Mother, Maiden, Crone

by Gwen Benaway

  “Hang on,” she said. “How did a chamrosh set everything alight?”

  Kai and Sindy just kept walking.

  It wasn’t a massive hill. If someone were to set off immediately after breakfast, they would be quite capable of reaching the summit in time for a mid-morning snack. In the grand scheme of things, it was actually quite dull. But two things made it stand out.

  Firstly, it was the only hill around for quite some distance. It stood alone in the middle of grasslands. The nearest cover was a forest that stood a couple of leagues away. If, once their mid-morning snack had been consumed, someone were to stand up and look around, they would be able to see a long way all around them and see if anyone was approaching.

  Secondly, there was a huge timber wall that encircled the whole thing at its base. At one point on that wall a gate stood, higher than the wall that surrounded it and even more foreboding and threatening. Up on top of the hill stood a large tower.

  All of this implied very strongly that any walkers and/or snackers who were theoretically resting and surveying the countryside from a vantage point on top of the hill would be more likely to be surveying their own intestines rather than anything else. Nhurthr the Orc King wanted people to know that he was in charge, and this hill gave a very strong impression of exactly that.

  The four women lay on the ground, hopefully hidden by Farielle’s skill at camouflage and by a small dip in the ground.

  “So, what’s the plan again?” Mirabella asked, her voice tense with anxiety. She hadn’t been entirely certain of her own part in the endeavour before, but now, seeing the reality of where they were heading, she was terrified almost out of her wits.

  Farielle held her girlfriend’s hand as Sindy explained what they were going to do one more time. Sindy kept her voice steady and tried to project her own confidence but, if truth be told, seeing the hill fortress had rather unsettled her as well. But they needed to get this woman, and this was the only way to do it.

  Once the human girl had finished explaining, Mirabella shook her head and sighed.

  “I think we’re deeply mistaken, and I think we’re all going to either die horribly or join the Bitch in her cell”, she said.

  “I still can’t believe that we’re going to try and save someone who seriously calls herself ‘The Bitch,’” Kai said.

  “She knows where the Staff is and without her we have no way of getting to it. So, we need to rescue her. Otherwise, the Orc King gets it and then we’re all in trouble,” Sindy said. “It may look like a long shot, but I know that when we’re together, there is nothing we can’t do because we are amazing women.”

  Kai made a throwing up noise.

  Glaring at the dwarf, Sindy said, “Let’s go. It’s now or never.”

  “Can I think about those options for a minute?” Kai said, grinning as she hefted her axe in both hands. “Okay, I’ve thought about it. Let’s go and get this woman. She’d just better be grateful.”

  Mirabella slid her lute from her back and plucked a few strings, making sure the tuning was just right. It was a beautiful instrument—the body was made of many different shades of wood intricately crafted together in a beautiful swirling design while the soundboard was enamelled in dark blue with silver stars picked out. If you stared at the soundboard for any length of time it almost seemed like the stars were moving, the whole image seemed to draw you in until you almost felt like you were falling into space. Mirabella was justifiably proud of it and never let anyone else touch it. When they rested, if she wasn’t spending time with Farielle, eating, sleeping, or actually playing her lute, she would invariably be found polishing it or tuning it or even just holding it, gazing at the soundboard.

  She also pulled out some cotton wool from her backpack and handed it to her friends.

  “Put that in your ears when I tell you,” she said. When they had taken it, she looked at them all one by one.

  “Are we ready?” she asked.

  They all nodded in affirmation, despite looking more nervous than she had ever seen them before.

  “Let’s go then. But if we all die before we even get through those gates,” she said, “don’t blame me.”

  As they got closer to the hill, Mirabella nodded to her friends. They fell back a little and pushed the cotton wool into their ears. Farielle nocked an arrow and kept scanning the area. Mirabella’s skills wouldn’t matter at all if someone was too far away to hear and chose to use them for target practice. The halfling took up her lute and started to pluck a tune.

  It seemed that nobody was too worried about four young women strolling up to their front gates. Presumably, if anyone had seen them, they thought that either the band had a reason to be there or they would be soon turning up on the dinner menu. The fact that one of them was playing an instrument probably didn’t hurt their apparent harmlessness.

  Reaching the gates, Mirabella changed the tune slightly, slowing it down and slurring the notes together. Even through the padding in their ears, the other three could feel a certain heaviness in their limbs.

  “Hold it right there, girlies,” the guard said as they approached. “Jus’ who do you—”

  His question was cut off by a huge yawn that allowed the four women to get a closer look at his huge jutting incisors than they may perhaps have desired. They also got a gust of his foul breath in their faces. Farielle blanched at the stench and looked like she wanted to throw up.

  “Good afternoon,” said Mirabella. “We’d like you to let us in please.”

  “Wha? Wha’d you mean? Let y’in?”

  “Yes please,” she said, radiating sweetness and light while her fingers nimbly played, almost seeming to move by themselves with no conscious input from the rest of her. “And then we’ll get out of your way and you can have a nice … long … snooze. Won’t that be nice?”

