Doom's Break

by Christopher Rowley

  "What is the message, Thru Gillo?"

  "You must tell them that the enemy is raising an army of pyluk. They will come down the valley with thousands of pyluk warriors, and we must be prepared."

  At these fell words, the chooks gobbled and ducked their heads.

  "We will stay in your nest tonight, and tomorrow we must all head downstream as fast as we can go. The fate of the Land depends on us."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  "Sergeant Rukkh, come in, stand easy. Take a cup of tea?"

  Rukkh entered the Emperor's tent with not a little awe. He had served this man all his adult life, but he had never met him like this, nor expected to.

  "Yes, Your Majesty."

  "Good. Make yourself comfortable. We have a couple of minutes."

  The Emperor took up a dull metal teapot and a tin mug and poured the tea with remarkable gusto, keeping the pot at least two feet from the mug. Rukkh observed that not a drop was spilled.

  "Look, I'll get to the point. You're a good man, Sergeant, been in the army most of your life, been with this colony army since its inception. You have plenty of experience."

  Rukkh sipped the tea, unsure whether he was supposed to say anything or not. He was awed that the Emperor knew anything about him at all. Rukkh had always thought of himself as just another grunt in the army of Shasht.

  "So, what I want from you, Sergeant, is information. You know how the men are thinking, and maybe even why they're thinking it. I want to know all that, too, understand?"

  Rukkh took a breath. This was beyond anything he had imagined. The Emperor wanted his services. He nodded. "Yes, Lord."

  "Good. See, I know we're in for a difficult time here. Only a short time ago we were fighting these people, what you were calling monkeys until very recently. Well, I know you're still calling them monkeys."

  The Emperor had a conspiratorial smile on his face.

  "I know how soldiers think. I rose from the ranks, Sergeant, never forget that."

  "Yes, Lord."

  "So I know where the salt is kept hidden, understand? But now we have made common cause with the monkeys. They aren't our enemy anymore. We're allies against our real enemy who sits in that fleet offshore and threatens us all with annihilation."

  "Yes, Lord."

  "So we have to cooperate with our former enemies, and I know that there are many men who still bear a grudge. We've all lost good friends here, and that can leave hard feelings."

  Rukkh nodded. He'd heard plenty of harsh words about the monkeys from the men during the voyage north, and now that they were actually camped on the old battleground where so many had fallen in the first summer of the war, fresh veins of bitterness had opened.

  "But that has to change. We have to fight alongside these people now. Our real enemy is too powerful for us to do the job on our own. We need the monkeys now, understood?"

  "Yes, Lord, I think so. But, if I may be so bold, I would like to ask something."

  "Go ahead, Sergeant. When you meet with me like this, you can say anything." Aeswiren let a grim little smile flicker across his face. "Well, almost."

  Rukkh grinned. The Emperor was a soldier first and foremost, and he had long since earned the respect and love of his troops. Meeting him like this, Rukkh could see why.

  "Well, Your Majesty, this enemy, out there on the ships, who is he exactly? We have been told some things, but there is still confusion. Who is this enemy?"

  Aeswiren tented his fingers together and touched them to his lower lip as he considered the question.

  "He is a sorcerer, Rukkh, an evil thing that has lived far beyond his time. It has been hidden behind the priesthood, and so it was invisible to the common people. It created the hierarchy of Red Tops and Gold Tops. It used them to rule us, while all the time hiding in the darkness, sucking our blood."

  Rukkh heard the barely repressed fury in the Emperor's words.

  "How could this enemy have hidden itself for so long?"

  "Because it ruled by murder and intimidation. Only Emperors were made privy to the secret. Each Emperor was confronted with the knowledge that if he moved against this thing, it would kill him. When I refused to obey its wishes, it tried to have me killed. It unleashed the priests against me and fomented treachery among my own forces. That is why I am here."

  Rukkh swallowed. These were weighty matters for a sergeant in the Blitz Regiment. "And why has this thing come here?"

  "To kill me, to annihilate the native people here, both of which it sees as threats to itself."

