Maig's Hand

by Phillip Henderson

  “Hurry, get her into that chair. I need some of her blood.”

  Mason and Bale moved to comply while Keira picked up the ceremonial bowl and dagger. “Have you checked for the markings on her stomach?”

  “There was hardly time,” Mason replied.

  He glared at Keira’s displeasure but kept his mouth shut. Keira handed the bowl to Allius and crouched. The princess was awake now and her sharp blue eyes watched them like a cornered animal weighing its options.

  “Hold her still.”

  Mason already had a firm grip on the woman’s arms, which he’d pulled back behind the chair. Bale was holding her ankles.

  “If you be still, I won’t harm you,” Keira said. Then, with the dagger in hand, she began to cut off the buttons on Danielle’s wet and tattered coat.

  Danielle tensed and began to struggle. She was remarkably strong for one so small and Mason had to use considerable effort to turn her right wrist, before she gave a cry and relaxed.

  Keira sheathed the blade and began to undo the lower buttons on Danielle’s shirt.

  “You should know, Milady, this is in no way personal. You did not choose this any more than we and I promise you it will be done as quickly and painlessly as possible, if you give us no trouble and the name of your sister.”

  “Forgive me, if I do not offer you the same courtesy. And the name of my sister is none of your business.”

  “You should watch her, mistress,” Lea said, from across the room. “She bites.”

  Keira peeled back the woman’s wet shirt and smiled at the tattoo on Danielle’s stomach. “Extraordinary. You are a wonder, my dear. The likes of this has only been seen by our kind twice in all the centuries.”

  “And for good reason,” Mason said. He couldn’t see the markings from where he was standing, but he felt Bale and Allius’ fear. The Children of Light had been the White Druid’s most potent weapon since the beginning, and this one had the potential to rob them of Maig’s promised deliverance. It was a daunting thought.

  Keira ignored him and took a deep euphoric breath and stood. The slight smile on her face was mocking, as if she thought them cowards for not wanting to enjoy this victory. Savour it. She took the dagger and the ceremonial bowl and carefully scraped some of the blood from Danielle’s shoulder. The princess was as still as a statue, but Mason could see the mix of fear and menace sending blood red flares shafting through her aura. It made him ever more anxious to have this done with. He would breathe easier when they tossed her disembowelled corpse on the fire and watched her husk burn to ashes as the sun rose—and the future of her kind with her.

  “I would have preferred if you had not bloodied her.”

  “Unfortunately she is more capable than she looks,” Mason said curtly. “She may not be Druid’s Bane yet, but one would be a fool to underestimate her.”

  “What happened?” Keira asked as she worked.

  “Seems she can already talk to animals. She created chaos among the horses and put the bloody carriage in the King’s River. Killed Mr Clamant and almost drowned Lea in the process. We had to abandon our mounts and kill a number of guards to get away. Then in the palace rose garden, the little hellion feigned unconsciousness, only to grab a dagger from Margot’s belt when opportunity afforded her. She made a real mess of two of our lads before we could restrain her again.”

  “And yet you have no name from her?” Keira said, evidently reading their thoughts.

  Mason swallowed his rising anger. “Bianca.”

  “Yes, which is about as much help as saying her sister is Arkaelyon and has black hair.”

  Mason licked his lips. “Then be my guest. You try.”

  Keira handed the bowl and blade to Allius and bent down to look Danielle in the eye. “So, you have a sister. Bianca. A common Arkaelyon name. What’s her last name?”

  “I’ve already told you, de Brie.”

  Keira smiled at the woman’s cold defiance and stood again. “Lea, come here.”

  Henry’s niece got up and came over. Her face bore the marks of Danielle’s nails and she was holding a fresh cloth to the cut above her left eye.

  “Are you able to serve?”

  “Yes, mistress.” There was a steely resolve and simmering hatred in the girl’s brown eyes and her gaze was fixed on the princess.

