Winterheim it-3

by Douglas Niles

  “Tildy!” roared Forlane. “Where’s Tildy Trew?”

  “Keep your boots on, your greatness!” came a peeved reply from one of the many doorways leading off of this large chamber. A moment later a stout, round-cheeked woman emerged to glare impatiently at the noble ogre. “Well? Don’t you know we’ve got to get the king’s welcome feast together? What do you want now?”

  Strongwind was startled at the slave’s temerity-in his own castle, a servant who spoke thus might be subjected to a rebuke, even a slap. Lord Forlane chuckled agreeably, despite the stern frown on the woman’s features.

  “This one is to be present at the feast for inspection by the court. The king wants you to get him cleaned up, dressed for the occasion, and so forth.”

  “Oh, great,” muttered Tildy Trew, squinting up at Strongwind. He had the impression that she was nearsighted. “Did you just come in on the ship?”

  “Er, yes,” he replied.

  “Well, all right. Not as if I have any choice in the matter.” She addressed the ogre lord. “You can tell the king that I’ll do my best-though I can’t say he’s given me much to work with!”

  As the ogre lord, still chuckling, turned to leave, Strongwind noticed that the Tildy was in fact somewhat younger than he had first suspected. Her clean, round face was unlined, and her hair was a rich dark brown, like good, fertile soil. She was much shorter than him, shorter even than Moreen he thought, and her green eyes glinted with something that might be good humor.

  “All right, get undressed,” she declared, as soon as the door had closed behind Forlane.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Gotta look you over for wounds, you know. Heal you up if you need it.” She spun about and shouted, her voice as keen as the cry of a hawk. “Sherris! Draw a hot bath for our guest, here! Looks like we’ll have to comb some lice out!”

  Strongwind heard water pouring in another room as the command was obeyed. He shook his head-lice? On the King of Guilderglow? Anything was possible, he conceded, as Tildy took his hand and tugged him toward the adjacent room.

  Besides, a bath didn’t sound bad … not bad at all.

  “Grimwie?”

  He hated it when she called him that, but he was too comfortable, too satisfied to raise an objection. Instead he merely sighed and settled more deeply into the pile of furs that was Thraid’s mattress.

  “I saw you brought a slave back on Goldwing. Didn’t you?”

  “Mmpphh” he said.

  “He looked like a good one, I thought, not like so many of these humans, dirty and scrawny and all. He looked strong, and he was tall … like you wouldn’t be ashamed for people to see him, say, in your house. I was wondering something.”

  Another sigh. The king hoped she was about done talking-he really wanted to sleep.

  “Grimwie, my king?” She kept going. Her hands were moving now, another unwelcome distraction.

  “What is it, my cuddle?” He tried to sound patient, lacking the energy to endure one of her pouts. “What is it that you were wondering?”

  “Well, you know that my house slave, Wandcourt, is getting old. Why, he and Brinda tell me that their children have had children somewhere back around the Moongarden. Perhaps you noticed when you followed him-he’s not as spry as he used to be. I think he would sleep half the day away if I didn’t invent things for him to do, so I thought I should have a younger slave, one to help Wandcourt with the chores … someone who is a little more capable, who is strong and would look acceptable in my livery.”

  “You want the human I brought back from Dracoheim?” Grimwar was immediately unhappy with the idea, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. “I don’t think he’s right for a house slave, my sweet. He was a wild man, attacked a whole company of my guards, killed more than a few. No, he’s quite dangerous-too dangerous for a house slave. Maybe the Seagate crew for him. With a back like that, he could do the pulling of two men.”

  The king was lying. In fact, he had considered the prisoner for a slave in his own house-there was a presence and dignity about the fellow that seemed beyond the typical human. Of course, the King of the Highlanders would have to face a different fate soon enough. Stariz had made her intentions clear regarding his death at the Autumnblight feast, and-since she had the clear will of Gonnas on her side-the king was not prepared to dispute her on that matter. Until then, however …

  “Well, after he’s tamed, I mean,” Thraid pressed. “In fact, I could help tame him. Certainly Wandcourt and Brinda would be a good influence-they’re about as perfect as slaves can be.”

