A Mankind Witch (25 page)

"There is a human who is interfering with my magical working," said Cair, with irritation, to the guards. "Here, on this node." He pointed at the map.

"We kill him," one of the kobolds said cheerfully. "Show us."

Cair was intensely glad that the kobolds hadn't really got a handle on the maps yet, or he might have been the man responsible for Manfred of Brittany's death. He had nothing against killing him. It just wasn't what he had planned right now. "I don't need him killed," he said hastily. "It's the prisoner in the hole."

"Can't move him," said a senior guard. "Dangerous prisoner. Had koboldwerk vest."

Cair had heard of the fine chain mail that went by that name. It was just a name. These kobolds would have trouble in making a single link, let alone an entire vest. But he'd gathered that there were several tribes and varieties of kobold. These, the mine-kobold, seemed to be at the bottom of the kobold civilization scale. "Oh, I don't want him moved! Just mocked. His spirit is too strong. I need him pelted with these symbolic items." He pointed to several knotted scraps of cloth.

"Won't hurt," said a kobold dismissively.

Cair shook his head. "He must not be hurt, but shamed. Inside each
vestumentum
is a piece of clay." Cair unknotted the bundles, showing them. "It is the symbolism, see. The clothed man of baser clay. And then I put the magic curse words on these little scrolls." Cair couldn't yet read more than the basic futharks—but normal script was something the kobolds didn't use at all.

"So you want us to go and throw these at him?" asked the guard commander.

Cair nodded. "Every day. The shaming takes time. I will prepare more magic missiles."

"Can't we just throw rocks?" asked one of the stupider guards, looking at the missiles. The idea of having to carry the bundles obviously didn't appeal.

Cair shook his head vehemently. "No. That would strengthen his resolve."

The guard commander shrugged. "You're the magician. You, you, and you. Go."

"You've got to insult him, too," said Cair. "At least make rude noises."

"Better wait until the miners go off shift then," said the guard commander. "We don't want to start any fights."

One of the little delights of the wet hole that they'd put Manfred into was the seepage. By the time the kobolds arrived to start work it was usually at least knee deep. The depth varied—his last sleep had been better. But sometime during the "night" Manfred had had a choice of waking up or drowning. Then he had to stand and wait. He'd done his best to make a higher platform, but "no ore, no food" applied, too. So he had not managed that much of a platform—like an idiot he'd given them much of the platform his unfortunate predecessor had managed to build up.

So getting to sleep as soon as possible was an essential. He was tired enough to pass out.

Dreamland was disturbed by something hitting him.

"Yah. Surface crawler!" Whizz. Another missile hit him.

He caught the next one. And just as he was about to fling it back—a good fifty feet straight up—at the jeering kobolds, he realized that it was soft cloth. Cloth? Knotted cloth? A parcel of some sort?

Instead he dodged the next one, and shook his fist at the kobold who had just called him scum. He unknotted the cloth. There was a lump of clay and a piece of parchment in it. On it was written one word in Frankish.

Rescue, in a neat, precise hand.

Manfred was not stupid. People, he knew, assumed that because he was large, he was dim-witted. He'd cultivated this. It was quite useful at times, and had saved him work at others. Erik had sent the messages and was doing so under cover. He could play along. He collected the parcels, shaking his fist and yelling back at his tormentors.

After a few more missiles they went away.

Manfred realized, as their light receded, that there was one flaw in his cooperation. In the dark he could not read the messages. And he wanted to, very badly. Carefully he untied the knotted cloth. They appeared, by the feel of it, to contain clay. And a slip of parchment. Well, the hole he was in seemed less deep if Erik was at least trying to get him out of it. And these bits of cloth were an unexpected bonus—untied they proved to be enough make a sort of loincloth.

It was only when he lay down to try and sleep again, that he thought of the clay. He felt around for where he'd dropped it. In the dark it was hard to tell one piece of damp clay from another . . . but one of the pieces was only a thin coating of clay covering a wrapping of some sort. Manfred unwrapped it cautiously. By the smell of it, and by the taste, it was—bread! He bit into it ravenously. And nearly broke his teeth. There was something very hard inside it.

