Master Of The Planes (Book 3) (67 page)

They were about halfway across the bridge when Hepdida noticed a shimmering around her three companions.  The assumed masks and physiques of grey hided orcs blurred and shifted and again became undeniably human.  

The disguise had been good enough to get past the orc guards at the western end of the bridge.  Haselrig had a fluency in the orcish tongue and Thom’s illusion had matched the man’s voice to his appearance. The ex-antiquary’s chest thumping assertions had met a grudging acceptance from the sentries.

It was a believable subterfuge, given the blaze which had engulfed Listcairn castle.  Of course the outlander Willem would send messengers to bring news of the disaster to Quintala and chief Barnuck.  The confident mention of such well feared names had also brought more credibility to their tale.  It had been sufficient to dispel any awkward questions about where were the wolves and horses that any messenger should have been riding, and why were their clothes so mismatched at the waist?

So it was with nothing more than a half-suspicious grunt, that the quartet had set out across the bridge.  But now, caught midway between the western orcish sentries and the eastern outlander guards, the magic had abandoned them. 

The light of the moon and the inferno on the hill glinted off the mirror smooth waters of the swift moving Saeth. Hepdida peered into the distance. To make a perilous situation worse, an outlander foot patrol was also on the bridge striding towards them.  No chance now of sidling past and no place to hide.

“Your magic never seems to last,” Elise said tartly.

“It won’t outlast the destruction of the subjects I copied,” Thom replied glaring at the ravaged castle as the roar of a tumbling tower followed a few seconds behind the sight of its collapse.  “We locked them in that tower cellar, remember.”

“That’s as maybe.” Haselrig jerked his head towards the approaching men.  “But we have more pressing problems than mourning a trio of orcs buried in masonry.”

Hepdida saw the lead outlander in the patrol stiffen, his attention drawn to the little group standing at the midpoint of the crossing.  The flickering light of reflected fire and moon was enough to show they were not orcs and had no business in the oversized breastplates and misshapen helmets that they bore.  She saw a shadow of movement as he stretched his arm across his chest, reaching for his sword.  “We could jump,” she said.  Getting in had always been the easy part, getting out they had ridden their luck almost to the end.

“I was never a great swimmer,” Elise said.  “And a deadweight of orc armour is not going to improve my skill.”

The outlander had his sword out, the other half dozen in the patrol were also reaching for weapons.  “You, you four,” the man called out.

“Ego praecipio tibi, ut adoleret,” Elise cried. A circle of fire erupted on the bridge, engulfing the last five outlanders.  The leader and another man hefting a two bladed axe, were ahead of the flames. It took them less than a split second to gather their wits and lunge weapons held high at the white haired sorceress and her associates.

Thom muttered something.  Elise blinked out of existence and reappeared to one side of the leader’s frantic swing.  He turned to aim another blow at the shifting woman but Haselrig ducked behind him and gave the off-balance swordsman a hearty push. It sent him spiralling over the parapet.  Elise, wore a confused expression between re-appearances, struggling to get a grip on her constantly changing bearings. 

Haselrig turned from the leader’s splash as the second outlander raised an ugly axe to split his head.  Hepdida had been too slight a target to draw the axeman’s initial attention, or at least he saw Haselrig as the main threat.  She glanced at Thom. The illusionist was frowning, fingers flicking as he sought to draw down some other dissembling spell to deceive or confuse Haselrig’s attacker.  But the ugly weapon was already swinging down, the ex-antiquary’s nervous sideways dodge was too late and slow.

Hepdida did not quite know how it happened.  The thin bladed knife of last resort, the weapon Kaylan had taught her to carry, was in her hand and its blade was red.  The axeman lay on the ground, coughing blood.  His weighty weapon had split a stone in the road, his aim quite ruined by the deep thrust Hepdida had made into his armpit.

Haselrig looked over the dying man at Hepdida’s pale face, his own expression scarcely less drawn.  “Thank you,” he mumbled.

“Come on,” Elise cried, her random perambulations at an end.  The other blazing outlanders were too distracted by the fire to make much protest as the quartet dodged past in their bid to escape.

