Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) (35 page)

The big orc seized her by the hair and pulled her upright.  Much as she tried to rise in a smooth fluid movement, Hepdida still found her body twisting awkwardly at Grundurg’s handling.  She felt one of the wounds on her shoulder crack and open and the trickle of warm fresh blood across her skin.

“Grundurg had good hunting today.”  The orc breathed foully in her face. “Killed many humans. Took their food.  Farmers are soft, Grundurg’s sword is hard.  Splits skulls very easy.  Women they are soft too. See this.”  He thumped his chest where his black armour was covered in drying blood.  “This their blood.” He tapped the left shoulder.  “This was baby’s blood, killed him first.”  Then the right shoulder.  “This mother’s blood, she was pretty, like you used to be.  Killed her next. “

“You bastard,” Hepidida breathed
.

“Last,” he gestured across his chest at the broadest stain.  “This was fat
her’s blood, killed him last. Let him see what I did to his woman and his child.  That made him angry, so angry.  I gave him sword, said do your worst.”

The orc flung back his head and laughed.  “I didn’t kill him quick.”  The orc gave a quick chopping motion with his hand.  “Cut his a
rm off, then killed him slow. Let him see how he had failed.  He not protect his woman, not protect his child, not avenge them either.  He cursed me as he died.”  Again Grundurg guffawed in amusement at the funniest thing he had seen in weeks.  “I tell him, Grundrug collects curses of dying humans, Grundurg got many of them. He say ‘see you in hell, orc bastard.’” Grundurg was shaking his head with mirth, his eyes glinting at the memory.  “Grundurg say, sure but you go to back of line, back of long line, very long line.”

At last the orc let Hepdida go, but only so he could slap his own leg at the hilarity of his bon mot to the dying farmer.

“You bastard,” Hepdida repeated more loudly.

Her contempt finally punctured his mood and he sneered at her, nostrils flaring.  “You be caref
ul.  You not so pretty anymore. Lots of pretty human girls out there.  Maybe I get rid of you. Take one of them, give them a blanket of your skin.”

She shivered at the reality of his thr
eat.  “You were to keep me safe. The Lady Dema will be angry with you if I die.”

He shrugged.  “Snake lady might not come back.  Grundurg has to wait here for old elf, snake lady has to stay …. stay somewhere else.  Grundurg might never meet snake lady again.”

“You can’t be sure of that. Who knows what your foul master might order.  She could be on her way here now.”

There was the briefest flicker of fear in the orc’s eyes as he imagined
Dema striding momentarily into the tent.  But then he seized at his neck and pulled out a black disc on a leather lanyard.  “Snake lady not coming.  Master talk to Grundurg, talk to Grundurg through this. This big magic.”  He waved the disc at her.  “Master tell Grundurg if snake lady coming. She not coming yet.”

“But she might come. Your M
aster might tell you today she is coming.”

Grundurg nodded sourly.  “Master might, and if he does Grundurg kill you.”

Hepdida drew in a sharp breath at the cold certainty of the orc’s promise.  “The lady would not like that, she would punish you.”

The orc just shrugged.  “Grundurg tell her you got ill, no shaman to cure you and you died.  Snake lady never find you, not unless she look in cooking pot.”  This idea seemed to amuse the
chieftain even more than the farmer’s death and he fell to another fit of grunting shuddering laughter. 

Hepdida edged away towards her allotted
space at the foot of Grundurg’s fur covered sleeping couch.  She was determined not to crack, but her lip was trembling and her eyes were wet.  Day in day out, one day at a time, she had been determined to survive.  But despair flooded over her and the dam holding back the tears finally crumbled.   Tied to the chieftain’s bedframe, in his tent in the centre of the encampment, surrounded by five hundred orcs there could be no escape from a captor who had just promised to kill her.  The last shreds of hope died in Hepdida’s weeping heart.

Vesten breathed a huge sigh of relief.  The tall keep of Listcairn was unmistakeable on the North Eastern horizon.  His nightmare would soon be over.  “Come hurry, men,” he called out to the tired and watchful nomad infantry.  “We will sleep in the halls of Listcairn tonight.”

