by Dave Duncan
By marching into Thargvale, the Free were blatantly provoking a fanatically xenophobic warrior state. This was the second time in four years that D'ward Liberator had led such an invasion. The air seemed to crackle with danger.
The countryside was much as Dosh remembered it: prosperous, well-tended farms in the lowlands, stone walls trailing like pencil lines over the fertile, rolling hills. The big houses of the nobles were more noticeable with the trees bare. Silos, haystacks, windmills. As D'ward said, no visible people or animals. Since Jurgvale, his progress had been marked by groups of the sick and their attendants, waiting for healing: people on foot or in wagons or even in tents, camped out until he should arrive. Here, there was no one. Had the pestilence avoided Thargvale, or were the people forbidden to seek the aid of the heretic?
No one in sight except the Free themselves, a wide column that stretched back out of sight, many thousands, carrying thousands of circles ... or quarterstaffs, if that was what they were. With them came their wagons and pack beasts, oxen and llamas, and even a few moas and rabbits that had appeared after the snow melted. It must be the greatest movement of people in the history of the Vales.
Where was D'ward taking them? That morning he had placed himself at the front and given orders that the inevitable stragglers be herded up as much as possible. He was setting a very gentle pace. He had detailed no advance party and had refused Bid'lip's request to send out scouts. Obviously he anticipated trouble, but he would have to be insane not to anticipate trouble in Thargvale. A little while ago, he had passed the word for Dosh and Bid'lip, but so far he had said nothing of substance.
Then he did. “How's the money?"
"All gone, master."
He nodded. “Thought it would be. Well, Bid'lip? You're our expert on strategy. How does our situation look?"
The big Niolian scrunched up his luxuriant black eyebrows. He had been known to remark that he had the sort of face that looked best when he put his helmet on backward, but he was not in a joking mood today. “Shaky.” He pointed to the river. “Mestwater's in spate. Somewhere up ahead it must join Thargwater. There'll be other tributaries, I expect, and likely all of them in flood too. The Thargians can cut down the bridges, if the rivers haven't done it for them. Is Tharg on the south bank or the north?"
"North. But you're right about the tributaries."
When D'ward said no more, Dosh spelled out his own worries.
"No supplicants, no fresh recruits, so no source of funds. Buying food in Thargland won't be as easy as it's been in other vales. There's no villages here, only those big estates. They trade with one another or send their produce directly to the city. Dommi's moaning about supplies, master."
Still the Liberator continued to stroll along in silence, wielding his pole like a staff. His face was giving nothing away. He seemed to be enjoying the walk and the sunshine.
"But we have the One True God to rely on?” Dosh snapped.
His impudence earned him a reproving frown. “He doesn't expect to do all the work, Brother Dosh. Good intentions are not enough by themselves.” Then D'ward smiled to take the bite out of his words. “Yes, I know it looks bad. I'm not unaware of that. Here's what I want you to do. See that little hill? The one with the trees and the house on top? We're going to camp there. Bid'lip, I want you to post guards around the house to keep people out. I'm going to use that as my headquarters. I think it'll be empty. It was half a ruin when I last saw it. Don't let anyone except shield-bearers in ... and anyone else I send for, of course."
The soldier nodded. “Yes, sir."
"And post guards around the perimeter. I don't expect an attack, but they may try a feint or two, just to see what our reaction is."
"And what is it?"
"We can defend ourselves, if we must. Try to avoid violence."
The big man rolled his eyes as if to imply that he would not attack Thargia with a force comprised of civilians and two armed Nagians.
"I'll want you at the house,” D'ward continued, “so appoint deputies. Tell them to let any sick people into camp, of course, as usual—any genuine supplicants. They're to escort those to me in the usual way. But if messengers come or emissaries, they're to make them wait and send to the house for Dosh. All right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Then go and get started."
D'ward sent him on his way with a smile. Dosh waited for his orders. And waited. The Liberator continued to walk in silence. He was frowning now, though.
