The ringing of swords no longer drifted up the chimney. Moriana's heart lurched. Had Fost fallen? She heard a rattling, scraping sound like metallic hail, and a voice raised in a bold shout of derision. There was no mistaking Fost's defiant cry. Rann had obviously ordered missile troops to the fore, and Fost had just as obviously weathered their first storm of projectiles.
She jumped up, knowing she shouldn't dawdle. Though to flee smacked of betrayal, she couldn't help the courier. He gave his life to buy time, Fost had said when grief for her fallen war bird had threatened to drag her down. Let's not waste it. If Fost somehow escaped Rann, she was confident he would catch up to her in time. If he fell . . . well, he wouldn't want his own death wasted either.
Settling the satchel's sling more comfortably over her shoulder, she set off. The twin moons had long since set, an event for which Rann had doubtless waited before ordering his assault. The rock underfoot tended to break beneath her weight and slip away. She fell constantly until her arms and knees were a mass of bruises.
'By the Great Ultimate,' Erimenes complained when they had ascended a torturous five hundred feet, 'must you keep bumping me about so? You're as clumsy as that lead-footed Fost.'
Moriana dropped to a flat rock. A narrow trail stretched behind, curving out of sight around the flank of the mountain. Beyond the path the land dropped away sharply. It was a miracle that one of her many stumblings hadn't carried her over the rim.
She wiped sweat from her forehead, felt a stickiness and held her hand close to her eyes to examine it. Her lacerated palm bled freely. She'd just smeared blood across her face.
'If you don't like traveling with me, I can drop you down a crevice somewhere, so you can enjoy peace and solitude for another fourteen hundred years,' she told the spirit.
'Thirteen hundred and ninety-nine,' Erimenes corrected mechanically. 'You will do no such thing. You need the amulet too badly, if ever you're to have hope of defeating your sister. And you need me to find the amulet.'
Moriana nodded wearily. She couldn't deny the truth of what he said. Freeing the City from Synalon's oppression was worth any sacrifice, even enduring Erimenes's endless prattle.
What troubled her was what the spirit needed her for. She had seen ample evidence of the late sage's capacity for treachery. The shade was utterly without loyalty. Yet he had interceded time and again in the last few weeks to save her and Fost from recapture by Rann. Why? she asked herself. Back in the City he seemed to find Synalon and Rann more to his taste than us.
I know why I need him. But why does he need me? She sighed and pushed herself erect. She would learn the answer eventually, though she had a premonition she wouldn't care for it very much. Right now the only thing to do was climb.
False dawn had begun lightening the sky when she reached the meadow. The warm north winds had melted the snow. Grass grew green and lush and soft. A streambed, drying now that the runoff was gone, provided Moriana an upward route. The bed rose in a brief cliff, its rock worn smooth by running water. Climbing the dead waterfall took the last of Moriana's strength. At the top she threw herself down on the grass, drinking in icy air in gasps, the grass-smell rich in her nostrils with the lying promise of spring.
'You mustn't tarry like this,' Erimenes chided her.'Just let me rest a minute.''If I do, you might not escape the bird I sense approaching.' 'Bird?' She rolled onto her back, her sword hissing into her hand. Has Rann sent men on birds after me, despite the darkness? She scanned the sky intently. No vast cruciform shapes occluded the southern constellations. 'I see nothing,' she said. 'Erimenes, if you're . . .'
A shadow loomed above her. Instinctively she rolled and felt something graze her shoulder. She continued her roll, coming to her feet in a crouch, the scimitar tasting the air in front of her.
A bird stood before her in the darkness but a bird unlike any she'd ever seen before. At least as tall as a Sky City eagle, it lacked a war bird's grace of form and movement. Ungainly, it waddled toward her, swaying on thick legs, powerful clawed toes gripping the ground. It stirred its wings restlessly, a sign only of agitation. The foot-long stumps were plainly vestigial and incapable of raising its considerable weight.
The knobby head slowly swiveled. It lacked eyes. Instead a single strip stretched across its head above the blunt, massive beak, dark but gleaming in the starlight like an insect's carapace. The head turned toward her, then stopped. The bird advanced.
'But it's got no eyes,' she gasped, retreating slowly. 'How can it see me?'
'It doesn't see you, obviously,' Erimenes said. 'It does, however, perceive the heat of your delectable body with some keenness, particularly in this chill.' He made a speculative sound. 'We knew them in my day, of course, but they didn't grow this large then. I wonder if they've changed in other ways.'
Glancing over her shoulder, Moriana backed away. She had to be certain she didn't trip over a rock, if she fell, she had no doubt the monster would be on her in an instant, striking with its heavy beak. This time the beak would do more than simply glance off her shoulder.
The bird made no move to attack as Moriana slowly gave ground. 'It's curious,' Erimenes explained. 'It's never encountered anything like you before and wonders what manner of creature it's about to make a meal of.'
She licked her lips. The legs were long, at least half its height. If she bolted, it would overtake her within five yards. The stony wall of the valley lay twice that distance behind her.
