ASHE
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Chapter Seven
Sleep… Was it sleep or was it diving? She was surfacing slowly, coming up from the cool green depths. Her eyes were wide open and she could see the weeds moving in the current. Fish slid past her. She reached the surface and duck-dived. This time the water’s hold on her was more determined: Ashe felt arms pulling her back. She twisted in that grip and woke. Calliope and Sam woke up, too.
“We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry,” said Calliope, as quickly as she could. Sam was half-hiding behind her. “We were cold.”
Ashe blinked. A wash of pain struck her. She put up her hand and felt with tentative fingertips the sore patch at the back of her head. “We’re sorry about that, too,” said Sam. “We didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Ashe stared at them both. Then she put up a hand as if to silence them. “I know who you are, don’t I? At least, I think I know what you are.”
“We’re your almost cousins,” said Calliope, simply. “I’m Calliope. This is Sam. We left the river to come with you for a while. We borrowed shapes like yours.”
“To come with me? How can you leave the river behind?”
“Well, to be honest, we can’t,” said Sam. “At least, we can’t for long. But we can for now. We saw you and we wanted to help you.”
Things were beginning to clear in Ashe’s still half-asleep brain. She remembered water. It wasn’t just that she’d dreamed it, there was more to it than that. And the two girls were water spirits: Ashe didn’t doubt that for a second. She even found their faces oddly familiar. She closed her eyes and tried to recall the whole of the images that had been scudding about her brain. There had been a fall. Had she fallen? Surely if she had, there’d be a trace of the hurt. But when she looked down at her hands and forearms she could see no change. No change, except… She could see the faintest possible lines on her skin, like old, old scars. She scowled, puzzled.
“It’s very kind of you to want to come with me,” said Ashe, “but I’m afraid I don’t know where I’m going.” And she got no further. As they sat beneath the tree there echoed all around the valley a howl so deep and blood-curdling that the three of them fell silent. Ashe’s mouth went dry and she had to force herself to swallow twice before she managed to say, “What in the name of all the Gods was that?”
Another howl, and this time shouts, too, and from not far away. They began, all three of them, to run in the direction of the disturbance.
*******
Some time after dawn, when the sky was so lovely it hurt to look at it, the queen spoke. But her voice was too tremulous to be heard. Laure brushed the soft hair back from the queen’s forehead and then sat back down again on the bed. Jura sat in a chair beside the bed.
Laure had gone past the point of exhaustion, and now she was deadened to everything. Nothing felt real any more. In some respects this deadness helped Laure: it was impossible to think about anything other than the queen. The Elders had produced an elixir that had made the queen sleep more easily. Other than that, it didn’t seem to have made any difference.
Laure rose again, stretched, yawned. The fire had burned all through the night and the air in the royal bedchamber was mild enough, but despite that, Laure felt cold and stiff. She went to the basin and splashed water over her face but even that wasn’t clearing her head. She glanced down into the courtyard and saw that it was full of people. Then she heard a cry of such pain and outrage that it startled her. The duty guard had just brought in Alexis on a stretcher.
The details reached Calypso easily enough: an early-morning patrol had seen – on passing the foot of the seer’s tower - that Rhea’s door was swung on a single hinge. Two of them had cautiously ascended the steps. Seconds later they’d reappeared. After that they had put together a stretcher of sorts, on which to carry Alexis.
Calypso looked down on Alexis’s pale face and saw with dismay the blood that had soaked through the fabric of the stretcher. The injury was an odd one: when Alexis had been thrown against wall she had struck a post once used by Rhea from which to hang flowers, and become impaled upon it. In the unlikely event of her having come round, the guard said that she would have been incapable of helping herself. The guard who found Alexis had been forced to pull her free. The sticky noises incurred by the process of extracting Alexis had left the duty guard feeling universally sick. One of the guard, young, inexperienced, and unused to blood, was still being sick in a distant corner of the courtyard.
Laure heard only the distant echoes of the words, but that hardly mattered: Calypso was alert to the situation. She gave orders that the Elders be called to attend Alexis. Then she went up the stairs to the royal bedchamber like a woman possessed, or a too-tightly compressed spring uncoiling. At the door she paused for the shortest instant to regain her control, took a deep breath and lost the plot.
Laure was standing in the middle of the room. When Calypso came crashing in, she had stopped dead. “What’s wrong?” she asked, foolishly, confused.
Calypso went to the bed and gripped the footboard so hard that she cracked the wood. She hung by her arms, her face down, her breathing ragged and brutal. Laure went toward her and then hesitated. The sounds coming out of Calypso were just too horrible. It sounded like a dozen axe blades being pulled across a stone floor. Calypso finally hauled herself upright. “What did you do to her?” The words came out in a scream.
