Present Tense [Round Two of The Great Game]

by Dave Duncan

  "That's enough, thank you! I get the gist."

  "You asked."

  "And I should not have. I didn't mean to humiliate you."

  "How could you humiliate me? You don't know what humiliation is."

  "No, I suppose I don't. I am truly sorry."

  "Don't be,” Dosh said. “Sorry is a waste of time. The Green Scriptures, Canto 474."

  "Really?"

  "Who knows? Who ever reads that junk?” He smiled ruefully at Edward's laughter. “What's your problem?"

  "Can I trust you?"

  "If you mean will I tell anyone in the camp what you say to me, the answer is no. Who would listen?"

  "Can you talk to anyone outside the camp?"

  Dosh flinched. “Of course not!” he snapped.

  Which confirmed what Edward had suspected for some time. The wind was gnawing through to his bones now and he was probably turning bright blue, but this was important.

  "You were spying on Tarion, weren't you? Who for?"

  "I won't answer that."

  "You can't answer that! And you couldn't tell him, either! That's why he cut up your face!"

  "You calling me a hero?"

  "No, I'm not. You're not spying for a mortal, are you?"

  A spasm that might have been pain twisted the red scars beside Dosh's eyes. “Can't answer that,” he mumbled.

  "Then you needn't try. If I name a name, can you—"

  "Don't, sir! Please?"

  "All right,” Edward said, still uncertain how much of this performance was real. “If you get the chance, will you stick a knife in my back?"

  Dosh curled his cherubic lip in contempt. “You would be well rotted by now."

  "Yes. I see. Thank you.” Not Zath, then. “Did you ever wear a gold rose in your hair?"

  Dosh stared at him, then nodded. A boyish blush spread around his scars. What did it take to make a harlot blush?

  But the answer to the real question was obviously Tion. “Just snooping?"

  "Just snooping. Now, what's the problem?"

  He was a born spy, curious as a cat about everything. Even little Eleal had been no nosier than Dosh. Edward did not like to think about Eleal.

  He hugged himself, hunching against the wind. “I told the new battlemaster that I would take the city for him tonight, and I don't know how. Haven't the foggiest."

  "Oh, you'll find a way."

  "You display a gratifying confidence in...” Edward stared at that cryptic, mutilated face. “What do you mean by that?"

  Dosh smiled slyly, twisting the crimson railway lines around his eyes. “Nothing, Hordeleader."

  "Out with it!"

  "The prophecy?” Dosh said reluctantly.

  "What prophecy?"

  Surprise ... disbelief ... “The long one? The one about the city? The Filoby Testament, about verse five hundred, or four-fifty?"

  "Tell me!"

  "You don't know? Truly?"

  "No, I don't know."

  For a moment Dosh seemed to think Edward must be joking. He shook his head in astonishment, thought for a moment, then declaimed: “The first sign unto you shall be when the gods are gathered. For then the Liberator shall come forth in ire and be in sorrow revealed. He shall throw down the gates that the city may fall. Blood in the river shall speak to distant lands, saying; Lo—the city has fallen in slaughter. He shall bring death and exultation in great measure. Joy and lamentation shall be his endowment."

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  28

  TOO MUCH HAPPENED THAT NIGHT. IN RETROSPECT, DOSH WAS NOT to recall ever panicking or disgracing himself. He was never to doubt that he had remained clearheaded during the events themselves. He did what was needed, with far greater courage than he had ever known he possessed.

  It was his memory that betrayed him. Terror piled on terror and horror upon horror until his mind could not retain them all. Reality faded like a nightmare, so that afterward he recalled only glimpses, the highlights mostly, but also a few unimportant incidents like incongruous flickers of dream. It was as if the turning point of his life had been written in a precious book and then he had lost all but a fraction of the pages before he could even look at them. Long stretches were evermore blank.

