by T. O. Munro
And between her tears Hepdida told her.
The Princess felt her cousin’s arms about her shoulders, felt her grip tighten beyond breathing. Yet the arms ended in solid fists that clenched and unclenched against Hepdida’s back as the Princess told her halting story. And a steady rain of tears dripped down on Hepdida’s hair as Niarmit swore regret and railed against the Goddess that she had only been able to kill the orc but once.
***
The elves had gone, with barely a sign that there had ever been three thousand elven warriors arrayed at the gates of Rugan’s palace. True to her word the Steward had departed barely an hour after arriving, bearing away Kychelle’s body and the desperately needed spears and the concession of human passage through the Silverwood. Now, with dawn still hours away, a far smaller troop bid their farewells in the grand courtyard before Lavisevre.
A cold wind tugged at the cloaks of the riders. The horses’ breath misted in the torchlight.
“It is so dark,” Hepdida cried. “It isn’t safe to ride. You’ll fall.”
“All will be well,” Niarmit soothed. “Tordil will lead us, and Thom’s spells will help us see the night more clearly. We cannot delay.”
Jolander’s horse stamped its feet, impatient in the darkness, sparking a flurry of shaken heads and rattled bits from the rest of the lancers’ horses, roused at such an ungodly hour from the warmth of their stables.
“Be careful Lady Niarmit,” Giseanne urged. “The night is not the only danger.”
Niarmit smiled, “What we cannot out fight we can outrun, can’t we Thom?” She buffeted the young illusionist on the shoulder, making him grab for the pommel of his saddle. Suddenly serious, she turned to Rugan. “You will send word, won’t you to the towns and villagers?”
“I know my duty to my people, Lady Niarmit.”
“But the message, about the priests.”
“Aye, Lady Niarmit. They will gather about their priests and holy places. I will have the priories and monasteries emptied too. It is time these prelates grown fat on our indulgence finally earned their keep.”
A white speck drifted through the pool of light, disappearing before it reached the ground, another drifted by. “Great,” Thom exclaimed. “Now the snow comes!”
Niarmit gave a grin. “For an illusionist, Thom, you have so little imagination. The snow could be our friend as much as our enemy.” She turned back for a last look at the trio of companions she was to leave behind. “Quintala, you have my say in matters of state here, use it wisely.”
The half-elf bowed and answered plain, without the habitual twinkle of mischief in her eyes, “I will guard your interest, your Majesty, and my temper.”
“And look after these two fools,” Niarmit said with a wave towards Kaylan and Hepdida. “Keep them from seeking any harm. Goddess knows why, but they are both precious to me.”
“I am honoured by your trust, your Majesty.”
“And they will honour you with their obedience,” Niarmit insisted, her eyes on the thief and the Princess. Kaylan stood tall and impassive. Hepdida could not raise her head, her eyes full and averted.
“Your friends will enjoy my protection as Regent,” Giseanne offered. “And my husband’s also.”
“Indeed,” Rugan gruffly agreed. “I hope it will serve them better than it did poor Kychelle.”
Niarmit leant from her saddle to lift the Princess’s chin and look steady green eyes to tear-filled blue. “Don’t worry, Hepdida, I’ll be back.”
***
Kimbolt was excited in a way he hadn’t been since a long ago afternoon with his first love, a girl whose name now escaped him. Dema at his side was affording him a sideways glance, her forehead wrinkled with perplexity. “You have already surprised me Captain. When you said you had something to show me I expected to be walking towards my bedchamber, not away from it.”
“I think this will please you nonetheless, Mistress,” Kimbolt assured her as he led her across the castle bailey to the great eastern storage shed. He pushed open the double doors, an opening big enough to admit a loaded cart, and with a conjurer’s bow waved her in. “There,” he said. “Now what do you see?”
Dema picked her way through the timbers laid out on the floor, some straight, some angled, some curved into curious shapes but each as thick as a horse’s neck and as long as a wagon or two. “I see wood,” Dema replied. “A lot of wood.”
