The former cook vented a strangled scream. Widahd wrenched herself out of his slackened grasp and made for the bed, not even bothering to pull off the gag so intent was she on the deliverance of her loved mistress from the hulking torturer.
It was a brave effort, but it was doomed at its inception. Forgetting his wound, which though stinging ferociously was not bleeding very much, Gaios brought up his sword and stamped forward. With a meaty
tchunnk
, the broad, heavy blade descended to strike the valiant brown-skinned girl at the angle of her slender neck and her right shoulder, cleaving through flesh and bone to the sternum. The very force of the blow drove Widahd to her knees, and her shriek of mortal agony was muffled in the gag.
Setting a foot against the girl’s back, Gaios jerked his shortsword free, propelling Widahd’s body face down on the thick carpets, which quickly became soaked with more blood than one would have thought so small a body could contain. A glance showed Gaios that his master, Myron, had taken no notice of the brief, bloody affair, being completely absorbed in the disfigurement of his own victim. Grinning, the former cook dropped his clotted sword, rolled Widahd onto her back, hurriedly shredded off the front of her skirt and set about raping the dying young woman, heedless of the spurting gushes of blood that soon soaked his shirtfront.
Myron took his time on Giliahna’s right cheek, deliberately prolonging the agony. Tears poured from the suffering woman’s blue eyes to water the blood on her cruelly slashed face, but she had set her teeth and her will and no slightest sound came out to meet the barrier of that thick, dirty hand mashing down on her lips.
All the while he carefully marred Giliahna’s beauty, Myron hissed his plans for her and for Tim in a half-whisper. “The way you barbarians searched this hall was comical. Gaios and I could have departed anytime we wished, and we can still, unseen and unsuspected. I only remained to deal with our barbaric brother, Tim, and with you.
“I know that he will come here, soon or late, intent upon doing more of his sinful incest with you. He certainly will be alone and unsuspecting and, like as not, unarmed, so Gaios and I should have no trouble dealing with him.
“By all that is holy, I should be
Thoheeks
and chief-of Sanderz-Vawn, but simply because I am a good, Christian man, my patrimony, my very birthright, is denied me. But if
I
cannot be chief,
he
will not sit in my place. As God is my witness, he will not!”
Showing his teeth in a grin of pure, evil malice, he went on, “Your barbarians will not have as new chief any maimed or crippled man, so when once we have immobilized dear Tim, I mean to dig out his right eye. I’d take them both, but I want him to have one so he can forevermore gaze upon what I’ll have done to you, sweet sister.
“Then, when I’m done gelding him, I mean to hack off his right hand and his right foot and char the stumps in yonder fire.”
Widahd was not yet dead. She knew what the man was doing to her body, though she could not feel her defilement or much of anything else. But she was come of a warrior race and refused to die leaving her foe a chance of life. If the arm she had stabbed was removed quickly enough, he might just live. What she must deliver before she surrendered to oncoming death was a wound impervious to treatment.
Awkwardly, her numbing left band sought and found the hilt of her second little dagger, but the cold unfeeling fingers kept slipping off the abbreviated hilt and it seemed for long and long that she would not summon the strength to draw it. Then, at last, it was free, but she found she had used too much of her waning power. She could not stab up.
Haltingly, she worked her small hand and the knife between their two close-pressed bodies. As her ravisher raised himself slightly in preparation for a deeper thrust, she maneuvered the blade to an upward slant so that the straining man impaled himself on it, taking the length of it in his belly, between navel and crotch.
There was nothing strangled about Gaios’ second scream. It rang loud and long… and it served to alert Tim, just approaching the suite, and Sir Geros, who had bid his young lord goodnight and was about to descend the stairs.
Myron ignored the scream for the very good reason that he knew from the earlier sounds that his cohort was raping the Zahrtohgahn and was wont to make loud noises in transport of pleasure. While a woman’s scream within the hall would have been sure to bring unwanted visitors tramping through the corridors and banging on doors and barging into suites, a man’s would not, not with wounded men and prisoners under the roof.
He had done at last with Giliahna’s right cheek. Turning her ravaged, gory face back, he hissed, “Hold still now. I’m going to carve a
pi
for
Porneea
on your brow, so that all will know you for the arrant whore you are.”
