The Many-Coloured Land - 1 (30 page)

The old man's voice was compassionate. "So when the contemplative orders justifiably turned you down, you scratched around and found what looked like an even better form of atonement. . . Can't you see that you haven't loved yourself enough, Amerie? This hermitage-in-Exile idea was the ultimate chair in a corner facing the wall."

Her head was averted from him so that the broad-brimmed hat hid her face. She said, "So the Exile anchoress turns out to be just as much of a fraud as the ministering nun in the hospice for the dying."

"That last bit isn't true!" Claude snapped. "Gen didn't think so and neither did I. And neither did the hundreds of other suffering people you helped. For God's sake, Amerie, try to keep a perspective! Every human being has deep motives as well as superficial ones. But the motivation doesn't invalidate the objective good we do."

"You want me to get on with my life and quit picking scabs.' But, Claude, I can't go back now, even though I know the choice was wrong. I have nothing left."

"If you've got any faith remaining at all, why not believe that you're here for a reason?"

She gave him a crooked smile. "It's an interesting idea. Suppose I spend the rest of the night meditating on it."

"Good girl I have a feeling you won't have much time for meditation later on, if Felice's plan works out ... I tell you what. You meditate and I'll snooze, and we'll both do ourselves good. Wake me as soon as Basil starts playing the signal. It'll be just before dawn."

"When it's darkest," sighed the nun. "Go to sleep, Claude.

Pleasant dreams."

There were no more double beacons, which seemed to have been the scouting party's warning of Firvulag in the vicinity. The caravan had come down from the plateau now and traversed open wooded slopes cut by little brooks that foamed whitely over boulders, calling for tricky footwork by the chalikos as they picked their way along in the starshine. The country became rougher and there was a tang of conifer resin in the air. As the night wore on, a breeze sprang up, ruffling the lake and making the beacon fires near the shore lean and twist It was very quiet. Aside from the noise of the moving caravan, only owl hoots were to be heard. There were no lights of villages or farms, no sign of habitation at all. So much the better if they did manage to escape ...

They came to a deep gorge lit on both sides by bonfires, where a lonely guard post secured a suspension bridge over a cascading stream. Three torch-bearing men in bronze armor stood at attention as Epone and Captal Waldemar crossed the swaying structure. Then the soldiers led small groups of prisoners over, bracketed by amphicyons.

When they resumed their march, Richard told Felice, "It's after four. We been losing time fording the creeks."

"We'll have to wait unI'll we get far enough away from that damn guard post. I hadn't planned on that. There are more than three soldiers manning it, count on that. Epone will be able to send them a telepathic call for help and we've got to be sure they'll get to us too late. I want to wait another half hour at least."

"Don't cut it too fine, sweets. What if there's another post? And what about the scouts ahead who light the beacons? "

"Oh, shut up! I'm juggling factors unI'll I'm dizzy trying to optimize this thing. Just be sure you're ready... Did you lash it firmly to your lower arm? "

"Just like you said."

Felice called out, "Basil."

"Righto."

"Would you play some lullaby tunes for a while?"

The notes of the woodwind rose softly, soothing the riders after the brief anxiety caused by the bridge-crossing. The double file of chalikos and their flanking bear-dogs now moved among titanic black conifer trunks. The trail was soft with millennia of needle duff, muffling their passage and sending even the most uncomfortable riders into a doze. The track rose gradually unI'll it was more than a hundred meters above the Lac de Bresse, with occasional sheer drops to the water on the caravan's right. Too soon, it seemed to Felice, the eastern sky began to lighten.

She sighed and pulled down her hoplite helmet, then leaned forward in the saddle. "Basil. Now."

The Alpine climber played "All Through the Night."

When he finished it and began again, four amphicyons went charging soundlessly to the head of the procession and hamstrung Epone's chaliko with simultaneous slashes of their teeth. The exotic woman's mount uttered a heart-stopping shriek as it went down in a welter of dark bodies. The bear-dogs, with barking roars, leaped upon Epone herself. Soldiers and the front ranks of prisoners gave shouts of horror, but the Tanu slave-mistress did not cry out.

