Alfric lost desire for sleep, the girl being as skilled in the arts of love as she was beautiful. But later they fell to talking.
A dim shaft of moonlight streamed through the window and etched her face against the dark, a faint mysterious rippling of light and shadow and loveliness. He drew her closer, kissed the smooth cheek, and murmured puzzledly: “Who are you? Why are you working in a place like this, when you could be the greatest courtesan in the world? Kings would be your slaves, and armies would go to battle with your name on their lips—if they only knew you.”
She shrugged. “Fortune does strange things sometimes,” she said. “I am Freha, and I am here because I must be.” Her slim fingers ruffled his harsh black hair. “But tonight,” she breathed, “I am glad of it, since you came. And who are you, stranger?”
“I am Alfric, called the Wanderer, son of Beodan the Bold, son of Asgar the Tall, from the hills and lakes of Aslak.”
“And why did you leave your home, Alfric?”
“I was restless.” For a bleak moment, he wondered why, indeed, he had ever longed to get away from the wind-whispering trees and the cool blue hills and the small, salty, sun-glinting lakes of home—from his father’s great hall and farmstead, from the brawling lusty warriors who were his comrades, from the tall sweet girls and joys of the hunt and feast—Well, it was past now, many years past.
“You must have come far,” said Freha.
“Far indeed. Over most of the world, I imagine.” From Aslak, pasture lands of hengists, to the acrid red deserts of Begh Sarrah, the scrub forests of Astrak and Tollaciuatl, the towered cities of Tsungchi—along the great canals which the ancient Empire had built in its last days, still bringing a trickle of water from the polar snows to the starved southlands—through ruins, always ruins, the crumbling sand-filled bones of cities which had been like jewels a hundred thousand years ago and more—
Her cool hands passed over his face, pausing at the long dull-white scar which slashed across his forehead and left cheek. “You have fought,” she said. “How you have fought!”
“Aye. All my life. That scar—? I got it at Altaris, when I led the Bonsonian spears at the storming of the gates. I have been war-captain, sitting beside kings, and I have been hunted outlaw with the garms baying at my heels. I have drunk the wine of war-lords and eaten the gruel of peasants and stalked my own game through the rime-white highlands of Larkin. I have pulled down cities, and been flung into the meanest jails. One king put a price on my head, another wanted me to take over his throne, and a third went down the streets before me, ringing a bell and crying that I was a god. But enough.” Alfric stirred restlessly. Somehow, he felt again uneasy, as if—
Freha pulled his face to hers, and the kiss lasted a long time. Presently she murmured, “We have heard some rumors of great deeds and clashing swords, here in Valkarion. The story of the fall of Altaris is told in the marketplaces, and folk listen till far into the night. But why did you not stay with your kings and war-lords and captured cities? You could have been a king yourself.”
“I grew weary of it,” he answered shortly.
“Weary—of kingly power?”
“Why not? Those courts are nothing—a barbarian ruling over one or two cities, and calling himself a king and trying drearily to hold a court worthy of the title. The same, always the same endless squabbling, carrion birds quarreling among the bones of the Empire. I went on the next war, or to see the next part of the world, and erelong I learned never to stay too long in one place lest the newness of it wear off.”
“Valkarion is ever new, Alfric. A man could live his life here and never see all there was.”
“Perhaps. So they told me. And it was, after all, the old seat of the Empire, and its shrunken remnant of territory is still greater than any other domain. So I came here to see for myself.” Alfric grinned, a wolfish gleam of teeth in the night. “Also, I heard tales—restlessness, a struggle for power between Temple and Imperium, with the Emperor an old man and the last of his line, unable to get a child on his young queen Hildaborg. It seemed opportune.”
“How so?” He thought she breathed faster, lying there beside him.
