by T. O. Munro
***
Niarmit winced at the pain of the wounds she had already suffered and in anticipation of the blow that was yet to come. There was a snarl of rage from the medusa then a soft whoosh, a draft of air, and nothing.
Niarmit creaked open one eye, the moonlit earth of Coln forest stared back at her, speckled with the dark wet stains of her own blood. She strained her ears to hear the sounds of her adversary. Nothing. She was alone. Alone and bleeding her life out in the dirt. She cried out in pain as she reached with her wounded arm for the crescent around her neck. “Sanaret servum tuum carus dea,” she mouthed. It was a delicate balance. Invoking the grace of the Goddess was a draining experience, sucking out what little strength she had. She felt faint, nearly fit to swoon into unconsciousness. But if she passed out before she could stem this bleeding and knit the ruptured tissue together then death would claim her as surely as if she attempted no healing.
She grimaced with the pain that alone kept her awake. It was cold by this forest, but she would not die, not here, not alone. She gasped as she looked at the belly wound she had clasped her hand over. It was high, half way between hip and ribcage and a couple of inches in from her side. Was her child safe? Where would the life within her lie at this point in her pregnancy. She felt a foolish panic for not knowing.
Then she shook her head and seized upon the crescent again drawing on the grace of the Goddess and adding a prayer for her unborn child. When the bleeding of her wounds had slowed to an ooze she staggered to her feet, dizzy from the physical and spiritual drain than had sapped her strength.
The Helm lay on its side a dozen yards away. She ambled towards it, pushing the crescent back inside her jerkin. Her fingers touched the royal ankh and she pulled that out. It glowed a steady pink, she still had an heir, an heir that was not of her own line. The ankh would not glow red until her child was born, if that should ever come to pass. But which of her successors did the ankh glow for now, was it her cousin Hepdida, or her aunt Giseanne? Niarmit dared not dwell too heavily on that thought.
She seized the Helm and set it on her head. A clamour of voices erupted in her head. Impatient minds plucked at her body and senses anxious to see for themselves what lay before her. She shook off their cloying bids for control.
“The medusa is gone,” she told them. “She just vanished.”
“The gate must have been destroyed!” Eadran declared, his voice quelling the chatter more effectively than the queen’s.
Niarmit nodded. “She has gone back then, into the past to keep her appointment with death.” She allowed herself a pained smile. “She has been denied that share in the great victory that Maelgrum promised her.”
“You are hurt,” Gregor called.
“You need healing,” Thren said.
“I am as healed as I can be,” Niarmit told him. “But even if Dema is gone, there is still a horde of trolls chasing the remnants of mine and Johanssen’s soldiers through this forest. They will be a mile or more in the forest but we must help them.” She glanced around the abandoned forest edge. “Can anyone see a horse? I don’t think I can run very fast.”
“Give me your hands, girl,” Eadran commanded and she let him. She saw her fingers fan out, pointing a spray of digits at the forest edge. White flame plumed from beneath her nails jetting into the forest in a conflagration which caught at the trees so quickly one might have thought them dried to kindling by a drought.
“Eadran, what are you doing?” She exclaimed as a wall of fire grew along the tree line.
“I have a power over flame that makes using quick oil look like rubbing two sticks together,” the Vanquisher declared with a laugh. “See how it burns.” It was true, the fire was spreading into the forest interior faster than wind.
“But the trees.”
“Bugger the trees, it’s the trolls we need to destroy. Unreliable and inflammable, the idiots have run inside a woodpile and I have the match.”
“What about the men?” She opened her eyes in the Domain of the Helm to glare at the amused form of Eadran on his white throne. “What about them, how will they escape the flames?”
“They have more chance of escaping the fire than they do of escaping the trolls,” Eadran said with a shrug. He quailed a little beneath the intensity of her glare. “I will do what I can to constrain the flame,” he said.
“Do it!”
Niarmit opened her eyes again in the Petred Isle, her face glowing from the heat of the roaring flames. “Forgive me Tordil,” she murmmered at the sight of the blazing deforestation.
