The Horse Lord

by Peter Morwood

  Aldric bowed gratefully, extending deliberately now to the full obeisance which he had reached only accidentally before. Ymareth seemed to ignore him; it was coiling up again on the platform where he had first seen it, slow and sinister grace in every movement. Then its head swung to regard him once more. "The Charm of Understanding wearies me, and I would sleep the long sleep once again. Ere then I would tell thee that which may prove of some purpose. If perchance ye should possess a thing sought after greatly by cu Ruruc, make pretence of its destruction and await what follows…"

  The eijo had no idea how Ymareth had gained such knowledge, but its advice seemed sound enough: if Ka-larr thought the spellstone was destroyed, then he would also think himself free of any challenge to his own ability and might… just might… do something stupid. Unless what the dragon really meant was… Aldric's head began to pound, what with the unremitting heat, the air stiff with enchantments, and the strain of talking to an old, wise, crafty and—hide it how he would—frightening firedrake in awesome full maturity. The convoluted workings of sorcery and dragon-minds were enough to give anyone a headache.

  Scales clicked and grated as Ymareth settled on the plinth, and its eyelids slid down to shutter the glow of those terrible hypnotic eyes. At his side Aldric could sense Kyrin stirring; despite his warning she—and probably Dewan who had been too far away to hear him— had looked full at the dragon's gaze and had been snared, subject only to the firedrake's will. If it had bidden them walk up to be devoured, they would have done so without resistance. The smoke-plumes drifting from Ymareth's nostrils ceased as some internal process slaked the fires in its belly. There was a heavy silence.

  In the shadows at the entrance of the hall, something glinted as it moved.

  When the dragon fell asleep Kyrin shivered violently, glanced from the corner of one eye at Aldric, then threw her arms around him and clung there tightly. After only a few minutes she released him and backed away, her glazed sleepy look rapidly becoming one of disbelief as the spell faded and understanding took its place. "Aldric-ain …" She faltered, glanced at Ymareth and then looked him full in the face. "You were talking to… that thing… as easily as you talk to me. Who are you? What are you?"

  "I'm Aldric Talvalin and I'm scared." The eijo smiled, a sour twist of thinned lips, but he was not being funny. Under his black metal carapace he was trembling with reaction, and there was something with big, soft wings flapping around the pit of his stomach. "Which I expected to be. And I'm still alive, which I didn't expect at all. Speaking to firedrakes is…" he laughed weakly, "… rather a strain."

  Ar Korentin came sprinting up with a clatter of armour, but when they turned to look at him he slackened his headlong pace and approached more sedately, as befitted a captain-of-guards—even a thoroughly shocked one. His eyes rested briefly on Aldric, then slid past him to the dragon. The eijo could tell there were many questions dammed up behind Dewan's impassive features; questions which he would be well advised to answer. But not just yet.

  "Are you both all right?" was all the Vreijek asked, and Aldric nodded.

  "Yourself?" he returned.

  "Well enough," said Dewan, shrugging off the languorous heaviness in his limbs as unimportant, and showing some teeth in what should have been a grin but fell rather short of the mark. "Though I have felt better."

  "So have I," Aldric conceded. Laying the Dragon-wand carefully by his feet, he wrapped head and chin in the heavy silk scarf he had taken off earlier, then settled the comforting weight of coif, mask and helmet over its padding and laced them in place. As he straightened with Ykraith in both hands, he saw ar Korentin watching him thoughtfully. Aldric's mouth twitched into a little smile."'In strange places, when all seems still—look to your armor,'"he quoted. "I've got what I came for. Let us leave."

  They walked up the hall together, with that strange attraction of the treasure still tugging at them—but after having seen its guardian, resisting the urge to steal was easy. Even though hidden now by shadows at the far end of the cavern, Ymareth's ominous bulk was an ever-present deterrent.

  Perhaps his senses had been dulled by the proximity of the firedrake's spell-binding gaze, perhaps his mental faculties were not operating fully in this place of sorcery. For whatever reason, when two swordsmen sprang at him from the stairs Aldric was taken completely by surprise.