* * * *
He chuckled, a harsh iron sound in his corded throat. “How should I know? Except that when such a hell’s broth is bubbling, a fighting man can always scoop up loot or power or—at the very least—adventure. If nothing else, there might be the Empress. They say she’s a half barbarian herself, a princess of Choredon, and a lusty wench giving hospitality to every visiting noble or knight.” He felt Freha stiffen a little, and added: “But that doesn’t interest me now, when I’ve found you. Freha, leave this place with me tomorrow and you’ll wear the crown jewels of Valkarion.”
“Or else see your head on a pike above the walls,” she said.
Faintly through the window and the whining night-wind, they heard the crash of a great gong.
“Dannos is rising,” whispered Freha. “Tonight he mates with Mother Amaris. It is said that the Fates walk through the streets of Valkarion on such nights.” She shivered. “Indeed they do on this eve.”
“Perhaps,” said Alfric, though the hackles rose on his neck. “But how do you know?”
“Have you not heard?” Her voice shuddered, seeming to blend with the moan of wind and steady, slow boom of gong. “Have you not heard? The Emperor Aureon is dying. He is not expected to last till dawn. The Thirty-ninth Dynasty dies with him, and—and there is no successor!”
The wind mumbled under the eaves, rattling the window frame and flowing darkly through the alley.
“Ha!” Alfric laughed harshly, exultantly. “A chance—by Ruho, what a chance!”
Of a sudden he stiffened, and the voice of danger was a great shout in his head. He sat up, cocking his ears, and heard the faint scratch and scrape—aye, under the window, coming close—
He slid from the covers and drew his sword where it lay on the floor. The boards felt cold under his bare feet, the night air fingered his skin with icy hands. “What is it?” whispered Freha. She sat up, the dark hair tumbling past her frightened face. “What is it, Alfric?”
He made no answer, but padded over to the window. Flattened against the wall, he stood waiting as a hand raised the sash from outside.
The pale cold light of Amaris fell on the hand that now gripped the sill. A body lifted itself, one-handed, the other clutching a knife. For an instant Alfric saw the flat hairless face in the moonlight, the double crescent brand livid against its horrible blankness. Then in one rippling motion the slave was inside the room.
Alfric thrust, slicing his heart. As the man fell, another swarmed up behind him. He and Alfric faced each other, tableau for one instant of rivering moonlight and whining wind and remotely beating gong. Then the barbarian’s long arm shot out, yanked the slave in, and twisted him in an unbreakable wrestler’s grip.
“Talk!” he hissed into the ear of the writhing creature. “Talk, or I’ll break you bone by bone. Why are you here?”
“He can’t,” said Freha. She came up to them, white in the moonlight, her long hair blowing loose about her shoulders. “The Temple breeds these slaves, raises them from birth to utter, fanatical obedience. And—see—” She pointed to the dead man gaping under the window.
Stooping over, Alfric saw that he had no tongue.
* * * *
The northerner shuddered. With a convulsive movement, he broke the neck of his prisoner and flung the body aside. “What do they want?” he panted. “Why are they after me?”
“There is a prophecy—but quick, there will be others. Out, down to the taproom—we must have protection—”
“The assassins would hardly be so stupid as to leave us a way out,” grunted Alfric. “Any down there who might help us are probably dead or made prisoner now. No doubt these men have friends on guard, just outside the door—men who’ll come in pretty soon when these don’t come out—”
“Aye—that would be the way of the Temple—but where, then, where?”
Alfric flung on his kilt, dagger belt, and baldric. “Out the window!” He whipped the girl to him, held her supple body against his, kissed her hard and swift as the swoop of a hunting falkh. “Goodbye, Freha, you have been a wonderful companion. I’ll see you again—if I live.”
“But—you can’t leave me!” she gasped. “The slaves will burst through—”
“Why should they harm you? They’re after me.”
“They will.” He felt her shaking against him. “They will, that’s their way—oh!”
The door shuddered as a heavy weight was flung against it. “That’s they,” snarled Alfric. “And the bolt won’t hold very long. I’d like to stay and fight, but—Come!” He grabbed his cloak off the floor and buckled it across Freha’s slim naked shoulders. “I’ll go first—then you jump.”
