by Ron Miller
The horse is almost to the wall when the princess raises the pistol and fires a single shot. There is not a chance that it would hit either horse or rider, but she tries anyway out of little more than sheer frustration and anger. The result is more than she had anticipated.
The horse, deciding that it has had its share of sudden loud noises, digs its heels in and comes to an immediate and almost instantaneous halt. The general, however, is abandoned to the inexorable laws of inertia and momentum, the latter in this case, and continues on, describing a graceful parabolic arc that passes first over the horse’s head and then the wall. For the briefest moment she catches a glimpse of Praxx’s inverted face, bearing an expression of almost infinite incomprehension, before the figure disappears over the wall. Even from where she stands, in a kind of awe, Bronwyn can hear the distant splash.
Running to the parapet, under the baleful and reproving gaze of the horse, she looks to the water below, where the tide surges tumultuously, a confused mass of licorice black. There is no sign of General Praxx.
She hears her name called from the direction of the palace and raises her head. Gyven is striding across the flowerbeds, breaking into a run when he is certain that the figure by the wall is the princess. She falls into his arms and allows herself to weep uncontrollably.
“What happened?” he asks, at last.
She looks up at him. His face, in its concern, appears for the first time entirely human to her. He is as stained and torn and ragged and bloodied as she is, and this, too, makes him more human.
“Praxx is gone,” she says. “Dead, I think. I hope.”
“And Payne Roelt? And your brother?”
“Gone, too. Not dead, I mean; gone. They’ve escaped to the castle at Strabane.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going after them, of course.”
“The duke should be able to have his men back in order by morning . . . “
“No! I can’t wait! I mean now!”
“You can’t do that! Look at yourself: you’re hurt, you need a doctor.”
“So what?” She looks at the man, whose bloody, sooty, craggy face looks like a rock that had been used to beat someone to death. What is he going to say? Is he going to repeat Mathias’s fateful words? Is he about to tell her what she shouldn’t do? What a terrible disappointment if he were to do that!
“I’ll go with you,” is all that he says.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AND YET EVEN MORE REUNIONS
The castle at Strabane lies about two hundred and seventy-five miles from Blavek, and it takes the princess and Gyven a week to transit the distance. The countryside west of the capital, following the valley of the Slideen, is chaotically hilly and the river winds between the grassy hummocks in convoluted turns, so that even the most direct route she can find is frustratingly circuitous. Brownyn and Gyven change horses as often as they can, commandeering them from farms and inns who surrender the animals as much or more from the wild appearance of the two travelers as from any conviction that they are who they claim to be. By now, the people of Tamlaght have more or less resigned themselves to turning over their personal property upon demand.
And always, news of those they pursued brought them closer every hour. What little they are given they eat and drink while on horseback. They do not stop to sleep, but doze in their saddles when they can, taking turns.
Strabane comes into sight on the afternoon of the seventh day, an ominous block of nearly featureless stone squatting atop a low, rocky hill. It had been designed centuries before, when the construction of a castle had not been a matter to be considered lightly. They are not the decorative, rustic country homes they became later, but, like Strabane, were intended to ward off serious and prolonged attack. This particular castle had for a very long time done just that exceptionally well, creating a reputation and legend for impregnability that it rightfully earned.
It had grown around a nearly cubical keep, four stories and over one hundred and fifty feet tall, with short L-shaped wings added later. The only break in the thick surrounding wall is a gate flanked by a pair of massive towers.
Long in general disuse, Strabane has been allowed to fall into some disrepair, though as a valuable and historic property of the state it had been permanently if not altogether effectively attended by a series of assigned caretakers, a good job for a pensioned non-commissioned officer. Nevertheless, however musty its empty chambers and halls have become, however rotten and decayed its woodwork, however rust-flaked its iron, its thick walls and heavy gates are intact.
“How can I get inside of that?” wonders the princess aloud, as she and Gyven survey the nearly featureless block of stone from the crest of a nearby hill. It looks like a mailed fist punched through the parched fabric of the landscape.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. Do you think we can simply bottle them up in there? They’ve got to run out of food and water eventually.”
“There’s probably a well inside, but that’s not the point. I want them now.”
“Why not wait them out?”
“I told you: I don’t want to. I’ve waited long enough as it is.”
“Well, then,” he sighs in the face of her unreasonable obstinacy, “let’s find someplace where we can camp and keep an eye on the place. It’s too late in the day to do anything now. We’ll see what we can do in the morning.”
Someplace proved to be an abandoned hunter’s or woodman’s hut at the edge of a copse of trees that borders the road leading to the massive main gate of Strabane. The windows are only empty holes in the earthen walls and it is probably fortunate that the dry, hot weather is not likely to place the burden upon the roof that rain or snow would have. They unroll their blankets on the hard-packed floor, making beds as comfortable as they can. Behind the hut Bronwyn discovers a shallow, stone-lined well, its rim almost even with the surrounding earth, really more like a stone-rimmed pool, with crystal-clear water bubbling only a few inches below. Probably a spring, she realizes, noticing an overflow that trickled along a shallow ditch into the woods.
