The One-Armed Queen

“A good promise,” Sarana said. “I do not make them lightly.”

  The old woman laid the soap and brush on the tub’s edge. “Best scrub afore the water turns ice. I’ll tend that mare.”

  It took two days, not three, to get through the woods for Scillia hardly let the guards rest. Good shepherds must also be tough taskmasters, she told herself, when needs be. The soldier had been right about where they were. It took half a day to Bear’s Run after that.

  Scillia scarcely recognized the battlefield site till they were on it. The field looked smaller than she remembered. And the stand of trees larger. But then, thirteen years can make a vast difference in the life of trees. And the life of girl, she thought. The two mounds were unmistakable.

  “Make camp,” she said to the sergeant. “And let me be for now. There is something I must do.”

  As if he knew her mind, the sergeant nodded, and turned to the task of organizing the campsite. Scillia left them and went directly to Iluna’s grave.

  It was midday, but shadowed and cold between the mounds. She knelt beside the grave marked by the goddess sign. For a long moment she was still.

  Above her some bird wheeled in the bleached sky. By her toes, a line of dark insects moved quickly through the winter grass. She felt herself between times. She did not like that feeling.

  At last she rose. The truth was that she knew nothing of the woman in the grave beyond her name and the fact that she had been a warrior of M’dorah.

  M’dorah!

  “I am Jenna’s daughter,” she said to the grave. “But I will fly home to my throne from M’dorah.

  The grave did not answer.

  Sarana left the farmhouse before dawn, a pocket of journey-cake and a flask of wine tied to her waist. She had to leave the little horse behind. But the old woman had given her more than a gift of food and a long-needed bath. She actually had had an idea of where Queen Scillia and her followers might be heading.

  “Her mam was from M’dorah,” said the old woman.

  “Her mam was Queen Jenna.”

  “Second mam.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Everyone knows.”

  Sarana did not point out that she had not known.

  “Besides, there’s prophecy.”

  “What prophecy?”

  The old woman put her head back, closed her eyes, and in an eerie, quavering voice sang: “An eagle’s girl shall gain the throne, but she’ll not rule the land alone.”

  “How does that mean Queen Scillia’s from M’dorah?” Sarana was puzzled. “There’s nothing in the prophecy that says the name.”

  “M’dorah. High-towered. Where eagles dare not rest. Do ye not know history, girl?”

  The connection had seemed thin in the evening when they first spoke of it. But by morning the logic seemed in-escapable. Besides, Sarana had no other leads.

  “Where is M’dorah?” she asked.

  The old woman drew her a map in the yard, as scratchy as if one of her scrawny chickens had made it. But Sarana had read many such maps, drawn in mud and sand and snow.

  “Take good care of that mare,” Sarana had said in lieu of a parting.

  “Like she was my own,” the old woman said, smiling, because they both knew the mare was her own, now.

  STREET RHYMES:

  Eagle, eagle in the sky,

  Watch the queen as she rides by.

  How many soldiers has she now?

  One … two … three … four

  —Counting out rhyme, Mador Plains

  Shoe the horse, shoe the mare,

  Ride the long riding alone.

  One comes east and one comes west

  And one comes riding home.

  —Baby lap game, South Ridings

  Pick up stones and pile them on,

  One, two, three until they’re gone.

  —Circle game, Berike Harbor

  THE STORY:

  “They tried to escape!” Jemson cried, his voice rising in anger and breaking on the last syllable. “They tried to escape!” His hands gripped the arms of the throne so hard his knuckles turned white.

  “Well of course they tried to escape,” Lord Malfas said calmly. “Though being Dalites they sent the women and children out first. Stupid, stupid! What good are women and children in a fight?”

  “But we have them,” Jemson said, his anger ebbing as he remembered the outcome. “The three boys, and old Petra.” He smiled. “Can’t you just see her skinning down that makeshift rope?” Then he laughed. “Her petticoat was part of it, so it was a make-shift indeed.” He waited for Malfas to applaud his joke and when no applause was forthcoming, he sat back in the throne pouting.

