Lady Of The Helm (Book 1) (29 page)

They had progressed like a traveller taking stepping stones across a river.  Isolated patches of high ground
gave places just large enough for the army to camp almost dry shod, while a flurry of patrols could then explore the snaking pathways to find the best route to the next dry campsite.

Some patrols had never returned and Odestus with brutal logic had dismissed those routes
, as clearly some marshland treachery must have overwhelmed the missing scouts. So they had blundered fruitlessly through the levels until at last Odestus had been forced to re-examine those assumed dead ends. 

Thus the little wizard had been brought at last to this extraordinary scene
.  The barely promising track had quickly broadened into a veritable highway of firm ground before rising to this small wooded copse on the very border of the marsh.  His initial assumption had been that the missing patrol had simply fled the fly ridden marshes as soon as they had realised they had found the route out.  On that premise, he had been rehearsing in his memory the spells to search out the deserters and bring them back in various forms and pieces as a salutary lesson to re-invigorate the loyalty and dutifulness of his dwindling army.

However, as he scratched his chin, the error of the assumption was brought home t
o him in the midst of a newly unfolding mystery.

“We should wait, Governor,”  Vesten said at his elbow.  “There is clearly some force beyond our expectation or unde
rstanding.  We should tell the Master that we wait here.”

“Wait!” Odestus exclaimed
. “Wait you say?  May I suggest you tell that to the Master.  We failed to force a passage of the elven kingdom, we were driven back from the mountain passes and we have blundered for days in this infernal swamp.  Now, when I finally bring a force to our Master’s call, albeit half of what was expected and a week overdue, you suggest I tell the Master we wait and because of what …. This?”

Governor and secretary looked around at the scene before them.  There were a score of bodies, orcs and nomad mercenaries.  A group lay scorched and twisted, their limbs curled up in a pugilist’s pose by the fire that had despatched them to the underworld.  Others lay scattered in a trail around the small clearing, their lives
ended by single sword thrusts of brutal precision.  The most remarkable corpse was that of the ogre suspended in the branches of a tree some fifteen foot off the ground.  They were all several days dead.

“These were our best, Governor,
and yet here they lie, every last one of them, with not a single foe for company.”

Odestus nodded and hail
ed an orcish shaman from his inspection of the less obviously dead bodies.  A few words in the twisted orcish tongue and the shaman set to work, holy symbol clutched to his chest as he wailed horribly over the least damaged of the corpses.  It was a long invocation and at its end there was the slightest twitch at the corner of the corpse’s mouth that signified the spell’s success.

“It is done?” Odestus demanded.

“He speak now,” the shaman assured him with a bob of the head.  “Few questions only, before his spirit must go back to slaughter hall with his brothers.”

“Ask him who did this.”

The shaman put question in the tangled sounds of the orcish tongue.  The body’s black cracked lips moved in a whisper of an answer which puzzled as quickly as Odestus and Vesten translated it.  “One? one, but that makes no sense.  Ask him again. Who did this Make him answer in the common tongue.”

Once more the shaman put the question and for the last time the dead orc spoke to the li
ving.  “It was an elf. One elf. A terrible elf.  He did it.”

The wind was whipping white horses on the crests of the waves and Niarmit pulled her cape close about her shoulders.  To the west lay the shore of the Petred Isle, barely a league away.  The recently repaired trading schooner had followed the coastline North towards Oostsalve where the Captain’s promised rich cargo lay waiting, but after that the sails would be set for the Eastern lands.  Despite Feyril’s sad salute of farwell as the ship had warped out of Dwarfport’s harbour, Niarmit had no regrets.

Her father, Matteus, her father,
she constantly reminded herself of the kindly white haired man who had been at her side her whole life until that moment of heartbreak at Bledrag field.  He was her father, would always be her father despite the elf lord’s repugnant aspersion on her parenthood.  In his youth, Matteus had travelled to the Eastern lands, serving in the forces of the Salved outside Salicia as well as journeying into the mysterious hinterlands of the vast sprawling continent from which the original human colonists of the Petred isle had hailed two thousand years or more ago.

