Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull (36 page)

The girl screamed and continued to resist. No one else in the tavern moved.

"Come on," the warrior said hoarsely. "Outside ..."

"I won't," wept the girl. "I won't until I'm married."

"Is that all?" The boarmasked man laughed. "Well, then—I'll marry you if that's what you want." He turned suddenly and glared at the four who sat in the shadows. "You're holy men, aren't you? One of you can marry us." And before Hawkmoon and the rest had realized what was happening, he had grabbed Yisselda, who sat on the outside of the bench, and hauled her to her feet. "Marry us, holy man, or— By the Runestaff! What sort of holy man are you?"

Yisselda's cowl had fallen back, revealing her lovely hair.

Hawkmoon stood up. There was nothing for it now but to fight. Oladahn and D'Averc stood up.

As one, they drew the swords hidden under their robes. As one, they launched themselves at the armored warriors, yelling for the women to flee.

The boar warriors were drunk and surprised, and the three companions were neither. It was their only advantage. Hawkmoon's blade slipped between breastplate and gorget of the leader and killed him before he could draw his own sword, while Oladahn's swipe to another's barely protected legs hamstrung him.

D'Averc managed to slice off the hand of one who had stripped off his gauntlets.

Now they fought back and forth across the tavern floor as men and women made hastily for the stairs and doors, many to crowd to the gallery above to watch.

Oladahn, forsaking normal swordplay in the narrow room, had leaped onto the back of a huge opponent and, dirk in hand, was trying to stab him through the eyeholes of his mask while the man clumsily tried to dislodge him, staggering about halfblind.

D'Averc was fencing with a swordsman of some skill who was driving him back steadily toward the stairs, while Hawkmoon was desperately defending himself against a man with a huge ax that, every time it missed him, chopped huge chunks out of the woodwork.

Hawkmoon, hampered by his cloak, was trying to get out of it and at the same time duck the blows from the ax. He stepped to one side, tripped in the folds of the cloak, and fell. Above the axman snorted and raised the ax for the final blow.

Hawkmoon rolled just in time as the ax came down and sheared through the cloth of his gown. He leaped up as the man tugged the ax from the hard wood of the floor and swung his sword round to clang against the back of the axman's neck. The man groaned and fell, dazed, to his knees. Hawkmoon kicked back the mask, revealing a red, twisted face, and stabbed into the gaping mouth, driving the sword deep into the throat so that the jugular was cut and blood shot from the helm. Hawkmoon withdrew his blade and the helm clanged shut.

Nearby, Oladahn was struggling, halfoff his man, who had now got a grip on his arm and was tugging him away from his neck. Hawkmoon jumped forward and with both hands drove his sword into the man's belly, piercing armor, leather underjerkin, and flesh.

The man screamed and crumpled to the floor, to lie there writhing.

Then together Oladahn and Hawkmoon took D'Averc's man from behind, both swords slashing at him, until he, too, lay dead on the floor.

There was nothing left but to finish off the handless man who lay propped against a bench, weeping and trying to stick his hand back on.

Panting, Hawkmoon looked about the tavern room at the carnage they had wrought. "Not a bad night's work for holy men," he said.

D'Averc looked thoughtful. "Maybe," he said softly, "it is time to change our disguise to a more useful one."

"What do you mean?"

"There are enough pieces of boar armor here to furnish all four of us, particularly since I still have mine. I speak the secret language of the Order of the Boar. With luck we could travel disguised as those we fear most—as Dark Empire men. We have been wondering how to get through the countries where Granbretan has consolidated her gains. Well—here's our way."

Hawkmoon thought deeply. D'Averc's suggestion was a wild one, but it had possibilities, particularly since D'Averc himself knew all the rituals of the order.

"Aye," said Hawkmoon. "Perhaps you're right, D'Averc. We could then travel where the Dark Empire forces are thickest and stand a chance of getting to the Kamarg faster. Very well, we'll do it."

They began stripping the armor from the corpses.

"We can be sure of the landlord's and townspeople's silence," said D'Averc, "for they'll not want it known that six Dark Empire warriors were killed here."

Oladahn watched them work, nursing his twisted arm. "A pity," he said with a sigh. "It was an exploit that should be recorded."

