by David Waine
“He could certainly move an army up to the border quickly enough,” conceded Simian, “but once here, he would be checked. Something is wrong.”
An ageing military eyebrow rose. “What could be wrong? We have left our side alone. It’s a quagmire in comparison with theirs. See those cliffs above their road? Snow is gathering there already. Within a month or six weeks it should be so thick that a couple of patrols, armed with nothing more than loud voices, should be able to bring the whole lot down on their side.”
“I know,” Simian’s words agreed, but his head still shook.
“So what is your problem?”
Simian faced him squarely. “From our perspective, the plan is foolproof. Consider, however, that Sulinan knows as much as we do, and probably more.”
Vlaan nodded.
“Even if the unthinkable happened,” continued Simian, “and we were defeated — Heaven forbid — he could not reconstruct the road on our side quickly enough to capitalise on his advantage. The bulk of his troops would still be stranded at the border while we could call our reserves up.” He scowled as he thought on, his face clearing at last as the grim realisation dawned on him. “We have been duped.”
Vlaan stared at him incredulously. “What?”
“This new road is a diversion.”
Vlaan retired a few paces. “You don’t think he’ll invade through the pass?”
“He’ll send a force — enough to keep us busy — but the main invasion will come elsewhere.”
Vlaan thought carefully. “All right, but where? Killian will cut him to pieces at sea. He can’t creep along the coast because it is sheer cliffs all the way and he can’t go round the mountains the other way because it is simply too far. He has to come by this pass.”
“Unless…”
“Unless what?”
Simian smiled grimly. “Unless he has found another way through the mountains.”
Vlaan exploded with mirth. “What other way? This is the only passable defile.”
“A tunnel?”
Vlaan gaped. “Have you any idea of the engineering that would demand?”
“No more than you have,” returned Simian, indicating the impressive Draal road on the far side of the border, “but they built that.”
*
Keriak Rulik stood on the battlements of Graan, looking inwards towards his home city. The dying golden rays of the sun illuminated the many domes and spires that graced the Kingdom’s only seaport. A glint from a high tower of the citadel caught his eye. Graan was rich in Kingdom glass — another reminder to their northern neighbour of the benefits of allegiance to Rhomic Vandamm.
“A splendid evening, Sir Keriak.”
Keriak snapped to attention. The speaker was Baron Coreth.
Coreth waved the salute away. “Please be at your ease, Sir Keriak. I have not come to inspect you. Rather I came to inspect the Draal encampment over yonder.”
Keriak turned to view the cloud of dust that obscured the horizon and the dark, shifting shadow beneath it.
“They have been exercising mightily today,” he confirmed.
Coreth nodded. “We estimate their number at twenty thousand, all in heavy training. They do not mean to lay siege to us. They mean to overrun us.”
*
“Just like old times, Master Callin.”
Not quite, he thought. Compared with his comfortable quarters, Mussa’s cottage was cramped and smelled earthy; her straw mattress was prickly and lumpier than his down one and there was no miserable fresco. In that, at least, it was an improvement. More than any of these, though, his quarters held no cradle containing a demanding infant with an unbelievable sense of timing.
She uncoupled the little snorting lump from her swollen breast and placed him tenderly back in the cradle.
“That’s him full, Master Callin,” she said, her voice overflowing with love. “He’ll fill his swaddlers in a moment, then I’ll change him and he’ll go to sleep.”
‘For how long,’ he thought? The little beast had interrupted them twice already.
Minutes later the contented gurgles from the cradle subsided into a gentle miniature snoring. She straddled him, positioning herself with practised ease and beginning her familiar gentle rocking motion.
Callin allowed his head to loll back, the old, familiar sensations flowing through him. His eyes flickered closed in contented anticipation.
“Does that feel better, Master Callin?” she said softly. Mutely, he nodded. “You been waiting for this a long time, haven’t you, beautiful boy!”
His eyes jerked open. Bare thighs still gripped him but the belly was flatter and the breasts were no longer swollen with milk. The movement was quicker, harder, more urgent — no regard given to protecting areas made tender by the recent passage of an infant. He was still in the grip of an aroused naked woman, but that woman was not Mussa.
“What!” she paused in her writhing. “Do you forget me?”
“What are you doing here?” he stammered, “What have you done to Mussa?”
The wanton mouth smiled broadly. “Did you enjoy her in my absence?”
Despite her insistent rocking, he felt his interest dwindling involuntarily. So did she.
“Has the beautiful boy forgotten how to be a man?” she cooed. “Shall I remind you? Can she do this? Or this?”
A small adjustment in her position and movement produced an immediate response in him. She took his hands in hers and placed them on her breasts. He cupped the splendid globes automatically, then withdrew them and held them above his head in revulsion
“What have you done to Mussa? I rejected you!”
“Where is my king’s head?”
He swallowed, heart pounding. “You can have Sulinan’s.”
Her head fell back, peals of laughter shaking her body and causing an instantly regretted response in his loins.
“Your moment has come, beautiful boy,” she hissed. “Sulinan will play his hand. He is ready now. Do not wait for the visit. It will not happen.”
