by Lee Duigon
A chief shook his head in amazement.
“No sacrifices?” he called out. “Why, any other god would jump for joy to receive these Zephites as a sacrifice!”
But Orth said, “There is no other God. There is only one true God, the God who fought for you this night. And He would not be pleased if you sacrificed these prisoners. I tell you the truth, whether it’s what you like to hear or not.”
“You’re a brave man, Et-taa-naa-qiqu!” Foxblood muttered, so that only Orth could hear him. But aloud, to his warriors: “You’ve heard the holy man! Be grateful to God, and do as he says. Why should God fight for us again, if now we refuse to do what pleases Him?”
After a long moment of silence, the Abnaks began to shout again. Foxblood turned and grinned at Orth.
“It shall be as you say, First Prester!” he said. “My people are eager to please God, even if what He wants seems strange to them.”
Orth’s knees buckled from sheer relief. And so the prisoners were spared.
It took all of Ysbott’s skill to sneak into the baron’s camp that evening. Roshay Bault had put more guards on duty. “Keep your eyes and ears open!” he said. “Anyone caught falling asleep on sentry duty will earn a flogging.” And to the whole camp: “I heard the voices in the night, same as all the rest of you. Well, wherever there are voices, there are men—not ghosts! But I’m not such a fool as to order any of you to blunder around the woods, trying to catch them. Whoever they are, if they were strong enough to attack us, they would’ve done it by now. That they haven’t shown themselves means only one thing—they’re too weak to risk a fight.”
Ysbott heard that speech. He had to admit it was a shrewd one. He would have to be careful not to underestimate the baron.
He soon found Donn Decker and some other malcontents and joined them by their campfire.
“It must be the Thunder King’s scouts out there,” Donn said. “It stands to reason that he wouldn’t leave all this gold unguarded, even if it looks that way. If you ask me, the whole setup is probably a trap.”
“That’s a thought, my friend!” said Ysbott. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already made short work of our boy king and his puny army and were on their way up here in numbers that will swamp us.
“But the one danger doesn’t rule out the other, does it? I still believe there’s deadly magic at work here. Can’t you feel it? And the more gold we take off the pile, the more wreckage we pull out of the way, the easier it’ll be for the dead to walk.”
As soon as it was full dark, Ysbott’s men in the woods started shrieking and gabbling for all they were worth. He’d decided it would be best if they didn’t perform at the same hour every night, so tonight they were early.
Roshay Bault was furious. He stalked about the camp, growling at his troopers.
“Hold on to your nerves! No one can hurt you just by making noises in the night!” But Ysbott could see they were hard put to keep their courage. Roshay saw it, too, but he couldn’t order men not to be afraid.
Suddenly the noise stopped, just as Ysbott had commanded earlier. It left a lot of jangled nerves in its wake.
“I wonder why they stopped,” Donn said.
“Just be ready to flee for your life when the first shriveled claw starts groping its way out of that pile!” Ysbott whispered. He didn’t want the guards to overhear him. “I don’t know about you, but when that happens, gold or no gold, I’ll be running down the mountain as fast as my legs can carry me.”
“Me, too!” someone said.
There were no more disturbances. Ysbott would have liked to murder another sentry, but there were too many guards on duty now, and they were too alert. It was all he could do to sneak out of the camp an hour short of daybreak.
CHAPTER 25
A Quiet Killing
Led by Jiharr, who walked without assistance, albeit slowly and gingerly, the Zeph departed for their own country to spread the good news of the Thunder King’s impending fall. But first they saluted the king of Obann and his chieftains, and Jiharr knelt before Gurun and kissed her hand.
“I kiss the hand of my healer.”
“It was God who healed you,” Gurun answered, blushing.
“Then God is mightier than the sword that struck me down,” Jiharr said.
“See that you remember it,” said Obst.
The army resumed its eastward trek. They had no maps; there were no roads. East beyond Griff-land, said Tiliqua, lay a country much disputed between the Griffs and the Zephites, with settlers from the land of the Dahai also trying to establish a foothold in it. Beyond that, at some ill-defined distance, lay the westernmost of the Great Lakes. In ancient times, all these lands were part of Obann’s Empire, but no Obannese army had come this way for a thousand years. The Griffs seldom went as far east as the lakes, so there was little that Tiliqua could tell them about what lay ahead.
Looth’s Attakotts scouted far and wide, many miles ahead of the army, and Shaffur kept his riders busy on the flanks, both north and south.
“Some of the lands conquered by the Thunder King have been depopulated,” the Wallekki chieftain said. “The Quadi-Quai used to live around these parts, but no more. He made them as if they never were.”
“It seems strange that he has sent out no great army against us,” said Hawk, the Hosa. “Can it be that he’s run out of armies?”
“He will never run out of armies,” Chagadai said. “He has all the vast lands of the East to draw from. Kara Karram, on the other side of the Great Lakes, is only the center of his power. There is more behind it in the East than there is before it in the West.”
