Before The Mask (15 page)

Most of the ogres were scattering in panic, lumbering toward the foothills or toward the
fire itself, covering their heads, grunting and shrieking. The others stood still in fear,
like a circle of stones around the frozen riders of Nidus.

All were still except Verminaard. He reeled for a moment with Dragonawe, then righted
himself in the saddle, clutching Orlog's mane until the dizziness passed. Then he raised
his mace and brought it thundering down onto the head of a panic-stricken ogre, and a
black wind

muffled the screams of the dying monster.

Verminaard swung again, shouting wildly, as a passing ogre, a large one, ducked, dodging
the blow. The creature lunged at the mace-wielding rider and passed through the whirl of
darkness that followed the weapon's arc through the air. At once, the ogre fell to its
knees, clutching its eyes, then groped and gibbered as it crawled toward the fire wall and
vanished into the white-hot flames.

Slapping the mace excitedly against his broad thigh, Verminaard guided his horse through
the dazed monsters and rode to the side of the Lord of Nidus.

“Lord Daeghrefn?” he called, tugging on the scorched sleeve. “Father?” Daeghrefn stared
blankly at the northern sky.

Propped against a sturdy young vallenwood in the foothills, Robert had watched the plains
below through the swirl of smoke and moonlight. By the red light of Lunitari, his eyes had
followed Verminaard's path through the ogres to Daeghrefn, the mace-wielder untouched by
the scattering ogres. And as the druidess set and splinted Robert's shattered leg, the
seneschal had seen the new battle begin, the moon darken and the deepest of shadows pass
over the battlefield.

She had told him to close his eyes then, and he had done so. But still he felt a
breathless, sweating dizziness, overwhelming nausea, and the sudden, brief impulse to run.

Indeed, he would have run, had his leg allowed it, the rough old seneschal thought
bitterly.

“What was that shadow, Lady?” he muttered, but the druidess shook her head. Her auburn
hair shimmered in the faint moonlight, and for a moment, Robert was again breathless.

“Not yet,” she cautioned. “The world is not yet ready to see it, nor even to hear again
the stories and rumors.”

“But it . . .it laid out half of 'em!” the seneschal protested. “Put most of the ogres to
flight! What in the”

“'Tis the Awe, if my guess is right,” L'Indasha Yman explained cryptically. “The creature
inspires the Awe in most mortals. They break, panic-stricken, for safety, or else they are
frozen dead.”

“Then Daeghrefn's boy must be a god,” Robert replied in perplexity. “Not that I ever
fancied him one. But did you see how he didn't run? Didn't freeze? Why, he stood alone
against it!”

“He's no god,” L'Indasha replied with an ironic smile, “but that mace he carries will give
him illusions of it.”

Robert lowered himself painfully to the ground, lifting his battered leg onto the litter
the druidess had fashioned of vines and fallen limbs. “He had illusions to begin with,
Lady. Right curious ones, of runes and hocus-pocus.”

The druidess laughed softly, musically. “Rest now, loyal Robert. You have earned this
brief holiday.”

“We need help here, Verminaard,” Aglaca insisted. Come down from your horse and help us
lift Tangaard."

Judyth and Aglaca struggled with the dazed cavalryman, a man noted in his company for
strength and bulk. Between the two of them, they had scarcely the strength to lift the
enormous soldier to his feet, much less to hoist him over aiiorse's back.

The others, however, were ready to be carried into Nidus. Daeghrefn and his surviving
soldiers lay draped across the saddles of their horses, and Aglaca's wondrous little mare,
still shaking from the shadows across Solinari, was pawing the earth, ready to guide the
lot of

them into Nidus.

“Verminaard?” Aglaca called again, but the lad sat astride Orlog, staring out at the
fading fire as though he, too, had been paralyzed by something in its depths. “Verminaard!”

Verminaard turned, regarding Aglaca with a wild, exuberant stare.

“Help?” he asked, his strong hands shaking on the stallion's reins. “Oh, rest assured I'll
help, Aglaca. While you take them into the castle, I shall cover our escape.”

