The SteelMaster of Indwallin, Book 2 of The Gods Within (8 page)

~~~

An odd silence descended on the castle yard as the last of the mob raced through the gates on hastily saddled mounts, and AnnaRail breathed a sigh of relief. She crossed the yard quickly to get in out of the rain, but she met Tulellcoe standing just inside the main entrance, and at the look on his face her heart almost came to a stop.

“What have you done?” he demanded coldly.

She ignored him, tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm and spun her to face him. “What have you done?”

She yanked her arm out of his grip. “No more than any mother would do.”

“You’re a fool!” he said, then turned away.

She reached out desperately and caught his arm, but he refused to be stopped and pulled her along beside him. “Where are you going?” she pleaded.

He halted, turned to face her. “I’m going to find him myself, and carry out the Council’s sentence.” He hesitated, looked in her eyes, and, as if reading her thoughts, added, “And you can believe I’ll not be foolish enough to follow horses ridden by sacks of grain.”

She reacted without thought. Her magic came upon her unbidden, coalesced into a black, hot spark of hatred cupped within the palm of her hand. She swung it at him like a club, realizing she had lost control and might well kill him. But his hand shot out instinctively and caught her wrist in an iron grip, stopping it only inches from his face. They stood that way for several seconds, facing each other silently while she fought for control, and slowly the power she had called forth faded, though not until she had released it completely did he release her hand. Shamefully she dropped it to her side.

Tulellcoe’s face could have been chiseled from stone for all the expression it held, but his eyes cut into her soul like white-hot steel. “As much as I hate that damn Council, I have to admit they’re right.”

“You don’t know that,” she shouted.

“And you don’t know they’re wrong.”

Roland, speaking softly, startled them both. “I do.”

Tulellcoe turned to face him. “What did you say?”

“I said I know the council is wrong.”

“You know nothing.”

Roland shook his head sadly. “The only thing I don’t know, is how I know what I do know. But I do know the Council is wrong, as only I can know such things.”

Tulellcoe shook his head, but while outwardly he scoffed, AnnaRail saw that Roland’s words had stung him, and she understood then that he was forcing himself to do what he thought was right, even while he hated the doing of it.

“Use your own judgment,” she said to him. “Don’t follow the dictates of the Council blindly.”

He frowned uncertainly, then looked at Roland, and the silence between them grew heavy and stilted. Then he turned about, threw the doors of the castle open, and walked out into the stormy night.

Olivia stepped out of a shadow near the base of the stairs. “Well done, Roland. You may have just saved Morgin’s life.”

AnnaRail exploded. “What do you mean well done? You betrayed my son to that pack of wolves and now you speak of saving his life.”

The old woman threw her head back and laughed hatefully. “Oh you foolish woman! Do you think there is anything you do within these walls that I do not know about long before the doing of it? If I had wanted those jackals to have him, they would have had him. Do you believe for an instant you could have spirited him away without my help? Who do you think instructed the guards to open the gates for the swordsman and the
twonames
and the peasant? Had it not been for me those gates would have never been opened in the first place.”

Speechless, AnnaRail spluttered, “But—”

“But nothing!” the old woman shouted. “Your greatest danger was Tulellcoe, and you didn’t even realize it. He feels responsible for Morgin. He knew about this talisman even before Csairne Glen, but he failed to help Morgin then, and he failed to help him during the intervening months, so he blames himself now that Morgin is under sentence of death, and he would rather kill Morgin himself, kill him cleanly, than let those jackals have him.”

“But why didn’t you stop him?” AnnaRail demanded.

Olivia shook her head. “The only way to stop Tulellcoe when his mind is made up is to kill him, and not even Morgin is worth that. Tulellcoe can be as stubborn as Morgin, and as uncontrollable when his mind is set. The two of them are alike in so many ways, if I didn’t know Tulellcoe better I’d wonder if he didn’t do a little whoring about nine months before Morgin was born. The only way to stop Tulellcoe is to convince him to stop himself, and Roland began that process by introducing doubt with his intuition. But you had to lose control like a stupid young girl, and in doing so you hurt Morgin’s cause in Tulellcoe’s mind. We can only hope the doubt Roland introduced will grow, for Tulellcoe will find the whoreson, and if that doubt fades between now and then, then Morgin will die. It is that simple.”

