by T. O. Munro
“Let’s just get this done,” Hepdida murmured. “We have to destroy the body right?”
“We burn it,” Haselrig glared at Elise. “You can still cast a fire spell I trust.”
“My fingers may be a little stiff for fine spell casting, Haselrig,” she scowled. “Malachy always said as much, but then you have only yourself to blame for that, you and the half-elf’s curse.”
“Just get on with it,” Thom said.
She smiled and flexed her hands infront of her, directing her fingertips at the body beneath the shroud, “I think I can still summon a blaze that’s hot enough for this work.”
“Wait,” Hepdida cried. “Where is the blue gate?”
Haselrig nodded at the door to the bedchamber. “Through there,” he said. “It’ll vanish once the corpse is destroyed. Go on mistress, Elise.”
As Elise braced herself to begin casting, Hepdida called out again. “No, wait. I have to see the gate.”
The sorceress frowned and the princess hurried to explain. “We know I see the gate before it vanishes, I have to see it first.”
“She’s right,” Thom said. “The future and the past are tied together here. She has to do what she has already done.”
“Be quick then,” Haselrig muttered. “We have done well to get this far, let us not tarry a second longer than necessary.”
Hepdida pushed her way into the bedchamber. She had expected to see it, but still it was a surprise, the electric blue oval hanging in space. The room was simple an arrow slit alcove and a bed, and the oval gate appeared at first to be just a blue filter on the room itself, for looking through it she saw the same walls the same furnishings that she saw when glancing past the gate’s edge. But the scene through the gate was darker, the dead of night rather than the shadowy light of dusk that filtered through the arrowslit of the present. The sconce in the past wall held a torch with an eerie unflickering flame, the sconce in the present was bare.
Hepdida stepped further into the room, moving round to see more clearly into the past. And there he was, Kimbolt, thin and ragged with a rough growth of beard, clad in only a sheet caught frozen in mid step towards the other side of the gate. His lips were parted mid-utterance and as she watched the word “Dema?” vibrated through the gate.
Hepdida shook her head even though she knew he could not see her. “Kimbolt!” she called. She had known she would say it, she had even rehearsed how she would say it, practiced it so she should play her part as accurately as possible. But in the end the surprised cry was wrenched from her quite involuntarily.
“He can’t hear you, girl,” a voice behind her called. She spun round. A man stood there, heavily jewelled with gold rings and bracelets, a nomad by his dress.
Crap, oh crap. She turned despite herself to shriek at the only friend she could see. His features jarring and reforming as the window on the past trembled in its temporal location. He took half a step back, half a step forward, his mouth again forming a question. “Kimbolt!” she cried.
Then the nomad seized her wrist and dragged her from the room.
***
The fighting was thickest around Rugan’s standard. The dying light of the day wreathed the battle in shadows as man and orc, wolf and horse danced around the half completed defences that the prince’s forces had dug. One central line of pits had been properly dug and spiked so it broke Quintala’s charge in two. The wolf riding orcs had veered to the left and were giving the Medyrsalve foot soldiers a fearful mauling, while Rugan’s cavalry was pinned down on the right in a sword to sword fight with the outlander horsemen.
The boldest soldiers on either side sought out the glory of striking down the enemy commander, but fire and lightning sparked from the hands of both of the half-elves and circles of enemy corpses mounted around each of the battling siblings.
“Where are you brother?” Quintala screamed. “Come to me.”
A whiff of orc to the half-elf’s right alerted her to Barnuck’s arrival, his wolf leaping and landing four square upon a fallen horse. The great worg dipped its red maw to tear at the horse’s throat, while Dema’s old favourite saluted her successor. “Infantry all gone,” the orc said without exaggeration. “Outriders tell me nomads coming up from the south, riding hard.”
A small part of Quintala cheered at the news, her brother’s fate sealed by a fresh enemy taking his depleted cavalry in the rear. But the greater part of her spat venom. “No!” she cried. “They’ll not have him. Rugan is mine.” And with that she slashed at one unwise attacker and flung a bolt of lightning that unhorsed two more. “Mine, only mine,” and with that she dug in her heels and spurred her horse towards Rugan’s embattled standard.
