“Yes of course,” said Minuet, trying to smile through her tears. “It's not that I don't have faith in you and Fuzz.”
“I know Mother,” said Rose as she hugged her again. I'll miss you and Father terribly. I know these are frightening times, but I promise we'll be back.”
Minuet smiled and nodded as Fuzz took Rose's hand and followed Yann-Ber aboard the Sea Sprite.
Rose, Fuzz and Yann-Ber stood at the railing and waved until Hebraun and Minuet were mere specks that vanished with the horizon.
“You've no idea how grateful I am to have the two of you with me,” said Yann-Ber, speaking first. “I wasn't sure how much chance of success there would be with me alone. I'm actually starting to think that this might work.”
“It's a privilege to help you, Yann-Ber,” said Fuzz. “We're prepared to have you advise us non-stop if needs be, in order to be convincing enough to pull it off. You're the one who knows your family.”
“Yes,” said Yann-Ber with a weary nod. “And now, if you all don't mind, I really need to go below and find my bunk. Besides, the pair of you haven't had a shred of a chance for a nuptial holiday, or what we call a gouel priedel in Head. Perhaps this voyage will suffice for a time, aye?”
Rose went scarlet but smiled appreciatively at Yann-Ber. When at last he went below, Rose leant her head against Fuzz in the biting breeze and studied the grey blanket of clouds. “It's winter Fuzz, and it really looks it. Those clouds look like snow clouds.”
“Isn't it early?” he said, looking up.
“Not at all. You've just turned into a southerner, down south all these years.”
“I s'pose you're right. I hope Edward, Mary and the dragons get back to the caves before it snows. Edward's scarcely seen more than a light dusting.”
“You worry. And I love you, Fuzz.”
“I think he's grown quite a bit since summer, don't you?”
“Yes,” said Rose with a laugh. “It was wonderful seeing him, and we'll soon see him again, too. Now be glad he's in such good hands and let's do what Yann-Ber suggests, shall we?”
“Excellent idea, my dear.”
***
“I have my northern division on Ashmore in sight of the Ash Mountains,” said Captain Brutus as Spitemorta studied his image in her skinweler, “and I've just now been reached by a messenger from my southern division with word that they are in position across the Gold River from Ash Fork.”
“Good. Report to me when you've implemented our plans. Make certain that it is Hebraun who responds.”
“Yes my queen,” said Brutus as he thumped his chest. “You can count on me.”
“Glad to hear it Captain,” she said as she let the skinweler go blank. She sat for a moment, staring wistfully at the skinweler, wishing she had left one of the globes with Abaddon. “This journey would've been so much easier had I been able to speak with him,” she murmured. “How I miss him.” She ran her hand across her bulging belly as she thought about the new life within it. “How could I love another child as I do Abaddon? Yet how could I not?”
She shook the thoughts from her head. They were nearly to the west end of Lake Loxmere. She had to be ready when they disembarked and made their way through the Jutwoods to the serene Elven village of
Dúradán Deannaigh. And serene it would be, too, for they had not seen a single Elf the entire way upriver. “At last,” she said, surging up the stair with a new energy lightning her steps. “Something's finally happening. Maybe now we'll get to the end of all this.”
Demonica was already topside, her wings and robe standing out stark white against the looming silhouettes of the trees of the Jutwoods. The trolls were busy hauling the ships up against the quays at the west end of the lake, near the mouth of the upper Loxmere River. Spitemorta gave her quite a surprise by smiling at her with fierce enthusiasm.
“Your Marooderyn Imshee await your order to disembark the vessels, which we can do any time now Fnadi-yaphn,” said Demonica, as a tinge of amusement replaced her surprise.
“Do you think I should lead them or follow them?”
Demonica tapped her pursed lips and considered. “Lead them to just outside of Dúradán Deannaigh, I'd think, then send them in to do what they do best.”
“What they do best, Demonica?”
“Certainly. Slaughter Elves, Fnadi-yaphn Bras. But don't take my word for it. Let's go see for ourselves.”
Down went the gangplank.
