Doom's Break

by Christopher Rowley

  The Emperor's peace was absolute, however. Seven men had been hanged over the winter for killing mots, usually in the course of a robbery. There was a great hunger in the colony for the finery made by the natives. On this island—now called Mauste, the native name widely used by the men—there had existed a long tradition in cloth making. Everyone wanted to wear the warm twisted wool and bushfiber coats and trousers. Admiral Heuze disliked the practice and did his best to discourage it aboard the fleet. But ashore? Monkey-made clothing was universally worn now.

  Seeing the folk clothed by the monkeys, but living in these shacks and the hulking tenement sheds, it was hard for even the admiral to avoid the comparison with the monkey cities. Heuze had seen them himself; indeed he'd burned a couple. He knew how strangely lovely the little cities were, with their centuries-old architecture, parks, monuments, tree-lined avenues, and open central squares. Now his own people appeared like barbarian vagabonds, living in rude structures and increasingly dependent on the monkeys for clothes and utensils. It left Heuze smoldering with frustration and anger.

  But the rule of Aeswiren was popular with the people. They were eating better, staying warmer, and working toward the goal of returning to Shasht. Just about everyone wanted that more than anything. The land of the monkey folk was better left to its original inhabitants. The conquering spirit had gone out of the colony.

  And now, he thought, a crisis was upon them. The news he carried had the potential to change everything.

  Aeswiren had built a modest, two-story, block house with eighteen rooms, part fortress, part administrative center. The Emperor lived in a single room, just like everyone else in the colony. His room was a bit more lavish than anyone else's, but it was a far cry from the imperial luxury of Shasht. By this, Aeswiren assured his people that he was dedicated to the cause of returning home.

  Heuze was ushered past the guards who recognized his peg-legged limp the moment he entered the hallway. Aeswiren only used the throne for large formal meetings. Most of the time he was to be found in his office, a small, cozy room decorated with woven mats and rugs given him by native weavers. Aeswiren was said to be especially fond of the brightly colored mats depicting lifelike scenes. It was an art form unknown in Shasht and taken to a very high level.

  Heuze studied a piece titled "Mots at Prayer" on the wall. It was new, done by someone with considerable flair. Heuze bought and sold his share of these kinds of pieces, and he could see that this one was especially valuable. Even though he shuddered at the thought of cooperating with the monkeys, he knew that these works were of astonishing quality. If pressed, as by his friend and confidant Filek Biswas, he would cheerfully admit the inconsistency of his position.

  He recalled a recent conversation. "Damn it, Biswas, first I was told that they were fornicating monkeys. I've killed as many of them as I possibly could. Now I'm told that they're not monkeys but natives, and that I have to be nice to them? Well, all I can say is that that's asking a lot."

  Nothing Filek could say could break the admiral's front on the issue.

  The doors opened into the inner sanctum. The Emperor, dressed informally in a grey tunic and slippers, was dictating to his favorite scribe, Simona of the Gsekk. The admiral was waved to a seat while Aeswiren finished dictating a letter to the King of Sulmo. Simona copied it and then set it in the packet with the others that were due to leave that evening aboard the frigate Cloud.

  The Emperor clapped his hands. Almost immediately a pot of hot tea was brought in by an orderly. Cups were poured.

  "Well, Admiral, I have heard the outlines of this news. What more do you have for me?"

  "The count is now thirty-one major ships, Lord, including as many as eight frigates."

  "Eight?"

  "Yes, Lord, they must have stripped the harbors of Shasht."

  "They've done that, Admiral, and they've stripped the treasury, too. The first fleet cost five years' revenue but still left just enough to keep the Empire stable. This new fleet has gone far beyond that." Aeswiren moodily pounded his fist into his palm and continued, "They have come to force our hand. It isn't the way I wanted it, but so be it. We have some advantages. This is our ground, we have experience here, and we are allied with the natives. With only thirty-one ships they cannot have much beyond twenty thousand men. With the natives, we can match that."

