by Lee Duigon
“But we give him nothing in return,” said a one-eyed chief with a dreadful white scar across his scalp. “What kind of a god is that? Even the littlest of our gods, in the littlest tree, likes a wee bowl of beer now and then.”
“You have asked a question that God answered thousands of years ago, and men wrote it down in a book to remember it,” Obst said. “What does the newborn babe give his father and his mother? What repayment can he make to them? And yet they will starve so he can eat: behold, a mother will lay down her life for her child. The Lord loves you as a father loves his firstborn son, and as a mother loves her suckling babe.”
Those men, who would just as soon take a man’s scalp as get up in the morning, puffed on their beans and pondered the verse. They all had mothers and fathers, and most had children of their own. And they were a long way from their children, their families, their homes.
“The westmen should not have kept this god to themselves,” said one.
“But they are his people,” said another. “No wonder they’re so rich. This god gives them walled cities and all the good land between the mountains and the sea.”
“Why does he love them so much better than he loves us?” Uduqu asked. “Why hasn’t he given us cities and wide lands and gold?”
Obst faltered, but Ryons took up the question:
“Mighty warriors—what a simple thing to say! Could you live in those cities and still be Abnaks?
“I journeyed with my former master to a city once, when we were in a caravan. The people there, those who weren’t slaves, shut themselves up in smelly houses and lived in fear of thieves. Too cowardly to fight for themselves, they had to hire warriors to protect them. If a god ever put the Abnaks in such cities, they wouldn’t thank him for it. Has he not put you where you’re free and proud, and given you the things you like best—game to hunt, fish to catch, other tribes to fight with? Who would you rather be than yourselves?”
Obst held his breath: the boy had gone too far. But then the chief with the great scar on his scalp laughed so hard he coughed.
“Ho, ho! Who’s the wise man in this tent?” he gasped. “The westman’s god must love us dearly—otherwise, he never would have made us Abnaks!”
The chiefs all laughed and praised Ryons for his answer. Obst could breathe again.
Much later, when they were back in their own tent and bundling up for the night, Obst admonished the boy.
“You mustn’t be so bold with the chiefs, Ryons! They’re dangerous men, and if you anger them, how could I protect you?”
“Pooh, my master—pooh! I know them better than you do. Abnaks like a little sass. Besides, they’re all afraid of you.”
“Afraid of me? I doubt it!”
“For one so old, you don’t know much,” Ryons said. “All the nations have gods, but there are only two kinds of gods—the kind men are afraid of, and hate, and the kind they only laugh at. They’re afraid of your god, so they’re afraid of you.”
“I don’t see how they can be afraid of God, when they don’t know Him—although to know Him and not fear Him would be not to know Him at all.”
“They know he killed the mardar; they saw it with their own eyes. They were very afraid of the mardar because he served a terrible god. But your god killed the mardar, so he must be a very terrible god, too. Besides, they’re still terrified of the Great Man: so they need your god to protect them from him.”
Obst sighed. Being a hermit was much more to his taste than being a missionary.
“In ancient days,” he said, “God spoke to the people all the time through oracles and prophets. He gave them laws, and when their enemies oppressed them, He raised them up deliverers. He blessed their crops and their herds, and chastised them when they were wicked. People lived every day with God in their midst, as if He were a father to them.
“But things are different nowadays. That’s why I became a hermit: so I could live alone in the woods and seek my God.
“We have our great Temple in Obann, and it rules a thousand chamber houses strewn all over the country. It collects fees, trains presters and reciters, buys and sells land: the name of the Lord is on everybody’s lips. But it’s only a name. As the prophet said, ‘These people swear by My name, but know Me not.’ For all the little regard they have for Him, for all they leave Him out of their reckonings, He might as well be one of the Abnaks’ tree-spirits, content with a little pot of beer—if He even gets that much.”
“His people must be great fools, then,” Ryons said.
