The Black Prince: Part II by P. J. Fox Page A

time.”
    Hart didn’t question him. Couldn’t afford to take the time. His attention had to be all for the task at hand, if there remained any hope of accomplishing it. He could only hope both that Rudolph survived long enough for him to make the gallery and that whoever was up there was too distracted by repelling the invaders to notice one in their midst. At least until Hart had freed his sword again.
    The wood of the rungs was slickly smooth under his fingers. The soles of his boots were slippery with gore. All the things the bards never talked about: that men died because they slipped in entrails, or shit. Men shit when they died. The site of even a small skirmish produced smells that were unholy. Or, blinded by their own blood, they walked straight into swords.
    The din behind him grew louder.
    They were in the room now.
    He reached the top.
    There were two men. He didn’t give them time to respond. He charged them.
    One fell, and then the other. They’d been shooting with crossbows. Neither had had time to draw their swords.
    Hart gasped the lever and pulled. He let out a roar as he did so; the thing was meant to be operated by multiple men, and he felt the muscles in his arms straining. Muscles that could draw a twelve stone longbow, loosing arrows as thick as his thumb.
    The lever dropped free and Hart stumbled backward as the winch spun. Chain flew through the twin pulley gates, rectangular windows in the stone that allowed the drawbridge to operate. And as the drawbridge banged down the portcullis shot up, solving the mystery of there having been only one lever: the portcullis itself was the counterweight to the drawbridge, and they could not be operated independently. Another engineering oversight.
    Hart watched, dazed, thinking that it was strange indeed what one found themselves thinking at times like these.
    He’d done it. He’d really done it. He fumbled the horn at his side free from its catch and, raising it to his lips, blew. One single, long blast. The prearranged signal.
    He slumped briefly against the wall. The floor beneath his feet vibrated with the pounding of a thousand other feet, and then a thousand more, as the whole of his army stormed the castle. Once the gate was down, he’d known, they’d have won. That was always the challenge, always the risk. A place like House Salm couldn’t be breached except by stupidity. Or treachery. Not by a ragtag band of ill-fed serfs and yeoman more comfortable with pike than bow.
    The castle was his. With those feet crossing the threshold, the castle was his. The rest was just cleanup.
    He wondered if Rudolph was dead, and discovered that he cared. But he didn’t have time to investigate. The castle might be his, but they were none of them out of the woods yet. He was like the girl in the fairy tale who inherited a house filled with spiders. Spiders that hid in the shadows, giving no hint of their presence until it was too late. Cleanup might be simpler than wholescale war, but it wasn’t a formality. And one spider, in particular, was long overdue for justice.



THIRTEEN
    H art strode down the hall, sword out.
    Servants were fleeing right and left, like so many chickens with their heads cut off. One woman, seeing him, screamed. He ignored her. She responded like he’d cut out her liver, hyperventilating as she flapped her hands. Somewhere else, another person screamed.
    Hart couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
    The torches flickered in their brackets. All lit, all well maintained. The floor was likewise smooth and scrubbed, square terra cotta tiles with a grout mixed from their dust. The walls were stone. No wainscoting, no decoration. Nothing compared to Caer Addanc’s finely colored tile and recessed paneling, but worlds apart from what he’d grown up with in Enzie or seen anywhere in the Highlands. House Salm, indeed, looked like it had all just been given a bath the day before.
    So where was everybody?
    The castle might be beautiful, but