"It is natural?" Simon persisted, sure somehow that it was not. Though why he was so certain of that he could not explain.

"When a potter creates a vase he lays clay upon the wheel and molds it with the skill of his hands to match the plan which is in his brain. Clay is a product of the earth, but that which changes its shape is the product of intelligence and training. It is in my mind that someone-or something-has gathered up that which is a part of the sea, of the air, and has molded it into another shape to serve a purpose."

"And what do you in return, lady?" Koris had come out behind them. He strode straight to the parapet and slapped his hands down upon the water-pearled stone. "We are like to be blind men in this!"

She did not look away from the fog, watching it with the intentness of a laboratory a.s.sistant engaged in a crucial experiment.

"Blindness they may seek, but blindness can enfold two ways. If they will play at illusion-then let them be countered with their own trick!"

"Fight fog with fog?" the Captain commanded.

"You do not fight one trick with the same. They are calling upon air and water. Therefore we must use water and air in return, but in another fashion." She tapped her thumbnail against her teeth. "Yes, that might be a confusing move," she murmured as she swung around. "We must get down to the harbor level. Ask of Magnis a supply of wood, dry chips will be excellent. But, if he has them not, get knives that we may cut them. Also some cloth. And bring it to the center quay."

The choked clamor of the gongs echoed hollowly across the heart of the harbor as the small knot of Sulcarmen and Guards came out on the quay. An armload of board lengths appeared and the witch took the smallest. Her hands plied the knife clumsily as she strove to whittle out the rude outline of a boat, pointed at bow, rounded at stem. Simon took it from her, peeling off the white strips easily, the others following his example as the woman approved.

They had a fleet of ten, of twenty, of thirty chip boats, palm-size, each fitted with a stick mast and a cloth sail the witch tied into place. She went down on her knees before that line, and, stooping very low, blew carefully into each of the tiny sails, pressed her finger for a moment on the prow of each of the whittled chips.

"Wind and water, wind and water," she singsonged. "Wind to hasten, water to bear, sea to carry, fog to ensnare!"

Swiftly her hands moved, tossing one and another of the crude representations of a sea fleet out into the water of the harbor. The fog was almost upon them, but it was still not too thick for Simon to miss an amazing sight. The tiny boats had formed into a wedge-shaped line pointing straight for the now hidden sea. And, as the first dipped across the line of the fog curtain it was no hastily chipped toy, but a swift, gleaming ship, finer than the slim raiders...o...b..ric had displayed with pride.

The witch caught at Simon's dangling wrist to draw herself to her feet again. "Do not believe all that you see, outworld man. We deal in illusion, we of the Power. But let us hope that this illusion will be as effective as their fog, frightening off any invaders."

"They can't be real ships!" Stubbornly he protested the evidence of his eyes.

"We depend too strongly upon our outer senses. If one can befool the eyes, the fingers, the nose-then the magic is concrete for a s.p.a.ce. Tell me, Simon, should you be planning to enter this harbor for attack and then saw out of the fog about your ships a fleet you had not suspected was there, would you not think twice of offering battle? I have only tried to buy us time, for illusion breaks when it is put to any real test. A Kolder ship which would try to lock sides and board one of that fleet could prove it to be what it is. But sometimes time bought is a precious thing."

She was in a measure right. At least, if the enemy had planned to use the blanket of mist to cover an attack on the harbor, they did not follow through. There was no invasion alarm that night, neither was there any lifting of the thick cover over the city as the hour of dawn pa.s.sed.

The masters of the three ships in the harbor waited upon Osberic for orders, and he could give none, save to wait out the life of the fog. Simon made the rounds of the Guards in Koris' wake, and sometimes it was necessary for one man to link fingers in the other's belt lest they lose touch, upon the outer stations of the sea wall. Orders were given that the gongs continue to beat at regular intervals, not now for the protection of those at sea, but merely that one sentry post keep in touch with the next. And men turned strained, drawn faces, half drew weapons as their reliefs came upon them, until one shouted the pa.s.sword or some identification ahead lest he be spitted upon the steel of a jumpy outpost.

"At this rate," Tregarth commented as he side-stepped one rush from a Sulcarman they came upon suddenly, and so saved himself from a crippling blow, if not worse, "they will not need to send any attack force, for we shall be flying out upon each other. Let a man seem to wear a beaked helm in this murk and he will speedily be short a head."

