The Doomfarers of Coramonde

by Brian Daley

  Andre shrugged. “Of that, what shall I say? We’ve had no time to study matters. Yet Yardiff Bey has turned every power at his command to this labor. He’s locked in a pull so mighty on Gil’s soul that I doubt if I can counteract it, even if Gabrielle and I join our fullest efforts.”

  Springbuck was thinking furiously, suppressing a violent urge to strike out with his hands, to channel his emotion into blows. This was nothing that could be met with a frontal onslaught, he chided himself. The way of the Kareteka wasn’t for this situation. What did that leave? The Gentle Way, perhaps. Take advantage of your opponent’s strength somehow.

  If you’re pushed, give way. If you’re pulled . . .

  Inspiration burst into his head and he let out a shout. The others stared at him and he tried to explain to them, ordering details in his mind as he went along.

  “If Yardiff Bey’s exerting force on Gil, pulling him as it were, can we not use this? Suppose Andre and Gabrielle, instead of trying to counter Bey or resist him, add their power to his? We already know they can move people and objects between places. What if they used Bey as a terminus? We could break the incantation and maybe even slay him.”

  Their mouths opened in surprise, all but that of Gabrielle, who was thinking this through calmly. “It might mean the end of the war in a single blow,” she said. “Yes, I’m sure it can be done. I’ve never experienced so intense a line of energy as this one from Bey to Gil. Andre and I can metamorph it, add to it until it becomes like the bridgeway outside the city.”

  Her brother snorted. “It will be nearly as easy as saddling an avalanche, but not so safe by half.”

  But his sister was serene. “We will do it, dear brother, because we must for the sake of a friend, mustn’t we? Now, don’t be so downcast; when has my power failed us?” She seemed a very rampart of reassurance to overtop them all, granting them confidence from her own ample stores.

  The Snow Leopardess was smiling, but her eyes were slitted and there was death glee in them. “How many of us can you take?” she purred.

  Andre was clucking his tongue in thought. “I don’t know. Bey must be in his sanctum at Earthfast, the high place in which we saw him. Springbuck, how big is that outsized pentacle of his there?”

  “Earthfast! But that’s it then; Strongblade and Bey together and unready at Court. We could slay both at a single turn! I only saw the pentacle once, with my father, so far back that I can scarce remember. But at the time it seemed big enough for a game of chase-ball.”

  Andre was calculating more rapidly than he liked, a careful and methodical practitioner by nature. But he dismissed caution now; it must be all or nothing at a single cast.

  “To allow for some error, let us say a dozen, including myself, and the gods help us if the pentacle prove too small!”

  * * * *

  If any of them doubted Springbuck’s abilities as a commander, they had their misgivings assuaged by his quick decisiveness in the next minutes and hours. He organized the proposed raid without falter.

  Andre and Gabrielle were deeply engrossed in their own private conversation, bustling away to consult charts and tomes of their own. The main problem was in excluding unneeded volunteers and putting together an optimal group.

  The Prince would lead, and of course Gil must come. Van Duyn, with rifle and pistol, would be of great value, as would Reacher. Andre, rather than his sister, was the obvious one to accompany the spell, as he put it.

  Springbuck hedged very little. He knew that a direct staircase connected Bey’s sanctum to the throne room, the only entrance to it aside from the main portals.

  His two major worries were the archers at the sides of the throne room and the giant ogre guards on the royal dais. With these in mind he included Kisst-Haa and bade Dunstan find him the four best archers in Freegate. Hightower must come, too, if for no other reason than that he was one of their best fighters, but also because he’d earned the right to help avenge his son’s death in the halls of his enemies. They’d take Ferrian, acting Champion of the Horseblooded, too, and Dunstan.

  He reviewed the list in his mind: twelve. To give himself a margin of safety, if that word could conceivably be used, he decided to take only three bowmen rather than four, since Kisst-Haa occupied the space of at least two men.

  They assembled in a large room into which Gil had been brought on a litter. His sword and knife had been strapped to him, his carbine put at his side. The Prince noted that Dunstan had selected the archers diplomatically. One was a prowler, one a Wild Rider and one a member of Reacher’s own guard.

