Blood ran over Tarn's exposed face. Rena did not notice, so intent on reaching the Hierarch was she. When she stood before him, Asram noted that she had a glazed look in her eye. He did not understand for a moment. Then he realised. It was a dull, deadened kind of hatred that swam behind her eyes, like oil on water.
'Give me your knife,' she told Asram. Asram felt her cold, but she was his master on the journey, and he could not deny her.
'Tell me how many hunt us,' she said, leaning over the prostrate creature.
It laughed again, a sickening kind of laugh that had naught to do with humour. 'I will tell you nothing,' it said. 'You cannot threaten me.'
'You will tell me nothing?' she said.
'Nothing. Never. My master is more fearful than some chit of a mother with a babe on her tit.'
'Then what use are you to me?' she said, and drew the dagger across the creature's throat. Blood sprayed over Asram and Rena and the child, too.
Bathed in blood, thought Fell, but did not say anything. He merely wiped the blood and spit from his face, and pushed himself free of the dead thing on the ground.
Cold, thought Asram, cold. But then he would have done exactly the same thing, wouldn't he? The thought suddenly made him look at her in a new light. Perhaps she wasn't merely cold. Perhaps she was just becoming a survivor. Like him.
It was a harsh, hard thought. It was a harsh world, though, wasn't it? Was she any less or more of a murderer than him?
He found himself wondering.
Together, they washed in the stream. If Asram Fell had ever thought Rena was not hard enough for the road, he thought her weaker than himself no longer. She was capable of fighting, perhaps, not just magic. A partner on the road, maybe, rather than a simple charge and liege lady to order him about.
Maybe they could use each other. It would, he thought, certainly make the road easier.
He wondered, and looked at the young witch in a new light.
*
Chapter Thirteen
He already knew, of course, that she was a hard woman, but she was so young to be so harsh, so accomplished a murderer. For he had no doubt that what she had just done was murder.
The Hierarch would have had to die, he reminded himself.
Did it make any difference how he died, or by whose hand?
Asram wasn't sure why he felt so uneasy about the way that the young girl had killed the creature. Ultimately, given the chance, the Hierarch would have happily tortured them all, babe, too. Of that Asram had no doubt.
He had no choice but to set aside his thoughts. It was a matter for another day, he told himself. Instead of pointless introspection he set about the business of a battle done - tending the wounded.
He scanned the countryside constantly while he and Rena washed the blood from themselves in the freezing stream water. He watched the land with hunter's eyes, well tuned to the subtleties of the bush. He found nothing untoward. Assured that they were safe for the time being, he turned his full attention back to his charges.
The girl was bleeding and the Hierarch's arrow jutted from her left shoulder. Blood flowed freely down her dress and on the sling and babe, too. The babe she had set in the snow. He wore simple fur clothes, tiny things for a winter babe. While Asram tended Rena the child crawled around in the snows. Whenever his hands hit the snow he giggled.
A son of a northman, thought Asram with a grim smile.
The King, playing in the snow. He almost laughed, but he had business and the child was not it, not right now. Rena was still bleeding, though the arrow itself was stopping the worst of it. When he removed the arrow she would bled more.
'Wait a moment,' he told her. 'We'll get the arrow out. Got to be done now,' he said, with what he hoped was a reassuring smile, though he was sure he still had a fair amount of blood in his beard.
He left Rena for a moment to take a look at the arrows that had spilled from the Hierarch's quiver. The tips of the assassin's arrows were barbed. Asram took one arrow, looked at it long and hard. He smelled it, then licked it, gingerly.
He detected no hint of poison.
He was left two choices - cut out the arrow, or push it through and snap off the point.
'My lady?' he asked, turning back to Rena.
She seemed unaware of what was going on. Breathing heavily, then, without warning, she pitched forward. Asram managed to catch her before she fell onto the babe.
He laid her down. In truth, it was remarkable that she had stayed on her feet for so long. Many a man was laid low by lesser wounds, and the arrow was deep within the meat of the girl witch.
