Murie, all one hundred and five pounds of her, was mother-naked. Though, if one be softly furred in the most peculiar places, this may come under the heading of quasi-quasi. Whatever. I was quasi-quasi, too, and it was the kind of nakedness that dreams are made of, if one but has the imagination,
“Hey, my lord?” Murie had finally straddled me between clutches and was holding me by the ears and looking down into my eyes. “You look surprised. Did you not expect me?”
“No, I did not,” I said.
I reached up to pull all that squealing, squirming, sweet-scented, soft-fleshed mystique down upon me again.
There was no moon, or moons; only clouds reflecting the strobelike flashes of blue lightning to silver the room and our faces. In all the Galaxy, I thought, there could hardly be a more romantic setting than this. I was eighteen again, and it was senior prom with the scent of girl-flesh and Venusian Kablis. … I was a number of things, each representative of everything “great” that had ever happened to me. Then, finally, I was again Harl Lend, the Collin. I was a knight, a warrior, a feudal lord, a mythos come to life, so that small furry creatures such as the one I how held in my arms would continue to people the green vales and wine-dark mountains of this so-fair world of Camelot-Fregis.
I looked down into her purple eyes—she was beneath me now, held strongly against me, and holding just as strongly. “My princess,” I said, “I know naught of palace dalliance. But if you were to repeat but a tenth of this—even in thought— with anyone else, I would flay, stuff, and mount you, so that you would ride forever on my dottle’s rump, as Pug-Boos do. For know you well that I am the possessive type. And she who I most desire above all women, having come to this bed of her own free will, may not just leave it at her pleasure.” I was only half teasing. I gripped her tighter still and buried my face in the soft curve of her neck and shoulder.
“Oh, Sir Collin.” Her voice came muffled. “You think yourself possessive? I would warn you, sir, that the women of our family love fiercely or not at all. They choose not idly either. And when they do, the lord of their choice had best not yearn for chambermaids and bar girls, else he be flayed, tanned, and worked into a greatcoat for winter outings. You have my love, my lord, and that is that.” At this last she reached up and covered my mouth with hers, held for brief seconds, then slipped down the length of my throat to sink her small white teeth into my shoulder.
Above my instant yell she said, “And that is my mark. Do you likewise upon my body, so that I may know that you love me.”
I sat up aghast. “Murie,” I said. “I cannot I’m not an animal. I would not hurt you.”
“Nor am I an animal, stupid oaf. But I do love you. And if you have forgotten that in these brief seconds since the making of my mark, I will do it again—and again—until you love me.”
And so saying she gripped me with arms, legs, and teeth, so that I was driven somewhat wild with the absolute sensuousness of it all. And we became what we truly were. And the great, fur-strewn bed was a welter of Murie, the Collin, and sundry remains of various pelts and treated skins. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. And in the end I knew, at least from one point of view, what it was to love. I would learn of other ways in the perilous days ahead. But of this night I learned that which few are given to know—and in the end she had her teeth-marks. So help me, Ormon, but she had them! And we lay back then, her curls in the curve of my shoulder, arms and legs thrown across my body, and all around us the screaming of the wind and rain and the blue-white lightning of a primal sky such as only the Furies themselves could create. … A fitting stage, I thought, for this welding of myself and the elfish princess from a world that was now mine, too.
We talked. We murmured nonsense. We made love. Caroween, Murie told me, as I worried one of her slightly pointed ears with lips and teeth, was even now with her cousin, Rawl. And it was because of this that he had suspected that I, too, would be so honored.
“And what of your father?” I murmured against her breast.
“That you are my chosen.”
“He was not opposed?”
“Opposed?” She leaned upon a dainty elbow, her eyes but a lash’s distance from my own. … “I would think you not of Marack, my lord. Why oppose? I am his daughter. Were I not so in fact, then it would be otherwise. But I am. And that, too, is that.”
