Night Winds (27 page)

From somewhere in the cellars beneath them, a dog began to bark frantically. Laddos and Kane exchanged glances.

"A rat," explained Hranal, as the two men started to their feet. "He likes to chase them."

The dog yelped in pain, howled in sudden fear. The sound rolled eerily through the ruined halls beyond "Big rat," observed Kane, wiping grease from his hands. He headed for the cellar.

"I'll just come with you," Laddos decided.

"Thought Jeresen said to watch the old man."

The Waldann's broken nose jutted truculently. "Hell, they ain't going nowhere. I want to see what scared that dog."

The cellar beneath the kitchen was clean and well kept. Shelves of wine bottles and foodstuffs were neatly ordered along the walls. One end was curtained off, and behind was a small bed and plain furnishings, a broken mirror and a few items of woman's clothing laid over an old trunk. Sesi's quarters, guessed Kane. The others slept upstairs.

A heavy door opened into the cellars beneath the main house. The door was ajar.

"This been open?" asked Kane.

"How should I know?" Laddos shrugged, edging the lantern into the room.

The floor of the gutted halls overhead had been broken through by falling stones. Sections had caved in under the weight of rubble. A few stars could be seen through the jagged apertures. Dust and decay and broken walls. The ruin was complete.

"There'll be another cellar beneath the far wing," Kane surmised. "Probably at least one subcellar beneath this one. Over there, steps go down."

"Where?" Laddos raised the lantern, stepping cautiously around the shadowy piles of debris. "Gods, if there's a weak place in the floor here..."

Kane crossed to the steps that led below. "Something's disturbed the dust here."

"Jeresen searched the place pretty thorough when we got here. I don't hear that dog no more." Laddos kept glancing over his shoulder.

"Paw prints in the dust, too. Something else I can't figure--too blurred and blotchy." Kane started for the stairs.

"Let's forget it. The dog had a rat."

"Give me the lantern if you're going back."

Laddos swore and followed him down the narrow steps.

Something growled from below.

"Watch it!" Kane's blade wavered.

Laddos hurried with the light. Twin circles of fire glared at them. The dog was backed into a comer at the foot of the stairs. Hackles raised, fangs bared, tail between his legs in paralyzed terror. He didn't seem to see them until they reached the base of the steps--then be bolted between them and dashed madly off into the ruins above.

The two nervously surveyed the subcellar. Its ceiling had not given way, but the chamber was cluttered with mouldering debris of uncertain nature. In the lamplight Kane saw a skeleton still sprawled across a rotting pallet, both legs clipped off at mid-femur. A torture chamber or hospital; the distinction seemed meaningless, as he glanced over the cobweb-shrouded tables and implements, noted the dry bones asleep under blankets of dust. A gas bomb Kane guessed. It would have lingered for days in this low place'

"What's that?" Laddos hissed.

Something scurried crab-like away from the circle of lamplight. Kane had the impression of a misshapen spider the size of a hound. He started for it, but the creature scrambled agilely beneath a mound of overturned furnishings and vanished before he could get a good look at it. Something squat and shaggy, with a gait impossible to describe.

"There's a burrow here!" Pointed Laddos.

Kane nodded. He had seen one like it in the trench where Sesi had escaped. A cramped burrow through which an agile youth might wriggle, piercing the wall of the subcellar.

"Did Masale have trenchworks connected to the manor?" Laddos demanded.

"I don't know."

"Then what...?"

"I don't know."

A broken-legged chair toppled over with a crash from a mound of rubble close to the burrow. Laddos whirled with a curse--then dropped his sword and thrust his arm beneath an overturned table.

"Got you--you goddam bitch!" The mercenary yanked the snarling girl out from where she crouched, his arm gashed where her dagger had struck. He flung her sprawling onto the stones and kicked the blade from her hand.

"Hold her, Kane! Jeresen's going to--"

Laddos didn't finish. Kane caught the lantern from his nerveless hand as the mercenary sprawled forward.

Sesi stared without comprehension as Kane wiped the blood from his swordblade.

Slowly she came to her feet--eyes on Kane as she straightened the torn edges of her short gown over her scratched and muddy thighs. "That's three times you've interceded, Kane. Whose hand do you play? Not Grey's; not Jeresen's. Is it Masale's?"

