Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) (14 page)

Niarmit stood beneath the canopy of Rugan’s hastily erected tent.  The water was everywhere. Rain had turned the dust to mud and only on the cobbles of the Eastway could a man be sure of his footing. Water flooded noisily from the valleys of the canvas canopy, adding to the thunderous cacophony of raindrops striking stone, wood and metal around the hastily reclaimed camp.  

The guard at the tent flap watched her warily, but then his colleague returned and bade her enter.

Rugan was seated, Kychelle standing.  The elf pressed a flagon of steaming broth into the Prince’s hand.  She looked up at Niarmit’s entrance.

“I know not how you dare show your face here, bastard born witch,”  the elf lady began.  “But if it is an apology you offer, then it is some hours overdue.”

“I have been tending the injured, Lady Kychelle,” Niarmit replied stiffly.  “I am a priestess as well as Queen.  Prior Abroath and I have been much occupied calling on the Goddess’s favour to heal the wounded and ease the path of those beyond saving.”

“It is no thanks to you, that there
are so many in need of healing, leading the force of Oostsalve off on some wild goose chase,” she snorted.  “Where is my grandson’s victory?”

“Leave u
s grandmama,” Rugan said, his voice laden with the weariness of five hundred years.

“I’ll not…”

“Leave!” sharper toned this time, energy the Prince could not spare expelled in a simple command.

She looked from one to the other and then, with a haughty sniff she strode from the tent, as though leaving entirely of her own volition.  Rugan waved Niarmit into a seat opposite him.

“Have you need of healing, my Prince?”

“Only
to my pride, Lady Niarmit.”

She raised an eyebrow at his choice of title.  He glared back at her and took a gulp of steaming broth.  “I have spoken with Sir
Ambrose and others of my soldiers.  Unlike my grandmother I will concede you have done our cause more good than ill these past twenty-four hours.”

Niarmit bit back the
instinctive angry words at the Prince’s mean spirited gratitude.  She was glad she had not brought Quintala to this meeting.  The discussion seemed fated to move as stiffly as their battle weary limbs.  It would not have been well served by the Seneschal’s hot temper.   

“It was your sister who commanded the archers,” she said
, determined to draw Quintala into the circle of credit with her half-brother.  “They are the ones that broke the undead and gave you time and room for this retreat.”

The Prince glared back at the unwelcome reference.  “My sister,” he began before thinking better of his intention.  “My sister has been Seneschal to seven Monarchs of the Salved.  Near half of them did not admit her to the inner counsels appropriate to her office.
Inconstancy and vice have been the only constants in her life.”

“She
is Seneschal to an eighth monarch now and I find she serves me well.  She has saved my life and I would argue in her deeds today has saved yours also.”

Rugan laughed at that, an
unusual throaty roar from one not given to merriment.  “Be sure you tell her that, Lady Niarmit.  My rescue is not an accomplishment she will take much pride or pleasure in.”

“Prince Rugan, I am your Q
ueen,” Niarmit grasped the nettle of Rugan’s disdain, glad to do so without an audience.  “You should address me by my proper title.”

The Prince took another draught of broth and levelled the finger of his left hand at Niarmit.  “When yo
u stand before me, wearing the Vanquisher’s Helm, Lady Niarmit, then will I call you my Queen and bend the knee to you.  Not one second before. For your service today and your proven bloodline I will admit you to my councils and heed your advice, but I will take no orders from you.”

“Your people might think differently,” she said mildly.

He stood up at that, spilling his flagon on the muddy floor. “Do not try my patience, Lady Niarmit.  My people are my own. To me they are true.  If you, or anyone of your company, should dare to foment some rebellion against my rule, then I will have you ushered from my land so fast you’d think I’d learned the trick of flight.  See what support you can marshal in your coronation town of Dwarfport.”

She glared back at him, her thoughts a mass of rebukes and ripostes.  His ingratitude, his arrogance, his obstruction of her service to the nation of Salved, a service she had for some time resisted herself, all these were fertile grounds for argument with the unrepentant Prince of Medyrsalve.  But Niarmit chose none of them.  She stood, sparing Rugan nothing more than a cold stare, and walked in silence out of his tent into the driving rain.

Kimbolt
was nervous, the strip of cloth still balled in his palm. Dema prowled the sodden hillock, glowering at the distant pass and bleeding.  They stood all four, Willem, Barnuck, Kimbolt and wizard, drenched by the endless rain awaiting either orders or dismissal while the Medusa wrestled with some tangle of thoughts, shaking her head as though to rattle an idea free.

