Andre Norton - Zarsthor's Bane

The boy caught at his shoulders.

“Lord—” He looked beyond the man he supported to the girl.

There was such hostility in the glare he turned upon her that Brixia took a stronger grip on her spear. It was as if he hated the sight of her enough to open attack. Then a flash of understanding came to her. He was moved by shame—shame that someone should see his lord so bereft of his senses.

Instinctively, at that moment, she also guessed that for her to make any sort of a move, say anything which would show she did understand, might in turn render matters worse. Totally at a loss Brixia met the boy’s glare with what calm she could summon. She wet her lips with tongue tip, but said nothing.

For a very long moment they stood thus and then his glare became a twisted scowl.

“Get out! Go—! We have nothing left worth the stealing!” He made another gesture towards his sword.

Brixia’s temper flared. Why that order seemed like a lash laid across her face she could not have told. These two were nothing to her. She had seen suffering and trouble enough, and had learned that in order to survive, she must go her own way—alone.

But she curbed that temper. With a shrug, she retreated toward the hedge from which she had emerged, caution telling her not to turn her back on the pair. Though she, nor no one else, need have anything to fear from the man.

The boy had him on his feet again, was urging him back towards the tower door with a steady murmur of encouragement pitched too low now for Brixia to hear. She watched them disappear before she went also.

It would be wise to leave the dale entirely, she told herself as she climbed the slope towards the ridge top. Yet she made no move to go. An expertly flung stone stunned one of the leapers in the grass, and she dressed the lean body skillfully, saving the skin to be worked upon at her leisure. Six such would form a short cloak and she had three already green cured and rolled within the journey bag at her hidden campsite.

Knowing that she might not be the only one to have marked those camped in the ruins, she took extra precautions at concealment herself. Had any outlaws seen the horse, the sword the boy wore—that would be loot enough to draw down a small raid. Brixia wondered if the boy realized how dangerous his camp among the forgotten hold buildings might really be. She shrugged. If he did not it was no responsibility of hers to correct that ignorance.

As she built her small fire of carefully selected wood which would give the least possible smoke, and then used a spark from her prized snapper to light it, her thoughts were with the two below. Brixia was reasonably sure there were only two.

The boy named this Eggarsdale and spoke of it as home. His Lord was plainly unable to care for himself—how then did they propose to exist? Yes, there was game of a sort to be found. But without a bow one had to have dexterity with a throwing stone to bring a leaper down. She had near starved—had eaten grubs and chewed on grass—until luck favored her and she had learned enough to remain alive. While a single leaper made hardly a full meal for one at best.

Brixia turned those bits of her own catch she had spitted in the heat of the fire, to be half cooked before she tore at them hungrily, and sat back on her heels. Though she had had no time to explore the long overgrown garden patches below she could well guess that few edible plants had seeded, or rerooted themselves during what was doubtless years of abandonment. There were herbs one could cull, and that she had done when and where she could. But those, if they could be found, would not show in any quanity. Unless those two had come supplied—how were they to fare?

Brixia turned her stick spits again, jealous of the fire which sputtered and leaped under the spill of juices she had no way of catching. Her mouth filled with saliva as she smelled the roasting meat.

There was a small sound to draw her attention to the opposite side of the fire.

“Unfriend,” she said, eyeing Uta sternly. “If you have changed your House Shield, lady, then go there and ask for a guest place at the great table—come not to me.” Still she flipped one of her meat sticks up, stripped its burden off, using a leaf to shield her fingers, letting the half-seared chunks lie on a second leaf for Uta to take or refuse.

The cat sat waiting for the meat to cool enough to mouth. Yet she glanced only now and then at the offering, rather watching Brixia the while in that disconcerting unblinking manner. The girl shifted. It was only Uta’s way—there was no reason to feel that in some fashion her own thoughts were being combed and shifted.

“Yes, go to them, Uta. The big one seems to like you well enough.”

The girl narrowed her own eyes and stared as straightly back at the cat. Uta’s actions in regard to the man had puzzled her. Not for the first time she wished there was some way of communication possible between them. Before that desire had been born of her own loneliness—at those times when that had formed a prison for her. Then the physical presence of the cat had not been enough to banish the girl’s dark thoughts, Brixia had longed for another voice—to shake her out of such aching emptiness.

Now she wished speech because of curiosity. In some way Uta had been able to pierce the clouded mind of this Lord Marbon—to bring him into some measure of awareness. Why—and how?

Brixia took up a skewer and waved it in the air, cooling the meat it impaled enough to chew at it.

“What did you do to him, Uta?” she asked. “He is as one moon-blasted. Did it come from a wound, I wonder, or some trick of the invaders? Perhaps a fever—Who is this Jartar upon whom he calls, and who the boy says is dead?” She chewed vigorously at the tough meat. Uta was eating, too, and had not even looked up at her questions.

That song—it could not be any of a swordsmith’s making—crude, ill fashioned—like it had been done by someone without skill, only a driving purpose. Brixia was slightly surprised at the turn of her own thoughts. But to her those carried the sense of truth. Purpose in that song? Zarsthor’s Bane—what else had the song named it? Star bane.

Someone called Zarsthor had taken up the sword against a foe and had been destroyed because the enemy had had this weapon. Brixia shook her head. There were legends in many about old wars and struggles. All of them held a small kernel of truth, but a truth which meant nothing today. Unless the dark touch of Zarsthor’s Bane still lay upon this dale.

Nothing was entirely improbable among the dales of High Hallack. The Old Ones, before they had withdrawn from the lands bordering the great sea (fading northward or westward beyond the Waste itself), had strange knowledge and many powers. There were places to be shunned and other places—She stopped eating as a sudden flash of memory struck her with such intensity that it was almost as if she herself had been whirled away in both time and distance.

The afternoon that they had fled from Moorachdale’s keep, when the warning came that the defense could no longer hold, Brixia’s breathing quickened. Running—running through the twilight—the soon-come leaping of destroying fire behind, the screams and shouts—It seemed that at this moment she could feel again a sharp pain beneath her ribs, that in her leg—as she fought against the drag of her long skirt, fear sour in her mouth.

On—up to the ridge. Kuniggod had run beside her, urging her on. Kuniggod—Brixia’s face twisted at that memory. She wanted to thrust it away from her—far away—but memory would not now be denied. Kuniggod, who had risen from her bed wheezing and coughing from the Deep Chill, but who had made sure her nurseling was out and away before death fought its way to the door of the ladies’ bower—using the inner stair of the hall—the bolt hole gate.