Lady Of The Helm (Book 1)

by T. O. Munro

  There were a hundred or so of them. Swaggering nomads on horseback, riding in a column four abreast down towards the shallow beach which was to be Kaylan’s next search zone. At the head of the column, rode the squat and ungainly figure of the Governor of Undersalve. The little man’s limited horsemanship was further compromised by him managing the reins one handed. His free right hand was stretched out infront of him, fingertips twitching as he felt the air ahead of him.

  Kaylan cursed his ill luck that this intervention would not only delay his search but would trample into obscurity any traces of Niarmit making it ashore. Still he was one thief and they were a hundred warriors, while the Governor was even rumoured to be a wizard. Kaylan squatted down behind his concealing ridge and resolved to wait for the interlopers’ departure.

  ***

  A cool breeze swept down off the Palacinta hills stirring Dema’s snakes into hissing wakefulness. She had the watchtower platform to herself, pacing the narrow space unmasked and unhooded. The orc and outlander lookouts had been sent away so the Medusa could enjoy a rare moment of freedom. Normally she only let her snakes and her gaze go free in the heat of battle and even then only if there were few of her own troops to be accidentally harmed by a misplaced glance or an irate serpent. In the main she trusted to her own formidable skill with a sword at which neither orc nor outlander had yet managed to best her.

  However, once in a while there was a sense of freedom to be revelled in. She stood arms raised to the heavens, spitting serpents writhing on her head, surveying the rolling farmland with a petrifying azure gaze. For just a moment she let her guard drop, acknowledged the creature she had become, a glorious monstrous affront to all that the Salved held holy.

  It had been twenty years earlier in a long abandoned magistry that she had first felt this chilling power course through her veins. The numbing shock of the little wizard’s magic had faded and she had begun to stretch up from the kneeling position in which she had received his incantation. She had been aware of a strange prickling sensation in her scalp that made her reach for the hand mirror they had brought. In looking for that first rather than at Odestus she had probably saved him, and he in turn, in kicking the mirror from her hand so it shattered on the stone had probably saved her.

  “Why did you do that?” she had demanded, perturbed that her hands still looked slim and feminine and then that her voice was unbroken.

  That the spell had misfired in someway was quickly becoming apparent without the little wizard’s frantic cry, “Don’t look at me. Don’t look at anything. Yes shut your eyes.”

  “What? Why? What has gone wrong little wizard?” The crawling sensation on the top of her head was more insistent now, she had reached up to scratch her head and then screamed at the feel of reptilian scales the hiss of a snake. She had grabbed its body thinking to throw it free, but a yank brought only a searing pain in her head as though she were pulling her own hair out. Her hair had become snakes.

  “What have you done to me little wizard?” she had demanded. Odestus had been cowering before her, hands over hs own eyes face turned to the ground.

  “It’s not my fault,” he was insisting. “I never meant for this.”

  She had seized him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. “What have you done to me? Tell me now or I will prize those hands away from your eyes and make you look at me.”

  “No… no!” the very suggestion brought a long paralysing cry from the quivering wizard.

  “Then maybe you should undo it and not just free of charge, give back the money I have paid you.”

  “It was never about the money and I can’t undo it.”

  She’d seized his hands at that and yanked them apart to look into his screwed shut eyes, shut as firmly as if he had been gazing towards the midday Sun. “Speak little wizard and start making some sense, or by the Goddess I will peel back your eyelids with my finger nails.” There had been a chorus of hissing as the serpents on her head seemed to respond to her mood. “And first question, little wizard, is why have I got snakes stuck to my scalp?”

  “The scroll, the spell on the scroll, I misunderstood the translation. It is an ancient language, an easy mistake, the transformation it wrought was not into the form I had thought.”

  “I had gathered that, little Wizard. You have not made me into the form of a man. What have you turned me into?”

  Odestus had wailed. “I have made you a monster, Lady. We are both doomed to exile.”

  “Undo the spell then. Uncast it.”

