Authors: Ron Miller
The Iron Tempest (32 page)
She turned in her saddle and saw that Rashid was still a mile away and behind him rode another, whose blood-red figure she recognized even at that distance as Marfisa, quickly catching up to her knight. In ten minutes her two pursuers arrived almost simultaneously, but where Rashid pulled up a dozen yards from Bradamant, Marfisa did not hesitate. She galloped past Rashid at full speed, lowering her lance.
Bradamant’s heart had lifted at seeing Rashid’s anguished face, but at seeing her sworn enemy charging she felt it shrink and harden once again. She had thought that Rashid had pursued her out of love, but that was evidently a romantic misconception. Why else had he brought this woman, the cause of all her misery, other than to give Marfisa another opportunity to murder her? What else would have inspired the Moorish warrior woman unless it was her love for Rashid?
“Wasn’t my agony enough,” she screamed at the knight, “that you have to flaunt this woman? I’ve seen how much you want to drive me away, but now you want to use her as a cowardly weapon against me. All right! I’ll give you want you want by dying—but I’ll see the reason for my death die with me!”
Like a striking cobra, she lunged at Marfisa, catching the other’s shield with such a violent blow that the woman spun completely around in her saddle, flying from her seat like a top. She landed backwards on the grass, her helmet sailing as her head struck the earth.
Bradamant leaped to the ground, throwing her lance aside in favor of her sword. She ran toward the stunned Moor, intent upon severing Marfisa’s head before she had a chance to rise. But Marfisa had bounced to her feet like a rubber doll, as enraged by her second fall as was Bradamant at the sight of her rival. Bradamant could hear Rashid calling both her name and Marfisa’s, but the words were muffled by her anger, which overfilled her like the brimming crater of a volcano. In her bloody delirium she believed that Rashid’s shouts were meant to encourage his new lover.
Marfisa had drawn her yataghan as she had risen and the women, only two paces apart, hacked at one another until Rashid had to shield his eyes from the dazzling scintillation of the flying sparks. The ringing sound of the blows came so quickly that they blended into a single, sonorous clamour. The women pressed toward one another until Bradamant’s vision was filled with the dark, raging face. Bradamant flung her now-useless sword aside and grappled hand-to-hand, tearing at her rival with fingers and teeth, her face streaming blood from a dozen scratches and bites. She felt Rashid’s traitorous hands at her shoulders, trying to restrain her, to pull her away from Marfisa. She felt her dagger slipped from her belt by his hand and her disgust and fury at this additional perfidy—not knowing that he’d similarly disarmed Marfisa—lent her renewed strength and a piston-like jab from her mailed elbow sent the knight rolling.
Rashid did not abandon his efforts to part the women and this time, when he tried to pull Marfisa away, she turned on him, hissing like an ocelot. Blind with frenzy, she twisted from Bradamant’s clinch, picked her weapon from the grass where it had fallen and turned upon Rashid.
“How dare you!” she shrieked. “I’ll send you both to hell!”
Rashid backed away from the enraged woman, relunctant to defend himself, fending off her blows with his shield, until finally, pressed to desperation, he was forced to draw his own weapon.
Bradamant could have been no more delighted at this spectacle than if she had been an ancient Roman watching a gladiatorial contest. No sight could have ravished or delighted her more than this one that confirmed her every suspicion: Rashid and Marfisa were obviously having a lover’s spat. She made no move to save either combatant, but instead picked up her sword and stood aside to watch.
If Rashid defended himself like Mars, Marfisa was a Fury unbound. Bradamant saw that he was restraining himself, for she knew as well as he did the fatal power of the sword Balisard, and that he was striking his opponent with only the flat of that irresistable blade. Seeing him do this only served to convince Bradamant that she was correct in her assumptions about Rashid’s feelings toward the woman.
He saw her trying to murder me,
she thought
. By all rights, if he loves me as much as he once claimed, he wouldn’t hesitate by as much as a heartbeat in putting the harlot to death. But look at that: he’s trying to save her life!
