Web of the Witch World

5 RED MORNING

“SIGNAL FLAGS!” One of the knot of men at the prow of the coaster, now being worked by sweeps up the golden river in the early morning, nodded to the flutter of colored strips from a pole on the bank beside the first wharf of Kars.

He who wore a surcoat gaudily emblazoned with a fish, horns on snout and sloping, scaled head against a crimson square, stirred, his hand going to his belt.

“Expected?” He made an important question of that one word.

His companion smiled. “For what we seem, yes. But that is as it should be. It remains to be seen now whether Yvian is ready to welcome his father-in-law per ax with kindness or the sword. We walk into the serpent’s open mouth, and that can snap shut before our reinforcements arrive.”

There was a low laugh from the third member of the party. “Any serpent closing his jaws upon us, Ingvald, is like to get several feet of good steel rammed up through its backbone! There is this about blank shields—they are loyal to the man who pays them, but remove that man and they are willing to see reason. Let us deal with Yvian and we shall speedily have Kars thus!” He held out a brown hand, palm up and slowly curled fingers inward to form a fist.

Simon-Fulk was wary of Koris’ impetuous estimate of the odds. He did not underrate either the seneschal’s fighting ability nor his leadership, but he did question this feverish drive which kept the other at the prow of the coaster all the way up river, staring ahead as if his will could add to their speed. Their crew were Sulcarmen who, as merchants, had made this run before and knew every trick of inducing speed, all of which they had brought into action since they had entered the river’s mouth.

In the meantime, the main force of the Estcarpian invaders were coming down through the foothills, ready to dash for Kars when the signal came and that signal . . . Simon-Fulk, for the dozenth time since they had boarded the coaster, glanced at the tall basket cage now draped in a loose cover. In it was the Falconer’s addition to their party. Not one of the black-and-white hawks which served the tough mountain fighters as scouting eyes and ears and battle comrades—trained not only to report, but also to fly at the enemy in attack, but a bird which could not be so easily recognized as belonging to Estcarp’s allies.

Larger than those hawks which rode at Falconer saddle bows, its plumage was blue-gray, lightening to white on the head and tail. Five such had been discovered overseas by Falconers serving as marines on Sulcar ships.

And these had been bred and trained now for three generations. Too heavy to serve as did the regular hawks, they were used as messengers, since they had a homing instinct, and the ability to defend themselves in the air.

For Simon-Fulk’s purpose this bird was excellent. He did not dare take one of the regular hawks into Kars, since only Falconers used those birds. But this new breed because of its beauty would catch the attention, and it had been trained to hunt, so that Yvian would welcome it as a gift.

Ten men, a bird and a whole city against them. This was a wild and foolish expedition on the face of it. Yet once before four of them had invaded this same Kars and had come out with their lives and more. Four of them! Simon’s hand slipped back and forth along the ornaments on Fulk’s belt. Three of them now—himself, Koris and somewhere, hidden in those buildings, Loyse. But the fourth? Do not think of her now. Wonder why she had not returned, why she had allowed him to hear secondhand from the witch at Verlaine that her mission had failed. Where was she—nursing that hurt? But she had accepted the cost of marriage between them, had come to him first! Why—

“We have welcomers, Lord!” Ingvald drew Simon’s attention to the here and now.

A file of men at arms, surcoated alike with the badge of Yvian—a mailed fist holding aloft an ax—were on the wharf. Simon’s fingers closed on his dart gun, the edge of his cloak discreetly veiling that movement. But on a barked order from their officer the waiting squad clapped their bared hands together and then raised them for an instant, palm out and shoulder high, the greeting of a friendly salute. Thus they were welcomed to Kars.

There was another turn out of barehanded, saluting troops at the citadel gate. And, as far as they had been able to judge on their march through the city, life in Kars flowed smoothly, no sign of unease.

But when they had been ushered with the formality of court etiquette into the suite of chambers in the mid-bulk of the citadel, Simon beckoned Ingvald and Koris to a bowed window. The seven they had brought with them from Verlaine remained by the door. Simon indicated them.

“Why here?”

Koris was frowning. “Yes, why?”

“Bottle us all up together,” Ingvald suggested. “And if such handling gives us warning, they apparently do not care. Also—where is Yvian, or at least his constable? We were escorted by a sergeant-at-arms, no one of higher rank. We may be in guests’ quarters, but they skimp badly on the courtesy.”

“There is more wrong than insult for Fulk in this.” Simon pulled off the dead man’s ornate helm and leaned his head against the wall where a breeze ruffled the heavy forelock of red-gold hair which he had borne from the shape-changing. “To pen us together is a security move. And Yvian has no reason to honor Fulk. But here there is more—” He closed his eyes, tried to make that mysterious sixth sense deliver other than just the warning which had been growing stronger every step he took into the enemy’s hold.

“A sending—there is a sending?” Koris demanded.

Simon opened his eyes. Once a sending had brought him into Kars, a dull pain in his head which marched him, hot, cold, hot, down streets and alleyways to Jaelithe’s lodging. No, what he was feeling now was not the same as that. This—it drew him forward, yes—but that was not all. He tingled with a kind of anticipation, such as one felt on the verge of taking some irrevocable step. But also it was not altogether concerned with him. Rather as if he now moved on the edge of some action; brushed by it, but not the true focus point.

