by Jeffrey Lord
He reached for the veil. "I would see your face, my lady."
Blade was accustomed to success in these matters, yet not greatly surprised when, with a single lithe movement, she eluded his grasp and stepped away. Her hands went to where the veil was secured to the golden coronet. Her question was filled with mockery.
"You are sure, Blade! Quite sure that you would see my face? I warn you it is a thing to think on."
So aroused was he now that he gave no thought to anything but the taking of her, as swiftly and fiercely as possible. He moved toward her and again she skipped away, still mocking him.
She was laughing. "I am half beautiful, Blade. Riddle me that. And say again that you wish to see my face. For then I will show it, which will cool you instantly and cheat me of that monster." She was gazing at the front of his thin breeches where the physical manifestation of his lust was plainly writ.
He did not, in that tumescent moment, give a damn what lurked behind the veil. The words, unthought on, came automatically from his lips and it was not until later that he realized the implication. He was more than merely in Alb now. He was Albian!
He leaped at her. "I would see," he said hoarsely. "By Thunor, I will see! And I will have you. Here and now."
She halted him with a hand against his massive chest. Her fingers curled in his dark chest hair.
"Then see, Blade." She whisked away the veil.
Blade could not repress his exclamation. He took a step back and stared. He had seen sights to turn the stomach before, but never anything like this. It was horror. Horror made double by contrast.
The Lady Alwyth was a female Janus, two faced, the schism explicit in exact middle from forehead to chin. One half-face was lovely of skin and contour, the nose high arched and patrician, chin firm, eye blue and sparkling, brow pale and unlined.
The single blue eye watched him. In a tone of mockery and venom she said, "How think you now, Blade? Do you cool?"
The other half of her face was no face at all. Where flesh had been there was now a raw red cicatrix, the fiberous tissue drawn into spiderwebbing scars that reached below her chin and around to her ear. The eye was still there, an eye that glared milky white and ulcerous beneath the maimed lid.
Blade took a deep breath. He was still in rut, but she had been right. The true urge was gone. Instinct warned that he tread as carefully as ever in his life. For his life. A wrong move now and she would see him dead, nor care that it wrecked all her plans.
Lady Alwyth turned so that only her unscathed profile was visible. She was lovely so, and Blade felt pity. And as pity is the death of love, or lust, so he felt himself begin to droop as desire fled.
She raised a hand to touch the side of her face away from him. "A gift from my King husband. Long ago, at childhood play. I was a maiden captured by sea robbers, and tortured by them. Then something I do not now remember something drew the other children away and left Lycanto alone with me. But recently I had quarreled with him and spat in his face. We had a fire against the cold that day and he took a brand but you have seen it. Lycanto's revenge. He was eight years then, I but six."
He understood, then, the hate that welled in her like poison in a cup. Understood her spite for the beautiful Taleen.
He could not feign ardor now, and was too wise to try. To show his pity, or revulsion, was death. In a cold, matter-of-fact voice he said, "It is true that half your beauty is ruined, my lady. But only half. You are fortunate in that, for how many women are beautiful in any fashion?"
"Too many," she said darkly. "A truth that does not please me." He knew she spoke of the Princess Taleen and in the same moment knew she lied when she spoke of returning Taleen unharmed to her father. She would find a way to destroy Taleen.
She turned full face to him again. That blighted milky orb glinted in the gloom. The torch was burning low and the smoke was thickening.
Her husky voice was silken smooth, she spider wise, as she looked at him. "You still desire me, Blade? And I warn you nothing but truth."
He met her good eye without flinching. "I am a man, my lady. I desire you."
"You will do my bidding, then? Find a clever way of killing Lycanto, so no blame attaches to us?"
"I will." He intended it as a lie, but how to be sure? He might very well have to carry it out.
"Then see another part of your prize." She threw open the fur cloak. Beneath it she was naked.
Her minikin body was as flawless as her face was imperfect. She was built in absolute proportion, on a miniscule scale, with a blonde's pale cream skin. Her firm pointed breasts were painted blue and tipped with scarlet. (Blade had already noted that some of the warriors painted themselves, and did not yet know that only married women could do likewise.)
