The Patrimony

18

At the same moment Mehleena was decimating her own ragtag little army, Uhlos, the wine steward, now commanding the walls, was notified by a tower sentinel of a cloud of dust rapidly approaching from the direction of the west hall village. Jumping to the sadly erroneous conclusion that said dust cloud heralded the arrival of the expected company of Captain Deemos, Uhlos set his few men to the laborious tasks of lowering the drawbridge spanning the twenty-foot width of the deep ditch fronting the hall, raising the oak-and-iron grille that served to protect the outer gate from rams, then unbarring and swinging wide both the outer and inner gates.

These lowerings and raisings and openings took much time and effort for the undermanned, inexperienced contingent to accomplish, and by the time Uhlos became aware of his fatal error, it would have been too late to even attempt to reclose the approaches to the hall. Far too late even had not he and the few survivors of his force been cowering in the low, central tower, while the rest of the unarmored men lay still or feebly twitching on the wall walk, with bright-feathered arrows jutting from various portions of their anatomies.

While their retainers went about retrieving their arrows and such weapons as were on or about the fallen, then shoving dead and dying alike through the crenels to thump onto the bottom of the boulder-strewn ditch forty feet down, the nobles got quick and complete answers to all their questions from the pale and trembling wine steward, Uhlos.

When they had returned to the main courtyard below, Tahm Adaimyuhn stepped to his horse long enough to unstrap a case containing his silver-mounted throwing stick and six Ahrmehnee darts—short, heavy and infamous. He tightened the carrystrap over his armor and baldric so that they jutted in easy reach over his left shoulder.

As he returned to his three peers, Komees Dik was saying, “Well, to put it all in a walnut shell, Tim and the loyal folk hold the central portion of the hall, that bastard didn’t know how many levels and neither do we; the Ehleen bitch and her whelps, most of the servants and one company of those ruffian-soldiers hold the rest of the hall; but we hold the walls and this courtyard and those murdering rebel dogs don’t know that fact yet.”

“So there’s one company in the hall, one feeding the crows back up the road yonder and one unaccounted for. Now it’s a pretty fair bet that the other company won’t have engines or rams, but let’s play it safe and raise that bridge. If we do that and place guards on the posterns, the dung-spawned rebels will be rats in a pit and we, my lads, will be the terriers. Too bad none of us is much good at far-speak, for I know good old Sir Geros will regret missing the fun.”

Leaving a dozen men to man the walls and guard the small rear gates, the four gentlemen clanked into the south wing at the head of thirty-two fighters. The intaking was ferocious, brutal and quickly done. No quarter was expected or proffered, but at Komees Dik’s express command, Speeros Sanderz and his two maternal cousins. Xeelos and Mailos, were taken alive—battered but alive. So, too, were the younger, prettier Ehleen serving women—at no one’s command, rather by an unvoiced but general agreement. Mehleena’s younger children were in the north wing and were not found until long after the heat of bloodlust had cooled.

It was near sunset before the company marched in from the eastern village. Captain Plehkos spurred ahead of his men and reined up at the edge of the ditch, demanding that the bridge be lowered. In the dusk, he failed to recognize the stiff, grayish, naked corpses of Mehleena and Captain Ahreestos, dangling by their ankles above the gate. His armor saved him from the arrows, but his horse lacked any such protection. Captain Plehkos executed a retrograde movement at a limping run, commandeered the mule from a sergeant then led his forty-eight bravos far enough down the hill to be well out of bow range.

Komees Dik, Vahrohneeskos Tahm and the others were all for mounting and sallying out to finish the job of rebel eradication, but Tim—who had assumed overall command with natural ease and without argument—shook his head.

“No, Kinsmen, you have had your fun. There are those coming who have not so leave yon bandits to them.” Then he added, on a serious note, “If you want an occupation for your men, set them to finding that whoreson Myron. We found his armor in that room where his bitch mother was killed, but sword, dirk and the pervert himself are gone, along with his bum boy, the cook, Gaios. You say you had all exits guarded so he must still be in this hall. I charge you, Kindred, find that precious pair. I’ve a stake prepared that will no doubt tickle his arse to such a degree that the folk off in Morguhnpolis will hear his shrieks of pleasure!”

But when a nightlong search failed to produce even a clue to the missing men, Tim sought out Sir Geros, locating him at last lowering a cloth-wrapped bundle onto a pyre of faggots he had laid between his small house and the outer wall.

