by Glen Cook
Narriman drew her saber, stalked forward. Her mind boiled with all she wanted to say before she killed him.
He regained control, drew his own blade. A strained smile crossed his lips.
Narriman moved in carefully. I'll attack to his right, she thought. Make him put more strain on his wound. He's battered and bleeding. He'll be slow. I can wear him down.
"Little Fox. Little fool. Why did you come here? Outsiders don't come into the Jebal. Not and leave again."
There'll be a first, then, she thought. But she did not speak. Things she wanted to say rattled through her mind, but not one reached her lips. Her approach was as silent and implacable as his preceding her rapes.
She threw three hard, quick strokes. He turned them, but looked disturbed. She was not supposed to do this, was she? She was supposed to fall under his spell.
"Narriman! Look at me!"
She was caught by the command. She met his eye.
The fire ran through her. She ached for him. And to her surprise, she ignored it. She struck while his guard was loose, opened a gash on his cheek.
He went pale. His eyes grew larger. He could not believe it.
She struck again. He blocked her, thrust back, nearly reached her. He knew he was not dealing with a little girl anymore.
He beat her back, then retreated. A weird keening came from him, though his lips did not move. Leaves stirred. A cold wind rose. The tip of Narriman's saber drooped like a candle in the sun. She shifted it to her left hand, pulled her dagger and threw it. Mowfik had taught her that.
The dagger struck the shaghûn in the left shoulder, spun him. The cold wind died. Narriman moved in with her odd-looking saber. Fear filled the shaghûn's eyes.
He plucked the dagger from his wound and made those sounds again. His wounds began to close.
Surprise had been Narriman's best weapon. Fate had stolen that. She feared she had more than she could handle now.
She launched a furious attack. He retreated, stumbled, fell. She cut him several times before he rose.
But he had his confidence back. She could not kill him. He smiled. Arrow, saber, and dagger. She had exhausted her options. She did have poison. Would he step up and take it? She had a garrote given her by one of Al Jahez's men, half a love-offering and half a well-wish. But would he hold still while she used it?
Brush crackled. She whirled. "Misr, I told you . . . ."
That shaghûn smashed into her, knocked her saber away. His fingers closed around her chin and forced her to turn toward him.
XVI
Lost! she wailed inside. She should have listened to Al Jahez and Mowfik. The fire was in her again and she could not stop him. He stripped her slowly, taking pleasure in her humiliation.
He pressed her down on the stones and pines needles and stood over her, smiling. He disrobed slowly. And Misr stood there watching, too terrified to move.
Tears streaming, Narriman forced her eyes shut. She had been so close! One broken twig short.
She felt him lower himself, felt him probe, felt him enter. Felt herself respond. Damn, she hated him!
She found enough hatred to shove against his chest. But only for an instant. Then he was down upon her again, forcing her hands back against her breasts. "Karkur," she wept.
The shaghûn moaned softly, stopped bucking. His body stiffened. He pulled away. The spell binding Narriman diminished.
"The Great Death!" she breathed.
It had him, but he was fighting it. Amber wriggled over him, flickering. There were few bloody veins in it. His mouth was open as though to scream, but he was gurgling a form of his earlier keening.
Narriman could not watch.
It did not occur to her that a mere shaghûn, even a shaghûn of the Jebal, could overcome Karkur's Great Death. He was but stalling the inevitable. She crawled to her discarded clothing.
Misr said something. She could not look at him. Her shame was too great.
"Mama. Do something."
She finally looked. Misr pointed.
The shaghûn's face was twisted. The muscles of his left arm were knotted. The bone was broken. But there was just one patch of amber left, flickering toward extinction.
He had bested the Great Death!
A silent wail of fear filled her. There was no stopping him! Raging at the injustice, she seized a dead limb and clubbed him. Misr grabbed a stick and started swinging too.
"Misr, stop that."
"Mama, he hurt you."
"You stop. I can do it but you can't." Did that make sense? I can murder him but you can't? No. Some things could not be explained. "Get away."
