Crusader

  “Thank you,” he said, simply enough, but with such emotion that Azhure was stunned to see tears well in both the sisters’ eyes.

  “We long to see this Underworld of yours,” said one of the sisters, “for we are weary of the hills and dales and turmoils of the Overworld.”

  “Don’t you miss Faraday?” Azhure said, curious about what these women felt for the woman. After all, they’d spent a long time travelling as Faraday’s devoted companions.

  “Faraday was kind to us,” said one of the sisters, “and she had a purpose which we were happy to aid her with.

  But…” “But there are very few people we would wish to spend a forever with,” the other finished. “Very few.”

  And, as one, both sisters switched their eyes from Azhure to SpikeFeather.

  The birdman blushed to the roots of his hair, but managed a small and utterly exquisite bow to the two women.

  They stared at him, and then their faces relaxed from their usual austerity into such utter beauty that Azhure gasped.

  “The bell,” one of the women finally and very gently prompted, and SpikeFeather grinned at his own distracted air.

  “The bell,” he agreed, and walking over to the tripod, struck it once.

  It pealed three times, and within heartbeats a punt had floated out of the far tunnel where the waterway ran into the ice cave and glided to a halt by the group.

  “I welcome you to my world,” SpikeFeather said, and helped the three women into the barge.

  Azhure sat down in the prow, settling Katie comfortably on her lap, and smiled as the two ice women sat—close!—on either side of SpikeFeather in the bow.

  “Take us,” SpikeFeather asked the waterways, “to a safe place close to the Maze, for that is the StarSon’s purpose.”

  As the punt glided forward, each sister lifted a graceful hand and placed it on one of SpikeFeather’s knees.

  Azhure looked the birdman in the eye, arched an eyebrow, and grinned.

  The barge glided through caverns that were empty, and caverns that were filled with the skeletons of cities and forests. In one cavern, Azhure stared about her in amazement at the city that crammed the spaces to either side of the waterway. Tenement buildings fourteen or fifteen levels high, halls that soared even higher, streets crammed with workshops and market stalls: all deserted, all covered with dust and neglect, all empty and haunting.

  “What are they?” Azhure finally said. “Who lived here? What happened to them?”

  To that SpikeFeather had no answer, but Katie stirred on Azhure’s lap and sat up, rubbing her eyes as she looked about her.

  “They are dead,” she said, “and have always been. No-one has ever lived here.”

  “But—” Azhure began.

  “They are nothing but memories,” Katie said. “Memories of the world the Enemy once lived on. Carried here by the ships, and built as memorials to the world that has been lost. Memories.”

  And the punt glided on.

  Chapter 51

  Sliding South

  The brown horse and her black-clad rider flowed over the landscape like wind let loose from an age-long prison. The horse’s legs stretched forth and ate up the landscape, yet so smooth was her motion that she scarcely seemed to move.

  Axis leaned forward over Pretty Brown Sal’s neck, urging her forward. He had not been this happy in decades.

  Behind him—somewhere—came his war band of some three thousand riders and trees, and somewhere behind them followed the column, but for this moment in time Axis did not care if they ever caught him.

  He was free, riding across this bleakened landscape, running south, riding this magical, magical mount.

  Pretty Brown Sal leaned her head forth even more eagerly, and surged forward. She, too, loved to run (fly), and her slim legs ate up the landscape.

  Even more than usual.

  From the first day that Axis had led the column south he’d discovered something unusual about the way Sal moved. It had at first disorientated him, almost frightened him, but then he’d learned to accept it and to enjoy the freedoms it gave him.

  Pretty Brown Sal was, as the sparrow had said, a gift of flight. Pretty Brown Sal’s legs literally flew. For every stride she took, almost half a league of landscape slid by. That was the unnerving sensation, for the passing landscape became an inchoate blur as it slid past with no recognisable features. On the first day, once Axis had got over his initial surprise, he’d found himself halting Sal every six or seven strides just so that he could orientate himself again.

