Witch World ww-1

by Andre Norton

  There was no mistaking the race of the man who stumbled in to them. A bloody gash could not disguise Estcarp features. He fell forward and Koris caught him about the body. Then they were all nearly rocked from their feet as a blast of sound and displaced air beat in on them and the very ground moved under them.

  The man in Koris’ hold moved, smiled, tried to speak. Deafened momentarily they could not hear. Briant slammed shut the gate and set its locking bars. Together Simon and the Captain half carried, half supported the fugitive into the house.

  He recovered enough to sketch a salute to the witch as they brought him to her. She measured some bluish liquid into a cup and held it to his lips as he drank.

  “Lord Vortimer?”

  He leaned back in the chair into which they had lowered him. “You just heard his passing, lady — in that thunder clap! With him went all of our blood fortunate to reach the embassy in time. For the rest — they are being hunted in the streets. Yvian has ordered the three times horning for all of Estcarp or of the old blood! He is like a man gone mad!”

  “This too?” She pressed her hands tight against her temples as if she might so ease some almost intolerable pain. “We have no time, no time at all?”

  “Vortimer sent me to warn you. Do you choose to follow him along the same path, lady?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Those who have been horned can be cut down without question wherever they are found. And in Kars today the cutting down does not come swiftly as a clean death,” he warned dispassionately. “I do not know what hopes you may have of the Lady Aldis—”

  The witch laughed.”Aldis is no hope at all, Vortgin. Five of us…” She turned the cup around and around in her fingers and then looked directly to Simon. “More depends upon this than just our lives alone. There are those in the outer parts of Karsten of the old blood, who, warned, might safely get through the mountains to Estcarp, and so swell our ranks. Also what we have learned here, patchy though it is, must be taken back. I could not hope to summon power enough — you will have to aid me, brother!”

  “But I don’t know how — I have no use of power,” he protested.

  “You can back me. It is our only hope.” Koris came away from the window where he had been peering into the garden.

  “Shape changing?”

  “It is the only way.”

  “And how long will it hold?”

  She shrugged.

  Vortgin ran his tongue across his lips. “Set me outside this cursed city and I’ll rouse your countryside for you. I have kin in the backlands who’ll move on my word!”

  “Come!” She led the way to that tapestried room of magic. But just inside the door Koris halted.

  “What I have been given I bear with me. Put on me no shape in which I cannot handle the gift of Volt.”

  “I would call you lack-witted,” she flared back, “if I did not know the worth of that biter of yours. But it is not of human make and so may change shape also in illusion. We can only try. Now let us make ready, quickly!”

  She pulled a strip of carpet from the floor as Simon and Koris shoved the chair and stool, bore the other things to the other end of the room. Stooping she traced lines with the jewel of power and those lines glowed faintly in the form of a five pointed star. A little defiantly Koris dropped his ax in the center of that.

  The witch spoke to Simon. “Shapes are not changed in truth, but an illusion is created to bemuse those who would track us down. Let me draw upon your power to swell my own. Now,” she glanced around and brought the small clay brazier to sit by the ax, puffing its coals into life, “we can do what is to be done. Make yourselves ready.”

  Koris caught Simon by the arm. “Strip — to the skin — the power does not work otherwise!” He was shedding his own jerkin. And Simon obeyed orders, both of them aiding Vortgin.

  Smoke curled up from the brazier, filling the room with a reddish mist in which Koris’ squat form, the fugitive’s muscular body were half hidden. “Take your stand upon the star points — one to each point,” came the witch’s order out of the murk. “But you, Simon — next to me.”

  He followed that voice, losing Koris and the other man in the fog. A white arm came out to him, a hand reached for and enfolded his. He could see under his feet the lines of a star point.

  Someone was singing — at a far distance. Simon was lost in a cloud where he floated without being. Yet at the same time he was warm — not outwardly, but inwardly. And that warmth floated from his body, down his right arm. Simon thought that if he could watch it he would be able to see that flow — blood-red, warm — being drained in a steady stream. Yet he saw nothing but the greyish mist, he only knew that his body still existed.

