EXILED Defenders of Ar

by Jack Lovejoy

  Concealment magic was now useless, perhaps dangerous.

  It might alert the clawed figure that she was awake, and was unlikely to cause so intense a gaze to turn away from her in any case. She heard sounds of commotion outside her window, but faint and far away, too far, away for sentries somewhere out in the city to reach her in time, were she to cry out. The she-mrem in this very barracks could no longer help her.

  The advancing figure raised its steel claws as maliciously as if they were its own; its intense hatred concentrated upon the head of the cot, as if it did not just want to kill Srana but to claw her beautiful face to ruins.

  Srana also concentrated. If the shadowy figure in the doorway had reminded her of the night her grandfather died, it also reminded her of the manner of his death. Even redoubled by her fragment of the Khavala, her fire-starting magic was limited compared to his. But if she could not bring an entire house down in flames, she should at least be able to ignite a piece of cloth—the hooded dark cloak worn by the assassin.

  The first waft of smoke only caused Srana to focus her magic more intently; the first glow of fire to redouble her concentration. But so intent was the malice of the approaching figure that its cloak was actually in flames before it even hesitated.

  The commotion outside in the streets seemed to be drawing nearer, but was now drowned by the wild commotion that erupted inside the room.

  Srana leapt out of bed. She did not have to cry for help; the shrieks of the small hooded figure, evidently female, had already awakened the barracks. There were answering cries outside the corridor; the sounds of running feet. Srana herself was cut off from the door by the shrieking, writhing, flaming horror; she slipped into the darkest corner of the room, and used concealment magic to elude observation.

  The running footsteps were now right outside her door, the shouts of converging sentries right outside her window. But she was still in deadly peril. The pounding at the door meant that its inner clasp had somehow been jammed so it would not open. The assassin at last writhed free of the burning cloak. The reek of singed fur tainted the air; the firelight rose brighter and brighter, the smoke and heat became more and more oppressive as the bedclothes were ignited.

  Srana at last recognized the assassin. It was the High Priestess Parvatala, somehow escaped from the Mamlock dwelling where she had been confined. Her guards had been reinforced after her condemnation: every sword in full council had been raised against her. Had this merely provided her with more mind power to tap, used to cloud the very minds she was tapping? Whether by this means or one more violent, she had somehow broken from confinement. Not to escape the land of the Yozgat—with bambarongs to pursue her, that was impossible—but to wreak vengeance.

  Half blinded, in agony, with no hope, perhaps no desire anymore, to escape, Parvatala slashed the smoke and shadows around her, still trying to claw the beautiful face of her enemy to ruins. The pounding at the door grew more desperate as smoke seeped out into the corridor; the shouts of the sentries now resounded from inside the barracks.

  Slashing, clawing, shrieking unintelligible curses, Parvatala now began to work systematically back and forth across the small room, as if in her cunning she had guessed that some manner of concealment magic was being practiced on her. Her ugly dwarfish figure was like the phantom of a nightmare illuminated by the flaming bedclothes, veiled in billows of smoke—as she drew ever nearer the corner where Srana had concealed herself.

  The pounding at the door was now succeeded by heavy thudding crashes. A bench, used as a battering ram? A beam? Srana could hardly breathe in the choking heat and smoke, her eyes burned, and yet she dared not move.

  So frenzied now was Parvatala’s wild slashing and clawing that it seemed impossible to slip past her. If the intruder herself was no magician, she understood at least the workings of magic. With the door locked, and the single window a mere slit, her enemy must still be somewhere in the room. Srana could not escape her vengeance. Parvatala’s shrieks sounded more and more like cries of triumph.

  Srana was desperate. Concealment magic could not hide her much longer from someone who knew she was there. And what if she fainted from smoke inhalation? Nothing would then conceal her from the vindictive razor claws of the High Priestess. Parvatala was old now, but she was a Yozgat, with all a Yozgat’s almost supernatural battle empathy. She would respond with lightning reflexes to any movement around her. The timing had to be perfect.

