TWENTY SIX
A SAD, SAD TALE

They had a week to prepare and travel to the Veins, and each man used that week as best he saw fit to ensure his triumph.

Maximilian spent the nights sleeping soundly and long, while the days he spent on his knees in prayer or meditation, or speaking gently with Ravenna, whose conversation he enjoyed.

Cavor spent time doing none of these things, but he did spend many hours closeted with Fennon Furst—who left for the Veins two days ahead of either Cavor or Maximilian—or in the palace courtyard at weapon practice, his long sword whispering viciously through the air.

No-one saw the Manteceros, but no-one doubted that it would appear as needed.

Four days after the aborted execution in City Square the two men made final preparations to travel (independently) to the Veins. Cavor left early one morning, escorted by the larger portion of Escator’s standing army.

Maximilian left at noon, his escort consisting only of those who had believed in him enough to rescue him from beneath the hanging wall, while the majority of the Order of Persimius followed Maximilian’s party in several well-appointed wagons.

Behind them, at a respectful distance of some two hundred paces, came the first in a column of almost fourteen thousand people from Ruen and surrounding districts. They could sense that not only would the duel in the Veins decide a throne, it would also birth a legend, and they wanted to be there to witness.

And all this time laboured thousands of men in the Veins, their bodies glistening with sweat and gloam and despair, and they had no idea of the drama about to be played out in their midst.

Along the coasts and in the underground caverns and chasms, throbbed the sea, watching, wanting, probing…seeking, seeking, seeking…

Myrna was overflowing with people, loud conversation and whispered rumour. The dreary town had never felt so alive: Anya and her girls locked the front door—who could think of business when such events as these beckoned?—and leaned from windows thrown wide open, eyes and voices wondering, their bright smiles and scarves drifting in the breeze blowing in from the sea.

The army lay encamped and encircled about Myrna and the Veins; beyond them sprawled the makeshift camps of the thousands who had walked from Ruen, their numbers swelled by further hundreds who’d come east and south from the northern countryside. When he arrived, Cavor and his immediate entourage accepted Fennon Furst’s hospitality; Maximilian, with the Baxtors, Ravenna and three or four of the Order of Persimius, made full use of the physicians’ quarters.

On the second day after all had arrived, mediators from both groups made arrangements for the duel; on the third day Cavor and Maximilian prepared to go down the Veins.

Cavor allowed Egalion to buckle on his weapon belt, then asked the man to wait for him outside. As Egalion left the room, Cavor made a show of checking the straps on the light armour he wore, then adjusted the weapon belt about his hips. The long sword felt satisfactorily weighty swinging against his left leg, and Cavor’s mouth curled in a tight smile. For almost forty years he’d trained with this weapon, and he’d never been fitter; since Maximilian had made his claim in the Pavilion the mark on his arm had healed completely. Cavor felt nothing but strength suffuse his body. Even if he would be fighting in the stinking cloyness of the Veins, he would prevail. His smile widened.

From his shadowed corner Fennon Furst saw the smile and stepped forward. “You will win, sire.”

Cavor’s face hardened. “In whatever manner I have to, Furst. Have you…?”

Furst bowed slightly. “All is prepared, sire.”

Cavor relaxed slightly. “Good. Then let us go and dispose of this wishful dreamer once and for all.”

Maximilian prepared in much the same ritualistic manner that he’d made his claim. Attended only by Garth, he spent an hour in prayer after he rose, breakfasted lightly, then bathed and dressed in nothing but linen breeches. Even his feet he left bare.

Garth eyed him with some concern. “Maximilian, er, Prince…” Garth had still not quite worked out what to call the prince.

Maximilian paused from rubbing a light oil into his arms and shoulders. “Call me Maximilian, Garth,” he said with a grin. “You of all people owe me no title.”

“Ah, yes, well…Maximilian. Are you sure that I’m the best person to act as your companion down the Veins? I would have thought that one of the guards…someone familiar with weapons…”

Maximilian ran his hands back through his hair, binding it in a short tail in the nape of his neck. “I need a friend at my back, Garth. Not someone shouting terse instructions about how to swing a sword.”

