Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) (6 page)

She swallowed hard and faced him, with blood running down her chin.  The answer when it came was as great a surprise as her transformed table manners and altered tastes.  “Maelgrum is scared of me.”

Now it was his turn to laugh, to laugh at what was clearly a joke, but she did not laugh back.  She faced him still, chewing carefully on some morsel of deep red meat, the mauled steak in her hands held poised for another assault.

“Maelgrum fears you?”

She shrugged indifferent to his belief or disbelief and lowered her mouth once more upon the meat.

“How can he fear you? What harm could you do our Master?”

“He fears what I know,” she mumbled through a mouthful of flesh. “Fears what I might tell him and what he might do because of it.  That is why he will not talk to me anymore.  Maelgrum and I have exchanged our last words.”

He shook his head incredulously.  “How, what can you know? Dema this is insane, tell me. Tell me what it is he fears to hear.”

“I can’t?”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m afraid, Odestus. I
’m afraid to speak to you of it, and yet I long to tell you.”

There was
anguish in her voice which he ached to soothe.  He reached for her bloody hands trying to ignore the juices of her barely cooked repast.  “Dema, we have been through enough in our lives together and apart that you can tell me anything.”

For a long moment she looked at him and he held the discomforting sparkle of her shielded eyes, feeling the stillness that assailed his senses, the blood curdling in his veins, yet still he held her gaze.  At last she shook her head and shook off his hands.  “There are some things, little wizard, that cannot be told.  Not yet, perhaps
not ever, not even to you.”  She stood up, shaking off his grasp. “Thank you for a lovely dinner. Now if you’ll excuse me, that meat has put me in the mood for more.  I have a guard captain to fuck.”

His thoughts would not assemble
quickly enough to reply before she was gone; his great issue was left unraised.  He reached in his robes and drew out the bottle of luminous orange liquid.  Dema had posed him a question twenty years earlier and now, in this bottle, the frustrating and fractured search for a solution had finally reached its fruition.  The only question he had wanted to ask had been, was she still interested in the answer?

“Did you have to tell them?” Hepdida asked softly.  “About me, about whom I am?”

At first the girl wondered if she had spoken loud enough to be heard, for Niarmit made no reply.  The two cousins lay flat on the ground behind a gnarled tree root
.  The priestess’s attention remained fixed on the distant canvas city.  The flaming braziers and campfires around the uneven conurbation of tents and pens lit up the lowering night clouds in a flicker of inconstant orange.  A momentary strengthening of the soft breeze in their faces brought another stench of fresh death to their nostrils.

Hepdida coughed a quiet retch into the palm of her hand, drawing a sharp look of reproach from her cousin. “Sorry,” she mouthed.

Niarmit bent her head close to whisper in the younger girl’s ear. “We may be downwind of them, but we don’t know what other awareness they may have besides a zombie sense of smell?  If you must be here it is best to be quiet. I could have waited alone.”

“I didn’t want to stay back there.”

Niarmit pursed her lips and then hissed back, “But that is why I told them, so you could stay safely with Jolander and his lancers.  You cannot always be at my side.  It is neither safe nor wise.  Now they know you are like me, you can be sure of their respect and protection.”

“I am not like you, not at all like you.”

Niarmit’s eyebrows flickered upwards, the faint movement barely perceptible in the midnight darkness. She spoke quickly and softly. “You have lived a life of lies because your father could not keep his vows and your mother could not keep her honour, in consequence of which you have been cast into a world of danger and obligation which you had never expected.  I would say you are just like me.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Hush, child and keep watch for their return.”

The
y were quiet for many minutes.  The hard ground numbed Hepdida’s senses, but she would not risk her cousin’s displeasure by moving so much as a muscle.  Just when she thought she might never feel her legs again, Niarmit broke the silence. “They are taking too long.  By the Goddess let it not have gone ill with them.”

“Tordil does not like Thom.”

“What of it?  Tordil is a consummate scout and Thom knows the ways of these creatures and their masters.  Who else would you have had me send?” 

“Tordil does not like Thom.  H
e doubts him always.”

“They are both wise enough to put pe
tty personal differences aside.   If any mischance has occurred it will not have been a falling out between them.  Hold!”

