The Sword and the Sorcerer (20 page)

For the first time in their dealings with one another the kings were unified by a common bond of anger.

“Every one of us here owes Talon a favor,” Leonidas resumed. “We can’t let him die like a dog!”

“What are you proposing?” asked King Charles.

“That at the right moment we call in our own guards, free Talon, climb our mounts and ride out of here with him. Possibly during the marriage ceremony. By then most of these reprobates,” he pointed to the revelers, “will be too drunk to fight, and Cromwell will be so dreamy with thoughts of his nuptial bed that no one will have a full head to stop us.”

“But the treaty!” Ludwig protested.

“Come on!” King Charles jeered, now clearly throwing his lot in with Leonidas. “You know deep down, as every one of us at this table knows, that the treaty is a farce.”

King Anthony nodded. “Cromwell has something up his sleeve. I know it.”

Noting some reluctance still in King Sancho and King Louis, Leonidas looked them in the eye and firmly said, “If I have to I’ll free Talon alone! Without going into embarrassing detail—I literally owe that young man my life, and maybe even my kingdom.”

“It means war with Cromwell if we interfere,” Ludwig warned, but tilting toward Leonidas’ side.

“It would mean war with him sooner or later anyway. How say you all, Lords? Are you with me?”

“Aye!” the kings whispered in unison.

TWENTY-TWO

he agony of his spiked hand was excruciating. But the soul-pain he felt watching the ceremony unfold on the balcony was worse.

Trumpets blared a bridal march and the coarse merriment surrounding him seemed to accompany the brassy joyous music. But to Talon he was listening to an abysmally depressing dirge. For if the abominable marriage between Cromwell and Alana did take place—and unless a miracle happened it certainly would—for him it would be a death of sorts. The corpse was a dream he now realized he had carried in his chest since the first day he laid eyes on Alana as a boy, which was to one day marry her himself. If only he could spit out the gag and scream and howl like a wolf for its lost mate he’d feel some degree of relief. But the steel plate seemed permanently locked over his mouth, as did the spikes through his throbbing palms.

He looked up once more at the ornately decorated atrium on the balcony, where a priest in flowing white robes had just arrived and acknowledged with a perfunctory smile the twelve beautiful bridesmaids waiting for the king and Alana. Like another spike driven through him—this time through his heart—he saw a sad but oh so lovely Alana emerge from a balcony wing, accompanied by two more bridesmaids. She was absolutely beautiful and ravishingly virginal in her tightly clinging white silks. But as radiant a vision as she projected, Talon could tell, even from where he was nailed to the table, that Alana was miserable through and through. Like a mourner at a funeral instead of a woman about to become a bride, Alana looked neither left or right, nor raised her lambent brown eyes, nor cast so much as a glance at the frolicking guests below in the courtyard, who were now settling into respectful silence. Throughout these proceedings she was as if mesmerized.

Alana’s wretchedness was Talon’s torment. He could endure his own suffering easier than hers. He began to frantically pull on the spikes, but the augmented pain incurred therewith was too great and he had to stop. Then Cromwell’s abrupt appearance from the opposite wing sent searing bolts of anger through his brutalized body again. Cromwell was dressed in a silken mantle of white with gold trimming along the edges. A red velvet cape flowed down from his squared shoulders. Atop his head was the royal crown encrusted with rubies and diamonds. His strong jaw was imperiously thrust upward and he was so obviously and smugly pleased with himself that Talon wanted to retch.

Talon went mad with frustration. Once more he bucked and tugged at the vicious spikes and cutting ropes like a wild horse trussed on the ground. But neither the ropes nor the spikes gave an inch. Still he struggled to break free. Nothing mattered to him but preventing that discordant pairing from taking place, neither his pain, the Cause, Mikah nor his own life. He’d sacrifice everything to save Alana from the concupiscent coils of Cromwell’s rampant lust.

“Join hands and kneel my children!”

The priest’s words echoed down to Talon from the balcony.