There were tears in the baronet’s eyes and the traces of more down his stubbled cheeks, as he lifted his head to face Tim. “Poor old Brownie,” he said chokedly, his lips drawn in a tight line. “The oldest hound in the duchy. The last gift Komees Hari Daiviz of Morguhn presented your late father, near eighteen years agone. He was near blind and his teeth were so worn down that he could not eat meat unless I chewed it for him first, so I kept him here by me where I knew he would sleep warm of cold nights. Those bastards couldn’t find me here to kill, so they murdered old Brownie, speared the poor beast where he lay on my hearth.”

They sent the faithful old dog to Wind together, Tim chanting what he could recall of the Lament of Sanderz, as he would have sung it for the sending to Wind of a human Kinsman.

Later, over brandy in the sitting room of his cottage, Sir Geros remarked, “Tim, I hate to discourage you, but Myron and Gaios might’ve got away clean … or they could still be in the hall.”

Tim shook his head, tiredly. “Not in my hall, Geros. I’d stake my horse on it! Why, man, we went through that place from top to bottom, then from bottom to top, from the cisterns in the spring cellar to the bat roosts in the attics. And every one of the outbuildings, too, and all the towers, and down the stable well and the privies. We found some remarkable things but not one hair of my perverted half brother and his pooeesos.”

Geros sipped at the fiery brandy, then said slowly, “No, Tim, you’re wrong, though you have no way of knowing it, not till now, at least.”

“Tim, your pa was haunted by the shades of the Vawn Kindred, and it was for long his constant terror that he would be trapped in his hall, and helplessly murdered as were so many of them by the Ehleen rebels in the Great Rebellion. Therefore, when his old friend and comrade Sir Ehdt Gahthwahlt designed this hall, he prepared two sets of plans. When the building was done, one set was burned. It’s the other, incomplete set that’s among your pa’s papers.”

“Tim, there’s tunnels and stairways and passages and hidey-holes in this hall even I don’t know about, and I’ve been castellan since it was finished. Only your pa knew them all, and there’s a good chance Mehleena got some of those secrets out of him from time to time, her and her witch.”

Tim pursed his lips. “Friend Geros, I wouldn’t throw that old charge of witchcraft about too much from now on, were I you. If Mistress Neeka passes all the tests they’ll put her to in Kehnooryos Atheenahs, she’ll be declared a High Lady of this Confederation of ours, and it has been my experience that women—all women, high or lowly—have long memories for insults or slights.” He chuckled. “Not to mention that most women are far more dangerous than men because their strength and determination are so often underestimated.”

The hapless rebel bravos of Captain Plehkos milled about the base of the hill in uncertainty for an hour too long, only attempting to disperse and scatter when they spotted the vanguard of Arhkeethoheeks Bili of Morguhn’s column … and by then, of course, it was far too late for any of them. The middle-aged archduke led his dragoons, and Tim—on a hastily saddled Steelsheen and accompanied by his four noble relatives—spurred forth to take command of his own company of lancers. Then the horsemen rode down their two-legged game with the whoops and shouts of the hunt rather than war cries. Tahm took one more head, and only Captain Plehkos, rendered insensible when his wounded mule bucked him off, was taken alive.

The rebel captain would much have preferred a quick death from lance or saber, axe or arrow, for Bili of Morguhn—who had right speedily pressed his rightful claim to Speeros Sanderz, the captain and the majordomo, Tonos, who had been found cowering in an old privy pit during the searching for Myron—made no secret of the great delight he would derive from their interrogation, torture and eventual execution.

Tonos collapsed, befouling himself in an excess of unconcealed terror. The veteran Plehkos’ face went white as whey, but he just set his square jaws in silence. Speeros Sanderz, at fifteen, more of a man than his hulking elder brother had ever been, just sneered, then coolly spit at the archduke’s feet.

“Threaten and bluster all you like, cousin,” he snapped, superciliously. “But we both know, you and I, that you dare not harm or slay me for fear of our prince, my poor mother’s cousin. Her murder alone already weighs right heavy on your head!”

Bili grinned like a winter wolf. “Once that was so, young sir, but no more, Sun and Wind be praised. You and your ilk have removed yourselves from any scintilla of protection. You rose in armed and organized rebellion against your rightful overlords, and were Zenos to try to intercede for you in any way, all loyal noblemen would view him tarred with the same brush … and you may rest assured that the prince, your cousin, recognizes his jeopardy as clearly as do I.”

