Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) (7 page)

“I had two fathers, I’m not sure either of them was good.”

“Goodness is over-rated, come we have a watch to keep.”  The half-elf turned back to her scanning of the river bed, her eyes alert her body still.  Hepdida settled stiffly beside her.

“Easy your reverence, easy does it. These fellows have a light touch on their bowstrings.”

Udecht was quite aware of his per
il without Haselrig’s warning.  Four outlander guards stood in the corners of the room, bows drawn with arrows trained on the Bishop’s much shrunken frame.  Haselrig sat opposite him at the work bench, leaning forward curious but hesitant.

The stimulus
for this excess of caution was the artefact Udecht held in his hands, the Great Helm of Eadran the Vanquisher.  All knew that Udecht dare not wear the object.  His royal blood gave him some immunity from the enduring spells of protection which the Vanquisher had cast, sufficient to let him handle the Helm.  But should he try to usurp the rightful monarch by wearing it, he would be destroyed as his elder brother the traitor Prince Xander had been destroyed.

However, all present had seen the blistering effect of
the Helm when it came into contact with the Vanquisher’s enemies, the blasts of energy which could kill those close and stun those far away.  So no chances were to be taken as the Bishop manoeuvred the object to enable the antiquary’s closer inspection.

“I’m hardly likely to throw this at you,” Udecht muttered glancing around at the taut bowstrings and the even tauter archers.

“Even so, your reverence, set it down on the bench here.  There’s a few orcs now drinking in the eternal feasting halls that are telling a tale of how a mad bishop clubbed them into the afterlife with an old basinet.”

“That was simply self-defenc
e.”   Udecht set the Helm down on its back in the middle of the bench. It rolled a little to one side on the curved tail plate.  The Bishop reached forward instinctively to steady the item, but thought better of it with his fingers still an inch or so short of the metal.  There was a whisper of exhaled tension, and a creaking of slackened bowstrings around the room.   

“It may have been self-defence, but it was in the midst of a prisoner’s escape attempt.” Haselrig reminded him as he lowered his head to peer more closely inside the Helm.  “Who’s to say you will not try to repeat the artifice?”

Udecht shook the chain on his wrist drawing a complimentary rattle from the other end around the antiquary’s arm.  “I would be a fool
to try to kill you, Haselrig, and land myself chained to a dead weight.”

“
Sound logic indeed, but there has been much lack of wisdom in your actions to date, your reverence.  Such folly would not be out of recent character for you.”

“Says the man who betrayed an entire nation so he could become slave to an undead abomination.  I’ll take no lectures in wisdom from you Haselrig.”

The antiquary gave a weary sigh.  “Here, bring that lantern close, let us shine a light inside the Vanquisher’s dark place.”  Udecht did as he was bid, illuminating fully the inner surface of the Helm.  It was a simple basinet. A solid metal aventail provided some projection for the neck.  The frontispiece extended down as far as the tip of the nose, shielding the eyes with an unbroken sheet of metal which would effectively blindfold the wearer.  The light inside showed a lining of rich red leather, providing the Helmet’s wearer with some cushioning and comfort against the hard metal and any blow that might be struck against it.

“The lining is
perhaps not part of the magic. If you could peel it away there may be an inscription beneath that will make sense of its dweomer.”

“You want
me to put my hand inside that thing and try to tear it apart?  My I remind you that my unlamented brother put his head in it and two dozen orcs scrubbing have still not got the stain out of the marble throne room floor.”

“My I remind you that we have thus far spent over a week in frui
tless study and each sunset my Master’s disappointment is a shock to both of us,” Haselrig rattled the magical chain that bound them together.  “You will have marked no doubt how the lightning bolts which this binding conducts grow stronger with each day of failure.  There will come a time, before too long, when the persistence of our inadequacy will prove fatal.”

“I’m not afraid of death.
  You should have let him kill me when he wanted to.”

“You’re an ungrateful sod.
I risked my Master’s displeasure to intercede on your behalf, to save you from your brother’s fate.”

“Why did you do that then, Haselrig?” Udecht challenged the antiquary.  “If I were to scratch away the sheen of your magnanimity
I am sure I would find crude self-interest where it has always been, the beginning and the end of all your motivations.”

Haselrig made no reply.  He gave the prisoner a cold glare of malevolence, which assured Udecht his words had struck home.  “What happened to you, Haselrig?  You were a priest once like me.  How could you turn so far from the path of the
Goddess?”

“It is my place to ask questions and yours to answer them,” Haselrig growled
.

“
I know no more than you of the workings and the wielders of the Helm.”

“You know much that you do not say, your reverence.  The secret passages into which you
led your guards to their deaths at the assassins’ hands.  The self-same paths by which you led the intruders to their escape.  It would require the painful taking of many lives to recompense my Master for a betrayal of such magnitude and you have but one life with which to pay.”

Udecht shrugged.  “My life has been a nigh
tmare these past six weeks.  Death would be like waking up.”

Haselrig gave a snort.  “You clearly know too little of death and nothing of dying.
For now, we have a riddle to unravel, set by your ancestor.  Where in lies the power of this helm and how could it be unlocked?”

“Peer into the blast
ed thing all you like Haselrig. You’ll get no help from me.”

The antiquary turned to the nearest archer.  “Shoot him
,” he said.  “Somewhere painful but not fatal.” 

Abroath bowed low before Prince Rugan as his father had told him to.  “My name is Prior Abroath. I bring the host of Oostsalve to your aid, my Prince.”

The Prince of Medyrsalve ran a thumb along his jaw, the black beard precisely trimmed despite the privations of an army camp on the marc
h.  “How many men?” the half-elf demanded.

