The Flint Lord

by Richard Herley

  She transferred her hand to his lap and made a chaplet of it, counting the fingers over and over again as if they were the prayer-beads the villagers used in their supplications to the gods of earth and sky. Her head was wound with a new sheepskin bandage; her mouth, still the voluptuous mouth he remembered, was moving in silent petition.

  Was it only two nights ago? How different she looked now! And yet, the savages could not take away what had been. He had filled her; their union deserved to bring forth golden offspring. A son, a child to vie with Gehan First!

  “What will you do with me?” she said.

  “What a strange question!”

  “Will we be together again?”

  Gehan extricated his hand and began to rise. “We will be together always.”

  “As we were?” she said, anxiously lifting her face.

  He kissed her lightly. “I must go now, Ika. Don’t be frightened.”

  5

  Ten tons of water: at two pints a day each, the supply would give out in less than a month. And each bucket being poured into the leather tank, bucket after bucket brought by human chain from the reservoirs, held one man’s water for a week.

  Everyone knew it. Very soon, the chain would break and the slaves would try to get out again. They had been pacified by the hope that the Flint Lord would keep his promise to withdraw. Then Klay’s body had been set on fire and thrown from the machine. He had hit the gates and lain there, burning.

  The slaves’ panic had then been rekindled. Even before the first fireball landed there was yet another attempt to break out, restrained by violence. Then the slaves had been made to join the nomads in the work of preventing the gates from catching fire.

  The ditch surrounding the palisade was nine feet deep: the two gatehouses were the prime targets for fire attack. This had been foreseen by those who had equipped the Trundle, and among the siege-goods stored under the battlements, Correy led Tagart to a contrivance which consisted of a collapsible frame supporting a large tank made of waterproofed ox-hides sewn together with sealskin. A leather hose led from the front of the tank, near the ground, and to this fitted a pan-shaped box drilled on one face with many small holes.

  When assembled, the tank occupied the best part of the floorspace in the gatehouse. The hose, fed out of the slit in the wall, could be manoeuvred by means of a hinged rod. Where the hose joined the tank there was a tourniquet to shut off the flow of water.

  Tagart had left Correy in charge of directing the spray on each fireball as it arrived. Made of chalk boulders covered with netting and stuffed with straw and wood and fat-soaked leather, the fireballs were coming at regular intervals, loaded with smooth efficiency on the machine. The axe fell; the throwing-arm slammed against the crossbar; the blazing ball was launched in a roaring trajectory and fell against the gates, or against the palisade, rolling back into the ditch where it burned uselessly, or fell among the wreckage of bodies and timber left by previous attacks.

  It was inconceivable that the Flint Lord was unaware of the low state of the water supply inside his own fort. As Correy had said, one of the purposes of a fire attack was to make the defenders waste their water and shorten the period of the siege. In effect the Flint Lord was saying to them: “Either let the gates burn or yield to me when you are dying of thirst.”

  The slaves understood this only too well. At the rate at which the precious water was being passed up to the gatehouse and poured into the tank, it would not be much longer before they abandoned their places in the chain and made a final effort to break out. Once the chain was broken, the fire would take hold, and the nomads would have no choice but to follow the slaves.

  Tagart had not believed the General’s offer to withdraw. He had known it for what it was, and had tried at all costs to keep the gates safely shut. But with the rejection of his conditions and the failure of his attempt to get within reach of the Flint Lord, he had, after considering whether to send an impostor or to go himself, decided he had little alternative but to give up Klay’s body in case the offer was, after all, genuine.

  If the soldiers had withdrawn then, he would have risked trying to run. But the whole army was still in its original position. What was more, none of the soldiers had returned to the north-east gates.

  In this Tagart saw not an oversight, but the shape of the Flint Lord’s plan to recapture the fort. He was leaving the way clear for a breakout on the north-east side. Once it had started, he would move some of his men round the palisade and pursue those who had escaped, while other soldiers would enter the enclosure and chase those still within out through the south-west gates and into the main position.

