by T. O. Munro
“But the force of Oostsalve is.” The Prior struggled to his feet assisted by Hepdida. “I am Abroath, third son of the Prince of Oostsalve, all the spears that I have brought are in your service. Forgive my doubting, your Majesty.”
“The mounted infantry?” Rugan queried scornfully, his mask of control slipping at the Prior’s volte-face.
“Mounted infantry?” Niarmit was puzzled.
“Five thousand hobelars, your Majesty including sundry archers. They ride ponies to the point of battle, but fight afoot.”
Niarmit nodded slowly, “that will serve our purpose.”
“I have need of them, of all the force of Oostsalve,” Rugan cried. “They are to guard my left flank when my force overwhelms the invaders.”
“Your force?” Niarmit said. “I am Queen, they are mine to command.”
Rugan shook his head slowly, looking around the broken table at the silver clad captains of his army. “Just because one stunned boy priest accepts your rule does not mean a single soldier of Medyrsalve will raise his shield at your command. These are my soldiers, not yours.”
Niarmit scanned the faces of the assembled officers. Most would not meet her gaze; a few stared back in unsmiling endorsement of the half-elf’s claim.
“Tomorrow,” Rugan declared. “We fight the battle for Morsalve and I have need of Oostsalve spears.”
“More need than you know,” Niarmit replied. “As Quintala has said, twelve thousand foes approach from the South.”
“Well brother, without those Oostsalve spears, will you run back to your palace? Is your force or your stomach not up to the challenge ahead?” Quintala taunted. “Mayhap you can relinquish the reins of command to one who knows how to lead?”
Rugan gave his half-sister a glare of cold loathing. “You’ll not find my courage wanting, Seneschal. But as I understand it, the Lady Niarmit’s battle experience is limited to the disaster of Bledrag field. Hardly a pedigree of generalship.”
“I have learned much in the five years you thought me dead, Prince Rugan, of the ways of battle and of the enemy you face.”
“What was the biggest force you had sole charge of, Lady?”
Niarmit hesitated for an instant and then conceded, “a little over a hundred, but we hindered the invaders out of all proportion to our numbers.”
Rugan laughed. “I have sixteen thousand of Medyrsalve. The ill-witted Prior has brought another five, we face perhaps thirteen thousand at Sturmcairn and, if you are right, another twelve from Undersalve. Lady this is war, not petty forest ambushes. You think I will entrust my troops to your untried outlaw’s hand? Then you are truly mad.”
“I was well taught in the years I lived as Prince Matteus’ child. I am equal to this task.”
“No army can serve two generals, and mine will not serve you, Lady Niarmit.” Rugan swung his head to glare in challenge at Abroath but the Prior was unrepentant.
“My force is at her Majesty’s service,” he declared.
“Then it seems, Prince Rugan, though neither of us wished it so, that we have two armies and two generals. Let us make our plans as such and, the Goddess willing, success may still attend us on the morrow.”
***
Haselrig led the way into Maelgrum’s halls. The Bishop limped haltingly behind at the other end of the silver chain. It was after sunset so, in addition to his freshly bandaged thigh, Udecht was feeling the tingling after effects of the latest electrical bolt of Maelgrum’s disappointment.
The antiquary had little time for the Bishop’s discomfort. He was walking once more in the hall he had first entered seventeen years earlier at the start of a journey of conspiracy and betrayal. There had been three of them then, four if you counted the duped guard as party to that plot. Now Haselrig alone returned. Then they had crept into the chamber through an uneven side passage. A route carved centuries earlier by Chirard the Mad. Through it he and they had gained access to the vault, sealed at both ends with tons of rock, where Eadran the Vanquisher had hidden the jewelled entrance to Maelgrum’s planar prison.
Now the hall was restored by weeks of human and zombie slave labour. The entry way was a long sloping passage from the victory plaza in the centre of Morwencairn. It opened into a great arched hall, far larger than any temple, even those seen in the ruins of the Monar Empire in the Eastern lands. There was something of that civilisation’s architecture and skill in the columns carved out of living rock and the mosaics that adorned floor and walls.
