Witch World ww-1

by Andre Norton

  “Captain!” The other Guard had tramped a little ahead, uninterested in the bodies among which he threaded a fastidious path. Now he stood on the end of that tongue of stone beckoning Simon forward.

  There was a stirring of the waters; waves lapped higher on the wharf, forcing all three men to retreat.

  Even in that limited light they could see something large rising to the surface.

  “Down!” Simon snapped the command. They did not have time to return to the lift; their best hope was to play one with the bodies about them.

  They lay together, Simon pillowing his head on his arm, his gun ready, watching the turmoil. Water spilled from the bulk of the thing. Now he could make out the sharp bow with its matching needle stem. His guess had been right: this was one of the Kolder ships come to harbor.

  He wondered if his own breathing sounded as loud as that of his men beside him did to him. They were more fully clothed than the dead about them; could sharp eyes pick out the gleam of their mail and nail them with some Kolder weapon before they could move in defense?

  Only that silver ship, having once surfaced, made no other move at all, rolling in the waves within the cavern as if it were as dead as the bodies. Simon watched it narrowly and then started, as the man beside him whispered and touched his officer’s arm.

  But Simon did not need that admonition to watch. He, too, had sighted that second boiling upheaval of waves. In those the first ship was pushed toward the quay. It was plain now that she answered no helm.

  Hardly daring to believe that the vessel was unmanned, they still kept in hiding. It was only when the third ship bobbed into sight and sent the other two whirling with the force of its emergence, that Simon accepted the evidence and got to his feet. Those ships were either unmanned or totally disabled. They drifted without guidance, two coming together with a crash.

  No openings showed on their decks, no indications that they carried crews and passengers. The story that the quay told was different, however. It suggested a hasty loading of vessels, intended to attack, or to make a withdrawal from Gorm. And had only an attack been the purpose would the slaves have been killed?

  To board one of those floating silver splinters without preparation would be folly. But it would be best to keep an eye upon them. The three went back to the cage which had brought them there. One of the ships struck against the wharf, sheered it off, and wallowed away.

  “Will you remain here?” He asked a question of his men rather than gave an order. The Guard of Estcarp should be inured to strange sights, but this was no place to station an unwilling man.

  “Those ships — we should learn their secrets,” one of the men returned. “But I do not think they will sail out from here again, Captain.”

  Simon accepted that oblique dissent. Together they left the underground harbor to the derelicts and the dead. Before they took off in the cage, Simon inspected its interior for controls. He wanted to reach some level where he might contact Koris’ party, not return to the hall of the map once again.

  Unfortunately the walls of that box were bare of any aid to direction. Disappointed they closed the door behind them waiting to be returned aloft. As the vibration in the wall testified to their movement, Simon recalled vividly the corridor of the laboratory and wished he could reach it.

  The cage came to a stop, the door slid back, and the three within found themselves looking into the startled faces of other men, armed and alert. Only those few seconds of amazement saved both parties from a fatal mistake, for one of the group without called Simon’s name and he saw Briant.

  Then a figure not to be mistaken for any but Koris shouldered by the others.

  “Where do you spring from?” he demanded. “The wall itself?”

  Simon knew this corridor where the Estcarp force was gathered: the place he had been thinking of. But why had the cage brought him here as if in answer to his wish alone? His wish!

  “You have found the laboratory?”

  “We have found many things, few of which make any sense. But not yet have we found any Kolder! And you?”

  “One of the Kolder and he is now dead — or perhaps all of them!” Simon thought of the ships below and what they might hold in their interiors. “I do not believe that we have to fear meeting them here now.”

  Through the hours which followed Simon was proved a true prophet. Save for the one man in the metal cap, there was no other of the unknown race to be discovered within Gorm. And of those who had served the Kolder there were only dead men left. Found, those were in squads, in companies, or by twos and threes in the corridors and rooms of the keep. All lay as they had dropped, as if what had kept them operating as men had suddenly been withdrawn and they had fallen into the nothingness which should have been theirs earlier, the peace which their masters had denied them.

  The Guards found other prisoners in the room beyond the laboratory, among them some who had shared captivity with Simon. These awoke sluggishly from their drugged sleep, unable to remember anything after they had been gassed, but thanking such gods as each owned that they had been brought to Gorm too late to follow the sorry path of the others the Kolder had engulfed.

  Koris and Simon guided Sulcar seamen to the underground harbor, and in a small boat, explored the cavern. They found only rock wall. The entrance to the pool must lie under surface, and they believed it had been closed to the escape of the derelict ships.

  “If he who wore the cap controlled it all,” surmised Koris, “then his death must have sealed them in. Also, since he is the one you battled from afar through the Power, he might have already been giving muddled orders to lead to confusion here.”

  “Perhaps,” Simon agreed absently. He was thinking of what he had learned from that other in his last few seconds of life. If the rest of the Kolder force were sealed into those ships, then indeed Estcarp had good reason to rejoice.

  They got a line to one of the vessels and brought it alongside the wharf. But the fastenings of the hatch baffled them and Koris and Simon left the Sulcarmen to puzzle it out, returning to the keep.

