by Andre Norton
“We are bound.” The bard tapped the bracelet on his arm. “So bound that each of us is but a part of a whole. That much I believe. That being so, we have each a strength or skill that will prove to be useful. We—”
He did not finish, for Naile had returned to the fire, his lips snarling so that the teeth which had given him his name were exposed nearly to their roots.
“The snake is gone!” His voice was a grunting roar. “He has gone to join them!”
“And your Afreeta?” Milo asked in return.
The berserker started. Then, holding out his hand and half turning toward the dark without, he whistled, a single, ear-piercing sound. Out of the night came the pseudo-dragon like a bolt from a crossbow. She was able to stop in midair, drop to the palm Naile extended. Her small dragon head was held high as she hissed, her tongue flickering in and out. Naile listened to that hissing. Slowly his face relaxed from a stiff mask of pure fury.
“Well?” Wymarc stooped to throw more wood on the fire, looking up over one shoulder.
He was answered, not by the berserker, but rather by a second figure coming out of the night. Gulth himself stood there. His scaled skin glistened in the firelight, and water dripped from his snout.
“In the river.” Naile did not look at Gulth. “Lying in the river as if it was a bed, just his eyes above level!”
Once more Milo’s memory stirred and produced a fact he was not aware a moment before he had known.
“But they have to—water—they have to have water!” The swordsman swung to the lizardman. “He rode all day in the dry. It must have been near torture for him!” He thought of the miles ahead with two more long dry patches to cover. They must think of some way of helping Gulth through that. Even as he struggled with the problem, Ingrge made a suggestion.
“We can change the line of march by this much—upriver to the main stream. We shall have Yerocunby and Faraaz facing us at the border. But the river then will lead us straight into the mountains. And it will provide us with a sure guide as well as the protection of more broken ground.”
“Yerocunby, Faraaz—what frontier guards do they post?” Naile placed Afreeta back to coil about his throat.
Their united memories produced some facts or rumors, but they gained very little real information.
They decided to take Ingrge’s advice and use the river for a guide as long as possible. Naile tramped out again to take the watch. Milo, wrapped in his cloak, settled for a little rest before he should take his turn at guard.
Though they had all agreed to change the direct line of their march in the morning, they had also planned to set the ambush, or at least a watch on their backtrail. To learn the nature and strength of those trailers was of the utmost importance.
Milo was aware of the aches of his body, the fact that he had been twenty-four hours, or near that, without much sleep. He shut his eyes on the fire, but could he shut his mind to all the doubts, surmises, and attempts to plan without sure authority or control? It seemed that he could—for he did not remember any more until a hand shook his shoulder lightly and he roused to find Naile on his knees beside him.
“All is well—so far,” the berserker reported.
Milo got up stiffly. He had certainly not slept away all the aches. Beyond the fire to which Naile must have added fuel, for the others slept, the night looked very dark.
He pushed past Wymarc, who lay with his head half-pillowed on his bagged harp, and went out. It took some moments for the swordsman’s eyes to adjust to the very dim light of a waning moon. Their mounts and the pack animals were strung out along their picket ropes a little farther north. Naile must have changed their grazing grounds so that they could obtain all the forage this small pocket in the river land could offer.
A wind whispered through the grass loud enough to reach Milo’s ears. He took off his helmet and looked up into the night sky. The moon was dim, the stars visible. But he found that he could trace no constellation that he knew. Where was this world in relation to his own? Was the barrier between them forged of space, time, or dimension?
As he paced along the lines of the animals, trying to keep fully alert to any change in the sounds of the night itself, Milo was for the first time entirely alone. He felt a strong temptation to summon up fragments of that other memory. Perhaps that would only muddy the impressions belonging to Milo Jagon, and it was the swordsman who stood here and now and whose experience meant anything at all.
So he began to work on that Milo memory, shifting, reaching back. It was like being handed a part of a picture, the rest of it in small meaningless scraps that must be fitted into their proper places.