“A long way to walk!” Uduqu sighed.
Not long at all was the rest of the way to the top of the Golden Pass, and Ellayne and her companions got there just after noon. Her father’s face began to redden as soon as he clapped eyes on her.
“I told you to stay home,” he began to say.
“Please, Father—we bring important news!” Ellayne said. “Martis and Jack and I came because we already knew the way.”
“What news is it?”
“My lord,” said Martis, “we came as quickly as we could, lest some rumor reach you first and you be misinformed.” He related the news of the First Prester’s abduction by the Abnaks. “Lord Orth greatly feared that you would try to rescue him and so put many lives in danger. It’s his desire that no such attempt be made. We have this from Hlah, who had it from Lord Orth himself. The baroness was afraid you might hear some other version of the matter and be led to make a bad decision.”
“That’s putting it diplomatically!” Roshay said. “I remember Hlah—a sound young man. If he says Lord Orth has asked not to be rescued, we can believe his word.” He sighed and shook his head. “And anyhow, what could I do with just a few hundred militia? But I suppose Vannett was right. I might have been tempted to try.”
A little later, when the children and Trout were settled, Roshay took Martis aside to show him the body of the young trooper who had died.
“We’ve had some trouble, these past two nights,” the baron said, and explained the situation. The body lay under a horse blanket. Roshay exposed it.
“I want you to examine him, Martis. Maybe you can tell me how he died.” The baron knew that Martis had long served Lord Reesh as an assassin. Martis had long ago confessed it to him. “We found no wound on him—but a young, healthy man doesn’t just fall down dead without a cause.”
Martis nodded and knelt beside the body. Somewhere up above, an invisible insect began to drone. Somehow, he thought, that particular noise enhanced a kind of stillness. The noises of the camp seemed to come from far away.
Gently he removed the dead man’s shirt, delicately pried open the eyelids, and saw what he already expected to see.
“This man was killed by someone who has much experience in killing,” Martis said. “He was attacked from behind and a powerful hold put on his neck. But not across the windpipe—which would have left marks
for you to see.” Martis pantomimed the action. The baron nodded, understanding. “It would have taken two minutes to make the kill, but only seconds to render the victim unconscious. It would have been a quiet killing, leaving no marks but for these bloodshot eyes. And if you look closely, here, you can just make out a little bruising.”
“So someone came into our camp the other night and murdered him,” Roshay said.
“Unless it was someone who has been in the camp all along,” Martis said.
“Either way, it’s murder. Please don’t speak of this to anyone else.”
A change of expression passed over Martis’ face, like a small, dark cloud drifting briefly across the sun. “He is ashamed of the things he used to do,” Roshay thought. He reached for Martis’ shoulder and squeezed it. “Thank you for bringing my children safely up the mountain,” he said.
As the men toiled under the hot sun, Jack, Ellayne, and Fnaa wandered here and there, watching them. Jack and Ellayne had seen the golden hall in all its glory, and seen the avalanche crash down on it like the fist of God. Fnaa listened to their tale with awe.
“Is the Thunder King buried under all that?” he asked. “But he must be!”
“No one got out except for a great big cat that ran right past us,” Jack said, “and that man, Gallgoid. But he got out a few days before the avalanche.”
“Chillith’s in there, too,” said Ellayne. She remembered him, the Griff mardar who became God’s servant, with a pang of loss. “He was a good man, and here he lies with all those evil men.”
“Obst says it doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “Chillith is in heaven, with God.”
“What’s heaven?” asked Fnaa.
“Don’t you know?” Ellayne said. “It’s where your soul goes after you die. Didn’t your mother teach you that?”
“We never went to the chamber house. My mother didn’t know the Obann God, and she said the Fazzan gods were too far away to do us any good.”
“Obst says it’s been a long time since anyone learned anything important in a chamber house. You have to read the Scriptures,” Ellayne said. “Most days, my mother reads them with us.”
“I’ve read a little bit of them,” Fnaa said. “Ryons has to read them every day, and sometimes I read with him. But I don’t remember reading anything about heaven.”
“Well, it’s in there,” Jack said. “God calls people’s souls His jewels. We read that part just a few days before you came to our house. When we get back home, we’ll read it to you, and then you’ll see.”
Before the day was over, they knew about the ghosts of witches that guarded the Thunder King’s gold and made terrible noises in the night and had even killed a man. Everyone knew better than to speak of these things in front of the baron’s daughter, but they couldn’t help muttering about them while they worked. Although they stopped whenever they saw the children draw near, the children still managed to overhear much of it.
“This place is not as safe as it looks,” Jack said.
“Who says it looks safe?” Ellayne answered.
