Conflict of Interest:  Part 10
By Zuiderzee  (zuiderzee@yahoo.com)
Women in Power for the wrong reasons.


       The continuing legend of Doctor Ustreed
       Hormgrud; Scholar of Law and Soldier of the
       Palatinate.


                  (the story from 1-8)   
             Responding to a small-scale, but
       hostile incursion in the marches of Crenholtz,
       16-year-old Doctor Hormgrud routs a knot of
       crop-thieves and barely wins out when she is
       ambushed by more hostile members of their
       tribe.
     
            Injured, unhorsed and on foreign soil,
       Doctor Hormgrud uncovers elements of slavery,
       invasion and piratical plots.

            

            Of the many unexpected encounters, the most
       bizarre is the intense, uncommunicative stranger
       whose sudden appearance stops her before she can
       blunder into certain death... 
            Fifty Cumexian pirates assemble, laying out
       their encampment in the clearing adjacent to her
       meager hiding place. 
            Her first order of business is to determine
       the nature of the reticent spook...



                 ^                              ^





            "No games...!"  Ustreed growled in a voice as
       loud as the perilous situation would allow.  She 
       could still feel the big Gouccle's thumbs on her
       larynx and the fact she had been three-quarters
       strangled to death did much to mute her voice.  This
       aside, her police work demonstrated the importance
       of a commanding tone of voice, whether it could be
       understood or not.
            Intent.  It all lay in intent.
            She had her sword in hand and with much mind of
       the bustling, but wary Cumexians well within earshot,
       gave the robed, long-haired Suryish spook a few bats
       with the tapering end of the blade.  Seven inches or
       so of tempered steel, applied only with the flat of
       the weapon made contact with the spook's upper arms.
            Ustreed knew the danger of getting too physical
       at this moment, her hastily bound wounds still ached
       and activity would make them bleed.
            The spot on her cheek under her eye where the 
       now-dead Gouccle had pitched his rock was every bit
       as swollen as before.  It continued to impair her
       vision.  The welt was as large as a nutshell and the
       her overall scope of things was cut down by a quarter.
            It was still good enough to see the curt blows of
       the hanger's blade were enough to ripple those princely
       coat-sleeves and make the arms inside them shift in
       anticipation of the swordblows.
            WHAP------WHAP------WHAP went the steel, intent
       on making him focus and cooperate.
            "Whose side are you on?  Answer quickly before I
       have to really hurt you--"
            "You can't hurt me!  I am Sury."
            An odd thing to say, she thought.  Was this first
       statement a warning or a boast?
            But he backed off.
            Well, he was flesh, after all.



                                         *

            Urlim Brehn had assembled the 35 members of the
       detatchment that were to accompany him to Grais Castle.
       He was mildly worried that Ustreed Hormgrud hadn't
       at least waited to greet them personally.
            Fresh, unscarred faces, whole bodies and naive
       minds were the rule here.  This assignment to the 
       border country would satisfy the requirements of the
       state for three years of military service.
            "Children...." Brehn huffed.
            The three dozen figures on the hard ground outside
       the stables were silent in their ranks.
            Those who had not met the Vytim giant or heard of
       his reputation as the strongest man in the Palatinate
       gazed wonderingly at parade rest as he gave a short
       speech and detailed their journey up the mountain road
       to Grais.
            There was a solidly-built wooden table, several yards
       long which earlier had held small packs of provisions which
       had since been loaded onto pack animals.  The broad, lengthy
       table was empty now.
            Brehn had them fall out of ranks and take a seat on
       the tabletop itself.
            There had been no chairs.
            After much bustle, the 35 young men all found places
       around the rectangle, having to crowd in tight to fit.
            Ordering them to remain seated regardless, Brehn 
       squeezed his enormous bulk under the laden platform and
       after finding the center, pressed his expansive back up
       against the center.  In a crouch, he rested his hamlike
       hands on a stone block under the table and exerted all
       his lifting strength in a slow push.
            Sounds of surprise came from the seated men on the
       topside as in unison, the four legs of the table cleared the
       hard ground, first one inch, then two, then three, then four,
       then slowly lowered again with the same controlled speed.
            Still seated, the young men cheered solidly as
       Brehn worked his way out from under the load, stretching as
       he rose, but not pained.
            "Who wants to try it next?" he asked jokingly.  It was
       vital to earn their respect.
            He thought of Ustreed again.  In a scaled down version
       of this same lift, she could manage the table itself which
       was roughly her own weight plus four anvils.
            Not too bad, but a start.
            If jumped, she would have to be able to shrug off
       an overbearing opponent with ease.  
            Brehn could kill a man with a single punch, but few
       suspected his might was so adaptable.
            "And now, to your mounts...."  

