A Mankind Witch (22 page)

"As a sentence making a lot of no sense, that one is a winner," said Manfred, sounding slightly amused. "I only understood one word of it . . . hola . . . Here it comes." They could hear heavy treads. "What do I do with this one, Erik?"

"Put him to sleep. We can't take a chance."

As he said this, Cair brought both his feet down on Manfred's toes. And head-butted back as he thrust with his elbows with all his strength. Manfred lost his grip as Cair danced free.

"Damn you!" Manfred snatched at him.

Roar!
ROAAAAAAAAR!

It was huge. White, except for the terrible redness of its mouth. So close now that you could smell the fresh blood on its breath.

Talons like six-inch knives missed Cair's skin by the thickness of a hair.

They didn't miss his clothing. Had it been anything more substantial than a thrall's ragged tunic, it might not have ripped like paper, and he would have died right there, hauled into a bear hug worse even than Manfred's. As it was he was flung sprawling, to the far side of the fire. He cracked his head against a rock, and the world spun. In the mist, with his head whirling he watched the two knights with their bright swords . . . and the great mass of white fur and terrible claws and teeth. It seemed to be at least one and a half times as tall as the men. It also had a club. Half a tree, by the looks of it. The two knights only had their swords.

And beyond the monster . . . mouth dry, head spinning, Cair croaked a warning and pointed. In the mist all that you could see was that they were big and misshapen. Like the gnarled trolls of Norse tales. He scrabbled at the fire as Erik ducked under the club and lunged at the white-furred monster.

Erik cut the monster, and it yowled. But it would take more than one blow to stop such a creature. And the others were coming to join their master.

Cair burned his fingers on an ember, and then found a brand. And stared at the
bautarstein
he'd been seeking.

"Back! The cave!" he called, fumbling with his pouch. One of his homemade grenades came to hand. "I'll fix 'em. Back and down," he yelled again. Wishing that his eyes would focus properly, he struggled to light the wick. A powerful arm hauled him back. Which was not at all what he'd meant. "Hell's teeth, fool. Back where?"

"Cave." They staggered back up the slope, and against the odds Cair managed to light the wick of his grenade. He tossed it. But his strength just—wasn't. It fell barely twelve feet away, rolling toward the troll-things instead of their monster master.

"God's blood! It's a grenade. Back!" yelled Erik.

Cair was hauled off with a strength and speed that nearly had his arm out of its socket. They stumbled against a rock face and fell, as it exploded. As grenades went it was not a great one. Still, it did get results.

The earth shook slightly. And it was certainly not from the puny grenade. Soft snow cascaded down on them, and a deep grumbling sound shook the earth in earnest. "Avalanche," said Erik. "Back. Back into the cave."

Erik had heard the growl of avalanches before. But not ones like this one. Erik had been willing to swear that it hadn't been natural. There'd been a dance of odd lights in the mist and a strange sort of music in that grumbling.

Whatever or however the idiot thrall had triggered it, he was really not sure. It must have taken more than that little grenade—there'd been enough noise earlier to start three avalanches. The odd thrall's grenade had made a nice flash and been good for shock value—those trolls had panicked easily enough.

But the avalanche . . . He was sure that the grenade hadn't caused it.

Running into the cave had left them in an interesting position . . . 

If by "interesting" you meant "stuck." They were going to die of suffocation sooner or later, along with an unconscious man who could possibly have tried to trap them here. "I still can't wake him," he said to Manfred.

"He took a swipe from that thing," said Manfred in the darkness, where he was taking a break from digging.

Erik didn't hold out much hope for the digging. The snow was soft and powdery and simply cascaded back down onto them. And twice now they'd dug . . . to encounter rock. Perhaps boulders had come down with the snow—or they weren't digging straight. The cave had sloped sharply in and they had rolled and fallen about twenty paces. Erik was also very skeptical about the unconscious man. "That's what it looked like, perhaps, as far as we could see in that murk. But he's alive and not bleeding that I can feel. That seems unlikely, given that I have a gouge in my breastplate and a cut on my shoulder, just from the tail end of one of those blows. I fought with this fellow a few minutes back. He was too good. He had a little homemade knife. I had a sword. He should have died. He should have died, if that thing had really hit him."

