by T. O. Munro
“You meant for the dragon to dessstroy your brother.” It was a statement not a question, but she answered it anyway.
“I meant for the dragon to destroy everybody.”
“Your brother’sss fate isss mine to decsside, not yoursss.”
She shrugged “Not Rugan then, kill someone else instead. Open a gate and burn that blasted illusionist. Or that scarred magpie daughter of Udecht. Turn either of them into a pillar of flame or both. For reasons unknown she has a certain fondness for them. Demonstrate your power to the bitch.”
“Do not forget yourssself ssso much asss to command me, Quintala.” The cold was sapping now. The half-elf wrapped her arms around her body and clenched her chattering teeth to still them. But then the frigid air eased as Maelgrum went on. “There are other waysss to ssshow my reach isss long and other threatsss we mussst be wary of.”
“Other threats.”
“You sssent ssskirmishers ahead of you, Quintala but not behind.”
“I wasn’t marching backwards,” she retorted. “I had, still have, a fortress to recapture.”
“Fortunately Mazdurg wasss not so preoccupied. Otherwissse we might have no idea of what lurksss behind usss.”
“Behind us?”
“Really Quintala, you ssshould aspire to be ssso much more than a mere echo, if you want to live long in my ssservice that isss.”
She nodded dumbly; it seemed safest.
“There is an army of Nordsalve, cavalry led by some giant on horseback. They will be upon usss by mid-afternoon tomorrow.”
“We can destroy them.”
He gave the slightest shake of his skeletal head. “The force they have isss too great for usss to risssk attacking. Essspecially if those troopsss within your former fortresss come out to attack usss in the rear. Thisss isss a time when we retreat.”
Quintala gasped. “But what of those allies you sought.”
“They are not ready yet, though they will be, and spring will bring usss the full forcsse of Marwella’sss zombiesss. However, for now we will let this whore of Eadran’sss think ssshe hasss won a victory. Let them enjoy their temporary rule of thisss portion of Morsssalve. The momentsss of happy triumph will make their dessspair all the more sssweet when I return and sssweeep her and her kin all the way to the sssea.”
Quintala clenched her fists. “She can’t be allowed to think she has won, not even for a moment.”
Maelgrum tilted his head to look at her anew. He raised a blackened finger reaching for a tear of frustration on the half-elf’s cheek, it froze into a stinging drop of ice at his touch. “There are timesss, Quintala, when well directed rage can sssserve a purpossse. But there are timesss for patiencsse too. I have known both, you ssshould learn them too.”
“I told her someone would die, I promised her,” the half-elf wept.
“You ssshould not make promissses you cannot keep Quintala, but do not worry. Sssomeone will die, sssomeone alwaysss doesss.”
***
The bailey was busier than ever as Jay picked his way between the tents. The people of Colnham were abandoning their shelters, returning to the comfort of their stone and wooden buildings in the town beneath the hill. The new arrivals, tall Nordsalve horsemen, were taking their place in the less enticing allure of the fortified hilltop. The morning had dawned with no sign of Quintala’s besiegers and then as they had grown warily used to the abandonment of any threat of siege, a fresh force had been heralded from the north-east and the reason for the half-elf’s night-time flight became apparent.
All around were smiles of hope and greeting. The prospect of a long drawn out siege had ended before it had even begun; the opportunity the queen had pursued, the chance to reclaim a portion of Morsalve had been delivered in its entirety with a dead dragon to boot.
The reptile’s corpse, curled around the mound of rubble on the western peak, had been a focus of some interest. Soldiers and towns people alike had crawled over its remains, trying to prize free the precious scales of its skin. The impenetrable dragon steel could form shields or mailed coats as was rumoured the monar emperors had borne. However, even in the cool of the dying winter, the lizard’s flesh had already begun to reek. The race now was to find sufficient tinder to safely burn it, before the stench of decay drove them out more surely than the half-elf’s entire army had.