If it just stays curious a few breaths longer. . .As she turned her head to check the path, the monster charged. The rustle of talons on grass gave her a heartbeat's warning. She threw herself back and to the side, lashing out blindly with her sword. The blade clattered against hardness, slipped and then bit briefly. At the same instant, agony raked across her ribs. She scrambled away on all fours, panting with the pain in her side.
The bird lifted its hideous, naked head and loosed a squall of rage. Moriana's scimitar had struck its beak and had been deflected down to lay open its shoulder. Blood flew from the tip of its wing as it shook the stumpy limb in wrath.
I've only made it mad, she thought. My next cut must tell, if it's not to finish me. Cods, it's big!
Moriana's blood shone on the talons of its left foot. The monster had kicked out, trying to eviscerate her. Moriana drew her long knife and moved to meet the sightless hunter.
Hissing savagely, it attacked with beak and talons simultaneously. The knife blocked the beak, but the axe-like blow sent the weapon spinning from Moriana's grip. Her scimitar bit deep into the striking leg, chopping through the bone. With an anguished wail, the bird collapsed.
Moriana ended its life with a sword-cut, dancing back barely in time to escape the final lunge of its beak. Shaking, she went to retrieve her knife.
'A monster, that one,' she said, wiping slimy blood from her blade with a handful of grass.
'Don't grow complacent,' Erimenes said. 'You handled yourself bravely and skillfully. I've no complaints about the quality of the fight. On the other hand you do have a problem.'
'What's that?' the princess asked, sliding her sword back into the improvised belt.
'What do you plan to do about the rest of the pack?' In their eagerness to be first to get at the courier, the Sky Guardsmen completely forgot their discipline and training. Fost retreated into the crack. Three bird-riders lunged in after him, only to find themselves crowded too tightly together to use their weapons to full effect. Fost's broadsword licked out. The Guardsmen fell. Only one showed sign of life, and that was a feeble groaning.
'Do you want more?' Fost asked them, exultant at this initial victory. He didn't fail to heed the small voice in his skull that reminded him how many more bird-riders the night held. But a wild, fatalistic exhilaration settled on him as his dream of immortality evaporated. It was as though a burden dropped from his shoulders. He had lost all fear; the fight was all that mattered.
I almost wish Erimenes was here to see it, he thought. He was not so giddy th
at he missed the curt order, 'Back! Give the archers a shot, you groundborn scum!'
Man-high rocks flanked the entrance of the fissure. With a bound, Fost was behind one. An arrow skimmed his calf, ripping the rough breeches he'd put on after leaving the Ethereals' village. Other missiles bounced from the rocks with an iron clamor. His boulder shielded him completely.
He had his dagger in hand as well as the basket-hilted broadsword. A javelin probed around the rock sheltering him. The dagger slammed against its haft, pinning it to the stone, while Fost stabbed around the obstruction. The bird-rider gasped and carried the sword groundward as he fell. Fost yanked the blade free, roaring in triumph.
Darts and arrows winged up the crack. Close behind the volley came another rush of the Guardsmen. Fost slashed open the chest of the first to cross his vision and leaped out to confront the rest, hacking and thrusting with his broadsword, parrying with the dagger. A scimitar cracked against his hilt, a blow that would have halved his hand but for the protecting steel basket. His riposte went through the soldier's throat.
'Come on,' he shouted at them, 'You're no more men than he who leads you!'
Dead silence stretched down the rocky slope. Torches had been lit to illuminate the mouth of the fissure. Fost watched goblin shadows dance on the stony walls.
'Stand back,' he heard a calm voice say. Cautiously Fost peered around the side of his boulder, ready to jerk back out of an arrow's path. 'Come and die, half-man,' he cried, spitting on the ground before him.
Rann's face turned the color of sunbleached bone. 'You won't have the lingering death you deserve,' he said, his words still flowing like liquid amber, 'because you force me to come up there and kill you now.' His scimitar lightly gripped in a gloved left hand, he started up the slope.
Awaiting him, Fost held himself poised, alert for treachery. He had no doubt Rann would face him alone; any man who would put himself between the Vicar of Istu and the object of its wrath, armed only with a puny sword, possessed courage to match the prince's cruelty. Besides, his life lay on it. The longer Fost held the gap, the more likely Moriana was to escape. A point would come when Synalon would no longer accept failure, even on the part of her cousin, the prince. But Rann specialized in lethal cunning. Fost would take nothing he did at face value.
At the mouth of the crevice Rann threw himself face first on the ground. Three archers stood behind him, weapons nocked. Instantly they let fly at the courier's broad chest.
He was no longer there. The arrows passed harmlessly on to shatter against the rock wall. Rann's first unusual motion had sent Fost jumping back. Rann bounced up now, his left arm a blur of motion.
Springing up to pounce on his presumably disabled foe, Rann was just in time to catch Fost's dagger inside the joint of his right shoulder.
Rann sagged back. His smile went sickly. Reaching up with his sword hand, he extended two fingers and a thumb from his hilt and plucked the blade from the wound with no further change of expression. Casually he tossed the knife aside. 'Let's end this farce,' he said.
