1

⁠—⁠—⁠— I ⁠—⁠—⁠—

Stafolos Keep was in flames.

The battle was decided. Knights in black armor lay scattered in the courtyard and in the corridors, viscous inky smoke rising here and there among the bodies. The few remaining defenders had been pushed back towards the two towers in the center of the keep, fighting for their lives in a slow retreat. Outside, it was a brilliant day on the Marches. Other than the drifting cries of the Sem proclaiming the fall of the keep, there was nothing to disturb the calm of the wider landscape. The Kes flowed steadily on, a black ribbon under the sky which had gradually changed from a light violet to a soft blue as midday neared.

A short while earlier, before the defenders abandoned the courtyard, the keep had been filled with the clanging of swords and the cries of men, while a disturbance of another kind took place in the white tower where the prisoners were held.

In the inner court below the towers, the captains shouted order after order, trying to stem the tide of Sem pouring through the main gate and bailey. The fourth squad captain had already fallen, shot with a poison arrow, and the captain of the sixth had disappeared beneath a swarming throng of the monkey-like invaders.

“To the towers! Protect our lord!” yelled the First Captain, a favorite of the count, and one of the few left in the courtyard still unwounded and with strength enough to shout. Gathering soldiers around him, he made a push for the two towers, arrows clanging off the iron back plate of his armor. He heard a great commotion ahead.

“The Sem are in the white tower!” a knight running ahead of him yelled.

The First Captain thought quickly—the white tower was mostly filled with captives of little account, but if the Sem took the white, they would have access to the black through the underground passage… and then there were the twins that his lord had worked so hard to find. “Never mind the other captives,” he shouted. “Save the Pearls of Parros! Protect them at all costs!”

Gasping for breath, he turned to a soldier fighting nearby. “Sound your horn! The rest of the keep is lost, we must gather all who can still fight and move to defend the towers.”

“Sir!” The soldier put his horn to his lips and blew a blast that trailed off when an arrow lodged in his neck, which was exposed for an instant as he lifted his head. Another soldier saw him fall clutching at his throat; jumping over, this other grabbed the horn and blew a stronger blast.

The First Captain heard the sound rising clear above the clamor of the fray, and he rested, his shoulders heaving with each breath. Leaning on his broadsword, he looked up at the beautiful blue sky. There they were: the gold savannah lion on a field of black—the Black Lion pendant of Gohra—streaming golden tassels; and beside it, the white and gold crest on purple, the flag of the Mongauli archduke, both fluttering proudly in the breeze as if to say that, should the keep fall beneath them, they would still fly. It was for this that the soldiers of the keep were laying down their lives. It was pride, it was pure beauty.

The captain’s vision blurred and he lifted his sword. Shouting “For Mongaul!” he charged toward the white tower. All around him, men turned and followed the sound of the trumpet blast. They were running, fighting for their pride, the pride of Mongaul!

But the captain never reached the tower’s gate. A wildling whip of cured wolf hide wrapped tight around his leg and sent him tumbling to the ground. In an instant, his large form disappeared beneath the furry bodies of the Sem, their stone axes falling on his back, a stone knife cutting his throat.

Up in the tower, the captives were banging on the walls of their cells with whatever they could find, shouting to be let out. Not every room in the tower was filled with those who had received a death sentence from the bloodthirsty Black Count; most of the stone-walled chambers were empty, filled with silence and the occasional torq rat. But several did contain prisoners, and a few of those had windows to let in the light, from which the occupants had watched the battle spilling into the inner court, and the steady approach of the tendrils of fire that threatened to take the tower long before the invaders could claim it as theirs.

The corridors echoed with the sound of prisoners slapping the stone doors with the flats of their hands, benches and stools, and kicking and screaming to get the attention of the jailer. The clamoring was enough to drown out the battle outside.

“Jailer! Jailer!”

“What’s going on out there?!”

“The wildlings have come! This keep’s done for! We’ll all be killed!”

“Let us out of here! Let us out! Give me a sword, I’ll fight those monkeys! A Mongauli sword—I’ll never run again!”

