Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (13 page)

“I made a promise, your Majesty.”

There was a cry from behind them.  “My boy, where is he?”

They both turned to face Lady Isobel.  Though she had not ridden as far as Kimbolt, nor fretted over matters of state like Niarmit, Prince Yannuck’s mother looked less rested and more ragged than either of them.  Her petite frame was thinner still, so each stray gust of wind threatened to lift her clear of the cobbled courtyard.  “Did you find him, where is he?”  Her expression was so distraught it might almost have tempted them into a lie, just to relieve the misery for a moment.

“We have not found him, not yet, my lady,” Kimbolt said gently.  “But we will.  I have made a promise and I mean to keep it.  We ride out again within the hour.”

“Find him,” was Isobel’s only response.

Kimbolt gave Niarmit an apologetic smile.  “Dinner will have to wait, your Majesty.  Perhaps when I next return?”

“It is not for subjects to decide when and where to accept a queen’s invitation,” she said with a haughtiness she hated herself for.  She hated Isobel for losing her son, she hated Kimbolt’s infernal honour for binding him to this digression of a quest, she hated him for making her hate and she hated herself for hating.

The day was ruined.

The wizard was terrified; Jay liked that. The whole endeavour had proven surprisingly easy.  This was the first diversification of strategy for the little band. There had been a dearth of lone orcs for a week or more.  The creatures had either grown wise, or been given clearer orders, for they seldom wondered abroad in groups of fewer than three.  It had caused a hiatus in the supply of headless, and occasionally gutless, orcs.

Jay liked to think it was he who had suggested they graduate to headless wizards, thinking to come one step closer to his ultimate goal of Maelgrum the Dark Lord.  However, if he had been the one to first voice the idea, it was a thought which had clearly already been on Father Simeon’s mind.

The wizards had been easy to spot, having appropriated the best houses in town.  The group had marked this sorcerer returning with leaden steps from the hill where the half breed witch devoted her best efforts and most of her attention.   It had been a relatively early hour, night having only just gripped the occupied town in its dark embrace, but the wizard had been sleeping soundly when Travis and Jay broke their way in.  He had barely woken when they carried him out through the window, rendering the gag and the bindings almost superfluous. 

Now the shivering wizard occupied the prison cellar beneath the barn, its dirt floor black with the stains of dried orc blood. He was not that old, thirty at the most.  Jay had assumed wizards were always old, that they were born old.  In the school history books human wizards had always been depicted as white bearded old men their faces twisted with the evil of their unlawful craft. This fellow had dark hair and pale skin, covered in a sheen of sweat despite the cold winter air.   His nervous expression and pained whimpers may have had something to do with the fact that his hands had been nailed to the top of the barrel.  Jay had enjoyed that, driving a pair of six inch nails through the back of each hand to pin the man’s spell casting into immobility. 

“I’m not an orc,” the prisoner said.  “I’m human like you, my name is ….”

“Shut up,” Travis shouted.  “Your name doesn’t matter.”

“Edrick,” the wizard mumbled.  “My mother’s family were from round here.  They had a farm.”

“Aye, I’m sure they did.” Simeon’s nod brought a brief flare of hope to the wizard’s face.  “You should have stuck with the plough too, rather than dabbling in the dark arts, getting yourself exiled and then coming back with these invading scum.”

“Please, I’m not like that.  There were lots of us did magic, we weren’t all turned to evil.  I didn’t even know how we were all linked up.  I only ever saw a couple of others.”

“You’re a filthy wizard,” Travis spat at him.  “You’ve been murdering and thieving your way across Morsalve, you and your scum orc friends.  Goddess only knows what dark sacrifices your foul kind have been carrying out up that hill.  You, the half-breed witch, the orcs, you’re all one with Maelgrum.”

“No, no,” Edrick shook his head in desperation.  “It’s not like that.  I’m not like that.  It’s just building work.  I don’t like Quintala any more than you do.  You should hear what we wizards call her behind her back…”

“You still follow the witch’s orders.”

“It’s just building, forming stone from sand and rock, making her infernal fortress.  She wants it done by spring and she abuses us like slaves, just because our spells can fashion the thing far faster than a thousand men.  The exhaustion is total, it leaves us fit for nothing but sleep.  She is driving the wizards into the ground. I loathe her.”

Simeon shrugged.  “You’re a criminal wizard returned from exile.  We can’t exactly send you back into exile, so we’re going to have to find a simpler punishment.”

“I’m not an orc,” Edrick wept.  “Don’t send her my head.”

“No,” Simeon shook his sadly.  “We’re sending her your fingers.”

