A Mankind Witch (36 page)

Signy shook her head again. "But he allowed himself to be branded as a thrall! He worked in my stable."

Manfred pulled a wry face. "He worked in Bakrauf's stable, too. And look what he did to her. She couldn't hold him prisoner. If he worked in your stable—he stayed by choice."

"He was always very good to the horses," she said in a small voice.

Erik suddenly realized that in her odd, terribly limited world, that was as high a praise as she had ever given anyone. Perhaps, as she ever could.

She continued in that odd little wooden voice. "He always said kind things to me. He made me believe that I could do things. My stepmother always made me believe I couldn't." Her chin quivered. "He made me laugh."

This childlike princess had always been emotionally deprived of any real affection, or praise. No wonder she looked so gauche when Manfred had thanked her. "He was a good man," said Manfred awkwardly.

"No, he wasn't," said Erik, regretting his earlier harshness. This child-princess could hardly help her upbringing. At least he understood it. With his own background he had a far better idea of what this Norse ice-maiden would value. "They called him the Lynx of the Sea. I've heard any number of stories. He'd trick his foes, out-think them, arrive when he was not expected. He was the greatest of raiders. The cleverest and best. But the only person he ever was 'good' for, was you, Princess. Remember him with honor."

"You will tell me all the stories," she said turning to Erik, fiercely. "I will find the greatest skalds to have him made immortal. Tell me his whole name again."

"Cair Aidin."

"I had been hoping I could avoid you discovering that, Erik Hakkonsen," said the man himself, hauling his weight up onto the ledge.

"Cair! But we thought you were dead!" exclaimed Manfred, the only one of them not too stunned to speak.

"You were mistaken, but only just." He grinned crookedly. "Just as well, eh? The Emperor will actually want to see my head before he pays for it."

He looked at Signy, who was sitting as if frozen on her horse, looking straight ahead. "What is wrong, Princess?" he asked, gently.

"You're dead. I saw you die. This is just your
fulgyr
. I will not look at it."

"No, I'm alive, truly, Princess." Cair grinned. "You never gave your thrall permission to die."

Her reaction was to bury her head in her hands.

"Hell's teeth," said Manfred, peering over the rock lip. "Look, the trolls are on their way up here. But I still want to know: how did you get away this time, Cair?"

Cair mounted his horse. "I'll tell you as we ride," he said. "I'm very glad to see you have my horse for me. I abandoned one of the spares back down there when I saw that I could save a lot of time by coming straight up the rock band. Besides I'd never have gotten the horse past them. Fortunately for me, you were very visible from below."

Looking back, it was apparent that the entire force that had set off to raid the kobolds was now hot on their heels. This trail had no side branches or possible escapes on it. If it didn't open up—and it showed no sign of doing so—the trolls would capture them soon. The end seemed very near, short of any more miracles. It didn't stop Signy both refusing to look Cair in the eye, and yet constantly checking to see that he was in the saddle, while he explained.

"The troll fell on top of me, all right. Had we been on rock or even sand, I'd have been as flat as a grease spot. But there was a thick snow drift in the gully. The troll pushed me flat into it."

He laughed. "To think I should be grateful for snow. The troll was a lot wider than I was. A lot wider and a lot bigger—and snow must have supported more of its weight than it did of mine.I must admit that I panicked. One lungful of air wasn't going to get me out. I was scrabbling when I hit a tree branch. Skinned my hand—but the branch wiggled. I pulled it. It hit me in the face . . . and there was a hole. I could breathe and I could hear. And what I could hear was enough to make me lie still and breathe. Bakrauf caught up with the ones that had nearly caught us, and she was spitting nails. All I had to do was wait in the snow and dig my way out once they had passed. I found one of the horses and set off after the trolls, and you. And then I saw a way of climbing straight up and avoiding the trolls and getting to you. Very unheroic," he said matter-of-factly.

Erik couldn't believe it. Nothing short of magic and heroism could have got Cair Aidin out of that one. Erik had little doubt both had been called into account.

* * *j

The trail had become narrower and steeper. They'd ended up dismounting on sections of it which were little more than a scramble up a rock slide. Yet it was obvious, despite this, that the trail was a well-traveled one and that the trolls were pressing hard to catch them. The trail was hemmed with cliffs, and to continue on was the only option.

Eventually the trail did arrive at an end point—a hundred-yard-long valley ending against a sheer rock wall of gray-black basalt. It was several hundred feet high, smooth and sheer, and stretched above the rim of the valley as far as the eye could see in either direction. It didn't look climbable . . . It looked as if even birds might turn around and go the other way.

"And now?" asked Manfred

"The trail leads somewhere."

"I suppose we may as well follow it."

The trail did lead somewhere. It led to the rock wall. It stopped there, as there was nowhere further to go. The trolls were coming on now at a flat run.

"All right. Let's at least go down fighting," said Manfred, drawing his sword.

Erik did likewise.

"I lost mine," said Cair

Signy said nothing. She just held her knife out to him.

"I take it with pride, Princess."

She bit her lip and nodded. Took her bow and set an arrow to the string. Picked a mark.

And the rush halted. And then . . .

"They're backing off," said Signy incredulously. "I don't believe it!"

"I can only think of one possible reason," said Erik, grimly, looking at the basalt cliffs. He'd swear that a part of it had moved . . . it was almost as if an eye had blinked. But if Erik hadn't been looking just there, just then, he would never have seen it. Whatever it was that lay sleeping inside that rock, you surely didn't ever want it to wake up.

Then Erik realized that they were also being watched by a small man, leaning against the cliff. He was swarthy skinned and with a black curly head of hair and a large beard, almost as broad as his wide chest. The look of unholy amusement in his dark eyes was alarming, to put it mildly.

So what had made the trolls back off? The eye in the endless line of serpentine basalt cliff—or this dwarf?

"Three humans and a throwback halfling," drawled the dwarf. "My. What a fascinating gift." He cocked his head inquiringly. "Or are you perhaps not a gift from the troll-people?"

"No," said Cair. "We're just passing through."

The black dwarf seemed to find that very funny. Behind him a black stone doorway swung open.

Bakrauf ground her big square teeth. It was steamy and hot here in her throne chamber. She hated heat. Signy's broken cage lay on the floor. The straw plait and old riding dress had been torn to pieces. "If I get my hands on them they will die by the slowest and most awful means I can devise," she said through gritted teeth.

"Send the wild hunt to fetch them," he said. "We dare not go any farther than we have."

She raised her eyes to the roof. "Fool. You made me use them to cross the river to consult with Jagellion. I have used up all the debts they owe me for this year. If I called them again, before yuletide, they'd come. They'd come for
me
. I need to take Signy and the Frank prince in some other way."

"Well, you can't." Her son almost seemed to enjoy her fury. "The black dwarves will have them now and they're not going to part with them. Not cheaply anyway."

She made throttling movements with her square hands. "Those . . . thieving twisters. The pipes and mechanisms that are wrecked in the geyser . . . The dwarves will make us pay and pay to fix them. And who else could have helped those snot kobolds to cheat us?"

Her monster son paced. "We dare not go against the dwarves. You know what happened last time."

"I know. I know," she said, angrily. "Even those cursed
Ás
make deals with them rather than fight the tricky little rats." She smashed her fist into her palm. It sounded like a gunshot. "What I want to know is, who was the fourth one? Where did he come from? How was he able to get in? How was he able to free her?"

"The thrall who was left bound said that he was a new thrall."

"Those are few enough. A kobold? Or a gnome?"

"A human, Mother. A human from Midgard. Dark of skin and with curly dark hair, like a black dwarf. Does that bring anyone to mind?" he asked, sarcastically.

Her green eyes narrowed. "That's not possible! Simply not possible. He was just a messenger. A thrall. And I used the lightest of enamor entrapment spells on him. Merely a glamour onto his memory of her. Enough to make a thrall do what a thrall would not dream of doing."

He snorted. "Your spell had a far stronger effect on that one than you realized," said the beast. "Sometimes, Mother, you're too devious for your own good. My way—direct and brutal—would not have had these consequences."