  “This is another of their magics.” Koris slid the door of the lift closed behind them. “But seemingly one the capped man did not control, seeing as how we can use it now.”

  “You can control this as well as he ever did,” Simon leaned back against wall, weariness washing over him.

  Their victory was inconclusive; he had an inkling of the chase yet before him, but would those of Estcarp believe what he had to tell them now? “Think upon the corridor where you met me, picture it in your mind.”

  “So?” Koris pulled off his helm; now he set his shoulders against the opposite wall and closed his eyes in concentration.

  The door opened. They looked out upon the laboratory corridor and Koris laughed with a boy’s amusement at an exciting toy.

  “This magic I can work also, I, Koris, the Ugly. It would seem that among the Kolder the Power was not limited only to women.”

  Simon closed the door once again, pictured in his mind the upper chamber of the wall map. Only when they reached that did he answer his companion’s observation.

  “Perhaps that is what we now have to fear from the Kolder, Captain. They had their own form of power, and you have seen how they used it. This Gorm may now be a treasure house of their knowledge.”

  Koris threw his helm on the table below the map, and leaning on his ax regarded Simon levelly.

  “It is a treasure house you warn against looting?”

  He picked that out quickly.

  “I don’t know,” Simon dropped heavily into one of the chairs, and resting his head on his fists, stared down at the surface on which his elbows were planted.”I am no scientist, no master of this kind of magic. The Sulcarmen will be tempted by those ships, Estcarp by what else lies here.”

  “Tempted?” Someone had echoed that word and both men looked around. Simon got to his feet as he saw who seated herself quietly a little from them, Briant beside her as if playing her sh
ieldman.

  She was helmed and in mail, but Simon knew that she could disguise herself with shape-changing and still he would know her always.

  “Tempted,” again she repeated. “Well do you choose that word, Simon. Yes, we of Estcarp shall be tempted; that is why I am here. There are two edges to this blade and we may cut outselves on either if we do not take care. Should we turn aside from this strange knowledge, destroy all we have found, we may be making ourselves safe, or we may be foolishly opening a way for a second Kolder attack, for one cannot build a defense unless he has a clear understanding of the weapons to be used against him.”

  “Of the Kolder,” Simon spoke slowly, heavily, “you will not have to fear too much. There was but a small company of them in the beginning. If any escaped here, then they can be hunted back to their source and that source closed.”

  “Closed?” Koris made a question of that.

  “In the last struggle with their leader he revealed their secret.”

  “That they are not native to this world?”

  Simon’s head swung around. Had she picked that out of his mind, or was that some information she had not seen fit to supply before?

  “You knew?”

  “I am not a reader of minds, Simon. But we have not known it long. Yes, they came to us — as you came — but, I think, from other motives.”

  “They were fugitives, fleeing disaster, a disaster of their own making, having set their own place aflame behind them. I do not think that they dared to leave their door open behind them, but that we must make sure of. The more pressing problem is what lies here.”

  “And you think that if we take their knowledge to us the evil which lies in it may corrupt. I wonder. Estcarp has lived long secure in its own Power.”

  “Lady, no matter what decision is made, I do not think that Estcarp shall remain the same. She must either come fully into the main stream of active life, or she must be content to withdraw wholly from it into stagnation, which is a form of death.”

  It was as if they two talked alone and neither Briant nor Koris had a part in the future they discussed. She met him mind to mind with an equality he had not sensed in any other woman before.

  “You speak the truth, Simon. Perhaps the ancient solidity of my people must break. There shall be those who will wish for life and a new world, and those who shall shrink from any change from the ways which mean security. But that struggle still lies in the future. And it is only a growth of this war. What would you say should be done with Gorm?”

  He smiled wearily. “I am a man of action. Out of here I shall go to hunt down that gate which the Kolder used and see that it is rendered harmless. Give me orders, lady, and they shall be carried out. But for the time being I would seal this place until a decision can be made. There may be an attempt on the part of others to take away what lies here.”

  “Yes. Karsten, Alizon, both would relish the looting of Sippar.” She nodded briskly. Her hand was at the breast of her mail shirt and she drew it away with the jewel of power in it.

  “This is my authority. Captain,” she spoke to Koris. “Let it be as Simon has said. Let this storehouse of strange knowledge be sealed, and let the rest of Gorm be cleansed for a garrison, until such time as we can decide the future of what lies here.” She smiled at the young officer. “I leave it in your command, Lord Defender of Gorm.”

  VII

  A VENTURE OF NEW BEGINNINGS

  A dusky red spread slowly up from the collar of Koris’ mail shirt, reaching the line of his fair hair. Then he answered and the bitter lines about his well-cut mouth were deep, adding years to his young face.

  “Are you forgetting, lady,” he brought the blade of Volt’s Ax down flatwise on the table with a clang, “that long ago Koris the Misshapen was driven from these shores?”

  “And what happened to Gorm thereafter, and to those who did that driving?” she asked quietly. “Have any said ‘misshapen Captain of Estcarp’?”

