VI
A woman! And in that moment of amazement, she was quicker than he.
There was nothing to warn him, no least flicker of expression. Her twofists came up together between his outstretched arms and caught himunder the jaw with a force that nearly snapped his neck. He went overbackward, clean out of the saddle, and lay sprawled on the bloodystones, half stunned, the wind knocked out of him.
The woman wheeled her mount. Bending low, she took up the axe from whereit had fallen, and faced her warriors, who were as dazed as Stark.
"I have led you well," she said. "I have taken you Kushat. Will any mandispute me?"
They knew the axe, if they did not know her. They looked from side toside uneasily, completely at a loss, and Stark, still gasping on theground, thought that he had never seen anything as proud and beautifulas she was then in her black mail, with her bright hair blowing and herglance like blue lightning.
The nobles of Kushat chose that moment to charge. This strange unmaskingof the Mekhish lord had given them time to rally, and now they thoughtthat the Gods had wrought a miracle to help them. They found hope, wherethey had lost everything but courage.
"A wench!" they cried. "A strumpet of the camps. _A woman!_"
They howled it like an epithet, and tore into the barbarians.
She who had been the Lord Ciaran drove the spurs in deep, so that thebeast leaped forward screaming. She went, and did not look to see if anyhad followed, in among the men of Kushat. And the great axe rose andfell, and rose again.
She killed three, and left two others bleeding on the stones, and notonce did she look back.
The clansmen found their tongues.
"_Ciaran! Ciaran!_"
The crashing shout drowned out the sound of battle. As one man, theyturned and followed her.
Stark, scrambling for his life underfoot, could not forbear smiling.Their childlike minds could see only two alternatives--to slay her outof hand, or to worship her. They had chosen to worship. He thought thebards would be singing of the Lord Ciaran of Mekh as long as there weremen to listen.
He managed to take cover behind a wrecked booth, and presently make hisway out of the square. They had forgotten him, for the moment. He didnot wish to wait, just then, until they--or she--remembered.
She.
He still did not believe it, quite. He touched the bruise under his jawwhere she had struck him, and thought of the lithe, swift strength ofher, and the way she had ridden alone into battle. He remembered thedeath of Thord, and how she had kept her red wolves tamed, and he wasfilled with wonder, and a deep excitement.
He remembered what she had said to him once--_We are of one blood,though we be strangers._
He laughed, silently, and his eyes were very bright.
The tide of war had rolled on toward the King City, where from the soundof it there was hot fighting around the castle. Eddies of the mainstruggle swept shrieking through the streets, but the rat-runs under theWall were clear. Everyone had stampeded inward, the victims with thevictors close on their heels. The short northern day was almost gone.
He found a hiding place that offered reasonable safety, and settledhimself to wait.
Night came, but he did not move. From the sounds that reached him, thesacking of Kushat was in full swing. They were looting the richerstreets first. Their upraised voices were thick with wine, and mingledwith the cries of women. The reflection of many fires tinged the sky.
By midnight the sounds began to slacken, and by the second hour afterthe city slept, drugged with wine and blood and the weariness of battle.Stark went silently out into the streets, toward the King City.
According to the immemorial pattern of Martian city-states, the castlesof the king and the noble families were clustered together in solitarygrandeur. Many of the towers were fallen now, the great halls open tothe sky. Time had crushed the grandeur that had been Kushat, morefatally than the boots of any conqueror.
In the house of the king, the flamboys guttered low and the chieftainsof Mekh slept with their weary pipers among the benches of the banquethall. In the niches of the tall, carved portal, the guards nodded overtheir spears. They, too, had fought that day. Even so, Stark did not gonear them.
Shivering slightly in the bitter wind, he followed the bulk of themassive walls until he found a postern door, half open as some kitchenknave had left it in his flight. Stark entered, moving like a shadow.
* * * * *
The passageway was empty, dimly lighted by a single torch. A stairwaybranched off from it, and he climbed that, picking his way by guess andhis memories of similar castles he had seen in the past.
He emerged into a narrow hall, obviously for the use of servants. Atapestry closed the end, stirring in the chill draught that blew alongthe floor. He peered around it, and saw a massive, vaulted corridor, thestone walls panelled in wood much split and blackened by time, but stillshowing forth the wonderful carvings of beasts and men, larger than lifeand overlaid with gold and bright enamel.
From the corridor a single doorway opened--and Otar slept before it,curled on a pallet like a dog.
Stark went back down the narrow hall. He was sure that there must be aback entrance to the king's chambers, and he found the little door hewas looking for.
