by T. O. Munro
There was a sudden scream that split the dream as the wind rushed past Niarmit’s face and her father’s voice stopped singing and Niarmit awoke and before she could help herself she had screamed too. A long cry of vertiginous alarm as she looked beneath her dangling feet to the carpet of snow far far below. She was flying without wings, and it was not a dream but a horrible waking nightmare.
There were wings nearby, great shadows of feathers beating rhythmic downdrafts of air around her. But there were hands also, bony fingers gripping beneath bicep and around wrist on each side as she was carried aloft. She twisted her head round looking up past the dirty skinny arms to bare chested but not quite human torsos. They were female, that much was plain, though gravity did little to flatter their scrawny figures. The huge beating wings sprouted from their shoulders, the faces were turned away looking along the line of flight. All Niarmit could see from this angle was a sharp chin, smeared with dark stains that might have been blood, and tangled tresses of hair hanging so heavily that the wind could barely lift them.
“My Lady!”
It was a faint cry from behind her. Niarmit twisted her head to look over her shoulder, past feathered legs and taloned feet to where a blacker patch of darkness hinted at another pair of foul creatures bearing an unwilling burden. “Kaylan?” she called.
“What is this nightmare?”
There was another scream close by and spinning the other way Niarmit saw the third victim of the aerial kidnappers. Twisting and screaming in a struggle that could only loosen the creatures’ grip, to his own terminal disadvantage.
“Fenwell!” She mustered her best parade ground voice to break through the wall of wind and panic that enveloped the Nordsalven manservant. “Be still! Stop wriggling. You will make them drop you.”
It was the last admonition that brought the man’s whimpering compliance. “What is this, Lady?” he shouted a snot specked snivel across the distance between them.
“These are Harpies,” Niarmit shouted back. As her eyes grew accustomed to the shadowy blackness she could just descry another half dozen creatures flying escort to the six who bore the three companions. “Quintala told me about them. They serve Maelgrum and they carry men aloft.” She left out the part about dropping those same men to certain death on the rocks below, the fate that had overwhelmed her half-brother Eadran and so made her Gregor’s heir.
Below her feet the ground was still pristine winter white with a fresh snowfall. There was no way of knowing how deep it was, but she guessed that the harpies were looking for a more certain killing ground than the potential cushion of a blanket of snow.
She shrugged her shoulders, felt the weight of her sword in the scabbard across her back. The bird women had snatched them as they slept, doubtless having lulled the guard, Kaylan it would have been, with the beauty of their singing. Niarmit was grateful that long habit of a life in the wild had left her sleeping fully armed. She flexed her biceps, trying to raise a hand to the hilt of her weapon, but the harpies pulled apart, stretching her arms out and giving them more room to beat their mighty wings. Niarmit arched her back, bringing her booted foot towards her right hand. It was a difficult manoeuvre buffeted by the wind and tugged by her captors and twice she failed, but at last she could touch the top of her boot with her fingertips. It was there, the thin blade of last resort, and in a second she had plucked it from its hiding place.
She drew her arms inwards with all her strength, dragging the harpies together and then as they tried to pull apart she shot out with the blade, stabbing at one in its dirty pale belly. There was a earpiercing shriek, the blade came away red, and suddenly her right arm was free as the wounded harpy shot away. Before its companion could react Niarmit swung herself under its belly, entwining their legs together, wrapping one arm around its waist and pressing the tip of her knife between its sagging breasts.
The creature’s wings were beating in wild panic. Alone it could not bear their combined weight and they were tumbling earthwards in little more than a controlled fall. The birdwoman looked down at the ferocious limpet clamped to its chest. “Fool!” It cawed in thickly accented common tongue. “You will destroy us both.”
“You’re the one with the wings,” Niarmit barked. “You work it out.”
There was a flurry of other wings around them, wiry hands grasped Niarmit’s ankles and prized them free of their leader’s body. Niarmit tried to kick the newcomers off, but their grip was strong and they kept her flailing feet at arms’ length as, borne now by three of the vile birdwomen, the little formation slowly began to regain height.
