Zarsthor’s Bane
Andre Norton
1
Wan sunlight touched the upper reaches of this unnamed western dale to which Brixia’s unguided wandering had brought her. It was far enough from the ravaged lands eastward to promise a breathing space of dubious safety—if one took care. Squatting on her heels, the girl grimaced at distant clouds to the east, a hint of worse weather to come. She drew the thin blade of her knife back and forth across the sharpening stone, eyeing that silver of worn steel anxiously. It had been sharpened so many times and, though it had been well forged and strong, its making was in the past—the past she did not even try to remember nowadays. She had to be very careful, she knew, or that finger of metal might snap, leaving her with no tool—nor weapon—at all.
Her hands were sunbrowned and scarred, the nails of her fingers broken, rimmed with a grime which even scrubbing with sand could not banish entirely. It was very hard to think now that once all she had held was the spindle of a spinner, or the shuttle of a weaver, the needle of one who wrought pictures in colored threads upon the thick stuff meant to cover the walls of a keep. Another girl had known that living, soft and secure, in the High Hallack before the invaders came. Someone who had died during the time stretching behind her like a corridor, the far end of which was so faint in her mind that she had difficulty remembering.
That Brixia had survived flight from that enemy besieged keep which had always been her home made her as tough and enduring as the metal she now held. She had learned that time meant one day to be faced from sunrise until she could find some shelter in the coming of dark. There were no feast days, no naming of one month upon another—only times of heat, and times of cold when her very bones ached and sometimes she coughed and knew the bite of the chill until she felt she would never be warm again.
There was little spare flesh on her now; she was as lean and strong as a bow cord. And near, in her own way, as deadly. That she had once gone in fine wool, with a necklet of amber, and the pale western gold in rings upon her fingers—to her that now seemed like a dream—a troublesome dream.
She had walked with fear until it had become a familiar friend, and, had it been banished from her side, she would have felt queerly naked and lost. There had been times when she had nearly shut her eyes upon the rock walls of a cave, or upon the branches of some tree arched above her, ready to lose her stubborn will to endure, to accept death which followed her like a hound on the trail of a fal-deer already wounded by the hunter.
Still there was within her that core of determination which was the heritage of her House—was she not of the blood of Torgus? And all in the south dales of High Hallack had known the Song of Torgus and his victory over the Power of Llan’s Stone. Torgus’ House might not be great in lands or wealth, but in spirit and strength it must be reckoned very high indeed.
She raised a hand to brush back a wandering strand of her sun-bleached hair, sawn off raggedly at her neck level. Not for any skulker of the unsettled lands were the gold braided strands of a bower dweller. Now as she drew the knife back and forth across the stone she hummed the Challenge of Llan on so low a note that none but her own ear might have picked up that thread of sound. There were none to hear—she had scouted this place well shortly after dawn. Unless one counted as listener the black-plumaged bird which croaked menacingly from the top of a nearby, winter-twisted tree.
“So—so—” she tested the keenness of the blade on that errant strand of hair which kept fluttering down into her eyes. The sharpened steel sliced easily through the strees, leaving a puff of severed hairs between her fingers. She loosed her hold and the wind swept those from her. Then she knew a touch of fear again. Better—in this country unknown to her—that she had safely buried that portion of herself. There were old tales—that powers beyond the reckoning of her own people could seize upon hair, nails, the spittle from one’s mouth and use such for the making of ill magic.
Save that there were none here, she thought, to be feared. Evidences there were, this close to the Waste, of those who had once held this country—the Old Ones. They had left monoliths of stone, strange places which beckoned or warned the spirit.
But those were but the markers of long vanished power or powers. And those who had wrought with such were long since gone. The black bird, as if to deny that, cried again its harsh call.
“Ha, black one,” the girl broke off her hum to glance at the bird. “Be not so bold. Would you take sword against Uta?” Sitting back on her heels, she pursed her lips to give a low but carrying whistle.
The bird squawked fiercely as if it well knew whom she so summoned. Then it arose to swoop down slope, skimming only a little above the ground.
From the tussocks of green grass (there were no more sheep on these hills to nibble it ground short) there arose a furred head. Lips drawn back, the cat spat, eyes slitted in annoyance as the bird sheered off and was gone with a last croak of threat.
With the vast dignity of her kind the cat trotted on up to Brixia. The girl raised a palm in greeting. They had been trail comrades and bed mates now for a long time and she was inwardly flattered that Uta had chosen to company her so during her aimless wanderings.
“Was the hunting good?” she asked the cat who had now seated herself an arm’s distance away to give close attention to the tongue washing of a back leg. “Or did the rats move on when there were no more people in that ruin to bring in food for them to steal?” Talking with Uta gave her her only chance to use her voice during this wary solitary wandering.
Settling back, Brixia surveyed the buildings below. Judging by the remains this had once been a well cultivated dale. The fortified manor with its adjacent defense tower—though now roofless, bearing signs of fire on its crumbling walls—must once have been snug enough. She could count twenty fieldmen’s cottages (mostly from the outlines of their walls alone for that was all which remained to be seen) plus a larger heap of tumbled stone which might have been an inn. A road made a ribbon along which those cottages had been strung. It had run, Brixia guessed, straight to the nearest river port. Any traders coming into these upper dales must have followed that way. In addition those strange and only partly tolerated people who roamed the Waste, prospecting in the places of the Old Ones, would have found this a convenient market place for their discoveries.
She did not know what name those who had lived here had given their settlement. Nor could she more than guess what had happened to turn it into the wasteland. The invaders who had ravaged all High Hallack during the war could not have reached so inland a place. But the war itself had spawned evil which was neither invader nor Dale, but born of both.
During that time when the Dalesman’s levies had been called elsewhere, two-legged wolves—the outlaws of the Waste—pillaged and destroyed at will. Brixia did not doubt that when she went poking below she would find disturbing evidence of how this settlement had died. It had been looted—perhaps even the ruins combed more than once. She was not the only sulker in the wasteways. Still she could always hope that there remained something usable—if it were only a battered mug.
Brixia wiped her hands across her thighs, noting with a small frown that the stuff of her breeches was so thin over one knee that flesh showed palely through. Long since she had put aside skirted robe for the greater ease of a forest runner’s wear. She kept her knife in her hand as she reached out for her other weapon, the stout hunting spear. Its point had been newly sharpened also, and she knew well how to use it.
Her pack she would leave here hidden in the brush. There was no need to linger long in the ruins, in fact perhaps she was wasting time to even explore. But Uta would have given her warning if anything larger than a rat or a meadow-leaper laired there, and she could always hope for a find. Her spear had come out of another just such blasted keep.