Bard I (10 page)

Pendor tossed his coil of rope over the head of a third attacker. ‘Rope!’ he thundered. ‘Bind and strangle!‘The rope obeyed him, coiling about the half-man’s arm, lashing it fast. Another loop slipped around the gaunt, corded neck and began to tighten.

The magician went to work with his rowan staff. He parried a knife-slash, and thrust to the midriff with his longer, more versatile weapon. The half-man vomited black bile, its liver or spleen ruptured. With a mighty two-handed blow, Pendor broke its neck.

Regan had pounced on a fallen hunting knife. Now she prowled the edges of the fight, waiting to strike. She could readily see that Avraig’s hounds, far longer-limbed than she, would slice her to collops if she let them approach closely. But let her catch one of the semi-humans with his back turned–!

No. The Lord Avraig was joining the fight, anger darkening his skin at the need to dirty his hands so. He kicked his mare forward to ride Pendor down. The magician raised his staff in both hands, and cried strange syllables. Avraig’s bridle-reins rotted in his hands, as did the saddle-leather and saddle-girths beneath him. They broke. The Lord Avraig crashed among the trampled snowdrops in Pendor’s garden.

Rolling to his feet, drawing his sword, he faced Felimid. He was the bard’s; he had to be. Only they among the struggling combatants held swords. Pendor recognised it. He turned pragmatically to deal with the surviving half-men, his staff a spinning blur in his hands.

‘Murder a bard, would you?’ Felimid spat.

‘Bard?’ the Lord Avraig said contemptuously. ‘You?’

The black mare rushed upon Pendor, neighing like a trumpet. He dodged between the timber stair and the tree-trunk upholding his house, away from the deadly hooves. The mare followed him.

Pendor shouted, ‘Rope! Hobble me this horse!’ Rope came writhing across the ground, like a serpent.

Regan faced repellently grinning death. The Lord Avraig’s two ‘hounds’ who yet stood upright had turned on her. She dared not run; she’d be caught in five strides. She made bluffing feints with her knife, held blade upward in her small hand.

Oh, God! For a weapon with some range to it, like Pendor’s staff or Felimid’s sword! Then I might have a clrance . . . might at least hold them off . . .

She backed away, making use of a hawthorn bush.

The half-men combined to roust her from the meagre protection it gave. Regan dodged deeper into Pendor’s trackless garden. No other tactic gave her any hope of survival. If she let those creatures within arm’s length of her, it was over.

The Lord Avraig proved as tall dismounted as he’d looked in the saddle. Although he had slightly more reach than the bard. he quickly learned he was no stronger. For agility. quickness of hand and eye, they were well matched. Skill would decide this fight.

The swords rang. Both men were enraged; both meant to kill. For Avraig, with his ill-tempered condescension toward every other creature alive. his fury was due simply to being defied. Felimid’s had a more reasonable source; he resented strangers who came out of nowhere casually intending to slay him.

Scrape and slither of steel! Feint, sudden thrust!

Fighting without shields for defence had its own stresses. They must guard, as well as attack, with the blade. Felimid brought Avraig’s sword low with a double feint, and cut downward at the juncture of his enemy’s hard-muscled shoulder and neck.

The Lord Avraig hadn’t been fooled, after all. The blades crashed together, an equal-armed cross in the foggy air. Felimid and Avraig strained, body to body. Avraig brought up his knee, but Felimid knew all about that; the knee missed its target.

The Lord Avraig’s balance faltered.

Blade against blade, Felimid shoved hard. At the same time he hit Avraig in the belly with his free hand. It had its effect, as the strange lord wore only cloth. Winded, Avraig cut and hewed fiercely, then drove his point at Felimid’s face.

Felimid slipped aside with exquisite, soft-breathing ease. The Lord Avraig’s blade hissed by his neck. Then Felimid’s sword slid through the muscles of Avraig’s forearm as neatly as a shuttle through the threads of a loom, passing between the bones.

The bard twisted his blade. The Lord Avraig’s face turned grey. His weapon fell from a hand robbed of strength. Then Felimid drove his point hard into the hunter’s body.

The Lord Avraig fell blindly forward. Clutching at his slayer, he croaked faintly. Felimid shoved him backward off the impaling blade, which grated on Avraig’s spine as it pulled free. Dying, he dropped to the ground, run through the belly-muscles and guts. The mighty artery near his backbone had been severed as well.

Felimid’s mouth twisted wryly. There was no trace of regret in him, such as he sometimes felt. The Lord Avraig had come here of his own free and arrogant will to murder them all. Had they been faint-hearted, he’d have done so.

