The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  It was bright daylight on the other side of the tapestry and Jenna blinked frantically, trying to adjust her eyes to the sudden light. She turned to speak to Skada but Skada was gone. Jenna felt a terribly loneness, as if she had been forsaken, though she knew it was but a trick of the sun. Skada would be back again in the evening. If they were still alive by evening.

  Then she realized that the room was unnaturally quiet for the central room of a castle. Slowly she looked around. No one was there.

  “Empty,” she whispered at last to the slightly raised tapestry.

  The curtain inched its way higher until there was a doorway held between hands. The rest of the prisoners boiled through, blinking awkwardly in the light and staring about in confusion. If they had expected anything, it was not this. The Great Hall was totally deserted.

  “I don’t understand …” Carum began.

  “I do,” Jenna said. “Listen!”

  They all heard it then, the faint tumble of voices coming from outside where an uneven battle was being waged.

  “We must help them,” someone cried.

  “First set fire to this hall,” Jenna said. “You—the curtains there. And you—the arras on the other wall.”

  “And break up those chairs. At least we will have clubs to fight with,” Carum called.

  The tapestries smoldered slowly at first, refusing to take up the flame, till at last one section flared suddenly, and within minutes that Cres and his heroes were completely consumed by the fire. The men armed themselves with chair legs and the table bracings and several caught up cushions from the chairs to use as shields. The rest of the furniture they piled in the middle of the hall and set on fire. As the central flames rose higher, Skada danced next to Jenna for a second.

  “I will follow whenever I can,” she said.

  “I know,” Jenna whispered, then waved to the empty air as she followed Carum and the men out of the door and down a wide hallway.

  Racing along the door-lined hall, they followed the cook’s shouted directions, heedless now of any noise. They came upon two guards who turned to face them but were quickly and efficiently disarmed and bound by Carum and three of the men wielding clubs. The guards’ swords were taken up by two of the men, and a dagger in a boot was found as well.

  “I will take that,” said the cook, pointing at the dagger. “And I’ll dice the next one into small, bite-sized pieces.” He giggled.

  “Just get us outside,” Carum cried, “and you can carve up who you will.”

  The cook led them to a wide stone stairs flanked by a pair of magnificent banisters polished to a high gleam. At the bottom of the staircase, ranged across it to block them, were some twenty castle guards armed with swords and fully shielded.

  “What now?” Jenna asked. “We have but five swords and a knife.”

  “Let them come up to us,” Carum said. “They’ll have a harder time of it, unbalanced on the stairs, though what I would give for a bow now. Still, we have more men. And clubs.”

  As if guessing Carum’s strategy, the guards remained below, unmoving. Long minutes went by.

  At last Jenna said, “We cannot just wait.”

  “If we go down there one at a time, they’ll take us one by one. If we try and rush them with the weapons we have, it will be a slaughter.”

  “Then we must fool them with a line of false mice.”

  “Too late. They’ve seen us and counted our weapons. Time is on their side,” Carum said.

  “Cook,” Jenna said suddenly, turning. “What of those doors we passed in the hallway. Any escape there?”

  “They are closets, lady. With extra dishes and linens and …”

  “Ha!” Jenna said, turning back to Carum. “We will have our mice! You”—she touched one of the men on the shoulder—“take my sword. And you—take Carum’s.” When they hesitated, she shoved her sword at one, took Carum’s and handed it to another man. “And you three”—she pointed to some of the weaker-looking men—“come with us.”

  Carum chose a raw-boned, blond-bearded man to be in charge while he was gone, then ran to catch up with Jenna. “Where are we going?”

  “To make us a line of mice.”

  Kicking open the first door, she stripped the shelves of priceless wool and linen weavings, of banners and toweling.

  “Take it all,” she told them.

  The second closet yielded goblets and platters and, best of all, carving knives.