                                       *

            Brehn watched them go, content to follow in a wagon.
        He entered the tackroom, noticing chips of wood on the
        floor at the base of one of the ceiling posts.  A sword
        or knife had been used on it recently.
             He thought instantly of Schneer and his rapier.
             What had Schneer been doing in the tackroom for so
        long--long enough to leave a litter of wood chips as he
        whiled away what might have been an hour?
             Thoughts of the woman struck him and he fished for his
        flattened Vytim amulet, the forbidden talisman Hormgrud had
        threatened to expose.  He unwrapped the leather binding on
        the haft of his warhammer, slipped the small piece of nickel
        up against the haft and rebound it.  
             Ustreed had been here earlier.
             At the same time?  Had he been lurking in the tackroom
        and the adjoining stalls while Ustreed had saddled Trooper?
             "POUL!" Brehn pushed his bulk out the tackroom door,
        bolwing over Vint, the herzog's assistant groom and now
        in training to manage the stables at Grais.  Poul was his
        chief, but Vint was reliable too.
             Brehn had no rank, one of the few old-time warriors
        left in Crenholtz before the new military had formed, though
        subordinates were told to call him--
             "Captain Brehn!"
             Brehn winced at the name.
             "Report."
             "Trooper--Doctor Hormgrud's horse was just brought in from
        somewhere near Kobelthal."
             Ignoring the salute, Brehn continued outside to see Poul
        trotting the unnerved gelding back into the paddock.
             Trooper reared until abruptly tethered.
             "Attacked!"  Brehn snarled, whacking his huge hand against
        his forehead with a loud report.  Trooper had clots of dried
        blood in his coat and obvious wounds in addition to his not-quite
        lamed hoof.
             Vint shook his head woefully to Brehn's fierce annoyance.
             "Stop looking at me with that 'oh, the poor girl' mask!"
        Brehn felt a trickle of sweat run down his temple.  The herzog
        would be especially harsh if....     
             "Doctor Hormgrud was not found with him--not found at all."
        Vint sighed in exasperation.
             "Don't make sorry sounds like that!  I trained Hormgrud...
        she wasn't unhorsed without a fight.  There are javelins missing
        from the quiver--" Brehn shook his fist.
             Following a prearrangement they'd made, Brehn yanked Trooper
        to immobility with one stupendous arm, searching through his short
        mane until he found a snipping of Ustreed's hair, hastily braided
        and knotted securely to Trooper's mane.
             "Trouble.  Outsiders.  A fight took place, she was wounded."
             Poul groaned with a hangdog expression which Brehn didn't
        miss.  The aging stabler looked toward the mountains with his
        graying eyebrows trembling.  He beat the hitching post with a fist.
             "Poul--you've got some explaining to do.  And wherever Schneer
        is, I want to see him, too!"        

           

