Falcon Warrior (The Swordswoman Book 3)

by Malcolm Archibald

  Eyota smiled and slid her hand upward.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Melcorka heard the slight sound. She turned over in her bed, pulled the furs over her face and closed her eyes. It did not matter what the noise was. She was safe in her own rooms in her own palace and with Chaytan commanding the guards she had nothing to fear.

  She felt the man beside her stir. 'Keep still,' she ordered. He moved again so she pushed him away. 'Get out,' she watched him rise and stumble, naked in the dark. He turned once, opened the door and left. The door closed. Melcorka turned around again and closed her eyes.

  That noise came a second time.

  Melcorka grunted and sat up. She contemplated shouting for a servant, decided not to, threw back the covers and stood up. 'Is somebody there?' She should have kept that man after all. What was his name again? She shrugged; she could not remember. It did not matter; there were always more and then there was Enapay when she wanted him.

  The sudden flare of light temporarily blinded her. Throwing up her hand to shield her eyes, she stepped back. 'Who's there?'

  'Your death is here.'

  The voice was deep and harsh and terribly familiar.

  'Wamblee?' Melcorka reached for Defender, cursing in sudden panic when she remembered she had hung it on the wall of another room rather than have it spoil the luxury of her sleeping room. She looked around as the light subsided to a dull glow. The wall gaped open at her side and men stepped into her room from some secret passageway.

  'Wamblee indeed,' Wamblee said. 'You will know these people.'

  Enapay was next, followed by three feather-bedecked priests. They all crowded into Melcorka's room, pushing her against the wall.

  'What's this?' Melcorka stalled for time, reaching for her head-band.

  Enapay was faster, grabbing the band and holding it tight. 'I know that you are not Eyota,' he said. 'Only this band gives you power and authority over our people.'

  'Enapay?' Melcorka said. 'You are my man! We have shared my bed!'

  'Many men have shared your bed,' Enapay said caustically as he pushed her away.

  Melcorka looked behind her, calculating the distance to her living quarters, where Defender was. Wamblee casually knocked her to the ground with a backswing of his hand.

  'How does it feel, Eyota of Cahokia as you call yourself?' He asked. 'How does it feel to know you are going to die?'

  'Chaytan!' Melcorka shouted as loudly as she could. 'Chaytan! I need you!'

  'He can't hear you,' Enapay said. 'Nobody can. 'You strengthened the wall, remember?' His smile contained no humour at all. 'I think your pet Lakota will have troubles enough without considering some foreign woman.'

  'That was your idea to strengthen the wall,' the realisation bit Melcorka. 'You planned this!'

  Enapay laughed. 'You're correct. Did you really think that you, a foreigner, could replace the king and remain in power, pretending to be Eyota? A long dead woman?' He laughed.

  'You fooled me,' Melcorka said.

  'It was not hard to fool you,' Enapay said. 'You thought your subjects worshipped your every word!' He looked up at Wamblee. 'Shall I kill her now?'

  'No.' Wamblee said. 'That would be far too easy. The people must see their ruler humiliated; they must see how foolish it is to try and take my place. Hold her.'

  'I won't go so easily!' Melcorka kicked out, catching Enapay a shrewd blow in the groin. She grunted in instant, if momentary satisfaction, ducked under Wamblee's clumsy grab, pushed one of the priests away and dived for the door to her living quarters. The other two priests stepped in her way, both holding great stone-headed maces. Melcorka tried to jink past, realised that there was no room and returned to the room. Reaching under her pillow, she had a momentary horror of being seen naked and grabbed at her clothes; if she was to be displayed to her people at least she would be decent.

  That small delay cost her dear as one of the priests took hold of her tunic and held tight. Melcorka pulled away; the tunic ripped, leaving her with only the hem and one of the small copper falcons. She swore, slipped the falcon in her mouth for safe keeping and turned away.

  The only escape was the hole in the wall through which Wamblee had entered. Melcorka dived for it and found herself in a narrow passage that spiralled both up and down. She headed downward, saw a stone lever in the wall and pushed it hopefully. The door into her room groaned shut and she was left in darkness so complete that it pressed down upon her.

