by Lee Duigon
He opened his mouth to speak, but Ysbott did not let him. He pulled Donn close and whispered in his ear, “Call me Tobb! That’s my name from now on.”
Donn said, “I didn’t know you were with us. When did they pick you up?”
Ysbott shrugged. “A few days ago, just before we struck the road. I was sick from something I ate and had to lie up for a while. Otherwise I would have been here first.”
“I never noticed you,” Donn said.
“I wasn’t feeling all that well. Besides, I thought it best to just be quiet and see what I could see and hear what I could hear. Nobody paid much attention to me. We’re all just slaves, I guess—or little better.”
“We’ll be paid for our work, though,” another man said.
“So they say. But will we be paid enough?” said Ysbott. “I’ve heard a few things about this place that I don’t like. Do you know what’s under all that gold?”
“More gold!” Donn said, grinning.
“Oh, I don’t doubt that. But I was thinking of something else, not so nice as gold.” He had their attention now. “Everybody knows that hall was flattened by an avalanche. They say the Thunder King himself was caught in there, along with a lot of his mardars. Do you know what a mardar is?”
“Some kind of Heathen chief,” said Donn.
“They are more than that!” said Ysbott. “They’re the Thunder King’s magicians. They’re witches, all of them. They have terrible powers, and the Heathen are scared of them—as well they should be. It’s the mardars who put hexes on their water and curse their cattle and their women to make them barren. How else do you think King Thunder conquered all those nations? How else do you suppose he keeps them conquered? They know what the mardars can do to them if they don’t obey.”
A few more townsmen came to sit by Donn Decker’s campfire. Ysbott continued.
“I thought I could come up here and take just a little bit of gold for myself, whatever I could carry—just enough to set me up,” he said. “But not for all the gold that’s up here would I dig up one of those dead witches!
“What’s more, I think they know we’re here. I think they’re getting restless in their grave. Listen! Be quiet for a minute, and just listen.”
Ysbott knew what they would hear. Behind the homey, ordinary sounds of men talking and fires crackling, you could hear the great pile shift and creak and softer sounds of voices moaning, whispering, sighing.
“Oh, that’s just the wind!” Donn Decker said.
“Do you think so?” Ysbott said. “I’m not so sure. I’ve traveled in these hills before. I’ve been over the mountains once or twice, too. I’ve learned to speak a little Zeph, and Griffish. Some of what I hear sounds like words in those languages. Of course, the mardars would speak in all kinds of Heathen languages that nobody here can understand. All I’m saying is, those dead witches don’t rest quietly. And you know how devilish hard it is to kill a witch! The Abnaks say you have to toss a witch’s body into a peat bog and weigh it down with heavy stones—and drive a stake of willow wood through it, too, for good measure—to keep it from walking. Otherwise they just don’t stay put. Ask anyone who knows the Abnak customs. They’ll tell you the same.”
Donn tried to laugh at that, but no one else joined in. There were more men around the campfire than there were a few minutes ago. A young trooper noticed and came over to join them.
“What’s all this talk?” he said.
“Nothing much,” Ysbott answered. “We were just saying how the wind makes noises that sound like a lot of Heathen whispering together.”
“Tobb’s been telling us bedtime stories,” Donn Decker added.
“Don’t be scaring yourselves so you can’t sleep tonight,” the trooper said. He looked like he might be a little scared, himself, Ysbott thought. “There’ll be a lot of work to do tomorrow.” And he went back to his own fire, not wanting to sit with a lot of chickenhearted townsmen.
Ysbott fed his audience on more Heathen lore he’d made up out of his own imagination, mixing it with some of the more lurid superstitions prevalent in Lintum Forest. By and by the moon went down, and much of the camp went to sleep. At least they tried to sleep. Ysbott lay down and pretended.
That was when the howling started.
Everyone sat up. Only Ysbott knew it was his own men hiding in the forest, moaning and wailing like tormented spirits, shouting gibberish, which he quickly identified as various Heathen languages. No one seemed to doubt him.
Following his instructions, his men kept it up for a good half hour, then abruptly stopped. Roshay Bault stalked all around the camp, cursing, giving orders, trying to force his men to get some rest. The camp finally subsided, after he threatened a few sharp floggings for the worst offenders.
But in the morning the young trooper from the other campfire lay sprawled on the ground, dead.
CHAPTER 23
A Creature Not Worth Noticing
Word came to Gallgoid that Baron Hennen’s force—without Hennen—was retreating back to Obann under the command of Hennen’s senior captain, a man named Joah.
“I know him,” Preceptor Constan said, when Gallgoid, in the guise of a servant, came to see him at his private office at the seminary. “His son was one of my students. Joah is an old soldier. He won the title of First Spear, serving under Lord Gwyll. If we have him to manage the defense of the city, we’ll be well off. And Prester Jod will be here in another day or two.”