*
The same slave girl who had danced for her life at the council of war had already pleasured Sulinan in her new status as a rutting wench. Now she straddled his son and heir, Kubelik, grinding her loins ever harder and more insistently into his groin. Sweat trickled between her breasts and small moans escaped her lips. Moans but no more. She no longer had a tongue to give utterance.
“That’s right, slut! Harder!” he hissed. She responded immediately, grinding desperately, forcing their union to new depths. Kubelik’s head lolled back, his eyes closing in anticipation of the approaching explosive climax.
Then she stopped. His eyes snapped open. “What?”
“Be still, little boy!”
He was thrust bodily back onto his bolster, although no hand touched him. A different woman straddled him, older than the barely pubescent slave and incomparably more beautiful. Kubelik squirmed beneath her, his mounting arousal threatening to carry all away. He felt her hot breath on his neck.
Her velvety voice purred in his ear. “Why wait, little boy? The visit is a sham. Rhomic knows that. Strike now before he is prepared. All is ready.”
“What? How…?” he began only for his back to arch involuntarily as a scream of ecstasy ripped from his lips; his entire body locked rigid in an arc of completion.
*
Lissian Dumarrick was convinced she was dreaming. How else would an unclad woman appear at the foot of her bed? Dismissing the vision, she turned over.
The slap rebounded from the ceiling. Lissian was flat on her back, her cheek smarting from a stinging blow. The bruise she sported the following morning removing any lingering doubts as to whether this was a dream. The vision towered over her.
“Don’t turn your back on me, girl,” she hissed.
Lissian was pinned to the mattress. No hand touched her, but she was held nonetheless.
“Rise,” instructed the vision.
Lissian rose. She did nothing, but
she rose notwithstanding. Although her body levitated from the bed into a standing position, her nightgown remained where it was. For a horrible moment, she felt its rough linen pass through her flesh.
“What do you want with me?” Her voice trembled, her composure having been stripped from her as completely as her clothing. A fleeting vision of Mussa stripped down in that very room, being measured by Mirial and Angma, for the delectation of the smelly Keck, flashed through her mind.
The Hag knew her thoughts and smiled cruelly. “Be at your ease, Lissian Dumarrick,” she said without warmth. I have not come for your body.”
“Then why did you remove my nightgown?” demanded the sullen young woman, consciously averting her eyes.
The Hag’s smile broadened. Lissian hung her head. For the first time since that fateful afternoon, she considered how Mussa must have felt.
“Look.” The Hag indicated a full-length mirror on the opposite wall.
Lissian looked. At first she saw only their reflections, hers sleeker and curvier than it had once been, but still a poor comparison with the flawless figure at her side, a full head taller with every detail of her form polished to perfection.
The image in the mirror changed. The reflections of two women merged to form a single misty figure, which gradually clarified to reveal itself as her sister. She wore flowing raiment in glistening white. Her hair was piled high on the back of her head and bejewelled. She held a bouquet in her hands and her eyes were downcast, her face serious, yet strangely remote.
“That isn’t happening now!” cried Lissian. The Hag waved her hand over the mirror. The image shivered and altered subtly. The figure and the dress were the same, but the garment now hung more loosely about her frame. On the wall behind her was the Vorst crest. Her hair was brushed out and flowed over her shoulders. Some man out of her sight was pulling the single cord that would remove it.
Lissian turned away in disgust.
“I take no joy in the sight of girls being stripped,” she asserted.
The Hag smiled cruelly. “Would a serving maid confirm that?”
Lissian rounded on her, anger mastering her fear.
“That is my sister!” she cried. “What do you think I am?”
The cruel smile broadened. “I know what you are, little slut, and I know what you wish in the depths of your heart. Would you like to see who is loosening that dress?”
Lissian shook her head desperately. She knew who.
“Look again!”
No hand touched her but her head was twisted back to face the mirror. The dress was on the floor. The slender, unadorned form glowed golden in the firelight as it straddled a firm body, the face lost in a passionate kiss. Jealousy stabbed at her heart and bitter tears welled up in her eyes.
“Why are you showing me this?” she spat. “This has not yet happened. That was a wedding dress she was wearing.”
The Hag looked down on her with an eyebrow raised.
“She?”
Again she turned to the mirror. Lissian followed suit.
The embrace was over and the girl was straightening up. Lissian’s breath caught in her throat. The girl had paused in her task and turned her head to face directly out of the mirror, smiling. The face Lissian beheld was not that of her sister. It was her own.
*
“It is an omen!” shouted Kubelik, slamming his fist onto the council table. Deathly silence reined everywhere else in the room as generals, the admiral, knights and lords all averted their eyes. Only the eyes of his father, Sulinan Furak, were able to hold the ferocity of his stare.
“Do you mean to tell us,” asked the king, “that this rutting wench, whose tongue we cut out, told you this?”
Prince Kubelik was shaking with suppressed indignation. “Not her,” he gasped, “of course not her. But there was a woman there. She replaced her somehow.”
General Trulik leaned forward. “What woman?”
