by Jeffrey Lord
Blade had Taken free at last and, keeping a secure grip on her arm, ran to Sylvo. The man had not been so fortunate. A stray arrow had lodged in the stake, near his head, and some lout had pulled it out of the wood and was jabbing it at Sylvo's face, all the while screaming in inarticulate fury.
Blade laid the broad side of Aesculp alongside the oafs head, none too gently, then slashed at Sylvo's bonds as the melee raged around them. More archers and men at arms had moved in now, as Beata began to get matters under control, and the mob surged back in sullen defeat.
Sylvo was muttering in excitement. "Hurry, master! There is a postern I marked it when we were brought here. If we can gain it, and run fast enough, there is a chance."
Blade chopped the last cord free, then glanced around. His heart sank. A squad of archers and men at arms was headed his way. Beata had no intention of losing her profit or her pleasure.
For an instant Blade's heart struggled against his head. Good sense bade him wait and fight another day, seek a better opportunity. The odds were too long against him now. And nothing had really changed he could still pleasure the queen and Taken would still be held to ransom. He might even be able to beg Sylvo's life.
Yet Blade wanted to fight. He leaped in front of Taken and Sylvo and brandished the axe high. Upon seeing this the squad captain gave an order and the file of archers halted and went to one knee, their bows half drawn and a score of arrows aimed at Blade.
Sylvo cried out. "No, master! They are too many. Yield to them."
"Not so," said Taken. She came to Blade, though he sought to push her back, and so clung, her two small hands entwining his great bicep.
Her face was flushed and her voice shrill and high. "Fight, Blade. We will die here and now! At least we shall cheat that bitch-whore! Fight, Blade. I will die with you!"
The horns sounded then. Savage, cruel, menacing in the dank mist, the horns sounded doom and disaster for Craghead. There came a great shouting, a feral surf of barbarian voices breaking against the castle walls. And the horns squalled on and on and on.
For a moment, suspended in terror, the mob and soldiers in the vast inner court were silent. Rage died on the instant, to be replaced by fear. Men ran, women screamed and forgotten babies wailed. Blade, watching the captain of archers, saw him mouth an order. The file of archers reversed and faced the ramparts. Blade, the girl and Sylvo were forgotten.
Where had been frenzy before was now absolute chaos. A single outcry went up and hung over the courtyard like a palpable blazon.
"REDBEARD!"
Chapter Ten
It was Sylvo who saw him first. The man clutched at Blade's arm and pointed. "See, master! Yonder by the great tower. Thunor protect us now, for that is surely Getorix. He who is called Redbeard."
Taleen still gripped Blade's arm and he could feel her trembling. Her courage had run out. She was ashen and sad-faced as she said, "It is over now, Blade. Nothing can save us. It is the arch-fiend and even Frigga cannot prevail against such evil."
They were ignored for the moment, in no immediate peril, and Blade gripped the haft of Aesculp and stared up at the great tower where last night he had done such yeoman service. In that instant he began to plan ahead new dangers meant new techniques of survival. One thought was salient over all: in what was coming there would be no margin for error. None at all.
The man who stood by the tower was seven feet tall and built to proportion. He wore a helmet that had a noseguard, came low behind to protect the neck, and was topped by a long golden spike. A rich purple cloak flowed from the Gargantuan shoulders. The man stood with arms crossed on his chest as his raiders swarmed about him,and he did not appear to be armed. Now and then he bellowed a command in stentorian tones, but for the most part he watched in silence as his men raped the castle of Craghead.
But it was his beard that most marked the man. It flowed to his waist, a pennon of flame, and it was plaited in two parts and tied with gay colored ribbons. Blade, in reluctant admiration, and seeking desperately for clues to his planning, noticed that Getorix now and then toyed with his plaited beard, adjusting a ribbon just so. And this in the heat of battle. Vanity!
Blade saw her then, for just a moment, and something sweet and sick, and at the same time cold, leaped in his heart. It was only a brief shimmer of white that could have been illusion, but was not. A moment's flurry of pale robes, a beech tree's slimness, a glint of silver hair beneath a cowl. Drusilla! She so named in his weird dream. She had been phantom then but was not phantom now unless he was mad and she vanished in a fraction of a second.
