Two To Conquer ELF

  Still, confronted with an accomplished fact, he could probably trust her to be silent about the substitution.

  For now there was only one thing to do; and that was just what Bard wanted him to do—to ready himself, not only to impersonate, but to become Bard di Asturien, the Kilghard Wolf, general of all the armies of Asturias. And perhaps, one day, more.

  To his own surprise—for he knew nothing of the Darkovan style of swordplay and war and had never held a sword—he took to it as if he had been born to it. A little thought told him why. He had been born with the identical reflexes and superb physical organization that made Bard an incomparable swordsman; and he had trained that physical mechanism to the utmost with martial arts and the skills of unarmed combat during the rebellion. Now it was just a case of adding another set of skills to the trained muscles and brain, as a trained dancer can learn variation of steps.

  He found he enjoyed the campaign, riding lookout with the aides, making camp each night and sleeping beneath the four moons that waxed and waned again. He thought often that if he had been brought up to this life he would have been happier. Here there were few expectations of conformity, and those there were came naturally to him; there was plenty of outlet for aggression. In his first close-quarters battle he found that he had no fear and that he could kill, if he must, without fear and without malice, and, better, without squeamishness. A corpse hacked by spears and swords was neither more nor less dead than one riddled with bullets or blasted with fire.

  Bard kept him close at hand and talked to him a good deal. Paul knew this was not out of good will; the Wolf simply had to know whether Paul had his gift for strategy as well. It seemed that he did; a talent for handling men, a sense for the strategy of battle or attack, as city after city fell, almost undefended, to the armies of Asturias, and the men of Serrais fled, or went down before them, to the very borders of the Serrais lands. In forty days they had conquered half as many towns, and the road lay open before them to the old lands of the Serrais people. And Paul discovered that he knew instinctively what was the best strategy to take each city, to strike down each fighting force spread against them.

  “My father said once,” Bard told him, “that with two like me we could conquer the Hundred Kingdoms. And damn it, he was right! I know now it’s not only likeness skin deep; you and I are the same man, and when we can lead two armies at once, the whole of this land will lie open to us like a whore on the city wall!” He laughed and clapped Paul’s shoulder. “We’ll have to—one kingdom would never hold us both, but with a hundred, there ought to be room enough for us both!”

  Paul wondered if Bard really thought he was as naïve as all that. Bard would certainly try to kill him. But not yet awhile, maybe not for years, because he would need him until all of the Hundred Kingdoms, or as many of them as he wanted, were in subjection.

  And meanwhile, paradoxically, he enjoyed Bard’s company. It was a new experience for Paul to have someone to talk to who could follow what he said and understand it intelligently. And he felt that Bard enjoyed his, too.

  It would all have been quite perfect if he could have had Melisendra actually with him on this campaign; but Melisendra rode with the other leroni, men and women in gray robes sternly chaperoned by a gray-haired elderly man with a lame leg, so severely lame that he rode with a special device attached to his saddle to prop it up before him, and another to unfold and help him in dismounting. In all the first three ten-days of the campaign he had no opportunity to exchange more than half a dozen words with Melisendra, and those were such as could be spoken in front of half the army.

  The walls of Serrais were actually within sight when Paul, riding with Bard’s aides, saw that Bard had dropped back from his usual leading place to ride with the leroni. After a moment, seeing that Paul was watching them, he beckoned and Paul rode back toward the cluster of gray-robed men and women. Melisendra raised her eyes in greeting, with a secret smile beneath her gray hood, somehow as intimate as a kiss.

  Paul asked, “Who is Master Gareth?”

  “He is the chief among the laranzu’in of Asturias; also, he is my father,” Melisendra said. “I wish that I might tell him—” she broke off, but Paul knew what she meant.

  He said in a whisper, “I miss you,” and she smiled again.

  Bard beckoned imperatively to him and said, “Master Gareth MacAran, captain Paolo Harryl.”

  The gray-haired sorcerer gave Paul a formal bow.

  “Master Gareth was lamed in my first campaign,” Bard said, “but he seems to bear me no ill will, for all that.”

