King of The World's Edge

by H. Warner Munn

  14 The Mantle of Arthur

  Now, this so-called Miner’s Road was not really a road at all, being (from the habit of these people in walking single file through the thick forests) at no place along it more than a foot in width and narrowing very often to become no wider than a few inches. Its depth also varied, depending on whether or not it passed over rocky ground or soft soil. Yet its whole length was well marked, well patrolled, and studded with forts; for this hard-beaten path connected the four central cities, before mentioned, with the rich copper mines near the Inland Sea, and along it, during the summer months, passed a stream of heavily laden slaves.

  To us, this seemed like a long arm of hated Tlapallan thrust deep into the treasure chests of Chichameca, and we resolved to break that arm, and if possible to stop this systematic looting.

  So a war party marched: myself, Hayonwatha, twenty Romans, eighty Hodenosaunee, all conscious that upon us rested the duty of proving to Tlapallan that a power has risen in the north. Myrdhinn, with the rest of the Romans and two hundred of the People of the Long House, marched to seize the mines, while other detachments headed, in strength commensurate with the size of the fort they were to attack, for each of the holdings along the Miner’s Road.

  My party had orders to intercept and cut off, below the last fortification, any party which might slip through the line of communication with news for Tlapallan. We were to kill or take prisoner any small party of troops coming to the aid of the forts, should Tlapallan be warned. We hoped that by night attacks, all forts might be taken before smoke signals could spread the news, for our strength was great, the woods full of our warriors.

  As a mark of favor, before I left Myrdhinn called me aside and pressed a small package upon me. I opened it and thought he was joking, for the little box inside was empty.

  He laughed. “Feel within.”

  I did so and was surprised to feel the fine texture of fabric, in which as my fingers quested they seemed to become lost and my eyes blurred as I looked at my hand. Nor could I see the bottom of the box, which puzzled me, it also being blurred and wavering.

  “That,” said Myrdhinn, “is a priceless relic—the Mantle of Arthur.”

  Then I understood. We all had heard of the robe which rendered anything beneath it invisible, but I had not thought until then that it might be in our possession.

  “Myrdhinn! You have brought—?”

  He nodded. “Aye. The thirteen precious things were in my great chest. Would you have had me leave them for the Saxons?”

  I smiled. “I suppose this is not magic?”

  “What is magic?” he said impatiently. “Only something which the uninitiate does not understand. There is nothing evil about it. You need have no fears. You will not be blasted. Tis but a simple linen robe covered with black paint.”

  “Black paint? Nay, seer, you jest. There is nothing black about it. It is without color.”

  “Precisely. Without color, because it has robbed the light which falls upon it of all color, and in doing so the various colors contained within light have canceled one another out, leaving nothing. Thus, it follows that one can no more see the robe or what it covers than one can see light itself as it passes through the air; for light and the colors which compose light are absent, being fully absorbed by this absolutely perfect black.”

  I could not have shown much comprehension, for he muttered:

  “Why waste words? You are a man of war, I am a man of thought. We have nothing in common. Be off therefore to your killing.”

  So with that for farewell, I took the soft cloth which I could not see or understand, stuffed it under my lorica and marched away.

  Now, for three days we lay in the hills overlooking the Miner’s Road, at our appointed place, and nothing larger than tree-mice did we see, and our duty began to pall upon us all and grow very irksome. On the fourth morning, it seemed to me that further inaction could not be borne, for beyond the hills southward we could see the smoke arising from the City of the Snake and we yearned to strike some blow that would hurt and harm.

  I lay thinking. What could a company so few as we do against such a multitude? Too, we must not disobey the orders of Myrdhinn and the Royanehs. The Miner’s Road must not be left unwatched.

  Then I remembered the Mantle, where it nestled warm beneath my lorica, and suddenly a plan, grand and dazzling, came to me.

