Witch World Part 3

"As has been known. Else you would not ride with the Hawk," she pointed with a lift of her chin to Koris. "Were you not of the proper metal he would have none of you. Koris is a warrior bred, and a leader born-to Estcarp's gain!"

"And you foresee this danger at Sulcarkeep?" he pressed.

She shook her head. "You have heard how it is with the Gift. Bits and patches are granted us-never the whole pattern. But there are no city walls in my mind picture. And I think it lies closer than the sea rim. Loose your dart gun, Simon, or bare those knowledgeable fists of yours." She was amused again, but her laughter did not jeer-rather it was the open good humor of comradeship. He knew that he must accept her on her own proffered terms.

DEMON BATTLE.

The troop from Estcarp pushed the pace but they had still a day's journey before them when they rode out of the last of the frontier posts and headed along the curve of the seaport highway. They had changed mounts regularly at the series of Guard installations and spent the night at the last fort, keeping to a steady trot that ate up the miles.

Although the Sulcarmen did not ride with the same ease as the Guard, they clung grimly to saddles which seemed too small for their bulk-Magnis...o...b..ric not being unique in his stature-and kept up, riding with the fixed purpose of men to whom time itself was a threatening enemy.

But the morning was bright, and patches of purple flowering bush caught radiance from the sun. The air carried the promise of salt waves ahead and Simon knew a lift of heart which he had thought lost long ago. He did not realize that he was humming until a familiar husky voice cut from his left.

"Birds sing before the hawk strikes."

He met that mockery good-naturedly. "I refuse to listen to the croaking of ill-it is too fine a day."

She plucked at the mail scarf wreathing her shoulders and throat, as if its supple folds were a kind of imprisonment. "The sea-it is in the wind here-" Her gaze roamed ahead where the road rippled to the horizon. "We have a portion of the sea in our veins, we of Estcarp. That is why Sulcar blood can mingle with ours, as it has oftimes. Someday I would take to the sea as a venture. There is a pull in the very surge of the waves as they retreat from the sh.o.r.e."

Her words were a singing murmur, but Simon was suddenly alert, the tune he had hummed dried in his throat. He might not have the gifts of the Estcarp witches, but deep within him something crawled, stirred into life, and before he reasoned it through, his hand flashed up in a signal from his own past as he reined in his horse.

"Yes!" Her hand was flung to echo his and the men behind them halted. Koris' head whipped about: he made his own signal and the whole company came to a stop.

The Captain pa.s.sed the lead momentarily toTunston and rode back. They had their flankers out; nothing could be charged to lack of vigilance.

"What is it?" Koris demanded.

"We are running into something." Simon surveyed the terrain ahead, laying innocently open under the sun. Nothing moved except a bird spiralling high. The wind had died so that even its puffs did not disturb the patches of brush. Yet he would stake all his experience and judgment upon the fact that before them a trap was waiting to snap jaws.

Koris' surprise was fleeting. He had already glanced from Simon to the witch. She sat forward in the saddle, her nostrils expanded as she breathed deeply. She might have been trying the scent as does a hound. Dropping the reins she moved her fingers in certain signs, and then she nodded sharply with complete conviction.

"He is right. There is a blank s.p.a.ce ahead, one I can not penetrate. It may be a force barrier-or hide an attack."

"But how did he-the gift is not his!" Koris' protest was quick and harsh. He flashed a glance at Simon which the other could not read, but it was not of confidence. Then he issued orders, spurring forward himself to lead one of those circling sweeps which were intended to draw an overanxious enemy into the open.

Simon drew his dart gun. How had he known-how did he know they were advancing into danger? He had had traces of such foreknowledge in the past-as on the night he had met Petronius-but never had it been so sharp and clear, with a strength which increased as he rode.

The witch kept beside him, just behind the first line of Guards, and now she chanted. From inside her mail shirt she had brought out that clouded jewel which was both a weapon and the badge of her calling. Then she held it above her head at arm's length and cried aloud some command which was not in the tongue Simon had painstakingly learned.