He balanced on the window-sill, then leaped. Even as he fell, he wondered at the agility of the slaves who had crawled up the wall. It was of roughset stones, but even so—
He hit the muck and cobblestones of the alley with the silent poise of a jaccur, and turned up to the window. It was just above the pit-black shadows, a square of darkness in the moon-whitened wall. “Come!” he called softly.
Freha’s body gleamed briefly in the moonlight as she sprang. He caught her in his arms, set her down, and drew his sword. “Let’s go,” he growled. Then suddenly: “But where? Will the city guards protect us?”
“Some might,” she answered shakily, “but most are controlled by fear of the Temple’s curse. Best we go toward the palace. The Emperor’s Household troops are loyal to him and hate the priesthood which seeks to usurp his power.”
“We can head that way,” he nodded, “meanwhile looking for a place to hide.” He took her hand and they trotted through the thick darkness toward the dim light marking the end of the alley.
Other feet padded in the gloom. Alfric snarled soundlessly and pulled himself and the girl against a wall. He was almost blind in the dark, but he strained his ears, pointing them this way and that in search of the enemy.
The others had also stopped moving. They would be waiting for him to stir, and their own motionlessness could surely outlast the girl’s—anyway, the pursuit from the room would be after him in another moment, when the door gave way—
“Run!” he snapped.
* * * *
He felt a dart blow by the spot where he had spoken, and lengthened his frantic stride. A form rose before him, vague in the night. He chopped down with his sword, and felt a grim joy at the ripping of flesh and sundering of bone.
Now—out of the alley, into a street not much wider or lighter, and down its shadowy length. The slaves would be behind, but—
There was a one-story house ahead, of the usual flat-roofed construction. “Up!” gasped Alfric, and made a stirrup of his hands. He fairly flung the girl onto the roof. She gave him a hand up, bracing her feet against the parapet, and they fell down together behind it.
Alfric heard the slaves’ bare feet trotting below him, but dared not risk a glance. Snakelike, he and Freha slithered across the housetop. Only a narrow space separated them from the next; they jumped that and crossed over to another and higher roof. From this, Alfric peered into the street beyond.
A couple of city guards were walking down it, spears at the ready. Alfric wondered whether he should join them—no, they would be no shield against a blowgun dart sent from an alley—anyway, they might be priest-loyal.
He put his mouth to Freha’s ear, even then aware of the dark silky hair tickling his lips, and whispered: “What next?”
“I don’t know.” She looked ahead over the nighted roofs to the great central forum, still ruddy-bright with torches. Beyond it, the city climbed toward a double hill, on either crest of which was a building. One must be the palace, thought Alfric—it was in the graceful colonnaded style of the later Empire, white marble under Amaris. Nearly all its windows were dark; but he thought, puzzledly, that it was surrounded by a ring of fires.
The other building was a great gray pile, sprawling its grim massiveness in a red blaze of light. From it came the steady gong-beat and a rising chant—the Temple of the Two Moons, holding vigil at their wedding.
The night was huge above them, a vault of infinite crystal black in which the stars glittered in their frosty myriads and the Milky Way tumbled its bright mysterious cataract between the constellations. The pale disc of Amaris rode high, painting the city and the hills and the dead sea-floor with its cold ghostly light. And now Dannos was swinging rapidly out of the west, brightening the dark and casting weird double shadows that slowly writhed with its changing position.
It was bitter chill. The wind blew and blew, hooting down the streets, banging signs and driving dead leaves and sand and bits of parchment before it. Alfric shivered, wishing for the rest of his clothes. In the waxing moonlight, he could see sand-devils whirling on the sea-bottom, a witches’ dance—and on such a night, trolls and ghosts and the Fates themselves might well be abroad.
He set his teeth against chattering and tried to fix his mind on real and desperately urgent problems. “The priests seemed able to trace us,” he said. “At least, they knew where I went for lodging. Best we work toward the palace as you say, but look for a ruined house or some such place to hide in till morning.”