  Ferrian was quiet, but Reacher took him aside for a moment and spoke to him briefly. Then the two clasped each other’s forearm in a fierce grip, the grip, Springbuck thought, of friendship reborn.

  Andre and Gabrielle had drawn a huge pentacle, circumscribing it with obscure and powerful runes, many of them the runes of Shardishku-Salamá and of Yardiff Bey.

  They crowded into the center of it, ranged around Gil’s litter. Van Duyn shifted his ammunition belt, noticed that his hands trembled, and smiled encouragingly to the only onlooker, Katya. Kisst-Haa, who’d had the situation carefully explained to him, endeavored to keep statue-still so as not to jostle anyone inadvertently.

  As the deCourteneys began to chant the spell to interdict that of Yardiff Bey and warp it to their own purposes, Springbuck had a moment of surprise that the Snow Leopardess hadn’t raised any objection at being excluded, on her brother’s insistence, from the raiding party.

  As the chanting grew louder, though, he saw her countenance fill with that hunting light, and as Andre moved to his place within the pentacle for the final segment of the cantrip, the Prince felt his grasp on reality slipping. Katya, with a triumphant yell, bounded into the defined area of the pentacle and crowded at her brother’s side.

  She mussed his hair playfully. “Didst think you could keep your big sister from this? Am I not a Doomfarer, too?”

  Springbuck dimly heard the King reply, “I wish that you had not come, but the choice is made. Look to your knives now, and ’ware the foeman.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Victory is a thing of the will.

  —Ferdinand Foch

  Alone in his aerie, the Hand of Shardishku-Salamá perspired and concentrated on completing the incantation he’d implemented to ensnare Gil MacDonald’s soul and fetch it to him. There were many agencies to call upon, many oaths to invoke and yield, the utmost care and attention to be exercised. None of these were beyond his competencies, though; wasn’t he the greatest thaumaturge in the world, aside from his masters?

  As the spell reached fruition, Yardiff Bey felt interference, and his supernatural servants complained of a counterspell of great efficacy being laid against them. He attempted to ken what had generated the opposing magic, or whom, but couldn’t; he was unable to divert his concentration from completion of his risky work. Yet even as he spoke its concluding words, he was aware of terrible wrongness. The lamentations of his demonic slave brought him to the jarring knowledge that, for the first time in his memory, his magics had been subverted.

  A suffused glow of blue appeared in the center of his pentacle. Before he could cast a negation, a sulfurous cloud roiled and vanished. There stood in its place an armed company, among them his worst enemies, poised and ready to slay.

  He didn’t gawk or try to repair the irreparable. His thought was of escape, saving redress for this insulting intrusion for another tune. But the raiders were between him and the door leading to the roof and Cloud Ruler. With a hand motion he caused the opening of the door behind him, leading to the lower stairwell, then turned and plunged down the steps.

  Reacher was first to react, for Yardiff Bey had signaled the door to shut after he’d gotten through it. The King sprang to intervene between door and frame, to strain and arrest the closure, but only succeeded in slowing it. In a moment Hightower was with him, and together they stopped the door, managing to keep it open a few hands’ width. But this
was gap enough for Kisst-Haa, stumping up after them, to wedge clawed hands in and pull the portal irresistibly wider, opening it again.

  Gil knew that same feeling that comes with healthy awakening from a fever dream. Now that the energies seeking to drain him had been abated, life swelled in him. One side of his mind was coming out of the all-encompassing sorrow of Duskwind’s death, braving to deal with it subjectively. His brain had known it, but somehow now, in this bizarre turn of events, his skin and heart and loins learned.

  He’d held her hand at the last, feeling the remarkable warmth of her ebb slowly until the brown-gold fingers were cold. It came back now, that feeling, an emphatic declaration of her departure. He accepted it with a species of welcome; it was some excruciating sacrament that passed him, vengeful, into a state of unholy grace. He took up his carbine and a grim smile touched his lips.

  Springbuck leaped through the reopened door, Bar in one hand and his knife in the other. “We must move apace,” he called, and with that was in hot pursuit of the vanished magician.