The king had to seize Alana’s limp hand by her side, holding it tightly in case she tried to pull away. Still her head hung despairingly low and she seemed oblivious to her surroundings. Cromwell now made her kneel beside him.

And now the short, epicene priest began to make religious signs over the crestfallen bride and triumphant king, while he recited marriage vows in a hybrid Latin.

“Prodeas, nova nupta, si. Iam videtur, et audias. Et beata viri tui, quae tibi sine serviat . . .”

The guests nearest to the fettered young giant began to wonder if perchance epilepsy—the disease of the gods—had not entered his body, for his fists continually clenched convulsively on the spike heads, while he tossed his handsome head from side to side, seemingly indifferent to the pain these twistings and paroxysms were causing him.

Unbeknown to anyone at this lavish fête, save the king and a select few, while the priest chanted his litany, in another part of the castle General Rumbolt’s archers dipped their arrows in a cauldron of poison. When they were finished, they surreptitiously entered the castle and replaced the regular guards on the second balcony. The celebrants below were too engrossed with the marriage ceremony to notice the archers slipping arrows into their bow strings.

General Thogan’s men were also busy, their job being to seal off all the courtyard exits.

In the pretty castle gardens, where earlier the six kings had conferred, a squad of General Renquo’s soldiers stealthily surrounded the six kings’ bodyguards and, with one fell swoop, killed them with daggers, swords and spears.

These three separate but interrelated moves spelled turning the courtyard into a deathtrap for the kings inside.

Ever since the guards had dragged the horribly mutilated bodies of Elizabeth and Ishmael away from their sight the mercenaries and pirates had been sunk in prickly gloom. From the remarks overheard between Verdugo and the guards they knew about the wedding taking place upstairs and Talon’s cruel predicament. And as these atrocities went on unchecked, the raiders stewed in helpless frustration, awaiting either Verdugo’s instruments of torture, the arrow or the guillotine. To die fighting was an honorable death. But to die like sheep led to the slaughter was to compound death with shame.

“What’s that?” Darius asked, jumping to the bars.

In the opposite cell Morgan and his buccaneers also rushed to the bars and strained to see who was coming into their cell block.

When the iron door flew open and three fiery, beautiful concubines from Cromwell’s harem came sprinting to their cells, they couldn’t believe their eyes. The men gasped and made exclamations of disbelief. Were these transparently clad girls lovely apparitions manufactured by the fever of their frustrations?

The spunkier of the three concubines—with hair like spun gold and lascivious green cat’s eyes—carried a huge ring of keys. While she looked over the men in both cells her saucy companions kept warily glancing at the door.

“Where are the men who came to save the good-looking warrior with the hand of steel?”

“We are!” the men in both cells shouted back.

“All right. Listen carefully. We haven’t too much time.” Her soft voice was sparked with anger. “We know what happened to our beloved sister Elizabeth—and we want to make Cromwell pay for it! And we know that the best way to get the king is to spoil his wedding and the horrible game he plays with your friend upstairs!”

“What’s your name, little spitfire?” Morgan asked, impressed by the pretty woman’s pluck.

“Bar-Bro. But that’s not important. Your friend can be killed at any moment. We must act at once if we are to save him!”

“Open these doors, sweet angel,” Darius urged, “and you’ll have your revenge!”

The mercenaries and pirates roared their unanimous support.

Bar-Bro quickly unlocked the cells and the warriors came pouring out, itching to get their hands on weapons. She tossed the ring of keys to the good-looking tough who had promised her revenge. “Here. The armory is on the other side of the door.”

As the raiders tore down the walkway Darius lingered with Bar-Bro long enough to say, “When all this is over I’d like to show you a mercenary’s idea of fun!”

She smiled encouragingly and playfully pushed him towards the others.

In the dungeon armory they grabbed every weapon in sight. Armed to the teeth with swords, daggers, maces and spears, the men let their lovely liberators lead them through the maze of dungeons. But as they were about to file past the Torture Chamber they couldn’t resist settling one score.