  "It is a sorcerer? You have seen it?"

  "I have met it many times. It is ancient, and it despises all men. To it we are little more than ants. It has forced the men of Shasht into lives of misery for uncounted generations, and it could not care less. If we can kill it, then our descendants will have far better lives than we."

  "Well, Lord, I will do everything in my power to help you."

  "Good. I knew I could depend on you, Sergeant. This is how we will work together. I will send for you every other day or so. It will be nothing more than one of my men giving you a look or a tap on the shoulder. I don't want everyone knowing what you're up to or you'll be isolated in no time. When you get the nod, then I want to see you within the hour. Just find a way to reach me. My guards will recognize you. Be discreet, though, and whatever you do, don't tell anyone about this meeting."

  "Yes, Lord."

  "And now, tell me, honestly, how do the men see the situation?"

  "Well, Lord, it's like this: We fought the bloody monkeys for years. We beat them sometimes, and they beat us sometimes. We've lost a lot of good friends here, buried a lot of good men."

  Rukkh felt strong emotions rising in his chest.

  "Right here on these sand dunes, Lord, we fought a hell of a battle. Lost a lot of good men. We all remember it well. And now we're going to fight alongside them. So we all feel a bit confused. But we don't look on them like we did years ago. We've had to respect them, 'cuz they are brave little fuckers. They fight hard. And they're hard to kill. When we first fought them, we always killed three of them for each of ours, but by the end of the war it was more like one of ours for one of theirs."

  Aeswiren was listening carefully. "They learned to fight."

  "That they did, Lord. And we have to respect them for it. But there are still some of us who hate them. It's hard to forget all that's gone before."

  "I know."

  "But more than that, we all want to get this over with and go home. The men are ready to fight, and they're ready to fight for you. We all believe that you're the real Emperor and that you're going to get rid of the priests, and we all want that."

  "How do they feel about the colony here?"

  Rukkh made a dismissive gesture. "Nobody wants to stay here. Well, maybe there's a few, but nearly everyone wants to get home where we belong. Kill the sodomistic priests and start new lives outside the army."

  "Good, because we'll all be going home when this is done. I expect we'll have to knock a few more heads back home before it's all really over and done with, but in a year or two I expect most of the men will get their discharge. I plan to force through a land redistribution program and give every veteran thirty acres."

  Rukkh whistled. "The men will fight through hellfire for that, Lord."

  Aeswiren grinned. "I don't expect it'll be quite that bad, but we're likely to have a scrap before this is done. You'll all get the chance to wet your blades."

  As the sergeant was leaving, slipping out of the back entrance of the Emperor's tent, he came face to face with a slim figure, a woman, but without the head covering of purdah. The next moment recognition bloomed in his mind. It was Simona of the Gsekk.

  Her family had haughtily refused Rukkh's overtures, and then he had seen her one day, dressed in this open style, with no covering, nothing demure about her whatsoever, and he had felt hatred for her.

  And now? He was confused, and curious about her presence here, in the Empero
r's quarters.

  "You?" he said clumsily.

  She had seen him; she knew who he was. Her eyes were unreadable. She moved to step around him. He put up a hand to stop her. For a moment his fingers rested on her arm.

  Simona's eyes flashed fire at him, and his own anger was rekindled.

  "You wear no covering in public?" he said.

  For a long moment she stared at him, as if weighing her words carefully.

  "You cannot understand," she said at last. "But I refuse purdah. I am my own person. I do not belong to any man."

  Then she was gone, twisting away and passing through the inner flap of the tent. Rukkh could not go back, the guards were already in place. Then it hit him that she had gone into the Emperor's tent without even a challenge from the guards.

  Shaking his head, Rukkh hurried back through the lines, making sure to return to his own squad's position from the direction opposite that of the Emperor's tent. He was to be the Emperor's trusted informant, and he must not jeopardize this gift from on high.

