THE LETTERSEEKER

CHAPTER ELEVEN

            The mace came at his collar, hard-driven by mercenary brawn. Landing, it would crush bone; but Thierknut, Red Prince of the South, knew the tricks of club and dagger. He did not flinch to the right but stepped into the blow, catching the long handle in the grapple on his shieldboss, pulling the man fiercely to the side.

            His opponent's daggerstroke collapsed an inch short. Thierknut's blade caught him hapless in the breast, taking life swiftly. Using the death spasm, the prince sent the man's stocky frame against two of his fellows as it dropped like a grainsack, spoiling their forward rush.

            As the point came free he took it in a stroke up and to the right, slitting the armpit of another foe before that one's mace, poised aloft, could fall upon Driek, Thierknut's lieutenant who fought beside him. Driek, grimacing, rammed the mercenary in the chest with his shield. The man went down, dropping his weapon from nerveless fingers. Driek's sword flashed out at the men suddenly exposed behind.

            Thierknut dared a glance around then as Driek and the others challenged the remaining brigands who had been hastily thrown against them. Although two of his men had withdrawn, wounded, none were dead. His line held. They were pushing the macewielders steadily back to the river.

            But the battle promised to become hotter. Behind the mercenaries were swordsmen, held in reserve by their leader, that dark-robed villain called Namon. Thierknut thirsted to challenge that one, whose haughty bearing had already inflamed the prince's pride. Mindilfir had given Thierknut a specific task, and so far the Hunterchief's judgement had proven correct. The Prince and his men occupied the long sandspit that divided the river inlet from the sea, protecting the archers led by Flarann, who were even now running out along the beach behind them. Offshore, three sailing ships labored in the growing gale, black lateens double-reefed. Thrice those ships struggled to tack 'round the spit into the anchorage behind, but the morn, as Mindilfir predicted, brought a powerful ebb with a storm on its heels.

            Now the ships maneuvered to keep position off the beach, intending to land Namon's reinforcements in the surf without grounding, for they would run to the open sea when the weather demanded. Presently they showed their doubt, however, for the soldiers, impeded by the foam, would now meet a wall of arrows from Flarann's people if they disembarked.

            Sand, tossed by the brawl, flew across the battlefield in gusts. Wiping grit and sweat from his eyes, the prince scanned the beach. There was Flarann, greatbow in hand, green cloak flaring in the wind. He gestured right and left, ordering his troops. Fifty men were there with him—and one woman. The prince spied her as the archers spread out among the low dunes. He hair was bound and she wore men's clothing, but there was no mistaking her figure and her slim hunting bow. Proud Gretta could outshoot Flarann three times out of five!

            Mindilfir had not resisted when Gretta demanded she join the affray, for he knew her skill and her determination. He also had to attack with maximum force and swiftly, for the early twilight had shown the approaching ships, black dots on the gleaming flood, beating for Rivermouth.

            They saw the vessels before Namon as they arrived on a height above the beach, unnoticed and unexpected. Mindilfir could not allow fresh troops to join the army below, already larger than he expected it to be. He sent Flarann and Thierknut stealthily north, then began a fierce onslaught from the southwest, drawing Namon's forces away from the beach.

            Now, therefore, Thierknut stood between Namon and the archers, holding the spine of the sandspit, and Namon could not pull his stronger forces away from the engagement with Mindilfir. Soon, Thierknut knew, Namon would be forced to enter the battle himself with his reserves, in an effort to secure the beach for the army on the boats. Then Thierknut, son of Mog, would meet him. The battle waited on that event.

            But something odd was happening. As the prince turned back to the line, he saw that Namon, standing on a mound with a group of warriors, was not looking now to the fight, but anxiously back into the gale—toward the thicketed marsh, where black stormclouds blotted the sky above.

* * *

            Namon thought fast. “A similacrum!” he exclaimed. He was alarmed now. He had come to Rivermouth and taken command only hours before, close to midnight. His group were tired from the march, so he had held them back when the Hunterchief attacked. Even so it had seemed that his other men outnumbered the hunters. But suddenly, just as Maegeth's ships had shown their masts, fierce warriors in mail had sprung from the dunes to the north, led by a crimson-cloaked prince.

            Namon was counting on the ships, expecting them to enter the protected river-inlet and land the reinforcements. Dismayed, he realized now that they could not force the entrance against the tide and rising wind. The only other landing was upon the long beach, where the redcloak blocked the path.

            The harsh wind's wuther was a shriek on the reeds and a fine-edged hiss where it drove the sand before it, sending cold grey flames from the dunetops. Clouds boiled out of the south. A skin-prickling hint of thunder whispered a prediction of deadly rain-war. And now—the Dark Maiden alive, darting out of the reeds in a yellow boat, a spear in her hand!