“Cover our ... I don't understand.”

“Quickly, Aglaca,” Judyth urged. “Before the ogres waken.”

She glanced nervously at the circle of monsters. Nine ogres remained after the darkening
of the moon and the panic and flight of their comrades. Stunned by the Dra-gonawe, they
lay stiff and scattered like tomb effigies in the forsaken field.

“Carry our comrades in, Lady Judyth,” Verminaard commanded, a strange note of hilarity in
his voice, “and let the banquet be called to celebrate our victory over the assembled
ogres and the powers of the enemy.”

Aglaca and Judyth glanced nervously at one another.

“As you say, Verminaard,” Aglaca murmured. “For now.”

Verminaard lifted the mace again, holding it delicately, almost lovingly, fitting its
handle in the scar- notched groove of his palm. “Do so, and I shall attend to the rear
guard action, to the last despicable attempt to spoil our victory.”

Aglaca shook his head and started to speak, but Judyth set her hand on his shoulder.
Wordlessly she nodded toward the unconscious soldiers tied carefully to the horses they
were leading, and Aglaca understood. Swiftly, almost shamefully, with scarcely a look
behind them, they mounted the horses, Judyth atop the mare and Aglaca on

Daeghrefn's stallion, steadying the petrified Lord of Nidus across the horse's rump.

It was a strange caravan that made for the gates of the castle. Traveling in darkness, the
dying fires behind them, the party of seven approached the battlements, where, at their
posts, the sentries began to waken and stir.

Gundling was the first to sit up in the saddle. Blearily he looked toward the battlements.
The sentries waved and the gates opened.

“By the gods!” he cried ecstatically. “By the Book of Gilean, by Zivilyn and by great
Kiri-Jolith, we have weathered the lot of it!”

He looked beside him, where the dark girl, her hands gently on the reins of his horse, led
them toward safety, toward a good meal, no doubt, and a warm bath.

With a sooty hand, Gundling rubbed his head. His hair was a little singed, his right ear
bloodied. Otherwise, he thought, he was unbroken and sound. And yet he felt he had seen...
no doubt had imagined ...

What was it? He couldn't remember, and the opaque, troubled stare of the girl riding
beside him told him nothing.

With a groan, Graaf sat up on the other side of the girl, weaving atop his horse, almost
falling, until Aglaca rode up and caught him.

“Be calm,” the Solamnic was saying with a thin, unas-suring smile. “Rest and try not to
stir. You nearly fell from your horse there, Sergeant Graaf, and it'd be a shame to
weather threescore ogres only to break your crown in a riding accident.”

The ogres. Where were the ogres? Gundling steadied himself, turned painfully in the saddle.

Behind him, dark in the light of the waning fire, Master Verminaard stood on the plains.
He was shouting riotous words, incomprehensibleand lifting a black mace to the night sky.
A dozen ogres lay lifeless around

him, and he stood over the last one shouting, the mace rising, wheeling, and falling in a
lethal, silent rhythm.

Twelve of them, Gundling marveled, a strange and numbing awe spreading over him. Twelve of

them, by the gods, and if he's been unsung before, he will be unsung no longer. Not if I
have breath and voice to sing.

It was a custom in tbe mountains, a custom honored since tbe Age of Might, that victory in
battle was followed by a night of banquet and celebration, but also of the Minding, when
the story of the victory was told, the fallen mourned, the brave honored, and the history
of the battle enrolled in the thoughts and memories of those who had not been present.
Regardless of rank or station, everyone was permitted to speak.

So was it done in other castles throughout Taman Busuk, in Jelek and Estwilde, through the
Kalkhists, into the Doom Range, and down into Neraka.

Not so, however, in Castle Nidus. It had been Daegh-refn's custom to conduct the Minding
all by himself.

Instead of allowing the men to tell their version of the day's events on the battlefield,
the Lord of Nidus would assemble the troops and speak briefly of the deaths that had
befallen his house that day, of its heroism and tragedy. Then the ceremony was
overobserved, so as not to arouse the traditionalists, but bleak and quiet and altogether
joyless, the words floating aimlessly into the dark rafters of the great hall.

