A Cruel Wind

by Glen Cook

  iii) He returns to the place of his iniquity

  Once again the winged man slid down a midnight sky, a momentary shadow riding the beams of an October moon. It was Allernmas Night, nine months after his earlier visit. He banked in a whisper of air, swooped past towers, searched his sluggish memory. He found the right one, glided to the window, disappeared into darkness. A red-eyed shadow in a cloak of wings, he stared across the once festive court, waited. This second visit, he feared, was tempting Fate. Something would go wrong.

  A black blob momentarily blocked a gap between crenellations on the battlements. It moved along the wall, then down to the courtyard. The winged man unwound a light line from about his waist. One end he secured to a beam above his head. With that his mission was complete. He was supposed to take wing immediately, but he waited for his friend instead.

  Burla, a misshapen, dwarfish creature with a bundle on his back, swarmed toward him with the agility of the ape he resembled. The winged man turned sideways so his friend could pass.

  “You go now?” Burla asked.

  “No. I watch.”

  He touched his arm lightly, spilled a fangy smile. He was frightened, too. Death could pounce at any moment. “I start.” He wriggled, muttered, got the bundle off his back.

  They followed the hall the winged man had used before. Burla used devices he had been given to overcome protective spells, then overcame the new lock on the Queen’s door…

  Came a sleepy question. Burla and the winged man exchanged glances. Their fears had been proven well-founded, though the Master had predicted otherwise. Nevertheless, he had armed Burla against this possibility. The dwarf handed the winged man his bundle, took a fragile vial from his purse, opened the door a crack, tossed it through. Came another question, sharper, louder, frightened. Burla took a heavy, damp cloth from his pouch, resumed care of his bundle while the winged man tied it over his twisted mouth and nose.

  Still another question from the room. It was followed by a scream when Burla stepped inside. The cry reverberated down the hall. The winged man drew his dagger.

  “Hurry!” he said. Excited, confused voices were moving toward him, accompanied by a clash of metal. Soldiers. He grew more frightened, thought about flying now. But he could not abandon his friend. Indeed, he moved so the window exit would be behind him.

  His blade began to glow along its edge. The winged man held it high before him, so it stood out of the darkness, illuminating only his ugly face. Humans had their fears, too.

  Three soldiers came upstairs, saw him, paused. The winged man pulled his blade closer, spread his wings. The dagger illuminated those enough to yield the impression that he had swollen to fill the passageway. One soldier squeaked fearfully, then ran downstairs. The others mumbled oaths.

  Burla returned with the child. “We go now.” He was out the window and down the rope in seconds. The winged man followed, seizing the rope as he went. He rose against the moon, hoping to draw attention from Burla. The uproar was, like pond ripples, now lapping against the most distant palace walls.

  iv) He consorts with creatures of darkness

  In the Gudbrandsdal Forest, a Royal Preserve just beyond the boundary of the Siege of Vorgreberg, a dozen miles from Castle Krief, a bent old man stared into a sullen campfire and chuckled. “They’ve done it! They’ve done it. It’s all downhill from here.”

  The heavily robed, deeply cowled figure opposite him inclined its head slightly.

  The old man, the sausage seller, was wicked—in an oddly clean, impersonal, puckish sort of way—but the other was evil. Malefically, cruelly, blackly evil.

  The winged man, Burla, and their friends were unaware of the Master’s association with him.

  v) Bold in the service of his Lord

  Eanred Tarlson, a Wesson captain of the King’s Own, was a warrior of international repute. His exploits during the El Murid Wars had won renown throughout the bellicose Lesser Kingdoms. A Wesson peasant in an infantry company, Fate had put him near his King when the latter had received a freak, grave wound from a ricocheting arrow. Eanred had donned his Lord’s armor and had held off the fanatics for days. His action had won him a friend with a crown.

  Had he been Nordmen, he would have been knighted. The best his King could do for a Wesson was grant a commission. The knighthood came years later. He was the first Wesson to achieve chivalric orders since the Resettlement.

