Iron Eyes muttered something about mercy for the mad. But he did not get carried away. “Shift them without hurting them. If they won’t be shifted, make them a feast for wolves and crows.”
The latter were in the air, excited.
Iron Eyes had used the dwarf language. The old men heard. They seemed amazed. Then decided they were overmatched after all. They went back inside, pursued by the derision of crows.
The entrance loomed dark as a fathomless cave.
Iron Eyes again asked, “You were going to keep me from marching straight in, weren’t you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. On the other hand, it might be instructive to see how Aelen Kofer mail stands up to a falcon’s bite.”
The old man was guessing, based on Piper’s speculations. Layers of hearsay and imagination could be hiding something but it seemed most reasonable to suspect the presence of firepowder weapons. Which he had explained to Iron Eyes when the expedition was forming. “You see any unusual bones around here?”
“I see a lot that are busted up strange. You mean the striped creature? Like the ones that tried to invade the Realm of the Gods?”
“Yes.”
“They don’t look so different with the meat off.”
“Extra fingers and toes.”
“There’s that. But the small bones are scattered, probably for miles. But sometimes theirs are black. Don’t ask why. We found out getting rid of the ones we dealt with before. How should we do this? Can you just pop inside?”
“No. I don’t know what I’d be jumping into. There might be spells to make me unhappy. But I could get up on the wall … Girl!”
***
Heris turned, perched amongst panicky crows, looked down, turned again to rejoin Februaren and Jarneyn. “Not one falcon, Double Great. Two. One the kind Piper calls a hound. The big kind he got rid of because they worked so bad at Clearenza. The old men are beside them with torches. I didn’t see anybody else. If it wasn’t for them I’d say the place was deserted.”
Februaren told Iron Eyes, “Move your people out of the way, now.” He indicated an arc, narrow end at the gate, that he thought should be dwarf-free. “And tell them there’s going to be a lot of noise. These machines talk loud.”
Heris asked, “What’s the plan?”
“We get those people to think the whole mob is charging in. They fire. Then the whole mob charges in.”
Februaren and Iron Eyes made the arrangements. Crows and wolves observed, remaining at a safe distance. The crows kibitzed. An occasional wolf crawled forward, got hold of a fallen pack mate, dragged it away until one of the Aelen Kofer decided to object. Iron Eyes told Februaren, “That’s clever. The perfect trick.”
It tricked no one.
Iron Eyes, not counting chickens, already had another plan running. Some of his people brought rails from the fence. Wolves paced them but took no risks.
Heris wanted a look at the countryside roundabout. She went up top, came back down. “The wolves are waiting for something.” The beasts were gathering out where they could not be seen, with numerous comings and goings. At least two dozen more had come from somewhere.
“Probably expecting the Bastard.”
Aelen Kofer work parties used fencing to bridge the moat off to the right of the gate. They started building a ladder. Heris told them, “Wait.” She took a coil of rope from a dwarf, turned sideways, then dropped one end from the top of the wall. A half-dozen dwarves swarmed up. They climbed like monkeys despite the clutter they carried.
Those six readied their crossbows, stepped forward, sighted on the two old men. Then dove back so violently that one knocked Heris right off the wall. She did miss the makeshift bridge. Which meant an intimate encounter with icy, nasty, shallow water. She came up cursing, turned sideways, got back up top in time to watch a fog of burned firepowder clear from the little courtyard. Dripping, starting to shudder in the breeze, she demanded, “Anybody hurt?”
The dwarves could not hear her. The bellow of the hound had stolen their hearing briefly. Heris had trouble hearing herself, but because of water in her ears. She had been falling when the hound roared. The wall had sheltered her from the noise.
A dwarf pulled her back as the lighter falcon barked. The glimpse she had gotten was of two old men reloading the hound, now aimed for a blast through the gateway.
All six dwarves popped up and loosed quarrels. Shrieking crows whipped around them. There were no cries from below.