Richard thumped his free feet against his mount's neck and held tightly to the reins as the creature took off He galloped into the midst of the quartet of soldiers trying to come to the assistance of Epone. Waldemar was shouting, "Use your lances, not the bows! Lift them off her, you stupid bastards!"

Richard's chaliko reared and crashed down upon the captal, knocking him from the saddle. A figure in white robes and a black veil leapt down as if to help the fallen officer. In the moment that Waldemar took to gasp astonishment at seeing a mustache on a nun's face, Richard slipped Felice's little dirfc from its golden scabbard and pressed the steel blade home twice below the two corners of Waldemar's jaw, just above the gray metal necklet. His carotid arteries severed, the captal clutched at the false nun with a bubbling cry, gave a peculiar smile, and died. -

Two riderless chalikos were thrashing together in the semi-darkness, inflicting ghastly wounds upon one another with-their huge claws. Replacing the dirk in its sheath on his forearm, Richard seized the dead officer's bronze sword and backed off, cursing. There were confused shouts and a long scream of pain from the tangle of amphicyons and armed men. The two soldiers of the rear guard came pounding up to assist their comrades One of the men charged with lance couched, spitting a small bear-dog that dashed in from the side and hoisting it high into the air. Then another hulking form came darting among the mounted guards, snapping at the heels of the enraged, screeching chalikos.

Felice sat her beast, motionless, as though she were merely a spectator to the carnage. One of the ronin, heels drumming the shoulders of his mount, rushed into the free-for-all and hauled back on his reins. The chaliko reared and brought its scimitar claws down onto the rump of a soldier's animal. The Japanese warrior, shouting an ancient battle cry, forced his own mount to ramp again and again with terrible driving blows that crushed the soldier and his chaliko into the tangled mass already on the ground. The second ronin came up on foot and grasped a lance from its scabbard on the fallen man's saddle. "A bear-dog! Behind you, Tat!" Richard yelled.

The warrior whirled around and braced the spear on the ground as the amphicyon leaped. Transfixed through the neck, the animal body continued forward on momentum and crushed the ronin named Tat beneath its great bulk. Richard ran forward and stabbed the struggling monster in its near eye, then tried to haul it off the warrior. But someone shouted, "Here comes another one!" And Richard looked up to see a black shape with gleaming eyes not four meters away.

Felice gazed impassively at the fight, her face almost hidden within the T-shaped helmet opening.

The charging amphicyon swerved away from Richard and ran over the edge of the steep embankment, squalling in midair and striking the water with a tremendous splash. Basil and the knight Dougal rode their mounts impotently around the edge of the bedlam of noise, hesitating before the flailing bloody claws and struggling shapes. Ripping off the impeding veil and wimple, Richard picked up another lance and tossed it to Basil. Instead of stabbing with it, the climber hoisted the thing like a javelin, threw, and hit one of the soldiers high on the armor of his upper back. The point of the weapon skidded up beneath the man's kettle-helmet, penetrating the base of his skull. He fell like a bag of sand.

Felice watched.

No more bear-dogs came from the shadowy perimeter. All that were left alive were busy worrying something lying next to the body of a dead white chaliko. A single soldier stood upright among them, hacking slowly at the snarling amphicyons like some freshly painted red automation.

"You must kill him," Felice said.

They could not find any more lances. Richard ran to the mounted knight, handed up his bronze sword, and pointed. "Take him, Dougal!"

As if in a trance, the elegant medievalist grasped the weapon and waited for a suitable moment before riding into the mass of dead and dying animals and men. He decapitated the fuI'lle chopping figure with a single blow.

There were two bear-dogs left alive as the last soldier fell. Richard found another sword and prepared to stand his ground if they came after him; but the creatures seemed seized with a kind of fit. They backed away from their prey reluctantly, giving vent to agonized howls, then turned and went leaping to their doom over the edge of the lakeside cliff.

The sky was becoming rose-colored. There were gagging sounds and hysterical sobs as the stunned prisoners, who had been herded into a compact group by Claude and Amerie during the embroilment, now came slowly forward to look. Noises from dying chalikos were cut short as the surviving ronin went about with a dispatching sword. The first morning notes of song sparrows, simple and solemn as Gregorian chant, echoed among the lofty sequoia trunks.

