The Vistor

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "A barrel," said Dismé, flatly.

  "It will be a drum," said Camwar quietly, though with considerable pride. "As soon as we have a skin to stretch across it. Up here," and he started across a gangplank that led from the butte to the upper edge of the huge construction. The barrel was not as tall as the fortress walls of Godland, but it was very tall for a drum, enough that Nell and Arnole were dizzied by the height. Dismé sauntered after Camwar, and the others after her, except for Tamlar who remained on the butte, her eyes fixed on the horde that was still pouring toward them over a far rise, its vanguard momentarily hidden in the trough between the ridges.

  Those on the drum regarded the great width and thickness of the staves with awe, for each of them must have been cut from a single, very old and large tree. The great hoops that bound the barrel were riveted with bronze. The top edge was finished with a circular wooden rim wide enough to walk or work upon. Hooked to this rim were thick leather laces that dropped down the outside to run through blocks fixed halfway down the barrel, then came back up to thread through others just beneath the rim, before dropping to the ground, where each lace went through a great eye bolt.

  "To tighten the drumhead," Camwar said, following her eyes. "When we have skinned it from its owner."

  "Why a drum?" asked Dismé.

  "I am told that Dezmai knows," said Camwar, smiling at her with unaccountable fondness. "Dezmai knows very well."

  Dismé regarded the great open vat with wonder. It could hold a small village, complete with bell tower. What sound this thing would make when it could be drummed upon!

  "What animal carries a skin large enough to…" the doctor started to ask, stopping as his eyes were caught by the horrid leader of the approaching horde, cresting a nearer ridge. The ogre. More colossal than ever.

  "There," pointed Camwar. "It was built to fit the hide of that beast."

  "How can we kill it?" the doctor whispered.

  "You could starve it," called Tamlar from behind them. "If it gets no blood, it will die. Make it pursue and pursue, but don't let it catch you."

  "We can't outrun it," said Dismé. "Michael's the swiftest of us, and even he..."

  "The race is not to the swift," laughed Michael. "Haven't you heard that? We have horses. And demons."

  "Demons?" Nell turned toward him. "What about demons."

  He shook Dismé by the shoulders. "Dismé, you have a dobsi. By this time, the demons know everything about our last day, or hour, or however long it's been. They've been watching us. Ask for help, Dismé! Everyone, look at Dismé and ask for help!"

  She saw all their faces, the open mouths, heard the screamed, uttered, muttered command. Help. And how could the demons help?

  "They'd better hurry," she said. "That army is getting a lot closer."

  Michael was already across the gangway and running down the sloping side of the butte toward the horses. Within moments he had mounted the swiftest of the riding horses and was off toward the horde. Even from this distance, they could hear shouted commands and the ogre's roar.

  Nell grimaced in anger, her arms rising, every atom of her being focused on that distant horde as Elnith took her. Her hands came up. Her lips formed one silent word. A wave went from Elnith's hands outward, visible in the air as it went, past Michael, past the ridges of earth between them and the horde, and across the horde itself.

  Silence. No more roars, no more commands, no more trumpet sounds. The horde kept coming, but it began to fray at the edges as its parts turned questioningly to those behind. Some stopped moving, shaking their heads. Others turned back only to be knocked down by those behind, who then stumbled and fell to make an obstacle for others in their turn. By the time the ogre's head appeared over the nearest ridge, Michael was halfway there.

  Elnith stood tall upon the butte, robed in green and gold, eyes fixed on Michael, hands outstretched to hold fast the silence that wrapped the world. Michael and the horse had become something other than Michael and the horse. They too, were larger than life, brighter than life. They glowed and sparkled. The horse's golden hooves gamboled upon the grasses. Michael become Jiralk stood in his stirrups and laughed in the face of the monster. The ogre gaped wide to utter a soundless roar as it plunged down the slope toward the horse, which spun on its hind legs and came galloping back the way it had come. Eyes fixed on the retreating horse and rider, the ogre pounded after it.

  "No time to starve it," cried Bobly. "No time!"

  She took the same route Michael had taken, Bab in close pursuit, short legs padding down the slope, growing longer, and longer yet as they neared the bottom of the butte and circled it to the rock strewn slope at the bottom of the great drum. Aarond's hair touched the rim of the drum, but Ialond was taller by a head. Aarond jerked a boulder loose from the butte face and heaved it atop another farther out on the flat. Ialond towered above it with his hammer over his shoulder, body twisted for a mighty swing. His body uncoiled, his hammer struck the stone, and it shot toward the ogre like a ball from a cannon. While it was still in the air, Aarond had set another stone ready.

  The first stone struck the ogre on the shoulder. The arm on that side went limp, but in deadly silence the beast came on. The second stone struck it on the chest. Ribs shattered and jabbed through bloody flesh, sawing at it as the ogre moved, as it did, without even slowing. Michael was almost back to the other horses; the ogre was very near. Those on the butte top held their breaths. The third stone struck the beast full in the face, felling it. Aarond and Ialond ran toward the body, which was trying to rise, the earth shaking to their footfalls, Ialond with his hammer ready, glancing over his shoulder to see Camwar thundering behind him, almost as tall, his axe over his shoulder.

