A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess (22 page)
Read A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess Online
Authors: Ron Miller
She is halfway down the corridor, trying to decide which door she should hazard opening, when the decision is more or less made for her. A figure suddenly emerges from a room whose escaping light momentarily dazzles the princess. She flings her foream in front of her eyes at the same time hearing a tinny voice cry “Bronwyn!”
Lowering her arm, she sees General Praxx standing in the swath of yellow light that pours through the doorway. He had been carrying an armful of rolled papers and in his surprise still clutches them to his chest.
“Praxx!” the princess replies and, with an almost automatic movement, raises her pistol toward his face.
Just as automatically, the general throws the papers at her. She ducks; her pistol goes off, sending its projectile wildly off target to disembowel a cherub high in the plaster wall. She hears the clatter of Praxx’s retreating boot heels. She sets off in hot pursuit.She can hear Praxx descending the big staircase. She hits its brink without thinking of slowing down and her leather-soled boots shoot from under her. She tumbles painfully down the first five or six steps, terrified that she might fall all the way to the bottom. Her lanky, flailing body is no more built for rolling than a starfish’s, fortunately, and she catches herself before breaking either back or neck. Scrambling to her feet, she continues on down the steps with frustrating caution, railing at the distance that the general must be gaining.
At the bottom of the stairs she pauses for a moment, trying to catch her breath long enough to be able to hear Praxx. Elbows, hips and the back of her head are starting to hurt from where they had banged the marble steps. She will be an enormous bruise by noon, she is sure. The palace is unnaturally quiet.
Can he have escaped so quickly?
She carefully, and as silently as she can, continues on into the colonnaded hall. She grasps her saber tightly and only then notices that while she had miraculously maintained a grip on the sword, she had lost her pistol on the stairs.
She is convinced that the general has not gone any further than the great hall. She feels like some hunter prowling among the glossy cylindrical boles of the marble columns, looking for a dangerous and intelligent prey, one that perhaps is now hunting her.
She doesn’t have more than a second to feel justified at her premonition when Praxx suddenly appears from behind one of the columns, sword in hand, already making a swing for her neck. She flinches away, parrying clumsily, a spray of sparks from the colliding weapons not an inch from her face. She feels a sting as the sharp tip glances from her cheekbone. Again the general attacks her and again she parries the blow, this time less clumsily, returning his blow with a thrust. The little man dances back, deflecting her with surprising grace.
She presses her attack and, more by accident than intent, scratches his grey cheek with the tip of her blade. It makes a sound like a nail on slate. A drop of dark blood oozes from the wound; it looks like oil. Praxx seems amazed and confused by the fierceness of the princess’ attack. And probably not a little by the apparition that is now revealed in the supernatural, guttering light of the stray candles: the Princess Bronwyn, for Musrum’s sake, whom he had last seen and remembered as a gangling, spoiled girl of seventeen or so, now far taller than he, her hair streaming as wildly as the blood that flows from her face, splattering against the torn cream-colored uniform. As she swings her saber from side to side, as sinuously as a cobra, the glint of light from its tip like the lidless glitter of a reptile, the general notices that a luminous breast is nearly revealed.
Why doesn’t she cover herself decently?
He had never suspected her of being such a hussy and is surprised and disturbed that it bothers him. And
why
, for Musrum’s sake, would such a thing interest him now, of all times? It never had before. Her luciferase eyes flash luminously, like a cat’s, as she passes from illumination to shadow, from shade to light, and there is a hungry-looking snarl curling her upper lip, exposing one sharp white canine.
Praxx feints, but the princess refuses to respond. He again attacks and there is a brief flurry of sharp silver sparks before the two retreats, the echoes still clamoring unmusically.
Praxx is breathing irregularly and there are odd and uncomfortable pains in the vicinity of his chest and ribs. His vision has a supernal clarity, as though he were watching the action from a point a few feet above his own left shoulder, as through the wrong end of a low-power telescope. He knows for a certainty, at that moment, that the princess is not going to let him escape with his life.
How she has changed!
“It’s a great surprise to see you again,” he says, the first words be has spoken since their duel began.
“I can well imagine. Where’s Payne and my brother?”
“If you can believe me, they’re well on their way from the city.”
“I believe you. I know how far your loyalty goes and how far their cowardice. How long have they been gone?”
“Since the first report of your crossing the river. They must be halfway to Strabane by now.”
“Strabane? Why there?”
“Who knows? They’re both mad.”
“Drop your sword, Praxx, and give yourself up for arrest.”
He looks at the feral princess and knows that she will give him this chance only once, yet something of Payne’s perverseness must have infected him; perhaps he trusts her no more than he trusts anyone else, which is of course not at all, or he perhaps has some idea that if he gets her angry enough she will grow reckless. Whatever his reasons might be, Bronwyn is horrified to hear him say:
“What’ve you seen of your brave Baron Milnikov?”
“
What
?” she cries, her face as unnaturally ashen as the general’s is naturally.
“How did he look the last time you saw him? Hale and hearty?”
“Damn you, Praxx!”
His leer is infuriating her; the point of her saber describes eccentric circles as her hand shakes and wavers. Her vision blurs as unbidden tears well in them. “Tell me what happened to him! Who did it?”
“He lost his head, your Highness. People get into trouble when they lose their heads.”
“
Who did it?”
Praxx looks with satisfaction at the tears that drool down ber face, streaking the blood that covers one cheek, diluting it, causing it to splash in pink rosettes onto her blouse, spattering the pale curve of her right breast. He looks with pleasure upon the wavering tip of her blade.
“Is it possible that Payne is right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That the baron was your lover, I think he might have been correct!”
“You filthy little worm! You dirty . . . “
“Don’t start repeating yourself. You sound like the baron when be died. He denied the very same thing with his last breath.”
“Who killed him, Praxx? Answer me now or I swear I’ll cut you in half where you stand!”
“Why, it is
my
pleasure, entirely,” he replies, coolly, and raises his sword in anticipation.
With an inarticulate howl, Bronwyn throws herself at him, flailing her weapon mindlessly. The general had hoped for this and easily dodges the wildly, thoughtlessly thrashing blade and brings his up against it. The blow, so close to the hilt, stings her hand and for a moment she is stunned. Praxx draws his sword back and in doing so cuts her across the ribs. The edge slices through the fabric as though it were a cobweb; the princess feels only a sharp sting. Yet when she glances down, there is already a flood of crimson pouring down her hip and thigh. Praxx swings for another blow, but Bronwyn parries it at the last moment, deflecting the general’s blade so that instead the flat of it catches her across the temple. Dazed, she staggers back a pace or two.
Praxx is uncertain what to do then. Should he press his attack and attempt to kill the princess, or should he take advantage of having stunned her and make an escape? He chooses the latter.
Dashing past her into the ballroom, he is surprised and delighted to see that the princess’ horse has been waiting placidly, grateful for the few minutes of peace and quiet. He leaps upon its back.
Bronwyn, meanwhile, shakes her head and, glancing down, discovers, to her infinite surprise, her revolver lying at her feet. She glances up and sees that the staircase curves to a point almost overhead: when she dropped the gun at the top step it had fallen directly to the floor below.
She hears her horse nicker, knows immediately what Praxx is doing, snatches up the gun and runs into the ballroom, just in time to see the general and the horse exit through the shattered doors. She runs the width of the room, suddenly conscious of an intense, aching pain in her side, and through the broad opening. Praxx is most of the way across the garden, the horse at almost full gallop, heading diagonally toward the parapet that overlooks the river. The general is evidently no horseman, but it is unlikely that he needs to be. Given its head, all he needs to do is hang onto the animal.
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!