Demon in the Mirror
Page 7
The disturbing aspect of the “plan” was that the savages were definitely heading for Mount Erstand. Surely their village lay not there… in which case they must have some particularly unpleasant intent for her, here in the woods.
Surely they’ll free me of this pole first…
Though she caught no sound or sign that they were other than alone in the woods, her captors halted abruptly. They stood silent and still. Stepping noiselessly to Tiana, the chieftain placed his finger to his lips and her own dagger to her throat. To his men he made several rapid hand signs. Tiana was lowered to the ground. By the time she was able to turn her blood-thickened head, all five men were gone. She had no idea of the direction they’d taken; no broken leaf or bent branch or whisper of grass betrayed the passage of these men of the woods. It was as if they had sorcerously vanished.
The chieftain remained. Her own dagger remained at her neck. Obviously keenly alert, the man seemed actually to be pricking his ears while he strove to send his gaze piercing through the surrounding foliage. He was immobile; there wasn’t the faintest of movement even of the five black-tipped green feathers standing from his headband. Tiana tried to be as still — ostensibly, while she tested the bonds at wrists and ankles. The thongs were tight; the dagger snugged against her throat in warning. The Woodling chieftain stared into the forest.
It was not from the woods that his bane came, though, but from the pack of Tiana’s mule She saw, and the back of her neck crawled.
From the pack, like spiders the colour of old parchment, crept the severed hands of Derramal.
Her heart commenced to thutter. The hands! One sought to save itself in the temple of Theba… I am its saviour! Will it seek to protect me, then, to preserve itself?
Yes. Dropping to the ground, the hands froze while even that slight noise attracted the Woodling’s attention. He must have assumed the mule had stamped, and turned his gaze back into the woods without having seen the ghastly menace in a clump of slawgrass.
The hands advanced on the squatting man. Though his senses eventually warned him, his eyes naturally sought higher for a foe. He left Tiana to glide a pace aside, half-rising into a crouch, his axe up and ready. In vain his gaze roved in quest of the advancing enemy.
When at last he saw the hands, they had spidered nigh to his feet.
Even then the Woodling’s speed and agility could surely have saved him, but astonishment and horror were ice that froze his legs. Scuttling obscenely forward, the hands closed about his ankles. Tiana saw them begin to squeeze. The man’s dyed skin drew and wrinkled above and below the grip of dead fingers.
“Hunh!” Sweat popped out on the man’s chest and forehead and he swung his axe in a well-aimed blow delivered with all the power of an enraged and horrified barbarian.
The axe struck the left hand — and rebounded as if it had hit a smith’s anvil.
Dead fingers — Undead fingers — slowly constricted, crushing his legs.
A brave man, Tiana’s erstwhile captor fought to the last, raining blows on the hands even as they squeezed trickling, then spurting blood from ruptured flesh. The woods barbarian made no sound until both his feet were completely severed from his legs with a splitting, spurting, crunchy sound. Only then did he voice a ululating death cry. He fell, kicking footless legs that gouted blood.
Tiana stared in horror while the hands laved themselves in the scarlet splashes. Then they went still. So did the Woodling chieftain.
“Brainless idiot. Drood-begot hands! You could have freed me to slay him — now when his band returns, they’ll run all the way home in panic!” But I’ll wager one tarries long enough to slit my throat first — or free me from this pole by chopping through my ankles!
In more than a little haste, she writhed and contorted and doubled herself to set about attacking the binding thongs with her teeth. For all their woodcraft, the savages were not sailors, and had bound her merely by making loops and drawing a loop through. The knots yielded easily to tugging teeth. Though it seemed to take hours and her jaws and gums ached, Tiana freed herself. Staggering a little from long inactivity and interrupted circulation, she recovered her weapons from the corpse that had not used them. The hands were quiet, and she assumed she could recover them later.
Now, she thought, teeth gritted and a desire for spill Wood-ling blood as high in her as anger, where are those other naked green-and-brownies?
