'Hate me, Lyfeth of Ghant,' said Ilian, for Lyfeth's ears only. 'You need do no more. But listen to me, also, for I do not come to betray you.'
Lyfeth bit her lower lip. Once she had been beautiful - more beautiful than Ilian - but now her face had hardened and her skin was pale, rough. Her hair had been cut short, to the nape of her neck. She wore no ornament. Her patched smock was green, to blend with the foliage, and belted at the waist with a broad, woven belt, at which hung her sword and dagger. Her legs were bare and she wore tough-soled sandals on her feet. Her garb was no different from that worn by most here. With her chain-mail jerkin and leggings, Ilian felt almost overdressed.
'Whether you came to betray us or not this time, that's not important,' said Lyfeth. 'For there would still be every reason to punish you for Bradne's death. An uncivilised opinion, I know, Ilian. But I feel it strongly. However, if you have the means of defeating Ymryl, then we should listen to you. Katinka van Bak's reasoning is good.' Lyfeth turned away, letting Ilian's head drop again. 'Cut them down!'
'The Yellow Horn will soon make plans to attack the west," said Jhary-a-Conel. His cat had returned to his shoulder and he stroked it absently as he told Mysenal and the others of all he had discovered through its help. 'Who rules in the west now, do you know?'
'One called Kagat Bearclaw had the cities of Bekthorm and Rivensz under his sway," said Lyfeth, "but more recent news suggests that he was murdered by a rival and that two or three rule there now, among them one called Arnald of Grovent, who has little resemblance to a man, but is blessed with the body of a lion and the face of an ape, though he walks on two legs.'
'A Chaos creature,' mused Jhary-a-Conel. 'There are so many here. It is as if Garathorm has become a world to which all those who serve Chaos are banished! An unpleasant thought.'
There had been two other large cities in the west, Ilian recalled. 'What of Poytarn and Masgha?' she asked.
Mysenal looked surprised. 'You have not heard. A vast explosion destroyed Masgha - and destroyed all those within it. It was nought to do with those who resist the conquerors, by all accounts. They destroyed themselves, by accident. Some sorcerous experiment, no doubt.'
'And Poytarn?'
'Looted, razed and abandoned. Those who did it rode to the coast, doubtless hoping to find other rich pickings. They'll be disappointed. The sea villages would be deserted. Those who lived on the coast were the luckiest of us. Many were able to put to sea and escape to distant islands before the invaders found them. The invaders have no ships and thus could not pursue them. I hope they fare well. We would attempt to follow them, if there were any ships left.'
'They have made counter-attacks?'
'Not yet,' said Lyfeth. 'Soon, we hope.'
'Or not at all,' said someone else. 'They probably have enough sense to bide their time - or merely forget the problems of the mainland.'
'Still, they are potential allies," said Katinka van Bak. 'I had not realised so many had escaped.'
'But we cannot contact them," Lyfeth pointed out patiently. 'No ships.'
'There might be other means devised. But we must consider that later.'
Ilian said: 'It seems to me that Ymryl places much faith in that yellow horn he wears ever about his neck. If that could be stolen from him or destroyed by some means, it would weaken his confidence. Perhaps he even draws his power from the horn, as he believes. If so, there would be even more reason to part him from it.'
'A good thought,' said Mysenal. 'But hard to accomplish. Would you not say so, Katinka van Bak?'
Katinka nodded. 'However, it is an important factor, and something we must continue to consider.' She sniffed and rubbed at her nose. 'The first thing we need are some better weapons that these. Something a little more modern, in my terms. Flame-lances and the like. If each of us was armed with a flame-lance, we should immediately triple our striking power. How many are here, Lyfeth?'
'Fifty-three.'
'So we need fifty-four good weapons - the extra one being for Jhary here, who has weapons as primitive as yours. Weapons which depend upon a power source...'
‘I follow your reasoning,' Jhary said. 'You see a certain expenditure of resources by Ymryl and the other, when they eventually do war on each other. If we are then in possession of weapons like flame-lances, we shall have a considerable advantage, no matter how small our numbers.'
'Exactly. But the problem is how to capture such a large supply, eh?'
'It could mean a visit to Garathorm itself,' said Ilian. She stood up, stretching her bruised muscles and wincing. She had stripped off her chain armour and was now dressed in a green smock like the others. She had made every effort to show her ex-friends that she wished to be accepted as one of them. 'For that is where we should find such weapons.'
'And death,' said Lyfeth. 'We should find death there, too.'
'We should have to disguise ourselves.' Katinka van Bak stroked her lips.
'Better,' said Jhary-a-Conel, 'we should bring the weapons to us.'
'What do you mean?' Ilian asked him.
Chapter Five
The Raid On Virinthorm
There were eight.
Ilian was in the fore. She was dressed again in her shining chain armour, with her helmet on her golden hair, a slender sword in her gauntleted hand.
She led the remaining seven along the wide branches of the trees, balancing expertly, for she had trodden the tree-roads since she was a child.
Virinthorm was ahead.
Slung on her back was one of their two flame-lances. The other was back at the camp, with Katinka van Bak.
