Their hosts proudly served skewers of roast chevon along with brimming bowls of porridge. Verda realized they must have slaughtered a pair of goats for the feast, and wondered how many months it would be until they had meat again, aside from whatever small game might succumb to snares or to the boys' slings.
Many gazes were upon her. She made sure to eat as heartily as she could manage to honor their hospitality—their only material way of showing their gratitude. Much as her bony form needed a little fattening, it was not an easy task. Every time she encountered a cyst, she had to re-learn the desire to thrive.
When everyone had eaten and beer had been served, Mott raised his cup in salute. "To King Takk and his cousin, the noble Verda, a true daughter of Ommero."
A cheer went up.
"Where will you go next, My Lady?" Mott asked. "How long until you return to the palace?"
Verda knew the serf was trying his best to be an amiable host and engage her in as much conversation as someone of his low station could dare, had she been who he thought she was. She could not answer him.
Rayl responded for her, before the pause grew uncomfortably long. "Alas, the Plague Queen is determined to reclaim her realm. She has roamed far and wide, spewing out the sort of abomination you saw destroyed today. Tomorrow we must move on to aid your neighbors at Heather Bluff. From there, we cannot yet know how many more places we must visit."
"May you fare well," Mott said.
"The old tales say Prince Ommero killed the Plague Queen. Is this another one?"
The speaker was young Cauld. His mother twisted his ear for his lack of etiquette.
Rayl held up his hand, granting pardon.
"It is a fair question. One that is on the minds of many in the realm, I am sure." Rayl's tone became grim. "What we face is indeed the same being. Evra, the Plague Queen, who ruled these lands until two centuries ago, when nearly all of this great valley was the Fever Swamp, and our people were little more than shepherds and olive growers in the hills. She is one of the bloodwraiths who was unleashed in our world during the Sorcerers' War. It is not possible to truly slay a bloodwraith. Ommero destroyed the suit of flesh she wore. It caused her great agony. It made her unable to wield most of her power, so that when Ommero assumed the kingship and commanded his engineers and laborers to drain the swamp, the effort succeeded, giving us our fine, fertile croplands and noble estates. But it did not kill her. For generations our people described Evra as dead because it was assumed her essence had been sucked back to her dimension, where she could bother us no more. Now we know she hid away somewhere, perhaps in the deepest part of the delta where men never go. She has manifested again. With a corporeal body, her sorcery has its old potency back. So for these past four years, she has laid her hideous spores, trying to turn our realm back into the Fever Swamp."
"Is it true she has killed two of King Takk's sons?"
"It is," Rayl replied.
The peasants murmured apprehensively. A small child hid behind his mother's skirts.
"Evra has a special enmity for the House of Ommero," Rayl continued. "First, to have revenge. Second, because anyone who carries the blood of the man who defeated her is immune to the full effect of her magic, and this enrages her. The princes are only two of the victims. Outside the king's own household, a score of other descendants have fallen. Evra is powerful and she is resourceful."
"But King Takk can kill her, can't he?" asked Gritt. "The way she was killed before?"
It was an even bolder question than his brother's had been. Rayl frowned at Gritt, the way he had frowned at him back in the tree during the sword practice. Gritt cowered.
"The Plague Queen's day of reckoning will come. The king hunts her as we speak. Meanwhile, he has arranged to send his lesser kinsfolk—even fourth cousins, fifth cousins—to such places as this, to destroy the cysts before the land is rendered too sick to be worth saving."
Verda saw the serfs glance at her with new insight, understanding now why they had never heard her name before. They had been too intimidated by the escort of twenty king's guards to confess their ignorance, fearing they would cause insult.
She knew they didn't suspect the rest. Undoubtedly they still assumed she was a figure at court. The truth was, she had never seen the palace, much less been welcomed inside. Long ago, Ommero's youngest daughter had been given in marriage to the first Duke of Riverbend, who gave his own youngest daughter to a favorite vassal, a knight beloved far and wide, but only a marchwarden in terms of rank. Later the warden had needed money, so he made a rich merchant into a son-in-law. The merchant had been a commoner, and so Verda, his granddaughter, was a commoner as well.
