by T. O. Munro
Vlyndor and Persapha both stood. A dark figure had splashed its way to the shore. The lizard squirmed in Persapha’s arms but she held it close. The new comer wore tattered blackened robes, mist enveloped his shoulders as he staggered up the slope. He reached out a blackened hand. “Perssepha,” a hoarse voice whispered.
The medusa and the karib stepped closer, tasting the air while Kolyn’s chirping filled their ears. The figure slumped to his knees. They saw the red welts beneath the burnt skin, the steam still rising from the smouldering cloth around his shoulders. They could taste the fear and the pain.
“Odestus,” Vlyndor cried.
“Uncle.” Persapha ran to him. Bob leapt from her arms and scampered beside her.
***
“You should leave me, your Majesty,” Johanssen gasped through cracked lips. The stretcher jolted when one of his bearers caught a tired foot on an unyielding protrusion of rock. A small whimper of pain escaped the constable’s mouth.
“I’m not leaving anyone,” Niarmit said.
“I’m slowing you down. You need to move quickly.”
“No you’re not Johanssen.” That much at least was true. What was slowing her down was the trail of refugees clogging the roads with carts and oxen. It was fortunate that the summer heat had baked the earth hard and firm or else they would all be wading through a quagmire. Nonetheless every fifty yards or so another wagon lay pushed into a ditch, full of abandoned possessions, its occupants exorted to make faster lighter progress on their own two feet.
“You should not tarry, your Majesty.” Each word was drawn with a painful breath. “You must survive.”
“Not if it means leaving all these people to Maelgrum’s vengeance.”
“You can’t save everyone.”
“I can try.” She reached for his arm, finding a patch of skin unmarked by flame or troll tooth. “Your wounds are not closed yet Johanssen, let me attempt another spell of healing for you.”
The constable shook his head with a vigour that must have cost him dear. “No. Save your strength. Leave me.”
Niarmit shook her head more in despair than denial. The constable’s complex mosaic of injuries was the antithesis of easy healing. It would have taken the efforts of half a dozen priests to even ease his discomfort, and there were a score or more of survivors from the forest ordeal in no better condition. The stumbling journey east and south was doing his barely staunched wounds no good at all. If they did not stop soon or at least find some legion of priests it would be too late for all these wounded. But they could not stop and there was no help coming for them this side of Medyrsalve’s borders.
Niarmit shook her head, angry that the constable’s judgement was right. “Your Majesty, his army is vast,” he whispered. “You must flee. Leave all of us who cannot walk.”
“Save your strength, spare your breath, Johanssen. No one gets left behind.”
“Pragmatism wins wars, not idealism, your Majesty.” Expressing that thought quite exhausted the constable. His eyes closed and his head lolled. The bearers and the queen both stopped, watching the ruined form on the stretcher, watching and waiting. There was the faintest lift to his chest, a wheezy croak as he drew in a breath. The constable lived still, and while he lived they would bear him with them.
Niarmit nodded at the stretcher bearers and they resumed their plodding walk.
“Your Majesty,” Torsden hailed her while he was still some distance away. His great horse wove a path way through the intervening columns of retreating soldiers as he closed on the queen.
“What news, Lord Torsden?”
The Northern Lord slid from his mount and bent to speak more closely in the queen’s ear. The clumsy effort at confidentiality was compromised by Torsden’s inability to talk more quietly than a ship’s master commanding his crew in the height of a gale. “The scouts have reported a new force closing from the north-east, your Majesty.”
“The north-east?” Niarmit frowned. All of Maelgrum’s force lay to the west of them. “Could they be more refugees?”
Torsden shook his head. “They are marching in close order and quickly, the swiftest foot soldiers my scout ever saw.”
“How many?”
“A company, maybe two, he said certainly less than a thousand. But they will be upon us in with an hour.”
Niarmit beckoned the soldier who was leading her own steed. “It is too small a foe to be an attack of the enemy.”
“Unless it be more trolls, your Majesty.”
