Empire of the East Trilogy

by Fred Saberhagen

  The second mounted trooper hove into view. He grinned, for he too was a skeleton, although it seemed he had good grounds for peevishness. Straight before him there extended the long handle of a farmer’s pitchfork, long tines vanishing in his tunic’s front, and coming out his back as fine, sharp points. Rolf had one third his answer now.

  The third wore flesh upon his bones, and breathed, but only in a vision could anyone so wasted sit on a beast and ride. His scalp was marked by an old wound, his eyes rolled vacantly. The fourth man came, a handless skeleton: had he survived his maiming, and fled with other of Ekuman’s people to the East, there to discover no one could be bothered feeding him? The fifth man rode past jauntily, a hatchet buried in his fleshless skull. The overthrow of Eastern power in the Broken Lands had taken heavy toll.

  The tallest beast came last, with Lisa still carried unconscious before the saddle. She lived—but Rolf saw with a shock that she was changed. Her body looked the same, and her ragged garments and her dark-brown, bound up hair. But her face had been transformed, from its familiar homeliness to beauty that awoke an echo from Rolf’s dreams and made him catch his breath. This was the girl whom he had called his sister, yet it was not. He called her name out, once, and then fell silent, marveling.

  Her captor, too, was live and whole. His full-fleshed image with its proud, bored face watched indifferently the ghastly capering before him of his slaughtered men.

  “Does he live, then?” Rolf demanded of the air.

  He will be slain and he will live, he thought the answer came.

  “Loford?” The vision was suddenly spinning before Rolf like a reflection in a whirlpool. He staggered, drew in a deep breath, and found himself firmly in his own body once more, standing on the solid Castle stone. Loford and Loford’s brother were close beside him, and the light of day had come, to make the green fire ghostly dim. The last torn ribbons of the fog were swirling far above them now, borne by what seemed no more than a natural wind.

  A wizard’s or a statue’s face, that of Loford’s brother, lined but somehow ageless, loomed over Rolf. “Call me Gray,” the statue said. “You will understand I cannot casually use my real name. How is it with you?”

  “With me? How would it be? Did you not see?” Then Rolf felt Loford’s grip upon his arm, and fought to calm himself. “I am sorry. I give you thanks, and ask your pardon, Gray.”

  “I grant it,” Gray said solemnly.

  Rolf turned from one of the wizards to the other. “She lives, then. But where? Tell me, could he still have her with him? The one who took her?”

  “I do not know,” said Gray. “You heard the only guide that we were given to further information: ‘get help from the tall broken man.’ I expect that will prove decipherable to you. I am not sure what powers we reached today, but at least they were not definitely evil, and I would tend to trust them. Though they were strange... it seemed to me I spoke with one who held the lightning in his hands...”

  A little later, Rolf stood on the tower alone save for the sentry who had come with day to scan the desert. While he was deep in thought, gazing out over the complex crowded courtyards of the castle, Rolf saw a familiar figure by the newly rebuilt main gate in the outer wall, dragging crippled legs out of a beggar’s lean-to.

  A broken man, who once was tall.

  When it had become apparent that Chup was not going to die, he had been placed under close guard by the new masters of the land. Thomas and other leaders of the West had come many times to question him. Chup had told them nothing. They had not tried to force answers from him; new to revolution and to power, they probably were not sure what questions needed answers, nor what information Chup was likely to possess. Probably he could not have told them much of any use. He knew little of Som the Dead, of Zapranoth the Demon-Lord, and of the Beast-Lord Draffut, the powers of the Black Mountains, two hundred kilometers distant across the desert. They were the powers that the folk of the Broken Lands and the other newly freed satrapies must fear, and must eventually defeat if they were to retain their freedom. Unlike most others of his rank in the Eastern hierarchy, Chup had never formally pledged himself to the East, never passed through the dark and little-known ordeals and ceremonies. He had never visited the Black Mountains.

