by Lee Duigon
It was about the size of a small dog, the color of a fawn, but with white stripes instead of spots, and feet with little toes instead of hooves. Along the top of its neck stood a stiff mane of bristly black hair; and it had large, liquid eyes. Ellayne had to turn away when Martis killed it.
“I’ve been in these mountains before,” he said, “but I’ve never seen one of these.”
Wytt stood over it and chattered. “He thinks it’s a horse,” Jack said. “Well, it’d be about the right size horse for him. Maybe if we could catch one alive, he could learn to ride it.”
“What do the Scriptures say about all these new kinds of animals coming along?” Ellayne said. “Remember the knuckle-bears!”
“And the giant bird I saw that night,” Jack said, “and that great beast that ate a knuckle-bear.”
“I’ve seen the birds, too,” Martis said. He was thinking of the monster bird that killed his horse and devoured it, and the birds that chased him and Dulayl across the plain and nearly caught them: only the Heathen horse’s speed saved them.
He had never been so afraid of anything in all his life. But now, coming down from the mountain, those creatures seemed less fearsome. The black, mind-paralyzing terror that had almost unseated his reason—he’d lost that. He didn’t think he would ever be afraid like that again.
“I don’t know the Old Books much better than you do,” he said. “I can’t think of any verse or fascicle that speaks of such things.”
“It doesn’t make much sense for God to bring a lot of new animals into the world if He’s going to destroy it soon,” Ellayne said. It was all very confusing, Jack thought.
They had the striped animal for supper, and found its meat sweet and succulent.
“I think we’d be wise to make for Lintum Forest and get there as fast as we can,” Martis said. “We can keep to the fringes of the forest if we decide to go on to Obann. We don’t know when the war will break out, and we don’t want to be caught on the open plains when it does.”
“My father was in the militia,” Jack said. “He fought the Heathen.”
Jack’s father died right after Jack was born, so Jack had never known him. He envied Ellayne her family: her father and mother were still alive, and she had brothers. That they lived in a fine big house, and her father was chief councilor of Ninneburky, he didn’t envy. But he supposed that was why Ellayne refused to believe the world was soon to end: it must have been a very happy world for her.
And yet she’d left it all behind to journey to Bell Mountain with him. No one else would have.
“Martis,” Ellayne said, “there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. I hope you don’t mind. How old are you? You have a young man’s face, but your beard is as white as snow. Was it always white?”
Martis’ hand went involuntarily to his chin. “White? My beard is white?” he said. “But it should be brown, like the hair on my head.”
“It’s white now,” Jack said.
Well, how long had it been since he’d looked into a mirror? Martis shrugged. “It was brown when I went up the mountain,” he said.
“Abombalbap once met a young prince whose hair turned snow-white after he spent a night in the Accursed Tower,” Ellayne said. The old stories of Abombalbap were her chief source of knowledge concerning adventures.
“Never mind,” Martis said. “This’ll make it harder for Lord Reesh’s new assassin to recognize me if he sees me.”
But things were afoot in the world that Jack and his companions knew nothing of.
Helki the Rod had returned to Lintum Forest with a strange little girl in his care, whom he’d found wandering all alone on the plains. Her name was Jandra; her family must have lived in the wooded foothills below Bell Mountain, until Heathen raiders killed them—at least that was what Helki thought must have happened. She was a tiny blonde thing, barely old enough to walk and talk. Helki hoped to give her to a family of settlers in the forest who would take proper care of her. With his giant frame, wild hair, and clothes that were mostly patches of all kinds of different fabrics and colors, they made an odd pair.
What was strange about Jandra was that sometimes her eyes went all glassy and she said things that she could never remember saying, and which to Helki made no sense. He supposed that the destruction of her family had addled her mind.
“There is a book missing,” was one of those things she said, and others, equally obscure, like, “Restore, restore the throne of Ozias.” What in the world did it mean, any of it?
