"Take me to him," she seethed through gritted teeth. "Take me to Merodach. He will wish to see me. I am the Princess. I demand an audience."
Still, Brom did not move. Gabriella's fury boiled over at him. She thrashed to her feet and flung herself at his silhouette.
"I… demand… an audience!" she shouted, and kicked at her captor.
His fist moved as if of its own accord, catching her just below the jaw. She tumbled backwards, gasping, sure that the beast had crushed her windpipe. She blinked past a dizzying wave of greyness and rolled onto her side to catch her breath.
Behind her, a shuffle of fabric sounded. There was a flash of firelight and a rabble of voices and then darkness again. Amazingly, without a word, Brom had left.
Gabriella rolled back towards the entrance again, straining her eyes in the dimness. Two shadows could be seen on the flaps of the tent's door. There were guards outside of course, each one nearly as tall and vicious as Brom. There would be no escape that way.
She cast around in the gloom, weak with pain, barely breathing for the thick stench of the place, and her gaze fell upon the mysterious mass she had seen earlier. It looked familiar, although she could not quite place where she had seen anything like it before. She crept towards it in the darkness, hissing through her teeth at the pain of her arm. The stink seemed to be coming from it.
With a wave of horror, Gabriella realised what it reminded her of. It was like the mound of carcasses heaped in the corner of the dragon's cave. Only this mound was rather smaller. And it was not comprised of dead beasts.
Human corpses were piled like rag dolls, most stripped to bare bones streaked black with rotting tissue. The hands, feet, and heads, however, still bore flesh and skin, as if whatever had consumed the bodies had not wished to waste time on such sparse meat. Shoes and sandals adorned some of the feet. Rings glittered on some of the fingers. A shock of bloody red hair was evident near the edge of the pile. Gabriella did not wish to look any further, and yet she could not tear her gaze away. Her eyes widened in the darkness, taking in the hideous sight. Surely, this was what was to become of her. Brom was that most awful of all possible villains. He was an eater of the dead.
But it was worse even than that, and Gabriella knew it. It was as if Brom himself was dead and yet animated, his corpse haunted by something otherworldly, sustained only by the consumption of more death.
Gabriella shuddered violently. It was completely insane of course. It could not be true. But then she remembered the beast riders that she had encountered earlier in her journey, remembered hacking the arm from one of them and it not even slowing down. Its eyes, when it had reared on her, had been milky white, utterly blank. And the severed arm had continued flexing… flexing…
"No wonder Father's army could not defeat them," she said to herself, and her voice was a high tremolo of horror. "How can you kill something… that's already dead?"
And then, like the final, most devastating blow, Gabriella realised what she had been looking at all along. It glittered before her, loose on one wasted, pale hand. It was a gold ring.
It was the mate of the one on her own finger.
"No!" she moaned desperately. She pushed herself forwards, willing it not to be what she knew it was. The hand was slender but strong, the fingers curled gently, palm up, as if offering a gift. The ring was unmistakable.
"Darrick," she sobbed, reaching her bound wrists forwards and touching the cold, pale hand. "No! No, no, no…," she repeated helplessly, shaking her head and closing her eyes. In the darkness, she pressed her hands into his, tried desperately to remember what it had felt like when his fingers were warm and strong.
She could not.
For several minutes, grief swallowed her up. Nothing else mattered. She sobbed into the dirt of the floor, still resting her hand in his dead palm.
And then, finally, the pain of her body merged with the agony of her heart and overwhelmed her. Darkness fell upon her, seamlessly and heavily, and for a long while, she knew no more.
She came back to herself slowly. She was lying on a dirt floor, surrounded by darkness and the stench of death. But more nagging even than that, something was tickling her hands. She moaned and stirred, and a busy squeaking chitter caught her ear. It was very near.
She startled and thrashed to her knees. When she opened her eyes in the dimness, she could just make out the shape of a large rodent in the darkness. It had retreated from her and now stood near the mound of dead bodies. It was, of course, a rat.
Gabriella shuddered violently. She hated rats.
