Again Elof felt his arms seized, found himself whirled round, and saw the trees come rushing at him. The stormy air whistled around him, the branches swung and nodded wildly, and now the movement did not stop, but went on and on, a great giddy rush that left him breathless, barely able to think. Then it ended. The onrush dropped suddenly, sickeningly downward, then the grip on his arms was released, foliage whirled about him, and he tumbled with a rustling crash into a drift of rotten leaves. He sat there a moment, winded, shaking his head in utter confusion. But still clasped in his hand was a long sprig of redwood.
"Elof!" shouted Ils, and as he picked himself up, dusting away damp fragments of decay, he saw his friends rushing through the trees toward him. Ils made it first, and caught him in a hug that strained his ribs. "Where'd you get to, idiot? All we knew is that they whisked us off, we heard you shout, and then we were swung here!"
"And dropped," said Kermorvan, flexing his arm gingerly. "But they left us all our gear. I begin to think I was not so foolish, tending that witchwoman."
"They are a strange people," said Ils.
"Surely, if they are stranger than the mountain-folk," grunted Kermorvan, as they turned to the pile of gear, and began to gather it up. "At a hazard, Elof, you were taken to their chieftain?"
"Say instead, their father," said Elof.
"What?"
"Later," said Elof, unnerved. He turned to ease the redwood sprig carefully into a pocket of his pack, and strap it on. "Ask me later, if at all. We must leave here at once."
Kermorvan shrugged. "Easily done. We have come right across the dale, and are almost at the southern fence of the trees. A pass opens between the hills only an hour or two's walk east of here." Ils shivered. "But the weather! Can't we settle down for the night here in the shelter of the trees, rather than out there on the windy hills—"
The sound that stilled her was not loud, but it was very large, as if many trees and bushes rustled all at once. They turned, and became aware of the shadow that moved slowly among the thicker green behind them. It looked like a moving wall behind the leaves. Hands crept to sword and axe as it lurched slowly closer, then fell away in dismay as they saw the true size of the thing. The bulky body rose to more than twice Kermorvan's height above the ground, on four legs that rivaled the redwood trunks around them in both girth and appearance, for the whole brute was covered in sparse but shaggy brown hair, thinnest on its small triangular ears. Small red-rimmed eyes, glinting with a mildly wicked merriment, gleamed out from the bony, high-crowned skull, and below them, weirdest of all, two vast curving blades of yellowish-white horn or tooth. Longer even than the very forelimbs of the beast, they crossed at the tips, and between them rose an immense flexible snout that browsed and ruffled among the thick foliage.
"Mammut!" whispered Ils. "But a kind greater than any I have heard of, that's sure." It looked absurd, that snout, until they saw it pull down a huge branch with casual strength to shame the arm of a troll. Not far away among the trees came another, similar, crash and rustle. Then the travelers backed away as one, very slowly.
"Would you still linger?" hissed Elof. "Tapiau bids us begone!"
"I know well enough when I've outstayed my welcome!" Ils muttered. "Yon hill takes on a strange allure." So they caught up the last of their gear, and wrapping their dark cloaks about them they moved silently away among (he trees, until they came at last out into the cloudy dusk. The hillside beyond was steep, the grass and bushes tangled, but they did not stay to rest, clambering up it as fast as they could go. A blaring call, trumpeting derision, sounded at their backs, but only Elof stopped and turned, looking back across the dull sheen of the leaf-roof, to where it parted a little around the pinnacle of the tallest tree, and touched for a moment the rough outline of the sprig within his pack. Then Ils called him, and he hurried on.
Chapter Ten - The Tempering
So it was that same night that the three travelers crossed the southern slopes of the high hills, and came at last down into the fair land of Bryhaine. They found the pass without trouble, and came through it into country that Kermorvan knew well. Even in the dark, with only a faint moon glimmering through the heavy clouds, he was able to guide them along many little winding paths on the hillsides, and lead them so well that when they at last made camp by the mouth of a narrow dale, the hills lay behind them. Beside their camp a small swift stream disappeared downhill in a stairway of falls and deep pools, and at dawn next day, having bathed in the pools, they followed it on its way. It wound away between little stands of trees, across patches of green meadow, and came at last to a low stone wall which marked the edge of a vineyard. Already the fruit hung heavy on the vines as they passed. "A good vintage this year, by the look of it!" said Ils.
