WoP - 01 - War of Powers

by Robert E. Vardeman

  Leaving oldsters, children and non-combatant parents to stay behind with the flocks, the fighting strength of the People of Ust, some hundred warriors of both sexes, had set out for Hurinzyn territory the day before. As they camped, their scouts reported a body of bird-riders swooping in a landing at the foot of the mountains. Intent on Fost and Moriana, the Sky City troops hadn't noticed the bear-riders stealing up silently to pin them against the sheer rock walls as thoroughly as they had pent up their own quarry. Just as Jennas had been about to attack, the Guardsmen had rushed Fost's camp. Though in the habit of slaying all strangers, the bear-riders had been impressed by the courage of Fost's solitary stand against such numbers. Still, they had been prepared to let the Guardsmen do the work of finishing off this valiant warrior - until he had called on Ust for aid. The sign had been clear: Ust had provided this outlander to aid his folk against Kleta-atelk. They had unhesitatingly gone forward to his rescue.

  Fost had been bandaged, fed and housed in a hide tent stretched over the bones of some colossal creature. In the morning he had been given the best of the spare equipment. Under the circumstances he could scarcely refuse to join the bear-folk on their raid. Yet he fretted as he rode across the flat, featureless land in the lee of the Ramparts. Time fled. Would Moriana wait for him or was she at this very instant nearing Athalau, intent on using the Amulet of Living Flame to help depose her sister?

  His fatalistic fury of the night before had gone. Now he looked back on his reckless berserker rage with something akin to shame. He wished he knew more of his antecedents that he might learn whether his family had a history of madness. Life now seemed very precious to him; joining in a desperate expedition against a wizard of surpassing might and wickedness struck him as a poor way to hang onto it.

  For all their ungainly bulk the bears rolled along at a pace much quicker than a man could walk. Feeling his breakfast of dried meat and sour bear's milk churning in his stomach, Fost groaned. In action he would have a hard enough time just staying aboard his mount. If Ust had indeed contrived to have him join the attack, the doctrine of divine infallibility was in for a drubbing.

  They had ridden two hours when a shout roused Fost from the dour reverie into which he had fallen. Looking up, he saw two figures rise from the grass and flee with a peculiar hunching lope: badgers, slightly smaller than the Ust-alayakits' bears, with black on their masks and limbs. Their riders wore peaked fur caps and long, dirty robes. They showed no signs of armor and carried javelins with bone shafts.

  The bear-riders jeered at the retreat of their enemies. Even Jennas shouted after them, her stern, handsome features flushed as though she'd just won a battle.

  Did they seriously expect a pair to fight a hundred? Fost wondered. He began to understand his new comrades better. The growing enlightenment failed to cheer him.

  The village of the Hurinzyn came into view. The mountains here rose abruptly from the steppe in a grey, shiny wall. Artists or nature had pocked the stone face with a myriad caves in which the badger-folk made their homes. Ledges scaled the cliff in terraces, chiseled out of living rock to provide lateral access between the caves. Vertical movement was accomplished by means of ladders. Warned by their pickets, the badger-folk had drawn up the lowest of these. By any means Fost could see, the homes of the Hurinzyn were unreachable to the People of Ust. The courier wondered if Jennas had some scheme he'd been unable to guess at.

  One hole at the highest level was larger than the rest and fronted with a wide balcony of stone, a single broad slab that jutted from the cliff. From the hole emerged a lone figure. He was a tall man, or so Fost surmised, for his back was badly hunched. Wild black hair shot with grey fell around his shoulders and a beard of the same combination reached knobby knees left bare by the smock he wore. His garment was a faded black, crudely embroidered with white and lemon pictographs. He supported himself on a staff carved of yellowing bone topped with a gap-eyed and fanged badger's skull. His own eyes were round ebony glints.

  'Kleta-atelk,' Jennas said, reining her bear at Fost's side. The bridle applied pressure to the beast's neck to guide it while leaving the jaws free to bite.

