The old soldier’s weapon slid easily up into place to block the blow. He returned Rolf’s bitter smile. “That’s it, hit first and hit hard when you can. Now let me show you how to hold a sword.”
IX
Messages
* * *
“We must strike first, and strike hard.” Thomas spoke in a low, heavy voice, knowing their truth and at the same time knowing the grim risks that they implied.
Around him in the huge lean-to were assembled such leaders of the Free Folk as had been able to respond in time to his summons to a council. Olanthe sat at his left hand, and Loford at his right. The bird Strijeef had a place in the circle, sitting sideways and with his unwounded wing raised to shield his eyes from the firelight.
Around the island the night noises of the swamp rose and fell. Thomas went on: “When Ekuman has the Elephant, and has made himself its master—then it will be too late for us to attack or defend, even if we could raise ten thousand men. Is this not true?”
Loford nodded his great head at once. Others in the circle added their agreement. None could deny what had been said.
Thomas went on: “If we are daring enough, we may let Ekuman dig away the mountain first, then strike to take the treasure from him. But even that moment lies only a few days in the future.”
“The very day of the wedding,” said someone.
“Very likely,” Thomas agreed.
Another man, the leader of a band from the delta region, shook his head. “You want to attack him on his very doorstep. How many men can we raise in a few days, and march there with any secrecy? Hardly more than two hundred, I think!”
There was some discussion. No one could really dispute that the figure of two hundred must be approximately correct.
“Ekuman will have the Elephant-diggings guarded heavily,” the man from the delta predicted. “He must have a thousand men available, in and around the Castle.”
“Still, do you see any alternative to attacking?” Thomas asked him. Then Thomas looked around the fire-lit circle, questioning each person with his eyes. None had anything to suggest. Loford’s visions, and those of the Old One before him, had convinced them all that the Elephant was the key on which the future rested.
“Then, since we must attack, it only remains to determine how. Don’t forget that we now have new powers of magic on our side. The Thunderstone—we’ve already discussed some plans for that. And we’ll find a way to put the Stone of Freedom to work, too. There are plenty of prisoners needing to be freed. One of them, especially, would be important to us now.”
“The boy who was in the cave,” said Olanthe.
Thomas nodded.
Mewick spoke up; with the gray still painted in his hair he looked like some grave tribal elder. “I think the soldiers who had him knew nothing of his importance, of where he had been. On his clothes was much mud, so likely they took him at the riverbank. And they had tied him most casually behind a beast, and they were in no hurry. Also Rolf was smart, he looked at me but once. If he stays smart I think they will just be using him as an ordinary slave.”
Thomas added: “The birds are watching for Rolf in the work parties that go out of the Castle at night. There are some now.” He hesitated. “Of course we can’t be sure he really learned anything about the Elephant.”
“He nodded to me,” said Mewick sadly. “How could he talk? What other signal could he give? So I think that the nod means something.”
Olanthe said: “It might have meant only that he saw you.”
“Maybe.”
“Well.” With a gesture Thomas put the problem of Rolf aside. “With more knowledge of the Elephant or without it, we still must get the thing out of Ekuman’s hands, or else overthrow him before he can put it to use. Now consider that our friend Ekuman is not stupid, nor are his chief officers. They know that we must act.”
“All the more hopeless then,” said the pessimistic delta-man.
“Not at all,” returned Thomas firmly. He looked round the circle and saw faces steady in their support. “For one thing, we’ll arrange diversions. Draw troops from the Castle if we can, at least keep any more from being sent there. For another, we’ll come at Ekuman in a way he doesn’t expect.”
Bending, he scratched on the bare earth beside the fire a rough map of the Broken Lands. “Here, and here, are the likely places for us to cross the river, to get near the Castle for an attack. Ekuman will be strengthening the night patrol in those places. But we’ll avoid them.”
“How?”
“It’ll mean a long hike, but we can do it. Go farther south, cross the Dolles in your country, the delta. Move in small groups, mostly at night of course. Get across the mountains there in the south. Reassemble, somewhere on the desert...” Thomas’s voice slowed. He felt a new idea taking shape.
Olanthe seemed to be reading his thoughts. “That’s not far from the Oasis.”
Thomas faced her. “Olanthe, how many of the Oasis farmers would be willing to join us, against the odds that we’ll be facing?”
“How many? Every one of them!” Her face had lighted. “Two hundred and a few more, men and boys. And some of the women will come too. If you once get the invaders off my people’s necks, they’ll go to the Castle and fight, they’ll follow you to the Black Mountains if you like. They’ll fight with their pitchforks and reaping-hooks!”
“They’ll have swords and shields and arrows for the picking-up, if we can hit the Oasis garrison the way they should be hit!” It was a heady thing for Thomas to see, the hope coming into the faces of these strong people who now depended so much on his words.
