by Andre Norton
“Captain”—that address of respect came wryly from him—“if it is peace you offer, peace shall we take. But do those who walk with us also offer it?”
That I did not know either, but it must be tested. “Try them,” I replied.
Then, watching warily their flankers, Godgar and his men started south. Slowly, with a semblance of reluctance, a way was opened to them. As he saw this, Godgar’s shoulders went back a fraction more. He looked once more to me.
“This must be reported,” he said.
“Let it be so,” I answered.
“Wait!” He started towards me. A grass cat crouched, fangs bared, snarling. Godgar stopped short. “I mean you no ill. Walking with bound hands is hard; I would free you.”
But the cat would have none of that, despite my silent command.
“It would seem that our oaths are not current coin here, Godgar. Go you in peace, and report as you must. And I say again—I hold no feud thought against you or yours.”
He returned to his men and they walked south, behind them trailing a detachment of the creatures, as if they were to be escorted on their way. But for me there was another path—blue-green wings again in the air and a trill of song urging me along it.
XVIII
It was a little later that I learned I was not being escorted, but after a manner herded also. For once Godgar and his men were out of sight. I paused, faced about—and looked into the snarling mask of a grass cat, behind it a prong-horn snorting and pawing earth. Ancient enemies, but now united in purpose. The cat growled; I wheeled to face east and the growling ceased. More and more of the furred company had fallen away from the body which had set us moving away from the ledge, but I still led a formidable force, mostly of larger creatures.
A trilling overhead—Dahaun’s messenger circled there, urging me on, I thought. So I left the road, tramped on in the sodden grass which brushed wetly about me almost thigh high and sometimes concealed my escort altogether. When I was on the move once more, the bird flashed ahead.
Dahaun—had she followed across the mountains? But sense was against that. There was so close a tie between her race and Escore that they could not go out of that haunted land. Kemoc? But the command over this company of beasts and birds was not Kemoc’s, nor Kaththea’s, nor born of any magic ever brewed in Estcarp.
Ahead was the dark mass of broken mountains. This route would bring me into their foothills. I struggled against the cords about my wrists. Once into that rough country I would need use of my hands. The ties cut into my flesh and I felt the slipperiness of blood oozing from ridged cuts. Perhaps that loosened them sufficiently at last. For, in spite of menacing growls and snorts, I halted now and again to work with all my might at those circlets. Then, with a tearing of skin, I pulled one hand free and brought both before me, congested and purple, bloodstained. I wriggled fingers to restore circulation.
The rain had ceased but there was no lightening of the clouds, now that it was twilight. Not only the coming of dark in this wilderness plagued me, but fatigue had slowed my progress to a weary shuffle. I glanced behind. The head of a prong-horn buck was up, the eyes of a cat watched—but farther back. I took a step or so in their direction. Snarl and snort—warning me on. I could see other bodies crouched or erect in the grass. There was for me no road to the west.
They did not follow me, merely stood where they were now, a barrier before those lands where I might find others of my kind. Just as those hunters had been on my trail before, so now these were harrying me out of Estcarp.
Seeing a rocky outcrop not too far away, I made for that and sat down to rest aching feet. Riding boots had never been fashioned for steady hours of walking. I could spy those sentinels slipping along the ground if they were felines, treading on determined hooves for prong-horns. The heavily built bears had disappeared, perhaps unable to keep up. But for the others . . . we matched stares while I thought.
It would seem that someone or something wished to send me back to Escore. And I rebelled against such pressure. First send me to Estcarp on a fruitless mission, then drive me out again. I could see no sense in this, nor does any man take easily to the knowledge that he is only a piece on some gameboard, to be moved hither and thither for purposes which are none of his.
Dermont had told me once of a very ancient custom of Karsten, one which had fallen into disuse when the Old Race lost rule there and the newcomers from still farther south had overrun the land. But in dim history there had been a game played each decade. Carven pieces were set out on a marked board. At one side sat him who was deemed the greatest lord, on the other who was landless, followerless, the least, but who would dare the game. And the landless player represented the forces of disruption and ill luck, while the lord those of confidence and success. Thus they played, not only for all the great lord held, but also for the luck and fortune of the whole land. For, should the landless topple the lord, a period of chaos and change would ensue in the land.
Was such a game now in progress, with a living man—me—for one of its pieces? In Estcarp abode the settled state of things as they are, well established, even firmer now that Karsten had been dealt with. And uneasy Escore where old troubles stirred was the opposite. Perhaps behind that ancient game had lain some older truth well buried, that a more powerful action once known had been reduced to ritual at a gameboard.
So could I speculate, but I doubted that I would ever know how much of my guessing was the truth. I had certainly been moved into Estcarp, just as I was being moved out again. I shook my head, though only the beasts saw that gesture. Then I began to pull up the grass about my rock, making a nest bed. The one thing I was sure of was that I could go no farther now.
Though I lay in the open this was one night I felt no need for watch keeping. Perhaps I had been lifted out of the normal courses to the point where I no longer cared, or perhaps I was too tired and worn by what had chanced.