            He knew that it was she; but the others might not be as certain. She was changed. Her familiar glossy hair was tangled and dirty; she seemed smaller and less menacing, without bears, whip, or sword; and she wore cloth of the hunters. He could not risk her coming ashore!

            “Similacrum?” Snypp repeated, squinting into the gale at the apparition. He, as well as the dozen others who stood on the mound with Namon, had also caught sight of the strange boat and its two passengers.

            “An image,” Namon lied. “You see that man at the bow? It is he: the scarred magician who destroyed the cave. By his magic he has given the huntress, Gretta, a visage like that of our dead mistress. It was that which you saw, Snypp, two nights ago. A flesh-and-blood woman, not a ghost. Look, she carries the very spear we lost then.”

            “In the daylight she does not look much like The Mistress,” snarled Snypp.

            “Take archers and spearmen. Go to the beach there,” Namon pointed out a place where the sand thrust out a little into the water. “That boat is caught in the current. No one steers it. It will be carried within range. Kill those two, Snypp. Don't let them land!”

            Snypp rounded up a half-dozen bowmen and two who carried spears. They ran to the curving bank. Namon had been right. The boat was not under control. The current was bringing it closer. The false woman gestured toward him and shouted, but her words were drowned out by the wind and the tumult of battle.

            Snypp gave a command. A flight of arrows challenged the wind. All fell short, but the two figures in the boat dropped out of sight behind the thick bulwark of reeds. Snypp ordered the spearmen to be ready, the archers to correct their aim. The little yellow vessel drifted nearer.

            The thrust of the mercenaries had gone blunt. Their maces, greatly effective against peasants and townsmen, were no match for skilled swordsmanship. To Namon's left, the bulk of his army was holding its own against Mindilfir. But the situation would change rapidly if the prince, having prevented a landing from the ships, drove south against their rear with sword and arrow.

            “We must clear the beach,” Namon said at last to his officers, seeing that Snypp apparently had the upper hand with the two in the boat. “Order all the reserves to strike at their line there, where the red commander fights.”

            In a loose wedge with Namon leading, the reserves surged toward Thierknut's line. But the prince had been working his way toward the chief mercenary, a powerful man taller than his fellows who wore a helm inlaid with carved bone. It was Torrsl the sergeant, who had skirmished with Garufel at Grimdale and had ordered the retreat from the caves. As soon as Thierknut saw that Namon was making his move, he leaped forward with a loud cry straight at Torrsl.

            Pale countenance flushed by battle heat, cloak swirling in the wind like a curtain of blood, the prince's onslaught threw a sudden fear into weary Torrsl. Thierknut blocked the sergeant's violent warding blow, then separated head from body in a brutal chopping stroke. The bonehelm toppled.

            Seeing their leader down ghastly, the mercenaries broke. In a body they fled straight into Namon's charge. Thierknut called to his warriors to fall back. He signalled to Flarann on the beach.

            He had no need. As soon as the southerners separated from the melee, Flarann's archers let fly. Darts of death fell fast on the backs of the fleeing macemen. The charge slowed, almost stopped. Namon's men began beating the mercenaries with the flats of their swords, shouting at them to get out of the way or to turn and fight. Here and there, a mercenary struck back in panic. The arrows began to take a heavy toll.

            But Namon broke out of the press. The Red Prince stood in his way. Sparks flew as their swords met. Rain began to fall. The arrowslaughter halted. All along the gore, warriors of both sides paused. Their attention was caught by the combat between the leaders.

            Thierknut thrust and was parried. Namon, with the longer sword, cut the prince on the hip. Thierknut brought his shield before him and stepped back. Suddenly a mercenary, lying as if dead on the sand, rolled into the prince's heels. Instinctively Thierknut drove his blade deep into the man, but the stroke left him off balance and unguarded. Lightning flashed on Barallas-top. A long roll of thunder shook the field as Namon aimed a killing blow. At that instant, Gretta the huntress loosed her arrow into the storm, unmindful that her hair had come unbound and was whipping wildly in the gale.

* * *

            Helpless, Stoneglow Threescar watched the battle on the beach. The Pride had swung close to the men in the inlet, but Maegeth stood up among the arrows and cast her spear with surprising strength. It had passed through Snypp's belly, hurling him to the ground. As the others hesitated and Snypp writhed in agony, the Pride seemed to leap away from the bank as if the boat had brought them there solely for the sake of that single blow. Two spears, badly thrown, struck the water nearby as a swift current took them out of range and past the bar.