  With her footsteps sounding hollow in the passage, Melcorka followed the stairs, hoping they led to safety. They continued downward into stinking darkness, step after steep step. Listening to the sound of her own breathing, feeling the thunder of her heartbeat, she tried to think of some way out. There were only two possibilities: find Chaytan and Chumani or retrieve Defender. She shook her head at the ease with which she had been deceived. Enapay must have pretended friendship purely to bring in Wamblee. This had been planned for weeks.

  If she could not trust him; how could she trust Chaytan?

  The stairs ended in a long passage that stretched left and right; one way seemed as dark as the other. Melcorka moved left, hoping for an exit, hoping for help, hoping for some escape from this strange world where luxury and absolute power was intertwined with extreme danger and where a friend one minute could be a deadly enemy the next.

  There was the sound of voices ahead. Melcorka hurried forward. She saw a slender shaft of light emanating from the wall and a slight draught of air. She stopped and pressed her face to what was a finger wide gap. She was looking into a chamber in the lower reaches of the palace, where the servants lived.

  They were packed into a tiny room, with bare stone walls and stone floors, sharing a filthy rug for a bed. A single rush lamp gave feeble light as three women struggled to their feet. The women in the bed were in rags; it was obvious that the one set of decent clothes were shared between them and used only when they were on duty.

  'I did not know,' Melcorka said. She had been so intent on her own position she had never considered that of others. 'When I get back into power I will change things. I swear I will.' She considered shouting, realised that the servants probably did not know about the passageway or the spyhole and moved on.

  There were more spyholes looking into other rooms, more servants, or stores or empty rooms, and no way of escape that Melcorka could see. She moved on, not giving up as the passage dipped down and thrust onward through deeper darkness, with dampness dripping on her from above and the sinister rustle of many tiny feet on the ground. Melcorka did not know what type of insect would live here and she did not wish to find out.

  The passage ended at a single stone slab. Melcorka stopped, running her hand over it, desperate for an exit. She found a circular stone handle, tugged and pushed, and then turned anti-clockwise.

  The slab turned on a central axis, rotating a full one hundred and eighty degrees. Melcorka peered into a room that seemed even more luxurious than her quarters in the palace. She stepped forward and the door swung shut behind her.

  'I thought you would end up here,' Wamblee said. 'We're been waiting for you.' His laugh was full of genuine humour. Stepping forward, the priests on either side of him took hold of Melcorka's arms and held tight. 'We'll hold you secure until the time comes to execute you.' He patted her face. 'Your sacrifice will be a fitting example to my people of the futility of rebellion.'

  'The people won't accept you as their king,' Melcorka said. 'Your tyranny has alienated you.'

  Wamblee laughed again. 'Were you any better? All you did was increase rapes and robbery and hunt for men to pleasure you. You had no interest in the people; only in your own enjoyment.' He jerked a thumb to the priests. 'Take her away and keep her safe. If she escapes I will have both of you on the altar.'

  With her hands twisted behind her back, Melcorka was pushed through a labyrinth of corridors to a dungeon comprised entirely of stone flags. With no windows and a stone door sealed by an immense stone bar, she
was thrown onto her back and her wrists and ankles tied securely to four stone posts in the ground.

  'Nobody has ever escaped from here,' the taller of the two priests said, 'and nobody ever shall escape from here.'

  Looking around, Melcorka could see why. She was surrounded with nothing but stone and when the stone door slammed shut and the stone bar ground into place there was not even a glimmer of light. Lying in the immense darkness, Melcorka had only her own thoughts as uneasy companions.

  Wamblee was partially correct. She had concentrated on her own physical pleasures. But why? She was not by nature an overly sensual woman. What has caused the change? Was it because she had lost Bradan? Partly, Melcorka acknowledged. Yet there were other reasons. Every time she wore that head-band, Eyota took over and she lost something of herself. The sensuality was undoubtedly from Eyota; with the head-band she adopted more of Eyota's personality, yet without it, the Cahokian people would never have accepted her. Melcorka swore; she could not think of a way out.

