War of Powers

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  He fell backward, squawking. The bear was all over him in a flash, as nimble as a racing hound, plying the courier's face with vast swipes of rough tongue.

  'Grutz is glad to see you,' said Jennas, 'though you abandoned him.'

  Fost struggled under the bear's loving attack and stifled the impulse to hit the immense, shaggy head. No matter how glad Grutz was to be reunited with his former master, the bear might lose his temper if batted around the ears by accident. Finger-length fangs inches from Fost's face kept the courier quiet. He managed to bury his fists in the fur on either side of Grutz's muzzle and pushed the bear's face to one side. He gulped a frigid breath. Air recycled through a bear's lungs wasn't the sweetest in the world.

  He stood, using Grutz's fur for handholds. The polar waste wheeled crazily. He leaned against the bear's flank and finally fell forward, draping himself across the creature's back. He managed to straddle the beast, then lay like a limp rag. Without a word, Jennas turned her own mount and started off at a rolling gait for the mountains. Grutz followed. Fost hung on precariously, never having been much of a rider. And riding one of the Ust-alayakit's bears was like trying to keep astride an avalanche.

  'I take it you know this rustic person, friend Fost,' a voice complained peevishly. 'I can't say much for her choice of pets, but wherever they are taking us must be a substantial improvement over this miserable wasteland.'

  Grutz snapped upright, snarling in alarm. Arms and legs feebly wheeling, Fost arced through the air and landed hard on frozen ground. Grutz swayed back and forth, growling low, hunched to spring on the unseen intruder.

  'Declare yourself, apparition,' demanded Jennas, whipping her longsword from its sling across her back. 'Are you demon or magic of the Sky City?'

  'Neither one,' a voice from behind said. 'Merely the shade of a great but unfortunately demised philosopher. Since my loutish companion has neglected to do so, I shall introduce myself. I am Erimenes the Ethical, madam, late - if I may allow myself the clever turn of phrase - of the glorious city of Athalau.' The ghost chuckled at his own wit.

  With great effort, Fost turned his head. His satchel had fallen a few feet from him, dislodging the lid of Erimenes' jar. A thin umbilicus of blue vapor wisped from under the satchel's flap. Fost was pulling himself to his feet when an ominous rumbling echoed down the mountain. Erimenes turned the color of winter sky.

  Seeing a strange blue being appear from nowhere confused Grutz. He was bright - for a bear - but in his mind he held many of the insular attitudes of the Bear Tribe. It didn't take much for him to form the basic equation: unknown = danger. He attacked with a deep-throated roar.

  Erimenes barely had time to bug his eyes and utter a strange squawk before Grutz lashed out with a forepaw. The huge scythe-clawed paw swept through the philosopher's midsection.

  Fost yelled in surprise. The ghost poised above the satchel, a gap the width of the bear's arm separating his top from his bottom. Then he collapsed into himself in a swirl of blue vapors.

  Fost regained his feet. Concern for the philosopher filled him with urgent energy. Erimenes had been a trial for him, but they were comrades. It would be bitter only for the sage to have survived his own body's death, the fall of his city, and the many strange perils of the quest to Athalau only to be destroyed by a startled bear.

  Grutz loomed over the satchel, his wet nose sniffing. An outraged cry caused him to jerk back.

  'Awk!' cried Erimenes. 'Outrage! Indignity! To be manhandled so by such a noisome brute - arrgh!'

  Fost watched the blue vapor boil out of the satchel, shot through with blue-white sparks of anger. Relief gave way to amusement. Fost had never seen Erimenes reduced to such spluttering, wordless rage.

  The philosopher wasn't mollified when Grutz scooped up the satchel with his paw and hoisted it off the ground. When Grutz swatted a foe, it stayed swatted. He shook the bag until finally curiosity won out over fear of the unknown. The bear stuck his nose into Erimenes' jar.

  Erimenes howled. He winked into being above the bear and drummed the flat, shaggy head with immaterial fists.

  'Oaf! Monster! Get your snout out of my jug!' jennas's sword drooped in her hands. She gaped as she tried to assimilate the spectacle of a war beast beset by an infuriated ghost. As Grutz took the jug in both paws and shook it, Erimenes' complaints soared an octave. Fost did the only thing he could. He fell down, laughing.

