“But, dammit, she is crippled!” Gy said under his breath, while securing his rolled blanket with lengths of thong, his frustration causing him to jerk so hard on one length that the tough rawhide snapped like rotten twine. “She has been for almost as long as we’ve been here, has been since that night that she first forced Lieutenant Kahndoot into a death-match duel, then attacked Duke Bili when he brought the duel to a halt.”
The bearded man sighed, thinking, “She must have been mad, that night, to attack Duke Bili—and him in full armor and armed with his big axe. He could easily have killed her then. All of us expected him to do it… though I hoped against hope that he wouldn’t, of course. But it might have been better for poor Meeree if he had. Her arm has never been sound since the side of his great axe shattered it through the thicknesses of her target and armor, both. Nor has Pah-Elmuh’s healing art been successful for Meeree, much as he has helped others.
“He claims that there is some something deep in her mind that negates his instructions to the other parts of her mind to properly heal the arm. That sort of thing is beyond my poor powers of understanding, of course, but I do know that as she is now become, it were suicide for her to attempt to ride into battle. Her left hand no longer seems to have strength; too weak and unsure it is to handle the reins or even to grasp the handle of a target.
“But she cannot or will not recognize this as the reason she is being left here. She insists that it is because Duke Bili distrusts her and Lieutenant Kahndoot hates her, and I know for fact that neither accusation is true. But she, she hates the two of them so fiercely that she will hear nothing good of them from me or anyone else, not even the Lady Rahksahnah.”
Gy remembered he had borne Meeree’s furious sulks and towering, screaming rages for more than a week before he had, in frustration that his efforts had been completely unavailing, humbly beseeched the aid of the Lady Rahksahnah. But if he had thought that her close relationship to Meeree in times now past would help, he had been wrong.
Almost immediately, taking time from her own many and most pressing duties, the hereditary war leader of the Moon Maidens had come to the lakeside tower keep, climbed the nine flights of winding, stone stairs, and called upon Meeree in friendship. But all had been for naught.
Every soul on that level and many on those levels above and below had heard the crippled woman’s shrieking tirade— the verbal filth, abuse, insults and baseless accusations, the blasphemies of the Silver Goddess Herself. In the end, her movements stiff with the tight control of her grief and her anger, Rahksahnah had departed room and level and tower, speaking to no one. Back at Sandee’s Cot—the palatial lodgelike residence of Count Sandee, wherein the lowlander nobles were lodged—she had taken Gy apart and spoken to him gently, quietly, in her still-accented but more fluent Mehrikan.
“Man-Gy, know you that with you I, too, grieve, grieve for the Meeree that once was, not so very long ago. But I fear me that that Meeree who so loved and was loved by me inhabits no longer the fleshly husk that we still call by her name. Face that fact, we must, and also the harder one, that never again will she—the old Meeree—return to us who love her.
“I have mindspoken Ahszkuh the Kleesahk and opened my mind and recent memory to him. It is his opinion that this needless, pointless hate she has harbored has poisoned and infected her poor mind as bad, dirty blood will poison and infect a wound. He has promised me that while we all are gone on this season’s campaign, he will spend as much time as he can by her, try to reach and cleanse of the infection those portions of her mind wherein it festers. But he also warns that he may be no more successful in the healing of her poor mind them was Pah-Elmuh in healing her arm.”
“My lady… ?” breathed Gy hesitantly.
A smile flitted across her dark-red lips. “Fear you not to speak, to interrupt me if your words have bearing. Man-Gy. We, the Maidens of the Silver Lady, never knew or practiced very much of rank; all proven warriors were with us of equal standing, none inherently greater or lesser. Amongst the host of other differing newnesses, I have found such servility by stark fighters most difficult to understand and accept. But Dook Bili attests that such is necessary to the maintenance of discipline and order, so I give the appearance of adherence… in public, at least.
“But we two are not in public, now, Man-Gy. You are a well-proven warrior; I have seen you fight more than once. Too, we have much in common, so speak.”.
“My lady, Pah-Elmuh told me several times that something deep within Meeree’s mind was… was nullifying the effects of his healing of her arm. Could… could hate do such a thing?”
Rahksahnah sighed. “Possibly, Man-Gy. No, probably. Hate can be very powerful, and it is a sword of two edges and no hilt—it cuts the wielder as deeply, often, as it wounds her at whom it is wielded, or so said the Wise Women of the Hold. Yes, her soul-deep hate it probably was that obstructed the healing of Pah-Elmuh from poor Meerec’s arm.
“Her hate is truly a sickness, for she hates not just Dook Bili and me, but every sound woman and man in the entire squadron, in the glen, in all this world. She hates even our Silver Lady, the Goddess, hurls terrible blasphemies against Her and Her sacred Will. She swears that the day will come when she will see Dook Bili’s blood, and mine, and will impale our little babe on her spear before our dying eyes.”
Gy shook his head forcefully. “No man or woman will harm you or the duke or your noble son, my lady, not even Meeree, not while still Gy Ynstyr lives and breathes! I do now forswear.”
With his blanket roll firmly lashed and the ends tied for carrying down to the stables, Gy similarly rolled and secured his fine cloak, then slipped his padded jerkin over his head and rapidly did up the points along each side. They would all ride forth armed, but most of the armor for men, women and horses would remain on the pack saddles until and if it should be found needful to don the hot, uncomfortable stuff.
Around his slim waist he clasped his dagger belt, then slipped his sheathed dirk into the frog and shrugged into his wide baldric. When his saber was securely buckled on, slung high, for walking, he looped the braided, red-dyed lanyard of his bugle over his left shoulder so that the instrument hung within easy reach of his right hand.
Throughout all of his packing, Meeree had breathed not a single word to him, had grunted curses only when the chancy grip of her left hand had caused the honestone to slip and so interrupt the established rhythm of her task.
When Gy had shouldered his packed saddlebags and the rolls, he picked up his helmet from the strawtick mattress that had been his bed and, turning, spoke his first words of this day of departure to Meeree.
“I must leave now, Meeree. Soon it will be dawn. I wish… may you bide well until we meet again.”
She dropped the stone from the fingers—now suddenly all aquiver—of her left hand, but clenched the haft of the axe so fiercely that the knuckles of her right hand stood out as white as virgin snow. The dark eyes that looked up at him were no longer dull with sullenness, but were become bright and sparkling with purest malice.
“You fear to tell me what you truly wish, eh, cowardly man-thing? Well, Meeree fears not any woman or man and so says as she wishes to say always. Meeree wishes you a slow and exceedingly painful death in the north, you and all of the rest… but, no, not all. Meeree wants the killing of your precious, woman-stealing Dook Bili and his new brood mare, that fickle sow Rahksahnah, all to herself.