Warrior of the West (60 page)

Her feet left a slight track in the rime of frost that covered both flagging and the brittle grass. Within the simple herb garden, she cut a good store of lavender, rosemary and rhue that completely covered Targo’s blade. Waving to soldiers and early visitors, Nimue tripped down the long curved path to the base of the hill, passing through the fortifications without really noticing the wondrous practicality of their design.

But then, Nimue was accustomed to her master’s inventive works, be they medicinal, alchemical or mechanical.

She wandered through the market of Cadbury town, buying a scarlet ribbon and examining a length of fine woven wool that had been dyed to the colour of deep water. But her purse was well nigh empty, and she had no desire to browse if she couldn’t afford to buy.

As she passed through the bustling laneways, the townsfolk smiled in her direction. The Maid of Wind and Water was a singular creature, as all the townsfolk knew, but she was also a fetching lass and was always ready to talk and give cheer as she passed among them. She was not above agreeing to see a sick child or an elderly grandparent and, on many occasions, had sent herbs or poultices from the fortress to sooth the ills of her patients. Nimue would have been surprised to discover that she was more highly respected than the noble Wenhaver, queen to King Artor.

Nimue loved her herbal rambles. Her passion for walking in the early morning had started in her childhood, when she had risen in the dark and played hide and seek with her shadow under the dappled trees. Ever mindful of the dangers of the wild places, Gallwyn had remonstrated with Nimue when she was caught outside the gates of Venonae. Nimue had tearfully obeyed Gallwyn’s demands because her foster-mother had seemed so frightened. Gallwyn had tried in vain to cure Nimue of her tendency to wander, for the young girl loved the trees, the shadows, and the still water within the deep forests.

Now, as she ambled through the places where the laneways turned into rutted tracks between the fields, Nimue began to whistle in a very unladylike fashion. She smiled as she remembered how often Gallwyn had boxed her ears when she caught her trying to warble like a bird, or creating songs of her own devising. With no one to care what she did, Nimue caught the hem of her trailing skirt in her girdle so that her long legs were bare below the knees, and she swung her basket with its precious clippings in sheer exuberance at the joy of being alive.

The wood gradually ate into the fallow fields and the sun, as it rose through the sky, sent long, green-stained bands of light through to the forest floor. Nimue overturned a rotten log, and found a rich source of lichens growing in serried, orange flanges like some strange flower. She deftly cut away the spongy flesh, and scraped a handful of common moss from the wettest sides of the log.

The morning passed quickly as she hunted for her lichens and the elusive mandrake plant. She swam through the shadows from tree to tree, harvesting useful specimens from the roots and adding to the supplies that were filling her basket. Then, just as the sun had finally started to angle down in the sky, Nimue’s sharp eyes spied the foliage she sought, the familiar leaves of the mandrake plant, growing in a cluster of smaller specimens.

She was on her knees in a trice, digging for the special root that had derived its name from its resemblance to child’s rough manikin. She was happily humming under her breath and singing softly as she imagined Myrddion’s joy when she brought him her booty.

Nimue felt no inkling of fear, and completely missed the sounds of quiet feet that were slowly creeping up behind her.

Then, as she placed the mandrake root in the basket and stowed away her small trowel, she saw the movement of her stalker’s shadow. A hood was thrust over her head and jerked tightly round her throat in one swift, practised movement.

Blind panic overtook her as darkness and pain, but at the exact moment when the cord of the hood bit into her neck, Nimue managed to slide two fingers under the cord. It allowed her a tiny space in which she could maintain an airway, albeit in great, wrenching sobs.

‘You bitch! I’ll make you scream before you die. You’ll beg to be dead . . . you’ll howl for it,’ a male voice whispered in her ear so softly, so insidiously and with such a hiss of hot breath that she shrieked with panic.

The man snickered.

All Nimue’s instincts, coupled with Odin’s instructions, told her that she must keep those two bruised fingers under the cord and keep hold of her basket, for her life depended on her presence of mind.

‘Morturi!’ the voice gloated. ‘Let the games begin.’