After the surprising, near-disastrous battle with the ogres on the plains near Nidus, many
of the men wondered if the Minding were in order at all, if what had taken place that
night, within sight of the battlements, could have been more defeat than victory.

And yet on the next evening, after wounds had been stitched and bruises salved, the boards
of the tables bent low with fowl and venison. The wine swirled and spilled, the servants
busied themselves with pouring and porting and setting salt, bread, and water by each
place, and the music began at sunset, a thin and graceful trumpet signaling that the Lord
of Nidus requested the pleasure of his soldiers at the meal.

In preparation and prologue, the Minding began like the dozen or so that had taken place
at Nidus since the Nerakan Wars had resumed. And yet, almost before the sound of the
trumpet died, all who were summoned from the family of the lord to his noble hostage, to
the veteran cavalrymen who returned with him yesterday, all the way down to the youngest
of the servantsknew that this night would be different, would be like no other.

As usual, Daeghrefn was the last to arrive at the Minding. Flanked by two cavalrymen, he
made for the long table, for his customary seat in the high-backed chair adorned with the
arms of Nidus: Raven Displayed on a Field Gules, the stormcrow of ancient lineage, sign of
the house, perpetually and unchangingly honored.

And yet something had changed in the climate of the

hall. The dozen chairs by the lord's seat, by the gift throne, were empty tonightempty of
petitioners, courtiers, sycophants. The knights and retainers who usually sat at the
master's table had moved elsewhere, to the opposite end of the chamber. To the table by
the fire, the far hearth which now blossomed with laughter and the first of the songs, for
the men in the great hall had gathered around Lord Verminaard.

Daeghrefn scowled from his distant vantage. He struck the boards once, twice, but only
Juventus and Onnozel, two of the younger troopers, untested in battle, even looked in his
direction.

Gracefully, confidently, Verminaard held forth in the midst of the men. Raising a black
mace, a weapon that seemed to catch the firelight and set it astir and spinning,
Verminaard began the festivities, as the hero shouldor in the absence of a single hero,
the lord of the castle with the formal, warlike speech of the mountain mead-hall.

“Say to me, soldiers, soul-mated in battle, stones and mountain, sea and river, before
whom the fire has broke, is breaking, will break in the final hours of fire. Say to me,
soldiers, the afternoon's story of what came to pass in the country of ogres, to honor the
Nine in the Regions of Night, a dirge for the Lady dwelling in darkness, a song for
Takhisis, a song for the queen....”

Daeghrefn leaned back in astonishment. Where had Verminaard learned the songs of the mead
hall? This kind of foolishness had never gained ear in Castle Nidustoo sloppy and eastern,
it was, smacking of Nerakan dives and the dockside bars of Sanction. This was a solemn
hall, after a solemn battle. Men had been slain. Men had not

returned. And this ... this cursed usurper ...

Daeghrefn had heard enough. With a shout, he rose and stalked to the center of the hall,
hiding the limp from the wound suffered at the ogre's hand. The long scoring lacerations
had been stitched neatly by the girl Judyth, the very one whose rescue had prompted all
the disastrous, harebrained journeys of the last several days. Stiff and aching, Daeghrefn
stood before the entire garrison, folded his arms, and glared balefully at the young man
who would commandeer his place at table, who would turn the solemn occasion into a pulpit
for vulgar legend and drunken boast.

All eyes turned to the lord of the castle, and for a moment the hall fell hush. A pigeon
flapped in the eaves, and a solitary dog padded across the flagstone floor on its way to
the safer darkness.

Old Graaf stood first to tell the first story, as was his place by age and honor.
Daeghrefn smiled. A loyal retainer. A man who knew his benefit and safety in the ranks of
Nidus.

Slowly, with a strong voice unshaken by time and wounds in the service of his lord, Graaf
turned to the young man standing at the head of the new table.

