Andre Norton - Web of the Witch World

The witch cast her squares of silk into the braziers and began a low chant. Smoke arose to hide the men who had stripped and were now standing, one on each star point. The smoke mist was thick, wreathing each man so that he could not believe that there was anything outside the soft envelope about him. And the chanting filled the whole world, as if all time and space trembled and writhed with the rise and fall of words none of them could understand.

As slowly as it had come the smoke mist ebbed, reluctantly withdrawing its folds, returning once again to the braziers from which it had issued. And the aromatic scent which had been a part of it left Simon lightheaded, more than a little divorced from reality. Then he felt the chill air on his skin, looked down at a body strange to him, a heavier body with the slight beginning of a paunch, a feathering of red-gold hair growing on its skin. He was Fulk.

Koris—or at least the man who moved from Koris’ starpoint—was shorter—they had selected their counterparts from men not too afar from their own physical characteristics; but he lacked the seneschal’s abnormal breadth of shoulder, his long dangling arms. An old sword slash lifted his upper lip in a wolfish snarl, enough to show a toothprint white and sharp. Ingvald had lost his comparative youth and had fingers of gray in his hair, a seamed face marked by many years of evil and reckless living.

They dressed in clothing from the castle chests, slipped on rings, neck chains, and buckled tight the weapons of dead men.

“Lord!” One of the men hailed Simon. “Behind you—it fell from Fulk’s sword belt. There.”

His pointing finger indicated the gleam of metal.

Simon picked up a boss. The metal was neither gold nor silver, but had a greenish cast and it was formed in the pattern of an interwoven knot of many twists and turns. Simon searched along the belt and found the hooks where it once must have been fastened, snapped it back into place. There must be no change in Fulk’s appearance, even by so small an item.

The witch was returning her braziers to the chest. She looked up as he came to her, studying him narrowly, as an artist might critically regard a finished work.

“I wish you well, March Warder,” she told him. “The Power be with you in full measure.”

“For those good wishings we thank you, lady. It is in my mind that we shall need all such in this venture.”

She nodded. Koris called from the door. “The tide changes, Simon, it is time we sail.”

“SIGNAL FLAGS!” One of the knot of men at the prow of the coaster, now being worked by sweeps up the golden river in the early morning, nodded to the flutter of colored strips from a pole on the bank beside the first wharf of Kars.

He who wore a surcoat gaudily emblazoned with a fish, horns on snout and sloping, scaled head against a crimson square, stirred, his hand going to his belt.

“Expected?” He made an important question of that one word.

His companion smiled. “For what we seem, yes. But that is as it should be. It remains to be seen now whether Yvian is ready to welcome his father-in-law per ax with kindness or the sword. We walk into the serpent’s open mouth, and that can snap shut before our reinforcements arrive.”

There was a low laugh from the third member of the party. “Any serpent closing his jaws upon us, Ingvald, is like to get several feet of good steel rammed up through its backbone! There is this about blank shields—they are loyal to the man who pays them, but remove that man and they are willing to see reason. Let us deal with Yvian and we shall speedily have Kars thus!” He held out a brown hand, palm up and slowly curled fingers inward to form a fist.

Simon-Fulk was wary of Koris’ impetuous estimate of the odds. He did not underrate either the seneschal’s fighting ability nor his leadership, but he did question this feverish drive which kept the other at the prow of the coaster all the way up river, staring ahead as if his will could add to their speed. Their crew were Sulcarmen who, as merchants, had made this run before and knew every trick of inducing speed, all of which they had brought into action since they had entered the river’s mouth.

In the meantime, the main force of the Estcarpian invaders were coming down through the foothills, ready to dash for Kars when the signal came and that signal . . . Simon-Fulk, for the dozenth time since they had boarded the coaster, glanced at the tall basket cage now draped in a loose cover. In it was the Falconer’s addition to their party. Not one of the black-and-white hawks which served the tough mountain fighters as scouting eyes and ears and battle comrades—trained not only to report, but also to fly at the enemy in attack, but a bird which could not be so easily recognized as belonging to Estcarp’s allies.

Larger than those hawks which rode at Falconer saddle bows, its plumage was blue-gray, lightening to white on the head and tail. Five such had been discovered overseas by Falconers serving as marines on Sulcar ships.

And these had been bred and trained now for three generations. Too heavy to serve as did the regular hawks, they were used as messengers, since they had a homing instinct, and the ability to defend themselves in the air.

For Simon-Fulk’s purpose this bird was excellent. He did not dare take one of the regular hawks into Kars, since only Falconers used those birds. But this new breed because of its beauty would catch the attention, and it had been trained to hunt, so that Yvian would welcome it as a gift.