"Your way would have had the arm-ring exerting magical forces against us. Just like the raid that the great Vortenbras talked his foolish men into," she said, sarcastically.

"A raid that brought back the slave you foolishly used," he replied. "He must have been besotted with her already, and you had to put an entrapment on top of that."

She was silent for a while. Then she said, "The other slaves taken on that viking . . . they were all men from the League lands. He was the only one even taken in waters to which the Holy Roman Empire lays claim. The truce-oath was broken. He is a curse brought down by that act."

"You attribute the arm-ring far too much power," snorted the beast disdainfully.

She rubbed her heavy jaw pensively. "Maybe not. Maybe I underestimated it. It's a symbol of an old religion, much tied to the land. It was old before Odin worship came to Telemark. I am beginning to think that there is more to it than we realized. I think Chernobog may have misled us deliberately."

"Letting rivals seek their own destruction you mean?" he said, scratching his heavy brow.

"Exactly," she said, her voice grim and cold as ice rime.

"Then I do not think we will tell him of our setbacks. Not until we have recovered the prisoners from the dwarves."

"At least we can be sure that they will not let them go," she said. "They never do."

"But they always offer a way out," he said, meditatively.

She twisted her thick lips into a sneer. "And no one ever succeeds in the dwarf challenges, curse their tricksy little selves. I hate them. I hate them nearly as much as humans."

Milady de Chevreuse had been forced to change her routines. Francesca did not like doing so. But the winter weather was just too appalling. Furs were all very well, and beautiful and soft, but the wind out of the north cut through or found its way into everything. It was, she gathered, exceptionally cold, even for here. Walking in the snow was . . . unpleasant. Walking in sleet was simply out of the question. Her mind turned to Alexandria, where it did neither, where the sharpest minds of the modern world met in a blossoming of culture, art, and knowledge. Where the pleasures of the flesh met the pleasures of the mind on balmy nights . . . most unlike this gray sky, gray sea of winter Copenhagen. The food was fattening, one was cold and therefore hungry. And her constitutional brisk walks were curbed by the weather. And now, on this, the first rain- and snow-free day for ages, that oleaginous lardball admiral had to accost her. The man with him looked less obnoxious at least. The furs he was wearing spoke of three things: Vinland, money, and hard wear.

The florid-faced admiral bowed, with a creaking of whalebone corsets inadequate for the job required of them. "The divine Francesca! Your beauty brightens up a dull day! Milady, allow me to introduce my new friend, Fleet Captain Lars McAllin of Vinland."

He bowed, "Honored, milady. What brings a southern flower to these cold northern waters?"

She waved a delicate hand at him. "We go where we must, Fleet Captain. I might ask what brings a Vinlander, and a military man, here to Copenhagen?"

He smiled. "We do what we must too. And what we had to do was deal with a damned pirate. He thought we'd wait 'til spring, but with our Danish friends' help we bearded him in his lair, when he least expected us. We didn't even need the sled teams."

"And which pirate might this be?" inquired Francesca. "One of the infamous Redbeards?

"Nothing on that scale! Besides, although there have been reports that they're starting to harry shipping outside of the Pillars of Hercules, our routes tend to be in northern waters," he said.

"Fascinating! Who then?" she asked.

"A local kinglet. Or should I say, ex-kinglet. We left his ugly head on his gates," answered the Vinlander.

The admiral shuddered. "What a thing to talk about to a lady, Lars!"

Francesca shook her head and smiled warmly on the Vinlander. "It makes an interesting change from on-dits about the affairs of the notables of Copenhagen. It is far too cold to stand around and talk, though. I am making the best of this patch of better weather to take some exercise. Why don't you walk with me and tell me about it?"

"A pleasure, milady. May I offer you my arm?"

Francesca inspected it thoughtfully. "Why, thank you. I have always space for another one in my collection. I do not saunter, Fleet Captain. I walk. I hope that you can keep up."

He allowed himself a look of amusement. "If I fail, you get to keep the arm."

They set off and she said, "I can only assume that you attacked either King Hjorda, Jarl Orm, or King Vortenbras. If it is the latter, I want to know, and the admiral," she gestured at the puffing man, "doesn't want me to."