  1 surmised as much,' Fost said. The badger-shaman raised an arm and began to sing in a high, trembling voice. 'What's he up to?'

  'He chants up his creatures,' said Jennas. She cinched her helmet strap tight beneath her jaw.

  'Are they otherworldly?' She shook her head. 'He must keep his song to control them. His pets are mortal beasts, 'tis said, transformed to monsters by his sorcery. The change maddens them. Should his chant falter, they'd fall on the Hurinzyn in an instant-and him as well.'

  More figures sprang from the waist-high grass. A line of Hurinzyn on foot confronted the bear-riders. The unarmored footmen cast javelins. Slings whined and loosed buzzing projectiles. A rock glanced off Fost's shield, momentarily numbing his arm. A grey bear to his left was struck by a spear just in front of its rider's leg. The creature gave no sign of noticing. Less vigorously driven than the spears and arrows of the Sky Guardsmen had been, the Hurinzyn javelins failed to pierce the coarse fur and fat that sheathed the bears' vitals.

  Jennas whipped her greatsword loose from its sling across her back. 'Forward!' she shouted. Growling, the column of bears spread into a line and charged. The Hurinzyn skirmishers loosed a desultory hail of missiles and took to their heels.

  Fost's worries about controlling his beast proved well founded. No matter how he tried to rein in, Grutz put his massive head down and charged along with his fellows, rumbling deep in his throat like a distant thunderstorm.

  'Hold on!' Fost bellowed, clinging to the horn of his pitching saddle. 'Stop! Can't you see we're being led into a trap!'

  A warrior-woman grinned fiercely at him in passing, whether in contempt at his caution or thinking he gave his battle cry, he couldn't tell. Jennas's big brown ran far in advance of the charge, rolling with all the irresistibility of an avalanche toward the departing badger-folk.

  Just as the animal's jaws gaped to seize a Hurinzyn, the disaster Fost feared came crashing down on the People of Ust.

  From burrows dug into the clay erupted monsters. Horrid parodies of natural creatures swarmed over the bear-riders. A thing like a badger but covered with slimy skin grabbed a rider from his saddle. The man screamed as the acid seeping from its pores consumed him. An eight-legged dog ran in front of Fost's mount, slavering in mad rage. Something that seemed all eyes and mucus lashed at him with a jointed sting. He warded off the blow with his shield and swept his blade in a bloody line over the gaping orbs. Grutz carried him headlong.

  Suddenly the red bear put his rump to the ground and stopped so precipitously that Fost had to brace his hands against the pommel to keep from being emasculated. Falling back into his saddle, he looked ahead to see what had made the animal halt. Then he turned his head and vomited.

  At the foot of the cliffs a thing waited. Twice as high as a bear, wide as several, a mass of obscenely white and obese flesh, it sat and raised its voice in a lament. Great dugs drooped like sacks across its bulging belly and arms lay in boneless loops tipped with clumps of yard-long tentacles. Its eyes were wide and blue, long-lashed and weeping constant tears down cheeks and shapeless nose. The mouth had been elongated into a trunk, ending in incongruously red lips.

  The apparition had unquestionably once been human. 'Taimgring!' The shriek soared above the yammer of battle. 'O Ust, it cannot be!'

  Jennas's bear had halted and refused to budge. Anticipating the horror's advance, Jennas reslung her sword and seized her lance. At the despairing cry she twisted in her saddle.

  A tawny bear lunged past her, slobbering foam in its panic. On its back rode a woman taller than Jennas, with braided black hair flying from her helmet. She plunged her sword into her animal's rump to goad it into motion. 'No!' The black-haired woman howled, an explosion of agony. 'My daughter!'

  All action stopped. Even Kleta-atelk's changelings ceased battling to watch the dreadful reunion.
The amorphous head turned. The streaming dish-sized eyes saw the demented woman who had lost a child and now found it transformed into the essence of a thousand nightmares. Its arms reached.