"So I have thought," the Captain answered shortly. "They play with illusion, too, born of our nerves and fears. But what answer can we give except what we had already done?"

"Anyone with good ears could pick up our pa.s.swords." Simon determined to face the worst. "A whole section of wall could fall to their control, post by post."

"Can we even be sure that this is an attack?" counter-questioned the other bitterly. "Outworlder, if you can give better orders here, then do so and I shall accept them gladly! I am a man of war, and the ways of war I know-or thought I knew-well. Also I believed that I knew the ways of wizards, since I serve Estcarp with a whole heart. But this is something I have never met before; I can only do my best."

"And never have I seen this manner of fighting either," Simon admitted readily. "It would baffle anyone. But this I think now-they will not come by sea."

"Because that is the way we look to have them creep upon us?" Koris caught him up quickly. "I do not think that the keep can be a.s.saulted from land. These sea rovers have built shrewdly. It would need siege machinery such as would take weeks to a.s.semble."

"Sea and land-which leaves?"

"Earth and air," Koris replied."Earth! Those under pa.s.sages!"

"But we cannot spread men too thinly to watch all the underground ways."

Koris' sea-green eyes glowed with the same feral battle light Simon had seen in them at their first meeting.

"There is a watch which can be put upon them, needing no men. A trick I know. Let us get to Magnis." He began to run, the point of his sheathed sword clinking now and again against the stone walls as he rounded the turns in the keep corridors.

Basins were lined up on a table, of all sizes and several shapes, but they were uniformly of copper and the b.a.l.l.s Koris was carefully apportioning, one to a bowl, were also of metal. One of the bowl and ball combination, installed in the portion of wall overhanging an underground way, would betray any attempt to force the door far below by the oscillation of ball within basin.

Earth was safeguarded as best they could. Which left-the air. Was it because he was familiar with air warfare that Simon found himself listening, watching, at the cost of a crick in the neck, the murk encasing the towers of the port? Yet a civilization which depended upon the relatively primitive dart guns, the sword, the shield, and a mailed body for offense and defence-no matter what subtle tricks of the mind they called in bolstering aids-could not produce airborne attack as well.

Thanks to Koris' device of the bowls they had a few moments of warning when the Kolder thrust came. But from all five points where the bowls had been placed that alarm arose at nearly the same instant. The halls leading to each doorway had been stuffed during frenzied hours of labor with all the burnable stuff in the warehouses of the port. Mats of sheep wool and cowhair soaked in oil and tar, which the shipwrights used for the calking, were woven in around torn bales of fine fabrics, bags of dried grain and seeds, and oil and wine poured in rivulets to soak into these giant plugs.

When the bowls warned, torches were applied and other portals closed, sealing off from the central core those flame-filled ways.

"Let them run their cold dog noses into that!" Magnis...o...b..ric thumped his war ax exultingly on the table in the central hall of the main keep. For the first time since the fog had imprisoned his domain the Master Trader appeared to lose his air of hara.s.sment. As a seafarer he hated and feared fog, be it born of nature or the meddling of powers. With a chance for direct action, he was all force and drive again.

"Ahhhhhh!" Across the hubbub in the hall that scream cut like a sword slice. Torture of body was not all of it, for only some supreme fear could have torn it from a human throat.

Magnis, his bull's head lowering as if he would charge the enemy, Koris, sword ready, a little crouched so that his dwarfish body gathered strength from the earth, the rest of the men in that chamber were frozen for a long second.

Perhaps because during all this period of waiting he had been half expecting it, Simon identified the source first, and sped for the stair which, three floors higher, gave upon the sentry go of the roof.

He did not reach that level. Screams and cries from above, the clash of metal against metal was warning enough. Slowing his pace, Simon drew his gun. And it was good he was cautious for he was midway to the second level when a body rolled down, missing him by a scant inch. It was a Sulcarman, his throat a ragged wound still pumping blood to spatter wall and stair. Simon looked up into a wild confusion.

Two Guardsmen and three of the seafarers still fought, their backs against the wall on the landing of the next level, keeping at bay invaders who attacked with the single-minded ferocity their kin had displayed at the road ambush. Simon snapped a shot, and then another. But a wave of beaked helms poured unceasingly from above. He could only guess that in some way the enemy had come by air and now held the top floors of the keep.

