Blood of the Fold

Chapter 15

Tobias scanned the snowy darkness as they slogged through the deepening drifts. “Are you sure you did as I instructed?”

“Yes, my lord general. I told you, they be spelled.”

Behind, the lights of the Confessors’ Palace and the surrounding buildings of the city’s center had long ago faded into the swirling snowstorm that had swept down out of the mountains while they had been inside listening to Lord Rahl deliver his absurd demands to the representatives of the Midlands.

“Then where are they? If you lose them and they freeze to death out here, I will be more than displeased with you, Lunetta.”

“I know where they be, Lord General,” she insisted. “I will not lose them.” She stopped and lifted her nose, sniffing the air. “This way.”

Tobias and Galtero looked at each other and frowned, then turned to follow her as she scurried off into the darkness behind Kings Row. Occasionally he could just make out the dark shapes of the palaces looming in the storm. They provided ghosts of lights and guidance in the directionless void of falling snow.

In the distance he could hear the passing clank of armor. It sounded like more men than a simple patrol. Before the night was out, the D’Harans would probably make a move to consolidate their grip on Aydindril. That’s what he would do if he were in their place: strike before your opponents have time to digest their options. Well, no matter, he wasn’t planning on staying.

Tobias blew the snow from his mustache. “You were listening to him, weren’t you?”

“Yes, Lord General, but I told you, I could not tell.”

“He be no different than anyone else. You must not have been paying attention. I knew you weren’t paying attention. You were scratching your arms and you weren’t paying attention.”

Lunetta cast him a quick look over her shoulder. “He be different. I do not know why, but he be different. I have never felt magic like his before. I could not tell if he be telling every word true, or every word a lie, but I think he be telling it true.” She shook her head to herself in wonder. “I can get past blocks. I always can get past blocks. Any kind: air, water, earth, fire, ice, any kind. Even spirit. But his . . . ?”

Tobias smiled absently. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need her filthy taint to tell. He knew.

She mumbled on about the strange aspects of Lord Rahl’s magic, and how she wanted away from it, away from this place, and how it made her skin itch like never before. He only half listened. She would have her wish to be away from Aydindril after he took care of a few matters.

“What are you sniffing at?” he growled.

“Midden, my lord general. Kitchen midden.”

Tobias gripped a fistful of her colored rags. “Midden? You left them at a midden heap?”

She grinned as she waddled along. “Yes, Lord General. You said you didn’t want people around. I not be familiar with the city, and did not know a safe place I could send them, but I saw the midden heap on our way to the Confessors’ Palace. No one will be there in the night.”

Midden heap. Tobias harrurnphed. “Loony Lunetta,” he muttered.

She lost a stride. “Please Tobias, do not call me—”

“Then where are they!”

She lifted her arm, pointing, and hurried her step. “This way, Lord General. You will see. This way. Not far.”

He thought about it as he trudged through the drifts. It made sense. It did make sense; a midden heap was the perfect justice.

“Lunetta, you be telling me the truth about Lord Rahl, aren’t you? If you lie to me about this, I will never forgive you.”

She stopped and looked up at him. Tears welled in her eyes as she clutched her colored rags. “Yes, my lord general. Please. I be telling the truth. I tried everything. I tried my best.”

Tobias stared at her a long moment as a tear ran down her plump cheek. It didn’t matter; he knew.

He flicked his hand impatiently. “All right then, get going. You better not have lost them.”

Suddenly beaming, she wiped her cheek, turned back to the way she had been going, and darted off. “This way, Lord General. You will see. I know where they be.”

Sighing, Tobias started after her again. The snow was piling up, and at the rate it was coming down it looked like it was going to be a bad one. No matter, things were turning his way. Lord Rahl was a fool if he thought Lord General Tobias Brogan of the Blood of the Fold was going to surrender like a baneling under hot iron.

Lunetta was pointing. “Over here, Lord General. They be here.”

Even with the wind howling at their backs, Tobias could smell the midden heap before he could see it. He shook the snow off his crimson cape when they reached the dark hump lit by the faint lights from palaces beyond the wall in the distance. The snow melted off in places as it fell on the steaming heap, leaving much of its dark shape devoid of even the pretense of purity.

He put his fists on his hips. “So? Where are they?”

Lunetta moved close to his side, hiding herself in his lee from the wind-driven snow, “Stand here, Lord General. They will come to you.”

He looked down and saw a well trodden path. “A circle spell?”

She cackled softly as she pulled some scraps up around her red cheeks against the cold. “Yes, Lord General. You said you did not want them to get away, or you would be angry with me. I did not want you to be angry with Lunetta, so I cast them a circle spell. They cannot get away, now, no matter how fast they go.”

Tobias smiled. Yes, the day was ending well after all. It had provided obstacles, but with the Creator’s guidance he would overcome them. Now matters were in his command. Lord Rahl was going to find out that no one dictated to the Blood of the Fold.