Jay spotted the tent he was after, his pace quickened. He was anxious to deliver his summons and get back to the queen’s court. The girl would be there and he could look on her and think of the soft touch of her lips on his. A kiss in which, for just a moment, he had known a sanity that had eluded him since the day Maelgrum killed his family. He had not spoken more than a couple of words to the crown princess in days. By accident or contrivance she had always been elsewhere than where he was, or in company where he could not speak freely. But she was with the queen and the others. If he could linger unnoticed on the fringes of their deliberations then he could watch her and maybe she would see him.
The pleasant thought so filled his mind that he was quite unready for the horror that greeted him when he shouldered his way into the tent. Vomit rose by reflex in his throat and the moment’s effort it took to swallow it down only gave his eyes time to look, to tell his brain what it was he was seeing and then he puked copiously, his spew mixing with the blood that spread across the dirt floor.
***
“Your orders, Lord Torsden were to be a decoy and a distraction. You have mightily exceeded your instructions.” Niarmit struggled for a sombre face as she rebuked the smiling giant of Nordsalve, but a grin itched at the corners of her mouth.
“Forgive me, your Majesty,” the Northern Lord gave a self-deprecating bow. “That I am such a poor actor. I was never one for the illusory exertion of a street mummer. It seemed wasteful to go to all the effort of shaping to invade the half-breed’s stolen realm and then stop short of actually invading.”
At last Niarmit let pleasure show on her face. “Well I am glad of it. Your arrival is most timely. It closes a circle of complete success in our recent endeavours.”
“Indeed initiative, even in defiance of orders, can still earn its due recognition.” The seneschal directed his soft words at Torsden; Niarmit frowned, hearing a message meant for her.
“With your help, Lord Torsden, we can be sure of holding this fortress and liberating all the northern counties of Morsalve.” She spoke quickly, carrying and carried by her ambition.
“With respect, your Majesty, this place it’s not really a castle is it. More just a big wall around a hill top.” Torsden gave his smiling judgement.
“It will serve our purposes well enough we can harry any force smaller than ours while offering shelter and refuge from any greater foe. It is time to spread the good news amongst the people. Their slavery is at an end.”
The far door of the receiving room opened and Jay tumbled into the gathering. The boy’s complexion was paler than usual, Niarmit greeted him kindly. “Master Jay, where is …”
“Dead,” the boy replied. “Father Simeon is dead.”
A shock like ice ran through Niarmit’s blood. “Dead?” she echoed stupidly. “How, where?”
“Butchered in his tent, while all the world walked by.”
“That is impossible,” Kimbolt muttered.
“Outrageous,” Johanssen agreed.
“They used his crescent symbol to strike out his eyes,” Jay said, his face drawn. “And that is not the worst of it.”
“They? How many was it, who did this?”
The boy shrugged helplessly. “Father Simeon would not have gone quietly. It would take more than one person to bring him down.”
“I saw him,” Niarmit stood and walked to the window, looking out across the heaving bailey. “I spoke with him this afternoon, on the battlements.” She shook her head. “Quintala had gone, all was well. Everything he had hoped for come to fruition”
“It is a sign,” Rugan growled from his chair. Alone of the company he had leave
to sit when the queen stood. Strength and blood were returning to his limbs, but slowly. “A sign that we must always be on our guard. This a first and significant strike back against the enemy but my sister and her master are far from spent.”
Niarmit nodded. “The murderer must be found.”
“As you command, your Majesty,” Kimbolt dipped his head in acknowledgement of an order she had not yet given.
She shook her head. “No, Seneschal, not you.” As Kimbolt blinked his surprise she glanced across at the grey bearded Nordslave soldier. “Constable Johanssen, go to Father Simeon’s tent and see what can be done to identify his assailants.”
“Your Majesty,” constable and seneschal chorused obedience, the one briskly business-like, the other puzzled.
***
“It’s Jay isn’t it?” Thom hailed the lad curled in a ball between the poles of scaffolding. He unfolded enough to look at the illusionist from beneath a shock of dark hair. “It’s an unusual name,” Thom went on.
