Helm

  Leland shut his eyes and searched frantically for a focus, something worthy of concentration. He heard Siegfried step behind him and pushed his feelings about his father away. He thought of…Marilyn.

  Okay, do it.

  Something cold and hard touched his head and he went away.

  The ropes from the old lift still hung in the shaft, but Marilyn had no intention of trusting her weight to them. Instead, she worked down the shaft using a series of hand- and footholds formed by offset bricks.

  Once she’d closed the wall hanging over the hole in the paneling, it was pitch dark in the shaft. She carried a candle and matches with her, but needed her hands to climb, so the candle stayed behind with her knife, wrapped in a cloth tied around her waist. Her staff hung across her back, tied with another piece of cloth. Fortunately, the footholds were regular, probably deliberate, and she felt her way down, slowly, in the moldy dark.

  She passed three different sets of paneling, old openings closed, before she came to the top of the old elevator, rotting ropes still attached to its frame. According to the plans, they were down to the levels of the baths, the bottom of the shaft. She wondered what they’d done to the opening on this level.

  Hopefully, they didn’t brick it up.

  When she pried open a corner of the elevator roof and lowered her lit candle, she found just the opposite. The elevator had been converted to storage, with barrels and shelves. The door to the hallway was wide open and she saw the glow of distant gas lights.

  She put out the candle and listened for a good ten minutes. She could hear the distant sounds of running water, but no footsteps or human voices. She dropped down into the closet, then stood on a barrel to replace the roof panel.

  The barrels contained salted fish; the shelves, paraffin-encased cheeses. Life is good.

  Zanna’s advance troops were reinforced when they’d made the top of the pass but before they’d reached the fortifications at Fort Bayard.

  Her losses were heavy, both in number and on her mind, and the last thing she needed to hear was her father’s voice.

  “You could’ve waited for the rest of us,” he said, when he heard the figures.

  Marshall de Gant was the only other person present and she had no compunctions when she snapped, “Don’t speak to me about waiting! You delayed us weeks. How many people have died in Laal while you denied the invasion?”

  Arthur’s face went from petulant to vicious. “I can still disinherit you. Don’t take that tone with me.”

  Zanna crossed her arms. “That threat doesn’t work anymore! You’re rapidly ruining anything I’d want to inherit. I don’t want control over our people—I want their trust, and you’re destroying that.”

  De Gant intervened. “None of this gets us into Laal. Surely that’s the current problem? You can finish…assessing the situation after we’ve kicked Siegfried’s butt out of Greater Noram.”

  Arthur looked ready to explode, but Zanna chose to take the hint. “You’re right, Marshall. What do you propose?”

  “I suggest we isolate and bypass Fort Bayard. Now that your forces have gotten us past the worst of the snow, we can move around the fort on the southern route.” He tapped the map on the table.

  “It’s still in bow shot,” Arthur pointed out.

  “We have shields,” said de Gant. “We’re going to be moving quite fast, and Captain Kuart’s ballista will be operating from the top of the pass, a height advantage that greatly increases his range.” He put the tip of his index finger on the pass, then lifted it in an arc that dropped down on Fort Bayard with an audible thunk. “They’ll be too busy to bother us.”

  Koss moved his forces carefully through the high passes, alert for the same sort of trap he’s used on Marshall Plover’s forces. Dexter commanded the Pikes and Anthony was directing his couriers as scouts.

  It was cold but the weather was below them, low clouds in the valleys. Let it snow on the bastards.

  Dexter, Captain Koss, and Anthony came together on horseback, in the lee of the pass, as the troops moved past.

  “No traps, Captain,” Anthony reported. “They had some sentry posts but they’re running before us, pulling back.”

  Dexter asked, “Any word from Leland?”

  Anthony frowned. “No—we know roughly where the Eight Hundred is, er, are, but there’s snow falling between here and there.”

  Captain Koss blew into his mittened hands, then banged them together. “Well, let’s get moving. Once our forces are down in the valley, Dexter can send a unit to link up with them.”

  They began the descent.