Th
ere was a noise to their right, a cracking of a twig. Niarmit shot into a low battle stance, her ancient sword sliding smoothly from the scabbard on her back. Hepdida, scuffled stiff-leggedly half upright.

“Rest easy,” the illusionist’s voice re-assured them as
Thom materialised from the darkness creeping along in a low crouch with the elf Captain at his shoulder.

“Did you get lost?” Hepdida asked
.  “Why are you skulking up on us from the wrong direction?”

“This
noisy oaf would have a hoard of zombies at our heels if I would let him.  We had to lose them in a gully and work our way round to get back here without a pack of them for company,” Tordil growled.    

“It
is an ill-disciplined camp,” Thom offered his own interpretation of events.  “Their undead pens are insecure and a few of the creatures have escaped to roam beyond the camp limits.  A handful smelled us out but I managed to bend their wills to another purpose long enough for our escape”

“We’ll not discuss it here,” Niarmit hissed.  “Let us get back to Quintala and the others and you can both tell all then.”

Kimbolt preferred it when the snakes were covered, but some
nights Dema liked to give them their freedom.  While the writhing and hissing of the serpents was always in tune with the Medusa’s mood, he was unsure how far the creatures were truly subordinate to her will.  There were moments when the sibilant chorus was in precise harmony with the pitch of Dema’s arousal, but nonetheless Kimbolt kept his hands well below her shoulders lest an over excited snake should inflict a celebratory but lethal bite upon him.

N
ow the beasts were hissing a soft purr, all passion spent.  The absence of the sparkle of blue through the gauze mask showed that Dema’s hidden eyes were closed, her thoughts and sight elsewhere. For a long moment they were both lost in silent separate intimacy.  Then she got off him and pulled a robe around her cool bare skin.

He pushed
up on his elbows, contriving as he did so to fling the sheet across himself.  She sat in the deep window alcove with her back to him.  The hood of her robe was flicked up and she gripped herself with arms folded in a fierce hug.

“
Mistress Dema?”

He pulled
his crumpled tunic from a pile of discarded clothing on the floor and tugged it impatiently over head and arms.  Then he padded across the stone floor, as cool beneath his feet as his mistress’s body.  She must have heard him.   She heard everything. The softest falling of a silk handkerchief on thick carpet was still audible to the Medusa’s heightened senses.  But she did not turn round, even when he was close enough for his breath to ruffle the thin material of her bedrobe.

“Dema?”

“What?”

“Have I displeased you?” 

She spun round at that.  Her sparkling half hidden gaze met his eyes and he looked away quickly. The mere echo of her masked sight sent his stomach tumbling in a wave of nausea.  Carefully he turned his head back, letting his field of vision rise as high as her lips, the lips so soft and human in brutal contrast to the monstrous aspect from her cheekbones upwards.

Her mouth opened in a sharp retort.  “
Why do you ask, Captain?”

“You seem….” He hesitated.  For a creature of such varied and volatile moods it was difficult t
o identify what was normal and, by contrast, bring definition to a sense that something ailed her.  Her lips, sealed and straight in a thin unsmiling line, gave him no encouragement.  “You seem unsettled, Mistress.  Is it some failing of mine?”

She gave a haughty sniff.  “The arrogance of men is limitless.  To assume that responsibility for all things good or ill must always lie with them.  There are other concerns in my life, Captain, beyond the quality of your modest accomplishments in the bed chamber.”

He winced at the rebuke, but was comforted by the fact that whatever fault had occurred it was not his.  She turned back to gaze at the camp fires of the assembled armies within and beyond the castle walls.  He reached for her shoulder, first letting his fingertips rest there then, when that elicited no shrugging dismissal, he settled his palm to give her a squeeze of reassurance.  She grabbed his hand with hers, always the shock of her cold skin, and gave him a complicit squeeze in return.

“Who has displeased you? Is there anything you would have me do?”

She laughed at that.  “Noble Kimbolt the bed slave, freed from guilt and so released and ready to take up arms in my defence.  Would you strike down Nagbadesh and all the Redfangs for me?”

“I would,” he gulped,
biting back bitterness at her belittling tone. “Nagbadesh is unsoldierly.”

