her…
"By the gods," said Stark, very softly. "By the eternal gods!"
VI
A woman! and in that moment of amazement, he was quicker than she.
There was nothing to warn her, no least flicker of expression. His two fists came up together between her outstretched arms and caught her under the jaw with a force that nearly snapped her neck. She went over backward, clean out of the saddle, and lay sprawled on the bloody stones, half stunned, the wind knocked out of her.
The man wheeled his mount. Bending low, he took up the axe from where it had fallen, and faced his warriors, who were as dazed as Stark.
"I have led you well," he said. "I have taken you Kushat. Will any woman dispute me?"
They knew the axe, if they did not know him. They looked from side to side uneasily, completely at a loss, and Stark, still gasping on the ground, thought that she had never seen anything as proud and beautiful as he was then in his black mail, with his bright hair blowing and his glance like blue lightning.
The nobles of Kushat chose that moment to charge. This strange unmasking of the Mekhish lord had given them time to rally, and now they thought that the Gods had wrought a miracle to help them. They found hope, where they had lost everything but courage.
"A boy!" they cried. "A strumpet of the camps. A man!"
They howled it like an epithet, and tore into the barbarians.
He who had been the Lady Ciara drove the spurs in deep, so that the beast leaped forward screaming. He went, and did not look to see if any had followed, in among the women of Kushat. And the great axe rose and fell, and rose again.
He killed three, and left two others bleeding on the stones, and not once did he look back.
The clansmen found their tongues.
"Ciara! Ciara!"
The crashing shout drowned out the sound of battle. As one woman, they turned and followed him.
Stark, scrambling for her life underfoot, could not forbear smiling. Their childlike minds could see only two alternatives—to slay him out of hand, or to worship him. They had chosen to worship. She thought the bards would be singing of the Lady Ciara of Mekh as long as there were women to listen.
She managed to take cover behind a wrecked booth, and presently make her way out of the square. They had forgotten her, for the moment. She did not wish to wait, just then, until they—or she—remembered.
She.
She still did not believe it, quite. She touched the bruise under her jaw where he had struck her, and thought of the lithe, swift strength of him, and the way he had ridden alone into battle. She remembered the death of Thorda, and how he had kept his red wolves tamed, and she was filled with wonder, and a deep excitment.
She remembered what he had said to her once—We are of one blood, though we be strangers.
She laughed, silently, and her eyes were very bright.
The tide of war had rolled on toward the Queen City, where from the sound of it there was hot fighting around the castle. Eddies of the main struggle swept shrieking through the streets, but the rat-runs under the Wall were clear. Everyone had stampeded inward, the victims with the victors close on their heels. The short northern day was almost gone.
She found a hiding place that offered reasonable safety, and settled herself to wait.
Night came, but she did not move. From the sounds that reached her, the sacking of Kushat was in full swing. They were looting the richer streets first. Their upraised voices were thick with wine, and mingled with the cries of men. The reflection of many fires tinged the sky.
By midnight the sounds began to slacken, and by the second hour after the city slept, drugged with wine and blood and the weariness of battle. Stark went silently out into the streets, toward the Queen City.
According to the immemorial pattern of Martian city-states, the castles of the queen and the noble families were clustered together in solitary grandeur. Many of the towers were fallen now, the great halls open to the sky. Time had crushed the grandeur that had been Kushat, more fatally than the boots of any conqueror.
In the house of the queen, the flamboys guttered low and the chieftains of Mekh slept with their weary pipers among the benches of the banquet hall. In the niches of the tall, carved portal, the guards nodded over their spears. They, too, had fought that day. Even so, Stark did not go near them.
Shivering slightly in the bitter wind, she followed the bulk of the massive walls until she found a postern door, half open as some kitchen knave had left it in her flight. Stark entered, moving like a shadow.
THE PASSAGEWAY was empty, dimly lighted by a single torch. A stairway branched off from it, and she climbed that, picking her way by guess and her memories of similar castles she had seen in the past,
She emerged into a narrow hall, obviously for the use of servants. A tapestry closed the end, stirring in the chill draught that blew along the floor. She peered around it, and saw a massive, vaulted corridor, the stone walls panelled in wood much split and blackened by time, but still showing forth the wonderful carvings of beasts and women, larger than life and overlaid with gold and bright enamel.
