The Year's Best Horror Stories 6

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  Now they opened and, fogged with sleep, looked at her.

  “What is it, love?” He must have seen the fear in her face, for he pushed himself up on his elbows. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “Not a dream, no. Derek, your Uncle Martin—he could have lived here if he hadn’t been a master himself. If he hadn’t kept horses. The horses turned on him because they had found another master.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The spirit that lives in this land,” she said. She was not trembling, now. Perspiration beaded her forehead. “It uses the . . . the servants, or whatever you want to call them . . . it can’t abide anyone else ruling here. If we . . ."

  “You’ve been dreaming, sweetheart.” He tried to pull her down beside him, but she shook him off. She could hear them on the stairs.

  “Is our door locked?” she suddenly demanded.

  “Yes, I think so.” Derek frowned. “Did you hear something? I thought . . .”

  “Children are a bit like animals, don’t you think? At least, people treat them as if they were—adults, I mean. I suppose children must . . .”

  “I do hear something. I’d better go—”

  “Derek—No—”

  The doorknob rattled, and there was a great pounding at the door.

  “Who is that?” Derek said loudly.

  “The children,” Marilyn whispered.

  The door splintered and gave way before Derek reached it, and the children burst through. There were so many of them, Marilyn thought, as she waited on the bed. And all she could seem to see was their strong, square teeth.

  WINTER WHITE by Tanith Lee

  “It’s a rare writer who inspires editors to almost total confidence. But Tanith Lee, with the trilogy that includes The Birthgrave, Vazkor, Son of Vazkor and Quest for the White Witch, her novels of Four BEE, the epic adventure The Storm Lord, and her witchcraft novel, Volkhavaar, has earned just that sort of faith. Editors expect her to be able to do just about anything. And she does. This story, which appears here for the first time, was originally intended for an anthology of heroic fantasy which DAW plans to publish next year. But so emotionally intense, so strong, is this story of sorcerous revenge, that it was felt it would fit this book; and so powerful and haunting is it, that it somehow seems wrong not to rush it into print. Because a writer like Tanith Lee is sure to deliver another equally good, in time to appear in the forthcoming book . . .

  Crovak the warrior came home in the snow with eighty men, and with one other, so they say. This is how it was:

  There had been a war, near summer’s end, in the High Country. Ten of the clans were in it, and Crovak had gone from his hold with the rest, to fight and kill and take spoil, man’s work for which he was well fitted, being very much a man. Over six feet in height he was, broad in the shoulder, and as strong as he needed to be with strength to spare. His hair and his eyes were brown, but his beard was black and the hair on his body black, and he could get up a black temper, too, when he had a mind to it. But his teeth were white as salt and he got his name from them, Crovak White-Tooth, though later he had other names. He was vain of his teeth, and vain all through if truth be told, not of his looks but of his battle skills, his chiefdom, vain of his manhood and of the fact he was a man. Being a man had been lucky for him. It was his boast that none could out-fight him, out-drink him or out-ride him in the horizontal art. He had sired only sons. “A man makes men,” he would say. He had lost two wives that way, getting sons out of them. But the third wife, she was healthy, a red-haired vixen.

  After the war was done, Crovak and his eighty warriors were going homeward with their spoil, but halfway to Drom-Crovak the winter woke early. Snow began to come down, and night closed in, and the warriors lost their road. They were in a wild unfamiliar place, on rocky hills with a pelt of thin forest, land where the wolf-folk live more often than men.

  They cursed the snow, the warriors, but the snow paid no heed. Then, riding blind down through the tree-line in the storm, they came on a narrow valley, and in the valley was an old Drom hall. Not one of them knew the spot, neither of the hall, which plainly was long empty, though curiously not derelict. Still, they took it for shelter and fortune, and they rode their red horses straight in at the gate and through the doors into the house.