  If we were to attack Tlapallan we needed strange and powerful arms, which would terrify our enemy with their might. In the pits beneath the Egg lay the things we needed to create those arms—the clamps of the arrow engines and the tormenta! The bronze clamps we could not make, owing to the death of our smith and the lack of tin. (For even yet, we have found no tin in this land.)

  But I, under the Mantle of Arthur, could enter the gates and steal those clamps out of the pits, unseen and safely too!

  So, with five Hodenosaunee, I left the ten Romans in charge, and we six went over the southern hills. At the edge of the forest nearest the city my followers bid themselves while I donned the Mantle. The sight of their erstwhile stern and impassive faces as they saw me fade from sight was worth remembering. I thought they would turn and flee when they heard me speak from empty air, but though they wavered as they would not before enemy acts or lance, they held firm and I left them there to think on the godlike mysteries of white men and then: ways.

  After nearly an hour’s brisk walk, I passed by the outworks and entered through the open gates, though I was obliged to wait a little time, for there was a coming and going of many people, as the fields were being put in order for the planting season.

  Secure in my invisibility, I strolled amdng the buildings, many of which were newly built, showing the damage done on the night of our escape. I spied out the strength of the city, and while I was amusing myself by calculating the thousands of people which it contained and mentally marking the weakest spots in the palisade which spined the back of the Woman-Snake, an accident imperiled the success of my adventure and nearly cost me my life.

  Around the corner of a building ran a little naked reddish boy, his face all one large grin at some prank he had just played on some pursuing comrades. Head down, he hurled himself into my middle, all unseen as I was to him, and we both went rolling.

  My robe flew up above my knees, my hood came off my head and had he not been well-nigh stunned by the impact, I must needs have killed the child or have all my trouble go for nothing.

  I had barely time to scramble to my feet, adjust my robe and hood, and stand out of the way when a shouting pack of boys came and fell upon their fellow and bore him away, dizzy and sick.

  After this I had no more inclination to roam aimlessly, but made for the Egg, found the entrance to the pits unguarded and soon came out again with three of the heavy clamps beneath my robe, which were as much as I could handily carry.

  When I arrived among my followers, I was hungry and ate a cup full of teocentli meal stirred into cold water, which is all we carry for rations when on a journey, it being light and very nourishing, and it would be a valuable addition to the army commissariat.

  Then I returned and made two more trips with clamps and on the third trip brought the last of them and some tin from the Rrydwen’s sheathing.

  It was now darkening and I knew I could not make another journey before nightfall, but wished to bring more tin while my luck still was good. The tin was worth more than gold to us, if we could discover in what proportions and in what manner we were to use it with the great supplies of copper which Myrdhinn and his men must have taken in their assault on the mines. So I tempted Fortune, and found I could not depend upon her fickle smile, as you shall see.

  Returning, I had entered the crypt in almost absolute darkness and was feeling about for the pile of sheet tin which I knew was there, when suddenly I felt myself seized by unseen hands. I surged away, heard a ripping and suddenly I was free, but with the Mantle of Arthur st
ripped from me, without even a knife to protect myself against the armed men who crowded the place.

  Luckily I was near the entrance. I dashed out, knocked over two men with torches who were hurrying to shut the corridor gate, and was loose in the city, with the people aroused and hunting me, every gate watched and with nothing open to me for a hiding-place.

  At first I made for the river. Its high bank was lined with torch-bearers, so thickly gathered that an ant could not have slipped through. I headed back to climb the palisade.

  Sneaking in the shadows, I came to a large unlighted house of logs, toward the center of the city. Behind me were a number of people, though not intentionally, for I knew I had not been seen. Another group was coming toward me, a short distance away.

  What was I to do? Another moment and I should be within one of the two circles of light, or be seen by either group against the flares of the other as I tried to escape from between them.

  I could not burrow into the ground or fly into the air. Then, as I looked up, an owl quitted the roof with a screech, dazzled by the many torches, and sailed into the forest. The owl has been a bird of evil omen to many, but I will forever bless that one!

