Page 81 of The Truth of Our Past: Unframed Art MM Romance

The knock on his door came as Justenin was sitting down to his luncheon.

“My lady,”

he said when he opened it to find the duchess standing there, with Leonin and Davi standing at a discreet distance.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,”

she said apologetically.

“I came for that book you mentioned? About hallow knights?”

The matter of hallows had been much on her mind since Brother Oleare had arrived, and she and Justenin had discussed the oath several times already, analyzing the words for all possible shades of meaning.

Or rather, he had analyzed it, and she had listened, with the abstracted little frown that meant she had not contemplated it sufficiently to voice an opinion .

“Certainly,”

he said, and left his door open as he went to fetch the book from the shelves that covered the entire rear wall of his cottage.

Justenin was a meticulous man by nature, and he had made Remin a promise, so even as he carefully located the half-dozen relevant passages, he studied her, identifying the fault lines of weakness and frailty with the force of long habit.

There were many.

Youth, na?veté, and timidity were the most obvious, but Mionet was not the only one that suspected there were darker secrets behind those guileless eyes.

It was tempting to poke at her and see what might come shambling out of the corners.

But the purity of her intellect restrained him.

He had never met anyone whose mind was so uncolored by the world; a child prisoner who knew nothing beyond the walls of the place she had grown up, and a young woman almost entirely lacking in preconception. He did not want to interfere with that unless he had no choice.

Though if the shadows under her eyes got any darker, he was going to have to interfere just a little.

“—and this one,”

he said, finding the last relevant passage.

“You should note the variations in the wording of the oath as well.

Some of it is regional, some of it is simple evolution of the language, but it seems to me that much of the oath of a hallow is what the two parties make of it.”

“Thank you,”

she said, marking the places with her fingers.

Bidding him farewell, she returned to her not-yet-hallowed guardsmen and left Justenin to get back to his own work.

It was his habit to address his correspondence over luncheon, and Justenin took his seat at a small table under the window, slipping on the pair of spectacles he wore when he was reading.

He was young to need such things, but his eyes had never been the same after the hungry winter in Iverlach.

And somehow, that felt right.

At thirty-one, he felt he had already lived two lives, and had many yet to go.

That was the work before him now, the machine he had begun building long before Sir Darrigault of Ghis ever went to the capital.

A construct of people and information, built by humble people with very great grievances, and Justenin had been laying its foundations for long, patient years.

He had Remin’s blessing for this work, but though the Duke of Andelin would be its greatest beneficiary, he had no notion how deep a game his spymaster was playing.

One day, the Duke of Andelin would be the wealthiest and most powerful man in the Empire.

And with his rise would come a vengeance so lasting and terrible, it would crack the Empire in two.

And then, perhaps, Justenin would have peace.

Quietly, his quill moved over the page, writing instructions in careful code.

He had no one in position to act—yet—and there was little action to be taken, all those miles away in Segoile.

But the time to build so terrible a machine was not the moment that it was needed.

The Emperor was not content to leave his enemies alone, building their strength on the edge of his Empire.

And so Justenin would labor against him, using every lever at his command.

Beginning with the scholars.

He had settled them comfortably in one of the new townhouses by the market, with the single precious copy of Duchess Andelin’s treatise and a quantity of ink and paper that made Edemir grumble.

The scholars had made profligate use of both when Justenin arrived shortly after sunset to escort them to the wall.

“The palisade tonight, I hope?”

Master Forgess said pointedly, buckling a heavy toolbelt around his ample middle.

“With the stipulation that you may bring only one journeyman each, and all of you must stay within the ring of torchlight,”

Justenin replied, dismounting his horse.

The scholars had been complaining for days that they could hardly observe the devils from the height of the city wall, and in the interests of furthering House Andelin’s relations with the Tower, Justenin had taken their part in the argument.

Which meant he got to play nursemaid every other night, to make sure they didn’t get themselves or anyone else killed in the excess of their enthusiasm.

“We thank you for your efforts, sir knight,”

Master Torigne said, beckoning to one of the four journeymen.

“Do you think we will have a better look at the creatures from the north wall?”

“As well as any other direction,”

Justenin replied, leading the way up the road on foot.

