by Dave Duncan
“You know what I mean. Being crucified.”
He sighed. “I wouldn’t put it past him if he thought that was what was needed. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s relevant. I asked Prof and he agrees. There’s no way that the Liberator’s death would in itself destroy Zath. Edward’s in terrible danger, of course. The odds are still long against him, so he may well die. If he does, I’m sure it won’t be by his own wish.”
The argument in the corner sounded as if it was about to come to blows. The protesters were growing louder too.
“He might pull down the temple, like Samson?” Alice asked.
“No, that won’t work. It’s got to be a straight, heads-down contest of mana. The stronger wins, the weaker loses. If Edward isn’t powerful enough to win that, then he would gain nothing by pulling down the temple. Zath would just trapdoor himself out of there. Edward would have used up far more mana than he would.”
She thought of the other two men she had lost in her life and wondered if she was about to lose a third. Not a lover like them, of course, but a very dear foster brother. Just that. It was enough. Of course, if Edward survived his ordeal and then renewed his suit…She shied away from such thoughts.
“You still believe he needs help from the Pentatheon?”
“Zath has been collecting mana for a hundred years or so.”
“But Edward has done far, far better than anyone expected, hasn’t he?”
“Thanks to the Spanish flu, he has. I know we mustn’t say that, but it’s true.” Julian chuckled, and Alice felt it through her backbone. “Fallow always claimed it taught us leadership, but no old Fallovian has ever led anything on this scale before. He’s done far, far better than the Service ever dreamed possible. I think the only one who foresaw this was Zath himself. I hope the bastard’s been worrying about this for thirty years.”
“How do you think the Pentatheon feels?”
“Pretty bucked, if we’re right in thinking they don’t like Zath.”
“But the more powerful Edward is, the greater the risk they take if they help him, surely? They’ll just create another Zath to threaten them, and they must know Edward doesn’t approve of them either.” His own success might doom him.
“I don’t know.” Julian squirmed into a new position. “Nobody knows. It’s a waste of time theorizing.” He wasn’t contradicting her. He couldn’t, because he had said much the same things himself in the past. “I will say this: Prof and I went over the Testament, and this is almost the end. This is verse four-oh-four, hunger in Thovale. There’s only one prophecy left. Edward’s fulfilled all the rest—all those that mention the Liberator, all those that mention D’ward, all those that seem to be relevant but don’t name him at all. The only one left to go is verse one thousand one: ‘In wrath the Liberator shall descend into Thargland. The gods shall flee before him; they shall bow their heads before him, they will spread their hands before his feet.’”
“That’s certainly encouraging, but you’re forgetting three eighty-six. It’s not finished yet.”
“Well, of course.”
Everyone knew verse 386:
‘Hear all peoples, and rejoice all lands, for the slayer of Death comes, the Liberator, the son of Kameron Kisster. In the seven hundredth Festival, he shall come forth in the land of Suss. Naked and crying he shall come into the world and Eleal shall wash him. She shall clothe him and nurse him and comfort him. Be merry and give thanks; welcome this mercy and proclaim thine deliverance, for he will bring death to Death.’
The arguing men had been forced into silence by their neighbors. People were whispering and coughing, and a child wailed in another tent somewhere. Snow smothered all other sounds.
Thinking over what Julian had said, Alice realized that there was another verse in the Testament that had not been completed yet, one that mentioned someone called the Betrayer. Who was he?
53
Dosh had set off over Figpass with fifteen helpers and ten wagons. Five men and six tusk oxen froze to death on the way, but four days later he led the survivors into Thovale, arriving two hours after dawn, just as a warm wind mockingly turned the snow to rain. A crowd of men and women ran out to meet the train, shrieking and cheering, slithering and stumbling through drifts already shrinking. The famine was over.
