Connach pulled his teeth back into a snarl. His eyes flashed. “Those bastards think they’ve captured a Mirror at last. Not as long as I draw breath!” He stared at Cunneda’s under-privileged kinsman with eyes that had become green sparks. He leaned conspiratorially close.
“How long will it take you to repair the damaged winch in proper Celtic fashion?”
The man’s smiled broadly, revealing a set of darkened teeth that resembled a section of a broken picket fence.
“The job will take as long as the Lord Connach requires.”
“Three days should suffice. Then, if Caerwent is not back in our hands, make sure that the boat can never be examined. The Navarchus, Castillo, will give you the tools to complete that job,” Connach said casually, sending the dockworker to his certain death.
“It is done, my lord,” The Celt replied, thus, sealing the suicide pact. Castillo led him out of the room, Morgan guessed, to learn how to count up to C-4 in proper guerrilla fashion.
Morgan absently touched his stolen bar of explosive and studied Martin Cunneda carefully. The nobleman stood nowhere near his bride to be and paid her scarcely any attention. Morgan did not know if he felt relieved by the possibility that Cunneda had no interest in women or if he felt angry that she might be doomed to neglect and a loveless marriage in that House. Brigid’s face was a reflection of both those possibilities, yet when she looked at him again, her eyes softened still further, giving him the hope of hope. He then decided that Martin Cunneda would not meet his death by Kerry Morgan’s hands. He would win Brigid back. He did not know how he was to accomplish that feat, but he was going to try. If Glivas could be kept out of the way, perhaps a kind of peace could be made with Cunneda, from there, perhaps an understanding. Understanding might lead to an agreement.
He was thinking of an approach that he might make to Cunneda as Castillo reentered the room—with Glivas. The clan leader slithered to Cunneda’s side and stared at Morgan with an undisguised malevolence.
Morgan ceased thinking, and automatically loosened his dagger in its sheath.
Glivas saw and took a step forward.
Fortunately for Morgan, Connach took that moment to begin the actual council. “Now that we are all assembled once more, I think we should begin.”
Morgan took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and then released it slowly, loosening his tensions.
“We all know the general plans for the liberation of Caerwent itself,” he said smoothly as if addressing a sales meeting. “But now we have a more immediate and critical target.” Sales are down in L.A., ladies and gentlemen. “If the Mirror can be removed from here and taken to Londstaadt, we can expect the end of Celtic civilization to follow within days. The Viks care nothing about a high casualty rate and will not be slowed in the least by the fact that their flawed Mirror will kill many of their own troops.”
Connach looked at Morgan with a faint smile on his lips. “There is only one officer present who has had experience in planning and leading raids such as the one we will need to mount against the Vik installation at Caerwent Harbor.”
Morgan gulped. This would not go down well with Cunneda. He stepped forward even before Connach called his name.
Glivas locked eyes with him and seemed to be laughing at an evil secret—something that included Morgan and, he knew… Brigid as well.
“Get me a map of the Harbor area,” he said calmly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Then the Connach bitch is in Kaerwendt?” Thorkell asked, unable to suppress the excitement that gripped him like the hands of lover. The Scatha assassin who brought him the welcome news disgusted him, however. He was a slimy, secretive Unmensch, incapable of the clean, directness of speech and action that marked the Mercian in all things. Still, he was useful, very useful, if the news he brought was to be believed.
“If she and her brother are here with a mercenary force, they must be ready to make their move against us soon.” He fought down his disgust and leaned aggressively toward the informant. “How soon?”
“Two days, perhaps three,” was the hissed response. “No more than that.”
“I am to be the target, am I not?” He felt somehow pleased that Ian Connach would die attempting to storm the palace he now inhabited as Lord.
“You are not the chosen target, Mercian,” the assassin answered in a voice that was like the rubbing of dry scales together. “It is a foreign boat they intend to seize, along with its secrets.” The laugh that accompanied that revelation was a sound not intended for the ears of the living.
