David Smith - Against the Prince of Hell

“It’s not much. Gruel—made from what we could take when we left Thesrad, plus what game we’ve been able to catch. But it’s nourishing.” He offered her a spoonful; Sonja tasted it and swallowed.

“I—prefer to feed myself,” she said, fumbling for the bowl.

“Sure you can handle it?” Omeron said, smiling.

She set the bowl in her lap and lifted spoon to mouth with shaking hand, dripping soup with every lift.

“Can you tell us who you are?” Omeron asked.

“Red Sonja.” She felt stronger with the first few mouthfuls. “Red Sonja, an Hyrkanian.”

“A warrior?”

“A free sword. I’ve been on my own all my woman-hood.”

“I see. Looking for employment?”

Sonja shrugged. “I’ve still got some gold, unless—” She set down her spoon, reached to her belt. Her purse still hung there.

Omeron smiled knowingly. “No one took it. But, again—you’re lucky robbers didn’t find you in the mountains.”

She returned to her soup. In another moment, however, she was overcome with a wave of nausea and pain in her head. She dropped the bowl to the ground, spilling the gruel.

“Here, Sadhur!”

“Tarim and Erlik!” Sonja grumbled feebly. “I am well! Give me a moment, it will pass. I am . . .”

“You’re still weak, Red Sonja. Don’t fight it, you’ll only make it worse. You’ll feel stronger in the morning.”

“But I—”

“Damn it, woman, lie still and take your rest!”

Feeble anger flared in her at Omeron’s tone, almost the tone of a father putting an ill child to bed. But she couldn’t fight back. She felt Omeron and Sadhur lift her up, carry her nearer a fire. She lay supine, breathing, feeling the heat of the fire on her face and body, hearing the low, dull conversation of the camp.

Someone threw a blanket on her, tucked it neatly under her legs, hips, shoulders and neck. A rolled-up blanket or cape was pushed under her head as a pillow. As she dropped back into her hot slumber, the fever in her seemed to recall a farmhouse on fire, and Omeron became her father, protecting her as both he and she, a young woman, escaped together from the holocaust. Then she fell entirely to sleep, and was visited by no more dreams.

Omeron and Sadhur took their places at a fire beside the handful of officers who had escaped with them.

“What do you think?” one of them asked his lord.

“A swordswoman for hire.” Omeron stared at the sleeping woman. “Mayhap we can recruit her.”

“To fight Du-jum? Can we pay her enough to die by sorcery?”

“Perhaps she has met sorcery in her time.” Omeron continued to stare, measuring, judging, appreciating. A beautiful woman fallen into his care, a beautiful swordswoman.

“Perhaps her coming is a good omen.”

Lookouts on the mountain slope called back into camp, “Thesrad is still lighted.”

Dusk fell fully into night.

Omeron slapped his knees, stood up, then sat again.

“Calm yourself,” Sadhur warned him. “We will take the city back.”

“He is torturing my people!” Omeron groaned out loud.

Some of the men at other fires glanced at him. All were fatigued, worn, bloody, some ill. And all felt close to their lord, their general, their master, driven out with them from their city and their home.

Omeron dug his boots into the dry soil of the mountainside and stared into the campfire. How to take it back again, against sorcery?

Sorcery, aye. But could not sorcery be fought? It was not only Du-jum, the Kushite wizard, who Omeron and his men fought. That had been bloody, violent, expected. But Du-jum, no matter his sorcery, should never have been let inside Thesrad’s gates in the first place. And he never would have, save for an act of treachery by a high-placed traitor—Omeron’s wife, Yarise.

Omeron’s fists knotted, the shadows deepened on his face in the blazing firelight. Yarise, his own wife, had opened the door to the sorcerer. Yarise, his wife, whom he had loved with all his heart, whom he had still considered his bride after seven years. Yarise, strong-willed, strong-tempered, but seemingly loving and knowing and caring all at the same time.

Yarise, daughter of a dead governor of Iranistan, and also a daughter of troubled upbringing, an exile, eager for power and excitement. Why had she done it? To harm him, Omeron? He still could not believe it.

Nine months earlier, Du-jum had paid a visit to Thesrad, acting like a pilgrim. He had entertained at court, and Yarise had been fascinated by his magic.

Omeron had noticed the fascination, but had discounted the possibility that it went beyond the art to the man himself. He had been philosophical and, as in all that he did, lenient and fair. But leniency and fairness work only with those who have these same qualities within themselves. Yarise had taken advantage of her husband’s openness to promote a closer relationship between herself and the Kushite wizard. She had, Omeron now realized bitterly, probably fallen in love with him on that date, and since then had worked secretly and guilefully for months, behind Omeron’s back, to unlock the key to the gate that would allow Du-jum to accomplish his conquest of Thesrad.

But why? Why should Yarise chance playing traitor to her husband and to a city she already half ruled? Even granting her fascination, this was a great risk. And why should Du-jum, on his part, want so much to possess this one small kingdom out of the many scores of such city-states that dotted the plains, valleys, and low mountains? Was it Yarise only that he wished? Yarise, who had admitted Du-jum, with his sorcery and his soldiers, that they might rip at Thesrad and take it and conquer it? Every man on the mountainside knew that it was Lord Omeron’s wife who had left the city open for conquest. And Omeron knew that each man, despite his loyalty and love and trust in him, had blamed him also. For leadership is not only leading in battle and in prayers, in governing and finance and law. Leadership is also knowing oneself, and those around one. At this, Omeron had failed.

The troops of Thesrad might have fought off Du-jum’s sorcery and troops. But they had had no defense against their lord-governor’s own wife’s treachery—against a woman who had stabbed their master in the back even as she pretended to love him. A small city was Thesrad, with its old walls and its towering palace in the center of the main square. It was one of many small fortified cities in that vast region between the Styx and the Ibars—a dot on the landscape, primarily self-sufficient, and living an uneasy life between the great western governments and the volatile eastern kingdoms.

It was old—older than its inhabitants knew. Thesrad was only its latest name, given by a Corinthian governor a hundred years ago. Before that it was known as Akasad, and before that Kordu’um: “empty with walls.” Earlier than that, history faded and legend took over. There were deep tunnels beneath the newer levels of the city, old catacombs, and idols buried deeply under earth falls and collapsed corridors. Thesrad’s modern life was a veneer over a far older and more sinister foundation. It was, at one time, so legend claimed, the refuge of sorcerers and dark worshippers. Aye, Thesrad held secrets in the bottom of its old belly, and Du-jum had come to carve them out.

Yarise, Mistress of Thesrad, knew this for a fact, for she had readily conspired with the sorcerer in his plan to revive the old dark forces, so that she might share in his plan to gain great power, perhaps over all the earth.

Tonight, with sections of Thesrad ablaze, with Du-jum its conquerer and the people of her city being decimated, sav-aged, roped into submission like chattel, and with her husband dead or escaped—none knew which—Yarise looked into her own eyes. She sat in her tower chamber in Thesrad’s palace and, with the screams of slaughter wafting through her windows, examined herself carefully in her burnished silver mirror. She wondered casually if her eye shadow was too dark or if the oil lamps were betraying her, and decided finally to lighten it.