Finally, however, Marfisa’s raging passion proved greater than Rashid’s reticence and she penetrated his guard with a blow that cut through his shield like a knife through paper; the blade smashed through his helmet and would have split his skull had he not deflected the blow with his forearm, which was so numbed by the stroke that his sword dropped from his nerveless hand. He fell, stunned, to one knee.
Marfisa, her mad eyes glittering at the sight of imminent victory, drew back her hand for the final, fatal blow. Rashid, however, grasped the hilt of his fallen sword with his good hand and lunged at the woman like a bull. Whether he was thrown off balance by having to use his left hand or if he were still dizzied by that last titanic impact, he missed her by a scant inch, driving the point of his weapon a full foot into the trunk of a cypress.
With an ululating cry of triumph, Marfisa raised her yataghan over the fallen knight’s head and Bradamant, her heart shattering like cold glass, raised her hands over her head and screamed.
There was a blast of sound as though the earth itself had heard Bradamant’s wail and every hidden cavern, canyon, gorge and hollow had become a mouth that echoed her. The force of that geological lament was like a physical blow—Bradamant and Marfisa both staggered and dropped their weapons, stunned, their skulls ringing with mournful echoes.
A rosy light streamed from the marble pavilion and Bradamant turned toward the glare, whose rays seemed to caress her, carrying away her anger like the cool, clean water washes away the dross in a miner’s pan, leaving behind only the glittering traces of gold.
It’s wrong for a sister to slay her brother,
thundered a voice, like an articulate earthquake. Under its impact, Bradamant felt her brain reverberate like the clapper of a bell.
Or for a brother, the voice continued, to slay his sister. You, Rashid, and you, Marfisa, sprang from one womb and one seed. Your father was that Rashid who was murdered by his wife’s brothers, who then, not knowing that their sister was with child, set her adrift in the sea. Galaciella’s boat was not lost however, but cast ashore on a desert coast near Tripoli. There she gave birth to her twins and died. Fortunately, I happened to’ve been nearby. I gave your mother as decent a burial as I could and took her newborn babes with me to my hiding place in the mountains of Carena. There I enchanted a lioness who gently suckled the infants for a year and eight months.
“I have no recollection of this,” said Rashid, who had come to Bradamant’s side. She dared a quick, sidelong glance at him but otherwise refused to acknowledge his presence.
“Nor I,” said Marfisa.
Nor should you
, agreed the voice
. One day when I was away a band of Arabs stole you from me, Marfisa, but Rashid ran into the rocks and hid. Having lost one of you, my desire to protect the other became a compulsion to which I devoted the remainder of my life. This compulsion was increased tenfold because my studies of the stars had told me that Rashid was fated to perish, betrayed, in the midst of the Christian empire. I did everything in my power to protect him, to shield him from this fatal destiny.
“Atalante!” cried Bradamant.
Yes, it is I. We’ve met before, my brave, stubborn maiden. All my magic was powerless against your determination. After my last effort to save Rashid was defeated, I saw, finally, that I’d been foolish to try to circumvent what the stars had foreordained. Without the hope of preserving Rashid’s life to sustain me, I wasted away. There was no longer any purpose to my life if I couldn’t save his. Before I died, I had this monument erected, knowing that the three of you were to meet here one day in combat.
I’ve waited in this pleasant glade for a long time so that you, Bradamant, who adore Rashid so truly and faithfully, could finally purge yourself of that hateful jealousy that was surely destroying you and your love.
The voice fell silent and the light faded. Birds and squirrels that had been knocked senseless from the trees picked themselves up and shakily returned to their branches. Bradamant, Rashid and Marfisa looked at one another in confusion and embarassment. Bradamant was now able to watch with equanimity as the other two embraced one another. Her heart swelled with new-found generosity and compassion.
Rashid turned to her and held his arms wide. Bradamant rushed into them like a needle to a lodestone.
CHAPTER TEN
In which three Brave Knights punish an Evil King
The sky was purpling with twilight before Bradamant realized that she and her two companion knights had passed an entire afternoon with their glad reminiscences. Rather than return to Arles, Rashid suggested they spend the night at a deserted farmhouse he knew was not far off. This was far more appealing to Bradamant than a night in the city and Marfisa agreed with her—neither woman relished the idea of having to deal with the considerable fuss they knew would greet them when they returned, from both the Christian and Saracen camps. They looked forward to furthering their relative intimacies, though of course now with entirely different motives.