"Go away," she hissed at the thing. It flinched but did not run. Gabriella raised her bound wrists to shoo it and then stopped. The thick ropes were frayed into tufts of loose fibre. They were nearly broken through completely.
The rat had been gnawing her free.
She shuddered again. She really did hate rats. And yet…
She lowered her wrists gently towards the ground. The rat watched this with its beady, black eyes. Then, haltingly, it moved forwards again. After an anxious moment, it darted towards her hands. Gabriella tensed with loathing and clenched her eyes shut. The rat's tiny, cold feet clambered over her fingers and the backs of her hands.
"Ungh…," she shivered as it began to gnaw again. "Just the ropes. Do you understand? I appreciate the help… but I can barely resist the urge to crush your skull with my boot."
Suddenly, she realised that this must have been very close to how the dragon had felt about her.
The ropes loosened gradually. Finally, with a faint pop, the coils fell away. The rat squeaked once, then kicked off from her hands. It scampered towards the tent's wall and vanished beneath it.
Gabriella raised her hands and peered at them in the dimness. Her left forearm was swollen and bruised beneath her wrist gauntlet. The subtle grate of the broken bone had become almost bearable, but the fingers of her left hand were stiff and weak. She flexed them experimentally. It was painful, but not excruciating. Or perhaps excruciating was simply something she was getting used to.
They did this to me.
It was a small thought, like a candle flame in a dark room, but it was very bright. They killed Darrick, and they mean to kill me. And when they are through, they will seek out and kill everyone else. Father. Sigrid. And the Little Prince.
The flicker of her anger stoked gradually to a flame. She had felt her anguish, tasted the full draught of her grief. Now, on the other side of that, all that was left inside her was rage. She relished it, allowed it to well up in her chest, to fuel her.
Gingerly, she took off her wrist gauntlet. She would have to move fast, for even her rediscovered determination would not last long in the face of what she was about to do. She patted the flesh of her left forearm with her right hand, probing for the broken bone beneath. The pain was intense, but it was nothing compared to what was yet to come. She found the break. The smaller of her two forearm bones was snapped completely in two.
I cannot scream, she told herself. She looked up, saw the shadows of the guards still evident on the tent's flaps. They were just outside the door. I cannot let them hear me. If they come to investigate, all will be lost…
She drew several deep, long breaths. And then, sealing her mouth shut as tightly as possible, she gripped the lean flesh of her left forearm in her right hand. Her fingers embraced the shape of the broken bone beneath, and squeezed.
The pain was like a white sheet. It filled her vision, and every muscle in her body strained to hold in the scream of anguish that boiled up in her throat. Then, with an audible snap, the broken lengths of bone aligned. Gabriella exhaled harshly, and tears streamed from her eyes, running down her face and mingling with the dried blood on her cheek. A wave of faintness drifted over her as she held the bones in place. She fought to remain alert. Finally, the pain receded to a ringing ache. Gabriella released her forearm slowly, and the bone remained set.
The rope that had bound her wrists was still lying on the floor in loos
e coils. She collected this, then got carefully to her feet. Stealthily, she moved towards the table in the rear of the tent. As she had suspected, its surface was cluttered with plotting tools, although the coating of dust implied that they had not been used in a long while. She found a heavy ruler and carefully began to bind it to her left forearm, supporting the broken bone with a rudimentary splint.
Then, finally, she put her wrist gauntlet back on.
Her sword was gone. She had no weapon whatsoever. Still, having regained the nominal use of her left arm, Gabriella felt better, if only slightly. She examined the tent once more, hoping that perhaps she could slip out beneath one of the canvas walls just as the rat had done. The silence of the camp implied the very depths of night; thus, she might actually be capable of stealing her way to the citadel unnoticed if only she could get past the guards at the tent's entrance. The canvas walls were secured tightly to the ground via a series of heavy, wooden stakes, but she thought she could wriggle beneath if she was very careful.
