Witch World Part 12

Koris looked to Vortgin. "They spread it fast enough. You'd best be on your way, if any of your kin is to be warned at all."

Vortgin thrust his belt dagger deep into the earth of the field as if he were planting it in one of the blue coated riders. "I'll need more than my two legs."

"Just so. And there is what we all seek." Koris jerked a thumb at the ducal party.

"Beyond the bridge the road takes a cut through small woods," Simon thought aloud.

Koris' pseudo-face expressed malicious appreciation of that hint. "They'll soon be through with the chatter. We'd best move."

They crawled away from their vantage point, crossed the river ford, and found the woods track. The roads leading north were not well kept. Yvian's rule in this district had been covertly opposed by n.o.ble and commoner alike. Away from the main highways all pa.s.sages tended to be only rough tracks.

On either side banks rose, brush and gra.s.s covered. It was not a safe place for any wayfarer, doubly suspect for anyone in the Duke's livery.

Simon settled into concealment on one side of that cut, Koris chose a stand closer to the river, prepared to head off any retreat. And Vortgin was across from Simon. They had only to wait.

The leader of the messengers was no fool. One of his men rode ahead, studying every bush the wind stirred, every clump of suspiciously tall gra.s.s. He pa.s.sed between the hidden men and trotted on. After him came the one who bore the horn, and a companion, while the fourth man brought up the rear.

Simon shot as the rearguard drew level with his position. But the man who fell from the expertly aimed dart was the lead scout.

The leader swung his mount around with the skill of an expert horseman, only to see the rearguard collapse from his saddle coughing blood.

"Sul. . .Sul. . .Sul!" The battle cry Simon had last heard in the doomed seaport rose shrilly. A dart creased Simon's shoulder, ripping leather and burning skin-the leader must have cat's eyes.

The remaining shieldman tried to back his leader in that attack, until Vortgin arose out of hiding and threw the dagger he had played with. The weapon whirled end over end until its heady k.n.o.b struck the back of the other's head at the base of his skull and he went down without a protesting sound.

Hooves pawed the air over Simon's head. Then the horse overbalanced and crashed back, pinning his rider under him. Koris sprang out of hiding and the hooked pole battered down upon the feebly struggling man.

They set to work to strip the riders, secure their mounts. Luckily the horse which had fallen struggled to its feet, frightened and blowing but without any great injury. The bodies were dragged out of sight into the brush and the mail shirts, the helmets and the extra weapons were bound on the saddles before the horses were led to the deserted sheep fold where the fugitives had sheltered.

There the men walked into a hot quarrel. The withered crone, the dark beauty in rent gold and scarlet fronted each other hot-eyed. But their raised voices fell silent as Simon came through a gap in the rotting fence. Neither spoke until they brought up the horses and their burdens. Then the girl in red gave a little cry and pounced upon one of those bundles of leather and mail.

"I want my own shape-and now!" She spat at the witch.

Simon could understand that. At Briant's age a role as he had been forced to a.s.sume would be more galling than slavery. And none of them could wish to keep on wearing the decidedly unattractive envelopes the woman from Estcarp had spun for them, even though they had been so delivered out of Kars.

"Fair enough," he endorsed that. "Can we change by our-or rather your will, lady? Or is there a time period on this shape business?"

Through her tangle of rough locks the witch frowned. "Why waste the time? And we are not yet out of the reach of Yvian's messengers-though apparently you have dealt with some of them." She picked up one of the surcoats as if to measure it against her own bent person.

Briant glowered, gathering an armload of male clothing to him. The pouting lips of his girl's face set stubbornly. "I go away from here as myself, or I don't go at all!" he announced and Simon believed him.

The woman from Estcarp gave in. From beneath her ragged bodice she pulled a bag and shook it at Briant. "Off with you to the stream then. Wash with a handful of this for your soaping. But be careful of it, for this supply must serve us all."

Briant s.n.a.t.c.hed the bag, and, with the clothing, he gathered up his full skirts to scuttle away as if he feared his new possessions might be torn from him.

"What about the rest of us?" Simon demanded indignantly, ready to take off after the runaway.

Koris secured the horses to the moldering fence. His villainous face could not look anything but hideous, but somehow he managed to suggest honest amus.e.m.e.nt in his laughter. "Let the cub get rid of his trappings in peace, Simon. After all, he hasn't protested before. And those skirts must have irked him."

"Skirts?" echoed Vortgin in some surprise. "But . . ."