Prester Jod and Captain Joah arrived at the city the same day. Jod met with Constan at the seminary, but Joah and Gallgoid had a clandestine conversation in a boarded-up house that Gallgoid had secretly bought for his own use. As far as any of the neighbors knew, it was still deserted.
“I hurried to get here,” Joah said. Grey-bearded, leathery-skinned, he wasted no time getting down to business. “The troops will be here in two days. No need for a forced march—Chutt made no effort to pursue us.
“Either he’s a bigger fool than anybody thought he was, or he’s out-guessed us all. He wasn’t coming to Obann. No—as soon as he had five thousand men together, he took off into the east. His force is mounted, and they’re making good time, I hear. But I’m chopped potatoes if I can fathom what he’s up to.”
“He’s heading east, you say?”
“On a straight line that would take him to King Oziah’s Wood.” Joah frowned. “I don’t understand it. He can feed his army by pillaging towns and farms—they’re used to that!—but there’s nothing in that country worth conquering. If he wants to overthrow the king, he needs to be south of the great river, not north of it.”
Lord Reesh used to collect maps. Gallgoid used to draw maps, based on the reports of the Temple’s intelligence service. In his mind’s eye, Gallgoid plotted a course from Market City in North Obann to Oziah’s Wood, just across the river from Ninneburky. It was farming and herding country, thinly populated. East of the capital, Obann’s cities hugged the Imperial River.
“There’s nothing up there,” Gallgoid said softly, “and nothing to draw him to Oziah’s Wood. What can he be thinking?”
“Well, he hasn’t force enough to take this city, even against an undermanned defense,” Joah said. “I thought there might be traitors here who’d open the gates to him some night. That was General Hennen’s biggest fear. But it looks like Lord Chutt has something else in mind.”
Wytt did not come into the big camp with Ellayne and Jack.
He remembered the Golden Pass from the last time they’d been there, with Chillith. Now it was a place that stank of death. Only humans would be dull enough not to notice. No bird would fly directly over the ruin, if it could be avoided. No wood mouse nested there. Nothing would live in that vast pile but worms and insects.
Wytt knew nothing of gold, so it was a mystery to him why all those human beings were there, toiling away like ants. But then they seldom behaved in a way that made any sense at all, and Wytt didn’t try to understand them.
He was comfortable alone in the woods. And there he waited.
CHAPTER 26
When the Scriptures Came Alive
Foxblood’s next prey was an encampment of Fazzan warriors, three hundred of them. They wouldn’t last long against two thousand Abnaks.
Foxblood limped from his wound, but he wouldn’t let that slow him down. “I have to strike while my warriors’ blood is up,” he explained to Orth. “They won’t be in this mood forever. I’m surprised they’ve stayed together this long. My people are like a fire that burns hot, but won’t burn for long.”
As swiftly as they moved down the hills, the Fazzan still managed to learn that they were coming. But when Foxblood and his first rank of warriors emerged from the trees and looked down on the camp, they saw something they didn’t expect.
“That’s a dead man hanging from the top of the stockade,” said a subchief with keen eyesight. “It’s their mardar, by the look of him. His face is painted red and blue.”
Two men in wolf’s-head caps came out the gate and raised white shields over their heads. Foxblood sent for Orth to join him from the back ranks where he’d been placed for protection.
“They want to parley,” the chief said, “and it seems they’ve slain their mardar. Let’s go down and find out what’s what.”
He chose half a dozen warriors as a guard for Orth, in case of treachery, and led them down to the fort, holding his stone axe high in one hand and displaying the other palm-outward. It meant he came in peace, for the time being.
They stopped within shouting distance of the gate.
“If you wish to parley with us, speak!” Foxblood called. “What is the meaning of that dead man on your wall and those white shields in your hands?” He spoke in Tribe-talk, and they answered him in kind.
“Chief of Abnaks, we wish only to leave here with our weapons and our lives—to leave your country and never come back. We know how you overcame the Zeph, who had a much stronger camp than ours, and let them go. A few of them stopped here yesterday and told us all about it. Our mardar commanded us to kill them as traitors to the Thunder King, but it seemed best to us to kill him instead.”
The other Fazzan spoke. “We’ve heard the God of Obann is with you, and His chief of holy men. This was the God who swallowed up King Thunder’s host that marched to Obann to take the city. Not a man of them returned! We don’t want the same thing to happen to u
s.”
Orth asked Foxblood, “May I speak to them?” The chieftain nodded.
“Fazzan,” Foxblood said, “we will let you go and do you no harm.” The warriors of the guard shot their chief sharp glances: this was not the Abnak way. But he glared back at them, and none of them dared speak. “Come out of your camp, and we will come down from the hill and make peace with you. I, Foxblood, give my word.”
As the Fazzan filed out of the fort and the Abnaks assembled in a sprawling mob, Orth plucked at Foxblood’s elbow. “I’ll need a speaker’s platform,” he said, “so they can see me and hear me.” Foxblood ordered a few men to see to it.