Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) (8 page)

Udecht shook his head.  “No, I have much to do tonight.  But if you find a quiet corner of the temple and pray there, I am sure you will be heard.”

“What should I pray for?”

“An untroubled sleep would be a start,” Udecht suggested.

“Of course,” such a sensible suggestion, Kimbolt could have kicked himself for not realising it.  “I shall go at once.”

Udecht nodded as the Captain rose and made for the door, but then held him back with a call.  “And Captain!”

“Yes, your reverence.”

“
Do come to me if anything unusual should come to pass, to me, you understand, not Prince Thren. I trust him not, his eyes are too far apart.”

“Of course your reverence,” Kimbolt hurried away, reflectin
g deeply on the spacing of the Castellan’s eyes.

Sahira Psah bustled into the servants’ kitchen, her eyes sweeping the tables and shelves for a missing plate of victals or her daughter or both.  “Hepdida!” she called.  “Where is that plate of sliced meat from the Castellan’s table?  I had plans for it”

She hesitated, and ran a hand through her own dark hair.  She was much like a
n older version of her daughter, one who had worn the years well, albeit that actually she was only just past thirty summers herself.  She swung round as the pantry door, which had stood ajar, somehow contrived to close itself with an audible creak.  Sahira’s mouth opened, but then closed, her cry of triumph unuttered. She chose instead to approach the pantry with light footsteps.  As she flung the door open, her daughter fell out, her attempt to listen at the door quite unequal to her mother’s subterfuge.

“Well,”
Sahira demanded.  “I guess the missing weeks’ worth of dinners has something to do with you.  And I have already told your father to expect it, so where is it?”

The gir
l stood up, gaze averted, and muttered inaudibly.  “What was that?” Sahira demanded, swinging her daughter round by the shoulder.  “Have you been crying?”

“No,”
sniffed Hepdida, smearing dried tears across reddened cheeks.

Sahira shook her head.  “Nothing so unattractive to a man as a
woman’s tears. You look awful.”

“I thought he liked me,” Hepdida sobbed.

Sahira frowned and shook her head. “Is that where all my week long supply of choice meat has gone, fool girl, squandered on wooing some soldier. You should have come to me. There’s not much about the ways of men I don’t know.  Reckon you’ve got charms enough without calling on choice cuts of venison.”

“I did try to find you before dinner, ma.
” Hepdida’s eyes were hooded in reproach.  “I thought tonight… it felt like it might be special.  But you weren’t there.”

Sahira nodded quickly.  “Aye, gir
l.  I was … I was in the keep, Castellan’s business.”

“Oh,” Hepdida stifled her surprise.

“We’ll see you fixed up, girl, don’t you worry.  Maybe a sergeant might take a shine to you,” Sahira offered good naturedly, putting her arms around her daughter’s shoulders.

Hepdida shuffled off her mother’s embrace.  “I don’t want a sergeant, ma.  I don’t want anyone else.  I just want him, I love him.”

“I used to think like that too,” her mother smiled with all the assurance of an experience crammed thirty one years.

“I’m not you, ma,” Hepdida
shrieked.  “I’m not like you. Not at all.  I just want
one
man.”

Sahira’s hand slammed into her cheek, with force enough to redden it far more than tears of distress ever had done. Stunned Hepdida lifted her hand to her face, feeling the warmth of the smarting blow.  “I’m your mother,” Sahira spat with cold fury.  “And you will use me with more respect.  When I was your age I was n
othing, crawling out of the gutter doing what had to be done until I met your father.  People like us, we find security where-ever we can, pah, love! Love doesn’t put bread on the table or a roof over your head, silly silly little girl.”

“You just don’t know what lo
ve is, you’ve never known love. You’re a sad old woman.”

Sahira’s flung back her hand to strike again, but Hepdida stood her grou
nd.  “Go on then, hit me again. It won’t change how you feel, or how I feel about Captain Kimbolt.”

“Go to your room!” Sahira ground out the instruction through clenched teeth, her raised arm trembling with barely restrained fury.