  “I cannot. The spell is gone from the scroll. It is spent and I have no other scroll nor power in my own skill to undo the spell. You…. we, we are stuck with how you are. They will send us beyond the barrier. We will be eaten by orcs, devoured one limb at a time while the rest of us still lives. Why did I agree? You made me agree. I never wanted this. Why didn’t you leave me alone? I was happy with my hobby.”

  Dema had given him a sharp slap to rouse him from his hysteria and, as his head swung sideways his eyes had opened a fraction in surprise and then immediately closed clenched as tight as a whelk before she could catch his gaze. “Come little wizard, it wasn’t just a merchant’s hobby. You wanted to do big sorcery. You wanted it as much as I and now you have right royally fucked it up. What have you turned me into?”

  “A monster, the worst of monsters.”

  “I don’t feel like a monster.”

  “You will become one, not tonight, not tomorrow, but the monster will merge with you. You will lose your humanity all trace and vestige of the human being you were and in time you will become that monster.”

  “What monster am I to become?”

  “Oh Dema, I have turned you into …. into a medusa. Any unfortunate who meets your gaze will be petrified, any fool who comes near enough your head will be poisoned by your snakes. Oh Dema I have killed you as sure as if I had stabbed you through the heart. It would be kinder to do the deed now than let your spirit whither into nothingness inside this creature.“ As he spoke the little wizard was fumbling in his cloak clumsily reaching for a dagger which Dema with a pinch and a twist easily relieved him of.

  “Little wizard you would never be able to stab me through the heart even if you could bear to look at me as you did it. Now listen I am Dema, I will always be Dema. My spirit is not withering anywhere least of all inside my own body. Now you get me somewhere I can hide while we work out how to undo this mess you have created. You can find another scroll that reverses this change, pay whatever you have to. The Goddess knows you’re rich enough.”

  Odestus had bobbed and whimpered but he did as he was bid.

  Two decades later atop the tower of her own fortress, Dema stretched her arms aloft and allowed the snakes their moment of hissing bickering freedom. Not days, not weeks, Odestus, she said to herself. Two decades she had survived, two decades she had been Dema. She had held at bay the snarling visceral abomination whose physical form she wore. True there had been moments of necessary cruelty, but that had been the natural human fight to survive, not the gratuitous sadism of an unfettered medusa. For twenty years she had thought and fought to see herself as just somehow differently human. Kimbolt’s jibes about her humanity had hurt more deeply than she dared admit.

  The thought of Kimbolt darkened her mood once more and she glared anxiously South East, desparate for the distant murk to disgorge the precious reinforcements from Undersalve and pressage the long overdue reunion of the warrior Medusa and her wizardly creator. Her scrutiny of the unyielding horizon was disrupted by another powerful stomach cramp. She bent double and gritted her teeth against the pain. “Not now,” she muttered to herself before demanding of the clouds low on the Southern horizon. “Where are you Odestus, I need you now?”

  ***

  Hepdida hurt. The long deep cut in her back was the worst. There were no mirrors in Grundurg’s tent. Vanity was not one of the orc chieftain’s many vices, so it was only by touch that Hepidda could explore her unseen wounds. The sup
ple flexibility of youth had been compromised by her other cuts and bruises so that twisting and reaching round with her hand was a stiff and painful experience. It brought a wince to her lips even as her fingers tips crept across her back towards the ragged edge of Grundurg’s cruellest cut. Before she even reached the seeping wound itself she felt the flesh grow hot and could imagine the reddened skin as her body fought infection. Her mouth felt dry and her head ached and she knew the untreated wound was spreading its poison through her body.

  Her trembling self-examination was cut short when she heard the howls of returning wolves. As hurriedly as the pain and stiffness allowed, she drew the dirty linen cloak around her shoulders and crouched dutifully on the floor to wait her master’s return. The coarse rope tether had scoured the skin of her ankle until it bled, making it uncomfortable to sit crosslegged. So she squatted awkwardly within the limited freedom that the rope gave her.