  A third closet would not open even to their frantic kicking, and they left it, hurrying back to the stairs with their treasures. The guards were still waiting below with the studied calm of hunting cats, but the men at the top of the stairs had not been as patient. A few were several steps down and pacing. One had already tried to get through the line by himself, his bloody body testimony to the foolishness of such an act.

  “He was not one of us, my lord, but a prisoner of Kalas’ from before. He had not our training,” the blond-bearded man said.

  “Still we must count him as ours,” Carum said softly. “He died on Kalas’ blades.”

  “Here is what I would have us do,” Jenna said, showing them how to tie together the line of banners and linen, threading into place the cups and platters and bowls.

  “A woman’s wiles,” complained one man.

  “A mouse’s,” Carum said, smiling grimly. “Listen to her.”

  Below the soldiers were curious at first, but at a shouted command from their captain, stilled again, waiting with swords raised.

  It took precious minutes to complete the little mice, as Jenna called the strange assortment of cobbled-together tableware. She traded the men carving knives for cudgels, adding the pieces of wood to her strange tapestry. Then she gave the final orders in a whisper, telling the men of their places.

  “The signal,” she explained, “is For Longbow!”

  She stationed herself at the top of one banister, one end of the tied banners slipknotted around her waist. Carum stood at the other. He had a similar line bound around. They each held a sword. Behind them, not yet taut across, was the quick weave and behind it, the waiting men, knives, torches, and three swords at the ready.

  “For Longbow!” Jenna shouted suddenly, and at the signal she and Carum both leaped onto the banisters as if onto horses. They pulled the line taut between them, a strange curtain of heavy implements, and slid straight down. Screaming their defiance, the men came trampling down the stairs right after. The bemused guards watched their advance.

  The mouse-line hit the guards neck high, tangling them long enough for Jenna and Carum to slip the knots from their waists. By the time the guards had gotten free of the weaving, Carum’s men were on them, too close for the swords. The carving knives, sharp enough for tough venison, found little resistance in the soft meat of a man’s neck. It was over in minutes, and only one of Carum’s crew had been injured from tripping in the lines himself and cutting his shin on a piece of broken glass.

  Quickly they stripped the guards of their weapons and shields and then hurried, under the cook’s nervous direction, toward the main doors. A heavy piece of wood deadbolted the door, but they managed to push it aside. When they flung open the doors, the scene outside in the courtyard was bedlam.

  Outmanned but fighting steadily and well were the women of M’dorah, light sisters only, battling under the glaring eye of the afternoon sun. There was no sign of Piet and his men.

  “They are still behind the gates,” Jenna cried.

  “Or caught in the trap between the portcullises,” Carum added. “We must raise those gates.”

  “I will, my lord,” cried the blond-bearded man. “I’ll take several with me.” He hurried out, careful to sidestep a number of the fighting guards. Jenna watched as he made his way across the courtyard and knew they could count on his success, for he was single-minded in his march, and the men around him saved him from many a blow.

  “And where is Kalas?” Carum cried. “Where is that toad? I do not see him.”
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  Jenna realized that she had not seen him, either.

  “He is where toads always are, my lord, hiding in a hole,” the cook said. He smiled and Jenna saw that his teeth were as yellow as Kalas’ had been. As yellow as the Cat’s. She wondered that a cook could afford such an addiction.

  “In his dungeon?” Carum asked.

  “In his bolt-hole,” the cook said. “He will wait there till he is sure of his victory.”

  “Are you sure?” Jenna asked, staring in fascination at the man’s teeth.

  He nodded and, mistaking her attention, picked at his teeth with the knife.

  “And you know where that hole is?” Carum asked.

  “I do, sir, I do. Surely I do. And haven’t I many times taken him his meals there?”

  “The tower!” Jenna said suddenly.

  The cook nodded his bony head. “The tower.”

  “Take me,” Carum said. “I have a score to settle with him.”

  “Take us both,” said Jenna. “We have lost more than one family each.”

