by Tanith Lee
‘He’s embarrassed to be a ghost, Peb Yuve. He’d have liked to fight with you, under your banner, as before.’
‘He would have been welcome. I thank you, Guri.’
‘Did I never say,’ said Lionwolf, ‘you sent him to his death?’
Like a cat silkily unsheathing its claws.
Both Peb Yuve and ghost Guri sat up. Then Yuve said, ‘If he was part of my vandal bands, I may have done. In a raid or fight, was it?’
‘It was when you sent him to fetch back my escaping mother. He told you he failed. That was because he had died.’
Peb thought. His eyes cunning, he looked at Lionwolf and said, ‘Yes, I remember that man – a brave man. I must have his name written on my banner staff: Guri.’
Lionwolf replied, ‘Perhaps he’d care for that. There now – he’s vanished suddenly. Self-conscious, as I explained.’
Later, as Peb went to his own tents to sleep, he glanced cautiously about him. The three or four seconds who accompanied him wondered at this, for no man of the alliance was presently hostile to them. Peb himself, one eye out for the invisible ghost, realized this other game Lionwolf had been playing was that of a son with his father. Olchibe history was full of such jests and mental tests that could wrong-foot you. So it did not worry Peb, he expected nothing else, and it was always wise to take care with the dead.
Guri though, now depressed, was down by the Ranjal cart. Here, whenever he was in the camp of the Gullahammer, he would patrol. Often he found her there too, the old sibulla. She was there tonight, sitting on the floor of the cart, miserable as an old boot.
‘What are you at?’
She did not look at him. ‘With lady,’ said Narnifa.
Guri knew her name, for she knew it. Undead telepathy. He had come to know much about her, not wanting to, like that, and trusted he was, to her, far more opaque.
‘Why don’t you go off to your grave, you silly old cow?’
‘Want here.’
‘Want, then.’
Morning always removed her, or it always had done. Guri had not been by to check for a while.
He noted Peb Yuve was now far from the Lionwolf tent. Guri winked out of one spot, and reappeared on the table.
The lamp had been doused. The lions lay across the doorway, and Lionwolf himself lay on the floor pillows. His eyes were wide open. Guri caught their red flash as they turned to him. How bright his shadow had been, too, this evening, for any who could perceive such things, like a dark phosphorescence on the tent wall. Lionwolf was stronger than ever, and less predictable.
‘You’ve been off two months or more,’ said Lionwolf. ‘Were you in a pleasurable place?’
‘Sometimes.’
Guri had run away after Lionwolf had met Peb Yuve. Once only had he returned, to inform Lionwolf that Saphay was now again missing. That time, Lionwolf had looked long at him, with eyes blue in daylight. Lionwolf had said, ‘She’s found some other protector.’ In his tone had been stubborn uninterest but also condemnation – prudish as Guri’s own response – worst of all, jealousy. As Guri knew, you must always recall that Lionwolf was eleven or twelve now, though a man of twenty-one years. Among the Olchibe, boy-men did not cleave to their mothers in this way, but then they grew up amongst men and learnt the ways of men. What males had this boy seen? A dead step-father and a fiend of a step-uncle, a rancid bit-slave, other Ranjallan oafs, and a god from hell. There had been Guri, too, and Guri had done his best with him. But Guri was – undead.
So, Guri had been bounding about the ice-wastes, flying up and trying to touch stars – which he never reached. Sometimes he slid perversely away once more into the ’tween-world, slew phantom foes, ate banquets. He had had intercourse there with a mera, grappling her mermaid tail in spasms of delight. She had bitten him and promised she would lay his egg – but all such matters grew vague when he came back into this sorry, totally physical world.
It was a fact: Guri was ashamed. Of not making a better job of Lionwolf’s upbringing, of teaching him so much of Olchibe ways that Peb was in thrall to him. Ashamed of having died.
‘Soon,’ said Lionwolf, after a lapse of a half hour, ‘we’ll cross into Ruk lands.’ One of the lions raised its head at his voice, then lowered it again. He preferred a chariot in battle, and already one pair of lions had died. These new ones, who also slept in his tent and fed from his hands, often lay up on the mammoth he rode only for recreation.
‘Into the Ruk, yes.’
