War of Powers

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  The bird lifted its hideous, naked head and loosed a squall of rage. Moriana's scimitar had struck its beak and had been deflected down to lay open its shoulder. Blood flew from the tip of its wing as it shook the stumpy limb in wrath.

  I've only made it mad, she thought. My next cut must tell, if it's not to finish me. Cods, it's big!

  Moriana's blood shone on the talons of its left foot. The monster had kicked out, trying to eviscerate her. Moriana drew her long knife and moved to meet the sightless hunter.

  Hissing savagely, it attacked with beak and talons simultaneously. The knife blocked the beak, but the axe-like blow sent the weapon spinning from Moriana's grip. Her scimitar bit deep into the striking leg, chopping through the bone. With an anguished wail, the bird collapsed.

  Moriana ended its life with a sword-cut, dancing back barely in time to escape the final lunge of its beak. Shaking, she went to retrieve her knife.

  'A monster, that one,' she said, wiping slimy blood from her blade with a handful of grass.

  'Don't grow complacent,' Erimenes said. 'You handled yourself bravely and skillfully. I've no complaints about the quality of the fight. On the other hand you do have a problem.'

  'What's that?' the princess asked, sliding her sword back into the improvised belt.

  'What do you plan to do about the rest of the pack?' In their eagerness to be first to get at the courier, the Sky Guardsmen completely forgot their discipline and training. Fost retreated into the crack. Three bird-riders lunged in after him, only to find themselves crowded too tightly together to use their weapons to full effect. Fost's broadsword licked out. The Guardsmen fell. Only one showed sign of life, and that was a feeble groaning.

  'Do you want more?' Fost asked them, exultant at this initial victory. He didn't fail to heed the small voice in his skull that reminded him how many more bird-riders the night held. But a wild, fatalistic exhilaration settled on him as his dream of immortality evaporated. It was as though a burden dropped from his shoulders. He had lost all fear; the fight was all that mattered.

  I almost wish Erimenes was here to see it, he thought. He was not so giddy that he missed the curt order, 'Back! Give the archers a shot, you groundborn scum!'

  Man-high rocks flanked the entrance of the fissure. With a bound, Fost was behind one. An arrow skimmed his calf, ripping the rough breeches he'd put on after leaving the Ethereals' village. Other missiles bounced from the rocks with an iron clamor. His boulder shielded him completely.

  He had his dagger in hand as well as the basket-hilted broadsword. A javelin probed around the rock sheltering him. The dagger slammed against its haft, pinning it to the stone, while Fost stabbed around the obstruction. The bird-rider gasped and carried the sword groundward as he fell. Fost yanked the blade free, roaring in triumph.

  Darts and arrows winged up the crack. Close behind the volley came another rush of the Guardsmen. Fost slashed open the chest of the first to cross his vision and leaped out to confront the rest, hacking and thrusting with his broadsword, parrying with the dagger. A scimitar cracked against his hilt, a blow that would have halved his hand but for the protecting steel basket. His riposte went through the soldier's throat.

  'Come on,' he shouted at them, 'You're no more men than he who leads you!'

  Dead silence stretched down the rocky slope. Torches had been lit to illuminate the mouth of the fissure. Fost watched goblin shadows dance on the stony walls.

  'Stand back,' he heard a calm voice say. Cautiously Fost peered around the side of his boulder, ready to jerk back out of an arrow's path. 'Come and die, half-man,' he cried, spitting on the ground before him.

  Rann's face turned the color of sunbleached bone. 'You won't have the lingering death you deserve,' he said, his words still flowing like liquid amber, 'because you force me to come up there and kill you now.' His scimitar lightly gripped in a gloved left hand, he started up the slope.

  Awaiting him, Fost held himself poised, alert for treachery. He had no doubt Rann would face him alone; any man who would put himself between the Vicar of Istu and the object of its wrath, armed only with a puny sword, possessed courage to match the prince's cruelty. Besides, his life lay on it. The longer Fost held the gap, the more likely Moriana was to escape. A point would come when Synalon would no longer accept failure, even on the part of her cousin, the prince. But Rann specialized in lethal cunning. Fost would take nothing he did at face value.