  After only half an hour she began to suffer from cramp. Her arms and legs ached abominably and her back was stretched to its limit. She was hungry, thirsty and cold, yet all that did not matter besides the fact that she had let so many people down. She had removed a tyrant only to prove herself as a weak and ineffectual leader. She was Melcorka the Swordswoman, not Eyota of Cahokia. This had never been her place. It was too late now; Cahokia looked like being her final adventure. Melcorka closed her eyes; her mother would welcome her into the next world.

  She did not know how long she lay there. It may have been hours; it may have been days, it may have been weeks. It seemed like an eternity. She was not sure if she wanted her physical, emotional and mental agony to end or if she wished it to continue, knowing that the eventual relief would only end with her death.

  There was a tiny sound in that place. An insect of some sort was trapped with her inside that stone tomb. She twisted her head, looking for the culprit but seeing only darkness. Nothing else. It was some time later, hours or days, that she saw it. A small, long- legged lizard that searched for food in the miniscule cracks where the stone slabs had been laid in the unimaginable past.

  Stretched out and securely tied, Melcorka tested her bonds for the hundredth time. They were so tight they cut into her ankles and wrists and any movement merely added to her pain. She felt her feet and hands swell until she realised that the only thing she could do was lie still and hope the swelling died down.

  Melcorka formulated a plan; the second she was untied she would launch herself at the nearest priest and knock him down. Even without Defender, she should be a match for a priest. She had worked and lived with fighting men long enough to have picked up moves and tricks; she knew how to fight even though she lacked the muscles of a warrior and months of easy living had made her soft. She could fight and she would win, Melcorka told herself. That thought gave her strength as she lay there, prone and scared in the dark.

  As time passed Melcorka became quite friendly with that solitary lizard that was sentenced to imprisonment just as much as she was. She named it Erik after the Norseman and spoke to it as a companion. Erik the lizard appeared to listen to her, turning its head this way and that as she spoke. Sometimes it came up to her and pressed its body against hers, and once or twice it ate the tiny but disgusting six-legged things that crawled over her as she lay, too helpless to brush them off.

  Erik never spoke back but his presence helped keep her sane when her mind threatened to explode with a mixture of despair and disappointment that she had let so many of the Cahokian people down.

  Now it was too late. Now she had no future. Her release from here would end only in her own death.

  Death.

  That word was so final. She would enter the spirit world with Bearnas and her own people; that could not be a bad thing. Yet she was not ready.

  'I am not yet ready!' she called out. 'I am not ready!'

  The priests stood over her. 'That is a shame.' One said, 'for this is the day that you will be sacrificed to Wi.'

  'She stinks,' the other priest said.

  'I can smell that! She has been lying in her own sweat and filth since we tied her here.'

  Melcorka cringed at the sound of voices again after so many days of solitary silence. The priests seemed to be shouting at the top of their voices and their presence filled the nearly empty space that she had come to think of as home.

  'I can't leave Erik behind' she said, with her mind confused.

  'You'll never see the Norseman again.' The priests said.

  As soon as they untied her, Melcorka remembered her plan. She tried to rise, to throw herself at the nearest priest, but the agony of returning circulation into her swollen hands and feet made her cry out in pain and writhe on the filthy stone slabs. With much experience of handling such prisoners, the priests had expected no less and watched dispassionately; they did not care about her suffering. They were about to inflict immeasurably more.

  'Wash her,' the first priest called over his shoulder, and a slave lifted a bucket of Mississippi water and threw it over the top of Melcorka. A second slave added another bucket, and then a third until Melcorka cringed and writhed under the deluge. She looked up through a curtain of wet hair.

  'I'm not defeated yet,' she said, with the sharp beak of her falcon jabbing painfully into the roof of her mouth.

  'Prepare her,' the priests said. They had heard such promises of defiance before, from brave and proud chiefs of once powerful tribes. Their words had not helped them and they had all died under the flint knives in insufferable agony.

