The first arrow hissed past his head. Another found the breast of one of Rihwin’s proud dapples. The southerner’s chariot slewed, flipped over. He and Nordric, both veterans of such mishaps, landed lightly. They were on their feet at once to face the oncoming Trokmoi.
More arrows flew past. The Fox shot a couple in return. Then he yelled to Priscos, “We’d all better get down. The horses will just have to take their chances.”
The driver chewed his lip, unhappy at the thought of abandoning the beasts but knowing not all spills ended so luckily as Rihwin’s. He pulled to a halt, his long face doleful. Sword in hand, he followed Gerin and Van to the ground.
He ran to the horses. Evading a snap from the Shanda pony, he slashed through their traces and slapped both beasts’ rumps with the flat of his blade. They galloped away, leather straps trailing. Priscos gave Gerin a wintry grin. “All right, my lord, I expect I’m ready now.”
The baron had no time to answer—the Trokmoi were upon them. He glimpsed a hurled stone just in time to flick up his shield and knock it aside. A wild-haired northerner, naked but for a helm and one greave, thrust at his legs with a short pike. He skipped aside.
Van rammed his own, longer, spear into the Trokmê’s belly. He jerked it free with an expert twist. Bloody entrails came with it.
At first, progress toward Fox Keep was not hard. Though outnumbered almost two to one by the Trokmoi Balamung sent to hold them off, the Elabonians had better weapons and armor than their foes. But soon the lack of order the baron had looked for before began to cost his relieving force. More and more Trokmoi gave up the attack on the palisade and ran toward the hand-to-hand fighting they loved so well. Their wizard leader cursed shrilly and tried to bend them to his will again, but had little luck. Wizard or no, leader or no, he could not change the habits of the proud, wild folk he led.
A tall noble in brightly burnished scale-mail confronted the Fox. “It’s Dumnorix son of Orgetorix son of—” he began. He got no farther, for an arrow—a Trokmê arrow, by its length and fletching—suddenly sprouted in his throat and sent him spinning to the ground.
Then the baron was facing a woodsrunner who must have learned his swordplay from an Elabonian. Forsaking the usual slashing style of the Trokmê, he thrust wickedly at Gerin’s face, belly, and face again. His wrist was quick as a snake. But Rihwin sprang to Gerin’s side. His slim blade darted at the Trokmê. Unable to stand against two such swordsmen, the barbarian sprang back among his comrades.
Both sides slowed to a brief, panting halt. Not fifteen feet from the Fox, a sweaty barbarian leaned on his spear. He was picking his teeth with a gory forefinger. He caught Gerin’s eye and grinned. “Good fighting.” And in truth, that was all the twisted corpses, the gashed limbs, the terror and agony meant to him: a sport, something to enjoy and at which to excel.
Gerin wearily shook his head. Too many on both sides of the border felt thus.
Someone threw a stone. Someone else cast a spear. The heat of battle again grew to a boil. Shouting like men struck mad, a wedge of Trokmoi slammed into the middle of Gerin’s thin line, splitting his force in two.
The larger half, led by Nordric, made for the repaired breach in the palisade. That, thought Gerin, was largely because his berserker comrade saw more Trokmoi there than anywhere else. Nordric and his companions fought their way into range of covering arrows from the palisade. Its defenders cheered their every forward step.
For his own fragment, which included Van, Rihwin, and Priscos, the baron had another goal: Balamung himself. The black-robed mage, hood flung back to show his face, stalked menacingly round the palisade. Under one arm he carried the Book of Shabeth-Shiri. The codex was bound in light, fine-grained leather, perhaps tanned human hide.
No arrow bit the wizard, though the men on the palisade sent many his way. Some flared into brief blue flame, others flew wild, others simply vanished. Arrogant and contemptuous, Balamung stood, dry, under a rain of death.
He opened the Book of Shabeth-Shiri and began to chant. Even fighting desperately afurlong away, Gerin felt the power the wizard gathered, saw the air around him shimmer with pent-up energies. His hair tried to prickle upright under his helm.
The Trokmoi who had been assaulting the wall of the palisade on which the spell would fall sprinted away for their lives. Balamung’s chant rose to a crescendo. He shouted in the dread Kizzuwatnan tongue, paused, shouted again.
