Leda

Chapter Forty-Four: Routing out Rats

"Will Hal get better?" Lauré asked, riding up to meet Magda.

Behind them, Roc's great army fanned out amongst the woodland of the lower vales ˗ pikemen at the rear, mounted guard to the fore. They amassed more help with every day they travelled east, crofters and aristocrats flooding to join them, desperate to take the fight to Castor.

Magda twisted round to view Hal who rode silent and alone, her eyes hard and fixed on the ground, a dark greatcoat muffling her wiry frame. She would not speak, she did not eat and nor did she sleep, for on occasions when Magda woke in the night, she witnessed her old friend pacing the forest floor, whispering to herself, her fists clenched into balls. It chilled her to think that Hal might be tipping between sanity and madness. If she fell, the consequences would devastate them all.

"I'm not sure," Magda said, turning to the maid. "Her losses have been great."

"Yours too," Lauré said. Her lips were pinched, her face pale and tired in the weak light of morning. Magda winced inwardly, thinking of Edæc; of his big, strong heart and his raw love of life. To have suffered such cruelty in his innocence. It was all too much.

"We've all lost," Magda said, swallowing her pain. "You too, Lauré. You too."

"I would have died for Evelia," Lauré said with sudden passion. "She was such a good woman. She treated me as her friend ˗ shared all her secrets with me. She knew Castor was going to kill her."

"And I didn't stop him."

"That wasn't your fault, Magda. He would have had his way no matter what. He saw our mistress as a threat. Why ˗ I do not know."

Magda shook her head, studying Lauré. Each day she studied the maid, as if making a mental collection of her gestures and her words: the way she arched her back with grace, the tangled web of her hair, her liquid beauty as she moved, a beauty sometimes too great for Magda to bear. In such times of horror, she asked herself, how could such perfection survive? From time to time, she observed Roc's men watching Lauré too ˗ talking to her, coaxing her away from their band of travellers. And a jealousy rose in Magda's heart so fierce she would have fought everyone of them.

"That night when they came for me, after the coronation feast...she begged me not to leave her alone. She knew...she knew he was coming." Lauré's voice was low, little more than a rustle of words. "I stayed with her, I held her hard. When they searched her apartments, they said they'd found the letters. They said I'd smuggled papers in and out of the palace. But I didn't, Magda. It was a lie."

"I know, Lauré. I know."

"They took me out of there, and I could hear her screaming. It was...pitiful." She rubbed fiercely at her eyes. Tentative, Magda reached out for the girl, wrapping her own hand over Lauré's. The maid stared at her in wonder.

"We'll make him suffer for what he's done," Hal said, startling them both. Releasing Lauré's hand, Magda turned in her saddle. Hal Hannac's face was gaunt, her eyes shadowed from lack of sleep.

"I'll have his head," Hal said through gritted teeth.

"Hal, you ought to sleep."

"I won't sleep until I've seen Hannac. Until I've buried my dead."

"Hal," Magda shuddered. "Jools believes we should move straight onto Dal Reniac, now that we know Castor's there."

"Jools can believe what she wants," Hal said. "I'll see my people amongst the ancestors. And then I'll take the fight to Castor."

Magda opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it. Hal was a raw, open wound and with the slightest pressure she would bleed afresh.

"Keep an eye on her," Magda whispered to Lauré. The maid nodded and Magda felt her gaze on her back as she rode up to meet Jools at the head of the column.