"Simon is not of the old race." The witch combed her hair with her long nails."He is new to our ways and shape changing. You are right, Koris," she glanced oddly at the Captain, "Briant can be left to make his transformation in peace."

The garments looted from the Duke's unfortunate messengers hung loosely on the young warrior who returned at a far bolder gait from the stream. He tossed a ball of red stuff to the back of the shelter and stamped earth over it with an energy which approached attack as Simon and the rest went to the water.

Koris rubbed and laved his rusty hooked pole before he dipped his body, and continued to hold the Ax of Volt as he scrubbed himself. They made a choice from the tumbled clothing, Koris again a.s.suming the mail shirt he had worn out of Kars since no other would fit him. But he shrugged one of the surcoats over it, a precaution followed by both his companions.

Simon handed the bag to the witch when they returned and she nursed it for a moment in one hand, then restored it to its former hiding place. "You are a brave company of warriors. Me, I am your prisoner. With your hoods and your helms Estcarp does not show so strong in you. Vortgin, you alone have the print of the old race. But were I to be seen in my true face I would d.a.m.n you utterly. I shall wait before I break this shape."

So it was that they rode out of that hiding place, four men in the Duke's colors and the crone perched behinds Briant. The horses were fresh, but they held the pace to a comfortable trot as they worked a path across the country, avoiding the open roads until they reached a point where Vortgin must turn east.

"North along the trade roads," the witch leaned from her seat behind Briant to urge."If we can alert the Falconers they should see fugitives safely through the mountains. Tell your people to leave their gear and bring with them only their weapons and food, what may be carried on pack animals. And may the Power ride with you, Vortgin, for those you can urge into Estcarp will be blood for our veins!"

Koris pulled the horn strap from his shoulder and pa.s.sed it over."This may be your pa.s.sport if you flush any of Yvian's forces before you get into the back country. Luck be yours, brother, and seek out the Guards in the North. There is a shield in their armory to fit your shoulder!"

Vortgin saluted and kicked his horse into a flurry of speed eastward.

"And now?" the witch asked Koris.

"The Falconers."

She cackled. "You forget. Captain, old and shriveled as I seem, with all the juices age-sucked from me, still am I female and the hold of the hawk men is barred to me. Set Briant and me across the border and then seek out your women-hating bird men. Rouse them up as best you may. For a border abristle with sword points will give Yvian something else to think about. And if they can afford our cousins safe pa.s.sage, they will put us deep in their debt. Only," she plucked at the surcoat on Briant's shoulders, "I would say to you throw these name signs of a lord you do not serve away, or you may find yourself pinned to some mountain tree before you have time to make your true nature known."

Simon was not surprised this time to find they were being observed by a hawk, nor did he think it odd to hear Koris address the bird clearly, giving their true identies and explaining their business in the foothills. He covered the back trail while the Captain took the lead, the witch and Briant riding between them. They had parted with Vortgin in midafternoon and it was now close to sunset, their only food during the day the rations found in the saddlebags of the captured horses.

Now Koris pulled up until the others joined him. While the Captain spoke he still faced into the rising mountains and it seemed to Simon as if he had lost a little of his robust confidence.

"This I do not like. That message must have been relayed by the bird's communicator, and the frontier guards could not have been too far away. They should have met us before now. When we were in the Eyrie they were eager enough to promote a common cause with Estcarp."

Simon eyed the slopes ahead uneasily. "I do not take a trail such as this in the dark without a guide. If you say, Captain, that they are not following custom, then that is all the more reason for staying clear of their territory. I would say camp at the first likely spot."

It was Briant who broke in then, his head up, his attention for the bird wheeling overhead.

"That one does not fly right!" The youngster, dropping the reins of his horse, held his hands together to mimic the wings of a bird. "A true bird goes so-and a falcon so-many times have I watched them. But this one, see-flap, flap, flap-it is not right!"

They were all watching the circling bird now. To Simon's eyes it was the same sort of black and white feathered sentry as had found them outside the Hole of Volt, as he had seen on the saddle perches of the Falconers. However he would be the first to admit that he knew nothing of birds.

"Can you whistle it down?" he asked Koris.

The Captain's lips pursed and clear notes rang on the air.

At that same moment Simon's dart gun went up. Koris turned with a cry and struck at Simon's arm, but the shot had already been fired. They saw the dart strike, piercing just the point of the white vee upon the bird's breast. But there was no faltering in its flight, no sign that it had taken any hurt from the bolt.

"I told you it is no bird!" cried Briant. "Magic!"