Emerging from the darkness, he first saw the swish of her yellow skirts as her wrap was pulled open by a gust. Duchess Lumholtz, the duke a half step behind and to her side, trod purposefully toward him. When she saw who was standing beside the path, a glower darkened her painted face. She tugged closed her snow-encrusted wrap.

Tobias greeted her with a broad smile. “We meet again. A good evening to you, madam.” He tilted his head in a slight nod. “And to you, too, Duke Lumholtz.”

The duchess sniffed her disapproval and lifted her nose. The duke eyed them with a stern glare, as if he were placing a barrier he defied them to cross. Both marched past without a word, and off into the darkness. Tobias chuckled.

“You see, my lord general? As I promised, they wait for you.”

Tobias hooked both thumbs in his belt as he straightened his shoulders, letting his crimson cape billow open in the wind. There was no need to pursue the pair.

“You did well, Lunetta,” he murmured.

Before long, the yellow of her skirts appeared again. This time, when she saw Tobias, Galtero, and Lunetta standing beside her well-trodden path, a look of shock drew up her eyebrows. She really was an attractive woman, despite the superfluous paint: not girlish at all, though still young, but mature of face and figure, ripe with the proud poise of full womanhood.

With deliberate menace the duke rested a steady hand on the hilt of his sword as the pair approached. Though ornate, the duke’s sword, Tobias knew, was, the like Lord Rahl’s, not mere decoration. Kelton made some of the best steel in the Midlands, and all Keltans, especially nobility, prided themselves on knowing well its use.

“General Bro—”

“Lord General, madam.”

She looked down her nose at him. “Lord General Brogan, we are on our way home to our palace. I suggest you stop following us, and return to yours. It’s a foul night to be out.”

From beside him, Galtero watched the lace at her bosom rise and fall in ire. When she noticed, she snatched her wrap closed. The duke noticed, too, and leaned toward Galtero.

“Keep your eyes off my wife, sir, or I’ll cut you to pieces and feed you to my hounds.”

Galtero, a treacherous smile spreading on his lips, looked up at the taller man, but said nothing.

The duchess huffed. “Good night, General.”

The pair marched off again to make another circuit of the midden heap, thoroughly convinced they were headed toward their destination, straight as an arrow flies, but in the haze of a circle spell they went nowhere except around and around. He could have stopped them the first time, but he relished the consternation in their eyes as they tried to grasp how he could repeatedly show up ahead of them. Their spelled minds would be able to make no sense of it.

The next time by, their faces went as white as the snow, before flushing to red.

The duchess stomped to a halt and, fists on her hips, scowled at him. Tobias watched the white lace right in front of his face lift and fall with the heat of her indignation.

“Look here, you greasy little nick, how dare you—”

Brogan’s jaw locked rigid. With a grunt of rage, he snatched the white lace in both fists and ripped the front of her dress down to her waist.

Lunetta’s hand lifted, accompanied by a short incantation, and the duke, his sword halfway out of its scabbard, stopped, rigid and unmoving, as if turned to stone. Only his eyes moved, to see the duchess cry out as Galtero pinned both her arms behind her back, rendering her as immobile and helpless as he, though without the use of magic. Her back arched as Galtero twisted her arms in his powerful grip. Her nipples stood out stiff in the cold wind.

Since he had forfeited his knife, Brogan drew his sword instead. “What did you call me, you filthy little whore?”

“Nothing.” In the clutch of panic, she threw her head from side to side, her black curls whipping across her face. “Nothing!”

“My, my, lost your spine so easily?”

“What do you want?” she panted. “I’m no baneling! Leave me go! I’m no baneling!”

“Of course you be no baneling. You be too pompous to be a baneling, but that makes you no less despicable. Or useful.”

“Then it’s him you want? Yes, the duke. He’s the baneling. Leave me go, and I’ll recount his crimes.”

Brogan spoke through clenched teeth. “The Creator does not be served by false, self-serving confessions. But you will serve him, nonetheless.” His cheek twitched with a grim smile. “You will serve the Creator through me; you’ll do my bidding.”

“I’ll do no such—” She cried out as Galtero tightened his grip. “Yes all right,” she gasped. “Anything. Just don’t hurt me. Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

She tried unsuccessfully to back away as he put his face within inches of hers. “You will do as I tell you,” he said dirough gritted teeth.

Her voice was choked with terror. “Yes. All right. You have my word.”

He sneered derisively. “I wouldn’t take the word of a whore like you: one who would sell anything, betray any principle. You will do my bidding because you have no choice.”

He backed away, pinched her left nipple between his thumb and the knuckle of his first finger, and stretched it out. As she wailed, her eyes opened wide. Brogan brought the sword up and, with a sawing cut, sliced off the nipple. Her scream drowned out the howl of the wind.

Brogan placed the severed nipple in Lunetta’s upturned palm. Her stubby fingers closed around it as her eyes closed in a shroud of magic. Soft sounds of an ancient incantation melded with the wind and the sound of the duchess’s shivering shrieks. Galtero held her weight as the wind wheeled around them.