  The singing grew louder. Once before he had heard such singing — then it had aroused his lusts, and urged him to satisfy appetites he had beaten under by force of will. Now it worked upon him in another way, and he no longer loathed it fiercely.

  He had closed his eyes against the endless swirling of the mist, stood attuned to the singing so that each note throbbed within his body to be a part of him, made into flesh and bone from this time forth — yet also did that warm flood trickle out of him.

  Then his hand fell limply back against his thigh. The drain had ceased and the singing was fading. Simon opened his eyes. Where the murk had been a solid wall it was now showing holes. And in one of them he caught sight of a brutish face, a beastly caricature of human. But in it sat Koris’ sardonic eyes. And a little beyond was another with disease-eaten skin and a flat lid where an eye had once been.

  He wearing the Captain’s eyes glanced from Simon to his neighbor and grinned widely, displaying decayed and yellowed fangs. “A fair company we shall be!”

  “Dress you!” snapped the witch from the disappearing murk. “This day you have come out of the stews of Kars to loot and kill. It is your kind who thrive upon hornings!”

  They put on the gear they had brought into Kars, but not enough to go too well clad for the dregs of the city that they seemed. And Koris took up from the floor — not the Ax of Volt — but a rust incrusted pole set with hooks, the purpose of which Simon would rather not imagine.

  There was no mirror to survey his new self, but he gathered that he was as disreputable as his companions.

  He had been expecting changes in the witch and Briant also — but not what he saw. The woman of Estcarp was a crone with filthy ropes of grayish hair about her hunched shoulders, her features underlined with ancient evil. And the youngster was her opposite. Simon stared in pure amazement, for he fronted a girl being laced into the scarlet and gold gown discarded by the witch.

  Just as Briant had been pallid and colorless, here was rich beauty, more than properly displayed since her tiring maid did not bother to pull tight breast laces. Instead the crone quirked a finger at Simon.

  “This is your loot, bold fellow. Hoist the pretty on your shoulder, and if you grow tired of your burden — well, these other rogues will lend a hand. Play your part well.” She gave the seeming girl a shove between her shoulder blades which sent her stumbling into Simon’s arms. He caught her up neatly, swinging her across his shoulder, while the witch surveyed them with the eye of a stage manager and then gave a tug to strip the bodice yet farther from those smooth young shoulders.

  Inwardly Simon was astonished at the completeness of the illusion. He had thought it would be for the eyes only, but he was very conscious that he held what was also feminine to the touch. And he had to keep reminding himself that it was indeed Briant he so bore out of the house.

  They found Kars harbored many such bands as theirs that day. And the sights they had to witness, the aid they could not give, ate into them during that journey to the wharves. There was a watch at the gates right enough, but as Simon approached, with his now moaning victim slung over his shoulder, his raffish fellows slinking behind him, as if to welcome the leavings of his feast, the witch scuttled ahead with a bag. She tripped and fell so that the brilliant cont
ents of her looter’s catchall rolled and spilled across the roadway.

  Those on guard sprang into action, the officer kicking the crone out of his way. But one man had a slightly higher sense of duty, or perhaps he was more moved by Simon’s supposed choice of pillage. For he swung a pike down in front ofTregarth and grinned at him over that barrier.

  “You’ve got you a soft armload there, fishguts. Too good for you. Let a better man sample her first!”

  Koris’ pole with its rusty hooks snaked out, hooking his feet from under him. As he sprawled they darted through the gate and along the wharf, other guards in pursuit.

  “In!” Briant was pulled out of Simon’s grasp, thrown out into the flood of the river, the Captain following in a cleancut dive to come up beside the draggling red and gold clad body. Vortgin took off at a stumbling run. But Simon, seeing that Koris had Briant’s hand, looked back for the witch.

  There was a flurry down the wharf and a tangle of figures. Gun in hand he ran back, pausing for three snap shots, each taking out a man, dead or wounded. His rush brought him there in time to see that twisted gray-haired body lying still while a sword swung downward aimed at the scrawny throat.