Garth’s eyes slipped to the long sword lying in its scabbard on the table. “Maximilian,” he said quietly, “can you use that?”

Maximilian sobered, and his hands dropped loosely to his sides. “It’s been years, Garth. Years, and at fourteen I’d only just begun my training with the long sword.” A wry expression crossed his face. “I wish Cavor had chosen mine-picks to fight with.”

Despite his concerns, Garth broke into laughter. “I doubt he even knows what one is, Maximilian. He’s probably no idea how the prisoners worried the gloam from the rock-face.”

Maximilian stepped over to the table and picked the weapon belt up, holding it in his hands for a long moment before buckling it about his hips. Then, without any apparent effort, he lifted the heavy sword and scabbard and slipped them into place. “Cavor will soon find out more about the Veins than he ever would have wished,” he observed.

Garth eyed him, sober now. Even dressed only in a pair of breeches, Maximilian looked every inch the king. His aquiline face was composed, almost grave, and his bearing proud. His skin glowed ivory in the soft light of the room, the blue-engraved Manteceros rippling across his right upper arm and catching the glints in his blue-black hair. Despite Maximilian’s years apart from the sword, he appeared to move at one with the weapon.

Without knowing why he did it, Garth offered Maximilian his hand. The prince grasped it with both of his, and their eyes met.

“You have my faith,” Garth whispered, letting his Touch burn fiercely through his hand, “and my belief.” There was no healing in that Touch, only pure emotion, and Maximilian’s eyes misted.

“I know it,” he replied, “and it is why I chose you for my companion. To have faith at my back today is more than I could ask for.”

For a moment longer they stood, then both let their hands drop, slightly self-conscious at the emotion each had revealed to the other.

“Well,” Maximilian said, “shall we go?”

Garth gave him a confident grin and waved that he should precede him through the door, but privately he wondered how Maximilian felt about going back beneath the hanging wall. Then he shook his head, and followed Maximilian out the door. For Maximilian to go back beneath the hanging wall demonstrated a courage that Garth found almost impossible to comprehend.

They met at noon by the main shaft. It was a bright and sunny day, yet the greyness of the Veins so pervaded the air that it seemed cool and dreary. At a distance of fifty or sixty paces stood guards and soldiers at stiff attention; behind them thousands upon thousands of the ordinary folk of Escator.

All were quiet and solemn.

Garth and Ravenna walked quietly behind Maximilian—Vorstus and Joseph were waiting at the first ring of soldiers. They shared a nervous glance—where was the Manteceros?

Cavor, waiting by the shaft, didn’t care. He had almost forgotten the Manteceros and its annoying insistence on administering its curious ordeal. All Cavor wanted, all he had on his mind, was that finally he was going to run Maximilian through with his sword. And then, he knew, knew, that his mark would never trouble him again.

He grinned coldly at Maximilian as he, the Baxtor youth and that curiously beautiful girl stepped underneath the ironwork surmounting the shaft—what’s the fool thinking of, dressing only in breeches? Cavor almost laughed. This was going to be easier than he thought.

“Summon the cage,” he said tersely, and behind him Egalion, dressed only in a short tunic and breeches himself, nodded to Jack, who stood by the controls.

Garth ran his eyes over Jack. He was newly stooped, and fresh scars littered his body; the guard avoided his eyes and threw a lever.

Deep in the yawning shaft at their feet came an answering rumble, then a frightful screeching as the cage rushed towards the surface. Garth forgot Jack and looked anxiously at Maximilian. The prince’s face and body was apparently relaxed, but Garth thought he could see some tightness about his eyes.

The screeching increased, and now seemed overlaid by some ghostly wailing. Fennon Furst, who neither Garth nor Ravenna had noticed to this point, emerged from behind an iron strut. His red hair was oiled down so tightly it clung to his skull in a shining cap. “Welcome home, 859!” he jeered.

Maximilian could not help a flinch spasm across his face, and Cavor roared with confident laughter. “This time I will make damn sure you won’t escape, pretender!”

Cavor had been forced to shout to make his voice heard above the impending arrival of the cage, and the instant that he had finished the cage crashed into the iron framework. Above their heads massive wheels ground reluctantly to a halt, and great chains twisted and shrieked with the shock of the cage’s arrival.

