by Zach Hughes
When, at last, Duwan stood alone and then was taken she was in shock, incapable of movement, save for her eyes, and they followed him as he was carried away. She regained movement and crept along the side of the canyon to see that he had been tied to a tree and she could hear what was said. She ground her teeth in anger as the wounded were tortured and then she almost screamed with Duwan when his first agonized wail came to her.
He was going to die. She did not want to live with him dead. She gathered her limbs to leap to her feet and go charging down the hill to, hopefully, surprise the enemy and get within swords' length of Elnice of Arutan, to take that evil with her and Duwan into death. She was poised to move when she heard, "Stay as you are, daughter." She looked around, frightened, for she had been very much alone in her hiding place. And she was still alone.
"You have given your word," the voice said, and she realized that it was in her head, not her ears.
"Who?" she whispered.
"I, too, know his agony," the voice said, "and he is my grandson, but you have promised him. You must not die with him."
And, in spite of her efforts, she could not stand. When Duwan screamed again she hid her face in her hands.
She had to look. She saw the torture proceeding slowly and, although he still writhed and screamed, she knew that he was dead, for he was peeled to the waist and no one could survive that. A silent wail of grief filled her, and the voice spoke, and it was laughing.
Laughing?
"The fools give him to the earth, daughter."
He returned to the earth, buried up to his hips in an upright position. He knew a new agony, for as the soil was shoveled and packed around his raw legs it was as if he'd been dipped to his hips in the molten rock of the land of the fires.
They braced his back against a post and tied his hands above his head so that the peelers could reach the tenderer hide of his underarms. Between each strip, the peelers rested, and Elnice, seated comfortably in her chair, taunted him, promised him that he would talk, would answer all her questions. And in her hiding place above, Jai died a little with each strip of hide removed from Duwan.
When, as the day grew long and Du sank low, there was only the skin on his face left, he had screamed so that his sounds of agony were now nothing more than a hoarse croak.
"Leave the lips," Elnice ordered, as the peelers began on the face. His eyelids were removed carefully. Now his orange eyes seemed on the verge of popping from his head and he stared without seeing at the smiling face of Elnice.
"You've stood more than most, already," Elnice said. "It is not that I believe you have any secrets worth knowing, it is just that you will talk. Tell me, if nothing else, of your childhood, my lover."
"The curse of Du be on you," Duwan said. "The agony you have given me will be returned to you in multiples."
"Take the fool's lips," Elnice snarled, leaping from the chair, her skirts swirling as she walked regally away.
Night. A light rain came, cold, not a great hardship to the camped enemy, but new horror for the peeled Drinker, with each drop striking like acid fire. He could no longer moan, for his throat was swollen closed with his screaming, and his breathing was difficult. There was no time. The rain stopped and he knew that death was near. He did not know how long the night had gone on, whether for an eternity or for an hour. He determined to live until Du came, to look upon Du's kind face just once more.
His sight was blurred by the blood that ran over the lidless balls, but he saw a lightening in the east. He lifted his head to agony. He had been in a semiconscious state of shock, and the movement seemed to awaken his mutilated body to fire. But there was Du. He could not blink to protect his eyes from the brightness.
"Du," he tried to say, and managed only a croak, "take me. I can stand no more."
And then the red, fiery circle was fully exposed above the hills and he set his lidless eyes on it and prayed until the rays began to burn his sight and blackness came slowly, slowly.
Elnice was in her uniform. Around her the conqforce was making preparations to move out. She stood and looked down upon the raw, bleeding body. His head was hanging on his bloody chest. His lungs had ceased to function.
"I had hoped," she told Hata, "that he would last at least until the heat of midday began to cook him."
"He died just after dawn," Hata said, "with one last prayer to his du."
"So much for dus," Elnice said. "I am ready." She did not look back. The last of the conqforce was out of the canyon by midday, leaving behind a feast for the scavengers of the earth and the air, and a weeping female who knelt before the dead one. In her nostrils was the stench of the newly dead and the long dead, for the enemy did not bury his own, much less dead pongs.