Dosh was dead on his feet, soaked and frozen and exhausted, aching in every bone. If he were in a fit state to find anything amusing, he would be finding that welcome amusing, for the rescuers were being greeted like the long-lost son in that parable D’ward told. Tielan and Doggan were the first to locate Dosh himself amid the bedraggled band of rescuers. They embraced him as if they were planning to rape him. Doggan kissed him. Tielan screamed that he loved him. Oh, how times changed! The last time the three of them had been in Thargdom together, those two would not have been seen within arm’s length of Dosh Houseboy. That was what the Liberator had wrought. That was what virtue was all about, and it felt good. He could not deny that it felt good.
More people flocked around him to pummel, hug, and congratulate. He was too weary. He shook them off, turned away…and came face-to-face with the one man he really wanted to see.
“Well done!” D’ward said harshly. “You delivered the goods again. You saved the day!” He clasped Dosh’s shoulder briefly, a squeeze hardly detectable through its covering of wet fur.
Dosh stared up at him in dismay. “Master? What’s wrong? What have I done?”
“Nothing! I mean everything. We’ve got a famine on our hands, and you’ve saved us. You’re the best, Dosh! I can always count on you.”
The Liberator bared his teeth in a death’s-head grin, thumped Dosh’s shoulder again, and trudged away to greet the others. His eyes had not said what his voice had. Something was wrong.
Dosh found a tent and fell into the bottomless sleep of total exhaustion. By the time he awoke, it was the following morning and the Free were already on the move, under a roof of cloud that seemed to rest on the treetops. A steady drizzle still fell; slush had become a soup of mud, black and pungent and knee-deep. Most of the tents had been struck; all the livestock had gone. The remaining wagons were being hauled away by teams of men.
Stiff as an oak rafter, he limped off in search of food and news. The rumors were thicker on the ground than the mud. The Thargian army was holding Mestpass. The Thargian army had been devastated by the sickness. No, it had been devastated a fortnight ago but was now recovered. The ephors had sent word that the Free were welcome to enter Thargia, or must not enter Thargia. The ephors had demanded D’ward be handed over to them. D’ward had demanded Zath. The ephors were dead and Tharg was burning. All guesswork, obviously.
The poles were genuine, though. Men had been tearing down a forest, cutting poles. D’ward had decreed that every able-bodied pilgrim should henceforth bear a pole topped with the circle of the Undivided. He had demonstrated by cutting a sapling, trimming off all the branches except one at the top, curling that one around, and tying it with a length of creeper. The camp was full of them. They were being issued to everyone departing.
“What the blazes are those for?” Dosh demanded of the Fionian woman who heaped his platter with boiled vegetables. The meat he had brought had not stayed around long enough for him to share.
“Symbols of the One, dear.” Fionians called everybody “dear.”
Dosh considered the matter as he headed off to find a seat. The Free had never needed such emblems before; D’ward spurned even the earrings that the old Church of the Undivided had issued to its followers. So what was he really thinking?
Thargia maintained the only real standing army in the Vales, commonly estimated at no less than ten thousand men. That number might be doubled or tripled in an emergency, but what had the pestilence done to Thargland’s fighting strength? Moas would not accept substitute riders, so the cavalry had certainly been weakened. It was not impossible that the Free would outnumber whatever forces the ephors sent against them, although numbers alone were mis
leading. A trained Thargian soldier could eliminate half a dozen peasants without spitting on his hands. When every peasant bore a quarterstaff, the odds were a little better. Moas had very fragile legs.
So D’ward was anticipating trouble. What of morale? Would even Thargians fight for the hated god of death? Furthermore, the Liberator had gone from strength to strength for the last three fortnights, from nothing to leader of a mighty host. This was the hand of the One, of course. Even the pagans must be wondering which side their phony gods supported.
If he were one of the ephors, Dosh concluded, he would let Zath and the Liberator settle their own quarrel first. Then he would decide whether to let the Free go or round them up and send them to the mines.
He was still very shaky, but his duty lay with D’ward and Dosh did not want to be left out of the excitement. Having checked on the condition of his helpers—because that was what D’ward would have done—he acquired one of the circle poles and set off in pursuit.