“As regards your late dam, the valiant Tonos, here, has signed a sworn statement that she went berserk when your dear brother publicly demonstrated that he held his wretched life of more value than his honor. Stout Tonos goes on to say that she then attacked your brother and a whole roomful of men with an axe. Tonos saw no more after that, but your mother was already dead when first the loyal warriors entered that room. As she was run through with an antique slashing sword, I think it safe to assume that one of her own armed jailbirds did it; so she was hoist on her own treasonous hooks, and I only regret that she did not live to be hoist upon a dull stake.”

Bili had the three prisoners manacled and weighted with chains and guarded closely by his handpicked dragoons, lest they find a way to take their own lives.

While Tim and his noble guests dawdled over their post-prandial wines and cordials in the lamp-lit dining chamber, tall bonfires threw leaping, dancing shadows in both main and rear courtyards, where lancers and dragoons, Ahrmehnee and Kindred milled and laughed and shouted, gorging themselves on coarse bread and dripping chunks carved from the whole oxen slowly revolving on the spits, guzzling tankards of foaming beer, tart cider and watered wine.

The Ahrmehnee loved music and dancing even more than did the Ehleenee, and their musicians never went far without their instruments. Around one of the bright, crackling fires, a circling line of the young warriors of Vahrohneeskos Tahm Adaimyuhn of Lion Mountain stamped and leaped in a fast-paced and intricately complicated dance, their deep chorus rising in the refrain of the ancient melody.

And the chorus and the shrilling flutes, twanging ouds, jangling tambourines and roaring rank of drums were almost enough to drown out the tearing screams of the captured rebel Ehleen serving girls, stripped, staked out and suffering repeated ravishment.

The noblemen and ladies strolled out onto the wide balcony that ran the length of the central portion of the Hall and connected the two wings. From there they watched the Ahrmehnee dancers for a while as Tahm Adaimyuhn recited the history of the songs and the significance of the dances. Then Tim, Bili, Tahm, Komees Dik, Sir Geros and the brothers Sanderz, Kahrl and Bahb, descended the stairs to make an appearance among their troops, drain off a tankard or two, nibble a little beef and publicly commend those fighters who had distinguished themselves in some way.

Blind Ahl and Sir Geros’ daughter, Mairee, retired to the suite they shared. Mistress Neeka, who looked to be and truly was still moving in a daze, made her way up to her old, familiar rooms, preferring the known comforts to the sumptuous south-wing suite Tim had offered her. Another reason she tamed in her cramped north-wing quarters was the proximity to Mehleena’s three daughters, whom she had taken it upon herself to console in their grief and fear.

Giliahna and Widahd lingered above-stairs only long enough to collect the necessaries, then trooped off to the semi-detached bath chamber, returning a good hour later. She and her dusky companion shared a minty cordial, then, while Giliahna sipped yet another thimbleful, the slender, graceful Zahrtohgan girl went into the main room to turn down her mistress’ bed and bank the hearth fire.

While sitting and musing, Giliahna chanced to think of a particularly treasured gift of her late husband she wished to show Tim when he presently came up to bed. But a quick fumbling through the trunks in the big closet failed to locate it.

“Widahd,” she muttered to herself, “will know where it is.” She opened the door to her bedroom and moved into the large, dim chamber, shrugging off her quilted robe and dropping it into a chair. But before she could kick off her low felt boots, a big, callused hand clamped over her mouth from behind and the icy needle point of a dirk or dagger was pressed painfully against her soft throat, just below the jaw where the vein throbbed.

Myron Sanderz’s deep, hateful voice growled in her ear, “If you scream or try to far-speak, you incestuous bitch, I’ll open your throat from ear to ear!”

Giliahna licked her lips and by a great effort of will kept her voice to a normal speaking level, devoid of any emotion or quaver. “What have you done with my friend, with Widahd? If you’ve slain her or harmed her …”

Myron removed the hand from her mouth but not the steel from her throat, took her shoulder and turned Giliahna to the right, so that she could see Widahd across the room near the hearth. The small woman had been gagged but was unbound. The cook, Gaios, had his left arm clamped about her arms and upper body while he menaced her with the broad blade of a Confederation-pattern short sword.

Abruptly, Myron pushed his captive forward far enough to hurl her nude body down upon the big bed. “Keep your mouth shut and your mind shielded, you sinful, unnatural slut, or Gaios will let the guts out of yon dung-colored pagan bitch!”