She pulled him down beside her in the alcove and looked him in the face
, head cocked to one side in curiosity. “How so, brave Captain?”

“He posts his guards in pairs too far apart.  The line between their vantage points is too great and the guards are a
llowed to talk and be a distraction to each other.  A spy or an attacker could easily sneak through his leaky cordon.”

She nodded slowly. “Indeed, you see much in your wonderings and from this vantage point, Captain.”

“Is that how Nagbadesh has displeased you?”

She shook her head with a sigh. “Even an impatient and unsoldierly orc is no more than a pimple on the arse of my displeasure.”

“I am sorry that you are so troubled. Surely this is your time of triumph, victor of many extraordinary battles, commander now of a far greater force.  Is not your ambition on the point of fulfilment?”

She gave a snort of derision. “And what follows fulfil
ment, Kimbolt?  What is left next but oblivion? Is not every triumph to be followed by disaster?”

“Dema? What is this doubt which
ails you?”

“Doubt?” she laughed at that.  “Yes doubt is a sickness
and I have the cure.  Come Kimbolt.” She rose, and pulled him back towards the bed.  “Come give me some certainties to ease my doubt.”

He followed, rising to her challenge.  He hoped she would keep the snakes covered.

“Wait my P
rincess.”  It was Kaylan who stopped her with a firm but humble admonition.  “Your cousin needs a moment alone.”

Hepdida rounded on the thief. “She is upset, I want to go to her.”

He shook his head.  “She is angry and if you go to her you will only draw her fury like a lone tree draws lightning.”

“I don’t care about her anger.”

“But she will. She will care tomorrow and be sorry for the things she would say to you.  Do not go to her when she is angry and provoke for her yet more cause for guilt and self-reproach.”

Hepdida hesitated.  Ahead of her Niarmit paced back and forth beyond the camp perimeter, her head shaking
, her fingers clenching and unclenching.  Occasionally the priestess would stop and glare at the crescent moon low on the horizon. 

“Come, sit down,
my Princess,” the footpad urged as he sat cross-legged on the ground.

“I want to help her.”

“Then wait until she wants your help.  Just being here is all you can do for now.”  He patted the ground beside him and this time she accepted his invitation.

“Here, for you my P
rincess.”

He passed her a tiny carving, scarce bigger than her thumb.  She turned it over in her hands. 

“It’s a cat,” he said at length.

“Oh I know, Kaylan,” she said hurriedly.  “I could always tell, I was just amazed at how well it was done.  You’ve even carved the fur.”

“Keep it,” he closed her fingers over the small gift and pulled a fresh fragment of timber from his pocket.  “This one, I think will be a sheep.”  He worked his knife into the grain, swiftly creating the crude outline animal shape on which to base the finer work.

“You are very clever with your hands,” she said.

“All thieves are clever with their hands, my Princess.  And I have had plenty of time for whittling when your cousin has been struck by these moods.”

“Why is she so angry Kaylan?  We knew what kind of army we were tracking.”

“Not all of it we didn’t, my Princess, not all of it.”

Hepdida racked her memory for what insignificant element in Tordil and
Thom’s report had triggered her cousin’s distress.  “We knew there were zombies and wizards, we knew some of the zombies were from the refugee caravan.  We might have guessed there were orcs. There are always orcs. And everyone knows that the desert nomads ride with orcs these days.  There was nothing new in this.”

“Tordil reckoned their force numbered twelve thousand, five thou
sand of them the unrested dead, including as you say the risen refugees.  The orcs another four thousand, the nomads perhaps two.”

“Tordil said three thousand nomads.”

“No,” Kaylan corrected her.  “Tordil said three thousand humans, two thousand are nomads aye.”

“And the rest?”

Kaylan struck smoothly at his latest sculpture for several seconds.  When he spoke again she thought at first he had changed the subject.  “There was a man, a boy really, that the Lady Niarmit was once most fond of.”

Hepdida leant in, intrigued by the promise of
a tale which might open a window on her cousin’s past.

“They were to
be wed.   It would have been a great union.  An assured future for Undersalve, blessed by everybody up to and including the Goddess.  The new young Royal line of Undersalve, joined to one of the most ancient houses in the province. There was much to celebrate when the prancing bear of the house of Prince Matteus was set to join the black eagle of..”

