Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (20 page)

There must have been two hundred or more of them crowded in the barn.  Goddess only knew how far they had travelled for the wary looks they traded showed a company as unfamiliar with each other as they were with Niarmit and Johanssen standing before them.

“So you’re our queen then?   Gregor’s heir?”  The voice from the back seemed barely to believe the question it was asking, let alone the answer.

“Gregor’s bastard more like,” another growled.

“Hold a civil tongue in your head!” Father Simeon’s command pre-empted Johanssen’s outraged response. Niarmit was glad. Better the rebel’s leader should be the one to impose his authority on the gathering.

“There’s not much civil about orcs murdering our children, outlanders stealing our food and filthy wizards plying their disgusting trade.  Reckon civil died about the same time as Gregor did.”  The growler was not so easily silenced.

“You’re the one that fought at the battle of the Saeth, rescued Rugan’s arse they say.” Praise of sorts from a slim man with a whispy beard.

“Heard you’d been captured, but escaped by the trick of flight.”

“Flung the winged she-devils to the ground outside Listcairn.”

The chorus of stories was building, whispers in the crowd, as Simeon’s motley army tried to assimilate the mythical reality before them.

“Had a sword could cut through plate mail,” another muttering in the front row. 

Niarmit held up her hands for silence.  “What’s done matters far less than what we are about to do, together.  I know Father Simeon had a plan, a good plan, and Jay came to tell us of it.  But there is a bigger prize within our grasp. Constable Johanssen and I have got two hundred soldiers camped in the woods just north of here to help you seize that opportunity.”

“I liked my plan, your Majesty,” Simeon spoke with a polite but firm deference.  “It was just, get in, get slaughtering, get out.”

“This one’s simpler, father,” Jay said with a grin.  “More of the middle bit and none of the last.”

Outlander women weren’t as a rule attractive.  Beauty had been more a hindrance to survival than an asset in the anarchic world of the predominantly male exiles.  Throw in a few tribes of orcs, who could be relied upon to seize any vaguely pretty female who strayed too far from the dubious protection of the outlander menfolk, and you had a barely survivable environment.  A situation where woman had been known to scar their own faces and smear themselves with goat droppings as the least worst of the available alternatives.  

Lilith was something of an exception to that rule.  A mere novice of exile having spent just five years beyond the barrier, but fortunate enough to have caught the eye of Rondol.  The sorcerer had been Maelgrum’s herald sent to greet the group of exiles that contained Lilith. The big oaf had been immediately taken with the willowy sorceress, forming a pairing that had remained unbroken until Quintala had ordered them apart.

It was a separation that clearly pained Lilith as much as Rondol. She had immediately shorn off her long black hair, to leave a scalp of irregular and unattractive baldness.  It was one of the many minor disfigurements used as a defence by the unpartnered women beyond the barrier.  Haselrig had not at first known whether to be flattered or ashamed that she should feel it necessary to scare off his advances.  In truth though, he quickly recognised it was a signal to Rondol, a public advertisement that she would not surrender herself to Haselrig whether or not he made the attempt.

She stood scowling at him now, unkempt and unwashed, as he gazed at the silver blade gleaming on the work bench.  “What’s the point?” She said.  “You can’t even touch it.”

“I can look even if I can’t touch,” he said, bending over the blade.

“Yeah, that’s right,” she replied, pulling her cloak tight around her skinny form.  “And not just the sword.”

His mouth twitched in irritation.  “Don’t flatter yourself that I am in any hurry to do either on your account, my dear Lilith.”

“You know Rondol would break you in half if you did try anything.”

He sighed.  “Just bring the lantern over and that blue smoked glass, let us see if we can decipher the markings on the blade.”

Lilith grudgingly complied, directing the light as Haselrig required, lantern in one hand, glass filter in the other. “How do you even get the thing out of the chest?” she asked as Haselrig caught the hint of a curl of a letter etched along the fuller.

The glimmer of writing was gone, glimpsed and then lost.  Haselrig harrumphed his dissatisfaction and then bent once more to try to catch the hidden script unawares. “You have your secrets, Lilith, let me have mine,” he said.  Whatever he told her was sure to find its way back to the red-bearded wizard and the less Rondol knew, the less capacity he had to hurt.

“You know I’m not really a sorceress,” she said conversationally.  There was a shout from the courtyard outside

Haselrig mumbled some noise of indifference, but it didn’t stop Lilith.

“I’m a necromancer.  I should have been with Marwella, more death and shadow than fire and lightning, that’s me.”

