Free Ursus of Ultima Thule by Avram Davidson Page A

without bruise or blood.
    At length, when they had begun to repeat themselves and no chantings or whistlings could prevail upon them to enact any new pattern, Mered-delfin drummed them back and dancing they went, throwing up their root-thin arms they danced backward upon their root-thin legs, and climbed back into their box at last and closed its lid upon them.
    Thus the dancing mandrakes. As for the watching mandrakes, they remained in the outer court and would shriek, beshrew, if so much as an unbidden shadow fell. And there they muttered and watched.
    The chief witcherer licked his mouth and wiped his arm across his sweat-slick face and quickly rolled his eyes. The other two were not looking at him. Swiftly he set his countenance into its accepted lines. He softly clicked his fingernail against the side of the drum. They looked up toward him.
    “It is as we have seen, it is as I have said, they have enacted the lineaments of the dream and mimed for us the finding and sounding of All-Caller, the great fey horn — ”
    The king grimaced and showed his sharp teeth. As he leaned forward on his hands and arms he seemed to crouch on all fours. “And where, then,” he asked, “is the great good which you said this dream portended for me?”
    Mered-delfin parted his thin beard from lips and mouth and dared to grin. The very daring of the deed made the king draw back, somewhat relax the tenseness of his pose. Witch Mered thrust out his hand and arm and described a quarter-circle in the air and let the hand extend two fingers in a point. “Can it be that the sounding of All-Caller has lured from across the all-circling sea an enemy who is not to be named? And with him a son begat in treacherous exile? Lured them thence and it must be alone?”
    His master’s grimace grew into a snarl. His eyes blazed red. He seemed like a creature of the forest about to hurl itself from its den. He gave off the rank and bitter smell of denizen and den. “I shall kill them!” His voice rose into a howl. “I shall have them killed! They shall be killed for me and before me!” His tongue lolled out of his mouth. “Limbs broken” — the howl prolonged itself — “impaled —
    “Slayer of Bull Mammonts —
    “ — flayed —
    “Great Dire Wolf —
    “ — disemboweled — ”
    The last word hung upon the air. The Orfas panted. His sides heaved. He flung up his head and again he howled. In this howl there were no words, but it rang with a lust for vengeance long delayed. In his narrow pen Arntat heard it and stopped in his mindless pacing and hearkened to it and his arms moved slightly and he stood still. The nain-thralls heard it in their tunnels and turned their massy heads on their short necks. Servants heard it and shivered and tremored. Kingsmen felt flesh pucker and hair rise and let their eyes roll to each other, and almost they clean forgot the tales of the ill-struck king, cloistered and shabby and sick and old.
    “The Orfas,” they whispered to one another.
    “The wolf! The wolf!
    “King Orfas! Great Wolf! King Wolf!”
    “ — King Wolf — ”
    • • •
    Long the wolf-king lay upon his side, panting, wet with sweat. Then he jerked his head and in two silent bounds Mered warlock was crouching at his head. Said the king, “Not kill him?”
    Said the witcherer, “Not yet.”
    Said the wolf-king, “When, then?”
    Said the sage, “When the curse is canceled. When iron is well.”
    The king said no word. His eyes rolled up and his lids rolled down. He nodded. He touched his sage’s hand. His queen kneeled beside him and he touched her face. The words last spoken hung upon the air.
    And the words unspoken, too.
    Arnten and his father were allowed to toil together; one of the guards had said with a guffaw that the two of them were barely equal to one nain. Iron was the nains’ heritage and though they had been used to it in all its workings at their own speed and though timed toil was inhospitable to them, still the