by T. O. Munro
My thoughts exactly, your Majesty. Niarmit echoed.
“They have seen us then, your Majesty,” Torsden’s voice summoned Niarmit’s attention back to her own world.
The queen nodded. The zombies were wheeling to the right and fanning out on a broader front, while their escort split into three groups. A formation of mounted orcs was taking up station on either flank of the zombies, while the mages sheltered with their personal bodyguards close behind the mass of driven undead.
Niarmit pursed her lips. The necromancers were the vulnerable point. Strike them down and the zombies would lose all purpose save the desire to feed. Destroy the mages and their charges would be as much a danger to the orcs as her own cavalry. However, the orcs were positioned to obstruct any attempt to ride around the flank of the horde and take the necromancers from the side. It could be attempted, but not fast enough to prevent the zombies and mages repositioning themselves.
“Orders, your Majesty.”
Niarmit pointed to the thin line of necromancers at the rear. “We must destroy the mages, Lord Torsden.”
Torsden nodded. “And how will we get to them?”
“We ride through the middle, Lord Torsden, wedge formation.”
He nodded with grim satisfaction. “Charging into the centre of the enemy, your Majesty! That’s my kind of plan.” He raised his hand in a lofty signal of command; The Northern Lord’s stature was so great he would have dwarfed any standard borne by an ordinary man.
Torsden dropped his hand and, with a thunder of a thousand hooves, the cavalry of Nordsalve erupted off the hillside. They charged for the heart of the crowd of zombies with Niarmit riding hard at the Northern Lord’s side.
Surrendering partial control of her body to the crowd of ancestors gathered on the stone thrones, Niarmit watched her own fingers twisting at the Lady Mitalda’s command and a cone of freezing air rolled over the centre of the zombie line. A cold so severe it stilled the creatures into immobility as though winter’s depths had in an instant returned. The point of the cavalry charge crashed into the paralysed forms with such force that undead bodies were shattered into fragments by the impact. Shards of decayed but frozen flesh flew into the faces of the swelling ranks gathered on either side of the deep wound which had been gouged in the enemy line.
Astride her horse, Niarmit could see over the clawing mass of undead to the wavering line of necromancers, their nerve shaken by the depth of penetration the cavalry had so swiftly achieved. Glancing left and right she saw the mounted orcs loping round to try to come upon the cavalry from behind. It was imperative to seize the advantage, to push on through and complete the bisection of the zombie horde.
Torsden’s axe was swinging lustily at her side, cleaving two zombies at a time with one blow. She urged her horse through into the swelling ranks. The power of other hands from within the Helm leant force to her own sword arm so that the blows she struck were scarcely less formidable than the Northern Lord’s. The zombies that crowded around, too close for Mitalda’s spell to be unleashed in safety, found yet more danger in the swinging blade of the queen. A foul ichor of decay stained the air as her scything blade separated limbs and heads.
Her horse stumbled, crumpling to its knees, tripped by some mass of bodies and body parts beneath her. She swayed back in the saddle pulling on the reins to urge her mount back up. There was a thump from her side, something had crashed into her, sending her flying into the mass of zombies.
Her first thought was of the inconvenience of being on foot. She rolled as she fell and came up still swinging. Her sword still sliced with the accumulated power of her forebears, eviscerating the nearest trio of zombies so that they tripped and fell in a tangle of their own decaying entrails.
The second thought was the oddity that someone had struck her from behind without sparking the Helm’s defensive protection. And even as that thought crossed her mind she was struck again, sent sprawling full length in the mass of zombies. The quality of sound in her ear suddenly changed, the clash of battle louder, the excited mutterings of her ancestors silent. Before her eyes the Helm rolled free, jarred from its seat upon her head.
The peril of her position lying flat and defenceless within a dark mass of undead needed little emphasis, but nonetheless a foul set of teeth bit into her ankle to re-iterate the point. She reached with her hand towards the Helm, straining to retrieve its power and safety, but a zombie foot struck it, and then another, kicking it beyond her reach beneath the crowd of rotten feet and legs.
