Chapter 21

FOUR UNEVENTFUL DAYS brought Aillas to Tawn Timble. Here he bought two plump chickens, a ham, a flitch of bacon and four jugs of red wine. He packed some of the goods in his saddlebags, tied the rest to his saddle and rode north through Glym-wode, to the cottage of Graithe and Wynes.

Graithe came to meet him. At the sight of the provisions he called back into the cottage: "Woman, start the fire under the spit!

Tonight we dine like lords."

"We will dine and drink well," said Aillas. "Still I must arrive at Madling Meadow before tomorrow's daybreak."

The three supped on chickens stuffed with barley and onions and roasted to a turn, hearth-cake set to catch the drippings, a pot of fieldgreens simmered with bacon, a salad of cress.

"If I ate so much every night, I would no longer care to chop logs in the morning," declared Graithe.

"Pray the day will arrive!" exclaimed Wynes.

"Who knows? Perhaps even before you expect it," said Aillas. "But I am tired and I must arise before sun-up."

Half an hour before sunrise Aillas stood by Madling Meadow. He waited in the gloom under the trees until the first glint of rising sun showed in the east, then slowly started across the dewwet grass, the gem in his hand. As he neared the hummock he began to hear small twitters and warblings in a register almost too high for his ear to perceive. Something slapped at the hand which carried the gem; Aillas only clenched his hand the tighter.

Invisible fingertips tweaked his ears and pulled his hair; his hat was whisked away and flung high in the air.

Aillas spoke in a gentle voice: "Fairies, kind fairies: do not treat me so! I am Aillas, father to my son Dhrun, whom you loved."

There was a moment of breathless silence. Aillas continued toward the hummock, to halt twenty yards short.

The hummock suddenly became misty, and underwent changes, as of images gathering and going, shifting in and out of focus.

From the hummock came a red carpet, unrolling almost to where Aillas stood. Along the carpet came a fairy five feet tall, pale brown of skin, with an over-sheen of olive-green. He wore a scarlet robe trimmed with white weasel-heads, a fragile crown of gold strands and green velvet slippers. To right and left other fairies showed on the margin of visibility, never totally substantial.

"I am King Throbius," stated the fairy. "You are indeed the father of our beloved Dhrun?" "Yes, your Majesty."

"In that case, our love transfers in part to you, and you will find no harm at Thripsey Shee."

"I give you my thanks, your Majesty."

"No thanks are needed; we are honored by your presence. What is that which you hold in your hand?"

Another fairy spoke softly: "Oh, the thrilling dazzle!" "Your Majesty, this is a magic gem, of enormous value!" Fairy voices murmured: "True, true. A fervent gem, of magic hue."

"Allow me to hold it," said King Throbius, in a peremptory voice.

"Your Majesty, ordinarily your wishes would command me, but I have been most solemnly instructed. I want my son Dhrun returned to me alive and well; then and only then may I relinquish the gem."

From the fairies came murmurs of surprise and disapproval: "A

naughty fellow!" "Just so, the mortals!" "One can never trust their gentility." "Pale and coarse as rats!"

King Throbius spoke: "I regret to state that Dhrun is no longer resident among us. He grew into boyhood and we were forced to send him away."

Aillas gaped in astonishment. "He is barely a year old!" "In the shee time jerks and skips like a may-fly. We never trouble to reckon it out. When Dhrun left, he was, in your terms, perhaps nine years old."

Aillas stood silent.

"Please give me the pretty bauble," coaxed King Throbius, in the voice he might use upon a skittish cow whose milk he hoped to steal.

"My position remains the same. Only when you give me my son."

"That is next to impossible. He departed some time ago. Now then"—King Throbius' voice became harsh—"do as I command or never will you see your son again!"

Aillas uttered a wild laugh. "I have never seen him yet! What have I to lose?"

"We can transform you into a badger," piped a voice.

"Or a milkweed fluff."

"Or a sparrow with the horns of an elk."

Aillas asked King Throbius: "You promised me your love and protection; now I am threatened. Is this fairy honor?"

"Our honor is bright," declared King Throbius in a ringing voice.

He nodded crisply right and left in satisfaction, as his subjects called out endorsement.

"In that case, I return to my offer: this fabulous gem for my son."

A shrill voice cried out: "That may not be, since it would bring good luck to Dhrun! I hate him, most severely! I brought a mordet*

on him."

*A unit of acrimony and malice, as expressed in the terms of a curse.

King Throbius spoke in the silkiest of voices: "And what was the mordet?"

"Aha, harrumf. Seven years."