  The old wizard said genially, “You were not to blame, Master Bard—or must I call you Lord General now as the young guardsmen do? No one could better have led such a campaign. That I caught a poisoned dagger in the leg muscle was ill fortune, the fortunes of war, no more. Those of us who ride to war must accept such things.”

  “It seems long since that campaign,” said Bard, and Paul, who was as always catching some spillage from his mind and feelings, realized that the tone was the bitterness of regret.

  And in truth Bard was feeling the sharp sting of regret, a longing for days long past, of which the presence of Master Gareth was a sharp reminder, and the copper sheen of Melisendra’s hair beneath the gray sorcerer’s cloak more poignant still. Beltran had been at his side then, and still was his friend. And Melora. He found he could not resist the temptation to ask, “And your elder daughter, sir, how does she; where has she gone?”

  “She is in Neskaya,” Master Gareth said. “In the circle of Varzil, Keeper there.”

  Bard frowned, displeased, and said, “She serves, then, the enemies of Asturias?” And yet he felt it might be better to think of Melora as an enemy, since she had gone beyond his reach. She was the only woman alive who had ever come near to understanding him, yet he had never laid a hand upon her.

  “Why, no,” Master Gareth said. “The leroni at Neskaya have pledged to work with starstones and live only for the good of all mankind, and to give allegiance to no king or ruler whatsoever, but only to the gods, and to help or heaL So they are not the enemy, my lord Wolf.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Bard’s voice was contemptuous.

  “Sir, I know it; Melora does not lie, nor would she have reason to lie to me, nor can one laranzu lie to another. Dom Varzil is exactly what he says he is, sworn to the Compact, to use no weapons, make no weapons, allow no weapons by laran. He is an honorable man and I admire his courage. It cannot be an easy thing to renounce your weapons knowing that others still carry them, and that others may refuse to believe you disarmed.”

  “If you admire him so much, then,” Bard said peevishly, “must I look for you too to desert my armies and rally to the standard of this wondrous great man Varzil? He is a Ridenow of Serrais.”

  “Born so, sooth,” Gareth said, “but now he is Varzil of Neskaya, with no loyalties other than that. And your question, Master Bard, is needless. I have sworn to King Ardrin an oath lifelong and I will not forsake it for Varzil or for any other. I would have held to the standard of Ardrin’s son, had Lady Ariel not fled the country with him. I follow your father’s banner because I believe truly that this is best for Asturias. But I am not the keeper of Melora’s conscience. And indeed she left Ardrin’s court in that same night that you were exiled, sir, long before there was cause to choose between Valentine’s cause and Alaric’s—in fact, Valentine was yet unborn. And she left with the king’s leave.”

  “Still,” said Bard, “if she has chosen not to fight against the enemies of Asturias, should I not rank her among them?”

  “That’s as you see it, sir. But you might also say that she has chosen not to fight alongside the enemies of Asturias, either. She could have done that easily enough; all of Varzil’s circle did not swear the Compact, but left him and went to the Hastur supporters among that army. She stayed in Neskaya at Varzil’s side, and that meant she’s chosen to stay neutral, sir. And my granddaughter Mirella went to Hali Tower,
which has also sworn to stay neutral alongside Neskaya. I’m an old man, and I’m loyal to my king while he needs me, but I pray the young people may find some way to end these damnable wars year after year while our countryside is laid waste!”

  Bard did not answer that. He said, “I would not like to think of Melora as my enemy. If she is not my friend, I think it well that she is neutral.”

  Paul, riding between Bard and Melisendra, wondered why Melora could bring to Bard’s face that note of anger and grief and misery. Master Gareth said, “Indeed, she’d never be your enemy, sir. She always spoke well of you.”

  Bard, sensing that both Melisendra and Paul could read his emotions, made an angry effort to control them. What was that woman Melora to him anyhow? That part of his life was over. At the end of this campaign, he would put all his leroni to seeking out a way to attack the Island of Silence and bring Carlina home to him, and then he need never think of Melora again. Or—he thought, intercepting a look between Paul and Melisendra—of Melisendra. Paul could have her and welcome. It would, at least, keep Paul safely preoccupied for awhile.

