The Bronze Axe

Chapter Fifteen

And so Richard Blade came at last to the land of Voth, ruled by King Voth of the North, from the Imperial City of Voth.

The city lay pleasantly situated in a green valley, on the confluence of two wide rivers that twined down from surrounding mountains, and was sentineled by a high wall of stone and earth. All about were hill forts, cunningly placed, and before the great wall was a deep valley with a steep counterscarp, and bristling with chevaux-de-frise. There were new mass graves about, freshly dug, and a few corpses still rotted in the spikes in the vallum, evidence that another band of sea raiders had been to Voth and got more than they bargained for.

When Blade and Jarl landed in Bourne they found the town a smoking ruin full of stink. It had been well raped. Not a soul greeted them.

Jarl, after examining one of the few robber corpses, said: "This is the work of Fjordar, son of Thoth. Remember you drank from the skull of Thoth before strangling Getorix with his own beard."

Blade, holding a cloth over his nose against the stink, nodded. "They did a thorough bit of work here, by Thunor! To what end? A mere fishing village, with nothing worth looting."

Jarl, resplendent in purple cloak and gold tipped helmet which Blade had given him the right to wear ran a finger over his smooth chin. "Malice, nothing more. A few women slaves taken, perhaps. Fjordar is beast and madman by comparison Redbeard had great virtues and we are sworn enemies. He is sure to march to Voth, Lord Blade, and try his luck there. I would like to catch up with him."

Blade agreed immediately. "I think it wise, Jarl. There has been the smell of mutiny in the air of late, as palpable as this corpse stink. Your lads need a fight! Else they will fight among themselves and, in time, turn on us. It is best that we march at once."

Jarl regarded him steadily. "They are your men, Lord Blade. Not mine. You have the heritage of them from Redbeard I am but second in command."

"I know," said Blade, "and it is an inheritance I do not greatly care for. But we will speak of this again order the march to begin!"

He had not seen or spoken with Taleen again; she kept well out of sight. When Sylvo would have gossiped Blade bade him keep his ugly mouth shut. Sylvo, valuing his crooked bones, squinted and said nothing. He had never seen his master in such a dour mood.

It was three days march from Bourne to Voth and the trail they followed was plain, marked by hanged men and women, raped children, butchered cattle and smoldering villages. The complaints and grumbling among the men grew louder and more ominous. There was nothing left for them, they said. Not a slave, nor a woman, not even food that was fit for men. Fjordar was picking the bones clean as he went.

On the evening of the third day the next morning they would see Voth Blade called Jarl to his tent for conference. They had taken a straggler that day, one of Fjordar's men who was a coward and had deserted to loot. It took but little torture to make the man tell all he knew. Blade, watching until he was sickened, bade them end it by striking off the man's head. This brought him more dark looks and new muttering not only were they deprived of loot, but also of their pleasure.

Blade had drawn a crude map on an ox hide, based on the intelligence gasped out by the straggler when the hot pincers tore his flesh. He and Jarl studied it now as Blade pointed with a finger.

"If that fellow spoke truth," said Blade, "this Fjordar has hidden his ships in this cove, marked so, a few kils to the north of Bourne. If he is well beaten at Voth which you tell me is certain he should try to regain his ships by the most direct route. You agree?"

Jarl leaned close to study the map, and Blade noticed what he had never noted before an odor of chypre about the man. .

"I agree," said Jarl. He traced a path with his finger. "When he has had his fill of Voth, a city that had never been taken, nor its wall even breached, he will run for his ships leaving his dead and wounded behind, for such is his custom. I told you he is more fiend than man."

Blade, in the feeble light of a smoking fish oil lamp, drew a small cross on the map near the Western Sea, using a Dru's dye and brush that Jarl had somehow come by.

"It is my thought," said Blade, "that if you were to take the men your men now, for I will them freely to you and start tonight, you could be waiting snug in ambush for Fjordar when he returns to his ships. He will be fresh from a beating, weary, and his men exhausted, and it should be an easy prize. What say you, Jarl? It solves many problems your rascals will come by easy loot, that Fjordar has already won for them, and there will be the ships as well. No doubt stored with more treasure. I think it an opportunity not to be missed."