  Now literally cornered, Srana’s own reflexes told her when to move—with the agility and muscular coordination unique to a White Dancer. Even so, the slashing razor claws hooked the skirt of her nightgown, but their very sharpness saved her as they cut through the cloth like air.

  A wild scream of rage, and the High Priestess was after her. Srana reached the door just as it burst open, with a splintering crash. She had a confused experience of dwarfish warriors rushing past her, of the crazed High Priestess being swarmed over from all sides at once, then a dizzy, half-conscious awareness that she was out in the corridor, supported by a score of anxious little females, none standing much above her elbow.

  Her next awareness was of lying on an unmattressed cot in the dormitory. Changavar himself looked down at her with concern.

  “She’ll be all right,” he said. “Swallowed too much smoke, that’s all. A day’s rest, and she’ll be fine.”

  Srana looked up at the tufty faces around her, and smiled.

  They responded with satisfaction, and a few homely smiles of their own, but never quite lost their expressions of awe. Though they had just brought down the wicked High Priestess Parvatala, their reverence for the goddess herself was undiminished, and Srana still seemed to them her very incarnation.

  “The first thing I’m going to find out,” said Changavar, “is how the treacherous old hag got the news.”

  “News?” Srana sat up.

  “The Mamlock messengers to Namakhazar have at last returned,” he said. “As is our law, they were questioned in full council. Somehow the news leaked out, or Parvatala had some illicit arrangement with the Mamlock family on whom we quartered her. I’ll find out, and when I do, somebody’s going to hop for it,” he added, and an impromptu council began to discuss the ways and means for discovering the traitor.

  Srana was soon so impatient that she felt like hopping herself. “What news?” she cried at last. “Are my friends safer? Did they accomplish their mission? Please tell me. It’s important for all of us.”

  “They’ll tell you themselves in a few days,” said Changavar.

  “Exactly what they set out to accomplish, you’ve never fully explained. Only that it’s important, and I believed you.” Though Srana sat on the edge of the cot, while he stood, their eyes were on a level. He looked thoughtfully at her for a moment. “It will have to be very important indeed, for other messengers have brought grim tidings from Ar. No, it still stands. But for how much longer, I don’t know. The troops of marauders who have ravaged the land are now rejoining the besieging army, along with reinforcements from the Eastern Lords. It seems that a river somehow protects Ar—I care nothing for those who hide behind walls—but now has been damned.”

  “There are still powerful defenses there,” replied Srana.

  “Defenses that have nothing to do with walls.”

  “Magic?” Changavar guessed. “Yes, I felt there must be other reasons why Ar still stood. The Yozgat need no walls. Nor would walls avail any people we went forth to chastise.”

  A sizeable crowd of male and female warriors had now gathered around the cot. They too had only scorn for walls.

  “Even magic may be overcome by stronger magic,” continued Changavar. “Which may already have happened at Ar.”

  “What do you mean?” Srana stared at him in alarm.

  “The last messenger to arrive reported that a great sorcerer has just taken command of the besieging armies. It seems even
they are terrified of him. The messenger swears he actually saw him riding through the camps on a monstrous dragon. Can this be the Evil One you told me about?”

  Srana nodded, an anxious look in her eyes. She could understand now why the High Priestess had tried to assassinate her tonight. The old she-mrem had somehow learned the news brought back by the messengers from Namakhazar, and realized that she must strike now, or forever lose her chance. There would be more outlanders allowed into the land of the Yozgat; more flouting of sacred traditions. Perhaps her twisted mind had seen the assassination of the person she held responsible for it all as justice, rather than personal vengeance. Or perhaps she anticipated what Srana now requested of Changavar:

  “It is a long distance to Ar. You all know what will become of the Yozgat if the great city of Ar falls to the Eastern Lords. And if I don’t return there in time, with what my friends are bringing me from beyond the sea, then it must surely fall. Will you help me?”

