Swords - The First Book of Swords Part 17

Draffut could feel the fervor of his anger growing, growing, till it was hotter than the lava that made the earth burn just in front of him. He roared back: "I have as much right to be a G.o.d as any of you do. More! Tell the human world what you really are!"

Beyond the wavering heat, their numbers were still increasing. Another voice mocked him: "You tell them what we really are. Ha, haaa!"

"I would tell them. I will tell them, when I know."

"Ha, haaa! We are the G.o.ds, and that is all ye need to know.

It is no business of a son of a b.i.t.c.h to challenge G.o.ds."

In a single stride Draffut moved forward across the stream of lava. And now he could see the last speaker plainly enough to be able to recognize him. "You are Vulcan. And now you are going to give me some answers, about the swords."

Vulcan answered boldly enough, with an obscene insult. But at the same time he appeared to shrink back a little within the group. There was wrangling and shoving among the deities, amid a cloud of smoke and dust. Then another figure, pus.h.i.+ng Vulcan aside, stepped forward from behind him. Now the shape of a gigantic and muscular man, carrying a great spear, his head covered with a helm, stood limned against afresh flow of red-hot lava spilling down a slope.

"I am traveling west from here," said Mars. His voice was one that Draffut had not heard before, all drums and trumpets and clas.h.i.+ng metal. "War draws me there. I see a beseiged castle, and one in the attacking army who offers me sacrifice with skilful magic. I think it is time for me to answer the prayers of one of my devoted wors.h.i.+ppers."

From the group behind the speaker there came a discordant chorus of varied comments on this an- nouncement. Draffut noted that they ranged from applause to enthusiastic scorn.

Mars ignored them all. He did not turn his terrible gaze from Draffut, who stood right in his way. Mars said: "I am going to that castle, there to spend some time in killing humans for amus.e.m.e.nt."

Draffut said simply: "No, that you will not do."

At this point someone in the rear rank of the G.o.ds threw a burning boulder straight at Draffut. It seemed to come with awesome slowness through the air, and it was accurately aimed. Catching it strained his great strength, but from some reserve he drew the power to hurl it back-not at its unseen thrower. Instead Draffut aimed it straight for Mars, just as the long spear leveled for a throw. Rock and spear met in mid-air, to explode in a million screaming fragments.

Another spear already in his hand, the G.o.d of War strode forward to do battle.

CHAPTER 18.

Dame Yoldi herself had told Mark several times that she considered his survival vitally important, and that she meant for that reason to keep him in comparative safety at her side as much as possible when the fight- ing started. Thus it happened that they were together on the high roof of Sir Andrew's castle, in early morn- ing light, when the first attack of the Gray Horde broke like a dirty wave against the walls.

The defenders were as ready as they could be for the a.s.sault, for there had been no way for the attackers to achieve surprise. On the previous day, Sir Andrew's enchantress had announced that the- speed and direc- tion of the larvae's advance could be only approxi- mately controlled by the magicians of Yambu. For the past few days, Yoldi and several of her a.s.sistants had attempted to interfere with the enemy magic, and turn the larvae against those who had raised them. But that effort had failed, and Dame Yoldi was necessarily concentrating upon other matters now. She said that in any case the larvae would not be able to remain active for more than a few days, Once raised from the swamp, they drew no nourishment, no energy of any kind, from their environment. This made them diffi- cult to interfere with, and almost impossible to poison, but also awkward for their masters to control. However, for the few days that their pseudo-life endured theywere an almost invincible army, immune to weariness and fear.

Their ma.s.sed howling, like distant wind, could be heard in the castle for more than an hour before their first charge at the walls. Therefore the defenders were alerted and in place when the hundred scaling ladders of the Horde were raised.

As the light grew full, Mark could see from his high vantage point how Ben was taking part in the fighting atop the eastern wall, using his great strength behind a pole to topple scaling ladders back as fast as the handless, clumsy larvae below could prop them up; there were no humans to be seen at all in the first wave of attackers.