  “Snoozh … Tha’s a nice ideee …”

  “Snoozing is the best thing in the world. Just curling up and letting the worries of the world disappear,” Mirabella continued. “I love to have a nap in the afternoon. So, if you let us through, you can get right on and have one. Nobody will disturb you.”

  Turning, the orc stumbled to the wicket gate set into one of the two massive doors. Pulling a key from a pouch on his belt he tried to fit it into the lock. Missing, he tried again and a third time before giving up and letting it drop. He leant against the door beside the gate and slowly crumpled to the ground. Even before he had settled all the way down, a snore escaped from his mouth.

  Sindy stepped forward and picked up the key, going to pull out the cotton wool from her ears as she did so.

  “Not just yet,” Mirabella told her, realizing as she said it that speaking was pretty much pointless. Instead, she just held her friend’s hand away from her head. Getting the point, Sindy nodded and left the cotton wool where it was, turning to the gate and sliding the key home.

  Pushing the gate open with her foot, Mirabella changed her tune once again. This time, it swirled and faded in and out. At the same time as she strummed, she kept a steady beat on the face of the lute. Standing directly in front of Mirabella, Sindy felt the beat wash over her, her heart immediately following the sound. She turned around to talk to … Who was she talking to? There was no one else here. Was there? She had a memory of something or someone, and she knew there had been a reason for the cotton wool in her ears, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember what it was.

  She nearly screamed when a tall, slender elf girl seemed to appear out of nowhere and grabbed her arm, dragging her back from the gate. As soon as she stepped forward and behind Mirabella, sight and memory flooded back to her. Her knees went shaky, and she would have fallen to the floor if she had not been held by Farielle.

  The elf had a worried look on her face, but Sindy, shaking her head to clear the last rapidly fading feels of muzziness, stood properly and indicated that she was
fine.

  As Mirabella stepped through the gate, the other three followed, staying as close as they dared to her, and quickly crossed the inner courtyard, carefully stepping around the orcish soldiers on duty. Kai gripped her axe, but at the same time, her beard shook as she shivered with fear and trepidation. If just one single orc was able to overcome Mirabella’s playing, they could be in deep trouble.

  Reaching the far side of the courtyard, they stood before a dark tunnel opening that led into the hill. Looking at each other, they grimaced in acknowledgement of what they were about to do and then passed out of the sunlight into the shadows within.

  It was the darkest place that Sindy had ever been. A couple of years previously, she had been very ill after eating fungi that she knew she should never have touched. During her recovery, she had had fever dreams where she had been stumbling down an endless corridor, strange noises emanating from all around. Now, stumbling through those passages, slowly working higher and higher up inside the hill, crouching in side passages and rooms, trembling as unseen but loud and stinking orcs went past, when she wondered whether she had actually left those dreams. If the last two years had really happened—working up the courage to tell her parents that they had a daughter rather than a son; their acceptance of her—once her mistress had spoken to them; her mistress’s herblore that had allowed her body to blossom into femininity; and, finally, her journeying with her friends. It was only the firm grip that Farielle had on one arm and Kai had on her other hand that reminded her that this was real. It was nightmarish but it was real.

  Some indeterminate time later, they paused. From somewhere ahead, a faint grey light filtered down. Although after the agonising darkness they had endured, it seemed to Sindy that it was the brightest, most beautiful and welcome light she had ever seen.

  Unfortunately, the illumination it provided only showed a damp, dismal corridor with several doors set into either side. Every single door was open except for one that was held shut with a heavy iron crossbar that bit deep into the rock on either side and was held in place with a huge padlock.

  Mirabella handed her lute to Farielle and stretched her fingers. Playing for that long had made them cramp up, but she needed them limber for the next task ahead of her.

  “Could you give me some light, please Sindy” she said. “I can’t do this with just my dark sight.”

  Sindy pulled out a torch and, speaking a single word, caused it to burst into flame.

  Rummaging in her pack, Mirabella pulled out a set of lock picks and carefully set to work. It wasn’t a complicated lock, relying on heaviness rather than subtlety to prevent it being opened, and as such, it didn’t take long before there was a click and it fell into the halfling’s outstretched hand.

  “Let’s hope we’ve got the right place,” she said as she twisted the crossbar around and pulled on the door. As it opened it released a gust of stinking, sour air from inside that made all four of them cough and blink their eyes clear of tears.

  The other side of the door was not a pretty sight. The cell inside was barely wide enough or long enough to hold the cot that was its only furnishing, and a stench arose from the hole in one corner. Until the door opened and let in the light from the torch, whoever was put inside must have lived in complete darkness, for however long they were allowed to remain alive anyway.

  The current occupant was pressed against the far wall, holding a plate as if she was going to use it to defend herself. Or, judging from her size and the way she rushed forward when the door was halfway open, to attack. She slammed the door open the rest of the way and brought the plate smashing down on Kai’s head before stopping, gaping at the sight of four young, decidedly non-orcish women standing before her, one of them shaking her head angrily to dislodge the shattered clay remnants from her helmet.

  “Who the hells are you?” she said, her voice rusty with disuse.

  “We’re here to rescue you,” Sindy said.