She swung again. The shaghûn tried to block with his injured arm. He failed. The impact sent him sprawling. The Great Death crept over him. She hit him again.
He looked at her with the eyes of the damned. He did not beg, but he did not want to die. He stared. There was no enchantment in his eyes. They contained nothing but fear, despair, and, maybe, regret. He was no shaghûn now. He was just a man dying before his time.
The club slipped from her fingers. She turned back, collected her clothes. "Misr, let's get our things." For no reason she could appreciate, she recalled Al Jahez's words about severed heads.
She collected the shaghûn's sword, considered momentarily, then gave him the mercy he had denied her.
"You killed him, Mama. You really killed him." Misr was delighted.
"Shut up!"
She could have closed her eyes to his screams, but his dying face would have haunted her forever. It might anyway.
When all else was stripped away, he had been a man. And once a mother had wept for him while a dark rider had carried him toward the rising sun.
Misr Sayed bin Hammad al Muburaki, the Hammer of God, would become a major player in desert politics in the later Dread Empire novels, just as Sadhra prophesied.
Silverheels
The following wasn't originally intended for publication. It was written at the 1969 Clarion Workshop as a birthday gift for Fritz Leiber, one of whose loves was cats. Both he and Robin Wilson, the workshop director, insisted I market it.
This was my second sold and first published piece of short fiction. It was not, at the time, part of the Dread Empire world, that not having yet coalesced. But changing just a few words places it in the wild north of that world rather than the wild north of our own—though, as the name implies, Trolledyngja is a particularly remote mountain wilderness in our own world, armed with an ancient reputation for harboring all manner of the fey.
In the old days there was a man from Telemark, up in Lochlain, which you call Trolledyngja, who had a very strange adventure. His name was Olav and he lived in Rauland, beside Lake Totak. Everyone thought him a ne'er-do-well, because, instead of farming his land, he made his living by fishing the lake, and trapping in the forests covering the sides of the valley leading down to the lake's eastern edge. Olav did not mind what people thought. He was content with his own sort of friends.
Save for a few animals, old Olav had lived most of his life alone. He had just two friends at the time of his great adventure: a mare pony named Faith, and a black kitten with white paws, called Silverheels. A precocious kitten.
They were very close, those three, and some of the more credulous country folk thought Olav a wizard, or even one of the huldre-folk—the hidden people, the mischievous elves of that country—because he talked with his animal friends. But there was no truth to that rumor. He had merely saved a talent from childhood, a talent his neighbors had forgotten.
It was a fine, sunny day just before summer's start when Olav began his adventure. He had had a particularly fine catch the day before, so he called Faith and Silverheels, and said, "Friends, let's take this fish down to Rauland Market today. I need some salt, and a pink ribbon for Faith's mane."
So they got the fish, put them into two panniers on the pony's back, Olav set Silverheels up on top, and off they went to market. They had been walking about an hour when Faith noti
ced that Silverheels was sneaking fish from the baskets.
"Little thief, stop!"
"It's just a small one," said Silverheels, guiltily.
"But the fourth. And there'll be another, and another, and then how will Olav get the money to buy my ribbon?"
"Oh, don't worry, Faith," said Olav. "We have enough to get the ribbon. But if Silverheels steals another fish, we won't get him his bowl of cream." Olav always bought Silverheels a bowl of cream when they took fish down to Rauland town.
Silverheels liked his cream. He took his paws out of the basket and behaved very well. For a time.
Down around Lake Totak they walked, and came to the foot of Dovre Mountain, where trolls and huldre-folk were said to live. They reached a turn in the road where an old grandfather of trees had fallen across a huge boulder.
They met a strange man around the turn. Very old he was, dressed in a gray robe, and wearing a white beard so long it hung to his waist. He was leaning on an oaken staff in the middle of the road, humming to himself.
"Excuse me, sir," said Olav. "I have to get by so I can take my fish to Rauland. I have to get some salt, and a ribbon for my pony."
"He's not going to move," said Silverheels. "He's one of the huldre-folk."