  It was a night of quadruple conjunction, a wonder that few mortals ever see, coming only once in generations. Even then, most people will not be alerted in time; it never lasts long. Neither Niol nor Tharg would admit afterward that the great event ever happened. The Niolians insisted that Ysh passed close by Trumb that night, but not actually behind, while the Thargians claimed it was Kirb'l who narrowly failed to cross over Trumb. In Joal the weather was bad and no one noticed anything at all.

  Dosh knew better. He witnessed the gathering of the gods that had been prophesied, and his world was changed forever.

  As for all the rest ... just pictures on a wall.

  The first picture: faces around a campfire at sunset.... He huddles silent on the outskirts, ignored. A dozen or more near-naked Nagians shiver in the dusk, their unpainted faces listening in awe as the Liberator promises a miracle.

  He does not mention the word. He does not tell them he is the Liberator; he seems not to believe that himself. In his own mind he has no great faith that he can deliver a miracle—Dosh knows this from what he heard earlier—but certainly no one else around this fire will guess as much from D'ward's manner. He gives orders calmly, with perfect poise. He needs a miracle, so he will attempt one. To profit from it he must have his troops standing by, so he is promising them that he will open the city. If he fails he will have destroyed himself, but he is the Liberator and they believe him. It shows in their wild, childlike eyes. They would follow him into a furnace, these crude peasants. They are all muscle and faith and no brains.

  They will be the Warband, the first of all his followers.

  Does Dosh sense that, even then?

  What says the Liberator in this image by the campfire? Alas, most of that precious speech is written on pages lost. Dosh will recall no words, except a few, right at the end, when the Liberator turns and points at him and all the warriors scream in fury.

  Their hordeleader has told them he will take only one man with him to help carry the ropes. A dozen strong voices have cried out, demanding the honor. No, none of them, D'ward has said. Not the troopleaders, for they must lead their men. Nor the prince, nor even Talba and Gospin, although they know the way. No, he will take Dosh Envoy and no one else. Only he ever calls Dosh by name. Everyone else has other terms for the despicable catamite.

  This is the second picture—a dozen furious warriors howling in outrage and the Liberator shouting them down. To Dosh his words are to be the beginning of the other miracle, his personal miracle, but he does not know that yet.

  "Because you ask,” D'ward is saying in that second picture, “and only because you ask, I will tell you why. I need a man whose courage I cannot doubt. Be silent! Look at those marks on his face! They were made in the dark, while he was bound and gagged. See how close they come to his eyes? See how his throat was slashed? That man endured vile torture, yet did not tell his tormenter what he wanted to know. Will any of you now claim to be this man's better in courage? Will any of you exchange your merit marks for his? I will have Dosh Envoy at my side tonight, for I trust him beyond all others."

  Another glimpse: Dosh weeping, as the warriors come, each in turn, to embrace him and beg his forgiveness for past slights.... Some also whisper in his ear that he will die most terribly if he fails D'ward this night, but he ignores that. He is finding the experience very strange, for many reasons. The body contact arouses him, and he knows that will disgust them if they sense it. Their admiration distresses him—why should he care what these bullocks think?

  Not the least strangeness is that he knows the Liberator is lying. The Liberator is fully aware that Dosh could not have given Tarion the information he wanted. Dosh does not understand why the Liberator should tell such a falsehood now, nor why he apparen
tly believes his own lie enough to trust Dosh, or why Dosh himself in his present terror is not refusing the suicidal honor. He has not been asked, and he does not refuse.

  Do the wonders begin here?

  The waiting in the trenches as the sky darkens ... gut-wrenching anxiety. Dosh and D'ward crouch amid timbers and stonework while the weary soldiers trek back to camp for the night. Below an empty sky, the temperature drops by the minute. Trumb's green disk peers between the eastern peaks, huge and ominously perfect. Nights are bright when Trumb is full.

  Has the Man already eclipsed? Will he wait for true darkness? The Liberator is counting on those few precious moments of distraction to let him approach the city unobserved. An eclipse of Trumb is a time of dread, when reapers claim souls for Zath. The guards will be watching the sky and praying. It is a time of ill omen, the last time anyone should choose to launch a mission such as this.