I pondered her statement. I said mildly, “But are marriage vows, at least, followed by certain ceremony? In our case, since you have arranged this joining, am I to assume you have arranged that, too?”
“In good tune, my lord,” she said, and kissed me. “We are at war now, however. But since all will know soon enough that you are to wed me, it will be sufficient for the moment.”
“Gods!” I grinned, and she grinned back at me.
I felt just slightly off-balance, though. Without a doubt prerogatives had been used without my gainsay. I said softly again, “It would appear, my most delicious tidbit, that though my counsel is sought in war, it is not sought in matters of our personal union.”
“Which is as it should be,” she answered pertly. “The question of marriage is the sole province of women, plus the ordering of the household—or has this news not reached that frozen mudhole wherein you claim your birthright?”
“Whatever,” I said. “One thing’s for sure, and that is that my ‘mudhole’ will see no more dull moments.” I bowed to her without getting up. “Your servant, m’lady… .” Then I ran my fingers along the length of her instantly reactivated body —and tried to hold her. “You,” I exclaimed, panting, “are like a bucket of eels.”
“Eels, my lord?” She wriggled deliciously. “What are eels?”
“Small fish,” I stammered. “In the north, in my province of Fleege.”
“I know not of them.” She looked at me closely and stopped her sexy squirming. “Which suggests again the matter of the mystery in you—a thing of the Collin, that you have hinted. My cousin, Rawl, has said that you are not wholly of this world, though what he meant, I know not. He told this to his love, the lady Caroween—and she to me.”
“In due time,” I said gruffly. “Be patient and know one thing, which is that I do love you, and that all that I do is a part of the love I bear for you.”
She raised above me again, stared into my eyes, then seized me in an embrace to equal all that had gone before. Finally there were but three brief hours till the pearling of a Fregis dawn. So I cautioned her, and wrapped in each other’s arms, we slept… .
She was gone when I awoke. Yet, when I met her later in the gray and storm-lashed courtyard, she was as fresh as a babe. Only the intimate sparkle in her eyes remained to tell me of our night’s adventure. We spoke but briefly, though she leaned to kiss me upon the cheek before all that gathered assembly—and thereby established our relationship for all to see. She was with Caroween, which was surprising since I had quite expected the good dame Malion to be her journey companion. But, as it turned out, the dame was sore ill, and of a sudden, so that Caroween took her place. They were both in light armor, dainty surcoats, and furred capes against the cold. They looked most appealing upon their quietly kneeling dottles. The skinny sorcerer neophyte named Ongus was with them. He, too, was dressed warmly for the journey. Other than a bag of tricks, herbs and such, he also carried a musical instrument consisting of a series of small pipes and a bellows. I had heard a similar one but yesterday, upon the tournament field. It had a strange, monotonous, and skirling noise— somewhat hypnotic.
The great flagstoned courtyard was alive to men, mounts, puddles of rain, and the shouts of hostlers and lackeys. I was all business now. I had but three days to deliver Murie to her sanctuary—three days to cover four hundred miles, and three more to reach the king’s army on the frontiers of Kelb. The ground-eating lope of a dottle was at twenty miles per hour, so this feat was not as impossible as it may seem.
Rawl and Hoggle-Fitz joined me in a brief inspection of our men: Rawl’s hundred in one Corner of the
courtyard; mine in another. I had been granted but ten men-at-arms and ten students. All were a menacing panoply of leather, steel, and weapons. I matched them in grimness. Even Rawl remarked that in the dawn’s light I looked most huge and black and evil. His statement seemed molded somewhat by his surprise at seeing Caroween with Murie. Indeed, since they, too, had spent the night together, I had no doubt that he had planned to keep her with him.
Griswall, a member of the king’s own household guard, and a heavily bearded knight of -many seasons, commanded my men-at-arms; Charney, a blue-eyed, red-furred scamp of a youth, led the students. I learned later that Charney had listed among his ten, three of his brothers. All had participated in the melee. I welcomed them, shook each proffered hand in turn. We were twenty-six in all. We had a herd of a hundred dottles, five of them burdened with foodstuffs, baggage, and the like.