He had not been gone but a few days, but Helki found the forest in an uproar. The first cabin he visited was deserted, the family up and left, with no sign of a struggle or a robbery: friends of his, and he could not tell what had happened to them. And various outlaw bands were on the move, which forced him to remain in hiding for much of the time. He doubted this activity was on his account, albeit Latt Squint-eye, the richest and most murderous of all the outlaw chiefs, had sworn to kill him.
Helki had a nice, dry cave he used from time to time as quarters. Its location was a secret known only to him. There he set up a temporary home for Jandra, intending to stay there with her until he knew the cause of all the uproar. He made her a bed of fresh ferns.
“Now, little one, you mustn’t go outside when I’m not here,” he told her. “It isn’t safe. But there’s a nice spring of clear water nearby, and I’ll find us all kinds of nice things to eat. The forest is a good place to live, as long as you know how to live in it.”
“You be my daddy?” asked the child.
“Yes, my peeper, I’ll be your daddy—at least until we can find you a real daddy, with a mommy, too, and other tykes for you to play with. I’ve been a daddy to baby birds and baby squirrels, and little fawns, so I reckon I can be a daddy to a good little girl like you, if needs must. Only promise me you won’t set foot outside this cave unless I’m with you.”
“Bad mens?”
“Bad enough, and plenty of them—but I’ll see to them, never you fear.”
And then her eyes went funny—Obst’s eyes used to get like that when he was meditating, Helki recalled—and she said, “You shall be the flail of the Lord,” and then fell fast asleep on her bed of ferns. Helki sighed and ran thick fingers through his tangled hair.
“Flail of the Lord, is it?” he said. “And what might that be? Burned if I know!”
There was uproar in the city of Obann, too, but of a different kind.
With a loud and measured tramp that filled the space between the buildings, companies of spearmen marched, their captains on horseback, their boots ringing on the cobbles, the people lining the streets to watch and cheer. Lord Gwyll’s officers had raised the levies of the coast and along both banks of the Imperial River, all the way down from the city to the sea, and marched them here for mustering into brigades. Now they were being sent east, to firm up strong points and make ready for the invasion of the Heathen.
Lord Reesh watched from the roof of his own house, with Judge Tombo by his side. They watched intently.
Tombo pointed down to the street. “There!” he said. “Watch.”
Reesh leaned forward, squinting, his hands braced on the marble parapet. “Down there by the bootmaker’s shop,” said the judge.
Reesh saw her then, a scrawny old woman capering along the cobblestones. She was shouting something that they couldn’t hear over the rattle and thud of marching feet. As Reesh watched, two burly men emerged from the crowd, each seized her by an elbow, and before you knew it, all three were gone. The people watching the parade glanced around uneasily for a moment, then gave their attention back to the troops.
“Very nicely done,” Reesh said.
“We can’t grab them all, of course,” Tombo said. “But I think we’ll do well just to take them when we can, without my making any official statement about it whatsoever. As you saw, my men were out of uniform. Soon enough, people will understand that now is not a good time to play at being a prophet. It won’t stop th
e fanatics, but it might prompt others to avoid them instead of standing around listening to them.”
Reesh nodded his assent.
“I’ve sent out agents to look for those two children you’re so worried about,” Tombo said. “They’ll try to find out what happened to your man Martis, too. It’ll be a difficult task in wartime, but we’ll do our best. Then again, if the world suddenly comes to an end, it won’t matter.”
What was there to be done, Reesh wondered, about religious delusions that affected even nonbelievers like Judge Tombo?
“Don’t worry about me, Reesh. I don’t listen to the prophets.”
“The Old Books are obscure, my lord judge,” said Reesh. “No one knows what half the verses mean, or if they mean anything at all. If there is a God, He delights in mystifying us.
“But the past mystifies us, too! So little is left of it. Just enough to tantalize! Men talking to each other miles apart; crossing the sea in great ships; even flying through the air in conveyances too fabulous to imagine; destroying enemy cities in the blink of an eye … and nothing left of it but tantalizing fragments. Little scraps of rusted metal.