  At the mouth of the crevice Rann threw himself face first on the ground. Three archers stood behind him, weapons nocked. Instantly they let fly at the courier's broad chest.

  He was no longer there. The arrows passed harmlessly on to shatter against the rock wall. Rann's first unusual motion had sent Fost jumping back. Rann bounced up now, his left arm a blur of motion.

  Springing up to pounce on his presumably disabled foe, Rann was just in time to catch Fost's dagger inside the joint of his right shoulder.

  Rann sagged back. His smile went sickly. Reaching up with his sword hand, he extended two fingers and a thumb from his hilt and plucked the blade from the wound with no further change of expression. Casually he tossed the knife aside. 'Let's end this farce,' he said.

  Their blades crossed in a geometry of line and curve. Barely turn ing a low-line thrust with a twist of his wrist, Fost felt his berserker fever dissolve. A normal man would have been handicapped by the flowing wound in his shoulder, to say nothing of a man who still nursed ribs cracked by a demon's hand. Yet Rann's sword hand moved with sure precision, and his feet made no misstep. His foe would need both skill and luck to walk away from this encounter.

  Far from disabling his opponent, his dagger cast had served solely to deprive Fost of his parrying weapon. He felt its need sorely now, with Rann's scimitar insinuating itself past his every defence to lick like a steel tongue at his flesh. The sword's caresses were light still, but each touch spilled more of the big man's blood and weakened him that much further. Nor would his strength serve to best the prince. Fost tried a widely swung powerhouse blow, and in turn received a cut across his belly that made him blink with pain. Had the scimitar bitten the breadth of a finger deeper his guts would have fallen around his knees in loops.

  Rann did not go unscathed. A whistling stroke nicked an ear and a sudden lunge drew a bloody line along the side of his neck. But it was obvious the big man was wearing down more rapidly.

  The decision came abruptly. Fost blocked a sidewise cut at his middle, only to have Rann turn his wrist unexpectedly. The tip of the scimitar whipped down and sank in the great muscle of Fost's right thigh.

  Fost reeled back, hoping desperately the blade hadn't severed the main artery. If it had, he would be dead as soon as the shock wore off and the artery opened. But that could be a blessing; the leg gave way beneath him and he sat down with his back to the wall of the fissure. His resistance was at an end.

  Rann whipped his sword through a blood-streaked arabesque and brought the hilt to his lips in a mocking salute.

  'I hail you, courier. You've given me a better fight than I've enjoyed in years.' He smiled wickedly. 'Also, I perceive my men can now overpower you. It appears we'll come to know each other better, you and I.'

  Fost never knew afterward what moved him to speak the words, whether fear or desperation or something else had made his mind fall back on half-held faith. Fending off the prince with his sword, Fost raised his head and shouted, 'I call upon my patrons, Gormanka of the Couriers and Ust, Red Bear of the East, to aid me now against these devil worshippers.'

  The response was all he could have asked for. At once an eerie wailing rose into the night from somewhere down the mountainside. Rann turned, as mystified as Fost, who sat with one hand pressed to his thigh and the other holding his broadsword aimed at the prince.

  Again the cry, shrill and despairing. Consternation showed on the soldiers' faces. It was the sound of war birds, not only in pain but in fear - a sound no living ear had ever heard.

  A torchbearer fl
ew into the air, snatched up by something that rose behind him as though growing from the rocks themselves. His torch limned a snarling visage, immense jaws opened wide and a furry head with flattened ears and flame-dancing eyes advanced. The jaws clamped shut with a crunching sound. The torch fell.

  More huge, misshapen figures loomed out of the blackness. Demons rode them, striking out with long spears and clubs. Grunting and whuffling, their mounts shuffled forward, titanic bears whose paws scattered bird-riders like straw dolls.

