All had taken note that its wings had never flapped. Nor had any sound come from that ferocious curved beak. All had seen that no blood spurted from it. Now every man saw that there was nothing at all on Jarik’s unshining black blade. Nor was it notched or even marked, though Kirrensark’s good war-ax of iron was badly notched. Goreless and bloodless, that unnatural demon-bird died.
The sword’s wielder lurched down beside Jilain. She was bleeding, and conscious though muzzy. Even as Jarik’s brain blurred with the hovering of Oak’s reaching for the surface of a shared mind, he saw that only the wound he had put on her forehead had been knocked open, and that by her shield. It bled anew, in a trickle only. On her cheek, from bracer or shield, showed a scratch within a bruise. Her hazel eyes found focus and glowed up at him. Jarik hardly knew what he did. She had just slain three and been singled out for that god-demon’s attack because of it, and was injured and groggy. And she was a woman who noted the attention and anxious concern of the man she had chosen.
“This one is all rikht, Jarish,” she told him, and showed him a pallid smile. It was the first time she had said his name that way.
“Lie still,” he said, and though he was Jarik he snarled the words as a command, as Oak would have done. He let go the Black Sword, leaving it against his bent leg. Both his hands rose to draw a thong from behind his neck. At its end swung a warmly glowing chunk of amber, cut into a thumbsized ward symbol. He placed the cord over her head so that the weight of the honey-colored stone fell onto the warcoat she wore with a little rap of amber on leather.
She smiled, but she had to force it; never had Jilain seen such mad eyes. Those eyes were not soft blue perisine gemstones now, or flecks of sky, but two chips of cobalt that were at once hotly glaring and yet of ice. Flaming icebergs; frozen volcanoes of blue fire.
Straightening, he hurled himself to the rail. Only she had seen that fearsome glassy glare, those staring mad eyes.
Like a madman he stood tall, presented a fine target while he waved the Black Sword high. Seemingly begging for archers to try their skill. Challenging the other craft as an entity. Begging its crew to come and die. And suddenly by his side was a man twenty years older but no less maniacally inimical. White-blond hair floated out beneath his round iron helm in which a dent and scratches showed like badges of experience. Then Kirrensark too was there, roaring, shaking his notched ax and his beard, with nothing pitiful or ludricous about that big girthy man’s lack of one arm.
Only Kirrensark knew what he was doing.
From behind them and aftward, four arrows left Seadancer together. Never could anyone be sure which man’s was the bow that sent the other ship’s straw-bearded master toppling backward with an arrow sunken deep in his corselet of stout boiled leather.
“Belches!” Jarik bellowed in a mighty voice. “Excrescences on a frog’s back! The BIRD directed you, on behalf of the Iron Lords! Without it, you are without them — and without them you are LITTLE men and dead men! For this is a sword of the Iron Lords, you gusts of gas from a fat oldster’s belly! What else could have SLAINNN that foul bird that was no bird?”
Beside him, pale-eyed, fire-eyed, Delath too had gone morbrin. “Come,” he roared, “and DIE!”
“Oh Sweet Lady, to see this! Both are gone morbrin. Neither knows what he says or does!”
The attacking ship sheared away as if gusted by those mad voices. Not so much as a single arrow streaked at those maniacs, who stood tall and within range. Mad-eyed and foaming for the letting of blood, Jarik and Delath demanded that they pursue and slay, slay, slay, sink the other ship, wash it in blood, chop men and ship into scarlet kindling …
They were restrained and calmed by men wary of their blades, for they were in an insane fever for battle and blood. In that emprise the two morbriners wreaked far more damage than the attackers, in bruises and abrasions on the shipmates who at last restrained them. They lay panting, snarling, held down.
“They attacked me,” Jarik morbriner said once, panting. “The Iron Lords sent attack on me!”
Oh so slowly those glaring eyes of blue and of grey lost the ugly glitter of the morbriner. A few feet away Jilain was hale and fine, and none had heard her bright-eyed murmur:
“O Osyr! How one loves it! How is it that Your daukhter Jilain never knew she was born for battle and danger?” And her right wrist pressed hard against her breast while she clamped in her hand the chunk of ancient amber that hung from a leathern cord around her neck.
