by Джеффри Лорд
Chapter 10
Blade rode past the white posts at a canter, then slowed to a trot as soon as they were out of sight behind him. He wanted to spare the heuda even more than usual. He might have to ride for his life before this day was over, and he wanted his mount as fresh as possible.
It was two hours before Blade saw a single Wolf. During those two hours he rode steadily onward, stopping twice to let the heuda catch its breath. He rode with his sword belted on over his coat, ready at hand, and with one dagger in his boot and another up one sleeve. His crossbow was slung on one side of his saddle and a bag of bolts for it on the other side. He wasn't sure if the Wizard's agents ever rode up armed to the teeth like this, but he didn't care. In Blade's experience, few men ever died from having too many weapons ready to use.
The road was wide enough for three men to ride abreast and surfaced with hard-packed gravel. It twisted and turned in curves and sharp bends. Some of these curves and bends took it around hills or ravines. Others seemed intended to bring it within easy range of perfect ambush sites
Twice Blade crossed small wooden bridges. He noticed that the roadbed of each bridge was made of loose planks, while the supports were held together by ropes and wedges. A dozen trained men could take this bridge apart in an hour, using nothing but their bare hands. An invader could still push cavalry and infantry across the stream and on across country. He could not do the same with the heavy wagons carrying food or siege equipment.
Just beyond the second bridge, Blade came to a farm, perched on a hill beside a bend in the road. Its fields were masses of rank weeds and its barn was a sagging pile of decaying timber. No one had raised a crop here for many years. Yet the farm still had its uses as part of the Wizard's defense plans.
The walls of the farmhouse were loopholed for crossbows. A stout brick wall surrounded the farmyard. Near the top, black iron spikes, sharp and freshly painted, jutted outward from the brick. A wooden barrier crowned the wall and it also was loopholed. In the center of the farmyard rose a circular stone tower with a tiled wooden cupola and a weathervane on top.
Over the past century the Wizards of Rentoro had created a formidable defense in depth. Spies and Wolves made rebellion almost impossible, but the Wizards still weren't taking any chances.
By luck or through the Wizard's mistakes a rebel army might assemble and march on the castle. It would not be able to use the Wizard's roads. Instead it would be forced to disperse and scatter across the country as it marched. Then the Wolves, concentrating with their unnatural speed, would come down on the scattered columns. An invader would be lucky to get within sight of the castle's walls.
At least Blade could now understand why he hadn't met any Wolves on the road. With these defenses stretching for miles ahead of him, there was no need to hurry in stopping a lone rider. The Wolves would be waiting for him where they could do so most comfortably, and they would speak to him when they found it convenient.
The farm disappeared around the bend of the road. Blade trotted into a forest and the heuda began to labor slightly as the road climbed a hill. Half a mile farther on he came out of the forest, back into the gray daylight, and found the Wolves waiting for him.
There were only three of them-one of the leaders and two men-at-arms. The men-at-arms wore their usual armor and weapons, but the leader was dressed more for dancing than for fighting. He wore a black tunic embroidered with gold and with silver lacing down the front, blue hose, a flowing red cloak with a fur collar-in general, the clothes of a Renaissance nobleman on his way to a party. A white sash around the man's thick waist supported a blue-enameled wolf's-head badge and a jeweled dagger.
The face above the lace collar was less elegant. It was tanned, scarred, coarsened by years of too much food and wine, but still hard and ugly. It was a face Blade had seen many times-the professional mercenary, without scruples, friends, or any place in the world except what he can win by his sword and loyalty to his chief. A dangerous man in a fight, but otherwise more accustomed to obeying orders than to making up his own mind, and therefore perhaps less dangerous to Blade here and now.
Blade rode straight up to the three Wolves, paying no more attention to them than to the rain. He pulled to a stop twenty feet away, just as the leader started toward him. One of the men-at-arms drew his sword, while the other unslung his crossbow.