“For Janos’ sake! If you keep us trapped in here those monkeys will peel our skins off, they will!”

“Jailer! Somebody! Everyone, the fire’s on the wall! Ach, we’ll burn in here! Let us out!”

The noise of fists beating on doors and the pitiful screams of one unlucky man who had been ignited by a flaming arrow that happened to fly through the small window in his cell mingled with shouting in every accent: Torusian, Valachian, a Marches drawl, even the booming tones of Kumn—each throat straining until raw.

The roar got louder and louder as the hunched jailer hobbled as fast as he could—which was painfully slow—up the dark stairway.

“Open my door! Let me out of here!” the voices yelled at every landing, pleading with him. The jailer walked up to each cell and slammed his key ring on the door, shouting back at the prisoners.

“No! No! Be silent! No talking! You will be freed when his Excellency has given orders, not before, not while I’m jailer here!”

“This is no time for displaying your loyalty, man! Leave us in here and you’re sacrificing us to the Sem, you are!”

“Open up, now!”

“Silence!” the jailer roared. “I take who I’m supposed to take, and no more!”

Ignoring both insults and pleading, the jailer, followed by several knights, passed by most of the doors until he reached the room where Guin and Remus were being held.

The leopard-headed warrior and Prince Remus, son of his Holiness of Parros, the late Aldross the Third, were yelling and pounding on the door like all of the other prisoners. Remus seemed to have gone mad, screaming his sister’s name over and over, and the door to their cell shook with the blows of Guin’s powerful hamfists. The door itself was fashioned of a single slab of stone, and well-nigh unbreakable, but Guin’s hands and giant body had nearly succeeded in battering it from its hinges.

The jailer barked for them to wait, his harsh Marches voice made harsher by exasperation.“I’ll be letting you out now, so away from the door with you!”

“If you plan to take me to your rotting lord, I’ll take my chances with the monkeys!” roared Guin, his voice sounding muffled through his mask and the thickness of the door. “Give me a sword! I have the right to defend myself against those sub-humans of Nospherus!”

“I’ve gotten no such orders,” said the stooped jailer, chuckling. Sidling over, he lifted a key from the large iron loop at his belt, turned the lock, and then quickly stepped back as Guin, howling, burst out into the corridor.

“I have knights, beast-man!” screeched the jailer, quickly shuffling behind the black knights that had followed him. They stepped forward, the points of the long spears in their hands lightly tickling Guin’s throat and chest. He roared a challenge at them, and from behind his powerful form the young prince of Parros cried out to the knights, trying to reason with them.

‘’Can’t you hear the fighting outside? Guin can defeat your whole squad barehanded, but the wildlings will kill us all if we’re fighting each other! Give Guin a sword!”

“The affairs of this keep are none of your concern, prisoner,” the leader of the knights told him with an air of superiority. “You’re to be brought to the safety of the black tower by the count’s order.”

“Safety? With that monster?” Guin scoffed. “There’s no safety in that tower, and it’s not the Sem I’m worried about.”

“Who’s the monster, freak?” The knight stabbed the tip of his spear through the skin on Guin’s chest. Guin didn’t flinch.

“You’re coming with us!”

“No. I will not go near that Doal-spawned count of yours again.”

“Why you…”

“Sir, downstairs!” one of the knights broke in hesitantly, stopping their enraged leader on the brink of beating Guin with the butt of his spear. “I think we may have a problem.”

“The only problem is this presumptuous half-man!” snapped the leader, turning to the worried knight. “This keep will not fall to mere barbarian rabble,” he said with evident pride. “We are the strongpoint of the Mongauli Marches defense! We’ve weathered many a siege and every time, our proud Mongauli swords have beat the enemy back! Besides, reinforcements from Alvon will be here short—”

Suddenly, he stopped, a curious look on his face. A second passed during which no one realizd why he wasn’t talking—why he was standing there like a giant comical puppet without a puppeteer.

The knight never got to finish his speech. Above the high and narrow bridge of his distinctively Mongauli nose, right between his eyes, a small arrow with two black feathers and a short black shaft stood sticking straight out like some strange fashion accessory, quivering from side to side. His eyes rolled up into his head and he fell back into the stone doorway, the metal of his armor crashing like thunder as he hit the floor.

