The Thunder King (Bell Mountain)

by Lee Duigon

  Atop the great beast, Ryons saw the river coming up as the sun went down.

  He supposed the animal would swim across the river. Maybe it was tall enough to wade. He had no conception of great rivers like the Imperial, how strong their currents were, how deeply they flowed. All he knew was that the beast would carry him across.

  “Cavall—are you still there?” he called. The dog barked, and he was very glad to hear it. But if he knew more about rivers, he would have known there was no way Cavall could swim across.

  Ahead, lights began to come on in the city—lights along the walls, lights in a hundred thousand windows, lights everywhere. “Their night must be like day!” he thought. The thought of all those people living there dazzled him.

  Instead of heading straight for the city, the beast now veered off to the west. It must know where to cross the river, Ryons thought—how, it was impossible to imagine. Maybe animals just knew the best place to cross a river.

  By now, after a whole afternoon, he was much more comfortable on the beast’s broad back, much less afraid of falling off. There was room up here, he thought, for half a dozen boys.

  He wondered when the people on the city walls would see him coming and what they’d think of it. “They’ll be afraid,” he thought. “They’ll think it’s something bad.”

  He couldn’t help that. The only choice he had was whether to hang on or fall off. Anything else was all God’s doing.

  CHAPTER 41

  Lord Reesh’s Departure

  Having a general idea of the range involved, but no clear target in the darkness, the catapult-men on the walls nevertheless flung flights of stones in the direction of the enemy. Gwyll let them go on with it; they were bound to hit somebody. But he gave the archers word to wait until they could see men to shoot at. Arrows ought not to be wasted.

  He posted himself atop a fort between the Great North Gate and the Durmurot Gate, surrounded by his aides, sending and receiving messages, but mostly letting the commander of each section do as he thought best. He had faith in his subordinates, and too much meddling from above would make them uncertain in their actions.

  As the enemy mass crept nearer to the city walls, he saw them better. As yet they were nothing much more than a black shadow, shot with the light of countless torches, spreading over the plain. He couldn’t make out individual men. But he saw the rams making their slow progress on their heavy wooden wheels, and exulted when a lucky shot set one of them on fire. Burning, its light showed desperate men milling all around it. But the enemy had many rams. A few of them were bound to reach the gates.

  “It makes me mad, having to stand and wait for them!” a young subaltern cried.

  “Steady on, there,” said Gwyll. “If there’s any panicking to be done, let the Heathen do it.”

  “Sorry, General!”

  Now the Heathen were close enough to be heard, barbaric war cries in a score of different languages, the total effect thereof being a kind of low and surly growl—like that of a great bear wounded and distressed by arrows, but not yet weakened by them. The vast horde growled, and Lord Gwyll ordered trumpets to be blown in defiance. He ordered all the trumpets blown; and what the enemy would make of that, he didn’t know. But he knew from experience that the horns would hearten the defenders.

  What he did not know was that down below the Temple, underground and out of sight, picked men of the Heathen host were filing into the city by way of secret passages. The city fought on, unaware of treachery.

  Once again Lord Reesh saw Mardar Kyo face to face.

  “Well met, First Prester!” said Kyo. “The time has come for you and your people to leave the city. Your carts are ready and waiting. My men will escort you to them. I’ve had a litter prepared for you.”

  “My thanks, Mardar,” Reesh said.

  “We’ll meet again tomorrow. I will travel with you all the way to Kara Karram.”

  “A long journey for us, Mardar.”

  “But a safe one,” said Kyo.

  Assisted by a pair of painted savages from a country he had never heard of, Lord Reesh rose from his chair and left the chamber, entering the narrow passageway that led beneath the walls. Orth came after him and then the others, one by one, and then the twenty chests.

  “Courage, Excellency!” Gallgoid said. “I must show the mardar the way up into the Temple. I’ll rejoin you as soon as I can.”

  Reesh nodded. He didn’t feel like speaking. To embark, at his age, on a journey to the very ends of the earth was a matter to weigh on any man’s spirit. To leave everything behind that he’d known for all his life, worked for, sacrificed for, lived for—it would be a miracle if he lived long enough to see the New Temple in the East. But he would try.

