by Grace Ingram
He halted in the doorway to look about him, straining to listen, and then flitted through moonlight to the forge. He leaned the cleaver handily against the wall and reached to the rafters in the darkest corner, pawing into the sooty thatch for Kenric’s sword. He had just laid hold on its woollen wrappings when he heard movement and low voices. He stood motionless, his heart thumping, and reminded himself that there was no reason for anyone to enter here. But feet were approaching, brisk and purposeful, and round the corner of the forge came a tall shape helmed and mailed. Discovery was inevitable; Guy’s shirt caught the light. He dropped the bundled sword and swooped for the cleaver. The man checked, black and featureless with the moon behind him, and snatched at his own hilt. The blade glinted.
‘Who—out of there! ’ came Conan’s voice. He peered over his levelled blade and Guy swung back the cleaver. ‘Guy!’ He thrust the sword back into its scabbard and sprang to catch him in a fierce hug. ‘Guy, lad! ’
The cleaver clattered down. There was no doubting his delight, and Guy’s arms went round him in spontaneous response. He received a disagreeable impression that he embraced a mailed skeleton; under the hauberk there seemed nothing but bones. Conan loosed him and caught him by the arms, but Guy pulled back to tear the wrappings from his sword and clasp the belt about his waist.
‘You’re loose! I came for tools to free you, but you’ve freed yourself. Good lad!’ He reached for his hilt. ‘Come—what’s that you have? A sword?’
Guy drew it, and the blade glittered silver. ‘God’s Blood, how’d you come by that?’
‘My father’s gift—my true father.’
‘Your girl’s in the keep.’ He whistled softly, and three shadows detached themselves from building shadows and became armed men. Conan beckoned, and led at a run, jerking out explanations. ‘First chance I’ve had—thought it would never come—my own men on guard. The devil’s run mad—not a dozen men left in the hold—’
They took the keep steps three at a time. A taper flickered as the guardroom door flung back. Three men started up from pallets. Conan plunged past their startled faces for the stairs, and before they could disentangle themselves from their blankets or lay hands on weapons his routiers were on them, stabbing expertly. Guy heard one strangled cry as he dived past the curtain.
Round and down into blackness; one of the men scrambling after had caught up the taper, which sent their shadows reeling wildly over the grey stone curving at their right hands. At the bottom they fell against a heavy door bound and studded with wrought iron, the door of the undercroft.
‘Light here!’ Conan ordered, and the tallow dip leaned over them, dripping hot fat on his hands as he sorted over a bunch of keys.
‘This one.’ Guy knew it from his previous experience among the stores. ‘And here!’ From a ledge by the door he took down a torch and held it to the taper, and as it flared thrust it into the second trooper’s hand. The third had remained above to secure the stairhead.
The door groaned open, and they trod into odorous darkness, the light wavering on stacked barrels and sacks, wool-bales and cornbins. The air was dry and cool. Guy bore left, threading between obstacles to the cells in the corner, the torchbearer extending the flare to shine over his shoulder. They stopped before another door. This was bolted, top and bottom, with a small barred slot for surveillance. ‘Helvie!’ he called, as he wrenched back the upper bolt, and heard an incredulous cry. ‘Helvie, it’s Guy!’ He heaved the door back on stinking blackness, and the torchlight touched her face. ‘Helvie!’
She hurled herself into his arms, her own clutching fast, dry sobs shaking her. Her head burrowed into his shoulder, and she gasped his name over and over, clinging as though she would become part of him. He gripped her to him, kissed her hair and ear, and swung her away from the black den of her prison.
‘Steady, steady, my heart—I have you now, Helvie—’
‘Be quick!’ Conan interrupted. ‘You’ve a lifetime to embrace if we survive, but no time to waste now. Move!’ He sank talons in Guy’s shoulder that jerked him to reality.
‘Helvie, he’s right. Come!’
‘Yes, yes—’ She loosed him, gulped a great breath, and lifted her white face and wide eyes to the torchlight. He caught her arm and hurried her to the stair. ‘Guy, the baby—my little brother—’
‘I guessed it—the wet-nurse’s brat for a changeling.’
