Tales From High Hallack, Volume 2 Page 10

  Nancee was half-conscious—the pain in her shoulder where the great teeth gripped her and the bruising of her body dragged along the ground made her sick—but she held onto the small portion of awareness she had. Surely one of the men back there would use an arrow to better purpose soon—

  For the third time the battle cry of a cat rang out, and this time from close to her, from the air, as if some furred warrior had grown wings.

  “Two-legs, let the good horse free you and then join me here!”

  Somehow that reached her in spite of the pain of her body and the near blankness of her mind brought about by Dik’s blow. She was freed suddenly from that crushing of her shoulder, and she slumped, unable to move. Then she could have screamed, perhaps she did, as something tangled fiercely in her hair and pulled up her head. There was a furred body behind her; she caught only a glimpse or two of it as it endeavored to keep its hold in her hair.

  Somehow she got to her knees, and that torturing grasp on her hair loosened. She flailed out with one arm, and her hand struck against a stone-firm pillar seemingly covered with damp hide. Grasping at that, she strove to come erect, though she had to lean against the foreleg of the Northhorse to do that.

  “Two-legs, there is no time for resting. Get you up!”

  Nancee wavered along Boldhoof’s side, and her hand hit against one of the panniers which had still beladen the horse. Apparently the raiders had not stripped their prize. That voice in her head provided the energy she must have. As it impressed “Climb” on her, Nancee strove to fight her way up over the pannier onto the broad back. There was a flash of gray-brown and the young prairiecat was there also, crowding against her.

  Boldhoof went into a rocking trot and then such a gallop as Nancee would never have expected the heavy animal could produce. She lay on that back, her fingers laced in the belts which held the panniers, while the cat flattened itself beside her.

  “The voiceless horses of those have run,” it cast into her mind. “This good mountain stepped on two of the bad two-legs—perhaps neither will rise again. This is better than the wagon—but we shall find that, two-legs, and Frog Hunter shall be among the bold ones—with another name—you shall see. I am Rider of the Mountain that runs—”

  She managed to raise her head a fraction. There was the flow of air about them; truly Boldhoof was running now. Nancee listened for a sound of pursuit; she was not able as yet to look back. Surely Dik would not let them go so easily!

  “Dik—” she said aloud, forgetting the difference now between mindspeech and that from the lips. “He will follow.”

  There was an odd feeling in her mind. If perhaps the cub laughed so among his peers, that was what she sensed now.

  “The loud two-legs was stepped upon by this great mountain.”

  To be stepped upon by Boldhoof—could she wish a more successful fate for Dik Romlee? Her mind still seemed hazy, but she held onto the fact that they did seem to be free and moving at a wind-raising rate of speed. But how had Boldhoof had the luck to break loose just at that right moment?

  “This one called upon the Mountain.” There was a burst of pride and satisfaction in the mindtouch from the cat. “The lesser horses were told to run. Run they did. But the Mountain came with Rider!”

  She shook her head a little and winched at the resulting flash of pain. That the cats of the clans talked with both man and mount was well known. However, those furred and hoofed ones were familiar from birth with each other and with the humans of the tribes. Boldhoof came from a country where horses were truly dumb beasts.

  “Only because two-legs have no speech either,” returned the cat crisply. “Ask now what this one thinks.”

  Tentatively Nancee denied her headache and her uneasiness at being a part of this flight. She tried to reach out to contact Boldhoof.

  There was a sensation of pleasure and freedom, of being a mistress of herself—and with it a small, almost humble touch for Nancee. The girl pulled herself up higher and could not help but stare at the large maned head before her, twining her fingers harder into the straps of the panniers. The ears on the head twitched, then slanted directly back as if pointing to her.

  She filled her own mind, that part of it she hoped would be a passage to Boldhoof, with thanks and return pleasure.

