Paul O Williams - [Pelbar Cycle 02]

by The Ends of the Circle (v0. 9) (epub)

  Nonetheless, she set to work, instructing them on wall bracing, preliminary traps, backup positions, a second ditch and wall, and the use of spears. So little wood was available, and so little time for instruction, that this seemed the most useful set of methods.

  She also tried to train raiding parties, with slings, to stampede the herds at night as the enemy gathered above. All in all, it was frustrating work. Eventually, she felt that there were cows on the outside of the wall, and also cows inside. So used to their quiet gardening, their round of ceremonies, were the Originals that they could hardly conceive of the strategy of a raid.

  Ahroe tried to relate the whole process to games but found that they had almost no sports. The life of the Originals was hedged in not only with the walls, cliffs, and. river, but with observances and ceremonies. Several times she had the men she was trying to train simply walk away when the drums from the heavy towers called them.

  She got Boldar assigned to be her assistant. She thought his size and strength would help, and he was one of a number of the Originals who were basically practical, tolerating the priests because that was what they were used to, but not awed by their procedures. He was plainly devoted to her and amazed at her abilities, and tried to be of help. But he could not see the use of posting massed guards on the hilltops when there was water to lift for irrigation, fruit to dry, or grain to grind. When the Commuters did come, the Originals would see them.

  One day as they were on the upper slopes with Ahroe studying the possibilities of flanking positions on the high rocks, Boldar tapped her arm and pointed. A single horseman stood at the head of the funneling valley.

  “There. He is a Commuter.”

  “Come. I will talk with him.”

  “No. You mustn’t. They are a fierce and wild people.” “And I am a fierce and wild woman, Boldar. They should have called you Timid. What is it you are Boldar than?”

  “What?”

  “No matter. Come.” She held up her hand and advanced toward the distant horseman, but he turned his mount and trotted over the rim of the height and vanished.

  “He didn’t look fierce and wild to me. He looked scared.”

  “I think you should have the walls built higher.”

  “They cannot be higher without being stronger. As it is, they can be battered down.”

  From down the hill Recha came running. When he recovered himself, he said, “Upriver. Four miles. The grass gatherers found Commuters. They had begun gathering the grass and passing water up the cliff in buckets.” “How many?”

  “I don’t know. Many. The cliff is high and it takes many hands.”

  Ahroe scanned the piled walls. It didn’t look at all good. Well, she would do what she could.

  18

  Stel stayed with the people at the Center of Knowledge for over three weeks. The paper-making had started poorly, because of the lack of proper materials. But they made progress with cottonwood, once they had learned to make chips and beat the fibers separate. The main problem was water. The process took it in quantity, and there was almost none.

  Finally they succeeded in pouring out a quantity of water-laden pulp onto a cloth on a flat rock, spreading it with a roller, squeezing most of the water out, and letting it bake dry in the sun. It was uneven in thickness and a bit lumpy, but it was undeniably paper. Howarth, especially, was delighted.

  The other people at the Center of Knowledge kept Stel busy with questions. He was a new dimension to them. They often laughed at his lack of knowledge of things from the time of fire, things they knew well. They had not suffered quite the blackout of knowledge that the early Pel bar had. But he enlightened them on many things, not only about geography, the present peoples of the landscape, and their cultures, but about the practical things they seemed persistently to know so little of. It was easy for Stel to see why Elseth carved rock in her own private valley. Artistic expression abounded. Even wooden bowls and spoon handles were carved individually and creatively.

  Occasionally Stel and the Commuters startled each other by some piece of preserved knowledge that they shared—never so amazingly as when Otta, a thin old man who tended the Center stock, played a melody on a stringed instrument with a sound box, and Stel was immediately able to furnish harmony on his flute. It was the “Song to Aven, Source of Joy.” The Commuters called it the “Joy of Man’s Desiring,” but had no words to it. The experience brought a general hush, as they sat in the sun musing on the strangeness of the past.

  A horseman came slowly into the box canyon. It was Shay. He dismounted stiffly. “The Rockpilers are ready for us. They have built walls, high ones, and other de* fenses. Pross is already near Cull. All the north wells have failed. I met Tad and his brothers with twenty-two head as well, going toward the river.”

  Howarth sighed. “They must share their water and grass. We cannot perish because they are standing in front of the only water. It will be another battle.”

  “Perhaps you can arrive at some agreement with them,” Stel said.

  “We have tried. In good years they sometimes trade with us, but in drought they do not. Perhaps we have been wrong. We have destroyed their gardens in our desperation. But they haven’t suffered as we have.”

  “You have almost no weapons. They will slaughter you.”

  “They have almost none, either. Neither of our societies fights. We have our studies. They have ceremonies. We keep occupied and stay out of each other’s way.” “Except when there is drought,” said Shay.

  “Yes. Drought brings out the worst in men, in spite of hope, in spite of plan.”

  Stel smiled. “But after drought there comes a rain, and then the grass grows up again.”

  “When you two get through riming, maybe we ought to do something.”

  Howarth stood up and brushed his ragged shorts. “Debba will not like this a bit. It is a bad time.”

