To Ride Hell’s Chasm
An epic fantasy standalone novel from the author of the stunning Wars of Light and Shadow series. When Princess Anja fails to appear at her betrothal banquet, the tiny, peaceful kingdom of Sessalie is plunged into intrigue.When Princess Anja fails to appear at her betrothal banquet, the tiny, peaceful kingdom of Sessalie is plunged into intrigue. Two warriors are charged with recovering the distraught king's beloved daughter. Taskin, Commander of the Royal Guard, whose icy competence and impressive life-term as the Crown's right-hand man command the kingdom's deep-seated respect; and Mykkael, the rough-hewn newcomer who has won the post of Captain of the Garrison – a scarred veteran with a deadly record of field warfare, whose 'interesting' background and foreign breeding are held in contempt by court society.As the princess's trail vanishes outside the citadel's gates, anxiety and tension escalate. Mykkael's investigations lead him to a radical explanation for the mystery, but he finds himself under suspicion from the court factions. Will Commander Taskin's famous fair-mindedness be enough to unravel the truth behind the garrison captain's dramatic theory: that the resourceful, high-spirited princess was not taken by force, but fled the palace to escape a demonic evil?
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Voyager
TO RIDE HELL’S CHASM
Janny Wurts
To Ride Hell’s Chasm
For the warriors, may they keep their hearts open.
For those who make decisions and hold sway over others, may they do the same, only more so.
And for all who have given or lost their lives because one or the other fell short — this story.
Table of Contents
The closet was dark, dusty, stifling, and the pound of her heart, ragged thunder in her ears. Her breaths went and came in strangling gasps. If death took her now, it would come filled with horrors, and strike without sound from behind…
IN THE LONG SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAIN SPRING TWILIGHT, UNDER THE GLOW OF A THOUSAND LANTERNS, ANJA, CROWN PRINCESS OF SESSALIE, failed to appear at the banquet to celebrate her official betrothal. The upset and shock caused by her disappearance had not yet shaken the lower citadel, though more than an hour had passed since the midnight change in the watch.
The public festivities continued, oblivious. Farmwives and tradesmen still danced in the streets, while the unruly crowds spilling out of the wine shops teemed and shouted, a hotbed for fist fights and arguments. Mykkael, Captain of the Garrison, kept a trained ear on the tone of the roistering outside. He listened, intent, to the off-key singers who staggered arm in arm past the keep. The noise ebbed and flooded to the tidal surge of bodies, jamming the bye lanes and thoroughfares.
The racket funnelled into the cramped stone cell requisitioned as his private quarters. Captain Mykkael sighed, rasped his bracer across the itch of two days’ stubble, then propped a weary hip against the trestle where his sword lay, unsheathed. The hard-used steel cried out for a whetstone and rag to scour a light etching of rust. Mykkael cursed the neglect, but knew better than to hope for the time to care for his weapon.
The taps in the taverns would scarcely run dry on this night. Landlords had stocked their cellars for weeks, while the folk from Sessalie’s farthest-flung valleys crammed into the citadel to honour Princess Anja’s brilliant match. Their exuberance was justified. A marriage alliance with the Kingdom of Devall promised them access to the coveted wealth of the sea trade. Yet if craft shops and merchants had cause to rejoice, no soldier who bore the crown’s falcon blazon was likely to rest before cock’s crow.
Twenty hours on duty, with no respite in sight, Mykkael grumbled, ‘At least on a battlefield, a man got the chance to lay down his shield after sundown.’
He stretched his knotted back, steeled himself for discomfort, then clamped iron hands around his thigh above the knee. A grunt ripped through his teeth as he raised the game limb on to the plank trestle that served him as weapon rack and desk. There, forced to pause, he blinked through running sweat, while the twinge of pinched nerves rocked him dizzy.
Mother of all thundering storms, how he ached! Far more than a man should, who had no trace of grey. Still young, still vigorous, Mykkael kept his sable hair cropped from blind habit, as he had through his years as a mercenary.
Nonetheless, his career as a hired sword was finished. Cut short, with the spoils and pay shares laid aside not enough to sustain him in retirement. His fiercely kept dream, of an apple-bearing orchard and a pasture to breed horses, lay as far beyond grasp as the moon.
‘Damn lady fortune for a cross-grained crone.’ Mykkael glowered at his leg, stretched across the tabletop like so much worthless carrion. His infirmity disgusted him. Three tavern brawls nipped in the bud, two street riots quelled, and a knife fight in the market started by a Highgate lordling who was fool enough to try to nab a cutpurse; scarcely enough exertion to wind him, yet the pain clamped down with debilitating force the longer he stayed on his feet.
‘Borri’ vach!’ he swore under his breath. The uncouth, rolling gutturals of the southern desert dialect matched his savage mood as he unhooked the looped studs at his calf. No help for the embarrassment, that canvas breeches looked ridiculous under his blazoned captain’s surcoat. Yet the more genteel appointments of trunk hose and hightop boots had proved to be too binding. Mykkael jerked up the cuff, laying bare his crippled knee with its snarl of livid scars.
Even in hindsight, he took little comfort from the troop surgeon’s final prognosis. ‘Powers be thanked, young man, you’re still hale and breathing. With a joint break like yours, and a septic laceration, I’d have dosed you senseless, and roped you out straight and taken that leg with a bone saw.’
