(VAPTER

1

Elizebith ran and fell and scrambled up and ran and fell again.
The fresh-fallen leaves and tilted slope were treacherous un-
der the slick soles of her boots. Naked branches of bramble
and scrub oak clutched at her, tearing and cutting, pricking
her a thousand times about the face and hands and neck. The
giri slipped once more on a leafy rock and fell, banging her
knee. She knelt, clutching her leg and crying silently. Letting
the tears flow helped the pain—in her knee. anyway. Her
heartache was something else.

Bith was tall and dark, slim and soft, with flowing brown-
black hair and eyes that were almost luminous. She wore a
dark outfit of shin and pants with a deep blue cloak over all.
Around her middle was a wide yellow belt that matched her
fine-tooled boots. The belt's grinning devil-face buckle and
dozen small pouches marked her as a magic user.

The girl tried to quiet her breathing enough to hear the
pursuit. Far down the ravine could be heard the cursing of
men as they thrashed through the dark underbrush. Bith didn't
know how many there were, but there were enough to comb
the ravine easily without missing her. She looked up at the
fading light. The days were short now. Scaly branches made

2           RUNESWORD ^LUME ONE

a spider's web that laced the overcast twilight. The brush was
so thick it was like looking up through a latticework basket.
Even where she crouched there were branches reaching for
her soft skin. She hadn't known how thick the brush grew up
this ravine. She should have found out, she berated herself,
she should have teamed her own neck of the woods' It was
stupid to not know what lay at the head of this ravine. Did it
open into meadow, or more forest, or drop down again to
more brush? She should have found out before now, now
when she was fleeing and learning the hard way. The lesson
for today. Live and learn, she thought bitteriy. Learn or die.
Somewhere below her a man barked an oath. Her heart flut-
tered. He was close. She pinched her knee into numbness
and crept uphill through the brambles-
In truth, she hadn't lived in her tiny ramshackle cottage
long enough to leam where much of anything was. Living
alone meant so much to do- Fetch water, tend the fire, check
the snares before the foxes got to them, gather roots. This
was why men had wives and the wealthy had servants. It was
an all-day affair just to keep fed and warm. There was no
time for exploring. Or reading or studying or having any fun.
It had been a long time since Elizebith had done anything
fun.

And here she had to minister to the wants and needs of the
peasants who sought out the "witch." More wants than
needs, but who was she to talk? The reason she was so clumsy
at fetching and carrying and cooking is that she'd never done
it for herself until recently. If only she'd known how happy
she was when she was happy! She had been such a little giri.
A spoiled little girl. Never wanting for anything. She would
give anything now, even her soul, just to be able to sit quietly
and not run, run,run.

Yes, the peasants had come. They wanted a cure for a
toothache. A love potion. A physic to flush a baby from the
womb. A curse fora prosperous neighbor. Elizebith did what
she could. A toothache received the inner bark of the slippery
elm. But it was only a temporary cure. A love potion was
camphor oil applied tb me hair of the loved one, accompanied
by "good thoughts." It was a nostrum. The physic to be rid
of a baby was mineral oil. The poison killed the woman as
well if she took it improperly. The curse could be anything

OUTCASTS              3

as long as it was vile: hate added the rest. But she had known
she couldn't keep it up for long. People hated witches. (It
was a mark of the peasants' ignorance that they couldn't tell
witches from magicians.) They hated what a witch could do,
even as they asked her. They welshed on payment unless you
took it beforehand. And they waited until the last minute,
and that had been Bith's undoing. While a couple had not
hesitated to make the long journey to her hut to save a cow,
they always waited until a daughter was at death's door before
lifting a finger. This time it had been too late. Bith had tried,
but the child had died within hours. The grieving parents had
blamed the witch. She should have known. Her mother had
warned her time and again that helping people always brought
punishment. But she hadn't expected it to happen so soon.
Here she was, fleeing for her life.

Bith rose and pressed through the brush, uphill. It was very
quiet up here, and there was no wind. Was the ravine closing
in? The slopes at either hand were not just grass and leaves,
but crumbly ledge. The sides were steep and not thirty feel
apart. Maybe she'd pass through this cut soon, then she could
run on the flat. Though she couldn't run much farther—she
was almost spent. A lifetime of sailing a cockleshell on a
lake and reading romances had not prepared her for a real
outdoor life. She put her hand against one rocky slope for
balance. It remained quiet. Had she lost them? She couldn't
see very well. The sky was faintly luminous but this ravine
was black as the inside of a bucket. Suddenly she bumped
her nose into another rock wall. An outcropping? She groped
with her hands. No, a turn in the wall. Then her heart sank.

This was the head of the ravine. A rocky wall all around,
a stone box. A dead end. The slopes had to be twenty feet
high on three sides. The only way open was downhill.

Bith jumped at the stone cage around her and found no
purchase. Her fingers were too weak. And she couldn't see
anyway. What to do? Jump like a mountain lion? Fly away?
She almost laughed. Her mind was playing tricks on her.
Nothing useful came to mind. Nothing. The slim giri fell to
the ground and sucked air in great wracking sobs.

She was trapped. Her captors might as well be running up
a tunnel at her. Except they weren't captors. They would kill
her when they caught her, probably tear her to pieces. They

4           RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

wouldn't even drag her back to the village to burn. Was that
better? She doubled over, fear and fatigue overwhelming her.
She hugged herself and sobbed.

A horned owl brushed overhead with a hoo, startling her.
Had she been asleep? Was that possible? Bith wiped her face
with filthy hands and took a deep breath. She felt strangely
better. She was all cried out. Did that mean she was ready to
die? On the contrary, she was beginning to feel angry. Angry
at these stupid, ignorant people who hunted her for no rea-
son. The peasant girl had died this morning, true, but not
from Bith's lack of care. She simmered with fury until her
ears grew warm. She'd get them if she could, with the black-
est magic she could conjure. But where were they?

She cocked an ear down the ravine and listened. All was
quiet. Crickets chirped far off, the last before the snow.
Somewhere a badger hissed. The air was full of the smell of
leaf mold and crushed teaberries and red sumac. Where was
everyone? Bith rose softly and felt along the stone slope. No
sound. Then she heard them. A thrashing of brush. The gut-
tural growl of men after blood. And a new sound.

Ha-rooooo! Hark. hark'. Ha-roooooo!

Dogs! They'd brought up dogs' She was surely done for
now. Never mind. There was one thing both men and dogs
feared. And she'd teach them to fear a sorceress, too.

She found a small overhang of rock and bumped her head
getting under it. She felt in a pouch with delicate fingers and
plucked out a'fuzzy lump that crackled under her fingertips.
With the other hand she touched the bole of an oak tree per-
haps a handspan thick.

And she waited - . .

As the darkness grew deeper and the sound of pursuit
louder, Bith, daughter of Morea, thought of her old home and
what it had meant. Her old home was a musty castle wreathed
in mist. Lake water had stretched away behind the castle, and
the front looked out over a hard expense of scrabble and low,
tough bushes. Brimstone bubbled from fissures along the
shoreline. Water leaked into all the lower rooms of her moth-
er's castle. A rusty iron gate with iron spikes guarded the
door. Every battlement had the cracked skull of an enemy
mounted on it- That evil place had been her home for sixteen
years. How strange that she had been content there. Would

OUTCASTS               5

she rather be there right now? She couldn't say. How strange
the way her mind worked, the mind of a spellcaster. No won-
der mortals didn't understand them. They didn't understand
themselves.
Hark. hark! Rowf! The bark of the dog exploded almost
under her feet. Bith saw a white branch whip aside, low down,
at the height of a dog's shoulder. A growl sounded off to her
left. There were two dogs. They stopped. Having found her,
stood still and sounded.

Ha-rooo! Rarf, rarf! Park rark, rark! In between calls the
beasts snapped and snarled at her, foam splashing from their
jaws. They kept her in place and notified their undeserving
masters. The noise was ear-splitting in the narrow defile.
Bith's hands were busy, as were her lips. She chanted, low
and intense.

Shouting oaths the crowd of men burst into the ravine.
"There she is!" "Hold her fast!" "Don't let her get away!"
Someone called for a flint to spark a torch.

I'll give them a torch, Bith thought. She finished her chant
and with her thumb crushed the dried firefly against the young
oak tree.

FWAASHHHH! Instantly the tree was ablaze as if it had
been steeping in a hot wind for an entire summer. The dogs
howled in fright. The men swore and shielded their eyes with
their forearms. And Bith, who had kept her own eyes tightly
closed, bolted towards them.

Hot sparks and ash floated all around them as she ducked
between the cowering dogs and into the crowd of men. She
got between two by scooching low. She had her knife out and
she poked at another to get him out of the way. He shrieked
as if he'd been bitten by a dragon and tumbled backward,
though Bith's tiny knife had barely nicked him. The man fell
against his neighbor and both went down thrashing. Bith tried
to jump clear. How many of the bastards were there, anyway?
It wasn 'tfair to send so many after one girl! Men swiped at
her and kicked out. A tangle of feet caught her and she fell.

Cries of "Got her now!" and "Hang onto her!" burst on
her ears. One man had her by the wrist. She stabbed with her
short knife but it tangled in the folds of her cloak. She bit
the dirty hand instead. It tasted of pig fat and woodsmoke.
The man let go, but brought his other fist down on her head

6 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

with a crash. Lights flashed before her eyes. Before she could
tumble to either side someone kicked her in the ribs. A laugh
stung her. Bith struggled and Sought but was powerless. Three
men flopped onto her and mashed her face into the leaf mold
of the forest floor. She might not be hacked or stoned or
burned to dead). She might smother. The panic came back,
so bright it burned her brain even as the tree burned the night
sky.

Far away she heard a man scream. It was not a laugh or a
shout, but a scream like a trapped rabbit's. Then it was cut
short. But another man took it up. Suddenly the weight on
her back was gone. A dog howled and she struggled to free
her face. What was happening?
In the flare of the burning tree Elizebeth saw a giant figure
raise a whimpering dog high overhead. The giant had the
dog's back legs in one hand and its neck in the other, and as
Bith watched, it ripped the heavy animal apart as if it were a
sheet of paper. Men howled—there was howling all around
her—as the black figure hurled the bloody pieces at them.
The chunks pinwheeled blood that rained on the villagers'
backs as they ran away. They pushed each another in their
mad scramble down the brushy slope. The figure gobbled and
croaked madly, berating and mocking them. Then it stood
still as a statue until the men's noise had faded.

Then it slowly turned towards Bith. *

The figure was huge, tall and wide. His shape was indis-
tinct under a shaggy bearskin and floppy hat- The creature
advanced over the rocky brushy terrain with sure steps that
pressed deeply into the ground. It came directly at her. He
can see ui the dark, Bith thought. Despite the wild dying light
and the smoke and roughness of the ground it could see her
as if it were daylight.

"How you?" the figure growled in the common tongue.
"All right? No hurt?'* Its grunt was painful to hear and must
be more painful to make. It reached out for her—

"I 'm all right,'' she stammered. ' 'Please don't touch me.''

The figure withdrew its great paw. Slowly it turned and
squatted and wiped its hands on the crushed grass. Then it
moved away.

Bith stood up and had to clutch at a tree trunk. She was
dizzy with shock and the aftennath of panic. Her knees gave

OUTCASTS              7

out and she sank down, grateful for even that small respite.
The oak was all but incinerated. There was only a burning
stump left, just knee-high. Bith didn't know many spells, but
the ones she knew she knew well.

Bith looked up. Would she be able to slip away from mis-
thing—when the light was gone? Should she, now that he had
rescued her?

The hulk kicked out with a foot and knocked over the bum-
ing tree. Then it half-dragged, half-carried a large dead tree
to the stump and crumbled wood onto the makeshift fire. Bith
knew that the tree was dead, but the cracking sounds told her
the creature was very strong. Strong enough to rip a dog
apart, or a magician. Stronger than any man could be.

The figure squatted again and blew at the fire. Bith saw his
face for the first time. A wide, flat nose in a wide face, small
eyes, thick brow. A hint of fangs behind the thick lips? She
knew now what this was. She had seen paintings in books in
her mother's castle.
"You're a troll."

"Hathor."

"No, you're a troll. I know."

"Me too. Me Hathor. Troll. Good one.'*

Sure, thought Bith, and I'm a fond witch. She stood slowly
and edged away from the fire, towards the downhill slope of
the ravine.

"Don't go," said the troll. "Eat."

"Eat?" Bith's stomach betrayed her. It rumbled at the
thought of food. "Eat what?"

The troll gestured with a thick finger. "Dog."

Bith shuddered. "No. I couldn't." Her stomach squeaked
so that it hurt. "Well, maybe a little."

The troll moved away from the fire. The blaze was glowing
merrily now, the only light for miles, probably. It made the
dark inside this ravine that much more intense. Bith's legs
trembled. If she didn't sit down she'd fall. Might as well be
by the fire, she reasoned. She straightened her pants and shirt,
drew her cloak around her and sat. Then she moved again to
plump her back against the fallen tree- It felt wonderful to
stop moving.

The troll came back to the fire with the torn torso of the

8

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

dog. He had an axe in the other hand. Bith watched warily
as he laid the carcass over the log not far from her head.

"Liver?" the troll asked. "Haunch? Brains?"

"Liver."

"Good." The axe came down with a whack that split the
carcass. Two more whacks freed a good hunk of—
something—which the troll tossed on the fire. Bith watched
die flesh sear and blacken. Maybe she wasn't hungry. But she
bravely fished up a stick and sharpened the end and speared
the meat. She propped it up on a rock at the edge of the fire
and held the end down with her boot.

More cracking and crushing noises sounded closely, then
a sucking noise. He must be licking his fingers, she thought.
Another hunk of meat landed on the fire with a squishy hiss.

The troll whomped the axe into the stump. Bith noticed it
was not a war axe but a felling axe. A war axe was wide and
thin-bladed, chased with fierce insignia, light with a short
handle so a man could wield it all day. This was a simple
pole axe for cutting trees. Was that good? The troll sat by the
fire opposite her. He took off his floppy hat and set it beside
him.

Bith studied him. The troll was surprisingly human. But
she knew trolls were a type of human that had taken to caves.
Or never left them. This one's features were just too—swollen.
His lips were thick and protruded slightly. His eyes were
small and close-set and recessed. His teeth were large; so
were his ears. He had no beard, but a sort of scruffy mutton-
chops. His hair was curiously soft and fine and curly golden-
red. A strawberry-blond troll, she thought. He wore only a
peasant's smock tied around his blocky body, but over it he
wore a thick cape of brown—bearskin? His fingers were thick
and coarse, with dark nails, but were nimble enough as he
poked the fire. His hands had red hair on their backs, too.
His feet were bare and the soles thick enough to walk on
coals. He smelt, too. Not an unpleasant odor, but alien: musty
and cavish-

"You pretty." he said suddenly, and Bith jumped. Proba-
bly tasty too, she thought. But he said nothing more, and her
pulse settled back down.

Strange he should say she was pretty. It had been a long
time since she had seen herself. At sixteen Bith was still

OUTCASTS              9

developing, in all the wrong places first, naturally. She knew
she looked like her mother, and men thought her mother
lovely, so she might be. But she was tall and thin and gawky,
she thought. Coltish and clumsy. Her face was acceptable.
She had long straight hair of a color between brown and black.
Her skin was pale as milk from living in the north country,
sprinkled with freckles the way the northern reaches could
be sprinkled with cornflowers in spring. Bith knew her most
arresting feature was her eyes. She was the only human she'd
ever met—besides her mother—who had silver eyes.

"What name?" the gruff voice asked.

"Name? Elizebith, daughter of—Elizebith. Bith."

"Bith," the troll tried the name. "Easy."

"You are—Hathor?"

"Hathor. Thor. Hath." He followed these names with a
string of others she couldn't understand. He finished,
"Hathor."

"Hathor. Good." Wonderful, she thought. One night of
this and she'd talk like a troll forever. "Why did you save my
life?"

"Voice."

" 'Voice,' did you say?"
"Voice."

"What voice?"

He put a grimy clawed fingernail—or were they just natu-
rally black?—to his temple. "In head. Tell me come here,
res-cue you- Did."

"What did the voice tell you?"

'*1bld me. Come here, save you." He speared a chunk of
burnt meat from the fire and took a bite, coals, ashes, and
all. "Never hear voice in skull before."

Bith tended her own meat. She sliced off a strip and ate it,
suddenly ravenous from the smell. She had never eaten dog
before. It tasted sweet. When she could, she asked, "Did it
haw a sort of imperious tone, like a king's voice? Like this?
*Go. my child, hie ye hence and ye shall be rewarded.* Did
it sound like that?"

Hathor nodded vigorously. "Yes, that voice. Just like that.
Oood."

Bith pondered mat a moment, her mouth forming an un-
i' conscious pout. She too had heard a voice lately, mostly in

10

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

her dreams or when she was distracted. It had told her to wait
or to be content or to anticipate danger or a dozen other
things. She had largely ignored it. A few short months ago
Bith had been dragged from her mother's castle by some in-
credibly stupid men who thought she was Morea's hostage.
Once they had learned she was Morea's daughter they'd de-
serted her, abandoned her in open country, alone and un-
armed, without supplies. Even before then, Bith had been
haunted by ghosts, had her dreams ridden through and tram-
pled on, but since her kidnapping, night and nightmares were
synonymous to Bith. It came with spellcasting. She had ig-
nored this new imperious voice along with the screeching
ones and the giggling ones.

"You send voice?"

Bith shook her head. "Me? No. I heard it too, is all."

"Who is?"

"I have no idea. Someone who wants something for noth-
ing, I suppose. Isn't that always the way?"

Hathor bit into his meat and said nothing. He swallowed
noisily and asked, "Where bow?"

"Bow?"

He mimicked an archer and men pointed at her. Elizebith
had no bow. She had only the clothes she stood in, her magic
pouches, and an eating knife. "I have no bow."

Hathor grunted. He got up from the fire and walked into
the dark. He returned in a moment and handed her a shaft.

It was an arrow. A short one with long fletching: blue and
red-streaked feathers she'd never seen before. The wood was
smooth, almost like glass. The bead was of some clean steel,
longer and sharper man any razor. It felt no heavier than a
dandelion. She held it up to Hathor. "It's not mine."

"Not?" he scratched his chin. "Not mine either."

"Well, wait," Bith asked. "Where did you get it?"

The troll rose and moved off into the dark. Outside the ring
of firelight he bent over something. He lifted the bulky object
and pointed to it. "In him." Bith gulped. The thing was a
corpse, the body of a villager with a rusty dagger in his hand.
"Stuck here." Hathor indicated his throat. Bith shuddered
again.

With ridiculous ease Hathor hefted the body and threw it

OUTCASTS             11

up the side of the ravine and over the top. "Wolves get it,**
he said. "Not get us."

Bith looked at the sheer wall. "How strong are you, any-
way?"

Hathor grinned for the first time. Yes, those were fangs in
his upper jaw. "Strong."

Bith slumped back to the ground with the shaft still in her
hand. She looked at the arrow and tried to guess where it
came from. Who it came from. But her brain wouldn't budge.
It was felling asleep, and so was she.

"Sleep," Hathor told her. "I watch."

Sure, Bith thought. The dog was dinner and I'm breakfast.
She dragged her cloak around, lay her hand on the ground,
and lay her head on her arm. With the fire in front and her
back to the large log and its reflected heat she was very cozy.
This was a pleasant place to be: better than burning or smoth-
ering or being hung. She'd rest just a moment, then sneak
away when the troll dozed off.

The last thing she saw as her eyes closed was the ugly troll
peering at the beautiful arrow. A strange sight after a strange
day- . . .

CHAPTER

2

Bith wandered the halls of the castle looking for her mother.
Up and down the stone passages she went. She had to
climb, for the floor slanted crazily. It was very dark inside.
Though there was light at the end of the halls, the giri couldn't
reach it. Spiders as large as dogs passed by. An ore skull
turned to watch her go, its empty eyes lit with green. A door
sprang open and a pack of bloody dogs howled. They chased
her until her lungs burned. The daughter of Morea ran for the
end of the hall but couldn't get there. A rushing noise rose
and rose, and water poured down the halls after her. A door
changed into an axe blade ten feet across. It swept into the
sky over her, edge down, and dropped. . . .

Bith screamed as the monster with the axe loomed over
her, ready to strike. She screamed again and covered her
eyes-
When nothing happened she uncovered her face. The thing
was still standing there, axe poised, a puzzled frown on its
ugly face- Then she remembered.

She remembered the growly sound of pursuit close behind,
the rasping of her breath, the cold feel of the rocks as she
was trapped, the crackling of the ignited tree, the thud of

12

OUTCASTS             13

boots into her back, the thrill of rescue from a stranger. She
sat up with a shudder and mopped rain, or cold sweat, off
her face. An early morning shower fell around her and pat-
tered gently on the fallen leaves.

The troll continued to look at her. He looked even uglier
in the grey misty morning than he had by firelight. His skin
was pale but knotty and lumpy underneath. Bith wondered
how soon she could get away from him. He growled at her.
"All right?"

Oh, that's right, she recalled. He worries about me. And
saved my life. Because that voice commanded him to. "Yes,
I'm fine." In fact she was. Her body was wracked with
bruises and stiff muscles, but it was delicious to be alive-
It was a misty, wet autumn morning. Birds grizzled to one
another about me weather and ignored Hathor's whacking.
He chopped another armful of wood and poked up the fire.
Raindrops hissed. The troll spitted some white objects like
large slugs on a stick. Bith realized they were oyster mush-
rooms that grew on beech trees this time of year. He hadn't
Just thrown them on the fire. He must have learned to spit
things from me, she thought.

"Isn't there any more meat?" she asked.

"Sure," he replied. "Lots." He fetched some and spitted
that.

"Aren't you having any?"

The troll shook his ponderous head. "No. Don't eat meat."
"You don't eat meat?" Trolls, she knew, were often can-
nibals. She was still surprised to have woken alive. "What
was that you ate last night?"

The troll grinned that toothy grin. "Can't waste."

"Did you watch all night?"

Hathor pointed to his lumpy head. "Eyes sleep. Ears
watch."

"Oh."

The two of them were quiet during their meal, her dog meat
and-his mushrooms, which he shared. Finally Bith wandered
off to neaten up. She wiped her hands and face with water
from bushes, combed burrs from her hair. She came back to
the fire and patted her belt- Everything she owned she wore
right here. She didn't even have a walking stick. There were
a few things in her hut far down the ravine, some books, a

14

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

candle, a cache of white money, but she couldn't go back
there. The brave villagers might be waiting for her return.
She would have to make her way up out of the ravine and
through the woods to the road. She wrapped some cooked
meat in leaves and stood up.

The troll stood up too. He kicked the fire apart and dumped
sodden leaves on it. He cinched up his bearskin cloak and
clapped on his floppy hat, which hid his face fairiy well. Then
he stood with the axe hanging in his hand, as ragged as a
gorsebush, as still as a statue.

"Well," she announced in a matter of fact voice, "I'll
guess 1*11 be off."

"Where we go?"

Bith bit her lower lip. She had been afraid of this. "/,"
she said slowly, "am going somewhere else. /—"

"Where?"

"I—I don't know. North, for now, I guess. Away from that
wretched village. There's a town to the north, a day's hike, I
know. And / have to get going—"

The troll shrugged. "Let's go.**

Bith sighed. She'd have to sneak off later. Wouldn't it look
lovely, she thought, her walking down the road with this mon-
strosity trailing after her. Though she had to admit no one
would bother her. No, more likely they'd run screaming. She
raised her hands and dropped them. "All right. Let's go."
With Hathor's help she clambered up and out the ravine.
The forest floor here was flat, the tree boles large. She could
see a long way. White deer tails flickered off to her left and
were gone. Something grey slunk off to her right. She noticed
the body of the man killed last night. The wolves or wild
dogs had been working on it. Ribs stuck up at towards the
sky. Scavengers ate the guts first. But then, so had she with
the dog.

The body reminded her. She turned and found Hathor
standing silently at her elbow. "Can you give me a little more
room?" He moved off a few more steps. "Thank you. Did
you bring that arrow?"

Hathor produced it from under his cloak. The thing fairiy
shone in the morning sun. It was very short for a war arrow,
not much longer than her forearm. The metal of the head was
more like silver than steel. Bith handed it back to the troll

OUTCASTS             15

without a word. She looked all around, but the forest was
now empty. She sighed and started walking north by a little
east.

They found the road. It was just a pair of ruts wide enough
for a cart and horse. It twisted back and forth, around the
trees. The road was as deserted as the forest had been. They
settled into a steady arm-swinging tramp that ate up the miles.

The rain stopped and the sun came out. The smell of leaf
mold was replaced by the scent of grass. Bith was well-
exercised by midday and sore by the afternoon, but Hathor
moved along as easily as a boulder down a hill. Neither of
them said a word all the day long. They drank their fill at a
stream and ate their meat and mushrooms and walked and
walked. The only people they passed were a young boy on
the road who led a cow, and a woodcutter. Neither gave the
disguised Hathor more than a curious glance. It was Bith, tall
and slim and raven-haired, who attracted their attention.
Maybe her "hound" would work out. It was nice not to be
alone, even if her company wasn't quite human. She was
surprised to find she didn't fear him at all now. Maybe it was
because he wasn't human.

Eventually they came upon fields and then a village as the
short day drew to a close. From their perspective on the out-
skirts it looked to have some two dozen small houses and ^
marketplace, which meant there had to be at least one inn
with a tavern. That was the place to go, Bith thought, to find
loose talk and loose change. And food. But she wouldn't be
able to get any dumb fanner to share his meal without him
expecting something in return: she wouldn't know how to
ask, anyway. Bith had led a sheltered life, but she knew
enough about men to avoid them. She had no money, nothing
to sell or barter. Except perhaps her belt buckle, but that was
me only thing left from home. She'd not pan with it. She
would have no time to work up spells, and didn't think it wise
anyway this close to that last village, not after her experiences
with the people there- Unless she was willing to sell herself—
she wasn't—it was sleeping in the woods again. And eating
mast. Or ...

"Come on, Thor. Let's take a walk. Pretend we're passing
through."

16

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

Hathor grunted something and Bith had to ask for an ex-
planation. "Horses not like me. Smell bad."

Bith stood with hands on hips looking at the town. It was
no good to stand here, for they were attracting looks of their
own. A town this small wouldn't see many magicians. Or
trolls.

"That can't be helped. Let's walk."

They strode through the center of town, turning heads and
making children point and dogs bark. They soon reached the
center. Bith took a quick look around the sleepy marketplace.
There was an inn. The Blue-Bellied Boar, with a stable be-
hind. Horses tied before it whickered when they caught Hath-
or's scent, but the two kept moving. In no time they were
past and in the forest again. Bith stopped and ordered Hathor
to find a place to camp.

"We sleep night?**

"We nap for a while. Then when it's truly dark and the
town's abed, and men are in their cups, we'll sneak back and
raid the kitchen."

"Steal?"

Bith flushed. "Well, yes, I'm afraid so," Guilt and fresh
anger sharpened her tongue-"! have no other way of getting
food, and it was filthy peasants like this who attacked my
hut! They will have made off with any money I had! We'll
just take something back!"

The troll shrugged. "What you say."

Bith sniffed and followed the troll as he entered the woods.
They found a place to snuggle among the brown leaves. They
made no fire and curled up to sleep.

Bith awoke with a start. It was pitch black all around.
Something had moved and startled her. Then she realized it
was Hathor. She would have to get used to waking in strange
places, she thought. For someone who, until a few months
ago, had awakened every morning in the same bed in the
same tower chamber where she was born, it was not easy to
accept the night and its noises. The girl pulled her cloak close
and thought about home.

Hathor loomed in the dark like a dead tree trunk. "We
go?"
Bith sighed and rose. "We go."

They stumbled to the road—or rather, Bith stumbled while

OUTCASTS               17

Hathor stepped easily—and found its white stripe in the tun-
nel of trees. Bith realized she had no idea which direction
they'd come from. She'd have to leam to orient herself better
or get lost often. Hathor understood her confusion and pointed
a gnaried finger. "Right," Bith said, "I knew that." Care-
fully and quietly they picked their way toward town.

The moon was up. The town was washed white, especially
so after the black tunnel of the road. As soon as they got to
the edge of town a dog picked up their scent and began to
bark. That woke other dogs who took up the call. Bith and
Hathor retreated. They waited until the first dog had been
kicked quiet, "It might be you," the girl said. "I'll see if I
can get on ahead. Wait here but come running if I call."

"Got it."

Whether she was quiet enough or scentless enough she
didn't know, but she got as far as the inn without being de-
tected. Through an unshuttered side window she could see a
small light and hear men's voices in conversation—late risers
talking away the night. The rest of the village was silent and
black. Elizebith slunk along the side wall and peered around
the back. By moonlight she could see the back stoop of the
inn, the woodshed, the privy and stable and smith's hut. Every
surface was splintery silver under the moonlight. Small doors
held the stalls closed in the stable. She heard a horse's hoof
strike hollowly as it lashed out in a dream. She could smell
manure, both horse and human, and sweet hay and stale wa-
ter. Lightly she picked her way to the back door. The packed
earth around the steps was sticky with mud. That was a good
sign, she thought, for it meant this was probably the kitchen
door. She put her nose to the crack under the door and sniffed.
The smell of ham and salt and cooking fat and spices made
her mouth water. No dog barked, no cat swiped at her nose.
Gently she took the door handle in hand and pressed the
thumblatch. It gave but the door did not. Barred, she thought,
to keep out thieves. Like me.

She eased out her knife and tried to work it into the crack
along the latch, to try and pry the bar up, but the frame was
built to prevent that. All right then, you bastards, she thought,
try this.

Bith fished in one of her pouches and extracted a pigeon
feather. The door itself was made of planks with some small

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

18

space between, and she stuffed the feather in between the
planks whete she guessed the bar was. She worked it in far-
ther with her knife point. Then she set both hands against the
door, cupped as if holding the bar. She whispered,

' 'Up and up, float ye high
Mimic the birds, make the sky.
Light you be, ye canfty,
Up and up, float ye high."

She chanted this three, then four tiroes while holding onto
the invisible bar, until she thought it had failed. She thought
of the food she'd miss and how hungry she'd be, and she
gritted her teeth. Suddenly the imaginary weight left her hands
and she knew it was up. She floated the bar in her mind up
and out a hair. Then she halted the spell.

The bar fell with a clatter that made her jump. Fool. she
berated herself, idiot. You should have/hated it to earth! She
waited breathlessly—her chest hurt from all this breath-
holding—but no one came to investigate. Perhaps the door
from the kitchen into the front loom was also closed. Silently
and with shaking hands she eased down the thumblatch and
pushed the door open.

The smells from me room washed over her, redoubling her
hunger, as she put her head inside. It was black. There was
no one inside. Lightly she hopped into the room and felt
around for any kind of foodstuff. Her hands touched a plate
of cold greasy meat and she recoiled. Better were the blood
sausages and hams and cheeses hanging over the fireplace.
She grabbed five objects and then realized she couldn't carry
it all. Such a glorious problem! She groped around and found
an apron. She spread that and filled it with smoked meats and
cheese, then searched for more. Some turnips and dried on-
ions and a bottle of something went onto the pile until she
reckoned she'd overstayed her welcome. She plucked up the
four corners of the apron and swung the bundle over her back.
With a wary eye on the front room door she skipped to the
back door and hopped out and down the steps.

And crashed full into some fool coming in. The comers of
the heavy apron slipped from her fingers. The plunder
thumped and bounced all over the steps.

OUTCASTS             19

"Uhh!"

"Mides and Mithra!" Bith burst out.

The blockade grunted while backing up. "What are you
doing? Hey, who are you?"

"Gel out of my way or I'll kill you!" Bith snapped. She
started to squat to retrieve the food but then stopped, unde-
cided whether she should pull her knife, snatch food, or just
run. She settled for drawing with one hand and scrabbling
with the other.

"What's going on?" It was a boy's voice, though he was
as tall as a man. "How did you get inside?"
"I will kill you!" Bith repeated. "You've ruined every-
thing'"

Inside the kitchen the front-room door creaked open and
then slammed against a table. "What's going on? Hey, stop,
there! Thief, thief!"

Bith had a sausage or something in her right hand. With it
she batted at the boy in her way. She tried to press past him
but a hammy hand clamped onto her shoulder. "You imp!
Stay—" He howled as Bith's tiny knife slashed the back of
his hand. That hand disappeared but another grabbed her by
the back of her loose hair. The long locks were almost ripped
out of her skull as she was yanked backward. She tripped and
fell, landing on her rump. The proprietor, for it could only
be he taking such an interest, steadily dragged her backwards
to keep her off-balance. Within a minute there were three
large men around her and she was still on the floor.

"Look what I caught, Bert! Lookee here! A minx after the
larder!"

"Heeeeey," said another man. "That's the witch from
Blackrock! The one we chased up that ravine! Ain't it, Ro-
gie?"

Bith looked up at their frowning, beer-blowsy faces. She
could expect no sympathy. She was a common thief in this
town and a killer witch m another. The proprietor, in an
apron and thick mustache, still had her by the hair in a po-
sition she couldn't twist out of. In the doorway she saw the
one who'd foiled her escape. It was a brown-faced boy in
faded wool with straw in his hair. A stupid stableboy.

"Yeah, that is her!" said the third man. He gave Bilh a

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

20

swift kick in the leg. "She killed Carew when she called up
that monster!"

Bith yelled, "I didn't kill anyone! An arrow did! And you
were out to kill me for no reason!"

"You shut up," Bert told her. "We'll bum you now fair
and square, with the whole village out to watch."

A shudder passed through Bith as if they'd doused her with
water. A day hadn't passed and she was right back where
she'd been. Only this time she couldn't rely on help. Oh, yes,
she could, she remembered. She raised her voice and
screamed, "Thor! Help me, Thor! Quickly!"

The last man kicked her again, but he swore as he did.
"That must be her monster!"

"Well, bar the door, you oaf! It can't break that down!"
The boy was gone. The two men stepped over Bith to slam
the door into place. Drunk and sleepy, they got in each other's
way and stumbled over the fallen bar. They almost had the
door closed when a sword blade slipped in between them,

"Back up," a voice commanded. It was a boy's voice but
a man's tone. Bert and Rogie staggered back away from the
blade. Into the room stepped the stableboy. He still had straw
in his hair and manure on his boots, but he had a boss shield
and naked sword in his hands. The sword was of an old-
fashioned design and pitted and the shield was scarred blank,
but it made an impression on the farmers.

"Cat!" barked the proprietor. He let go of Bith's hair to
wave his arms about. "What the hell are you doing? These
are friends of mine! Put that thing down!"

The boy Cal didn't take his eyes off the men as he said,
"Girt, get up and get out of here. Run!"

Bith took a moment to register herself as "Girt" and that
he was helping her escape. Then she was up and streaking
out the door. She paused only to snatch up a cheese and ham
before she pelted around the comer. She heard him call, "Go
on ahead, and I'11—un/iA—" His words were cut off with a
grunt. Bith didn't care. She ran across the village, now awake
to the cacophony of barking dogs- Halfway across me mar-
ketplace she found Hathor jogging towards her.

"You get rood?" he croaked.

"Shut up and nm!"

OUTCASTS

21

They did. Out of the village and down the inky road into
the night.

They walked swiftly for the rest of the night to get distance
between themselves and the village. By midmoming Bith was
too exhausted to go on and they sacked out in the woods for
a nap. Later they walked some more. Bith looked over her
shoulder often.

In the middle of the afternoon she glimpsed someone trail-
ing them. She pulled Hathor into the bushes to one side, but
the figure was already trotting to catch up. He wore a sword
and a light pack with a shield tied atop. The sheriff? No, he
would be mounted. A boy's voice called, "Hey, wait up! Wait
up!"

Bith stepped into the road and blew out her cheeks in dis-
gust. She waited with a curious Hathor. As the boy drew even
Bith said acerbically, "Ho, stableboy. What do you want?"

The boy shucked his pack and set it in the road. He huffed
slightly as he looked her in the eye. "Well," he puffed, "a
thank you might be nice."
Bith set her hands on her hips. "Thank you for what?
Thanks to you I spilt a week's food on the ground!"

The boy lifted his chin. He was taller than Bith, with av-
erage looks and brown hair that escaped from under his leather
helmet. He wore a soldier's helm, baldric, scabbard, pack,
and shield, and no piece of it matched any other piece. The
baldric was brown, the scabbard black, the pack green, the
shield scrubbed clean of any emblem. His clothes were plain
and patched and faded, his boots worn white. His young face
was showing some wear loo, brown from an outdoor life with
a scar on the right side. A sword tip had nicked him on the
upper lip and continued onto his chin.

The boy had a soldier's insolence, too. He burst out, "/
saved your Hfe\ I caught a meat cleaver on the back of the
head—the flat side, luckily—just for you! Thanks to me you're
not ashes blowing in the wind! They were serious about bum-
ing you! I could tell."

Bith shuddered involuntarily. She kneaded her hands and
couldn't look at him. Uncertain what to say, she said, "Thank
you, then."

22

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

The boy snorted. "That sounded like hard work! Didn't
they teach you any manners where you come from?"

The sorceress's daughter turned on him hotly. "Where /
come from / was in charge of a dozen slaves of my very own!
When I commanded something they did it or suffered the

consequences^'

The boy snorted again and looked her up and down.
"You're dressed fine, all right, like a princess. But who knows
but you stole the clothes too." He gestured at the remnants
of the netted cheese and sausage mat hung from her belt. Bith
whipped her cloak over them. He went on, "And I don't see
any dozen slaves, just one motheaten—whatever he is."

"He's a troll, and he'd gut you and eat your liver if I com-
manded him to."

The boy stepped back and put his hand to sword. But when
he looked at the troll be smiled. The troll was grinning widely
and shaking his head. "No," he growled, "no eat meat.

Only flowers."

Bith looked at her traitorous companion sharply. He lost
his grin but the boy laughed. "Oh, yes, I see how your slaves
obey. They must have feared your highness greatly. Quivered
at your name when you ordered them flogged."

Bith was beside herself. She snaried, "Do you know who
my mother is? She is Morea, the most feared woman in the
worid! And / am her daughter!"

"Morea?" The name gave me boy pause. He rubbed his
downy chin and looked her up and down again. He took in
the magician's belt and knife and myriad pouches. Then he
shook his head. "Spellcaster, maybe. But not from behind
any Mistwall."

Bith breathed, "What?"

"I don't believe you."

"You— don't—believe— me? You're calling me a liaft 1
don't believe you\ You cad\ If we were in my native land I'd
have the skin off your back for book covers! iy—"

"But you're not," the boy retorted. "So curb your tongue
and act your age, girl."

Bith sputtered and spit and finally got out, "You—you—
stabteboy\ You stand there with dirty hands and horseshit on
your shoes and you dare insult me! I should, should—
Ooooht" She turned and stalked away down the road. Hathor

OUTCASTS

23

followed her silently, trailing just behind and to the right,
like a faithful dog.

Bith had not gone twenty paces when she spun to her left
and screeched, "Where do you think you're going?"

The boy looked bland. "This way. You don't own the roads.
Or do you? Does your mother collect a toll here?"

Bith resumed walking. "I won't be seen walking with a
stableboy\"

"No, I suppose not. A princess has a reputation to up-
hold." He was still walking not ten feet behind her. "Funny
thing about this country," he mused as if to himself. "It's
more full of princesses than milkmaids. Why, you can't swing
a goose switch without hitting a princess some days. Yes, sir,
there must be a pile of queens somewhere having babies, that
every giri you meet has royal blood. Yes sir, yes sir."

Bith paraded down the road with her nose in the air.
"Hathor, kill him."

The troll only chuckled, a sound like flint on steel.

