Broken World Book Four - The Staff of Law (9 page)

Orland
shrugged. “Call them. By the time they get here you’ll all be dead,
and they know the Mujar is still in the city. They’re not
interested in me or my cousins.”

“
As a hostage, you’d be very useful.”

“
My father won’t be blackmailed. If these thieves are hiding in
the city, we don’t know where they are, but nor will he allow you
to dictate terms to him. All you’ll do is start a war your queen
will regret very much. Now, I’d advise you to get out of my way,
before I have my men remove you.”

The officer
glanced past the Prince at the long column of men behind him. “You
need a whole battalion to escort your cousins?”

“
It’s a dangerous world these days.”

The man
hesitated a little longer, then urged his horse closer to the
Prince. “We’ll inspect your wagons, just in case you have stowaways
aboard. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Orland
shrugged. “Certainly not. Inspect all you want, but don’t damage
our supplies.”

The men
converged on the wagons, leaving the manhorses to block the road.
Orland signalled to the drovers, who set their brakes and untied
the tarpaulins that covered their loads, pulling them aside. The
officer who had confronted Orland rode past Talsy, Kieran and the
Aggapae, his eyes raking them. Talsy raised her chin and glared at
him, Kieran ignored him. As befitted a king’s cousins, she wore a
gold-trimmed green velvet dress and Kieran a smart outfit of royal
blue edged with silver. The officer studied them and passed on,
following his men to the wagons. They poked their swords amongst
the provisions until they were satisfied, then rejoined the
manhorses. The officer stopped his horse in front of the
Prince.

“
You may go, Prince Orland. Queen Larina does not desire war
with your father. We have strict orders not to start one, so, in
view of that, we’ll not detain you further. The thieves will
eventually have to leave your city, or perhaps your father will
eject them when his people run short of food. Either way, we’ll
capture them in the end.”

“
I’m sure you will. Doubtless you’ll enjoy watching those stone
monstrosities suck the life out of your fellow Truemen. Just
remember, one day it’ll be your turn.”

The Prince
urged his warhorse forward, shouldering aside the officer’s mount,
and the manhorses moved off the road, allowing the column to
proceed. Talsy let out her pent breath as they passed Larina’s men,
and the tension drained out of her, leaving her dizzy with relief.
She did not like to think of what might have happened had they been
discovered. Certainly there would have been a great deal of
bloodshed. She looked back many times at the city with its looming
castle, wondering if Chanter watched them leave from its tall
turrets. Eventually a belt of trees hid it, and she concentrated on
the road ahead.

Two weeks of
uneventful travel brought them to the mighty forest that girded the
foothills of the mountains to the south, where the peaks sank into
wooded land and vanished. Entering the forest’s gloom, they
followed a road that wound through the massive trunks, the vast
leafy boughs overhead blotting out the sun. The brooding atmosphere
amongst the trees sent shivers down Talsy’s back, and the distant,
weird screams that echoed through it made her hair bristle. She had
long since shucked the velvet dress, and was clad once more in her
tough, practical leather trousers, sturdy shirt and bodice. Kieran
had also reverted to his black outfit and armour, and his hand
lingered often on the hilt of the Starsword at his side. The horses
grew restive and nervous in the forest’s menacing dimness, sidling
and prancing, their eyes white-ringed. Everyone sensed it, and the
soldiers’ eyes darted amongst the trees while the drovers’ hands
clenched on their reins.

The first
night, Orland posted a guard of thirty men rotating at four-hour
intervals, and the next night he increased it to fifty. On the
fifth night, while Talsy sat beside the campfire she shared with
Kieran and Orland, the gloom erupted with a horde of wailing black
chaos beasts whose banshee screams froze her blood. She crouched
beside the fire, her heart hammering. Soldiers burst from their
tents with drawn swords to battle the creatures, whose front legs
were armed with razor claws and whose long, matted fur, the men
discovered when their weapons clanged off it with little effect,
concealed chitin armour.