"But who will harvest it, I wonder?" said Elof. "Listen!"
"I hear nothing!" said Ils, puzzled.
"Nothing indeed!" said Elof. "Beyond the vines lie fields, a farm. And yet these farmers are surely not greater sluggards than the northerners I knew. Some at least should be up and at work now. Do you hear the clink of hoes, the cackle of fowl, the call of animals driven to pasture or to milking?"
"Nothing," said Ils, and so it was. It was now high summer, and those lands were at their richest, the corn ripening all across the broad plains, the fruit swelling on the orchard boughs. Yet the only sound of man in them was the rumor of distant war, and it echoed in emptiness. All the folk had fled.
"A few, perhaps, will have gone inland," said Ker-morvan as they walked down to the first river ford. "Westward toward the wild land around the roots of the mountains, where I suppose the duergar gates are, Ils. But that to us is rough and dubious country. Most of them will now be within the walls of the city, eating up its store of supplies, draining its wells and crowding it out so sickness spreads. I would not have admitted the peasants, but the syndics will."
"It seems the kinder course," said Elof doubtfully.
"Kind for the moment, unkind for the future. They will hinder and weaken our defenses, and perhaps bring doom upon everyone, when they would have been as safe or safer inland."
"Even so," said Ils, "could you drive them clamoring from the gate?"
"I would never have let them reach the gate to begin with, but made preparations, issued commands against any emergency, and seen that they were understood. As they would be, were the need made clear. How else may a realm be defended? But this the syndics will not do, lest they alarm the poor tender people. Well, I'll wager they are alarmed now!"
And he strode splashing fiercely across the ford, checking his pace not the least against the strong current that tugged at their ankles.
To three hardened travelers this was an easy country, its paths and rutted roadways a great luxury; they made a fast pace, and it was not yet noon when they crested the first range of hills between them and the city. Now it was only some five or six leagues distant, and much clearer to see, though the air shimmered with the midday heat. From a brooch it had grown to a great shield-shape, set upon a checkered blazon of fields and with high-crowned towers for its boss, atop a stone hill from which the ivory walls ran outward as ripples spread in water. A fair sight it would have been in days of peace, but now both blazon and shield bore the strokes and scars of war. Smoke arose in great wreathing coils from many of the blazoned fields, brown as the scars of some spreading disease among the rich greens and yellows of summer. The sea, too, was stained, its tarnish clear now as innumerable black flecks of sails. Many as there were, the high walls dwarfed them, and from within these no smoke came. But it was clear the city now stood encircled, and the siege had begun.
It was a great sight and a terrible one, that beleaguered burg. Kermorvan took one horrified look, and would look no longer, but strode down the slope into the vale beyond. Elof and Ils looked at one another, and ran after him.
The valley below was wider and its floor less even, but Kermorvan went striding across the lands like a man within yards of his own threshold and a sto
rm coming on. The others had to hold him back almost forcibly, and remind him that it would do no good to arrive at the city exhausted and without due care. It was as well they were heeded, for in crossing a small farm they rounded a corner and came suddenly upon a foraging party of Ekwesh, nine in all, lolling at their ease among the arbors. For a heartbeat their stern copper faces were blank with astonishment, then Kermorvan was among them before they could drop their looted wineskins and snatch up their spears; he fell upon them like a howling wind. Three he slew with two great slashing strokes even as they scrambled up, and two he felled in a breath when they stood to fight. Elof and Ils, caught up then and engaged the rest, and the dark sword sang in the light as it shattered their spears. Ils with her axe hewed the legs from one, Elof thrust through another who sought to stab her, and the last two turned to flee. But Kermorvan caught them by the farmhouse wall, knocked one sprawling and cut down the other among the splintered debris of the door. The fallen warrior sprang up with a long knife poised to throw, but Ils's axe struck him between the shoulders and he fell. Kermorvan drove his sword through him. "For none," he said, "must escape to give the alarm,, or we would be hunted down in hours. I doubt not the land here is alive with them, for with so large a force they cannot have brought much provender. We must go carefully. Well, they have a few less mouths to feed now, and ere long, I hope, fewer yet. Let them dine on these their friends, if they find them!"
