Wizards’ Worlds (60 page)

Thra fought defensively and kept the tree ever at her back. The point of that other
weapon seemed to flicker in her very eyes and there was a sharp pain along her cheek.
Where was Farne? She was sure he had been there at the beginning of this duel yet
it would seem that the men had not sighted him—No time for that now—this battle was
her own.

She fixed the picture of the sword in her mind. If
Grimclaw read her thoughts now would he answer her? Then there was a flash of thought
which did not seem aimed at her but did come like a third dancing blade to join the
battle. Sword—to take the sword—to choose—

It was not her desire, something more powerful even than fear had awakened in her.
There was denial, and anger, and yes, a touch of terror. The ancient enemy—the sword—No,
rend, tear, take payment for the wrong thus. Fang right, claw right—those were best—always
best!

There was no animal cry but out of the bushes sprang a form which fastened upon one
of the watching men. For only a second Thra spared a glance towards that struggle,
heard sounds from others in the brush. Payment for that glance came with a blow upon
her shoulder, which drove the mail painfully inward, bruising, though it did not cut
the rings.

“Thus and thus—” He who fought sent the point again flickering into her face. She
countered his stroke and her sword snapped, leaving but a jagged fragment in her hand.
He laughed then and moved in for the kill.

“Thus!” he cried for the third time and that was a sentence of death, or so she hoped.
Instead his blade cut painfully across her fingers so she dropped her hold on her
broken weapon.

“What I promise I do. Do you take this one—” He turned his head a fraction to give
that order.

Thra’s knife came up toward her own throat. She was ready to press the point home
when pain shot through her head and she would have fallen had not the tree supported
her.

No pain of body—no—a deeper, stronger pain, such as her kind had never been meant
to bear. She heard a voice cry aloud in torment and despair against a fate which could
not be denied—but the voice was not hers.

Nor did Thra appear to suffer alone. The lord who had bested her staggered, his sword
fell from his hand as he put both to his head. His mouth twisted in a wordless scream.

From where the brush had been beaten down by Farne’s charge someone rose. He flung
up his head, sending his hair back from his face, a face which wavered and changed
even as they stared at him. Man not beast now, he leaped forward and in his hand was
the other sword clear of its sheath, its blade giving off a reddish glow as if it
were a shaft of Hell fire.

There were cries. Men ran but Thra did not try to move and her knife was still ready
in her hand.

The lord half twisted to face the swordsman. He visibly drew a deep breath and stooped
to seize again his own weapon as if he had already regained full control of body and
mind. Of his followers only one flaccid body remained on the ground.

“Well met, ill met, kinsman!” Farne smiled slowly. He stood waiting attack even as
she had earlier done.

There was a wild rage in the other’s eyes. Thra thought that for this lord of the
hounds the whole world had suddenly narrowed to confrontation with this single man-beast.

The glow in Farne’s blade spread. His fingers, locked about the hilt, reddened, the
flush wreathed about his wrist, reached up his arm. In Thra a fire seemed to burn.
She caught her breath and choked down a cry of agony. If this was the cost of using
the weapon to her who only stood aside, what must it be to Farne himself? For she
was certain that what she felt was a reflection of that he had to bear now.

Instead he cried aloud on the edge of human rage yet still with an animal note. If
the young lord thought that he faced easy meat he was made speedily aware of his mistake,
for the fire blade kept play in a way which Thra, with all her knowledge of weapons,
marveled to see.

Only for seconds she watched and then she remembered the others. What of the men who
had gone with the hounds, the rest? No matter how skillful Farne might be he could
not hope to stand against four or more of them.
Dropping her sheared sword she leaped for the body in the brush.

Red ruin above a torn throat, she looked no higher. But she had her hands on a spear
haft. Above the clash of weapons behind her she heard a stifled moan.

There was a second man in the bushes. He half-lay, face stark, a mangled arm across
his breast, looking at her wild-eyed as she came to him, his good hand awkwardly fumbling
with a short hunting sword. She took that from him easily, wrenching it free, for
her own arming.

While he spat meaningless words at her she staggered back, still afire, straight into
the path of another running to the fight.

“Die, devil!”

She was still not at ready and he was about to cut her down when he shrieked aloud
and threw up his hands, the wounded man echoing his cry. This pain in her head—she
could hardly see. However on hands and knees Thra scrambled away as a heavy body crashed
down. To make certain of his helplessness she brought the heavy pommel of the sword
on the nape of his neck as his helm loosened and rolled away.

For a moment she simply crouched, sobbing for breath, hardly daring to believe she
yet lived. The pain was now no longer a torment; rather a steady fire which strengthened
her in a way she could not understand.

Out of a tangle of tall grass came Grimclaw. As he passed the legs of the man before
her a paw aimed a quick blow claws out. Thra used the spear to aid her to her feet
where those other two still fought with skill and desperation. Thrusting the hunting
sword close to hand in the ground she stood with the spear at ready, to hold the lists.
Grimclaw stationed himself beside her.

Mastery of steel—Thra knew that she watched two evenly matched fighting men of top
skill. And they could almost have been brothers from one birthing. That strange
cast of Farne’s features had faded away. He was smiling slightly, yellow eyes alight—only
the color of those differing from his enemy.

The blaze from his blade now formed a nebulous glow about his whole body through which
the sword moved like a darting tongue. Were they so evenly matched that they might
fight forever without giving way? Thra could detect no sign of fatigue, no lighting
of the clang of weapons.