Eventually Dosh couldn't stand it any longer. “How many days from here to Tharg?"
"I don't know. Four, maybe?"
Dosh almost gasped aloud. That was a shock! Until now, the Liberator had always known exactly where he was going. Sometimes the weather or the crowds had delayed him unexpectedly, but always he had known the route he was going to follow. He had scouted it out in advance. Now he did not know.
D'ward glanced behind him, as if making sure that there was no one close enough to overhear. “Dosh?"
"Master?"
"We've been friends a long time."
"The only real friend I've ever had."
D'ward winced. “Surely not?"
"It's true."
"I wish it wasn't."
"Well it is! Everyone I've ever been close to just wanted carnal pleasure of me, one way or another. You're the only person I ever knew who liked me as a person. I have friends among the Free, now, of course. But they wouldn't be my friends if I wasn't the new man you made me."
D'ward's face twisted as if he was in pain. “Well, you've certainly been a good friend to me, these last few fortnights. I don't think I'd have managed what I have without your help. I want you to know that, Dosh. I wasn't nearly as sure as I pretended I was that you'd manage to reform. You've succeeded beyond anything I ever dreamed of. You've been wonderful."
"It was you, master. D'ward, I mean. Or it was God. You brought me to God, and every night I thank God for sending me to you."
D'ward groaned. “Well, I need your help again. I need you to do something for me."
"Anything. Anything at all."
"Oh, Dosh, Dosh! It isn't going to be that easy. It may cost you your life, or worse."
How could he doubt? “Just tell me, master! I swear I will do it, exactly as you tell me. I know I failed you in Roaring Cave, letting those intruders—"
"You did not fail me! Those two both had magic to help them. Don't blame yourself for that. But I said then that I gave you all the tough ones. There isn't another soul in all the Free that I could trust to do this."
Dosh laughed aloud. He felt almost as excited as he'd ever felt in all his years of perversion and debauchery. “Tell me! Tell me!"
D'ward put an arm around his shoulders. “I'm not clear on the details yet. But if I give you an order tonight or perhaps tomorrow ... We'll need a signal. Suggest one."
"'Good old days'?"
The Liberator's brief smile acknowledged the humor. “Yes, that'll do. So if I mention the good old days, that means I want you to do whatever I ask then, however wrong or crazy it may sound. Or it may seem absolutely trivial, but it will be deathly important. Whatever it is, will you do it with no argument?"
"Yes, master. Of course."
"Thank you. That's all I can tell you now."
"I promise."
The Liberator gave Dosh's shoulder another squeeze and then took his arm away. He had left a burden there, though. What orders could possibly be so terrible that Dosh would be tempted to refuse them?
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54
"I know you are hungry!” Eleal cried. “So am I. So, I am sure, is the Liberator, for he will not eat when you cannot. Remember how he spoke to us in Thovale, saying that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled?"
She must hurry up and finish now, for it was almost dark and she was supposed to be up at the house. Pity! Her speech was going very well. She was enjoying it, and she thought her listeners wer
e enjoying it too. They were certainly attentive. The little clearing was so packed with people that she could barely see the campfire. The woods all around were packed also, and yet when she paused for breath the night was still. Barely a cough, only the ticktock of woodcutters in the distance. Earlier she had caught snatches of other shield-bearers preaching elsewhere on the hill, but not anymore. Hurry.
"But he has also warned us that mortification of the flesh can be carried too far. And so that message I gave you, that you will feast tonight!” She paused while a sigh of wonder swept the wood like a breath of wind. Did they think the Liberator might have changed his mind since she began her talk? “Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters! It will be a sign unto you! Tonight Trumb will eclipse."
They all knew that. The great moon hung over the jagged teeth of Thargwall like a green plate, glistening in the winter night. Before dawn it would certainly fill out to a circle and then fade to black.