There came into view a natural formation of rocks pointing into the sky as fangs from some giant jawbone, and the road ran between two which met in the semblance of an arch. About the foot of the standing stones was a ma.s.s of brush, dead and brown, or living and green, to form a screen.

From the gem a spearpoint of light struck upon the tallest of those toothstones, and from that juncture of beam and rock spread a curling mist which thickened into a cottony fog, blanketing out the pillars and the vegetation.

Out of that clot of gray-white stuff burst the attack, a wave of armed and armored men coming forward at a run in utter silence. Their helms were head-enveloping and visored, giving them the unearthly look of beaked birds of prey. And the fact that they advanced without any calls or orders along their ranks added to the weirdness of the sudden sortie.

"Sul . . . Sul . . .Sul. . .!" The sea rovers had their swords out, and swung them in time to that thunderous shout as they drew into a line which sharpened into a wedge, Magnis...o...b..ric forming its point.

The Guard raised no shout, nor did Koris issue any orders. But marksmen picked their men and shot, swordsmen rode ahead, their blades ready. And they had the advantage of being mounted, while the silent enemy ran afoot.

Simon had studied the body armor of Estcarp and knew where the weak points existed. Whether the same was true of Kolder armor he could not tell. But he aimed for the armpit of one man who was striking at the first Guard to reach the cresting wave of the enemy forces. The Kolder spun around and crashed, his pointed visor digging into the earth.

"Sul . . . Sul . . . Sul . . .!" The war shouts of the Sulcarmen were a surf roar as the two bands of fighters met, mingled, and swirled in a vicious hand to hand combat. In the first few moments of the melee Simon was aware of nothing but his own part in the affair, the necessity for finding a mark. And then he began to note the quality of the men they battled.

For the Kolder force made no attempt at self-preservation. Man after man went blindly to his death because he did not turn from attack to defense in time.

There was no dodging, no raising of shields or blade to ward off blows. The foot soldiers fought with a dull ferocity, but it was almost mechanical. Clockwork toys, Simon thought, wound up and set marching.

Yet these were supposed to be the most formidable foemen known to this world! And now they were being cut down easily, as a child might push over a line of toy soldiers.

Simon lowered his gun. Something within him revolted against picking off the blind fighters. He spurred his mount to the right in time to see one of the beaked heads turn in his direction. The Kolder came forward at a brisk trot. But he did not engage Simon as the other had expected. Instead he leaped tigerishly at the rider just beyond-the witch.

Her mastery of her horse saved her from the full force of that dash and her sword swung down. But the blow was not clean, catching on the pointed visor of the Kolder and so being deflected over his shoulder.

Blind as he might be in some respects, the fellow was well schooled in blade work. The blue length of steel in his hand flashed in and out, in its pa.s.sing sweeping aside the witch's weapon, tearing it from her hand. Then he cast aside his own weapon and his mail-backed glove grabbed for her belt, tearing her from the saddle in spite of her struggles, with an ease which Koris might have displayed.

Simon was on him now and that curious fault which was losing his comrades their battle possessed this Kolder as well. The witch was fighting so desperately in his hold that Simon dared not use his sword. He drew his foot from the stirrups as he urged his horse closer, and kicked out with all the force he could put behind that blow.

The toe of his boot met the back of the Kolder's round helmet, and the impact of that meeting numbed Simon's foot. The man lost his balance and sprawled forward, bearing the witch with him. Simon swung from the saddle, stumbling, with fear that his jarred leg would give under him. His groping hands slid over the Kolder's plated shoulder, but he was able to pull the fellow away from the gasping woman and send him over on his back, where he lay beetle-wise, his hands and legs still moving feebly, the blankness of his beaked visor pointing up.

Shedding her mailed gloves the woman knelt by the Kolder, busy with the buckles of his helm. Simon caught at her shoulder.

"Mount!" He ordered, drawing his own horse forward for her.

She shook her head, intent upon what she was doing.