She had no more that thought then when the flame-wreathed blade appeared to turn of
itself in Farne’s hand. The weapon might command the man not the man the weapon. There
was a hard clang of sound and the lord’s sword spun out of his grip to strike against
the trunk of the tree where Thra had sheltered. He stood bare handed, with no change
of expression, as if he now waited stocially that thrust at throat or breast which
would put an end to him.

As the fire blade turned point down Farne caught and held those other chill eyes.

“Blood calls to blood,” he said slowly.

The other’s mouth contorted. He spat and the spittle flecked the trampled leaves by
Farne’s boots.

“Beast calls not to true man!” He flung up his head in harsh pride. “Kill if you will
but think not that aught between us can ever be altered—runner in the night!”

Farne swung the sword, not towards the other but as if he weighed something in his
hand and that weight dragged heavy upon him. He shook his head.

“Run no more,” he said slowly. “The choice has been forced upon me at last. I may
well have lost more than I gain—”

“I do not understand you,” broke in the other impatiently. “Kill me—you win nothing,
beast—”

Farne, to Thra’s surprise, nodded. “Nothing,” he agreed. “Did you think I challenged
your rulership with this?” Again he waved the sword.

That light which had blazed along it was gone. But the
strangeness did not return to his face. Now he stepped back and away from the other.

“This much is true. You live, kinsman, by my leave.”

The other scowled and took a step forward as if he wished to drag Farne down by strength
alone.

“Also,” once more the forest man shifted his grip on the sword, “I have at last come
into my inheritance. No, kinsman, do not fear that you shall be dispossessed of your
lands, your ill-ruled people—not yet. But the ‘beast’ you have been pleased to hunt
is gone. Try your tricks again at your will, they shall net you naught. Take up your
liegemen and get you gone. This forest has an ill name among your kind that was not
lightly earned, nor shall it be forgot.”

Deliberately he sheathed the sword and held its belt in one hand. The other he put
to the wide buckle of the furred belt.

As Farne’s fingers touched that buckle it burst open. The metal over which the strange
colors had played flaked away. Fur loosened from scaling hide and shifted through
the air, the hide itself slipped and fell from about his body, to lie in bits upon
the ground. Then he fastened the sword belt in its place.

The lord watched through narrowed eyes.

“You have given me quarter—I asked it not, I shall not accept it!” His voice was harsh
challenge.

“Accept or not as you wish,” Farne shrugged. “You stand on land which I know and which
knows me. I have made my choices—yours shall be yours only, and you shall answer for
them.”

He turned his head to look to Thra. What he had just said, she thought, was meant
in its latter part as much for her as for the lord.

She swallowed. Life was always choices and somehow she knew she faced a mighty one
now. As she settled the sword she had taken into the empty scabbard at her belt she
saw on the ground a wisp of dirty fur.

Two belts and a man, there was a meaning she could guess at. But in this forest one
need not be surprised at anything. She made her choice.

As Farne moved forward she fell in at his right hand, Grimclaw padding into the shadow
of the great trees at his left.

By a Hair

Y
OU
say, friend, that witchcraft at its strongest is but a crude knowledge of psychology,
a use of a man’s own fear of the unknown to destroy him? Perhaps it may be so in modern
lands. But me, I have seen what I have seen. More than fear destroyed Dagmar Kark
and Colonel Andrei Veroff.

There were four of them, strong and passionate: Ivor and Dagmar Kark, Andrei Varoff
and the Countess Ana. What they desired they gained by the aid of something not to
be seen nor felt nor sensed tangibly, something not in the experience of modern man.

Ivor was an idealist who held to a cause and the woman he thought Dagmar to be. Dagmar,
she wanted power—power over the kind of man who could give her all her heart desired.
And so she wanted Colonel Andrei Varoff.

And Varoff, his wish was a common one, though odd for one of his creed. When a man
has been nourished on the belief that the state is all, the individual nothing, it
is queer to want a son to the point of obsession. And, though Varoff had taken many
women, none had produced a child he could be sure was his.

The Countess Ana, she wanted justice—and love.

The four people had faith in themselves, strong faith. Besides, they had it in other
things—Ivor in his cause and his wife, Varoff in a creed. And Dagmar and Ana in something
very old and enduring.

It could not have happened in this new land of yours, to that I agree; but in my birth
country it is different. All this came to be in a narrow knife slash of a valley running
from mountains to the gray salt sweep of the Baltic. It is true that the shadow of
the true cross has lain over that valley since the Teutonic knights planted it on
the castle they built in the crags almost a thousand years ago. But before the white
Christ came, other, grimmer gods were worshipped in that land. In the fir forest where
the valley walls are steep, there is still a stone altar set in a grove. That was
tended, openly at first, and later in secret, for long after the priests of Rome chanted
masses in the church.

In that country the valley is reckoned rich. Life there was good until the Nazis came.
Then the Count was shot in his own courtyard, since he was not the type of man to
suffer the arrogance of others calmly, and with him Hudun, the head gamekeeper, and
the heads of three valley households. Afterwards they took away the young Countess
Ana.

But Ivor Kark fled to the hills and our young men joined him. During two years, perhaps
a little more, they carried on guerrilla warfare with the invader, just as it happened
in those days in all the countries stamped by the iron heel.

But to my country there came no liberation. Where the Nazi had strutted in his pride,
the Bear of the north shambled, and stamped into red dust those who defied him. Some
fled and some stayed to fight, believing in their innocence that the nations among
the free would rise in their behalf.

Ivor Kark and his men, not yet realizing fully the doom come upon us, ventured out
of the mountains. For a time it appeared that the valley, being so small a community,
might indeed be overlooked. In those few days of freedom Ivor found Dagmar Llov.