‘That devil-the witches—they’ll sacrifice him tonight to the Devil—’
‘May Eve!’ It broke from him like an oath, and he hauled her after him up the stair with barely time to catch her skirts from under her feet. The door thudded, the trooper followed with the torch, and the third man stood aside for them at the stairhead with his sword swinging ready. Conan’s voice rasped.
‘Out and saddle up! A horse for the lady!’
Helvie passed the dead men with scarcely a glance as they sped across the guardroom. They tumbled down the moonlit stair and ran to the gate, the torchbearer at their heels, while the other two routiers slanted across the bailey to the stables. The porter popped his head out of his lodge. His eyes and mouth gaped wide, but before he could yell the torchbearer thrust him through the throat. The man wrenched back his spear, set the torch in the iron holder on the gatehouse wall and glanced interrogatively at his captain. Conan nodded. He plunged into the guardroom. Guy heard a muffled cry, a crash as a bench went over and a brief scrambling.
‘The sergeant was not my man,’ Conan explained.
Guy shuddered a little, and Helvie made a small sound of protest, pressing close to his side. He set his left arm about her and held her fast.
‘Lady, my task this night is to bring Guy and you out of Warby with your lives,’ Conan told her. He stood sword in hand against the wall, watching the bailey. Shadows emerged from the guardroom and stooped to the windlass. The portcullis began to grind up, the drawbridge down. ‘The man on the roof is not mine, nor the two on the walls. Forgive me, Guy, for leaving you so long in that foul den. I was watched nearly as closely as you. I had to wait. You understood when I gave you the word? One chance only. It had to be sure.’
‘You don’t imagine I blame you?’
‘You knew I’d never abandon you, lad.’ He dropped his left hand on Guy’s shoulder. ‘All I owe you can never be paid. I knew you’d remember.’
‘Of course I knew it,’ Guy lied. In the face of that fierce confidence he could never admit to the truth.
The last man emerged from the guardroom and stood by the portcullis release. Three more trotted across the bailey leading horses enough for the company. Conan signalled impatiently. A voice shouted a question from the wall-walk, but by then they were swinging into their saddles. Guy linked his hands to toss Helvie up, and they rode two by two out of the gate and over the drawbridge. The voice yelled alarm, and feet thudded along the walk. As they urged their horses into a run down the track a screech followed, and then the horn bellowing to rouse all Warby.
‘They can blow their teeth out,’ said Conan contemptuously. ‘They are barely enough to man the gate.’ He leaned to address Helvie across Guy. ‘Lord Reynald’s taken your father’s heir, lady?’
‘Yes—yes.’ Speech suddenly tumbled from her. ‘I was riding home from visiting Thorgastone. I saw that wench making for the waste, and I knew—I can’t tell how—the way she was carrying the baby perhaps. I never trusted her. I knew it wasn’t hers but my brother, it was her changeling in his cradle. So I sent my groom to tell my father, and rode after her—I never thought past that. But Lord Reynald and his men were waiting to meet her, and I rode into their arms.’ She shuddered violently. ‘They’ll kill him, Guy. They’ll kill him, offer baby Hervey to the Devil in sacrifice. Guy, Guy, you’ll stop them, you’ll save him?’
‘If I can.’
‘A changeling? How’s that to profit Warby?’ exclaimed Conan.
‘Wulfrune,’ Guy pronounced, all the monstrous pattern suddenly laid clear before him. ‘She told me once, when I
enraged her, that on the day when King Edward was alive and dead, her grandsire’s father was lord of all the lands between Trevaine and Etherby. She has set her will and her witchcraft to bring one of her blood to rule again.’
‘Wulfrune—that foul crone? Then that nurse-wench must be the miller’s daughter he threw out of doors!’
‘So that she could be brought to Trevaine. She has worked for this over forty years. This is the third—no, the fourth try.’
‘How d’you reckon—the fourth?’
‘If you are to substitute a changeling for the true-born heir, you must meet three conditions,’ Guy said soberly over the trampling of hooves, the creak and jingle of harness. ‘The midwife must be party to the plan, the mother must die—’ He checked as they shattered the ford to moonlit spray—‘and the children must be of the same sex.’
‘Yes, yes, but what—’
‘This is the first time all three have been met?’ Helvie was the quicker to take his meaning.