With the cage had arrived the dreadful sulphurous stench of the Veins; it hung about the cage like a fog.

Garth shuddered, and wondered how Maximilian could bear it.

Furst stepped forward and swung open the door, then stepped back in hasty shock.

Standing inside the cage was the Manteceros, its face wrapped in an expression recalling the darkness below.

Ravenna stepped gracefully inside the cage and stroked the creature’s nose. “Skip, trip, my pretty man,” she smiled, and the Manteceros’ face lightened slightly.

“It is time,” it said, shifting its eyes to those waiting outside. “Finally, it is time.”

“More than time,” Cavor said roughly, and pushed past the Manteceros into the cage. Egalion, then Maximilian, Garth and Furst—who announced loudly that he would operate the machinery and wait with the cage, crowded into the small space.

Ravenna found herself squeezed between the thick, rusty wire netting walls and Cavor, and she suppressed a grimace of distaste as the man pressed against her body even more than he had to.

Then the doors closed, and the silent group plummeted to their fate.

Furst let the cage descend, not to Section 205, where Garth had expected them to go, but to a section several levels lower. As soon as they stepped out of the cage—Furst remaining behind—he realised why. The initial cavern, then the tunnels opening off it, were much higher and wider than those of Section 205.

Here the combatants would have room to move; to swing their swords.

“Are you ready, pretender?” Cavor asked belligerently, a note of tension creeping into his voice. He could hardly believe the stench of this forsaken hole in the ground.

Maximilian stared at him a moment. “Not here,” he said calmly. “In the Veins, Cavor, not in their foyer.” He set off without a backward glance down one of tunnels, forcing the others to follow him.

The Manteceros, Ravenna at its shoulder, brought up the rear.

As they went Garth was shocked, deeply shocked, to realise that men still laboured down the Veins. Surely Furst could have called a halt to work for this one day?

But apparently Furst was committed to meeting his quota of gloam, and challenge or no challenge, the men still worked and died silently and hopelessly. Successive gangs watched silently, their bodies hunched, their eyes devoid of any expression or any hope, as the strange procession passed them by.

Ignoring the gangs he passed, Maximilian walked until the party was deep into the tunnel. Gloom surrounded them, torches sputtered fitfully but cast little light, and the blackness of the tunnel walls reached out hungrily for those who dared to pass within it.

“Here,” he said eventually, some minutes after they’d passed a group of prisoners huddled against the floor of the tunnel in an infrequent and inadequate break from their labour.

Cavor glanced about. If he had any doubts then they did not show from his face—barely visible in the pressing shadow. “As good a place to die as any other, pretender. Are you ready?”

Cavor’s sword rattled out of his scabbard, and Maximilian drew his to meet him. Egalion and Garth hastily moved back two or three paces behind their respective combatants.

“Gentlemen,” said the Manteceros, ignoring the danger and taking a shuffling step forward. “There is still time to reconsider this ridiculous duel. A simple tale will suffice to determine who—”

“Be quiet, you irritating lump of morose flesh!” Cavor snarled, and lunged with his sword at Maximilian; Ravenna clutched at the Manteceros’ stiff mane and hauled the creature back a pace or two.

Maximilian surprised Cavor. The prince’s body was lean compared to Cavor’s well-muscled frame, but it belied a strength that had been built over seventeen years of back-breaking labour in the Veins. He met and parried Cavor’s first thrust, then drove home the attack himself. But Cavor met attack with vicious determination, and soon Maximilian found himself retreating first one step, then another, then three more.

Cavor grinned.

Yet if he had won an initial advantage, soon Maximilian’s knowledge of the Veins came to his aid. The gloom was his friend, the hanging wall his ally. He knew the darkness with a lover’s intimacy, and he used it as an additional weapon, melding with shadows one moment, rushing out of them the next, stepping lithely over rocks that Cavor stumbled—and once almost fell—over, letting the darkness envelop him, comfort him, hold him as it had for so very many years.

He merged with the gloom and the shadows, became one with them; Cavor fought them and cursed them, and then had to spit out the choking dust that filled his mouth.

