Lady Of The Helm (Book 1)

by T. O. Munro

  “Why is he not here? Have you abandoned him Secretary Vesten?” There was a pause as the rider reached into saddle bags. “Here, see what happens to those who abandon their fellows.” A big rock was thrown on the ground. Vesten followed it rolling and turning until it settled, looking up at him, a stone head of an orc, its mouth open in a silent scream. It was Hulgrid.

  “This bastard turned up two days ago with just a bunch of wolf-riders. I had him tried for abandoning his post. Trial by combat that is, with me. When I had cut and beaten him and knocked him bleeding and weaponless to the ground, but before I cut his head off, I looked deep into his eyes. The rest of him is now a reclining stone statute in the courtyard at Listcairn.” There was a moment’s silence before the Lady repeated her question. “Lest you wish to share his fate tell me, why is Odestus not here, Secretary Vesten. Have you abandoned him?”

  He shook his head in trembling fear. “The Governor is on a mission for the Master. He took the nomad cavalry due East, we parted seven days ago.”

  “Maelgrum told me none of this!” Dema spat out in disbelief.

  “The Master does not share all his plans with his servants.”

  “He does with me,” the Lady cried standing tall in her stirrups. “If Odestus was ordered away, then I would know of it. Where is he? Where is the little wizard? Why did you leave him?” She reached across and hauled the trembling secretary up by his lapels until Vesten found himself looking askance into the gauzed covered gaze of the Medusa.

  “I was ordered away. I do not know where he is, but he has the cavalry with him. He will come to no harm.” Vesten sought to blunt the shrill edge of concern in the Medusa’s questioning. “That which he cannot outfight he can outride.”

  “Ogre’s blood, if Odestus’s safety should ever depend on his horsemanship, then he is surely doomed. Where is he?” She shook the secretary so that his bones rattled.

  “He is in our Master’s service,” Vesten pleaded. “Where he is and when or if he comes back to us is in our Master’s will.”

  “Bugger Maelgrum’s will, I need Odestus.” The Medusa dropped the secretary abruptly, seizing her side with a cry of pain. Vesten fell astride the saddle of his patient pony, eyes watering with the numbing force of the impact. Through the mist of his own discomfort he observed Dema sway and groan in her saddle.

  “Are you ill lady?” he ventured when his agony faded faster than hers. “If it is healing you need then a shaman would serve better than Odestus, mighty though the Governor’s powers are.”

  “My own trouble is past Odestus’s healing,” she ground out through gritted teeth. “It is on another matter that I have need of the little wizard’s magic.”

  “Mayhap the wizard Galen could assist, he is the Governor’s deputy in Undersalve. He is charged with bringing re-inforcements to Listcairn by the path we have now mapped. He at least is certain to arrive in a few weeks, while I have no certainty of whither our Master will be sending the Governor.”

  “Then Maelgrum can send Galen on this fool’s errand, and return Odestus to me.”

  “And you would tell the Master that?”

  “Aye and a load more, aiee,” Dema’s threat ended in a yelp. She took a couple of shallow breaths to steady herself before issuing fresh orders to Vesten. “Get your men to the castle. We have arranged billets for you in the town.”

  “Where are the orcs billeted?”

  “In an open field, and there they will stay ‘til they have learned, you do not split your force in hostile territory. Rugan could have destroyed you all piecemeal.”

  “I know, Lady, I know. But we are here now, to serve at your command.”

  “I’d rather have had Odestus than the whole damned lot of you,” she muttered before wheeling her horse round to ride back to Listcairn.

  ***

  Kaylan cursed the fog. For two days now he had shadowed the nomad horsemen and their unlikely captain, but the fog was a cloying and unwanted complication.

  The nomads’ search of the beach had ended with whoops of triumph that Kaylan had heard even in his place of rocky concealement. Then, with barely a pause to let the horses catch their breath, the column had wheeled round and headed back inland. As soon as they had disappeared from sight, Kaylan had scurried onto the sandy shore fearful that anything there might have given enemies cause for celebration.

