Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) (32 page)

It was like a cold shower for the mind.  A flood of numbing images shot through his head. A smiling dark haired girl.  A grinning orc.  A sharp blade in the creature’s hand.  Dema. Dema smiling.  His friend Captain Thackery at the top of Sturmcairntor, his last gasped “why?”  Tears on a young girl’s cheeks.  And then there was the blue gate, the gate of fear but it disappeared.  The thing he feared was not the gate. After it came Dema all hissing snakes and bloodied sword, her unshielded eyes staring into his, chilling his flesh to stone.  Hepdida. The girl’s name was Hepdida.  How could he have forgotten?

And there he was standing in the narrow gully
.  A few yards ahead stood his Mistress, sword in hand bent low over a prone figure.  Her snakes hissing venom at the woman on the ground, the woman who had shouted of Hepdida and broken promises.

“Sword or Stone?” Dema screamed.

“Oh my Goddess,” Kimbolt murmured.  “What have I done?”  

Niarmit waited for the pain of the blade.  She was not going to be anyone’s statue, nor was she going to give the abomination the satisfaction of an answer.  She tried not to tremble but death held more fears than dying.  Somewhere, the Helm was waiting to capture her soul and keep her forever separate from those she had loved, both in this world and the next.  She wished, oh she so wished she had told Hepdida to never wear the Helm.

The weight on her back lessened as Dema leaned away for the killing blow.  “Sword, then bitch!” she cried.

Niarmit shut her eyes and clenched her fists instinctively.

The weight was suddenly gone from her back, the freedom she needed.  There was a soft thump
. Niarmit rolled to one side, twisting to grab the knife from her boot and springing to her feet as Kaylan had taught her.  She did not see what she expected.

A ragged outlander stood before her, a bl
oodied sword in his hand.  The Medusa lay stretched out on the floor, fingers scrabbling feebly at the ground, her snakes lethargically wriggling, as she tried to force herself up.  She coughed, without the strength to turn her head. A spray of blood speckled the ground beneath her.  “You lied to me,” she wheezed with a painful exhale. “You lied to me, bitch.”  And then she was still.

Niarmit swung from the M
edusa’s corpse to the man who had saved her.  He looked at her dumbly, the point of his sword still raised, tears running down his cheeks into his ragged beard.  “I am in your debt, sir,” Niarmit said, aware that he still had a sword while she had just a knife.  “What is your name?”

He shook his head and waved her back with his sword.  She steppe
d away as he knelt beside the Medusa’s body, his eyes on Niarmit all the time.

“Who are you, sir?”

He shook his head.  “I was Kimbolt,” he said.  “Now I am nothing.”  He flung the Medusa’s corpse on its back and gazed into Dema’s dead open eyes.

“No!” Niarmit screamed. “Don’t.”

The man did not turn to stone, instead he shivered with sobs of grief.  Cautiously, Niarmit let her eyes slide over her fallen foe.  There were no snakes now.  Long blond hair was strewn across the ground.  The eyes that stared so blankly at the weeping Kimbolt were a deep brown hue.  She watched as he touched the body’s skin, ran a finger over her parted lips, traced the length of Rugan’s scar.

“She’s warm,” he cried.  “Warmer than I’ve ever felt her.”

Niarmit leapt past him to retrieve her sword from Dema’s discarded shield.  There were shouts and cries from along the gully, they had not long.

She tugged the mournful Kimbolt by the hand but he would not move. “Come fool, there will be others along soon.”

“I meant to die. I am meant to die,” he told her, stubbornly unmoving.

“You tried to die and you didn’t.  It cannot be the
Goddess’s plan for you to die, not today at least, Captain Kimbolt.”

He shook his head.  She pulled again.

“Come Kimbolt, Hepdida at least will be pleased to see you.”    

His face creased in incomprehension.  “She lives?”

“The girl lives. The orc is dead.  The rest of the story will have to wait until we are out of this fucking gully.  Now Kimbolt, for the love of the Goddess, come!”

And at last he did.

Hepdida
had reached an understanding with the horse.  All it took was enough oats and the animal would do whatever she required of it.  She clicked her tongue and the cob moved a little faster, threading its way between the trees.  There was a clearing ahead just as she had been given to expect.  It resembled the clearing in Hershwood so long ago and far away where she had first told Niarmit and the elves her tale.  There was even a twisted tree at its centre. 