She crept across the dirt floor, approaching the side of the tent opposite the pathetic mound of corpses. Here, the ground dipped slightly. A band of moonlight could be seen beneath the taut canvas. Gabriella lowered to her knees and gripped the hem of the tent's wall. It was just loose enough, she thought. She began to slip her leg beneath it.
It was then that the guards moved outside. Gabriella heard the subtle clank of their mismatched armour, the creak of their leather belts and vests. They had heard something and were finally moving to investigate.
She glanced up, frozen in place, one leg half pushed beneath the side wall. The shadows of the guards moved over the entry. And then, worst of all, a third shadow heaved into view, even taller than the others. The guards stepped aside without a word.
Brom had returned.
The tent flaps twitched as Brom began to pull them back.
Gabriella scrambled. She clawed at the tent wall, yanking it up as far as she could and shimmying beneath it. Firelight flickered in the dark tent as Brom entered. He scanned the room, saw her, and his eyes flared angrily. Gabriella's lower body was already out of the tent, but Brom moved with incredible speed, crossing the tent floor and letting out a low roar. He did not waste time bending to grasp her but raised his boot instead, intending to stamp down upon her neck. She rolled frantically, ducking her head and twisting beneath the taut canvas. An instant later, Brom's boot slammed down. He missed her neck but stomped down upon a sweep of her hair. It pulled painfully as she rolled into the mud between the tents.
Brom roared again, and she sensed him bending, gripping her hair on the other side of the tent wall. She scrambled to her knees and pushed as hard as she could. Her head snapped back as her hair went taut, pulled hard by the root, but Brom held it firm and began to wrestle her backwards, dragging her back under the tent wall.
There was a ring of metal, then a slash. Brom's sword unzipped a huge tear in the tent wall, barely missing Gabriella's neck. It snagged there, and Brom grunted, trying to pull it back without releasing his fistful of her hair. Gabriella twisted, saw the glimmer of the blade protruding from the tent wall, and lunged upwards towards it. The taut hank of her hair hissed along the blade, which cut it neatly. An instant later, she was free, scrambling forwards between the tents, her boots slipping in the thick mud.
Brom roared, louder this time, and slashed again at the wall of his tent, cutting an exit.
"She escapes!" he bellowed, ripping his way into the open air. "Tell me where she goes! But do not touch her! She is mine!"
Gabriella reached the end of the tent, leapt over one of the support ropes, and struggled into a wider pathway. The fires had mostly burnt low, and there were no torches or lanterns anywhere in the camp. Worse, the fog obscured the moon, rendering the night almost completely black. Gabriella ran, desperate for a weapon but finding nothing.
Voices rabbled behind her.
"She's gone back that way."
"She will not get far."
And then Brom's voice: "I smell her fear. Leave her to me. I will save you each a bite."
Gabriella ducked between another rank of tents. Voices muttered inside, rousing. She leapt over more stakes and guide ropes, cursing them for slowing her down, and ran headlong into a dead end beneath a ragged outcropping of rock. The shadows were thick here, but there was a tree nearby. Gabriella thought she might be able to climb it. Then, inspiration struck her. She ducked back to the nearest tent and gripped the stake embedded at its corner. Inside the tent, a voice growled thickly, and Gabriella froze in fear. After a moment, however, the voice subsided to a mutter and then to slow, rattling breath.
Gabriella began to work the huge stake back and forth in the mud, prying it loose. Soon enough, the stake came free of the earth, and she pulled it up, pushing its loop of rope from the muddy tip. The tent's corner sagged slightly. She leapt to her feet, hefted the stake, and dashed nimbly towards the nearby tree. As quietly as she could, she scrambled up into its branches, panting harshly through her nose, her heart pounding.
There was a minute of silence. Gabriella had begun to think that Brom had lost her trail. Then a shadow moved from between the line of tents. He was stalking her, as quiet as a snake. His nostrils flared as he moved into the open. He did not see her in the tree, but he sensed her nearness. He crept closer, weaving slowly back and forth, homing in on her.