There were no trumpets to hail our .departure, only the muffled martial cadence of kettledrums, echoing hollowly to the padded beat of our prancing dottles’ paws. The fulsome clouds lowered still further so that a most evil and penetrating mist seemed to descend upon us. I led off, with Murie at my side, down the distance between the walls and through the outer gate to the great meadow beyond. The mist was sleet, actually, akin to the cold of my own, supposed, northland. I reached across my dottle’s middle—I was riding Henery—to touch Murie’s hand, wondering if the snow-land to which we traveled was like the hell of the ice-world of Fen in the Cygnus system, where I had spent a most miserable six months.
Once through the portcullis and across the moat, we bid good-bye to Rawl and Fitz. We clasped hands and arms to do this, leather and armor all a’tinkling. I even felt somewhat choked up as I received the “sainted” Fitz’s blessing, and wished him well in turn. After all, the chance that I would see them again soon, considering, was questionable.
Caroween clung to Rawl for the space of minutes, tearful, feminine; her natural, warlike aplomb was now worn to a nub. Hoggle-Fitz stared fiercely and paternally at the both of them, but said never a word. … I wondered, at that last moment of parting, about Hooli; why he was not with us. I had not asked, for I was sufficiently suspect in that area already. But still, as our dottles broke into their first long strides, I remembered the voice of last night and became obsessed with the premonition of a gathering fate wherein the web had suddenly gone awry… .
All that day we thundered north and west, stopping only for the four-hour, midday dottle browsing-period. We crossed the Cyr three times along its sinuous course until it fell away to south and east. Some miles beyond Glagmaron city the forest began again in earnest, thick, impenetrable. At one point great rock falls lined the winding road that paralleled a tributary of the Cyr. The middle-aged knight, Griswall, led the way with his group of ten. He, like his men, was familiar with the road, having been born in those mountains bordering the plateau of the snow-lands.
With the steady drizzle, the advent of early summer, or “late spring” as some would call it, seemed premature. The rain-filled clouds were no harbingers of sunshine. Great birds flew overhead, waterfowl and predators of the winged variety, while all around us in the underbrush, outlined on wild promontories, and sometimes in the very road itself, was the fauna indigenous to Fregis. Some were sabertoothed, carnivorous, and almost ready to dispute our passage. Though, at the very last moment, if they were in the road, they would stand aside, or if watching us from a close deer-meadow, they would turn and disappear into the brush. One great animal resembled a Terran grizzly, but was six-limbed, as, seemingly, were most animals of Fregis. The thought caused me to wonder at the dominant humanoids with their four limbs; for suddenly it was something to think about. The “grizzly” was larger than the Terran model. He stood at least fourteen feet. He rose from the heavy grass beside a small stream to watch our passage with tiny eyes of a bright and laser red. He made no move to approach our thundering herd, though. And our dottles streamed past him with rolling eyes and bared teeth.
In the late afternoon the road wound between low hills and rocky promontories. It began to climb more steeply. Three times we passed hard-riding couriers, their dottles wild-eyed, dripping swaths of foam and sweat. Twice we passed large contingents of cavalry, archers, and footmen with heavy hardwood spears and pikelike weapons. There were at least two thousand to each contingent. Their captains saluted us gravely, bowing their heads briefly in obeisance to the princess. On one flat and rocky mass of crisp, short grass and wind-gnarled trees we found a crossroad. It led east to another road that, I knew, would meet one which would lead to my own, supposed, province of Fleege. To the west it wound down to Klimpinge province and Klimpinge city, on the shores of the western sea. One hour beyond the crossroads, and in the light of the fast-setting sun, we made our camp. Again we were ringed around with dottles against the night.