Thus I slept. And if I dreamed, I did not carry the memory of those dreams past my waking. But when I got stiffly to my feet from that mass of grass in the morning, I faced the mountains. This was right—if I were a piece on a game-board, then I had been moved. I started off with empty hands, no food, and a hard climb before me. Twice I looked back. If my herders had kept vigil during the night that had not lasted until this hour. No sign of them was visible. Neither was there in me any need to go out once more into Estcarp.
During the day I was certainly one under some order, though I could not have put it into words. The broken mountains were my goal. Senseless, senseless, one part of my mind repeated over and over. Urge me in, bring me out—what had I accomplished? A meeting with refugees on a single holding, and on them I had made only a negative impression.
I thought I had been sent to recruit—but my feeble effort had not even begun that task. So—and that brought me up short as I halted on the verge of a mountain reaching ravine—so what had been the real reason for my return to Estcarp? I kicked viciously at a stone, sent it rolling from me with a sound to break the general silence.
A use for me—what? None that I could see, and my ignorance gnawed, plunging me into action, the only kind open to me now, the return over-mountain. I scrambled down slope, began to run almost blindly, taking little heed of my body with my mind so bedeviled with frightening half-thoughts to which there were no sane answers.
A fall was the end of that witless race, witless because there was no escaping from fears I bore with me. I lay panting on the earth, beating my still swollen hands on the gravel until the pain of that contact shocked me back to quiet again.
Once the blood stopped pounding so heavily in my ears I heard the gurgle of water and I was drawn by that, my dry mouth gaping even before I reached a spring fed pool. I lapped up the fresh liquid as might one of the hunting cats. Water cold against my face restored more rational thinking. To run terror stricken was never an answer, so—yield to this mysterious ordering until more could be learned. I was far more a man when I left the spring. There was an exp
lanation somewhere and it could only lie in Escore. For the beast army was not of Estcarp’s devising. So the sooner I gained to Escore, that much earlier would I learn my place in the new scheme of things.
Hunger grew in me. It had been a long time since I had chewed those trail rations under the rock ledge. Yet nowhere in this wilderness was there food. But I had known hunger before and kept on the move in spite of its twinges. The mountains—could I find again that valley which led to our climb point? Sometimes when I looked about me, either that peculiar distortion which had plagued us before was in force, or else my lack of food worked upon my vision, for there was a disorientation to this land through which I moved.
Evening did not stop me, for the need of Escore had grown to an all-pervading urge. I stumbled on, in a narrow cut, but whether the right one I could not have said. And then—ahead was light! Stupidly I plowed to a halt and blinked. I had a dull fear that I had been forestalled, that I was awaited now by those who would cut me off, take me once more captive.
My mind worked so sluggishly that I could see no way out of such disaster. If I retreated it could only be back to the plains, or to be lost in the foothills where I could never find my way again.
Brother!
So deep was I sunk in my own inner pit that at first that mind call meant nothing. Then—then—Kemoc!
I do not believe that I shouted the name aloud as I began to run towards the fire—but in me was a welling fountain of recognition.
He came to meet me and I could not have made those last steps, few as they were, alone. Half guiding, half supporting, he brought me to his oasis of light and warmth. I leaned against a backing springy brush and held a small bowl, the warmth of its contents reaching my hands, the aroma making me eager to sip at a thick stew.
Kemoc—wearing the garb of Dahaun’s people—even to the whip stock at his belt, yet looking as he had a hundred times before when we had shared patrol camps. And the familiarity of the scene was as soothing to my feeling of being under another’s control, as the stew was to my hunger of body.
“You knew I was coming?” I broke the silence first, for he had allowed me those moments in which to soak up ease and reassurance.
“She did—The Lady of Green Silence.” He sounded a little restrained and aloof. “She told us you were taken—”
“Yes.”
“They would not let Kaththea try to aid you. They put a mind lock on her!” Now his constraint was hostile. “But they could not hold me. So having wrought their own magic, they allowed me to come to see how well it worked.”
A small flash of insight—did Kemoc, also, feel that he was now moved by another’s will?
“Their magic.” The beasts—yes, that could well be Dahaun’s magic.
“They were not sure it would work—not in Estcarp. But it seems that it did, since you are here. Kyllan, why did you go?” he demanded of me hotly.
“Because I had to.” And I told him of what and how it had chanced with me since my awaking from that dream in the Green Valley. Nor did I hide from him my concern over being used by some unknown authority for a reason I did not understand.
“Dahaun?” Again that sharpness.
I shook my head. “No, she did not wish it. But I tell you, Kemoc, in all of this we play a game, and it is not of our choosing or understanding. Least of all do I know why I was sent here and then allowed—no, ordered—to return again!”
“They say there is an ingathering of forces in Escore, a rallying of evil—and they summon their people also. The time of truce is past; both move now to a trial of strength. And I tell you, brother, hard as this may be, still I welcome it. For I do not relish this play behind a screen.”
“Kaththea—you say they have mind locked her.”
“Only until she would agree not to use her Power. They said it would only further awaken all we have to fear. She waits with the others, up there.” He gestured at the mountain wall behind him. “With the day we shall join them.”