Milo Jagon—what was his earliest memory? If he searched the past with full concentration, could he come up with the answer to the riddle of the rings? Since Deav Dyne’s discovery, he had moments of acute awareness of them, as if they weighed down his hands, sought to cripple him. But that was nonsense. Only there were so many holes in that fabric of memory that to strive to close them with anything but the vaguest of fleeting pictures was more than he could do. More than he should do, he decided at last.
Live in the present—until they had come to the end of the quest. He accepted that all Hystaspes had told them was correct. But, there again, how much had the wizard influenced their minds? One could not tell—not under a geas. Milo shook his head as if he could shake such thoughts out of it. To doubt so much was to weaken his own small powers as a fighting man, he knew, powers that were not founded on temple learning or on wizardry, but on the basis of his own self-confidence. That he must not do.
So, instead of trying to search out any past beyond that of his calling, he strove now to summon all he knew of the details of his craft. Since there was none here save the grazing animals to see or question, he drew both sword and dagger, exercised a drill of attack and defense which his muscles seemed to know with greater detail than his mind. He began to believe that he was a fighter of no little ability. While that did not altogether banish the uneasiness, it added to the confidence that had ebbed from the affair of the rings.
Dawn came, and with it Wymarc, to send Milo in to eat, while the bard kept a last few fleeting moments of watch. As they settled the packs and made ready to move out, Deav Dyne busied himself at the now blank ground where last night he had worked his magic. He lit a bunch of twigs that he had bound into a small faggot, and with that he beat the ground, intoning aloud as he so flailed the earth.
Wymarc returned, bearing with him newly filled saddle bottles. With a lift of eyebrow he circled about the cleric.
“May take more than that to waft away the scent of magic if they have a man of power with them,” he commented dryly. “But if it is the best we can do—then do it.”
The three who were to play rear guard chose their mounts—the choice being limited for Naile because of his greater bulk. He could not hope for any great burst of speed from his, only the endurance to carry his weight. Were they not pushed for time by the geas he would better have gone afoot, Milo knew, for the were-kind preferred to travel so.
As the line of march moved out, he, Yevele, and Naile waited for them to pass, moving at a much slower pace and searching with well-trained eyes for a proper setting where they might go into hiding.
7
Ambush
THEY HAD RIDDEN ON FOR AN HOUR BEFORE THEY FOUND WHAT Milo’s second and stronger memory hailed as a proper place to set their trap—a place where the river banks sank and there was a thicket of trees, stunted by the plain’s winds, but still barrier enough to cover them. Seven rode into the fringe of that thicket and four, with the pack train, rode out again, Ingrge in the lead.
Naile, Milo, and Yevele picketed their mounts under the roof of the trees and gave each a small ration of dried corn to keep them from striving to graze on the autumn-killed grass. The berserker waded through the season-shrunken flood to the opposite bank where there was a further edging of the growth and disappeared so well into that screen that Milo, f
or all his search, could not mark the other’s hiding place. He and the battle-maiden picked their own points of vantage.
Waiting plucked at the nerves of a man, Milo knew that. Also, it could well be that they were engaged in a fruitless task. He did not doubt Deav Dyne’s Seeing of the night before. But those who sought their party could have ventured on straightway and not upstream. Until, of course, they came across no further evidence of trail. Then they would cast back—action that would take time.
Here in the brush he and Yevele were not under the wind which carried a chilling bite. It blew from the north promising worse to come. However, there was a pale showing of sun to defy the gray clouding.
“Two men, plus one worker of some magic,” Milo spoke more to himself than to the girl. In fact she, too, had withdrawn so well into the brush he had only a general idea of where she now rested.
The men would be easy enough to handle, it was the worker of magic that bothered Milo. Naile, as were and berserker, had certain spells of his own. Whether these could, even in part, counteract that dark blot Deav Dyne had read in the flames was another and graver matter. The longer they waited the more he hoped that their turn north upstream had indeed thrown the followers off their trail.
