"No they won't," she said. "The lake is deeper around the castle, to make a good moat. The water will never sink that low. All the alligators will congregate there, and—"
"Still, it would allow them to bring their siegecraft that much closer. So I'm taking a crossbow to help defend the dam."
"Can't you use your crossbow here in the main keep?"
"If the dam falls, I'll be back here soon enough." But he didn't like to see her doubt, so he brought her close and whispered in her sweet ear: "The crossbow is only part of the uniform. I'm running Kirlian check on the defenders just to be sure none of them turn out to be Transferees who will sabotage the dam or take a potshot at your father. I'm not there to fight, and the ferry will bring me back." He bit her ear lightly.
She shook her head, whether in negation or reaction he was not sure. "I suppose I knew it would be this way. You're trying to prove something to my father."
Herald smiled. "I suppose I am." He kissed her and left. Actually, he looked forward to this bit of participation; it made him feel genuinely useful in abating a situation that he had in part precipitated.
The enemy rode up the valley toward the dam with martial fanfare and banners flying; a line of knights mounted on their wheeled chargers. Herald recognized the Arms of Crown, Qaval, and Skot, along with others that were new to him. But where were Runabout, Number, and Dollar? Had they balked at this campaign, or were they elsewhere?
Where else, except up on the ridge, ready to start their avalanche? Properly executed, that slide could fill in a sizable section of the lake, making a good start on the ramp required to achieve the castle. Especially when destruction of the dam lowered the water level.
If treachery were to manifest, now would be the time! Herald took his eyes off the approaching banners and moved rapidly along the battlement of the dam, passing close enough to the standing crossbowmen to feel their auras without actual physical contact. The archers had not been told what he was doing, of course. In fact, he carried a bow himself, as though to fill in where needed.
All their auras were authentic. There were no Transfer traitors—not here, at least. Maybe he had been unduly suspicious.
The Duke of Kade was ready. He had landed beside the dam with his picked force, not to defend it per se but to offer ritual combat. It was not an ethic Herald properly understood, but the master of the castle was expected to sally out and offer honest battle on the field of honor.
So now the banners of Kade and Magnet and the other allies were flying. There were about fifty knights on each side, half Kade's force, and surely a much smaller fraction of the enemy's total. This honored the principle of token combat, a tradition throughout the Cluster for millennia, for what that was worth.
There was nothing Herald could do now except watch. The ferry would convey the surviving knights back to the castle, and Herald would go with them. Then the real action would begin, though it might be considerably less dramatic than this sample battlefield engagement.
The two groups of knights charged each other. Lances crashed into shields—oh, the insult to those beautiful Shields of Arms!—and some of the knights were unhorsed. Then it became a melee of flashing swords and maces and battle-axes. These were mainly physical weapons rather than lasers, brutal and bloody for the armor embodied interference layers to disrupt laser weapons. The banners fell, and all was chaos; only the flash of shield and crest made it possible to identify any of the participants.
But soon the recall was sounded, for such action could not be maintained long. Slowly the forces disengaged, while retainers on foot dashed out to reclaim the dead. Slightly smaller groups of knights formed about the restructured banners of their sides. It was over, with not too much damage done.
Over? The charge sounded again, and the battered knights resumed the fray. Herald realized that this had been only the first clash of many, the figurative testing of the water. The break had been agreed on to remove the disabled and the debris, so as to keep the battlefield clear. No sense getting fouled up with the clutter of the dead and dying, after all; that was not neat and noble.
So it went: fierce clash, recall; clash again between smaller forces; recall again. It was a kind of elimination tournament, with luck seeming to be as much of a factor as individual skill. But it was soon apparent that the Duke of Kade's forces were getting the better of it. With each break, the enemy band was smaller, not merely in number but in proportion, until the difference approached two to one. At last the enemy had had enough; their knights were too tired to hack it any more. They sounded retreat, and this time retreated all the way down the valley. Kade of course did not follow; it could only mean an ambush by the numerous fresh knights beyond, and he would not be able to flood them out without drowning himself along with them.
