The Reavers of Skaith-Volume III of The Book of Skaith

by Leigh Brackett

  In the cold deserts northeast of the Bleak Mountains, at the Place of Winds, the Fallarin listened to the voices of the high air, which brought them word of the world, and they took urgent counsel among themselves.

  South along the Wandsmen's road, the fortress city of Yurunna crouched on its rock above the oasis. The women of the Six Lesser Hearths of Kheb, whose duty it was to tend the fields, saved what they could while the irrigation ditches sheeted over with ice and roots froze in the ground. The men, whose business was war, turned their veiled faces toward Ged Darod.

  And at Ged Darod, the annual tide of Farers flowed in along the many roads that crossed the plain. They filled the streets of the city. They filled the squares and the pleasure gardens. They filled the hostels, and they ate the food that was always forthcoming from the Wandsmen's bounty. And still more of them came, too early and too many, while behind them in the temperate zone the harvests failed.

  The million bells of Ged Darod made joyful music in a breeze that was not as warm as it might have been. In the Palace of the Twelve, Ferdias listened to reports that were in no way joyful, and the first small worm of doubt crept in behind his triumphant serenity.

  19

  Below the Fertile Belt, it had become more difficult to evade the bands of refugees who plundered wherever they could in the hope of finding food. Stark steered away, out of sight of land, venturing in only when water became a pressing need.

  Upon the sea, food was no longer a problem. Everything was moving north. Aquatic creatures followed shoals of the lesser creatures they fed upon. Winged things, fierce-eyed and whistling, swooped over the surface. Dark, bobbing heads showed where whole colonies of the Children of the Sea-Our-Mother migrated, feeding as they went. The hounds watched constantly, even when they slept, and the men's hands were never far from their weapons.

  The boat was under oars much of the time, beating against southerly winds that the Fallarin had not yet learned to tame, though they spent hours in the fore-peak with their wings spread, listening, talking.

  "They're different from our desert winds," Alderyk said. "They speak of bergs and sea-ice, and they smell of water instead of dust. They have had no one to talk to, and they're proud and wild. They do not learn easily."

  Snow came in whirling flakes, and the Northhounds snapped at it like puppies, rolling in the delicious chill where it collected on the deck. The first outriders of the southern ice slipped by, floating mountains glittering and silent amid flat, white pans of drift that thickened imperceptibly across the solemn ocean.

  The winds died, through no effort of the Fallarin. Ahead now was a spreading whiteness that swallowed sea and sky together.

  Gerrith looked at it and said, "That is where our road leads."

  Stark felt the breath of the Goddess upon his cheek and shivered. "She has taken the south for her domain."

  "Someone else is there. A woman with strange eyes, who waits for us."

  "Sanghalain."

  Gerrith repeated, "Sanghalain." And the name sounded like a call to some secret, deadly battle.

  The Fallarin found wind enough to fill the sail, but they lacked vigor. Frost clung in their dark fur and rimed the stiff ridges of their wings. It was a chill that nothing could keep out. Men and women huddled together beneath their cloaks, around the galley fire, and Pedrallon shuddered constantly in his blankets. Ashton kept his small radio inside his shirt, lest his fingers freeze to it when he monitored the unchanging silence from the sky. Only the Northhounds throve.

  The boat passed into that waiting whiteness. Tendrils of snow-fog wrapped it. It swam englobed in blind mist, with the pan ice rattling and racking along its sides. The men stood at battle stations with their weapons ready, and they saw nothing. The hounds bristled and growled, and gave no warning. Stark held the steering oar, seeing nothing ahead, and behind him the wake vanished as quickly as it was made. He was inured to cold and did not suffer as the others did. But the primitive N'Chaka growled and whimpered within him, as uneasy as the hounds.

  Ice finally closed about the boat on all sides and held it fast. Men and hounds stood silent in the silent fog and listened to ghostly voices, the squeaking and grinding and muttering of the floes.

  Then another voice spoke in Stark's mind, a deep groaning like a winter tide among rocks.

  I am Morn, Dark Man. You are in my waters. My army is beneath your keel.

  We come in peace, said Stark.

  Then bid those beasts with the black and burning minds be still whilst I come aboard.