The Lady Alwyth stood on tiptoe and preened for him. Her waist was tiny, and his big hands would have fitted well around it, but when he sought to embrace her he was again ready she moved away like a wraith. Blade did not pursue, but stood glowering, calling himself a simpleton and yet raging to get into her.
She stood wide legged now, her head thrown back and her beautiful half-face turned to him. She caressed her blue painted breasts with her jeweled fingers and watched him with narrowed eyes. As he gazed more intently he saw that her lush small body was marked blue in other parts there was a sort of runic tatooing under each breast.
Her words were barely audible. "You desire me now, Blade?"
His lower brain in command, Blade said fiercely, "I desire you, my lady. Here and now."
She laughed and closed the fur cloak. "That is good. Desire me enough, Blade, do as I have spoken, and you shall have me. And doubt me not I am a prize worth having."
She was gone, so swiftly that Blade, nearly ill with un-appeased lust, his loins aching, stared at the shadows as though she might be hidden there. Her scent lingered in the hut, and but for that he might have thought it all a dream, a fantasy wrought by some potion in his beer.
It was the man Sylvo who brought him back to harsh reality. He entered and pointed his spear at Blade, his lunatic face creased in a leer.
"You have friends above the salt, master. By Thunor you have! The word comes that you are wanted at the king's great house. Gossip has it that you sit at the War Council, though this I do not believe. More likely they mean to have some sport with you before you are hanged or skinned."
Sylvo, bursting with this news, and his wits a bit fuddled by it, for once grew careless. The spear point drooped.
Blade moved like a great serpent. Before the man could breathe again he had him in a full nelson, crunching the misshapen face down into the scrawny chest. Sylvo groaned and dropped his spear. He fumbled for the dirk at his belt and Blade, loosing one hand, nearly broke the man's wrist with a downward slash.
"Now," Blade said softly, "now, Sylvo, who rules in this hut?"
"You, master! You rule." Sylvo was choking, yet he tried to kick back at Blade.
Blade, wide straddled, lifted the man as easily as he might a babe in arms. He turned the man and changed his grip, his left hand about the scrawny neck. Sylvo's tongue lolled and began to turn color, and his eyes popped even as they begged.
Blade drew back his mighty right fist. "I would teach you manners, my man. This is a lesson, nothing more. In future you will know how to speak to your betters."
He deliberately muffled the blow, for he did not wish to maim or kill, yet it was a buffet that might have floored a largish horse. Sylvo went sprawling across the floor to end up against a wall, his little eyes glazed.
Blade prodded him with a foot and grinned. "Get up, man! Escort me to the house of Lycanto."
Chapter Five
Matters went badly from the beginning.
Blade was enjoined to silence, under penalty of immediate death, and so deprived of his only weapon. He was seated in a crude, barrel-shaped chair, with the light of a flaring torch in his face, and harshly told to keep his peace. He dared not defy this his position being so weak so he made
do with his eyes and brain, straining to use both to best advantage.
The Council Room was large, with an earthen floor strewn with rushes and sand, and leather hanging on the walls. It was well lit and stank of fish oil. A fire, like an enormous red cat, drowsed in a huge fireplace before which slept massive hounds of much the same breed as the one he had slain in defense of Taleen.
There were ten other men in the room, of whom Blade recognized only Cunobar the Gray. The man ignored him.
The ten sat grouped around a long table set on trestles. In a corner, opposite Blade, and coughing now and again from the smoke, sat a white robed Dru so heavily cowled that she seemed headless. She was an amanuensis, with aging vein-traced hands that were yet nimble enough with brush and dye pot. She wrote on large squares of pressed birch bark and Blade, watching her hands move, guessed it to be a runic script.
Lycanto, King of Alb and husband to the Lady Alwyth, sat at the head of the table with Cunobar to his right and a thickset bald warrior to his left. All ignored Blade, while talking of him as if he were some strange animal, something to pique mild curiosity, but not to be taken too seriously.