  “I thought you told me they were getting too old,” the king retorted.

  “Well, besides that. I mean, they’ve always been loyal. And discreet-you know how important that is! This new slave would be just perfect. I got a good look at him that night when you had him paraded off the ship.”

  Grimwar reflected, remembering the argument that had erupted between Stariz and himself when they had discussed the slave’s fate. He knew that she sorely wanted to kill him to slake her craving for vengeance over the disaster at Dracoheim. This prisoner was the only tangible remnant of those reckless saboteurs. Certainly he was doomed, eventually … but maybe there was some way the king could get some use out of him before he was killed.

  Indeed, what better way to keep him out of the way and to gain Thraid’s gratitude than to temporarily give him to his mistress? It would make Thraid happy, and that always led to pleasant consequences. Indeed, her playful fingers were no longer annoying him.

  “All right, Cuddle,” he said breezily. “I will send him to you, and you can look him over. Then you can decide if you really want him.”

  “Oh, Grimwie, thank you!” she declared, rolling over to give him a kiss on his jowly cheek.

  “Enough talk,” he said, reaching for her with both arms. “Time for me to get what I really want.”

  “Can I have a little privacy?” Strongwind asked, longingly eyeing the stone bathtub filled with steaming water. The lice he hadn’t even noticed before were now starting itch, and he was ready, even anxious, to disrobe, soak, and clean up.

  “Privacy? You’re a slave!” Tildy Trew snorted indignantly. “It won’t be anything I haven’t seen before. You think I don’t know my way around with the lads?” she asked, glaring at him with her fists planted on her pleasantly rounded hips. “It’s my job to see that you get cleaned up proper-I should think you’d show a little more gratitude. Take those bruises, now!”

  “What?”

  She was pointing at his wrists, where the shackles had enclosed him, and he grimaced to see the purple-yellow marks that extended halfway up his arms. “That’s where I was chained!” he growled.

  “Of course,” she said, “and an unsightly blotch you’ve got from it. Now, if you’ll let me take care of you, I’ll see them salved and slimed so that you’ll be whole again before you know it.”

  Strongwind tried to decide what to do. He had never had another human being speak to him like this-although he had to admit that Moreen had come close on a few occasions-and he felt his temper rising. Tildy Trew was trying to take care of him, under awkward conditions imposed by their mutual enslavement, and he could not lose sight of the fact that he had many real and dangerous enemies here. It did not make sense to add to the list of his foes one who might otherwise be neutral.

  He sighed in resignation and shrugged out of his clothes, turning his back to her and slipping into the tub as quickly as possible. Unfortuately, the water was so hot that a very gradual immersion was all he could manage.

  Acutely aware of his undignified position, he turned his head to find Tildy examining him with sparkling eyes and a wide grin. That was all it took-ignoring the near scalding heat of the bath, he slid over the edge of the stone tub and sank into the water up to his chin.

  “Hmmm,” she said. “Comb a few tangles out of that beard, trim the hair a bit, and you might have some promise. We’ll have to deal with those bruises, though-an ugly
lot on your back, as well.”

  “That’s where they had me strapped over the bench,” Strongwind informed her, trying to sound haughty but far, far too comfortable to pull it off.

  “It looks as if you’ve already felt the lash a few times,” she remarked, her tone softer and sadder than before. “What did you do to bring that on yourself?”

  “I bloodied the nose of an ogre who tried to push me around,” he replied, with some measure of pride.

  She clucked in what sounded like sincere concern. “Best you learn to let them do that when the brutes are of a mind to. Otherwise, you won’t last long around here.”

  “I don’t know if I want to last,” he answered sourly. “Tell me, what about all these slaves? It seems to me that we humans outnumber the ogres here in Winterheim.”

  “Oh, we do … by at least two to one in Highlanders alone. There are hundreds of Arktos here as well,” Tildy said, “maybe more.”