The monsters
poured from the shadows in a dark tide, their eyes aglow in the
torchlight, fangs bared. Kieran laid about him with the Starsword,
its fire making the creatures explode, splattering the
surroundings, and everyone within range, with globs of gelatinous
flesh. The fallen monsters’ stench made Talsy ill, and she clutched
her stomach and retched while the Aggapae surrounded her, ready to
take on any beast that broke through the defenders. The battle
seemed to last for an eternity, and the moon had set by the time
all the chaos beasts were dead.

Trueman
casualties were high, and Kieran went amongst the wounded with the
Starsword, healing all he could with the army doctor’s aid. When he
finished, dawn’s first faint glow filtered through the forest.
Talsy had moved upwind, her eyes averted from the twisted dead,
eager to quit the glade and its horrific contents. She did not want
to contemplate what manner of beast had attacked them, their
grotesque forms defied analysis. Orland moved on as soon as the
last of the injured was healed, leaving the fallen to whatever
scavengers inhabited the woodland.

The forest
unleashed its true horror upon them two days later, and their
journey became an ordeal Talsy wished she could forget. Howling
horror filled the nights, when hordes of shrieking beasts swarmed
around the camp. The creatures ensured that no one slept with their
blood-curdling screams, and occasionally charged from the darkness
to slay a hapless soldier, vanishing back into the gloom too
quickly to be killed. Days of anxious walking followed the
sleepless nights, waiting for the next ordeal to reveal itself.

The chaos
beasts attacked with the mindless fervour of the insane, erupting
from the ground or dropping from the trees to slay as many as they
could before they died. Orland soon learnt the folly of sending out
scouts when he encountered their torn and mangled bodies impaled on
trees beside the road. There were nights when the campfires gave no
warmth, and other times when the air became difficult to breathe.
Soldiers fell to strange illnesses that killed them in mere
moments. Some went mad and fled into the forest, where their howls
could be heard from time to time.

The troops’
discipline broke down under this endless onslaught, and they became
dishevelled and unshaven, too tired to ride in ranks or wash their
filthy clothes. The forest unleashed vile atrocities in the form of
worms that crawled up the horses’ legs and devoured steed and rider
alive unless driven away with fire. Men turned on one another in
the night and slew their comrades while in the grip of delusions
brought on by intense fatigue. Once, the trees dripped slime that
burnt like acid, making the soldiers and their mounts scream and
run about tearing at their flesh in an orgy of pain. Many times,
Talsy thought that they would not survive the journey, and prayed
for Chanter to save them or for the gods to put an end to the
madness. She longed for the safety of the valley she feared they
would never reach, and when at last the forest ended she could
hardly believe so many had survived.

Chapter
Four

Talsy stared
across the sunlit bowl of Chanter’s valley at the snow-capped
mountains that ringed it like jagged white teeth. From her high
window, she sniffed the scented breeze that ruffled the curtains
and smelt within it the promise of rain. In the distance, herds of
sheep and cattle grazed, the faint bleating of lambs mixed with the
soft ringing of the cow’s bells. Her eyes never wearied of the
mesmerising sight, which imparted its peace in Chanter’s
absence.

Two months of
gruelling travel had brought them home, battered and numbed by the
horrors they had witnessed in the forest. The journey had taken its
toll, and almost half the soldiers had fallen to the chaos beasts’
predations and the land’s ever increasing madness. She shuddered at
the memory, still haunted by it in horrible dreams that dragged her
screaming from her sleep. When they had finally quit it, Orland had
led them through a narrow pass that had opened onto a vast plain
dotted with rock claws.

Chanter had
joined them there, the black army left behind in the mountains to
struggle with the elements of a world gone mad. Although their
suffering saddened the Mujar, he took no blame for their demise
since he had had no hand in it other than to lead them astray.
Talsy wondered at his strange logic, but remembered the time when
he had disowned the soldiers from the doomed tar town, leaving
their fate to the land’s mercy. As before the breaking of the Staff
of Law, a Mujar would take no part in killing, but would stand by
and watch unchosen die without regret.