They undress and wash themselves with the breathtakingly icy water. They have only sand to scrub themselves with, but it works nearly as well as soap in removing the grime accumulated while on the road. Bronwyn is circumspect in dealing with the areas surrounding her bruises and wounds, which, in truth, do not leave that much of her body available for scrubbing. By the time they finish, it is dark.
As they eat their cold meal that evening, miserable food they had coerced from their last rest stop, little better than jerky and goat cheese, Gyven asks Bronwyn if she has any knowledge of the castle.
“Only by reputation. And that’s not anything very specific. It’s famous for being virtually invulnerable. It makes Kaposvar look like a wicker birdcage. Hundreds of years ago, when Tamlaght was last at war with anyone, it was one of the only strongholds not ever to fall, even though some of the sieges lasted for months.”
“They must have stored away a lot of food for emergencies like that.”
“I suppose so.”
“I was thinking: what if they hadn’t stored all of the food that was needed in the castle? I mean, who could have guessed when a siege might happen or when one did how long it might last?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what if there is some other way into and out of the castle, so that, at night probably, people could have left it to forage for food and provisions, or draw upon outside help or stores?”
“That’s not a bad idea, and I know I’ve read that a lot of castles did have just such a provision, but if you’re suggesting that there might be secret passages into Strabane, you may be right, but how would we ever find them? No one else ever has. Besides, if there are any such passages, why wouldn’t everyone in the castle have escaped one night?”
“Probably because they were safer inside it than loose in a countryside that is at war.”
“Well, it’s a good idea, but I
don’t know what we can do about it.”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
That night, the princess lay awake for a long time, watching the distant black hulk, a huge square against the indigo sky, her eyes fixed upon the glow of a single window in one of its highest towers, wishing that she could travel along that unbroken thread of light that connected her with her sworn enemies.
She awakes curled against Gyven’s back, her right arm draped over his undulating ribcage. From her viewpoint he looks more like some raw, primeval range of mountains than a reclining human being; his muscles, even in repose, are as sharply defined as the uneroded ridges and buttresses of some antarctic massif. She savors his synclines and anticlines. She runs her fingers lightly over his dorsal topography, the skin feeling textureless and cool, like fine sandstone, across the twin dikes of his shoulder blades, the deep, hummocky glacial valley of his spine, the smooth twin domes of his buttocks, which are separated by a geometrically straight crevice. He is a planet unto himself, she thinks.
He stirs at her touch, rolling over to face her.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Good morning.”
He reaches out a huge, long-fingered hand and traces the sharp outline of her jaw with its fingertips, passing them caressingly across her lips, which tickle so that she has to bite at them.
“I like your lips,” he says.
“Thank you. I always thought they were too thin.”
“And your nose,” he says, ignoring her comment, as he brings a finger along its gentle arch, from bridge to wide nostrils.
“And my nose too big.”
She rolls onto her back. Gyven touches the hollow at the base of her throat, where her pulse throbs like the gauge of an idling engine. He runs a fingernail down her median line, from sternum to pubis, chuckles at seeing her body immediately covered with goosebumps. He strokes the suede curves of her breasts, which either hand can cup easily, watching the nipples become as erect as lighthouses. With his palm, he skates the flat expanse of her stomach, which flutters like a luffing sail.
“That is a deep cut you got from Praxx,” he observes.
“It still hurts.”
“You’ll probably have a scar.”
“That’s nice to know, thank you very much..”
His broad hand brushes the curled tips of her pubic hair and she feels a seismic tremor quiver in widening circles from that epicenter. Her back arches by just a tentative, suggestive half-inch, like a question mark.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” answers Gyven. “And the hour is growing late. We can’t stay here all day.”
He raises himself from the floor, stretching himself to full length above her, towering away in an endless masculine perspective. Oh, Musrum, she thinks, looking at the one blatant, perpendicular interruption. You son of a bitch.
Their clothes had been thrown over the windowsill and Bronywn looks at the filthy garments, still crusted with dried blood, with repugnance. She gathers them up and takes them to the spring. There is still no soap, but she soaks them and wrings them as best she can, scrubbing at the worst stains with handfuls of sand. The water is icy and stings her hands, while at the same time the rising sun is already heating the air; her body acquires a fresh sheen of perspiration. So intent is she upon what she is doing that she is not aware of the approach of the strangers until their shadow falls across her. Almost simultaneously a voice says “Princess!” She does not jump at the sudden interruption, nor even, strangely, feel the least frightened; there is an inexplicable sense of normalcy of which she is not consciously aware, though it has its effect. Instead, she shades her eyes against the low sun and squints at the vast shadow that eclipses it.
“Who is it?” she replies, noncommittally, but vaguely aware that something in the back of her mind is stirring, like a hedgehog disturbed in its midwinter slumber.
Before the newcomer can answer, Gyven calls from the hut, “Who’s there?”
Bronwyn stands and moves to one side, where the sun no longer shines full into her face. There are two strangers, she now sees, a very tall, broadly built man, and a smaller, slighter person. There is something indefinably familiar about the big man and she is aware of confused synapses rushing from file to file in an effort to discover the elusive identification.