  Strain, danger and exhaustion took their toll. Fost's laughter quickly turned to shrill hysteria. Alarmed by the sound of his friend's voice, Grutz tossed the jar away, provoking a fresh outcry from Erimenes, and came to stand over Fost. He licked the courier's livid face.

  The danger of being drowned by the bear's sloppy goodwill brought Fost a measure of sobriety. He only giggled now as he pushed the bear away. From off in the rocks, Erimenes vented language unlike any Fost had heard since his days on the docks in High Medurim. Fost wiped bear slobber from his face.

  Jennas stared at him. The only sounds now were the wind whispering through the Ramparts, Grutz's stertorous breathing, and Erimenes' chanson of profanity. The nomad woman shook her head in wonder.

  'It is truly said,' she sighed, 'that those touched by the gods are touched with madness.' Reslinging her sword, Jennas turned her bear around and again set off for the mountains.

  It took three days to cross the mountains and a fourth to reach the winter camp of the Ust-alayakits. During most of the journey, Erimenes kept still, sulking over his ill treatment by the bear. Fost enjoyed the respite.

  Explaining the spirit had been hard enough. The People of Ust, ingrained by long years of war with their neighbors, the Badger Clan, had an instinctive dread or magic. The semi-nomadic Hurinzyn had been under the sway of their shaman Kleta-atelk, whose obscene magical experiments transformed animals and humans into monsters. His depredations of the Ust-alayakits had proven too much even for the valor and skill of the Bear Tribe. They had just embarked on a final, all-out suicidal raid on Kleta-atelk when they happened upon Fost. Rescuing him from the bird riders, they had extracted the promise of his aid against the Badger Clan sorcerer. The Ust-alayakits custom of killing all strangers in their realm helped wrest this promise from him.

  All had worked out for the best. Fost had led an attack and had come upon the Badger clansmen from above. Kleta-atelk had been directing his horrors in the destruction of the Ust-alayakits when Fost dropped a twenty-pound stone on him. Her people released from the threat of further sorcery, Jennas had agreed to guide Fost through the treacherous Rampart Mountains, though she had pleaded with him to remain and become a member of the Bear Tribe.

  The fear of sorcery remained even after Kleta-atelk's death. Jennas suggested dropping Erimenes into the next abyss.

  Erimenes talked her out of it. His continued survival, he explained, was due to his tremendous intellect and strength of character which had allowed him to live on incorporeally after his body died. Athalar magic was a misnomer; the Athalar used their mental powers, not spells and captive spirits to work their wonders. Jennas hadn't been fully convinced, but like Fost, she came to the conclusion that a being so utterly garrulous posed no threat, unless it was death by boredom. But that night Fost found himself agreeable to Jennas's suggestion of tossing the philosopher down a crevasse.

  They had pitched a tent in the lee of a snow-burdened tree and had eaten supper by the smoky yellow light of a brazier fueled by resin pellets. Chewing the tough, jerked meat, Fost told the story of his foray into Athalau with Moriana and Erimenes. Jennas nodded knowingly at the account of the princess's backstabbing and expressed satisfaction at the thought that Moriana had the wrong amulet.

  'If it is capable of wreaking great misfortune on its bearer,' she said, 'perhaps it will bring fitting retribution for her crime. To stab a comrade in the back . . . honor knows no fouler breach.'

  'She did what she thought was best,' said Fost, staring into the tiny flames. 'I want to catch up with her and warn her of her mistake.'

&
nbsp; Jennas only shook her head. They soon crawled into their bedrolls. Fost wasn't surprised when a warm and naked Jennas wriggled into his bag with him. Her mouth covered his, tongue probing deep, hand searching for the sudden hardness between his legs. Lust burst like a bomb inside him. Later he would reflect that he had needed the reaffirmation of life provided by lovemaking, that his need sprang from soul as well as loins. He had no such thoughts now. His mind filled with his need for her as his hand fumbled with the thatch between her smoothly muscled thighs. She rolled atop him.

