The Pixilated Peeress (23 page)

             
"How about the murder? You know I'd never have harmed
dear old Bardi."

             
"Lodar tells me they have taken in another suspect. The details I know not yet. As for desertion. I told Gunthram ye were on a secret mission for me."

             
Thorolf squatted, as living with trolls had accus
tomed him to do. "Where is Yvette
now?"

             
The Consul shrugged. "As far as I know, your lady love is mewed up in the castle. None hath seen her since your departure. Now tell me the tale of your in
volvement with that lady. I have never had it straight
—
merely a hundred rumors, each contra
dicting the last."

             
"Very well, Father. See you this place?
'
Tis where she and I first met
...
"

             
Thorolf went through the story of his encounter with the unclad Countess, Bardi's magical blunder, and her subsequent capture by Psychomagus Orlandus.

             
"He
has cast upon many followers," said Thorolf, "a spell that causes them to be possessed by a spirit, which enables him to command their implicit obedi
ence. If he bade them jump off a cliff, they would do it."

             
"Terrible!" muttered Zigram. "I wish someone
would magic this accursed cult out of existence! As things now stand, I can do nought, for reasons ye know."

             
"If I rooted out this nest of vipers, wouldst give me all the protection your position commands?"

             
"Assuredly so! But ye must needs do a thoroug
h job. If ye let Orlandus and a few of's creatures escape, they'd be back to plague us more. How would ye gain access to his lair, defended by stout fortifications, fanatical fol
lowers, and magical spells?"

             
"Methinks I have a way." said Thorolf.

             
"How? Through those mythical trollish tunnels?"

             
Thorolf winced, feeling the testicular cringe that the thought of entering a tunnel gave him. "I'll tell you nought that they could twist out of you. Speaking of my friends the trolls, knowst Orlandus' plan
s for them?"

             
"Aye. And I am he who tried to raise them to human rank! But the cultists have me in a cleft stick
—
—
"

             
A loud sneeze made both speakers start. Each looked at the other, saying, "Health!" before they realized that neither had in fact sneezed.

             
Thorolf sprang up and raked the landscape with a glance. Then he started away from the stream, saying: "Father, come see!"

             
Thorolf was watching, at his own eye-level, a pair of detached eyeballs hanging in midair. He could see the little red blood ve
ssels forming a network around the interior of the eyeballs. As he watched, the eyeballs swiveled away and began to move off.

             
"Ho! Come back!" shouted Thorolf, reaching for his sword.

             
When the eyeballs continued to retreat, Thorolf bounded after them a
nd swung his blade in a whistling arc. The sword met meat, and its unseen target pulled it down to the ground. Blood sprayed from an invisible
source.

             
As Thorolf wrenched his blade loose, a faint, trans
parent human form, like a man-shaped fog, came slow
ly into sight. As it solidified, it became a man of medium stature and build, nude and clean-shaven, with a deadly wound where Thorolf's sword had cloven it between neck and shoulder, shearing down into lungs. The wound still bled, but the body showed no
s
igns of life.

             
"Good gods!" Zigram exclaimed. "What's this, son? Hath some wizard made himself invisible to spy upon us?"

             
"I have a suspicion, Father. Bide you here whilst I seek evidence."

             
Thorolf soon returned bearing a pair of boots, breeches, and
a yellow robe. He said: "Methought the knave would have hidden his garments nearby. Had he been invisible but his raiment not, we were as startled by an empty suit of clothes walking about as by the whole man. He was one of Orlandus' diaphanes, as the vil
l
ain calls his pixilated victims."

             
The Consul said: "Doubtless he sent the fellow to follow me from the city. But why did the Psychomage not make the rascal's eyeballs invisibl
e along with the rest of him? They enabled you to perceive and slay the fellow."

             
"My professor at Genuvia explained it. Sight comes from the mutual action of light rays and the eye. Were the eyeballs as transparent as the rest of him, the light would pas
s through unhindered, and the rogue were blind until the spell wore off." Thorolf held up the garments he had found. "Here's your evidence for legal action against the Sophonomists."

             
Zigram frowned. "I know not, son. If I bring action, Orlandus will clai
m this fellow acted on his own; and since the rascal's dead, that were hard to disprove. Be
sides, Orlandus hath the shrewdest attorney in Zursh
nitt, Doctor Adolfo, in his pay. Moreover, ye know what they'd do to my repute
—
"

             
"Oh, you mean that damned el
ection!" snorted Tho
rolf. "Where's your courage, man? Which
—
"

             
"Stand!" came a new command. From downstream a group of men marched forward, swords in hand. They wore merchants' dress of plain browns and blacks, but bits of mail gleamed dully underneath.