“You’re not going to drop me,” Niarmit shouted a command at the lead harpy’s chin.
“No, we not drop you,” the harpy gave a flat assurance as though the thought had never even been entertained.
“You’re going to put me down, slow and safe.”
“No, we not put you down.” The same untroubled disinterest in Niarmit’s demands.
“Me and my companions.”
“No, not you, not your companions.”
“Do it or I will cut you. I will slice open your belly and use your guts as a climbing rope.”
The harpy shook with some strange sensation, it might have been laughter.
“You not make threats, not while we hold your companions.”
The harpy looked to left and right and Niarmit followed suit. Kaylan and Fenwell were now more tightly confined with a fluttering harpy on the end of each outstretched limb. Carried by a quartet of flying stretcher bearers the thief and the manservant were quite helpless in their captor’s grip.
“We drop one of them now!” The harpy said. “We drop the other one the next time you scratch me.”
“No!”
The harpy made some throaty squawk and there was a long scream from Niarmit’s right. She glanced that way to see unburdened harpies drifting upwards as the beat of their wings adjusted to the lightened load. She twisted her head round to see the dark speck of a man, twisting and turning, limbs flailing for purchase on the insubstantial air as he plummeted towards the ground pursued by the thin wail of his fear. Niarmit turned left and there was Kaylan, pale but still securely held by his bird-women bearers.
“You killed Fenwell!” Niarmit told the harpy.
“We kill many. Whiny man not first not last. We not kill you, Master not want you dead, but we kill him.” The creature jerked its head towards Kaylan. “Drop your knife, little girl, or other man falls.”
“If you drop him, then I will kill you,” Niarmit said, pressing the blade against the creature’s filthy flesh by way of emphasis. “I will kill all of you.”
“Brave words from wingless girl a thousand feet above the ground.”
“I don’t need wings, I’ve got a knife, a knife and you on the end of it.”
There was an exchange of cawing squawks between the agitated harpies as the leader steadily beat her wings carrying them ever further across the white cloaked reaches of Morsalve. “Simple,” her harpy announced. “If you kill me, we drop him. If we drop him, you kill me. We not drop, you not kill.”
“Stalemate, then?”
“But we still fly.” The harpy gave an extra powerful flex of her wings by way of emphasis. “Master wants you, little girl. Master wants you very bad.”
***
“Why such urgency, Captain?”
Giseanne had followed at his bidding, hastening along the corridor, just him and her as he had asked. But Kimbolt’s agitated manner and the nervous flick of his eyes as they walked were doing little to ease the Lady Regent’s disquiet.
“What is it? What have you uncovered?” There was a strain in her voice as she demanded answers.
“The Princess is remembering,” he told her.
“Everything?”
“Some things, things you should hear, your Highness.”
Giseanne’s next question went unuttered as there was crash of noise from behind the door to Hepdida’s room. Captain and Lady Regent exchan
ged a look of alarm, each distrusting their own ears hoping the other had heard no commotion. But then there was another indubitable clatter of an object falling.
Kimbolt shouldered open the door. Giseanne following in his wake.
Elise lay on the floor, an ominous pool of red spreading out beneath her from some wound other than the ugly gash upon her head. An icy gale whipped through the broken shutters. The fragments of the chair which had shattered them lay in pieces across the stone floor, and through the yawning opening all that could be seen was the black of the night.
“Hepdida!” Kimbolt ran for the balcony staring into the darkness of the palace garden for some glimmer of the fleeing girl.
“Mistress Elise,” Giseanne called him back. “She is grievously hurt.”
As Kimbolt turned from the fruitless survey of the obsidian night, he saw the Lady Regent kneeling on the floor, her skirts dipped in Elise’s blood. She squeezed the herbalist’s hand. “She still lives,” Giseanne called out. She rose and took two steps towards the door calling, “send for a priest! Deaconness Rhodra, Bishop Sorenson, bid them hurry!”