For all Kermorvan's words of caution, he still led them at great speed across the country, only taking more care around estates and dwellings. These were few, and scattered. "Does Bryhaine not have any other towns?" Elof asked Kermorvan.
"Only three of any size, a port to the south named Bryhannec and two inland towns. Our ports to the north are smaller, about the size of your large Northland towns. Most people prefer to dwell within one great center; a legacy, perhaps, of the days when we first came to this land across the eastern ocean, and were alone among immense forests and mountains vaster than aught we had left behind us. Even now we still cleave to the coast, wherever we settle."
They saw three other Ekwesh parties before they left the valley, but only at a distance; they were sauntering along, evidently not expecting trouble, so it was safe to assume the others had not yet been missed. As night fell the travelers came into the first slopes of the hills, and made a comfortable camp in a shepherd's empty hut; they ate well, though they lit no fire.
"Our food is all but gone," said Ils sleepily.
"What of it?" said Kermorvan, already wrapping himself in his stained cloak. "Tomorrow we will win through to the city, or have no cares about food thereafter. As well keep up our strength."
"Tomorrow," thought Elof as he sought the sleep he felt he would never find. "Tomorrow the city—and what then? Will I find it then, that one more thing I need? Can I possibly find it in time?" But then sleep stole on him unbidden and he walked through uneasy dreams. Faces swirled before him, translucent against darkness like moonlit clouds, faces of Ils, Kermorvan, Roc and ever of Kara. But behind them all came the sword, its fell patterns no longer fixed but swirling like oil on water, changing so he could read them like script, and he knew with mounting excitement that it was about to reveal to him the secret he needed to know. Then it shimmered, shook, swirled again and the pattern twisted into hateful faces that leered and mocked at him. And still the sword advanced, swelled and grew gigantic, till it struck at him with a crash and a rumble like a falling mountain, and he was cloven to the heart.
"What was that?" he cried, sitting bolt upright. Then he realized he had been dreaming, and yet it seemed to him that faint echoes of his dream still shivered through the cool dawn air.
"A single thunderbolt," said Kermorvan softly from his place by the doorway. "The flash awoke me. Yet such a thing is rare in our summer storms. Strange. Still, the awakening came timely. We must be on our way!"
Elof and Ils rose, grumbling a little, and made a hearty breakfast on the last of their stores, while Kermorvan fumed and fretted and would hardly touch a morsel. He even grudged them minutes to splash water on their faces at the nearby spring before setting off up the hill, but now he kept a more cautious pace, an eye on the land around and great care that they should not show themselves. This close to the city they dared not cross the hillcrests and be seen against the sky, but walked a weaving path between the slopes, ever alert for sign or sound of danger. It was late afternoon, therefore, when they made their way into a little coppice of trees that skirted the last and lowest slope. Elof knew they could not be far now, for the sound of the sea was faint in his ears, and he could taste it on the breeze. But there were other sounds and taints also, and less welcome. "Here we may rest a while, and scout out our way," said Kermorvan. "The far end of this looks out upon the city."
They came to a line of trees linked by a great bank of bushes and tall ferns; cautiously he parted them, and peered out. Then Elof heard him catch his breath, and it sounded like a sob, whether of rage or sorrow or despair he could not tell. He pushed forward also, and looked out, and he, too, caught his breath at the sight before him. "It reminds me of my own village!" he said softly, and choked. "You will think that foolish! When it could have fitted into a tiny corner of this great burg…"
Kermorvan shook his head firmly, though his face was gray. "No! Never foolish. The lesser must be free of this slaughter, or how shall the great endure? It is the same, and as evil, be it writ large or small."
"He is right," said Ils. She unslung her pack, and pulled from it a bright shirt of fine mail. "Your folk, mine, his— their deaths weigh every bit as heavily in the scale, and the balance is a fearful one. This must stop!"