  'If you'd remove yourselves from that ridiculous gunny sack,' Erimenes said with marked asperity, 'you'd not only be more comfortable, you'd also be affording me a better view of the proceedings.'

  Jennas jerked herself off Fost as though his manhood had blazed white-hot inside her. They thrashed like drowning kittens in a bag, then she stood over Fost, shivering, bare skin sheened with the sweat of desire and goosefleshed with chill.

  •You make sport of me?' she raged, dividing her rage impartially between Fost and Erimenes. 'You think me nothing but a plaything for your dirty games?' She burrowed back into the depths of her own bedroll.

  In the library at High Medurim while he was under the tutelage of the pedagogue Ceratith, Fost had read a text on ethnology prepared by the Imperial University. The treatise had said that nomads tended toward sexual conservatism and even prudishness. The teenaged gutter urchin had stuffed this morsel of knowledge into his voracious mind and read on, digesting it as thoughtlessly as he did the food given him by Ceratith.

  He had thought his earlier experiences with Jennas had given the lie to that Imperial text; she had led Fost through a series of erotic combinations that would have been the envy of a Kara-Est courtesan. Now he learned a new truth about the bear-riding people of the Southern Steppes: what they did in privacy was one thing, public exhibitionism was another. Erimenes being dead, it hadn't occurred to Jennas that he might prove an avid voyeur. The spirit's suggestions filled her with a righteous indignation that included Fost. In her outrage, the chieftainess assumed Fost wanted his vaporous companion to witness their passion.

  Fost had been too exhausted in mind and too aroused in body to give any thought to Erimenes, Jennas's powerful body writhingagainst his, her musk heady in his nostrils, had driven all else from his awareness. His attempts to tell her this elicited only stony silence from the woman. Fost finally gave up and rolled onto his back. He stirred himself to reach over and give Erimenes' jug a hearty thwack when the sage complained at the sudden cessation of the evening's entertainment. The courier eventually went to sleep, feeling robbed and angry.

  Fost assumed sourly that his physical liason with jennas was done.

  The woman felt her honor besmirched. She wouldn't forgive him. Or so he thought until the small hours of the morning when Jennas emerged from her bedroll, heaved a protesting Erimenes out the front flap of the tent, and rejoined Fost in his sleeping bag. She uttered no word but her mouth spoke eloquently.

  In the morning, Erimenes brooded upon the injustice of his summary eviction as well as the mistreatment at the paws of Grutz. Crushed by the weight of indignities heaped upon him, Erimenes fell into a sullen silence all the way to the bear-rider's camp in the foothills north of the Ramparts.

  Somehow, Fost didn't miss the philosopher's repartee, especially in the dead of the night when he and Jennas fought the cold in their own very special way.

  'You're determined to go on, then?' the fat woman asked. Fost nodded, distracted by his effort to keep his gorge from rising due to the aroma wafting up from his earthen cup.

  'Good!' the woman cried, a hearty backslap knocking the breath from his body. He slopped the hot, stinging brew into his lap. 'Small is the soul craving no adventure. Jennas may sit there looking baleful, but mind you, boy, she'd have it no other way.'

  Vancha Broad-Ax took a healthy swig of her own tea and beamed at Fost as though she'd just finished sculpting him from clay. Fost, feeling the tea corroding his crotch, managed a grin in response. The subchief of the Ust-alayakits was a vast, coarse woman, outstandingly ugly with a squashed nose spread across a visage reddened by wind and drink. Her hair was a faded reddish-orange tangle. Her eyes gleamed like emeralds inset in the fatty rolls of her face. She wore a leather harness studded with bronze, and bronzen torques as thick as two of Fost's fingers encircled arms as big as the courier's thighs. Vancha was loud, exuberant, mercurial, and apparently seldom sober.

  Fost liked her immensely.He felt the pressure of Jennas's hip against his. A warm tingle stirred his crotch, only partially dampened by the now-cooling tea. He took a sip from his cup and shuddered. The four of them in Jennas's tent were drinking amasinj, the favored drink of the Ust-alayakits. He didn't mind the astringent herb tea; it was the distilled ofilos-tree sap liquor the bear people added to it in liberal quantities to give it strength that watered his eyes and crisped his nose hairs. Vancha poured the stuff down her throat in torrents until Fost expected smoke to pour from her bangled ears. Jennas downed it with a will, too, though not with the relish of her second chief.