  Though they’d lost mere seconds, the Prince did not overtake the sorcerer. At the bottom of the stairs the arras covering the lower portal had been ripped away. As Springbuck charged into the brightly lit room, the general furor was eloquent word that Bey had passed this way and given the alarm.

  The atmosphere of the Court hit them like a storm front, compounded of the heat of revelry and its exertions, the smells of the drinking, the seductions and the sweaty laughter of the evening’s merrymaking. They were stopped for an instant by its tropical intensity, as tipsy surprise changed the faces of the guests there.

  The Prince was shoved aside from behind by Reacher as an arrow hissed down past him to splinter on the hard flooring stones. Court archers were warned, and marshaling to carry out their duty, while terrified courtiers flooded toward the main doors. The three ogre-guards had closed ranks around Strongblade, who stood in white-faced fury on his dais. The Usurper’s lips were drawn back, his hatred of the true Heir plain. His hand clutched Flarecore’s hilt at his side.

  Gil and Van Duyn were through into the throne room, adding to the uproar with the sound of gunfire, concentrating on the bowmen along the walls. Kisst-Haa had unslung a wide shield from his scaly back; using it to cover himself and Dunstan along with one of the raider archers, the prowler-cavalryman, he barged his way to the main doors, scattering the mob to either side with brutal ease. Even in former times, the Court had known its affluent and idle, and under Strongblade this had become the common type, no challenge to Kisst-Haa.

  The raider archers were sending arrows of their own winging at their opposite numbers along the walls as trumpet calls came from the outer halls, the guards reacting to the unprecedented invasion. The two Americans were firing hastily, thankful that the wall archers were in plain view rather than hidden behind iron or stone.

  The Prince could see no sign of Fania, and took no time to seek her. Some of the nobles had mustered themselves and were counterattacking at the behest of the screaming Strongblade. An Earl in golden finery, known to Springbuck, came at him in a frenzied flèche; but the Prince sidestepped, locked hilts with him and delivered a thrust through his ribs with the knife. He searched for Yardiff Bey but couldn’t see him.

  A knot of courtiers had gathered at the foot of the dais. These were rugged men, brutes and bullies who’d been set at Strongblade’s feet by hunger for power and privilege. They saw their precious, newfound rank at hazard and were determined to make sure it wasn’t ended by the premature death of their false Ku-Mor-Mai. Springbuck moved toward them, even as Ferrian and Hightower crowded past the two Americans to help. There began the deadly carillon of swords.

  Reacher had sprung to the near ledge before the archers there were well aware of his plan; he killed one with a single ripping blow of his clawed glove, and began moving on the rest, using the corpse as a shield.

  Kisst-Haa had made the main doors by means of fangs, armored tail, shield and outsized broadsword. He caught two advancing soldiers’ polearms on his shield and bulldozed them into those behind, sweeping the household troops from the room with one push and driving them back into the corridor. He jumped back as the prowler with him fired two arrows through the still-open doors. Kisst-Haa swung the portals shut, threw the thick bar and left Dunstan and the archer to keep it from being reopened; then he turned and lumbered back toward the dais.

  The sharp smell of gunpowder was in the air. Two men at the foot of the dais were down with the Snow Leopardess’ knives in them, and the remainder wavered before the onset of Ferrian, Hightower and Springbuck. Andre was close by, trying to locate Yardiff Bey without success.

  So quickly and willfully had the raiders begun that they’d done amazingly well. The archers who hadn’t been shot or knocked from the ledges by bullets, arrows or the Wolf-Brother had jumped for their lives, and the majority of the courtiers still hadn’t presented much of an obstacle. The two remaining raider archers at the dais end of the throne room—the Horseblooded and the man of Freegate—moved to join the third to hold the main doors.

  But swords and other weapons were appearing among the crowd. Even the dissipaters maintained by Strongblade and Fania would do damage when forced to fight for their lives. Several seized a bench for a rush at the doors. Katya, seeing this, yelped, grabbed a fallen sword and ran to stop them; Reacher jumped to help her. There was bloody fighting at closest quarters.

  Archog, leader of the ogre-guards, grunted to his fellows and those two advanced down the steps of the dais roughly pushing aside those who were in their way and moving into the mayhem. The first fell into an exchange with Hightower, who was hard put, even with his renowned might, to meet those strokes. Yet somehow he did, but had to fall back step by step and could effect no attack of his own.