There was no time to speculate upon their method of getting there-it was enough that they had managed to break through. Two more of the seafarers, one of the Guard were down. The dead and wounded, friends and foe alike were disregarded by the beaked helms. Bodies slipped downstairs-they could not be stopped there. The plug must come below.

Simon leaped for the first landing, kicking open the two doors fronting on it. The furniture favored by Sulcar was heavy stuff. But the smaller pieces could be moved. In that moment Simon summoned up strength he did not know he possessed, jerking and pushing articles out to choke the stairwell.

A beaked head faced him through the upraised legs of a chair used to top his efforts, and a sword point struck for his face. Simon crashed the chair over on that helm. There was a smarting cut on his cheek but the attacker was not a part of the barricade.

"Sul! Sul!"

Simon was elbowed to one side and he saw Magnis' face, as red as its tawny bristle of mustache, loom up as the trader chopped down, smashed up at the first wave of invaders to reach the stair barrier and claw at the stuff which formed it.

Aim, fire, aim again. Throw away an empty dart clip, reload to fire anew. Straddle a Guardsman down moaning, until the man could be dragged back into whatever safety anyone could find in the keep now. Fire-Fire!

Somehow Simon had come back into the hall, then the party of which he was one were on another stairway, selling each flight dearly as they descended. There was a thin smoke here-tendrils of fog? No, for when it wreathed them its acrid bite stung nose and throat setting them coughing. Aim-fire-grab dart packs from the belt of a fallen Guardsman who could no longer use any weapon.

The steps were behind now. Men shouted hoa.r.s.ely, and the smoke was worse. Simon smeared his hand across his watering eyes and pulled at the throat scarf of his helmet. His breath came in shallow gasps.

Blindly he followed after his companions. Doors of five-inch thickness swung after them, were barred and locked. One . . . two . . . three . . . four of such barriers. Then they stumbled into a room facing an installation housed in a casing taller than the giant of a man who leaned against it, dull-eyed. The Guardsmen and the seafarers who had made it rimmed the room, leaving the strange machine to the master of the city.

Magnis...o...b..ric had lost his bear-crested helm, his fur cloak was a tattered string trailing from one shoulder. His ax lay across the top of the casing, and from its blade a red line dripped sluggishly to the stone pavement. The ruddiness of his coloring had faded, leaving his skin with a withered look. His eyes were wide, staring at men and not seeing them-Simon guessed that the man was in a state of shock.

"Gone!" He picked up the ax, slipped its long half back and forth in his rope-calloused hand."From the air like winged demons! No man can fight against demons." Then he laughed softly, warmly, as a man might laugh when he took a willing woman into his arms. "But there is also an answer to demons. Sulcarkeep shall not serve that sp.a.w.n for a nesting place!"

His bull head lowered for the charge once more, swung slowly as he singled out the Estcarp men from among his own followers. "You have fought well, you of the witch blood. But this last is no doom laid upon you. We shall loose the energy which feeds the city powers and blast the port. Get you forth that you may perhaps settle the accounting in a way those air-flying wizards can understand. Be sure we shall take with us such a number of them that they shall have thinned ranks against that day! Go your way, witch men, and leave us of Sulcarkeep to our final reckoning!"

Urged by his eyes and his voice, as if he had caught each of them in a bear's grip and thrust them away from him and his, the remnant of the Guard gathered together. Koris was still with them, his hawk helm lacking a wing. And the witch, her face serene, but her lips moving as she walked quietly across the chamber. Twenty more men and Simon.

As one the Guards drew to attention, their stained swords swinging up in salute to those they left. Magnis grunted.

"Pretty, pretty, witchmen. But this is no time for parade. Get out!"

They filed through a small door he indicated, Koris through last to slam and bar it. At a dead run they took that pa.s.sage. Luckily there were globe lights set in the roof at intervals and the floor was smooth, for the need for haste burned in them.

The sound of sea and surf grew stronger and they came out in a cave where small boats swung at anchor.

"Down!" Simon was pushed aboard with others, and Koris' hand slapped between his shoulders, sending him face down. Men landed on him and about him, pinning him flat to the rocking bottom. There was the slam of another door-or was it a deck shutting over them? Light was gone and with it air. Simon lay quiet, having no idea of what would happen next.

Under him the boat moved, men's bodies rolled, he was kicked, prodded, and he buried his face in the crook of his arm. The craft which held them swung about and his stomach fought against that motion. He had never been too good a sailor. Mainly occupied with his fight against sickness, he was not prepared for a blast which seemed to end the world with one blow of sound and pressure.

