching for the sorceress with the glass chain. She chopped contemptuously and a gravestone was ripped from the ground, spinning through the air to slice the corpse in half at the waist. Its top half tumbled away through the grass, while its legs kept wobbling towards her.

She curled her lip and kicked them savagely away. ‘They have a necromancer!’ she snapped.

‘One of the three …’ came a voice from the opposite side of the graveyard, ‘ best in Europe !’

Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi stood among the trees, ripped trousers held up by a length of frayed twine. He curled his fingers into trembling claws, dragging them upwards, the ground bursting open, gravestones toppling, the tortured earth vomiting up corpses.

Brother Diaz had never imagined he might rejoice to see the blackest of Black Art practised before his very eyes, but now he punched the air.

And the magician’s tangled hair was whipped by the breeze as Jakob of Thorn thundered past him at a full gallop, sword flashing in the morning sun.