Octobers Baby Read Free

arc. It cut air-then flesh and bone. A hand fell beside the fire, kicking up little sprays of dust, fingers writhing like the legs of a dying spider. A scream of pain and rage echoed through the forest.
    But Eanred’s stroke came too late. Fingers had brushed his throat. The world grew Arctically cold. He leaned slowly like a tree cut through. All sensation abandoned him. As he fell, he turned, saw first the dark outline of the being that had stunned him, the startledfaces of the others, then the severed hand. The waxy, monstrous thing was crawling toward its owner... Everything went black. But he tumbled into dark-ness with a silent chuckle. Fate had given him one small victory. He was able to push his blade through the hand and lever it into the fire.
     
    VI) His heart is heavy, but he perseveres
    Burla, with the baby quiet in the bundle on his back, reached the Master’s campsite as the last embers were dying. False dawn had begun creeping over the Kapenrung Mountains. He cursed the light, moved more warily. Horsemen had been galloping about since he had left the city. All his nighttime skills had been required to evade them.
    Troops had been to the campsite, he saw. There had been a struggle. Someone had been injured. The Master’s blanket lay abandoned, a signal. He was well but had been forced to flee. Burla’s unhappiness was exceeded only by his fear that he wasn’t competent to fulfill the task now assigned him.
    His work, which should have been completed, had just begun. He glanced toward the dawn. So many miles to bear the baby through an aroused countryside. How could he escape the swords of the tall men?
    He had to try.
    Days he slept a little, and traveled when it was safe. Nights he hurried through, moving as fast as his short legs would carry him, only occasionally pausing at a Wesson farm to steal food or milk for the child. He expected the poor tiny thing to die any time, but it was preternaturally tough.
    The tall men failed to catch him. They knew he was about, knew that he had had something to do with the invasion of the Queen’s tower. They did turn the country over and shake out a thousand hidden things. The time came when, high in the mountains, he trudged wearilyinto the cave where the Master had said to meet if they had to split up.
     
    VII) Their heads nod, and from their mouths issue lies
    An hour after the kidnapping, someone finally thought to see if Her Majesty was all right. They didn’t think much of their Queen, those Nordmen. She was a foreigner, barely of childbearing age, and so unobtrusive that no one spared her a thought. Queen and nurse were found in deep, unnatural sleep. And there was a baby at the woman’s breast.
    Once again Castle Krief churned with confusion. What had been seen, briefly, as a probable Wesson attempt to interrupt the succession, was obviously either a great deal less, or more, sinister. After a few hints from the King himself, it was announced that the Prince was sleeping well, that the excitement had been caused by a guard’s imagination.
    Few believed that. There had been a switch. Parties with special interests sought the physician and midwife who had attended the birth, but neither could be found-till much later. Their corpses were discovered, mutilated against easy recognition, in a slum alley. Royal disclaimers continued to flow.
    The King’s advisers met repeatedly, discussed the possible purpose of the invasion, the stance to be taken, and how to resolve the affair. Time passed. The mystery deepened. It became obvious that there would be no explanations till someone captured the winged man, the dwarf a guard had seen go monkeying down the ivied wall, or one of the strangers who had been camped in the Gudbrandsdal. The dwarf was working his way east toward the mountains. No trace of the others turned up. The army concentrated on the dwarf. So did those for whom possession of the Crown Prince meant leverage.
    The fugitive slipped away. Nothing