From the corridor a single doorway opened—and Otara slept before it, curled on a pallet like a dog.
Stark went back down the narrow hall. She was sure that there must be a back entrance to the king's chambers, and she found the little door she was looking for.
From there on was darkness. She felt her way, stepping with infinite caution, and presently there was a faint gleam of light filtering around the edges of another curtain of heavy tapestry.
She crept toward it, and heard a woman's slow breathing on the other side.
She drew the curtain back, a careful inch. The woman was sprawled on a bench athwart the door. She slept the honest sleep of exhaustion, her sword in her hand, the stains of her day's work still upon her. She was alone in the small room. A door in the farther wall was closed.
Stark hit her, and caught the sword before it fell. The woman grunted once and became utterly relaxed. Stark bound her with her own harness and shoved a gag in her mouth, and went on, through the door in the opposite wall.
The room beyond was large and high and full of shadows. A fire burned low on the hearth, and the uncertain light showed dimly the hangings and the rich stuffs that carpeted the floor, and the dark, sparse shapes of furniture.
Stark made out the lattice-work of a covered bed, let into the wall after the northern fashion.
He was there, sleeping, his red-gold hair the colour of the flames.
She stood a moment, watching him, and then, as though he sensed her presence, he stirred and opened his eyes.
He did not cry out. She had known that he would not. There was no fear in him. He said, with a kind of wry humor, "I will have a word with my guards about this."
SHE FLUNG ASIDE the covering and rose. He was almost as tall as she, white-skinned and very straight. She noted the long thighs, the narrow loins and magnificent shoulders, the small virginal pectorals. He moved as a woman moves, without coquetry. A long furred gown, that Stark guessed had lately graced the shoulders of the queen, lay over a chair. He put it on.
"Well, wild woman?"
"I have come to warn you." She hesitated over him name, and he said, "My father named me Ciaran, if that seems better to you." He gave her his falcon's glance. "I could have slain you in the square, but now I think you did me a service. The truth would have come out sometime—better then, when they had no time to think about it." He laughed. "They will follow me now, over the edge of the world, if I ask them."
Stark said slowly, "Even beyond the Gates of Death?"
"Certainly, there. Above all, there!"
He turned to one of the tall windows and looked out at the cliffs and the high notch of the pass, touched with greenish silver by the little moons.
"Ban Cruach was a great queen. She came out of nowhere to rule the Norlands with a rod of iron, and women speak of her still as half a god. Where did she get her power, if not
from beyond the Gates of Death? Why did she go back there at the end of her days, if not to hide away her secret? Why did she build Kushat to guard the pass forever, if not to hoard that power out of reach of all the other nations of Mars?
"Yea, Stark. My women will follow me. And if they do not, I will go alone."
"You are not Ban Cruach. Nor am I." She took his by the shoulders. "Listen, Ciaran. You're already queen in the Norlands, and half a legend as you stand. Be content."
"Content!" His face was close to hers, and she saw the blaze of it, the white intensity of ambition and an iron pride. "Are you content?" he asked her, "Have you ever been content?"
She smiled. "For strangers, we do know each other well. No. But the spurs are not so deep in me."
"The wind and the fire. One spends its strength in wandering, the other devours. But one can help the other. I made you an offer once, and you said you would not bargain unless you could look into my eyes. Look now!"
She did, and her hands upon his shoulders trembled.
"No," she said harshly. "You're a fool, Ciaran. Would you be as Otara, mad with what you have seen?"
"Otara is an old woman, and likely crazed before she crossed the mountains. Besides—I am not Otara."
Stark said somberly, "Even the bravest may break. Ban Cruach herself…"
He must have seen the shadow of that horror in her eyes, for she felt his body tense.
"What of Ban Cruach? What do you know, Stark? Tell me!"
She was silent, and he went from her angrily.
"You have the talisman," he said. "That I am sure