Dark Lord of Derkholm (41 page)

It was just as well this was a much smaller valley, Derk thought when they reached it. Now half the legions and a third of the mercenaries were gone, the Forces of Good, up among the trees opposite on the hill that hid the lake in the next valley, were small indeed. Kit had had his work cut out to plan their victory convincingly. Their own side was smaller, too, but this was because people had been killed. Kit called this natural wastage. Derk wished he wouldn't. He gave the signal to advance.

Both sides shouted and began moving downhill. As the front lines closed on one another, Kit as usual rose majestically from behind Derk's lines, twice the size and with the illusion of a dark shadow riding on his back, and circled above the fighting, uttering dreadful screams. It was always awesome. Derk stared upward admiringly. Kit looked almost as big as Scales. He blocked off the light.

Movement caught the corner of Derk's eye. He turned sharply to the right. Half the soldiers there were down on one knee on the hillside, bending longbows, aiming upward. The glimpse he had of the nearest face did not look bespelled in the least. What the—? Derk slapped a hasty and ragged stasis spell out there. Bowstrings twanged, and most of the arrows looped harmlessly around the hillside. But almost at the same time, Don screamed a warning from Derk's left, and behind Don's scream, Derk heard the breathy
whuff
of a flight of arrows truly aimed. He whirled that way to see arrows storming into the sky and the soldiers on that side punching the air, capering about waving longbows, and pointing triumphantly.

Above the valley Kit screamed even more dreadfully and lurched in the air. Two black stalks were sticking out of his chest. Another black stalk was slantwise into one wing. As Derk stared, scarcely able to credit this, the shadowy figure vanished from Kit's back and the mighty black illusion shrank. Kit was suddenly a black griffin half the size, tumbling and shrieking and turning in the air. One wing was flailing uselessly, whirling Kit upside down. Then he fell like a stone and plunged out of sight beyond the opposite trees. Only some big black flight feathers were left, twirling above the hill. All around, the soldiers cheered and shouted their hatred and joy. They had been out to kill Kit, and they had.

Beside Derk, Callette spread her wings. “Stay where you are!” Derk snapped. “And you, Don.”

He translocated himself, messily, and so jerkily that half of him seemed to be still in the valley for a second, among a battle that was breaking up into chaos. His own side was fighting itself. The werewolves, the monsters, and King Luther's men threw themselves upon the soldiers in black. Groups of Pilgrims, cheering lustily at what they took to be the death of the Dark Lord, raced across the valley to join in, while the legions and most of the dwarfs and mercenaries hung back, bewildered by this. It was not part of the plan. They only moved when the fanatics stormed out of the woods and began attacking everyone impartially. As Derk arrived among the trees at the top of the opposite hill, the valley became full of a seething free-for-all. He knew he should have told Don and Callette to get to safety. They were going to be killed, too.

But the lake was below him, long and blue-brown. He was in time to see the reflections of trees in it tossing and breaking in the great ring of waves where Kit had gone down. Bubbles came out of the center for a moment and then stopped. By the time Don and Callette arrived, Derk was staring at the very last ripples lapping the shore.

“I told you—” he began. Then he gave up. “What's the use? Did either of you see Prince Talithan?”

“He went into that green haze,” Don said. “All the elves did when the fanatics came out.”

“Barnabas went, too,” Callette said sourly. “He knew I was going to pull his head off.”

Derk looked at her and saw blood on her beak and her talons. But it did not seem to be her own blood, so he did not let it worry him. His mind seemed to have closed down into a very small space. There was only one thing in it. “Follow me back to camp, both of you,” he said, and translocated again.

In the camp, he collected the dogs, the pigs, and the Friendly Cows into a huddle and called Talithan. As Callette and Don landed by the river, the green haze swung and Talithan stood on the shale beside them. He was pale and breathing heavily, but he bowed politely to Derk. “You have need of me, Lord?”