He saw a flicker of color in the air, speeding downstream. Afreeta—Naile had released the pseudo-dragon. Milo silently raged at the rash action of the beserker. Any worker of magic had only to sight the creature—or even sense it—and they would be revealed! He knew that the berserkers, because of their very nature, were impetuous, given to sudden wild attacks, and sometime unable to contain the rage they unconsciously generated. Perhaps Naile had reached that point and was deliberately baiting the trailers into action.
Then—Milo looked down at the bracelet on his wrist. There was a warmth there, a beginning stir of dice. He tried to shut out of his mind all else but what the wizard had impressed upon them—that concentration could change the arbitrary roll of the dice. Concentrate he did. Dice spun, slowed. Milo concentrated—another turn, another—so much he did achieve, he was certain, by his efforts.
Moving with the utmost caution, the swordsman arose, drew his blade, brought his shield into place. Now he could hear sounds, clicking of hooves against the stones and gravel of the shrunken river.
Two men rode into view. They bore weapons but neither swords nor long daggers were at the ready, nor was the crossbow, strapped to the saddle of the second, under his hand. It would seem that they had no suspicion of any danger ahead.
Two men. Where was the third—the magic worker?
Milo hoped that Naile would not attack until they learned that. However, it was Yevele who moved out. Instead of drawn steel she held in her hands a hoop woven of grass. This she raised to her mouth, blowing through it. He saw her lips shape a distinct puff. There came a shrill whistling out of the air overhead, seemingly directly above the two riders.
They halted, nor did the leader, who had been bending forward to mark the signs of any trail, straighten up. It was as if both men and mounts had been suddenly frozen in the same position they held at the beginning of that sound.
Milo recognized the second rider—Helagret, the beast dealer they had met in the market place in Greyhawk. His companion wore half-armor—mainly mail. His head was covered by one of those caps ending in a dangling streamer at the back, which might be speedily drawn forward and looped about the throat and lower part of the face. This suggested that his employment was not that of a fighter but rather a skulker, perhaps even a thief. The crossbow was not his only armament. At his belt hung a weapon that was neither dagger nor sword in length but between those two. That he used it skillfully Milo had no doubt.
There was a limit to the spell Yevele had pronounced, Milo knew. But though they had so immobilized two of the enemy (which was an improvement on an outright ambush), there was still that third.
Milo waited, tense and ready, for his answer to Yevele’s action.
Afreeta was heard before she was seen—her hissing magnified. Now, with a beat of wings so fast that they could hardly be distinguished, save as a troubling of the air, she came into sight, hung so for a moment, and was gone again downstream. Milo made a quick decision. If the spell vanished, surely Naile and Yevele could between them handle the two men in plain sight. It was evident that the pseudo-dragon had located the third member of the party and was urging that she be followed to that one’s hiding place.
The swordsman stepped out of concealment, saw the eyes of the two captives fasten on him, though even their expressions could not change, nor could they turn their heads to watch him. On the other side of the stream Naile appeared, his axe swinging negligently in one hand, his boar-topped helm crammed so low on his head that its shadow masked his face. He lifted a hand to Milo and then pointed downstream. Apparently the same thought had crossed his mind.
As Milo twisted and turned among the rocks and bushes, so did the berserker keep pace with him on the other side of the flood, leaving Yevele to guard the prisoners. Seemingly Naile had no doubts about her ability to do so. Had her spell-casting answered to concentration on her bracelet, thus giving it added force? Milo hoped fervently that was so.
Naile’s hand went up to signal a halt. That the were possessed senses he could not himself hope to draw upon, Milo well knew. He drew back into the shadow of one of the wind-tortured trees, watching Naile, for all his bulk, melt into a pile of rocks and drift.