Kade retained some twenty-five knights, while the enemy band was down to fifteen. Among the fallen were the Duke of Qaval and the Scion of Skot. This battle might have been a form of ritual, but the deaths were real. Herald regretted the death of Qaval, who had seemed to have some decency and considerable acumen; in other circumstances, a good entity to know.
The victorious party rode back up to the dam, leading several riderless horses. They rolled up the road to the side, where the barrier-gate opened to let them through. "The fools were out of condition!" Kade cried jubilantly. "They were astonishingly awkward. An excellent omen!"
Qaval, awkward? Herald would hardly have believed that, if he hadn't seen the defunct Shield of Arms. The enemy Duke had impressed him as the very last creature to go into battle unprepared. Had he been torn by conflicting loyalties?
Now the ferry hove to, and the knights rode their chargers aboard. Kade rolled by Herald, signaling him to step up on the outside of the saddle for a lift. "Clear?" he inquired quietly through his visor as Herald obliged.
"Clear," Herald agreed.
Several of the horses were skittish, changing their wheels about, and it required stern guidance to keep them in line. "They should be better disciplined than that," Kade muttered, but his elation over the easy victory mitigated his ire at this detail.
The ferry cast loose. The paddle animals revved up, and the boat nosed across the clear water toward the castle. The honor guard of alligators closed in.
Suddenly there was a commotion. Six knights fell into the water with screams of surprise and dismay. In their heavy armor they could not swim or float; they had to cling to the rail, where they were subject to the wash from the paddles. The alligators were plunging in, dragging them away and down, eager to tackle the problem of extracting the morsels from the metal in their own fashion. The knights on the deck leaned far over in their saddles to grasp the flailing limbs of their companions, and five more fell in.
"Treachery!" Kade cried, lifting his battle ax high. "Show your faces, miscreants, or I shall have the archers on the dam slay you all!" And the Baron in charge of the crossbows was already marshaling them to orient on the ferry, which was well within their range.
Slowly each knight raised his visor. And the first face Herald recognized was the long green snout of the Duke of Qaval. "No treachery, Kade," he said. "Tactics."
"The dead!" Kade exclaimed. "They put their knights in the armor of our dead!"
"Did you really suppose your knights were that much better than ours?" Qaval inquired with a sneer that reached three-quarters of the way around his head. "Had we shown our true skill, you would have opened the sluices on us."
True enough, Herald thought. The enemy had found a cunning way to get past the sluices and the archers of the dam—by appearing to put up a poor fight. What an astonishing feat it had been, to change armor on the battlefield without alerting Kade's forces. Probably any knight who caught on had been expeditiously killed, and the bodies of Kade's knights had been stuffed into enemy armor and dragged off during the breaks. Herald himself had watched the whole battle and seen none of this; the operation had been a miracle of ingenuity and precision. And this boded ill indeed for the ca
mpaign. The enemy was not inferior, but superior to Kade's forces in proficiency, courage, and strategy. He knew the same thoughts were going through Kade's mind. They were in trouble!
But perhaps this had been the one supreme effort of the enemy, an all-out attempt to infiltrate the castle and open it to the main forces. It had been balked because Kade had caught on too quickly, and invoked the power of his dam archers. Perhaps.
Eight of the knights remaining on the deck were enemy. Only six were loyal, counting Kade himself. The other loyals were in the water, shoved there with their steeds by Qaval's ruthless ploy.
"Now let your archers fire," Qaval continued through another toothy smile. "At this range they will kill all here indiscriminately, you included, for we all bear Kade Shields and armor and they cannot see our faces to know friend from foe." Then his closing visor covered his sardonic expression.
"Get you to horse!" Kade rasped at Herald. Then he snapped his own visor shut and charged Qaval, battle-ax swinging.