  Gahnfeld signaled the attack when the sun hit the valley floor.

  They burst out of the snow-covered tunnel end to find that over half the opposing troops had pulled back in the night. Those remaining didn’t stand a chance. The Eight Hundred took no casualties.

  The prisoners were disarmed and sent south, roped together, under a small guard. “Get them below the snow line, then turn ‘em loose,” Gahnfeld said. “Then join us.”

  He mounted a captured horse. “The rest of you get moving! We’ve got a date in Danbury.”

  “Excuse me, do you work here?” That’s what she’d said, the first time he saw Marilyn. He’d looked up, transfixed by an angel.

  Finally, though, he’d blinked and stirred, embarrassed by his moment of stupefaction. “I suppose you could say that. I work everywhere else.”

  He’d been buried, hiding, deep in the book, anything to get away from the bleakness his life had come to. Her very existence had shown him there was more in the universe than his own pain.

  He kept that memory before him like a cold man holding his hands before the fire and basked in its glow, no, he watched the memory just as he’d stared at Marilyn that faraway morning—as if it were the most important and wonderful thing in the universe.

  It was the sound of his own voice speaking that brought him out of it—his own voice, but it wasn’t him speaking.

  Just his body.

  “—protect and serve you. Serving you fills me with joy. Disloyalty to you causes me pain and sorrow.”

  Two voices, actually. Siegfried’s, too, but all Leland could see was Marilyn’s face, feel his attraction to her intensifying, fixating.

  Then there was a moment of extreme disorientation and the sunny library ledge disappeared in waves of vertigo. He was slumped over, blinking, and he could feel his body struggling to sit upright. Again, not Leland, just his body, that other—Michaela. He started to help, but other hands were there, lifting his head, unstrapping his limbs.

  Leland waited, floating.

  Siegfried’s voice. “How do you feel?”

  “Not bad for an old bag of bones,” came the answer. Michaela’s inflections were different, an accent unmarked by three hundred years of phonetic drift. Leland’s head swiveled sharply and stared, unblinking, at Siegfried.

  “Old?” Siegfried frowned. “How old?”

  “I was born four hundred and eighty-three years ago.”

  Siegfried took a step back from him. “What are you talking about? You’re not even twenty years old!”

  Just barely eighteen.

  “Leland isn’t, I am. But that’s not important,” said Michaela. “How may I serve you?”

  Siegfried peered at her, somewhat calmed. “What is your purpose?”

  “To protect and serve you.” Leland could feel that smile on his face, a matching version of the one on Bartholomew’s face, and longed to wipe it off. Instead, he tentatively took control of his hands, rubbing the areas where the straps had bitten into his wrists.

  Siegfried relaxed even more, setting the Helm down on the bench by the batteries.

  “You were born on Earth?”

  “Yes. Tacoma, Washington.”

  Siegfried’s expression was blank.

  “In North America. I suppose that’s where the name Noram comes from.”

  “Ah.” Siegfried nodded. “And was Cotswold a mighty coun
try back on Earth?”

  Leland felt his head shake. “It was a small region of England, but pretty.” At Siegfried’s expression she added, “At one time, England was the mightiest empire on Earth.”

  Siegfried shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what happened on Earth. What became of Leland?”

  “Oh, he’s here, too,” Michaela said.

  Siegfried nodded. “And you came from the imprinter, eh? Do you have any knowledge of Earth technology?”

  “Oh, yes,” Michaela said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Imprinters. Could you make more?”

  Michaela sighed. “No. I know the theory, but the many support technologies are beyond me.”

  Siegfried scowled. “Well, then, how about weapons of war?”

  “Yes, I know about those.”

  Leland began flexing his toes inside his boots.

  Siegfried smiled. “Enough knowledge to direct their manufacture and use?”

  “Yes. Poison gas, projectile weapons, Greek fire, even explosives, though I understand their use is forbidden in this culture.”

  Leland shifted his hips in the chair.

