by Terry Marcel
“One which she may live to regret,” said an unrelenting Hawk.
He changed the subject abruptly.
“Baldin! Check if this place can be held against attack.”
Hawk knew that the presence of him and his companions would eventually be made known to his brother, Voltan. His brother! The very term was anathema to him. But there had been a time when it hadn’t been so; when his ambition was to have his brother acknowledge him as his peer; a time of riding together in the upland hills of Varenne, hunting the proud mountain stag.
Days and nights of fruitless search but with the distance of recollection, furnishing a warmth of memories. The sweetsmelling smoke of spluttering juniper twigs; the tang of the mountain springs with their delicious coldness threatening to inebriate the senses at first sip; the comradeship of exhausted men whose reliance on one another was never in question. Then the day they held their quarry at bay. That had been the moment, the first questioning doubt of his brother’s code of life.
They had hunted the great beast for six days. It had evidenced a manlike cunning the way it twisted and turned its pursuers with a nimble dexterity. But inexorably its great strength had been sapped and in the end it stood boldly against the mountain, the many branches of its antlers sweeping back and forth as it couched its head in defiance.
The bolt pierced its heart and it fell to its knees. A dreadful sadness rushed through Hawk. No! he wanted to scream. Such valiance should never be sullied by death. Who could have been so indifferent to the cry of destiny?
Voltan’s hand still held the crossbow aimed at the beast’s chest. His face was lifted in a smile of intensely satisfied delight and his eyes shone from some deep, inner catharsis.
“There is a small door at the back leading to the outside.” Baldin had returned and his report nudged Hawk from his recollections. “Locked, it will hold against many men. The only other way in is as you can see—through the front doors. The builders of this place had an eye to defence, it seems.”
Hawk nodded. His dark thoughts seemed to be a portent of some imminent threat and the feeling made him restless. He acknowledged what the dwarf had said but he needed some activity and decided to check it for himself.
Baldin perched himself on the edge of a table at which Gort was methodically cleaning his breastplate. Off to one side, Ranulf replenished his crossbow magazines with bolts and observed the dwarf draw out a pouch with an overt flourish which immediately caught the giant’s eye. Baldin removed something from the bag and popped it ostentatiously into his mouth. He chewed slowly with infinite relish.
Gort harrumphed loudly and pressed on with his polishing. The dwarf smacked his lips, licked his fingers and poked in the bag for another tidbit.
It was too much for the giant.
“Always stuffing yourself, but never a thought of offering your comrades anything,” he complained sourly.
The dwarf eyed him speculatively and adopted a slightly hurt look.
“Well—they’re rather special, that’s all,” he replied evasively.
“Special are they? Too good to share with a friend, are they?”
“No, it’s just—” said Baldin hurriedly, “—that dwarves seem to be the only ones who appreciate the flavour of—”
Gort snorted with indignation and grabbed the pouch.
“Are you insinuating that your people have better taste than mine?” he roared.
He groped in the bag and extracted a strange-looking “sweetmeat”. A jellied globule with a suspicious-looking hard blob, unwinking inside it.
Baldin watched placidly and, with more insouciance than he felt, Gort tossed the confection into his mouth.
“What are they?” he asked as he chewed. “Some kind of fruit?”
“Fruit, he says,” mimicked Baldin.
“Well, what then?”
Baldin shook his head bemoaning the big man’s ignorance. “These are the finest sugared turkles money can buy.”
“Turkles?” puzzled Gort.
“Yes, you lummox! Turkles!” the dwarf reiterated. “You know—what d’you call them? Lizard’s eyeballs!”
Gort’s jaws stuck in half travel, he clapped a hand to mouth, threw the pouch back at Baldin and hastened outside.
The dwarf hugged his knees, noticed Ranulf watching him and, sheep-faced, offered the pouch to him. Ranulf demurred with a firm shake of his head.
