The Cuckoo by Leo Carew

Author:Leo Carew [CAREW, LEO]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

31

The Thing in the Barrel

There came a knock at the door. “Come,” barked Keturah.

Ormur crept around the door’s edge, hair newly tied in the high ponytail of a Sacred Guardsman. His eyes travelled over the three men sitting on the floor with her, each occupying their own bearskin. “Brother,” said Keturah, briefly. “I see you’re the guardsman you’ve long deserved to be, and you’ll see I’m engaged. An hour, then we’ll talk.”

“My lady,” murmured Ormur. “My lords,” he added to the men sitting with her, and bowed his way outside. There he waited in silence with the bodyguards who escorted Keturah’s guests. They all stood rigidly to attention, but presently Ormur slid onto the floor and began running his fingers in an endless pattern on the cold flagstones. It was not one hour but two before the door opened and the Anakim lords Keturah had been parlaying with began to file out. Strange men, strangely dressed and even strange-smelling, but all part of Keturah’s new alliance.

“Come in, brother,” came Keturah’s voice.

Ormur bent low to the passing lords, and then slid into the Black Lady’s quarters. It looked much the same as it had when these rooms had been Roper’s. On the wall hung the giant elk antlers Roper had hunted with Tekoa; in the corner his bed with its blankets still rough and woollen, Roper’s wolfskin cloak hurled upon them, as if the great man had just returned from campaign and was merely seeing to his equipment somewhere out of sight. Keturah had made only two changes. The first was to remove the chairs, which she declared a Suthern extravagance. Chairs, she scoffed, were only necessary if one needed to write at a table. Of course the Anakim did not write, and Keturah was a popular leader, so many in the Black Kingdom had followed her lead and hacked their chairs into firewood.

The second change was the suit of armour, mounted on a stand in the corner. On top was Roper’s famous Unthank-silver helmet, a sharp axe-blade on the crest at the front. And beneath was an eye-wateringly expensive cuirass: the first, Ormur believed, to have been made entirely of Unthank-silver. It was made to Roper’s measurements: the suit Tekoa had commissioned in memory of his conquest of Lundenceaster. It had been completed shortly before Roper’s assassination, though the Black Lord had never worn it.

But Keturah was not alone in the room. She stood with her back to him, deep in conversation with the broad-shouldered Virtanen. Her arm was on his shoulder, their heads leaned close together.

Virtanen spotted Ormur first and nodded at him, giving a wink. “The young guardsman!” he declared.

Keturah turned and folded her arms, wryly observing Ormur’s high guardsman’s ponytail. “Who’s taken you for protégé then?”

“Captain Gray.”

“Ha!” Virtanen strode forward to embrace Ormur. “So the old fellow’s crumbled at last! I thought he’d keep putting it off, doubtless waiting for a special case to make an exception, eh?”

“I think the time was right,” said Ormur.

Virtanen regarded him fondly.

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