  Tagart was in the day-room, discussing this with the other chiefs: they were agreed that the slaves would eventually succeed in breaking out. Unencumbered, making a break and trying to outdistance the soldiers was now the best and only chance of survival; but there were more than a hundred wounded to consider. Of these almost half were nomads. Some of the chiefs were in favour of taking the wounded nomads and leaving the wounded slaves, since their able-bodied comrades would have deserted them. Crow said that, if the breakout came as Tagart anticipated, there would be no hope of taking any wounded. Every man would have to escape the best he could: better that some should live than all should die. Any who could not walk, or run, for themselves would have to be left behind. With luck, they might be allowed to live as slaves. No more could be hoped for them.

  Tagart wanted to, but could not, deny this appalling truth.

  He had become numbed by the horror assailing him on all sides. After the meeting had broken up and the chiefs had gone back to the enclosure, he stood for a moment at the window, staring through the gateway of the inner palisade at the double line of people, one line passing full buckets forward, the other line passing them back, empty, to the reservoirs.

  There were footfalls on the stairway behind him. Lady Brennis and her body-slave were coming down. Tagart had removed the guard from the door of her chamber: the man had been needed in the line.

  She glanced at him as she stepped on the floor of the day-room, turning to allow a valise, which was slung over her shoulder, to clear the staircase wall. She had changed her clothing. Instead of house-robe and slippers, Altheme was now wearing a thick fur jacket, hat and mittens, leggings and snowboots. Rian was also dressed for travel and, like her mistress, was carrying a valise.

  “Do you want our help with the water?” Altheme said.

  “No. Thank you.”

  She looked anxiously outside.

  “Where will you go?” he said.

  At that instant there came shouts from the enclosure. Women were screaming. Tagart saw slaves throwing their buckets aside, running to catch and overtake the first few who had seized the initiative and begun the rush to the north-east gates. And with them, among the stampede, he saw nomads. He began to recognize some of those who had been defending the gatehouse; and, as Rian returned from the kitchen, he saw Correy and then Crow running past.

  He grasped Altheme by the wrist and followed.

  * * *

  Speich, the Vuchten commander, stood at the fore of his personal Grey Unit and felt his stomach fluttering with the old sensation he knew so well. It never changed. From the day of his first battle at the age of eight, through forty years of bloody campaigns and slave-raids in the glorious service of the Home Lord, this feeling was the constant in his life. He tightened the bone-studded fingers and knuckles of his right gauntlet on the haft of his axe and prepared to meet the exhilarating moment when he and his men would be working as one.

  The fire attack had succeeded in flushing the savages out of the far gates. Four hundred and seventy-five men, in two contingents of twelve and seven units each, had encompassed the walls of the Trundle and converged on the open gates; the larger contingent, led at his own insistence by Lord Brennis himself, was at this moment running down and recapturing the escapees. From here, where three Vuchten units had remained to guard the south-west gates,
little of this battle could be seen, but flag signals were coming from the lookouts and keeping Speich informed.

  The second contingent had fought its way into the enclosure and now, as Speich watched, the south-west gates opened and a stream of slaves spilled forth. They were scrambling over the smoking debris of the toster, the corpses, the battering-ram, the heap of burned-out fireballs, being chased by the soldiers, driven out of the fort and into the crescent-shaped formation which had Speich at its centre.

  The slaves were coming closer.

  “Units!” Speich shouted. “As ordered and detailed! Pre-pare!”

  After the losses at the village and in the attacks on the gates, Hewzane had given the commanders orders to regroup their teams and units. Fifteen units of Vuchten and seven of other men remained. The heaviest casualties had been among the common recruits from the homelands, then among the men of the Brennis barracks. The Vuchten had escaped lightly. They now outnumbered the other soldiers by more than two to one.

  Along the curve came the soft sound of visors shutting.

  “Ad-vance!”