  Simon shot twice more. Then his fist struck flesh, crushed it against bone. Someone shrieked and fled as he scooped up the witch, finding her weight more than Briant’s. Bearing her over his shoulder he staggered to the nearest barge, his lungs laboring as he dodged among the piled cargo on its deck, heading for the far rail and open water.

  The woman in his arms came to life suddenly, pushing against him as if he were indeed a captor she might fight. And that overbalanced Simon so that they went over together, tumbling to strike the river with a force he had not expected. Simon swallowed water, choked, and struck out instinctively, if clumsily.

  His head broke the surface and he stared about him for the witch, to see a wrinkled arm, hampered by water soaked rags cutting in a swimmer’s stroke.

  “Ho!”

  The call came from a barge floating downstream and a rope flicked over its side. Simon and the witch gained the deck, only to have Koris wave them impatiently to the opposite rail into the river again, the craft serving as a screen between them and the city shore.

  But here was a small boat with Vortgin sitting therein, Briant leaning over the side being actively sick into the water, while he clutched his red robe about him as if indeed he had been the victim of rapine. As they scrambled down to this refuge, Koris pushed them away from the barge, using the point of his hook spear.

  “I thought you lost that at the gate!”

  Koris’ ruffian face mirrored his astonishment at Simon’s comment. “This I would never lose! Well, we have us a breathing space. They will believe us hiding on the barge. At least so we can hope. But it would be wise to head to the other shore as soon as this has drifted far enough from the wharves.”

  They agreed with the Captain’s suggestion, but the minutes during which they remained wedded to the barge were very long ones. Briant straightened at last, but he kept his face turned from them as if heartily ashamed of the guise he wore. And the witch sat in the bow surveying the far shore with searching intensity.

  They were lucky in that night was closing in. And Vortgin knew the surrounding country well. He would be able to guide them inland across the fields, avoiding houses and farms, until they had put enough distance between them and Kars to feel reasonably safe.

  “Thrice horned — yes, that sentence he can enforce in Kars. For the city is his. But the old lords have ties with us, and where they lack such ties or sympathy, they may be moved by jealousy ofYvian.They may not actively aid us, but neither will they help the Duke’s men cut us down. It will be largely a matter of their closing their eyes and ears, hearing and seeing naught.”

  “Yes, Karsten is now closed to us,” the witch agreed with Vortgin. “And I would say to all of the old race that they should flee borderward, not leaving escape until too late. Perhaps the Falconers will aid in this matter. Aie… aie… our night comes!”

  But Simon knew that she did not mean the physical night closing about their own small party.

  VI

  FALSE HAWK

  They lay behind the winter pressed stack in the field, Simon, Koris, and Vortgin, wisps of the dank straw pulled over their bodies, watching what went on at the crossroads hamlet beyond. There were the brilliant blue-green surcoats of the Duke’s men, four of them, well mounted for hard and far riding, and a fringe of the dull-robed villagers. With some ceremony the leader of the small force out of Kars brought his horse beneath the Pole of Proclamation and put a horn to his lips, its silver plating catching fire from the morning sun.

  “One… two… three…” Koris counted those blasts aloud. They heard them clearly, all the countryside must have heard them, although of what the Duke’s men said to the assembly afterwards they caught only as a mumble.

  Koris looked to Vortgin. “They spread it fast enough. You’d best be on your way, if any of your kin is to be warned at all.”

  Vortgin thrust his belt dagger deep into the earth of the field as if he were planting it in one of the blue coated riders. “I’ll need more than my two legs.”

  “Just so. And there is what we all seek.” Koris jerked a thumb at the ducal party.

  “Beyond the bridge the road takes a cut through small woods,” Simon thought aloud.

  Koris’ pseudo-face expressed malicious appreciation of that hint. “They’ll soon be through with the chatter. We’d best move.”