“Indeed.” A minimal verbal reflex as the light teased out another hint of writing, runes of an ancient design flickered into clarity.  Haselrig kept his eye on the blade as he reached for a pencil to scrawl down the design.  Another cry from beyond the hutch walls, guttural orcish shouts.  The guards were restless tonight.

“But Rondol spotted me, took me under his wing.  Said I was too good for corpse driving.”

“Fascinating,” the lines were resolving into sharp relief.  If the silly bitch would only shut up he might learn something here.

There was a shudder as something crashed into the hutch walls.  The tiny timber building shook, the workbench rattled and the runes twisted out of sight as the blade rocked on its hilt.

“Orc’s blood and ogre piss!” Haselrig straightened up in fury.  “This is too much.”  He slipped round the table and yanked open the door. 

A dead orc fell into the room, arms curled over its escaping intestines. 

The picket lines had been thin, the surprise total.  In the absence of Quintala and the bulk of the army, the paltry garrison of the half-elf’s fortress had hunkered down behind their high walls trapping themselves in a killing zone.  The patrols beyond Colnhill had been too few and far between to give warning of the approaching force. Father Simeon’s decoy party, bringing evening food and drink to the garrison, had held the gate just long enough for the rest of them to arrive and with the outer gatehouse taken the fortress’s fate was sealed. 

Niarmit paused a moment to take in the unfolding battle, lit by flickering torches placed around the broad open ground of the bailey. Along the inside edge of the curtain wall, orcs and outlanders ducked for shelter behind timber supports.  They fenced around the scaffolding poles, trading blows with Johanssen’s soldiers and losing.  

A dozen of Simeon’s resistance fighters crashed their way into a low long bunkhouse on the left, screaming threats and waving a variety of agricultural weapons.  The far door to the bunkhouse flung open and two robed figures erupted into the carnage of the bailey.  The pair were no fighters, looking around in wide eyed panic before turning to run.  A small figure darted from the shadows, and leaped on the shoulders of one of them bearing him to the ground with a cry of triumph.  As the wizard struggled beneath him, his assailant jabbed in his face, once, twice, a glint of short steel in his hands.  The victim howled in pain, and carried on screaming; the attacker rose scanning the courtyard for more prey.  His eyes met Niarmit’s and the queen recognised Jay, grinning widely, then the boy was scampering off after another robed quarry.  Behind him his last victim rose from the ground, moaning, arms outstretched as he stumbled across the courtyard, his cheeks red with the blood that flowed from his ruined eyes.

Niarmit gulped back her revulsion and ran for the inner gatehouse athwart the section of wall that separated the outer bailey from the more defensible walled mound at the hill top’s western end. To either side Johanssen and Kimbolt had led their divisions onto the battlements streaming along the southern and northern stretches of the curtain wall.  Their target was also the western gatehouse, the only barrier between them the bizarre tall tower which passed for the fortress’s keep.  Seize that and their triumph would be complete.

Haselrig stared out at disaster.  The fortress was overrun, not just peasant farmers waving scythes and spears made from knives on sticks, but hardened soldiers, their swords slicing open the few orc and outlander guards that Quintala had left behind.  It took less than an eyeblink to realise that this was a catastrophe beyond recovery and in a second glance Haselrig saw a sight that almost froze his racing heart.  In the middle of the conquered bailey stood a tall wiry figure, long red hair streaming behind her as she scanned her unfolding triumph.

He kicked the disembowelled orc back over the threshold and pushed the door closed.  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

The ragged sorceress edged round the workbench reaching for the door.  “What’s going on?”

“Don’t open it!” Haselrig commanded.  “Well no more than a crack.  Keep watch.”  He dragged the chest over from the corner of the work hutch, and flung open the lid.  Inside lay The Father, the paired blade with The Son on the workbench.

“What are you doing?”  Lilith glanced from her watch post, wide eyed with fear but also puzzlement.

“I’m packing.”

“Why bother? No one can handle those swords.”

“There is one person out there that could, and she mustn’t get hold of them.  With either of these in her hands she’ll make plate mail as useless for armour as a silk robe.”

“How are you going to pack them then?”

“Just keep watch, Lilith.”  There were some secrets he would not share, even in the extremis of their present circumstance.  Fear made her obedient.  She turned her eye to the tiny crack in the door.  The shouts were fainter now, the battle either lost or moving further away from them.  Haselrig bustled about his awkward business and then the job was done and the long simple box fastened shut again.

