Empire of the East (40 page)

The banging and chopping ceased. “Bargain?” roared a man's deep voice. “With what? Who are they, what do they want?”

“They are bandits,” Charmian cried weakly. Glancing toward her, Rolf saw that she had retreated from Chup's sword until her head was pressed against the wall, but the sword had advanced until it now poised rock-steady a centimeter from her face. Loss of beauty would be worse than loss of life to her.

There was a pause outside, as if of disbelief. “Well, wondrous stupid ones, so it would seem.” More feet now on the stair, a platoon gathering hurriedly; and overhead now, soft footsteps on the roof; it had not taken the Constable long to order his forces. Now he bellowed, with vast authority: “Ho, in there! The trap is shut on you; unbar this door!” Chup forced his erstwhile bride into the big wardrobe where one of her servant-girls was still cowering in silence. What he said to Charmian at parting Rolf could not hear, but she went in with quiet alacrity.

Loford had ceased prying at the ceiling, and sheathed his sword, but stood still looking upward at the damage while he made the gestures of his magic art. Now he signed to Rolf to cease work also; Rolf did so. But by Loford's art, the noises they had made when working went right on without a pause, the subdued splintering of light wood, the trickling falls of powdery fragments to the floor were heard, though the hole they had begun in the roof now got no bigger. Now Rolf attacked the floor with his dagger. He labored to pry up a board; Catherine dropped to her knees beside him and wrenched with strong sure hands as soon as he had raised one end enough for her to get a purchase on it. By the art of Loford, who worked on silently above them, the shriek of yielding nails was made to come from overhead.

The Constable's voice renewed its demands for entry.

“Not so fast!” Chup roared back. “What'll you give us for your woman's life?” And he thumped with the flat of his sword on the wardrobe, from which the voice of Charmian hastily called out, serving to demonstrate that she was still alive.

Rolf and Catherine by this time had one floorboard completely up. A quick look down through the gap assured him that the room below was deserted. The soldiers lodged in it would have been called to duty when the alarm broke out.

The Constable's overbearing voice called out some threat, and the battering at the door resumed, more violently than before. The renewed noise from the door, with that induced by magic overhead, effectively covered the ripping up of another board. The hole was big enough now for Rolf, and he was through it in a moment, with Catherine right behind him. Loford had to tear up yet another plank before the gap was wide enough to accommodate his bulk; luckily the ceilings were low and he had not far to fall. Chup was right behind.

Catherine picked up a bow, and looped over her shoulder a quiver of arrows that had been left in a corner of the room. With her cloak she might manage to conceal the weapons, and she pulled up its hood now to hide her face. Rolf was at the door, peering out through a crack until one set of hurried footsteps had passed their landing going up, and another down; and then he led the way out onto the stair, flattening himself against a wall. The Constable's men were gathered on the stair and landing above, still assaulting the heavy door of the top-floor apartment.

Rolf, Catherine, Loford, Chup. In single file on the stair, the four of them glided swiftly down. At the bottom of the stair, weapons under cloaks, they passed out swiftly through the doorway into the courtyard where torches flared, disturbed animals stamped and moved and grunted, and travelers, slaves, grooms, tavern girls, all milled around, gaping upward with mixed alarm and interest.

The four moved in a regular walking pace across the courtyard to the stair on the other side; over there was the only way out. They were about halfway across, moving deliberately amid people and restless animals, when behind them Charmian's screams for help were suddenly added to the noise. She must have at last dared to peer out of the wardrobe, to find herself practically alone amid unnerving sounds. When the screams came Rolf took Catherine's arm in a hard grip, but he need not have bothered, for her step remained steady. Without interference from anyone in the ragged little crowd of gapers, the four reached the desired doorway and began to mount the stair. This building was less solidly built than the one they had just come from, though of the same general plan.

Doors stood open to their right and left as they ascended, one floor, two, but for the moment no one was in sight. The rooms had evidently been emptied of soldiers and onlookers alike by the alarms.

Now Chup took the lead, and pulled back the hood of his cloak. As they rounded the last landing going up, the expected sentry appeared at the top of the stair, the door to the room behind him standing open.

Chup in his best Eastern-officer voice demanded: “Here, fellow, are any men loitering in those rooms?” and kept on climbing as he spoke.

“No, sir! No malingerers here.”

