War In Tethys

21

Across the courtyard, a single man stood in the opened door of a long, low stone building, evidently a barracks. No lights shone from within, but startled cries emerged as men struggled out of sleep to grope for weapons.

Zaranda's lips moved, near-noiselessly. As the man bent down to try to re-cock his bow by hand, she flicked a tiny pellet from her fingertips. It sped over his back with unnatural accuracy and exploded into the red hell-glare of a fireball spell.

The blast hurled him into the middle of the court-yard. Behind him, screams.

A giant shadow loomed beside her: Shield, scimitars in hand. "Take a detachment and try to block the bar-racks exits," she told him. Though a fireball spell did its deadliest work confined by walls, she dared not hope to have killed or incapacitated everyone inside.

For two heartbeats his eyes held hers, aglow with the fires flickering inside the barracks. He hated to leave her side in the heart of battle, but he had pledged his troth to her. He turned and barked out the names of squad leaders as he hurried down the steps.

With a squeal of tormented metal, the gates began to open beneath Zaranda's feet. Surprise gone, the re-maining raiders had to get inside as quickly as possible. Some still clambered up the ladder. Zaranda leaned down to help Fiora over the top.

She heard a deep hum and the plangent clatter of a steel-tipped quarrel striking rock. Even as the metal rang, a longbow uttered a deep-voiced twang of re-sponse and a scream spurted from the tower. A cross-bowman had tried to mark her down from the safety of an arrow loop.

Stillhawk stood behind her, bow still upheld. He nod-ded acknowledgment to her grin of thanks. At this range, the narrow shooting loops gave only an illusion of cover where the woodsman was concerned; if you could see to shoot through it, he could put an arrow in your eye.

Unfortunately, with the exception of Farlorn sober, the ranger was the only marksman among them with nearly the skill for that feat. A few crossbowmen in the keep could massacre her youthful volunteers in the open courtyard. She dashed downstairs and toward the keep, Crackletongue in hand.

The door at the tower's base was iron-bound oak, and likely a hand or more in thickness. The hinges were on the inside—which meant the door opened in-ward, a weakness, but likewise prevented an attacker from forcing it open with two quick strokes of a sledge-hammer to burst the hinges. Doubtless a massive beam set in brackets barred it within. It would take long min-utes for the strongest man to batter through it with an axe.

Zaranda was prepared for this one. She flung forth her left hand, spoke words of command. She felt the heavy beam, bound it to her will, willed it to rise, heard the startled outcries from within.

She felt the bar come free, let it drop outside the brackets, powerless to do more. She raised a foot and gave the door a furious kick.

Her door-opening spell had dumbfounded the defenders; none thought to hurl his weight against the door. It swung ponderously open. Zaranda charged inside.

A pale blur in candlelit gloom, a face startled beneath a steel cap and within a mail fringe. Zaranda slashed it across. Its owner staggered back, howling. Zaranda caught him by the hauberk and shoved him against mates trying to close from her left, while Crackletongue, alive with blue-white fire, did deadly work to her right.

A clang, a clash, a bellowing cry, and she was through to the steps that wound upward. She lunged up three, turned back to parry a spear thrust with her blade, grabbed the ashen haft, and slew the wielder with a forehand stroke. Reversing her grip on the spear, she threw it.

It was a clumsy cast, left-handed, and did no one harm. It wasn't intended to. It did make the clot of guards jump back, which was her intent. Before they could recover, she reached in her pouch and flung a fist-ful of skunk-cabbage leaves in their faces, uttering an incantation. Thick green smoke swirled up from the leaves, surrounding the guardsmen, who began to cough, retch, and weep uncontrollably. Her own eyes streaming from the fringe effects, Zaranda bolted up the stairs.