  It took only one swing of that great axe to behead the creature. From the butte, Dismé watched unmoved as Camwar hewed the monster's thick hide from neck to groin and lopped the short legs and long arms, but she turned away when the skinning of the long, wide torso began, trying to reason her way past her revulsion at the thought of drumming upon that hide. She could not fathom what the drum was for. For herself, obviously! Was she not Dezmai of the Drums? But what good would drumming do? She stared at the great barrel Camwar had built. Each stave a whole tree. Felled. Cut. Shaped. Again and again. Then the monster staves fitted around that huge bottom, itself made from gigantic planks, pegged and glued together. The labor of years, and for what? Did Camwar himself know?

  She looked up into the silence. The ogre's death had gone unnoticed by the army, for all that horde was entangled with itself, spilling into the trough of land between ridges, unable to hear commands or curses, screams or simple talk. Elnith kept her hands outstretched, her eyes fixed, as the men of Bastion screamed silently for help and struck out at their brethren in frustration.

  Skinning the monster took some time, though there were three huge flensing knives busy at the process. When the hide was off, Ialond and Aarond set the ogre's head upright in a pit and laid the bloody hide over it, hair side down, tugging it to and fro as Camwar scraped it free of fat and flesh with the drawknife he carried. Though the three were still giants as they returned, even they staggered under the weight of the reeking bundle, half-carried, half-dragged to be draped over the huge drum. They pierced the edges of the hide with their knives and attached the laces. Even when the laces had been drawn tight by the three of them, the hide sagged wetly, stinking like a sewer.

  Camwar summoned Tamlar with a gesture. She stepped to the edge of the butte and leapt upon the drum, fire blooming at her feet as she moved, flame darting from her hands as she gestured, here, there, charring bits of flesh, drying the hide, shrinking it, tighter and tighter. As she danced, the hide hummed and the laces stretched while the drum moaned as though it were a living thing. Camwar watched the great staves anxiously as they creaked under the pressure.

  Michael, who had been watching from the foot of the hill, rode up to the place Jens and Dismé were standing, dismounted, put a hand on either side of Dism�
�'s face and kissed her—a joyful rather than erotic greeting—then put his arm around her shoulder and looked across the low rise where the host struggled against itself.

  At that moment, Elnith dropped her hands and Nell turned to them saying in a troubled voice, "The thing is with them."

  Sound returned. They heard shouting from the army and a hideous roar from the same direction.

  "That's it roaring," said Nell. "The devil from Bastion. The thing you called Gohdan Gone. It's got them organized again. It can speak directly to their minds, without speech."

  In a moment they saw it, a netted filthiness, like a roiling skein of rotted sinew, coming over the nearest ridge, one only a few hundred yards away. Toothed tentacles lashed out from it, a slime trail followed it, a terrible shrieking and slobbering came with its movement.

  "Look," said Arnole, gripping Dismé's arm. "Look at the cloud around it. Ouphs."

  She had already noticed the vortex that whirled above the monster, already heard the thin screaming as the ouph cloud was drawn into it, feeding the monster with its pain. At last, she realized what the drum was for.

  "Tell Elnith to put silence around the rest of you," she said to Arnole. "Tell her, quickly." And with that she leapt upon the rim of the drum, gesturing to Tamlar to leave it. The drum had been made for this, this one thing, this thing only. She should have known at once. She felt Dezmai pour into her, looked down at her elaborate robes, her long full sleeves, felt the tassels of the headdress tinkling by her ears. She looked back at Tamlar, who gave her a fiery grin from the lip of the butte. There had been sufficient time, just. The drum head was taut. Tamlar could do no more.

  Arnole went to Elnith, grabbing Michael by the arm as he went. He gestured to Bobly and Bab to join them while Michael dragged Camwar and the doctor into the tight circle. Elnith gave Dezmai a long look and put her arms around the others as they bent their heads and covered their ears. Dezmai, towering above the drum, extended one foot and stamped with it.

  The peal was greater than thunder. It resounded, again and again. It sped across the approaching host, across the plain, across the mountains beyond the plain as Dezmai counted the miles between. Before the sound died, she brought her foot down again, and again the thunder roared. Now she stepped back and knelt on the butte, leaning forward to drum with her hands:

  BOOM! aTum/ BOOM! aTum/ BOOM! aTuma/ BOOM! Turn. And again. And again. Her eyes were fixed on the approaching thing that was Gohdan Gone, a vast ropeyness like graveyard roots that feed upon the dead, a stringy filthiness, dripping as it came, and above it the vortex of tortured ghosts whose everlasting sorrow kept it strong. The army fell before the sound, but Gohdan Gone was less susceptible.

  He is not supernatural, Dismé assured herself, as Dezmai raised her hands again. Not supernatural, merely unnatural in this world, at this time.