Giliahna’s initial shock and terror were being speedily replaced by cold rage and disgust—the rage directed toward the filthy, disheveled, stubble-faced and wild-eyed Myron, the disgust toward herself for having allowed this craven, perverted whoreson of a half-brother to glimpse even a bare eye-flick of her fear.

She levered herself up on her elbows and smiled at the black-haired man, mockingly. “You call me unnatural, brother dear? Then what, pray tell, are you? As regards dung, you should certainly know the color of it, since your abiding lust is to wallow in it.”

“Were you a natural man of normal lusts and designs, I’d assume you’d come to my suite to ravish me, steal my jewels and gold, then slay me before you sought out Tim and your own death. But I cannot picture you ravishing any female; a young lad, perhaps, but never a girl. As for my treasure, I’ll not make you a gift of it. If you want it, look for it. And you will find that Widahd and I will face such death as you and your bum boy mete out to us with more courage than such a known craven as you will ever be able to muster when your time comes!”

Myron had gone livid, his face twisted in wrath. “Kill you, bitch?” he snarled. “No, there be better ways to deal with strumpets like you!”

Before she knew what he was about, Myron was on the bed, kneeling astride her body, his weight and the strength of his legs pinning down her arms. His left hand clamped tightly over her mouth, grasped her jaw and turned her head. Then the sharp dirk opened Giliahna’s face to the bone from temple to jawline.

She struggled frantically but futilely, for Myron was nothing if not as strong as the proverbial ox. Finally, she sank her teeth into the palm of his hand. He did not lift the hand. Instead, he poised the point of his bloody blade above her face, grating, “Loosen your damned teeth, or I take out an eye!”

Widahd, like many Zahrtohgan women, went waking or sleeping with a pair of thin, flat little steel daggers hidden beneath her garments but within easy reach. These purely Zahrtohgan items were sheathed in tight metal cases, sealed with dense wax, and they required a real effort to uncase or draw. Such precautions were necessary to prevent fatal accidents, for the needle-tipped and razor-edged little weapons’ blades were coated their full length and width with a poison that brought slow and agonizing death and for which no antidote was known.

Moving slowly and carefully, Widahd had managed to draw the one on her right side. Ever so gradually, she brought her arm up, up, up, flexing it just enough to give power to her thrust, and cocked her wrist to impart the proper angle. Then, mustering all her strength and her not-inconsiderable courage, Widahd drove the full three inches of the blade deep into the muscles of Gaios’ sword arm.

The former cook vented a strangled scream. Widahd wrenched herself out of his slackened grasp and made for the bed, not even bothering to pull off the gag so intent was she on the deliverance of her loved mistress from the hulking torturer.

It was a brave effort, but it was doomed at its inception. Forgetting his wound, which though stinging ferociously was not bleeding very much, Gaios brought up his sword and stamped forward. With a meaty tchunnk, the broad, heavy blade descended to strike the valiant brown-skinned girl at the angle of her slender neck and her right shoulder, cleaving through flesh and bone to the sternum. The very force of the blow drove Widahd to her knees, and her shriek of mortal agony was muffled in the gag.

Setting a foot against the girl’s back, Gaios jerked his short sword free, propelling Widahd’s body facedown on the thick carpets, which quickly became soaked with more blood than one would have thought so small a body could contain. A glance showed Gaios that his master, Myron, had taken no notice of the brief, bloody affair, being completely absorbed in the disfigurement of his own victim. Grinning, the former cook dropped his clotted sword, rolled Widahd onto her back, hurriedly shredded off the front of her skirt and set about raping the dying young woman, heedless of the spurting gushes of blood that soon soaked his shirtfront.

Myron took his time on Giliahna’s right cheek, deliberately prolonging the agony. Tears poured from the suffering woman’s blue eyes to water the blood on her cruelly slashed face, but she had set her teeth and her will and no slightest sound came out to meet the barrier of that thick, dirty hand mashing down on her lips.

All the while he carefully marred Giliahna’s beauty, Myron hissed his plans for her and for Tim in a half-whisper. “The way you barbarians searched this hall was comical. Gaios and I could have departed anytime we wished, and we can still, unseen and unsuspected. I only remained to deal with our barbaric brother, Tim, and with you.”

“I know that he will come here, soon or late, intent upon doing more of his sinful incest with you. He certainly will be alone and unsuspecting and, like as not, unarmed, so Gaios and I should have no trouble dealing with him.”