  It was crowded in the passageway. Kyo’s men were pouring in, hundreds of them, some of them dressed up as city militia. Reesh’s escorts found a way through the press. It would have been utterly dark but for the many torches carried by the Heathen. The smoke of them fouled the air and made Reesh cough.

  He never would have made it to the end of the passage but for his escorts, who supported him and all but carried him to the exit. “It’s strange,” he thought, “that I’ve lived practically all my life in the Temple and I’ve never been here before—and now I’ll never see this place again. I wonder how much more of the Temple there is that I have never seen, and now will never see.”

  At last they brought him out into the fresh air. Even the oppressive, muggy air of that night was revivifying, after the smoke-filled passageway. He heard horns blowing on the walls, and the voices of tens of thousands of men shouting all at once. Well, that was to be expected; and it would be worse, much worse, before this night was over.

  A litter was waiting, with strong men to carry it. Reesh’s escort helped him into it. He noted with approval that Kyo had furnished it with cushions and curtains. Prester Orth climbed in beside him and drew the curtains shut; and then with a lurch the bearers raised the litter and they were on their way, departing forever from their native city.

  Orth sighed. He was sweating profusely, and his shirt was soaked.

  “Are you all right, my lord?” he asked.

  Reesh nodded. He wished the curtains might be opened to let in more air; on the other hand, he had no wish to see what was happening outside.

  “I half expected them to cut our throats by now,” said Orth. “They’ve got what they wanted from us, a way into the city. We have nothing left to give them as a ransom for our lives.”

  “We’ve already paid the ransom, Orth,” Reesh said. It amazed him how hard it was to speak. “The Thunder King wants a new Temple, and he needs us for that. Besides, when the food ran out, they would have taken the city anyway. We’ve made the best bargain that we could.”

  “Let’s hope they keep their end of it,” Orth said. “But you’re right, Excellency. What else could we have done?”

  Just then a bell began to toll. Reesh knew that bell. It was the one in the main tower. It shouldn’t be tolling until another hour from now, as was the custom. But as it kept on tolling, he understood: someone in the Temple had fled to the tower and was sounding an alarm.

  Orth reached for the curtains, but Reesh stopped him.

  “I’ll not look back—and neither will you, if you’re a man,” he said.

  “Excellency, I thought—”

  “There’s nothing to see!” Reesh snapped. “We are the New Temple now. The old one is no longer any of our business. Leave those curtains shut.”

  CHAPTER 42

  The Salvation of the Lord

  When the beast first stepped into the water, Ryons was afraid. The sun had set; it was quickly getting dark; and except when lightning flashed above, he couldn’t see the far bank of the river. During those split seconds of illumination, it seemed dreadfully far away. But the beast went right in, and there was nothing Ryons could do about it. If they both went under the water, he didn’t know how he would be able to hold on. Besides which, he didn’t
know how to swim.

  Behind him, he heard a splash. It was Cavall jumping in. How the dog could possibly swim all the way across, Ryons didn’t know.

  The gigantic beast did not go under. At all times its head, neck, and back remained above the water. Whether it was actually swimming or just walking on the bottom, Ryons couldn’t tell.

  “Cavall!” he cried. And Cavall, dripping wet, somehow scrambled aboard the beast’s broad back and teetered forward until he was as close to Ryons as he dared to go. Ryons heard him whine, but didn’t risk turning around. “Good boy!” he said. “But don’t forget to jump off before he climbs out on the other side.” Cavall answered with a subdued bark.

  Inky waters swirled and bubbled along both sides as Ryons bent over and peered into the darkness. He couldn’t see whether the beast was being swept downstream by the current, but he could still see the lights of Obann up ahead and to the right. The beast would emerge from the river somewhere to the west of the city. What it would do then, only God knew.

  “I could get off, too, just before he reaches land,” the boy thought. But then what?

