by Andre Norton
“Three hours past noon.”
The Captain's eyes darkened. The day was almost gone. “How fares the fleet?”
“As we would have, apparently, from the few glimpses we have been able to get of it.” Brennan glanced toward the window. “Perhaps that is just as well. I count myself no traitor for saying that it would not be an easy watching.”
“That it would not,” Tarlach agreed bleakly. “Whatever they be, it is no matter of pride to see men broken by a force nothing human can hope to face and withstand.”
The fury of the great tempest did not waver at all during what remained of that day or during most of the following night. It began to lessen just before dawn and then eased off so rapidly that it was no more than a heavy rain by morning. Visibility was good by then, and the Seakeep leaders crowded together at the window in their high council chamber.
Although physically close to his companions, Tarlach felt utterly isolated from them, isolated from everything in the world around him. His body was stiffly held, tense, his expression intentionally emotionless as he gazed out over the beach and the sea beyond it.
The ocean was almost completely clear of ships, and those few remaining were but shards, hopeless wrecks that would never again dance over any wave. The Sultan's mighty fleet had been annihilated. Not so much as a dory remained of all that had been.
The strand was littered with debris, that and other things. The sea was beginning to give up her victims.
Not all the bodies washing up there had come from the ships. Most of them had not. The storm-driven tide had claimed far more of the beach than was its wont, and a considerable part of the invading army had been unable to avoid its mighty, hungry waves.
His head lowered. The toll might be fully as high as half the Sultanites’ original number—they had certainly lost a third of their force—yet what did that massive slaughter mean to Seakeep? His was still so much the lesser force as to scarcely seem an obstacle to the intended invasion at all.
The Holdlady's thoughts were little brighter as she watched the stunned aliens gather what they had thus far recovered of their dead for burning, an essential precaution if they were to avert the pestilence otherwise almost certain to fix upon their damp, incredibly crowded camp. At least, the remnants of their broken warships provided them with fuel enough for their grim work if they could no longer support the cause of the living.
“They will not sail from here now,” she said, speaking aloud to herself rather than to the others. “We accomplished that much for our neighbors.”
“Let us not claim too much credit,” Tarlach told her, rousing himself out of the dark thoughts which had been holding him. “The storm might have done as much without our intervention.”
She shook her head. “I think not. Less than half of those ships would have been left, maybe less than a quarter of them, but that would still have been more than enough to work grief upon some other unsuspecting port.”
“We have made our own case the more desperate,” the Mountain Hawk said without taking his eyes from the activity going on below. “They have no choice but to take us now.”
“We realized that would be so,” Brennan told him quietly. “Rabble may break under heavy adversity, but we never believed those ones down there would do so.”
“When do you think they will make their move?” Una asked the Captain. The fury of the storm and sheer shock had thus far shielded them, but they all knew that respite would not be long-lived.
“Sometime before noon, I would say. They will settle their camp first and secure their supplies. They were fortunate in being spared the most of them and are not likely to risk exposing them to any more heavy weather if they can avoid it.”
He turned away from the window for the first time. “We will have little warning. Tell those on the wall to be prepared for a sudden assault and put the reserves on alert. Reinforcements must reach the line almost immediately if it is to hold. After this first blow, we will keep it at full strength, and this will no longer be a concern unless our line is breached.”
“Perhaps they should move up now,” Rorick suggested doubtfully.
He shook his head. “Our enemies will have found a few cut ropes by this time and know we are organized and daring. I would keep our true strength from them a while longer. They will discover that soon enough, and then we shall have no further weapon to throw against them save our skill and our courage under arms.”
17
Rufon sped from the valley without a backward glance at either the round tower or the ocean that would all too soon cradle the warships of their enemies.
He was heavy with a sense of frustration and with the dead feeling that his mission was a hopeless one, at least as far as saving those he loved was concerned. The Mountain Hawk and Seakeepdale's Lady would cast themselves day after day into the thickest and most furious part of the fighting. Even with all their skill, it was not likely they would be able to avoid their enemies’ blades until help could reach them.
No aid would be coming to the Dale for many long weeks yet. They all must accept that fact and everything it portended. Linna lay far from the sea-girth hold, and the land separating them was wild and rough. He would be fortunate indeed if he could cross it and return again without meeting with some accident or other ill happening that would cause him serious delay.
The man forced patience upon his heart. There was no purpose in railing against circumstances he was powerless to alter, and it but wasted energy he could better spend elsewhere.
Time went by, better than two weeks, without change in the routine the man had set for himself and his nonhuman companions. Fortune rode with them, and they experienced no unexpected delay.
The stops he was forced to schedule were more than bad enough. However much he might resign himself to the limits terrain put upon their speed and to the breaks he had to permit each day to refresh both himself and the animals, Rufon bitterly resented the coming of darkness when he must stop entirely. All those hours lost, and in the end, Seakeep's fate and this world's might be lost with them.