Purple twilight stretched across the sky overhead and the fire of sunset was fading behind them as they made their way along footpaths to the wall, through one of the as-yet-untamed stretches of forest within Tresingale.

It was an eerie place in the twilight, especially with devils calling from beyond the wall.

“Strangler,”

he said aloud, as another clicking chirp sounded, a noise that could almost be mistaken for a bird.

“They always call at dusk.”

“Perhaps communicating with each other?”

Master Forgess was first as they approached the palisade, heaving himself up the ladder.

The north palisade was fifteen feet high at its tallest point, and the long ladders creaked and shook as each man ascended.

Justenin turned immediately to haul it up after him, handing it down the line to be hooked under the rough platform.

He had stood enough watches that the thought of leaving a ladder at his back made his skin crawl.

Especially when there were already three ghouls on the outside of the palisade, working at its timbers like beavers.

“Thought you’d like to see ’em, master,”

said one of the nearby guards, his lips curling.

“Cracking all their teeth apart, the stupid buggers.”

“Do they really? You have observed damaged teeth?”

Master Forgess immediately bent over the side of the low wall, making Justenin inwardly hiss and move to grab for him if necessary.

“Black blood on the wood, and missing teeth on some of the carcasses,”

he replied.

“We always thought ghouls the stupidest of the devils, but it is interesting to see the lengths they will go to kill us.”

“No sense of self-preservation? How fascinating,”

Master Torigne murmured, and Juste glanced at him, one eyebrow lifting.

“No,”

was all he said aloud, shifting aside to leave them to their speculation.

He had forgotten how dull it was, standing a watch.

As the sky darkened, the pitch of the conversation lowered, and Justenin paced back and forth along the same twenty feet of platform, a restless habit.

Night watch was dull, but also fraught, for the guards had to remain alert for stranglers slinking through the slightest shadow, and a moment’s inattention could mean a human corpse by morning.

The scholars were not making it any easier.

“I must ask you to keep your voices down,”

Justenin repeated, with great patience.

“You wished to observe the devils; observe them.

If you have questions that cannot wait, please address me rather than the guards.

That is not a wolf demon.

You would know it by its eyes before you saw anything else at this distance. ”

With Juste’s poor eyesight, he could not have discerned anything more than that poisonous green glow.

All that night, he found himself remembering sections of Ophele’s treatise, from her descriptions of the devils’ calls to her speculations about their function.

Master Forgess hunched behind the low wall like a hunter at a blind and Master Torigne bent periodically to murmur to him, exciting exclamations that forced Justenin to hiss at them again to be quiet.

If they were frustrated that there were so few devils to be seen, they could only blame themselves.

It was just lucky for everyone that a strangler decided to try its luck further down the wall a few hours before dawn.

A shout, a hissing shriek, and then a sudden cacophony of thuds, clangs, and swearing as the nearest guards all lunged together to subdue the creature.

“Stars, is that one of them?”

Master Forgess leaped to his feet and would have raced off down the wall at once if Justenin hadn’t yanked him back.

“We need to see it, tell them not to ki—”

There was another garbled shriek, abruptly terminated.

“I will not,”

Juste said, low.

“It is not worth the risk.

Often, one strangler will serve as a distraction for the others, and everyone must be doubly on their guard, or it might be you that finds one of them coming through your window some moonless night.

I will take you to examine the corpse once everyone is back at their posts.”

“But it is a strangler?”

Forgess was craning his neck, trying in vain to see past the knot of guardsmen.

“We haven’t had a chance to see one of them yet.”

“Of course, it is a strangler,”

Justenin replied, his eyes narrowing.

“The creatures called stranglers are named for their strong hands and very long fingers, which boast an extra joint on the index, middle, and ring finger.

They are noted for being excellent climbers, managing even very sheer surfaces with ease, and can remain suspended for hours at a time in pursuit of their prey.

Their hands boast exceptional crushing strength, which makes light of wooden and leather barriers, and may even crush poor quality iron.”

It was a direct quote from Ophele’s treatise, and neither man showed the slightest sign of recognition.

“You have read the materials I provided to you, have you not?” he asked.

“A pamphlet is no substitute for examining the creatures,”

Forgess began dismissively, even as Master Torigne lifted a hand .

