by Clayton, Jo;
“You don’t want much, do you.” Maissa laughed. “I swear.”
“No reservations again. You make me uneasy, woman.”
“Do I lie?”
“No. But it puzzles me.”
“Exercise for your marvelous brain, witch.”
“Third, this. You will deliver Stavver, Sharl, and me to any world he names, without argument, trick or other treachery.”
Maissa tipped her head forward, hiding her face behind her masses of blue-black hair. Then she tossed the hair back, a crooked smile on her small face. “All right. I swear.”
Aleytys slid off the bunk. “You mean these things. But I sense there’s something I’ve missed. I’ll keep thinking and poking at this, that I promise you. Hold your hands out. I haven’t anything to cut with, so I’ll have to work on the knots. It’ll take a while.”
Chapter VIII
The bands of color were contracting into towers as the sun rested on the eastern horizon, painting the air vermillion. On the master’s wagon the guards hacked away at the entrance to the tent, enlarging it so he could come out. Near the edge of the huge wagon behind the hedge of swords six men sat with tall drums clutched between their knees.
“What’s happening?”
Aleytys turned when she heard Maissa’s voice. The small woman stood just behind the bench, hands resting on the top slat.
“Getting ready for some kind of ceremony, it looks like. That’s the road into the lakelands just ahead there.”
Maissa fidgeted about, her fingernails scraping repeatedly across the weathered surface of the wood. “I know that. Look around. All the wagons driven back. Somewhere. Except ours. That makes me nervous, witch.” She laughed suddenly, eyes gleaming with malice. “You should know, you’re close enough to that monster.”
Aleytys shuddered. “Don’t remind me.” She watched the wagon in frowning silence. Five boys scrambled up the ladder herded by a pair of sober-faced guards. They stopped before the mangled entrance to the tent and formed up into a ragged line.
As the last tip of the sun slipped away the master emerged, dipping through the broken arch to stand blinking in the misty twilight, his white curls glowing like a halo around his grotesque head. He nodded briefly to the line of boys as he walked past them. While he eased himself down on a leather mound, the boys moved in a wobbly line to sit on the wagon floor in front of him, facing outward, legs folded into full lotus, hands resting on knees.
“The making of a master,” Aleytys muttered. “It begins.”
“What?”
“Hush. I’ll tell you later.”
The master’s wagon was drawn up on the summit of a low rise with the caravan parked close on the sundown side. The thousands of beings in the horde stood packed in a wedge-shaped mass that began at the foot of the rise and continued on up to the rim of the three hillocks beyond. The standers were silent, so still they were like a forest of statues. Waiting—there was a tension in the air—waiting.
With a great burst of sound the drums began beating. At first they throbbed wildly with no perceptible commonality, then, slowly, out of the chaos of sound, a thrumming double beat rose triumphant.
Aleytys heard a low murmur, a whispering wordless sound that fluttered across the crowd. Behind her she heard a faint echo. When she looked back Maissa was staring glassily at the master, moaning very very softly in a cadenced whisper that matched the double beat of the drums. Aleytys swallowed, closed her eyes and pressed her hands tight against them, then forced herself to watch, locked into watching by the pressing need for knowledge.
The master bent slowly forward, planting his elbows on his knees. He lowered his massive head onto his hands. The chant intensified, merging with the beat-beat of the drum.
The shaman came from the tent to stand erect beside the master, his head barely reaching the top of the meaty shoulder. He crossed his arms over his skinny chest and looked around, an absurd little figure with a clattering kilt made from strips of leather threaded through small polished skulls that danced about and clicked mightily whenever he moved.
The chanters began to sway rhythmically, shifting weight first to the right, then to the left, then back, over and over. So tightly were they packed, the slightest break in the rhythm would have thrown knots of them into confusion. But there was no break. As if they shared a single mind the horde swayed right then left without stopping. The drums beat the double beat unchanging monotonous hard calloused hands caressing the tough hides with mechanical exactitude.
Ah … oh … ah … oh … the shaman circled the master and the boys, feet moving in unison with the great groaning cry of the multi-tongued beast that covered the hills. Behind her Aleytys could feel Maissa’s body sliding back and forth in exactly the same rhythm, murmuring the same ah … oh … ah … oh … over, over, over.
