by T. C. Rypel
Hildegarde’s moods shifted from gruffly loquacious to gruntingly laconic, and Gonji took advantage of her turning for the latter by rising from the table and performing his stretching regimen, careful to take it easy on the cut, bruised and wrapped knee.
When he had completed his exercises under her critical gaze, he sat in the lotus position before the licking hearth fire and relaxed, drifting into a Zen meditation that was almost instantly dispersed by Hildy’s switching back into a talkative mode. She seemed to have taken his mystical posturing for an invitation to utilize him as confessor.
She waxed introspective. “My Sven,” she reflected, dreamy-eyed, “he was a man of the sea. I knew before he took me for wife that there would always be the other woman. The sea. She took him. Finally, she took him. She does not let go easy of those who love her, the sea. So she took Sven.
“After that Hildy leave Sveden. Sveden not good these days. Denmark worse. And your mother’s Norway—ugh. Her glory days are gone, Gonji-Gunnar. But Hildy want no more to look upon the face of the sea. So I come south, leave her behind, bring my father’s harbisher craft with me. I make those—” She pointed to a small antechamber wherein a half-finished cuirass lay on a workbench. “—cuirasses, pauldrons, vambraces, light hauberks—the kind of armor a warrior can move in. Not this crazy bulky plate that make you move like a turtle and die like one. Mine is fine leather scale and tough links of mail. You bought my pauldrons and vambraces, is that not so? I sell them to the barker, he sell them to you!” Her smile faded quickly.
“So I work my goods. Then I meet Eric. Eric Grimmelman. He was...highwayman. A bandit, you know. He try to rob Hildy. He give me this.” She half-turned and pulled up the back of her tunic to reveal a broad, smooth back marred only by the ugly lips of a knife scar. “I slash his leg open. So we become friends. He was my man for a time. We plunder the main roads. Merchants, travelers.... We live like kings.”
She shrugged. “Then they catch us in Austria. They kill Eric, hold me—big mistake. Man takes Hildy into the forest at point of pistol. Going to have some fun, you see. Make me take my clothes off. Then he take his off. I play at being weepy, then I break his jaw, take pistol and run. Join adventurers for a time. Not so different from this horde in Vedun. Not much better. I leave again. Come here. Take up harbishing again. Not too bad, not too good. Then these crazies come to Vedun. Then you come, Gonji-Gunnar, half-breed Viking—and Hildy’s life get exciting again....”
Gonji shifted imperceptibly before the fire, then relaxed and exhaled deeply, abandoning the meditation.
She grew maudlin, slugging down the ale with a vengeance. “I don’t care about these damn Christians, some of them. Most of them—I don’t know. But maybe...maybe Yesus the Christ like it if I help out here, eh? These Christians need many good warriors with the wolves they draw, eh?”
The samurai nodded stiffly but said nothing.
“Flavio,” she went on, “he was a good man, no? You think, Gonji-Gunnar?”
Gonji rose and returned to the table, rubbing his jaw. “Hai. He was a very good man.” He stretched and yawned. Retying his obi about his waist, he sashed his swords and took up the capote and burgonet. The rough padding inside the helm was still wet.
“I’ve got to see how our plans are coming. The alert teams should have all reported back by now.”
He moved to the tiny vaulted foyer at the kitchen door and viewed the darkening back lane. Evening descended over the Transylvanian Alps. Misty rain diminished visibility.
“You need a place to sleep tonight,” she called after him, “you come back here, eh?”
He swallowed but revealed nothing of the pang of desire her casual statement had inspired. He bowed to her and smiled gratefully. Then he was off through the rear courtyard and splashing into the deadly lanes.
* * * *
The traitor sat timber-stiff astride a black stallion, dressed in a masked close-helmet and a cowled, silk-lined cloak, surrounded by a squad of mercenaries in Mord’s private employ. Trembling with secret triumph. The game was playing itself out extremely well.
They neared the main gate, slowing as they approached a party of mourners on horseback, who in turn followed a closed wagon bearing a coffin. The traitor recognized them all, wondering amusedly at the contents of that coffin.