“The wildlings!”

The knight who had sounded the warning stood spellbound at the sight of his fallen leader who, a moment before, had so loudly guaranteed their safety.

“Look out! Behind you!” shouted Remus, just as a stone axe came down on the unlucky Mongauli’s head. The knight screamed, more in bewilderment than in pain, and joined his comrade on the floor. The next thing Remus knew, a dozen brown, furry creatures appeared out of nowhere, as though they were coming through the very stone of the walls, and began streaming over the fallen man, howling and chattering as they ran.

The hunchbacked jailer flailed his arms and turned to run, ignoring a Sem arrow that stuck like a needle into the lump on his back. If he had been of regular height, it would surely have struck him in the neck, but hunchbacked as he was, he was barely taller than the Sem archer, and this had saved him. He dropped his key ring and made to run down the stairs, then stopped and cried out. An innumerable odorous mass of monkey-men was surging up the stairs, screaming in their alien tongue. They came like floodwater breaking through a dam, except that this flood flowed uphill.

“Save me! Save me!” the jailer cried out, flattening himself as best he could against the stone wall of the stairs, as though it could somehow swallow him up and protect him from the enraged horde. But the Sem did not mistake him for one of their own.

Shrieking like wicked birds, they fell upon the jailer. Pulling in his head like a turtle, he took three wounds to his back before one of the Sem jumped over him and stuck an axe deep in his forehead. The jailer toppled over without so much as a whimper, and began to roll down the stairs like a ball, bowling over several Sem before coming to a stop on the landing below. The wildlings rushed over him, their dirty bare feet scrambling over his body.

On the floor above, a fierce battle was underway. The knights who had quickly drawn their swords to resist the sudden attack were cutting down the Sem. They had the advantage of elevation, compounded by their natural advantage in height. They had been taken by surprise; but they knew the keep well, and the narrow stairs limited the number of Sem that could attack them at once. Fighting one on one, or two on one at most, the black knights were more than a match for the tiny Sem.

But the strength of the Sem was in their numbers. Even as their kin fell in a haze of blood, the monkey-men pressed on without hesitation, screaming “Aii! Aii!” as they charged over the bodies of the fallen. Behind them, a group of wildlings had snatched up the keys and were unlocking the prison doors, screeching wildly every time one of the great stone portals swung open. If a prisoner was inside, they would rush in with their axes and strike until nothing moved in the room, then move on to the next chamber. Some of the prisoners huddled under their beds, others picked up chairs and bravely fought these wildling fiends that dared to profane the domain of humanity. But the Sem dragged them out from under their beds, and swarmed around the ones that put up a fight like ants attacking a beetle until their prey succumbed.

Several of the rooms they opened were already blazing with fires set by arrows that had come in through the windows, and the stair corridor quickly became a hell on earth, filled with the crackling of the blaze, the screams of the dying prisoners, and the shrieking of the Sem, all mixed in the whorls of thick black smoke that grew thicker by the moment.

Remus, shaking, looked down upon the fray from further up the stairs, clutching at the sturdy wooden chair that was his only weapon. But Guin had not stood still for long. When the leader of the knights fell to the Sem arrow, the leopard-headed warrior had, after a second’s hesitation, grabbed Remus and pushed him back behind the stone door of their cell.

“Stay there!” Guin barked. Then he grabbed the nearest thing he could find—the empty mulsum jug—and holding it up to ward off arrows, turned to go back out into the hall.

“Guin, no!” Remus screamed, but the warrior had spotted something: the fallen knight’s sword was still in its scabbard at his side. Guin ducked through the door, stepping clear into the hall, and a ripple of astonishment ran through the Sem.

“Alphetto! …Riyaad! Riyaad!” Their shouts rose above even their constant war cry, the tone in their voices making their meaning clear: “A leopard god! Mercy!” But then one of their leaders raised his hand and shouted something that seemed to bring them back to their senses, and lifting their axes they charged at the leopard-headed warrior.

