Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01]

by The Fire Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  Eleanor barely felt the garrote before she was choked into unconsciousness. Her only instinct was not to struggle, since a broken neck seemed the only outcome of that. So she went slack and did not feel the leather thongs being tied around wrist and ankle, and was spared the ignominy of knowing she was slung like a bag of grain over a broad shoulder.

  Eleanor opened her eyes and looked into Baird’s ruined face. A scar bisected it from one brow-tip across the nose to the other cheek. The missing eye socket was a crusted wound. She wanted to look away, but she refused to. It was partially her fault he was in this pitiable condition, since she had not had the mercy to kill him after the rape.

  She started to speak and found her mouth gagged. Eleanor tested the restraints on her wrists and ankles and found them very tight. Her sympathy for her brother-in-law faded in a burst of anger. She flexed her fingers and called for fire. None came.

  "Surprised?” he asked. She gave a little nod, though she would have preferred to deny him the satisfaction. "Good.” Baird reached out a hand and caressed her jaw roughly, running thumb and forefinger down to press against the arteries on either side of the throat. Darkness swirled in her mind until he released his grip. "I have several other surprises for you, dear sister.”

  Eleanor found she cared not at all for the tone of his voice. The fear crept in, coiling itself around her soul as she realized how helpless she was. Her staff was back in the camp with Arthur, assuming that he was not dead already. She forced a breath into a tense chest and looked around.

  They were in a small glade. A large horse was tethered nearby, but there was no evidence of the Fire Sword. If he had killed Arthur, he would have found some way to obtain the weapon, even if he could not wield it. Baird was insane, but he was not stupid. The whole family was a little loony, she decided, and that made her smile under the gag, so the cloth cut into the comers of her mouth.

  Baird saw her expression, and he looked a trifle uneasy. He relieved his frustration by dragging her head up and slapping her face several times. Tears started in her eyes, and she felt the soft brush of his lips and beard upon a stinging cheek. The quick contrast in his behavior almost undid her fragile control, and for a second she would have done anything to prevent him hurting her again. That passed, and she forced the tension out of her body.

  "If you are wondering why you cannot resist me, why your fire is dead, it is this.” His thick finger rubbed on a band around her throat. She had not felt it before, for it was not snug. It was, in fact, almost not there, except it was. "It took me some time to find it, but it makes you mine. And mine you will remain.” He brushed her brow gently. "I shall take great pleasure in slitting the throat of that child within you with the very sword I shall get from you. Now, where is it?”

  Eleanor sighed. The sword, always the sword. She damned the smith who forged it, the metal it was made of, and Orphiana, for being so arrogant that her lovers must make such things, so careless they were lost, and such a neglectful parent that her sons were single-minded boors at times, all with equal fervor. Though Doyle had, she thought, come to love her in the end, he never would have noticed her existence unless she had the sword. And Baird might lust for her body, though at five months’ pregnant, she doubted it, but he lusted for the sword more. Although it put Arthur in peril, she was glad it was no longer hers to bestow. And Arthur, bless him, had not wished to possess the cursed thing at all.

  Baird apparently found having a one-sided conversation unsatisfactory, for he loosened the gag. "No biting now.”

  Eleanor swallowed several times, for her mouth was very dry. Then she flexed her jaw and shoulders to ease her tension. "You really should not gloat, Baird. Your eyes get piggy.” A slap stopped any further comments. She tasted blood from a cut lip and decided she was in no position to be sarcastic. She pressed her tongue against the wound and waited.

  Baird reached for her face, and she flinched before she realized he only wished to stroke her cheek. He looked puzzled, as if his hand felt nothing. He cupped both breasts in his hands and looked even more confused. Eleanor shared his confusion, until she recalled the sprig of white heather that rested in her belt pouch. It was a charm against unwanted acts of passion, and it seemed to be working like one. Now, if he would just refrain from stripping her, she could at least avoid being raped again.