"You could have come with us," Jai whispered to dead ears. "You could have left during the night, and we would now be marching to the west and you would be alive. You could have, you could have."
Chapter Seven
Sema, mother of Duwan the Drinker, put fresh, dry wood on the fire. The cave was an ideal place, for there was a small vent at the very rear that allowed the smoke to be drawn straight up and out. She looked up as her mate entered.
"More have come," he said.
"Is there word?"
"None," he said. "Save that the enemy marches south and does not pursue any toward the west."
"And of Jai?" she asked.
Duwan the Elder shook his head. "There is one of the newcomers who has an infected wound."
Sema rose, reached for her bag of dried healing herbs.
"I will tell you immediately if there is word of either of them," Duwan the Elder said. "Go now, for the warrior is in pain." They had joined Tambol and a growing group of Drinkers who had found their way into the hills of the west. The last stages of the journey had been made in snow and sleet and cold. Many wounded died. A few of the old valley Drinkers had chosen a pleasant valley in the foothills to go back to the earth. Now the cadre of valley Drinkers had been reduced to less than ten, and Dagner, as if the defeat in the canyon had taken away his seemingly newfound youth, was hardening and had spent the first few days in the hills looking for his chosen place to return to the earth. There were, counting females and the few young, just over three hundred of them in the valley they'd chosen when a band of free runners came. Duwan the Elder went out to meet the runners, marveling at their wasted condition in the midst of plenty. There were evergreens and plenty of dried fodder, enough food to make a Drinker sleek and fat.
"If you must make your presence so blatant, with fires and noise," said the skinny spokesman of the runners, "you will leave this area and go further west, lest you draw the masters down on us."
"Who gives me orders?" Duwan the Elder asked.
"Farnee, Eldest of the free runners."
"I see only a fool who starves with Du shining and good food everywhere," Duwan the Elder said.
The group of runners, thirty strong, reached for weapons. Duwan the Elder clapped his hands and the group of runners were quickly surrounded by swordsmen, healthy, fat swordsmen who, except for their ragged dress, looked like masters. Farnee yelped and tried to run and two strong Drinkers seized him by the arms and brought him back to face Duwan the Elder.
At that moment Tambol appeared and Farnee, seeing him, cried out,
"Traitor, you have led them to us."
"Be quiet, old one," Tambol said. "We are Drinkers, all. We have killed the enemy, and we give you one more chance to join us."
"I see the new mounds of earth where you have buried dead," Farnee said. "If you have killed the enemy, why are you here, hiding as we hide?" All during the march to the west Tambol had been trying to come up with an answer to just that question, and others like it. There had been long days and night when he walked in miserable muteness, when he knew the blackest despair. From the beginning Duwan, the Master, had been the heart of it.
He had come from the earth to fulfill the ancient prophesy, that coming witnessed by his mate, Jai,
and he had killed the enemy and taught others how not only to kill, but to live. Tambol could not delude himself into believing that things would be the same with Duwan gone. During those first grim days, when everyone was fearful that the Enemy was just behind them, he could not muster enough faith to believe that Duwan could escape the canyon of death. He knew that Duwan had accepted death, in exchange for a greater chance of escape for his followers. Try as he might, Tambol had never been able to hear the whispers from the trees, trees that Duwan called brothers, trees that, said Duwan, were the spirits of Drinkers. His entire faith was based on the Master. He had seen the evil in the pens, and he had heard others weep and pray to many dus. Emotionally, the concept of one Du, an all-powerful, merciful Du who was the Du of the Drinkers, appealed to him. Intellectually, he doubted during those days when it became apparent that Duwan had died in the canyon and would never rejoin them. He felt hypocritical when he told others, "This is the way of the Master. He left us once before, to attend to the business of Du. He has left us once again, but only temporarily. It is up to us to honor him and what he has done for us by carrying on his work. In the days of final crisis he will return to lead us into the last battles." As for the freed slaves, never having had anything in which to believe save some nebulous dus who seemed always to favor the stronger, the Devourers, they seized on Tambol's teachings and spread them. So, although Tambol, himself, knew doubt, he also knew the worthiness of the cause, and he still had some small hope that Duwan's ultimate goal, freedom for all, could be achieved under the leadership of the Master's father. So he was ready for Farnee's question.