  “Now”—that was the cat cutting in impatiently— “we go to the clan. This Mountain will carry us safely and we can find the trail where there is no reason to hide. Let all see Rider and no more will he be a kitten-cubbling to wagon-ride!”

  Nancee laughed shakily. They had forded a river where the water had risen high enough to wet the pannier and Boldhoof’s barrel, and the whole of the wide-open country lay before them. To go to the clan—why not? She had no kin—

  “Save Rider,” the cat cut in sharply.

  “And Boldhoof,” she agreed. “Two who fight very well and are valiant company. Agreed—let us now seek this clan of yours, Rider of a Moving Mountain!”

  The Silent One

  Chilled to the Bone (1991) Mayfair Games

  There was a chill wind, the first thrust of fall. Here in the city street there were no leaves to blow, only the urban discards of sticky bits of food wrappers.

  The woman who had walked so slowly along was seeking house numbers, and many of those were no longer displayed. Coming at last to the steps of a half basement she saw below a window with a sign which glittered, a sign made of the very product it advertised — large, many-colored beads.

  Marta Hartmann looked at the card in her hand and then to the sign. In her worry-beset mind the two had no possible connection. Yet at that moment she was willing to take any chance.

  In fact she was down the two steps into the area way, her hand on the latch of the door with a spurt of determination. There was a second sign there — OPEN.

  Somehow she was not surprised to hear the jangle of a bell when she did just that, a sound which pushed her back some forty years to when she had gone with her grandmother to Miss Worley’s yarn shop.

  The day outside was gloomy enough but inside here there was the brilliance and light of a treasure house. Beads, indeed! They hung in strands on the walls, and they were heaped in divided trays on the counters. While inside glass-fronted display cases were beads put to use, formed into jewelry, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, a show of what was barbaric wealth of every possible color and shape.

  For a moment this display, which was far too extensive to be really seen in detail, even pulled her thoughts away from her errand here. She was drawn without being conscious of it to peer into the nearest case, pulling impatiently — really trifocals were the limit while shopping — at her glasses.

  “African trade beads —”

  She was startled, her reaction too quick. In fact for a moment she felt a touch of the vertigo which came with stress and which she fought so fiercely.

  A woman had come out of the inner room. She was quite unlike what Marta had expected. Not the gypsy-like figure her mind had built from what hung and lay about.

  For a long moment Marta simply stared at that tall, dark-suited person who might better be met behind the desk of a vice president of a bank, a most conservative bank. Then her total astonishment found voice:

  “Ilse, Ilse Bergen, it is you!”

  The woman dropped a string of beads on the counter as she looked at Marta as piercingly as she would at one of those globes she had just put down.

  “Yes, I am Ilse Bergen but I don’t —” Then her voice changed from politeness into warmth. “But it is Marta! Marta Ferris!” Her two hands came out to Marta in the welcome they had always been quick to offer.

  Marta’s thin lips twisted in a grimace even as she met that grasp. “You didn’t really know me, did you, Ilse? Well, I don’t wonder. And it isn’t Marta Ferris any more — it’s Marta Hartmann. Which is why —”

  Now that the time had come somehow she had lost the words. Again she closed her eyes as those rows of beads hanging on the wall seemed to swin
g.

  “You — you are — this?” She broke loose from Ilse’s hold. The card which had guided her had been crumpled between their palms, now she shoved it at the other. Then she took fast grip on the edge of the nearest counter to steady herself.

  “Marta!” The hands were gone, and there was an arm around her shoulders.

  “I’ll be all right,” she managed to mouth, drawing on all her resources as she had so many times during the last weeks of sickness and sometimes sheer panic.

  Then she found herself safely away from those dangling strings of beads, seated in a chair, Ilse standing over her with a mug held out and the old imperious look on her face as if she would accept no denials.

  “Drink this.”