Talsy had
spent the last two weeks of the journey on a litter that four burly
soldiers carried. As her belly had swelled, she found she could not
stay awake for more than a few hours at a time, and became so tired
that she fell asleep in the saddle. When she had been awake, a
terrible hunger had forced her to consume prodigious amounts of
food, yet the flesh melted from her and her teeth had become loose.
Her skin had taken on a pale, waxy look, and her hair fell out in
hanks. Several times, she had noticed Kieran and Chanter muttering
together when they thought that she was asleep, the Prince pleading
and the Mujar shaking his head. Her lethargy and mental torpor had
not allowed her to ponder this, and she had dismissed it as
unimportant.

Upon her
arrival in the valley, Chanter had taken it upon himself to raise a
castle of smooth grey bedrock for her to live in, a small but
elegant fortress. He had modelled it on Trueman castles he had
seen, and made a surprisingly good job of it with a little help
from Kieran. Sheera had been horrified by Talsy’s condition and
appointed herself nursemaid. As soon as Talsy was installed in her
new domicile, Chanter had vanished without farewell. This had not
overly concerned her, for all her interest was now focussed on the
new life growing within her, making its presence felt. All of her
waking moments were centred upon it, and, when she was not eating,
she talked endlessly to Sheera about it.

Kieran
remained distant but supportive, and at times he sat with her when
Sheera was busy, listening to her ramblings. After a week to
recover from the journey, Orland had returned to his father’s city
with his army, which the valley could not feed. He assured them
that he and his men would not brave the forest a second time, but
would take an even longer route around the woods, staying in open
country where the chaos beasts could not hide.

Two months
later, Chanter had returned with the fourth piece of the staff.
Sorrow had haunted his eyes, a silent testimony to the horrors he
had witnessed beyond the valley. Talsy had smiled at the broken
piece of grey stone, but had been unable to summon any enthusiasm,
the coming birth of her child overshadowing her ambition to restore
the staff. The four pieces lay on a sheet of crimson velvet in an
empty tower room, a five-foot broken staff missing its metal-bound
foot.

Since then,
two more months of balmy, sun-filled days had passed within the
valley, sheltered from the chaos by Chanter’s power. Dargon had
invaded the haven in increasing numbers, bringing a wealth of
fecundity to the soil and allowing monstrous crops to be grown. The
grass grew so fast the beasts could not crop it quickly enough, and
the grazers became fat. Chanter had ordered hundreds of trees to be
planted around the copse by the lake, and a young forest sprouted
with amazing speed. Life in the valley remained idyllic, and
nothing disturbed Talsy in her ripening pregnancy. Sheera
diligently rubbed oil into her turgid belly, now swollen to such
proportions that walking was a major task, and she had not seen her
feet for some time.

Chanter left
from time to time to fly over the mountains, returning bristling
with wild beauty and burdened with intense sorrow. He had left
three days ago now, or was it four? Talsy frowned. The amount of
sleep she craved distorted her sense of time, and days tended to
blur together with nights. She sighed and turned from the window,
her feet and back aching from standing even for a few minutes. The
child kicked, making her gasp and clasp the hard bulge of her
belly. He kicked often now, waking her at night when she felt him
pushing at her flesh. She smiled and rubbed her belly as it bulged,
its small occupant shifting, maybe stretching as he woke. Tottering
across the room, she sat on the bed. Hunger gnawed at her again,
and she reached for the silver bell Sheera had given her to summon
aid.

Before she
grasped it, pain tore through her, and she gasped, biting her lip.
As it subsided, she rang the bell. Sheera appeared within minutes,
looking worried when her gaze raked Talsy’s pale face.

“
What is it child? Has it started?”

Talsy nodded,
gasping when another pain lanced through her.

Sheera turned
away. “I’ll call the midwife.”

Talsy lay back
as the old woman hurried out, and a twinge of fear accompanied the
next crushing pain. After months of living in a happy daze, the
birth pains’ onset brought the world back into sharp focus, like a
rosy veil drawn aside to reveal the harsh reality she had been
blind to for so long.