Soon he realised why Maximilian had only worn light breeches. Sweat trickled down his body, collecting in small pockets underneath his armour, rubbing, chaffing, irritating. Cavor was a strong man, and used to fighting in full armour, but soon even this light plate he wore felt as though he had rocks strapped to his back, his shoulders and his arms.

Maximilian had barely raised a sweat.

Cavor stepped back, drawing desperately needed breath into lungs screaming with abuse, then wasting it all in a scream of rage as he lunged for Maximilian again.

“Truly!” the Manteceros muttered under its breath, then turned its head and nuzzled Ravenna. The girl’s face was pale and damp with sweat; even though Maximilian was holding his own, she did not know how he could possibly manage to best Cavor.

“Sweet lady,” the Manteceros said quietly, “I must administer the ordeal. This clashing of swords will accomplish nothing—save, perhaps, the death of the true king.”

Ravenna dragged her eyes away from Cavor and Maximilian. Was the Manteceros admitting some preference for Maximilian?

“Egalion stands between me and the two men, Ravenna. Can you pull him back? Then stay with me, bury one hand deep within my mane and stroke my neck with the other, and give me the courage to administer this ordeal. It is very painful.”

“But you said that it wouldn’t harm them!” Ravenna cried.

“Not them,” the Manteceros replied, and Ravenna could see that it was close to tears, “but its sadness will plunge a sword into my own heart. Now, do as I ask.”

Hesitating, Ravenna tugged at Egalion’s arm. The man jumped. All his attention had been on the two fighting before him.

“Please,” Ravenna mumbled, and indicated that he should step behind her and the Manteceros.

Egalion blinked, turned to look at Maximilian and Cavor, then nodded, his shoulders slumping wearily. He stood at Cavor’s back, but he watched the battle as if he stood at Maximilian’s. He did not want the prince to die.

Ravenna flinched at the tortured rasp of metal against metal as she and the Manteceros drew as close to the men as they dared.

The creature coughed, then cleared its throat.

Neither man took any notice.

“Only the ordeal can determine the true king,” the Manteceros said softly, reaching deep within itself for the strength to do what it had to. “Not this ridiculous duel.”

The Manteceros lifted its head, but its voice remained soft. “Listen to me. Listen to the sadness I must relate. Live it.”

Neither man paid this any attention either. Cavor had driven Maximilian to his knees with a parry of strokes that seemed deadlier than any he’d struck before, and Ravenna cried out softly as Maximilian barely managed to regain his feet. For the first time it appeared the prince was tiring.

“Listen to me,” the Manteceros repeated. “Live it.” Its eyes were now far distant, looking at something far sadder than the battle before it.

“Once there was a woman, married to a blacksmith in Ruen. As wives are wont to do, she waxed great with child, and one afternoon her time came. Her husband sent for the local midwife, but she was busy elsewhere, and the midwife from the neighbourhood next to theirs answered the call. She was a short woman, stout, and she had a hunched shoulder, a twisted arm, and wall eyes that stared at deviant angles. When she entered the birthing chamber, the wife cried out in shock and terror, and the midwife took affront.”

The swords clashed in fury, and a shower of sparks cascaded to the floor. Ravenna did not think either man heard the Manteceros. But she…now she was there in the birthing chamber with the woman struggling with the new life within her.

“In spite the midwife sat back when the woman bled, and let her life’s blood drain into useless pools in the bed. And from these cooling pools she lifted a baby girl even as the mother took one last shuddering breath and died. ‘I curse you,’ the midwife cried to the infant, ‘to a sad life!’ Then she picked up her instruments, laid the infant down by her dead mother, and left the room.”

The Manteceros paused, and as it did so Ravenna roused enough to notice that Maximilian and Cavor also paused. Perhaps they were listening.

But the next moment their swords met again, and both grunted with the effort of dealing each other death.

“The blacksmith mourned his wife, for she had been useful, and blamed his infant daughter for his loss. He put her out to a wet nurse, begrudging every coin he had to pay to let his daughter suck at the woman’s breast, and only reluctantly took her back into his house when she was four. The blacksmith already had three older sons, and he did not want this daughter, but he was obliged to take her.”