            Now wind and tide were driving them steadily out to sea, and it had begun to rain. Maegeth, keeping Stoneglow at bay with the sword she had taken from him as he slept, shouted and waved at the ships. It was useless. Visibility was decreasing rapidly as the storm waxed. The gale tossed Maegeth's cries seaward where only the swells could hear them.

            The Dark Maiden's fury mounted with the storm as she realized that her plan to retrieve her queenship, meeting her loyal captains at Rivermouth before Namon could reach them with his lies, had failed. Yet, as the gale strove to snatch away her breath and the cold rain struck, she exulted while she raged. For the first time since its making, Berainn's precious stick had been wrested from its guardians. She had the Bodla!

            On the beach the battle appeared to stop. Then Stoneglow saw Namon, black-robed, in close swordplay with a tall man in mail- and-crimson. At first the two seemed evenly matched; but then the crimson warrior stumbled. Stoneglow caught his breath as Namon raised his sword to strike.

            A blood-chilling scream carried down the wind from the beach even to the Pride where she wallowed in the seas. A lightning flash lit the whole sky, and in its bluewhite glare Stoneglow saw Namon stiffen. His sword dropped. His hands flew to his face. Thunder tumbled down from Barallas as Namon collapsed, an arrowshaft protruding from his eyesocket. The mailed warrior leaped up again and stood over the body of the traitor.

            But there was something else—something that gave Stoneglow an almost irresistible urge to leap from the boat in a futile effort to swim ashore. He had seen not only the victim of that cruel arrow, but also the skilled archer whose bolt had fallen true despite the vagaries of wind and rain: one whose fine long hair, breaking free, now challenged even the argent glory of the lightning with its copper gleam! Then the Pride slid into a deep trough. When she rose again to the crest a blinding rainsheet cut off his view of the shore.

            “Bail faster, you fool, or this raft will sink!”

            Maegeth, brandishing the sword, had threatened more than once to kill him if he did not bail. Yet he thought that the Pride would stay afloat even filled with water, for the reed bundles seemed a positive flotation. Far up in the bow compartment, under the foredeck, Garufel's pack and other supplies were dry. The reeds were so tightly drawn together by the binding-spell that water did not penetrate them.

            Hours had passed, punctuated by squalls that turned the air into a cold froth. During a break in the rain they sighted one of Maegeth's ships among the swells. It was dismasted, low in the water, fighting to keep head to wind under oars. Men on the ship saw the Pride, too, but the vessels drifted rapidly apart.

            Stoneglow watched the Dark Maiden carefully. If her attention wavered, he would not hesitate to spring at her, wresting away the sword and Bodla. What he would do then, he was not sure. The boat still had no means of propulsion or control. In this, though, he marveled: despite her lack, the Pride rode lightly and with spirit, frequently avoiding the most dangerous hollows and peaks of the sea.

            But Maegeth did not lower her guard, even in the worst moments when the downpour pelted them mercilessly. She was ready to kill him, he knew. Twice she had been on the verge of it, when it had appeared to her that the boat might be better off without his weight. But he was useful, too, laboring to cast out the water with one of Garufel's cookpots. So she stayed her hand. Having failed at Rivermouth, she intended to weather this storm. Her plans regarding the Bodla could not be carried out well at sea. She had seen the poles lashed to the deck. Short saplings, but capable of bearing a small sail. When the skies cleared she would force the scarface to make a jury rig. Sighting her ship had raised her hopes. She might yet reach it, or even her island citadel that lay in this very sea.

            She had the strap of the Bodla case over her right shoulder now, so that the case hung at her left side. With her left hand she gripped the sternpost, and with her right she held the sword ready. Stoneglow had seen the skill and force with which she had gutted Snypp, and he had marveled at her contemptuous disregard for the flying arrows. He did not underestimate her. He bailed, and waited.

            Over the smudge of the squalls now was cast a darker shroud: evening approached, lending a strange hardness to the stormfiltered light. Again and again the Pride breasted the billow, poised breathless, then plunged into a dull grey valley. At first the motion was sickening. But after a while Stoneglow became used to the erratic rhythms. He had been at sea before and his body remembered, adjusting without thought.

            It was the worst and final squall of the storm that brought with it an unexpected opportunity. After a long, ominous pause, during which Stoneglow had managed to clear the hull of water, a black wall of cloud swept up from the south. Pride heeled sharply, broadside to the gust, the reedhull shaking off the sudden deluge like an animal as the whitecaps set it quivering. Then a different sound— tympani of the sea-broil, heralding the climax of this passage: not thunder, not wind. Breakers!

