“Nor me. There is a — girl — who was at Trakon’s Pillars. She may have left there by now; but I hope to find someone who saw her, who perhaps knows where she has gone.”
“And I will fetch my Thelda and the child out of that filthy den.”
“Then let us go forward. This lead looks promising.”
We led our mounts for a space, quieting them down, and walked with careful feet along the shuddery trail between quagmires. We walked with naked steel in our fists, and, because I was now afoot, considered it more fitting to unlimber the Krozair longsword. Lol stared.
“I know I am in the best of company with Jak the Drang,” he said. His own clanxer glimmered. “Men have heard of the deeds of Jak the Drang.”
“And you?”
“I was tending my estate of Sygurd when the Troubles began. I had no truck with politics. But in evil times a man must turn his hand when he can. And then I was able to help my Thelda, and we married and we carried on the fight as guerillas. At times, I think, you could almost call us drikingers.”
“I have used bandits, Lol. Properly motivated they are just people — it is those who seek only self- gratification who pose the problems.”
“Aye. We have been fighting Layco Jhansi’s men for a long time now, and never seem to gain an advantage.”
“And the Kov of Falinur? How stands your allegiance?”
“He is dead-” Lol started to say and then he swung about sharply and the clanxer flashed and a tendrilous mass of fleshy pseudopods writhed onto the trail. In the next instant we were fighting together, shoulder to shoulder, almost, to clear the path as bulbous growths, half-flesh, half-plant, descended on us from the dank recesses of the overhanging trees. I say almost shoulder to shoulder. I like to stand with a free space so as to get a good swing with the longsword. So, together, as comrades in arms, we fought, and cleared a passage through for ourselves and our zorcas.
When at last we burst free, Lol drew the back of his hand across his brow, and ichor dripped from the blade of the sword.
“That weapon, Jak the Drang, is incredible.”
“It has been called an old bar of iron.”
“Would we had a thousand such to face Jhansi and his lurfings.”
“We shall deal with Jhansi, if the Racters have not done so first, in due time. What d’you know of this fellow Zankov?”
“Only that he is a devil. He seeks an alliance with Jhansi. There is some foeman they both fear — apart, that is, majister, from you.”
“Aye, me. They mock me, I know.” I told him about Yantong and his crazy schemes. “If Zankov has fallen out with his Hyr Notor, he is in parlous case and must seek fresh allies.”
“They could form a powerful combine across the center of Vallia. If-”
“You said, Lol, you were not a political.”
“I said, if you will pardon me, majister, that a man must turn his hand to the business of the moment in evil days.”
“And so you did, Lol, so you did. And what is that, striking a hard corner through the mist?”
On the instant we halted and remained perfectly still and silent.
Strands of spiderweb drifted from tree to tree, intertwined bundles of gold-glinting threads like gilded thistledown floating on the breath of the breeze, and at the center of each small aerial maze the darkly red body of the spider, crouched and ready, feeling the currents of the air upon his senses and the trapped thrashings of insects on his hairs. Beyond the drifting spider-silk puffballs and the down-drooped trees, beyond the last curl of orange and green mist, the hard outline of a blockhouse thrust a manmade objection into the running deliquescence of the marsh.
“The first outpost,” breathed Lol. I barely heard him. “Now may Opaz be praised.”
“Amen to that. D’you know the best place to hit ’em?”
“No. But I guess we should circle around-”
“They’ll be wary of that trick, I’d guess. Mantraps, stavrers, spikes. Let’s just stroll up to the front door and knock. What say you, Lol?”
His features brightened and took on a fierce look of joy. He moved his sword, freely, liberated from worry over trivialities. “By Vox, majister! I am with you!”
So, as calm as you please, we strolled up to the front door of the blockhouse, leading our zorcas. Yes, we were an impudent pair, or a foolhardy pair; but we did it.
A Rapa stepped out, a dwa-Deldar, big and vulture-like in his leather and bronze harness. His sword pointed at us.
“Llanitch!” he shouted when we were within a dozen paces. “Llanitch!” Which is by way of being an intemperate order to halt.
We moved on a full four paces before we hauled up and I said: “Llahal, dom. This bog! It is enough to give the Reiver of Souls a touch of the black dog. Layco Jhansi is expecting us.” Then, as though that little halt had fully obeyed his order and as though it was the most natural thing in the world, still speaking, I started to move on. “This bog — it tires the sword arm and that is the truth, by Krun!”
The Havilfarese oath must have gone a little way to reassure him, perhaps, even to soothe him, for he lowered his sword and half turned to call back into the blockhouse.
I sprang. I was on him like a leem. He went down, unconscious, gathered under the black cloak of Notor Zan, and Lol and I were into the ominously gaping doorway.
There were four others inside, lolling on bunks, and another two who contested fiercely over Jikalla. We dispatched them all after a short and not very bloody struggle. We did not slay them all. I was pleased at the way Lol worked. Short, efficient strokes, a minimum of fuss, and a neatness about his fighting told me he might have been a peaceful farmer before the Time of Troubles but, like so many Vallians, he had been forced to take up the sword instead of the ploughshare and found in the new occupation an aptitude that, while it must please him, left him also with that dark and hollow feeling of self-disgust and despair. We surveyed the interior of the blockhouse, then Lol went out and dragged the Rapa in. The Rapa’s big cruel beak of a nose was dented in where he had hit the dirt face-down. It had been his misfortune to find a solid chunk of earth instead of the ubiquitous mud.
“This one is half-conscious,” I said, and hauled the fellow up. He was an apim, like us, and wore a fine fancy uniform of leather and bronze with a short and ridiculous cloak of ochre and umbre in checkerboard style.
“Wha-?” he said in immemorial stupid question.
“We did,” I said, cheerfully.
“Uh?”
“I assume you were asking who or what hit you?”
It was a little too much for him. He decided to tell us what we wanted to know when Lol, very casually, asked which portion of his anatomy he fancied he could best do without. The trail opened out past the blockhouse, becoming firmer and less treacherous and there were no more risslacas. That, at the least, was good news. The openness was something else again. We put him to sleep, gently, and bound and gagged all those still alive and, going out and bolting the door and wedging it with a half-rotten log covered with woodlice and limpet-like sucking slugs, we took ourselves and our zorcas off along the trail to Trakon’s Pillars.
Presently Lol, who had been showing acute symptoms of earnest thought, said: “Why not take a couple of their uniforms? We could pass muster for guards, you and I.”
“Aye, Lol. We could. I think you have been a farmer and a guerilla. Those guards back there — their uniforms. They are outpost men, exterior details. If Jhansi is still as slippery as I think, he will have arranged first-rate and differently accoutred guards for inside.”
“Oh,” said Lol. Then, “I see.”
“We’ll try the same trick again, and this time say we have been passed on by the outpost guards. It should serve to bring us within range for handstrokes. I’m loath to shaft ’em without warning.”
The wide-eyed and incredulous gape Lol favored me with indicated, truly enough, the flabbiness of this my later self and the unwelcome realization that I would have to stiffen up, brassud! in the near future. To attempt some limping explanation of my words and thus reveal my hopeless confusion seemed to me an enormous task and
