Mistress of Dragons (40 page)

The
midwife bent over the bed on which Melisande lay writhing in agony and moaning.

“Melisande!”
Bellona cried, kicking over one of the stools in her haste to reach her.

The
midwife raised her head, a scandalized expression on her face.

“What
do you mean, Master, barging in like this? Men are not allowed in the birthing
chamber. Get out! Get out!”

Flapping
her apron as though she were shooing geese, the midwife clucked and snorted and
shook her head.

Bellona
stood staring at Melisande, who had ceased to scream. She lay on the
sweat-soaked sheets, her face deathly pale, her eyes huge and glistening.

Bellona
knew the answer to the question, but she had to ask, “Can she be moved?”

“Are
you daft?” the midwife screeched. Seizing hold of Bellona, the midwife shoved
her bodily out the door.

Bellona
heard Nzangia’s voice.
You have spied out the house.
She stood staring
in the direction of the forest, gnawing her lip and wondering desperately what
to do.

“Seth
warriors,” said the Hermit. “How many?”

Bellona
at first ignored him, then the import of his words came to her and she turned
to stare at him. His eyes were dark and shadowed. His face beneath the heavy
beard had set in hard lines that deepened as his jaw tightened.

“I
don’t know what you’re talking about,” she began, thinking that she’d seen him
somewhere.

“Yes,
you do.” He cast a glance to the north, to the mountains of Seth, whose
snowcapped peaks were whitewashed on a blue backdrop. “And you’re going to need
help. How many of them are there? Ten? Twenty?”

“I
counted twelve,” she said, wondering, still trying to place him. “There may be
more.”

“Probably
are. Where did you see them?”

“In
the forest.” Bellona stared at him, eyes narrowed. “Draconas!” she exclaimed
suddenly. “The king’s servant! You’ve been spying on us—”

“A
good thing, too,” Draconas interposed coolly. “The warriors will have to come
through the fields to get at us and the shepherds will think they are raiders
after the sheep. Go alert the villagers. Tell them you’ve seen raiders in the
woods and they’ve got to mobilize the militia—”

His
words were drowned out by a wild pealing of bells and the off-key blasting of a
horn.

“Fire!”
someone shouted. “Fire!”

Bellona
and the Hermit turned in the direction of the frantic bellow to see a curl of
smoke rise up into the morning sky.

“The
mill’s on fire!”

The
call was caught up, handed from voice to voice, growing louder and more
strident and more panicked. The smoke thickened to an ugly roiling gray shot
through with orange flame.

“They’ve
torched the mill,” said Draconas.

“Nzangia
said that the villagers wouldn’t interfere with them,” Bellona remembered.

“She
was right,” he replied grimly.

Fire,
the nightmare terror of every community from tiny village to teeming city. If
the fire spread from the mill it could burn down the factory, destroy every
dwelling place, every shop, wipe out the entire village. In an instant the
dreams, the hopes, and the very lives of the inhabitants could be reduced to
ashes and charred rubble.

The
villagers came running in answer to that terrified call, carrying buckets or
axes or pitchforks, ready to douse the blaze and try to knock it down. All was
a confusion of shouted orders, the whinnyings of frightened horses, and a
crash, as of timber falling. The acrid smell of smoke wafted up the hill.

Inside
the cottage, Melisande’s screams grew more and more agonized. Bellona dug her
nails into the palms of her hand.

“They’re
here after Melisande,” she said hoarsely. “The Mistress sent them to kill her.”

Draconas
glanced at her, started to say something, then shut his mouth. Smoke from the
burning mill was starting to layer over the hills, filling the valley and
creeping up the slopes, where the sheep bleated in panic and the dogs barked
frantically.

“She
can’t be moved. We’ll have to hold them off here.”

“We
had best go inside,” said Draconas. “Hide ourselves. Let them think they’re
taking us by surprise.”

The
cottages were constructed of stone with thatched roofs, each one identical to
another. Each was built on a small strip of land, where the owner could grow a
garden to eke out communal winter stores with vegetables of his own.

