Brutal Women (10 page)

“Of course, my King,” Madden
answered, expression melting into a smile that did not touch his eyes. “Let me
start ahead to bring news of your coming. My Lady must prepare.”

Madden walked from the throne room
with a hand on his sword and death in his eyes. I gazed up at the ceiling where
Flanin still remained, and motioned toward the doors. He gave a nod and
disappeared without a sound to be heard over the hearty cheering and drinking
of the Thanes, King Dunwan, and a blushing Mallen. Yes, the named Prince of New
Skalland was actually blushing.

Like an ill-bred Lady.

When we arrived at Inveress three
days later, Lady Madden gave us all such a pleasant, polite welcoming that Ross
and I were nearly sick. Madden’s Lady was dressed in practical attire,
consisting of a halter top, black leather coat and faded, tattered trousers
that hung loose about her slight form.

Madden seemed moody most of the
night, and he and his Lady left the banquet table early. At the time, I thought
little of it. Flanin sat beside me at supper, grudgingly displaying his table
manners. Even Ross complemented me on my boy’s behavior, and the Thane of Len’s
Lady offered to purchase him from me. I was very proud.

Several of us sparred in Inveress’s
courtyard after the meal. Madden watched coolly with a chipped porcelain cup in
his hand. My boy battled with Ross, and was thrown to the dirt arena many a
time, but his spry, wiry form kept coming back up until he had learned all he
could from her fighting forms. Madden, for the first time, watched my boy with
interest. He had never taken any notice of him, even when his Lady bore him no
children.

As Flanin went to shake hands with
Ross, I noticed Madden’s Lady in the shadows near the stairway leading up into
the guest rooms. Her eyes were narrow slits. I had heard many times the tricks
he played on that unpleasant woman, and I rewarded him with a sweet treat from
New Ley every time I heard of those tricks. Her eyes found their way to me, and
I stared right back at her with the gaze of a woman. For several moments we
stood like that, eye to eye, a courtyard arena between us. She did not turn
away until Flanin rushed up to my side to receive a hearty pat on the back and
a wink. And then, her eyes turned to him.

I could not stand it any longer,
and told my boy that we were going to bed. He protested, but I would not have
him running about with that mad Lady on the loose. Flanin and I shared a good
room at Inveress, and it should have been a restful night, despite Madden’s
Lady. It was not.

“Mother? Banan!”

I threw off my flimsy sheet and
jerked my head to the glowing coals of the fireplace. No, it wasn’t a fire. My
boy stood at the window, fully dressed and armed with his dagger.

“Come to the window,” he said.

I grabbed my sword from beside my
sleeping pallet and went to stand with him at the cracked window. He pulled
back a bit of cloth keeping out the chill night air from a large fracture and
stuck his head dangerously close to the jagged glass.

“I heard a shout,” he muttered. His
hair stuck up in all directions, so dirty it looked as if he bore thick brown
locks like my own. “Nyden and Len came in from a ride last night and asked
Madden if they could see the King. Nyden just went up to the King’s rooms.”

I glanced down into the courtyard
where Madden and Len were speaking in low voices. A door just five rooms down
from our own was flung open, and a piercing cry split the dusky haze of dawn.

“Murder and treason!” Nyden cried,
and pounded down the stairs.

Madden and Len conferred with him a
moment, and then they jumped up the stairwell to Dunwan’s rooms.

“Ring the alarm bell!” Len shouted
as he darted back out from the room.

Nyden sprinted to the great gong
next to the gates and picked up the mallet. A single boom shuddered the air,
and those not already stirring stirred. Those awake flung open their doors and
strapped on their weapons.

“Stay here, boy,” I said to Flanin,
and opened up the door.

“Mother?”

“Stay here!” I shouted, and slammed
the portal shut.

What followed was utter chaos. I
have never heard such wailing and disorder except on a battlefield. Ross and
Annil were ready to slit the throat of Nyden. Len insisted that he and Madden
were innocent. Lady Madden looked as if she were about to faint, even before
Madden stumbled back down the steps, shouting that King Dunwan’s attendants
were drunker than New Ennlanders and covered in the King’s blood, daggers in
their hands. He said he’d killed them in his rage.