The stubborn strap gave and she wrenched off the helm. Simon did not know what he had expected to see. His imagination, more vivid than he would admit, had conjured up several mental pictures of the hated aliens-but none of them matched this face.

"Herlwin!"

The hawk crown helmet of Koris cut between Simon and that face as the Captain of the Guard knelt beside the witch, his hands going out to the fallen man's shoulders as if to draw him into the embrace of close friends.

Eyes as green-blue as the Captain's, in a face as regularly handsome, opened, but they did not focus either on the man who called, or the other two bending over him. It was the witch who loosened Koris' grip. She cupped the man's chin, holding still his rolling head, peering into those unseeing eyes. Then she loosed him and pulled away, wiping her hands vigorously on the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. Koris watched her.

"Herlwin?" It was more a question addressed to the witch than an appeal to the man in Kolder's trappings.

"Kill!" She ordered between set teeth. Koris' hand went out to the sword he had dropped on the gra.s.s.

"You can't!" Simon protested. The fellow was harmless now, knocked partly unconscious by the blow. They could not just run him through in cold blood. The woman's gaze crossed his, steel cold. Then she pointed to that head, rolling back and forth again.

"Look, outworld man!" She jerked him down beside her.

With an odd reluctance Simon did as she had done, took the man's head between his hands. And on that moment of contact he nearly recoiled. There was no human warmth in that flesh; it did not have the chill of metal nor of stone, but of some unclean, flabby stuff, firm as it looked to the eye. When he stared down into those unblinking eyes, he sensed rather than saw a complete nothingness which could not be the result of any blow, no matter how hard or straightly delivered. What lay there was not anything he had ever chanced upon before-an insane man still has the cloak of humanity, a mutilated or mangled body could awaken pity to soften horror. Here was the negation of all which was right, a thing so loathsomely apart from the world that Simon could not believe it was meant to see sun or walk upon wholesome earth.

As the witch had done before him, he scrubbed his hands on the gra.s.s trying to rub from them the contamination he felt. He scrambled to his feet and turned his back as Koris swung the sword. Whatever the Captain struck was dead already long dead and d.a.m.ned.

There were only dead men to mark the Kolder force, and two slain Guardsmen, one Sulcar corpse being lashed across his horse. The attack had been so strikingly inept that Simon could only wonder why it had been made. He fell in step with the Captain and discovered that he was in search of knowledge.

"Unhelm them!" The order pa.s.sed from one group of Guardsmen to the next. And beneath each of those beak helms they saw the same pale faces with heads of cropped blond hair, those features which argued they were akin to Koris.

"Midir!" he paused beside another body. A hand twitched, there was the rattle of death in the man's throat."Kill!" The Captain's order was dispa.s.sionate, and it was obeyed with quick efficiency.

He looked upon every one of the fallen, and three more times he ordered the death stroke. A small muscle twitched at the comer of his well-cut mouth, and what lay in his eyes was far from the nothingness which had been mirrored in the enemies'. The Captain, having made the rounds of the bodies, came back to Magnis and the Witch.

"They are all of Gorm!"

"They were of Gorm," the woman corrected him. "Gorm died when it opened its sea gates to Kolder. Those who lie here are not the men you remember, Koris. They have not been men for a long time-a long, long time! They are hands and feet, fighting machines to serve their masters, but true life they did not have. When the Power drove them out of hiding they could only obey the one order they had been given-find and kill. Kolder can well use these things they have made to fight for them, to wear down our strength before they aim their greater blows."

That lip twitch pulled the Captain's mouth into something which curved but in no way resembled a smile.

"So in a measure do they betray a weakness of their own. Can it be that they lack manpower?" Then he corrected himself, slamming his sword back into its sheath with a small rasp of sound. "But who knows what lies in a Kolder mind-if they can do this, then perhaps they have other surprises."

Simon was well in the van as they rode on from that trampled strip of field where they had met the forces of Kolder. He had not been able to aid in the final task the witch urged on them, nor did he like to think now of those bodies left headless. It was hard to accept what he knew to be true.

"Dead men do not fight!" He did not realize he had protested that aloud until Koris answered him.