That was Jay’s cue.  The hatchet swung before Edrick had even registered it.  The wizard’s left little finger had already hit the dirt floor before he summoned enough realisation to unleash a bellow of pain.  Jay cheerfully swung the hatchet again as a string of invective flew from the wizard’s mouth.  Foul threats mingling with the dread language of magic.  However his trapped and diminished hands were unable to twist openings in the fabric of space through which thaumatic energy could flow. His spells like his curses, were mere empty words to punctuate the screams as Jay’s hatchet struck.

And when it was done, ten bleeding stumps in a puddle of red on the barrel top, the wizard spat through gritted teeth.  “You’ll die, you’ll all die for this.  You can’t stop them.  Not the half-breed or the master.” He panted against the pain, his threats screamed out as some catharsis for the agony in his hands.  “The Master is  All-seeing, the Master is All-knowing, the Master is all Powerful.”

“Bugger me, but the bastard’s got his faith back,” Travis exclaimed.

“The prospect of imminent death can do that to a man,” Simeon said.

“I’ve killed hundreds,” Edrick gasped, all pretence at human fellowship gone.  “I burned scores of peasants at Proginnot.  They ran down the hill like torches. If that fucking witch hadn’t made me form stone all day I’d have burned you into pillars of ash before you got within ten feet of me. You’re going to die, but your families will die first, infront of you horribly.”

Jay picked up an index finger from the floor and waved it at the wizard.  “That’s already happened you bastard.  We’ve got no families.  Why do you think you’re here?  You and the filth you serve have got no threats left for us.”

“Finish it, Robard.”

At Travis’s urging, the youth stepped up behind the raging wizard and dragged his knife across the man’s neck.  He let Edrick’s head fall open throated onto the barrel.  A puddle of red spread out and overflowed down the staves.

Simeon frowned.  “Maybe we should go have a look at this fortress the witch is building.”

Kimbolt shivered.  He hoped it was just the cold.  At his side Pietrsen was uncharacteristically quiet. Kimbolt looked around, drawing in a deep calming breath of frozen air as he tried to slow his racing heart.  It was just him and the Master of Horse, as had been agreed.  A quarter of a mile down the track behind them lay their little camp, a company of cavalry bivouacked across the pass.  Smoke from the campfires rose lazily into the crisp morning air.  A dozen pots were warming oatmeal breakfasts to fill soldiers’ bellies.

Pietrsen had eaten before they set out.  He’d offered some to Kimbolt too, but the seneschal’s appetite had abandoned him.  The squads of horsemen gathered around their breakfast fires, filling their mess tins and then finding vantage points from which to observe, with a professional curiosity, the travails of Kimbolt and their commander.

A lone rider swung himself into the saddle at the southern edge of their encampment.  Kimbolt could just make out the bulge of a knapsack on his back.  The cavalryman looked up towards the seneschal and the Master of Horse.  He raised his arm in a salute.  Kimbolt waved back but, before he could be sure he’d been seen, the rider spurred his mount and galloped away down the narrow valley, riding hard, riding fast.

Kimbolt breathed out slowly.  It was gone, for better or worse it was on its way.  He found the irrevocability reassuring.  The die was cast, he could not now recall the man or the missive. That half at least of the day’s business was done.

He turned away from the camp and clapped Pietrsen on the shoulder.  “Come on,” he said.  “Let’s do this thing.” And at last he looked north to the great timbered steading, cradled by the enfolding arms of the mountains at the head of the valley.

The Master of Horse swallowed hard and nodded with a nervousness Kimbolt thought quite unjustified in the circumstances.  Pietrsen was just the second. Together they walked another hundred yards towards the steading’s entrance.  The fortified manor house had a gate that would have credited many a castle.  It swung open now and two men walked out. Well the description certainly matched one of them; the other towered so tall that genealogists might have looked for ogre blood somewhere in his recent lineage.

Pietrsen was not short, but this man stood a full head taller than the Master of Horse.  He walked with unhurried ease towards the rendezvous, but his second had to half-run to match the natural pace of his lord’s giant strides.

“That,” Pietrsen murmured, “is Lord Torsden.”

“He’s tall.” Kimbolt’s numbed mind found that the obvious was sometimes the only thing to say.

Torsden, like Kimbolt, wore full armour.  The shield was painted blue with a gold stallion rampant upon it, a slightly larger copy of the one Pietrsen carried.

“It doesn’t look like he’s accepted his dismissal from your post, Master of the Horse,” Kimbolt said.

“He’s an arrogant bastard,” Pietrsen muttered,

The arrogant bastard drew a bastard sword from his belt.  It was a blade that most men would have wielded two handed, but Torsden swung it in one giant paw, his wrist flexing effortlessly to snap the weapon to left or right.