At least this way his work would be easier. He checked her eyes, which were unresponsive, then with a grunt of effort shoved the arrow through her dress and coat both, out the other side.
That woke her up just fine.
*
Chapter Fourteen
The following days were harder on Asram, perhaps, than Rena.
They paused by a stream to take some chill water from beneath the ice forming above. Rena held the babe the whole time. The babe bore his confinement without complaint.
She would not allow Asram to handle the baby unless she absolutely had to, although doing so obviously pained her. It was as though the closeness of the arrow to the babe, the brush with death, had hardened her still more.
He did not know what to do to mend the breach between them. Ordinarily he would not have cared, one way of the other. Nothing had caused this coolness that she showed him, other than grief. In no way had he hurt her - he'd saved her life twice, to date - and yet she would barely speak to him. Rena stared off into the distance, as if deep in thought. There were deep dark pits under her eyes, that looked almost black. Her gaze, on the horizon, was largely unwavering. There was something wrong with Rena, and as he thought back to those days, watching her wash her hair, Asram wondered if perhaps she was broken, somehow.
He remembered a man he had served with in border patrols, long ago, where he'd learned many of the skills he used in his current calling.
The Draymar, Sturma's aggressive neighbours, had captured the man. Tortured him. They took all the tips of his fingers and thumbs, leaving him nearly crippled, but not quite. The man had turned into a savage. That man - Asram misremembered his name - had begun to collect thing...collect parts of his Drayman foes.
Asram himself had left the borders behind and now served Queen and King...in name, perhaps, if not in marriage. He did not know what had become of the man with a penchant for body parts. He hoped he was dead. If he'd been an animal, someone would have put him down. Maybe someone had.
Still, the man with the mutilated fingers wasn't the worst man he'd ever served with. War, violence, death - all served to mutilate a man's mind, if not his body.
Damn, he thought. Maudlin today. Rena's mood was seeping into his bones, like the constant cold.
He didn't think the woman Rena a savage. Or did he?
'Rena,' he said to her back. 'We need to get moving.'
'I'm ready,' she replied, no warmth in her voice. She turned and picked the babe up, wincing from the pain in her wounded shoulder, but she did not complain.
Asram thought to offer her aid, once again, but knew she would rebuff him.
He sighed, low, so she would not hear.
'Then on,' he said. 'We'll be at Haven in a week at most. Best get going. It's a long road yet.'
All she did was nod, and follow in his footsteps.
*
Chapter Fifteen
The southern Thanes mustered west of the Fresh Woods, some thirty miles from Rena and Asram, who slogged through the outskirts of the woods toward the new town of Haven.
The pennants of the armies of the great and mighty flapped in the wind and snow. Soldiers on horseback and on foot all shifted, some stamping, some clapping their hands, trying to work some blood into their freezing extremities.
Even though the winters were milder in the south than the north, the depths of winter were
still harsh enough to frost the breath, and harder still on a man wearing armour.
The battle was a way off...three, maybe four weeks march in the summer. In the winter, it could be twice that. Men would be lost on the journey, but time was short...the enemy was coming.
Yet Redalane was confused. They were to march north, then east to the coast. And yet the enemy forces, by all accounts, were working their way south from the frozen wastes above Thaxamalan's Saw.
He sighed, wishing Durmont was beside him for his council. Yet Roskel needed Durmont more than he. Roskel would be in need of wise council in the days to come. Redalane was all too aware that Roskel was no warrior, nor a commander of men. He had no experience of war, apart from the battle against the Thane of Kar. There was nothing for it, though, but to march the men north.
In Durmont's missive to him he read plenty between the lines. Durmont was getting old. This he knew. But he was no doubt still sharp, though Redalane had not seen his old friend and his right hand man for a year - since loaning his expertise to the northern courts and the Stewards of Sturma.