There was no sound of hooves this time to herald the coming of that third rider. But he was now in plain sight, almost as if he had materialized out of sand and rock. His horse was long-legged, raw-boned as if it had never had forage enough to fill its lean belly. In the skull-like head it carried droopingly downward, its eyes burned yellow in a way unlike that of any normal beast. Nor did he who rode it guide it with any reins or bit.
Seemingly it strode onward without any direction from the one crouching on its bony back.
The rider? The rusty robe of a druid, frayed to thread fringes at the hem, covered his hunched body. Even the cowl was drawn so far over the forward-poking head as to completely hide the face. Milo waited to catch the hint of corruption that no thing of the Chaos passing this close could conceal from one vowed to the Law. But the frosty air carried no stench.
Still, this was not one of Law either. Now his beast halted without raising its head, and the cowl-shadowed face turned neither right nor left. The druid’s hands were hidden within the folds of the long sleeves of his shabby robe. What he might be doing with them, what spells he could so summon or control by concealed gesture alone, the swordsman could not guess. The stranger was not immobilized, save by his own will—that much Milo knew. And he was a greater danger than any man in full armor, helpless and weaponless though he now looked.
Afreeta came into view with one of those sudden darts. Her jaws split open to their widest extent then closed upon a fold of the cowl that she ripped back and off the head of the druid, leaving his brownish, bare scalp uncovered. His face writhed into a mask of malice but he never looked upward at the now hovering pseudo-dragon, or made any move to re-cover his head.
Like all druids he seemed lost in years, flesh hanging in thin wattles on his neck, his eyes shrunken beneath tangled brows that were twice as visible on his otherwise hairless skin. His nose was oddly flattened, with wide-spaced nostrils spreading above a small mouth expressing anger in its puckered folds.
To Milo the man’s utter silence and stillness was more of a menace than if he had shouted aloud some runic damnation. The swordsman was more wary than ever of what those hands might be doing beneath the wrinkles of the sleeves.
Afreeta flew in a circle about the druid’s head, hissing vigorously, darting in so close now and then it would seem she planned to score that yellow-brown flesh or sink her fangs into nose or ear. Yet the fellow continued to stare downward. Nor did Milo see the least hint of change in either the direction of the eyes or the expression of the face. Such intensity could only mean th
at he was indeed engaged in some magic.
The pseudo-dragon apparently had no fear for herself. Perhaps she shared with her great kin their contempt for humankind. But that she harassed the druid with purpose Milo did not doubt. Perhaps, though the man showed no mark of it, his concentration on what he would do was hindered by the gadfly tactics of the small flyer.
Out of the rocks Naile arose. All one could see of the berserker’s face was his square jaw and mouth. The lips of that mouth were drawn well back to expose the fangs. When he spoke there was a grunting tone to his voice, as if he hovered near that change which would take him out of the realm of humankind, into that of the four-footed werefolk.
“Carlvols. When did you crawl forth from that harpies’ den you were so proud of? Or did the Mage pry you out as a man pries a mussel forth from its shell? It would seem, by the look of you, that you have lost more than your snug hole during the years since our last meeting.”
Those unblinking eyes continued to hold their forward stare, but for the first time the druid moved. His head turned on his shoulder, slowly, almost as if bone and flesh were rusted and firmly set, so that to break the hold was a very difficult thing. Now, with his head turned far to the left, he bent that stare on Naile. However, he made no answer.
Naile grunted. “Lost your tongue also, dabbler in spells? It never served you too well, if I rightly remember.”
Now—while his attention was fixed on Naile!
Milo leaped. He had sheathed his sword slowly, so as to make no sound. What he was about to do might well mean his life. But something within him urged his action—as if some fate worse than just death might follow if he did not try.
He gained the side of the bony horse in that one leap. His mail-mittened hand arose, almost without his actually willing it, to catch at the nearer arm of the druid. It was like clasping an iron bar as he swung his full weight to pull the arm toward him. By a surge of strength he did not know he could produce, Milo dragged apart those hidden hands, though the druid did not lose his position on the horse.