“Yes. Come over here,” Derk called to the griffins. “Talithan, do one more thing for me. Then you can collect Pretty from the Horselady and I won't trouble you again.”

Talithan looked puzzled. “But, Lord—”

“The Horselady had no business to take Pretty,” Derk said. “Tell her from me that he's yours. What I want you to do is to put all of us here into your green haze and move us back to Derkholm.”

Talithan's eyes moved dubiously from Derk in his huddle of animals to the two griffins. “So many,” he murmured.

“Can't it be done?” Derk asked.

Talithan looked at his face. His manner changed. “I was merely thinking,” he said gently, “that very few have ever walked through our country. Of course it can be done. I shall take you through my own lands, Lord, all of you.”

When King Luther and the Emperor Titus panted into the camp half an hour later, blood-spattered, exasperated, and wanting an explanation, they found the place deserted.

I
T WAS A BIG MISTAKE
, Blade discovered, to translocate in among a troop of galloping horsemen. It would have been a mistake by daylight. In the dark he was lucky not to be killed. Sukey's kidnappers did not even know Blade was there. They simply galloped on. Reville, pounding up on foot around dawn, found Blade lying in the clump of gorse he had been kicked into some hours before.

“Are you all right?” said Reville.

“No!”
said Blade.

In fact, he was only very badly bruised. In the days that followed, he kept finding new black horseshoe shapes on new, unlikely parts of his body. But no bones were broken. Reville assured him of that. It seemed that all Thieves Guild members learned quite a bit about healing. And about making other people do what they wanted, Blade discovered. As soon as Blade was sitting up, moaning, Reville said, “Good. Now translocate us both to where those riders are.”

Blade shuddered. “No. I can't. I'm not going to get ridden over again.”

“Just take us to a hundred yards behind them,” Reville said. “You can do that.”

“Why?” said Blade.

“Because I want to catch up with them before they do anything to Sukey, of course,” Reville said.

“But there's about half a hundred of them. What can we do?” Blade protested.

“Only twenty or so. I'll think of something,” Reville replied. “Come on. Think of Sukey.”

Sukey, in Blade's opinion, was not worth thinking about. He had only gone after her because, what with the dark, and the way she was screaming, he had woken up and thought it was still that morning when the soldiers tried to escape from the dome. Sukey's screams had been very like Shona's. He had realized it was Sukey and not Shona while twenty horses—only twenty? Well, that made eighty hooves—were each individually treading all over him. Now he did not want to move. But Blade was low and aching and feeble, while Reville was well and strong and worrying about Sukey. Reville won.

They translocated. A hundred yards ahead, a tight little group of horsemen trotted over the moor away from them. All of them were in black except for one rider in the midst of them who was in pale blue. Blade's heart sank. He knew who these were. Escaped soldiers. They could be the same group who had ambushed the bandits. Reville was right to be worried about Sukey. “There's nothing we can do!” Blade moaned.

“We keep following. They have to stop sometime,” Reville said.

Blade could still hardly walk. He let the riders get well ahead and then translocated himself and Reville again. They did that all day until, finally, in the evening, the group stopped and made camp. Blade sat in an exhausted, aching heap and let Reville creep away to investigate.

Reville was gone nearly an hour. “This isn't going to be easy,” he said, arriving back suddenly in the twilight. Loaves, pieces of cheese, and a wine bottle thudded down in the heather beside Blade. “They're keeping Sukey right in the middle. They've got ropes tied to her ankles and her wrists, and each rope is around a man's wrist the other end. But they don't seem to be hurting her. They seem to be arguing with her most of the time. I got close enough to hear her telling them all the bad things that would happen to them if they didn't let her go, but that was all. Lucky they don't keep any kind of a guard on their provisions. Let's have supper and think.”

Blade ate ravenously. Reville ate dutifully to keep his strength up. He really was wretchedly worried about Sukey, Blade realized. “Are you in love with her or something?” he asked Reville incredulously.