  Marta had to hold the mug in both hands she was shaking so, but she obediently sipped something which was neither coffee nor brandy as she had expected, but was warm and spicy and somehow soothing,

  “Now.” Ilse seated herself on another chair so closely that their knees were almost touching. “Drink that up.” She had the crumpled card in her fingers and glanced at it. “Where did you get this?”

  Marta swallowed another mouthful of the brew. The shaking was almost gone. She had glanced over the rim of the mug cautiously; she no longer saw spinning walls.

  “Esther Walters, she belongs to the quilting circle. She said —” Marta swallowed again. “Only I never thought that Dr. I. Haverling was you!”

  “Mrs. Walters — oh.” Ilse leaned back a fraction. “Yes, I remember Mrs. Walters. As for the Haverling, Marta, I was married, my husband died some years ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marta made what she knew was the weakest of replies to that.

  “If Mrs. Walters gave you this,” Ilse now flicked the edge of the card with one fingernail, “you must know what she called upon me for.”

  Marta put the mug on the edge of a table where there were small tools and trays of unstrung beads.

  “There was trouble,” she said slowly, “about some lost papers — her husband’s mother died very suddenly and they could find no record of investments which were very important. She said you were able to—to somehow sense where those were.”

  “And you did not dismiss what she said as nonsense, as well you might?” Ilse was watching her now very intently.

  “No. I — I have read of such things. I do believe that some people are able to —to help when there is no — no reasonable way for the ordinary person to accomplish something.”

  “I see,” Ilse nodded. “And now you have a need for help in such a way?”

  She was not going to cry, no, she could not let herself cry! But the tears came in spite of all her efforts, and after those her words spilled out so fast she was sure she was not making sense but she could not control them.

  “It’s Alexia — There’s something wrong. The doctor says she is perfectly well — but mostly I think she believes that I’m the one who should be — be given treatment! But I’ve seen it happen to her, Ilse, little by little, day by day. She’s changed — horribly. And it isn’t drugs — that’s what I thought at first, you always fear that these days. She just isn’t Alexia any more. Most of the time she isn’t. But other times — other times she is just as she used to be. I can’t let it go on like this anymore!”

  “Alexia is?”

  “My granddaughter — she’s only sixteen, Ilse. And she is all I have left. She was a darling, such a darling!”

  She had decided to explore the garden. It had been a show place once. And she went out longer and longer each day. But she no longer talked about what she was doing.

  Marta groped blindly in her purse for a wad of tissues and dabbed at her eyes. She did not want to face Ilse — how could she really explain after all? Perhaps it was she who was imagining things.

  “Marta, my dear, in what way has Alexia changed? Can you remember when it began?”

  Marta drew a deep breath. “I’ll try to make some sense.” She was giving that promise not only to Ilse but to herself. “Alexia’s parents, my son Robert and her mother, were killed in a plane crash when Alexia was three. Jonas was alive then, Jonas Hartmann, my husband. We took Alexia, she was the daughter we had never had and a delight to both of us. I think, I am sure, we made her happy.

  “When Jonas died it — it was difficult for both of us. That was three years ago. But we had each other and that was a comfort. Then, about six months ago, Jonas’ great grandmother died. She was Lilly Hartmann, the wife of Herwarth Hartmann.

  “I don’t suppose many people remember about him now. He came over from Germany and made a fortune. They used to call him lucky, almost everything he tried in the way of business turned out well. He was also a very proud man, one who always insisted that his family in Germany had been of consequence at one time and it was his constant ambition to return the family to what he considered its rightful place. Back in about 1910, after he had made several millions, he took Lilly and his son Albert to Germany. He insisted that they visit an old castle there in which he believed the family had once lived. In fact he bought a kind of summer house, which was still partly intact, had it torn down, and all the stones numbered so it could be brought back here and rebuilt.

  “His pride almost ruined the family — he spent at least a million dollars building a huge mansion and then filled it with art works. He never knew it, but he was cheated on a lot of those purchases. Anyway he tried to make Albert into his idea of a proper heir and it didn’t work.