The boy shrugged. “It used to be longer, it’s Jay now, just Jay.”
“It was you who found poor Father Simeon yesterday.”
Another shrug.
“That must have been awful.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Jay snarled. “Done worse myself.” Despite his insistence, his face still took on an unhealthy pallor as an image reared in his memory.
“He was a good man, and I hear a friend of yours?”
“You hardly knew him,” the boy spat.
Thom smiled through the hostility. “Still, at least they found the culprits and quickly too.”
Jay scowled, “found two fools covered in blood claiming they done it yes, but that don’t make it so.”
“It’s a pretty compelling case,” Thom suggested.
The boy snorted his derision. “One with no eyes and the other with no hands, and the both of them locked in a cell the whole time. How is that possible? Tell me that mister Wizard?”
“I’m an illusionist,” Thom instinctively corrected the boy. “A purveyor of visual deception, not a wizard. The two murderers though, they are certainly wizards, sorcerers skilled in dark magic.”
Jay shook his head and stared out across the crowded bailey. “It’s not right. None of it. Simeon can’t have died, not to two cowardly cripples who pissed their robes the minute they saw the glint of a knife.”
Thom hesitated to suggest that that was exactly what had happened. The truth seemed unlikely to satisfy the boy. Jay sniffed and wiped a ragged sleeve across his nose.
“It just ain’t right,” the boy muttered. He turned away, presenting only a shoulder to the illusionist, his hands working at his eyes.
Thom stood a moment longer. “No Jay, I guess it isn’t, but then a lot of things aren’t these days.”
***
Kimbolt was uneasy. It should have been a time for celebration. The night of the full moon had come and gone. The morning had seen the walls of wizardstone at last lose their unpleasant yielding nature and harden into a permanence which had no need of support. Torsden was right, it was a shell of a fortress more than a complete castle, but it was a shell that no accidental or deliberate fire could now destroy. Teams of soldiers were already dismantling the timber bracing to use as raw materials. They held promise of more comfortable barracks than the tented encampment the soldiers had so far been enjoying. All was going so wonderfully well. But still Kimbolt was uneasy.
He stood by the side of the chair that stood service as a throne, trying from that inauspicious angle, to catch the queen’s eye. While he barely dared admit the fact, she had been avoiding his company, even his gaze for days now. Ever since the dragon had fallen. At first he had thought it a minor annoyance at his intervention against the lizard. He had assumed the irritation would wear off as time and common sense gave her a different perspective on his actions. But, if anything, the days between had seen a hardening in her mood. When he looked at her, she looked away. When he spoke, she seemed distracted to the point of not listening. When she went to bed, she went alone.
This hurried council had been called without any consultation with him and it was a broad gathering. Not just the chiefs of staff, but the burghers of the town and even a fair few captains of the guard. Kimbolt watched them all file into the room, fearful of how many untested loyalties stood before him. Whatever matters the queen had in mind to discuss, it could not have been any issue of great confidentiality.
“Thank you all for coming.” She settled quickly to business, dispensing decisions with swift care, mindful that with so large a group, none save she could sit for the audience. Even Rugan, recovered now from his exertions, stood with the rest. For the most part it was the routine business of government.
Until such time as all of Morsalve could be freed, the seven counties of the north-east were to be placed under the protection of Nordsalve. Constable Johanssen was to be their steward, administering justice and raising men and taxes in the queen’s name.
The fortress in which they stood was to be completed and would henceforward be known as Mattucairn. Kimbolt raised an eyebrow at that, as the queen faced down the puzzled looks of the assembled crowd.
“That is in recognition of Prince Matteus of Undersalve.” She made a challenge of it, daring them to show some surprise or dissent at the honour she bestowed on the man who had raised her. There was murmuring in some corners of the room which drew a glare from the queen, but then Johanssen put his hands together in a show of light applause which caught and lit around the room, growing to a thunderous roar. And Kimbolt saw the queen smile, and wished he had been the one to have initiated her pleasure.