  Eanred was his King’s champion, respected even by the Nordmen. He was well known as an honest, loyal, reasonable man who dealt without treachery, who did not hesitate to press an unpopular opinion upon the King. He stood by his beliefs. Popularly, he was known for his victories in trials-by-combat which had settled disputes with neighboring principalities. The Wesson peasantry believed him a champion of their rights.

  Though Eanred had killed for his King, he was neither hard nor cruel. He saw himself only as a soldier, no greater than any other, with no higher ambition than to defend his King. He was of a type gold-rare in the Lesser Kingdoms.

  Tarlson, by chance, was in the courtyard when the furor broke. He arrived below the Queen’s tower in time to glimpse a winged monster dwindling against the moon, trailing a fine line as if trolling the night for invisible aerial fish. He studied its flight. The thing was bound toward the Gudbrandsdal.

  “Gjerdrum!” he thundered at his son and squire, who accompanied him. “A horse!” Within minutes he galloped through the East Gate. He left orders for his company to follow. He might be chasing the wind, he thought, but he

  was

  taking action. The rest of the palace’s denizens were squalling like old ladies caught with their skirts up. Those Nordmen courtiers! Their ancestors may have been tough, but today’s crop were dandified cretins.

  The Gudbrandsdal wasn’t far on a galloping horse. Eanred plunged in afoot after tying his horse where others could find it. He discovered a campfire immediately. Drawing his sword, he stalked the flames. Soon, from shadow, he spied the winged thing talking with an old man bundled in a blanket. He saw no weapon more dangerous than the winged thing’s dagger.

  That dagger… It seemed to glow faintly. He strode toward the fire, demanded, “Where’s the Prince?” His blade slid toward the throat of the old man.

  His appearance didn’t startle the two, though they shrank away. Neither replied. The winged man drew his blade. Yes, it glowed. Magic! Eanred shifted his sword for defense. This monstrous, reddish creature with the blade of pale fire might be more dangerous than he appeared.

  Something moved in the darkness behind Tarlson. A black sleeve reached. He sensed his danger, turned cat-swift while sweeping his blade in a vertical arc. It cut air—then flesh and bone. A hand fell beside the fire, kicking up little sprays of dust, fingers writhing like the legs of a dying spider. A scream of pain and rage echoed through the forest.

  But Eanred’s stroke came too late. Fingers had brushed his throat. The world grew arctically cold. He leaned slowly like a tree cut through. All sensation abandoned him. As he fell, he turned, saw first the dark outline of the being that had stunned him, the startled faces of the others, then the severed hand. The waxy, monstrous thing was crawling toward its owner… Everything went black. But he tumbled into darkness with a silent chuckle. Fate had given him one small victory. He was able to push his blade through the hand and lever it into the fire.

  vi) His heart is heavy, but he perseveres

  Burla, with the baby quiet in the bundle on his back, reached the Master’s campsite as the last embers were dying. False dawn had begun creeping over the Kapenrung Mountains. He cursed the light, moved more warily. Horsemen had been galloping about since he had left the city. All his nighttime skills had been required to evade them.

  Troops had been to the campsite, he saw. There had been a struggle. Someone had been injured. The Master’s blanket lay abandoned, a signal. He was well but had been forced to flee. Burla’s unhappiness was exceeded only by his fear that he wasn’t competent to fulfill the
task now assigned him.

  His work, which should have been completed, had just begun. He glanced toward the dawn. So many miles to bear the baby through an aroused countryside. How could he escape the swords of the tall men?

  He had to try.

  Days he slept a little, and traveled when it was safe. Nights he hurried through, moving as fast as his short legs would carry him, only occasionally pausing at a Wesson farm to steal food or milk for the child. He expected the poor tiny thing to die any time, but it was preternaturally tough.