Yonder stood the Lord Avraig’s black mare. struggling with the live rope that closely hobbled her legs. Of Felimid’s friends there was no sign.

‘Regan!’ he shouted, running through the garden, casting swift glances about. ‘Regan!’

‘She’s here!’ Pendor boomed. ‘All’s well. now.’

It wasn’t completely well. Freed from the black mare’s savage attentions when Rope arrived, Pendor had gone seeking Regan. One of the semihuman hounds had barred his way. Pendor’s staff, swung two-handed, had pulverized the creature’s shoulder to something like a sack of sharp-edged gravel. He’d finished it with its own knife.

Regan had disarmed the last half-man, but the creature had then borne her down with its greater weight, seeking to fang her throat. She had forced her arm into its jaws and essayed to stab. It was savaging her forearm while it strove to pin the other when Pendor appeared.

Pendor had kicked it very hard at the base of the spine, forcing it to gasp for air. He’d then driven his captured knife into its back, and finally crushed its larynx with his staff.

Moaning softly, Regan let her tom arm dangle. Blood ran down, to drip from her fingertips.

‘A drug for you, little one,’ Pendor said decisively, ‘and brewed strong. Then-more work for me. What of the hunter, Felimid? I suppose, as you’re here—’

‘True for you; I slew him.‘Felimid cleaned the sword Kincaid on a leather kilt. ‘None left alive but the mare, and she’s safely bound by your live rope. I’ll see to her, and not with the sword’s edge at all.’

‘Right,’ Pendor grunted. ‘Come along. girl. You needn’t trouble to walk.‘With ease, he lifted her small but solid figure in his arms.

Left to himself, the bard felt his hands shaking. A slaughter, no less! Seven lifeless bodies scattered about! His mind veered from that. Whence had the Lord Avraig and his ugly servants come, unremarked by Pendor’s robber associates? Avraig’s clothes had been oddly free from rent or stain, a sign that he’d ridden no great distance.

Finding no answer. Felimid shrugged the question away. He approached the dead man’s horse. She threw up her beautiful head and showed her teeth.

What a creature, what a mount! Longer of leg and slenderer than the common. she showed swiftness and intelligence rather than strength. Yet there was neatly understated power, too, in the hindquarters, barrel, shoulders and neck. Son of a race of horsemen. the bard felt his heart take wing.

‘Sa, sa, my beauty,’ he sang, approaching her with no sudden movements. ‘Do not shy. It has been a bloody hour, this, not so? It’s over, fret you not. I’m wishing only to take the bit from your mouth; it’s useless now and must discomfort you. Sa, sa! It’s all right. None shall mistreat you. There’s a man here who can change dead leaves into grain, osier twigs into sweet oat-straw. You shall have them.’

Gently but confidently, he ran a hand down the silky neck. Caressing, talking, he took hold of the iron bit and eased it out of her mouth. A saw-edged obscenity. it moved him to disgust.

‘By Cairbre’s fingers! If he couldn’t ride you without a thing like this, he didn’t deserve to be riding you at all! You are well rid of him, so.’

The black mare answered, ‘You are yet to learn the full truth of that.’ Despite the many strange things he’d seen and beard, Felimid gaped.

‘I am a daughter of Epona, the horse-goddess,’ she told him in a soft rumble that issued not from her lips but from somewhere deep in her throat. ‘The Lord Avraig discovered my name, and enslaved me there­ by. I had no choice but to obey him. Hunting was his passion, his delight; in the pursuit of it I have carried him between worlds. Unicorn, griffin, mammoth, I’ve seen him slay them all. To take the last, he tricked a clan of ignorant forest folk into believing him a god, and forced them to serve him as trackers and beaters. They lost two in three of their able men.

‘All that is over now. My gratitude is yours for killing him.’

Felimid had regained enough coolness to attend the last bit of this remarkable speech. ‘I’ll not ask your name, or try to learn it,’ he said, ‘but will it offend you if I call you Myfanwy? It’s Cymraeg, and means The Rare One.’

The mare nickered, seemingly not displeased.

‘It will do to call me by:

‘And I’ll ask a favor. since it was I myself who slew the Lord Avraig. That you speak not in anybody’s hearing but mine. That you feign lack of understanding and bide here some days, until the woman’s arm is healed. We may be needing to depart suddenly, she and I. Will you bear us out of this forest when the time’s come?’

‘I’ll gladly do as much.’ The fine neck arched. ‘You mistrust the other man?’

