though she might be hidden there. Her scent lingered in the hut, and but for that he might have thought it all a dream, a fantasy wrought by some potion in his beer.
It was the man Sylvo who brought him back to harsh reality. He entered and pointed his spear at Blade, his lunatic face creased in a leer.
'You have friends above the salt, master. By Thunor you have! The word comes that you are wanted at the king's great house. Gossip has it that you sit at the War Council, though this I do not believe. More likely they mean to have some sport with you before you are hanged or skinned.'
Sylvo, bursting with this news, and his wits a bit fuddled by it, for once grew careless. The spear point drooped.
Blade moved like a great serpent. Before the man could breathe again he had him in a full nelson, crunching the misshapen face down into the scrawny chest. Sylvo groaned and dropped his spear. He fumbled for the dirk at his belt and Blade, loosing one hand, nearly broke the man's wrist with a downward slash.
'Now,' Blade said softly, 'now, Sylvo, who rules in this hut?'
'You, master! You rule.' Sylvo was choking, yet he tried to kick back at Blade.
Blade, wide straddled, lifted the man as easily as he might a babe in arms. He turned the man and changed his grip, his left hand about the scrawny neck. Sylvo's tongue lolled and began to turn color, and his eyes popped even as they begged.
Blade drew back his mighty right fist. 'I would teach you manners, my man. This is a lesson, nothing more. In future you will know how to speak to your betters.'
He deliberately muffled the blow, for he did not wish to maim or kill, yet it was a buffet that might have floored a largish horse. Sylvo went sprawling across the floor to end up against a wall, his little eyes glazed.
Blade prodded him with a foot and grinned. 'Get up, man! Escort me to the house of Lycanto.'
Chapter Five
Matters went badly from the beginning.
Blade was enjoined to silence, under penalty of immediate death, and so deprived of his only weapon. He was seated in a crude, barrel-shaped chair, with the light of a flaring torch in his face, and harshly told to keep his peace. He dared not defy this— his position being so weak— so he made do with his eyes and brain, straining to use both to best advantage.
The Council Room was large, with an earthen floor strewn with rushes and sand, and leather hanging on the walls. It was well lit and stank of fish oil. A fire, like an enormous red cat, drowsed in a huge fireplace before which slept massive hounds of much the same breed as the one he had slain in defense of Taleen.
There were ten other men in the room, of whom Blade recognized only Cunobar the Gray. The man ignored him.
The ten sat grouped around a long table set on trestles. In a corner, opposite Blade, and coughing now and again from the smoke, sat a white robed Dru so heavily cowled that she seemed headless. She was an amanuensis, with aging vein-traced hands that were yet nimble enough with brush and dye pot. She wrote on large squares of pressed birch bark and Blade, watching her hands move, guessed it to be a runic script.
Lycanto, King of Alb and husband to the Lady Alwyth, sat at the head of the table with Cunobar to his right and a thickset bald warrior to his left. All ignored Blade, while talking of him as if he were some strange animal, something to pique mild curiosity, but not to be taken too seriously.
'He says he is a wizard. I say he is more likely witch, or warlock, which is not at all the same thing. At very best I call him spy, sent by Redbeard, and so he should suffer a spy's death. Flaying.'
The speaker, a burly man to Lycanto's left, stroked his bald head with a badly scarred hand and did not glance at Blade.
'And yet,' said Cunobar, 'the Lady Taleen speaks for him. She names him wizard and also vows that he saved her from Beata's men— and from a fierce hound.'
A grizzled man at the lower end of the table spoke up. 'Then what is the question? Why make so large a thing of what is simple enough? There is an ordeal, one we all know. Put him to it.'
Blade was intent on Lycanto, the King, for in the end his fate would lie on Lycanto's whim. What he saw was not reassuring.
He judged Lycanto to be in his forties, a lanky man with drooping blond moustaches that did little to conceal a receding chin. His light blue eyes, inflamed now by copious amounts of beer, were too narrow set, his nose too long and thin. A single droplet kept appearing at the end of that thin nose, and Lycanto repeatedly wiped it away. He paid no more attention to Blade than did the others.
Only Lycanto's chair had a back, and arm rests carved in the form of dragons, and only he wore a metal helmet on which was engraved a crown. He lolled on his throne, indolent and sullen, drinking constantly from a great horn in a stand before him. His fingers, clean enough and spatulate in shape, drammed incessantly on the table. Blade thought the King's mind strayed, and he wondered if it were to the Lady Alwyth and the things she did in dark, dank mist.
Now Lycanto spoke. His voice was reedy, high pitched, with an oddly girlish tremor to it.
'There is more to this than meets your eye, Bartho.' He was addressing the last speaker. 'Were it not for the Lady Taleen it would be simple enough. We could put him to the ordeal, or turn him over to the Drus, and who would care? But it is not that easy. The Lady Taleen has vouched for him and— '
The bald burly man, who Blade already knew to be an enemy, broke in with a derisive laugh. 'A maid! A simple maid, even though she be cousin to you, Lycanto. What does she know? A maid can be cozened by any likely rogue who comes along. And I give him that— he stands well. He is no doubt a great one with maids, a thing which he knows and uses well to his advantage. I say kill him and have done!'
Lycanto had stiffened in his chair. He glared at the bald man with bloodshot eyes. 'I will not have you interrupt me, Horsa! See to it, that it does not happen again. Or do you forget who is king here?'
Blade, watching with fascination— yet not forgetting that his own head was the subject— marked the expression of sullen contempt on the face of the man called Horsa. No great respect for the king there!
