Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) (18 page)

“I know you don’t love me,” she said, bluntly.

“Hepdida, I… er.  I..” he stammered, searching her expression for guidance.

“I’ve been so stupid. Ma and pa both dead. O
rcs in Sturmcairn. What was I thinking? What does it matter now?”

“Hepdida,” he interrupted.  “We don’t have much time, Dema she promised us a few moments only together.”

“The lady is too generous,” the servant girl responded with a hollow laugh.

“I care,
Hepdida.  I care.  It may not be love, but I care, you have to believe that,” he insisted.

She looked at him.  B
lank eyes, drained of the power of emotion by the trauma of the last twenty four hours.  “I’m going to keep you safe,” he went on.  “I pledge my life to it Hepdida. I will keep you safe however I can.”

“W
e are to be separated it seems, many leagues apart.”  She shot a bolt of realism to puncture his fervent assurances.

“
Aye, but I will find you again. I will keep you safe.” He turned away quickly, muttering beneath his breath, “it’s all I have left.”

In the midst of all her horrific recent experience, a sudden bloom of pity flowered for the Captain who seemed to invest more in her survival than she herself did.  She stood up on tip toes, touched h
is cheek with her hand and brushed her lips against his in the lightest of kisses.  They stood a moment thus, inhaling each other’s breath.  “I know you will,” she said. “I know it is.” 

“Ar
e we quite finished then,” the Medusa’s mocking voice broke in on the moment even as Hepdida stepped away from the non-plussed Captain.  Dema stood in the doorway, Grundurg grinning at her side.  “I wonder if the good Captain has been entirely truthful about your relationship, my girl?” 

Hepdida ignored the question and, without a backward glan
ce, walked steadily to the orc, her jailer.  The monster grabbed her arm and hustled her through the door drawing a cry of alarm from Kimbolt, but Hepdida made no protest nor looked over her shoulder at the Captain.  Whether she would survive, whether they would ever meet again, she knew not.  But by the Goddess she knew that she was fitter for the challenge of separation than he was.

Quintala had to admire the consummate royal showmanship. A great cheer went up from the men on the parade ground as Gregor swung the gleaming blade that was ‘the father’ above his head.  He whirled his grey mare around twice and called again, “For the Goddess and the Empire of the Salved!”  Once more the assembled militia echoed him, waving the assorted agricultural implements that masqueraded as their weapons.

At last, as the cheering died down, Gregor ordered his captains to take command of their divisions and spurred his horse to th
e edge of the field where the Crown Prince and Seneschal had been waiting and observing with a troop of the household cavalry.  “A rousing speech, sire,” Quintala congratulated him.

“They seem ready to face the orcish enemy now,” Eadran interjected, his own eyes bright with enthusiasm.

“Let us pray to the Goddess they never meet, then!” Gregor growled.  “an there be fifteen hundred of that militia yet still five score of orcs would cut them down without breaking out in that slime they call sweating.”

“Y
ou don’t mean to let them fight?” The Prince was disappointed, the half-elf unsurprised.

“I don’t mean to let them die futiley,”Gregor corrected, but his eyes scanned the
South-Eastern horizon behind his companions.  “I need soldiers,” the King muttered before succumbing to the distraction that loomed in the distance. “By the Goddess, what is that? Can it be?”

His companions twisted round in their saddles to follow his gaze.  A distant cloud of dust revealed and concealed the approach of some new host.  “Has Rugan come at last!” Eadran exclaimed.

“Not Rugan,” Quintala assured him blankly having made her own assessment of the new arrivals.

“Indeed not,” Gregor gasped.  “Not even the host of Medyrsalve could march so fast afoot
.  Come Eadran, Quintala.  Our friends have journeyed in such haste that they are at least entitled to a royal escort for the last half league!”  With that the King dug his heels into the grey mare’s flank and hurried east at such speed that his followers were fifty yards adrift before they got their own steeds into motion.