And then Kimbolt saw her erupting from hiding beyond the far side of the bed. Hepdida! A wiry figure wielding a bloodied poker, the sallow yellow pallor had returned to her skin and the madness was in her eyes as she leapt towards Giseanne. The Lady Regent turned, arm high in horrified defence. Hepdida lunged, the poker raised above her head, already beginning a downward arc of dazzling speed. Kimbolt was four strides away and had but half-finished one of them. There was a grunt, Elise’s hand snaked out and caught Hepdida’s ankle. The girl toppled off balance. Giseanne leant back and it was the tip of the poker alone that scored a bloody line the length of the Lady Regent’s forearm.
Then Kimbolt barrelled into the murderous invalid, bowling her other. They rolled together across the floor. The poker skittered across the tiles. He had her in his arms holding her tight. Her feet flailed kicking his shins. Her head shot back crashing into the bridge of his nose with eye-watering force. She wrestled and howled in his grasp. “It’s all right,” he cried to the frightened girl he knew was trapped within. “It’s all right. We’ll make it all right again.”
And over the shoulder of the wriggling lunatic he saw the Lady Giseanne, a white faced spectator, blood dripping freely from her wounded arm. Others were rushing in, white cloaked priests and priestesses rushing to the aid of the wounded. But none were in a hurry to approach Kimbolt and the heaving maniac whom he could barely restrain within the compass of his arms.
There was an agony in his heart which quite dwarfed the pain when Hepdida bit hard and deep into the fleshy part of his hand. His feet scrabbled for purchase as she rocked from side to side, trying to shake free from him. He dared not let go. Guards were arriving now, guards with spears. He dared not let go.
And there was Rugan, his expression darker than the night, the black voids of his eyes bereft of cheer or mercy. He flicked his fingers, muttered some small incantation, and the thrashing banshee in Kimbolt’s arms went suddenly still and rigid. But Kimbolt dared not let go, not even when the guards lifted them both from the floor and brought great chains to wrap around her feet and hands.
“It will be all right Hepdida,” he said. “It will be all right.”
Two priestesses hustled Giseanne from the room, her injured arm held high. She gave Kimbolt a blank stare as she left, not the hostility of her husband, but a look of shocked incomprehension.
Then they took Elise, lifted none too gently onto a simple litter and attended by a single curate.
And then they came for Hepdida as she began to stir and howl within the confines of her chains, and Kimbolt tried to soothe her. “It will be all right, Hepdida, it will be all right,” he said without conviction.
***
The square roof of the citadel tower made a fine vantage point. It had held the beacon pyre that had been lit the night that Sturmcairn fell, but now only a few grains of ash remained of the conflagration which had once raged. Haselrig drew his cloak close around him with a shiver that owed more to the memory of that night than the chill of the morning air. He had been a hundred leagues away at the other end of the chain of beacon towers in the captured fortress of Sturmcairn, desperate but ultimately unable to prevent the signal being given to alert the sleeping realm of the Salved people.
The panic and consternation on that tower top had been absolute. Even Dema had been stunned into inactivity by the firing of the beacon, but Dema was dead now slain in the pass of Tandar. The remains of Xander the traitor prince had been poured slowly into a makeshift grave. Kimbolt, the Captain who had lit the beacon, was gone too, burned to a cinder by elven flame. Of the four key players in that roof top drama only Haselrig alone remained, and for all their fears and the Master’s fury, Maelgrum’s plans had proceeded virtually unimpeded.
The undead wizard played a long game. It was seventeen years since that night deep in the mountain beneath the citadel, when the three of them had released the enslaver of the Salved from his prison. There had been no immediate fulfilment of Xander’s hunger for revenge, only a malevolent patience by the Dark Lord in building force and allies to recapture his old domain, one piece at a time.