  The tall men failed to catch him. They knew he was about, knew that he had had something to do with the invasion of the Queen’s tower. They did turn the country over and shake out a thousand hidden things. The time came when, high in the mountains, he trudged wearily into the cave where the Master had said to meet if they had to split up.

  vii) Their heads nod, and from their mouths issue lies

  An hour after the kidnapping, someone finally thought to see if Her Majesty was all right. They didn’t think much of their Queen, those Nordmen. She was a foreigner, barely of childbearing age, and so unobtrusive that no one spared her a thought. Queen and nurse were found in deep, unnatural sleep. And there was a baby at the woman’s breast.

  Once again Castle Krief churned with confusion. What had been seen, briefly, as a probable Wesson attempt to interrupt the succession, was obviously either a great deal less, or more, sinister. After a few hints from the King himself, it was announced that the Prince was sleeping well, that the excitement had been caused by a guard’s imagination.

  Few believed that. There had been a switch. Parties with special interests sought the physician and midwife who had attended the birth, but neither could be found—till much later. Their corpses were discovered, mutilated against easy recognition, in a slum alley. Royal disclaimers continued to flow.

  The King’s advisers met repeatedly, discussed the possible purpose of the invasion, the stance to be taken, and how to resolve the affair. Time passed. The mystery deepened. It became obvious that there would be no explanations till someone captured the winged man, the dwarf a guard had seen go monkeying down the ivied wall, or one of the strangers who had been camped in the Gudbrandsdal. The dwarf was working his way east toward the mountains. No trace of the others turned up. The army concentrated on the dwarf. So did those for whom possession of the Crown Prince meant leverage.

  The fugitive slipped away. Nothing further came of the strange events. The King made certain the child with his Queen, at least in pretense, remained his heir. The barons stopped plaguing odd strangers and resumed their squabbles. Wessons returned to their scheming, merchants to their counting houses. Within a year the mystery seemed forgotten, though countless eyes kept tabs on the King’s health.

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  i) Bragi Ragnarson and Elana Michone

  Suffering in silence, brushing her coppery hair, Elana Ragnarson endured the grumbling of her husband.

  “Bills of lading, bills of sale, accounts payable, accounts receivable, torts and taxes! What kind of life is this? I’m a soldier, not a bloody merchant. I wasn’t meant to be a coin counter…”

  “You could hire an accountant.” The woman knew better than to add that a professional would keep better books. His grumbling was of no moment anyway. It came with spring, the annual disease of a man who had forgotten the hardships of the adventurer’s life. A week or so, time enough to remember sword-strokes dangerously close, unshared beds in icy mud, hunger, and the physical grind of forced marches, would settle him down. But he would never completely overcome the habits of a Trolledyngjan boyhood. North of the Kratchnodian Mountains all able males went to war as soon as the ice broke up in the harbors.

  “Where has my youth gone?” he complained as he began dressing. “When I was fresh down from Trolledyngja, still in my teens, I was leading troops against El Murid… Hire? Did you say hire, woman?” A heavy, hard face encompassed by shaggy blond hair and beard momentarily joined hers in her mirror. She touched his cheek. “Bring in some thief who’ll rob me blind with numbers on paper?

  “When me and Mocker and Haroun were stealing the fat off Itaskian merchants, I never dreamed I’d get fat in the arse and pocket myself. Those were the days. I still ain’t too old. What’s thirty-one? My father’s father fought at Ringerike when he was eighty…”

  “And got himself killed.”

  “Yeah, well.” He rambled on about the deeds of other relatives. But each, as Elana pointed out, had died far from home, and not a one of old age.

  “It’s Haroun’s fault. Where’s he been the last three years? If he turned up, we could get a good adventure started.”

  Elana dropped her brush. Cold-footed mice of fear danced along her spine. This was bad. When he began missing that ruffian bin Yousif the fever had reached a critical pitch. If by whim of fate the man turned up, Bragi could be lured into another insane, byzantine scheme.

  “Forget that cutthroat. What’s he ever done for you? Just gotten you in trouble since the day you met.” She turned. Bragi stood with one leg in a pair of baggy work trousers, the other partially raised from the floor. She had said the wrong thing. Damn Haroun! How had he gotten a hold on a man as bullheadedly independent as Bragi?

