Free Wings in the Night by Robert E. Howard Page A

mud, set in the reedy breast of the fen.
    A woman greeted him from the open door and Bran’s somber eyes narrowed with a dark suspicion. The woman was not old, yet the evil wisdom of ages was in her eyes; her garments were ragged and scanty, her black locks tangled and unkempt, lending her an aspect of wildness well in keeping with her grim surroundings. Her red lips laughed but there was no mirth in her laughter, only a hint of mockery, and under the lips her teeth showed sharp and pointed like fangs.
    “Enter, master,” said she, “if you do not fear to share the roof of the witch-woman of Dagon-moor!”
    Bran entered silently and sat him down on a broken bench while the woman busied herself with the scanty meal cooking over an open fire on the squalid hearth. He studied her lithe, almost serpentine motions, the ears which were almost pointed, the yellow eyes which slanted curiously.
    “What do you seek in the fens, my lord?” she asked, turning toward him with a supple twist of her whole body.
    “I seek a Door,” he answered, chin resting on his fist. “I have a song to sing to the worms of the earth!”
    She started upright, a jar falling from her hands to shatter on the hearth.
    “This is an ill saying, even spoken in chance,” she stammered.
    “I speak not by chance but by intent,” he answered.
    She shook her head. “I know not what you mean.”
    “Well you know,” he returned. “Aye, you know well! My race is very old—they reigned in Britain before the nations of the Celts and the Hellenes were born out of the womb of peoples. But my people were not first in Britain. By the mottles on your skin, by the slanting of your eyes, by the taint in your veins, I speak with full knowledge and meaning.”
    Awhile she stood silent, her lips smiling but her face inscrutable.
    “Man, are you mad,” she asked, “that in your madness you come seeking that from which strong men fled screaming in old times?”
    “I seek a vengeance,” he answered, “that can be accomplished only by Them I seek.”
    She shook her head.
    “You have listened to a bird singing; you have dreamed empty dreams.”
    “I have heard a viper hiss,” he growled, “and I do not dream. Enough of this weaving of words. I came seeking a link between two worlds; I have found it.”
    “I need lie to you no more, man of the North,” answered the woman. “They you seek still dwell beneath the sleeping hills. They have drawn apart, farther and farther from the world you know.”
    “But they still steal forth in the night to grip women straying on the moors,” said he, his gaze on her slanted eyes. She laughed wickedly.
    “What would you of me?”
    “That you bring me to Them.”
    She flung back her head with a scornful laugh. His left hand locked like iron in the breast of her scanty garment and his right closed on his hilt. She laughed in his face.
    “Strike and be damned, my northern wolf! Do you think that such life as mine is so sweet that I would cling to it as a babe to the breast?”
    His hand fell away.
    “You are right. Threats are foolish. I will buy your aid.”
    “How?” the laughing voice hummed with mockery.
    Bran opened his pouch and poured into his cupped palm a stream of gold.
    “More wealth than the men of the fen ever dreamed of.”
    Again she laughed. “What is this rusty metal to me? Save it for some white-breasted Roman woman who will play the traitor for you!”
    “Name me a price!” he urged. “The head of an enemy—”
    “By the blood in my veins, with its heritage of ancient hate, who is mine enemy but thee?” she laughed and springing, struck catlike. But her dagger splintered on the mail beneath his cloak and he flung her off with a loathsome flit of his wrist which tossed her sprawling across her grass-strewn bunk. Lying there she laughed up at him.
    “I will name you a price, then, my wolf, and it may be in days to come you will curse the armor that broke Atla’s dagger!” She rose and came