Her ancestry had never been significant until those with even a drop of the blood of Ommero in their veins had been conscripted into the war against the Plague Queen.
"Excuse me," she said, standing up. "I am very tired. I would like to sleep now."
Wreena leaped up to show her the way to her accommodations—Wreena and Mott's own straw tick in the loft of their hovel. A cheer followed her away from the bonfire. To Verda, it was an assault on her ears when she only wanted silence and solitude.
Rayl studied her as she passed by him. She avoided his gaze.
* * * *
She burst awake to find Rayl with his hands on her shoulders. He was shaking her.
The nightmare—the usual one of drowning in a stagnant, scum-coated pool deep in a swamp—lost its grip on her. Her eyes focussed, recognizing the loft. A rooster was crowing, but it was still full dark, the only illumination coming from the lantern Rayl must have re-lit.
Furrows were etched deep in Rayl's forehead. "Breathe deep. Let it pass," he said. He let go of her, letting her sink back onto the mattress.
She tried to let go of the tension. But her heart kept hammering the inside of her ribcage. Muscles ached all over her body. And her left arm itched in a maddening way. It was the worst episode yet.
"I don't know how much longer I can do this," she said.
He raised a finger to his lips. She caught the mouse-stirs from below—cookfires being stoked up, bed pallets being removed from the floor to be stored away for the day. The peasants were awake, and might overhear.
She kept the silence he wanted, but it was harder than it had ever been. She wanted to shout until her outcry echoed from the thatch above her head: The king cowers in his palace under triple guard. He sends cousins he has never met out to save his lands, to become targets for his nemesis.
"I'm just a girl," she murmured. "How did it come down to me?"
"If you don't do it, who will?" Rayl whispered.
* * * *
It was a mark of her exhaustion that she managed to go back to sleep, if only for one more hour. She awoke to the sound of eggs frying and the aroma of porridge as it bubbled in Wreena's kettle. She stayed still and kept her eyes closed, trying to hoard her strength. She was sure the squad already had their bedrolls packed and would be ready to depart for Heather Bluff as soon as breakfast was over. The prospect of fighting another cyst at noon was unbearable.
Unfortunately the itch on her arm tormented too much to let her linger further. She gave up, threw on her clothes, and climbed down the ladder.
The peasant family curtsied and bowed. "Good morning," she said in as friendly a tone as she could manage given her unsettled mood.
She lifted the door flap and stepped out. The east had buttered, but the sun was not yet peeking above the horizon. The air was refreshingly brisk.
Rayl, as she could have predicted, was the guard stationed closest to the door. "What's wrong with your arm?" he asked in place of a greeting.
Verda realized she had been scratching even while she walked. She turned the arm outward. Now that she was in the light, she saw just how large the irritated area was at the inner elbow, and spotted the pinprick of red.
Rayl's face went pale. "She has found you," he told Verda. He tossed away the mug of tea he had been drinking and shouted to his men:
"Battle ready! The Plague Queen comes!"
As always, a third of the squad were stationed at intervals around the holding; they had only to stay as they were in order to do as Rayl commanded. The rest began donning armor, lacing up boots, stringing bows, buckling on scabbards.
Verda vomited the remains of her supper onto the ground in front of her.
All three peasant families burst from their hovels. Rayl held up a hand to quiet their cacophony. "The Plague Queen will be upon us at any moment. Gather everyone inside the watchtower. We will try to fend her off, but you should bring anything that can serve as a weapon. Bring your dogs."
Men and boys rushed to do as he said, while mothers snatched babies from cribs, and girls rounded up toddlers.
Rayl helped Verda straighten up. He held out her rapier and sword belt. "Remember all we've spoken of. Hope is not gone."
