by Brian Daley
Gil, guns empty, unleashed a cut. He was trying frantically to defend himself and look after Duskwind. He turned to tell her again that she must go back, and saw her features twisted in agony; a toss-dart had sped from the opposing ranks and was lodged in her side. She began to slump in her saddle.
He screamed in shock and grief. Catching her as she fell, he held her to him and raced for the gate.
When Hightower, Katya, Gil and Duskwind were nearly at the entrance to Freegate, Springbuck called for Reacher to come and disengaged himself from the press. The King told him to be off, that he would follow, and the Prince went.
As he raced back to the city, Springbuck heard gunfire from the gatehouse; Van Duyn, come too late to ride out but contributing his share. Something bright caught the Prince’s attention; with a rush of panic he spied Yardiff Bey’s aircraft hovering off to the right on streamers of red demon-fire.
Reacher held the bridgeway alone now, giving the others precious seconds to withdraw. His two swords were impossible to see, licking out and swinging back and forth to lay open or thrust through any who came close. He danced back and forth, but never retreated or yielded an inch of the entranceway to his home. The soldiers wavered irresolutely; he’d already slain several of their champions and many other accomplished warriors besides.
At last there was none to go against him and the bright imperatives of his blades. He stood waiting silently. For an incredible moment in time the King held the bridge, facing down a numberless host as much by bravado as skill at arms, a deed to be told and retold long afterward.
He brought his swords to his sides, still for the first time, and yet there was none to challenge him. Then Reacher threw the bloodied blades down scornfully, and no man dared meet his gaze squarely; the monarch of Freegate was master of them all as if they were a pack of hounds at his feet.
He turned to go. From the massed men Desenge, the feared and deadly aide-de-camp to Legion-Marshal Novanwyn made his way through with blows and curses and charged the Wolf-Brother with his long, heavy spear Finder at ready. It had been said Desenge could never miss with Finder, and to prove it true he threw the weapon with a lunge. It flashed at the King’s chest with speed that none could follow.
None, that is, except Reacher. He bent and crouched, avoiding the spear and catching it in his right hand. Straightening, he took Finder in both hands and contemptuously snapped it in two with a single surge of arms and chest. Then he flung the pieces from him and they arced out to either side, over the low walls of the bridgeway and into the chasm below, and it was the end of a weapon that had many evil deeds to its name. When they saw this, the troops were more loathe than ever to attack the King.
Desenge frothed with rage. Unsheathing his sword, he ran at Reacher with death in his eye. The Wolf-Brother knocked the blade aside in anger, catching Desenge by the throat and belt, and heaved the big man over his head, holding him there despite his frantic efforts to escape. Van Duyn, watching from the turrets of Freegate, was reminded of Hercules choking life from the giant Antaeus. The King grimaced with effort; he closed his fist and his opponent’s windpipe was crushed.
Flinging the body of Desenge out over the chasm, Reacher turned to run. But now two more adversaries leaped to meet him. These were Kanatar and Deotar, twin sons of Midwis, who was camp commander and second-in-command to Novanwyn.
They were fair-haired and held in fondness by their father and their men, strong at war and loyal to Strongblade because their father was. Deotar’s armor was black, with silver trim, and Kanatar’s was silver with trimming of black; Deotar rode a black horse and Kanatar a white.
They’d broken through after much trying to face this King who was so feared. He’d faced about and fled, so they laughed and mocked him as they pursued.
Reacher hadn’t run from them, but from what he’d seen above and behind them. For, having learned how his armies had been outfought, tricked and frustrated, Yardiff Bey had vowed at least to have the life of the King, and to this end swooped down on trails of fire. He didn’t want to bring Cloud Ruler too close to the well-defended city, but his manic rage had the better part of him and he swept in, disregarding the hazard to himself and his own army.
Reacher ran for his life as the twins galloped after and the sorcerer bore down, intent on incinerating him. Horses the Wolf-Brother could outdistance, and did. But the airship overtook the twins and Kanatar and Deotar died, burned alive in molten armor, victims of Yardiff Bey’s single-minded intent. Their father Midwis gave a wretched cry and buried his face in his hands.
