"Had you heard and seen what I have heard and seen in a lifetime you would be as bent as I am, Ghaill Earthspeaker. The long night comes, and who will call the Cthochi out of the darkness?" He leaned on his staff as he spoke.
"We were speaking of war, old one." The Ghaill spoke carefully, respectfully, making sure that no insult lay in his tone.
"You were speaking of war and they are speaking of war." Allein-a-Briech gestured negligently at the gathered elders. "Forces of darkness are calling for war and the Cthochi are not immune to their call. It must be the final war, when all of the Aulig must stand together. The one whose fate it was to guide us through the night has refused the call." For a moment, his expression grew bleak.
"Are you against this, then?" A part of the Ghaill was relieved at the thought. While he as the chieftain could not hope to still the blood wrath of the Cthochi, perhaps their respect for the most revered shaman of the age could. Of all the people gathered, only this man had the power to prevent this war. A word from Allein-a-Briech and the elders would go home to their camps, not without some grumbling, but they would go home.
In his heart, the Ghaill did not want war with the stonecutters. He had fought them before, and it had never been easy. Lost friends and scars attested to that. Even with the addition of the Sons of the Bear and the other island tribes, the Auligs could not hope to match the numbers the Mortentians would eventually bring to battle. Perhaps it was a sign of his age that he was no longer eager for it. He looked half-hopefully toward the shaman, who seemed to read his thought.
"I am sorry, Ghaill Earthspeaker." The shaman's voice was gentle, but still managed to carry to each of the gathered men. "The Final War comes whether we will it or not. In this war a people shall end, and it is time. We'd best get on with it."
Several voices shouted lusty agreement. The Ghaill nodded with resignation. He noted to himself that the shaman had not specified which people would end. He knew that those around him believed it would be the stonecutters, but he was himself not so sure. This war could just as easily mean the end of the Cthochi.
"Kill the bull!" He shouted, trying to sound enthusiastic as he threw a bundle of wood on the fire. The gathered men shouted and shook their spears.
Although Hanjenger would never know it, his effort to speak to Ghaill Earthspeaker only missed its object by a few hours. Together with Anajel he crossed the Redwater just before dawn, paddling a narrow punt in tandem with his old friend. He bore the longsword that had been his father's, as well as a bow and a sheaf of arrows. Anajel carried only his bow and long knife, for he was an archer first and a hand-to-hand fighter only at desperate need.
Over and across the dense thicket that was the Northwood he saw a remnant of smoke, the last thin thread that marked the remains of the great council fire Ghaill Earthspeaker had left only a few hours earlier. "That'll be the Ghaill's band, I reckon." He said to Anajel, who nodded his agreement. "We can make it there in less than an hour if we hurry." Because they did not yet know they were at war, neither Hanjenger nor Anajel bore the accouterment of heralds. They had dressed in the simple clothing of foresters.
Banden-a-Gelt had not been at the council fire, but he had heard the result. He was only nineteen summers old, and he had never been involved in a fight against other men. He was lean and dark, known for his speed in footraces. Last summer there had been fighting between his clan and a few warriors from one of the northern islands, but Banden had been out hunting at the time and had missed it.
He would not miss this fight. This was the Final War spoken of in prophecy, and over a hundred thousand warriors would be in on it. It was said that some bands from far across the eastern sea would come, too. He intended to be in every battle from the first to the last. The Mother willing, he would lay enough trophies at the feet of Ghaill Earthspeaker, his chieftain, to become a war leader himself.
His stone-tipped spear rested heavily in his palm, and he had a full quiver of iron-tipped arrows at his back. He hoped for a sword one day, like so many veteran Cthochi carried, proof of his prowess. To capture a sword from the Stonecutters was no mean trick, and would show him a true man. He had spoken the war oath just an hour ago, with the setting of the red star, and he was as eager for war as any young man could be who had never experienced it.