"All right," Bith said to the air. "We'll leave it at this. If
any stableboys smelling of horsesweat are still with us to-
night, we'll cut their throats as they sleep and leave them to
the wolves."

Behind her came two chuckles,,one human, one trollish.
Bith stalked along and damned all men of all races.

That night the three shared a campfire.

Cal was still with them, for Hathor didn't mind and Bith
refused to acknowledge his presence. Eventually though, as
the blackness settled in and closed the sky around their tiny
pool of light, the silence pressed upon the giri. Cal stropped
his sword with a whetstone. It was a hopeless job, for the old
thing was so deeply pitted it could never shine. Bith said,
"There's not much point in sharpening that thing. It's not
much of a sword.**

Cal stroked the blade. "No. It's nose-heavy and wont hold
an edge, but it's all I have. A soldier is judged by the con-
dition of his weapon."

"Did you steal it from your former master?"

"No. I looted it from a battlefield. I don't know if it fell
from the hand of some barbarian or was left by others who

24

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

didn't care for it, or whether it had lain there since an eartier
battle. The field I was on had seen many battles, I'm told."

"Did you win the battle?"

"I don't know." Cal paused in his stropping and looked at
her bewildered face- "That seems a strange thing to say, but
I really don't. Sometimes whole armies retire from the field

and don't know."

"That's ridiculous! How can you not know if you've car-
ried the day or not?" Bith would have criticized more sharply,
but she was wrapped in this boy's blanket.

"There's nothing more confusing than a battle. The old
soldiers say that. Old sailors argue that being on a ship in a
storm is more confusing, but I don't see how it can be. Either
you're afloat or you're not. But a battle. Have you ever seen

one?"

Bith admitted she hadn't. She almost replied that she'd read
of them in books, but mat would sound foolish- In books the
hero was never in doubt as to what had happened. And he
always won. Hatbor too was intrigued. He leaned forward by
the fire attentively with his huge ears seeming to point for-
ward.

The boy settled to polishing the blade with the flat edge of
the stone. His voice settled into storytelling.

"You have to understand what happens in a battle. And
before it. One day you're training and hoping to get your
chance in a battle. Then the king sends a messenger through
the land to rouse all the knights. Your master, the local knight,
makes a speech as to why we hate the so-and-sos in the next
country over. He summons his retainers—squires, cooks,
men-at-arms—and you report to the castle. I was a squire to
a knight. Sir Edric. I only had one more year to go before
my vows. Anyway, now the laird makes a speech about this
ghastly enemy who's coming to kill you all and how you must
fight for justice and such, then you march off. And march
and march and march and march, and some men slip away
into me night and go home, and some others are caught and
horsewhipped. And me knights argue with one another about
what they know of the enemy, which is usually nothing, ex-
cept mat the old men know but no one listens to them, which
is too bad. Some of the knights beg their lords if they can't
just buy their way out of the fight and go home. You pick up

OUTCASTS             25

mercenaries at some town, filthy long-haired bastards who'll
steal anything not nailed down, and cut your throat if you
don't sleep light. You get to the big town, and the king is
there, and he makes a speech, same one you've heard already.
Some believe it. On" you go, marching some more. Finally,
one day, a rider comes gallopin' up and tells you the enemy's
in sight.

"Then everyone goes over their armor and weapons and
makes sure their cinches are tight and edges sharp, and then
you wait. For two, three days, sometimes. Your side sends
messengers to their side and they argue about where the battle
should take place and what's the maximum they'll pay for any
knights they capture for ransom and a bunch of other money
concerns. Then they announce that tomorrow will be the bat-
tle—the big day. Unless it rains, which means the ground'll
be muddy and the horses will get bogged down and maybe
hurt, which knights hate like fury. They don't care if they
lose a hundred peasant footmen, but having to kill one war-
horse is a crime. So the next morning everyone gets up while
it's still dewy, and you wait some more. Sometimes all day
and into the next and everyone wonders what happened. You
can't eat 'cause your stomach's in a knot, you can't sleep
'cause you're worried. So you just sort of stumble around and
pick fights with your friends and fidget with your weapons.
I've seen men pick their arrows clean to pieces fidgeting."

Bith interrupted him. "How many battles have you been
in?"

Cal grinned. In the firelight the disjointed scar on his lip
and chin gleamed. Someone had come close to splitting his
face. "Two. The first was lucky for it was hardly a battle at
all. We came out of the woods onto this plain and die enemy
spotted us. We had them outnumbered three to one, so they
just fumed and fled into the woods. We peppered 'em with a
few arrows and that was all. Still, you should nave heard the
men tell the campfollowers what a great battle it was and how
brave they were. My second battle, well, I'll get to that.

"Finally someone blows a trumpet and you crowd for-
ward. The lord up there on his high horse makes a fine speech
full of flowery words while a sergeant screams cuss words in
your face, and you form up. I was just a plain squire with an
old horse and my master's spare sword. It's fanny, but for all

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

26

the fear you get caught up in the fever. The words and the
pounding on shields and the screaming gets to you and pretty
soon you're screaming along with the rest and all you want
to do is get some enemy on the end of your weapon and tear
his guts out.

"This was some battle, too. Lots of men and horses on
both sides. Like you'd hear about from a bard, though there's
never been a bard on any battlefield that I've seen. We came
onto this rise and looked onto the opposite rise and there
were the enemy, and we all guessed right away we were pretty
evenly matched. So there'd be a fight, and a big one. Then
up goes the cry and we thunder forward like a giant wave,
down this hill and crash into the other fellows.

"Mars and Mercury, what a mess'. Men are screaming fit
to burst their lungs and slashing at everything in sight. They'd
chop an enemy or their best friend or their own leg if it got
in the way. It wasn't half a minute everyone was so mixed up
and turned around you couldn't tell friend from foe. Not that
it makes much difference.

"Now you have to understand that this army is made up of
individual lords, most of whom hate each other's guts. Each
lord has his own knights, and each knight has his own squire
and his own peasants. So in a battle you stay close—as close
as possible—to your knight, and him to his lord. And what
with all these knights charging right and left and every which
way, and men trying to follow them, you're doing some trav-
elling, slashing every foot of the way. And then some lord
will get cold feet and just turn and run. Or his horse will get
cut down and he goes down and the peasants stick him full
of steel till he looks like a hedgehog. Then suddenly his
knights don't have a leader anymore, or any reason to be there
except for capturing something valuable. The mercenaries
aren't going to get paid, so they just chop anyone they mink's
got money in his purse. Or if the lord runs away, his men
follow, and there's a great hole in your flank. Or two lords
will forget the enemy and decide to settle a blood feud right
there on the battlefield.

"Anyway, there's this surging and fighting and smashing
and after three minutes you're hoarse and thirsty and tired
and all you want to do is sit down and rest, but you can't, of
course. People get killed all around you, or disappear. So

OUTCASTS               27

you can't really tell if you're winning or not. No one can. I
always figured, and so did a bunch of old soldiers with scars
to prove they'd been there, that if you were still breathing
after a battle, you had won and that was that.

"And as if it weren't confusing enough, magic makes this
mess a hundred times worse! Some damned hand-waver will
be up on the hilltop—way out of arrow range—wiggling his
fingers and blowing smoke from some stinking pot—and sud-
denly there are spells all over me place. The sneaky kind.
Like a horde of knights will suddenly be bearing down on
you and you duck and cover your head, only to have them
sweep over you like fog. And you realize they weren't making
any noise. Or three giant men come running at you, and they
all look alike as brothers, and are even raising their axe the
same way. My master told me how he was once charged like
that, and he rode straight for the middle giant and impaled
him on a lance, and the other two—ghost pictures, they were—
curied up and died too. Magic, pah'. And glory too."

Cal shoved his helmet back to wipe his brow. He had goose
bumps from the memories he conjured. His voice had turned
dark and broody, as if an owl in the night had suddenly begun
to tell its sad story.

"My master knew a thing or two, but not this time. The
battle went back and forth for two hours or more, with all of
us with our arms hanging by our sides almost, when suddenly
our lord was seen being carried off towards the woods. I don't
know what exactly happened—I didn't see it—but my master
up and blows his horn and yells 'Follow me!' We did, though
we couldn^t see why. It was dark then and the battle was
winding down. Off we went into the woods, but we didn't
find nothing. It was just some illusion he saw, he reckoned.

"When we got back to the battle, it was over. We had lost,
our side said, and it was our fault because my master ran
away! My master got into an argument with another lord that'd
always hated him. They got off their horses to swing swords
but the other bastard refused, said my master had disgraced
himself. Ooh, was he mad! Other noble knights who were
fighting for the glory of the gods were squabbling like vul-
tures over dead men's goods. We got driven off the field with-
out a chance to collect any loot at all. And there was
something wrong with my master. I don't know what. But I

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

28

think he believed he was a coward somehow. And I wasn't
too proud of myself either. It's a damned fool who goes off
to war.

"Believe me," he finished, "this guff you hear about bat-
tles being glorious and romantic is just that—guff. They're
nothing more than a chance for some fat lord to get out of
his castle and kill a few of his hungry mouths and maybe
pick up some land or some loot in the process. Ach!"

Bith breathed. "But what happened to you?"

"Hunh? Oh, nothing. We camped that night and set a
guard, but the guards ran off. When I awoke everyone was
gone. Everyone, just like that. Stole my horse, too.

"Oh, was I mad! There I was, no food, no weapons, no
master, no friends. 1 snuck back to the battlefield and picked
up this stuff—" he gestured vaguely to his sword and shield
and harness—"stuff no one else wanted. I scrubbed the em-
blem off the shield with a rock and went into business for
myself."

The troll asked, "What you mean, business?"

Cal blew out his cheeks. Hunched over by the fire, he
looked very thin and young. "Well, after years as a page I
had worked my way up to squire, and in one more year I
would have made knight. Then in one day I was demoted
clear back to foot soldier- A soldier of fortune, with no for-
tune in sight.

"Anyway, I hear they're mustering some sort of army to
the east, on the coast somewhere. Maybe they can use one
more hand."

Bith yawned despite her interest in his words. "That's all
you know, that someone is mustering an army somewhere,
and you might join? What kind of a life is that?"

Caltus Talienson pursed his lips. "That's a soldier's life.
The pan you don't hear about in stories. Good night."

With that the former squire sheathed his sword and ar-
ranged it by his right side. He put the shield on his left. He
propped his head on his helmet and laid a moth-eaten sweater
over his chest as a blanket. In three slow breaths he was
asleep.

Bith looked at Hathor, who looked back as docile as a
sheep.

"Sleep. I watch," the troll said-

OUTCASTS             29

"You'll get some sleep too?"

Hathor shrugged an awkward shrug. Bith pillowed her head
on her arm and pulled the blanket to her chin. She fell asleep
with the rush and cry of battle in her ears. Men screamed
and swore and died. They cursed one another and the gods.
Horses dashed past her and arrows whizzed above. Cal swung
a sword and looked confused. . . .

Finally the night was quiet.

At midnight a stranger was sitting by their fire.

CHAPTER

3
Cal's first thought was "Vampire!"

Something woke him up. He'd opened his eyes expecting
to see either a pretty (though snotty) giri or a lumpy (but
friendly) troll. What he saw was a nightmare.

The boy snatched his sword from its scabbard and rolled
far to one side, coming to his feet, clumsy but upright. Bith
jerked awake and muzzily raised her hands in a dramatic
sorcering pose. Hathor trotted up from somewhere off in the
woods. He shouted something in trollish and lifted his felling
axe high.

The stranger at the fire lilted pale eyes and looked compla-
cently from one to another to another. After a long look round
he asked, "Yes?"

Cal let out his breath in a gasp. "Who are you? What are
you doing here?"

"Sitting," replied the pale man, "by the fire."

Cal waved his free arm to take in the forest. "That's not
what I meant! I mean—" he panted—"I mean, what are you
doing here? Besides the damned fire, I mean. Oh, hell!" The
boy had to stop talking to get his breath back.

It was the dead of night. No dew had formed. The stranger

30

OUTCASTS             31

sat and stared at the invisible flame over the coals. Cal stud-
ied the shadowed face. Although the boy had never seen one,
he was pretty sure this wasn't a vampire: it wasn't sinister
enough. But it surely wasn't a proper man.

The being was tall, taller than most men Cal had met. He
had pale, almost translucent skin, paler than a fish's belly.
His thin beard was so white it was almost not there at all.
His eyes were green like a cat's. He wore clothes very plain
but exceedingly fine-woven of a leaf green. On his head was
a soft hat with a sprig of holly, and over his shoulders he
wore a cloak of some very light material. Cal could see the
tail of something (not his tail, surely) sticking out behind and
lying on the ground. It looked to be a sword scabbard, but
was far too narrow. On the other side showed a quiver for
short arrows. A short, curved, foreign-looking bow lay across
the man's lap. What was he? Cal wondered. A jongleur? A
magician? A doctor? A prophet?

Elizebith had been studying the stranger too. Now she burst
out. "You're the one who shot the arrow!"

The pale man nodded slowly.

"You're an elf!" Bith berated herself for not realizing it
sooner. She'd seen pictures of elves in books. She had even
seen one in the flesh once. A dead one.
"Ulf?" grunted Hathor.

"Elf," Cal corrected. Which was as bad as a vampire. The
young soldier pointed his sword. He said, "Whatever you
are, sir elf, you be gone. Now. The road is that way."

The elf continued to stare at the fire.

"Didn't you hear me? Up with you, and out! We'll not
have your kind here!'

Bith said, "Cal!"

The man turned green eyes upon him and said, "You've
not heard the voice."

"Voice? What voice?"

Bith piped up. "We've heard it, sir elf! Hathor and I! This
troll."

"My name is Endril."

Cal waved a hand to shush people, though no one was
talking. "What's this about a voice?"

Bith told him how the voice had contacted both her and
Hathor. The elf nodded, "I too. As you guessed, t'was I who

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

32

shot the arrow and kept that villain from stabbing yon troll
in the back." He addressed the troll in a string of words that
gobbled and gulped. The troll replied in kind with a smile.

Cal was waving again. "Be damned to all that! What's—"

Bith said, "But why, if you shot that arrow, didn't you join
us in the ravine?"

"Why you not help us?" the troll ended. 'And how you
get past me to fire?"

Endril replied, "At the time, you were too far removed."

"We were trapped in a box! Where were you?"

"I was atop a hill opposite."

"Hill? I didn't see any hill."

"It was—some distance away."

Bith bit her lower lip. If he was speaking true, this elf had
shot an arrow from the top of a faraway hill, in the dark. and
killed a man. She didn't know if she believed it or not.
Cal stepped in front of Bith, blocking her view of the elf.
"Bith, wake up. He's hexing you."

"Get out of the way, stupid!"

"We can't have him here. Elves are evil! They curse crops
and poison wells' They steal children, they drink blood, they
do all kinds of horrible things!"

Bith shook her head until her hair flew. ' 'You don't know
anything. Elves are the fair folk who were here before men!
They live in castles and the forest and they compose beautiful
songs—they invented songs. They do ... nice things."

The soldier pointed his sword at the elf again. "And which
is it?"

The elf closed his eyes momentarily. "At any one time,
any thing is true."

"That's your answer," the boy snorted. "Nothing. Elf.
last warning. Get you gone."

When he didn't move, or even blink, Cal suddenly
screamed a battle cry and swung his sword two-handed.

la fact, Cal didn't intend to harm him. He only hoped to
jolt the elf out of his seat, to get him up and running. Usually
one close swipe of a blade was enough to make civilians run.
So his charge was more bluster than bloodlust.

But the elf was gone.

"Cal, behind you!" Bith's voice called.

He spun. There was a blur of green against the backdrop

OUTCASTS                33

of brown forest, then—nothing. Thinking the elf had ducked
behind him—already anticipating a cold dagger in the back—
Cal whipped around on his heel and slashed viciously without
looking. Something clinked. His sword arm stopped in mid-
air. The rest of him kept going. He tripped over his feet and
fell sprawling. His sword disappeared, plucked from his hand
like a feather from a bird's wing.

Standing over him was the elf. His face was blank and
unaccusing. He held Cal's sword by the blade in his left hand.
His right was empty. With no expression at all he offered the
sword back to the boy, hilt first.

Wondering, Cal took it. It was only then he noticed the elf
was wearing a glove, a metal gauntlet, on his left hand. The
white figure (who really was very tall) stepped back to the
fire, all without word 'br sound. When Cal looked again
the gauntlet was gone.

The boy stayed sitting on the ground, though he held onto
his sword. "How did you do that?"
The elf's only answer was to wave a breezy hand. They
were long thin hands with blue veins. Hands strong enough
to stop a sword thrust? That couldn't be right. And how could
a metal thin enough to make a glove still stop a blade? It had
to be magic. Elf black magic.

Hathor looked at the two humans who stared at the elf. To
the troll they all looked the same. He asked the crowd, "You
want mushrooms?"

Endril said, "Enough. 1 seek answers. Have you aught clue
as to his origin?"

Bith shook her head.

Hathor asked, "What he say?"

Cal asked, "Whose origin?"

Endril nodded as if he'd received an answer. Without
speaking he sat crosslegged by the fire. The elf spread his
hands onto the ground beside him, threw his head back, and
closed his eyes.

Caltus Talienson walked close to the fire and peered at him.
The elf sat still as a rock. His mouth was open slightly and
his face blank. Bith stood near Cal and stared also. The lower
lip clamped in her teeth betrayed her nervousness. Hathor
scratched his lumpy head and sat down. He dozed.

After a long time Endril opened his eyes and glided to his

34

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

feet. His every move was fluid and graceful, like a cat's. Cal
wondered if maybe elves were related to cats. That would
explain a lot. The elf said, "Nothing there." He turned with
his hand to his chin. studying the glade they camped in.

Endril squatted and stoked up the fire, arranging the em-
bers in some pattern, then fed on small sticks to prick up the
blaze. Soon its warm yellow light was reflected on the faces
of the four travelers.

Endril stooped low to peer into the fire as if it were a
crystal ball. He drew forth a small pouch from beneath his
cape and sprinkled a pinch of some powder on the fire. It
gave a green glow for only a second.

The elf shook his head. He hamunphed.

Now he walked around the glade, studying the trees. He
circled and touched each one, murmuring to himself in his
own language. It sounded as if he were singing under his
breath.

"'What is he rfomg?" Cal asked the two.
Hathor woke up with a grunt. Bith shrugged.

The e^f's voice came from the dark. "Boy, bring light!"

The boy sniffed at being called a boy, but his curiosity got
me best of him. Cal took a burning brand and swung it lightly
to whip up the flame- Bith and Hathor walked on his heels.

Endril stood back in the forest about fifty feet. He had one
fine hand on the bark of a thin tree. "This one would die
soon anyway, and take its neighbor." He gestured upwards.
Cal and the others looked. This slim tree was a leaner. High
up it had cracked, probably from lightning, and now it was
cocked over so it rubbed against a healthier neighbor. A
woodcutter would take it in an instant. But Endril set his
forehead against the bark and prayed for a moment. (Bith and
Cal wondered to whom.) Then the elf took out a long knife.
It had a shining white blade and a handle wrapped with silver
wire. (Cal wondered how much other stuff the elf carried
under that cloak.) He made a square cut in the soft bark of
the tree and then pried it loose. Silver wood was exposed,
and the elf signalled the light close. He peered at it closely
and frowned. "Not a druid god- What then?"

"Beats me," Cal replied- "What are you looking for?"
Bilh poked him in the arm.

Endril didn't reply. Back at the fire he pondered some more

OUTCASTS             35

as the humans and troll pondered him. He turned their way
and stared right through them. Suddenly he said to Cal, "Will
your helm hold water?"

"What?"

"Give it here." Without waiting he took it off Cal's head.
The helmet was made of bands of iron lined with leather.
Endril walked off into the dark, this time alone.

"What's he want with rW?" Cal asked.

"Thirsty?" Hathor asked.

Bith was biting her lip again. "I think . . . he's trying to
contact our—contact."

"What contact?"

"The one with the voice."

"What voice?"

Bith said icily, "The one in our heads."

Cal retorted, "/haven't heard any voice."

"Maybe he only talks to intelligent beings."
"Hey!"

Endril came back into the firelight carrying Cal's helmet.
It was full of water. The elf set it carefully by the fire. He
studied the water's surface and startled his companions when
he said, "There. "

More startling was the faint squeak that replied, "Yes, good
work." It sounded like a child talking at the bottom of a well.
Cal and Bith and Hathor crowded close. Peering into the dark
water they perceived—a face!

It was a man's face, stem and frowning, for all that it was
young. The brows were knitted, the eyes slanted and slitted,
the nose sharp cut, the mouth thin-lipped. There was a hint
of beard, though it was hard to tell. The face filled the bowl
like a man's reflection seen in a bucket. But there was no
man above. Only an elf and three astounded compatriots.

"List me," the voice said- "We have much to instruct you,
our servants."

"I'm no man's servant," Cal blurted out. "Who is this
clown?"

Endril told him. "It's a god."

Hathor asked. "That a god?"

"A little titchy one, maybe," Bith answered him. The tiny
man might have been some drowned soul frozen under ice.
"Who are you? What do you want from us?"

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

36

"You will address us as Magnificent Lord, Exalted Master,
and Ruler of the Twelve Spheres'" the god tried to thunder,
but his voice was so tiny and tinny he sounded like a kitten.
Cal and Hathor laughed outright. Bith giggled. Only Endril
remained silent.

"I've a better idea," Cal replied. "Why don't we tip over
this bowl?"

"Into fire," Hathor added. They laughed again.

The god's face twisted and he spit out in a sparrow's chirp.
"Insult us, whelps? Die, then!"

Cal's laugh stopped as if he'd stopped an arrow. With jerky
motions he scrabbled up from the ground so quickly he
clonked heads with Bith and Hathor. With a howl he jumped
clear and ripped his sword from the sheath. As the pitted
blade caught the firelight Bith saw the god's face on the blade'

"Die! Die! Die!" Cal shrieked. He lunged.
Hathor shot out a rough arm that knocked Bith over on her
back, unfortunately too close to the fire. Her sleeve fell onto
hot embers and burst into flame. Hathor himself dropped to
the ground so that Cal's thrust carried him over the troll's
back. Straddled, Hathor stood up and dumped Cal on the
ground, but as the boy landed he slashed out and caught
Hathor on the back of the leg just below the hamstring. Hathor
roared and jumped and would have fallen back onto the up-
thrust blade, except for the forgotten Endril-

The elf's boot caught Hathor square in the rump. The troll
shot forward as if launched from a ballista to crash on top of
Bith. She had been frantically flapping her sleeve to put out
the flame but had only fanned it hotter. Bith now got a face
full of smelly stale troll as the wind was knocked out of her.

Cal, meanwhile, had swung with new fury on Endril, The
elf only spread his feet and arms wide and waited. He'd
donned his metal glove again. He sidestepped the clumsy
charge and then deftly tripped the boy. Cal plowed headlong
onto the forest loam. Endril stepped on his sword arm, bent
and wrenched the weapon loose, then threw it far out into
the dark woods. He stood with both feet on Cal's arms.

It grew quiet. Cal lay on the soil and panted like a dog.
Then he blew dirt out of his mouth and rasped, "What hap-
pened?"

"You mocked a god," Endril told him.

OUTCASTS             37

"I did? Oh, that's right. I did. But what happened then?'*

Endril told him. Bith shook off Hathor's help and sat up.
She batted at her sleeve and clothing and inspected her wrists.
"Where's that idiot god gotten to?"

Endril stepped to the fire and peered into the helmet full
of water. "Still here."

The dish rocked. "Mock us, will you? We'll kill you all!
We'll send you to the darkest pits of hell! Below that even,
where your bowels will be impregnated with serpents, your
eyes ripped out with hooks, and your lungs drowned in brim-
stone fire!"

Endril squatted, looked into the bowl and addressed it while
the others crept close and did not laugh. "Before you do that.
oh Magnificent Lord, Exalted Master, and Ruler of the Twelve
Spheres, pray tell this measly servant thy name that I may
sing thy praises to all the ears of men and mortals."

There was a pause, then the tiny lipless mouth spoke. "We
have many names, but men know us most often as Vili."

"Ah," said Endril. "Many tales have I heard of Vili, the
most noble, most high, most feared, most wise of the gods
of the north. Verily, I grow faint in the majesty of thy pres-
ence." With his hands behind him Endril waved his compan-
ions back. Then he started to creep backwards himself-
" Excuse this frail one, oh lord and master, I must pause for
breath ere I swoon."

Endri] joined the three at the edge of the firelight. He sig-
nalled them even farther back among the black, looming trees.
There he told them, "So we have it. Our mysterious shade is
Vili, a god of the north."

"Who's Vili?" Cal asked. "I never heard of him."

Bith said, "I have. I've read about him. He's brother to
Odin, king of northern gods, which makes him kin to Loki
and Thor."

"Thor?" asked Hathor.

Endril nodded, but with a cant to his head. "Those tales
may be true or not. He may or may not be Vili."

"What? "Cal asked.,

Bith answered. "I know what he means. Gods lie. There
are all kinds of stories about the tricks they play or the dis-
guises they wear. To fool each other or to gull men. Loki
especially is known as the trickster, and he's Vili's cousin.

38

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

This fellow could be anyone. We have to be careful we don't
fall into a trap."

Endril nodded. "One cannot be too careful when dealing
with gods. They are more like children than adults, with dan-
gerous and arcane powers. Some are fools, some liars. But
all of them welcome flattery. Put honey on your tongue when
addressing them and you'll be rewarded. Some of the time."

"How do you know all this?" Cal demanded.

"T'is common knowledge."

"What are we to do?" Bith asked,

"Wait a minute," Cal said- "How did you know to put
out that bowl of water?"

"I didn't, I provided several opportunities for this god of
whatever to manifest himself- I opened my body to receive
him as a host. I built up the fire to perhaps glimpse a fire
fiend, t stripped a tree to see a druid god. It was water that
did the trick. Coot water."

"Hunh?"

Endril explained as if to a slow child. "This god is a north-
ern god—a cold elemental—and so needed a cool surface on
which to manifest himself. The water was cool and so he
appeared there. Your steel sword served as well."

"Why didn't he just show up in person, like a ghost or
something?''

"Watch your tongue!" Bith spit out.

Edril answered. "Yes, please do. We've enough—other-
woriders visiting us now. For your question, I suspect this
godling needs a medium through which to manifest himself
because he cannot do so 'in person.' He must be too weak
to enter this plane. Thus so far we have only heard his voice-''

Cal harrumphed. "The less we have to do with gods the
better. Especially weak ones."

"Weak ones seek weak vessels."

"Hey!" Cal blurted. Bith laughed.

"I mean," Endril continued, "this god seeks our help,
Gods always want something, usually something they can't
have. Like children and men."

"That's men, all right," Bith muttered.

"And gods crave worshippers to sing their praises. Or
mayhaps be wants something from this plane, something he
cannot fetch himself,"

OUTCASTS             39

"He won't get much with threats," Cal said. "Why should
we help him?"

"Why indeed? Let us talk. Try to discern if he is indeed
Vili. Then we can see what he wants."

'' Why not?'' Bith sighed. But her tone was too casual. She
was curious.

"I don't like this," Cal murmured.

"Then leave," the girt told him. "We didn't invite you
here anyway."

"Oh? In that case I'm staying."

Hathor laughed and shook his head.

The four again crouched over the helm full of water. They
had moved it away from the fire so it would not grow warm
and rigged a torch on a pole so they could see. The god's
face rippled like the path of a fish's tail.

Endril did the talking. Gently and subtly, with many hon-
eyed words, he asked Vili about his ancestry, his homeland,
his ideals, his reasons for summoning them. "That we might
know how to serve you, master, best."
Vili replied, though it took some time. His tiny voice
droned on and on, and the petulance in it became clearer and
clearer. The godling claimed to be the younger brother of
Odin, and anyone with siblings could read the jealousy there.
He was ignored by his brother Odin, eclipsed by his nephew
Thor, picked on by his half-cousin Loki. Only the kind Balder
would speak to him or take him seriously. The elder gods had
the tribes of the far north firmly in their grasp and they pro-
tected their influence ferociously- It was Balder who had sug-
gested that Vili move farther south to "build a following."

To this end, Vili had left the land of ice and pine and rock
and spume. He'd found a new land of low mountains and
green hills and thick forest. And a long rolling wall of col-
ored mist.

In this new land VUi found potential for followers. He
hoped to attract worthy men, men of great wisdom and
strength and heart. Men, he had heard, liked geegaws—sacred
objects, venerated relics, fine tools. So Vili had dwarves con-
struct him a set of runeswords.

"Runeswords? " The word tolled tike a bell in Cal's mind
and mouth.

"Hush!" snapped the three.

40

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

These swords were forged in the bodies of mountains and
tempered in the god's own blood. With them in hand his
priests would "gather worshippers, assemble armies, conduct
war, and conquer kingdoms!" Like his brother Odin, Vili
would forge unbreakable bonds with the earth and make him-
self supreme^

Or so he thought . . .

"What went wrong?" Bith asked.

"Nothing went wrong!" snapped the tiny god in the bowl.
"Our plan was good! It was worthy! But the men squabbled
among themselves, and then the Dark Lord came. ..." Vili's
plan fell apart. The swords—Vili wished now he'd never com-
missioned them—were scattered over the earth. "The nearest
one is to the northwest. A thrice-cursed wizard drains its
power—our power—for his own petty ends, to protect his
kingdom from the Dark Army that encroaches."

"That doesn't sound so petty," Cal opined.

"Dark—Army?" asked Hathor.

"Shhh!!!" Bith hissed.

The tiny voice finished, "And so it comes to you."

"What?" asked all four together.
"Capture the sword!" hissed the voice. "Cast down the
wizard and kill him as an example to those who would oppose
our will!"

"Why should we?" Cal asked, and this time no one
shushed him.

"Do this thing for us," proclaimed the squeaky voice,
"and we shall reward you with gifts such as no mortal has
ever yet beheld!"

"Like what?"

The face in die bowl was silent. Cal thought he detected a
pout on the thin lips.

"Well?" the boy repeated.

"Gold! Jewels! Spell books! Fabulous magic swords and
ancient crowns of kings and potions and fabric from far lands!
Priceless—"

"Ores," Cal put in. "Big ugly ones with clubs."

"Traps," said Bith. "Evil spells to drive a person mad or
put out their eyes or stop their hearts. Homunculi and incubi
and earwigs."

OUTCASTS             41

"Trolls," Hathor put in. His three companions looked at
him.

"Cowards!" crowed the god, "You are afraid! Wastrels!
Feeble ones! Pusillanimous—''

Cal flicked the edge of the helmet with his finger. Un-
bound, his brown hair fell into his eyes and he had to brush
it back. "We're all that and more, but we're not stupid. None
here would embark on a doomed quest at the behest of a god
so feeble he can't even hex a chicken."

"Beware," Endril murmured. He hadn't spoken for some
time- "He hexed you."

Cal started and touched the pommel of his sword. Endril
clamped a hand over his. The elf's hand was warm but hard
as a ring of iron. Cal tried to shake it off but couldn't. "I'm
all right!" Endril let go.

"I drink god water?" Hathor asked.

Endrit held up a white hand. "No. We've listened enough,
though. Let us talk. Or better, see. Can you, oh Vili, show
us some picture of our destination?"

"The sword?" came a squeak.

"The treasure," replied Cal.
"And the magic," added Bith.

The face screwed itself up as if in disgust. Then it faded
away.

"He gone?" Hathor asked.

Cal peered close. "Looks like. No, wait. Look!"

A room came into view, a tiny picture in me round bowl.
Everyone bumped heads to catch a glimpse. The room re-
volved slowly. Bith gasped as a workbench crowded with
books and retorts and crocks and skulls and stuffed birds
came into view. Hathor grunted at the jeweled armor and
splendid battleaxe seen on one wall- And Cal gasped loudest
of all when he beheld a sword hanging in mid-air: a sword
etched with runes along its length.

Then suddenly the sour face of their god confronted them.

"Well?" he demanded.

The four mortals were silent. They tried to look at one
another surreptiously, to gauge each other's reaction. Finally
Bith broke the silence. "How much help do we get?"

Negotiations went on for some time. The mortal party fired
questions and answers at me beleaguered god and he answered

42

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

as much as he knew (or would tell them). He could scout
ahead for them, spy around corners and amongst the enemy
(whom he would not name), warn them of trouble. Maybe
possess a soul or two as needed, enhance their abilities, speak
to them in their minds, direct them back together if they
should separate. He made many more promises they weren't
sure he could keep. But in the end they consented, in a way.

"We'll take a look," Bith said.

"From a distance," Cal agreed.

"Nothing sure," Hathor added.

"The journey costs nothing," confirmed Endril.

"Then get on with it," commanded Vili, and faded.

Endril tilted the bowl. then dumped it out. "I think his
power is spent for now."

Cal got up from his knees and stretched wide. "Unhh!
That was interesting, but I have a feeling there's a whole lot
he didn't tell us. Hunh. I've never talked with a god before,
though I've called out a few of their names when I was fight-
ing."
"Beware lest your prayers be answered," Endril supplied.

"When do we start for the northland?" Bith asked.

"Tomorrow," replied Endril.

"Good," Hathor echoed. "Sleep now."

"Not yet," said Endril. "We must make a pact."

"Pact? What kind of pact?"

"Can't that wait until we're on the road?"

"What a pack?"

"A bond. A pact of honor," the elf explained. "And no,
it cannot wait. We've been brought together and we need to
seal our friendship. Rise and attend me, you all."

Wondering, glancing at one another sidelong, Cal and Bith
and Hathor shuffled forward and tentatively advanced their
hands.

Endril shook his white head. "Not here. Here." He stood
at one side of the fire and extended one hand over it. The
flame had died to embers that threw a lot of heat. But he
stood there as still as a tree with a branch extended. Cal
joined him and put his brown scarred hand on the elf's. The
fire began to slowly bake it- The troll stuck in his hairy knotty
hand, and finally Bith's slim short-fingered one was added to
the triangle.

OUTCASTS            43

Endril nodded- "An elf takes an oath not lightly, and I
hope humans and their kin do likewise. Let us pledge. That
we shall share peril and plunder and plague together. That
we shall defend one another unto death. That we shall work
together and never at cross purposes. That we shall succor
one another and expect succor.

"As the winds have four homes and the seasons four turn-
ings, as the world has four directions and this fire four sides,
let us have four hearts. A brotherhood of four.

"So be it!" Endril finished.

The other three echoed him. "So be it!"

They dropped their hot hands. With the dying down of the
fire had come the pressing of the night. A minor breeze rat-
tled through the camp. Bith shivered and drew her cloak close
about her. Cal said, "1*11 stoke the fire for you."

Hathor said, "I get wood."

"And I will stand watch," added Endril.
Bith asked, "What do I do?"

"Sleep."

The girl was too tired to argue. She settled against a fallen
tree dragged up by Hathor and laid down. "This has been a
long day," she yawned.

Having dumped an armful of wood, Hathor laid down to
sleep in die dirt like a dog. Endril wandered off while Cal
stacked the fire.

Hathor picked his head up and looked at the starry sky.
"Not four directions. Six."

"What's that?" Cal asked him.

"Wodd has four directions. North, south, east, west—up,
down."

"Go to sleep, Hathor." The troll dropped his head back
down and slept.

"Besides," Cal mused, "we're five, including our little
god friend.'*

Bith answered sleepily, "Gods don't count. You can't de-
pend on them."

Cal chuckled. "A brotherhood of outcasts- Some bunch."

"Go to sleep, Cal."

He did.

A shimmering sword etched with runes flashed in his
dreams.

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

44

Three days walking found them far to the west. They went
directly west because Endril had said they might as well face
what they were fighting as soon as possible.

They climbed through increasingly hilly country. The for-
est thinned out as the land rose. The trees stayed in the bot-
toms of gulleys that soon became valleys and promised to
become gorges. The grass was replaced in some places by
rock. The four were often the tallest things around save for
curiously conical stone spires. Cal asked Endril if they were
fashioned by hand, but the answers he got were so vague as
to be useless.

They passed through three hamlets. Two of them were de-
serted. In the third only their money was welcome. The res-
idents—gruff and scruffy men and women—would say that
"strangers and stranger ones" had passed by and caused
"some trouble." More than that they would not tell. The
villagers sold them trail food and waterskins at an exorbitant
price. They learned this tiny village was almost the end of
civilization, that beyond there was but one valley of people
left, a valley with a castle and a village around it.

And the party learned from these downtrodden and scur-
rilous people that they had become true outcasts, for the vil-
lagers did not try to hide their contempt and fear of the elf
and troll, and even of the human magic user.

With money lent by Cal, Bith had bought herself a blanket,
a teapot, a mirror, and some other camp gear. She tucked
her supplies into the blanket and tied it across her back. She
and Cal wondered at Endril and Hathor, who carried only
their weapons. Comfort was nothing to them. Hathor ate any-
thing he could chew and he slept in the mud or the rain.
Endril found food for them—game birds and animals, roots
and grasses—but ate little himself. And the elf never slept, it
seemed. He would only sit crosslegged and rest his eyes. He
sang lilting yet monotonous airs in a strange language that
started and stopped in no particular way. The pale figure wan-
dered off at times and returned later without a sound or ex-
planation. Their companions' inhuman fortitude began to
grate on Cal and Bith as the days passed.

They tramped across heathered moors and autumn-yellow
plains. Mile after mile, on and on.

OUTCASTS             45

Endril found the newness of the land enthralling. True, he
had walked these same miles before, many times in his long
life, but each time he passed through there was something
new to sec- A robin had found a new place to build a nest in
me top of a sundered tree. Conies had split their former col-
ony in two, occupying two hilltops now. Lavender had worked
its way up from the south to grace the side of a mountain
stream. The light through the grass had a different translu-
cency as the land settled. It was all beautiful, he found, all
one with itself. But it could not compare in any way with his
homeland, and often his heart was downcast. It was then he
would dream his dreamless memories and sing of home.

Bith wished she'd worked more as a youngster, so her body
would be tougher now. She had to struggle to keep up with
the elf's swinging gait, the troll's roll, and the soldier's stolid
marching. Blisters grew and burst on her feet inside their
fancy yellow boots, burst and leaked and chafed anew. At
nights she could barely sleep for their aching, just as the hard
ground mashed her soft curves and left her stiff in the morn-
ing. She thought this an empty land, grass and rock and noth-
ing else, empty of life and laughter and intrigue, and she
often wished she were some place exciting, or even home in
her mother's castle. Her mother was pure evil. The giri knew
that now, and nothing could make her go back to that dark
structure. But this outdoor wandering life was alien to her
too; she didn't belong here, and the land seemed to know it
and oppose her at every step-

Hathor strolled and walked and plucked up food and
thought about things or didn't. Everything was colorful and
noisy and interesting. He liked the red in the rocks underfoot,
the blue in a bird's wing, the yellow and green of the grass
stalks. He watched the clouds drift together to form a thou-
sand different shapes, then drift apart to form a thousand
more. He liked the sounds the wind carried, the click of
beetle and me scurry of ants, the hoot of a sleeping ground
owl. He liked the new tastes of the roots and plants he found,
a hundred different sensations on his tongue. He enjoyed it
all and was glad he'd left behind his dank moist caves and his
cruel people.

Between Endnl's singing, Bith's silent misery, and Hathor's
complacence, Cal began to feel very alone despite me com-

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

46

pany. This land was not very different from his homeland,
and sometimes the breeze carried scents that triggered mem-
ories of childhood. Yet that homeland was lost forever, and
he came from a race of people that accepted their fate without
complaining. So it had been with his father and so with his
mother- The stony silence was comfortable in its own hard
way, for it reminded Cal of the times in which he'd marched
and sung with stout soldiers to face a common foe. In these
harsh reaches he could breathe clear air deep into his lungs.
His head was free of the cobwebs of the forest. So the silence
was not so bad.