Niarmit looked up sharply at the doubt in Torsden’s voice, she might even have called it fear. She had not realised how far his bruising encounter with the creatures had buckled his confidence in his own supremacy. Then again, who else would not find their confidence in the power of their own arms blunted by a foe who would not die?
“A few hundred of them could do us grievous mischief. They could hold us up while his main body comes at us from the west.” Torsden hastened to explain his trepidation.
“There are no more trolls,” Niarmit asserted with a bravado worn more for Torsden’s benefit than one born of her own convictions. “And in any case they certainly have not the commander to bring them to battle in good order. Not anymore.” She swung herself into the saddle wincing slightly at the flexing of the raw scar in her side. “Come, let us see for ourselves who approaches.”
They worked across the columns of troops as the mixed force of Medyrsalve and Nordsalve retreated in more or less good order, their columns threaded through with streams of refugees.
Torsden took an eager lead. Niarmit, following a little more gingerly behind, looked at the broad back of a man ill-suited to quiet reflection. His response to any situation was to take action, the more desperate the situation the more urgent the action, but doing something quickly meant he rarely considered whether he was doing the right thing. It had nearly been his downfall before. She spurred her horse a little faster, anxious to assert her command of the decisions to be made.
The ground was higher to the north-east, a proud ridge from which an enemy could look down on their retreat. The Northern Lord’s scout stood at the limit of their army’s flank. Behind him a captain marshalled Torsden’s depleted cavalry into order for a charge. And then the newcomers breasted the ridge.
“By the Goddess they do march fast!” Torsden said as the column flowed down the hill at a steady rate not far short of a run.
“But they are not trolls,” Niarmit smiled, her spirits leaping at a sign of hope she had not seen since before the battle of Bledrag Field. The sheen of sunlight on their steel spear tips, the sinuous speed of their marching, and then, unlooked for a flare of lilac flame bursting in the air above their column. Niarmit gasped and spurred her horse before Torsden could react. She had a lead of twenty yards before he got his giant steed to motion, and she never lost it until she drew up at the head of the newcomers and flung herself from the saddle into the astonished arms of the tall elf.
“Tordil,” she cried not caring how his embrace hurt her side. “Tordil. What befell you and how did you come to be here?”
“Your Majesty,” he said, gently easing her back to a more appropriately formal degree separation. “It is a tale of folly, some of it my own, I will admit. I would be suffering for it still had not Elyas sung me to freedom.”
To Tordil’s side she saw the elf lieutenant smiling at the joyful reunion, and beyond a column of elves in the livery of Hershwood, but also some undeniably silver elves. “You have worked your magic on Steward Marvenna and brought Andril’s people to our aid.”
Tordil winced. “I have brought aid, your Majesty, those of Lord Feyril’s people and a few of the bolder elves of the Silverwood. But I could not persuade Marvenna to our cause, this is all I could muster.”
She tried but could not quite keep the disappointment from her countenance and the silent rebuke of her expression hurt Tordil more than harsh words. “The steward was not for turning,” the elf spoke hastily in his own defence against
a charge she had not laid. “She has disowned all those that marched with us and laid an interdict on their ever returning to the Silverwood.”
Niarmit’s eyebrows shot up. “She must have feared you to make so dire a threat.”
“It is no threat, your Majesty,” Elyas said. “She meant to keep as many from your cause as she could, to promise them a security in the Silverwood and to threaten them with damnation if they left. We were lucky to bring as many as we have.”
“Nigh on seven hundred,” Tordil said. “All of Feyril’s folk and two hundred of the best and bravest of Andril’s people.”
“And how many have the art?” Niarmit asked. “”Maelgrum is at our heels and he will have sorcerers aplenty in his army. I could do with some elven heavy artillery of my own.”
“There are some amongst us,” Tordil admitted.
“I’d reckon it at one in twenty, your Majesty,” Elyas added.
Niarmit gave a quick nod. She had hoped for more, but it was still nearly two score more mages than she had had that morning.
“How far away is Maelgrum and with what strength?” Tordil asked.