From there on was darkness. He felt his way, stepping with infinitecaution, and presently there was a faint gleam of light filtering aroundthe edges of another curtain of heavy tapestry.
He crept toward it, and heard a man's slow breathing on the other side.
He drew the curtain back, a careful inch. The man was sprawled on abench athwart the door. He slept the honest sleep of exhaustion, hissword in his hand, the stains of his day's work still upon him. He wasalone in the small room. A door in the farther wall was closed.
Stark hit him, and caught the sword before it fell. The man grunted onceand became utterly relaxed. Stark bound him with his own harness andshoved a gag in his mouth, and went on, through the door in the oppositewall.
The room beyond was large and high and full of shadows. A fire burnedlow on the hearth, and the uncertain light showed dimly the hangings andthe rich stuffs that carpeted the floor, and the dark, sparse shapes offurniture.
Stark made out the lattice-work of a covered bed, let into the wallafter the northern fashion.
She was there, sleeping, her red-gold hair the colour of the flames.
He stood a moment, watching her, and then, as though she sensed hispresence, she stirred and opened her eyes.
She did not cry out. He had known that she would not. There was no fearin her. She said, with a kind of wry humor, "I will have a word with myguards about this."
* * * * *
She flung aside the covering and rose. She was almost as tall as he,white-skinned and very straight. He noted the long thighs, the narrowloins and magnificent shoulders, the small virginal breasts. She movedas a man moves, without coquetry. A long furred gown, that Stark guessedhad lately graced the shoulders of the king, lay over a chair. She putit on.
"Well, wild man?"
"I have come to warn you." He hesitated over her name, and she said,
"My mother named me Ciara, if that seems better to you." She gave himher falcon's glance. "I could have slain you in the square, but now Ithink you did me a service. The truth would have come outsometime--better then, when they had no time to think about it." Shelaughed. "They will follow me now, over the edge of the world, if I askthem."
Stark said slowly, "Even beyond the Gates of Death?"
"Certainly, there. Above all, there!"
She turned to one of the tall windows and looked out at the cliffs andthe high notch of the pass, touched with greenish silver by the littlemoons.
"Ban Cruach was a great king. He came out of nowhere to rule theNorlands with a rod of iron, and men speak of him still as half a god.Where did he get his power, if not from beyond the Gates of Death? Whydid he go back there at the end
of his days, if not to hide away hissecret? Why did he build Kushat to guard the pass forever, if not tohoard that power out of reach of all the other nations of Mars?
"Yes, Stark. My men will follow me. And if they do not, I will goalone."
"You are not Ban Cruach. Nor am I." He took her by the shoulders."Listen, Ciara. You're already king in the Norlands, and half a legendas you stand. Be content."
"Content!" Her face was close to his, and he saw the blaze of it, thewhite intensity of ambition and an iron pride. "Are you content?" sheasked him. "Have you ever been content?"
He smiled. "For strangers, we do know each other well. No. But the spursare not so deep in me."
"The wind and the fire. One spends its strength in wandering, the otherdevours. But one can help the other. I made you an offer once, and yousaid you would not bargain unless you could look into my eyes. Looknow!"
He did, and his hands upon her shoulders trembled.
"No," he said harshly. "You're a fool, Ciara. Would you be as Otar, madwith what you have seen?"
"Otar is an old man, and likely crazed before he crossed the mountains.Besides--I am not Otar."
Stark said somberly, "Even the bravest may break. Ban Cruachhimself...."
She must have seen the shadow of that horror in his eyes, for he felther body tense.
"What of Ban Cruach? What do you know, Stark? Tell me!"
He was silent, and she went from him angrily.
"You have the talisman," she said. "That I am sure of. And if need be, Iwill flay you alive to get it!" She faced him across the room. "Butwhether I get it or not, I will go through the Gates of Death. I mustwait, now, until after the thaw. The warm wind will blow soon, and thegorges will be running full. But afterward, I will go, and no talk offears and demons will stop me."
She began to pace the room with long strides, and the full skirts of thegown made a subtle whispering about her.
"You do not know," she said, in a low and bitter voice. "I was agirl-child, without a name. By the time I could walk, I was a servant inthe house of my grandfather. The two things that kept me living werepride and hate. I left my scrubbing of floors to practice arms with theyoung boys. I was beaten for it every day, but every day I went. I kneweven then that only force would free me. And my father was a king's son,a good man of his hands. His blood was strong in me. I learned."
She held her head very high. She had earned the right to hold it so. Shefinished quietly,
"I have come a long way. I will not turn back now."
