by Lee Duigon
“I ask you to let me do it, my lords,” he said.
Shaffur laughed, not merrily. “Our king ought to do as he pleases!” he said.
“Speeches never killed anyone,” said Buzzard. “I don’t think those men will listen to you. But I don’t suppose there’s any harm in trying.”
So, when it was light enough for the enemy to see his face, Ryons, mounted on his wiry Gholish mare, with Angel on his shoulder and Cavall at his right hand, rode out a few steps in front of his army, facing the main gate of Silvertown. At his left stood Perkin, with Baby on a stout leather leash: he thought it would be good for the king’s enemies to see the giant bird. Behind him massed the Attakotts, ready to let fly with poisoned arrows should anyone on the walls attempt to shoot the king.
“You men in Silvertown!” cried Ryons, and his voice carried in the mountain air. “This city doesn’t belong to you. For the last time, we ask you to come out of Silvertown and go in peace. Go back across the mountains, where you came from. We won’t try to stop you.
“The God of all nations fights for us. We’re here because He sent us. Save your lives, and go in peace!”
Over the gate, Iolo gnashed his teeth. To be harangued by a boy was more than he could bear.
“Come and get us—boy!” he answered. “These are grown men on these walls. We’ll take you alive and send you to King Thunder! That’ll be the end of your childish games! Ye gods! Must we truly fight with children? What kind of god sends a boy to fight with men? The only god we know is the Thunder King!”
His warriors murmured agreement, but they did not cheer. Something, Iolo decided, would have to be done.
“Archers!” he roared. “Send this child packing!”
Osfal’s Wallekki nocked arrows to their strings and aimed.
Everything seemed to happen all at once.
Without a word from Ryons, Angel took wing from his shoulder and flew over the walls of Silvertown. She flew in tight circles over the gate, with shrill cries that could be heard by everyone. Some of the Wallekki muttered superstitiously.
“Shoot it down! Shoot it down!” Iolo roared. “Shoot that cusset bird!”
His men launched arrows at the hawk. But Angel had calculated nicely, and the arrows fell just short. She circled over the defenders, taunting them. And then a man toppled off the wall, and Ryons’ men saw the defenders turn and look behind them.
“Go!” cried Buzzard, waving his stone axe. “Abnaks, Abnaks—go!” And the mass of Abnaks charged, racing for the broken spot in the defenses.
“Ooh-sooh, ooh-sooh!” The Hosa clashed their spears against their shields, and as one man, rushed the gate. Attakotts followed them, shooting as they ran. And the fifty Ghols of Ryons’ bodyguard galloped after them, shooting expertly from horseback.
Helki twirled his staff over his head. “Now!” he cried. And the rest of the army, Griffs and Dahai and others, followed him.
The defenders got off hurried shots. A few of them fell to the attackers’ arrows, but many more fell to a hail of broken bricks hurled at them from inside the city.
In no time at all the Abnaks were scrambling up the broken wall, Fazzan in wolf’s-heads mixed among them, howling, shrieking, brandishing their scalping knives. The Hosa had a harder time of it, assaulting the gate; but the strongest of them braced themselves against the walls while the rest clambered up their heads and shoulders, eager to get at the defenders. For every man of them who went tumbling down, two more got their legs over the ramparts and pulled themselves onto the wall. And all the while the hail of bricks continued. The great smelting chimneys that the Thunder King’s warriors had knocked down now provided an inexhaustible supply of ammunition for the captives in the town.
Ryons watched, amazed, as his Abnaks drove the defenders from the breach and bulled their way into the city. All along the wall around the gate, his Hosa wrestled with Iolo’s warriors, stabbing with short spears, knocking men aside with thrusts of their big cowhide shields.
He almost leaped from his saddle when Obst’s hand suddenly clutched his ankle.
“Not yet, Your Majesty!” Obst said. “Wait for our men to get the gate open.”
Helki and his men, with swords and axes, tore splinters from the wooden gates, tearing them apart because they had not the means to break them down. Those who had no swords or axes beat the timbers with the butts of their spears or kicked them with their heavy boots. Cavall howled, and it was all Perkin could do to hold back Baby.
The splintered gate fell off its hinges. Men dragged wreckage out of the way. They shoved against overturned wagons. Perkin lost his struggle with Baby. The great bird broke free and ran straight for the gate. Perkin chased him, to no avail.
Helki entered Silvertown. His men around him cried exultantly, “The Flail of the Lord! The Flail of the Lord!” Two of Iolo’s Wallekki tried to stop him, but Helki’s rod laid them both low in an instant.
“Iolo, Iolo!” Helki roared. “Come to me!”
“I’m here, you stinking rebel!”
With his hardest men around him, Iolo came for Helki, a good spear in his hands. But before he could come in close enough for combat, Baby darted past Helki, knocking him backward into a wagon, and closed his beak on Iolo’s neck.
That was when the garrison began to surrender.
Osfal, with a good hundred of his horsemen, cut their way out through the gate and onto open ground. They lasted for only a minute or two when Shaffur countercharged.