«The Wizard gives you welcome,» said the leader. His voice matched his face-rough, harsh, and much less polite than his choice of words.
«I come on the affairs of the Wizard,» said Blade. Only a Wolf or an agent who'd served the Wizard for many years would use the forbidden proper name without betraying himself by nervousness or hesitation.
The man nodded. «It is written?» he went on, pointing at Blade's saddlebags.
«It is here,» said Blade, pointing at his forehead. «It is for the Wizard, and none other.»
«That may be,» said the man. «It comes from-where?»
«From Morina,» said Blade. «Some also from near Dodini.» He'd picked those two cities well in advance. Dodini must have been giving the Wizard trouble, or the Wolves would not have attacked it. Thanks to Lorya he also knew a good deal about the place.
He knew little about Morina, but he knew one important thing-it was still the most closely watched city in Rentoro. The present Wizard had not forgotten its leadership of the last rebellion against the first Wizard's authority. Nor had Morina forgotten the slaughter of its people by the Wolves when the rebellion was put down. News from Morina should be something no Wolf would care to delay a single moment.
The Wolf nodded and was silent for a moment, his eyes still on Blade. Blade returned the Wolf's stare, and did his best to hide the tension he felt. He was on a hair trigger, alert for the slightest sign of the leader's receiving a command from the Wizard or of the two men-at-arms going into action.
The silence lasted until Blade was almost certain that something had gone wrong and he was going to be hurled into a vicious little fight. He was fairly sure he could deal with these three, but after that-
The Wolf leader turned toward his men and waved one hand. They spurred their heudas up to Blade, and one of them took out of a pouch on his belt a two-foot length of red ribbon. On it were embroidered three golden wolves, one running, one standing, and one lying, as well as several words in a script Blade didn't recognize. The leader tied the ribbon to the bridle of Blade's heuda, then raised a hand in farewell. «Pass on to the Wizard,» he said.
Blade had to fight an impulse to spur his heuda to a full gallop and hold that pace until he was out of bowshot. Instead he kept the heuda to a leisurely trot until the Wolves were out of sight around a bend in the road.
So far so good. The Wolf leader had passed him on as someone with legitimate business here, or at least not dangerous enough to stop. He'd also been given what he hoped was a safe-conduct pass, but which might be a «shoot this man on sight» message to the next band of Wolves.
Apparently the ribbon was a safe-conduct. The next three bands of Wolves Blade met stopped him, looked at the ribbon, then waved him on. Each time he kept expecting a crossbow bolt to sprout in his back, until he was out of sight or at least out of easy range.
The country was growing more rugged, with rocky hills, a few stunted trees, and cliffs overhanging the road at nearly every curve. Along this stretch, a hundred Wolves could hold off an army of ten thousand simply by rolling rocks down from the cliffs. Then suddenly the road made a hairpin turn around a last cliff. On the other side a solid stone bridge ran across a deep ravine. Beyond the ravine lush fields of grain rolled away toward a long black wall. Far away beyond the wall Blade saw four round towers. One gleamed faintly as a stray sunbeam broke through the clouds and struck the polished tiles on the domed roof.
Blade spurred his heuda to a gallop. His cloak streamed out behind him as he thundered across the bridge and down the winding road, past fields of grain swaying in the wind. There were people at work in the fields-old men and ev
en older women, or so it seemed to Blade as he swept by. Then at last the black wall loomed before him, rising fifty feet above the stone-paved square in front of the gate.
He had reached the castle of the Wizard of Rentoro.
Seen close up, the castle was even larger than Blade had imagined it from Lorya's tales. What he could see of it showed signs of neglect. Vines grew all the way to the top of the wall, and there was a foot-wide crack thirty feet high to the right of the gate. Grass sprouted from the cracks in the stone under him.
The Wizard might be getting careless, but Blade doubted it. Even if an enemy did manage to reach the castle's walls, it would take them so long the Wizard would have plenty of time to put his house in order. Meanwhile, what was the sense in spending money and labor on things that might never be needed? The Wizard could not create workers out of thin air, or feed and clothe them with a wave of his hand.
