A smile split the face. 'Ask the bird-lovers how real we are.' She looked off in the direction the Guards had taken. 'Run, you cowards! Run or we'll catch you and take your scrotums for medicine bags!'
'A bit late for that, in Rann's case,' Fost murmured. 'My name is Fost, and I am in your debt for saving my life.'
'Jennas,' she acknowledged, her head dipping curtly. 'You owe me nothing.' She knelt and pried Fost's fingers from his wound. He winced as her fingers probed. 'I confess we tarried overlong in coming to your rescue. We came upon the Sky folk unseen and so witnessed your stand. Well and bravely fought, if stupidly. You should never have let yourself be trapped so.'
She rose and took a roll of linen bandages from a pack fixed to the bear's harness. The beast stood placidly, peering at Fost. Blood dried blackly on its muzzle.
Skillfully Jennas began to bandage his wound. 'We get few strangers in this land. The Sky folk we know, and their name has a foul taste in our mouths. Most others have been spies for those who seek to subdue us. So, as a general rule, we kill all who are unknown to us.' She tested the binding for tightness, nodding in satisfaction at her handiwork.
'Why did you help me?' Fost asked. 'Stupid,' she repeated. 'Or in shock. Do you truly not know?' He shook his head. 'You called for aid upon the Sun Bear. We are his people, the People of Ust.'
CHAPTER FOUR
'Perhaps "pack" isn't the proper word,' Erimenes said as Moriana sprinted into the litter of large rocks covering the valley's slope. Squawking stridently, the file of dark shapes that had been slowly stalking toward her up the valley broke into a long-legged run. 'It may be that "flock" is the correct collective, considering that these beasts, after all, are avian in nature.'
'Why didn't you tell me that they hunted in groups' Moriana gasped, choking down a groan as she slammed her knee against a stone. Behind her the blind birds, attracted by the heat ebbing from its body, had found their fallen comrade. They set up a shrill keening that flayed Moriana's nerves.
'Why, I was unsure until I sensed the bulk of them stealing up on you,' the philosopher said. 'As I stated before, they have changed in form since my mortal years; I didn't know whether their habits had varied as well. I presume now that they have not.'
'Marvelous.' Crouching behind a boulder, Moriana peered into the meadow. An indeterminate number of the giant birds clustered about the corpse, their heads swiveling on their hairy-feathered necks. One's eyeless face fixed on the princess. Instantly it uttered a shriek and ran straight at her.
'How many are there?' she asked, turning and scrambling up the slope.
'In the olden days they seldom numbered more than a hundred to a pack, if you will stipulate for the moment that it is a suitable term.' Moriana made a noise of exasperation that Erimenes chose to interpret as assent. 'I never knew of a group fewer than twenty. Of course, their numbers may have dwindled as their individual size increased, since it takes more food to support each one.' The shade paused, apparently undisturbed by the jostling of his pack as the princess fled over and around the boulders strewn across the incline. 'One thing appears unchanged. They are intensely social animals and will pursue to the end of their endurance anyone who has slain one of their number.'
Moriana slumped against a leaning menhir, her strength exhausted. The sounds of the chase drew nearer. Realizing that the long legs of the birds made them far faster than she over open ground, she had headed instinctively for the cover of the rocks. But even here the birds held an advantage. Their big claws could grip protrusions and irregularities in the stone better than her hands and feet.
'Observe,' Erimenes began. Moriana silenced him with a swat of her hand to his satchel.
'Be quiet,' she whispered. They'll hear you.' 'Oh, rubbish,' said Erimenes loudly. 'They know perfectly well where you are. They can sense the heat of your body rising from behind this wretched rock, and your breath displays your presence like a column of smoke.'
Moriana just had time to digest this intelligence when a bird came scuttling over the top of her boulder. Warned by the scratch of claw on stone, she danced back and threw up her blade to ward off a whirlwind assault of talon and beak. Somehow she blocked the blows with half-instinctive turns of her wrist, the beak clanging from metal like blows of a hammer. The scimitar licked in above reaching claws and the monster went down, gurgling blood from a gash in its throat.
Moriana darted away as a wave of birds broke over her rock. For a time they nattered in confusion. But shortly they caught her heat-signature again and the chase was on. Sightless, the hunters possessed a lethal edge over their quarry. In the dark eyes were all but useless, while their heat-sense told them her exact location.
There must be a way to mask my heat, she thought. An idea came to her. 'Erimenes,' she panted. 'Find me some vegetation, quick-the drier the better.'
'That won't hide you any better than the boulders.' 'Do it!'
With ill grace, the sage's ghost directed the princess to a stand of stunted cedars high up near the crest of the ridge that flanked the grassy valley. Some blight had killed them, yet they stood, bent and twisted like emaciated dwarves. Their limbs snapped with dry cracks as she bore down on them.
A burst of energy born of sheer panic had carried Moriana well in advance of her monstrous pursuers. But their cries rose behind her like the baying of hounds, coming inexorably closer with each passing second. Her lips moved in a half-remembered spell. She'd never been the sorceress her sister was, particularly in this complex and exquisitely perilous branch of the art.