  He was a thief rather than a woodsman. However, even Kaylan’s meagre skills of tracking were sufficient to identify the trail which had excited the nomads. A line of hoof prints trodden deep in the sand led off the beach. Either side of the horse’s track were two deep irregular lines as of branches dragged across the sand. A set of footprints accompanied the horse and its burden. A slow moving horse dragging some kind of load and with a walking companion.

  What other signs there may have been had been trampled by the cavalry who had also crisscrossed some of the trail as they had followed it off the beach across the coast road and due West back into the heartland of the Petred isle.

  Kaylan had studied the footprints carefully, fitted his own boot into them and found it oversized, tested his weight on the sand and found it drove deeper. The horse’s pedestrian companion was lighter of build and smaller of foot than Kaylan and walking away from the wreck of the ship that Niarmit had boarded. The thief had needed no further convincing that it was his lady walking the laden horse slowly westwards, all unaware that the Governor himself and a company of nomad cavalry were pursuing her.

  His immediate resolve was to catch up with her and warn her so together they could evade the pursuit. For any hope of success in this ambition, he had the Governor to thank. While the hardy nomadic horseman would have easily outstripped Kaylan’s tired horse, the company in pursuit were limited to the speed of their slowest rider. That was the Governor himself. While the horsemen were making much better pace than the walker they pursued, they were still slow enough for Kaylan to ride around in a wide circuit south west trying to work his way ahead of them. He had kept them in sight, working at a distance where a body of horsemen could be easily perceived but a single rider would be hard to pick out against the grey backdrop of the marsh and the distant Hadrans. Thus he hoped he had gone undetected and had certainly worked some way ahead of them. He had made enough ground to begin cutting back North Westwards aiming to cross Niarmit’s trail, ahead of her pursuers and then hasten to warn her.

  The plan had worked well until this damn fog had fallen. Now he led his horse warily across the uneven ground. He was scanning for rabbit holes and patches of marshy softness that would make his horse stumble or possibly twist a fetlock and lame it. He was also searching for Niarmit’s trail which he must surely cross, but in addition keeping his ears pricked for any sign of the nomads. At a rough estimate they should still be at least a couple of miles due East of him, but that was assuming they had kept the same speed and heading as when he last saw them.

  The fog was thick, and Kaylan was barely able to see more than a dozen yards ahead, then, through the murk he heard the softest jangle of harness to his right and a guttural cry of salute that was swiftly echoed, down a line. He cursed softly at his misjudgement and turned his horse due west. Even though the nomad troop were clearly walking at a slower pace than he had anticipated, he had cut his approach too fine. Far from being two miles away, they were less than a hundred yards away.

  He walked his horse urgently westward, listening for the calls and acknowledgements of his unknowing pursuers. Strung out in a line, sweeping slowly Westwards. What were they up to? They must have lost the trail and were trying to find it again. For a moment Kaylan was swamped with relief. The Governor and his hunters had lost Niarmit’s trail and, for the time being at least, his Lady was safe from them.

  The relief was tempered with the realisation that those frustrated trackers would soon cross his own trail. The soft yielding ground was even now dimpled with a trail of hoofprints. True his horse was unburdened, by the load Niarmit’s had clearly been dragging,
but that subtle distinction would not deter the curiosity of the two hundred or so nomads.

  Even as he thought it, there was an excited call from within the fog behind him, a call that was quickly picked up by the others. Kaylan was trotting alongside his horse now, trying to put distance between him and the far too close horsemen. Orders were being barked out, voices converging on his trail. Kaylan swung himself noiselessly into the saddle. Rabbit holes and molehills be damned, he would have to ride his way out of here. The sounds of pursuit were unmistakeable now. The thief quickly crescented himself and made a silent prayer for the Goddess’s favour, and then he kicked his heels against the horse’s flank and began a mad gallop westwards. He could see barely two horse-lengths infront of him, and it was pure equine instinct that guided his steed on its frantic charge into the unknown.