And Barbara was on the wall west of the guard towers and the main gate, one of a company of men and women armed with bows and slings. Their mis- siles went hailing thickly down into the sea of the attackers, but Mark could not see that they did much damage. An arrow might penetrate a larva's sh.e.l.l, but the thing kept advancing anyway, pus.h.i.+ng up another ladder and then climbing to the attack. A slung stone might crack a carapace, but the hit figure came on anyway, until a leg joint was broken too badly to let it walk, or its arms disabled to the point where it could no longer climb a ladder.

The hundred ladders carried forward to the walls in that first attack, Mark decided, must have been made for the larvae by their human masters and allies. Last night he had heard Nestor talking in the castle, describ- ing in detail what he had seen of the larvae at close range, and what kind of fighting might be expected when their horde swept to the a.s.sault on the castle walls.

Sir Andrew had listened very carefully to the same account. The knight had then sat alone for a while, the picture of grim thought, and then had issued orders, disposing of his defense forces as best he might. Mark had got the impression, listening, that all the experts on hand knew that the walls were going to be under- manned.

Then Sir Andrew had had Nestor speak to the defenders also of Draffut, of how the Lord of Beasts had seemed to favor their cause, and to hint of active intervention on their side. This raised the hopes of everyone somewhat, though Nestor was careful not to claim that any such promise had been made by Draffut.

Nestor, as he had explained to a smaller gathering of his old companions of the wagon, had decided he had no real choice but to take part in the fighting, once he had decided to come to Sir Andrew's castle with the sword.

"Besides, where would I have gone to get away?

From here all roads lead ultimately to Fraktin or Yambu, except those that go back into the swamp, or to the northwest; and I expect that even those are closed bynow. "

Armed with the Sword of Fury, and wearing the best armor that Sir Andrew had been able to fit him with at short notice, Nestor was somewhere in one of the central guard-towers when the first attack began.

The strategy was for him to wait there until close combat provided a suitable chance to bring the sword's powers into use. But though the sword whined restlessly when the attack began, and drew its threads of vapor from the air into itself, that chance did not come with the first a.s.sault.

Not that there was much of a break between the first and second. The Gray Horde did not retreat from the foot of the walls to reform, as a human army would certainly have done.

Instead its thousands milled around, indifferent to slung stone and arrow.

And then surged forward behind the ladders once again.

By now it had been discovered that large stones dropped on the attacking larvae below the walls were somewhat more effective than slings and arrows, but that fire was disappointingly inefficient. The deadwood figures were not really dry, and they would have to be burnt into ashes to be stopped.

"A breach! A breach!"

Mark heard the cry go up some minutes after the second surge with ladders against the walls began. Looking down at the top of the west wall, to his right, he saw that gray mannikins were on it, their arms windmilling as they fought.

"The sword comes!"

"Townsaver!"

Through the defenders' thin reserves the figure of Nestor, recognizable in his new armor, was moving into action. Above and through the banshee-howling of the enemy sounded the high shriek of the blade. The sound called up for Mark his last day in his home village, and he felt a surge of sickness.

The hand of Dame Yoldi pressed his arm. "It comes awake, and timely too. We have a holding here, and unarmed folk in it to be defended. The G.o.ds cannot be wholly evil, to have forged a weapon of this nature."

Mark could not think beyond that screaming sound. Nestor had reached the foe now, and the blade in his hands blurred back and forth, faster than sight could follow it, and the first gray rank went down.

This was Duke Fraktin's first chance to hear Townsaver scream, and he was greatly interested. He watched from a distance as the small blur in one man's hands cleared the west wall of larvae. The Duke was impressed, but not particularly surprised.