Tim and Geros, broadswords bared and ready, kicked open the bedroom door and burst into the room. Myron left off his carving of Giliahna’s ruined face and slid himself down her body far enough to get an inch of his blood-slimy dirkblade into her left breast, then he half-turned to face the armed men.
“Take one more step toward me, pagan bastards, and I’ll drive this blade into her heart!”
He had taken his hand from her mouth, and his weight now was on her belly rather than her chest and arms. Giliahna swallowed a mouthful of thick, hot blood, then shouted, “No! I am already hurt, terribly hurt. Take the swine alive, for Archduke Bili and my brother. Tell Tim I love him.” Then she grasped Myron’s knife hand and wrist with both her own hands and forced her body up violently, so that half the length of the wide, thick blade sank into her chest
Tim was at the foot of the big bed in a single leap and the flat of his sword crashed against Myron’s temple, hurling his body to the floor in an unconscious heap. But then the young captain’s sword dropped from fingers suddenly gone cold and nerveless, and, as hot tears ran, he could but stare in grief and horror at what had been wrought upon this, the only woman he ever had loved… or ever would.
Her face was a mask of blood, with jaw, teeth and white bone winking through the slashed cheeks. Just above the red-pink nipple of her full right breast, the hilt and part of the blade of a heavy war dirk jutted up.
Geros glanced at what lay on the bed, then averted his eyes and stalked quickly to where Gaios had rolled off the body of Widahd and, his trousers still bunched about his knees, was sitting in obvious agony with a handful of cloth from her skirt pressed against his lower belly.
Geros sheathed his sword. “What ails you, bumboy? Bellyache, is it? Mayhap six feet or so of oaken clyster will, if not truly ease you, at least serve as a counterirritant.” He chuckled, then added, “That’s what you get for eating your own cooking, of course. You should’ve known better.”
Giliahna said weakly, “Tim… my love. Please… it hurts… so much… please take… it out.”
Tim walked on wooden legs up to where he could grasp the hilt of that cruel dirk that had robbed him of so much, of so many happy years. Quickly, he jerked the steel from his sister’s chest He did not bother to try to staunch the Wood-flow that followed the blade out, for he had seen many death wounds, and from its location, this could be nothing but such.
But she should have been dead long since. He was too experienced a warrior to deny that incredible, astounding survivals occurred now and then. And with the flare of a spark of hope, some of the leaden enervation left his body and his mind.
“Sir Geros,” he snapped. When that man stood close beside him, he said, “There may be a chance to save her. Go fetch Master Fahreed. At once!
Even as he raced across the deserted balcony toward the north wing where several adjoining suites had been temporarily converted to a hospital and surgery, Geros knew himself bound on a fool’s errand. No mortal man or woman could survive a war dirk in the heart. But if fetching the Zahrtohgahn physician would ease young Tim’s grieving mind, that is what he would do.
In the hospital, Geros had to pull his rank and almost his sword before Master Fahreed was finally summoned from another room. The tall man’s white robe was liberally spotted and smeared with fresh blood. He was scowling and his manner was brusque.
“Say your piece quickly and begone, Sir Geros. I’m in the middle of a chancy bit of emergency surgery on a brave young Ahrmehnee, whose skull was cracked in a drunken brawl. You Kindred are all mad. When all your enemies are slain, you turn on each other like starving wolves.”
But Geros could not speak fast enough for the master, who suddenly snapped, “You can mindspeak? Then lower your shield, man, I cannot waste more time.”
When he had scanned the contents of Geros’ mind, his scowl vanished and his tone softened. He placed a hand on the aging castellan’s shoulder and said, softly, “I grieve with you and your poor young lord, friend Geros. It was a terrible act, even for an Ehleen, and I of all men in this hall know that these Ehleenee can be beasts incarnate. But I must agree with your prognosis. A wound inflicted with a weapon like that in that area of the chest is invariably fatal.
“I could do nothing for the woman, even were I to come, and I cannot come, nor can my apprentice, not now. I’m sorry.”