  Debba, Howarth’s wife, didn’t like it. But it was she who suggested that Stel might help. He knew a great deal about warfare that neither the Commuters nor the Rock-pilers had dreamed of. Stel wondered about it. Things were growing more desperate all the time. Eis soon rode in from someplace called North Navaho Sink. They too were running out of water and feed.

  Before long, separate groups of Commuters were moving toward the river. The dryness of their grazing lands meant that they lived apart, in small groups, and the entire Commuter society did not total more than four hundred, with about sixteen hundred head of cattle and horses. As Stel was caught up with the gathering migration to water, he noted how poor they were, and how gaunt the stock. In this heat and drought, the Commuters were trying to survive. As he questioned them, he found little overall organization, except educative, largely in history and the arts, and little ability at a concerted military effort.

  When Howarth’s family arrived above the river cliffs, many others were already there. Lines of people handed buckets and skins of water up the cliffs in relay fashion, but it was much work for little result, and there was nothing much for the stock to eat.

  “We will appeal to the Rockpilers for enough feed and water for a trip north. But it is a good sixty miles until we can reach the river ford, then cross and try to get to the mountains. If we even can. Then there are the goatherders, but they will not be all that much trouble.”

  “Perhaps you can negotiate with the Rockpilers. Offer them some of your livestock in return for what you need.”

  “I doubt it, but we can try. But make no mistake, Stel, we mean to survive, even if that means a fight, and messing up their precious gardens. We don’t like it, but nobody here is going to simply pass out of existence because they have blocked off the only access to water.”

  Howarth’s attitude left Stel musing. The old man normally was quiet and noncombative. The Rockpilers, it would seem, had created a viable mode of life for themselves, denying it to others, while the less provident but more interesting Commuters had not. There was a certain justice in what Howarth said. But as a Pelbar he
had long been a defender, and he knew how the others felt. He then gave Howarth a short account of his own experience with the outside tribes before the peace.

  “The difference,” Howarth mused, “is that they needed you and you them. The Rockpilers need us for nothing. We have offered them education, which we have far beyond theirs, but they see little in it. They are ceremonially inclined. They are woefully ignorant of history. Some of them actually think the sun would not rise if they did not sing it into the sky. Come. Ride with me to Cull and look at it. See what you think.”

  The two walked their horses with Shay to the crest of the hill above the funnel mouth leading down to the valley of the Rockpilers. Stel suddenly reined and held Howarth’s bridle. The old man frowned at this.

  “Look,” Stel said. “A ground trap. Three more steps and you’d be in it.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Here,” said Stel, handing the old man his bridle. He dismounted, ducked under the horses’ heads, and brushed dust away with his hands, then lifted off a framework of light twigs. Beneath was a pit perhaps an arm’s length deep with pointed stakes driven into its floor. Stel stood up again, then put it all back together. “If I didn’t know better, I’d be sure that was Pelbar work,” he said.

  “They’ve never done that before,” said Shay. “And look at those walls. They’ve worked on them a good deal lately.”

  “See the guard posts? I think I see men in them. Now. Look down there. I think they have ditch traps as well as these pits. This will not be easy. But those walls are flimsy. They will not be much trouble to breach, if it comes to that. Ladders would be easiest, behind a cover of cattle. You will need slings and staves. I can at least give you all a short staff lesson. What will happen when the wall is breached and the cattle pour through to the river? It could get very deadly.”

  “They will run.”

  “Are you sure? They outnumber you. Neither side seems heavily armed. There could be a lot of bruising and killing.”

  “Stel, you don’t like this. Neither do I. What alternative have I? They always have run. I have checked the records. This has happened four times that we have recorded. Each time there was a fight, then they ran and hid. We watered the stock well, and fed them, loaded them down with water, and left for the mountains. Each time was a hard one. There were always fatalities, and once it was really bad. But there is no record of any of these defenses.”

  “They are all familiar to me. Always remember—when you have circumvented one set, you will be tempted to think you have made it. There will always be another trap for the unwary. I don’t like this. They have had some advice. Look—are those spears I see down there? Down by the wall?”

  “Spears? My old eyes don’t see that well.”

  “Yes,” said Shay. “They are spears.”

  “What is it like by the river? Could we climb down by the cliff and approach them from the rear?”

  “They have walls there, too,” said Shay. “So Dres said. They were gathering grass upriver from Cull.”

  “Apparently they are ready for us, Howarth.”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Talk to them. If that doesn’t work, nullify the traps at night, but so they don’t know it. Then attack the walls directly behind the cattle, using ladders and crooks to bring it down. It is an awful wall. They ought to be ashamed of it.”

  “Fortunately, they are not. We had better get organized. Stel, you ought to be there when we talk, but we will do the talking. It is our problem. You are unknown to them.”

  By sundown the family heads had gathered and talked. They agreed to Stel’s plan, having none of their own. He drew it roughly in the dirt.

  “We ought to send some men by the river,” said one man.