He watched also, with fascination, how gracefully and angrily Queen Yambu rode her prancing warbeast in front of her own ranked army of human men, even as he himself paced near the center of his own. The bulk of the Duke's forces were now disposed in a semicircular formation, with its right wing on the lake almost behind the castle, left wing anch.o.r.ed just about where the winding road came up the hill to find Sir Andrew's fortified main gate. Upon that gate a hundred larvae were now battering with a ram fas.h.i.+oned from the trunk of ahuge tree. Their feet slipped and slid in mud that had been their predecessors' bodies, while stones and fire decimated their ranks from above. Meanwhile, along the road, rough battalions of replacements jostled forward, howling dully, ready without fear or hope to take their turn beneath the walls.

From the winding road around west to the lake again, the human forces of Yambu held the field. They were arrayed, like the Duke's army, in a rough halfcircle. The Duke like everyone else was well aware that the two armies of attackers were watching each other closely and uneasily, even as both watched the progress of the swarming preliminary attack on the castle by Yambu's auxiliaries.

The Duke turned to his blue-garbed wizard, who was waiting nearby clad in incongruous-looking armor. "At least,"

His Grace remarked, "a good part of the Horde is going to he used up against those walls, and particularly by that sword.

We can hope that most of those dead-wood monsters will be out of the way before it comes our turn to fight Yambu, for the spoils."

"Indeed, sire:"

"I'm convinced now, Blue-Robes, that it was she who tried to kidnap my cousin. Obviously she's got word of the swords somehow . . . what word is there from the east?"

This last was spoken to the Duke's staff at large. None of them had any real news to report from that direction. At night there were the reddened eastern skies for all to see, and by day the distant plumes of smoke. When the Duke had dispatched a flying scout with a message for the small garrison at Arin-on- Aldan, the scout had come back with a report of being unable to find the village or its garrison, in the altered landscape and foul air. (The message had been an order for the family of Jord the Miller to be brought into the Duke's presence for some serious interrogation, milder methods having failed.) Indeed it appeared now that communications with the foothill region had broken down completely. Reports, scattered and uncertain, indicated that the whole civilian population of that area was now in flight, and military patrols were at best disrupted. The Duke sighed, for his vanished family of subjects for interrogation. But he had a battle to fight here, and could spare no extra manpower for search operations of doubtful utility over there.

Still, the blue-robed wizard did not appear entirely unhappy when this subject came up for discussion. He had the air of holding good news in reserve, and, sure enough, at his earliest good chance he announced it.

"Sire, I am pleased to be able to report that my private project has achieved a measure of success."

"What other project?" The ducal brow creased with a slight frown. "Oh. You are speaking now of . . . of what you spoke to me about last night in secret:"

"Exactly so, sire." The wizard bowed, a small dip with an air of triumph. "We now have reason to hope that Mars himself is soon going to come directly to our aid. Then, what will our rivals have gained from their paltry success in raising the Horde?"

"By the Great Worm Yilgarn." Duke Fraktin wasindubitably impressed. But he was suddenly somewhat worried as well. "Do you think, Blue-Robes, that such a raising is . . . the G.o.d? Mars? Are you sure you're serious?"

"Oh, entirely serious, sire."

A hundred people or more might be watching, even if probably none of them were close enough at the moment to hear. The Duke made himself smile. "Do you think it entirely wise?"

At this the wizard began to look downcast; he had surely been expecting more enthusiasm from his master. He was somewhat relieved when their talk was interrupted. A close- ranked body of men had surrounded, and were now bringing into the Duke's presence a man who (it was reported) insisted on speaking to the Duke himself, who swore that he had been within the past day inside the beseiged castle, and who claimed to know a way by which it would be possible to enter secretly with a body of armed men.

Presently, after the man was thoroughly searched, and tested for magical powers, the Duke confronted trim. "Well?

Spit it out, fellow."

The fellow before him was poorly garbed, and young, with a lean, hunted look. "My name is Kaparu, Your Grace. I have worked as an agent of Queen Yambu in the past, but I'll be pleased to work for a prince as well-known for generosity as yourself instead."