It was one bright morning they sighted their first goal. En-
dril, in the lead, reached the top of a slope and announced,
"There it is."

Bith, then Hathor, then Cal in the rear, joined him on the
flinty crest. They drew a sharp breath at the strange sight. On
this cloudless day in this cloudless clime, far to the west. they
beheld the common enemy of all the speaking races.

The thing was a line of cloud, or fog: a storm cloud come
to ground. The bank was tall, very tall, reaching almost to
where normal clouds would fly. The clouds that formed this
bank were not still. They roiled and boiled and fluttered and
rippled up and down its sheer face. Color flitted through the
cloud like a dirty rainbow—grey where it touched the ground,
a tinge of purple here, a jot of red there, green where the sun
hit it along the top, with orange streaks. But none of the
colors were beautiful. They were the colors of bruises on
skin, of mold on vegetables, of dried blood or vomit, of sun-
bleached bones and things long dead.

But the most curious feature of the cloud was its straight-
ness. True, the wall of cloud billowed out here or receded
there, but its front edge was as cleanly cut as if with a knife.
The tremendous wall ran from north by east to south by west,
and it stretched from horizon to horizon and obviously be-
yond. It was all the eye could see in looking west, a giant sea
wave poised to come crashing down on all civilization.
Cal said aloud to no one in particular, "So that's it. eh?"

"Aye," replied Endril. "The Mistwall,"

CHAPTER

4

"It's beautiful," said Bith.

"No, it's not," Cal snapped. "It's a curse on all man-
kind!"

Bith shook herself as if in a trance. "I—I suppose you're
right. It's full of color, but there's something wrong with
it. . . ."

The four stared at the long wall of bilious cloud without
moving or speaking.

It was Endril who broke the silence. "I remember when it
was far to the west. Very far. I remember when it didn't exist
at all." The elf's gaze was fixed in space, but not upon Mist-
wall.

Cal found the regular swirling of the mists arresting and
hypnotic, like watching water pass under a bridge. If a man
stared too long he could slip quietly over the edge. . . . Cal
shook himself. He turned his back and rubbed his eyes. A
few more minutes of this and the whole party would march
off into its depths. "Maybe we should get away from it. Out
of sight.''

No one answered. His three companions just stood and
stared. The soldier reached back—without looking at the dis-

47

48

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

tant Mistwatl—and grabbed Elizebith by the arm. Roughly he
jerked her down below the brow of the slope.

"What? Let go of me, you—ruffian!"

Hathor looked up at Bith's cry and jumped down beside
the girl. He growled at Cal to let the girt go. Cal did, but he
asked her, "Feel better?"

Bith looked around and put her hand to her throat. "Well,
yes. I do. Thank you, I guess."

"It's going to be a Jolly journey with that thing always at
our left hand."

"Maybe we'll get used to it."

"Never."
Endril alighted beside them without a sound. "Shall we
resume our trek?''

The three of human stock stared at him. Cal asked,
"Doesn't that wall do anything to you?"

Endril shook his head. "It saddens me. I suppose it's our
fault it's here."

' "The wall? How do you reckon it's your fault?''

Endril didn't answer. He set off down the slope, swinging
his short bow as if it were a willow switch.

"Hey, wait up'" Cal called. He took Bith's hand and helped
her along. They slid down the scree to the shaley bottom of
a slope. They set off north along a goat trail, out of sight of
the Mistwall.

Cal caught up with Endril. "Slow down, you! What did
you mean, it's your fault?"

Endril almost shrugged. "Is omission or commission the
greater crime? At the first coming of the Dark Lord we elves
did nothing. We discussed it at length, but dismissed it as yet
another manifestation of man's ignorance and urge for self-
destruction. Too late did we leam it was more, something
that may eat up the land permanently. We never thought you
capable of that. We were wrong."

"You could have stopped the Dark Lord, yet you didn't do
anything? That's horrible!"

Endril watched the sky to the north. "We did nothing.
Perhaps we couldn't have stopped it. We didn't try- That is
the worst crime of all."

Bith and Cal both trotted to keep up with the elf. Hathor
strolled along far behind, in no hurry to catch up. Endril

OUTCASTS            49

slowed his stride somewhat. The girl asked, "What do you
know of the Dark Lord? Is he human?''

"I don't know."

"Why not?"

Endril gave her a look that in a human would have been
irritation. "Why anything? He—or she, or it—is what he,
she, or it is. 1 know only that it is not elven. What more need
I know?"

Cal spit out an oath and stopped in his tracks. Bith stood
beside him. In a moment the elf had passed over a hill. Hathor
walked up chewing on a piece of sapling he'd cut. Cal asked
Bith, "What do you know about the Dark Lord?"
"I? Nothing. Nor—well, nor my mother, either. She's
wondered for years about him, or it. Asked every—traveller-
mat came to our castle. But no one knew. Not even his priests
have a clue."

Cal's tone was snide. "Oh, yes, your castle again."

Bith put her nose in the air. "And who are you to be doubt-
ing me? You forget the state of your person—and your boots."

"Horseshit," Hathor supplied.

Cal barked, "That's enough out of you, troll. And you too,
princess. If you're so high and mighty, where is this castle of
yours?"

"My castle—my home—is beyond that veil."

"What? Really?"

Now was Bith's turn to be snide. "Oh. Now you choose to
believe me."

Caught, Cal was suddenly flustered. "Well, yes. I guess
so. But how can you have a home beyond the veil? Only evil
beings dwell there."

"And now you say I'm evil. I can't say I care for your
conversation."

Cal waved his hands uselessly. "Look, I don't know what
to believe. All I've ever heard is—"

"I'll tell you this," the giri's voice was direct. "I am a
princess, because I am Morea's daughter, and Morea is the
most powerful woman in the world. And the most evil. And
if you stopped to think for even half a moment, you might
wonder this: Why is her only child, heir to her throne and all
her power and all her wealth and all her gramarye, out here?—

50

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

wandering in the wilderness, no home, no shelter, alone and
penniless, with only the clothing on her back? Why?"

Then Cal was alone, for the giri had turned and stalked
away, up the slope where the elf had gone. Hathor followed
her.

Cal contemplated their receding backs and the sigh of the
silent plain. Damn! but he was tired of bringing up the rear
and listening to the quiet! And having sensitive people bark
at every word he spoke! Soldiers were entitled to grumble
and to question: it was one of their few joys. And he had his
pride. . . . But so did the others. The poor always had the
most pride—it was all they could afford- Maybe they were all
on edge in these eerie wastes. The empty wind whistled
around his ears and he shuddered. Cal's pride wasn't worth
a crooked copper out here. He Jogged to catch up.

"Hey! Bith, Hathor. wait up! Let's not fight! Hey!"

He walked as best he could alongside the girl, but as she
had the center of the narrow trail through rock and heather,
he had to stumble along on the side or walk behind her. He
talked fast.

"Look, I'm sorry if I doubted you. Or said that you were
evil. That wall makes me edgy. And sad."

"Sad? Ha!"

"No, really, it does. Because I come from the Lost Lands,
too. In a way." He saw a glimmer of interest in Bith's eyes.
He kept talking as their party stepped out across the heathered
plain. The Mistwall had come back into sight, filling the
western sky. They didn't look at it.

"My father, Talien Berefordson, had a small fief in the
west, at the northern tip of an island. I don't remember it
very well. I was just a baby when the wall first appeared—
I'd never even seen it before today. I remember my mother
saying it was the queerest cloud structure, not like a storm
coming on, but like it was alive. One day my people realized
that it wasn't just a cloud bank, for the fisherfolk who sailed
into it seldom came back. Some who did came back mad.
Some complained of nightmares, awful ones. so vile they
killed themselves, sometimes after killing others. My father
could see it was poison, but he didn't know what to do.

"Then one day—my mother told me all this, mind—an
army of monsters came out of the mist. There were ores and

OUTCASTS             51

giants and other kinds of misshapen things. No offense,
Hathor. My father, who never listened to the council of any-
one in his entire life, finally decided to set out with his army
to drive them away. Thai I remember, little though I was. I
remember my father had a pennant, a green one with a red
eagle with a fish in its jaws, a sea eagle. The strongest man
in the army carried it in a boot on his saddle, and it fluttered
in the breeze. The army rode off one day when it was dark
at noon.

"They didn't come back. Not one man out of a hundred.
Not a single horse. We could only assume they were all
dead."

His voice was running out like the end of a rainstorm. His
pace slowed, as did his audience's: one girl and one troll.
Cal talked on, but more to himself than to anyone else.

"When they didn't come back after many days, and the
wall had drawn closer, my mother bundled me up and we
fled, with only one servant and a horse. We never had much.
We travelled east. My mother died. The servant was old—-
Hamish, his name was—and he put me in the service of Lord
Edric. You know what happened after that."

Cal had stopped walking altogether. The unceasing wind
plucked at his garments and sent the loose threads of ragged
ends streaming. His brown bangs-blew into his eyes and wisps
fluttered about his ears. "Then Hamish died. I'd nothing left
of my father's estate, or my mother's either, all gone behind
that evil wall of mist. Nothing but the memory of a big man
bearing a pennant. A red eagle carrying off a fish. I've thought
of painting it on my shield, but there's no one can vouch for
me."

Hathor shopped chewing and threw away his stick. "Sad,"
he said. He seemed to be remembering something himself.

Bith put a soft white hand on CaTs brown one. "I'm—sorry
to hear all that, Cal- It is sad. It really is. That's something
like what happened to me. I lived in a castle that was always
in the mists- Sometimes I wonder if I could travel back inside
and go home. But I don't think I can. . . ." She stopped and
rubbed her nose. "Ooh, this wind is tiresome. Could we—
should we find a place to camp for the night?"

The three stood together as the shadow of the wall overtook
them. Lying along the west, it eclipsed the sun and created

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

52

a false twilight before the real dusk. The wind took on a new
life and edge, with a smell of corruption. "Yes, let's," Cal
said. "But not within sight of that wall."

"You know, we can't go on like this."

"Like what?"

"Wandering around without any plan or sense," Cal re-
plied.

"We've a plan," Bith said. "We're bound for the north,
now. And Endril's the only one of us who wanders, and he
always comes back."

The four of them were hunkered around a campfire. They
had found a hollow among some low hummocks. The land
around was clad in tough grey weeds and tall grass that hissed
in the eternal wind. But down here only the holly sprig in
Endril's hat was rimed. It took a lot of cutting with Hathor's
axe to get stems for firewood, but they had enough for the
night. The elf had returned with a rock goat they roasted on
a spit.

With his new contrition, Cal was weighing his words so
not to offend. He waved his sharpening stone as he talked,
trying to recall how his father had made suggestions. "It's
not just Endril's wandering, it's our whole manner of travel-
ling. We've been lucky, but we're going to get in trouble
sooner or later. Especially now that we're in dangerous coun-
try. More dangerous. Look at the way we hit me bushes."

Even in the firelight they could see Bith blush. "What I do
in the bushes is none of your business^."

"No, no, not you personally. We all have to hit the bushes.
But we need to have some sort of plan for—hitting the bushes
or going for water or taking point or whatever. I mean," Cal
couldn't took at Bith for blushing himself, "with a bunch of
soldiers, if a guy has to, uh, hit me bushes, he just goes a
short way off where everyone can see him. Not that they look,
but he stays close enough that no enemy can pick him off.
You wouldn't believe how many men get killed with their
pants down. But we're always getting out of sight of one
another. If anyone starts tracking us we'd get picked off in a
day."

Endril asked calmly, "What would you have us do?"

OUTCASTS             53

"I don't know! Something, some plan. And we should have
a leader."

"Who?" Bith asked. "You?"

"No, not me necessarily. But someone should be in charge.
Not for everyday stuff, but in case we have to make a decision
quickly. That's when a leader counts."

"We've done all right so far," Bith commented. "I don't
think we need to turn ourselves into soldiers. From what I've
seen of soldiers, that would be a step down—for a lizard-
man."

Cal said nothing. He stropped his sword blade viciously.

Bith drew a blanket around her shoulders. For a time the
only sound was the sough of the wind through their hollow
and the crackle of the fire. "It is a strange life we lead,
though. The Mistwall has displaced Cal and me, we find.
What about you, Hathor?"

Hathor was cutting the goat hide into strips and braiding it
with the end looped over his big black-nailed toe. He looked
up, surprise in his beady eyes. "Hunh? Me?"

"Yes, you. Why do you wander?"

"Oh," his croak had an embarrassed sound. "Not like my
home. It not a nice place."

"Why not?"

"Oh, trolls not nice people. Kill anyone who not a troll
and eat them. Not much food in caves. Mushrooms, white
fish with no eyes, nothing else. Bats no good, no meat on
'em. So trolls come out at night, catch deer or bear, possum,
people. People slow, easy to catch. But very salty and tough."
The troll had not noticed his companions' faces, or he would
have stopped talking. But he was warming to his subject.
"We not stay out in the daytime because sun hurt our eyes.
No can see good. And elders say sun bum us, make us blind,
kill us. We stay in dark.

"But one night, me got lost in woods. Stuck out when sun
come up. Thought me would die in sun. But no. See lots of
pretty colors. Green grass. Flowers all over, white ones, yel-
low ones, even blue ones. Birds in trees, and little red flowers
even on trees! Liked it, didn't go back. Learned to eat other
things. No meat. Hair turn red."

Cal stopped in mid-strop. "What?"

Hathor pointed to his flat head. He'd removed his hat, as

54 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

he always did at night. The humans realized now it was as a
sun shade that he wore it. "Stop eat meat—not much, any-
way—hair turn red. No troll ever have red hair before."

Cal asked, "Is that true, Endril?"

"I never saw one with red hair before."

Bith said, "It's probably the sun that changed your hair
from brown to red, Thor- Not the lack of meat-''

The troll pulled at his lip with a craggy finger. Then he
grunted and continued his braiding.

Bith said, "And you, Endril. What brings you to the land
of men?"

Endril sat without saying anything for some time. Hathor
slid the goat off the spit onto a flat stone and used his axe to
quarter it. He handed the sections out. Each ate with a knife
and his or her fingers. The silence stretched out, and finally
the elf filled it. His voice matched the night breeze in the
way it lifted and fell. It was sonorous and other-woridly.

"The lands of men and the lands of elves overlap," he
began.' 'Some of each are common, some not. Before, a long
time ago, elfhome ranged wider and farther. Magic, or per-
haps something else, has leeched some of it away. Now
elfhome recedes like the tide, as the ocean once receded from
the land herself. This spot we occupy was once under water.
You can often split a rock and find a seashell inside."

Cal gave a grunt that sounded negative, but he said noth-
ing. Bith and Hathor chewed on strips of goat and listened
raptly.

"The land, the ocean, the wind, the sun, all run in cycles,
waxing and waning, growing and shrinking. Nothing ever
goes away, it only bides its time. In times past the land gave
rise to the speaking races. First elves. Then came men and
others. Something is lost as each new race arises. Elves are
most a product of the land."
Cal asked, "More than men?"

"Yes. Humans do not live with the land, they live on it."

"What's the difference?"

"The difference is in how the races treat Mother Earth.
Humans take from the land and give nothing back but their
bodies when they expire. Elves give back as they take. They
give more, and improve the land."

Cal pointed with his greasy dagger. "Wait a minute, what

OUTCASTS

55

do you mean, 'improve the land'? Humans do that. Ifapassel
of humans travel to a valley that's empty, that has nothing in
it but grass, and they build houses and plow the soil and bring
forth a crop, if they thin the forest so you can move through
it and divert a stream to create a pond full of fish and do like
things like that, how can you say they haven't improved it?
There was nothing there before and there's suddenly plenty!"

"If you say so, man. But that you can think a valley full
of grass is 'empty' speaks volumes."

"I don't understand."

"No, you do not."

Cal and Endril glared at each other for a while, then Bith
put an end to it. "Be that as it may . . . ummm . . . Endrit,
I have a question. I have heard that the lands of the elves-
improved as they are—are ever so much more beautiful than
the lands of men. Is that not true?"

The elf replied, "It is."

Cal snorted.

"And I have furthermore heard that elves love their land
more than their very lives. That they suffer homesickness and
loneliness in the extreme, more so than any humans can even
understand. Isn't that true?"

The elf's reply this time was quieter. "Yes. It is."

"Then why do you choose to travel the lands of men?"

Endril didn't reply, and Bith repeated the question, but
gently. Finally the pale figure spoke. "I—have no choice."

"Why not?"

EndriPs face was as solemn as they'd ever seen it. "I—am
no longer welcome in the lands of the elves."
It was Bith's turn to say nothing. Cal asked, without ran-
cor, "Why? What did you do?"

The elf sat, saying nothing, looking at nothing, for the
longest time. Then he rose and walked away into the black-
ness.

Cal stood up. "Hey, come back! Hey—" He trotted out of
the firelight, but there was nothing to see.

The boy sat back down. He stirred the fire with a crooked
stick and then tossed it in. "Great. He's gone."

"What do you care?"

The soldier glared at the magic user. "He's off again! Wan-
dering all over hell and gone, leaving us in the lurch to get

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

56

our throats cut! And what did / do anyway? You're the one
started asking him questions'"

"Some questions you shouldn't ask."

Cal raised both hands to the sky. "Oh, excuse me, your
royal highness\ I'm sorry if I want to know something about
the people I break bread with, and stand watches with, and
turn my back to! I'm sorry if I want to know whether 1 can
count on someone in a fight, or whether they'll disappear like
a wisp of smoke!"

"You think the magic users will run out on you too, eh?"

"I didn't say mat!"

Bith slammed herself back against a grassy hummock. She
folded her blanket just so and snuggled down inside, then
arranged her cloak about her shoulders. "I'm done talking.
Good flight^"

"What about setting a guard?"

"You like it so much, you stand guard!"

Hathor had already lain down and pulled his hat back on.
Cal did a poor job of banking the fire and then flopped down
himself. He spread his blanket loosely over himself. He po-
sitioned his sword alongside his right leg and his shield at the
left. He said to the air, "Fine, fine. Good night yourself, all
of you. I hope you wake up alive."

"Cal!"

The regal voice shouted in CaTs ear even as a drumming
trilled along his spine. Soldier's instinct shot him into the air.

Something was charging at him from the dark. His mind
registered simply Not one of ours and he swung the sword
while putting up his shield.

A club clomped against his wooded shield even as his blade
bit into the attacker's side. Cal could tell by the feel that the
edge had cut into muscle before fetching up against bone.
The depth of the cut and the sag of his opponent's body told
him it was a mortal wound. He shoved the body away—it
would act as a partial shield on his left—even as he put back
his right foot to spin to that side.

Sure enough, another assailant was coming up fast be-
hind—a coward who had held back just long enough to let
his companion rush in and draw attack. Cal completed his
turn, hooked his shield around. Since he was already moving

OUTCASTS             57

in that direction, he used the momentum of the swing. Back-
handed, he threw power to his shoulder and tensed his fore-
arm, cracked his wrist at the last moment, and connected
with something soft. He dragged his shield back across for
protection, but he'd done enough damage to stop bis oppo-
nent. The creature (he sensed it wasn't a man) was down
before him in the dark. Cal looped his arm over his head and
added another stroke to his invisible enemy. The tip of the
sword split a spine and his foe crumpled.

Cal stomped his feet to get his balance and sucked cold
night air to wake himself up. So far he'd done no thinking—
every action had been pure training. And even as he awoke,
his instinct was running down a list. What to do next? Get
his back to a wall, or promontory, or the fire, or any unpass-
able obstacle, preferably one that would stop missiles. There
was nothing solid here, so it had to be the fire. But only
temporarily, for it would light him up while his enemy held
the darkness. What next? Gauge the number of enemy as best
he could. A pattering in the earth under his feet said they
were all around. Not too many, maybe four. He'd killed two,
and that made sense. Six was a common number for a patrol.
There were sounds above the gurgling of the dying. Some-
thing was growling in an almost human tone, but something
else was snuffling. Dogs? Impossible to tell bow many. Four
live enemies then, two or more dogs. Bad odds, though the
fire at his back helped. What to do? Run to a safer position,
maybe keep going. But—first check the state of his compan-
ions. His eyes had taken in nothing but one slim shape as
he'd moved in battle. Endril was still gone men, and now
Hathor was missing too. Damn them! He'd told them—never
mind. Work with what you have.

"Bith!" he hissed. "Wake up! We're under attack!"

"Hunh?" A sleepy murmur sounded from the ground. He'd
been up and killed two somethings and she hadn't even
woken! "Wha—?"

"Bith, damn you, wake—Crom!"

Cal jumped forward. Two dark shapes had materialized
from the grass over the giri. Cal couldn't see them well, only
their shapes as they blocked the stars just above the horizon.
But it was enough. He took one, two. three short solid hops—
for the worst riling you could do in a fight was to fall down—

58 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

and screamed and swung. He prayed that Bith would keep
her head down. "Hyaaaaa!!!!!"

A monster shrieked as Cal's swing chopped into its arm.
He'd meant to only nick the beast and let his sword travel on
to also sting the other. Incapacitating two foes was better than
killing one outright and leaving the other whole. But it was
hard to judge the distance in almost total darkness. He smelt
UK copper tang of blood as the thing retreated. The other
ducked and latched onto Bith with impossibly long arms. It
tugged at the giri, who came fully awake for the first time.
Cal hopped in, way too close—close enough to get fingers
stuck in his face—but the beast was centered on the girl and
not paying attention. These whatevers were poorly trained,
the soldier was relieved to see. He crashed his blade onto a
bare back. He heard skin split and ribs crack and then the
thing was down. Two foes dead, two wounded. Where were
the others, and the dogs? Could he and Bith get away quick
enough?

"Bith! Get—ahh\"

Bith had been dreaming of home again. She'd heard the
screams of prisoners in the dungeons, the cries of ravens out-
side her window. Then something was looming over her,
stepping on her. Wide awake (or so she thought) Bith rolled
over in a tangle of blanket and cloak.

And collided with Cat's leg. Off balance, the boy fell square
on top of her. Bith oojed and Cal tumbled clear.

"What are you doingf" the girl demanded.

"Shut up! We're under attack!"

"Attack?"

"This way!" Cal snatched her billowed sleeve and pulled
her close to him. "Stay at my back and keep quiet!"

"Where are Hath—"

"Shut «p!"

Bith shut up. She hooked her hand in the back of Cal's belt
and stumbled along in the dark after him. She discovered that
the grassy hummocks that has seemed so smooth and uniform
in the daylight were suddenly full of chuck holes, rocks, roots,
and ridges. She tripped again and again until she learned to
put her feet flat. She thumped into Cal's back a half dozen
times as he shuffled and stopped, ducked forward and
crouched, backed up and crabbed along sideways.
OUTCASTS               59

"Where are we goingf" she finally had to whisper.

"There's a—where is it?—pocket with some trees—
somewhere here-1 found it earlier when I walked around. We
should be able to—is that it? Yeah!—get under the leaves—
Watch it!"

Bith heard only the rapid patter of feet and a low growl.
Then Cal grunted and slammed full into her. A hideous snarl-
ing split the darkness where Cal had stood. The boy rasped,
"Leggo my—hand, you foKsy—Bith, use a sleep spell!"

"I don't know one!" the giri wailed.

"Don'(?—well, what do you—get a-way\"

Bith didn't know what to do- Cal had to be wrestling with
a dog, but she couldn't see a thing. That was it! Light would
help! With clumsy fingers she dug in her pouches and pro-
duced a dried firefly. Chanting as quick as she could without
mangling the spell, she flicked the tiny carcass into the grass
a dozen feet away.

Fire broke out and quickly licked among the dry grass.
Within seconds there was light enough to read a book as a
patch of grass blazed in the night. Bith shielded her eyes from
it and looked for Cal.

The boy was in trouble. A wolf almost as tall as Cal had
him by the sword hand. It was a fierce-looking beast, long
and gaunt and ribby with shaggy patches of grey-white fur.
Its head was wide and flat and the black eyes shone like
lamps. Fortunately, Cal had on his leather gauntlets. But the
wolfs jaw was locked on his sword arm and could not be
shaken off.

Cal turned from the light with a curse. 'Wo/ We're blind
enough!—" He gave up talking and tried to slam the wolf
with his shield. He tried to kick its belly or back legs, tried
to wrest his arm loose to get in a blow with his sword. But
the animal was as clever as it was sturdy. It danced on its
back feet to keep out of range even as it dragged its victim
forward and off-balance, all the time snarling quietly with its
muzzle locked shut.

Bith fingered all her pouches as she tried to think of another
spell that could stop the wolf. Then something hit her from
behind and she went sprawling. Claws skittered along her
sides as teeth snapped on her hood. The giri gasped. If she
hadn't had her chick hood up, the teeth would have met in

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

60

the back of her head. Then she went flat on her face under the
full weight of the body. She bleated, "Cat! Help me!"
Cal sucked wind and smacked twice at the wolf's head with
the iron edge of his shield. - The blows rapped on the tough
skull with no effect. He switched tactics, shucked his shield
from his left arm, and fished for the dagger on his belt. But
the wolf twisted its powerful neck and knocked him over
sideways. His sword thrashed against the grass. "Bith! Get
away!" he shouted. The wolf thumped both huge front feet
onto his chest. By the light of the burning grass he saw two
rows of yellow teeth draw back to rip out his throat.

The jaws suddenly snapped shut. The wolf's nose dropped
like a rock to bang Cal's nose, then the full weight of the
beast thudded onto him. It was dead weight. Something had
killed the wolf.

The boy shoved away the smelly carcass and rolled onto
all fours. He hunted for his sword as he looked for the an-
swer.

Tall and dark against the grass fire, Endril the elf stood
poised over Bith and her attacker. From white hair to long
grey cloak to thin bony arms, his soft outline was like a
ghost's. At the end of his arm was a slim black blade that
had transfixed Bith's wolf as he had dispatched Cal's. He
whipped the almost-invisible blade out of the dying wolf's
body. With his boot he shoved the carcass clear of the giri's
body. He caught her by the upper arm and lifted her. She
thanked him shakily.

Cal recovered his shield and sword, pulled his baldric round
straight and approached Endril from an angle where he could
be seen. "You! Where have you—"

The elf shot a hand in the air. He canted his head into the
wind. "Hist! T'isHathor!"

"What about him?" Cal asked, but Endril was off, loping
across the prarie with long strides. Cal swore and ran after
him. Bith trailed along.

Topping a hummock brought them back to their campsite.
The fire had died down to coals, but there was enough light to
see Hathor fighting for his life.

The troll had tossed away his hat and bearskin cloak. In
the red firelight he looked much like his enemies. These were
a pair of dog-like men wielding clubs. They were just over

OUTCASTS             61

five feet tall and stooped. Short bristly hair stood up all over
their bodies, growing in a mane that travelled from their
crowns down their spines. Their shoulders and arms were
wide and powerful, their legs bent curiously like a dog's.
They wore no clothing other than their native spots. Most
disturbing was their faces. They had receding brows and
pointed ears, and elongated snouts with dark noses like a
hound's. Their teeth were yellow and long, curled in snaris
uglier than the wolves' had been.
The two worked as a pair. One waved his gnarled club in
Hathor's face as the other circled. Animal-like, they were
quick to jump back whenever the troll swung his long felling
axe. At each swing the foremost beast would dance back while
his partner got in a solid rap. Even as the three breasted the
ridge they heard a painful crunch that made Hathor stagger.
The two yipped and raised their clubs for the final blows.

A clear singing call arrested their arms and made them
mm. Endril leapt down the slope with his sword swishing in
the night sky. The creature behind Hathor bleated and turned
to run. The elf overtook him and ran the blade through his
back. Cal charged breathlessly for the other assailant, but
Hathor's axe made a noisy thwack! that folded the beast over
like a sapling. In a frenzy the troll set both feet wide and
slammed the axe again and again into the lifeless body.

The crunching, chopping, smashing sounds made Bith ill.
"Thor!" she shrilled. "Stop, Thor! Please, stop!"

Hathor slammed his axe down a final time and stopped.
Spent, he held onto the handle and panted like a bellows.

Cal trotted back up the slope and scanned what he could
see of the horizon- Only the wind moved. A cool night breeze
dried the sweat on his brow and chilled his damp clothes.
When Cal was satisfied all was clear, he rejoined the party
by their ravaged campsite.

Hathor had snatched up a scrap of filthy clothing that he
used to wipe his axe clean. Cal wiped his blade on the grass,
then stropped it with his stone to bring back the edge. All
the while he kept casting about, turning around in the dark.
Endril studied the faces of their dead enemies. Only now did
Bith realize there were more than two dead bodies on the
ground. Where she had been sleeping were two more. She

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

62

joined Endril and grimaced at the ugly masks of death. She'd
seen these things before.

"Well," Cal panted, "What are they?"

The first sneak thieves, the ones Cal had killed, were like
deformed men, skinny and shrivelled, but with knotty arms
and legs. Their faces were mostly massive bony brow ridges
and heavy jaw. Their teeth were snarled and fanged. Their
skin was a dirty grey, and they wore only scraps of learner
armor that must once have belonged to men. Clubs studded
with obsidian lay near their bodies.

Endril pointed with his invisible blade to the first attackers.
"These be ores, common ones. Hardy, stupid, vicious. Not
terribly strong or able, their strength lies in numbers, and the
way their commanders drive them. There are other types of
ores, taller and stronger, wiser, crueller."
He stepped to the others and pointed out the snouts. Lines
of black trickled away from the monsters: fleas and mites
deserting a cooling body. "These be gnolls, hyena men. They
are only half sane but with a wolf's cunning."

Bith shuddered. "And were those wolves that attacked me
and Cal over the hill?"

Endril frowned, his face long and vampiric in the half-
light. "Too large for wolves. They must have warg blood.
Bred by the dark lords, most likely."

Hathor had finished cleaning his weapon. He stooped now
for his cloak and floppy hat. "Should move camp," he
growled. "More come, maybe."

"Yes, that would be best," Endril agreed. "These may be
an isolated raiding party, or the vanguard of a larger group.
The sooner the better—"

"Nothing's going to be better for quite some time!" came
a bark from the edge of the firelight. It was Cal. "We'll just
walk square into some other disaster. We might as well get
ourselves killed here as anywhere!"

His three companions stared at him.

"Don't give me those looks! The lot of you are responsible
for this! We're lucky, damned lucky, to be standing here at

all."

Hathor said, "We fight—"

"Cut it!" the boy interrupted. "Any more fighting like
this and we'll die, singly and painfully! Look what happened!

OUTCASTS

63

Bith fast asleep, and me—I admit that. No idea where Endril
is or even if he's coming back! Hathor who knows where
when the fighting starts, and then having to fend for himself
back here because Bith and I are fleeing to a stronger posi-
tion! A fine lot of babes in the woods we are!" Cal rubbed
at a raw claw mark on the side of his face. In doing so he
found his right glove was mangled along with the hand be-
neath. He stripped off the ruined glove and threw it on the
ground.

The wind sighed. Ashes swiried in the fire pit. Endril said,
"Let us move camp before we speak again." He, of course.
had nothing to pack, nor did Hathor. Bith rolled up her blan-
ket and camp gear. Cal savagely jammed his blanket into his
light pack and slung it over his shoulder. He tramped off to
the north.

The others trailed along, Bith stumbling like Cal in the
dark. Endril and Hathor moved as easily as if it were full
day. After Bith had jolted herself a dozen times, her fatigue
and exasperation gave vent to her innermost thoughts.

"You don't need to protect me just because I'm a woman,
you know!" she said to no one in particular.

Cal turned around and walked backwards. "What?"

"You always protect me because I'm a woman, I said!"

Cal snorted. "Gid is more like-it. And it's not true. We
protect you because you're a mage and defenseless. You've
got nothing but empty hands and belt full of geegaws to keep
off the beasties when they come at you. And, you know, it
would be right handy to know exactly what spells you do
know. When those wolves were ready to bite our faces off I
asked you for a sleep spell, and then I learned you don't have
one. I thought every magic user knew that spell!"

"Shows what you know about spelling!"

'' I won't get much older to learn anything at this rate. What
spells do you know?"

Bith did not answer as they trudged along.

Cal turned back to the trail and his voice carried over his
shoulder. "Sec? Secrets. Wonderful. I don't know nothing
about spelling, or much else except swinging a sword. But
I'll tell you, when I travelled with soldiers and knights at
least I knew what we didn 't know. We didn't have any secrets
that counted. But with mages and elves and trolls it's a sur-

64 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

prise every minute. Too bad you almost have to get killed to
learn something. Never mind, I can see I'm wasting my
breath."

The party did not go far, only a mile or so. Endril said
they could not really hide if there were more ores around,
for they could sniff out their trail. But they found a flattish
dish rimmed with brush that would be shelter from the wind
yet leave them free to flee in any direction if necessary. They
didn't bother with another fire. Wrung out from their exer-
tions and lack of sleep, the humans and troll fell to the ground
and rumbled to make themselves comfortable. Endril squat-
ted in their center and gazed around the horizon.

Cal had grumbled quietly every step of the way. Now he
raised his voice and asked tiredly, "Who's got first watch?
Or are we to trust in the fates again?"

"I will watch,*' Endril replied. "T'was I who was remiss
in leaving the party."

Cal grunted.

Hathor mumbled, "Sun come up, we practice fighting. To-
gether. Be good fun,"
Bith said sleepily, "Haven't we done enough fighting with
each other today?"

"Sleep," Endril told her.

Cal propped himself up on one elbow. "You know, Bith,
the reason we protect you is because you're one of us. Like
it or not."

Bith yawned. "S'nice—to have—friends."

And practice they did over the next few days. At breakfast
and dinner, before turning in or while walking- They also
talked. They worked out some simple battle orders and for-
mations, they discussed which spells Bith might use to sup-
port their actions. They formed wedges with Hathor the
axeman in the middle, Cal and Endril flanking him, and Bith
acting as backup. They worked out watches and schedules
and smoothed rough edges. They still maintained their se-
crets and privacy, but at least they knew where and when to
expect each other.

Endril still wandered afield, but he told them when he
would return—usually. And it was while wandering one day
that he made a discovery.

CHAPTER

5

"Hoy!" came a distant shout. They turned and looked up
the trail, which wound its way into a broken land of head-
high rocks and fissures. Endril stood in the middle distance,
a black scarecrow shape against the white sky. He waved his
bow and called something they couldn't hear in the wind.
"Wonder what he's found now?" Cal said.
"Probably some exotic mushroom," Bith replied.
"I like mushrooms," Hathor added.
Bith smiled. "Come on. Let's see what it is."
Endril led them into the rocks, down ravines that dipped
and climbed, to stop at the bottom of a gully. This was almost
a pass through the hills. The walls were fragmented and
craggy, in some places only head high, in others towering
above. They were shot through with cracks and pockets and
probably caves higher up. The floor was smooth in the center,
trod by a thousand feet, speckled with fallen rocks.

Endril pressed his ear against a stone wall. He waved them
to it. "Listen."
"To what?" asked Cal.
Bith put her ear to the crack. It was about nine inches wide.

65

66 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

She strained to hear and then started. "It's a voice! Calling

for help!"
Cal listened. Faintly, weakly, far back, he too thought he
could hear a cry for help. Or it could have been the wind.

Hathor was more sure. "Someone there, all right. I got
good ears."

Cal stepped back and looked at the wall. It was more frac-
tured here than solid. In fact, now that he studied it, the space
was pan of a huge rift jammed with rock. Din and weeds
had settled into the hollows.

"How could anyone be alive in there? Is there a cave or
something? They would have had to crawl in from the other
side. Or come up from underground. It might be—fairies or
some kin."

Hathor had his blocky head to the crack. "It Vili.*'

"Vili? In there?"

Cal brightened. "Hey, that reminds mei When those ores
attacked the other day, a voice shouted to wake me up. It
must have been Vili."

"He's good for something, anyway," Bith observed. "But
he should be able to float out of there."

Endril nodded. "It is strange. Vili hasn't much power in
this plane, but he should grow stronger as we go further north.
But then, the closer we come to the sword the more his power
is drained. Or so I guess."

"Why doesn't he just jump out onto my sword as he has
before? How much effon can that be?"

"Draw your sword," Bith suggested.

Cal did, but no face appeared. Hathor called into the crack,
"Vili! Come out to sworo!"

"What will you?" piped a small voice.

The adventurers bumped heads to peer at the blade. In the
foggy pitted surface of the sword they could see a man's face
as if under water. In the wan sunlight it looked a demon's
face, like the one on Bith's belt buckle.

"What were you doing in that cave?" Bith asked the tiny
god.

"Cave?" squeaked Vili. "I am in no cave, but am rather—
here and there. And busy. What do you require?"

Cal waggled the blade. " You asked us for help. Now you're
out, what do you want?"

OUTCASTS             67

The sword waggled itself. "Addle-pated fool! Cretin!
Crack-brain! I am in no cave! Now leave usi" The face van-
ished.

The four stood for some while looking at the crack in the
wall and at each other. Hathor listened. "Someone still in
there."

"Someone else?" Bith asked.

Hathor shrugged.

After a time Cal said, "We're not moving, so I suppose
we've decided to free him."

"I suppose," the girl agreed.

"How shall we do it?"

They talked. Cal asked Bith if she had some spell that
could "suck him out of there." Bith told him no. She did
float a light spell inside, but it couldn't penetrate very far.
Hathor suggested they return to a tree they'd passed earlier
and cut it as a lever. They dispatched him to fetch it. Cal
climbed the wall and inspected the top for promising cracks.
The stones were locked tight and tamped down flat. It looked
as if a tor to the left had split and collapsed into a side ravine.
Dwarf trees decorated the top. Cal searched for an entrance
to a cave beyond, but there was nothing. Bith recalled a spell
that might help and they discussed its use. Endril brewed tea
and spitted a brace of ptarmigan as they waited for Hathor's
return. Eventually the troll returned dragging a tree trunk that
Cal doubted anyone else could lift.

As they ate the sparse meal Cal aired some thoughts. "I
-still wonder what kind of being can live under a pile of rocks.
Have you looked at that wall and the cap? There are trees on
top of there hundreds of years old! What kind of thing can
live in a cave for hundreds of years?"

Endril stared at the sky and said nothing. Bith bit her lip.
Hathor said, "Not trolls."

The elf said slowly, "Many things live long by man's stan-
dards. Elves, fairies, turtles. Demons, giants, rock lizards.
You cannot judge a soul by its age."

"But what if it's .not a real person? What if it's an old magic
trap or a will o' the wisp or something?''

Their magic user said, "We'll never know what it is until
we dig it out."

"Curiosity kills cats," the boy told her.

5i,

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

68
"But never soldiers?"

"Never. Drink and the pox kill soldiers."

Hathor spoke. "We help him because he need help,"

No one could rebut that, so they finished their meal and

began.

Cal used his work-worn dagger to pry a rock loose from
the wall. Together the three males set the lever into the socket,
wiggled it into place, and heaved. Boulders groaned and
shifted. Soil clouded around them. A section of wall tumbled
down and they repeated the process. And more. Grit settled
onto their faces and slid down their necks. A leg-breaking
rock dropped practically on CaPs foot, making him Jump.
With wiggling and straining and dropping the bar and not a
little cursing they eventually gouged a hole six feel deep. But
then they fetched up against a boulder that showed no edges.
It could have been any size and it completely blocked their
path.

Cat rubbed a dirty sleeve across a dirty face. "That son of
a bitch better really be in there. Your turn, Bith." The men
sat down to watch and sip water and get their breath back.
Cal did, anyway. Endril and .Hathor seemed hardly put out.

The giri crept into the hole and scooched forward to the
offending rock. She seemed calm enough, but her lower lip
betrayed her, clamped as it was in her teeth. The giri leant
sideways to gather some light. With her small knife she
scooped a hole at the lower edge of the boulder and into it
placed a fresh green weed. She then trickled water from a
skin down the face of the rock and onto the weed. Then the
men could just hear her whisper in a queer cadence.