The drum beats trembled in Aleytys’ blood, striking against her will like hugely amplified blows. Her breathing came faster and lighter, a haze drifted across her eyes and her mouth opened to join the chant, the seductive compelling join join join, share the ecstasy—one in many, one of many, one out of many, no more pain loneliness tension difficulties … come come come.…
“No!” For a minute she thought she shouted it then knew the word had trickled from her lips in a barely perceptible whisper. “No,” she repeated softly. “I deny you. I am I.” She stared at the shuddering straining master. “I will not join.”
As the compulsion retreated, she laughed, eyes sparkling with her victory. She looked at the mob with disgust, sickened that a single reasoning being should allow himself to surrender his will in a kind of beast ecstasy to the monster on the wagon. Now she knew what a master was, and knowing this, the last unwillingness to destroy him washed out of her.
One of the boys jerked suddenly to his feet. A candidate, she thought. Has he passed or failed his test?
The shaman strode into the tent, the skulls clacking about his legs. He came back with a knife in one hand and an ivory white bowl in the other. A huge bowl, vaguely hemispherical with a rough rim and odd bulges. Aleytys came close to vomiting when she realized it was the sawn-off top of a master’s skull.
The boy stood swaying from side to side, chanting, blind, lost, unaware of what was happening. The sound, she thought. Ramaikh. It’s too much for him. He can’t cope. I cured him. My god, I cured him of life. She pressed her fist to her mouth as the shaman stroked the knife expertly across the throat, catching the flood of blood in the bulbous bowl.
He handed the bowl to the boy next to the tumbled body. The surviving candidate drank deep and passed the steaming mess on, wiping the red stain from his lips as innocently as a child wipes off a milk moustache. When the bowl was empty the shaman set it with the knife between the master’s feet then continued his endless circling around and around and around. Waiting for the next to succumb.
In the east the moon drifted up over the rim of the earth and sailed in silver silence between the false thunder-heads. The chant went on … and on … on.… Oh.… ah … oh … ah.… The chant and the drum beats … on … and on. There was no sign of fatigue in the chanters as if they had stepped outside of the needs of their humanity, tapping into another source of energy.
Another boy leaped to his feet.
Aleytys swung past Maissa and dived into the caravan.
Sharl was pushing against his blankets … right … left … right … left, whimpering in pain and fear, his small cry echoing the ah … oh … ah … oh … chant from outside.
Rage flared in Aleytys, an anger that settled into a cold intensity that filled her with strength enough to slaughter the lot of them if she had to She snatched Sharl up, cradling him against her breasts. “No,” she whispered. “No, baby, he can’t have you.” She let the strength pour out of her into his small body. “My little one, my dream singer. Remember your father. Remember him in your blood and bones, my Sharl, my baby, be strong and wise and warm, remember, little one. You have his gifts, I know it, I know it, m
y baby, my baby.…” She continued humming softly as she rocked him gently back and forth. He relaxed against her, curled up like a kitten, warm and purring.
Aleytys settled onto the cot, shivering as the chill of the night air coiled around her. Tucking Sharl into the curve of her right arm where he would lie safe between her and the wall, she stretched out on the cot, pulling the quilt over her.
Outside, the interminable unchanging chant the interminable unchanging beat of the drums went on and on. As she grew warm and drowsy and eventually drifted off to sleep.
Chapter IX
Warm. Content Sharl lay beside her, his head propped on her arm, kicking peacefully and waving his arms about while he gurgled and murmured an outpouring of wordless sounds as if he lectured to the air or to the feet he was too young to recognize as his own. Aleytys lay quiet a while, enjoying the sense of well-being, then she pushed up one elbow and tickled Sharl into giggling hysterics. She fluffed up the blankets in the drawer and set him down. “We’re moving baby. Going somewhere.” She stroked his cheek affectionately. “Sleep, little one. I’m going to stick my head out and see what’s going on.”