However, the scenes picked out in tiny fragments of stone were anything but civilised. They depicted images of torture and despair more in keeping with a fire-breathing prelate’s warnings of hell, but Haselrig knew these were no threats for the life here after. These were solemn promises by Maelgrum of what had been and what would be again. The antiquary spotted a sequence of pictures on the floor, of ugly winged creatures, half-women half-birds, lifting men high into the sky and dropping them onto rocks. He had, with his own eyes, seen a dozen such creatures taking hunks of meat and bags of gold from his master’s hand before setting off on just such a mission as the mosaic showed.
Udecht stumbled and Haselrig yanked at the chain. They must not keep the Master waiting. Maelgrum sat on his carven stone throne on the raised dais at the far end of the hall. He was utterly still. Only the red glow in his empty eye sockets and the trails of condensing vapour from his ragged robes and blackened paper thin skin gave any clue as to his mood or thoughts.
Haselrig groaned to see those in attendance on the undead wizard. To his right stood Rondol the ruddy bearded sorcerer in chief. To his left stood Marwella the toothless crone who led the necromancers in their marshalling of the legion of undead. There was a time when the antiquary would have been the one stood at Maelgrum’s right hand, as guardian and repository of all the intelligence and information the undead wizard needed in preparing for his return to enslave the Salved. Haselrig gave the chain another tug and the limping Bishop staggered again.
They were not the first brought to audience with the Master. A man lay prostrate on the floor before Maelgrum, richly dressed yet trembling. Haselrig halted and held back Udecht when the Bishop drew level. It was not wise to intrude on the Master’s business until invited to do so.
“Do you promissse then to sssserve me and no othersss?” Maelgrum was asking of the supplicant.
“Yes, your Highness,” the man stammered.
“Insolent bastard,” Rondol interrupted. A crack of lightning arced across the man’s back as the sorcerer added a conjured whip to his words of rebuke. “To speak to the Master in the style of the servants of the traitor Eadran. You address the Lord Maelgrum as Master or your Eminence!”
Haselrig noted the puddle of liquid spreading out from between the prone man’s legs.
“A thousand pardon’s Master Eminence er… Your Eminence, I meant no offence,” the words spilled out incontinently.
“Very well then, you ssshall ssserve. I grant you the freehold of Proginnot. Marwella will ensssure you know what your fiefdom isss required to sssupply to usss in men, women, children and materialsss. Provided you meet our requisssitionsss, the ressst of the people and property of Proginnot are yoursss to do with entirely asss you will. Ssserve me well and great richesss may yet accrue to you.”
“What if the people cannot provide…”
He never finished the question. Rondol was ready to strike again but Maelgrum raised a blackened bony finger and the sorcerer stalled his spell. The Lich’s red eyes were flaring, and the cold mist around his body thickened. “If? Cannot?” Maelgrum played with the words. “Thessse are not termsss a loyal ssservant of Maelgrum would ussse. Your tasssk isss to make them provide. You will find that knowing you act in my name isss a great motivator and alssso a defencsse. The people will sssoon learn that to raissse a hand to Maelgrum’sss ssservants isss to raise a hand to Maelgrum himssself. They will not enjoy the dissspleasure that sssuch an unwissse choice would invoke.”
“Thank you, Yo
ur Eminence,” the man gasped still motionless until Rondol announced.
“You may rise.”
The new made freeholder of Proginnot thrust himself damply upright and followed the crone Marwella into a side chamber.
“Approach the throne of Maelgrum, Antiquary Haselrig and Udecht,” the sorcerer commanded.
Haselrig needed no encouragement, he hurried forward, throwing himself flat in the still warm puddle left by the previous petitioner and dragging Udecht down beside him.
“We came at your command, Your Eminence,” he told the stone floor loudly. “We exist to serve.” A quick sharp elbow stifled whatever additional comment Udecht might have been intending to make.
“Ssstand,” Maelgrum commanded. “And tell me how goesss the resssearch into thisss trifling toy of Eadran’sss?”
“It is yet to unlock its secrets, Master, though we have made much progress,” Haselrig lied.
“It is for you, Hassselrig to unlock the sssecretsss. You have the asssissstance of the Bissshop. Are your skillsss unequal to thisss tasssk?”
“Udecht has been less co-operative than he should,” Haselrig hastily flung blame about him. “I have had to have him punished.”