  Unbalanced, he could not sidestep the nearest man fast enough, and like most kailinin he seldom carried a shield when out of the saddle. But he reacted with the speed of training that had become almost a reflex action, blocking the closer cut with the only thing to hand—the Dragonwand. As the sword came slashing down on to his head he flung Ykraith up, braced like a spearshaft in a wide double grip. Steel and glassy adamant met with a harsh belling clang and sparks flew. Splinters also, as the sword-blade shattered.

  Aldric twisted at the waist and lunged towards his second enemy with the long, sharp crystal tip, using only his right hand—lower down the staff—to give a longer reach. It was an old trick of straight-spear fighting.

  Like so many old tricks, it worked. Ykraith's crystal flame and its dragonhead slammed into the swordsman's throat just where neck joined collarbone, tore through everything in their path and burst from his spine with sufficient force to nail him to the wall. With his neck uncleanly but completely snapped, the man was dead almost before he knew that something was wrong.

  Long before that Aldric had released the Dragonwand. His left hand had already freed Widowmaker's safety-collar from her scabbard's mouth and tilted the longsword's hilt forward. His right hand crossed, gripped and drew.

  Dewan had already noticed how fast the young eijo could move, but he was two hundred years too young to have seen this form of draw before. And his eyes were hardly fast enough to see it now.

  With a bright, brief sring Isileth blurred from her scabbard in an arc of light. Dewan heard a noise, a thud blended with a moist, ripping crunch; and then Aldric's arm was fully extended after its horizontal sweep, the longsword gleaming in a hand which had been empty one-eighth of a second before. There was a dark, wet smear on the last six inches of its blade. Aldric whirled the taiken up behind his head, left hand joining right prior to a vertical cut. It was not needed.

  The Alban's opponent made a wheezing sound, not from his mouth but from his chest, and his eyes glistened white as they rolled up and back. Though the man wore a bullhide jerkin, taikenin in hands little stronger than Aldric's had cloven armour. Mere human bodies were no obstacle. Isileth's backhand cut had sliced through breastbone, heart and lungs, and as the man collapsed a bubbling spew of blood erupted from his gaping ribcage. Both legs kicked in random jerks and then, as the body accepted it was dead, they quivered and were still.

  From beginning to end the thing had taken seven seconds.

  With a slow, sweeping movement, Aldric brought the poised longsword over and down into a posture of readiness and drew in a deep, rather shaky breath. The breath whispered softly out between his parted lips as he relaxed, then stepped back, fastidiously avoiding the mess which oozed across the floor. Light and shadow moved within the trefoil opening of his war-mask as he turned his head away. There were spots and trickles of blood on his face, but no emotion; it was cold, immobile as if graven of grey metal, with a flawed imperfection scarring one cheek under the curved black armour.

  Kyrin stared at his dispassionate features and an overwhelming sense of unreality filled her mind. This was not the Aldric she knew, the one who smiled and had gentle hands. This eijo's face was that of a stranger who had felt no tenderness in all his life. Her Aldric would not have… Would not have done what he had just done without showing some trace of feeling.

  Then she met his eyes and saw the pain in their grey-green depths. Aldric was skilled in the art of taiken-ulleth and would kill without hesitation. But not without reason. And not without remorse. Not yet.

  Dewan, perhaps unfairly, had seen nothing of that brief, wordless exchange; he was impressed merely
by the speed and near-surgical precision of Aldric's fighting style. He was not an Alban. "Who were they?" he wondered, half to himself.

  Widowmaker, cleansed and sated, hissed softly like an angry cat as she slid down into her scabbard. She had tasted human blood again, for the first time in three centuries and her thirst was quenched once more. Until the next time. Kyrin remembered all the stories she had heard of Alban named-blades and remembered, too, the sense of icy menace she had felt on the only occasion she had drawn the star-steel sword herself. Then she had been unsure of the feeling's source; now she was quite certain. Yet the taiken was not evil in itself, no more than men or dragons were—but it had been forged and named with one purpose in mind, and though she could not blame either Aldric or his blade, it did seem that Isileth Widowmaker fulfilled that purpose all too eagerly.

  The young eijo jerked Ykraith from the stone wall, lowered his second victim to the ground, then eased the Dragonwand's deadly crystal point out of the corpse's neck and brought it round for cleaning. He blinked; the talisman was unblemished by any trace of blood, as if the fluid had refused to touch its surface. Or had been absorbed.

