“Encircle!”
The two riders were surprised, but they let themselves be surrounded.
“Now, friends!” cried Breckan, cheery as ever. “Who have we here? Have you come to a ransom, Master Steward?”
“Oh, more than that!” replied Wennle in his strong cracked voice. “A just reward for a foul deed, eh, Captain?”
For the first time, Badger Breckan recognized the captain of the troop as Gael Maddoc, mounted on Ebony, the horse he had set running over the plateau. The merest shade of anxiety crossed the wide map of his face.
“You wouldn’t think of trying any foolish tricks,” he said firmly, looking Gael in the eye. “Not with the two pearls of price in our power. The man and the woman.”
“We’re armed against you,” said Gael, loud and harsh. “Bring us into the Boar’s Lair, Breckan, or by the Goddess, you will lie in earth, like a true badger!”
Breckan did not believe her, but he was a shade unnerved. He gave some order under his breath to the young lad, who began to swing his pony toward the widest gap in the circle, a space between Bress Maddoc and Shim Rhodd. Gael gave her own order:
“Strike and bind!”
The action worked like a charm indeed. Raising the wooden pole of his lance, Bress tapped the boy behind the head so that he fell forward onto his pony’s neck. Together with Shim, he chanted a line, and they clashed their lances rhythmically together over the slumped figure. Horse and rider became absolutely still, bound as if frozen by the simple spell. They had all tried it on each other the previous day, and Gael recalled the cold absence of sensation, the dreamlike fading of the world. When the spell was released, some of the horses had been upset. Now Ebony stamped and snorted along with From’s handsome dapple-grey gelding, as they recognized the spell again.
Badger Breckan did not keep still; he drew his sword, roared out, and tried to turn. Gael advanced; he struck at her boldly with his broadsword and could not come to her because of the magic shield. She slid the point of her lance through the invisible barrier, and brought it up under Breckan’s chin.
“Rein in, Badger,” she said. “Or my hand will not be steady!”
Already, with the grip of his mighty knees, he had brought the charger to a standstill.
“Lead us in to Silverlode,” said Gael. “No foolish tricks!”
He croaked out some words—she let him speak.
“The boy … spare the boy …”
“He will stay here until we lift the spell,” she said. “There is no danger in it unless he remains bound for too long … now bring us in.”
The big man obeyed, wild-eyed. He led them toward the rough gateway, and Gael saw that it was in bad repair—the Wild Boar relied on magic, not on wood or stone. She questioned Breckan quietly as they rode along.
“How many in your liege Huarikson’s troop?”
“Thirty or so, with the servants and helpers,” he said.
He was not surly or unwilling. Gael could not tell if he had simply changed sides once cornered; she could not trust him.
“Where are the O’Quoins, man and wife?” she asked.
Badger Breckan spat convincingly into the grass.
“Oh you can have
them,
Captain!” he said. “I’ll give you the pair of them!”
He turned his head and stared back, between the riders, to where the boy in green remained slumped upon his horse in the cold landscape.
“Those damned half-blood Shee have set up shop in the second lodge to the west of the Roundhouse—has a painted sign for Yorath and the men of Cloudhill who were assigned to the place years past.”
“For the Bloody Banquet!” said Gael.
They had been using the common speech, but now she spoke in Chyrian, and sure enough Breckan did not understand until she quickly translated. She said to Bress and Shim Rhodd:
“First, when we’re in, you two must place a triple binding around the stone hut marked for Yorath and the men of Cloudhill. You know where it stands?”
“Aye, Captain!” they chorused grimly.
Before they came too close to the gates, Gael said to Badger Breckan:
“Get down and leave your horse out here to graze.”
He was unwilling, and she moved her lance, saying:
“What, are you afraid it will bolt over the high ground?”