She yawned, stretched, and smoothed the crumpled batik. “Maissa.” There was no answer. “Where’re we going?” Silence. She slid off the bunk and thrust her head through the curtains. “Leyilli?”
Maissa sat stony still as if she heard nothing except perhaps some daylight echo of the night’s chant, reins firm in her hands, holding the team to a steady slow walk that kept the back edge of the master’s wagon a measured distance from the horses’ noses. Aleytys stepped onto the narrow ledge behind the back of the driver’s bench and scanned the horde.
They were in the lakelands. Not on the road. No. They were moving across the gently rolling fields, tearing up fences as they came to them. Aleytys shivered. The faces she could see were set like masks with glassy lifeless eyes, moving with the stiff regimentation of automatons. Licking dry lips she caught hold of the carving at the edge of the caravan and leaned out, looking behind to see what was happening there.
Off to one side there was a break in the dark flood of riders. About twenty of the horde—men, women, children, were mechanically slaughtering a small herd of pihayo. As she watched a gap opened between the standing figures and she saw a stone-faced boy slit the throat of a shaggy beast and thrust his mouth into the warm stream of spurting blood. Beyond him a girl not more than four stabbed repeatedly at the throat of a calf. Aleytys wrenched her eyes away only to see black plumes of smoke rolling up the slant of the morning breeze. She closed her eyes, unwilling to see more. Unsteadily she swung around the end of the bench to sit beside Maissa.
In eery silence the front edge of the horde swung axes and clubs, levelling fences and hedges. Ahead, thrusting up over the tree-interrupted line of the horizon she saw a delicate scarlet thread. Loahn, Loahn, she thought. I hope you warned them. Then, over the rumble-crunch-shriek of the wagons, she heard the musical metallic voice of the bell calling out the danger beat, triple threes repeated over and over.
A small band of riders came galloping past, loosing a cloud of bolts. The horde ignored them, ignored the bodies of their own dying and dead. And the wounded rolled as silent as the dead off their mounts, rolled as silent as the dead under the careless hooves of the horde. Maissa drove stolidly over the trampled fragments of men. And not only men. The off-side horse shied suddenly, Aleytys looked down into the unmarred face of a child, a girl, hair streaming out over the ground, ragged bloody shreds of flesh, rubbery white tubing where her neck should have been. There was nothing in her stomach to void but Aleytys hung over the side of the caravan racked with dry heaves, the acids from her stomach burning in her throat. She wiped a trembling hand over and over her mouth.
The raiders came again. And again. Their quarrels found easy targets. But it was not enough. The sheer bulk of the horde defeated them. Ten died, fifty, a hundred. The loss was scarcely perceptible in the mass of riders. Ahead the crimson thread rose higher and higher. Aleytys stumbled around the seat and plunged inside the caravan. She reached through the back curtains, pulled the water-skin inside. Without caring where the water fell, she splashed handful after handful of the warmish liquid across her face and arms, then took a mouthful, sloshed it around, and spat it out the back. She swallowed more, letting it slide down her burning throat to rest uneasily on her stomach. She looked at the sleeping baby, her face relaxing into a tender smile as it always did. She let the waterskin swing out again, wiped her damp hands on a rag, then touched the wispy curls haloing his small face.
She pulled the corners of her mouth down, pressed a hand against her stomach. “Eating doesn’t really appeal to me, baby,” she muttered. “But I have to feed you, little leech.” She rummaged through the drawers until she turned up a resin paper packet full of hard greyish-umber chunks of dried meat. She took two pieces of meat, twisted the paper together again and dropped it in the drawer. After slamming the drawer shut she climbed back on the bunk. She glanced at Sharl curled up in his nest of flannel. “Huh, baby. I’ll stay in here. No use wasting the effort I’m going to put into chewing this leather.”