"Ciara." Stark came and stood before her. "I am talking to you as afighting man, an equal. There may be power behind the Gates of Death, Ido not know. But this I have seen--madness, horror, an evil that isbeyond our understanding.
"I think you will not accuse me of cowardice. And yet I would not gointo that pass for all the power of all the kings of Mars!"
Once started, he could not stop. The full force of that dark vision ofthe talisman swept over him again in memory. He came closer to her,driven by the need to make her understand.
"Yes, I have the talisman! And I have had a taste of its purpose. Ithink Ban Cruach left it as a warning, so that none would follow him. Ihave seen the temples and the palaces glitter in the ice. I have seenthe Gates of Death--_not with my own eyes, Ciara, but with his. With theeyes and the memories of Ban Cruach!_"
He had caught her again, his hands strong on her strong arms.
"Will you believe me, or must you see for yourself--the dreadful thingsthat walk those buried streets, the shapes that rise from nowhere in themists of the pass?"
Her gaze burned into his. Her breath was hot and sweet upon his lips,and she was like a sword between his hands, shining and unafraid.
"Give me the talisman. Let me see!"
He answered furiously, "You are mad. As mad as Otar." And he kissed her,in a rage, in a panic lest all that beauty be destroyed--a kiss asbrutal as a blow, that left him shaken.
* * * * *
She backed away slowly, one step, and he thought she would have killedhim. He said heavily:
"If you will see, you will. The thing is here."
He opened the boss and laid the crystal in her outstretched hand. He didnot meet her eyes.
"Sit down. Hold the flat side against your brow."
She sat, in a great chair of carven wood. Stark noticed that her handwas unsteady, her face the colour of white ash. He was glad she did nothave the axe where she could reach it. She did not play at anger.
For a long moment she studied the intricate lens, the incredibledepository of a man's mind. Then she raised it slowly to her forehead.
He saw her grow rigid in the chair. How long he watched beside her henever knew. Seconds, an eternity. He saw her eyes turn blank andstrange, and a shadow came into her face, changing it subtly, alteringthe lines, so that it seemed almost a stranger was peering through herflesh.
All at once, in a voice that was not her own, she cried out terribly,"_Oh gods of Mars!_"
The talisman dropped rolling to the floor, and Ciara fell forward intoStark's arms.
He thought at first that she was dead. He carried her to the bed, in anagony of fear that surprised him with its violence, and laid her down,and put his hand over her heart.
It was beating strongly. Relief that was almost a sickness swept overhim. He turned, searching vaguely for wine, and saw the talisman. Hepicked it up and put it back inside the boss. A jewelled flagon stood ona table across the room. He took it and started back, and then,abruptly, there was a wild clamor in the hall outside and Otar wasshouting Ciara's name, pounding on the door.
It was not barred. In another moment they would burst through, and heknew that they would not stop to enquire what he was doing there.
He dropped the flagon and went out swiftly, the way he had come. Theguard was still unconscious. In the narrow hall beyond, Stark hesitated.A woman's voice was rising high above the tumult in the main corridor,and he thought he recognized it.
He went to the tapestry curtain and looked for the second time aroundits edge.
The lofty space was full of men, newly wakened from their heavy sleepand as nervous as so many bears. Thanis struggled in the grip of two ofthem. Her scarlet kirtle was torn, her hair flying in wild elf-locks,and her face was the face of a mad thing. The whole story of the doom ofKushat was written large upon it.
She screamed again and again, and would not be silenced.
"Tell her, the witch that leads you! Tell her that she is already doomedto death, with all her army!"
Otar opened up the door of Ciara's room.
Thanis surged forward. She must have fled through all that castle beforeshe was caught, and Stark's heart ached for her.
"You!" she shrieked through the doorway, and poured out all the filth ofthe quarter upon Ciara's name. "Balin has gone to bring doom upon you!He will open wide the Gates of Death, and then you willdie!--die!--_die!_"
Stark felt the shock of a terrible dread, as he let the curtain fall.Mad with hatred against conquerors, Balin had fulfilled his ragingpromise and had gone to fling open the Gates of Death.
Remembering his nightmare vision of the shining, evil ones whom BanCruach had long ago prisoned beyond those gates, Stark felt a sicknessgrow within him as he went down the stair and out the postern door.
It was almost dawn. He looked up at the brooding cliffs, and it seemedto him that the wind in the pass had a sound of laughter that mocked hisgrowing dread.
He knew what he must do, if an ancient, mysterious horror was not to bereleased upon Kushat.
_I may still catch Balin before he has gone too far! If I don't--_
He dared not think of that. He began to walk very swiftly through thenight streets, toward the distant, towering Gates of Death.