Then Jarik and Delath were recovered from that fit of madness that came now and again on some few men, and it was Jilain who was hero of Seadancer.
*
The day waned and ended in the peace of a sunset that was orange and the color of roses splashed with gold. Combat-companions slept well with a feeling of accomplishment. And had any sought to touch the woman among them, surely ten would have attacked him.
Next day Jarik and Jilain stood for long, each with hands on the other’s shoulders, and looked each into the other’s eyes. The men of Seadancer, of Kirrensark-wark, saw that about his neck and on Jarik’s chest hung a necklace of shells. Nor had those shells been touched by any man.
That cool day Strave Hot-eye had a thought, and smiled, and tugged off his leggings to display dirty breechclout and hairy, knotted legs. Ceremoniously he folded away his leggings. He said nothing, but soon Tole’s leggings were off and piled on Strave’s, and Coon’s, and those of Stirl and Runner, and Jilain was no longer alone bare-legged on Seadancer.
A crosswind gave them trouble, and they spent hours battling it. That was good, for it was something to do. Kirrensark worked at smoothing out his damaged ax, and shot glances at Jarik. Once they were sure they had bested the contrary wind, those men of his wark saw land. Aye, and this time it was land; it was land they knew.
Standing well out, the men of Seadancer ruddered up the coast to familiar landmarks. Marks of land; land they knew; a land that rose to sneer down at the sea but admitted it here and there by way of deeply slashed inlets. Most willingly they answered the questions of one aboard who had never been to sea. She was a fellow warrior. They did not today call her Jilain, or even Jilain Kerosyris. Jilain Demonslayer, they called that hero of Seadancer. Nor did Strave Hot-eye mind or say a word when she erred and called him “sister archer.” For both of them knew what they were, and words would not change that. Besides, he knew she intended only to compliment him, battle companion.
And Seadancer came to Kirrensark Long-haft’s wark on the high shores of Lokusta, where the sea crashed and roared with the voices of a hundred wolves; and they made landing amid a great welcoming.
There followed a feasting and much license, for women were glad to see their men home and the men twice as glad and in need besides. Willingly maidens bestowed that which they had saved and protected. The presence of Jilain aboard, and her untouchable, had only increased the desire and need of those seafaring men. Produce of this night’s sowing would be seen nine months hence, and welcome, for there was battle to come, and battle again.
They were not aware of it, and would not have given it thought had they known: a wind age, a sword age, a wolf age had come upon the earth.
In that celebration Jilain took part, in a loose tunic of blue the color of her hair and the hair of Kirrensark’s fat wife Lirushye, whose tunic it was, dyed with the same water-steeped leaves that provided the color of the hair and brows of every woman of Kirrensark-wark. Thus they did not see Jilain’s hair as unusual, for they thought she dyed it as they did theirs. Only her black brows they thought strange — but that year a new fashion was born in Kirrensark-wark, and blue eyebrows vanished.
The leggings Jilain wore, fawn-hide and hardly stained, were old but little worn. They had belonged to a firstman’s dead son named Kirrensarkson Kirrenar. They fit, nearly, though it was not easy for that archer-warrior to sit. Leather, Kirrensark assured her grinning, would stretch. And he added, “Blight the fact!”
She was warrior and hero and c
ombat-companion, but she did not participate in the license. None dared touch her save Jarik and Kirrensark — who touched her in the way of a father. And Jarik of the Black Sword lay neither with Iklatne daughter of Lirushye and Kirrensark, nor with Jilain called Demonslayer of Kerosyr, though both wanted him sorely. Indeed, he was careful to avoid such possibility by taking pains to become thoroughly, disgustingly drunk.
Chapter Nine
“A white-bearded man with an unlined face and eyes like water in a stone basin sworded open Thanamee’s swollen belly so that he took two lives at once.”
— from The Iron Lords
Kirrensark’s cousin Ahl was ambitious, and not content with his own holdings. He had kept his bargain with the Lady of the Snowmist because he dared not do otherwise: Ahl had kept to his own lesser domain and made no attempt on Kirrensark-wark in the absence of its firstman. He had also kept a spy high in those bad eastward hills. That man set off for Ahl-wark the moment Seadancer put in to shore and the gladsome clamor rose in the wark of Kirrensark. Now the firstman was home, and the bargain was at an end, terminated by its own terms. Just after dawn of the morning of Seadancer’s return, Ahl made attack, with nearly all the men of Ahl-wark.
