'It will have to be.' Ilian smiled. She opened the window wide and looked up. The nearest large branch was some ten feet overhead. Ilian took the rope and made a noose at one end, coiling the rope so that it was the same circumference as the noose. Then she began to swing the coil round and round before releasing it suddenly.
The noose settled over a branch, held, and Ilian tightened the knot.
'You'll have to climb onto my back," Ilian told Yisselda, 'curling your legs around my waist and hanging on as hard as you can. Do you think you'll be able to?'
'I must,' said Yisselda simply. She did as she was ordered and then Ilian pulled herself onto the window sill, took a good grip on the rope, turning it round her hand once or twice, and then flung herself out over the rooftops, narrowly missing the spire of one of the old trading halls. Her feet struck another branch and she dug in her heels, straining with all her might to get a belter grip on the branch above her. She was about to slip when Yisselda reached up and pulled herself onto the branch, leaning down to help Ilian after her. They lay panting on the great branch.
Ilian sprang up. 'Follow me,' she said. 'Keep your arms spread for balance. And keep moving."
She began to run along the bole.
And Yisselda, somewhat shakily, followed her.
They were back at the camp by morning and they were jubilant.
Katinka van Bak came out of the shack she had built for herself from old planks and she was delighted to see Ilian. "We feared for you,' she said. 'Even those who profess to hate you so. The others came back with the flame-lances. A good haul.'
'Excellent. And I have more information.'
'Good. Good. You'll want to breakfast - and rest, too, I should think. Who is this?' Katinka van Bak seemed to notice the woman in the white, soiled dress for the first time.
'She is called Yisselda of Brass. She, like you, is not of Garathorm...'
Ilian noticed the look of astonishment which appeared on Katinka's face then. Yisselda? Count Brass's daughter?'
'Aye,' said Yisselda in some delight. 'Though Count Brass is dead - slain at the Battle of Londra.'
'Not so! Not so! He dwells still at Castle Brass! So Hawkmoon was right. You are alive! This is the strangest thing I have yet to experience - but by far the most pleasurable.'
'You have seen Dorian? How is he?'
'Ah -' Katinka van Bak seemed to become evasive. 'He is well. He is well. He has been ill, but now all the portents are that he will recover.'
'I wish it was possible to see him again. He is not in this plane?'
'Unfortunately he could not be.'
'How came you here? In the same manner as myself?’
'Pretty much the same, aye.' Katinka van Bak turned to see that Jhary-a-Conel had emerged from one of the ebony houses still standing. He was rubbing sleep from his eyes and looked barely awake. 'Jhary. This is Yisselda of Brass. Hawkmoon was right.'
'She is alive!' Jhary slapped his thigh, looking with some irony from Ilian to Yisselda and back again. 'Ha! This is the best I've ever known! Oh, dear!' And he burst into laughter which Ilian and Yisselda found inexplicable.
Ilian felt anger rise in her. 'I become bored with your mysteries and your hints, Sir Jhary! I become bored with them!'
'Aye!' Jhary continued to laugh. 'I think it is the best way to respond to it all, madam!'
Book Three
A Leavetaking
1
Sweet Battle,
Triumphant Vengeance
There were nearly a hundred of them now and most of them had flame-lances. They had been hastily trained in the use of the lances by Katinka van Bak and some of the lances were inclined to be faulty, for they were very old, but the weapons gave confidence to all who bore them.
Ilian turned in her saddle to look back at her troops. Each man and woman was mounted, mostly on striding vayna birds. Each hailed the burning banner as she turned. The fiery thing, which burned without consuming the cloth, fluttered over her armoured head. It was their pride. And they were going to Virinthorm.
Beneath the great, green trees of Garathorm they rode: Ilian, Katinka van Bak, Jhary-a-Conel, Yisselda of Brass, Lyfeth of Ghant, Mysenel of Hinn and the rest. All, save Katinka van Bak, were youthful.
It seemed to Ilian that, while her own crimes had not been forgotten by those she led, she and her people were united again. But much would depend on how they fared in the battles which lay ahead.
They rode through the morning and by the afternoon they had come in sight of Virinthorm.