“Sssoo I ssseee. If you continue thusss, Hassselrig you may have the Bishop praying he could be his brother’sss prisssoner again. The unlamented Xander had a talent for cruelty which you ssseeem like to rival.”
“I am not Xander, your eminence,” Haselrig stammered. “I have not betrayed or disobeyed you. I would never do that.”
“But you have ssso far failed me. At thisss rate of progresss you will be a blackened ssskeleton long before ssso much asss a rune of Eadran’sss spell casssting isss revealed to you.”
“I will try harder, your eminence. We will both try harder.”
Maelgrum nodded slowly, his lipless mouth parting in a toothy rictus. “And I have sssome advice to sssteer your resssearch into more productive pathsss.”
“Yours is always the greater intellect, your eminence. We bow in gratitude for the fragments of your genius that you choose to share.” Haselrig bent low in a bow, pulling Udecht down with him.
“Think back Hassselrig, to when the wearer of the Helm confronted and asssailed our perssson.”
Haselrig’s thoughts floundered. The short battle in the citadel plaza had been the closest thing to Maelgrum’s humiliation that the antiquary had seen in seventeen years. To revisit the occasion was to risk triggering an explosion of wizardly fury. An ill judged comment could easily trespass on Maelgrum’s monumental ego. The antiquary chose his words with extreme care. “The wizard challenged your eminence, but his powers were unequal to yours.”
“By what name did he announce himssself?”
“Name?” Haselrig scavenged his memory. There had been the moment of panic when the Helm wearer had turned his aim upon them, then Maelgrum’s arrival had drawn all the wizard’s attention in a display of earth shattering pyrotechnics. “I don’t remember, your eminence.”
“Chirard,” Udecht murmured. “He called himself Chirard.”
“It ssseemsss that the bissshop may yet offer you sssome asssissstance,” Maelgrum joked. “Hisss memory is fassstter than yoursss.”
“Chirard? An unusual name.”
“There are three of that name have sssat on the betrayer’sss throne, but only one wasss a dabbler in the magic artsss.”
“Chirard the Third, the mad.”
“Exsssactly. There isss some link between thisss long wizard and Eadran’sss pretty toy. If the Helm will not give up itsss sssecretsss, then perhapsss you ssshould look in the archivesss of Chirard.”
Haselrig frowned despite himself. He had probed Chirard’s papers long ago, deciphered much of the code in which the mad wizard had tried to conceal his plans. That is what had led him by diverse passages to the means to free Maelgrum. But the process had been fraught with danger. Chirard the mad, the plain paranoid, had littered his papers with traps for the unwary. Glyphs of lightning, fire, and poison. And in all the papers, Haselrig could recall not one single word in reference to the Helm. The oddity only now struck him, that a lunatic obsessed with recording in double encrypted code every detail of his life, including his daily bowel movements, should have made no reference to the Great Helm, symbol of a throne he had sacrificed so many and so much for.
“You ssseeem puzzled, Hassselrig?”
“If the man is unequal to this problem, your eminence, I am sure I could solve it within the week,” Rondol volunteered.
Maelgrum shook his head. “No Rondol, there are other more important tasssksss you mussst do for me. Thisss trivial puzzle is Hassselrig’sss alone, well hisss and the Bissshop’sss. They will ssssolve it, or it will be the death of them.”
***
“They are early,” Willem growled from atop his massive horse.
“Orcs is ready,” Barnuck snorted. “Plenty dead men soon. Battle won before sun is high.”
“Only if Nagbadesh follows the plan,” Dema silenced them both. They stood, an unlikely quartet of riders and their disparate mounts, atop a low hillock on the Eastern bank of the Saeth. Kimbolt, kept his counsel in the company of his betters, and contented himself with a quick survey of their surroundings.