“Somewhere to the west,” Niarmit said. “With about four times our numbers. He has been slow to pursue, but he may just be toying with us. I check every hill we pass to see if it is a place where we might make a stand. Our cavalry have been sorely mauled so I have few to spare for scouts.” As though to punctuate her observation there was a braying of horses behind her as a pair of Torsden’s outriders caught up with them.
“Let me take Caranthas and Michil to the west,” Elyas said. “We may not be quite as fast as a horse, but we tire less readily.”
“I would be sorry to part so soon, Lieutenant,” Niarmit said. “But I am starved of detailed news of the enemy’s movements.”
“It will be done, your Majesty.” A smile played on Elyas’s lips as he spoke so lightly of so heavy a task. But then his cheerful expression was supplanted by puzzlement.
Niarmit frowned a moment, thinking the lieutenant had shaken his own confidence, but then she realised he was looking past her at the scouts Torsden had greeted with a gruff halloo. Even as the realisation dawned a voice of dreadful familiarity said, “your Majesty.”
She spun round. It was no pair of scouts from Torsden’s cavalry. There stood Kimbolt with Jolander at his side. The seneschal looked dishevelled, a week’s growth of beard upon his jaw, the dust of a hard ride upon his clothes. He slid swiftly from his saddle and seized a long bundle wrapped in cloth frm across his horse’s rump. As he turned to present her with the bundle, Niarmit’s mouth worked in confusion. A clamour of different emotions fought for control until at last she spluttered, “Seneschal Kimbolt, you are supposed to be in Oostport.”
***
Kimbolt bowed low but careful of his burden. He had hoped for a less public audience with the queen. There was too much he could say only in private. He had hoped also to find her better. She looked pale and tired, more so than could be explained even by the hardships of a wearying retreat interspersed with snatched morsels of sleep.
“I have brought you these, your Majesty.” He laid his awkward parcel on the ground and flicked back the cloak to reveal the paired swords of The Father and The Son. There was a gasp of astonishment from Tordil, all the more pleasing for being drawn from one rarely impressed by the seneschal’s words or actions.
Even Niarmit was rendered speechless. She knelt and reached towards the weapons, touching the hilt of The Father, the sword which she had wielded at the battle of the Saeth. “How?” she said. “Both of them. How?” She turned the blade over with her hand. “This one, was taken from me in Morwencairn.” She shook her head. “How far have you strayed from your posting, Seneschal?”
He smiled at the flash of acerbic humour. The surprise had softened the reflex of displeasure at his appearance. “They were brought to us. The traitor Haselrig has forsaken his foul master and he brought us these in token of his sincerity.”
“Haselrig? A turncoat?” Niarmit shook her head. “Why the Dark Lord’s ship must surely be foundering if even the fattest rats are fleeing. Still how could he carry these weapons? How could you carry them?” She picked up the Father, testing its weight.
Kimbolt nodded at the ragged cloth on the ground. “Those are your uncle’s robes, saturated in his blood when Maelgrum killed him. Haselrig and I both used them to handle the weapons and circumvent the power of their ancient wards.”
Niarmit nodded sadly as she picked up the other blade in her off hand. “Even in death the bishop still does us a great service.” She turned the weapons, tested one edge against the other with a light touch that nonetheless rung a clear pure note. Then she laid them carefully back on the cloth.
“You have need of those weapons, your Majesty, urgent need.” Kimbolt hurried on with the crux of his message. “Haselrig came to Lavisevre to warn us, to warn you in particular. You need the most powerful weapons to wield in your defence. Maelgrum has cast an infernal spell, he has opened a hole in time and used it …”
“To send the medusa against me. To drag her past into our present.”
Kimbolt blinked his surprise at Niarmit’s laconic interjection. His only satisfaction was in seeing that the others were as dumbstruck by this news as he.
“How could you know?”
“Because I met her in battle two days ago, on the western edge of Coln Forest.”
“And you survived unscathed?”
She grimaced, touching at her side. “Not exactly unscathed, but yes I survived.”
