Night Winds (26 page)

"At last the fortress fell by treachery. There were passages through the rock spire that opened onto the valley below. After two years of siege, someone showed Masale the way through the mountain--led the conqueror and the remnant of his army secretly into Lynortis on one moonless night. The final battle was a hard one, but the city was taken unaware, and two years of siege had left its defenders weakened. By dawn Masale was in command of a city of the dead, and the rocks far below were splattered with broken bodies of all those who had escaped his army's steel.

"Masale left Lynortis in flames, boasting that he had spared not one life of all within. But his dream of empire died at Lynortis as well, for scarcely twenty thousand remained of his army of conquest. Masale returned to Wesvetin with nothing to show for his dream but a land drained white of its blood and its wealth."

Jeresen paused for a huge swallow of wine. Kane waited for him to recount something not common knowledge.

"He brought back one survivor as part of the plunder of Lynortis--Reallis, the young daughter of Yosahcora, its last ruler. It gave him some bitter satisfaction to have his enemy's child as slave and whore. Often when despair was upon him he amused himself with Reallis, until at length it seemed she would bear his bastard. Masale meant to kill her then, it's said--but the girl disappeared. Escaped, Masale thundered, and his people wondered why he bothered to lie.

"But Reallis did escape somehow. Survivors of Lynortis, or enemies who sought to use his bastard against him? Who knows? For Reallis was never heard from again. Now, twenty years later, word comes to Masale that Reallis had escaped to hide among the few refugees who live among the ruins of the battleground--and that Reallis had given birth to a daughter. Word got out finally through some drifter who'd been holed up here. Took a fancy to the daughter, but couldn't get to her because she was always inside tending to her mother, who was dying of fever. One night he sneaked in and got close enough to overhear Reallis on her deathbed telling the daughter all about a secret room piled high with gold and jewels hidden somewhere in the, caverns beneath Lynortis. He couldn't get close enough to hear where the treasure was hidden, but the daughter was there until the end and heard it all. Next night he tried to get to the girl, but they caught him and beat him half to death. So he limped off and came to Masale with his story--figuring on sharing in the treasure when Masale got his bands on it. Masale sweated him pretty hard before he was certain it wasn't some trick. The bastard talked a lot and loud on the rack. Not everyone who listened was as hard to convince as Masale."

Jeresen drained his cup with a flourish and pointed. "Word reached me through Bonaec there. He was hired to Masale, but after what he heard he shipped out and came running back to his old captain for help in beating Masale to the treasure. Bastard in my own outfit then sold out to Grey for a bigger cut of the gold. Grey's boys got here a hair before we did, and now I'm certain Masale is hard on our heels."

All eyes were fixed on Sesi. She stared hopelessly at the floor, uttering no sound.

"Just a matter of getting her to talk." Jeresen grinned. "We'll grab what we can carry and make a run. You'll have equal share, too, Kane. Not that I'm doing it all for old times' sake. We may have to fight past Masale, and I know what you're worth in a fight. Agreed?"

"Of course," Kane said, draining his own cup.

Jeresen grunted and clapped Kane's thick shoulder. "Well, enough, then. And time to move." He smiled wolfishly at the bound girl. "You see we know what the score is, Sesi. Tell us quick where the treasure lies hidden, and I'll take you with us beyond Masale's reach--and your lap'll be heaped high with gold. It's the only choice you have."

Her voice was almost too low to bear. "I don't suppose it would do any good to tell you I don't know what you're talking about."

Jeresen hit her without seeming to move. Her head flew back. Blood started from her nose. The circle of eyes watched mercilessly.

"All right," Sesi said shakily. "But I can't describe the place. Give me a horse, and I'll lead you there."

"Very smart," Jeresen congratulated. "Bonaec, make a noose for her neck. Sesi, I hope you don't think you can slip away in the dark. We really don't have time to waste."

Be watched Bonaec haul the girl to her feet and snug a noose to her throat. The stocky mercenary paid out several feet of stack and tied the other end to his thick wrist.

"The first time you cause me to find fault with you," Jeresen told the girl, "I'll tell Bonaec to cut off your cars. Bonaec will enjoy that. So will I. So make sure you don't make us wait too long to get to that gold."

There had been more of the Waldanns--another thirty men left with the horses a distance from the ruined manor. Jeresen had not expected resistance from the few refugees who lived there, and more men might have warned Sesi away. The girl was lifted onto a saddle, and the others swiftly mounted to follow her lead. Night was fast closing over the battle-scarred forest, and, Kane noted, there would be no moon tonight.

"I don't understand how Masale could have missed a room full of gold," Kane remarked to Jeresen.

The Waldann captain paused to shout an order. "It was hidden in the caverns beneath Lynortis. Few knew its secret, and Masale took no prisoners when the city fell. It was a treasure Yosahcora had amassed to buy an army to break the siege. There were those who didn't care to see Masale continue his march to empire. The treasure was to persuade them to attack Masale and lift the siege--Yosahcora had planned to send part of the gold out through the secret passageways with a few trusted agents. But Lynortis fell before his plan could be tried, and Reallis was the only one left alive who knew of the treasure. She wasn't inclined to share the secret with Masale."

Kane nodded. "Sounds plausible. And you're certain Sesi knows the secret?"

"She'd better," Jeresen stated. "I need this gold, Kane. The years don't seem to have bothered you, but I'm pushing fifty. You don't get much older in this game, and I've nothing to show for my years of living close to death but a few beat-up veterans to follow me and less gold between us than a lord squanders on his whores on a night of slumming."

He broke off and studied the shattered terrain. "Maybe we'd better light torches. It's getting dark, and there's no trails through this damn junk pile."

Shadows lay thick over the nightmarish tangle of blasted trees, rotting siege machines, weed-grown embankments. Ahead of them loomed a huge ballista, its giant timbers charred and frozen as if the phosphorus bomb that seared its catapult and the crew had struck only hours ago. Charred skeletons yet manned its broken arm. Touch a man with fire hot enough, mused Kane, and his bones will last forever.

High above them Lynortis looked down--a ruined fortress atop a spike of sandstone thousands of feet high. Kane could barely make out the narrow roadway carved into the face of the stone, spiralling the pinnacle to a dizzying summit. Stones hurled from that height had gouged craters into the earth as deep as a man was tall.

Cautiously they worked around the earthworks of the ruined ballista. Trenches and craters scarred the terrain, and where the earth was not barren from some still virulent poison, scrub growth of three decades made their passage almost impossible.

"Can't you find a better trail?" Jeresen demanded of his captive.

Sesi shook her head. Her horse and Bonaec's led the way. "We are following a trail of sorts. You forget that the battlefield has been deserted these many years."

"Well, something's been going through here," Jeresen pointed out. "There's tunnels running through the scrub."

Sesi's horse screamed and plunged forward--its hooves breaking through the crumbling sides of an unseen trench. Wrists bound behind her back, Sesi fell from her saddle' Her neck jerked back with the throttling halter as the falling horse carried her into the hidden trench.

Kane's sword slashed across the tethering rope just as the slack snapped taut. The strands parted with a crack an instant before the noose could break her neck, and Sesi rolled away from her stricken mount, into the weed-buried earthworks. Her legs flashed white as she wriggled head first into cover.

"Get her!" Jeresen yelled. Bonaec leaped from his saddle and dove into the trench after her. Its log broken, the foundered horse lay on its back at the bottom, hooves thrashing dangerously. The thickset Waldann skidded around it and plunged through the brush where the girl's long legs had disappeared. Farther back, the others milled in confusion, not knowing what had happened in the thick gloom.

Jeresen bawled orders for his men to encircle the trench. Horses crashed and stumbled as cursing riders tried to force them through the twilight wasteland.

"If she gets away in the darkness..." snarled Jeresen in a rage.

"She can't run far with her hands tied," Kane said. "She would have told us nothing with a broken neck."

"Hell, you did the only thing..." Jeresen started to say.

A scream echoed eerily from the bottom of the trench. Bonaec. He only screamed once.

Someone finally lit a torch. Men dropped into the trench and forced their way into the tunneled path through the thick scrub. In a moment they backed out, dragging Bonaec by his heels. They didn't find the mercenary's head. Nor did they find Sesi.

"There's a tunnel down here!" someone announced, as their blades hacked away the cover of undergrowth. "This animal trail runs straight into an old tunnel!"