  “Shay says there are walls. With so few,” Stel replied, “you need a mass assault to break through the wall. The only real chance is that they will run, as they have in the past, and leave you the place. Once you are inside, they will fight as well as you, I assume. After all, it is their home. I know I would fight. You may well lose a lot of stock, but the stock may confuse them, too.

  “They made one very bad mistake—building that silly wall down from the summit in the narrow part. Here we have the height advantage, and they have to look up at us. With missiles, especially, that is important. If you divide your forces, and send some down to the river, the Rockpilers will also have that same height advantage. We mustn’t hurry, either. We need at least another day.”

  “They will have that day, too.”

  “Yes, but that is time to talk to them, get supplies, coordinate, and most of all to study the trap systems so they can be nullified at night. If that is done quietly, so they don’t know it, they will be stunned when the whole force moves over their defenses to the wall.”

  “Can that be done?”

  “Yes, with a lot of people, and a lot of care. Ditch traps you dismantle and fill in, then cover over again. Spring traps you disarm. Trips you tie off so they look untouched. And we need some logs for rams. Are you used to stealth?”

  “I can catch long-eared rabbits bare-handed,” said one woman.

  “Is that a general skill?” Stel asked.

  “We are pretty good sneakers, as you may remember,” said Shay.

  Stel laughed, and, glancing up, saw Elseth. “And so are you, Elseth. Hello. What are you doing here?”

  “I knew it would come to this. The cliff will wait, and if I don’t come back, it will be the same.”

  That brought a pause. “By all means talk first,” said Stel. “There is a lot of Elseth’s cliff that needs to be carved.”

  At that time, Ahroe was also advising the circle of priests to talk.

  Teleg, the chief priest, a portly old man who thought himself wise, said, with his fingertips pressed together, “You have told us that you came from a walled city. Suppose this people came to your wall and demanded more resources than you could give and threatened you if you did not give them.”

  “They did many times.”

  “And did you talk with them?”

  “Always. We had a message stone where all talk was held. We gave to our own limits, and when further giving would threaten us, we defended ourselves.”

  Teleg pursed his lips. “And for us, how much would that be?”

  “That could be over half your resources if needed. You have plenty. Your water is unlimited. Remember, in a fight, people would die.”

  “Not with our walls.”

  “Those walls? They would not hold a wild turkey, let alone a herd of thirsty cattle. They aren’t yet braced properly, intertied, locked in any way.”

  Teleg paused. “We have made the walls in accordance with Deity, using natural materials in a natural way, just like these solid cliffs. We will rely on Deity to help us.”

  “We always did that, too. But our feeling has been that Aven, or Deity, did not excuse anyone from trying to help himself according to his intelligence.”

  “Ahroe, the priest has spoken,” Ilage whispered, horrified.

  “Oh. Yes. I am sorry,” said Ahroe. “I will help you if I can. But the best way, if it is possible, is not to fight.” Teleg clapped his hands, ending the conference.

  The wind rose with the sun, and piled clouds. Noting them, Stel asked if there might be rain in them. “Yes, for the mountains there might,” said Shay. “Not here.”

  The Commuters brought a delegation down near the edge of the trap field—six men and six women, all family heads. Their flag, showing the great beast on white, with a red base and star, flapped stiffly in the rising wind. Stel stood to one side. At last, five priests of Deity, in reed robes, climbed down the wall and walked through the trap system to face the Commuters.

  “Greetings,” said Howarth. “We have come because we need water and river bank feed. We wish access to it. We see you have the valley securely walled off. We will offer to trade you stock for our needs. Or work. We have agreed that we will work for you in
exchange as well.”

  Ilage was offended by the abruptness of this statement. Were any people less decorous? And look at them, dressed in rags and skins. A glance to his side showed him the others felt similarly.^

  He raised himself up. “We have lived here since time began. We have cultivated this valley and made it to fruit in accordance with the wishes of Deity. You have ruined it before. We do not have enough for you, and we have no need for your stock. What animals we need, we have.” “Is that a clear refusal, then?”

  “A refusal? No. It is an explanation. You must give us time to confer. We will return after the recital call of half-morning. Then we will give you a reply. In the meanwhile, our greetings to you, and our good wishes for a prosperous future under our father, the sun, given us by the Deity and praised daily by the priests of Cull.” “Confer? You grass-covered goat, you well know that you have already decided. So it is a refusal, then? May I remind you that we have taken food and water before, and we will take them again if we have to. We do not wish to but are driven to that necessity.”

  Stel winced. “Howarth, perhaps there might be some exchange they will be willing to consider.”

  Ilage was already turning away, but here was a new voice, in a strange tone. Who was he, a short young man, thin but squarely built, with massive shoulders, bearded, with piercing gray eyes.

  “What exchange to you propose?” Ilage asked.

  “I am not sure. What needs do you have? What skills do you lack? Perhaps education. I am not a Commuter, but I have seen they are people of wisdom. I have learned much from them. Perhaps you could as well. Or there are building skills. Yours are, by the standards of many groups, just slightly archaic, to put it kindly. I mean no offense.”

  Shay, who was holding horses, laughed. “He said last night that a wild turkey could tear that wall down.”