Lunetta’s chanting rose in pitch as she tilted her head up to the inky sky. With her eyes shut tight, she summoned the spell around herself and the woman before her. The wind seemed to pull the words forth as Lunetta conjured in her streganicha tongue.

Lunette’s voice lowered to a throaty chant. “Cock’s hen, spiders ten, bezoar then, I make a thrall stew. Ox gall, castor and caul, I make a chattel brew. . . .”

Her words drifted away and were lost in the wind, but her squat body bobbed as she went on, shaking her empty hand over the woman’s head, and the other, with the chunk of flesh, over her own heart.

The duchess shuddered as tendrils of magic coiled around her, snaking into her flesh. She convulsed as its fangs sank into her very soul.

Galtero had all he could do to hold her, until at last, she went limp in his grip. Despite the wind, there seemed a sudden silence.

Lunetta opened her hand. “She be mine to bid. I pass my right to you.” She placed the now desiccated knob of flesh in Brogan’s upturned palm. “She be yours, now, my lord general.”

Brogan closed the shriveled knot in his fist. The duchess hung glassy-eyed by her arms behind her back. Her legs held her weight, but she shook with pain and cold. Blood oozed from her wound.

Brogan tightened his fist. “Stop that shivering!”

She looked into his eyes, and her glazed expression faded. She became still. “Yes, my lord general.”

Brogan gestured to his sister. “Heal her.”

Galtero watched with a glint of lust in his dark eyes as Lunetta cupped both hands around the woman’s injured breast. Duke Lumholtz, too, watched with eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets. Lunetta’s eyes closed again as she wove more magic, casting a soft spell. Blood trickled from between Lunetta’s fingers until the woman’s flesh began drawing together in the healing.

Brogan’s mind drifted as he waited. The Creator did indeed watch over his own. A day that had started with him at the brink of the greatest of triumphs was brought nearly to ruin, but in the end he had proven that those who kept the Creator’s cause in their hearts could prevail. Lord Rahl was going to find out just what happened to those who worshiped the Keeper, and the Imperial Order was going to find out just how valuable the lord general of the Blood of the Fold was to them. Galtero, too, had proven his worth this day; the man was entitled to a trifle for his efforts.

Lunetta used the duchess’s wrap to wipe off the blood, and then withdrew to reveal a perfectly whole breast, as flawless as the other, except it had no nipple. Brogan had that, now.

Lunetta motioned toward the duke. “Am I to do him, too, Lord General? Do you wish to have them both?”

“No.” Brogan lifted a hand with a dismissive wave. “No, I only need her. But he will play his part in my plan.”

Brogan fixed his glare on the duke’s panicked eyes. “This be a dangerous city. As Lord Rahl told us today, there be dangerous creatures about, attacking innocent citizens who have no chance against them. Shocking. If only Lord Rahl were here to protect the duke from such an attack.”

“I will to see to it at once, Lord General,” Galtero said.

“No, I can take care of this. I thought you might like to ‘entertain’ the duchess here, while I see to the duke.”

Galtero drew teeth across his lower lip as he gazed at the duchess. “Yes, Lord General, very much. Thank you.” He tossed Brogan his knife. “You will need this. The soldiers told me that the creatures disemboweled their victims with a three-bladed knife. You will need to make three slices to duplicate the effect.”

Brogan thanked his colonel. He could always count on Galtero’s thoroughness. The woman’s eyes moved back and forth between the three of them, but she said nothing.

“Would you like me to compel her to cooperate?”

A gruesome grin spread on Galtero’s usually stony face. “And what would be the purpose of that, Lord General? Better if she learned another lesson this night.”

Brogan nodded. “As you wish, then.” He looked to the duchess. “My dear, I do not bid this of you. You are free to express your own true feelings about it to Galtero here.”

She cried out when Galtero swept an arm around her waist. “Why don’t we go over there, in the darkness. I would not want to offend your delicate sensibilities, Duchess, by allowing you to see what be happening to your husband.”

“You can’t!” she cried out. “I’ll freeze in the snow! I must do my lord general’s bidding. I’ll freeze!”

Galtero patted her bottom. “Oh, you won’t freeze. The midden will be warm under you.”

She shrieked and tried to pull away, but Galtero already had a good grip on her. He tightened his other fist in her hair.

“She be a lovely creature, Galtero; see that that beauty isn’t marred. And don’t be long; she yet has bidding to do for me. She will have to wear less paint,” he said with a smirk, “but since she has such talent with it, at least she can paint herself a nipple where her real one be missing.

“When I be finished with the duke here, and you be finished with her, then Lunetta has another spell to cast over her. A very special spell. A very rare and powerful spell.”

Lunetta stroked her pretties as she watched his eyes. She knew what he wanted. “Then I will need something of his, something he has touched.”

Brogan patted his pocket. “He accommodated us with a coin.”

Lunetta nodded. “That will do.”

The duchess shrieked and flailed her arms as Galtero began dragging her off into the darkness.

Brogan turned and waggled the knife in front of the tall Keltan’s wild eyes. “And now, Duke Lumholtz, on to your part in the Creator’s plan.”