They were still rolling in the waves, but when Simon lifted his head he gulped clean air. He wriggled and strove, paying no attention to the grunts and protests of those about him. No more fog was his first dazed thought-and then-it was day! The sky, the sea about them, the coast behind were clear and bright.

But when did the sun rise from the sh.o.r.e, leap up in sky-touching flames from a land base? He had been deafened by the blast, but not blinded. They were heading out to sea, leaving the source of that heat and light behind them.

One . . . two . . . three c.o.c.ksh.e.l.ls of boats he counted. There were no sails, they must be motored in some way. A man sat erect in the stem of theirs, his shoulders identifying him. Koris held that tiller. They were free of the inferno which had been the port of Sulcarkeep, but where did they head?

Fog gone, and the fire on sh.o.r.e giving them light. But the waves which swept them along were not born of any calm sea. Perhaps the shock of that blast with which Magnis had destroyed the keep had been communicated to the ocean. For a wind drove down upon them as if a hand strove to press them beneath the surface, and those on board the featherweight ships began to realize that they had gained perhaps only a few minutes of life rather than full escape.

PART II: VENTURE OF VERLAINE.

AX MARRIAGE.

The sea was dull and gray, the color of an ax blade which would never take on a sheen no matter how much one polished, or a steel mirror misted by moisture one could not rub away. And above it the sky was as flat, until it was hard to distinguish the meeting line between air and water.

Loyse huddled on the ledge beneath the arrow-split window. She dreaded the depths, for this turret, bulging roundly from its parent wall, hung directly over the wicked, surf-collared rocks of the sh.o.r.eline, and she had no head for heights. Yet she was often drawn to this very seat because when one stared straight out into the emptiness, which was seldom troubled save by a diving bird, one could see freedom.

Her hands, long fingered, narrow of palm, pressed flat against the stone on either side of the window as she did lean forward an inch or so, making herself eye what she feared, as she made herself do many things her body, her mind shrank from. To be Fulk's daughter one must grow an inner casing of ice and iron which no blow to the flesh, no taunt to the spirit could crack. And she had been intent upon that fashioning of an interior citadel for more than half the years of her short life.

There had been many women at Verlaine, for Fulk was a man of l.u.s.ty appet.i.te. And Loyse had watched them come and go from her babyhood, cold-eyed and measuring herself. To none had he given wifehood, by none had he sired other offspring-which was Fulk's great dissatisfaction and so far her own gain. For Verlaine was not Fulk's by blood, but by his one and only marriage, with her mother, and only as long as Loyse lived could he continue to hold it and its rich rights of pillage and wreckage, ash.o.r.e and afield. There were kinsmen of her mother's in Karsten who would be quick enough to claim lordship here were she to die.

But, had Fulk sired a son by any of the willing-and unwilling-women he had brought to the huge bed in the lord's chamber, then he could have claimed more than just his own life tenancy for the male heir under the new laws of the Duke. By the old customs mother-right was for inheritance; now one took a father's holding, and only in cases where there was no male heir did the old law prevail.

Loyse cherished her tiny thread of power and safety, held to it as her one hope. Let Fulk be chopped down in one of his border raids, let him be sought out by some vengeful male of a family despoiled, and she and Verlaine would be free together! Ah, then they would see what a woman could do! They would learn that she had not been moping in secret all these years as most of them believed.

She drew back from the ledge, walked across the room. It was chill with the breath of the sea, gloomy with lack of sun. But she was used to cold and dusk, some of both were a fast part of her now.

Beyond the curtained bed she came to stand in front of a mirror. It was no soft lady's looking gla.s.s, but a shield, diamond-shaped, polished through patient hours until it gave back to the room a slightly distorted reflection. And to stand so, facing squarely what it told her, was another part of Loyse's strict self-discipline.

She was small, but that was the only feminine characteristic she shared with the blowsy women who satisfied her father's men, or with the richer fare he kept for his own enjoyment. Her body was as straight and slender as a boy's, with only shadow curves to hint she was not a lad. The hair which lay in braids across her shoulders, and then fell below waist level, was thick enough. But it was lank and of so pale a yellow that except in direct sunlight it was white as a beldame's, while lashes and brows of the same colorless tint made her face seem strangely blank and without intelligence. The skin pulled tightly across the fine bones of her face and chest was smooth and also lacking in any real color. Even the line of her lips was of the palest rose. She was a bleached thing, grown in the dark, but a vitality within her was as strong as the supple blade a wise swordsman chooses over the heavier hacking weapon of the inexperienced.

