EXILED: Lord of Cragsclaw

by Bill Fawcett

  The weather was bitter, so that even a fortress made of stone sounded inviting and warm. The last thing she needed, this close to her goal, was a battle to fight, or even one to avoid.

  “Who are they?” she questioned the scout at last.

  “If our eyes are true,” he said, “the fleeing army seems led by a mrem with darker fur than the rest. Perhaps, though, the color is only a trick of the moonlight. They wear a mixed bag in all sorts of armor and fur colors, but they are holding out against four times their number.”

  “Dark fur?” she exclaimed. “How dark?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We couldn’t tell the color, even in the firelight. When I saw him last, he was sitting on the hillside to the rear of his flank.”

  She nodded. “Whom are they fighting?” she asked.

  “Highlanders, led by the worst of their kind. His clansmrem call him Crethok.”

  When she heard her own voice order her officers to join her, she was surprised at how calm it sounded. She knew what Crethok’s name meant. As friend of Morian, and as companion of Talwe, she knew its meaning even more than the clansmrem that followed him. At the sound of that name, her eyes had blazed with fury. What calm she possessed now was purely the result of knowing what she must do. What she would do, because she was a princess of Ar.

  As Sruss spoke, the words hurt as if they whipped her. “We are not here to save bandits. We are here to reinforce Cragsclaw. There will never be a better opportunity for us to enter unseen. Every man is to prepare to move quickly.”

  Here the princess’ voice broke. Duty conflicted with her own desire, even though she knew there was no other choice. The urge to go to Talwe’s aid was strong. She allowed herself a short sob, one that startled her commanders, then hardened her voice.

  “One mrem inside the walls is worth three in the field. Order the mrem to give no assistance to those who are fighting. None at all. They are only to hurry through the nearest gate.”

  As they crept toward the fortress, Sruss would almost have welcomed their discovery by a party of clansmrem, but she wasn’t to have the satisfaction of even a small fight. They managed to enter the western gate virtually unseen. The commanders praised her wisdom, but something inside the white-furred female was sickened. She knew her decision had been correct, but it still felt wrong. For the first time, Sruss regretted being a princess.

  Wordlessly, leaving the joyous commanders wondering what they had said, the white female stumbled out of the gatehouse and stood on the wall. Lord Sleisher could find her there. She watched the western valley, anxious to see how the dark-furred one was faring.

  Minutes later she could hear the sound of fighting, but couldn’t see any movement among the shadows of the false dawn. There was a scraping behind her, and a rasping breath drawn deeply in.

  She turned. Morian stood there, a sword in her hand.

  “It worked,” Sruss observed, turning. “We are safe.”

  “I am going to find Talwe,” the other announced.

  Sruss shook her head. “What?” she demanded.

  “Talwe’s out there,” Morian repeated.

  “Don’t,” Sruss insisted.

  Emotionless, Morian looked at her. “I could have gone without telling you,” she intoned. “Please don’t stop me.” Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she raised the sword off the ground.

  Sruss sighed. “Find him, then,” she muttered. “I wish I could accompany you.”

  “I know,” said the female of the grasslands, and she turned and hurried downstairs. For a moment Sruss watched her, then she put up her hand and wiped a tear from her eye.

  The gesture was stopped by a bolt of venomous magic, searing deep inside her brain, and as Sruss clutched at her head she fell hard to the ground. As she writhed where she lay, she felt the beginnings of a pain more fierce than any she had known before. She sensed it was not real, that nothing was truly there, but as her head started bursting she knew that it could kill her nonetheless. Eagerly the Dancer sought the relief of unconsciousness.

  •

  Talwe opened his eyes.

  His dreams had been of the White Dancer. They had lain together, their mating gentle at first but intensifying with each passing minute. Near the end he was frantic, enchanted by her beauty and with the strength of their passion. But suddenly she rose to her feet and began a long, graceful, burning dance that drained him as no mating ever could. When the dance was finished, he collapsed and slept.