He was quite without choice. The distance to be covered was simply too great to permit another such race as the Mountain Hawk had ridden to Lormt for the Lady Una's sake. Without sufficient rest and food, man and beast alike would falter and fall before a fraction of the journey was ended.
That was, at the least, a predictable delay. Other forces were at work which could sweep infinitely more time from those who would save the embattled Dale.
The weather had turned sour. As yet, it was merely raining heavily, making riding unpleasant but causing no delay. That would not remain true for many more hours. The storm was gaining steadily in force and would be a full tempest before morning unless some miracle scattered it. Once it reached its full potential, there would be no going on until the better part of its force was spent again.
Several hours passed. The Dalesman began to feel decidedly nervous about his route and altered it abruptly so that he left the rift he had been following well below.
The steeper, rougher ground of the mountainside might slow him somewhat, but narrow highland valleys could too easily become riverbeds during a downpour like this. He had no wish to find himself in the path of any such flood.
He would have had to come up to this level anyway. There was a large cave that travelers from Seakeep had used before, during their infrequent journeys to Linna. It was the only really acceptable resting place on this part of his route if the weather should be significantly foul.
He had better find it, and soon, the veteran thought grimly. More than his and his companions’ comfort was at stake. There were dangers in a gale such as this, too many and too heavy to permit travel, at least during its height.
He should have passed the cave already according to his recollections, but the storm and the more recent change in the path he followed had so much slowed his progress that he had not yet reached it.
Rufon of Seakeep fervently hoped he ha
d not. If he had somehow gone by the only place in this area able to shelter both himself and his horse, if he had failed to see its dark entrance during one of those increasingly more frequent times when the rain drove so heavily that visibility ranged scarcely a foot beyond his eyes, then they all faced a hard night and maybe a perilous one. The cold was increasing and so, too, was the falling of branches and even of whole trees.
His already tight lips grew still harder. His mission could be ended before dawn once more touched the eastern sky.
There! The yawning blackness that marked the mouth of the cave he sought was before him.
The Dalesman longed to race for it and fling himself and his weary mount into its shelter, but warrior's discipline was too much a part of him to permit any such unguarded action. He drew rein well away from it.
He watched his gelding carefully, the horse and the falcon, who had been sheltering beneath his cloak. His own senses were in a great part negated by the sheer fury of the elements, but animals were possessed of other gifts scarcely comprehensible to humans, and those of well-trained war comrades were highly developed.
When neither of the pair showed sign of unease, Rufon started forward, still moving cautiously.
He slid from his saddle and advanced toward the entrance on foot. Under his cloak, he held the torch and the flint kit he had readied during his last break in anticipation of this moment.
The falcon darted inside ahead of him. She remained within for several seconds, then returned briefly to circle him and dash back, into the cave, out of the driving elements.
Despite that reassurance, the man tensed as he slipped inside and moved quickly to set his back against the wall to his right.
Nothing sprang at him, and-he hastened to fire his torch and penetrate beyond the half light of the entrance.
Rufon found himself in a great chamber about thirty feet square. Walls and floor were equally rough, with fissures and cracks marring both in several places. At least two of the former appeared to lead farther within the mountain. The roof was probably very high in proportion to the cave's other dimensions; it loomed beyond the feeble power of his single torch to reveal.
One feature of the place pleased him greatly, a small cavelet situated just behind the left-hand lip of the entrance that seemed to have been created to fill a traveler's needs. No light from his fire would leak outside to betray his presence to the world beyond, and at least a little heat would be held within its relatively confined space.
He hastened outside again. The storm was likely to hold him a long while in the cave, and since a couple of hours of reasonable light remained, he would do well to utilize it by drawing in as much fuel as possible and also as much fodder as he could collect. It would be wise to spare what he could of his remaining supplies for later need. He had not made Linna yet.
There was little twilight that evening, and darkness came rapidly once it began to fall.
The veteran settled back to wait out the storm. His small fire would never banish more than the edge of the chill and damp, but that did not trouble him overmuch. He had often been less comfortable than he was now. The cold in here was not sharp enough to give pain, and the fire did serve to dry his clothes once more.
Hunger would be no problem. His food might be the familiar journey rations, dry and nigh unto tasteless, but it filled the stomach and met the body's needs, and he was not inclined to complain because daintier fare was lacking.
In truth, he was too tired, too physically and emotionally battered, to concern himself with much beyond his most basic requirements. The hard stone floor would be no deterrent to sleep that night.
The little he had, he shared. These falcons were war birds, hardy and able to care for themselves, but he had observed the attention their human comrades paid to them, and he was resolved to give no less to the one accompanying him. She doubtless had no greater love for damp, cold air than he did himself, and if his cloak and the warmth of his body could provide her with a measure of comfort, he was more than pleased to offer her both.