  Yet there was an edge to his feelings. He had long dreamed of that red-mark girl, seeing her on the women's deck of the old Growler. He had hoped to one day win her hand and make her his bride. Together they would have founded a family here in the new land where such things as birthmarks were less important than the ability to bear children and tame the wilderness.

  Now that dream was gone and the girl was a woman and taken by the Emperor. Well, at least it showed that Rukkh had good taste when it came to women! He spat on the ground. What was done was done, and he would give it no more mind.

  —|—

  "Good tasty beetle—try?" Chenk had caught another leaf hopper and proffered it to Thru.

  He grimaced, then shrugged and took the big bug. Insects were not his preferred food. With all those legs and things they felt weird in one's mouth. But they were edible in a pinch. Thru crunched the thing up, finding that it tasted a little like fried bushpod but oilier. He tried to ignore the legs and feelers as he chewed them up.

  Iallia wrinkled her nose in disgust. She was hungry, but she was holding out for some berries, or anything but bugs. Iallia had led a privileged life and had never known hunger before this nightmare.

  Mukka had returned from her ramble through the laurel bushes with another big hopper. "Eat good beetle, tasty," said Mukka, offering it to her. Iallia shuddered and turned away. Thru could not resist a grin, though he was concerned that Iallia keep up her strength. They still had days of hard marching ahead of them.

  They were traveling west along the north bank of the river Dristen. They had left the mountains behind and were wending through the lower foothills. Thru estimated that they could reach the coast in five or six more days, depending on the pace they were able to keep up.

  He knew a village was not too far ahead, where he'd found some dried bushpod curd before. But until they reached it, they had nothing except what they and the chooks could find. Thru had lost his bow and quiver in the plunge over the falls—indeed, he counted himself fortunate to have retained his knife—but he had fashioned a little sling, and with some of the roundest pebbles he could find he'd hunted for small game. His efforts had brought them a couple of small birds, a squirrel that was astonishingly tough, and one young rabbit, which he let Iallia eat mostly since she couldn't stomach the insects.

  Roaming through the woods like this with chooks had proved a revelation. Thru had known the big, intelligent birds all his life, but he had never hunted alongside them for food. They didn't miss a thing when it came to bugs or useful leaves and berries. There was a constant murmur from them everytime they found a clearing filled with bushes and small trees:

  "This leaf is good to eat, but that one is bad."

  "These berries are good, but not too many or you be sick."

  "Eat this! Very good."

  Even Thru had blanched at the big spider with yellow veins across its back held up in Mukka's proud beak. "Uh, no, not just now," he'd managed. Mukka blinked, then gobbled down the tasty morsel while Thru allowed himself a little shudder. Hoppers were one thing, but spiders were still too strange for his palate.

  Still, along the way, Thru had learned to try half a dozen wild foods produced by the cheerful chooks. He remembered hearing his grandmother and mother talk about them, things like toe tree buds and the yellowed shoots of the lippinstalk. Grandmother had used lippinstalk to wrap up pats of butter. She said it was good to eat, too, but Thru's mother never cooked it. She said it was "wild food" and not fit for civilized tables.

  Thru had learned to relish the salty, fat flavor of the lippinstalk shoots as well as the creamy inner pulp of toe tree buds and the sour inner bark of the kork tree.

  They had made pretty good time, and they had seen no sign whatsoever of the enemy, neither men nor pyluk. Whatever they were up to back in the mountains, they were still busy with it.

  Before midday, they reached the village Thru remembered. The chooks had passed through it, too, during their flight up the valley.

  "We found nuts there, but no people. All mots, all chooks gone to the hills. We go to the hills, too."

  Thru had learned that they had become separated from the people of their village quite early during the flight. They had missed the point where the villagers turned away from the river and climbed into the hills above. The leading rooster, Chenk, was not the brightest spark in the fire. He had kept going up the river, hoping to find another group of refugees who could tell them something about their own village mots and chooks. Alas, they were behind the wave as the news had gone up the valley at great speed, triggering instant flight.