  “By Parvatta, I will!” cried Changavar. Then, sensing an ominous silence in the crowd around him, he added, “I will present all the facts before a full council, as is our law. They alone must decide the matter, but I’m sure that decision will be favorable.”

  The crowd nodded their approval, both of the issue and of Changavar himself. The blatant treachery of the High Priestess had once more brought about the opposite effect she had intended. Changavar had been Prince Warrior of the Yozgat for nearly seventeen years now, an unusually long term, and, was too canny to push this advantage too far. He knew what had to be done, but the decision would have to be made officially by a majority of lifted swords, and many believed he had already gone too far in profaning the sacred traditions of the people. What he proposed was nothing short of revolutionary.

  Shrewdly, he named the very Temple of Parvatta for the standing of the full council—the Yozgat considered sitting in council nearly as effete as living behind walls—and dressed Srana in a peculiar robe of copper green, identical in fashion to that worn by the eidolon, at whose feet she stood throughout the proceedings. He made not a single reference to her during his long harangue, nor did she herself utter a word; but the impression that an incarnation of the goddess herself sanctioned these violations of custom had a powerful effect on the council, and carried many swords aloft at the final vote—enough to carry the day.

  “When your children’s children wonder at so many trophies of honor—so many, my fellow warriors, that many of you, male and female alike, may have to get Mamlocks to build new presses to hold them all—your names will be remembered with awe.” The question of trophies was still a sore point with the council, and Changavar sought craftily to allay it with the promise of new opportunities. The last show of swords was out of sheer enthusiasm.

  Nonetheless there were some evil looks four days later, even some grumbling, when Severakh’s band marched smartly into Parvat, but at least there were no open demands for pelts. Not even for Kizzlecosh’s, though grim jokes wondered if hers would fill an entire press by itself. The military smartness of the new arrivals was another point in their favor, a very important point. Severakh took personal charge of their drills. His guerrilla army—what was left of it—was again united, and he immediately set to work drilling out any tendencies toward slackness.

  Meanwhile Changavar personally drilled his own warriors, in competition with the outlanders, whose military posturing was an old object of derision among the Yozgat.

  Although contrary in size, and from adverse traditions, the two leaders instinctively recognized in each other true soldiers. No matter what the past, though in years to come they might again be hostile, both realized they must now stand together, side-by-side, might and main, against the common foe. They drilled morning and afternoon, and conferred with their captains and each other long into the night; neither slept much for the next few days. Nor did they scamp their preparations, despite Srana’s urging and impatience.

  Her first meeting with Branwe, upon his return, had been public. To the warriors of both Severakh and Changavar it had seemed like no more than the formal report of an emissary; his presentation to her of the cloven section of the Khavala like no more than a royal gift. But the Yozgat shemrem were not beguiled. The pair of tall and beautiful outlanders were in love, and their possible relations, their every exchange of look and gesture, became in the barracks and on the drill field an exhaustless subject of gossip—though this did not keep the females from drilling with their own particular weapons as staunchly as the males did with theirs. In addition, they had charge of the bambarongs.

  Most of the delay in departing for Ar was due to these bizarre creatures. It was a sacred law of the Yozgat to keep as many of them ready for war as there were warriors to ride them. But it had been generations since so mighty a host had ridden forth to battle, and from upland meadows, from Mamlock farms and pastures, from neighboring valleys, the huge two-legged animals were still being brought in. Some had grown half wild with freedom, and had to be rebroken to the saddle.

  The Yozgat females were more adept at this art than the males, and from dawn until late afternoon bambarongs could be seen running, leaping, and gliding back and forth across the countryside surrounding Parvat, each with three little riders—the normal complement when riding forth to battle—saddled on its back. Many had been out to pasture for months, even years, and were unusually strong and vigorous. It was these bambarongs that were reserved to carry one of the heavy outlanders along with two of the smaller Yozgat.

