by T. O. Munro
Hepdida nodded slowly. “And how goes the whole business of winning this war?”
Niarmit raised an eyebrow at her cousin’s curiosity. The princess glared back. “I am interested,” she said. “I mean I assume you didn’t bring me to this draughty castle just so you could monitor my choice of hair colour and I could hold that thing for you.” She waved at the Helm, brooding on its side table.
Niarmit pursed her lips and dragged out a long, “no.” She frowned. “I wanted you close, where I could keep an eye on you, keep you safe.”
“I think I’m past the stage of being wrapped in swaddling clothes, Niarmit. I need to know what’s going on. For example, why are you worried about Tordil?”
“How did you know?”
“I heard you talking to Sorenson. You shouldn’t keep things from me, I’m not a child. None of us are.”
Niarmit combed her hair with her fingers. “We’ve had no word from the Silverwood. I’m worried that he never got there, that Quintala may have laid some trap for him.”
“How would she have known?”
Niarmit shrugged. “That’s the thing. I don’t see how. All our discussions have been in the council chamber. Rugan’s special hall on stilts should be completely safe from any prying eyes.”
Hepdida screwed up her face. “Not when you first mentioned it, we weren’t in the council chamber then. You were in your room. It was just after you’d fainted when I took that thing off you. You spoke to Tordil about it then.”
“But,” Niarmit frowned. “She couldn’t have spied there. Rugan moved us to those rooms because Quintala hadn’t seen them, he was sure. And that means she couldn’t open a gate there, large or small. She couldn’t have…”
There was a knock at the door; the cousins started and exchanged a look. Their daily luncheon was not a meal where interruptions were allowed.
“Come in.” Niarmit’s tone bellied the simple welcome of her words.
“Forgive me, your Majesty,” a liveried manservant apologised in the doorway even as a soldier pushed past him into the room. “This man was most insistent.”
“A thousand pardons for the intrusion, your Majesty.” The soldier bent low. The blue and gold of his cloak was splattered with the mud and slush of a hard ride through the snow.
“You rode with Master of Horse Pietrsen.” Niarmit quickly deciphered his stained colours.
“I have a letter, your Majesty, which I was bidden to give to you, to you personally.” He reached into the knapsack over his shoulder to pull out a thick fold of sealed parchment. “I was charged on my honour.”
Niarmit took the package from him with careful suspicion, first weighing it in her palm before raising it to her eyes. “Who is it from?” she said.
“He bid me give it to you, your Majesty,” the soldier repeated. “All that is to be said is in there. That is what he told me to say.”
“How mysterious,” Hepdida clapped her hands together.
“You may leave,” Niarmit said quickly, adding with a look in Hepdida’s direction, “all of you.”
The princess coloured at that, eyes flashing a defiance which her mouth stopped just short of expressing.
“All of you,” Niarmit repeated.
She held herself still until they had all left, the princess closing the door none too quietly behind her. Then she took a knife from the table and heated it over a candle before sliding it under the wax seal and unfolding the letter.
The writing was coarse and uneven, written in haste, or some other awkwardness of circumstance. Niarmit drew a deep breath. Her hands were trembling as she began to read.
The opening salutation of Dear Niarmit had been crossed out and replaced with My Queen.
We have found Torsden. The prince is safe and well with him. However, the fulfilment of my vow to Lady Isobel proves a little more complicated than I had hoped.
Torsden is locked up in a steading that we have not the force to assault, nor the supplies or ready forage to besiege. If we leave here, he may slip away again and never be found.
We had a parley yesterday. His retainer conveyed his demands to us. Yes, the murdering traitor is making demands. He holds that he is not guilty of murder, that his actions have always been reasonable and just. As proof of this he has demanded a trial, a trial by combat.
I have accepted the challenge.
You may think this foolish, but I have my reasons. Whatever happens, the prince will be restored to his mother’s care. Either I will bring him myself. If not then Torsden, acquitted by combat of any wrong doing has promised to return to Karlbad with the boy. As a man proven innocent in the eyes of the Goddess he will have nothing to fear, I would humbly ask you to respect the innocence he would have earned.