The farmhouse lay not more than a mile beyond the temple of the now thoroughly late Atalante, but, as Fate perversely ordains such things, they were not destined to reach it. Indeed, they had not gone half the distance when Bradamant asked, “What’s that sound?”
“I don’t hear anything,” replied Rashid.
“I do,” added Marfisa. “It sounds like someone crying.”
“I still don’t hear anything.”
“Over there,” said Bradamant. “In that spinney. It’s getting louder as we approach.”
She suspected that Rashid had denied hearing the soft weeping for the not entirely honorable reason that he feared being distracted from an evening he—and she, she blushed to admit—anticipated with much pleasure. She sympathized with him, but knew also that the sound would haunt her all the night if she did not satisfy her curiosity. Too, chivalry ran in a purer stream through her arteries than his and she could not as cavalierly shrug off evidence of what must surely be someone in distress. Rashid was finally forced to admit that he either heard the sounds or that he was deaf. She heard him grinding his teeth with ill-concealed annoyance as he followed the curious women when they turned toward the copse.
Bradamant was the first to enter the grove and when she saw the three half-naked women huddled on the ground, she cried, “Good heavens! Ullania!”
The Icelandic ambassadress did not reply, but her strained, tear-streaked face looked up at the warrioress with miserable recognition. The other two women, Bradamant noticed in spite of their efforts to hide their faces in their hands, were from among Ullania’s attendants. All three still wore the elegant gowns that Bradamant had once admired, except that the garments had been cut away from the waist down, leaving the women nude from their navels to their feet. Their wretched postures reminded Bradamant of Vulcan’s son, Erichthonius, who vainly tried to hide his deformed feet. She felt her face grow hot and a glance at her dark companion showed that the Amazon’s countenance had gone black with shame and embarrassment.
“What’s happened?” she demanded, as she descended from her horse. “Who did this to you?”
Ullania replied while accepting the cloak that Bradamant offered. Meanwhile, Marfisa threw hers to one of the other women and called to Rashid, who had remained outside the spinney, to bring his for the third.
“I was abandoned by the three kings whom you defeated at Tristam’s castle and, one by one, all of the remainder of my retinue left me as well—all except for these two loyal handmaidens.”
“Abandoned!” cried Bradamant. “How could they’ve done such a cowardly thing? Especially to you, a representative of the queen of Iceland. Was it because I unhorsed them?”
“No, not entirely. Had it been left at that, their egos would have survived. After all, no one knew of their ignominy other than myself and Tristan. But it was I who did far more damage than your lance.”
“What could you have done?”
“I taunted them, I’m ashamed to say. I told them that it’d been a woman who’d bested them. I said, ‘Now that a mere woman has managed to throw all of you with a single swipe of her lance, as thoughtlessly as she’d swat a trio of flies, what’ll happen when you meet Renaud or Roland? Do you suppose their fame has no foundation? Do you think you’d do any better with them than you did with this maiden? What if one of
them
gets hold of the golden shield?’”
“You were a little hard on them, my lady.”
“I suppose so. It was just that I’d gotten so weary of their endless posturing and rodomontade. But I didn’t leave it at that.”
“No?” replied Bradamant, who’d never before heard the word “rodomontade”, but suspected that she could divine both its meaning and source.
“No. I told them that if they wanted to continue trying to prove themselves in Frankland that they’d only succeed in adding injury to insult. Well, their reaction was far more violent than I expected. At first I thought they were going to murder one another, but instead they threw their armor and swords into the moat and swore they would spend the next year wandering the countryside as mendicants, unarmed and on foot. And when the year was up, they still would not wear armor or mount a horse until they’d won the right to do so. And with that oath and not another word, all three of them walked off down the road. They were out of sight before I realized that they’d been entirely serious.”
“Yes, knights often are about such things.”