The tableau broke and time swept on and Redbeard was alone near the tower, shouting his orders. The ramparts had been won by this time, the Unicorn standards of Beata trampled, and the dead were piling high with each passing moment. Blade had never really doubted Craghead was doomed.
Sylvo tugged at his sleeve again. "Why do we linger, master? The postern I know there is still a chance, though it grows less every second we dally."
They had retreated Blade so engrossed that he was not aware into a niche formed by two great buttresses supporting the wall. It was a cul de sac and a fit place to die with their backs to the wall, had Blade so chosen. He did not so choose. He had made his decision.
He turned on Sylvo in haste. "What do these raiders, and this Getorix called Redbeard, value above all else in life? Quickly now!"
Sylvo, poor man, stared at his master as though he thought him demented. Taleen awoke from her apathy to say, "What matters that, Blade? We are all dead."
He frowned through the bear blood now caking on his face and beard. "Perhaps not. Well, Sylvo? Think, man, and answer as if your life hangs on it for it does."
Sylvo squinted horribly. A spear flew past his head and he ducked.
"Courage, master! That is the greatest of matters to the sea robbers. Courage and feats of battle. It is all they care about to be a great warrior is to be everything. But we are not sea robbers, master, and they scorn anyone not of their cutthroat tribe. And they take no prisoners, but for women." He did not look at Taleen.
The girl said: "You will kill me, Blade, when the time comes." She touched the broad edge of Aesculp. "My skull is fragile one small blow will do it."
Blade ordered them both behind him, back against the rampart wall. "Keep there," he said, "and keep you quiet. No words. None! And you, Sylvo, make no effort to help me. Or you, Taleen. You will spoil everything if you do. I am playing a desperate game for all of us, but I must do it alone. You must be alert, both of you, and follow me as this play progresses. I will have no time to explain, you must delve it for yourselves, and be not astounded at the great lies I am going to tell. If you must speak though it is best you keep shut mouths you will support me in every lie I tell. Now I begin. You two crouch back there and look afraid."
Sylvo's harelip writhed in an attempted smile. "That is not a hard part to play, master. Ar, I can do it most convincing."
Blade turned his back on them. The alcove formed by the buttresses was some eight feet across where he stood, and narrowed behind him. With his arm extended, and swinging the bronze axe by the very end, he could cover nearly six feet. If he were nimble enough afoot, and his luck ran well, he should be able to do it.
So Richard Blade, a towering and bloody apparition, leaned on the handle of the bronze axe and surveyed the waning battle before him. On his face he carefully fashioned an expression of boredom and utter scorn, while his eyes missed nothing, no significant detail, of the carnage.
A few of Queen Beata's men still fought on, though most had long since thrown down their arms and cried for quarter. It was rarely given, most of the quitters being butchered on the spot, but Blade did note a few sullen prisoners huddled together under guard. Of the queen there was no sign, and he judged her already taken, or slain, or fleeing by some secret passage. Blade had no care for that.
The courtyard, keep, ramparts and the stairs were thick with corpses. Some still moved and twitched, a
nd were being dispatched as quickly as the raiders could get to it. The victors appeared more concerned, at the moment, with rape and drinking than in following up victory. Not twenty feet from Blade a buxom young woman lay naked and silent, a sword at her throat, while man after man dropped his loot, raped her, picked up his loot and staggered away to be replaced by the next. Not far from the young woman a boy was being sexually attacked by a huge warrior who, laughing uproariously at the youth's screams and struggles, kept cuffing him into position again.
A great deal of the wine and beer swept from the tables had been in corked jugs and bottles of fired clay and had not been spilt. It was now being guzzled as fast as possible. Blade glanced up at the tower and saw Redbeard conversing with two men, both of whom wore purple cloaks also, and had helmet spikes of silver instead of gold. They were big men and as dwarfs beside Redbeard.
Redbeard gave an order and one of the men, with an odd, open-handed salute, turned and stalked away. There was no sign of the slim, silver haired Dru if indeed she had ever been there. Blade at the moment was not so sure. Battle, and blood, did eerie things to a man's senses.
