Lady Of The Helm (Book 1)

by T. O. Munro

  Yet still he hesitated.

  “Go on.”

  “Niarmit, I never wanted this. I loved you, always loved you.” The tears were flowing down his cheeks as he misconstrued her apparent surrender. She grew weary of the charade, armed or not he had as much chance of overcoming her as Kaylan had of becoming a priestess of the Goddess.

  The sword wavered. He looked away. Too late she recognised the rustle of the bushes the soft sound of Kaylan’s feet arriving at speed.

  “No,” she screamed. “Kaylan, no!”

  The sword dropped from Davyn’s fingers. He looked down at the bloodied point of Kaylan’s blade which had burst through his chest. Then with darkening eyes he looked up at her in surprise. “Niarmit?” he said, then grunted as the blade was pulled free. He fell forward to reveal Kaylan, his face full of concern.

  “My Lady, are you much hurt? Your arm? I am sorry I tarried, but I didn’t want to disturb you, and then when you were gone so long I came and I heard voices.” The words tumbled out as Kaylan reached forward over Davyn’s body anxious to assess his mistress’s wound.

  She hit him, hard. Her fist connected with his jaw sending him sprawling across the stones. He only looked at her quizzically, mouthing, “my Lady?” as she rained blows upon his shoulders striking blindly through a mist of tears. He curled into a foetal ball until the deluge stopped and she crawled over to Davyn’s body. She dragged her former lover into her lap, cradling him, smoothing the damp hair across his head. “I’m sorry, Davyn. I’m sorry.”

  Kaylan gathered himself and retreated to the edge of the forest, sitting watchful and alert, but just out of line of sight of his inconsolable mistress.

  ***

  Kimbolt looked up as the door to the messroom creaked open. A young girl slipped shyly into the room bearing a tray of bread and cut meat.

  “Oh,” she said. ” I didn’t realise you would be here.”

  Kimbolt looked at her anew, this teenage servant girl, with the long dark hair, pale skin and unnervingly clear blue eyes. “Well,” he said. “I am a Captain and this is the captain’s mess, so it can’t be entirely unexpected.”

  Her brow creased as she tried to work out how far he was teasing her. She came hesitantly forward, the tray infront of her. “There was some food left over from the Castellan’s table,” she explained hastily. “My mother… my mother, she said take it to the captains’ mess, she said. She said ‘no reason why such good quality leavings should go to waste, them Captains deserve it.’”

  Kimbolt tried to hide his grin. “I’m sure your mother said all of that, Hepdida.”

  His use of her name brought an uncertain smile to her lips. “I’m glad it’s just you, Sir,” she confided as she set the tray down on the table. “I wouldn’t want you to have to share it.”

  He suppressed a guffaw, there was enough cured ham and venison for all four captains and quite a few of the sergeants as well. “Honestly, girl. Anyone would think you were trying to feed me up for slaughter.”

  She stepped back and pushed a recalcitrant curl of hair back behind one ear before clasping both hands demurely in front of her crisp white apron. “My mother says food’s important. It’s the way to a man’s heart, she says, through his stomach that is.”

  Kimbolt looked up from the prime slices of pork, beef and game that were very far from being offcuts. “To a man’s heart?” he repeated evenly.

  She looked to one side and then back again. The tip of her tongue darted nervously over her lips. She went to push back the lock of hair that was already firmly in place. Then, after a quick look in every direction except at him, she let her eyes meet his and hold them in a steady gaze.

  “You know, sir, you know I’ve always….”

  “Hepidida, no!” he exclaimed, raising his hand to emphasise the order. “Don’t say….”

  She was not to be stopped. “The others, them other servant girls, they say it’s not my imaginings. They say they see the way you look at me. I see it too. You look at me different.”

  “That’s not….”

  “You’re kind. You know my name. You remembered my birthday.”

  “That was nothing,” he snapped. “I just remembered you telling me, the day before.”

  She stepped quickly towards his chair, kneeling in supplication and reaching for his hands. “I know there’s a world of difference between us, sir. I don’t want to cause trouble for you with the Castellan, but you must know how I feel.”