There are those who think me foolish, you may count yourself amongst that number. Pietrsen has repeatedly told me that I am both mad and dead. I have my reasons and one thing which makes this decision easier to bear is knowing that come what may, you will read this and whether I live or die, you will have heard what I have to say.
Here the words, my Queen had been begun and then scrawled through and he had written simply, Niarmit.
I am a broken thing, corrupt beyond redemption. I betrayed the fortress of Sturmcairn. I failed to protect Hepdida from Grundurg or from Quintala. I have shared a bed with the medusa and allowed her poison to infect my mind, such that it was I who suggested flinging the sick and the dying of Listcairn by catapult upon Sir Ambrose’s lines. Yet there are nights I still weep for Dema and I wake ashamed of those tears. Tordil and Kaylan are both right about me.
I was once a man of honour but I am tarnished to the bone.
I think, maybe, you were…
At this point several words had been tried and scribbled through before he had settled on
…disappointed that I flung myself so wholly into the search for Prince Yannuck, with promises and assurances to Lady Isobel, which have carried me so far from your side.
It is not through any wish to hurt you, nor is it real chivalry. It is perhaps my most selfish act. I seek not just a son for a mother, but some atonement for myself, some way to make amends for those ill deeds which haunt me still.
I was there when Lady Isobel’s husband was butchered. I have willingly served his killer. It seems such a small weregild to set out to retrieve her son, to finally make and keep a promise as befits my rank and service.
Torsden’s challenge is heaven sent. Win or lose I will fulfil my vow to Lady Isobel. I will find out if my crimes can be forgiven. It is not simply the Northern Lord who is submitting to trial by combat. I am seeking a verdict for myself.
By the same token we may not meet again, and there are things which I cannot leave unsaid between us.
There were many false starts at the next section. Fragments of sentences struck through, some lightly scored, others scrubbed over to completely obscure whatever words beneath had caused the writer such offence, before at last some passages survived his self-censorship.
I am not worthy of you, Niarmit. But the lowest creature in the darkest ditch can still gaze in wonder at the stars in their multitude. That is how I look at you. I love you as I have never loved anyone before.
The writing became a hurried scrawl at this point.
Pietrsen has come, it is nearly time and I have not said half what I wanted, but I have said what matters most.
If I should fall, accept the judgment of this trial by combat and forgive Torsden. And please be sure that today, win or lose, my soul will find a peace it has not felt since the night that Sturmcairn fell.
It has been my greatest happiness to make you smile and laugh, my greatest woe to leave your side.
Yours in peaceful acceptance of fate
Kimbolt.
She tried to read it again, but the writing swam before her eyes and the steady drip of saltwater on the page threatened to blur the scarcely readable script into complete illegibility.
***
“Forgive me
your reverence, but have you seen my cousin?”
Sorenson turned from the altar to face the princess. He was clad in thickly embroidered vestments, his hands worrying at the borrowed crescent symbol about his neck. “Your cousin?” he mumbled.
“The queen.” Hepdida reigned in her exasperation as she stepped into the chapel. “I had thought to find her here, she seems to have been spending more time at prayer.”
“Oh yes, your Highness,” the bishop agreed warmly. “She was here until perhaps half an hour ago worshiping at the altar, as I have been. Though in my case I might blame the length of supplication on the flawed communion of this…” He waved the crescent in her direction. “This imperfect vessel of faith. It was not fashioned for me you see. These past weeks I feel the Grace of The Goddess as though I were listening to voices underwater. It is most frustrating.”
“I am sure the queen will let you reclaim your own symbol, your reverence,” Hepdida lied with the practised artifice of a teenage girl managing a parent. “Perhaps if you knew where she was I could go and put that suggestion to her.”
“You could?” Sorenson beamed.
“Yes.” Hepdida waited a moment before firmly repeating, “If I knew where she was? Your reverence?”