The race narrowed to the king and the sorcerer, who leaned over the looking lens. Reacher’s feet barely touched the ground. He ran as he’d never run before, having acquired some of the fire fear of his lupine foster brothers, and he was as close to hysteria as he’d ever been. Nonetheless, his running was disciplined, arms and legs pumping and head bobbing up and down in regular rhythm with his controlled breathing.
The King caught up with the others at the gate, but the defenders in Freegate hadn’t been idle. An engine hurled a metal-shod stone at Yardiff Bey’s predator ship.
Like a fireless meteor it flew, narrowly missing the craft and falling into the jungle in the chasm below. Bey’s high regard for Cloud Ruler suddenly quenched his desire for immediate revenge. He ordered it to sheer off and make altitude.
But by that time the would-be victim and the others were safely inside the gate.
* * * *
That night, when he’d had reports from pale, shamefaced subordinates on the events of the last several days, Yardiff Bey brooded in his tower sanctum at Earthfast. He considered asking the guidance of his masters in Shardishku-Salamá, but knew this would be interpreted as a sign of weakness and inadequacy.
He weighed recent news. Word had been leaked to the Mariners of the store of ship-fighting engines; boarding pikes and grappling hooks were being prepared in Boldhaven. Now they came to trade in fleets, with hands seldom far from cutlass hilts, and it was rumored that they’d laid down two-score keels for craft of war.
Roguespur, that hotblooded cub of cursed Fim, had, by sudden march in the night and deceit, taken a key border fortress and manned it with his own mercenaries and rebels mustered from the wilderness of the north.
And only this evening Honuin Granite Oath had sent a solicitous message, bathed in crocodile tears, that eleven of Strongblade’s ministers in his area were being systematically and mysteriously assassinated.
A new shape of things was forming in the sorcerer’s mind, incorporating the new ideas filling the heads of the rabble, the disconcerting, clever innovations against him and the perplexing weapons his foes were using. He remembered the humiliating occasion in the Inferno sharply, but was sure that the machine wagon had been dismissed from this cosmos.
It wasn’t, he was certain, the work of Van Duyn. That one was all theory, all discussion and generalization. No, this was the crafty influence of another, and Bey was sure he knew who that other was; it must be the one he had seen through the eyes of his mask-slave Ibn-al-Yed at the Hightower. It was the younger alien, the one called Gil MacDonald; he seemed to be the causative factor of anomalies in the plans of the Hand of Shardishku-Salamá.
A precarious situation had come to be. Though the sorcerer hated to tear his attentions from other phases of his grand scheme, he decided that he must remove the unpredictable, unlooked-for cipher that was MacDonald. He already knew from cursory investigation that the man had no presence whatsoever on spiritual levels. He was in no sense a magician, and therefore had scant defense or resistance against supernatural manipulation. Unlike Springbuck, deCourteney and the rest, he wouldn’t have been provided with incantations to protect his soul.
The sorcerer stood up, crossed the enormous pentacle on his sanctum floor and considered possible configurations for appropriate magical procedure. It might be complicated, take time and require great effort, but he had confirmed his decision to do it.
MacDonald must
be eliminated.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Defense is the stronger form with the negative object, and attack the weaker form with the positive object.
—Karl Von Clausewitz, “On War” (prefatory note)
Life in the beleaguered city, Springbuck found on the day after their spectacular return, wasn’t as despondent as he’d feared.
True, rationing was in effect, but allotments were adequate. There were enormous stores of food, and cultivated ground on the plateau to provide more, plus forage for herds and flocks. The job of maintaining a watch at the gatehouse was uneventful, as the encircling army was looking to its wounded and repairing its bivouac.