In quieter moments,
of which there had been a few after he gained the province of Undersalve, he had told her of these strange places.  Places where humans worshipped more than one god, or where every town or village had and needed some fortified castle or stockade for there was no barrier of mountains to protect them.  Places where merchants could make fortunes by persuading one nation to make a luxury of its neighbour’s surplus goods.  Places where magic was not the preserve just of priests and elves, but even weak willed humans were allowed to dabble in dangerous thaumatagery.  Places she would soon see for herself.

The howl of the gale had risen to a new pitch and it seemed that all of the small crew were now on deck.  A third man ran to join the two at th
e tiller leaning heavily on it, pushing the great bar towards the shore which now seemed not so distant, its grey mass underlined by a white froth of breakers on the green-grey sea.

The bow of the ship turned sluggishly seaward while the rest of the crew pulled on the
bafflement of ropes and pulleys that swung the storm shortened sail.  The Captain was shouting orders above the wind.  A few of the crew cast accusing glances in Niarmit’s direction but for only a second as that was all they could spare from the urgent demands of their situation.

Niarmit felt strangely calm.  She had no expertise in seamanship and knowing that there was nothing she could usefully do left her unworriedly inactive.

The end, when it came, was sudden.

There was a mighty crack as the mast sprung.  Ropes went slack and then taut again as the great structure crumpled over the port side.  A moment of helpless drifting and buffeting passed as the crew hacked with axes to free the wreckage.  Then there was a thunderous creak and crash from below as the hull struck some hidden rock and the ship lurched to one sid
e.  Niarmit, her view of the approaching sea concealed by the steeply tilted deck, had no chance to brace herself as another huge wave struck the ship, flinging her overboard.

She surfaced quickly enough, to be welcomed by a mouthful of saltwater.  All thoughts of returning to the safety of the boat vanished when she saw how sorry its state had become during her brief moment of immersion.  

The waves had all but broken it in two as they impaled it on the rocks.  Niarmit was not alone in the water now.  She, like the others, was being swept irresistibly towards the bubbling froth of white water breaking over half submerged rocks which lay between her and the distant shore.

Kircadden joined the sentries on the battlements, panting from the unaccustomed exertion.  It appeared that the entire garrison was already there, those on duty joined by those who had just finished breakfast and heard the commotion of alarms.

“Where is it
?” the breathless Constable demanded.

A dozen fingers pointed at the cloud of dust
rising over the great Eastway. Horses ridden hard but by whom and why.  Even as Kircadden watched, the approaching cloud resolved itself into two groups, pursued and pursuers.  There was silence as the watchers strained every squinting eye to identify the approaching groups. 

“Them’s orcs,” one veteran growled.

“Nah, humans, soldiers on horses,” he was challenged.

“I’m not talking about them’s as is running,” the old timer snapped. “It’s them’s as is d
oing the chasing that’s orcs. Orcs on wolves and plenty of them.”

“Silence!” Kircadden commanded,
as he strove to bring his scattered wits to bear on this unwelcome development.  The awful truth was soon plain for all to see. A group of human cavalry chased up the great Eastway by twice their number of wolf riding orcs.  The lupine howls were just now carrying on the wind to the transfixed spectators.

Orcs in Morsalve,
it was unthinkable and Kircadden couldn’t think.  The town of Listcairn was a walled oval set out on a diagonal from North West to South east.  The castle of Listcairn with its high walls stood on the hill at the north western end of town nearest the approaching riders.  The rest of the settlement stretched out within its more modest walls, crossing the Eastway with two gated entrances.  Within the confines of the town walls the Eastway served also as the town high street.

“Them’s coming our way,” a cry went up.