             
"Who are ye?" barked the Consul, drawing his own blade. Beside him, Thorolf whispered:

             
"Try not to provoke a battle, Father. You're too old for swordplay."

             
"And who impugned my courage just now?" rum
bled Zigram. "I shall do what I must." Raising his
voice, he called: "Wilchar! Odo! To me!"

             
The Consul's bodyguards came crashing through the bushes, armed, armored, and nocking arrows to bows. Zigram turned back to the newcomers. "Know that I am the Consul General of the Commonwealth of Rhaetia. Who ar
e ye and what do ye here?"

             
"Let your
Excellency not trouble himself,"
said the leader in the vernacular of Carinthia. "We seek two persons, to wit: Countess Yvette of Grintz and a knave who slew three of our comrades. That hulking man be
side you fits th
e description. Who are ye, sirrah?"

             
"Concern yourselves not with that," said Thorolf. "You are Duke Gondomar's men. using our sovereign Commonwealth as your private hunting preserve."

             
"None of your affair
—
" began the leader, but Tho
rolf interrupted:

             
"As for the Countess, she's where neither you nor I have access to her."

             
"Meaning she's dead?" cried the Carinthian.

             
"She might as well be, being in thrall to a magician. Now get back to your Duke and cease to pester us." Thorolf turned to the body
guards. "If it come to blows, how many can you kill ere they close with us?"

             
"At this range," said Odo, "two surely and four probably. They are seven, and methinks we four could account for the rest."

             
"So find your horses and gallop for the border," sa
id Thorolf, "counting yourselves lucky to get out un
scathed
—
"

             
"Hold!" said a new and toneless voice. A group of yellow-robed men approached from upstream with bared swords. The leader, who had spoken, continued in his flat, unmodulated tone: "We see ye
have slain one of our number." He indicated the dead man. "Ye are all our prisoners. Resist not, or it will be the worse for you. Yield, and ye shall not be hurt."

             
Over a dozen yellow robes advanced, spreading out as if to surround both the Consul's men
and the Carinthians.

             
Thorolf said to the Carinthian leader: "These are creatures of the sorcerer Orlandus. If they take us, he'll possess us, like them, with spirits that force us to obey his whims. We must join to fight them!"

             
"Shoot the yellows!" the
Consul roared to his body
guards.

             
Instantly two bows twanged. At that range, the ar
rows struck the chests of two Sophonomists with such force as to sink up to the feathering and protrude from their backs.

             
Although staggered, the two struck recovered
and came on as if nothing had happened. Zigram's body
guards got off two more arrows, with the same result. The Carinthian leader shouted to his men:

             
"They're walking corpses! Kill them!"

             
He sprang forward and struck a terrific backhand at the leading
Sophonomist. The man's head flew off, struck the ground, and rolled. Spouting blood, the headless body continued forward, blindly slashing empty air.

             
"They cannot be slain!" wailed a Carinthian. "All's lost! Flee! Flee!"

             
As one, the party from Landai t
urned and ran, as fast as the weight of their mail allowed. They hastened downstream with a jingle and clatter of accouterments.

             
"Keep shooting!" shouted the Consul. The headless body finally sank to the sward.

             
Bows twanged, then swords were out and c
langing. Thorolf's party formed a back-to-back group as the Sophonomists silently closed with them. Thorolf found them slow, clumsy fighters. He thrust one through and then, finding the fellow still in action, hewed his arm from his shoulder.

             
The man who
se arm Thorolf had severed stopped to recover his sword with his remaining arm. Thorolf split his skull, whereupon the cultist slumped at last while two others pushed forward and tried to step over the body to get at Thorolf. While swinging swords with on
e
hand, each of them reached out with the other to clutch at Thorolf. He hewed off both clutching hands, one at the wrist and the other at the elbow. Thereupon the two attackers dropped their swords and thrust their remain
ing hands toward Thorolf.

             
"They'
re trying to take us alive!" Thorolf cried, hacking two-handed at his maimed antagonists with chopping woodcutter's strokes. No matter how fiercely he and his allies fought, he thought, they were doomed by weight of numbers. As he thrust another through,
t
he attacker seized the sergeant's sword with his free hand, ignoring the deep wound the blade made in his hand. Another aimed a blow at Thorolf's head, splitting his hat but not his scalp.

             
Another sound broke upon Thorolf's ears. From no
where a horde of
yellow trolls erupted and charged, waving iron-headed spears, axes, and clubs. Yelling, they rushed upon the Sophonomists from behind. Of some they spattered the brains with mighty blows; oth
ers they hewed asunder or picked up and threw into the Rissel.