“Listen,” he spoke softly, “do you think you could sing her out, as you did in those in ambush?”
“We must. We must!” Her voice was a husky whisper with an element of hysteria in it.
“And we can! Remember once—back in Kars when there was need of shape-changing and you said that you would call upon me for that which you needed to make the ceremony a swift one? Now it will be the same: call upon me for what you need.”
She turned in his arms, though she did not step away from him, only faced outward. And her fingers grasped his in a grip which tightened with her need for the effort. Once more she began to sing that song of invocation which started as a hum and rose higher. And Simon felt, as he had on that day in Kars, that flowing from him, down his arms, through his hands, into her, draining him so he used iron will to stand unmoving.
All this world became one with that sing-song, so that he did not see the drab stones about him, nor the patches of encroaching vegetation—only a kind of silvery sheen which was within him and without him at once and the same time. But there was no time either; only this—this—this—
Then that chant which beat in his veins died, and he saw again this deserted city. There was movement, something in the shadows. Coming into the open, crawling . . . Aldis crawling. She did not try to get to her feet, instead she collapsed and lay still. Jaelithe released her hold on Simon.
“She is dead—“
Simon hurried to turn over the limp body. Blood, his hands were wet with it, yet there was more flowing, so much more. Her wan face was untouched but below, the wound flowed blood.
And torn flesh was one with torn robe where she had worn the Kolder talisman. Jaelithe cried out. But Simon caught at one of the bruised hands which was a fist tightened in death to still protect. He worked the rigid fingers until he released what they had gripped to the end of reason and life. Whatever had striven to tear from Aldis the Kolder device had not succeeded in winning its desire. She had lost her life in that battle, but not what she had fought to retain. He held the talisman.
“Come.” Simon stood up, his eyes searching the windows, the doors, for any sign of the one or ones Aldis had met here.
Jaelithe stooped and pulled a fold of the torn robe across the body, veiling the ravaged face and the wound on the breast. Then she made a sign in the air above its quietness.
They worked their way back to the cut at the best pace they could muster. Simon watched the back trail, unable to believe that they would not be stalked by whatever had killed Aldis. Had the possession of the Kolder talisman brought on that assault? He believed that it had, and that it might draw the same fate after them. The possessed dead lay in the broken road. There was no sign that anyone had passed this way since they had left hours earlier. Only the shadows were longer, the signs of approaching night clear.
They climbed down into the cut and stood on the cracked surface of the road where the wrecked crawler slewed to close it off. There were the pillars marking the gate, the dusk making the green somber streaks.
Simon raised his hand, the palm cupping the Kolder talisman, and Jaelithe set her hands on his shoulders, keeping such contact with them as they approached the gate.
Would the talisman take them past? They had been three together when they had made the other crossing. And the skeleton army had needed the Kolder to see them through. Simon walked on.
He did not know what to expect, but he was not surprised when the object in his hand grew cold and colder—this was akin to the Kolder barrier against mind reaching. But Aldis had not been Kolder by blood and it worked for her.
Another step and they were both between those wall strips. Once more the shaking, wrenching sense of being whirled into a nothingness which was highly inimical to their kind—then through it. Simon staggered forward. He was on his hands and knees on rock still warm from the sun of a baking day, Jaelithe beside him.
Sunset was not complete enough to hide what lay before them. There had been a battle here. And it had not all been the way of the otherworld force as it had on the other side of the gate. The rock was not only heated by sun, great ribbons of black scorch lay back and forth across the whole plain of the gate and there were things lying there . . .
Simon wavered to his feet, stooped to bring Jaelithe up in turn. Nothing before them moved, this had been left to the dead. What he was going to do now might be the wrong thing, but it was the only blow he could see to strike for the freedom of this world against the Kolder and what the Kolder had drawn upon this world.
He raised the alien rifle and fired whatever energy it controlled at the base of the nearer of the gate columns. For a moment in the half light he thought that either the charge was exhausted or that it had no effect upon the structure. Then came a shimmering, licking up from his point of target, running along all that side, coming to the bar at the top, across it, down the opposite pillar. Shimmering became sparkling motes drifting apart.
Simon cried out and dropped the weapon. His hand—his hand!