  A great house it was, too, or had been. The pointed roof went up a good forty feet or more, and the cross beams, jet black with ancient smokes, were intricately carved in a fashion not instantly recognizable. The central hearth was years cold, yet by the hearth lay a huge bundle of wood, as if in readiness for them. One or two of the warriors discussed this uneasily, but Crovak gave them the edge of his anger and they shut their mouths. Certainly, when the Wood was lit on the hearth and the sparking reek going up, they were glad enough of it. Outside, the snow went on falling and piled against the doors and the ledges of the windows, but the lire burned within, and the men ate the dry meat they had saved over and drank their beer. They made a racket, eating, drinking, crowing over victories in the war, over loot, over women, and over each other’s women in Drom-Crovak and how glad the women would be to have their men back after so many nights alone. Only they kept quiet on the matter of Crovak’s wife, for none but he might make a story of her, how hot she was and how willing. But Crovak was not apparently in the mood for talking of women, and soon he got up, dipped a brand from the hearth, went about the Drom, through the hall, and at length up the inner stairway to the one big upper room which was the Chiefs place, or would have been if any chief had remained. Everyone knew what was in Crovak’s mind then, he was on the lookout for fresh spoil, as if he scented it here as a hound scents his home hearth. None followed, for Crovak had summoned none to follow him. Whatever he found he would most probably keep, it was his by chiefs right, and if he was greedy nobody cared to cross him.

  Crovak was indeed very restless. He liked to be up and doing, warring or hunting; if at rest, then with a girl or getting drunk, and they had no girls, and not enough beer with them to get drunk on. So he paced about, peering into the shadows of the Drom. He hardly expected to come on any riches left behind, and when he discovered the tall black chests standing in the upper room, he put his foot through their doors without much hope of reward, and truly there was none, for they were bare. The frame of an enormous antique bed stood against the far wall, and here spiders had got to work as they had in the corners of the room below. Crovak, what with the shadows and the webs of these spinner-people, nearly missed what rested on the sinister post of the bed. But just as he was going out with an oath, the brand he held caught a red glint in the dark, and Crovak returned to see.

  What he saw was a thing all bound over with gray spider flax, with its one red eye shining out at him. So he pulled the thing loose and picked off the webs, and presently he held a. slender small hollow pipe of ivory, with three black holes in it and a scarlet gem set where the fourth hole was not. Now Crovak was not a man given to superstition or to fancies of any kind, but it seemed to him, suddenly, that everything in the upper room had grown very still. Even the brand had stopped flickering in his grasp, even the spiders had paused upon their threads. But this was only for a moment. Crovak shook the pipe, and the flame on the brand jumped again, and the webs swayed and the shadows lurched. Then Crovak put his mouth to the pipe to blow the dust from it. The pipe made a sound when he did this, a thin high squeal, and for some reason the sound reminded Crovak instantly of the noise a woman might make when a man struck her, or raped her. This amused him, and he put the pipe to his lips a second time and blew it, but now no sound came out, and try as he would, no sound could he make to come from it. Still, for the ruby at its other end, it was not valueless.

  Crovak left the room and swaggered down the stair. He toyed with the pipe, artfully not speaking, till the warriors asked where he had got it. He told them, and later he spoke of his wife and how she would run to him and hang on him when they got home. When the men slept, Crovak lay awake some whil
e, considering that.

  In the morning the snow was all down, but hard with frost, and a chill bright sun stood over it. They found their road again easily, Crovak and his eighty men, and by noon they were far from the old Drom where it lay empty and hearth-cold once more under the whiteness.

  There were three more days of riding before they would reach Drom-Crovak.

  All the first day, Crovak’s horse acted oddly, swerving at nothing, trembling at nothing. Crovak cursed it, beat it and finally gifted it to another man and took that man’s horse in exchange. After which Crovak’s own horse became steady and the new horse under him began shying and stalling. That night they made their camp in the wretched open. Wolves howled on the hollow hills behind them, and the stars had a look of that same hungry howling, so swollen and brilliant they were in the sky. Yet the men had taken a deer and eaten fresh meat that night. Crovak slept under his cloak and dreamed he had his woman with him. A very real dream it was, yet she was not as she had been, her body stony in his grip. He woke in the dawn and took out the ivory pipe and set it grinning to his mouth, attempting to evoke that female squeal of pain or fear, but no sound came.