  For awhile. Until I am safely established, with Alaric king over all these lands. Then he will be too dangerous to me; an ambitious man, accustomed to wielding all that power… .

  And then he felt an unexpected surge of pain. Was he never to have a friend, a brother, an equal, that he could trust? Was he to lose every friend and peer as he had lost Beltran and Geremy? Perhaps, after all, he could think of another way; perhaps Paul need not die.

  I do not want to lose him as I lost Melora. … He stopped himself, furious. He would not think of Melora again!

  Suddenly Melisendra jerked her horse to a violent stop; her face contorted, and at the same moment Master Gareth flung up his hands as if to ward off some invisible evil. One of the other leroni screamed; another choked aloud in terror, bending over his horse’s saddle and clinging there by instinct, almost unable to sit. Bard looked at them in dismay and bewilderment. Paul moved swiftly to steady Melisendra, who sat swaying in her saddle, paler than the snow at the edges of the paths.

  She paid no heed to him. “Oh—the death, the burning!” she cried, and her voice held terror beyond expressing. “Oh, the agony—death, death, falling from the sky—the fire—the screams—” Her voice died in her throat, and she sat with her eyeballs rolled up until only white showed, as if they stared at some inward horror.

  Master Gareth choked, “Mirella! Dear gods, Mirella—she is there—”

  This brought Melisendra back, but only for a moment. “We cannot be sure she has come there yet, dear Father, she—I have not heard her cry out, I am sure I should know if she were among them—but oh, the burning, the burning—” She screamed again, and Paul reached over from his own horse. She let her head fall against him, sobbing.

  He whispered, “What is it, Melisendra, what is it—” but she was beyond answering him. She could only cling to him, weeping helplessly. Master Gareth, too, looked as if he were about to fall from his saddle. Bard put out a hand to steady the old laranzu and at the touch the images flooded into him.

  Flaring light. Searing pain, intolerable agony as flames rose and struck inward, consuming, tearing . . . mounting fire, walls crumbling and falling… voices raised in shrieks of agony, terror, wild lamentation… air-cars booming and fire, death raining down from the sky….

  Paul had been immune, but as Bard’s mind opened to the images, he saw and felt them too, and felt himself go pale in horror. “Fire-bombing,” he whispered. He had believed this world civilized, too civilized for such warfare, and war almost a game, a manly test of courage, of domination and challenge. But this…

  A woman’s body flaring like a torch, the smell of burning hair, burning flesh, agony searing…

  Bard steadied the old man, as he would have with his own father. He was sick with the horror of the images flaring through his mind. But Master Gareth managed somehow to pull himself free from the horrors within. “Enough!” he said harshly, aloud. “We cannot help them by sharing their death agonies! Barricade yourselves, all of you! At once!” He spoke in command voice, and suddenly the air around them was free of smoke and the smell of death and burning, the intolerable screams of agony gone. Paul looked around, dazed, at the peaceful trail and the soft silent clouds overhead, the small sounds of an army on the march. A horse whinnied somewhere, supply wagons creaked and rumbled, a drover somewhere good-naturedly cursed his mules. Paul blinked with the suddenness of the falling quiet

  “What was it? What was that, Melisendra?” His arms were still around her; she straightened, a little abashed.

  “Hali,” she said, “the great Tower by the shores of the Lake; Lord Hastur had sworn that the Towers should be neutral, at least Hali and Neskaya—I do not know who struck them.” Her face was still stunned with the horror she had shared. “Every leronis in the Hundred Kingdoms must have shared that death… This is why the Lord Varzil has sworn neutrality. If this goes on, soon there will be no land to conquer…”

  They all looked sober; many of the leroni were weeping. Melisendra said, “Not one of us here but has a sister, a brother, a friend, a loved one at Hali. It is the largest of the Towers; there are thirty-six women and men there, three full Circles, with leroni from every one of the kingdoms and laran-bearing families…“ Her voice died again.

