Spell of the Witch World (Witch World Series) Read Online Free Page B

become that those guards were mainly women, armed with bows and with spears which had once been the harpoons of deep-sea fishermen. Well did we keep watch and ward, for we had seen several times what chanced in small settlements when those raving wolves of scavengers came down.
    It was midsummer of our second year in that pocket of earth, and most of the others were at labor tending what grain and roots we had saved for this season's planting, that I was on hill watch and saw for the first time riders on that faint track which would bring them to the south pass. I raised my bared sword and with the sun flickering on its bright blade signaled the alert down valley. I myself went by previously learned ways to spy closer upon those who came. For by this time we judged all strangers enemies.

    As I lay upon a sunwarmed rock and watched, I could see that they were little threat to us. For we made up in will and preparedness enough to handle these two.
    They were plainly fighting men, but their mail was rusted and gashed. One had been tied to his saddle and drooped so he might have fallen to the ground had it not been for those ties and the fact that his comrade rode close beside him, leading his mount. There were bloodied rags bound around the head and the shoulder of the half-unconscious rider, and about the forearm of his companion.
    That companion looked time and again to their back trail, as if he expected pursuers. He still wore a helm topped with a crest of a swooping hawk, though one wing of that was shorn away. And both had the ragged tatters of heraldic coats over their mail, though whatever device those had once displayed was so raveled as to be unreadable. Not that I was learned in the symbols of the noble Dale houses.
    Both men had swords, now sheathed. And the helmed one a crossbow. But they had no field packs, and their mounts ambled at a footsore pace, as if nigh to floundering.
    I inched a little back and got to my feet in the shadows, setting arrow to bow cord.
    “Stand!”
    My order must have seemed to come from empty air. The helmed man jerked his head. I could not see his face clearly because of the overhang of his headgear, but his hand was on sword hilt in swift, sure movement. Then he must have thought better of what might be useless defiance, for he did not draw.
    “Stand forth yourself, lurker, steel to steel!” His voice was hoarse and low, but he bore himself as one ready to meet trouble as it came.
    “Not so,” I answered. “I have that which will pin death to you, bold man! Come out of your saddle and put your weapons from you.”
    He laughed then.
    “Cut me down as you will, voice from the rocks. I put aside my blade for no man. If you want it—come and take it!”
    Now he deliberately drew his weapon, held it at readiness. Even as he faced me so his comrade stirred and groaned, and the other urged his horse a little on, pushing between the wounded man and where he must believe I stood.
    “Why do you come here?”
    His constant glancing at his back trail remained in my mind and I wondered if he led more trouble to us. Two such men we could handle—but more—
    “We come no place.” There was vast weariness in his voice. “We are hunted men as you can guess if you are not blind. Three days ago Haverdale stood rearguard at the Ford of Ingra. We are what is left of that force. We bought time as we promised, but how much—” He shrugged. “By your speech you are of the Dales, not the Hounds. I am Jervon, once Marshal of Horse—this is Pell, my lord's younger brother.”
    That bristling defiance seeped from him; the weariness lay like a heavy burden on him. And I knew—as if I had cast runes on it—that these men were no menace to my people, unless they drew after them what we could not handle.
    So I came out of hiding. As I wore mail, he believed me a man, and I let him think it. But I brought them into the Dale and to the tending of Aufrica.
    Those with Omund were first ready to find me