The Kolder talisman which had still been in his grasp when he fired that shot or ray fell from him, leaving his flesh blackened and burning! It rolled out midpoint between the gate posts shimmering into nothing—to explode in a flash of green fire. But the gate was also gone and they looked upon barren space.
Together they staggered on to where the Kolder camp had been, where there was still a huddle of machines and about them things neither wished to see clearer; they were thankful the light was half cut away by the shadow of the mesa. Simon lurched to the ground by one of the crawlers, his hand pressed against him, much as Aldis had always pressed the talisman to her. He was only aware of the pain, pain mixed with a rising weakness so that he could not think clearly, pain beyond enduring save for the space of a breath, and another, and another—
Then the pain was not so great, or else he had become accustomed to it, as a man might come accustomed to any torment which lasted. He tasted water and after that a solid substance was put between his lips and a voice urged him to eat. How long had he been apart in that place of pure pain? Simon did not know. But now his head cleared and he knew that it was dark and nearly as cold as the day had been hot, that his head rested on Jaelithe’s knee, and that she was striving to wake him, her voice first only a low murmur and then her words making sense.
“. . . coming. We cannot stay here—”
It was so good just to lie so, the fiery torment in his hand reduced to a dull pain. Simon strove to move his fingers and found there was a bandage about them. Luckily, he thought dreamily, it was his left hand.
“Please, Simon!” More than a plea—a half command. Jaelithe’s hands on his cheeks, gently moving his head back and forth. Then her arm slipped under his neck, striving to raise him. Simon protested.
“We must go!” She leaned closer over him. “Please, Simon—there is someone coming!”
Memory flooded back, he sat up. The pool of shadow which had been there when he collapsed was now inky, all light cut off by the bulk of the mesa. He did not question her warning as he pulled himself to his feet, leaning on the crawler’s track. For a moment he nursed a dim hope of using the machine, then he knew that he would not understand its controls. Once erect Simon found himself steadier than he had first thought. He moved out with Jaelithe, stumbling over the ruts left by the crawlers.
“Who comes? Kolder?”
“I think not—“
“Those others?”
“Perhaps. Do you not feel it too?”
But if there was anything to be sensed in the night it remained a secret to Simon and he said so. For the first time in many hours he remembered those they had left when they began this last weird adventure. “Loyse—the Sulcarmen?”
“I have striven to reach them. But there are new forces loosed here, Simon, things strange to me. I cannot pierce a barrier, then—suddenly it is gone! Only to rise immediately in another place. It is my thought that Kolder fights for its life, that those who share that blood are using all weapons to their hands—some material, some outside our reckoning. That which came out of the wilderness beyond the gate is still alive to hate, to hunt. And if we do not wish to be caught up in this struggle we must keep aloof. For Kolder fights that which is also Kolder, or what gave birth to Kolder, and this is no war such as our world has seen before.”
As he moved on, Simon’s strength continued to return.
Jaelithe had plundered the camp for rations; she told him of that quietly and he felt her horror of what she had seen on that quest. So again he drew her to him, and they went on with his arm about her shoulders, his bandaged hand resting on her lightly, momentarily content that they could go thus, divided in neither mind nor body. They were rounding the bulk of the mesa to reach the place where they had left Loyse and the Sulcarmen when a stone, rattling down the side of that table land, made Simon sweep Jaelithe behind him. He had dropped the alien rifle by the gate, but he still had the knife Jaelithe had given him. And now as he listened, that was ready in his good hand.
“Sul—” Not a battle cry but a whisper in the dark.
“Sul!” Simon replied.
More stones fell and then a figure swung down with the agility of a man used to making his way about ship’s rigging.
“Sigrod,” he identified himself. “We saw you come out of nowhere back there, Lord. But there have been demons in these hills and they destroy aught that moves, so we dared not join you. Ynglin has the Lady Loyse in good hiding and I have come to guide you.”
“What has happened?”
Sigrod laughed. “What has not, Lord! These Kolder pushed through that gate and were gone as if they had used a spell for becoming nothing before a man’s eyes! Then—why, it was like all Demon Night opening. Out came those others, marching as an army of dead risen out of their graves to bring swords for a cause as dead as they! They came down upon the Kolder camp and —this is the truth I speak, I swear by the Waves of Asper that it be so!—they looked at a man and he shriveled up and died, as if a frost storm or a fire had shot upon him. Witchcraft, Lady, but such as I have never seen in Estcarp.