Bith finished with a shake of her head and scrambled back
out of the hole. She stood poised, like a ferret over a rabbit
hole, watching.

Cal asked, "Well? Are you—"

"Shhhh!!!"

Grrrruuuunnmmnnnn.

"What's that?"

Aeeeerrrrrmnn. Grrmnnuuuuu.

It was the boulder. It was growing. It was swelling like a
gas bubble, like a loaf of bread dough.

Cal whistled. "Whoa! That's something!"

Bith raised a hand in the air-"Yes, but-—"

OUTCASTS
69

As the rock expanded it shoved at its neighbors. The boul-
der pressed outwards from the hole. Cracks ran up the face
of the rock wall. Dirt under pressure geysered from the top.
As if in a dream, Bith watched the course of her destruction
run. The boulder showed no signs of stopping.

"LOOKOUT!"

The wall above them gave way as the whole side of the
ravine split open. Bith spun and caromed into Cal. Out of the
corner of her eye she saw her companions disappear. Endril
was off the ground and gone like a grasshopper. Hathor leapt
at the wall behind him, dug his fingers into soil and rock,
and clattered up the slope like a squirrel up a tree. Cal caught
the girl and almost knocked them both down. She pushed at
his chest.

"RUN!"

With a crump! the side of the ravine fell flat on the place
they had stood seconds before. The earth shook so hard that
Ca! fell to his knees. Bith landed on top of him. She was
surprisingly heavy for so small a thing, he noticed. But she
was very soft. Then the two were coughing in the gout of
smoky dust that plumed up and down the ravine. Lamely the
boy snatched Bith's sleeve and scrambled for air somewhere
down the trail.

The two finally stopped where -the weak autumn sun fell
on them. Every move made dirt trickle from their clothing
and start them coughing again. They sat down and gasped
for breath.

"Good spell," the boy hacked.

"Thank—you."

Eventually the dust settled. Endril and Hathor and Cal and
Bith reformed and gingerly picked their way down the now-
blocked ravine.

They found their tiny hole had grown into a pocket clear
to the sky, twenty feet high and wide and deep. The keystone
had fractured into a dozen pieces from the stress of expanding
and then shrinking. In the process it had shattered the whole
wall and tipped it onto the ravine floor. Cal grunted and
grunted again. "That's some spell, all right. Does it always
work that well?"

The other males murmured assent. Bith looked embar-
rassed. "Never, never this well. When I've used enlarge bc-

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

70

fore it made things twice their size, not—ten times. I—I think
my powers are—more powerful here. But I don't know why."
At the back of me new pocket they could see a tiny Mack
hole that went straight back- Cal said, "That must be where
our mysterious captive—"

"Ho." Hathor had turned around to point to me opposite
wall of the ravine, high up. "Look there.'*

The others turned. There was something poised along the
wall, watching them. Its four-legged shape was silhouetted
against the sky. Cal asked, "Is it a goat? Shoot it, Endr—"

The elf shouted, "It's a—"

The thing leapt thirty feet to hit the ravine floor with a
thump! Bith screamed and covered her head as the thing
landed right beside her,

It was a monster. Big, long, and low. Body like a lion. A
tawny belly and brown back, black claws, white teeth. A
brassy smell. Tiny wings and a human face.

Bith ducked and skittered past the unmoving men. She put
herself behind the stolid troll and this horrendous menace that
had fallen from the sky.

"Thor! Your axe! Hit it! Quick! HIT IT!"

But the troll didn't move. Neither did Cal or Endril. All
three of them stood where they had turned, staring.

Bith shot a glance past the troll's wide shoulders. Bal and
Bast, what was it? Everything in her first nightmare impres-
sion was true. A perverted form of lion with grey vestigial
wings and a mockery of a human face. That face stared back
at her, stared with wide brown eyes, deeper than any ani-
mal's. Eyes as deep as a well, as a bottomless pit ...

Bith shook her head. Dizzy, she stumbled over a rock and
fell. The shock of hitting the ground seemed to wake her-
What was wrong with her? Ah! She was succumbing to a
spell! This was the way she'd felt when her mother had dem-
onstrated control spells to her daughter. But a monster that
spelled? Then she knew what it was.

It was a sphinx, the monster with eyes that could hypnotize
small animals and weak beings. And men, for some reason.

The men!

"Hey!" Bith shoved at the men's backs. Nothing hap-
pened. She put her hand in front of the elf's eyes and waggled

OUTCASTS

71

his head. He stood still as a statue. "Cal! Endril, Thor! Wake
up! Oh, please wake up!"
The beast growled and padded towards her. Panic over-
whelmed her and she ran. She hunkered down behind a boul-
der, and peeped over the top with tears distorting her vision.

Bith watched the lion-thing as it sniffed at the fronts of the
three men—or one boy, one troll, and one elf. Damn Endril,
she thought, he of all people should have been able to resist
the spell! Men were so clumsy at anything cerebral! Bith
watched the tufted tail twitch in anticipation of a meal. What
to do? To make a spell work—any spell—she'd have to run
over there and touch the monster, which would get her bitten
in half. What could she do to badger a sphinx? Ignite it?
Confuse it? Enlarge it? (That was a brilliant idea!) Oh, wait!
Animals hated loud noises. Now if she could just find the
right sort of rock . . .

Bith scuttled around, swearing at herself and the monster,
and the men and the rocks of this canyon. Then she spotted
a stone that looked promising. It was of tough stone with a
dark vein of necking in it. She looked again towards the mon-
ster. It had pushed the men over like dummies. It twitched
its tail and checked Bith's movements. It licked its chops: it
wanted to eat now. Bith bit her lip. She wasn't even sure the
spell would work. She rolled the- rock in her hands as she
tried to remember her mother's words.

Whatever she said must have worked, for the rock began
to glow. And glow. It grew hot in her hands and Bith almost
dropped it. But that would be death. Clumsily she juggled
the glowing stone, trying to look at the sphinx and yet not
look. Then she yelled, "Hera and Hermes help me\" and
threw it.

The explosion in the tight canyon was incredibly loud. Rock
splinters shot everywhere. They whined around her ears and
ricocheted off the walls to plink into her hair. Too late she
thought to duck. But then she hadn't totally believed it would
work. A blast spell was for experienced sorcerers, not nov-
ices. To do it right one should first place a hold spell on the
object, then work the blast spell, then get clear and release
the hold. What would her mother say if she saw this clumsy
attempt?

But it had worked. The sphinx gave a horrid sob and leapt

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

72

high in the air (so high that men thought they flew) and landed
far down the canyon. That was more than Bith could have
hoped for. She whipped her cloak free of her legs and sped
to Endril and the rest. The men were all three face up and
rigid as statues. Violently Bith wrenched at Endril's shoulders
and shook him.

"Wake up! Wake up, you sanctimonious old curmudgeon!
You're going to be eaten\" She slapped the elf's pale face
and felt his shoulders sag- An eyeball twitched, but no more.
He was slipping into unconsciousness. Bith let him go and
he fell back limp as a dead fish. She crawled the short dis-
tance to the recumbent Hathor and pounded on his chest.
Maybe the troll was made of sterner stuff.

Another sob whooped in the canyon, not far away. The
sphinx was coming back.

Down the canyon it padded, wary of another blast but
driven by hunger. It hopped across boulders as lightly as dan-
delion fluff. Its face was horrible to see. The twisted human
visage had been pulled like putty, tugged forward and round
in the cheeks so it resembled the way the sun was portrayed
in books. But its mouth was bared in a lion's grimace that
showed a lion's sharp teeth. Bith could even smell it now: a
stink of ammonia and rotten meat. She gave up on the troll
and fumbled for another rock, but none were the right color.
The sphinx topped the nearest boulder and loomed over her,
blacking out the sky. Could she wield Cal's sword? She won-
dered what a lion's claws felt like when they struck.

She never found, out. As the giri cowered and waited for
death, something grey leapt clean over her head and into the
sphinx's face. There was a snari of surprise from the monster,
then a grunt as it was rocked back. It tumbled from the rock
with something like a great grey spider attached to it.

The battle that followed was shrill and violent. There was
a tumult of screeching and snariing and howling and ripping
that boomed up and down the ravine. The magic user's cu-
riosity overcame her common sense and Bith latched onto a
boulder to pull herself up where she could see.

Something—they thrashed so wildly Bith could barely make
it out—had appeared from somewhere to attack the sphinx.
The new thing was built like a man, but like no man could
be. It was grey all over, naked as a snake, with short legs

OUTCASTS             73

and two long arms. It had a bald pointed head and big mouth
with sharp teeth. And it was big—it made the huge sphinx
seem no larger than a hound dog.

The giant fought as savagely as the animal. It had clamped
its teeth into the sphinx's muzzle. One long arm had the
sphinx by a forepaw, and the other hand (or claw) was twisted
into the monster's mane. Because its muzzle was locked in a
powerful jaw, the sphinx could bite nothing. Having one fore-
paw trapped in the air meant it couldn't get its balance, and
with the man-thing pulling down on its mane, the sphinx's
head was tilted painfully.

The sphinx could still sound though, and it did in that
painful half-sobbing, half-roar that set Bith's teeth on edge.
It keened with pain and rage and humiliation all rolled into
one, as if the thing knew it was an abomination with no
ancestors, no home, no love or companionship or reason to
be. The tortured wail echoed up and down the canyon as the
monster felt itself being overpowered.
The grey giant kept after the beast. With its own shark's
teeth drawing blood from the sphinx's torn lips, he dragged
down inexorably upon the mane while shoving up on the fore-
paw. The sphinx thrashed madly in the air for a minute, then
was flipped over on its back. It went down with a crash!
Claws windmiUed in the air and connected. A rear paw stud-
ded with talons whipped around and scored across the giant's
chest. Bith shuddered and closed her eyes. The big man's
back was towards her, and she thought surely he must have
been disembowelled. He'd crumple over and die and the beast
would live, and come after her. She started to back over
the rocks when there came a scream—the sphinx's.

The giant was still alive, still in command. He held the
monster's head down with his left arm, pinning it to the
ground. The flailing forepaw was now locked in his teeth.
Before the sphinx could rake him again, the giant raised a
knotty fist high into the air and slammed it down on the cat's
ribcage. Bith beard bones break. The fist sailed up and down
again, and again, and each time it pulped bone like tinder.
Blood spurted from the cat's nose. The fist rained again and
again until the sphinx stopped moving. The giant spat out the
limp forepaw and pushed away from the sphinx.

The cat, however, was not dead. Quick as a thought, as a

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

74

blur, the beast jerked upright and launched itself at the giant.
It crashed into the grey man's chest and spilled him over.
Slobbering blood and drool, it fastened its teeth into his face
and hung on.

Bith wanted to scream. She felt as if she hadn't drawn a
breath since the battle had started, and it seemed she'd been
here forever. The giant had to be dead now. What would
happen then?

But the giant was unkillable. The two long arms with those
rock-like fists rose on either side of the sphinx as it twisted
its jaws and tried to rip the giant's face off. When the two
fists struck just below the ears the lion-thing was staggered.
Rattled, it let go. Its eyes glazed over. The giant's short legs
kicked and the creature slid off his body. The sphinx's jaws            ^
clacked as its chin banged a rock.

Immediately the giant was up and on it. He grabbed onto       ^
the fallen animal's back legs and lifted. Grappling, scrabbling               :

for purchase, the giant folded the monster over backwards,              ''•

and pressed, and shoved, and strained, until the beast's back

legs were almost over its head. Bith hissed through her teeth

and peeked between her fingers. She knew what was coming,          f

With a snap! the sphinx's spine broke. The beast gave one          ^.
last bleat and stopped moving. The color faded from its eyes.                  %
The giant let go and the carcass dropped to the ground. The                „
grey giant stood and watched it, unmoving. Rivers of blood             ^
trickled down the stone-like surface of his body. All the blood                    ^
was from the cat.

Then he turned and noticed Bith.

The girl stared, as hypnotized by the giant as she had been                ^
by the sphinx. She didn't know whether to be thankful it had
saved her life, or fearful that it had saved her for last. Still
staring, Bith crept backwards and slid over the edge of the
boulder.

She hurried to where her three male companions still lay
like toppled trees. She took Endril's face in her hands and                '•
patted his cheeks and pried open his eyelids. "Endril! Wake
up! I think we're in trouble again! Wake up! Please!"                      ^

After few moments the elf did rouse- He slowly reached          f*
up a hand and rubbed his face. Then he sat up and looked              S;

around. "What's happened?"                                  ^

Bith waved both hands. "You saw a sphinx and it hexed           j.'

OUTCASTS             75

you. And Cal and Thor. Understand? But a—giant—or some-
thing came from—I don't know where—and killed it. But now
he's just on the other side of this boulder— oh\"

The elf peered up at the apparition that loomed over them.
Tall on the boulder, taller against the sky, the giant seemed
taller than the sides of the ravine. Blood and foam and hanks
of brown hair still clung to his narrow chest. As they got
their first good look at him, they realized he was the strangest
being that Bith or even Endril had ever seen.

The giant was over seven feet tall, but his proportions were
all wrong. He had a long head, pointed on top, entirely free
of hair, with long pointed features uniformly grey. His eyes,
pupils and whites, were grey, even his teeth. His skin had a
fine soft sheen like a river-polished stone, or a lizard's hide.
His shoulders and chest and hips were narrow. His arms were
longer than a man's would be, and his legs shorter and bowed,
so his hands hung almost to his knees. The hands and feet
were equally long, twice as long as a man's, with cat claws.
The hands scratched at the long gashes made by the sphinx's
black talons, gashes that showed only as fine white lines.

The being stared down at them for a time, then turned and
hopped away. After a few moments me giri and elf could
hear tearing, rending noises. And the champing of jaws.

"What's been happening?" Endril asked again.

Bith told him the full story, for the elf could remember
nothing after glimpsing the black eyes of the sphinx.
Endril's face was unreadable. He said, "Why didn't you
just run away?"

Bith rubbed her chest, which hurt for some reason. "What?
I—I don't know. I was thinking of too many different spells,
or something." Her hairline hurt too, and when she rubbed
h she found a bump and blood.

Endril rose. "Or something." He roused the boy and the
troll by pouring water from a skin onto their faces. He whis-
pered, "Be cautious. We are not out of the fire yet."

Cal and Hathor finally got to their feet. Bith spilled her
story yet again. At the end the elf pointed. Together the four
peeked over the boulder to look at the giant.

The tall creature was just finishing the sphinx. It had
cracked open the cat's skull and scooped out the brains. He'd
split the belly and gulped down the internal organs, twisted

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

76

off the legs and munched on the rump and thighs. As the four
watched in mixed awe and horror, the giant splintered the
leg bones and dug out the marrow with dagger-like fingertips.
Bith and Endril grimaced in disgust, but Cal and Hathor found
they were hungry.

Suddenly the giant turned and addressed the party in a
surprisingly deep voice.

"You are well?"

The party shook their collective heads at the words. It was
Endril who finally asked, "Good sir ... what, pray, are
you?"

The giant belched and rubbed his chin. He was now en-
tirely covered in gore: dirt, blood, dried spittle, hair, grease.
"I? I am a stone giant. Not so big for I'm not old- Ratcatcher
is one of my names. Vamog is another. Ratatosk and Grim-
bod, Thunderer and Smite. Before I was trapped in yon hole
I was called Mountain Back Breaker. That is the name I shall
use in these days."

"Mountain Back Breaker?" said Cal.

Cal straightened his baldric and checked his sword. The
giant's stony fists, swung at the ends of those whip-like arms,
must be fearsome weapons. They'd be even deadlier if he
chose to expose his talons. Cal thought a fighter couldn't be
better equipped, bom with built-in maces, daggers, and war
hammers.

The giant looked all around the ravine, up at the sky and
seemingly beyond. He scratched his chest idly. "Much has
changed."
Bith, trying not to look at the naked giant, looked rather
at the gaping hole they'd dug and broken open. "You were
trapped behind that stone? How long were you in there? And
haw did you get in there?"

The deep voice boomed, ' 'I was cast there by demons on
a lark. We giants and demons have fought since time un-
known. A pack of them thought it amusing to drop a moun-
tain on me." He looked around again. "Ifs been some time."

The party didn't have much to say to that. Cal asked, "Why
did you say your name was VUi when Endril here heard you?"

"I told you. I have many names. Vili is one, after the god
of the north country."

OUTCASTS             77

"That's what I'd call a vast coincidence, for we are in Vi-
li's—the god's—service these days. Funny you should men-
tion that name to us, of all of them you and the gods have."

The giant only grunted. He picked a bone splinter out of
his teeth. "Strange is fate. Glad I am I called my name.
Trapped in there, it has been my sorrow to hear everything
said by those who've passed this way for many a year. Yet
always I was helpless to make myself heard. Hope of rescue
has been mine a countless thousand times, yet always it came
to naught. I am in your debt."

Endril replied, "And we in yours- You killed yon monster
while we were helpless."

"Yes."

Cal filled the silence. "I still think it's a big—"

Bith cut him off. "Cal."

The soldier shut up. He reckoned the giant was lying, and
he didn't like it. He didn't like anything about this character.
The point on his skull reminded Cal of the sharks' fins he'd
seen trailing fishing boats. Cal looked around at his compan-
ions for some help but they just watched him. He resigned
himself to dealing out the harsh words. "Fine, look, uh—
Backbreaker—you're free now, free to go wherever you like.
We've places to go—"

"And I with you. I would see the world and its changes."

His bony hands joined were a lump of stone larger than
Cal's head, and the boy stepped back. The giant's knuckles
popped like rocks shattering in frost.

Cal shook his head. "No, I'm sorry. We are four and we
plan to stay that way. Am I right, fellows?"

Endril said nothing. Hathor frowned. Bith bit her lower
Up. "Where we're going it might be nice to have someone
strong with our party—"
"That my job," Hathor interjected.

"Well, of course, yes, Thor," the giri corrected herself.
"But to have two mighty fellows would be even better."

Endril spoke. "Do you know the reaches to the north of
here?"

The giant bobbed his pointed head. "Aye. I am from the
north country, the far stony hills."

Cal tried again. "I don't think it's a good idea to sign
anyone else on now. We've just worked out our strategies—"

78

RUNESWORD VbLUME ONE

Bith countered, "Why are you in such a huny to be rid of
him? We were in no hurry to be rid of you!"

"Yes, you were! You weren't going to be seen with a
stableboy, remember?"

"That was a long time ago."

Cal hesitated. He wasn't himself sure why he wanted to
leave this giant behind. Some warrior's instinct just told him
to stay clear. But here was Bith complicating things. And
glaring at him. "Fine, fine. Never mind. What's one more?
Let's be walking north."

The giant nodded. "Let's. I would stretch my legs.'*

Bith said,"Ummm ... do you think . . . you could . . .
find something to wear? It's, ummm, cold at night. . . ."

Endril had retrieved his bow and inspected the string. He
said to the giant, "She would have you cover your naked-
ness."

The giant glanced down at his filthy body. "This? T'is not
a tradition among us to wear the skins of dead things."

The elf pointed to the split hide of the sphinx. "Where we
go it is- I suggest you garb yourself in yon skin. T'will ease
our minds." '

The giant shrugged and picked up the skin. He ripped off
some loose strings, poked rents in it with his fingers, and
pulled it over his body. It covered what was necessary to
cover, Bith was glad to see.

"Fine," Endril said. "Does that suit you, good Bith?"

Bith nodded, her cheeks afire. She strapped her blanket roll
over her shoulder and took off after Cal down the canyon.

Cal, in the lead for once, stopped and checked on his com-
panions. Endril was nowhere to be seen. Bith strode along
with her decorous sway and her head held high. Hathor
stumped along behind her like a dog. Mountain Back Breaker
trod along in his sphinx skin.

Cal faced forward and marched. He grizzled to himself,
"That fellow ought to charm the locals. A. fine kettle of fish.
Soon we'll be an army of outcast misfits and still have no
leader."

So saying he passed from the head of the ravine and out
on the flat again. Far to his left the great wall of cloud clung
to the earth like dirty wool. It was sunset and the cloud cast
a shadow on the land before it. A long and dark shadow.

OUTCASTS             79

Six days later they were still marching over the yellow plain.
They could see the land dipped ahead, all across the horizon,
and they wondered where the land went.

Endril popped into sight up there, as sudden as a hare. As
usual, he'd been on point. Now he waved them down with
long sweeps of his hands. They hunkered into the tall grass
and waited. Endril joined them, practically on his belly -

"We arrive. There be scouts about. Follow me to shelter.
Keep low, off me skyline."

The party crept awkwardly through the grass, across scree.
and into a rocky fissure. The fissure terminated at the edge
of a bluff that overlooked a wide valley. The strung-out party
reached the edge and stopped one by one. Endril first, flow-
ing like a ghost, Cal scuffling in his broken boots, Bith with
her light step, Hathor with his sturdy stamp. And bringing
up the rear came Backbreaker, scrabbling as much with his
arms as his short legs.

They gazed down into the valley and were silent.

The valley ran east-west. The eastern arm flowed out of
sight. Green conifers and red-yellow hardwoods dotted
the slopes of yellow grass. The western arm was shut off by the
Mistwall, tall, silent, roiling. On the opposite side of the
valley, two or three miles away, the land rose again in a gentle
slope before striking mountains that ran off into infinity. The
peaks were stark, inhospitable. They looked impassable. This
valley, then, was where the fabled and mysterious highlands
began.

Directly across from the party, caught between the fertile
valley floor and the sharp mountains, was a flattened slope,
or shelf. On this shelf was a castle with a small village around
it.

Castle Cairngorm.

The castle perched at the farthest end of the shelf. Behind
the shelf dropped off into a chasm. The castle was not big as
castles go, nor were its grounds or the village expansive. But
it was singulariy awe-inspiring in that the stone structure lit-
erally hung upon the lip of the shelf, as delicately balanced
as a butterfly on a leaf- It reminded Cal of a seagull riding
placidly on the crest of a giant wave. The castle was squat,

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

80

with a single tower: the tower was actually stepped over the
chasm, or so it looked from the party's angle.

What was on the other side of this chasm they could not
tell, for the Mistwall pressed close around the castle in a
semicircle, as if eager to eat it up, but afraid to begin.

The front of the settlement, the landward side, was ringed
by two stone walls upon which soldiers could be seen. So the
place was inhabited.

And pressing as close to the front of the castle as the Mist-
wall did the back, covering the valley floor, was an army.

It was a varied and multicolored army, with little unifor-
mity and no obvious discipline. The adventurers on the bluff
could see pennants and cooking fires and spits and tents and
lean-tos and pots and bones and garbage scattered over what
had been fertile fields. There were figures of all sizes, some
knee-high, some twice taller than a man. All of them moved
with curious crabbing motions.

The mob looked like a sprawling nest of spiders.

Endril pointed his short bow to where a steady stream of
figures issued forth, like a black train of ants, from the Mist-
wall itself.

"Behold," the elf pronounced, and his voice was so omi-
nous they all felt a chill.

"The Dark Lord's Army."

CHAPTER

6

It was Endril who spoke first. "Magic."

"Eh?" The humans had been hypnotized by the sight of
the awful army—there were so many of them!

"Magic," he repeated. "Yon castle, how it hangs in the
air. Some powerful talisman holds it thus, else it would have
tumbled into the depths long ago. *Tis magic and not mortar
at work. I should not be surprised if it's that which we seek."

"Hunh?" said Cal.

"He means," Bith translated, "it's probably Viti's sword
keeping that castle up. There are very few other artifacts that
could, especially in such remote regions and shabby sur-
roundings. I wonder that I never heard of this castle's wizard,
With such power, his name should be known far and wide."

Cal adjusted his baldric, loosened his sword in its scab-
bard, then shot it home. "I could have said that castle was
our goal without knowing anything about magic."

"And how's that?" Bith asked.

"Because if a god needs us to find a sword, where else
would it be but between the Mistwall and an army of ores?"

The five travelers looked down at the valley and collec-
tively sighed. Endril sat down and set his back against a slope.

81

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

82

Bith smoothed her cloak behind and perched on a rock. Cal
took out a dagger to point out aspects of the army and mutter
to himself. Hathor sat at the edge of the fissure and swung
his big, dirty, hairy, black-tocnailed feet like a child. Back-
breaker scratched a hairless armpit.

After a long time—long enough for me sun to drop behind
the Mistwall and so elongate its shadow far across the doomed
valley—Cal spoke. "That's it, then."

"What?" Bith asked him.

"We can't do it."

"We must," replied Endril.

Cal shook his head, "There's no way."

Bith looked from one to the other. "What are you talking
about?"

"This task, this trip," Cal answered. "We're done. We
tell Vili to go fish up a tree. We're finished."

"We gave our bond," Endril intoned.

"We gave our bond," Cal replied with heat in his voice,
"to venture north and see if we can retrieve VUi's sword.
Well, we did, and here we are, and 1 for one say we can't do

it."
ii

Bith asked, "Are you afraid?"

Cal pointed to his chin with his dagger. "There's a stupid
question. I've a scar right here to prove I'm not. I've fought
in battles, two anyway, and I needn't prove anything to some
girt raised on her mother's lap and fed on white bread. I'm a
soldier to the bone, and I can tell you you might as well fall
on your sword here as walk down there. Five people do not
attack an army. It wouldn't be brave, it'd be plain stupid."

As if in echo, a howl sounded from me valley below. The
noise was neither human nor animal.                                   ;

It was quiet for a while, then Endril said, "To walk away
would not, methinks, be as simple as you describe. Gods
have long memories and hold grudges to suit. We've prom-
ised Vili to try and he will expect it of us, or find ways to
make us pay. And we gave our bond."

Cal asked, "Will you lead the charge?"

"There are other ways than direct attack."                            -r

"Such as?"                                                -;

' 'Outflank them."                                             , f-

"Have you no eyes? They encircle the castle."

OUTCASTS               83

"Not to the mountains."

"Those mountains are sheer rock! And if there are scouts
over here—" Cal remembered that and lowered his voice
"—there are bound to be more over there. A fly couldn't get
through those lines."

The troll's gruff voice startled them. "Caves."

Cal asked, "Where?"

The troll pointed to the mountains. "In mountains."

"How can you tell?"

"Can just tell."

Cal shook his head some more. "Ores come from caves.
They'd be thickest there."

"Infiltrate the army," said the elf.

"Good luck. We're white as ghosts compared to that lot.
Bith especially wouldn't get past the first flank. Not whole."

Beside him the girt shuddered, but Cal didn't try to retract
his words. It was madness to proceed, and Cal was wary of
the elf's powers of persuasion. He'd have them marching to
the walls in a parade, singing, if he talked long enough.

Indeed, the elf turned to Bith. "Could you fly over them?"

Bith shook her head.
"We must join them, then," Endril said.

"Take prisoners." Hathor grunted.

Cal asked. "What? What good-would taking prisoners do?
No one would ransom them."

Hathor pointed to the three fair people, then Backbreaker.
"Take you prisoners. Him, me. Tie you up. March to edge
of army, ask to see leader. Walk right through. No one touch
us."

"Why would no one touch us?"

"Whole army afraid of leader. Prisoners be brought to him.
Anyone interfere, cut head off. We walk right to wall, jump
over."

Cal waved a hand in the air. "Wait a minute, Hathor. Let
me get this right. You 're going to tie us up and lead us down
there as prisoners, right through their lines, to the leader's
tent? And how do you know about their leader?"

The troll ignored Cal's second question. "No, take you to
wall."

"Not I," This from Endril.

Cal whipped his head around. "What do you mean, not

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

84

you? Who's the one carping about our bond? Who's the one
keeping us here?"

Endril was placid. "You are the one keeping yourself here,
so blame not others. But no, I cannot go amidst that army.
The smell of an elf would bring a thousand ores on a rampage
that no leader could stop. I'd be hacked to pieces in a trice.
That part is impossible."

Cal asked, "But we lesser humans get to be trussed up like
chickens? How do you propose to be of any use?"

"I can enter the castle by my own ways. But none can
come with me. As it is, I may not arrive at all."

Cal pointed his dagger. "Look, I've had it up to here with
your high-and-mighty elfness! Anything you do is fine for
you, but not for us\ We're just sheep to be led to the slaugh-
ter—where arc you going?"

Endril stood and swung his bow in his hand. "Hathor's is
a suitable plan- I shall endeavor to meet you inside the castle
walls when you arrive. If I do not arrive, then I never shall.
May you walk in peace.** He climbed the shelf and looked
around. Then he crept out onto the grassy plain, into the
gathering gloom.
Cal put his hand to his hilt and trotted after him. He hissed.
"Hey, you! Wait up! Who do you—where'd he go?"

Bith scurried up beside him. Together they crouched and
peered into me dusk. They could still see some distance across
the plain, and there was nothing to obstruct their vision. No
trees, no rocks.

Cal kicked the toe of his boot- "Damn him' Damn him to
whatever hell he fears. What a—a srwl'."

He turned to look at Bith and found Hathor and Back-
breaker looming in me near-dark. Their outlines against the
grey sky were chilling. Hathor had a coiLof rope. "Good
plan, start now. We tie you up."

Cal backed around and this time drew his sword a good
four fingers from its scabbard. "Hold on, here! I haven't
agreed to a thing yet! We're still just talking—hey!"

Hathor lunged and with one sweep of his foot knocked Cal
sprawling. The heavy-muscled body crashed onto his chest
and knocked die wind from him while the nimble and broad
feet pinned his arms. Cal was as helpless as a trout on the
shore. Bith cried out once before Backbreaker covered her

OUTCASTS

85

mouth and entire face With his monstrous hands. Cal un-
leashed a truly spectacular string of swear words as the coarse
rope was wrapped around his torso. Hathor unhitched the
boy's baldric, and slung it and his shield over one shoulder.

Five minutes later, bound like squabs, Cal and Bith were
being frog-marched down the long slope towards the valley
and its invading army.

Hathor towed the humans along with no more trouble than
a child dragging a branch. Backbreaker stamped behind.

The first pluck at Hathor's memory came as he reached the
floor of the valley. Across the tall billowing grass came a
whiff, an odor, a scent—of home. The rope around the two
humans jerked taut as they caught the smell, but Hathor
dragged them on. Along with the rotten-egg and low-tide
smell of the Mistwall came the stink of ore dung and urine,
bad meat, unwashed bodies, dried blood, rancid hides, pus,
corruption, vomit, and the thousand other smells of several
thousand soldiers packed in one place. Hathor flared his nos-
trils and took a deep breath. To someone raised in a warren
of dank caves inhabited by cannibal trolls since the beginning
of time, it was like old times. Hathor discarded his man's
hat, tightened his grip on his axe, and marched.

The humans twitched at the end of their rope but Hathor
just hauled harder. The captives had two choices; walk or be
dragged. The giant Mountain Back Breaker chivvied them
along.

Exposed by firelight, the black mass of troops resolved into
detail.

The first thing they passed, at the outer fringes of the army,
was a trio of ogres. These were he-ogres, each as wide as
two men. Evidentally they preferred the outskirts where they
had room to move. They wore wide bullhides clumsily
stitched and stretched across their hairy backs and legs. They
looked not at all sinister, but rather like fat greengrocers
blown out of proportion. But one with a gleaming bald head
wore two human skulls in helmets as earrings. The ogres
watched the troll and giant and their prisoners pass without
comment.

The next group was a large party of ores, some thirty or
so, small hunched creatures with craggy faces and pointed

86 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

ears. They wore scraps of armor or nothing at all. They looked
greedily at the trussed humans but fearfully at the striding
troll and giant. One of them yipped like a coyote as they
passed.

Hathor jerked to a halt. He turned in surprise and found
Cal leaning back on the rope. The boy had planted his boots
against a rock and snubbed the rope tight. Hathor quickly
released his hold and Cat tumbled backwards. The troll
stomped angrily and loomed over the boy. The fangs in his
lower jaw champed as he shouted, "What you do? Get up or
I kill you!"

Cal stayed where he was. Bith had stopped too and hun-
kered down behind him, trying to make herself small. Cal
swore a soldier's oath and hissed, "Thor! This is madness!
We'll never get out alive!"

Hathor kicked with   his bare feet at Cal's boots, and it was
me boy who winced.   The troll raised his felling axe high aloft
and shook it- "You   get up now!" he thundered. "Or I break
born legs and drag   you!"

Cal's eyes shot hate at the troll. Bith's flickered to one side.
Approaching them was a party of three beings. Trolls, just
like Hathor.

The lead troll was as big as Hathor and even deeper in the
chest. His grubby hair was the same washed-out color as his
greasy fur vest and kilt. He sported a bandolier with three
hatchets in it. The other trolls were smaller. One wore a
wrapping of grimy cloth and carried a war club studded with
obsidian. The other wore only a loincloth. A hideous pucker
covered one whole side of his face. The eye on that side was
white as a boiled egg. He carried a mallet.

The foremost of the trolls rumbled something to Hathor in
his own tongue. It sounded to the humans like a dogfight. He
appeared friendly enough towards his brethren, though die
grimace on his face revealed four yellow fangs. Hathor only
growled something short and turned back to his prisoners.
He wrenched savagely on the rope, hard enough to bring a
bleat of pain from Bith.

The one-eyed troll stepped around the leader. With a snari-
ing laugh he started to say something to Hathor, but was cut
off. Hathor roared, "I said, go away\" and lashed out. The
back of the heavy woodsman's axe caught the troll square in

OUTCASTS

87

the face. Cal and Bith heard a sickening crunch. Blood flew.
The troll went down to writhe on the trampled grass. Hathor
hauled the two humans to their feet by main strength. He set
off through the army without looking back at his kin. Cal did
look. The two trolls had walked away and left their compa-
triot twisting in the grass.

"Bast and Belial!" Bith whimpered. "Did you see what
he did?"

"I saw," Cal grated.

The girl glanced over her shoulder, but the sight of the
grey-skinned alien Backbreaker was unnerving. "Some-
thing's wrong with Hathor."

"Nothing's wrong with him. He's gone back to his own
kind, is all."

Bith quavered, "I can't believe that."

"Believe what you want."

"What will happen to us, Cal?"

Cal stared straight ahead without seeing anything. "If we're
lucky, someone will kill us right away."

Bith bit her lip and cried without tears.

Cal was glad it was full night now, for it meant less to see.
Dogs scuttled up to bark at them, skinny cowardly things that
fought with each other. Dead ones roasted in the fire. One
pack fought over the guts of their brother. Ugly trophies and
war booty were to be seen at every hand. A lady's velvet
gown, torn and stained with blood, hung on a spear along
with a scalp. A gilt hand mirror winked from a scabby shield.
One ore tore leaves from a book to transport fire. Others sat
on a green woven carpet. Cal counted with hard eyes every
helmet on every hideous head, all of which had to be hu-
man—or dwarven-made, for none of the lesser speaking races
could work metal. He counted over two hundred before he
gave up. There were men's swords, men's shields, men's
spears, and more.

The noise was equally horrid. A hooting went up ahead
where two small beings knife-fought by a fire. Far away a
bubbling scream went on and on, the product of torture.

Every step—dragged foot by foot—brought the two humans
deeper into the Dark Army and brought them more attention.
Dark twisted shapes pointed and gibbered and laughed at the

88

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

two prisoners. Cal kept his eyes forward and looked at noth-
ing. Bith kept her eyes on Cat's back.

Hathor trudged along with slit eyes. He growled or spat at
anyone who even hinted at getting in his way. He tried to
recognize the minions of the Dark Lord's army. They were
mostly ores in all shapes and sizes. There were a handful of
giants, at least two tribes of trolls, gnolls like upright jackals,
tiny twisted pink piglets, and some species of speaking races
that Hathor could not identify. He saw females of various
races too. Dull-eyed, they tended fires or scraped skins or
carried water while me males jeered them. They were as
skinny and filthy as the dogs, with less spirit. Far off, over
the shorter ores, Hathor could see patches of bronzed skin.
Those were men, soldiers who had turned their hand to the
Dark Lord's service. Their heads swivelled and fixed on me
smallest in Hathor's party—they'd spotted a human woman at
half a mile in the dark. Calling to one another, they picked
up their weapons and started to push their way through.

Hathor scanned as he walked, looking for some sign of
authority. He was far enough across the valley now that he
had to pick up his chin to see the castle at the top of the hill.
The pitch of the hill was steep, steep enough that a man
would need one hand for his weapon and one hand to climb.
And the slope was flinty and crumbly, supporting no weeds
or trees. In the reflected light of fires he could see, some two
hundred feet away, the first wall. Helmeted heads with dark
faces underneath peered over it, motionless. A hundred feet
behind that was the second wall, and just behind dial, the
blackened castle. From here Hathor could see its outlines
were soft. The castle was old and crumbling. The well-lit
houses around it were tiny. The two walls that protected die
community had fresh stonework and no moss. There were no
living invaders on the slopes. Only a goat could rest there.
But there were occasional bodies prickled with arrows. Dogs
pulled at them.

Hathor scanned the terrain to either side of him. Ahead, at
the front edge of the army and closest to the wall (though not
close enough to invite arrows) were the army's only tents,
therefore those of the leaders. A half-dozen small tents formed
a ring around a very large one. Flagpoles made an avenue to

OUTCASTS               89

this tent. Pennants stirred in a night breeze. Large guards
faced one another across this corridor.
A shout from their left made Hathor turn around. A cluster
of soldiers—men—were coming their way. They had their
heads high and their swords loose.

Bith gasped. "Quick, Hathor! We must away! They'll take
me!"

Cal grunted, "He doesn't care."

The giri shuddered. "Please, Hathor! They'll kill you to
get me! They'll cut you down!"

Hathor turned right abruptly, so abruptly that a cluster of
ores did not part quick enough. He crashed his axe onto the
head of one and then kicked the body out of the way with his
big feet. He shoved onward through the crowd in the direc-
tion of the tents, towing his prisoners behind. He heard a
growl behind as Mountain Back Breaker snaried at someone.

The crowd was thicker here—and more foul—and they
clustered around. The human soldiers shouted after Hathor.
A fight was in the air and the bloodthirsty crowd wanted to
see. Hathor broke free of the press and found himself in the
only open space—the corridor of trampled grass leading to
the largest tent. The soldiers were not far behind. He jerked
at the rope to snub his prisoners tight. A flag hung just over-
head, brushing the troll's curiy hair.

"What now?" Cal spit in his face, "You collect a re-
ward?" Bith only bit her lower lip.

The two humans' eyes widened in surprise as Hathor
hissed, "Turn around. I loosen ropes. You can hold them?"

Cal frowned. Bith was quicker to recover. She whispered
too. "I can put a hold spell on them. Oh, Thor, I knew you
were still with us! But what shall we do?"

The troll nodded a fraction of an inch up the hill. "Run
for wall. I don't know if we can make it, but we try. Those
men close. You right, Cal, this bad idea."

Cal only grunted, but it was a relieved grunt with a hint
of apology, a soldier's only acknowledgement that he had
been wrong. He spun around as if he had been slapped and
presented his bound hands for Hathor to "tighten." Bith did
the same. Cal heard her whisper a spell and suddenly his
bonds were tighter than before. But she shot him a quick,

90

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

tight, smile. Cal smiled back, then frowned anew as the troll
spoke.

"Hey? where Backbreaker go?'*

The others looked. The giant was gone. Tall as he was, he
should have stood out easily. But there was no sign.
Cal croaked, "Good riddance—"

Hathor jumped. A laige ore. grey-faced, with spiky black
hair sticking out all over, loomed over them. He wore shiny
black armor like a turtle's shell. He carried a halberd.

"What you do here?" he growled. Hathor growled in re-
ply- The ore pointed with a forefinger like a dagger. "What
these?"