  They crawled away from their vantage point, crossed the river ford, and found the woods track. The roads leading north were not well kept. Yvian’s rule in this district had been covertly opposed by noble and commoner alike. Away from the main highways all passages tended to be only rough tracks.

  On either side banks rose, brush and grass covered. It was not a safe place for any wayfarer, doubly suspect for anyone in the Duke’s livery.

  Simon settled into concealment on one side of that cut, Koris chose a stand closer to the river, prepared to head off any retreat. And Vortgin was across from Simon. They had only to wait.

  The leader of the messengers was no fool. One of his men rode ahead, studying every bush the wind stirred, every clump of suspiciously tall grass. He passed between the hidden men and trotted on. After him came the one who bore the horn, and a companion, while the fourth man brought up the rear.

  Simon shot as the rearguard drew level with his position. But the man who fell from the expertly aimed dart was the lead scout.

  The leader swung his mount around with the skill of an expert horseman, only to see the rearguard collapse from his saddle coughing blood.

  “Sul…Sul…Sul!” The battle cry Simon had last heard in the doomed seaport rose shrilly. A dart creased Simon’s shoulder, ripping leather and burning skin — the leader must have cat’s eyes.

  The remaining shieldman tried to back his leader in that attack, until Vortgin arose out of hiding and threw the dagger he had played with. The weapon whirled end over end until its heady knob struck the back of the other’s head at the base of his skull and he went down without a protesting sound.

  Hooves pawed the air over Simon’s head. Then the horse overbalanced and crashed back, pinning his rider under him. Koris sprang out of hiding and the hooked pole battered down upon the feebly struggling man.

  They set to work to strip the riders, secure their mounts. Luckily the horse which had fallen struggled to its feet, frightened and blowing but without any great injury. The bodies were dragged out of sight into the brush and the mail shirts, the helmets and the extra weapons were bound on the saddles before the horses were led to the deserted sheep fold where the fugitives had sheltered.

  There the men walked into a hot quarrel. The withered crone, the dark beauty in rent gold and scarlet fronted each other hot-eyed. But their raised voices fell silent as Simon came through a gap in the rotting fence. Neither spoke until they brought up the horses and their burdens.
Then the girl in red gave a little cry and pounced upon one of those bundles of leather and mail.

  “I want my own shape — and now!” She spat at the witch.

  Simon could understand that. At Briant’s age a role as he had been forced to assume would be more galling than slavery. And none of them could wish to keep on wearing the decidedly unattractive envelopes the woman from Estcarp had spun for them, even though they had been so delivered out of Kars.

  “Fair enough,” he endorsed that. “Can we change by our — or rather your will, lady? Or is there a time period on this shape business?”

  Through her tangle of rough locks the witch frowned. “Why waste the time? And we are not yet out of the reach of Yvian’s messengers — though apparently you have dealt with some of them.” She picked up one of the surcoats as if to measure it against her own bent person.

  Briant glowered, gathering an armload of male clothing to him. The pouting lips of his girl’s face set stubbornly. “I go away from here as myself, or I don’t go at all!” he announced and Simon believed him.

  The woman from Estcarp gave in. From beneath her ragged bodice she pulled a bag and shook it at Briant. “Off with you to the stream then. Wash with a handful of this for your soaping. But be careful of it, for this supply must serve us all.”

  Briant snatched the bag, and, with the clothing, he gathered up his full skirts to scuttle away as if he feared his new possessions might be torn from him.

  “What about the rest of us?” Simon demanded indignantly, ready to take off after the runaway.

  Koris secured the horses to the moldering fence. His villainous face could not look anything but hideous, but somehow he managed to suggest honest amusement in his laughter. “Let the cub get rid of his trappings in peace, Simon. After all, he hasn’t protested before. And those skirts must have irked him.”

  “Skirts?” echoed Vortgin in some surprise. “But…”

  “Simon is not of the old race.” The witch combed her hair with her long nails.”He is new to our ways and shape changing. You are right, Koris,” she glanced oddly at the Captain, “Briant can be left to make his transformation in peace.”