The Castle of the Winds

by Michael Scott Rohan

  She whirled around, giving Kunrad a glimpse of some kind of brown riding breeches, and nothing above them but hair cascading down between bare silky shoulder blades. He hoped she would take a little longer than a second. By then he might be safe to stand up.

  She stormed out of her dressing chamber without even looking at them, clad in a shapeless brown tunic, tucking her hair into a loose woolen hood. It shadowed her face and made her surprisingly hard to recognise. ‘Wait here!’ she rapped out. ‘I’ll be a while!’ But as she reached the door she turned to look at them again, weighing up all three from head to toe with an unnerving intensity. ‘I’m going to get you some brave disguises!’

  The door seemed about to slam, but closed quietly, and then reopened again. ‘If anyone should knock, out the window, understand? Not under the bed or anything witty. I’m compromised enough as it is!’

  The door clicked to again. Olvar paid her the ultimate tribute by putting down the last shreds of the chicken carcass, and swallowing. ‘Some wild little biddy, is that one!’

  ‘Can we trust her?’ muttered Gille. ‘After the last time? Little bitch! We nearly went into the bag with you.’

  Kunrad cuffed him on the back of the head, but very gently. ‘I was never more glad than when I saw those empty saddles. That was quick thinking. As to trusting her, who else exactly had you in mind?’

  ‘We could get you back across that pond,’ said Olvar. ‘No problem. Smooth as seal’s milk out there.’

  ‘No,’ said Kunrad. ‘Getting down those pipes would be a lot worse than getting up. And we’d most likely be seen. You could dive, but not supporting me.’

  ‘Who needs you to dive?’ demanded Olvar cheerfully. ‘Just let you sink a bit.’

  Kunrad shivered. The room was warm, but he could still feel the lake-chill. ‘No. Not unless there’s no other way. We’ll trust her. She’s a determined one, this, and she keeps her word – after a fashion.’

  ‘Hella take fashion,’ said Gille, with surprising grimness. ‘Let’s see how she keeps it now.’

  It was almost an hour before she returned. Gille was biting his nails and looking to the window, although Kunrad pointed out she would have betrayed them at once, if at all. ‘Maybe, but I don’t trust this one. Who knows what folly she’s cooking up now?’

  ‘Something new,’ grunted Olvar. ‘Skirt Gille doesn’t take to.’

  ‘I know ’em,’ said the young man sullenly. ‘Jokers. Teases. They want to see yours, run screaming to Mummy when you show ’em. Get you to climb in their bedroom window, only it’s Grandma’s, and Grandma still chops down trees. Lure you into the woods where their real fancy-man’s waiting with a big stick. Get you by the—’

  Kunrad and Olvar were holding their sides. ‘No idea you lived so dangerously, lad! These are the ones you don’t boast about, eh?’

  ‘They’re the ones I’ve learned to avoid. You want this bit of fluff, Mastersmith, you have her, and the Powers protect you!’

  Kunrad stared. ‘I want?’

  The door opened. A bulky bundle swayed in, with two slender arms around it, and fell heavily on the bed. Alais straightened up from the pile, face scarlet, hair straggled, heaving for breath and grinning like a puppy. ‘Got them!’ she wheezed, as Kunrad sprang to shut the door.

  ‘Guard uniforms, mail, leggings, surcoats, the lot. One long cloak to wrap ’em in. Your sizes, close enough. Chose lightest mail. Fit over those black things you wear. Boots, too, though I can’t guarantee the fit. Swords, as well.’

  Kunrad hefted a mailshirt. ‘Northern work – my old friend Galdred’s worst, in fact! Or you’d never have managed to carry four. I’m still impressed. A princess with thews! But where’d you get them?’

  She puffed. ‘My father couldn’t afford a teacher for me. Wouldn’t send me to common school, and he was right, too; they’d have run me ragged. Taught me himself, like a boy. Said I did better than my big brothers. Only when Nanny took me in hand … Oh, you mean the hauberks? Out of a storeroom.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Kunrad, who had had visions of four naked guards cowering in a corner somewhere. Then he thought again. ‘Our sizes? You had a good choice, then – there were a lot of armours there?’

  ‘Woof, thousands!’ laughed the girl. ‘No idea he’d need so many … Oh.’