~~~

Rhianne stumbled up to her room, conscious only of the sword and its power. A part of her knew she should feel some triumph at Morgin’s escape, but the talisman demanded too much of her for her to feel anything beyond a need to find a place where she would not be disturbed.

Her handmaidens were waiting for her excitedly, and immediately they began a flood of gossipy twittering that threatened to overwhelm her. But she silenced them with a single, angry bark, and when they finally took notice of the magic in her eyes they understood what was required of them. In silence they helped her out of her wet clothing, wrapped her in a dry nightgown and put her to bed. But she was barely conscious of these things, for all of her power was devoted to the sword, to holding it at bay during the first critical hours of Morgin’s escape so he could concentrate on the world about him.

She shut out the world around her, thought only of Morgin and the blade, placed her own magic between his power and that of the sword, and let the hours pass without rest or comfort. She had never done anything so terrifying, for as she penetrated deeper into the depths of the talisman’s magic, a malign intelligence hovered there, an unwholesome consciousness that, until then, had been aware only of Morgin. But now, with her interference, it had grown aware of her, and never again would she be able to lower her defenses fully and rest with ease.

Chapter 5: To Sense the Sword

Morddon brought Mortiss to a sudden halt and eyed the trail suspiciously. All about him the soft roar of a slow drizzling rain spattered on the leaves of the forest. It made him uneasy to have his sense of hearing so encumbered when on the trail of his enemy, not to mention the discomfort of the damp cold that penetrated to his soul. For the hundredth time he looked at the sky, but blanketed by low, gray clouds it gave no hope the rain would end soon.

He climbed wearily out of Mortiss’ saddle, squatted in the middle of the trail and stared for a long time at the hoof prints of what was undeniably a group of seven Kulls. Without Morgin’s memories to guide him, Morddon would not have known what a Kull was, for they were foreign to this time and this dream.

The spoor was fresh, not more than a few hours old, the signs were there for even the most inexperienced tracker to read: seven Kulls; not six, not eight, but exactly seven. And yet only that morning he had been following just three. Something strange was going on; of that he had no doubt.

He got back into the saddle and started up the trail again, moving with even more caution than before. He was well behind his own lines, and time and again he thought there should not be groups of Kulls roving about here. Possibly his enemy might begin using Kulls at this time, and a small number of halfmen might become separated from their main column, and through the fortunes of war even find themselves behind the lines of their enemy. But this was the second such group Morddon had come across, and like the first, after tracking it for some time, it had met and joined forces with another such group. He continued tracking them in the constant, steady drizzle of the rain-soaked forest.

Morddon had been scouting the Goath hordes for Metadan for more than a month, and during that time Metadan’s forces had met the enemy in full-scale engagements twice, and both times they had been victorious, though not without losses of their own. Morddon knew that he—and the intelligence he’d gathered—had been partly responsible for those victories, and that gave him almost as much satisfaction as doing the killing himself, though he’d managed to do his own share of killing on his scouting expeditions. Then six days ago the clouds set in and the rain began; it had stopped only occasionally during that time, poured heavily for brief periods too, but mostly it just rained a constant, steady drizzle, without wind or thunder or lightning.

The weather ended any plans for real battles, so he decided to come in and get a well-deserved hot meal since he’d been out on the trail for more than twelve days. But on his way in, after crossing into what was friendly territory, he’d come across the trail of that first group of Kulls: two of them. He followed them, and the next day they joined up with four more that had come from a different direction, and that night he killed them all in their sleep.

It had bothered him at the time; two separate groups of Kulls well behind enemy lines meeting and joining forces. But then, stranger things had happened in war. And then late yesterday he’d come across the trail of three more. Of course he took up the trail, intending to catch up with them and kill them in their sleep like the others, and of course it troubled him that there were three such groups of halfmen wandering through these hills, but for the third group to join up with a fourth . . . Morddon didn’t need magic to know that something was up.

About midday the rain stopped, though the clouds hung close and gray. But now, without the constant patter of raindrops on the forest leaves, Morddon’s ability to hear danger improved. Several hours later when, without warning, he caught a hint of sound at the edge of his hearing, he pulled Mortiss to a stop and waited, and after many seconds it came again: a faint, distant cry of death.

He dismounted and led Mortiss carefully off the trail, while Morgin pulled a cloak of shadow about both man and horse. He found it difficult moving through the undergrowth of the forest, but earlier he’d spotted a high ridge from which he should be able to see a good distance through the mist shrouded hills, and a direct route appeared to be the only means of gaining access to it. The climb was difficult, but as he approached the ridge his ears picked up certain sounds with increasing clarity: a shout, the clash of a sword, silence for a long time, the whinny of a frightened horse, the hoof beats of a charging animal on a muddy road.

