Master Of The Planes (Book 3)

by T. O. Munro

  “What have we got here?” A rough voice rasped.

  “I caught him outside, spying.” Jay’s captor was younger; he couldn’t have been many years older than Jay himself. Maybe they’d been at school together, in the days when there was still school. He wanted to twist round to see, but the knife was at his neck now and it didn’t leave much room for movement.

  “Hey, that’s Mayor Hiral’s boy.” His eyes, accustomed to the light, could make out the third speaker. A short nervous man, thin faced beneath slick black hair.

  “Can’t be,” the lad with the knife said. “They was all killed, the whole family. Butchered by orcs.”

  “Not all.” The group’s leader took his turn to step into the light. Broad shouldered but with clothes that still hung loose upon his frame. At his neck a filigree silver crescent scattered the lamplight in myriad directions.

  “You’re a priest!” Jay gasped. “I thought they killed all the priests.”

  “They thought so too,” the priest agreed. “Looks like you were both wrong. Father Simeon, at your service. Formerly of the parish of Colnham, but latterly bishop of this barn,” he waved his arm around the enclosure.

  “Why are you telling him your name?” the rat faced one cried. “He might be a collaborator.”

  “Relax Travis,” the priest assured him. “If he is one of us there’s no harm in a few introductions.”

  “And if he isn’t?”

  “Then young Robard here gets to practise his knife skills.”

  For emphasis, the youth with the knife ran the edge of his blade up Jay’s neck in what would have been the closest of shaves, had Jay been old enough to need the services of a razor.

  “Yeah, that’s right he is Hiral’s boy.” As Robard spoke Jay placed both the name and the voice, a big lad a couple of years older than him at school. Must be all of sixteen now. Had they got on? He tried to remember.

  “All his family dead, horribly tortured and here he is,” Travis growled with suspicion. “The one that lived.”

  Father Simeon leant in and rubbed his thumb down Jay’s forehead. “Aye, the boy Maelgrum let go and not a mark on him.” The priest shook his head ruefully, some doubt creasing his features. “What’s your name lad?”

  “He’s called Jorgen,” Robard supplied the answer.

  “Don’t call me that!” Jay snapped.

  “Why not?” the older lad was puzzled. “It’s your name. It was always your name.”

  “I’m Jay, just Jay.” He shivered. The rest of his name, like the rest of his family, lay in a past he rarely chose to revisit.

  “And why is Just Jay Hiralson skulking around an old abandoned barn.”

  “I’ve heard there are people fighting back. I want to join them, I want to be one of them.”

  “Want vengeance for your family eh?” Simeon nodded, lips pursed in appreciation of a credible argument. “So come on lad, which one of the bastards do you want to kill?”

  “Maelgrum, I want to kill Maelgrum.”

  Travis laughed, Robard whistled and Simeon smiled. “You’re a touch late lad. That bastard’s been dead for over a thousand years, not that it’s slowed him down much. Maybe you should start small and work your way up.”

  “Yeah, start small,” Travis echoed.

  “We plan on delivering another headless orc to the half-breed witch’s door,” Simeon said. “Think you can manage that.”

  “Anything. I’ll do anything.”

  The trio exchanged looks. Simeon gave Travis a nod and, while Robard hauled Jay to his feet, the wiry little man scuffed away some loose straw to expose a trapdoor in the floor. It was flung open with a crash to reveal a short stairway descending into darkness. Jay instinctively resisted his captor’s pressure forcing him down the steps. “Relax, Just Jay, we ain’t going to hurt you,” Robard assured him.

  “No,” Travis laughed. “Not us.”

  It stayed dark at the foot of the stairs until Simeon came down last of all, bringing the lantern with him. The priest shone the shuttered lamp across the space. It was a ten foot wide enclosure, stonewalled, dirt floored. The beam of light caught a grey green shape snarling and writhing in its grip. Then Jay saw the iron manacles by which the creature had been secured to the wall.