Mestpass was classed as easy, but no pass was truly easy in winter. Much of the trail ran through a broad, flat valley, made difficult now only by mud, but in some places it narrowed to a canyon. Normally placid Mestwater had become a boiling torrent, glutted with melted snow. Half the bridges had gone and must be replaced before the Free could cross. Consequently, they had not progressed very far, and Dosh caught up with the main body before midnight. The next morning he was ready to resume his duties.
By midday, he was walking over the green hills of Thargslope. Snowy peaks dwindled away to west and south, for Thargvale was so wide that its far side was hidden beyond the horizon. The sun shone in a sapphire-pale sky as if spring would jump out of the ground at any moment. Yet this was midwinter! Thargvale was blessed with a much finer climate than its inhabitants deserved.
“The old place hasn’t changed much, has it?” D’ward said cheerfully.
“No, master.” Dosh eyed the Liberator’s smile and decided that there was nothing wrong with it. He must have been imagining that odd greeting two days ago. He had been very tired, after all. “I don’t suppose the people have changed much either.”
“Well, you never know. It does look as if they’re up to their old tricks, though, hiding the silverware.”
“Master?”
“No welcoming committee, no livestock in sight. You think perhaps they don’t trust us?”
“We’re being watched,” growled Bid’lip Soldier from D’ward’s other side. “I’d swear I saw something on that hill a moment ago. And the back of my neck’s itching.”
“Fleas,” D’ward said. “Fleas in bronze armor. You can see the sun flashing off them every few minutes. Watch over there.”
Four years ago, Dosh had traveled across Thargvale with D’ward—and with Tielan, Doggan, Prat’han, and all the others. Then it had been springtime, with the trees shining in a million shades of green and gold and purple and blue. Then he had been young and crazy. Now most of the woods were bare, although here and there he could see patches of evergreens—also everblues and everpinks, for all Thargian vegetation was colorful. A few patches of snow still lingered in the hollows. Mestwater swirled along the valley floor, deep and dark, spread beyond its banks. It was burdened with floating logs that had been cut in the summer and were now on their way to market.
By marching into Thargvale, the Free were blatantly provoking a fanatically xenophobic warrior state. This was the second time in four years that D’ward Liberator had led such an invasion. The air seemed to crackle with danger.
The countryside was much as Dosh remembered it: prosperous, well-tended farms in the lowlands, stone walls trailing like pencil lines over the fertile, rolling hills. The big houses of the nobles were more noticeable with the trees bare. Silos, haystacks, windmills. As D’ward said, no visible people or animals. Since Jurgvale, his progress had been marked by groups of the sick and their attendants, waiting for healing: people on foot or in wagons or even in tents, camped out until he should arrive. Here, there was no one. Had the pestilence avoided Thargvale, or were the people forbidden to seek the aid of the heretic?
No one in sight except the Free themselves, a wide column that stretched back out of sight, many thousands, carrying thousands of circles…or quarterstaffs, if that was what they were. With them came their wagons and pack beasts, oxen and llamas, and even a few moas and rabbits that had appeared after the snow melted. It must be the greatest movement of people in the history of the Vales.
Where was D’ward taking them? That morning he had placed himself at the front and given orders that the inevitable stragglers be herded up as much as possible. He was setting a very gentle pace. He had detailed no advance party and had refused Bid’lip’s request to send out scouts. Obviously he anticipated trouble, but he would have to be insane not to anticipate trouble in Thargvale. A little while ago, he had passed the word for Dosh and Bid’lip, but so far he had said nothing of substance.
Then he did. “How’s the money?”
“All gone, master.”
He nodded. “Thought it would be. Well, Bid’lip? You’re our expert on strategy. How does our situation look?”
The big Niolian scrunched up his luxuriant black eyebrows. He had been known to remark that he had the sort of face that looked best when he put his helmet on backward, but he was not in a joking mood today. “Shaky.” He pointed to the river. “Mestwater’s in spate. Somewhere up ahead it must join Thargwater. There’ll be other tributaries, I expect, and likely all of them in flood too. The Thargians can cut down the bridges, if the rivers haven’t done it for them. Is Tharg on the south bank or the north?”