Spitemorta held her hands high as a signal to the trolls before tramping off the ship behind Demonica. “Yes,” she said quietly to Demonica's wings, “I'm looking forward to it. I may even join in the fray.”
“My dear!” barked Demonica with a hoarse laugh. “The way you enjoy blood and mayhem, I seriously doubt if you'll be able to keep yourself from it.”
Quietly, long lines of trolls filed off of each of the seven ships, to muffle along the path in the moonlight behind them without a single utterance. Owls boomed and hooted through the timber hither and yon. It was a long walk, a good five leagues at least, but every single troll kept silent. When they reached the mouth of the Gold River, Spitemorta and Demonica halted and waited for their six hundred and eighty-one trolls to gather around. Spitemorta addressed them in hushed tones, telling them that Duradan Deannaigh lay up the Loxmere another two leagues or so, a good half mile away from the river. From here on she and her winged servant would follow.
Spitemorta was delighted to see that stealth was going to be no problem at all. In spite of how clumsy and brutish the trolls had seemed aboard ship, they now slipped away from the path and through the woods as silently as cats. The Elves were not going to know what hit them.
***
The white moon busily sliced through cloud after cloud, indifferent to the conflagration below, as owls echoed in the woods. Every single building in Ash Fork was ablaze, hissing and popping as sparks dashed aloft in the roiling columns of smoke and flame.
Captain Brutus stood proudly, studying his accomplishment as children whimpered and bawled and soldiers jerked wailing women away from the corpses of their husbands. He roared with laughter at the sight of a tottering old woman in her nightgown when she was knocked unconscious by a soldier who struck her from behind with the hilt of his cutlass as she tried to scoop up a terrified little naked boy in her blanket. As he looked on, bouncing on his heels from time to time, with his hands clasped behind his back, his men lined up every surviving citizen of Ash Fork in front of the burning tavern. There they huddled in wide eyed horror, watching everything that was familiar being consumed by the fire, as a little sergeant walked up and down their ranks whacking them here and there with his riding crop. He smacked a young woman across the face with it in time for a straw haired youth to step out of line and yank it away from him. At this, another soldier lunged forth and ran the young man through.
Brutus walked slowly up and down the lines. A freckle faced boy of about thirteen with fiery red hair lunged at him and spat on his shiny plate hauberk. Brutus stopped short and pulled out a cloth and ran it over his armor as two of his sergeants grabbed the boy and yanked him back. The boy was not cowed in the least and squirmed with fury against their grasp.
“Now I like a boy with courage,” said Brutus, beckoning with his fingers for the little sergeant's riding crop, as the roof of the tavern behind them collapsed into the flames. “But I don't much care for a boy who's just plain stupid.” And with that, he took the crop and struck the boy so hard that he knocked out a couple of teeth.
A woman cried out from the lines and a younger red haired boy burst into the open and ran at Brutus, managing to plant a kick that doubled him over. “Stinking bully!” screamed the boy.
Several soldiers broke into howls of laughter until Brutus silenced them with a murderous look.
“Hey, little cachu ci!” he snarled, seizing the boy by the arms like a lobster. “There's a lesson you'll be learning before you face eternity! You've made a big mistake this day, whelp!” He him sh
ook soundly and flung him into the arms of his men. “All right! Put the other one right here!” he barked, pointing to the ground at this feet.
They obliged by tripping and flinging the boy face down.
“So!” said Brutus as he kicked the boy in the temple. The boy grabbed his face in time for Brutus to kicked him soundly in the ribs, knocking him onto his back. “I suppose you think you're a big man, aye?”
The boy thrust out his chin and stared at him with silent bug-eyed rage.
“Good,” said Brutus with a quick nod. “I see you have some brains. And since you have, I have an important job for you.”
The boy's look of hatred softened with a tinge of surprise but he said nothing.
“So, what's your name, boy?”
“Herio.”
“Well Herio,” said Brutus as he glanced away for a moment at the woman who had cried out, who was now struggling with a couple of soldiers. “Must be their mother,” he thought, turning back to Herio. “So you know that skinny boy yonder who just kicked me, aye?”