Felice rose up in her saddle, arms wide, fingers grasping, head in its plumed helmet thrown back as she writhed, cried out, then slumped back inertly against the high cantle.

The Japanese bent over the gory carcass of the white chaliko. He grunted and beckoned to Richard. Numbed now, feeling only curiosity, the former starship captain went stumbling into the fleshly wreckage, hindered by his incongruous nun's garb. On the ground amidst the bodies was a hideously gnawed limbless trunk swathed in bloody rags. The face was torn to the bone all along one side, but the other was still beautiful and untouched.

An eyelid opened. A jade-green orb reached out at Richard. Epone's mind took hold of him and began to drag him down.

He screamed. His bronze sword hewed and stabbed at the thing down there but its inexorable grip held firm. The dawn-light began to fade and he was being taken to a place from which he would not return.

"Iron!" the high-pitched voice of the knight called out "Iron! Only thus may the faerie perish!"

The useless sword fell and Richard fumbled at his wrist. As he continued to sink he clutched at the instrument of redemption and sent its steely potency deep, between the heaving white-scarlet ribs without breasts to the raging heart, stilling it and quenching the body's resident spirit which took flight, releasing as it was released.

Basil and the ronin hauled Richard out of there by the arms. He was wide-eyed and still screaming but holding tight to the gold-handled knife. The three of them paid no attention to the demented Dougal, who leaped from his saddle and began stomping something beneath his mailed feet.

Felice shouted a warning.

Ignoring her, the knight picked a blood-smeared golden hoop from the mess and scaled it far out over the lake, where it sank without a trace.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The riverside palace at Darask was in an uproar when the southbound travelers broke their journey there on the second evening. The mistress of the establishment had been brought to childbed with twins and her labor was proving dangerously prolonged. Creyn went off to volunteer his medical services, leaving the prisoners in the care of a silver-torced major-domo, a black Irishman who forthrightly introduced himself as Hughie B. Kennedy VII and led them under guard to a large chamber high in one tower of the palace.

"You'll have to rough it tonight, friends," Kennedy said. "Boys and girls together here where we can keep you secure easily. We can't spare the guards tonight for single quarters, not with our poor Lady Estella-Sirone hovering on the brink and the buggerin' Firvulag gathering round, knowing what's in the wind. You'll be cool up here at any rate, and above the mosquitoes. There's a good supper out on the balcony table."

The escorting palace guards carried in Stein's litter and rolled the Viking onto one of the netting-draped bedsteads. Sukey protested. "But he needs care! He hasn't eaten or drunk all day or, anything."

"Don't fret yourself over him," Kennedy said. "When they're put tinder with the torc", and he fingered his own, "they're like in suspended animation. Your friend's just like a hibernatin' animal, metabolism all slowed down. He'll keep unI'll tomorrow. By then, please Jesus, all'll be well with our Lady, and we can spare some time for him." The major-domo gave Sukey a shrewd look. "Likely you'll keep a good eye on your friend."

The prisoners were allowed to take a change of clothing but nothing else from their packs, which were then removed by the guards. Kennedy apologized once more for the meagerness of their welcome and prepared to lock them in. Elizabeth came to him and said in a low voice, "I must speak privately to Creyn. It's important"

The major-domo frowned. "Ma'am, I realize that you're a privileged person, but my orders were to install all of you together here."

"Kennedy, I'm an operant metapsychic and a trained redactor. I can't get through to Creyn, but I can farsense your lady and her unborn babies and I know that right this moment they're in serious trouble. I can't help them from here, but if you take me down to the birthing room . . . there! Creyn's calling for met"

Kennedy had heard the telepathic summons, too. "Come along, then." Taking her by one arm, he drew her into the tower corridor and slammed the door shut.

Raimo said sourly, "That was nice going. We get stuck here, but Little Red Riding Britches gets to see the fireworks."

"I never would have pegged you as an obstetrics freak," Aiken jeered.

"Didn't you hear that guy? " Raimo's pale eyes glistened and he licked his lips. "He said the Firvulag were gonna lay siege to the palace, I wanna see that. Maybe get in on the fighting."

Sukey's face was twisted with scorn. "You just can't wait to join the Hunt, can you? Can't wait to get some monster's head on a pike. But you weren't so brave when we were shooting those rapids today!"