Octobers Baby

THIRTEEN: In Their Wickedness They Are Blind, in Their Folly They Persist

i) He watches from darkness

Once again the winged man came to Castle Krief, this time gliding noiselessly through a moonless, overcast night. He deeply feared that the men would be waiting for him, their cold steel ready to free his soul, but the only soldier he saw was asleep at his post on the wall. He drifted into an open window unnoticed.

Heart hammering, crystal dagger half-drawn, he stole through darkened corridors. His mission was more daring and dangerous than either previous. This time he truly tempted the Fates.

Twice he had to use the tiny wand the Master's lady had given him. He need only point it and squeeze and a fine violet line would touch his target. The sentry would fall asleep.

The first time he almost fainted. When he stepped in front of the man, he found the soldier's eyes still open. But unseeing. Shaking and sighing, Shoptaw made his way to his goal.

It was tricky, finding the room where the Krief held his secret audiences. The Master had visited Castle Krief but once, and that the day before Shoptaw's last visit. Their knowledge of the castle's interior came from men the Master had recruited to help Kiki claim her inheritance. None had been intimates of the King. They knew of the room's existence, but not its location.

So Shoptaw had to trust his own judgment. He was pleased that the Master had such faith in him, but feared that faith might be misplaced. He knew he wasn't as intelligent as the real men... As always, he persevered, for his friend Kiki, for the Master. He found a plain small room down a narrow passage from an ornate large one. It felt right.

He searched the room carefully, preternaturally sensitive fingertips probing for the mechanisms hidden in the walls. It took three hours to find the hidden doorway. With a half-prayer that no one would use it soon, he slipped through.

The passage behind had been designed to his purpose. It ran round three sides of the chamber, had tiny holes for hearing and seeing. Long-undisturbed dust lay deep within, a promising sign. He shed the small pack he had been able to bring, prepared for a long stay.

He had chosen correctly. But for a long time he learned nothing that would be of interest to the Master.

Then came the break he had been awaiting. He knew it the moment the chamber door opened, alerting him, and he reached a peephole in time to see the lean dark man follow the King in. He didn't recognize the man. He was new, a foreigner.

The dark man spoke directly. "Her Majesty will need supporters without a political stake."

"A point you made in your letter."

"None of your Nordmen fit."

"I have the King's Own and the guard. Their loyalties are beyond question."

"Perhaps. But we're speaking of a time when you won't be here to guide those loyalties."

The King, thought Shoptaw, was a tired old man. The wasting sickness was devouring him. He didn't have long to live. His face often revealed some internal pain.

"Don't overstep good taste, sir."

"You've had time to investigate. You've been stalling for it. You know tact isn't my strong point."

"No. Yet the reports were, in the balance, favorable." The dark man smiled a thin smile that made Shoptaw think of hungry foxes.

"Granted, I need someone. Granted, your proposal sounds good. Still, I wonder. Your specialty's guerrilla warfare. How would Fiana use you? You couldn't prevent the barons from taking Vorgreberg. Then you'd be unemployed... There is, too, the question of what you hope to gain personally."

"Good. You did your homework. I don't mean to conduct the Queen's defense myself. For that I have in mind a talented gentleman in retirement in Itaskia. He'd conduct the conventional campaign. Most of the arrangements have been made. When we conclude a contract, a regiment will begin gathering."

"Yes, no doubt. You've been ducking in and out of Kavelin for years. Spent a lot of time with the Marena Dimura, I hear. Which leads back to your interest in the matter."

"I could lie to you. I could say it's profit. But you'd know I was lying.

"No matter what you do, no matter how well you prepare, there's going to be a period of adjustment after you pass on. Neither Gaia-Lange nor Fiana is acceptable to your nobility. And you have greedy neighbors. They're watching your health now. They'll complicate and prolong it. Itaskia and El Murid will be watching them, to guard their own interests...

"My intention is to hit my old enemy while he's distracted."

The Krief chuckled. "Ah. You're devious."

The dark man shrugged. "One sharpens the weapon at hand."

"Indeed. Indeed. Your friend. Do I know him?"

"Unlikely. He's not one of your glory chasers. He's preferred to keep his operations small. But he's -as competent as Sir Tury Hawkwind. And has a good relationship with such as Count Visigodred and Zindah-jira, of whom, I'm sure, you have heard."

"Ah? Any man might find such friends useful. His name?"

"Ragnarson, Bragi Ragnarson. Guild Colonel. Though he operates independent of High Crag."

"Not the Ragnarson who was in Altea during the wars?"

"The same. He knocked the point off the spear El Murid ran up the north slope of the Kapenrungs."

"I remember. A lucky victory. It allowed Raithel time to block the thrust. Yes. This might be what I need..."

The winged man had heard enough. For the first time in his vigil he became impatient. He had to fly, to warn the Master.

