“Nice to meet you, Basilea Erinor,” Thirrin hissed through clenched teeth. “Pity you have to leave so soon!” Then, stepping back, she wrenched her sword free, and struck her head from her shoulders.
Imp-Pious had flown far to the north of Romula. For some time now he’d been wrestling with a troubling sense of divided loyalty. Did he want to risk further emotional contamination and stay with his mortal friends, or should he cut his losses and return to his homeland where no one and nothing felt any bonds of friendship – or, worse still, love? A few weeks ago the decision would have been easy, but the longer he stayed in the company of mortals the more difficult it became.
Finally that morning, he’d sneaked out of camp and flown off. He needed to think things through carefully. He had no idea where he was going, but the fact that he hadn’t actually made the jump back to the Magical Realms could only mean that he wanted to stay. It was a thought that shocked and horrified him, but even so, he was almost certain now that he’d finally reached a decision.
“Do you intend flying far, Pious?” he said to himself. “I believe I’m right in saying that those are the foothills of the Dancing Maidens below us, and if I go much further north the rising topography will necessitate attaining a higher altitude to ensure safe passage over the peaks and arêtes.”
He had to admit that his emotions had got completely out of hand ever since he had left the Plain of Desolation. But even if his arrival in the Physical Realms and his relationship with the three mortals had been completely accidental, he was beginning to wonder if his feelings for them had been destined to happen for some, as yet undisclosed, reason. As a creature of the Magical Realms, he was fully aware that there was no such thing as coincidence, and that “accidents”, if they were studied carefully, often turned out to be very well planned.
But then his thoughts were suddenly interrupted, and he stopped and stared at a black and ragged something that seemed to be struggling to fly some way ahead. “Hello,” he said to himself. “I wonder what that might be. Funny looking bird. In fact, it looks more like a big bat to me. I say, it couldn’t be a Vampire, could it?”
He continued to scrutinise the object as it dipped and wavered over the sky. “It’s not flying very well, whatever it is. In fact, it appears to be injured in some way. I think it would only be charitable to lend it a hand.” And he shot off towards the bat at high speed. In a matter of seconds he was flitting around the Vampire and inspecting its ragged wings.
“I say. Whatever did that to you must have been a big blighter. Does it hurt?”
The giant bat seemed to suddenly become aware of his presence, and, screeching in terror, it folded its damaged wings and fell from the sky. The Imp powered after it, and, flying below its tumbling form, he reached out and lifted it back aloft. “Have a care, you could’ve hit the ground!”
“Leave me alone!” the bat screamed. “I know nothing, and I won’t give you any information!”
“Fair enough. But I don’t actually want any information. Now, who are you, and where are you going?”
“I’ll tell you nothing!”
“All right, all right! Calm down. You don’t have to say a thing. Though I suppose you want to join Queen Thirrin and the Witchfather to help in their war. There’re plenty of other Vampires there.”
“What do you know about the Queen and the Witchfather? You’re . . . you’re an Imp!”
“Do you know, ever since arriving in the Physical Plains I’ve suffered nothing but insults and blind prejudice. I suppose you’re making the assumption that I have ulterior motives?”
“Well, yes,” said the giant bat. “You’re a small demon, and as a species you’re evil!”
“Fortunately not all of us adhere to that particular stereotype,” said Pious wearily. “I’m fully aware that my words will carry no weight whatsoever, but I mean you no harm, and you can rely on me completely.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Quite simply, because I could have ripped you to shreds by now if I’d chosen to do so; you’re in such a bad way you wouldn’t have had a chance of defending yourself.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But you’ll forgive me if I ask a few questions before I make any decisions about trusting you.”
“Certainly,” Pious agreed. “Now might I suggest you ask for information that no enemy of the Allies would be likely to know?”
The bat thought for a few moments, then said, “What’s the name of the Queen’s youngest son?”
“Charlemagne,” Pious replied. “Sharley, to his friends. Next!”
“All right, then; what’s the name of his closest friend?”
“Mekhmet. He’s Crown Prince of the Desert Kingdom and—”
“Does he have any non-human friends?”
“Lots. Werewolves – myself, I’m proud to say – even a few Vampires. But his best non-human friend is Princess Kirimin of the Icesheets. She’s a Snow Leopard, and daughter to Tharaman-Thar and Krisafitsa-Tharina. Any more?”
“No, I suppose I’ll just have to trust you,” the Vampire replied. “Besides, I don’t really have any choice; if I don’t get help soon I won’t reach the Queen anyway.”
“In which case, the question of my intentions towards you becomes quite academic, does it not?” said Pious. “If I help you, you’ll reach your intended destination; if I don’t, you’ll die.”
“True,” the Vampire replied. “As I said, I have no choice really.”
“None whatsoever,” Pious agreed. “Right. Off we go!”
“Where are we going?”
“To find Queen Thirrin, of course. Last I heard, she was heading south to do battle with Erinor. It’ll be interesting to see what the outcome of that little confrontation may be.”