  Then, as the day had worn on, he’d learned to trust the mare, and learned to flow with her as she coursed over the land.

  She was wondrous and magical, and Axis leaned forward even more, whooping and laughing as he urged her forward, forward, forward…

  But Pretty Brown Sal and her abilities were not the only reason for his high humour.

  Axis had a purpose again, he had a usefulness, and he felt he could make a difference. He didn’t care that he was not the hero of this particular battle, only that he had a purpose. Moreover, he had a purpose that encompassed what he adored beyond anything else: leading a war band over countryside against a vile enemy that was ravaging the land. He had a purpose, and it involved speed and battle and blood.

  It felt like old times again.

  From the column, Axis had selected some three thousand seasoned campaigners—including Zared, Herme and Theod, who refused to remain behind—to ride in his war band. With the three thousand men came a similar number of the trees who, as Axis led out his band for the first time, had simply lifted roots and moved out with them. Another four or five thousand trees roamed through the landscape for leagues to either side of Axis’ war band, catching and destroying every creature they came across. As the Demonic hours came and went (without Raspu’s hour of Pestilence at dusk, for Urbeth said that Gwendylyr had triumphed against him, and, at that, Theod had broken down and wept), the trees provided shelter, although this far north the Demonic influence was negligible.

  Axis found he had no need for the trees’ shelter, for Sal conveyed her own protection against the Demons’ maddening probings. Axis was truly free at last to ride as far and as fast as he wished.

  Each day they travelled further south. Although Axis tended to ride out alone, the war band was never far behind. Somehow Sal’s abilities extended to the war band, for Axis only ever had to rein her in, and turn about, and there was the war band thundering towards him, whooping and screaming with an excitement—we’re making a difference! we’re taking action!—that matched Axis’. To either side of the band of horsemen ran the trees: gigantic beings waving branches far into the sky and singing their own war song. Every time Axis saw them his breath would catch in his throat.

  Several times a day they’d meet groups, often many thousands’ strong, of crazed creatures and humans.

  And every time they met them, they would decimate them.

  Horsemen and trees would wade in side by side, swords and pikes sweeping and plunging, branches and roots snapping and snarling, men screaming, trees shrieking, death dealing.

  None of the Demon-controlled creatures survived.

  Of them all, the men found it hardest to do death to the women and children among the hordes of crazed creatures, but death they did, for it was the only release possible for those whose minds and souls had been eaten and corrupted by the Demons.

  And every time Axis drew breath, and called his war band to a halt, he looked about at the blood-soaked snow that surrounded them, and he smelled lilies.

  Thousands upon thousands of lilies, and Axis hoped that somehow the dead had managed to find their way into the Infinite Field of Flowers.

  At the end of each day Axis led his war band back to the column that trailed behind them, Urbeth patiently plodding at its head.

  But, as Axis did not have far to look back for his war band when he rode ahead, so he and his band did not have to ride far to meet up with the column. Sal
’s magic, perhaps combined with Urbeth’s, extended to them as well.

  And so they moved south.

  Fast.

  Until the eastern peaks of the Icescarp Alps rose to meet them.

  Axis reined Sal to a halt, the mare snorting nervously.

  A birdwoman stood in the snow before them.

  Crazed? Probably so, considering her appearance, but crazed in a manner Axis had not yet seen.

  She was…hideous. Before this moment Axis had not believed that any Icarii woman could make herself look hideous, but this birdwoman had gone to extraordinary lengths to make herself so.

  Axis was not to know that she thought herself extraordinarily beautiful and alluring rather than repulsive.

  Her hair had been teased by wind and ice into ragged spikes.

  Her robe, possibly once gold, but Axis was not sure, was tattered and stained by whatever the wind had thrown at her.

  Her wings were a frightful confusion of orange and red dye that had run in the wet conditions.

