Quag Keep

by Andre Norton

  Deav Dyne, the girl, and Milo worked together, laving the skin of Gulth, until the lizardman coughed. His eyes, dull and nearly covered by the extra inner lid, opened.

  They could not wet down his cloak again, that would have taken all the water of a small pond, Milo imagined. Perhaps though, with it about him the moisture on his skin would not evaporate so soon. At least the burning sun was gone. As they freed the cloaks they had used to roof their day shelter, the swordsman looked to his ring. To his great surprise fortune at last favored them a little, for, even in the dark, a spark of light shone there on what they hoped was their path.

  Deav Dyne stepped up beside Gulth, pulling one of the lizardman’s dangling arms about his own shoulders, lending him part of his own strength. The rest shrugged on their packs, Naile, without a word, slinging the cleric’s along with his own. There were a few stars, high and cold, very remote, but tonight no moon. Still, the dust itself seemed oddly visible though Milo could discern no real radiance out of it—merely that it stretched as a pallid field ahead.

  They wobbled and fought for balance until their aching muscles perforce adjusted to a gait necessary to maintain them afoot. At least the blowing of dust powder, which had accompanied them during their half-day’s travel, appeared to have died away. Their surroundings were clear enough of the punishing haze for them to breathe more easily and see to a greater distance.

  Milo moved out, his attention ever divided between the ring and the way ahead, for they had to detour from time to time to avoid the rise of dunes. They had halted twice for rests before Afreeta’s hissing call brought them to a quick third pause.

  The pseudo-dragon sped directly to Naile, hooked claws in the folded back hood of his cloak, and pressed her snout as close to his helm-concealed ear as she could get.

  “That way—” Naile gestured with his hand to the right. “She has made a find.”

  He stepped out of the line of their advance, apparently quite confident of Afreeta’s report. Because the others had some hope in that confidence, they fell in behind him. Weaving a way through a miniature range of dust hills, they came out into a wide open expanse. From its nearly flat surface jutted upward two tall, thin columns, starkly dark against the pallid sand. Afreeta took wing once more, hissing loudly. She reached the nearest of those pillars and clung with taloned feet, her head pointing downward to the smooth dust. Her hissing became a squawk of excitement.

  Milo and Naile floundered on until the berserker set hand to the pillar below the perch of his winged companion.

  “Wood! Wood!” Now he pounded on it. “You know what this is? I have seen service aboard the free ships of Parth—this is a mast! There is a ship below it!”

  He dropped to his knees scooping away dust with his cupped hands, sending its powder flying over his shoulder as a hound might dig at the burrow of prey gone to earth.

  “But”—Milo moved away from the flying dust that swirled out from the berserker’s exertions—“a buried ship—what might that still hold after all these years?”

  “Anything.” Ingrge’s voice was calm, yet it would appear he was infected with the madness that had gripped the berserker only with a little more logic in his action. For, before he squatted down a short distance away, he had drawn off one of his dust shoes and was using it as a shovel, doing greater good with that than Naile had been able to accomplish with his hands.

  Milo was certain some madness born of this alien and threatening world (perhaps, even an outreaching of that which they sought and which must have defenses they could not conceive) had gripped both of them. Then Wymarc moved closer and deliberately knelt to unfasten his own webbed foot gear. He glanced up at Milo, his dust-begrimed face showing that lazy smile.

  “Do not think they have taken leave of all senses, swordsman. Any ship that breasted such a sea as this must have gone well provisioned. And do not underrate our winged friend there. If she was told to seek water—that was what she quested for, nor would she make a mistake. It seems that perhaps miracles may yet be with us, even in these unregenerate and decadent days.” With that, he, too, began to dig.

  Though Milo could not really accept that they would find anything, he discovered he could not keep apart from their labor. So, save for Gulth, who lay on the dust well away from the scene of their efforts, they united to seek a ship that might have lain cradled in the dust since before even one stone of Greyhawk’s wall had been set upon another.