Hathor glanced around him. The crowd was thick on all
sides. There was seemingly half an army between them and
the bottom of the slope. They could hear the voices of the
men soldiers swearing filthy oaths as they tried to push
through. Hathor looked for a way out- He snaried at the ore
and spit on the ground.

"Prisoners."

The ore pointed at the big tent. "They go there."

The troll netted his axe. and tried to think. The flags flapped
overhead and the humans looked up. The rope in Hathor's
hand suddenly snapped taut. He looked at Cal and then looked
up-

Overhead were standards: pennants and banners, each one
a different color and pattern, each one representing a king or
kingdom, a particular army, or a large and prestigious band
of heroes. There were so many standards they could not even
be set side by side, but were rather clustered like sheaves of
spears. There must have been hundreds of them, each one
representing a portion of the worid lost to the Dark Lord and
his army.

Cal stared upwards as if hypnotized, fixed on a single sheaf
of pennants. To Hathor they looked much the same: a yellow
streamer with a red dragon, a blue square with four crowns
filled with stars, a orange and white striped flag with a black
bar, a green rectangle sporting a red eagle with a fish in its
beak. . . .

"My father," the boy whispered. "My father . . ."

The ore guard prodded Cal with his halberd- The boy
jumped sideways but did not otherwise move. He only wlus-

OUTCASTS             91

pered again and stared upwards. The ore raised his pike high
to split me human in half—

The shaft of his halberd slammed against something solid.
Twin grunts sounded. The head of Hathor's axe had stopped
the ore's halberd as solidly as a rock. The two weapons be-
came the focus of a contest. The ore flexed his muscles and
pressed downwards: Hathor gritted his fangs and pressed up.
All this time the blade of the halberd quivered inches over
CaTs head, but the boy was oblivious. He whispered and only
Bith could hear him. "So he's really dead. He's really, re-
ally—dead. Dead . . -"

Bith tried to do what she could with her hands tied. She
shoved the boy with her shoulder. "Cal. Cal' Wake up. Cat!
Please!" Another shove almost sent him sprawling. "Cal,
we have logo!"

The boy shook his head and looked at her as if at a stranger.
He glanced back towards the sky.

Hathor huffed, "Hyah!" and threw off the ore's halberd.
He stared the ore down, picked up the tail of the rope, and
dragged his prisoners into the dim tent of the Dark Army's
leader.

The night air had been chilly, but it was hot inside this
tent. The interior was lit all with yellow, from a hundred
candles, from torches, from the glint of gold. The floor of
wheat had yellowed from lack of sun. There were blond rugs
and skins piled around. The light reflecting on the canvas roof
suffused the glow. After the dark night and dark things they
had seen, the inside of the tent was dazzling as a fairyland.

The inhabitants were not. The sagging canvas, itself hot
and stale, trapped an eye-smarting stink of stale sweat and
spoiled food that was worse than outside. Dark as spiders
were myriad guards and hangers-on, whispering or croaking
or arguing with one another. These were mostly the larger
buriy ores that stood outside as guards, along with some trolls
and coarse men and some olive-skinned creatures, hairless
and fish-eyed, that none of the party recognized. The first
humans Bith noticed were the concubines who lolled around
the throne. They were huge coarse women clad only in taw-
dry makeup and body tattoos and rolls of their own fat. No,
there was only one dazzling person in the tent.

The man on the throne.

92

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

He was the biggest man any of the three had ever seen.
Cal, who had seen some large soldiers, reckoned his height
at close to seven feet. As it was, he was taller sitting down
than Cal was standing up. The man's skin was brown from
the sun, a healthy glow that contrasted sharply with the dark-
loving creatures who served him. His body rippled with mus-
cle: his skin looked tighter than a snake's. But something had
happened to his body, or was happening. It was somehow
pushed to it limits. His chest was overiarge, bigger than a
barrel, and they could hear his abnormal breathing from where
they stood thirty feet away. His features might once have been
handsome, but now they were—what? overdeveloped? His
chin, his ears, his nose, his brow, all were enlarged. Even
his teeth were big as a horse's. His hair was thick and blond,
yet lifeless, like sun-baked thatch. Cal thought he had never
seen a man so fit and yet so on the verge of dying in his life.
The man—the leader of the Dark Lord's Army—stared at them
with wide white eyes with yellow centers. He raised a hand
as big as a lion's paw and waved mem forward.

Hathor gently pulled on the slack rope between them. To-
gether the three advanced across that hot, steaming space.
The crowd quieted as Hathor, Bith, and Cal stopped in the
middle of me tent. Their legs would carry them no further.
It grew very still in the tent. The only sound was the hoarse
breathing of the giant before them.

When the three didn't move and the silence drew on, the
leader left his chair—a throne of gold, with more gold and
jewels heaped around it. He advanced upon them without a
word. They could see now he wore a breechclout of some
tawny hide that still bore a tufted tail like the sphinxes. Oth-
erwise he was naked except for jewelry. His chest was hung
with pendants and chains, his arms were adorned above and
below the elbows with bands of copper and gold and silver.
His shaggy head with its tiny gold circlet brushed me tent
in places. He towered over the three. Cal, who was tall. had
to crane his head back to look at the man. His chest heaved
and they could smell his breath, curiously sweet. Sweat
rolled down the leader's breast and trickled off his nipples.
His mouth hung open as he panted like a horse run thirty
miles.

Twice the man licked his lips as he looked down at the

OUTCASTS             93

party. Cal felt his legs turning to water. Bith wanted to cry.
Hathor wished he were back in his cave deep below ground.
The man reached out a great hand and brushed the boy and
troll aside. He spoke only to Bith.
"What brings you here?"

CHAPTER

7

No one, especially Bith, knew what to say to this golden giant
and his strange question, so they said nothing.

The silence in the yellow-hued tent dragged out. The var-
ious retainers watched their master and waited. Cal and Bith
and Hathor stared up at the man, as trapped and helpless and
confused as flies in a web.

The leader of the Dark Army spoke. "No answer, good
woman? It's unlike you. You've always had a loose tongue
and a sharp wit. Or is it the other way around?"

The man's eyes were staring yet unfocused. Cal looked at
Bith, Bith looked at Hathor, Hathor looked at Cal. All three
swallowed. They were suddenly thirsty. Maybe it was the
giant's panting that did it.

The leader put his massive hands out in the air. He waved
them gently and leaned towards Bith. "Speak! How is it we
find you here on the wrong end of a rope? Is your magic
gone? If so, we are all in dire straits indeed!"

Bith let go her lip from her teeth and stammered, "S-sire—"

"Sire!" The giant barked and made her jump. "Sire! She
calls me sire!'' He roared with laughter and the retainers about

94

OUTCASTS

95

tittered along with him, though cleariy none understood the
joke.

"Sire! A goodly jest, Morea! What unguessable misfortune
has befallen you?" The giant leaned close and peered into
Bith's tiny face- "Gog and Magog, what queer times we live
in!"

Cal and Hathor were dumbfounded. What had he called
Bith? Morea? But that was the name of Bith's—

The name—and the truth—had tolled like a bell in Bith's
mind. Tossing her nose in the air and straightening her back,
she gave a haughty shake of her head. "So," she pro-
nounced, "you've recognized us."

The giant laughed again, a deep hearty laugh that rattled
their breastbones. "No man who'd seen you would forget
you- It's said all through the Mistlands—"

"Stop!"

The man stopped.

Bith shrugged her shoulders, a ripple that made her lithe
body shimmer bewitchingly. She rapped a command, a ring-
ing cry in some obscure language. Then her hands were free
and entwined over her head. The ropes had fallen behind her
onto the dead grass. The crowd murmured.

Bith proclaimed, "I need my false bonds no longer then.
The ruse had failed."

"Yes," said the giant, though he was now as befuddled as
anyone else. Cal found himself wishing for a cool day and a
clean hot battle—or anything he could understand.

Bith wiggled her fingers and the giant stepped back. "Feed
us," she commanded. "Bring wine."

The leader barked and servants scuttled away. He back-
stepped to his throne and waved Bith after him, deferentially.
She came, demurely- The leader of this vast army cleariy
considered her an equal. He shouted for a chair and one was
brought, a heavy wooden chair carved with intricate designs.
Bith nodded towards the painted hariots and they were dis-
missed. Hathor and Cal tried to remain invisible.
Bith was served wine and fresh fruit. She ate decorously
and talked with the leader (whose name Cal and Hathor still
didn't know). Conversation flickered back and forth between
the two like fire between dragons. It ranged through a half
dozen languages that only they could follow.

96 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

The talk went something like this:

He: "I ask you again, what brings you here in these cir-
cumstances?"

She: "Circumstances change."

"The Mistwall?"

"It moves, docs it not?"

"We drive it like wolves before sheep."

"Or it drives you."

"Soon we'll have all the speaking races under our thrall."

"And what is your position then?"

"Exalted leader. Supreme among men. Second only to the
Dark Lord. Almost a god. And you?"

"I?"

"Yes, you. Would you stay here?"

"In this chair?"

"Don't tease. At my side."

"There's room there only for a sword."

"At night a man needs a woman."

"Morea is more than a woman."

"Queen, then."

"Empress?"

"As you wish."

As they bantered back and forth, Cal whispered to Hathor,
"What the hell are they talking about?"

Hathor muttered without moving his lips. "Don't know."

"He keeps calling her Morea. That's her mother. And
something about an alliance," Cal said.

"More than that," the troll replied-
Cal hissed, "Don't you start talking like them. We'll all
go mad." He thought a moment. "We better find out his
name. It's clear Bith doesn't know it."

Hathor grunted again. He took a step and caught a passing
ore by the arm. He squeezed as he demanded, "What his
name? Quick!"

The ore twisted as he replied. "Schlein. Him Schlein,
leader all armies."

Hathor released the creature. He asked Cal, "How we tell
Bith?"

"Beats me- What are they doing now, arguing?"

The conversation had become even more arcane—some of
it in elven, some in the Old High Tongue and some in a

OUTCASTS            97

weird, clacking cant. Schlein's voice had taken on an abrasive
edge. The giant was fingering his beltline. Cal couldn't tell
if he was straightening the tilt in his kilt or reaching for a
knife. Bith's voice grew shrill as a crow's.

"I'll not be subservient to any man, god, or demon in any
of the seven planes' I say you grant me a retinue now, access
to a laboratory now, and such materials as I need, now and
when I have had time to gather my intelligence and energies,
then and only then shall I speak more of marriage or other-
wise!"

Schlein's tone hovered somewhere between placating and
commanding. "You misinterpret my advances, mistress. I
need to know better your—skills, so we can together—"

Hathor and Cal had crept forward, Cal shuffling because
his hands were still bound behind him. They stood behind
Bith unnoticed, though retainers and guards pressed closer,
Hathor nodded at Cal. The boy girded his loins, waited for
a pause and then spoke as quietly as he could into Bith's ear.
"Mistress, wouldst you and Exalted Schlein . . ."

Schlein, who'd obviously been planning his next attack on
Bith, snapped his head around. "How dare you' Interrupt
UJ? Guards' Take these two out and kill them! Drain their
blood and prepare them for the fire!"

Hathor's and Cal's eyes flew wideiapen. Bith leapt up from
her seat and waved her arms. "Kill my retainers? How dare
you! No one kills my staff but mtf!"

In his turn Schlein leapt up, rocking his heavy gold throne.
He stabbed out a hand and had slapped into it the hilt of a
great jeweled sword that glittered in the torchlight. "I darel
You forget your place and position! No witch woman can
resist me, mistress of the sacred arts or not! Guards' I say
kill these two and roast them! They'll grace our table and
Morea herself shall eat their hearts!"

Bith rotated her hands and rattled a short arcane phrase
like a curse. Crushing something in her left hand, she reached
up and put her right hand on the sword hilt. She smiled
sweetly up into Schlein's face and the giant paused, uncer-
tain. Then a column of flame shot up the blade of his sword
and ignited the tent.

Dusty and dry from a thousand suns, the sheet of canvas
became a sheet of flame within a heartbeat. Schlein howled

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

98

and dropped his sword. The adventurers smelt scorched flesh.
Bith jumped away from his swinging paw and bumped into
Cal. The tent flooded with smoke and the screams of fifty
dark minions. Schlein howled curses and called a dozen or-
ders at once that no one heeded. Cal called to Bith, who
stood six inches away, "What do we do?"

"What else? We run!"

Everyone else was doing the same. A torrent of fetid flesh
pushed and shoved and screamed to get out the doorway of
the tent, shoving others to progress to safety. It was impos-
sible to see in the eye-smarting smoke. The stench of the
room, the heat, and the smoke left nothing to breathe, and
the party's lungs cried for air. Hathor kept a heavy hand on
his two friends as he half-helped, half-dragged them towards
a wall. Blackness gaped where someone had picked up the
side of the tent- Hathor brushed at rumps with his axe and
shouted for his friends to follow.

They popped outside into what now seemed pure, sweet,
night air. They had collected two deep breaths when Bith
called, "Come on! This way!*'

The gid tucked her cloak up and bolted. She ran past the
front of the tent and towards the slope and the distant wall.
Hathor took off after her with long dog-like lopes of his bowed
legs. Cal struggled to keep his balance as he ran.

"Hey, hold it! I'm still tied!"

Bith whirled, chirped a word, and Cal's bonds fell away as
if cut with a knife. Pins and needles shot fire up his arms.
He waggled his hands to get some life in them as he ran after
the whippet Bith and her sheepdog Hathor, who handed him
back his sword and shield.

Confusion was king around the leaders' tents. Guards, re-
tainers, servants, women, and soldiers ran hither and thither
on whatever errands they chose to pursue. They ran toward
or away from the tents as their whim took them. People called
for buckets, for blood, for battle, and for booty. Men waved
swords in the air and shouted without knowing why. Ores
shrilled and slapped one another in their fear. Dogs barked.
Bith pulled her hood up and ducked her head. She twisted
and turned among the crowd unnoticed. Hathor nudged or
threatened people with his axe, but did not hit anyone for fear
of getting bogged down in a fight. Cal put an ugly grimace

OUTCASTS               99

on his scarred face and made no eye contact. Strung thin and
constantly moving, they dodged and darted their way to the
front line.

Then they were in the clear. Cal looked up. Two hundred
feet away, up a forty-five degree slope, was the first wall. It
was lined with more helmets now, and more torches. He
panted, "Do we just run up there?"

Bith was hunkered down, trying to look small. She
snapped, "What else would you have us do?"

Cal looked right and left. "1 see no archers down here, but
the defenders up there will probably nail us before we get
half way- We're caught between two forces."

"But we're friends."

The boy gasped, "Yes, but the people up there don't know
that! They'd probably shoot first and wonder later."

"Well, we can't stay here'."

Hathor grunted agreement.

Cal bit his lip. "You're right, but ... All right, try this.
Hathor and I will go abreast. You go before us."

"Why me?"

"Don't argue, damn it! Pull back your hood so they can
see you're a human woman—giri. Then they won't shoot, I
hope."

For the first time Bith noticed just-how many rotting bodies
there were on the slopes, and how most of them were fes-
tooned with arrows. She hesitated before she said, "All right,
let's try it. I don't want to go back to Schlein,"

"Me neither," Hathor and Cal said in unison.

Bith pulled back her hood. Her face was flushed and lovely
in the flickering firelight. "Here we go!"

Together the three mounted the slope.

They were halfway when a shout sounded behind them.
The shout was picked up to carry throughout the army. The
trio imagined they could hear the booming voice of Schlein
thundering above everyone else. Cal called, "Keep going!
Don't look around! That costs time!" They scrabbled with
their hands up the flinty slope.
A black arrow hit the slope wide of them. It came from
behind. "Don't stop!" Cal shouted. "Ores arc lousy shots!"
With that something knocked off his leather helmet. He let it
tumble down the slope.

100

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

Bith's yellow boot slipped on the scree and she fell and
banged her face. Blood started from a scrape on her chin.
Cal and Hathor both reached for her but she shook her hands
at them, "Never mind! Climb! We're almost there!"

And they   were. Another thirty feet would bring them to
the foot   of the wall- Of course, getting over it was another
concern,   but even so Cal shouted, "We're going to make it'
Hel-h up   there—"

His voice was cut off as something grabbed his boot and
slammed him to a halt. He spun, clawing for his sword. In
the black night against the grey slope, black shapes scuttled
among the still ones. A swarm of large ores were after them—
and were upon them.

The ore attached to Cal clutched his boot in one hand and
a jagged knife in the other. With an animal howl he raised
his arm to plunge down the knife. Cal kicked him in the face
with his free foot. That ore fell over backwards into another
and the two skittered a dozen feet down the slope. Then Cal
was up with his antique sword and swinging.

He swopped overhand for the head of the next advancing
ore, but instead lost his footing on the treacherous slope and
fell himself, hard on his rump. Bith bleated behind him: he
must have just missed her with the backswing of the sword.
Hathor roared and pitched a rock that caught another ore in
the chest. The creatures paused in their ascent. Three humans
with weapons in hand faced them from the advantage of
height. There was no way to carry the attack. Instead the
monsters settled for shouting and howling and chucking rocks
of their own. Cal tried to keep his guard up and rise at the
same time, but he didn't dare: he'd pitch headlong and be
among them in seconds. Bith shouted too but did nothing
else, since she couldn't touch an enemy to spell him. The
only other spell she could think of was a light spell, which
was not a good idea. Steel-headed arrows struck sparks all
around them. Rotten shots or not, enough shafts sent their
way would find a mark.

Something—a thrown axe—bounced off Cal's shield. The
blow knocked him off balance. Hathor hooted and shuffled
his way even as a giant black shape rose before him. An ore
had a war axe raised high, ready to split Cal in half. The boy
winced involuntarily. This was going to hurt.

OUTCASTS

101
A zap! sounded, and a crunching noise. The shape fell over
backwards to crash on the slope. Then another arrow buzzed,
and another, all striking targets. These arrows came from
behind die adventurers—from atop the wall.

The ores howled with rage and disappointment, then took
to their heels as a shower of red-fletched arrows fell among
them. Hathor, Cal, and Bith risked a glance over their shoul-
ders to sec—a ladder!

"Come on!'* a mustached man called from the wall. He
waved his gauntlet wide. "Quick! Before they change their
minds! Get up!"

The three got. The ores howled loudly but without convic-
tion. Probably, Cal thought, they planned to storm the castle
in the next few days. They'd have their revenge then.

Then he was behind the wall and things didn't seem so
very bad.

The castle defenders were all good folk and true, men and
women with blond hair and clear blue eyes. There were about
a hundred and fifty of them all together, all warriors.

The mustached leader introduced himself as Barin, house
cari of the kingdom. "Welcome to Cairngorm, friends! What's
left of it, anyway. We didn't know what to make of you lot
coming up that hill. Thought you-were some suicide squad
driven mad to attack, or something. We've seen stranger sights
along these walls. How ever did you get through that army?"

"You were right. We're suiciders," Cal told him with a
soldier's black humor. "And I'm not sure how we did it."

"It was Hathor did it," Bith replied- The three stood on
the wall and looked out at the dark valley spread before them.
It looked much the same as me view from the opposite side.
There were enemies thicker than locusts as far as they could
see. "He pretended to be delivering us as prisoners. It got
us through."

Barin signalled to a younger man for a torch. He held it up
close and studied each one of the three. He peered especially
at Hathor. "You'd be a—troll, now wouldn't you, son?"

Hathor grinned and the man stepped back from the fangs.
"Yessir. Good troll."

"Never was there a stouter heart, or more honest," Bith
added.

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

102

"Pulled our tails out of the fire," Cal agreed. His voice
was overiy gay. "We were for the stew pot. Mercury and
Mob! Good job, Hathor! But don't ask me to do it again."
Hathor grinned so his fangs shone. His face was ugly in
the torchlight without his battered hat to obscure it. "No. Cal
was right. Was bad idea."

"But we're here," Bith breathed. She glanced back at the
boiling army of monsters and suddenly had to sit down. Cat
and Hathor joined her.

Bario snapped his fingers, a dull sound with his gauntlets
on. "Forgive me my manners. You must be fell tired. Farm,
fetch some wine, will ye? There's a dear. That's one good
thing about the end of a siege. We get to kilt the livestock
and pillage the cellar. Fresh meat and all the wine we can
soak up." He smacked his lips.

The weary adventurers were given flagons of honeyed wine
and black bread, roast meat and cheese. "We've broached
casks and sampled wine until we're pickled. Good for these
cold nights, it is. We've even watered the goats with wine.
Flavors the meat and saves trips to the well. We ain't leavin'
nothing for the ores."

Cal wolfed a huge chunk of meat, washed it down with
wine, and then asked, "S'good. Bith, what were you and
Ugly there—Schlein—arguing about? Did he really think you
were your mother? That can't be right."

Bith huddled small as she ate. "No, that's what he thought.
A lot of people mistake me for my mother."

"How can they? Doesn't she look—older?"

Bith shook her head and her dark hair shimmered. "No.
She keeps her looks with spells. It costs other people theirs,
but she keeps them. She's that way."

Cal asked, "Is that why you're in no hurry to get home?"

Bith didn't reply.

Sergeant Barin cleared his throat. "What I want to know—
not that I've followed anything you've said thus far—is why
you've fought your way into this castle. This place is doomed,
you know."

Bith sniffed and raised her scraped chin. Cal thought she
looked glad for a distraction. "We're here to speak to your
leader. The chief mage. We—uhh—have an important mes-
sage for him."

OUTCASTS             103

Barin shook his head. The ends of his scruffy mustache
waggled. "That's too bad. He ain't here."

"He's not?"

"Nope." Others shook their heads around them. The de-
fenders of the castle all had the same gestures. They all looked
alike, like an extended family. "No, ma'am. He went up into
his tower one night and never came down. There's been no
sign of him since."

"He's deserted us," a woman proclaimed.

Barin shook his head some more. "We don't know that,
daughter. He could have gotten into some mischief. He could
have been trying some spell to save us all and had it backfire,
for all we know. We mustn't speak ill of our lord."

"Nor the dead."

Barin just shook his head.

Cal looked along the wall and to the castle and the dark
mountains beyond. The moon was up, and it cast a glow upon
the upper peaks. "Why defend, then? Why not just pull out?"

Barin frowned. "No reason, really. 'Cept this is our home.
We've lived here going back so many generations no one
knows when we came, or where from. We're hanging on as
long as possible. The bastards haven't made any serious
moves towards us yet. Mostly just noise and mock advances
for the young 'uns. They're still gathering here in the valley,
spilling out of the damned cloud like bees swarmin' on a
summer's day. We can bide a bit. Maybe Criegsten will come
back with some plan. There's always hope. But any road, if
he don't, we'll just slip over the mountains at night. We know
the hills and the caves and no amount of ores can stop us
getting out."

"I wish we'd known the back route coming in," Cal mum-
bled. He asked for more food and was given it. The defenders
watched them incuriously, like cows. Only Barin had any
intelligence in his pocked and seamed race.

"What about—" Bith started.   She stopped and looked
sideways at her companions,   who nodded. "What about a
sword, a fabulous sword? Is   it still here, or has—what was
his name?—your master taken   it?"

Barin nodded his head. "Criegsten of Cairngorm. Lord
Criegsten sometimes. Master of Multhothy, he called him-
self, though he never did tell us where Multhothy was. We

104 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

asked him often enough, around the fires late in the winter,
when he was in his cups, about it, Multhothy that is, but he
never told us. It was a secret, he said. He liked secrets, he
did. Likes 'cm, I should say.'*

"The sword?" Bith prompted.

"Oh, that's right, you asked about the sword. Forgive me.
I'm a garrulous old man surrounded by children who've heard
it all before. That's what comes of being uncle to every
blooded being within five leagues. It's nice to see some new
faces, let me tell you. You must be the first brown-haired
wench inside these walls in three generations."

"The sword?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, it's here. Up—" he turned and lifted his
arm to point high, high—"way up there- In his room. Hangs
in the air, it does. We wouldn't touch it."

"Hangs in the air?" Cal asked.

"A simple enough spell," Bith told him. She asked Barin,
"May we see it? We promise not to touch it."

"Well," Barin rasped his stubbly chin with his horsehide
glove. "I don't know. 1 suppose so, seeing as how you've
come all this long way, through that bunch. I suppose. Soon
as you've finished your food I'll show you. Er, no, I'll have
Erin show you. There are four hundred seventeen steps up to
that eyre."

Bith set her wooden cup on the stone wall. "We're done.
Aren't we, Cal. Hathoi?"

Cal the Prepared and Hathor the Ever-Hungry each
snatched up as much food as they could and stuffed it into
their shirts. They wiped bread crumbs off their chins and
hefted their weapons. "Right. Whatever you say, Bith. Lead
on."

Barin fished out of his pockets a ring of three keys, all
brass. He pointed out the biggest one to Erin as he gave it to
her. "Escort them up to Criegsten's keep to see this sword,
but don't let them touch it. You understand? No one's to touch
it. Them were Criegsten's words. His final words to us,
maybe." The trio promised they wouldn't touch the sword or
anything else.

And off they went on the last leg of their long journey.

The hill rode even steeper up to the second, smaller wall.
Cal opined the inhabitants must be bom with one leg shorter

OUTCASTS            105

than the other. He paused to check the valley floor once again.
The oroan army roiled and bubbled, but there seemed no sign
of imminent attack. Their guide, Erin, growled. "Them were
the best fields in the northern reaches. Used to be a river
bottom. Ten feet of topsoil. Now they'll never grow anything
again, we're thinking."

They passed through the gate and into the midst of the
small village. Like the inhabitants, the tiny houses all looked
alike. Even the yellow dogs that came out to bark at them all
looked alike. Cal smiled and reached out to pat one. He had
seen villages like this before: he'd grown up in one.

Either Cal's show of interest or the task of being a guide
set Erin to talking. She told them about Cairngorm in a mo-
notonous drone. The party discerned more from the way she
talked than from the actual words.

Like most frontier settlements, the people were not bril-
liant. They survived by hard work and hardship. Between the
short growing season, the isolation, the raids by animals and
enemies, the land gave up its produce sparingly, and to sur-
vive the people had become like the land. They went into the
fields with a hoe and a spear. Children learned to churn butter
and hunt deer, to card wool and chop wood, to cut wheat and
kill bandits. People knew their jobs and were set in their
ways. Yet if the land made them hard, it also made them
content, proud of their ability to survive and even prosper in
the wilderness. They guarded what they gathered jealously,
but once someone was "family" they showered him or her
with generosity. They laughed silently at the same old tired
jokes.

Of the wizard, Erin could tell them that Criegsten arrived
from "the outside" about thirty years ago. He was very wise,
they decided. (Bith sniffed. Anyone who could read would
seem a genius to this lot.) He was very old. (That made sense
to Cal- He'd heard those who used magic either lived a very
long or a very short life.) Criegsten kept to himself, moved
into the vacant castle alone, but helped whenever anyone
asked. (Hathor liked that.) Why he'd "deserted them in their
hour of need" Erin couldn't understand, but her voice was
more hurt than angry.

The people had been here forever, she declared, but not
perhaps for much longer. Raids by "ores" (they called all

106

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

their enemies ores, even the giants) had intensified in the last
few years. Several outlying families had been slaughtered.
Everyone had had to relocate inside the walls. The Mistwall,
once just a smear on the horizon, had advanced to within a
stone's throw. It had been halted, thanks to Criegsten's en-
chanting "the magic sword" and setting it up as a barrier.
But forty days ago ores had begun to spill from the Mistwall.
The people resisted their every advance. There were four
hundred Caimgormers all told, more than two hundred able-
bodied warriors. But four hundred could not resist four thou-
sand with more arriving daily. The end of Cairngorm was not
far off.

They came to the foot of the castle.

Seen up close, it was small, as northern castles tended to
be. It was a multitude of kinks and crannies, spires and crooks
and doubled ramparts that no one needed, with a deceptively
small core. It was also more crumbly than they had supposed.
It was carved from the same flint that made up the slope. It
seemed strong, except that the tower did indeed hang over
me cliff further than any mason could fashion. Three natives
guarded the single door. Their guide accepted a torch and led
them inside.
It was up, up, up, and up some more. They walked up
hundreds of steps, each worn with a deep dish in the center.
The interior of the castle was very plain, mostly cut-stone
walls with no ornamentation other than old wooden shields
and faded banners. The light of the torch dipped and bobbed,
sparkled on mica necks, frightened mice and bints in nests.
Bith thought this a dreary place to be a woman. Hathor won-
dered why humans went to the trouble of building above
ground when caves were ready made and more varied. Cal
walked with a catch in his throat, for the place reminded him
of home.

Up they went, nose to tail, up winding stairs and straight
ones, across balconies and through arched doorways, and up
again. Finally they turned into a tiny twisted stairwell where
Hathor's shoulders brushed the walls. They stopped on a
landing. Erin faced a door with an ornate brass lock. Bith
took the torch and held it above her head, for no one could
pass. The warrior woman fumbled with the key and men
turned the tumblers with an eerie screech.

OUTCASTS            107

The room they entered was black, but it took on an eldritch
glow as they advanced with the torch. Erin lit torches in iron
sconces. The party filed into a fairly large room, a space
bigger than the public room of most inns. Scarred tables lined
three walls and two tables stood in the center. Wooden boxes
and tin pails full of dusty animal parts or greasy liquids stood
on the floor. Beakers and vials and burnt trays and candles
and books littered the tables. Poles and nags and other junk
filled the corners. The rafters that stretched high into the
conical roof were hung with multitudinous dusty things: a
stuffed owl, a net full of sea shells, a horse tail, a thin bone
fully six feet long. The stubs and wax of a thousand candles
were stuck to everything. The room was scented heavily with
brimstone and charred wood, saltpeter and fermented leather,
formaldehyde and mint, cabbage and dust.

Erin pointed across the room. Illuminated by a queer fairy
glow, the adventurers could see a huge arch that lead out onto
a tiny balcony. The balcony overlooked the Mistwall and
nothing else.

At the mouth of the arch, half in, half out of the room, a
slim black cross was silhouetted against that roiling rain-
bowed wall.

A sword hung in mid-air.

The runesword.

CHAPTER

8

"Don't touch it,'* Bith said.

Cal had immediately stepped over to the swoni. Now he
squatted for a better look at it. "Why not?"
"It's spelled. To touch it might banish the spelt."

The warrior woman Erin said, "You're not going to touch
anything anyway." She rapped the haft of her spear on the
stone floor for emphasis.

Cal lit a candle from a torch so he could peer at the sword.
The thing was beautiful, the most beautiful artifact he'd ever
seen, weapon or otherwise.

The sword was outwardly very plain, but it had lines as
perfect as a virgin's body- The pommel was a round emblem
with a rune engraved on each side. The handle was wrapped
with gold wire. The crosshilt tapered in slim lines to a pair
of matching knobs, each again etched with a rune. The blade
was slim both in thickness and width—not much thicker than
a knife blade, no wider than three fingers. It looked to be as
long as Cal's arm: the perfect length, he thought. There was
no chasing on the shining shank, but there were runes written
tar down the blade around the cutting edge. The letters were
nothing Cal had ever seen before. Straight here, curiicued

108

OUTCASTS

109

there, linked and separate. The edge of the blade was so fine
the boy could not even see it.

Bith came over and peered close at the sword's engravings.
Cal could see the freckles on her nose reflected in the blade's
surface. He asked her, "Can you read the words?"

"They're not words, they're runes."

"What's the difference?"

"Words are made of letters, which are abstract lines that
represents sounds. Runes are pictures. You don't read them
as much as you interpret them. They carry more power than
words, too."

"Why?"

"Because. Let's see ... The one here on the pommel,
that would be the most ppwerful one because it's closest to
the heart. It looks like a mountain. See the snow on the peak?
Or maybe it's sunlight. A mountain might mean power, or
solidity. Or it might stand for the home of a god, or the god
himself. Or a country or empire. Or masculinity."

The boy held the candle close. "How can one picture stand
for so many things?"

The girl sat back on her haunches, balanced on her yellow
boots. "It probably doesn't. A picture, or symbol, has dif-
ferent meanings in different cultures. Look at an owl, for
instance. To one people it might mean wisdom. To another
it might mean death is imminent. Or it might just symbolize
night. You can't know what meaning the picture carries un-
less you know the stories that go with it, what people think
of it. I don't even know if these are dwarf runes or human
runes. Or something else."

Cal sighed. "I get the idea, sort of. Anything else?"

Bith pointed to a rune on the hilt. "This is a wing."

"Means flight?"

"Or speed. Or all of a bird's powers: toughness, far sight.
This looks like an eye next to it. so it probably does mean
far sight. . . . This looks like a deer, maybe for fleetness. I
don't recognize any others. The mountain is significant,
though. Maybe mis sword's name is Mountaintop or Moun-
tain of Light or—"

"Mountain of Light? Wow! Is that its name?"

"I told you, I don't know."

no

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

Cat crept closer to the sword and Bith waved him back lest
he tumble onto it. He said, "We could ask Vili."

"You ask Vili."

Cal did, calling the god's name, offering his own worn
sword, peering into the magic one. At one point they thought
they detected a flicker within the shining surface of the rune-
sword, but the god did not appear. Erin watched them un-
easily.

Bith said, '*lf Vili is around here, or in there, he's probably
too weak to manifest himself. All the power from the sword—
and Vili himself—would go into holding back the Mistwall-
Vili is trapped inside an artifact of his own making, not an
uncommon fault of people who dabble in magic."

A snore startled them. Hathor had lain down on the stone
floor. The giri got up and walked off to look at the rest of
the room.

Cal sat on his hams and stared at the sword. His hands
itched to pluck up the sword and make a practice swing. A
strong blade with a long reach, it would cleave the air and
anything else effortlessly. The gold wire around the handle
and the fat button pommel would give it weight and heft and
a good counterbalance. The polished crossbill would feel like
silk along the fingers. Mountain of Light' My! but he wanted
this sword! With a weapon like this a man could do any-
thing—slay a dragon, lead an army, conquer the world!

How long the boy stayed there, staring at the sword, he
didn't know, but he started when someone touched his shoul-
der.

Bith yawned, "Let's go, Cal."

"Go?"

"Yes, go." Bith—who had bags under her eyes—nodded
towards the door. Three more Cairngormers had joined Erin.
"They want us out of here. I'm about to drop anyway."

"Nonsense," Cal replied, but he swayed on his feet.
"Well, maybe a short rest. Say, why don't—"

"You sleep here next to the sword? Forget it."

Cal frowned. "What, can you read minds, too?"

"I can read yours." She plucked at his sleeve. "Let's go
before they drag us out. I want to try sleeping in a real bed
for once. It's been weeks."

Cal huffed, but he was too tired to argue. It had been a

OUTCASTS            111

long day and a longer night. He and Bith routed Hathor.
Together they were escorted to temporary sleeping quarters-
The last thing Cal muttered was, "I wonder when we'll see
Endril again."

Bith tossed on a stormy sea. Waves threw her from wave
crest to trough, curled over and crashed down to bury her.
No matter how many spells she tried she was helpless,
knocked under the water a hundred times only to surface
again, snatch a breath of air, and go back down. The water
was black and white. Fish sailed overhead. Suddenly a huge
white sea worm burst from a wave alongside her. Its black
maw drove straight for her. She couldn't move. She was
pinned against the sea- The mouth bit her in half. . . -

Morea's daughter jerked awake. Someone was shaking her
shoulder. She tried to roll over and almost fell from the bed.
She was tangled in blue blankets.

It was a bright autumn morning. Frost rimmed the edge of
a cut-stone window and sparkled in the light. Erin, the tall,
blond, and dull warrior, had been the one shaking her.

Bith kicked the last of the covers loose and sat up. She
wiped her forehead and found sweat.

The Cairngorm woman said, "We've captured someone at
the castle gate!"

"Hunh, what? Someone?" Bith panted, couldn't catch her
breath. "Can you be a little more—specific?"

The woman's brow clouded. "We've captured someone at
the castle gate."
Bith tried, "Yes?"

"It's a tall man. dead white, with a short bow. He says—"

"Bow? All in green? He's ours."

The woman blinked.

Bith held the covers to her breast. "I'll be right there. Just
give me a moment, please."

Alone, the giri poured water from an ewer into a bowl and
rinsed her face. The nightmares were back. After sinking
deliciously into a real bed and clean blankets, here she'd
awoken practically on the floor, her mind conjuring demons.
She wondered if the dreams meant anything. Not that she
could remember them. She combed her hair and looked out
the window. Down in the valley, ores continued to spill from

112

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

the Mistwall- There were thousands of them. Nightmares
asleep and awake, she thought. It wasn't fair. She wondered
if her mother was ever bothered by nightmares. And if she
ever wondered where her daughter was . . .

Bith shuddered. She napped her clothing in the air by way
of cleaning it, and joined Erin.

In the main hall of the castle, a trio of natives stood with
drawn swords. In their center was a loose-limbed Endril. He
greeted Bith with a nonchalant wave.

Cal and Hathor were brought in. When all three vouched
for the elf the guard dispersed, but they didn't go far. The
humans, troll, and elf were invited to sit down at a long table
laid with a hearty breakfast. Barin came in, escorted by a
half dozen look-alike family members, and the meal began.
There was oatmeal and raisins, cold tongue and cold shoul-
der, small beer and cakes. The party ate well in the strained
atmosphere. Cleariy the presence of the elf upset people.

Bith tore bread and asked, "All right. Master Elf, how did
you gain the inside of these walls?"

"I walked."

Bith sniffed delicately- "I suppose my question was pooriy
aimed. Our real question is, why could you just 'walk' when
we could not?"

Endril stared at her innocently with his pale blue eyes.
"You could not have followed the way I came."

"And why not?"

Endril almost shrugged. "No human could."
Cat blew out his breath and reached for more beer. The
soldier wanted to chastize the elf for walking off so abruptly,
for leaving them in the lurch, for not telling them more. But
he held his tongue. It would accomplish nothing. Besides,
the elf seemed even quieter and more reserved than usual.
Could one of the fair folk be melancholy? And even for an
elf. Endril looked very pale. as if he'd been wounded. Cal
said, "Never mind, Bilh. We should be glad he's back."

Bith shook her head but agreed. The castle defenders shook
their heads around them. The breakfast talk moved to the
state of the orcan army. It was largely dormant in the bright
sun, Barin told them. The monsters might try a push to-
night—they used the dark for their own purposes. Barin said,
"The Dark Army was stirred by your passage the way mud

OUTCASTS            113

puppies are aroused by a stick." The elders of Cairngorm
were trying to decide whether it was time to send the old
people and the children into the hilts.

They had finished their meal and were talking when a sol-
dier ran into the hall. "Come quickly!"

"What is it?"

"Hurry!"

Everyone pressed out the door. Something was happening
beyond the outermost wall. Some commotion. A block of
ores and others—looking tike spiders again from this height-
were rushing the walls. No, they were pursuing someone,
pegging arrows and spears at a tall figure who sprinted before
them. The arrows found their mark but bounced off. Finally
the grey figure—in a pointed helmet?—attained the wall. He
disappeared for a moment, then reappeared as he vaulted
over. He dropped into a knot of castle defenders.

Endril said, " 'Tis our companion, the giant."

Cal snorted. "Backbreaker? I thought we'd seen the last of
him. Where's he been?"

The party could see the grey stone giant—it had been his
pointed head they'd seen and not a helmet—wave his long
arms in earnest conversation with the smaller blond humans.
Finally the lot of them turned and pointed up me hill, and
the giant stepped from their ranks." He loped up the hills in
great strides, no more discommoded than a hare, and joined
them before the gate.

No one greeted the giant. Cal reflected that the others must
be as uncomfortable with Backbreaker as he was. He was just
too—sinister, alien. Powerful? The boy asked, "What kept
you?"

The giant called Mountain Back Breaker lifted his raptor's
hands. "I fell in with some other giants. They wanted to talk
to me. It's been a long time since I met kin."

