Crusader (50 page)

Several times a day they’d meet groups, often many thousands’ strong, of crazed creatures and humans.

And every time they met them, they would decimate them.

Horsemen and trees would wade in side by side, swords and pikes sweeping and plunging, branches and roots snapping and snarling, men screaming, trees shrieking, death dealing.

None of the Demon-controlled creatures survived.

Of them all, the men found it hardest to do death to the women and children among the hordes of crazed creatures, but death they did, for it was the only release possible for those whose minds and souls had been eaten and corrupted by the Demons.

And every time Axis drew breath, and called his war band to a halt, he looked about at the blood-soaked snow that surrounded them, and he smelled lilies.

Thousands upon thousands of lilies, and Axis hoped that somehow the dead had managed to find their way into the Infinite Field of Flowers.

At the end of each day Axis led his war band back to the column that trailed behind them, Urbeth patiently plodding at its head.

But, as Axis did not have far to look back for his war band when he rode ahead, so he and his band did not have to ride far to meet up with the column. Sal’s magic, perhaps combined with Urbeth’s, extended to them as well.

And so they moved south.

Fast.

Until the eastern peaks of the Icescarp Alps rose to meet them.

Axis reined Sal to a halt, the mare snorting nervously.

A birdwoman stood in the snow before them.

Crazed? Probably so, considering her appearance, but crazed in a manner Axis had not yet seen.

She was…hideous. Before this moment Axis had not believed that any Icarii woman could make herself look hideous, but this birdwoman had gone to extraordinary lengths to make herself so.

Axis was not to know that she thought herself extraordinarily beautiful and alluring rather than repulsive.

Her hair had been teased by wind and ice into ragged spikes.

Her robe, possibly once gold, but Axis was not sure, was tattered and stained by whatever the wind had thrown at her.

Her wings were a frightful confusion of orange and red dye that had run in the wet conditions.

Masses of ill-placed jewellery hung from ears and neck and waist and streamers of what possibly had once been scarves fluttered from neck and arms.

Her face…her face was painted in several shades of purple and blue and red, as streaked by the elements as were her wings.

And yet her eyes still sparkled with obvious joy, and her mouth pouted seductively.

She held out her hands. “Axis StarMan!” she cried. “Well met! Have you brought me my husband?”

Axis finally recognised the woman from the time he, Azhure and Caelum had been trapped in the tunnel below the Fortress Ranges.

“StarLaughter!” he said, and Sal instinctively backed away two paces.

“
W
hat?”
WolfStar said. “I don’t believe you!”

And yet he remembered what StarLaughter had said to him on the ice-edged glacier at the foot of Star Finger.
We could love each other again.

Then, he’d thought she had simply been intending sarcasm, or perhaps was even a little mad.

Now he wondered if she was indeed mad, but also truthful.
She could actually think that she and he…?

WolfStar stared at Axis. They’d camped for the night within sight of the Icescarp Alps, and just as he and Zenith had eaten and begun to settle down for the night, Axis had ridden his pathetic brown mare into the camp, seized WolfStar by one wing, and dragged him to a relatively deserted spot beneath the ethereal trees.

“I have StarLaughter under guard at the head of this column,” Axis had said with no preamble as he slid down from Sal’s back. “She says she has come here to meet you. She says that you are her husband. She says that she has loved you for all eternity, and she says that your happy marriage is about to recommence.”

WolfStar still could not quite comprehend it. Stars, but the woman must be so far out of her mind that it was likely waiting for her on some distant iceberg in the Iskruel Ocean!

“What are you going to do about it?” he said.

“What am
I
going to do about it?” Axis turned his face
away for a moment, a muscle working in his cheek. He looked back at WolfStar. “The question, renegade, is what
you
are going to do about it.”

“I don’t have to—”

“Yes, you do! WolfStar, this is your problem, and you are damn well going to fix it! I do not like the idea of StarLaughter running about in this convoy, but even less do I like the idea of what she might do if I kick her sorry person back into the snow and ice. She is happily preening herself at my campfire, telling the poor sods of Lake Guardsmen who stand watch over her about the night of passionate love that awaits you and she, while meantime you are huddling up to my daughter and trying to pretend that StarLaughter is not your problem.

