Night Winds (24 page)

"Mother, I think I remember this place."

"Surely you've played near here often before."

"Never. The other children are afraid to come here, and I don't like to be alone so far in the woods."

Ionor walked resolutely on, impatiently slackening her quick stride to let the child stay beside her. It was not as if Klesst were hers. She was Kane's--and a stolen part of her own flesh. Stolen. Raped and shamed and stolen. Klesst wasn't her daughter--she had been determined on that from the first. She was a cancer which Kane had implanted within her body, and in pain she had been purged of the cancer. Almost. The child was something apart from her. If there had ever been love this would be different, but there had never been love; there never would be love. She would feel no more guilt for Klesst than for a cancer that a surgeon excised and destroyed.

It would be over in another few minutes. Seven years of hate. Klesst would not suffer. Not like she had...

"Mother, I think this is the place in my dream."

"Hush, Klesst."

"No, Mother! I know it's the same place. That great big rock up there is where the black dog first appears, and the black man who walks behind him." Klesst's voice rose in sharp fear.

Ionor frowned at the girl. She had hoped to avoid physical contact--physical force--with the child, though she had a length of cord under her cloak if she needed it "Don't be afraid, Klesst. When you get to that big rock and see that there's no black hound and his master, then you won't have those silly nightmares any more."

"I'm still scared," Klesst whispered, her eyes round and frightened.

"Come on, quickly now."

Klesst walked slowly on. She did not want to anger Mother. She used to think that if she never made Mother angry again, then Mother might forget the awful thing she once had done--although what this crime might have been, she never understood. Of late Klesst had lost hope of making Mother ever forget.

Then her owl-like eyes stared at the barren spur of rock. Ionor had forgotten--if she ever knew--how well Klesst could see in the dark.

"Mother!" screamed Klesst, breaking away. "I can see them! It's the black dog and the black man! They're waiting in the shadow of those big rocks up ahead! Mother! The black dog sees me, too! Can't you see how red his eyes glow?"

"Come here, damn you!" shouted Ionor, reaching for the cord. In her urgent need to catch the terrified girl, she lunged and stumbled over a root. "Come here!" she yelled, as she sprawled after the retreating child.

It was the last fragment of horror for Klesst. She whirled and dashed back down the trail, utter panic lending horrible impetus to her childish stride.

Ionor called once more, then saved her breath for overtaking Klesst. The girl could not stay ahead of her for very long.

But terror gave her strength, so that Klesst flew headlong down the path, running faster than she ever had. She could hear Ionor's boots drawing closer from behind, and in her mind Mother, the black hound, and its master all merged into one onrushing phantom of dread.

A giant, diseased apple tree overhung the trail. The last of a blighted orchard that once had stood along this slope, the huge tree reached over the path with grotesque and nightmarish limbs. The sick-sweet odor of rotting apples hung under its shadow like the smell of state flowers in a graveyard. It had frightened Klesst when first they passed beneath its clutching branches.

Now as she rushed past it, her feet skidded on the rotted fruit. Klesst howled and pitched flying onto the decay-strewn ground. The jar of her fall left her no breath to cry out.

Desperately she tried to scramble back up to run. Too late. A frenzy of motion in the darkness, and Ionor's cold hand knotted in her disordered hair. Still trying to draw breath, Klesst was yanked to her feet.

Ionor slapped her, hard. "Now I'll show you what good it is to run!" she panted. And she drew the girl's wrists together, fumbled with the cord.

Klesst watched mutely as her hands were tied, still too terrified to grasp what was happening to her. She wondered if Mother meant to whip her like once she did Sele.

There was a scuff of boot on stone, then another silhouette joined the apple tree's contorted shadow.

It's the black man, thought Klesst. He's come with his hound. Mother will give me to him... "Kane!" snarled Ionor, leaping up in fury.

There was fury in Kane's eyes.

The arbalest in his arms shuddered.

Ionor shrieked in clawing agony as the iron-barbed quarrel tore into her belly and flung her back against the tree. She should have fallen then; instead she hung there, writhing in torment. At point-blank range the quarrel had drilled through her spine and sunk into the gnarled trunk.