The Manteceros took a great, shuddering breath, and through the mists that wrapped her mind Ravenna heard Maximilian cry out softly. Had he been hurt?

“She grew, but following the midwife’s curse she grew only into sadness. Her father and brothers treated her with cold indifference that too often bordered on hostility. The girl spent her days attending their needs, never leaving the house or the forge that abutted it, keeping her head bowed, never smiling. She had no reason to smile.”

Now both men’s movements had slowed, and their shoulders dropped as if they carried some tremendous weight. Ravenna’s head was buried in the Manteceros’ mane, and her shoulders trembled.

The Manteceros continued, but great tears rolled out of its eyes and down its cheeks. Ravenna leaned even closer, rubbing, stroking, comforting, gaining comfort herself from the creature’s warmth.

“She grew into young womanhood, yet her days were as grey and featureless as they had been as a child. Her only comfort was her mother’s small collection of books which she kept under her bed and only pulled out to read once everyone else in the house was asleep. These books were her only friends. Until…until one day a young man came to the forge, bringing his horse which had cast a shoe. He spied the woman as she sought to hide in the shadows, and managed a quiet word to her. Over the next few weeks, with increasing courage, she met him for snatched minutes in the alley behind the house, exchanging words, hopes, dreams. For the first time in her life she learned to smile.”

The Manteceros hesitated, and when it continued its voice was thick with sorrow. “Alas!”

Both Maximilian and Cavor stumbled and cried out with the Manteceros. “Alas!”

“Alas! One night she determined to run away with the young man, run to an inn nearby where they planned to consummate their love and from there move into a world of hope. But she was careless, and in her eagerness left her father’s house before she had dried the dishes washed from the evening meal. Her brothers followed her, furious at her slovenliness, and found her even as her lover’s lips were for the first time lowering to hers.”

The Manteceros sobbed, and the king and the prince let the tips of their swords droop to the floor for a moment. Both of their faces were grey with horror.

Both were so lost in the Manteceros’ story, they were hardly aware of each other.

“They seized him, crowing with fury, and bore him to the ground. They were strong men, and could have killed him quickly, but they chose to take their time, and they drew out his death until his screams shattered the night. And yet no-one threw open their shuttered windows to investigate. No-one. When he was dead they turned to their sister, and one took his knife and, as the others held her down, he put out her eyes so that she need never be tempted again.”

“Oh gods,” Maximilian whispered, and almost let his sword fall from his hand. Cavor groaned, one hand to his forehead, then both recovered and set about their battle again.

“Now even her treasured books were denied her. Long hours she would sit on her bed, late at night, feeling their taunting shapes beneath her hands, her tearless sorrow ravaging her face. There was nothing for her now.” The Manteceros paused briefly to collect itself, then continued. “Her father grew old and died, and her brothers took wives, bringing them home to live in their house. She continued as the household drudge, creeping blindly about the house, sometimes but not always evading the sharp corners of furniture deliberately moved into her path and the stabbing fingers of her sisters-in-law. Nieces and nephews were born, and they soon learned the sharp ways of their parents. The woman learned to accept pinches and punches, and she bowed her head to fate.”

Now Cavor was crying, taking huge gulping breaths as he swung his sword about in great, useless arcs. Maximilian was no better; he leaned on his sword, one hand over his eyes, his shoulders shaking.

Garth watched them with growing concern—what was going on?

The Manteceros continued mercilessly. “After some years, she became aware of a comforting presence that lingered in the back alleyway. It was a great shaggy dog, a stray, that someone had discarded. Gradually he became used to her, and accepted careful scraps from her fingers, licking them gratefully when he had finished. He was her only friend, and somehow she conceived the idea that the dog was her lover’s soul come back to aid her. The thought comforted her. One day the dog went a-roaming, as dogs are wont to do, and he caught a squirrel, wandering madly through the back streets of Ruen. As the dog caught the squirrel the rodent bit him, and the dog yelped in surprise and let the creature go. Two days later he felt a madness building in his mind.”

The tunnel was utterly silent now, and if Cavor and Maximilian had their heads bowed in indescribable grief, then all other eyes were on the Manteceros.