  “You four?” she replied, disbelief evident in her voice.

  “We got this far didn’t we?” Kai said, her ears still ringing from the blow.

  “I guess so. Unless Nhurthr is trying something …”

  “Seriously,” Farielle said. “You think that he would have the wit to come up with something that would require four non-orcish girls? How much intelligence does it actually take to become king of the orcs?”

  “Wait? Girls? I just see three boys dressed weirdly and one halfling girl,” the woman said.

  The sound of Kai’s axe blade dropping to the floor echoed back and forth along the corridor.

  “You know what?” she said. “I could have been insulted back in Hjammerhild. Forget her. Put her back into her cell and let’s get out of here. She’s not worth the trouble.”

  “We need her,” Sindy said. “If we are going to find the Staff we need her. We don’t have to like her.”

  “No worries there,” Kai muttered. “It’s obvious that her name is accurate.”

  “You’re going after the Staff?” the woman said. “Maybe I will just stay in there. Nhurthr may be stupid but he isn’t suicidal.”

  “Or maybe he just doesn’t know that you know where it is.” Sindy said.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Farielle said. “But I don’t think that we should stand around here for too much longer. I think someone may have heard Kai just then.”

  “Hells,” the woman said. “Okay. We’ll discuss what you are later. How are we getting out of here?”

  “Yeah. Later. Like there’s anything to discuss,” Kai said, although as she said it, she also lifted her axe into a position of readiness.

  As she spoke, a shout came from back down the passage.

  “That’s the only way out, isn’t it?” Mirabella said.

  “What about your lute?” Sindy asked. “Can’t you make us invisible or put them to sleep again?”

  “They know we’re here. It only works if they aren’t on their guard against us,” Mirabella said

  “Damnation,” said Sindy. “That’s going to make things a little more complicated.”

  “When you came in here, didn’t you have a plan for getting out again?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” said Sindy. “But it rather relied on the orcs not knowing we were here.”

  “Because that always works.”

  At that moment, an arrow zipped out of the darkness and embedded itself in the door above Kai’s head. All five of them scrambled to get behind the door. Farielle unlimbered her bow and returned fire. A scream showed that she was more accurate than the orcs.

  “This is going well,” the woman said.

  “Shut up,” Sindy said. “Let me think for a moment.”

  The woman went back into her cell and sat against the wall.

  “Goddess, you really are a bitch, aren’t you?” Kai said.

  “Haven’t you heard? I’m not a bitch. I’m the Bitch.”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  “Will you two please be quiet,” Sindy said. She stood, staring at the walls of the cell.

  “Whatever you are doing, can you please hurry it up?” Farielle said. “I’m rapidly running out of arrows.”

  Her gaze fixed on the wall furthest away from the door, Sindy spoke, seemingly ignoring Farielle. “Kai?” she said, “You’re good with stones and rocks. Is there a weak point in this wall?”

  For a brief moment, the dwarf considered making a clever comment about stereotypes but, probably wisely, decided that this was not the best time for it. And anyway, Sindy wasn’t wrong. Kai wasn’t just “good” with stones and rocks. She was brilliant with stones and rocks and she was very proud of her abilities. It may not have been very “girlish” for her to know this stuff—only gkran were allowed to learn the ways of stonecraft—but she had always been very, very good. Her father had been so proud of her and talked confidently of her futur
e status in the mines. That was when he had spoken of her, of course. She was certain that her name—neither the one her parents had given her when she had been born nor the one she had taken when she had revealed her true self to the mine—was ever spoken in her family any more. She suspected that they would both be noted in the lore books as names of ill repute and never given to another dwarf ever again.

  Pulling a smallish pickaxe from her belt, she went up to the wall and examined it, tapping a couple of spots here and there.

  “I’ve got five …” There was a brief pause. “… Four arrows left,” Farielle said, sounding more than a little worried.

  The Bitch held Kai’s axe in one hand, tossing and catching it as she prepared herself. Mirabella had pulled her sword from its scabbard. There was a time for lute playing and there was a time for stabbing and slashing. She was pretty sure she knew which was which.

  Kai tapped a spot again and then once more before she struck as hard as she could, embedding the head of the pick deep into the wall.

  “There,” she said simply.

  “Good,” Sindy said. “Right, all of you, get back. Maybe into another cell if you can.”

  “What exactly are you going to do?” Kai asked.

  “I’m not completely sure … Can you make that hole a bit bigger for me though?”

  Kai dug away at the weak spot making the hole larger.

  “I’m down to my last arrow. We’re all going to die. Just thought you should know that,” Farielle said.

  “Get back. Take cover,” Sindy said. Lifting her arms, she started to chant, quietly at first but growing louder as she continued. As she spoke, the torch in her hand grew brighter until suddenly it exploded in a gout of flame and sparks, leaving her holding a column of bare fire burning by itself.

  The other four looked at one another and ran as one across the open passageway into an open cell opposite, pulling the door shut behind them. The orcs, seeing this and utterly failing to understand the meaning of the growing light from the cell into which they had placed the Bitch, judged this to be their moment of triumph and ran forward screaming.