  "I cannot remember why I wanted you so much,” he said. Baird picked her up in his arms and set her in his lap, resting her face upon his shoulder so she could only see the unmarred side of his profile. She considered the blood pumping through his jugular and decided she was not good vampire material. Instead, she rested against him as if she were friend, not prisoner.

  "Perhaps the collar hides my charms,” she said slowly.

  His hand caressed her throat, the metal across her skin.

  "How does it feel to be powerless?”.

  Eleanor considered the question seriously. "Okay, I suppose. Don’t forget, I’ve spent the greater part of my life that way. Will you tell me about it?”

  "What? The collar? Do you think that if you learn its secret, you can overcome it? Banish the hope. The goddess has no power over starstones. And Bridget would not help you in any case. She is too flighty. And careless.”

  Eleanor did not inform him of her somewhat divided loyalties as far as deities went. In her own mind, she did Bridget’s bidding, but she served Sal. It was a niggling distinction redolent of theological hairsplitting and meaningful only to her own interior sense. Dismissing this, she concentrated on the term starstone, assuming he meant it was made of meteoric material. Why should nonterrestrial iron interfere with magic? Or was it some other metal? She wished she had paid better attention in her science classes. She solved the riddle to her own satisfaction by realizing that in the end, all goddesses were essentially of the earth, that their power was connected to the planet itself.

  She relaxed against him, wiggling her fingers and toes and feeling needles. "What’s this? Think you can seduce me?”

  "No,” she replied. "You are just a more comfortable resting place than the ground. And I wish we could have been other than adversaries. I would like to have liked you, Baird, truly.”

  He caught her hair and dragged her head back until the collar pressed her larynx and she could see the ruin of his beauty. "You didn’t try very hard, did you?”

  Eleanor gasped in pain and did not answer. Something of her mother’s stern pride kept her from pleading. She endured the agony as long as she could, then whimpered a little. He loosened his grip and pushed her head back against his shoulder with a kind of rough tenderness.

  She was silent, smelling his body scents awhile, until she said quietly, "It must be terrible to want to beat me and want to love me.”

  "Terrible? It is nothing to how you will be when I am done with you. I shall use you until you break and come to me like a pig to the trough. Now, where is the sword?”

  "I don’t know.” That was true enough, since she did not know where Arthur was, or where she was if it came to that.

  "I think I can improve your memory.” Baird untied her feet and hauled her onto them. Then he led her over to the horse, mounted, and took up a length of stout rope. He brought it down against her shoulder and commanded, "Now run!”

  Eleanor needed no urging to try to avoid the rope, and she stumbled away. The glade gave way to a rough heath, and as the blood returned to her legs, she ran. The horse was always behind her, the rope striking her back. Sweat stung her eyes, and she fell forward, rolling slightly to the side to protect her child. Having her hands bound behind her did not help her balance on the uneven terrain, and he pulled her up by the hair each time she fell. She lost count of her tumbles, lost any sense of anything but the need to keep moving.

  Finally, her legs refused to move under her, and when he released her hair, she sank down on the hummocky ground again. Baird dismounted the horse, and she could feel him standing above her. Eleanor bowed her shoulders and waited for the rope to fall. Sh
e drew air into her lungs and felt her muscles tremble with exhaustion. After several minutes, he had not moved, and she risked a quick glance up.

  Baird might have been carved from stone, so still was he. The one good eye stared at her emptily, and Eleanor felt a rush of pity. She knew instinctively he would hate that if he knew, and she suppressed it. Besides, it was not her fault he wanted what was not his to have. And she wondered if she had given the fire sword to Arthur just to spite Baird’s ambition. Did she hate him that much? With a pang, Eleanor realized she had never even noticed Baird enough to care sufficiently to hate him. One look at Doyle’s gloomy features and Baird had simply ceased to exist. And that was just not fair.

  With a grunt, he bent forward and picked her up in his arms. "You are stronger than I thought.”

  She gave a shaky laugh, one a breath from tears. "I am stronger than I thought, too.”

  Baird kissed her, gently at first, then more deeply. She tasted his sweetness and wished the cosmos more fair. But there was only room inside her to love Doyle, with table scraps for Arthur, and nothing at all for this ruined, golden demigod. She shuddered, suddenly hating herself.

