by Andre Norton
“But they did not get all of you,” Craike pointed out. “Can you bring your men up to the tower? I have been hurt and can not walk without support or I would lend you a hand.”
“We will come.” Jorik returned to the dugout. Water was splashed vigorously into the face of the man in the bow, arousing him to crawl ashore. Then the leader of the fugitives swung the third man out of the craft and over his shoulder in a practiced carry.
When Craike had seen the unconscious man established on his own grass bed, he stirred up the fire and set out food. Jorik returned to the dugout to bring in their gear.
Neither of the other men were of the same size as their leader. The one who lay limp, his breath fluttering between his slack lips, was young, hardly out of boyhood, his thin frame showing bones rather than muscled flesh under the rags of clothing. The other was short, dark skinned and akin by race to Kaluf’s men, his jaw sprouting a curly beard. He measured Craike with suspicious glances from beneath lowered red lids, turning that study to the walls about him and the unknown reaches at the head of the stair.
Craike did not try mind touch. These men were rightly suspicious of Esper arts. But he did attempt to reach Takya, only to meet the nothingness with which she cloaked her actions. Craike was disturbed. Surely now that she was convinced he was determined to give harborage to the fugitives, she would not oppose him. They had nothing to fear from Jorik and his men, but rather would gain by joining forces.
Until his wounds were entirely healed, he could not go far. And without weapons they would have to rely solely upon Esper powers for defense. Having witnessed the efficiency of the Hooded Ones’ attack, Craike doubted a victory in any engagement to which those masters came fully prepared. He had managed to upset their spells merely because they had not known of his existence. But the next time he would have no such advantage.
On the other hand the tower could be defended by force of arms, bows. Craike savored the idea of archers giving a hooded force a devastating surprise. The traders had had no such arms, as sophisticated as they were, and he had seen none among the warriors of Sampur. He’d have to ask Jorik if such were known.
In the meantime he sat among his guests, watching Jorik feed the semiconscious boy with soft fruit pulp and the other man wolf down dried meat. When the latter had done, he hitched himself closer to the fire and jerked a thumb at his chest.
“Zackudi,” he identified himself.
“From Larud?” Craike named the only city of Kaluf’s people he could remember.
The dark man’s momentary surprise had no element of suspicion. “What do you know of the Children of Noe, stranger?”
“I journeyed the plains with one called Kaluf, a master trader of Larud.”
“A fat man who laughs much and wears a falcon plume in his cap?”
“Not so.” Craike allowed a measure of chill to ice his reply. “The Kaluf who led this caravan was a lean man who knew the edge of a good blade from its hilt. As for cap ornaments, he had a red stone to the fore of his. Also he swore by the Eyes of the Lady Lor.”
Zackuth gave a great bray of laughter. “You are no stream fish to be easily hooked, are you, tower dweller? I am not of Larud, but I know Kaluf, and those who travel in his company do not wear one badge one day and another the next. But, by the looks of you, you have fared little better than we lately, Has Kaluf also fallen upon evil luck?”
“I traveled safely with his caravan to the gates of Sampur. How it fared with him thereafter I can not tell you.”
Jorik grinned and settled his patient back on the bed. “I believe you must have parted company in haste, Lord Ka-rak?”
Craike answered that with the truth. “There were two who were horned. I followed them to give what aid I could.”
Jorik scowled, and Zackuth spat in the fire.
“We were not horned; we have no power,” the latter remarked. “But they have other tricks to play. So you came here?”
“I was clawed by a bear.” Craike supplied a meager portion of his adventures, “I came here to lie up until I can heal me of that hurt.”
“This is a snug hole.” Jorik was appreciative. “But how got you such eating?” He popped half a fruit into his mouth and licked his juicy fingers. “This is no wilderness feeding.”
“The tower is thought to be demon-haunted. Those taking passage downsteam leave tribute.”
Zackuth slapped his knee. “The Gods of the Waves are good to you, Lord Ka-rak, that you should stumble into such fortune. There is more than one kind of demon for haunting towers. How say you, Lord Jorik?”
“That we have also come into luck at last, since Lord Ka-rak has made us free of this hold. But perhaps you have some other thought in your head?” He spoke to the Esper.
Craike shrugged. “What the clouds decree shall fall as rain or snow,” he quoted a saying of the caravan men.
It was close to sunset, and he was worried about Takya. He could not believe that she had gone permanently. And yet, if she returned, what would happen? He had been careful not to use Esper powers. Takya would have no such compunctions.
He could not analyze his feelings about her. She disturbed him, awoke emotions he refused to face. There was a certain way she had of looking sidewise. But her calm assumption of superiority pricked beneath his surface armor. The antagonism fretted against the feeling which had drawn him after her from the gates of Sampur. Once again he sent out a quest-thought and, to his surprise, it was answered.
“They must go!”
“They are outlaws, even as we. One is ill, the others worn with long running. But they stood against the Black Hoods. As such they have a claim on roof, fire and food from us.”
“They are not as we!” It was again arrogance. “Send them or I shall drive them. I have the power.”
“Perhaps you have the power but so do I!” He put all the assurance he could muster into that. “I tell you, no better thing could happen than for us to give these men aid; they are proven fighters.”