Undead hands seized her arm. She jerked her elbow back, slashing out with her sword blade. She struck with all the well-honed speed and power borne of years of struggle, but found the blow strangely lethargic compared to what the Helm’s augmentation had afforded her.
***
Gregor lolled in the grip of the thorns. Days had merged into a sequence of pain and failure. A succession of imagined blades had cut him a few inches of movement in some unknown direction before the jagged thorns had claimed him once more.
Memories swam around his dazed senses, snatches of music, faces, old scenes reaching to him across the years. She was there. It had been the last time he had spoken to her, at Prince Eadran’s naming ceremony.
The baby boy had screamed at the touch of the purifying oil. Gregor coughed a laugh at the recollection. Even then at the first test of the Vanquisher’s bloodline the child had shown himself soft, far softer than his uncomplaining elder brother Thren, as the young Lordling had been quick to point out.
And she had laughed the comment off and ruffled young Thren’s hair and said her child would be braver than them both. Then she had stumbled, almost fallen, and Matteus had caught her by the arm while she clutched her swollen belly.
“Are you well, my lady?” Gregor had asked.
“I am quite well,” she had insisted though even then she had been terribly pale, her eyes dark and shadowed.
“The child does not trouble you?” he had asked alarmed to see her so frail, leaning so heavily on the old general’s arm.
She had smiled. “Not at all, Prince Gregor,” she had insisted. “The Deaconess tells me I carry a girl, but I warrant she will be as strong as your boys.”
“With a mother such as you, my lady, how could she be anything less?”
She had smiled. It was a flash of that intoxicating charm which had swept them into each other’s arms, while the baby Eadran’s mother had languished sick with child. He had loved her with more passion than he had thought possible and now she stood before him, the general’s wife. She had patted her stomach and said, “I would walk through fire for this child.”
He had bent to kiss her hand. “I am sure her father would do the same,” he had said his eyes fixed on hers, bright lights within the dark hollows of illness.
“Indeed he would and will, my liege,” General Matteus had thundered cheerfully at his wife’s side. “I may come late to fatherhood, but with years comes a commitment that youth cannot understand.”
“Of course, General Matteus,” Gregor had said, avoiding the honest happiness of the soldier’s expression. He could have had no inkling of the tragedy awaiting him and his unborn daughter.
A sound, a tremor, brought Gregor back to the present, trapped within a jagged web of thorns within the cursed Domain of the Helm, trapped as far from Matteus and Niarmit’s mother as it was possible to be. He struggled a moment, another half dozen thorns pricked his skin. There was some disquiet carried on the wind. Some shudder running through the fabric of the demi-plane.
She was in trouble, she was in danger.
He struggled anew, fresh blood drawn from deep scores across his skin. The rough hewn cloak no match for the sharp tips of those hollow thorns. How long had he lain here, trapped in useless submission to a briar? She would not have given up, she would not have surrendered, she would have walked through fire for her daughter.
Through fire.
A thought caught at the edge of his awareness. A flame grew in
his imagination, flickering specks of glowing soot that alighted on the nearest dry branch. It caught, the briar burned. The fire took hold, crackling through the branches it consumed them, it consumed him. He laughed. There was no death in the Domain of the Helm, pain yes, but not death and while he lived he would do what her mother would have done, and walk through fire for Niarmit, his daughter.
***
“Your Majesty!” A voice thundered above the sound of battle and two great boots landed either side of Niarmit’s prone form. The glimmer of daylight returned as Torsden’s axe swung in a great circle with such speed and power that the wind of its passing was barely stilled by the undead necks and chests that it cut through.
Niarmit pulled the crescent symbol from around her neck and held it high, pronouncing aloud the blessing of the Goddess. “Benedictonium de Dea.” She felt the divine power flowing within and through her, drawing on her strength as it destroyed the undead. The Northern Lord’s axe swung through clouds of tumbling dust as the tortured bodies were given the rest their departed souls must have longed for.