“Without them, I was helpless and unprotected and, well, what with one thing and another, I found myself reduced to the company of just these two loyal women. It was while we were seeking shelter at a castle not far from here that this outrage was committed upon us.”
“What happened?
“That’s easy enough to relate. We’d no sooner announced our presence at the gate when we were set upon, beaten and suffered the indignity of having half of our dresses cut off. We were then turned away. We had to continue on foot since the villains’d taken our horses, too. I’d heard that Charlemagne’s army was in Arles and I was taking my complaint to it when you found me.”
Bradamant did not say anything in reply to Ullania’s story, but instead climbed back onto her horse, her face gone as hard and white as marble in her fury—always at its most white-hot when faced with a put-upon woman. She glanced at Marfisa, who had been silently listening to the entire conversation and saw that her face, too, was set, her long eyes and wide mouth compressed to three parallel slashes. The warrioresses turned and rejoined Rashid.
“Did you hear?” Bradamant asked.
“I did,” he replied.
“There’s obviously nothing else for us to do but to right this terrible wrong. Ullania!” she cried as the woman and her two satellites came out of the trees. “Climb up behind me. I’ll need you to show me the shortest way to this damnable castle. Rashid and Marfisa, you take the other women.”
Rashid did not even try to argue.
The road was tortuously winding and the first stars were appearing in the indigo sky when the travelers arrived at a tidy hamlet nestling atop a hill. They were welcomed with as much hospitality as the villagers could afford. Much was made of Ullania and her handmaidens and new clothing was provided—simple and coarse though it was, it was also clean and, better yet, decently complete. Ullania was gracious in her thanks for this generosity. Meanwhile, Bradamant, Marfisa and Rashid, not having eaten in twenty-four hours, plunged ravenously into a meal of bread, cheese, cabbage, sausage and beer. More than half an hour passed before Bradamant, feeling pleasantly mellow and comforted, leaned back in her chair, her hands clasped over her stomach, and belched softly.
“Didn’t you get enough?” asked Rashid.
“Pardon?” she replied.
“You look dissatisfied about something. I thought perhaps you were still hungry.”
“No, everything’s fine. I was just wondering . . .”
“What?”
“Well, I was just wondering—where are all the
men?”
“The men?”
“Yes. There aren’t any men here.”
“Oh, sure—there must be.”
“No,” interjected Marfisa, “there aren’t any. She’s right. I haven’t seen a man—not as infant, child, adolescent or adult—since we got here.”
“Well? So?”
“I think something must be wrong,” Bradamant said. Now that she had broached the subject, what had been only a niggling question took on a sinister quality. She looked around the room. It was full of women—many more than when they first arrived. They must have been gathering in twos and threes all the while she had been eating. They were of all ages, young and old, from babes in arms to blind, withered crones. An uncanny shudder made Bradamant’s spine vibrate like a plucked lute string as she recalled the ancient story of the women of Lemnos, who had cold-bloodedly murdered their loving husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. She tried to make the faces of the women look like murderesses, but her imagination just wasn’t up to it. Still . . .
Suddenly sober, she stood and placed her hand on the hilt of her sword. The faces that surrounded her only looked curious—far more sad than threatening.
“Where are your men?” she asked as Marfisa and Rashid joined her at either side. They were also sober, grim and alert, their hands resting on the hilts of their weapons.
An elderly woman shuffled forward, wrung her crispy hands and replied in a voice like crumpling paper: “We’re unhappy exiles, my lady, banished here by our cruel tyrant, separated forever from our fathers, sons and husbands.”
“Exiled? Whatever for?”
“He loathes women, our lord does. When we lived on his lands, which are about two leagues from here, he subjected us to every imaginable indignity. Finally tiring of this, and disgusted by our very presence, as though we were the carriers of some terrible plague, he forced us to live here. He’s promised death to any of us who dare attempt to return. Many of us’ve tried only to discover that for all his faults, he is a man of his word.”
“This is monstrous!” cried Bradamant indignantly. “But why haven’t your men come to your rescue?”
“They’re under the same threat of death. Our lord’s guards patrol every road and any man caught trying to escape is tortured or killed. Usually both.”