Spies had already reported the departure of Ymryl with his main force. He had left less than a quarter of his men behind to defend Virmthorm, not expecting any kind of full scale attack. Yet still those defenders were some five hundred strong and would have been more than sufficient to defeat Ilian's force, had they not been armed with flame-lances.
Yet even the flame-lances only improved the chances of the Garathormians. It was by no means certain that they would defeat Ymryl's men. This, however, was the only chance they might have to try.
And they sang as they rode. They sang the old songs of their land. Gay songs, full of their love for their rich, arboreal world. They hardly paused as they reached the suburbs of Virinthorm and spread out.
Ymryl’s men had garrisoned themselves close to the centre of the town, near the large house which had once been the residence of Ilian's family, and which had, until lately, become Ymryl's palace.
Ilian regretted that Ymryl himself was not there. She looked forward to taking her vengeance on him, should her schemes be successful.
Now the hundred riders, thinly spread, had dismounted and situated themselves in a circle around the centre of the city. Some lay behind roughly thrown up barricades, others lay on roofs, while still others crouched in doorways. A hundred flame-lances were aimed into the city when Ilian rode out into the broad main avenue and cried:
'Surrender in the name of Queen Ilian!'
And her voice was high and proud.
'Surrender, Ymryl's men! We have returned to claim our city.'
The few who were on the streets turned to look in consternation, hands reaching for weapons. Men in every form of clothing, in all sorts of armour, in a score of different shapes, men with fur all over their bodies, men who were completely hairless, men with four arms or four legs, men with beastlike heads, men with tails or horns or tufted ears, men with hooves instead of feet, men with green, blue, red and black skins, men armed with bizarre weapons, the purpose of which was mysterious, men deformed, men who were dwarves and men who were giants, hermaphrodites, men with wings or with transparent skins, came pouring into the streets and saw Queen Ilian of Garathorm and laughed.
A warrior with an orange beard which came to a point at his belt called out:
'Ilian is dead. As you will be before another minute has passed.'
In reply Ilian raised her flame-lance, touched the jewelled stud, and pierced the mans' forehead with a beam of red light, whereupon a dog-faced soldier threw a disc which howled and which Ilian was barely able to deflect by bringing up the small buckler she had on her right arm. She wheeled her horse around and dashed for cover. Behind her the defenders also sought cover as beams of red light darted at them from all around.
For an hour the fight raged thus, with either side using power weapons from cover, while Katinka-van Bak rode from warrior to warrior, giving instructions to tighten the circle and contain the defenders in as small an area as possible. This they did, not without considerable difficulty, for though the enemy had fewer power weapons, they were more skilled in using them.
Ilian climbed a rooftop to see how the battle went. She had lost about ten of her small band, but Ymryl's men had lost more. She counted at least forty corpses. But the alien soldiers were plainly grouping for a counter-attack. Many had mounted themselves on a variety of beasts, including some captured vayna.
Ilian dropped back down to the ground and sought Katinka van Bak.
'They are planning to charge through, Katinka!'
'Then they must be stopped,' said the warrior woman, firmly.
Ilian got back onto her own vayna. The long-legged bird croaked as Ilian swung it round. It began to stride away to where Jhary-a-Conel had taken up his position in the window of a house looking towards the central square. 'Jhary! They charge!' she called.
And then a packed mass of cavalry came howling along the avenue and it seemed to Ilian for a moment that only she stood against it.
She raised her flame-lance, touched the stud. Ruby light flared, flickered from the hip, cut an erratic swathe across the bodies of the leading riders. In going down, they got in the way of those behind them and the force of the charge was weakened.
But the lance was now all but useless. The light wavered, spread, merely burned the skins of the soldiers as the sun might burn them, and they came on.
Ilian flung down the lance, drew her slender sword, took her long poignard in the hand that also held her reins, and urged the vayna forward. Behind her, in its saddle rest, the burning banner cracked and hissed as she gathered speed.
'For Garathorm!'
And now she knew joy. A black joy. A terrible joy.
'For Pyran and Bradne!'
And her sword sliced through the transparent flesh of a ghostly creature who grinned at her and tried to slash her with steel claws.