As abruptly as it had formed, the bubble of Hepdida’s bravado burst, and she fled the kitchen in a fresh deluge of tears.

Xander, in Udecht’s form, hurried down the steps between Sturmcairn’s inner courtyard and the outer bailey.  The inner courtyard was closest to the steep peak to which Sturmcairn clung.  It housed the Castellan’s fortified quarters, the temple and the officers’ mess.    The slope of the mountainside meant that the wall dividing inner courtyard from the outer bailey was five feet high on the Northern courtyard side, but twenty foot high on the Southern bailey side.  At its Eastern end, like a slender spear, rose Sturmcairntor, known to most simply as the Beacon tower.  It soared a clear hundred foot higher than any other building in the castle. 

As he emerged into the bailey, Xander took a long look at the beacon tower. From its crenelated top, a man looking East could see twenty mil
es into Morsalve the capital province of the Kingdom of the Salved.   Perhaps two thirds of that distance away lay Gargator the simple relay tower with its own beacon and small garrison which was the first in the chain of beacon towers stretching from Sturmcairn all the way into the kingdom and beyond.  Xander tried to recall how many steps it was up to the top of the Sturmcairntor; He had counted them once long ago in a half remembered previous life.  Perhaps he would get the chance to do so again this evening – though other matters should press more on his mind.

It was quiet as he crossed the b
ailey, late enough that any soldiers not on watch were hunkered down in the low barracks tucked up against the eastern and western walls.  Again the steep slope of the mountain showed itself in buildings which were single storey at the Northern end, but became two storey as the ground fell away where they neared the southern curtain wall.  There was no-one about, barring the soldiers on the walls, patrolling in pairs.  Xander cursed.  Damn his nephew’s caution, doubling the guard. That would complicate things.

Xander slowed on his approach to the gatehou
se.  It was built on three floors.  The open upper storey was level with the top of the curtain wall, which it merged with seamlessly.  The bottom storey was level with the mountain path and separated from it by portcullises and gates.  Inbetween these two, was a mid-level enclosed guardroom.  This was where the pulleys and housing for lifting the portcullises lay and where any intruders into the gatehouse below could be picked off by crossbows through the murder holes in the floor.

It was this mid-level guardroom which was Xander’s first target. 
He breezed into the square room with a hearty. “Kopetcha, gentlemen,” at which the four guardsmen turned around.  “It is an auspicious evening. My long lost brother is returned to us and I am minded that all should share my joy.  Here.”

He drew out a heavy purse.  The jangle of coins brought the soldiers close
r to him, their approach hastening as he produced the first heavy gold crown.  He twisted the coins around his fingers before depositing one in each palm in turn.  As he placed the last coin, he intoned, “somnus omnibus vobis.” The guardsmen exchanged curious glances as a bout of yawning overtook them all. Before any of them could voice the strangeness of the sensation, a deep lethargy overcame them and they slipped into untidy heaps on the floor gently snoring. Surrounded by sleeping guardsmen, Xander swayed unsteadily, rendered light headed by his fourth magical invocation in under an hour.

He gathered enough wit and energy to pick two knives from sleeping guardsmen’s belts. With four quick strokes he despatched the dreaming sentries into a greater slumber from which they would never awaken.  He cleaned the blades and secreted them in his voluminous sleeves, before
setting off for the lower level. 

Another four guards awaited him there and once more he played the avuncular cleric keen to distribute largesse in celebration of his own return.  However, as the two men gathered around him, one stopped in shock.  A drop of blood had appeared on his hand, and then another.  The puzzled man looked up towards the murder hole above him, through which the blood of one of Xander’s earlier victims was dripping.

Xander acted quickly.  As the blood spattered guard looked up, Xander drove a knife up through the man’s chin and into his head.  His colleague on Xander’s other side, reached immediately for his sword but drew it but an inch or two before the false priest’s other knife was driven through his throat.  As two men spluttered into pools of blood on the ground, the remaining two, still some feet away, switched from curious beggars to alert warriors. Swords unsheaved, mouths widening to cry out an alert.

