Glen Cook - Octobers Baby

"Tonight?"

"Everything's ready."

"Then so are we."

"One little matter. Some articles for you to sign. That was the hard part, getting them to accept a position from which they couldn't back down."

Ragnarson chuckled as he examined the parchment. "An exchange, then. My own guarantees." He handed the man a document he had had prepared. "And my word, which's worth more. Unless your fealty becomes suspect."

"As an act of good faith, some information which, I believe, only I outside the Nordmen councils possess."

Ragnarson's eyebrows rose questioningly.

"The Captal of Savernake has been making the rounds of the barons. He slipped out of Sedlmayr just before you arrived."

"So?"

"He claims the true child of the old King is in his custody. You've heard the stories about a changeling? He's trying to find backers for his 'real' heir."

"The Captal," Bragi interjected. "He's old?" He described the sorcerer he and Mocker had encountered in Ruderin.

"You've met?"

"In passing. You've told me more than you realize, friend. I'll return the favor, but don't spread it around. The power behind the Captal is Shinsan."

Mundwiller went pale. "What interest could they have in Ravelin?"

"A passage to the west. A quietly attained bridgehead against the day when they move to attain world dominion. All spur-of-the-moment speculation, of course. Who knows the motives of Shinsan?"

"True. We move at the second hour. I'm to lead you to the postern we hold." iv) Savernake Gap

Bragi occupied Sedlmayr without disturbing its citizens' sleep, capturing the Nordmen and disarming their troops. Baron Kartye had assumed he would decamp in the night.

Sedlmayr taken, Ragnarson secured Delhagen, then decamped in earnest.

Ragnarson departed with twenty-five hundred men, over half of them Kaveliners. None were men he had given Reskird to dispute the Armstead ford. If forced to fight, he would miss those bows.

Kildragon, he learned, had held the ford so successfully that he had almost turned Vodicka back—till the Baroness Breitbarth had surprised him from behind. He had barely gotten out. Fleeing east, he had encountered Volstokiners who had crossed the river above him. He had abandoned everything but his weapons, swum the Ebeler, and was now hiding in the Bodenstead forest.

Vodicka had shown his gratitude to the Baroness by making her prisoner and sacking Damhorst. That gentleman had abandoned all pretense, was destroying everyone and everything as he advanced toward Vorgre-berg.

The barons harrying the capital now eyed him as the greater danger.

In Volstokin itself there was trouble, bands of horsemen cutting, in the guerrilla style, at the roots of royal power. Ragnarson suspected Haroun.

Good. Nothing prevented him from doing what he wanted. He marched eastward, passed within twenty miles of Vorgreberg, struck the caravan route east of the city and, spreading panic among the Nordmen, swept on till he entered Savernake, at the juncture of the Kapenrungs and Mountains of M'Hand, where the Savernake Gap debouched into Kavelin. He considered the Captal the most dire threat to the Queen.

His arrow-straight drive didn't slow till he had entered the Gap itself and had climbed above the timberline. Then he stopped cold. He summoned Blackfang, Altenkirk, Jarl Ahring, subbing for Kildragon, and Sir Andvbur Kimberlin of Karadja, in command of the new Wesson battalion.

The five considered the Gap above. Behind them, men seized the opportunity to rest.

"I don't like it," Ragnarson said. "Too quiet." The pass did seem as still as a desert.

"Almost as if time had stopped," said Blackfang. "You'd expect an eagle or something."

Altenkirk spoke to one of the Marena Dimura. The man examined the road ahead.

Ragnarson, blue eyes frosty, studied the sky. He had scouts out. They were to send up smoke in case of trouble.

"I've been this way before," said Sir Andvbur," and have heard tell it gets like this when the Captal's expecting a fight."

The Marena Dimura said something to Altenkirk, who translated, "The scouts are still ahead of us."

"Uhm. The Captal knows we're coming. In Trolle-dyngja they defend passes by rolling rocks down on people. Altenkirk, put a company on each face. Have them root out anything bigger than a mouse. It'll be slow, but caution's more important than speed now."

"It's only four or five miles to Maisak," said Sir Andvbur. "Around that bluff that looks like a man's face. It's built against the mountain where the pass narrows. The Imperial engineers used natural caverns for barracks, laying the least possible masonry."

Bragi had gone through the Gap to Necremnos once, a few years after the wars, but his memories were vague. He had been in a hurry to see a woman.

Marena Dimura filtered up the rugged slopes. The troops below perked up, saw to their weapons. The day-after-day, week-after-week grind of the march, without a pause to loot or fight or carouse, had eroded morale. Prospective action lifted that.

"What's that?" asked Ragnarson, indicating a wisp of blackness over the formation Sir Andvbur had pointed out. "Not smoke?"

"The Captal's sorcery, I'd guess," said the knight.

"Send your people for more firewood. We'll make our own light. Have some men stand by with what we've got. Ahring, bring your best bowmen up to support the Marena Dimura."

Once they had left, Ragnarson told Blackfang, "Maybe it's mother's witch-blood, Haaken. I've got a bad feeling."

"You're sure this's the sorcerer from Ruderin?"

"Reasonably."

"Think I'll have a bad feeling myself." He chuckled. "Here we sit without even Mocker's phony magic, getting ready to storm a vassal of Shinsan."

"That's my worry, Haaken. The Captal's just supposed to be a dabbler. But what's Shinsan put in?"

"Imagine we'll find out."

"Haaken, I don't know what I'd do without you." He laughed weakly. "Don't know what to do with you, either, but that's another problem."

"Don't start your death dance yet."

"Eh?"

"We've been through the campaigns. You're going to tell me how to run things after you've found the spear with your name."

"Damn. Next time I'm using new people." He laughed.

Marena Dimura shouted on the slopes. Something broke cover, ran a few yards toward them, then fled the other way. A bowstring twanged. The creature jumped, screamed, fell. Ragnarson and Blackfang moved up, a dozen bowmen at their backs.

"What is it?" Blackfang asked. The body was the size of that of a six-year-old. It had the head of a squirrel.

"Coronel!"

Bragi glanced up. A Marena Dimura tossed some­thing. He caught it. A child-sized crossbow.

Haaken caught a quiver of bolts, pulled one out, examined its head. "Poisoned."

Ragnarson had the word passed, saw shields start to be carried less sloppily.

"Poor fellow," said Blackfang, turning the corpse with a foot. "Didn't want to fight. Could've gotten off a shot."

"Maybe the light was too bright." Ragnarson studied the black cloud growing over the bluff with the face of a man.

During the next hour, as the sky darkened, the Marena Dimura flushed two score creatures of almost as many shapes. Several of Ragnarson's people learned the hard way about the poisoned bolts. The little people weren't aggressive, but they got ferocious when cornered.

"Wait'11 you see the owl-faced ones," Ragnarson said as they reached the natural obelisk he had marked as their goal for the hour. "Some as big as you, and even uglier."

"Speaking of ugly," Haaken replied with sudden grimness.

They had found the missing scouts.

The men hung on a gallows-like rack, from curved spikes piercing the bases of their skulls. The flesh was gone from their faces, fingers, and toes. Their bellies had been ripped open. Their bowels hung to the ground. Their hearts had been cut out. Painted in blood on a pale boulder were the Itaskian words, "Leave Kavelin."