  They will be still.

  Stark spoke to the hounds, and they were shamed because they had not been aware of Morn and his people.

  Minds shut, N'Chaka. We cannot hear.

  Trust them.

  Friends?

  No. But not enemies.

  Not like. Cannot hear.

  Trust them.

  The hounds' eyes glowed yellow and their tiger claws scored the deck. But they crouched and were still.

  Astern of the boat—where there was open water in perilous cracks between ice pans—round, shining, hairless heads appeared, heads with great eyes used to seeing in the ocean depths. And presently Morn hauled himself huge and dripping over the rail and stood looking at Stark and the hounds, at the Fallarin wrapped in their dark wings and the Irnanese in their leather and the tribesmen in their faded cloaks, and at the Tarf, who regarded him with mild indifference from under horny lids.

  He looked at Gerrith and bent his head briefly.

  Yours is the far-seeing mind. The Lady Sanghalain has awaited your coming.

  Gerrith bent her head in acknowledgment, but if she made any answer it was made in mind-talk and Stark could not hear it. They could all hear Morn when he wished it, and he could hear them, but the non-telepaths were deaf to each other except in normal speech.

  When Stark had first seen Morn—that time when Morn and the Lady Sanghalain saved him from the mob in the pleasure gardens at Ged Darod—Morn had been clad in ceremonial landgoing gear, a fine garment of worked and polished leather, and he had carried his badge of office, a massive trident set with pearls. Now he wore sea-harness, a scant webbing that served only to hold his weapons.

  He did not need a badge of office to make him impressive. He stood a head taller than Stark, a natural amphibian evolved from some mammalian ancestor, in contrast to the deliberately mutated Children of the Sea. Unlike the Children, Morn's people were not furred, but had smooth skin, dark on the back and light on the belly, camouflage against deep-swimming predators. Also, they were intelligent and highly organized, with a complex social order of their own. The Children of the Sea hunted them for food, and they hunted the Children of the Sea as vicious brutes, despising them.

  Morn's people were called Ssussminh, a name that sounded like rolling surf when it was properly pronounced. They were telepaths because mind-talk was easier than mouth-talk in their watery world; and they had an ancient, mystic, and very powerful connection with the ruling house of Iubar—a connection Stark was sure he would never completely understand. Probably it had begun as a symbiotic partnership, with the Iubarians, who had always been fisher-folk and traders, providing land-based goods and services in exchange for pearls and sea-ivory and such other unique offerings as the Ssussminh might make. Now both members of this ancient partnership were being forced from their homeland by the Dark Goddess.

  In any case, Morn was the Lady Sanghalain's other voice. And when he spoke, he spoke to all of them.

  At Iubar we are in a trap. Will you enter it? Or will you turn back?

  "We cannot turn back," said Gerrith.

  Then let us have lines. My people will take you through the pack.

  Lines were paid out. The Ssussminh grasped them, many strong swimmers. They towed the boat astern and then ahead again, finding narrow leads which were hidden from a steersman by the fog.

  Let your hellhounds watch, douse your fire, and let you all be silent. We must pass through an army.

&
nbsp; "Whose?" Stark spoke aloud so that his comrades could follow his end of the conversation. They could all hear Morn.

  The Kings of the White Islands have come north, all four tribes, with their belongings and their hunting packs and their sacred island. They besiege Iubar, in force.

  "Why?"

  The Goddess has told them that it is time for them to go and claim their ancient lands beyond the sea. They need our ships.

  "What is their strength?"

  Four thousand, more or less, and all fighters, except for those still in the cradle-skins. The women are as fierce as the men, and even the children fight well. Their small javelins fly for the throat.

  The boat glided on black water between tumbled plains of ice. Great bergs embedded in the pack showed cliffs and caves where the mist moved vagrant about them, thinning now and then but never lifting. The Ssussminh swam tirelessly. The company stood to arms, making no sound. The hounds watched. Men, N'Chaka. Men and things, there.

  "There" was somewhere ahead. The bowmen warmed their bows against their bodies, for the cold made them brittle. The strings were inside their shirts to keep them dry. Stark let them stand to, in case they were needed, but he and Simon took the automatics from their place of safety and loaded them. Ammunition was irreplaceable, but this was no time for parsimony. They took up positions on either side of the boat. Morn took the steering oar.