***
“Trolls you say?”
The voice in Niarmit’s head came from the Domain of the Helm. “Yes,” she thought. Her eyes were focussed entirely on the material world across which she galloped with reckless abandon. She was trusting to the Grace of the Goddess to spare her from any treacherous rabbit holes that might ensnare her horse’s hoof and send her sprawling into the shadowy dusk. “Do you know of them? I am told they heal so fast they cannot die.”
“I’ve never fought such creatures,” the voice of faifthful Thren admitted. “But the monarchs are gathering, I am sure one of them will know more.”
“So, not mentioned in that little book of Chirard’s then?” Niarmit projected a question.
“No,” came the regretful answer. “It would appear these trolls are one of the few evils of which the Kinslayer knew nothing.”
“Goddess, prophet and Saint Morwena!” The words erupted from Niarmit’s consciousness as the frantic ride brought her within sight of the forest fringe. The dying rays of the sun illuminated a dreadful battlefield. Loose limbed leathery giants pranced beneath the trees shredding soldiers with their bare hands. They plucked heads as easily as she might have picked a flower, tossed dismembered corpses between themselves for entertainment and some were were even sitting gnawing on pieces of fallen foe.
A few soldiers stood in clumps, spears outwards, holding the trolls at bay, but the points of the weapons seemed to amuse more than frighten the bristle haired monsters. Niarmit saw one of the creatures stretch up to its full height, arms spread wide inviting the spear thrust to the belly.
Elsewhere along the ragged forest line, soldiers where fading into the treeline, taking advantage of the trolls’ distraction with the dead, the dying and the few isolated circles of resistance. But then, at some command she could not hear, the trolls abandoned their grisly toys and shuffled into some order. A long thin line along the forest’s edge that at another word of command, began sweeping in after the few survivors of Johanssen’s rearguard.
She had arrived too late to save Johanssen’s command, but there might still be time to spare a few quick footed stragglers. She levelled her sword and bellowed, “Charge, let’s give those bastards something else to think about.”
With a thunder of hooves the tight knit formation came crashing towards the trolls’ rear. The creatures hastily turned to reform and face this new adversary, but the weight of the charge carried them away, huge forms impaled on lances and carried before the cavalry a wriggling banner until their weight sheared the lance.
Niarmit felt the wind of one lunging for her, a long fingered green hand grasping for her arm and then there was a flash as the Helm’s wards fired and the creature was flung sideways with enough force to topple the charging horse that it crashed into. A second met the same fate, as the cavalry charge perforated the enemy line and emerged on the far side.
At a barked command from Niarmit, relayed along the line, the horsemen wheeled round and readied themselves for another charge into the heart of the trolls. There was a brief pause while those who had survived the first charge closed up ranks to make the tight wedge formation. With her cavalry jostling for position, Niarmit looked on in horror at the unbowed enemy. Speared trolls were rising from the ground. One dragged half a lance out of its
belly with no more discomfort than if it had been pulling a splinter from its toe. The troll that had lunged for her, struggled up from the horse it had felled with its fall. It grabbed a handful of flesh from the struggling animal, which it stuffed into its maw. Then, with a backward swipe of its hand across its bloody mouth, it shuffled into position in the line. Then at another unheard command, the whole line of trolls began to advance. The trolls were charging the cavalry!
“Charge!” Niarmit commanded and again the men spurred on their horses.
The clash was more brutal this time, the trolls leaping as they charged, many soaring over the points of the lances to pluck riders from their saddles in a deadly embrace. One leapt at Niarmit and bounced off her with an explosive flash. As she broke through the line and wheeled round she saw the rest of her troop embroiled in a seething mass of feasting trolls. She spurred her horse back at them.
Two trolls charged for her from the melee. She ducked the first one’s lunge and swung her sword across its throat feeling the weight of a dozen ancestral arms behind her slashing strike. White bone gleamed at the back of the deep wound she had opened and a plume of thick green ichor erupted from opened arteries. But still the creature stumbled on, pushing its half severed head back upright, the ugly tear sealing itself like a well sewn seam.
