The Sword of the Lady (26 page)

″That′s really why I′m here,″ Jack replied. ″My kids are going to be around for the next sixty years, God willing, and by then they′ll have grandkids. These Cutters . . . they may not get to Iowa soon, but if they aren′t stopped now they′ll be here in force
someday
.″

Ingolf nodded. ″Christ, Jack, why aren′t there more who can see that?″

Jack grinned. ″You′re expecting people to be
sensible
now, Captain? How you′ve changed!″

″Point. I wish Mary and Ritva would get back here,″ he said. ″What′s going on out there?″

Ritva Havel raised her head, slowly, leaving just her eyes above the ridge of the roof and brought the night glasses to them; beside her Mary used a monocular.

Their heads and most of their faces were covered by a knitted cap of wool made in the irregular very dark taupe color that faded into an urban background better than black. It was full night—the moon was down—and from above the gaslights at the corners of the streets hid more than they revealed, killing much of her night sight no matter how carefully Ritva squinted and looked aside. The building where the Cutters were quartered was unlit . . . which was significant in itself.

She took a deep breath, feeling her blood pump and senses extend themselves outward. It wasn′t particularly nice air in itself—this town burned coal too, like most in Iowa, and it was heavy with wet and still too warm for comfort. Sweat trickled and ran down her flanks, making the coarse dark linsey-woolsey and supple leather of her Dúnedain working garb cling and chafe.

But at least I′m
doing
something instead of sitting and worrying!
she thought.
Real Ranger work.

The door opened. There was only a moment′s gleam of muted light, noticeable because it caught at the edges of honed steel. The Cutters′ armor was partly metal, but mostly lacquered leather the color of dried blood, not very conspicuous in the dark. They came out in disciplined silence, with only a very slight clatter of harness and bootheels on pavement. A rough count showed forty or fifty; not all the survivors of the troop Graber and the Cutter magus had brought east with them, but well over half.

A brighter light flickered and then steadied. Edgar Denson of the State Police strolled forward, half a dozen of his men behind him, their shetes drawn. According to the
plan
he′d insisted on he was going to hold the Corwinites in conversation for a few moments, enough for the two Dúnedain to flit back and put the rest into motion. She wouldn′t put it past him to have some elaborate triple cross in mind, but so far, so good.

She glanced aside and met her sister′s one eye above the face-covering mask-hood. Their thoughts ran in perfect harmony:

″Halt,″ the Iowan said to the Cutter party. ″Care to explain why you′re all out at night, and armed?″

Graber was in the lead, but the red-robed Seeker pushed past him before he could do more than clap his hand to the hilt of his blade.

″I—see—you,″
the Cutter priest said.

Fingers of icy slime caressed her at the sound. Memories cracked open like a too-fresh scab, although it had been a year since that encounter in the snow-thick forests of the Teton slopes. It wasn′t fear that made her want to flee the Cutter priest′s presence, exactly. More an elemental
disgust
. This was something that shouldn′t be in the world, and it made everything around her suddenly seem alien, alien and slightly decayed. Some part of her expected to smell rot from her own flesh.

″What?″ Denson said.

″I—see—you,″
the Prophet′s man said again, staring into his eyes.

The voice sounded
suffused
, as if it was swollen with freight beyond what words could bear, as if meaning itself would tear apart at the weight and leave words to rattle empty through human skulls.

Ritva could hear Mary′s breath hiss out, a slight sound in the night. It had been a Seeker who cut the eye out of her face. And Ritva who killed him, which had been like a battle in a bad dream, against an opponent who wouldn′t
die
. Denson had courage. He cleared his throat, but when he spoke his voice was calm and sardonic.

″Hey, don′t you guys know voodoo only works on people who
believe
in it?″

The Seeker laughed. There was no joy in the sound; listening to it made you doubt the
possibility
of joy for a second. But there was considerable satisfaction.

″Does your sword only cut those with faith in it?″ he said, in tones more human. ″You have pledged and taken the fruits. Now all is demanded.″

Sorta human
, Ritva thought.
Sorta-kinda.

Denson bristled. ″I never took anything from you!″

The laugh sounded again, and Ritva fought an impulse to drop the glasses and jam the heels of her hands over her ears.

″We have no need to
buy
men′s souls. You
give
yourselves to Us. And you have listened to our counsel for a very long time.″

″Fuck you, you lunatic!″

The Seeker shrugged. ″What is that you wear around your waist, man?″ he asked.

″It′s what I use to hold up my pants and for my shete, when I′m not pointing it at some asshole I′ve suddenly decided needs killing,″ the secret policeman said, his voice gone hard.

He waggled the long curved horseman′s weapon, the point rising until the razor-edged six inches on the back of the blade hovered near the Cutter′s throat.

″You may have lost the concept out in Montana along with regular baths and brushing your teeth, but it′s called a
belt
in this part of the world,″ he went on. ″Anymore questions about civilized fashions?″

″You lie,″ the High Seeker said casually. ″It isn′t a belt; it is a giant rattlesnake. What a fool you are, to wear a deadly serpent around your body!″

Denson started to laugh himself. Then Ritva saw his face shift, as one hand dropped to his midriff. He gave a single high shriek and dropped his sword. He struck convulsively at himself before the steel rang on the pavement, scrabbling and pounding . . . and then pitched to the ground, twitching. Her own breath caught as she saw his purple, distended face and the foam on his lips. Then her throat clenched tighter still, as her eyes dropped to his right hand.

It bled, where the palm was pierced by the loosened pin of his belt buckle.