Cal scratched the scar on his upper lip. "I didn't see any
big fellows like you last night."

The monster lifted his hands again.

The boy asked, "What did they have to say to you?"

"Much- Nothing. Talk of the big people. My father died.
I have been away a long time."

Nobody could top that. Cal rubbed his scar. "Well . . .
Let's get back to the sword."

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

114

Endril said, "Yes, let us. I have yet to see this monu-
ment."

They filed into the castle and climbed the myriad stone
steps to the tower.

Cal ran directly to the sword. In the morning light it glit-
tered like a jewel.

"Don't touch it." Endril's admonishment cut into his rev-
erie.

Cal reflected the elf had been with them for only ten
minutes and already he was giving orders again. "Can't I
even breathe on it?"

"No," Bith cut in. "Nor drool either. It's hexed. Don't
you be."

Endril said. "See here." He stepped to the balcony and
signalled the boy to follow. The elf pointed down.

Down, down, down, so far and so far underfoot that Cal's
knees turned to water, was the floor of a dry canyon. The
boy had to grip the edge of the low balcony—small comfort-
but Endril looked over as unconcernedly as a bird. "Do you
still doubt that the object of our quest here holds up this
balcony? Certainly no natural or contrived strut keeps this
shelf in place. Touch that sword and it may be your last act,
short of screaming, before hitting the bottom of this gorge."

Cal glanced up at the Mistwall. They could see the far wall
of the chasm, but the cloud started just above it. It was the
only thing in sight, really. Seen up this close, the closest they
had come to it, the wall had a maddening and hypnotic qual-
ity. The colors that made up the wall roiled not in circles,
but rather tumbled upwards and yet downwards at the same
time, like a rainbow waterfall gone mad. It drew the eye and
held it like some massive fire—a fire racing to consume the
watcher. Endril touched his shoulder and Cal shook his head.
He averted his eyes downwards but saw only space. He backed
into the room.

Endril followed. "Somehow this sword also holds the
Mistwall at bay. Recall you our view from across the valley?
And see there and there? The wall has a belly sucked in with
its midpoint here."
"It must be very powerful, then," Cal said.

Bith spoke behind them. "Powerful, yes. But like a fire,
it's too hot to grasp without tongs."

OUTCASTS            115

Cal looked at the two, then at the swoid before them. It
was unreal the way it hung, a foot above the floor, touching
nothing. "But you're just guessing about the sword. If I did
pick it up, nothing at all might happen."

Endril nodded in that maddening way he had. Then he
flinched as some twinge touched him. He'd limped consid-
erably coming up the stairs. Cal suspected his right leg had
been wounded recently. The elf cleared a bench of books and
sat down gingeriy. He continued. "True. But then, you might
not be able to move it at all. It might be rooted in that spot
as if driven into anvil and stone."

Cal stared at the sword in helpless frustration. "I want to
find some way to get my hands on it."

"Let us look then, and see what we find. To break a spell
we need the spell maker. Let us find the wizard, or the wiz-
ard's words."

Erin barked, "You'll not touch a thing! Barin said so!"

Endril turned on her with gentle eyes and gentle voice.
"Would you have us find your wizard?"

"Barin said—"

Bith mumbled under her breath for some time. Now she
reached out a soft hand and touched the warrior woman's
shoulder. Erin shivered and stared at the magic user—stared
as a bird stares at a snake.

"Erin," Bith's voice was silk on glass, "We're . . . your
. . . friends . . . aren't we?"

"Y-y-yes."

"Good. That's good. Friends are nice. Now, why don't - . .
you go ask Barin ... if ... we ... can help find your . . .
wizard? That's what you want, isn't it?"

"Y-yes."

"Good. Good. Go ask Barin."

The soldier woman turned and clomped off down the steps.
Bith sighed. Endril nodded to her. Cal frowned- "I didn't
know you had—what do they call it?—suggestion powers."

The mage lifted her pert nose. "I have a lot of powers."

"You better not use that spell on me, or any of the rest of
us."

Bith made a face in imitation of his serious one. Cal
frowned deeper and the girl laughed. Hathor grinned a toothy
grin.

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

116

Endril waggled a hand at the room. "Bith, let us see what
other powers you command. There was a magic user in this
room at one time and now there is none. Can you discern
whence he's gone, and how?"

Bith bit her lower lip as she looked around at the mess.
Every table, every space underneath, every comer, every nook
and cranny was littered or stuffed with junk. Finally she said,
"I can't guarantee anything. There may be some sign or script
as to where he's gone. But he could just as easily have fallen
over the balcony drunk. Or been spirited away. I'll try, but
it will take time."

The elf said, "We have time. Some little anyway. Try as
you may."

"All right. First things first. Why don't you all stand by
the doorway?" The elf, the soldier, the troll, and the giant
shuffled through the crowded room out of her way. Back-
breaker had to crouch, with knuckles on the floor to keep
from hitting his head in the rafters.

Bith fished in a pouch and came up with a double pinch of
something. She pushed her sleeves up and stuck her fingers
in the air. "Watch for anything that glows," she said, and
began a sonorous chant that built quickly.

"Come to me, things unseen,
You 've the pulse, I the mean,
Now I scry the ways inside,
Unto tome let no spark hide!"

Bith repeated the phrases until she had the cadence just
right. Then she snapped her hands to flick the magic dust
into the air.

The men gasped as—just for a moment—objects in the
room lit up. Green, blue, gold, orange, red, white, a dozen
things flashed on and off in an eyeblink. Most of all, the
sword winked like a glimpse through a furnace door—bright
yellow, white hot, searing on the eyeballs. Then the show
was over. The restored room was dull and grey by compari-
son.
The magic user stood pursing her lips.

Cal said, "That was fabulous, Bith! I've never seen any-
thing like it! Do you do that often?**

OUTCASTS

117

Bith was distracted.
expected more,"

"What? Oh, that was nothing. I

"More?"

She put her hands on her hips. "Yes, a lot more. With this
many objects in the room, so little magic. It's odd . . ." She
ended with a sniff.

"It's had some effect," Endril commented. He watched the
roiling mass of the Mistwall.

"Is it getting closer?"

"No. But it's moving more fiercely, as if agitated."

Cal asked, "Could your spelling have done that?"

Bith drummed her fingers on the back of a chair. "I don't
know . . . Well, what next7"

None of them had an answer. In the silence there came the
sound of shuffling on the stairs and hoarse breathing. Soon
Barin appeared at the door. He staggered into the room and
immediately took a chair. Erin came in behind him and helped
him sit.

"Odin and Isis, I'm too old for this trip!" he croaked- "I
could almost let the Dark Ones have this castle. How did old
Criegsten do it? He must have had magic in his legs."

Bith continued to scan the room with her hands on hips.
"That might have been one place."

The sergeant rubbed his mustache. "That Criegsten. He
was a queer sort. I always thought a lot of his tricks were
smoke and mirrors, and knowing his audience was simple.
Have you any clue as to where he went?"

Everyone shook their heads. Bith said, "We haven't made
an intensive search yet. We were, uh, wondering how to pro-
ceed. Have I your permission to poke around in here?"

Cal piped up, "Can we, for instance, take up yon sword?"

Barin waved a hand as he fought for breath. "Touch what-
ever you want—except that sword. Criegsten said it was the
only thing holding up the castle, for what his word was worth.
I have to admit some of die underpinnings in the hall look
awful dicey. Sure something's holding up this pile of rock,
and it ain't money nor faith. No, go ahead and fool with
whatever you want, except the sword. Take it alt. We're none
of us magic users and can't use it. The Dark Army'll just get
it."

Bith's frown did not go away, but she rubbed her hands. A

118 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

mage turned loose in a wizard's cave was like a wild boar in
a marketplace. The giri hunted for sacks.

Endril murmured, "Let us remember our purpose here,
Bith. To leam the whereabouts of this Criegsten and to see if
indeed we can take the sword with us." His companions
blinked at the last phrase until they remembered the outsiders
in the room. The Cairagormers might not take kindly to the
idea of destroying the sword. "We can load bags while you
look. Find some trace of a spell, or record in a book. Or a
doorway or portal. Or means of escape."

Bith pointed. "Cai, Thor, would you move all the open
books to this table, please? And find a crate for the closed
ones? Endril, sort through that stuff and remove all the pro-
saic gear, please. Let's see. Barin, can you tell me, sir, when
was the last time you saw Criegsten?"

"The last time? Oh, that would be ... Well, what's today?
When did the army first start to leave the wall?"

"It was twenty-some days ago," Erin supplied.

Barin squinted. "Was it? But I had dinner with him just
the other night. . . ."

"It was before the full moon. Father."

Bith asked, "Could he have left the castle without your
people knowing it?"

Erin asked, "Walking, you mean?"

"Or flying? Did he fly?"

"Not that I ever saw."

Bith chewed the end of her thumb as she looked around.
Cal and Hathor were gingerly moving books as if they might
explode. Backbreaker had sunk into a comer to doze. Endril
stood on the balcony and watched the Mistwall and the sky.
The tips of his lank white hair flickered in the breeze. The
magic user said to no one in particular, "I see nothing big
enough for a portal. No mirror or tapestry. No throne. Hathor
thought this mountain was honeycombed with tunnels. Is that
true?"

Erin sniffed and put a hand on her guardian's shoulder. The
old man was asleep. "True enough. It's part of our escape
route. We keep them clear and check them often. There are
naught but bats and worms down there. The tunnels wander
up and down. Most are useless. We collapsed some long ago.

OUTCASTS

119

None go down to the valley, so the ores can't attack from
underground."

Bith had turned to the books that lay open on the tables.
There were over a dozen of them, all different sizes with
pages odd-shaped and mismatched, stained and mouse-
gnawed. The parchment pages were largely blank. Here and
there were tiny lines or scratches or drawings inscribed in
faded ink.

Bith wet her fingers and gingerly touched the edge of one
book. When nothing happened she raised the page and
crooked her head to peer at it with the light behind.

"What are you doing?" Cal asked her.

"Hmmm?"

"What are you looking for? There's nothing there."

Bith brushed the page and peered with her nose no more
than an inch off the page. She mused, "Maybe. He was the
secretive type. ..."

"Hunh?"

"What?" Bith looked up. "What do you want?"

"What are you looking at?"

"I'm looking for rebuses."

"What?"

Bith frowned. "Honestly, haven't you learned anything?
Do you know how to read?"

Cal's flush answered the question, but he snapped, "I know
better than to stare at blank pages like some stupid hypno-
tized chicken!"

Bith's frown turned to confusion. "What do you mean,
*hypnotized chicken?* They've no brain."

"Now whose education is lacking?"

Erin said from across the room. "He means when you draw
a line in the dust from a chicken's nose."

"Chickens don't have noses," Hathor said. He was chew-
ing on some root he'd found.

"Beaks, then."
"Why," Cal ground his teeth, "arc you poring over those
blank pages?"

"These? They're not blank."

Hathor came over and stared close. Munch, munch, munch.
The root had the consistency of a chair leg. "Naked."

Bith looked down, "What?"

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

120

Cal stepped past the troll and jabbed a grimy finger, pin-
ning flat the page in Bith's hand. "Where—are—the—
words?"

The girt brightened. "Oh! They're right here. They're just
sealed."

"Sealed?"

"Masked."

"You mean, invisible?"

Bith shook her black hair. "Well, it looks like it, though
it isn't, really. They have a conceal spell on them."

"Can you see them?"

"Oh, no. No one can until the spell is lifted. At least, 1
don't think anyone can. No, I can't. I just have to decide
which ones to unseal, is all."

"And how do you decide that?"

"You read these little rebuses here, if dial's what they are."

It was Cal's turn to peer close. "These little squiggly lines?
That's just spider scratching, or art, or something, ain't it?"

Bith shook her glossy head again. "No, no, no. They're
little words or phrases twisted to make a drawing. They're
called rebuses. Like when you're first learning your letters
and die tutor writes the word 'reindeer* all twisted so it makes
a little picture of a reindeer, starting at the tail and making
the legs and finally the horns. It's to help you remember the
word. You see them all the time, on cave walls or doorways
or blades and such. Don't you?"

Cal shook his head. "No. Wait. Is that what's on the blade
there?"

"What? No, no. Those are runes."

Cal sighed. He pointed to the page again. "Why don't      s-
those pages look like any writing I've ever seen before?"          /'
"I told you, these are rebuses. Mages use them all the time               ^
to note what spell is really on the page once it's unsealed.                  ;

Look here, see this one? It looks like an olive branch, but               ^
really it has the word 'peace* written into it. So it's probably                  ^
some kind of friend spell. See?"

Cal peered closely, as did Hathor. (Crunch, crouch in Cal's
ear.) Cal did notice that the etching on the olive branch
seemed oddly un-baridike. He conceded, "Well, maybe. But         ^
a friend spell won't do us any good."                                |£

"But it might not be a friend spell. Surely you don't be-            ^

121

lieve everything you read, do you?" Bith waved a breezy
hand at the man and troll's glassy stare. "Don't you see? It
might be a trick. This page might contain a hate spell, or a
love potion. You can write any rebus you want, after all. Or
the page might really be blank, and this is just the page he
intended to inscribe a friend spell on later. Or it could just
be a description of some artifact he knew of that had a friend
spell, or just anything at all."

Cal rubbed his forehead. Hathor scratched his ear with his
root. Bith went on. "See this? This page refers to another
page somewhere else. The book is full of cross-references to
confuse people. Or there might be two masks on the same
page, one covering another. Or three. Or it might be trapped.
There are spells to hold, you know."

"What good is that?"

"To protect your work from snoopers. A stranger might
unmask a page and start reading. Surprise! he trips a hold
spell. That freezes him like a statue—he stands there until
the writer unfreezes him."

Cal burst out, "That's awful! You could die waiting for
someone to come back!"

Bith shrugged. "Of course. Many have. Why do you mink
every magic user's den has at least one skull lying around?
He or she didn't find that in the middle of the road." Every-
one in the room except the giri looked around. There were
three skulls and one jawbone showing in the room. "Or the
page could blind you, or drive you mad, poison you slow or
fast, or just kill you outright with a lightning bolt."

Cal and Hathor backed away from the table.

The gid gave a merry laugh. "I don't think we have to
worry about that here. Much, anyway." She turned and
nipped that book shut and tossed it to the back of the table.
She pulled another close as Cal and Hathor retreated across
uw room.

"Gorm and Ghast," Cal muttered. "I'd take a clean sword
thrust on the battlefield rather than pore over these things.
It's like shoving your hand into a box of serpents."

Bith looked up and was surprised to find herself alone at
the table. "Oh, come now, it's not that bad. There are tricks
you leam to protect yourself, protections that you wear or
carry in your pockets."

122

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

"Do you have any?"

"Some. Of course, you never know if they're going to work
against a particular spell. An enchanter will never sell you a
protection against another spell of his own making. That
would be foolish. But there's probably nothing in these books
that can hurt me. Actually, if something does spring at me,
I'll know I'm close to what we want."

"Hell of way to find out," Cal muttered.

Hathor agreed. "That like pulling down rock to see if it
foil on you."

Bith murmured, "Umm hmm."

From the opposite wall Cal called, "But can you find what
we want in one of those books?"

Endril spoke from beside him, his voice so quiet the boy
and troll jumped. "There's no guarantee the books can tell
us anything about where Criegsten has gone, or why. That's
just a starting point. After the books she may have to inves-
tigate all these artifacts separately, then search the room it-
self."

Cal looked around at the jumble. "That could take weeks'."

The elf nodded. "Years, more likely, to find all the secrets
in this room. And then probably not all of them, or even half.
Mortals are too short-lived to leam much."

Cal gritted his teeth and said nothing.

Bith laughed again. "Don't you worry, Endril. I'll have
what we need pretty soon. Within a day."

Hathor finished me root with a crack that set all their teeth
on edge. "I go look around," he announced. "Look at
caves."

Cal watched the giri's slim back, bent over me books, and
the elf's bland face, ageless and unseamed- "I'll go with
you," he said. "And find something to do."

"Check the state of the Dark Army," Endril told him.
"You have a soldier's eye. See if they're massing for an attack
or a cutting-out expedition."
"They're not going to wait any weeks, that's for sure."
Cal muttered as he followed the troll down the stairs. Back-
breaker had left the room some time earlier. Assisted by Erin,
Barin awoke and dragged himself out of his chair to make his
creaky way down the stairs. Endril and Bith were left in the
room. The elf walked to the edge of the balcony. He stood

OUTCASTS            123

with his toes projecting through the stiles until they hung over
the chasm beneath. He stared at the Mistwall as if staring
could penetrate its depths.

Alone in the room, Bith closed another book and stacked
it against the wall.

Days passed.

By the end of the first day Bith had pored over every book
twice. Cal had taken another long nap and then polished his
antique sworo. He came in often to gaze at the runesword.
When he crouched low and the room was still he imagined
he could hear it singing. Endril watched the Mistwall from
die balcony or was gone. No one knew where. Hathor and
Backbreaker were likewise absent.

By the end of the second day Bith had thrown three books
out the window.

Cal practiced swordfighting with some of the young men
and women, but most were busy packing and putting rood
by. Endril wandered the hills behind the town. Hathor and
Backbreaker were still gone.

By the end of the third day Bith was throwing artifacts off
the balcony, some of which glowed even as she threw them.

Cal chafed at the Lack of work and fighting. He borrowed
a heavy bow and took potshots at the-Dark Army. He argued
with Endril that they should "do something." The elf ig-
nored him and dried flowers on a flat stone. Hathor and Back-
breaker poked among the hills. The defenders of the castle
asked Cal which side the troll and giant were on.

By the end of the fourth day Bith was setting fire to artifacts
before throwing them out the window. Cal and Endril won-
dered if they should ask her why, but decided not to.

Cal noticed that no one else was issuing forth from the
Mistwall. Did that mean the Dark Army was complete? The
force seemed to be massing, stirring. The Caimgormers were
almost ready to flee. Cal announced that if nothing happened
soon be was leaving with the castle defenders, but he was
going to snatch the sword off the balcony just before leaving.
Eadril said nothing. Hathor and Backbreaker came back and
reported there were caves under the hillside "full of bats and
nothing else."

By the end of the fifth day the men voted to disturb Bith.
124

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

What they found was not encouraging. The room was al-
most empty. Bith was haggard, with grey bags under her eyes,
stained hands, and a white-hot temper.

"Wrong? I'll tell you what's wrongV she shrilled. "That
lying old fossil Criegsten was a fake\ He was a fraud and an
idiot1. Look at this stuff!" There wasn't much left to look at:

a stuffed owl, brass candlesticks, a box of odd metal parts, a
few books, some other things, "This is./wiA! Trash\ Hwnbug\"

The men asked, "What?"

"He faked everything! There's not a magic spell in one of
these books that would work, or that a child couldn't do with
his eyes closed! And these things'. Residual magic as old as
the hills! My grandmother's shoes had more—" The girt
paused to snatch up the stuffed owl, march to the open win-
dow, and pitch it off the balcony, "—more magic and were
more interesting than these—trinkets! And he claimed to have
forged the runesword1. He took credit for dwarven work! He
couldn't conjure a homunculus from a quart of demon blood!"
She paused for breath and huffed, "Barin was right. All
Criegsten ever did was cheat\'11

Cal, Hathor, and   Backbreaker looked around the room and
didn't know what   to say- Endril tried- "All you say is no
doubt true. good   Bith. With all your knowledge, you would
know. But how is   it me runesword hangs in the air?"

The giri waved a tired hand. "Oh, that. Anyone can do
that- Once the object's in place it stays there until disturbed."

"But it does keep the Mistwall at bay?"

Bith sighed. She peered in the sword's direction. "Yes, it
must. I can And no notes on it. Nothing. He hasn't written
any fresh notes— lies— in years. But he did prop it up there.
I don't even know where he got the sword, for that matter."

"Barin doesn't know either."

The magic user sniffed. "He probably stole it from some
blind beggar."

Cal asked, "Can we move it, then?"

Bith flapped her arms. "NO! Not until we know what will
happen! You want to get us all killed? You want this place to
drop out from under us? Or have the Mistwall slam down on
us? Or something worse—lightning, blindness, who knows
what?"

The elf offered, "But—"
OUTCASTS               125

"I told you, there's no discussion of it anywhere. And I
don't know where the fool disappeared to either, not that I
want to find him- There's no mention of a portal or a teleport
spell or a carpet or walking hole or anything'."

At their back someone spoke. It was Erin, obviously come
to find out what the commotion was about. "Did you look in
the cellars?"

Everyone turned. "What?"

The woman stammered as everyone stared at her. "I—I
asked if you'd—looked in the cellars. Just before he disap-
peared Lord Criegsten spent much time in a comer of the
cellar. He wouldn't let us near, and we—"

Very quietly, very icily, Bith said, "Please show me."

Not much later Cal, Endril, and Hathor stood with her in
a small set of chambers deep in the heart of the castle. The
rooms were tiny with rounded ceilings, carved from rock
before the castle above had been assembled. The light of
torches was absorbed by dry bare walls. The floor underfoot
was slippery with dust and grime. There was nothing in the
room except a rotted tapestry nailed to the wall.

The giri ranted some more. "Here! Bast, Bathsheba, and
Baal, why didn't somebody tell me about this room earlier'?'1
Bith waved her arms until the sleeves of her shirt flapped like
wings. "How am I supposed to learn anything if people don't
tell me about these things in \hs first place?"

Backbreaker, too tall for the room, hung back in the stair-
well. Erin stood behind him. "You never asked, you know,"
she put forth from the darkness. "You just wanted to see his
room in the tower, and we let you—"

Bith pushed up her sleeves with stained fingers. "Oh, shut
up. I'll bet this is where he went."

She reached out and snatched down the tapestry. Unfortu-
nately she hauled down with it a sheet of dust and mold that
set them all hacking and coughing. They had to retreat to me
stairwell. Bith rubbed her eyes with dirty hands, which made
them itch abominably. When they could go back into the
room, a stark pale wall stood behind the remnants of the
tapestry.

"Look you—hack— there," she announced. And sneezed.

"Looks like a wall," Cat said.

Bith swore. "Idiot."

126

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE
With a grand gesture she wet her fingertips and traced a
wide circle on the wall. Then-she rolled out a short chant,
her detect spell. The wall shimmered like water, then die
circle turned black.

"See? It's a hole."

"Worm hole," Hathor said. He had a parsnip in his hand
which he munched on.

Bith tsked, "No, no, no. It's not a worm hole. It's too big.
It's a portal hole, made with magic. A sort of melting spell
that turns the rock into a gas. Slow but powerful. You need
fifty pounds of holed cheese to even start it."

Hathor walked to the five-foot hole and stuck his head in.
Munch, munch. "It's worm hole."

"We'll see. Fetch torches."

"Finally!" Cal leapt up the stairs. "Action!"

A few minutes later they had three torches. Cal strapped
his scabbard and shield across his back to keep his legs free.
Hathor shed his bearskin and carried his felling axe. Endril
held his short bow with an arrow alongside it. Backbreaker
went unarmed as ever.

Cal looked in the hole- "Hathor, why don't you go first?
You're used to mucking around in caves, and you can see in
the dark, right?"

"Yeah."

"I'll go second- Endril can bring up the—"

"1*11 go first," Bith interrupted.

"What?"

"I found this portal, I'll go first. It might be magic-trapped.
Get out of my way."

Cal stepped aside. The girl stepped to the hole and lifted
her foot high to enter, careful with the torch near her hair.
The boy shrugged and pointed Hathor after her. Cal went
next, followed by Endril and Backbreaker. Erin watched them

go-

The hole went straight for about fifteen feet, then slowly
bent to the right and down. The bottom was like a trough,
so they had to walk with one foot placed in front of me other.
The floor was not smooth, but rippled like the bottom of a
quick-moving stream. Hathor crouched on two bare feet and
his one free hand. Cal had to stoop: almost immediately he
developed a crick in his neck. He envied the troll, who moved

OUTCASTS              127
as easily as a monkey. He could not hear the cat-quiet elf
behind him. He did hear Backbreaker's grainy skin rasp along
the cave walls. The giant probably had to crawl on all fours.

Around the bend and down they went. The descent was
gradual at first, then slanted farther. Any more slant would
force them to cling to the walls. That would be difficult, since
the floor was slimy in spots. The light was strange, a mixture
of bright flashes of torch and sudden black shadows when
someone occluded one or more. The only sound was the
scrape of leather or giant skin on a wall.

They had no idea how far they crept. At one point they
passed through an intersection of tunnels. The side passage
went up and down, very steep. Cal asked about it.

Bith called from up front, "A powerful mage could fly
through these tunnels."

"But I thought Criegsten was a fake. And why would any-
one melt their way through a mountain when they could just
walk away from the castle?"

"I don't know. Perhaps he wanted to be mysterious."

Cal muttered, "Perhaps he was crazy."

The floor's slant became steeper. Cal could feel his toes
jam as his hobnails tried to bite. The ceiling rose and became
rougher as they entered part of a natural cavern. Bith gave a
grunt of disgust.

"What is it?" Cal called.

"It's— ugh— some mess of grey gunk. A lot of it."

"Worm shit," came Hathor's voice.

"Will you stopf It's not—"

Her scream filled the cavern and pierced their ears.

CHAPTER

9

The thing coming at Bith was an enormous whits ring with a
serrated edge around a gaping hole. The hole was big enough
to swallow the giri easily.

The worm (Bith had the fleeting thought that she'd been
dead wrong) completely filled the tunnel they stood in. It
should have—the worm had drilled it. The worm was a moun-
tain of white flesh; its maw just went on and on with receding
rings.

Bith stifled another scream. She didn't have time for an-
other spell, and couldn't have touched the worm if she wanted
to. She simply chucked her torch down its throat and ducked.
The flaming brand flew into the worm's maw and disap-
peared. The beast didn't even slow down. All Bith had done
was blind herself temporarily. At least she wouldn't see that
mouth close shut on her and snap her in two. She squinched
up her face and felt another scream escaping.

She'd forgotten she was not alone. A hand snagged her
tunic and jerked her backwards- More hands landed and car-
ried her straight back. Bith felt as if she had tumbled off a
cliff and fallen into friendly branches. Then the hands on her

128

OUTCASTS            129

were cool, dry, and scaly. Backbreaker loomed above, eyes
luminous in the dark.

By the light of the giant's eyes and a sputtering torch Bith
saw the men attack. Cal's poor sword and Endril's slim one
winked and disappeared and shone again like summer light-
ning. For a second the girl's lonely heart sang as she thought
they were leaping to defend her. But no. they wercJUSt saving
themselves as well. The men flanked the troll with practiced
precision. The worm rippled towards them like a loathsome
tide.

The attack was Hathor's. The troll raised his felling axe in
both hands. At home in the tunnels, he knew just how high
he could heave it and not hit the ceiling. His hairy arms
swelled as the steel head rose, bobbed, and then chunked into
the worm's lip.

The worm stopped. Hathor struck again. Up went the arms
and the long axe haft and then down with a meaty smack.
One more blow whacked a hunk out of the monster's maw.
A white slab as big as an inn table writhed with its own life
on the round tunnel floor. Hathor was shouting as he swung,
lustily howling in trollish, the noise like thunder. Cat shouted
too with the meaningless oaths of a soldier and even Endril
sang in a clear ringing tone.

The worm had stopped, even retreated a fraction, and the
three warriors advanced- Hathor twisted the next blow, sank
it sideways, and a larger chunk of worm flapped and fell
away. The maw was half gone, and white pus dripped where
it had been hacked. Hathor had swivelled to whack at the
right side when something black engulfed the five of them.

Bith felt something wet and cold and infinitely disgusting
slap her in the face. It immediately began to bum and itch.
And it crawled. With a shriek she clawed at herself to get it
off. The goo smeared everywhere, and everywhere it landed
it burned and crawled. She shrieked again until she got some
in her mouth, and that alone shut her up. Flailing her hands
down her body, she located a clean section of her tunic tails
and wiped her face clean, spitting and spitting again and again
and damning herself for ever going down any damned tunnel.
As she scraped her ears clean she heard a new kind of shout-
"Hathor!" It was Cal. "HATHOR! Where are you?"

130

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

"Gone," Endril's voice was clear and inhumanly calm.
"It's taken him away."

"Well, for—" Cal's suggestions after that were unhelpful.

Only the cat-shine of Backbreaker's eyes gave them any
light, and that a deceptive one. Endril called for a light. Cal
fumbled with a torch and burned himself relighting it. He
picked up his sword from the floor, unmindful of the glop
clinging to it. Bith shuddered from head to toe as the black
stuff all around continued to move.

"What is this?"

"Never mind!" Cal snapped. "We have to go after Thor!"

"But what happened!"

Endril finished mopping black goo from his face. "It vom-
ited this—discharge of slime at us. A defense like a skunk's,
I reckon. Then it snatched up our troll."

Tears started in Bith's eyes. "Hathor is eatenV

Endril shook his head. "Swallowed, mayhap, not con-
sumed. He'll more likely to suffocate if we don't—"

"Then let's!" Cal snapped. And he trotted off down the
tunnel with torch and sword. Bith and Endril and Back-
breaker trotted to catch up with him, slipping and sliding on
the slimy smooth floor.

The tunnel hooked sharply right—Bith wondered how a
worm could eat through rock like cheese—then the light dis-
appeared. They heard a "Whoop!" that trailed off and ended
with a thud. Endril slid to a stop, but not soon enough. The
tunnel floor took a sudden bend downwards, and the elf was
too far along. His slick soft boots had no purchase on the
floor and he followed Cal. His final words were, "Your
sword, boy! Put down your—" Thud.

Bith snagged a dry patch of wall and stopped, breathless.
The stone giant hovered behind her like a rock outcrop. She
listened. The soft sound of swearing came up the tunnel, in
man's tongue and elven. So they were safe.

Or were they? Left in the dark, Bith crept forward a hair
more and peered at the opening. She stood on a lip of stone
and sensed a vastness out in the black before her. A breeze,
cold and musty, trickled past her cheek.

"Cal, Endril, are you all right?"

"Aye," came the elf's voice from the darkness below.
OUTCASTS               131

Ca! got his torch lit yet again. Its soft flare showed their
surroundings. Bith and Cal gasped.

The tunnel had emptied into a larger cavern. A luminous
sheen—moss or slime or foxfire—reflected the torchlight like
a bronze mirror. This underground worid was not brown dirt
or grey stone, but a luscious soft red with yellow streaks that
chased each other in maddening swiris. Stalactites dripped
stone from the lofty and irregular ceiling. The floor of the
cavern had been covered with stalagmites, but these were
broken off and crushed underfoot. Just as well, Bith realized,
or Cal and Endril might have been impaled. The cavern
stretched away in two directions, maybe sixty feet high,
maybe thirty feet wide. The worm hole—she felt a tightening
in her chest: she'd been so sure mere was no worm—continued
on the opposite side of the cavern, high up, as if a god had
threaded a giant needle through the mountain.

Cal held the torch high and the red-yellow light of the cave
shimmered in a thousand thousand facets. "No sign of
Hathor. No, wait."

The torchlight shimmied and bobbed and danced. Then
Cal said, "Here's his axe."

Bith leant even further forward, in danger of losing her
footing. She wondered how she'd get down to the men—they
were almost twenty feet below her. Backbreaker still stood
just behind her, immobile. She called, "Is there blood?"

Endril had joined Cal. The elf took the torch. "I don't
know. Let me look—"

The firelight was suddenly magnified a hundred times, as
if someone had ripped off the roof of the cavern. A giant
white form, big as a sailing ship, spurted from the worm hole
opposite. Cat yelled, Endril shrilled, and Bith froze as the
worm returned. It was the same one—could there be more
man one?—for it bore the hack marks around its mouth. The
worm poured from the hole like a cataract of water, straight
for the opposite hole where Bith stood. The giri shuffled her
feet, slipped, whimpered.

Something—Backbreaker—shoved her from behind. She
tumbled from the tunnel.

The worm's mouth dilated.

Bith fell. Inside.

132

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

The girl shrieked as the edges of the mouth passed her.
Then the light was gone as the throat snapped shut.
Bump, thump, clump, wham! Bith fetched up against a cold
wall. The surface under her—then next to her, then above
her—twisted like a bed in a nightmare. Her hands found some
ridge and she grabbed hard. The roof, also ridged, banged
against the back of her head. She was going to be crushed in
the throat of a giant worm! Bith found herself praying and
crying and wishing she were back in her mother's castle,
sitting on the balcony with her cats and looking out over the
misty lake. But she remembered her mother and how she had
mocked her daughter's weak stomach, and Bith hung on and
gritted her teeth. If for no other reason than to show her
mother up, she had to survive.

And in fact, she wasn't dead yet. Or even close to it. As
the seconds passed she found herself still clinging to one
ridge, held in place by the other. Nothing else happened. The
worm was still moving, undulating like a ship at sea, but the
ride was smooth. Bith tried to take stock. She fought down
panic by concentrating on spells. Which one could get her
out of here? Any of them? Fireballs? Glow? Levitate? Ignite!
Yes, surely this—flesh—would bum if she got the spell off
right. But how would she breathe in the smoke? And imagine
the stench!

The worm took a dive downward. Bith felt her hair falling
down her back. Was it stuffy in here already? Would she
suffocate before she could get off a spell? It was so black!
Something flopped across her hands and she recoiled from
the touch. It was hairy, like a big spider. But warm. And the
smell was familiar.

Carefully she unpried one aching hand and put it out for
the object. It was soft and grimy with—hard nails? It was a
hand? A foot! Hathor's!

"Thor! Thor!" the girl cried, "I'm so glad to find you! I—
Thor?"

She tugged at the foot. It felt limply from her grasp. Was
he dead? Had the troll suffocated? No, he was too tough to
die. And too nice. The girl let go to lock both hands onto
the foot. She dug her fingers in alongside the ropy tendon
and felt. Yes, there was a pulse! It would be all right. Unless

OUTCASTS            133

they both suffocated. Or were crushed, or swallowed further,
or drowned in black slime.

The worm dropped with a stomach-wrenching lurch. It
bucked and twisted and rolled on its back until Bith's brain
shook in its pan. She tried to think of what to do, but was
too dizzy and weak. Then suddenly the beast shuddered all
through its frame. And she could—see—light?

A gash in the worm's side opened and light spilled in. The
gash shut and the blackness returned. Then it cracked open
again and stayed that way. Something slim and shining pen-
etrated the crack.
A voice called, "Bith! Are you in there? Bith!" It was Cal.

"Here," the giri squeaked. She gathered her breath and
shouted, "Here!"

An arm holding a torch shoved inside, followed by Endril's
head- "There you arc. And Thor. Would you like to come
out?"

Bith gasped. She had to press with her back to get free of
the embrace of the dead worm. Then she crawled over Hath-
or's body and was helped through the split. She pointed Cal
and Endril back to the troll and they tugged him free.

The giri clung to the elf while the boy dragged the troll to
a level spot on the cavern floor- Bith looked around. The
giant worm lay on the floor of the-elongated cavern, as huge,
white, and repulsive as the Mistwall itself. It was dead white
with heavy creases at intervals where the segments joined.
There was twenty feet of it showing in the cavern and more
inside the tunnel beyond—she had no idea how long it really
was. The thing twitched feebly, the spasms making it jump
three feet at a time. The gash that Endril and Cal had hacked
in the side—Bith wondered how they had known where to
hack and not cut their fellow adventurers—oozed white pulp
like tree sap. Evidently the worm had snatched up Hathor,
retreated, then come back and shot across the upper part of
the cave to engulf Bith. She wondered if the thing had used
an intelligence for that or had merely followed blind instinct
and sucked up everything in sight. She looked at the monster
worm and felt her knees go weak.

"We were lucky to get you free." the elf said quietly. "It
was suspended over our heads. Cal leaped up and struck. He
must have hit something vital. It almost fell on us."

RUNESWORD VbLUME ONE

134

Bith opened her mouth, but only a squeak came out.

Aside from being out cold and unbelievably filthy—as they
all were—the troll seemed unharmed. They patted his cheeks
and pumped his chest and after a few moments he came to.
He worked his face in a goggle-eyed fishy way before he sat
up.

"Where's my axe?" he asked.

Cal gave it to him. Hathor lay back down with it clutched
to his chest.

"Do we bury you now?" the boy asked.

The troll opened one eye. "Don't like worms to eat me."

Everyone laughed with relief. Cal quipped, "He probably
didn't like you much, either. I'm surprised he didn't puke you
up."
"Washed my feet. Taste good."

"Think," said Endril, "how this experience has increased
our knowledge by leaps and bounds. Now you two know how
a worm feels when fed to a fish."

"I think I'll become a vegetarian like Hathor here." Bith
giggled. "I'll stick to corn and roots and mushrooms."

"And dogs," Cal added.

They all laughed at that, but the laughing died down as
they noticed a rumbling that built and built like a storm com-
ing in overhead.

"What's that? An earthquake?"

Endril was up and reaching for Hathor. "We should move,
I think. This worm—"

Wasn't dead. It must have been only stunned. For suddenly
it gave a massive hump in the middle. A long clean split
appeared far down its body, away from the gash. The giant
frame jerked, once, twice. Then with a nerve-shattering rip
the still-living segment of body separated from the dead sec-
tion. The however-many feet of invisible body tore free and
disappeared into the tunnel, but not before leaving something
behind.

The party of adventurers howled as the central artery of the
worm squirted a waterfall of black glop into the cavern. The
same crawling sticky filth that had been shot at them eariier
now returned in an avalanche. Too late tliey tried to dodge
out of the way. The ichor spilled all over their upraised arms
and down their necks. Blinded, they couldn't see the torrent

OUTCASTS           135

that hit them, but they could feel it. Endril managed to wipe
his eyes clean and push at them. "Run! Go that way!"

Stumbling, cursing, scratching, the party banged into sta-
lagmites and slipped on patches of slime until they clunked
into a wall at the end of the cavern.

The swearing went on for some time in various languages.
Pinned in the comer, Bith clawed her face clear, though she
thought bitterly she'd never feel clean again.

A whiff of fresh air wafted around them from yet another
worm hole in the wall- Only Cal had a torch. He'd juggled
shield and sword and torch since they'd gotten inside this
mountain. He made to strike it alight with flint and steel yet
again but Bith stopped him.

The cavern did indeed end here, tapering away to a junc-
ture of floor and ceiling- The giri moved to the hole and stuck
her head inside. The hole sloped downwards, and far, far
down, she thought she could see a sheen of reflected light.
Or maybe it was just spots before her eyes caused by the
intense darkness. She pointed out the hole to her compan-
ions.

Cal grunted- Endril said nothing. The boy got the torch
burning and held it high. The entire floor of the cavern was
no longer red and yellow but black and squirming. The carpet
of whatever it was—what was it, anyway? Bith held her sleeve
up to her face. By the intermittent light she could make out
the black goo. It was a combination of tiny, tiny insects and
their residue. Mites, of some sort, and the crud they gener-
ated. A colony of parasites living in the intestines of the
worm. Bith shuddered and scrubbed some more.

Endril said, "We're safe for the moment."

Bith snapped, "I can't believe we survived an attack by a
giant worm only to be trapped in the comer by bugs."

"We haven't had the best luck, or judgement," Endril ad-
mitted.

Bith continued, "And we're no closer to this damned wiz-
ard. He could have gone anywhere! Why didn't you tell us
about these caves, Hathor?"

The troll shrugged. "Did. Backbreaker and 1 explore.
Found bats and nothing else."

"What about this worm?"

Another shrug. "Worms move fast. Go miles in a day

136

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

looking for food. Saw hole but didn't see worm. He came
back. Sorry."

The giri sighed. "Oh, I'm sorry, Thor. It's not your fault.
We were just surprised, is all. Oogh. I hate bugs!"

