Betrayal's Hands - Chapter 13

Chapter 13

To the north Anna showed signs of returning to who she had once been, but she grew more and more ill as the season changed. Within a few months it became impossible for her to deny, she carried Makan's child in her womb.

Anna was devastated by the realization, and fought to hide it. She also considered trying to void the babe from her body, but it was too late by the time she had accepted the truth. Destroying it would quite probably kill her as well. And so she lived, hating herself and hating the baby within her each day more and more. She was determined to destroy it with her own hands as soon as it was born.

As time passed and her belly grew she was forced to retire from her command, if only temporarily. She would not have her soldiers knowing what it was that she carried within her. How tainted she had become. She sought out her sister and arranged for her to go into hiding to bear the child in secret. Shar arranged a special assignment for her, as far as her soldiers were concerned. A secret mission to strike fear into the hearts of the Aradmathians. None knew the truth.

Winter stayed unusually long, and by the time it was over Anna was nearly finished with her pregnancy. She was miserable with the knowledge of what she carried within her. Shar had her cloistered with a midwife that visited daily in a small homestead a week's ride from the army, out of the way of the supply routes to further conceal her condition from their people.

Anna had also, at one point, put in a request to see Corillius. She had thought long and hard on her behavior towards him and she sought to put it right. Her attitude towards men had grown somewhat rougher than it was before, and it was the only way she found herself able to deal with them anymore. Gone was the camaraderie she had once felt. In its place was the uneasiness of a cat that knew only that the dog would not snap at it so long as the dog knew that the cat would attack it at a moment's notice.

But Cor she had treated wrongly, and she knew it even if she did not feel it. Having sent for him she waited impatiently, anxious to see him and afraid to see him. Cor was the only one, after all, who had seen her at her worst, when she had been Baron Makan's plaything. She spat at the thought of it, dredging up considerable anger. Yet at the same time a part of her quailed in terror at the memory.

Her sister, Sharlotta, had arrived instead of Corillius. Shar told her of their cousin's fate, how he had ridden back into Aradmath to exact the vengeance upon Makan that Anna herself had called down upon him. She also told her how intelligence had learned that Makan's two daughters had disappeared, one slain and another missing. No more news had come of it, and after many months had since passed, the worse was assumed. Corillius Argondiir, one of the army's greatest single warriors, had fallen.

Anna's mood grew sullen at the news, and she took ill for many days. The rest of her pregnancy was plagued with troubles of one sort or another. It was only the end of it, one cool late spring night, that brought Anna and her midwife any relief.

Several hours enduring the pains of labor finally produced a large baby boy. Anna stared at him, sweat and tears running down her face from the agony of the ordeal. She was in a state of shock, unbelieving that such a thing had come from within her. She stared and she reached for him, her lips trembling. The midwife finished tying the child's cord and dried him off, then wrapped him in a blanket before handing him to Anna.

Anna took the child, then remembered her silent vow to herself. Her hand rubbed down his cheek then settled around his throat. Still trembling, she tried to make her hand squeeze, but she could not do it as she stared into the innocent babe's eyes. She looked away, fresh tears running from her eyes.

"Take him!" Anna commanded, thrusting the boy back to the midwife. Confused, she did as she was ordered, then helped Anna finish her ordeal while the babe rested in a cradle, strangely silent for one just introduced to the world.

While finishing her delivery, Anna's mind wandered. She still sought the death of the child. It represented her slavery and imprisonment to her enemy, after all. But now she had hatched a better way of making it happen. Instead of slaying the boy herself, she wanted to take up the quest that Corillius had failed. She would take her bastard son and confront Makan himself with him Before his very eyes she would spill the boy's blood and then Makan's as well. His whore of a wife could bear him no sons, she knew, and the one he had sired would die in front of him, with him helpless to intervene.

The midwife looked up, alarmed, at the strange laughter that kept coming from her charge while she pushed out the last of the remnants of her pregnancy with her final contractions.

Continued in Chapter 14