A story up, she came upon a guard swinging a cocked crossbow away from a firing loop to aim at her. She hurled herself at his legs and tackled him. They lay on the floor writhing. The man was shorter than she but had strength on her, and kept stupidly trying to force his weapon to bear on her instead of beating her over the head with it. His breath and body stank in her nos-trils, and his garb was greasy to her touch.

She succeeded in rolling atop him. At once she saw a second soldier standing in the middle of the round chamber, pointing a crossbow at her by the light of a single reed torch. Frantically she threw herself to the right, dragging her opponent's body over hers by sheer force of will. The crossbow thumped. The man Zaranda was wrestling with yelled in anguish as the bolt pierced his back and pinned him to the wood-plank floor.

Fortunately it missed Zaranda. She eeled out from under him and lunged for the other. This one had wit to drop his now-useless weapon and grab for his dirk. Crackletongue's point took him in the throat before he could draw.

There were straw-stuffed pallets strewn about the floor, as well as empty wine bottles and discarded crusts of bread and cheese. Breathing through her mouth, Zaranda grabbed up one of the pallets. Hoping few vermin were migrating into her hair and clothing, she continued up the stairs that wound around the inner side of the keep wall, holding the pallet before her.

As she came to the next level, she cast it up and into the chamber. Crossbows twanged. Zaranda popped up, flung a pinch of fine sand from the river bottom, shouted words. Three guards collapsed into slumber.

Rubber-legged more from magic-making than exer-tion, Zaranda caught up the pallet again. A blue flash split the night outside, the glare through the arrow loop turning the chamber momentarily day-bright.

Thunder cracked like the world breaking open.

Through ringing in her ears, Zaranda heard screams from outside. Someone was loosing potent magic against her people. As she paused, the lightning lashed out again.

Frantic, she dashed upstairs. A guard waited at the next floor. She threw the pallet over his head and put her shoulder into him, thrusting him back against the wall. His helmeted head struck stone with a clang.

Ten feet away, another soldier had just finished hooking the thick string of a crossbow into the claw that held it cocked. He had not had time to drop in a bolt. As Zaranda rushed him he threw the weapon down and snatched up a spear.

He thrust at her. She put her weight back, skidded, stopped. He jabbed at her again. She parried. Behind her, she heard the first soldier cursing and floundering. Apparently he was coming out second-best in his con-test with the pallet.

Zaranda threw a looping wild cut at the man's eyes.

He ducked his head back out of harm's way and, whoop-ing with triumph, drove his point for her unprotected body. Crackletongue whirled around and slashed his leading arm. He howled, and lost his grip with that hand. She cut him down before he could shift grip for a one-handed stab.

The other guard finally escaped the pallet. Zaranda knelt, caught up the fallen crossbow, plucked a quarrel from a wall-mounted rack, and slotted it home. As the guard charged, she shot him through the body. He cried out and fell backward down the stairs.

Blue lightnings stabbed and crashed outside. Some sort of potent magic artifact was clearly in play here. No one's mind could hold so many spells of such co-gency. At least, no one who'd be keeping the company of a hedge-robber like Lutwill.

Her urgent mission had abruptly changed from an effort to safeguard her youthful warriors from cross-bowmen to stopping whatever magic was being un-leashed against them. For the first time, she wished she'd actually brought helpers with her into the tower, rather than charging in alone—and sealing the en-trance behind her with a persistent stinking cloud spell.

More cautiously, she advanced up the final set of stairs, sword in hand. Blue flames danced along both edges of Crackletongue's blade. There was evil afoot here.

What she most feared was to find another stout door sealed against her; she had used up her magic for that. But the heavy trapdoor that might seal off the penthouse from the rest of the keep was thrown open, inviting.

Too inviting; she wasn't that ingenuous. She gath-ered herself, pantherish on strong haunches, then launched herself upward in a mighty leap. It carried her up through the entry hole and beyond. She tucked a shoulder and rolled as a blade clashed on the floor be-hind her.

