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

“But where are the bodies?” Jolander spun full circle to survey the scene before repeating, “Where are the bodies?”

Neither
Thom nor the handful of the lancers made any answer to the distraught sergeant.  They had all scoured the abandoned caravan.  Over a hundred carts had been drawn up in a dozen defensive circles around camp fires long since burnt out.  The light air lifted the corners of empty bedrolls.  The dirt was scuffed and stained with the signs of struggle.  The story of disaster written in uncounted bloodstains. The arterial jet which had sprayed the canvas of a merchant’s wagon.  The dark puddle of a life leaking remorselessly away by a camp fire.  Most sad of all, to Thom’s eye, was the trail of dark red-brown some yards long, leading beneath a cart where a wounded cripple had sought safety.  By the still deeper stain beneath the wagon’s axle it was clear that no sanctuary had been found.

“Where are they?” Jolander cried again.  “There were a thousand living breathing people here.  Women, children too.  Where are they?”

“We should go back,” Thom said gently.  “The others will be waiting for our report.”

Jolander shook his head as though to free his mind of the thoughts and fears that assailed it. 
“Is this some artifice of your kind, master wizard?” He quizzed Thom.  “Are the dead merely hidden from our eyes?”

“No, sergeant.  The
re is no illusion here.   What you see is what there is. No more, no less.”

Jolander harrumphed his discontent. 
Thom knew how much his presence, his existence even, offended the sergeant.  To be a wizard was bad enough, but one returned from exile? It was against all the laws the Sergeant had lived to defend.  He knew that the big warrant officer tolerated him only because of the Lady Niarmit’s intercession.  Volunteering for this scouting party had been an attempt to prove he could win friends and be useful without the lady’s patronage.  However, the scale of the disaster they had explored quite dwarfed such minor considerations. 

“I reckon it was orcs, Sarge,” the
floppy haired lancer holding their half-dozen horses volunteered an opinion.

“Fool,” another shouted him down.  “Orcs might eat somethings, but not everything, not bone and gristle.”

“We should go,” Thom repeated and, with a heavy nod, the Sergeant concurred.

It was a short
but jolting ride to the wooded copse where the rest of their small party lay waiting.  However, the Sun was a hand’s breadth nearer the Western horizon by the time they arrived.  Whatever they would have found, in the desolate caravan, it was too late for them to further their journey tonight and for that at least Thom was grateful.  Riding was one of the many useful talents that he did not possess.  Even a night camped in danger would be fair exchange for the extra couple of hours of relief afforded to his jarred spine and bruised buttocks.

The
re was a quiet bustle of activity in the copse as others had reached the same conclusion.  Tordil was lighting one of his smokeless magical fires, while his three elven compatriots were helping the lancers secure the horses and make a meagre camp.  Kaylan and the last lancer were just hoving into sight bearing water from the stream to the South. 

So
it was only the three women who awaited the scouting party’s return, standing just beyond the tree-line.  The flame haired priestess, the half-eleven seneschal and the scarred slight servant girl.

“You rode straight back?” Niarmit spoke first
, directing a harsh enquiry at the sergeant.  She strode to Jolander’s side, her green eyes bright in the fading light, her plaited red hair whipping round as she caught his horse’s bridle.  “Why was that?”

“There was no-one there to follow us, your Majesty,” the sergeant hastened to explain.  “No need to take a detour on the way back.”

“No-one?” The dark haired girl could not hide her surprise.  “No-one at all?”

“None, mistress Hepdida,” Jolander kept his answer deliberately simple.  When the girl looked
across to Thom, the illusionist gave a slight moue of agreement. He was in no greater hurry than the sergeant to share the echoes of disaster which had been in plain view down the hill.

“But it was the
same refugee caravan, the one you and the Seneschal passed what four days ago?”  Niarmit asked, glancing between Jolander and the dark skinned silver haired form of Quintala.

The half-elf pursed her lips in recollection.
  “Aye, it would be four days, three nights.  We met them on the road in the morning.  They warned us of the Hearteaters who had been laying waste to all the villages North of Hershwood.  That’s why they were fleeing.  We pointed them East towards Medyrsalve, though they knew the way well enough.  Then we headed West to do ourselves a bit of orc hunting.”