For he had heard the name Bragi Ragnarson before. Ragnarson was one of the men who had destroyed the father of the Master's lady. He must be terrible indeed.

ii) The wicked persist in their wickedness, and know no joy

"Papa Drake," said Carolan, whispering, "why's Aunt Mist always so sad?"

The old man glanced across his library. Mist stood staring out a westward-facing window, deep in her own thoughts. "She lost something, darling."

"Here? Is that why she's here so much now?"

"You might say. Someone she loved very much... Well..." He dithered, then decided he might as well tell her the whole story.

When he finished, Carolan went over, took Mist's hand. "I'm sorry. Maybe someday..."

Mist frowned, glanced at the Captal, then flashed a bright smile. She hugged the child. "You're priceless."

Through the window, over Mist's shoulder, Carolan saw something hurtling across the sky. "Shoptaw! Papa Drake, Shoptaw's coming. Can I go?..."

"You just wait, young lady. Business first. But you can tell Burla."

As she ran out, Mist said, "He's in an awful hurry. Must be bad news."

Within the half-hour they had heard it all.

"Not to deprecate the man's ability," said Mist, as the Captal began fussing, "but he can be neutralized. I can ask Visigodred not to get involved, and bully Zindahjira into minding his own business. And if we slip the word to El Murid, he'll take care of this Ragnarson for us."

"And if that fails?" The Captal remembered that this Ragnarson had been associated with Varthlokkur. He was more frightened of that man than he had been of Mist's father.

"We'll handle it ourselves. But why worry? Unless the economic picture changes and the politics of High Crag shift, he won't gather much of an army. And if he does, he'll find himself facing my troops, assuming he survives the rebels."

"So many difficulties already..."

"We won't win any victories sitting here."

To the Captal it seemed but moments till their first failure. Nothing they did prevented Ragnarson from leaving Itaskia. Try as he might, he couldn't shake his pessimism.

"I feel Death's hot breath on the back of my neck," he once confided to Burla.

One day Mist announced, "He's in Ruderin. He knows the King's dead. I'll need your help setting a trap."

The Captal, with his creatures, transferred to a small fortress in Shinsan, which, with the help of the Tervola, was projected into Ruderin.

There were complications. Always there were compli­cations.

The whole thing collapsed. And the Captal lost dozens of his oldest friends.

He also suffered a crisis of conscience.

Back in his own library, to Mist, he said, "Don't ever ask me to do anything like that again. If I can't kill more cleanly than that..."

Mist ignored him. She had her own problems. The Tervola were growing cooler and cooler. Her followers still hadn't taken care of O Shing. And Valther... He had disappeared. He had been gone from Hellin Daimiel for months.

But that worry she kept secret. Neither the Tervola nor the Captal would understand...

She spent more and more time at Maisak, delegating more and more authority to her retainers.

iii) The spears of dread pursue them...

Months passed. The excitement of the succession reached a feverish pitch. The Captal did some quiet campaigning. At first he was received coolly, even with mockery, but the swift parade of rebel disasters scrubbed the disdainful smiles from Nordmen faces. A few began mustering at Maisak.

"There're so few of them," said Carolan.

"They don't know you yet," the Captal replied. "Besides, a lot of them want to be King too."

"The man that's coming... He scares you, doesn't he?" There was no longer any doubt that Ragnarson's swift march was aimed at Maisak. "Is he a bad man?"

"I suppose not. No more than the rest of us. Maybe less. He's on the law's side. We're the bad ones from the Crown's viewpoint."

"Aunt Mist's scared too. She says he's too smart. And knows too many people." Shifting subject suddenly, "What's she like?"

"Who?"

"My mother. The Queen."

The Captal had supposed she knew. Burla and Shoptaw could deny her nothing. But this was the first time she had brought it up.

"I don't know. I've never met her. Never even seen her. You probably know more than I do."

"Nobody knows very much." She shook her head, tossing golden curls, almost lost the small iron diadem she wore, symbolic of Kavelin's Iron Crown, a legend-haunted treasure tkat never left the Royal vaults in Vorgreberg. "She's shy, I guess. They say nobody sees her much. She must be lonely."

The Captal hadn't thought of that. Hadn't thought of Fiana as a person at all. "Yes. Probably. Makes you wonder why she stays on. Practically no one wants her..."

Shoptaw appeared. "Master, hairy men very close. In Baxendala now. Traveling fast. Here soon. Maybe two, three day." Though the Trolledyngjans were in the minority in Ragnarson's forces, they had so impressed the winged man that he thought of all enemies as hairy men.

"How many?"

"Many, many. Twice times us, maybe."

"Not good. Shoptaw, that's not good." He thought of the caves, whose mouths he had for years been trying to locate and seal. Ragnarson had a knack for discovering his enemies' weak points. He would know about the caves.

"Shoptaw, old friend, you know what this means?"