Sheets of red flame flowed from his fingertips. The fire engulfed the wall of the palisade. Gerin watched in awe and consternation. Not even ashes, he thought, could remain when that incandescent flood receded. But the palisade withstood the fiery bath unharmed, still the same sour green which had bemused the Fox before.
“I think your own wizard has won a point,” Rihwin said, parrying a spearthrust. That was a notion new to Gerin. It had not occurred to him that the ugly paint might be a sorcerous defense.
Balamung shouted in frustrated wrath. His flapping black cloak gave him the aspect of a starveling vulture. He loped toward the repaired section of the palisade, crying to Siglorel, “Southron fool, you’ll pay for not bending the knee to me!” Less than a bowshot from where Gerin battled his minions, the Trokmê mage opened his fell grimoire and began another spell.
Redoubling their efforts, the baron and his men tried to close with the wizard while his sorcery distracted him. But they had all they could do to stay alive; pushing forward against the barbarians was impossible.
The Fox could only watch as fire shot once more from Balamung’s hands. It caught and clung to the untreated timbers of the improvised barricade—and to the back of a woodsrunner not quick enough to get away. A human torch, he shrieked and fell and burned. Gerin’s men within Fox Keep braved arrows to beat at the flames with hides and pour water and sand on them, but could not douse the wizardfire.
Then Siglorel, clad in robes no less black than Balamung’s, appeared at the top of the burning stretch of palisade. As Rihwin had said, when faced with the supreme challenge of his life he turned his back on the alepot and fought Balamung’s spells to a standstill. Now he worked with unhurried skill, ignoring the missiles flying around him. His fingers flashed in intricate passes. As his hands fell when his spell was done, the flames fell too, leaving the bulwark smoldering but intact.
“You dare to show yourself in my despite?” Balamung hissed. Gerin shuddered at the malice in his voice. Siglorel gave his foe a tired, grave nod. “Then dare—and die!” Balamung’s arm swept down. Lightning cracked from a clear sky. A flick of Siglorel’s hand sent the bolt smashing harmlessly to the ground.
The backlash of energies from the wizards’ duel—and simple fear, too—held Trokmoi and Elabonians frozen where they stood, unwilling witnesses to a struggle more dire than any in which they fought. Balamung was clearly the stronger. The lightnings he hurled crashed ever closer to his enemy, his whirlwinds spun up great clouds of choking dust that all but hid the palisade, his demons flew shrieking through the winds and dove on Siglorel like huge bat-winged falcons.
No levinbolt, though, seared through Siglorel’s heart, no wind seized him and flung him to his doom (though the warrior who had been at his side had time for but one brief scream of terror as Balamung’s tornado tore him from Castle Fox), no demon drank his blood. Face gone dead white from strain, hands darting now here, now there like those of a man wracked by fever, Siglorel somehow kept an ever-tightening circle of safety round himself.
Once or twice he even managed to strike back. Balamung contemptuously swatted aside his lightnings, as if they were beneath his notice. The end, Gerin saw, was inevitable. Balamung cursed in balked outrage as his weaker opponent evaded destruction again and again, but each escape was narrower, each drained more of Siglorel’s waning strength.
Then the Trokmê wizard chuckled terribly. He briefly checked the Book of Shabeth-Shiri. At his gesture, a plane of pulsing violet light sprang into being on either side of Siglorel. As Balamung brought his hands toward each ot
her, the planes of force he had created began to close upon his antagonist. Siglorel tried to check the inexorable contraction, but all his knowledge, all his cantrips, were of no avail against the ancient, mighty sorcery Balamung commanded.
Ever nearer each other drew the planes of force, so that now Siglorel held them apart not with his magic, but by the power of his strongly muscled arms and shoulders. The desperate tableau held for half a minute, no more; then only a crimson smear lay between the glowing planes.
Gerin expected his own life to be similarly crushed away, but Balamung, a cat toying with a helpless mouse, took too much pleasure in the baron’s dismay to end the game so quickly. Full of noxious confidence, his voice sounded in the baron’s ear: “First you can watch your fine keep fall. Then I’ll get round to dealing with yourself—if my lads have not done it for me.”