"Herlwin was like one born in the sea. I have watched him hunt the spear fish with only a knife for his defense. Midir was a recruit in the bodyguard, still stumbling over his feet when the a.s.sembly trumpet blew on the day Kolder came to Gorm. Both of them I knew well. Yet those things which lie behind us, they were neither Herlwin nor Midir."

"A man is three things." It was the witch who spoke now. "He is a body to act, a mind to think, a spirit to feel. Or are men constructed differently in your world, Simon? I cannot think so, for you act, you think, and you feel! Kill the body and you free the spirit; kill the mind and ofttimes the body must live on in sorry bondage for a s.p.a.ce, which is a thing to arouse man's compa.s.sion. But kill the spirit and allow the body, and perhaps the mind to live-" her voice shook, "that is a sin beyond all comprehension of our kind. And that is what has happened to these men of Gorm. What walks in their guise is not meant for earthbom life to see! Only an unholy meddling with things utterly forbidden could produce such a death."

"And you cry aloud the manner of our deaths, lady, should Kolder come into Sulcarkeep as it did to Gorm." The Master Trader pushed his heavy-boned mount up level with them.

"We have bested them here, but what if they muster legions of these half-dead to a.s.sault our walls? There are only a few men within the keep, for this is the trading season and nine-tenths of our ships are at sea. We needs must spread thinly in the fortress. A man may clip heads with a will, but his arm tires at the business. And if the enemy keeps coming they can overwhelm us by sheer weight of numbers. For they have no fear for themselves and will go forward where one of us might have a second thought, or a third!"

Neither Koris nor the witch had a ready answer for that. Only Simon's first sight of the trading port, hours later, was in a manner rea.s.suring. Seamen though the Sulcarmen might be by first choice, they were also builders, using every natural advantage of the point they had selected as an a.s.set in the erection of the keep. From the land side it was mainly wall with watch towers and firing slits in plenty. And it was only when Magnis...o...b..ric escorted them within that they saw the full strength of the place.

Two arms of rock curved out to the sea-a crab's open claws-and between them was the harbor. But each of those claws had been reinforced with blocks of masonry, walls, watch points, miniature forts, connected to the main body with a maze of underground ways. Wherever possible the outer walls ran down straight to the pound of the waves, providing no possible hold for climbers.

"It would seem," Simon commented, "that this Sulcarkeep was built with the thought of war in mind."

Magnis...o...b..ric laughed shortly. "Master Tregarth, the Peace of the Highways may hold for our blood within Estcarp, and to a measure within Alizon and Karsten-providing we clink gold in the hearing of the right ears. But elsewhere in the world we show swords along with our trade goods, and this is the heart of our kingdom. Down in those warehouses lies our life blood-for the goods that we barter is the flow of our life. To loot Sulcarkeep is the dream of every lordling and every pirate in this world!

"The Kolder may be the demon sp.a.w.n rumor names them, but they do not disdain the good things of this earth. They would like to paddle their paws in our takings as well as the next. That is why we also have a last defense here-if Sulcarkeep falls her conquerors will not profit!" He brought his big fist down upon the parapet before them in a giant's crushing blow. "Sulcarkeep was built in my great-grandfather's day to provide all our race with a safe port in time of storm-storm of war as well as storm of wind and wave. And it would seem that we now need it."

"Three ships in the harbor," Koris had been counting. "A cargo bottom and two armed runners."

"The cargo is for Karsten in the dawning. Since it carries the Duke's bargainings it can go under his flag and her crew need not stand to arms in the port faring," remarked Osberic.

" 'Tis tongued about that the Duke is to wed. But there is a necklet of Samian fashioning lying in a chest down there intended for the white neck of Aldis. It would appear that Yvian may put the bracelet on some other's wrist, but he intends not to wear it on his own."

The witch shrugged and Koris appeared far more interested in the ships than in any gossip concerning the neighboring court. "And the runners?" he prompted.

"Those remain for a s.p.a.ce." The Master Trader was evasive. "They shall patrol. I am better pleased to know what approaches from the sea."