“The people are beginning to wonder why they have no news of Lord Orth,” Gallgoid said. Constan shrugged. Gallgoid understood it only meant he had nothing to say. “They’ll be less troubled by that, once Jod is here,” the spy added. “But it may be necessary to invent a reassuring message from the First Prester.”
No one else would have dared suggest such a thing to Constan. The preceptor blinked. He had probably never in his life invented a message and said it came from someone else. But he spoke no word of disapproval.
“The king is away, our First Prester’s been abducted, and our chief general has been imprisoned by a traitor,” Gallgoid said. “None of it’s the kind of news you want circulating all around the city.”
Constan didn’t answer.
No one at the Golden Pass had the skill to explain how the young trooper had died. Roshay had his most experienced men examine the body, but they found no wound on it.
That was because Ysbott, when he killed the man, hadn’t left a wound. He did the deed in silence, then stole into the forest. Donn Decker noticed that Tobb was nowhere to be seen in camp that morning, but didn’t mention it to any of the officers. If Tobb chose to make himself scarce, that was his business; Donn would have done the same, if only he’d thought of it. But it never entered his mind that the man he knew as Tobb was capable of murder.
“The witches’ curse got that young fellow—no doubt of it,” someone said. And soon many men were saying it.
“The camp’s in an uproar, sir,” Sergeant Kadmel told the baron.
“I can see that for myself. Superstitious rabble!” Kadmel was used to Roshay Bault’s outbursts, and didn’t flinch. Roshay took a deep breath and got himself under control. “Very well,” he said, “let’s work them until they’re just too tired to be afraid of witches. Don’t be afraid to knock some heads together.”
For the time being, he sent no one down the mountain. Roshay put everyone to work wrestling sheets of gold loose from the pile and stacking them neatly. He stripped off his shirt and lent his own hands to the work, pulling, pushing, and carrying. His logging men would have told you that was his way: “No one works harder than the boss.” It had been some time since he’d visited a logging camp, but he hadn’t lost his knack for toil. Nor had he forgotten how to give orders.
“You, there—lever that timber to the right! No, no, leave that one alone; it’s not safe to disturb it. Here, give me that! You’ll only smash your shins if you handle it like that.” By the early afternoon there wasn’t a man who wasn’t drenc
hed with sweat, aching, and untroubled by any fear of witches.
Roshay paused to survey the work accomplished so far. Although they’d stacked enough gold for everyone in Ninneburky to live on comfortably for the next ten years, the whole ruin looked like they’d hardly touched it. “What must it have been like, before it was destroyed!” he wondered. Ellayne and Jack and Martis had seen it, moments before the avalanche came down. He must remember to ask them about it, now that he had an appreciation for the vastness of the place.
Ellayne and her companions were hiking up the road even as he thought of them. “Tomorrow we’ll be there,” Martis said. They’d have arrived much sooner if it hadn’t been for Trout’s bad ankle. Martis had to help him on and off the horse. On the ground, with the help of a stick, he hobbled.
“It looks terrible,” Fnaa said, fascinated by the swollen mass of black and blue.
“Where’s Wytt got to?” Ellayne asked.
They hadn’t seen much of Wytt all day. The children knew from long experience that it was his way to scout ahead or off to one side or another, and they were glad he did. “No telling what trouble we might stumble into, if he didn’t,” Martis said. His right hand jumped to his weapons with every little noise. You might have thought that he was making too much of the calls of birds and squirrels, but he’d learned from Helki that birds and squirrels had much to tell a traveler. He hadn’t yet learned how to interpret their calls.
But Wytt understood them and busied himself investigating the information. Birds and squirrels were saying there were men nearby—not the great crowd of men at the top of the pass, but just a few, not far away. Birds didn’t often see men in those woods, and kept a close watch on them. So did the squirrels and some other creatures who objected to the intruders’ presence.
Wytt had come close enough to Ysbott’s camp to pick up Ysbott’s scent—the scent of an old enemy. A squirrel perched on a tree right above the camp and noisily let all the other squirrels know precisely where it was. That made it easy for Wytt to find it.
Ysbott, who’d been up all night, was sleeping. Nine men sat around, idle. They had no fire: Ysbott feared the baron’s men might see the smoke. Wytt crept up close enough to study them.
Hrapp the cobbler, and a few of the others, he recognized from Ninneburky. Their scent told Wytt they were tired and hungry, and more than a little uneasy. It seemed undesirable to him that they should rest in peace, so he let out a blood-curdling screech that jerked them all to their feet—even Ysbott.162
“Carrion-eaters! Robbers of babies in the nest! I am Omah—I kill!” It sounded to the men like nothing but a lot of animal screeching and chattering—but not like any animal they’d ever heard before.
“What’s that? What is it?” they cried, turning around and around in frantic circles, seeing nothing. Ysbott stood still and only sneered at them.
“Pipe down!” he said. “It’s only a rabbit getting eaten by a wildcat, or some such thing. Grown men carrying on like a lot of giddy girls because of animals making a ruckus in the woods! You ought to be ashamed.”