  He took her shaking as revulsion. "Does my touch sicken you?”

  "No!”

  "I will choke the truth from you if I must.”

  "Baird, I am sick of myself.” The hand closing around her throat stopped. He considered deeply, and she saw his good eye twitch suddenly.

  "You gave the sword to that sniveling cockerel! You whore!” He flung Eleanor facedown on the turf. "Why?” "Because he did not want it. He wanted me—just me! Because I was lonely, but mostly because he didn’t see me as a way to that damn sword!”

  Baird roared his rage, "I will kill him! I shall flay the skin off his bones! The sword is mine; you are mine!” For a moment, she was afraid he would turn into a beast shape and tear her limb from limb. The rope fell across her back several times, then stopped. He rolled her onto her back and crouched over her. "You never gave me a chance.”

  Eleanor felt the bitterness in his voice and found an echo within herself. There are no chances; just moments in between disasters. I don’t have any moments in me for him. Goddess, why is compassion such an empty feeling? Tears filled her eyes. "I have no song to give you.”

  For a second, they shared the empty space that yawned between them. Then there was a great rush of wings, and Baird was lost in a flurry of golden griffin feathers. He fell backward in surprise, hit his head, and stayed down. The horse reared in fright, and the griffin sank long talons and claws into the proud throat. The horse screamed as blood fountained up. It sagged to its knees as the beast turned to Eleanor. With a brazen squawk, it grasped her shoulders in its eagle claws and leapt into the air. She gasped in pain, but he bore her higher and higher, so she held herself very still. As they flew away, she looked down at the dying horse and the still figure of the man. She saw his arm move and felt the relief of knowing he was not dead. Then she let herself go into the care of whatever the fates had prepared for her.

  Eleanor lay in the wagon, Sable back in panther form, stretched across the bed at her feet. Arthur whistled shrilly as he brought water or gathered firewood, a cheerful sound that contrasted irritatingly with her black mood. Outside the wagon she could see the heartless sunshine, and it annoyed her. It ought to be raining, at least, to match her mood.

  Eleanor turned her head away from the offending sunlight and winced. Where the eagle claws of the griffin had gripped her through her clothing, she had two painful wounds, small but very real. Her back was bruised badly from Baird’s rope, though the skin was not broken. Her legs were cut from numerous falls, and she was one large ache all over.

  For three days she had lain in the wagon, barely responding to Arthur’s questions from her bruised lips, and sunk in gloom. She had a kind of cold rage churning within her, most of it directed at herself with a goodly portion left over for Bridget. She knew it was irrational, for had she had the foresight to know that the moment she grasped the sword in the priory she would set in motion a series of events with terrible consequences, she would still have taken the sword. The Fates had a nasty sense of humor.

  Eleanor forced herself up on one elbow, leaned over the edge of the narrow bed, and picked up the strange collar that Baird had used to neutralize her. It was heavy, dense metal, a shiny silver color, incised with some reptilian creature, neither serpent nor dragon. She rubbed a finger over the design, and it was warm, though the metal of the collar itself was cool. Something in her wished to put it on again, so she could do no more harm.

  She dropped it with a thunk, glanced at the goldeneyed cat at her feet, and lay back down again. It was too late to stop. Doyle was dead, Baird was crippled, and there was still a Shadow over Albion. She patted her growing belly and tried to be optimistic. Perhaps all the tragedies were behind her. She wasn’t quite sanguine in that hope, and hope, she remembered, can break the heart. She made a wry face at this unintentional pun on her last name, wriggled sore toes against the panther’s sleek belly, and snuggled back down. Things were bound to look better in the morning.

  XXX

  Eleanor always remembered the next few weeks as nearly idyllic. They had taken the sturdiest wagon of those undamaged by the storm, caught four of the ponies still wandering in the valley, loaded up anything that seemed useful, and set off to the east. It was more comfortable than walking, though they rarely managed more than ten miles in a day, and they often went on long detours to find fording places across Scotland’s numerous rivers. She found her spirits restored as her body healed and regaled her companion with occasional tales of pioneers crossing the Great American Desert in similar conveyances.