"Hey, what happened to Backbreaker anyway?" Cat asked.
"He disappears more often than Endrif here."

Bith pointed. "He was up there—behind me. He tried to
pull me back when the worm lunged. No, wait a moment.
He pushed me."

"Pushed you?"

The magic user thought hard. "I think so. I think ... he
tried to push me clear of the worm's maw."

"Or into it?" Cal asked.

"Now why would you say that?"

The boy shrugged and waggled his sword. "I don't know,
but I haven't trusted him since the day he signed on with us.
He's been pretty chummy with Hathor here, though."

Hathor shrugged again. "He just follow me. Not talk much.
I not like him either."

Bith combed her crusted hair with her fingers. "Well, never
mind. He'll turn up again. Like a bad penny."

"Are these insects coming at us?" That was Endril.

"And how," said Cal. "Let's try this bole. Thor?"

The troll twisted among them easily—Bith recalled he could
see in the daik—and stuck his head down the hole. "Hunh.
Goes to bottom of ravine, must be- Smell fresh air, big fog
wall- Water, too."

"Clean water?"

"Yep, spill from inside mountain. I go?"

"Go."

The troll hopped into the round passage. He set both hands
and feet against the circumference and scuttled away like a
spider. The other three waited in the circle of firelight. It was
quiet. The puddles of bugs gave off a slight hissing-crunching
sound, like surf on a gravel beach.

After a while Hathor's voice carried up from the hole,
sounding hollow and distant. "Hay! Come here. Found some-
thing. ''

Cal called down, "Whaaaattt?"

A pause. "You see. Something good. "

"Good? "Bith asked.

OUTCASTS              137

Cal shrugged. "Better there than here." He snuffed out
the torch, tightened his gear, and entered the tunnel. Bith
climbed up behind him. Her leather-soled boots slipped on
tile smooth floor. Endril came last.

Cal was muttering ahead. "The slope gets steeper."

"What?" Bith asked.

"I said, the slope— whoa! WHOOOOOAAAA!"

"Cal!"

Cal was gone. The giri and the elf froze. They heard only
a faint banging and scraping and a stream of receding pro-
fanity. Bith inched forward and saw where the tunnel did dip,
smoothly but almost straight down before heading up again.
The sheen of light was brighter now, strong enough for her
to see her hands. She called, "Cal! Cal! Are you all right?"

Silence.

"Ca-"            _,

"I'm fine. " The voice came from far away. "Come on
ahead, but do U on your—rump.''

"My what?"

"Slide. You'll be fine."

Bith looked back at Endril. The elf waved an elegant hand.
Bith signed and sat down carefully. She drew on her gloves
and tucked her hood over her head. Then she scooted forward
an inch, then another, then—she was sliding!

Like Cal, she let out a Whoo! as she slid and banged and
swooped around corners. The ride was rough and scary, but
exhilirating too. Down and down she went, faster and faster,
sliding on her tunic and cloak with occasional braking with
her hands. She wondered if she'd fetch up against some wall,
but recalled that Cal had survived.

Then suddenly she rounded a corner and the light blinded
her. The tunnel ended and she flew into space with a bleat.
But strong arms caught her and set her down gently on a
rocky slope.

Peering between her hands, Bith took a step and staggered.
The strong hands—they were Cal's—tugged her aside. She
got her vision back just in time to see Endril shoot from the
hole above her and crash onto me shale slope.

Bith turned to Cal. "Why didn't you catch /urn?"

Cal grinned at her. His teeth were white in a face black
with slime and dust. "What fim would that be?"

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

138

The elf sat up rubbing his elbow and the back of his head.
He got his eyesight back and located his companions.

The crowd looked around. They were indeed where Hathor
had said: at the bottom of the chasm behind the castle. Rock
walls loomed on two sides. The Mistwall roiled above one
side in its queer U-shape. Above the other, the tower balcony
projected at a dizzying height. If they walked to the left far
enough they would enter the valley. To the right, the canyon
narrowed as it wound into the hills. The floor of the chasm
was fallen rock, some sparse grasses and scrubby trees. It
was also littered with the stuff Bith had pitched off the bal-
cony in days past.

The giri put one hand on the wall and looked up- "We
came all the way from up rfiere?"
Cal grunted. "Yep. We have to go back up, too."

"Why do you say that?"

"Come here. Look what Thor found."

Hathor was hunched over farther down the slope. He squat-
ted awkwardly, like a crippled duck, and took small steps
sideways. Bith put her feet carefully lest she fell.

Bith called, "Hathor! Hey, Hathor' What's the big idea of
letting us tumble down the slope?"

The troll turned curiously. Cat laughed. "He didn't slide.
He walked. But a human can't do it the way he did.''

Bith sighed anew. "I keep forgetting how disparate we all
are."

"Disparate?"

"Different. We've nothing in common, really."

"Except that we're all mad as hares in spring."

Bith laughed. "There is that."

Hathor stood up when they arrived. He grinned his wolf's
grin- "Fun?"

Bith rubbed her backside. "Fun. Oh, yes. I can't wait to
do it again."

Cal said, "Look what we found."

Hathor handed her a slim bar of silver. The girl accepted
it and weighed it in her hand. It was about eighteen inches
long and slim as her finger. It was round on the ends and
entirely smooth. Something about its heft tickled her mem-
ory. She bobbed it in the air a few times. It felt somehow

OUTCASTS             139

aliw, as if it were fluid and not solid. More quicksilver than
silver, she thought.

"It's a wand."

Cal nodded. "That's what we thought. And look here."
He held up a small metal bracket.

"A belt buckle?"

"Unh, unh. Tbo small. I'd say it's a shoe buckle."

Endril came close and looked without touching. He stroked
his pointed chin.

Hathor had resumed his scavenging. He suddenly grunted
and stooped and came up with some white nuggets. He
poured them into Bith's other hand. She peered. "They're—
teeth."

Endril murmured, "Human."

The giri chirped. "Ah! I was right! The old fool felt off
the balcony drunk and scavengers ate him."

Cal shook his head. "Try again."

Bith just looked confused.

€     Cal asked her gently, "What happened to you in me tun-
<    nels?"

"What happened to me? I got covered in muck."
y     "Before that."

"I got—swallowed by a worm."

"And?"

"Why arc you asking me all these questions? You and En-
dril cut me loose. Me and Hathor."

"Right. Now suppose you were a wizard being clever and
poking around in a bunch of caves. And you got snatched
up, swallowed by a giant worm. And you pass out from lack
of air, like Hathor did. Then what happens to you?"

Bith stared at the small white teeth in her palm. Then she
recoiled and dropped them. They rattled on the shale. ' 'Yuck!
Ugh! Yew! That's disgusting!"

Cal nodded. "Sure is."

Endril picked up a tooth and looked close at it. "So the
magician was swallowed and digested, and all that survived
were his teeth."

"And the metal. It all passed out the worm's back end and
rattled out that bole. Down to here."

Bith was rubbing the palm of her hand against her filthy
pants. She had not, however, dropped the silver wand. Endril

140 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

tossed the tooth over his shoulder. "So much for finding our
magician."

"In one piece, anyway. We're stuck with the problem of
taking the sword by ourselves."

Endril said gently, "We are to destroy the sword, Cal."

"Well, maybe."

Bith looked up at the Mistwall, over at the castle balcony,
and both ways down the ravine. She asked bleakly, "Why
don't we just walk down this canyon and keep going?"

Endril stroked his chin. Cal stirred the fallen teeth with the
toe of his boot. Hathor walked back to their party with an-
other scrap of metal. It was a crumpled badge cut in the shape
of a crescent moon, made for sewing on clothing. Cal offered
to hold it, since it was silver.

Hathor scratched his neck. "Wash?" he asked.

Bith shook her head. "Oh, yes, the water. Lead us to it!
Please."

The water was farther down the canyon. It was no more
than a trickle that spilled from the rocks and emptied onto
the shale. A twin line of tough green chased it across the
rocks. The people took turns scooping water in their hands.
They mopped their faces and necks and scraped the gunk off
their clothing. They drank their fill and felt much better.
Eventually they sat down in a circle of rocks and propped
their backs as comfortably as possible. Even with the Mist-
wall looming over them the sun was warm and pleasant. Cal
produced jerked meat from a pouch. Hathor shared his ubiq-
uitous roots. The four munched and chewed and talked over
their dilemma.

"Well." said the soldier philosophically, "at least we
learned where the wizard went. He came to a bad end."

"Ouch," said Bith.

"Yep, he's been passed to a better place."

"Stop it."

"Yessir, he should have had a more noble outcome ..."

"Cal!"

The boy ripped jerky with his teeth. His fingernails were
as black as Hathor's. "Does this mean I can pluck the sword
up and run with it?"

"No, it doesn't mean that."

"How about if I promise to ruafast^ Very, very fast."

OUTCASTS             141

"Can you run faster than the roof can collapse?"

"Sure."

"It is not just the castle that concerns us," Endril said.
"We must think of the Mistwall. I am sure if we touch the
sword it will envelop the castle, maybe the whole valley. We
cannot allow that. We need time for both ourselves and the
defenders to get clear. No one goes into the Mistwall and
returns, as so I've heard." He stopped and the three males
looked at Bith- "Well, almost no one."

Cal countered, "What about those ores and other beasties?
If they come out of the Mistwall they must be able to go back
into it. I say it's grandmothers' tales to frighten children. It's
just a bank of fog you can walk in and out of. It just stinks,
is all. Right, Bith?"    »

"No. The smell of evil gets into your head and poisons
you. You'd become one of them before you saw daylight
again."

"Not me."

Endril said, "Let us hope we not test it. The student might
not survive the lesson."

Hathor said, "Bith should grab sword, jump off balcony.
Fly down here."

"1 can't fly."

"Oh."

;,     "Suppose we tie a rope to it, then throw the rope off the
balcony," Cal offered. "Then we come down here and jerk
the rope."

Bith shook her head. Her grimy hair flopped around her
face. "You don't understand. It's balanced there as if on its
point. One touch will undo the spell. I think. Or, as I said
'   before, you may not even be able to move it, as if it were
fixed in stone. There may not be a solution to this prob-
lem. ... I don't know. We're just going round in circles."

"Circling or no," Endril said, "we must   see that sword
\   does not fall into the hands of the   Dark Lord. Whoever or
whatever he is, having even a minor god   like Vili under his
thumb would give him power too awful to   consider."

Cal rose and stretched his legs. "I'd be willing to just grab
it and run. Give me a clear shot down those stairs and stay
out of my way. We'll see what collapses first.''

142

RUNESWORD VbtUME ONE

Bith snapped, "How many times do we have to say it! You
can't—"

Hathor interrupted them both, "Where sun go?"

"Eh?" The party looked up.

"The Mistwall," Endril whispered. "It's moving."

It was. Whereas before they could look and see clear sky
above the face of the fog, now they are looking at the bottom
of it. The greenish smokey cloud had drifted across the can-
yon. Even as they watched, the balcony grew dimmer, harder
to see through the mist.

"How can that be?" Cal asked.

The elf stared up at the castle, his long face somber as an
eagle's. "Perhaps it's time. The Dark Lord's forces are in
place. Perhaps one big push of magic is enough to engulf the
castle. Or perhaps someone's moved the sword."

"Moved the sword? No, I want the sword!"

Bith retorted, "Cal, we've told you! You can't have it!
You're obsessed with the thing."

The soldier shook his head. "No. I'm not! I just want a
chance to hold it once before we destroy it."

"Hist! Listen!" said the elf. He had his head cocked like
a dog.

Hathor grunted, but the two humans could hear nothing.
"Now what?"

"Storm," said Hathor.

"Not a storm," Endril corrected- "Shouting. War cries.
The Dark Army is attacking.''

"We've got to get up to the tower!" Bith said.

Cal hitched up his belt. "Which way?"

Bith looked around. "Not up that tunnel. Hathor is the
only one can scale that."

The troll hefted his axe. "Know another way. Backbreaker
and me find it."

Bith asked, "What do you suppose that giant's up to, any-
way?"

Cal snorted. "Who cares? Let's go."

Hathor led the way, though he went in the direction op-
posite they would have guessed. He led them up the canyon
away from the castle, past the spring. From there he mounted
a tumble of stone and crawled onto a ledge. He reached down

OUTCASTS                143

a mighty arm and pulled the others after him. Two more lifts
brought them to a cave.

"It's good we have you, Thor," Bith panted. "We couldn't
climb (his ourselves."

Hathor grinned. "Easy. Come. Quick way back."

The way was easy enough, if long. They negotiated an ok)
riverbed, then a series of switchbacks. They went under-
ground half the time, through caves or along ledges the resl-
Occasionally they walked the bottom of a sharp cleft that had
BO rocks to impede them. Hathor explained this was part of
the back way the defenders had mentioned as their evacuation
route, which they kept clear of debris. "Met scouts in here
when walked these past days."

They met someone now. Hathor hushed them and pulled
them back into a niche. This spot was a wide track with rock
walls that almost met overhead. Cal snuffed out the torch in
dK sand underfoot. The party froze and listened. Soon they
all heard it, a reassuring sound: a chattering like a flock of
magpies. Children calling to their friends, entreating their
parents to be carried, singing and laughing. Hathor stepped
out and raised a homy hand.

The families of Cairngorm were well equipped to travel.
Each man, woman, and child bore a pack and cloak and
carried something in their hand. Several led donkeys piled
with sacks of food and firewood and tents and geese tied by
the feet. At the sight of the party the children squealed and
ran to their mothers. The warrior men and women hefted
their axes and swords, then let them drop. "Friend Hathor,
Bith, Cal, Endril! Advance," called a tall man in front. He
was, as with all the rest, blond and blue-eyed and shaggy-
maned,

"What transpires on the wall?" Endril asked.

"The enemy rises in a wave to sweep over Cairngorm. Not
all the arrows in the world could hold them back. It looks
like a black carpet thrown against us. We could see it coming
all morning. They left their normal camp activities after
breakfast and drifted to the tents. Someone tall gave a speech
fora long time. Then they turned and swept upon us not three
hours ago. Barin didn't even try to hold the first wall. We
shot our lot and fell back. We are the first wave to leave, with

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

144

the children and mothers and elders. The rest hang back to
make sure none are left and see we are not overtaken."

"The castle still stands?" the elf asked.

"Aye, for now, but not much longer. 'Tis a sad day," he
told them. his voice grown hoarse, "By nightfall Cairngorm
will be gone from the face of the earth. But not from our
minds or hearts. Eh, good people?"

The crowd raised their weapons and their voices in a lusty
cheer that rang against the walls. But the silence that followed
was just as loud.

"Go then, good people, and may the spirits guide you on
your way," Endril told them. "Yours is not the first village
to fall under the Mistwall's deadly embrace, nor shall it be
the last. But like all bad storms, it will blow away eventually
and leave the earth fresh and clean."

The yellow-haired people nodded, but their faces were so-
ber. Without many more words they passed by the party and
down the slope towards the unknown.

The party of four were quiet when again they stood alone.
Cal asked Endril, "Do you believe that stuff about the Mist-
wall being rolled back some day?"

Endril replied, "All things come to an end. Alt. But a land
may lie dead at the bottom of the sea for a millennium before
it feels the sun again, and a lot of beings come and go in
darkness during that time."

"That's very encouraging, Endril," Cal told him bitterly.
"You're as uplifting as a lark."

"Live some." the elf replied, "before you judge."

On that sour note the party trudged uphill towards their
goal.

"Stop here." Hathor said after they had gone another few
hundred yards.

Cal asked, "Why?" The way before them was another
stretch of cave, open and clear.

"Secret." The troll pointed to a dark space way above
head height. He crouched down with his hands against the
wall and motioned someone to get on his back. "Climb."

Endril did as the troll suggested. Hathor straightened his
powerful legs and the elf snagged the ledge. He swung up
light as a squirrel into the space.

OUTCASTS             145

"It opens up," they heard him say, "into another pas-
sage."

Hathor grinned and squatted again. "Shortcut to castle.
Backbreaker and me find."

Cal helped Bith onto Hathor's back. He said, "The castle
defenders don't know it's here?"

"Nope. No one go in for years.**

When Cal was on the ledge he reached down and offered
his hand to pull Hathor up. He wished he'd offered his left
hand instead of his right because his shoulder creaked in its
socket. The troll was heavy.

The four brushed aside ancient cobwebs and peered down
die tunnel. Cal said, "It's black. Looks hand-hewn."

"Goes under wall."
"What wall?"

"Castle wall, big one." The troll sketched a circle around
his waist.

"The outer bailey wall? That surrounds everythingf"

"Yup, Old tunnel to valley floor. River bed, 1 think. But
big stones on other side. We couldn't move."

"But how—"

"Side tunnel goes to castle. Come."

"He's right, Cal," Bith interrupted. "Enough talk. Let's
go."

"But I can't believe the people who live here don't—"

"Come on!"

Hathor had taken the lead again, without benefit of torch.
Cal strove to light his as they shuffled along in the intense
blackness. He dropped his flint and couldn't find it, then gave
up as the rest of the party left him behind. Bith gasped as she
stumbled. Endril and Hathor, in the lead, had no trouble
seeing. Cal brought up the rear, as usual. This was his pre-
ferred position, one a soldier takes pride in holding, but today
he could have done without it. It was tiring being a second-
class citizen in the dark behind trolls and elves. He stumbled
often over fallen rock.

Suddenly the boy plowed into Bith's back as she banged
into Hathor. Endril had somehow gotten out of the way. Cal
sputtered but the troll shushed him. "Listen!"

Cal listened. "I don't hear any—"

"Rawwwwwwwwwrrrrrrr!!!!"" The shout all but knocked

RUNESWORD VDLUME ONE

146

Cal and Bith over. The sound was deafening in the close cave,
goose-pimply in its unhuman basso.

It was Hathor who had shouted. A battle cry. He was
charging down the tunnel and swinging his axe at some flick-
ering light ahead. He added a very human, "Follow!" Endril,
Cal, and Bith followed, with their ears ringing and their blood
pounding, towards what they knew not.

Hathor screamed around a comer into a maelstrom of hairy
faces and jagged weapons and flickering torches. Cal and
Bith had only a second to register the scene.

In a three-way juncture of tunnel stood a knot of ores, evil
humans, and piglets. The humans alone carried birch torches.
Fresh-sharpened steel shone on the edges of war spears, bat-
tieaxes, mattoxes, and short swords. All else was black or
hair or dirty grease, me smell of which filled their nostrils.
Past the first knot—there had to be twelve enemies within
arm's reach—a long dim line of more evil soldiers trailed off
into the dark of the leftmost tunnel. Every evil face was turned
towards them in astonishment.

Standing tall amid the group, stooped by the low ceiling,
was Mountain Back Breaker.

Cal grabbed Bith's shoulder to pull her behind him. Endril
dove to the right to avoid the troll's backswing.

"Elf! Elf!" shouted a chorus.

Hathor howled again and swung his felling axe high. The
troll's howl was echoed by a dozen throats. The axe flew in
a murderous arc and plowed into the first three enemy sol-
diers.

Blood sprayed in the air, scattering the firelight in all di-
rections.

CHAPTER

10

There were three enemies down on the dusty floor of the
cave. The troll's broad axe had severed one man's arm: he
lay on the floor screaming as blood gouted from a stump. An
ore had fallen back showing lungs through split ribs. A piglet
was dead from a smashed head. The others—ores, men, and
all—pressed backwards momentarily from the horror of the
attack.

Hathor kept them staggered. He was spattered with others'
blood. His lace was a fanged and screaming mouth. And his
axe swung back and forth as if he were cutting wheat. Min-
ions of the Dark Army clawed and fell over each other to get
out of the way.

Cal stood frozen as he   tried desperately to guess what was
going on. That a whole   troop of dark soldiers could be here,
sneaking to the castle   through these tunnels, when only Back-
breaker and Hathor had   known the tunnels were here, had to
mean that—

"Backbreaker's betrayed us! The bastard\" Cal's voice
shook with rage. "He's opened the tunnel for them! I'll fix
/urn!" He changed his grip on his sword to wade into the
attack. Behind Bith began to chant.

147

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

148

*No," interjected Endril, his voice inhumanly calm. He
caught the boy's leather sleeve in a strong grip and dragged
him sideways.

CaTs boots skidded. He jerked a vicious elbow. "What are
you doingf"

The elf didn't answer. He shoved the boy up the tunnel
towards the castle, then grabbed Bith with the other hand and
moved her. The palms of her hands were luminous and smok-
ing. She shook his hand off and continued her spell.

"Hathor's bought us time," Endril explained. "We're in
the proper tunnel now. Thor! Join us!"

"Elf!" a voice screeched. "Kill elf!"

During this short interval Hathor had felled another five
soldiers. His swings were wild and uncontrolled as he threw
all his strength into them. Now he stopped suddenly and
backed up, turned and crashed into Bith.

The giri staggered and recovered, then ducked past me troll
back towards the enemy. "Stand clear!"

Bith slapped her hands on the bodies of two dead ores. Her
fingers had to be flat or she'd blow her fingernails off. Raw
energy churned from her heart, rushed down her arms like a
boiling cataract, then left her palms in a blinding flash.

With a whoosh! twin jets of flame gushed from her palms.
The tiny intersection lit up. Fire crackled and spat as hair,
leather, wood, and skin ignited. The flame was blinding, the
stink appalling. Cal controlled the urge to retch. Endril
barked, "Run!" and they ran.

With Hathor in the lead and Endril behind, the party gath-
ered speed and pelted along in the dark. The two humans
never were sure who was where. All they knew was that it
was very dark. They held a hand in front of their faces for
protection. The howls and screams were left behind.

Hathor called back, "Good spell."

"I just wish I could snoot fireballs from a distance!" the
girt gasped.

On they ran. The humans missed their footing often but
thankfully never fell. As their breath began to bum in their
lungs Hathor warned, "Slow! Wall here!"

He trotted and stopped. Cal rearranged his baldric. Bith
panted and leaned on the wall. Endril pressed past them to
help Hathor.

OUTCASTS                149

"What is it? A door?"

"Wood wall. Break through."
There came a grunt and then a crash! of splintered wood.
Hathor kicked again with his bare feet. He ducked through
the hole. A strong vinegary smell surrounded them. Cal
groped with his hands and thumped up against something
solid and round. Bith and Endril followed.

The elf turned immediately. "Bith, can you do your fire
spell again?"

"Hunh? What? I guess so, yes. Where arc we?"

Wood clattered. Endril found Bith's hand and set it gently
on a pile of kindling. "Fire this." The giri fumbled out an-
other firefly (her last, she reckoned) and gasped the ignite
spell. The fire crackled into life.

They were in yet another part of the cellar beneath the
castle. The wine cellar. Huge barrels and hogsheads taller
than a man lay on their side, some tapped with bungs, some
obviously empty. A stairwell was at the far end of the cham-
ber. The wall they had broached from the other side was
made of white-washed planks laid sideways. It made up a
wall—a false wall—behind two barrels.

Endril reached out and shoved at a barrel- It didn't move.
He shoved another and it rocked. "Empty, Cal, grab hold
and we'll roll it in front of the hole.

Hathor had run to the stairwell, presumably to scout. The
elf and boy got the barrel off its stand and wrestled it in front
of the hole to the tunnels.

Bith frowned at the smallness of the blaze. She rubbed her
palms, which were painfully red. "I'm sorry, that's all I can
do right now."

Endril fanned at the small blaze with his hat. "It will suf-
fice. Would we had some brandy."

Cal the soldier had done some scouting of his own. "Maybe
we do. This can't hurt, anyway." He held up a small glass
bottle from a sideboard.

Endril pointed at the tiny blaze. Cal whipped the bottle
against the stone ceiling. It shattered and rained liquid onto
the barrel. Flame leaped and licked up its side. Cal threw
three more bottles—"It's a shame to waste this!"—and got die
blaze roaring. Smoke filled the low room and made them
cough. The three shuffled to the stairs and ascended. After

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

150

they bad passed the thick door Endril slammed it shut, but
there was no lock to engage.

They were in a short, sunken corridor that slanted up
to the rest of the cellar rooms. They could see light at the
top. Voices sounded. Then down the corridor stepped three
Caimgormers bristling with weaponry.

The closest man swiveled his shield in their direction and
took a firmer grip on his short sword. "Where the devil did
you come from?"

Endril nodded. "Yon wine cellar. There's a passage be-
yond the back wall full of your enemy."

"There be no passage through that cellar. We'd know of
it." The three, two men and a woman, shuffled their feet to
get elbow room and a better look at their opponents. They
were black with muck and grey with cobwebs. Hathor, with
blood across his face and chest, was a particularly unsettling
figure.

"You don't or you'd have blocked it," Endril corrected-
"My troll discovered it just these past days- And now a horde
of ores are in it and coming rast."

"I don't think so. I think we better take you to Barin—"

Hathor cocked an ear. "They here."

With a smash! the wine cellar door burst open. Ores howled
and screamed and gibbered as they flooded out the door.

The adventurers were gone. They bolted past the natives,
who fell in close behind.

In the catacombs under the castle stood the rest of Caim-
gorm's army. The blond men and women warriors—more than
two hundred of them—had gathered together, said goodbye
to their homes and fields, and marched in orderly retreat into
the cellar. The dark had finally come. Some had cried, some
had sworn, some were silent. Many had grumbled over a
missed fight.

Now as the screaming ores came into sight a howl of equal
rage and intensity welled up from the natives. Weapons shot
into the air. The orcan invaders and the human defenders had
glared at each other across two stone walls and a stretch of
no man's land for a long time, and all were eager, glad even
with a fierce joy, to close and hack and maim and kill. The
noise threatened to shatter eardrums as the battle was on.

Vili's adventurers were caught square in the middle.

OUTCASTS            151

Cal shouted, "Form up! Make a wedge! Form up!"

He yelled for effect and planted himself in the leftmost
position. Hathor fell in beside him. Endril flanked on the
right, further away from the troll in the center, for Hathor
was right-handed and swung his axe from that side. The elf
had a wall at his right as a giant stone shield. Bith was behind
them. Their practice on the plains paid off now. This
"wedge," as they called it, was a tight unit that could with-
stand attack on three sides, with a magician for backup.
The formation centered around the axeman. A strong fighter
with an axe was a terrible thing in battle, for he could knock
down enemies like wheat. An axeman could smash through
any defense, go where he wanted, and stop anything: it was
sergeants with axes that surrounded a king on the field. Yet
an axeman needed swordsmen to watch and protect him from
a sudden thrust, for he needed both hands on his weapon and
he carried no shield. His swordsmen were in mm safe as long
as they stayed close (but not too close). With a magician
behind them to weave spells and confuse the enemy, the for-
mation was almost invincible.

The party's arrival timed with me first charge by the Caim-
gormers, and they matched up on the end of a battle line that
snaked through the twisted cellar. They held the enemy at
bay. Maddened ores saw too late the giant troll and his axe,
and their howls turned to cries of anguish just before Hathor
smashed through their shields and shoulders and heads. Any-
one reaching in with a blade to pink the troll received a thrust
in the throat or eye from Endril's waspish sting, or a good
honest shot from Cal Talienson's poor but burnished blade.
It was not long before Hathor had a knee-high pile of bodies
before him.

The shouting and the clash of armor was frightening, and
the stone rooms were hot. Sweat ran in their eyes. Cal
shouted, "Look there! I'd like to stab that son of a bitch!"
Past pillars and stone walls they could see Backbreaker. The
giant used no weapons but his fists, which he flailed high in
the air and brought down on human defenders like twin
sledgehammers.

"I'd like to do something^' Bith shouted from her cramped
position behind the soldier.

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

152

"Conjure some water!" Hathor panted. He feinted a swipe
at a knot of glaring ores.

"No time." That was Endril, calm as ever. The elf hopped
forward and spitted a man through the heart. Cat wondered
if, since a pitched battle couldn't excite him, anything could.
"We needs get upstairs and quickly. After—"

"The sword, we know!" Cal interrupted. "How do we get
there?"

"We know the castle. These ores do not." Endril said. It
seemed strange to be discussing ores when the very same
were jabbing at them from five feet away, but such was war.
He pointed his dripping sword to a passageway thirty feet
down the wall. "That portal takes us up a back stair to the
main hall. Let us go thither."

Cal grunted. They couldn't just back out and leave a hole
in the ranks, but the battle seemed to be shifting away from
them. It was hard to tell in the dazkened cellars. Hathor's pile
of bodies was almost a hill the enemy had to climb. And the
Caimgormers wanted to be away down a fax passage anyway.
The boy hitched up his belt and made sure of his footing on
the blood-slippery stone. "Right! We can disengage! Let's-—"

Hathor interrupted, "Company!"

A pack of four savage men, blond and blue-eyed servants
of the Dark Lord, had just arrived in the cellars ready for
war. Their eyes lighted at the sight of three males and one
•woman. With a hoarse shout they raised shining weapons
high. In a steady line, and without dropping their defense,
they slid over me pile of bodies. They had swords or short
bill-hooks and square shields bound with iron. They wore
copper-studded armor and iron helmets. Larger and stronger
than most men, they had obviously practiced as a unit them-
selves. They laughed horribly and taunted their victims as
they closed.

They got a surprise.

"Only four?" Cal jibed, and he added a string of epithets
to insult their manhood that made Bith blush. It was calcu-
lated to make the men mad, and it worked. The end man
roared and left the line to strike the boy down from superior
height.

Cal expected that and countered. Instead of drawing his
shield close to absorb the blow, he flung it wide and high.

OUTCASTS               153

^

,0.
,',1?1

The brute balked momentarily as the edge of the shield
clipped the underside of his arm. "Hat" Cal barked. Too
late the barbarian whipped his own shield around to hit Cal
in me face. The boy had made one expert stab at the bottom
of the leather armor. The man was pierced through the gut
without realizing it. Cat only had to fend him off until his
strength departed and he died.

Endril had his metal glove and his slim, balanced blade.
He crouched low, dangerous as a mountain cat. His end man
advanced warily. It looked too easy. It was. As he roared for
a traditional attack he learned how difficult it is to kill an elf.

Endril's attack came not in the center, but to the outside.
Where this man expected a blow on his shield, Endril side-
stepped and slashed the man on the outside of his weapon
arm. The black blade cut like a fish knife, and it opened red
flesh to show white bone along half his forearm. Another
flicker, and the underside of the arm was cut clean through.
The man's arm was effectively sawn through except for the
bone. Blood began to blossom as if from a split wineskin.
Aghast, the man back-stepped and twisted his bead to look. En-
dril ended his life with a surgical stab just below the ear.

The two men in the middle concentrated on the axeman
before them. for they had done this before. While the first
baited the troll, trying to elicit a rash stroke, the other cocked
his sword arm behind him, me trap hidden by his shield. If
the first barbarian could get the axeman to overreach or stum-
ble forward—for nothing threw a man off-balance more than
to slash with an axe and strike nothing—his companion would
take both arms off with one hard blow. But Hathor could not
be baited. As the man before him ducked in and weaved
back, Hathor started to swing but held it. Yet each time the
man stepped in he threatened to stab Hathor. Three times this
happened, in and out, the man actually laughing at his prow-
ess, while his companion waited. Once Hathor stumbled and
the man got in a lick that pinked his shoulder, just missing
me ear. Hathor looked for his companion swordsmen, but they
were still engaged. Even Bith was gone from his peripheral
vision. He ground his fangs and muttered trollish oaths under
his breath. The second man kicked out with a steel-toed boot
and clipped his knee. It didn't hurt, but it distracted. Another

154

RUNESWORD \bLUME ONE

thrust by either would put Hathor off-balance or push him
back and he'd be done.

Then suddenly the first man made to hop forward and could
not. He tried to get back and couldn't. Shielding himself, he
glanced at his feet to see what he was stuck in. There was
nothing. His feet weren't even touching the ground.

He yelped some oath. His companion looked confused.
The first man was taller, suspended in the air a foot. And
rising. He windmilled his legs and began to tilt backwards.
Flailing only made him spin more. Soon he was horizontal,
facing the ceiling. He howled. His companion, both hands
full, dithered around and finally decided to tow his friend
clear of the fight. He kept his shield up and snaked a sword
hand into his friend's belt. In that moment Hathor struck.

The troll threw back his axe and swung hard, knowing he'd
connect. The axe hummed and hit the men with a meaty
whack! The air-home barbarian lost his right leg below the
knee. Knocked clear, he spun out across the room in a diz-
zying circle, jetting blood. His companion stayed where he
was, an axe head buried in his chest. Hathor stood at the end
of the hickory haft and watched the man's face turn from red
to white. Then the fellow's eyes rolled up in his head and he
dropped in place. So deeply was the axe buried that Hathor
had to brace his foot on the body to wrench it loose. The
severed leg lay between them.

The troll turned to find Bith sunk on her haunches. Her
hands hung limp beside her. Sweat lined her brow.

"Was that you?"
The girl gulped and nodded. "I'm not supposed—to be
able to levitate—anything more than I can—lift. And I didn't
have to—touch him!"

"You save my life."

"Did I? I was—only trying to help."

Cal straightened and shoved his man clear. He toppled onto
the stone floor with a crash. "Only jbur^" (he boy roared.
"Come on, the rest of you! Come on!"

Endril's hand on his collar arrested him. He towed Cal
away from the fight. "Let us go."

The fight had moved away into other parts of the cellar.
Cairngorm was making an orderly retreat. Only dead natives

OUTCASTS              155

n

(

y>
^

•od dying marauders were left behind. The party herded
themselves out the door and up a set of stairs. Endril led.

On the second set of stairs they came up behind two ores
who jabbered to one another. They never heard the elf. He
lanced the two of them and pitched them like bales of hay
over me heads of the party to smash on the steps below.
"Always blathering when they should be fighting," the elf
commented.

These stairs brought them to the foyer before the main hall.
la the hall itself a troop of something-or-others overturned
lables, smashed candlesticks, and set fire to tapestries. The
beasts were fat underground dwellers, pasty and slug-like,
with bloated races and sparse white hair. They shrilled when
(bey saw the adventurers pass the door. The first one around
die corner got his long nose sliced off by Cal. That one dis-
appeared to be replaced by another who also stuck his nose
out and also got it sliced off- The soldier put his back to the
door and waited with a cocked aim for the next.

"Come on, Cal!" Bith called down from the stairs.

"I'll bold the bridge!" me boy called.

"No, you won't!" Endril barked.

Cal gave a soldier's reply, short and sweet. He added, "You
can't tell me what to do!"

The other three had paused on the wide stairs. Endril said,
"You come now or I'll hoist you over my shoulder!"
Bith called, "And we'll get the runesword and you won't!"

The boy groused. He checked the doorway again—he could
hear clucking inside—then bolted away and up the steps. It
was well he did, for in the next instant a dozen slugs charged
around the comer with slender spears. They ran so fast and
so clumsily they clanged the iron tips against the wall Cal
had vacated. They looked around stupidly and finally spotted
the party disappearing up the stairwell. They squealed and
gave chase.

In a short while the adventurers had knocked aside a few
more looters and gained the wizard's tower. But at the top of
the narrow stairwell they found the door closed and the key
missing from the brass lock. Endril slammed against the door
without budging it.

"Bith," Endril said, "can you dismantle this door?"

156 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

The giri peered past him to see. "Umm. I guess so. I can,
uhh, use a fire spell, or an enlarge. Or maybe a—uhh—"

"Never mind. Step you back. Thor, knock it down."

"I*U mind those—whatever they are," Cal called.

Bith said, "I'll go with you."

It didn't take long for Hathor to hack out the lock in the
old wooden door. Endril called Cal and Bith to him. Threats
had kept the slugs at bay. The party stepped into the wizard's
chamber. It seemed to the humans like years since they had
been there last, but in fact it had been only early morning.
The room was darker now for the Mistwall blotted out the
sun. It was hard to say whether the fog seeped inside the
balcony or not.

Hathor and Cal dumped a sturdy table and set it before
the ruined door. They wedged junk into the stone floor to
hold it in place. They turned and found Bith and Endril look-
ing at the runesword. It hung in pristine beauty, suspended
like a diamond in mid-air.

Cal joined them. He stared at the perfect sword. "What now?"

"I don't know," Bith said.

Nor did any of them.

A hammering sounded on the door along with a squealing
of slugs and deeper hum of something big. The door and the
table bracing it creaked.

"Well," said Cal, "do something'."

"That's very helpful, Cal," Bith snapped. "What would
you have us do?"
The boy waved his hands. "We're supposed to destroy it,
right? So how do we do that?"

"I don't know."

"Nor I," put in Endril.

Cal swept an ami around the room. "Days and days of
reading all those books and you can't find a spell to ruin a
sword?"

"I told you! There was no mention of the sword!"

Cal leaned closer for a look- Bith said, "Don't touch it."

"Bith, to destroy it we have to touch it first, don't we?
Look, they forge swords in coal fires. Can't your fire spell
melt it?"

"No. It wouldn't be hot enough."

OUTCASTS             157

"All right, wouldn't it just break if we slammed it against
the floor? I've seen swords break from lesser Mows, espe-
cially if they're cold."

"I doubt that would work."

"What if we throw if off the balcony? Anything would
break falling from that height onto rocks."

"Maybe . . ."

Hathor too had hunkered down for a look. "That not
work."

"How do you know?"

"You can tell. Read steel. Tough," the troll shrugged. Then
he grunted. "What that there?"

"Where?" Everyone peered close.

"There. Look like Vili."

The four people put their heads together to squint at the
blade. Was it imagination, or was there a face deep in the
steel, as of someone reflected m a foggy mirror, or seen
through smoky glass?

"It's Vili," agreed the elf. "He's saying something."

"What?"

"I don't know. I can't make it out."

Cal said, "He probably wants us to sacrifice ourselves to
his glory."
The door jumped in the frame..Someone must have brought
up a pole to use as a ram. Another thump elicited a splinter-
ing sound. The door would not sustain many more blows.

"Well, what are we going to doV Cal asked again.

Bith fluttered her hands in the air. Endril stood loose-
limbed and stroked his chin. Hathor brought out a stone and
quickly stropped his axe blade.

The door shattered into a dozen pieces. The table got
knocked aside. The pole used to batter it down was chucked
inside. A confusing jumble showed blades and armor, white
hair and black pug noses, shaggy heads and iron helmets. A
trio of chittering slugs were ejected into me room, presum-
ably to draw fire. Behind them came a phalanx of tall ores
and humans, at least five of each. careful and slow with weap-
ons foremost.

Hathor stampeded forward with his axe at port arms. En-
dril whipped out his slim, black blade and took a stance to
his left. Cal raised his worn sword and shield.

158

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

The ores and humans grunted as they surveyed the room
and the three defenders before them. A barbarian pointed out
the shining sword to his partner. The slugs picked themselves
up and scurried to one side. The largest ore, a black monster
with notches in his ears and white scars etched on his face,
waved left and right for the line to fan out. A wide attack
was called for.

The deienders could see the battle would be swift and short.
In the silence before the storm Endril said, "Bith, do what
you will."

"But I don't know what to do!" the giri wailed.

The maulers took a step forward. They gripped and re-
gripped the haft of their weapons. The leader grunted some-
thing in orcish-

Cal said, "I know what to do."

Without turning around he Cook three long steps backwards
onto the balcony. He tossed his old sword aside and caught
the pommel of the runesword.

The suspended weapon came away as easily as if a squire
had handed it to him. As everyone in the room watched the
boy took a small practice swing, then a wider one. The sword
was alive. Cal could feel it- In one second he came to know
that sword more intimately than he'd ever known anyone or
anything before. It was feather light in his hand, yet it had a
deadly, quivering weight in the nose that would carry through
any obstacle. The balance was perfect, better than an empty
hand. A man would never be betrayed and pulled off-balance,
never tire from swinging it. In a stark moment of frozen time
Cal knew everything there was to know about swordsman-
ship, about fighting, about living, about dying. When he
moved the shining blade, it hummed ancient runes of power.
The songs sang in his head like lightning on a winter's day.
With this sword he was a master.

