by Brian Daley
Sandur’s knees clenched hard to the barrel of his horse. The powerful Bordhall dug in as she’d been trained, transmitting force to her rider. The lizard shrilled, its great weight conveyed to its rider via its high-cantled saddle. Weapons trembled against one another, but the Outrider’s renowned strength saw him through. Though both men were in danger of being unhorsed it was the barbarian who broke contact first, reining his mount away.
Sandur snagged the lance head with a twist of his blade; with the threat of the broadsword before him, the barbarian let go of the weapon to draw a wavy-bladed sword from his saddle scabbard. He and Sandur collided again, their blades striking sparks. The lizard missed a bite at Bordhall; her hooves battered at its plated head.
Crassmor had perforce reined up at his brother’s first impact so as not to slam into Bordhall’s croup. That saved his life. The third enemy, coming at him obliquely, missed with his lance, surprised by the pause. The savage drew back to thrust. By that time Crassmor had thrown up his shield, taking the stroke in safety. Fear clamored in him; he thought, Would that I had time to entertain a full-blown panic!
The lizard’s forked tongue and its master’s lance made a weird symmetry. The man wore a gorget of steel lozenges and a helm adorned with long, insectile antennae. His plumed lance and his beast’s blue and red hide filled Crassmor’s eye for an instant. Then training took over. Crassmor got in at close quarters, ending the barbarian’s advantage of lance length. The reptile’s rank scent was thick in his nostrils. He managed to grab the lance shaft with his gauntleted shield hand. The lizard rider had no choice but to release the weapon, barely eluding Shhing’s edge. Then the barbarian pulled forth a sicklelike shortsword and swung.
Crassmor turned the sickle’s first blow handily with his shield, launching a counter slash. Shhing’s greater weight carried the curved blade back, though that gave Crassmor no great confidence. He had an unshakable faith in misfortune.
His caution was justified. With his left hand, the lizard rider snatched a steel dart from the bandolier of them hanging from the big, gem-set horn of his saddle. He tossed the twin-lined dart underhand, intending to take the other in the throat as he leaned forward for a sword stroke. Crassmor’s extreme wariness had him alert; he saw the palmed dart and ducked aside to hear it zip past his neck. On his recovery he turned Shhing edge on. The heavy, cup-hilted cavalry rapier caught the barbarian at the crook of his elbow, just above a vambrace of stiffened lizard hide and bronze bossing and below the thick armlet banding his bicep.
The barbarian screamed as his blood flowed. He swung madly at his foe to keep Crassmor from following up on the hit. The lizard backed away in response to its master’s spurrings, hissing its anger, making Crassmor miss his next cut. Kort went after the lizard once more at Crassmor’s urging. Crassmor parried the barbarian’s wild swing, then went for the opening in his guard.
Only the lizard rider’s frantic effort to throw himself aside saved him. Shhing sliced through more plumage and accouterment than flesh. The lizard rider lost his seat; the reptilian mount paused for a moment, uncertain what its master wanted of it. Crassmor leaned, as much from nervousness as from enthusiasm, with a vigorous thrust. He only managed to prick the barbarian lightly as the man tumbled from his beast
Sandur rained blow after blow on the other enemy, parrying the blows that came in answer. Crassmor hewed at the man he’d just unhorsed. The two riderless reptiles were racing off across the sand, injured, not heeding the control whistle being piped by the man on foot. That barbarian evaded a final swing by Crassmor to run off after his beast. Crassmor turned to help his brother.
Just then Sandur penetrated the last enemy’s guard to strike home. The man dropped his weapon, clutching at the wound in his chest. Dark blood coursed between his fingers and down his harness of red leather and hammered brass. The scaly mount bolted away, aware that its rider no longer directed it. The barbarian slid from his saddle to land in an unmoving heap.
The dust settled as Crassmor watched one lizard rider running off after his mount. The second lay stunned, the third dead or dying. Sandur’s face was set as he clashed sword back into scabbard. Crassmor slowly emulated him. The younger brother was about to essay some remark when there came from a distance the war whoops of the larger party, still in pursuit. The sand squall was clearing; the lizard riders had drawn frighteningly close.