Nyden raised a cry of alarm at the
deaths of the attendants and said that they had not been allowed to attend a
proper trial. Len said that the spirits of the dead had to be laid to rest or
would walk about the night seeking revenge.

“There are no such things as
spirits,” Lady Madden contended.

The shouting began to trouble my
ears, and I grew tired of the endless tirade. Lady Madden grew considerably
paler the more Madden spoke. She finally fainted.

“Help the Lady!” Nyden cried, and
rushed to her side. Len and Madden followed suite, fondling over her as if she
were truly as frail as she appeared.

Ross and I exchanged disgusted
looks.

Mallen and Donal, Dunwan’s sons,
stood apart from the others, shock painted on brotherly faces. They would be of
no help. Ross and Annil stood solidly, however, and the three of us stepped
forward as one.

“Yes, look after that Lady,” I
said, voice heavy with scorn. “And when we have our frail, delicate Lady safe
from the sight of blood, we’ll meet together to discuss what happened to our
King.” I glanced over at Madden’s Lady. She watched me closely from beneath
thick, heavy lashes. “Fear and Ladies cloud our judgment. I’m willing to put
both aside to find the traitor who killed our King.”

“I am as well,” Nyden said.

“So I,” Ross and Annil echoed.

The rest rose up a roar of
approval, and at Madden’s say, we went to the hall to discuss the treachery.
All but Mallen and Donal.

By noonday, Dunwan’s sons had fled
without a trace. Nyden said they must have conspired to kill their father. I
disagreed. We all agreed that the servants had either been hired by a higher
personae. Even as we discussed this, thoughts were whirling about in my head
faster than I could grasp them. One thing was ominously clear: I had to get my
son as far away from Inveress as possible.

When we gave Madden the title of
King of New Skalland that night, having no choice because of the amount of his
land holdings and the loss of Prince Mallen, I thought of the witches.

As Madden knelt to receive the
crown, my former companion, my former partner in battle, and I might even go so
far as to say my former friend, looked up at me with a hazy sorrow in his eyes,
and I knew he was thinking of the witches as well. His Lady watched from the
hallway, since Ladies were not allowed into such meetings, and I realized she
knew of the witches’ prophesy. I looked over at her. Her eyes were full of fire
and greed and intense, almost erotic, pleasure as she watched not Madden, not
me, not any of the Thanes, but the crown; a beaten piece of silver embossed
with precious flecks of gold and glass that glowed in the lamp and candle
light.

I knew in that instant who had
murdered our King, who had twisted my companion’s will and the prophesy of the
witches. She stood in the doorway in a nearly transparent swath of crimson linen,
dark as blood; dark as her deepest ambitions.

Days passed. One week, two. I kept
Flanin by my side, and Madden kept me by his. Every time I thought to slip
away, his Lady was offering me a bit of water, some tea, perhaps? Or a look at
the weapon’s room? Flanin went near mad with it all, and disappeared only once.
I screamed and beat him so severely afterward that he did not dare do it a
second time.

I found myself a prisoner in the
place that I had once thought of as my home, the place my boy was raised. And
all the time Ross and Annil were hearing rumors, rumors that Mallen had flown
to New Ennland for their King’s support and Donal had joined the New Illand
clan in the north. More rumors, rumors of spirits and freak storms, of thunder
and lightening appearing out of a cloudless sky more often than usual. Whole
clan holds were said to have been swept away by great winds. But nothing, I
knew, was so horrible as the atmosphere inside Inveress.

It wasn’t until three weeks after
Madden’s coronation that I received my chance to escape. Autumn had begun to
cool into winter, lessening the sun’s bite. Madden decided to hold a banquet in
my honor, and told me to go out to Nyden’s hold in Fyfe to escort Nyden’s Lady
and son to the celebration.

I was so elated at the chance to
leave the stifling hold that I didn’t notice the deadness of his eyes, or the
hunch in his stance. He had not been sleeping well as of late, but I considered
it none of my concern, and shrugged off his manner as having to do with his
lack of rest.

“Flanin,” I said, once we were back
in our room. “Take nothing more than the clothes on your back and your weapons.
We can afford nothing else.”