  Heuze felt a rising tension. He found the thought of fighting alongside the monkeys blasphemous. He almost missed the days when they obeyed the priests and their harsh views concerning the natives. Now, the priests were reduced to lives as simple men of the cloth, taking care of the poor and conducting the new style of services that Aeswiren had decreed for them. There were no more Red Tops and Gold Tops. Their days of terrorizing the public were over.

  "With roughly equal numbers, I know we shall give them a very hot reception," the Emperor concluded.

  Heuze had to agree. Aeswiren had brought the elan back to the army. What had been a beaten force, riven by cynicism, was now reforged, unified and rededicated. Once again they drilled with the wondrous precision with which the men of Shasht had always drilled. Their weapons were ready, polished, practiced. Indeed Aeswiren had added new weapons, including an array of catapults of various sizes. The men were ready to take on anyone.

  "So, Admiral, where are these twenty-three ships and eight frigates?"

  "Most of them are at sail in the northern bay, Lord. Twenty ships now keep station eighty miles off the coast of Flem. Some of the locals' fishing boats have been taken by the frigates. Their crews have perished, as far as we can tell."

  "Alas that it should be so. I hope we can make our enemy pay in blood for all that he has shed."

  "Yes, Lord," Heuze murmured.

  Aeswiren unrolled a map across the table. "So," he mused aloud as he studied it. "It is just as General Toshak expected. Our enemy makes his first thrust at the mots in the North."

  The Old One clearly hoped that by gaining a quick victory over the mots, he might avoid a fight with Aeswiren. He would expect that Aeswiren's army would not fight if the mots were already destroyed.

  "It may be so, Lord, but so far only two ships have gone in close and landed forces. All advantage from surprise has been surrendered."

  "Two ships only?" Aeswiren continued to study the map. "Where?"

  "The estuary of the river called Dristen by the, er, natives."

  "And what are they doing there?"

  "They sent ashore a party of men with horses. They burned part of the village and then went inland. The last report put them well beyond contact with the ships."

  Heuze thought this behavior bizarre. The monkeys would soon mobilize an army. This small raiding force would probably never see the ocean again, even if they were all mounted. The mots would find ways to kill them. They were very resourceful in that way.

  The admiral studied the map. A piece of monkey work, it was beautifully done. The terrain was painted in green and brown, the rivers and sea in blue. He could see the rivers crawling across the green toward the snow-capped peaks of the mountains that cut the Land away from the dry plains of the east.

  Aeswiren was just as puzzled as the admiral. "Cavalry, eh? Well, I had expected that. But why land a small force there? Why give up the element of surprise?"

  Heuze knew that if he was in command of this new fleet, he would have put ashore his entire army. They would need at least that to be secure. The damned monkeys were hellishly good at fighting in the woods. Once you moved inland, you were at risk of being cut off and surrounded.

  "I have wondered about that since the first news was brought in, Lord. They have the benefit of all the letters we sent back describing the place. They know the dangers. It's not a scouting mission, not with two ships' complement. Nor is it secret. They burned several houses in that village."

  Aeswiren scratched his chin and studied the map. "Well, Admiral, we will move at once to embark the army, but"—Aeswiren tapped the map—"we won't sail quite yet."

>   Heuze nodded. A little caution might be called for in this situation. "Yes, Lord."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Thru moved at a steady trot, keeping to the deer trails on the ridgeline. Over his shoulder he carried the bow and the quiver he'd taken from the abandoned Geliver house in the village. He kept moving, running on raw willpower. His constant travel for Toshak had hardened him to marching, but to keep up this jogging pace for hour after hour was a test of endurance.

  Ahead and far below, the riders pressed on up the narrow road that ran beside the river Dristen. Thru had counted at least eighty riders, and with them were a dozen captives, mots and mors taken somewhere on the road below Juno village. These poor folk were tied, back to back, and placed over horses at the end of the line.