"I play Kane's hand," said Kane. "Does it matter?"

Sesi grimaced. "I suppose not--in the end." "Don't edge any closer to that tunnel, or I'll pin foot to the floor," warned Kane.

Sesi halted her stealthy retreat. "What now? Do you call Jeresen?" Her voice was cool for the terror that shone in her eyes.

"Should I?"

Sesi glanced at Laddos's body. "So Kane means to share Lynortis's treasure with no one. What difference will it make to me?"

"You'll find me kinder than Jeresen. If this treasure exists, it's useless knowledge unless you have someone who can arrange to get both you and the gold out of this devil-haunted graveyard."

"Is that why you think I haven't made use of my secret before now?"

"There's some reason why you haven't. Could be you needed time to think it out. The gold is useless to you here, but to get it out you'd need someone you could trust."

"Meaning you." Her voice was sarcastic.

"That's right."

"Suppose I told you I didn't know of any secret treasure?"

Kane shrugged. "It might be. But the story the old folks tell of your mother's coming here corroborates Jeresen's account. Was Reallis your mother?"

"She was--but that doesn't prove she told me of any hidden treasure."

"You'll never prove that to Jeresen."

Her shoulders sagged. "I know. Or to anyone."

She stood a moment slumped in despair, her lips pressed tight. Kane wondered that she had no tears. Then her hands caught the hem of her shift. With a quick movement she pulled the gown over her head and tossed it to the floor.

Her tousled brunette mane and her defiance were all that clothed her. Her flesh was a warm tan, her breasts high and proud. The dirt that smeared her lithe limbs and piquant face was a contrast to the clean lines of her hips and torso.

"This is all I have to give you, Kane. Whether you believe that or not, you're the only hope I have. Get me out of this, and I'll give to you the only thing I can offer."

Not original, and nothing he couldn't take by force, but Kane liked the set of her jaw as much as he approved the rest.

"All right," he said. "We'll take this up again later. Right now there's Jeresen to think about. How'd you get back here?"

Sesi slithered into her ragged shift. "I grew up here; I know the battlefield well. When I led Jeresen to the trenches I thought it would either be a chance to escape or a quick death. When you cut my halter, I dove into the tunnel at the end of the trench. When you have to, you can wriggle pretty fast, even with your hands tied. I came out in the brush farther down, slipped away in the darkness and crept back here through the ruined wing. I thought Jeresen wouldn't think to search here again."

"Your hands were tied? What killed Bonaec?"

Sesi started. "Was that the scream? It must have been one of the half-men. There was one in here just before you came down. I was afraid to move or cry out, with Jeresen's men upstairs. I don't think they'd hurt me, but they terrify me."

"Half-men?" Kane remembered the misshapen crab-like skulker.

"They live in the ruins of Lynortis--the other survivors of the battle. They don't like to be seen."

It was time to get away, Kane decided. Jeresen might swing back to the manor at any minute, and it would not be good for them to be here.

"We'll slip out the way you came in," Kane told her. "Let Jeresen puzzle it out. If we can hide in Lynortis, Masale and Jeresen can fight it out while we make our break."

Sesi nodded. "This way, then." Kane followed her back up the stairs and into the night outside.

Behind them in the darkness there were scurrying, scraping sounds from the burrow.

"How much of what Jeresen said was true?" Kane asked. They were close to the summit, and Kane judged it safe to rest for a moment. In the darkness it had been easy to steal across the battleground, although twice the search had come close. Once on the spiral road, the danger increased. Horses had passed this way, and if they encountered Jeresen's men here... On one side rose the sandstone cliff, on the other there was only emptiness. Nowhere to hide--it would have to be stand and fight.

"True? You're asking me?" Sesi was fighting for breath. She leaned against the low wall of the road's outer edge, watching the shifting torchlight far below. Jeresen had spread his men out as best he could. In places huge bonfires served as beacons to guide their search. It was a desperate search, even for that many men--but Jeresen had no choice.