Beside him Odestus stood, motio
nless, the little wizard as nonplussed by her mood and as powerless to break it as any of them.  He had dared to speak to her, to offer some suggestion or reassurance, but she had bared her teeth and snarled him into silence before the half-formed thought had left his lips. 

S
taggering up the hill through the rain came Nagbadesh.  He burst with evident pleasure on their silent council, oblivious to the stern faces. 

“Redfangs fought good, lady,” he announced.  “
Kill many. Nagbadesh kill hundreds.” He thumped his chest and grinned a broken toothed smile.  “Blood washed off in rain, but see some brain and bone still sticks.”

The stocky orc drew close to Dema to show he
r the gory evidence of his battle prowess.  She bent her head, wordlessly to inspect the marks on his rusty mail surcoat.  Her snakes hissed into wakefulness.

It happened so fast that n
one could react.  The Medusa’s head dipped and Nagbadesh screamed a horrible gurgling scream.  She held his head by the tangle of coarse hair and buried her face in his neck.  The orc was twitching now as Kimbolt saw the back of Medusa’s head twist left and right as she drove her face deeper into the orc’s neck and then she pulled back with a roar, black blood running down her mouth and chin, while Nagbadesh, fell into a shaking heap, jets of black gore spurting briefly from the ragged wound where his throat had been.

It was Odestus who reacted first.  He pointed with a
n elaborate flick of his fingers and cried out, “Assassin! See he had a knife.”  Sure enough there was a knife in the corpse’s hand, though Kimbolt could not remember seeing it before.

  The big outlander exchanged a wide eyed look with the Bonegrinder’s chief
tain.  Barnuck merely shrugged, brutality not so much an orcish habit as an orcish invention.  Dema gave another roar, staring up open mouthed into the torrents of rain.  Her left side stained with her own blood, her chin and neck saturated with Nagbadesh’s. 

“Dema!” Odestus called.

She looked round, looked round at all of them.  “What are you all looking at?” she cried.  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and looked at the watered down grey of orcish blood smeared across her skin.  Then she glanced down wordlessly at the unmoving body of the Redfang’s chieftain.  She gave it a speculative kick and Nagbadesh’s head rolled loosely to one side.

“Dema?” the wizard called again.   

She glared at him at all of them in turn, “what are you doing fools, stuck out in the rain?  Get under cover.  Kimbolt, I have a bed in Listcairn that needs warming.”

Kimbolt was trembling as he followe
d the Medusa down off the hill.  He looked back at Odestus, seeking some guidance or reassurance.  The wizard looked back his expression paler than any corpse and his eyes haunted.  It was no reassurance at all.

“Rugan leaves tomorrow.”  Niarmit glanced around the dank interior of the tent, gauging the reactions of these, her closest advisors.

Quintala
spoke first, with a response as scornful as Niarmit had expected.  “I’m only surprised it has taken him a week to decide to run,” the half-elf sneered.  “Kychelle barely waited a single night.”

“He’s leaving Sir
Ambrose and his troops to guard the pass.  It is only his honour guard that will accompany him,” Niarmit struck out in defence of the Prince.

The S
eneschal sniffed at the word honour, but it was Tordil who asked, “Where is he going then?”

“He has a son he hasn’t met yet, and a wife who thought she might never see him again.  But more than that he wants to call a council of the Princes
to assemble at his Palace.”

“On whose authority?” Quintala growled.

Niarmit shrugged.  “His own, but he has invited me to attend as well.”

“Invited you?” Kaylan bridled in indignation.  “
The insolent ingratitude.  He would offer you a seat in your own home and call it hospitality.”

“
He has invited me and those of my advisors I consider most apposite to attend this council.”

“What is to be the purpose of this council?” Tordil asked
.  Niarmit smiled, pleased that the elf at least had homed in on the more important question.

“The council will discuss the ordering of the realm of the Salved and its defence against the enemy.”

“The summoning of such a council is your prerogative, your Majesty, not my brother’s.  Indeed, as Seneschal to the Crown it would be I that called such a meeting were no king present.   My brother overreaches himself, this is treason!” The half-elf had to stand to pace out her anger.

“Hush, Seneschal. 
There is truth in what you say, aye,” Niarmit urged.  “But sometimes being right is not enough.  We have not the machinery of government to command, nor do we have the unequivocal proof of my claim to the crown, which Rugan, and many others would demand.”