"Indeed. I find myself vexed. For seven years you shall taste not nectar but tooth-twisting vinegar. For seven years you will smell bad smells and never find the source. For seven years your wings will fail you and your legs will weigh heavy as lead and sink you four inches deep into all but the hardest ground. For seven years you will carry all slops and slimes from the shee. For seven years you will know an itch on your belly that no scratching will relieve. And for seven years you will not be allowed to look upon the pretty new bauble."

Falael seemed most distressed by the final injunction. "Oh, the bauble? Good King Throbius, do not taunt me so! I crave that color! It is my most cherished thing!"

"So it must be! Away with you!"

Aillas asked: "Then you will bring back Dhrun?"

"Would you take me into a fairy war with Trelawny Shee, or Zady Shee, or Misty Valley Shee? Or any other shee which guards the forest? You must ask a reasonable price for your bit of stone.

Flink!" "Here, sir."

"What can we offer Prince Aillas to fulfill his needs?"

"Sir, I might suggest the Never-fail, as carried by Sir Chil the fairy knight."

"A happy thought! Flink, you are most ingenious! Go, prepare the implement, on this instant!"

"On this instant it shall be, sir!"

Aillas ostentatiously put his hand, with the gem, into his pouch.

"What is a 'Never-fail'?"

Flink's voice, breathless and shrill, sounded beside King Throbius. "I have it here, sir, after great and diligent toil at your order."

"When I require haste, Flink hurries," King Throbius told Aillas.

"When I use the word 'instant' he understands the word to mean

'now.'"

"Just so," panted Flink. "Ah, how I have toiled to please Prince Aillas! If he deigns me only one word of praise, I am more than repaid!"

"That is the true Flink speaking!" King Throbius told Aillas.

"Honest and fine is Flink!"

"I am interested less in Flink than in my son Dhrun. You were about to bring him to me."

"Better! The Never-fail will serve you all your life long, always to indicate where Lord Dhrun may be found. Notice!" King Throbius displayed an irregular object three inches in diameter, carved from a walnut burl and suspended from a chain. A protuberance to the side terminated in a point ripped with a sharp tooth.

King Throbius dangled the Never-fail on its chain. "You will note the direction indicated by the white fairy-tooth? Along that slant you will find your son Dhrun. The Never-fail is failureproof and warranted forever. Take it! The instrument will guide you infallibly to your son!"

Aillas indignantly shook his head., "It points north, into the forest, where only fools and fairies go. This Never-fail points the direction of my own death—or it may take me without fail to Dhrun's corpse."

King Throbius studied the instrument. "He is alive, otherwise the tooth would not snap to direction with such vigor. As for your own safety, I can only say that danger exists everywhere, for you and for me. Would you feel secure walking the streets of Lyonesse Town? I suspect not. Or even Domreis, where Prince Trewan hopes to make himself king? Danger is like the air we breathe. Why cavil at the club of an ogre or the maw of an ossip? Death comes to all mortals."

"Bah!" muttered Aillas. "Flink is fast on his feet; let him run out into the forest with the Never-fail and bring back my son."

From all sides came titters, quickly stilled when King Throbius, not amused, thrust his arm upward. "The sun stands hot and high; the dew is going and the bees are first at our flower-cups. I am losing my zest for transactions. What are your final terms?"

"As before I want my son, sound and safe. That means no mordets of bad luck and Dhrun my son in my safe possession. For this, the gem."

"One can only do the reasonable and convenient," said King Throbius. "Falael shall lift the mordet. As for Dhrun: here is the Never-fail and with it our warranty: it shall lead you to Dhrun in life's full vigor. Take it now." He pressed the Never-fail into Aillas' hands, who thereupon released his grip on the gem. King Throbius snatched it and held it high. "It is ours!"

From all sides came a suspiration of awe and joy: "Ah!" "Ah, see it glow!" "A lump, a lummox!" "Look what he gave for a trifle!"

"For such a treasure he might have claimed a wind-boat, or a palanquin carried by racing griffins, with fairy maids in attendance!" "Or a castle of twenty towers on Misty Meadow!" "Oh the fool, the fool!"

The illusions flickered; King Throbius began to lose his definition. "Wait!" cried Aillas. He caught hold of the scarlet cloak. "What of the mordet? It must be lifted!"

Flink spoke aghast: "Mortal, you have touched the royal garment!

That is an irredemptible offense!"

"Your promises protect me," said Aillas. "The mordet of bad luck must be lifted!"

"Tiresome," sighed King Throbius. "I suppose I must see to it.

Falael! You, yonder, so industriously scratching your belly—

remove your curse and I will remove the itch."

"Honor is at stake!" cried Falael. "Would you have me seem a weathercock?"

"No one will take the slightest notice."

"Let him apologize for his evil side-glances." Aillas said: "As his father, I will act as surrogate and tender his profound regrets for those deeds which disturbed you."