  Trumb did eclipse, of course. Trumb must have eclipsed. At D'ward's side, Dosh must have sprinted through the darkness under the stars, stumbling up the slope under his burden, forcing legs and straining lungs to greater effort before the brief blessing was withdrawn. He must have reached the base of the walls before the light returned and hence escaped the notice of the watchers above. If he hadn't, he would have died. He must have done.

  He just lost the memory somewhere.

  Terror.

  Fingers scrabbling in dirt for purchase, feet fumbling and slipping, the coiled rope a crushing weight on his back threatening to pull him out into the abyss, a hundred feet of nothing above the rumble of the torrent. His face pressing into the rimy grass.

  Why did he not remember sooner how much he hates heights?

  His nose against the gritty surface of the masonry as he edges his way along, spread-eagled against the wall ... Nothing below him at all, just a hundred feet of vertical rock in the ghastly green moonlight, and below it the raging cataracts of Lemodwater. How many seconds would a man have to scream as he fell? How often would he bounce on the ledges?

  Wind.

  Cold. Icy, biting cold, and he is swaddled in a double layer. He has wool underwear that nobody knows about, except the three Joalians who sold it to him all through one very hard night. D'ward must be frozen to the marrow of his bones.

  Slippery wet grass and steep slopes. Not a bush, not a root.

  Greasy rock with nothing to grasp hold of.

  Always the smooth face of the wall above, merciless and uncaring.

  Always the thought that someone up there may chance to look down and see the two intruders. They will be amusing target practice. Even in moonlight, fifty feet straight down is not a difficult shot.

  Dosh will remember quite a lot of that journey. Too much.

  The dike ... that is the Liberator's name for it, not a word Dosh has ever heard. It is only a narrow buttress jutting out from the cliff face a few feet below the brink, a crumbly black rock about ten feet across. Here D'ward can stand a small way back from the wall to work his miracle. Of course they are much more visible here than they were earlier, directly underneath. Watchers on the battlements will see them easily if they look down.

  That is what watchers on battlements are supposed to do, isn't it?

  The wind tugs and pushes viciously, striving to throw them both from their perch. D'ward curses under his breath as he fights with the thin line and the wind tries to carry it all away or tie it in tangles. His teeth chatter. In the lurid green light he looks like a walking corpse.

  Picture: Dosh unbuttoning his tunic and pulling it off—he offers it to his near-naked companion and it streams out sideways like a flag.

  D'ward's angry snarl: “Stop that! Are you trying to get us killed?"

  "You need it."

  "No. The others do not have it. Put it on again.” He goes back to tying knots with numb fingers.

  The others are not crouched on this accursed ledge a hundred feet above the rapids.

  The throw ... the beginning of the miracle.

  In the wind and the dark at that impossible angle, the Liberator succeeds at his first attempt. It is beautiful: the log rising into the night, trailing the string behind it, the wind arcing it away.

  D'ward teetering on one leg, flailing his arms, and somehow recovering his balance. For a moment Dosh is sure he is about to fall. That image will remain always, one of the clearest—the Liberator poised over the abyss, with one leg and both arms outstretched, face rigid with terror, and Dosh leaping forward to catch him just in time....

  If the log makes a noise as it falls on the parapet far above, then the wind steals it away.

  There must have been a hasty scramble then, back up to the base of the wall, into relative cover. Dosh does not recall it. That is a moment of terrible danger, for if anyone has heard or seen that log arriving then he must inevitably peer down to see where it came from.

  The waiting.

  How long it lasts, he will never know. The two of them huddling up against the cruel masonry, waiting, waiting ... D'ward looking as if he will freeze to death. Again—perhaps several times—he has refused to accept a share of Dosh's garments. In the end Dosh wraps him in his arms, and the Liberator does not resist the embrace.

  It is hardly romantic, anyway, like hugging a glacier.

  The fading of hope. The despair...

  The moons. Trumb's glare drowns out the stars, but Ysh had risen soon after him, and then Eltiana. Three moons shine together, close together: a huge green disk, a tiny blue disk, and a red star. In the required order. Not quite a straight line, but close enough, yes? Please! Imperceptibly but inevitably, the red and the blue catch up with the green.