Her rapier wheep-wheeped, slicing air, as she considered. It seemed logical that they would have suspected followers. In that event they’d most likely creep back parallel to their own trail, to ambush the stalkers. What she should do, naturally, was mount up and betake herself elsewhere and with alacrity. But the indignity of having been captured and so ignominiously carried was too fresh in her mind. Urgency was on her to seek out and slay those who’d demeaned her. It blotted out the inner voice of reason that should have convinced her she was no match for barbarians in the forest that was their home. She had ignored such sensible thoughts in past; she was alive.
Working at it, Tiana managed to glide nigh as silently as her foes. She was nearly upon the first before she saw him. He crouched beside a large tree, with his back to her.
Waiting in ambush, she thought with pleasure, and she saw naught but justice in leaping at that naked back, rapier extended. The slim blade sank deep before it jolted to a halt against a frontal rib. When she withdrew, he toppled over to lie face up. She stared.
From behind, it had appeared that the Woodling wore three feathers in the plaited hide encircling his head. Now she saw her error; he wore but two feathers in that chaplet. The third decorated the end of a slender wooden shaft that stood from his forehead.
Tiana’s cursing was passing quiet, but altogether sincere. Some mangy mongrel had got to her quarry first!
“Some people have no manners or consideration,” she muttered, and almost with the words an angry bee buzzed past her ear and a thud sounded behind her.
Tiana whirled. She faced a Woodling, his axe raised on high for the death blow, and she shuddered at thought of his coming upon her so silently. The blow would not fall, now, but no credit to her; the man’s eyes were already glazed in death. The bee that had streaked so closely to her face was an arrow, now lodged just left of centre in the Woodling’s chest. He fell.
It occurred to Tiana in a wave of bitter humiliation that someone was using her as a stalking horse!
Controlling her rage, she slipped on through the woods. She appreciated now the host of subtle factors that could betray one’s position in the forest, and she sought the harder to avoid such errors. Accordingly she paused at the edge of the small glade in whose centre sprouted a little clump of turkeybush. The bushes’ base sprouted a Woodling’s lower body. The man lay prostrate, with an arrow in his side. Tiana skinned back her lips, but curbed her hiss. This was maddening! All her rightful victims were being stolen from her.
Beside a huge-boled tree, she studied the body.
Hold! That didn’t appear to be a death-wound… it wasn’t! The arrow wasn’t even in the man. Faking, then. Bait for ambush! Her eyes narrowed. Where are his two comrades, then? Aye, she mused, thinking back. Two of the devils had carried bows — but neither this one nor the two she’d… found dead had done. So. This is the decoy. They’d choose a blind with a commanding view of this glade…
There was only one such spot.
By the Cud! This tree They must be directly above me! But why haven’t they killed m — Then she knew, and she clenched teeth and lips. Insult added to insult! The Woodlings had set this trap for bigger game, a foe they considered more dangerous than the woman they’d captured so easily, with her skinny little sword. Doubtless they now hoped she’d just go away without noticing them.
It was worse than galling — she durst not even voice her rage.
She drew her dagger from its oiled sheath without a sound. It was out and ready even as she bounded to one side. Her arm had begun the throw before her gaze found the target
squatting just where she’d expected, on the broad branch above. The blade rushed to him like a homing bird so that she made an impressed face. Struck in the stomach, the Woodling groaned and pitched headfirst from the tree. He landed asprawl, face down in a way that did a lovely job of grinding the dagger in until the hilt broke his skin.
As the other green-and-brown man shifted position to gain a clear bowshot at Tiana — who was scurrying for cover — his movement disturbed the branches, only a little. Nevertheless, with his bowstring cheek-drawn and the shaft centred on Tiana’s back, the man’s spine was smashed by a heavy, big-game arrow.
Tiana heard the thud, heard his gasp, and turned in time to see his arrow skitter wildly away. The Woodling crashed to the ground.
Nearby the faker jerked as if starting to rise and Tiana realised she had one last chance to exact her own vengeance. She leaped in a fury. Her dagger was gone, nor did she draw her sword; she’d slay the savage with bare hands and feet highly skilled in the vicious art of unarmed combat. Let him essay to match agility with one accustomed to fighting on the ever-moving deck of a ship!