The castle had its own separate approach road road, wending down the hillside from the great West gate of the castle until it joined the Eastway some three quarters of a mile short of the town gate.  The horsemen had swung off the main Eastway and were charging up the road as the wolf riding orcs closed in on them. 

Kircadden tried to think.  Orcs in Morsalve the impossibility of it chased around his head in a loop.  While his two
hundred was ample to protect the castle, the town walls were longer and more easily scaled.  He could hold the castle for years, but he could not keep the orcs from the town.

“Them’s coming our way,” another voice echoed.  “Constable, sir, them’s coming our way.”

Kircadden knew. He could see that. Why did they keep on reminding him that the pursued humans were charging towards the castle’s firmly shut Westgate.  He dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief.

“Sir, the humans have the lead. W
e could open the gate for the humans and shut it before the slimy green bastards get even close.”  A sergeant felt moved to voice the thought which was in all their heads.

It was plain for all to see.  The orcs were in bow shot of their quarry now, and a flight of projectiles was launched at the tailmost of the human horsemen.  One figure fell from his horse and rolled into a ditch, to a collective groan from the watching garrison.

“Who are they?” Kircadden wondered aloud.

“See, blue and g
old. That’s the colours of Nordsalve.  They’m Hetwith’s men.” A youngster exclaimed.  They were closer now, the colours visible even to Kircadden.  But they were slowing too, hauling their wind as though realising they were doomed to fight to the end with their backs to the wrong side of a gate that could have given them sanctuary.

Then from the midst of the crowd thundered the sound of a horn an eerie haunting note which echoed in rebuke of the unwelcoming walls of Listcairn.

“D’you hear it?” the guardsman growled.  “Hetwith’s horn!  The Northern Prince himself must ride with them!”

“Lord Constable, sir,” the
sergeant began, but he had no need to reproach the Castellan further.

“Open the gate,” Kircadden commanded.

Niarmit had lost count o
f the times she had gone under. Certainly it was more than the proverbial thrice of the drowning man, equally certain was that the ordeal could not be sustained much longer.  She had contrived to shed her sword, her boots, her cape and other weighty encumbrances, but still she could not even begin to swim.  All she could hope for was to time her desparate gasps for air to coincide with those rare moments when the roll of the waves pushed her above the surface.  As it was each breath brought in as much salt water as precious air while, above the continuous howl of the storm, the thunder of surf on rocks was drawing ever closer.

One of the crewmen drifted past her, a strong swimmer but powerless to resist as a sudden swell flung him like a rag doll against a razor sharp outcrop of granite rock protruding like a tooth through the water.  The sic
kening crunch of bone may have been more imagined than heard, but the limp lifeless form that washed off the rock was all too real.

Niarmit was surprised at the rationality with which she faced the
prospect of imminent death. Would it be better to drown than be crushed?  She weighed the options with as much care as the foaming sea water would allow and, when the next wave came, made no struggle as it thrust her ten, twenty feet underwater.

Her last conscious thought was a regret that she had waited so long, wasted so much time, in futile pursuit of freedom for Undersalve.

Kircadden’s men stood poised
, arrows notched and ready to fly as the human riders hurtled through the open gate beneath them.  The orcish pursuit thundered closer and the Constable’s troops let fly their arrows, anxious to blunt the assault and buy time for their comrades below and the host of Hetwith to make fast the gate once more.

Some orcs fell, writhing in the dust, but the rest galloped onwards rushing towards the portal which even now must be closing in their faces.
  But something was wrong.  Kircadden hurried to the back of the gatehouse, looking into the courtyard which separated the outer curtain wall from the fortress’s central keep.  The horseriders were there, undeniably human. But the tabards of blue and gold which they wore were covered in improbable blood stains and beneath that veneer of Nordsalve uniform they were equipped with an ill assorted mix of armour and weaponary.   These weapons they now brought crashing down on the small detachment that Kircadden had assigned to open the gate.