  It was a back-killing and disheartening task, for the dust shifted continually through their improvised shovels. And, though they mounded it as far away from where they dug as they could, streams of dust continually trickled down the sides of the hole to be lifted out again. They tried to steady these walls with the fabric of their cloaks, but Milo believed they were wasting their strength in folly. Then Naile gave a shout mighty enough to move the dunes themselves.

  “Decking!”

  Long ago Deav Dyne had produced his light-giving globe to aid their sight, and now he swung it below. It was true enough—what Milo had never really expected to see was firm under the berserker’s boots—a stretch of planking. Afreeta fluttered down from her perch on the mast and landed on a ridge of yet uncleared dust. There she began to scrabble with her feet, again uttering her high squawk.

  Naile pursed his lips, hissed in turn. The pseudo-dragon fluttered up, keeping her wings awhirr while he scooped vigorously at the site she had indicated. Within moments his sweeps had uncovered what could only be the edge of a hatch.

  At the same moment, Milo looked down at his wrist. His bracelet had come to life.

  “ ‘Ware the dice!” he cried out, as he strove to concentrate with all the energy his tired body could summon on the beginning whirr of those warnings of danger. He did not even know if his warning had reached the others.

  Heat warmed the metal as the points of light glinted. On, his mind urged. On—give me—give me—

  The dice stopped, allowing their pattern to blaze just for a moment before they were dead, metal and gem together again. Milo snatched up the shield he had been using to carry off the up-thrown dust from the edge of the pit they were digging. His sword was already drawn as he swung slowly about, searching for an enemy he was sure must exist. He saw Gulth throw off the heavy cloak, pull himself to his knees, his hand fumbling weakly at the hilt of his own quartz-studded weapon.

  Yevele, dumping a burden of dust from her own shield, scrambled to her feet and sank calf-deep in the loose ground. For the first time Milo thought of this impediment to any battle. To fight on their dust shoes would make even the most dexterous of swordsmen unsteady, unable to use even a fraction of his skill. To discard the webbing might plunge them instantly into a trap, keeping them fast-pinned at the pleasure of the foe.

  Where was the enemy?

  The pale stretch of the dust above the pit and the hillocks of powdery stuff they had dumped at a distance were clearly vacant of any save themselves. Ingrge crawled up, made for his bow and the arrow quiver that he had left beside the depleted water skins. The elf’s head swung from side to side, and, though in this half-light Milo could not be sure, the swordsman believed Ingrge’s nostrils expanded and contracted, testing the air for a scent human senses were too dulled to discover.

  Deav Dyne was the next to crawl into sight. He must have left his light globe below in the pit, though his prayer beads swung from his left wrist. Now he stooped a foot or so away from the edge of their pit to gather up a fistful of dust. Chanting, he tossed this into the air, pivoted slowly, throwing similar handsful to each point of the compass as he used one of the archaic tongues of the temple-trained.

  What he strove to do, Milo could not guess. But as far as he himself could gauge it, the spell achieved nothing.

  “Heave, man, I have the lashing cut.” Naile’s bellow sounded from below. Had the berserker not heard the warning or taken heed of his own bracelet? Milo, reluctant to leave his post above, shouted back.

  “ ’Ware, Naile—”
>
  “Take watch yourself!” roared the other. “I have seen the dice spin. But what we must face lies—”

  There was a crash. Dust rose out of the pit in a great billowing cloud to blind their eyes, fill their mouths and noses, render them for a long moment helpless.

  Then came another shout, fast upon that the warning grunt of a battle-mad boar many times louder than any true boar could utter. Without clear thought of what might happen, Milo, still wiping at his watering eyes with the back of his left hand swung around to wade toward the lip of the pit. For there was no mistaking the sounds now. Battle was in progress there.

  13

  The Liche Ship

  THE DUST ITSELF CHURNED AND MOVED, UPSETTING MILO AS A wave might sweep the feet from under a man. He heard cries through the murk, fought to keep his feet, instinctively threw up his shield arm to give him a small breathing space between the billow of rising grit and his body which the dust threatened to bury.

  Already the swordsman was held thigh deep in the outward spreading flood of gray-brown powder. More than half-blinded, gasping for breath, Milo reeled and fought against the powder that entrapped him. For all he could tell he was alone, the others might have been swallowed up, buried by this eruption. Yet he could still hear faintly that infernal grunting, even what might be the clash of steel against steel.