“Oh, you needn’t worry,” Baldin said with understanding. “They’re actually sugared nuts. But if I’d told longshanks that, this bag would be as empty as his head.”
Crow squatted on a plinth a stone’s throw from the entrance to the monastery. He listened intently, dividing the various sounds his sensitive ears picked up into categories which either demanded further examination or instant dismissal. For some time he had concentrated on a series of low muffled footfalls a few miles away in the distant forest. They developed into the measured tread of armed men and their advancing progress verified to the elf that their objective was the monastery. He slipped down from the stone pedestal and loped quickly over and into the church.
“Armed men moving towards us,” he said simply.
“How many?” queried Hawk, totally alert.
“A dozen!”
Sister Monica heard the exchange from the window of a cloister and hurried to confront the men who prepared themselves for the coming combat.
“Please,” she entreated Hawk. “Just give them the gold.”
“If the Abbess is released, they shall have it.” Hawk spoke wearily but gently. “You have my word. Now, tell your sisters to remain in their cells.”
Hawk positioned himself in front of the altar facing the great double doors which he had purposely left unbarred. The others disposed themselves in the shadows and waited.
The doors of the church burst open. Twelve men stormed in and arranged themselves about their leader, Drogo. Contemptuously, he stepped down into the chapel interior, apparently opposed by one solitary man.
“That’s far enough,” said Hawk in a voice of spun steel. “State your business.”
“You know my business. I am Drogo, son of Voltan! I come for the gold.”
He looked past Hawk to the chest on the altar table, a mocking smile on his lips.
“The gold will be given when the Abbess is returned. Tell Voltan it is here waiting.”
Drogo took another step nearer, his face stony.
“I did not make myself clear,” snarled Drogo icily. “I came for the gold. I am no messenger, but I will give you a message.”
He motioned his men forward, their faces eager for the kill.
“A message of death.”
He lunged himself at Hawk.
The mindsword sparked to life and leapt into Hawk’s hand. Green fire wreathed a helix about Drogo’s sword and his charging blow cut through the empty space where Hawk had originally stood.
Drogo’s men faced the full fury of Hawk’s comrades. Arrows and crossbow bolts ripped from two angles of concealment and before they could comprehend what had happened, a whirlwind of death-dealing blows erupted on them from Gort’s hammer. Those who survived the slamming were dealt with mercilessly by Baldin’s cudgel as he darted from pillar to pillar, too small and too agile for the searching blades of the attackers.
A bearded bull of a man swathed his broadsword at Hawk but the thrust was deflected by the mindsword, the impetus of the lunge taking him beyond Hawk. He whirled a slice at the unprotected back but the bearer of the mindsword danced sideways and Hawk’s driving cut severed bone and sinew.
Drogo had suffered a bone-jarring slit across his forehead and the blood poured down across his eyes. He slicked it away with the back of his hand.
The ghastly green of the mindsword beckoned Drogo scornfully.
Mindlessly, the son of Voltan shrieked venomous hate at Hawk, slashing blindly in all directions with berserker rage. He used his sword like a cleaver but he hardly felt the mortal blow which rent through his chest.<
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The tumult had boiled in the tight confines of the chapterhouse for what seemed an eternity but in reality had only endured for a trice.
Only two of Drogo’s men still had the breath left in their bodies and Hawk bade them drop their weapons.
“Take him to Voltan.” Hawk indicated the fallen Drogo whose tortured breaths racked his frame like the ague. “Tell him Hawk waits for the Abbess to be returned.”
Sister Monica rushed in as Drogo was trailed from the church. The sight of the dying and the dead appalled her. She glared at Hawk with eyes which now saw him as contemptible as the other despoiler of churches. What difference was there between them? They all delighted in the ecstasy of killing.
Her revulsion prickled the hair on Hawk’s neck. There was nothing he could ever say now that would wipe away her loathing for him and the knowledge weighed heavily on him.