Were they genuinely bereaved or merely essaying a diversionary performance? Or even bearing weaponry for their futile revolt?
Three horsemen, headed by the formidable Salavar, clattered up on the heels of the mourners, having abruptly splashed out at a jangling gallop from the gatehouse.
Salavar ordered the small funeral cortege to halt two hundred yards outside Vedun.
This could be quite interesting, the traitor thought. Even through the rain and gathering gloom, the driver and assistant could be seen to pale as they looked at each other.
“Such long faces,” Salavar intoned sarcastically as he swung down off the huge armored destrier, plucking his feathered lance from its mooring and striding up to the wagon. “Tell me—is it the rain that has your spirits down? Or the presence of so many vicious warriors? Or—my goodness,” he minced, removing his dagger-festooned helm and bowing to a tearful mounted woman with mock-cavalier grace. “It’s a funeral. Now why didn’t we notice that, Luba?”
Behind him, one of the soldiers laughed coarsely, and the Slayer continued walking to the rear of the wagon. His eyes narrowed, manifesting his self-satisfaction with the clever inspiration.
“Maybe it’s because of the hour—rather late for a funeral service, isn’t it? Open that coffin, and let’s have a look at the...dear departed.”
The drivers began to demur, outraged, yet their eyes never strayed far from the point of the lance. The pair of mercenaries with Salavar drew steel, and a couple of men in the traitor’s party nervously reached inside their cloaks to prime pistols, in a show of solidarity.
Oh my, the traitor thought with folded arms, aren’t you bushi in dire straits? And you have your Japanese blusterer to thank. Guten nacht....
Forced to leap down from their seat, the anxious wagon drivers lowered the coffin to the ground. Fisting pry-bars with a final grim look, they began to work at the sealed casket’s lid.
The traitor restrained the sudden mad urge to tear off the close-helmet and laugh in their faces. But no, there would be time for that. The laughter swelled and burst, and the traitor snorted inside the helm.
Salavar wrenched the coffin lid free of the final two nails. One of the women screamed, and some of the others crossed themselves. The Slayer peered down expectantly, flicking open the shroud with his lance.
His victorious grin fled, and he wiped his mouth with the back of a hand to obliterate the grimace he felt coming.
In the casket lay the mangled partial remains of a man masticated by the cretin giant.
“Take this thing...,” he said, breathing in sonorous gasps, “and bury it.”
* * * *
Footwear was a subject of special interest to Old Gort.
Before he had become the keeper of the gatehouse, he had been a cobbler, and an excellent craftsman, at that. When his poor health had caused him to abandon his beloved trade, he carried into his new job the habit of recognizing people by their footgear long before he learned to match their names and faces.
So it was that his eyes settled with lingering surprise on the fine-tooled leather boots that stirruped the saddle of the black stallion. There was no mistaking those boots, wrought by a master craftsman far from Vedun. He had seen them leaving earlier that day. But why did their owner now ride with a concealing helmet—and accompanied by brigands?
There was only one answer, but...it couldn’t be.
That militia leader, Gonji, would want to know of this. Oh, yes, this was just the sort of thing—
When he heard the squad leader repeat his command to open the portcullis, Gort knew his surprise had betrayed him. Even as he cranked the capstan wheel he quavered with fear. The horses
walked into the tunnel, stopped. Nickering and wet pawing. The heavy thump of someone dismounting.
Gort listened to the purposeful stepping of those now ominous boots. A chill seized him as the gatehouse door squealed ajar and the wind and rain hissed in with a dank breath that coiled about the room.
Old Gort turned, affecting a shakily indulgent smile. The figure’s head, side-lit in the harsh glow of the cresset lamp, shook free of the close-helmet.
The face was the one Gort had expected, but the expression was dreadfully wrong.
Dr. Verrico had told Gort that the growth that twisted his neck would be what sooner or later consumed the old man’s life.
Dr. Verrico could not foretell the future.
