Without any gentleness in their hands, Aethylla and her companion grabbed Cornelia’s knees, rolled her wailing onto her back, and forced her legs up and apart.
Aethylla gave a great sigh of relief. “Look, the baby’s head crowns. It must have turned in the cold water.”
And if I’d known cold “water would help so much, Aethylla thought, I would have dropped Cornelia overboard long before this .
A shout from outside, then a bloodcurdling war cry, and a clash of sword against sword.
Aethylla and the midwife glanced fearfully at each other, but Membricus merely grinned. “It begins,”
he said, and Aethylla wondered at what she had been caught up in, and whether she would survive it at all.
The woman beside Aethylla whimpered, glancing apprehensively toward the open door. Aethylla herself was growing more and more concerned, especially remembering Brutus’ reluctance to allow the nobler Blangan to come ashore, but she also knew that if they succumbed to their fear now, then it might well be the death of them. She gave her companion a sharp pinch to bring her mind back to the task at
hand, then reached between Cornelia’s legs to place a hand on her belly, giving the girl a reassuring pat.
‘It will not be long,” she said, “but now, when the pain comes, you will need to bear down with all your might.”
Just then another contraction did begin, and Cornelia writhed on the bed, sobbing in her agony.
Membricus smiled.
The sound of fighting drew much closer, and Membricus tensed, looking to the door. He could see bodies silhouetted against the faint starlight outside, struggling, the blades of swords and knives flashing, sometimes clean, sometimes dulled with blood.
He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry—not with fear, but with a sudden strange flowering of sexual excitement.
Soon… Soon…
Cornelia was screaming now, her body almost lifting off the bed with the strength of her agony, and Aethylla was shouting at her to bear down! bear down !
The other woman was no longer at the bedside, but had scuttled on her hands and knees to the door as if seeking escape.
The fighting drew much, much closer, and Membricus, still watching—eyes wide, mouth open, breath panting in the extremity of his own excitement—could plainly now make out the features of those who fought.
The attackers, Goffar’s men, fought stark naked, their hairy bodies daubed with blue clay, their faces strangely tattooed in blue-black ink, and their bouncing genitals stained with some black substance.
As Membricus watched, only barely aware of what was happening on the bed before him, one of the Poiterans suddenly screamed, his sword dropping from nerveless fingers as the blade of a Trojan sword emerged from his belly. At that precise moment, the baby slithered from Cornelia’s body to the accompaniment of a final, brutal scream from its mother; Aethylla gave a triumphant yell; and the other woman, now terrified witless, made a dash for the door…
… where she was impaled on the sword of the gigantic Poiteran who had just stepped through the opening.
His fierce eyes fixed on Membricus, the Poiteran put his hand to the dying, screaming woman’s shoulder, and pushed her off his sword.
She fell on the floor, hands to her belly, her mouth open in now-silent shrieks, convulsed, and died.
No one noticed.
Membricus gave one glance to the bed—a baby boy lay between Cornelia’s bent legs, his arms and legs waving weakly, his tiny face screwed up with the injustice of his barbaric entry into the world; Aethylla, her hands held out to the baby, was nonetheless staring horrified at the Poiteran who had now taken one farther step toward Membricus; while Cornelia was trying to raise herself to reach down to the child, oblivious of everything but it.
Membricus looked back to the Poiteran who towered only a pace away. “Kill her,” he said. “Kill her now.”
The Poiteran looked at the woman and the child, hefted his sword, and with a fierce cry of utter joy, buried it in Membricus’ belly.
He twisted the sword, crowing with delight at the shock on Membricus’ face, then jerked it to one side, then the other, opening up Membricus’ entire abdomen.
Then he took a step back, grinning hugely as he dragged the sword from Membricus’ flesh.
Membricus gagged, took a staggering step away from the Poiteran, and, too late, tried to stop his bowels erupting from his body.
The glistening pink ropes of his entrails steamed in the night air, so many lengths that it seemed impossible they could have been stored within one man, and slipped gently, irretrievably, from Membricus” abdomen to cover Cornelia’s breasts and belly.
Membricus gave one surprised hiccup, sank to his knees, grabbed at his entrails, and tried to stuff them back inside his ruined body.
The Poiteran, still screaming with battle-lust, lifted his sword and stepped toward Cornelia.
eigbceejsi coRnetia speaksTHINK THAT IN EVERYONE’S LIVES THERE IS ONE MOment, just that one single moment, where something happens that is so shocking, so profoundly extraordinary, that your life forever is changed.
For me that moment was when my son finally fought his way free of my body. After all the hatred and savageness of the past months, and most particularly of the preceding day, to have that child battle his way into life from my body was the most joyous moment of my entire life.
I loved him instantly, simply, and unconditionally. The mere fact of his existence wiped away all the pain and troubles of those long, terrible months he grew inside me.
I—,’—had produced thisl How could I ever have not wanted him? How could I ever have said I loathed and resented him? At that very moment I was so full of overwhelming love that I swear that I also loved the man who had put him inside me (and at that thought I also wondered if my wits had been totally addled by the pain).
Everything Blangan had said to me was true. The instant he was born, and I could see what I had made, I adored him.
If I’d had the strength, I would have pushed damned Membricus’ entrails and steaming shit off my belly and snatched him to my breast, but as it was all I could do was try and shovel what was left of Membricus off my body and reach down between my legs to touch my glorious child.
I didn’t even think about why Membricus should have so suddenly and inexplicably burst apart before me, or why Aethylla was screaming at me (or was it at someone behind me?). I just wanted to touch my child.
I did, I touched his downy shoulder with one finger, and I burst into sobs of sheer joy.
Something whistled through the air where an instant before my shoulders had been, burying itself in the bed behind me, but that fact only barely penetrated my mind. I leaned farther forward, disregarding the pain it caused my body, and ran my hand over his head.
Aethylla was still screaming about something, leaning back and pointing behind me, but I didn’t care.
‘Shush,” I murmured to the boy, and, oh, hear his cries! “Shush, my lovely, shush…”
Then someone grabbed my hair.
EVERYTHING CHANGED. I ABRUPTLY BEG AME AWARE OF what was happening about me: the foul smell of Membricus’ spilled bowels, and the shrieks and howls that emitted from his lips; Aethylla’s screams as her terrified eyes focused on someone behind me (the man who had my hair? Was it Brutus, returned to view his son?); the humped body, also curiously disemboweled, of the other woman who’d been assisting my son’s birth; and then the stink of the man who had his hand so cruelly buried in my hair—a stink more foul even than that of Membricus’ bowels. I suddenly realized I was very likely about to die.
Perhaps strangely, this did not particularly perturb me. After what I’d been through, sure that I was going to be torn to pieces anyway, I was quite resigned to a death of some sort. So long as Aethylla managed to get my son to safety I wasn’t particularly concerned about it.
But I twisted my face, and looked anyway.
The great naked hulk of a man loomed behind me. His body—ugh! What a hairy gut he had!—was caked thick with blue clay. His face was a messy web of close-woven black-inked lines, his eyes wild and staring from their midst.
His genitals, wobbling on a level close with my eyes, looked as though they’d been tattooed completely black. They smelt diseased. I wrinkled my nose in disgust, and out of the corner of my eyes, saw him raise a blood-daubed sword on high.
His mouth parted, and his teeth gleamed.
Aethylla was screaming in the background, and something inside me just snapped.
I’d simply had enough. This day had been bad enough without this disgusting hulk trying to murder me.
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