by T. O. Munro
Nagbadesh glared at the unresponsive gathering. Odestus had noted the chieftain’s fondness for standing when others were sitting. It gave him a rare opportunity to look down on them, an opportunity he exploited now. His amber eyed gaze shifted from face to face while his grey green physiognomy twisted into a scowl of disgust.
Chief Porgud had killed five others in unarmed single combat en route to succeeding Hulgrid as leader of the Blackskulls. But he found something of great interest in the inlaid edge of the council table, rather than return the Redfang leader’s stare.
Vesten the pale human secretary, devoid of martial prowess or skills of command and present here only at Odestus’s insistence, gazed anywhere and everywhere but at the glowering orc.
The nomad captains, comrades in arms of Nagbadesh from the victory at Bledrag field five years earlier, exchanged glances between themselves, in preference to any sign of fellowship with Nagbadesh’s stance.
Only Barnuck and Willem, seated either side of the council’s hooded and masked leader would meet the short one’s gaze. The former, chieftain of the Bonegrinders, glared back with a fierce intensity, his own grey lips curling in contempt. The latter, a hardened career criminal and survivor of fifteen years beyond the barrier, eyed the angry orc with confident disdain.
“I see you cowards too.” Nagbadesh spat. “We wait here when there is half breed flesh and human blood to feed on in the hills. Your blood is cold, Rugan has stolen fire from your veins, or maybe…”
He swung his gaze upon the council leader, braving the masked sparkle of her hidden eyes, intent on some further rejoinder. The mood around the table abruptly shifted. Calculated indifference froze into breath holding expectation, as they perceived a line about to be crossed.
Nagbadesh was stopped short of any unwise utterance by Dema rising to her feet between Willem and Barnuck. The hood slipped from her head so the crowning glory of snakes stirred into instant hissing wakefulness. Her right hand snapped up, not to the hilt of her sword, but to the gauze mask across her eyes. At the gesture, Nagbadesh shut his own eyes and turned his head to the side.
“You forget to whom you speak, Chief Nagbadesh, and by whose authority you are permitted to speak,” the Medusa barked. “While you stumbled through failures in burning elven forests and the cloying swamp of the Saeth levels, I routed the army of Nordsalve with but three hundred soldiers. We sit at council in the untakeable fortress of Listcairn, which my force captured unaided while yours floundered through marsh piss and shit. I am not used to having my judgement questioned least of all in my own council. Perhaps I have made a mistake in having but a single orcish statue for my courtyard. Should Hulgrid’s headless monument need a matched pair I see now where it will come from.”
Nagbadesh persisted but his challenge became a piteous whine. “Why we wait? Redfangs need battle. Battle and blood.”
“That they shall have in plenty, when battle comes your place shall be in the vanguard, Nagbadesh. But this foe we seek is no fool. There are tricks and traps he has planned for us in the hills. We shall draw him down onto the plain but at a time of our choosing, time when it is our trap that is the one being closed.”
“Season is late, lady. We wait, we not get another chance.”
“One chance is all I need before the winter rains come. We will trample our path into Medyrsalve before the winter Goddess feast, bridging the mud and snow with the corpses of Rugan’s force.”
This promise drew a raucous table thumping cheer from the other chiefs and Dema gave a nod of satisfaction. “Now, go about your business. Hold your positions, despite the tempting taunts of Rugan’s skirmishers. I will send word of where we move and when, but be certain there will be blood and victory enough for all of you.”
The chiefs both human and orcish filed out. Odestus gave a quick nod in Vesten’s direction and the secretary bowed low before following the captains out, leaving Dema and Odestus alone. “A word if you would, dear Dema,” Odestus asked. He waved towards a side door. “I have ordered a table set for dinner in the ante-chamber.”
The Medusa’s mask shifted slightly as she raised a hidden eyebrow. She flicked her hood up to calm her reptilian coiffure and replied, “I had thought, little wizard, that you were the guest and I the host. Is this invitation a reproach for my unhospitable behaviour this last week?”
