I
THE RIVING OF THE BORDER
A column of smoke penciled into the air, broken by puffs as more combustible materials caught. Simon reined up on the rise to gaze back at the site of another disaster for the Karsten forces, another victory for his own small, hard-riding, tough-punching troop. How long their luck would hold, none of them could guess. But as long as it did, they would continue to blast into the plains, covering up the escape lines of those set-faced, dark-haired people from the outlands who came in family groups, in well armed and equipped bodies, or singly at a weaving pace dictated by wounds and exhaustion. Vortgin had done his work well. The old race, or what was left of it, was withdrawing over a border the Falconers kept open, into Estcarp.
Men without responsibilities for families or clans, men who had excellent cause to want to meet Karsten levies with naked blades, stayed in the mountains, providing a growing force to be led by Koris and Simon. Then by Simon alone, as the Captain of the Guard was summoned north to Estcarp to recommand there.
This was guerilla warfare as Simon had learned it in another time and land, doubly effective this time because the men under him knew the country as those sent gainst them did not. For Tregarth discovered that these silent, somber men who rode at his back had a queer affinity with the land itself and with the beasts and the birds. Perhaps they were not served as the Falconers were by their trained hawks, but he had seen odd things happen, such as a herd of deer move to muddle horse tracks, crows betray a Karsten ambush. Now he listened, believed, and consulted with his sergeants before any strike.
The old race were not bred to war, though they handled sword and gun expertly. But with them it was a disagreeable task to be quickly done and forgotten. They killed cleanly with dispatch and they were incapable of such beastliness as the parties from the mountains had come upon where fugitives had been cut off and captured.
It was once when Simon left such a site, white, controlling his sickness by will power alone, that he was startled by a comment from the set-faced young man who had been his lieutenant on that foray.
“They do not do this of their own planning.”
“I have seen such things before,” Simon returned, “and that was also done by human beings to human beings.”
The other who had held his own lands in the back country and had escaped with his bare life from that holding some thirty days earlier, shook his head.
“Yvian is a soldier, a mercenary. War is his trade. But to kill in such ways is to sow black hate against a future reaping. And Yvian is lord in this land; he would not willingly rip apart his own holding and bring it to ruin — he is too keen-witted a man. He would not give orders for the doing of such deeds.”
“Yet we have seen more than one such sight. They could not all be the work of only one band commanded by a sadist, or even two such.”
“True. That is why I think we now fight men who are possessed.”
Possessed! The old meaning of that term in his own world came to Simon — possession by demons. Well, that a man could believe having seen what they had been forced to look upon. Possessed by demons — or — the memory of the Sulcarkeep road flooded into his mind; possessed by a demon — or emptied of a soul! Kolder again?
From then on, much as it revolted him, Simon kept records of such finds, though never was he able to catch the perpetrators at their grisly work. He longed to consult with the witch, only she had gone north with Briant and the first wave of fugitives.
He launched through the network of guerrilla bands a request for information. And at nights, in one temporary headquarters after another, he pieced together bits and patches. There was very little concrete evidence, but Simon became convinced that certain commanders among the Karsten forces did not operate according to their former ways, and that the Duke’s army had been infiltrated by an alien group.
Aliens! As always that puzzle of inequality of skills continued to plague him. Questioning of his refugees told him that the energy machines which they had always known had come from “overseas” ages past: “overseas” energy machines brought by the Sulcar traders, adapted by the old race for heat and light, the Falconers also from “overseas” with their amazing communicators borne by their hawks. And the source of the Kolder was also “overseas” — a vague term — a common source for all?
What he could learn he dispatched by messenger to Estcarp, asking for anything the witches might have to tell in return. The only thing he was sure of was that as long as his own force was recruited from those of old race, he had no need to fear infiltration himself, for that quality which gave them kinship with the land and the wild things granted them in addition the ability to smell out the alien.
Three more false hawks had been detected in the mountains. But all had been destroyed in their capture and Simon had only broken bits to examine. Where they came from and for what purpose they had been loosed was a part of all the other mystery.
Ingvald, the Karstenian lieutenant, pushed up beside him now to look down upon the scene of destruction they had left.
“The main party with the booty is well along the hill track. Captain. We have plundered to some purpose this time, and with that fire laid to cross our trail, they will not even know how much has come into our hands! There are four cases of darts as well as the food.”
“Too much to supply a flying column.” Simon frowned, his mind snapping back to the business at hand. “It would seem that Yvian hopes to make a central post somewhere hereabouts and base his foray parties there. He may be planning to move a large force borderwards.”
“I do not understand it,” Ingvald said slowly. “Why did this all blow up so suddenly out of nothing? We are not — were not — blood brothers of the coastwise people. They drove us inland when they came from the sea. But for ten generations we have been at peace with them, each going our way and not troubling the other. We of the old race are not inclined to war and there was no reason for this sudden attack upon us. Yet when it came it moved in such a way as we may only believe that it had long been planned.”
“But, not, perhaps, by Yvian.” Simon set his horse to a trot matched by Ingvald’s mount so they rode knee to knee. “I want a prisoner, Ingvald, a prisoner of such a one as has been amusing himself in those ways we saw in the farm meadow of the fork roads!”
A spark gleamed deep in the dark eyes meeting his. “If such a one is ever taken. Captain, he shall be brought to you.”
“Alive and able to talk!” Simon cautioned.
“Alive and able to speak,” agreed the other. “For it is in our minds too, that things can be learned from one of that sort. Only never do we find them, only their handiwork. And I think that that is left deliberately as a threat and a warning.”
“There is a puzzle in this,” Simon was thinking aloud, playing once more with his ever-present problem. “It would seem that someone believes we can be beaten into submission by brutality. And that someone or something does not understand that a man can be fired to just the opposite by those methods. Or,” he added after a moment’s pause, “could this be done deliberately to goad us into turning our full fury against Yvian and Karsten, to get the border aflame and all Estcarp engaged there, then to strike elsewhere?”
“Perhaps a little of both,” Ingvald suggested. “I know, Captain, that you have been seeking for another presence in the Karsten forces, and I have heard of what was found at Sulcarkeep and the rumors of man-selling to Gorm. We are safe in this much: no one who is not truly human can come among us without our knowledge — just as we have always known that you are not of our world.”
Simon started, but turned to see the other smiling quietly. “Yes, Outlander, your tale spread — but after we knew you were not of us — though in some strange way your own akin to our blood. No, the Kolder cannot sneak into our councils so easily. Nor can the enemy venture among the Falconers, for the hawks would betray them.”
Simon was caught by that. “How so?”
“A bird or an animal can sense that kind of alien quicker than even one who has the Power. And those like now to the men of Gorm would find both bird and beast against them. So the Hawks of the Eyrie serve their trainers doubly and make safe the mountains.”