  He stood up rapidly, tipping the chair up and shook off her hands. “Hepdida, gather yourself. This will not do.”

  “Oh sir, I know how it is, you a captain, me a common servant. But I can still…” She hesitated at the last. Her tongue tip flicked across her lips again. “But I can still be a…. a comfort to you.”

  “Get out,” he shrieked, more unnerved by an adolescent throwing herself at him than he had ever been by a platoon of orcs.

  The extremity of his reaction confused her at first. When he repeated the order, with more cold contempt and a petulant stamp of his foot, she stood up wide eyed. “Don’t you like me? Don’t you want me?”

  He clutched at the questions, seized in them as a route out of this mire as he launched into a brutal denial. “No, Hepdidia I don’t. I think you’re hideous. Now get out.”

  At last she obeyed him, fleeing with a violent sob scarcely noticing that she practically bowled Bishop Udecht over as he came into the messroom. The cleric looked after her retreating back with an appreciative glance before turning to Kimbolt with a grin, “Woman trouble, eh Captain?”

  Kimbolt stood stiffly to attention, his face crimson with rage and embarrassment. “I am sorry your reverence that you had to see that. It was unforgiveable.”

  Udecht gave the Captain’s apology a nonchalant wave of dismissal and approached instead the plate of plenty that Hepdida had left. Mesmerised by the food, he said nothing and seized on a slice of pork and crammed it hungrily into his mouth, even as his other hand reached out for some beef to chase the half chewed pig down his throat. Midway through the second mouthful he grew conscious of KImbolt’s incredulous stare and tried to slow his unmannered guzzling mid gulp, with the effect that he succumbed to a choking fit. Coughing and spluttering helplessly, he waved at the carafe of mead until Kimbolt poured and handed him a cup which the Bishop drained in one gulp.

  “That’s better,” Udecht pronounced to the punctuation of a deep belch. “One forgets how hungry one can get in this place.”

  “Er… yes your reverence,” Kimbolt replied uncertainly. While well known to enjoy his food, the Bishop had always seemed most fastidious about such things as table manners.

  Udecht gave him a shrewd stare, reading in the Captain’s confused expression the concern that his unaccustomed gluttony was generating. He put the cup down carefully, working his fingers over each other. “Forgive me Captain, Kimbolt isn’t it?”

  “Yes your reverence,” Kimbolt gave a puzzled acknowledgement for his name was well known to the Bishop after a six month tour of duty in Sturmcairn.

  “Just so, just so,” Udecht mused, toying with the cup a moment. Then he pointed suddenly at Kimbolt saying. “Vos amici mei mandabo, Kimbolt!”

  It was odd, for though the words were the most unfamiliar thing that the strangely altered Bishop had yet done, they were also instantly and immediately re-assuring to the startled Captain. He felt soothed and relaxed by the presence of his good friend Bishop Udecht. When the Bishop smiled he felt like laughing, when the bishop frowned he was both concerned and yet confident the Bishop would explain the wisest course of action. Udecht watched him for a moment, as the Captain unconsciously mirrored his gestures, waiting expectantly for whatever words of wisdom his good friend would share.

  “You know Captain, Kimbolt,” he began. “I find the cold and age are both catching up with me and my memory is not what it should be. I have quite forgotten what the password for this evening is.”

  “Oh, you could always ask the
Castellan for it,” Kimbolt hastened to offer a solution, but was then gripped by anxiety when his good friend frowned deeply at the suggestion.

  “My nephew though, is such an inflexible and petty man.” At the description, Kimbolt wondered why he had never before seen Prince Thren’s failings as clearly as the Bishop described them. “He would make such fun of me for forgetting, and doubtless make me serve some punishment.” The Bishop went quiet before suddenly wheedling to Kimbolt. “Couldn’t you tell me?”

  “Of course,” Kimbolt began, but then some shadow fell across his certainty. He looked away, trying to pin point the elusive thought that had darkened his happy security.

  Suddenly his chin was caught by the Bishop’s hand as Udecht gently turned him back to face his good friend and look him in the eye as he repeated the question. “Couldn’t you tell me?”