                                          *


            Ustreed felt a chill of sympathy.   
            It had felt like a terrible disregard of reverence
       to assault him; this was a being unaccustomed to the
       touch and disapproval of others.
            And what had he meant about his being Sury?  Wasn't
       the correct form "Suryish", not Sury?  The way he'd
       phrased it made him sound like a symbol.
            "Are you telling me you are a lawful representative
       of Sury?"  Ustreed asked.
            The princely spook now appeared in the deepest shame.
            "What is your involvement here?"
            She kept the now-disgraced personage right in front of
       her as he gracefully, but sneakily moved to her near-blind
       side.  He rubbed his arms as though pained, then stopped.
            This helped dispell the notion that this weird
       figure dressed in a costume straight out of crumbling
       frescoes or millenium-old statues was as real as she
       was.
            Those ghastly eyes of rosy copper looked back with
       supplication.  And his maidenly ruddy lips were almost
       embarrassing to look at--they were like whore's lips,
       promising, but not immediately delivering until something
       was paid.  Ustreed had been on brothel-raids before;
       prostitution under Pfalzgrafin Mathilda's mandate was a
       hanging offense.  Sluts disrupted the economy, traded
       in secrets, helped fugitives and foreigners and were a
       black eye to the image of the woman as serious and worthy
       of trust.
            Ustreed hated prostitutes and had attended any number
       of hangings.
            The androgynous nature of the Suryish spook rattled
       something in her gut and in defiance of better judgement,
       she jabbed him with the wicked end of her hanger, a lethal
       blow, though only four inches deep.  The loom-crafted fabric
       of his ankle-length robe dimpled in under the shaft of steel
       that had penetrated the place where Ustreed knew his liver
       was huddled.  She deliberately hit low, avoiding the ribs.
            He's familiar to me--Ustreed suddenly thought in horror.
       Why is he so familiar?
            No blood spread from the wound and no pain registered on
       the spook's face.
            "Why don't you talk, you creeping spider?  You haven't
       long to go now, so you might as well use what arts of 
       communication you still possess--"
            He lunged forward, speechless, fearless, weaponless, 
       driving the hanger deeper into his body with a zzzzipp of
       resisting fabric.  There came a muffled squelch, but no blood.
            Ustreed barely believed in what were called "supraphants"
       supremely disciplined mystics and (purported) consumate wizards
       in using mental power to do the otherwise impossible--his silence
       suggested that, but Ustreed refused to be believe this being was
       truly enlightened.  His sad eyes were a mark of some unappeasable
       failure.
            "What does it matter?" he finally inquired, wrapping his 
       long, dangling-sleeved arms around Ustreed's body.
            His touch made her lacerated hip burn and drool lymph.
            "Why you fool--!"  Ustreed countered in another of her
       strangled shouts, now putting a real effort into trying to get
       away.  Fresh fear burst from her system in cold, creeping spinal
       chills and pricks of tepid sweat in her armpits.
            "No, Doctor.  It is you who are deceived."
            "I'll take you with me to Crenholtz--"
            "Oh no, that you may not do."  Now the unequalled rosy-
       hued eyes burned into hers.  "And whatever you're thinking,
       this is not the product of delerium.  You are awake, you are
       alone, the Cumexians are real.  I am real."
            "--But not as definitely framed."  Ustreed's mind rambled.
            If only she'd avoided those headwounds.
            "But I know all those things, and they are only details.
       Who are you?  What are you?"
            Keeping one hand on the swordhilt, she sought to push him
       away with the other, finally resorting to her knee to lever 
       him back.  He was spoiling her ability to think.
            "My place in this picture is not for you or any other
       man to alter--"
            His calling her a "man" made the hairs on the back of
       her neck rise.  She struggled again, stirring leaves under her
       feet.  Oddly, the stranger's footfalls were silent.