The last Woodling did not rise to meet her charge. Only after she had broken his neck did she spot the arrow that projected from his other side. Her unseen ally had killed the bait with a low shot through the grass before she’d succeeded in salving her dignity with a partial revenge.
I’m beaten, she thought glumly, by a score of five to one… saved like a snivelling girl by a pair of dead hands and an archer I’ve neither seen nor heard! She could only do that which came far from easily to her: congratulate and thank her unseen ally.
At that moment he stepped into the glade, Young he was, light-footed as a panther, a bit shorter than Tiana — and a superb physical example. His was a tight, closely knit body covered with hard lean muscles. In Martania of Thesia he’d have been one of their public fighters, surely, in the middleweight class. Then she recognised him, the not-unhandsome, lean-faced and boyish man with his curly hair.
“Bandari!”
He smiled. “Incredible. You are Tiana, aren’t you?”
The finest cat burglar in Reme, Bandari the Cat had taught Tiana considerable subtle points of thievery — years and years ago. She’d had no notion he was a master bowman, as well.
“By the Cud — Bandari! What are you doing here?”
“Reducing the number of Woodlings,” he said casually, and went on with a serious answer. “Life in the cities was too easy and boringly safe, Ty. Three years ago I returned to my home village Stromvil — where the real action is!” As the young man spoke, his eyes roved admiringly over her magnificent body; his own was even more on display, in soft red buskins, a sleeveless tunic cut very low, and naught else save weapons and hip-slung quiver. “But I have heard of Captain Tiana — what are you doing here, looking like a temptress in a temple in Shamash?”
“Reluctantly congratulating and thanking you on cheating me of my revenge on those barbars. They were taking me to their village, I suppose, after they… finished some business near Mount Erstand.” She conceded the pleasure she felt in his gaze, though she stood with her shoulders back and hip flaunted. She’d been an awkward teenager, more nuisance than woman, when last she’d seen Bandari the Cat.
“Hmp! Better you knew not, Tiana. Assuming they were following their normal tactics, they’d have found a good spot for ambush and crucified you there — then killed any who came in quest of you.”
She blinked, swallowed. “None will. And now I doubly congratulate and thank you on getting four of them to my one.”
“Oh, I — one! What about their warchief?”
“That is a rather long story… and I must go and collect my mount and pack mule.”
“Just let me retrieve a few arrows, and I’ll be for going along.”
He did and, as they re-entered the woods, he felt it necessary to caution her to remain wary. While they made their way through the dark domain of trees and greenery, she told him of the mirror, of the bargain with Lamarred, of Woeand, of the hands and the Woodling chieftain’s eerie death.
“And so now I must climb Mount Erstand. It isn’t really impossible, surely.”
“Tiana: it is. Last time I was atop old Erstand, I surveyed carefully. From the top I saw plainly that the slopes are unscalable — even to Bandari the Cat!”
“Then by the Back — how did you get up there?”
The lean face smiled under its unruly cluster of dark curls. “There is a way. And it too is a long story, lovely Ty. Do you know aught of Stromvil — that we are called those who hurl the lightning and ride the thunder?”
“I’ve heard the phrases. Surely hurling the lightning refers to Stromvili archery — that I have now seen! The other means… Stromvil is way up on a cliff so that thunderstorms sometimes pass under it, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. But it’s literally true, Tiana.” He grinned, shook his head. “Captain Tiana! Who’d have thought it, back in Reme! You, ah, developed late, Ty… Well. We ride the thunder — uh, careful with those branches! I will teach you such skill of it as words can convey. The weather looks for being favourable tomorrow, and we have preparations to make. You’ll want to watch, and that only — we live on the edge of death, Ty.”
An upward glance of Tiana’s sea captain’s eye told her tomorrow would most likely bring a thunderstorm — that was favourable weather? “But… getting atop Mount Erstand…”
“We ride the thunder, Tiana. In a month or so, you should be ready to essay it — if ever you dare.”