“No sending,” he made belated answer. “There is something here on the move . . .”

Koris shifted the ax on which he leaned. Volt’s gift was never far from his hand. But for his entrance into Kars it had been disguised with leaf foil and paint into the ornament weapon of a lord’s constable.

“The ax grows alive,” he commented. “Volt—” His voice sank to a whisper which could not reach beyond the window bay. “Volt guide us!”

“We are in the main block,” he added more briskly, and Simon knew that Koris was reviewing mentally the plan of Kars’ citadel as they had learned it from reports. “Yvian’s private chambers are in the north tower. The upper corridor should have no more than a pair of guards at its far end.” He moved towards the door of their own suite.

“How so?” Ingvald looked to Simon. “Do we wait or move now?”

They had planned to wait, but this compulsion Simon could sense . . . Perhaps the bold move was the right one.

“Waldis!” One of the men in Verlaine livery looked up alertly. “We have need for a sack of the bird’s grain; it was forgotten in the ship—you seek to send a messenger for it.”

Simon pulled aside the covering of the hawk’s basket. Those bright eyes, not golden as was usual in that breed, but dark, regarded him intently, having in them a measure of intelligence—not human kind—but yet intelligence. He had never given the bird more than passing heed before, but now he watched it closely as he put hand to the fastening of its prison.

The feathered head turned, away from him, to the door of the room, as if the white one also listened, or strove to hear what could not be picked up by any ear. Then the curved beak opened and the bird uttered a piercing scream at the same moment Simon caught it too—that troubling of the very air about them.

Koris stared at Volt’s gift. The shallow disguise of foil could not hide the gleam of the ax head, not brilliant as from sunlight on the burnished metal, but as if the weapon had, for an instant, held fire in its substance.

And as suddenly that flash was gone.

The wide, white wings of the hawk fluttered and for the second time the bird screamed. Simon unlatched the cage door, held out his wrist and arm as a bridge. The weight of the bird was a burden, it could never have been carried so, but he held steady as it emerged. Then it fluttered over to perch on the back of a chair.

One of the Borderers held back the door and Waldis came in. He was breathing in great panting gasps and his sword was in his hand, the point of it dripping red.

“They have gone mad!” he burst out. “They are hunting men through the halls, cutting them down—” It could not be Estcarp forces; they had not yet flown their signal! Nothing to do with them—unless something had gone widely wrong. Ingvald caught the boy’s shoulder, drew him closer to Simon.

“Who hunts? Who fights?” he demanded harshly.

“I do not know. All of them by their badges are the duke’s men. I heard one shout to get the duke—that he was with his new wife—”

Koris’ breath hissed. “I think it is time to move.” He was already at the door. Simon looked to the bird mantling on the chair back.

“Open the window casement,” he ordered the nearest Borderer. He was being rushed, but that turmoil inside him was a sense of time running out. And if there was already trouble within the citadel they had best make use of that. He motioned and the hawk took off, out through the window, setting a straight course for those waiting. Then Simon turned and ran after Koris.

There was a dead man lying face up at the end of the hallway—his face gone loose and blank. And he wore no mail, but the tunic of some official by its richness, the small badge of Yvian’s service on one shoulder. Ingvald paused by the body long enough to point out a small rod of office, broken in two as if the dead man had used it in a futile attempt to ward off the blow which had cut him down.

“Steward,” the Borderer officer commented. But Simon had noted something else, the inset belt about the other’s loose over-robe. Three rosettes, each set with a small wink of red gem in their heart. But where the fourth should have been to complete a balanced pattern was another ornament, a twined and twisted knot, the same as on the belt taken from Fulk, which he, Simon, now wore. Some new trick of fashion or—?

But Koris was already well up the stairs leading to the next floor, the path which would take them to Yvian’s apartments and Loyse—if they were lucky. This was no time to speculate about belt ornaments.

They could hear uproar now, distant shouting, the clash of arms. Clearly an all-out struggle of some kind was in progress.

A shout from above, demanding. Then the thud of hollow sounding blows. Simon and Koris burst almost together from the stairwell to see men trying to force the door at the far end of the corridor. Two swung a bench as a battering ram, while others of their fellows stood, weapons in hand, waiting for the splintering barrier to give.

“Yaaaah—” No real war cry, but a shattering scream of rage, out of Koris, as if all the impatience and frustration in him was boiling free. With a feline leap he was halfway along the hall. Two of the Karstenians heard him, turned to face this new attack. Simon shot and both went down, one after the other, the darts finding marks. He was never good in cut-and-thrust melee, having come too late to the learning of sword play, and the niceties of ax attack were not for him. But there were few among either the Guard of Estcarp or the Borderers who could equal his marksmanship with a dart gun.

“Yaaaaah!” Koris overleaped the first body, fenced the other toppling man with a shoulder. Now Volt’s gift was doing bloody work with those at the battering ram.

