She sighed and pulled down her hoplite helmet, then leaned forward in the saddle. "Basil. Now."
The Alpine climber played "All Through the Night."
When he finished it and began again, four amphicyons went charging soundlessly to the head of the procession and hamstrung Epone's chaliko with simultaneous slashes of their teeth. The exotic woman's mount uttered a heart-stopping shriek as it went down in a welter of dark bodies. The bear-dogs, with barking roars, leaped upon Epone herself. Soldiers and the front ranks of prisoners gave shouts of horror, but the Tanu slave-mistress did not cry out.
Richard thumped his free feet against his mount's neck and held tightly to the reins as the creature took off. He galloped into the midst of the quartet of soldiers trying to come to the assistance of Epone. Waldemar was shouting, "Use your lances, not the bows! Lift them off her, you stupid bastards!"
Richard's chaliko reared and crashed down upon the captal, knocking him from the saddle. A figure in white robes and a black veil leapt down as if to help the fallen officer. In the moment that Waldemar took to gasp astonishment at seeing a mustache on a nun's face, Richard slipped Felice's little dirk from its golden scabbard and pressed the steel blade home twice below the two corners of Waldemar's jaw, just above the gray metal necklet. His carotid arteries severed, the captal clutched at the false nun with a bubbling cry, gave a peculiar smile, and died.
Two riderless chalikos were thrashing together in the semi-darkness, inflicting ghastly wounds upon one another with-their huge claws. Replacing the dirk in its sheath on his forearm, Richard seized the dead officer's bronze sword and backed off, cursing. There were confused shouts and a long scream of pain from the tangle of amphicyons and armed men. The two soldiers of the rear guard came pounding up to assist their comrades One of the men charged with lance couched, spitting a small bear-dog that dashed in from the side and hoisting it high into the air. Then another hulking form came darting among the mounted guards, snapping at the heels of the enraged, screeching chalikos.
Felice sat her beast, motionless, as though she were merely a spectator to the carnage. One of the ronin, heels drumming the shoulders of his mount, rushed into the free-for-all and hauled back on his reins. The chaliko reared and brought its scimitar claws down onto the rump of a soldier's animal. The Japanese warrior, shouting an ancient battle cry, forced his own mount to ramp again and again with terrible driving blows that crushed the soldier and his chaliko into the tangled mass already on the ground. The second ronin came up on foot and grasped a lance from its scabbard on the fallen man's saddle. "A bear-dog! Behind you, Tat!" Richard yelled.
The warrior whirled around and braced the spear on the ground as the amphicyon leaped. Transfixed through the neck, the animal body continued forward on momentum and crushed the ronin named Tat beneath its great bulk. Richard ran forward and stabbed the struggling monster in its near eye, then tried to haul it off the warrior. But someone shouted, "Here comes another one!" And Richard looked up to see a black shape with gleaming eyes not four meters away.
Felice gazed impassively at the fight, her face almost hidden within the T-shaped helmet opening.
The charging amphicyon swerved away from Richard and ran over the edge of the steep embankment, squalling in midair and striking the water with a tremendous splash. Basil and the knight Dougal rode their mounts impotently around the edge of the bedlam of noise, hesitating before the flailing bloody claws and struggling shapes. Ripping off the impeding veil and wimple, Richard picked up another lance and tossed it to Basil. Instead of stabbing with it, the climber hoisted the thing like a javelin, threw, and hit one of the soldiers high on the armor of his upper back. The point of the weapon skidded up beneath the man's kettle-helmet, penetrating the base of his skull. He fell like a bag of sand.
Felice watched.
No more bear-dogs came from the shadowy perimeter. All that were left alive were busy worrying something lying next to the body of a dead white chaliko. A single soldier stood upright among them, hacking slowly at the snarling amphicyons like some freshly painted red automation.
"You must kill him," Felice said.
They could not find any more lances. Richard ran to the mounted knight, handed up his bronze sword, and pointed. "Take him, Dougal!"
As if in a trance, the elegant medievalist grasped the weapon and waited for a suitable moment before riding into the mass of dead and dying animals and men. He decapitated the futile chopping figure with a single blow.