He frowned gazing over her shoulder into his memory. “She said something about fresh air, I have noticed how she likes to walk the battlements when she is not here. Particularly the gatehouse.”
“Thank you,” Hepdida reached for the chapel door, cursing that it had taken the bishop to tell her something she should have worked out for herself.
“You won’t forget, your Highness.”
She did little to hide the petulance in her stare. “Forget what, your reverence.”
He held up the borrowed crescent. “You were going to speak…”
“Yes, yes of course,” she gushed. “I’ll do it right away.”
The castle corridors, like the whole expanse of Nordsalve itself, were cold and wide. Hepdida swept along them determined to have it out with her cousin. She was not a child and would not be treated like one. Too many secrets kept from her, the big matters of state and the little matters too. The letter that Niarmit would not share, which she had destroyed, or concealed beyond the reach of Hepdida’s imaginative scouring of hiding places. The questions, she re-played them in her mind.
“Have you see Kimbolt fight?”
Hepdida did not like her cousin’s interest in Kimbolt. She could not say why. She felt no claim on the man herself, nor suzerainty in the queen’s choice of friendships. Just a desire to keep the two separate in her mind and in her life. They did not belong together.
“Yes of course, they were always practicing their sword play at Sturmcairn.”
There hadn’t been much else to do in the remote border fortress, nor for that matter had there been much entertainment for a fifteen year old girl, beyond watching the soldiers working up a sweat in the practice yard.
“I watched Kimbolt fight Thren once.” She’d volunteered the fact unthinking, as the memory awakened in her mind, but she had been jolted at the alacrity with which her cousin had leapt on the information.
“Did he win?”
She’d laughed at Niarmit’s question, the absurdity of it.
“No, of course not. No-one beat Thren.”
“Someone did,” Niarmit had concluded glumly. “He’s dead now.”
And that had been the end of the conversation, the closest she had got to probing either the big or the little secrets that lay between her and her cousin.
The frustration carried her up a short spiral to the battlement walkway, where a vicious wind whipped at her cloak. The fur trimmed hood flapped with the gusts that swept around the edges of the old square watch towers.
She heard the scream at the same instant as she saw Niarmit. The queen was standing thirty yards away, hands resting on the embrasure between two merlons, staring out over the frozen landscape of Nordsalve. The relentless wind had flung back the hood of the queen’s cape and she let her red hair stream heedless in its wake.
It was Niarmit who had screamed, some short syllable of anguish, cut off like a door shutting on a torture chamber. The sound brought the princess to a dead halt. Her cousin spun away from the battlements and charged past Hepdida; it would have been directly at her, had the princess not stepped quickly to the side. The queen’s face was a mask of fury which froze the blood more cleanly than the icy wind.
Hepdida stood still watching Niarmit fly down the stairwell, cloak billowing behind her. She thought it wise to let her cousin have a good head start in the hope that she might outrun her own formidable anger.
There was a sound from beyond the wall, a horse neighed, a chain rattled. Hepdida hurried to the battlements to see for herself what had enraged the queen. A column of cavalry was following the trail to the gate, clad in the blue and gold colours of Nordsalve. There was the black bearded Pietrsen at the head of the column, but he was riding in the shadow of a giant of a man beside him. His horse was in the same huge proportions as its rider. Next to it the Master of Horse and his destrier looked like a harbour skiff bumping along the side of some ocean going cog in the harbour of Oostport. Along the rest of the line of cavalry there was no sign of Kimbolt.
As Hepdida watched open mouthed, the giant looked up and saw her. His head was bare exposing a thatch of thick blond hair that stretched to his shoulders and a beard which, though shorter than a dwarf’s, was braided with a symmetry that would have done Pardig-ap-Lupus proud. The man grinned, a flash of teeth as white as the snow on the distant peaks.
Hepdida stepped away from the battlement, swept back by a wave of the man’s confidence, and hurried after her cousin.