  Its tentacle-fingers wrapped around its mother and lifted her to its breast. The black-haired woman dropped her weapons and embraced her ghastly child. Then she screamed.

  The lips had pressed beneath her breasts as though in a caress of love. They peeled back to reveal sharp, chisellike teeth that cut through mail and skin and ribs with equal ease.

  Fost's heels dug into Grutz's side. The red bear coughed and broke into a run. Abashed at having to carry a lowly outlander into battle, Grutz displayed none of his fellows' dread of the once-human monstrosity.

  Sucking its mother's entrails into its belly through the tube of its mouth, the behemoth turned its eyes on Fost. A sickening stench wafted from it. Its gelatinous flesh wriggled as it stretched a hand toward the courier.

  Grutz roared. Fangs flashed. A squeal of anguish bubbled from the thing. Still feeding on the writhing body of its mother, it tried to wrest its hand from the bear's jaws. Fost's broadsword hacked the arm through. Blood hosed over him.

  The monster's keening rose to a petulant crescendo. Fost lunged. His sword tip sundered iron links and struck through the heart of the black-haired woman. Dropping her corpse, the being reached for him. His sword rose high and fell again and again, until the bloated face with its questing, sucking proboscis had been butchered to red ruin. With a final slobbering cry the being flopped to its side, convulsed and died.

  The fight had surged to life again as Fost, sick to the depths of his soul, turned Grutz away from the mountain of cooling flesh. Badger-riders had appeared to take the attackers from the flank. With shield and spear the lighter defenders took heavy toll of the bear-mounted People of U.st, whose formation had been ruptured by the onslaught of the monsters.

  'Jennas!' Fost shouted at the sight of the Ust-alayakits' leader. Though her greatsword had slashed their riders down, three grunting badgers held her bear by snout and two legs while the warrior-woman fought a caricature of the beast she rode. Covered with squirming pink tendrils instead of fur, the bear-thing obviously held the upper hand.

  Again Grutz charged. Fost smashed in the skull of a badger. Jennas's bear whipped the freed paw around and disemboweled the animal that clung to its nose. The bear-riders' chieftain struck at the final badger with her sword as the monster turned its wrath on Fost.

  The round shield was pushed far up Fost's arm, enabling his left hand to grip the saddle horn. He wasn't going to chance failing beneath all those stamping, clawed feet. Unable to shield himself, the courier chose attack and drove his sword into the bear-thing's hanging belly.

  The blade became bloodied. The thing's own fat armored it as well as any bear's. Blinking, Fost barely had presence of mind to lean back in the saddle to avoid a sweep of its paw. The talons raked the front of his helmet, skirring jaggedly against the metal.

  Fost fought for balance. Grutz backed slowly away from the beast, sparring with it, swiping with his paws. Gashes hatched his shoulders. The monster had a longer reach. Fost shook his head to clear it and raised his sword, steeling himself for a last suicidal lunge into those lethal claws.

  A brown battering ram smashed into the bear-thing's side. It went down, squalling and snapping at the splintered end of Jennas's lance, which jutted from its side.

  'Come on!' the hetwoman shouted. Her brown bear galloped away from the cliffs. Fost sent Grutz lumbering after.

  'Did I save you or you me?' he asked, dazed. 'I don't know,' Jennas flung over her shoulder. 'All I know is that we have lost.' Moisture gleamed on her cheeks. On both sides of them the surviving People of Ust turned their mounts and fled.

  Behind the routed bear-riders, Kleta-atelk's chant droned like a dirge.

  Feeling as weak as if she had fought at Fost's side, Moriana slumped back onto her heels. 'He lives,' she whispered, wanting to affirm it, hardly daring to belive it.

  'Indeed,' said Erimenes judiciously. 'I believe I've judged the boy too harshly. He put on quite an excellent fight, don't you agree? Especially the way he rescued that buxom wench who appears to lead the bear-folk.'