For a heart-stilling instant nothing happened. The birds screamed triumphantly as they burst from the rocks and bore down upon the lifeless grove, their claws kicking up a shower of pebbles. Desperate, Moriana shrieked the final words of the invocation.
A sun blossomed within her. She cried out as intolerable heat traveled up her body to her shoulder and down her arm, casting a lurid white glow as though her flesh itself had become incandescent. The blazing agony reached her fingers, and a fire elemental burst from their tips and shot like a fireball into the scrub.
The desiccated wood took fire at once. Flames leaped high with a popping whoosh and the burbling laughter of the salamander chilled her soul. Rank, cloying smoke clutched at Moriana's throat. Coughing, she staggered out of the young inferno her magic had caused.
The birds went mad. The blaze of flame was like a blinding light flashed into a human's eyes in the dead of night. The creatures never had encountered fire before, particularly not the supernatural heat of the elemental. In their astonishment some of the huge killers flung themselves into the conflagration. Their cries rose in a horrid crescendo as the sprite devoured their flesh.
Weakened by the effort of conjuration, Moriana staggered away. With no fire to draw the salamander, the only heat available was that of Moriana's own body; the possibility had existed that the salamander would remain within her as it attained fiery life and consume her own flesh before breaking free. She had rid herself of the being in time but she had no idea how much harm it might have done her. She could barely manage the power to put one foot in front of the other, but that didn't matter now. The burning grove totally obscured her own bodily heat. The blind predators had no way to follow her.
A hundred yards away she stopped and performed the dismissal. The salamander resisted but was finally forced back to where it had come from. Its final shriek of rage stretched across the night like a banner. Though weariness tried to cement her limbs to the bench of stone where she paused, she drove herself to her feet and onward through the darkness.
When she had left the valley of the sightless birds by climbing another nearly dry waterfall, which Erimenes assured her rose too steeply for the hunters to scale, she dropped to the grass and slept the deathlike sleep of total exhaustion. No dreams animated her repose. The chill mists that arose in the hours before dawn failed to disturb her. Only when the sun finally pushed its way above the peaks that loomed all around did she awaken.
> 'If the blizzard of a week ago hadn't been followed by unseasonable warmth, you would have frozen to death last night,' Erimenes chided her as she sat up. 'I'll thank you to be more cautious in the future. It wouldn't do for me to be stranded among these tedious valleys.'
'Why the concern over my welfare?' Moriana asked. Erimenes gave the same answer as when she had questioned him before about his new solicitousness: silence. Maybe he's afraid of being stuck here for generations, with nothing to entertain him but the ponderous circling of the seasons. But that explanation failed to satisfy her.
'I congratulate you on the resourcefulness with which you handled those abominable birds,' Erimenes said. 'It would have been too degrading to contemplate had one of them swallowed my jar. Imagine spending the rest of the monster's natural life - and in past years they were renowned for their longevity- rolling about inside its gizzard with a lot of common pebbles and the occasional bone. Brrr.'
Her every joint feeling like an unoiled hinge, Moriana rose and went to the stream. Kneeling, she splashed water on her face, gasping as the stinging cold revived her. She shook her head, sending droplets glittering off in the early sun. She finally realized Erimenes was speaking to her.
'Pardon?' 'I said, I've decided I'm not at all dismayed at the present turn of events. You're much more stimulating than that slugabed Fost. For one thing your nicely rounded posterior as you bend over the creek . . .'
'Fost!' Moriana's startled cry interrupted the spirit. 'I must find out what happened to him.' She settled on her knees and began the scrying spell, her hand poised above the stream.
'Are you sure you want to?' Erimenes's words sounded strangely gentle. 'Remember the odds he faced.' He didn't say, Remember what awaited him if he was captured by Rann, and Moriana marveled at his restraint. She continued the chant.
The water went murky, roiled and became a window. Sun rays slanted across a high rock face honeycombed with black holes. Huge shaggy shapes lumbered across the steppe in front of a high cliff.
'Look!' Moriana cried. She seized the satchel, dragged it to her and pulled out Erimenes's jug, uncapping it in the throes of her excitement. 'Look, Erimenes. He lives!'
Blue mist arose from the jar. It gyrated briefly, coalesced into the familiar gaunt figure. Erimenes bent forward to peer myopically into the water.
'He does indeed,' the spirit said, as violence suddenly swept the tableau. 'But for how long?'
Moriana could only shake her head, her features a mask of impotent worry.
Fost watched the copper band of sunlight expand across the steppes as the sun rose over the distant Gulf of Veluz. He breathed deeply of the clear, brisk air and felt his body tremble, both from the weakness caused by his wounds and anticipation of what was to come.
'The Sun Bear rolls the Great Globe into the sky,' the shaman intoned. 'The time has come.'