The blue-black man turned to go, shaking his shaven head. All at once, he turned back. “Sir Geros, Mistress Neeka, for whatever else she may or may not be, is a skilled and most talented apothecary. She assisted me here during the rush of battle casualties, and I found her performance most impressive. Her suite is just down the hall from here. Why don’t you go to her and open your mind as you did to me? If nothing else, she can administer the young man a draft to ease his shock and hurt and grant him restful, healing sleep.”
Mechanically, Tim arose from beside Gilliahna. She lay unmoving save for the barely perceptible rise and fall of her chest. Myron seemed to be still unconscious, but taking no chances, Tim retrieved his sword and ran two inches of the blade into his half brother’s buttock. When the carcass did not even twitch, Tim was satisfied.
Gaios still sat near the corpse of his victim. Moaning, he rocked from side to side, both hands still pressing the rags to his belly. His eyelids were pressed tightly shut, but tears still managed to ooze from beneath them, joining a copious sweat to impart a glistening sheen to his face, now twisted in agony.
Turning back to the bed and Giliahna, Tim noted that her slashed face and the stab wound in her chest had ceased to bleed. Moaning louder even than Gaios, he tried not to think of the licking flames that so soon must be set about her lovely body, tried not to think of the long and bitter years he still must live without her… and he made his decision.
He lifted off his baldric, stripped off tunic and shirt and stretched himself beside his sister, his lover, she who should have been his wife. He kissed her cold lips, then reached out and took from the bedside table Myron’s blood-sticky dirk.
Softly, tenderly, he said, “We shall go to Wind together, my love, never again to be parted.”
Then Tim Sanderz grasped the wire-wound hilt in both hands and ran the full length of the blade into his own chest, skewering his broken heart.
When Sir Geros and Neeka hurried into the suite, the old soldier reeled against the door frame in shock, but Neeka bustled over to the bed. Ignoring for the moment the man, who had obviously taken his own life since his hands were still gripped about the hilt of the knife, she set about examining the woman.
When Geros had more or less composed himself, he approached. “Dead, is she not? Poor little Giliahna.”
The answer he received then was like the crash of a war-hammer against his head. “Not dead nor even dying, Sir Geros, she has only swooned.”
Hesitantly, Geros laid a trembling hand on Giliahna’s-flesh. “But… she is cold as death… and she no longer bleeds…?”
Neeka just sniffed. “You’d be cold to the touch, too, if you’d lain naked in this icy chamber for who knows how long, not to speak of the large amounts of blood she must have lost before the bleeding stopped.”
In his own state of shock, Geros at first could not understand. Even so, he proved far easier to convince than either Tim or Giliahna.
Ahrkeethoheeks
Bili,
Thoheeks
and chief of Morguhn,
Vahrohnos
Deskahti,
Vahrohneeskos
of the Order of the Golden Cat of the Confederation, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Blue Bear of Harzburk, was nothing if not stubborn and set in his ways. Not even the rising wrath of his supreme overlord, Milo of Morai, High Lord of the Confederation, not even the vicious temper of the High Lady, Aldora Linszee Treeah-Pohtohmahs Pahpahs, could persuade him to leave Morguhn before the harvests were all in, the archducal taxes collected and his personal affairs set in order.
To one of the Undying High Lady Aldora’s more violent outbursts, he had replied with a calmness that further infuriated her, “Aldora, I don’t want to go north and become Prince of Karaleenos, and you well know it. I only do so out of loyalty to the Confederation and willingness to serve it when and as called upon.
“But if go I must, then I’ll do it in my own way and at my own pace. There is much my son, Djef, must know if he is to be a good chief and
thoheeks
of our clan. I must be certain that all sits well in Vawn and that young
Thoheeks
Tahm Adaimyuhn of Sanderz is adjusting well to his new and heavier harness of duty. At the same time, I must attend the thousand and one small but important functions of my present office, entertain my distinguished guests… and often waste precious time soothing the temper tantrums of one of them.” The small, olive-skinned woman went livid and speechless
v
with frustration and rage. She snatched her long belt dagger free of its case and made to slash its keen edge at Bili’s maddeningly unruffled face. But suddenly she became aware of the huge, slavering hound, stalking in from the next room, stiff-legged, with tail tucked and lips wrinkled up from the bared foam-covered teeth. Whirling, she flexed her knees and held her blade ready for stab or slash.