“These pieces were in Rugan’s baggage train, at the battle of the Saeth, he left them in his flight up the Eastway.”
Dema nodded as understanding dawned. “These are the components of his siege engines, the ones he meant to bombard Listcairn with after a battle he had no chance of winning.”
“Indeed.”
“But, my brave Captain, while he left these struts and frames, his soldiers did have the wit to destroy the trigger mechanisms. Without that, there is no point in assembling them.”
“But Dema, I am trained in siege warfare, unlike your outlanders and your orcs.” He licked his lips, savouring the moment of revelation. “I have had the triggers rebuilt. These machines can be assembled and made serviceable wherever you please.”
He had her interest now. She nodded slowly. “And where had you in mind, Captain?” Although he guessed she already knew the answer.
“On the Eastway, half-way up the pass. We can bombard the enemy lines from well beyond bowshot. Boulders, stones, caltrops, all could be flung at them from perfect safety.” He hesitated to make his next suggestion while Dema walked between the massive timbers, testing their strength with a speculative kick. “We could hurl other missiles at them which might break their spirit as much as their bones.”
She looked at him, her snakes silent as she pondered. “Go on.”
“Corpses, the dead of the battlefield, those too torn to be of use to Galen.” When she nodded to herself he hurried on. “There is an outbreak of fever by the Eastgate of town, near the sewage outfall. Several have died, women and children, many are ill. Why bury the dead when they may yet serve our purpose.”
He had surprised her again, though she was smiling beneath the mask. He shrugged, “why even waste time with the sick – those doomed to die anyway. Why not cast them out….. in the bucket of a trebuchet?”
“The women and the children?”
“This is war, Dema, absolute war. We win or we die.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “My Kimbolt how you are changed. I’ll make a good orc of you yet.”
He grinned, glad to have pleased her.
“There will be a chance.” She nodded, pursing her lips in contemplation of the possibilities. “Between the rains and the snow, we have perhaps a week when the frost has hardened the mud, but the snow is no more than a dusting on the ground. We could strike then.”
“What of the necromancer?” he asked.
“That dandy? What of him?”
Kimbolt swallowed hard, wary of raising a matter which was likely to spoil Dema’s mood. “He is gathering his orcs and nomads for an assault. The enemy have detached half their force chasing his zombies; Galen means to be the one to make use of that weakness. We should make him wait until these machines are ready. Then we can act together.”
The Medusa gave the slightest shake of her head and a dismissive wave of her hand. “No, let us not trouble the necromancer with this news. Let him see if he can show us how to force the Gap of Tandar by his own efforts.”
***
Abroath clutched his cloak about him, frost crunching with every step of his borrowed boots. Ahead of him, Niarmit strode from picket to picket, Sir Ambrose by her side. At each group of soldiers she paused to exchange a few words and dispense a blessing which warmed the men more deeply than their guttering fires. “You should rest, your Majesty,” he said softly as they moved between pickets. “You must have ridden day and night. The men will hear you just as well tomorrow.”
“The Prior is right, Lady Niarmit,” Sir Ambrose added his considerable weight
to the argument.
The Queen shook her head. “The men may have to fight today, tomorrow will be too late for words of comfort.”
The knight gazed out across the frozen pass. “By the Goddess I hope you are wrong, my Lady. We are at our weakest now.” He bent low to bring his mouth to Niarmit’s ear. “No disrespect to your companion, but I would you had brought Captain Tordil with you rather than this scrawny fellow.”
The Queen followed the Knight’s gaze to where Thom was flapping his arms and hugging himself next to a campfire in a bid to drive the cold and aches from his gallop weary limbs. She smiled. “The illusionist has his uses, Sir Ambrose, and I have hopes of seeing Captain Tordil before the day is done.”
“If the enemy should come we will sorely miss those hobilers which Elyas took,” the knight said ruefully.