***
The half-elven siblings lay slumped on opposite sides of the stone landing. Rugan had abandoned his attempts to reload the crossbow. Quintala lay deathly pale, only occasionally raising her hands in a weak flutter above the floor.
“So this is it then,” she murmured.
“I’m five hundred years old, sister,” Rugan gasped. “I’m looking forward to a day off.”
She laughed at that, a painful cough that accelerated the rushing sensation in her chest. She shook her head. “You always knew, and you never told me. Never.”
He shifted his shoulders in the slightest of shrugs. “I spent over four centuries, knowing that an evil lurked within me.” Words came with difficulty, but still her brother felt the need to speak, to share as he had never shared before. “I watched myself all the time, trying to spy the first sprouting of his desires, of his motivations. Knowing I had no right to the throne I sat upon, that everyone who doubted me had a better reason than they could ever have known for such distrust.”
“You wanted to spare me that, brother?” She murmured. “You shouldn’t have bothered, I felt it anyway.”
He gave a small shake of his head. “Not to spare you no, I was too absorbed in my own worries. Too selfish. I should have tried to help you. I’m sorry.”
“Tried to save me from myself eh?” she grinned. “I think I was born to self-destruct.”
“No child is born evil.”
Quintala laughed a racking coughing laugh that specked her breath with blood.
“I’m glad you can laugh at death’s door,” Rugan snorted.
She shook her head. “All my life I lived in your shadow, brother, and for all your many many faults you were always everyone’s favourite half-elf. Everybody trusted you more than they trusted me.”
He tried to speak but she raised a limp hand to wave him silent. “Even Maelgrum, even Maelgrum. You were his favourite. He admired your caution, he would not let me kill you. He would not let anyone kill you.” The amusement consumed her, though her voice was little more than a croak.
“I’m sorry, sister,” Rugan mumbled. Shock registered in his eyes as he saw the fierce concentration on her face, her heavy arms raised for one last effort of spell casting. “What are you doing?”
She had put her hands together infront of her, finger tips touching, and was pulling them apart to form a horizontal shape. “I was always meant to die alone, brother,” she said. Sweat broke on her brow as Rugan hastily reached for the quarrel and crossbow. “Good bye.”
An oval window opened in the floor beneath Rugan and with a cry of pain and disbelief, the prince disappeared through it. Quintala let her hands fall and leant back against the wall. Eyes half closed, breathing so shallow as to be barely noticed. She could feel the heat of the blazing tower seeping through the stone walls and floor. She was thirsty, so very thirsty, but at least the pain had stopped.
***
Hepdida skirted round the broad battlements atop the castellan’s tower. The thinner beacon tower rose to her right, but there was no point in going higher. There were shouts below her. Flames cast flickering shadows across the small courtyard. The quick oil had set fires not just within the tower beneath her, but also spreading through the L shaped halls that filled three quarters of the keep space. There were popping noises behind her as the slates on the conical roof cracked with the heat they could barely contain.
In the oute
r bailey Hepdida could see makeshift bucket lines forming, outlanders and orcs gathering by the wells, but a steady stream of figures were fleeing from the keep. Some jumped from the top of the steps in their desperation to escape the conflagration within the confines of the fortress’s heart.
Hepdida scanned the walls of the keep, its four towers and thick curtain walls fast becoming little more than a huge stone brazier for flames that even now licked through the timbered rooves of towers and halls. The battlement level lay ten feet below the tops of the towers. She knelt up in an embrasure to look down on that section of wall that stood between keep and bailey. The tower at its far end, in the south eastern corner of the keep was the only one unconnected with the burning buildings. Its stairway should safely lead down to the little courtyard and the possibility of escape. But how could she get Rugan up here.
She started to edge back between the merlons when an orc called to her. “Hepdida, Hepdida!” She turned. The creature was clad in a few scraps of orcish armour around its chest and shoulders, but the breeches belonged to an outlander scout. Behind it lurched two more, similarly dressed. Beneath a top half of orc garb lay the boots and trews of an outlander and a Medyrsalve lancer.