The tempest roared on in all its awesome strength through the rest of that night and the day following while the courier bowed down his impatience and endeavored to make himself content in his waiting.
Beyond the necessary care of his mount, which brought him several times into the larger chamber, he rarely left the cavelet. It was cold in the outer cavern, very damp throughout, and wet near the entrance from the rain carried in by the fierce wind whenever it so swung about as to blast in through the wide mouth. Nothing was to be seen through the downpour that he should expose himself there, nor did caution demand that he do so. He knew himself to be safe from attack; nothing, animal or human, would be moving through this.
Only once did Rufon remain at the uncomfortable post for more than a few minutes. He had finished his evening meal and was just replenishing the fire when an awesome roaring began, a grinding, seemingly continual explosion deeper and more terrible than the sharp crash of the thunder.
The Dalesman sprang to his feet and raced for the entrance. He could see nothing and praised the Flame that he could not. That eldritch rumbling was the voice of a suddenly released flood tearing through the valley below. Had it so moved that some wild surge swept upslope to the point that it became visible to him, it would very probably have filled the cave as well. Whether he and his companions would have been able to withstand the battering until the water had receded again, well, he was only glad not to have seen that question put to the testing.
His head lowered. This proved the wisdom, the necessity of stopping and remaining here until the gale blew itself out, but he quailed in his heart to think of the price that might yet be exacted for this long delay.
He wondered how his people were faring. Had they been able to complete the wall before the tempest had broken? Had the Sultanites arrived? This was about the time the spirit had set for their coming.
If so, it was a harsh welcome they had received from the realm they had thought to despoil. He knew storms, and this one ruled for a greater expanse of sky than that directly above his sheltering place. There would be no fighting while the weather held thus, save against the wind and the waves lashing the beach.
Rufon returned to his camping place, shaking his cloak vigorously before entering it to remove the rainwater clinging to it. He had no wish to bring any more damp than necessary inside with him.
He leaned back against the wall and resolutely willed himself to relax. There had been little time for rest since he had left Seakeepdale, and there would be less still once he was again free to set out. It behooved him to use it well while he could.
The anger of the great storm finally spent itself during the early hours of the following morning just before dawn began to grip the sky.
The rain still fell, but travel was once more possible, and the Dalesman set forth as soon as he was certain the alteration in the weather was a true one and not merely a lull that would quickly give way to madness again.
The pace he set and maintained was a killing one, allowing rider and mount just enough rest that they were able to continúe with their race, for with every fast-flying moment, Rufon realized that more blood was being spilled at Sea-keep's newly constructed barrier—if that barrier still held at all.
For nearly three days longer, Rufon continued to ride until at last he crested the final rise separating him from Linna town.
He paused there, to rest and to look down upon the cluster of buildings that was his goal, and his head raised in triumph and hope. Filling all the land surrounding the seaport was a great camp. Those he sought were here.
Setting his heels to the sides of his tired horse, he began the final stretch of his long journey.
A question came suddenly into his mind. Falconers masked not only their faces before those of other races but also every sign of rank or personal identity. How was he to find the man he needed to see? Would he, a Dalesman of no apparent authority, be taken to the Warlord of this st
range people merely because he claimed he bore a Blood Call and needs must speak with him immediately?
He smiled then, and his fingers rather shyly touched the proudly held head of the falcon riding the perch before him. “Well, Winged Lady,” he told her, “this must be your part, I think. Find this Warlord of your comrades and let him know the need that is on us.”
He had no more power to speak with the war bird than he had with his horse, but she uttered a soft cry, as if in understanding, and took wing, streaking toward the encampment below with obvious purpose.
Only a short time passed before two Falconers rode out to meet him and escorted him back to their camp. They drew rein before a large tent set approximately at its center and then left him after first giving salute to the man standing in its entrance.
The Falconer chief was tall and slender of build with a wiry, lithe look about him that reminded Rufon of Tarlach. There was no questioning that he was a veteran fighting man and that he was long familiar with the burden of great responsibility. Both his carriage and what could be seen of his features allowed no doubt of that.
Even as the Mountain Hawk would have done, he stepped forward quickly and caught the horse's bridle.
“The Horned Lord's welcome, Dalesman,” he said. “Alight now so that my aides may care for your mount and come inside yourself. I have ordered that food and drink be prepared for you.”
The interior of the tent was divided into two parts, the larger to serve the Warlord for living and work space and a small screened-off area in which he probably slept. It was furnished comfortably enough, rather surprisingly so, and as Rufon looked about him, he received the impression of a man of both taste and discipline.
For only a moment could he permit his attention to so wander before his host's eyes fixed on him. They were so pale a gray as to be almost silver, and they held and pierced him as if they would delve his very soul.