It was over. The great carcass slumped, the hands fell away from Blade, as a final tremor ran through the man Getorix, called Redbeard. He slumped out at full length near the wine tub, dead.
Richard Blade, near dead himself, left the plait coiled around the throat and staggered to his feet. Every nerve and muscle screamed for rest, for the merciful oblivion of sleep. Or death? Blade, in those frenetic last moments, was not quite sure who had won, who lived and who had died. He knew only an enormous longing to close his eyes and have done with it.
Yet the matter must be carried out to a fitting and proper conclusion. As his senses filtered back he began to understand, through the roaring in his head, that he was now king of the Sea Raiders. Redbeard was dead! He, Blade, now ruled.
He swayed over the huge corpse. Silence had fallen over the vast hall.
Blade raised a hand and in a voice that was surprisingly strong he was amazed himself said: "I rule now. I make Jarl my First Captain. You will obey him as you would me."
Blade looked down at the corpse of Redbeard, still not quite believing that he had killed such a man.
"Let this man be given a proper burial, as befits such a warrior. Jarl will see to it. As for all of you, who now serve me, get on with your feasting. As soon as the body has been taken to a place of honor. I "
Blade never saw his attacker. The man, who had been sitting at a table near the wine tub, leaped at him with a high scream of hate and mourning. A long dirk flashed in the smoky light and Blade felt exquisite white agony as the metal ripped his flesh. He staggered away, blood streaming from his back, and cast frantically around for a weapon as the man came at him again.
Blade stumbled into a table and fell half across it. He turned, trying again to face his attacker, blood drenching him, as Jarl leaped into action.
Blade saw what followed through a curtain of pain and blood. Jarl, a long sword in his hand, shouting in anger, sprang at the man who had daggered Blade. The sword came around in a level, glistening circle and bit into flesh with a loud chunk.
Blade's attacker, headless, stood for an instant and spurted blood from the dying trunk high into the air. The dagger, stained with Blade's blood, clung to the fingers.
The head fell into the tub of wine and floated there, eyes staring, crimsoning the wine.
Blade felt himself falling into sleep. Now that he could achieve oblivion, so longed for just an instant ago, he did not want it. He was suddenly afraid of it. This was not a natural sleep that stalked him, this numbness that pervaded his feet and legs and arms and was fast working toward his brain. He sought to speak and heard only a strangled cry. He was falling and felt himself caught and supported by brawny arms.
Jarl, bloody sword still in his hand, was peering at Blade. His lips moved and Blade heard the words from a great distance. They sparked a final bitterness and rebellion in him to have come so far, to have done so much, to have defied circumstance so valiantly and to have it end here, like this.
Jarl's voice was a muted trumpet sounding on a vagrant and fading breeze. Blade could barely hear, but what he heard told him he was dying.
"Oleg natural son of Redbeard his dagger poisoned we know of no antidote, Lord Blade. But we will try there is a Dru, she you spoke of, and it is said, it is possible that "
Jarl's voice was gone. His face was fading. Blade smiled up at the ring of faces and wondered why he was smiling. He was an idiot! He had always hated death and feared it in his secret soul and why should he smile now that it was here at last? What would happen to Taleen and poor Sylvo? Then everything went black.
Chapter Thirteen
For ten days the wind blew from the northeast, stubborn and unrelenting, and scattered the ships like autumn leaves over the Western Sea.
Richard Blade, in waking dream and nightmare sleep, fancied himself in a cradle rocked by a giant's hand. His wound festered and the poison was insidious, seeking his life, held in check only by the bitter draughts given him by the silver-haired Dru, she who in his dream he had called Drusilla.
Her real name was Canace. This she told him in one of his rare lucid moments, before she administered the black cool liquid, so bitter to his tongue, that brought on the drowsy inertia, the waking dream state, that sapped his will and made his great muscles so much mush.
In the dim recesses of his brain he knew he was being drugged. He also knew the drug was combating the poison and saving his life. So, though he did not think to make the comparison, Blade at the moment was like the ship on which he lay, driven and harried, floating helpless on the tides, too weak to resist what he knew was happening to him. And such was the sly machination of the drug he did not want to resist. His mind was lulled and dormant,he welcomed his seduction as heartily as any spinster who dreads to die before experiencing the ultimate convulsion.
It could have been on the first day aboard ship, or the fifth Blade had no track of time that he dimly sensed what she was about. She paid him frequent visits, always with the bitter potion, careful that he never lapse back into full consciousness and will power. Blade, wandering lonely and bemused in his dream forest, welcomed her coming. The bitter drink meant an end to the pain in his back, and to the terrible cramps of his belly, and the wily potion persuaded him that he was lucid.
The cool hand on his brow. Gentle, smooth as satin fingers. The bitter drink to his lips and the cloths, wrung out in an ewer of cold water and pressed to his burning flesh. Then, for a little time, she would sit beside his rude cot and hold his hand and watch him with topaz eyes in which swam darker flecks of brown. She would toss back her white cowl, her hair a draping silver fall breaking gently on her shoulders, and Blade would marvel at her beauty and knew not, nor cared, if he was in death or life.
Her breasts were well swathed in the white robe, but Blade remembered the dream in the fens and knew those breasts he was too weak to raise a hand to touch would be firm and cold.
Then, from between those deep breasts, she would take the little golden medallion, worked in intaglio, of a crescent moon ensnared in a design of oak leaves. It hung from her white throat on a fine chain of gold. Her long fingers, blue nailed, toyed with the pendant and set it to swinging ever so gently to and fro while Blade watched as a cat will watch a string dangled before it.
Always she began in the same way, with the same words, her voice as low and unctuous as rich cream pouring.
"I am Drusilla, Lord Blade. That is my title, not my name. My name is Canace. I am also called Drusilla,leader of all the Drus in this land and in all the lands across the seas..."
On the first day, at this juncture, Blade opened his mouth in an effort to speak. A cool, soft, perfumed hand closed it gently and he had not tried again. Did not want to speak. Wanted only to listen to that voice running on like some celestial choir, recounting his sins and forgiving them, promising him joys in future and sealing it in the end with the greatest pleasure he had ever known. Blade, stricken and inert hulk that he was, lived for the paradise that was to come. That came every day just before she left him for the long interval of night.
On this day Blade did not know that it was the tenth and that the storm was at last abating she began in the same fashion. Her words were always the same, never varying, as though she meant to imprint them in Blade's mind forever. The golden medallion swayed before his eyes and he followed it listlessly. Somewhere, for the first time, a spark stirred in his mind and he was near to understanding what she was doing to him. There was a word for it. A technique called
The effort to think was too much and Blade closed his eyes. A soft blue-nailed finger opened them and she went on intoning what had become a litany between them: