The Prophet Of Lamath

by Hughes, Robert Don

  "Give me the man and the girl. It is simple enough a gesture, and think of the savings in life, in time, in crops. We're farmers, you and I, and neither of us has time for a siege." "I quite agree that a siege would be foolishness," Dorlyth yelled back. "But I cannot choose for Pelman and the Lady Bronwynn. If they chose the house of Dorlyth over the house of Ognadzu, who am I to send them packing?" "Dorlyth-" "You say we are old men, too old for fighting. I agree there, too. The laws of the Confederation agree. I have no wish to fight you, and indeed I won't lay a hand to the sword. All I ask is that you pack your tents and return to the western lands before Dragonsgate." "I will do that when I have Pelman and the girl," Tohn yelled, calmly evaluating what force it would take to splinter the gate of the keep.

  "They are free to go with you when they so choose," Dorlyth answered back, pointing down toward the gate with a hand hidden from Tohn behind the wall. Several warriors below him reinforced it, still further, and a pair of thickly muscled local freemen carried a large vat of boiling pitch up a nearby stairway.

  "Do you have any estimate as to when that might be?" Tohn smiled gravely.

  "I am sure they will be ready to go with you in several years," Dorlyth smiled back.

  Tohn chuckled. "As I said, I'm an old man. In several years I may be dead." "Of course, there is that other possibility," Dorlyth called back, adrenaline rising through him and making him incautious.

  "Which is?" "That in several minutes you might be dead," Dorlyth called out brightly, and there was laughter all along. the line of the wall.

  "Or that you may!" Tohn called back, realizing that the battle was inevitable.

  "Perhaps I will die today," Dorlyth replied loudly, "but I shall not raise my hand against you unless attacked." "Well then," Tohn answered sadly, sheathing his greatsword, "I suppose I shall have to raise mine against you." He turned the head of his horse and made to ride away, then decided he wanted to add a word to the powerful warrior standing astride the gateway. "One thing, Dorlyth. This is not my idea." "Mine, either," Dorlyth called back, and Tohn and his captains rode back to the striped tent on the hillside.

  No assault came that day, but Dorlyth had really been expecting none. Tohn was no hot-headed youth, itching to prove his leadership by slaughtering his own men needlessly. No, the merchant was a tough old fighter of rich battle experience. Not only had he ridden with warriors of all the three lands, but some said he had battled with dragons. Dorlyth retired to his rooms to wait for the event he felt surely must come-Tohn's attack on his water line. The water lift in the lesser tower had been kept pumping since Pelman's departure, but the cisterns were still far from full. When an old soldier knocked on his door and informed him that Tohn's warriors were in the forest behind the castle, Dorlyth recognized that the blow would come sooner than expected.

  "Probably tomorrow," he whispered to himself. "Send Venad mod Narkis to the lesser tower now. We need his bow to defend our water." "He's already there, Lord Dorlyth," the old man said softly, "and he's already claiming first blood." Tohn and his captains were sitting solemnly in the command tent when the news arrived, followed quickly by the body. Tohn cradled the young man in his own arms and carried him to his own cot. "Get out!" he growled, and all others left the tent. "What am I going to tell your mother, lad?" the old fighter asked quietly, then he bowed his head across his young nephew's chest and wept.

  The young man had been nineteen years old, one of the many Tohn had wrestled with and coached. He had been inspecting the stream on the far side of the castle, unwary, and had taken an arrow through the neck. In these few moments of quiet, Tohn did not blame the archer. He blamed himself for bringing such a youthful army so far for so little-and for deciding to remain and press the point.

  "An old man should spend his days reflecting on life, my boy," Tohn said quietly, "watching the wheat grow. Not killing oil his sister's babies." And yet he realized he wouldn't give it up. Death or no death, Tohn had committed himself to this way of living, and he'd sat in too many tents with too many bodies of the first-slain to believe that this time he would yield to the temptation to pack up and go. He would be no hypocrite, and beat his breast and sob. Decisions made were decisions made. To second guess decisions constantly would only bring greater pain.

