One Velvet Glove by Dave Duncan

Author:Dave Duncan [Duncan, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: King&#39, s Blades, 1933-, Duncan, a tale of the King’s Blades, author, One velvet glove, Dave
Publisher: Five Rivers Publishing
Published: 2017-11-29T23:00:00+00:00

As soon as the carriage was safely across, we continued our path through the forest. I became more and more convinced that this was not the best road in. It looked as if no one had come along it in a dozen years, but eventually it swung around to the west and I saw daylight ahead. We emerged from the forest as if from a tunnel, but the clearing Dragon had mentioned was so narrow that we were right under the walls of Castelo Velho—the old castle, the very old castle. It certainly deserved his description of it as a ruin, a gloomy, mouldering corpse of what must once have been an imposing stronghold. All we could see of it was ivy-coated masonry, pierced with arrow loops, and topped in places by battlements. A crumbling tower stood at either end. Perhaps there was a newer residence inside the old curtain wall?

The clearing itself was barely worth the name, being overgrown with tall thistles and thorns and weeds, but yet no trees. The ground around a castle is always kept open so that enemies cannot creep up on it, but why had the forest not moved in completely? We had approached from the east and I had no need to give Donato directions, for the trail continued straight toward an archway in the centre of the eastern wall. Dragon and I led the way until we were forced to halt at what had once been a moat, but was now only a weed-infested trench. In places heaps of stone in it showed where turrets had fallen.

The drawbridge’s chains had rusted away and its timbers were heavily weathered, but they looked sound enough to try. Having told Donato to wait until Dragon and I had made sure it was safe, I urged my gelding forward. He snorted doubtfully, testing each step before making another. As he carried me across, I was almost hoping that it would collapse beneath me so that I would die under my horse in the rocky bottom of the dry moat. When that did not happen, I beckoned to Dragon to follow, and together we proceeded along a tunnel toward daylight. The thump of our horses’ hooves on the flagstones echoed all around us. I shivered when I realized that this had once been a murder space, where invaders could be trapped between two portcullises and then slaughtered through loopholes in the ceiling.

We emerged into an open bailey, and the illusion of ancient ruins popped like a bubble. Castelo Velho was a huge park—far larger than I had expected, twice or three times the size of Ironhall or even the Praça Real in Lindora. It was glorious. Most of the huge quadrangle was occupied by a close-cut lawn, decorated with fountains, flowerbeds, decorative palm trees, and statuary. Glazed windows looked down from walls tiled in vibrant colour, as if the entire edifice was an enormous jewel. The great towers marking the corners were not the weathered relics we had seen from the outside, but smooth and proud.

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