Kubelik shook his head. “I know not. One moment I was rutting with the whore and the next this other woman was astride me.”
“You were dreaming,” General Siriak folded his arms and sat back complacently.
“Was I?” He clutched his groin obscenely and gestured to his manhood for all to see. “Tell that I was dreaming. I could hardly walk this morning. No rutting wench ever left me like that.”
“She certainly did not leave me like that,” confirmed his father.
Kubelik glared at his father. “This was no ordinary woman. She is not human.”
“To do what you say she did, she could not even be mortal,” put in his father.
“My Liege,” put in Admiral Flenn after a pause, “the Sutherlanders do have an ancient legend of a hag.”
“Fairy tales are for children, My Lord Admiral,” admonished the king.
“So they are,” agreed the Admiral, “but Prince Kubelik tells us this strange story. Why? What does he have to gain from it? Nothing. I suggest, therefore, that we take note.”
A slow nodding of heads greeted this statement, broken eventually by a raucous guffaw from General Siriak. “You’ve lost your head, Flenn,” he announced, “time you retired.”
“I am not so sure,” put in General Trulik, “I have heard of this hag legend. The Sutherlanders say that she is not really a hag at all but a voluptuous woman who waylays knights in the mountains, ruts and devours their souls.”
“What is this?” objected Siriak. “Are we at a council of war or a reading of myths?”
There was an outburst of both objection and mirth to this statement. At length King Sulinan held up his hand.
“My lords,” he announced, “my son’s tidings seem to me to be, at least, propitious. You say she told you to go early?”
Kubelik nodded.
“We would lose credibility,” advised General Siriak. “What reason could we then give for the attack?”
“If we win, as we will,” countered General Trulik, “what reason need we give?”
*
“And you expect us to believe this?” The scepticism in King Rhomic’s voice was plain for all to hear above the roar of the wind outside and the lashing of the rain on the window in the council chamber. Russet leaves fairly flew past, occasional ones plastering themselves against the wet glass only to be ripped off again by a new gust.
Callin felt ridiculous. He had told as much of the truth as he dared. “I know it sounds absurd, Your Majesty, but it was as I said.”
“You were with that girl of yours?”
Callin looked sidelong at Avalind. Her face was blank. His was red. “I may have dreamed it, sire. One moment I was with the girl, and the next she was this woman.”
Avalind spoke coldly. “How is Mussa? Did she survive the experience?”
“Yes, Your Highness,” he nodded. “The woman told me her message and then Mussa was back again. I cannot explain it.”
“I can,” remarked General Gallen. “You were drunk.”
Callin coloured again, this time with anger. “I assure you that I was not, General”
General Treasor rose quietly. “Your Majesty, if I may?”
Rhomic nodded.
Treasor produced a sheet of parchment and handed it to the king. “I received this within the past hour. It is a letter jointly from General Vlaan and Sir Simian Treponic up on the pass. Sir Simian has surmised that our supposition of a major assault that way is false.”
“So I see,” confirmed Rhomic, perusing the letter.
“If you read on, sire,” continued Treasor, “you will note that he believes the Draals to have discovered another way through the mountains.”
“But there is no other way,” objected Gallen.
“He suggests that they have built one,” said Rhomic.
“Preposterous,” cried Gallen. “That’s impossible!”
“Is it?” countered Treasor. “They are fine engineers.”
“Even if they did,” returned Gallen, “they would have been discovered as soon as they set foot o
n our side.”
Treasor thought for a moment. “Perhaps not,” he announced at last. “There are places where the mountains, themselves, are deemed a sufficient barrier.”
“I do not like the sound of this,” put in Baron Dumarrick.
A stunned silence from everyone around the council table greeted his statement. It was eventually broken by King Rhomic.
“If what you surmise turns out to be accurate, General Treasor, the balance of this struggle is altered, possibly decisively. Do we have any other evidence?”
“Our lookouts report massive troop movements on their side of the mountains,” said Treasor. “These have been going on for months, of course, under the guise of exercises, but they have intensified of late. Interestingly, we cannot work out where many of them are going.”
Rhomic decided. “We must move at once. Princess Avalind will remove to Nassinor with her ladies. Count Vorst will escort her and return immediately with the Nassinor forces,” he nodded to a sober-faced Dorcan, whose finger now bore the ring emblazoned with an M for Magister. “Baron Dumarrick will return to Yelkin and place his forces on high alert, ready to stem the seaborne invasion or march on Brond, as appropriate. Baroness Dumarrick and The Lady Xunin to withdraw to Yelkin, and thence to Nassinor, if necessary. Lady Lissian to travel with Princess Avalind.”
“May I not remain in Brond, father?” Avalind’s voice betrayed disappointment.
Rhomic shook his head. “No. Brond may be overrun and it is better that the Royal Family is not found together in one place. Soth is in Dragotar. He may find himself caught up in the action there. I will certainly be involved here. We will keep you in reserve for the moment, my child, in case you are required to lead the fight back.”
Avalind, with dignity, nodded mute acceptance, turning her face to stare out of the great window, through which she could see the storm intensifying.