Kirlian Quest (18 page)

"Actually, the dam is guarded by bowmen, so a small force will find approach difficult—"

"I mean the high trail!"

"The Ridge Road is necessary for herding our cattle to and from the high pasture," Kade said patiently. "It is a good pasture, the best in this region, and our cattle are the finest and fattest wheelers available. You saw how our recent guests tore into that wheelbeef! Much of the wealth of the Dukedom derives from that herd."

"And no one ever expected to go to war," Herald said glumly. "Who could have anticipated that a Lady of Kade would become haunted?" He touched the sword he now wore. "The whole thing is so foolish! This damned superstition that says anything new must be suspect! Anybody who really
knew
Psyche...."

Kade smiled with one of the few touches of warmth Herald had seen in him. "You begin to echo me."

"And why not? The truth bears echoing."

Kade returned to the map. "I, too, objected to the vulnerability of the Ridge Road. One never considers one's defenses with the assumption that they will never be used. But in the end I left the ridge unfortified. Can you see why?"

Herald studied the map again. "It is a mystery to me. I assume the certainty of inconvenience for your prime cattle outweighed the uncertainty of war. Why go to a lot of trouble and expense for something so theoretical?"

"Why, indeed," Kade agreed. "So I am sure the Prince's strategists have pored over this same map and reached a similar conclusion."

"Yes."

"And thereby lies the Prince's fall—perhaps."

Herald looked up sharply. "How so?"

"Suppose these fine fat cattle should stampede from the high pasture?"

Herald looked closely at the map a third time, seeing the high pasture and the way it channeled into the familiar—to cattle—ridge path. Slowly he smiled.

 

* * *

 

Psyche caught him arming for battle. "Herald! You're not going to fight? Your host doesn't have the strength or training!"

"All hosting is voluntary," Herald reminded her. "I could never take my host into danger without his permission and cooperation."

"I don't know," she said. "We've seen strange things here on Keep, and with your aura—"

"I'll let you speak to him directly," Herald said, and turned over the vocal apparatus.

"It's true, ma'am," the host said. "I'm a nobody myself. I knew when I started that I had to choose between serfing and hosting, and if I went the host route I'd have to stay out of the way and let my Transferee do it his way. Mister Herald has exercised me and made me stronger and tougher than I ever was before, and his aura heals me all the time, making me feel real good, you know—"

"I know," she agreed.

"And I
like
having people admire what my body carries. Even if it's not exactly
me
. And—no offense, ma'am—I'd never get remotely close to a doll like you by myself. I'm nothing, and you're the Lady Kade. So I'll take my chances. Maybe I'll die with Mister Herald, but it's a sight better than living on my own."

It didn't faze her. "Yes, I have been making love to two men, haven't I! But this is the nature of Transfer. Herald knows that I'll never love anyone but him in any form, ever."

"He knows," the host agreed. "Thanks for the word, ma'am, and now I'll just submerge again, okay? I feel sort of out of place, you know, talking to you like this."

"'Bye, host," she said, making a cute little wave of her hand. Then, to Herald: "I still want you by me, husband. We haven't been married long, and I want to conceive Pleasure. If anything happened to you now—"

"It is
you
they are after," Herald reminded her. "We have to defend the castle, and its main vulnerability is the dam. If the enemy holes the dam, the lake will drop, and they'll be able to cross to the very walls. The mud will slow them, but still—"

"No they won't," she said. "The lake is deeper around the castle, to make a good moat. The water will never sink that low. All the alligators will congregate there, and—"

"Still, it would allow them to bring their siegecraft that much closer. So I'm taking a crossbow to help defend the dam."

"Can't you use your crossbow here in the main keep?"

"If the dam falls, I'll be back here soon enough." But he didn't like to see her doubt, so he brought her close and whispered in her sweet ear: "The crossbow is only part of the uniform. I'm running Kirlian check on the defenders just to be sure none of them turn out to be Transferees who will sabotage the dam or take a potshot at your father. I'm not there to fight, and the ferry will bring me back." He bit her ear lightly.