“The woman was relieved when she heard the dog scratching at the door, and she hurried to give it a pat and a hug. But as she leaned down the dog snarled and bit her hand, and she screamed and tore loose, and the brothers and their wives and their numerous children came a-running through the house and dragged her inside, slapping her for her foolishness, and stomped the dog to death.

“But it was too late. She grew feverish, her body wracked with convulsing agony. Her sisters-in-law tended her only enough to keep her alive, but they wished they had not bothered when the woman finally struggled up from her sickbed. The fever had crippled her back and twisted one leg shorter than the other. Even as a drudge, she was useless.”

Maximilian had sunk to his knees in the rock, only his grip on his sword keeping him upright. Cavor had turned to stare at the Manteceros.

“There is not much left to tell,” the creature said, and a strange light came into its eyes. “They threw her out to wander the streets, where she begged what food she could and slept in doorways when she was able. She accepted the abuse meted out by those who prey on the weak and helpless, and knew her time was short. Winter approached, and winter is never kind to those lacking both home and comfort.”

Now the Manteceros reared its head up to its full height. “So she curled up about her rags and sought the only answer to her pain. I ask you now,” it cried, its voice ringing with authority, “to venture the ordeal. What was her answer? What answer could she find to her pain and her sorrow?”

Cavor shifted, stumbling as he did so. “Death,” he whispered. “What answer could there be for her pain but death?”

The Manteceros stared at him. “You are wrong Cavor. Wrong,” it said, its voice now heavy with judgement, then shifted its eyes. “Maximilian?”

Maximilian slowly raised his head, and Ravenna almost cried out at the pain evident in his eyes. Did he somehow see his life mirrored in that of the poor woman cursed to a life of sorrow?

Then, unbelievably, Maximilian smiled his wondrous smile, and hope lit his features. “She laughed,” he said, then laughed himself, the sound ringing rich and vibrant through the tunnel. “She laughed. It was the only thing left for her to do.”

“Yes!” the Manteceros said, and Ravenna could feel its flesh leap beneath her fingers. She frowned. The creature felt almost hot, as if it were running a fever itself. “Yes!”

He turned back to Cavor. “You were wrong, Cavor, because you admitted hopelessness. A true-born king would never do that. You are a man of no hope and, hopeless, I cast you from the throne of Escator.”

“No!” Cavor shrieked, and raised his sword above his head in a huge arc meant to cut Maximilian down where he kneeled.

But rage turned to puzzlement an instant later as he felt his sword seized in tight hands.

His blade had cleaved straight into the gloam above him, and now there it hung, caught in the hanging wall. Cavor struggled with the weapon, his muscles bunching and straining, but he could not shift it.

For an instant everyone stared, then, just as Egalion moved to disarm Cavor completely, the Manteceros screamed.

Ravenna was flung back against the tunnel wall by a huge surge of power and heat. She cried out, and Maximilian scrambled forward on hands and knees, pulling her away from the ball of pulsing light that had enveloped the Manteceros.

Garth shouted and started forward as well, but before he could reach Maximilian and Ravenna, the blue light resolved itself into a tall, well-built man with a head of cobalt hair and eyes that sparked with blue fire. He was almost ethereal, and his fine features were very, very beautiful.

He stared at Maximilian, and spoke low but intensely, demanding.

“Who comes to Claim? Who dares the Dream, And, daring, ------”

Maximilian returned his stare steadily, accepting the challenge. “And, daring,…laughs”, he finished, completing the stanza that had puzzled Garth and Ravenna and centuries of historians for so long.

The cobalt-haired man nodded. “Yes. Laughs.” An extraordinary and utterly exquisite smile swept his face. “To laugh is to dare, because laughter dares fate and sorrow and the weight of all injustices. You are true-blooded indeed, Maximilian, and I name you rightful king of Escator. Welcome home.”

Cavor finally let go the sword and slowly lowered his arms, still staring about in utter amazement. Then, in an instant, his demeanour changed.

“Enjoy your triumph while you can,” he rasped flatly to Maximilian, the sword still hanging over his head, then turned and fled down the tunnel.

No-one paid him the least attention.

“Who are you?” Garth whispered. “Who?”