‘Then we will take them, the villages, the cities, Ru Karismi itself. I’m sorry my mother won’t be there to see that. Perhaps she’ll suddenly arrive from wherever it is she’s gone. Do you know, Guri, my father … I mean my father, that one—’
‘Yes?’
‘I think he too – he’s gone away. He must have done, or wouldn’t I have seen him? Not even any more in a dream.’
‘Do you dream, Lionwolf? Your lions sleep, but you don’t.’
‘No, but I can if I wish.’
‘What about the woman coloured like ebony?’ asked Guri. He had been absent when the army was in Sham, but here and now the camp was rife with talk of her. He had glimpsed her, and goggled in disbelief. Nothing living should be so black. Her beauty was so extreme, to Guri she had seemed ugly. Despite that, he sensed, as no other quite did, Lionwolf’s vast lust for her. He had always had women as and when he liked. But this one he had not approached.
‘Who’s that?’ said Lionwolf.
Coy? Guri got up and stamped impatiently, as if his feet were cold, which now they never were.
‘You want her. Why not have her?’
‘She’s the Gullahammer chariot. Two thirds of the warriors have ridden her.’
Guri laughed. ‘But she’s God-made, isn’t she? In her case, whoring won’t change her.’
‘Perhaps he made her, that one,’ said Lionwolf, ‘to trap me after all.’
Guri considered this. It might be true. Zeth Zezeth – who could guess what he was at, his laval hand hidden. Something flickered oddly through Guri’s spirit-brain. His mind saw an especially fine constellation he had once rushed at – and missed. It had been shaped like a frog or a toad.
The young man lay there, looking unblinkingly at nothing now. An abrupt sympathy of long association led Guri over to squat beside him.
‘Go to sleep,’ said Guri. ‘Go on. I’ll watch.’
‘I’m not afraid to—’
‘Of course not. But sleep. Your old uncle’s here.’
‘Guri, I can do anything – or not, I don’t know. But this road I’m on is made of flames. Sometimes I look back and see the distance I’ve come. Or forward, and I see a light as if the earth burned. And sometimes I wonder what choice I have.’
‘No choice. Your kind – none.’
‘Great Gods,’ said Lionwolf softly, in the Olchibe tongue. ‘Amen.’ He turned on his side. Guri sat back, whistling, hearing the boy crying. Then the crying stopped. The young god slept.
Chillel stood before a Faz bivouac, her neck and wrists garlanded with rings and necklaces of eyes – Fazion war-jewelry. A few feet away, three Fazions had set about killing each other for her sake.
Her face was sober, neither distraught nor glad. It was anyway rather hard to be sure of her expressions; her darkness and her beauty hid them to a great extent.
Other Faz circled the duelling ground. At their pickets, horsazin whinnied shrilly for the lost sea.
THREE
The Gullahammer flowed south – a south, that was, which tended west, for there lay the vital centres of the Ruk, the larger villages, the minor cities – ultimately Ru Karismi itself.
The top of the continent, as map makers had partly recorded, was in the shape of a bloated and unwieldy sword. The Northlands formed its hand grip; to the east the land shelved away until The Spear provided a pathetically whittled end-piece of hilt. Westward, the other portion of the hilt, curving back as if to protect the giant fist that might hold it, cupped in the Rukarian cities
of Thase Jyr and Kandexa. To these, the bulk of the ships and jalees of the Fazions and Vorms, some twelve thousand men, had set off, hauling their vessels overland by means of wooden runners, axed trees, and sorcery. Others sailed north to west, and lugged the ships inland there, across the frozen sea that filled in the coastline.
Thase had had some warning – her mages had intercepted sendings between the sea peoples and the rest of the Gullahammer. Also the Magikoy had sent to alert the west. But of those Magikoy who had personally held wardenships in western regions, none went back there. For a fact, all physical routes westward were fast closing to Rukarian traffic. It was the Faz overland advance which shut them. Additionally, Olchibe and Gech vandal bands, split off from the main thrust of the Gullahammer, quartered the snows searching for Rukar prey. On anything they found, they dropped like lammergeyers. Strayed caravans and small garrisons and villages were erased. No slaves now were taken. Pillars of smoke erected colonnades across the waste.
