Through ringing in her ears, Zaranda heard screams from outside. Someone was loosing potent magic against her people. As she paused, the lightning lashed out again.
Frantic, she dashed upstairs. A guard waited at the next floor. She threw the pallet over his head and put her shoulder into him, thrusting him back against the wall. His helmeted head struck stone with a clang.
Ten feet away, another soldier had just finished hooking the thick string of a crossbow into the claw that held it cocked. He had not had time to drop in a bolt. As Zaranda rushed him he threw the weapon down and snatched up a spear.
He thrust at her. She put her weight back, skidded, stopped. He jabbed at her again. She parried. Behind her, she heard the first soldier cursing and floundering. Apparently he was coming out second-best in his con-test with the pallet.
Zaranda threw a looping wild cut at the man's eyes.
He ducked his head back out of harm's way and, whoop-ing with triumph, drove his point for her unprotected body. Crackletongue whirled around and slashed his leading arm. He howled, and lost his grip with that hand. She cut him down before he could shift grip for a one-handed stab.
The other guard finally escaped the pallet. Zaranda knelt, caught up the fallen crossbow, plucked a quarrel from a wall-mounted rack, and slotted it home. As the guard charged, she shot him through the body. He cried out and fell backward down the stairs.
Blue lightnings stabbed and crashed outside. Some sort of potent magic artifact was clearly in play here. No one's mind could hold so many spells of such co-gency. At least, no one who'd be keeping the company of a hedge-robber like Lutwill.
Her urgent mission had abruptly changed from an effort to safeguard her youthful warriors from cross-bowmen to stopping whatever magic was being un-leashed against them. For the first time, she wished she'd actually brought helpers with her into the tower, rather than charging in alone—and sealing the en-trance behind her with a persistent stinking cloud spell.
More cautiously, she advanced up the final set of stairs, sword in hand. Blue flames danced along both edges of Crackletongue's blade. There was evil afoot here.
What she most feared was to find another stout door sealed against her; she had used up her magic for that. But the heavy trapdoor that might seal off the penthouse from the rest of the keep was thrown open, inviting.
Too inviting; she wasn't that ingenuous. She gath-ered herself, pantherish on strong haunches, then launched herself upward in a mighty leap. It carried her up through the entry hole and beyond. She tucked a shoulder and rolled as a blade clashed on the floor be-hind her.
She fetched up against the wall amid a pile of furs that smelled worse than they had when attached to their original owners. Clearly hygiene was not a matter much on Baron Lutwill's mind. A young woman cow-ered nearby, naked but for a bearskin clutched against her, straw-colored hair hanging limp in a scared, blank face.
"Keep out of the way," Zaranda told her. "We'll get you free of this."
The penthouse was a larger version of the filthy bar-racks on the second floor, though more sumptuously furnished. Instead of straw pallets, furs and stained silk cushions lay scattered across the floor. On the walls hung once-fine tapestries that, it appeared, had seen much use for the wiping of greasy fingers. The
dis-carded wine bottles were of a better vintage than the ones on the lower floor, but the crusts and mold-green cheese rinds and gnawed joints were much the same.
The windows were much larger than the arrow loops below, glazed with heavy age-wavy panes set in lead. These were apparently stout; an arrow crashed against the pane and made a mere bird-beak clack before it fell harmlessly away.
A slight man in a black robe stood by the window. He was a mage, to judge by the large sphere he held up to the window. Its surface was alive with opalescent fire, but the light that cast fiendish highlights over his bearded face was blue—the same blue as the lightning-bolt that stabbed down outside as Zaranda watched.
Somehow the black-robed man was controlling the lightning with his sphere. Zaranda summoned the last bit of magic she had in her, preparing to send him a magic missile where it would do the most good.
A huge shadow loomed up before her, blocking her aim. "Die, interloper!" it roared, and hacked downward savagely with a great double-bitted battle-axe.
She rolled aside. The blade crashed down, cleaving valuable if dirty pelts. She came to the balls of her feet, crouching, Crackletongue held before her. The axeman turned to confront her.
He was tall, taller even than Shield. He had a mashed-in nose and dark eyes almost hidden beneath bushy brows. Black mustaches swept ferociously back across his cheeks to join with his sideburns, leaving his chin bare. He wore a steel cap, a mail hauberk like his men's, buckskin trews, and boots of some stout, scaled hide, possibly dragonet. His paunch was majestic. The heft of chest and upper shoulders was hard to judge, since he wore a black bearskin vest. Judging from the size of his bare arms, he was doubtless sturdy enough.
"You must be the one who calls herself Countess Morninggold," he said, swishing the axe in the air one-handed before him—seemingly careless, inviting at-tack. "Zazesspur will reward me mightily when I send them your head preserved in vinegar."
"Cheapskate," Zaranda said, trying to crane past him to get a clear shot at his wizard. Reading her in-tent, he kept shifting side to side with an agility that belied his bulk. "Brandy works much better."
"I doubt you're worth the cost, frankly," he said in his oddly pleasant baritone voice. "But you might provide some diversion if I don't kill you at once."
Suddenly he held the axe's yard-long helve in both hands and was whipping the head toward her face with the sheer awesome strength of his wrists alone. The blow would have cloven her to the breastbone had it landed. Expecting such, she had read the signs in his body motions and threw up Crackletongue with her left hand bracing the back of the blade. Impact drove her to her knees.
At contact, the saber flared and crackled with light-ning. Evil! Zaranda thought.
Immediately the big man retracted the axe for a fol-low-up, finishing stroke. Zaranda fell back, braced her-self with one hand, and stabbed with the other. The baron went tiptoe to avoid the thrust and jumped back, giving her time to scramble to her feet.
They squared off, feinting left and right, each trying to provoke the other to commit to an attack.
Zaranda quickly sensed she was the more skillful, but he was quick as well as horribly strong, and her attention kept getting distracted by the desire to do something to in-terfere with the wizard at the window.
The combat continued thus, inconclusive, for what seemed like hours but was probably seconds. Then the baron, noticing the glances his opponent kept darting past him, growled over his shoulder, "Ho, Whimberton! Leave off that play and make some magic so I can put this wench out of the way and deal with her minions myself."
The wizard jerked as if slapped. Lowering the opalescent sphere with visible reluctance, he turned to Zaranda and began to gesticulate and mutter. Franti-cally, she tried to get a clear shot to cast her own re-maining spell, but Baron Lutwill, grinning savagely, launched a fierce attack, forcing her to concentrate ex-clusively on keeping her skull unsplit.
Whimberton threw out his hand. The air seemed to congeal abruptly around Zaranda, freezing her in place. A holding spell! She fought back with all her will, but her exertions, magical and physical, had sapped her. In a moment, she was trapped.
The baron stepped back, leaned on his axe for a mo-ment, admiring his magician's handiwork. "Hmm. Since I didn't have to damage you at all, maybe I won't be so quick to separate your head from that lovely slen-der neck. After all, I can always collect the reward." He turned away. "Well done, Whimberton. Now you can get back to your games. But see you don't use up all the juice, or whatever it is that drives that thing."