  “I don’t rightly know why Farmer Slieg dug out this cellar in an old barn, still less why he put these chains in here, particular with the place so far away from everywhere, not even near the fields mind.” Simeon chatted genially as he set the lantern down on a barrel, adjusting its light to fully illuminate the straining orc on the wall. “Still old Slieg died in your father’s great battle against the Dark Lord.” The priest frowned. “Or maybe he died running away from it. Still, it’s the thought that counts, and he left us a nice little hidey hole for entertaining our new neighbours.” He waved at the orc and got a snarl and a spit in reply.

  “I thought you said you were sending her a headless orc,” Jay stammered as the creature strained again against the tight restraint of its chains.

  “Oh yes, Just Jay, but I didn’t say we’d finished it yet.”

  “That’s where you come in,” Robard whispered. “Here, you can borrow my spare knife.” A weapon was pressed into Jay’s hands. “It’s not as big as my other knife, but it’s sharp enough for this job.”

  “Go on Jay Hiralson,” Travis said. “Make your old dad proud.”

  Jay’s eyes stung with tears as he inched his way forward towards the trapped creature. The orc writhed and shook and spat. There was no fear in it, only anger.

  “Go on Just Jay,” Travis urged. “Reckon it was this bastard as murdered your sisters, or maybe it’s the one that raped your mother.”

  It wasn’t that one. Jay remembered that one, its foul face haunting his dreams. The apparition alternated with his father’s broken expression as Jay had walked away denying him a son’s absolution for having made an impossible choice.

  “Come on, it probably fucked your sisters too.”

  “Travis!” Simeon shouted his associate into silence.

  Jay lunged, punching the orc, but punching him with a knife. The creature roared. Jay’s arm pumped back and forth driving deep into the creature’s gut. He leant back and raised his arm to slash across the orc’s throat as its bellow turned into a gargle. Jay’s hand moved in a frenzied whirl. Stabbing gouging, slashing. His arms were thick with black ichor. Soft wet things were slipping from the orcs innards, as he hacked and thrust, throat, belly chest. He was possessed. The orc hung limply in the chains now its head dangling down its back, suspended by a stretch of skin that the knife hadn’t found. Black gore puddled in the floor.

  Jay dropped the knife and stepped back, almost slipping on scattered viscera. His arms were black to the elbows, his shirt soaked in orc blood.

  “By the Goddess, you were only supposed to cut its bloody head off,” Travis muttered.

  ***

  Kaylan set the orc head atop a broken spear and turned it with a sculptor’s care to face down the dirt road towards Woldtag. Then he limped across to the next grim marker and twisted a second orc head a fraction to the left.

  “Are you done yet?” Elise demanded. She glanced around at the retreating column of soldiers. Dwarves and men walking in easy harmony away from the smoking pyre of headless bodies.

  “Nearly,” Kaylan said, his eyes fixed on the direction that another dead orc was looking in.

  “We should go. You need the prior to look at that leg of yours.”

  “It’s a scratch,” the thief insisted.

  “You don’t get scratched with an orc halberd. It’s not a toothpick.”

  Kaylan looked down at the rag bandage tied around his thigh. A dark stain stretched a path from the dirty grey cloth binding down beyond his knee. With each flex of his leg a fresh trickle of blood seeped through the dressing, rich red gleaming in the light of the morning sun. He gave a dry humourless chuckle. “I’ve had worse; this might even me up a bit, my other leg was the bad one before.”


  “Well come on. The smoke from that bonfire will be seen for miles around. We need to be away from here.”

  Kaylan shook his head. “This is the third warband we’ve destroyed. They’ve seen our work. They aren’t going to be in a hurry to come here until they can muster enough force to feel safe. I reckon it’ll take them a pretty while to scrape together two thousand orcs and nomads.”

  “So you’re just going to stand here bleeding to death so you can welcome them?”

  He shook his head, and tweaked another head on a high pole. “No. I just want to make sure that when those bastards march up that hill the first thing they see is a hundred dead eyes looking at them.” He tapped the last skull to settle it firmly on its grounded spear. “That should do it.”

  A sigh of relief escaped the sorceress. She led the two horses over to the thief, hovering with indecision while he clambered painfully but unaided into his saddle. He gave a last look at his handiwork, careful to lead his mount upwind of the stench of burning orc. Another pyre to taunt the enemy, another warband lured into a trap and utterly annihilated.