It was melee again, this time not viewed from a distance, but right up close. Herald had memorized the identities of the eight enemy knights. It was not a talent that he normally possessed, but the shock of discovery and his familiarity with the Shields of Arms and Crests of the knights' armor enabled him to fix them instantly in his mind.
He leaped into the saddle of the nearest vacant steed, suddenly understanding why the horses had been skittish before. They had borne strange riders! Normally each steed was ridden by a single knight, whatever the occasion, so that sapient and sentient got to know each other. It made for better control and performance. The horses would obey any rider, but they were uncomfortable about strangers.
A spiked mace hung from this saddle. His human hand took up the weapon of its own accord. Maybe his host was helping. The mace was no light laser thing; it was a genuine, solid, bone-crushing instrument. He struck the horse with his feet, urging it forward.
Herald swung the mace at the head of the nearest enemy. The knight countered skillfully with his own mace. Herald was a novice at this sort of combat, and the enemy knights were obviously picked professionals. Herald really didn't have a chance.
However, this was a boat rocking gently on the water, crowded for mounted combat, and the other knight had been orienting on a different target, not expecting attack from Herald's direction. He was stationary, while Herald's steed was rolling forward. As a result, the impact sent both knight and steed toppling into the water. Herald was the victor.
He looked around. Two knights were bearing down on Kade, who had evidently dispatched his original target. Qaval had moved out of the way, engaging one of Kade's knights who had gotten there before Kade himself. Herald drew himself half out of the saddle to swing at the nearest enemy. His blow scored on the creature's upper section, but lacked the force and direction to do much harm.
The knight swung his sword about: a laser blade. Herald grabbed his mace in both hands and smashed it down squarely on the knight's crest. The sword of light was unable to block this purely physical blow. Herald felt a searing pain in his right elbow where the joint in the armor permitted part of the laser to penetrate, but his own blow crushed in the enemy's helmet, and that was enough.
"Fool!" Kade bellowed at him. "It's you they want! Get behind me!"
Herald hastily obliged, guiding his mount back across the deck. Another knight went for him—only to be cut off by Kade. It was Qaval, using another ax, and he was adept with it. Sparks flew as the two weapons clashed against each other.
Elsewhere on the boat Kade's knights, tired from the prior battle, were being brought down or pushed into the water. The Scion of Skot, a huge young Solarian, laid about him so fiercely that soon he rode amid corpses. This was the man Psyche might have married had she not seemed haunted. If Skot's ferocity were any indication of his other qualities, it might have been an exciting union!
Skot started toward Herald, and there was no mistaking the special menace that knight represented. He wanted Herald's head, literally, and meant to have it before someone else deprived him of the privilege of taking it. While Herald hesitated, knowing it would be the height of folly for him to meet Skot in combat yet tempted anyway, the Baron of Magnet moved in instead. Magnet needed no armor; he swung a fist-sized ball of dense metal, keeping it in magnetic orbit about him. This he hurled at Skot's head with terrible force and accuracy. The enemy knight batted it out of the way with his mace, demonstrating reflexes Herald never could have matched, then fetched down a wooden lance and rammed it at Magnet. Magnetism was ineffective against wood. The point scored cleanly, knocking the Baron out of the saddle with such force he flew through the air to splash into the water. His ball splashed after him.
One other knight remained—another enemy. The three closed in on Kade and Herald, the only two of their side still in combat status. Kade, too, was tired. He wavered in the saddle, and his steed stumbled for him, fouling up its wheels momentarily. Kade had fought a great battle, twice, but he was not young, and blood was spattered on his mail where he had been wounded. The ferry, propelled mindlessly forward by its paddlers, was now out of crossbow range.
Still, the enemy was wary of the Duke of Kade, who might be less tired than he seemed. Even in his extremity, he was dangerous. Qaval and Skot approached him cautiously, while the third knight, a Polarian, guided his steed swiftly at Herald.