Jarl was not looking at the map now, but at Blade direct. A smile crinkled his lips. "You are right about one thing, Lord Blade. It solves many problems. Voth will never admit my men to his city, and I doubt I could control them in sight of so much loot and so many women. And there is the account with Fjordar to put right. Yes, I think your plan is a good one. It is best we part tonight, you to go your way and I to go mine. I will send a trumpet to wake the men at which there will be more whining. But they'll march fast enough when I promise them Fjordar's head and all his treasure."

For a moment they watched each other in the feeble light. Blade put out his hand. "You have been a good friend to me, Jarl. I thank you for it."

Jarl's hand was sweaty, and again Blade caught a whiff of chypre. Jarl said: "I did what my heart said do, Lord Blade. I am sorry for none of it. But there is one other thing I would have you know of me "

"And that is?" Blade waited.

Jarl snatched away his hand and wheeled to go. "No! It is of no importance now, and would serve no purpose. Fare you well, Lord Blade. You were a stranger and you are a stranger still yet until I go to Thunor, whom I do not believe in, I will remember you."

So Blade came to Voth alone with Sylvo and the Princess Taleen, Taleen riding on a gray horse found in one of the looted villages and somehow spared. Taleen rode in aloof silence, without complaint, and would not speak to Blade. Poor Sylvo was harried into being an intermediary, an additional burden to him because he had by now acquired a wife. And, Blade was surprised to note, something of a pot belly. The kyrie he had chosen was feeding him well.

The woman was a buxom lass, near twice the size of Sylvo, and with a great mass of yellow hair that cascaded over massive white breasts. She walked well behind the small party, carrying Sylvo's few possessions, yet the princess found cause to complain. To Sylvo, for she would not so much as glance at Blade, except when his back was turned.

"Bid her cover those vast teats," Taleen snapped. "She looks like a sow in farrow. We enter the city soon and I will not be seen with such as her."

Sylvo fidgeted and squinted at the ground. "You do not understand, my princess. It is the custom of the kyries, the war maidens, to go about so. It means nothing it will cause no trouble, I assure and "

Taleen glared at him. "Do as I bid you, you low fellow! And at once. Do not tell me what I do not understand else you want to hang with your master when we come to Voth."

Blade, striding along a few paces ahead, had trouble concealing his grin. Now that the spires of Voth were in sight he was in a better mood. The pains in his head came more frequently, and were more severe, but now he understood them and was not anxious. It could only mean that Lord Leighton was reaching for him with the computer, trying to recall him, sending out electronic feelers, seeking to change the molecular structure of Blade's brain back to the original state and snatch Richard Blade back to his own dimension.

Princess Taleen was rasping at Sylvo once again. "Ask your master, the great Lord Blade, if he prefers to be hanged with a golden rope before he is flayed. His rank entitles him to this honor."

Blade, trying not to laugh, swung the bronze axe in a great circle. "Tell Princess Taleen that a common rope will do. As for the flaying of me I ask only that my poor hide be placed in her bed chamber, before the fire, and that she tread on me nightly with her dainty feet."

Sylvo stared from one to the other, scratching himself and squinting horribly, and wisely said nothing. There was an explosive sound from Taleen that could have only been choked laughter, but she would not look at Blade.

They were admitted to the city by a postern gate, after some brief parley, and soon separated. Blade and Sylvo were shown to a suite of sumptuous rooms in the great wooden palace, an enormous structure that was painted a vivid gold and scarlet and was more bespired and turreted than Craghead had been.

Sylvo's chief concern was at being separated from his kyrie. He patted his newly plump belly as he was attending to Blade's bath.

"She is a cook of cooks, master. Ar, I have never eaten so well. By Thunor, I swear it! And she has other talents, too! But it is a puzzle to me, master. She had a fine sea robber for a man, a big bastard, too, and she gave him up for me! I, who am admittedly a trifle ill formed and lacking in couth and education. How do you think of this, master?"

Blade considered his man through a foam of suds. The bronze tub was too small for him, but he was enjoying his first real bath in many a day. He kept a straight face.

"It is a puzzle to me also, Sylvo. The greatest puzzle being why did this warrior let you take her. What happened to him?"

Sylvo busied himself scrubbing Blade's back. "There was some sort of accident, master. He was found dead. His heart had stopped."

"I'll wager that! What stopped it? Out with it, man!"

Sylvo dribbled water over him. "There was a small knife in his back, master. I know nothing more on it."