"It could happen," said Manfred, doubtfully.

Erik was far less inclined to give the fellow the benefit of that doubt. "You've got to admit his turning up there was more than implausible. He didn't ride with us, so he must have been here before us."

There was a long pause. "I suppose he must have been."

"And he was dead keen for us to get into this cave. Which he knew about!"

"It is pretty damning, I must admit," agreed Manfred. "But I'll swear that thing hit him. And he really seems to be unconscious. I'll get straight answers out of him when he comes around, I think." There was a certain implacability about that tone.

"His being unconscious is mighty convenient for him," said Erik. "But if he isn't, he's the best faker in the world."

"True enough," agree Manfred, who had also tried to wake the thrall. "Well. I can't just sit here and wait for him to come around or for the air in this hole to run out."

"What are you doing?" asked Erik. Manfred's voice had come from farther away.

"Just exploring this hole we're stuck in," came the echoing answer.

Erik's first inclination had been to say, "Well, don't." But he curbed it. He was too inclined to say "no" to Manfred. With some reason, he had to admit. But a novitiate and their experiences in Venice, not to mention Francesca, had made the once-spoiled prince grow up a lot. These days it was far more of a meeting of equals who respected each other, than of instructor and reluctant pupil. Besides, it was nearly impossible not to like Manfred, for all that he was still something of a tearaway. He settled for "Well, let's stick together. It's probably not very big but you never can tell."

"What about the thrall?" asked Manfred.

Erik shrugged, and realized that this was rather a futile gesture down here. So he answered instead, "He's not lying in the snow. He's breathing. I can't get a response from him. I think we can leave him here while we explore around. One of us would be bound to break our necks tripping over something carrying him, for all that I want him to answer some hard questions. If he's a thrall I'm an Ilkhan."

Erik made his way over to where Manfred stood, and they began making their way, cautiously feeling footstep by footstep along the wall.

"It's a lot bigger than I thought," admitted Erik. "We shouldn't run out of air at least."

"Although the stuff stinks a bit, Erik. You know, I don't think this cave is natural."

"Now what leads you to this conclusion?" asked Erik, dryly. "Could it be the relative smoothness of the walls? Or is it some arcane knowledge that is taught to heirs of Carnac?"

"Well, you're feeling better, anyway," said Manfred cheerfully. "I was worried that the slash you took from that thing might have been worse than you were telling me."

Erik smiled to himself. "What the hell was that thing?"

"Hard to tell," said Manfred. "There was fog rolling off its fur. A magical creature of some sort, for sure."

Erik had to agree. The one thing that the Knights of the Holy Trinity had learned—to their cost—was that magical creatures did exist. "It bled, though."

"Yes, I saw that. I think that we might have handled it between us, if those others hadn't been there, too."

"Trolls," said Erik, thinking of the gnarled knobbly things.

"Oh?" said Manfred. "I thought they were stories to frighten children."

"They frightened the hell out of m—"

"Erik?"

Erik would have replied but many small hands held him. Many, many small hands. Several of them were holding his mouth shut. He managed to bite one. It tasted vile. Like swamp mud. But its squeak at least gave Manfred some warning.

Not that that helped him much.

The place was dark. And then there was a hint of light. It grew, but it was no natural light. Instead it was like some eerie marsh light. Cair concluded he was dead. He'd heard of people who had been inside the doors of death describing the tunnel and the clear white light.

Considering the life he'd led he would have thought that it would be warmer. But perhaps that came later. Did the pain stop? His head hurt ferociously. He closed his eyes. Odd that you could still do that when you were dead.

Something touched him. He opened his eyes again. Blinked. The clear white light came from an odd-looking lantern on a pole.

That was not half as odd as the gnomelike thing that held it.

The Norse hell was cold, wasn't it? And what else could this creature be but a devil? A very minor one, by its size. Or maybe he was concussed. He'd hit his head, he remembered. He'd had a seaman on his first vessel who'd lost his wits after a blow on the head from a grappling iron.