  The slaves moved forward. Now was Melcorka's time. Fighting her pain, she rose and grappled with the first; throwing him in the move she had learned from Erik. The second was stronger; she thrust her straight fingers into his throat and sent him gasping back against the wall. The third lifted a short mace and crashed it against the back of her head. Melcorka winced and staggered.

  The slight delay was sufficient for the slaves to recover. They too were used to dealing with reluctant prisoners and threw themselves on Melcorka. One held her arms, another her legs and a third attached hobbles to ankles as if she was a horse to be tethered so it could walk but not stray.

  'Get her up,' the priests ordered and a slave grabbed a handful of Melcorka's hair, dragged her unceremoniously to her feet and pushed toward that great stone door. Unable to walk properly because of the hobbles, she took tiny, baby-steps with the slaves pushing her along, taunting her, poking at her with sharp sticks, mocking her nudity and generally doing their job of ridiculing her.

  Melcorka did not know what to expect when she left her dungeon. She remembered the execution of the two tribal chiefs yet was unprepared for the explosion of noise and colour. After so long in the dark she was disorientated, confused and blinded; she blinked and turned her head from the light, stumbled with the hobbles and nearly fell, which gave the slaves more opportunity to prod and beat her.

  It seemed that every person in Cahokia was present. Men, women, children and dogs bayed and jeered as she was pushed along the broad thoroughfare between her dungeon and the sacrificial pyramid.

  Another prisoner was pushed toward her. It was Chumani, with a great swelling bruise on her right eye and a bloody cut on her right arm. She looked up at Melcorka.

  'You tried, Eyota,' Chumani said. 'Thank you for trying.'

  'I failed.' Melcorka said. 'I was a very poor Queen.' She staggered as one of the slaves pushed her from behind. Turning, she tried to kick, swore as her hobbles held her feet together; swung a punch that missed and gasped as one of the other slaves thrust his sharpened stick into her ribs. Melcorka closed her eyes; she knew that she was fighting the wrong battle. The slaves were under orders to torment her; if they failed they would doubtless be horribly tortured to death.

  There were guards around, the rump of the Wall Guard and the remains of the Citadel Guard, glaring at her in utter hatred as she walked to her execution. Melcorka stared
back. She was going to die. She did not care about their hatred; they were her enemy. She should have killed them all when she had the chance rather than allowing them back into society. It was too late now.

  'Get your head up, woman!' Bearnas snapped. 'You are Melcorka of the Cenel Bearnas! Act like it!'

  'I let you down, mother,' Melcorka said. 'I let everybody down.'

  'You never have let me down, Melcorka. Walk erect and proud!'

  For one moment Melcorka heard the piping call of an oystercatcher, guiding her on her last walk in this realm before she joined her mother in the spirit world, or Tir-nan-Og or heaven or whatever name was given to the place she would go to after death. She watched that black-and-white bird disappear toward the fatal pyramid, straightened her back and walked on as best she could.

  The crowd watched her, some curious, some sympathetic, some gloating, some afraid. Bradan stood among them with that young lady, Ehawee at his side. Melcorka smiled at them; she was glad that he had found a good woman. Ehawee would look after him when she was gone.

  They were at the base of the pyramid now and the steps stretched ahead, leading up to the altar where the priests and Wamblee waited.

  The crowd was hushed. As Melcorka mounted the steps one at a time, moving sideways because of her hobble, there was a collective groan, instantly hushed by the guards. Somebody cried out: 'they can't sacrifice Eyota!' The words were no sooner spoken than a Guardsman stepped forward and clubbed the speaker to death.

  'Murder!' Somebody else called, and the Guards moved toward her.

  'Hurry up; the rabble is getting restless,' one of the priests said. 'The sooner we sacrifice this one the better I'll like it. That's the only thing that'll settle them down. Push her up the stairs!'

  Taking hold of Melcorka's hair, one of the slaves hauled her up the next step, with the other two alternatively shoving at her backside and thrusting their pointed sticks into it.