Murie and Caroween slept to themselves, though Murie came to me briefly before retiring. We leaned against the bole of a great tree, and I held her closely and we talked of Marack and of Fregis, and of ourselves and what we would do when the forces of Om were no longer on the northern shores. And once she spoke of strong sons to further our cause in distant battles. And while she talked I thought myself possessed of a veritable Valkyrie. I wondered, too, since my mink pelt— its growth had been artificially stimulated—was what it was, just what she would think of our somewhat “shorn” progeny. Then I walked her to her tent.
We—Griswall, Charney, and I—set pickets for the fires and as watchers. And in this we included ourselves. During one of my hour-long stints—it was almost the time of the false dawn and the clouds had disappeared and the second moon shone whitely—I dared to walk beyond the kneeling, sleeping dottles to a stony outcropping that overlooked the road we would take on the morrow. As I stared out along its length and then up to the fast-hurtling moon, I saw what seemed to be the great bat wings of the Vuun, skimming low, away from the mesa. Had it been here? I wondered. Settled and watching from across that silvered road? Or over there, perhaps, in that large grove? Then a slight breeze stirred and a smell of carrion, of rotting human flesh—I knew this because of the sick-sweet stench of it—touched briefly upon my nostrils.
My sword sprang instantly to my hand, and with never a sound, so well-oiled had I made both sheath and metal. A great boulder, half again as tall as a man, lay on the downslope of the hill. I approached it stealthily and rounded its prominence to come face to face with three creatures. They were as tall as myself, white-furred, muscular; naked, except for a leathern harness with sword and dagger. But the resemblance ended there. A single look into their eyes told me that they were what I had not believed to exist. The eyes were white-filmed, the mouths open, slack… . It was from these open mouths that the foulest of carrion stenches came. They were dead-alives, and they had been named correctly.
I drew a quick breath, crouched, knees flexed—and waited. Were there others in that far grove; behind the boulders strewn around? Then they advanced upon me, awkward, hideous, stumbling, pulling their swords from their sheaths with stiff and labored movements. I did not wait for their clumsy assault. In as many strokes as it took me to do it—and with an indescribable repugnance for the job—I literally slashed them limb from limb. Two final strokes and I had hewn the white arms from the last one’s body. Then I cleft the head down through (he shoulders to below the waist, from which there poured entrails and sundry putrescent effluvia containing a second life of maggots and yellow filth, to drench its knees and lower parts until the whole tottered and toppled. I did the same to the carcasses of the remaining two, so that, but for a few still jerky movements, they were reasonably dead a second time.
I stood apart from this moon-splashed scene of horror to find that my sword and legs were splashed with a reeking, stinking mass of pus and matter. I couldn’t stand it I backed away, retched, and gave the contents of my stomach to the ground. Were I again attacked in so defenseless a position, I would indeed be easy prey. My mind was dazed. The smell, no longer
encapsulated by the cadaver containers, had reached the sensitive nostrils of the dottles some three hundred yards away, and they were up and wheeeeing in horror and fear.
I woodenly retraced my steps toward our circle; saw Gris wall, Charney, and the others. They were armed and staring white-faced through the ring of dottles.
“Stay your weapons!” I cautioned. “There is naught to do now. Those who would walk the night are slain again. Bring me water. And bring it outside the circle, for I would not subject you to the filth of the things I have destroyed.” I stood some fifty feet from the wheeing dottles as I talked. They brought water but hesitated to come beyond the circle—even Griswall. But Murie, who had awakened, snatched a bucket and said, “I come, my lord,” and walked bravely out to me. The others sheepishly followed.
Of the fact that I truly loved her, there was no doubt; that I loved her then above all else was as true as the stars of our Galaxy. I disrobed before them, threw my clothes to the ground, cleansed my sword, my belt, and my body and walked back naked through the circle, with Murie most proudly at my side.
“The dead-alives,” I announced, while one of the students fetched fresh clothes, “were brought here by the Vuun; for what purpose we can only guess—certainly not for spying since the Vuun itself has better eyes for that. Have you seen dead-alives before?” I asked slyly, knowing full well that they had not.
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