Catcher saw us. She threw up a hand in a warding gesture. We were upon her. I released my shaft.
The carpet slammed up against me as the Lady pulled it upward, trying to clear horse and rider. She did not pull up enough. Impact made the carpet lurch. Frame members cracked, broke. We spun. I hung on desperately while sky and earth wheeled about me. There was another shock as we hit ground, more spinning as we went over and over. I threw myself clear.
I was on my feet in an instant, wobbling, slapping another arrow across my bow. Catcher’s horse was down with a broken leg. Catcher was beside her, on hands and knees, stunned. A silver arrowhead protruded from her waist, indicting me.
I loosed my shaft. And another, and another, recalling the terrible vitality the Limper had shown in the Forest of Cloud, after Raven had felled him with an arrow bearing die power of his true name. Still in fear, I drew my sword once my final arrow was gone. I charged. I do not know how I retained the weapon through everything that had happened. I reached Catcher, raised the blade high, swung with a vicious two-handed stroke. It was the most fearful, violent blow I have ever struck. Soulcatcher’s head roiled away. The morion’s face guard popped open. A woman’s face stared at me with accusing eyes. A woman almost identical in appearance to the one with whom I had come.
Catcher’s eyes focused upon me. Her lips tried to form words. I stood there frozen, wondering what the hell it all meant. And life faded from Catcher before I caught the message she tried to impart.
I would return to that moment ten thousand times, trying to read those dying lips.
The Lady crept up beside me, dragging one leg. Habit forced me to turn, kneel... “It’s broken,” she said. “Never mind. It can wait.” Her breathing was shallow, rapid. For a moment I thought it was the pain. Then I saw she was looking at the head. She began to giggle.
I looked at that face so like her own, then at her. She rested a hand on my shoulder, allowing me to take some of her weight. I rose carefully, slid an arm around her. “Never did like that bitch,” she said. “Even when we were children...” She glanced at me warily, shut up. The life left her face. She became the ice lady once more.
If ever there was some weird love spark within me, as my brothers accused, it flickered its last. I saw plainly what the Rebel wanted to destroy-that part of the movement which was true White Rose, not puppet to the monster who had created this woman and now wanted her destroyed so it could bring its own breed of terror back to the world. At that moment I’d gladly have deposited her head beside her sister’s.
Second time, if Catcher could be believed. Second sister. This deserved no allegiance.
There are limits to one’s luck, one’s power, to how much one dares resist. I hadn’t the nerve to follow through on my impulse. Later, maybe. The Captain had made a mistake, taking service with Soulcatcher. Was my unique position adequate to argue him out of that service on grounds that our commission ended with Catcher’s death?
I doubted it. It would take a battle, to say the least. Especially if, as I suspected, he had helped the Syndic along in Beryl. The Company’s existence did not appear to be in absolute jeopardy, assuming we survived the battle. He would not countenance another betrayal. In the conflict of moralities he would find that the greater evil.
Was there a Company now? The battle of Charm had not ended because the Lady and I had absented ourselves. Who knew what had happened while we were haring after a renegade Taken?
I glanced at the sun, was astonished to discover that only a little over an hour had passed.
The Lady recalled Charm too. “The carpet, physician,” she said. “We’d better get back.”
I helped her hobble to the remnant of Catcher’s carpet. It was half a ruin, but she believed it would function. I deposited her, collected the bow she had given me, sat in front of her. She whispered. Creaking, the carpet rose. It provided a very unstable seat.
I sat with eyes closed, debating myself, as she circled the site of Catcher’s fall. I could not get my feelings straight. I did not believe in evil as an active force, only as a matter of viewpoint, yet I had seen enough to make me question my philosophy. If the Lady were not evil incarnate, then she was as close as made no difference.
We began limping toward the Tower. When I opened my eyes I could see that great dark block tilting on the horizon, gradually swelling, I did not want to go back.
We passed over the rocky ground west of Charm, a hundred feet up, barely creeping along. The Lady had to concentrate totally to keep the carpet aloft. I was terrified the thing would go down there, or gasp its last over the Rebel army. I leaned forward, studying the jumble, trying to pick a place to crash.
That was how I saw the girl.
We were three quarters of the way across. I saw something move. “Eh?” Darling looked up at us, shading her eyes. A hand whipped out of shadow, dragged her into hiding.
I glanced at the Lady. She had noticed nothing. She was too busy staying aloft.
What was going on? Had the Rebel driven the Company into the rocks? Why wasn’t I seeing anyone else?
Straining, the Lady gradually gained altitude. The slice-of-pie expanded before me.
Land of nightmare. Tens of thousands of dead Rebels carpeted it. Most had fallen in formation. The tiers were inundated in dead of both persuasions. A White Rose banner on a leaning pole fluttered atop the pyramid. Nowhere did I see anyone moving. Silence gripped the land, except for the murmur of a chill northern wind.
The Lady lost it for an instant. We plunged. She caught us a dozen feet short of crashing.
Nothing stirred but wind-rippled banners. The battlefield looked like something from the imagination of a mad artist. The top layer of Rebel dead lay as though they had died in terrible pain. Their numbers were incalculable.
We rose above the pyramid. Death had swept around it, toward the Tower. The gate remained open. Rebel bodies lay in its shadow.
They had gotten inside.
There were but a handful of bodies atop the pyramid, all Rebel. My comrades must have made it inside.
They had to be fighting still, inside those twisted corridors. The place was too vast to overrun quickly. I listened, but heard nothing.
The Tower top was three hundred feet above us. We couldn’t get any higher... A figure appeared there, beckoning. It was short and clad in brown. I gaped. I recalled only one Taken who wore brown. It moved to a slightly better vantage, limping, still beckoning. The carpet rose. Two hundred feet to go. One hundred. I looked back on the panorama of death. Quarter of a million men? Mind-boggling. Too vast to have real meaning. Even in the nominator’s heyday battles never approached that scale...
I glanced at the Lady, She had engineered it. She would be total mistress of the world now-if the Tower survived the battle underway inside. Who could oppose her? The manhood of a continent lay dead...
A half dozen Rebels came out the gate. They launched arrows at us. Only a few wobbled as high as the carpet. The soldiers stopped loosing, waited. They knew we were in trouble.
Fifty feet. Twenty-five. The Lady struggled, even with Limper’s help. I shivered in the wind, which threatened to bounce us off the Tower, I recalled the Howler’s long plunge. We were as high as he had been.
A glance at the plain showed me the forvalaka. It hung limp upon its cross, but I knew it was alive.
Men joined the Limper. Some carried ropes, some lances or long poles. We rose ever more slowly. It became a ridiculously tense game, safety almost within reaching distance, yet never quite at hand.
A rope dropped into my lap. A Guard sergeant shouted, “Harness her up.”
“What about me, asshole?” I moved about as fast as a rock grows, afraid I’d upset the carpet’s stability. I was tempted to tie some false knot that would give way under strain. I did not like the Lady much anymore. The world would be better for her absence. Catcher was a murdering schemer whose ambitions sent hundreds to their deaths. She deserved her fate. How much more so this sister who had hurried thousands down the shadowed road?