  As he walked to the door of his tent and called for men to carry the body away, Tohn could not help but wonder if the continuation of the family business was really worth all the family blood. Once his captains rejoined him, he would need to thrust the question aside and get on to practical matters. But while he waited, shielding his eyes against the afternoon sun and examining once again the castle that was his target, he let his mind wander freely. Did the boy's personality ride now on the winds, a new power to be dealt with? Or was he just gone, a fleeting bright fire of a life, drowned by a bucket of his own shed blood? "We raised no sword against them!" he heard one captain say angrily as they rounded the comer of the tent in a group. "And yet they ambush us from the battlements!" Tohn turned away and ducked back into the tent. The man continued his tirade as he followed the old merchant in. "What manner of man is this Dorlyth that he says one thing and does another! When we take this castle we should-" "Quiet," Tohn said, and the man obeyed, a bit surprised. Tohn waited until they were all assembled, then addressed himself to the red-faced speaker. "You are saying he fights unfairly. So do you. So do I. Have some integrity as a soldier, son. He's done nothing you wouldn't do if you were outnumbered and your keep surrounded. Perhaps you must get steamed up about something before you can fight. Well, go ahead then. But don't let it color your respect for your enemy, or he'll kill you." Tohn turned to the others, and shrugged broadly. "We've lost a man. We'll lose others. At least the boy's death wasn't totally a waste. It provided us with some helpful information." "What information?" "Show me the spot where the young man died. I'll show you where we can cut off Dorlyth's water." It rained during the night. When the sun rose the next day the colorful uniforms of Tohn's army were no longer so bright and clean. The field between the tents and the castle gate was bright, the bright green of new grass; but though it looked as smooth as a hand-tied carpet, Tohn knew it was full of treacherous potholes and hidden puddles. He urged the long column of riders to move closer, trying to minimize as much as possible the distance of the charge while staying out of bowshot range until all was ready. One unit of two hundred men stood abreast of him on the eastern edge of Dorlyth's field. Their mission was ostensibly a frontal assault on the castle gate, but Tohn knew in advance they wouldn't breach it. Not unless Dorlyth had built the thing of green wood. The real purpose of this attack was to draw defenders to this side of the castle. Tohn didn't expect it would work, but he needed to try it in order to achieve his main objective.

  The second force was stretched along the bank of the stream to the castle's north. This force of three hundred warriors was armed for melee with axes and knives, and each pair of riders carried a homemade ladder slung between them. The wall was lower here than elsewhere, due to the slope of the knoll on which the keep sat. If it were possible to scale Dorlyth's stone barrier at all, this was the best chance, for the wall along this section rose no higher than twenty-five feet. Part of this force would attack the lesser tower directly. Tohn worried about this strategy, realizing that it would be here that he would suffer the bulk of his casualties. But it was essential somehow to engage the defenders of that smaller tower in the main battle, or the third arm of his attack was doomed.

  Tohn's third force hid in the forest to the west, armed not with bows and swords but with good Lamathian spades. Tohn had not come to war unprepared. While he had hoped to avoid battle altogether, he had filled several wagons with tools his experience told him might prove useful. Tohn realized that soldiers did not end sieges-engineers did..

  Dorlyth stood on the lesser tower, watching the woods for movement.

  "There-" he pointed, but Venad mod Narkis shook his head. "You didn't see that?" "No, my Lord Dorlyth. I saw nothing. Perha
ps I discouraged them?" "What, win a battle with one arrow? Wishful thinking, my friend." "Maybe the merchant will surprise you and do something foolish." Venad smiled.

  "No, they are there. I just can't see them yet." "Nor can I, and my eye is as nearly perfect as that of o_" "Yes, you've told me. There?" Dorlyth pointed again, but Venad only smiled at him and shook his head. There was some noise on the far side of the keep, and Dorlyth turned to look across the court at those who guarded the gate. Someone was shouting at him.

  "Lord Dorlyth, Tohn mod Neelis calls to you!" "What can he want?" Venad wondered.

  "He wants to get my attention off the forest and on that side of the wall," Dorlyth grumbled. He gave one last sweep of his eyes to the forest, and jerked around to make his way down through the tower to the wall below them. "Keep pumping!" he called to the team of freemen who were driving the water lift with all the energy they could throw into it.