  He had failed in his search for Niarmit’s trail. However, the thief took comfort in the fact that, not only had the nomads lost the trail too, but he was about to lead them on a wild goose chase which would take them even further from their target. His decoy run could maybe buy Niarmit the time to escape from a peril she may not even have been aware of. Kaylan gave a grim smile at that. Would he ever get to tell her of his intervention on her behalf. Well, he told himself, you’re a town thief riding a tired horse, through opaque fog, while being chased by a group of nomadic horsemen who like all their kind, were doubtless raised from sucklings in the saddle. Winning this race would require divine favour of quite miraculous proportions.

  ***

  Udecht’s dirty robes hung loosely on his shrunken frame. Even Xander had occasionally commented to his captive younger brother, “my how you stink.” However, his sibling gaoler had made no offer or concession to allow him to bathe. Xander attended on Udecht but rarely, and even then only for the brief business of humiliation and gloating. The two orcs detailed to be Udecht’s constant guardians were themselves so rank of odour as to be indifferent to the Bishop’s unwashed state.

  They were however, amused as Udecht shuffled down the bank towards the waters of the Nevers river. “You not drown, little priest,” the darker one called, his skin a mottled green between pine needles and oak leaves.

  “We not come in after you,” his more lime hued companion added.

  “I’m just washing,” Udecht called plaintively, before adding under his breath, “something you know nothing about.”

  “What he say?” needle green asked.

  “I think he said you fat,” limey replied.

  “Did he? I show him,” needle green retorted with fake indignation as he reached for the horsewhip at his belt. However, he made no further move as the priest scurried the last few steps to the water’s edge and waded fully clothed into the river.

  He pulled the robe over his head and, standing thigh deep in just his drawers and vest, brought the soiled outer garment down two handed with a satisfying thwack into the river water. He had played here as a child, fishing and splashing with his brothers and the other court children. But now the bustling bridge over the Nevers and the busy river port of Droost were gone. Both charred ruins, the blackened stumps of oak timbers poking out of the broad river water, while the ash strewn plain that once was Droost was now covered with the tents and pens of the invaders.

  Udecht busied himself with his ablutions, losing the misery of his present existence in the minutiae of everyday life. He rubbed the coarse sodden cloth against itself to excise the worst of the stains, and then used the robe as part towel part loofa to scrape the grime from his own body. Absorbed in the laundering, he shut his eyes and ears to the near complete makeshift bridge which the invaders had been erecting alongside the charred ruin. The wizards and the engineers had been at work fabricating another crossing to replace the one that the defenders had destroyed. When their work was done the army would be able at last to cross the river and begin the siege of the fortress of Morwencairn, and that was a thought Udecht did not wish to dwell on.

  He had felt a thrill of triumph at the disaster which had overtaken his brother two days earlier. Watching from the ridge, he had seen Xander’s vanguard charge through Droost and onto the bridge only for town and crossing to both to go up in flames before the traitor’s force could reach the northern bank. He had rejoiced at the defender’s determination and planning, grieving only that the trap had not entirely caught his treacherous brother. Singed and furious Xander had returned to the ridge, railing at the duplicity of an Archbishop who had packed the houses and the bridge supports with barrels of pitch. The flammable casks had been fired by archer’s flame arrows and by a few brave souls who had stayed and sacrificed all to obstruct the enemy’s advance. The traitor’s anger had known few bounds, and owed much, Udecht suspected, to his fear of Maelgrum’s reaction to another failure.

  In the absence of Archbishop Forven, the architect of his latest disaster, Xander had fallen with fist and boot and whip on Udecht as a surrogate recipient of his rage. Udecht had born the latest beating with a grim satisfaction bordering on mirth. However, that pleasure, like the bruises it cost him, had soon faded.

  True Forven’s trick had cost Xander pride and men and bought the inhabitants of Morwencairn some time. But that was all. Time to wait in hope of some miracle of re-inforcements. Whatever force the Archbishop had within the town’s stout walls, he had not risked it in any sally forth to further harass the would-be besiegers. The main body of Maelgrum’s army milling on the south bank of the Nevers would soon cross the river and the city’s hopes of rescue would depend on relief from the unreliable forces of Medyrsalve or Nordsalve.

  “Hey, what are you doing brother?”