“They are indeed,” said Obst. “That’s why, at long last, God required the bell on Bell Mountain to be rung, ringing in the last days of the world. I suspect that’s why He has moved the nations of the East to come together and invade the West. The day of God’s wrath is at hand.”
“What do you mean, ‘the last days of the world’?”
“Why, just what I say—the end of it all.”
“I think that’s very silly,” Ryons said. “If God went to all the trouble of making the whole world, as you say He did, and it turned out so badly that He got sick of it, that’d mean He didn’t know what He was doing in the first place. I wouldn’t bother with a God like that. Good night!” And he rolled over in his blanket, without giving Obst a chance to rebuke him.
CHAPTER 18
A Wild Story from the North
While Jack, Ellayne, and Martis made their way to the northwest corner of the forest so they could cross the plain to Caristun, and while Obst toiled up the mountain pass with the Heathen host, Helki got his refugees to safety and prepared to make war.
“How does one man make a war?” Sairy demanded. “You’d better stay here with us.”
In the heart of Lintum Forest, at a place known only to Helki and the woodland Omah, stood the remains of a castle. No one knew how old it was, and much of it was ruined; but there was enough left of it to testify that it had been a very grand building in its time. The settlers had never seen anything like it. The roofs had fallen in, one or two towers lay in jumbles of mossy stones, and nature had long since filled in the moat. But it had been built to defy the worst that man could do to it, the walls were thick and strong, and much of it—with a little work—could still be used as shelter. A nearby spring provided drinking water; and although city people would have starved here, the settlers knew how to wrest a living from the forest.
“There’s enough room in this place for a hundred of us,” Sairy said. “Hadn’t you better stay? Someday the war will be over, and Latt Squint-eye will get his comeuppance.”
“He’ll get his because I aim to give it to him,” Helki said. “I’ll come back here whenever I can, with tools, weapons, and like as not more people. But someday soon Latt’s going to get careless; and when he does—” He spun his rod in his hands and made it whistle.
The seventeen-year-old boy, Andrus, said, “Take me with you! I’m good in the woods, and you’ll need help.”
“I reckon not,” said Helki. He looked to the boy’s father, Ival, but Ival only shrugged. “The lad’s heart is set on it,” he said. “But I’ll stay here to help the lasses with the heavy work.”
Sairy’s husband, Davy, spoke from his litter. “It’s time the honest men of this country stood up to Squint-eye and his kind! There must be hundreds of young, able-bodied men in these parts who are ready to do it.”
“I’ll do everything you tell me to, and I won’t be a bother,” Andrus said. “But Goodman Davy’s right. This fight belongs to all of us, not just you.”
Helki thought it over. The forest was full of settlers; no one knew how many. The outlaws bullied them. Maybe it was time for a change. But he was used to doing things alone, without help. Was he ready for a change?
“All right, boy, you can come along,” he said. “If we could get the honest men together into war-bands, it might be something for the robbers to fret about at night. Are you any good with a bow and arrows?”
The boy grinned. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and
had, Helki thought, the makings of a mighty man. He had fair hair, blue eyes, and strong white teeth. Helki liked him.
“I’m good enough, I guess!” he said. “I’d show you, if I had my longbow with me.”
“We’ll find you one soon enough.”
The last thing Helki did before setting out was to say good-bye to Jandra. “Daddy Helki’s got to go and do some work, peeper,” he said. “You stay here with Mama Sairy, and she’ll take good care of you. And you’ve got your bird and plenty of the little hairy men to play with.” Omah liked ruins, and there were many of them living in and around the castle. Helki had gotten these Omah to agree to protect and help the humans. He was surprised at how easily they’d agreed.
“Daddy go?” Jandra said. She didn’t quite understand.
“Yes—but I’ll be back again. So you be a good girl!”
She gave him a hard little hug around the neck and a loud kiss on the cheek. He was glad she made no prophetic utterances.