There were two bear-dogs left alive as the last soldier fell. Richard found another sword and prepared to stand his ground if they came after him; but the creatures seemed seized with a kind of fit. They backed away from their prey reluctantly, giving vent to agonized howls, then turned and went leaping to their doom over the edge of the lakeside cliff.
The sky was becoming rose-colored. There were gagging sounds and hysterical sobs as the stunned prisoners, who had been herded into a compact group by Claude and Amerie during the embroilment, now came slowly forward to look. Noises from dying chalikos were cut short as the surviving ronin went about with a dispatching sword. The first morning notes of song sparrows, simple and solemn as Gregorian chant, echoed among the lofty sequoia trunks.
Felice rose up in her saddle, arms wide, fingers grasping, head in its plumed helmet thrown back as she writhed, cried out, then slumped back inertly against the high cantle.
The Japanese bent over the gory carcass of the white chaliko. He grunted and beckoned to Richard. Numbed now, feeling only curiosity, the former starship captain went stumbling into the fleshly wreckage, hindered by his incongruous nun's garb. On the ground amidst the bodies was a hideously gnawed limbless trunk swathed in bloody rags. The face was torn to the bone all along one side, but the other was still beautiful and untouched.
An eyelid opened. A jade-green orb reached out at Richard. Epone's mind took hold of him and began to drag him down.
He screamed. His bronze sword hewed and stabbed at the thing down there but its inexorable grip held firm. The dawn-light began to fade and he was being taken to a place from which he would not return.
"Iron!" the high-pitched voice of the knight called out "Iron! Only thus may the faerie perish!"
The useless sword fell and Richard fumbled at his wrist. As he continued to sink he clutched at the instrument of redemption and sent its steely potency deep, between the heaving white-scarlet ribs without breasts to the raging heart, stilling it and quenching the body's resident spirit which took flight, releasing as it was released.
Basil and the ronin hauled Richard out of there by the arms. He was wide-eyed and still screaming but holding tight to the gold-handled knife. The three of them paid no attention to the demented Dougal, who leaped from his saddle and began stomping something beneath his mailed feet.
Felice shouted a warning.
Ignoring her, the knight picked a blood-smeared golden hoop from the mess and scaled it far out over the lake, where it sank without a trace.
Chapter Fourteen
The riverside palace at Darask was in an uproar when the southbound travelers broke their journey there on the second evening. The mistress of the establishment had been brought to childbed with twins and her labor was proving dangerously prolonged. Creyn went off to volunteer his medical services, leaving the prisoners in the care of a silver-torced major-domo, a black Irishman who forthrightly introduced himself as Hughie B. Kennedy VII and led them under guard to a large chamber high in one tower of the palace.
"You'll have to rough it tonight, friends," Kennedy said. "Boys and girls together here where we can keep you secure easily. We can't spare the guards tonight for single quarters, not with our poor Lady Estella-Sirone hovering on the brink and the buggerin' Firvulag gathering round, knowing what's in the wind. You'll be cool up here at any rate, and above the mosquitoes. There's a good supper out on the balcony table."
The escorting palace guards carried in Stein's litter and rolled the Viking onto one o
f the netting-draped bedsteads. Sukey protested. "But he needs care! He hasn't eaten or drunk all day or, anything."
"Don't fret yourself over him," Kennedy said. "When they're put under with the torc", and he fingered his own, "they're like in suspended animation. Your friend's just like a hibernatin' animal, metabolism all slowed down. He'll keep until tomorrow. By then, please Jesus, all'll be well with our Lady, and we can spare some time for him." The major-domo gave Sukey a shrewd look. "Likely you'll keep a good eye on your friend."
The prisoners were allowed to take a change of clothing but nothing else from their packs, which were then removed by the guards. Kennedy apologized once more for the meagerness of their welcome and prepared to lock them in. Elizabeth came to him and said in a low voice, "I must speak privately to Creyn. It's important."