“WolfStar, she is more than your problem, she is your
responsibility!
She became
your
responsibility and
your
problem the instant you threw her through the Star Gate! Now, you are going to accompany me back to the head of the convoy and you are going to sort out this mess once and for all. I do
not
want StarLaughter a threat to this column. Stars know what she could do, or call down upon us, if she feels she’s been slighted.”

WolfStar sneered as Axis paused to take a furious breath. “No doubt you couldn’t be more pleased by this development, Axis. No doubt you think that you can send me off with StarLaughter and rescue your daughter from the depths to which I have dragged her. Well, I won’t do a thing to—”

Axis reached out and seized WolfStar’s hair with one hand, his chin with his other.

“You will come with me
now,”
he said between clenched teeth, “or I will personally deliver your sword-stuck corpse to your wife…with my condolences, of course. Now,
you will come with me!”

WolfStar snarled, an automatic response, but he offered no resistance as Axis hauled him forward.

Damn Axis to everlasting agony in the pits of the AfterLife! When he, WolfStar, wrested power and control from DragonStar
no-one
would be able to treat him so contemptuously!

As Axis remounted Sal, and gave WolfStar a none-too-gentle kick in the small of WolfStar’s back with his booted foot, Zenith emerged from the shadows, her face expressionless.

Further back in the gloom, so furtive and silent that Zenith did not know she was being watched, stood StarDrifter, his face an equal mixture of hope and despair.

StarLaughter laughed, fluttering her hands about her, admiring the way the firelight caught at the sparkle of rings and nail polish. She tossed her head, knowing the five Icarii men who stood around her were finding it hard to control their lust.

StarLaughter knew WolfStar would not be able to keep his hands off her once he saw her again.

It was predestined, for their love was meant to be eternal.

There was a movement in the night, and the Guardsmen stepped back, not even bothering to hide their relief.

Axis stepped into the firelight. “I have brought you your husband, StarLaughter,” he said, “although whether or not you find him what you—”

“WolfStar?” StarLaughter scrambled to her feet, almost tripping over a length of tattered scarf that hung from her waist. “WolfStar? Is that you?”

“Yes, you over-painted harlot,” WolfStar said, and stepped into view. “What in every god’s name have you done to yourself?”

StarLaughter preened, turning her body this way and that so her husband could admire it. “I have made myself beautiful…for you,” she simpered.

WolfStar laughed derisively. “Then what a shame you have failed so badly.”

So lost was StarLaughter in her madness, and her mad world, that none of WolfStar’s derision registered. He was here, and he was hers, and nothing would ever come between them.

She threw herself full length against WolfStar’s body, rubbing herself wantonly against him, running her hands over curves and into crannies that few women ever dared caress in public.

“My love!” she whispered, and kissed him.

WolfStar wrenched his head back, and seized StarLaughter by the shoulders.

“I find you repulsive!” he hissed. “Disgusting! Nauseous! Can you understand that, you raving witch?”

“Enough play,” she murmured, attempting to snuggle up to him again. “You always had such a way with words!”

“WolfStar…” Axis said, wanting WolfStar to end this repellent scene.

“Listen to me!” WolfStar snarled. “I never loved you, not once! Can you understand that? Do you actually hear my words?”

Something flickered in StarLaughter’s face, and her hands stilled.

“I married you for the power you’d bequeath our son,” WolfStar continued, his voice deliberately hard and scornful, “and for the added legitimacy you’d give my seizure of the throne of Talon. I found your personality grating, your body only bearable at best. I kept lovers to keep me amused and warm, for
you
never did! I have never, do not, and will not ever love you, for you are the most repellent woman in creation!”

StarLaughter’s face had now blanched, and she stared in confusion into WolfStar’s eyes.

He continued, brutally cruel. “I repudiate you, before all these witnesses. I cast you aside. I deny our marriage. You are filth, StarLaughter. Filth!”

“WolfStar!” Axis’ voice cracked across the campfire. “That’s enough!”