  The slaves, with a few savages, comprised mainly the old, women, and the walking wounded. They made little resistance. In a short time, all had been captured and bound hand and foot, strung together ready for sorting. Some would go back into the slaves’ quarters. The rest would be destroyed. Meanwhile, the fort had been made secure and the Flint Lord’s pennons were again raised into the wind.

  Irdon, the Brennis commander, his breastplate smeared with blood, took off his helmet and put his hand to the back of his neck, twisting his head from side to side. He had led the seven units, four of them Vuchten, which had cleared the slaves from the fort.

  “What are our orders now?” he asked Speich. “Do we go back into the Trundle? Or do we support Lord Brennis on the hill?”

  According to the flagmen, Lord Brennis had nearly finished and did not need support. Speich gave Irdon and long, calm look. His stomach not stopped fluttering: this was the moment. It had been delayed, delayed again, by the sea, by the snow, by the superstition of Brennis Fifth and his soothsayer, and by the wholly unexpected invasion of the fort. Since yesterday the plan had been restructured, the details revised, Gehan’s inclinations kept on course, guided by the sure, lucid logic of Hewzane’s mind. The numbers had been carefully estimated, the casualties monitored and taken into account. On the hillside with Lord Brennis were eight units of Vuchten and four of his own men. The ratio here, at the main position, was the same: six to three. And it was a Vuchten unit that had stayed behind in the fort to secure the gates.

  Irdon was waiting for an answer.

  “You are my prisoner,” Speich told him quietly.

  * * *

  “In there! In there!”

  Half running, half kicking their way downhill through the snow, they were trying to reach a broad, piebald expanse of gorse. They had been seen by the soldiers and were too far from the bottom of the hill to do anything now but hide and wait for night.

  Fodich had nearly reached the first bushes.

  “Into the middle!” Tagart shouted.

  Beside him, just keeping up, were Altheme and Rian. They were at the rear of the group of eight or ten who had managed so far to evade the organized, systematic pursuit which had already claimed at least half of those who had escaped from the fort. Tagart had seen Crow being run down and killed, and he had looked back to see Segle captured and led away.

  The soldiers, three hundred of them, had divided into a dozen parties. Each party, alone or in conjunction with others, had concentrated on one part of the hill: the escaping nomads and slaves, on leaving the gates, had fanned out. Most had gone directly north-east, making straight for the forest. Few of these had succeeded, for they had attracted the largest number of soldiers. Tagart himself had turned left at the gates and started westwards.

  The wind had strengthened and a near-horizontal blizzard was blowing from the north-west. Far below, in the safety of the valley, the fields of the settlement were blank, immaculate, their boundaries traced by white-drifted lines of spidery hawthorns. Between the fields and the fort, ascending by steep scarps and slopes, the hill was patched with scrub.

  Rian stumbled and as he helped her Tagart looked back once again. The soldiers were less than three hundred yards away now, a party of twenty-five in the brown armour of the Brennis barracks, carrying spears and axes. Behind them he thought he glimpsed ten or a dozen more, clad in black.

  “Quickly! Into the middle!”

  Heedless of the sharp green spines, they pushed branches aside and plunged after the others. The bushes were old and thick, in places towering above their heads, grudging, obstructive, barring their way with strong, springy arms densely dressed in painful prickles. Near the ground, where they had lost their needles, the branches were bare and peeling and snagged at their feet.

  “Spread out!” Tagart cried. Ahead of him, the others had broken a passage through the gorse. They were making it easy for the soldiers to follow.

  After struggling another fifty yards or so he judged that they had reached the middle of the thicket. In one hand he was holding an axe, which he had snatched up as he had left the fort. With the other hand he took hold of Rian’s sleeve. “Get down on the ground. Down there. Don’t move.” He went on another few yards and called to her mistress, a little way to his right. “Now you! Get down!” He found a place for himself. “Everybody! Get down!”