Torsden hauled her to her feet one handed, in the circle of dusty desolation which her spell had cleared. More undead pressed in at its circumference, but she advanced, limping towards them while all around the cavalry surged forward. Again she invoked the Goddess’s grace and another void was created within the zombie ranks. She scanned the ground for the Helm, trying to recall in which direction the last foot had kicked it but knowing that another dozen such blows could have carried it anywhere.
A horseman rode up, leading her own roan mare by its bridle. Without ceremony, Torsden heaved her into the saddle. Then turned to his gargantuan mount and leapt astride it. From the higher vantage point, Niarmit re-iterated the liberating blessing of the Goddess. As another swathe of undead surrendered their physical forms, a glimmer of metal shone in the spring sunlight. The Helm lay on its side within the latest fine carpet of dust.
She was grateful for the support of the horse; powerful though the Goddess’s blessings were, they drained her of energy. A last wind of divine grace and the bifurcation of the enemy force was complete. The lead horseman of Torsden’s guards had a clear path through to the necromancers beyond and as they took to it, the mages took to flight, bidding their bodyguards to action while they fled the battlefield with ungainly speed.
Niarmit slumped against the horse’s neck. The outer ranks of the now directionless zombies turned their ire elsewhere. They fixed upon the orcs poised to press upon the rear of Torsden’s cavalry column. The inner ranks, thinned by ice, axe, sword and divine grace, were a much diminished threat to the hardy Nordsalve horseman. While the horrific nature of an undead foe might haunt several dreams to come, the scent and rhythm of combat was a second home to Torsden’s warriors. A simple world in which you hacked at everything infront of you until it stopped moving, and then you found the next thing to hack.
With the battle scattering across the plains, Niarmit guided her horse to the Helm and slipped gingerly from the saddle. Her ankle wasn’t the only wound, though it was the one that bled most heavily and already she could feel a corruption seeping into her blood from whatever taint had been on the corpse’s lips. There were scratches besides, on her arms and across her face and bruises where her leather armour had blunted but not entirely dissipated the trampling force of the undead.
There would be a healing to be done later, another trespass on the favour of the Goddess.
She looked at the Helm with deep suspicion, fingers running over the crescent symbol, feeling the reassurance of the familiar nick in its outer edge. She had trusted to the Helm’s protection, dispensed with the precaution of thicker or more complete armour in the certainty that its magical wards would repulse any who came against her.
When she had first worn it in Morwencairn, orcs had hurled themselves at her back and been despatched to oblivion entirely unfelt by her, their blows deflected and their bodies destroyed by a dweomer ancient and automatic.
She shook her head. She had hurled the artefact at a crowd of the enemy and it had scattered them with an explosive contact to rival the power of Lady Mitalda’s icy magic. Yet here, the foe had not only struck at her but had stumbled over and around the greatest weapon she had in her possession showing no more discomfort than if they had been wrestling over a football.
She raised the crescent symbol to her lips, feeling its warm reassurance of the Goddess’s presence. She had noticed how dull and cold the symbol was whenever she wore the Helm, another reason to eschew the artefact. She knew the Domain of The Helm lay beyond the Goddess’s reach, or at least beyond where she chose to reach. Prayers there went unheard and, while the queen wore the Helm, even in her own world it appeared to raise a barrier to her communion with the deity.
She reached a hesitant hand towards the Helm. Had she trusted it too much? Had that displeased the Goddess so that she wanted her erstwhile priestess to learn a lesson? Did the Goddess want her to see that the blasphemous artefact was not a solution to be relied upon? To warn her that the evil that was Maelgrum should not be fought with the scarcely less evil creation of Eadran, a reminder that he was not just the Dark Lord’s vanquisher, but also his one-time lieutenant.
Niarmit sat a moment in confused contemplation while her horse bent its head snorting away the dust of the dead to uncover a few green shoots of spring grass beneath. She tended to her injured ankle. A strip of cloth and a brief drawing on the Goddess’s grace was sufficient to slow the bleeding and dull the pain of the ragged wound. The repair to her riding boot would be another matter.