The second troll flung itself lower, rolling beneath the trampling hooves of Niarmit’s mount, its fingers raking at the animal’s belly. The horse stumbled to its knees, propelling Niarmit over its neck. She rolled as she fell with the expertise of one who had endured many an involuntary unhorsing, and rose Helm still atop her head to face the foe.
More trolls were drawn from the melee to face the obdurate queen, more curious than fearful, for nothing seemed to permanently harm their hides. Niarmit felt the familiar sensation of another will tugging at her fingers. She surrendered control and in a second a cone of cold sprang from her fingertips, freezing the nearest trolls into immobility. They strained to move, frost covered fingers snapped and fell to the ground, the charge of trolls behind them shattered their frozen comrades into pieces. But even as the pieces thawed, they slithered and crawled and squelched together, rebulilding the body that had been.
“How do you destroy these things?” Niarmit screamed as another swinging slice of her arm cut the nearest troll in two at the waist. The legs ambled off, with the upper body hand walking after it in hot pursuit.
“Fire girl, fire!” A weighty presence from the Domain of the Helm seized her attention. “Now give me your hands girl.”
She let him take them, and the Vanquisher dropped her sword and spread her fingers in a fan. Two more trolls leapt and were repelled to the same useless effect as before by the shocking power of the Helm.
Beyond the encircling crowd of trolls, Niarmit could see the mauled remains of her soldiers staggering in retreat. Most of the horses were gone and the new made infantry were fleeing for the shelter of the trees. The dense trunks obstructing the clean lines of pursuit for the leaping trolls. Not that many of them were in pursuit. Niarmit was far too interesting a puzzle and the trolls crowded round her like children with a new toy.
And then her fingers flared into life, jets of flame of white heat shot out, three yards deep and covering an arc of as much as a third of a circle. The trolls in the front rank caught the full force of the fire. Not just singed but burning in a way she wouldn’t have credited from the texture of their rubbery hide. But the buggers did burn, and where they burnt they did not heal. Some fled all aflame, and the others parted with alacrity to let them through.
“We can burn them all girl,” a voice echoed in her head. “I always told Maelgrum they were useless, uncontrollable inflammable liabilities. We’ll burn the bastards, all of them.” The Vanquisher was taking a rich pleasure in the destruction, a triumphant laugh echoing around the Chamber of the Helm.
But then, in defiance of the Vanquisher’s opinion, the trolls fell back in good order, retreating from his flame faster than Niarmit’s body could be made to keep up. And then, as Niarmit chased them along the treeline they about faced with the precision of the finest regiment of guards and leapt into the forest in pursuit of the scattered remnants of both Niarmit’s and Johanssen’s commands.
Niarmit turned to pursue them, but then she saw a figure standing in the space revealed by the trolls’ precipitous flight. A tall figure in chainmail with sword and shield and a writhing head of hair.
“No!” she said. “It can’t be.”
***
The medusa’s body still lay beneath her shroud, the castellan’s chamber as cold as ever. Hepdida’s nomad captor dragged the blade from her belt and flung her across the room to be caught by a big outlander. She struggled in his grasp, glimpsing her comrades each restrained by another nomad, all with curved knives held to their necks.
The outlander turned her in his arms, gripping her shoulders and glaring down at her scarred face. He grinned at the nomad “Well, Vezer Dev, what have you found?” He glanced first at Hepdida and then at the miserable form of Haselrig. “I’ve heard tell of this one. I can’t say I ever thought I’d see you again, Haselrig, but I certainly didn’t expect you to bring us the fucking crown princess.”
“Traitor bastard,” Elise spat.
“This was not my intention,” Haselrig snarled.
Willem graced the sorceress with an ugly smile. “The little shit speaks true. Or at least if his defection was some twisted plot by Maelgrum it was one I knew nothing of, not I, not the half-elf witch.”