“And yet the muddled story these tell must be true. Men did do all those things, once upon a time. They were so infinitely wiser than we, so infinitely more powerful.”
“Infinitely more wicked, too, from what I’ve heard,” said the judge.
Reesh waved the words away. “Rubbish,” he said.
“But isn’t that why God destroyed the Empire? Isn’t that what the Temple teaches? You only have to look across the river to see the ruins of Old Obann. And those are thousand-year-old ruins. Imagine how much greater a city it was than ours! The ruins of the Old Temple alone are half as big as our entire city.”
“But they were great!” Reesh said, suddenly gripping the parapet so hard his knuckles whitened. “And their greatness is our birthright, if we have but the endurance and the courage to pursue it.
“People were no more wicked in those days than they are today. Human nature doesn’t change. Who knows what destroyed the Empire? Maybe it destroyed itself.
“But I refuse to believe in a God who speaks to us in parables and riddles in the mouths of lunatics, who remains aloof for ages, and then, when the spirit moves Him, wrecks our world. I cannot know what will happen now that the bell on Bell Mountain has been rung. Scripture doesn’t say what will happen. All we can do is to go on as we have done, to pursue what we have always pursued, and let our achievements speak for us.”
“Always providing that we win the war,” said Tombo.
CHAPTER 7
The Mardar and a Boy Named Gik
The big camp on the east side of the mountains was a mass of Heathen of all nations, a sprawling jumble of conical tents, round felt yurts, the low black tents of Wallekki chieftains, and the rickety lean-tos of the Abnaks. It covered a great area, and Obst couldn’t guess how many fighting men were there. Along with their women, slaves, and camp followers, he supposed there were enough to populate a good-sized city.
“Why aren’t you scared?” Hooq demanded, as they covered the last mile to the encampment.
“Why should I be?” said Obst.
“Don’t you know what our people do to westmen prisoners? Sometimes we roast them slowly in a fire, alive. Sometimes we throw them to wild dogs and watch them get torn to pieces. And if you think that’s bad”—he jerked a thumb at Sharak, the Wallekki—“his lot do worse.”
“No worse than the westmen do to us when they take one of us alive,” Sharak said.
“The human heart is cruel, ours no less than yours,” Obst said. “From it come all wars, murders, and the boiling evils of this world.”
“That’s a funny way to talk,” Hooq said.
They walked right into the encampment, there being no barricade, no sentries posted. Its air was heavy with a mixed reek of horse and cattle dung, cooking fires, and the sweat of men. The warriors for the most part ignored them, but a few inquisitive ones formed a small procession after them.
There was a great black tent in the midst of the camp, rising as high as a house and surrounded by tribal standards fixed on poles: skulls of men and animals, ox and horse tails waving in the breeze, round leather shields fringed with human scalps, and long red socks billowing in the wind. In front of the big tent was a stone altar, not unlike the ones described in the Old Books. At the entrance to the tent stood a pair of spearmen.
“We’ve brought a prisoner,” Sharak announced. “He is an unusual man, who speaks all languages, yet claims to know only his own. Our chief thought the mardar would wish to see him.”
“Wait here,” said a guard, and the other went into the tent.
He returned a minute later with a most outlandish figure of a man. Feathers of every kind and color imaginable crowned his head, and some kind of sharp white bone pierced his nose. A necklace of human teeth added to the natural fierceness of his expression—that, and the fact that half his face was painted red and the other half a ghastly blue. He wore a feather cloak of red and purple, and boots and garments of deer hide with the furry side out.
“O Mardar,” Sharak said, “we found this old man wandering alone upon the mountain. He has the rare gift of being able to speak any language known to man. He says a god gave it to him.”
The mardar, whatever a mardar was, came up for a closer look. He smelled of rancid animal fat. He looked as if he would be just as pleased to eat a prisoner as question him.