  The hint it had given me was enough. In an instant I had climbed up the chinks in the log wall, with toe-tips and fingertips, and was comfortably ensconced upon the roof by the time the two groups met, conferred and went upon their separate ways.

  For the moment I was safe, but my situation was most precarious. At best I could remain there only until daylight, and there were no indications that this relentless search would die down by then.

  I was thinking what would be best to do, when a man came out of the house beneath me and walked unsurely toward a bench, groping about beneath it, till he came upon a jug of water, from which he drank avidly as though parched with thirst.

  Again he groped, his hands before him, back toward the entrance. This was strange in itself, for there was light enough from the stars and distant torches for me to see his face, so that he should be well able to see where he was going. Then I saw with surprise that he was walking with his eyes closed. The man was blind!

  Perhaps, anywhere in the fest of the world, this would not have been peculiar. Even in Chichameca, there were people who were blind, deaf or dumb. But here in Tlapallan he was a freak, for Tlapallan had no use for, or mercy upon, anyone who was handicapped by any affliction. Even among the ruling class of the Mias, an individual with an incurable disease was marked for death upon the altar of the Egg, whose priests had never enough sacrifices stored below in the pits to satisfy Ciacoatl, called the Devourer.

  You can imagine what chance this blind- man, a Tlapallico of the third generation removed from his original slave parents as his garments proclaimed him, would have had if his blindness had been known to the priests, whose pits were completely empty just now.

  “Anywhere that is safe for you is safe for me, my friend!” I muttered to myself, as I swung off the roof edge and dropped beside him. He whirled with a little cry. I clapped my hand over his mouth and shoved him inside out of the light.

  “Old man,” I said, fiercely, “your people are hunting me. If they find me here they will take you too and we shall both be skinned alive on the altar. Do you understand my words?”

  He nodded with vigor.

  “Then hide me wherever you are yourself hiding. Quickly!”

  He led me to an opening in the floor and went down a short ladder. I followed, snatching a stone hatchet from the wall. My life was in his hands, but he was equally at my mercy and I was younger and stronger than he. As I reached the dirt floor, he ran,up the ladder like a youth, and I was about to hurl the hatchet when he pulled a trap-door into place and by pulling a cord drew a bearskin across the floor above.

  And then we sat in the dark together and became acquainted.

  He had not always been blind. In his youth he had been a trader, until captured by Chichamecans and tortured by being forced to run between two long rows of barbarians armed with switches of thorn.

  He had escaped, leaped into a river and floated to safety with his head hidden in a clump of floating weed, though grievously hurt. From a stroke of thorn-bush across the eyes or poison in the river water, his sight later had begun to fail, and he had stayed within the city with his family, his wife and their one son, likewise married.

  His family had dug this refuge beneath their dwelling and here for five years he had lived, quite bund, In constant dread of discovery, going outside only upon the darkest of nights to taste the fresh air, when no one he met could go about easier than himself.

  Tonight, being left alone, the women helping in the search for me, his thirst had tormented him into going after water.

  As we talked, I learned that he had little love for Tlapallan and had enjoyed the free life of a forest trader; so I made him the proposition that he should help me to escape and I in turn would secure him a safe home among the Hodenosaunee, whose population was growing through their practice of raiding lesser tribes, taking captives and adopting them into their own nation with full rights of citizenship.

  It appealed to him, and later it appealed to the women of his family, and two days later, his son, returning from a forest expedition, bringing furs, elk-teeth and shell beads, likewise favored the plan. He had heard talk of a growing power in the north and was clever enough to see that an ambitious man might help himself mightily if allied to a nation whose sun was rising.

  The following morning was set for another trading-expedition, and with it this whole family planned to go, the blind man and I to be robed as women who were passing through the gates to walk a little way with then: men before bidding them farewell.