  They began to hear voices in the mist, and saw lights, the faint glimmerings of blubber stoves. These were at first before, and then beside, and then behind and all around the boat, which moved with no sound but a gentle purling, creeping through the heart of an army. N'Chaka! Things come!

  The Ssussminh splashed and were gone. The lines fell slack.

  The hunting packs have found us. Let your hounds kill now. And let the Fallarin give us way. Hurry!

  Alderyk cracked the air with his wings. His fellows joined him. In a moment the sail filled and the boat was moving. The fighting men made ready. In the fore-peak, the eyes of the Northhounds brightened and their jaws hung open, panting white smoke.

  There came a boiling and moiling in the water. Beasts, shaped like giant otters and furred like snow-leopards, shot up screaming and rolled over to float like dead fish. Then voices shouted alarms off in the fog. Conchs boomed and brayed. Shadows moved on either side, where folk came running in the freezing mist. They ran faster than the boat could swim. Bone-barbed throwing spears rattled inboard.

  Stark raised his hand and brought it sharply down. "Now!"

  The automatics made bursts of stuttering thunder. Fur-clad forms skittered and fell across the ice. A sort of insane howling rose, and then dropped behind as the boat picked up speed and slid out into open water, leaving the floes astern.

  Some trick of the currents, which ran swiftly here along the coast, kept this stretch of water clear of all but broken ice. A fleet of skin boats darted out like beetles from the edges of the floes.

  Kill, said Stark, still holding the automatic in case of need.

  The hounds growled.

  The folk in the boats faltered and lost the paddle stroke, but few of them died, and those not quickly.

  Minds fight fear. Strong. Not easy, like most.

  Morn said, The White Islanders are without fear. They are madmen. They have broken themselves by the hundreds against our walls. Now they wait, knowing that we starve. Look there.

  Iubar took form, a dim peninsula ridge-backed with mountains, snow-covered from the peaks to the sea's edge.

  Those fields, said Morn, should be green, and all this sea clear of ice. But the Goddess holds us fast, pens our ships in the harbor. Even if we could somehow free our ships and try to pass through the floes as we have just done with you, the Islanders would overwhelm us, taking each craft as it came. He pointed. There is your anchorage.

  Stark made out a walled town and a harbor. A gray guardian castle bestrode the walls, mailed from its foot with the ice of frozen spray. The single high tower, rising sheer from the rock, bore no battlements. There was no need for defenses atop that unscalable height.

  Offshore from the castle, an island reared frosty cliffs above the water. Yet they had not quite the look of cliffs.

  Shallafonh, said Morn. Our city. Looted, like Iubar, and soon to die . . . like Iubar.

  The castle held one side of the harbor mouth in its arm, with a frowning tower for a fist. A second tower faced it across the gap, at the end of a fortified mole. Both towers were armed and manned, and a boom could be drawn to close the narrow entrance. The still water within was choked with ice, but a way had been cleared for Stark's boat to the end of the royal quay.

  Let be, said Morn to the Fallarin, and they were glad to stop because the Goddess sapped their strength. Some of Morn's people caught the trailing lines again. The boat was brought into harbor, with film ice already forming behind it, and was moored beside what Stark was sure must be Sanghalain's own ship. Everywhere at the quays, white-shrouded ships lay motionless and all the normal voices of the harbor were mute.

  And so, said Morn, you are safely within the trap, though for what reason I do not yet know.

  Stark looked toward Gerrith, but she had gone apart from them.

  The sail folded down like a tired wing. Men and women sat stiffly, unable to comprehend that they had reached the end of the voyage.

  The great portal of the castle tower opened. A woman clad in brown appeared, and Stark knew that it must be Sanghalain and that there were people with her. But he could only watch Gerrith.

  A change had come over her. She seemed to have grown taller, to have shed all the weariness and uncertainty of the voyage. She walked to the gunwale and mounted it and stepped onto the quay, and no one dreamed of offering her a hand. Stark moved to follow her, and then stopped. On the tower steps, Sanghalain and her ladies and her courtiers stood still.