  “Has there ever been talk of … well, of revolt?”

  There was a long silence, and Strongwind finally looked up. He was startled to see Tildy’s pert face white with anger, her lips compressed into a thin line. She shook off the hand that he placed on her arm.

  “Don’t even think about that!” she hissed, looking around frantically. Strongwind had been careful to speak when they couldn’t be overheard, so he was taken aback by her reaction.

  “Why not?” he demanded softly, meeting her eyes with his own scowl. “Has every memory of freedom been driven out of you people?”

  He was surprised again when her eyes abruptly swam with tears. Strongwind waited for her to regain her composure.

  “I don’t want to make you cry,” he said finally. “I just got here. I don’t understand this place, not at all, but I thought that I understood Highlanders, and the Arktos as well. I would expect them to be working against their captors!”

  When she looked at him, her eyes were dry and her tone level but serious. “It’s the queen!” she said. “She has ways of knowing when someone is planning trouble. There was a man, Redd Dearman, who tried to incite a little resistance a few years back. He was discreet about it and careful-but they came for him in the night. He perished on the altar at Autumnblight, but not before the queen made an example of him that every slave in Winterheim would remember. Even the children-the little ones-were forced to come and watch!”

  “I would think that’s all the more reason to revolt,” Strongwind said. “How can people live under such tyranny and cruelty?”

  “We make do,” Tildy said, looking at him earnestly. “There are some who would make trouble-like Black Mike, who works in the royal kitchen. I have heard of him, and that means others have, too. It will only be a matter of time before the queen’s attention falls upon him. More’s the pity.”

  “Who is this Black Mike? How is he making trouble?” The Highlander king asked, trying to disguise the eagerness in his voice.

  “Quietly, so far,” Tildy said. “I shouldn’t even tell you-but he is trying to recruit slaves, men and women for a secret purpose. I don’t know what size group he has formed, but I know that the danger to him and to many others is real.” She took Strongwind’s brawny forearms in her small hands. “Tell me that you’ll stay away, that you won’t give the queen any excuse to single you out.”

  “Hmmpf, I’ve always been good at taking care of myself-”

  “Until you got captured and enslaved!” she retorted pointedly.

  He stiffened. “I have no regrets about that. I made a sacrifice to help a friend, the woman I still mourn, who made an even greater sacrifice. If this is to be my fate, I can only hope to meet it with the same courage that she met her own.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tildy said quickly. “At least heed my words enough to be careful-please!”

  Strongwind Whalebone nodded. “I will not do anything rash,” he promised. “Nor will I endanger others, but I do intend to keep my eyes open.”

  She nodded seriously, then dumped some soap and water over his head, scrubbing fiercely. She surprised him by turning and shouting toward the door of the bathing room.

  “Hey, Barkstone!” Tildy called, so loudly that the king winced.

  “What is it, beautiful?” asked a man, sticking his head in the door. His accent was familiar. He was of the Highlander clans near the king’s own fortress of Guilderglow. Strongwind could tell that, though he couldn’t tell much more because soap was dripping down over his eyes.

  “Blondie here doesn’t think I know anything about the lads, he doesn’t. Told me so himself!” Tildy was indignant again. “Thought maybe you could tell him about us in the Moongarden, that time?”

  “Ah, Tildy-those memories will last my lifetime and keep me warm though I live through a thousand winters, but it wouldn’t be very gentlemanly for me to speak about them, now would it?”

  “I tell you, he doesn’t believe me!” declared the woman.

  “Who is he?” asked Barkstone, coming forward.

  “Someone just came in on the galley, as fresh as you were yourself nine years ago, when the ogres plucked you off the coast.”

  “Sorry to hear that, my friend,” said the slave man. “We’ve a life here, but it’s a pale imitation o’ freedom.”

  “I agree,” Strongwind replied, brushing aside the soap and looking up. He was startled as the man, whom he didn’t recognize, took a step backward then dropped to one knee and bowed.