They all looked to the witch for an explanation, but her attention was riveted on that bird, the dart still protruding from its body, as it made low lazy circles overhead.

"No magic of the Powers." That answer seemed forced out of her against her will. "What this is, I cannot tell you. But it does not live as we know life."

"Kolder!" Koris spat.

She shook her head slowly. "If it is Kolder, it is not nature-tampering as it was with the men of Gorm. What it is I cannot tell."

"We'll have to get it down. It is lower since that dart struck it; perhaps the weight pulls it." Simon said, "Let me have your cloak," he added to the witch, dismounting.

She handed him that ragged garment and looping it over his arm Simon began to climb the wall beside the narrow track they had followed to this place. He hoped that the bird would remain where it was, content to fly above them. And he was sure it drew nearer earth with every circle.

Simon waited, flipping the cloak out a little. He flung it, and the bird flew unwarily into the improvised net. When Simon tried to draw it back the captive fell free, to fly blindly on and smash head first against the rock wall.

Tregarth leaped down to scoop up what lay on the ground. Real feathers right enough-but under them! He gave a whistle almost as clear and carrying as Koris' bird summons, for entangled in the folds of torn skin and broken feathers was a ma.s.s of delicate metal filings, tiny wheels and wires, and what could only be a motor of strange design. Holding it in his two hands he went back to the horses.

"Are you sure the Falconers use only real hawks?" he asked of the Captain.

"Those hawks are sacred to them." Koris poked a finger into the mess Simon held, his face blank with amazement. "I do not think that this thing is any of their fashioning, for to them the birds are their power and they would not counterfeit that lest it either turn upon them or depart utterly."

"Yet someone or something has tossed into the air of these mountains hawks which are made, not hatched," Simon pointed out.

The witch leaned closer, reaching out a finger to touch as Koris had done. Then her eyes raised to Simon's and there was a question in them, a shadow of concern.

"Outworld-" she spoke hardly above a whisper. "This is not bred of our magic, or of the magic of our time and s.p.a.ce. Alien, Simon, alien . . ."

Briant interrupted her with a cry and pointing a finger. A second black and white shape was over their heads, swooping lower. Simon's free hand went to the gun, but the boy reached down from his saddle to strike at Tregarth's wrist and spoil his aim. "That is a real bird!"

Koris whistled and the hawk obeyed that summons in the clean strike of its breed, settling on a rock crown, the tip of the same pinnacle against which the counterfeit had dashed itself to wreckage.

"Koris of Estcarp," the Captain spoke to it, "but let him who flies you come swiftly, winged brother, for there is ill here and perhaps worse to come!" He waved his hand and the falcon took once more to the air, to head straight for the peaks.

Simon put the other thing into one of his saddle bags. In the Eyrie he had been intrigued by the communication devices which the true falcons bore. A machine so delicate and so advanced in technical ability was out of place in the feudal fortress of its users. And what of the artificial lighting and heating systems of Estcarp, or the buildings of the Sulcarkeep, of that energy source Osberic had blown up to finish the port? Were all these vestiges of an earlier civilization which had vanished leaving only traces of its inventions behind? Or-were they grafts upon this world from some other source? Simon's eyes may have been on the trail they rode but his wits were tumbling the problem elsewhere.

Koris had spoken of Volt's non-human race preceding mankind here. Were these remnants of theirs? Or had the Falconers, the mariners of Sulcarkeep, learned what they wished, what served their purposes best from someone, or something else, perhaps overseas? He wanted a chance to examine the wreckage of the false hawk, to try and a.s.sess from it if he could the type of mind, or training, which could create such an object.

The Falconers emerged from the mountain slopes as if they had stepped from the folds of the ground. And they waited for the party from Kars to approach, neither denying them pa.s.sage, nor welcoming them.

"Faltjar of the southern gate," Koris identified their leader. He swept his own helm from his head to display his face plainly in the fading light. "I am Koris of Estcarp, and I ride with Simon of the Guards."

"Also with a female!" The return was cold and the falcon on Faltjar's saddle perch shook its wings and screamed.

"A lady of Estcarp whom I must put safely beyond the mountains," corrected the Captain in a tone as cold and with the sharpness of a rebuke. "We make no claim upon you for shelter, but there is news which your Lord of Wings should hear."

"A way through the mountains you may have, Guard of Estcarp. And the news you may give to me; it shall be retold to the Lord of Wings before moonrise. But in your hail you spoke of ill here and worse to follow. That I must know, for it is my duty to man the southern slopes. Does Karsten send forth her men?"

