The Sapphire Rose. David Eddings

with a heavy log carried in rope slings attached to their saddles. It took them perhaps five minutes to batter down the gates, and then the Church Knights streamed into the courtyard.

      ‘Throw down your weapons!’ Vanion shouted to the confused soldiers in the yard.

      Sparhawk led his friends around the perimeter of the courtyard to the large doors that gave entry into the palace. There they dismounted and climbed the stairs to confront the dozen soldiers on guard in front of the door. The officer in charge drew his sword. ‘No one may enter!’ he barked.

      ‘Get out of my way, neighbour,’ Sparhawk said in his deadly quiet voice.

      ‘I don’t take orders from –’ the officer began. Then his eyes glazed as there was a sudden sound like that a melon might make when dropped on a stone floor as Kurik deftly brained him with his spiked chain mace. The officer dropped, twitching.

      ‘That’s something new,’ Sir Tynian said to Sir Ulath. ‘I never saw a man with brains coming out of his ears before.’

      ‘Kurik’s very good with that mace,’ Ulath agreed.

      ‘Any questions?’ Sparhawk asked the other soldiers ominously.

      They stared at him.

      ‘I believe you were told to drop your weapons,’ Kalten told them.

      They hurriedly shed their arms.

      ‘We’re relieving you here, neighbours,’ Sparhawk informed them. ‘You may join your friends out there in the yard.’

      They quickly went down the stairs.

      The mounted Pandions were slowly advancing on the church soldiers standing in the courtyard. There was some sporadic resistance from the more fanatic of the soldiers, and the Pandion Knights provided a sizeable number of those ‘object lessons’ their Preceptor had mentioned. The centre of the courtyard soon flowed with blood, and it was littered with unattached heads, arms and a few legs. More and more of the soldiers saw the direction the fight was going, threw away their weapons and raised their hands in surrender. There was one stubborn pocket of resistance, but the knights pushed the struggling soldiers up against one wall and slaughtered them.

      Vanion looked around the yard. ‘Herd the survivors into the stables,’ he ordered, ‘and post a few guards.’ Then he dismounted and walked back to the shattered gate. ‘It’s all over now, little mother,’ he called to Sephrenia, who had waited outside with Talen and Berit. ‘It’s safe to come in now.’

      Sephrenia rode her white palfrey into the courtyard, shielding her eyes with one hand. Talen, however, looked around with bright vicious eyes.

      ‘Let’s get rid of this,’ Ulath said to Kurik, bending to pick up the shoulders of the dead officer. The two of them carried the body off to one side, and Tynian thoughtfully scraped the puddle of brains off the top step with one foot.

      ‘Do you people always chop your enemies to pieces like this?’ Talen asked Sparhawk as he dismounted and went over to help Sephrenia down from her horse.

      Sparhawk shrugged. ‘Vanion wanted the soldiers to see what would happen to them if they offered any more resistance. Dismemberment is usually quite convincing.’

      ‘Must you?’ Sephrenia shuddered.

      ‘You’d better let us go in first, little mother,’ Sparhawk said as Vanion joined them with twenty knights. ‘There may be soldiers hiding in there.’

      As it turned out, there were a few, but Vanion’s knights efficiently flushed them from their hiding places and took them to the main door and gave them pointed instructions to join their comrades in the stables.

      The doors to the council chamber were unguarded, and Sparhawk opened the door and held it for Vanion.

      Lycheas was cowering, slack-lipped and trembling behind the council table with the fat man in red, and Baron Harparin was desperately yanking on one of the bell-pulls. ‘You can’t come in here!’ Harparin said shrilly to Vanion in his high-pitched, effeminate voice. ‘I command you to leave at once on the authority of King Lycheas.’

      Vanion looked at him coldly. Sparhawk knew that Vanion bore a towering contempt for the disgusting pederast. ‘This man irritates me,’ he said in a flat voice, pointing at Harparin. ‘Will someone please do something about him?’

      Ulath strode around the table, his war-axe in his hands.

      ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ Harparin squealed, cringing back and still yanking futilely at the bell-pull. ‘I’m a member of the royal council. You wouldn’t dare do anything to me.’

      Ulath did, in fact, dare. Harparin’s head bounced once and then rolled across the carpet to come to rest near the window. His mouth was agape, and his eyes were still bulging in horror. ‘Was that more or less what you had in mind, Lord Vanion?’ the big Thalesian asked politely.

      ‘Approximately, yes. Thank you, Sir Ulath.’

      ‘How about these other two?’ Ulath pointed his axe at Lycheas and the fat man.

      ‘Ah – not just yet, Sir Ulath.’ The Pandion Preceptor approached the council table carrying the case containing the swords of the knights who had fallen. ‘Now, Lycheas, where is the Earl of Lenda?’ he demanded.

      Lycheas gaped at him.

      ‘Sir Ulath,’ Vanion said in a tone like ice.

      Ulath grimly lifted his blood-stained axe.

      ‘No!’ Lycheas screamed. ‘Lenda’s confined down in the cellars. We didn’t hurt him at all, Lord Vanion. I swear to you that he’s –’

      ‘Take Lycheas and this other one down to the dungeon,’ Vanion ordered a pair of his knights. ‘Release the Earl of Lenda and replace him in the cell with these. Then bring Lenda here.’

      ‘If I may, My Lord?’ Sparhawk asked.

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘Lycheas the bastard,’ Sparhawk said formally, ‘as Queen’s Champion, it is my distinct pleasure to place you under arrest on the charge of high treason. The penalty is rather well known. We’ll attend to that just as soon as it’s convenient. Thinking about it might give you something to occupy the long, tedious hours of your confinement.’

      ‘I could save you a great deal of time and expense, Sparhawk,’ Ulath offered helpfully, hefting his axe again.

      Sparhawk pretended to consider it. ‘No,’ he said regretfully. ‘Lycheas has run rough-shod over the people of Cimmura. I think they’re entitled to the spectacle of a nice, messy public execution.’

      Lycheas was actually blubbering in terror as Sir Perraine and another knight dragged him past the wide-eyed head of Baron Harparin and out of the room.

      ‘You’re a hard and ruthless man, Sparhawk,’ Bevier noted.

      ‘I know.’ Sparhawk looked at Vanion. ‘We’ll have to wait for Lenda,’ he said. ‘He’s got the key to the throne-room. I don’t want Ehlana to wake up and find that we’ve chopped her door down.’

      Vanion nodded. ‘I need him for something anyway,’ he said. He put the sword case on the council table and sat down in one of the chairs. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he said, ‘cover Harparin up before Sephrenia gets here. Things like that distress her.’ It was yet another clue, Sparhawk thought. Vanion’s concern for Sephrenia went far beyond what was customary.

      Ulath went to the window, jerked down one of the drapes and turned back, pausing only to kick Harparin’s head back over beside the pederast’s body, then he covered the remains with the drape.

      ‘A whole generation of little boys will sleep more securely now that Harparin’s no longer with us,’ Kalten observed lightly, ‘and they’ll probably mention Ulath in their prayers every night.’

      ‘I’ll take all the blessings I