  “Kopetcha,” the word sprang to Kimbolt’s lips. “Kopetcha is the password.”

  Udecht’s eyebrows rose and he murmured with a nod, “his mother’s name. How like the boy!”

  KImbolt was pleased to have been of service to his good friend, though something troubled him still. He couldn’t place the thought, but Udecht supplied an answer. “I sense your fear, Captain. I feel it too. Something is amiss. I have heard rumours.”

  “What rumours?”

  “I believe our Castellan harbours some ill intent.”

  “Prince Thren, no?” Kimbolt tried to shake his head, but the Bishop held him still, his piercing gaze beseeching Kimbolt’s support. “What would you have me do?”

  “Perhaps it might be a good time to pray?”

  Kimbolt’s religious observances had never been particularly devout. The army as his master always took precedence over the Goddess as his mistress. However, this suggestion of prayer seemed an excellent and timely idea. “Together, your reverence?”

  Udecht shook his head. “No, I have much to do tonight. But if you find a quiet corner of the temple and pray there, I am sure you will be heard.”

  “What should I pray for?”

  “An untroubled sleep would be a start,” Udecht suggested.

  “Of course,” such a sensible suggestion, Kimbolt could have kicked himself for not realising it. “I shall go at once.”

  Udecht nodded as the Captain rose and made for the door, but then held him back with a call. “And Captain!”

  “Yes, your reverence.”

  “Do come to me if anything unusual should come to pass, to me, you understand, not Prince Thren. I trust him not, his eyes are too far apart.”

  “Of course your reverence,” Kimbolt hurried away, reflecting deeply on the spacing of the Castellan’s eyes.

  ***

  Sahira Psah bustled into the servants’ kitchen, her eyes sweeping the tables and shelves for a missing plate of victals or her daughter or both. “Hepdida!” she called. “Where is that plate of sliced meat from the Castellan’s table? I had plans for it”

  She hesitated, and ran a hand through her own dark hair. She was much like an older version of her daughter, one who had worn the years well, albeit that actually she was only just past thirty summers herself. She swung round as the pantry door, which had stood ajar, somehow contrived to close itself with an audible creak. Sahira’s mouth opened, but then closed, her cry of triumph unuttered. She chose instead to approach the pantry with light footsteps. As she flung the door open, her daughter fell out, her attempt to listen at the door quite unequal to her mother’s subterfuge.

  “Well,” Sahira demanded. “I guess the missing weeks’ worth of dinners has something to do with you. And I have already told your father to expect it, so where is it?”

  The girl stood up, gaze averted, and muttered inaudibly. “What was that?” Sahira demanded, swinging her daughter round by the shoulder. “Have you been crying?”

  “No,” sniffed Hepdida, smearing dried tears across reddened cheeks.

  Sahira shook her head. “Nothing so unattractive to a man as a woman’s tears. You look awful.”

  “I thought he liked me,” Hepdida sobbed.

  Sahira frowned and shook her head. “Is that where all my week long supply of choice meat has gone, fool girl, squandered on wooing some soldier. You should have come to me. There’s not much about the ways of men I don’t know. Reckon you’ve got charms enough without calling on choice cuts of venison.”

  “I did try to find you before dinner, ma.” Hepdida’s eyes were hooded in reproach. “I thought tonight… it felt like it might be special. But you weren’t there.”

  Sahira nodded quickly. “Aye, girl. I was … I was in the keep, Castellan’s business.”

  “Oh,” Hepdida stifled her surprise.

  “We’ll see you fixed up, girl, don’t you worry. Maybe a sergeant might take a shine to you,” Sahira offered good naturedly, putting her arms around her daughter’s shoulders.

  Hepdida shuffled off her mother’s embrace. “I don’t want a sergeant, ma. I don’t want anyone else. I just want him, I love him.”

  “I used to think like that too,” her mother smiled with all the assurance of an experience crammed thirty one years.

  “I’m not you, ma,” Hepdida shrieked. “I’m not like you. Not at all. I just want one man.”