“Swords can not stand against the power!”
Craike smiled. His plans were beginning to move even as he carried on this voiceless argument. “Not swords, no, Takya. But all fighting is not done with swords or spears. Nor with the power either. Can a Black Hood think death to his enemy when he himself is dead, killed from a distance, and not by mind power his fellows could trace and be armored against?
He had caught her attention. She was acute enough to know that he was not playing with words, that he knew of what he spoke. Quickly he built upon that spark of interest. “Remember how your illusion guard died upon the offering rock when you would warn off these men?”
“By a small spear.” She was contemptuous again.
“Not so.” He shaped a picture of an arrow and then of an archer releasing it from the bow, of its speeding true across the river to strike deep into the throat of an unsuspecting Black Hood.
“You have the secret of this weapon?”
“I do. And five such arms are better than two, is that not the truth?”
She yielded a fraction. “I will return. But they will not like that.”
“If you return, they will welcome you. These are no hunters of witch maidens—” he began, only to be disconcerted by her obvious amusement. Somehow he had lost his short advantage over her, yet she did not break contact.
“Ka-rak, you are very foolish. No, these will not try to mate with me, not even if I willed it so, as you will see. Does the eagle mate with the hunting cat? But they will be slow to trust me, I think. However, your plan has possibilities, and we shall see.”
VII
Takya had been right about her reception by the fugitives. They knew her for what she was, and only Craike’s acceptance of her kept them in the tower. That and the fact, which Jorik did not try to disguise, that they could not hope to go much farther on their own. But their fears were partly allayed when she took over the nursing of the sick youngster, using on him the same healing power she had produced for C
raike’s wound. By the next day she was feeding him broth and demanding service from the others as if they had been her liegemen from birth.
The sun was well up when Jorik came in whistling from a dip in the river.
“This is a stout stronghold, Lord Ka-rak. And with the power aiding us to hold it, we are not likely to be shaken out in a hurry. Doubly is that true if the lady aids us.”
Takya laughed. She sat in the shaft of light from one of the narrow windows, combing her hair. Now she looked over her shoulder at them with something approaching a pert archness. In that moment she was more akin to the women Craike had known in his own world.
“Let us first see how the Lord Ka-rak proposes to defend us.” There was mockery in that, enough to sting, as well as a demand that he make good his promise of the night before.
But Craike was prepared. He discarded his staff for a hold on Jorik’s shoulder, while Zackuth slagged behind. They climbed into the forest. Craike had never fashioned a bow, and he did not doubt that his first attempts might be failures. But, as the three made their slow progress, he explained what they must look for and the kind of weapon he wanted to produce. They returned within the hour with an assortment of wood lengths with which to experiment.
After noon Zackuth grew restless and went off, to come back with a deer; he was visibly proud of his hunting skill. Craike saw bowstrings where the others saw meat and hide for the refashioning of footwear. For the rest of the day they worked with a will. It was Takya who had the skill necessary for the feathering of the arrows after Zackuth netted two black river birds.
Four days later the tower community had taken on the aspect of a real stronghold. Many of the fallen stones were back in the walls. The two upper rooms of the tower had been explored, and a vast collection of ancient nests had been swept out. Takya chose the topmost one for her own abode and, aided by her convalescing charge, the boy Nickus, had carried armloads of sweet-scented grass up for both carpeting and bedding. She did not appear to be inconvenienced by the bats that still entered at dawn to chitter out again at dusk. And she crooned a welcome to the snowy owl that refused to be dislodged from a favorite roost in the very darkest comer of the roof.
River travel had ceased. There were no new offerings on the rock. But Jorik and Zackuth hunted, and Craike tended the smoking fires which cured the extra meat against coming need, while he worked on the bows. Shortly they had three finished and practiced along the terrace, using blunt arrows.
Jorik had a true marksman’s eye and took to the new weapon quickly, as did Nickus. But Zackuth was more clumsy, and Craike’s stiff leg bothered him. Takya was easily the best shot when she would consent to try. But while agreeing it was an excellent weapon, she preferred her own type of warfare and would sit on the wall, braiding and rebraiding her hair with flying fingers, to watch their shooting at marks and applaud or jeer lightly at the results.
However, their respite was short. Craike had the first warning of trouble. He awoke from a dream in which he had been back in the desert panting ahead of the mob. He awoke to discover that some malign influence filled the tower. There was a compulsion on him to get out, flee into the forest.
He tested the silences about him tentatively. The opression which had been in the ancient fort at his first coming had not returned; that was not it.
Someone moved restlessly in the dark.
“Lord Ka-rak?” Nickus’ voice was low and hoarse, as if he struggled to keep it under control.
“What is it?”
“There is trouble—”
A bulk which could only belong to Jorik heaved up black against the faint light of the doorway.
“The hunt is up,” he observed. “They move to shake us out of here like rats out of a nest.”
“They did this before with you?” asked the Esper.
Jorik snorted. “Yes. It is their favorite move to battle. They would give us such a horror of our tower that we will burst forth and scatter. Then they can cut us down as they wish.”