For the rest of the day Pious helped the giant bat to stay airborne, augmenting its feeble wing-beats by flying beneath it and holding it up. Progress was slow, and as the sun descended to its setting they were silhouetted against the livid red of the sky.
They journeyed on through the night, flying over the city of Romula that was lit up below them like a galaxy in the darkness of the surrounding plain. And then, with surprising speed, they came upon a second city of lights – but this time the houses were tents, and the walls were the watchful eyes and spears of sentries posted at strategic points all around the camp’s perimeter.
“Looks like we’ve made it,” said Pious to the Vampire. But there was no reply. The Undead warrior was unconscious.
With much slapping of cheeks and some very colourful insults, the Imp managed to revive the Vampire enough to make him realise where they were. “You’d better warn your kindred you’re about to come in to land,” said Pious.
The Vampire nodded. Raising his head, he gave the high-pitched warning call of his kind.
“Do it again. We want them to know it’s urgent, and not just some routine patrol coming back.”
This time the giant bat let out a great screaming bellow that echoed over the sky, then slumped into unconsciousness.
Pious struggled to keep the Vampire airborne as they clumsily circled down to the ground. “The landing won’t be textbook, I’m afraid,” he gasped to himself. “I’d better look for something soft to crash into!” He desperately scanned the camp below him, and saw only scurrying soldiers and general panic. “We’re coming in! Move! Look out! LOOK OUT!”
“All right! We’ve got him!” said a sudden voice as four Vampires appeared and took the weight, their huge wings beating into the air as they slowed the descent. “Down there – the Witchfather’s waiting.”
The night boomed and pulsed with the sound of labouring flight as the Vampires gently lowered their injured comrade. A tall and slender figure then hurried forward and bent over the prostrate form. “These are injuries from a psychic blast,” Oskan said, as he quickly examined the burns and rents over the bat’s body. “But he must metamorphose to his human shape. I can only work on his base form, not a magically derived simulacrum. Th
e treatment won’t take otherwise.”
The other Vampires gathered round and helped the injured bat regain his human form. “Fine,” said Oskan. “Now I can work.”
Cressida fought to put aside the atmosphere of war and fighting that clung to her like the smell of blood. She’d washed again and again, combed her hair, shocked the guards once more by putting on a dress, and still she felt like a machine created purely for killing. It didn’t occur to her that anyone else might feel the same; she presumed the struggle to regain a sense of humanity after such wholesale slaughter was hers alone. After all, Leonidas seemed to come alive when on the battlefield; gone was his social incompetence, his mumbling and shambling, and in their stead was an assured and elegant warrior who moved with the deadly grace of a hunting cat. Why would Leonidas want to be anything else other than a fighter? Certainly, as a potential lover he was hopeless; even Cressida, who was a complete novice herself when it came to the gentle arts of finding a mate, could see he was ridiculous!
She sat back in her chair and considered the problem, artfully avoiding admitting to herself that concentrating on Leonidas and his bumbling was an ideal way to forget the horrors of the recent battle. She tried to settle the huge amounts of cloth that made up her dress, and failed utterly. Why did women put up with wearing such monstrosities? But eventually her mind returned to the commander and his social incompetence.
She’d sent a guard to fetch him less than five minutes ago, and she calculated that she still had another few minutes to decide on her strategy before he arrived. She’d already come to the conclusion that there was little point in waiting for Leonidas to make any meaningful moves, and so all she needed to do was to advance upon him herself and break down his defences. She found that viewing him as a heavily fortified city that she must capture concentrated her mind wonderfully, and provided her with a modus operandi she would otherwise have lacked.
The sound of approaching feet alerted her, and she sat up straight and quickly patted her hair. Within seconds the entrance to her campaign tent was flung open, and the werewolf and housecarle guard marched in with Leonidas between them. It almost looked as though he was under arrest, and after taking one look at her in a dress, he then managed to look like a man on his way to the gallows.
“Commander Leonidas,” the human soldier announced with a huge grin. Escorting the Polypontian officer to and from the Crown Princess was swiftly becoming one of the highlights of his duties. Only pay parade came anywhere near to it for sheer joy.
“We found him having a bath,” the werewolf guard added. “But as you’d ordered his presence immediately, we helped him finish off and dry himself.”
Cressida looked at Leonidas and shuddered when she saw the huge red marks, like rope burns, all over the exposed areas of his flesh. Obviously a werewolf’s idea of towelling someone dry was a little rougher than the average human being was used to. She dreaded to think what the rest of his body looked like and then immediately blushed at the very thought.
“Thank you,” she finally said in her haughtiest tones. “You may leave us.”
The guards looked deeply disappointed, but contented themselves with nudging each other as they backed out of the Royal Presence. With a bit of luck they’d be able to hear their conversation as they guarded the tent. It was amazing how people forgot that a canvas wall wasn’t very soundproof.
Cressida decided to start her campaign immediately, and after observing the commander for a few seconds, she said, “You can sit down, you know.”
She pointed to a chair that was already positioned at an angle to hers. After the chaos and fiasco of Leonidas’s last attempt to find somewhere to sit, she was taking no risks. He dropped into it, wincing slightly as his buttocks made contact with the seat. Obviously the werewolf had been very attentive when helping him to dry.