“Remember, Pietrsen, whatever happens, everything is carried out as we agreed.”  Suddenly Kimbolt needed the reassurance, the promise.

“His strength is as mighty as his ego,” the Master of Horse mumbled on.

“Pietrsen, your promise, your word of honour whatever happens.”

“You have it, Seneschal.” Kimbolt’s second blew out a soft whistling breath. “You’re a braver man than I, Kimbolt.  I just want you to know…”

“Save it,” Kimbolt spat.  He wasn’t interested in good-byes, at least not from him.  “You know what they say about big musclebound men, Pietrsen? Big means slow.”

There was a flutter of movement.  A thrush darted from the wall of the steading, either disturbed by the creak of the gate closing or drawn to the noise and smells of cooking in the cavalry camp.  It flew low, swooping across the ground.  Torsden’s sword flashed, a tiny spray of red and two halves of the bird fell to the snowy ground.

“Shit, that was fast,” Pietrsen said.

It was not the finest set of rooms in the fortress of Karlbad but it had a separate antechamber as a sitting room, and the bed chamber was comfortable if a little draughty.  It served Niarmit’s purpose well enough, and the queen had no mind to turf the distraught Lady Isobel out of the grand hall and the suite of connecting rooms. Niarmit could in all comfort, govern Nordsalve from a broom store and would, if doing so would allow the widowed Lady of the North some small easement against the ache of her missing son.

They sat, the pair of cousins, either side of a simple table.  The meal was rudimentary.  The depths of winter and the remoteness of Nordsalve did not allow for much beyond salted meat, bread and a few stewed vegetables.  However, Niarmit thought it important that she and Hepdida should pass some time together, free of the distractions of state and castle.

“How are you finding it?” she asked her cousin.  “Our sojourn in the North.”

Hepdida chewed morosely on a hunk of bread before replying.  “Cold. Cold and dull.”

Niarmit winced. Her cousin, she reminded herself, was not quite six months from being a besotted servant girl whose greatest challenge had been manufacturing chance meetings with the object of her obsession.  For all their shared blood and suffering, the crown princess had just as much in common with Maia, the flighty consort of Lord Tybert, as she did with Niarmit.

“You have changed the colour again, I see.” Niarmit stabbed at small talk; the paler central streak to Hepdida’s coal black hair was now a deep plum hue.

The princess looked up with sharp suspicion.  “Maia showed me how. I can do it myself now.” She watched Niarmit through narrowed eyes.

“It suits you,” The queen insisted. “Very striking.”

Hepdida nodded slowly.  “And how goes the whole business of winning this war?”

Niarmit raised an eyebrow at her cousin’s curiosity.  The princess glared back.  “I am interested,” she said.  “I mean I assume you didn’t bring me to this draughty castle just so you could monitor my choice of hair colour and I could hold that thing for you.” She waved at the Helm, brooding on its side table.

Niarmit pursed her lips and dragged out a long, “no.”  She frowned.  “I wanted you close, where I could keep an eye on you, keep you safe.”

“I think I’m past the stage of being wrapped in swaddling clothes, Niarmit.  I need to know what’s going on.  For example, why are you worried about Tordil?”

“How did you know?”

“I heard you talking to Sorenson.  You shouldn’t keep things from me, I’m not a child.  None of us are.”

Niarmit combed her hair with her fingers.  “We’ve had no word from the Silverwood.  I’m worried that he never got there, that Quintala may have laid some trap for him.”

“How would she have known?”

Niarmit shrugged.  “That’s the thing. I don’t see how. All our discussions have been in the council chamber. Rugan’s special hall on stilts should be completely safe from any prying eyes.”

Hepdida screwed up her face.  “Not when you first mentioned it, we weren’t in the council chamber then.  You were in your room. It was just after you’d fainted when I took that thing off you.   You spoke to Tordil about it then.”

“But,” Niarmit frowned.  “She couldn’t have spied there. Rugan moved us to those rooms because Quintala hadn’t seen them, he was sure.  And that means she couldn’t open a gate there, large or small.  She couldn’t have…”

There was a knock at the door; the cousins started and exchanged a look.  Their daily luncheon was not a meal where interruptions were allowed.

“Come in.” Niarmit’s tone bellied the simple welcome of her words. 

“Forgive me, your Majesty,” a liveried manservant apologised in the doorway even as a soldier pushed past him into the room. “This man was most insistent.”

“A thousand pardons for the intrusion, your Majesty.” The soldier bent low. The blue and gold of his cloak was splattered with the mud and slush of a hard ride through the snow.

“You rode with Master of Horse Pietrsen.” Niarmit quickly deciphered his stained colours.

“I have a letter, your Majesty, which I was bidden to give to you, to you personally.” He reached into the knapsack over his shoulder to pull out a thick fold of sealed parchment.  “I was charged on my honour.”