“Great spellcraft,” Thom cried.  “To take five of them down.”

“With better aim, you might have had all seven,” Haselrig grumbled jogging behind them, still shaken from his narrow escape.

“If your half-elf’s curse had not withered my joints, I am sure I could have done better,” Elise panted. “Accuracy and precision in spell craft are the preserve of more nimble fingers than mine.”

“Enough arguing,” Hepdida said.  “We are not free yet.”

There was a double splash behind them, as two of the immolated outlanders either jumped or fell into the river’s watery embrace. Hepdida glanced back.  One more was rolling on the cobbled roadway.  The other two had slumped against the low wall, all hope and breath consumed by the flames.  They were free of pursuit, but there were still guards at the far eastern end of the bridge.  Their attention was sure to have been drawn from the flaming skyline of Listcairn castle to the bonfire of the outlanders that Elise had set so much closer to their post.

“A little more fire, Mistress Elise,” Thom suggested as they saw a line of soldiers taking position across the roadway.  “Before their crossbows seek us out.”

“I can’t run and cast,” Elise gasped.  “I can barely do both on their own and certainly not two together.”

“Horsemen,” Haselrig groaned, as shapes emerged at a gallop from the dark gloom to the south of the bridge’s end.  “Nomads!”

“Damn you Goddess,” Hepdida blasphemed in desperation at the night sky.  “We’ve helped ourselves so much and so far, isn’t it time you helped us.”

A crossbow bolt whistled past Hepdida’s ear, a second one followed it higher and wider.  The horseman were galloping through the bridgehead soldiers.  Only they weren’t coming through.  They were milling about, the flash of curved scimitars descending on the outlander crossbowmen.

The fleeing quartet crashed to a halt sixty foot short of the end of the bridge, watching as the nomads set about their allies with murderous fury.  “What is going on?” Haselrig muttered. 

Death was soon done with the bridge’s western guards.  The column of riders trotted onto the bridge, three abreast, moonlight glinting off bloodied blades and golden jewellery.  In the centre rode a silver haired nomad, proud and tall in his saddle, to his left a younger dark haired nomad eyes scanning the rode ahead.  But it was the familiar figure on the leader’s right who drew Hepdida’s attention, leaner limbed than the nomad but carrying himself with no less assurance.

“Kaylan!”

Hepdida called out the name a fraction of a second before Elise, but it was the sorceress who exclaimed in wonderment at the thief’s companions.  “Vezer Khan, Ismael.”

The old nomad dipped his chin in greeting, the younger nomad smiled.  “Well met, Mistress Elise,” he said.  “How many are there at the other end of the bridge?”

“Two dozen.  They are orcs, easily confused.  They will not have seen clearly what you did to their comrades at the western end of the bridge.”

Ismael nodded grimly.  “Then we will show them.”  He muttered to the older nomad in their own tongue and then the two spurred their horses to a canter and the troop of nomads followed with a clatter of hooves.

“Kaylan,” Elise called as the thief wheeled out of line and slipped from his saddle to greet them.  “You made an alliance with Khan.  You didn’t wait for the queen’s authority?”

Kaylan shrugged.  “Prior Abroath can be very persuasive, the dwarves too.”

Elise stepped out reaching towards him, but then her foot turned in a pitted cobble and the embrace she had been stretching for became a fall into the thief’s quick arms.  They rose, embarrassed and Kaylan set Elise back on her feet.  The sorceress stepped away, running a hand through her white hair and mumbling an apology for her clumsiness.

Hepdida was less circumspect, she seized the thief and crushed him against her in a hug that drove the air from both their chests. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

Cries of battle and alarm rose from the western end of the bridge.  Kaylan glanced to where Vezer Khan’s nomads were dealing severely with the surprised and demoralised orcs.  “I should go,” he pulled away from her.

“Not yet,” Hepdida said.  “As crown princess I command you to stay, and to see us safely home.”

He grinned at that.  “Getting used to the trappings of power are we, my princess?”

“I hear you are not without power yourself, Master Kaylan,” Thom said.  “How goes the war in Undersalve?”