Ilian paused as they reached the outskirts of Virinthorm and could see the city's conquerors moving about in the streets.
Virinhorm had, over the months, become a series of smaller townships. Each township attracted groups or races of men or other creatures to it, so that those from similar eras or similar worlds or those who resembled each other physically would band together.
The township on which Ilian and her small band now spied was one which they had selected specially. It was made up mainly of folk who resembled mankind in many ways and yet who were not men.
The features of these people - who were drawn from many spheres and eras - were familiar to Ilian. Indeed, now that she looked upon them, she had a great reluctance to put her plan into action. They were tall and slender, with slanting, almond eyes, ears which came almost to points. While the eyes of some of them were like those of ordinary men, others had eyes that were purple and yellow, others had eyes that were flecks of blue and silver which sparkled constantly. They seemed a proud and intelligent people and were plainly given to avoiding most of their fellows. Yet Ilian also knew that these could be cruellest of all the invaders.
'Call them Eldren, call them Vadhagh, call them Melniboneans,' Jhary-a-Conel had said to her, 'but remember that these are renegades all of some kind, else they would not league themselves with Ymryl. And doubtless they also serve Chaos as willingly as does Ymryl. Feel no regret for what you do."
Ilian drew the flame-lance off her back, then began to work her way round to the far side of the unhumans' enclave. On this side dwelled a group of warriors who had all been born at the end of or immediately after the Tragic Millenium. As a group, they were one of the best armed. Each man had at least one flame-lance.
It was about an hour to dusk. Ilian judged her moment the right one. She picked out an unhuman warrior at random, pointed the flame-lance with a skill she had no right to possess and touched the jewelled stud. Immediately a beam of red light issued from the ruby tip and burned a clean hole through the breastplate of the warrior, through his torso and through the backplate on the other side. Ilian released the stud and moved back into the leafier branches to watch what would happen next.
Already a crowd had gathered around the corpse. Many of the eldritch-featured men pointed at once towards the neighbouring camp. Swords slipped from scabbards. Ilian heard oaths, a babble of rage. Her plan had worked so
far. The unhumans had drawn the obvious conclusion that one of their number had been murdered by those to whom the flame-lance was their first weapon.
Leaving the corpse where it lay about thirty of the unhumans, all dressed in a variety of styles of clothing and armour, each looking faintly different to the other, began to run towards the neighbouring camp.
Ilian smiled as she watched them. Her old pleasure in fighting and tactics was returning.
She saw the unhumans gesticulating as they reached the other camp. She saw warriors come running out of their houses, buckling on swords. She knew that Ymryl had banned the use of power weapons within the confines of the camp and that this made the crime doubly treacherous. Yet she did not expect a fully-fledged fight to develop yet. She had noticed that the discipline of the camp though crude was effective and designed to stop such squabbles between different factions.
Now Tragic Millenium swords flashed in the dying light of the sun, but still they were not used. A man who was obviously the leader of the unhumans was deep in argument with the chief of the humans. Then both groups trooped back to the unhumans' camp to inspect the corpse. Again the Tragic Millenium leader was plainly denying that his men had anything to do with the murder. He indicated that they were all only armed with swords and knives. Still the unhuman leader was not mollified. The source of the beam seemed obvious to him. Then the human chief pointed in the direction of his own camp and again the warriors stalked across the space between their camps. Here the human pointed to a sturdily built house whose doors and windows were heavily padlocked. He sent one of his men away. The man returned with a bunch of keys. The keys were used to open one of the doors. By straining her eyes Ilian could just see inside. As she had hoped, this was the house where the flame-lances were stored. It was one of the necessary things she had to know before she could continue. Now, as the two factions separated, not without exchanging many scowls, she and her band settled down to wait for night.
They lay in the boughs overlooking the Tragic Millenium camp, almost directly over the flame-lance storehouse.
Ilian signed to the nearest youth who nodded and drew an exquisitely made dagger from his shirt. This was a captured dagger, belonging to the unhumans. Silently, the young man dropped down through the trees until he stood in the shadows of the street. He waited for nearly half-an-hour before a warrior came strolling by. Then he leapt from the dark. One arm went around the throat of the warrior. The dagger rose. The dagger fell. The warrior screamed. Again the dagger struck. Again the warrior screamed. The young man was not striking for the death, but to inflict pain, to force the warrior to yell out.
The third blow was the death blow. The dagger jutted through the man's throat as his corpse fell to the ground. The youth jumped up and began to climb up the side of a house, jumping into the lower branches of a tree and then disappearing as he climbed higher to rejoin his comrades.
This time the scene was enacted from the point of view of the Tragic Millenium soldiers who came running to discover the body with the unhuman dagger sticking in its throat.
It was obvious to them what happened. In spite of their innocence. In spite of their protestations, the unhumans had taken a cowardly vengeance on them for a crime they could not possibly have committed.
As one man the Tragic Millenium soldiers raced towards the unhumans' camp.
And that was when Ilian dropped from her tree onto the roof of the armoury. Swiftly she slung her own flame-lance from her back and directed its beam close to her feet, cutting a circle large enough to admit her body. Meanwhile the others had joined her on the roof. One of them held her flame-lance as she lowered herself into the building.