‘I think she first conceived the plan when she was chosen to suckle Lord Reynald. Midwives are often witches; they know the charms and the simples, and Wulfrune commands them. So his mother died, but Wulfrune’s child was a girl. Her ambition possessed her the stronger for being thwarted; she waited for another chance and meantime corrupted her nurseling. Rohese is seventeen—’
‘My father’s first child would have been that age!’
‘But was stillborn, and the mother lived witless. Then her eldest granddaughter bore a son at the same time Lady Mabel bore Roger, but she cheated them—she told me this herself—by contriving to remain at Hernforth for his birth. This time it’s the miller’s younger daughter provides the changeling. Brought into your household, you told me, by the midwife.’
‘Mother of God, so Alice brought in her own death!’
‘And to make doubly sure Rohese is pregnant too, but that’s been mis-timed.’
‘But how can she hope to trick—there’s my father, and Alice’s women—’
‘Which of them knows one baby from the other?’
‘Lord Henry’s not intended to learn,’ Conan said. ‘There’s an ambush laid on Thorgastone Waste for him this night, when he rides to rescue his girl and the brat. I arranged it myself. Lord Reynald bade me leave my men to guard Warby and command his knaves, telling off one of them to cut my throat should I fail him. Then he left for his devil’s celebration, I deployed his fellows on either side of the way, told each party I’d wait with the other, did a little throat-cutting on my own account and slipped away to get you out of the kitchen.’
‘Where’s your ambush?’
‘Just beneath the Devil’s Ring, where the way’s roughest and the rocks and thickets crowd on both sides.’
‘That’s—that’s two miles more!’ Helvie cried. ‘My father—and the baby—oh Mary Mother of God—’
She urged her horse forward, almost into the troopers riding ahead, and he balked, half-reared, whinnied and sidled. Guy reached to take her reins.
‘What good will it do to lame your horse? You can’t gallop on this track,’ Conan rasped.
‘My father—my little brother—’
‘You’ll not help them by breaking your neck.’
She caught her breath in a gulping sob. ‘Guy—’
‘We are in God’s hands,’ he said steadily. ‘May He grant that we are in time.’ He thought of the tiny swaddled body he had seen brandished as a trophy, and of the he-goat he had seen sacrificed, and had to restrain himself from pressing his own mount; they were already riding much faster than was safe at night on so vile a track.
‘You intend to save them?’ Conan enquired.
‘What else can I do?’
‘Where you go I follow.’
There had been muttering among the routiers at their backs. Suddenly the stocky sergeant spoke out. ‘Captain Conan!’
‘Yes?’
‘Your pardon, Captain, but are you aiming to fight against m’lord o’ Warby?’
‘I am. Have you any objection, Bertin?’
‘Indeed and isn’t he paying us?’
‘Since he has not paid us a penny since Christmas I reckon we are free to quit his service. Do you wish to continue in it?’
‘Me, Captain? Brings me up in gooseflesh to look at him, nor I don’t hold with witches and sacrificing babies. But who’s paying us?’
‘This once, Bertin, we fight without pay, unless you count the benefit to your damned soul.’
‘Captain Conan,’ Bertin gasped, insubordinate with alarm, ‘are you turning religious?’
For the first time since Guy had known him, Conan laughed with genuine mirth. ‘After this foray I’ll take the cowl,’ he declared, and the sergeant guffawed with relief and said something in Breton that brought laughter from the rest of the troop. They fell back a little, chuckling as they embroidered the jest.
‘But in God’s Name, why?’ Guy burst out. ‘It’s against all your advantage, and Trevaine is nothing to you.’
‘You are. I’m your man. I was damned and in Hell, and you reached your hand to me. And didn’t I see you throw away all advantage, almost your life, for an old done man doomed whatever you did? It came to me that if you could save your soul at such cost, I too could crawl out of Hell at your heels.’
Guy was overwhelmed beyond answering. It was for a priest to save souls, not a sinner as fallible as himself. He crossed himself. ‘In nomine Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti,’ he murmured. ‘May God’s Grace uphold us this night against the Devil’s power.’
