Purpose restored him a little. He went to the entrance and stuck his face out between the lashed poles, into the rain. Four Yuthoaz stood guard, wrapped in leather cloaks. They edged from him, lifted their weapons and made signs against evil.
“Greeting, you fellows,” Lockridge said. Storm had let him keep his diaglossas. “I want to ask a favour.”
The squad leader nerved himself to reply, sullenly, “What can we do for one who’s fallen under Her wrath, save watch him as we were told?”
“You can send a message for me. I only want to see a friend.”
“None are allowed here. She ordered that Herself. We’ve already had to chase away one girl.”
Lockridge clenched his teeth. Naturally Auri would have heard the news. Many a frightened eye had seen him marched off last night, by torchlight, under Yutho spears. You she-devil, Storm, he thought. In the jail you hauled me out of, they let me have visitors.
“Well,” he said, “then I want to see the Goddess.”
“Hoy-ah!” The warrior laughed. “You’d have us tell Her to come at your bidding?”
“You can tell her with respect that I beg audience, can’t you? When you’re relieved, if not before.”
“Why should we? She knows what She wants to do.”
Lockridge donned a sneer and said, “Look, you swine, I may be in trouble but I’ve not lost every power. You’ll do as I say or I’ll rot the flesh off your bones. Then you’ll have to pray for the Goddess’ help anyway.”
They cringed. Lockridge saw foreshadowed the kind of realm that Storm would build. “Go!” he said. “And get me some breakfast on the way.”
“I, I dare not. None of us dare leave before we are allowed. But wait.” The leader drew a horn from beneath his cloak and winded it, a dull sad noise through the rain. Presently a gang of youths arrived, axes in hand, to learn what the trouble was. The leader sent them on Lockridge’s errands.
It was a puny triumph, but nonetheless drove some more hopelessness off him. He attacked the coarse bread and roast pork with unexpected appetite. Storm can break me, he thought, but she’ll need a mind machine for the job.
He was not even surprised when she came, a couple of hours later. What did astonish him was the way his heart still turned over at sight of her. In full robe she walked over the land, big and supple and altogether beautiful. The Wise Woman’s staff was in her hand, a dozen Yuthoaz at her back. Lockridge saw Withucar among them. From her belt of power sprang an unseen shield off which the rain cascaded, so that she stood in a silvery torrent, water nymph and sea queen.
She halted before the cabin and regarded him with eyes more sorrowful than anything else. “Well, Malcolm,” she said in English. “I find I must come when you ask.”
I’m afraid I’ll never come to your whistle again, darlin’,” he told her. “Too bad. I was right proud to belong to you.”
“No more?”
He shook his head. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“I know. You are that kind of man. If you weren’t, this would hurt me less.”
“What’re you goin’ to do? Shoot me?”
“I am trying to find a different way. You don’t know how hard I am trying.”
“Look,” he said with a hope wild, sweet, and doomed, “you can drop this project. Quit the time war. Can’t you?”
“No.” Her pride was sombre. “I am the Koriach.”
He had no answer. The rain hammered down around them.
“Hu wanted to kill you out of hand,” Storm said. “You are the instrument of destiny, and if you have become our enemy, dare we let you live? But I replied that your death might be the very event that is necessary to cause—what?” Her resolution flickered low and she stood isolated in the blurring waterfall. “We don’t know. I thought, how gladly I thought, when you came back to me, that you were the sword of my victory. Now I don’t know what you are. Anything I do could bring ruin. Or bring success, who can tell? I know only that you are fate, and that I want so much to save you. Will you let me?”
Lockridge looked into the haunted green eyes and said with huge pity, “They were right in the far future. Destiny makes us slaves. You’re too good for that, Storm. Or no, not good-not evil either, maybe, not anything human—but it’s wrong for this to happen to you.”
Did he see tears through the rain? He wasn’t sure. Her voice, at least, was steady: “If I decide you must die, it shall be quickly and cleanly, by my own hand; and you will be laid in the dolmen of the gate with warrior’s honours. But I beg that that need not be.”
He fought against a witchcraft older and stronger than any powers her distorted world had given her, and said: “While I wait, can I say good-bye, or somethin’, to a few friends?”
Then anger leaped forth. She stamped the staff into mud and cried, “Auri? No! You’ll see Auri wedded tomorrow, in yonder camp. I’ll talk to you again afterward and learn if you’re really such a contemptible idiot as you act!”
She turned, in a whirl of cloak and gown, and left him.
Her escort followed. Withucar dropped behind. A sentry tried to stop him. Withucar shoved the man aside, came to the door, and held out his hand.
“You’re still my brother, Malcolm,” he said gruffly. “I’ll speak for you to Her.”
Lockridge took the clasp. “Thanks,” he mumbled. His eyes stung. “One thing you can do for me. Be kind to Auri, will you? Let her stay a free woman.”
“As far as I’m able. We’ll name a son for you, and sacrifice at your grave, if things come to that. But I hope not. Luck ride with you, friend.” The Yutho departed.
Lockridge sat down on the dais and stared into the rain. His thoughts were long, and nobody else’s business.
Toward noon the downpour ended. But no sun broke through. Instead, mists began to rise, until the world beyond the door was one dripping grey formlessness. Now and then he heard a voice call, a horse neigh, a cow low, but the sound came muffled and remote, as if life had drawn away from him. So cold and damp was the air that eventually he got back under his blanket. Weariness claimed him; he slept.
His dreams were strange. When he rose out of them, inch by inch, he didn’t know for a while that he was doing so. Real and unreal twisted together, he was wrecked in a Storm-dark ocean, Auri blew past, crying his mother’s name, a horn summoned hounds, he went down into green depths and heard the clangour of iron being forged, fought his way back to where the lightnings burned, thunder smote him and—and the hut was filled with blackness, twilight seeped through the fog, men shouted and weapons clattered—
No dream!
He stumbled from his bed to the door, shook the bars and yelled into the slow wet roil, “What’s happenin? Where is everybody? Let me out, God damn you! Storm!”
Drums thuttered in the grey. A Yutho voice roared, hoofs hammered past, wheels banged and axles squealed. Elsewhere, wildly, men rallied each other. From afar, a woman shrieked, under a mounting rattle of stone. And metal, bronze had been unscabbarded, he heard the sinister whistle of an arrow flight.
Figures moved, vague in the smoky dusk, his guards. “Some attack from the shore,” the leader told him harshly.
“Why do we wait, Hrano?” shrilled another. “Our place is in the fight!”
“Stay where you are! Our place is here, till She tells us otherwise.” Feet pattered by. “Hoy, you, who’s fallen on us? How goes the battle?”