Verdugo was in the act of sharpening an assortment of blades on his huge stone wheel when he found himself suddenly besieged on all sides by a myriad of flashing knives. Through the shock of multitudinous stabs all over his rocky body, just before the light left his shifty eyes forever he heard a tiny sweet voice whisper, “This is for Elizabeth, pig!”

“. . . uxor, vivamus it viximus, et teneamus . . .”

A silky movement from the balcony on the second floor distracted Talon from the priest’s cryptic words. When he looked up a shudder went through his tortured body. Cromwell’s archers were raising their bows and taking aim at the kings below. My God, what kind of a beast was Cromwell? Who but an irredeemable fiend would think of mixing his wedding ceremony with the spilling of his supposed guests’ blood! If the miracle, or King Leonidas, or an upsurge of superhuman strength did not spring his fetters in the next couple of minutes, not only would Alana be married to the man who had butchered his family, but the lives of six noble kings would be snuffed out.

Using the appalling sight of Alana being coerced into a loathsome marriage as a maddening spur, Talon drew upon his last reservoir of strength to pull on the stakes again, the tension causing another spillage of blood. He tugged and used his chest, shoulders and arms to bring leverage on the iron pins. He found himself watching the marriage ceremony through a blinding white-hot haze of pain—but still he fought off passing out and redoubled his Herculean effort to break free. Like salt rubbed into open wounds, he continued to use the priest’s chanting words to lash himself onward.

“Do you, Titus Cromwell, Lord God on earth, King of Eh-Dan, take this woman to be your bride, your queen and mother of your children?”

Mother of Cromwell’s children! Talon held fast to that repellant image as yet another spur, and it was then that he thought he sensed one of the spikes budge.

“I do!” Cromwell’s voice proudly boomed across the courtyard, to the delight of the celebrants—excepting of course the kings and the young man engaged in a titanic life and death struggle on the table.

“Then repeat after me,” the priest droned on.
“Quando tu Alana, ego Titus
. . .”

Talon’s swollen muscles were strained and quivering to the breaking point. They knotted and stretched like iron cables, as he worked the spikes back and forth, both in his hands and the wood beneath them. He had been so long encased in dire pain that he seemed numb to it now. Only when he allowed himself to focus on the shooting shards of pain did the numbness cease, and when that happened he longed to scream his head off.

“Do you, Alana, daughter of Lord Duncan, take this man to be your groom, your—”

The dreaded words lashed his nerves into a final frenzy of effort. It was now or never. Nor could he allow himself to be distracted by the number of guests who had become aware of his struggle and were moving away from the table, wondering whether to call the guards or to ignore him. Slowly, as if tearing up the deep roots of a tree, the spikes began to give. And as he finally tore loose from the wood in a primal burst of energy he experienced a flashing kaleidoscope of different impressions; the Klaw archers readying to fire, King Leonidas rising and drawing his sword to help him, and the priest asking, “Do you take this man to be your husband?”

All within a matter of seconds, Talon sprung forward, pulled the spikes out of his hands and flung them at the revelers, ripped away the gag and yelled, before Alana could answer the priest’s question,
“Cromwell!”
It was the blood-curdling cry of a wild beast breaking loose from his cage, a cry of vengeance as well as liberation.

Pandemonium instantly broke loose in the packed courtyard and on the balconies. Alana rushed to the balcony’s edge and gazed helplessly at Talon struggling to unbind his feet, as a storm of noblemen bore down on him with swinging swords. But a raging Cromwell whipped his arms about her tiny waist from behind and dragged her through a wing of the balcony before she could see his attackers suddenly deflected by the six kings with their own swords drawn.

Added to the expanding chaos was the shrieking and sword-swinging tumult of Talon’s mercenaries rushing into the courtyard from one end, and Morgans pirates charging in from the other. Already covered with the blood of the Klaws they cut down outside, the raiders now unleashed their pent-up frustrations and rage at the surprised knights, lords and inrushing Klaws with the smashing suddenness of a typhoon—and they rapidly went down under the storm of the raiders’ blades in a sea of their own spurting and gushing blood.