The old man looked up then, staring at the kitten. Silverheels stared right back, his head cocked naughtily.
"Silverheels is right," Faith said. "He's the king of the huldre. My dam told me about him."
The old man turned his strange eyes on the pony. She backed a step away. Olav made signs against the evil eye, twice, hoping that would frighten the hulder away.
"I'll buy your mare and kitten," said the bearded man. Olav thought his eyes seemed on fire, so intense was his gaze. Frightened, he made the signs of Hammer and Star, from the new religion and the old, in appeal to whatever gods were watching, then replied, "I'll not sell my friends, all I have in the world."
"Well, if that's the case, you'll just have to come along too, Crazy Olav." Crazy Olav, that's what the villagers down in Rauland called him.
"Where?"
"A place with no name." The old man walked to the fallen tree and smote the boulder beneath with the tip of his staff. The sound was louder than the ringing of the alarm bell in the thane's watchtower, the other side of Rauland. As the ringing died, a large door opened in the side of the rock. Olav could see a passage, lit by smoky torches, waiting within. He made the Hammer and Star again.
The old man stepped through the doorway, then beckoned the three to follow. Then they realized they were huldrin, which is the name given those who are bewitched by a hulder. They could not keep their feet from starting down the path which led into the heart of the mountain.
Olav, Faith, and Silverheels followed the wizard through a long tunnel. It seemed it would take forever to get wherever they were bound.
Once they happened on a band of drunken trolls, but the old magician cast a spell so they would not be seen by the wicked tusse-folk. Had the trolls known of their visitors, they would have had a plump little pony for supper. And, perhaps, a kitten, or even a stringy old Trolledyngjan.
A while later, they came to caves where dwarves lived. Olav marveled at all the gold and silver the little smiths had.
After more weary travel, they came to the end of the tunnel. Olav immediately knew they were nowhere in Trolledyngja. He saw dragons soaring in the sky, huldre maidens catching sunbeams in great silver bowls, and he knew that they had entered Utröst, the land of the elves.
He and his friends followed the old wizard across a strange land, a land where it was always late afternoon, and, at last, came to a great castle with many towers, which sat high atop a hill. Huldre knights rode forth to greet them, hailing the wizard "King," confirming Faith's identification. Princesses lined the gray battlements over the gate, waving gaily colored handkerchiefs, bidding their father a welcome home. All the huldre squires and servants, dressed in their finest, were clustered at the drawbridge. The old man stopped and greeted each as he led his captives into the fortress.
Olav, Faith, and Silverheels whispered to one another, questioning these strange events, and wondering what they should do. They wanted to go home, but were unable to escape the spell the wizard had cast. Naturally, they were frightened for there were many tales told in Trolledyngja about the evil ways of some of the folk of Utröst.
Then little Silverheels succumbed to curiosity, and announced that he wanted to go on. Olav told him the tale of curiosity and the cat, but the kitten wouldn't listen.
The wizard led the way into a great hall where a huge meal was already set on the tables. There were just four places set: platters of meat for Olav and the king, a trencher heaped with fine fresh clover for Faith, and a little golden bowl of cream for Silverheels. Relieved, the three captives took their places at the Elfking's table.
When they were done, and after huldre maidens had brought out huge stoops of chilled ale for Olav and the king, it was time to talk.
"Why did you bring us here?" Silverheels asked.
"Ah, little kitten, you're a bold one, I see. I've brought you here because I want you to help my people, in a way only mortals are able. You see, there are a pair of terrible dragons, Ironclaw and Hookfang, who are destroying the kingdom. My people cannot stop them because it's impossible for one under-earth creature to slay another. Only a mortal can give the gift of death to a creature of Utröst. And these two dragons cannot be bested, save by being slain."
Olav and Faith shook with fear at the mere mention of dragons, for the linnormen have a dreadful reputation in their country, though no Trolledyngjan could truthfully claim to have seen one. But little Silverheels was undismayed. "Why don't you use your magic to make them go away, old wizard?"