Throughout the whole morning the fighting continued with scarcely an interruption. What small pauses there were resulted not from any weariness or unwil- lingness on the part of the inhuman mob that tried to swarm upon the walls, but from their need for new ladders, as numbers of the old ones burned or broke under the impact of rock or fire or molten lead. And even when the fighting ebbed for a time, the howling of the Horde went on without pause.

The volume of sound did not seem to diminish much with their necessarily diminis.h.i.+ng numbers.

As Mark came down from the roof to the level of the top of the outer walls, he heard a stalwart swordsman mutter: "We have cut down thousands of them, and yet still they come."

The man was not exaggerating.

Presently Mark was making his way across the crowded main courtyard of the castle, pa.s.sing hastily arranged stockpiles of supplies, tethered animals, a row of moaning wounded being cared for. He had come down from the roof with Dame Yoldi's permission, in response to a wave from Barbara. A longer break in the fighting than any previous had set in, and the magicians of Yambu had even summoned the Horde back from the walls, out of reach of fire and hurled rock, till more ladders could be got ready. Inside the castle, those who had borne the burden of the battle were being relieved now, wherever possible, for food and rest. Still it seemed to Mark that the yard was crowded mostly with noncombatant refugees, all of whom seemed to be muttering complaints that too many others had been let in. Mark heard several people a.s.suring others that whatever food supplies Sir Andrew had available could not possibly be enough to see this crowd through a long seige.Mark repeated this saying to his old companions, when he came to the place against a damp-stoned wall where Barbara, and now Ben as well, were waiting for him.

Barbara sat leaning against the wall, but Ben was standing, as if his nerves and muscles were still on alert, tuned to too high a pitch to let him rest. He was not tall, but neither was he as short as his thick build sometimes made him look. The mismatched breastplateand helmet he had scrounged somewhere now gave him an almost clownish look.

Looking at Barbara, Ben laughed tiredly. "I only hope we have the chance to try out a long seige. I think we'd like it better than.. . " He didn't finish, but let himself slump back against the wall, and then slide down till he was sitting beside her.

Now Mark could see Nestor, swordless at the moment but still wearing most of his new armor, picking his way wearily across the crowded court toward them.

Nestor said nothing until he had come up to where they were, and had let himself down with a great sigh, that seemed to have in it all the exhaustion of war. He tipped his head back and kept it that way, gazing up into the gray sky which dropped a little rain from time to time. Only occasionally did he lower his gaze to look at any of his companion.

"The fighting. . . " Nestor began to say at last. And then it appeared that he did not mean to finish either.

For some time there was a silence among them all. Mark knew, or at least felt, that there were things that needed saying, but he had no feeling for how to begin.

He kept expecting at any moment to hear the call to arms, but it did not come. The respite in the fighting was growing unexpectedly prolonged. From the distance came the repet.i.tive, soothing chants of the lesser magicians of Yambu-it was said that the Queen there was her own best wizard. The chanting was being used to keep the Horde treading in place or marching in a circle until a greater number of ladders could be made and distributed for the next a.s.sault .

. . . Mark roused with a start, and realized he had been dozing, his back against a wall. Dame Yoldi had appeared in the midst of their resting group. It was early afternoon now, and she was bending over Nestor, talking to him. "Are you hurt?"

"No, lady. Not much. But tired. And stiffening now. I've had a fair rest, though. I'll be ready to take back the Sword and use it when the fighting starts again:"

Yoldi, straightening up, nodded abstractedly. She said: "Whoever has Townsaver in hand, fighting to protect unarmed folk in a held place, cannot die so long as he keeps on fighting, no matter how severe his wounds. But if he is badly hurt, he will fall as soon as the fighting slackens:"

Nestor said nothing, but continued gazing at the sky. After a time he nodded, to show that he had heard.