She shook her head, whether in negation or reaction he was not sure. "I suppose I knew it would be this way. You're trying to prove something to my father."

Herald smiled. "I suppose I am." He kissed her and left. Actually, he looked forward to this bit of participation; it made him feel genuinely useful in abating a situation that he had in part precipitated.

The enemy rode up the valley toward the dam with martial fanfare and banners flying; a line of knights mounted on their wheeled chargers. Herald recognized the Arms of Crown, Qaval, and Skot, along with others that were new to him. But where were Runabout, Number, and Dollar? Had they balked at this campaign, or were they elsewhere?

Where else, except up on the ridge, ready to start their avalanche? Properly executed, that slide could fill in a sizable section of the lake, making a good start on the ramp required to achieve the castle. Especially when destruction of the dam lowered the water level.

If treachery were to manifest, now would be the time. Herald took his eyes off the approaching banners and moved rapidly along the battlement of the dam, passing close enough to the standing crossbowmen to feel their auras without actual physical contact. The archers had not been told what he was doing, of course. In fact, he carried a bow himself, as though to fill in where needed.

All their auras were authentic. There were no Transfer traitors—not here, at least. Maybe he had been unduly suspicious.

The Duke of Kade was ready. He had landed beside the dam with his picked force, not to defend it per se but to offer ritual combat. It was not an ethic Herald properly understood, but the master of the castle was expected to sally out and offer honest battle on the field of honor.

So now the banners of Kade and Magnet and the other allies were flying. There were about fifty knights on each side, half Kade's force, and surely a much smaller fraction of the enemy's total. This honored the principle of token combat, a tradition throughout the Cluster for millennia, for what that was worth.

There was nothing Herald could do now except watch. The ferry would convey the surviving knights back to the castle, and Herald would go with them. Then the real action would begin, though it might be considerably less dramatic than this sample battlefield engagement.

The two groups of knights charged each other. Lances crashed into shields—oh, the insult to those beautiful Shields of Arms!—and some of the knights were unhorsed. Then it became a melee of flashing swords and maces and battle-axes. These were mainly physical weapons rather than lasers, brutal and bloody for the armor embodied interference layers to disrupt laser weapons. The banners fell, and all was chaos; only the flash of shield and crest made it possible to identify any of the participants.

But soon the recall was sounded, for such action could not be maintained long. Slowly the forces disengaged, while retainers on foot dashed out to reclaim the dead. Slightly smaller groups of knights formed about the restructured banners of their sides. It was over, with not too much damage done.

Over? The charge sounded again, and the battered knights resumed the fray. Herald realized that this had been only the first clash of many, the figurative testing of the water. The break had been agreed on to remove the disabled and the debris, so as to keep the battlefield clear. No sense getting fouled up with the clutter of the dead and dying, after all; that was not neat and noble.

So it went: fierce clash, recall; clash again between smaller forces; recall again. It was a kind of elimination tournament, with luck seeming to be as much of a factor as individual skill. But it was soon apparent that the Duke of Kade's forces were getting the better of it. With each break, the enemy band was smaller, not merely in number but in proportion, until the difference approached two to one. At last the enemy had had enough; their knights were too tired to hack it any more. They sounded retreat, and this time retreated all the way down the valley. Kade of course did not follow; it could only mean an ambush by the numerous fresh knights beyond, and he would not be able to flood them out without drowning himself along with them.

Kade retained some twenty-five knights, while the enemy band was down to fifteen. Among the fallen were the Duke of Qaval and the Scion of Skot. This battle might have been a form of ritual, but the deaths were real. Herald regretted the death of Qaval, who had seemed to have some decency and considerable acumen; in other circumstances, a good entity to know.

The victorious party rode back up to the dam, leading several riderless horses. They rolled up the road to the side, where the barrier-gate opened to let them through. "The fools were out of condition!" Kade cried jubilantly. "They were astonishingly awkward. An excellent omen!"

