Web of the Witch World - Andre Norton

Another step and they were both between those wall strips. Once more the shaking, wrenching sense of being whirled into a nothingness which was highly inimical to their kind—then through it. Simon staggered forward. He was on his hands and knees on rock still warm from the sun of a baking day, Jaelithe beside him.

Sunset was not complete enough to hide what lay before them. There had been a battle here. And it had not all been the way of the otherworld force as it had on the other side of the gate. The rock was not only heated by sun, great ribbons of black scorch lay back and forth across the whole plain of the gate and there were things lying there . . .

Simon wavered to his feet, stooped to bring Jaelithe up in turn. Nothing before them moved, this had been left to the dead. What he was going to do now might be the wrong thing, but it was the only blow he could see to strike for the freedom of this world against the Kolder and what the Kolder had drawn upon this world.

He raised the alien rifle and fired whatever energy it controlled at the base of the nearer of the gate columns. For a moment in the half light he thought that either the charge was exhausted or that it had no effect upon the structure. Then came a shimmering, licking up from his point of target, running along all that side, coming to the bar at the top, across it, down the opposite pillar. Shimmering became sparkling motes drifting apart.

Simon cried out and dropped the weapon. His hand—his hand!

The Kolder talisman which had still been in his grasp when he fired that shot or ray fell from him, leaving his flesh blackened and burning! It rolled out midpoint between the gate posts shimmering into nothing—to explode in a flash of green fire. But the gate was also gone and they looked upon barren space.

Together they staggered on to where the Kolder camp had been, where there was still a huddle of machines and about them things neither wished to see clearer; they were thankful the light was half cut away by the shadow of the mesa. Simon lurched to the ground by one of the crawlers, his hand pressed against him, much as Aldis had always pressed the talisman to her. He was only aware of the pain, pain mixed with a rising weakness so that he could not think clearly, pain beyond enduring save for the space of a breath, and another, and another—

Then the pain was not so great, or else he had become accustomed to it, as a man might come accustomed to any torment which lasted. He tasted water and after that a solid substance was put between his lips and a voice urged him to eat. How long had he been apart in that place of pure pain? Simon did not know. But now his head cleared and he knew that it was dark and nearly as cold as the day had been hot, that his head rested on Jaelithe’s knee, and that she was striving to wake him, her voice first only a low murmur and then her words making sense.

“. . . coming. We cannot stay here—”

It was so good just to lie so, the fiery torment in his hand reduced to a dull pain. Simon strove to move his fingers and found there was a bandage about them. Luckily, he thought dreamily, it was his left hand.

“Please, Simon!” More than a plea—a half command. Jaelithe’s hands on his cheeks, gently moving his head back and forth. Then her arm slipped under his neck, striving to raise him. Simon protested.

“We must go!” She leaned closer over him. “Please, Simon—there is someone coming!”

Memory flooded back, he sat up. The pool of shadow which had been there when he collapsed was now inky, all light cut off by the bulk of the mesa. He did not question her warning as he pulled himself to his feet, leaning on the crawler’s track. For a moment he nursed a dim hope of using the machine, then he knew that he would not understand its controls. Once erect Simon found himself steadier than he had first thought. He moved out with Jaelithe, stumbling over the ruts left by the crawlers.

“Who comes? Kolder?”

“I think not—“

“Those others?”

“Perhaps. Do you not feel it too?”

But if there was anything to be sensed in the night it remained a secret to Simon and he said so. For the first time in many hours he remembered those they had left when they began this last weird adventure. “Loyse—the Sulcarmen?”

“I have striven to reach them. But there are new forces loosed here, Simon, things strange to me. I cannot pierce a barrier, then—suddenly it is gone! Only to rise immediately in another place. It is my thought that Kolder fights for its life, that those who share that blood are using all weapons to their hands—some material, some outside our reckoning. That which came out of the wilderness beyond the gate is still alive to hate, to hunt. And if we do not wish to be caught up in this struggle we must keep aloof. For Kolder fights that which is also Kolder, or what gave birth to Kolder, and this is no war such as our world has seen before.”

As he moved on, Simon’s strength continued to return.

Jaelithe had plundered the camp for rations; she told him of that quietly and he felt her horror of what she had seen on that quest. So again he drew her to him, and they went on with his arm about her shoulders, his bandaged hand resting on her lightly, momentarily content that they could go thus, divided in neither mind nor body. They were rounding the bulk of the mesa to reach the place where they had left Loyse and the Sulcarmen when a stone, rattling down the side of that table land, made Simon sweep Jaelithe behind him. He had dropped the alien rifle by the gate, but he still had the knife Jaelithe had given him. And now as he listened, that was ready in his good hand.

“Sul—” Not a battle cry but a whisper in the dark.