“Why did you not give him the gold?” she cried. “That is all he wanted. Now you will bring the wrath of the Dark One on us all.”
Hawk could find no words but Gort felt obliged to speak bluntly.
“He came for the gold and he also came for Hawk,” he pointed out to her. “If he had got them your Lady would not have lived beyond the dawn and this church would have been burnt to the ground.”
Sister Monica paid no heed to the giant and directed her words to Hawk.
“I asked you to give them the gold. They would have returned the Abbess and left us in peace.”
There was an awkward silence and Crow, not normally one to speak, surprised everyone by responding, “The peace of the dead.”
16
THE FUNERAL PYRE
Voltan’s steed thundered up the rising forest path which gradually widened like a funnel as it mounted towards the base of the rearing rocky eminence. The steep bluff of limestone shimmered before him but the blazing pain coursing the length of his face made his vision fragment into dancing scintillas of disconnected pictures.
His horse slowed its charging pace to a panting walk as the gradient grew too great and stopped altogether on the grassy clearing which lay like a carpet before the gaping blackness of the cave sundered in the face of the rocky scar.
He dismounted and entered the cave mouth which vibrated with an undulating redness. Almost at once he was swallowed up in the inky midnight.
The tall creature seemed suspended inside the grotto before a huge, concave, bioplasmic eggcell which pulsated throughout its organic sphere with the vermilion flush of living blood.
Voltan removed the grilled mask which hid his tortured face and faced the Black Wizard. The orbs within the hood focused on him.
“Has the one we seek—come?” asked the stridulous voice.
“Not yet,” panted Voltan, swaying his head to and fro. “Hurry! The pain grows worse.”
“The flesh does not heal. A strange malady affects the face. It is beyond all skill to render a permanent cure.”
The hooded Wizard removed from the folds of his cloak the relief-giving crystal.
“Soon my tormentor will be within my grasp,” gritted Voltan. “Then shall he endure double the pain I have suffered these long years.”
“Steel yourself,” hissed the creature. “The pain will be great.”
A sudden blast of power erupted from the crystal and scorched Voltan’s face, tearing a growling scream from his throat. White heat silhouetted his head and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
And in the floating darkness his recurring nightmare began. A flaming torch drove straight at his face and he could smell the blackening flesh burn. The white face of a woman bobbed in the murk, the beautiful profile of a beckoning fair one: which shattered and resolved itself into a screaming countenance falling away from him, endlessly spinning. The flowing robes once pure and clean became besmirched by an ever-increasing blot of blood. It crimsoned from a central point like a whirlpool and in its eye a steel shafted arrow vibrated.
Eliane, he screamed soundlessly and the nightmare repeated itself.
He woke with a start.
The Black Wizard stood over him impassively.
“How long have I been like this?” Voltan asked in a thick voice.
“The effect of the crystal lasts longer each time,” answered the spindly creature. “The sun has gone from the sky and will soon rise in the east.”
Voltan rode into his encampment and the outlying guards snapped out of their loose stances at his passing. He paused in front of his pavilion and waited for Chak to take care of his horse.
Some commotion broke out on the far edge of the camp. Two men half-carried a third, threading through the small, smouldering fires and bivouac tents.
A coldness crept over Voltan when he recognised the injured man as Drogo. He indicated a rough trestle. The two warriors nervously lay his son upon it and retreated, hoping for anonymity.
Voltan looked down upon Drogo bleakly. His son’s eyelids flickered wildly, then held his father’s gaze.
“I wanted to …” Drogo’s voice faltered and a tiny trickle of his life blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Each word was a hot tongue of fire. “… to prove myself … Hawk …”
Voltan gripped his son’s shoulders.
“Hawk? Where?”
“He helps the nuns … the gold is in the church … I tried to …”
His eyes swivelled up into his head. Voltan felt the body sag and go slack. His son was dead.
“Dro—go!”