"Then follow it!" Jeresen yelled, and swore as they slowly obeyed him. Farther down the line of the trench, his riders were finding no sign of the girl.

"She knew it was here," Kane decided. "Rode her horse into the trench and chanced it. Masale's army spent two years digging tunnels and earthworks against the counter-bombardment. If Sesi knows the battlefield, she could be crawling off to hide where we'll never find her."

"Found an old blade down there, too," Jeresen surmised gloomily. "Sawed her hands free and lopped old Bonaec's head off when be crawled after her."

"Must have been a dull blade," observed Kane. "From the stump of his neck I'd say his head was chewed off."

"I wouldn't be out there tonight for a pile of gold as high as Lynortis," grumbled Hranal, handing Kane a platter of boiled meat. "Too many men died out there."

"Oil?" said Kane, jerking his hand away from the steaming meat. After an hour of scouting around the site of Sesi's disappearance, Kane had decided the girl had made good her escape--at least until daylight. Leaving the problem to Jeresen, he returned to the ruined manor for a long-deferred meal. If Jeresen wanted his men to risk their necks in a pointless search, that was between the Waldanns and their leader.

"Too many died," Hranal repeated. "Too many to stay dead on nights like this. I've seen things moving around the old battleground in the dark of the moon, and I've stayed behind bolted doors since."

"You're full of crap, old man," muttered Laddos, who had remained behind to watch the manor and its tenants. "Dead men stay dead--unless there's sorcery at work. Ain't nothing but bones here." He dug a grimy hand into the platter.

The old man stared at the mercenary without anger. He and his wife had shown little emotion after their initial terror, serving the Waldanns' wants in docile silence. "You may have seen many a man die," he stated, "but you never were in a battle like this one. There never was a battle like the siege of Lynortis. They died here by the thousands. Suicide assaults to storm the fortress walls--when the roadway was buried tinder crushed bodies twenty deep. Then the months and months of siege--stones and springald bolts dropping down day and night, bodies smashed and skewered. And the glass bombs of phosphorus and black vapor bursting over the trenches--they died by the hundreds then, burnt to the bone and screaming their insides out. You can see whole sections of the battlefield at night ghost-lit where the phosphorus bombs struck."

"I've been through sieges," Laddos growled.

"Not like this one. There never was a siege like this one. Masale was determined to take Lynortis--kept bringing in new troops as fast as they could die. He came here with a hundred thousand men, and he must have brought in at least that many more as the siege wore on--no one knows how many. And plague set in when the countless dead were piled in heaps as high as Lynortis. They couldn't bury that many dead, they couldn't burn that many dead, they couldn't carry that many off. For two years the air was foul with death, and the survivors fought on behind breastworks of the dead.

"Then the night Lynortis fell. You could hear their screams all through the night, and at dawn the pinnacle was red with blood, and the earth beneath was piled with smashed bodies more than a hundred deep. They died by the tens of thousands that night, and you can see their broken bones piled like snow drifted against an oak at the base of Lynortis. Lynortis cost Masale his empire, but Masale made Lynortis pay with its life.

"Who can say who won the war? Who can number the dead here? Masale left the field a graveyard, and the bones of two nations bleach unburied here amidst the ruins of war. And they don't rest easy, my friend--take the word of a man who's lived through it all."

Laddos cursed him and gnawed at the stringy meat. His gaze wandered to the bolted door.

"You've lived here ever since?" Kane asked. "Why?"

The scarecrow figure gestured weakly. "Where else to go? The woman and I served the master before Masale swept upon us. No one kills the servants. For a space Masale himself made this house his quarters, but when the trebuchets found the range, he moved back. Sometimes his generals quartered here, sometimes his surgeons worked over bodies too broken to fight again. We served them all. And when the missiles fell about the house, we hid in the cellar until it stopped for a while, and when we crawled out we'd find our masters buried beneath the walls and ceilings, and then new masters would come.

"We hid the night Lynortis fell, and when Masale marched his broken army away there were no more masters. Where else to go? Who else to serve? We remained here in the wreckage with a few others who survived, lived off what we could scavenge, and shivered through nights when the ghouls and ghosts marched around the manor and pounded at our door..."