  Now he reached out for her, but she wasn’t there. In her place, though, he felt a danger so strong he could almost touch it, a danger his dream had kept him from sensing. Still only half-trusting in his magical ability, he rose quickly. Taking his sword, Talwe stepped out of his tent.

  The fires burned low, and the guards paced quietly. Nothing seemed out of place, nothing seemed dangerous at all. For several minutes he strolled among the mrem, watching their faces as they relaxed in the light of the flames. Then suddenly he felt himself tire once more, and ducking inside his tent he lay down with his sword at his side. In less than a minute, he was fitfully asleep.

  This time he awoke to a high, sharp cry. The warrior glanced around, but the camp was quiet. The cry had been inside his head.

  Leaping to his feet, he sprang from the tent. Down the mountain came hundreds of the black-clad mrem. Talwe had to rouse the camp.

  “Inla-a-a-a-a-a-a!” The war cry came easily to him—too easily, he was beginning to understand. Even if he had wished to fight, there were too many to fight. They would have to risk the gates of Cragsclaw at night.

  His warriors now rose from the ground, looking around them in what seemed to Talwe a stance of utter surprise. Didn’t they sense the danger surrounding them? At their leader’s urgent orders, the bandits quickly dressed and took up their weapons. Then they too began to see the dark wave rolling down the mountainside toward them.

  Again Talwe wondered at the source of the warning cry, knowing now that only he had heard it. He glanced at the descending warriors. By their cloaks these were highlanders. Turning, Talwe forced himself to remain calm. He measured the distance between the clansmrem and his band, and then the distance to Cragsclaw.

  The triangular fortress sat where two great mountain valleys joined. They were in the western valley. Cragsclaw sat under an overhang of solid granite. This meant it had only two walls which met less than a mile from the mountain slope that marked the far side of the narrow pass it guarded. Between them and Sleisher’s castle lay only snow-covered fields and orchards. Not a single highlander was visible. Was it a trap? There was no choice but to risk it.

  The next hour was a confused blur of running and fighting and then running. Somehow Talwe and his mrem managed to stay ahead of the bulk of the clansmrem, stopping to fight only those few who were fleet enough to overtake the fleeing bandits. The cost of this was much of the loot they had carried with them. Their path was strewn with bolts of fine fabric and fur cloaks. This probably slowed their pursuers more than the occasional arrow one of the band would stop and shoot.

  Just beyond arrow range from Cragsclaw, Talwe halted the band. Their precipitous approach looked too much like a ruse. Young Sleisher had to go on ahead, or they would all be slaughtered by the guards visible on the battlements, but little time remained and the young noble panted near exhaustion beside him.

  They were very close, and even as he watched the highlanders formed up for an attack. It was very likely the clansmrem thought they had the bandits trapped. If the gate wasn’t opened soon, they would be right.

  Suddenly a blur of pink filled the air around them all and the young lord staggered as if struck. Grasping his shoulder, Talwe supported him.

  “Can you go on?”

  “Not a very good place to stop.” The noble gestured at the highlanders forming up just beyond bowshot. Then he stumbled toward
the gate. After a few steps he staggered again and one of the Ar-mrem they had captured with him rushed to his side. He also staggered, but then both straightened and walked rapidly toward the distant fortress.

  They needed time: a few minutes until the young lord was close enough to assure the gate guard they were friendly. For a moment Talwe considered facing the highlanders alone, charging at them in a great display of heroism. Then he discarded the idea. So many mrem would simply wash over him, ignoring a lone warrior. It might be a glorious death, but it would be a useless one.

  But there was something else he might try. For hours he and Rhesa had practiced sending simple images to each other. Talwe had been frustrated with the effort, and often failed. One day he had been most annoyed and Rhesa had hissed at him. Both stood stunned as they realized she had received his emotions in so strange a way as to think they were her own.