She slipped, more or less gracefully, from the saddle and looped the cob’s reins over a low branch.  He nuzzled at
her hip for the purse in which she kept the oats.  A handful seemed to calm him, for the moment at least.  She hurried to the centre of the clearing crossing grass made crisp with the morning frost. 

A
protruding root twisting out of the ground afforded her a dry seat where she could draw her knees up to her chest. The knife was in her sleeve in case she should need have need of it. Kaylan made her carry it always.   She hoped she would not have to wait long.  The morning was cold and she felt the chill more sharply in the marks that Grundurg had left.

She pulled the crumpled note from her purse.  It had been beneath her pillow, left after her bed had been made that morning.  She read it again, a simple servant scrawl, not unlike her own writing. 
‘I saw who went to the nursery the nite the elf bitch was killed.  It wasn’t your friend done it. I’m scared. Meet me at the great oak an hour after sun up.  Come alone or I run.’ 
She looked around, trying to remember the faces of the many servants who had attended on them since they had arrived.  Rugan seemed to maintain a constant rotation of maids and footmen to his guests, wary of any of them forming any bond with the outsiders.  But one of them it seemed had done so, reaching out to Hepdida.

A breeze gathered pace across the clearing making Hepdida pull the riding cloak more tightly about her shoulders. She whistled for warmth and looked down at her feet
.   The ground was scuffed, a few broken twigs had been trodden underfoot, but not by her feet. That was when she saw it.

She wasn’t sure at first, didn’t dare to believe it.  She even turned her head to see if the object was simply fooling her and if a different angle might reveal it all as a harmless leaf, or misplaced piece of forest furniture.  She was trembling as she reached down towards it.  Her fingers touched the leather lanyard, a worn cord.  A fear seized her gut even at that small contact.

She swallowed hard and dragged on the cord, pulling the object free from the tangle of roots until it dangled like a pendant on a necklace.  But this was not a pendant.  It was a thick black disc, a medallion of ill intent.  She could not supress the shaking, could not forget the last time she had seen such an object.  Her wounds weeping in Grundurg’s tent when the foul orc had pulled out just such a black disc as this and destroyed her hope with the assurance,  “Snake lady not coming.  Master talk to Grundurg, talk to Grundurg through this, this big magic.” 

It couldn’t be him.  Niarmit said he was dead, Tordil said he was dead.  They had both seen the orc’
s headless corpse while Hepdida had rolled in delirium.

There was a crack in the woods behind her.  Hepdida froze. ‘Oh Crap!’ she thought, trying to reach for her knife.  But fear had literally frozen her.  She could not move a muscle. Oh shit, this wasn’t fear.  This was something else.  She tried to blink, she tried to turn.  Another noise, closer now, coming up behind her. The medallion swung in the breeze from her paralysed outstretched hand. She couldn’t move. She’d been so stupid. ‘Oh, Niarmit – I’m sorry.’

Thom
was dirty, sweating and happy.  The scrabble back along the north side of the pass had brought its moments of intense fear.  Several times it had been necessary to jump gaps of varying distances where the ledge they were following had disappeared into the steep rock face.  But now the encampment at the crest of the pass was in sight and the path had broadened into a gentle slope down to the floor of the saddle shaped Gap of Tandar.  Now he could savour not just success, or even his part in their success.  As he walked by the head of the short column of elven and human archers, he could reflect on a still greater achievement.

As though in echo of his inner thoughts,
a hand clapped him heavily once more on the shoulder.  “I meant it Thom,” Tordil said.  “You did well there.”

Thom
stumbled for words, ‘thank you’ seemed unnecessary, ‘I know’ would be arrogant.  Instead he dipped his head in quick dumb nods, with the excessive eagerness of a small child offered a treat.

“I did say
so, Captain.” Elyas bore up on the illusionist’s other side. “I told you young Thom had done us good service and would do so again.”

“Aye, well hiding those ropes from sight so the enemy would think they’
d hurried into a trap for us rather than themselves.” Tordil set his mouth in measured appreciation of the feat.  “It was good.”