Their blades crossed in a geometry of line and curve. Barely turn ing a low-line thrust with a twist of his wrist, Fost felt his berserker fever dissolve. A normal man would have been handicapped by the flowing wound in his shoulder, to say nothing of a man who still nursed ribs cracked by a demon's hand. Yet Rann's sword hand moved with sure precision, and his feet made no misstep. His foe would need both skill and luck to walk away from this encounter.
Far from disabling his opponent, his dagger cast had served solely to deprive Fost of his parrying weapon. He felt its need sorely now, with Rann's scimitar insinuating itself past his every defence to lick like a steel tongue at his flesh. The sword's caresses were light still, but each touch spilled more of the big man's blood and weakened him that much further. Nor would his strength serve to best the prince. Fost tried a widely swung powerhouse blow, and in turn received a cut across his belly that made him blink with pain. Had the scimitar bitten the breadth of a finger deeper his guts would have fallen around his knees in loops.
Rann did not go unscathed. A whistling stroke nicked an ear and a sudden lunge drew a bloody line along the side of his neck. But it was obvious the big man was wearing down more rapidly.
The decision came abruptly. Fost blocked a sidewise cut at his middle, only to have Rann turn his wrist unexpectedly. The tip of the scimitar whipped down and sank in the great muscle of Fost's right thigh.
Fost reeled back, hoping desperately the blade hadn't severed the main artery. If it had, he would be dead as soon as the shock wore off and the artery opened. But that could be a blessing; the leg gave way beneath him and he sat down with his back to the wall of the fissure. His resistance was at an end.
Rann whipped his sword through a blood-streaked arabesque and brought the hilt to his lips in a mocking salute.
'I hail you, courier. You've given me a better fight than I've enjoyed in years.' He smiled wickedly. 'Also, I perceive my men can now overpower you. It appears we'll come to know each other better, you and I.'
Fost never knew afterward what moved him to speak the words, whether fear or desperation or something else had made his mind fall back on half-held faith. Fending off the prince with his sword, Fost raised his head and shouted, 'I call upon my patrons, Gormanka of the Couriers and Ust, Red Bear of the East, to aid me now against these devil worshippers.'
The response was all he could have asked for. At once an eerie wailing rose into the night from somewhere down the mountainside. Rann turned, as mystified as Fost, who sat with one hand pressed to his thigh and the other holding his broadsword aimed at the prince.
Again the cry, shrill and despairing. Consternation showed on the soldiers' faces. It was the sound of war birds, not only in pain but in fear - a sound no living ear had ever heard.
A torchbearer flew into the air, snatched up by something that rose behind him as though growing from the rocks themselves. His torch limned a snarling visage, immense jaws opened wide and a furry head with flattened ears and flame-dancing eyes advanced. The jaws clamped shut with a crunching sound. The torch fell.
More huge, misshapen figures loomed out of the blackness. Demons rode them, striking out with long spears and clubs. Grunting and whuffling, their mounts shuffled forward, titanic bears whose paws scattered bird-riders like straw dolls.
Rann ran at them, shouting orders. Arrows and javelins flew; a bear reared screaming and dropped, crushing its rider against a knife-edged outcropping. The bear-riders charged up the slope, led by a giant who swung a six-foot sword in fiery arcs.
The lead bear came among the score of Sky Guardsmen who'd followed Rann's commands. Sword and talons struck, men died. The Sky Guardsmen broke. Running as fleetly as any among them went Rann. It was one thing to interpose himself between his cousin and an animated statue gone amok; it was quite another to face an army of monster-riding fiends who'd swept out of nowhere to take his men in the rear and butcher them as blithely as they themselves had massacred Ethereals. The old campaigner in him took over, and with the demoralized remnants of his troops, he disappeared beyond the boundary of torchlight.
The bear paused for a moment to allow its rider to hurl imprecations after the fleeing Guards. Then it turned and lumbered toward Fost. The courier had just about come to the conclusion that his mind had snapped.
A whiff reached his nostrils, laden with the searing, musky tang of bear. He screwed his face up.
'Ust, what a stench!' 'You're very welcome,' the bear-rider boomed. 'We save you from certain death at the hands of the Sky people, and you thank us with insults. Truly you northern folk have odd notions of courtesy.'
Fost shook his head. 'I'm sorry. I'm not at my best just now. Besides, I didn't think you were real.'
The giant swung off the bear's back and stepped forward. To Fost's astonishment his benefactor was a woman as tall as he and a little lighter, her bare arms bulging with muscle that rippled as she stirred. A tightly-laced leather bodic
e restrained breasts of surpassing fullness. Over it was thrown a fur vest and a gorget of mail. Black breeches lined inside the thigh with leather and knee-high boots completed her outfit. Though far from beautiful, her face was strikingly handsome, eyes blazing blue from a tanned, high-cheekboned face beneath an upright shock of hair the color of flame.
WoP - 01 - War of Powers Page 24