  No—it wouldn’t do. No getting off! He must ride until the ride was over. It was God’s will. He would not get off, but rather take the adventure God had given him. “I haven’t come all this way just to disobey Him now,” he thought.

  “But I hope you’re watching!” he added by way of prayer.

  The lightning flashed again, and the opposite bank seemed just as far away as ever, barely to be seen.

  The first hint Lord Gwyll had of anything amiss was the untimely tolling of the great bell of the Temple. He couldn’t imagine what that might be about—something better left to Lord Reesh, he supposed.

  Gwyll had more than enough to do on the walls. The enemy had never before committed such numbers to a direct assault. The plain teemed with solid masses of warriors: there was no estimating how many of them. But without ladders, such a bold attack against the walls was plain suicide; and Gwyll saw no sign of ladders.

  They had no way to get over the walls. Their only hope was the rams with which to batter down the gates. The claw machines would overturn most of the rams, and the city’s archers and crossbowmen would slaughter the men like sheep. What were the enemy commanders thinking? Was there to be one last, supreme effort before the cold weather came? Did they hope to achieve by blind bravery what only ladders and machines could do? It was magnificent, Gwyll thought, but it was not war.

  On they came, hordes of them, waving torches, howling like a wounded bear who sought only to kill once more before he died. Gwyll could see them now. And from the walls, arrows began to fly in thick swarms. Men dropped by the hundreds, to be trampled by those who came after them. Some were crushed under the rams.

  The rams had just come within reach of the claws over the gates when a panting courier stumbled up the steps of the fort.

  “General! Lord Gwyll! There’s fire in the Temple!”

  “Where are the fire-fighting crews?” Gwyll said.

  “They’re trying, General—but there are Heathen warriors in the Temple, and they’re coming out and killing them!”

  And Gwyll, who knew how cities fall, knew instantly that his city was betrayed; and now it would be the devil’s own job to save it.

  “I can’t leave the walls,” he said. “Tell my colonel to commit the reserves to the Temple—all of them!”

  “Yes sir! Sir, Lord Davensay is already fighting there with a troop of men he found somewhere.”

  In spite of the horror of the situation, Gwyll grinned. Davensay the popinjay, in all his ridiculous and gaudy armor!

  “God save Lord Davensay!” he said. “Now run, boy—he’s going to need help!”

  The boy saluted and hurried back down the way he’d come up. Gwyll turned toward the Temple and was appalled by what he saw. The fire had already set its fangs deep into the Temple, and bright flames danced against the night sky.

  Although he had no reciter there to lead him in a prayer, Lord Gwyll offered up a prayer of his own devising. “Father God, see this your city through this night!” he prayed. “And let me match Lord Davensay in courage.”

  Up in the hills, Helki and the chieftains saw fire break out inside the city.

  “It’s the Temple, if I’m any judge,” said Hennen. “The Temple of the Lord is burning.”

  “How can that be?” Shaffur said. “They have machines that throw fire, but they aren’t using them.”

  “It’s the Temple, sure enough,” said Nanny. “That’s where the Temple stands, where all that fire is. My poor Lord Gwyll!” And then she slumped against her cushions and said no more.

  What they could not see from the hills, and what neither Lord Gwyll nor any of his officers did not yet know, was that Heathen in Obannese dress had fanned out from the Temple and were now opening some of the city’s lesser gates, having surprised and killed the guards. But the Heathen commanders outside the walls knew it, and had been waiting for it, and were now directing warriors into the city.

  Nor could they see Lord Davensay, with some two dozen men, trying to fight his way up the Great Steps of the Temple, only to be driven back down by sheer weight of numbers. They perished in the Presters’ Square before the steps, cut down before the reinforcements could arrive.

  “‘Heavy is the hand of God in judgment,’” said Obst, quoting from the Prophet Roki. “Men and brothers, we are witnessing the death of Obann’s greatest city and God’s judgment on the Temple.”

  “Witnessing, but not doing anything,” said Spider.

  “Wait,” Obst said.

  Once the lesser gates were opened, and there were Heathen horsemen in the city clattering up and down the streets and throwing torches everywhere, the defenders’ discipline broke down.