Most
of the houses clustered near the factory and the mill, down by the river. As
the community expanded, dwellings were added in a more .random fashion, so that
now they straggled along the dirt road known as Shepherd’s Way. Their cottage
had one small window, facing east to let in the sunlight, and a single door.
The window had no glass panes, for glass was dear, but it did have wooden
shutters that could be closed against the wind and weather. The shutters were
usually open, for Melisande loved the fresh air. This day they were closed. The
midwife wanted the cottage warm. She had built up the fire and it was now so
hot that it was stifling.

A
strip of garden separated their house from that of the Hermit’s. Nothing grew
in their garden, for Melisande was too ill to tend to it and Bellona knew little
about plants. As she was wont to say, she had been taught only how to kill, not
how to grow and nurture.

As
Bellona started to enter the door, she paused, glanced uncertainly inside. “Melisande
. . . what will I tell her?”

Draconas
followed her anxious gaze. Melisande’s terrible screams were coming more
frequently, punctuated at intervals by almost equally terrible silences.

“I
doubt she’ll even be aware of what’s happening,” he answered. “You go on ahead.
I’ll join you.”

He
departed, hastening back to his own cottage. Bellona watched him leave and
wondered if she trusted him or not. She decided that she didn’t have much
choice.

Back
in his cottage, Draconas reached for his staff, then halted, irresolute,
uncertain what to do. He knew the real reason the Mistress had sent her
warriors here. They wanted Melisande dead. They wanted the baby alive.

He
stared out the window, trying to catch sight of them, but the smoke obscured
his view. More than ever he missed Braun, missed the dragon’s eyes that would
have apprised him of their approach, warned him ahead of time, so that he could
have dealt with them. Now, it was almost too late.

As
he saw it, he had one option.

“I
could kill them. I could kill every one of them.”

He’d
broken the laws of his kind already, broken several, some on orders, others of
his own volition. The one law, the one sacrosanct law of the Dragon Parliament,
the supreme law, Draconas had not yet broken. He had never in six hundred years
intentionally taken a human life. Accidently crushing that insane monk didn’t
count.

If
he killed, Anora would have no choice but to take away his humanity. He might
try to hide the deed from her, but she would see it in his mind, for he could
never rid himself of the blood.

His
hand smoothed the wood grain of the staff. Melisande’s screams, imprisoned
behind stone walls, were muffled.

He
couldn’t risk turning over this task to some other walker, someone who had no
care for it. Draconas might lose Melisande, but he would not lose her child. He
owed her that much.

Gripping
the staff tightly, he left his house, headed for the cottage.

Trying
to enter the door, Bellona discovered that it had been locked. She banged and
beat on the door until it opened a crack and the midwife glared out.

Shoving
her foot in the door, Bellona elbowed her way inside, pushing the protesting,
sputtering old woman out of the way. She slammed shot the door and put her back
to it.

“Raiders,”
she said, her taut voice slicing through the midwife’s angry scoldings. “They’ve
set the mill on fire. They’re likely planning an attack on the village. They
may come here and I can’t defend the cottage from outside.”

The
midwife knew about raiders. Her face twisted in a grimace. “Murdering devils.”
She eyed Bellona disapprovingly. “I suppose you know what you’re doing. Keep
your eyes to yourself, though, and don’t interfere with me.”

“It’s
only right that I tell you that you may be in danger,” Bellona said stiffly.

The
midwife sniffed, turned away.

Melisande
cried out, her body writhed.

“There,
there, lambkin, nothing to worry about,” the midwife said, wiping Melisande’s
forehead with a wet cloth. “Another push, my pet. Another push.”

Melisande
groaned and shook her head. Her face was wet with sweat, her hair soaked. The
midwife had attached strips of rags to the bedposts, so that she had something
to hold onto when the pains came. Her eyes were lusterless and sunken. She
gazed at Bellona as at a stranger, unknowing, uncaring, wound round with the
pain that was all she could see or hear or taste or feel. She arched her back
and gripped the handholds and screamed.

Shuddering,
Bellona closed her eyes. The screams ceased, mercifully. Melisande lay sucking
in huge gulps of air. The midwife fussed around her. At least the old woman was
taking this calmly, Bellona thought. But then, a midwife dealt with life and
death on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps it got humdrum.

