When it was full dark, the gay sadistic song began again, with the beating of wings. Again the werewinds prowled and frisked, and destroyed, and killed wherever they could.
Fires were harder to set because this night there were no torches or cressets or lamps in the city. They managed even so. They puffed old embers to life and tumbled more cauldrons and torches, throwing ballistae and crews from the wall and from the towers by the gate. At dawn there was a pall of smoke over Yurunna, and no rest within it.
For three long nights the werewinds made Yurunna their playground. On the morning of the fourth day Alderyk, gaunt and strange-eyed, came like a molting eagle to Stark's tent and said:
"Now you must get off your hunkers, Dark Man. You and your Lesser Hearths and your demon hounds. We have broken the path for you. Tread it."
He went back to his camp, angry cat's-paws striking up sand at every flapping step. Halk looked after him.
"That little man makes an evil enemy."
He had spent his idle days creaking and groaning at martial exercises. He had not yet got back his full strength, but half of Halk's strength was greater than most men's. Now he made steel flicker around his head.
"When we enter the city, I'll bear shield beside you."
"Not you," Stark said, "and not Simon, either. If I should fall, there'll be things for you to do."
Stark sent word to the chiefs. He spent time with Ashton. He spent time with Gerrith. He ate and slept, and the day passed.
For Yurunna that night began like the others—as it seemed to the Wandsmen, a year of others, with the whirling winds dancing death around them and over them, and sandy sleeplessness in their smoke-stung eyes, and their limbs aching. Then they began to perceive that there was movement in the darkness.
They tried to follow it. The winds kicked and trampled, blinding them with dust, wreaking havoc along the wall. Twice and thrice the Wandsmen had replaced the defenses of the gate-towers, clearing away scorched wreckage from the square below to give the Yur fighting room. Now again cauldrons and spreading fire were thrown down to smoke and blaze in the square. Gusts of wind pounded at the iron gate, so that it moved with a deep groaning.
Things, said the hounds of Yurunna, where the Houndmaster and two handlers and two apprentice boys held them at the back of the square, away from the fires. Things come.
Kill, said the Houndmaster.
The hounds sent fear.
Thirty Tarf, fifteen on a side, bearing a ram made from a green tree trunk cut beside Yurunna's springs, came up the zigzag road to the gate. Twenty more came with them, holding the turtle roof above their heads. They did not flinch from the sending of the hounds.
The hounds said, Things do not fear us.
And they became afraid, with a new fear added to the ones they already had, of strange winds and noises and the smell of death.
The Houndmaster said, Those will come who do.
He was a tall Wandsman. The tunic under his dented mail was the somber red that marked him next in rank below the Lords Protector. From the time he had been a gray apprentice up from Ged Darod he had lived and worked with Northhounds. He loved them. He loved their ugliness and their savagery. He loved their minds, to which he had become so closely attuned. He loved sharing their simple joy of slaughter. His heart was broken for each hound he had lost to the were-winds.
For the nine traitor hounds he had lost to an off-world monster called Stark, who was neither man nor beast, more than his heart was broken.
The Lords Protector had come, the august and holy men he had served all his life, tending the hounds and training them and sending them north to guard the Citadel from all intruders. His hounds—his hounds!—had not guarded, had betrayed, had followed after this sky-born blasphemy who flouted their power; and the Citadel was a burnt-out ruin, the Lords Protector driven shamefully to seek refuge at Yurunna.
They had been kind. They had absolved him of fault. Still the hounds were his.
The dishonor was his.
After the Lords Protector, Gelmar came, in such haste that he killed his beast within sight of the gate. The Ochar were broken. Yurunna stood alone against the host of the north, and the leader of that host was Stark, with his nine faithless hounds.
Gelmar and the Lords Protector had fled on, down the road to Ged Darod. Now, as they had feared, Yurunna was tottering to its fall. And the Houndmaster had seen from the battlements a big dark man on a dappled beast riding a circuit of the walls, with nine white hounds running by him.