Quintala closed the gap f
aster than the Prince and the lancers, coaxing her mount to draw on reserves it did not know it had.  Even so the king was well over halfway to the approaching host before she was close enough to hail him.  “Sire,” she yelled.  “You should await your escort. It is not seemly.”  In reply, she caught only a fragment of his laugh on the wind. 

The newcomers had drawn to a halt at the King’s approach.  The dust cloud
which had been stirred up by their passage was settling back on the ill-made dirt road.  It would not have been an easy march.  The river road had never been well maintained.  Even before the fall of Undersalve, traffic and trade had preferred the meandering but easily navigated river Nevers. In the ruin of Morsalve merchants, precipitated by the catastrophe at Bledrag Field, it was the great Eastway on which all efforts had been expended.  The Eastway might yet serve as a land route to the ocean and their rich pickings beyond.  The river road now served only the scattered farming villages that filled the Nervers plain, and one other destination.

They stood rank on rank, fine featured and dark skinned.  The dull dust eschewed their seamless armour and the bunished steel of their spears glinted brightly in the sunlight.  Quintala felt her heart quicken at t
he sight of so many of her kin, her half-kin she corrected herself, standing and breathing easy, despite the vigour of their march.

Two riders headed the column.
The elf Lord sat astride a white stallion, his body still, his hair and beard grey with authority.  Beside him an elf Captain, eyes flickering left and right while his horse took small steps in time with its rider’s attention.

Gregor skitter
ed his horse to a halt along side the Elf Lord’s and reaching two handed to pump the newcomer’s hand in greeting. “Well met, Lord Feyril, true and trusted friend. Well met indeed, always the first of our allies to rally to our cause.  Right glad are we to see you.”

“
We answer the beacon, my King, as honour and the law commands,”  Feyril demurred.

“Indeed indeed, though I would there were others who were as well versed in the demands of law and honour as you.”

“Rugan?”  Feyril raised an eyebrow in the slightest of queries.

Gregor sighed.  “We have only silence from Medyrsalve.”

“Mixed blood could never run true!”

The king looked up at the elf Captain’s sharply toned interjection.  Feyril made a hasty introduction. “Your Majesty, may I present Captain Findil.  Pray forgive the impet
uous tongue of youth; He has but five hundred summers.”

“A good four hundred and fifty more than I.”  Gregor
growled back. “May I in turn present my Seneschal the Lady Quintala and here comes Crown Prince Eadran with my Lancers.”

Quintala watched the Elf captain’s features
and saw dark spots of colour appear on his cheeks as Gregor made the introductions. 

“Captain Findil, you will of course have heard of the lady Quintala,” Gregor went on with steel edged courtesy.  “Th
e famous half-eleven Seneschal of the kingdom these past two hundred years.”

“Of course your M
ajesty,” The Captain gave Quintala a curt thin lipped nod, to which she responded with a gracious deep bow and a grin.

“Sire,” Feyril broke in on the stilted greetings of the near-kin.  “Prince Eadr
an is Crown Prince?” he queried. “Then Prince Thren is..”

“Perished in the fall of Sturmcairn.”  The king was brisk and businesslike.  “Or so we can only assume.  The scouting patrols I sent thither have found only a bank of fog that covers the foot of the passes.  It is dense cloud into which, let alone beyond, they cannot in safety explore.”

“I think I know of what character and origin that fog might be,” Feyril said.

“I have my own theories, Lord Feyril, and I am not entirely without intelligence as to the situation at Sturmcairn.  But come, the road is no place to discuss matters of state, or offer rest to weary but most welcome travellers.  Quintala, ride on and arrange a billet
for Lord Feyril’s troop. How many have you brought two thousand?”

“’tis three,” Findil corrected.

“By the Goddess, Feyril, you must have stripped the trees.”     

“An’ I could have persuaded them to march, my King, I would have brought the very trees themselves, for you will have need of everything ‘ere this matter is done.  But as you say, a different time and place is moot for such discussions.”

“Two hours shall we say, we will meet. Come to the citadel then.  I have affairs to settle first, but then we can share our thoughts on the strategy we will take.”

