The small mob of refugees had followed Nestor down to ground level. Draffut was obviously known to them, and a very welcome sight; Nestor supposed it was hope of the giant's protection that had brought them fleeing to the island in the first place. Now they offered Draffut worship, and clamored to him at length. The giant answered them in their own language. With his huge hands he raised them from their knees, and touched their wounds and healed them.
Then one of his enormous hands reached out for Nestor, who once more felt its restoring power. As his touch healed, Draffut said to him: "You have fought well here. And with the use of more than ordinary powers, if what these people tell me is correct."
"It probably is. Thank you again, Healer-who-is-not-a-god." The shaking was gone from Nestor's body, and the places where his small wounds had been were whole. He felt healthy, to a degree that made the long fight just past seem as unreal as a dream. He was surprised at a passing feeling that, along with the fear and pain, something valuable, had been wiped away.
"Yes," Nestor went on, "there were very many of them. Very many, including your pet that rose up in advance of the others and tried to kill me. The sword gave me no more than ordinary service against that one."
Abstractedly Draffut lifted one of his huge wrists, and the flying dragon perched on it like a falcon. "My airborne scouts," the giant rumbled, "tell me that the Great Swamp is being invaded from the west by a large human army. Its soldiers wear the black and silver of Yambu, and it may be that the queen herself is leading them."
"Ah." Nestor felt shaken by the news; he bent to take up again the sword he had cast down when Draffut reached out to him. Nestor like everyone else had heard of that queen and of her power. "I suppose that her objective is not the conquest of the swamp."
"And I suppose that it is probably the domain of Kind Sir Andrew. The sorcerers of her army chant their spells as they march, and all across the swamp the larvae that they have cultivated from afar rise up and form in ranks to follow them."
"So," said Nestor. "We know now who is responsible for the larvae. And why is this army being led against Sir Andrew in particular? And why just now?"
Draffut made a motion of his arm, so that the dragon flew up from his wrist; it had rested, and now with vigorous wingstrokes went off on its own business. Draffut said: "Two of the god-swords, at least, are there now. A tempting booty to be taken, would you not agree?"
Nestor looked at the refugees, who were following the talk with reverence if little understanding. He said to Draffut: "One sword at least is there, and that one mine. I suppose if the Queen of Yambu knew where it was, and its importance, she might risk much to take it. As would Duke Fraktin, or a hundred others, I am sure. So what are we to do? I'd risk much myself to get it back."
Draffut said: "You should go to Sir Andrew, and warn him. And do what you can, with that you have there in your hand, to help him. Now that we know who is raising the Gray Horde, and where it is being led, I no longer feel that I must remain in the swamp. In fact, there is somewhere else I want to go now, and we can go part of the way together."
Again Draffut held brief conversation with the surviving swamp-folk. Then he explained to Nestor: "I have told them that they can return to their village now, on another island not far from here. They will be safer there than here, if powers should come seeking here for followers of mine."
"What powers might those be?"
"I mean to go," said Draffut, "and start an argument with the gods. Or with some of them at least. Are you ready to depart?"
Nestor had no baggage to bring with him except the sword. Which was, he now observed, an awkward thing to have to carry in one's hand for any length of time. This difficulty loomed larger when he realized that he was going to have to ride a long way on Draffut's shoulders, and that he might at times want both hands free to hang on with. Draffut, suggesting a solution, sent Nestor to rummage in a certain room of the temple that he had not found in his own explorations, a long-abandoned guardhouse or arsenal. Much of the weaponry stored therein had rusted and rotted away, but Nestor turned up a copper scabbard that fit Townsaver tolerably well. To make the necessary belt, he used the sword itself to cut a length of tough vine from the temple wall.
The surviving swamp-people and their canoes had already disappeared back into their native habitat when Draffut, with Nestor clinging to his back, left solid land behind and strode into the morass, heading to the northeast. Draffut's long wading strides soon overtook the paddlers; the people in the canoes made way for him, waving as they pulled aside.
For half an hour or so, Draffut made steady and uneventful progress. If any of the multitude of lifeforms large and small that inhabited the marsh ever considered molesting the Beast-Lord in his passage, Nestor at least was not aware of it. Draffut never went more than waist-deep in the water and mud, and Nestor was easily able to keep himself dry. Now and then he had to dodge a tree-branch, but that was his most serious immediate problem. He clung with both hands to his mount's glowing fur, and was actually beginning to enjoy himself. It seemed to Nestor that sometimes even the thorntrees bent aside before the giant reached them.