  A few of the Free Folk, as the successful Western rebels in the Broken Lands did sometimes call themselves, had perhaps been willing to show some mercy to a fallen enemy, at least to one who had never been known to dabble in pointless cruelty himself. Perhaps for that reason Chup’s life had been spared. Chup himself thought it more likely that after the physicians and the wizards had looked many times at the ill-healing wound on his back, had jabbed pins and burning sticks at his useless unfeeling withering legs, and had decided that no herb nor surgeon’s knife nor wizard’s spell could ever mend what Mewick’s flashing hatchet-blade had severed, then the Free Folk of the West were quite content for him to live. Existence as a cripple among enemies might well be thought a punishment worse than death.

  So they let him go, or rather one day they dragged him out of the cell in which he had been guarded. Explaining nothing to him, they simply dragged him out and walked away. When he was left alone, he used his hands to drag himself on. When he got as far as the great new gate where the road came in through the massive outer wall, he could see the empty distances the road ran to, and found no point in trying to crawl on.

  When Chup had been sitting for half a day beside the gate, preparing himself to starve, there came one he had never seen before, an old man, to leave beside him a chipped cup with some water in it. Having set this down as if he were doing something shameful, and hardly looking at Chup, the old man walked quickly on.

  Thinking it highly unlikely that anyone would trouble to poison him in his present state, Chup drank. Somewhat later, a passing wagoneer, perhaps a stranger, looked down from his high seat, perhaps saw only a beggar instead of a fallen enemy, and tossed Chup a half-gnawed bone.

  Chup propped his torso erect against the castle wall and chewed. He had never been too finicky about his food when in the field. Turning his head to the right, he could squint across two hundred kilometers of desert to a horizon darkened by the Black Mountains. Even if he could somehow get there, the East that he had served had little use for the crippled and the failed. That was of course quite right and realistic, fitting with the way the world was made. Where else? A few kilometers to the west was the sea, to north and south, as here, his former enemies were in power.

  The village just below the Castle was in ruins from the fighting, but people were already moving back and rebuilding. The road here promised to be a busy one. It seemed that if he must try to live on handouts he was not too likely to reach a better place than this.

  By the night of that first day he had gathered scraps of wood and had begun to build his lean-to near the gate.

  On the morning after the demon’s visit, Chup had life back in his legs. Before emerging from his shelter he had tested them, gritting his teeth and laughing with the glorious pain of freely coursing blood and thawing muscles. Whatever the source of the healing magic, it was extremely powerful. He could bend each knee slightly, and move all his toes. His fingers told him that the wound upon his back had shriveled to a scar, as smoothly healed as any of his other battlemarks.

  Now he must earn what the East had given him. He knew them too well to think for a moment that the demon’s parting threat of punishment for failure had been an idle one.

  Emerging at the usual hour from his shelter, he took care to give no slightest sign that anything of moment had occurred during the night. The light drizzle was fading as he dragged himself to his usual station at one side of the great gate, which had just been opened for the morning. As usual, he held in his lap his beggar’s bowl, chipped pottery salvaged from a dump. His pride was too great to be destroyed by taking alms; it had been easier because he had never been forced to really beg. The weather had been good, and food plentiful throughout the summer. Peopl
e came to look at him, a lord humbled, a villain punished, a terrible fighter beaten. People whom he never asked or thanked put in his bowl small coins orbits of food. There were no other beggars at the gate, and not many in the land. Western soldiers maimed in the fighting were still being cared for as heroes, and the others of the East, of less importance than Chup, had evidently been slain to the last man.

  Sometimes people came to gloat, silently or loudly, at his downfall. He did not look at them or listen. They were no great bother. The world was like that. But he was not going to give them the satisfaction of dying, starving, or even showing discomfort, if he could help it.

  Often it was the soldiers, even those who had fought against him, who gave him food and drink. When they spoke to him civilly he answered them in the same way. Daily he dragged himself to get water at their barracks well.