“Thom! That’s a really shit disguise.”
The illusionist in orc’s form shook his head. “We didn’t have time to get more gear on, but don’t worry. Everybody’s running around like headless chickens. It wouldn’t matter if we were naked or wearing an archbishop’s robes.” He closed the distance to the foot of the wall beneath her. “Let yourself down, I’ll get you.”
“How did you set such a fire, child?” The other orc in outlander’s trousers demanded staggering with halting steps after the first.
“I need to get Rugan,” Hepdida said, turning to slip back from the stone embrasure. But just as she did so, the roof of the tower collapsed and and a column of flame shot into the sky, scattering tiles and timbers with the force of the blast. Hepdida was flung backwards through the stone gap and she was falling. She felt the feathery touch of hands reaching for her and then her head hit something hard and her vision went dark.
***
“She’s coming round,” Thom said, as the two ill matched orcs carried the girl out of the spiral stairway.
“You two look ridiculous,” Elise hissed more to vent the irritation at her own impotence, limping down the steps behind them.
“Nobody’s looking,” Haselrig told her and it was true. The small courtyard was insufferably hot, blazing buildings on three sides turning the confined space into a furnace. A few figures could be seen scurrying for the passage through the curtain wall that led to the relative safety of the outer bailey, none of them spared a glance for the trio of orcs carrying an unconscious girl
Hepdida struggled wide-eyed in the grip of the orcs. “It’s all right,” Elise told her. “You fell and hit your head. We’re nearly out.”
“Rugan,” Hepdida gasped. “He’s stuck in the tower. We have to go back.” The three orcs looked at the plume of flame roaring high from the huge stone chimney that had once been the castellan’s tower.
Elise shook her orcish head in the glare of the raging flames. “We have to get ourselves out of here. If we stay we’ll roast.” There was a crispness to her clothes which were starting to smoulder. A wisp of smoke rose from the cloak around Thom’s shoulders. “Come on.”
They ran, half dragging the reluctant Hepdida towards the passageway. Nobody tried to stop them. The outer bailey was filled with leaderless orcs and outlanders standing staring helplessly at the inferno. Every so often another burst of fire would send fragments of scorched timber or shattered tiles over the curtain wall and the spectating line would retreat a little further.
No-one took any notice of a quartet of mismatched fleeing orcs and a girl outlander scout.
***
Giseanne rushed along the corridors of Lavisevre. “Where is he? Where is he?”
She met the stretcher party coming from the grand entrance.
“He just appeared, my lady,” the lead guard was saying. “He was at the gate, lying on the ground.”
“Rugan!” Giseanne wailed seeing the battered form of her husband lolling on the stretcher. “Rugan, what has happened to you?” She lifted her head. “Call for Deaconess Rhodra, call for all the priests.”
“Already done,” the guard assured her.
Rugan raised his uninjured hand. Giseanne gripped it. “Take me to my bed,” Rugan whispered hoarsely. “And bring my son to me.”
***
Hepdida staggered through the eastern gate of Listcairn town. “Stop,” she said. And the four of them turned to look at the inferno illuminating the night sky. Even at this distance, the light was bright enough to fling long shadows of their orcish shapes across the ground.
“Shit,” Thom said. “It’s caught the buildings in the outer bailey too.”
“Sparks do carry,” Haselrig said. “And wood does burn.”
“I reckon that job is well and truly done,” Thom said as a thunderous roar reached them a couple of seconds after another bright flare from within the doomed castle. “That’ll be the main hall roof.”
“What in the Goddess’s name did you use to start that fire?” Elise asked.
“Quick oil,” Hepdida muttered. “Quintala said it was quick oil.”
“Quintala was there?” Haselrig sharply curious.
“How much quick oil did you use?” Elise demanded.
“The whole flask.”
The admission drew a stare of disbelief from the sorceress.
Hepdida nodded. “I didn’t mean too, it was an accident.”
“And Quintala is in there,” Haselrig nodded towards the inferno.
“Job definitely done,” Thom murmured.