'For vengeance!'
And how sweet it was, that vengeance. How satisfying, that blood-letting. So close to death was she, and yet she felt more alive than she had ever felt. This was her destiny - to bear a sword into battle - to fight - to kill.
And as she fought it seemed she did not merely fight this battle but a thousand others. And in each battle she had another name, yet in each battle she felt the same grim elation.
Around her the enemy roared and rattled and it seemed that a score of swords forever sought to slay her, but she laughed at them.
And her laughter was a weapon. It chilled the blood of those she fought. It filled them with a great and unwholesome terror.
'For Fate's soldier!' she heard herself shouting. 'For the Champion Eternal. For the Struggle Without End!' And she knew not the meaning of the words, though she knew she had cried them before and would cry them again, whether she survived this encounter or not.
Now others were joining her. She saw Jhary-a-Conel’s yellow horse rearing and snorting and thrashing out with its hooves, striking down warriors on all sides. The horse seemed possessed of unnatural intelligence. Its actions were no mere flailing, no panicky defence. It fought aggressively, with its master. And it grinned, displaying crooked yellow teeth, cold yellow eyes, while its rider slashed this way and that with his sword, a small smile on his lips.
And there was Katinka van Bak, tough, methodical and cool as she went about the business of slaying. She held a double-bladed battle-axe in one gloved hand, a spiked mace in the other, for she did not consider the situation suitable for the subtler sword-work. She pushed her heavy, stolid horse deep into the enemy and she chopped off limbs and crushed skulls just as surely as a housewife might prepare meat and vegetables for her husband's meal. And Katinka van Bak did not smile. She took her work seriously, doing what had to be done and feeling neither disgust nor relish.
Ilian wendered at the relish she herself felt. Her whole body tingled with pleasure. She should have been weary, but instead she felt fresher than she had ever felt before.
'For Garathorm! For Pyran! For Bradne!' 'For Bradne!' echoed a voice behind her. 'And for Ilian!' It was Lyfeth of Ghant, wielding her sword with a mixture of delicacy and ferocity which came close to matching Ilian's own. And nearby was Yisselda of Brass, proving herself an experienced warrior, using the spike on her shield boss almost as effectively as she used her sword.
'What women we are!' cried Ilian. 'What fighters!' She saw how disconcerted the enemy warriors were to discover the number of women who had come against them. There were few worlds, it seemed, where women fought like men. It had never been so on Garathorm, before the coming of Katinka van Bak.
Ilian saw Mysenal of Hinn grin briefly at her, his eyes shining as he rode past her towards a cluster of Ymryl's warriors whose retreat had been cut off by three or four flame-lance beams darting from the tops of nearby houses.
Two or three buildings had been ignited by the power weapons and smoke was beginning to curl through the streets. For a moment Ilian was half-blinded and found herself coughing as the acrid stuff entered her throat. Then she was through the cloud and joining Mysenal in his attack on the enemy.
Though she now bled from a dozen minor cuts and grazes, Ilian was tireless. She unhorsed one rider with a blow of her buckler and in the same movement swept her sword round to take a green-furred dwarf through the roof of his gaping mouth so that the point ran deep into his brain. As the dwarf fell, Ilian twisted the sword from his corpse in time to parry an axe which had been thrown at her by a warrior in purple armour whose pointed steel teeth clashed as he tried to draw back his arm to thrust at her with the lance he held in his other hand. Ilian leaned out in her saddle and sliced the hand from the wrist so that fist and spear dropped to the ground. The stump, spouting blood, continued the motion of casting the spear and only then did the warrior with the steel teeth realise what had happened to him and he moaned. But Ilian was riding past him, to where one of her girl warriors stood over the corpse of her dead vayna desperately trying to ward off the blows of three men with reptilian skins (but who were otherwise dressed dissimilarly) who were determined to slay her. Ilian clove the skull of one reptile man, smashed another unconscious so that he fell backward across his horse's rump, and pierced the heart of the last, clearing a way for the girl who darted her a quick smile of gratitude before picking up her flame-lance and running for an open doorway.