Heris turned sideways. She materialized four feet behind the hound. One old man had his left hand pinned to its wooden mounting frame by an Aelen Kofer bolt. Heris smacked the other one with her fist. “Ow! Goddamn! Why didn’t I bring something with me?” She grabbed both torches, turned sideways, chucked them into the moat from the top of the wall. “That’s your cue, Double Great!” She swatted a diving crow. And watched just long enough to make sure the Ninth Unknown understood.
She turned yet again.
One groggy old man was trying to cut the bolt nailing the other to the hound’s frame. Which, at a glance, told Heris why Piper had rid himself of the big bore weapons. The machine could not be moved easily. And recoil had cracked its supporting frame after one firing.
A mob of dwarves trundled into the courtyard. Overhead, angry crows registered their disapproval by defecating on the fly.
Cloven Februaren and Korban Iron Eyes were not among the arrivals. “What now?” She decided to go see. Nearing exhaustion, she walked out this time. And reached the drawbridge in time to see Iron Eyes and the Ninth Unknown become involved in another engagement with more wolves than ever before. Wolves who seemed desperate but unenthusiastic. This time they encountered Aelen Kofer and human sorcery before they got close enough to be ripped up by Aelen Kofer steel. This time the survivors left with their tails all the way under and their bodies riding low.
Februaren and the dwarves grabbed lupine corpses and headed inside the castle. Crows followed. Several died as dwarves lost their senses of humor.
Heris needed not ask why all the excitement. She had her answer once she got a look at the dead wolves.
Some of the fallen from the first attack had begun to shift shape. The largest wolves, the ones with the heaviest, darkest fur. The leaders of the vast pack.
“I don’t know,” Februaren said, answering a question she had not yet asked. “Changed by the Night. By the one who lives here, maybe, using whoever was unlucky enough to be passing by. Making himself a fierce pack of protectors who dared not run away. Because everywhere else would mean an agonizing death at the first hint of a change. Damn those things!”
A skilled sniper of a crow had gotten him in the forehead with a nasty load.
The old man dug into one of the pouches hanging from his belt while muttering in Archaic Brothen. He found something, flung it into the air, shouted. To Heris it looked like a fistful of peppercorns.
Each peppercorn shot off toward a crow. The air filled with little pops as those hit feathers at high velocity. A hundred birds gave up flying, fell, lay twitching. The rest fled, making more noise than ever.
“Not a very nice man, the Bastard.”
“Blood will tell, child. What about in there?”
“The falcons have been captured. And the two old men. I don’t understand what’s happening. The dwarves were standing around waiting for orders when I left.”
The dwarves had gone into the fortress while Heris was outside. They had found nothing remarkable. The dizzy old men were the only inhabitants. Though there was a suite on the second level that showed signs of regular use.
Its user appeared to have been absent for some time.
The inside of the castle consisted mostly of storerooms generously stocked with supplies suitable for use by men, dwarves, or wolves.
Howling from the woods roundabout made clear what those beasts thought of the change of management. The crows were out there, still, but had grown contemplative.
The Aelen Kofer indulged i
n a huge feast, underwritten by the Bastard. They ate their fill, drank their fill, burned firewood profligately. Februaren and Heris joined in, some, though she spent time communicating with Piper while Februaren tried to crack the glamour imprisoning the minds of the two old men. He had no luck.
They were automatons shaped by the man who was not there. They did not speak. Left alone, they went back to managing the castle. They ignored the intruders now that they were inside.
Februaren told the Aelen Kofer, “Leave them be. Let them work. But keep them away from any weapons.”
It was late. Heris said, “I need some sleep. I’m seeing things that aren’t there. Our guy hasn’t come around. So what’s next, Double Great?”
“We wait. The Bastard will come home, eventually. And the things you’re seeing are there. The Night is strong and active here. Much more so than anywhere you’ve ever been before.”