"After all, it was not kind to treat me so."

"Of course not! You are sensitive and just."

"In that case I will remind King Throbius that the mordet was his own; I merely tricked Dhrun into looking back."

"Is that the way of it?" demanded King Throbius.

Flink said: "Just so, your Majesty." "Then I can do nothing. The royal curse is indelible."

"Give me back the gem!" cried Aillas. "You have not held to your bargain."

"I promised to do all reasonable and convenient. This I have done; anything more is not convenient. Flink! Aillas becomes tiresome.

On which hem did he seize my robe—north, east, south or west?"

"On the west, sire."

"The west, eh? Well, we cannot harm him, but we can move him. Take him west, since that seems to be his preference, as far as possible."

Aillas was whirled up and away through the sky. Windy draughts howled in his ears; sun, clouds and earth tumbled across his vision. He lofted high in trajectory, then dropped toward glittering sunlit water, and alighted on sand at the edge of the surf. "Here is west as west may be," said a voice choking with merriment. "Think kindly of us! Were we rude, west might have been another half-mile."

The voice was gone. Aillas, rising shakily to his feet, stood alone on a bleak promontory not far from a town. The Never-fail had been tossed on the wet sand at his feet; he picked it up before the surf could carry it away.

Aillas organized his thoughts. Apparently he stood at Cape Farewell, at the far western edge of Lyonesse. The town would be Pargetta.

Aillas held the Never-fail suspended. The tooth jerked about to point toward the the northeast.

Aillas heaved a deep sigh of frustration, then trudged up the beach to Pargetta, hard under the Castle Malisse. He ate bread and fried fish at the inn, then, after an hour's wrangling with the hostler, he bought a hammer-headed gray stallion of mature years, with a willful disposition and no grace whatever, but still capable of good service if not used too hard, and—no small consideration—of a price relatively low.

Never-tail pointed to the northeast; with half the day still ahead, Aillas set off along Old Street,* up the valley of the River Syrinx and into the fastnesses of the Troagh, the southern culmination of the Teach tac Teach. He passed the night at a lonely mountain inn and late the next day he arrived at Nolsby Sevan, market town and junction of three important roads: The Sfer Arct leading south to Lyonesse Town, Old Street, and the Ulf Passway winding north into the Ulflands, by way of Kaul Bo-cach.

*Old Street, running from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Cantabria, had been laid by the Magdals two thousand years before the coming of the Danaans. According to popular lore every step along Old Street overlooked a battlefield. When the full moon shone at Beltane, ghosts of the slain came out to stand along Old Street and stare at their adversaries across the way.

Aillas took lodging at the White Horse Inn and next day set off to the north along the Ulf Passway, at the best speed his obstinate mount would allow. His plans were not elaborate nor, by the nature of things, fully detailed. He would ride up the Passway, enter South Ulfland at Kaul Bocach, and proceed into Dahaut along the Trompada, somehow giving Tintzin Fyral a wide berth. At Camperdilly Corners he would leave the Trompada for the East-West Road: a route which according to the Never-Fail should take him more or less directly to Dhrun, if so much were allowed by the seven-year mordet.

A few miles along the way Aillas overtook a band of itinerant peddlers bound for Ys and towns along the South Ulf coast. Aillas joined the group to avoid passing Kaul Bocach alone, so perhaps to be an object of suspicion.

At Kaul Bocach there was unsettling news, brought by refugees from the north. The Ska had once more erupted across both North and South Ulfland, almost isolating the city Oaldes, with King Oriante and his paltry court, and the puzzle remained why the Ska used such forbearance toward the powerless Oriante.

In another operation the Ska had driven east to the Dahaut border and beyond, to seize the great fortress Poelitetz overlooking the Plain of Shadows.

Ska strategy presented no mysteries to the day sergeant at Kaul Bocach. "They intend to take the Ulflands, North and South, as a pike takes a perch. Can there be any doubt? A bite at a time: a nip here, a gnaw there, and soon the black flag flies from Tawzy Head to Cape lay, and someday they may be bold enough to try for Ys and Vale Evander, if ever they could take Tintzin Fyral." He held up his hand. "No, don't tell me! That's not the way of a pike with a perch; he takes all at a gulp. But it's all one in the end!"

Somewhat daunted the peddlers took counsel in a grove of aspen trees, and finally decided to proceed with caution, at least as far as Ys.

Five miles along the road the peddlers met a straggle of peasant folk, some with horses or donkeys, others driving farm carts loaded with household possessions, others going afoot, with infants and children: refugees, so they identified themselves, driven from their steadings by the Ska. One great black army, so they stated, had already stormed across South Ulfland, obliterating resistance, enslaving able men and women, burning the keeps and castles of the Ulfish barons.