Though Gabrielle demanded he remain with her for the day, he rose late in the morning; donning fresh attire, he belted on his sword and went out to see what could be seen. When he arrived at the bailey, he found the men there grimly surveying the countryside, pointing and clutching their weapons in anger. At first he thought an assault was being prepared against them, but following the pointed finger of the guard officer he saw what had so aroused them. To the northwest, by squinting somewhat, he could discern the smoke of many fires climbing through the sky. He instantly knew this as the burning of outlying farms, garths and villages.
An unintelligible growl went up from the gathered soldiers. At the rim of the chasm on the Western Tangent, a large horde was leaving the forest, on its way to join the besieging army.
Despair was on the watchers’ faces as they witnessed long files of sturdy, glittering knights winding their way to the camp. Behind the chivalry came closely ranked infantry, many with some bundle or bag of plunder tied to belt or back. They carried kite-shaped shields and long, black-varnished pikes. They looked hardened. There were many companies of them, many war banners riding the wind. Then came baggage wagons flanked by lancers and bearing archers as escorts.
More squadrons of cavalry divided the baggage wagons from those containing food and provisions. After these came more infantry, men of the west of Coramonde in Teebra, who wore the skins of wild animals over their hauberks, and necklaces made from the claws and fangs of hunting beasts. They wore bonnets of eagle feathers and didn’t carry guidons, but had before them animal totems mounted on poles.
There were strings of extra mounts next, fresh and high-stepping, then additional archers, the sharp-eyed men of Rugor, whose sport was shooting chestnuts from high branches with their arrows. Last came more dragoons.
“This is only part of their second army,” the watch commander said to the Prince. “Off there, where the fires are, there must be many more. These are here too early to have set them.”
That sounded logical to Springbuck. Send part of your force ahead to bolster those confining your enemy and use the rest to raze any outposts, burn out resistance and make a thorough forage, scouring the land so food and shelter would be denied any guerrillas who escaped.
One of the men at the wall began to scream oaths and threats at the unheeding foemen, clashing his sword against his shield.
“His home,” explained the officer, “is there, where the smoke billows thickest. It was a farmhold this morning.”
The Prince wanted to make some sympathetic remark, but found none that wouldn’t sound hollow in his own ears.
Instead, he set off back to the palace.
When he arrived, he found that the leaders of the alliance had been called to council in Reacher’s belvedere. They were already assembled, looking much as the men on the baily, except for the undemonstrative Wolf-Brother and Gil MacDonald.
The American had just come from the deathbed of the Lady Duskwind. His face was frozen, as vacant of emotion as Ibn-al-Yed’s had been. Hearing this news, Springbuck tried to offer condolences, and knew a grief of his own. Gil waved them away. He’d lost many friends to war, known that special bereavement many times. But this was a sorrow beyond even that.
She had lost conciousness just at the gate of the city and never awakened. He’d been at her side through the night, futilely, as massive internal bleeding took her from him by inches. She’d crossed the threshold of death almost imperceptibly. He had refused to believe, would not leave her.
He’d sat with her and cried for hours, speaking aimlessly without knowing that he did, trying to sort out emotions he couldn’t even name and coping with pain so great that he knew no word for it. In the end, he did the only thing he could think of; he went out to pick up the parts of his life left to him.
The rest of them avoided eye contact with him and withheld their words of consolation, seeing that he didn’t want them.
The Prince addressed the group.
“It seems Yardiff Bey will divert every fighting man in Coramonde to destroy us.”
Hightower grunted. “Let them come! They’ll never take this city. Pah! I’ve inspected it myself, and damn if it isn’t the finest fortification I’ve ever seen! They’ll spend themselves on us by day, and by night we’ll harry them. The men still in the hills will poison their wells and ambush their outriders. Perchance more help will come from other tribes of the High Ranges and Freegate’s upland tributaries.
“With no way to get food, our enemies outside will be desperate before they’re three months camped at our door. When their bellies force them to slaughter their own horses we’ll sally and that will be that.”
The rest considered this; the Prince said quietly, “No.”