  “Your Majesty,” Malfas said, making another of his almost-an-insult bows, “the boys, being boys, know nothing except that they were to head north.”

  “Away from the center of the fighting of course.”

  “Toward your sister’s hold. Of course.”

  Jemson crossed his legs casually. “We don’t know that. They did not tell us that.”

  “We can make a good guess at it, though. Think, boy, think! What does the Book of Battles tell us?”

  Jemson’s face screwed up in concentration. He had never been good at memory games, and he had positively hated all the drills in battle lore he’d had to endure in the Garunian court. Much better had been the action games—dog-fighting, bear-baiting, watching the duels. What had the cursed Book of Battles said? Then he had it. “The spider sits in the center of its web and entices the fly to come to it.”

  “Good, good. That certainly comes from the Book and might even apply here. But I was thinking rather of the notion that, ‘The further north, the greater noise.’”

  “I do not remember any such.” Jemson began to study his fingernails with great concentration.

  “And your father a scholar, your dam a fighter. How they ever threw you … still the Book knows that, too.”

  “What do you mean, man?” Jemson glared at him.

  Malfas did not moderate the insult in this bow. “A white ewe may have a black lamb,” he said. His voice was strong and was meant to carry.

  “Damn you!” Jemson stood, grabbed up the scepter which was resting against the throne, and flung it at Malfas’ head.

  Without glancing at it, Malfas reached up and plucked the scepter from the air, turned, and walked out of the room, his back offering his final insult to the young usurper king.

  The broken window was boarded up by the guards, the wine rack restored and checked every hour. The men were all shackled, wrist to wrist, except for Corrie who, as the king’s brother, still had certain privileges.

  The three boys were not bound, but they had been so maltreated by the Garuns when they were caught, they did not even dare walk into the next room without asking permission. Instead they fell asleep on the dirty pallets without speaking, though one of them cried for an hour in his sleep, a sound so despairing that Corrie sat down on the bed by his side and rubbed the child’s forehead. The boy’s exhaustion was deep and the touch did not wake him, nor did it seem to salve him.

  Corrie wanted desperately to ask about the fourth boy who had gone with them through the window and about Petra. But he feared alerting the guards who, in pairs, now stood at attention in the archway. Instead, he joined the card players. It was not an easy game, shackled as they were, but it was the only way to lighten the gloom in the wine cellar which now, truly, felt like a dungeon.

  They whispered among themselves, but without any real information the talk went in circles until one soldier in a husky voice said, “We still have the king’s sword.”

  “And what good is it, the blade ruined from sawing at that window?” said Piet. “And only the end man in our chain with a hand to swing it.”

  “There’s Prince Corrine here,” the man answered. “He’s both hands free.”

  “He’d be no match for the two of them,” Piet cautioned, gesturing with his head toward the doorway where the g
uards strained to hear them.

  “Then let him distract them and we can …”

  “If you are an anvil …” Piet said.

  “… be patient,” answered the soldier. “I know that one. My sergeant says that all the time. And if you are a hammer, be strong. It is time we all became hammers.”

  Corrie whispered to them. “I am more anvil than hammer it is true, but even I have lost what patience I had. There is something our poor land needs and only I can supply it.” He stood slowly and walked over to the guards. They were instantly on the alert, but he held out his hands to them. “Take me to my brother, Jemson-Over-the-Water. He will want to speak to me.”

  Piet started to stand but he could not pull the others up in time. “No, Corrie,” he cried.

  But they were already gone.

  “What is it?” asked the soldier, the one who had been speaking before. “What is it that he alone can supply?”

  Piet looked down over the boys, now sleeping peacefully, the bruises on their faces and arms beginning to show in the flickering light of the torches.

  “Blood,” he said, loudly and with great feeling now that the guards had left them alone. “Royal blood. And courage in its shedding. He means to be a martyr.”

