Quag Keep (13 page)

MILO SMASHED HIS SHIELD INTO THE GAPING, LONG-FANGED
mask of beast fury, at the same time thrusting with his sword. Then, out of nowhere Afreeta spiraled, darting at the bleeding head as she had when harassing the druid. The urghaunt drew back on its haunches, its head swung up to watch the pseudo-dragon for an instant. Milo took advantage of that slight second or two of distraction, as he had during their struggle with the master of these things. He launched a full-armed swing at the creature's column of neck.

The steel bit, sheared halfway through flesh and bone. With a shriek the urghaunt, paying no attention to its fearful wound, launched itself again at Milo. Though the swordsman brought up his shield swiftly, the force of its body striking against his bore him back. He felt Yevele stumble as his weight slammed against her. Claws raked around the edge of the shield, caught and tore the mail covering his sword arm, pierced the leather shirt beneath, bit into his flesh with a hot agony.

But he did not lose grip of his sword. Nor had the fury of that
attack wiped away the practiced tactics his body seemed to know better than his mind. Milo thrust the shield once more against that half-severed head, with strength enough to rock the creature.

In spite of pain, which at this moment seemed hardly a real part of him, he brought up his sword, cutting down at the narrow skull. The steel jarred against bone but did not stop at that barrier. He was a little amazed in one part of his mind at his success as the besmeared steel cut deeper.

Despite wounds that would have finished any beast Milo knew, the urghaunt was near to charging again. Now the swordsman's hand was slippery with blood until he feared the hilt would turn in his grip. Shield up, and down, he beat at the maimed head with crushing blows.

The body twisted. Broken-headed, blind, the thing still fought to reach him. It might not be dead but it was nearly out of the fight. Milo swung around. It had taken his full strength to play out that encounter—strength that until this very moment he had never realized he possessed. Yevele—weaponwise as she was—how could she fare?

To his surprise the battlemaid stood looking down at a second heaving body. Implanted in its elongated throat was her sword. One forepaw had been severed. From the stump sputtered dark blood to puddle in the gravel. Milo drew a deep breath of wonder. That they had won—almost he could not believe that. The raw fury radiated still by the dying creatures struck against him, as if they could still use fang and claw. He heard a heavy grunting and glanced beyond. The giant boar, its sides showing at least two blood-welling slits made by claws, nosed a pile of ripped skin.

The urghaunt Yevele had downed snapped viciously as the battlemaid cooly drew her steel free of its body. She avoided a small lunge, which sent the blood pumping faster from the wounds, and used the edge of her weapon, striking full upon the narrow head with two quick blows.

But even then the thing did not die. Nor was Milo's own opponent finished. Only the torn body the were-boar had shredded lay still. The boar trotted to the water's edge. For the first time Milo remembered their captives.

Neither man was in sight, and their weapons were gone from where they had thrown them. He swung around to look into the fringe of trees. The crossbow had vanished, still strapped to the saddle of the horse that had fled, so they need not fear any silent bolt out of cover to cut them down.

“Ware!” Milo turned swiftly at that warning.

Naile Fangtooth, not the boar, stood there once more, his axe in his hand. But his warning had been needed. The mangled thing Milo had thought in the throes of death—which
should
have been dead—was gathering its body for another spring. Axe ready, upraised, the berserker advanced a couple of strides. His weapon rose and fell twice, shearing both heads from the bodies.

As the last flew a foot or so away from the fury of that blow, Naile gave an exclamation and one hand went to his side, while Milo was aware that his sword arm now burned as if a portion of it had been held in the flames of an open fire.

“Marked you, too?” The berserker gazed at Milo's mittened hand. Blood showed in a rusty rim about the edge of that mitten. “These beasts,” he kicked the head he had just parted from the body away from him, “may have some poison in them. So they are gone, eh?”

He had apparently noted the absence of their prisoners also. Yevele answered him. “To be set afoot here is no fate I would wish on any—even of Chaos.”