At the summit of the climb he left Mortiss to graze, then dropped to his hands and knees and crawled to the lip of the ridge. Far below, in the middle of a long strip of road that wound its way through the misty hills of the forest, a coach lay on its side. The coachman, two attendants, and two guards lay sprawled and lifeless in the road, while nine Kulls swarmed over and about the coach. He reasoned that the seven he was following had met up with another two, then as a group had stumbled across an unlucky traveler on the road below.

While Morddon looked on the Kulls pried open the door of the overturned coach. Three of them dropped down into the body of the coach, and moments later lifted the unconscious form of a woman from its interior. And though the distance was too great to distinguish any detail, Morddon caught a momentary flash of bone white skin and knew the woman to be AnneRhianne.

The Kulls moved quickly, tying her to the bottom of the coach between its axles in an upright position with both arms and legs spread wide, which meant she was still alive. The Kulls were probably going to have a little fun, and since Morgin understood all too well what the Kulls considered fun, Morddon started hastily down the slope leading Mortiss on foot.

With the Kulls concentrating on looting the coach, and their minds preoccupied in anticipation of torture and rape, Morddon took the chance of depending almost wholly on Morgin’s shadowmagic and his own sure footing. The Kulls would wait for AnneRhianne to regain consciousness before beginning, so he had only a little time to spare. But a deep ravine cut in the side of the hill forced him to veer far to one side, and by the time he reached the road the overturned coach was hidden around a sharp bend far in the distance.

Leading Mortiss he trotted up the road, and at the bend he pulled her into the forest and started to tie her reins to a nearby tree. But she shook her head wildly and refused to let him do so, though she was careful to avoid making any noise by snorting, and at the intelligence he saw in her eyes he changed his mind. “Have it your way then,” he whispered, tying her reins loosely to the saddle horn. “But stay here until you’re needed.”

He untied the bow case from the saddle, unwrapped the canvas and strung the bow quickly. The bow pleased him. He’d made it from the best ash, spent hours shaping and treating the wood. It could fire one of the steel tipped, arm-length shafts he’d fashioned straight through a man without stopping, or pierce full plate armor. He worried momentarily about the string so recently fashioned of stretched gut and not properly aged, and now exposed to the damp. But he forced that thought from his mind, strapped his sheathed sword over his back to keep it out of the way, slung his quiver of arrows over his shoulder, and slipped quietly into the forest and one of Morgin’s shadows.

The coach came into sight as soon as he rounded the bend. He didn’t go deep into the forest, but stayed close to the edge of the road, slipping in and out of the shadows there as he worked his way toward the coach, trying to keep it in sight at all times. AnneRhianne had regained consciousness, and was pulling quite actively at her bonds, shouting angrily at her captors, though with no hint of hysteria in her voice. With the coach turned on its side, the Kulls had tied her to its underbelly, torn her clothing away down to her waist, and two of them were busily groping at her breasts and crotch. A third Kull was on his knees in the middle of the road much closer to Morddon and facing him, busily rifling the body of the coachman; his back to his comrades and the coach. Morddon kept a close eye on that one since he might look up at any moment. Then one of the two groping at AnneRhianne leaned back and slapped her with a blow that resounded loudly through the damp mountain air. “Bitch!” he shouted at her.

Morddon froze as the Kull in the middle of the road looked up and back toward the coach. “You monsters!” AnneRhianne screamed. One of the Kulls jammed a torn piece of her gown into her mouth to silence her, then the two went back to their groping. Their comrade in the middle of the road laughed and returned to his scavenging.

They were just within bowshot, but still too far for good accuracy, and he still didn’t know where the other six Kulls where, though he saw their horses tethered on the far side of the coach. As he worked his way closer he caught glimpses of four more behind it, but even after he’d reached a reasonable range he had yet to locate the last two. Tentatively he drew an arrow, knocked it, edged closer a few more steps, still wondering where the last two Kulls might be.

“Blast you!” one of the two Kulls groping at AnneRhianne screamed. He cuffed her hard with a closed fist, gripped her chin and slammed her head against the coach’s floorboards two or three times. Her eyes fluttered near the edge of consciousness. This time the Kull in the road scavenging the dead coachman did not look up, but the overturned coach rocked and one of the missing Kulls hoisted himself up out of its interior. He climbed up onto the side of the coach and looked down at his two comrades.