Again the peddlers, now in distress, took counsel, and once again decided to proceed at least as far as Tintzin Fyral. "But no farther until safety is assured!" declared the most sagacious of the group. "Remember: one step into the Vale and we must pay the Duke's tolls!"

"On then!" said another. "To Tintzin Fyral, and we shall see how the land lies."

The group continued along the road, only in short order to meet another band of refugees, who brought news of the most startling sort: the Ska army had reached Tintzin Fyral and even now had placed it under attack.

There was no more question of going forward; the peddlers turned in their tracks and returned south far more briskly than they had come.

Aillas remained alone on the road. Tintzin Fyral lay yet another five miles ahead. He had no choice but to attempt to discover a route to detour Tintzin Fyral: one which climbed into the mountains, over, then descended once more to the Trompada.

At a small steep ravine choked with scrub-oak and stunted cedar, Aillas dismounted and led his horse up the faintest of trails toward the skyline. Harsh vegetation blocked the way; loose rocks rolled underfoot and the hammer-headed gray horse had no taste for mountain climbing. During the first hour Aillas progressed only a mile. After another hour he arrived at the ridge of a spur which splayed out from the central crag. The route became easier and led in a direction parallel to the road below, but always climbing, up toward that flat-topped mountain known as Tac Tor: the highest point within range of vision.

Tintzin Fyral could not be far away. Stopping to catch his breath, Aillas thought to hear far faint shouts. Thoughtfully he continued, keeping as much to cover as possible. Tintzin Fyral, he calculated, stood across Vale Evander, immediately beyond Tac Tor.

He was approaching the scene of siege far closer than he had intended.

Sunset found him a hundred yards below the summit, in a little dell beside a covert of mountain larches. Aillas cut himself a bed of boughs, tied his horse on a long tether near a rivulet seeping from a spring. Forgoing the comfort of a fire, he ate bread and cheese from his saddlebag. From his pouch he brought Never-fail and watched as the tooth swung to the northeast, with perhaps a trifle more easting than before.

He tucked Never-fail into his pouch, shoved pouch and saddle-bags deep under a laurel bush and went out on the ridge to look around the landscape. Afterglow had not yet left the sky and a full moon of enormous dimensions rose from the black loom of Forest Tantrevalles. Nowhere could be seen gleam of candle or lamp, nor the flicker of fire.

Aillas considered the flat summit, only a hundred yards above. In the half-light he noticed a trail; others had fared this way before, though not by the route he had come.

Aillas followed the path to the summit to find a flat area of three or four acres, with a stone altar and five dolmens at the center, standing stark and quiet in the moonlight.

Giving wide berth to the altar Aillas crossed the flat summit, to where the opposite brink dropped away in a cliff. Tintzin Fyral seemed so close that he might have flung a stone across and down to the roof of the highest tower. The castle was illuminated as if for a gala, windows aglow with golden light. Along the ridge behind the castle hundreds of small fires flickered red and orange; among them moved a company of tall somber warriors, to a number Aillas could not estimate. At their back, dim in the firelight, stood the gaunt frames of four large siege engines.

Clearly here was no chance or capricious escapade.

The chasm at Aillas' feet dropped sheer to the floor of Vale Evander. Below the castle torches lit a parade-ground, now unoccupied; other torches, in parallel rows, marked the parapets of a wall across the narrow neck of the Vale: like the paradeground devoid of defenders.

A mile to the west, along the ridge, another spatter of camp-fires indicated a second encampment, presumably Ska.

The scene was one of weird grandeur which affected Aillas with awe. He watched for a period, then turned away and descended through the moonlight to his own camp.

The night was unseasonably cool. Aillas lay on his bed of boughs, shivering under cloak and saddleblanket. Presently he slept, but only fitfully, waking from time to time to watch the progress of the moon across the sky. Once, with the moon halfway down in the west he heard a far contralto cry of misery: something between a howl and a moan, which brought up the hairs at the the back of his neck. He huddled deep into his bed. Minutes passed; the call was not repeated. At last he fell into a torpor which kept him asleep somewhat longer than he had intended, and he awoke only when rays from the rising sun shone into his face.

He rose lethargically, washed his face in the stream and considered how best to proceed. The trail to the summit might well lead down to join the Trompada: a convenient route, if it avoided the Ska. He decided to return to the summit the better to spy out the lay of the land. Taking a crust of bread and a knob of cheese to eat along the way, he climbed to the top. The mountains below and behind fell away in humping spurs, gulches and wallowing folds almost to the verge of the forest. As best he could determine the trail descended to the Trompada and so would serve him well.