Kaylan nodded.  “Well enough.  Vezer Khan has done as he promised and brought all the tribes beneath his overlordship.  Now the orcs and the ogres are outnumbered and besieged and the people have hope enough to rise up beneath our banner.  I had force enough to bring Khan here and see what impact he might have on the alleigances of the nomads at Listcairn.”

He frowned.  “But I have come across much that I did not expect.  First Rugan and Quintala locked in battle from which they both fled through some portal.  Then you three unlooked for and ill-dressed in the middle of the river Saeth. And in the distance I see something or someone has quite destroyed Listcairn castle.   That is a little too much coincidence for these events to be unrelated.”

“You saw Rugan and Quintala in battle?” Thom frowned.  “Hepdida saw them both in the castle.”

Kaylan gave a grim nod.  “I thought as much.  Quintala opened a gate to flee the battle.  Rugan followed her through it before the magic was dispelled.”  He frowned and looked to the blazing fortress.  “They are both there, you say.  In that?”

Hepdida found she was shivering, shaking her head, sniffling uncontrollably.  “I tried to get him out.  I wanted to get him out.  But he was so dreadfully hurt and I could not lift him and then the roof exploded.”  Here safe within Kaylan’s protection, the constant stress of fight and flight at last receded and left her beached by delayed shock and grief.  “He saved me from Quintala.  She would have killed me, she was killing me, throttling me.” 

Elise reached out to reassure the trembling princess, but the thief was quicker pulling her close within his arms.  Words formed and died unspoken on his lips, he glanced at the ruined funeral pyre of the half-elven and shook his head. “I’m glad he kept you safe, my princess.”  His voice was thick, heavy with regret.  “I will always be in his debt for that.”

Hepdida shifted within his embrace, burying her tearstained face in his chest.  They stood in a moment’s impromptu silence for the fallen prince.  Then Kaylan gently eased Hepdida back.  “Come, we must get you away from this place and you can tell me what insane mystery or mischance carried you to Listcairn.”

She gulped and nodded her agreement. As she turned away Kaylan caught sight of the fourth member of their party.  Haselrig had pressed back against the parapet when Kaylan first drew near, keeping his face down, eyes fixed in scrutiny of the uneven cobbles of the bridge’s roadway.  However, as Hepdida turned he had looked up and the moonlight had illuminated his face.

Recognition exploded on Kaylan’s features, followed at a hair’s breadth distance by vengeful fury.  “You,” he cried, his sword already half way out of its scabbard. “You bastard!”

For all Haselrig’s penitent humility, the thief’s hostility still drew an instinctive backward step from the ex-antiquary.  The man’s face was pale with fear at the sword raised to smite him.

Elise stepped between the two. Kaylan’s desparate adjustment of his aim to avoid the sorceress threw the thief off balance.  “Step aside,” Kaylan barked.  “This man must die.”

Elise shook her head. 

Kaylan roared incredulously.  “He was the Dark Lord’s lieutenant, his treachery the foundation of all the disasters that have befallen us.”

“He will not die.”

“He will and he must.  Have you forgotten the trap he lured the queen and I into, the tortures his plotting subjected us both too.  He showed me no mercy, I mean to show him none in fair repayment.”

Elise held up her wizened hands, shook her white hair free.  “Have you forgotten the lifetime of suffering his cursed plotting inflicted on me?  Have you forgotten my dead sister, my murdered father, my mother forced to be bedslave to a depraved master?  You have no right to strike him down before I do, Kaylan, and I do not choose to do so.”   

Kaylan shook his head in bafflement.  “He must be punished, he must die.”

“Punished yes, but not put to death.”  Elise laid a hand on Kaylan’s arm.  “Enough people have died already.”

The thief swung his gaze on Hepdida.  “What say you, my princess?  Is this man fit to live?”

Hepdida pursed her lips.  She had stabbed the outlander axeman to save Haselrig; she still did not quite know why.  “He has served us well tonight, without him we could not have even got in, let alone achieved what we set out to.”  She smiled uncertainly.  “My father trusted him too, and he discharged that trust.”