  Rann ran at them, shouting orders. Arrows and javelins flew; a bear reared screaming and dropped, crushing its rider against a knife-edged outcropping. The bear-riders charged up the slope, led by a giant who swung a six-foot sword in fiery arcs.

  The lead bear came among the score of Sky Guardsmen who'd followed Rann's commands. Sword and talons struck, men died. The Sky Guardsmen broke. Running as fleetly as any among them went Rann. It was one thing to interpose himself between his cousin and an animated statue gone amok; it was quite another to face an army of monster-riding fiends who'd swept out of nowhere to take his men in the rear and butcher them as blithely as they themselves had massacred Ethereals. The old campaigner in him took over, and with the demoralized remnants of his troops, he disappeared beyond the boundary of torchlight.

  The bear paused for a moment to allow its rider to hurl imprecations after the fleeing Guards. Then it turned and lumbered toward Fost. The courier had just about come to the conclusion that his mind had snapped.

  A whiff reached his nostrils, laden with the searing, musky tang of bear. He screwed his face up.

  'Ust, what a stench!' 'You're very welcome,' the bear-rider boomed. 'We save you from certain death at the hands of the Sky people, and you thank us with insults. Truly you northern folk have odd notions of courtesy.'

  Fost shook his head. 'I'm sorry. I'm not at my best just now. Besides, I didn't think you were real.'

  The giant swung off the bear's back and stepped forward. To Fost's astonishment his benefactor was a woman as tall as he and a little lighter, her bare arms bulging with muscle that rippled as she stirred. A tightly-laced leather bodice restrained breasts of surpassing fullness. Over it was thrown a fur vest and a gorget of mail. Black breeches lined inside the thigh with leather and knee-high boots completed her outfit. Though far from beautiful, her face was strikingly handsome, eyes blazing blue from a tanned, high-cheekboned face beneath an upright shock of hair the color of flame.

  A smile split the face. 'Ask the bird-lovers how real we are.' She looked off in the direction the Guards had taken. 'Run, you cowards! Run or we'll catch you and take your scrotums for medicine bags!'

  'A bit late for that, in Rann's case,' Fost murmured. 'My name is Fost, and I am in your debt for saving my life.'

  'Jennas,' she acknowledged, her head dipping curtly. 'You owe me nothing.' She knelt and pried Fost's fingers from his wound. He winced as her fingers probed. 'I confess we tarried overlong in coming to your rescue. We came upon the Sky folk unseen and so witnessed your stand. Well and bravely fought, if stupidly. You should never have let yourself be trapped so.'

  She rose and took a roll of linen bandages from a pack fixed to the bear's harness. The beast stood placidly, peering at Fost. Blood dried blackly on its muzzle.

  Skillfully Jennas began to bandage his wound. 'We get few strangers in this land. The Sky folk we know, and their name has a foul taste in our mouths. Most others have been spies for those who seek to subdue us. So, as a general rule, we kill all who are unknown to us.' She tested the binding for tightness, nodding in satisfaction at her handiwork.

  'Why did you help me?' Fost asked. 'Stupid,' she repeated. 'Or in shock. Do you truly not know?' He shook his head. 'You called for aid upon the Sun Bear. We are his people, the People of Ust.'

  CHAPTER FOUR

  'Perhaps "pack" isn't the proper word,' Erimenes said as Moriana sprinted into the litter of large rocks covering the valley's slope. Squawking stridently, the file of dark shapes that had been slowly stalking toward her up the valley broke into a long-legged run. 'It may be that "flock" is the correct collective, considering that these beasts, after all, are avian in nature.'

  'Why didn't you tell me that they hunted in groups' Moriana gasped, choking down a groan as she slammed her knee against a stone. Behind her the blind birds, attracted by the heat ebbing from its body, had found their fallen comrade. They set up a shrill keening that flayed Moriana's nerves.