“They overran the camp as if those within it had not the power to raise hand to sword or shoot a single dart. Then there came the same lightning as strove to seek us out when we left the shore, and that smote and smote again, catching many of the demons and rendering them once more of the earth. But others went on, taking with them a Kolder, and they were traveling toward the sea. Since then there have been strange things in that direction. Only from this height have I seen something to sea. Lady, your sending has been obeyed—for there are sails showing!”
Simon functioned again as a field officer. “And if the fleet runs into that fire—” He put his worry into words. A warning—but how could they deliver that? Would the Kolder, if they were beleaguered in their own hold, weaken their defense to use the lashing fire at a new, seaborne enemy in a three-cornered fight? And what of the skeletons? Would it make any difference to them whether they hunted Kolder or stood up to a new foe? He must know more of what was going on.
They held council after they joined Ynglin and Loyse in a rock-walled cave.
“There is a way to gain the coast without too much effort,” Ynglin reported, “and I, for one, feel the safer with water nearby. This country is too well made for the hunting games which favor the pursuer as well as the pursued. There have been no more fire lashings for some time now. Also we have seen only a few of these wandering bags of bones slinking about. They prowl as if they would sniff up some trail; they do not show the fear of broken men who run from a strong enemy.”
“Maybe they have the Kolder besieged in the keep,” Simon speculated. “If so—to go seaward might take us into them.” He tried to think. The fleet out there—no one ever claimed that Sulcarmen were stupid. They would not run recklessly headlong into a Kolder den, knowing only too well the nature of the enemy and the traps which might lie before them. But this was a good chance, which, if handled right, might stamp out the evil once and for all.
He did not believe they could erect another gate in a hurry, not while harassed by these creatures from their own past. Therefore, that retreat was closed to them. A siege. But guesses were not enough; he had to know more and that meant seeing the site of the present activity—the coast and the Kolder keep.
“A scout,” he began, when Jaelithe spoke.
“We must go together, all of us. Also, the sea is our answer.”
Was that her thought—or his? The sea could be their answer, giving them a chance not only to communicate with the fleet but to scout the Kolder. Simon agreed.
They set out along the way the Sulcarmen had marked during that time when, with Loyse, they had remained in hiding. It was rough going and in the dusk perhaps doubly dangerous. But night had not yet deepened into full dark and they made the best time they could. The Sulcarmen had raided the Kolder camp before Simon and Jaelithe had returned and the supplies from there, meager as they were, gave them renewed vigor and energy.
Simon took advantage of several rest halts to climb above and try to sight the fleet. At his second failure he commented on that and Sigrod chuckled.
“Aye, they are doubtless coasting. That is a raiding trick which always serves us well. They have split the fleet in twain, each half turning stern to the other. There will be one scouting north and the other south to find a landing.”
Simon brightened. He knew next to nothing of naval tactics, and his acquaintance with Sulcar fighting methods had been limited to their service ashore. But this information was helpful. If even one of those divisions now sailing north and south could be contacted . . . He began to question the two marines. They might not be able to reach those now heading north, but the southern half of the fleet was headed in their own direction, and there was an excellent possibility it could be signaled from shore. Ynglin volunteered to try.
Then Simon went on—with the keep as his goal.
19 DRINK SWORD—UP SHIELD
“TO SHAKE them out of that, Lord, you will need more than a fleet. Such walls cannot be wished away.” Sigrod lay belly down on the rock peak beside Simon regarding the sealed enigma of the Kolder hold.
There was movement below. Apparently those who had come through the gate were gathered before those unscalable, unbreachable walls, willing to wait. Though in a matter of siege Simon thought the Kolder had all the advantage. The force without had no supplies and this was a totally barren land. Perhaps they believed that they would still withdraw through the gate. How long before they discovered that no longer existed?
Wish away walls—that comment remained in Simon’s mind. All in all, since he had been here he had seen only four of the true Kolder—the two in the hold and the two who had manned the crawler into ambush. And two of those were dead. Of the others he believed that the one in the cap with whom he had dueled long range from the shore might serve the purpose he was beginning to formulate. If that one still lived. But could he be reached and how effective would such a try be? Simon signaled a return to where they had left Loyse and Jaelithe.