"No matter the misguided pagans worship that disk as one of their false gods, for the Liberator has taught us that it is only a blessing from the One, to brighten darkness. Is not the circle His symbol? It is a sign of God, not of the so-called Man. You know how the pagans tremble when that light is eclipsed, believing that Zath will send reapers to steal away souls. Well, Zath's days are numbered. It is written that the Liberator will slay him, and he has come to Thargvale to do that."
Another sibilant murmur.
"We are greatly blessed to have traveled with him, all of us. Friends and family behind at home will revere us all our days because we are here and they are not. Harken to what the Liberator said to us at sunset! He said that before Trumb eclipses again, Zath will be dead and there will be no more reapers!"
Louder, longer, came the reaction. Naturally—the shield-bearers themselves had cheered when they heard that news. Trumb's eclipses often came nine days apart, sometimes only four, rarely more than a fortnight. She raised her voice over the rumble.
"And therefore tonight, when the green moon darkens, we feast! We are the Free, and we shall celebrate tonight the certain death of Zath! So promises the Liberator, in the name of the One True God. He bids us remember this night all our days and all our years, so that evermore, when midwinter comes and the sun turns, we shall feast and make merry in remembrance and thanksgiving. This be his command to us. Let us pray."
She kept the prayer brief, made the circle sign, and stepped down from the stump. Her head was pounding with reaction as if she had just come offstage after playing some great role. Which was apt, she supposed. What greater part could there ever be than this? Voices were rising excitedly all around. She looked for her shield before remembering that it was still slung on her back. Willing hands passed her staff and her pack. The crowd parted to let her through. She saw eyes glinting with tears in the moonlight, she felt hands reach out to touch her gently as she passed. She did not enjoy that for it reminded her of how men had fondled her flesh in the Cherry Blossom House. Here they were doing it for other reasons, of course, but she still did not like it. She was only D'ward's mouthpiece, unworthy of such adulation. She hurried off, up the hill.
Since she had joined the Free, she had never known D'ward to take over a building. It was yet another sign that things were changing. The absence of any new recruits today, the fact that they were now in Thargvale, which had always been their objective, D'ward's unique promise of a feast ... events were hastening toward their climax, and one tiny part of it was Eleal Singer.
Singer? She did not sing now, except when everyone else did. She really ought to change her name. Eleal Preacher? She considered asking Piol's advice and chuckled as she imagined his reaction, telling her not to get swelled-headed. Eleal Actor? She performed before great audiences now, greater than any Grandfather Trong had ever imagined, but she wasn't really acting. Plays were fiction, mostly sinful nonsense about evil people who claimed to be gods, but every word she spoke now was true. She only repeated what she had heard D'ward say, or what Piol and Dommi had written, which again was only what D'ward had said in public or in private instruction.
Puffing and leaning on her staff, she emerged from the wood at the entrance to the house. It was a spooky place, two storeys high, long abandoned. The windows were empty eyes, the door a vacant mouth. Once there had been gardens around it, but they had run to weeds, dead winter straw crackling under her feet. Stark, unsightly trees raised branches against the sky in frozen agony.
Two young men sat on the steps, chatting. They jumped up when they saw a shield-bearer and made the circle. She, having both hands full, raised her staff in salute instead. She paused to catch her breath. “Blessings of the Undivided! Am I the last?"
They exchanged worried glances. One said, “Don't know, Mother. There's another door."
Mother? Now that was amusing! She was younger than they were. Mother Eleal? Eleal Mother? “Well, D'ward says that the last shall be first.” Making a mental note to ask him or Piol what that meant, she went on up the steps.
She found the others gathered in a large, high-ceilinged room. A fire crackled cheerfully in a fireplace at one end, but most of the light came from Trumb's great disk, blazing in through three huge windows. Cobwebs festooned the gaps between jagged edges of glass, and the mullions cast hard shadows on the floor. The floor, she noted, had probably been a fine expanse of mosaic at one time, but it was so littered with a mulch of dead leaves that little of it was visible. Someone had thought to sweep a clear space in front of the hearth, or the first spark would have sent the whole place up. The air was musty and earth scented.