  They trailed after him back up the stairs, along the hallway, and into the Great Hall again. The fires they had started there had sputtered out, and one wall of the tapestry was but partially burned. There was still heavy smoke in the air, as if the floor had been draped with gray bunting. Putting their arms across their faces to shield themselves from the smoke, Jenna and Carum followed the cook to a door in the wall next to the gaping opening down to the dungeon.

  “Here,” the cook said, pulling open the door and pointing up the twisting stairs.

  “You go before,” Carum said. “I trust you more in front of me than behind.”

  “He has done nothing wrong, Carum,” Jenna said, though she was uneasy as well.

  “Like my men, I feel things have been too easy so far,” Carum said. “And as they said at Nill’s Hame: The day on which one starts is not …”

  “… the day to begin one’s preparations. You are right,” Jenna said. “Better to be safe than buried, we said at our Hame. He will go in front.”

  The cook mounted the stairs before them. The passage wound up and up, unrelieved by any landings or windows, and was the darker since they had just come from the light. They went up by feel alone, putting their feet where the stone was worn smooth by many treadings.

  “If we had a torch now,” Carum whispered.

  “Skada would appreciate that,” Jenna whispered back. “And we could certainly use the extra sword.”

  As they rounded the final twist, a sliver of light announced an open door. Jenna pushed aside the cook and put her eye to the crack. She could see nothing but a wedge of light on a polished wood floor, but she could hear Kalas’ voice speaking in an oily, cozening fashion. Having heard it only for a few minutes the night before, she could still not forget it. It was at once powerful and weak, full of dark promises and hinting at even darker secrets.

  “Come, my dear,” Kalas was saying, “it will not be so bad as all that. Once done and it need never be done again. At least with me.”

  Jenna breathed slowly. So he was alone—with only a girl as company.

  There was a silence, and then a young woman’s voice, wheezy and achingly familiar.

  “Leave me be,” she said, catching her breath. “Please.”

  “Alna!” Jenna’s mouth shaped the name though she did not speak it aloud. Surely that was her Hame mate’s voice. Alna, who had been on her mission year to Calla’s Ford, had been stolen away. But it had been weeks—no, years in actual time—since she had heard Alna. She could not be sure without seeing her. Still, she could feel heat rising to her cheeks, could feel her stomach roil, as if her body already believed what her mind hesitated to accept. Turning to Carum, she whispered, “Kalas is alone in there with a girl. I can handle this. Best you see to the others.”

  “No. I will not leave you.”

  “The sword is my weapon, not yours. This is my fight. That is my Hame mate in there.”

  “It is my fight, too. Kalas murdered my family.”

  “I will not match blood with you. But if you stay and your men below go marching off to Lord Cres because you did not lead them …”

  He kissed her cheek, turned, and left, so light on his feet she did not hear his footsteps go. When she turned back it was to see the cook tapping lightly on the door.

  “No!” the woman inside screamed, then coughed violently.

  Jenna pushed the cook hard on the small of the back, and he fell against the door, springing it open.

  “It is a trap!” the woman cried, but she was too late.

  Jenna was already inside. Before her was Alna, hands bound behind her, lying on a great canopied bed. To her right Kalas squatted toadlike on a carved chair. Ranged before him were seven large men. Very large men, Jenna thought. Seven to her one, with little room to maneuver as the door swung shut behind her. The stranger’s sword in her hand was lighter than she was used to, the pommel sitting awkwardly in her hand.

  She knew she had to stall. Stall—and silence the cook who had betrayed them. She took a half step to the side and kicked the fallen man in the head, hard enough to quiet him for an hour or two, not hard enough to kill him. But her eyes never left Kalas and his men.

  “Jenna!” Alna managed to get out, “it is you. I could not be sure it was not another lie.”

  “Alna!” She could not spare her old friend another glance, not even out of the corner of her eye, though she had known her at once. Alna was older and thinner than when they had parted on the first day of their mission year. And that, Jenna thought wryly, was the day she had believed that her life was at its worst, when she had been separated from her best friends and sent off to a strangers’ Hame alone.