They said in Thase, and in Kandexa too as it received the bad news, that the Magikoy alone of all men might have braved the enemy blockade, but had abandoned the west to its fate. All Magikoy power had been concentrated in the capital. The rest might burn, or sink in hell.
And Thase Jyr did burn. Sallusdon had kept a palace there, and mage-coined defences existed. The dozen psychic cannon that had been activated on the walls wounded the landed armada of Fazions and Vorms with peeled-off rays. But more and more of the invaders poured in to brim the gap, like melting water. The cannon, improperly manned, proving too much for soldier and local mage alike, exploded. Balls of light engulfed areas of the city. Fires started in an ignition of screaming. The gates went down.
Kandexa capitulated without a blow. Thinking itself sensible, it let the sea-reivers in at once, tried to welcome them. But Kandexa was battered, raped and murdered. Only her stones remained, with over-eaten Vorms vomiting and urinating on them, and crows standing sentinel.
These cities were small, and the force from the sea substantial. Yet never before would any reiver have dared to come against a metropolis of Ruk Kar Is. In itself, this daring was enough to fill the Ruk with terror. Besides, their own soldiery had been properly untried for half a century. None had thought the whole of the east and north, plus the peoples of the northern sea, would ally.
By now the main body of the Gullahammer stretched over the landscape.
The larger Rukarian villages were swallowed. No mercy was ever shown, and no adult slaves taken. Only the children were spared, in the Olchibe way, up to the age of twelve. Even then not always, for to the Jafn, as to Faz and Vorm, enemy children had the dangerous potential of growing up to make a blood-feud. Lionwolf himself had been the intended victim of just such a theme.
Lionwolf.
There on the back of the mammoth given him by Peb Yuve, one of so many of his adoptive fathers, or in the lion chariot, he was an icon of bronze and fire. On cloudy days, he shone for them like the sun.
He needed to do so little. He walked among the warriors, or sat with them. He joined in their games of skill, their archery contests, their feasts, drank with them by the side of the war road. He told them stories around the fires, as only the best of bards could do, wondrous tales never before heard – or dreamed of – of heroes, of battle and honour and the winning of wives and riches. Which made them recall, too, the prophecy of the Ranjals on his behalf. He himself had that knack the ancient lays of bards described: the ability to be one with men and lose nothing of his kingliness, his godhead.
Sometimes there was magic. He performed a miracle – he changed an iron bracelet into a gold one, a jug of Jafn wine into fierce Fazion spirit. Once, a man on a litter asked the Lionwolf to cure his broken leg. Lionwolf frowned, as if thinking. Then he touched the leg, below the knee. The warrior – a Gech – said he felt scorching heat. Then he got up on both legs, and raced about. The crowd of men cheered. Later, the Gech toppled down; the bone had given way again, it seemed. He blamed himself – he had been too previous in his gymnastics.
Every one of them felt that he had spoken to the Lionwolf, knew him, was known, was bonded to him by brotherhood.
They vaunted him, admired him, and were reverently in awe – afraid. But he was pitiless solely to their foes; for his people of the north and east, he wanted only victories and rewards. Seeing him, knowing him so well, they never doubted that, by following his blue sun, they would get their heart’s desire. They had been subjected, and of little worth, for centuries.
And so the spilling march ran on, and cities burned.
‘How is it their mounts survive out of the ocean? I thought they rode fish.’
Vuldir’s facetiousness was ignored.
‘Horsazin. The reivers carry barrels of sea water, and wash the beasts down from time to time.’
‘I understand! But the second question persists. How have they achieved this much?’
‘They’re inspired.’
‘By what?’
‘By what you have already been told of, Vuldir.’
‘Thryfe’s nonsense, this god-king – surely only some berserk Jafn princelet?’
Vuldir plainly did not know he spoke of Saphay’s son, his own grandson.
The Magikoy who addressed him, an older man, grey-haired, did not enlighten him. This mage master had been warden to a village of the western shore – but no longer.
‘Ru Karismi,’ said the Magikoy, ‘must ready herself.’
‘Not quite. That’s your task.’ The Magikoy turned and began to walk out of the room. ‘Wait,’ commanded Vuldir. The Magikoy took no notice. At the door, two guards moved from his way. No man blocked the path of a Magikoy, unless he was crazed.