Five years ago it had been annexing the province of Undersalve in the name of the desert nomads. This year it had been Morsalve. Next year, when summer came, it would be the turn of Medyrsalve and the last provinces of the Vanquisher’s kingdom. Haselrig paced the stone platform. He had initially served through greed, though back then he had called it ambition. Now he stayed through fear. He had embarked on a journey at the side of a master of unimaginable cruelty, and there was no choice but to carry on, no escape, no alternative but to see it through. He could only hope that, unlike his companions from the signal tower of Sturmcairn, he was still standing at Maelgrum’s moment of ultimate victory.
His reflections were interrupted by a guttural grunt from the orc on watch to the East. The creature waved his three subordinates over, gesticulating towards the horizon where the low morning Sun still dazzled. Squinting through splayed fingers the antiquary could see the dark specks of distant birds.
“Fetch the Master,” Haselrig ordered.
The biggest orc glared down at him. “Camrak give orders to orcs, not little man.”
“Fine,” Haselrig replied. “You do it, Camrak. You might want to get some extra guards sent up here as well.”
“Glubnut, go tell Master. Bird-women come back.”
“And?” Haselrig raised an eyebrow to prompt the big orc.
“And…. And hurry,” Camrak concluded with a glower at the antiquary.
Glubnut disappeared down the stairway while his commander dared Haselrig to utter some word of rebuke. He heard something in the antiquary’s silence and answered it anyway. “Three orcs enough for little human prisoners. We not need more.”
Haselrig smiled and backed towards the stairway entrance, always anxious to guard his retreat in case anything should go amiss. He had discovered over long years in Maelgrum’s service that orcish arrogance was usually a presage to some form of disaster.
The flying monsters’ appearance was deceptive. Their span, far broader than the greatest of eagles, meant they could be discerned when still well over a league away and it was a long ten minutes before the clumps of winged assassins were close enough to begin circling around the tower top for a landing. They had brought only two prisoners with them but they had the most important one. Haselrig saw the flash of red hair on the slim figure clinging to the lead harpy’s belly. The other prisoner was a man, stretched between four flying maidens who glided down to a perfect landing in the narrow space of the roof top. The captive wrestled against their grasp but, at a barked command from Camrak, two orcs flung themselves upon him pinning him to the tower with their weight as they wrapped bindings around his legs and arms.
As the first four harpies cleared the platform, the lead harpy came in for her landing, attended by two followers who
held the Lady Niarmit’s flailing feet. Haselrig stayed back in the shadow of the stairway, more from fear of being shat on again than from any more mortal concern.
Perhaps that was why he didn’t entirely see what happened next, perhaps that was why he didn’t die. There was some squawk of panic from the harpy leader and Niarmit swung from her belly towards the stone floor. The harpy was flapping frantic for height but there was a drunken disco-ordination to her movements and she slid sideways onto the tower. Red blood was spewing from a jagged wound ripped up through her belly, or at least it was mostly blood.
The other two bird-women had released Niarmit with a sudden jerk, raising their wings high for a downbeat that would drive them yards further into the air. But their passenger must have leapt in the instant that Haselrig blinked for what he saw next was the red haired woman hanging one handed from a harpy’s taloned foot as the creature tried unsuccessfully to drag their combined weight into the air. The circling harpies cawed and shrieked their alarm at the sudden disaster. One of them swept down to buffet the furious prisoner with its wings and shake her free from its desperate companion. There was a flash of silver as Niarmit drew a long steel blade from over her shoulder and a yellow toothed harpy’s head rolled across the platform to rest by Haselrig’s foot.
He looked up, one headless harpy was strutting a faltering walk across the rooftop until it toppled over the battlements. Another of the bird-women lay sprawled against a merlon, its blood mingling with that of its dying leader.
An orcish battle cry drew his attention. Camrak’s two minions were circling towards the ferocious woman and her blood red sword. They were spreading apart but she was quick and that blade was deadly. Orcish armour was stoutly made with a lattice of metal plates, but the first orc might as well have been wearing a night shirt for all the good it did him as the woman dived and drove and the point of her weapon emerged with a hiss from the creature’s back.