Thorkell shivered as a crypt-like chill entered his body. His pet abruptly retreated and cringed behind the throne, keeping the massive chair between itself and Thorkell’s visitor. If the importance of his position had permitted, the Lord of Dumnonia would have joined his terrified dragon in hiding at that moment. But because he was Lord, and because he read this same fear in the faces of his guards, Thorkell carefully maintained his haughty exterior and fought the paralyzing cold that had invaded his body and spirit when the Keltic monster had first been granted audience.
“Then will you tell me...?”
“I will tell you no more, Mercian usurper.” A vise-like hand choked empty air into silence. “I have given you this, and I demand what you have promised in return.”
Thorkell looked about the chamber furtively. He had kept the two guards who had allowed the Druid priest to escape with him for this distasteful interview because they were bound to him as never before. Their suspended sentences of death would be invoked instantly if they failed him in anything. Terrified or not, they would not disobey his command. His quick glance had satisfied him that their crossbows were ready for use. He had only to make a slight gesture that would have no meaning to the Keltik horror and the bowmen would loose their bolts.
Reassured but still frightened of his visitor, he forced a smile onto his granite face. He wondered that he could not relax. In a moment, the traitor would be dead, killed in crossfire of deadly Mercian iron. The cold would then be dispelled. Order would then be restored.
“Very well,” Thorkell said, feeling better as he listened to the smooth flow of his own voice. “The mercenary chief, this Mor-gan you speak of, is yours to do with as you wish, but you must bring that bitch to me, alive. If you accomplish this, then I will give you all the pretty boys you want to warm your bed.”
The offer was an empty one. Thorkell had no intention of allowing the revolting murderer to leave his audience chamber except as a corpse. He now had what he wanted. He now knew that a small force of Keltik warriors was in Dumnonia to take the beautiful Kettelmann’s boat, and with it, one of the coveted Mirrors. An undamaged Mirror would allow Mercian troops to roam the Earth at will, unbound by distance and terrain. Mercia would in fact rule the world, and he would command Mercia! Brigid and her dullard brother would soon be dead enough without Scatha’s fateful assistance.
He felt quite confident as he made his second covert hand signal. He was not prepared for Scatha’s intervention, however.
The darkness that swallowed the audience chamber was complete, a frigid blanket that blinded him and made his heart thud in panic. In the blackness he heard his guards cry out, the distinctive sound that accompanied the release and impact of iron bolts upon stone. But above at all, he could hear the voice of the assassin.
“Mercian! For my own reasons I will keep my part of the bargain.” The sound came from everywhere, yet nowhere, and Thorkell did not know where the man stood. A stench of venomous snakes reached his nostrils, gagging him. His pet Kraakthonen hissed in terror and Thorkell could hear the giant gekko bumping and thrashing against the throne as if trying to escape an attack.
“But since you had the audacity to dissemble with a servant of the Dark One, what you offer me is not enough. There will be much more demanded of you.” Hollow laughter echoed in the chamber, and the viper odor grew stronger. A warm feeling pulsed through Thorkell’s groin area, a small center of heat
that did nothing to combat the chill that gripped the audience chamber. When the warmth became a rivulet that traveled the length of his leg to his booted foot, he realized that he had released his bladder.
That, combined with the other assaults on his senses, broke the last vestige of resolve he had managed to save. A great weakness flooded through him and he sank to his knees, an abject and crawling petitioner.
“What?” His voice trembled and changed pitch. “What more can you demand of me?” The thought that there would actually be a demand filled him with even more dread, and he slumped forward so that his forehead touched the wetted stones.
Sepulchral laughter again reverberated in the chamber. “It will be within your power to give what I demand and which is my right to receive, Mercian. But until I make my presence known to you again, I give you warning.”
Thorkell made the attempt to reply, but the only sound that escaped his lips was a thin, mindless mewling that threatened to become a shriek. His forehead drummed upon the floor as uncontrollable tremors wracked his body.