But Craike could not isolate any thought beam carrying that night terror. It seeped from the walls about them. He sent probes unsuccessfully. There was the pad of feet on the stairs, and then he heard Takya call.
“Build up the fire, foolish ones. They may discover that they do not deal with those who know nothing of them.”
Flame blossomed from the coals to light a circle of sober faces. Zackuth caressed the spear lying across his knees, but Nickus and Jorik had eyes only for the witch maid as she knelt by the fire, laying out some bundles of dried leaf and fern. Her thoughts reached Craike.
“We must move or these undefended ones will be drawn out from here as nut meats are picked free from the shell. Give me of your power; in this matter I must be the leader.”
Though he resented anew her calm assumption of authority, Craike also recognized in it truth. But he shrank from the task she demanded of him. To have no control over his own Esper arts, to allow her to use them to feed hers—it was a violation of a kind, the very thing he had so feared in his own world that he had been willing to kill himself to escape it. Yet now she asked it of him as one who had the right!
“Forced surrender is truly evil, but given freely in our defense it is different.” Her thoughts swiftly answered his wave of repulsion.
The command to flee the tower was growing stronger. Nickus got to his feet as if dragged up. Suddenly Zackuth made for the door, only to have Jorik reach forth a long arm to trip him.
“You see,” Takya urged, “they are already half under the spell. Soon we shall not be able to hold them, either by mind or body. Then they shall be wholly lost, for ranked against us now is the high power of the Black Hoods.”
Craike watched the scuffle on the floor and then, Still reluctant and inwardly shrinking, he limped around the fire to her side, lying down at her gesture. She threw on the fire two of her bundles of fern, and a thick, sweet smoke curled out to engulf them. Nickus coughed, put his hands uncertainly to his head and slumped, curling up as a tired child in deep slumber. And the struggle between Jorik and his man subsided as the fumes reached them.
Takya’s hand was cool as it slipped beneath Craike’s jerkin, resting over his heart. She was crooning some queer chant, and, though he fought to hold mind contact, there was a veil between them as tangible to his inner senses as the fern smoke was to his outer ones. For one wild second or two he seemed to see the tower room through her eyes instead of his own, and then the room was gone. He sped bodiless across the night world, casting forth as a hound on the trail.
All that had been solid in his normal sight was now without meaning. But he was able to see the dark cloud of pressure closing in on the tower and trace that back to its source, racing along the slender thread of its spinners.
There was another fire, and about it four of the Black Hoods. Here, too, was scented smoke to free minds from bodies. The essence which was Craike prowled about that fire, counting guardsmen who lay in slumber.
With an effort of will which drew heavily upon his Strength, he concentrated on the staff which lay before the leader of the company, setting upon it his own commands.
It flipped up into the air, even as its master roused and clutched at it, falling into the fire. There was a flash of blue light and a sound which Craike felt rather than heard. The Hooded Ones were on their feet as their master stared straight across the flames to Craike’s disembodied self. His was not an evil face; rather did it hold elements of nobility. But the eyes were pitiless, and Craike knew that now it was not only war to the death between them, but war beyond death itself. The Esper sensed that this was the first time that the others had known of his existence, had been able to consider him as a factor in the tangled game.
There was a flash of lightning knowledge of each other, and then Craike was again in the dark. He heard once more Takya’s crooning and was conscious of her touch resting above the slow, pulsating beat of his heart.
“That was well done,” her thought welcomed hi
m. “Now they must meet as face to face in battle.”
“They will come.” He accepted the dire promise that Black Hood had made.
“They will come, but now we are more equal. And there is not the Rod of Power to fear.”
Craike tried to sit up and discovered that the weakness born of his wounds was nothing to that which now held him.
Takya laughed with some of her old mockery. “Do you think you can make the Long Journey and then romp about as a fawn, Ka-rak? Not three days on the field of battle can equal this. Sleep now and gather again the inner power. The end of this venture is still far from us.”
He could no longer see her face, the glimmer of her hair veiled it, and then that shimmer reached his mind and shook him away from consciousness. He slept.
It might have been early morning when he had made that strange visit to the camp of the Black Hoods. By the measure of the sun across the floor it was late afternoon when he lifted heavy eyelids again. Takya gazed down upon him. Her summons had brought him back, just as her urging had sent him to sleep. He sat up with a smile, but she did not return it.
“All is right?”
“We have time to make ready before we are put to the test. Your mountain captain is not new to this game. Matters of open warfare he understands well, and he and his men have prepared a rude welcome for those who come.” Her faint smile deepened. “I, too, have done my poor best. Come and see.”
He limped out on the terrace and for a moment was startled. It was illusion, yes, but some of it was real.
Jorik laughed at the expression on Craike’s face, inviting the Esper with a wave of the hand to inspect the force he captained. There were bowmen in plenty, standing sentinel on the upper walls, arch, and tower, walking beats on the twin buildings across the river. And it took Craike a few seconds to sort out the ones he knew from those who served Takya’s purposes. But the real had been as well posted as their illusory companions. Nickus, for his superior accuracy with the new weapon, held a vantage point on the wall, and Zackuth was on the river arch where his arrows needed only a short range to be effective.