She struggled frantically to break free, but her strength suddenly failed. Hate was slower to desert her, and she spat curses through her bubbling lips as she died. And finally there was an end even to her hate. Her slumped figure hung limply from the apple tree, impaled on the spike like a shrike's prey on a thorn.

Clumsily--for his chest pounded with agony, and scarlet mists blurred his vision--Kane gathered up his sobbing child and wrapped her in his wolfskin cloak. "Well played. Kane!" came sardonic congratulations. "I had thought the game won."

Klesst buried her face in Kane's shoulder. Kane warily shifted his burden away from swordhilt. The Demonlord and his hound stood before him on the trail.

"Do you still say I'm your pawn?" he growled. "There stands your pawn. Your pact is forfeit, and you'll have to play at my game if you think to claim this prize!"

"Your game, Kane?" mocked Sathonys. "I think not. And perhaps I was wrong to call you a pawn. We'll play the game another day, and then we'll see whether Kane is truly master of his fate, or simply fool of luck.

"Still, I won't say this outcome displeases me. Our souls are like matched blades fired in the same forge, Kane. After all these centuries, I believe I'd miss you, and you've served me well so many times."

Kane's eyes blazed in anger.

"As an ally, of course," the Demonlord amended, with a sarcastic salute.

He touched the hound's misshapened head. "Come, Serberys. The moon is growing old, and our friend Kane has led so many souls into our domain tonight. We must not delay our hunt any longer, as I see my creatures have become quite hungry."

Serberys opened his slavering jaws in a baying note of horror.

Hound and master vanished into the night.

Kane almost found pity for those who had dared to pursue him beneath the Demonlord's Moon. But pity was too rare in Kane to bestow upon his enemies.

Through the throbbing haze of pain, Weed felt himself lowered to the floor. He waited blindly for the torture to take some new direction, only thankful that the agony of his wrenched shoulders had let up. Then a knife sheared through his bonds.

He opened his swollen eyes. It was Kane, although it took a moment to be sure. The outlaw leader was a grisly sight to see this side of Hell.

Kane pushed a bottle of brandy into his mouth. Weed tried to take it in his hands but found them too numb to respond. The brandy was fire on his torn lips and broken teeth, but he swallowed greedily as Kane tipped the flask.

In a moment he had come to himself enough to note the torn bodies of his guards strewn about the room. Kane had descended on them in a murderous rush of fury, but Weed had hung unconscious through it all.

"Can you ride?" Kane demanded.

Weed glanced at Kane's face, then quickly looked away. "I guess so," he grunted, feeling cracked ribs as be struggled to stand. "I guess so. Give me a minute to get my breath."

"There're horses saddled and ready in the stable," Kane told him. "The guards won't bother you."

"Thoem! What's happened?" muttered Weed, swaying for balance. "Where's Pleddis and all his men? They all went out to look for you..."

A chilling howl stirred the night winds. It sounded like the bay of a hound as he closes on his quarry. It was not pleasant to hear.

"I think they found other hunters already out there," said Kane.

He thrust a bulging scrip into Weed's hands. It was heavy, but the weight of gold was one that Weed's tingling fingers found strength to close upon. "Here's gold," Kane told him. "Use it as you need it. When you're strong enough to ride, take Klesst here and go. Dawn will soon break, and you'll be safe enough--besides, Sathonys owes me for a game. Take Klesst with you to Obray's Station--that's well north of the Combine's authority, and no one will follow. Take good care of the girl, and when I join you shortly, I'll share my cache with you. I know that interests you."

Weed wiped the blood from his face, not realizing until later that Kane had known his designs. "Sure, Kane. Whatever you say. But what about you? Pleddis is going to return any minute now..."

"I'll see to my end," Kane grimly vowed. "You make damn certain about yours."

Dawn was greying the skies, the Demonlord's Moon had plunged beneath the black ridges, when Pleddis pushed open the door of Raven's Eyrie. He staggered into a common room, his garments ragged and bloody, his face more colorless than ever. His limbs trembled, and there was gore on his sword no human veins had spilled. He lost his laugh.

"Demons!" he blurted out with a choked voice. In a dazed stupor, he lurched across the center of the room. "Devils from the hills! Vaul! The things were everywhere! Snapping, clawing, leaping out on you from the trees and the shadows and the rocks! Too many--reaching out from all around us! Couldn't make a stand!"

