Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) (14 page)

“He is to be my slave,” Dema proclaimed with a confidence she could not feel.

“He hasss disssrupted my plansss. He mussst sssuffer for that before he diesss.”  Maelgrum stated.

Dema stood defiantly before Maelgrum.  “He is mine.  My property.  My prize.”

The lich was virtually enveloped in a cloud of vapour as three quick strides brought him to the Medusa.  A bony hand seized hold of her snake hair, two serpents in his grasp froze into instant death, a fate which brought cries of pain from Dema’s lips.  Despite the agony in her scalp she reached and pulled off her mask.  Sparkling eyes met the flame red sockets of Maelgrum’s skull.  A glance that would petrify any living thing, brought merely a mocking hiss from the Lich’s fleshless mouth.

“You think to ssstone me
, Dema?”

“He is mine, Maelgrum.  Mine.  I have earned him.”  Through the pain she still resisted.

He twisted the dead snakes.  “Think, my fine friend what you risssk.  I am angry.  I am consssidering ssspiking out thossse eyesss of yoursss, ssslicing of these petsss that conssstitute your coiffure and casssting you into the ssskull crussshersss camp.  I believe that orcsss know well what to do with a bald blind medusssa.  If physssical gratification isss what you ssseek, they would be happy to oblige you endlesssly.”

“He is mine Maelgrum.”

“No, Dema.  You are mine, you are all mine. It ssseemsss that you forget it.”

“You could not kill me.”

“Isss it the power or the inclination that you doubt I posssesss?” The Lich drew her face close to his, frost formed on her skin in the freezing air that surrounded him.

“I serve you well.  Who would command your armies, save I.  No him at least!” she waved an arm towards the watching Xander who, until that point, had been enjoying th
e Medusa’s discomfort at their Master’s hand.

“That isss a point in your favour.”  She dropped to the floor as Maelgrum released his grip.

“Can I have him?”

“One h
uman life, what isss that worth?” Maelgrum asked the night sky before suddenly swinging his ice cold hand hard across the kneeling Medusa’s cheek.  The force of the blow flung her half stunned across the courtyard.  “Yesss, I think that isss about right. A blow of my hand isss the price.  You have paid, you can have him - when you can ssstand again of courssse.”

The borrowed horses were uneasy, either with the circumstances that had brought them to their present riders, or the tension that filled the air between the two humans.  Niarmit led on the roan mare, Kaylan followed at a distance of carefully calculated deference.  Neither thief nor Princess had the inclination to break the silence as their mounts picked a careful way along the stony pass rising into the blue tinged peaks of the Hadran mountains.  Each rider was alone with their thoughts while the wind whipped around their muffled faces.  The climb from foothills to the crest of the rarely used pass was near halfway done, when the steady clip-clopping of Kaylan’s steed stopped. 

It was a moment before Niarmit realised, swivelling on her own mount to look back at her stationary companion.  The thief was standing in his stirrups, head inclined as though sniffing the air. 
Niarmit was about to ask what he was listening for when she heard it too, carried within the wind the unmistakeable howl of wolves. 

Niarmit saw a deep reproach in the blank expression that Kaylan afforded her.  “I would not kill them,” she said defiantly.  “Even if they were collaborators,
they are people of Undersalve not orcs to be slaughtered.”

A fresh gust of wind brought guttural whoops and cries embedded with
the animal snarls.  “Well, my Lady, there’s orcs a plenty behind us now,” the thief reflected stoically.  “Doubtless been untying those collaborators and asking who stole their horses.”

“We must outrun them.”  She gathered her reins, ready to set thought to deed but Kaylan was shaking his head.

“Horses will never outrun wolf riders, not on this ground.”

“Then we must fight.”

“I, not we, my Lady.  Yours was always a greater destiny than mine. You must fly, go on claim it.  I will hold them here a while.”

“Don’t be a fool Kaylan,” she snapped at his cloying offer of s
acrifice. “We do this together, side by side.”

