"He says it's his," the soldier bellowed.
"Then get him up here and tell him to get the thing out of the way! It won't move, and it's slowing up the whole evacuation!"
The officer turned back toward Garth with a sour expression. The overman tried to smile ingratiatingly and avoided saying anything that might annoy the soldier.
"Go on up," the man said, waving him on.
Garth obeyed with alacrity, bounding up the worn steps as fast as he dared. At the top he was waved through, and another officer pointed out the warbeast, standing quietly in exactly the spot where Garth had left it.
The problem was that the entire eastern side of the ridge, from the wall down to the plain, was ablaze with torchlight and jammed with people-except for a wide circle, perhaps thirty feet across, around Koros. That circle happened to take in the only easy path around the south tower, and its north edge skimmed the main highway.
"Can you get it out of here?" someone asked.
Garth nodded.
"Then do it, please."
Garth nodded again, then paused. He was rather overwhelmed by the vast crowd of people; he had never seen so many individuals of any major species gathered together before. He had known, in an intellectual way, that Ur-Dormulk held tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, but that had not prepared him emotionally for seeing most of the population packed together on a hillside at night without shelter or much of anything else but a few personal belongings.
"What are you going to do with them all?" he asked the officer.
"How should I know?" the man replied. "I just follow orders. With any luck we'll be able to start letting them back into the city by daybreak."
"You will?" Garth was startled. "How can that be? What of the monster?"
"The court wizards are trying to drive it into one of the lakes, I understand-probably Demhe, but Hali if they have to. I doubt anything that big can swim."
"How can they do that?"
"How would I know? I'm no sorcerer. They've kept it from chasing the crowds so far; they should be able to handle it."
Garth was far less optimistic, but did not say so. Instead, he asked, "These wizards-do you speak of Chalkara of Kholis and a person called Shandiph?" He had forgotten the cognomen attached to the latter name, if he had ever in fact heard it.
"Those names sound right," the soldier replied. "The two from the prince's court, whoever they are. They were about to flee the city themselves, I hear, when they got ordered to deal with the thing." He was obviously not interested in such details. "Now, could you move your animal?"
"Yes, of course," Garth said. He considered telling the man that he would be returning shortly with the means of dispatching the monster, but decided against it. This fellow did not appear to have much authority, and even if he had some, what good would such a message do? Besides, the possibility of something going wrong was always present; Garth might be delayed or might have difficulties with the Sword of Bheleu, or with the cult of Aghad, that would prevent his return. There was no point in raising hopes that might go unfulfilled.
He said nothing, but marched down to the side of the waiting warbeast. The crowd parted reluctantly before him, pressing back upon itself.
He stowed his possessions, including the Book of Silence, and made certain they were secure. A moment later he was in the saddle again; he shouted a warning to the people gathered before him, then gave Koros the command to advance.
Those immediately in the beast's path moved back as quickly as they could, eager to stay out of its way, but the resistance of the mass behind them ensured that Garth's progress remained slow until the crowd thinned out, a hundred yards farther down the slope. At that point Koros began picking up speed, and when rider and mount passed the line of soldiers that marked the outer perimeter of the clustered refugees, Garth gave the warbeast the order to run.
Koros obeyed magnificently, hurtling forward so fast that the overman's eyes stung and watered with the wind of their passage. He was able to do little but cling desperately to the harness, casting an occasional glance back to be sure that the pack behind the saddle that held the Book of Silence remained secure.
He rode on thus for hours, pausing only at a roadside tavern for a long-overdue drink and a hearty meal.
It was this scene, of Garth bent over his warbeast's neck, charging onward at top speed, that Haggat conjured up in his scrying glass when he found time to check again on the overman's whereabouts. He was startled; he wondered what urgency drove Garth to maintain such a pace. He had not bothered to follow events in Ur-Dormulk personally, relying instead on reports from the cult's many agents there; half a dozen had been equipped with the communication spells acquired from murdered wizards, which provided almost instant news-a great improvement on the old system of relays and carrier pigeons that they had relied upon before the breaking of the Council of the Most High.
No reports had reached him from Ur-Dormulk, which could mean many things; he told himself that he would have to look into that later.
For the present, Garth was obviously returning to Skelleth with all possible haste, and if the cult were to maintain its image and its hold upon him, then a greeting of some sort would have to be arranged. The overman's homecoming-Haggat thought of Skelleth as Garth's home, even though Garth did not-could not be allowed to go unheralded.
The high priest had already considered this matter in his planning and had devised two possible unpleasant surprises. The better one, unfortunately, was the more difficult and time-consuming, and at the rate Garth was moving, it might not be ready in time; therefore, the other would have to do.
Haggat paused before giving the signal, however, and studied the image in the globe thoughtfully. The warbeast had to be taken into consideration. He was determined that his people would maintain an appearance of total invulnerability, and the warding spells that he had provided his last group of tormentors would not serve against so powerful a creature as a warbeast.