  “Albert ran away from home in his teens. He went out west and went into mining, married the daughter of a farmer and refused to have anything to do with his family. There was something behind it all which he never told anyone.

  “Herwarth Hartmann died and Lilly lived on and on — she was a hundred and one when she died. And for about fifty years, her last ones, she had lived as a recluse in that big house, most of it was closed up. The money, what was left of it, was a trust which passed to Jonas and so to Alexia and me. That, and that big useless house.

  “When the lawyers got in touch with us we came here to see about settling the estate. Mainly we came — well, because we wanted to get away from our home for awhile — I thought it might be good for both of us — I did.”

  Marta wiped her eyes again. Why couldn’t she stop this stupid crying?

  “It seemed to be good for Alexia. She was interested in the old house, and we spent a lot of time with appraisers. It was almost like a treasure hunt — we even found a forgotten wall safe with some very charming Victorian jewelry in it which I promised to Alexia. And after that she went hunting on her own for things. I never saw her so excited.

  “Then — then she changed. She had decided to explore the garden. It had been a showplace once. And she went out longer and longer each day. But she no longer talked about what she was doing. She in fact talked less and less. I wanted her to come into town with me, and she kept saying she had things to do. Then — then she went out at night!

  “I found her bed empty, I’d hunt her, I’d wait up. I tried to reason with her that it might be dangerous when I confronted her.

  “She — she was so angry. It was not like Alexia at all. We had always been on such good terms. I thought maybe she might be meeting someone. But we were strangers there, we never went to town except together and we had been so busy with the house that we had not tried to meet anyone but the lawyer and the appraisers when they came. I tried to follow her twice — it was as if she just disappeared!

  “Then I even asked Mrs. McCarthy, we had gotten her in to help us clear things out. Her mother had been cook for the Hartmanns in the old days and she knew something of the storerooms and the like. She — she said — Alexia — Alexia had been — caught!”

  “Caught?” queried Ilse.

  “That’s what she called it. There — it seemed there were old stories about some children — young people in the past — who acted as strangely as Alexia — some were from the town and had gone exploring on the estate — there wer
e stories, as there always are, about it being haunted. I think there was one little boy who just disappeared, though they searched for weeks. And a girl a little older than Alexia who had been gone for several days and when she was found — she had had some sort of a shock and had to be put in a hospital. There was even a relative of the Hartmanns who had come over from Germany back in the ‘30s, a young refugee who was going to stay with Lilly as a companion. She hung herself! Though they say it was because she had bad news about her people back home. Oh,” Marta squeezed the wad of tissue tighter into a ball. “People talked and there were all kinds of stories. It is silly to listen!”

  “Not always,” Ilse returned. “Some such rumors have more than just a grain of truth in them. Did Mrs. McCarthy also suggest that these various victims had the same attitude as Alexia?”

  “Yes. She said that those from the town, the boy and the girl, took to going off on their own, running away once or twice when their families refused to let them. I believe that the Restons actually locked their son up and he got out by climbing out of a window on the night he disappeared. Ilse — I don’t live with my Alexia any more, and I am frightened, so frightened —” Her voice trailed off. And then she fumbled in her purse and brought out a small plastic bag.

  “Yesterday Alexia was writing something, and I came into the room and spoke to her. She actually screamed and leaned forward over the paper she had been working on as if I were not to see it. Then she crumpled it up and swung around. She was wearing something, a string of beads, around her neck. I’d never seen them before. They had been hanging under her shirt and came out when she moved.

  “The string caught on the corner of the desk lid and broke. She — Ilse, she was like a mad thing, scrabbling around on the floor picking up those beads! And she yelled at me — words I did not even believe she knew — horrible words. She grabbed up all the beads — or she thought she had them all—and ran out of the room and up the stairs to lock herself in her bedroom and she refused to answer me. She was a totally different person. After she had gone I found these caught under the fringe of the rug.”