  Corrie stood before the throne where his brother sat on three pillows, comfortable at last, his right leg crossed over the left. There was a guard standing at attention on either side of the throne and Sir Malfas waited on the left side of the dais.

  “So you have something to say to me,” Jemson said. He smiled and turned to Malfas. “I told you he would come round at last. He is my brother. Blood will tell.”

  Malfas stroked his moustache, as if the feel of it between his fingers lent him comfort or strength, but he did not respond.

  “I do,” Corrie said.

  “Well out with it then, Corrie. No games. I am serious,” Jemson said, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward in the great chair.

  “No games? But I thought that Garuns loved games. And you are more than a match for any Garun at game-playing.” Corrie smiled and cocked his head to one side. He suddenly thought about Gadwess and the games they used to indulge in. Jemmie would never admit to any of those.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Malfas stirred, took a step closer to the king. “He toys with you, Majesty. There is nothing to tell.”

  The Garun’s words made Jemson’s face prune up.

  “I know where Scillia is.”

  “See—he knows where Scillia is, that dough-faced slut.” Jemson said. He grinned and spoke again to Corrie. “So …?”

  “Oh I know—but I will not say. That is what I have come to tell you.” Corrie spoke slowly, carefully, as if speaking to a child.

  Malfas went up the steps to the throne and whispered in Jemson’s ear. “He is merely playing you like a reed flute, Majesty. Do not sing to his tune.”

  Jemson shook his head violently, trying to rid himself of the Garun’s voice. His hands made fists and they trembled as he spoke. “I can make you tell, you know.”

  “No, Jemmie, you cannot.”

  “King Jemson!”

  “Mother always said: You can call a rock a fish but it still cannot swim.”

  Jemson’s whole body began to tremble. “You’ll be sorry you spoke to me like that.”

  Corrie smiled again. “I expect I will.”

  “Take him away!” Jemson shouted. “Now! Out of my sight! But not down in the dungeon again with his friends. They will laugh there. They will laugh at me. And I will not have it. I will not. What I will have, though, is Prince Corrine whipped. Like a slave. Like a dog.” He stood up partway, holding on to the arms of the throne. But his legs trembled so much, from anger, from humiliation, that he sat down again heavily. One of the three cushions skittered to the floor. “No! No! I will have him pressed. Then you will talk to me, Corrie. The stones will make you speak. Only I may not listen right away.”

  Three guards came and grabbed Corrie by the arm and they were no longer polite with him.

  Malfas shook his head. “Do not do this, Jemson. Whatever he says to you in agony will avail us nothing.”

  “He will talk. I will make him talk. And you must call me king. King Jemson. Or I will crush you, too.”

  “You will only make him a martyr, Sire. A martyr could stir a somnolent countryside. King Kras will not be pleased.”

  “King Kras can go suffocate!” Jemson screamed. “I am all the king needed here.” He looked up at the guards. “What do you wait for? I have given you your orders. Take him. Take him and guard him till the stones can be found. Then we shall see who will talk and who will not.”

  There was a note in the bottom of one of the evening porridge bowls and, as Alta’s luck would have it, Piet found it. He turned his back to the guards, slipped the note out of its messy resting place, and stuck it down the front of his tunic. When he turned back he handed the bowl to one of the boys who had the task of gathering them up.

  He waited.

  He waited till the guards were distracted by the servers taking charge of the empty bowls. Then he leaned into the guttering torchlight and read.

  Wet porridge had obscured some of the writing. But the message was still clear.

  Mada_ Petr_ __been k lled_ __hers captur__

  I am __town. All__ __t lost. Praise Al__.

  The boy had made it into town, so all was indeed not lost, as the note said. But Petra. He could not bear to think on it. Tucking the note back into his shirt, he turned away from the light.

  Shackled three down from Piet, Jareth’s eyes were closed but he was not asleep. He was still coughing badly and the spasmodic jerking kept the men on either side of him from sleeping. Still no one complained. Jareth was a good man, a hero of the wars. Imprisonment, Piet thought, has made brothers of us, more than freedom ever did.