“Ride for your life!” Sandur called. They raced off side by side, coaxing last bursts of energy from Bordhall and Kort. Crassmor, bent low over Kort’s neck, risked a look backward under his armpit. The war party was gaining; the freshness of its lizards outbalanced the horses’ natural advantage of speed.
The older brother led the way into a broken area of chasms and ravines. Crassmor wanted to protest, alarmed at the possibility of the barbarians’ trapping them with their backs to some wall or cliff. He held his tongue, though, trusting in his brother. The sounds of pursuit reached them even over the drumming of hooves, their own panting, and that of their horses. Sandur yelled something that Crassmor couldn’t catch, something that seemed to hold a note of increased alarm.
Sandur veered suddenly; Crassmor kept up close behind. The Outrider reined in hard and his brother did the same, Bordhall and Kort skidding to a stop with hooves chopping and plowing the sandy soil at the very brink of a chasm.
There was no seeing the bottom of it in the reduced light; it was umber dusk down there. The rim stretched away right and left as far as they could see. The far side was better than five paces away, Crassmor saw, though it was somewhat lower than the one on which they’d stopped. They’d come to the narrowest point in the chasm; Crassmor decided that Sandur must have spotted it from the high ground back at the dead men’s laager. Then Crassmor realized his brother’s plan with abrupt dread.
“Names of assorted gods’ vitals!” Crassmor screamed at his brother. “’Rider, even Kort and Bordhall can’t—we’ll be killed if we try this jump!”
“And nothing less than that if we don’t,” Sandur pointed out calmly. “Did you not hear the battle pipes? That’s him back there, their Warlord himself. We won’t elude him any other way; those lizards aren’t much as jumpers.”
“And our horses hold no great promise as birds!” Crassmor spat.
Sandur was peering back at the rapidly growing figures of the war party, wearing an expression of doubt. Crassmor sensed in his brother a misgiving he’d never thought to see there, one raised by the Warlord. It shocked the younger brother; he would have sworn that Sandur feared no man alive, not even Ironwicca the King.
Sandur reached out to seize his brother’s arm with a grip that hurt. “No time for quibbling! We must!” His tone softened. “Trust me.”
Crassmor assented to that, adding ruefully, “Here’s what errantry gains me!”
Sandur was turning his horse with a reckless laugh. “Pray it’s all you get!” Then he was heading back toward the lizard riders, who, not far off, had broken into a ragged charge. Crassmor followed, seeing that Kort and Bordhall would need a long start for the jump.
It was terrifying in every degree to charge straight at the oncoming barbarians, watching the distance close as panic mounted. Sandur reined in as dual-tined darts began ranging on them. The lizard riders could be seen blowing their intricate, silvery control whistles.
The Tarrant brothers brought their mounts around and galloped back the way they’d just come as darts fell all around them. They could hear the mad trills of the war party; yowls of triumph signaled the lizard riders’ certainty that they were about to take their prey. Crassmor and Sandur roweled their horses: Bordhall and Kort, true to their bloodlines and training, surged forward with all their speed and power.
The chasm came up all at once. Bordhall carried Sandur into the air. Crassmor had to force himself not to hesitate or draw rein at the last instant, but he’d taken the Outrider as his exemplar. Kort used the muscles of his great neck and shoulders to aid in the jump, as those of his back and loin
s gathered. Crassmor, up in his stirrups, seconded the horse’s extension of neck with his own arms and chest. Kort bore him after his brother, and they were over empty space.
Bordhall landed fairly well; she’d done less carrying than Kort on this sally into the Beyonds. Kort’s back, convex when he’d made the jump, now became concave under Crassmor. The stallion’s forequarters absorbed the first shock of landing; he barely made the opposite edge. Kort teetered for a moment, whinnying, eyes rolling in fear, rear hooves digging for purchase, sending bits of gravel and soft sand spilling into the abyss. More darts fell around Crassmor. The second or two during which his horse flailed on the edge of eternity seemed a century. Crassmor dared not return to his saddle; he crouched in his stirrups, feeling a peculiar emptiness in his middle.