For a moment, Vuldir seemed angry. Then he put that from him. He was not alarmed. He knew this rabble from the out-lands could do nothing here. Only the idiocy of Thase and Kandexa had let it do anything there. Meanwhile, Thryfe had not come to tell him of the sending from the west, but this fellow. Thryfe, it would seem, was otherwise engaged. How fascinating that such a tiny morsel as Jemhara could tackle such a mage as Thryfe. But to Vuldir all men were fallible. Not himself, perhaps.
Servant-apprentices of the Magikoy rode westward and southward of the city, to Thryfe’s two known houses. At the quintul house, all was quiet and empty. The windows shone blue: nothing had happened there. The South House, nearer to Ru Karismi and where it had been thought Thryfe had retired, was harder to discover. Only the Magikoy-trained could ever have found it.
They stood in their sleekars on the snow, looking up at it in dismay.
Thryfe had given his pledge to return to the capital inside five days. He had by now been gone sixteen.
‘But he never stayed here,’ the senior apprentice remarked. ‘He must have seen this and gone elsewhere.’
‘No one said the house was in bad repair,’ murmured another. ‘Something’s occurred.’
‘What? What could occur – to Thryfe? He’s one of the foremost magicians, though modestly he never admits as much.’
Above them, the house loomed against twilight. The ground below had subsided slightly, as if the snow had thawed at some unknown heat – dropped, then locked again as abruptly.
None of the minor gargolems were in evidence. No spirit-attendant appeared. It was not possible, here, to see the colour the windows might, or might not, have been, to show either threat or uneventfulness. They were closed over by ice. The entire house had been sealed in it. Though the building’s shape was discernible, for the ice had followed its every contour, the barrier of it was yards thick, and cloudy.
‘The Stones that give off lights, they lie up there,’ they said. ‘No one knows what the Stones truly are. Could they have done this to the house of a Magikoy?’
They left their chariots, the lashdeer shaking their heads, ill at ease. No less concerned, the senior apprentice made a circuit of the mansion.
It was impenetrable, unless some blasting magic were applied. The senior apprentice,
though able enough, had neither the jurisdiction nor the confidence – probably not the power – to try it.
Thin winds veered along the snow plains.
One of the party spoke. ‘If Highness Thryfe isn’t here, and isn’t in the west … then where?’
No one answered.
As they edged down from the mansion, one or two glanced back. They had the impression the imprisoned building was cladding itself ever more thickly in the ice, becoming solid all through.
Above, a moon rose. In the forests below, opal spiders spun their wicked webs.
Between the Gullahammer and the core of the Ruk lay next the south-west city of Sofora. Like the coastal cities, it should have proved harder to consume than a village.
It was possible, but not prudent, to bypass Sofora. Sofora had troops, who must surely pursue and attack the Gullahammer from the rear, should the Gullahammer fail to lay siege. Sofora had been so ordered by sendings from the capital.
She marched out her soldiers in any case, to meet the barbarians on the icescape under her walls.
From a tower on a high point of the city, non-Magikoy mages sent to the capital a vision of the alien army. And the words, They are too many.
Further on, a second imaged message entered Ru Karismi. It displayed a bluish fire devouring the snow, the walls, all Sofora – and words cried over and over, never being completed:
There is ONE among them …
He rode into the battle under Sofora, as he had done against the Jafn Klow, in a lion chariot.
Elsewhere he had sometimes ridden the mammoth, but perhaps he risked it less, valuing it as the gift of Peb Yuve. He had certainly lost many of his lion-teams to arrows, knives and clubs – but there were always more lions brought to him, the best the Jafn kept by as battle spares. It was not he did not love all the lions. He fed them by hand, they slept in his tent. None drew any comparison: that those he loved he used, then lost, and then forgot.
Only one magical cannon was retained at Sofora. It turned out that, lacking Magikoy, they did not dare to start it, having heard of the effect at Thase Jyr. The sorcerous gun peered out through the walls, a green dragon-head with open jaws, yet unarmed. By sunset, the men of the Gullahammer had pushed it off its perch and let it smash in harmless pieces on the ice plain beneath.