“A half-elf and twenty lancers h
unting an entire tribe of orcs. That was a bold move, or a foolish one,” Niarmit observed.

“Whichever it was,” Quintala replied, with a mocking lilt to her voice. “It was a move you and your friends have reason to be grateful for…. Your Majesty.”

Niarmit was silent a moment, before giving a curt nod of acknowledgement.  “Quite so, Seneschal.  But to the matter in hand.  What befell these refugees since you left them and went on your way to deliver us from a detachment of Hearteaters?”  She turned back to Jolander. “So sergeant.  Why is it there is no-one in that camp to follow you to this hiding place?  Is it nothing but bodies?”

“
’An it please your Majesty, but I’d rather not speak of it in front of the girl,” he nodded in Hepdida’s direction.  “It is not an account for young ears.”

Thom
saw the blush of red inflame the girl’s face from her cheeks to the tips of her ears. She opened her mouth to rebut the sergeant’s condescension but Niarmit waved her into silence.  “The mistress Hepdida has every right to hear of whatever it is you have seen, Sergeant. I can assure you that she has already seen and experienced much more and much worse than whatever you might have witnessed in the valley below.”

Jolander gulped uncertainly at Niarmit’s displeasure. 
“There was death in the camp, your Majesty.  Signs of many struggles, the blood dripping and pooling in ways that told of hundreds dead.”

“Bodies?” Quintala interrupted.

“None,” Thom answered.  “Neither friend nor foe left fallen on the battle field.”

“How tidy.”

“I reckon it was orcs, your Majesty.” The lancer who had spoken before again ventured his unwise opinion, drawing a glower of rebuke from the sergeant.

“Orc
s aren’t tidy.” Tordil, his fire lighting work concluded, had approached the discussion in time to hear the last few speakers.  “Perhaps the dead got up and walked away?” The elven captain levelled his gaze at Thom as he made his suggestion.  The illusionist felt the hostile glare of sergeant and lancers turned upon him as the soldiers swiftly crescented themselves to invoke the Goddess’s blessing.

“The dead don’t walk, Captain,” Quintala rebuked him.  “No need to frighten the troopers and the horses so.”

The elf-captain laughed.  “Indeed, Seneschal, though you have lived long, you have not seen the evils that I have this last month.  The dead can walk. They can feed. I have fought against them and walked amongst them.  A skilled wizardly mind can bend their actions to his purpose. Is that not so, Master Illusionist?”

The captain’s censorious tone drew a sharp rebuke
from Niarmit. “Tordil, you forget yourself.  Thom has done us much good service since fortune or the Goddess cast us in each other’s path.”

“Yes, your Majesty,
much has happened since we first met Thom shepherding two undead souls across the burnt fields of Morsalve…”

“Enough, T
ordil!” Niarmit snapped, but not before the many eyes already focussed on Thom first widened in surprise then narrowed in suspicion. “What is clear from the fate of those refugees is that danger lurks ahead of us as well as behind. We are a day’s hard riding still from the River Saeth and the security of Medyrsalve’s border.  We will need a vigilant guard tonight and the Goddess’s blessing, if we are to make Prince Rugan’s court unscathed.”

“As you command….Your Majesty,” Quintala gave a short bow.  “I admire your faith in the safety my Brother’s realm will afford us.”

Niarmit frowned at the smiling Seneschal.  “Whatever your doubts about your brother, Quintala, we have nowhere else to go but to Prince Rugan and he is my vassal now.”

“Yes,” Quintala stretch
ed out the single syllable of agreement.  “I wish you joy in impressing that circumstance upon him, and I in turn intend enjoying the spectacle.”

Deaconess Rhodra was used to anxious would-be fathers but a would-be great grand-mother was an experience as new as it was proving unwelcome.  It certainly wasn’t helping the restless woman on the great bed.

“Deep breaths, your H
ighness,” Rhodra soothed her.  “Breathe through the pain.”

“It’s too soon,” the P
rincess Giseanne ground out through gritted teeth as she shook her head against the pillows.