Then hooves found good purchase; Kort thrust himself onto solid footing. Several more darts dug into the ground where he’d been. Crassmor cantered to the right, where the chasm widened sharply, holding his shield aloft. The lizard riders, when they reached the brink of the chasm, waved weapons and cursed at the brothers; none cared to attempt the crossing on their bulky, truculent animals. The pursuers set off to parallel their quarry, who now followed the chasm’s rim at a prudent remove. The barbarians continued blowing their control whistles, keeping their beasts in bloodthirsty arousal. The range being long for their darts, the barbarians’ fire gradually stopped, as they tired of losing their missiles to the chasm.
A burring of battle pipes made the horsemen pause. On the opposite rim, the barbarians drew aside in haste, making way for their Warlord. It was the first time Crassmor had seen the man. He then understood Sandur’s worry and wariness.
The Warlord was astride a crimson and black lizard of unusual size, its hide inset with flashing sequins and precious stones, its saddle horn carved from a single piece of agate in the form of a serpent reared to strike. He wore a bib of ruby pendants, a headband of twisted gold, and a corselet of silver lamés and green lizard skin. He towered above his men, but was thickset for all of that, with a scarred, broken-nosed face and brows that were a single black curve. What parts of him were uncovered by oddments of armor, harness, ornaments, and trappings were thick with muscle. His hair was dark but streaked with gray, bound with clips of bone and shell. He carried a lance longer than those of the men around him, handling it as if its weight meant nothing.
It was the look on his face, a fury that blasted across the gap at Sandur, like a physical force, that brought home with greatest impact the sheer danger of the man. His words, when they came, seemed to rattle the very air. Yes; an enemy to raise misgivings even in the Outrider.
“You! Sandur! Traitor!” The Warlord’s lance shook in his hand; its war streamers and pennons snapped and swayed. “This is no escape, it is reprieve! Do you hear me?”
Sandur sat his horse as a statue might. “I hear you, Ravager.”
“Yes, Ravager! It is Ravager! Bringer of slaughter! Emptier of Lodges! I am the Blight Who Ends Life!”
Crassmor shivered at the anger in that voice, believing all that the Warlord said. “Look for no safety in your Singularity,” Ravager went on. “Word has come to me; one of my hordes has already thrown down your best fighters, the flower of your armies!”
The Warlord spat in the sand and laughed harshly, without joy; the men around him muttered their malign satisfaction with that. The Warlord’s riding lizard shifted its weight and flickered forth its forked red tongue, still stirred for killing by the control whistles, looking about it for a victim. Ravager said, “The broken-cross soldiers are all dead now. I still have the Horde of D’nith and the Horde of Rong, the Militia of Kek and the Corps of Booth the Mighty, the Five Armies of Chula and all the others who ride to my command! Your lords of the Singularity will be under my heels in days, you twice traitor!”
Sandur’s face tensed when he heard the accusation again. Ravager’s mount stirred; the Warlord quieted it with an angry jab of his prick spurs. Such was his strength that the beast squealed in pain and then became still.
“Come back and fight me!” Ravager challenged. Sandur only stared at him.
Crassmor wondered what was going through his brother’s mind; no one had ever used that word on the heir of House Tarrant. “My, such odium,” Crassmor murmured, but Sandur gave no sign of having heard.
The Bringer of Slaughter wasn’t through. “You are so eager to protect your home, coward? Come, strike down Ravager, and your Singularity is safe! Well? Liar! Coward! Come back and fight!”
The Warlord took from the arming belt at his middle a small rod, whittled from some dun-colored wood, intricate and inset in a manner that Crassmor couldn’t quite make out, banded with beaded cord. His eyes held Sandur’s like a hawk’s.
“Here: my medicine wand, safe passage for you! Accept it and no hand can be raised against you but mine.” He held it high, where his men could see it too. “Come, craven; ply swords with me, for your own life and your homeland’s!”
All the lines of Sandur’s face were pulled taut; his hand was now at the hilt of the cut-and-thrust broadsword. His lips began to shape a reply; his chest swelled to hurl it. That it would be acceptance, Crassmor doubted not at all.
“’Rider!” he barked, a sharper tone than he’d ever used with Sandur in his life. “You’re on the King’s commission; you are Cup Bearer, the Outrider, Knight of the Order of the Circle of Onn. You have your report to make!”