            Right in the path of drift a dark layered crag rose like a crake's black wingtip, aslant out of the water. Its limit, a hundred feet above, was nearly invisible in the scud. The sea battered it with explosive force, sending great plumes of spray flying halfway to the summit. Trails of spent foam sluiced down the sides, a white net over the glistening stone.

            Pride began to lurch. Maegeth, clinging grimly to the stern, fixed her gaze on the rock ahead. Her eyes widened in spite of the downpour. Her jaw dropped.

            “It is Koronthos, the Boundary Stone,” she shouted at Stoneglow. “How comes it here? What manner of wind has blown us? Accursed wizard! You had a hand in this! Get us away! Turn back!”

            He could scarcely hear her words but the menace was plain. Stoneglow crouched tensely in the forward end of the cockpit, expecting anything.

            The Pride careened down the face of a water-wall, heaving closer to the pinnacle, spinning half-around. Maegeth found herself facing into the storm. She could scarcely keep her position as the bow rose to a precarious angle. Above it a white torrent of foam gathered.

            Intoxicated by a rising fearful madness, the Dark Maiden made a move toward Stoneglow; and of a sudden, something dropped from the skies. A yellow and brown ball of bone and feathers, struggling with the gale! It hit Maegeth full on the chest, writhing, wet. The wave began to break. She flung both hands to her breast, striking at the thing.

            Threescar needed no further invitation. He leaped aft, seized her forearm, twisted violently. With a cry she dropped the weapon, wrenching free.

            The Pride reared then like a horse, about to pitchpole end for end. White water rushed down the foredeck. The saplings broke their lashes and skittered to the stern, striking out as they came like so many clubs. Stoneglow ducked into the cockpit and hung on, his body protecting the creature that Maegeth had brushed away.

            Off balance, inundated by the breaking sea and fighting to keep the poles from bruising impact, the Dark Maiden hurtled overboard.

            The Pride, glad to be free of an unwanted burden, recovered. She slipped over the breaking crest and began drifting east as a current carried her in an arc just outside the dashing sea-mill. Stoneglow reached down to the deck and picked up what had fallen there. It was an owl—a yulet, little more than a bundle of soaked down. But its great round yellow eyes looked up at him alert, defiant, pleading. Its steeply arched beak, cruelly pointed, was open, tongue aquiver as it gasped for breath. It had fought the storm, bravely, for hours!

            As suddenly as it had come the squall ended. The sea calmed noticeably. For the first time since morning the wind dropped to a tolerable breeze. Darkness was rapidly approaching. Stoneglow took a last look back at the outthrust, framed in a milky foamburst. Then he slipped beneath the foredeck with the owl and felt around with his free hand until he found Garufel's pack.

            Within he found a folded cloak, dry and of a weave that warmed as soon as it was drawn about him. He curled up in the dry space, holding the owl beneath the folds against his chest. He could feel its tenuous breath.

            Here beneath the deck there was a comparative silence and a strange feeling: all was dark now outside, yet amid the woven reeds that surrounded him Stoneglow sensed a faint luminosity and warmth—amber radiation at the very edge of sight. He wondered at the boat then. How had it survived such a fearsome passage? There seemed a live quality within it. Several times it had brought him close to disaster, then, having fulfilled a purpose, pulled safely away again. Could it have been in response to his hidden wish? Could he in some way have influenced its course?

            In a while there came yet another dull roar. It was ahead of them, growing steadily louder. Had they made a circle, now approaching the stone again? Not likely. This new sound was gentler, as surf upon a shelving strand. It was surf. A shore!

            The boat began to slip sideways and to roll. They were entering a string of low breakers. All at once, broadside to the swell, the Pride rolled and barely righted. Another like that and they would capsize. Stoneglow was about to put the owl down and go on deck when he remembered what Garufel had said: “Fashioned in part by you, the Pride might listen carefully if you spoke.”

            So he spoke to her, letting the words be shaped by all that he had heard and seen and felt at her making.

               Now, Pride! Now, Pride!

               By Vrrjhri's will that binds you,

               By the light-caulk that seals you,

               Show these combers your heels!

               Turn! Turn!

            A tremor ran the length of the keel. The Pride shifted. She took the next wave on the quarter, the next on the stern; then the next, and she surfed, shot ahead like a sled upon a silken carpet! There was a bump and a scraping. The water withdrew with a hiss. Another roll of foam, and they lifted slightly, skidding further shoreward. Then they came to rest.

            The boat did not move again. As the surf retreated, each time a little further away, Stoneglow Threescar fell into a thick sleep. He did not hear or know when, some time later, a white figure clinging like a mussel to a pair of floating saplings struggled ashore not far distant and crawled unsteadily to a sheltered hollow before collapsing.