"He says he is a wizard. I say he is more likely witch, or warlock, which is not at all the same thing. At very best I call him spy, sent by Redbeard, and so he should suffer a spy's death. Flaying."
The speaker, a burly man to Lycanto's left, stroked his bald head with a badly scarred hand and did not glance at Blade.
"And yet," said Cunobar, "the Lady Taleen speaks for him. She names him wizard and also vows that he saved her from Beata's men and from a fierce hound."
A grizzled man at the lower end of the table spoke up. "Then what is the question? Why make so large a thing of what is simple enough? There is an ordeal, one we all know. Put him to it."
Blade was intent on Lycanto, the King, for in the end his fate would lie on Lycanto's whim. What he saw was not reassuring.
He judged Lycanto to be in his forties, a lanky man with drooping blond moustaches that did little to conceal a receding chin. His light blue eyes, inflamed now by copious amounts of beer, were too narrow set, his nose too long and thin. A single droplet kept appearing at the end of that thin nose, and Lycanto repeatedly wiped it away. He paid no more attention to Blade than did the others.
Only Lycanto's chair had a back, and arm rests carved in the form of dragons, and only he wore a metal helmet on which was engraved a crown. He lolled on his throne, indolent and sullen, drinking constantly from a great horn in a stand before him. His fingers, clean enough and spatulate in shape, drammed incessantly on the table. Blade thought the King's mind strayed, and he wondered if it were to the Lady Alwyth and the things she did in dark, dank mist.
Now Lycanto spoke. His voice was reedy, high pitched, with an oddly girlish tremor to it.
"There is more to this than meets your eye, Bartho." He was addressing the last speaker. "Were it not for the Lady Taleen it would be simple enough. We could put him to the ordeal, or turn him over to the Drus, and who would care? But it is not that easy. The Lady Taleen has vouched for him and "
The bald burly man, who Blade already knew to be an enemy, broke in with a derisive laugh. "A maid! A simple maid, even though she be cousin to you, Lycanto. What does she know? A maid can be cozened by any likely rogue who comes along. And I give him that he stands well. He is no doubt a great one with maids, a thing which he knows and uses well to his advantage. I say kill him and have done!"
Lycanto had stiffened in his chair. He glared at the bald man with bloodshot eyes. "I will not have you interrupt me, Horsa! See to it, that it does not happen again. Or do you forget who is king here?"
Blade, watching with fascination yet not forgetting that his own head was the subject marked the expression of sullen contempt on the face of the man called Horsa. No great respect for the king there!
Lycanto went on speaking. "I say once more that it is not easy, this matter. Not only does the Lady Taleen vouch for him, but she is cousin to me, and more important" she is daughter to King Voth of the North. Voth of Voth! I dare not offend Voth. You all know that. He is powerful and a great warrior, though aging now."
He paused and looked around smiling wryly, his thick lips still moist from beer. "If none of you can help me I must turn him over to the Drus. They will have an answer."
"Thunor take the Drus!" It was the man Horsa again. He scowled and banged on the table with a huge fist. "And Thunor take Voth as well. I fear not Voth. Nor the Drus. Why take a chance on a maid's word, Lycanto? Kill the rogue. If we are wrong, and he is no spy or warlock, then it is unfortunate but still no great matter. If I am right, and he is a spy, then we are rid of him. In any case, I vote we send his head to Redbeard, and have our own spies mark his reaction. So it might be proven one way or the other."
Blade winced inwardly. It was not a system of justice for which he cared too much.
It was Cunobar who came to Blade's aid, a thing Blade was not to understand for many a day.
Cunobar's gray hair again Blade thought it belied his age glinted in the torches. He stood up and pointed a finger at Blade, at which all at the table turned and appeared to see the big stranger for the first time.
"I also thought him spy at first glance," said Cunobar. "And I saw him first, before any of you. I saw and I taxed the Lady Taleen that he might be spy. She denied it. If she could be here she would deny it now "
"No doubt," growled the man Horsa. "I tell you she is bewitched of him. Who knows but that he plants his lies on her tongue?"