Ryons rode into Silvertown with Obst beside him.
The Thunder King’s men lay everywhere. Several hundred of them had been disarmed, herded together, and forced to their knees. Abnaks guarded them. Many of the Abnaks had fresh scalps tucked into their belts. Their old habits died hard.
All around, dirty and ragged, but with their faces shining, stood the rightful inhabitants of Silvertown, what was left of them. A few of them still clutched bricks in their hands. When they saw Ryons, they let the bricks fall. More than a few of them wept, but not for sorrow. For a year they’d been enslaved, starved, terrorized, hanged. But now their king had come.
“Long live King Ryons, King of Obann!” someone shouted, in a cracking voice. Others took it up, and then the rest: the city resounded with it. “Long live the king!”
Obst raised his hand, and raised his voice.
“Gives thanks to God, O people! For He has given us the victory! Glory be to God, and peace on earth to men!”
Angel came down and perched again on Ryons’ shoulder. The king had no speeches to make. He couldn’t have said a word if he’d wanted to. Directed by the chieftains, warriors and civilians gathered up the dead for burial. Before the afternoon was out, everyone was calling this day’s work the Battle of the Brickbats, and so it would be known, Helki said, forever.
“But now what do we do?” asked Ryons, when finally he found the power to speak again. “What do we do now?”
Helki shrugged. “Burned if I know,” he said. “Clean the place up, repair the defenses, and get these people fed. Maybe send the Attakotts up the pass to look out for reinforcements. We may have to fight again real soon.”
“God forbid,” said Obst.
The king’s army had a thousand wounded, but few killed. Martis, had he been there, could have told them that many who belonged in Silvertown would come flocking back to it. But he would have had no need to tell them that the people of the city were hungry. You could see it in their faces.
As for the prisoners, the Abnaks had learned not to kill their captives or torment them. That came as a surprise to the prisoners.
“You’ll have to do the work of burying the dead,” Helki addressed them, “and then we’ll see. The King of Obann doesn’t fight to make slaves of anyone.”
“We cannot go back across the mountains,” a spokesman for the captives said. “But they say the king takes men into his army if they swear an oath to serve him and to worship God.”
“That’s true,” Shaffur answered
them, “but some of you are oathbreakers.”
“This oath we’ll keep!” the spokesman said, and all the kneeling prisoners nodded and rumbled their assent.
“We can use their help to bring food from farther down the river, until the city’s on its feet again,” Helki said. “If they prove trusty, then we can give them back their weapons and they can march with us.”
“I can hardly wait to get back to Lintum Forest!” Ryons said.
“God will show us where to direct our steps,” Obst said.
In the evening, outside the walls, the Hosa held a ceremony in honor of the king’s hawk.
“After a great battle like this one,” the chief they called Hawk explained, “it’s our custom to honor the particular hero of the battle. And that, O King, is none other than your little hawk. After all, she knew when to start the battle! So we must praise her and place a wreath around her.”
What Angel thought of that, no one ever knew.
CHAPTER 44
How the King Was Not Crowned
Up the palace’s marble steps, to the wide space between the two great columns that framed the entrance, palace servants spread a scarlet carpet trimmed with gold. Owing to the rain, the carpet would never be usable again. Merffin Mord fumed over the waste of money.
When the king arrived, he and the queen would mount the steps—thanks to the carpet their feet wouldn’t slip—to a throne that had most recently belonged to Lord Ruffin, the late governor-general of Obann. Massive, made of solid oak, and ornately carved, Merffin’s workmen had also gilded it: an extravagance that Ruffin would have despised, had he only lived to see it. But Merffin was resolved that the throne would be his someday, when there was no more king and he was chief of oligarchs, and he liked it gilded.
From the ceiling of the portico, protected from the rain, hung woven tapestries hastily removed from the oligarchs’ great hall, with no attention paid to subject matter. They were chosen for their bright colors. Ellayne would have recognized the scene of Abombalbap jousting with the one-eyed giant, depicted on one of the brightest of the tapestries. But most of the people of Obann had never seen these works of art, and they would jostle one another to get a better look.
“It’s shaping up rather nicely,” Aggo said, as he and the other councilors watched the work proceed. “I don’t think this porch has ever looked so fine.”
“I wonder how it looks to the people in the square while they’re getting rained on,” Merffin grumbled. He couldn’t stop complaining about the weather.
Inside the palace, Gallgoid wandered here and there, a lowly clerk carrying out fictitious errands. His work was done for the day, but an indefinable sense of something left undone nagged at him. What it might be, he didn’t know. In the meantime he roamed the corridors, seeking out his agents.
What would Merffin and Goryk do, when Fnaa refused to be crowned? Gallgoid sent as many of his people out into the street as he could find. “Be prepared to help the boy and Prester Jod and all who are in their party. They will retreat to the seminary, if they can.” He couldn’t tell them why this ought to be done, but they’d all learned not to question him.
In a little while he’d be out there, too. Lord Reesh had sometimes employed him as a rabble-rouser. He expected he would have to use that skill today.