On this clear sunny morning the air smelled sweet of mountain herbs: heather, gorse, rosemary, cedar. Aillas crossed the summit to see how went the siege of Tintzin Fyral. It was, he reflected, an episode of great significance; if the Ska commanded both Poelitetz and Tintzin Fyral, they effectively controlled the Ulflands.

Approaching the brink he dropped to his hands and knees to avoid impinging his silhouette on the skyline; nearing the brink he went flat and crawled, and at last peered out across the gorge. Almost below Tintzin Fyral reared high on its tall crag: close, but not so close as it had seemed the night before, when he thought he could fling a stone across the chasm to the roof. Now it was clear that the castle lay beyond all but the strongest arrow-flight. The uppermost tower culminated in a terrace guarded by parapets. A swayback saddle, or ridge joined the castle to the heights beyond, where the closest vantage area, reinforced from below by a retaining wall of stone blocks, overlooked the castle well within bowshot range. Remarkable, thought Aillas, the foolish arrogance of Faude Carfilhiot, to allow so convenient a platform to remain unguarded. The area now swarmed with Ska troops. They wore steel caps, and long-sleeved black surcoats; they moved with a grim and agile purpose, which suggested an army of black killer-ants. If King Casmir had hoped to create an alliance, or at the very least a truce with the Ska, his hopes now were blasted, since by the attack the Ska had declared themselves his adversaries.

Both the castle and Vale Evander seemed lethargic this bright morning. No peasant tilled his field nor walked the road, nor were Carfilhiot's troops anywhere visible. By dint of great exertion the Ska had transported four large catapults across the moors, up the mountainside and along the ridge which commanded Tintzin Fyral. As Aillas watched they dragged the engines forward. They were, so he saw, heavily built devices capable of tossing a hundred-pound boulder the distance to Tintzin Fyral, to knock down a merlon, break open an embrasure, rupture a wall, and eventually, after repeated blows, to demolish the high tower itself. Worked by competent engineers, and with uniform missiles, their accuracy could be almost exact.

As Aillas watched, they worked the catapults forward to the edge of that vantage overlooking Tintzin Fyral.

Carfilhiot himself strolled out upon the terrace, wearing a pale blue morning gown: apparently he had just risen from bed. Ska archers immediately ran forward and sent a flight of arrows singing across the gorge. Carfilhiot stepped behind a merlon with a frown of annoyance for the interruption of his promenade. Three of his retainers appeared on the roof and quickly erected sections of metal mesh along the parapets so as to ward away Ska arrows, and Carfilhiot was again able to take the morning air. The Ska watched him with perplexity and exchanged ironic comments, meanwhile proceeding to ballast their catapults.

Aillas knew that he must depart, but could not bring himself to leave. The stage was set, the curtains drawn, the actors had appeared: the drama was about to begin. The Ska manned the windlasses. The massive propulsion beams bent backward, groaning and creaking; stone missiles were placed into the projection chutes. The master archers turned screws, perfecting their aim.

All was ready for the first volley.

Carfilhiot suddenly seemed to take cognizance of the threat to his tower. He made an annoyed gesture and spoke a word over his shoulder. Underneath the catapults the stone abutments supporting the vantage collapsed. Down toppled catapults, missiles, rubble, archers, engineers and ordinary troops. They fell a long way, with hallucinatory slowness: down, down, twisting, wheeling, bounding and sliding the last hundred feet, to stop in an unpleasant tangle of stone, timbers and broken bodies. Carfilhiot took a final turn around the terrace, and went into the castle.

The Ska assessed the situation, stern rather than angry. Aillas drew back, beyond the Ska range of vision. High time for him to be on his way, as far and as fast as possible. He looked toward the stone altar in a new spirit of speculation. Carfilhiot was clearly a man of wily tricks. Would he leave so tempting a lookout point for presumptive enemies unprotected? Aillas, suddenly nervous, took a final look toward Tintzin Fyral. Ska work-gangs, evidently slaves, were dragging timbers along the ridge. The Ska, though bereft of their catapults, were not yet abandoning the siege.

Aillas watched for a minute, two minutes. He turned away from the edge of the cliff and found confronting him a patrol of seven men wearing Ska black: a corporal and six warriors, two standing with bows drawn.

Aillas held up his hands. "I am a traveler only; let me go my way."

The corporal, a tall man with a strange wild face, gave a guttural croak of derision. "Up here on the mountain? You are a spy!"

"A spy? For what purpose? What could I tell anyone? That the Ska are attacking Tintzin Fyral? I came up here to find a safe route around the battle."

"You are quite safe now. Come along; even two-legs* have their uses."

*Two-leg: a semi-contemptuous term applied by the Ska to all other men than themselves: a contraction of "two-legged animal," to designate a middle category between "Ska" and "four-leg."