  Venad mod Narkis watched as Dorlyth came out of the tower below him and onto the wall, then began to move along it toward the gate. He saw Dorlyth give a pat on the shoulder here, a word of encouragement there. Then Venad notched an arrow on his bowstring and turned to scan the forest again. He heard the two lords exchanging words far behind him, but he couldn't make out what was said. Suddenly he saw movement in the forest-and there they were. One hundred lime-and-blue warriors, half of them armed with shovels and the other half with bows and bucklers to protect the diggers. For the first time in a long while, Venad mod Narkis felt a chill scamper up his back.

  Tohn shook his head at the needlessness of it all, then checked his lines of men. Signals traveled down the line and around to the other side of the castle, where his engineers waited. All was in readiness. Tohn gripped his sword with both hands, and slashed it over his head.

  The scream rose first in the east and arced quickly around to the warriors gathered in the forest. As they broke from cover and splashed through the stream, Venad raised his bow. He picked his point carefully and loosed the arrow. The lead rider kicked his horse and the animal lunged forward-carrying its rider into the arrow's path, and death. Venad did not see him drop. He was already notching another shaft.

  Tohn loved charges, but he quickly came to hate this one. Some riders went down under a hail of arrows from defenders above the gate. Others dropped when their horses tripped in the deceitful mud beneath the grass. He began to wonder if any of his warriors would ever reach the gate, much less breach it. Screams and shouts distracted him but he bent low in his saddle and merged himself with the rhythm of the pounding hooves. It seemed an age, that ride to the gate; but then he was there and off of his horse, shouting orders as he sought some cover under the lip of the gate itself. There he stopped, sheltered by the overhang of the battlement. Leaning against the heavy wood, he held a hand to his pounding heart. He was far too old for this, he thought. Par too old.

  Dorlyth had no time to return to his position on the lesser tower. When the charge began, he grabbed up a bow and positioned himself astride a basket of arrows, pausing in his firing only to shout encouragement to those around him. He soon realized that it was here at the gate his aid was most needed, for the battle raged thickest along this short stretch of eastern wall.

  The first battle of the siege of Dorlyth's castle lasted no longer than an hour. But neither commander had anticipated how costly the short conflict would turn out to be. Through the first half-hour Tohn despaired, watching helplessly as warrior after warrior was tossed from the wall or thicketed with arrows. His orderly commands turned first to anxious cries, then to hoarse screams as the rising level of noise took its toll on his voice. The battle was lightest at the lesser tower, for Venad and his fellows concentrated their fire on the engineers across the field, while Tohn's soldiers discovered they had underestimated the height of the wall. The barrier proved too tall to be scaled, and those clustered at the foot of it soon shifted around the base of the keep to take the places of friends who had fallen before the gate. The pace of the battle there slowly wore away the strength of the castle's defenders. During the latter half of the hour Dorlyth too suffered, for he watched the fall of many loved and trusted friends and realized his responsibility in their deaths.

  Time and again it seemed Ognadzu would scale the northeastern wall, for the blue-and-lime warriors had discovered that here their ladders could reach the lip of the battlement. But each time fresh reserves of pride and rage drove Dorlyth's defenders in to fill the gaps. The boiling pitch bubbled merrily in the courtyard, forgotten, for there was no time to raise it to the parapets. There was only time to thrust a sword, or fire another shaft. At the moment when Dorlyth acknowledged that they could stop the flood no longer, Tohn gave in. His blue-and-lime wave had been reduced to a trickle, and he croaked a retreat and ran for his own horse. A few of Dorlyth's battered companions managed a slight cheer at the sight of so many enemy backs, but most were able only to lean against the walls and gulp lungfuls of air in blessed relief. Ognadzu's retreat was far from orderly, but there were no fresh defenders to take advantage of the confusion of their flight. The battle- for the moment-was over. That was all that mattered.

  Dorlyth leaned across the wall and gazed at the carnage below. How was it that he always remembered the glory and color of battle, but rarely recalled the horrible visions of those sacrificed to the powers of war? He gasped for breath, and put the sight and the thought behind him.