He spoke to his own hounds, the twenty-four that were all he had left, and less than half of them full-grown. He spoke to them gently, because the young ones trembled.
Wait, he said. There will yet be killing.
The ram begin to swing. The deep drum-sound beat out heavily over Yurunna.
Muster-horns blew, calling the Yur to defend the gate.
The defenses along the wall, already thin, were thinned still more. Many of the storerooms were gutted, and the emplacements destroyed. Because of the blocking of streets where fire and wind had brought down buildings, bodies of men could no longer be moved quickly back and forth. They could only move freely on the wall. Now many of those who manned it were drawn to the gate.
When the wind dropped, it was seen that masses of men had gathered in the plain below and were already on the zigzag road.
Stark was under the wall with his hounds and fifty Tarf, led by Klatlekt. Half the Fallarin, with the rest of the Tarf and one-third of the tribal army, waited in the fields.
Kill, said Stark. Clear the wall.
The hounds ranged on either side, sending fear to the Yur above.
When the chosen section of the wall was cleared, the Fallarin hop-flapped up the sheer cliff, up the unscalable wall, and made fast ropes of twisted hide around the crenels of the firestep.
Tarf swarmed up the ropes, swords and shields hung at their backs. Some spread out to hold the wall. Others hauled up rope ladders or helped the tribesmen climb.
Stark forced the growling hounds to submit while he fitted slings under their bellies. The Tarf hauled them up, careless of their rage and fear. Stark climbed beside them. On either side now came red Kref and green Thorn.
The Fallarin returned to their mounts and rode away.
On the broad top of the wall Stark gathered his party: Klatlekt and twenty Tarf and the hounds. He set out toward the gate.
The hounds forgot the indignity of the slings. There was a dark excitement in their minds, a wildness mixed with fear.
Many minds, N'Chaka. Too many. All hate. All red. Red. Red.
In the square, where the ram was a wincing thunder in their ears, the hounds of Yurunna said:
Things come. There along wall. And men. And hounds.
Hounds?
Yes.
The Houndmaster stroked rough heads. Good, he said. That is good.
He passed word to the Wandsman captains that invaders were on the wall. He snapped orders to his two handlers and the apprentice boys, all Wandsmen, though of lesser and least rank, and thus safe like himself from the Northhounds. All were leaden with weariness, and the boys were all but useless with fright However, the time would not be long. They would do.
He did not call up any of the Yur. The renegade hounds would only kill them before they could shoot arrow or lift spear, and the captains would need every one.
He spoke to his favorite hound, an old wise bitch.
Hounds, Mika.
Mika made an eager growling and led the way.
Up on the wall Gerd said suddenly, N'Chaka. They come to kill.
16
Stark had come far enough around the curve of the wall to be able to see the top of the north gate-tower above the roofs. The tribesmen were coming strongly behind him, pouring up onto the wall, helped by the strong arms of the Tarf. They could still be thrown back if the hounds of Yurunna spread death and terror among them.
Stark went down stone steps, down off the wall, into
the street below. Klatlekt and the twenty Tarf came with him.
The hounds slunk, whining.
Houndmaster, Gerd said. Angry.
Dim faint memories stirred, of old days, of running in couples with littermates, of an overmastering mind that gave orders and engendered a respect that was as near to love as a Northhound could feel.
He will kill us, Grith said.
How?
With hounds. With his great sword.
Kill N'Chaka, Gerd said.
Not N'Chaka, Stark answered. And, contemptuously, Stay, then, if you fear the Houndmaster. N'Chaka will fight for you.
N'Chaka understood that he had little choice about fighting in any case. That was why the Tarf were there. But he felt a responsibility toward these fangy horrors who had become his allies. He had deliberately seduced them into betraying their masters, knowing that they could not comprehend what they were doing. They had followed him, they had served him, they were his. He had a duty to fight for them.
To the Tarf he said, "Do not touch mine."
He set off along a street that led inward from the wall. He had no worry about finding the hounds of Yurunna. They would find him. He wanted it to be as far as possible from the tribesmen.