Blade repressed a smile and tried to look grim. "You are a great rascal, man, and will end on a gallows yet. And serve you right."

"No doubt," said Sylvo cheerily. "No doubt, master." Then he looked glum. "Already I doubt my wisdom in taking the kyrie she is a marvelous cook and wondrous in bed, but I cannot beat her. I tried and she near killed me with one blow!"

Blade let out a bellow of laughter. "A fit punishment. It will teach you not to use your knife so freely."

Sylvo looked abashed, but nonetheless pleased with himself. He bent to retrieve a washing cloth that Blade had dropped from the tub. Something shiny and metallic slipped from his waistband and tumbled to the floor. It lay there, glimmering in sunlight that came aslant through an open window.

A golden medallion on a fine gold chain, with an intaglio crescent moon caught in a net of oak leaves.

Blade stepped from the tub, naked and dripping, and picked up the medallion. He held it by the chain on a finger and stared hard at Sylvo. "How came you by this?"

Sylvo, after taking a few hasty steps back, halted and met his eye squarely. "I found it, master. May Thunor strike me if I did not find it!"

"Where did you find it?" Blade, though frowning and black of visage, did not think Sylvo was lying. He thought that the truth, when he heard it, would be about as he had expected.

"On the deck, master. Where the silver Dru dropped it in the fight with nay, master, do not make me tell it! It is over now and this serves no purpose. I have tried to keep it from you."

"I know," said Blade. "And a pitiful try, too. Any dolt could have guessed it. So I will tell you! There was a scuffle and the silver Dru dropped it when she was pushed overboard. That is right?"

"Yes, master. I could not sleep in my swine pen. I was on deck and they did not see me. But I saw and listened and later, when it was over, I thought I had as much right to the trinket as any."

Blade hurled the medallion at him. It was a talisman of a time he wanted to forget, of things that sickened him when he thought back on them. Not the things themselves, but the manner in which he had craved and been slave to them. His mind had been as sick as his body.

"You are right," he told Sylvo. "It is yours. So long as I never see it again. If I do I will destroy it. Now leave me. You have quarters down the corridor. Go to them and wait until I call for you."

And now Sylvo, seeing that his gossip was anticipated, and dying to tell, gave his master a sly glance. "You do not order me to tell you who pushed the silver Dru, master?"

Blade jerked a thumb at the door. "I know who pushed her. It was Princess Taleen. Get out!"

"Ar, master, that it was. A most terrible struggle it was, too. I thought "

A step and a baleful glare. "Out!"

When the man had gone Blade paced the chamber restlessly. He had known all along, in his heart, that it was Taleen. No one else would have dared touch a Dru, much less a High Priestess. But Taleen, when the mood was on her, would dare anything.

To ease his mind of her he tried to think of King Voth. Word had been sent that Voth would give Blade an audience that evening. An audience at which and the message had been precisely worded Blade could expect thanks and reward for restoring Taleen to the paternal arms.

Blade sought to conjure what King Voth might be like. From what Taleen had said, now and again, and from other sources, Blade pictured an Arthurian figure cast in heroic mold. A veritable porphyrogene. Well, he would soon know. As for the thanks, and reward, they did not matter so much any more. The pains in his head had become more frequent, as bit by bit his memory of former life flowed back. Blade had a premonition that his stay in Voth would not be long. It also occurred to him that Lord Leighton, in trying to recapture him, might only succeed in killing him.

Hard on the thought came another blinding pain. This one was worse by far than any of the preceding Blade cried aloud and clutched at his head in agony. There was a dagger in his brain. He staggered to the huge bed in a corner and collapsed into a roaring darkness.

He was awakened by a soft tapping at the door. He noted that it was dark he had been unconscious for hours, then? and with even more surprise he realized that he was still in Voth.

He went to the door, feeling his way across the unfamiliar chamber. "Who knocks?"

"It is Taleen, Blade. Let me in quickly." She was whispering.

She slipped through the door like a wraith in white. She carried a candle and in the dim light he saw the shimmer of her body under the single garment she wore, a pale linen kirtle that ended well above her knees and barely covered her breasts.

Blade closed the door, barred it, and turned to face her.

"There is little profit, Princess, in coming to whisper at my door. I am not a Dru and this is not a ship. Or perhaps you thought to push me out the window?"