“Two hours, aye.”  Feyril’s acknowledgement fell on the king’s departing back as Gregor spurred
his horse back to the citadel.   Quintala waited a moment, while Eadran offered an uncertain bow to Elf Lord and Captain, before they hastened after the King.

Dwarfport was an arsehole of a town, a ramshackle collection of hastily erected wooden buildings, waiting only for a strong wind or a flood tide to wash or blow them away.  It was a settlement built on necessity, greed and gold, dwarvish gold.  The dwarves of the Hadrans had, these last five years, closed their doors and their trade to the province of Undersalve.  Since Bledrag field, the stout hearted miners of the Hadran mountains would have no truck or dealings with a land where orcs walked openly in the streets.  So the great port of Neversmouth in Undersalve no longer received the monthly dwarven caravans laden with the bounty of their excavations.  Yet still the dwarves mined and generated an excess of gems and metal which they needed to trade, so still the dwarves needed a route to the sea and to the merchants of the Eastern lands.

So it was that the muddy mouth of the Rhumb, where a small and nameless fishing village had nestled in a storm-sheltered bay, became the new outlet for Dwarven merchandise.  It lay in the land to the North of the Hadrans, to which both Medyrsalve and Oostslave had made some
token but unenthusiastic bids for a disputed overlordship.  Until the coming of the dwarves there was little of interest or profit for a provincial ruler in a barren sparsely populated land where few but the coastal fisherman could scratch out a living.  But now, while Rugan and the Prince of Oostsalve argued in the courts, the entrepreneurs and business men made what fast money they could in a town rich in the dwarven trade and low in law and order.

I
nitially fuelled by Dwarvish gold, the overrun fishing settlement had become a boom town of epic proportions.  Drink, gambling and every vice imaginable had become the basis of its economy.  So much so that Rugan and his rival argued as much over how, in all decency, to exploit this money spinning miracle as they did over who should claim jurisdiction.    

Glafeld
the Innkeeper, high in greed, low in morals, was but one turd floating in the cesspit of Dwarfport’s business class.  The dwarves themselves eschewed Glafeld’s establishment on their monthly trips, but that bothered the fat Innkeeper not at all.  The dwarves were a principled race who came here strictly to do business and had no need or hunger for Glafeld’s brand of entertainment.  However, the human sailors and traders who enjoyed moments of temporary wealth with every passing caravan, they were the objects of Glafeld’s business plan.  Put hardworking men in an environment with no laws, lots of money and even more alcohol and it was a simple matter to unleash their baser instincts and in so doing part them from the hard earned cash.

While Glafeld’s Inn conform
ed to the definition of an Inn, in so far as it served drinks downstairs and had beds upstairs, the strength of the drink and the company that could be enjoyed in the bedrooms went way beyond that which would have earned the Goddess’s approval.  But in so doing Glafeld offered his clients a kind of service available no where else in the Petred Isle, nay, nowhere this side of the Eastern lands. 

And,
as a man devoted to relieving his customers of all available cash, Glafeld kept a watchful eye for anyone else who might be looking to harvest the same crop.  He had one such individual in his eye now. 

The red haired woman had spent three nights in his bar.  At first he had taken her for a whore, like some of
the casual street walkers who, for a fee, he let recruit their clients on his premises.  She was a scrawny looking thing and her attire was travelworn and masculine rather  than alluring, but then Glafeld’s establishment was  a broad church entertaining many tastes.  However his suspicions changed, as he watched her nurse a solitary drink all night and engage in brief and unenthusiastic conversations with the few clients who breathed a beery greeting into her face. She left occasionally, but always alone and returned too swiftly for the business Glafeld had at first attributed to her.  He had been meaning to raise with her the matter of ‘the arrangement’ he would expect for working his Inn. But now, as another client cried out in alarm at a lost purse, Glafeld had a clear idea of what game the red haired woman was up to.  True he had never seen her pick a pocket or lift a purse. She was never there when a client discovered his loss, but these past three days, since she had arrived there had been a sharp rise in the number of thefts.  Correlation was proof enough for Glafeld.