  The second day, there was the same trouble with the horse. The warriors came into the lowlands and passed by the frozen river. Somewhere here, Crovak began to feel a certain strangeness at his back, as if something pressed against him, and not long after, the horse reared up and fell, throwing him. Then Crovak, in his fury, took a boulder and brained the horse as it struggled to rise.

  The man whose horse it had been was angry. Altercation broke out, and Crovak struck him down with a blow that near broke his jaw. Crovak took back his own mount, and the horseless warrior must ride behind another. Crovak’s horse shied at nothing, and trembled, but knew better than to throw him.

  Just before the sun left the white plain, they passed a stretch of the river where the ice was broken and, glancing aside, Crovak saw his own reflection there astride the red horse, and something up behind him, riding pillion as the horseless warrior rode behind another.

  Crovak drew rein, and turned about to see, and saw nothing, only the dying ruddy light, and his men at his back.

  Some would dwell on an occurrence of this sort, but Crovak’s mind was not constructed to dwell on shadows or on dreams. Yet, when they made their camp, he drew out the ivory pipe and offered it to one of the men.

  “It has a pleasing note,” said he, “but it is a stubborn object.”

  The man took the pipe and rolled it between his fingers.

  “I never met such a thing before, Crovak lord,” said he. “But I will not offer to sound it”

  “Come, if I say sound it you shall,” said Crovak.

  “I say I will not, Crovak lord.”

  “What are you afraid of? Is it a woman’s cringing heart you have? Perhaps I should wed you to one of my ten-year-old sons, and see if he can get you with child.”

  The other warriors joined his jeering. One said he would try the pipe, but when he was about to put it to his mouth he sneezed, and each time he raised the pipe he sneezed, a curious happening. And another man who snatched the pipe was taken with a fit of choking, while a third had the pipe at his lip, but the fire spat and a piece of flaming tinder flew up and lodged in his cloak, and he dropped the pipe to beat out the burning. Then Crovak retrieved the pipe with a snarl of laughter.

  “The wench is wed to me,” he said, and put the ivory away in his belt, and laughed again.

  The next day’s riding was hard, but they were getting near Drom-Crovak; the curve of the land, the trees, the tracks, all took on the look of home things, even beneath the snow. Here and there they passed by a small steading, the outlying holds of the Drom, which owed Crovak tithe. Generally when the Drom warriors went riding, the out-women kept from sight but a few miles from the Drom there was a girl child, not more than four or five, playing on the track. It was ill luck, and worse, unlawful among the clans, to kill a child, even a peasant’s or a slave’s brat The warriors reined aside, and then a dour skinny woman ran from the huddle of huts nearby to scoop the child up. Not looking at Crovak, she mumbled for his pardon and received instead a gob of his spit. As the men moved off, the girl child’s voice rose thin and clear above the crunch of hoofs in the snow: “White woman! See.”

  Crovak heard, and something caught him in the cry, he could not have said what, but it inflamed his temper. He swung round and rode back.

  “Speak, sow. What does your filthy bairn mean?”

  “I do not know, Crovak lord.”

  “White woman,” said the child again, “on big man’s dog.”

  “What?” shouted Crovak.

  “Pardon, Crovak lord. She thinks a horse a dog. She means on your horse, Crovak lord. But no one is there.”

  “White woman,” said the child, the third time.

  “Get from my sight!” Crovak shouted. He struck the woman a blow with his whip across her thighs, before she could run. But somehow she ran after the blow, hauling the child with her, silent, into the nearest hut.

  Crovak was not frightened, did not think to be. But he was angry, with a mad unmotivated rage. He slashed his horse about the neck, and it plunged forward snorting. The warriors tore after. Yet, even riding so swift, Crovak felt a constriction at his chest and, glancing down, he saw an odd thing. Two white arms, white as the snow, were round his ribs and held him fast, and two white hands, their fingers knotted among his furs.