Fnaa and Prester Jod, Gurun and Uduqu, would travel to the palace in the prester’s coach. Jod’s grooms were busy now attaching bright red plumes to the two black horses that would draw the coach, and his brawniest footmen would go before it to clear the way.
Jod put on his formal prester’s robes and had Fnaa and Gurun attired as brilliantly as his ample wardrobe would allow. But Uduqu flatly refused to wear anything but his own stained deerskin leggings. It was only with difficulty that they could get him to don a plain white cotton shirt.
“An Abnak in those fancy clothes?” he said. “Everyone would laugh at me! Besides, I don’t want to be stuck in tight clothes if I have to swing this sword.” He meant the huge sword once owned by Shogg the giant. With it Uduqu had famously cut in half two Heathen warriors with a single blow.
“Let me hold it!” Fnaa said, as one of Jod’s maids dressed him in a black silk doublet.
“Go on,” said Uduqu, “this blade weighs more than you do. And it’s taller, too.”
“I sincerely pray that sword will have no occasion to leave its sheath,” Jod said.
“That would be best,” Uduqu agreed, “but all the same, I’d like to keep it handy.”
“It’s getting on toward noon,” Gurun said. She wore now a shimmering white dress, with a girdle of interlaced golden leaves and a sky-blue wrap around her shoulders. A delicate silver tiara confined her fair hair, braided down the back with a scarlet ribbon. “I suppose, Fnaa, that you have had no change of heart?”
“Not me. I’m going to tell the truth and see how they like it.”
Behind him Dakl, still masquerading as his handmaid, shook her head. “You’ll grow up to be a strong-willed man, my son,” she said. It was not necessary to add, “if those people at the palace let you live.”
“My lord, your coach is ready,” announced a servant.
“Bring it around to the front door,” Jod said, “and we’ll all go to the coronation.” That made Uduqu laugh.
Slowly, through the crowded streets, Jod’s coach proceeded to the palace. People cheered them as they passed.
Up on the palace porch, Mardar Zo gingerly set his wrapped box on a little table near the throne. In his ceremonial First Prester’s robes, Goryk Gillow watched silently.
It was to be presented to the king as a coronation gift from Goryk’s overlord, the Thunder King. If all went well, there would be no need to loose its power. But if there was any trouble, Zo would turn that power on the crowd; and all the people of Obann, those who weren’t killed outright, would know their country had a master.
The square was packed with people waiting for their king. Goryk was curious to see him again. He’d met King Ryons twice before—once at the walls of the city, and once inside the palace—when he came to Obann as a herald for the Thunder King. The second time, Ryons’ advisers promised to hang him if he ever came again.
“Well, I’ve come again,” he thought, “and now I’m their First Prester. There’ll be some hangings here, before I’m done.”
The crowd began to rumble. Over the sea of turning heads, Goryk saw the roof of an elegant hardwood coach, a driver in bright livery, and the plumed heads of its horses. Slowly the people edged back to make a path for it.
“Here they are!” said Merffin Mord. “I do wish it’d stop raining.”
Guards backed the crowd away from the palace steps to clear a wide space for the coach. There it clattered to a halt. The driver climbed down and held open the doors.
Jod descended first, in his gold-trimmed robes, and then the savage Abnak with the sword. It cheered Goryk to reflect that his master the Thunder King would wipe the Abnak tribes off the face of the earth.
Gurun came out next. And at the sight of her, Goryk Gillow’s heart seemed suddenly inadequate to keep him on his feet.
He couldn’t breathe. He’d seen her once before, on the walls above the East Gate. That time he’d been afraid of her, not knowing why. But this time he was frozen.
She was no natural creature. Her white garments and her long hair blazed, whiter than any white he’d ever seen. The rain seemed not to touch her. Goryk ground his eyes shut, lest her eyes should meet them, but still her white light thrust against the darkness. Deep, deep, deep inside his soul there was a scream.
The God he had betrayed, defied, and mocked: that God had sent her here to take His vengeance on him. She was His messenger. Goryk trembled from head to toe. Mardar Zo looked up and stared at him, alarmed.
Because his eyes were clenched shut, Goryk didn’t see the daft king hop out of the coach and scramble like a monkey to the roof. But he heard him. Oh, yes—he heard him. The crowd gasped, and then fell silent.
“My name is Fnaa. I look like Ryons, but the real King Ryons is safe in Lintum Forest where these wicked men can’t hurt him. It’s all a trick, and now it’s over!”
You could hear the raindrops fall, each one.
“It’s true!” Jod added, with his voice that could fill the greatest chamber house. “Hear the truth, Obann—this boy is not King Ryons. And those men who would crown him as such are traitors to our God and country!”
A man in the crowd bellowed. “Traitors! Creatures of the Thunder King! Our true First Prester, Lord Orth, lives! He escaped before these men could murder him!” That was Gallgoid, seizing the moment. He’d hardly shouted his last word when his people in the square took up the cry. “Traitors! Murderers!” Others began to take it up, too.