Niarmit took the package from him with careful suspicion, first weighing it in her palm before raising it to her eyes.  “Who is it from?” she said.

“He bid me give it to you, your Majesty,” the soldier repeated.  “All that is to be said is in there.  That is what he told me to say.”

“How mysterious,” Hepdida clapped her hands together.

“You may leave,” Niarmit said quickly, adding with a look in Hepdida’s direction, “all of you.”

The princess coloured at that, eyes flashing a defiance which her mouth stopped just short of expressing.

“All of you,” Niarmit repeated.

She held herself still until they had all left, the princess closing the door none too quietly behind her.  Then she took a knife from the table and heated it over a candle before sliding it under the wax seal and unfolding the letter.

The writing was coarse and uneven, written in haste, or some other awkwardness of circumstance.  Niarmit drew a deep breath.  Her hands were trembling as she began to read.

The opening salutation of
Dear Niarmit
had been crossed out and replaced with
My Queen.
 

We have found Torsden. The prince is safe and well with him.  However, the fulfilment of my vow to Lady Isobel proves a little more complicated than I had hoped.

Torsden is locked up in a steading that we have not the force to assault, nor the supplies or ready forage to besiege.  If we leave here, he may slip away again and never be found.

We had a parley yesterday.  His retainer conveyed his demands to us.  Yes, the murdering traitor is making demands.  He holds that he is not guilty of murder, that his actions have always been reasonable and just.  As proof of this he has demanded a trial, a trial by combat. 

I have accepted the challenge.

You may think this foolish, but I have my reasons.  Whatever happens, the prince will be restored to his mother’s care.  Either I will bring him myself.  If not then Torsden, acquitted by combat of any wrong doing has promised to return to Karlbad with the boy. As a man proven innocent in the eyes of the Goddess he will have nothing to fear, I would humbly ask you to respect the innocence he would have earned.

There are those who think me foolish, you may count yourself amongst that number.  Pietrsen has repeatedly told me that I am both mad and dead. I have my reasons and one thing which makes this decision easier to bear is knowing that come what may, you will read this and whether I live or die, you will have heard what I have to say.

Here the words,
my Queen
had been begun and then scrawled through and he had written simply,
Niarmit
.

I am a broken thing, corrupt beyond redemption.  I betrayed the fortress of Sturmcairn. I failed to protect Hepdida from Grundurg or from Quintala.  I have shared a bed with the medusa and allowed her poison to infect my mind, such that it was I who suggested flinging the sick and the dying of Listcairn by catapult upon Sir Ambrose’s lines.  Yet there are nights I still weep for Dema and I wake ashamed of those tears.  Tordil and Kaylan are both right about me.

I was once a man of honour but I am tarnished to the bone. 

I think, maybe, you were…

At this point several words had been tried and scribbled through before he had settled on

…disappointed that I flung myself so wholly into the search for Prince Yannuck, with promises and assurances to Lady Isobel, which have carried me so far from your side.

It is not through any wish to hurt you, nor is it real chivalry. It is perhaps my most selfish act. I seek not just a son for a mother, but some atonement for myself, some way to make amends for those ill deeds which haunt me still. 

I was there when Lady Isobel’s husband was butchered. I have willingly served his killer.  It seems such a small weregild to set out to retrieve her son, to finally make and keep a promise as befits my rank and service.

Torsden’s challenge is heaven sent.  Win or lose I will fulfil my vow to Lady Isobel.  I will find out if my crimes can be forgiven.  It is not simply the Northern Lord who is submitting to trial by combat.  I am seeking a verdict for myself.

By the same token we may not meet again, and there are things which I cannot leave unsaid between us. 

There were many false starts at the next section.  Fragments of sentences struck through, some lightly scored, others scrubbed over to completely obscure whatever words beneath had caused the writer such offence, before at last some passages survived his self-censorship. 

I am not worthy of you, Niarmit.  But the lowest creature in the darkest ditch can still gaze in wonder at the stars in their multitude.  That is how I look at you.  I love you as I have never loved anyone before.

The writing became a hurried scrawl at this point.

Pietrsen has come, it is nearly time and I have not said half what I wanted, but I have said what matters most. 

If I should fall, accept the judgment of this trial by combat and forgive Torsden.  And please be sure that today, win or lose, my soul will find a peace it has not felt since the night that Sturmcairn fell. 

It has been my greatest happiness to make you smile and laugh, my greatest woe to leave your side.

Yours in peaceful acceptance of fate

Kimbolt.

She tried to read it again, but the writing swam before her eyes and the steady drip of saltwater on the page threatened to blur the scarcely readable script into complete illegibility.