  Elise swung up into her own saddle as the thief spat with expert aim at head of the orc leader, the one who had wielded the halberd. As the phlegm dripped down the creature’s bloodied chin, the sorceress remarked, “there is a purity to your hatred, Kaylan. It’s almost beautiful.”

  He hauled on the reigns. “This is my country, my mother’s country. Those bastards should never have come here, but I’m buggered if I’ll let any of them leave alive. I’ll see them all turned into mulch for our fields first.”

  ***

  Niarmit rubbed at her temple and tried to blink away the band of pressure that gripped her forehead.

  “Are you all right, your Majesty?” the elf lieutenant’s words were muffled by their passage through the gate.

  Niarmit shook her head. “I’m fine, Elyas,” she assured him. The edge of Sorenson’s window through the planes had lost none of its sharp precision in the two weeks since it had been conjured. The portal’s persistence had made communication with the council chamber in Laviserve infinitely easier. It was far more secure and speedy than relying on heralds crossing the occupied borderlands of Morsalve. However, it was still imperfect, like trying to join in a discussion from the other side of a half-open window.

  So it was that Niarmit stood barely two feet from the wafer thin surface, taking care not to dislodge the bishop’s crescent symbol which still anchored the gate in place. Elyas stood no further from the other side, making the experience like looking in a mirror. Except that she saw not her own likeness but the image of Tordil’s lieutenant, taller and darker than she. The disconcerting effect of seeing a reflection which neither moved nor looked like her deepened the nausea that assailed her. Or maybe it was the elf’s news that made her sick.

  “You are sure you have had no word from him, or from the Silverwood direct?”

  “There are no secret ways of elves, your Majesty.” Elyas said apologetically. “I have no better means of following Tordil’s thoughts and movements than Prince Rugan. I had expected to meet him here myself.” He shook his head slowly. “I cannot say why we have heard nothing.”

  Niarmit grimaced. “Could he have come by some mischance on the road to the Silverwood? His task was to resurrect an alliance that Quintala went to great lengths to destroy. Could she have struck out at him?”

  “You forget the precautions we have taken, Your Majesty,” Giseanne appeared at Elyas’s shoulder. “Quintala can have no means of spying on our discussions here. She would have had no knowledge of his mission.”

  “And even if she did, your Majesty, I am sure Tordil is more than equal to any threat she might make.” Elyas weighed in with his own reassurance.

  Niarmit bit her lip, trying to unravel the skein of thoughts that twisted in her head. From Undersalve to Nordsalve, from Medyrsalve to Oostsalve there was an endless supply of unanswered questions.

  “What of Lord Leniot, Lady Giseanne?” She flung another question at the distant council chamber. “Has he had any success in moving his father to action?”

  Elyas stepped to one side. Giseanne frowned. “It seems the good prince of Oostsalve can neither bend nor bind the merchant ships to his will. A fleet sufficient to bring the Salicia garrison home is a considerable body of vessels. Every time the prince comes close to assembling sufficient tonnage, there is a shift in the wind and the offer of a tempting cargo that has the masters put to sea on more immediately profitable ventures.”

  “He is paying them a retainer, is he not?”

  “So he tells us, your Majesty” Rugan added a low growl to the discussion. Niarmit had to strain to hear the prince’s voice for he was seated on his throne several feet from the planar portal. There was a breach of protocol in his sitting while the queen stood, despite the hundreds of leagues which separated monarch and her audience. “But I would suspect payment is by means of written bills, tickets to be redeemed against the prince’s honour at some point in the future. However, sailors are more readily moved by hard currency than paper promises.” Rugan glared at Tybert as he ground out his disdain through gritted teeth. The Lord of Oostsalve stood to one side fiddling with a gold chain with scarcely the decency to blush at Rugan’s pointed rebuke.

  Niarmit frowned, running a finger through her hair and teasing out one long auburn lock. “You’ll have to go to Oostport, Rugan.”

  “Me, your Majesty?” Shock raised the register of the half-elf’s voice to a squeak and Niarmit thought his face paler than she had seen it before, though maybe it had been pale before her command.