“There are matters I would discuss with you, please,” he insisted deferentially.
“Our Master’s business?”
“That too.”
Still she hesitated. “It has been a long day little wizard, I had in mind to retire early to my chambers.”
Now it was Odestus’s turn to raise an eyebrow and hers to scowl at his doubt. Though he said nothing, she heard him well enough. “Don’t begrudge me my pleasures, little wizard, they have been well earned.”
He shrugged and held open the door to the ante-chamber. “It is not my place to question how you employ your slave, but be wary not to turn him to stone again. I will not answer for his chances of a second complete restoration of health and vigour.” He paused. “He is completely restored?”
Dema swept past him towards the adjoining chamber. “This business of yours, little wizard, let us be about it and quickly so.”
He winced at her brusque manner and resolved to drop all allusion to the sensitive subject of her bed slave. A simple square table was set for two; a servant hovered beside it bearing a carafe of wine. The liquid surface shivered with his nerves.
Odestus, shut the door softly while the Medusa took her seat. The neck of the carafe rattled against the glass as the servant poured, a few drops spilling onto the table. “It is your favourite vintage, my dear. I brought it with me from Undersalve,” the wizard assured her. “I think you will find the meal precisely to your tastes.”
“Are you trying to seduce me little wizard?” she goaded.
“No,” he sat down sulkily. “But you are mocking me.”
She shrugged. “Then you shouldn’t radiate such obvious disapproval for the way I treat my slave, my property. If you insist on being the pompous parent glowering disapproval then don’t be surprised if I play the petulant child.”
Odestus waved the servant away with a command to bring the first dish. “I have never questioned you before in military matters…”
“But you are about to do so now!”
“Do you think it wise to allow the good Captain slave Kimbolt such freedom to roam the fortress to survey our force and our defences?”
The Medusa sampled the wine, wrinkling her nose unhappily at the rich flavour. “There is no harm in Kimbolt,” she asserted.
“He is neither an oafish villager or a hardened outlander exile, Dema. He was, he is, a Captain of the Guard from Sturmcairn. Remember, it was one of his predecessors that escorted us into exile and certain death two decades ago. He is a soldier of the Salved Kingdom.”
“He is a soldier yes, as am I, but there is no Salved kingdom anymore. Our Master’s writ runs in the streets of Morwencairn and a new order is come to the Petred Isle. Kimbolt has learned he must fight and fend for himself, for his own best interest, just as we did.” She jabbed her finger at the table by way of emphasis. “All soldiers are mercenaries, some just take a little longer to realise it.”
Odestus leaned away from the Medusa’s ferocious defence of her pet captain. “Does he remember anything? Does he remember anything of the accident which necessitated my intervention, how he might nearly have been stuck as a permanent companion piece for poor Hulgrid.”
Dema looked at him over her glass, the disquieting sparkle of her eyes stilling his blood even through the gauze, yet he did not turn aside. “How far is his memory returning? What does he recall?” Odestus insisted.
Dema tossed the wine back with a single grimacing swallow. “Of the accident? Nothing. Of his past life? Much, but all of it seen through the lens of soldiering and service. He has his purpose and he is content.”
“His purpose?” Odestus lef
t the question hanging for a moment while Dema’s mouth bent into a grimace.
“Do not mock me, little wizard. I did not think you laid on this occasion simply to berate me about my love life.”
“Indeed not,” Odestus agreed while still unwilling to broach the issue at the heart of his thinking. The servant’s arrival with the main dishes afforded him a moment’s grace to select a suitable gambit. He was pleased to see the rich steak had been prepared to his precise instructions. While his was well done, browned to the point of burnt, hers sat glistening in a puddle of its own red juices. He gathered assorted vegetables from the side dishes while marshalling his thoughts. Before he could speak, however, Dema had summoned the servant back.
“Take this away,” she commanded. “It is overcooked.”