  ‘He’s been building up his stocks,’ said Kunrad, as he and the prentices sorted out their gear. ‘Wonder why, don’t you? And the men to fill them – where’ll he get those …’ He broke off. The girl was unfolding the fourth mailshirt. ‘I thought you brought that as a spare ! You’re not—’

  ‘My father,’ she said. ‘You’ve made me sure now. Not convinced me, but – I want to get word to him about this idea of yours. You may be lying in your teeth, or Merthian’s playing little tricks, but – well, this could be dangerous, and I’m taking no chances. If anyone’s going to be kings in this land, it’ll be the rightful lords of Morvan!’ For a moment her mouth was a pale twisted line; then she relaxed. ‘Not that he can do much, poor old dear, but my brothers are officials under the Chief Syndic, that cold salt stockfish Bryheren. He can at least get word to them.’

  ‘Look,’ protested Kunrad helplessly, ‘we can manage so much, you need never do a thing. Give us directions, and you can sit here safe and, and—’

  ‘Marry Merthian? Yes.’

  ‘Well, you were concerned about working against him!’

  ‘If he’s innocent, I’ll saw your head off myself! If … there’s some other explanation for all those weapons and uniforms … oh, I don’t know! I don’t! But I’ve got to!’ She saw the sympathy in his eyes, and stiffened. ‘There’s no other way to be sure, and I won’t have any argument about it! I know the way across country to my father’s, better than most. All the shortcuts and safe paths! I can get you there ahead of any hunt.’

  Kunrad gestured to her writing table. ‘Take a moment to write down the directions, anyhow. Just in case.’

  She nodded, and quickly pulled the mailshirt over her head.

  ‘How do I look?’ said Kunrad, buckling his belt, while she was still scratching away with a silvered quill. ‘Feels well fitted, my lady …’

  The prentices, settling their mail over their own clothes, stared. ‘You’d look fine if you hadn’t put that bloody sheep on!’ said Gille.

  ‘Well, what’m I supposed to do with it?’

  ‘Tell him, somebody!’ said Olvar despondently.

  ‘Try rolling it up at your belt – no, you’d be arrested for sheep-stealing. Or worse. On your back, like a pack? No, don’t think they hire many snowtrolls down here – though I wouldn’t put it past Merthian. Sorry, lady. Look, master, put it back on, unlaced, and drape the cloak over it, so …’

  They surveyed the result. Alais stifled a giggle. ‘A touch monstrous,’ admitted Gille. ‘Still trollish about the shoulders. But they had some awful thugs in the courtyard here. I suppose you’ll do.’

  ‘At least it’s dark,’ agreed Alais.

  Four guards, two of them huge and two somewhat undersized, strolled confidently down the lower steps of the tower; or did their best to. Kunrad was luxuriating in new boots that fitted him better than his own battered pair. Olvar’s sword was sticking in his scabbard, and he kept fidgeting to find the maker’s mark. Gille was still eyeing Alais suspiciously, and doing his best not to bite his nails. Alais was doing her best to copy their walks. ‘Glaiscav’s arrows! Not like that!’ hissed Kunrad. ‘You’re strutting like a randy pine-grouse! You walk like a man already, just open your stride a bit … that’s better!’

  ‘I do not walk like a man!’ she smouldered. ‘How would you know, anyway? You’ve hardly looked at a woman in your life!’

  ‘Let me tell you—’

  ‘Shut up!’ hissed Gille. ‘There’s people down there! Our accents will give us away! Or Olvar’s face!’

  A door stood half open on to the battlements, and rather than plunge into the brightly lit hall below, they paced out with the heavy tread of b
ored guards. ‘Shouldn’t we keep in step?’ hissed Gille.

  Alais kicked him. ‘No! They’ll know there’s no patrol listed. We’re just lounging about off-duty, right? What you do naturally, remember?’

  Gille glared. ‘Now listen—’

  Olvar’s mailed fists knocked their helmets together, and he laughed raucously. After a moment Kunrad joined him, slapping him on the back. The watchers who had begun to notice them saw only skylarking soldiers, not afraid to draw attention to themselves, and turned away again.

  Alais straightened her helmet, which had tipped over her eyes, and glared. Kunrad only grinned. ‘Well done, Olvar! Stop looking so conspiratorial, everyone! There are more people about than I expected this late, princess.’

  She leaned back on the battlements, looking at the wide courtyard below, and then turned to gaze out at the black lake and the softly mirrored moon. ‘I love this aspect … Yes. That’s unusual, I think. They’re pulling stuff out of store and piling it up. Food, I guess, from the sacks. Preserved stuff.’