The horsemen and the cousins followed parallel paths on either side of the castle’s curtain wall as they converged on the gatehouse. Fast though she ran, Hepdida did not catch sight of Niarmit again until they were in the outer bailey and the newcomers were making their way under the gate. The blond giant alone had to bow his head slightly to pass beneath the stonework.
Niarmit had stopped in the middle of the frozen courtyard, beckoning one of the guardsmen to her side. Hepdida heard her demand. “Give me your sword, now!”
The soldier hurried to comply but his haste was not enough for the queen who grabbed the hilt in her own hands and pulled the blade from its sheaf just as the giant and Pietresen drew level with her.
“Your Majesty, may I present the Lord Torsden.” The Master of Horse made an unctuous introduction.
Niarmit’s welcome to Lord Torsden was uncompromising. “Get off that horse. I don’t care what my idiot seneschal promised you, your fucking head comes off right here, right now.”
Torsden merely smiled at the vitriolic greeting. “I’d love to oblige your Majesty, but circumstances prevent me.”
Niarmit caught sight of Hepdida for the first time. “On second thoughts, Hepdida, get the Helm,” she cried. “We’ll make the smug bastard wear it.” She spun back towards Torsden, the blade shaking in her hand as she shouted, “now are you going to get off that horse or am I going to pull you down and hack you to pieces in the dirt?”
The white heat of the queen’s fury was unlike anything Hepdida had seen before. She tried to keep her own voice calm. “Niarmit, you’re scaring me.”
“Where’s Yannuck, where’s my boy.” Isobel came running from the shadow of the inner bailey. “What have you done with my boy?”
“For the last time, get off the fucking horse!” Niarmit screamed. “Or I will cut you off it one fucking limb at a time.”
Torsden’s grin grew broader and he held up his hands with a rattle. There was a chain on them running in a tight loop around the horn of his saddle. As he shook his feet, Hepdida saw that they too were manacled to the stirrups. “I’d love to oblige, your Majesty, but as you see, it is not quite as easy as just getting off the fucking horse.”
“My boy,” Lady Isobel mouthed at Hepdida’s side, looking beyond the cav
alrymen to the still open gate. “My boy! My boy!”
There was a clatter of hooves in the archway, two new riders came charging into the courtyard. In the lead a small boy on a white horse, behind him a soldier on a roan mare.
“Yannuck, my boy!” Isobel ran towards the young rider, who brought his steed to an elegant stop beside her.
“Mama,” he cried.
“Kimbolt!” Hepdida exclaimed as the second rider hove into view, approaching the reunion of mother and son with a hesitant discretion.
“That idiot seneschal of yours is quite quick with his sword, your Majesty,” Torsden observed, though Niarmit did not seem to be listening.
“My horse threw a shoe,” Yannuck was saying as he dismounted into his mother’s arms, trying to simultaneously enjoy and shrug off her embrace.
“Took ages for the smith to get the forge warm,” Kimbolt was explaining. His voice sounded strange. As he slipped off his horse Hepdida saw that he had a swollen split lip and an ugly yellow bruise around his right eye which had all but closed. “I thought we’d catch back up, before they got here.”
Words tailed off into silence. Mother and son clutched at each other oblivious to the rest of the world. Kimbolt stood stiff and awkward staring past Hepdida at the queen. Niarmit was frozen to the spot, lips parted, eyes wide, the sword still in her hand but gripped tight enough to squeeze the blood from her fingers.
“Well which is it to be,” Torsden said. “Head off? head on? I haven’t got all day?”
The spell was broken, Niarmit gave a slow half shake of her head then turned away, flinging the sword aside. Hasty steps took her from the open courtyard and its guards and visitors. One hand was at her face, the other reached out infront of her as she stumbled through the privacy of a dark doorway. The guard had to step smartly to one side to avoid her crashing into him. And then she was gone.
Kimbolt looked after her a moment, then at Hepdida and finally Isobel. The Lady of the North cradled her son’s head against a shoulder as she looked at the seneschal’s expression of utter painful bemusement.