“Don't sound so astonished. She's wonderful,” said Reville. “Yes, I am in love with her, if you must know. I never thought I could be before this. Ice cool, I used to call myself. Cynical. I was all set to marry an heiress for her money. But now I'm going to marry Sukey or die.”

“She's a
tourist!
” said Blade.

“So?” said Reville. “I don't hold it against her. And she's promised to stay here with me.”

Blade found this hard to believe. He thought Sukey must have been leading Reville on. It would be like her. So, the sooner they got Sukey back from those soldiers, the sooner she could disillusion Reville and the sooner Reville could return to sanity. “What are you planning to do?” he said.

“Go in there as soon as they're asleep and cut the ropes,” Reville said. “Obviously. I'll do it alone. You're like a dragon with corns. I suppose it's those bruises. You wait here.”

“For transport,” Blade said bitterly. “Thanks.”

But Reville's plan did not work. He came back disgustedly at dawn with more food. “One of the four is on watch all the time,” he said, moodily tossing Blade a loaf. “I think they may have spotted us following them. Try keeping us further back today.”

They tried that for the next two days. Blade's bruises hurt more, and Reville became almost too tired to steal food. The evening of that third day Blade pointed out that, amazing as it was, no one had tried to hurt Sukey yet and the two of them were not going to be much use to her as they were. He explained that he could catch up with the soldiers, even carrying Reville along, from anywhere up to fifty miles away, and he suggested that they have a day's rest. Reville did not agree. He and Blade had a nasty argument. It only ended when Blade burst into tears, tore his beard off, and threw it at Reville.

“Oh,” said Reville, staring at him. “I was forgetting you're only young. And I tell you, it wouldn't take much to make me cry, too. All right. A day's rest. We move in when we're fresh.”

That was the evening the Horselady called in all the horses.

This time it was Reville who got trampled. After the argument, both of them fell asleep, close together for warmth, with heather piled on them for further warmth. The last thing Blade heard was Reville demanding to know who the stupid fool was who decided that the tours always started in autumn, until even from a deep sleep, Blade heard and recognized the drumming of eighty hooves. He translocated without properly waking up, and settled down to sleep again a hundred yards away. He found Reville in the morning by the groans.

“Gods!” Reville howled. “I tried to get up and run! A mistake.” After a long pause he added, “You know, I don't think I was sympathetic enough when this happened to you.”

“Look on the bright side,” Blade said. “The kidnappers are walking now.”

Unfortunately Sukey's captors seemed to have decided that someone had stolen their horses. For the next few days they were so watchful that Reville did not dare limp too near them. They sprang up at the least noise and stabbed their swords into bushes. And they guarded Sukey as if she were the most valuable thing in the world. If they had not been forced to abandon quite a heap of provisions when the horses left, Blade and Reville would have starved as they hobbled along behind. As it was, they had more stale bread than they could carry.

The kidnappers were clearly going somewhere. They crossed the moors in a steady, straight line and eventually struck a road, a well-used-looking road with high bushy banks and wheel marks on its stony surface. Blade and Reville pursued mostly by letting the group get out of sight and then translocating to where they could see them again. In between, Reville was too bruised to do much except sit and look gloomily at the ruined wristwatches on his arm and worry about Sukey. He thought there must be an outlaw stronghold that the men were making for. He told Blade that the Thieves Guild knew of hundreds of people who had been kidnapped for no apparent reason, over in the east, and that nobody ever found where they had been taken. “We must rescue her before they get wherever they're going,” he kept saying.

The road made things a little easier. The soldiers seemed to relax once they were on it, and Blade found that the high banks made it possible to get quite close to them. Whenever the trudging group stopped, Blade took hold of Reville's skinny, muscular arm and brought them behind a clump of gorse or some small trees on the bank, where they lay flat and listened to Sukey's high voice, arguing.