By the feel of it . . . a key.

Manfred felt it again, unbelievingly. And then the humor of it struck him. It might undo the manacles, but it couldn't get him out of this hole. Well, it was a start. And he'd bet that it was the first time that any prisoner in this hole had done any laughing.

He finished the piece of bread, eating it slowly, savoring each crumb before he even tried out the key.

It fitted and worked. Liberty was sweet even if you couldn't go anywhere with it.

Eventually he decided that he might as well rest while he could, although his stomach desperately wished that Erik had sent more bread. And a bigger piece of cloth for a blanket. And a bottle of brandy. And a cuddlesome lass. Francesca wouldn't like this spot much, but surely his Icelander could have found a pretty troll or something?

Sleep was a while in coming, but when it did, Manfred slept peacefully and deeply. Water licking at his heels woke him. And a hint of light. The seep had obviously been slower that night. It had only just woken him in time to relock his manacles. As a second thought he pulled off his new loin cloth and stashed that and the key behind a lump of clay against the wall. Somehow he'd find a chance to read the messages on the scraps of parchment and see just what Erik was up to.

But the parchments all said the same thing . . . and advised him to do just what he had done anyway. Play along. The work seemed less hard but more tedious that day.

And this time he wasn't asleep when the taunting and missile-throwing began.

The single light the missile flingers brought with them was pretty dim, but Manfred was encouraged by the words Escape, 2. Behave until then. And this time there were two pieces of bread—even if there was no rope and grapple. Only Erik would tell a man stuck in a pit to behave! Still, he had been considering yanking their bucket ropes down—which he'd been sure would stop the gruel if not bring rocks or arrows down on his head.

It was better than just giving up. But a chance of getting out was better still.

Out on the Telemark mountainside it had been snowing intermittently for the last two days and, looking at the depth of the snow accumulating, Juzef Szpak knew that they simply could not stay here. The knight-proctor had to admit that, as little as he liked Vortenbras, the Norse kinglet had been more than cooperative. Dogs had been brought up, the snow dug over. A cart and then a litter had even brought the nuns up. Sister Mary had tried her wand-divining—with odd results. "It is only effective in a limited range, Ritter," she apologized. "But it does suggest that he isn't in this valley."

The best that the magic workers had been able to establish was that both Manfred and Erik were alive. Alive and chained, somewhere dark.

They could, by moving Sister Mary around, establish where he was. But the locals predicted that days of blizzard conditions were coming.

Szpak knew he had little choice but to retreat back to Kingshall.

Signy had felt her muscles turn to jelly and herself frozen, trapped like a fly in amber, as the Christian witch's divining wand had streaked toward her, and then it suddenly appeared to hit something and fall at her feet. It felt as if the cursed thing was drinking her! She was so exhausted she could barely stand, let alone face this!

The feasting hall blurred as she felt herself swaying. She fell, just as the bear pelts somehow became bears.

When she woke again, she was flying. Or that was what appeared to be happening. Actually she realized that a bear had her by each limb and they were carrying her facedown as they raced through the forest. Tree branches and dead brambles scratched at her. She might as well have struggled to free herself from quicksand—her limbs had no strength.

They raced through forest and meadows, swapping carriers, running on. When they came to the river, Signy thought that they'd have to slow down . . . but instead the bear-creature's leader gestured at the ice-rimmed water and began chanting in a guttural growling voice.

Ice grew as she watched. Splintery spars of it blurred the transparent water, and then hardened and firmed. Soon, amazingly soon, a creaking ice bridge appeared. The bears, claws shrieking on the new ice, scrambled across and ran on. And on.

She recognized Svartdal, and the narrow pass up to the high fells. She'd even been up there, once, with her father. In summer. Her teeth were chattering by the time the bears arrived at a small
bautarstein
in the high valley. They paused there. The lead bear took a pouch that was hung around his neck, sprinkled powder from it onto the stone, and growled some
galdr
words.