“Beware the shadows, Mercian! Beware the invisible things that hide in the night.”
The voice echoed, multiplied, and became many obscene voices, gibbering, mocking at Thorkell’s helplessness. It was minutes later that the Lord of Dumnonia realized that the assassin was no longer speaking to him and that the chamber was filled with light again. It took still more minutes before Thorkell dared to open his eyes.
A wave of blackness from within nearly blotted out that light, and Thorkell had to lower his head once more to keep from losing consciousness altogether. Siegler and Hengst lay on the cold stones like broken toys, blackened and swollen tongues poking at the tainted air like charred wood. He jerked his eyes away from the dead bodyguards and swung around to hide the sight of ugly death from himself. His throne captured his spinning concentration. It was drunkenly tilted to one side. The sight was so incongruous in the chamber of horrors that he began to giggle. Tears ran freely down his cheeks until he saw what had tipped the heavy seat. The Kraakthonen was wedged under the legs, its ponderous body pushing the throne from the floor. The giant reptile was dead. Its jaws gaped wide in a final, impotent defiance. And its scales, no longer iridescent but the color of feces, stood out, perpendicular from its body. Thick, stinking mucus oozed from its mouth and distended anal cavity.
Thorkell screamed at last.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Morgan left the House Cunneda by a servant’s entrance and almost laughed aloud at the feel of the sun’s warmth upon his face. It was a cleansing of the spirit that he sorely needed after the seemingly interminable subterranean existence that had been forced upon the rebel force. Connach had only allowed him a slim half-day of freedom in the city, but he was determined to make it count.
He adjusted the executed Mercian agent’s wig on his head before he left the grounds. It did not fit well, but without it he would have excited comment. Dumnonians did not usually wear crew cuts. As he turned a corner of the hulking building and headed for the street gate, he narrowly avoided a collision with a young servant woman. Her loosened hair sprayed over her face as she recovered from her near fall. He reached out a hand to steady her, and the local beauty who appeared to have more native blood than Celt held out her own slender hand to him.
It held a freshly cut flower.
“Will you accept a peace offering?” Her voice stripped away all illusion that she was a mere servant girl.
“Brigid!” He caught at her arm and attempted to hold her, but she managed to slip through his encircling fingers with a fluid twist.
“Do not touch me, Kerry,” she said, looking into his eyes without smiling. “But let us get away from this place.” She turned without looking back at him and led him to the gate and onto a broad avenue that would have been filled with traffic and strollers had it been in Verulamium.
The street traffic they did encounter was primarily Mercian and military, the civilian pedestrians were solemn-faced and few, people who walked with the downcast looks of the conquered, watching their shadows instead of the sun.
Fifty meters along the street, two Suevian non-commissioned officers, staggeringly drunk, supervised the unloading of a freight wagon by a team of civilian prisoners. Morgan could feel their eyes slide away from their struggling prisoners to rest with increasing frequency upon Brigid and himself, but primarily upon Brigid.
He gripped her hand and squeezed it quickly. “Get your head down and shuffle your feet a little as you walk. You’re marching like a soldier.” As they approached the work party, Morgan’s scalp began to twinge. The Suevians’ stares had become openly fixed on them, and the looks reserved for Brigid were like dirty fingers running over her body.
“If they talk to us, say nothing,” he strained through clenched teeth, hoping that the wig sat straight upon his head.
“Taag, Froulein,” the fat Schildtrager said to Brigid licking his lips. “How would you like to be serviced by a real man?”
Brigid turned pale then reddened, but said nothing. Morgan clenched his jaws even tighter so that his teeth ached. He was armed only with a dagger concealed in his boot. To possess even that small weapon was death if discovered. To use it would bring only disaster to the commandos’ hopes of surprise and do nothing to increase the honor Brigid wore like armor. The obese Suevian would live to insult another Celtic woman, but not many more. Morgan memorized his face.
“Come on, Liebchen, once you’ve licked Suevian meat, you’ll never go back to Keltik sausage.”