When the big man had dismounted, Bress led away the big,
docile charger to a green place. Breckan gave a brief hail, and the broken gates were opened. They rode slowly into Silverlode. The place was rather tidier than Gael had expected; the brushwood and weeds had been kept down. It had the same aura of emptiness and loss. The lofty stone Roundhouse, the Commissariat roundhouse, and the scattering of smaller buildings all cast long black shadows. Women were drawing water at a new well; there were five, six, armed guards lounging on the framework that did duty for a battlement on the south eastern wall.
Gael and her troop of Witch-Hounds rode steadily into the middle of the yard, to a water trough with a hitching rail, directly before the Roundhouse steps. One of the massive doors of the Roundhouse was open, and a man in a dark brown tunic, fancily cut, ran out on to the steps. He darted his hands, fingers extended, at the troop; then came a fearful crackling sound as his magic bounced off their shields. Gwil Cluny shouted “O’Quoin!” at the same moment as Gael raised high her lance and pronounced the Grand Bewitchment, the Stillstand, the stone hour.
She saw it work, serially, from west to east, clamping down on a party of men carrying harness, then on the women at the well, then the men on the scaffolding: one was caught off balance and fell to the ground. Only the witch, O’Quoin, was not held rigid, for he had a personal shield, but he was kept to his place on the steps. And Gael believed that he looked toward the hut for the men of Cloudhill.
“Dismount!” she ordered Bress and Shim. “Encircle that hut yonder! Triple strength. He cannot stop you.”
“Master Cluny,” she said. “Speak to O’Quoin, as we planned.”
Gwil Cluny got down and tethered his pony. Before he could walk to the steps, men came crowding out of two of the smaller houses, ten, fifteen, twenty, some wielding swords. As they came into the yard the Bewitchment seized them, the leaders sprawled and others fell over them, and they lay in grotesque stiffened heaps, as if turned to stone. Three women, together with two young boys, came out of the Commissariat roundhouse and stood bewitched like all the rest.
“How is the count, Breckan?” she demanded. “We have at least thirty of the Young Boar’s folk in the yard … how many are still hidden?”
The big man was sweating with fear and impatience.
“How shall I know, Captain?” he panted. “A few … the lord is in his headquarters, in the Roundhouse. That damnable O’Quoin hag is entrapped by your boyos there … .” He pointed to the Cloudhill hut.
“There is only one way you can shorten this exercise, Sergeant,” said Gael Maddoc. “Where are the prisoners?”
Breckan growled and shuffled his boots in the dust.
“Are they in the underground rooms? Can we go in through the kitchens?”
He nodded sullenly.
Gwil Cluny had pressed on to the steps of the Roundhouse and Gael observed that his shield could just be seen, as a faint golden radiance, surrounding his body. He spoke to the witch, O’Quoin, and straightaway, while they parleyed, Gael went on to the next, the most difficult part of the action.
“Well, kedran,” she said, “are you ready? Do you see the way?”
“Aye, Captain,” chorused Bruhl and From.
“Captain Maddoc,” said Wennle, “I pray you—let me go with the ensigns! I must find my lord and lady …”
“Of course,” said Gael, “but have a care of yourself, Master Wennle!”
The two ensigns and the old steward broke off and rode at a slow walk to the Commissariat roundhouse; Shim Rhodd, on his way back from encircling the Yorath hut, followed Gael’s hand signs and went to attend to their horses. Bress came back to her at the horse trough and said in Chyrian:
“Other side of the Yorath hut is something we could use—I mean for the lord and his lady!”
“What’s that?”
“A covered cart—almost a carriage. Not so fine as that one we just saw on the road, but I warrant the Boar himself rides in it with his fancy women. It has two good greys in the shafts, and they are bewitched, poor creatures.”
“We’ll have it then,” said Gael, returning to the common speech. “Can you loose the greys as you were shown, bro?”
“Aye, Captain!” he said, teasing.
“For the Goddess’s sake, don’t make a botch!” she said. “Bring the thing over here—but not between us and the Roundhouse.”