  The prophecy is being fulfilled. Three of the gods gather, as they do every few years. It is awesome and auspicious, but it is only three. Three are rare; four are epochal.

  Where is Kirb'l, the Joker?

  The Maiden and the Lady edge closer to the Man. Where is the Youth?

  No one can predict Kirb'l. He moves in strange patterns, straying far to north and south. He appears and he disappears at will. Sometimes, at his brightest, he travels from west to east.

  Dosh praying.

  The Joker!

  Dosh will never forget that dramatic entrance. It will be the sharpest of all his recollections of that night—the tiny, brilliant, golden moon flashing into view ahead of Trumb, so that all four gods blaze together in the velvet silver of the sky. Kirb'l, visibly moving, moving east! Four lights. Four shadows.

  Eltiana and Ysh on one side, Kirb'l on the other, almost in a line, in perfect order and relentlessly closing on the great disk of Trumb.

  Quadruple conjunction, a gathering of the gods!

  Wait for it...

  The Liberator's sudden hiss, and the brightness in his eyes...

  "What?"

  "Someone's coming!"

  Dosh peers all around, and of course there is no one on this accursed windswept cliff top. Someone up on the battlements, then? How can D'ward possibly know?

  (Perhaps that was the beginning of belief.)

  "He's found it!” D'ward pushing free, sitting up, tense in the moonlight.

  "Here it comes!"

  The miracle!

  Some weary sentry, cold and bored, walking his beat on the parapet, has found a chunk of firewood. His superiors will not approve of litter where a fighting man may trip over it.

  Perfectly natural for such a man to pick up the log and heave it over the side and then resume his march. He will be watching the skies tonight, like any other man.

  Not natural for a sentry to overlook the twine attached to the log ... that is the real miracle. Not entirely luck, either, that he does not throw it out the same crenel it came in by. But he does not notice the twine he is thus looping around a merlon, and he does not notice that twine running out as the log slides down the wall, snagged on a stone tooth.

  He plays his part in history and walks away to die, and at the base of the wall the Liberator relaxes with a sob, a gasp of br
eath held far too long.

  Miracle.

  There are more pages missing here.

  One of the two invaders unfastened the twine and attached it to the heavier rope. One of them hauled on the twine, muttering prayers that the string would not wear through on the crenelation or just break under the strain. One of them then grabbed the rope when it came and tied a noose in it and hauled it tight.

  It may have been Dosh. It may have been D'ward. It must have been one of them.

  The four moons closing.

  Faint sounds of chanting coming down on the wind. The priests of the city are rousing the people to come and praise the miracle in the heavens.

  They do not notice the miracle on the walls. So small a thing, to bear such fruit—a length of twine looped around the battlements, and then a rope.

  The Nagians will be on their way now.

  The quadruple conjunction.

  Side by side, sapphire Ysh and ruby Eltiana vanish behind Trumb. A moment later Kirb'l slides in front, and the gold speck is lost in the green glare. Only Trumb remains.

  A gathering of the gods, omen of great destiny.

  No one ever forgets seeing that.

  D'ward has gone, gone up the rope. His corpse has not come back on its way to the river; there has been no sound of challenge. He must still be alive up there. Dosh waits to show the way.

  He is to remember that waiting as being worst of all, because D'ward is up there alone.

  Then the cream of the Sonalby troop emerges out of the darkness in single file, bringing more ropes. Bringing no spears or shields, only their clubs, clambering along that same perilous road.

  Dosh insists that he be allowed to go next, first after D'ward.... They argue and Prat'han concedes, letting him go.

  Stripping off his clothes so that he will not be mistaken for a defender.

  Climbing near-naked and unarmed up a vertical wall in the dark.

  That image will remain, always.

  And after that ... a great blank.

  The Sonalby troop followed the Liberator into the city. They overpowered the watch. They opened the gates for the rest of the Nagians, the spearsmen who had crept forward while the defenders watched the conjunction.