  Grundurg was in good spirits when he stormed into the tent, though that was never a guarantee that he would leave her alone. If his business had gone ill, he would take out his frustrations on her, if it had gone well he would celebrate at her expense and if it had been a quite day’s scouting he would vent his boredom on her injured frame. Hepdida had yet to find any combination of humility or circumstance which would secure the freedom that Dema had promised her from orcish torture.

  The big orc seized her by the hair and pulled her upright. Much as she tried to rise in a smooth fluid movement, Hepdida still found her body twisting awkwardly at Grundurg’s handling. She felt one of the wounds on her shoulder crack and open and the trickle of warm fresh blood across her skin.

  “Grundurg had good hunting today.” The orc breathed foully in her face. “Killed many humans. Took their food. Farmers are soft, Grundurg’s sword is hard. Splits skulls very easy. Women they are soft too. See this.” He thumped his chest where his black armour was covered in drying blood. “This their blood.” He tapped the left shoulder. “This was baby’s blood, killed him first.” Then the right shoulder. “This mother’s blood, she was pretty, like you used to be. Killed her next. “

  “You bastard,” Hepidida breathed.

  “Last,” he gestured across his chest at the broadest stain. “This was father’s blood, killed him last. Let him see what I did to his woman and his child. That made him angry, so angry. I gave him sword, said do your worst.”

  The orc flung back his head and laughed. “I didn’t kill him quick.” The orc gave a quick chopping motion with his hand. “Cut his arm off, then killed him slow. Let him see how he had failed. He not protect his woman, not protect his child, not avenge them either. He cursed me as he died.” Again Grundurg guffawed in amusement at the funniest thing he had seen in weeks. “I tell him, Grundrug collects curses of dying humans, Grundurg got many of them. He say ‘see you in hell, orc bastard.’” Grundurg was shaking his head with mirth, his eyes glinting at the memory. “Grundurg say, sure but you go to back of line, back of long line, very long line.”

  At last the orc let Hepdida go, but only so he could slap his own leg at the hilarity of his bon mot to the dying farmer.

  “You bastard,” Hepdida repeated more loudly.

  Her contempt finally punctured his mood and he sneered at her, nostrils flaring. “You be careful. You not so pretty anymore. Lots of pretty human girls out there. Maybe I get rid of you. Take one of them, give them a blanket of your skin.”

  She shivered at the reality of his threat. “You were to keep me safe. The Lady Dema will be angry with you if I die.”

  He shrugged. “Snake lady might not come back. Grundurg has to wait here for old elf, snake lady has to stay …. stay somewhere else. Grundurg might never meet snake lady again.”

  “You can’t be sure of that. Who knows what your foul master might order. She could be on her way here now.”

  There was the briefest flicker of fear in the orc’s eyes as he imagined Dema striding momentarily into the tent. But then he seized at his neck and pulled out a black disc on a leather lanyard. “Snake lady not coming. Master talk to Grundurg, talk to Grundurg through this. This big magic.” He waved the disc at her. “Master tell Grundurg if snake lady coming. She not coming yet.”

  “But she might come. Your Master might tell you today she is coming.”

  Grundurg nodded sourly. “Master might, and if he does Grundurg kill you.”

  Hepdida drew in a sharp breath at the cold certainty of the orc’s promise. “The lady would not like that, she would punish you.”

  The orc just shrugged. “Grundurg tell her you got ill, no shaman to cure you and you died. Snake lady never find you, not unless she look in cooking pot.” This idea seemed to amuse the chieftain even more than the farmer’s death and he fell to another fit of grunting shuddering laughter.

  Hepdida edged away towards her allotted space at the foot of Grundurg’s fur covered sleeping couch. She was determined not to crack, but her lip was trembling and her eyes were wet. Day in day out, one day at a time, she had been determined to survive. But despair flooded over her and the dam holding back the tears finally crumbled. Tied to the chieftain’s bedframe, in his tent in the centre of the encampment, surrounded by five hundred orcs there could be no escape from a captor who had just promised to kill her. The last shreds of hope died in Hepdida’s weeping heart.