The major-domo frowned. "Ma'am, I realize that you're a privileged person, but my orders were to install all of you together here."
"Kennedy, I'm an operant metapsychic and a trained redactor. I can't get through to Creyn, but I can farsense your lady and her unborn babies and I know that right this moment they're in serious trouble. I can't help them from here, but if you take me down to the birthing room . . . there! Creyn's calling for me!"
Kennedy had heard the telepathic summons, too. "Come along, then." Taking her by one arm, he drew her into the tower corridor and slammed the door shut.
Raimo said sourly, "That was nice going. We get stuck here, but Little Red Riding Britches gets to see the fireworks."
"I never would have pegged you as an obstetrics freak," Aiken jeered.
"Didn't you hear that guy?" Raimo's pale eyes glistened and he licked his lips. "He said the Firvulag were gonna lay siege to the palace, I wanna see that. Maybe get in on the fighting."
Sukey's face was twisted with scorn. "You just can't wait to join the Hunt, can you? Can't wait to get some monster's head on a pike. But you weren't so brave when we were shooting those rapids today!"
Leaving them to their bickering, Bryan and a strangely subdued Aiken Drum went out to the balcony. The promised supper had enough food for a dozen people; but all of it was cold and bore evidences of hasty preparation. Aiken picked up the leg of a roast fowl and took an uninterested bite, meanwhile inspecting the security arrangements of the balcony. It was completely enclosed in a cage of ornamental brass grill-work.
"I won't be flying out of here very quickly, will I? I suppose I could saw through the bars with one of the little vitredur gizmos I have in my pockets. But it hardly seems worthwhile trying to escape. They've got me so curious about the Tanu good life that running away seems stupid."
"I believe that's the attitude you're supposed to form," Bryan said. "You were allowed to taste just enough of your new powers to want a whole lot more. Now they've taken your metafunctions away until you submit to their training regimen down in the capital and they make you into a good little copy of themselves."
"So you think that'll happen, do you?" Aiken's golliwog grin was as wide as ever, but his black button eyes held an ugly glitter. "You don't know a fewkin' thing about me and the way my mind works. As for the metabilities, you're only a normal. You've never tasted the powers and you never will, so don't give me any of your high-ass professor's predictions about the way I'm going to behave!"
"They've got you collared and liking it," Bryan said mildly. Aiken touched the silver neck-ring with a dismissive flick. "This thing! It's only put a clamp on my metafunctions. The clamp is effective now because I haven't figured how to turn it off. But I'm working on it. You think they've got me under control? What Creyn did at the very beginning was program this inhibitory thing on us. There's this little nagger in the skull that hints at horrible things happening to us if we try to escape or do anything to threaten the peace and good order of our wonderful Tanu friends. You know how much that inhibition is worth, influencing me? It isn't worth shit. Little Sukey and dumbo Ray in there are safe, but not Aiken Drum."
"The torcs . . . have you discovered how the different kinds work?"
"Not the details, but enough. One of the Tanu women at the Roniah party spilled a lot when I put it to her nicely. The gold torcs are the basic article, the mental amplifiers that turn latents into operants. They're stuffed with barium chips all latticed with microscopic amounts of rare earths and bits of other junk that these jokers brought with them from their home galaxy. They handcraft the torcs and have a machine to grow and print the chips. They hardly understand how the machine functions, and most of 'em know even less about the theory behind the torcs themselves, the whole metapsychic thing. The technology of it is handled down in the capital city by some outfit called the Coercer Guild."
"Do the golden torcs have differing powers of, uh, magnification?"
"They're all exactly the same. And all they magnify is what the individual's got. If a guy's got one weakie ability latent, he becomes an operant weakie. If he's loaded with all five metafunctions in wholesale lots, he becomes operant as the Wizard of Oz. Most of the Tanu are fairly strong in just one metafunction and they tend to club up with others of the same type. The folks who have several strong powers are the real aristocrats. Just what you'd expect. It's the same sort of setup that you get in the Milieu, only on a pipsqueak scale, with everyone pretty much out for what he can get. Near as I can tell so far, there are no master class metas here and nothing like the Milieu's psycho-union."