“We prefer to form our own impressions, sir knight,”

he said, placating.

But for all his outward serenity, Juste had never been a man to suffer fools.

“Did you need to personally observe the predations of an owl or cat to believe they hunt by night, or were you content to rely on your copybooks?”

he asked sharply.

“Yes, only stranglers can climb.

Their fingers allow them to find even very small grips, which is why we have to plane the outside of the palisade smooth.

And while they do not have the intelligence of men, they do still appear to coordinate their efforts…”

The lecture settled his temper, though Forgess was still looking mutinous, his round face even more florid than usual.

They needed the Tower, Juste reminded himself as he took them to see the corpse of the strangler, stretched out full length on the rough plank platform and nearly seven feet tall.

That was another curiosity of stranglers in particular; they were long in the body, but like cats, they could squeeze through almost unbelievably small spaces, as if their bones were less solid than those of natural creatures.

And why did devils have teeth, if they had never been seen to eat? he wondered, watching Forgess open the thing’s mouth.

It was a question that had not yet occurred to the scholars.

Forgess had pulled out his measuring strings and was calling sharply to his journeyman to record such elementary observations, it was clear they had not read a single word of Her Grace’s treatise.

“Shall we have a cart brought around?”

The journeyman asked excitedly.

“This will be the first specimen—”

Every guard nearby shot Juste a look of such transparent panic, he jerked forward immediately.

“No. No cart,”

he said.

“If we take its head off, then we can crate the thing up and transport it after dawn, but we will not take the least chance of a live devil being brought into town.”

“It looks fairly deceased, sir knight,”

Forgess began, and swore as Juste’s sword came down in a single stroke, severing the devil’s head from its neck.

There was a long, susurrus sigh that could have been the last air escaping the thing’s lungs.

Or it could have been the wrathful hiss of a wicked, sorcerous creature, thwarted at the very last .

Juste looked at all four scholars, letting the lesson sink in.

“They are very good at looking dead,”

he told them.

“Please understand, we must take the danger seriously.

We have endured four years of these creatures, and we have never seen them in such numbers as we saw this year.

Imagine a dozen of these things coming over the wall at once, winding their long limbs about you, and those hands closing on your throat.

Sometimes the hands do not come off even when they are severed from the rest of the body.”

Jerking his chin to the guards, he issued a silent order for them to crate the corpse and drew the scholars away.

“They are not curiosities to us.

They have killed a great many of our friends and brothers, and we do not even know the numbers that may be dead in His Grace’s villages.

More of our brothers travel there now, to bring back whoever survived.

And based solely on our understanding of the creatures, His Grace has gone to find where they are coming from, in the hopes that he might destroy them forever.”

“We understand the peril they have posed to your people, sir knight,”

Master Torigne began.

“And to the Tower, they are a new discovery,”

Juste interrupted.

“New animals for the Library of Beasts, and unnatural ones, to fascinate the Library of Alchemy.

Well, you may have their hide and their bones to experiment upon, but I would be remiss if I did not deliver everything we already know about them to you with all speed, so that your understanding will enhance our own.”

That was some of his very best diplomacy, and the politest way he could think of to say, read the fucking treatise.

“Thank you, Sir Justenin,”

Master Torigne said, once again placating.

“We will make all possible haste.”

* * *

Ghouls offer the greatest range in their vocalization, from growls to snarls to higher-pitched yelps and squalls when they are injured or startled.

Stranglers are noted for a few isolated calls, which most often occur at dusk and dawn, but may sometimes precede an attack.

Theirs is a rasping noise similar to chuckling or laughter, and while some speculate it may indicate communication between devils, this is not yet conclusively proven .

Though a wolf demon’s howl is superficially similar to that of natural wolves, being a sustained note that may escalate and diminish in volume, there is no confusing the two.

The howl of a wolf demon is deeper and hollower, with a metallic tone.

This may be explained partially by anatomy: wolves are thicker in the neck and deeper in the chest, but beneath their smoky, flaking fur, their necks are very different, with ridges running lengthwise that emit black smoke and green light when the wolf howls or exerts itself.

This may be explained by an anatomical flaring, similar to that of a frilled lizard…

Remin had read every word of Ophele’s treatise.