Xander flung out
his hands, fingers working faster then ever before as he exclaimed “fulgur percutiamque vos.”  A crackle of lightning shot from his outstretched hand, ricocheting back and forth between the two guardsmen as they convulsed in its arcing embrace. As the bodies fell to the floor amid a stench of singed flesh, Xander slid to his kness, drained and panting.

It took him a full minute to recover, a desperate minute of listening for sounds of alarm from elsewhere in the fortress, while
blood continued to drip through the murder holes from the chamber above.  At last he was strong enough to stand and stagger over to the Western wall where the palm shaped stone awaited him.  The portcullis was down, the gate was shut and the dull glow from the stone showed the bloodline lock was active.  Of course Thren would have locked it himself on this night of curious homecomings. 

Xander hesitated a moment, examining his conscience with curious detachment as he contemplated the ultimate treachery he was about to commit.  His conscience he found, was not so much clean as entirely absent. Without further delay he pressed his palm against the stone, saw the change
in colour as the ancient magic, which locked and strengthened the portals of Sturmcairn, was discharged.

The wheel to raise the unlocked portcullis spun easily beneath his hands and once it was raised above head height, Xander passed under it to the wooden gate beyond.  While the entire double gate could now be opened that was not yet Xander’s intention.  Instead, he unbarred
and opened the smaller wicket gate set within the northern side of the right hand gate.  It was dark outside, but the wind from the pass howled through the opening he had made.

Xander gazed into the night, his eyes strugglin
g to get used to the blackness. But even as he thought to call out to his unseen compatriots, dark shapes detached themselves from the shadow of the curtain wall and slipped towards the opening of this chink in Sturmcairn’s defences.

A familiar voice at the head of the group dema
nded, “what kept you, my Prince?”

“Hush your mythering, Haselrig,” Xander retorted as his associate slipped by him into the warmth of the body strewn gatehouse.  “You have no idea how hard it is to break open
the most secure castle in the Petred isle.”

As more figures slip
ped through, Haselrig eyed the Prince up and down.  “Is that what your brother looks like these days? I dare say you’ve been enjoying a few home comforts while we have all been freezing our balls off for the last hour waiting for you to open the gate.”

Xander grimaced, “surely not all of you
suffered that penalty, Haselrig, unless the lady elected not to come.”

“Fear not, worm,” a soft
voice at his shoulder commanded.  “Dema is here to make sure you don’t cock it up….. again.”

Xander turned slowly to face the new arrival, a tall female figure whose chainmail glinted beneath the floor length cloak she wore.  Her head was closely hooded and she wore a black gauze mask over her upper face through which she could clearly see out, but through which naught could
be seen of her eyes save an oddly unsettling and chilling sparkle.  “Remember in the days to come, lady, it was I that took Sturmcairn,” he told her.

“
Such a bold worm, to take ownership of a feat that has not yet been accomplished.”

“Without my power to unlock the gates, you would be a frozen icicle on that pass out there.”

“Enough bickering, both of you,” Haselrig interrupted.  “Dema at least is right in one thing. The task is not yet done.  Much peril lies ahead before we maybe sure we have carried the night.”

As the last of the party hastened through the open gateway Xander coughed at the stench and cr
ied out hoarsely.  “Orcs, you mad bitch? you brought orcs into Sturmcairn.”

Dema shrugged.  “The leaders of the
three tribes demanded that honour, and to be honest, three orc chieftains are worth a lot more in this venture than a nine-fingered renegade prince.”

Xander surveyed the
little band.  There were two dozen men in all. It seemed far too few to take a fortress.  There were in fact many more waiting beyond the bend in the pass.  However, only these twenty four had the skills to creep unnoticed beneath the length of the curtain wall and so be close enough to take advantage of the gate being opened.  They were ruffians all. Thieves and killers sent into exile and now returning to put their dubious skills to use in a momentous revenge on the kingdom that forsook them.  And then there were the three orc chieftains, gazing in stupefaction at the unprecedented experience of being inside fortress Sturmcairn.