“By all that is holy, I should be Thoheeks and chief of Sanderz-Vawn, but simply because I am a good, Christian man, my patrimony, my very birthright, is denied me. But if I cannot be chief, he will not sit in my place. As God is my witness, he will not!”

Showing his teeth in a grin of pure, evil malice, he went on, “Your barbarians will not have as new chief any maimed or crippled man, so when once we have immobilized dear Tim, I mean to dig out his right eye. I’d take them both, but I want him to have one so he can forevermore gaze upon what I’ll have done to you, sweet sister.”

“Then, when I’m done gelding him, I mean to hack off his right hand and his right foot and char the stumps in yonder fire.”

Widahd was not yet dead. She knew what the man was doing to her body, though she could not feel her defilement or much of anything else. But she was come of a warrior race and refused to die leaving her foe a chance of life. If the arm she had stabbed was removed quickly enough, he might just live. What she must deliver before she surrendered to oncoming death was a wound impervious to treatment.

Awkwardly, her numbing left band sought and found the hilt of her second little dagger, but the cold unfeeling fingers kept slipping off the abbreviated hilt and it seemed for long and long that she would not summon the strength to draw it. Then, at last, it was free, but she found she had used too much of her waning power. She could not stab up.

Haltingly, she worked her small hand and the knife between their two close-pressed bodies. As her ravisher raised himself slightly in preparation for a deeper thrust, she maneuvered the blade to an upward slant so that the straining man impaled himself on it, taking the length of it in his belly, between navel and crotch.

There was nothing strangled about Gaios’ second scream. It rang loud and long … and it served to alert Tim, just approaching the suite, and Sir Geros, who had bid his young lord goodnight and was about to descend the stairs.

Myron ignored the scream for the very good reason that he knew from the earlier sounds that his cohort was raping the Zahrtohgan and was wont to make loud noises in transport of pleasure. While a woman’s scream within the hall would have been sure to bring unwanted visitors tramping through the corridors and banging on doors and barging into suites, a man’s would not, not with wounded men and prisoners under the roof.

He had done at last with Giliahna’s right cheek. Turning her ravaged, gory face back, he hissed, “Hold still now. I’m going to carve a pi for Porneea on your brow, so that all will know you for the arrant whore you are.”

Tim and Geros, broadswords bared and ready, kicked open the bedroom door and burst into the room. Myron left off his carving of Giliahna’s ruined face and slid himself down her body far enough to get an inch of his blood-slimy dirk blade into her left breast, then he half-turned to face the armed men.

“Take one more step toward me, pagan bastards, and I’ll drive this blade into her heart!”

He had taken his hand from her mouth, and his weight now was on her belly rather than her chest and arms. Giliahna swallowed a mouthful of thick, hot blood, then shouted, “No! I am already hurt, terribly hurt. Take the swine alive, for Archduke Bili and my brother. Tell Tim I love him.” Then she grasped Myron’s knife hand and wrist with both her own hands and forced her body up violently, so that half the length of the wide, thick blade sank into her chest.

Tim was at the foot of the big bed in a single leap and the flat of his sword crashed against Myron’s temple, hurling his body to the floor in an unconscious heap. But then the young captain’s sword dropped from fingers suddenly gone cold and nerveless, and, as hot tears ran, he could but stare in grief and horror at what had been wrought upon this, the only woman he ever had loved … or ever would.

Her face was a mask of blood, with jaw, teeth and white bone winking through the slashed cheeks. Just above the red-pink nipple of her full right breast, the hilt and part of the blade of a heavy war dirk jutted up.

Geros glanced at what lay on the bed, then averted his eyes and stalked quickly to where Gaios had rolled off the body of Widahd and, his trousers still bunched about his knees, was sitting in obvious agony with a handful of cloth from her skirt pressed against his lower belly.

Geros sheathed his sword. “What ails you, bum boy? Bellyache, is it? Mayhap six feet or so of oaken clyster will, if not truly ease you, at least serve as a counterirritant.” He chuckled, then added, “That’s what you get for eating your own cooking, of course. You should’ve known better.”

Giliahna said weakly, “Tim … my love. Please … it hurts … so much … please take … it out.”

Tim walked on wooden legs up to where he could grasp the hilt of that cruel dirk that had robbed him of so much, of so many happy years. Quickly, he jerked the steel from his sister’s chest. He did not bother to try to staunch the blood-flow that followed the blade out, for he had seen many death wounds, and from its location, this could be nothing but such.