  Siegfried waved his hand. “A superstition. Don’t worry about it. You are a pleasant surprise, much more useful than the boy Leland. I suppose it was you who directed his accomplishments back east?”

  “Not really. I wasn’t fully awake then. Leland is surprising, but he’s not to be trusted.”

  Siegfried laughed. “I hardly think that’s the case now. Is it? I mean, doesn’t he share your purpose?”

  As Michaela said, “No,” Leland moved, darting out of the chair and to one side, directly at the leftmost guard. He left his voice to Michaela who echoed Siegfried’s “Stop him!” in almost perfect unison.

  The guard reached for him with both hands, and Leland brought a cupped hand up from his waist, almost gently contacting the man’s chin, and extended out. The man’s head met the wall hard and Leland turned, taking the other guard’s reaching arm in the first teaching, Ikkyo, and doing the ura version, which brought the man’s head down and into the chair before he’d fully reached the floor.

  “Stop! Submit! Don’t do this!” his own voice in Michaela’s accent protested. “I’m sorry, sir, he’s not very biddable!”

  Leland threw the bolt on the door before the guards outside responded to the noise and turned back to the room.

  Siegfried was backed into the corner, holding the Helm in one hand and a dagger in the other. Bartholomew stood between Leland and Siegfried, a knife in his hand. Leland recognized the blade, the same one Bartholomew had given him so long ago. Bartholomew held it low, with his hand back, and advanced with the other hand forward, to block and check.

  “Good, Bartholomew,” Michaela said through Leland’s mouth. “Hold the blade back. Strike and pull back. Don’t let him get your knife hand.”

  Careful. You don’t want to confuse him.

  STOP THIS! DON’T YOU SEE THAT SIEGFRIED MUST BE OBEYED? THIS IS WRONG.

  Leland lunged to the left and Bartholomew struck out, a slashing chest-high blow from the outside in. Leland entered, checking a return slash with a hand on Bartholomew’s elbow. And extending, propelled Bartholomew away from him, to tangle, briefly, with one of the fallen guards.

  Before he could take advantage of Bartholomew’s momentary imbalance, Siegfried lunged at his exposed side.

  “Don’t!” warned Michaela.

  Thank you, thought Leland. He pulled his hip, took the wrist, and pivoted, taking his other arm over Siegfried’s, then up under, grasping his own wrist and locking Siegfried’s elbow. He expanded his chest and heard a creaking sound. Siegfried gasped and let his dagger clatter to the floor.

  Bartholomew recovered his balance and turned back. “Let go of him!”

  “Yes!” Michaela seconded with Leland’s voice.

  I don’t think so.

  Siegfried dropped the Helm onto the bench with his free arm and tried to strike, across his body, at Leland’s face. Leland leaned back, putting more pressure on the elbow, and Siegfried shot to his toes, trying to get away from the pain, twisting. Leland let him pull back into the corner, exposing Leland’s back to Bartholomew.

  He heard Bartholomew move and Leland smiled.

  “Look out, Bartholomew!” Michaela cried.

  Without changing his grip Leland raised Siegfried’s captured arm, then twisted his hips hard, one hundred eighty degrees, dropping abruptly to one knee at the end. Siegfried’s feet came off the ground and his entire body flew over Leland and into Bartholomew’s charge.

  Siegfried’s scream cut short at impact in an anguished, desperate gasp for air.

  Then Bartholomew began screaming.

  He didn’t get hit that—

  Michaela began screaming with Leland’s mouth.

  Bartholomew’s knife was buried to the hilt in Siegfried’s left kidney and blood was spreading across the floor at a prodigious rate.

  Leland felt sick. Enough! He took control of his voice away from Michaela and his own throat stopped screaming. “Enough!” he shouted out loud.

  Bartholomew dropped to his knees, his hands to his head, his face twisted in unimaginable pain. His scream dropped to a closed-mouth keening and he began rocking back and forth.

  You will do nothing that causes me harm. Disloyalty to me causes you pain…

  The guards in the hallway were yelling and pounding on the door. They pounded, first with their fists, then with their shoulders and the hilts of their swords as they tried to break in.