″Thiach iluuvea gail, Heru Denson,″
Mary observed, dropping back into Sindarin.

″No, he isn′t very bright. Wasn′t.″

″He wouldn′t listen to us, and now look what it got him. And us.″

″And there goes our crucial delay. Well, maybe Denson′s retainers will attack them—″

The men behind Denson wavered, got a good look at their commander, then threw away their weapons and took to their heels. From the sounds they were making, the State Police troopers didn′t intend to stop until they hit the Mississippi—or Nebraska, if that street led west. She very much doubted they planned to stop and inform the authorities of what had happened . . . not that anyone would believe them in time if they did.

I don′t know if I believe it myself
, she thought in some corner of her mind.
There are stranger things in the Histories, but this is the Fifth Age of the World. Or maybe the Sixth!

All the Cutters except the Seeker formed into a column, quick-timing down the night-empty street in a harsh clatter of leather and hobnails on pavement. The Corwinite priest stayed a moment and raised his arm until it pointed at the two Dúnedain, where they
should
have been invisible in the blackness.

Mary nodded. ″Uh-oh,″ she said, very softly.

″I know what
uh-oh
means,″ Ritva replied. ″It means
we′re fucked
.″ A tile grated under a foot behind them, where the grapnel holding their climbing rope was hooked into the roof′s gutter.

″Kill,″
the High Seeker said.

Then he turned and walked after the troopers of the Sword of the Prophet. The two Dúnedain whirled, as the trio of men swung up onto the edge of the roof. Curved knives gleamed in their hands, and the moonlight glittered from the steel and from eyes empty of humanity. Those eyes blinked in perfect unison. They weren′t Seekers, just Corwinite soldiers of the Sword, but something of the red-robed magus was there in those blank faces. A nullity that was less than emptiness, one that hungered for existence and hated it at the same time.

It′s as if they′re
contagious
, somehow.

Ritva had a sudden flash of memory. Long ago she′d been on her belly behind a fallen fir tree in the mountains east of Mithrilwood, watching a pair of scrub jays feeding their nestlings. Something had made her turn her head, and a rattlesnake as long as her forearm had been there, behind the same sun-warmed log. It had turned its long patterned head and looked into her eyes. Looking into the eyes of the Church Universal and Triumphant′s men was like that . . .

Except that she had a feeling that if their eyes stayed locked long enough the same reptile gaze would be on both ends.

″Varda and Manwë aid me!″ Ritva said. Then:
″Im suu ei thiach men!″

Sweat suddenly drenched her, but she felt better:
I fart in your general direction
might not be as dignified as a call on the Lord and Lady, but it helped.

Beside her Mary was still, motionless with something beyond Ranger training, as if she was once more in the Seeker′s grip as she had been that day the eye was cut out of her head. The bow in Ritva′s hands came up. If she had thought about the action it would have stopped, but she forced her mind
not
to consider it. Ten thousand hours of practice had graven the movement into brain and bone and muscle, as much as breathing or walking. There was the slightest creak, as yew and horn and sinew bent and flexed and stretched.

″Kill,″ they whispered through identical smiles, their voices overlapping so that the sound was a sibilant blur: ″Kill/kill/kill/
Kkkiiiillll
.″

And attacked. Their movements were jerky, but perfect and unerring on the irregular surface of the curved tiles. Behind them
something
moved, planes of shining jet that receded into infinity, as if constructs greater than worlds
squeezed
down to interact with the tiny space of the planet, of this rooftop in one place and time. The soot-covered laurel-leaf arrowhead touched the cutout through the riser of her recurve, right above the black-gloved knuckle of her left hand. The fingers on the bowstring seemed locked, but she breathed out and let the waxed linen cord roll off the pads.

Snap
.

The string lashed at the bracer on the inside of her left forearm. Ach ingly slow, the arrow began its flight; she could see the way the fletching rippled, and how the slight curve in the fashion the feathers were set to the cedarwood made the whole spin as it flew. She
couldn′t
be seeing it move; the distance was less than thirty feet, and the shaft would be traveling at two hundred feet per second. In this darkness it should be a blurred streak at most.

The central attacker′s body flexed loosely as the point approached, as if he was moving backward even before it struck. When it did he swayed like a whip being snapped, and looked down for an instant at the narrow thirty-inch shaft transfixing him just beside the breastbone.

He′s not going to stop
, Ritva knew.

Then he did, but the fixed smile on his face did not alter as blood run neled out his nose and hung in threads from his lips.

″
Not—yet—to—rule—so—many
,″ he said. ″
Soon. We—will—be—abroad—and—loose
.″

And collapsed forward. The others continued their herky-jerky advance. Ritva bounded back frantically, her soft elf-boots gripping at the roof ridge as she dropped her bow and the longsword hissed out in the two-handed grip.

″Lacho Calad!″
she cried.

There was a wheeze of relief in it too, for Mary was moving as well, the ball and hook whirling on the ends of the length of fine chain she unwrapped from her waist.

Her sister completed the Ranger war cry
. Flame Light! Flee Night!

CHAPTER NINE

″Sure,and I don′t think your Majesty should be unguarded,″ Rudi said, shifting uneasily with the prickling feeling along his spine.

Kate Heasleroad came back into the room at that instant, and Rudi breathed a sigh of relief, at least in the privacy of his mind. Her husband looked at her with annoyance, as if he′d been hoping she′d stay in the nursery. And he′d been dropping very pointed hints that Odard and the Mackenzie should leave, once his genuine interest in the conversation about heraldry had died.