Tordil glanced up at her darkly. “It is a shame we had not brought
the Helm with us from Morwencairn.”  It was as close as the elf would come to rebuking his Queen.   Once again Niarmit tried to express the impossibility on which his assumption was founded, to intimate to him the thing of evil which the Helm had become, a peril to its wearer’s very soul and a danger to their allies.  Once again, the mere attempt to voice any thoughts on the Helm, left her mouth working in dumb impotence.   Once again, Tordil took her confused silence for an admission that in this matter he was right and she was wrong.   He sucked in a breath and nodded to himself.

“What does it matter if Rugan calls the council of Princes.  He is
only one Prince,” Hepdida ventured.  “Prior Abroath here speaks for Oostsalve and Rugan has allowed Niarmit on the council, so we already have two votes to his one.  The rest will be won over to Niarmit’s way of thinking just as Abroath was.”

“Indeed,”
Niarmit frowned.  “Rugan tells me he has sent word to Oostsalve for one with authority to speak at council with a Prince’s voice.”  She looked at the Prior, “I do not think he intends for you to be the spokesman of Oostsalve.”

Abroath smiled weakly.  “I am not surprised.  It will like as not be one of my brothers who comes to council; My father does not travel well.  Whoever he sends though, will be Rugan’s puppet.  My father has grown wealthy on the simple strategic principle of not doing anything to offend Prince Rugan.  I fear that the extremities which we face will have strengthened more than weakened his adherence to that rule.”

“But
, saving my lancers, the Prior’s force of hobilers are the only army that answer to your direct command,” Jolander said. 

“Exactly so, and th
at is why the hobilers and the Prior must stay here, well away from any risk or opportunity that Abroath may be superceded in his command and his soldiers put under Rugan’s authority.” Niarmit explained the one firm decision she had already made.  “I am a Queen with neither land to rule, nor civil servants to direct, to have no army either would be to leave me entirely dependent for rulership on the power of my words and the force of my own presence.”

“Do not underrate the val
ue of those attributes, my lady,” Kaylan said.  “Rugan has little idea what a formidable foe he is admitting to his council.”

Niarmit gave a wan smile.  “Pretty words and a certain royal manner are all very well, Kaylan.  But
five thousand soldiers can speak more forcefully than the finest speeches and I would do all I can to keep them under my command.”

“I am happy to stay here with the soldiers,” Abroath said.  “I am in no hurry to see my father or my brothers again, this side of Prophet’s day.”

“And the lancers will ride with you, ma’am,” Jolander quickly added.  “If Rugan has his honour guard, so must you.”

“Thank you both,” Niarmit replied.  “That was my thinking too.   
Of the rest of you, the Princess Hepdida and Thom must come with me, both have knowledge of the enemy, his methods and his nature which the council must hear.”

“My, how are the fallen mighty,” Tordil muttered at the illusionist’s preferment. Niarmit’s sharp look failed to curb the elf’s
ill-concealed resentment.  Instead Tordil elaborated with palm spread disingenousness.  “The fellow is a criminal, an exile, and a collaborator with the enemy.   It seems strange that such a pedigree should make him the natural adviser to a council of princes.”

Niarm
it’s brow furrowed, finding her other tentative decisions unsettled by Tordil’s continued hostility towards Thom.  “I cannot leave the Prior alone to stand beside Sir Ambrose and all the force of Medyrsalve.  He must have some adviser with him, one experienced in military matters.  The command will be his, but I am sure he will appreciate and heed the guidance of another of this my inner circle.”

Abroath gave a self-deprecating moue of acceptance at Niarmit’
s assessment, as the priestess’s gaze settled on Quintala and Tordil.  “You mean to leave one of us behind!” The half-elf gasped.

Niarmit nodded. “My thinking was that Tordil may offer most in any entreaty with the Lady Kychelle. The
rest of his kin from Hershwood, those that did not take ship with Illana and the Lord Feyril, will have joined Kychelle’s people in Silverwood.  I had thought there might be an opening there to crack the elf lady’s hostility.”  She thought it a sound argument and a kinder one than voicing her fear that Quintala’s volatile hatred for her half-brother and grandmother made her a liability in any negotiations.  “That would leave the Seneschal at Abroath’s right hand here in the Gap of Tandar.”