Milo remembered the screaming of their own hidden horses which had alerted them to the attack. The three might now be faced by an ambush in the net of trees, but it would be well to find their mounts and ride.

Afreeta had been dipping and wheeling out over the water, her hissing sounding like self-congratulation at her own part in their battle. Now she came to Naile. He winced again as he raised his fist for her to perch upon, holding her near the level of his eyes. Though Milo caught no rumble of voice from the berserker he was sure the other was in communication with his small companion.

The pseudo-dragon launched from his fist, whirled upward in a spiral, and then shot off under the trees.

“If those skulking cowards plan to play some game,” Naile remarked, “Afreeta will let us know. But let us now make sure that
we
are not also afoot.”

Milo wiped his sword on a bush and sheathed it with his left hand. It hurt to stoop and pick up his battered shield on which most of the painted symbols had now been scratched and defaced. The fire in his arm did not abate, and he found that his fingers were numb. He worked his right hand into the front of his belt to keep the arm as immobile as he could, for the slightest movement made the flame-pain worse.

Grimly he set his thought on something else, using a trick he had learned when he had marched with the Adepts of Nem, that pain could be set aside by a man concentrating on other things. How much they could depend upon the pseudo-dragon's
scouting he was not sure. But Naile's complete confidence, and what he himself had seen this day when she had flown with intelligence and shrewdness to aid in their battles, was reassuring.

They cut through the trees to where they had left their mounts, only to face what Milo had feared from the first moment he had heard those screams. A sick taste rose in his mouth as he saw the mangled bodies. The urghaunts had not lingered at killing, but the mauling of unfortunate horses had been coldly complete. Not even their gear could be sorted out of that mess.

The fate Yevele had not wished even on a sworn enemy was now theirs also. They were afoot in territory where there was no refuge, and how far ahead their comrades rode they could not even guess. Yevele gave one level-eyed glance at what lay there. There was a pinched line about her mouth and she turned her head quickly.

But Naile approached more closely, while Milo leaned against the trunk of a tree and fought his battle against admitting pain into his mind. The berserker gave a snort of disgust.

“Nothing of the supplies left,” he commented. “We are lucky there is the river. Now we had best be on the move. There are scavengers who can scent such feasts.”

Milo only half heard him. Along the river, yes. It was to be the guide of their party north and at least they would not go without water. Water! For a moment the fire in his arm seemed to touch his throat. He wanted—needed—water.

“What if”—he forced the words out—“there were more than three of those things?”

“If there had been we would already know it,” returned Naile. He ran his fingertips, with an odd gesture as if he feared
to really touch, down his side. “They do not hunt singly. And, since the druid's summoner is ground to dust, he cannot call them down upon us again.”

Milo stood away from his tree. “Back to the river then.” He tried to get the right note of purpose into his voice, but it was a struggle. Naile's suggestion that the claws of those black devils might be poisoned ate into his mind. He had taken wounds in plenty—with scars on his body to prove it—but he could not recall any pain as steady and consuming as this before. Perhaps washing the gash out with cold water would give some relief.

Twice he stumbled and might have fallen. Then a hand slipped under his arm, took his shield and tossed it to Naile who caught it in one fist as if it weighed nothing. Yevele drew Milo's arm across her own mailed shoulder, withstanding his short struggle to free himself. His sight grew hazy with each faltering step and in the end he yielded to her will.

He did not remember reaching the river, though he must have done so on his own two feet. Cold, fighting the heat of his wound, made him aware that his mail, his leather, and his linen undershirt, had been stripped away and Yevele was dripping water on a gash along his arm from which the blood oozed in congealing drops. So small a gash—yet this pain, the lightness of his head. Poison?

Did Milo say that word aloud? He did not know. Yevele leaned down, raised his arm, held it firm while she sucked along that slash and spat, her smeared lips shaping no distaste for what she did. Then Naile, his great hairy body bare to the waist, gashes longer than that which broke Milo's skin visible near his ribs, loomed into the swordman's limited field of vision.