Cunobar held up a hand. "As may be," he went on smoothly, "but the Lady Taleen cannot be here as against tribal law and we all know she suffers from the swooning sickness."
"Another thing I do not understand," muttered Horsa. He shot a malignant glance at the King. "The wench was hearty enough when she came to Sarum Vil and a glass later she is sick and swooning. How explain that to Voth, Lycanto? He will ask, make no doubt of it!"
The King paled, then reddened, but kept his tongue. He reached for his beer horn and drank heavily. There was a grumbling at the lower end of the table. Blade brightened and felt his chances increased. All was not well in Alb. There was weakness, dissension, and therein lay his opportunity. He must grasp it firmly, quickly, when the moment came.
Cunobar waved a placating hand. His voice, as silken smooth as the steel gray hair, filled the chamber. Blade listened with growing wonder. Why was Cunobar now advocate to him? The man had been surly and suspicious enough before. Again there could be only one answer Taleen.
"If we bicker among ourselves," said the graying man, "nothing will ever come of it. This matter must be settled, and quickly, for the time water drips swiftly and Redbeard is on the march. We should be marching to meet him, yet we linger here on the fate of a single stranger.
"There is no need for this. It is all so simple, if we but see it so. I agree with Lycanto that we cannot afford to anger Voth of the North. So we do not anger him. I also agree that the Lady Taleen is his cousin, and that she be so treated. Yet we do not have to regard her word as straight from Thunor himself. There is no problem, my Lords! We have ancient law and in that law the answer is plain we must give this stranger trial by single combat, so he stand or fall on it. Neither the lady, nor her father Voth, can find reason against that. Did not Voth himself proclaim, long ago, that no man is above the law? Can he then quarrel with his own words? Can his daughter?"
Cunobar the Gray paused and looked around the table. Lycanto was listening intently, nodding in approval. Horsa stared down at the table, his broad red face expressionless. The others muttered and whispered among themselves.
Cunobar was looking directly at Blade. There was a message in the glance, Blade would have sworn to it, yet one that he could not yet read.
Cunobar said, "You all know our law. The man challenged has the right to pick the man he will fight." His eyes met Blade's again, then moved to the man Horsa with a bare flicker of expression that might have masked a sne
er.
"I vote," said Cunobar, "that we give this man Blade the right to prove himself in single combat. I say let him speak now and take free choice of the warrior he will fight to death. I ask for fists."
Eight clenched fists shot upward. Lycanto did not vote. Horsa sat scowling for a moment, then reluctantly raised his fist.
"If you will all have it so, so must I. Yet it goes against me. We do not know this man. He may be serf, peasant, catiff or runaway slave though I still think him a spy
and there is no constraint that nobleman fight with one of low birth. I vote yes but I think no."
Cunobar laughed and pointed at Blade again. "Look well at him. Does he have the look of a servant? Slave? I say not. Spy, maybe. Low born, no. But let him speak and judge for yourselves you all know what the Drus tell us when they grow impatient with our ignorance. A man is fashioned of his words. If he speaks as a slave I will take back my vote and let him be flayed without a murmur."
Cunobar had had audience with Taleen since their parting. That was certain. Even more certain was that Taleen had done all she could. As had Cunobar the Gray, for whatever reasons. Now it was up to Blade. But they had given him a weapon his tongue.
Lycanto looked long at Blade before he said, "You can speak now, stranger. By vote we grant this boon and we will listen with patience. But words will not save your life. You must fight one of us to the death. Pick that man as you will."
Blade stood up. He swelled his chest and stood as tall as possible. Cunobar had tossed the cue deftly. These Albs loved words, and war, and he guessed that lies and bragging were condoned as long as the words were sweet and firm enough. He would give them that. He stalked to the fireplace and wheeled to face the table, his arms crossed and his head high, the fire casting his shadow long on the floor. The Dru selected a fresh square of bark and dipped her pen in the dye pot, and for a moment Blade caught the gleam of intelligent old eyes from the depths of the cowl.