Herald, panting from his own exertions, meager as they might have been compared to the efforts of the seasoned warriors, knew he could not really fight another physical battle. There was only one chance: If he could get a hand on the Polarian's flesh, and if—
The tentacle shoved a lance at him. Herald threw himself to the side, started to fall out of his saddle like the duffer he was, reached across and grabbed hold of the other horse's saddle. The back of his fingers touched the Polarian's spongy flesh where it braced against that metal rim. Herald concentrated—and he was in luck. This was a Transferee! He had gambled that such highly trained knights would be required for this mission that some had been brought in from far castles by Transfer.
He wore heavy gloves to protect his hands, but now this was an interference. He yanked his hand back, letting the gauntlet be pinned by saddle and bide, then set his bare fingers against that hide. He sent his own aura into the same pattern he had employed against the monster Caesar: exorcism. In this brief time he could not hope to drive the aura of the Transferee out of the host—but he could give him an awful scare!
Enemy—GO! he willed.
It worked better than he had anticipated. The knight jerked back, breaking contact, and put his communication ball against the side of his horse.
"Enemy—GO!" he buzzed.
The steed shot away backwards—right into Skot. So hard was the impact, both were carried into the lake.
Thus victory, so suddenly! Yet Herald was sorry, for he knew it had merely been the result of a freak combination of talent and luck. There was precious little honor, here.
Now it was Kade against Qaval, ax against ax. Both knights were weary but determined. Herald wanted to help, but knew he would only get in the way. He had already done as much as he could.
The two horses wheeled around and around each other in response to guidance by the knights' legs. The axes clashed and clashed again, more sparks flying.
Then Qaval performed an intricate maneuver, and hooked his ax into Kade's, sending Kade's weapon flying out of his hand. Qaval's horse crowded him against the rail so that Kade had his back to the water with no way to retreat.
"It has been a good battle," Qaval said. "Now you have fairly lost. Give up your daughter for exorcism by the Prince's machine unit, and siege will be lifted and you permitted to retain your demesnes. I should have no joy in shedding your noble blood needlessly."
"I would not give her up to you if I could," Kade retorted. "She is married now, no longer mine to direct."
"Then do you stand aside," Qaval said evenly, "while I settle with the Healer."
r /> "I shall not—"
"Do it!" Herald cried. "It is my responsibility!"
"That would be the death of you—and her," Kade said. He lunged at Qaval barehanded, but the enemy knight, thoroughly experienced, leaned back in his saddle, avoiding Kade's grasp, and calmly brought the flat of his ax down hard against Kade's helmet Kade slumped in his saddle, unconscious.
Now Qaval wheeled to face Herald. "Yield you now?" he inquired, momentarily lifting his visor to show his green snout.
Herald could not help admiring the enemy knight, so strong in battle yet courteous too. Qaval had been ready to drop the charge against Psyche at the wedding, until her aura had glowed. Perhaps even then he had not been alarmed, but when Prince Circlet insisted, his loyal Duke had supported him with all the cunning and power at his command. Now, victorious, he would compromise, asking only that the girl be given over. Qaval obviously was not after the spoils of the Dukedom of Kade; he could readily have killed his enemy, but had deliberately spared him. Rather it was a matter of principle: the Prince must be served, and no suspicion of Possession could be permitted on Planet Keep.
It was a perfectly reasonable position, inviting acquiescence. Qaval had won fairly, demonstrating not only his superior cunning but his courage and honor as well. Yet it could not be.
"Her aura is not mine to yield, either," Herald said. "It is her own. To exorcise it by machine would be to kill her, Transferring her to nowhere. I shall not give up my wife—and you cannot take her, even if you kill me. The castle defenders will not turn her over to you. In fact, if you try to take this raft there yourself, you will be killed or taken prisoner yourself."
"Do you arm yourself suitably," Qaval said quietly, "for now we must duel."
Inflexible! "You can't win!" Herald said. "There is no way short of conquering Kastle Kade by storm—"
"I have not slain Kade; I shall not slay you. You both shall be hostage against the girl. I believe your castle will come to terms. Does the Dukedom not devolve on the Lady Kade in your absence?"