  Not so Kisst-Haa, who’d flung aside his shield and locked in combat with the other ogre. Of the two, the reptile-man was a trifle larger and his weapon heavier. Yet it was a close thing, and the throne room resounded to the contestants’ bellows even above the tumult. Their enormous blades moved like darting tongues of light, and men fighting near them could only do their best to stay out of the behemoths’ way.

  Gil, a new magazine in his carbine, was the only one to spy Hightower’s predicament as the old hero was forced toward a wall by the machine-like advance of the ogre he fought. The American brought his weapon up and fired, but such was the creature’s weight of armor that the bullet went spanng! and ricocheted to the far side of the room.

  The monster loomed over its human adversary, preparing to deal a final flurry of blows, when Gil ran up behind it, jammed the carbine muzzle into the opening between the rear lip of its helmet and the armored neck, and squeezed the trigger as rapidly as he could. Two shots crashed upward through thick bone into the ogre’s brain before a spasm snapped its neck backward and the whole body went rigid. The tilting helmet rim bent the end of the carbine barrel, but Gil couldn’t stop the reflex that triggered the third shot and resulted in a small explosion. The American was knocked down as a shard of metal plowed a groove in his forehead, and other shards plucked at the mesh covering his chest and arms. His cheek was scorched by the fireball effect, hit by grains of powder that would normally have been consumed in the gun barrel.

  Springbuck, who with Ferrian had been trying to carve a path to Strongblade and who’d planned to make his way through the opening at the foot of the dais left by the ogres, was frustrated when the gap closed too quickly. He and Ferrian launched themselves at the men, fighting for a chance to down Strongblade before the inevitable arrival of reinforcements. Van Duyn’s shots at the Usurper were useless as the heavily plated Archog protected Yardiff Bey’s bastard son from bullet and arrow.

  Two more came at the Prince, a rash noble with an ambitious rapier and an officer of mounted infantry with a long sword, but in doing so they both threw their lives away; he was beyond the reach of common men and cut them down one and two, cleanly and with hardly a pause. />
  Then fear caught at his heart. He heard the dull booming of a ram and knew the household troops were battering at the doors.

  Events had developed into two separate actions. The three archers, Dunstan, Reacher and Katya—the latter two having taken up swords—were holding the doors; Springbuck, Ferrian, Hightower and Kisst-Haa were trying to get to Strongblade. To one side Andre helped Van Duyn pull Gil’s leg from under the corpse of the ogre he’d killed as Gil swore uselessly.

  Kisst-Haa dealt his ogre-foe a final blow, driving his greatsword completely through the sturdily armored torso. Withdrawing the blade, he took in the scene at the throne and moved with decision. Since the Prince couldn’t get at his enemy through the press of men, the reptile-man seized him from behind and prepared to carry him, literally wading through a wave of steel. But he stopped as he saw Ferrian kill a last antagonist and penetrate the defense there while Hightower guarded his back. Archog’s temper parted and he drew his own greatsword and charged this human upstart.

  Kisst-Haa shifted his grip on Springbuck; taking advantage of this new opening, he carefully tossed the Prince over the heads of the remaining opposition onto the dais. Strongblade saw him coming and jumped back as Springbuck landed awkwardly. The Usurper, who’d pulled on a pair of gauntlets, brought Flarecore out with a threatening sweep. Then Strongblade put a hand up to steady the unadorned circlet of gold that was the Crown of Coramonde, as if to assure himself it was still his.

  None of the men at the foot of the dais had time to turn and help their liege; Gil was free and had drawn his sword, helping Andre, Van Duyn and Hightower keep them busy. He used his trench knife and all the skill he’d acquired in recent weeks, and needed them. Van Duyn’s M-1 jammed, and he drew back and jacked the operating rod handle to clear it, swearing.

  Ferrian was doing poorly with the ogre Archog, and Kisst-Haa was circling them, tail lashing, seeking a chance to join the fight. At the rear of the room a crack had appeared in the doors; as the rest of the raiders at that end formed a perimeter of deadly swordplay around them. Reacher and Dunstan the Berserker braced their backs against it.