Beside him walked his war brother Maret-a-Gelt, his mother's sister's son. Maret was a year older, and the two of them had competed against each other in everything from footraces to stealing horses. Maret had killed a man last summer, and he often boasted of it. Banden had watched the way the others treated Maret with new respect, and he knew that he would not be treated like that until he'd killed his first man.
Strung out behind the two were several other young Cthochi bucks, their mission a simple one. They were to go down to the Redwater and watch for stonecutter boats. If they sighted one, they were to light a smoky fire, and the main body of warriors down river would do the rest.
The Redwater River was no longer to be used by the stonecutters.
"There are Cthochi ahead." Anajel said quietly to Hanjenger. Hanjenger nodded. He had already seen them.
"Maybe they can take us to the Ghaill."
Midnight had passed, and then most of the morning before Dejon felt the time was right to act on his urge. Silent as a breath of air, he slipped his bare feet from the hammock and muscled his way out of it. Without a sound he lifted a small sheaf of dry corn husk and crept to the door of the crew quarters. He listened in the darkness for the sounds of his companions sleeping, and only when he had accounted for the snores or breathing of each of the four other men did he move.
I could have been a burglar, he mused to himself, forgetting that he’d already failed at that task and gone to the Blackhill for it. Like a dark ghost he drifted across the room and silently opened the door leading to the main deck. Across the water only a few lonely lights still burned in the city of Northcraven. He moved on cat's feet to the main hatch leading down into the hold.
This was the tricky part, for the hatch was heavy and it would be impossible to move without making a little noise. After pressing an ear to the hatch to confirm that the hold was unoccupied, Dejon got his hands under the cover and pulled as hard as he could. He confirmed that the hatch lifted enough for his purposes. He put it back down.
The Kalgareth, like every other boat buoy-moored in the harbor, was required to keep a small lamp burning at the base of the main mast, to avoid collisions. Dejon walked silently to that small lamp and thrust the curled sheaf into it. He held it carefully with his fingertips so that it burned only a little bit at a time.
He walked back to the hatch and lifted it. He peered in the gap thus created, but could not see the hold’s contents, other than a shadowy something just out of view near the stern. Holding the hatch one-handed, he put his feet through the opening and eased them down onto the top rungs of the wooden ladder.
The light nearly went out as he struggled to close the hatch noiselessly above his head. He climbed down until he reached the bottom of the hold, surprised to find that warm water met his bare feet. Apparently there was no flooring between the bottom of the hold and the bilge. The warmth of the air in the bilge surprised him, as did the strange, almost miasmic smell. Only when he was firmly on the floor did Dejon turn around.
The young thief gasped in amazement. The thing in the hold was repulsive to look at. In the thin and uncertain light cast by the burning sheaf he saw what he took at first to be a sculpture, carved in wood or stone. In shape it was like a fat, broad leafless tree, the bark of which was so dark that it seemed to be composed of shadows.
At the base of the tree-thing lay a row of tiny bundles, shaped like the forms of sleeping children. Only his conviction that they were sculpted things kept him from scrambling back up the ladder in horror. He walked closer, peering so intently at the bizarre piece of artwork that he did not notice the two shadowy forms moving soundlessly in the dark bilge beyond it.
When he stood wi
thin just a few inches of the thing he saw that the tree was sculpted so that the babies appeared to be swaddled tightly by the roots and tendrils of the tree. Some of the tree's roots actually appeared to have been carved so that they grew into the bodies of the twenty or so statuettes.
Suddenly one of the sculpted children seemed to come awake. Tiny hands flailed helplessly against the roots and branches that bound the baby to the base of the grotesque, monstrous tree.
Dejon's eyes widened and his mouth gaped in horror.
He gasped as the baby opened its eyes wide, the whites glowing sickly green with the tree's poison in its body. It looked at him. It writhed horribly in pain and helplessness, opened its mouth wide and breathed a silent scream in Dejon's direction.
Four strong black hands came out of the darkness, grabbed Dejon and pulled him to the floor, under the warm, fetid water. In the darkened hold he saw her face, the face of the black haired witch who had hired him. She spoke. “It is time for you to meet your new god.”