Kane moved beside her, studying the lights below. They had crept through the tangled wreckage of the battlefield not daring to show the lantern. Sesi wondered time and again as Kane uncannily avoided unseen obstacles and pitfalls that even with her familiarity with the field she would have blundered into. When she realized her companion could see in the dark, she almost turned and fled. But Kane, enigmatic and menacing, was her one uncertain hope.

Kane was speaking. "I mean about someone overhearing your mother tell you about the treasure and going to Masale with that knowledge."

Sesi tried to see his face in the darkness. "That would have been Amenit. Drifters pass through from time to time--drifters like yourself, if that much is true about you. If you don't mind stealing from the dead--and Amenit didn't--there are many dead here. Mother never was very strong; she died a month ago. Before she died we talked of things. Several nights later, Amenit was drunk. He crept in and tried to force himself upon me. Orsis beat him rather badly, and the next morning Amenit was gone. Poor Orsis--he was a protector for us both. Jeresen had to kill him."

"And you say Reallis never spoke to you of treasure?"

"Not a word. You have to believe me, Kane!"

Kane shrugged. "Something doesn't add up, I'll grant you. But we need to reach Lynortis. Got your wind back?"

The once imposing gates of Lynortis had been torn from their hinges and the bronze doors thrown from the summit, after the city had fallen from within. The citadel's dark streets were blocked with rabble. The skyline was one of foreshortened horizons, broken towers, gutted buildings, and fire-blackened walls.

Kane paused at the empty gateway, peering across the open plaza beyond. Sesi pressed close against his massive body. "Almost no one ever comes up here," she whispered. "And never at night. Only the half-men."

"I thought I saw something move over across there," Kane murmured, straining to see. Sesi could discern nothing but thick shadow.

"The half-men are other survivors?" he asked. "How many are there?"

"I don't know. There aren't many of them left. I've seen some of them creeping about the battlefield at night. They never tried to hurt me, but I never waited to find out."

Kane frowned uneasily. "I don't like this--but we've got to reach cover. Let's try it." He started across the open plaza for the shadowy streets beyond.

"Here she is!" bawled someone from the darkness. A blurred figure stirred from the wreckage of a petrary. "Kane's got her! Here!"

Kane snarled and threw his knife at the onrushing Waldann. The man cried out and pitched backward from the force of his throw. Kane retrieved the heavy dagger from the mercenary's chest as he dashed past. But the damage had been done.

Hooves and boots stamped across the plaza at the shout--indistinct shapes rushing toward them. A torch flared to life, another. Jeresen had posted men to guard the entrance to Lynortis. The Waldanns closed in on the fugitives like wolves for the kill--how many, Kane couldn't tell. It was enough.

Kane cursed his luck and broke into a run. If he could cut through the first to reach them, he and the girl stood a chance of losing the others in the chaotic ruins of the city.

Halfway to the safety of the rubble-strewn streets, Sesi cried out and fell headlong across the stones. Kane spun about to help her. She writhed in pain, clutching her leg.

"Kane! My knee! It's broken!"

Kane hauled the girl to her feet. Sesi gasped as her injured leg buckled. He'd have to carry her. And they wouldn't make it.

"Kane! Go on!" Sesi hissed, trying to crawl for the shelter she'd never reach.

But now it was too late for Kane to get clear. The first horsemen were upon them, hooves striking sparks as they drew rein.

They weren't certain about Kane in the initial surprise. Kane's knife caught one rider in the throat, spilling him from the saddle. His horse broke away as Kane lunged for its reins. The other mercenary reacted instantly, taking Kane's swordstroke across his buckler. He yelled out a warning and slashed down at Kane's face. Kane parried, at disadvantage against a mounted foe. The horseman did not press his attack--waiting for the others to close in.

It was hopeless, and Kane knew it. In seconds they would ring him with steel. In the open he had no chance against mounted veterans; if he broke for cover they would ride him down. It would be good sport for them, but a game quickly finished. Sesi was tugging Kane's knife from the fallen mercenary, whether for defense or a quick death, Kane had no time to speculate. The circle had closed.

Angry faces snarled down at him as the horsemen pressed in. Kane parried one blow, hamstrung the horse as it bolted past. Its rider died as he fell. That made the others more cautious. Their prey was certain, but the first to reach him would die. For a heartbeat they milled about, each waiting for someone else to rush in.