"War here." The winged man shuddered. "We fight. Win again. As always."

Carolan hadn't missed their uncertainty. "You'd better tell Aunt Mist."

"Uhn." The Captal didn't like it, though. She would want to bring in her own people. There were more Shinsaners in Maisak now than he liked, a half-dozen grimly silent veterans who were training his troops and keeping their eyes on him.

iv)... And the thing they fear comes upon them

The first troops came through next day, immediately behind Mist and several masked Tervola. She had said she was bringing six hundred. The stream seemed endless to a man who had often heard what terrible soldiers they were. Yet she was honest. He counted exactly six hundred, most of whom left the fortress immediately. Mist was considerate of his sensibilities.

And before long Ragnarson encountered the Captal's little ambushers.

The Captal followed the reports in quiet sorrow, standing rod-stiff in the darkness atop Maisak's wall. It was murder, pure and simple. The little people couldn't cope with the hairy men. He could console himself only

' been with the knowledge that none of them had conscripted. They had asked for weapons.

There was a fierce, bloodthirsty determination in the enemy's approach that startled and frightened him. It didn't seem characteristic of the Ragnarson who had swept the lowlands. Then he learned what had been done to Ragnarson's scouts.

He was enraged. His first impulse was to confront Mist and her generals... But no, with their power they would simply push him aside and take over. He did order his small friends to cease disputing the pass. In a small way, in lessened readiness and increased casualties, Shinsan would pay for its barbarity.

Ragnarson didn't come whooping in as expected, as past performance suggested he would.

Many of the Captal's friends, and a startling number of Mist's troops, died before the Tervola felt ready to commit Carolan's men.

Mist visited his station on the wall, from which he watched Shinsaners being harassed by bowmen. "We're ready." She had sensed his new coldness and was curious. He had already told her he wouldn't discuss it till the fighting ended.

"You're positive she'll be safe?"

"Drake, Drake, I love her too. I wouldn't let her go if there was a ghost of a chance she'd get hurt."

"I know. I worry like a grandmother. But I can't help feeling this man's more dangerous than you think. He knew what he was up against when he came here. Why'd he keep coming?"

"I don't know, Drake. Maybe he's not as smart as you think."

"Maybe. If Carolan gets hurt..."

Mist wheeled and'went below. Soon she and Carolan, leading Kaveliner recruits, departed Maisak's narrow gate.

When the swift-sped arrows dropped from the darkness, he said only, "I knew it. I knew it," and plunged down steps to ground level.

In moments he was beside Carolan. "Baby, baby, are you all right?"

Subsequent events seemed anti-climactic. He bickered with Mist, dispiritedly.

"Sometimes, Drake," she once murmured, "I wish I could give it all up."

iv) What does a man profit?

Winter came early, and with a vengeance. The Captal had never seen its like. In normal times it would have been cause for distress. But there were no late caravans to be shepherded through the Gap. Hardly a traveler had crossed all summer.

The Captal welcomed the weather. He would have no trouble with Ragnarson before spring.

Mist damned it. She foresaw them facing a united Ravelin next summer.

The Captal kept his winged creatures watching the lowlands. Ragnarson seemed unable to avoid success— yet each redounded to the Captal's benefit. Ever more Nordmen turned to his standard. Because of his power, he thought. Because he was the one enemy Ragnarson hadn't been able to reduce.

He realized these new allies would abandon him the instant the loyalists collapsed, but that was a problem he could solve in its time. For the" present he had to concentrate on old enemies.

Though his couriers brought news consisting entirely of lists of towns and castles and provinces lost, he began to hope. In the free provinces several hitherto uncommit­ted Nordmen were turning rebel for each turning loyalist.

The edicts flowing from Vorgreberg had changed the root nature of the struggle. The issue, now, was a power struggle between Crown and nobility, one which would preserve or sweep away many ancient prerogatives. And it had become a class war. The underclasses, bought by Crown perfidy, strove to wrest privilege from their betters.

The Captal contacted Baron Thake Berlich in

Loncaric, a recidivist who had been captured by Ragnarson in the Gap and paroled by Fiana. The man's response had been to raise stronger forces for the rematch. He had been one of the Krief's commanders during the wars. He was the logical man to bring Ragnarson to heel. But he was a conservative of a stripe judged bizarre even by his own class.

Through Berlich, using the Baron's interlocutors— whom he kept in careful ignorance of the messages they bore—he reached Sir Andvbur Kimberlin of Karadja, in Breidenbach. Kimberlin had publicly voiced displeasure with the Queen's tepid social reforms. The Captal invited the knight to help him build a new society, hinting that while he controlled Carolan, he wasn't long for this world and was looking for someone who understood, who could carry on after he was gone.