  Among the captives Thru had identified a handful from Warkeen, mostly older folk like Disha Mux and lanky old Moon Chapin, but he had also seen the pretty face of Iallia Tramine, the mor he had loved in his youth.

  He'd had the chance to identify them when the raiders stopped at Juno village to water the horses. Thru had caught up, and from the hill above he'd used the spyglass Mentu had given him. The captives were taken in a group to the pump and forced to drink like animals from the trough. Then they were dragged out of sight again.

  The men were Shasht soldiers. Thru knew the type very well. They wore steel helmets and leather armor. They carried spears over their shoulders and swords at their belts. A few, with green ribbons on their coats and no armor plate, carried long bows.

  Thru understood what he was seeing. Mentu had long before explained to him the concept of cavalry. He had seen horses in Shasht and even driven a team of them hitched to a wagon at one point during his epic escape. He could see that these men had a professional, skilled manner with the horse animals. Such men would be deadly foes to a battlefield, able to move quickly across the terrain, strike, and then withdraw before any counterattack could be made.

  Thru made sure to stay out of sight as he followed the path of the riders. Fortunately, the hooves of so many animals set up a vibration in the ground that he could often detect when he couldn't actually see them. He stayed on the slopes above, keeping to the deer trails.

  There were no other mots around. The alarm had passed swiftly up the valley, and the folk had dropped everything and run for their lives. Thru imagined that Toshak had already heard of the incursion and was organizing a response.

  Still, the question remained: What were these men up to? They had known by now that all the villages around were emptied of their populations. And they were surely aware that getting back to the coast and the safety of their ships would be highly hazardous. The woods would be alive with ambushes.

  The whole thing seemed quite mad. Even the destruction in Warkeen village had been haphazard, almost halfhearted. A few houses had been burned, among them that of the Gillos, but most of the village had been spared. Thru had never heard of this pattern before. Usually the men burned the whole village if they had the chance. This time they didn't bother to burn any of the other villages they passed through. Instead, they would stop to water their animals and do some looting. They would eat, sometimes lighting a cooking fire in the kitchen of a mot house. Then they'd mount up again and move on.

  This was the pattern they'd kept up all day. Thru had managed to stay close to them by dint of a prodigious effort.

  Ahead of them, around the curve in the valley, the village of Round Pond came into view. The famous pond—broad, deep, and perfectly circular—glistened in the late-afternoon light. No smoke rose from any of the chimneys, though. The folk and the animals were long gone.

  Thru turned up onto the hilly ridge that rose on the northern side of the village, which, like nearly every village in the Dristen Valley, was built close to the river, often around a bridge.

  He worked his way around to a point where he could see down to the main square. The men tethered their horses in groups along the cobbled main street. They broke into the houses and pulled out furniture, mats, pottery. Some they burned on a big bonfire. Some they rolled up and put among their things. Others they despoiled or smashed with gleeful laughter.

  The captives were not in sight. Thru assumed they had been put in a cellar somewhere under guard.

  The bonfire blazed. Some kind of biscuit was handed out to the men who ate it greedily, hungry after a long day in the saddle. The biscuit was accompanied by a wineskin. The cooks were working up a huge pot of porridge.

  Suddenly the crowd stirred, and voices began chanting something. A huge figure, their leader, so Thru had decided from previous observation, shouldered his way close to the fire. The leader said something, and the men roared with laughter.

  More furniture was thrown onto the fire. Thru saw a fine old dining table, no doubt an heirloom centuries old, tossed into the flames. Meanwhile, other men had rolled out a barrel of ale from the tavern. It was quickly broached and mugs were handed around. The leader took a mug and quaffed it and then made a joke and all the men laughed.

  He raised a hand and commanded silence. The huge man paced about the inner ring around the fire, staring into the men's eyes. Then he bellowed something at them. Thru caught the word "monkeys" and guessed at least part of what the huge man was saying. If Thru could get within bowshot and had a decent steel point, he'd be happy to show this man what the monkeys could do.