  As always, Fost felt time pressing him onward. Yet now he had stayed with the People of Ust for a week. His hurts needed healing, but the luxury of relaxing among friends uncovered deeper wounds. Sometimes in the night he clung to Jennas and whimpered like a whipped puppy. She held him, comforted him, and thought no less of him. The Ust-alayakits did not believe in hiding their emotions. And any who could answer the Hell Call and return sane needed no further proof of strength and courage.

  But the time had come for leaving. Tomorrow Fost would go north in pursuit of Moriana. Tonight he, Jennas, Vancha and Vancha's young consort Rinzi - and Erimenes - had gathered for a quiet celebration.

  'Care well for my people when I am gone, Vancha,' said Jennas smiling. But her expression wasn't reflected in her eyes. Vancha laughed uproariously.

  'I shall be a mother to them all,' she declared. 'But it hurts me to be left behind. Put Lurnum or Vixo in charge and let me accompany you. Little Sister is vexed at having missed the bloodletting at the caves of the Hurinzyn.' Little Sister lay on a pillow on the other side of Vancha's bulk from the slender Rinzi. Vancha patted her affectionately. Little Sister shifted, sending shafts of reflected firelight dancing from her blue steel blade.

  The ax was of the same monumental proportions as its owner. A three-foot shaft of black hardwood from the Tanzul Forest, as rare as valuable silver on the treeless steppe, was affixed to a broad, spike-backed head weighing fully five pounds. The weapon filled Fost with awe. Despite the exploits of the brawny heroes of Medurimite romance, five pounds' total weight was usually the maximum. Vancha could wield Little Sister with one meaty hand while she held a beaten-brass buckler in the other.

  He had always assumed the barbarians of the Southern Steppe chose their leaders by combat. Vancha was easily the strongest of all the several hundred Ust-alayakits. She outweighed Fost and Jennas combined and could break either like a reed in the wind. Yet Jennas seemed to feel no compunction about naming her subchief guardian of her daughter Duri and going off with Fost, leaving Vancha to rule in her absence.

  'I fear your Little Sister will drink her fill all too soon,' said Jennas, staring moodily into the flames.

  'What's that, girl?' Vancha demanded. 'Have you had a vision?' Jennas nodded. 'What are you talking about?' asked Erimenes. 'Is there a nice, bloody war in the offing? If so, I may stay here and let Fost wend his weary way north without me. I shouldn't like my jar to get cracked by some ignorant ruffian.'

  'Ust should so favor me,' Fost said dourly.Jennas's glance was sharp. 'You, of all people, shouldn't use Ust's name so lightly.' Fost dropped his eyes from hers, feeling warmth touch his cheeks. The hetwoman gripped his arm in an iron band. 'I go north with you because you have done the Ust-alayakits greater service than we can ever hope to repay - and because I want to be with you, though your heart is with that northerner wench. But these things aren't enough to make me lea
ve my people, even in Vancha's capable hands.'

  Fost looked up at her, the question in his eyes. 'No,' she said with a bitter laugh. 'I'm no young girl to go mooning off after you like a pet goat. You're a man like no other I've known, Fost Longstrider, but not even you can take me from my people, not even if you gave me all your love and forswore this princess.' She shook her head. 'Not unless the welfare of my people lay in my going with you.'

  Fost stared at her. Her proud, high-cheekboned face was set into grim lines. He looked at the others. Erimenes looked bored, Ranzi diffident. A hard glint showed in Vancha's eyes.

  'What do you mean?' he asked. 'Danger is building in the world like a storm gathering thunder-heads,' Vancha said. 'Our hetwoman fares north to assess the danger. She fears the wind may soon blow foul for the People of Ust.'

  'I don't know what you're talking about. There's peril, to be sure, but that Meson the path before me. It doesn't have anything to do with your folk.'

  'But it does,' said Jennas. 'I feel it. Ust sends me dreams. There is a power - and malice - in the north. They grow. They shall soon break free, and their fury will not spare the people of the steppes.'