"We will not regain the lands of our ancestors and rid ourselves of the Devourers without loss," he said. "The Master guides us, speaking to us through the spirits of our ancestors. He calls out to all to join in the battle." He drew himself up and looked at the free runners, his face majestic, grim. "And these are the words of the Master. All who are not with us are against us."
Duwan the Elder seized upon that thought. He had been told that there were hundreds of male runners, and that number would partially replace the losses to the army.
"We will waste no time on those who equivocate," he said, "but we will shove them aside, treating them as we would treat the enemy, lest they stand in our way or betray us to the enemy."
"The choice is yours, Farnee my father," Tambol said. "Join us, accept the ways of Du, live a good live eating and drinking of the bounty of Du, or risk our wrath. The sight of you reminds us of what we were before the Master taught us to be Drinkers, and that we cannot abide." Farnee looked around nervously at the bared blades of the swordsmen.
"What would you have us do?"
"Eat," Tambol said. "Fatten yourselves, and then you will be assigned to a unit for training."
Farnee swallowed and then said, "Can we not simply leave you, go farther to the west where we will not offend you?"
Duwan the Elder motioned with his hand and the swordsmen moved closer to the group of runners. "You are with us or against us," he said, borrowing Tambol's words. "Eat."
Farnee was handed leaf organs from an evergreen. He glanced around, in panic. Seeing no other course, he ate. In the days that followed it became a challenge not to get the free runners to eat, but to keep them from stripping all green in the immediate area.
Runner males began training. The surviving wood workers began to replace lost bows and arrows, and, in the absence of metal, experiments were made in accordance with ancient legends of the making of arrowheads from stone.
"It is time for me to go," Tambol told Duwan the Elder, on a day when the first severe storm of winter threatened, when the sky to the northwest was purple-black and Du's rays seemed to be already weakened. "I will try to outpace the winter to the east."
Winter overtook him, however, and he walked through snows and winds and when, at last, he reached a settlement he was weakened, looking very much the part of a wandering priest of Tseeb. He was given shelter in the pongpen and began, that first night, to talk of the Master. Winter had come to Arutan. The conscripts among those who had served in the conqforce were sent back to their homes. All was quiet in the pongpens. Elnice had ordered a few random peelings, with questioning, to determine if word of the abortive slave rebellion in the north had reached the pongs of the capital city and she was pleased to hear no hint of it from the screaming, begging victims. She had ordered a quarantine of the city of Kooh. It was enforced by a large force of her guards. No citizen or pong was allowed to leave Kooh to travel to the south.
As the cold closed in and made her luxurious quarters seem even more cozy, Elnice consulted her wise men with Captain Hata present. The eldest of her advisers was speaking. "It is my opinion, High Mistress, that there is no present danger. The future? That is another matter. It took our ancestors three generations to wipe from the memory of the relatively few native survivors of the conquest the knowledge of the special abilities of these people. Now that knowledge is once more afoot. We know that there are escaped slaves in the west. Your own people say that many escaped death in your last battle in the north. We can be assured that those who escaped will continue to spread the word, and that, High Mistress, is the danger."
"I see no danger," Hata said. "A few pongs were deluded by a rabble-rouser. He is now dead."