The objector from the delta was ready and willing to act as an anchor on Thomas’s soaring dreams. “Aye, suppose we do attack the Oasis at night! Suppose we win! Then, what, next day, when the leatherwings come out from the Castle and see what’s happened? We’re out there, in the midst of the desert; we’ll not get back to the swamp or the mountains before Ekuman’s cavalry has gobbled us up.” His voice became sarcastic. “Or maybe you think we can raid the Oasis and wipe out the garrison, and march away from it again, all in one night?” The man snorted his scorn. “It would’ve been done already if it was so simple.”
“We’ve got new powers now, remember?” Thomas pointed again to the Thunderstone, in a new pouch at Olanthe’s side. “It will bring not only lightning, but sheltering clouds and rain as well. And I mean for us to use every power that it has!”
On his first night within the Castle walls Rolf in his great exhaustion could do nothing but sleep. In the morning he was well fed, and again at noon. And in both morning and afternoon the old soldier came to take him to the practice yard, where they spent an hour or two each time. In the afternoon they practiced with real shields as well as the mock-swords, and Rolf was given a gladiator’s barbut-helm to accustom himself to wearing.
His hands were callused by farm work, and he had thought his arms well toughened too. But this new unfamiliar weight of weaponry seemed to discover new muscles and set them aching. His tutor drilled him mainly in endless repetitions of simple lunge and parry, retreat and counterstroke. It was work that soon grew dull; and for all Rolf’s sullen urge to hurt his enemies, he could not manage to hit this man while the old soldier corrected Rolf’s technique by jabbing and thwacking him in the ribs, seemingly at will.
As if Rolf’s lessons were something semi-secret, the practice sessions were ended whenever other soldiers came to the yard to carve at the timber butts, or spar against one another. Rolf felt some curiosity at this, but there were more demanding burdens on his mind. Escape was much in his thoughts, now that he was nourished and had rested. But the high walls were all around, and only his thoughts could leap them.
Looking up from the practice-yard from time to time during the day, Rolf marked the growing preparations for the approaching wedding. Flowers and gay banners were being brought by the wagonload into the Castle, where they were at once made grotesque by their surroundings. At the directio
n of the Master of the Games, these were displayed on walls and parapets and railings. Rolf wondered if the bleaching human bones hanging beside the high reptile-roosts would be bedecked with flowers as well.
And somewhere not far from his cell, lively music was being rehearsed throughout the day. The Castle was preparing to work at being joyful, but Rolf could see no joy in any face, as he had seen during the preparation of farmers’ weddings. Here even the Master of the Games had a prisoner’s countenance.
On his second night in his privileged cell, Rolf saw the labor-gangs returning just after sunset from their work, being driven stumbling and staggering back to the dungeons from which they had been routed in the early morning. There was rockdust and sand on them tonight, not river-mud—he knew by this that most of them had been working on the north side of the pass, lifting off the mountain from Elephant’s resting place.
Leaning against the cell wall beside his door, Rolf listened as two of the overseers trudged past wearily. One said that today the digging had uncovered the corner of a door, but there was days’ work yet remaining. Aye, said the other. Not until after the wedding would they be done.
The voices faded. Rolf threw himself down on his bed of straw. The mount of Ardneh was almost freed—the Elephant, that belonged more to Rolf than to any other. Even his coming duel with Chup faded to secondary importance in his thoughts.
During this night a second shift of slaves went out from the dungeons to labor, a column of soldiers at their side, marching as sullenly as they. The courtyards were ablaze with torches through most of the night. Workers and messengers kept coming and going, and even the singing practice went on, so the business of the digging seemed all mixed with that of the wedding. Rolf could sleep but little with the noise and the light. And he was worried again, for his life no longer seemed valueless. He must not die, just for a chance of scratching Chup—not when the Free Folk might be facing slaughter for want of knowledge of the Elephant, knowledge that Rolf alone could give them.
When morning came and he was taken as usual from his cell to go to the barracks latrine, Rolf noticed more than one tiny burnt-out stub of torch amid the night’s casual litter on the paving stones. The guard who was escorting him today had taken on either too much work or too much wine, or both, last night, so that his eyes were closed as much as they were open. Coming back, Rolf contrived to stoop and fiddle with his sandal-straps. When the door of his cell swung shut on him again, he had a little charcoal-stick closed safe within his sweating hand.
Again he was given water and good food. And again, the old soldier came to take him to practice. Rolf had contrived to hide his piece of charcoal inside a seam of his shirt. And the impulse that had prompted him to pick it up had begun to grow in his mind into something of a scheme.
Today his tutor brought swords, though dull of edge and blunt of point. During the practice Rolf’s mind was kept too busy to elaborate on schemes. He was beginning to appreciate the truth of Mewick’s warning—that the martial arts were not to be learned in a week. Just as he thought his sword arm had finally developed some cunning, his teacher’s weapon would thump against his ribs once more.
But during the break at noon, and when he was locked once more into his cell at nightfall, he was free to think. The idea had already occurred to him that the birds must certainly come reconnoitering at night, probably every night, above the Castle. He saw that the defensive cords and nets were always carefully spread on the high places after the reptiles had come thronging back at sunset. But there was nothing to stop the birds from passing over, higher still. There would always be some scrap of information that they might gain, using their sharp eyes and their wits. Now, if he could only display some sort of message for them to read...