They were no more than a half-league now from the city walls, on a level with its highest towers, and it lay spread out before them. To Elof's eyes it seemed to spill outward from a central hill, outward across the flatter lands to either side. A great encircling wall, fronting the harbor and running from there inland in a horseshoe shape, seemed barely able to contain such a vast sprawling scatter of rooftops, all shades of slate, gray-green and weathered ivory. It seemed to Elof that his village and every other village and town he had ever seen, whether of men or duergar, might be dropped among them all together, and never noticed. Ivory also were the high walls which meandered here and there between the rooftops, setting off one section of the city from another in a way that looked at first meaningless, till he realized he was seeing the history of its growth, outward like the rings which mark the passage of seasons in a tree. In their way these rings were also a mark of time and growth. When, every few generations, the community dwelling beyond the walls had grown too large to defend from within, they would simply build another section of wall, or even an entire new encircling wall, round it. Sometimes the wall behind might be demolished, but most often it was left as an extra line of defense. Elof traced these walls inward, and marveled at the great number of them. This city was an ancient place.
And no part of it seemed more ancient, or more noble, than what he saw at its heart, wellspring of all that growth. The heart of the brooch, the shield-boss, was a rising promontory of rock, a gentle slope on its narrow landward side but dropping as a sheer cliff to the waters of the harbor. Atop this, like a high crest on a helm, it bore up a great fortress of seven high towers. Gray were the lower slopes of the citadel, for they were carved whole from the living rock. But above them the towers were of ivory stone, as also the walls and roofs that ran between them. They stood like a diadem on the brow of the rock, the tallest of them rising straight up from the cliff face above the waters. And the tops of the towers glowed under the noon sun, more brightly even than the sea which lay beyond them, for they were roofed all with bronze, and crowned in bright gold.
So much Elof would have seen if he had first gazed upon Kerbryhaine the City in the days of its peace. There might perhaps have been great ships stirring in the harbor, white sails spread, or a thin wisp of smoke arising from some great cooking fire in the citadel,
where an evening's banquet was being prepared. But now there was much, much more. The sun still shone mellow upon the tower tops, the many-hued banners they bore swirling proudly in the wind from the sea. But against them rose banners greater and more telling, dark reeks that heralded no feast fit for men, the high plumes of black smoke from the ruined lands around.
From here the devastation worked upon those lands was all too clear, the scatter of camps, emplacements, trenches and hasty fortifications, and the files of black-clad warriors that flowed among them like ants from a nest. What had once been buildings beyond the walls were but blackened shells now; what had been fields and pastures and parks were trampled down and strewn about with litter of war gear, loot and debris. What must once have been pleasant groves beneath the walls had been hewn down and stacked against the gates, or made into great laddered platforms to be pushed on rollers against the walls, and spill warriors inside.
The harbor, too, was despoiled, its waters choked now with the skeletal remains of ships, some beached, some thrust up out of the polluted water. Beyond the seawall the sails that crowded shore and sea around, like a spreading stain, were every one of them black. The grim hulls of the Ekwesh rode at anchor, the livid faces painted along their flanks menacing the city with gaping jaws. From their decks, as from the land, catapults raked the ramparts with terrible volleys of arrows and harpoons and shot of metal and stone.
But it was not only from field and sea that the banners of destruction arose, for new fires had sprung up. The ruin outside had entered. The outermost encircling wall, that only the day before had stood a stern bulwark against the spreading reek, now bore a terrible wound in its northern flank, a great jagged collapse of stone, scarred black and ashen as if by blasting heat. Into it, like a plague, streamed the black and white banners of the Ekwesh. Beyond it rooftops of gray and cream lay broken, and among them danced triumphant fires. Through the shattered streets figures of men flickered back and forth in bitter conflict, darting and dodging among the buildings, and on parts of the wall above, defenders still strove to turn back the enemy, lest they be pinioned from both sides. But the banners pressed even further and further on, and more advanced from outside. It was like a blight that had settled on a fair flower and now was creeping inward by degrees, toward the heat. Already the somber ensigns flew above a high round tower at the harbor end of the wall, and behind its battlements of sea-whitened stone robed figures were gathering. The first wall was breached; overwhelmed, futile, the first circle taken. The Ekwesh had overwhelmed the outer defenses, and were within the city.
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