“I don’t believe you,” StarLaughter whispered. “I can’t!”

“Would you believe it,” another voice said, “if someone told you that WolfStar has taken another to his heart and to his bed, and would wife her, if only he could permanently dispose of you?”

WolfStar cursed foully. StarDrifter! What had the stupid birdman done!

StarDrifter had now stepped into the circle of light. “He has taken a woman,” he said, “that does not belong to him, and who does not love him.”

“That’s a lie!” WolfStar shouted. “She loves me, and I her!”

Humiliated, scorned, betrayed, StarLaughter jerked out of WolfStar’s grasp.

“Who?” she whispered, then turned her head to StarDrifter and spoke louder, more strongly.
“Who
is this whore-bitch that thinks to depose me?”

It was only then that StarDrifter realised what a terrible mistake he had made.

T
hey continued south, Axis and his war band ranging ahead during the day, Urbeth leading the column of trees and people and animals behind him.

StarLaughter had proved a problem.

Since StarDrifter—
curse his tongue!—
had blurted out the fact of Zenith’s existence, StarLaughter had not said a word.

She had, quite simply, gone silent.

And Axis did not like to think what might be going on in her mind.

He’d done what he could, but he wasn’t sure if he
could
do anything to mitigate the situation.

StarLaughter had been asked, politely enough and with the offer of supplies, to leave the column.

StarLaughter had turned her head slightly in Axis’ direction, but had said nothing.

Nor had she moved.

So Axis had been forced to remove her. A dozen Lake Guardsmen had taken her some ten leagues to the east where they’d left her in a cave in the Icescarp Alps with supplies, clothes and strict instructions to leave the column alone.

Next morning, a sentry had alerted Axis to StarLaughter’s silent, ghostly presence in the snow some hundred paces beyond the treeline.

She’d just stood there, ever silent, staring with unblinking eyes at the convoy as it prepared to move for the day.

Axis had had her moved again, further this time.

Next morning she was back again.

Urbeth had roared and snarled, but StarLaughter had not blinked, nor moved, and after a week of trying to drive her away, Axis had been forced to admit that nothing would work. StarLaughter would use whatever power she had to return herself to her silent
(hate-filled)
vigil a hundred paces away from the column.

Staring, staring, staring.

Stars knew what horror she’d bring down on the column! Axis did not know if StarLaughter was still working in league with the Demons and the Hawkchilds, or if she had embarked on a solitary quest for revenge. One night a sentry had reported that a strange shape—half bird, half woman, strangely lumped and as black as the night itself—had been spotted stumbling its way through the snow towards StarLaughter, but when Axis and a unit of men had ridden out to investigate, StarLaughter was once more alone in the snow.

Albeit with the ghost of a smile on her face.

So Axis had done what he could within the convoy itself. There were always several units of men detailed to keep an eye on StarLaughter—and for whatever horror she might call down out of the sky.

WolfStar and Zenith had finally been forcibly separated—to WolfStar’s fury—but Axis was not leaving Zenith with WolfStar when StarLaughter, in all probability, had his daughter’s murder in mind.

Thank the Stars StarDrifter had not blurted out her name!

As Axis had men watching StarLaughter, so he also had an equal number of men watching Zenith, as also WolfStar. Zenith to protect her; WolfStar to keep him away from Zenith.

WolfStar was incandescent with rage, Zenith was unhappy, StarDrifter spent his days in a turmoil of guilt at the danger he’d placed Zenith in, and Axis was damned glad to
spend the days hunting down insane cows in the snow rather than spend time with his family!

“Gods, Azhure,” he muttered one day as he urged Sal into her slide through time and space, “I miss you more than you could ever know. What a muddle our family has got itself into!”

From the edge of the Icescarp Alps Axis led the convoy ever south, Sal’s power sliding them across the landscape at incredible speed. The Avarinheim was no more, obliterated by Qeteb’s rape of the land when he’d first been resurrected, and Axis almost wept at the destruction. He had never been close to the Avar, although they’d aided him in his final quest against Gorgrael, and he’d never been at home in the forests, but the massacre of the trees deeply saddened him.