Odestus spluttered over his plate. “Dema, any less cooked and it would be raw!”
She looked at him in puzzlement and gave an indifferent shrug. “This is not how I like it.”
“You didn’t used…” he began, but then stopped. It was five years since their separation when he had been despatched by their Master to the invasion and enslavement of Undersalve. Dema’s magically transformed body had withstood the march of years which had polished his scalp and broadened his girth, but perhaps her tastes had changed.
They were silent for a moment, long experience usually made such periods comfortable. They had no need of prattling empty chatter to be at ease in each other’s company. But this time there was a different harder edge to the silence, each aware that in some way they had disappointed the other. Odestus was relieved when Dema cracked a tangential question. “This necromancer of yours, what was his name?”
“Galen.”
“Is he your equal in wizardry?”
Odestus shrugged. “I am a sorcerer, he a necromancer. The two schools cannot easily be compared. But he is an arrogant bastard and would rate himself my equal at least.”
“And it is this arrogant bastard who shepherds the re-enforcements for our destruction of the half-elf and his host?”
When Odestus gave a shrug of unconvincing acquiescence Dema probed more deeply. “Is he equal to the task our Master has set him? Much of our fortune hangs on him travelling the path you cleared with greater speed and fewer losses.”
“He has enjoyed some recent success. Our Master is pleased with him. Has Maelgrum not told you this?” Odestus’s brow furrowed at the uncharacteristic ignorance of the Medusa.
Dema shrugged. “Our Master does not talk to me anymore.” She pulled a black medallion on a cord from about her neck. “It has been some weeks since this has warmed to herald our Master’s instructions. All that I know of his plans I hear from you.”
Odestus nodded slowly, aware of how much of Maelgrum’s instructions he had had to relay to the Medusa of late. “What has brought you into the Master’s dis-favour?”
She laughed out loud, deeply amused at the suggestion, but further discussion was suspended at the servant’s return with a blood red steak which had barely glimpsed the searing heat of the pan. Servant and Odestus exchanged incredulous glances as the Medusa inspected the dish and judged it fit for her consumption but only just so. Even when they were alone again conversation did not readily resume as Dema first hacked huge chunks off her steak and then, impatiently seized the whole in her hands and bit out a hunk of the barely dead meat.
When Odestus spoke again, it was in part at least to slow the unedifying spectacle. “So, Dema, why does Maelgrum no longer share his confidences with you?”
She swallowed hard and faced him, with blood running down her chin. The answer when it came was as great a surprise as her transformed table manners and altered tastes. “Maelgrum is scared of me.”
Now it was his turn to laugh, to laugh at what was clearly a joke, but she did not laugh back. She faced him still, chewing carefully on some morsel of deep red meat, the mauled steak in her hands held poised for another assault.
“Maelgrum fears you?”
She shrugged indifferent to his belief or disbelief and lowered her mouth once more upon the meat.
“How can he fear you? What harm could you do our Master?”
“He fears what I know,” she mumbled through a mouthful of flesh. “Fears what I might tell him and what he might do because of it. That is why he will not talk to me anymore. Maelgrum and I have exchanged our last words.”
He shook his head incredulously. “How, what can you know? Dema this is insane, tell me. Tell me what it is he fears to hear.”
“I can’t?”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m afraid, Odestus. I’m afraid to speak to you of it, and yet I long to tell you.”
There was anguish in her voice which he ached to soothe. He reached for her bloody hands trying to ignore the juices of her barely cooked repast. “Dema, we have been through enough in our lives together and apart that you can tell me anything.”
For a long moment she looked at him and he held the discomforting sparkle of her shielded eyes, feeling the stillness that assailed his senses, the blood curdling in his veins, yet still he held her gaze. At last she shook her head and shook off his hands. “There are some things, little wizard, that cannot be told. Not yet, perhaps not ever, not even to you.” She stood up, shaking off his grasp. “Thank you for a lovely dinner. Now if you’ll excuse me, that meat has put me in the mood for more. I have a guard captain to fuck.”