He struggled, but the hands belonged to strong and experienced men. Both his criminal career and his life ended within a few moments.
The two men on the bank of the Redwater came from different backgrounds, and they were markedly different in external appearance as well. Sanjer O'Hiam came from the farmlands south and east of the Redwater, and he'd come to Northcraven for the specific purpose of avenging his father, who had died in the last Aulig war and left the family penniless. He carried his hatred for the Auligs in his bones, as well as in his cold, white-blue eyes. He was a master swordsman, a deadly archer and a skilled, quick-thinking tracker. Intolerance and an unforgiving attitude toward his subordinates marked him as a man who would advance far in war time, but to whom peace offered nothing. He stood as narrow and sharp as a razor. He did not understand why men hated him and he did not care, so long as they did as he expected.
Beside and slightly below him, knee-deep in the spring flood, waded Aldebar J'lenti, thick limbed and bearded. Aldebar stood two hands taller than the next tallest man Sanjer had ever met, and he was as heavily muscled as a grain-fed plowhorse. He had grown up in the timberjack camps over the river, raised by men who felled trees by the thousands and dumped them in the Redwater to be milled in Northcraven. He could put his two-handed great axe through the trunk of a ten-year pine in a single blow. Despite his fierce appearance, however, he was known to be even-handed, fair and probably forgiving to excess. He, too, was a tremendous leader, not from skill or discipline, but because men loved him and would follow him through the Abyss if he asked it.
"Send for Prior Handel." The big man said simply, as he pulled his best friend and long time commander from the water. "Tell him Hanjenger D'Tarman is dead." Hanjenger had been a large man, and the loss of his head little subtracted from his weight. Nevertheless, Aldebar pulled his body gently and easily from the water, careful of the fifteen or so arrows that protruded from it. He had pulled the little punt out of the water earlier in the day, three or four miles downriver, with Anajel Heath's body lying in the keel. He, too, had been shot through with a dozen arrows that Aldebar recognized as having come from Ghaill Earthspeaker's arrowsmith.
"Easy enough to read." Sanjer's voice was cold as always. "They went over to parley, got caught in the brush, the Cthochi killed Hanjenger right away but somehow Anajel made it back to the boat. They killed him from shore, which is why neither his body nor the boat was pilfered. Then the damned Auligs took Hanjenger's head for a trophy and put his body in the river."
"I don't doubt that you are right." Aldebar replied sadly. "Send word to the duke immediately."
"It's war, then?" Sanjer could hardly suppress the eagerness in his voice.
"Aye." Aldebar sighed heavily. "It is war."
Ghaill Earthspeaker looked at the bloody lump of flesh held in the fist of Banden-a-Gelt. He shook his head. To have lived a life of peril for half a hundred years and end up shot down by this child. It was an ignominious end for so great a man as Hanjenger D'Tarman. The Earthspeaker recognized him, of course.
"He was a great enemy." He said aloud to Banden, who smiled proudly, unconsciously touching the new sword on his back. He felt fierce pride, although he was not certain how his chief meant the words to be taken.
"If this does not begin it, nothing will." Kerrick the Sword replied. "He was some sort of cousin to the duke, was he not?"
"Yes. And to the stonecutter king as well."
Chapter 21: The East Forest, between the towns of North Down and Mangavolle
Half a day north of the village of Mangavolle they'd had to kill a man. Jahaksi upbraided his scouts for their negligence in missing him, but there was really little they could have done. The hapless Mortentian had been wearing hunter's green and had been hidden in the treetops. A poacher, perhaps. The wagon had passed almost underneath him before Tathaga spotted him. It had taken only a few minutes to bury the man, then a few minutes more to ensure that the grave was not noticeable.
If the villagers put out dogs to search… Well, whatever happened would happen.
Jahaksi could waste little time worrying about things that had not happened yet. He had enough to worry about as it was. Each of the four days traveling north had taken him farther from the site of the eagle’s capture, and late every morning so far they had been required to halt by the presence of the great eagles in the southern sky. Fortunately, the eagles seemed to concentrate their vigilance along the roads, and the secret paths seemed deliberately placed to skirt them.