Wytt added a few unflattering remarks about their mothers’ mating habits. The men looked sheepishly at Ysbott, still too rattled to be suitably embarrassed. Ysbott had lived in forests all his life and never heard anything quite like the sounds Wytt made. But it had to be an animal, he thought—just some mindless little creature not worth noticing.
Finally Gwawl said, “Shouldn’t we put up some kind of barricade?”
“What for?” Ysbott said. “There’s no kind of animal around here that can hurt us.”
“But what about a bear, Tobb—” Hrapp started to say, but Ysbott wouldn’t let him finish.
“There are no bears this high up in the hills. Get hold of yourselves! You couldn’t be safer if you were in your own beds back in town. Even if there was a bear, it wouldn’t bother a group of ten men.”
By and by he got them to sit down again. He stretched himself out and tried to go back to sleep. Wytt decided to be quiet for the time being and to remain close by to watch. A human scout might have returned immediately, to tell his companions what he’d seen, but not Wytt.
His sharp little stick wanted another bite of Ysbott’s sleeping face.
CHAPTER 24
A Battle in the Hills
Helki decided to go back to the Golden Pass to see the baron, and then rejoin the king.
“I don’t reckon there’ll be much I can do for Ryons, down in Heathen lands where I don’t know my way around,” he said to Hlah, “but he’ll worry if I don’t come back to him like I said I would. Besides, what can I do for the First Prester? The Abnaks won’t give him up just because I ask them to. It’s out of my hands.”
“Sunfish is a man of God,” said Hlah. “I was afraid for him, but now I believe he has better protection than either you or I can give him.”
As for the First Prester, events were moving so rapidly that he had no time to wonder whether God was protecting him or not.
Two thousand Abnak warriors—an unprecedented number, Foxblood said—swarmed down the mountain to attack Zephites who had advanced high into the hills and put up a fortified camp. Their stockade of timbers, with five hundred battle-tested fighters to defend it, never had a chance.
Foxblood, not following his people’s usual practice, launched the attack by night, with torches, ladders, and clay firepots full of burning pitch. These his men slung over the walls, and wherever they fell and broke apart, they started a fire. Unprepared for a night attack, the Zeph had to fight when they expected to rest. So many Abnak warriors had never been known to obey a single chieftain, but now they did.
“It’s because we have you with us,” Foxblood explained to Orth, “and they want to show their bravery to you and to the Obann God. They’re excited to think that God is with them.”
He had Orth stand on a hastily erected platform overlooking the battle, so that the Abnaks could see him praying for them. Orth prayed, but even his mighty voice could not be heard above the tumult of two thousand men bellowing battle cries and calling on their ancestors to be witness to their courage.
Orth was glad of the night: he couldn’t see much of the actual bloodletting. The first Abnaks over the wall tore open the gate, and hundreds of men with stone tomahawks burst into the camp. In what seemed a very long time to Orth, but which was really much less than an hour, it was over. Foxblood came limping back to the platform to tell Orth to come down.
“You’re hurt,” said Orth.
“Just a stray spear-thrust—missed the tendon, missed the vein. I’ll be all right. But come down,” Foxblood said. “The men want to thank you and to thank your God.”
Orth followed the chief down to the ruin of the camp. The fires were already going out. The dead, mostly Zephites, littered the ground. Some of the Abnaks were already engaged in impromptu scalp dances, flourishing their gory trophies. A large number of enemy prisoners, disarmed, stood under guard. Dread was written on their faces. Their mardar’s head, cheeks painted black and red, stood on a spear thrust into the earth.
A great cheer went up for Orth. The Abnaks stopped dancing. They saluted him with their weapons and all spoke at once, as loudly as they could.
“They’re praising you and your prayers and your God, who has given us this victory,” Foxblood translated. “They wish to know if your God will be pleased if they sacrifice the prisoners to Him.”
Orth cried out in dismay. The men stopped cheering and looked confused.
“Men and brethren! Please, I beg you, listen!” Orth cried. Foxblood repeated his words in Abnak.
“My brothers,” Orth said, “God has accepted you and fought for you. He is not only my God, or the God of Obann. He is your God, too.
“He does not want sacrifices! He fights for you to give you peace. All He asks in return is that you love Him and keep His commandments and be good to one another. He has heard your praise of Him and your thanks, and He is greatly pleased. He will give you more
victories, and more, until your land is free of enemies and the Thunder King is no more.”
They listened attentively. Orth continued.
“These prisoners are helpless now,” he said, “as you were helpless when the Thunder King invaded the homeland that God gave you. Our Lord is a defender of the helpless. He raises up the needy and casts down the cruel, the proud, the arrogant. So He will not be pleased—He will not, I say!—if you deal with your prisoners as the Thunder King would deal with you.
“If you wish to please God, do as He would do. Send these beaten men away, back to their own country: for God will destroy the Thunder King, and they must not serve him anymore. Let them leave here with their lives. That’s the kind of offering that pleases God.”