“And multiplying our archers and our arrows when we wanted to climb free,”
Elyas reminded him.  “It sent them scurrying for cover.”

“But it was your flames that destroyed the enemy, Captain”
Thom hurried to dispense credit as freely as he appeared to be receiving it.  “My powers are only to deceive and confuse.  I didn’t kill anyone, or make them burn.”

Tordil slowed his
pace, chewing his lip in thought. “Yes, Thom, you didn’t. And that’s no bad thing.  You didn’t kill anyone and you haven’t killed anyone either of theirs or ours. May be the Goddess will spare you that …. that experience.” He sighed, “I have been less gracious or grateful than I should have.  I should not have held against you the service you were previously drafted into. I’m sorry.” 

Thom
felt his skin blush crimson at the elf Captain’s frank apology.  Elyas ruffled the illusionist’s hair with a laugh.  “See Captain, you embarrass our poor Thom.  He is too used to being kicked and abused.”

“Er… yes,”
Thom agreed glancing from one smiling elven face to another.  “Let me know when things will get back to normal.”

“All things change, Thom.  Even after five centuries an elf can learn a little humility.” 

“I hope that fortune has smiled as kindly on her Majesty.”  Elyas’s eyes scanned the milling soldiers in the camp for some sign of how Niarmit’s party had fared.

“She tempts the Goddess that one,” Tordil said.  “To resolve on destroying the engines of
war and freeing the prisoners, it was bold!”

“And burning the dead! S
he did set the wagons ablaze,”  Thom added.  “I saw it from the cliff top.”

Tordil shook his head and muttered, “bold or mad, I know not which Thom.”

“I see her!” Elyas shouted.  “There by the priests’ tents.” He laughed.  “Ah, Sir Ambrose’s chaplains are put to work again, delivering succour to the sick.  It will not be long before they ask the big knight for a sword and demand to stand in the battle line as simple soldiers, rather than always be dispensing the Grace of the Goddess.”

The trio had unconsciously picked up the pace
when Elyas spotted Niarmit.  As they scampered down the slope it was not far short of a race to be the first to report how good fortune had attended their endeavours.

The Q
ueen was ministering to the freed prisoners with absolute concentration, symbol in one hand, the other on the bodies of the sick, easing their fevers.  Though the elves had got there first, Thom had caught up with them before Niarmit rose and turned to face them.

“It went well with you then, Captain.”

“Exceptionally so, your Majesty.  Not just the siege engines, but half the troops that escorted them are destroyed, turned all to ash.” He nodded towards the weak but smiling refugees.  “I see the prisoners were all freed as well.”

She gave a slow pensive nod and
Thom thought her weariness quite understandable, after the night’s exertions.  But then she shivered, shaking off an unhappy thought.  “It was a little bit close to call at one point, Captain,” she admitted.  “You may be right, that I demand too much of the Goddess’s favour with fate.”

There was a murmuring amongst the prisoners, a low hum that grew angry like bees. An audible spit that stunned
Thom and then he saw a newcomer.   A man with a ragged beard, dressed in outlander garb, yet no prisoner for he still carried his sword as he walked past the resting refugees.  It was he that had drawn their disgust, a wave of surly looks, catcalls, mistimed kicks and phlegmy spit.  Energy that the sick could surely not spare.

“Who is this, your Majesty?” Tordil’s ha
nd had flown to his sword hilt in an instinctive first response to the newcomer’s appearance. Leaving his hand still resting on the slender weapon was a more deliberate choice.

“He is a friend,” Niarmit answered, despite the foul names and curses that the sick hurled at him.

The man had the good grace to bow his head at the abuse, offering no defence or rebuke to those who but a few hours earlier had themselves been entirely defenceless.

Tordil frowned.  “I sh
ould trust your judgement, your Majesty.  You have proved me wrong before, but it seems this fellow may have some accusations to answer. Who is he?”

Niarmit looked at the disconsolate outlander, a picture of misery in his freedom.  “Captain Tordil, this is Captain Kimbolt.” Neither soldier extended a hand to the other, content instead with the slightest nod of courtesy.

“Kimbolt?” Thom asked.  “Hepdida’s Kimbolt?”

At the mention of the girl’s name, the Captain swung his gaze on the illusionist with an expression of haunted hope.