A servant dabbed at the
woman’s sweating forehead with a scented cloth.  At the foot of the bed the upright figure of the expectant great-grandmother surveyed the scene with deep dissatisfaction.  Her hands resting on her walking stick, her silver hair dressed elegantly high atop her head exposing the pointed ears of her race.  The elf lady was unmoved to lift an eyebrow still less a hand in support of Rhodra, Giseanne and their various attendants, but she nonetheless viewed the confinement with a haughty disdain.

“The P
rincess is right is she not Deaconess, this child is not yet full term?”

“The
Goddess has given us grace and time, my Lady Kychelle,” Rhodra assured her.  “Since my lady’s episode in the gardens we have made every effort to delay the onset of labour and to strengthen the unborn child for that ordeal.   The Goddess has granted us two weeks and if she so wills that the child be born now, then it must be because she judges it ready.”

Kychelle sniffed.  “Or perhaps, she views your efforts and devotions unworthy of her further support.”  This blunt alternative interpretation of events brought a wail from th
e panting Princess on the bed, a wail which was cut off abruptly as a fresh spasm of pain gripped her.

“Where is Rugan?”
Giseanne cried. “Where is my husband?”

Kychelle clucked a not
e of reproach.  “He cannot come. He guards the road from Listcairn, poised to strike a blow to seize back this child’s inheritance from the usurpers.”

“You could send word,” Rhodra urged before adding with heavy emphasis.  “Her Highness would welcome some family support.”

The elf lady tutted impatiently.  “What would be the point, Deaconess? Rugan is many days ride away.  By the time he returned this business would be done for good or ill.”

Giseanne
moaned, bringing a disbelieving shake of the head from Kychelle.  “I had not realised what a creation humans make of the business of child birth.  By the Goddess, if this child is not full term then it should almost deliver itself, as easy as shelling peas.”

“
Excuse me, please my lady.”  Rhodra’s deputy hesitantly interrupted Kychelle’s reverie.  “I must examine the Princess.” 

The elf glared back
, incredulous that the woman would have had the temerity to address her. Then, with a flick of her head, Kychelle stepped aside surrendering her position at the foot of the bed to the midwife.

“My Lady Kychel
le, may I have a word? Outside?” Rhodra made a stiffly formal request.

The elf consented with alacrity.  “I was about
to make the same suggestion, Deaconess.”

Once beyond
the double doors of the royal bedchamber it was Kychelle who spoke first. “Deaconess, understand me well.  If at any time in these proceedings there should be a danger to life, it is the child that is paramount, you understand me?  The child must live!”

“It is my intention, Lady Kychelle, to see both mother and child safely through this night.” Rhodra ground out a flat mono
-tonal reply which those who knew her well would have recognised as the Deaconess’s highest level of fury short of physical assault. 

The elf however was either deaf or unmoved in response to Rhodra’s anger.  “A commendable aspiration, Deaconess, but remember if a choice must be made….”

“By the Goddess, it will not come to that.”

This time, something in Rhodra’s expression, the bright eyes shining in the middle of a round face or the mouth pursed in a tight-lipped line, penetrated Kychelle’s awareness. The elf looked oddly at the deaconess, opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it.  Rhodra swept over the el
f’s momentary doubt.  “Now, my Lady Kychelle, perhaps there is some business about the palace that needs your attention. My ladies and I can attend the Princess well enough without you.”

“You are sending me away?” The question surprised Kychelle so much she had to repeat it. “
You
are sending
me
away?”

“My Lady Kychelle, you are the ruler of Silverwood, the Regent of Medyrsalve and the Grandmother of my Prince,” Rhodra acknowledged. “But in that room,” she pointed behind them. “At this time, there is no greater authority than mine save the
Goddess herself, so yes I am. 
I
am sending
you
away.”

Kychelle raised her eyebrows, looked to one side, tapped her staff a couple of times on the floor.  “Well, well,” she said at
last.  “I see you would rely on your own resources, Deaconess. I trust you do so wisely.”

Rhodra did not afford the stunned elf a reply, spinning on her heel and plunging back into the royal bedchamber just as Gis
eanne let out another great bellow of pain.