In slow motion Calais Talienson brought die blade around
to face his enemies. None had moved. Nothing in the room
had moved since he'd touched the sword.

Cal could see everything clearly, in the tiniest detail: the
curled legs on a flea on the wrist of a red-haired man, traces
of worn engraving on the sword of the gnoll before him, a
drop of sweat at the tip of an ore's mustache. He could see
every flaw in their armor, every notch in every blade, every

OUTCASTS              159

weakness and hesitation. He could hear the heaibeats of his
foes and bis friends. He could feel the stone floor under his
boots shift in its bed.

Still no one moved.

As lightly as a butterfly preening its wing, Cal swept the
sword behind him. The runes sang to him, rang in his ears.
He could hear a choir of angels urge him on from distant
hilltops. And inside him rose a bubble, a wave, a flood, a
shout.

Cal roared, "VIW" at the top of his lungs. Then he was
moving faster than the wind. He was upon the enemy.

The first assailant was a man with blond braids who wore
studded leather. He carried a gnariy spear set with obsidian
behind the long steel blade. Before the man could blink, Viii's
sword swiped through the man's shoulder, his spear, and his
chest with no more trouble than cutting a flower. The man
hadn't even fallen before Cal attacked the next. This was an
ore, grey-skinned and black-haired, wiry but tall- Cal's re-
turning backswing caught him at the neck and took off his
head neatly- Before that blood could spurt Cal completed a
loop and killed the next ore as he tried to flinch out of the
way.

A long spear came at him from the second rank. Cal
watched it come. He tossed his. shield away because it ham-
pered him. With his bare hand, he pushed the man's wooden
spear aside, caught it and pulled. He thrust the runesword
straight into the belly of the owner, twisted the blade to free
it, and drew it back. The dying man's hand stabbed out to
punch him and Cal jumped forward. He drove his shoulder
into the man and bowled him backwards into his fellows who
crowded the top of the stair. As they fell in a tangle Cal was
already spinning to the left, careful to always swing the sword
away from himself, seeing everything, reveling in his power.

The red-haired man with the fleas tried to run, but Viii's
sword flicked across his back, splitting his wire-laced armor
and severing his spine. The man folded in half. His scream
sounded to Cal like a cow lowing in the fog. The master
swordsman completed his spin and found three more enemies
staring at him with wide eyes and open mouths. Cal laughed
again. They too would go down like wheat before Viii's
scythe. The sword was thirsty, and gods like a blood sacri-

160

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

flee, the more the better. Vili's handmaidens sang from the
clouds and filled the chamber with music. The runes built in
his mind, revealing all the answers mankind could ask and
many more beside. Cal was more than a man now. He was
like a god himself.

To his friends he was a blur. At the first shuffle from the
ores Hathor had readied a blow, but in another second he'd
had to Jump back out of Cal's way lest he catch a taste of the
humming blade. Endril had also moved back. Bith put her
hands to her mouth and tried to stifle a scream. It was fright-
ening to see Cal this way- The boy had taken three short steps
since meeting the enemy, and he'd killed three men at every
step. He moved fester man a rabbit before a hound, fester
than a windstorm breaking branches in a forest, fester than
an eagle pouncing. The runesword whipped through the air
like a hummingbird. Blood geysered into the air, bringing a
smell like hot metal. The clash of arms and armor was hor-
rendous as me sword blade cut through steel and copper and
iron. Broken weapons ricocheted off the walls like hail. The
dying screamed or burbled or prayed and the living shrieked
and cursed. Cal danced and spun, cut and thrust, hacked his
way clear, jumped into another group of living enemies and
turned them into dying men.

Hearing the noise of the battle, more ores crowded from
the stairs into me room, lusting after battle and blood. They
received only a quick death from a blade they barely saw.
Soon Cal the master swordsman could barely set his feet down
on me stone floor. Attackers were writhing bodies on the
floor and the boy was standing on them, yet he didn't notice.
Nor did he notice as an ore jabbed a spear into his back above
die kidneys—the ore simply died a second later. A slug
smashed a bludgeon into Cal's kneecap to no effect. One huge
barbarian got in a sword thrust to Cat's groin, but the only
reply was a jab through the jaw into the brain. Still Cal killed
with the blade, tireless and unstoppable.
"Venus and Vulcan, they're killing him!" Bith bawled.
"He kill them," Hathor corrected. "All of them."
The three had retreated to the balcony. Endril took his eyes
off the majestic Cal and looked around. "And us besides.
Note you how the mist closes in."
"Yes," Bith said with a hand to her fece. "It stinks\"

OUTCASTS               161

"It's more deadly than just poison," Endril agreed. "It
will overwhelm us soon. Moving the swoid has indeed un-
leashed it."
The air was seemingly gone from the room. In its place
was the greenish vapor of the Mistwall, a smell of low tide
and swamp gas and things newly dead. It thickened me air
so that even Cal, no more than fifteen feet away, was hard to
see.

Bith suddenly felt a trickle of something on her head. She
looked up and got dust in her eyes. What? . . . Then she
realized what it meant: if dust was filtering out from stone
that had sat in one place for many hundred years ... she
tried to say something but could only squeak as ...

The balcony creaked ominously. It was only a mild grind-
ing, but the noise froze the three of them. Then the handrail
at either side disappeared, separated from the building, gone
in the fog without a sound.

Bith jumped into the room to stand on the spot the rune-
sword had occupied. This brought her closer to the fighting,
the screaming, the splash of blood and crunch of bone and
flesh. A dead ore stared up at her with wide yellow eyes. A
dying man leaked blood at her feet. She bit her knuckles.
The whole mess had happened so fast, within seconds. The
ores had burst through the door, Cal had turned into a su-
perman with the runesword in his hand, and now the tower
threatened to collapse. Panic overwhelmed her. Bith covered
her eyes and prayed to be home with her mother.

Hathor barked out, "No!"

A gray mass came through the door by stepping on and
over soldiers. He was too tall for me doorway and had to
duck. Then Backbreaker's pointed head reared above the
crowd. He was covered from the neck down with blood and
his hands dripped gore. He even had Mood in his mouth
where he had bitten people. People, Bith thought, the brave
defenders of Cairngorm. How could they ever have trusted
this monster?

Backbreaker, if that was his true name, gobbled orders in
some arcane language. But me ores and humans in the room
did not respond. In mindless procession they had poured up
the stairs to attack whoever was in the room, only to find,
three at a time, that a boy with a sword proved unkillable.

162

RUNESWORD VbLUME ONE

Cal was still jumping, dancing, swiping, calm and cool and
altogether unhuman. He cut down men and skewered ores
and backslashed gnoils, all with a savage joy. Then he saw
Backbreaker and his eyes flashed. The giri and-the troll and
the elf saw his reaction cleariy. The old Cal was still inside
somewhere. With a howl their friend threw himself at the
traitorous giant.

Backbreaker had seen enough to know he must avoid the
sword. Quickly he seized a villain in each hand and threw
them like dolls at Cal. The swordsman swiped one in half
with the unbelievably sharp sword, but he was bowled over
by the other. As Cal went down Backbreaker threw another
victim on top of him. Then a half a dozen enemies closed in
with spears and knives. They were eager to kill this slashing
wonder, eager to carry a piece of him away to show their
comrades.

Hathor howled and leapt at the pile of bodies. He sank his
axe blade in a man's back, but two more took that one's place.
Endril protected the troll by cutting an ore's wrist to the bone.
Then the elf dragged the giri forward.

"Come," he said in a calm voice that cut through the noise,
"arms will not suffice. We need a spell."

Bith's legs quivered so badly she thought she'd fall. This
wasn't adventure: it was death, death, death everywhere! "A
sp-spell? What spell? I ca/i'f!"

Endril continued to drag her towards the melee when all
she wanted was to run away. "Any. A good one." Then he
slashed another thing's shoulder—Bith couldn't even tell one
race from another in the writhing, pitching pile of bodies—
and kicked the unfortunate aside. Backbreaker stood in the
doorway and pointed and cursed and gibbered like a demon.

The elf stooped, poking flesh randomly with his sword. He
trapped an arm against the stone floor. It was Cal's free hand.
Bith wondered that he was still alive. The boy's hand writhed
to claw and tear even as the rest of him was buried. Above
Hathor shouted again and again as he fought to free Cal from
the mess. Endril snatched Bith's hand and forced it onto Cal's.

Bith's mind rattled around inside her skull- A spell to help
Cal, to save all of them? Why her? Why couldn't it be some-
one else? Why hadn't she just gone home? A howl from
Hathor rocked her backwards and she almost lost the hand.

OUTCASTS            163

Blood squirted from somewhere and splashed on her breast
and her hair. They would all be awash in blood soon. They'd
spill theirs onto the stone floor of a wizard's crumbing castle
if she didn't do something.
ButnAor?

CHAPTER

11

Bith pressed her hands to the side of her head only to find
they were smeared with blood. She wracked her brain and
wept openly. Which spell? What could do any good?

Cal was buried alive. If only he could push them off, if he
were stronger, like hulking Hathor—

She had it.
Fumbling in her belt pouch with one hand, fumbling with
the other to hold Cal's hand, she dug out an acom and pressed
it tight against his palm. Cal's hand squeezed it.

' 'Grow, thing, grow, fast not slow,
Fill thy vision onto the sky.
In slipping your bonds and going beyond,
You rise. the largest of all the rest. "

Had Bith had time to consider, she may have selected an-
other spell. Confuse, or invisibility, perhaps even levitate.
But she forgot- She had never done an enlarge spell on a
human before, just dogs and cats and birds- And she had
forgotten that ever since she'd passed through the Mistwall
into the free lands, her spells worked twice or ten times better

164

OUTCASTS            165

than they ever had. Or that Cal was already under a spell, a
divine enchantment that made him strong and brave and vi-
tally aware. Or that he was holding onto a sword that embod-
ied the powers of a god.

She remembered all this and more in a moment, though.
For Cal's hand—all anyone could see—suddenly ballooned to
the size of a troll's. Then to the size of an ogre's. Then a
giant's. Then . . .

The pile of bodies that had swamped Cal was rising. Endril
took Bith's hand and urged her back. Hathor retreated with
them. They watched with open mouths.

Cal's enemies, who had thought to be in control, were con-
fused. They jabbered and looked around and banged their
heads on the rafters. Some were too slow. Living and dead
alike were caught amidst rafter-junk and pressed against the
ceiling. Enemy carcasses gave off a ghastly crunching sound.
A boot as big as a barrel suddenly popped out of the pile to
the right. Then a great hairy head tike a brown haystack ap-
peared at the other end. A column of steel showed among
black and red shapes. It was wider than a bench, longer than
a coffin. It had runes carved on it.

The floor leaned dangerously now. The whole tower was
tilting towards the chasm. Endril and Hathor and Bith looked
to their only escape. It was through the tiny doorway that was
blocked by a dozen ores, a screaming Backbreaker, and Cal's
expanding form. Bith watched a gap between two flagstones
gape like a fish's mouth. The balcony crumpled and disap-
peared behind them. "We've got to get out of here!"

"There he so!" Hathor shouted.

Cal the giant emerged from underneath his enemies. They
spilled off him like leaves. Men cursed. Ores whimpered.
Everyone fell back. Backbreaker barked at the horde to stay
put. but Cal was taller than Backbreaker just sitting up. The
young giant banged his head against the far wall, cracking it.
He put out a bleary hand and shoved it away. Daylight spilled
into the room- Everyone, friend and enemy, shrieked and
bolted for the stairs as the tower shuddered.

"Come!" Endril called. He caught Bith's upper arm and
charged with his sword out straight- Hathor put both hands
on his axe handle and used it as a bar to shove people aside.

The tip of Endril's sword caught the traitorous Backbreaker

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

166

square in the open mouth. The monster jumped with surprise
at a Mow that should have killed him. He snatched at the elf
but could not reach. Endril paused only long enough for
Hathor to knock two men down the stairs, then he slung Bith
like a bag of clothes after the troll- The elf produced a long
white knife and slashed at the giant's ribs, but the blade
skipped off. Backbreaker reached again as Endril bounded
away and down the stair.

The last thing they heard from the room was a trio of
screams and a crunching noise. Then the stairs lurched as a
gobbling growl of stone sounded. Sunlight spilled down the
stairwell.

Bith yelled, "What?—"

Endril had his back to her, for he faced up the stairs. "The
tower is gone."

"What? Oh, rw\ Where's Cal?"

Endril said nothing. He only urged them downwards-
" Hurry. The rest of the castle may follow."

"But where's CaH"

"He's dead\ Move!"

Bith trotted along with one hand on Hathor's shoulder. With
the other she wiped away tears. "It's my fault. My fault. . ."

Hathor kicked retreating ores headlong down the steps.
They had practically a free path. Bith noticed for the first
time the troll was wounded in many spots. He had been
pinked in the neck, chopped in his red hair, sliced on the
arm. He limped from a leg wound that ran blood all the way
to his broad bare feet. But he never complained.

A roar behind made her turn. Endril was a dozen steps
above her, skipping backwards light as a squirrel. He still
had his slim black sword in his right hand, his impervious
glove on his left with the white knife. Backbreaker was after
him like a personal demon. He screamed and piped and
hooted and howled with the noise of a thousand mad dogs.
He slashed with his talons at Endril *s face and arms. but
always the elf moved nimbly out of the way. Almost always.
His sleeves were in tatters, and Bith guessed the fair skin
underneath was too. After what seemed an age they all
reached the bottom of the stairs. Hathor slid in front of Bith
and raised his axe in the air. Backbreaker, not ten steps up,
looked as large and as fierce as a crazed dragon.

OUTCASTS            167

"Go!" Endril called. "He's after Bith'"

"Me?"

"Go. now!"

Hathor shifted his axe, took Bith's fine and trembling hand
in his own calloused hairy one. and pointed towards the sun-
light of a distant door. "We go that way."

"But the Dark Army's out there!"

"In here too. Castle fall on us. Run!"

Enemies scampered past and ignored them. Blocks rained
from the roof of the castle and thudded on the floor. Hathor
half-carried the giri out to the dazzling light.

The space in front of the castle was clear and amazingly
quiet. Ruins of the village smoldered, having been burned to
the ground by the ores. Many dead dark shapes lay scattered
about, and a few fair ones. There were live dark shapes close
by, too. A handful of gnolls and trolls stood well back from
the castle so as not to be hit by falling rubble. Down the
slopes the bulk of the army still clung to the valley floor like
a carpet. Endril, Bith, and Hathor cast about for an escape
route. The nearby marauders noticed the trio and grinned
evilly- They shuffled towards the party. Then the color drained
from their faces as they pointed past them towards the Mist-
wall.

"Form a circle," Endril warned.

Bith asked, "Wait. . . What are they pointing at?"

The three adventurers turned and looked.

Rising above the Mistwall, coming from the canyon behind
the castle, something huge blotted out the setting sun.

Was it a tree, impossibly tall? Or some pillar of a moun-
tain? Or a waterspout? It was too tall to be anything living.
But it was.

It was Cal.

The boy that was their friend, that Bith had teased, that
Endril had argued with, that Hathor had joked with, strode
towards his enemies, ninety feet tall.

Bith marvelled at me vastaess of the magic before her.
Perhaps her magic had been enhanced by the runesword. Or
perhaps it had been the presence of the dead magician in the
tower room, the old faker who could not protect his people.
Or maybe it was something within Cal. Whatever had done
it, here he came, tall as a god.

168

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

Cal moved slowly, as if in a dream, but he covered ground
like a cloud. His legs were thicker and taller than tree trunks.
His clothes napped in the breeze like a storm. His head was
lost in the brightness of the autumn sky. A sound rolled out
too, a sound like thunder. It was laughter from a true giant.

Cal marched full into the teeth of the Dark Lord's Dark
Army.

BOOM, BOOM. BOOM. The valley shook under his foot-
steps. The army ran screaming. A boot as big as a house
swept forward in slow motion. A pack of giants and ogres,
no bigger than ants to this giant, scattered in terror as that
boot crashed in their midst. Two were kicked a hundred feet.
One disappeared under Cal's hobnailed sole. Then the other
boot stamped down. Enemies gibbered and cowered and died.
Men, gnolls, trolls, ores, and a dozen other races ran and
screamed and tripped over one another. They either died or
they didn't as the giant's feet trod among them. They were
helpless to save themselves.

A phalanx of something—they were too far for Bith and
the others to see who they were—lifted bows under the shouts
of an officer. A dozen skinny shapes released a flurry of ar-
rows at the giant's head- The tiny shafts struck home in the
giant's face, but they only made him turn. Cal lashed out with
the runesword.

The mumble and grunt of runes was loud and weird, a
chorus of the damned. The blade hummed through the air.
The sword had grown along with its owner and was now a
shining rainbow of death thirty feet long. Before the archers
could move or even scream the blade overtook them. Like
grasshoppers trapped among wheat they were scythed in half
to rain in bloody gobbets. The laugh came again. It was a
deeper rumble now, not the laugh of their friend Cal, Bith
realized, but the laugh of a god come to earth to play. Vili
was there, owning Cal's body and using it.

A fireball shot into the sky and sizzled by the giant's dark
head. Cal swung around. Bith saw the source, too. A figure,
the tall, golden, god-man Schlein, stood in front of his tent
with both arms before him. Another electric charge coursed
through him, sparkled along his arms, and shot into the sky
to land in Cal's hair. It trailed flame up the side of his head.

T

OUTCASTS               169

^
"y-

s-

»

but the giant merely swiped at it with his hand and the fire
went out. Angry, Cal-Vili took a step.

His left foot came down and blotted out another handful
of soldiers. Then the right boot swung, slowly, inexorably.
Schiein lost whatever spell he was mustering. A hundred ban-
ners and poles skittered aside before a worn leather toe. The
leader of the Dark Army disappeared in a fireball just as the
boot connected. Schlein's tent and the one behind it were
kicked into the sky like a pig's bladder in some game. Bith
saw a wink of gold disappear toward the mountains. At first
she thought it was Schlein himself, somehow riding his fire-
ball, then she realized it was his golden throne.

The giant Cal, or Vili, reached down with monstrous
fingers towards the scorched spot where Schlein had disap-
peared. Bith could not see for what.

A grunt sounded behind her. The giri turned to find Hathor
and Endril being pressed for their lives.

The traitor Backbreaker had burst out the door of Castle
Cairngorm onto Bith and her companions. His grey statue's
face was twisted and ugly, his mouth a gash, his eyes wild.
Talons were raised high in the air like a bear's. He came off
the bottom step with a tremendous leap designed to carry
him through Endril and Hathor and onto Bith. Right at that
moment, the girt was more frightened than she had ever been
in her life.

Yet Endril and Hathor held like a stone wall. The troll
swung his axe overhead in a man-killing blow that made him
grunt. Endril lunged straight with his slim black sword for
the monster's throat. The axe blade thudded onto Backbreak-
er's shoulder and bounced off. The slim black blade caught
in the hollow of his throat and bent with a crink. But Back-
breaker was rocked. Elf and troll followed up with more
blows, but so did the giant.

His hands hissed through the air. One caught in Hathor's
back like a net filll of fishhooks. The troll was unprotected
without his thick bearskin. He sucked wind as the claws were
dragged forward and off his shoulder. Blood flowed from a
half dozen weals. Endril, faster than the eye could follow,
fended off the slash on his side with his metal glove. But the
claws came back quicker than a cat's. Hathor dropped his axe
and fumbled for it even as his own blood made his hands

170 RUNESWORD VDLUME ONE

slippery. Endril slashed with his white knife, but every stripe
yielded only a dulled edge. The giant's skin was as tough as
soapstone.
Nor was Backbreaker their only attacker. The white slugs
were back, gibbering and quaking. They did not join in the
fight, but picked up stones to hurt. Bith noticed the stolid
trolls rolling up the slope towards them. Another few minutes
would find the three of them surrounded by a horde of evil
ten deep.

Endril didn't look back as he called, "Bith! Run! Fly!"

"I won't leave you here!" she shouted, though her voice
shook.

"It's you he^s after! For the price on your head! Fly and
he'll leave us!"

A price on her head? Hers? Bith could barely believe it-
She certainly didn't believe that Backbreaker would give up
the attack on Endril and Hathor if she fled. And she couldn't
just leave her brave friends here to die, even if that fate befell
her also. Should she try another enlarge spell, on Hathor?
But Cal seemed to have lost his mind. And she didn't know
if she had die energy for it—she might pass out from the
effort. Here she was again, wondering what to do while peo-
ple died around her. Why had she taken up her mother's pro-
fession? "I won't leave!" she called again, to give herself
courage.

"Then summon Cal! We need him!"

"How?" she asked the air, for Endril was gone behind the
giant. Dwarfed by his size and bulk, me elf resorted to prick-
ing him in the back. Hathor had given up trying to regain his
axe. Instead he dove forward and grappled the giant around
the waist. Backbreaker roared for the first time in pain. Hathor
had bitten him deep in the side with his white fangs. The
giant responded by ripping deeper into the troll's back. The
peasant smock parted like a spider's web, as did the tough
skin beneath it.

Bith cried, "Stop that!" and raised both hands. Almost
before she knew it her shoulders and arms tingled. A blast of
fire shot from her hands and wreathed the giant's face. But
the monster merely blinked and shook his head and reached
for her again. He ignored the troll's bites, Endril's jabs, and

OUTCASTS            171

BIS own blindness to get the girl. Bith had no choice. She
turned and ran.

Right into the pack of trolls.

A brawny arm shot out and rapped her in the breastbone
so hard she sat down. She gasped for air as a dozen calloused
hands plucked at her shoulders, her hair, her legs. The trolls
meant to carry her off bodily. Bith jabbed her arms out straight
at me lead troll, but another troll knocked them aside and her
spell fizzled, sparks dribbling from her fingertips. She lacked
(be power to light a candle anyway. Someone clamped her
hands. Trollish heads blocked out the sky. Bith was helpless.
She put her head back and screamed, ' 'Endril. I can't!''

Fast as he was, so fast he could often see humans blinking
and thinking, Endril the elf had nonetheless been knocked
backwards by an elbow to the face from the giant Back-
breaker. The stumble actually saved his life, for unbeknownst
a gnoll had come up behind him to slip a spearpoint into his
kidneys. Endril slashed backhand with his short knife and
opened the doggish face from muzzle to jaw. The gnoll fell
away and Endril got clear- He swept the horizon with his
acute vision and missed nothing.

What he saw was both good and bad.

The Dark Army was gone. Only a rabble was left. A con-
fused mob of villains skittered around the giant Cal's feet
with no plan except to escape personal destruction. They ran
up the valley, up to the walls, back towards the Mistwall.
Anyone who stood still was squashed, any group that mus-
tered an attack was either kicked out of existence or stomped
on, or buried under a handful of soil and rock ripped from
the walls around Cairngorm.

The giant had stomped in ever wider circles, and now he
was far down the valley near the Mistwall. Even as Endril
watched the giant reared back his head and blew a mighty
breath that swept into the fog bank and pushed it back. Putrid
colors roiled and coiled and bubbled anew as the cloud gave
up land it had claimed. Cal—or Vili in his body—blew again
and shoved the Mistwall back a quarter mile, then a half.
Then he started a game of sending monsters home. Many of
the evil ones near the wall had run for its shelter, and Cal
helped them along. With seven-league strides he kicked a
dozen monsters like toadstools so they disappeared into the

172 RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

foggy bank. Cal scooped up a handful of caterwauling men
and ores and gnolls on his sword and flipped them far over
the top of the cloud. Then he stomped his feet hard, once,
twice. He hopped into the air and came down with CRASH
that shook the entire valley and rattled rocks from the teeter-
ing castle behind Endril. The whole structure slowly caved
in on itself. The giant roared in delight at the consternation
and destruction of me Dark Lord's army.

But while Cal was winning a one-man battle with the Dark
Army, his three small companions were losing theirs. Hathor
still clung to Backbreaker's waist, but it was only iron will
that kept him there. His back was in shreds. Endril could
scarcely believe he had any blood left to shed. Bith was bur-
ied somewhere under a pile of grasping trolls. She would be
safe enough, he reckoned, since the price demanded her in-
tact. But more enemies were encircling the three of them,
and only a miracle could save them now. A miracle, or a
god.

Endril fished under his cloak and drew out his short bow.
With deft and long-practiced fingers he strung the unbreak-
able string and nocked an arrow. If ever be had to make a
trick shot, it was now. He dodged the cowardly white mon-
sters and drew back his arrow. He adjusted for the wind,
aimed, held his breath, and loosed.

Whether it was the sharpness of the razor arrowhead, the
strength of the draw, or me uncanny aim, Endril never knew.
But it worked. The giant Cal smacked a hand to his brow.
He rubbed at me sunken arrow as a normal man might mas-
sage a fly sting. He looked around for the source of the pain
and saw his friends in trouble.

With a roar that rattled the hills Cal picked up his giant
feet and crashed them down. With one stride he covered half
the valley. With the next step he covered another quarter,
with the third step, an eighth.

Endril slashed behind him with a knife to keep gnolls at
bay. Bith was screaming a blue streak, using some of Cal's
oaths, and Hathor was still biting Backbreaker as they tum-
bled on the ground. "Help is on the way!" the elf sang in a
voice that pierced the wind.

"Helppppppp!!!!!!!!!!" Bith squawled.

Endril looked down me valley again. Cal had arrived at die

OUTCASTS            173

first wall of Cairngorm. But instead of towering over it. he
had to hop. Endril peered and blinked. Something was wrong.

Cal was shrinking. It was hard to tell, with so strange a
perspective and looking down a hill at a wall, but the boy
was definitely not ninety feet tall any more. He was still taller
than the castle, but be had to put a hand on the wall to hop
over it as a shepherd would vault a fence. Cal raced up the
slope, covering less ground with every step. Endril groaned.
At this rate he'd be normal-sized when he arrived. What had
happened? Had Endril's arrow awakened the Cal inside the
giant's body and negated the magic? Had pain countered the
spell? Or was it simply wearing off? Whatever the cause,
Endril prayed to his woodland gods that he hurry.

Cal climbed the hillside in ten-foot leaps. Endril sang
again, and Backbreaker looked up from where he was maul-
ing Hathor. Suddenly the giant shoved Hathor free. Here was
something worth fighting. The traitor gave a bawl that pierced
eardrums as he raised his hands high.

Cal was puffing when he arrived. He was still abnormally
tall, as tall as Backbreaker. He was obviously befiiddled as
to exactly what was going on. But the boy held the sword as
if it were a talisman. He faced the fearsome blood-soaked
Backbreaker squarely.

The stone giant shrieked and leapt full at the boy. Cal
sucked a deep breath, threw his arms back, and brought the
sword forward-

With one mighty crack the runesword cleft the stone giant
in half from pointed head to pointed crotch,

Backbreaker, it seemed, had no blood in him, but rather
bile like molten metal. As his stone-cased body split a gout
of liquid fire pinwheeled into the air. A gobbet splashed onto
Cal's sleeve and immediately set it on fire. Molten caustic
dribbled down the shank of the runesword and burned his
gloves. More acid sizzled onto the ground, etching a hole in
the flint slope and crisping the grass. The two halves of the
body collapsed together and began to bum, fierce and hot as
a blacksmith's forge, too hot to watch.

Cal dropped the runesword and frantically stripped off his
horsehide gloves. Gnolls howled and slugs gibbered in fright
at the flames. Endril slashed with his knife to get clear and

174

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

to Bith's side. Hathor, exhausted and bloody, managed to roll
over and sit up. The trolls holding Bith stood dumbfounded.

Then Cal himself howled. He had picked up the pommel
of the sword. It had no blade, only a melted hunk no longer
than his fingers. "Oh. NO!"

The pause that followed the giant's destruction lasted only
a moment. The remains of Backbreaker made a bright and
cheery blaze that shrank rapidly. The gnolls grunted queries
among themselves. The slugs shuffled around the helpless
Hathor. The trolls retained their grasp on Bith so she could
not flee.

Endril summed up the situation. The trolls were the   threat.
There were more man ten of them, and they had Bith.   Endril
addressed them in their own tongue. "Will you loose   the
woman now? Schlein is gone, his army scattered. You   have
no one to ransom her to."

The leader of the trolls, a tall beast with yellow fangs and
finger bones on a thong around his neck, glanced down into
the valley. The Dark Army was still in chaos, but not as badly
as they had been five minutes ago. Knots of black monsters,
whipped by their superiors, advanced towards the wall.
Someone had raised a few standards before the only standing
tent. The valley floor might be littered with dead, and many
black trails led back towards the now-distant Mistwall, but
there were scores of enemies left. The troll chief nodded that
way and barked, "We take her there. They pay us."

Endril nicked blood from his short knife. "She's one of
us- She stays."

The troll leader glanced behind Endril. Hathor was on his
feet, weaving and weaponless. Cal had thrown down the stub
of the runesword. He hunted for another, but found none.
Bith was on her back with at least five hairy feet pressing her
flat.
The troll chief laughed harshly. "We kill you easy. Eat
your livers."

Endril took a step forward. Bith squirmed and clawed at a
trollish foot. Cal drew his dagger and handed Hathor his
bloody axe. The two limped to join the elf. The three stal-
warts stood together again, if only for a short time. The trolls
hefted their clubs and spears and grinned at the easy prey.

Endril spit out one word between his teeth. "Try."

OUTCASTS              175

The wind flickered around them as they all stood frozen.
It was a rising wind with a howl in its teeth.

Or was it the wind?

Cal glanced up the slope towards the castle Cairngorm. He
put a tattered and bumed sleeve to his forehead to wipe his
eyes. The howl grew louder, more articulate, separate yet
united.

Cal roared with laughter and the trolls frowned.

"Look!" the weary boy called. "Look there! Oho! Look!"

CHAPTER

12

Howling, shouting, banging their swords against their shields,
cheering, singing, crying, the people of Cairngorm charged
down the hill. They were fewer now, not many more than a
hundred, but they came in a wave as if a thousand. Their
noise was a war cry and a hymn and a shout of joy all rolled
into one.

The sight of them decided the gnolls and slugs. With a
whine and a squeal they bolted down the slope for the wall.

The trolls argued among themselves at this new turn. Half
of the party watched for only a second, then turned and fled.
Three others held Bith down as the leader barked. The troll
next to him argued some point and was struck in the face. In
that moment Endril leapt. One clean swipe of his knife opened
the chief's throat. He died gurgling. The other three picked
up their feet and ran. They didn't get far. The forefront of
the Cairngormers' charge, the youngest and fleetest, overtook
them and cut them to pieces.

By now the remnants of the Dark Army in the valley had
noticed the charge, and with it all ambition fled. Ravaged by
a giant, deprived of their leader, denied the safety of the
Mistwall, and now attacked anew by a relentless and revital-

176

OUTCASTS              177
ized enemy, they broke. Throwing weapons to the wind and
knocking down their brothers, the Dark Army left the field a
scattered rabble. The thin trails-leading to the Mistwall be-
came a solid flood. At their heels came human men and
women fighting for their native soil. They watered it now
with alien blood.

The four champions of Vili watched the charge go by with
immeasurable relief. Hathor fell over backwards, the last
dregs of his awesome strength gone. Cal soon joined him on
the ground. Bith was already there, and she made no effort
to rise. And so even Endril sat down cross-legged with his
friends. The air was cool and clear and quiet.

Hathor the troll lay on his back and mopped blood from
his face with what was left of his peasant's tunic. Then he
rummaged under his shirt and drew forth a dark root of some
kind. Spitting on it to knock off the flecks of blood, he bit
off a huge chunk and began to munch methodically. He
counted the colors of the twilight sky.

Caltus Talienson, ex-master swordsmen, picked up the stub
of the runesword. It had cooled, but it looked more like a
melted candle than a sword. There was about nine inches of
blade intact. He tapped the end against a rock to see if it
broke. It didn't. With a sigh he brought out a whetstone and
experimented with sharpening what blade was left.

Bith of the Lost Lands, daughter of Morea, straightened
her wide yellow belt with the devil's head belt buckle. She
rearranged the dozen pouches, buttoning down their tops
or drawing their strings tight. She tucked the silver wand
into her belt until it felt right. Then she pulled out a bone
comb and tugged at the burrs and sticks in her glossy black
hair.

Endril the elf set his crooked sword and his hands on his
lap. He closed his eyes, let his face relax, and began a so-
norous song that barely registered on human ears.

And so Erin Barinsdotter round them a while later, when
the last of the Dark Army had been dispatched or driven
beyond the Mistwall. Erin too crouched down. She regarded
each of them in turn with her open and honest blue eyes.

Finally she said, "What happened?"

No one spoke and she repeated the question. Twice.

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

178

Cal put down his stone and sighed deeply. "That's a
good question. I don't think I know. The last thing I remem-
ber . . ."

"We thought you were dead," Bith said. "I'm glad you
weren't- . . ."
Slowly, piece by piece, the story was put together there on
the sunny slope below the ruins of Castle Cairngorm. Bith
explained how her already-augmented enlarge spell must have
been farther augmented by Cal's holding the runesword—or
something. Endril speculated that either Vili had seized con-
trol of Cal's enormous body, or Cal's mind couldn't function
well under the strain of running such a large form—or some-
thing. Hathor mentioned that Backbreaker was no giant, not
with that fire inside him. He was—something else—the heat
of which had been enough to slag even the magical rune-
sword, which in turn had been the only thing capable of cut-
ting his stony hide. Hathor guessed their traitorous partner
had been a demon, honey-tongued and hollow-hearted. Bith
asked about this "price" on her head, and Endril replied he
didn't know for sure: he'd heard it bandied about by the trolls
at some point. Presumably Schlein had put out a bounty after
Bith demeaned him in front of his followers. Exactly what he
wanted with Bim no one knew, Bith included.

They all agreed they would be crowbait had not the Caim-
gormers returned. Erin explained that they had just van-
quished the foes m the cellars and escaped out a back tunnel
when the Mistwall receded and they decided to return for a
look. She thanked Cal profusely for that, since it seemed the
Mistwall would be held at bay for some time now, maybe a
few more years even, and they could remain and possibly
find some permanent solution, or at least a decent place to
retreat to. Cal said he couldn't take credit for much. He didn't
remember a lot of it—as a giant his mind had been full of
wonder and glory and strength but not a lot of sense.

Sometime during the discussion. Castle Cairngorm gave a
quiet groan and slipped over the edge of the ravine. It shat-
tered with a quiet huff and cloud of dust at the bottom. The
rock shelf was left bare. Erin said the castle had been falling
down for years anyway. The warrior woman left them after
that to tend to wounded and start fires for some supper. The
four companions were alone again.

OUTCASTS             179

Cal asked Hathor, "Don't those wounds hurt?"
The troll peered at his shoulders and forearms and hands,

which were covered with more seeping gashes than skin.

"Not much. Yours."

"1 don't have—-" Then Cal noticed that yes, he too was
riddled with them, including a bee sting-like welt on his fore-
head he couldn't explain. But there was little pain. Scratches
itched more than anything else. "These should be—"

"A reward," piped a tiny voice they all recognized, "for
a sterling performance."

Cal held up the stub of runesword so they all could see.
Vili's tiny face was like frost on the blade. A long face with
a forked beard and mustache and long drawn eyebrows. A
tricky face, like a fox's.
"This is our reward!" Cal asked. "A balm for wounds
suffered in battle? We got them on your behalf."

"You fought on your own behalf," the tiny god told him.
"We only demanded you destroy the sword. Good work."

"You're free with your compliments but little else," Bith
chimed in. "Where's our big reward? Remember. 'Anything
you want?' "

"Well . . ." squeaked Vili, "We can not grant just any-
thing right now—"

"Nothing, he means," croaked Hathor.

"—We have not a lot of power remaining. The channel
through die sword hath drained us. We fade already ..."

It was true, his face was winking out like a reflection on a
cloudy poof.

Endril said, "Convenient, how he fades when we have de-
mands."

Cal shook the sword pommel. "That's for sure. Hey, you
weasly little crumb. You stay right—"

Vili was gone.

"I'd like to^>e giant around him," Cal said, "and stomp
him into the ground."

"Next time we drink him," Hathor said, "then piss him
out onto fire."

Bith giggled and covered her mouth. Cal and Hathor
laughed a deep belly laugh. Endril smiled.

"He'll be back soon enough, I warrant," the elf said.

180

RUNESWORD VOLUME ONE

"Remember he mentioned swords'? This was only the first.
They'll be others, and he'll be after us to destroy them too."

"Fat chance," said Cal. He held up the stub of a sword
and then threw it away in disgust. It clanged tar down the
slope. "I just wish we had something to show for all this
besides scars."

Bith pointed a slim and dirty finger. "Cal, what's that green
thing sticking out of your shirt front?"

Cal tugged at it. "This? I don't know. What is it?" He
tugged at the green cloth and it came free, a lump stitched
with red, "Why it's—"
"Your father's banner!" Bith cried.

It was. Cal held the flag up. It was not large, only two feet
by three, and simply made- A red eagle took off for the sky
with a red fish in its beak, all against a green background.

"But how did I get this?" the boy asked.

Endril replied, "You must have picked it up from the ban-
ners before Schlein's tent. Yes, I remember seeing you stoop
for something amidst your rampage."

Cal hung onto the flag. It snapped in the fresh wind like a
real sea eagle, proud and free and glad to be back in the right
hands.

Bith said, "There you are, Cal, there's the best something
you could ask to carry away."

Cal couldn't speak. He hugged the banner to his chest and
put his head down. Everyone else was silent for a moment.

Finally it was Bith who said, "Not bad for a stableboy.
Few of them have their own personal banners to carry into
battle."

Cal cleared his throat. His voice was still husky as he said,
"And you're still a princess, even without an entourage."

Bith lifted her hands. "No entourage? Look at me. Sur-
rounded by ancient and learned elves, sturdy, loyal trolls, and
seasoned warriors. One of each, anyway."

"Yes, an unlikely entourage," Endril said. "A deposed
princess, an errant knight, a gentle troll, a lost elf. Four more
disparate beings I doubt you could find in this worid, yet look
at us. We've learned to work together and laugh together, to
survive, to trust one another—'tis no mean feat. And we had
one thing correct from the very start. We were meant to be

OUTCASTS            181

four. Like the seasons, like the winds, like the quadrants of
the sky. No more, no less."

Cal stood up. He rocked a moment on his feet, but finally
stood steady. "And where are we four for next?"

The others stood up, Hathor with help. Bith replied, "I'm
not leaving this village until I've had a bath."

"Of course, your highness," Cal quipped. "And your en-
tourage will be glad to fetch you hot water. We can use a few
days to replace our tackle too. I need a new sword, and we
must get Hathor some real clothes instead of tho&e scarecrow
rags." The troll grinned and poked Cal in the shoulder with
a knotty finger. "But where then?"

Endril stroked his chin. "There's a forest to the north of
here, a beech forest, not far from a waterfall and a small
village. Lovely to see this time of year. Very peaceful."

Cal glanced at the others and winked. "And when, Endril
old friend, were you last at this oh-so-lovely village?"

Endril returned his hand to his chin. "It would have been
some seasons ago, perhaps . . . two hundred and fifty?"

Cal, Bith, and Hathor all nodded. Then together they said,
"Why not?"

About the Author

Clayton Emery is 36 years old, happily married with a
small son and a wife in medical school. He has been a dish-
washer, a carpenter, a zookeeper, a farmhand, a surveyor, a
teacher, and a volunteer firenghter, among other things. He
writes computer manuals for a living and fiction when he can.
His books include The 4D Funhouse with Eari Wajenberg;

me Tales of Robin Hood series; and a forthcoming murder
mystery, A Man on a Flying Horse. A displaced Yankee, he
currently lives in Cincinnati.