She spat out a final bit of vomit. "Yes it is. You know it is. Hope is for the king in his castle."
"Then be brave." He made her close her hand around the sword hilt.
"I'm not ready to die, Rayl. I've barely lived."
"All the more reason to cling to hope," he said. "Now, please, get into the tower."
He assisted her to the place in the ruined wall where the barbican had once been. These days only a gap remained, but most of the rest of the wall was eight or ten or even twelve feet high, a nearly unbroken ring that made it a credible place to attempt a last stand.
Suddenly the northernmost sentry cried out, "Mindless ones!"
Men were shambling out of the woods where Verda and Rayl had sparred with blunted rapiers the previous morning. The newcomers marched straight into the blighted area where she had killed the cyst, the still-repugnant part of the holding that any sane man would avoid.
But these were not sane men. The first rays of day revealed their blank countenances. They were the Plague Queen's slaves—men who had succumbed to her snares, and now had no will of their own.
The sunshine also revealed the swords and axes and pikes in their grips. And one other, far worse thing. The bloodwraith herself hovered in the air, personally directing her army.
Verda screamed.
Rayl covered her eyes and pressed her through the gap, taking her to a spot against the wall opposite the opening, the place that would be farthest from the point of attack.
"No," Verda pleaded.
Rayl stood up to leave. Verda clutched him by the leg.
"I have to command the defense," he said gently. "If I could, I would stay. It has been an honor to know you, Verda of Weaver Crossroads."
"Don't say that. Don't go. Don't die."
Rayl beckoned Mott, who had just appeared with a bundle of long sticks to make into torches. "Keep her close. Protect her as long as you can."
Mott nodded. Rayl hurried away.
"Nooooo... " Verda wept.
The watchtower filled with the rest of the locals. Verda's moans were drowned out by the wails of the children. Rayl ordered archers to the tops of piles of fallen tower stones. It seemed like only a moment had passed before they were nocking and releasing their arrows; the enemy was already that close. It was only a moment more before the first of them fell dead, shot through the eye as he stood above the level of the wall to shoot a second time. Evra's army had its own archers.
The bulk of Rayl's squad gathered just inside the opening, forcing the mindless ones to come at them one at a time. The first attacker flung himself onto the points of the defenders' swords, heedless of his own safety. Before the swords could be pulled from the body, more mindless ones surged forward, and just that quickly, the front two of Rayl's men were speared in their midsections, struck so violently that their chain-link armor gave way.
An insectlike whine rose in pitch and volume. It was maddening in a preternatural way, making the guardsmen stagger and shake their heads, breaking their concentration.
Verda huddled in her spot between two pickle barrels, trembling. Suddenly Mott knelt down beside her. He was holding a lit torch.
"I did not have time to tell the captain... "
"Tell him what?"
Mott handed her the torch and moved the barrel beside her out of the way. Beneath it was a trap door. Mott lifted it, revealing a tunnel.
"The people who built the tower made this. It leads through the hill to a hidden spot in the woods. We will send the children through. But you go first. Your survival matters most."
Verda seized the torch and, rapier clutched in her other hand, plunged into the opening.
The walls hugged close. Diminutive as she was, she had to stoop in order to avoid hitting her head on the roof. The air was stale with the musk of earth and grubs. The torch gave off only enough light to make it seem as though she were vanishing down the gullet of some giant creature.
The screams of men dying faded, replaced by the echoes of her own panting and, somewhere far behind her, the muffled shrieks of small children who did not want to be forced into the passageway.
Only then, in headlong flight, did guilt swell. Rayl and the others were facing death. According to the plan, she was to be with them to the end. But now that she had the unexpected chance, she couldn't stop running.
A gleam of daylight appeared ahead. She threw down the torch, letting it snuff out in the dust. She put on a burst of speed that made her trip and skin her knees, but she was up and going again even before the blood could ooze from the scraped spots.
She burst through the veil of scrub ivy and into the open.