As winter lugubriously progressed toward a spring that was no spring at all in the Gap, the Captal grew less and less pessimistic. The rebel coalition, spanning the extremes of political dissatisfaction and opportunism, waxed strong, reaching into Vorgreberg itself.

That fell apart.

"Stupid, greedy pigs!" the old man grumbled for days. "We had it in our hands. But they had to try cutting us out." Even Carolan stayed out of his way.

He decided there was no choice but to bring in eastern troops, to give the rebels backbone. And, to use a little wizardry.

News of the sudden shift at High Crag (where the ruling junta had for a decade discouraged mercenary involvement in actual warmaking), that had led to an offer of three veteran regiments to the Crown, again pushed the Captal toward despair. It was contagious. Mist became a sad, resigned woman. She returned to Shinsan to prepare a legion for transfer to Maisak when the snows melted.

The Captal, self-involved, overlooked her mood. Burla, Shoptaw, and Carolan understood Mist's unhap-piness. The man she had lost, and his brother, had reappeared. In Ravelin. Working the other side again.

v) Glitter of an enemy spear

Three men crouched beneath an ice overhang and, when not cursing the temperature, considered the fortress west of them.

"It'll work," promised the one with a single eye. "They can't sense us."

"The spells. The spells," another grumbled. "If that Shinsaner bitch wasn't in there, I'd believe in them."

"Just think about the gold, Brad," said the third. "More than... More than you've ever dreamed."

"I believe in that less than Haroun's spells. Maybe this's his way of getting rid of us. We know too much."

"A possibility," Derran admitted. "And I haven't overlooked it."

"If there's trouble, it'll come at payoff time," Kerth said.

"Uhm."

"It's dark enough," said Brad.

"Give it a few more minutes," said Derran. "Let 'em start thinking about bedtime. Some of those things can see like cats." For the hundredth time he patted his purse. Inside, carefully protected, lay a small bundle of plans of Maisak's interior, obtained by bin Yousif from a winged man taken several months earlier.

"You're sure there'll be no sentries?" Brad asked.

Derran concealed his exasperation. "No. Why the hell would they be watching for someone in this?" He gestured at deep snow now invisible in darkness: "Probably someone at the gate, but that's all that's logical." He checked the night, the few lights visible in the fortress. "Hell, you're right, Brad. Let's go."

It took a half-hour to slog the short distance to the castle wall, then just minutes to set a grapnel and climb up. Five minutes later they had finished the two owl-faced creatures at the gate and prepared it for their retreat. If all went right, they would be well on their way before their visit caused an alarm.

Maisak was thick with smells and smokes, but in the outer works, in the winter chill, they encountered no other evidence of occupation.

"Lot of men here," Kerth observed. "Wonder how they keep them fed?"

"Probably with transfers from Shinsan," Derran replied. "That door there, with the brass hinges. That look like the one we want?"

"Fits the description."

"Okay. Brad, you open. Kerth, cover." He went in low and fast so Kerth could throw over him, but the precaution proved unnecessary. The corridor was empty.

"All right," said Derran, "let's see. Commissary down that way. Third room this way."

In that room they found a half-dozen odd little people sleeping. "Look like rabbits," Brad said, after they had been dispatched.

"Place's supposed to be full of weirds," Derran replied. "Kerth, find the panel. We'll clean up." Soon they were climbing a dusty circular stair in complete darkness.

The stair ended in a landing. There was a wall with peepholes. Beyond the wall lay an empty, poorly lighted corridor.

"Brad, you watch." Derran felt for the mechanism that would allow access to the corridor. A small panel scraped aside. They awaited a reaction. Brad hastily assembled a crossbow.

"Go." Derran tapped Kerth's shoulder.

Daggers in hand, the man rushed the one door opening off the corridor. He paused beside it. Closed, he signaled. Derran joined him, pointed to the regular stair. Kerth checked it, signaled it was clear. Derran dropped to his stomach and peered beneath the door with his good eye. From his bundle of plans he took one of the Captal's library, indicated the position of each person in the room.

A final problem. Was the door locked? Barred? Haroun's captive had claimed there were no locked doors in Maisak, only hidden ones.

Derran stood, placed his back to the door, took its handle in his left hand, held his sword vertically in his right. Kerth readied his daggers, nodded.

Explosion. Derran slammed the door open. As his momentum carried him out of the way, one of Kerth's weapons took wing. Its pommel smacked the Shinsaner woman between the eyes.

Derran didn't pause to appreciate the throw. It was what he had expected. Kerth had spent countless hours practicing.

The woman was the key. If she weren't silenced, all was lost.

In passing he crossed blades with the old man, pushed through his guard, left him clutching his wound in amazement. He grabbed the woman, shoved a hand into her mouth, with his free hand tossed Kerth his dagger. Kerth took it on the fly and turned to two weird creatures who had thrown themselves in front of the little girl...

A wall opened up and men with swords stepped in. Ragnarson's men.