“Five thousand, your H
ighness.”

“
What kind of warriors?” Rugan queried sharply. Abroath felt the Prince’s keen scrutiny of his own monastic robes.

“H
obelars, your highness and five hundred mounted archers.”

“
No knights? No cavalry!”  The Prince’s eyebrows shot up as high as the tips of his cusped ears.

“
These are a mobile force, your Highness. We can ride to where we are most needed before we dismount to fight.”

Rugan sighed. 
“I had need of cavalry. There’s none can shatter an enemy like a charge of heavy horse.”

“Indeed, your highness, but we may
stand and hold a line against the foe.”

“
I need to break a line, not hold one. I have delayed precisely to await your re-enforcements that I may be sure of overwhelming force. We have this one chance to break into Morsalve before next spring.  Your father sends me half the force I expected with a priest to make his apology.”

Abroath stood dumbly before the Prince’s ire.  He kn
ew the arguments well enough, he had rehearsed them in his head so many times before conferences with his father.  The half-elf was pacing the tent, his swarthy complexion assuming a darker hue as he ruminated on their predicament.

“Where is your father in this lad, and your brother
s?”

Abroath gulped.  His father was busily crating up the family treasures and clandestinely commissioning all the fast merchantmen for an escape to Salicia and
the Eastern Lands.  His eldest brother drunk or gambling or both in an inn.  The other doubtless preoccupied in a whorehouse.  “My father is not well, your highness.  He is much troubled in his stomach.  He wished that my brothers stayed to comfort him.”

“Your father’s belly is big enough to trouble several men, though I would
think your priestly healing would avail him more than your brothers’ ribald humour and uncivil appetites,” Rugan growled.

Abroath blushed deeply red for shame, not at the insults but at their accuracy.
  “I came to serve your Highness, for the honour of my house,” he said stiffly.

Rugan paused in his pacing and looked anew at the prior, scanning him from blond tonsured head, past wispy boy
’s beard and white robes to sandaled feet. He nodded.  “Do you carry a weapon, Prior?”

“I have my staff
,” Abroath thumped the butt end of his quarter staff on the hardened ground.  “And I have the Goddess’s blessing,” he pulled out his crescent symbol on its chain about his neck.

Rugan sighed
and ran his fingers through his anthracite hair.  “Listen well, Prior Abroath.  A handful of refugees have told us of the abomination in command of the enemy, a vile creature who has captured Listcairn and sets her orcs to test our defences. There is one tribe in the plain below, which has been creeping forward this last week, probing our positions, chasing my skirmishers.  They are over reaching themselves moving too far ahead of the rest of their allies.”

“We can attack them,
cut them off!”

“I will attack them, and cut them off.  The arrogance of the creatures leads them into the trap I have set. 
Tomorrow it will be sprung and I will destroy this overweening tribe and send the few pitiful survivors screeching back to spread panic in the tribes that follow.  With the Goddess’s blessing we can trigger a rout that will not stop until the gates of Listcairn or beyond.”

“A nobl
e plan, your highness. What part may I play in it?”

“There is a valley
a mile south of here, the Torrockburn. Your hobelars can take that route down out of the hills and circle round to take the enemy unawares in the flank.”

“I will lead my soldiers to glory, for Oostsalve, your Highness.”

“Do not lead them boy.  You are a priest not a warrior.  I am sure your father did not send you without some captain to take the soldier’s part, if not I have people I can spare.”

Abroath blushed more hotly than before.  “I did not come to play the coward.”

“Do not mistake caution for cowardice or impetuosity for bravery, Prior Abroath.  I have manoeuvred long and hard to get in position where I can strike a single killer blow against the enemy.  Your men may serve a part and I am grateful to you for bringing them.  There will be many have need of your healing powers before tomorrow nightfall and that will be service enough.”

Abroath
struggled to marshal a counter argument in the face of bitter disappointment.  A third son, his was always to be the way of the cloth.  He had embraced both the separation and rigour of priestly training with a resolute commitment that his brothers had never given to their martial duties.  In his monastic order he had found something of the companionship he had lost when his mother died.  The same event which had plunged his father and his brothers into a prolonged and communal exploration of all the vices to the injury of both mind and body.     

Now, at last he had found the ch
ance to serve a worthy master, the impeccable Prince of Medyrsalve, his four hundred year reign a model of how a Prince of the Salved should conduct himself.  And now, on the threshold of such fulfilment, he was to be consigned to serve as hospitaler, rather than lead the small division he had coaxed out of his reluctant and recalcitrant father.

“Your Highness…” he began, a cogent entreaty fully formed in his mind.  But it evaporated as the tent flap was flung back and a
tall silver haired woman strode in, unannounced.

Her presence stunned the imperturbable Prince of Medyrsalve.  He stood, jaw dropped facing her.  She smiled at the impact of her arrival.

“Grandmama Kychelle,” the Prince muttered.  “What has happened, what brings you here at such an hour?  The Lady Giseanne she is….?”

“She is well,” Kychelle assured him.

“And….” He did not dare complete the question.

“You have a son, my boy, a healthy son,
to be called Andros in tribute to his great grandfather.”

Rugan heard not her pronouncement on the name of his heir.  His lips split in a broad grin and his eyes widened in joy.  He spun round and seized Abroath in a bear hug of surprising strength. Then breaking apart he seized the monk’s two hands in his own and pumped them ferociously.  “I have a son!” he declared.  “I have a son.”  Then just for the avoidance of doubt he added, “a son!”

“I wish you joy of it, your Highness,” Abroath found the Prince’s smile infectious.

“Joy indeed,” Rugan agreed.  “Now we truly have something to fight for, when tomorrow comes.”