  ‘Are they indeed?’ grinned Kunrad. ‘Well, I think we might give them a hand, don’t you? Olvar, you’d better keep in the shadows—’

  ‘No need, boss!’ answered the big prentice. ‘Three or four of those guys down there are Northerner colour, see? And there’s a couple more whiteskins I’d wager were Northern. Hark to the voices.’

  Alais peered into the flickering torchlight. ‘Why … that’s right. Recruiting Northerners? I’ve never heard of that, even here.’ She rubbed a little dust from the wall across her face. ‘There goes the princess. Let’s lend that hand.’

  The four guards lumbered cheerfully down among the lines of hurrying men, casually plucking the bags from their shoulders and heaving them on to the growing stacks. ‘For wagons,’ grunted Olvar, heaving a sack so hard it slid across the pile, and bending down to retrieve it.

  ‘Why not load it straight, then?’ argued Gille. ‘Must be coming in from somewhere, and in a hurry too – ah, twice-baked bread in this one. Fresher than that corsair stuff.’ He was stowing bags under his belt.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of bags of salted smoke-meat,’ said Kunrad, deftly turning over the sack he had slit.

  ‘Sausages,’ contributed Alais. ‘Nice big ones!’

  ‘Well, lucky old you!’ said Gille archly. ‘More meat, in this. Must be enough here to stand a siege!’

  ‘I wonder when they’re going to take it away,’ murmured Kunrad, heaving another sack on to the pile. ‘That might be our chance. The gate-guards look alert enough, more’s the pity. But sooner or later—’

  His fingers clenched hard on the sacking. A trumpet sounded, harsh and cold, from the tower above, and others from the walls joined it in a jarring discord which seemed to echo across the lake.

  ‘They’re on to us, lady!’ he hissed. ‘Found me gone! There’s no more you can do now! We’ll need shift for ourselves, and best you get away!’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m safe enough, believe me. I’ll stay as long as I can! Besides, I don’t think you’re right …’

  ‘Hoi!’ blasted a voice behind them. ‘You four beauties! Enough lounging around those sacks! To the gate, and snappy!’

  They needed no excuse for jumping; the voice could only belong to a sergeant, and he sent blistering words after them as they scuttled to obey. ‘Get your ’ands on that there winch! Can’t be worse ’n where you keep ’em most times, can it now? Well, what’re you waiting for? Mustn’t keep our precious flamin’ guests waitin’!’

  To the side of the gate stood a huge and complex affair of wheels and capstans and counterweights, enough to make anyone hesitate. The fugitives gathered around it in momentary disarray, and Alais looked up at Kunrad in blank horror. ‘Get on with it!’ bellowed their tormentor, landing a blow with his stick across Olvar’s huge shoulders. ‘I dunno, we’ve got to put up with you half-trained bloody marshrats! The wheel, shithead – know what a wheel is? The one with little ’andles what you put your ’ands on like they showed you all—’

  Anyone else might have been discovered then; but it was not a mechanism to baffle three smiths of Nordeney, still less a master. Before the sergeant finished his tirade Kunrad had already seen which way the wheel should turn, and how to slip the pawl that held it. He threw his weight on it, and Olvar after him, and the sergeant’s tone changed as the others joined them. ‘That’s it! Got some thews on yer, that’s something! Handsomely, now! We’ll have that bridge across like spit off a stove! Maybe make a wager or two on you lads one day soon, what d’you say? Against the reg’lars, like?’

  The wheel turned, the chains clanked, the counterweights descended, and a fine spray of black oil improved their disguises. Something seemed to be worrying Alais more than the labour. ‘Marshrats,’ she muttered. ‘Regulars …’

  ‘Cease hauling!’ called the sergeant. ‘Take a breather! You up there, gate open! Come on, jump to it!’

  The fugitives leaned on the locked wheel, pretending to pant. ‘Heads down!’ whispered Olvar. ‘Enter the guests!’

  ‘Not much ceremony about it!’ whispered Alais as they heard the drum of hooves from the drawbridge, and the rumble of wagon-wheels. ‘No flares, no flags – no Merthian, and he’s such a stickler! And those were alarm trumpets. Curious … Who’s this?’