  Now he ran along the wall, stopping to inquire about a slashed arm, wincing at the sight of a treasured comrade stretched lifeless on the stone slabs of the courtyard below. He put that behind him as well, and bolted into the lesser tower.

  "Is it-" Dorlyth stopped. There was no sound of the water lift being turned. Then he saw Venad slumped across the stairwell wall, gazing downward. The young archer turned to face his captain, wiping an embarrassing tear away in the same movement. Dorlyth put a hand on his shoulder.

  "I failed you, my Lord," Venad mumbled. "The water flow has been stopped." "What? Failed me, Venad?" Dorlyth said softly. "Never that, my friend. No, you think you've failed yourself-and only that because you expect far too much of Venad mod Narkis. It would have taken a miracle to keep them from destroying that water main, once they found it." Dorlyth sighed. Then he looked through a window that faced north. "And it's our miracle worker whose escape we fight to protect. Come." With an arm around Venad's shoulder, Dorlyth led the exhausted warrior down the steps and out into the inner court of the keep. The siege had been launched. There was nothing left now but to lick the wounds, and wait.

  Later that day Dorlyth sat alone in the greater tower. The curtain was open, and he gazed sadly out across his wheat field, sprinkled not with seed but with blue-and-lime tents. Was this a mistake, he wondered to himself? On the table before him lay a list his seneschal had prepared-a casualty list. Forty-three warriors were wounded, but that figure bothered him less than the other number scrawled on the sheet. Eighteen men were dead. Was it worth it? These eighteen lives for the sake of Pelman's escape? So many decisions came back to haunt a man long after they had been made and left behind. Would this decision? Could he still end it all by simply announcing to Tohn mod Neelis that the party he sought had moved on? Tohn would want to inspect the castle, naturally. Perhaps that wouldn't be so bad.

  No! Could he sit still while a supposed ally, a member of the Confederation of Mari Lords, ransacked his apartments and strolled through his keep like a conqueror? Tohn was no evil man, that Dorlyth knew well. But those who had ordered him to battle, those who controlled the Council of Elders-Dorlyth was convinced they were evil. He would not step aside and let evil men roam the land he loved without calling them into check.

  Dorlyth's decision was made. He would not change his mind now-that was not the Mari way. By the powers, the battle would come eventually, and he would whittle away at the enemy now, while he and the Mar still had the chance! But-eighteen Mari dead. Doriyth rose and walked to the window. He had plenty of time to rehash the argument in t
he days that followed-and so he did. Over and over again. Still, he stayed within Dorlyth's castle, the gate tightly locked.

  Flayh bustled down a long colonnaded walkway, thrusting people out of his path. The slaves were used to his foul moods, but no one could remember a series of tantrums quite so severe as those of the last week. "Why won't Tohn communicate?" he railed at the serving girl who brought him his tea in the morning. "What is taking Pezi so long?" he shouted in the face of his barber, giving the nervous little man fresh pains in his stomach. "Nobody listens to me!" he screamed at the captain of the guard, who sat up straight in his seat and endeavored to be as attentive as possible. Flayh was impossible to please.

  He banged open a door at the base of his tallest spire and turned to scowl at the slaves who had watched him do it. They all went back to their chores-clipping the roses, sweeping the walk, changing the torches-and only looked again as he slammed the door shut behind him.

  Slumped in his darkened room, he stared at the blue pyramid and thought angry thoughts at Tohn mod Neelis. The fool! The finest communications tool in all the world and the old fool wouldn't use it! Wouldn't say what he was doing, wouldn't tell where he was, no news about the girl, no news about Pelman, no news about anything! There was a chirp from the draped window. It drew an immediate response from the little man, for he bounced to his feet and jerked the black hangings aside. A blue flyer sat on the window ledge, a parchment at its leg flapping in the slight breeze. Flayh grabbed the note and read it quickly, oblivious to the fluttering flyer. In a very unsteady hand it read: Dragon is unstable, advise extreme caution in all approaches to Dragonsgate.