The berserker held his hands before him, cupped, water
dripping from the fingers. Kneeling beside the girl he offered what he so held. With no outward sign of aversion, she plucked out of the berserker's hold a wriggling yellow thing, hardly thicker than a bow cord. This she brought to Milo's arm, holding it steady until it gripped tight upon the bleeding wound. Three more such she applied before settling the arm and the things that sucked the dark blood by his side. Then she set about doing the same for Naile, though it looked as if his skin was not so deeply cut after all, for there were only two or three patches of drying blood. Perhaps the boar's hide that Naile had worn during his change was even better than man-fashioned mail for defense.

Milo lay still and tried not to look upon his arm, or what fed there, draining his blood, their slimy lengths of bodies growing thicker. There was a shimmer in the air and Afreeta hung once more above them, planing down to settle her claws in the thick mat of hair that extended even upon the berserker's shoulder. Her long beaked head dipped and lifted as she hissed like a pot on the boil.

“They are fools—” Milo heard Naile's words from a kind of dream. “Not all men make their own choices. It may be that their master will have some use for them again, enough to see them out of the wilderness. But to take to the plain without food or water—” Naile shook his head and then spoke to Yevele. “Enough, girl. Those draw-mouths are a-plenty to do the work.”

He had five of the yellow things mouth-clamped to his wounds. Turning to the stream he tossed those he still held in his hands back into the water. Then he approached Milo and leaned over, watching closely the wrigglers the swordsman did
not dare to look upon lest he disgrace himself by spewing forth whatever remained in his stomach.

“Ah—” Naile sat back on his heels. “See you that now?” he demanded of Yevele.

Milo was unable to resist the impulse to look, too.

The bodies of the wrigglers had thickened to double their original size. But one suddenly loosed its mouth hold and fell to the gravel where it moved feebly. It was joined moments later by a second that also went inert after a space of three or four breaths. The other two remained feeding.

Naile watched and then gave an order. “Use your snap-light, comrade. They would suck a man dry were they left. But their brethren have taken the poison, the wound is clean.”

Yevele brought from her belt pouch a small metal rod and snapped down a lever on its side. The small spark of flame which answered touched the suckers one by one. They loosed, fell, and shriveled. Naile examined his own busy feeders.

Three followed the example of the drinkers of Milo's poison and fell away. At the berserker's orders, the battlemaid disposed of the rest.

Milo became aware that, though he felt weak and tired, the burning he had tried so hard to combat was gone. Yevele slit his shirt and bound it over the wound, having first crushed some leaves she went into the edge of the wood to find, soaking them before placing them directly on the skin.

“Deav Dyne will have a healing spell,” she commented. “With that you will forget within a day that you have been hurt.”

Deav Dyne was not here, Milo wanted to comment, though he found himself somehow unable to fit the words together, he was so tired. They were without mounts, perhaps lost in this
land. Now. . . . Then the questions slid out of his mind, or into such deep pockets they could be forgotten, and he himself was in a darkness where nothing at all mattered.

He awoke out of the remnants of a dream that bothered him, for it seemed that there was a trace of some message which still impressed a shadow on his mind. Yet it drifted from him even as he tried vainly to remember. He heard a whinny—and awoke fully. The horses! But he had seen those slain. . . .

A face hung above him—familiar. He strove to put a name to it.

“Wymarc?”

“Just so. Drink this, comrade.”

Milo's head was lifted, a pannikin held to his lips. He swallowed. The liquid was hot, near as hot as had been the torment in his arm. But, as its warmth spread through him, Milo felt his strength fast returning. He sat up, away from the supporting arm of the bard.

There were horses right enough—he could see them over Wymarc's shoulder—fastened to the fringe trees.

“How—” He was willing to lick the interior of the pannikin to gather the last of that reviving brew.

“Deav Dyne did another seeing having been able to renew his energy. I came back with mounts.” Wymarc did not even wait for him to finish his question. “He sent the elixer too. Comrade, it is well that now we mount and ride.”