  Firm in the shifting clouds of dust was a dark mass. There was a great upheaval where the ship lay. The craft might itself now be answering to some spell once laid upon it. Milo, his eyes smarting and watering to rid themselves of the fine grit, moved toward it, only to be brought up (unable to judge distance, against what seemed a solid wall, with force enough to drive the shield back against his chest and shoulder.

  The waves of dust sent surging by the rise of this barrier were subsiding, the air clearing. Now the sound of battle came far more strong. Milo slung his shield to his back, forced the blade of his sword between his teeth in his dust-coated mouth and swept his hands along the wall for some method of climbing.

  To the left his gropings caught the dangling skeleton of a ladder. With a mighty effort he pulled himself toward that, wondering if the stiff rope of its sides, the wood of its doles might crumble under his weight. He knew that, strange and unnatural as it might be and surely born of some form of unnatural magic, this was no wall that had risen so summarily from the depths of the Dust Sea. Rather it must be the long-buried ship.

  He gripped the ladder and fought to raise himself out of the dust, kicking it to loosen its hold on him, drawing himself up with all the strength he could muster in his straining arms. The sea sucked at him avidly, but he won on to the next handhold and the next.

  His feet came free, found purchase on the ladder, so he pulled himself aloft haunted by a horror of falling back into the dry sea, there to perhaps lie entombed forever.

  Somehow Milo won to the deck, out into air that he could breathe, where the mist of dust had fallen away. Wymarc stood with his back against the butt of one of the masts. The bard’s harp lay at his feet while in his hand his sword made swift play, as controlled as fingers had been on the strings of his instrument, keeping at bay three attackers.

  Naile, in were form, plowed fearlessly into others emerging from the hatch he had broached, his heavy boar’s head flashing with a speed seemingly unnatural to such an animal, his tusks catching and ripping up ancient mail as if age had pared it to the thinnest parchment.

  While the enemy. . . .

  Milo did not need the faint, musty smell of corruption that wafted towards them from that crew to know that these were liches, the Undead. Their body armor was the same color as the dust that had been their outward tomb for so long. They even wore masks of metal, having but holes for eyes and nostrils, which hung from their helmets, covering their faces.

  The masks had been wrought in the form of fierce scowls, and tufts of metal, spun as fine as hairs, bearded their chins to fan outward over their mail corselets. They poured up from the hold, swords in hand—strange swords curved as to blade—which they swung with a will. And the Undead could not die.

  Milo, as he reached the surface of the deck, saw Naile-boar savage one of the Undead with his tusks, breaking armor as brittle as the shell of a long-dead beetle, in fact breaking the liche almost in two. But its feet continued to stand and the torso, as it fell, still aimed a blow at its attacker.

  “ALL-LL-VAR!” Without being aware that he had given voice to the battle cry of his youth, Milo charged at the liches that ringed Wymarc at the mast. His shield slammed into the back of one. Both armor and the dried body beneath broke. The swordsman stamped hard on an arm rising from the planking to sweep at his legs with one of the curved swords, brought down his own weapon on an angle between head and shoulder of another of the enemy advancing on Wymarc’s left, while two of his fellows kept the bard busy.

  Steel clanged against the breastplate edge, sheered a spread of metal thread beard, then took the helmed head from the thing’s narrow shoulders. Yet Milo must strike again and again before, with a blow from his shield, he could send the dried body blundering out of his path.

  Dimly he heard shouts from the others, though Wymarc held his breath to conserve energy for the fight. Milo leaped forward to engage a second of the Undead coming up behind the mast, its curved sword held at an angle well calculated to hamstring the bard. This liche was half crouched and the swordsman slammed his shield with all his power against its bowed shoulders. Tripping over the severed arm of one of those Wymarc had earlier accounted for (an arm that still heaved with the horrible Undead power), he fell, bearing under him the liche.