  This was the seventh day since the raid on the Miner’s Road had begun. No copper had come into the city and there was much talk and alarm because of this. Therefore a punitive expedition was being planned, and hearing of this I was filled with fear lest trading-parties should be forbidden the forest. I changed the plans to that night, and about the third hour after sunset, the young trader gathered his slaves (who were totally ignorant of our identity), and the blind man, his wife, myself and the son’s wife, all four of us closely muffled, approached the small gate at the Snake’s tail.

  We might have known that there was little hope of success, when both the city within and the forests without crept with suspicion, when a spy had been known to enter the city, steal valuables and escape safely, when no copper or messenger from any of twenty forts along the Miner’s Road had been seen or heard from for a week.

  We should have realized that a muffled person would be obviously marked for inspection, but we did not, until as we were passing out through a triple guard the blanket was twitched from the head of the young wife at the same time as my own. My height, I suppose, gave us away, but the cry of the guard told us all was lost.

  He swung at my head. I dodged, and my own hatchet split his skull.

  Then we were all running, we five, through the stupid slaves who were screaming beneath the knives and clubs of the guards, without the least knowledge of why they were being killed.

  We would certainly have been cut down had it not been for the heroism of the old blind man, who, after we had passed unscratched through the gate, stopped and turned back, standing deliberately in the way before five guards who were pursuing us with leveled spears and coming with great bounds. His body barred the gate, and he fell there, dragging with him those fearfully barbed spears which could not be withdrawn, but must be cut away.

  And in that moment of horror the whole sky burst into livid green and bloody scarlet! The women shrieked and dragged at the hands of the young trader and mine. We looked back. Above our heads drove a whistling arrow flight into the fighting mass at the gateway. All the world seemed alternately fire and night. We staggered like pallid corpses in the bloody rain of Judgment Day, and then ran on, they obeying my sharp commands, straight on into the dark
ness from whence the fire-tubes hissed and spat. Myrdhinn had come!

  Some two hundred yards from the gateway we met a host of archers, kneeling and firing, by order, flights of arrows which soared over the palisade into the city, barring any egress from the gate. Myrdhinn strode forward from among them and took my hand.

  “I have lost the priceless Mantle,” I said ruefully. “I am ashamed. I have acted like a child.”

  Myrdhinn clapped me on the back. He seemed in the best of spirits.

  “Think no more of it,” he said jovially. “You have given me something far more valuable. I was the child that I did not insist that we should bring the clamps and the tin on the night of our escape. I should have foreseen their value, but that night they seemed no more than so much metal, and a hindrance to our progress.

  “My friend, we have them now to design others by! We have the tin for bronze-making, we have the mines in which we can obtain the copper, and in seven days of fighting, Ghichameca has taken twenty strong forts of Tlapallan and the Tlapallicos within are either good reliable Hodenosaunee or are dead meat.

  “If necessary, we will go to the coast, make a ship, sail to the wreck of the Prydwen and get enough tin to outfit with bronze clamps enough tormenta to build a fence around Tlapallan.

  “These folk are fighting-men. We can do anything now. Anything!”

  He beamed upon his archers, like a hoary patriarch among his many sons.

  “Very well, for the future,” I said. “But let us look to the present. Shortly the Mias will be sallying out at another gate. They will cut off our retreat.”

  “Not so. Hayonwatha holds the gate at the Egg. The outworks are his. The other gate is held by ten companies.”

  “But we are not strong enough to take the city! They number thousands. The outlying villages will be surrounding us with men, if we do not make haste. We are deep within Tlapallan. For a real conquest, the small villages must first be taken and destroyed, their people driven into the main cities or cut up and absorbed into our armies. They are filled with slaves, who fight now for the Mias, but who would gladly fight for us if they had a chance of whining. We have here one city. If we take it too soon, we lose everything. The other three cities of Colhuacan, Miapan and Tlacopan will march upon us and swamp us with men! Where are our engines? Where can we find reinforcements?