  “I want that name from her. It’s clear pain will not weaken her defences in the time we have, so you know what to do. Have some of the men assist you—I’m sure they’ll enjoy the task for she is certainly pretty. With any luck you might have it from her before we have to leave. If not, your work will make it easier to get it out of her once I have her on the sacrificial alter. Do your best. We leave here before the hour turns. The rest of you with me, we have a mist to conjure.”

  ***

  Lea drew her sword and placed the point against Danielle’s stomach, pinning her to the chair while the two elders relinquished their hold and hurried after the priestess.

  “Yowl and Pete. Come and assist me,” Lea called out.

  Two men emerged from the kitchen. Danielle recognised both as members of the party that had abducted her from the palace. The broad shouldered red haired man had wrestled the dagger from her grip in the rose garden. His companion, a tall lean man with a hooked nose, shifty eyes and long black hair that was in desperate need of a wash had dragged her from the sinking carriage. He’d also copped a feel in doing so. His grin now was as wide as it had been then.

  Danielle ignored it. She had a fairly good idea what they intended to do to her, which made her all the more urgent in trying to find a way to escape. To that end she had been paying careful attention to the number of captors she had seen or heard talking in the house around her. Her estimate was that there were at least twenty; five of whom were positioned around this very room, each standing at one of the possible exits, the cellar door, the doorway into the kitchen, a hallway, the back door and the bottom of the staircase. Unlike the two men who had just arrived from the kitchen, none of the others had helped in her abduction, though they all wore the amour, green surcoat and knight’s sword of the Amthenium palace guard beneath a dark travel robe like the others.

  “Take the princess upstairs. The last bedroom on the left.” Lea withdrew her sword as Yowl and Pete took Danielle’s arms and pulled her up out of the chair. She was shoved across the room in the direction of the staircase. Determined to stay as calm as possible, Danielle kept her mouth shut and didn’t resist, though the chance of affecting an escape looked utterly hopeless with the volume of steel and men presently around her. And the general lack of a weapon herself wasn’t helping either.

  Pete caught her arm and stopped her at the bottom of the stairs to let Lea lead the way with the oil lantern. A firm hand pushed her forward and they climbed the rickety stairs to the hallway above. A grim, moody faced man with a nasty scar on his cheek was standing guard at the end of the hall. A nod from Lea and he unlocked the nearest door and swung it open. Danielle was pushed into the room. Yowl, Pete and Lea followed on her heels and the door was closed.

  The two men’s lascivious gaze and obvious intent made Danielle feel ill. More than ill. But she kept her fear in check and took in the room. It smelled of mould, unwashed bodies, pipe smoke and stale wine. Bedding for at least ten had been hastily rolled up and placed against a wall and apart from a small table covered with mugs and half empty jars of wine, there were no furnishings to speak of, nor a fire in the hearth.

  The two men drew her up at the centre of the chamber with their sword points. Danielle looked discreetly over at the balcony doors. The shutters had been closed against the dirty glass and the locks thrown. She shifted her gaze to the bedrolls, looking for any weapon that might have been left lying about. There was nothing that she could see. She thought about using the taint she could see around the room, but after weighing up the likely effects on herself against the damage she might render her captors, there seemed little point. Besides, she wasn’t sure it would even ha
rm these people.

  The bolt locking the door was shot into its iron loop, making her jump. Her throat had gone horribly dry and panic was prickling her skin.

  Having locked the door from the inside Lea placed the lantern on the table and came forward, her hands on her hips. “You know you could make this easy on yourself. You give us what we want and our mistress will finish you quickly. Believe me, you don’t want it otherwise. Make her cut that name out of you before she banishes your soul, and you’ll know eternal agony.”

  “You won’t get away with this,” Danielle replied. “Lord Leefton will have every soldier of the Amthenium guard combing the city. Every gate and wharf will have been secured and it will take more than a mist to stop them. And when they take you, it’ll be a short walk to the executioner’s block assuming the mob or worse the Kathiusian Druids don’t get you first.”