  Masses of ill-placed jewellery hung from ears and neck and waist and streamers of what possibly had once been scarves fluttered from neck and arms.

  Her face…her face was painted in several shades of purple and blue and red, as streaked by the elements as were her wings.

  And yet her eyes still sparkled with obvious joy, and her mouth pouted seductively.

  She held out her hands. “Axis StarMan!” she cried. “Well met! Have you brought me my husband?”

  Axis finally recognised the woman from the time he, Azhure and Caelum had been trapped in the tunnel below the Fortress Ranges.

  “StarLaughter!” he said, and Sal instinctively backed away two paces.

  Chapter 52

  A Marital Reunion

  “What?” WolfStar said. “I don’t believe you!”

  And yet he remembered what StarLaughter had said to him on the ice-edged glacier at the foot of Star Finger. We could love each other again.

  Then, he’d thought she had simply been intending sarcasm, or perhaps was even a little mad.

  Now he wondered if she was indeed mad, but also truthful. She could actually think that she and he…?

  WolfStar stared at Axis. They’d camped for the night within sight of the Icescarp Alps, and just as he and Zenith had eaten and begun to settle down for the night, Axis had ridden his pathetic brown mare into the camp, seized WolfStar by one wing, and dragged him to a relatively deserted spot beneath the ethereal trees.

  “I have StarLaughter under guard at the head of this column,” Axis had said with no preamble as he slid down from Sal’s back. “She says she has come here to meet you. She says that you are her husband. She says that she has loved you for all eternity, and she says that your happy marriage is about to recommence.”

  WolfStar still could not quite comprehend it. Stars, but the woman must be so far out of her mind that it was likely waiting for her on some distant iceberg in the Iskruel Ocean!

  “What are you going to do about it?” he said.

  “What am I going to do about it?” Axis turned his face away for a moment, a muscle working in his cheek. He looked back at WolfStar. “The question, renegade, is what you are going to do about it.”

  “I don’t have to—”

  “Yes, you do! WolfStar, this is your problem, and you are damn well going to fix it! I do not like the idea of StarLaughter running about in this convoy, but even less do I like the idea of what she might do if I kick her sorry person back into the snow and ice. She is happily preening herself at my campfire, telling the poor sods of Lake Guardsmen who stand watch over her about the night of passionate love that awaits you and she, while meantime you are huddling up to my daughter and trying to pretend that StarLaughter is not your problem.

  “WolfStar, she is more than your problem, she is your responsibility! She became your responsibility and your problem the instant you threw her through the Star Gate! Now, you are going to accompany me back to the head of the convoy and you are going to sort out this mess once and for all. I do not want StarLaughter a threat to this column. Stars know what she could do, or call down upon us, if she feels she’s been slighted.”

  WolfStar sneered as Axis paused to take a furious breath. “No doubt you couldn’t be more pleased by this development, Axis. No doubt you think that you can send me off with StarLaughter and rescue your daughter from the depths to which I have dragged her. Well, I won’t do a thing to—”

  Axis reached out and seized WolfStar’s hair with one hand, his chin with his other.

  “You will come with me now,” he said between clenched teeth, “or I will personally deliver your sword-stuck corpse to your wife…with my condolences, of course. Now, you will come with me!”

  WolfStar snarled, an automatic response, but he offered no resistance as Axis hauled him forward.

  Damn Axis to everlasting agony in the pits of the AfterLife! When he, WolfStar, wrested power and control from DragonStar no-one would be able to treat him so contemptuously!

  As Axis remounted Sal, and gave WolfStar a none-too-gentle kick in the small of WolfStar’s back with his booted foot, Zenith emerged from the shadows, her face expressionless.

  Further back in the gloom, so furtive and silent that Zenith did not know she was being watched, stood StarDrifter, his face an equal mixture of hope and despair.

  StarLaughter laughed, fluttering her hands about her, admiring the way the firelight caught at the sparkle of rings and nail polish. She tossed her head, knowing the five Icarii men who stood around her were finding it hard to control their lust.