“There’s a confidence booster. That’ll help me nod off. Just wait?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t he notice that something is wrong as soon as he gets near the place?”
“He may. I doubt it. He won’t be looking for it. He’s never had this kind of trouble.”
The Aelen Kofer had found no stable inside or associated with the castle. There was no sign that horses had visited in modern times. The Bastard came and went by extraordinary means.
That was troubling.
But maybe he just walked.
***
The wolves made a last try at midnight. A dozen wore the shapes of men. They came in the company of swarms of minor Instrumentalities, but otherwise unarmed.
Though they had been warned not to relax most of the Aelen Kofer had shed the misery of their mail. Several would pay the price in blood.
The Ninth Unknown had created booby traps using the hound and the falcon. They made the difference.
Nevertheless, the struggle was grim.
Come sunrise Februaren counted corpses and concluded that the Were had been exterminated. They had not appeared interested in surviving. Lacking leadership the ordinary wolves should now move on.
Not so. These wolves had been attached to the castle for generations. Despite events, they showed up at a postern to be fed by the two old men.
Februaren allowed it.
The crows watched. Quietly, mostly. They were everywhere. The Aelen Kofer tried to make them more miserable. The birds gave back no joy.
***
The Ninth Unknown, Iron Eyes, and several prominent Aelen Kofer were drinking and basking in the warmth of the little castle’s master suite. A spirited discussion had begun, fueled by boredom and beer. Spring was a definite threat. Its tentacles might reach Andoray in a month. Many Aelen Kofer were tired of waiting. They had convinced themselves that the Bastard would never show while they squatted in his home. If he even existed.
Some thought the Bastard was a product of the human sorcerer’s imagination. The human sorcerer responded with the observation that the Aelen Kofer appeared to exist despite being considered imaginary by some.
Heris had gone back to Brothe, to recuperate at her grandfather’s town house. She was under orders from the Ninth Unknown to visit and reassure Piper’s family, on pain of … Something. Which she would have done without the encouragement. Anna Mozilla was her friend.
Februaren was not thinking clearly. A lot of ale needed drinking. He did his part. The two old men, from whom the disdainful Aelen Kofer were removing stubborn glamours with the delicacy of craftsmen harvesting fur from a dozing leopard, were master brewers. Their names were Harbin and Ernst. They could not recall a time when they had not been part of the castle. They thought one of the Fredericks, or maybe German the Fat, might be Emperor. Celestine of Electon would be Patriarch. No one had taken the reign name Celestine in Februaren’s lifetime. He did not recall an Emperor named German. The history of the Grail Empire was sprinkled liberally with Fredericks and Freidrichs.
Iron Eyes observed, “These characters make you look like a callow boy.”
“And they make good beer.”
They did. And had been brewing for the Were for ages. It was not hard for them to adapt production to the needs of a horde of dwarves — assisted by Aelen Kofer brewing magic.
Iron Eyes had told his grumblers they would stay as long as it took to collect the Bastard. Or till the ingredients for making beer ran out.
The grousing did not end. One of the great joys of dwarfish life was the creative complaint. That died down some. The Aelen Kofer had something to look forward to, for a while.
Jarneyn prowled the castle night and day, muttering, like some symbolic ghost in a passion play. The unheard conscience listened to only the ever-present but now stubbornly silent crows. The rest of the Aelen Kofer enjoyed themselves, knowing circumstance would, in time, drive them back to their world or the Realm of the Gods.
Iron Eyes grumbled, “Right here in this place, sorcerer, you see why the Aelen Kofer don’t rule the Nine Worlds. The instant adversity steps aside we lose our focus. We suffer from a cultural absence of ambition. We can weave a bridge out of rainbows if somebody orders one up but we won’t raise a silver hammer to do ourselves any good. We’ll throw up a Great Sky Fortress with fanatic attention to the tiniest details but we won’t build decent homes for ourselves.”
“A little down tonight, eh?” Februaren asked.