***
They had made him comfortable. The Prince of Medyrsalve lay in his bed beneath the covers. They had used a blanket to cover his ruined right arm so that it should not distress the baby boy gurgling happily on the bed beneath his father’s tired and watchful eye.
Giseanne sat on the bed, holding her son as he reached out to grip his father’s finger. The baby Andros was laughing at the entertainment of being roused from his bed for this sudden party. Rugan smiled.
Giseanne looked past her husband to the robed deaconess standing on the far side of the bed. The Lady of Medyrsalve raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question. Rhodra gave the slightest twitch of her head, a barely perceptible shake. For a moment Giseanne’s face clouded with grief. Then she composed herself before her son should see and assumed again the smiling visage of a mother at play with her child and his father.
Prince Andros’s nurse was not so controlled. She turned away, shoulders heaving and a guard swiftly took her by the arm and led her from the room, himself in no hurry to witness this end game.
Rugan drew a deep breath, his face pale and drawn and looked at his wife. “He is my son,” he said. “Our son, watch him well, raise him true.”
Giseanne forced out a laugh. “You will do that yourself, Rugan.”
The prince gave a slow shake of his head and spared his wife a thin smile. “You made me better than I thought I could be, Giseanne. You will do the same for him.”
Giseanne looked away, digging long nails into the palm of one clenched hand as she strove and failed to remain strong. Rugan looked at the child playing at his side. The baby raised his hands above his head and slapped the bed clothes with glee. He looked around at the many faces around the bed, for their usual smiling endorsement of his hilarious performance.
Rugan smiled. His head fell against the pillow and the last half-elf closed his eyes.
A maidservant howled. A guard began to blub. Giseanne lifted her dismayed child and held him tight against her as the baby began to cry for a sadness he saw on the people around him, but which he could not understand.
***
Niarmit had found a horse a few hundred yards from the edge of the blazing forest. She limped towar
ds it careful not to scare the animal nor open her half-healed wounds. It was unmarked by the attack of the trolls which must have carried away its former rider and had found a tasty clump of grass to soothe its ragged nerves.
She murmured soft reassuring noises until she was close enough to catch its bridle. The horse skittered a little, jerking its head at the restraint, but Niarmit held tight. Just then, as Niarmit was shaping to get a foot in the stirrup, a great howl of anguish rolled across the plain as loud as thunder breaking from an overheard lightning strike.
The horse reared and whinnied flicking its head back to try and loosen Niarmit’s grip as it high stepped away from her. She held on hard. She needed this horse. Or rather she needed a horse and this was the only one she had found. She had just got the animal steadied when the wave of cold burst over them. It was a sudden drop in the air temperature that had Niarmit shivering, her teeth chattering while the horse stamped restlessly on the ground, its breath misting in the arctic freeze.
But the abherration moved on quickly, rustling the grass with its passing before the warmth of a summer evening returned. As the horse settled, Niarmit was able to make a first tentative attempt to mount it. Her side still hurt and she aborted the effort with her foot only a few inches from the ground. A second attempt, more gingerly undertaken, and she was on the animal’s back.
She hauled on the reins. In a night of horrors, the great shout and the freezing blast were two mysteries too many to ponder. The medusa was gone, the trolls too, but there was still a great army of the enemy advancing westwards, and a much smaller force of her own people that she had to find. The defeat of Dema would not be the last battle she had to face.
Part Five
Marvenna walked in Andril’s garden. She knew it was a dream, a dream of comfortable familiarity. Her steps were confident, certain that her actions would find her absent lord’s favour.
Centuries of restless sleep had inurred her to the way that her own conscience would rise up and assume the mantle of Andril in order to chastise her unguarded sleeping mind. Her angst, in the elf lord’s guise, would often berate her for some imperfection in her stewardship of his bequest. It might be a failure to challenge some small act of disobedience, it could be some part of the forest realm she had not tended as properly as it deserved. Always there had been something, no-one could ever replace Lord Andril. Every new day brought some new way that Marvenna had found to fall short of his perfection.