  "I said, who were they?" ar Korentin repeated, more loudly than before.

  "Your guess is—" Aldric began; then his eyes narrowed and he jumped almost six feet backwards from the entrance to the stairway, Ykraith tucked spearwise close into his right hip. That sixth sense of his had begun to operate again, like a lantern being unshuttered—and not before time, he thought viciously. It was weak, a premonition, a mental tickle rather than the usual full-throated yell of alarm, but it was undoubtedly there. The scuff of his soft-soled boots and the faint rustle of his armour sounded very loud in the stillness his movement had engendered.

  Much louder than the suave voice which drifted down the stairs towards him.

  "No need to guess, gentlemen." it purred. "They were once my colleagues. Rash fellows both—if I warned them about startling people once, I warned them a thousand times." The voice took on a world-weary, paternal tone. "And now see where such foolishness has brought them. Most regrettable…"

  The speaker sauntered into view; he was a tall, thin, wolfish man with an overly-precise moustache which looked as painted as a woman's brows, dark, roguish curls rather at variance with the predatory gleam in his grey eyes and a solitary pearl-drop in the lobe of his right ear. His clothes were equally dashing—black breeches with silver medallions down the outer seams, glossy boots worked with gold around their fringed tops, a fine white shirt and a blue coat over all, worked with more gold and embroidery, caught at the waist by a scarlet sash through which were thrust two curved shortswords and a fancifully carved telek. It was this individual's stylish—if eccentric—mode of dress which told Dewan what, if not who, he was.

  "Pirate," the Vreijek growled, putting all the distaste a king's officer could summon up into that one word.

  A flicker of annoyance crossed the other's saturnine face and his lazy smile became momentarily somewhat stretched. "You're over-blunt, my friend," he reproved. "That is not a word I like. I prefer to regard myself as an adventurous businessman, a dealer in the transfer of expensive commodities." He smiled broadly and snapped his fingers. "Now these are pirates."

  Feet clattered on the stairs and seven more intruders joined the first. They were a motley group, ill-favoured and villainous; some, in ill-fitting and ragged finery, tried to ape their leader's romantic attire, but without taking his painstaking care succeeded only in looking faintly ridiculous—although neither Aldric nor his companions felt like laughing at the spectacle. The remainder dressed—or to judge by the amount of scarred, weather-beaten flesh on view, did not dress—much as the fancy took them, in leather war-harness and furs, or in grubby jerkins and pieces of cast-off armour. Their threatening growls and curses fell to silence as they saw the heaps of treasure strewn about the Cavern of Firedrakes.

  Aldric paid them no heed, apart from the germ of an idea in which Ymareth the dragon played a leading role. His attention was focused on their lord, chieftain, captain or whatever he chose to call himself—and the pirate's attention was focused on Tehal Kyrin. Any Valhollan woman could take care of her own virtue, as the eijo knew quite well—Kyrin perhaps better than most—but he was still a kailin-eir and honour was still something to be upheld.

  "Gentlemen, and of course the lovely lady," the pirate murmured in a caressing voice calculated to provoke, "let me explain this delicate situation. Techaur Island is our… cashbox, if you like, where we deposit the profits from our various… transactions. In such circumstances you must see that your presence here is less than welcome. Apart, of course, from you, my dear." He bowed elaborately to Kyrin who, Aldric was pleased to see, failed to appreciate his courtesy.

  "I am not your dear," she snapped, drawing her estoc for emphasis.

  "For the moment," returned the buccaneer, not one whit deterred by her rejection. "We'll see what more intimate acquaintance produces. You see, gentlemen, we usually feel obliged to execute trespassers but on this occasion I think a fine would be more rewarding. The girl and twice her weight in gold, in exchange for your lives. Agreed?"

  "Not agreed." Aldric drove the Dragonwand into the floor with as much ease as piercing a fresh loaf and left it embedded in the flagstones. "Leave my lady right out of your calculations, pirate. Consider: there are three of us, eight of you." He was talking now not to the captain but to his common sailors, those with most to gain and lose from a good bargain or a hard fight.

