Jeffrey Lord - The Bronze Axe

Taleen was eyeing him with new speculation. Very softly she said: "She knew? And you live yet. I think I begin to understand, Blade. Matters I had not dreamed on, because Drus are sworn celibate. But yet ha! I do understand."

"You understand nothing," he shouted harshly. She had taunted him into loss of temper and he was helpless to resist it. He took subterfuge in the weakest of excuses, and knowing it so, lost his temper even more.

"You'd best go," he told her, "My thanks for coming to inquire of my health. But I confess to feeling a bit faint just now and I would rest. If you see Jarl send him to me, please, and likewise that rascally man of mine."

"You are well consorted," she told him bitterly. "You and that squinting knave. Ay, you go well together. Like master, like man it is well said."

A sharp pain began to materialize again in Blade's head, then vanished abruptly.

"Yet it was I who saved you from Queen Beata's dogs and men," he reminded her now. "I who came for you when you had been dragged by Lady Alwyth. I who fought bears for you at Beata's court, and later put you behind me and killed three brave men for you. I who fought and killed Redbeard for you, and like to died of a poisoned dirk, all that I might bring you safe once again to your father in Voth "

"Lies! Liar!" she screamed. "Liar liar! You fought to save your own life as well, and that you might bring me to Voth, as you say so piously, but only to seek and establish favor with my father. You have always meant to trade me, Blade, for favor and substance with my father, the King. Oh, you are brave enough! But you are also a great schemer and a liar and as blind as the furred mice that flutter in twilight. You claim you are a wizard! You say you are Prince of London wherever that is and I admit you command well and can go grave and sage of mien when it pleases you. Yet I say you are a fool and blind into the bargain. Blind blind "

Her loss of temper had restored his own. Blade gave her a sweet smile of tolerance.

"Wherefore am I so blind, then?"

Taleen picked up a stool. Blade, eyeing it, moved a step back.

"That I will not answer," she snapped. "If you cannot see it for yourself I will not tell you. But I am not blind! Do you think it any secret how you so near won that bitch Queen Beata over? Why you were given time, not slain at once, why you were permitted to fight bears instead of being flayed? And a false fight at that, with only that scummy servant of yours in real danger! I know, Blade, I know! Such things are not secret long. You must be a monster yourself to have gratified that red whore!"

Blade smiled at her. "That also I did for you, Taleen."

She hurled the stool at him. He ducked and it shattered against the wall.

At the door she hurled back a glance tipped with venom. "We left Beata in her cage, though Jarl spared the lives of her people yet alive. She was sniveling for mercy when last I saw her, crying to be killed and put out of pain. Jarl might have granted her this, but I said nay. I hope she still lives, Blade. And suffers. I wish you could have seen her, Blade. They had taken away her wig and her bald gray head was pitiful in the rain. Aye, she was a loathesome creature. I admit your taste was better with the silver Dru."

She was reminding Blade of things he did not want to remember, and he lost his temper for the second time.

"You speak of matters you know nothing about," he said coldly. "I had begun to doubt myself, but now I see that I have been right all along. You are a child! A willful and nasty child with the body of a woman. You need taming, and I know how it should be done, but I'll not be the one to do it. Now go, wench, before I lose all my temper and box your ears! A thing your father, king though he may be, has not done often enough. Get out!"

Halting in the door, she said: "I had always thought to have you whipped, Blade. Then I favored flaying, and I admit that hanging has entered my mind. But now I know what is best, and when we come to Voth I will see to it. There is a man, Blade, who wants me more than he wants his own life. He is to come for me. And I will go to him if he pleasures me by killing you first!"

The door almost left its leathern hinges as she slammed out. Blade, trying to get his own irrational rage under control it was strange how she brought out the worst in him went to the port and stared out at the sunlit water rippling past. The ship was heeled well over and running fast before a stiff breeze. From above came the boisterous shouts of the sea robbers and the chanting of the tillerman as he conned the ship.

"A man? What man? What in Thunor's hell was she talking about?"

Sylvo, just entering with the bronze axe, stared at Blade.

"A man, master? I do not take your meaning. What man?"

Blade seized Aesculp and swung her. And knew how weak he still was. It would be days before he could fight again.

Sylvo squinted at his master. "What man do you speak of? There was no one here when I entered, master, though I passed the Princess Taken as I came. By Thunor, she looked black as any tempest worse than the storm that so nearly sent us to Trit's kingdom. But a man, master? I "

"Leave off your chatter," Blade shouted. "And mind your affairs, not mine!"

He flung the bronze axe at the opposite wall, where it hung quivering for a moment, then fell to the floor with a crash. Blade looked at it with disgust.

"Think not of it, master. Your strength will come back fast, like the tide sweeping in. In a few days "

Blade turned on him so fierce a visage that Sylvo quailed and backed away with his hands raised to shield his head.

"You have a choice," Blade thundered. "Silence or a maimed ear."

Sylvo chose silence. Blade shattered it as he left the cabin, leaving the door hanging by one hinge.

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."