  Gerrith looked about her, at the shrouding mist and the dead sky. A sort of glory seemed to touch her. She shook back the hood that covered her head and her hair shone with its own light. Sun-colored woman, shining in this place of death. And Stark's heart turned in him like a sword blade.

  Gerrith spoke, and her voice rang like a sweet, strong bell against the bitter stones.

  "I know now why my way has led me to this place."

  Sanghalain came down the steps. The courtiers remained where they were, but a double file of women followed her, all in habits of brown wool, all with faces hidden behind brown veils. They marched along the quay and halted before Gerrith, who had turned to meet them. All the brown habits bent and swayed in a kind of genuflection. Sanghalain stretched out her hands.

  Gerrith took them. The two women looked at each other, motionless, their hands clasped together. Then they turned, and the file turned with them, somber skirts whipping in the wind, moving back toward the steps.

  And once again Stark stood, in memory, in the House of the Ironmaster at Thyra, when Hargoth the Corn-King turned in his rage upon Gerrith, whom he himself had wished to sacrifice. "You prophesied for me, Sun Woman," he had said. "Now I prophesy for you. Your body will yet feed Old Sun, though not as a parting gift."

  Stark sprang onto the quay. He started after Gerrith, and Morn stood before him.

  She goes of her own free will, Dark Man.

  "For a sacrifice? Is that why Sanghalain was waiting for her?"

  The hounds were beside Stark now. But others of the Ssussminh had gathered, barring his way. They were armed, and the hounds were of no use against them. Stark saw archers in Sanghalain's livery standing with ready bows on the lower defenses of the castle.

  We will slay you all, if we must, Morn said. It will not change this matter.

  Gerrith walked with the Lady of Iubar, up the steps and into the cold, gray tower.

  20

  They were in a cold stone room with faded tapestries on the walls and a tiny fire of sea-coals on the hearth. Sanghalain and the brown-veiled women of the Sisterhood of which she was High Priestess had been wi
th Gerrith all night. They had withdrawn now, so that the wise woman of Irnan might have time alone with her companions.

  She was clothed in a gown the color of her hair, which hung loose over her shoulders, glowing brighter than the firelight. She sat at a table, her head bent above a basin filled with pellucid water, provided for her by the Sisterhood.

  Halk, Alderyk, Pedrallon, and Sabak stood near the table, waiting for her to speak. Simon Ashton stood by himself, a little way apart. Stark remained at the far end of the room, as distant from Gerrith as he could be, looking as if he might kill her himself if she were within his reach.

  When she spoke, with the voice of the prophetess, he listened as the others did. But there was that in his face that made Ashton glance at him uneasily.

  "The folk of the north have begun their Second Wandering," she said. "The Fallarin have abandoned the Place of Winds."

  The sudden clap of Alderyk's wings made the candles gutter.

  "They go south to Yurunna," she continued, "and such as are left of the Ochar move that way also. At Yurunna, many of the tribesmen make ready to move, for they have not enough from the ruined crops to carry them through the winter."

  Sabak's blue eyes were intense above the tribal veil. Gerrith went on. "Across the Bleak Mountains, the Witchfires are sealed. Skaith-Daughter and her people have made their choice. Penkawr-Che's ships—and I think they got little from the Children for their pains—have left the planet. The Harsenyi were scattered long since, down the southern roads.

  "The forges of Thyra are cold and the people march. Hargoth the Corn-King leads his narrow folk south from the Towers. At Izvand, the wolf-eyed men look toward the Border. Other folk, whose names I do not know, are leaving their starving places. There will be much fighting, but the city-states will hold behind their walls. Irnan alone will be abandoned, for lack of food, and I see smoke above the rooftops. Her people will find refuge among the other city-states." Halk bit his lip, but did not speak. "The southern wave of the wandering will die out as the survivors find better lands. Pedrallon's country and others like it can absorb most of the refugees, though their way of life will be greatly changed. But there is no help there for our cause. It is from here, from the White South, as I foretold, that our armies will come. Sanghalain, by her arts, knows that there is no longer any place on Skaith for her people or for the Ssussminh. Their only hope lies in the star-ships."