His eyes still shone with horror. "And that hound! That hideous black hound! I saw it drag Eriall down as he ran! Vaul! I can still hear its baying! Drove me like a hunted fox across the ridges--but I outran it, made it back alive!"

He paused for breath, and awareness of his surroundings came to him. The huge inn lay in total silence.

"Where--where is everyone?" Pleddis called out.

"I'm right here," said Kane, rising out of the shadow.

High above the blighted wasteland Lynortis broods in gloomy majesty. Lofty eyrie on a fang of sandstone, the fallen citadel stares out over the silent wilderness of desolation far below. Lynortis. Fortress city whose walls no army could overwhelm. Tyrant lord of the limitless forestlands sprawled at its feet.

Lynortis, your eyes are sightless now, and the rich rolling valley over which you reigned is the boneyard of two hundred thousand souls. Lynortis is dead, and there are no mourners. No longer do carrion hawks nest in your gutted halls; even the jackals have abandoned your dunes of bleached bones. Alone and silent, you are the funeral obelisk for your unburied tens of thousands--and for the bones of your conqueror. When slayer kills slayer, all are one with the slain.

Two nations died here although one was hailed victor. Ask the dead whose side won the war.

The girl's breath came in ragged sobs, and her stride was a broken stumble. Hours before, her long legs had run swift, sure as a deer beneath the misshapen trees. A deer is swift, but hounds are patient. Since noon they had hunted her through that insane nightmare of moss-grown destruction. Now her tanned legs were scratched and bruised as they pumped wearily beneath the thorn-laced branches, and her bare feet left smears of blood upon the gnarled roots. Her long brown hair was disordered with twigs and moss; her thigh-length shapeless gown hung in grimy tatters about her lithe figure. The only sound she uttered was the jagged rhythm of her breath.

"Not here!" The hoarse drawl came dimly front a hundred yards to her right.

"Not here!" An answering bail from her left, and closer. There echoed a stamp of hooves and jingle of harness.

She darted into the wreckage of a huge trebuchet. A tent of saw-briar overgrow the rotting beam of its counterweight, and the shadowy shelter within was tiger-striped by the declining sun. Heedless of tearing thorns, she wriggled closer to the charred timbers of the mammoth siege machine. Smeared with soot and leaf mould, her tanned limbs and shift of coarse brown cloth merged with the rotting timbers of the apparatus. Against her thin face her brown eyes seemed large as those of some nocturnal creature. She froze--motionless save the fast rise and fall of her high breasts and the quick, hunted flicker of her eyes.

At first there had been hounds. They had almost caught her then. But she had slithered breathlessly through a debris-choked tunnel, and when the baying pack had followed, the rotted shoring had given way. Now men's eyes had to search out her trail, and it was enough to hold a scant lead.

A moss-grown skull stared up at her, the rest of its bones still crushed beneath the throwing arm of the trebuchet. Two skeletons in rotting mail lay half-buried in the earthworks, ensnared in a nest of saw-briar. Near her feet lay a rust-pitted dagger; a mouldering swordhilt protruded from beneath the wreckage of the throwing arm. The rusted weapons gave her comfort no more than the rotted bones caused her fear. Her terror was of the present, and of the savage men who hunted her.

"Here! Fresh blood!"

From behind her--and close. She had been unable to bide her trail. Her concealment was no refuge.

Hopelessly she broke from cover, flinging herself past the shroud of thorns. Their excited shouts were close--in a few seconds they would reach the ruined siege engine. Rank brush and twisted second-growth trees promised scarce cover to bide her flight. "Yo! That's her!"

Terror urged another burst of strength to her aching legs. She dashed headlong through this graveyard of a battle three decades silent. Each breath was agony, and still her lungs could not draw breath enough.

They were following close to her heels, confused in the war-scarred forest, making too much noise themselves to catch the sound of her flight. But they had horses.

She hurtled the fallen beams of a smashed springald, stumbling over the piled rusted fragments of its iron-headed bolts. It brought her up just short of a weed-grown trench that lay hidden a stop beyond. But this was a region of the battleground she did not recognize, and she dared not chance shelter that might instead be a cul-de-sac.