That seemed likely. Gerin and Van fought back-to-back much of the time now. Many of the warriors who had accompanied them were gone. Attacked at the same time by one Trokmê with a sword and two more with spears, Priscos went down while Balamung was speaking. Rihwin and Gerin killed the spearmen, but Priscos lay where he had fallen.
Balamung began another spell. A clot of black smoke rose before him. It quickly began to take shape and solidity. Even after his invocation ceased, that which he summoned continued to grow.
The demon was roughly anthropoid, but twice the height of any man, and broad in proportion. Forced to bear its huge mass, its short thick legs were bowed, but they carried it well enough. Its huge arms, hanging almost to the ground, ended in grasping, taloned hands. Its skin was black and green, and wet like a frog’s. It was grossly male.
Its chinless lower jaw hung slack, showing row on row of saw-edged teeth. A bifurcated tongue lashed in and out. The demon had no nose, only red slits to match the banked fires of its eyes. Above those eyes, its forehead sloped straight back. Its batlike ears swiveled and twitched at every sound.
Obeying Balamung’s shouted command, it waddled toward Castle Fox. The Trokmoi scattered before it. As he watched it near the keep, Gerin saw a plume of smoke curl up from within the palisade. One of the outbuildings was alight, whether from Balamung’s magic or a mere fire-arrow he did not know.
The wizard saw it too. He laughed. “You’ll no more be putting your betters in the stables to sleep, will you now?”
At their mage’s order, the Trokmoi raked the palisade with arrows, forcing its defenders to keep their heads down. A few Elabonians shot back. Two arrows pierced the demon. It wailed and gnashed its teeth, but did not slow.
Then Nordric rushed at it, a sword in either hand, curses rising even over its cries. All the barbarians around him had fled at the demon’s onset, but in his blind fury he knew only the attack. The demon stopped as he charged. It was confused, no doubt, to see a human running toward it.
Then confusion gave way to a full-throated bellow of pain and rage, for Nordric’s first stroke ripped into its thigh. Purplish-red ichor spurted from the wound. Gerin and the Elabonians cheered frantically, and were joined by more than a few Trokmoi not happy with the unholy ally Balamung had given them.
But the demon, faster than its bulk suggested, slipped by Nordric’s next rush. An arm longer than he was tall snaked out. A huge hand seized him in a chest-crushing embrace. No last oath passed his lips as his swords fell from nerveless fingers. The demon brought the fresh-killed dainty to its mouth. The horrible jaws slammed shut. The monster flung what was left of the broken body behind it and resumed its advance on the palisade.
Reaching the repaired section of wall, it grasped a charred timber near the top. Enormous muscles bunched under its glabrous hide. The timber groaned, screamed, and came loose with a splintering crash. The demon tossed it aside, grabbed another and pulled it free, then another and another.
More arrows thudded into its flesh, but so thick were its muscles that they guarded its vitals almost as well as a corselet. The Trokmoi shouted in excitement as they saw the barrier torn apart.
When the breach was all but complete, an Elabonian with more courage than sense attacked the demon with a spear. A heavy forearm knocked aside his weapon. The demon lashed out with a broad, flat foot. The Elabonian’s body, torn nearly in two by that terrible kick, flew through the air to land well within the courtyard of Fox Keep.
Balamung cried out once more in whatever fell tongue he used to control the monster he had summoned. It turned away from the keep, moved ponderously toward Gerin and his embattled comrades. The smoke from the burning stables grew thicker as the warriors who had been fighting the flames abandoned that task to meet the Trokmoi swarming into the breach.
More afraid of their hideous partner than the men they were facing, the woodsrunners who had opposed the Fox gave way as the demon neared. Out of the corner of his eye, Gerin saw Van closely studying the oncoming monster. The tight smile on the outlander’s face puzzled him until he realized his friend had at last found a foe to overawe him.
Then shouts from the keep made every head whirl. The demon, bat-ears unfurled to the fullest extent, turned to meet the new challenger bearing down on it. Duin the Bold, mounted on a horse and carrying the biggest spear he could find, had rammed his way through the Trokmoi at the breach. He thundered toward the monster, shouting to draw its attention from Gerin and his companions.