A bomber might reduce the outer sh.e.l.l of Sulcarkeep to rubble in a run or two; heavy artillery could breach its ma.s.sive walls within hours, Simon decided, as he continued on the inspection round with Koris. But there were a warren of pa.s.sages and chambers in the rock beneath the foundations of the buildings, some giving on the sea-those having barred doors; unless the Kolder had weapons beyond any arms he had seen in this world, the traders would appear to be unnecessarily nervous. One could think that, until one remembered the empty-eyed foemen from Gorm.

He also noted that while there were guardrooms in plenty and well-filled racks of weapons, stands of the heavy mace-axes, there were few men, widely spread through those rooms, patrols stretched over area of wall. Sulcarkeep was prepared to equip and house thousands of men and a scant hundred or so stood to arms there.

The three of them, Koris, the witch, and Simon drew together on a sea tower where the evening wind strove against their mail.

"I dare not strip Estcarp," Koris spoke angrily, as if in reply to some argument neither of his companions heard, "to center all our manpower here. Such foolishness would be open invitation to Alizon or the Duchy to invade north and south. Osberic has an outer sh.e.l.l which I do not believe even the jaws of the Kolder can crack, but the meat within it is missing. He waited too long; with all his men in port he might hold, yes. With only this handful, I doubt it."

"You doubt, Koris, but you will fight," the woman said. There was neither encouragement nor discouragement in her tone. "Because that is what must be done. And it may well be that this hold will break the Kolder's jaws. But Kolder does come-that Magnis has foreseen truly."

The Captain looked at her eagerly. "You have a foretelling for us, lady?"

She shook her head."Expect nothing from me that I cannot give, Captain. When we rode into that ambush I could see nothing but a blank ahead. By that very negative sign I recognized the Kolder. But better than that I cannot do. And you, Simon?"

He started. "I? But I have no pretense to your Power-" he began and then added more honestly, "I can say nothing-except as a soldier I think this is an able fort, and now I feel as one trapped within it." He had added that last almost without thinking, but he knew it for the truth.

"But that we shall not say to Osberic," Koris decided. Together they continued to watch the harbor as the sun set, and more and more the city beneath lost the form of a refuge and took on the outline of a cage.

FOG DOOM.

It began a little after midnight-that creeping line across the sea, blotting out both stars and waves, sending before it a chill which was bom of neither wind nor rain, but which bit insidiously into a man's bones, slimed his mail with oily beads, tasted salty and yet faintly corrupt upon his lips.

The line of light globes which followed each curve of the claw fortifications was caught. One by one those pools of light were m.u.f.fled into vague smears of yellow. To watch that creeping was to watch a world being blotted out inch by inch, foot by foot.

Simon strode back and forth across the small sentry platform on the central watch tower. Half the claw fortifications were swallowed, lost. One of the slim raiders in the harbor was sliced in two by that curtain. It resembled no natural fog he had ever seen, unlike the famous blackouts of London, the poisoned industrial smogs of his own world. The way it crept in from the west as a steady curtain suggested only one thing-a screen behind which an attack might be gathering.

Deadened and hollow he caught the clamor of the wall alarms, those brazen gongs stationed every so many feet along the claws. Attack! He reached the door. of the tower and met the witch.

"They're attacking!"

"Not yet. Those are storm calls, to guide any ship which might be seeking port."

"A Kolder ship!"

"Perhaps so. But you cannot overturn the customs of centuries in an hour. In fog Sulcarkeep's gongs serve seamen, only Osberic's orders can mute them."

"Then such fogs as this one are known?"

"Fogs are known. Such as this-that is another matter."

She brushed past him to come out into the open, facing seaward as he had done moments earlier, studying the fast disappearing harbor.

"We of the Power have a certain measure of control over the natural elements, though like all else that is subject to failure or success beyond our forereckoning. It is in the providence of any of my sisterhood to produce a mist which will not only confuse the eyes of the unwary, but also their minds-for a s.p.a.ce. But this is different."