The nomads made no answer beyond a collective scowl at the reedy
voiced secretary on his piebald pony.  “The bloody orcs will have got there first,” one surly foot soldier growled sparking a round of nodding agreement.

“Sure, they’ll have eaten all the food.”

“Taken the best billets.”

“Had all the women.”

“It’ll be turnips for us.”

“In the stables.”

“Sleeping with the pigs.”

The secretary
had not the spirit left to try and raise their grim mood.  He had never wanted independent command, fearing the responsibility, doubting his capacity.  When Odestus had departed on his mysterious mission, Vesten’s task of marching the rest of the army to Listcairn had seemed a simple one.  He had no expectation of facing battle, merely a need to bring twelve thousand orcs and nomads to the captured fortress.  Yet in this simple task he had plumbed new depths of failure. 

“Don’t let the orcs ride off,” had been Odestus’s parting word.  At first Hulgrid, the orc
chieftain, had been the picture of co-operation.  He had advised Vesten, helped him choose the path to take, the order of marching.  When he had suggested to the secretary that parties of wolf-riding orcs should go foraging to East and West, it had seemed reasonable.  But the forays into farmland had lasted longer and longer and brought back less and less food.  And then, one day Hulgrid had announced he was riding off to Listcairn. “I go ahead” he had said.

“You can’t, I fo
rbid it,” Vesten had replied. He may even have stamped his foot.  “We stay together. The Governor ordered it.”

Hulgrid had laughed.  “You too slow, and your horse smell.  If we stay my wolves may e
at your horse, might eat you. Though not much meat on you.”

And so the
wolf-riders had abandoned them, Hulgrid shouting something at the orcish infantry as he rode away.  Vesten had not heard the precise words, but the meaning was clear.  The orc foot soldiers had increased their pace, loping along in a simian stride which the nomad infantry could not quite match.  Slowly the orcs had pulled ahead in a strange walking race and by nightfall, Vesten and the nomads were alone.  A few thousand nomads in hostile territory with no cavalry protection.  Vesten knew that the forces of Morsalve were tied up in a deadly struggle far to the West, but to the East lay Medyrsalve.  As his diminished band crept along in the shadow of the Palacintas Vesten had, by night and day, expected the forces of Prince Rugan to sweep down and destroy them.

The nomads shared his fear, but took little notice of his orders.  His commands were treated like mild suggestions and the rump of
the army had camped and marched where the consensus of its chieftains decided.   Vesten was not its general, merely somebody who happened to be travelling in the same direction who they had decided not to kill.

But at last the nightmare was over.  Listcairn was in sight and, if Hulgrid and the infantry had made it, Vesten would have discharged his duty of bring Odestus’s army to Listcairn, albeit in instalments.

“Riders coming,” one of the sharper eyed nomads declared.

It was a fe
w moments before Vesten’s eyes, strained by hours of candlelit paperwork, could perceive the cloud of dust of fast approaching horsemen.  The distance between them closed steadily as the infantry continued their march.   Vesten could have ridden ahead, but the furious pace of the oncoming riders made him hesitate.  The nomads might not for all practical purposes be his soldiers, but if someone was in such mighty haste, the secretary would rather not meet with them alone.

The riders resolved themselves into a group of two dozen or so cavalry, strung out in a line as they fought to keep pace with their leader.  Vesten had an idea who that would be; though he had never met the Lady
, he knew she now commanded at Listcairn and Odestus had briefed him on her many powers and also her ferocious temper.  He kept his eyes fixed on the ground as she approached and didn’t even raise them as, with a clatter of horse’s hooves, a woman’s voice demanded.  “Who commands here?”

“Him on the scrawny pony.
”

The hooves tramped closer and
the voice snapped, “Who are you? Where is Odestus? Quickly now.”

Vesten let his gaze slide carefully upwards, until he was looking at the speaker’s chin.  “My Name is Secretary Vesten and the Governor is somewhere to the South East of here.”

“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 L
ady 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, bu
t 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 M
aster’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 ne
ed 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 wil
l stay ‘til they have learned, you do not split your force in hostile territory.  Rugan could have destroyed you all piecemeal.”

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

“I’d rather have had Odestus than the whol
e 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.