            "Ustreed Eluza Hormgrud.  Doctor. Scholar. Spreader
       of Truth.  As you see it."
            "I asked who first who you were--you haven't done else
       except give doggerel. And yet, I should know you."
            "According to you and the learned minds of the empire,
       signs and wonders are utterly without meaning."
             There was something in his futility that struck such a
       familiar chord in her mind, Ustreed nearly voiced a fierce
       grunt of frustration.  
            The threat of listening pirates killed this urge. 
            No grown male had ever embraced her so firmly outside of
       combat.  The feeling of being crushed against the body of a
       mysterious stranger in whose liver her own sword was skewered
       was one she had not been trained to cope with.
            "You can speak--!"  Ustreed cast a cautious glance over her
       shoulder to where the Cumexians were walking the perimeter of
       their new camp.  Even now, crossbow-toting sentries were being
       given their posts.  Four Cumexians in drab cloth livery and 
       pieces of leather armor signalled their willingness to a sub-
       chief and broke away from the ranks to begin their prowl.
       "And you have some reason to speak, I surmise."
            The killings dogs in the pirate camp growled and fought
       over the despoiled remains of the Gouccle youth, flinging
       torn chunks of human flesh all over the ground and snapping
       among themselves over the choicer pieces while their masters
       whooped approval.
            Their tethered ponies whinnied behind the screens of
       trees and bushes and sounds of Cumexians shouting orders
       boomed through the woods.  They were not warriors, these
       fifty Cumexian pirates, but hardened criminals, fully capable
       of banding together to accomplish something on the scale of
       a small, mercenary army.  They fought well enough to be hired
       in days before Pfalzgrafin Mathilda as paid soldiers, but like
       the prostitutes, they were banned from the Palatinate as
       treacherous money-grubbers and an insult to the new code of
       honor.  
            And they had a real taste for rape.
            Without strong and consistent leadership, they reverted
       quickly to banditry on campaigns.
            The herzog had to be warned, and if she couldn't get to
       him, at least she could sneak her way to Grais castle by
       following the stream even if Trooper was gone.
            But that would take hours.
            Whatever the Cumexians were planning, they weren't going
       to wait for her to bring the ritters down on them. 
            The shreik of jetting flights of bolts told her the
       Cumexians had wasted no time organizing a nearby target practice
       session.  Judging by the sound, they could get a lot of those
       bolts into the air in a short amount of time.  She had never
       seen Cumexians fight and didn't want to now.
            And this efette mystic was becoming an impediment to that
       new mission.
            "I'm going to get out of sight of those pirates, and with
       my sword in you or no.  Then, I am going to escape."
            Once more, the spook was goaded to say something that 
       might tip the balance of her success one way or the other, but
       held his tongue.   
            Clutching one another like dancers in an intimate set of
       moves, Ustreed and her un-victim withdrew from the little
       spinney of trees and down into the shadows of a jumble of 
       rocks, black and lifeless in themselves, but bearded in riots of
       bright green moss.  Not quite grappling, not quite walking, 
       the Crensewoman and the spook moved in silence and solemnity
       into the new hiding place.  Moving him more than he moved her,
       Ustreed used superior strength to force him to kneel.
            "You're fortunate this isn't the Palatinate.  There is
       policy concerning those who balk--"
            "If you knew anything about me, you'd know I can't be
       of any help in this matter."
            He heaved a sigh that made Ustreed fume with anger.
            Ustreed was panting now, determined to get her sword out
       of him before the Cumexian camp sentinels fanned out and 
       ran across their tracks.
            Dogs bayed in the distance, singing their carnal joys
       with gored muzzles and wet throats.
            She ultimately kicked him hard and yanked the bloodless
       hanger from his body and backed away, unsure of what to do
       with the sword now that it had been proven feckless.
            "I should know you--upon my own life, I should know
       your name!"
            Stricken in gray despair, Ustreed dropped to her knees,
       releasing the sword with a thud.  The Gouccles and the Cumexians
       were forgotten, even the figure who had given her so much cause
       to ponder his existence was swept out of her mind.    
            "His name does not matter--" came a new voice, issuing 
       from everywhere at once, but Ustreed sensed quickly that
       despite its booming volume, the Cumexians would never hear it.
            The princely stranger heard it too and turned from it,
       trembling like a mad thing, vainly wrapping his arms over his
       face, blanking his eyes and ears in cringing anticipation of
       a crippling blow.  That new voice alone had hurt him in a way
       a score of swordthrusts never could and never would.
            No, not new to Ustreed, she identified the speaker in a
       blush of emotion that felt to her like a flare of sunfire.
            But it was impossible, too!