  Sahira’s hand slammed into her cheek, with force enough to redden it far more than tears of distress ever had done. Stunned Hepdida lifted her hand to her face, feeling the warmth of the smarting blow. “I’m your mother,” Sahira spat with cold fury. “And you will use me with more respect. When I was your age I was nothing, crawling out of the gutter doing what had to be done until I met your father. People like us, we find security where-ever we can, pah, love! Love doesn’t put bread on the table or a roof over your head, silly silly little girl.”

  “You just don’t know what love is, you’ve never known love. You’re a sad old woman.”

  Sahira’s flung back her hand to strike again, but Hepdida stood her ground. “Go on then, hit me again. It won’t change how you feel, or how I feel about Captain Kimbolt.”

  “Go to your room!” Sahira ground out the instruction through clenched teeth, her raised arm trembling with barely restrained fury.

  As abruptly as it had formed, the bubble of Hepdida’s bravado burst, and she fled the kitchen in a fresh deluge of tears.

  ***

  Xander, in Udecht’s form, hurried down the steps between Sturmcairn’s inner courtyard and the outer bailey. The inner courtyard was closest to the steep peak to which Sturmcairn clung. It housed the Castellan’s fortified quarters, the temple and the officers’ mess. The slope of the mountainside meant that the wall dividing inner courtyard from the outer bailey was five feet high on the Northern courtyard side, but twenty foot high on the Southern bailey side. At its Eastern end, like a slender spear, rose Sturmcairntor, known to most simply as the Beacon tower. It soared a clear hundred foot higher than any other building in the castle.

  As he emerged into the bailey, Xander took a long look at the beacon tower. From its crenelated top, a man looking East could see twenty miles into Morsalve the capital province of the Kingdom of the Salved. Perhaps two thirds of that distance away lay Gargator the simple relay tower with its own beacon and small garrison which was the first in the chain of beacon towers stretching from Sturmcairn all the way into the kingdom and beyond. Xander tried to recall how many steps it was up to the top of the Sturmcairntor; He had counted them once long ago in a half remembered previous life. Perhaps he would get the chance to do so again this evening – though other matters should press more on his mind.

  It was quiet as he crossed the bailey, late enough that any soldiers not on watch were hunkered down in the low barracks tucked up against the eastern and western walls. Again the steep slope of the mountain showed itself in buildings which were single storey at the Northern end, but became two storey as the ground fell away where they neared the southern curtain wall. There was no-one about, barring the soldiers on the walls, patrolling in pairs. Xander cursed
. Damn his nephew’s caution, doubling the guard. That would complicate things.

  Xander slowed on his approach to the gatehouse. It was built on three floors. The open upper storey was level with the top of the curtain wall, which it merged with seamlessly. The bottom storey was level with the mountain path and separated from it by portcullises and gates. Inbetween these two, was a mid-level enclosed guardroom. This was where the pulleys and housing for lifting the portcullises lay and where any intruders into the gatehouse below could be picked off by crossbows through the murder holes in the floor.

  It was this mid-level guardroom which was Xander’s first target. He breezed into the square room with a hearty. “Kopetcha, gentlemen,” at which the four guardsmen turned around. “It is an auspicious evening. My long lost brother is returned to us and I am minded that all should share my joy. Here.”

  He drew out a heavy purse. The jangle of coins brought the soldiers closer to him, their approach hastening as he produced the first heavy gold crown. He twisted the coins around his fingers before depositing one in each palm in turn. As he placed the last coin, he intoned, “somnus omnibus vobis.” The guardsmen exchanged curious glances as a bout of yawning overtook them all. Before any of them could voice the strangeness of the sensation, a deep lethargy overcame them and they slipped into untidy heaps on the floor gently snoring. Surrounded by sleeping guardsmen, Xander swayed unsteadily, rendered light headed by his fourth magical invocation in under an hour.

  He gathered enough wit and energy to pick two knives from sleeping guardsmen’s belts. With four quick strokes he despatched the dreaming sentries into a greater slumber from which they would never awaken. He cleaned the blades and secreted them in his voluminous sleeves, before setting off for the lower level.