  This morning, Chup had hardly taken his place beside the gate, when he saw the youth Rolf pacing across the outer courtyard toward him. Rolf stepped quickly but deliberately, frowning at the puddles, evidently on serious business. Yes, he was coming straight toward Chup. The two of them had not spoken since Chup was a Lord and the other a weaponless rebel. This visit today could not be coincidence; the demon must have somehow arranged it. Chup’s chance was coming sooner than he had dared to hope.

  Rolf wasted no time in preliminaries. “It may be you can tell me something that I want to know,” he began. “About a matter that is not likely to mean anything to you, one way or the other. Of course I’ll be willing to give you something, within reason, in return for information.”

  Not for the first time, Chup found himself somewhat taken with this youth, who came neither bullying the cripple nor trying to be sly. “My wants these days are few. I have food, and little need of anything else. What could you give me?”

  “I expect you’ll be able to think of something.”

  Chup almost smiled. “Suppose I did. What must I tell you in return?”

  “I want to find my sister.” Speaking rapidly, saying nothing of his sources of information, Rolf described briefly the time and circumstances of Lisa’s vanishing, her appearance, and that of the proud-faced officer.

  Chup scowled. The tale awoke real memories, a little hazy though they were. Better and better, he would not have to invent. “What makes you think that I can tell you anything?”

  “I have good reason.”

  Grunting in a way that might mean anything or nothing, Chup stared past Rolf again as if he had forgotten him. He must not seem eager to do business.

  The silence stretched until Rolf broke it impatiently. “Why should you not help me? I think you no longer have any great love for anyone in the East—” He broke off suddenly, like one aware of blundering. Then went on, in a slower voice. “Your bride is there, I know. I didn’t—I didn’t mean to say anything about her.”

  Here was a peculiar near-apology. Chup looked up. Rolf had lost the aspect of a determined, bitter man. He had become an awkward boy, speaking of a lady in the manner of one who cherished secret thoughts of her.

  Rolf stumbled on. “I mean, she—the Lady Charmian—couldn’t be harmed in any way by what you tell me of my sister or her kidnapper.” One of Rolf’s big hands rose, perhaps unconsciously, to touch his jacket, as if for reassurance that something carried in an inner pocket was safe. “I know you were her husband,” he blurted awkwardly, and then ran out of words. He stared at Chup with what seemed a mixture of anxiety, hatred, and despair.

  “I am her husband,” Chup corrected drily.

  Rolf came near blushing, or did blush; it was hard to tell, with his dark skin. “You are. Of course.”

  Though Chup preferred the sword, he could use cleverness. “I am so in name only, of course. You came breaking in the Castle gates before Charmian and I could do more than drink from the same winecup.”

  Rolf looked somewhat relieved, and utterly distracted now, despite himself, from whatever his original business with Chup had been. He sat down facing Chup. He wanted, needed, to ask Chup something more, but it took much hesitation before he could get it out.

  “Was she really... I mean, there have always been bad things said about the Lady Charmian, things I can’t believe...”

  Chup had to conceal amusement, a problem he had not faced in quite a while. He managed, though. “You mean, was she as evil as they say?” Chup looked very sober. “You can’t believe all that you hear, young one. Things were very dangerous for her in the Castle.” Though not as dangerous as they were for others, living with her. “She had to pretend to be something different than what she truly was; and she learned to dissemble very well.” Rolf was nodding, and seemed relieved; it amused Chup to have answered him with perfect truth.

  “So I have thought,” said Rolf. “She seemed so...”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Yes. So she could not have been like her father and the others.”

  Of course, Chup thought, suddenly understanding the boy’s monumentally innocent stupidity about the Lady Charmian. He was befuddled by the love-charm that he carried; the same that Chup would have to carry, later. However, time enough then to cross that bridge...

  Rolf was saying, more calmly: “Nor were you, I think, as bad as Ekuman and the others. I know you were a satrap of the East, oppressing people. But you were not as vile as most of them.”

  “The most gracious compliment I have enjoyed in some time.” Chup rubbed a flea-bitten shoulder against the cool, damp stone of the sunless wall. The moment seemed favorable for getting down to business. “So, you would like me to tell you where your sister may be found. I can’t.”

