Quag Keep (8 page)

“What power? The druid?” hazarded Milo. “Chaos?”

Slowly Ingrge shook his head. “The druid—perhaps. But this was no spelling I have ever heard of. He carried on him some talisman which had its own smell, and that was alien. However,” once more the elf regarded his wrist and the bracelet on it, “alien though that was—I could defeat it. Yes, the wizard was right. Brothers”—there was more animation in his usually calm voice than Milo had heard before—“we must hone and sharpen our minds, even as the dwarf swordsmiths hone and sharpen their best of blades. For it is that power which may be both shield and weapon to us, past our present knowing!”

“Well enough,” Naile said. He clenched his huge fist. “With my hand—thus—or with the axe or with the likeness I have won to”—now he raised his fist to strike lightly against his helmet with its crowning boar—“there are few who dare face me. Yet to use the mind so—that will be a new experience.”

“They have gone.” Milo had been watching Helagret and the
shadowy figure beyond him. “I think it is well we follow their example and that speedily.”

Ingrge was already moving toward the horses the trader had loosed from his picket lines, stringing halter ropes together. It was apparent that the elf was of a similar mind to the swordsman.

5

DAWN WAS MORE THAN JUST A STRIP OF COLD GRAY ACROSS THE
sky when they at last rode out of the maingate southward. Milo, knowing that wastes and mountains lay before them, had bought light saddles that were hardly more than pads equipped with loop stirrups and various straps to which were attached their small bundles of personal clothing and the water bottles needed in the wilderness. He had questioned Ingrge carefully as to the countryside before them, though the elf, for all his woodcraft and ranger-scout training, admitted freely that what little he knew of the territory came through the rumors and accounts of others. Once they were across the river and into the plains of Koeland he must depend largely upon his own special senses.

They strung out the extra mounts on leads, Weymarc volunteering to manage them, while their four pack ponies snorted and whinnied in usual complaint under burdens that had been most carefully divided among them.

Having splashed across at an upper ford, they angled due south. Mainly because, now very easy to see, stood the dark stronghold of the Wizard Kyark apart from Greyhawk's walls, a place all men with their wits about them knew well to avoid. As long as it was in sight Deav Dyne told his prayer beads with energy and even the elf avoided any glance in that direction.

Not all their company were at ease mounted. Gulth did not croak out any complaint, but Ingrge had had to work his own magic on the steadiest of the mounts before the lizardman could climb on the back of the sweating, fearful horse. Once in the saddle he dropped behind, since the other horses were plainly upset by his close presence. Perhaps that was an advantage, for the ponies crowded head of him, keeping close to the human members of the company.

Milo wondered a little at the past of the scale-skinned fighter. They had all been caught in or by a game. But why had the role of a scale-skinned fighter been chosen by the one who had become Gulth? If Gulth had not been shackled to them by the common factor of the bracelet, Milo would have questioned that he belonged in their party at all.

Naile Fangtooth made no secret of the fact he both loathed and mistrusted the entirely alien fighter. He rode as far from Gulth as he could, pushing up to the fore but a short distance behind Ingrge. None of the other oddly assorted adventurers made any attempt to address the lizardman except when it was absolutely necessary.

Gray-brown grass of the plain grew tall enough to brush their shins as they rode. Milo did not like crossing this open land where there was not even a clump of trees or taller brush to offer
shelter. By the Fore-Teeth of Gar—they could be plainly marked from the walls of Greyhawk itself did any with some interest in them stand there now.

Without thinking he said as much aloud.

“I wonder—”

Startled out of his apprehensive thoughts, the swordsman turned his head. Yevele was not looking at him. Rather her gaze slanted back toward the river and the rise of the city beyond it.

“We ride geas-bound,” she commented, now meeting his eyes. “What would it profit the wizard if we were picked up before we were even one day on our journey? Look there, swordsman—”

Her fingers were as brown as her face, but the fore one was abnormally long, and that now pointed to the grass a short distance beyond their line of march.

Milo was startled, angry with himself at his own inattention. To go into this land without one's senses always alert was worse than folly and to have betrayed his carelessness shamed him.

For what he saw proved that Yevele might well be right in her opinion that they were not naked to the sight of an enemy. The grass (which was so tough that it stung if one pulled at it) quivered along a narrow line that exactly matched their own line of march.

He did not doubt that quiver marked a slight distortion, only visible to them in this fashion, masking
them
from aught but a counter-spell strong enough to break it.

“It cannot last too long, of course,” the battlemaid continued. “I know not how strong a power-worker this Hystaspes may be—but if he can hold our cover so until we gain the tributary of the Vold, the land beyond is less of an open plain.”

“You have ridden this way before?” Milo asked. If the girl knew these southwest lands why had she not said so? Here, they depended upon Ingrge as a guide when the elf had admitted he used instinct alone.

She did not answer him directly, only asked a question of her own.

“You have heard of the Rieving of Keo the Less?”

For a moment he sought a way into his memory which had so many strange things hidden in it. Then he drew a deep breath. The answer to the name she spoke—it was something out of the darkness that ever lurked menacingly at the heels of any who swore by Law. It was treachery so black that it blotted the dark pages of Chaos's own accounting—death so hideous a man might retch out his guts if he thought too long upon it.

“But that—”

“Lies years behind us, yes.” Her voice was as even and controlled as Ingrge's ever was. “And why should such as I think upon that horror? I am one born to the sword way, you know the practice of the Northern Bands. Those who ride under the Unicorn have a choice after their thirtieth year—they may then wish a union, to become a mother, if the High Horned Lady favors an enlargement of her followers. Then the child, being always a girl, is trained from birth in the ways of the One Clan of her heritage.