Herio nodded warily as he dared to get up onto an elbow.
“Well, I'm a soldier, Herio. I can hardly allow my prisoners to just up and attack me whenever they want to, wouldn't you agree?”
Herio glanced at the soldiers holding the other boy with white hot alarm.
“What's that you say, Herio?” said Brutus balefully. “I didn't quite hear you.”
“I wasn't trying to say anything!”
“Well Herio, as I was saying, I can't abide such behavior from the enemy. Now, I'm going 'o send you to King Hebraun so you can tell him what's going on down here. Understand?”
“But I can't go, 'cause I've never been anywhere 'cept Ash Fork,” he said, sitting up wide eyed. “I don't know how to get there.”
Brutus smiled as he suddenly raised his armored boot and with a lunge tramped Herio flat onto the ground again with all his weight. “Don't worry, my young man,” he said, grinding his heel into Herio's chest until it tore his shirt. “One of my men will be going with you to see you there. Of course you'll want to be certain to take advantage of his service the whole way, because I'm only givin' you a week to get there and back. And meanwhile, I intend for to hang one of these fine Ash Forkers each day you're gone.”
“So if I didn't get back in a week, you'd start hanging people?” said Herio with white-lipped horror.
“Of course not, you snot faced little idiot,” said Brutus with a smile as he scraped his heel across Herio's collarbone hard enough to make him bleed. “We start today. You might even get back sooner than a week.” He threw back his head with a volley of laughter. He suddenly sobered. “Oh don't you worry, pen cachu! I'll be right impartial about it. I'll pick villagers randomly without regard to age or gender. Ye can't expect me to get much fairer than that.”
By now, Herio was allowed to get up onto an elbow in his terror, but his arm felt like aspic.
“Hey!” shouted Brutus as he haled a soldier. “Sergeant Dunvel, come over here! Your job is to see this little curse to Castle Niarg!”
The ugly flat faced man gave a nod and a toothy grin and came directly over.
“But first,” said Brutus, raising his hand, “the boy needs to know I mean business, so we're going to have him watch the first hanging!” He turned to the soldiers who still held the boy who kicked him. “You men!” he barked. “Hang the little bastard!”
“No!” screamed Herio with every fiber in him, as he wrenched free of Dunvel's grasp, only to be grabbed and thrown furiously to the ground. At once, Dunvel had him pinned with a knee on each arm, plastering his face with his fetid spit as he smacked his head from side to side with his beefy fists.
“No! Please! Not my baby!” screamed the woman as she wrenched free to flail at Brutus with her fists.
Brutus knocked her to the ground with decisive fury. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he bellowed. “I gave you an order! Hang the brat!”
Chapter 101
Herio awoke to the sound of busy wee toenails scuffling along a corky ridge of bark overhead as a tiny chickadee searched for hibernating grubs. The cloudless dawn sky above was already turning blue. At the sound of a metallic clink from a link of his shackles, the bird chipped and flitted away. He jerked, giving a furious scratch at the fleas which infested the tattered unicorn blanket which Sergeant Dunvel had resentfully shoved at him. It was still far too cold to do without it. Jays called.
“Wake up cachu ci!” barked Dunvel as he kicked him in the ribs hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
He cried out in pain as he struggled to get his breath. He sat up, drawing his shackles tight around the trunk of the small maple he had straddled all night.
At once, Dunvel had a knife at his throat. “There, cachu ci,” he said, tossing the keys into the leaves by his shackles. “Undo 'em. And if ye do anything quick at all, I'll haul your stinkin' red head to Niarg in a bag.”
Herio stretched out his arms, mindful of the blade at his Adam's apple. He had to try several times to unlock the shackles, since his hands were trembling convulsively and Dunvel simply refused to let him lean forward. The blade stank fiercely of raw egg and foul spit. Wave after wave of white-hot fear surged through him as he fumbled. He could picture his own throat being cut. He could picture himself somehow grappling away the knife and running Dunvel through. Somehow he would manage to stay alive because someday he would get Dunvel for this, after he got Brutus for killing his little brother.