The hands that jerked her off her feet were very strong, and she found herself forced backwards over rocks and fallen branches like so much flotsam in a swollen river She heard her trowel fall, then her pruning knife, and she knew that all her carefully collected specimens were tumbling out of her basket as she was forced towards a place where the man intended to rape her, then take her life.

And she lacked a free hand to snatch up Targo’s sword.

What if the blade falls from the basket? Nimue thought desperately. If I cannot get to it, I’m dead! Don’t panic. Don’t fight yet. Just think, she told herself.

In the blinking of an eye, she realized she had one frail chance, almost impossible, but better than no hope at all.

She dragged a lungful of air in through the constricting hood, and then pulled her fingers out from under the cord. Immediately, she started to choke, to die, but she knew this animal had no intention of letting her strangle to death before he had had his fill of her body.

‘Don’t waste time thinking, Nimue,’ she almost heard Targo’s spirit whisper in her head as she plunged her free hand into the basket, and through a stray frond of rosemary that had become wedged in the wicker. ‘Just do it!’

Her questing fingers found Targo’s cold blade. Her hands desperately searched along the sharp edges until she found the hilt, although her fingers were cut badly in the quest.

‘Die!’ she keened with the last of her breath, even as her sight darkened from lack of oxygen. And she stabbed the short sword backwards and upwards from her waist.

A cry escaped from all too human lips, although it was quickly muffled, but the iron hands restraining her head released the cords of the hood, allowing Nimue to draw in lungfuls of rather musty air. The cloth of the hood stank, and Nimue wondered briefly what other terrified women had smelt its rankness. She spun on her heels and fell to her knees, still blinded by the hood, and slashed out in front of her with Targo’s sword.

The ancient blade had drunk blood for more than one hundred years. It had been used long before Nimue or Targo were born, for the legions never wasted good weapons. Now it drank again, eagerly, as if its will and lust were as strong as the man whose blood it tasted.

The man screamed again, shrill and high like a woman, and she heard something metallic fall to the ground with a thud. Then she was thrust down with great force, still clutching her sword as she fell on her back.

Heavy footsteps blundered off through the fallen leaves, and Nimue heard the smashing of twigs and branches under a hasty tread. She held the sword before her, and then silence fell, as terrifying and as horror-filled as her few moments of battle had been. Only rasping breathing disturbed the silence of Wildewood, and with a child-like wonder Nimue realized it was herself who was panting.

Disregarding a lance of pain in her elbow, Nimue raised her left arm and tore off the black woollen hood.

In the steadily darkening forest, she was utterly alone.

Breathing raggedly, and with blood oozing over her hands, Nimue took stock of the pains in her body. Her knees and heels had been scraped almost raw, her right hand was throbbing from long cuts, and her throat was bruised so she could barely croak a sound. Her left elbow had struck some hard tree root with such force that she had heard the sharp little crack of breaking bone.

In a strange, dream-like state, Nimue gathered up the hood and the discarded dagger, and then paused, listening and looking. She spied traces of blood on the bracken and ferns, but was unsure who had bled there, herself or her attacker. Where she had fallen, the message was more clearly written. Dark blood spatters showed that Targo’s blade had bitten deeply. She began to retrace her steps. She forced herself to recover every piece of lichen, moss and herb, including her trowel and pruning knife, a task that took some time as the mandrake root was difficult to find. The sunlight was almost completely extinguished, and every rustle in the underbrush sent a shiver through her body. Clever in the ways of illness, Nimue realized she was in shock, that strange, suspended period after a battle that could kill a man as quickly as a knife wound. But for now, she blessed the unnatural calm that forced her to think slowly and with clarity.

Then suddenly she was too tired to walk a single step and she sank to the ground.

The shock is beginning to wear off, she thought aimlessly, and every wound was burning like fire or aching so fiercely that movement was agony. The left arm that had dragged off the hood was now immobile, and its swelling joints and steady, thudding ache indicated at least one broken bone.

I must go, she admonished herself. Rise, Nimue, for your master will be worried. Besides, the beast might return. Get up, you stupid cow, for you cannot die here.

She struggled to her feet, gripped her basket with painful fingers, and began to trudge out of the forest. Weariness settled over her like a shroud. On several occasions, she leaned against forest trees, and left her own blood spoor behind her. But at last, the green aquarium of the Wildewood was at her back, and the fields stretched away to the serried towers of Cadbury Tor in the late afternoon light.