“I’ve never heard anything so outrageous.”
“It’s been two years now since our families were ripped asunder and there’s been not a soul to set things right. Everyone within a half dozen leagues lives in terror of Lord Marganor. They fear him more than death itself and rightly so: he’s of gigantic stature and prodigious strength.”
“We’ll soon see about that, eh, my friends?”
“I look forward to introducing myself,” replied Marfisa, with a pantherian grin.
“Oh!” cried the crone. “Not you, my ladies! We were hoping that this gentleman here might be convinced to win us our solace.”
“And what’s wrong with us two?” asked Marfisa.
“You’d be much better off escorting these three ladies to safety,” the crone protested, indicating Ullania and her handmaidens. “Take the road that leads away from Lord Marganor’s castle and you’ll thank me for the advice.”
“Whyever should Marfisa and I be afraid of this brute?”
“Ignore me and you’ll find out soon enough. He treats all women with the savagery of a Nero or Caligula, and not least of all foreign women who stumble into his murderous clutches. He craves their blood as the wolf craves the lamb’s.”
“But
why?
” asked Rashid. “Why would any man hate women so much?”
“He was always cruel,” the old woman replied, “but for many years he was able to successfully conceal his savage nature. Perhaps for this reason his two sons, Tanacre and Cilander, grew up to be quite the opposite of their father: kind, generous, refined, always ready to welcome and entertain guests and travelers. Under their benevolent management, Marganor Castle began to develop a well-deserved reputation for its hospitality. All would’ve been well if the sons hadn’t fallen in love.
“Cilander fell passionately for the daughter of a visiting Greek knight. He couldn’t bear to see her leave, so he schemed an abduction. After the departure of the knight and his daughter, Cilander met them on the road and challenged the girl’s father, who, it turned out, was the more skillful swordsman for he killed the boy at the first blow.”
“Marganor must have taken that well,” observed Bradamant.
“Better than you might think, all things considered. He buried his son and, although his grief was agonizing, his remaining son was able to maintain the manor’s standard of hospitality and grace. Unfortunately, less than a year passed before he, too, fell in love; this time it was the wife of a visiting baron—I forget his name.”
“Olinder of Longueville,” one of the women provided.
“Yes. Olinder—it was his beautiful wife, Drusilla. Well, Tanacre lusted for her no less than his late brother had desired the Greek maiden, but he also realized that there had been a lesson to be learned from Cilander’s fate, one that he wasn’t anxious to repeat.
“Can you imagine how sad this was? This elegant, witty, kind boy throwing away every bouyant virtue, to sink to the bottom of the black waters of evil where his father lay.
Aiee
, such a waste.
“Well, he waylaid the innocent baron, but unlike his late brother Tanacre was accompanied by twenty armed cohorts who wasted no time in dispatching the poor man. Seeing her husband thus brutally and cowardly murdered, Drusilla fled. Preferring death to dishonor, she threw herself from a cliff. She didn’t die, however, though she was terribly injured, not the least by a cracked skull. Tanacre recovered her unconscious body and had it carried back to the castle. While poor Drusilla was being cared for by Marganor’s doctors, Tanacre began preparations for his wedding.”
“While the girl was still unconscious?” asked Marfisa.
“What a foul little villain!” cried Bradamant.
“True. He did take after his father more than anyone might have suspected. To his credit, for whatever it’s worth, he admitted his crime to the lady, once she’d recovered enough to converse, and did what he could to make things up to her—short, of course, of letting her go. Drusilla, however, would have no part of him or his proposal and the harder he tried to befriend her, the more she loathed him and the more determined she became to kill him.”
“Good for her.”
“Yes, I think you would’ve approved of Drusilla—she had her wits about her, she did. For example, she knew it would do no good to attempt anything overt—Tanacre was scarcely less physically powerful than his father and could disarm her easily. Instead, she resorted to deviousness. As much as it pained her, she pretended to’ve forsworn her loyalty to her late husband, surrendering her heart to his murderer. For a long time she didn’t know how she could take advantage of Tanacre’s trust, other than that she was determined to die along with him.