This pleasant interval ended abruptly just as Draffut was mounting a ridge of dry, comparatively high ground. At that point a large warbeast, armored and collared in the colors of Yambu, sprang in ambush at the Beast-Lord from a brake of reeds. The giant's reaction was practically instantaneous; before Nestor could draw his sword, Draffut had caught the attacker in midair, as if he were playing with a kitten. But then the giant threw the warbeast violently, so that the flying, screaming body broke tree branches and vanished behind a screen of trees some thirty meters distant before it splashed into the swamp.
Almost as if in response, there came a distant, whistling call, that sounded like some hunter's cry. Nestor had heard similar signals used to control warbeasts. Draffut paused for a moment, turning to gaze over the treetops to his left; then he moved swiftly off to his right, walking at a greater speed than ever. Now Nestor had to clap his half-drawn.sword back into its scabbard and once more hold tight with both hands.
"The advance guard of Yambu," said Draffut over his shoulder, in what he used for a low voice. "We will outspeed them if we can."
Looking back, Nestor saw more warbeasts already in pursuit. He counted three, and there might well be more. Hundreds of meters farther back, beyond the great catlike creatures, he could see the first advancing elements of a human army, some of them mounted and some in boats. He announced this to Draffut's ear, but the giant did not bother to answer. Draffut was almost, but not quite, running now. Maybe, thought Nestor, his size and build made a real run an impossibility for him. Nestor had considerable conference in Draffut's powers; but at the same time the man could almost feel those huge warbeast talons fastening on him from behind…
The chase went on. From time to time Nestor reported, in a voice he strove to keep calm, that their pursuers were catching up. Then abruptly Draffut stopped, and calmly turned to stand his ground.
"It is no use," he said. "They are too fast. And they are maddened with the lust to fight, and will not listen to me." With one hand he lifted Nestor from his shoulders, and placed the man in a high crotch of a dead tree. "Defend yourself," the Beast-Lord laconically advised him, and turned to do the same.
A moment later, half a dozen warbeasts, hot on the trail, came bounding out of the brush nearby. Draffut cuffed the first one to come in reach, grabbed and threw another by its tail, and had to pick a third one from his fur when it was actually brave enough to leap on him. He hurled it into the remaining three. With that all of the warbeasts that were still able to move scattered in flight, emitting uncharacteristic yelps. Nestor, his sword drawn and ready though showing no special powers, had nothing to do. Which, under the circumstances, was quite all right with him.
Draffut had just retrieved Nestor from his high perch when a new figure appeared. It was the form of a woman with long black hair, her body clothed in light armor of ebony and silver, on another ridge or island of dry land about a hundred meters distant to the west. She was mounted on a gray warbeast of such a size that Nestor for an instant thought it was a dragon.
Beneath the cloudy sky, the woman's armor flashed as if it were catching desert sunshine. She brandished a silver needle of a sword, and she was shouting something in their direction.
The words came clearly in her penetrating voice: "Remove yourself from my army's path, great beast, or I will set men to fight against you! I know your weakness; they'll kill you soon enough. And who is that you carry?"
Nestor had heard of people who rode on warbeasts, but never before had he seen it done. As he resumed his seat on Draffut's shoulders, the giant roared back: "Rather remove your bloodmad warbeasts from my path! Or else I will send you dragons enough to make your march through the swamp much more interesting." Without waiting to see what effect his words might have, he turned and stalked away, resuming his passage to the north. There was no observable pursuit.
"That was the Silver Queen herself. Yambu," said Nestor to Draffut's ear a little later. The comment was undoubtedly unnecessary, but the man was unable to let the encounter pass without saying something about it.
"Indeed." The huge voice came rumbling up through Draffut's neck and head. "There are elements of humanity that I sometimes wish I were able to fight against."
Once more they were traversing bog and thicket at what would have been a good speed for a riding-beast on flat, cleared ground. Some time passed in silence, except for the quick plash and thud of Draffut's feet, while Nestor pondered many things. Then he asked: "You said that you are planning to go and start an argument with the gods?"
"I must," said Draffut. And that was all the answer to his question that Nestor ever got.
But little further conversation was exchanged. Nestor welcomed the comfort of his ride, and watched the sun move in and out of clouds in the western sky. By the time Draffut stopped again, some hours had passed and the reddening sun was almost down. Imperceptibly the land had changed, continuous marsh giving way to intermittent bogs bridged by dry land. Once Nestor saw herdsmen watching from a distance.