Another common pejorative, nyek "horse-smell" made reference to the difference in body odor between Ska and other races, the Ska seeming to smell, not unpleasantly, of camphor, turpentine, a trace of musk.

The Ska took Aillas' sword and tied a rope around his neck. He was led down from Tac Tor, across the gorge and up to the Ska encampment. He was stripped of his garments, shorn bald, forced to wash using yellow soap and water, then he was given new garments of gray linsey-woolsey, and finally a smith riveted an iron collar around his neck, with a ring to which a chain might be attached.

Aillas was seized by four men in gray tunics and bent face down over a log. His trousers were dropped; the smith brought a red-hot iron and branded his right buttock. He heard the sizzle of burning flesh and smelled the subsequent odor, which prompted him to droop his head and vomit, inducing those who held him to curse and jump aside, but they continued to hold him while a bandage was slapped down over the burn. Then he was hoisted to his feet.

A Ska sergeant called to him. "Pull up your trousers and come over here." Aillas obeyed. "Name?"

"Aillas."

The sergeant wrote in a ledger. "Place of birth?"

"I don't know."

Again the sergeant wrote, then he looked up. "Today luck is your friend; you now may call yourself Skaling, inferior only to a natural Ska. Acts of violence against Ska or Skaling; sexual perversion; lack of cleanliness; insubordination; sullen, insolent, truculent or disorderly behavior are not tolerated.

Forget your past; it is a dream! You are now Skaling, and the Ska way is your way. You are assigned to Group Leader Taussig. Obey him, work faithfully: you shall have no cause for complaint.

Yonder is Taussig; report to him immediately."

Taussig, a short grizzled Skaling, half-walked and half-hopped on one straight and one crooked leg, making tense gestures and squinting through narrow pale blue eyes as if in a state of chronic anger. He gave Aillas a brief inspection and clipped a long light chain to Aillas' collar. "I am Taussig. Whatever your name, forget it. You are now Taussig Six. When I yell 'Six' I mean you. I run a tight squad. I compete in production. To please me, you must compete and try to outdo all the other squads. Do you understand?"

"I understand your words," said Aillas.

"That is not proper! Say 'Yes sir!'"

"Yes, sir."

"Already I feel resentment and resistance in you. Be wary! I am fair but not forgiving! Work your best, or better than your best, so that we all make grade. Slack and shirk, and I suffer as well as you, and this must not be! Come now, to work!"

Taussig's platoon, with the addition of Aillas, was now at its full complement of six. Taussig took them down into a stony sunbaked gully and put them to work dragging timbers up to the ridge and downslope to where Ska and Skaling worked together to build a timber tunnel along the saddle toward Tintzin Fyral, through which a battering ram might then be swung against the castle gate. On the parapets Carfilhiot's archers watched for targets: Ska or Skaling alike. Whenever one such exposed himself an arrow instantly darted down from above.

When the timber passage reached halfway across the saddle, Carfilhiot raised an onager to the turret, and began to launch hundred-pound stones at the timber structure: to no avail; the timbers were elastic and cunningly joined. The stones, striking the timbers, crushed bark, splintered the surface, then tumbled away down into the gulch.

Aillas quickly discovered that his fellows in Taussig's platoon were no more anxious to elevate Taussig's grade than himself.

Taussig, hence, ran bobbing and limping back and forth in a state of frenzy, calling exhortations, threats and abuse. "Shoulders into it, Five!" "Pull, pull!" "Are you all sick?" "Three, you corpse! Pull now!" "Six, I'm watching you! I know your kind!

You're dogging it already!" So far as Aillas could determine Taussig's squad achieved as much as the other, and he heard Taussig's outcries with indifference. The morning's calamity had left him numb; the full scope was only just beginning to make itself felt.

At noon the Skalings were fed bread and soup. Aillas sat on his left buttock, in a state of numb reverie. During the morning Aillas had been teamed with Yane, a taciturn North Ulf, perhaps forty years old. Yane was of no great stature, sinewy and longarmed, with dark coarse hair and a pinched leathery face. Yane watched Aillas a few minutes, then said gruffly: "Eat, lad; keep up your strength. No good comes of brooding."

"I have affairs which I can't neglect."

"Forget them; your new life has started."

Aillas shook his head. "Not for me."

Yane grunted. "If you try to escape everyone in your squad is flogged and drops in grade, including Taussig. So everyone watches everyone else."

"No one escapes?"

"Seldom."

"What of yourself? Have you never attempted escape?"

"Escape is more difficult than you might think. It is a subject no one discusses."

"And no one is freed?"

"After your stint you are pensioned. They don't care what you do then."

"How long is a 'stint'?"

"Thirty years."