“Sul!” Simon replied.

More stones fell and then a figure swung down with the agility of a man used to making his way about ship’s rigging.

“Sigrod,” he identified himself. “We saw you come out of nowhere back there, Lord. But there have been demons in these hills and they destroy aught that moves, so we dared not join you. Ynglin has the Lady Loyse in good hiding and I have come to guide you.”

“What has happened?”

Sigrod laughed. “What has not, Lord! These Kolder pushed through that gate and were gone as if they had used a spell for becoming nothing before a man’s eyes! Then—why, it was like all Demon Night opening. Out came those others, marching as an army of dead risen out of their graves to bring swords for a cause as dead as they! They came down upon the Kolder camp and —this is the truth I speak, I swear by the Waves of Asper that it be so!—they looked at a man and he shriveled up and died, as if a frost storm or a fire had shot upon him. Witchcraft, Lady, but such as I have never seen in Estcarp.

“They overran the camp as if those within it had not the power to raise hand to sword or shoot a single dart. Then there came the same lightning as strove to seek us out when we left the shore, and that smote and smote again, catching many of the demons and rendering them once more of the earth. But others went on, taking with them a Kolder, and they were traveling toward the sea. Since then there have been strange things in that direction. Only from this height have I seen something to sea. Lady, your sending has been obeyed—for there are sails showing!”

Simon functioned again as a field officer. “And if the fleet runs into that fire—” He put his worry into words. A warning—but how could they deliver that? Would the Kolder, if they were beleaguered in their own hold, weaken their defense to use the lashing fire at a new, seaborne enemy in a three-cornered fight? And what of the skeletons? Would it make any difference to them whether they hunted Kolder or stood up to a new foe? He must know more of what was going on.

They held council after they joined Ynglin and Loyse in a rock-walled cave.

“There is a way to gain the coast without too much effort,” Ynglin reported, “and I, for one, feel the safer with water nearby. This country is too well made for the hunting games which favor the pursuer as well as the pursued. There have been no more fire lashings for some time now. Also we have seen only a few of these wandering bags of bones slinking about. They prowl as if they would sniff up some trail; they do not show the fear of broken men who run from a strong enemy.”

“Maybe they have the Kolder besieged in the keep,” Simon speculated. “If so—to go seaward might take us into them.” He tried to think. The fleet out there—no one ever claimed that Sulcarmen were stupid. They would not run recklessly headlong into a Kolder den, knowing only too well the nature of the enemy and the traps which might lie before them. But this was a good chance, which, if handled right, might stamp out the evil once and for all.

He did not believe they could erect another gate in a hurry, not while harassed by these creatures from their own past. Therefore, that retreat was closed to them. A siege. But guesses were not enough; he had to know more and that meant seeing the site of the present activity—the coast and the Kolder keep.

“A scout,” he began, when Jaelithe spoke.

“We must go together, all of us. Also, the sea is our answer.”

Was that her thought—or his? The sea could be their answer, giving them a chance not only to communicate with the fleet but to scout the Kolder. Simon agreed.

They set out along the way the Sulcarmen had marked during that time when, with Loyse, they had remained in hiding. It was rough going and in the dusk perhaps doubly dangerous. But night had not yet deepened into full dark and they made the best time they could. The Sulcarmen had raided the Kolder camp before Simon and Jaelithe had returned and the supplies from there, meager as they were, gave them renewed vigor and energy.

Simon took advantage of several rest halts to climb above and try to sight the fleet. At his second failure he commented on that and Sigrod chuckled.

“Aye, they are doubtless coasting. That is a raiding trick which always serves us well. They have split the fleet in twain, each half turning stern to the other. There will be one scouting north and the other south to find a landing.”

Simon brightened. He knew next to nothing of naval tactics, and his acquaintance with Sulcar fighting methods had been limited to their service ashore. But this information was helpful. If even one of those divisions now sailing north and south could be contacted . . . He began to question the two marines. They might not be able to reach those now heading north, but the southern half of the fleet was headed in their own direction, and there was an excellent possibility it could be signaled from shore. Ynglin volunteered to try.

Then Simon went on—with the keep as his goal.

19 DRINK SWORD—UP SHIELD

“TO SHAKE them out of that, Lord, you will need more than a fleet. Such walls cannot be wished away.” Sigrod lay belly down on the rock peak beside Simon regarding the sealed enigma of the Kolder hold.

There was movement below. Apparently those who had come through the gate were gathered before those unscalable, unbreachable walls, willing to wait. Though in a matter of siege Simon thought the Kolder had all the advantage. The force without had no supplies and this was a totally barren land. Perhaps they believed that they would still withdraw through the gate. How long before they discovered that no longer existed?