“Then who is that?” Chup barked. He pointed behind the sentry into a dark corner of an empty room as he came up to the man, bringing a sure blade from beneath his cloak as the man's head turned.

Now, the four could go unhurriedly up a ladder from the topmost stair-landing to a trapdoor that opened on the roof. Rolf, once more in the lead, flattened himself down as he crawled out into the open night. On the roof across the court the Eastern men waiting in fruitless ambush were being less cautious, and he could see them easily in silhouette. All was quiet in that direction now, a state of affairs that could not last much longer; the Constable would be finding his trap empty, and would be howling on their trail when he saw the great hole they had made in the floor.

Chup had the soft thin coil of rope unwound from his midsection, and now lay on his back with his feet against the low parapet, making himself a human anchor to hold the rope while the others slid down. Rolf went first. The rope was long enough to reach the ground with a little to spare. As soon as sand was under his feet, he tugged once on the rope and waited with drawn sword. Catherine came next, dropping her bow when halfway down but picking it up before she scrambled to Rolf's side; and then Loford, grunting and mumbling as the rope burned his sliding fingers. Then came the rope itself, a whispering coil; then Chup, dropping unaided from rooftop to sand.

In single file the four of them marched in silence, save for the soft crunch underfoot of sand, and the faint whisper of the wind. Now Loford followed Rolf, and then the girl, with Chup alert to hear pursuers in the rear. They left the caravanserai kilometers behind, while the stars spun slowly around the one that marked the Pole. Rolf strode on into the unknown with confidence, though he had only a hazy idea of what kind of country lay in that direction, and no idea at all of the goal that Ardneh wanted him finally to reach. No one spoke, except that once or twice a faint whisper-mutter with the rhythm of magic in it came forward to Rolf's ears, and soon thereafter arose what might have been perfectly natural pushes of wind against their faces, wind howling back down along their trail with strength enough to pull sand over their footprints.

Rolf now and again looked up, trying to catch sight of wide bird-wings against the stars. But there were none.

“We had best get clear of this open sand before morning,” Chup growled once, low-voiced, from the rear. Rolf only grunted in reply. The need was obvious. Rolf stepped up his pace a little more. Now he could hear Catherine's breathing. But the girl kept up without faltering.

The hours of the night turned on. There was no pause for rest. No hint of dawn had yet appeared in the clear sky when Rolf noticed that the character of the country was changing. The gentle dunes grew steeper, and among them there jutted up hillocks and humps of worn, eroded clay. Grass and bushes, appeared in a thin scattering, then became noticeably thicker. As the eastern sky began to brighten subtly, the clay hills came to dominate the land. These turned into a plateau across which the travelers walked, scrambling frequently through small ravines that lay across their path, or following those that ran for a time along it. Some of these narrow ravines were steep enough to have small overhangs along their sides, and these, when the morning sky began to brighten up in earnest, afforded some possibility of hiding for the day.

Rolf chose a place, which was then improved by digging back a little into the clay bank, the excavated material being carefully scattered where it would not show. Now, lying on the narrow ledge that they had made, it was possible to see back for nearly a kilometer in the way that they had come, and for some forty or fifty meters along the ravine in the other direction. And from this direction, now, at last, came Mewick and the other members of the patrol; or most of them, rather. There were five riders, not six, approaching.

The four who had just lain down in weariness sprang up again. Mewick reined in below their ledge, saying: “The birds have just now gone to shelter for the day. We would have caught up with you sooner, but—” He made a gesture of weariness, dismissing causes pointless to enumerate now. He and his mount, and the men and animals behind him, looked tired, and some had new bandages to show. “There is cavalry on your trail, not two kilometers back. They dared to follow you out by night, and we were not enough for a real ambush. We only delayed them a little and I lost Latham.”

It registered now with Rolf whose face was missing, whose animal was being led in the rear with the other spares. The shock of a friend's loss came and was set aside in the pile of losses that must someday be dealt with somehow. Now Rolf only asked: “How many of them?” As he spoke he was packing his meager gear into a roll, getting ready to bundle it onto the back of the best spare riding beast.

“Fifty. Thereabouts,” said Mewick wearily. “Through divination or otherwise they must have some inkling of the importance of what you took else I think they would not have come onto your trail at night, no. The Constable is leading them in person. Has Ardneh any offering of guidance now?”