“It had to be done, Sir Ambrose,” Abroath retorted. “We could not let five thousand zombies roam unhindered through the farms and villages of Medyrsalve.”
“That necessity will not make us need them any less here, Prior, should the enemy come,” Ambrose said.
Niarmit stamped her heel against the unforgiving frozen earth. The mailed boot made no dent in the solid ground.
Ambrose grimaced. “Our spades and picks cannot break the ground to dig pits, Lady Niarmit, or to embed our spikes against the enemy. We must hold this place with what few men and defences we have in place already.”
Niarmit merely smiled at the knight’s dour analysis. “How long ‘til the snow comes in earnest?”
Ambrose looked at the sky for inspiration. “A week, my Lady, maybe two. Then the whole pass will be thigh deep in a white blanket and we will be safe until Spring.”
“In the meantime?”
“We are vulnerable, my Lady, more exposed than ever.”
She shook her head and gave the knight a flashing smile. “Have faith, Sir Ambrose. Trust in the Goddess and let us bring some cheer to more of your poor cold soldiers.”
***
“What are you doing, Princess?”
“Trying to make my horse like me.”
It was warm in the stables, filled with the humid heat of equine bodies and the heady aroma of stables waiting for the morning mucking out. The cob hung its head over the door of its stall, nuzzling Hepdida’s hand for more oats. She held her palm flat beneath the horse’s wet tongue. “I will be riding him by myself when Niarmit gets back.”
The half-elf smiled. “A laudable ambition, Princess. I am sure the Queen will delight in your success. But you must let me or Kaylan know where you are going. This is a big palace and you are a little princess.”
“Must? Do you think I will get lost?”
Quintala shook her head. “No, Princess. But this palace is not as safe as we had thought. If an assassin could get into the fountain courtyard, how much easier to reach you here.”
“Why would anyone want me dead?”
“Why would anyone want my grandmother dead?” Quintala raised a hand even as the question left her lips. “No, Princess, don’t answer that.”
“Are you sorry she’s dead?”
Quintala side stepped the question. “Did you love your mother?”
“Yes, I must have I suppose. I cried when she died.”
“And did you fight, did you argue, where there times when you hated her?”
Hepdida shrugged. “Doesn’t every family live like that?” When Quintala made no answer Hepdida shot back another question.
“Have you cried for Kychelle?”
The question surprised the half-elf, but no less than the answer. “Yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t have expected to but I did. After all she was my only kin in the Petred Isle, save that piss poor apology for a half-brother. I wish…. “ she stared at the horse with an intensity that made the animal whinny. “I wish I could have been less of a disappointment to her before she died.”
“Who do you think killed her?”
“An assassin from beyond the palace?”
“Do you believe that?”
Quintala stroked the mane of Hepdida’s horse and whistled a soft tune that settled the animal. “The Deaconess said that her enquiries had led to the improbable solution of an outside assassin being the only solution that could be accepted.” She patted the horse’s neck. “There is, however, another solution which is certainly no less improbable.”
“Which is?”
“That the Deaconess was deceived in her enquiries?” The half-elf fixed Hepdida with a curious stare. “Princess, is there something you know that you are not telling me? If there is, you should tell it. This is a matter of greater significance than just the death of one old elf lady. You know the Steward took her soldiers away?”
Hepdida delved into the nosebag by the stable door for a fresh helping of oats. The cob nodded its head in expectation.
“Princess?”
“I don’t know, Quintala. I’m just a little princess, remember, in a big palace.” In her and the horse’s haste, Hepdida had offered the oats without fully uncurling her fist and the cob’s teeth caught her fingers in a bite sharp enough to make her cry out.
She bit back further exclamation as the half-elf seized her hands and carefully unfolded the injured digits. She counted swiftly to five before offering the reassurance, “you’ve not lost any. Just as well, really. The Queen will be most unhappy if you are anything less than complete when she returns.”
“She will come back, won’t she, Quintala?”