At last he was noticed, just as he was about to call out to seek attention. The alcove he guarded was small, the day dreary and dark the mist even now changing to rain and it was not so strange that the three had escaped notice until now. But now, as Blade stepped forward one pace and whirled the axe over his head, now the reckoning was due.
First notice came from the group around the naked woman nearby. They had given up raping her, so she must be dead, and now some ten of them came at Blade in a casual fashion that was nonetheless businesslike. One of them, a short burly man, noticed Blade's warlike demeanor, his villainous aspect, and stopped short. With an open mouth he stared at Blade. The others clotted behind him.
Blade, hideous with the gouted bear blood, spun Aesculp in a glittering circle and gibed at them.
"You hesitate, men of Redbeard? Why is this I am but one man! Do you have second thoughts, then?" Blade grinned malevolently through his mask of blood and pointed with his axe to the naked dead woman.
"I promise I will not die as easily as that one. You will find the raping of me harder! But I can see you prefer women and children to fighting men, and are a coward's spawn. Go, then, and find a man to do your work if there is a man among you!"
A great shout of rage went up from the raiders, so fierce that it attracted the attention of Redbeard. From a corner of his eye Blade saw the huge chieftain turn and stare down into the courtyard. This had been Blade's aim and he was pleased. Near silence fell on the courtyard now, a relative hush as the other sea robbers left off looting and raping and gravitated to the group facing Blade.
Blade did not waste the opportunity. His voice rang loud and clear over the voices, the shuffle of many feet and clangor of armed and mailed men.
"I know you worship courage, men of Redbeard. To die in battle is a great and good thing to you. So I give you opportunity. Who will come and die first? Who will make a legend today? Whose name will be sung by the skalds for years to come?"
The bronze axe sang as he whirled it over his head. "Come forward and die a hero's death. Aesculp is impatient."
Behind him he heard Sylvo mutter: "Thunor's balls! He has gone mad. They will flay us and have our livers for dinner!"
One of the raiders fitted an arrow to his bowstring and raised the weapon. Another man struck it down. "Fool! Kill him so and we are all marked coward as he proclaims. Why spoil a good fight? Rejoice that at least one of the whore queen's men is a warrior. It has been a poor battle until now, and this our chance to better it. Who goes first?"
A great clamor went up as a dozen of them vied for first chance at Blade. When the choice was made after bitter argument and a hush fell again, Blade spoke. Redbeard, his arms crossed and a tolerant smile on his face, was watching from the tower.
"I am no whelp of Beata's," Blade shouted. "I am a prince in my own land, and a wizard. Also a great warrior. I came to Craghead to fight for the lives of this maid, and for my servant, they who stand behind me. I had won, and we would be gone now but for your coming. So I must fight again! That this will be a pleasure I will not deny, for I ever enjoy killing scum, but I will have it understood that I was no man of Queen Beata's. But enough of talk who dies first?"
The man chosen stepped forward. He was a swarthy fellow, short in the legs but with massive chest and shoulders. He wore untanned boots, ragged breeches with cross-gaitering, and a wolf skin did service as a tunic. His hair was straw colored, his eyes a cold blue beneath a helmet that bore the insignia of two serpents entwined on the haft of an axe.
The raiders fell back to form a semi-circle about the alcove. They raised a great outcry as their man approached Blade cautiously.
"Wulfa! Wulfa!"
"Let him hear your axe sing, Wulfa. I wager he will not like the tune."
The man carried a small leather and wood buckler, bossed with an iron spike. His axe was shorter in haft than Aesculp, with a single biting edge of iron, the second edge having been ground down to a long sharp spike that still bore traces of the blood of a recent victim.
The man sprang at Blade and feinted a blow with his axe. Blade, not fooled, shifted position slightly and laughed. "You hesitate, Wulfa? What does that name mean in your language coward?"
The raiders snarled as one man and the semi-circle closed in a step or two. "Have done with him, Wulfa! Cut out his lying tongue."