“Only that I must go on, with what I carry.” Rolf finished tying his bundle onto the beast and swung himself up into its saddle. His eye fell on Catherine, and saw in her a desperation made calm only by her great weariness. The mention of Ardneh had probably meant nothing to her, he realized. Most probably she feared only one thing more than being with this bandit gang—there was still no reason for her to think them anything but bandits—and that one thing was being left behind by them, to be retaken by the East. “Mount up, girl,” he ordered, pointing to another ready animal. “Come with me.” Only after he had spoken did he realize that there was a deeper purpose than compassion, or any selfish want, behind his words.

Mewick raised his eyebrows, then nodded, handing Rolf provisions and a water bag. “So it must be. We here will do what must be done. Which way does Ardneh bid you go? We will try to turn the ones who follow aside.”

“I am still heading just a little west of north. I
think
it will be many days yet before I reach the goal—whatever it may be.”

Mewick and others raised their hands, murmuring good wishes. Arrangements for future contact would be left to nighttime and the birds—or to Ardneh, if he should take a hand overtly. Rolf dug heels into his mount and set off along the ravine to the north; a glance back showed Catherine riding competently and close behind him. If, as her accent suggested, she were really of some noble family in the Offshore Islands, it was natural that she should know how to ride.

The cleft of the ravine grew shallow, and bent off in the wrong direction. Rolf heeled his riding-beast to a faster pace as he urged it out onto the flat surface of a plateau. Steadily they put distance between themselves and the place behind them where Mewick was trying to arrange an ambush of an enemy force that outnumbered his by something more than five to one. Rolf knew that Mewick and his six men would not stand and be wiped out, not if they could help it. They would strike and retreat and strike again, if they were able. If they could get through the day, the night would offer better hope. But it was early morning now…

Rolf and his companion had come about a kilometer across the open plateau, and were almost in reach of another favorably oriented ravine, offering some chance of shelter from the sky, when there came drifting from a height the raucous cry that meant they had been spotted by a reptile.

No use to gallop now; Rolf held to a steady pace. The reptile was overtaking them on effortless wings, staying high out of bowshot; directly over their heads, it marked their position for the pursuers on the ground.

When Rolf and Catherine topped a slight rise, they could look back and see the mounted Eastern force, coming now onto the broken plateau, nearing the place where Mewick and the others must be in wait. It seemed the ambush could be no surprise, for there were more reptiles, concentrating over something Rolf could not see—over seven Western soldiers, no doubt. He felt an urge, not courageous but simply irrational, to turn back and be with them. But that was not to be.

Catherine drew abreast of him as they rode on. She asked: “Your whole band is scattering in different directions?” When he did not answer, she asked him: “What did he call you back there? Ardneh?”

“My name is Rolf.”

“Rolf, then. There is something I would ask of you.”

“Wait.” He urged his mount over a difficult stretch of terrain, then stopped for a brief halt, to rest the animals for the space of a few breaths and to see by what route the pursuing cavalry was following. “Now. What was it?”

Catherine said: “If we are going to be taken by them, kill me first.”

It was only surprising for a moment. “If that time ever comes, I will have other matters to think about. But cheer up, it has not come yet.”

The enemy riders had turned suddenly away from what seemed their logical course, and were slowing down. No reason was visible at this distance; but the concentration of reptiles, somewhat nearer, seemed greatly agitated. The one who had been flying directly over Rolf and Catherine, evidently assuming that they could be found again without any trouble on this bright morning, suddenly darted back to join the others.

“Now!” Seizing the chance for whatever it might prove to be worth, Rolf turned his beast off running at a tangent to the course they had been following. He had begun to alter his true course, a little west of north, as soon as he thought the leatherwings had spotted them, and now he took it up again. And now; far ahead, he could already see how the country shaded out of barren badlands and into a higher and grassier plateau.

The moments of freedom from reptile observation fled by, and Rolf could make no profit from them. There was no reasonable place of concealment in sight, nowhere they could vanish, to be gone when the reptile came back to find them, as it must. As he rode, Rolf anxiously tried to reach Ardneh's thought, to find guidance. Nothing helpful came, nothing except the impression of a titanic weariness: a vague image of a faceless, beleaguered giant, hard pressed by a thousand enemies. What Rolf was doing was important, and worthy of Ardneh's help, but no more so than ten or a score of other struggles in which Ardneh was simultaneously involved. At this moment there could be no help for Rolf, except the continuing sense of the direction he was to travel.