The moon, sheltering behind high flying scud, now chose to show its face. Lambent bars of silver radiance spread athwart the floor. Taleen blew out her candle and came to Blade. Her eyes were wide and wild, her auburn hair all tousled, and she was as bright as the moonlight. She fell to her knees before him and clutched his legs.

"Scold me, Blade. Beat me! I have come to abase myself to you. I am evil and it is true that I killed the silver Dru. I was jealous, Blade. Murderous in jealousy. Love me, Blade! Or if you cannot, if you yet deem me a child and not for loving, then let me love you. I plead with you, Blade. Let me stay. Love me. I have asked Frigga for help and she gave it not only saying that I must come to you and say these things. Do you understand me, Blade? I speak nothing but truth now I have been sick with love of you since that first day!"

Saying not a word, Blade raised her to her feet and kissed her. And knew how wrong he had been. This was no child. Her mouth was moist and hot, yet her tongue somehow innocent in its fumbling. Here was lack of experience, but great desire, a combination that set Blade's loins to raging.

Nor was there any reticence about Taleen, she now having declared herself. She kissed him back furiously, then she turned him to full moonlight and broke off the kiss to glance down.

She had been pale, but now was scarlet as she said: "Ah, Blade! You are monstrous big. I begin to feel afraid. I am virgin, Blade. Will it hurt me much?"

He led her toward the bed. "It will hurt, Taleen. But not for long, and in the end you will enjoy the hurting. And I will go as gentle as I can."

But once on the bed she held him off yet awhile. Blade explored and lavished kisses on her breasts, finding them swollen and warm and hard-tipped and fitting perfectly, encupped in his big hands,He sought to be tender, yet he wanted her terribly by this time and, when still she held him off and cried that she was afraid, he pressed her down and opened her slim legs by main strength and thrust softly into her. Gently at first, then the animal in him took over and he stabbed her to the core and did not hear her moans. Moans that changed gradually to sobs and then to a wild laughter and crying out as she came up to him and entwined about him and bit at him in frenzy. As Blade was himself spending he felt her final convulsive shudder and knew that for the first time in her short life the Princess Taleen had come at a man's urging.

For a long time they lay wrapped in moonlight, gossamer tendrils ensilvering their naked flesh, whilst each made his separate way back from the small death. Taleen, her legs all entwined in his, sighed at last and said most unsteadily: "So that is what it is like, Lord Blade! Thank Frigga I know at last and that it is you who have taught me. What fools young girls are! They jibber and jabber and prate wise of what they know not. But I see the why of it now making love is not a thing one can guess of. It cannot be known without the doing."

Blade kissed her ear. "You are calling me Lord Blade again. Am I to take it, then, that I am not to be hanged and flayed after all? Not even with a golden rope?"

She thrust her tongue into his mouth for an instant. Then: "I will always call you Lord Blade. You are my lord now. For all time. I will never want another."

Blade, with the cynicism of his age, and knowing it did not greatly matter, said nothing to that. Instead: "I am to see your father tonight. What is the clock?"

Taleen stroked his thigh.

"Not this night, my Lord. I have spoken with my father and the audience is put off until tomorrow. He is an old man, and weary from the recent fighting with Fjordar, and it was no great problem."

"I begin to see," Blade chuckled, "who rules in Voth."

"You will rule in Voth," she answered fiercely. "And I at your side. My father will not live long."

Blade, watching her through half closed eyes, wondered at her meaning. She was a marvelous elfin child, barbaric and savage, and blood on her hands was somehow innocent because she knew no difference. Her mind was not as befouled and complex as his had been, and was coming to be again as the computer of Lord Leighton probed again and again for him.

Taleen lay against him and whispered in his ear. "I have talked with Abdias, my father's High Councilor. He operates a net of spies. I have learned much that is of import to us."

Blade, again ready for jousting, would have topped her but she pushed him back. "Nay. Listen to me first. I have heard that the Lady Alwyth is dead and Lycanto taken leave of his wits. I am pleased, and thank Frigga for both, but it is a matter you should know of."

"Why should I care what happens to Lycanto and his lady?" he asked impatiently.

The truth was that his memory of recent events was growing dimmer by the moment. Taleen would never understand that.