Taking no heed for his back, Koris brought the ax down upon the door, and then sprawled forward as whatever bar had held it gave way. The swirl of Borderers had overtaken the remaining Karstenians, passed on after a moment of tight fast work, leaving only dead and dying behind.

Koris was already across the room, now snatching at a hanging to uncover a second and narrower stair. He seemed so sure of his objective that Simon followed without question. Another hall above and, halfway down it, a patch of yellow. Koris grabbed at that, and the folds of a travel cloak billowed out. He tossed it from him as he turned to face the only closed door.

There was no bar here. The first peck of the ax sent it crashing open and they looked into a bed chamber where the bed stood denuded of curtains, its coverings ripped and torn, sliding to the floor in an ominously stained muddle. The man whose fingers were still tightly clawed into those coverlets lay face down. But his legs moved feebly as they watched, striving perhaps to lift him again. Koris stalked forward and put hand to the hunched shoulder, rolled him over.

Simon had never seen Yvian of Karsten, but now he did not mistake the harsh jut of chin, the sandy brows which were a bushy bar across the nose. The sleekness of soft living had not altogether wiped away the forceful mercenary who had fought battles to become my lord duke.

He wore only a loose over-robe which had fallen apart at Koris’ handling so that the powerful body, seamed with old scars, was bare, save for a wide, wet, red band at his middle His breath came in great sobbing gulps, and with every moment of his arching chest, that band grew wider.

Koris kneeled beside the duke, so that he could look into Yvian’s face, meet his eyes.

“Where is she?” It was asked with no outer heat, merely a determination to be answered. But Simon doubted if any words could now reach Yvian.

“Where—is—she?” Koris repeated. Under his hand the ax moved, catching light from the window, reflecting it into Yvian’s face.

It seemed to Simon that the dying man’s attention was not for his questioner, but rather centered on that uncanny weapon, long since fashioned by a non-human smith. Yvian’s lips moved, shaped a word, and then a second audible enough—

“Volt—” He made an effort which was visible, looking from the ax to him who held it. And there was a kind of puzzlement in his eyes. Koris must have guessed the source of that for he leaned the closer to speak.

“Volt’s ax—and I am he who bears it—Koris of Gorm!”

But Yvian’s only answer was a ghostly grin, a stretch of lips which matched the slash of his death wound. He struggled to speak a moment later.

“Gorm, is it? Then you will know your masters. I wish them well—hell-cat—”

One hand freed its hold on the covers and he struck up, his closed fist merely touching Koris’ jaw before it fell limply back, that last effort having carried him over the final border into the waiting dark.

Save for Yvian they found these chambers bare, nor were the other two entrances unbarred. Koris, who had led that whirlwind search, came back wide-eyed.

“She was here!”

Simon agreed to that, but Yvian’s dying words were in his mind. Why had the duke spoke of “your masters” and connected that with Gorm? For Estcarp he would more rightly have said, “your mistresses.” All Karsten knew that the council of witches ruled the north. But Gorm had had grim masters—the Kolder! Someone had started the fighting here, and it had not been Estcarp work. Loyse was gone; Yvian given his death wound.

But they had little time to search farther. A band of the duke’s guards came seeking their commander and the Borderers needs must fight their way to make a stand elsewhere.

It was late night and Estcarp was indeed in Kars, when Simon slumped in a chair and chewed at a strip of meat, trying to listen to reports, to assess what had been done here.

“We cannot continue to hold Kars,” Guttorm of the Falconers slopped wine from a bottle into a cup, his hand shaking with fatigue. He had led the vans which had cut their way in from the north gate and he had been ten hours at the business of reaching where he now sat.

“We never intended to do so,” Simon swallowed his mouthful to answer. “What we came here to do—”

“Is not done!” The full thud was Koris’ ax punctuating his speech, haft butt against the floor. “She is not in the city, unless they have hidden her away so that even the witch can not sense her, and that I do not believe!”

Ingvald settled a slinged arm with a grimace of pain.

“Nor do I. But the witch says there is no trace. It is as if she never was—or now is—”

Simon stirred. “And there is one way of hiding which blanks out the power—”

“Kolder,” Koris replied evenly. Simon thought that he already had accepted that dour possibility.

“Kolder,” Simon agreed. “What have we learned from our prisoners—that suddenly, shortly after dawn yesterday, within the citadel some of the officers were given messages, all purporting to come from the duke, all definitely ordering them to quietly assemble the men under their command and then move in on each other! Each commander was told that one of his own fellows was the traitor. Could anything cause greater confusion? Then, unable to reach Yvian, even when they were beginning to realize their orders were wrong, the fighting became more intense as the rumor spread that Yvian had been killed by this one or that.”

“A cover, and none of our doing,” Guttorm stated, “it was only Yvian’s own force involved.”

“A cover,” Simon nodded. “And the only act which might be so covered was Yvian’s death. With his forces sadly split, too broken to organize a hunt for any murderer.”

“Maybe not just Yvian,” Koris broke in, “maybe also—Loyse!”

“But why?” Frankly that puzzled Simon. Unless—his tired mind moved slowly but it moved—unless Kolder wanted her for bait.

“I do not know, but I shall find out!” Once more the butt of Volt’s gift struck the floor with emphatic force.