  “Alone again, White Jenna,” Kalas said slowly, as if he had been able to read her mind. “What an odd habit you are developing. Always arriving uninvited into my little tower room.”

  “Perhaps not entirely uninvited,” Jenna said. “I think you sent the invitation by way of this skinny bit of …” She kicked again at the cook, this time deliberately bruising his ribs. He did not stir.

  “Ah, you have uncovered my little deception,” Kalas said, smiling. “But not—alas—soon enough.”

  “Tell me,” Jenna said, “was he at least a good cook?”

  “A terrible cook, but he had his other uses.”

  “What I do not really understand,” Jenna said, “is why you let us get away, why you did not just kill us in the Hole.”

  “Such an uninteresting death, don’t you think?” Kalas asked. “And I have made such a study of death, it would not do to just kill people outright. Besides”—and he laughed, showing again his horribly yellow teeth and running his fingers through his thinning red hair, which exposed darker roots—“I did not believe that even you, Prince Longbow’s White Goddess, would really dare the castle on her own. I needed you as bait for the redoubtable King Pike, who is even now at my door.”

  Jenna’s eyes opened wide, but she let nothing else betray the fact that she was startled. So Kalas did not know that Carum was king; did not know that Gorum was dead. She would keep that little piece of information to herself.

  He smiled again, reminding Jenna of her Mother Alta when she had a particularly devastating bit of news to impart. “I did not expect you to escape, not with my Cat watching carefully at the Hole. What a fascinating little mouse you are. But I have clipped the Cat’s claws for him. He will not make that mistake again.”

  Jenna nodded. Keep him talking, she reminded herself. “But how did you know we had gotten out?”

  “Oh, little girl, I know everything. This castle is mined with passages and set about with traps. You cannot go from one level to another without my knowing. Everything.”

  “Then we could not have gotten out without you letting us go?”

  “Not in a hundred years,” Kalas said. “Not in a hundred hundred years.”

  She had her back to the tower’s one window, could feel the sun warmin
g her. She could always leap out as a last resort, but she knew—having climbed it so painfully the night before—that it would be a long and fatal fall to the wall below. And that would leave Alna to the mercy of Kalas still, and the rest without their Anna.

  There would be no help from Skada either. The sun was only half down the sky, so Kalas had no torches lit. Carum was gone below, sent away by her, past recalling. And Jenna knew she was out of polite conversation.

  “Get her!” Kalas said to his guards, no change in the pitch of his voice.

  They moved in a well-trained wedge toward her and she stepped quickly to the other side of the bed, putting it between the men and herself. When they split and three came after her, she leaped onto the bed, straddling Alna, and beating them back with some quick, though awkward sword work. Then with a quick slash of her weapon, she severed the hanging curtains from the canopy’s crossbar, tangling the men below in its heavy brocaded folds.

  As they fought to free themselves, their companions came to their aid, giving Jenna just a moment. It was all she needed. She flung the sword point first into the breast of one of the guards. He did not have the Bear’s quick hands and the sword pierced him straight through, skewering the arm of a man beneath him who cried out in agony.

  Jenna bounced once on the bed and grabbed the cross bracing of the canopy, swinging herself feetfirst nearly out of the door.

  “After her!” Kalas cried.

  But before the remaining guards could untangle themselves, Carum and two of the M’dorans burst through the open door, swords in hand. Behind them came a fourth woman, carrying both a sword and a torch. She flung the torch onto the bed.

  The linens caught fire at once and Alna, moving faster than Jenna would have guessed, rolled off the bed on the window side, scrambling over the guards, where she cowered against the far wall.

  7As the cloth flared to life, Jenna moved around the bed to stand between Kalas and the flames. She was weaponless while he still had a thin rapier in his one hand. The other hand rested on a heavy tapestry behind his chair.