Sandur’s gaze shifted to his brother, then back across the chasm. The Warlord still held up the medicine wand, waiting, but everyone there sensed that a moment had passed. Sandur’s duty was as clear as Crassmor had said; it included nothing of personal duels. The Outrider gave a grudging nod, but his face was flushed with unutterable anger. He tugged irresolutely at Bordhall’s reins.
Now that the brothers had made it this far, they stood every chance of returning to the Singularity safely. They rode off slowly, sparing their horses. The lizard riders called jeering insults and crowed laughter. Ravager’s barbs followed them for a long time. Sandur rode with shoulders slumped, as if in a downpour.
“Pay no mind,” Crassmor encouraged, trying to sound lighthearted. “You did what you were sent to do. Sandur, at least we’re alive; give over.”
“Escaping with our lives is not the same as success,” the other said, so quietly that it could barely be heard.
“Well, brother, neither is getting killed,” Crassmor reasoned.
Chapter 3
IN THE CHARMED REALM
The Beyonds, Crassmor and the Outrider discovered as they made their way homeward, now pressed their instability in close upon the Singularity, a depressing omen.
A fixed sphere amid the fluxes and flows of the infinite Realities, the Singularity was buffered from them by the indefinite zone of mutability and access, the Beyonds. In the Beyonds, people and other things passed into and out of the Realities. If the opening were of the right sort, whole regions along with their populations might come into existence in the Beyonds, or leave them.
Sometimes those who traveled between Realities found their way home again; sometimes they perished, or became lost and strayed into a Reality not their own. Sometimes they arrived at the Singularity or simply found themselves a place, for a long stay or a short one, in the Beyonds.
Those not born in the Singularity who wished to leave it had merely to venture out once more. If they again survived the Beyonds, they were likely to find their way, eventually, into some other Reality. It was seldom a simple matter, though, to reach a chosen destination. It was a consistent phenomenon, on the other hand, that those native to the Singularity often encountered difficulties in seeking to leave it for good. Events had a habit of bringing them back in curiously ineluctable fashion.
There were areas of relative stability in the Beyonds, particularly those close to that intangible boundary de-marking the Singularity. But now, with the coming of Ravager and his hordes and their powerful influence in opening a way from their Reality
to the Beyonds, things had shifted. The huge amounts of human quanta released by the barbarians had altered formerly stable areas. The wilderness which had its origins in the lizard riders’ home Reality had extended itself to the very borders of the Charmed Realm. It had simply replaced what had been there before, provinces and inhabitants that had been virtually a part of the Singularity.
Crassmor, riding, considered the great lake-canal system of Gaftower, which had now departed the Beyonds. In the same manner the brooding forest of Chevord, a stretch of the Appian Way, the fertile plains of Jatahr, and the sudden crags of Webtissia had yielded up their places. It was an event with only a handful of precedents in the recorded history of the Home Plane.
To their surprise, the brothers encountered none of the Royal Borderers when they crossed into the Singularity. They’d expected to see at least some of Ironwicca’s hand-picked watchmen keeping roving surveillance. It happened that the brothers re-entered the Charmed Realm at a point touching on their vast ancestral lands, those of House Tarrant. That had them more worried than ever, this was the closest point, along the Singularity’s circumference, to Dreambourn, putting Ravager and his warriors within striking distance of both the capital and their home.
The two entered an area of quiet woodland and virgin timber where they’d both roamed and hunted as children. They saw no one still, and passed across the hills above the vineyards of Tolbur, then down through Blue Dell’s mists. Only a few workers moved in the fields far below, most of them women. Sandur concluded that the men were being mobilized for defense. Crassmor knew that stopping now was out of the question, but he longed nonetheless to pause at the family stronghold, clean himself up, and sluice the dust from his gullet with one of the vintages from his father’s capacious cellars. And just perhaps, it occurred to him, there would be time to make the acquaintance of that comely little handmaiden whom Aunt Byborra has taken on. He wished ardently for the days when there was nothing more pressing or perilous to do than tag along with Sandur for an evening at the Malamute Café.