Challenged, she compressed her lips firmly. Then she said, “I dare tomorrow, Bandari. I haven’t a month to waste.” And to preclude an argument as well as to prevent another such embarrassment as she’d endured today, she added, “Bandari. You must teach me woodcraft.”
He snorted. “Oh Tiana me girl — woodcraft is a matter of experience!”
She shook her head. “No. Being well coordinated and observant come with experience. I am both; what I need is to know what to observe. How might I have known of the presence of those Woodlings — how knew you that one in the tree wasn’t merely a bird or a squirrel?”
Tiana wanted to learn; Tiana hence became a charming pupil. Charmed and flattered, Bandari took up the lessons her impatience had caused Caranga to break off. Soon she realised the complex aspect — but to learn to avoid only the obvious errors and ambushes would be highly valuable. She listened until they reached her animals and the corpse of the Woodling war chief.
The hands were lifeless. Horse and mule, challenged by an entire forest, determinedly cropped grass and now and again sampled leaves from a branch. She collected and repacked the hands. Bandari was happy enough to ride the mule, which grumbled. The animal Tiana called Disciple because he followed, was not comfortable now, man-laden and leading — but Tiana was not about to mount him and let Bandari have Wind-song. They rode close, and the lesson continued. It ended abruptly: the trees and underbrush stopped as if sliced by a giant axe, and a crystal lake of shining blue sprawled directly before them. Beyond it, featureless rock reared straight into the sky.
Tiana could only stare up in awe. Erstand’s steep broad shoulders towered over the countryside and turned trees into pygmies. At some twenty thousand feet, Erstand was not the world’s tallest mountain — but it was the most vertical.
“It… looks as if one could toss a stone off the top and it would fall right into the lake.” Tiana’s voice betrayed the fact that she was most impressed.
“Not quite,” Bandari told her. “About midway up, just below the snow line, Stromvil perches on a wide ledge. It is accessible. But above — old Erstand is straight up and down.”
“Hmp. And the other side?”
“The north side’s not so steep — but the highest half-mile or so is absolutely vertical: ice walls.”
She stared, frowning. “Ban, if every side is perpendicular, how can Erstand have a summit?”
“Doesn’t. Flat as a table on top. There’s even a smal
l lake up there, on the mesa.”
“But — ” Tiana heaved a great sigh. “Then how do you propose to get me up there?”
He turned to gaze at her from the back of the mule, who was anxious to get to the lake. “Ah. I am for being in charge of getting you up there, Tiana? You are once again my pupil, and will do as I say?”
Tiana met his snapping black eyes for a long while. At last she heaved another sigh — a purpose, for she knew how to make a man’s eyes drop from her face. “Aye.”
Bandari shrugged, nodded. “Good then. To Stromvil first. As to scaling the rest of Erstand — we won’t. We fly.”
*
Though they’d reached the lake at midday, the sky was fading from the brilliant red-orange-pink of sunset to the blue-grey of dusk when they at last reached the ledge on which Stromvil lay. Disciple had proven too nervous, and they arrived with him plodding behind Windsong, who now bore Bandari; he wore the sort of sleeved vest he had collected partway up the time-etched trail.
Stromvil was an odd sort of townlet, stretched out along the ledge with each frame or partly stone building tucked back against the nigh-vertical mountainside. A host of noisy young men and women came rushing to meet them. Tiana, considering them boys and girls every one, learned that these youths were the Highriders, and that Bandari was their leader. All were built much as he was; lean, compact, hard-muscled. None was tall. The males looked marvellous, Tiana thought, while the girls — all around two-score years of age — looked adolescent, underdeveloped. Tiana towered still, when she had dismounted, and she was well aware of the admiringly appraising looks she received from the males. The female gazes and dark glances, she thought, were only appraising. Envy? Jealousy?
Apparently, for when Bandari began to explain that he was taking her to Erstand’s summit, one lean girl acted astonished. Tiana thought she’d caught her name as Nadya.
“Her? You’re insane, Banday! You can’t be for taking her highriding — look at the excess flesh on her! When this overblown slut lands, she’ll splatter like an egg!”