“You’ve recovered from the battle, then?”
Leonidas was relieved to have a familiar subject to talk about and nodded. “I wasn’t, erm, you know . . . injured really, as you know . . . erm . . . just a few scratches and, you know . . . lots of bruises.”
“Yes,” Cressida agreed. “In fact you seemed to have suffered more being helped out of your bath.”
“I think the werewolf meant well, but he was a little . . . robust.”
“As a species, they’re a little robust.”
“Yes.”
A huge silence now started to stretch out between them, and Cressida began to despair. Only the everyday sounds of the camp broke into the billowing silence as she desperately tried to find something to say. At one point she thought she heard a stifled giggle coming from outside the tent, and then a gasp that was suspiciously like the noise someone makes when elbowed hard in the midriff. But then the silence returned, and Leonidas’s face began to burn.
Cressida could have howled in desperate frustration. Just what was it about the pair of them? Why couldn’t they talk like the two responsible, intelligent human beings they obviously were? Why did their meetings have to descend into painful farce? But then at last she began to get angry, her military resolve asserted itself and she threw caution to the wind.
“For goodness’ sake, Leonidas. Do I have to spell it out? Are you willing . . . would you like . . . do you want to . . . would you consider . . .?”
“YES!” Leonidas blurted, and a small, hastily muffled cheer sounded from outside.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” Cressida said irritably. “I might have been about to ask you to drink poison!”
“Oh! Erm . . . yes . . . I mean, no . . . I’m sure you wouldn’t, well, you know, ask such a thing of anybody . . . you’re too . . . perfect!”
This time there were unmistakeably two loud guffaws from outside the tent, but Cressida ignored them. She felt her entire body burn in a combination of acute embarrassment and pure pleasure. He thought she was perfect! Nobody had ever accused her of that before. She was considered by everyone to be overbearing, bossy, rude, unreasonable and pedantic, but never perfect! Not even her mother thought she was perfect!
“Then you . . . you will?” she asked at last.
“Of course! With . . . erm, you know . . . immediate effect. Abso . . . you know . . . absolutely!”
A great, glowing, rushing flood of happiness and relief swept through Cressida from top to toe, and she leaped to her feet and spontaneously clapped her hands for joy. Then she stopped. “But you still don’t know what I was going to ask!” she said with suspicious pessimism. Perhaps he thought she wanted him to exercise her warhorse or something.
“Yes, I do!” Leonidas answered. “Or at least I think I . . . erm, you know, I think I do.”
“Well, say it then, what do you think I want you to do? Or more to the point, what do you think I want you to be?”
Leonidas now began to doubt his interpretation of events, and went crimson with the mortifying idea that he could have got everything horribly wrong. “I think . . . well . . . I thought . . . you know . . . that you wanted me . . . to, you know . . . be your . . . well . . . I’m not sure how to say . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake! She wants you to be her mate,” a rough werewolf voice provided from beyond the canvas wall of the tent.
“Yeah!” a human voice agreed. “She wants you to be her ‘bit of stuff’!”
“That’s right! She wants you for her partner in the Great Wrestling Match of Love!”
“Yeah! Her Bed Piece!”
“Not only that, she wants you to be her—”
“All right, thank you! We get the idea!” Cressida called out angrily. Then, turning to Leonidas, she said: “Well?”
“Oh! Erm . . . well, you know, definitely . . . absolutely . . . certainly . . . yes . . . no question . . . without doubt . . . indubitably . . .”
“All right, thank you! We get the idea!” a rough werewolf voice called from outside the tent.
Thirrin watched her husband as he drank the wine she’d given him. “Well, what did you lear
n from the Vampire?”
“Not good,” he answered, sitting back wearily in the chair that stood in the middle of Thirrin’s campaign tent. “We’re invaded again.”
“What?!” She leaped to her feet, and was just about to call for a bugler when Oskan held up his hand.
“Hear me out first. There’re things to explain, and a few more minutes’ll make no difference one way or the other.”
She looked at him, then nodded, trusting his judgement. “Go on.”
“It’s no ordinary invasion. Medea’s come home, in the company of my father.”
The words fell as stark and hard as pebbles into the silence of the tent. But at last Thirrin swallowed and said, “What else did the Vampire tell you? Do . . . does the enemy control all of the Icemark?”
Oskan shook himself, as though breaking free from unwelcome thoughts. “Um? Oh, yes . . . virtually. But Her Vampiric Majesty has been fighting hard to slow them down. Successfully too, by the looks of things. If she hadn’t been there to contest Cronus’s control, he’d have broken out by now and would probably have conquered most of the Northern Continent. We’ve a lot to thank the Vampires for.”
“So it would seem,” said Thirrin thoughtfully. “But what do you advise we do now?”
“For the moment, nothing. I need to make an in-depth reconnaissance, after which we can make plans.”
“Fine. When do you go?”
“Right now,” he answered. “Expect me back at nightfall.” And with that he took one step away and disappeared, leaving Thirrin to brood in the sudden silence.
CHAPTER 29