This night I did not sleep dreamlessly. Once more I rode the fields of Escore in another guise—mailed, armed, ready for bared swords or worse. And with me was a force of those to choose to share shields. Among them were faces I knew from the past, but not all from a distant past. For, mailed and armed as was the custom in times of great danger, I saw the Lady Chriswitha. Once she smiled at me before she rode on and others of the Old Race took her place. But always we traveled with danger to the right and left, and a kind of desperation eating at us. There was a banner fashioned like a huge green bird (or could it have been a real bird many times life size?) and the wind appeared to whip it so the wings were ever spread in flight. Always we bore with us an axe’s weight of death, not tribute, to satisfy any dark overlord.
“Kyllan!” I awoke with Kemoc’s hand on my shoulder, shaking me into consciousness.
“You had ill dreams,” he told me.
“Perhaps ill, perhaps otherwise. You shall have your open battles, Kemoc, one after another of them. Whether we shall cleanse the land or be buried in it—” I shrugged. “At any rate we have our hands, and swords for them to use. Though it may be that time does not favor us.”
For the second time we climbed the cliff out of Estcarp. And for all the urgency riding me I moved slowly. But when we had reached the crest, before we moved on to the pass, I turned, as did Kemoc. He had a distance lens to his eyes. Suddenly his body tensed and I knew he had sighted something.
“What is it?”
His answer was to pass the lenses to me. Trees and rocks leaped up at me. Among them men moved. So they were a-hunting on my track again? Well, that would not last; they would shy off from the forbidden lands as had those others. A large force—truly they wanted me badly.
Then I focused the glasses better and I saw one rider, another, a third. Unbelieving, I looked to Kemoc. He nodded, his surprise open to read on his face.
“You see truly, brother—those are in part women!”
“But—why? Wise Ones come to capture the fugitive for themselves?”
“What Wise One would bear a child in a riding cradle before her?”
I raised the lenses again, swept that company, found what he had earlier marked, a cloaked woman in the breeches meant for long and hard riding, but across her saddle the cradle of a child still too young to sit a pony.
“Some invasion—they being hunted before it—” I sought for the only explanation I could credit.
“I think not. They ride from the southwest. Invasion now would come only from Alizon in the north. No, I believe they are recruits—the recruits you were sent for, brother.”
“That cannot be—women and children?” I protested. “And I told my story only at Hervon’s manor where it was discredited when I named myself outlaw. There was no reason for them to—”
“No reason that you knew of,” he corrected.
I do not know why at that moment I remembered something from my childhood. I had come into the hall at Etsford on one of those rare occasions when my father had visited us. Yes, it was the time that he had brought Otkell to be our tutor in arms. And he was speaking of something which had lately happened at Gorm. A Sulcar ship from overseas had drifted into harbor, all her crew dead on board. And in the Captain’s cabin, written out in the log, the story of a plague picked up in a distant port, which spread from man to man. Those at Gorm towed the ship well to sea, set her afire to burn and sink, taking her dead with her. But all had come from one man, returning from shore leave with the seeds of death in him.
Supposing I had been sent to Estcarp carrying some such seed—not directly of disease and death, though the end result might well be the latter, but to infect those about me with the need to seek Escore? Wild as it was, that could be an explanation to answer more than one question.
Kemoc read it in my mind and now he took the lenses from me, to once more study those moving with such purpose towards us.
“They do not seem to be befogged, or otherwise blocked,” he observed. �
��Your plague may already be well seated.”
Women and children—no! A tail of fighting men, those with no ties who were long hardened by slim chances—that I had wished for. But to bring their families into the threat of shadowed Escore—No!
“It would appear that someone or something has plans for refounding a nation.” Kemoc lowered the lenses.
“More players for the game!” I knew dull anger and also that such anger would not avail me. Nor would I take the lenses again as Kemoc held them out. This was my doing and I would have to answer for it.
“They cannot bring their mounts in,” Kemoc said, becoming practical. I could almost have struck him for his quick acceptance of what was to come. “But with ropes their gear may be lifted, and they aided. Then, perhaps, horned ones waiting beyond the tree valley—”
“You are very sure they are coming to us,” I shot at him.
“Because he is right!”
Kaththea stood behind us. Now she ran forward, her hand on my arm, on Kemoc’s, linking us.
“Why?” Somewhere in her, I hoped, was an answer for me.
“Why do they come? Not all of them will, only those able to feel the call, the need. And why were you sent, Kyllan? Because you were the one of us who could best carry the seed of that call. In me the dream could not be set; I had too many Power safeguards implanted. In Kemoc also, for he was so close of mind that my block spread to him. So you had to be the carrier, the sower . . . and now comes the harvest!”
“To their deaths!”
“Some to death,” my sister agreed. “But do not all living things abide with death from the first drawing of life breath? No man may order the hour of his dying if he travels by life’s pattern. Nor can you bewail the chance, brother, which made you carry your dream into Estcarp. We stand in a time of chance and change, and move into new designs we do not understand. Play your life boldly as you always have. Do you blame the sword for killing? It is the hand and brain behind it which holds the responsibility!”
“And who is the hand and brain behind this?”