Mark, happening to look toward a far part of the courtyard where vehicles were gathered, saw something that made him speak without thinking.

"Look," he said. "Our old wagon."

The others looked. "My lute is there," Ben said."I wonder," asked Barbara, of no one in particular, "if the money's still under the front seat:"

Mark had nodded into sleep again, only to waken to a heart- Founding shock. It was late in the day, very late now, and long afternoon shadows had come over them all.

"Listen!" Nestor ordered, urgently.

Mark sat bolt upright.

The distant chanting of the sorcerers of Yambu had fallen into silence.

There was no time for farewells or good wishes. Mark rushed to rejoin Dame Yoldi on the roof, as she had bidden him do if an alert sounded. On his way to the first ascending stair, Mark ran past Sir Andrew. The knight's armor was dented here and there from the-earlier fighting. He was exhorting his troops, in a huge voice, to make another winning effort.

It was a long climb back to the roof. When he emerged on it at last, Mark found Dame Yoldi already there, her arms raised to a darkening sky and her eyes closed. A pair of her helpers, a man and a woman, arranged things on the parapet before her, things of magic in bottles and baskets between two burning candles.

Looking down, Mark saw the next surging attack of the larvae strike against the walls on a broad front, and wash up like a wave upon a hundred scaling ladders. He could draw some encouragement from the fact that the creatures' reserve force, that in the morning had stretched endlessly across the fairgrounds, was much compacted now. Their legions had been hacked and broken into a vast mud-flat that stained the ground for meters in front of every wall they had a.s.saulted.

But, beyond those thinning deadwood ranks, the human armies of Fraktin and Yambu were both readying themselves for an attack. Mark realized that -the human onslaught would be timed to fall upon an exhausted and weakened defense, just as the last of the larvae were cut down-if indeed the last of the larvae could be defeated. Already the defenders' ranks, thin to begin with, had suffered painful losses.

Sir Andrew's voice, now distant from Mark's ears, roared out from a wall-top: "Save your missiles! We'll need them to hit men!"

And the slingers and the archers on the battlements held their fire. Mark supposed that Barbara had rejoined her group there, though he could not pick her out.

The sun was setting now, beams lancing between dark ma.s.ses of cloud, red-rimmed like some reflection of the renewed red glow in the east. Torches were being lighted on the walls, for illumination and weapons both, and they shone down on the advancing, climbing Horde. Darts and arrows flew up at the defenders from below the walls, but in no great numbers. The Horde was not well supplied with missile weapons.

Dame Yoldi still stood like a statue on the high roof, her arms raised, her eyes closed, a rising wind moving her garments. She appeared to be oblivious to what was happening below. She would be trying to strike back at the enemy somehow, or else to ward off somenew harm from them-Mark was unable to tell which.

The attack this time was on a broader front than before, along almost the entire accessible rim of wall, and just as savage as the previous attacks had been. It prospered quickly. Two calls for Townsaver went up at the same time, from opposite directions on the walls.

Was it Nestor again, the helmed figure Mark saw now, running out from a guard-tower with the sword?

Mark could not be sure. Whoever it was, he could fight in only one place at a time.

Again the screaming of the Sword of Fury rose above the eternal whistle-howling of the foe. Again Mark watched Townsaver's blade carve a dead-wood legion into chunks of mud and flying dust. Again the sword built a blurred wall through which the invaders could not force their way, press forward as they might.

But, again, Townsaver prevailed only where it could be brought to bear.

Now, Mark could hear despairing cries go up, from the defenders on the wall where the sword was not.

The enemy had gained a foothold there, at last, and was now pouring in reinforcements. Dame Yoldi, rous- ing herself from what had seemed a trance, abruptly abandoned her work, snapping orders to her a.s.sistants.

Then she grabbed Mark by one arm and began to tow him to the trapdoor that led down. In his last glance from the high roof at the fighting, he could see warbeasts starting to mount some of the scaling lad- ders far below.