  The leader finished speaking, and a group of men went to the door of a house a little farther up the street and returned, dragging old Disha Mux behind them. Disha screamed when she saw the fire and the crowd of boisterous men.

  The leader caught hold of Disha by the neck and pulled her off the ground so she dangled beside him. She looked like a doll in his huge hand; he shook her and made jokes that provoked gales of laughter from the men.

  Thru stared, horror-struck, as the huge man took hold of one of poor Disha's arms and began turning it in the socket as if he was dejointing a rabbit for the pot. Disha's shrieks rang off the hills while her arm was torn from the socket and waved above the fire.

  The men howled with mirth at the old mor's agony.

  The giant shook Disha like a rag, snapping her neck and cutting off her awful screams. Then he tossed her body to the men by the fire. Thru's gorge rose as he watched them gut the old mor and clean out her viscera before they skinned her and cut her into pieces that were set on sticks over the coals. The odor of roasting flesh began to rise into the air.

  A second captive was brought out, a mor whom Thru did not recognize. This time a hatchet was used to dispatch the victim, a single blow smashing her skull from behind. Her head was then cut off, and the process of turning her into meat unfolded as before. Thru forced himself to watch to the bitter end.

  Doing so, he witnessed something strange. The arm that had been torn off poor Disha was cooked over the fire and returned to the giant man. He nibbled on it and then passed it around the group standing beside him. It didn't take too long before the arm began to come apart. As they split at the elbow and then disassembled the arm bones, each bone, gnawed and clean, was handed back to the giant. He examined each one, then handed it to a servant who stood behind him collecting the bones in a small sack.

  Intrigued, Thru watched until the servant took the bag away. Another layer of mystery had been added to that surrounding this strange, grisly expedition.

  The fires burned down eventually. Not a scrap of old Disha or the other mor survived. There was nothing to be buried. Their bones had been tossed into the flames, except for the arm bones of poor Disha.

  Thru waited until dark, then crept down carefully into the backyards of the houses at the base of the hill. The men, who had eaten their fill, had gathered around a small group who had removed their helmets to reveal the gold and red painted scalps of the priesthood of the Great God. The men knelt and began their evening prayers. To Thru it was an incongruous sight, these savage brutes who had just eaten two of his people, kneeling and offering prayers to a deity. With their droning
in his ears, he made his way carefully along the back of the village.

  In one house he found some dried bushpod curd, which he pocketed, plus a small jar of cooking oil and some dried beans. In another house he found a trove of bushpod cakes, which he wrapped in cloth and tied to his belt. Then he went on.

  He reached the end of the row of houses. Across the street he could see into a larger house that was being used by several men for a billet for the night. They had unrolled blankets and made themselves comfortable on the fine pillows and mattresses of the mots, brought down from the upstairs rooms. Thru heard the men chattering with each other and understood some of what he heard. The men were in a cheerful mood. They would ride on the next day, wherever their great leader wanted. They would kill whoever he wanted them to kill. They were quite content.

  Thru slipped across the street, a swift invisible shadow, skirting the house inside which the men were congratulating themselves on a good day's work. Eventually he found the house with the other captives. They were confined in the windowless cellar, and there were a dozen men in the rooms above. He knew why the captives were being held; he'd heard the men discussing whether the mots were to be eaten every day, as treats. The hot, sizzling flesh was tasty to these men, who had otherwise nothing but biscuit to look forward to.

  He could do nothing for the captives, so Thru crept on. He studied the horses and then the place where the huge leader was sleeping, one of the largest houses in the village, with several guards standing at the door and in the front yard, armed and awake.

  At last Thru withdrew into the hills, ate some bushpod curd, chewing slowly because it was very tough, and then curled up to sleep in the base of an old oak tree. He woke at dawn, ate some bushpod cakes, then drank from a spring not far from the tree.