Helvie was repeating prayers under her breath. Guy could discern glistening streaks of moonlight down her cheeks. They were mounting the ridge, what track there was twisting between ragged boulders and bloom-spangled thickets. Through the aroma of sweating horseflesh and the stink of his own foul clothing the fragrance of budding hawthorn and flowering gorse reached Guy’s nostrils, and he breathed deeply of sweetness. It was an outrage against all God’s world that this May Eve was the witches’ night, that there was a changeling in Trevaine’s cradle, Lord Henry was riding into an ambush, that Lady Alice had died and her heir was to be offered to the Devil to accomplish the evil Wulfrune had plotted for forty years and more. Only he and Helvie, Conan and his five routiers stood between her and that achievement.
From a lesser ridge they looked over the waste, grey dappled with darkness under the soaring moon, near full. Rock faces glimmered ghostlike, angled against their own black shadows, the crouching bushes were curdled with white bloom, and thin clouds drifted across the stars. One of the leading routiers exclaimed and lifted an arm. On the further ridge dark blocks nicked the skyline, and a thread of white smoke, flushed red at its base, climbed thickening and coiling into the night.
Helvie cried out. ‘We’re too late! Guy, Guy—’
‘Take heart!’ he said quickly, urging his horse down the slope. ‘That’s new-lighted!’
Haste overcame reason. Conan gave an order, the two men in the lead crowded aside, and he, Guy and Helvie headed the line, lifting into a run. Threading between obstacles, slashed by branches, holding their horses on a strong rein they went, and up the further slope to the ridge without concealment. The smoke towered, flame reflecting on its lower coils and sparks dancing away, and Helvie was gasping prayers. Fury mounted in Guy like the mounting blaze, a driving urgency to reach the Devil’s Ring before the offering was accomplished.
‘Pull out of the line before we reach the ambush,’ he ordered Helvie, ‘and get to your father as soon as may be!’ Conan checked on the ridge to point. A little below them something moved, a face’s pallor with the glint of a helmet atop turned in their direction. A spear lifted in salute. And pricking up the slope from Thorgastone came a moving blackness of horses and men, twinkling with metal under the moon.
‘Look at the fools, riding into ambush without even a scout ahead! God’s Blood, you could fit Lord Henry’s wits into a nutshell without extracting the nut!’
Guy paused
only to make out the nearest of the Warby men, crouching behind bushes and rocks, and then his fury broke. Kenric’s sword came sweetly into his hand with a chime of steel. He tightened his knees, rammed spurless heels into his mount’s barrel, and hurtled down the path. A wild yell pealed from his throat. Conan echoed it, and the routiers crashed bellowing behind.
The foremost man, already on his feet to welcome friends, yowled dismay at betrayal. Concealment disgorged screeching, scrambling figures. Panicked by treachery, they revealed themselves when their safest course was to lie hidden. They impeded Guy’s way to the Devil’s Ring. He thundered upon them, pale hair and face and shirt taking the moonlight and sword swinging low, leaping to the work it had not known through all the years of disuse. It jarred on bone, wrenched free; a yelling face fell away, and blood spattered warmly. More faces were about him, mailed shapes scurrying for cover or standing desperately. An arrow sang past his ear, a spear tore his shirt, his horse squealed at a grazing blow, but he burst through the ambush, and as Lord Reynald’s men rallied he was beyond them, leaving a savage worry locked behind him. He heard distant yells from the approaching force as he set his face for the stone circle and the fire and the witches’ rite.
The horse stumbled and crashed headlong. Catapulted over his head, Guy plunged into gorse, rolled, wrenched clear without heeding the spines, and ran uphill, his sword still balanced in his grip. The fire was flaring. He heard voices raised in incantation, Wulfrune’s cracked screech, and flung himself at the barrier of bushes. Blind chance or God’s own guidance brought him to the break, and before him a stone loomed black against the blaze. He dodged round it, his heart slamming and his breath jerking, and checked an instant to see where he stood.
The witches were just ringing the fire and the altar-stone, the last few shuffling into position; twice as many, Guy estimated, as he had seen on the night of All Hallows. They fell utterly silent. The din of joined battle came up the hill, the crashing of someone below fighting through the thickets, and above it the baby’s wailing. There was a different quality about the hush tonight, a tenseness of horror and dread and revulsion. An infant was not a he-goat.