"Because a wicked sorcerer of the east, of a land where the sun never shines, is using a magic greater than my own. The linnormen are proof from my power. These dragons can be slain only by a sword of steel, and only a mortal can stand the touch of iron."
"Then you were certain I would come too?" Olav asked.
"Yes, you're too fond of your friends to sell them to a stranger. And there was my spell."
"Am I not too old for such carryings on? Anyway, I've never held a sword in my life. I wouldn't know how to use one. How could I slay a dragon?"
"You can do it easy, Olav," said Silverheels, cocking his head at the old fisherman. "I think it'll be fun."
"You're just a kitten," Faith scolded. "You've never even caught a mouse. What would you know about dragons?"
Silverheels pretended he couldn't hear her, because he couldn't think of an answer. Olav and Faith argued with the king and Silverheels until late in the evening (it was always evening in that part of Elfland), but the question was finally settled in spite of any of their wishes.
When Olav and the king were many stoops of ale along, a young hulder knight came running in. He bore evil news. "Sire," he cried, "the dragons have come to the castle proper. The Red Dragon, Ironclaw, is setting fire to the fields in the west. The White Dragon, Hookfang, is burning the farmers' village to the east. The country folk are fleeing into the castle, but many have suffered grievous wounds where they were touched by drops of dragon fire."
Silverheels hopped from his stool to the top of the table. He danced with joy because he had a chance to see a real live dragon. Faith and Olav grew very frightened. They were older and wiser, and knew dragons were no fun. The king grew sad. "My enemy has brought evil to the walls of my people. It is sad that you will not help, Olav."
Olav, too, felt sad, but he had always considered himself a wise man. And a wise man knew better that to challenge the might of a dragon. There were many bleached bones to prove it.
Silverheels suddenly gave a little kittenish "miaow" of excitement. His sharp ears had caught the distant roaring of dragons. He leapt to the floor and scampered across the room. Over his shoulder, he called, "I'm going to see the linnormen."
"You come back here!" Olav cried. "Do
you want to get burnt?"
Faith ran after the kitten, but Silverheels evaded her. As he went out the door, he called, "Old Olav, I think you're afraid."
That made Olav angry. "I'm no coward! I just know better than to get myself killed fighting dragons!"
"Old Olav, I think you're afraid."
Olav got madder. Without thinking, he snatched a heavy sword from the hands of a hulder knight wearing thick gloves, and went striding off after Silverheels. Faith looked at the old fisherman strangely, then timorously followed. Smiling, the Elfking came along behind the mare.
Silverheels skipped upstairs, pausing just often enough to taunt Olav into following. He led the way to the turret of a tall tower, the tallest of the castle. From that vantage point, both dragons, and the damage they were doing, could be seen.
In the west was the blood-red dragon called Ironclaw, and in the east, now destroying precious vineyards, was the ivory dragon called Hookfang. The monsters had already destroyed most of the huldre crops. The Elfking was red with rage, but he could do nothing to protect his people from this plague. The lightning-spells he cast, there on the heights of his tower, only served to draw the attentions of the dragons. Perhaps that was the idea he had in mind.
Ironclaw soared up in the west, blood against the sun. In the east, Hookfang spiraled into the sky, turning toward the castle, trailing smoke. Both dragons circled the tower widdershins. Ironclaw roared past at low altitude, a huge, winged snake. His talons and fangs gleamed in the evening sun, like golden scimitars. Smoke and fire trailed from his huge nostrils. Hookfang was close behind. The White Dragon was both larger and uglier, like a gigantic, winged crocodile. His smoke and fire seemed to cover half the sky.
The huldre-king told a hasty spell, then said, "Olav, the sword is iron. It is proof against all the magic of Utröst, but still must be used at the right time. You must use it only when you can smite the Red Dragon in the eye, or the White in the heart. Each is invulnerable, except in those places. I've erected a spell which will protect the top of this tower, and you, from their fire, but that protection will be destroyed the moment you strike your first blow. If you make that stroke count, you will need fear but one of them." Having said this, the Elfking hastily retreated into the tower. He slammed a heavy door behind him.