And then Ilian was in the square with a score of her warriors at her back and she called out jubilantly:
'We are through!'
Men on foot came running from every house then, those who had not taken part in the cavalry charge, and soon Ilian was surrounded again.
And soon Ilian was laughing again, as life after life was extinguished by her sparkling sword.
The sun was setting.
Ilian cried to her warriors. 'Hasten now! Let us finish this before the night falls and makes our work more difficult.'
The remnants of the enemy cavalry had been driven back into the square. The remnants of the infantry were falling back towards the great house, the house Ymryl had called his 'palace' and where Ilian had been born. It was also the house where she had shuddered, screamed and called out the hiding place of her brother.
For a moment Ilian's joy was replaced by a feeling of black despair, and she paused. The sounds of the battle seemed to fade. The whole scene became remote. And she remembered the face of Ymryl, almost boyish in seriousness, leaning forward and saying to her: 'Where is he? Where is Bradne?'
And she had told him.
Ilian shuddered. She lowered her sword, oblivious to the danger which still threatened her from all sides. Five warped creatures, their bodies and faces covered in huge warts, flung themselves upwards at her, hands clutching. She felt sharp nails dig through the links of her mail. She looked at them absently.
'Bradne ...' she murmured.
'Are you wounded, girl!' Katinka van Bak appeared, and an axe bit into a skull, a mace crunched into a shoulder. The warted ones squealed. 'Are you dazed?'
Ilian forced herself from the trance, using her own sword to hack down a wart-covered body. 'Only for a moment,' she said.
'There's about a hundred left!' Katinka van Bak said. 'They've barricaded themselves in your father's mansion. I doubt if we'll have winkled them out before nightfall.'
'Then we must fire the building,' said Ilian coldly. ‘We must burn them.'
Katinka frowned. 'I like not that. Even these should have the opportunity to surrender...'
'Burn them and burn
the building. Burn it!' Ilian wheeled her vayna about to look around the square. It was piled with corpses. About fifty of her own folk still remained alive. 'It will save more fighting, will it not, Katinka van Bak?'
'It will, but...'
'And spare the lives of some of our folk who still survive?'
'Aye ...' Katinka tried to meet Ilian's eyes, but Ilian turned her face away. 'Aye. But what of the building itself. Your ancestors have dwelled in it for generations. It is the finest building in all Virinthorm. There's scarcely a finer in the whole of Garathorm. The woods of its construction are rare. Many of the varieties of tree which went to build it are now extinct...'
'Let it burn. I could not live there again.'
Katinka sighed. 'I will give the order, though it's not to my liking. Cannot I offer our enemies a chance to surrender to us?'
'They gave us no such chance.'
'But we are not them. Morally...'
'I'll hear nothing of morality for the moment, thank you.'
Katinka van Bak rode to do Queen Ilian's bidding.
2
An Impossible Death
They were grim-faced, those men and women, as they stood with their hands resting on their weapons, their faces stained red by the firelight, and watched Pyran's mansion burning in the blackness of the night, smelled the smell which came from the pyre, listened to the thin, horrible sounds that still issued through the thick, black smoke from time to time.
'It is just,' said Ilian of Garathorm.
'But there are other forms of justice," said Katinka van Bak in a quiet voice. 'You cannot burn away the guilt you feel, Ilian.'
'Can I not, madam?' Ilian laughed harshly. 'Yet how do you explain the satisfaction I feel?'
'I am not used to this,' said Katinka van Bak. She spoke for Ilian's ears alone; she spoke reluctantly. 'I've witnessed such acts of vengeance before, yet I like not the sense of unease I feel now. You have become cruel, Ilian.'
'It is ever the fate of the Champion,' said another voice. It was Jhary's. 'Ever. Do not fret, Katinka van Bak. The Champion must always seek to rid himself - or herself - of a certain ambiguous burden. And one of the means the Champion employs is deliberate cruelty - actions which go against the dictates of the Champion's conscience. Ilian thinks she bears only the guilt of her brother's betrayal. It is not so. It is a guilt which you and I, Katinka van Bak, could never experience. And we should thank all our gods for that!'
The Champion of Garathorm Page 10