At last he was astride his unicorn, a small dappled cyflymder-Dúlish cross. The thought of spurring it and dashing away through the timber had died the moment he saw how both mounts were already tethered together. He watched Dunvel champing open-mouthed at the last of the travel rations like some kind of dog. His stomach gnawed and he looked away.
“Hey cachu ci!” barked Dunvel. “Want some? Hey! Don't you look away! Do you want some?”
Herio looked but made no reply.
“You'd better answer me 'fore I come over there an' make you. Are you hungry?”
“Herio nodded ever so slightly.
“Well, ye ain't gettin' any 'cause this is the last, last little bit,” he said with beady-eyed merriment as he came up close to chew. He wiped his hands first on his breeches and then in the leaves, as he belched loud enough for it to echo amongst the trees. He began untying reins. “We'll reach Castle Niarg in less than an hour, I'd reckon,” he said with a grunt, as he threw his leg over his ponderous ceffyl arfog unicorn. “Now, ye'd best be rememberin' what the captain said, or else a lot more of your stinkin' Ash Forkers are goin' 'o swing.” He roared with laughter and smacked Herio's unicorn on the rump, making it rear and roll its eyes before spurring his own mount off through the leaves.
Herio stared straight ahead, tears streaming down his cheeks, watching his unicorn's ears turn this way and that, as Dunvel went to great lengths to describe how his little red-haired brother had kicked and kicked and turned blue as he died. At last the castle loomed before them, ending the ordeal.
Dunvel smoothed and straightened his black sash with its embroidered blood red hourglass and grinned a toothy grin as they rode up to the gate. “You remember why you're here, cachu ci,” he said.
Herio kept his eyes forward and gave a curt nod only to show that he had heard.
“Halt, right there!” hollered the guard from the embrasure above the portcullis.
“Ha,” thought Herio at the sight of the look which flickered across Dunvel's face, though not a twitch of expression managed to surface on his own.
“What business has one bearing an escutcheon such as yours doing here, sir?” echoed the guard.
“We have an urgent message for your king!” hollered Dunvel.
“Urgent? And who might this urgent message be from?”
“Are you blind, man?” cried Dunvel. “It ought to be obvious!”
“We are right well credited by this tottering sack of hog dung, wearing the black sash and red hourglass o
f sorcery and treachery, if by the mere sight of him he fancies that we can read his mind!” called out Captain Bernard as he stepped beside the guard. “Unfortunately, since he's so frightfully ugly that it would be impossible to read his mind, we must assume that his bloated head merely makes him forget his place in a country not his own! So be it! I'll let His Majesty know at once! In the meantime, though, you'd best stay exactly where you are, since I've ordered a score of long bowmen to loose arrows if they see you move at all!”
“Pennau Cachu,” snarled Dunvel as he huffed a sigh and sat back against the cantle of his saddle to stay exactly where he was. Suddenly they were surrounded by two dozen pikemen who escorted them inside the castle walls where they were ordered to dismount and were seen to the throne room where Hebraun and Minuet beheld them with icy curiosity.
Hebraun studied Dunvel and Herio. “I'm told you claim to have an urgent message for me,” he said. “You're in here now, so what is it?”
Dunvel gave a haughty nod at Herio, catching his eye with a menacing look as he did so.
Herio stood proud and straight as he met Hebraun's eyes. He could see at once that he stood before a kind and just monarch. “Sire,” he said, his voice thick with the pain he had endured, “I'm Herio, son of Ymladd of Ash Fork. Goll has invaded Niarg and has burnt Ash Fork, to the ground.” He paused to steady himself. “I've been forced to come here to tell you that all the people are being held on pain of their lives and will only be released when you come in person to Ash Fork.”
Hebraun and Minuet shared raised eyebrows. “I see,” he said as he resumed studying them. “So just what happens after I've made my appearance?”
“I'm afraid I'm merely a lowly sergeant, sire,” said Dunvel with shrug of contrived innocence. “I'm not privy to that information.”
“Yea? Well, I'll bet you can tell me exactly what will happen to the people of Ash Fork if I don't come.”
Dunvel gave Herio a poke in the back.
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 111
