StarDrifter had now stepped into the circle of light. "He has taken a woman," he said, "that does not belong to him, and who does not love him."
"That's a lie!" WolfStar shouted. "She loves me, and I her!"
Humiliated, scorned, betrayed, StarLaughter jerked out of WolfStar's grasp.
"Who?" she whispered, then turned her head to StarDrifter and spoke louder, more strongly. "Who is this whore-bitch that thinks to depose me?"
It was only then that StarDrifter realised what a terrible mistake he had made.
Chapter 53
Sigholt
They continued south, Axis and his war band ranging ahead during the day, Urbeth leading the column of trees and people and animals behind him.
StarLaughter had proved a problem.
Since StarDrifter — curse his tongue! — had blurted out the fact of Zenith's existence, StarLaughter had not said a word.
She had, quite simply, gone silent.
And Axis did not like to think what might be going on in her mind.
He'd done what he could, but he wasn't sure if he could do anything to mitigate the situation.
StarLaughter had been asked, politely enough and with the offer of supplies, to leave the column.
StarLaughter had turned her head slightly in Axis' direction, but had said nothing.
Nor had she moved.
So Axis had been forced to remove her. A dozen Lake Guardsmen had taken her some ten leagues to the east where they'd left her in a cave in the Icescarp Alps with supplies, clothes and strict instructions to leave the column alone.
Next morning, a sentry had alerted Axis to StarLaughter's silent, ghostly presence in the snow some hundred paces beyond the treeline.
She'd just stood there, ever silent, staring with unblinking eyes at the convoy as it prepared to move for the day.
Axis had had her moved again, further this time.
Next morning she was back again.
Urbeth had roared and snarled, but StarLaughter had not blinked, nor moved, and after a week of trying to drive her away, Axis had been forced to admit that nothing would work.
StarLaughter would use whatever power she had to return herself to her silent (hate-filled) vigil a hundred paces away from the column.
Staring, staring, staring.
Stars knew what horror she'd bring down on the column! Axis did not know if StarLaughter was still working in league with the Demons and the Hawkchilds, or if she had embarked on a solitary quest for revenge. One night a sentry had reported that a strange shape — half bird, half woman, strangely lumped and as black as the night itself — had been spotted stumbling its way through the snow towards StarLaughter, but when Axis and a unit of men had ridden out to investigate, StarLaughter was once more alone in the snow.
Albeit with the ghost of a smile on her face.
So Axis had done what he could within the convoy itself. There were always several units of men detailed to keep an eye on StarLaughter — and for whatever horror she might call down out of the sky.
WolfStar and Zenith had finally been forcibly separated — to WolfStar's fury — but Axis was not leaving Zenith with WolfStar when StarLaughter, in all probability, had his daughter's murder in mind.
Thank the Stars StarDrifter had not blurted out her name!
As Axis had men watching StarLaughter, so he also had an equal number of men watching Zenith, as also WolfStar. Zenith to protect her; WolfStar to keep him away from Zenith.
WolfStar was incandescent with rage, Zenith was unhappy, StarDrifter spent his days in a turmoil of guilt at the danger he'd placed Zenith in, and Axis was damned glad to spend the days hunting down insane cows in the snow rather than spend time with his family!
"Gods, Azhure," he muttered one day as he urged Sal into her slide through time and space, "I miss you more than you could ever know. What a muddle our family has got itself into!"
From the edge of the Icescarp Alps Axis led the convoy ever south, Sal's power sliding them across the landscape at incredible speed. The Avarinheim was no more, obliterated by Qeteb's rape of the land when he'd first been resurrected, and Axis almost wept at the destruction. He had never been close to the Avar, although they'd aided him in his final quest against Gorgrael, and he'd never been at home in the forests, but the massacre of the trees deeply saddened him.
At night, when they camped, the trees surrounding the column murmured and shifted, remembering not only what had been lost, but the pain they'd endured during their death.
And they whispered of revenge and of an accounting.
Here, in this drifting plain that had once been a forest full of song and enchantment and fey creatures, the snow thinned and eventually disappeared, and the going became somewhat easier and, unbelievably, even faster. In only two days Axis found himself approaching the valley that connected the Skarabost plains with the Avarinheim (or what had once been the Avarinheim).
Axis reined Sal to a halt, his war band still some distance behind him, and sat, staring and remembering.
Here he had chased Azhure and Raum, when he had still thought himself a BattleAxe.
Here he had seen the woman he'd later discovered was his mother.
Here he'd had his first real inkling that he was more, far more, than just BattleAxe.