She hurried on to other dispositions. Rugan and Pietrsen would return to Medyrsalve and Nordsalve respectively. The full strength of both provinces had to be marshalled if they were to take the fight beyond the seven counties and into the heart of Morsalve.
Kimbolt briefly lost himself, recalling a happier tangle of limbs they had enjoyed in the castle of Karlbad and hoping that the mundane pleasantry of rulership might shake the coolness from his queen. So it was that he almost missed his own name being mentioned and had to beg pardon for the queen to repeat herself.
At last she met his eyes with an unwavering stare beneath a frown of uncertain provenance, and she repeated the directive that he had only half heard and not at all believed. “Seneschal Kimbolt will go to Oostport to oversee arrangements for the long overdue return of the Salicia garrison.”
“Oostport!” He was so surprised he said it twice. “Oostport?”
“This is a pressing matter that needs your attention.”
“You are sending me to Oostport to organise a ferry trip?” He wished she had discussed this with him first. To raise it in so public a forum left him little scope to argue while maintaining all due deference. In private he would have refused point blank to leave her side.
“Not just a ferry trip, Seneschal,” she said. “Once the garrison is safely transported across the Eastern Ocean you can remain to assist the Prince of Oostslave in raising and training an army from the men of his province, an army you can send to us, when it is ready.”
His jaw dropped. She did not mean to just send him to Oostport, she meant to keep him there too. “You are sending me away?” It sounded stupid as he said it, a child’s protest, but still he said it. “You are sending me away!”
Her gaze was fixed, her expression cold. She swallowed and just nodded once in answer.
“My Queen?” Why was she doing this now? Why here? He gazed around at the room, too many faces too interested in this exchange, why be so Goddess-sworn public? “My Queen,” his expression if not his words beseeched a change of heart. He looked around again, dropping his voice to a whisper that everyone must have heard. “Niarmit?”
“Those are my orders, Seneschal,” she was quick, brusque even, turning away as she spoke. “You leave tonight. You can ride out with Rugan as far as Laviserve.”
And with that she moved on t
o the next item of business, while Kimbolt took his place again, hollow hearted and, for the moment only, at her side.
***
“You are sending me away?” Quintala railed, her eyes scanning the plush tent in search of some sign that Maelgrum was joking. In the end she fell to dumbfounded repetition. “You are sending me away!”
The undead wizard sat in the high backed throne of his own pavilion. Their immediate danger was passed, the flight from the host of Nordsalve had brought them within the more securely held counties of central Morsalve. Reinforcements from Morwencairn had strengthened their force enough for Maelgrum to halt their retreat and await any unwise move from the bitch’s army in their direction.
Now it seemed the Dark Lord had time and leisure to attend to more mundane concerns. Quintala was more than disappointed to discover she herself was one of those concerns.
“Think Quintala what you have cossst me sssincsse I gave you my trussst.” They were alone and Maelgrum’s voice issued with all the reasonable logic of a schoolmaster. “Your hot headed impetuosssity cssertainly had itsss placsse. It wasss a ussseful excussse for the disssembling and obfussstication which ssserved usss ssso well while the queen thought you were her creature.
“However, it ssseemsss that thisss wasss not an act assssumed in order to sssserve our endsss, but a genuine weaknessss in your character. I am sssending you away, becaussse if I did not then I would probably kill you. That isss sssomething which both of usss might regret, but I am sssure you can sssee that your death, your grisssly and uncomfortable death isss sssimply what othersss would exsspect of me.”
“Others, what others?”
“From the lowessst orc to Mazdurg himssself, from the mossst ragged outlander to Rondol in hisss pomp, all the talk isss about your much anticssipated demissse. They know of no ssservant who hasss failed me asss you have, or at leassst none that have done ssso and sssurvived.”
Strangely Quintala felt more anger than fear at the judgement of her fellow traitors. “I am not like the others,” she insisted.