Jahaksi had held his breath while the golden eagle landed in Mangavolle, its gold-haired rider undoubtedly putting out word for the villagers to be on the lookout. Still, no villagers had come forth from that small town and no hunters had found them. It was another five miles through the forest before they would come close to another village, this one called North Down. That journey would have to wait until nightfall, for he could not risk moving about by day.
A haze along the western horizon had him hopeful. If the haze turned out to be low clouds, he could travel through tomorrow with little fear of detection from above. The foliage had thickened in the late spring warmth, and most of the buds on the trees had opened into full leaf and flower. The morning fog enabled him to make better time than he'd anticipated, so all and all the journey was going well. The Empire’s spies in Zoric had provided him with an excellent map, and thus far, it had proven very accurate.
The wagon lay beneath its concealing cloak of mottled canvas, and twice now they had coaxed the great eagle to eat baby deer -fawns- painstakingly captured by his scouts. Today was the day Vai was supposed to try the chains, and if they worked, all would proceed according to plan. Khogar Vai was still in his tent, however, and had not emerged since Jahaksi had called this halt.
It was high time the wizard earned his keep, if he could. Frankly, Jahaksi doubted it, for the man had practically become a living corpse. Not only age seemed to have afflicted him, but the mental curse that comes with age as well. The High Lord was becoming a doddering old man. The sudden transformation smacked of magic, but it was caused by no eldritch curse. It was in fact the lack of youth-sustaining magic that was affecting the change.
Jahaksi was careful to remain beneath the canopy of the forest as he approached the wizard's tent, colored in the same mottled hues as the wagon cover. He paused at the tent's single flap.
"May I enter?" He kept his tone respectful, despite the fact that he had lost all respect for his wizard.
"Come in, Lord Jahaksi." Vai's voice seemed to have weakened along with his body.
The interior of the tent lay in gloomy shadow, and Vai sat cross-legged at the edge of a thick carpet, elaborately woven in arcane designs of black and white. With distaste, Jahaksi noticed the smell surrounding the man. Even Brizaki children knew enough to bathe daily, and Jahaksi found Vai's body odor only slightly less offensive than the neglect of his person it indicated. The wizard's eyes were haunted.
"I must tell you what I have seen."
High Lord Khogar Vai intoned solemnly.
"And what is that, High Lord?"
"The seeker has found his man and marked him, but the seeker is dead."
Jahaksi nodded calmly. "He was expendable." Although he knew little about the seeker’s role in the Imperial plan, he knew enough not to be too concerned. The seeker's mission was hardly the primary one, after all, and not his. From what he understood, Natarak’s witch Anrealla Bishota had that matter well in hand. "It is enough that he has marked the man. The witch can do her part now. It is little concern of ours." Then he paused, realizing the true import of what Vai had said. In order to know what he was saying, Vai must have used the Art. "How do you know this? Is your power returning?"
Vai shook his head and smiled ruefully. "Nothing like what it was in the Empire, Jahaksi. It is only the little thing I mentioned to you before, the weak, vague magic in the realm of Seeing." He gestured at the carpet in front of him. Jahaksi saw several regularly shaped bones that he had not noticed before. He grinned slightly with disbelief.
"Have you been dicing?" He tried to keep the scorn out of his voice.
"Aye, Jahaksi." The wizard returned his half-smile in a self-deprecating way. "Dicing like a common street teller. It is hard to believe that I, once the most powerful wizard in the second circle, am reduced to this. Even the apprentices in the Outer Circle do not deign to dice for wisdom."
"I diced as a child." Jahaksi's voice was indulgent. "I never really put much stock in it."
"It is real sorcery." Vai's tone was slightly defensive. "The realm of Seeing is the weakest, of course, and this is no substitute for True Sight, but it is real nevertheless. To tell you the truth, I have been sitting here throwing bones for the past two hours just to tell you what I just did."
"Can I rely on it?"
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 17