But she should have been dead long since. He was too experienced a warrior to deny that incredible, astounding survivals occurred now and then. And with the flare of a spark of hope, some of the leaden enervation left his body and his mind.

“Sir Geros,” he snapped. When that man stood close beside him, he said, “There may be a chance to save her. Go fetch Master Fahreed. At once!”

Even as he raced across the deserted balcony toward the north wing where several adjoining suites had been temporarily converted to a hospital and surgery, Geros knew himself bound on a fool’s errand. No mortal man or woman could survive a war dirk in the heart. But if fetching the Zahrtohgan physician would ease young Tim’s grieving mind, that is what he would do.

In the hospital, Geros had to pull his rank and almost his sword before Master Fahreed was finally summoned from another room. The tall man’s white robe was liberally spotted and smeared with fresh blood. He was scowling and his manner was brusque.

“Say your piece quickly and begone, Sir Geros. I’m in the middle of a chancy bit of emergency surgery on a brave young Ahrmehnee, whose skull was cracked in a drunken brawl. You Kindred are all mad. When all your enemies are slain, you turn on each other like starving wolves.”

But Geros could not speak fast enough for the master, who suddenly snapped, “You can mindspeak? Then lower your shield, man, I cannot waste more time.”

When he had scanned the contents of Geros’ mind, his scowl vanished and his tone softened. He placed a hand on the aging castellan’s shoulder and said, softly, “I grieve with you and your poor young lord, friend Geros. It was a terrible act, even for an Ehleen, and I of all men in this hall know that these Ehleenee can be beasts incarnate. But I must agree with your prognosis. A wound inflicted with a weapon like that in that area of the chest is invariably fatal.”

“I could do nothing for the woman, even were I to come, and I cannot come, nor can my apprentice, not now. I’m sorry.”

The blue-black man turned to go, shaking his shaven head. All at once, he turned back. “Sir Geros, Mistress Neeka, for whatever else she may or may not be, is a skilled and most talented apothecary. She assisted me here during the rush of battle casualties, and I found her performance most impressive. Her suite is just down the hall from here. Why don’t you go to her and open your mind as you did to me? If nothing else, she can administer the young man a draft to ease his shock and hurt and grant him restful, healing sleep.”

Mechanically, Tim arose from beside Giliahna. She lay unmoving save for the barely perceptible rise and fall of her chest. Myron seemed to be still unconscious, but taking no chances, Tim retrieved his sword and ran two inches of the blade into his half-brother’s buttock. When the carcass did not even twitch, Tim was satisfied.

Gaios still sat near the corpse of his victim. Moaning, he rocked from side to side, both hands still pressing the rags to his belly. His eyelids were pressed tightly shut, but tears still managed to ooze from beneath them, joining a copious sweat to impart a glistening sheen to his face, now twisted in agony.

Turning back to the bed and Giliahna, Tim noted that her slashed face and the stab wound in her chest had ceased to bleed. Moaning louder even than Gaios, he tried not to think of the licking flames that so soon must be set about her lovely body, tried not to think of the long and bitter years he still must live without her … and he made his decision.

He lifted off his baldric, stripped off tunic and shirt and stretched himself beside his sister, his lover, she who should have been his wife. He kissed her cold lips, then reached out and took from the bedside table Myron’s blood-sticky dirk.

Softly, tenderly, he said, “We shall go to Wind together, my love, never again to be parted.”

Then Tim Sanderz grasped the wire-wound hilt in both hands and ran the full length of the blade into his own chest, skewering his broken heart.

When Sir Geros and Neeka hurried into the suite, the old soldier reeled against the doorframe in shock, but Neeka bustled over to the bed. Ignoring for the moment the man, who had obviously taken his own life since his hands were still gripped about the hilt of the knife, she set about examining the woman.

When Geros had more or less composed himself, he approached. “Dead, is she not? Poor little Giliahna.”

The answer he received then was like the crash of a war hammer against his head. “Not dead nor even dying, Sir Geros, she has only swooned.”

Hesitantly, Geros laid a trembling hand on Giliahna’s flesh. “But … she is cold as death … and she no longer bleeds … ?”

Neeka just sniffed. “You’d be cold to the touch, too, if you’d lain naked in this icy chamber for who knows how long, not to speak of the large amounts of blood she must have lost before the bleeding stopped.”

In his own state of shock, Geros at first could not understand. Even so, he proved far easier to convince than either Tim or Giliahna.