Blade scanned the wall as far as his eyes could reach, looking for the sentries who must be up there on top of the wall. He couldn't see anyone, but he refused to believe the wall was completely deserted. Sooner or later, someone would come down to open the gate for him.
Time passed, minute after slow minute. The rain slackened and finally stopped, and the wind died to a faint breeze. The storm was also passing.
Now Blade had been waiting outside the castle for close to an hour. The clouds overhead were beginning to break up, but the sunlight revealed no sign of life on the wall. The gate still loomed above him, twenty feet high and thirty feet wide, made of whole tree trunks bound with iron, hung on iron hinges. The wood smelled of grease and the ironwork, shone with oil and fresh paint. No neglect here!
In the middle of the left-hand gate was a small postern, a door just high and wide enough for a man about Blade's size to pass through without stooping. On an impulse Blade went over to the postern gate and pulled on the iron ring hanging in the center of it.
With a faint squeal and groan, the postern swung open.
Blade could hardly have been more surprised if the Wizard himself had suddenly materialized in a puff of smoke and a clap of thunder. He also felt rather foolish. He wondered if anyone had been standing up on top of the wall, laughing himself silly at the spectacle of Richard Blade waiting for someone to let him through an unlocked gate.
A less pleasant question popped into his mind as well. Could the Wizard be expecting him?
Blade dismounted, led his heuda over to the nearest vine, and tethered it to a tough brown stalk. Then he drew his sword, walked back to the postern, and stepped through it into the Wizard's castle.
Chapter 11
Blade found himself in a shadowy, musty gateway, so long that it was almost a tunnel. In the dim light it was easy to imagine the heavy stones of the arched roof overhead crashing down on him. Blade hurried toward the open postern visible in the inner gate.
He was three steps from the postern when two things happened. First, the postern slammed shut, sending echoes rolling ominously from the stone walls on either side. Blade had just time to take a deep breath, then there was a rumble from overhead, a wsssh of air, and a huge block of stone plunged out of nowhere and smashed into the pavement. In the confined space the impact sounded like an explosion. The echoes doubled and redoubled, while chunks of stone flew in all directions like fragments from an exploding shell. One grazed Blade's leg hard enough to draw blood, while another knocked his sword out of his hand. He picked it up and looked at the stone. If he'd been six feet to the left, he would have been squashed under it like a stepped-on cockroach.
He drew his boot knife and probed the closed postern. There was no ring, latch, or lock visible on the inside. It appeared to be securely fastened from the outside, as if by-
No. Blade made up his mind. He would not let himself start thinking in terms of magic, even if this was a Wizard's castle. There would be a natural explanation for everything that might happen to him.
Blade backed away from the postern, eyes and ears probing the darkness around him. The postern in the outer gate was still open, but he certainly wasn't going to retreat at the first trick the Wizard played on him. Blade darted to the fallen stone and snatched up the largest piece he could lift with one hand. Then he went back to the outer gate, keeping close to the wall. He reached the outer postern and wedged the stone firmly under the open door. That would force anybody who wanted to close it to do the job by hand, rather than by some concealed mechanism. Blade straightened up and turned back toward the inner gate. As he did so, the locked inner postern suddenly swung open.
Blade retraced his steps, knife drawn and hand on sword hilt. If the door started closing this time, he was going to ram his sword into the gap, then go to work on the hinges with the knife.
The postern stayed open, and Blade slipped through. He took a deep breath, then another-then threw himself flat on the ground and rolled furiously to the right. Sssst-whuk! Something flashed overhead and struck the gate behind him. Blade twisted around without raising his head and looked.
Four heavy arrows stood quivering in the gate. Each had a wooden shaft a yard long and a solid iron head almost sunk out of sight in the logs. If any of them had hit him, he would have been pinned against the gate, dead without a twitch or a cry.