She fetched up against the wall amid a pile of furs that smelled worse than they had when attached to their original owners. Clearly hygiene was not a matter much on Baron Lutwill's mind. A young woman cow-ered nearby, naked but for a bearskin clutched against her, straw-colored hair hanging limp in a scared, blank face.

"Keep out of the way," Zaranda told her. "We'll get you free of this."

The penthouse was a larger version of the filthy bar-racks on the second floor, though more sumptuously furnished. Instead of straw pallets, furs and stained silk cushions lay scattered across the floor. On the walls hung once-fine tapestries that, it appeared, had seen much use for the wiping of greasy fingers. The

dis-carded wine bottles were of a better vintage than the ones on the lower floor, but the crusts and mold-green cheese rinds and gnawed joints were much the same.

The windows were much larger than the arrow loops below, glazed with heavy age-wavy panes set in lead. These were apparently stout; an arrow crashed against the pane and made a mere bird-beak clack before it fell harmlessly away.

A slight man in a black robe stood by the window. He was a mage, to judge by the large sphere he held up to the window. Its surface was alive with opalescent fire, but the light that cast fiendish highlights over his bearded face was blue—the same blue as the lightning-bolt that stabbed down outside as Zaranda watched.

Somehow the black-robed man was controlling the lightning with his sphere. Zaranda summoned the last bit of magic she had in her, preparing to send him a magic missile where it would do the most good.

A huge shadow loomed up before her, blocking her aim. "Die, interloper!" it roared, and hacked downward savagely with a great double-bitted battle-axe.

She rolled aside. The blade crashed down, cleaving valuable if dirty pelts. She came to the balls of her feet, crouching, Crackletongue held before her. The axeman turned to confront her.

He was tall, taller even than Shield. He had a mashed-in nose and dark eyes almost hidden beneath bushy brows. Black mustaches swept ferociously back across his cheeks to join with his sideburns, leaving his chin bare. He wore a steel cap, a mail hauberk like his men's, buckskin trews, and boots of some stout, scaled hide, possibly dragonet. His paunch was majestic. The heft of chest and upper shoulders was hard to judge, since he wore a black bearskin vest. Judging from the size of his bare arms, he was doubtless sturdy enough.

"You must be the one who calls herself Countess Morninggold," he said, swishing the axe in the air one-handed before him—seemingly careless, inviting at-tack. "Zazesspur will reward me mightily when I send them your head preserved in vinegar."

"Cheapskate," Zaranda said, trying to crane past him to get a clear shot at his wizard. Reading her in-tent, he kept shifting side to side with an agility that belied his bulk. "Brandy works much better."

"I doubt you're worth the cost, frankly," he said in his oddly pleasant baritone voice. "But you might provide some diversion if I don't kill you at once."

Suddenly he held the axe's yard-long helve in both hands and was whipping the head toward her face with the sheer awesome strength of his wrists alone. The blow would have cloven her to the breastbone had it landed. Expecting such, she had read the signs in his body motions and threw up Crackletongue with her left hand bracing the back of the blade. Impact drove her to her knees.

At contact, the saber flared and crackled with light-ning. Evil! Zaranda thought.

Immediately the big man retracted the axe for a fol-low-up, finishing stroke. Zaranda fell back, braced her-self with one hand, and stabbed with the other. The baron went tiptoe to avoid the thrust and jumped back, giving her time to scramble to her feet.

They squared off, feinting left and right, each trying to provoke the other to commit to an attack.

Zaranda quickly sensed she was the more skillful, but he was quick as well as horribly strong, and her attention kept getting distracted by the desire to do something to in-terfere with the wizard at the window.

The combat continued thus, inconclusive, for what seemed like hours but was probably seconds. Then the baron, noticing the glances his opponent kept darting past him, growled over his shoulder, "Ho, Whimberton! Leave off that play and make some magic so I can put this wench out of the way and deal with her minions myself."