  In the village they found flour, some sour curd, and a big store of hazelnuts. They made quickbread and roasted it in an oven, while Iallia fried the curd with some onions she found hanging in someone's kitchen.

  Everyone had left in a great hurry. There were utensils left out and even uneaten meals abandoned on tables to mold and insects.

  While they ate, Thru searched for a bow and some arrows. He was soon rewarded. In a sawyer's house he found an old but serviceable bow in a closet. Right next to it, hanging from a peg, was a quiver with ten good shafts, all with stone hunting points on them. He tried them out in the center of the village, placing three within a finger's breadth of each other on the front door of the tavern from fifty paces. The bow string was fresh, even if the bow itself was a little old.

  When they'd eaten and filled packs with nuts for the rest of the journey they set out once more. They followed the river road now. From here on it would offer the quickest route to the coast, and with the supply of nuts they would not need to forage for a while.

  The road turned westward as the river swung round in a broad curve into a wider section of its valley. The forest of oak and beech spread out wide on both sides. They hurried along, pushing tired legs to give their all.

  After an hour of steady marching, Thru and Chenk felt the vibrations in the ground at virtually the same moment.

  "Something comes," said Chenk, turning to the mot with anxious chook eyes.

  "Horse animal," said Thru in an instant. "Hide. Quickly."

  They scrambled up the bank. Iallia was struggling, so Thru picked her up and pitched her over his shoulder as he dug his feet in and powered them up and into the trees. He dropped her, threw himself down alongside, and peered back up the road.

  They were only just quick enough. Around the bend far back up the road a pair of horsemen appeared, riding fast.

  The chooks had vanished, Thru noticed. Then he saw they'd dropped a small sack of hazelnuts beside the trail. It was half hidden in leaf litter, but it might still be seen.

  He strung the bow and quickly nocked an arrow.

  The horsemen were coming. The sound of the horse hooves drummed on the road, scattering gravel. The men were scanning the road as they came, and Thru had the sudden chilling understanding that they were searching for him and Iallia.

  Could they have tracked them?


  Then he realized with a shiver that pyluk could. Pyluk could track anything that moved through the forest.

  He kept the bow down but at the ready while the horsemen rode past. Hard-faced men, wearing leather hats and breastplates, they had bows and swords. He had fought men just like them many times.

  Then they were past and they didn't slow down.

  Thru let go the breath he'd been holding. They had missed the little sack of nuts.

  He waited a few seconds, then darted out quickly to grab the sack. Others might be following the first two riders, and they might be more observant.

  They were forced to move through the trees, and they traveled much less quickly than before. The chooks formed up on the flanks, Chenk and Mukka to the left, closer to the road, while Dunni and Pikka took the right. Iallia did her best not to step on dry branches and make noise. With Thru encouraging her, she did quite well. Their flight from captivity had already sharpened her survival skills considerably.

  They went on like this for another hour. Thru judged the sun was halfway down the sky. They had kept well away from the road for the most part, but now they were forced closer as the valley narrowed and the river plunged down rapids for a few miles in a shallow canyon. The sides were breached by wide gulleys choked with alder and birch. Their progress was slowed negotiating these gulleys, and the footing was tricky in many places, for the rocks were covered in slippery moss.

  At intervals they halted while Thru scouted forward, closer to the road, looking for any sign of the two riders. But nothing showed itself. Nor had they heard any other parties of riders come down the valley. Thru was tempted to return to the road; if they stayed in the thickets, it might take weeks to reach the coast.

  He came around another bend. The river broke out of the canyon into a wider valley once more, but for the first section the road ran directly through an alder swamp. One look at the densely packed trees, the bogs and muddy pools, and Thru decided they would risk crossing the swamp on the road. On the far side, they could go back to working their way along through the woods.

  "We must use the road for a mile or so. The bogs would take all day to negotiate. But when we get out there we have to hurry. Don't want to be spotted if we can help it. Those two riders may have gone all the way back to the coast, who knows? Perhaps the pyluk have eaten all the other men and horse animals. Nothing would surprise me by this point."