It was not so long that he couldn’t finish it in an evening, and so he had spent part of his last night at home with Ophele in his lap, teasing her gently about her handwriting and regretting that he hadn’t given her this project months ago.

“This is excellent work, wife,”

he had said, tugging his favorite curl affectionately.

“It’s a good question—if we have been killing devils all this time, and they don’t breed in any fashion we can observe, then why are there more of them? Valleth cannot be summoning them.

Or they had better not be,”

he added grimly.

That was what they had needed.

Someone to gather this information and think about the creatures in an organized way.

Ophele had captured the experience and knowledge of his men as widely as possible, considered its implications, and then used precise words to compare one devil to another, defining the language that everyone would use to speak of them thereafter.

Not once in all those pages had she described a devil that purred.

“What is it?”

Auber breathed beside him, hardly daring to speak aloud as they stood in the dark together, gripping their spears.

No one was sleeping tonight.

Suspended in the gloom of the ancient forest, each sleeping platform was like a distant star, swaying as the men upon it paced uneasily.

Could Valleth be summoning more devils?

Hnnngh, hnnngh, hnnngh, came the sound again, a growl rolling from a very deep throat, loud enough that even the howls of wolf demons could not drown it out.

The thing was under them, pacing to Remin’s right, and he couldn’t help searching for it, straining his eyes into the pitch black below .

Ghouls squalled.

The purring faded.

He could almost have counted the other devils from the clusters of their noises; it sounded like there were two packs of ghouls, one ten yards to his left and another behind him, circling below Tounot’s platform.

At least five wolf demons.

And the stars only knew how many stranglers; he caught glimpses of those huge, shining eyes in the dark, crawling among the branches and even slinking above him on the ropes, just out of range of spears.

And then something struck against his tree with such force that the whole thing jerked, the platform swaying so wildly it knocked even Remin to his knees.

Horses whinnied.

Men shouted and swore.

Remin’s heart was beating out his ears as he scrambled back to his feet, grabbing for the nearest rope.

“Hold on! Get down low!”

he bellowed, bracing his legs far apart.

Directly ahead of him was the nightmare vision of another platform tossed like a boat in a hurricane, the silhouettes of the men atop it scrabbling to hold on as the shape of a man went over the side.

His shriek ended with the howling of devils.

Remin couldn’t hear.

The war-horn howl of wolf demons was so loud it almost hurt, and still he tried to out-shout it, as if he could save his men with the sheer power of his command.

“Hold on! Hold on! Hold—”

SLAM.

The tree shook again, and the horses in their boxes screamed.

There was nothing he could do.

Nothing any of them could do but hold on, stay low, and pray that the thing went away.

It was so dark, a new moon, and the light of the stars was lost in the wavering glow of the torches.

But still, Remin found his eyes turning to the sky, with Brother Oleare’s blessing echoing in his ears.

Save them, he thought, his chest tight with fury as he looked at the pale faces nearby, and the distant silhouettes of the rest of his men.

Stars, save them all.

It was surely only the mercy of the stars that spared them as the thing struck again and again, pounding against this tree and then that one as if testing them for weaknesses.

Again and again its angry rumble sounded, circling below, and Lancer neighed, loud and angry.

But no one else fell, and finally the devils grew quiet, and the purring faded away.

Do you think it’s gone? one of Remin’s men mouthed, not daring to even whisper the question .

Remin see-sawed his hand, listening.

Nothing in Ophele’s treatise had prepared them for this, but now he remembered all the questions she had asked that they still could not answer.

What was it that attracted devils to men? The light of torches, the smoke of fires? The smell of men and men’s things? The warmth of the blood in their veins? How could they find out?

He did not know why the purring devil had come.

And so he could not guess why it went away.

No one slept that night.

Even after Auber persuaded him to go to his bedroll, Remin stared open-eyed at the sky, visualizing the maps of this part of the Andelin.

They could not risk another night like this one.

A weaker tree, a more precarious branch, a hook set wrong, and he might lose five men at a stroke.

The mountains were not yet snowy enough to provide the devils cover by day; was there some open area they could go to, far enough that the devils could not reach it in the space of the night?

Or perhaps an old fortress, where they might hope to stand the devils off?