CHAPTER SEVEN
From the moment he took his first step into the middle bailey of Castle Lenska, Garth knew he was dying in the way, on that day many years ago, that he had seen his father die.
His chest constricted, knotted, swelling and tightening at the same time. His breath came in short, choppy gasps, and his left arm went numb.
Gott in Himmel, not now, bitte! I must see King Klann first....
He stopped and mopped his moistened brow with his cap. The pair of Llorm dragoons who escorted him paused and regarded his evident discomfort, impatient to discharge their duty.
“Are you ill?” one of them asked in Kunan.
Garth held his chest a moment and considered the foreboding signals his body sent. He banished their concern with a half-wave and moved forward again in short strides.
Several servants, recognizing the beloved smith, dropped their tasks and rushed up to engage him with a babble of anxious voices. The Llorm escort warded them away. But not before one scullion shouted out the grim fate of the prophetess Tralayn.
Garth eyed the guards accusingly and bowed his head.
They pressed on to the king’s private chambers, the smith in a state of roiling transition, his thoughts given over to disillusionment and morbidity; his stricken heart, to both palpitation and despair.
“Garth!” the king cried to see him, surging forward to welcome him into the chamber. “Garth Iorgens—gen-kori. Our dear, trusted friend.”
King Klann bade him sit in the plush red velvet stuffed chair that now faced the king’s own. Garth’s pain and terror held him captive, but the first sight of the tall, dark and bearded Newly Risen, with his severe, hawk-like features, gave him pause. It was hard to embrace the concept of the shared life experience and deep acquaintance of a longtime confidant being abruptly impressed into the body and personality of a stranger. Garth’s apprehension intensified, such that he wrung his cap in his hands, wishing desperately to be at home, on his own cot, his beloved sons around him....
“But you’re upset—Gorkin, pour for us, won’t you?”
The castellan, the only other person now in the chamber, moved forward with an indulgent head bob and, filling the goblets on the silver-gilt service, proffered Garth his cup with a smile that was unreadable.
They drank a toast to friendship. Then Klann came up to Garth, studied him momentarily, eyes slimming with suspicion or befuddlement. He clamped a hand on Garth’s shoulder. Their eyes met, Garth fighting to stem the liquid trembling he felt in his.
“Long did I languish in that terrible insensate boredom, waiting. Waiting for my turn to clasp your hand in brotherhood, faithful Iorgens....”
Garth nodded shakily, parted his lips to speak. The tightening in his chest was awful. His benumbed left arm now sent tiny tingling shocks to his fingertips. His hands were moist with perspiration; he rubbed them on his breeches. Tried to speak. No words could ascend his throat.
King Klann backed away, his expression playing through a range of changes, settling on impatience.
“I shall mince no words,” Klann said sharply. “I speak to you as a former loyal friend, a brother, a comrade-in-arms. Do you know that I was coming to see you and you alone when this...change occurred? I care not to know why it happened, or how. It has happened, and I am emerged. But I am still Klann, Iorgens. Scion of the House of Bel. Still your former liege lord. Tell me then, and tell me true—what are your compatriots planning against me?”
His voice had soared angrily in strength and pitch.
Garth blinked with surprise, though the words had trickled down to him through a cottony muting, the warm hollow drumming of blood in his ears. His chest pulled in two directions at once. Nausea seized him, cold sweat breaking. He thought he would faint.
“I—know—nothing,” he said, straining for every sound. “They plan nothing...against you, sire.” More surely now. A bit of control returning.
King Klann and the castellan eyed each other suspiciously.
“What’s wrong with you, Iorgens?” the castellan probed.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Garth apologized. “I don’t feel well. Bear with me, bitte—oh!” A slugging at his chest, less a part of him than some silent invader attacking his heart.
“Will you try to stop them?” Klann asked firmly.
Garth swallowed, strained to hear the sound of his voice over the blood-thrum that now even clouded his mind.
“I have told you I...don’t know...what they’re planning.”
Why did I say that? Get hold of yourself, Garth!