  “I think not,” Lea said blithely. “A troop of soldiers could march past this very house with you in full scream and they would not hear a thing or slow a step. That goes for the White Ones as well.”

  “Wards might protect this house, but there is a lot of distance to cover and a city wall to contend with if you are going to get me off this island and to your altar,” Danielle said.

  “Listening, I see, though obviously not hard enough. Shame we won’t be taking the streets then isn’t it.”

  “You can’t transform without being noticed and I know there are no catacombs beneath Amthenium despite what was said downstairs, so how? Magic?”

  Lea laughed at her ignorance. “There’s so much you don’t know.”

  Danielle glanced fugitively at the balcony door as Lea slowly walked around her. She had to think fast. How could she possibly over power three armed assailants, two of which had their weapons trained on her?

  A smug grin crossed Lea’s pretty face as she came back to stand in front of Dee. “You’d be wasting your time.” She reached out and began to unbuckle Danielle’s belt.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You show considerable resistance to pain. However, the opposite can serve just as well to loosen the tongue.”

  “Rape will not force me to speak.”

  “I don’t need you to speak. I need something that will divert your mind enough so that I can break through your defences and get entry to your memories. Yowl, you’ll go first. I know you have a taste for whores and they don’t come anymore lovely and fairer than this one.”

  The man put his sword aside and began to undress; his eagerness to have her was plain enough. Danielle shuddered with revulsion and looked away as he dropped his breeches and came forward to take her. Lea stepped back and took his sword, her smirk made it clear she was going to enjoy this. It reminded Danielle of Kane.

  The man grabbed her and she instinctively shoved him off. She knew it was futile to resist and when he grabbed her again she let herself be pushed up against the wall. She cringed with disgust as his stinking body pressed against her and his mouth found her neck. His coarse beard pricked her skin and his calloused hands snaked into her clothing seeking her breasts. He moaned with delight and within moments his manhood was pressing against her.

  It was more than Danielle could bear. “Wait!” She tried to push him off. “I’ll give you her name. Get off me!”

  Slated by desire her attacker paid her plea no attention. Instead he caught her wrists and forced them against the wall above her head, and kissed her painfully on the mouth. Danielle moaned and struggled wildly as he moved one hand to his manhood and tried to enter her.

  Lea stepped forward and struck him across the back of the head with the flat of her sword. The man yelped like an injured dog and fell away, cowering, and trying to cover himself.

  “What did you do that for? You bloody cut me!” He put a hand to his head and it came away bloody.

  “You’re too slow,” his companion laughed. “Milady, I’ll make her scream. Just say how loud,” Pete said. His manhood was terrifyingly large, as it stood ridged, pressing against his trousers.

  “Shut up. Both of you,” Lea said. She turned her attention on Danielle and lifted the point of her sword. Danielle was securing her trousers, hoping her fragile plan would hold. It had come to her in a flash and at the very least she hoped it might buy her some time. Her heart was thumping painfully.

  “What’s her full name?”

  “Let my sister and I live and I’ll tell you what I know of her.”

  “I’ll send these men away and give you a tonic that will make your end easier, and offer the same to your sister, nothing more.”

  It wasn’t exactly the response she had hoped for. “What are we to you? You have Cargius. Without him we are no threat to your plan.”

  “Is that what he told you,” Lea said, amused.

  “Yes.”

  “Even if the blood of the First Mother didn’t run in your veins, you’d be a threat to us. Now give me her name, or Yowl here will return to his work, and I will not stop him, or Pete, or however many men it takes to wear down your defences. What will it be? Come on, out with it. There isn’t time to waste.”

  “Bianca Welton. Her name is Bianca Welton. She was given to peasant folk in the south of Arkaelyon as a newborn. That’s all I know. Cargius wouldn’t tell me more for fear I might try and find her.”

  “You think me a fool?”

  “I don’t know what you mean?”