Laure and Jura both said, said, confusedly, stupidly, “Who? The queen?”
Calypso was nearly dancing with rage. “THE QUEEN? OF COURSE NOT THE QUEEN. WHAT KIND OF IDIOT DO YOU THINK I AM?” She drew a deep breath and attempted an impression of self-control. “What have you done to Alexis?”
Laure and Jura said, as one, and equally blank-faced. “Alexis? Has something happened to Alexis?”
A servant appeared at the open door. One of Laure’s servants. Calypso turned a horrid stare upon the girl, and then yelled, “What?”
“Your highness, the Elders have sent to tell you that they think your servant Alexis will live.” Laure watched as the livid patches of red and white that had patterned Calypso’s face began to fade.
Calypso’s head was spinning. Laure went to her, helped her into a chair. “What has happened to Alexis?” When Calypso said nothing, Laure looked toward her servant for further explanation.
“Your highness, it seems that the Mercian suffered some kind of attack. She was found in the seer’s tower. There was no-one else there, and nothing to explain the injuries she sustained.”
Laure looked at Calypso. It was clear to everyone in the room that the beast of Calypso’s recent fury was still very much in possession. Laure moved toward the queen, as a kind of shield, and the servant backed toward the door, a living illustration of fear and trepidation. But Calypso managed a super-human control and turned an almost normal expression upon Laure. “Is the queen alright?” she asked her.
“She… She’s much the same,” said Laure. “She’s sleeping more deeply, which is all to the good.”
Calypso was pacing. “Much the same. Sleeping deeply. Good. Good.” Then she said, “I must go and see what’s happening down there.” She moved so briskly out of the door that Laure’s servant had to jump to avoid being run down. The atmosphere in the room was instantly eased by Calypso’s leaving it.
*******
Lammor and the surrounding countries were home to a wide range of animals, even if most of them were seldom seen. There were horses, goats and sheep, of course, and the smaller creatures, rabbits, mice and so on. Less often seen were the creatures of myth, folklore and legend like the Auroch, twelve foot high (at the shoulder) jet black bulls, with great curving horns. They breathed fire. And on the other hand, there were the big silver and black kargs.
Alex had heard about the kargs. She even thought she remembered seeing one, once. The kargs were a kind of huge cat, with large ears and bizarre fur that seemed to stick out at all angles. They had golden eyes which – legend had it – could contain sufficient power to hypnotise their prey. Ashe didn’t know about that, but as she ran fast and desperately across the valley floor, Ashe was pretty sure that it was a karg’s howl that she had heard.
She reached the top of a grassy bank and looked down at the scene below her. It was a karg, and it was howling. It howled because it had an arrow sticking out of its shoulder – Ashe could see the dark patch of blood on the black and silver fur - and because a group of hunters were circling it. No-one was coming in close, and no-one was risking direct contact. Ashe hurled herself into the arena and shouted, “You can’t kill it! They’re protected!”
One of the hunters grabbed Ashe by the shoulder and tried to spin her around. “Just get the fuck out of this, sister,” she snapped. “It ain’t your fight.” Another arrow homed in on the karg, just missing a fore-paw.
Sam and Calliope were approaching, but they were too far away to do anything constructive. Ashe threw caution to the winds. “Get away from it now!” she roared, and the hunters looked at her with amazement. One of them put an arrow to her bow and aimed it at Ashe.
“You want the next arrow in your ribs?” The threat was very real and something in it incensed Ashe beyond anything she’d ever felt before. The big cat was beautiful, and the Gods alone knew that they were never to be taken alive. Ashe reached for her sword and swung in the direction of the archer, cutting the top of the bow clean off, the arrow dropping impotently onto the ground.
Ashe leapt toward the karg, which, wonder of wonders, did not immediately take out her throat. It growled horribly, to be sure, but it only backed further away from the hunters.
So they stood, the big cat and the newly-resurrected woman, back to back on the plain, facing their aggressors. Ashe felt the swing and bite of her sword and liked it. It was a little too heavy for her, but if she remembered to adjust her balance when she used it, she would be alright. And she was utterly sick of anything getting hurt.
The hunters rushed in, three on one side, facing Ashe, and two on the other, coming at the karg. Ashe’s sword smashed through one spear, and cut another down to the ground when it was flung at the karg. She kicked one of the women hard in the stomach, sending her flying, and then she met the next in hand-to-hand combat. She was fast, she was completely without fear and she was winning… Ashe would have been stunned by the balance of the situation had she had a chance of feeling anything. But she worked the sword, not wanting to kill, just wanting to force them off. And when Calliope and Sam came upon the scene, the two water spirits stopped dead.