Qaval, awkward? Herald would hardly have believed that, if he hadn't seen the defunct Shield of Arms. The enemy Duke had impressed him as the very last creature to go into battle unprepared. Had he been torn by conflicting loyalties?

Now the ferry hove to, and the knights rode their chargers aboard. Kade rolled by Herald, signaling him to step up on the outside of the saddle for a lift. "Clear?" he inquired quietly through his visor as Herald obliged.

"Clear," Herald agreed.

Several of the horses were skittish, changing their wheels about, and it required stern guidance to keep them in line. "They should be better disciplined than that," Kade muttered, but his elation over the easy victory mitigated his ire at this detail.

The ferry cast loose. The paddle animals revved up, and the boat nosed across the clear water toward the castle. The honor guard of alligators closed in.

Suddenly there was a commotion. Six knights fell into the water with screams of surprise and dismay. In their heavy armor they could not swim or float; they had to cling to the rail, where they were subject to the wash from the paddles. The alligators were plunging in, dragging them away and down, eager to tackle the problem of extracting the morsels from the metal in their own fashion. The knights on the deck leaned far over in their saddles to grasp the flailing limbs of their companions, and five more fell in.

"Treachery!" Kade cried, lifting his battle ax high. "Show your faces, miscreants, or I shall have the archers on the dam slay you all!" And the Baron in charge of the crossbows was already marshaling them to orient on the ferry, which was well within their range.

Slowly each knight raised his visor. And the first face Herald recognized was the long green snout of the Duke of Qaval. "No treachery, Kade," he said. "Tactics."

"The dead!" Kade exclaimed. "They put their knights in the armor of our dead!"

"Did you really suppose your knights were that much better than ours?" Qaval inquired with a sneer that reached three-quarters of the way around his head. "Had we shown our true skill, you would have opened the sluices on us."

True enough, Herald thought. The enemy had found a cunning way to get past the sluices and the archers of the dam—by appearing to put up a poor fight. What an astonishing feat it had been, to change armor
on the battlefield
without alerting Kade's forces. Probably any knight who caught on had been expeditiously killed, and the bodies of Kade's knights had been stuffed into enemy armor and dragged off during the breaks. Herald himself had watched the whole battle and seen none of this; the operation had been a miracle of ingenuity and precision. And this boded ill indeed for the campaign. The enemy was not inferior, but superior to Kade's forces in proficiency, courage, and strategy. He knew the same thoughts were going through Kade's mind. They were in trouble!

But perhaps this had been the one supreme effort of the enemy, an all-out attempt to infiltrate the castle and open it to the main forces. It had been balked because Kade had caught on too quickly, and invoked the power of his dam archers. Perhaps.

Eight of the knights remaining on the deck were enemy. Only six were loyal, counting Kade himself. The other loyals were in the water, shoved there with their steeds by Qaval's ruthless ploy.

"Now let your archers fire," Qaval continued through another toothy smile. "At this range they will kill all here indiscriminately, you included, for we all bear Kade Shields and armor and they cannot see our faces to know friend from foe." Then his closing visor covered his sardonic expression.

"Get you to horse!" Kade rasped at Herald. Then he snapped his own visor shut and charged Qaval, battle-ax swinging.

It was melee again, this time not viewed from a distance, but right up close. Herald had memorized the identities of the eight enemy knights. It was not a talent that he normally possessed, but the shock of discovery and his familiarity with the Shields of Arms and Crests of the knights' armor enabled him to fix them instantly in his mind.

He leaped into the saddle of the nearest vacant steed, suddenly understanding why the horses had been skittish before. They had borne strange riders! Normally each steed was ridden by a single knight, whatever the occasion, so that sapient and sentient got to know each other. It made for better control and performance. The horses would obey any rider, but they were uncomfortable about strangers.

A spiked mace hung from this saddle. His human hand took up the weapon of its own accord. Maybe his host was helping. The mace was no light laser thing; it was a genuine, solid, bone-crushing instrument. He struck the horse with his feet, urging it forward.