  As far as he could tell from their voices, the soldiers had stopped at the edge of the thicket and were debating what to do. He clenched his fists and shut his eyes, praying that they would be called away to search some more profitable spot. It was after midday. In two or three hours darkness would come and they would be safe.

  One of the voices was raised in a shout.

  “Altheme! Altheme! Altheme!”

  “It’s him!” she said. “My husband!”

  Tagart knew then that the soldiers would not be leaving. Others would be called; they would surround the thicket and move inwards. He had exchanged one trap for another, the Trundle for the gorse.

  But, in making the exchange, he saw that he had suddenly earned the chance of one last, desperate attempt to achieve his goal, to redress in some measure all that had been sacrificed. His own life was now finished. It had finished with Bubeck, with Klay, with Segle. He would die here on the hill. But the manner of his death could redeem the futility of what he had done to his people. If he remained strong, if he took his chance and got close enough, he might yet kill the Flint Lord.

  “Altheme! Altheme! Come out!”

  Tagart crawled among the branches until he could see her face. “You must go back to him,” he said. “There is still time.”

  “Altheme!”

  “Do you order me to?”

  “I cannot,” Tagart said. “You are free to choose.”

  “Then I choose to stay.”

  “You know what will happen to you?”

  “Yes.” She turned towards the place where Rian was hiding. “Rian! There is no need for you to die!”

  “No, my lady. I am free now. I’ll stay with you.”

  “Altheme!” the Flint Lord shouted. “Altheme! We are going to burn the gorse! I have sent to the Trundle for fire! Come out while you can!”

  Despite the snow, the bushes and the ground beneath were like tinder. With the wind blowing so strongly, everyone in the thicket would be burned alive.

  “Would he burn his heir?” Tagart said.

  “He thinks it is not his.”

  Tagart met her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “It does not matter now.”

  “Tell me.”

  “As you wish.” Briefly she explained about the agent from the homelands.

  “Yet you were with child before then?”

  “I was.”

  “Could he be convinced? Could Rian convince him?”

  “It is possible.”

  “Then she must try.”
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  6

  “And he says she will be released after dark, my lord, and allowed to go back to the fort, if you withdraw now.”

  “Has he threatened to kill her?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “But he might, if I make a move. Is that it?”

  “I cannot say, my lord.”

  Gehan was torn between his anger and concern for the child Altheme was carrying, a child which Rian had halfway persuaded him might be his own. A son! He remembered the moment in his chamber when he had struck Altheme. She had told him then, and he had not believed her.

  He cared nothing for her any more; but if it were true – if she were bringing him an heir – he could not risk her life.

  “What made her go with the savage?” he said to Rian. “Why was she running away?”

  “He took her hostage, my lord.”

  “And you? Why did you run?”

  “I am my lady’s body-slave.”

  Gesturing at Rian, Gehan turned to the leader of his black-armoured bodyguard. “Tie her up. When we’ve finished here, she can go back to the slaves’ quarters.”

  “But my lord!” she protested. “He said I was to —”

  She was silenced; Gehan stood glaring at the thicket. Anger had made him take personal charge of his men to pursue the savages on the hillside. Anger was his first reaction now. He wanted to fire the gorse; but Altheme would get caught by the flames. The savages had implied that she would be harmed if he sent in soldiers to drive them out. But the alternative, conceding to their demands and leaving, could not be tolerated. Besides, the word of the savages’ leader meant nothing. If Gehan withdrew, he would never get Altheme back. She would be killed and left here.

  He had no choice.

  “Flush them out,” he said to the unit leader. “Kill any you find, but bring Lady Brennis to me.”

  The gorse thicket, sloping down in two directions across a crumbling scarp, was about a hundred and fifty paces across at its widest part, with an irregular outline like the coast of a dark, rocky island in a sea of white. At its edges were smaller islands, smaller clumps of gorse, but beyond them the ground was open, the surface of the snow humped with the suggestion of the tussocks below.