She was in a loft. The lances were plainly stored in the rooms below. She found a trap-door and eased it open, dropping into deeper darkness. Slowly her eyes became used to the gloom. A little light came through chinks in the shutters on the windows. She had found some of the lances, at least. She went back the way she had come and signalled for all but one of her band to follow her. While they began to remove the lances, forming a human chain to take them out of the opening she had carved, she explored the lower rooms, finding more lances there, as well as a variety of edged weapons, including some fine throwing axes. These she had to ignore, and it would not be possible to steal more than sixty or so of the lances in the time they had, for there was also the question of carrying them back to their own camp. As she turned to go something came to mind. How did she know that the tips of the lances unscrewed from their shafts? She did not stop to wonder on this but crossed to where she had seen the lances stacked and began to unscrew the ruby tips. As she unscrewed them she picked up a well-balanced axe, placed the tip upon the floor and smashed the axe not on the ruby, which would not break, but upon the stem which screwed into the shaft, denting it so that they would have considerable difficulty in repairing their lances. It was the best she could do.
She heard voices outside. She crossed silently to the nearest window and looked down.
Other soldiers had appeared in the street. These looked like those Ymryl had made into his personal guard. They had doubtless been sent to quell the trouble. Ilian admired Ymryl's efficiency. He never seemed to care about such things, yet he always reacted swiftly when there was any danger of disruption in his camp. Already the soldiers were yelling at the embattled unhumans and Tragic Millenium humans, forcing them to lay down their weapons.
Ilian climbed back to where her band was getting the last of the flame-lances through the hole.
'Go,' she whispered. 'The danger increases. Leave now.'
'You, Queen Ilian?' said the youth who had killed the soldier.
'I'll follow. There is something I must try to finish here.'
She watched until the last of her band had disappeared and then she went back to unscrew the tips of the few remaining flame-lances. Smashing the axe down on the last, she heard a yell, a commotion. Again she peered through the crack in the shutter.
Men were pointing at the roof of the building. Ilian looked round for her own flame-lance and then realised that it had gone with her comrades. She had only her sword. She ran up the stairs, reached the loft, jumped and swung up through the hole she had herself made.
They had seen her.
And that was when an arrow whistled past her shoulder, so close that involuntarily she ducked back, lost her footing on the roof beam and fell down the sloping roof towards the ground on the other side of the house. But men were already running here. She managed to grasp a gable as she went over the edge. Her arms were almost pulled from her body as she swung there with arrows whistling on all sides. One or two arrows struck her helmet and mail, but did not penetrate. She got a foothold somewhere and pushed herself back up again, crouching behind the gable as she ran along, searching for a branch low enough to jump for. But there was no such branch. Now figures were appearing above her. They had found what had happened to their weapons and where she had entered. She could hear their angry shouts and she was glad she had gone back to destroy every one of the flame-lances. If they had had them now, she would be dead already. She reached the far end of the roof and prepared to jump to the next. It was her only means of escape.
She launched herself into space, hands clutching for the gable of that house. She grasped the carved wood and felt it give sickeningly beneath her weight. She hung there, thinking she would fall, but the gable held and she hauled herself up. They had realised where she was and more arrows sought her. She jumped from that roof to another, closer, realising with despair that she was moving deeper and deeper into the city as they pursued her. She prayed that she would eventually come to a spot where a branch brushed the roofs. In the trees she had a much better chance of escape. She was consoled, at least, that her comrades were getting away in the other direction.
Three more roofs and they had lost her for the moment. She breathed in relief. But it was a matter of time before they caught her, she was sure.
If she could get into one
of the houses and hide, then they would assume she had escaped. When the pursuit died down it would not be too difficult to leave at her leisure.
She saw an unlit house ahead.
That would do.
She jumped across the gap between the roofs, landed, swung over the edge of the roof and down to a window ledge. Crouching on the ledge she forced open the shutters and crept in, drawing the shutters to behind her.
She was tired. The chain-mail was heavy on her body. She wished she had time to remove it. Without it, she could jump higher, climb faster. But it was too late to worry about such things now.
The room in which she found herself smelled musky as if the windows had not been opened for a long time. As she moved across it, she bumped her knee against something. A chest? A bed?
And then she heard a stifled moan.
Ilian peered into the gloom.
A figure lay upon a rumpled bed. It was the figure of a woman.
And she was bound.
Was this some fellow-citizen whom one of the invaders was keeping prisoner? Ilian bent forward to remove the gag which had been tightly drawn about the girl's mouth.
'Who are you?' Ilian whispered. 'Do not fear me. I'll save you if that's possible, though I'm in great danger myself.'
And then Ilian gasped as the gag came free.
She recognised the face.
It was the face of a ghost.
Ilian felt terror shiver through her body. It was a terror that she could not name. A terror which she had never felt before, for while she recognized the face, she could not name it.
Neither could she remember where, in all her life, she had seen it before.
She tried to stop her impulse to shrink away from the bound figure on the bed.
"Who are you?' said the woman.
Chapter Six
The Wrong Champion