Gerd howled. Then he bayed, and Grith bayed, and the others took it up. They followed Stark, and that deep and dreadful challenge rang ahead of them along the silent stony ways with no other sound in them but the drumbeat of the ram.
The hounds of Yurunna heard. The young ones whined, partly from fear and partly from excitement, feeling a new ferocity rise within them. The old ones lifted their own voices, and their eyes glowed with a deadly light. The old relationship was long forgotten. These were strangers invading their territory, crying a pack cry, following a strange leader who was neither hound nor Wandsman.
The Houndmaster said kill. They would kill gladly.
The streets were not too much encumbered. The stout stone buildings here had resisted the winds and fires. Both parties moved rapidly, hound-minds guiding eagerly toward a meeting.
The Houndmaster knew the streets, and Stark did not.
The Houndmaster spoke. Handlers and struggling apprentices forced the hounds to a reluctant halt. Ahead of them was a small open space, a little square where four streets met. The Houndmaster waited.
In that one of the four streets that led from the wall, Gerd said, There! and rushed ahead into the square.
Nine hounds running, heads down, backs a-bristle. N'Chaka would have held them. But N'Chaka was fighting his own fight.
When the Northhounds fought each other, as the males did for leadership of the pack, they used every weapon they had. Fear would not kill a Northhound, but it served as a whip to wound and drive the stronger against the weaker. The hounds of Yurunna did not at first send fear against the invading hounds. By order of the Houndmaster they sent it all against the alien leader.
N'Chaka struggled to stand erect, to breathe. To live.
"Slip them," said the Houndmaster, and the hounds of Yurunna went free.
Twenty-four against nine, in the small square. Twenty-four encircling and overlapping nine, carrying them back by sheer weight into the mouth of the street whence they had come. Twenty-four and nine inextricably mixed. To the Tarf, indistinguishable.
The Houndmaster followed them with his great sword raised high, and to him each hound was as well known as the hairs and scars and pits upon his own face.
Three hounds of Yurunna, with the Houndmaster's old bitch Mika leading, burst out of the boiling mass into the street where the Tarf stood crammed between the walls, their effective force reduced by the constriction to no more than five or six.
At their forefront Klatlekt stood by Stark, blinking his green-gold eyes.
He warded the enemy hounds' first rush with his sword, while Stark sobbed for breath and stared blindly with the icy sweat beading his face.
"We must have fighting room," said Klatlekt. Hound-fear could not harm him. The fangs and the ripping claws could. He plucked at Stark with one powerful hand. "Come. Or we go without you."
The hounds attacked again, two feinting to draw Klatlekt's blade, the bitch driving straight for Stark's throat.
In the square the sword of the Houndmaster flashed down. And up. And down again.
N'Chaka saw death coming, smelled death, heard it. Sheer brute reflex, the dangerous last blind outlashing, brought his own sword forward.
Houndmaster! Kill Gerd! Kill, Or we all die.
The Houndmaster, untouchable Wandsman belly deep in hounds, swung his sword.
Gerd, torn and bleeding, with N'Chaka's cry ringing in his mind, saw the flash of that blade above him and broke the unbreakable commandment.
The Yurunna bitch-hound shrieked, an almost human sound, as the life-long mind-bond snapped. She turned her head, searching, crying out, and Stark ran her through the neck, clumsy and vicious with the black terror on him.
He went forward, shouting to his hounds, and they flung themselves in a frenzy of guilt and triumph on the hounds of Yurunna, sensing that the Houndmaster's death had robbed them of their strength.
The guiding presence was gone, the strong firm voice that had spoken in their minds since they first saw light.
Stark became that voice.
Go back to your kennel. Back, or we kill.
The hounds of Yurunna begged help from the handlers. The handlers no longer spoke. Gerd had learned how easy it was to kill Wandsmen. Back to your kennel! Go!
The apprentices had fled long ago. The hounds of Yurunna were quite alone. The strangers and their strange leader fought fiercely. The things fought with them, the unhuman things that wielded long sharp swords and were not touched by fear.