The summer day stretched long ahead of them, before the night would bring a reasonable chance of shelter and of rest. Again there sounded the shouts of men at war, louder than might have been expected when fifty were facing only seven. Looking back, Rolf saw a gray maelstrom of wind and dust settling upon, or very near, the area where the fighting must have been. Loford must have managed to raise a desert-elemental. The Eastern troops would be powerless to advance as long as it blasted and blinded them with sand, but the Constable would be sure to have able magical assistance with him and the elemental might be soon dispersed. Meanwhile, the reptiles were being driven from the fighting by the terrific winds; now instead they came on after Rolf and the girl.

Given a great-enough advantage in numbers, the leatherwings were willing to attack armed humans and there were a score or more of them now in sight. Rolf asked: “Can you use that stick of wood you carry?”

Catherine unslung the bow from her back and groped for an arrow, meanwhile guiding her mount with her knees. “Once I could shoot with some skill. It has been a long time since I had the chance.”

Rolf grunted. He was an indifferent archer, but almost certainly he would do better than she with sword.

The reptiles circled them at low altitude, a ragged-looking swirl of gray-green wings and yellow teeth; then, from all points of the compass at once, they closed. Catherine's first arrow missed, but she had time for a second, and one of the creatures tumbled heavily into the sand, a clean kill. Then the cawing cloud engulfed the riders. Rolf swung his blade with brutal energy. The riding-beasts plunged and screamed when they felt teeth and talons. Again and again Rolf's sword met resistance, parting leathery hide, stringy flesh, and light bones. Then suddenly the flock was gone, those who could still fly whirling at a safe distance to screech their rage, leaving half a dozen dead and wounded to litter the thirsty sand. Catherine had sheltered under her great cloak when the enemy came within clawing range, and she was unscratched though the cloak had been rent in several places. Nor was Rolf injured, but the animals, shivering and muttering, were each bleeding from several wounds.

Still, the riding-beasts trudged stolidly on, and this was not the time and place to stop and tend them if it could be avoided. Rolf was momentarily expecting the enemy cavalry to come into sight, the elemental had perhaps been dispersed, though a pall of dust still hanging over the area made it difficult to see what was going on back there. But no riders appeared. Once again, fainter than before, Rolf heard the sounds of fighting. Time was being bought for his escape, at what cost he did not care to think.

The reptiles continued in their circle. Catherine rode silently at his side, watching them with her chin up, an arrow nocked and ready in her bow.

The morning progressed, the reptiles gradually withdrawing farther and at last breaking their circle and landing, one of their number remaining airborne to observe Rolf and Catherine from a distance. Rolf called a rest stop, and devoted it mainly to caring for the animals, whose wounds were bloodier than he had thought. Insects were buzzing around them already. With Catherine helping efficiently, he did what he could to clean the wounds, and bandaged those in places where a bandage could be made secure. Then the two humans walked on for a while, leading the animals, before remounting.

Considering the damage the reptiles had suffered in their first attack, Rolf was not surprised that they forebore to launch another. When about midday they returned in a menacing cloud, Catherine loosed another arrow at them. They clamored insults but flew no closer.

Slowly but steadily the kilometers flowed by beneath the plodding beasts. Twice during the afternoon Rolf halted to rest and tend the animals as well as possible, and for long stretches he and Catherine walked. Far behind, there was still dust on the horizon. He groped for Ardneh's presence once more, and this time received a feeling of reassurance; help was to be granted, or was being granted now. What kind of help was not explained, but Rolf felt somewhat easier. He was further cheered when at last the reptiles screamed their final insults and began their forced retreat, to the safe roosts they must seek out before the coming of the night.

Rolf shortly called a halt. The mounts were swaying and stumbling with fatigue, and the place they had come to offered grazing as promising as any they were likely to find. It was a nearly driedout watercourse, marked along its edges by abundant grass, a few bushes, and even scattered trees.

The animals' wounds included several ugly punctures that seemed likely to become infected. When they had done what they could for the beasts, and eaten a little themselves, it had grown dark. “Rest,” Rolf grunted. Catherine, looking too tired to answer, collapsed into a silent heap.

He was too tired himself to try to stay awake when the likelihood of an enemy coming seemed vanishingly small. He arranged his weapons handily and began to doze off in the warm night, his back against the curved bank of the dry channel. Vaguely he wondered about Catherine, how she had come to be a slave, what she would want…he was too sleepy to think long.