One more left,
Morddon thought.
Just one more.

The Kull standing on the coach growled at his comrades, “If you can’t handle that bitch any better than that I’ll take her for myself.”

The one who’d cuffed AnneRhianne displayed a large, ugly knife and snarled, “If you try you’ll get nothing but steel.”

Morddon tensed, turned slightly to one side to get a better aim and pull on the bow, stood up straight and flexed it once. He’d rather be closer, and he still wanted to know where that last Kull was.

The halfman standing above shook his head and turned his back on them, bent to look into the interior of the coach again. AnneRhianne spit the gag from her mouth; her head shot forward, her teeth flashed and she bit into the ear of the halfman holding the knife.

“You whore,” he screamed. He hit her with the butt of the knife but she refused to let go of his ear. He flailed wildly at her while his comrade cuffed her again and again. But when they finally pulled her away the Kull’s blood dripped freely from her mouth, and with a triumphant gleam in her eyes she spit his ear in his face.

“Ahhh!” he raged, grabbed a fist full of hair, forced her head back and raised his knife to cut her throat.

Morddon’s bow rose into firing position almost with a will of its own, and his muscles strained against the pull of it. He sighted down the arrow toward the back of the Kull’s head, a part of him conscious of the shaft’s fletching tickling his cheek. But at the last moment he realized the shaft would pass straight through the Kull’s head and into AnneRhianne without stopping. In the flash of an instant he changed his aim to the outstretched arm holding the knife, corrected upward for distance and slightly to one side, leading the arm already striking inward toward her throat. Then he relaxed the fingers clutching the string.

~~~

AnneRhianne understood instantly she had pushed her tormentor too far, though she experienced a moment of triumph in the realization she would die outright now, rather than being raped first by this monster and his comrades, then killed afterwards. But as the blade rose high above her head and paused against the gray background of the afternoon sky, she thought of WindHollow, and of the likelihood he would not die so cleanly, and in that moment the blade began its descent toward her throat.

She heard, but took no notice of, the familiar hiss that always reminded her of water on white hot steel. Then a loud thud and a sharp vibration pounded the coach’s floorboards. And the knife, still glinting high above her exposed throat, jerked to a sudden and unexpected stop.

The monster holding the knife frowned angrily, looked toward his arm to see what had prevented it from delivering the death he so wanted to see in the Benesh’ere woman’s eyes, and both she and he saw it at the same instant: a steel tipped, Benesh’ere war arrow, glistening with the blood of his arm, pinning it to the coach. The monster looked down at her with a face wholly ignorant of pain but stretched into a grimace of hatred. He turned with a growl, moving awkwardly because of the arm still pinned to the coach, tried to look over his shoulder to locate the source of this affront.

The hiss came again, the second arrow punched into the ear she had bit off, out through the temple on the other side of his head, thudded into the coach’s floorboards, and the monster stood with his head spitted like a gobbet of meat and pinned to the coach beside his arm. He twitched, but could not fall.

~~~

Morddon tried not to hurry as he knocked another arrow, took careful aim, paused for just one instant. The dead Kull’s comrade was busy biting one of AnneRhianne’s breasts, and again any shot now would kill her as well as him. But then the monster looked up, saw the fate of his comrade, turned to look down the road, and Morddon’s third arrow caught him squarely in the center of his chest, thunked into the floorboards of the coach and pinned him upright.

“You bastards,” AnneRhianne cried. “Stop that! Take your hands off me.”

Morddon hesitated, then realized she was buying him time, certainly not knowing who he was, but knowing a sudden silence would draw the attention of the other Kulls, all of whom were still ignorant of the fate of their two dead comrades. He knocked another arrow, waited for the Kull standing on top of the coach and bending over the open door to rise to an upright position. Then he fired the arrow cleanly through the back of the halfman’s head, though it didn’t stop there, but arced well out over the forest beyond. The Kull twitched, leaned heavily to one side, then toppled off the coach with a crash.

Still kneeling in the middle of the road, the Kull scavenging the dead coachman looked up at the sound and turned to look over his shoulder. Morddon knocked another arrow, raised his bow, fired the shaft square into the middle of the halfman’s chest. He toppled backward off his knees and lay face up in the road.