  Riders were coming into the gate, into the centre of the courtyard, and behind them the wagons, big crude-looking things drawn by heavy horses. The riders halted so suddenly that the wagons almost collided in the gate, and they heard the sergeant swearing fearfully as he ran to sort them out. ‘Time to sling the hook, I think!’ muttered Olvar delightedly. Then he froze as Kunrad’s hand clamped down on his arm.

  The riders were dismounting in the open square, under the dim light of the braziers that flanked the great door. It opened, and Merthian strode out, casually and without ceremony, with the sleepy-looking captain Erlan at his heels. Alais shrank behind Kunrad, though she was by now barely recognisable. The light flamed scarlet on the robe of the man who stepped up to meet Merthian, and on the jewels that spangled his body from his ears to his boots. The parchment face with its deep lines looked even sallower in the firelight.

  ‘You know him?’ hissed Alais. ‘Who is that?’

  Kunrad turned to her with a horrible weight on his heart. ‘My lady … that’s the chieftain of the corsairs, as I described him to you. None other.’ He turned back, quickly, so he need not recognise the sound behind him. He felt sick himself.

  ‘I’d never …’ began Gille, and stopped, unable to form the words.

  ‘It makes sense, as always,’ whispered Kunrad. ‘Fine sense, if you know no limits. All that well-made war-gear, and where the bodies to wear it? I thought he’d raise a force from his own loyal peasantry, or other lords, or something. But this way he’ll have, what? Two thousand hardened fighters, not very well trained maybe but tough and rapacious. And desperate to get out of that marsh and that hole of a fortress.’

  Gille ground his teeth. ‘And we know now why that place looked so much like this one. They hadn’t just seen it …’

  The corsair chieftain halted on the lower step before Merthian, and bent his knee to the stone.

  Merthian’s voice cut across the silent courtyard. ‘Well, sealord? To what do I owe this honour? I was expecting only your supply train. What brings you in person? Come to count the sacks or the mailsuits?’

  The corsair rose uneasily. ‘Hardly, my Lord Warden. Your generosity needs no accounting. No, I came to warn you of a danger to your, uh, precious person.’

  The flattery seemed to stick on the chieftain’s tongue. ‘My lord, if we could consult in private…’

  Merthian’s auburn tresses shook slightly. ‘By no means. Say what you have to before me and mine, openly.’

  The chieftain clutched at his beard. ‘Not long since, we took some handy prisoners, as we thought. Smiths of Nordeney. One of them claimed to have some grievance against you, my lord, but we left his head on his
shoulders because we’re in so dire a need of such craft, and he seemed of no common skill. We chained him in our deepest smithy and set him to work.’

  Merthian nodded calmly. ‘Very well. That does not concern me, then.’

  The corsair winced. ‘Except that … Lord Warden, he has escaped from us, by arcane means we could never have guarded against. Most probably they are lost in the Marshes, and he was scarcely a serious threat, anyhow. But nonetheless we thought it best to come and warn you in person…’

  Merthian’s nod was imperceptible. ‘Of course. After, equally of course, wasting precious days, and no doubt precious lives, in fruitless searching – rather than admit such paramount stupidity to me. You locked up a Northern smith with iron? As soon douse a fire with twice-burnt wine! Hear this, my ambitious friend! This smith of yours did indeed escape the Marshes! But no thanks to you, I have him safe under my lock and my key, and they—’ He stopped dead, expressionless. ‘They, did you say?’

  The corsair’s face was expressionless in the gusty light. ‘Why yes, Lord Warden. He had two boys who escaped with him. And two of those duergar vermin, who stole a boat, and—’

  Merthian paid him no heed. ‘Two! Lost in the Marshes, most likely, but—’ He rounded on the captain with curt command. ‘Go, man, see that the fellow’s safe in his cell! I doubt it not, but – run!’

  A guard clattered across to the side door, and Kunrad heard the word being passed down those echoing corridors, faster than any feet. The fugitives were penned in, unable to make a move away from the bridge winches without drawing attention. Kunrad looked for something to block the mechanism, but could see nothing save their swords; and those they might need. Then the voices began again, and the guard came running back. ‘My Lord Warden! His door’s locked and barred fast, but – the Northerner’s gone!’

  Merthian’s face did not change, but he took a swift step forward as if to strike at something that was not there. The corsair stroked his beard with deliberate lack of expression. Another guard came rushing out. ‘Lord Warden, Lord Warden! He’s out into the lake! The bars have rotted away like old wood, and there’s scuffings all over the wall’s foot!’