Aillas groaned. "Who here is chief among the Ska?"

"He is Duke Mertaz; there he stands yonder... Where are you going?"

"I must speak to him." Aillas rose painfully to his feet and crossed to where a tall Ska stood brooding down upon Tintzin Fyral. Aillas halted in front of him. "Sir, you are Duke Mertaz?"

"I am he." The Ska surveyed Aillas with gray-green eyes.

Aillas spoke in a reasonable voice. "Sir, this morning your soldiers captured me and clamped this collar around my neck."

"Indeed."

"In my own country I am a nobleman. I see no reason why I should be treated this way. Our countries are not at war."

"The Ska are at war with all the world. We expect no mercy from our enemies; we give none."

"Then I ask that you abide by the rules of warfare and allow me to ransom my freedom."

"We are not a numerous people; our need is labor, not gold. Today you were branded with a date-mark. Thirty years you must serve, then you will be freed with a generous pension. If you attempt to escape, you will be maimed or killed. We expect such attempts and are alert. Our laws are simple and admit of no ambiguity. Obey them. Go back to your work."

Aillas returned to where Yane sat watching. "Well?"

"He told me I must work thirty years."

Yane chuckled and rose to his feet. "Taussig summons us." Across the downs convoys of bullock-carts brought timbers from the mountains. Skaling squads dragged the timbers up the ridge; foot by foot the timber tunnel thrust across the saddle toward Tintzin Fyral.

The construction approached the castle walls. Carfilhiot's warriors on the parapets dropped bladders of oil upon the timbers and sent down fire-arrows. Orange flames roared high; at the same time drops of blazing oil seeped through cracks. Those who worked below were forced to retreat.

Special contrivances fabricated of sheet copper were brought forward by a trained squad, and fitted over the timbers, to form a protective roof; flaming oil thereupon flowed off to burn harmlessly on the ground.

Foot by foot the tunnel approached the castle walls. The defenders displayed a rather sinister lassitude.

The tunnel reached the castle walls. A heavy battering ram, shod with iron, was carried forward; Ska warriors crowded the tunnel, ready to surge through the ruptured portal. From somewhere high on the tower, a massive ball of iron swung down and around at the end of a chain, to strike the timber construction fairly, at a spot thirty feet from the tower wall, to sweep timbers, ram and warriors over the edge of the saddle and down into the gully, another tangle of timbers and crushed bodies on top of the tangle already there.

From the ridge the Ska commanders stood in the light of sunset, contemplating the destruction of their works. There was a pause in the business of the siege. The Skalings gathered in a hollow to evade the steady wind from the west. Aillas like the others crouched in the wan light, back to the wind, watching sidelong the Ska silhouettes along the skyline.

There would be no further action against Tintzin Fyral on this night. The Skalings trooped down-hill to the camp, where they were fed porridge boiled with dried cod. The corporals marched their platoons to a latrine trench, where they crouched and voided in unison. Then they filed past a cart where each took a coarse woolen blanket and bedded himself on the ground.

Aillas slept the sleep of exhaustion. Two hours after midnight he awoke. His surroundings confused him; he sat up with a jerk, only to feel a sharp tug on the chain at his collar. "Stop short!" growled Taussig. "It's on the first night that the new ones try to run free, and I know all the tricks."

Aillas fell back into the blanket. He lay listening: to the cold wind blowing across the rocks, to a mutter of voices from Ska sentries and fire-tenders, to snores and dream-sounds from the Skalings. He thought of his son Dhrun, possibly alone and unprotected, possibly at this very instant in pain or danger. He thought of Never-fail under a laurel bush on the slope of Tac Tor.

The horse would break its tether and wander off to find fodder. He thought of Trewan and stone-hearted Casmir. Requital! Revenge! His palms sweated in a passion of hatred... Half an hour passed, and again he fell asleep.

Somewhat before dawn, at that most dismal hour of the night, a far rumble and crashing sound, as of a large tree falling, awoke Aillas for the second time. He lay motionless, listening to staccato calls among the Ska.

At dawn the Skalings were aroused from their rest by the clangor of a bell. Sullen and torpid they took their blankets to the cart, visited the latrine, and those who elected to do so washed at a rivulet of chilly water. Their breakfast was like their supper: porridge and dried cod, with bread and a cup of hot peppermint tea mixed with pepper and wine to stimulate their energies.

Taussig took his platoon up to the ridge, and there the source of the predawn sounds was revealed. During the night defenders from the castle had fixed hooks into that portion which still remained of the timber tunnel. A windlass high above had tightened the line; the passage had been overturned and toppled three hundred feet into the gulch. All the Ska effort had gone for naught; worse, their materials had been wasted and their engines destroyed. Tintzin Fyral had suffered nothing.