Silently the People of Ust rose from their campfires and went to the hulking, reeking shapes of their mounts tethered by the domelike tents. Following them, Fost nursed doubts as to the truth of what the shaman said. From what he had heard, he didn't think the time would ever come to challenge a sorcerer such as Kleta-atelk of the Hurinzyn.
A shirt of mail weighted down his shoulders, its hem slapping his thighs just above the knees as he walked. A round shield of bearhide rode on his left arm. The unfamiliar hardness of a helmet enclosed his head. For what it was worth, he was well armored. In his experience mere armor seldom had any use against enchantment. His thoughts did not run along optimistic lines.
They turned more morose still when his mount was presented to him. 'This is Grutz,' Jennas said, slapping the blunt red nuzzle companionably. 'His rider, Suss, fell last night with an arrow in her eye. Here, Grutz, behold your new master. Fost is a doughty fighter, if a trifle dim. You'll like him.'
Fost failed to appreciate the introduction but felt the time wrong to protest, particularly since the beast looked malevolently at him and growled deep in its throat.
'There,' Jennas said in satisfaction. 'See? He likes you.' 'As appetizer or entree?' asked Fost. Jennas guffawed. 'You've spirit for a northlander,' she said, dealing him a buffet on the shoulder that loosened his teeth. 'Irtans and the others are foolish babblers when they say we should have fed you to the bears or let the birdmen finish you.'
'I am, of course, grateful for your timely arrival last night’ Fost said, 'but you seem to assume I'll aid you in your battle against this sorcerer.'
'And why not?' jennas asked. 'It is only fitting. We save your thick hide from the birdmen and you aid us. Are we not all children of Ust? Do we not worship the same god? Do we not share the same code of justice given us by the Red Bear of the East?'
'Justice?' Fost croaked weakly, glancing from Jennas to Grutz and back.
'A life for a life. We save you, you must offer your life to the Bear Clan in return. One way or the other.'
Fost looked around. Others of the Bear People gathered, fingering knife hilts and smiling more like wolves than bears. Their lumbering mounts rocked restlessly, talons grating against rock. They could as easily slash through his tender flesh.
'You're saying I must aid you in exterminating this sorcerer?' 'Of course you must!' boomed Jennas. 'It is your duty. You owe it to us. After this duty to the clan, the obligation is erased.'
'I've had dealings with sorcerers in the past, bad dealings. I want nothing more to do with them.'
'Grutz.' Fost retreated and stopped short when he felt a knife blade pricking into his back. The huge bear Jennas had called moved forward with ponderous steps. Its mouth opened to reveal fangs that Fost fancied to be the length of his own fingers.
'Mount and ride, Fost Longstrider.'She didn't have to add, 'Or else Grutz sups early.' Fost smiled, hoping Jennas would read the tautness in the expression as bravado. He could think of nothing to say, so he put his foot in the stirrup and tried to hoist himself into the saddle on Grutz's high, sloping back. Fost had difficulty until Jennas put a hand under his rump and boosted him up.
Grutz grunted, shifting under the weight. Fost swayed dangerously, blushing with furious embarrassment. The other bear-riders appeared not to notice how their hetwoman had assisted him. They adjusted the hang of their weapons, fiddled with medicine bags and fetishes or simply stared somberly across the brightening steppes. A group of dispirited helots went about striking the tents and stowing them for the trail. The nomad raiders took their homes with them and left nothing to mark their campsites.
Jennas had mounted her beast, immense and brown with claws like black scythes. She plucked a lance from a rest, waved it above her head and spurred the bear into an eastward waddle. The bear-riders followed, forming up in a long column behind. Fost took his station at the end of the line. Grutz's muscles flowed smoothly under his fur, but his gait was ragged, lurching Fost about until the courier felt as though he were riding an earthquake.
Misery rapidly overtook him. Rationally he should have been far more upset by the desperate eagle ride from the City in the Sky and the twisting, confused aerial battle that could have sent him plunging to inevitable death. But then he had been too busy fighting for his life to indulge in excess emotion. Now, with hours stretching empty before him, he had ample time to spend convincing himself he was about to fall off and break his neck.
In a way that might have been preferable. Last night, stumbling away from the scene of the battle, Fost had heard how the Ust-alayakits, the People of Ust, had chanced to come to his rescue. They warred with a neighboring folk, the Hurinzyn, who dwelled in caves east of the bear-rider's range. The Hurinzyn - badger clan -were ruled by the sorcerer Kleta-atelk, who delighted in producing magical monsters. In days past the hunter-herdsmen of the Bear totem had often warred with the more agriculturally oriented Badgers. Since the advent of Kleta-atelk the conflict had taken on a far more bitter character.
'Whether to feed his pets or for some purpose more hideous,' Jennas had told Fost, 'his men and his monsters have been raiding ou
r flocks. Of late they have taken children too.' Her voice dropped beneath its usual deep contralto. 'A week ago my daughter Duri was taken and my freemate Timrik, her father, was slain defending her. Half a score other children of Ust were reaved away as well. So now we ride against the cursed Hurinzyn, to triumph or to die.'
WoP - 01 - War of Powers Page 25