  “Your Majesty!” cried Barkstone. “I canna believe that they took you!”

  “Majesty?” Tildy Trew said crossly. “Nobody tells me anything.” She glared at Strongwind, and he merely shrugged modestly. “Who are you anyway?”

  “This is Strongwind Whalebone, Lord of Guilderglow and king of all the Highlands!” declared Barkstone.

  “No kidding!” Tildy threw another bucket of water over him. “I’d better clean him up real good,” she said, her eyes still twinkling.

  6

  The Tusker Escarpment

  Four hundred and twelve humans, one elf, and one gully dwarf gathered in the courtyard of Brackenrock. Gray clouds hung low over the fortress, and by the time they were ready to march a steady drizzle had begun to fall. It was hardly the greatest omen for the start of a perilous expedition, and the weather-combined with about four hundred ripping hangovers-cast a pall of gloom over the war party’s departure.

  The gates of the fortress had not been repaired since the destructive attack earlier that summer, and the warriors filed through the gaping entrance in no particular order. They carried everything they would need: food, weapons, shelter, a nip or two of warqat for the cold nights. Many more Arktos lined the towers and walls of the fortress, watching in silence as the war party marched away. By the time they had gone a mile, Moreen looked back to see that the citadel had already vanished into the mist and rain.

  The soggy weather continued, with drizzle more or less constant over the next ten days. Nevertheless, the war party made good time. Even old Dinekki, who of course had insisted on coming, hobbled along at a brisk pace. Mouse led the way across the Whitemoor, following the same route he had taken two months earlier when he had ambushed the raiding party led by the ogre Broadnose. The long file marched past the ruin of one hamlet after another, the skeletal remains of small huts, no more than a dozen or two for each village, standing as a stark reminder of ogre cruelty. As each little ruin faded into the mist and rain behind them, the Arktos and Highlanders felt anew the hatred of their ancestral foes and the desire for vengeance that had sent them on this mission in the first place.

  Even Slyce seemed grim as they passed these sights, the gully dwarf apparently affected more deeply by this devastation than he had been by the accident that had claimed the lives of his comrade and his captain in the submersible boat. Moreen noticed the rotund little fellow sniffled sadly as they passed the muddy remnant of a village, and he looked down and saw the broken pieces of a child’s stick-and-feather doll.

  The terrain of the moors
undulated gently, the landscape utterly treeless except for a few cedar groves in the most sheltered valleys. Mouse led the band along these streams for the most part, though when swampy marshes blocked the lowlands he took to the rocky ridges. Their bearing remained almost due south, the direction determined by Dinekki’s instinct and confirmed by a nautical compass Kerrick had made from a bit of lodestone.

  The months of the midnight sun were drawing to a close-now four or five hours of twilight marked the middle of the night, though even in the cloudy, gray mist it never got truly dark. The short period of dusk seemed to suit the marchers well. They stopped only long enough to stretch out on the driest ground they could find, each person covered by his fur cloak to keep off as much of the rain as possible. Some sipped warqat; others brewed small pots of bitter tea. After a few hours of sleep they rose, ate sparingly from the dried fish, kelp, and trail-bread provisions each warrior carried along, and resumed their march.

  Moreen usually fell into step somewhere in the middle of the pack, holding her head up and slogging along among the rest of the Arktos and Highlanders. Most of them were men, and that included of the Highlanders, but several dozen women of the Arktos tribes had eagerly joined the band. Bruni was here of course, as well as several other female veterans of the long march to Brackenrock eight years earlier. Even slender Feathertail, who had been a mere girl then, now carried a bundle of spears lashed to her back and wore the heavy leather tunic that was the traditional-and only-battle armor of her coastal dwelling people.

  Every day the chiefwoman regarded them proudly-and guiltily. For all of her life, and the lives of her parents and all of her other ancestors, the humans of Icereach had lived in fear of the ogres, running and hiding, and when possible, trying to defend against their raids and attacks. To reverse that lifelong relationship was like trying to change the very reality of the world in which they lived.