‘So much as that. . . no. He’s taken us in and done well by us. Still. there’s something in him I’m not sure of. I may wrong him, but I’d as soon do that as judge him too kindly and then find my trust was misplaced! He didn’t let me know he possessed the live rope that now hobbles your feet, and he’ll have other secrets he’s not about to share, for certain.’

‘The rope is a feeble thing,’ Myfanwy said with disdain. ‘I can free myself in a short time, if it pleases me, for I cannot be held against my will by anything less than the power of my name.’

Feeble though it might be, the rope had held her while Felimid dealt with the Lord Avraig. Of courtesy. he did not remind her. Perhaps she could free herself.

‘Wear it a little longer, for the look of the thing,’ he said. ‘I can’t remove it, anyhow. Only Pendor can do that.’

As he returned to the tree-house. Felimid paused by the still form of the Lord Avraig. Thoughtfully, he picked up the rotten, broken saddle-girth and reins. Seeking a bit further. he found the dead man’s swordbelt had suffered the same swift deterioration. The superb golden buckle hadn’t suffered at all. Neither had Avraig’s sword.

So. He must have been too urgently busy clutching at his sword-sheath to stay on his horse when reins and girth had failed him together. Yet if Pendor could do that, why hadn’t he caused the Lord Avraig’s sword to rot and rust in his hand?

The reasonable answer seemed to be: because he couldn’t. In fact, recalling the hiss and glitter of that long weapon, hungry for his flesh, and the knives of the half-men, Felimid gravely doubted whether any other answer under the sun could prove acceptable.

Regan slept with soft purring snores, fumes of wine on her breath. Her forearm was thickly bandaged. Pendor nodded his large head at her.

‘Poor lass,’ he said. ‘She’s having a bad time of it this month.’

‘Your living rope saved us all from worse,’ Felimid replied. ‘Have you other fine worthy servants like that?’

‘Rope, basket and my staff only,’ Pendor said. ‘Will you have more wine?’

‘Later, I thank you, when I’ve eaten. For now I’m going to wash.’

Water stood warming in a cauldron on Pendor’s hearth, fitted stones above fireproofing layers of clay and gravel. The magician had used some of it to bathe Regan’s mauled arm. Now Felimid stripped and used the rest to lave himself from head to foot, while his thoughts ran in their own channels.

A haunch of fresh venison turned slowly on a spit over the hearth. Pendor’s outlaw friends had brought it to him; but it made fatter, tenderer eating than seemed feasible for the time of year, and Felimid suspected that Pendor had unobtrusively worked magic on it while he turned and basted. But why unobtrusively? From the beginning, he’d never tried to conceal that he was a magician. The house was his. To what end should he be shy?

‘Curse that bloody-hearted lordling for burning half my hedge!’ Pendor grunted, exaggerating. ‘It won’t grow again for some while. I’ll have to put in a fence of stakes. You can help me with that, Felimid. Meanwhile I’ll have to carry the slain far into the forest, or we’ll find wolves snuffling at the door.’

‘Why trouble?’ Felimid asked, with darkling levity.

‘Being lifeless, they are within range of your powers now. surely! Turn them to dust or compost where they lie, and spade them into your garden!’

‘I don’t follow you,’ Pendor said, too quickly. Had he paused before speaking, as he characteristically did, Felimid might have believed him. Seeing his mistake in the slightest narrowing of Felimid’s eyelids, Pendor tried to undo it, and only blundered further. ‘Besides, if I could do what you’re advising, their angry ghosts would haunt us. Better the wolves!’ He showed his large teeth in an uneasy grin. ‘You’re averse to the thought of work, my friend. Especially such nasty work. Well, Basket and I will see to it between us, if you will handle the fencing.’

‘Be it so,’ Felimid agreed. ‘Done.’ He towelled himself dry with a heavy cloth the size of a blanket, and kilted another about his otter-lithe waist. ‘But why pretend with me, Pendor? You brought Avraig down from his high horse by causing his reins and saddle-girth to break, and they were made of leather. Once you’d done that, you fought with the staff. Could you simply have turned Avraig and his ugly followers into hazel bushes, you’d have done so.’

‘Of course,’ Pendor said testily. ‘But my powers are not that great. If you’re thinking it makes a difference now that Avraig and his branded slaves lie dead, you’re altogether wrong. I wish you were not. It’s going to rain.’

His feeling for diplomacy warned the bard to let the matter rest. The lure of debate and the fascination of his own cleverness urged him on. Wine tilted the balance; he changed his mind and poured himself more. ‘You mended my boot. You conjured a tasty stew out of garbage. Then there’s this wine! If your outlaw friends ever got their hands on its equal, I can’t believe it would delight any gullets but their own. You made it yourself, not so?’