By that time, Ashe and the cat were only feet apart, back to back. And with the dust rising around them, there was the oddest suggestion of harmony inherent in the image. Calliope grabbed Sam by the hand and forced her down. “We’d only be in the way,” she said. She watched for a moment more and added, “Besides, Sam, I think they might be winning.” Sam just stared in fascination.
The remaining hunters began to circle Ashe and her new companion, but the odds were changing. Ashe had taken two of the hunters out and the karg had clawed the arm of one woman brave enough – or stupid enough – to try and get close. One of the hunters threw her spear, harpoon-style, toward the two: not caring which of them she struck.
The cat would have been struck by the spear-point, but Ashe got there first. She swung round and smashed her sword down on the spear even as it flew toward them. The force of the impact sent the broken pieces flying. Ashe kicked out again and caught another of the hunters mid-thigh, so that she screamed and dropped to the ground. The others seemed to have lost their desire to fight. Two of them reached for the woman Ashe had just fought and, taking an arm each, began to drag her away. The others stumbled after them.
After the intense noise and excitement of the previous minutes, the silence that then fell did so with a resounding thud. Ashe bent and prosaically began to re-tie the lace on one of her boots, and Sam and Calliope came running up, both of them wide-eyed.
The karg was still behind Ashe. When the two spirits arrived, it backed a few paces further off, then hesitated. Ashe swung round again, but easily, lightly. The karg sat facing her.
*******
Alexis lay on a bed in the palace hospital. The hospital had been almost unused in the recent years of the queen’s and Jura’s reign. Her skin looked very white, and the veins seemed to shine, they looked so bright. One of the Elders put her hand on Calypso’s arm. “We think there is an infection within the wound,” she said. “Her skin is burning.” Calypso put out a reluctant hand toward Alexis: she was unfazed by warfare but sickness had never been her strong point. But she let her hand rest for an instant on Alexis’s shoulder, and felt the heat of the flesh beneath her fingers.
“There has been a great loss of blood,” said another of the Elders. “It will take time to heal her.”
Calypso thought, whatever! Then she thought: Cairo. It must have been. That bloody captain of the stables. She stopped and frowned. No. Not possible. Cairo had been strong and slim, but she hadn’t had the strength to inflict that kind of injury: the spike that was stained with Alexis’s blood was almost five feet off the floor. There was no way that a solitary individual could have done that. She slumped into a chair beside Alexis’s bed, her legs stretched out, her booted feet crossed. She leaned her head back against the unyielding wood of the chair and closed her eyes. She felt very very tired.
The Elders attended Alexis, and Calypso could see that they were both fascinated and repelled by the scarification of Alexis’s skin. It had taken Calypso’s captain most of her life to learn and apply the magic that had been inscribed onto her flesh. Calypso had always found the marking to be both unattractive and threatening, although Alexis had never loosed any of her power on her. Now she found herself regarding her former lover as though the signs were a map of a country Calypso did not know.
She stared into the middle distance, dry-eyed, for the first time missing Mercia, wondering how this latest turn in events could have come about.
*******
Sam and Calliope stared. Ashe held her sword loosely in her hand and then lowered it to the ground. She eyed the karg warily but not with fear. She wasn’t sure if she was about to be attacked or not, but she knew that she didn’t want to fight the karg. Bury her face in the silver fur, perhaps, but nothing more. She looked at the arrow still sticking out at a horrid, sharp angle, then knelt down, facing the karg. Sam and Calliope watched her. Ashe put out a gentle hand, and the karg came slowly toward her. Ashe shrugged off her jacket and used it to wrap around her left arm. She was ready when the animal sprang forward, gripping the protected arm and closing its jaws hard, but the impact was worse than a heavy punch, and it hurt.
Ashe knew that she had very little time: in tandem with the karg closing its teeth on her, she reached for arrow-head and the body of the arrow, gripped both tightly and tugged as hard as she could. This process made a sound so horrible that it made Sam gag, but the arrow was out. Fresh droplets of blood hit the ground.
The rebounding force of the motion sent Ashe backwards, and she landed with a thud that knocked the breath out of her. The grip on her arm was gone, and she held the bloody remains of the arrow tightly in her fist. The karg paused for an instant, sniffed at the wound, regarded Ashe and then turned around and ran for the protection of the forest.
Ashe scrambled to the feet, Sam supporting her on one side and Calliope on the other. They hesitantly unwound the fabric from Ashe’s arm. The flesh was not broken, but already a wide bruise was forming, and Ashe felt the sick throb of pain. Calliope had found the flask of brandy and held it up so that Ashe could drink. The liquid burned a path through Ashe’s body, and made her shiver. Sam was crying. Ashe hugged her gently with her good arm.