  ***

  Vesten breathed a huge sigh of relief. The tall keep of Listcairn was unmistakeable on the North Eastern horizon. His nightmare would soon be over. “Come hurry, men,” he called out to the tired and watchful nomad infantry. “We will sleep in the halls of Listcairn tonight.”

  The nomads made no answer beyond a collective scowl at the reedy voiced secretary on his piebald pony. “The bloody orcs will have got there first,” one surly foot soldier growled sparking a round of nodding agreement.

  “Sure, they’ll have eaten all the food.”

  “Taken the best billets.”

  “Had all the women.”

  “It’ll be turnips for us.”

  “In the stables.”

  “Sleeping with the pigs.”

  The secretary had not the spirit left to try and raise their grim mood. He had never wanted independent command, fearing the responsibility, doubting his capacity. When Odestus had departed on his mysterious mission, Vesten’s task of marching the rest of the army to Listcairn had seemed a simple one. He had no expectation of facing battle, merely a need to bring twelve thousand orcs and nomads to the captured fortress. Yet in this simple task he had plumbed new depths of failure.

  “Don’t let the orcs ride off,” had been Odestus’s parting word. At first Hulgrid, the orc chieftain, had been the picture of co-operation. He had advised Vesten, helped him choose the path to take, the order of marching. When he had suggested to the secretary that parties of wolf-riding orcs should go foraging to East and West, it had seemed reasonable. But the forays into farmland had lasted longer and longer and brought back less and less food. And then, one day Hulgrid had announced he was riding off to Listcairn. “I go ahead” he had said.

  “You can’t, I forbid it,” Vesten had replied. He may even have stamped his foot. “We stay together. The Governor ordered it.”

  Hulgrid had laughed. “You too slow, and your horse smell. If we stay my wolves may eat your horse, might eat you. Though not much meat on you.”

  And so the wolf-riders had abandoned them, Hulgrid shouting something at the orcish infantry as he rode away. Vesten had not heard the precise words, but the meaning was clear. The orc foot soldiers had increased their pace, loping along in a simian stride which the nomad infantry could not quite match. Slowly the orcs had pulled ahead in a strange walking race and by nightfall, Vesten and the nomads were alone. A few thousand nomads in hostile territory with no cavalry protection. Vesten knew that the forces of Morsalve were tied up in a deadly struggle far to the West, but to the East lay Medyrsalve. As his diminished band crept along in the shadow of the Palacintas Vesten had, by night and day, e
xpected the forces of Prince Rugan to sweep down and destroy them.

  The nomads shared his fear, but took little notice of his orders. His commands were treated like mild suggestions and the rump of the army had camped and marched where the consensus of its chieftains decided. Vesten was not its general, merely somebody who happened to be travelling in the same direction who they had decided not to kill.

  But at last the nightmare was over. Listcairn was in sight and, if Hulgrid and the infantry had made it, Vesten would have discharged his duty of bring Odestus’s army to Listcairn, albeit in instalments.

  “Riders coming,” one of the sharper eyed nomads declared.

  It was a few moments before Vesten’s eyes, strained by hours of candlelit paperwork, could perceive the cloud of dust of fast approaching horsemen. The distance between them closed steadily as the infantry continued their march. Vesten could have ridden ahead, but the furious pace of the oncoming riders made him hesitate. The nomads might not for all practical purposes be his soldiers, but if someone was in such mighty haste, the secretary would rather not meet with them alone.

  The riders resolved themselves into a group of two dozen or so cavalry, strung out in a line as they fought to keep pace with their leader. Vesten had an idea who that would be; though he had never met the Lady, he knew she now commanded at Listcairn and Odestus had briefed him on her many powers and also her ferocious temper. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground as she approached and didn’t even raise them as, with a clatter of horse’s hooves, a woman’s voice demanded. “Who commands here?”

  “Him on the scrawny pony.”

  The hooves tramped closer and the voice snapped, “Who are you? Where is Odestus? Quickly now.”

  Vesten let his gaze slide carefully upwards, until he was looking at the speaker’s chin. “My Name is Secretary Vesten and the Governor is somewhere to the South East of here.”