The Ska now were intent not on the destroyed passageway, but on an army camped three miles west along the vale. Scouts returning from reconnaissance reported four battalions of well-disciplined troops, the Factoral Militia of Ys and Evander, consisting of pikemen, archers, mounted pikemen and knights, to the number of two thousand men. Two miles behind, the morning light twinkled on the metal and motion of other troops on the march.

Aillas considered the Ska: a contingent not quite so numerous as he had first estimated, probably no more than a thousand warriors.

Taussig noticed his interest and gave a harsh chuckle. "Don't count on battle, lad; waste no false hopes! They'll not fight for glory, unless there's something to be won; no risk of foolishness, I assure you!"

"Still, they'll have to break the siege."

"That's already been decided. They hoped to take Carfilhiot unawares. Bad luck! He tricked them with his knaveries. Next time affairs will go differently; you'll see!"

"I don't plan to be here."

"Ha, so you would say! I have been Skaling nineteen years; I have a position of responsibility and in eleven years I have my pension. My hopes are on the side of my own good interests!"

Aillas looked him over with contempt. "I don't believe you want to win free."

Taussig became instantly curt. "Now then! That's flogging talk.

There goes the signal. Break camp."

The Ska with their Skalings departed the ridge and set off across the moors of South Ulfland. This was a land like none Aillas had known before: low hills grown over with gorse and heather and dales trickling with small streams. Outcrops of rock scarred the heights; thickets and copses shaded the swales. Peasants fled in all directions at the sight of the black troops. Much of the land had been abandoned, the huts deserted, the stone fences broken, and furze growing rank. Castles kept the high places, testifying to the perils of clan warfare and the prevalence of raids by night. Many such places lay in ruins, the stones mottled with lichen; others, which had survived, jerked drawbridge high and manned the parapets to see the Ska troops pass by.

The hills reared upward, with sour black soil and peat bogs in between. Clouds swirled low overhead, opening to pass shafts of sunlight, closing as soon to throttle off the radiance. Few folk inhabited these regions except crofters, tin miners and outlaws.

Aillas marched without thought. He knew the burly back and tousled hair of the man in front of him and the catenary traced by the swinging chain between them. He ate on command, slept on command; he spoke to no one save an occasional mutter to Yane who hunched along beside him.

The column passed only half a mile inland from the fortified town Oaldes, where King Oriante had long held court, uttering sonorous commands which were seldom obeyed and spending much time in the palace garden among his tame white rabbits. At the sight of Ska troops, the portcullis dropped with a clang and archers mounted the walls. The Ska paid no heed and continued along the coast road, with Atlantic swells crashing into surf along the shore.

A Ska patrol rode up with news which quickly filtered down to the Skalings: King Oriante had died in a convulsion and feeble-minded Quilcy had succeeded to the throne of South Ulfland. He shared his father's interest in white rabbits and was said to eat nothing but custard, honey buns and trifle.

Yane explained to Aillas why the Ska allowed Oriante and now Quilcy to reign unmolested. "They cause the Ska no inconvenience.

From the Ska point of view Quilcy can reign forever, so long as he keeps to his doll houses."

The column entered North Ulfland, the boundary marked only by a cairn beside the road. Fishing villages along the way were deserted except for old men and women, the able-bodied having fled to avoid indenture.

On a dreary morning, with the wind carrying salt spume a hundred yards inshore, the column passed under an ancient Firbolg beacontower, built to raise the clans against Danaan raiders, and so entered the Foreshore, in effect Ska territory. The villages now were totally deserted, with the former inhabitants killed, enslaved, or driven away. At Vax, the column broke into several components. A few took ship for Skaghane; a few continued along the coastal road toward the granite quarries, where certain intractable Skalings would spend the rest of their lives chipping granite. Another contingent, including Taussig and his platoon, swung inland toward Castle Sank, the seat of Duke* Luhalcx and a staging station for Skaling convoys en route to Poelitetz.

*Memorandum: 'King,' 'prince', 'duke,' 'lord,' 'baron,'

'ordinary,' are used arbitrarily and inexactly to indicate somewhat similar levels of status among the Ska.

Functionally, the differences in rank are peculiar to the Ska, in that only 'king,' 'prince,' and 'duke,' are hereditary, and all save 'king' may be earned by valor or other notable achievement. Thus, an 'ordinary,' having killed or captured five armed enemies becomes a 'knight" By other exactly codified achievements he becomes a ,baron'

then ,lord', 'duke, then finally 'grand duke' or 'prince The king is elected by vote of the dukes; his dynasty persists along direct male lineage, until the line becomes extinct or is voted out of power at a conclave of dukes.

*For a brief discussion of Ska history see Glossary III.