“You defeated Dema?” He saw a flicker of irritation crease her brow at his incredulity. “You defeated the medusa without even the weapons of the Vanquisher.”
“I didn’t defeat her,” Niarmit admitted. “She was dragged back to her own time.”
Kimbolt let out a great sigh. “Then she did it, she did it.” He shook his head in wonder and murmured to himself. “Hepdida, you did it.”
“Hepdida?” Niarmit snapped. “Hepdida is at Lavisevre, or should be. What has Hepdida to do with the medusa’s dismissal?” She stepped closer, their faces barely inches part, but never before had they been so close and yet so distant. She pulled at the chain around her neck, dragging out the royal ankh with its soft pink gem. “This artefact of Eadran’s flared in anger during my battle with the abomination. Hepdida was in danger, mortal peril. In the circumstances I did not have the leisure to see if it went to white before it turned pink again. So tell me now Kimbolt, is this ankh charting Hepdida’s life, or Giseanne’s? Is my cousin dead?”
“I don’t know,” he said miserably.
“Did you leave her at Lavisevre?”
He shook his head. “No, I left her en route to Listcairn.”
“What!” She seized his shoulders and shook him hard. “What, you let her go into Quintala’s den. You sent her there!”
“She had to go.”
“She had to be kept safe.”
He shook his head again. “It was a blue gate, a hole in time.”
“I know what it was. I’ve seen one too. A circle of light blooming with blue eddies.”
“I’d seen the other side of that particular gate Niarmit. I was there when Dema came back, her sword bloody, her mask off.”
Again he saw her touch her side. Oh sweet Goddess, sure it wasn’t her blood he’d seen all those months ago on Dema’s sword. His knees felt weak.
“You saw her come back,” Niarmit asked.
“She turned me to stone, she didn’t mean to. I was there, she rose up and looked at me.”
Niarmit’s voice was thick. “That was why she stoned you, because she had just been sent back into the past.”
He nodded, “I thought she was Hepdida, I hadn’t time to look away.”
Niarmit glanced at the incredulous witnesses to this exchange. Tordil and Torsden open mouthed in wonder. Elyas stepping back, beckoning to Caranthas and Michil to join him. The elf lieutenant at least knew when it was courteo
us to make himself scarce. Kimbolt wondered if the queen might have wished for more privacy. He hoped she would take this conversation elsewhere where they would not be overheard or overlooked. There were other matters to discuss that definitely would not bear an audience. “And why did you think it was Hepdida?”
“Because she called to me, she called my name through the gate.” He was beseeching her. She had to understand, to believe he had had no choice, none of them had. “That’s why we knew that gate would not be destroyed, could not be destroyed until she had seen it.”
“And you told her this, you told her all of this.”
“I told her,” he said, biting his tongue. “I told her all she needed to know.”
Niarmit’s attention snagged on the tiny equivocation in his words. “But you didn’t tell her all you knew. You didn’t tell her all you heard?”
He shrugged helplessly.
“What else did you hear, Kimbolt? What did you keep from Hepdida?”
He looked up, looked her in the eye, those fierce green eyes, a gaze as hard as he had ever seen. He had to get her calm enough to hear him, there were Maia’s lies still to be laid to rest. Yet there were more weighty matters than his besmirched honour, and whatever else he did, he could not lie to her. “There was a man, a voice I didn’t know, who spoke to her after she had called my name.”
“And you didn’t tell her this?”
“Rugan and Haselrig both said that I should not. That the fabric of time was worn parlous thin by this benighted magic. That any more information I shared was like to work in exact opposition to the intention with which I shared it.”
“They said and you obeyed?”
He spread his palms. “I have no knowledge of such things, your Majesty. I had to trust to their judgement as to what was best, what was Hepdida’s greatest chance of safety.”
“Well she wasn’t safe was she?” Niarmit held up the ankh in Kimbolt’s face. “Two days ago she was on the brink of death, by the Goddess she may have succumbed.” She spun away. “And you have brought me two swords to defeat a foe who has already been banished back to her own time.”