  StarLaughter knew WolfStar would not be able to keep his hands off her once he saw her again.

  It was predestined, for their love was meant to be eternal.

  There was a movement in the night, and the Guardsmen stepped back, not even bothering to hide their relief.

  Axis stepped into the firelight. “I have brought you your husband, StarLaughter,” he said, “although whether or not you find him what you—”

  “WolfStar?” StarLaughter scrambled to her feet, almost tripping over a length of tattered scarf that hung from her waist. “WolfStar? Is that you?”

  “Yes, you over-painted harlot,” WolfStar said, and stepped into view. “What in every god’s name have you done to yourself?”

  StarLaughter preened, turning her body this way and that so her husband could admire it. “I have made myself beautiful…for you,” she simpered.

  WolfStar laughed derisively. “Then what a shame you have failed so badly.”

  So lost was StarLaughter in her madness, and her mad world, that none of WolfStar’s derision registered. He was here, and he was hers, and nothing would ever come between them.

  She threw herself full length against WolfStar’s body, rubbing herself wantonly against him, running her hands over curves and into crannies that few women ever dared caress in public.

  “My love!” she whispered, and kissed him.

  WolfStar wrenched his head back, and seized StarLaughter by the shoulders.

  “I find you repulsive!” he hissed. “Disgusting! Nauseous! Can you understand that, you raving witch?”

  “Enough play,” she murmured, attempting to snuggle up to him again. “You always had such a way with words!”

  “WolfStar…” Axis said, wanting WolfStar to end this repellent scene.

  “Listen to me!” WolfStar snarled. “I never loved you, not once! Can you understand that? Do you actually hear my words?”

  Something flickered in StarLaughter’s face, and her hands stilled.

  “I married you for the power you’d bequeath our son,” WolfStar continued, his voice deliberately hard and scornful, “and for the added legitimacy you’d give my seizure of the throne of Talon. I found your personality grating, your body only bearable at best. I kept lovers to keep me amused and warm, for you never did! I have never, do not, and will not ever love you, for you are the most repellent woman in creation!”

&nbs
p; StarLaughter’s face had now blanched, and she stared in confusion into WolfStar’s eyes.

  He continued, brutally cruel. “I repudiate you, before all these witnesses. I cast you aside. I deny our marriage. You are filth, StarLaughter. Filth!”

  “WolfStar!” Axis’ voice cracked across the campfire. “That’s enough!”

  “I don’t believe you,” StarLaughter whispered. “I can’t!”

  “Would you believe it,” another voice said, “if someone told you that WolfStar has taken another to his heart and to his bed, and would wife her, if only he could permanently dispose of you?”

  WolfStar cursed foully. StarDrifter! What had the stupid birdman done!

  StarDrifter had now stepped into the circle of light. “He has taken a woman,” he said, “that does not belong to him, and who does not love him.”

  “That’s a lie!” WolfStar shouted. “She loves me, and I her!”

  Humiliated, scorned, betrayed, StarLaughter jerked out of WolfStar’s grasp.

  “Who?” she whispered, then turned her head to StarDrifter and spoke louder, more strongly. “Who is this whore-bitch that thinks to depose me?”

  It was only then that StarDrifter realised what a terrible mistake he had made.

  Chapter 53

  Sigholt

  They continued south, Axis and his war band ranging ahead during the day, Urbeth leading the column of trees and people and animals behind him.

  StarLaughter had proved a problem.

  Since StarDrifter—curse his tongue!—had blurted out the fact of Zenith’s existence, StarLaughter had not said a word.

  She had, quite simply, gone silent.

  And Axis did not like to think what might be going on in her mind.

  He’d done what he could, but he wasn’t sure if he could do anything to mitigate the situation.

  StarLaughter had been asked, politely enough and with the offer of supplies, to leave the column.