  He wondered briefly if anything would be served by telling Jareth of Petra’s death, then decided it would not.

  “My friends,” he said at last, “it is time we were hammers indeed.”

  Jareth eyes fluttered open. “Then Petra is dead,” he said. It was not a question but Piet was forced to nod anyway.

  The men stood as one, though the last stooped and reached under the pallet, pulling out the king’s battered sword. Then, without further consultation, they snaked quickly through the archways, and caught the Garuns off guard as they were closing the door.

  The man with the king’s sword sliced down heavily, using his left hand, the only hand he had free, his anger and hatred lending strength to it. He managed to gut one of the Garuns badly, and the man began to scream. Jareth and the others used their chains to choke off the sound. But the other Garun guard started out the door for help.

  He was hauled back roughly by Piet who grabbed him one-handed by the neck, pulling him off his feet.

  “Kill him,” one of the boys cried. “Kill him!”

  Piet brought his shackled hand up and gave a vicious twist to the man’s head. The snap as the Garun’s neck broke was as loud as a hammer on stone. Piet caught the man’s sword as he fell away.

  “For Alta!” Piet shouted. “For the queen!”

  They had three swords now, but no time to try and hack off the shackles, for the Garuns were on them. Still they managed to kill a dozen Garuns on the way up the stairs before their own losses—dead weight to be hauled along—so slowed them that they could gain only the first landing. There, back to the curving wall of the stairs, they made their final stand.

  The best part of a Garun troop was loosed on them, man after man charging down the stone steps.

  The fighting was fierce, but the ending, everyone knew, was predetermined by the numbers. Not a one of the Dales men still standing thought he would come out of the battle alive. Still they fought on to the end.

  Blow after bloody blow was delivered, was taken. In desperation, they used their fallen comrades as shields and those poor bodies were pierced till they had no more blood to blee
d.

  Piet’s head was almost severed from his body but he managed a final thrust even then that took a captain down. Jareth, his cough miraculously cleared, bent over to get the sword Piet dropped, and was cut down just as his hand touched the hilt. He sighed Petra’s name at the last.

  Two of the boys were the only prisoners left alive of the fighting force and they were taken off to be hung at first light.

  The third boy had stayed behind in the cellar. Because of the noise of battle no one heard him shove the wine rack over. When it crashed to the ground it was simply one more sound, and too far from the main fighting to be counted.

  He drank several great gulps of red wine from a shattered bottle for courage. It was a red heat down his throat. Like blood, he thought, and shivered. He managed to open the boards over the window by standing on the overturned rack and using some of the slats from the rack as a prise. Then he shimmed through the open window, cutting himself on the same glass that had caught Sarana’s knee. He had no line to let himself down, but it was a full tide. So he flung himself out as far as he could, barely clearing the rocks. His right hand broke upon a stone outcropping, the three fingers furthest from the thumb and the bones in the palm, but he made it into the sea and it was hours later before he felt the pain of it.

  He swam along the shoreline till he was exhausted. Being from a fisherman’s family, the water held no fear for him, especially not this close to the sandy shore. When the tide drifted him onto the shingle, he headed north. He wanted to be as far from Berick as he could go. He never wanted to see a Garun again.

  Scillia’s guard had managed to round up several dozen more men from the farms and villages between Bear’s Run and M’dorah. Or rather they had gone to the farms and inns to see if they could beg for supplies and found eager farmers and innkeepers, often veterans of the last war, ready to fight for their queen.

  “The queen that was and the queen that will be,” became the rallying cry.

  Scillia was pleased to see the new recruits. She told them so, greeting each with a handshake and a request for a name. She rarely forgot a name after.

  But at night, sitting alone and away from the rest of the camp, she held a troubled conversation with herself. Speaking aloud, as if she were arguing with a dark sister, she set out her awful burden. She did not know that her sergeant set a watch over her, too far to hear what it was she said, but close enough to keep her from harm.