The giant set Nestor down carefully on dry ground, and said to him: "Go north from here, and you will find Sir Andrew. From here on north the land is solid enough for you to walk, and savage beasts are fewer. My own way from here lies to the east."
"I wish you good luck," said Nestor. And then, when he had looked to the east, he would have said something more, for never until now had he known the sunset fires of Vulcan's forge to be so bright that they could be seen from this far west.
But Draffut was already gone.
When Dame Yoldi took Mark for the first time to her workroom, he discovered it not to be the dismal, forbidding chamber that he had for some reason expected. Rather it was open, cleanly decorated with things of nature, and as light as the dying, cloudy day outside could make it, entering narrow windows.
The enchantress lighted tapers, from a small oil lamp that was already burning. She distributed a few of these in the otherwise dark corners of the room, and placed two more on the central table where Dragonslicer now rested on a white linen cloth. Most of the floor space in the room was open, while shelves round all the walls contained an armament of magic, arrayed in books and bottles, boxes, jars, and bags. One set of open dishes held grain and dried fruit, another set what looked like plain water and dry earth. Yoldi made Mark sit down at the table near the sword, where she made him comfortable, and gave him a delicious drink, not quite like anything he had ever tasted before. Then she began to question him closely about his family, and about the several godswords he had seen, and about what he thought he would do with his own sword if he could ever get it back. Her questions suggested new ideas to Mark, and made him see his own situation in what seemed like a new light, so that when he looked at the sword before him on the table now he saw it as something different from the weapon he had once held in his own two hands and used to kill a dragon. The more he talked with Yoldi the more fearfully impressive the whole business grew. But somehow he was not more frightened.
Their chat was interrupted by an urgent tapping at the door. Yoldi went to open it, and listened briefly to someone just outside. A moment later, with a solemn face, she was beckoning to Mark to follow her out of the room. She led him up many stairs, and finally up a ladder, which brought them out onto what proved to be the highest rooftop of the castle. This was a flat area only a few meters square, copper-sheeted against weather and attack by fire, and bounded by a chesthigh parapet of stone. Sir Andrew's Master of the Beasts, a dour young man who gave the impression of wanting to be old, was on the roof already, doing something to one of a row of man-sized cages that stood under a shelter along the northern parapet. In these cages were kept the flyers, the inhuman messengers and scouts, temporarily before launching and when they had returned from flights.
When Dame Yoldi and Mark appeared on the roof, the BeastMaster silently pointed to the east, into the approaching night. In that direction a large arc of the horizon was sullenly aglow, with what looked like an untimely dawn, or distant flames.
"The mountains," Mark said, understanding the origin of the glow. And then: "My home."
Dame Yoldi, standing behind him, held him by the shoulders. "In which direction exactly is your village, boy?" Her voice at first sounded almost eager. "Can you point toward it? But no, I don't suppose that's possible. It's somewhere near those mountains, though."
"Yes." And Mark, continuing to stare at the distant fires, lapsed into silence.
"Don't be afraid." Yoldi's tone turned reassuring, while remaining brisk, refusing to treat volcanoes as a disaster. Her grip was comforting. "Your folic are probably all right. I know these foothill people, ready to take care of themselves. It might actually be a good thing for them, make them get out of Duke Fraktin's territory if they haven't done so already." The enchantress turned away to the dour man, asking: "When is your next scout due back from the east?"
Mark did not understand whatever it was that the man answered. He was intent on wondering what might be happening to his home, on picturing his mother and his sister as stumbling refugees.
"I wonder," Dame Yoldi was musing to herself, "if anyone's told Andrew about this yet. He ought to be told, but he's down there talking to the fellow from Yambu — probably wouldn't do to interrupt him now."
And now Mark saw that one of the airborne scouts was indeed coming in against the fading sky; coming from the south and not the east, but approaching with weary, urgent speed.
Baron Amintor, who was Queen Yambu's emissary to Sir Andrew, was a large man, the size of Sir Andrew himself but younger. The Baron with his muscles and his scars looked more the warrior than the diplomat. He had the diplomat's smooth tongue, though, and Sir Andrew had to admit to himself that the man's manners were courteous enough. It was only the substance of what the visitor had to say that Sir Andrew found totally objectionable.
The two men were conversing alone in a small room, not far above the ground level of the castle, and within earshot of Sir Andrew's armory, where the clang of many hammers upon metal signalled the process of full mobilization that the knight had already put into effect. It was a sound he did not want his visitor to miss.