“North. But you’re right about the tributaries.”
When D’ward said no more, Dosh spelled out his own worries.
“No supplicants, no fresh recruits, so no source of funds. Buying food in Thargland won’t be as easy as it’s been in other vales. There’s no villages here, only those big estates. They trade with one another or send their produce directly to the city. Dommi’s moaning about supplies, master.”
Still the Liberator continued to stroll along in silence, wielding his pole like a staff. His face was giving nothing away. He seemed to be enjoying the walk and the sunshine.
“But we have the One True God to rely on?” Dosh snapped.
His impudence earned him a reproving frown. “He doesn’t expect to do all the work, Brother Dosh. Good intentions are not enough by themselves.” Then D’ward smiled to take the bite out of his words. “Yes, I know it looks bad. I’m not unaware of that. Here’s what I want you to do. See that little hill? The one with the trees and the house on top? We’re going to camp there. Bid’lip, I want you to post guards around the house to keep people out. I’m going to use that as my headquarters. I think it’ll be empty. It was half a ruin when I last saw it. Don’t let anyone except shield-bearers in…and anyone else I send for, of course.”
The soldier nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And post guards around the perimeter. I don’t expect an attack, but they may try a feint or two, just to see what our reaction is.”
“And what is it?”
“We can defend ourselves, if we must. Try to avoid violence.”
The big man rolled his eyes as if to imply that he would not attack Thargia with a force comprised of civilians and two armed Nagians.
“I’ll want you at the house,” D’ward continued, “so appoint deputies. Tell them to let any sick people into camp, of course, as usual—any genuine supplicants. They’re to escort those to me in the usual way. But if messengers come or emissaries, they’re to make them wait and send to the house for Dosh. All right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Then go and get started.”
D’ward sent him on his way with a smile. Dosh waited for his orders. And waited. The Liberator continued to walk in silence. He was frowning now, though.
Eventually Dosh couldn’t stand it any longer. “How many days from here to Tharg?”
�
��I don’t know. Four, maybe?”
Dosh almost gasped aloud. That was a shock! Until now, the Liberator had always known exactly where he was going. Sometimes the weather or the crowds had delayed him unexpectedly, but always he had known the route he was going to follow. He had scouted it out in advance. Now he did not know.
D’ward glanced behind him, as if making sure that there was no one close enough to overhear. “Dosh?”
“Master?”
“We’ve been friends a long time.”
“The only real friend I’ve ever had.”
D’ward winced. “Surely not?”
“It’s true.”
“I wish it wasn’t.”
“Well it is! Everyone I’ve ever been close to just wanted carnal pleasure of me, one way or another. You’re the only person I ever knew who liked me as a person. I have friends among the Free, now, of course. But they wouldn’t be my friends if I wasn’t the new man you made me.”
D’ward’s face twisted as if he was in pain. “Well, you’ve certainly been a good friend to me, these last few fortnights. I don’t think I’d have managed what I have without your help. I want you to know that, Dosh. I wasn’t nearly as sure as I pretended I was that you’d manage to reform. You’ve succeeded beyond anything I ever dreamed of. You’ve been wonderful.”
“It was you, master. D’ward, I mean. Or it was God. You brought me to God, and every night I thank God for sending me to you.”
D’ward groaned. “Well, I need your help again. I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything. Anything at all.”
“Oh, Dosh, Dosh! It isn’t going to be that easy. It may cost you your life, or worse.”
How could he doubt? “Just tell me, master! I swear I will do it, exactly as you tell me. I know I failed you in Roaring Cave, letting those intruders—”
“You did not fail me! Those two both had magic to help them. Don’t blame yourself for that. But I said then that I gave you all the tough ones. There isn’t another soul in all the Free that I could trust to do this.”