Jarneyn sat down facing him. “Enjoying an all-night loving session with despair. Thinking my folk are too much like our new friends, Harbin and Ernst. Automatons. Totally limited …”
The iron eyes shut. Korban began to snore.
The Ninth Unknown’s adventures had revealed a truth unmentioned in myth and legend. Dwarves snored. Always. Regardless. Relentlessly.
Februaren thought the dwarf had demonstrated initiative and inspiration. He ambled off to the chamber he had claimed, dove into a featherbed he suspected must belong to the Bastard himself. He drifted off wondering if they would ever get their man. Or if there was a point to continued pursuit, since the Windwalker still lay on the Andorayan shingle and showed no sign of recovering.
***
“Get your dead ass out of bed, Double Great. Something is about to happen.”
Heris had returned moments earlier, armed with routine news and luxury comestibles. The crows had begun going crazy. Now the wolves started up.
The castle filled with imminence — and the rattle of Aelen Kofer hastily unlimbering their mystic tools.
Noise and panic had nothing to do with her arrival. She came and went regularly without causing a stir.
“It’s time,” said the Ninth Unknown. He got out of bed and forced himself upright. He smoothed his hair and clothing while observing, “He doesn’t get in a hurry, does he?”
“His way isn’t ours, obviously.” Heris turned sideways, moved only far enough to place herself in a shadowed corner behind a glob of shimmer that was the source of waxing imminence.
A shape formed, as a dark, flat ghost that became humanoid, then gathered color and three-dimensionality. It took nearly a minute for the man to arrive, staggering. The shimmer vanished. The newcomer bent over, hands on knees, gasping. He panted for several seconds before he realized that he had an audience.
Both later wondered if what they heard as soft curses might not have been the muted screams of crows and howls of wolves from outside.
Still gasping, the Bastard forced himself upright. “You? You! But … How did …?”
“Ah, Brother Lester. Welcome. There have been changes. And your assistance is required. Allow me to explain.”
At which point Heris smacked the Bastard in the back of the head because of what he was doing with a hand hidden behind him.
Khor-ben Jarneyn arrived.
The Ninth Unknown announced, “We have him.”
“That fellow?”
“That’s him.”
“He doesn’t look like his mother at all.”
“Maybe he takes after his da
d.”
“I never met Gedanke. I don’t know. Tuck him under your arm and take him back.”
“Uh …”
“The stranger his surroundings when he wakes up the more likely he is to listen when you explain. He’ll want information so he can figure out what’s really happening.”
Februaren eyed his captive. He hoped Iron Eyes was right. “Heris? Shall we?”
29. Alten Weinberg: Spring
Titus Consent tapped on the frame of the open doorway. Hecht said, “Come ahead.” He set Redfearn Bechter’s memory chest aside. “What?”
“Algres Drear is here. He wants to see you. He seems distracted.”
“He say why?”
“Not straight up. Not to me.”
“Bring him in. And feel free to eavesdrop.”
Hecht expected that to happen with or without his approval. His people got more protective every day. There were times when he missed Madouc’s easygoing ways.
He resented the increasing isolation. He went back to contemplating Bechter’s bequest.
He did that when he was feeling low. Wondering if there was a deeper message. Was it part of a pattern? Was it proof that the world was essentially random? Was his own passage through life part of a divine plan or just a stream of events with no real meaning?
He could argue both ways. Were he in an epic it would, for sure, lack a traditional plot, everything connecting to everything else and coming together in the end. His epic consisted of a lot of little plots entangled.
Titus Consent coughed, held the door for Algres Drear, then disappeared. Drear peered around. “No armed guards in the inner sanctum?”
“Don’t give them ideas.” Drear was back in Braunsknecht livery, with an extra band of black silk around his wrists.
“It might already be easier to get to Serenity than it is to reach you.”
“I find it tedious, too. Then I have a shooting pain in my shoulder that reminds me why. I try to tolerate the overreaction of the people who want to keep me among the living.”