The leader was big and gaunt, his yellow hair and beard in twin braids, his face painted in red and blue stripes. A headdress of plumes and ox horns rose over him. His shoulders were covered by a mantle of badger skins, his midriff by a shaggy kilt. But he had a steel battle ax in his hand.
The others were similar. Axes, swords, spears gleamed among them. One wore the rusty tilting helmet of some murdered knight, a horrible faceless thing to see upon his naked body. Another blew a wooden whistle as he ran; the notes trilled between wolfish voices.
“Back!” exclaimed Carahue. “We’ll have to flee!”
“We can’t escape them,” groaned Holger. “Men can run down horses. And we’ve got to reach St. Grimmin’s soon.”
A javelin clattered yards before him, “Get aloft Alianora!” he shouted.
“Nay,” she said. One hand clutched blindly for his.
“You can fight better thus,” said Carahue. Holger wished his own wits operated that quickly. The girl nodded, kicked loose from her stirrups, and transformed. The swan rose in a thunder of wings.
The war band stopped. A yell went up. Several covered their eyes. “Allah akbar!” exploded Carahue. “They’re terrified of magic. Merciful saints, I meant to say.”
The swan dove toward the savages. The leader shook his ax at her, snatched a bow from one of the men and nocked an arrow. The swan veered just in time. The leader shouted at his men, uncouth noises borne faintly down the wind to his quarry. He kicked those who had fallen prostrate until they climbed to their feet.
“Aye.” Hugi’s mouth tightened in the white beard. “That un be in the coven. He’s seen worse witchcraft nor this. He’s heartening the others to rush on against us.”
“Their nerve is none too steady, though,” said Carahue, lightly as if he sat at a banquet. He strung his own short double-curbed bow. “Could we pull another trick or two—” He cocked an eye at Holger.
The Dane thought wildly of parlor tricks, of urging the cannibal chief to take a card, any card... Wait! “Hugi,” he gasped, “Strike me a light—”
“What is’t ye do?”
“Light! Damn your questions! Fast!”
The dwarf got flint and steel from his belt pouch while Holger stuffed his pipe. His fingers shook. By the time he had it lit, the hillmen were horribly close. He could see the scar on one cheek, the bone in another nose; he heard their bare feet slap the ground, almost he heard their breath. He inhaled, raggedly, to fill his mouth with smoke.
He exhaled.
The savages skidded to a halt. Holger fumed till his eyes smarted and his nose ran. God be praised, there was no wind just now. He guided Papillon with his knees, raising his cloak behind his head with both hands, to provide a dark backdrop for the smoke. Slowly, he rode toward the warriors. They had stopped dead. He saw them waver. Their jaws were slack and their eyes a-bug.
Holger flapped his arms. “Boo!” he shouted.
One minute afterward, the heathen were out of sight. The slope was littered with weapons they had dropped. Their screams drifted from the ravine into which they had bolted. The leader held his place alone. Holger drew sword. The leader snarled and ran too. Carahue shot an arrow after him, but missed.
Alianora landed, became a girl, threw herself against the Dane and hugged his leg. “Oh, Holger, Holger,” she choked. Carahue dropped his bow to clutch his sides, for the echoes had begun to ring with his laughter.
“Genius!” he whopped. “Sheer genius! Rupert, I love you for this!”
Holger smiled shakily. He’d simply taken another crib from literature—the Connecticut Yankee—but there was no reason to discuss that point. Enough that it had worked.
“Let’s get going,” he said. “Their boss may yet whip some courage back into them.”
Alianora sprang to the saddle. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked happier than she had for some time. Hugi observed grumpily, “Aye, their guts oozed oot fast enough. Yet ’twas ne’er said yon breed are aught but bonny fighters. Why should they shy from a seeming touch o’ wizardry? Because o’ late they’ve seen so much o’ ’t, and so nasty, that their nerves are close to breaking. That’s all. We’ve no seen the last o’ them.”
Holger had to agree. He doubted the band had intercepted him coincidentally. Morgan must have ordered it out—even across the feared pass—the moment she learned Rusel had not been able to keep him prisoner. She wouldn’t quit after this failure, either.
Carahue edged his mount close. “Methought I heard the fair lady call you by a name strange to me,” he remarked.
Alianora flushed. “N-n-nay,” she stammered. “Ye must ha’ misheard.”
Carahue arched his brows, too polite to call her a liar in so many words. She moved her own horse beside his until knees touched. “This is a wearisome journey,” she murmured. “will ye no beguile our way with some further tale o’ your exploits? Ye’ve done so many bold deeds, and ye relate them so well.”
“Oh, now... Ahem!” Carahue grinned, twirled his mustache, and launched into a recital. The girl listened wide-eyed to the most outrageous, if smoothly phrased, brags that Holger had heard in his life. Presently her respectful oh’s and ah’s got too much for the Dane to bear. He jerked harshly on Papillon’s reins and rode to one side by himself. The pleasure of his victory had quite departed.
21
EVENING FOUND THEM under the pass. It proved to be an upward gash through the cliff, covered deep with sharded rock, where the mountain had been faulted. The climb to the plateau next day would take hours. Thereafter, Alianora said, they would not lack many miles of their goal, and travel should be easy.
Easy as the descent to hell , Holger thought with a shiver. The agnostic engineer in him observed that so far the path had been more like the proverbial road to heaven. But the engineer’s world seemed infinitely far away, in time as well as in space, a dream he had once had, fading out of his memory as all dreams must.
Beneath the precipices they found a meadow, if that patch of soil was not too barren to rate the name, and established camp. In the center loomed a tall monolith. It might have been a pagan menhir, before the troll that Hugi smelled came to nest in some nearby cave and drive humans away. Darkness clamped down. The wind had resumed, and strengthened hourly. Orange flames streamed along the ground; sparks flew off like meteors and were as swiftly snuffed. Overhead lay a blackness where the gibbous moon was seen in rare glimpses, racing among monstrous cloud shapes. The night was full of whistlings, rustlings, and croakings.
The party were too exhausted to do more than swallow a little food and roll up in their blankets. Hugi took the first watch, Holger the second. By that time the night was absolute. Holger poked the fire, drew his cloak tightly about him against the cold, and looked down at his companions.
The blaze picked them out in guttering highlights. Carahue slept like a cat, as quiet and easy as when he was awake. Hugi had rolled himself into a cocoon of blanket from which only his lustily snoring nose projected. Holger’s eyes went to Alianora and remained there. The blanket had slid off her. She lay on her side, legs drawn up and hands clasped over the small breasts. Her face, glimpsed through a tangle of hair, was childlike, blind with sleep, a strangely helpless look. Holger stooped to tuck her in. His lips brushed her cheek and she smiled without waking.
He rose. A heaviness was in him, more for her than himself. If he had been snatched by irresistible warring powers, too bad, but he hated the thought of her being whirled along with him, he knew not whither. What could he do, though? What could he do?