Felice watched.
No more bear-dogs came from the shadowy perimeter. All that were left alive were busy worrying something lying next to the body of a dead white chaliko. A single soldier stood upright among them, hacking slowly at the snarling amphicyons like some freshly painted red automation.
“You must kill him,” Felice said.
They could not find any more lances. Richard ran to the mounted knight, handed up his bronze sword, and pointed. “Take him, Dougal!”
As if in a trance, the elegant medievalist grasped the weapon and waited for a suitable moment before riding into the mass of dead and dying animals and men. He decapitated the futile chopping figure with a single blow.
There were two bear-dogs left alive as the last soldier fell. Richard found another sword and prepared to stand his ground if they came after him; but the creatures seemed seized with a kind of fit. They backed away from their prey reluctantly, giving vent to agonized howls, then turned and went leaping to their doom over the edge of the lakeside cliff.
The sky was becoming rose-colored. There were gagging sounds and hysterical sobs as the stunned prisoners, who had been herded into a compact group by Claude and Amerie during the embroilment, now came slowly forward to look. Noises from dying chalikos were cut short as the surviving ronin went about with a dispatching sword. The first morning notes of song sparrows, simple and solemn as Gregorian chant, echoed among the lofty sequoia trunks.
Felice rose up in her saddle, arms wide, fingers grasping, head in its plumed helmet thrown back as she writhed, cried out, then slumped back inertly against the high cantle.
The Japanese bent over the gory carcass of the white chaliko. He grunted and beckoned to Richard. Numbed now, feeling only curiosity, the former starship captain went stumbling into the fleshly wreckage, hindered by his incongruous nun’s garb. On the ground amidst the bodies was a hideously gnawed limbless trunk swathed in bloody rags. The face was torn to the bone all along one side, but the other was still beautiful and untouched.
An eyelid opened. A jade-green orb reached out at Richard. Epone’s mind took hold of him and began to drag him down.
He screamed. His bronze sword hewed and stabbed at the thing down there but its inexorable grip held firm. The dawn-light began to fade and he was being taken to a place from which he would not return.
“Iron!” the high-pitched voice of the knight called out “Iron! Only thus may the faerie perish!”
The useless sword fell and Richard fumbled at his wrist. As he continued to sink he clutched at the instrument of redemption and sent its steely potency deep, between the heaving white-scarlet ribs without breasts to the raging heart, stilling it and quenching the body’s resident spirit which took flight, releasing as it was released.
Basil and the ronin hauled Richard out of there by the arms. He was wide-eyed and still screaming but holding tight to the gold-handled knife. The three of them paid no attention to the demented Dougal, who leaped from his saddle and began stomping something beneath his mailed feet.
Felice shouted a warning.
Ignoring her, the knight picked a blood-smeared golden hoop from the mess and scaled it far out over the lake, where it sank without a trace.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The riverside palace at Darask was in an uproar when the southbound travelers broke their journey there on the second evening. The mistress of the establishment had been brought to childbed with twins and her labor was proving dangerously prolonged. Creyn went off to volunteer his medical services, leaving the prisoners in the care of a silver-torced major-domo, a black Irishman who forthrightly introduced himself as Hughie B. Kennedy VII and led them under guard to a large chamber high in one tower of the palace.
“You’ll have to rough it tonight, friends,” Kennedy said. “Boys and girls together here where we can keep you secure easily. We can’t spare the guards tonight for single quarters, not with our poor Lady Estella-Sirone hovering on the brink and the buggerin’ Firvulag gathering round, knowing what’s in the wind. You’ll be cool up here at any rate, and above the mosquitoes. There’s a good supper out on the balcony table.”
The escorting palace guards carried in Stein’s litter and rolled the Viking onto one of the netting-draped bedsteads. Sukey protested. “But he needs care! He hasn’t eaten or drunk all day or, anything.”
“Don’t fret yourself over him,” Kennedy said. “When they’re put under with the torc”, and he fingered his own, “they’re like in suspended animation. Your friend’s just like a hibernatin’ animal, metabolism all slowed down. He’ll keep until tomorrow. By then, please Jesus, all’ll be well with our Lady, and we can spare some time for him.” The major-domo gave Sukey a shrewd look. “Likely you’ll keep a good eye on your friend.”
The prisoners were allowed to take a change of clothing but nothing else from their packs, which were then removed by the guards. Kennedy apologized once more for the meagerness of their welcome and prepared to lock them in. Elizabeth came to him and said in a low voice, “I must speak privately to Creyn. It’s important.”
The major-domo frowned. “Ma’am, I realize that you’re a privileged person, but my orders were to install all of you together here.”
“Kennedy, I’m an operant metapsychic and a trained redactor. I can’t get through to Creyn, but I can farsense your lady and her unborn babies and I know that right this moment they’re in serious trouble. I can’t help them from here, but if you take me down to the birthing room… there! Creyn’s calling for me!”
Kennedy had heard the telepathic summons, too. “Come along, then.” Taking her by one arm, he drew her into the tower corridor and slammed the door shut.
Raimo said sourly, “That was nice going. We get stuck here, but Little Red Riding Britches gets to see the fireworks.”
“I never would have pegged you as an obstetrics freak,” Aiken jeered.
“Didn’t you hear that guy?” Raimo’s pale eyes glistened and he licked his lips. “He said the Firvulag were gonna lay siege to the palace, I wanna see that. Maybe get in on the fighting.”
Sukey’s face was twisted with scorn. “You just can’t wait to join the Hunt, can you? Can’t wait to get some monster’s head on a pike. But you weren’t so brave when we were shooting those rapids today!”
Leaving them to their bickering, Bryan and a strangely subdued Aiken Drum went out to the balcony. The promised supper had enough food for a dozen people; but all of it was cold and bore evidences of hasty preparation. Aiken picked up the leg of a roast fowl and took an uninterested bite, meanwhile inspecting the security arrangements of the balcony. It was completely enclosed in a cage of ornamental brass grill-work.
“I won’t be flying out of here very quickly, will I? I suppose I could saw through the bars with one of the little vitredur gizmos I have in my pockets. But it hardly seems worthwhile trying to escape. They’ve got me so curious about the Tanu good life that running away seems stupid.”
“I believe that’s the attitude you’re supposed to form,” Bryan said. “You were allowed to taste just enough of your new powers to want a whole lot more. Now they’ve taken your metafunctions away until you submit to their training regimen down in the capital and they make you into a good little copy of themselves.”
“So you think that’ll happen, do you?” Aiken’s golliwog grin was as wide as ever, but his black button eyes held an ugly glitter. “You don’t know a fewkin’ thing about me and the way my mind works. As for the metabilities, you’re only a normal. You’ve never tasted the powers and you never will, so don’t give me any of your high-ass professor’s predictions about the way I’m going to behave!”