“The black eagle? That was one of the shields Tordil saw in the camp!”

“Just so.”  Kaylan focussed on the head of his carving as Hepdida’s thought processes ran their course.

“Then the boy, her fiancé,
he is there in the camp, serving the enemy!”

Kaylan shook his head quickly.  “Not the boy no, he is dead. I…..  he died.   But
it seems his father marches with the enemy.  His father who once bent his knee to Prince Matteus and kissed your cousin’s hand, marches as an ally with orcs, nomads and the risen dead, many of whom I’ll warrant were once his neighbours or his vassals.”

“Why? Why would anyone do that
? Why betray your own people? Why side with the enemy?”

Kaylan shrugged, “greed or fear, often both.  They are the g
reat motivators of human kind. Trust me. I’m a thief. I know.  But while I have been a thief as long as I recall, I have never been a collaborator.”  He spat on the ground for emphasis.

“She’s coming back.”  Hepdida rose to her feet as Niarmit began striding back towards the camp.

Kaylan, standing quickly next to her, muttered, “say nothing to your cousin of the boy of the black eagle.  He was the cause of much pain to her, to her and to me.”

As Niarmit drew nea
r, the thief bowed low.  “Your Majesty.”  His courtesy prompted Hepdida into an inelegant curtsy which brought the priestess up in nonplussed shock. 

“A ragged camp downwind of a zombie horde is no place for such formality you pair of fools.”

“Sorry, Niarmit,” Hepdida apologised.

“Likewise, your M
ajesty,” Kaylan replied without rising from his bow.

“Kaylan, I will cuff your ears
.  My name is Niarmit!”

“Of course your….” The thief stopped himself for a moment, his brow furrowed in perplexity. “er… my lady?” He offered a hopeful compromise.

Niarmit scowled and strode on.  Hepdida fell in step beside her while Kaylan followed a full three paces behind.   The others were waiting at the rainbow hued campfire.  “You have recovered your composure I see,” Quintala observed drily.

“Forgive me,” Niarmit replied.  “Our scouts’ report stirred an old memory of a deep ….. a deep ingratitude
whose power to wound I had mistakenly thought was now entirely spent.”

“Then it is we who should seek forgiveness.” Tordil gave
Thom a nudge with his elbow as he replied, clearly indicating which of the pair of scouts he felt needed to shoulder the greater part of the blame.

“No harm is done, think no more on it the pair of you, please.
We must confirm our course of action.  We know from Seneschal Quintala that Listcairn has fallen to the enemy and that Prince Rugan is marching to assault it, he may already have done so.”

There was an abrupt laugh from the half-elf cut short at Niarmit’s scowl of rebuke.  “My brother is not one to act in haste,” Quintala assured them.  “I think we will find Listcairn still unmarked by his engines of war.”

“Even so, Kaylan has told of nomads roaming North of the Hadrans in the southern Marches of Prince Rugan’s province.  They are led by the man we knew as the self-styled governor of Undersalve, though Tordil and the scouts of Hershwood assure us his name is Odestus.”

“Another
wizard returned untimely from exile beyond the barrier,” Tordil interjected bringing a blush of red to Thom’s cheeks.

“And now,” Niarmit went on.  “We have this force marching up the Eastern bank of the Saeth bringing more power than Rugan knows to his opponent.  Our priority must be to warn Rugan.  If we can get to him quickly enough
there may be yet a chance for him to attack these foes separately, striking before they can combine and so destroying them in detail.”

“A sound strategy, your Majesty,” Jolander agreed.

“We would need to strike East and ride up the foothills of the Palacintas, if we are to work our way around them,” Tordil said.

“Indeed, two days hard riding should do it.  Let us get some sleep.  Tordil, Sergeant set double guards to
night. I want no surprises from wondering zombies or their recalcitrant shepherds.”

“I’ll join the first watch,”
Quintala offered. 

“Me too!” Hepdida volunteered to some amused surprise from the gathering.  “
Why not?” she queried their incredulity.

“You are a princess,” Jolander gave an explanation he clearly believed was not just sufficient but complete.

“And Niarmit is the Queen, but you let her stand watch.”