  Gwyll ordered units off the walls to shut the gates; but once men saw others leaving their posts, not knowing it was by command, some of them fled, too. Gwyll’s trumpeters blew themselves hoarse. But all the soldiers saw the Temple burning, the archers and the claw crews were distracted, and before anyone could stop it, one of the surviving rams smashed open the Durmurot Gate. Heathen poured into the city from the west. Defenders poured down from the walls, frantic to save their homes and families. Hardly fifteen minutes later, the North Gate fell, too.

  “The end!” thought Gwyll. “Undone by treachery—whose, I’ll never know. God’s curse on them!”

  A soldier who hadn’t left his post cried out, “What do we do now, General?”

  Gwyll looked him in the eye, drew his sword, and saluted him.

  “Die bravely, son, as soldiers should,” he said. “Will you come down to the gate with me? There ought to be good fighting there.”

  The young man grinned at him. “It’ll be my pleasure, sir!” he said.

  The two of them climbed down from the fort, followed by all the rest who hadn’t yet deserted.

  “Good-bye, Rhianna, my wife and my love!” Lord Gwyll said under his breath. “We should have listened to old Nanny.”

  Splash! Cavall jumped back into the river; and a moment later the beast was climbing out of the water, Ryons still clinging to its back.

  Lightning flashed. Now thunder rolled. They were a distance west of the city, and now Ryons could see what he couldn’t see before—the whole plain swarming with warriors, Heathen hordes pressing to get into the city.

  From somewhere inside the walls, flames leaped into the night. Horns blared. Thousands and thousands of men roared together; but you couldn’t hear them when it thundered. Great, splitting thunderclaps, livid streaks of lightning: a storm was breaking on Obann.

  Unfazed, the great beast stretched out its neck and strode straight for the center of the battle. Ryons hung on for dear life. Cavall, he knew, was somewhere down there in the dark; but there was nothing he could do for him. He couldn’t see him, couldn’t even hear him. There was too much noise.

  “Go, beast, go!” he cried. “Chase them away from the city—chase them o
ff the edge of the world!”

  “What in God’s name is that?” said Helki.

  “It moves,” said Zekelesh. “But is it alive, or is it some machine?”

  Helki watched, seeing this marvel in short bursts of lightning. Yes, it was alive. It moved across the plain on four legs, making for the west gate of the city and the throngs of Heathen.

  But what was it? There was no animal he knew that was of such a size. Comparing it to the nearby city walls, he could see it was a giant. Where had it come from? Was it some undreamed-of monster called up from the river’s depths by the din of battle?

  A brighter flash of lightning revealed more. The monster walked on four huge legs with a long, thick neck thrust out ahead of it.

  “Look! The Heathen see it now!” cried Spider. “And there’s a rider on its back, I think.”

  The mass of men outside the western wall was breaking up, dissolving like a stream bank washed away by flood.

  “Arise, you soldiers of the Lord! Your king has returned to you!”

  It was Nanny. She stood up in her cart. Her white hair had come undone and was blowing in the wind, all around her face. She stretched out her hands.

  “Behold your king, the servant of the Lord! He rides upon the steed provided by the Lord his God, to make war upon the nations! It is the Lord who conquers; it is the Lord who is their judge.

  “Arise, you men of God! Go down and join your king, and follow him wherever God should lead him. Go, rejoice, the Lord is with you!”

  The army cried out with one voice. Obst, who had the gift of languages, knew without being told that God had for the moment given the same gift to His prophetess. All the men in Ryons’ army heard her speech in their own languages.

  Helki could not have held them back now if he’d wanted to. The Ghols, King Ryons’ bodyguard, spurred their horses, and with shrill cries galloped down the hill. The Wallekki horsemen followed, an avalanche of hoofbeats; and then, on foot, Abnaks and Fazzan and Attakotts, Hennen’s mail-clad spearmen, Lintum foresters, Griffs, and men of several other nations. Chief Spider howled ecstatically and ran after his men. Subchief Uduqu was among them, brandishing the giant’s sword on high.