The Saeth at their back was running low. The moss clad pillars of the bridge were laid bare, browning in the dry autumn sunshine. A quarter of the bridge’s span at either end traversed nothing wetter than the dried mud of an arid river bed. The half empty river channel rose sharply at its sides making a raised escarpment of the river bank. It was along the top of this bank that the deployment of Dema’s force began. The different divisions of her command stretched out in echelon formation from South West by the river towards the Northeast and the Palacinta Hills. The far right flank, to the South, was held by the nomad cavalry. Then came the infantry a little ahead and to the left of their formidable horse borne brethren. Further ahead still was the Redfang orcs’ position some hundreds of yard beyond the line of caution. To the Redfangs’ left the Blackskulls hung back leaving Nagbadesh’s tribe as a tempting orcish bait dangling in the jaws of the Gap of Tandar.
At the foot of their raised command position, Dema’s elite guard waited as a mobile reserve. These were the wolf riding Bonegrinders and the pick of the outlander warriors, victors of the battle of Derrach Bridge and of the capture of Listcairn. Veteran soldiers they sat or lay beside their mounts, snatching a few moments of nerveless rest or sleep, quite unfazed by the carnage which was about to unfold.
Kimbolt strained his eyes towards the hills. A cloud of dust was descending on the Redfangs as Rugan took the bait. “They have sixteen thousand, Nagbadesh has barely four,” Willem remarked as the clash of steel and the cry of distant battle reached their ears, some seconds after they had seen the lines meet.
“Nagbadesh has just to play the part,” Dema reminded him. “To appear the stupid orc he is, there is no act in that.”
“Orcs not run,” Barnuck said. “Nagbadesh think he brave. Think he stand and fight.”
“And that’s what’s stupid.” Dema muttered. “Orcs can run, a lot faster than humans can. He just needs to time his disengagement before the Redfangs are all destroyed, then he can pull this whole cursed army out of the hills and onto the plane for us to annihilate them.”
“Nagbadesh not running,” Barnuck pointed out. True enough, the banners of the Redfangs were unmoving, as the silver pennants of Medyrsalve swirled and merged about them. “Soon Nagbadesh be overrun.”
“Orcs’ blood,” Dema swore. “Oh would that I had a fishing line and rod, to pull this disobedient bait back.”
Kimbolt’s stomach muscles tightened at the tension which the Medusa’s displeasure engendered. Both orc and outlander bit their tongues as Dema walked her horse left then right, always gazing at the distant floundering banners of the Redfangs.
“They’re retreating now, Lady.” Willem said with some relief, as at last they spotted movement in the orcish lines. The
battered Redfangs turned and ran. To some it might look like a rout, but Kimbolt noted the cohesion as they fled, bunched together in a group at an even but fast pace. They were running but they were not broken.
“Thank fuck for that,” Dema growled. “Not before time.”
“Half-breed follows, follows them down.”
The Medusa’s lips were pursed, her gaze fixed on the approaching battle as clear ground opened between the retreating Redfangs and the pursuing force of Medyrsalve. “Ogre piss, he’s not breaking his own lines.”
Kimbolt too had noted the measured nature of the half-elf’s pursuit. They were following the Redfangs yes, but still in their own good order. The enemy had not been drawn into a strung out chase with the fleetest of foot way ahead harassing the ankles of the running orcs.
“Horse shit half-elf. Nagbadesh is flashing his arse cheeks at you and still you fucking walk after him. What does it take to make you fucking run?” Dema spat out a rhetorical question which Barnuck nonetheless answered.
“It matter not, Lady. Half-breed come. Come quick, come slow, he going to die just the same.”
***
“These poor condemned souls,” Abroath was saying. “Do we administer the last rites?”
“No,” Niarmit repeated with a distracted air. “We destroy them. As I said the blessing of the Goddess turns them to dust.”
“Oh,” the answer did not quite satisfy the Prior but he sensed the Queen’s irritation enough to moderate his questioning. For a moment they trotted along in silence, his pony impudently trying to race Niarmit’s mare. “I am sorry, your Majesty, to be a nuisance with my ignorance, but I have never met these undead you speak of before.”
“I’d seen none before a few weeks ago, Prior Abroath. But you soon get used to them, to destroying them.”
“And if they are too many, you said there are twelve thousand ahead of us? We are far fewer.”
“But we are mobile. Your hobilers and their ponies are well suited to this task. Once we have shown ourselves, we lure the enemy after us, back up the valley of Torrockburn. The undead are uncoordinated and slow. There will be plenty of time for your spearmen to dismount and take up a line across the valley.”