He could sorely use someone wise beside him now, for Durmont told him in a private letter than he, too, was confused - the enemy was in the north. The southern thanes and their force were to muster in the east. It made no sense, and Durmont pointed out, unnecessarily, that he felt the Queen of Thieves hand in the north. Her influence over Roskel was extending, and that, Redalane thought, was a dangerous thing.
But then he'd had dealings with her in the past, hadn't he? And she hadn't steered him wrong, either. He knew her for a dangerous woman, but true, too.
He just had to trust that she knew what she was doing.
'Damn it,' he said to no one in particular, wishing yet again for some sensible council. He had no choice. March. March to the coast and see what was what when they were safely in the north with the miles behind them.
Redalane, the Thane of Spar and the most powerful man on Sturma behind Roskel Farinder, had experience of dealing with Hierarchs. He knew they were masters of subterfuge. He could only imagine that they intended to come by sea, too.
Redalane was a man of wide experience indeed. He'd dealt with Hierarchs, and Kings; Thief Kings and Outlaw Kings. He was no stranger to courtly intrigue, nor to the field of war.
He knew, too, that Roskel was no fool. Durmont assured him as much, and if there was one man Redalane trusted with his life, it was Durmont.
It still bore heavily on him that it was his own blade, his own poison, which had ended the young Outlaw King's life. But it was the past, and he had to focus on the future. There needed to be a reckoning. His son, Kuin, was all but blind and not a little mad since his incarceration under the old Thane of Naeth - and the Hierarchy had taken a hand in that outrage, too.
His son remained behind, at the Castle of Light. Healing, he hoped. Redalane always hoped against hope that his son would heal, and be an heir to him. Aging, as he was, he needed an heir.
Hope, he thought grimly. Bastard hope.
But he turned his mind again to the battle coming. Hope had no place on the battlefield. It was no replacement for sound planning and strong arms.
So, against good sense, but feeling the urgency, the southern Lord's armies mustered. Frost sparkled on iron. Breath frosted in the frigid air. Clasps and swords and shields rattled and clanked and creaked.
Then Redalane, looking out in pride at an army unlike Sturma had ever seen, even since the War of Reconciliation, raised his fist, once, then dropped it.
The army marched.
*
Chapter Sixteen
Shawford Crale tucked his napkin into his finely embroidered shirt and began his evening meal. Ellisindre, his wife, had taken to her room with her latest folly. The folly, a young man, screamed from upstairs within the family bedroom. Shawford sighed. She never could control her food.
Crale's meal was laid out upon the vast dining table, her head laid just so, her neck bared at a comfortable angle for Crale to bleed.
With a sharp knife he sliced the girl's throat, thinly, so as not to kill her, and held a crystal decanter under the flow of blood released by his practised incision.
There really was no need to toy with his food. His wife...well...she was clumsy, and a little too hasty when it came to her food. Crale had learned as much when she had nearly killed the Lord Protector of Sturma.
Crale smiled at the thought and poured some of the warm blood into a crystal glass. He managed to take one sip of the fluid before there was a change in the air. He reacted fast, but not fast enough...no one could have reacted fast enough, for while Shawford may have had a vampire's preternatural strength and speed, the Queen of Thieves was nothing mortal.
Crale dropped the glass, swearing roundly and flushing, as Selana's hand was in his hair, pulling his head back, and her razor-sharp finger nails at his throat.
*
Chapter Seventeen
'You and your wife are both such children. How many years has it been now, Shawford? How many years? And still so hungry?'
Crale dared not answer, with the Queen of Thieves deadly nails placed on his throat. In fact, he dared not swallow, either, because to do so might have resulted in a nasty cut, and his shirt was fresh on.
'No matter,' said the Queen. She sighed.
It would be the matter of less than a second to break the thrall on the girl laid out on the table. And yet, to do so would create problems. As much as she was loath to admit it, she needed Shawford. She needed him for what he could do, if nothing else.
No mere vampire, but an undead mage, and no mean one at that.