  August passed into late September, the days growing shorter and the temperature getting brisker. Only the insistent presence of the panther reminded her they were not on a prolonged camping trip. Sometimes at night she toyed with the collar, remembering her powerlessness, and wondered what had become of Baird. That was not over.

  One day in late September, the terrain changed subtly. The heather grew in twisted shapes and was a sickly gray. The birdsong that had accompanied them across the land faded into eerie silence. It was a perfect setting for the opening of Macbeth, a notion Eleanor did not find particularly delightful.

  They crawled across the uneasy landscape for three days, both of them edgy in the oppressive silence. Eleanor tried singing but found her choices running to the gloomier and more tragic pieces in her repertoire, so she stopped. Arthur was very quiet, his eyes constantly scanning the horizon for some invisible threat.

  The fourth afternoon, Eleanor heard a sound that chilled her blood. It was a brazen horn, distant but not distant enough. There were Reavers somewhere on the plain. And there was a second noise, a kind of shrill whistle that frayed the nerves. It grew louder, a constant whining shriek, as if the wind had found a voice.

  A modest tor shoved its shoulders out of the heath. The dissonant piping swirled out from it, accompanied by a biting wind that seemed to come from all directions. They drew the wagon to a halt, since the ground sloped upward rather steeply.

  "Let’s camp here,” Eleanor suggested.

  Sable growled.

  "I do not think camping is what he has in mind,” Arthur answered.

  She regarded the panther unfavorably. "Pushy beast. We’d better go on foot. That noise is going to give me a headache. I never thought I’d hear anything that sounded like a bagpipe being tortured by the Inquisition. It is worse than my cousin Colin, who used to get drunk and play his bagpipes on the roof. He swore it kept the banshees away.” Then she wished she had not mentioned banshees, for they wailed to announce the death of royalty. Eleanor decided, not for the first time, that there was such a thing as being too Irish.

  They climbed out of the wagon, Eleanor taking her staff. Arthur put on the sword, his face grim. "Eleanor, I do not like this.”

  "What troubles you?”

  "My dragon... is very restle
ss here.”

  She wanted to chide him for being afraid of himself, but since she shared that fear, she did not. "I am sure it has reason. Those pipes would disturb a saint.”

  "No. It is more than that. I am going to do something terrible.”

  Eleanor studied him in the fading light and found him subtly altered. His aura seemed charged with a new energy, and his eyes gleamed with a light she had seen in Doyle’s before Glastonbury. She could not decide if he was fey or berserk, or if there was much to choose between them. Nor could she find any way to reassure him, for she remembered now her fleeting vision of

  Arthur in battle with some unseen adversary and the unharmonious scream of the pipes behind him.

  "Terrible?” She gave a laugh that had no merriment. "Shall we abandon the quest, then? I will not force you to continue. This is your choice. I am living with the consequences of mine.”

  He paused, then rested his hand on the hilt of the sword. "It speaks to me, you know. It whispers of bright blood and a brighter destiny. Did it ever speak to you?” "No.” She did not say that this revelation was both disturbing and unsurprising. "Do you believe what it says?”

  "I want to.” He drew a deep breath. "Let us go.” They moved behind the panther, through the unhealthy vegetation, the twisted branches snatching at ankles and hems. The twilight faded slowly as they climbed toward the screaming pipes, the wind spitting particles of dust into eyes and skin. Both of them moved stealthily, peering at shadows with tearing eyes, so it was a march of furtive movements and abrupt halts.

  A hunting horn clamored across the howl of wind and pipes, and a pack of Reavers seemed to leap out of the ground on all sides of them. A boar-man snorted and charged the woman, and Eleanor sent a fireball into its slavering maw. The flame flared along the tongue, and a second later, the skull exploded in a mass of sparks and flesh. The falling fire touched a bear-creature and started the dry heather burning. The wind fanned the flames as Arthur beheaded another bear.