“Master Verminaard,” he began, humbly but assuredly, “I haven't the high lord's poetry,
nor the song of the olden times, when men such as my grandsire spoke in verses themselves,
a song to the gift throne.”

Daeghrefn glanced angrily at Verminaard, who met his gaze directly. The first of the
speakers had broken protocol, had addressed this supplanter rather than the rightful Lord
of Nidus.

The pale eyes of the young man met the dark eyes of the older. Daeghrefn felt a chill pass
down his back, and he shivered involuntarily. He might as well be staring at his old
friendhis old enemy Laca Dragonbane.

Graaf continued, his voice acquiring resonance and strength. "And indeed there is no song
of the harp this evening, gold string and sound of heaven, to

gladden even the harshest voice with song. No song of the harp, for Robert the seneschal
did not return from Neraka Forest."

Daeghrefn winced. Robert had always been the harper at the Mindinga surprising talent, for
the rough old soldier had played like a bard.

“But here is the way your servant remembers,” Graaf announced, his voice gaining power and
confidence as he stepped away from the table. "To the best of his saying, these things he
remembers.

“We had searched for Verminaard, Son of the Storm-crow,” the grizzled sergeant began,
raising his cup in the ceremonial stance of the scop, the teller, the rememberer. “We had
searched for Aglaca, Son of the West. We had searched for them south of the forest where
the victims of banditry hang dried and blackened like unpicked grapes, where wild cats
roam in the bleeding woodland, where the trees scream of murder and conspiracies.”

He took a deep breath and handed the cup to Tangaard. The burly young cavalryman drank
fully, with a defiant glare at Lord Daeghrefn, then stood, raised the cup, and continued
the story.

“It was then that the fire from the south overtook us,” Tangaard began. “It caught us like
beasts at the edge of the forest, at the forest's edge where Fittela fell. Then came the
ogres, mark-steppers, man-eaters, falling on Thunar, finest of swordsmen, then upon Ullr,
wielder of hammers, dear to Majere and fierce Kiri-Jolith.”

Tangaard could no longer speak. The men kept respectful silence. It was well known that
Tangaard and Ullr were the oldest and best of friends.

Mutely, glaring with rage at Daeghrefn, the young man handed the cup to Mozer.

Where Mozer had found the courage to join in the Minding, none could say. He was the
softest of the men

who had traveled with Daeghrefnan aristocrat's son from Sanction, and he had gibbered and
wept in the midst of the burning forest. Yet something had happened to him on the
fire-struck plains. His eyes were deeper now, strangely fathomless, and he drank from the
cup wearily and reverently, as a pilgrim might at the altar of some ancient shrine.

“Asa the Bright One, Longbow of Lemish, fell to the fire in a cauldron of cedar....”

Aglaca, standing in a shadowy corner of the hall, dropped his head. He had almost
forgotten Asa's love of the bowthe big, gap-toothed westerner, ready with laughter and
arrows.

“Asa the Bright One,” Mozer continued, “and after him Reginn, Son of the Smith and the
Hammer of Reorx. None can remember a stronger hand, the foe of rock, the destroyer of
ramparts. Fallen to fire, to the leveling blazes, and abandoned deep in Neraka's forest.”

Furtively, without looking at the Lord of Nidus, Mozer extended the cup toward Aglaca,
beckoning him toward the hearth and the table.

Aglaca shook his head, waving away the invitation. He could not speak of what he had seen.
Aglaca had looked away, or tried to look away, on the fire-torn fields south of Nidus when

Verminaard offered to cover their retreat. He had known well what would happen, but the
men in his charge were stunned and weakened, and if the dazed ogres had come to themselves
before he and Judyth could get the men into the castle...

So he had left Verminaard to cover their retreat. He was not proud of it.

His back to the battlefield, Aglaca had heard the sound of the mace as it whirled and
roared, had heard it descend on the stunned, defenseless ogres, the wet, breaking sound of
metal against powerless bone, Verrninaard's

exultant cries as again and again he brought down the black, shimmering weapon.