  Fury exploded onto Lea’s face and she swung the flat of the sword at Danielle’s head. Danielle tried to duck but the blade struck her on the shoulder. It knocked her off balance and before she could recover the toe of Lea’s boot slammed into her back. Danielle hit the floor and rolled over on her back only to have the point of a sword press against her throat. “It’s not a lie,” she panted, trying to catch her breath and forcing down the pain of the blows she’d just been dealt. She groaned piteously as Lea planted a boot on her stomach.

  “Your aura says otherwise. You had your chance. Yowl, Pete, take her. And make her scream.”

  The two men were on her in a heartbeat. Despite her weakened state, the combination of fear and revolution at what they intended to do to her, fuelled Danielle’s blood and she fought them fiercely, writhing, clawing and kicking as they dragged her to her feet. It was no use. They laughed as they gradually reined in her flaying limbs and opened her tattered clothing. The one called Pete managed to pin her arms back. He was standing behind her and he buried his face in her hair and took to her neck like a leech. One of his hands slipped under her armpit and grabbed painfully at her left breast. Yowl, meanwhile, was pressed up against her, laying wet kisses on her cheek and preparing to enter her.

  Danielle forced her tears back and tried to stay composed. They could rape her, even murder her, but she wasn’t going to let them pry Bianca’s identity from her mind.

  She cringed and blinked wildly as Yowl clutched her buttocks and forced his manhood inside her. He grunted and rutted like a filthy pig as he did his business between her legs.

  “You like that, Milady?” Pete said.

  Danielle turned her face away as best she could. Yowl’s breath stunk of tobacco and garlic. He was hurting her. But it was Lea’s gazed that worried her most. The girl was trying to read her thoughts.

  “You keep resisting and it will only get worse,” Lea said.

  Danielle could feel the woman growing frustrated as her efforts failed.

  “Give it to her harder. Pete, take her from behind. For the sake of the gods, fuck her!”

  Pete bit her shoulder blade and when she cried out Yowl’s mouth closed over hers and he forced his tongue between her lips. It was more than Danielle could bear. Something snapped inside her and before she knew what she was doing, she slammed her jaw shut, piercing his tongue with her teeth. A gurgled scream erupted from Yowl’s throat and he tried to pull away. Danielle held on as he tugged and then abruptly let go. Suddenly freed, he stumbled back wildly under his own momentum. His heel caught on the bedding on the floor and h
e fell, his arms cart wheeling. His head struck the corner of the table, upsetting the lantern and both man and lantern crashed to the floor. Oil and blood oozed across the floorboards and flames instantly flared up.

  Driven more by instinct than design, Danielle threw her head back into Pete’s face as the man cursed and tried to restrain her. The collision broke bone and almost knocked her silly but it succeeded in getting her free. Through blurry vision Danielle turned to find Pete on his knees clutching at his bloodied face. Then someone leapt on her back. The force made her stumble but she managed to keep her feet. Her head was clearing a bit and she realised it was Lea. The woman had her arms around her neck and was trying to restrain her.

  “Pete, help me. Get up and help me.”

  Through the smoke and the flickering light of the flames, Danielle saw the burly red haired man beginning to struggle up on uneasy legs from beside the fireplace. His eyes blinked slowly in a face covered with blood. He seemed oblivious of the sword lying on the floor a few feet in front of him and intent on keeping it that way, Danielle charged across the room and then turned and rammed Lea up against the stone fireplace with as much force as she could muster. The first blow brought a cry of pain. The second silenced the woman and loosened her grip entirely. Free, Danielle ducked away as Pete came for her like a lumbering snow mammoth. He turned to make another lunge, but she dove past him and snatched up the sword on the floor.

  He hesitated when he saw the weapon in her capable hands and then looked across the room as someone began banging on the door, demanding to know what was happening and to be let in. Before he could call out, Danielle had sprung forward and opened his throat. He blinked in astonishment and grasped at his neck with both hands. Then he crumpled to his knees and dropped forward onto his shattered face.