Ten men, a bird and a whole city against them. This was a wild and foolish expedition on the face of it. Yet once before four of them had invaded this same Kars and had come out with their lives and more. Four of them! Simon’s hand slipped back and forth along the ornaments on Fulk’s belt. Three of them now—himself, Koris and somewhere, hidden in those buildings, Loyse. But the fourth? Do not think of her now. Wonder why she had not returned, why she had allowed him to hear secondhand from the witch at Verlaine that her mission had failed. Where was she—nursing that hurt? But she had accepted the cost of marriage between them, had come to him first! Why—

“We have welcomers, Lord!” Ingvald drew Simon’s attention to the here and now.

A file of men at arms, surcoated alike with the badge of Yvian—a mailed fist holding aloft an ax—were on the wharf. Simon’s fingers closed on his dart gun, the edge of his cloak discreetly veiling that movement. But on a barked order from their officer the waiting squad clapped their bared hands together and then raised them for an instant, palm out and shoulder high, the greeting of a friendly salute. Thus they were welcomed to Kars.

There was another turn out of barehanded, saluting troops at the citadel gate. And, as far as they had been able to judge on their march through the city, life in Kars flowed smoothly, no sign of unease.

But when they had been ushered with the formality of court etiquette into the suite of chambers in the mid-bulk of the citadel, Simon beckoned Ingvald and Koris to a bowed window. The seven they had brought with them from Verlaine remained by the door. Simon indicated them.

“Why here?”

Koris was frowning. “Yes, why?”

“Bottle us all up together,” Ingvald suggested. “And if such handling gives us warning, they apparently do not care. Also—where is Yvian, or at least his constable? We were escorted by a sergeant-at-arms, no one of higher rank. We may be in guests’ quarters, but they skimp badly on the courtesy.”

“There is more wrong than insult for Fulk in this.” Simon pulled off the dead man’s ornate helm and leaned his head against the wall where a breeze ruffled the heavy forelock of red-gold hair which he had borne from the shape-changing. “To pen us together is a security move. And Yvian has no reason to honor Fulk. But here there is more—” He closed his eyes, tried to make that mysterious sixth sense deliver other than just the warning which had been growing stronger every step he took into the enemy’s hold.

“A sending—there is a sending?” Koris demanded.

Simon opened his eyes. Once a sending had brought him into Kars, a dull pain in his head which marched him, hot, cold, hot, down streets and alleyways to Jaelithe’s lodging. No, what he was feeling now was not the same as that. This—it drew him forward, yes—but that was not all. He tingled with a kind of anticipation, such as one felt on the verge of taking some irrevocable step. But also it was not altogether concerned with him. Rather as if he now moved on the edge of some action; brushed by it, but not the true focus point.

“No sending,” he made belated answer. “There is something here on the move . . .”

Koris shifted the ax on which he leaned. Volt’s gift was never far from his hand. But for his entrance into Kars it had been disguised with leaf foil and paint into the ornament weapon of a lord’s constable.

“The ax grows alive,” he commented. “Volt—” His voice sank to a whisper which could not reach beyond the window bay. “Volt guide us!”

“We are in the main block,” he added more briskly, and Simon knew that Koris was reviewing mentally the plan of Kars’ citadel as they had learned it from reports. “Yvian’s private chambers are in the north tower. The upper corridor should have no more than a pair of guards at its far end.” He moved towards the door of their own suite.

“How so?” Ingvald looked to Simon. “Do we wait or move now?”

They had planned to wait, but this compulsion Simon could sense . . . Perhaps the bold move was the right one.

“Waldis!” One of the men in Verlaine livery looked up alertly. “We have need for a sack of the bird’s grain; it was forgotten in the ship—you seek to send a messenger for it.”

Simon pulled aside the covering of the hawk’s basket. Those bright eyes, not golden as was usual in that breed, but dark, regarded him intently, having in them a measure of intelligence—not human kind—but yet intelligence. He had never given the bird more than passing heed before, but now he watched it closely as he put hand to the fastening of its prison.

The feathered head turned, away from him, to the door of the room, as if the white one also listened, or strove to hear what could not be picked up by any ear. Then the curved beak opened and the bird uttered a piercing scream at the same moment Simon caught it too—that troubling of the very air about them.

Koris stared at Volt’s gift. The shallow disguise of foil could not hide the gleam of the ax head, not brilliant as from sunlight on the burnished metal, but as if the weapon had, for an instant, held fire in its substance.

And as suddenly that flash was gone.

The wide, white wings of the hawk fluttered and for the second time the bird screamed. Simon unlatched the cage door, held out his wrist and arm as a bridge. The weight of the bird was a burden, it could never have been carried so, but he held steady as it emerged. Then it fluttered over to perch on the back of a chair.

One of the Borderers held back the door and Waldis came in. He was breathing in great panting gasps and his sword was in his hand, the point of it dripping red.

“They have gone mad!” he burst out. “They are hunting men through the halls, cutting them down—” It could not be Estcarp forces; they had not yet flown their signal! Nothing to do with them—unless something had gone widely wrong. Ingvald caught the boy’s shoulder, drew him closer to Simon.