The devil spoke. Considering where he was, it was, he supposed, not surprising that it spoke Norse. Well, no more surprising than anything else. "Get up, slave," was something they might say in hell, too.

He tried.

And fell over. It wasn't very far to fall, but it seemed to take a very long time, and consciousness drifted away like smoke.

Later he awoke again, lying on what was, by the smell of it, old straw.

And it was warmer here, but, as his head no longer felt as if it was full of clouds, he was very sure that he wasn't in hell after all. And, he thought wryly, even a mere Norse thrall's heaven would surely have fresh straw?

A little of the cold white light streamed in through a barred grill. He sat up. He felt bruised but otherwise intact. He examined himself. He was still, as far as he could see and feel, intact. His pouch was missing, though. He examined his surroundings as well as he could without getting up. It looked like a cell. Cautiously he stood up. It was as well he did it cautiously, because the ceiling was very low.

Someone had plainly heard him move.

A little ugly goblinlike thing, gray-fleshed and dressed, unless he was much mistaken, in scraps of mole fur, opened the door. Either that knock on the head had permanently affected his brain, or this was some creature he hadn't ever encountered before. The latter was possible. After all, he'd seen for himself apes bigger than a man, that built nests in trees like birds, when they'd gone raiding down south. "Come," it said.

There didn't seem to be a lot of alternatives, especially as mole-fur-clothes was backed up by a lot more of his kind. With, what to them were probably spears. He was led though various hallways, all too low for him to walk erect, until he came to a room where an older, fatter copy of his guide, dressed in ermine, not tatty mole fur, sat on what could only be a throne. Several others sat around the low steps. And in each of the doorways were more. Crowds of them. With more spears that looked sharp enough to make him die the death of a thousand short needles, anyway.

His pouch lay on the stone in front of the throne. Open. The miscellaneous contents were spilled out onto the stone.

The goblin king held Queen Albruna's ring between a gnarled thumb and forefinger. For him it would have made an outsize bracelet.

"Where did you get this?" the king asked, his eyes narrow.

Something about the way it was said made Cair suspicious. And the way it was held. As if it might be contaminated.

"I stole it," he said calmly.

The goblin king began to chortle. So did his courtiers. And the guards in archways.

"That's one in the eye for the old bag," said the goblin with satisfaction, wiping his eyes. "You're a very brave, if very stupid, Midgarder."

"I left her tied up, in an oat store," said Cair.

"Haw, haw, haw! You're a good liar, anyway," said the goblin, sniggering. "What are these other things?" He prodded the aqua-regia bottle with a horny toe.

"The tools of my trade. I'm a . . . sort of magician."

"Haw, haw, haw. And you get caught by the likes of Thallbru?" The goblin king slapped his thighs in delight. The rest of the goblin horde seemed to find it equally funny. "I might just keep you as a joker instead of sending you to the mines."

Cair put the pieces together. Mines. Yet the metalwork he could see was crude. Could he pass himself off as something of an expert on this? He'd never really done much, but it had been an interest. A curiosity. A dilettante's entertainment. Like chemistry, he probably knew more than the locals about it. And he'd found that he could usually wing it on a bit of self-confidence, if they were anything like as gullible as his Norse thrall victims. He was good at this stuff, after all. Some of his tricks would almost have fooled himself, if he hadn't known they were tricks. "My magic is only in the working of metals," Cair said, loftily. "That bottle there is for assaying gold. If it is true gold, the liquid will dissolve it."

The goblin king grinned. "Nothing dissolves gold, Midgarder."

"I will show you if you like. In my pouch you found a coin."

"Not gold," squeaked a small goblin from near the portal. He was a poorly looking creature—head bowed and half groveling already.

The goblin king looked at him sternly. "Give, Thallbru."

The goblin cowered back against the cavern wall. "Not gold. Too light."

"He's quite right," said Cair. "It is electrum, a mixture of gold and silver made up to look like a gold florin. It is a fake."

The goblin king's pale eyes seemed to glow. "Good enough to fool trolls? Bring it here, Thallbru."