With her free hand she touched her temple, welcoming the chime with a strong feeling of relief. “Well, Rider,” she murmured. “Though you fool around with my body, at least you leave my mind alone.” She closed her eyes, rubbed her back against the side of the caravan. “All this is exciting. I wonder what fantastic things you’ve seen. You know, I think I’m actually enjoying most of this. In a funny kind of way. Still.…” She sighed. “I used to hate the thought of having something in my mind, snooping into what I thought and did. Right now, it’s kind of friendly. Though … to have you watching when I.…” She shifted on the bunk and frowned at the soreness in her body. “That elephant … left me sore as.…” She sighed again and swallowed the last hard lump of meat. “Does this stuff really have any value as nourishment? Maybe it’ll fill the hole inside me. I wish you could talk to me. I don’t even really know if you can understand what I’m saying.”
She lay down on the bunk and laced her fingers together below her breasts. “Rider.…” Closing her eyes she sank herself into the deep trance where at the utmost stretch of her mind she could feel the presence she called Rider. Once again she spread out the image of the still black pool. Amber eyes flickered there, amber light flashed over the surface. “Hello,” she thought. “I need your help, Rider. Do you know what has happened to me?”
Feeling of affirmation. Amber eyes blinked then vanished.
“Ah. Good. Do you know what I plan to do?”
Affirmation.
“Good. I have to kill the horde master. I don’t have the skill or the stomach for it. So.” She let her mind rest a minute breathed slowly to dissolve the tension. “So. Will you use your skill, your experience, and do this thing for me? Will you help me?”
There was a strained silence. A feeling of impatience. Amber flickered then black danced across amber then violet thread spun through the fragmented colors … like a war … black against amber against violet. Aleytys waited. The flickering colors faded, returned as the breathing exercises stilled the turbulence in her body. Then the pond of still water was there again. “Will you help me?” she whispered.
Image of stern black eyes coming through more powerfully than ever before. Feeling of reassurance and agreement.
For a minute she floated disoriented then she babbled. “Thank you … thank you … thank you.…” Tears of relief slipped from under her eyelids and rolled across her face to wet the hair above her ears.
The black eyes crinkled into laughter. She felt warm acceptance glow through her. Then she drifted into a deep, deep sleep.
The baby’s crying woke her. She slid off the bunk and changed him hastily, then put him to suck as she pushed through the curtain to find out why the caravan was stopped.
Maissa was gone. Ahead the city was a massive block of grey stone surrounded by the attacking horde like ants a
round a dying animal. From the walls archers poured quarrels into the mass of the horde swarming below. In front of the gate two sets of bearers swung wagon tongues they were using as battering rams, against the iron studded gates. The carriers died and died and died but there was always more to take their places, kicking the dead and wounded aside when they got in the way.
Around the walls as far as she could see the horde was clawing at the city. Some drove up against the walls, unhooked wagon tongues, tied ropes to them and heaved them up the walls with an unnatural strength that sent the tongues three times out of five flying over the top, dragging a knotted rope behind. Again and again the defenders cut the ropes, shot the climbers, speared those of the horde who reached the top. But each time more of them got into the city. In spite of the hundreds who died. More got into the city. And the bodies of the horde piled higher and higher along the walls in a pouring out of life that left Aleytys too shocked to tear her eyes from the waste. And horror piled on horror, it made no difference whether that life belonged to man, woman, or child. Without thought to age or sex the horde poured against the city, expending itself with a prodigality that defeated walls and defenders alike.
The gates boomed open at last, sections of the wall were cleared of cityfolk. Lines of horde beings like trails of ants poured over the walls and through the gate into the city. Aleytys looked up at the sky. The sun was halfway between noon and setting. Three hours. She leaned back and closed her eyes, shutting out the scurrying silent horde, swarming over the city’s carcass. Maissa among them. Running wild through the gate, arms and knife splattered with blood. An orgy of death where attackers and attacked joined in a crazy drunken deadly embrace. Three hours to kill a city.
Opening her eyes she stared with hostility at the master’s wagon. Sitting there like a spider under that hairy white-mound, she thought. How much death does it take to make a master?
Behind the hedge of swordblades twenty men stood, eyes alert, bodies under their own control, separated out from the rest of the mindless horde, wearing helmets of a silvery metal, the shaggy black ends sticking out like coarse grass from under a rock. Aleytys rubbed her forehead. Those helmets … but there was still no chance to kill the master, not really … there was too much confusion … she didn’t know enough yet … not yet.…