"Princessssss…," he whispered. "I know you are here. Come out, come out, wherever you are…"
Gabriella held her breath in the tree. The branches were bare of leaves and would not conceal her much longer. If he got any closer, he would smell her above him. She gripped the stake. It was long but virtually useless as a weapon. Still, it was better than nothing.
Brom circled closer, coming into the shadows of the rocks. "I smell you, my darling," he sang under his breath. Then he stopped. He swiveled his head, his nostrils flaring.
"I remember him, you know," he said very quietly. "Your man. I recall him well. I watched him die."
In the tree, Gabriella's face hardened. He was trying to provoke her of course. It was working.
"I watched Merodach stab him over and over until the blood sprayed like a pretty fountain. He was so handsome, even in death. Do you miss him, Princess? Is he the reason you are here?"
Gabriella's hand tightened on the stake. He was nearly below her now. He moved like a cat.
"When Merodach was through with him," he whispered delicately, "he gave him to me. I kept him for you. You may have him back if you wish, what is left of him. Come out, Princess. Your Darrick awaits you."
He stopped. Slowly, he looked up.
Gabriella dropped on him, bringing the stake down point first and driving it home with all of her weight. The stake punched into the slope of his shoulder, boring deep between his collarbone and shoulder blade. It sank in almost to its flattened tip, and Gabriella released it, stumbling backwards into the mud.
The brute had barely moved. He turned his head aside, peering awkwardly down at the wooden shape that protruded from the base of his shoulder. Slowly, he reached for it, tried to grip its blunt end with his fingers, and could not. He looked back at her again and then took a step towards her. His leg buckled, unhinged, and he dropped heavily to his knees in the mud.
"Ahhhh," he breathed, and his eyes bulged grotesquely. His hands rose, hooking into talons, and he reached for her. There was no strength in the gesture however. A moment later, his arms dropped to his sides. Then, perhaps most horribly of all, his eyes seemed to clear. He blinked, and something approaching humanity looked out at Gabriella, meeting her gaze.
"Thank you," he whispered weakly. "Thank you… Princess…"
And he fell forwards onto his face with a heavy thump, twice dead.
Gabriella took Brom's sword. It was larger than her own, and weighted differently. She hefted it, spun and swept it experimentally, and determined that she would be able to use it when the time came. Just as she was about to set off towards
the citadel, however, a subtle noise fluttered overhead. She glanced up and was surprised to see Featherbolt swooping gently out of the dark. He was carrying something in his talons, and its weight seemed to be nearly too much for him to bear. He landed awkwardly atop the object as it struck the ground.
"My pack," Gabriella whispered, kneeling before it. "Featherbolt, you amaze me. Thank you."
She had nearly forgotten about her pack. In truth, there was virtually nothing in it any more, save for one or two things. She opened the knot and reached inside, felt the dense weight of Darrick's wrapped candle, and nodded.
"You are a better friend than you know, Featherbolt," she whispered softly, slinging the pack over her shoulder. "You do not need to accompany me from here. Fly, my friend. Return to your home with the magical folk. I cannot vouch for your safety any longer."
The falcon cocked his head, turning one bright eye on her. He hopped forwards nimbly and let out a faint, unlikely twitter.
"Go," Gabriella insisted quietly. "You have done more already than I could have hoped. If it is possible, tell your masters what has transpired. Do not let our tale go untold. Do you understand?"
Featherbolt shook himself, clicked his beak, and ruffled his feathers. Whatever he was trying to say, however, it was lost on her. Hopefully, his magical friends spoke falcon better than she did. A moment later, the bird clapped his wings and launched into the air. The buffet of his passage ruffled Gabriella's hair as she watched him loft overhead. Within a few seconds, he was merely a dark shape against the night sky.
After that, he was gone completely.
Gabriella sighed, and the sigh turned into a shudder. She had not realised how much she had missed Featherbolt's company until he had returned to her. In truth, she would have liked for him to stay with her for the remainder, but she could not abuse the falcon's loyalty that way. It was one thing to risk herself by invading Merodach's lair. She would not make that choice for anyone or anything else.
Ruins of Camelot Page 22