That night within the Castle walls was quieter than the last; it seemed that the attempt to work a double shift in clearing Elephant’s hiding place had been abandoned. Maybe there were not enough slaves still driveable. Tonight there was no prodigality of torches in the courtyards, and Rolf’s cell was unobserved, save by the sentry who passed by a few meters away, at reasonably predictable intervals. Rolf had realized that no one could see the roof of his cell. The adjacent shed kept it from being seen from the height of the keep.
Turning his comparatively new shirt inside out gave him a nearly white surface for a slate. After pondering for a while on how to get the most information into the fewest words possible, he set down:
I RODE ELE. IN CAVE
And then he was stuck for a way to convey what should be said of the power that he had seen and sensed. Finally all he could add was:
SAVE IT FROM EKUMAN
ROLF
He thickened and darkened the letters with double strokes of his writing-stick, and worked them into the fabric with fingers and spit. He rolled up the garment and unrolled it again; his message seemed to have a fair degree of permanence.
Now he had only to display it on his cell’s flat roof, spread out straight and unwrinkled enough for a bird to read. After a little thought he reached out through the bars at the bottom of his door and gathered in some traces of the recent construction that lay there, small stones and little chunks of dried mortar. Choosing from these several that seemed of proper size, he made shift to attach them as weights to the lower edge of the shirt, loosening threads from the garment to tie them on. It took some time to make them all secure, but of hours he had plenty.
He rolled up the shirt then like a scroll, and made several practice openings of it, snapping it out to unroll quickly on the floor. One of the weights came loose and had to be retied, but he saw no reason why the scheme should not be successful.
Meanwhile he had been counting silently, roughly timing the passages of the sentry. Now Rolf waited until the man had passed once more, then went to the door. He thrust his rolled-up shirt out through the high bars, then held it by the shoulders and unrolled it with a backward snap. He heard the little stones strike with tiny clacks on the flat roof above his head.
Leaving the shirt spread out—as he hoped—upon the roof, he went to huddle in the cell’s darkest corner. So grimly was he forbidding himself to indulge in any hope that when there came another tiny clack on the roof he jumped to his feet, convinced that the sound must somehow mean that his signal had been discovered by the enemy. But no outcry followed. There came no rush of raging men with torches.
He realized gradually that the tap on the roof had been like the sound of a tiny pebble, dropped from a great height.
The sentry was nearly due again. Rolf made himself lie quiet on the straw until the man had shuffled past. And no sooner had the guard vanished than another pebble came, this one bouncing on the pavement before his cell, rising to ping faintly from a bar of the grillwork; Rolf could not see it but there was no doubt at all about the sound. He jumped to the door, reached out and up to grab his shirt and sweep it from side to side, waving it across the roof. Then he pulled the garment quickly into the cell, tore off the stones and threw them away. He rubbed and crumpled his message into an unreadable smudge and put the shirt on again.
He had living and watchful friends. He was not forgotten, not entirely alone. He pulled the shirt around him tightly. Only then did he realize that his sudden shivering was not due to cold or fear, but to a triumph that must be kept in silence.
On the next day Rolf practiced his swording with a will, winning some mild praise from his tutor. On the following night Rolf made no attempt to signal again—it was very dangerous, and he had nothing new to say—but he lay wide awake, listening, until the hour when the exchange of signals had taken place on the previous night.
Click. Click. Click. Evenly matched and spaced, three tiny impacts on his roof. He sat upright with a jerk, then waited, propped on one elbow in the straw. Did the bird expect him to reply? He went to the door and put his arm out and waved it slowly back and forth, once, twice, thrice. Then he lay awake listening and wondering for a long time, but no further signal came from above.
Fight For The Oasis
* * *
Lying sprawled near the top of the gentle dune, peering over its crest, Thomas could see the dark island-like mass of the Oasis of the Two Stones spread before him in the moonlight, its nearest boundary less than a hundred meters away. The night made the outlines of the great circle of fertile land uncertain, and gave it a half-magical look. Still, since Olanthe had schooled him in the matter, he could pick out where the different areas of the settlement were.
Most of the Oasis’ area was in the wide outer ring of cultivated fields. The invaders, Olanthe said, had at first wanted to fence in the whole fertile circle, but fence-building materials were hard to come by here in the desert, and they had concentrated on finishing their inner works.
On one side of the central area of the Oasis all the farmers’ dwellings, semi-permanent structures of wooden frames and stretched hides, had been moved together, crowded close to one another, and a strong fence built around them. In this compound the people of the Oasis could be confined every night at sunset. And by night as well as by day strong mounted and foot patrols of Castle-soldiers roamed the fields and paths around the perimeter of the watered land.
Stretched out on the dune with Thomas, and on the dunes immediately to east and west, were the two hundred men and women of his attacking force, resting now in silence from the hard march that had brought them out here from the mountains. Olanthe lay at his left side, and on his right was Mewick, face darkened with earth for the night attack until it looked like the visage of some carven demon of melancholy.
Empire of the East Trilogy Page 12