"BROOD OF THE MOUNTAIN GIANTS! I'll stifle to death before we've gone a mile!" The muffled voice of Oladahn came from within the grotesque helmet as he tried to tug himself free of its engulfing weight.

They sat, all four, in their room above the tavern, trying on the captured armor.

Hawkmoon, too, was finding the stuff uncomfortable. Apart from the fact that it did not fit him properly, it made him feel distinctly claustrophobic. He had worn something like it some time before, when disguised in the wolf armor of Baron Meliadus's order, but if anything, the boar armor was even heavier and far less comfortable. It must be that much worse for Yisselda. Only D'Averc was used to it and had donned his own, to look with some relish and amusement at their first encounter with the uniform of his order.

"No wonder you claim ill health," Hawkmoon told him. "I know of nothing less healthy. I'm tempted to forget the whole plan."

"You'll become more used to it as we ride,"

D'Averc assured him. "A little chaffing, a little stuffiness; then you'll find you'll feel naked without it."

"I'd rather be naked," Oladahn protested, yanking off the leering boar mask at last. It fell with a clatter to the floor.

"Careful with it," D'Averc said, wagging a finger.

"We don't want to damage any more."

Oladahn gave the helmet an extra kick.

A day and a night later, they were riding deep into Shekia. There was no doubt that the Dark Empire had conquered the province, for towns and villages were everywhere laid waste, crucified corpses hung along every road, carrion birds were thick in the air and even thicker on the ground where they feasted.

The night had been as light as if the sun were permanently on the horizon, lit by the funeral pyres of villages, farms, towns, villas, and cities. And the black hordes of the Island Empire of Granbretan, brands in one hand, swords in the other, rode like demons from hell, howling and shrieking across the broken land.

Survivors hid, cringing from the four as they rode in disguise through this world of terror, galloping as fast as they could, for none suspected them. They were just one small pack of murderers and looters among many, and neither friend nor foe had any suspicion of their real identities.

Now it was morning, a morning overcast with black smoke, warmed by distant fires, a morning of ashcovered fields and trampled crops, of broken flowers and bloody corpses, a morning like any other morning in a land under the heel of Granbretan.

Along the churned mud of the road, a group of riders came toward them, swathed in great canvas night cloaks that covered their bemasked heads as well as their bodies. They rode powerful black horses and were hunched in their saddles as if they had been riding for many days.

As they drew close, Hawkmoon murmured, "Dark Empire men for certain, and they seem to be taking an interest in us...."

The leader pushed back his canvas cowl and revealed a huge boar mask, larger and more ornate than even D'Averc's. He reined in his black stallion, and his men came to a halt behind him.

"Silence, all three," murmured D'Averc, leading them up to the waiting warriors. "I'll speak."

Now from the leader of the boar warriors came a peculiar snorting, snuffling, and whining voice that must be speaking, thought Hawkmoon, the secret language of the Order of the Boar.

He was surprised to hear similar sounds begin to issue from D'Averc's throat. The conversation continued for some rime, D'Averc pointing back down the road, the boar leader jerking his helm mask in the other direction. Then the leader urged his horse on, and he and his men filed past the nervous three and continued on up the road.

"What did he want?" Hawkmoon asked.

"Wanted to know if we'd seen any livestock. They're a foraging party of some sort, out to locate provisions for the camp ahead."

"What camp's that?"

"A big one, he said, about four miles further on.

They're getting ready to attack one of the last cities still standing against them—Bradichla. I know the place. It had beautiful architecture."

"Then we are close to Osterland," Yisselda said, "and beyond Osterland lies Italia, and beyond Italia, Provence... home."

"True," said D'Averc. "Your geography is excellent. But we are not home yet, and the most dangerous part of the journey has still to be encountered."

"What shall we do about this camp," Oladahn said, "Skirt it or try to ride through it?"

"It's a vast camp," D'Averc told him. "Our best chance would be to go through the middle, possibly even spend the night in it and try to learn something of the Dark Empire's plans—whether they have heard we are nearby, for instance."

Hawkmoon's muffled voice came from the helmet.

"I am not sure it is not too dangerous," he said doubtfully. "Yet if we try to skirt the camp, we might arouse suspicion. Very well, we go through it."