He soon found that young Andrus really was a good woodsman. The boy moved quietly through the underbrush, knew the meaning of most of the bird calls, and skillfully read the stories told by scuffed leaf-litter, bruised earth, and broken twigs. He quickly learned how to summon the Omah and make friends with them.
“A lot of folks live here all their lives,” Helki said, “and still don’t know the woods are full of little people. Or else they think it’s fairies.”
“I never knew there were so many,” Andrus said.
“Well, there are—only they know how to stay out of sight. And that’s what we’re going to do. Find out where Latt makes his camps, how many men he has, what paths he likes to use. He’s not to know we’re within a hundred miles of him. No fighting, no killing, if we can help it. That comes later.”
“Just like hunting a panther, eh?”
“Latt’s more dangerous,” Helki said.
Lintum Forest wasn’t the only place where there were refugees. There were plenty of them in Obann, too, and the rulers of the city had their hands full with them.
People in the east fled before the approach of the Heathen, but there were refugees coming from the north, all the way down from the River Winter. Nor was it any Heathen army that had chased them from their homes.
They brought wild stories with them—so wild, indeed, that Judge Tombo’s city patrol arrested a few of the loudest of them, and Tombo had one, as a spokesman, haled before a session of the High Council of the Oligarchy. This convened in the judge’s private meeting room inside the Justice Building, away from the public eye. Most people preferred to avoid going anywhere near the Justice Building.
The prisoner, if prisoner he truly was, was a trapper, grey-haired, grey-bearded, born and bred in the Northern Wilds. This was his first-ever visit to Obann. Dressed in worn, stained buckskins, he stared nervously at the six lords in their velvet robes and golden chains of office. A guard made him sit on a stool and stood behind him. Not really necessary, Tombo would have admitted: but useful in impressing upon the man the gravity of his situation.
Lord Reesh sat beside the judge, feigning a detached serenity, but keenly listening.
Tombo spoke first. “Your name, sir? Speak up, don’t be afraid. We aren’t going to hurt you.”
The trapper tried to bow while seated on the stool. “Guddorm, m’lord, son of Gan,” he muttered.
“Guddorm, son of Gan, do you know who we are?”
“No, m’lord. I don’t rightly know.”
Tombo gestured to his colleagues. “We are the men responsible for the peace and good order not only of this great city, but of all the land of Obann,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a war about to start—a mass invasion of Heathen from the East. People here are fearful. And then you come scurrying down from the northlands with a lot of alarming stories, and we have disorder in our city.”
Guddorm looked back at him like a bear cub in a trap.
“But be at ease,” Judge Tombo said. “We wish to know what frightened you out of your country. After all, we may have to send an army north. So all we want from you is the truth. We need to know the state of things up north. You’re here to tell us, and that’s all we ask of you. Do you understand?”
Guddorm nodded. Tombo told the guard to go out and find him a cup of watered wine. “It’ll calm you down,” he explained. “In the meantime, let’s hear your tale. Take your time, and tell the truth.”
Guddorm stammered a bit, but when he finally got going, this is the tale he told.
“The river froze this year, m’lord, froze real hard. But you never saw such furs as we were getting on the north bank. Otters as big as sheepdogs, with fur as soft as down. Tremendous beavers. A trapper could get rich. So we paid no mind to the cold, nor the deep snow, and a lot of us went up there.
“It’s all deep woods, m’lord. No one’s ever seen the other side of it. And there’ve always been stories about this or that. You know: funny creatures that lived in the wild lands. You’d meet a man who said he saw something, but couldn’t prove it. Once or twice I thought I saw something, too. But I couldn’t tell what it was.
“Come midwinter, we had a very nasty cold snap, and snow like you’ve never seen before. Some men packed up and went home. When the weather didn’t let up, after a week we all decided to call it quits. And that’s when we saw them.”
The guard returned with the wine, and Guddorm was allowed a drink. The cup shook in his hands, Reesh noticed. It took some prodding to get him to continue.