In
the gasping silence, Bellona heard a tapping on the door.

“It’s
me,” called Draconas.

Bellona
hesitated a moment, then unbarred the door. He slid inside, carrying with him
an oaken staff. He shut the door behind him, shot the bolt. The midwife glanced
at him askance, but she was too busy to scold. Melisande’s knees were drawn up,
her skirts folded back over her bare legs. She stared unseeing at the ceiling,
waiting in numb despair for the next agonizing moment.

Draconas
looked at her and his lips tightened. He looked back to Bellona.

“You
trained these soldiers. You were their commander. What’s their plan?” he asked.

Bellona
put herself in Nzangia’s place. Nzangia was a good warrior and very
imaginative. The torching of the mill as a diversion, to draw off any who might
have helped them, had been inspired.

“They
don’t know that I saw them,” Bellona said. “They’ll charge the house. As you
said, they’ll want to take us by surprise.”

She
grabbed hold of him by the arm, gripped him hard, hurting. “How did they find
us?”

“They
went looking,” he said.

She
stared into his eyes, trying to see inside him and failing. Her gaze could not
pierce the shadows.

“There’s
nothing I can say that will make you trust me, is there?” Draconas added.

“No,”
she returned caustically.

“So
why waste time asking?”

She
had no answer for that.

“Look
at it this way. I’m in here with you, not out there with them. That must count
for something.”

Slowly,
Bellona released her grip.

“Now
that’s settled,” he said, turning away, “we better decide what we’re going to
do. The door opens inward. They’ll rush it in a body. We’ll take the bolt off.”

“Why
make it easy for them?”

“Because
they won’t expect it. I’ll stand here.” He took his place beside the door. “You
stand there. When the door opens, they see you, not me. I’ll do this.” He
gestured. “You do this.” He gestured again.

She
didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, didn’t believe him. She was certain he had
something to do with the soldiers tracking them down, though how or why was a
puzzle. She didn’t want their lives dependent on him, but she’d never fought in
close quarters before and she’d certainly never had to defend a woman giving
birth, the woman she loved better than life itself. Bellona couldn’t trust her
judgement, with those terrible screams tearing her apart inside. He’d devised a
good plan. She could see where he was going with it.

“Is
that all the weapon you’ve got?” she asked, disdainfully eyeing his staff.

“It’s
all the weapon I need,” he returned, taking his position.

“But
you should at least have a dagger.” She reached into her belt. “Here. You can’t
kill with that—”

“I’m
not planning on killing. Only stopping. It’s a vow I took,” he added.

“Some
sort of religious vow?”

“Some
sort,” he replied.

She
gestured outside. “They didn’t take any such vow. They’ll be trying to kill
you.”

“Most
likely.” He cocked his head, listening. “They’re out there. I can hear them. Be
ready. Keep them focused on you. Hold their attention.”

Bellona
gnawed her lip, gripped her sword, and waited.

The
cottage was stifling. The midwife had built up a great roaring blaze in the
fireplace. Bellona wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. The air
stank of sweat and blood and smoke. She began to feel stifled, closed in. The
enemy was out there, creeping closer and closer. She hated waiting, hated the
tension. She longed to fling open the door, confront them face-to-face, and it
cost her an effort to control the impulse.

Melisande
gave a shuddering scream. This time, the scream did not stop, but trailed into
an agonized wail. Bellona risked a glance backward.

“Can’t
you do something for her?” she cried angrily.

“Push,
lamb,” ordered the midwife sternly, paying no attention to any of them. “I can
see the crown. Push!”

Bellona
shivered, the sweat chill on her body.

“One
more push!” ordered the midwife. Her own hands were wet with blood, the blood
of birth, not death.

Melisande
gave a last push, a final cry, and the baby rushed headlong into life. With a
gasping sigh of relief, Melisande sank back among the sweat-soaked pillows.

“A
boy, madam,” crowed the midwife in satisfaction. “Perfect as the livelong day.
Not a mark on him.”