“She’s a brave girl, Sergeant.” Qu
intala said.  “I’d be proud to have her stand watch with me, and keep me from falling asleep.”  At the Seneschal’s interjection the objections of the others evaporated.  Hepdida harboured a faint suspicion that the Seneschal had been mocking her.  She had never seen the half-elf asleep or even showing signs of fatigue.  She seemed as tireless as her half-cousins the elves, unlikely to need aid from a new made princess.  Nonetheless, Hepdida muttered a quick thank you to which the half-elf gave a demure nod. About them the rest of the group busied themselves for the business of standing watch or turning in.

They had chosen a shallow wadi for their camp.  A twist in the dried up river bed had created a natural trench some twenty yards wide bent into a semicircle
.  It was a place in which a score of horses and their riders could remain entirely hidden from view save for someone walking up or down the river bed or stumbling over the embankment.  

“We’ll take the Western end,” Quintala announced
, while lancers and elves stationed themselves at the high sides of the enclosure.  A man could lie with his head peeping over the earthen parapet, the rest of him completely concealed from view.  Yet they could still see across the broad plain towards the shallow rise which separated them from the horde of orcs and undead.  Only the eerie orange glow to the clouds hinted at the presence of their distant foe.

The ends of the
tubular camp were open.  The empty river channel meandered away into the night, its bed a little muddy as a trickle of water heralded the approaching winter rainy season.  Quintala sat down on the outer edge of the bend in the absent river’s course.  Here the faster flowing water had eaten into the bank to create an overhang beneath which one could find shelter and still keep an eye on the camp to the left and the rest of the channel to the right from whence an attacker might come creeping in the night.

Hepdida sat down bes
ide the silver haired half-elf, and strained her eyes to peer into the gloom.  “I can see nothing,” she confessed.

“My eyes can see enough for bo
th of us,” the Seneschal assured her.  “But if you make sure not to look towards the campfire you’ll find your night vision gets passably clear, for a human at least.”

“Thank you.” It was the longest exchange the half-elf had granted Hepdida since she had come,
Goddess sent, to their party’s rescue on the bank of the great Nevers River.

“It is the wadi you are supposed to be watching, not me
,” Quintala said a while later, without turning her own attention from the object of their guard duty

“I’m sorry,” Hepdida
stammered, realising that she had been staring at the half-elf’s cheek and ear while her thoughts raced round in circles.  “It’s just that I…”

“You’ve never sat down with
a half-breed before,” Quintala completed the sentence inaccurately, but with such amused certainty that Hepdida dared not correct her. “That’s not surprising. There are only two of us in the whole Petred Isle, perhaps in the whole world. If our leader’s plans bear fruit, you shall have met the full set before two more nights have fallen.”

“You don’t like Niarmit do you?”

Quintala shrugged.  “What’s not to like, a bastard Queen and her cousin the bastard Princess, served by a bastard Seneschal.  One has to admire the Goddess’s rich sense of humour.”

“Your father…”  Hepdida began a question
but again the half-elf anticipated her words.

“Never married
my mother. I’m sure he would have, if they had let him.  They let her marry my brother’s father, but then he was a prince, just about noble enough.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? It wasn’t your doing.  It was all a long time before you were born. My father’s been dead two hundred years now.”

“My father might be dead,
my other father that is.  My step-father he was killed by an orc, but my real father might be dead too.”

“
Bishop Udecht? He’s not dead.”

“How can you be sure?”

Quintala gave her a quizzical look.  “Our royal leader carries not just the mark of the Helm and the sword of the father, she carries also the Royal Ankh.  Its lustrous gem tracks the life of the royal heir.  Improbable as it might seem, that heir is her uncle and your father the philandering Bishop Udecht.  If he had died the Ankh would have told her.”

“How? Does it speak?”

“No, a flash of heat and light.   It is not a signal that can be easily mistaken.”

“She might not have told me.”

The half-elf opened her mouth to speak and then changed her mind.  In the pause Hepdida sprang a question.  “Was your father a good man, Quintala?”

The S
eneschal shrugged.  “I think he was a good man, he tried to do right by me for a short handful of decades before the Goddess took him. I watched him age and wither, lit the funeral pyre myself. What mayflies you humans are.”