Wish away walls—that comment remained in Simon’s mind. All in all, since he had been here he had seen only four of the true Kolder—the two in the hold and the two who had manned the crawler into ambush. And two of those were dead. Of the others he believed that the one in the cap with whom he had dueled long range from the shore might serve the purpose he was beginning to formulate. If that one still lived. But could he be reached and how effective would such a try be? Simon signaled a return to where they had left Loyse and Jaelithe.
They listened to him as he not really outlined any concrete plan, but thought aloud.
“These capped ones—they control the rest?” asked Sigrod.
“At least they give orders and control much of the installation, of that I am sure. The aliens brought one with them; they used him to get through the gate.”
“But he did not take them into the keep,” Jaelithe pointed out, “or they would not be down there now with the walls held against them.”
“He might have been killed in the assault on the camp,” Loyse suggested.
“And this other one, whom you fought,” Jaelithe continued, “you believe that you can reach him by the power, compel him to do your will?”
“We might,” Simon corrected.
“So open the doors for those demons?” Sigrod nodded. “But let those get within and the nut is still shelled for our cracking. They were Kolder, too, is that not so, Lord? Then what if we have only exchanged one set of Kolder for another?”
“Yes,” Simon admitted the justice of that. “Therefore we hope that Ynglin will be able to bring us reinforcements and we wait.”
Much of this warfare with the Kolder was based on waiting, Simon decided. And waiting was the most tiring of all a fighting man’s duties—war was full of “hurry up and wait.” He rolled over on his back and lay looking up into what was now the thick dark of a cloudy night sky.
“I will take the first watch, Lord.” Sigrod started up slope again. Simon grunted assent, still considering the problem ahead, chafing because—as so much else since he had ridden out of the South Keep weeks ago—this must depend on chance. Could one will good fortune or ill? His thoughts slid in another direction. Were the old witchcraft tales of his own world true so one could aim ill luck to strike an enemy as he might fire a dart?
A hand on his forehead, stroking back the sweat-dampened locks of hair which clung damply to his skin.
“Simon.” She could always make of his name a singing, an intimate reaching of one to the other. “Simon—” No more than that, just his name.
He reached up and caught that brushing hand with his unbandaged fingers, brought it down against his cheek and then to his dry lips. There was no need for any more words between them. Theirs had always been an inarticulate love, but perhaps, Simon believed, the deeper for its very wordlessness. And now the last vestige of that barrier between them had vanished. He knew that she had those depths and silences to which she must withdraw upon occasion, that he meant none the less to her because of those withdrawals. They were a part of her and so to be accepted. No one could ever occupy all of another’s thoughts and emotions. There were parts of him which would be closed to her also. But to take without question what she did have to give, and offer in return, freely and without jealousy, all he had—that was what their union meant.
“Rest.” Her hand went back from his lips to his head, soothingly. Simon knew that she had matched him thought for thought in wordless communication. His eyes closed and he surrendered to sleep.
There was the Kolder keep, sealed as Yle had been sealed, and from this height they could also see the forces from the gate drawn up about it. Nothing had changed during the night.
“They have not used the fire whip again,” Sigrod observed.
“Might not dare to so close to their own walls,” Simon returned.
“Or else it is exhausted.”
“That we cannot count upon.”
“They lost a lot of the possessed back there. Too many perhaps to try a sally. How long do you think they will keep sitting here like this?”
Simon shrugged. Could you judge the Kolder by any standard he knew? They might well be able to go without food and water, to squat stubbornly at the enemy gates for days, weeks—
“Simon?”
Jaelithe’s face was turned up to his as he looked back and down. Her eyes were alight and there was an eagerness in her expression, “A sending, Simon! Our people come!”
He glanced at the sea but the bay was free of ships; there were no sails on the horizon. Then he slid down into the hollow behind the scout point. Jaelithe was facing south, her head up. Loyse looked to the older woman as she would to a beacon of hope.
“Sigrod!”
“Aye, Lord?”
“Head south. Pick up those who come. Have them circle inland and come up behind us, so—” Simon clarified his order with gestures.
“Aye!” The Sulcarman slipped away into the broken country.