He seemed ready to argue, but then shrugged agreement as another airborne howl heralded the imminent arrival of their pursuers around the last turn of the pass som
e three hundred yards below.  Drawing a sword to gesture up the path he suggested, “the trail narrows there, my Lady.  Two stood side by side could make a decent stand.”

“Agreed.” She urged her horse to motion
.  Kaylan drew up behind her and then suddenly with a great shout, hit the Princess’s animal on the rump with the flat of his sword.  The mare reared up at this insult, nostrils flaring as it also caught the scent of the approaching great wolves.  With another blow the horse was on its way, galloping pell mell up the pass as Niarmit clung helplessly to its neck, struggling with the twin aims of soothing the charging beast and directing its frantic flight so neither of them should stumble over the precipitous edge to the trail. 

When, at last she could spare a backward glance she could see Kaylan hurling at an equally furious pace down the pass just as the first of their pursuers rounded the dis
tant outcrop of rock.  The thief and his mount hurled into the head of the irregular column of wolf-riding orcs.  One, no two were knocked over the edge of the pass by the unexpected counter-strike, but then Kaylan’s horse was down and a dismounted orc had somehow got on the other side of the unhorsed thief, drawing an ugly looking sword to plunge into the snarling growling fray which surrounded her most faithful companion.

“You fool, Kaylan, you bloody fool,” Niarmit cried into the sweating mane of her still panicked horse.

Vesten liked working for the Governor.  In times that were in so many ways inhuman, Odestus treated his secretary with exceptional consideration, a favour the pale faced administrator repaid through his impeccable discretion.  He told no-one of the nausea his master experienced at the grotesque public executions which passed for orcish entertainment. H
HH
e understood the portly mage’s appointments of brutal middle men, like Galen and Nordag.  Creatures to whom the Governor could entirely delegate the bone breaking nail pulling realities of rulership in post-Bledrag Undersalve.  Vesten knew his master’s public shows of rage were carefully orchestrated charades to keep his underlings uncertain of his favour and therefore of their own livelihoods.  Moments of real anger were rare and yet, this was one such moment and for the first time Vesten felt that frisson of threat which Odestus’s play acting usually reserved for orcs and collaborators.

“How many can we put in the field,
now?” the Governor demanded as he paced along the tent.   

“Twelve thousand orcs,
five thousand nomads at this point.  In a week’s time we will be fully prepared as planned…”

“We don’t have a week.  Our M
aster’s plans, our plans, have changed.” Odestus stormed.  “We break camp in twelve hours.”

“Twelve hours…” Vesten’s jaw dropped.  “What of the
wolf-riders?  Two brigades are on detachment hunting down Nordag’s killers.”

“Recall them.  Galen will have to trus
t to his own resources. I need all the cavalry I can muster, they can rendez-vous with us in two days at the confluence of the River Nevers and the Saeth.”

“
What is our objective, Governor?” 

Odestus looked up sharply at the unnecessary question.  “We march from here to where the Nevers meets the Saeth, where do you
think we would be headed Vesten?”

The secretary stroked his thin
wispy beard nervously.  “That would take us towards the Lord Feyril’s domain in Hershwood.”

Odestus have a quick grim nod.  “Hershwood, it was always going to be Hershwood.  We have unfinished business with Lord Feyril from Bledrag field.”

“Orcs’ blood though, Governor,”  Vesten could not hide his fear.  “Attacking elves, in their own forests?”

“Let us hope it is more e
lves’ blood than orcs’ blood, Vesten.  And that our Master’s other plans run more smoothly than they have so far.”