She kissed him fiercely. "Be patient and I will tell you why. It is said that Alwyth was taken flagrant in adultery, and plotting against Lycanto, and so stoned to death. Much too easy a death, I think. Lycanto has fallen into drink, will not be parted from his beer horn for a moment, and many say he is lunatic, or stricken by a Dru curse it really does not matter which so he no longer rules Alb."

Blade raised on an elbow and feigned interest while kissing one of her firm breasts. "Who does rule in Alb, then?"

"Cunobar the Gray. He has deposed Lycanto and even now marches north to Voth, with all the Albian army behind him. They will be at our gates in less than a week."

Blade, his lips brushing a rosy nipple, could find no vast excitement in this intelligence. "So what of this? Is not this Cunobar a friend to your father, and you?"

"That is true enough. But there is a difference now, my Lord. And it is all of my doing. Or most of it, for Cunobar the Gray has long wanted me for his wife. He spoke for me when I was still a child, as is the custom. I have liked him, but have not loved him, and I never gave him promise. Until "

Blade left off kissing her breast. "Until?"

"Until recent days, when I was greatly angered with you. Because you treated me as child and would not see my love. I sent a message to Cunobar the Gray. I "

It explained so much. Blade held up a hand and said, with a weary laugh, "You asked Cunobar to march up here and win your hand in fair and honorable combat by killing me!"

She would not meet his eye. "I did. I was regretful in the instant, but the messenger had gone. But it is no matter, Lord."

He followed her glance. She was looking at the great bronze axe, newly burnished by Sylvo, gleaming in the rays of the moon.

"You will slay Cunobar easily enough," said Taleen. "He is not as old as his hair tells of him, and he is a fine warrior, but none can stand up to you. I am not worried."

"Nor am I," answered Blade. "Because I am not going to fight Cunobar, in fair combat or foul. I am weary of blood and sick of killing."

Taleen drew back to stare at him in amazement. "This cannot be Lord Blade that speaks! You must fight Cunobar else he can take me for his own. And name you coward to the world."

A little star of pain exploded in Blade's head. He grimaced and fell into a flurry of temper.

"Let Cunobar take you, then. And the devil too, for that matter!"

The word lingered in the chamber. Devil? The Blade that Taleen knew would have said: Thunor!

Taleen's horror changed to concern. She eyed Blade with a new tenderness. "You are not well? Frigga help me, I know something is wrong. You do not look the same, my Lord Blade, nor do you speak the same. What is it?"

Blade reached for her, not to be denied this time. She resisted, still babbling on, but he bore her down and silenced her with his lunging entry. In a moment she began to move and moan beneath him.

Blade, on the verge of convulsion, felt the pain slamming at his head. Someone screamed and he knew it to be his voice. Then the pain vanished, to be replaced by utter silence and tranquility as he fell into the body of Taleen. She was enormous woman now, world woman, and she opened her chasm to him as he clung like an ant to her smooth female flesh-smelling mountains and shot the scarlet rapids of her veins down into the burning moist heat of her. Falling and falling and sliding no hand or foothold on these pink slopes and the wet glissade ever increasing and at the end, waiting for him, the edge of eternity drenched in a waterfall of frothing virgin's blood.

For one frantic half breath Blade clung to the precipice of the only reality he knew, fearful of returning to a reality he had lost. In a great brilliant flash of light and knowledge he saw Taleen's face, the room about him, and Aesculp brooding in the corner. This creature threshing about was himself. His hand, flailing, sought beneath a pillow by accident and his fingers closed about a round and smooth object that was of marble size. What?

Words roared at him in tiny balloons, miniscule from an inverted bull horn, and a chorus was crying aloud that it was the black pearl he held. The pearl given him back by Jarl, who had taken it by threat from a reluctant sea robber.

"Such loot is too rich for the likes of them," Jarl explained. "It will only give them ideas ideas idea "

Blade rode the black pearl now, clinging to that smooth convexity, and shot out of a red tunnel into Craghead's mists. Surf cried a dirge for Queen Beata groaning in her cage. Heads were piled high, each picked up and borne away by monster flies, and blood caked on an axe and the mist grew cold cold colder.

Aesculp came alive and leaped at Blade from the corner, a terrible creature with a bloodstain for a face. Bronze sparked and the chamber was filled with a dreadful sound of leathern wings.

Blade made a final silent sound in his throat. Not Thunor, not Blade himself, could have explained what it meant.