Kirrensark’s people were worse than unprepared. Men were swollen of tongue and head from ale and sex, and many were hardly rested from lengthy engaging in the latter. In seconds all three sentries and the two women with them were dead in their blood. Thus it was roosters and dogs that gave the alarm, and a shrieking woman who had gone to privy. She died too, and it was horror and injustice that wounded Handeth became a widower on his first day home.
Jarik, though his head was thick and exerting inward pressure on its caging skull, was up. No miracle was involved. Some of the gallon or two of beer he had downed wanted out. His mighty bellowing shout was soon joined by others.
“Attack! To arms! Attack! We’re attacked!”
Soon men were bustling forth, with or without armor, but at least helmeted, armed, and bearing shields of wood bossed with bronze or iron.
Still, it was impossible that in their state they could successfully defend and prevail, even against men whose leader had foolishly marched them nearly all the night. What was needed in Kirrensark-wark was a miracle. Or great heroes.
The attackers gave up all stealth when their prey came boiling forth to meet them. They came running and bounding in among the very buildings of the wark, men in leathern armor flashing with bosses of iron or bronze, and a bare few in chain-or scalecoats. The hair streaming from under their helmets and behind ranged from white to tawny and no darker, and the noise they made was horrendous clamor.
Always there must be a fastest runner and thus a first. The first among those of Ahl-wark fell to an arrow that was striped in a spiral wise. One man tripped over him while others pounded past and over. Five bounding paces the second man took in his strapped buskins and brightly glinting coat of scales sewn laboriously onto leather, and an identical arrow dropped aslant into his forehead, and burst within. The others ran on to the attack. Axes whooshed up and down and sharpened iron blades banged and clanged on bucklers and on iron and leather with fearful noise. A bit of bronze boss flew from a sundered coat of leather, and the first defender fell without a cry. And another. And another, while two more attackers fell to arrows from the bow of her whom Kirrensark had last night heartily announced, again and again, as his warrior daughter-son. Her name was not Iklatne. In Kirrensark-wark, Jilain had found immediate employment of her skills.
The roaring shout was hideous and bull-like as Delath burst from his home. In his hands an ax; on him neither armor nor shield. His pale eyes glared like sunlit ice and his pale, pale beard writhed with his snarls and roars. Whether he saw any man that day, as a man, was never known. Yet he slew or maimed more than a half-score of Ahl-wark, and received only two cuts the while. There was no dealing with a man without sense enough to know fear and have care for himself. He was morbrin; the machine-that-fights, and the machine was for killing. Bucklers were cracked and sundered under his flailing ax and men spun away in horror and pain with shield-arms wrenched or broken, and they were the lucky ones. Once Coon saw the mad Delath’s ax rip open the two thighs of one man and continue that same stroke into the side of another to bowl him over with a huge wound gaping in him, and all in one sweep of Delath’s arms. Coon had seen it. Coon told of it for years thereafter.
Darkness came on eyes grey and blue that day and ruddy lips turned the color of eyes. Sharpened iron shattered shields and flesh and bone while Kirrensark-wark became a chaotic jumble of hacking axes and swords whose clangor filled the air to the skies and hurt the ears. Like a madman plunging blindly, in the grip of his battle-rage that was a demon within him, Delath plied his dripping ax that split shields and skin and skulls. All about him others hewed and shielded in more normal ways. Combatants slipped in gore and wallowed among the dead to rise dripping and hideous even when unscathed. Battle cries and the clamor of dread chopping reverberated from the surrounding slopes and the wark ran red with blood.
Some few women of Kirrensark-wark fought, but she who was newcomer among them was no less warrior than any other warrior, save only the two who fought morbrin.
Five stout men were later found with her painted arrows in them, and she was seen to slay two others at least. Her skill was great and her swiftness hardly believable. Loose on her was the short-sleeved mailcoat of dead Shranshule, while her leather leggings had belonged to a dead son of the firstman Kirrensark. The horn plaques on her Kerosyran helmet of leather gleamed brighter than iron. Her first sword came from a slain man of Kirrensark-wark that day, and it broke, and her second came from a wounded man of Ahl-wark. Like a great spring released, she bounded with it into combat, fighting with strangers, alongside strangers, against strangers.