  Kneeling, forehead against his sword, Talwe tried to remember what it had felt like to give another his feelings. A glance at the mass of highlanders certainly inspired the emotion he would send. Fear. After a moment of struggling, he could feel the waves of fear radiating from him.

  At first the battle cries of the highlanders faded. Then their headlong assault slowed, stopping completely in places. Everywhere their officers glanced behind them, studying the empty shadows at the foot of the nearby mountains.

  Then Talwe found he could do no more. It was as if he had poured all the water from a jug and now it was empty. A hundred paces away, the highland officers rallied their men. Backing away from the cloaked highlanders, his fear still real, Talwe looked behind him. The gate was open. Spearmrem rushed out of it, led by a familiar female figure, and more archers appeared on the walls. Already his mrem hurried toward the safety of the fortress.

  Secretly the dark-colored mrem thanked Rhesa, who had taught him what it meant to control one’s magic, and secretly as well he gave thanks to Inla for the courage to finally use it.

  Then, suddenly, the world changed.

  From out of nowhere, something gripped his mind. At first it was slight, a pain almost like a headache, and he drank the night air in an attempt to clear his brain. But then the pain spread, first to the front of his head and then to the rear, until at last his whole skull throbbed with agony. His vision was blocked by red flames. The explosion building inside his skull came closer and closer to bursting. Then, finally, the pain overwhelmed him and he fell on his face to the ground. Other senses replaced those the hunter normally used.

  From somewhere on the side of the mountain, a bolt of sickly purple fire erupted and washed over him and then splashed off the wall of Cragsclaw. At the spot where it hit, golden sparks danced and the flame died.

  Another approached, even as the image of the last began to fade. In less time than it took Talwe to realize he was viewing something strange and deadly, a second bolt, this one burning a clean blue-white, met a purple bolt halfway between the mountain and the dark-furred mrem. Both were extinguished in a burst of light so bright that Talwe blinked, even though his real eyes could see nothing.

  Bolt after purple bolt erupted from the mountain until they formed a near-steady stream. Each was met by a blue bolt and destroyed. Then, instead of flashing toward the battlefield, one of the darker bolts spun back along the line the blue bolts were following. It too was met, but only turned, not destroyed. More flaming masses of purple followed, finally crashing brightly along the mountainside.

  For a brief instant there was no reply, then suddenly a point on the mountain throbbed and the entire pass was filled with actinic white light.

  Just as suddenly, it was gone. Clear-headed once more, yet even wearier, Talwe forced himself to his feet. He had expected to be blinded by the flash, but his real eyes worked perfectly. Already the hunter wondered if he had actually seen anything at all, or if the duel he had watched had been the result of hitting his head on the ground. To his right he saw Paralan, directing the last of his mrem quickly backward. As Talwe watched, a few of his band turned and ran back for him. Then there was a familiar presence at his side. He collapsed into her arms and knew Morian by her scent.

  Paralan reached him next. “We’re saved, hurry!” he shouted.

  Something beat against the bandit leader’s head, a much weaker version of the earlier attack. Talwe shook the exhaustion away and tried to picture a wall made of the burning blue light. This seemed to hold whatever was attacking him at bay. “Guide me in,” he ordered urgently. “There is something else I must fight.”

  The highlander’s brows knitted. “Something else?” he cried. “In the middle of battle?”

  “I have no time to explain,” Talwe replied. “You must trust me, Paralan. If I do not fight my own foe, the battle is lost after all.” Again he saw his friend’s frustration, and he softened his voice. “There is magic here,” he explained. “I can’t fight magic with swords.”

  “Magic?”

  Talwe nodded. “Crethok is not alone,” he explained. By the time he turned around, Paralan was commanding the retreat. He had grown, this warrior; Talwe was glad of his presence. Supported between Morian and Paralan, he was dragged toward the open gate. Twice more the red fire washed over him, but each time he drove it back. It left behind a throbbing agony somewhere inside the back of his head.