Bryan slowly nodded. "I'd already sensed a lack of hierarchy among these people. I wouldn't be surprised to find them still at the clan level of socialization. Fascinating, and almost unprecedented, given the high-culture trappings."
"They're barbarians," Aiken stated flatly. "That's one of the things I like about 'em! And they're not too proud to let us human latents join right in . . ."
"With silver torcs."
Aiken gave a short laugh. "Yeah. These silver collars have all the mind-expanding functions of the gold, plus control circuits. The gray torcs and the small collars of the monkeys have nothing but controls, plus a bunch of pleasure-pain circuits and a telepathic communication thing that varies a lot in its range."
Bryan peered over the edge of the balcony. "Can you get any mental clues as to what's going on around here? Quite a few alarums and excursions down there. I'm getting very curious about the Firvulag by now."
"Funny thing about those severed heads the Hunt brought in." Aiken frowned. "They weren't quite dead, some of them! And after a while they started to, how can I say it?, flicker. The Hunters took them away, so we never really got a good look at them. But there was something subliminal about the whole scene."
Sukey and Raimo chose that moment to come out in search of dinner. Aiken asked them, "You guys hear anything? With your minds? I've tried, but this damn lock Creyn put on me screens out all but whispers."
Sukey closed her eyes and put her fingers in her ears. Raimo just stood there with his mouth open, finally saying, "Hell, all I hear is my stomach rumbling. Lemme at that food."
After a few minutes had passed with Aiken and Bryan watching her patiently, Sukey opened her eyes. "I get . . . eagerness. From a lot of mental sources that seem to be different. Broadcasting on another wavelength from humans. Even different from Tanu. I can tune them in, but it's hard. Do you understand what I mean?"
"We understand, kiddo," Aiken said.
Sukey glanced from him to Bryan anxiously. "What do you suppose it could be?"
"Nothing to bother us, I'm sure," Bryan said.
Sukey murmured something about wanting to sit with Stein and took a plate of fruit and cold meat inside. Bryan was satisfied with a roughly made sandwich and a mug of some cider-like beverage. He stood looking over twilit Darask. In the east, the monstrous rampart of the Maritime Alps still reflected glaring sunset-pink on the highest snowfields. Extraordinary, Bryan thought. The mountains looked to be as high as the spine of the Himalaya or even the Hlithskjalf Massif on Asgard. A cool wind was coming down from the heights, spreading across the everglade
flats where the Rhône finally relaxed and spread wide after its precipitate plunge from the region around unborn Lyon.
The day's journey had been something like descending a series of vast canyoned steps. They would sail peacefully for thirty or forty kilometers, then encounter savage rapids that would chute them to the next lower level at jetboat velocity. Despite Skipper Highjohn's reassurances, Bryan felt that he had survived the ordeal of a lifetime. The last stretch of rapids, occurring, as he had suspected, in the gorge area about fifty kloms above the future Pont d'Avignon, had been formidable beyond belief. The prolongation of terror had blunted his senses to the point of stupor. Aiken Drum had begged Creyn not to put him to sleep for that last rough ride, being eager for some taste of the thrills that Bryan had described. When the boat had tumbled end over end down the face of the final great cataract and fetched up in the placid Lac Provencal, Aiken's face had turned to gray-green and his bright eyes were sunken in shock.
"A fewkin' flea ride," he had moaned, "In a fewkin' food blender!"
By the time they reached Darask on the Lower Rhône, they had journeyed nearly 270 kilometers in less than ten hours. The shallowing river twined and split and braided itself into scores of channels divided by rippling grasslands and mudflats inhabited by flocks of long-legged birds and cream-and-black checkered crocodiles. Here and here islands rose from the marshy plain. Darask crowned one of them looking for all the world like a tropical Mont-Saint-Michel towering above a sea of grass. Their boat had used its auxiliary engine to move out of the mainstream of the Rhône into a secondary channel leading to the fortified town. Darask had a small quay secured behind a limestone wall more than twelve meters high that butted against unscalable cliffs.