“I think the villagers of Grogham are safe, your Majesty.” The Northern Lord’s voice boomed above her, leant force with the added advantage of height.
“For now,” Niarmit admitted shuffling to her feet, a little dizzy with the aftereffects of her holy exertions. She reached down to the Helm and replaced it carefully in the saddlebag.
“Forgive me, your Majesty,” Torsden asked squirming a little in uncharacteristic discomfort. “I am a plain blunt man who does not understand the ways of magic, or what can drive and command the undead.”
She smiled while she braced herself to push off into the saddle from her uninjured foot. “There are some would think those were virtues more than flaws, Lord Torsden.”
Torsden frowned as the queen settled once more astride her mount. “But that weapon, that Helm you wear. I have heard much talk of it, but is this how it normally works? I am sorry if, my intervention interrupted a situation that was well within your control. But it seemed to me that you had need of help and that the Helm had not served you as a loyal servant should.”
She reached up to pat his arm, then caught his gauntleted hand and gave it a squeeze. He replied in kind but with a pressure of surprising gentleness for one so made for war and force. “Today, Lord Torsden, I am more grateful than ever that I did not have your head struck from your shoulders. I do not know the Helm well enough to say what is normal, but…” she struggled to frame the words to even talk of the object. That much at least of the Helm’s enchantment seemed to be intact. In the end she just shook her head. “I am in your debt, Lord Torsden.”
***
They came together, always together. Marvenna frowned. “I am pleased that you have been so prompt in your attendance on me, Lieutenant Elyas,” she said carefully. “But there was no need to trouble your friends to leave the feast as well.”
Caranthas and Michil glowered at her with ill-concealed distrust. Elyas’s expression was less scrutable, and the more worrying for it.
“We are keeping a close eye on our colleague,” Michil insisted.
“To misplace a captain is a misfortune,” Caranthas added with a humourless grin. “To lose a lieutenant as well might be considered carelessness.”
Marvenna’s eyebrows rose at their impudent implication. “Lieutenant Elyas is no danger of getting lost,” she said. “There can be no safer place for an elf than the heart of the Silverwood.”<
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“Forgive them, Lady Marvenna,” Elyas said lightly. “They do worry so. We who have fought so hard and lost so much, it can leave a scar, a certain insecurity. They do not like to be apart from me.”
The steward scowled unhappily. “I had hoped to be able to have words with you alone, Lieutenant Elyas. It is a matter of a little delicacy.”
Elyas wrinkled his brow, staring over Marvenna’s shoulder in a moment of reflection. “I can think of no matter for discussion where the presence of my two compatriots would cause me shame or discomfort.” He pursed his lips for a moment and then nodded curtly at the conclusion of some internal debate. “However, if a more private conference would help you in raising this … this delicate matter then by all means let us walk a while together. My colleagues can wait for my return I am sure.”
Caranthas and Michil exchanged a look while Marvenna ground out a grateful acquiescence. She let Elyas take her arm as she had seen Kychelle do when the elf lady had meant to cow a dissenter through a silken bludgeon of discussion. However, she had not the advantages of Kychelle’s age and her reliance on a stick. Marvenna was aware that they looked more like a couple out courting than two leaders embroiled in matters of state.
“This delicate matter,” Elyas reminded her when they had left his two associates a hundred yards behind.
“It is delicate,” Marvenna agreed and silence fell for another score of paces.
“Too delicate to be spoken of at all?”
“You have a fine singing voice,” Marvenna blurted out.
Elyas gave a self-deprecating dip of his head. “Lady Illana and Lord Feyril were kind enough to think the same. Often was the time I sang for them beneath the bows of Hershwood. Sometimes the Lady Illana would join me in a duet, sometimes it was Captain Tordil who accompanied me.”
“The songs you sing…”
He interrupted her carefully composed thought. “They are old songs, Lady Marvenna, though I have strung some new words upon old melodies.”