They turned to him. “My Lords—and Lady—this will be unlike any siege you here have ever seen. You’re used to fairly small armies fighting fairly autonomous wars and battles, but this bids to be a new kind of conflict. With unlimited manpower, the army outside the barbican will be able to keep itself supplied, even if it must stretch its lines back to Earthfast. We haven’t sufficient numbers outside the city to harry them.
“You’re thinking that their size may shrink after a few months; but with proper planning and supply, they can carry this effort through the winter and wait us out. Yardiff Bey can even afford to rotate the men here so their morale will not flag. He has no dearth of coin with which to pay them, with the coffers of Earthfast at his beck and call.
“Too, he’s shown he can come up with new tactics, and ideas like that demon ship. He could very well have some way of bridging that grand foss out there or cracking our walls, or bringing Freegate down around us. How long could we last if he sent plague against us?”
Now Katya was on her feet, hands gripping her knives, perfect face contorted with hatred. “No one asked you to come to us. If you are caitiff, go then. Mayhap it’s not too late to throw in your lot with your stepbrother.”
He shook his head. “I never said we have no hope, or that there’s no chance for us to hold fast. But we cannot think in the terms we’ve been used to. We cannot wait them out and assume they won’t be able to come at us in some unforeseen fashion.”
Reacher pursed his lips. “Where, then, does that leave us?”
Springbuck ran a hand over his sparse beard and chose his words carefully. “We have some things which hold good promise. Our enemies are a long way from home, and as yet regard the bridgeway as the only entrance to and egress from Freegate. Van Duyn and Gil MacDonald might have an idea of a way to alter matters in our favor. And, we have the deCourteneys, who may prove to be the most important asset of all.” Gabrielle smiled at this; Andre watched without comment.
“Lastly, most of the drive of Earthfast rests in one man right now, Yardiff Bey. It is to nourish his hungers and glorify his masters that battle has been joined. If we can conceive of a way of striking at him, we will have a chance to cut the head from the monster.”
The meeting turned to further haggling and hypothesizing, but they were all on a more productive track now. The Prince was satified that he’d brought their thinking closer to the demands of reality without robbing them of hope. As the council began to break up, he made to speak again to Gil, but stopped when he saw that the outlander had grown pale and was sweating, his breathing labore
d.
“You must rest,” Springbuck said. “You accomplish nothing with this.”
Gil smiled wanly, and a droll reply was on his lips when he winced, as a wave of dizziness overcame him. It was Hightower who caught him as he slumped to the floor, and Katya who bawled for the house physician.
He was taken to a guest chamber nearby and examined. The doctor, finishing his probings and scrutinies, shook his head.
“I can find nothing wrong,” he confessed; then he amended, “or rather, I can’t find the cause of whatever strange malady this young man suffers from.”
By this time Gil was drifting into and out of consciousness and hallucinating. Andre came to his bedside and leaned his ear close, listening to the fevered ramblings. He said, “My sister and I would like to be alone with this man; I think this is no natural affliction, or any illness conceived in this world. It is work for us.”
The rest left and the wizard and his sister took up stations on either side of the bed. They made mystic passes with their hands, chanting, and soon an evil entity crackled there, contained by their wills but impervious to them otherwise.
* * * *
“A working of Yardiff Bey, no doubt of it,” Andre said when they’d rejoined their comrades. Gabrielle nodded silently to Springbuck.
“He’s drawing Gil’s essence, his soul, from his body. We could only catch a few particulars on the periphery of the spell, but I think that the leeching will be fulfilled at the passing of midnight. Bey is in some high place, bending all his concentration to the task. He evidently considers Gil of importance and finds him more vulnerable to sorcerous attack than any of us who belong here on this plane. Gil’s soul is estranged from its home world to begin with, and that makes things much easier for Bey. And, too, there is this profound depression, blighting Gil’s resistances.”
“Well, the lad’s been a great help,” Hightower sighed. “But if that spell-cooker thinks this will quail us, he’s wrong. Ah, it’s a shame the boy must die with no chance. Is there nothing we can do?”