Wulfa, darting cold blue hate at Blade, feinted again and thrust the spiked buckler at Blade's naked chest. Blade, making sure the axe swing was a feint, chopped viciously with Aesculp and hewed the buckler from the man's forearm and hand. Two of his fingers went with it. Blade leaped back in defensive posture.
Wulfa cast a glance at his two fingers lying in the mud, then spat in disgust and leaped in to attack again, no feinting this time. The man reversed the axe haft in his hand and swung the pointed edge at Blade's skull. Blade countered with Aesculp and a fierce clanging filled the courtyard as the axes met again and again. Sparks glittered in the murky air as axe slammed on axe and the din and clamor grew.
Wulfa sought to draw Blade out, away from the alcove,but Blade would have none of it. With a snarl of baffled rage the raider leaped in again, swinging mightily. He slipped in the mud underfoot. Blade, instead of fending off the blow, let it pass over his head, then countered with a smashing backhand blow with the bronze axe. It bit into the man's neck at the base, just at the collar bone, and so great was the force that the axe cleft nearly down to the navel. Wulfa screamed and fell away as Blade pulled out the axe.
Two men ran forward to seize the dying Wulfa by the heels and drag him away. Blade leaned on Aesculp and smiled at them.
"Who comes next?"
There was no shouting now. They eyed Blade warily and whispered among themselves. Some glanced nervously to where Redbeard still watched by the tower.
Blade mocked them through the gore that covered him, Wulfa's blood having been added to that of the bears.
"I was right, then? You have no stomach for a man? But I give you this you are great rapers of women and children."
The second opponent was as large as Blade, dark bearded and bareheaded, fighting with a sword and dirk. Blade, tiring now and not daring to show it, began a slow silent count to ten. At nine he struck and the man's head flew off and rolled into a puddle, the eyes still staring in amazement at his fellow raiders.
Blade was arm weary, yet he swung Aesculp like a stick of pinewood. "The next? Do not hang back, warriors. There is no fame in living so come and die."
He gambled with the third man and killed him at the second pass. The bronze axe tore out the man's throat and his head fell back on a slender skein of flesh to lie grotesquely between his shoulders.
Blade, though hard put to breathe, brandished the axe at them. "Aesculp is thirsty today. Who will offer his blood next?"
The muttering was sullen now. For a moment none ste
pped forward. The rain had increased and was washing some of the blood from Blade's face and body. Behind him Taleen and Sylvo crouched in silence, as he had bid them, and for this much he was grateful. He could not fight forever; if he was to win his gamble it must be soon.
The raiders sent up a new shout.
"Jarl Jarl Jarl Jarl!"
The man who stepped out to face Blade was of only medium height but his arms were as solid and packed with muscle as Blade's own. His hairy legs were thick and very badly bowed. He wore a purple cloak and a helmet with a silver spike, and Blade had seen him before. He was one of the two officers who had been talking to Redbeard.
The man called Jarl faced Blade with an enigmatic smile. He was smooth shaven a rare thing among the sea robbers with wide-set gray eyes that sparkled with intelligence. Beneath the purple cloak he wore a corselet of leather and bronze, and over this a shirt of light mail. Instead of the ubiquitous breeches this man wore a kilt of heavy plaid cloth that came high on his sturdy legs.
He saluted Blade with a broadsword very like the one Blade had used to kill Horsa, and though his tone was sombre enough there was a strain of merriment just beneath. The voice was a light tenor and, in his former life, Blade would have marked it as that of an educated man.
"It appears," said the man called Jarl, "that these dogs of mine have had a belly full of you, sire. I cannot say that I blame them, for you fight like a fiend. Perhaps you are a fiend, but that is no matter to me. You must die all the same. This I truly regret, sire, for I admire the way you handle that axe."
Blade scowled at him, knowing this to be the real test. This man had mettle that Blade had not faced before.
"Come and meet Aesculp," Blade taunted. "I doubt you will admire her so much then."
Jarl stroked his smooth chin. "You could yield, man. I like not to kill you and that is whole truth. Yield in honor and take your chances."
Blade scowled again. "I might yield, but not to promises. I am a prince in my own land and I will be treated as such. I also demand safety for my servant and the maid."