Kaylan was in the midst of the orcs.  His initial charge had sent two of them tumbling to their doom but now he was on foot, his short sword a meagre weapon in the face of snarling long toothed opponents of both lupine and orcish varieties.  A wolf’s snout darted towards him, he dodged right and thrust his blade up through the creature’s snout.  It gave an earsplitting howl of pain and a jerk of its head as it all but wrenched the blade from his grip.  Kaylan ducked as a club whistled past his ear, for the moment his light armour and lightning reflexes were keeping him safe, but with his assailants crowding in on him, his slim advantage of speed was being nullified.  He parried one blow but then a club connected with his knee and he collapsed flashing his sword across an orcish ankle as he fell.  Biting his tongue against the pain he rolled on to his back to face the foul stink of rotting meat presaging the leap of a wolf towards him, its jaws wide, ready to clamp around his throat.

There was a sudden howl from an animal he had not struck, a cry of orcish alarm. Kaylan got his leather clad arm up to block the animal at his throat, but its teeth fastened on his wrist, sinking through the hardboiled leather as though it were softest silk.  Kaylan bellowed his own pain as the animal’s teeth met between the bones of his wrist.  Above him, through eyes reddened with agony he saw an orc swinging a club towards his lightly helmed head.  There
were more orcish shouts and other voices too, deep sonorous voices that awakened in Kaylan memories of childhood visits to markets to learn the art of pickpocketing.  Then the club connected with his head.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so beautiful,” the elf lady said.  “It is as though the Goddess is mocking us.”

“How so, Illana?”  Her husband gently enquired.  His wife was tall, but the Elf lord was taller still, his dark skin
was uncreased by age.  Only the steel grey beard and hair, both trimmed in a bygone style, bore testament to his venerable status even within his long lived kind.  Nonetheless, he moved with the fluid ease of youth to pull his wife towards him and meet her troubled gaze with his own soft grey eyes.

“Yo
u know my Lord, what peril we face. The greatest in a millennium, and yet when we have so much to lose. The Goddess makes the very leaves sing her praises.”

The elf L
ord held her close against him as they both looked around the clearing at the rich spectrum of autumn colours, the reds and purples, coppers and golds  and a dozen shades between with which the trees had decorated themselves. 

“Methinks, Illana, the Goddess intends only to remind us what it is we will be fighting for.
  Nature’s beauty beyond compare.”

Their reflections were b
roken by the arrival of an elf captain in shimmering chainmail. “My Lord Feyril, my Lady Illana, all is ready.”

“Give us a moment more, Captain Findil
,” the old elf commanded.  The Captain bowed low and withdrew along the narrow forest path whence he came.

Illana watched him go with a frown.  “I see in young Findil
an eagerness for the fight, my Lord.  He should have more sense of what he … what we all have to face.”

“He has
but five hundred Summers, my love. That youthful ignorance may yet be his shield.  He knows of Maelgrum only through tales he has been told and they can never touch the reality we both faced long years ago.  Besides, we have grown strong in the Dark One’s absence. He shall not find us unprepared for his return.”

“Aye, my Lord,
mind our numbers grow so slowly.  A day on a battle field can wipe out those whom it took two centuries of the Goddess’s favour to nurture.”

He tilted her face towards his.  “It is our destiny Illana, that which is dead cannot be killed, so ‘twas always chance we might fight Maelgrum again.  The Goddess spared us that trial in
the time of Chirard’s madness. Let us not now begrudge the fact that we must take up arms again.”  He raised his voice to call towards the trees.  “A moment longer, Captain Findil!”  The faintest rustle, inaudible to all but elvish ears, signalled the unseen Captain’s shamefaced withdrawal.

“I said he was eager.”

“And he is right, I must be on my way.”

“King Gregor will have need of good counsel and strong spears in these dark times.  I hope he heeds your advice.”

Feyril nodded, “he must be persuaded.  Since Maelgrum fell, there is magic in this world of which the Dark One knows nothing.  Therein lies our only hope to surprise and defeat him.”  

They stood a moment longer in silence, drinking
deeply of each other’s company, savouring the last few seconds before parting.

“You must go,” she said, pushing him gently away.

“The little wizard will come, my love, you know that.”

“And I will be ready for him.”