Could he be trusted?
She took her nails from his neck.
No, of course he could not be trusted.
She looked at the woman - maybe just a girl, still, laid out on the table before Crale, her life's blood leaking from her neck. She sighed again. There was nothing she could do for the girl.
'I have need of you,' she said, wishing there was some other way.
'Ah, so,' he said, his tones all oil and smoke, 'My lady needs one of my particular...talents...'
'Mind your pride, Shawford, and remember who I am.'
Shawford coughed. 'Indeed. Indeed.'
A scream came from the second floor of the mouldering estate house. The glamours that worked on the human food that came through the door had no effect on Selana. She could see that the estate, once grand, was crumbling around the vampires' ears. No doubt their little brood would soon move on to pastures new. Vampires could never stay in the same place for long.
'The lady of the house?' enquired Selana.
'Yes, she is entertaining,' he said.
Selana had to remind herself why she was here. It was a nest of vampires. What had she expected?
Maybe she'd thought their thirst to have abated before now. But either way...it wasn't her problem.
He was. Shawford Crale. Full of evil long before he was turned. Long before he became a family man. And yet because of his peculiar talents, that of mage and blooddrinker, he was one of the few people in the country she would count powerful enough to withstand a Hierarchy mage.
He was her problem, but he knew who the true power on Sturma was, and it was her. Time to remind him, perhaps.
With a swift stroke from her sharp nails she cut the young girl's throat from one side to the other. Blood and air fountained across the room, splashing the filthy table, the threadbare carpets, the crooked chairs.
Shawford Crale mopped blood from his face with a handkerchief. 'Really, my lady, that was uncalled for.'
She drove one of her perfect nails through Crale's cheek and pulled him to his feet.
'Fetch the Crown of Kings, Shawford, and leave tonight.'
Crale winced, still perfectly able to feel pain. He managed a nod.
'You will be meeting friends on the road north, and soon,' said the Queen, letting Crale go. The wound in Crale's cheek healed almost instantly. 'I have need of one with your pa
rticular talents...and perhaps predilections, too...'
'Ooh, I'm practically salivating,' said Shawford, licking his lips with an unseemly tongue, but with a little more reservation in his voice, this time.
Not enough, though, thought Selana. Her fist flicked out and she pierced that oily tongue between two of her long nails in an instant.
'You are to have three companions on the road. Meet them at the Pickled Hare tavern in no more than three days time. Night time will suffice. No harm will come to them. Understood?'
''eth'' said Shawford.
'Good,' said the Queen. 'Set out tonight. I'm sure the lady of the house will find her own diversions while you are absent.'
Shawford, his tongue back in his mouth, grinned. 'I'm sure she will.'
'And your daughter?' enquired Selana solicitously. She had to admit, she had a soft spot for the little girl. She, too, was a savage, but through no fault of her own. How old was the child now? She might very well be fifty years of age, though she would always look like a mere girl of ten years.
'Fine and well, Lady, fine and well. My wife can manage her admirably, while I confess sometimes I find fatherhood...trying.'
'As it should be,' she said with a nod. The man was a bastard, a devil, a mage and a vampire, but ever the proud father.
And as deadly a companion as one could ever wish, she thought. She just hoped he could keep his thirst in check to see Rena and her babe to Naeth.
You play some deadly games, she thought to herself. But the winter would be long and dark this year and she needed to risk much to win much.
'Now,' she said to Shawford, who still sat at the bloody table.
'Now?'
She nodded. 'The Pickled Hare tavern,' she said. Then she was gone.
*
Chapter Eighteen
Crale met his wife coming down the stairs as he came from the cellars of the estate house, carrying the most valuable artefact in the country in a simple hessian sack. Every time he saw her he was taken with her beauty, her grace, and the sheer passion she took in torturing her food. She was practically covered head to foot in blood. She left bloody footprints as she descended the stairs. But oh so gracefully...
The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three Page 4