Whitemantle by Robert Carter Page A

man, a beggar. He was filled with hope that this would be a sufficient armour in which to hide.
    He could feel the wrath of the mob. A weird pressure on the nape of his neck made the hairs there stand up and caused him to turn. Picking his way among the filth that clogged the dry moat was the Fellow in tattered grey garb. His head was cowled within a deep hood, and it was tilted in the manner that Will had seen each time he had come under the sightless scrutiny of a Fellow.
    A shout came from behind. ‘This way!’
    Will turned to see the first forerunners of the mob coming into the yard. They stopped in their tracks. Bigger men joined them, sweating and breathless. They would not approach their prey, though they were roused for blood, for an Elder was coming.
    ‘Kill! Kill!’ some fool shouted, hoping that a chant would be taken up, but it failed: there was no one to kill, save an old beggarman and a brooding Fellow who was now rising up menacingly out of the moat.
    They stared at the Fellow as he came forward. He was a huge man. By now a dozen helpers had closed off the yard and three Vigilants were led forward. The men in belted black shirts who carried cudgels and clubs deferred to the Elder as if he had the power of life and death over them. But still they looked with unavoidable respect upon the tattered Fellow who came to meet them.
    ‘Who comes?’ the Fellow boomed.
    His way of speaking was strange, his voice somewhat lisping, though deep and laced with a quiet kind of menace. When he gathered himself he was a figure to behold, the rends in his robes showing glimpses of a frame of tremendous power.
    Unseen now, Will backed up the steps of the chapterhouse. Above him, the brass fist came to life on the door and splayed grasping fingers from which he was forced to draw away.
    One of the Vigilants was ushered forward, but the big Fellow raised a denying hand to him.
    ‘Who comes?’ he repeated. ‘Who comes to disturb the peace of this House?’
    One of the black-clad men spat. ‘Yaaah, Hell-damned Grey Robes!’
    ‘There!’ shouted another of the Vigilants’ sighted helpers. He pointed towards Will, whose bewilderment at the various competing orders within the Fellowship was not helping him make sense of his danger. ‘That’s what we’ve come for. Him. That’s a bone demon, sitting on your stair! A bone demon from the Spire!’
    The Vigilants tilted their heads, their attention focussing now on Will. The big Fellow took a short step forward, which made the others draw back. ‘There is no bone demon here. Only an old man whom I hope will yet be persuaded to our purpose.’
    The leader of the Yellow Robes sniffed the air then threw up his hands. ‘Magic!’ he said. ‘Foul magic has been done here! The demon has taken on new form!’
    They all looked towards Will.
    ‘Let us fall upon the beggar!’ one of the mob shouted.
    ‘Aye!’
    They began to surge forward, but the ragged Fellow did not move aside. Instead, he stood four-square and let slip from inside his sleeve a heavy chain. Raising it on high he swept an arc clear before him. Then he said in a stolid but commanding voice, ‘It may be that this old man already belongs! You may believe that approaching him is forbidden !’
    The Vigilants drew back from the death-dealing chain that circled and swung over their heads. It filled all the yardwith the soughing of stirred air, and no one dared come within its compass for fear that it too was touched by the magic the Vigilant had smelled. It was plain to the stupidest that, in so narrow a space, a chain in the hands of a man like this might easily murder a dozen of them if they tried to take the recruit away from him.
    ‘You may imagine that we are angry with you,’ the Vigilant Elder said in a high, wheedling voice. ‘One might ask: who is this Fellow? And where does he belong?’
    The hooded head turned to face the questioner. ‘And some may hear that he is Fellow Eudas, and that he belongs to