"Karsten has thrice horned all of the old race and they flee for their lives. But also there is something else. Simon, show him the false hawk."

Simon was reluctant. He did not want to yield up that machine until he had more time to examine it. The mountaineer looked upon the broken bird he took from the saddlebag, smoothing a wing with one finger, touching an open eye of crystal, pulling aside a shred of feathered skin to see the metal beneath.

"This flew?" he demanded at last, as if he could not believe in what he saw and felt.

"It flew as one of your birds, and kept watch upon us after the fashion of your scouts and messengers."

Faltjar drew his forefinger caressingly down the head of his own bird as if to a.s.sure himself that it was a living creature and not such a copy.

"Truly this is a great ill. You must speak yourself with the Lord of Wings!" Clearly he was torn between the age-old customs of his people and the necessity for immediate action. "If you did not have the female-the lady," he corrected with an effort, "but she may not enter the Eyrie."

The witch spoke. "Let me camp with Briant, and you ride to the Eyrie, Captain. Though I say to you, bird man, the day comes soon when we must throw aside many old customs, both we of Estcarp and you of the mountains, for it is better to be alive and able to fight, than to be bound by the chains of prejudice and dead! There is a riving of the border before us such as this land has never seen. And all men of good will must stand together."

He did not look at her, nor answer, though he half sketched a salute, giving the impression that that was a vast concession. And then his hawk took to the air with a cry, and Faltjar spoke directly to Koris.

"The camp shall be made in a safe place. Then, let us ride!"

PART IV: VENTURE OF GORM.

THE RIVING OF THE BORDER.

A column of smoke penciled into the air, broken by puffs as more combustible materials caught. Simon reined up on the rise to gaze back at the site of another disaster for the Karsten forces, another victory for his own small, hard-riding, tough-punching troop. How long their luck would hold, none of them could guess. But as long as it did, they would continue to blast into the plains, covering up the escape lines of those set-faced, dark-haired people from the outlands who came in family groups, in well armed and equipped bodies, or singly at a weaving pace dictated by wounds and exhaustion. Vortgin had done his work well. The old race, or what was left of it, was withdrawing over a border the Falconers kept open, into Estcarp.

Men without responsibilities for families or clans, men who had excellent cause to want to meet Karsten levies with naked blades, stayed in the mountains, providing a growing force to be led by Koris and Simon. Then by Simon alone, as the Captain of the Guard was summoned north to Estcarp to recommand there.

This was guerilla warfare as Simon had learned it in another time and land, doubly effective this time because the men under him knew the country as those sent gainst them did not. For Tregarth discovered that these silent, somber men who rode at his back had a queer affinity with the land itself and with the beasts and the birds. Perhaps they were not served as the Falconers were by their trained hawks, but he had seen odd things happen, such as a herd of deer move to muddle horse tracks, crows betray a Karsten ambush. Now he listened, believed, and consulted with his sergeants before any strike.

The old race were not bred to war, though they handled sword and gun expertly. But with them it was a disagreeable task to be quickly done and forgotten. They killed cleanly with dispatch and they were incapable of such beastliness as the parties from the mountains had come upon where fugitives had been cut off and captured.

It was once when Simon left such a site, white, controlling his sickness by will power alone, that he was startled by a comment from the set-faced young man who had been his lieutenant on that foray.

"They do not do this of their own planning."

"I have seen such things before," Simon returned, "and that was also done by human beings to human beings."

The other who had held his own lands in the back country and had escaped with his bare life from that holding some thirty days earlier, shook his head.

"Yvian is a soldier, a mercenary. War is his trade. But to kill in such ways is to sow black hate against a future reaping. And Yvian is lord in this land; he would not willingly rip apart his own holding and bring it to ruin-he is too keen-witted a man. He would not give orders for the doing of such deeds."

"Yet we have seen more than one such sight. They could not all be the work of only one band commanded by a s.a.d.i.s.t, or even two such."

"True. That is why I think we now fight men who are possessed."

Possessed! The old meaning of that term in his own world came to Simon-possession by demons. Well, that a man could believe having seen what they had been forced to look upon. Possessed by demons-or-the memory of the Sulcarkeep road flooded into his mind; possessed by a demon-or emptied of a soul! Kolder again?

From then on, much as it revolted him, Simon kept records of such finds, though never was he able to catch the perpetrators at their grisly work. He longed to consult with the witch, only she had gone north with Briant and the first wave of fugitives.