  "The odds are not good—but enough to ensure somebody will not live to enjoy whatever the survivors win. All for a girl. Whereas if your captain leaves his own lechery aside, you'll all get gold enough to buy the favours of twenty first-rank courtesans and never a scratch to show for it. So there's my offer. Gold." Widowmaker sang as she slowly left her scabbard. "Or steel. And a death I'll make as painful as my skill allows. Choose."

  As a growling mutter rose behind him, the captain looked narrowly at Aldric, then at Kyrin and ar Koren-tin. All had now drawn blades and the firelight in the hall reflected from their weapons like molten copper— or fresh blood.

  "How much gold?" the man asked, much of his mocking good-humour dissipated by the possibility of his own violent death.

  "As much gold as each man can carry out unaided in one journey. But I want some word of honour that you won't come back again." Careful, Aldric reminded himself. If you sound too naive, they will suspect you're up to something. He deliberately sneered at them. "Assuming scum like you use oaths for anything but foul language, of course. Well?"

  "By the sea on which we earn our living, I swear we will not return once we have taken what we can carry," the pirate chief said primly.

  Dewan guessed that both men were hiding smiles; the . buccaneer for his ambiguous oath, which would change with the tide, and Aldric for his devious trick which seemed to be working well. Ar Korentin did not approve of such a scheme, but the circumstances were desperate enough to require harsh measures.

  "And my lady?" the Alban persisted.

  "You can keep her. I'll settle for a willing woman."

  "But I will not!"

  The bull-bellow startled everyone and almost precipitated the fight which Aldric was trying to avoid. Then he stared at the man who was forcing his way to the front of the buccaneers' ranks.

  "I am Khakkhur," the huge figure rumbled. "I want your woman, now. And what Khakkhur wants, he takes!" The man was a barbarian from the far north, but totally unlike the fair, ruddy-featured big men Aldric had seen on the docks at Erdhaven. Where they had been stern and grim, Khakkhur's heavy features were set in what looked to be a permanent scowl. A mane of coarse black hair hung to his shoulders and his massive body was clad only in boots, swordbelt and a length of bearskin strapped around his hips as a kind of kilt.

  The Northrons at Erdhaven had dressed in much the same way, proud of their sleek muscles and showing them off adorned with gold bands and ornaments of bear-teeth. In Aldric's
opinion, Khakkhur would have been wiser covering himself up. The man was overdeveloped to the point of grossness, his biceps as thick as the Alban's thigh, the ponderous muscles of his chest like a woman's breasts.

  A barbarian, to Aldric, had been one who neither spoke Alban nor lived in a land with permanent towns. He saw now that there was a third, more bestial type, who had left his tribal customs behind but who called civilised laws weak and in consequence did what he pleased. Even the wolf in the wood obeyed the rules of his pack. But not a wild animal like Khakkhur.

  "Give me the girl, little black-beetle," the barbarian growled, and drew a heavy broadsword from its sheath at his belt. "Give her to me, or Khakkhur will crack your shell apart and eat your liver raw."

  He probably would at that, Aldric reflected sombrely, then wrinkled his nose as a whiff of unwashed body reached him. Not all the big man's bronze skin came from sun and wind; it seemed he had decided soap and water was a mark of civilised decadence, along with manners, morals and the rest. Then the young eijo's teeth showed in an ugly grin. Shell—Light of Heaven, of course! Bare muscles were just meat, no matter how powerful, and Isileth Widowmaker was the ultimate carving-knife. "Captain," he advised, "call your henchman off if he's of any value."

  "I cannot do that, my friend," said the pirate with totally false regret. One fewer opponent would bring the odds even more into his favour. "My promise concerned gold. Killing is something else entirely."

  Aldric looked at the massive blade in the barbarian's fist and swallowed hard despite his own confidence. His tsalaer was full battle armour, but it wouldn't keep such a weapon out without being so heavy he would be unable to move. Long ago the kailinin had struck a balance in their armour: thick enough to turn chance arrows or glancing blows, but light enough to give them speed to dodge anything more deliberate. Tsalaerin were not impenetrable and Aldric's mind's eye had seen—was still seeing with hideous clarity—what that huge sword would do to him if it struck home squarely. So keep out of its way, he thought, and roll with what you cannot avoid in time. Duck and sidestep, then cut straight.