He pulled the two syllables out into a keening moan. It was a mixture of saddened loss and angry irritation.
Out of the corner of his eye he marked the two men and a new emotion eased the ache of his son’s death. An emotion he understood and could endure with pleasure.
He turned away from Drogo’s corpse.
“My son dies and yet you live,” he began casually. “I find that strange.”
The other warriors had heard this tone before and shrank back, leaving the two men in isolation.
“Give them weapons,” he signed to Chak. “It is fitting my son dies with dogs at his feet.”
The two men looked at one another unsteadily. They accepted the swords Chak thrust upon them with ill-concealed fear.
Voltan intentionally stood with his back to them. The swords hung loosely in their hands, watching, waiting, comparing glances with one another.
“Fight,” challenged Voltan, throwing away the conspicuous dagger from his belt. “Or you die where you stand.”
One of the men sneered and tightened the grip on his blade. His comrade was still unsure but gained courage from the other’s attitude. They widened the distance between them.
Voltan’s face was inscrutable but he listened intently to each minute sound. He knew the very instant that the first man made up his mind to strike. The stress of his footfall. Many times he had played this game and the excitement charged his body electrically.
With a swoop he plucked a concealed knife from a sheath at the top of his boot and hurled it sideways jumping splay-legged to face the second man.
The first man let out an oof of surprise, crumpled to the ground while he tried to prise the steel from his stomach. He never accomplished it and he was a long time dying.
“Has your courage deserted you so soon?” Voltan mocked the remaining man who had checked any thought of rushing Voltan.
Indeed, his head twitched with an uncontrollable palsy. He laid the sword down, making soundless noises of surrender.
“Pick it up!” hissed Voltan.
The man looked at his comrades of yesterday but found little solace there since they averted their eyes from his silent pleading.
“Pick it up!” screamed Voltan for the last time.
The man fled down a tunnel of men towards the safety of the forest.
Voltan held out a commanding hand and Chak placed a small javelin into it.
The fleeing man felt the thud in his back which tumbled him on to his knees. He pitched forward face down in the dirt, the javelin
transfixing his body and pinning him to the ground.
“Prepare the rites for my son,” commanded Voltan of Chak.
Scudding clouds obscured the moon and intermittent beams of liquid silver rippled over the high funeral pyre. Atop the brushwood pile lay the corpse of Drogo, his arms crossed on his chest clasping his sword, its hilt tucked below his chin. At his feet, the two men stared sightlessly into the night.
It had been built on a slight knoll and Voltan’s men stationed themselves at some distance below it.
Voltan stood close to it, a flaming brand poised to set it alight.
A wind sprang up from nowhere and sent masses of dry leaves swirling about the open hillock.
He thrust the torch deep into the pyre and the gusting breeze fanned the fire quickly into a scorching blaze.
Voltan retreated from the heat to where Chak held his horse at the ready. Safely mounted, he viewed his son’s pyre for the last time.
His son’s pyre!
The greedy sparks leapt from the fiery furnace and the image of another conflagration superimposed itself on Voltan’s mind.
Huts made of wattle and reeds incandesced and from one hovel, consumed with flames, issued the agonised cries of a man and woman.
A small boy crawled on the ground before it, calling endlessly for his mother and father. Warriors on horseback threatened to trample him underfoot until Voltan reached down from his saddle and swung him up on to his horse.
The reeking huts sent choking smoke in all directions.
“Father! Mother!” whimpered the boy.
Voltan shook the hysterical child.
“They are nothing. You obey me now,” he shouted above the crackling din. “I am your father. Do you understand?”
The colour of the boy’s hair was the colour of her hair. The wideness of eye had her candour. It could have been her child, he thought, but instantly dismissed it because of its impossibility.
His horse’s trembling jolted Voltan from his introspection and he eased it further back from the smouldering air which eddied from the pyre. Without being observed he drifted off into the forest enclosure and was gone before any of his men noted his disappearance.