Still, Brigid made no response. The prisoners, however, had halted their labors and watched Brigid and Morgan with sympathy. They were the ones who deserved the sympathy. Their bodies were marked like road maps with welts and cuts. The oldest laborer had lost his front teeth, and recently, Morgan saw as he scanned the bruised and bloody face.
Soon, you poor bastards. Soon you will be revenged, he promised them as he wordlessly endured the Suevian’s barrage of verbal filth. It followed them like the smell of an open sewer. As soon as a cross street was reached, Brigid took his hand and pulled him around a corner where she fell into his arms, shaking.
“Those animals!” She lifted her flushed face to his. “To think that the women in Caerwent must listen to that, must suffer insults like that every day that Thorkell rules, I....” Tears traced twin paths down her cheeks.
“He won’t rule here much longer.” He touched her face and for a moment thought that she would reach for him and kiss him.
She pulled away instead. “I met you outside deliberately to make my peace with you, but not to make love to you, Kerry. That part of our lives is over. Her expression told him she did not want to have it ended.
Morgan took the winged pendant from where it lay between her breasts and held gently in his hand, remembering how she had stirred him once simply by touching it. “How can everything be finished between us?”
Brigid removed the pendant from his fingers and let it dangle once more from its gold chain against her skin. There would be no seduction this time. “I have forgotten my anger over how easily you deserted me that last night in Verulamium.” Her eyes were moist, but she had stopped crying. “I have seen the invaders at close hand now and know that they must be driven out at all costs.”
“Then why?”
“Our lives together ceased when I arrived in Caerwent and found that Martin Cunneda was alive and still needed to have me as his bride.”
“Cunneda is a flaming fairy, and you know it!” He held her by the shoulders so tightly that her flesh was red between his fingers.
She pushed him away. “Stop it, Kerry! You’re hurting me.”
He released her, feeling ashamed. He was no better than the enemy soldier.
“I know what Martin is, Kerry,” she said, rubbing her shoulders. “But as High Chief, he will need a wife, one who can help him sustain the fiction that he is not homosexual. The clan chiefs would never stand for that.”
He laug
hed bitterly, feeling dirty fingers upon his soul. “That’s just great! You’ll be sitting on the throne over here, looking pretty for all those suspicious clan chiefs, while your husband is making it with Glivas. That’s one helluva life, lady!” He looked at her with wounded eyes, feeling very sorry for himself.
“Yes, Kerry,” she answered him with dignity. A High Chief’s consort cannot be permitted to take lovers. But it will be comfort enough to know that Reged and Dumnonia will stand united against the Viks.” She reached up and placed a finger on Morgan’s lips.
“I know that you no longer wish to return to the Shadow World,” she told him, simply. “ I also know that the bed of such a hero as yourself will never be empty. You will never know loneliness.”
“God damn it, Brigid! You know that you are the only woman I want! There isn’t anyone else, and I don’t want anyone else to take your place.” His hands shook and he had to cross his arms to keep from revealing his sudden lack of self-control. “You seemed to read me pretty well, and both of us have pegged old Martin as gay.”
She winced. “I do not “read” you or Martin. Through Aiofe I can read the stones. That is all.”
“Then give me a printout on Glivas while you’re reading your mail!” He said, reeling with confusion.
“That I cannot do,” she whispered. “He is closed to me, though I have tried. He frightens me, Kerry.”
“He scares the hell out of me, too,” he confessed. “Glivas would like nothing better than to slip a blade between my ribs. What really frightens me is that I know he can do it.”
Brigid furrowed her brow. “He is like the evil half of a whole mind. Martin is weak but basically a good man. Glivas is strong and filled with a dark power. Together they are one; apart, each is crippled.”
“A regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I believe,” Morgan said acidly. “Why should you be bound to them, knowing what they are?”
“They are Dumnonia, Ian, don’t you see? They....”She stopped in mid-sentence and looked beyond Morgan.
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