Aglaca shuddered and clenched his fists. He had secreted Judyth in the elaborate garden,
far from the notice of Verminaard, Daeghrefn, Cerestesthe whole evil lot of them. She was
hidden for a while, but she was hardly safe. And if anything happened to him, she would be
as good as dead in the viper's pit that Nidus had become.

And yet he would not leave, would not return to Solamnia. The gebo-naud was deeply
binding, and his father's words returned to him over the miles and years: No son of mine
is an oath-breaker, Aglaca. Remember that in the halls of Nidus.

And, after all, the man at that table was his brother.

The cup had passed on now, into the hands of Gundling. Perhaps the best of Daeghrefn's
soldiers, this man had been a bandit himself, and a good one, but had balked at the
raising of the dark temple in the midst of his village and at the ogres brought in to
construct the walls around the Dark Queen's stronghold.

Gundling was a man of few illusions and fewer sympathies. And yet he was honorable, and he
lifted the cup and drank from it, his eyes never leaving Lord Daeghrefn. Then slowly,
sonorously, he began the end of the story.

“Out of the forest on the northern plains, where the fire had taken the last of the
woodland, there we lost Aschraf, who was not yet himself in the lists of battle. Bold as a
wolf, the bearer of promises, he fell to the fire, and the fire found him worthy. Robert
the Seneschal, Robert the Harper, the last of our number to fall in the battle, left in
the midst of fire and ogres, loyal to Nidus in the rear guard of armies. While the gates
of the, castle, the gates of the ear, were closed to his cries, Robert the Seneschal drew
the last sword in the burning of memories.”

All of the men kept the silence. Gundling held forth the

cup, for any taker, any man who could complete the story. Aglaca looked wonderingly at the
assembled soldiers: None of them remembered the dark wings over the moon, the welling,
paralyzing fear that had passed across the high prairie and then vanished, leaving them
scattered and dazed and forlorn.

None, that is, except Aglaca himself. And Verminaard, of course, who now sat on a stool by
the fire, his gaze fixed on the guttering flames and his hands folded softly, almost
prayerfully under his chin. He would not take the cup to end the story; traditionally,
that was the duty of the lord of the castle.

When Daeghrefn moved toward the cup, there was a sharp intake of breath from one of the
men Mozer, perhaps, or Tangaard. Slowly the Lord of Nidus extended his hand, grasped the
jeweled

goblet, drank the dregs of the wine...

And spoke, his words halting and listless. They all knew he spoke from hearsay, from the
words that had passed through the castle the night before, this morning, and into the
waning hours of the afternoon. But it was his task to complete the story, to end the
Minding with all the dead reckoned and the heroes acclaimed.

“Let not the night pass,” Daeghrefn said resentfully, sarcastically, with the eyes of the
men fixed upon him, “without the remembrance of Verminaard of Nidus, black mace-wielder,
slayer of ogres, scourge of the flame, defender of battlements, right arm of the castle.”
He coughed and set the cup on the table. Verminaard rose from his seat by the fire. Coldly
and balefully, the mace swinging menacingly in his gloved hand, he stared after Daeghrefn,
who averted his eyes.

“Had I heard such a speech years ago,” he began flatly, “and had you meant it... had I
heard its beginning, its ending . . . one word of it, even last week, it might have moved
me.”

He stalked from the fire to the great hall's entrance, past the astounded sentries and out
the door of the keep.

Daeghrefn stood by the table, staring into the wine-stained bowl of the cup. The men began
to eat, in silence at first, but then amid muffled and uncertain conversation. He looked
up once, met Tangaard's resentful stare, and lowered his gaze again.

Until the ogres and the fires, Daeghrefn had not remembered fear. It had come from the
shadows like a thief, rising from the smoke to steal his nerve and his warrior's heart,
and the castle walls were narrow and dark, the corners menacing and comfortless. He had
gazed in the basin this morning as he washed his face, and for a momenta dark, horrific
momenthe thought he saw something standing over him, waiting....