  'He could hardly have let the monster kill her!' Moriana snapped. Erimenes smirked. With a weary gesture Moriana dismissed the image.

  'What do you intend to do now?' the philosopher asked. The princess shrugged. 'Await Fost here,' she said. 'I could use the rest, and this valley is fair.' She looked at the spirit with sudden suspicion. 'No heat-seeking birds lie in wait here, do they?'

  'No.' Moriana rose, stretched, felt the wan warmth of the sun on her upturned face. Her duty urged her onward, to forge ahead across the Ramparts and take the amulet for herself. Her need for it was greater than his; all he desired was eternal life for himself, whereas her sole motivation was the welfare of her people.

  Now that you know he's alive, you owe him no more, her conscience told her. Go on.

  She shook the thought away with a toss of her long, blonde hair. She had left Fost once, and guilt had nearly crippled her. She wouldn't do it again.

  'I'm surprised to find a valley this lovely in these desolate mountains,' Moriana remarked. 'I wonder if it has a name?'

  'It does,' Erimenes said. 'The Valley of Crushed Bones.' Her head snapped toward him. A spectral arm pointed up the valley. At its head several hundred yards away, the green grass was littered with what appeared to be sticks gleaming whitely in the sun.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  'Attack without our bears?' the clansman roared. 'Impossible!'

  Fost scowled, returning the bear-riders' glares in kind. Overhead the sun shone meekly through a high haze. The wind blew from the South, a chilling caress. The false summer had gone, and winter would soon follow.

  The abortive assault on the badgerclan had confirmed Fost's earlier suspicion. In matters of cunning the Ust-alayakits were competent enough; their trapping of Rann's Guardsmen demonstrated that. But methodical military planning wasn't part of their makeup. If no simple stratagem suggested itself, their response was a headlong charge, and Istu take the hindmost.

  It was a phenomenon Fost had noted among other mounted tribes. Nor did the reluctance of the bear-riders to part with their mounts surprise him. The nomads' bears were the central fact of their lives, of war, the hunt and worship. Going into battle in any other fashion except on the backs of the ferocious beasts was, to them, simply inconceivable.

  Yet they had to start conceiving of it soon. Or they would have no hope of defeating the Hurinzyn in their cliff dwellings.

  'Listen,' Fost said. 'I ask you again. How do you intend to reach the caves of the badger clan?'

  'We can stand on our bears' backs,' a man suggested, rubbing his moustache with the back of his hand. 'That would bring us high, enough to get a hand-hold on the ledge.'

  'And what will the Hurinzyn be doing while you're climbing up? Jabbing you with pikes and dropping great whacking rocks on your ugly faces, that's what. You can count on it.' Fost waved his hand contemptuously. 'Not that the opportunity would ever arise. You were in that charge as well as I. The Hurinzyn light cavalry and

  Kleta-atelk's atrocities would rip you to shreds before you got within javelin-cast of the cliff.'

  'Aye, we were in the charge,' a scar-faced blonde woman spat, 'and well we marked who first it was to run from the wizard's beasts. You're no sending of Ust, outlander; a common coward, I call you. We should take you out for the winged foxes to eat.'

  'Who was it who gave grace to ledre, when all else sat and gaped in terror?' Jennas's voice cracked like a whip. She stood aloof from the circle, moodily staring at the distant cliff. The other bear-riders stared at her. None could mistake what was on her mind. The canker of defeat plagued the proud war leader and concern over her daughter's fate wore heavily on her. 'Who came to my aid when I was sorely beset by those monsters?'

  The nomads looked at one another, shamefaced. 'We may as
well admit mere valor won't save our children,' Jennas said bitterly. 'If the stranger suggests new and troublesome ways to meet our problem, I ask, why else did Ust send him? Perhaps our thinking has become like a bone broken and improperly set. Perhaps we must break our ways that they may knit and grow strong again.'