Loyse plucked at Jaelithe’s mail sleeve. “Koris?” Her lips shaped that name rather than spoke it aloud.
There was a half smile on Jaelithe’s face as she made answer.
“That I cannot say, little sister. That Koris’ ax will swing for you—as it has swung—that is truth. But that it will do so here, that I can not tell you.”
Once more a waiting. They sipped from the water container taken from the crawler, shared out mouthfuls of the dry dust which was yet food, also from the Kolder camp. And, as the sun climbed, they continued to wait. But the sun was battling clouds, and its glare did not reach into their hole to scorch them. Before midday it was blotted out entirely. Simon manned the sentry post on the crag, seeing no change below. The Kolder fortress remained sealed, the attackers waited with a super or unhuman patience in their own chosen cover.
Shortly after midday Sigrod came down through the rocks, a tail of fighting men at his back. Mostly they were Sulcarmen, used to shore raiding, but with them also a scattering of hawk-headed helms marking Falconers, and one party of dark-featured men who came quickly to Simon, a hard core of his Borderers.
“Lord!” Ingvald lifted sword hilt in salute. He looked about him at the broken terrain. “This be a land to favor our fighting.”
“Let us hope that that is so,” rejoined Simon.
They held a council of war—four Sulcar captains with the pick of their fighting crews, the corps from the Borderer guard, the Falconers, so far from their own mountains but at home in this country like to those peaks. And Simon laid before them the only plan which he thought might open the Kolder keep.
“This can be done?” Captain Stymir asked, but not as if he greatly doubted the doing. Sulcar knew too much of the witches of Estcarp. Only the Falconers held aloof from magic—their avoidance of women and all the powers of women making them fear more than accept such weapons.
“We can only try,” Simon replied. He looked to Jaelithe now and she gave an almost imperceptible nod.
From among the outer ranks of the men came another figure who had just caught up with the main body of the troops. As those about her she was mailed and helmed, but she also wore the gray surcoat of Estcarp and above it rested the dull gem of witchhood.
She pushed to the fore and gazed from Simon to Jaelithe and studied Jaelithe the longer.
“This you believe you can do?” she asked and Simon heard a note of derision in that inquiry.
“This we can do!” Jaelithe made a ringing promise of her answer. “We have done much else in the past days, sister.”
A frown on the witch’s face. Plainly she did not relish Jaelithe’s title of kinship and equality. But she was willing to wait, to wait for them to fail, Simon believed. And her attitude awoke in him the same defiance, though perhaps not to a like degree, that Jaelithe’s tone had made plain. Perhaps it was that defiance which gave added force to his try now.
He built up his mind-picture of the room in the keep—of the two Kolder who had faced him there. Then he narrowed that vision to the one in the cap. His will became a solid, thrusting thing, as tangible and deadly as a dart or sword blade.
That will reached out—sought—and found! His first fear was proven needless, the man of the cap lived. Alive, yes, but that which had been within him was empty—gone. Empty space could be filled for the nonce—with purpose! Simon’s will entered in, and behind that flowed a vast building strength which fed and enlarged and worked at one with him—Jaelithe!
Simon was no longer aware of the rocks and the waiting men, of the witch’s scornful face, even of Jaelithe, save as that other force which was also a part of him. The will ran into the emptiness of the Kolder, making him wholly theirs—as possessed as had been the slaves he and his kind had taken from Gorm, Karsten, Sulcar, all the other nations of this world they strove to bring under their rule.
Somewhere within the keep the Kolder was on the move now, answering the commands given him. A simple one to begin with: Open the closed. Let in disaster. And, being no longer Kolder but possessed, he obeyed. Simon caught hazy glimpses of that obedience—of hallways, rooms—once of a man who strove to stand between and so died. But always the obedience.
Then came a final act, a picture of a board over-hung with lights, on it many controls. And the Kolder’s hands moved, pressed buttons, touched levers. With his actions the defense of the keep faltered . . . died.
Then there was a sharp darkness and nothing—Simon recoiled from that nothingness, a cold terror gripping him. He was out in the open under gathering clouds, his hands clasped in Jaelithe’s and the two of them staring into each other’s wide eyes, the horror of that last encounter with non-being upon them both.