Go, said the strong commanding voice in their minds.
The young hounds, already fearful and with no master to give them courage, did as Stark told them. There were eight still able to run.
The old hounds died there, full of rage and grief, and Stark knew that if the Houndmaster had been present on the Plain of Worldheart, he would never have made himself leader of Flay's pack.
The small square fell quiet again. Gerd and Grith came panting to Stark's side. Only three others came with them, and not one unmarked. Stark and Klatlekt and several more of the Tarf had taken wounds, but none was disabled.
Klatlekt blinked heavy eyelids and said, "If this is finished, we will return to the wall."
"It is finished," Stark said, knowing that more than this fight was finished. The face of the Houndmaster stared white and accusing from amid the rough sprawled carcasses. As a terror and a menace, as a weapon of the Wandsmen, the Northhounds were finished forever.
Stark took Gerd's head between his hands. You have killed Wandsmen.
Gerd's teeth showed, even though he trembled. Houndmaster killed us.
So. Other Wandsmen will kill. With a strange echo of despair, Gerd said, We kill them. Grith? We kill.
Come, then, Stark said, and went off after the quick-footed Tarf, who had not waited for him. He was conscious of his hurts and of his weariness, but he was exhilarated by this triumph over the Wandsmen. He ran swiftly, his heart beating hot, eager for more.
The booming of the ram had stopped. In its place was the confused uproar of men fighting. The tribesmen were making their attack.
Most of them had come down off the wall to strike the Yur in the streets and the square. A strong party of tribesmen and Tarf had gone on to the tower and were fighting their way into it. Down below it housed the mechanism that controlled the gate, which was standing firm in spite of the battering.
Stark and his hounds lent aid where it would help the most. He took a particular pleasure in picking out the Wandsman captains and saying, Kill. It was time they felt the weight of the weapon they had used for so long against other men.
The north tower was taken. The clanking mechanism hauled open the iron gate, and the tide of purple and white, brown and yellow, poured through it into the square. Th
e zigzag road was a solid river of men rushing upward, yelping, howling, brandishing sword and spear, and below the road more men came from among the warty crops and spiny orchards to jostle for a place.
Nothing could stand against that tide. The bodies of tribesmen spitted on Yur spears hung there with no room to fall. The defenders were forced back, back against stone walls, out of the square, into the streets, where the bands of Hann and Marag, Kref and Thuran, Thorn and yellow Qard hunted them and killed.
When the killing was done, the looting began. Most of the fat storehouses where food and drink were kept had escaped the damage of the werewinds, being in the heart of the occupied section of Yurunna; many of them were in underground chambers cut in the rock. The tribesmen pillaged the storerooms, and the houses, and the public places. The Keepers of the six Hearths did what they could to maintain order.
Even so, things happened.
The men found the great walled house of the Yur women and battered down its doors. Instead of the orgy of pleasure they had anticipated, they found creatures like obscene white slugs that stared at them with empty eyes and screamed without ceasing, clutching their unnatural young like so many identical blank-faced dolls. Overcome with disgust, the tribesmen made a silence in the place and never once thought of these degraded things as food.
That was the end of the Yur, the Well-Created servants of the Wandsmen. Some of the men still lived, but there would be no more breeding.
Stark had no part in this. He had gone to the kennels.
The gray-clad apprentices were there, boys up from Ged Darod only that year. One of them, a sullen heavy-faced youth, was crouched in a corner hugging himself and waiting to die, with hate and fear and nothing else at all in his eyes.
The other was with the hounds. He was slight and dark, his boy's face still unformed, his boy's hands too large and knuckly. He was afraid. There was no reason why he should not be. He was hollow-eyed and red-eyed and pale with exhaustion. But he was with the hounds where he belonged. And he met Stark's gaze with what dignity he could muster, even though he knew that those five grim blood-dabbled beasts at Stark's heels might kill him where he stood.
The Hounds of Skaith-Volume II of The Book of Skaith Page 10