The half-elf clapped a hand on Hepdida’s shoulder and looked her squarely in the eye. “Yes, Princess, she will. I’m sure of it. But Princess, besides you riding your horse, it would please the Queen if we had solved the riddle of my Grandmother’s murder. If you know anything, you should tell.” She hesitated. “No matter who it might concern.”
Hepdida nodded slowly, patting the cob’s neck as she carefully offered it more oats. “If anything comes to mind, Quintala, I will be sure to tell you of it.”
***
“You asked the Master to help you?” Odestus glared down at the necromancer’s stupidity, almost toppling from his saddle as he realised how far Galen had compounded his mistakes into a complete catastrophe. “You summoned the Dark Lord’s attention and you asked him to help you?”
Galen’s hands twisted over and through each other and his head flicked from side to side in fear of what might lie behind him. His crimson robes were ragged and torn. The flight of an arrow traced a path through his torn collar and a deep red graze scored across his bald head. His left eye was gummed with blood from the wound, which his finely plucked eyebrows could neither divert nor restrain. Despite the cold he was sweating from the unaccustomed exertion of running, running for his life and still, safely here out on the plane of the Saeth, the necromancer was trembling with a clear and present fear.
On the little wizard’s other side the Medusa was openly and loudly amused. “This is no time for laughter, Dema,” Odestus rebuked her. “Our Master’s fortunes have suffered a great reverse. We will none of us rest easy for that.”
Dema shook her head and chuckled. “Galen, Galen, Galen, all is forgiven. This is the best joke I have heard. Not only do you march your finest into a valley of death, but while they fall all around you, you dare to beg Maelgrum for assistance.”
“The Master was not pleased,” Galen stammered, his eyes hollow at the recollection. “He would not hear me, would not hear what I had to say.”
“Why would he?” Dema cried. “You were in the midst of losing your entire force, save these few stragglers through rank poor leadership.” The Medusa crossed her hands on the pommel of her saddle and gazed along the Eastway towards the Gap of Tandar.
Odestus followed her gaze to where a thin line of battered troops were picking their way to safety. They were not running as Galen had been, his thin legs pumping in an unlikely sprint, until Odestus had hailed him to a halt. But then, the limping column of retreating soldiers had lacked the motivating force of Maelgru
m’s opprobrium in their heads.
Dema nodded slowly. “There will be many a dead orc on his way to the feasting halls, his body freezing in the pass, who rues the day they chose your generalship over mine. All of them lost through your pride and stupidity.”
Galen shook his head convulsively, still gripped by fear and incomprehension. “There were too many of them, there shouldn’t have been that many. We knew. We knew they had sent five thousand after my zombies. How could there be so many?”
Odestus shrugged. “They must have come back, maybe they have abandoned the people of Medyrsalve to your creations. Maybe they decided the pass must be held.”
Galen frowned in bewilderment. “No, they’d gone. To come back, to abandon those people. It is inhuman.”
“Well, Galen,” Odestus chided. “We can hardly criticise an enemy for becoming like us.”
“It is not fair!” the necromancer wailed, a thin line of drool dripping from his nose, slowly freezing as it did so. “This was my chance, my moment.”
“And you threw it all away.”
“Come Dema, if the enemy have abandoned their villages to the undead that is a circumstance even you could not have anticipated.”
“Really, little wizard?” The Medusa slipped from her saddle and jumped lightly to the ground. She stamped speculatively on the cold earth and raised her mailed foot to examine the unbroken ground. She stamped again with a similar lack of effect. “You really think it could not be anticipated.”
Galen, in bedraggled misery could only watch as Dema stomped a third time. Odestus muttered, “if there is some point you are making it is too obscure for me, Dema.”
“Or you are too stupid for it!” the Medusa exclaimed. She leapt back into the saddle and wheeled her horse round. “I’m going to see if Kimbolt has quite finished my gift. It’s big Galen.” She glared at the necromancer and held her hands far apart for illustration. “Really big.”
She rode off leaving wizard and necromancer in an unlikely companionship of shared incomprehension.