  He was hardly aware of a curved sword striking the planking only inches away from his head. Milo rolled away from the liche. Without waiting to rise farther than his knees, he used his shield as a battering weapon for a second, striking the thing’s head and shoulders. Then looking around he saw one that had been striving to free its weapon from the nearly fossilized wood lose both arm and half the shoulder from a blow aimed by Yevele, her sword used two handed and brought down with all the force she could deliver.

  Ingrge, his green-brown forest garb standing out here as a bright color, waded into the mélé beyond. No arrow, not even one poisoned by the secret potions of the western hunters, could bring death to those already dead. So the elf had dropped his bow and was using his sword. Above all other sound, arose ever the terrible battle cry of Naile who charged again and again, blood dripping now from his thickly bristled shoulders, shreds of dried skin, bits of time-eaten metal and brittle bone falling from his tusks as he stamped and gored.

  Something caught at Milo’s heel. A head, or the travesty of a head sheared from a body, freed of the grotesque mask, lips long since completely dried away, snapped its teeth in open menace. The swordsman kicked out, sickened. Under the force of his blow that disembodied head spun around, was gone. Milo’s shield was already up to meet another rush from the two that had been the last to climb into the air.

  “AYY-YY-YY-YY-YY-YY!” The were-boar turned in a circle, striving to free himself from the weight of one of the Undead. The thing had either lost or discarded its concealing helm. Its jaws were set in Naile’s hind leg and there it gnawed with mindless ferocity at the tough flesh. Then, down through the air swept a sword serrated with wicked points of quartz, smashing the bodiless head into a shattered ruin. Gulth staggered on a step or two. Naile, with a last furious shake of his leg, wheeled away from the lizardman to hunt fresh prey. He charged again, and again, not at new attackers now, but stamping and lowering his great head to catch and toss aloft fragments of the Undead. Though there was still movement among the fallen, arms that strove to raise aloft swords, mouths that snapped, legs fighting to rise only to continually fall back again, none of those that had been imprisoned in the ship stood whole or ready to move against the adventurers.

  Wymarc’s arm hung limply against his side, blood dribbling sluggishly from ripped mail near his shoulder. Ingrge knelt well away from the
mass Naile still stamped, using the blade of his sword to force apart jaws that had closed upon his ankle, with better luck than those that had earlier threatened Milo. Gulth leaned against the second mast. His snouted head was sunk upon his breast and he kept on his feet only by his hold on the mast and the fact that his sword, point down on the deck, gave him support.

  The were-boar, having reduced to shreds and shards all the fallen, shimmered. Naile Fangtooth stood there in human form, breathing hard, some of the beast’s red glare still in his eyes, wincing, as he moved, from a wound on his flank.

  He drew a couple of deep breaths, but it was Wymarc, nursing his slashed arm against him, who spoke first.

  “There are never guardians without that which they must guard. What is it, I wonder, that these were set here to protect?”

  Yevele had withdrawn to the edge of the deck, wiping her sword blade over and over with a corner of her cloak, then deliberately cutting off the portion of the cloth that had touched the steel and discarding it among the mass of broken bodies and armor.

  “They were near the end of the spell that bound them so,” she said, not looking at what lay there. “Else they would have given us a far greater battle—”

  “Or, perhaps”—Milo looked to the bracelet—“we have indeed learned a little of what Hystaspes told us could be done. Did you also will the aid of fortune in this?”

  There was a murmur from the rest—mutual agreement. It would seem that they had perhaps changed in a little by their concentrated wills the roll of those dice which marked their ability to continue to exist.

  Up from the open hatch spiraled Afreeta. She wheeled around Naile, uttering small cries into which imagination might read some measure of distress as she hovered on the level of his leg wound. The berserker gave a gruff sound which might almost have been a laugh.

  “Now, then, my lady. I have taken worse. Yes, many times over. Also”—his laugh grew—“do we not have a healer-of-wounds with us?” He waved a hand to the bulwarks of the raised ship where Deav Dyne once more cradled his beads, the cleric’s lips moving with inaudible, but none the less, meant-to-be-potent prayer. “However, what have we uncovered here, besides the spells of some wizard? As the bard has said, guardians do not guard without good reason.” Limping, the berserker made his way to the edge of the hatch that had been pushed back to allow the exit of the liche defenders.