  She suspected it was because bin Yousif had a cause, a decades-deep vendetta with El Murid which infected his every thought and action. His dedication to vengeance awed a man like Bragi.

  Finally, grunting, Ragnarson finished dressing. “Think I’ll ride over to Mocker’s today. Visit a spell.”

  She sighed. The worst was past. A day in the forest would take the edge off his wanderlust. Maybe she should stay home next time he went to Itaskia. A night on his own, in Wharf Street South, might be the specific for his disease.

  “Papa? Are you ready?” their eldest son, Ragnar, called through the bedroom door.

  “Yeah. What you want?”

  “There’s a man here.”

  “This early? Tramp, huh, looking for a handout? Tell him there’s a soft touch next house north.” He chuckled. The next place north was that of his friend Mocker, twenty miles on.

  “Bragi!” A look was enough. The last man he had sent north had been a timber buyer with a fat navy contract.

  “Yes, dear. Ragnar? Tell him I’ll be down in a minute.” He kissed his wife, left her in troubled thought.

  Adventures. She had enjoyed them herself. But no more. She had traded the mercenary days for a home and children. Only a fool would dump what they had to cross swords with young men and warlocks. Then she smiled. She missed the old days a little, too.

  ii) A curious visitor

  Ragnarson clumped downstairs into the dining hall and peered into its gloomy corners. It was vast. This place was both home and fortress. It housed nearly a hundred people in troubled times. He shivered. No one had kindled the morning fires. “Ragnar! Where’s he at?”

  His son popped from the narrow, easily defended hallway to the front door. “Outside. He won’t come in.”

  “Eh? Why?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Well, if he won’t, he won’t.” As he strode to the door, Ragnarson snatched an iron-capped club from a weapons rack.

  Outside, in the pale misty light of a morning hardly begun, an old, old man waited. He leaned on a staff, stared at the ground thoughtfully. His bearing was not that of a beggar. Ragnarson looked for a horse, saw none.

  The ancient had neither pack nor pack animal, either. “Well, what can I do for you?”

  A smile flashed across a face that seemed as old as the world. “Listen.”

  “Eh?” Bragi grew uneasy. There was something about this fellow, a

  presence…

  “Listen. Hear, and act accordingly. Fear the child with the ways of a woman. Beware the bells of a woman�
��s fingers. All magicks aren’t in the hands of sorcerers.” Ragnarson started to interrupt, found that he could not. “Covet not the gemless crown. It rides the head precariously. It leads to the place where swords are of no avail.” Having said his cryptic piece, the old man turned to the track leading toward the North Road, the highway linking Itaskia and Iwa Skolovda.

  Ragnarson frowned. He was not a slow-witted man. But he was unaccustomed to dealing with mystery-mouthed old men in the sluggish hours of the morning. “Who the hell are you?” he thundered.

  Faintly, from the woods:

  “Old as a mountain,

  Lives on a star,

  Deep as the ocean flows.”

  Ragnarson pursued fleas through his beard. A riddle. Well. A madman, that’s what. He shrugged it off. There was breakfast to eat and the ride to Mocker’s to be made. No time for crazies.

  iii) Things she loves and fears

  Elana, who had overheard, could not shrug it off. She feared its portent, that Bragi was about to hie off on some harebrained venture.

  From a high window she stared at the land and forest they had conquered together. She remembered. They had come late in the year to a landgrant so remote that they had had to cut a path in. That first winter had been cold and hard. The winds and snows pouring over the Kratchnodians had seemed bent on revenge for the disasters wrought there the winter previous, in Bragi’s last campaign. The blood of children and wolves had christened the new land.

  The next year there had been a flareup of the ancient boundary dispute between Prost Kamenets and Itaskia. Bandits, briefly legitimatized by letters of marque from Prost Kamenets, had come over the Silverbind. Many hadn’t gone home, but the land had also drunk the blood of its own.

  The third had been the halcyon year. Their friends Nepanthe and Mocker had been able to break loose and take a grant of their own.