  Kizzlecosh was a special problem, as well as an object of wonder to the Yozgat, over whom she towered. They thought her too ponderous and slow to be effective in battle—until they saw her out on the drill field one morning. From years of keeping order among crowds of drunken thugs and bandits she had acquired a battle empathy of her own. Nor was a cosh the only weapon she was capable of wielding. The broad curved sword of the Yozgat—as long as the Yozgat themselves, and honed like a razor—was like a wand in her big powerful hands. Also, there were her teeth....

  “All settled, love.” Cajhet trotted gingerly out to her on the she-mrem’s drill field one sunny morning. The steel claws worn by the dwarfish females still made him nervous. “I stayed after them till they gave me the right answer, and I never gave in. You’ll ride when we do, or I’ll know the reason why. We leave at dawn.”

  She dropped the spiked mace she had been practicing with, and hugged him possessively to her massive bosom, to the delight of the little Yozgat she-mrem nearby. “Oh, Cajiewajie, I’m so happy. I don’t know what I would have done if I had had to stay behind.”

  The difficulty of leaving her had in fact been the principal consideration in finding some means of transporting her to Ar. Priestesses and superannuated veterans alone would remain in Parvat, and many of these had voiced concern about being left in her company—especially since the subject Mamlocks would outnumber them fifty to one, with only the fear of reprisals keeping them in order. Cajhet tactfully omitted to mention this, or refer to the hunt for the strongest and most vigorous bambarong in the entire valley. Mamlocks were even now crafting a special saddle for her.

  Other craftsmrem, under continuous guard and allowed only naps at their workbenches, had been working for days on a far more grandiose project. Copper was the most precious of all metals, and the Mamlock smiths who worked it could verdigris even their freshest engravings. The scepter on which they mounted the ruby Khavala stone was as green as the eidolon of Parvatta, and as exquisitely carved: a scepter that could be held forth like a beacon for all to see—including the enemy. Not until it was in the hands of Srana herself were the artisans allowed to leave their workshop.

  The entire host left Parvat the following morning. No new High Priestess had yet been appointed, and no incident marred the sacred battle formulary. The green-copper doors of the temple hung open, but it was just dawn, and the eidolon of Parvatta inside was only a shadowy presence, barely visible
in the cold gray light. It was on Srana rather that thousands of Yozgat eyes were now fixed with awe.

  She stood alone on the temple stairs, wearing the goddess robes she had worn the day of the great council. Exactly how much power the engraved scepter in her hand granted her, she did not know. Enough, she hoped, for her to carry it safely to Ar. Mithmid and The Three, their formidable powers thus remultiplied, should then at least be able to neutralize the evil magic of Khal. While she herself would again be with Sruss, her beloved teacher and friend, comforted and safe.

  The martial chanting of the chorus on the steps below her had the opposite effect of the last time she heard them. Then it had been soothing, lulling, hypnotic; now it stirred the valor and patriotism of the Yozgat warriors—females and males armed with their respective weapons—assembled in ranks in the square below. The very bambarongs, saddled and held ready by Mamlock handlers, appeared stirred.

  Srana wondered if the strange beasts really could surmount the ramparts of Ar, as Changavar had assured her. She was certain now that their long glides, sometimes hundreds of yards at a bound, were aided by some unevolved form of levitation magic, for neither their running leaps nor the skin flaps they spread while in the air alone could possibly sustain them aloft for such distances. But she had never seen them leap more than a few feet off the ground, and though, according to Changavar, the Yozgat had often carried enemy towns by simply leaping over the walls, he could have no real conception of how imposing were the ramparts of Ar, the loftiest ever raised by the mrem. She would know for certain only when they got there.

  Meanwhile she had somehow to communicate the arrival of friends. Even if Changavar was right about the powers of his bambarongs, they could not just leap blindly into a besieged city. But with the Evil One now surely more vigilant than ever, she might bring Sruss into deadly peril by trying to contact her telepathically. The sole means she could devise for signaling her that friends were coming—else the garrison might think they were being attacked, and resist—was to don the unique garb of a White Dancer, when the time came, and ride in the lead. She had it packed across her saddle.