Signy watched incredulously as a huge rock slid aside and a cave mouth gaped into visibility above them. They picked her up again and went into the maw.

And down into the dark.

Occasionally she glimpsed light—ghostly marsh light—and heard shrieking and scampering. The bear-men paid it no mind. They just pressed on. Then, at length they emerged, on the side wall of a cliff-hung gorge. They bounded onto the stones of a huge bridge built of perfectly shaped interlocking stone blocks, each block the size of a bonder's cottage. The bridge shimmered as if in the heat, but it was bitterly cold here. In the glimpse she had over the edge the gorge they crossed seemed bottomless. The other side was a bleak place, full of stones and dry grasses. But they rushed on, on and on, eventually carrying her across the braided sandbanks of a river that must be a full quarter of a mile wide in spate. And to a huge bald knob of a hill. There was no sign of habitation, but they were on a definite broad footpath leading somewhere.

From behind a rock rose something that looked like a pile of rocks and scraps of animal fur. Misshapen rocks. With tufts of what could almost be hair . . . or coarse grass, growing from the rock top.

It
was
hair. She supposed it was, anyway, because now that it had turned to look at them she could see the misshapen rocks were the features of the troll's face. She screamed weakly. Everyone knew trolls existed. She had just never thought to meet one.

It looked at her. "Mistress says that it must be hooded before you take it into the castle." He held out a leather bag that they pulled over her head. They carried her onward. The smelly leather bag might have hidden the sights from her eyes, but the noises told their own story. There were a lot more people—or perhaps trolls—in this place than the barren landscape had suggested it could carry. A lot of noise, anyway.

Then the bag was plucked from her head, and she was bundled into a cage. It was like a vast birdcage, except for one thing. It was made of wood.

The door slammed shut behind her, and she watched as the bears became men, men in bearskins and not a lot else. One of them locked the cage. The others hauled on the rope attached to a hook on the top. Soon her wooden cage, with a wooden slatted floor, hung thirty feet from the floor.

Lying on the wooden slats, bruised, stretched, wrenched, scratched, and dazed, Signy felt as weak as a half-drowned kitten. The wood she lay on seemed to draw what little life she had out of her, so, somehow, she found the energy to sit up. That was . . . better. But even touching the wood with her hands or her skin made her feel ill. She struggled to her feet. The cage swayed. And she had to clutch the bars to stop herself from falling over. As soon as possible she pulled her hands away from the wood.

Just staying on her feet took every resource she had. But after a little while she felt better. Well enough to take stock of where she was, and to begin trying to work out what had happened to her.

Whatever it was, it wasn't a rescue. The room her captors had hung this cage in was vast and dim. The walls were cut stone. And on a raised dais on the far side, set between carved pillars, was a large throne.The only light in the place came from lamps—stone bowls with wicks set in them—that burned in wall sconces. Still, Signy had never had any trouble seeing fine detail at a distance. It just blurred out when close at hand. The pillars were carved, appropriately enough, with bears. Snarling bears. The faces were not pleasant.

Signy inspected her closer quarters. The wooden slats were wide enough apart to let her put an arm through. She didn't want to touch the bars, though. The only furnishings were a rough wooden pallet. More of this cursed wood? It looked darker. And she was
so
tired. She couldn't stand forever. Perhaps she could curl up like a cat on her boots? Thank goodness she'd been out at the stable and had had no time to change. She stumbled as she stepped across the slats to the pallet, and had to put her hand down on it to save herself. It felt like . . . wood. Harmless. Gratefully she sat down on it, pulling her feet off the slatted cage floor.

It was as if she'd taken a heavy weight off her shoulders. Sighing with relief, she lay down on the narrow pallet and let exhaustion take her into sleep.

Bears and her stepmother chased her through narrow tunnels in her dreams.

She woke up with the cage swaying and being slowly lowered. A team of various-shaped thralls—certainly not all human—controlled the rope. And the throne was now occupied.

The occupant was large, square, and possibly female. The dress would suggest it. The wizened face was curled into a scowl of distaste. Hair, gray and lank, hung down in greasy locks.