She made a hasty count and decided she was not the last. In the absence of furniture, the shield-bearers were sitting in twos and threes on their own bedrolls, not clustered at the fire but grouped around the walls. Seeing Piol's shiny scalp alongside Hasfral Midwife's silver mop, she went to join them, dropping her pack and sitting on it before she dealt with shield and pole. She released a sigh of content.
"I heard you speak,” Hasfral said, leaning around Piol. “Some of it. You were marvelous! I do enjoy your sermons!” She patted Eleal's knee and smiled her motherly smile.
Eleal mumbled thanks. She would have been ecstatic to receive such praise had she been acting. For preaching, it seemed inappropriate. All she did was quote the Liberator. With a little practice, anyone could do the same. Besides, talent was a gift from God, D'ward said, more an obligation than anything to get swelled-headed about.
"Where's D'ward?"
"Out there,” said Piol, “with Kilpian and Dommi. And don't ask us what they're doing, because we don't know."
"Not so,” Hasfral corrected. “We know what they're doing. We just can't decide why."
The windows looked out on a courtyard enclosed by two wings of the house and a high wall. Like the gardens outside, it had degenerated to a wilderness of trees and shrubs run riot. In summer it would be a dense jungle of greenery. In winter it was a brown tangle of death and decay. What might have been a lawn had become a small hayfield. Three men were moving around there—dragging away thornbushes and brushwood, apparently.
"They can't be planning a bonfire. It'd burn the house down."
"They're clearing a space,” Hasfral said. “I think we're going to have a ball. May I have the first dance, Piol?"
He coughed his dry little laugh. “If you promise not to tramp on my bunions. Personally, I hope we have the feast first."
"Has D'ward ever promised a feast before?” Eleal asked. She could eat a mammoth, medium rare with lashings of mapleberry sauce.
The others said, “No,” in unison.
"Must have been a lovely garden once,” Hasfral said wistfully. “That's a lantern tree and a giant spindle nut. Those small ones are sesames; beautiful in spring, they are."
Footsteps scrunched outside. A small man marched in, his blond halo identifying him instantly as Dosh Envoy.
"Twenty!” said Tielan, from somewhere near the fire. “Now we can start."
"Twen
ty-three,” Dosh retorted. Two others followed him in. “Alis and Kaptaan, and you mustn't forget D'ward himself."
While Tielan protested that he hadn't, the newcomers found places. The men outside must have concluded their work, for they were approaching.
Eleal had almost never seen all the shield-bearers gathered together like this, with nobody else. Well, almost nobody else. Alis and Kaptaan didn't count—they were special. They were not shield-bearers or friends. They did not preach or undertake specific responsibilities. They just were. The Liberator knew what he was doing. Laws were for evildoers, he said. The righteous were guided by principles.
Kilpian and Dommi stepped over the low sills and stamped across the room to their bundles. D'ward followed, looked around, counting. He remained standing.
"Blessings!” he said. “Are you hungry?"
"Yes!” said almost everyone.
He sighed. “So am I! We'll have to wait awhile yet, I'm afraid.” He strolled over to the fireplace and turned his back on it. “A few of you may be worrying that I'm about to produce a sacramental supper. I'm not. That is not what we're here for. We have no bread and no wine, anyway."
He began to move again, sauntering along the big room. “You wonder what's going to happen. The One will provide. Bid'lip? Any signs of trouble?"
The soldier's deep growl came from the darkest corner. “No, sir. But they're out there. Lots of ‘em. You can smell moa on the wind."
"I'd rather smell a moa than its rider! Colleagues...” D'ward turned and started wandering back, peering at faces. “Yes, I am proud to call you colleagues. You have all realized, I'm sure, that we have arrived at an ending. I marvel that the Thargians let us come even this far. I will not tempt them further, for there are thousands of people out there who would make good mine workers."