"Will we not have to remove our masks, Dorian?" Yisselda asked him.

"No fear of that," D'Averc said. "The native Granbretanian often sleeps in his mask, hates to reveal his face."

Hawkmoon had noticed the weariness in Yisselda's voice and knew that they must rest soon; it would have to be in the Granbretanian camp.

They had expected the camp to be huge, but not as vast as this. In the distance beyond it was the walled city of Bradichla, its spires and facades visible even from here.

"They are remarkably beautiful," said D'Averc with a sigh. He shook his head. "What a pity they must fall tomorrow. They were fools to resist this army."

"It is of incredible size," said Oladahn. "Surely unnecessary to defeat that town?"

"The Dark Empire aims at speed of conquest," Hawkmoon told him. "I have seen larger armies than this used on smaller cities. But the camp covers a great distance, and organization will not be perfect. I think we can hide here."

There were canopies, tents, even huts built here and there, cooking fires of all descriptions on which food of all descriptions was being prepared, and corrals for horses, bullocks, and mules. Slaves hauled great war machines through the mud of the camp, goaded on by men of the Order of the Ant. Banners fluttered in the breeze, and the standards of a score of military orders were stuck here and there in the ground. From a distance, it seemed like some primeval concourse of beasts as a line of wolves tramped across a rained field or a gathering of moles (one of the engineering orders) grouped about a cooking fire, while elsewhere could be seen wasps, ravens, ferrets, rats, foxes, tigers, boars, flies, hounds, badgers, goats, wolverines, otters, and even a few mantises, select guards whose Grand Constable was King Huon himself.

Hawkmoon himself recognized several of the banners—that of Adaz Promp, fat Grand Constable of the Order of the Hound; Brenal Farnu's ornate flag, showing him to be a Baron of Granbretan and the Rats' Grand Constable; the fluttering standard of Shenegar Trott, Count of Sussex. Hawkmoon guessed that this city must be the last to fall in a sustained campaign and that was why the army was so large and attended by so many highranking warlords. He made out Shenegar Trott himself, being borne in a horse litter toward his tent, his robes covered in jewels, his pale silver mask wrought in the parody of a human face.

Shenegar Trott seemed like a softliving, softbrained aristocrat, ruined by rich living, but Hawkmoon had seen Shenegar Trott do battle at the Ford of Weizna on the Rhine, had seen him deliberately sink himself and horse under water and ride along the river bottom, to emerge on the enemy's bank; It was the puzzling thing about all Dark Empire noblemen.

They seemed soft, lazy, and selfindulgent; yet they were as strong as the beasts they pretended to be and were often braver. Shenegar Trott was also the man who had hacked off the limb of a screaming child and eaten a bite from it while its mother was forced to watch.

"Well," said Hawkmoon, taking a deep breath, "let's ride through and camp as near to the far side as we can. I hope we'll be able to slip away in the morning."

They rode slowly through the camp. From time to time a boar would greet them and D'Averc would answer for them. Eventually they came to the farthest edge of the camp and dismounted. They had brought the gear stolen from the men they had killed in the tavern, and now they set it up without suspicion, for it bore no special insignia. D'Averc watched the others work. It would not do, he had told them, for one of his obvious rank to be seen helping his men.

A group of engineers of the Badger Order came tramping around with a cartload of spare axheads, sword pommels, arrowheads, spear tips, and the like.

They also had a sharpening machine.

"Any work for us, brother boars?" they grunted, pausing beside the little camp.

Hawkmoon boldly drew his blunted blade. "This needs sharpening."

"Aye, and I've lost a bow and a quiver of arrows," Oladahn said, eyeing a batch of bows in the bottom of the cart.

"What about your mate?" said the man in the badger mask. "He's got no sword at all." He indicated Yisselda.

"Then give him one, fool," barked D'Averc in his most lordly tone, and the badger hastily obeyed.

When they had been reequipped and had their weapons freshly sharpened, Hawkmoon felt his confidence come back. He was pleased at the coolness of his deception.

Only Yisselda seemed downhearted. She hefted the great sword she had been forced to strap around her waist. "Much more weight," she said, "and I'll fall to my knees."