The part of the Fox’s mind which, regardless of circumstances, observed and recorded fine details, now noted that Duin was not riding bareback. He sat on a rectangular cloth pad cinched tight round the horse’s middle. His feet were in leather loops depending from either side of the pad.
Duin rode straight at the demon, which gathered itself to meet him. His lance, powered by the hard-charging horse, plunged deep into the monster’s belly. The improvised stirrups kept him atop his mount and added even more impact to the blow. The gore-smeared bronze spearpoint jutted from the demon’s back.
Its roar of agony filled the field. Though blood bubbled over its lips, it plucked Duin from his horse and slammed him to the ground. He lay unmoving. The demon’s shrieks faded to gurgles. It swayed, toppled, fell. Clawed fingers opened and closed on nothing, then were still.
But Balamung did not let the Trokmoi dwell on the defeat of his creature. “Have no fear, lads,” he said. “I’m after having more of the beasts, which they’ll not find easy to stop. And look: the palisade’s broken, and there’s fire in the courtyard. One more good push and we’ll need push no more.” He opened the Book of Shabeth-Shiri, began again the dreadful invocation which had called the demon from its plane.
Gerin looked from the congealing smoke of the Trokmê’s magic to the smoke puffing up from the stables—the stables where Balamung had slept three years before, the stables which, as his brother’s ghost had reminded him, had not been well cleaned from that time to this.
Sudden wild hope burned through him. If a single one of Balamung’s hairs was buried in the old dry straw of the burning outbuilding—and if his own memory still held the spell he had learned from Rihwin more out of sheer annoyance from any expectation it would ever be of use … “What have I to lose?” he muttered to himself, and began.
A woodsrunner leaped at him when he dropped his sword and shield. Van stretched the man lifeless in the dirt. The outlander had no idea what his friend was doing, or indeed whether he still had all his wits, but would guard him as long as breath was in his body.
Chanting in the harsh Kizzuwatnan tongue, left hand moving through passes fast as he dared, the Fox went to his knees in the first of the three required genuflections. As he rose, he remembered the words of the Sibyl of Ikos, words he had thought filled only with doom. Confidence tingled along his veins, warm like wine. He grinned savagely. Aye, he was bowing to the mage of the north, but he did not think Balamung would appreciate the compliment.
That newfound confidence almost made him careless. His tongue stumbled in a particularly intricate passage of the spell. For a moment, his body filled with frightening heat. But he r
ecovered and raced on, driving to be done before Balamung could finish his own magic and realize himself attacked. He bowed for the last time, shouted the last Kizzuwatnan curse, and stood. If he had blundered, he would soon be dead, either from the recoil of his spell or the overwhelming power of his foe.
He had won the race. Balamung was still incanting, his demon materializing before him. Half a minute passed in anticlimax. Gerin watched his enemy in baffled despair. Then the fire in the stables reached the two or three hairs still left from the wizard’s visit long before.
Balamung paused for an instant, brushing a sleeve of his robe across his forehead as if to wipe away sweat. Then little yellow flames licked at the robe, and at his flesh as well. Smoke poured from his body.
The half-formed demon vanished.
Balamung screamed, a cry of utmost anguish that stirred horror though from the throat of a foe. The wizard beat at his flaming chest with arms no less afire. He knew the author of his destruction the instant his dreadful eyes seized the Fox’s. A clawlike hand speared at Gerin for a final malediction. Flame dripped down the pointing index finger before the spell was cast.
The all-consuming fire left of Balamung only gray flakes of ash. The wind tossed them high in the air and blew them away. He had read his stars aright: no man would ever know his grave, for there was nothing of him to bury.
And with him burned the Book of Shabeth-Shiri. That evil tome, which had survived so long, seemed at the end more tenacious of life than the wizard who briefly owned it. Only slowly did the flames grip its pages. Gerin would have taken oath that he saw those pages flutter and rustle in an almost sentient effort to put out the fire and escape their fate. But the spells Shabeth-Shiri had amassed in ancient days now turned to smoke one by one, and as each was destroyed the power of the Book grew less. At last the fire engulfed it altogether, and it was gone.
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