  His hand tightened on the haft of his weapon until the knuckles were white and sharp. “Find another Lord Defender for Gorm, lady. I swore by Noman that I would not return here. To me this is a doubly haunted place. I think that Estcarp has had no reason to complain of her Captain; also I do not believe this war already won.”

  “He is right, you know,” Simon cut in. “The Kolder may be few, most of them may be trapped in those ships below. But we must trace them back to their gate and make sure that they do not consolidate shattered forces to launch a second bid for rulership. What about Yle? And do they have a garrison in Sulcarkeep? How deeply are they involved in Karsten and Alizon? We may be at the beginning of a long war instead of grasping victory.”

  “Very well,” she stroked the jewel she held. “Since you have such definite ideas, become governor here, Simon.”

  Koris spoke swiftly before Tregarth could answer.

  “To me that is a plan to which I agree. Hold Gorm with my blessing, Simon, and do not think that I shall ever rise in the name of my heritage to take it from you.”

  But Simon was shaking his head. “I am a soldier. And I am from another world. Let dog eat dog as the saying goes — the Kolder trail is mine.” He touched his head; if he closed his eyes now he knew he would see not darkness but a narrow valley through which angry men fought a rearguard action.

  “Do you venture into Yle and Sulcarkeep and no farther?” Briant broke silence for the first time.

  “Where would you have us go?” Koris asked.

  “Karsten!” If Simon had ever thought the youth colorless and lacking in personality he was to doubt his appraisal at that moment.

  “And what lies in Karsten which is of such moment to us?” Koris’ voice held an almost bantering note. Yet there was something else beneath the surface of that tone which Simon heard but could not identify. There was a game here afoot, but he did not know its purpose or rules.

  “Yvian!” The name was flung at the Captain like a battle challenge and Briant eyed Koris as if waiting to see him pick it up. Simon glanced from one young man to the other. As it had been earlier when he and the witch had talked across the board, so was it now: these two fenced without thought of their audience.

  For the second time red tinged Koris’ cheeks, then ebbed, leaving his face white and set, that of a man committed to some struggle he hated but dared not shirk. For the first time he left the Ax of Volt lying forgotten on the table as he came swiftly about the end of the board, moving with that lithe grace which always contrasted with his ill-formed body.

  Briant, a queer expression of mingled defiance and hope giving life to his features, waited for his coming, stood still as the Captain’s hands fell on his shoulders in a grip which could not have been anything but bruising.

  “This is what you want?” the words came from Koris as if jerked one by one by torture.

  At the last moment perhaps Briant tried to evade. “I want my freedom,” he replied in a low voice.

  Those punishing hands fell away. Koris laughed with such raking bitterness that Simon protested inwardly against the hurt that sound betrayed.

  “Be sure, in time, it shall be yours!” The Captain would have stepped away if Briant had not seized in turn upon Koris’ upper arms with the same urgency of hold the other had shown earlier.

  “I want my freedom only that I may make a choice elsewhere. And I have decided upon that choice — do you doubt that? Or is it again that there is an Aldis who has the power I cannot reach for?”

  Aldis? A glimmering of what might be the truth struck Simon.

  Koris’ fingers were under Briant’s chin, turning the thin young face up to his. This once was the Captain able to look down and not up at a companion.

  “You believe in sword thrust for sword thrust, do you not?” he commented. “So Yvian has his Aldis; let them have the good of each other while they may. But I think that Yvian has made a very ill choice of it. And since one ax made a marriage, another may undo it!”

  “Marriage in the g
abble gabble of Siric only,” flashed Briant, still a little defiant, but not struggling in the Captain’s new hold.

  “Need you have told me that,” Koris was smiling. “Lady of Verlaine?”

  “Loyse of Verlaine is dead!” Briant repeated. “You get no such heritage with me, Captain.”

  A tiny frown line appeared between Koris’ brows. “That you need not have said either. Rather is it that such as I am must buy a wife with gauds and lands. And never afterwards be sure of the bargain.”

  Her hand whipped from his arm to his mouth, silencing him. And there was red anger in both her eyes and her voice when she replied:

  “Koris, Captain of Estcarp need never speak so of himself, least of all to a woman such as I, without inheritance of lands or beauty!”

  Simon moved, knowing that neither were aware of the other two in that room. He touched the witch of Estcarp gently on the shoulder and smiled down at her.

  “Let us leave them to fight their own battle,” he whispered.

  She was laughing silently after her fashion. “This talk of mutual unworthiness will speedily be a step to no talking at all and so to a firm settlement of two futures.”

  “I take it that she is the missing heiress of Verlaine, wedded by proxy to Duke Yvian?”

  “She is. By her aid alone I came scatheless out of Verlaine, I being captive there for a space. Fulk is not a pleasant enemy.”

  Afire to every shade of her voice, Simon’s smile became grim.

  “I think that Fulk and his wreckers shall be taught a lesson in the near future; it will curb their high spirits,” he commented, knowing well her way of understatement. It was enough for him that she admitted she owed her escape from Verlaine to the girl across the room. For a woman of the Power such an admission hinted of danger indeed. He had a sudden overwhelming desire to take one of the Sulcar ships, man it with his mountain fighters, and sail southward.