Behind Blade towered the inner face of the main wall. On two sides rose vine-overgrown brick walls, on the third a line of squat trees with a timber palisade visible beyond them. The palisade was open at one end. There was no one in sight.
The inner postern was still open, but once again Blade was determined not to retreat. Instead he rose, first to hands and knees, then to a sitting position, then to a crouch. When this drew no reaction, he sprang to his feet and dashed across the open ground toward the gap in the palisade.
He dashed through the gap and saw a wide muddy ditch open before him. He was tempted to simply plough a way down one side and up the other, but instinct told him firmly that he shouldn't. So he leaped, soaring across the ditch and landing in waist-high grass on the other side. The grass not only broke his fall, it concealed him almost completely. He lay there to catch his breath.
As he did, part of the muddy bottom of the ditch seemed to come alive. The snake was a good ten feet long and a foot thick, with a triangular head and a body that showed mottled gray and purple under the mud. Blade was quite certain that if he'd walked across the ditch instead of leaping, he would have learned the hard way that the snake was as poisonous as it looked.
He rose and moved on. Someone was almost certainly watching him. He wished he knew why. He did know that he wasn't going to show fear, frustration, or carelessness if he could possibly avoid it.
Somehow, for some incomprehensible purpose of the Wizard of Rentoro, he was being tested. He was going to pass the test or die trying. In fact, that was probably all he could do, other than turn his back on the castle and the Wizard and admit defeat.
All that afternoon Blade pitted himself against the Wizard's tests and traps. He began to feel that he was in a world apart, a world where ordinary concepts of time and space had no meaning. The only constants were the sense of being watched and the certainty that danger lay close at hand.
He might have lost all track of time if the Wizard's testing ground hadn't been open to the sky. The clearing of the sky and then the slow fading of the sunlight told him of the passing hours.
There were tests of agility, there were tests of speed, there were tests of sheer brute strength-lifting a two-hundred pound beam that barred his only way forward. Each of these tests of his physical qualities also tested his ability to think quickly and logically, keep his head, and keep going forward. The Wizard's deadly maze was always offering him a safe road back, and he was always refusing to take it.
There was no sign of human activity-in fact no sign that the huge castle hadn't been swept clean of all human life by a plague. Yet Blade's instincts told him that each test took place under the eye of some hidden observer, ready to tell the Wizard if Blade succeeded, or com
e out to pick up the mangled remains if he failed. By the time Blade reached the castle, the Wizard would know as much about his skill and strength as anyone could want to know.
The Wizard must have been expecting him. It was hard to believe that he ran every agent coming to bring a report through this deadly obstacle course. That would kill off half his loyal people in a few months. No doubt the agents were met outside the castle and guided in, or had an easier route. Blade, on the other hand, was coming-or being sent-through the jaws of one trap after another. This could hardly be an accident.
It began to be clear that his course was taking him in a spiral, approaching the inner citadel by gradual stages. If he'd been moving in a straight line, he would have reached the citadel long ago. He began to wonder how much farther he had to go.
He also began to wonder how much longer it would be safe to move. The day was fading into twilight and Blade did not wish to face the rest of the obstacle course in the darkness. The night would hide too many subtle warnings of the traps.
He liked even less the idea of just sitting down and waiting for dawn. He hadn't seen any more of the big snakes, but he was sure they or equally unpleasant creatures were close at hand. If he sat down to wait out the darkness, would the Wizard send them out to pay him a visit? He'd have to be awake and on the alert every minute of the night, even if he wasn't on the move.
Blade decided he'd better scramble up on top of one of the walls and get his bearings, rather than plod on through the maze like a white rat in a laboratory. This might be cheating, and it might draw the attention of the Wizard or the Wolves. It still seemed a better idea than simply waiting for night to fall.
Around the next bend lay a paved triangular courtyard, with no signs of traps or obstacles. Close to one wall grew a gnarled, heavy-branched tree. Blade hurried toward it. The tree might have been made to order as a route up the wall.