It was as good an idea as any.

Remin rolled onto his side, yanking his blanket over his shoulder.

How could he defend when he didn’t know what he was defending against?

In the morning, they found a clue.

“Don’t touch it, you nit! Your Grace!”

Among this small group of men, there was no one who feared to call for Remin himself if they thought it was warranted, and Auber was right on his heels as he headed for the shouts, only to find that something large had preceded him.

Something very large.

“Stars and ancestors,”

breathed Auber, moving ahead of Remin with his sword drawn.

“What did this?”

They were looking at the passage of something that had trampled the underbrush underfoot and knocked several small trees over on either side of its trail, the saplings splintered about three feet off the ground.

“That’s not all,”

said one of the soldiers, waving them over.

“Here, Your Grace.”

Buried in the trunk of one of the huge ancient trees was a half-dozen large spikes, black and gleaming like oil, somehow ugly to behold.

They were lodged into the bark near a single large scrape that had gouged across two feet of root.

“They look like… quills,”

Auber said uncertainly, bending warily to inspect them as if they might leap out of the tree and embed themselves in his face.

He was very careful not to touch them.

“Like from a porcupine.”

“Go grab a leather pouch and some gloves,”

Remin told the nearest man, measuring the height of the quills against himself.

“A six-foot porcupine?”

“That would be the best-case scenario,”

Auber said, meeting his eyes with perfect understanding.

And the thought of porcupine quills made Remin look at the remaining soldier, who was keeping one hand out of sight at his side.

“Did you touch it?”

Remin asked sharply.

“Just a bit, Your Grace,”

the man admitted, shamefaced.

“I don’t think anything happened, though.”

“Let me see,”

Remin ordered, frown lines deepening in his face.

The devils and everything to do with them were cursed, and he knew a dozen men who had been bitten by ghouls only to have the wound turn septic.

Even a scratch from a strangler often got infected.

It was probably just from accumulated filth, but he felt a deep revulsion at the thought of anyone touching those oily black barbs with their bare hands.

The man held out his hand, turning it over to show perfect, unbroken skin.

“Wash it. Now,”

Remin said, jerking his chin toward the icy spring.

He might be overreacting, but he didn’t like this.

“If you notice anything, say something.”

The other soldier returned at a run with the requested gloves, pouch, and a pair of tongs, which was a good idea.

Two of the quills broke off as they tried to extract them, and that only confirmed in Remin’s mind that they were cursed things, crooked and malicious.

“Keep them in one of the wagons,”

he said, as the pouch was sealed shut, and drew his sword as he moved with Auber down the trail.

It was possible, in these deep woods, that there was some wild creature they had never encountered before.

The beasts of the Andelin tended to be big: the mountain lions, the silvertip bears, the roan stags with antlers five feet across.

There might be some shy, giant creature that had evaded the clash of marching armies these many years .

But the trail ended in a wide clearing some distance ahead, and Remin halted, gripping his sword in his hand.

“We’ll go to Crassege,”

he said, glaring futilely at the empty wood.

“It’s time we left the forest.”

“It’ll be a run if we want to make it by nightfall,”

Auber observed, but no one argued when Remin ordered them to break camp.

Crassege was an old Vallethi hillfort that Remin had personally toppled, but even the memory of its broken mirror tower was not enough to make anyone wish for another night in the wood.

Scarcely an hour after sunset, they were marching double time northeast, eating up the miles as if devils were on their heels.

And maybe Remin was the only one that noticed when they passed a wagon trace winding away to the north, the road that led to Nandre.

That was the way Rollon had gone.

If he and his men lived, they would be on their way back now.

Coming through those maddened, vicious devils.

Coming past that devil.

Was that why it had left? Because it sensed easier prey?

As the wagon trace disappeared behind them, Remin fought with himself, calculating the miles, weighing the cost in lives.

He had sent Rollon with only twelve men because the chance of success was so low.

He was only guessing that Rollon would be on his way back, much less where he might be; the forest was so vast and overgrown, they could pass within half a mile of each other and never know it.

And how many might die next year, if he failed in his quest now?

For an hour, he considered it in silence, and then Remin Grimjaw turned his back, facing resolutely to the north and east.

Toward Crassege.