Both Tordil and Niarmit were nonplussed by the half-elf’s reaction.  She flung herself to her knees at Niarmit’s feet, looking up into the priestess’s green eyes with an expression of almost tearful supplication.   “Majesty, do not send me away from your side, I beg of you.  The last
of Eadran’s line whom I served, your father King Gregor, despatched me on an errand against my better judgment.  I never saw him again.   I was not there in his time of greatest need. I should have been with him at Proginnot, perhaps I could have saved him from his fate.  I will not willingly abandon another monarch, no matter what she orders!”

Niarmit’s forehead creased in perplexity at the vehemence of the half-elf’s reaction.  “But Quintala …” she began.

“I know your Majesty, I know my failings.  I know sometimes I speak too quick or too true or both.  But I can be the diplomat I promise you and besides, I know all the princes and their ministers. I will be of service to you and I promise I will bite my tongue whatever my brother’s overweening arrogance may bring forth.”

Niarmit looked across at Tordil who gave a shrug
.  “I am pleased to serve your Majesty wherever and however you would see fit.”

“It is decided then,” Niarmit
said. “Tordil and Abroath help guard the Gap of Tandar. Quintala, Hepdida, Thom and the lancers are with me.   We ride at first light; I intend to keep pace with Rugan in all things.  You had best gather your possessions.”

Th
ere was a bustle of activity as Niarmit left the tent, intending to seize a moment of solitude.  A short walk along a defile cut into the mountain brought her to a craggy rock from which she had been wont to sit and survey the broad plain of the Saeth.  The orcish and nomad campfires were dotted randomly, perched on the small islands of firmer ground in the midst of the muddy ground.  The run-off from the engorged streams still flooded from the Palacintas towards the now full flowing river Saeth, washing the broad plain in a mud which offered much to aid agriculture and nothing to warfare.   

The fertile land
would be ripe for cultivation in the Spring, if there were any farmers left to plough under Maelgrum’s yoke.  In the distance the shuttered windows of Listcairn leaked faint torchlight into the night.  Niarmit knew in the darkness the standard of the Bonegrinders still fluttered over the ancient fortress.

It pained her to be riding away from the enemy, to be riding away from th
e enslaved province of Morsalve. But as her father Matteus, General and Prince, had once told her, sometimes you had to retreat to move forward.  It was certain that the force they had now was unequal to the task of overthrowing Maelgrum’s minion the Medusa, still less of confronting the Dark Lord himself.  Whatever else Prince Rugan’s council might do, it should rally the forces of all the Salved in desperately needed unity.

There was the faintest noise behind her, the slightest squelch in the
all-pervading mud.  He had trained her well, too well.

“Hello Kaylan,” she said without turning round.

“Well met, my Lady,” the thief replied, sliding onto a seat on a rough lower ledge to the boulder on which she perched.  They sat a moment gazing out on the lost land of Morsalve, before Kaylan felt he had served enough silence to be entitled to speak.  “So, you ride out tomorrow, my Lady.”

“Indeed.”

“And you had no orders for me, to stay or to follow.”

She laughed.  “What use are orders with you, Kaylan.   Whatever I say, you will follow me with even greater determination than Quintala.  If I gave you no orders Kaylan, it was only because I considered none necessary.”

“Then I ride with you and your party tomorrow?”

“Of course.”  

A
longer silence ensued before the thief spoke again.  “My Lady?”

“Yes, Kaylan?”

“It seems that you are beset with doubters and gainsayers.  The path of a Queen is no less crossed with ingratitude and betrayal than was the path of a certain Princess whom I proudly served.”

“Your point?”

“There was a time when the ingratitude was greater than you could bear.  It was a dark time.”

She clapped him on the shoulder.   “Fear not Kaylan, I am not about to seek another ship for the Eastern Lands, no matter how Rugan and Kychelle might make that a tempting proposition.”

“No one could blame you for feeling the temptation.”

“Well, Kaylan, the
Goddess has a way of re-inducting the recalcitrant into her grace.  I will serve her purpose and maybe she will find a way to save my soul.”

Kaylan blenched.  “My lady, your soul must be the safest in all the Petred Isle,
your efforts in your young life so far must stand you immeasurably in the Goddess’s credit, far more so than a humble thief some years your senior.”

“Kaylan,” she began but could not finish.  The fact that her soul was already lost to the
Goddess, that at her death the Domain of the Helm would claim her and imprison her for ever in the Vanquisher’s hellish paradise, these simple sapping truths were ones she could not express.  Instead she sat, hunched on the stone her arms around her knees overwhelmed with a sadness she could not share.  Below her Kaylan sat in companionable misery.  Long experience tuned his senses to an awareness of her distress yet he would not dare to intrude with the impertinent reassurance of a hug.