  “Your Majesty.” A look of panic flitted across Giseanne’s face. “He cannot go.”

  “I need someone there to speak with my authority, Lady Giseanne. I am sorry to part you from your husband, but the exigencies of war demand it.”

  “Your Majesty, he is not well enough.”

  “What ails him?”

  “I will go,” Rugan grudgingly insisted. He rose a little unsteadily from his seat and then sat back abruptly as his legs gave way.

  “What is it Rugan? Are you sick?” Niarmit called through the gate.

  “Never better, your Majesty,” Rugan waved aside her concern. “I have just been refreshing the wards about my private quarters. It has left me a little out of breath that is all.”

  It was Giseanne who answered the puzzled frown on Niarmit’s face. “My husband has found a new enchantment, a ward he thinks is proof against Quintala.”

  “Thinks?” Rugan snorted. “Be assured there is no doubt it is effective. The witch will not pass.”

  “But it has drained him somewhat.”

  The prince chuckled at that. “Well, I could hardly leave my family unprotected. My bitch of a sister could have opened a portal to Andros’ nursery, or Giseanne’s day room. At least now I can sleep in peace, though in truth I seem unable to do much other than sleep.”

  “We need that garrison brought back from Salicia,” Niarmit said.

  “I will go,” Rugan repeated.

  “It may take two days maybe a little more, before my husband is fit to travel,” Giseanne said. “Then you shall have your emissary.”

  Niarmit frowned. “I shouldn’t need to send you, Rugan. It is only that Leniot seems unable to move his father. Tell me what news of our other son of Oostsalve. How goes it with Prior Abroath in Undersalve?”

  “Prior Abroath was well when Thom and I left him,” Elyas said. “He and Kaylan were full of great plans for the soldiers we had brought him from Sir Ambrose.”

  Niarmit’s thoughts spun. She hoped that the ambition of the thief and the prior would not exceed their strength. She wondered if Sir Ambrose had force enough still to hold the Gap of Tandar. She needed Rugan to bring back the veteran garrison from the last colony of the Salved in the Eastern Lands.

  But Tordil’s silence nagged at her memory. Could his mission have been compromised, could some artifice of Quintala’s have plucked
him into danger? But how could the half-elf have known? For sure the failure of the heralds to safely cross Morsalve was easily laid at the traitor’s door. Quintala had known of their routes and methods and had allowed them to proceed in safety only so long as it served her and her master’s purpose. Once she was exposed, the pathway had been ruthlessly shut off. So many concerns and then there was …

  “What news of the seneschal, your Majesty?” Giseanne asked.

  “Still searching,” Niarmit hurried her way through another account that troubled her. “I haven’t seen him in two weeks now, but he has sent word. He and Pietrsen have ridden the length and breadth of Nordsalve, but Torsden has gone to ground. He still has friends, friends loyal enough to hide him and the boy prince, no matter that it is treason.”

  “And the boy’s mother?” Giseanne asked, her voice softening in empathy for Lady Isobel’s plight.

  Niarmit shrugged. “She does not take it well. She fears for her boy. Even though there is no body, nor any hint that Torsden has harmed him, she is convinced that Yannuck is dead in some icy ditch. She sees Zoirzi’s body in her dreams, but wearing her son’s face. She remembers Torsden’s laughter as he struck the tutor down, and with it she hears her son screaming.”

  Giseanne folded her arms tightly. “This must be torture for her.”

  “Kimbolt promised her that he would bring the boy home; she clings to that.”

  “A bold promise,” Rugan sniffed an interjection. “Better to have waited until at least first finding out where the boy was kept.”

  “I trust the seneschal, Prince Rugan, just as much as I trust you.” The accolade was one which Rugan struggled to interpret, let alone accept. His nod was curter, his smile flatter than before. Niarmit went on, “his promise is the only comfort Isobel has. She can think of nothing else.”

  “So who is governing Nordsalve, while Isobel is so distracted?”

  Niarmit shrugged. “I am. The Helm’s authority with the assistance of Constable Johanssen and Bishop Sorenson has ensured my commands are met. The royal progress we made on the lower river has stiffened the loyalty of the garrisons there.”