  'Why, I was unsure until I sensed the bulk of them stealing up on you,' the philosopher said. 'As I stated before, they have changed in form since my mortal years; I didn't know whether their habits had varied as well. I presume now that they have not.'

  'Marvelous.' Crouching behind a boulder, Moriana peered into the meadow. An indeterminate number of the giant birds clustered about the corpse, their heads swiveling on their hairy-feathered necks. One's eyeless face fixed on the princess. Instantly it uttered a shriek and ran straight at her.

  'How many are there?' she asked, turning and scrambling up the slope.

  'In the olden days they seldom numbered more than a hundred to a pack, if you will stipulate for the moment that it is a suitable term.' Moriana made a noise of exasperation that Erimenes chose to interpret as assent. 'I never knew of a group fewer than twenty. Of course, their numbers may have dwindled as their individual size increased, since it takes more food to support each one.' The shade paused, apparently undisturbed by the jostling of his pack as the princess fled over and around the boulders strewn across the incline. 'One thing appears unchanged. They are intensely social animals and will pursue to the end of their endurance anyone who has slain one of their number.'

  Moriana slumped against a leaning menhir, her strength exhausted. The sounds of the chase drew nearer. Realizing that the long legs of the birds made them far faster than she over open ground, she had headed instinctively for the cover of the rocks. But even here the birds held an advantage. Their big claws could grip protrusions and irregularities in the stone better than her hands and feet.

  'Observe,' Erimenes began. Moriana silenced him with a swat of her hand to his satchel.

  'Be quiet,' she whispered. They'll hear you.' 'Oh, rubbish,' said Erimenes loudly. 'They know perfectly well where you are. They can sense the heat of your body rising from behind this wretched rock, and your breath displays your presence like a column of smoke.'

  Moriana just had time to digest this intelligence when a bird came scuttling over the top of her boulder. Warned by the scratch of claw on stone, she danced back and threw up her blade to ward off a whirlwind assault of talon and beak. Somehow she blocked the blows with half-instinctive turns of her wrist, the beak clanging from metal like blows of a hammer. The scimitar licked in above reaching claws and the monster went down, gurgling blood from a gash in its throat.

  Moriana darted away as a wave of birds broke over her rock. For a time they nattered in confusion. But shortly they caught her heat-signature again and the chase was on. Sightless, the hunters possessed a lethal edge over their quarry. In the dark eyes were all but useless, while their heat-sense told them her exact location.

  There must be a way to mask my heat, she thought. An idea came to her. 'Erimenes,' she panted. 'Find me some vegetation, quick-the drier the better.'

  'That won't hide you any better than the boulders.' 'Do it!'

  With ill grace, the sage's ghost directed the princess to a stand of stunted cedars high up near the crest of the ridge that flanked the grassy valley. Some blight had killed them, yet they stood, bent and twisted like emaciated dwarves. Their limbs snapped with dry cracks as she bore down on them.

  A burst of energy born of sheer panic had carried Moriana well in advance of her monstrous pursuers. But their cries rose behind her like the baying of hounds, coming inexorably closer with each passing second. Her lips moved in a half-remembered spell. She'd never been the sorceress her sister was, particularly in this complex and exquisitely perilous branch of the
art.

  For a heart-stilling instant nothing happened. The birds screamed triumphantly as they burst from the rocks and bore down upon the lifeless grove, their claws kicking up a shower of pebbles. Desperate, Moriana shrieked the final words of the invocation.

  A sun blossomed within her. She cried out as intolerable heat traveled up her body to her shoulder and down her arm, casting a lurid white glow as though her flesh itself had become incandescent. The blazing agony reached her fingers, and a fire elemental burst from their tips and shot like a fireball into the scrub.

  The desiccated wood took fire at once. Flames leaped high with a popping whoosh and the burbling laughter of the salamander chilled her soul. Rank, cloying smoke clutched at Moriana's throat. Coughing, she staggered out of the young inferno her magic had caused.