  Much of Rolf’s original businesslike manner returned. “But you know something?”

  “Something that you’ll want to hear.”

  “Which is?”

  “And, since you are in earnest, I will tell you what I want in return.”

  “All right, let’s hear that first.”

  Chup let his voice fall into a grim monotone. “If I can help it, I do not want to die like this, rotting by centimeters. Give me a rusty knifeblade, so I can at least feel like an armed man, and take me out into the desert and leave me there. The great birds are gone south on their migration, but some other creature will find me and oblige me with a finish fight. Or let thirst kill me, or a mirage-plant. But I am loath to beg myself to death before my enemies.” It came out quite convincingly, he thought. Yesterday, there would have been more truth in it than fiction.

  Rolf frowned. “Why must it be the desert, if you can’t bear to live? Why not here?”

  “No. Dying here would be a giving in, to you who’ve made a beggar of me. Out there I’ll have gotten away from you.”

  So long did Rolf sit silent, pondering, that Chup felt sure the bait was taken. However, the fish was not yet caught. Chup volunteered: “If you want to make sure of my finish, bring along a pair of swords. I think the chances would now be somewhat in your favor. I’ll tell you what I can about your sister before we fight.”

  If Rolf was outraged by this challenge from a cripple, he did not show it. Once away from the subject of Charmian, he was adult again. Again he was silent for a time, watching Chup closely. Then he said: “I’ll take you to the desert. If you lie to me about my sister, or try any other sort of foolishness, I won’t leave you in the desert, dead or living. Instead I’ll drag you back here, dead or living, to be displayed beside this gate.”

  Chup, keeping his face impassive, shifted his gaze into the distance. In a moment Rolf grunted, got to his feet, and strode away.

  II

  Duel

  * * *

  In midafternoon Rolf came back, leading a load-beast. The look of the animal suggested it might be a reject from the Castle stable that could not be expected to give useful service in the coming campaign. Slung on it were several containers that might hold food and water. Rolf had also armed himself, but not with two swords. A serviceable sword and a long, keen knife hung from separate belts cinched roun
d his waist.

  The time since morning had tested Chup’s patience to the limit. First, of course, because he was not sure his fish was wholly caught. Secondly, the urge to move his legs had become almost overwhelming. Under his ragged trousers their muscles were far looser, and even seemed thicker, than they had been yesterday. The ache and tingle of returning life had turned into an itch for movement.

  Rolf said nothing but halted his feeble-looking animal just beside Chup. Then he came to catch Chup under the armpits, and with wiry strength heave his half-wasted frame erect. The gate sentries turned their heads to watch, as did some passersby. But no one seemed to care if Chup departed. He was a prisoner no more, only a beggar.

  Once standing, Chup gripped the saddle with his strong hands and raised himself, while Rolf guided his dangling legs into the stirrups. Rolf asked: “Are you going to be able to hang on, there? I wouldn’t want you to fall and split your head. Not just yet.”

  “I can manage.” Chup had forgotten how high riding raised a man. Rolf took the loadbeast by the bridle, and they were off, down the sloping switchback road that led first to the village and then the world.

  Rolf walked with long strides beside the load-beast’s head: a position that let him keep the corner of one eye on Chup. Chup, for his part, breathed deeply with the joy of seeing the Castle gradually recede behind him, and the greater joy of surreptitiously testing his legs in the stirrups and feeling them respond.

  Before they reached the village, Rolf turned off the road. He led the animal down a slope of wasteland to the beginning of the desert. The autumn day had cleared, and had grown almost hot. Ahead of them, gently rolling flatness shimmered with mirage. Sparsely marked with vegetation, it stretched on to the horizon, where towered the Black Mountains, jagged and enigmatic. Rolf had chosen the only direction which led quickly to solitude, and was heading straight east from the Castle.

  Men in the service of the Lady Charmian were to be patrolling in the desert. That might or might not mean some help for Chup. He could not count on any.