  It was Xander on horseback standing with Haselrig by the amused orcish guards. “It’s called washing,” Udecht called back as he pulled on his wet robe and waded reluctantly towards the bank. It was a warm day and the clothes would dry soon enough against his skin, but the semblance of physical cleanliness could not assuage the sense of spiritual dirt he felt in his brother’s presence

  “Aye. It may suit me better to have you look presentable when you set the Helm of Eadran upon my head. I should not be crowned by some vagabond.”

  “The Helm lies on the other side of the walls of Morwencairn, brother. Even when your Master gets his army across it will take him months to batter down those walls. You should not be so premature in celebrating your stolen inheritance.”

  Udecht knew it was foolish to bait his brother so. The traitor stood in his saddle, eyes bulging, the sinews of his neck straining as his anger sought some coherent expression. “Not stolen,” he spat out. “It is mine, won by might of arms against those who betrayed and denied me all my life. Stand against me in this Udecht and you will share the fate of all who have stood against me, of Thren, Eadran and Gregor himself.”

  Udecht let the invective wash over him, though silence was no guarantee of calming his brother’s anger or preventing it finding some expression in physical violence. He found himself dispassionately noting a new edge to Xander’s voice, a touch of hysteria. The traitor’s features were as ravaged as his own, bloodshot eyes in deep hollow pits, his straggly beard shot though with grey, skin hanging sallow on hollowed cheekbones. Pressure was making its mark on Xander, his volatile disposition pushed to new extremes. “A week is all it will take brother. In a week’s time the great wyrm will owe my Master another day’s service.”

  Udecht noted the frown of alarm that creased Haselrig’s features and the antiquary reached a restraining hand to Xander’s arm. The traitor Prince shook it off indignantly. “What matter who knows, Haselrig. The great wyrm serves our Master for one day each month and when that day next arrives, it is on the walls of Morwencairn that his fire will fall.”

  Udecht shivered at the recollection of the dragon Maelgrum had ridden when Sturmcairn fell. His innards tumbled in an echo of the bowel weakening fear he had felt that night. If the lizard were indeed to come again to the siege of Morwencairn, then the Bishop had to concede the justification for Xan
der’s confidence and, in equal measure, a cause for his own despair.

  ***

  Dema sat in the chair in her chambers, knees drawn up towards her chest, arms folded across her belly. In the courtyard outside she could hear the raucous shouts of orcish sentries and outlander guards. There was no love lost between the races, but they were content to express their antipathy in casual insults rather than anything more prejudicial to discipline. Dema knew that at the slightest sign of some more vicious quarrel the gaze of the combatants would stray towards her window and the argument would be forgotten in fear of the greater peril of the Medusa’s wrath.

  She sighed. She had at last the force, or something like it, which Maelgrum had always intended should guard this border. As one of his most trusted lieutenants, the Medusa had been privy to more details of his plans save any except perhaps Haselrig and Odestus. Beneath his malevolence, Maelgrum was a patient pursuer of vengeance. She guessed that after a millenium in a planar prison, a few months and years were eyeblinks of time to the undead lord. So the empire that Eadran had stolen was to be reclaimed by its rightful owner one piece at a time. The conquest of Undersalve had tried and tested imperial defence and resolve, without Maelgrum ever having to reveal himself. The capture of Sturmcairn, likewise, was intended to herald the fall of Morsalve absorbed and digested by Maelgrum’s force free from knowledge or interference from the outer provinces.

  While the veil of secrecy had been torn apart the night Kimbolt lit the beacon, it was still Maelgrum’s plan to conquer the central province undisturbed while Dema and her force stood guard against any unwise incursions from Medyrsalve. To that end he would require her to make some show of force before the Palacinta hills. Her scouts had reported movements in the passes to the East and even Prince Rugan could not stand idle for ever. So, this evening’s remote conference with Maelgrum would bring new orders and little rest. Dema gave a mild groan and folded her arms more tightly. The forthcoming conversation would be different, for she had demands of her own to make. Even at this distance she knew her Master’s ire would be fierce while her impudence would live long in his memory. However, she had an ace to play, an argument the undead Lord would surely hearken to, for it was an argument he himself had made.