Well, he told himself, he had a device that would. It was one of his most prized possessions, acquired by careful planning and considerable craft from the wizard who had pocketed it in that mysterious vault beneath Ur-Dormulk, whence so much of the cult's pilfered magic was derived. It was truly a shame that the chamber was lost and that all attempts to locate it had failed; if a score of magicians had brought out so much worthwhile magic just by retaining what they had casually picked up in a few hours' stay, what other treasures might still lie there, undiscovered?
One of Haggat's dreams was to find and reopen that vault; another was to obtain and use the Sword of Bheleu. Accomplishing either feat would give him, he was sure, mastery of the entire civilized world. He did not wholly understand why he had made no progress toward either goal. Divinations that were usually infallible came to nothing; spies vanished mysteriously and were never heard from again; healthy agents died of sudden heart failure while climbing the stairs of the King's Inn. It was obvious that some other power was blocking him. He was determined not to be thwarted; once Garth had been dealt with, he would track down and destroy whoever was responsible for the interference.
First, though, he had to deal with Garth, and for that, he wanted to provide the appointed agents with an infallible protection. He had only one, apparently unique in all the world, a simple metal rod that could, if properly used, temporarily render up to half a dozen people immune to all harm. After taking it from Haladar of Mara, he had intended to keep it solely for his own personal use, but this situation was special, and called for special measures. He would, he decided, loan it to the chosen cultists.
That, he was certain, when combined with the other magic at his disposal, would ensure that Garth received the greeting the followers of Aghad thought he deserved.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
After further hours of traveling at high speed, with its rider clinging to its neck, Koros slowed as it approached the crumbling walls of Skelleth. Garth rose from his crouch into a more comfortable and dignified posture; thus he was able to see clearly, in the gray light of morning, what awaited him at the gate. He had time, also, to hide his shock and dismay.
Three red-robed figures were slouched comfortably on the broken battlements, gathered around a pole that stood ten or twelve feet high, leaning at a jaunty angle and topped with Kyrith's severed head.
Lying crumpled against the wall below was the dead body of the man assigned to guard the southwestern gate; a long, crooked streak of blood ran from his slit throat down his arm to the ground.
Garth was as much appalled by the pointless murder of the sentry as by the defiling of his wife's corpse. After all, Kyrith had already been dead, insensible to further indignity. Even though she was his own species and his own family, the awful waste of killing the man simply because he was in the way-and Garth was quite sure that was the only reason the Aghadites had slain him, to remove him from the chosen site for their little display-was sickening.
As Garth fought to keep his anger leashed until he knew what he faced, one of the loungers called, "Back again?"
"We've been waiting for you," another said; his accent was Dыsarran. "We didn't want to kill anyone else important while you were off adventuring; that wouldn't be fair. So we've just been playing games." He waved casually at the gory trophy.
Garth growled involuntarily, as much at the calm dismissal of the guard's death as unimportant as at the taunts, and drew the undersized sword he had picked up in Ur-Dormulk.
The Aghadites laughed.
Enraged as he was, Garth remembered what had happened before when he struck at one of his red-clad tormentors. He saw no point in breaking another sword, even so poor a one as he now carried-but he was not sure that the protective spell worked against other weapons. The Forgotten King had called it a warding spell against metal. The overman leaned forward and whispered a word in the warbeast's ear.
Koros roared in reply and plunged forward, fangs bared and claws out. With a bound, it landed atop the three-and slid off, scrabbling for a hold it could not find. It was as if the Aghadites were sheathed in indestructible glass. They obviously had more protection than a ward against metal.
Garth lost his balance and slid from the saddle as the warbeast writhed about, trying to get at its indicated targets; he landed with a heavy thump on a patch of bare dirt, the wind knocked out of him, but not otherwise injured.
When he had regained his breath, he clambered to his feet to find himself facing a truly bizarre tableau. The three humans were sitting where they had been, trying desperately to look unconcerned, while Koros, standing awkwardly upon its hind legs, wrapped its immense forepaws around one man and tried to bite his head off. Garth could hear the grinding of teeth against something impervious.
The warbeast twisted its head for a better grip, but had no more success. The other two Aghadites wore ghastly, contrived smiles; the beast's intended victim was frozen with fear, despite his magical defenses, and his expression was one of sick terror as three-inch fangs skidded across his throat like fingernails on marble.
Garth took a great deal of pleasure in seeing the Aghadites discomforted, even though he realized that he could do them no real harm. He did nothing to interfere; something else had occurred to him. He stepped forward, sword in hand, climbed atop a pile of rubble, and, leaning over the head of one of the trio, swung the blade against the wooden pole.
As he had hoped, the protective spell had not been extended that far. The wood splintered gratifyingly, and the upper portion toppled over. Before any of the Aghadites could recover, he had stepped over and scooped up his wife's head.