The wizard jerked as if slapped. Lowering the opalescent sphere with visible reluctance, he turned to Zaranda and began to gesticulate and mutter. Franti-cally, she tried to get a clear shot to cast her own re-maining spell, but Baron Lutwill, grinning savagely, launched a fierce attack, forcing her to concentrate ex-clusively on keeping her skull unsplit.

Whimberton threw out his hand. The air seemed to congeal abruptly around Zaranda, freezing her in place. A holding spell! She fought back with all her will, but her exertions, magical and physical, had sapped her. In a moment, she was trapped.

The baron stepped back, leaned on his axe for a mo-ment, admiring his magician's handiwork. "Hmm. Since I didn't have to damage you at all, maybe I won't be so quick to separate your head from that lovely slen-der neck. After all, I can always collect the reward." He turned away. "Well done, Whimberton. Now you can get back to your games. But see you don't use up all the juice, or whatever it is that drives that thing."

The mage smiled. "It is dweomer, Lord, the stuff of all magic. Yet this object can be recharged merely by at-taching it to the weathercock when a thunderstorm rages."

The baron gestured airily with a hand. "Whatever."

He turned back to Zaranda, began to caress her cheek. "You know, this has interesting possibilities—"

A scream interrupted him. Zaranda could not move so much as her eyeballs, but she could focus vision past her captor, to the window where the mage had raised his sphere once again. He was surrounded by a swarm of tiny, indistinct things that seemed to shimmer with a faint light of their own. He beat at them, frantically, then began to slap at his face and robe, shrieking louder and louder, until he stumbled and fell back against the window.

Whoever installed the window had not worked up to the exacting standards of Tethyrian artisanship. It gave way at once. Window and mage fell out into the night, the latter trailing a thin dwindling scream.

The spell broke. Zaranda drove a knee into the baron's crotch. He bent over with a gasp and staggered back, but recovered almost instantly, and swung his axe horizontally.

Zaranda leaned away, going to one knee. Her free hand found a wolfskin. The axehead whistled by, a fin-ger's width from her face. She flung the pelt over the baron's head and shoulders and stabbed her glowing blade right through it.

Again. And again.

At last, when for some time the only cries sounding within the chamber had been her own and the voices coming through the now-vacant window, she stopped and turned. Chenowyn stood in the doorway, face so pale her skin looked like a sheet of parchment and her freckles like drops of paint.

She flew forward to catch Zaranda in a wild em-brace. "You disobeyed," Zaranda said, hugging her tight. Then, to her own astonishment, she burst into tears.

Ten volunteers died in the fight for the castle, includ-ing Osbard's daughter Fiora, blasted by a lightning bolt. Many more were wounded. So brutal was the battle that Goldie, released from the stables, forbore to complain about the indignities Farlorn had heaped upon her in the course of their masquerade.

But whatever the cost, they had won. And once the news of what had transpired reached Masamont, the villagers streamed forth to take up the casualties, bind their wounds, and bear them gently off to their own beds, where the local clerics could see to healing them.

What the wondrous rechargeable magic artifact Whimberton had used to such deadly effect was, Zaranda never learned. It had shattered on a paving stone beside its wielder.

Despite the horror of seeing friends die and suffering magic attacks they were powerless to prevent, the young warriors were exultant. Even the wounded laughed and joined in the singing as the townsfolk car-ried them to the village on improvised litters.

That would pass, Zaranda knew. When the hot rush of victory died away, the despair that came after would be as hard for some to bear as the pain of sword cuts and spear thrusts. With the help of Farlorn's gold-glib tongue, Zaranda would help them through that ordeal as best she could.

When the time came. But meantime, after the wounded were taken off and the castle secured, in that breathless hour before dawn, Farlorn came to her, in an apartment she had chosen to take sorely needed rest.

And it seemed to Zaranda Star the most natural thing in the world to go into his arms, and surrender herself to the hunger that had been growing in her for long, weary months.

Part III The Whisperer in Darkness