  “So much for the Compact,” said Master Gareth fiercely. “Shall they sit quietly in Elhalyn and limit their warfare to sword and crossbow when fire is sent against them from the sky? But who would have dared to strike them? It is not the forces of Asturias, surely?”

  Bard shook his head, numbed.

  “Serrais, now, has no such strength, and why should the Lord Hastur strafe his own Tower who were loyal to him and had sworn to hold themselves neutral? Can it be that the Aillard or the Aldaran have joined in this war, and that all the Hundred Kingdoms are aflame?”

  Paul listened, shaken. On the surface this world was so simple, so beautiful, and yet this, this hideous telepathic warfare lay hidden…

  “It can be worse than fire-bombing,” Melisendra said, picking up his thoughts as she so often did. “At least they were borne by aircraft and the defending Tower could have knocked them out of the sky. I once struck down an air-car bent on such attack. But I have known a circle of leroni to put a spell on the ground beneath a castle under siege—” she pointed to a ruin atop a distant hill—“and the ground opened, and shook—and the castle fell in ruins and everyone was killed.”

  “And is there no defense against such weaponry?”

  “Oh, yes,” Melisendra said indifferently, “if the Lord of the Castle had had his own circle of wizards and they were stronger than the attackers. For generations, all of our family—and all the great families of Darkover—had laran ever stronger bred into them; that was while all this land lay under the rule of the Hastur kin, the descendants of Hastur and Cassilda. But there is a limit to what can be done with breeding; sooner or later there is too much inbreeding, and lethal recessives take over. My father—” she gestured to Master Gareth, who still looked pale and exhausted—“was married to his half-sister, and of fourteen children, only the three survived, all daughters. There are no MacArans in these hills now, only a few away to the north who were never taken into the breeding program… and few Dellerays, and the old line of Serrais died out; the Ridenow took the name when they married into that line. And my sister Kyria died in bearing a daughter, so that Melora and I brought up her child… Mirella is a leronis too, one of those kept virgin for the Sight, and I pray she may stay so, for I know she fears to die the same way.”

  Paul was not really in rapport with Melisendra now, but he could sense the waves of old, half-conquered fear; he remembered Melisendra had borne a child, and felt sudden sympathy for the terrors she must have known. Always before this he had had but little sympathy for the special problems of women; now it struck him with remorse. In his own world, a woman would have known enough to make certain sh
e was not at risk of pregnancy, but he had not bothered, here, to inquire, and it occurred to him, troubled, that Melisendra had not stopped to weigh the cost of their lovemaking.

  “It has begun to be lethal in our family,” she went on, almost absently—Paul wondered if she was talking to him, or trying to ease her own tensions and fears. “Erlend is healthy, the Goddess be praised, but already he has laran, and he is young for it… Bard is only distantly related to us, of course, and Kyria married a cousin, so that may be why… Melora and I must be careful to whom we bear children; even if we survive, the children may be stillborn… I do not think Mirella should have children at all. And there are certain laran gifts which could combine with mine so that I would not survive forty days of such a pregnancy. Fortunately those are rare now, but I do not think their virulence is wholly lost in the line, and since records are not now kept, and the old art of monitoring cell-deep is not known now, the last of those who knew all of it died before she could teach what she knew… None of us can know, when we bear a child, what may come of it. And some of these new weapons…” She shuddered and resolutely changed the subject again, but not much. “I was fortunate that Bard was not carrying any of that heredity. It was perhaps the only fortunate thing about that whole affair.”

  It took another day of marching before they came up with the armies of Serrais, and that meant another night encamped on the road. Under ordinary conditions, Paul did not even see Melisendra when they were with the army; but near the camp was a little grove of trees with a well, and when he strolled that way, as the nightly drizzle began to fall (Bard told him this was normal for the season, except in the high summer—what a climate!) Melisendra, wrapped in the gray cloak of a leronis, beckoned to him. They stood embracing for some minutes, but when he whispered to her, moving his head suggestively toward the concealing trees, she shook her head.