The realization comes to her like the sudden jolt of an electric shock.
“Thud?”
“How are you, Princess?”
Thud? She has no doubt that it is him, but everything seems a little wrong, slightly askew, disproportionate. It is her old friend, she knows, gladly, but something has happened to him. He is big, but not as big as she remembers; his body is bulky, but it looks more powerful than balloon-like; his head is as round as a pumpkin, but not so much so that it looks very funny anymore; the beady little eyes have an intelligent glitter to them, rather than the slightly dull sheen they once had, like a pair of capers. Overall, he looks a lot more like a very powerfully built man, something like a weightlifter perhaps, or a professional wrestler, scaled up about one hundred and twenty-five percent.
“What’s happened to you?” she asks.
“I’ve been away,” he replies, misunderstanding the question.
There is a sudden rush of melancholy and bathos, catharsis and affection, that sweeps through her like a flood, bursting through in a flood of tears that washes away any other words as she flings herself onto the giant, burying her face in his enormous chest.
“Oh, Musrum, Thud! I’ve missed you so much!”
“I’ve missed you, too, Princess,” he says, his huge hands covering her bare back, “I’ve looked for you everywhere.”
“Aren’t you cold?” asks Gyven, looking from the window upon whose sill he is leaning. Bronwyn, reminded that she is still naked, decides that she doesn’t care.
“Hello, Gyven,” greets Thud.
“Hello yourself. Where’ve you been?”
“Away.”
“Who’s your friend?”
Bronwyn is suddenly aware that, indeed, Thud had not arrived alone. The smaller, slighter figure that she had barely noticed a few minutes earlier is still waiting patiently to one side. Good heavens, it’s a girl! A girl, she realizes, at least as tall as herself, maybe a little taller, she relunctantly admits, made to look much smaller than she really is by contrast with Thud’s superhuman scale. She is a dark, lanky-looking girl dressed in a cheap peasant’s costume of long, full skirt, low boots and a homespun blouse. Her skin is a light olive and the long, straight hair that hangs to the middle of her spine is as black and glossy as molten tar. She has a face a little longer and thinner than Bronwyn’s, with prominent, level cheekbones, a rather thin-lipped mouth whose amused, rather supercilious smile reveals small, perfectly matched white teeth, and large eyes whose dark irises are nearly as black as her hair. Hooked black brows arch above the latter like circumflex accents. Where Bronwyn’s fine nose is convex, hers is a perfect right triangle, like the prow of a torpedo ram. In a great many ways, not all of which the princess immediately appreciates, the newcomer is very much a darker, leaner version of herself. Bronwyn thinks of the tintype that had once hung on the wall of Thud’s room back in the Transmoltus and in a momentary lapse of reality thinks that somehow Thud has found his adoptive mother.
“I’m Rykkla,” the newcomer says in a pleasant contralto, extending a long-fingered hand. “Rykkla Woxen.”
“I’m, ah, Bronwyn . . . please . . . forgive me . . . “ Not knowing what else to do, she shakes the proferred hand. The grip is a strong one.
“Don’t let it worry you,” assures the dark girl. “Whatever it is that is worrying you.”
“My clothes, they’re still wet . . . “
“Then why don’t we all sit in the shade while your clothes sit in the sun, and catch up on some history?”
This is unanimously accepted as an excellent idea. Gyven, who had already pulled on his breeches at the sound of approaching strangers, joins them
. They pool what little food and drink they have, which is little enough, and loung unself-consciously in the circle of relatively cool shade beneath the umbrella of a big willow while, as coherently as they can, each tells the others their story.
Rykkla did most of the talking for herself and Thud, though Bronwyn is curious and amazed at how many intelligent comments the giant adds. What’s happened to him? She can scarcely take her eyes from him, as he lay in the sun-dappled shavee. My stars, she thinks, with an unexpected inspiration, he looks almost . . . normal! What a bizarre idea!
Bronwyn learns of Thud’s long and fruitless search for his princess, of the treachery and villainy he had met, of his rescue by Rykkla and her uncle, of how Thud had become first a circus star and then a kind of military secret weapon and, finally, how Thud had been condemned to death and his subsequent rescue by the Kobolds with the help, once again, of Rykkla and her uncle.
“My Uncle Busra and I,” continues the girl, “had been trying to reestablish another circus and we had come to Flekke to see a troupe of jugglers . . . “
“Flekke?” interrupts the princess. “You were in Crotoy?”
“Yes.”
Bronwyn looks at Thud with increased amazement, at the fact that he had been able to get more than a thousand miles from the last place she had seen him. Rykkla continues: “We had been there only a few days, without having done any business to speak of because of the big execution that was going to take place that week. The city was making a real carnival of it, and my uncle and I were furious with frustration that we hadn’t regrouped enough to take advantage of it. We did all right, though, such as it was, but that’s a tangent anyway. Can you imagine our surprise when we saw a poster with a picture of the condemned man on it? I was so angry that, before my uncle could stop me, I tore the poster down, crumpled it into a ball and threw it down a sewer. A policeman saw me do that and we had to escape into the crowd to avoid arrest.