Suddenly her hands flew together, gripped tightly for an instant. Then she as quickly snapped them apart and to her sides, though under her hanging sleeves they were still balled into fists, nails biting palms. Loyse did not turn to the door, nor give any other outward hint that she had heard that rattling of the latch. She knew just how far she dared go in her subtle defiance of Fulk, and from that limit she never retreated. Sometimes she thought despairingly her father never recognized her rebellion at all.

The door slammed back against the wall. Verlaine's lord always treated any barrier as if he were storming an enemy fortress. And he tramped in now with the tread of a man who has just lifted the city keys from the sword point of a vanquished commander.

If Loyse was the colorless creature of the dark, Fulk was lord of sun and flamboyant light. His good body was beginning to show traces of his rough living, but he was still more than handsome, his red-gold head carried with the arrogance of a prince, his well-cut features only a little blurred. Most ofVerlaine worshipped their lord. He had an openhanded if uneven generosity when he was pleased, and his vices were all ones which his men understood and shared.

Loyse caught his reflection in the mirror, brave, bright, turning her even more into a night taper. But she did not face about.

"Greetings, Lord Fulk." Her voice was toneless.

"Lord Fulk, is it? Is that the way you speak to your father, wench? Come show a little more than ice in your veins for once, girl!"

His hand slid under one of the braids on her shoulder, and he forced her around, gripping with strength which would leave her bruised for a week. He did it deliberately, she knew, but she would give no sign of feeling.

"Here I come with news as would send any proper wench leaping with joy, and you turn me that cold fish face of yours with no pleasure," he contemplated jovially. But that which looked out of his eyes was not born of good humor.

"You have not yet voiced this news, my lord."

His fingers kneaded into her flesh as if seeking to find and crush the bones hidden there.

"To be sure I have not! Yet it is news as will set any maid's heart to pounding in her. Wedding and bedding, my girl, wedding and bedding!"

Purposely Loyse chose, but with a fear she had not known before, to misunderstand him.

"You take a lady for Verlaine, my lord? Fortune grant you a fair face for such an occurrence."

His grip on her did not loosen, and now he shook her, with the outward appearance of one playfully admonishing, but with a force which brought pain.

"You may be a wry-faced nothing of a woman, but you are not stupid of wit, no matter how you may think to befool others. You should be properly a female at your age. At least you will now have a lord to make trial of that. And I'd advise you not to play your tricks with him. By all accounts he likes his bedfellows biddable!"

What she had long feared most had come upon her and it brought with it a betrayal of feeling she could not bite back in time.

"A wedding needs free consent-" She stopped then, knowing shame for her momentary breaking.

He was laughing, relishing having torn that protest out of her. His hand moved across her shoulder to vise upon the back of her neck in a pinch which brought an involuntary gasp out of her. Then, as one moves a lifeless puppet, he whirled her about, pushing her face toward the mirror shield, holding her helpless there while he pelted her with words he believed would hurt worse than any beating his hands could inflict.

"Look upon that curdled ma.s.s of nothing you call a face! Do you think any man could set his lips to it without closing his eyes and wishing himself elsewhere? Be glad, wench, that you have something besides your face and that bone of a body to lure a suitor. You'll consent freely to anyone who'll take you. And be glad you have a father who can make a bargain as good as I have for you. Yes, girl, you'd better crawl on those stiff knees of yours and thank any G.o.ds you have that Fulk looks after his own."

His words were a mutter of thunder; she saw no reflection in the mirror, save certain misty horrors of her own imagining. Which one of the brutes who rode in Fulk's train would she be thrown to-for some advantage for his lord?

"Karsten himself-" There was a sort of wonder underlying Fulk's rising exultation. "Karsten, mind you, and this lump of unbaked dough squeaks of consent! You are lacking in wits!" He released her with a sudden push which sent her flying against the shield and the metal rang against the wall. She fought for her balance, kept her feet, and turned to face him.

"The Duke!" That she could not believe. Why should the ruler of the duchy ask for the daughter of a sh.o.r.e baron, old and proud as her maternal lineage might be?