Meanwhile, Guin had taken advantage of the wildlings’ momentary hesitation to stoop and grab at the longsword lying on the floor by the fallen knight; but the hilt caught on the scabbard—it was stuck!

Guin growled deep in his throat, then pulled at the sword with all his strength—and a Sem archer, cackling like a crow, shot an arrow directly at him. Guin looked up.

The arrow hit him right between the eyebrows of his giant leopard head.

“NO!” Remus screamed and dropped his chair.

But it was the Sem archer who screamed next.

Ignoring the quivering black arrow, coated with deadly venom, that was sticking out of his forehead, Guin jerked the hilt of the sword back and forth until he had cut through the tangled scabbard; then he held up the freed blade with a satisfied growl. He swung the sword quickly to get a feel for its weight and balance, then rose calmly to his feet. He pulled the black arrow from his forehead with his left hand and casually chucked it back at the wildlings.

His aim was true. The arrow hummed like a dart as it flew unerringly to pierce the neck of the archer who had shot it. For a second, it seemed as though the Sem was immune to his own poison, but soon enough, the archer staggered, scratching at his throat, and fell motionless on the ground.

Fear shot like a bolt of lightning through the wildlings behind him, and cries of “Alphetto! Alphetto!” filled the narrow stair as the wildlings called on their god for mercy.

“Liirara, mul-straato!” shouted their leader, telling them not to be afraid and to continue their attack; but this time the Sem hesitated for more than a few moments before sending up another war cry.

Guin didn’t wait for them to regroup. He was finally armed again. His warrior blood boiled, and he became a fighting machine, his longsword whining through the air as he cut through five of the monkey-men with a single sweep. Then he assumed a fighting stance with the sword held in front of him.

“Guin!”

Glancing around, the leopard warrior saw one of the monkey-men slipping past him into the open cell. Howling, Guin turned and ran into the room, cutting the wildling into two halves through the waist just as it was lifting its axe to strike Remus.

“On my back!” growled Guin. “They’ll overwhelm us with their numbers if we stay here any longer. Whatever you do, hang tight!” He lifted the little prince up onto his massive back, then picked the Sem’s stone axe up off the floor in his left hand, and brandishing the sword in his right, watched the fighting in the hall outside, waiting for an opening.

Here and there in the corridor and on the stairs, some knights and a handful of the more able prisoners were putting up a fight, but they were too far apart from each other. It was only a matter of time before the wildlings would win by virtue of sheer numbers—the defenders would be crushed beneath them, their strength and will to live exhausted.

Guin quickly took measure of the situation even as he slashed and parried to every side. He thought furiously, bringing all his animal craftiness and human resolve to bear. At last he shouted: ‘’Everyone, to me! Fight alone and you will fall! We must fight together in one place to stop the Sem!”

“We’ll never make it!” shouted one of the prisoners. “We cut and we cut and still they keep coming! ’Tis like fighting against the ocean, this!” he howled, then, as an axe caught him in the leg and he tumbled to the ground.

“Doal!” Guin spat, even as his sword flickered through the air, cutting another simian head from a furry body.

“Child!”

“Yes, Guin!”

“We cannot fight like this for long, and the fire is getting closer.”

“What about Rinda, Guin?”

“I know. We must get to her somehow before the tower is buried in monkeys. If we keep moving upwards we’ll be trapped…” Guin paused, panting. “But the Sem leave us little choice!”

“Behind you!” shouted Remus. A wildling warrior had snuck around behind Guin and leapt, improbably high, striking at his head.

“Ay!” Guin cut the creature out of the air, knocking its lifeless body against the wall.

“On my count!” he whispered, turning to Remus. “Grab my belt. On three, I will cut us a path to the stairs.”

“Yes, Guin!”

“Ready? One…two…three!”

Guin lowered his head and thrust out sword and axe, lunging out into the sea of wildlings that had crowded into the stone corridor. Remus followed close behind him.

Guin’s sword swung faster than the eye could follow, cutting into the Sem, sending up a crimson spray on both sides. An animal howl leaked out of his mouth, his eyes blazed gold, and he became a wild beast, his godlike physique coated in the blood of his enemies.