“Trappers like to tell stories, m’lord: the taller, the better. Only this ain’t no story. God never love me more if I’m not telling the truth.
“They came out of the woods to cross the river on the ice. The weather must’ve been too much for them. I can’t tell you what they are, because no man ever saw the like before. There’s not even a story about animals like these—if they are animals, and not some kind of devil.
“Just imagine a black bear, or a wild boar, as big as one of the big houses in this city, and all covered with black hair. Just imagine a thing like that moving, coming at you on four legs, and now and then letting out a scream that’d freeze the blood in your veins. That’s what they were like.
“Only they weren’t giant bears. Wild boars have tusks, but not like these: a pair of great white tusks, curvy-like, each of ’em bigger than a grown man. And boars have snouts, but not like these things have. Like a giant hairy snake, squirmin’ and a-coilin’ and lookin’ for a man to choke.
“That’s what came out of the woods, m’lord. I swear I’m telling the truth. And I don’t know how many of ’em there were, because nobody stayed to count. But there were sure a lot of ’em. They crossed the river and just kept heading south, like they wanted to get clear of the woods.
“There’s a town up there, what has a trading post where we can sell our furs and ship them to the southlands. Market City, it was called. Only it ain’t there anymore.
“Those things passed through Market City, and they wrecked it. There’s nothing left of it. I was there, though I got away as fast as I could. But I saw a couple of those monsters flatten the emporium.
“After that, I just snatched up whatever I could carry and took off. There were a lot of us together. People along the way said, ‘Go to Obann, you’ve got to go to Obann,’ so that’s what we did. That’s why we’re here. We just wanted to get away from those things. We didn’t mean no harm.”
Lord Reesh sensed the man was telling the truth, was too scared to do otherwise. He spoke then, along the line he and Tombo had worked out beforehand.
“My lords,” he said, “the Temple recommends clemency. Judge Tombo’s men have detained a number of these people, and I think we should let them go. They’re honest pioneers who’ve lost their homes: the Temple will provide relief for them until they can either return to their own country or find another place to live. I’m sure they will understand that they mustn’t spread panic throughout the city. What sa
y you, Lord Governor-general?”
“I’m sure you’re right, my lord First Prester,” Lord Ruffin said. “After all, these are our own people. We want to protect them. But I think the time has come to appoint a special commissioner for the northlands and give him a seat among the oligarchs—especially since it may become necessary to build forts, organize a militia, etc., up there. Someone will have to be in charge.”
“I’m not sure we have the funds in the treasury for that,” said Lord Chutt, Taxes and Revenue.
“My lord Chutt now agrees that strange creatures have appeared among us?” Reesh said. Chutt sighed, and conceded that, on the face of it, it now appeared to be so.
“I haven’t got an army to spare for the north,” Lord Gwyll rumbled through his beard. “All the troops have been sent east to hold cities against the Heathen.”
“Even so, we can’t just write off the northern provinces. It would cripple the economy,” said Lord Davensay, Commerce. “But by all means let’s appoint a commissioner, send him up to investigate, and see what he recommends. A chain of stone forts might do the trick.”
“In the meantime,” Lord Ruffin said, “Judge Tombo, you may release the refugees into the care of the Temple.” He looked down his long, sharp nose at Guddorm. “You may go, my good man. Only have a care not to stir up the people of this city with your stories. You’re perfectly safe here. There are no beasts that can break through Obann’s city wall.”
There were such beasts in Scripture, Reesh thought; but those were only stories.
CHAPTER 19
Bron the Blessed
There was no hiding such a big army, not even in the mountains; so when the Heathen host reached Silvertown, they found the gates shut and armed men on the walls. The defenders shook spears at them and dared them to try it.
“Well, that’s that,” said Uduqu; for the Heathen had no equipment for breaking down the city walls, and no time for a siege. They would have starved before the city did. What they all wanted to do was to get down to the plain and look for easier prey; and that was what the chiefs decided.