“The gods do the bidding of the Great Man, who has power over them,” the mardar said. “The westmen’s god shall also be made subject to him.” He glared at Obst. “What have you to say to that?”
It was blasphemy, of course: no two ways about it. But you could hardly expect a Heathen medicine man to have a right notion of God, Obst thought.
“Who is the Great Man, sir?” he asked. “I’m ignorant; I’ve never heard of him.”
“You understand my language and speak it well enough,” the mardar said. “But look around you! Do you see all this warlike host? The Great Man called it into being, and it is only one of many armies that obey him.
“The Great Man bears the sword of the War God, which the god threw down from Heaven in obedience to his will. With it he shall subdue the world. He bears on his breast the mark that proclaims him the One Who Lives Forever. King Thunder is his name.”
Obst wondered how he was to preach against such twaddle. Time enough for that by and by, he thought. If the truth be told, the mardar frightened him a little.
“Sir, I know nothing of these things,” he said.
“Can you speak Ro-Ko?”
“Sir, I have never heard of Ro-Ko.”
“And yet you answer me in Ro-Ko!” said the mardar. “It cannot be that any westman should know a single word of it: it is the secret language of the priests, among the Mighty People.” He turned to Sharak and Hooq. “Take him away and keep him safe for now. I must devote some thought to this.”
Sharak had an extra tent, small, much patched, and probably leaky, and a slave boy to go with it.
“You, Gik,” the Wallekki said, addressing the boy. “This man is our prisoner. The mardar has seen him and will want to see him again. I place him in your keeping. He will sleep in your tent. See to it that he has food and drink. Don’t let him out of your sight.”
The boy bowed and said, “Yes, master.”
“Don’t try to escape,” Sharak said to Obst. “You’ll be killed if you try, and they won’t kill you quickly. Hooq and I will have to rejoin our scouting party, but we shall stay here for another day or two to see what the mardar does with you. Who knows? He might send you on to the Great Man.”
Hooq laughed, but not merrily. “Better you than me!” he said.
The two scouts walked away, leaving Obst alone with the boy. He was the dirtiest and scrawniest boy Obst had ever seen, with arms and legs like twigs and a head that seemed too big for his bony body. He wore only rags, and stood on bare, black f
eet. His hair was too dirty to be assigned a definite color. His only promising feature was his large, brown eyes.
“My name is Obst,” the hermit said, “but Gik is no name for a boy.” For the word meant something very foul in the Wallekki language.
“That’s all they ever call me,” said the boy. “I know what it means—what of it?”
“But surely you have another name?”
“If I do, no one ever told me what it was. I was born a slave in the household of Sharak’s father. They sold my mother after she weaned me. No one knows who my father was. Sharak says it was a dog.”
There was no slavery in Obann—except, of course, if you fell into debt and could not pay. But all the Heathen peoples practiced it, and sometimes bought Western children from outlaws. People living under the shadow of the mountains knew much about slavery.
“If you’re going to take care of me,” Obst said, “I can’t call you Gik. It wouldn’t be right. Isn’t there anything else you would like me to call you?”
The boy made a face, shook his head.
“Well, then,” Obst said, “since you leave it up to me, I shall call you Ryons, after a boy who lived a long, long time ago. He was an orphan, too; but God did not forget him.”
“They said you’ve been to see the mardar,” the boy said.
“Yes—and he has seen me. Tell me, what is he? Mardar means ‘chief of servants’ where he comes from, but he didn’t seem like much of a servant to me.”
The boy who didn’t seem to care what you called him sat down by the low entrance to the tent. Obst joined him.
“The mardar is here to make sure that everyone obeys King Thunder,” the boy said. “He makes sacrifices to the Great Man, and they’re all afraid of him. He can sacrifice a chief of chiefs, if he likes. He can do anything he pleases, and no one tries to stop him. He’ll probably have you cooked, and eat your heart.”