The wildlings wavered, then quickly retreated, avoiding the path of his charge. Guin cut his way to the stairs and began bounding up, taking three steps at a time with each great stride, the little prince scrambling behind him.

The floor above was already filled with the first Sem that had entered the tower. Guin kept swinging his sword, cutting down wildlings as he ran.

“Find your sister! Call her!” Guin shouted as his blade danced in the air.

Remus answered with a nod, and began to shout “Rinda!” up the crowded, smoky stair.

“Rinda! It’s me! Rinda, where are you?”

There was no answer, so while Guin stopped on the first landing and fought to push back the pursuing horde, Remus ran to each of the doors, checking every cell. He soon returned, pale with worry.

“She’s not here.”

“Right. We go up.” Guin gave the Sem one last sweep with his sword and headed up the stairs, this time sending Remus along in front of him. Few of the wildlings had made it up this far.

But Rinda was not on the next level either.

“Guin!”

“Up further, quickly!”

An ominous light shone in Guin’s eyes. His head tilted to one side, as though he were considering something.

“Guin…?”

“Listen!” said Guin, holding up his hand to silence the boy. “Outside, in the courtyard—it’s quiet. The only sounds of fighting are coming from inside this tower. If this means that the Sem have already taken the keep, and are now just cleaning up the remnants, even I don’t stand much of a chance of escaping.”

“Guin…”

The leopard-man growled. “Frown later, now we must run or be run over!”

Remus hurriedly turned and dashed up the stairs, which had become more narrow and steep.

“Guin, we’re running out of stairs!”

“We’re near the top, then.”

The small landing they arrived at next was darker than the others in the tower, with a ceiling so low that Guin almost had to crouch. The stairs came to an end at a single prison door.

Hope filled Remus and he shouted, “Rinda! Rinda, are you there?!”

“Remus! In here!” came the immediate answer.

“Guin!” said Remus, turning to the warrior.

“Stand back!” roared Guin, and gave the door a shake. But it was made of a sturdy, single sheet of rock, and it hardly budged.

“Hrmm…”

Guin tried bashing down the door, but it soon became clear that his shoulder would break before the door gave in, and he gave up after a few tries.

Lifting his axe, he made to strike the door with it, but stopped with the axe in mid-air.

“Where did that jailer’s key ring go, I wonder?”

“I saw it, Guin!” said Remus, suddenly remembering. “It fell in the hall outside our room, and then one of those wildlings kicked it and it fell into the water trough at the side of the hall. I bet it’s still there!”

“Hoh hoh!” Guin chuckled and looked with satisfaction at the heir to the kingdom of Parros. “Not bad, my little prince. Now, I will go back down and get them, but first, I will make a barrier between this floor and the one below it to keep you safe. One of those doors should do nicely….”

He started down the stairs, then turned back to face the boy. “I do not think many Sem will make it past the barrier, but should they come…” He handed Remus the stone axe. “You are a boy, and will soon be a man. Your first lesson starts now. If they come, fight.”

“Right, Guin!”

“Good.” Guin clapped his hand on the boy’s slender shoulder, and raised his bloodstained sword. “Protect your sister.”

“Guin… be careful!”

“Do not worry, I…” he began, the yellow eyes shining out of his giant tawny mask with a sudden understanding. “It is not my fate to die in this place. Nor is it yours.” His voice sounded almost gentle. Then, before Remus even had time to let those words sink in, the leopard-headed warrior was off like a whirlwind down the stairs.

When he reached the floor below, Guin yanked one of the open doors off its hinges, lodging it across the opening to the stairs going up. Satisfied with his makeshift barrier, he raised his sword and charged down to face the wildlings, who were just now arriving from below.

The stairway filled once again with the howls of the Sem and the sounds of fighting. The noise drifted up through the barrier to where Remus stood on the darkened upper landing, clutching his stone axe in sweaty hands, his back flat against the cruel stone door that separated him from his sister. The boy was praying under his breath: Don’t die, Guin… don’t die!