Allouette stared again, then broke into a full and open laugh. “Prince, I had not known you knew how to jest so!”
“Just so?” Alain asked. “Nay, surely, lady—I must have learned something of wit, for I was surely not born with it. I can appreciate its quality, but when it comes to good jesting, I can only sit and applaud, and thereby be—”
“A clapper?” Allouette asked with a covert smile. “Fie, Prince Alain! Must you wring every last drop of laughter from these bells of yours?”
“A touch!” Alain cried with delight. “A distinct touch! I had known you could not be so serious as you feigned!”
“Ah! Fane would I be witty!” Allouette sighed.
So the two former adversaries rode, trading jests and witticisms, and if some of them were far older than either of the two and nowhere nearly worth the amount of laughter they brought, that was all to the better for healing of wounds. But Alain was the sly one in that exchange, for while he distracted the lady with humor, her fiancé was reassuring his brother about her.
“Did she truly dissolve all three ogres by herself?” Geoffrey asked.
“I turned the first one to mush,” Gregory admitted, “but she did indeed disassemble the other two, and the third, due to the force of her anger, in a matter of seconds.”
“What angered her so?” Geoffrey demanded, then answered his own question. “Of course, the blow that struck your thigh. Is she your fiancée, brother, or a mother bear?”
“She will be a most formidable mother,” Gregory said proudly, “if we should be blessed with offspring.”
“If you are, bid farewell to concentration and scholarship for some years,” Geoffrey warned. “This is not a lady to take all of such a burden on herself.”
“Nor would I wish her to,” Gregory said placidly. “Still, I know, from the tales Magnus told of my infancy, that a mother who is also an esper has certain advantages in caring for babes.”
“Yes, such as crafting toys upon the instant.” Geoffrey shook his head. “Her power over witch-moss is most disconcerting, brother. I had known she was a powerful projective telepath, but I had not known she also excelled in telekinesis!”
“She does not,” Gregory answered, “but so powerful a projective with even mild competence at molding matter with her mind can be devastating when she wishes.”
“I see the sense in that,” Geoffrey said slowly, “and can only acclaim such strength—when it is wielded in my defense.”
“Or your brother’s?” Gregory asked with a smile. “I suspect that she will guard any who are dear to me with almost as much ferocity as my own person.”
“I begin to think that she is your own person, brother,” Geoffrey said with a touch of sarcasm, and when Gregory’s only reply was a smug smile went on to ask, “Can she follow the spoor of this ominous mist that we seek?”
“Why should she?” Gregory pointed to a range of hills ahead, their tops sending streamers of mist into the lowering clouds above. “Yonder lies our fog, does it not?”
Geoffrey stared a moment, then nodded slowly. “I think you have the right of it, brother. Let us climb upward and seek.”
• • •
The roads slanting upward across the slope had been worn hard and smooth, so the companions had no difficulty riding a series of switchbacks into the foggy realm at the peak. They were almost to the summit when a ululating howl sounded ahead, echoed a second later on each side and behind. Alain and Geoffrey barely had time to draw their swords before the ambush closed upon them.
There were no monsters this time, only men and women, though their eyes glared white in faces painted ochre and scarlet. They wore crudely tanned leather kilts and swathes of dun-colored homespun and screamed like berserkers, brandishing flint axes and wooden bucklers.
Alain and Geoffrey met their onslaught with shield and sword, bellowing in answer to the howls and shearing through the handles of the flint axes by the handful—but as the heads fell off, they flew spinning at the ambushers behind, swooping and diving like hawks.
Allouette’s face was taut with the strain of guiding so many weapons. Gregory’s was, too, as a series of warriors tripped over their own feet and went sprawling. Those behind stumbled over them and somersaulted to the ground.
None of them stopped howling for a second.
“Beware, my love!” Gregory shouted. “There are simply too many of them . . . Allouette? Allouette!”
His answer was a scream. He whirled to see half a dozen mountaineers carrying off his true love, thrashing and kicking and biting. Axeheads flew at them, knocking one after another away, but for every one who fell, another leaped in to take her place.
“Avaunt!” Gregory shouted, and earth and rock exploded before them. They hesitated but kept on going.
“A rescue, a rescue!” Alain shouted.
Gregory whirled, seeing four mountaineers descending on the prince. For a moment he wavered, then realized that he couldn’t go after Allouette alone. He shouted. “To blazes with you!”
Gouts of fire shot from the earth, ringing the prince. The mountaineers’ howls slid into shrieks of fear as they fell back.
Gregory spun, glaring at the kidnappers again. Three of them stumbled and fell, but three more leaped in to wrap arms around the struggling woman. One shrieked and fell, clutching at his leg, but a woman hurdled his body to seize Allouette’s waist in his stead. Then one of the mountaineers lost patience and swung a club at her head. Allouette went limp.
Gregory went berserk. He screamed like a banshee, and dozens of mountaineers clapped their hands to their heads, stumbling and falling or weaving about, aware of nothing but the fire in their brains. Allouette’s bearers stumbled, too, four of them losing hold of her—but the remaining two blundered doggedly ahead. Fire erupted in their path; still they plowed onward. Boulders vibrated, rocked, then rolled down upon them; they dodged and kept going.
Then, suddenly, all the mountaineers were running after them, pounding uphill after the hostage and her bearers.
“They flee!” Alain leaned on his sword, gasping for breath.
“Wherefore?” Geoffrey cried, then saw the bearers with their precious load disappear into a rocky maze. “Out upon them! Gregory, leap and seek!”
With a double explosion, both young men disappeared. They reappeared a split second later, standing upon a boulder high on the hill, looking down into the maze—but wind-twisted evergreens overhung the rocky channels, hiding the mountaineers from sight, and a host of triumphant thoughts shielded those of the bearers from discovery.
Gregory fell to his knees with a scream of anguish and loss.
CHAPTER 4
With a bang, Geoffrey was beside him, hand on his shoulder. “Courage, brother! We shall find her, we shall hunt throughout these hills until we have her safe again!”
“I shall tear this mountain apart if I have to!” Gregory’s face was twisted with anger and pain. “I shall rend each of them limb from limb if they seek to keep me from her! And if they dare to hurt her, each one shall die a slow and agonizing death!”
Geoffrey blinked, staring in surprise. Never had his gentle little brother been so caught up in rage; never had the abstracted scholar been so wracked with emotion—and it wasn’t until that moment that he realized just how passionately Gregory loved. In fact, it wasn’t until that moment that he had known his brother was capable of passion.
First Allouette became aware of a crushing headache. She tried to go back to sleep to escape it, but the pain was too severe and wouldn’t let her go. In desperation, she reached into her own brain and boosted her endorphin production. The pain didn’t go away, but it became oddly removed, as though on the far side of an invisible barrier; she knew it was there but no longer cared.