                                      * 


          --DO NOT BOTHER TO KNOCK, BREHN.  COME IN.  WATCHMASTER SCHNEER--

             Brehn charged up the stairs of Grais Castle as fast as his
       bulk would allow, slowing and looking with stunned surprise at the
       almost genial weclome note nailed to the door of the primary guard
       room.  Schneer had not yet been officially assigned to Grais, but
       he spent time here with the approval of the herzog, assisting in
       drills.
            The door swung inward before Brehn could use his warhammer on
       the timbers.
            Fearlessly, Schneer confronted the stout giant in the doorway.
       Schneer had removed his long outer coat, but the rest of his 
       barely-approved soldiering outfit was all in place.  He hadn't been
       caught napping, or as Brehn might have expected, wenching.
            "Schneer, you venomous toad--"
            "I am no toad, Brehn.  I didn't know why I did what I did earlier,
       but something is going to happen in the near future that concerns
       this castle and most everyone in it.  I'm surprised you haven't been
       plagued with memories of things that haven't happened yet.  This is a
       delicate time.  If it will help, I know about the fetish--I mean, the
       amulet you've got wrapped up in the binding of that warhammer of yours.
       Right about in the middle, actually."
            "What's...going on here!"
            "Here? In Crenholtz?  Very little, compared to what's going on
       in Sury.  If you think of mounting a rescue party for your friend,
       Doctor Hormgrud, nothing good will come of it."
            "I see she's no friend of yours."
            "We both serve the herzog...who does not necessarily serve the
       Pfalzgrafin.  It's been rumored, and I can say it.  I am a Wolperite.
       A property-owning libertine in the making who will rise and declare for
       the Red Margrave when he emerges from exile to snatch 'Matty's' throne
       out from under her.  The Pflazgrafin will betray us, and her flock of
       iron-clad hens will betray us.  When this castle is rubble in less than
       a decade's time, Ustreed will take the garrison to Sury and give over
       what loyalty she has to a...mystic.  And through her careless
       idolization of this prophetess, she will be cursed. We will all be
       cursed.  Myself?  I will be cursed into trying to disrupt what she'd
       doing.  I don't truly believe I can repair the wrong.  It's too
       far-reaching, too profound.  The variables are too many.
            You weren't there...you won't be there when she takes me into
       her confidence."  Schneer brushed imaginary dirt from his outfit,
       putting his swordhand close to the hilt of his sheathed rapier.
            "She was in power for the wrong reason...and she misused her
       power.  Love.  Who can explain it?  It could be you're immune to this
       specific part of the curse, but as I vaguely see, you wind up dying
       an unworthy death, trying to defend her useless reputation to the
       herzog.  Do us both a favor, Brehn, don't interfere.  This is a
       matter too delicate...too, too delicate for a man of your sort." 
            Drained of his might, Brehn clutched the handle of his warhammer
       and felt for the amulet he had so secretly hidden.
            "I may fail, Brehn.  I think I've failed before.  And knowledge
       of what I've shared with you may fall out of existence, but I've
       got...got to try something."
            "That is the most preposterous pack of lies I've ever heard!"
       Brehn lifted the hammer.
            Watchmaster Schneer had no equal with a sword in Crenholtz.
       Brehn's blows were devestating, but Schneer knew his weakness.        

                                         *

            Ustreed was at the point of tear-eyed shock.
            She had been twentyfour-years-old when she'd first met
       Madam Prophet at Danninger Castle. 
            A year after that, Ustreed had fallen in love with the
       prophetess, entering into a love as forbidden as it was vital.
       Many wrongs, many betrayals and many misgivings had come of
       that love and too many shames had been revealed.
            An old memory, Ustreed thought, dismissing that notion as
       swiftly as it had dawned on her.  She was only sixteen now,
       logically ruling that out.
            But Sury was like that.  Things that couldn't happen,
       happened here.  Sury was different from any place in the world. 
            A thousand images from a time Ustreed
       had not yet lived came roaring back to life like a dying fire
       suddenly given a gust of air.
            "Rathmarouw, begone." 
            Ustreed looked up in time to see the awed, doomed personage
       she remembered as Sury's immortal, but false prophet, slink away
       into the shadows of the woods with unheard footfalls, bent low
       and clutching at the trees as though he'd been sickened and
       enfeebled.  Rathmarouw could appear to anyone in Sury, but his
       power to help others had been taken away, leaving him only with
       prophetic sight and unbearable immortality. He passed through the
       hordes of Cumexians unseen and unfelt.
            Bad things happen to those who betray the God of Sury and
       any servants of the same.
            Rathmarouw had helped her, if only to remind her of the
       consequences of mortal treachery. 
            "Help me, Madam Prophet--stop me, this time.  I can die
       bravely if that will stop me from running toward that other fate.
       But I love you so much--I once asked you to blot the memory of our
       time together from my mind--can't you see what my knowing about you
       is doing?!"
            Like a complex shape no longer simplified by darkness into a
       mere outline, the prophetess appeared as a standing apparition
       set against the cluster of black rocks. The purple, twilight
       aura that surrounded her and illuminated her was not so dazzling
       as Ustreed remembered, but as unique. 
            Still sixteen, still tired and wounded and having only enough
       emotional strength to remain conscious, Ustreed closed her eyes to
       the glow and again reached for her sword, content to impale herself
       on it, rather than to let history repeat itself.
            Madam Prophet's love would be denied her this time, but her
       mortality would escape the stain of wretched pride.       
                            
                              

                          TO BE CONTINUED