  Michaela was dealing with her pain better. HELP HIM. WE CAN STOP THE BLEEDING. GET A DOCTOR TO HIM. A TRANSFUSION.

  Leland reached down and felt for a pulse at Siegfried’s neck. He felt three beats, each weaker than the one before, then nothing.

  He looked at Bartholomew and said, “He is beyond harm. He is beyond pain. He is beyond need.”

  He could feel the internal keening lessen and knew he was on the right track, but the pain on Bartholomew’s face was frightening in its intensity.

  I WONDER IF HE LEFT ANY WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS?

  Spare me.

  Chapter 23

  RANDORI: FREE-STYLE “ALL-OUT” TRAINING

  Sylvan led a large contingent from the Station down the snow-covered road. They were coordinating their advance with other Cotswold forces retreating up the valley and hoped to encircle the town before their purpose became known.

  A part of him wished he were back in the Station, watching what happened when Leland wore the Helm, but another part of him was glad to be out in the clean, cold air. He shuddered. Even this mission was designed to further his father’s plan—conversion of enemy commanders.

  As they neared the edge of the town, his signalmen reported that Captain Emmet’s down-valley troops were in position. Sylvan raised his arm. “Remember—women and children. Let the men run or kill them if they want to fight. Gather the hostages here. We’re taking what we have back to the Station in one hour.”

  He dropped his arm and the hunt began.

  Pickings were slim—the town was nearly deserted.

  “There are tracks leading up into mountains,” a coronet reported. “Halvidar Samson wants to know if he should pursue.”

  “No! Keep searching in the town.” Sylvan looked at the twenty hostages found so far. Most of them were elderly, over sixty, unable to brave the frigid heights. There was a young woman with a newborn infant and two pregnant woman due, apparently, any day now.

  “When did everyone leave?” he asked the prisoners.

  One of the old women stepped forward. She looked into Sylvan’s eyes without a trace of fear. “They started three days ago, but most of them left yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  She looked pointedly left and right, at the prisoners and guards. “Because you’re losing. Desperate men do desperate things.”

  We are not losing! He thought about striking her with his riding crop but controlled himself. Negotiations ove
r hostages was just the bait to lure Captain Koss into the Helm’s embrace, and he didn’t want to make the prisoners more difficult to control than necessary. He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward in his saddle.

  “What is your name?”

  “Dru Druza.”

  “Well, Madame Druza. We are getting desperate. Very. Do keep that in mind.”

  At the end of the hour, they’d added a mother with three children under four, but that was it.

  “Get them moving,” Sylvan said. Scouts had spotted Laal troops in the valley and there wasn’t much time.

  Marilyn heard the screaming as she neared the corner, oddly muffled, punctuated by the sharper sound of fists pounding on wood. She peered around the corner.

  “Open this door! High Steward? Are you all right?” The muffled screaming stopped and the guards increased their efforts, slamming shoulders to the door, then pulling their swords and slamming the hilts against the wood.

  There were three of them and they looked scared. As she watched, one of them left at a run, probably to fetch help.

  I should leave. This is going to be a very popular spot shortly. But she walked forward instead, holding her jo at the ready. They didn’t notice her until the first one dropped. The second one parried her first thrust, and she was forced to step back to avoid his counterthrust. She feinted high and he thrust low, as she hoped, and she dropped her center and the jo on the blade, just above the hilt. There was a metallic bell sound and the blade broke, then clattered to the floor. He tried to block her thrust with the hilt and the stub of a blade but managed only to lift it from his solar plexus to his throat.

  The guard fell back, choking. She heard the creak of door hinges and twisted, raising one tip of the jo.

  The figure inside was silhouetted by the gas lights within but there was something familiar about him. When he spoke, she couldn’t help but laugh.

  He said, “Excuse me, do you work here?”

  “Oh, Leland, you idiot! What are you doing here?”

  “I was wondering the same thing about you.” He pushed the door completely open and she saw limbs sprawling, and blood. She took a step closer.