“So you do admit they’re plotting against me!”
“Nein—I—”
General Gorkin clutched the hilt of his broadsword and glared at Garth balefully, his brow a dark menacing ridge.
Garth struggled for control. Thoughts into words. Thoughts into—“That is not what I meant to say. What I believed to say—no! What I meant to say—” Now even the Kunan tongue was failing him. Was it lack of practice? or the seizure?
The two accusers stared at him in mute hostility, watching him squirm.
“I meant to say...that...Mord...ja! It is Mord who plots against you.” His eyes bulged, and he drew a shuddering breath.
“Ho!” Klann laughed. “So you make a weak attempt at shifting suspicion. Who briefed you for this meeting, Garth, your dead prophetess?”
“And what’s the source of this intelligence? What proof have you?” Gorkin asked caustically. Once a rival for Garth’s position as the king’s second-in-command, he tendered Garth no fondness. “Your whole being trembles with revulsion over your deceit to the liege lord you once swore fealty to. You disgust me.”
“General,” Klann reproved him gently.
Garth grew restive, disliking Gorkin’s callous, indignant posturing. Think. Try to think. He strove, but the noise in his ears mingled with the effort of his mind to render Klann’s voice a senseless hum. And then words came clearly to Garth’s lips, but they scarcely resembled those his brain had fashioned.
“No one told me to say that. We simply want the sorcerer removed—nein!” He rose from his chair, reeling, seeing Gorkin take a defensive posture, sword drawn, Klann grabbing the general’s arm.
He fell back into the cushiony buffet of the thick chair seat. Why did I say that?
Klann quietly ordered Gorkin out of the room.
After a brief glance that seemed to question the wisdom of the move, the castellan saluted and left, the barely restrained satisfaction he felt perking the corners of his mouth. Gorkin was too much of a stickler regarding military honor to besmirch the reputation of even a former comrade. But he would relate what had transpired to the bored and jaded Lady Gorkin, who would in turn delight in relating to the other Akryllonian nationals how the European warrior, whom the king had once so favored, had as much as admitted his complicity against the king.
Garth clutched at his chest, breathing deeply. Klann had turned away thoughtfully, sipping at his wine. The king sighed long and mournfully.
“Forgive me, milord,” Garth begged with great effort. “I am ill. I am speaking gibberish. Perhaps—”
“Your strain is evident. Sometimes under stress the tongue reveals what is truly in the heart.”
Garth remembered things best left
buried by the years. Murky clouds gathered on the edges of his consciousness, and he spoke raspingly through his fear and pain: “If I were to speak...what most deeply pierces my secret heart...then even a king such as you, milord, might quake.”
Unaccustomed to him as such words were, Garth had meant them.
Klann’s eyes widened, despair veiling them, and when he tore his gaze away there was a feeling in the air like the ripping of fabric. The raft of cherished memories of brotherhood and deeds shared in common bonding sundered, so that king and subject drifted apart over a sea of repelling currents.
But Klann would not allow himself to ponder it.
White pinpoints flashed across Garth’s vision as he massaged his stricken chest, and through them he saw the king fling his cup across the room so that it bounded against the far wall and shattered, stem from bowl. Guards appeared, and Klann cursed them from the chamber.
Then he knelt on one knee before the seated smith.
“Garth—Garth, listen to me. I know what your people fear. I know that Mord wishes to see your city destroyed, but we, we are king. They’re all foolish to believe we’d let Mord have his way. We need him, Garth. Much as we despise his methods, we need him to help wrest back Akryllon from those who ravaged it. Those like him. It’s useless for this city to try to pit us against Mord. Are these people so hard-headed that they’ll resist rule until the violent end that must result? We’re growing stronger all the time, Garth. By spring—that’s all I ask, to remain here until spring—by then we’ll have grown in numbers. Mord will have all the power he needs. If these Transylvanian people want to fight, well then let them fight with us! As allies! There are great riches awaiting the re-conquerors of Akryllon. We’ll share them with all!