"Do you read the priestly writing, Captain Hata?" the old adviser asked. Hata shook his head. "Perhaps you should have read to you the records of those who came to these lands first. It is not widely known that our ancestors narrowly escaped being pushed back to the south, in bloody defeat, by peoples who, until our arrival, knew nothing of weapons or killing. Tell me, did the pongs fight well? Did you not have losses?" Hata made a gesture of dismissal, but Elnice said, "Their losses were greater, but the bones of our dead litter a canyon in the north. And one of them fought better than any warrior I've ever seen."
"So it was in history. Once they learned, they fought savagely. And," he squinted and looked around with a wry smile, "this will ruffle the pride of many, but it should be said. Warrior for warrior, equally armed and equally trained, they were superior, those early people who called themselves Drinkers."
Hata started to protest.
"Captain," the old adviser said, "can you march for one change of the moon without rations? Can you live, in winter, on dry leaves and grass?
Can you expose your skin to the sun and use its light to make energy? They can. Another thing. Have you seen figures showing the total population of pongs in our cities, in our settlements, in the single establishments in the countryside? We have, to sustain our lifestyle, allowed our slaves to outbreed us, to actually outnumber us."
"There is a simple solution for that," Hata said. "Kill them all." The old adviser spread his hands. "Are you willing, captain, to cook your own food, to carry your own wood, to clean your own house? Are you willing to take your turn in the mines, in the fields, in the workshops? Our entire way of life is based on our slaves, captain. To eliminate them would require vast upheaval."
"Well, all is quiet now," Hata said.
"Yes. It is winter," Elnice said. "What of the spring?" She looked at the old adviser. "What are your suggestions, old one?"
"Slow change," he said. "Little by little we must require more of our own people, our idlers. We must make it a requirement that each of our young learn a trade. We must limit the breeding of the pongs, allowing only enough of their young to survive to maintain a solid pool of breeding stock. Slowly, without letting it be known to the general population of pongs, we begin to reduce their numbers. This can be done easily in the cities. A pong, or an entire family, simply disappears. It happens often. Pongs are sold or traded. It will take years, perhaps ten, to make a significant reduction in the pong population without causing panic among them, without disrupting our economy."
"So be it," Elnice said. "Will you assume responsibility for starting this program?"
"I will, High Mistress," the old adviser said. "There is one other thing. Yo
u have begun to dismantle the army you put together. That process should be halted. Instead, you should build several forces, not as large as a conqforce, and train them well, have them ready to move instantly to any trouble spot in the land. As soon as the weather permits, the strongest force should be sent west to comb the hills. I would also suggest that you send emissaries to the western land, across the great, inland mountains, to see if there has been trouble there, to warn them if there was not."
"They would laugh at us," Hata said heatedly, "if they knew we had lost warriors to pongs."
The old adviser shrugged. "A small blow to pride, considering what is at stake."
"Let them laugh," Elnice said. "What I want to know is how this Duwan came to be a leader. He was pong. I saw the pores in the bottom of his feet. How did a pong rise above his station and influence thousands?"
"You killed the only possible way of knowing that in the canyon," Hata said.
"He could not have spread the word alone," Elnice said. "I want spies sent into the pens. I want to know who among them carries the messages of sedition." She rose. "Hata, begin to build the armies. You, yourself, will lead the force to the west in the spring. I want a daily count on the number of pongs put to death not only in Arutan but in all other cities. Upon consideration, I think it wise to exterminate the entire pong population of Kooh, and all surrounding settlements. If not all at once, at a rate in multiples to the exterminations in the other areas, for the pongs of Kooh saw an attack force kill masters in their city. That news must not spread."
"It will be done," Hata said, his eyes on Elnice's shapely backside as she swept from the conference room.
So it was that when Tambol came to Kooh, in the dead of winter, he came to terror and death. The days were filled with fear and wailing as entire families were taken from the pens to disappear forever. Not a day passed without several public executions in the square for offenses that, in the past, would have brought nothing more than a mild lashing. Tambol was shocked to find that fully a quarter of the population of one pen had already disappeared, or had been killed quickly—there were so many executions that peeling was too time consuming.