“My mother, having put aside the Unicorn and followed her will of union, became swordmistress and teacher. But our clan fell into hard days and there were three harvests that were too thin to support any but the old and the very young. Therefore, those who were still hearty of arm, who could ride and fight—and my mother was a Valkyrie”—Yevele's head lifted proudly—
“took council together. They were, by custom, unable to join the companies again, but they had such skills as were valuable in the open market wherein sword and spear may be lawfully sold. My clan—there were twenty-five who swore leadership to my mother. They came then to Greyhawk to bargain—settling for their pay in advance so that they might send back to the clan hold enough to keep life in the bodies of those they cherished. Then, under my mother's command, they took service with Regor of Var—

Milo's memory flinched away from what that name summoned.

“Those who were lucky died,” Yevele continued dispassionately. “My mother was not lucky. When they were through with her. . . . But no matter. I have settled two debts for that and the settlement hangs at the Moon shrine of the clan. I took blood oath when I took the sword of a full clan sister. That is why I do not ride with any Band, but am a Seeker.”

“And why you came to Greyhawk,” he said slowly. “But you are not—not Yevele—remember? We are entrapped in others . . .”

She shook her head slowly. “I am Yevele—who I might have been in that other time and place which the wizard summoned for us to look upon does not matter. Do you not feel this also, swordsman?” For the first time she turned to look squarely into his eyes. “I am Yevele, and all that Yevele is and was is now in command. Unless this Hystaspes plays some tricks with us again, that is how it will remain. He has laid a geas on us and that I cannot break. But when this venture lies behind us—if it ever will—then my blood oath will bind me once more. Two offerings
I have made to the Horned Lady—there are two more to follow—if I live.”

He was chilled. That about her which had attracted his notice had been but a veil hiding an iced inner part at which no man could ever warm himself. His wonder at their first entrapment grew. Was it some quirk of their own original characters that had determined the roles they now assumed?

Desperately he tried now to remember the Game. Only it was so blank in his mind that he wondered, for a moment of chill, if all Hystaspes's story had been illusion and lies. But the band on his wrist remained: that encirclement of jewel-pointed dice was proof in part of the wizard's story.

They spoke no more. In fact, there was very little sound from the whole party, merely the thud of hooves and, now and then, a sneeze or cough as some of the chaff from the crushed, dead grass arose to tickle nose or throat.

The sky was filled with a sullen haze to veil the sun. When they were well out on the plains Milo called a halt. They fed their animals from handsful of grain but did not let them graze, watering each from liquid poured into their helmets, before they ate the tough bread of which a man must chew a mouthful a long time before he swallowed. Gulth brought out of a pouch of his own, some small, hard-dried fish and ground them into swallowable powder with his formidable array of fangs.

Milo noted that those lines in the grass had halted with them, even joined before and behind the massing of their company, as if to enclose them in a wall. He pointed them out. Both the elf and Deav Dyne nodded.

“Illusion,” Ingrge said indifferently.

But the cleric had another term. “Magic. Which means we cannot tell how long it will provide us with cover.” He repeated Yevele's warning.

“The river has some cover.” The girl brushed crumbs of bread carefully into one palm, cupping them there preparatory to finishing off her meal. “There are rocks there—”

Ingrge turned his head sharply, his slanted eyes searching her face, as if he demanded access to her thought. Yevele licked up the crumbs, got to her feet. Her expression was as stolid and remote as Ingrge's own.

“No, comrade elf,” she said, answering the question he had not asked, “this road has not been mine before. But I have good reason to know it. My kin died in the Rieving of Keo the Less.”

Ingrge's narrow, long-fingered hand moved in a swift gesture. The heads of the other three men turned quickly in her direction. It was Naile who spoke. “That was a vile business.”

Deav Dyne muttered over his beads and Wymarc nodded emphatic agreement to the berserker's comment. If Gulth knew of what they spoke he gave no sign, his reptilian eyes were nearly closed. However, a moment later his croaking voice jerked them all out of terrible memory.

“The spell fades.” He waved a clawed forefinger at those lines.

Ingrge agreed. “There is always a time and distance limit on such. We had better ride on—I do not like this open land.” Nor would he, for those of his race preferred woods and heights.

Gulth was right. That line in the grass was different. Now it flickered in and out, being sometimes clearly visible, sometimes so faint Milo thought it vanished altogether. They mounted in some speed and headed on.

The drabness of the sky overhead, the faded grass underfoot, mingled into a single hue. None spoke, though they stepped up their pace, since to reach water by nightfall was important. There were flattened water skins on one of the pack ponies. They had thought it better not to fill them in Greyhawk. Such action would have informed any watcher that they headed into the plains. They depended upon the fact that Keoland did have three tributaries of size feeding the main stream, which finally angled north to become a mighty river.

As they went now Milo kept an eye on the line of distortion. When it at last winked out he felt far more naked and uneasy than he had in the streets of Greyhawk itself.

Ingrge reined in.

“There is water, not too far ahead. They can smell it even as I—” He indicated the horses and ponies that were pushing forward eagerly. “But water in such a barren land is a lodestone for all life. Advance slowly while I scout ahead.”

There was some difficulty in restraining the animals. However, they slowed as best they could as Ingrge loosed his own mount in a gallop.