  Then the anger, not the fear, overwhelmed Crovak, and with a bellow he strove to thrust and tear the fragile clinging white arms from him, and he must indeed have had his will, for they were suddenly gone. And when he looked before him again, and shook the freezing sweat from his scowling face, he perceived the track winding down between the shallow hills of the Low Country, leading to his Drom.

  Crovak the warrior came home in the snow with his eighty men just at fall of night, and he saw the long stockade and the terraced earth mound behind with the Drom huts circling up on it, and the great hall at its summit. The torches were red on the stockade gates, between them, the men Crovak had left here, when he went to war, were patrolling with their spears, looking out for enemies. Above, other torches blazed from the cross-alleys between the dwellings, and brazen from the doors of the hall. It was a good thing to return and see, the Drom so sturdy, so safe and so fine with its lights, as if the night had no power over it.

  Crovak had no sense of foreboding, or at least he would not have confessed one. But he said to his men: “Make camp here an hour, for I am going back alone. I would see how well my laws are kept when I am from the hearth.”

  The men laughed, and one dared to say that Crovak’s wife would be weeping, with her loom set by and her face in the ashes. Crovak grinned and, leaving his horse, he stole down on his own hold like the thief.

  He got over the stockade like a thief, too. No other but the master could have done it, for the watch-hounds knew his scent, and kept quiet when he bade them—one man who came to apprehend him, Crovak crowned with his fist. He was taking no chances. He stole up through the cross-alleys, muffled in his furs, and reached the hall door and went by it. Not only an inner but an outer stair led to the upper chamber, this outer stair infrequently used, but now Crovak used it. It was not yet the time for dinner, besides, the chief's wife did not sit in hall when he was absent, at least, not the wife of Crovak.

  He knew she was in the chamber as soon as he reached the outer door, for he could scent her, the hot russet smell of her hair and the ripeness of her flesh. When he pushed open the door, he knew also why the perfume of her was so strong. She did not hear him enter, she was too preoccupied. Neither did the man hear.

  They lay on Crovak’s bed, intent on their journey.

  Crovak, whose reaction to fury was usually one of clamor, made no noise at all as he crept about and took down from the wall one of his boar spears. He stood a moment, the spear resting in his hands, watching his wife and the man who rode her. Crovak did not feel
surprise or hurt. But when he leaped forward and plunged the spear down through both their bodies, with his massive strength, through the two of them and through the bed itself into a crevice of the stone floor beneath, he felt a boiling spasm of pleasure at their deaths. He stood and watched them die. The eyes of his vixen wife pleaded with him; even dying, she pleaded dumbly for mercy, till the soul left her.

  Crovak took out the ivory pipe. He looked at it with hatred and fondness.

  “Cunning, you warn me,” he said.

  Then he went out to call his warriors in, and rouse the Drom to his arrival.

  Of course, he did not mourn her. The man, Crovak gave to his kin to bury, that was their business. But she, his woman, Crovak had thrown a little distance outside the gates of the Drom, for beasts to feed on. The night meal was served late that night, but served it was, and Crovak sat down in his hall to it, sat in his carved chair, as if no untoward thing had happened. His rage was gone to a sort of grizzly playfulness. Not a man there but knew he must be wary for his skin’s sake. Particularly that night, they only laughed when Crovak did, and when he said no word, no man spoke, and the quiet hung from the rafters with the smoke. And the warrior who had jested of Crovak’s wife’s weeping, he stayed away.

  Finally Crovak called for his drinking cup, the cup which usually he kept for a feast. It was made from the skull of one of Crovak’s enemies, slain in an earlier war, the eyes, the nostrils and the mouth closed with red gold, and the brink rimmed with gold. This goblet was filled for Crovak with beer, and he drank it to the last drop and banged his bone cup down on the board.

  Just at that instant, there was another banging, much lighter—yet he heard it—on the doors of the hall. And, at the rapping, the doors opened.

  Crovak sat staring, and his mouth set in its grin, showing his flawless and glistening teeth. Through the doors came neither warrior nor slave nor servant; not a traveler, not an itinerant musician with his harp on his back. No, none of these. Through the doors came a woman, and she was white as the winter snow.