C. Brittain - Voima

Kardan glared at him, wondering how the black-bearded king could be so calm about it all, could even joke when his oldest son had been snatched away to unreachable realms, and when the princess he had raised like a daughter was held captive by an outlaw.

But then he noticed that Hadros was still sharpening his knife. He had brought the blade to a fineness that could split a hair yet was continuing to stroke away with the whetstone, now removing half an inch of edge.

“Are they trying to make us uneasy by their silence,” said Hadros, “or are they really as confused in there as it seems?” But then he laughed grimly, and the blade snapped in his hands. “Maybe Roric and the princess are leading them a merry chase already! Gizor told us she has a handiness with a knife I’d never appreciated, and you told me Roric is good enough to defeat my weapons-master in a fair fight. I’ll back those two against any renegade king.”

“Again!” yelled Kardan, paying no attention. The frame around the castle gate was beginning to split. The men all shouted as the ram struck again and again. Nails burst out of the hinges. A narrow gap between the two halves of the gate appeared and grew wider with every blow. A final rush with the battering ram, and the gate burst open. The two kings’ men rushed through, swords upraised, shouting their war-cries.

Here at last they met resistance as wild-eyed armed warriors sprang in front of them. But the kings’ men outnumbered the defending warriors, who seemed strangely disoriented considering they were fighting for their own fortress, and they only had to kill two before capturing the rest with no loss of life themselves.

“I think it’s a trap,” said Hadros, looking around the dim and echoing hall. “Where are all the raiders who attacked us by the river? This was a defense with no heart in it and no mind behind it.”

Kardan was ready to rush wildly down the passages in search of Karin, but Hadros insisted they go slowly. Stepping quietly, looking around every corner before turning it, the kings and their men explored the fortress. The rooms were dug into the rock as much as built on it, and everywhere was comfortless, dank, and bone-chillingly cold. They pushed open the doors cautiously, sent one person ahead alone through every narrow opening with the rest tense and waiting for ambush, and jerked open every chest and every storage bin.

And at the end of the hour they had found a beautifully-made lyre, wrapped in rags, at the bottom of a chest; four women; two wounded men; and no one else in the fortress beside the warriors they had already captured.

“Where can they have gone?” said Kardan in despair, a question none of the people here seemed to want to answer. “Where can they have taken Karin?”

“They might be down at the river trying to fire our ship,” commented Hadros. “Queen Arane said she could direct the defense quite well by herself-should we go see how successful she’s been?”

Kardan shook his head. “Why allow us to take their mountain fortress just for the chance to destroy our ship? Unless they wanted to steal it and go somewhere!”

“It’s your daughter who steals ships,” said Hadros, but his eyes narrowed. “This renegade king-Eirik, wasn’t that his name? — may have decided to get out of here and start over again somewhere further from a dragon. In which case they really might have taken my ship.” He yelled to his warriors. “Come on, everybody, back down the mountain! Yes, we’re taking all the prisoners!”

It was twilight when they emerged from the fortress and full night by the time they found their way, dragging the prisoners and carrying the food and blankets-all the booty the fortress afforded beyond the lyre-down the twisting, narrow tracks to the river. All the way Kardan’s heart was pounding hard, as he imagined Karin being taken south in chains by a renegade who would certainly find her more attractive than the slovenly women they had found in the castle. But the watch fires were burning by Hadros’s ship when they finally reached the salt river, and Queen Arane’s elegantly dressed warriors challenged them with very sharp weapons held ready.

The queen came to greet them once her warriors recognized the kings. “No, I have seen no one all day,” she said, looking from one to the other in the torchlight. Night hid both mountains and river, and there was a steady lapping of waves against the pebble beach. “Might they have gone higher up into the mountains, or hidden from you in caves down by the sea?”

“And left just a few men on guard, a guard they hoped would be sufficient and was not?” said Hadros thoughtfully. “That would only make sense if they were terrified of us, or if they were hoping the dragon would corner us in their fortress. But they did not seem terrified when they attacked the first time, and I doubt the dragon does anyone’s bidding!”

“Some of these men must know where they took the princess,” said Kardan grimly. “Torture should make them talk.”

“Too bad Gizor’s dead,” said Hadros. “He was my best torturer. Let’s try the women first.”

The first woman they tried needed no more persuasion than being dragged before the two kings and a torch held close to her hair before agreeing to tell them what she knew. “But this is only what Wigla told me,” she said darkly, looking up at them from shadowed eyes.

“Wigla?” said Kardan.

“She is his woman but she hates him too. She tried to leave last year; that is when Eirik had her lover killed.”

This was all very well, thought Kardan, but it had nothing to do with Karin. “But where are Eirik and the princess now?” he demanded.

“I only know what I was told,” said the woman sulkily, “and I don’t know about that fancy girl Eirik found. But Wigla told us to stay and wait for them. She and the king and a lot of the men were going, she said, to raid the Wanderers. I’m only telling you what she said!” she added as Kardan leaned toward her threateningly.

“One cannot ‘raid’ the Wanderers,” said Hadros sternly. “Was this a code term for some sort of attack?”

“If so, no one ever explained it to me,” said the woman, sulky again. “And I must say I was surprised to hear her mention the Wanderers. The king, he doesn’t like to hear talk about the lords of voima. He says the only lords he serves are those in Hel.”

Kardan had never before known, first-hand, of someone who served the lords of death rather than of voima. A chill went through him right down to the pit of his belly. There were hints of such things in the old stories, but to have his daughter held by such a man!

Hadros sent the woman off, still bound. “What do you make of her story, Kardan?”

“Maybe there is a door into the Wanderers’ realm here,” Kardan suggested slowly, “as Roric said there was. But the lords of voima would never allow someone to rampage through such a door in search of booty!”

“Let’s see if we get any more sense out of one of the men,” said Hadros.

But the warriors whom King Eirik had left behind seemed to have even less information. Brought bound before the kings with knives at their throats they proved quite willing to talk, but all they could say was that Eirik had taken more than half his men, leaving the rest with instructions to open the gates to no one until he returned.

“We’ll find them in the morning,” said Hadros, yawning widely. “They can’t have gone north because the mountains are too steep, and they can’t have gone south or Arane would have seen them, and they can’t have gone anywhere out to sea without a ship. They’re in a cave down by the shore or hiding in the rocks somewhere. They’ll be hungry and come back-unless instead of the Wanderers they were trying to raid the dragon’s lair, and discovered that this one likes to eat more often than they hoped! When they return to their fortress and find it standing open and empty, they’ll be down soon enough to talk terms.”