  Just inside the gate, Talwe collapsed against a wall. He didn’t even hear the thud as the thick gate was barred behind him. The stone was cold, but he scarcely felt it. Nor did he feel the pain still pulsing inside his head. All he knew, as he watched the battle swirl before him, was a sense of fear at what he was about to do. Something he had realized must be done.

  Closing his eyes, he shut out the noise once more. For a moment he listened to the silence, luxuriating in the false calm it gave him. But then he turned his mind toward the clansmrem, and he felt once again the power that drove them forward and gave them fanatical courage.

  Guarding himself from that power, he took away, into his mind, a tiny fragment of it. With that fragment he moved his mind away from the battle lines and into a nearby house, where Rhesa still slept amid the cacophony that surrounded her. For a short time he watched her, watched the contortions in her face and the restlessness in her body. Then, steeling himself against the pity that burned inside him, he slowly and calmly did the one thing in his life he knew he would despise forever.

  What he did, simply, was place a tiny fragment of that fanatic courage inside the sick woman’s mind.

  She bolted upright, and her eyes shot terror. Her face writhed in agony, as her body shook violently and her mouth began to hiss. Then, suddenly, the terror turned to hatred, and in that moment Talwe made his move.

  He let his own mind travel into hers. Hatred seethed all over him. Wave after wave of terror crashed against him, and to his senses came the choking reek of sulfur and of death. As he neared the center, he saw the fragment he had loosed piercing further inward, and he felt the convulsions that tried to combat it. He knew as he watched that the mind was trying to vomit out the reality it represented. If it did, Rhesa would be lost for good.

  He grasped the fragment now, fighting it with all his magical strength. It struggled against him, but it was only a fragment and his mind was whole. At last he controlled it, held it, quieted it. When he knew it was his, he called Rhesa to him.

  She sent against the fragment a bolt of pure magic that Talwe could not begin to resist. Holding it tightly, he felt himself tear free from her mind and fly with the wind across the mountainsides toward its source. It took him over Crethok’s right flank and back into the mountain. There, in a cave, it found the mind it sought.

  A sand-colored mrem sat cross-legged in the cave’s center. His hands shook as he held them out straight, and his face was rigid with the strain of concentration. Talwe saw him in his mind for only a brief second, then released his hold on the fragment. As the fragment touched its source, Talwe opened h
is mouth and screamed the Cry of Death.

  •

  Talwe’s awareness of his surroundings returning, a new sound came to his ears. He heard songs, songs from far away, sung in a language he did not understand. They were from out of the northwest, these voices, from out of the mountains where Crethok’s ambush had started. Shaking his head, which swirled with exhaustion, Talwe looked beyond the battlefield and saw what they were. The voices belonged to a new host of warriors.

  “Arklier!” the cries began. “Arklier!”

  Paralan raced to where Talwe now stood. “It is Arklier,” he said. “The brother of Crethok.” He looked at the darkfur and shook his head. “No highlander will fight against him.”

  “Even you?” Talwe asked carefully.

  “I have to think,” Paralan admitted.

  Talwe looked at him and said, “Do you want to be with him?”

  “No,” said Paralan. “I have committed treason. I will stand with you.”

  “Then you must fight.”

  “We can’t,” came the answer. “We have no strength to fight those we once knew.”

  Nodding his head, Talwe looked to his right. “Not all of you are highlanders, Paralan,” he ordered calmly. “Rally those who will fight, and do what Lord Sleisher orders you to.”

  Paralan stared in disbelief at the order to follow his clan’s enemy. Then he sagged. “The battle is over, Talwe,” he said. “We cannot defeat both Crethok and Arklier. They outnumber us greatly, and we are already weary. Even if we weren’t, Arklier’s name would stop most highlanders from fighting back.”

  “Would mine not convince them otherwise?” Talwe asked pointedly.

  Paralan exhaled. “You have to understand,” he said. “When we left Crethok’s band, he and Arklier were the bitterest of rivals. We don’t know what’s happened, but suddenly they fight together. If we’d known that earlier....”