She felt exposed and endangered, despite all her magical protection, standing there with only a few horses and a prisoner. Suddenly there was a burst of movement, the pattern changed. As Bress came from behind the O’Quoins’ house, driving the grey horses harnessed to the covered cart, there was a loud clattering sound from the roof of this simple Roundhouse. It took Gael a moment to realize that it was made by bricks and tiles showering from a hole in the roof.
The air was filled with a loud screaming cry, uncanny, half-human. Something moving very fast, so that it could be seen only as a blur of light, shot straight up into the blue morning sky above Silverlode.
Gael Maddoc reacted with a mad swiftness that she associated with magic itself: she directed her charged lance at the flying object and uttered a different holding spell. She saw in her mind, like a diagram or a battle plan, the domed shape of the holding spell that was presently operating in Silverlode. Luran had pointed out that there was a space above the town where the spell did not work—where a witch, for instance, or its familiar, might fly safely. But now the witch, Catrin O’Quoin, making a bid to escape, was caught and held thirty feet above the ground. She could be clearly seen as a small, dark woman, in a green gown, clutching a dark cloth bundle. She was in an awkward posture, her skirts clinging to her limbs; she was held upright as if she would dance upon the air.
Her husband, Fyn O’Quoin, who had been talking angrily with Gwil Cluny, let out another cry. He ran down from the steps of the Roundhouse, waving his hands, and cried out to Gael Maddoc.
“Captain! Captain! Hold steady!”
“Keep back, Master O’Quoin,” said Gael. “I have a steady hand …”
“Where d’you get these tricks!” he cried. “Hold steady!”
His sharp, dark, Chyrian face was twisted with anxiety; he mistrusted her grasp of magic as well as her hold on the lance.
“You have been told the truth!” said Gael. “We come in the service of the Eilif lords of the Shee, your kinsfolk, and they have granted us these powers!”
She shifted her lance a little, knowing it was a cruel thing to do; the figure of Catrin O’Quoin moved above them, very slightly, in the empty air. Fyn O’Quoin fell on his knees and held out his hands to Gael on her tall horse.
“I implore you!” he said. “For the love of the Goddess, let me lower her to the ground.”
Gael had no stomach for it, but she knew she must use this advantage. She did not look at him but at the woman above them.
“Summon your witch-quoyle to your hand, Master O’Quoin!” she said fiercely. “Abort its power and give it to Gwil Cluny, our scout. Not until then will I lower your wife to the ground!”
O’Quoin came wearily up off his knees, his eyes fixed upon the figure of Catrin, his wife. He cursed under his breath, rubbed his hands together, and made a stylish gesture that Gael recognized as that of a person truly adept in magic. He raised his left arm above his head and moved the fingers, uttering a few soft words in old Chyrian.
The dark cloth bundle that Catrin O’Quoin was clutching came away from her arms with a shower of golden sparks that hung in the air like falling stars. It dipped down, floating, to Fyn O’Quoin’s hand; he held it at arm’s length and said loudly in Chyrian:
“Sleep now, little heart, true helper!”
The bundle, as long as his own forearm, moved once, then was still. He flung back the cloth wrapping and revealed a piece of curved metal, like a digging tool, a length of rope dyed a brilliant red, intricately twisted around the handle. Gwil Cluny took it in his hands and said:
“It is safe, Captain!”
“Captain, have mercy—let her down!” cried O’Quoin again.
Badger Breckan swore under his breath and murmured to Gael:
“Don’t trust them! Don’t let them come together!”
Gael Maddoc rode out a little on the restless Ebony, holding her lance very steady, trained upon the witch in the air.
“Master O’Quoin,” she said. “Your time in Silverlode is over. Fly up to your wife, take her in your arms, and bring her away yonder, to the northwest: go down from the high ground by Hackestell Fortress. Remember I can strike at you while you’re within the range of my magic lance …”
“Thanks!” panted Fyn O’Quoin. “Thanks, Captain. We are in your debt.”