In front of her, a creek babbled. Trees and leaves shaded her. She was so far from the battle she could only hear a faint clang of metal striking metal. She couldn't hear the awful insect whine at all.
She darted across the stream and ran along the far bank. It did not take her perfectly away from the holding, but it kept her under cover of brush and trees. Her other choice was to cut across an open field.
She ran like a hare flushed from its burrow. She might lack girth and strength and training, but speed was one attribute she was blessed with.
She was daring to believe that she might actually be getting away when a sharp blow to her upper back sent her sprawling into a patch of bracken. She landed so hard the wind was knocked from her.
Breathless, she forced herself to spin onto her back. She swung her rapier in a wide arc.
Above her, the Plague Queen flitted back. The sword stroke missed.
Verda would have screamed again if she'd had air in her lungs. Rayl had told her the Plague Queen's current form was nightmarish, but he had spared her the details. The bloodwraith was a monstrous mosquito, its body as long as her own, its wingspan greater than the largest eagle. A swamp mosquito, its abdomen oily and red, the bristles on its legs dripping with greyish scum.
Verda held her sword at the ready. The Plague Queen... laughed. "Spawn of Ommero. You only had the one chance." The mirth and the taunt were decipherable in spite of being rendered in a mosquito-like burr.
All too soon Verda understood what her attacker meant. A numbness claimed her neck, and began spreading down into her body. She reached behind her head and found an oozing place at her nape. Evra had not merely knocked her down; she had stung her.
Verda became so weak the rapier fell from her grip. Soon her arm itself plopped to the crushed bracken. She tried to wriggle away—anything to put more distance between her and the bloodwraith—but her legs were so leaden she could barely divot the loam with her heels.
Evra descended, landing right atop Verda, flicking away the sword with a middle foot.
Verda thrashed as frantically as she could manage, but Evra was barely jostled. At her leisure, she took aim with her proboscis, and thrust it into Verda's neck.
As her blood was siphoned away, Verda grew faint, but not so much that she was graced with unconsciousness. She felt the sharp pinch of the wound, the weight of Evra's body atop her. She could see the giant mosquito abdomen swelling and reddening from the meal.
Evra lifted
her head back, pausing at her feast. "Your blood is sweet. I will savor it. I may keep you alive for days, child of Ommero, and snack upon you when the mood strikes me."
From farther down the creek came high-pitched human cries of terror. The peasant children had emerged from the tunnel. Gritt and Cauld were yelling at their juniors to be quiet and run. Verda moaned, realizing that the youngsters were heading to the spot where she lay, unaware of Evra's presence.
Evra rose into a hover, scanning through the trees. "Oh, good," she said. "My slaves needed some fresh meat for their supper." And she began to laugh again.
The laugh transformed into a screech. Abruptly the bloodwraith began thrashing in midair. She spun in a circle, then crashed to the earth an arms-length from Verda. She writhed there, her movement quickly becoming feeble.
"Your... your blood was sweet."
"It had a little something extra in it for you," Verda said. As Rayl had so often told her, she was the last line of her own defense. How she wished he could have been there. She had not played her part quite the way they had pictured, but the goal had been accomplished nonetheless.
Evra crumpled. Her new body, that had taken her two centuries to shape and to inhabit with her essence, twitched a final three or four times, then it moved no more.
* * * *
Verda slid into a state of hazy consciousness. She remained aware of pain, of the heaviness of her limbs, of the metallic scent of clotted blood wafting up from her neck. A twig snapped. Gritt and Cauld and a bevy of small children were staring at her and the dead bloodwraith in the crushed bracken. They ran off shrieking.
Eventually—she could not calculate how soon—she heard heavier footsteps. Figures loomed over her. To her astonishment, she recognized Rayl and two other members of the squad. They were bloody and all three moved gingerly, but they did not seem to be mortally injured. At Rayl's command, one of the younger men chopped the giant mosquito body in half with his battle axe.
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIII Page 2