‘One foot in front of the other, girl,’ Targo told her in his kindest voice.

Nimue swore she saw him stand at her right hand, his old face serious.

‘I’m doing the best I can, Targo,’ she replied irritably.

‘Not good enough, darling It’ll soon be full dark, and he’ll be waiting for you. Head towards the lights.’

Nimue carefully turned her pounding head towards her left side, and Gallwyn hovered beside her.

‘You’re both dead. Am I dead too?’ she asked the shades querulously.

‘Not hardly, lass, you’re just a little bent around the edges.’ Targo smiled. ‘You got him, girl,’ the ancient warrior continued proudly. ‘I never thought that dull old sword of mine would prove useful again.’

Nimue noticed irrelevantly that Targo no longer needed his canes. ‘I’m that proud of you, lovey, I could burst,’ Gallwyn whispered on the other side. ‘Look what you’ve made of yourself. Look how far you’ve travelled.’

‘The girl’s got a big heart, hasn’t she?’ Targo added. ‘And she has warriors as ancestors, for all that we called them barbarians.’ The shade smiled again. ‘Keep walking, lass. You’re doing well.’

‘You always were a bossy old bastard, Targo, even if you are a figment of my imagination,’ Nimue panted.

Then her foot slipped over a clod of earth on the rutted track, invisible in the half-light. Nimue fell on her injured arm and, for a moment, her vision went black. When her breathing returned, she began to cry aloud from the pain.

I think I’ll just lie here, she decided, and in her imagination the mud was a deep, soft, feather bed.

‘Get up, Nimue. Right now!’ Gallwyn ordered in the voice she used when she was very angry with the kitchen girls.

‘I’m ashamed of you, girl,’ Targo snapped. ‘Everybody hurts some time. Think of Myrddion, Who will look after him if you die in the roadway?’

‘Why are you both so angry at me?’ Nimue moaned, but she used her good arm and her strong thighs to force herself to her feet.

‘Because we love you, girl,’ Targo replied, the moonlight shining through his eyes.

‘And we want you to live,’ Gallwyn finished for the old warrior. ‘We watch over you, you know. And I’m now quite fond of this little pipsqueak here who helps me care for you.’

‘Pipsqueak? I trained a king, woman, and you only fed him,’ Targo snarled, in mock fury. ‘Keep moving, lass, you’re doing very nicely, my girl.’

‘And I trained Nimue,’ Gallwyn retorted.

‘There’s a light ahead, Nimue, so make for that,’ Targo ordered, and Nimue responded, while her two shades argued and bickered, and encouraged her to keep moving. She forced one foot in front of the other, still clutching her precious basket.

Lamplight poured out of the slit windows in a beehive-shaped hut as Nimue approached. She leaned against the door and tried to knock.

‘Bye, lovey,’ Gallwyn whispered softly.

‘See you soon, lass,’ Targo added.

‘Not too soon, I hope.’ Nimue giggled, knowing that she hovered on the edge of hysteria.

The night wind sighed around her as she tried to summon the strength to knock more loudly.

‘Yes?’ a frightened female voice stuttered from behind the latched barrier.

‘Let me in,’ Nimue called softly. ‘I’ve been attacked.’

Behind the door, the silence was absolute.

‘I am Nimue, the Maid of Wind and Water,’ she added. ‘I am apprentice to Lord Myrddion Merlinus. He will pay you well if you let me in and take care of me.’ She moaned softly, despite her intention to maintain her strength.

The door opened the slightest crack. Nimue lost her balance, and slowly began to fall down . . . deeper and deeper . . . to a place where she was without her comforting shades, and nightmares waited in the darkness.

‘Run to the fortress, boy,’ Nimue heard a coarse female voice shout as she was falling. ‘Run to speak to Master Merlinus. He will know what to do with her, for it’s certain that she is the Maid of Wind and Water. Run, lad, there’s gold for us this night.’

At least someone will be happy, Nimue thought vaguely, as she continued to fall into that soft, endless darkness where there are no dreams or nightmares, and where absolute silence reigns.