“Screw you, Willem,” Haselrig spat.
“This is too great a treasure for the likes of me,” Willem said with a shake of his head. “Come, lead the way Haselrig, you know where the dungeon is. You can all moulder there until someone with authority to dispose of you can spare the time.” The others went first and he pushed Hepdida infront of him. As they crossed the bloodied landing, Hepdida tried to turn and run back, but Willem held her firm and her struggles only served to dislodge the bloodied corpse of Gwin which toppled to its side with an almost living sigh. Willem called ahead, “Best send someone to tidy up this mess.” He pulled Hepdida towards the stairwell as captors and captives filed down the narrow spiral.
Willem tugged at his neck, pulling out a black medallion. “I think at last I have some news where I might risk the master’s anger by being the one who summons his attention.” Hepdida wriggled in his iron grip. “Be still girl.” He straightened his arm to thrust her face first into the wall and then dragged her back close.
Dazed she tried to spin round. She had to get away, to burn the body. Her struggle, more of a desperate fall than a determined escape attempt, shook Willem’s grasp free, and she was on all fours scrabbling up the cramped stairway. Willem swung round with a roar, flinging out a hand to seize her ankle. “Not so fast, girl,” he shouted, pulling her towards him. There was some commotion below as the other guards turned looking up, eager to lend their aid to their gruff master. “If you won’t walk to the dungeon, you little bitch, I’ll drag you there feet first,” Willem shouted.
There was a thunderous crash and a roar. The air was suddenly filled with dust that had Hepdida coughing and spluttering, unable to see more than a couple of inches infront of her. There was a hand still on her ankle its grip tightening convulsively and then loosening.
She could hear shouts, cries of alarm, a clash of blades but dimly obscured by something. A groan. A voice called faintly to her. “Hepdida, are you there?” Thom’s voice.
The dust settled and she could see the circular stairwell filled with disordered blocks of stone. Of Willem there was no sign save an arm stretching from the rubble, the fingers of its hand cooling even as they embraced her ankle. She shook herself free with a start scrabbling backwards onto the landing.
“Hepdida!” Thom called again his strained voice filtered through a myriad of cracks in the jumbled barrier of stone. “Are you there?”
“You fool, woman,” another voice mumbled, Haselrig
this time. “You’ve probably killed the girl with your misdirected spell.”
“I had to do something.” Elise’s voice carried an uncharacteristic tense doubt beneath her usual shrewish tone.
“I’m here, it’s all right, I’m here,” Hepdida called at the jagged wall of stone.
“Are you hurt?” Thom’s voice quick but happy.
“No, I’m fine. What happened?”
“Elise brought the roof down. Haselrig stabbed the guard that the stones didn’t get.”
“We have to go and now,” Haselrig’s voice was not directed at her, but audible nonetheless.
“I’m going to cast a spell of concealment here, Hepdida. People are coming.”
“Destroy the body, Hepdida,” Elise called.
There were other shouts, alarms and harsh male voices and then the grunts of orcs. Hepdida backed away from the blocked stairwell, the only route in to this tower. She was alone with Dema’s body. They could not get in. But then she could not get out. She gulped. Still, escape was not the priority, the medusa’s corpse was the priority.
***
Quintala flung out another blast of lightning, although the strain of such ferocious spellcasting was sapping her energy more rapidly than a hike up the side of a mountain.
Rugan’s diminished battalion had been pushed back from the crest of the low hill on which the prince had sought to make his stand. Still in some order, the silver soldiers were curving back in a convex line as orcs to one side and horseman to the other pressed in. Quintala’s two divisions were threatening to complete a ruinous encirclement all on their own.
Looking over the battlefield, the half-elf’s acute eyes could make out a broad line of nomads beyond Rugan’s troops emerging at a gallop from the darkness. The late arrivals were shaping to charge up the gentle slope and fall upon the shattered silver warriors from behind.
“Rugan!” She screeched. Flashes of magical light showed where her brother fought. She slashed her way towards the spot but, like the end of a colourful rainbow, the closer she battled the further away he seemed.