“He is dead.” Not Jaelithe, but the witch saying that. And she was no longer aloof, but something of that terror was in her face. But her hand came up in a small salute for their sharing. “You have done as you said.”
Simon moved stiff lips. “Was it enough?”
“Sul!” That cry from the spy perch. “Those demons, they are on the move!”
They were on the move, indeed. For there was a gap in the foundation of the keep, a break in the wall. And into that break streamed the skeletons from the gate world. They made no outcry, merely surged forward. Half the party were through when a shield dropped, catching two of the invaders between it and the earth in its crushing descent. These behind aimed their withering rifles at the lower edge, still kept from sealing by the bodies. And the gate shivered at that point, fell apart in jagged pieces as the rest of the skeletons beat upon it.
“Down and in!” One of the captains whirled his sword over his head, answered by the full-throated, “Sul! Sul!” of the raiders he commanded. The wave of the Estcarpian force flowed down the slope.
It was not pretty, that taking of the heart of Kolder. And it was more a hunt than a battle. Strange weapons slew men and skeleton alike in those narrow hallways as they fought from room to room. But then those weapons failed as if the heart of Kolder missed a beat.
And, when Simon and his Borderers, together with a detachment of Falconers, fought their way into the room with the control board that heart ceased altogether. For the capped men there, six of them, died together and the great board went dead with them.
Then the second battle began, for the skeletons from the gate turned upon the Estcarpian men. Warriors withered and died, but darts and swords could slay also.
Outside a storm raged over the barren land and inside, at last, that other and bloodier storm was stilled. Men wearied and sick of killing, men dazed from the deaths of those they held in close comrade or kinship, men unable to believe that this was the heart of Kolder and they had truly severed it with sword, dart and ax, drifted one by one into the hall where were the controls. “Kolder is dead!” Stymir tossed his ax into the air and caught its haft, to wave it in an exultant circle. Behind him others fired as they understood what had been done this day—in spite of cruel losses.
“Kolder is dead!” Jaelithe echoed him. With the witch and Loyse she had entered the hold as part of the rear-guard. “But the evil it has sown lives still. And this—perhaps others will rise to use this.” She motioned to the controls.
“Not so!” The witch had taken her gem from about her throat and held it out at eye level facing the board, “Not so, sister. Let us make sure of that!”
There was a flush on Jaelithe’s usually pale cheeks as she moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with the witch. Together they stared at the gem. The light in the walls had been slowly dimming, so that the chamber was dusky instead of brightly alight as it had been when they first found it.
But now there was suddenly bright sparkling on the board. Sharp explosions broke the silence. The sparks ran along the surface setting off more small explosions. A smell of burnt insulation rose in choking puffs and here and there the casing melted. Whatever energy the united power of the women released, it was fast stilling forever the controls the Kolder had used, perhaps not only to activate this hold, but to reach overseas in that web they had spun.
Simon said as much later when he waited with the captains and Ingvald for the last reports from those combing the now darkening corridors and rooms of the keep to make sure no enemy still lived.
“The web remains.” The witch sat a little apart, her face drawn and haggard from her efforts to blast the controls. “And, while Kolder spun that web, the materials—the hates, the greeds, the envies from which it was fashioned—were there before they gathered them into their hands and wove them into a net to take us. Karsten is in chaos and for a space that chaos has served us, because it keeps the eyes of the great lords there from looking north, but that will not last forever.”
Simon nodded. “No, it will not. Into the vacuum of no-rule will arise some leader and to him unity might come from fixing all the attention of those who would challenge him on a war beyond their borders.”
Jaelithe and the witch agreed as one; Ingvald also. The Sulcar captains showed interest but not greatly so.
“And Alizon?” Loyse spoke for the first time. “How fares the war with Alizon?”
“The seneschal has raged like a moor fire into their country. He has wrought better than even we thought he might. But we cannot hold Alizon, seething with hatred for us, any more than we can take Karsten under our rule. We of Estcarp want nothing—save to be left alone in our evening. For we know it is our evening, sliding into a night for which comes no morning. But these would make that a night of flame and death and torment. No man or woman dies willingly, it is in us to strive to hold to life. Thus if we have a night of war before us—” She raised her hand and let it fall again. “Then we shall fight to the end.”
“It need not be so!” There was that in Simon which refused to accept her reading of the future.