“We can’t get out, Haselrig.” There was a growing edge of panic in Lilith’s commentary.  “They’re killing wizards.  Some little brat just cut Aleric’s hands off with an axe. Haselrig, we’re going to die!”

“Shut up Lilith and keep watching.”

He dragged the box towards the back of the hutch and kicked at the planking of the rear wall.  It gave way easily, shoddy orcish workmanship. His workroom had been assembled in the shadow of the southern curtain wall. Through the opening his footwork had created, Haselrig looked out on the section of scaffolding supporting the unset wizard stone.  All was relatively quiet in the ten foot gap between his shaky workroom and the wooden poles.

Haselrig reached for the lantern and turned up the wick.  As the light flared brightly, he swung his arm and cast the object at the base of the nearest pole.

“What are you doing, you fool?” Lilith had abandoned her post by the door to see what Haselrig was up to.

The lantern shattered into a puddle of broken glass and spilt oil which licked at the foot of the timber structure.  “I’m making us an escape route.”

“If that scaffolding goes, you’ll bring the whole wall down.”

Haselrig shook his head.  After the unfortunate episode with the barrel of pitch at the gatehouse, Quintala had given strict orders on the separation of the sections of scaffolding so that a fire in one could not trigger a domino of disaster.  “Not the whole wall, Lilith, just a section wide enough for us to slip through.  Now, if you have any sorcery beneath those dirty fingernails of yours, this would be a good time to show it and kindle that sputtering flame into a proper conflagration.”

Johanssen’s men were skilful warriors, lightly armoured but working bows and swords with brisk efficiency.  They converged on the inner gatehouse from both sides, grapnels and climbing ropes making short work of the height difference between the gate battlements and the walkway on the curtain wall. Kimbolt seized a grapnel from a soldier pinned down by an orcish arrow.  Around him the men of Nordsalve returned fire on the few defenders.  The seneschal was glad to have exchanged his princess minding duties for a more martial role.  He hooked the grapnel on a merlon with his first throw and then launched himself from the uncertain solidity of the wizardstone walkway beneath his feet. The stuff looked like stone and felt like stone, but it flexed beneath running feet in a way that natural stone would not.

An orc appeared in the embrasure above him.  The creature held a hand axe high for a killing throw which Kimbolt, two hands on the rope, was in no position to defend himself against.  But then an arrow erupted from the orc’s eye and he tumbled forward, toppling past Kimbolt in a fall that was nearly as hazardous to the seneschal as the hurled hand axe would have been.

Kimbolt caught his breath and then resumed the climb.  As he plunged onto the gatehouse roof, all was carnage.  Orcs caught between Kimbolt and Johanssen’s sections were being forced back.  One green hided monster, larger than the rest, lashed out with an axe catching his opponent on the knee.  The orc gathered his weapon for a killing blow as the soldier collapsed to the floor, but Kimbolt’s sword through his side swiftly ended the threat.

Johanssen tumbled over the northern parapet, parrying one orcish axe before shoulder charging the creature against a merlon.  Kimbolt moved to assist but other soldiers stepped in first and the last orc fell beneath a rain of blows.

The constable straightened and greeted Kimbolt with a curt nod.   “You beat me to the prize, Seneschal.”

Kimbolt stared out over the captured fortress, the bailey strewn with fallen orcs, outlanders and a few moaning crippled wizards.  “I think we have all won a prize tonight, Constable,” he said.

“Fire, sir!” a soldier called both their attentions to a blaze on the southern wall, fierce but localised, the crack of the spluttering scaffolding audible even at this distance.

“Crap,” Kimbolt muttered.  “It’ll bring the whole lot down.”

“It’s not spreading,” Johanssen observed.  The invaders still in the bailey were dousing the neighbouring sections with water, though the constable was right, there appeared to be no danger of the fire spreading.

“Maybe there’s enough strength for the wall to stand by itself now,” Kimbolt suggested, testing the strange texture of the unset wizard stone with his heel.

Just then the last of the blazing scaffolding fell, blazing poles tumbling on a low hut in the shadow of the wall, setting the roof on fire. But before the flames could fully take hold there was a thunder and a crash. The twenty foot long section of wall collapsed into a cloud of dust that bloomed and spread, hiding the fire and obscuring vision as it rolled away from the epicentre of destruction.  Even at the distant gatehouse Kimbolt quickly found himself tasting the moisture sapping dust on his lips and tongue.  For those in the bailey, the confusion must have been absolute.

“Johanssen,” he coughed.  “Get some men, we must secure the breach.”