A lean grey sword came seeking Kirrensark’s life and he smashed the hand that wielded it to leave that man unslain while his whistling ax clove a buckler to lodge in a shoulder. Tole’s point sprang out between a man’s shoulder blades so that Tole had to set a foot against a standing corpse to free his sword for the dealing of more woundy blows. The sword had served Tole’s father and it served Tole. After that day there was little left to sharpen. But by then swords lay about for the taking.
Delath raged through the attackers like a mad bull goring wolves, so that men fled his coming, else he would certainly have slain more. His ax was a blur that dealt maiming wounds and death. It hummed in the air, that ax, and its wake was marked by scarlet droplets. The very air about him seemed to form a shield. Men feared him and fell back. Some even turned and ran, to face and hew at normal opponents.
Delath was not nigh when Ahl’s son Barakat Cloudlocks sore wounded Kirrensark — and lost first hand and then intestines to a leather-mailed woman in a strange helmet.
This Ahl did not see, for he was busy backing from a ravening maniac in a coat of dark, dark chain. This one moved with the dynamic speed of a wolf both famished and angered, and his blue eyes no less glittery than those paler ones of Delath. This was the second morbriner unleashed that day to halve the male population of Ahl-wark. His sword was black and nothing stopped it. It came upon Ahl in a whistling storm of fury and the unnatural sword sheared through his wrist as though it had been mere bird-flesh. The hand flew, a ghastly bronzed spider trailing scarlet.
As he had afore, Jarik forgot all save strength and horrible skill. His brain was of no use to him and he did not use it. In the grip of the kill-machine rage that day he and the Black Sword clove shields and arms, swordblades and hands, bowels and legs, helmets and skulls. Once four men surged at him in a great wave of lifted shields and whistling axes and swordblades. When one was dead and another dying and a third staring at a thigh and knee that would never again support him, the fourth blanched and backed and then fled.
The glitter of bright scarlet ran freely, like oil from his weapon’s strange blade while Jarik forged on. Even as he fought to wrench it free of an attacker
cleft from navel to thigh, Jarik’s left arm straightened in a rush. As if weightless his shield shot out at the warrior coming at him from the side. It slammed into that man’s buckler with staggering force. Jarik’s left foot kicked him neatly up under the skirt of his mailcoat of scales and the wight fell puking. He was lucky; had he not fallen he must surely have died to the morbrin-fighter. That dance of Jarik Blacksword, while he fought simultaneously with both hands and one foot, was not ludicrous.
Men slipped in blood; men stumbled over fallen men. Here and there a helmet or ax lay forlornly. Several feet from any corpse, an ax lay with its haft still clutched by the hand that had wielded it.
Ahl had become Ahl One-hand in this attack on his one-armed cousin, and he became prisoner and hostage while his wark’s survivors fled. Behind lay more friends and kinsmen than fled, and only a few were able to groan. Even the sky had gone gloomy.
To save Kirrensark-wark was needed a miracle or heroes; what saved it was a miracle of heroes.
Delath fell down gasping and panting. He was wet and running with sweat and the blood of others. He was hauled to his feet by a younger man whose hair was like wheat in summer and whose sword was black. They stood panting and gasping, with the blood of others all over them and in Delath’s ash-blond beard. Neither was able to talk. They stood and dripped, striving for breath while their eyes glared ferociously about in quest of more foemen to be slain. Sweat ran from them and darkened their clothing. Their arms and legs quivered and their chests heaved.
To them came that warrior that was a woman, with a sword dripping in her hand. There the three stood, with arms about one another. They made a fine picture of comrades in triumph; truth was all were so weary and breathless that they were holding one another up. Others among the successful defenders waded in gore while stepping across shields and corpses. They knew what they owed these three. Half those who had fallen had fallen to Jilain and Jarik and Delath, for they were warriors three and maniacs two. They were treated with awe and respect that must soon become high camaraderie. After the glare faded from those two morbriners’ eyes …
The Lady of the Snowmist (War of the Gods on Earth Book 3) Page 10