His thoughts would not assemble quickly enough to reply before she was gone; his great issue was left unraised. He reached in his robes and drew out the bottle of luminous orange liquid. Dema had posed him a question twenty years earlier and now, in this bottle, the frustrating and fractured search for a solution had finally reached its fruition. The only question he had wanted to ask had been, was she still interested in the answer?
***
“Did you have to tell them?” Hepdida asked softly. “About me, about whom I am?”
At first the girl wondered if she had spoken loud enough to be heard, for Niarmit made no reply. The two cousins lay flat on the ground behind a gnarled tree root. The priestess’s attention remained fixed on the distant canvas city. The flaming braziers and campfires around the uneven conurbation of tents and pens lit up the lowering night clouds in a flicker of inconstant orange. A momentary strengthening of the soft breeze in their faces brought another stench of fresh death to their nostrils.
Hepdida coughed a quiet retch into the palm of her hand, drawing a sharp look of reproach from her cousin. “Sorry,” she mouthed.
Niarmit bent her head close to whisper in the younger girl’s ear. “We may be downwind of them, but we don’t know what other awareness they may have besides a zombie sense of smell? If you must be here it is best to be quiet. I could have waited alone.”
“I didn’t want to stay back there.”
Niarmit pursed her lips and then hissed back, “But that is why I told them, so you could stay safely with Jolander and his lancers. You cannot always be at my side. It is neither safe nor wise. Now they know you are like me, you can be sure of their respect and protection.”
“I am not like you, not at all like you.”
Niarmit’s eyebrows flickered upwards, the faint movement barely perceptible in the midnight darkness. She spoke quickly and softly. “You have lived a life of lies because your father could not keep his vows and your mother could not keep her honour, in consequence of which you have been cast into a world of danger and obligation which you had never expected. I would say you are just like me.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Hush, child and keep watch for their return.”
They were quiet for many minutes. The hard ground numbed Hepdida’s senses, but she would not risk her cousin’s displeasure by moving so much as a muscle. Just when she thought she might never feel her legs again, Niarmit broke the silence. “They are taking too long. By the Goddess let it not have gone ill with them.”
“Tordil does not like T
hom.”
“What of it? Tordil is a consummate scout and Thom knows the ways of these creatures and their masters. Who else would you have had me send?”
“Tordil does not like Thom. He doubts him always.”
“They are both wise enough to put petty personal differences aside. If any mischance has occurred it will not have been a falling out between them. Hold!”
There was a noise to their right, a cracking of a twig. Niarmit shot into a low battle stance, her ancient sword sliding smoothly from the scabbard on her back. Hepdida, scuffled stiff-leggedly half upright.
“Rest easy,” the illusionist’s voice re-assured them as Thom materialised from the darkness creeping along in a low crouch with the elf Captain at his shoulder.
“Did you get lost?” Hepdida asked. “Why are you skulking up on us from the wrong direction?”
“This noisy oaf would have a hoard of zombies at our heels if I would let him. We had to lose them in a gully and work our way round to get back here without a pack of them for company,” Tordil growled.
“It is an ill-disciplined camp,” Thom offered his own interpretation of events. “Their undead pens are insecure and a few of the creatures have escaped to roam beyond the camp limits. A handful smelled us out but I managed to bend their wills to another purpose long enough for our escape”
“We’ll not discuss it here,” Niarmit hissed. “Let us get back to Quintala and the others and you can both tell all then.”
***
Kimbolt preferred it when the snakes were covered, but some nights Dema liked to give them their freedom. While the writhing and hissing of the serpents was always in tune with the Medusa’s mood, he was unsure how far the creatures were truly subordinate to her will. There were moments when the sibilant chorus was in precise harmony with the pitch of Dema’s arousal, but nonetheless Kimbolt kept his hands well below her shoulders lest an over excited snake should inflict a celebratory but lethal bite upon him.