We left Inveress that morning, and
once out of sight of that dreadful prison, we began to run. Perhaps it was the
joy of freedom, or the relief at knowing Inveress and its crazy Lady lay behind
me, or that my boy was finally going to be safe. Whatever the reason, I did not
think of pursuit or ambush. I did not think.

We slowed at noon and took refuge
in an abandoned car on the High Way. Flanin and I discussed our plight. He
voted that we join Mallen and his growing army in New Ennland.

When darkness came, we were well
off the High Way, far from Fyfe or Inveress, and I let myself relax. Flanin
stayed at my side.

Whisper
.

I stopped still at the noise. We
stood several yards from a stack of dark, hunkered vehicles, little more than
their frames still intact. Flanin motioned in the direction of the vehicles.

My hand rested on my sword hilt,
more out of habit than caution at the moment. I knew I had heard something. But
what?

The noise came from behind me.

In one quick stroke, I drew my
blade and turned to face a man twice my size covered in bits of patched and
battered metal. I cried out to warn Flanin, and another figure emerged, rushing
at my boy from the heap of cars. A third and a fourth arose. It was too dark to
make out any faces, but I knew who had hired them. Even as I felled the first
man, a second and third rushed at me from behind. My sword arm was twisted
painfully behind me.

With every muscle in my body, I
screamed. I screamed so loud that I hoped the treasonous Madden and his frail
Lady heard me, “RUN BOY! MADDEN IS A TRAITOR! A TRAITOR!”

I felt the blow to the back of my
head first, like a heavy hand trying to split open a melon. A sharp object,
dagger or wood, I know not which, forced itself into my side. Once, twice,
three times. They threw me to the ground and began kicking and punching. I lost
count of how many times. The more I moved, the harder they hit me.

I must have blacked out, because
the next moment, I was being dragged by the hair back toward the High Way. One
eye was swollen shut, and I could feel blood trickling down my cheeks like
warm, sticky tears. Why had they not cut my throat or split open my head? What
kind of assassins were they? Poor fellows, most likely. Poor, ignorant
townsfolk trying to get out of debt with their king. I didn’t know if I wanted
to scream or cry. The decision was made for me. My head bumped into a jagged
rock sticking up from the sandy soil, and I faded again.

I awoke to find myself staring at a
variety of insects swarming about my face and arms. I couldn’t move. For a
moment, I panicked, and tried to claw at the darkness enclosing me on all
sides. No, not all sides. Those were stars up above, weren’t they? Yes, yes!
And dirt. By the cataclysm, it was dirt beneath my fingernails! I tried to
laugh. Pain. So much pain that I thought perhaps I was baring a second child.
Burning, searing pain lanced through my body, up and down my ribs and face and
back. And I knew I was going to die. I turned my head toward the stars, trying
to ignore the industrious critters burrowing into my flesh and feeding on my
blood. I would bleed to death in this ditch as Madden and the Thanes feasted in
my honor. I dared not attempt to laugh again, but I wanted to. I found this so
humorous. Here I was, in this ditch most likely on the side of the High Way,
where I had borne my own boy, and where my mother had borne me. I wondered, did
my mother die in a ditch such as this, betrayed by her fellow? Did it matter? I
so wanted to laugh. I felt so tired, so deathly tired. Another joke. This was
so funny.

“Mother?”

The sound of the whispered voice
ravaged me anew. No, no, boy, get away!

“Mother?”

His face became visible just above
me, outlined by the stars. There was a bruise on his cheek, and his lip was
swollen, but he looked well. I tried to say something, tried to croak out some
sort of explanation, or tell him to leave me here, to let me die.

“I will not leave you here,
mother,” he said.

His fingers were warm and gentle as
he bent to pick me up like I was a frail, ill-bred Lady. As he moved my
bruised, battered form, I screeched my painful entrance back into the world of
the living. He shushed me quietly.

I said nothing as my boy wrapped me
up in an old tattered tarp and stanched the blood from my wounds with bits of
burlap. He carried me down the long, dark High Way to Inveress, the only place
we knew as home. The moon hung crimson in the sky, dark and lovely as the blood
coating my ribs, head and face.

It was a long walk to Inveress.