  BOOM! aTum/ BOOM! aTum/ BOOM! aTuma/ BOOM! Turn.

  From far, far away in the east there came a piercing cry, a lance of sound, growing as it came toward her and arrowed past:

  Thank ... Blessing ... Good child ... all... all... all... rest ... rest... now. Behind that first sound, a volley of others, whishing like arrows as they fled by.

  And again, BOOM! aTum!

  Last ... last go now ... last...

  Above the approaching filthiness, a clearing. The cloud of ouphs was thinning, fading...

  BOOM! aTum!

  Wait oh wait... coming now ... all all all

  The ouph cloud was fading, thinning, was no longer. The thing rolled toward them still, but smaller. And nearer yet, but smaller yet. And almost to the place they stood as it reared itself into a towering being still, with red, glowing eyes and a body made of ten thousand writhing serpents.

  As though in response to this advance, a glittering bug came low across the grasses from the south. Unlike the monster fly, this one made the sound of an engine, a fluttering, whipping noise. It was followed by others that dipped into the grasses all around the loathsomeness and disgorged dozens of silvery metallic figures before rising to return the way they had come. Among the metal figures were two quite ordinary persons, except that they wore horns.

  "Wolf," said the doctor, his distance glasses to his eyes. "He's coming this way. I don't know who the other one is. He's headed toward the army."

  As the loathsomeness continued to advance, several of the small silver creatures surrounded it, and one of them attacked it at once, leaping in to cut and slash with its three-fingered hands, then retreat, then leap forward again, over and over, too quickly for the monster to react.

  The thing that was Gohdan Gone turned, fixing its red eyes upon its attacker. "What are you," he howled. "Where have you come from?"

  "Me," cried the attacker, as it leaped and tore. "Nemesis of Gone. Me, killer of Gone. Me. Come for vengeance."

  The monster howled, thrashed at her, threw his great weight atop her and buried her as the watchers gasped. In a moment they saw flickers of reflected light as those cutting hands emerged, the nemesis slicing its way up through the very body of the horror, chortling with each snick of its knife hand, "Me, Nemesis of Gone, gone, gone."

  Wolf arrived at the bottom of the butte, where they had gathered to greet him.

  "What are they?" cried the doctor, pointing out the silver creatures, attacking Gohdan Gone, to others of them running toward the army.

  "People you sent from Bastion to Chasm," said the demon. "All the maimed ones you've been sending. We're doing the same thing with the ruined people brought from the redoubt up there on the mountain."

  "Inside those machines?"

  "More than machines, Jens. Part flesh, part metal. New bodies to replace the ones that had been sacrificed. Most of them have a score to settle with Bastion. We believe they will manage by themselves, though if they need more help..."

  "They may not need help," said Dismé, regarding the figures with strangely mixed emotions, half-relief, half-horror. "If that one kills the Hetman, perhaps the army will fall apart rather easily. Who is that?" She pointed at the silver figure that was still slicing its way through the already fragmented monster.

  "That's the last body we received from Bastion," said Wolf. "When she was wakened in Chasm, she had no will of her own at all, but she was eager to be commanded."

  "Who is she?" asked the doctor.

  "We have no idea. The men who picked her up didn't know. As soon as we had her brain installed, even before the speech module was in, we told her to write answers. We asked who she was, and all she wrote was 'Nemesis of Gone.' We assumed she'd been maimed by whoever or whatever Gone was. Later we found out she'd been dumped on the street, picked up there and taken to the clinic in Hold—at your standing orders, doctor. You weren't there, but one of your students was, and since the clinic was out of whatever you usually use, he gave her a dose of something different as pain medication. Some kind of potion."

  "Potion?" asked Bobly, eyes wide.

  "Potion!" said the doctor, trying to remember where he had put the bottle he had taken from the fortress.

  "Potion," replied Wolf. "Chasm found traces of very strange stuff in her body, what was left of it, but they have no idea what it is."

  "How did you find out all this?" cried the doctor.

  "Backtracking. Chasm asked the demons that sent her. The demons found out which guards brought her to the disposal room. The guards told us about your student at the clinic, Old Ben. He's a mute, though I suppose you know that. He wrote saying he used the stuff by mistake, that it was entirely gone."

  "There hasn't been time to do all that," cried Jens. "It's only been, what? Seven or eight days since we left Hold?"

  Wolf said, "You were in that fortress place for four days. It's summerspan six, fourday, fourteen days since you left Hold."

  "Four days in there?"

  Dismé said, "Time is probably quite different in there and out here." She was staring toward the silver figures on the hillside, slashing and tearing at the enemy, seemingly i
mpervious to sword or spear or arrow. On the far side of the ridge, they could make out many officers and men of the Regime who had turned their backs on the field and were fleeing the way they had come.

  Dismé strode down the hill and forward to the place the silver figure still chopped at the remnants of Gohdan Gone. Only shreds lay upon the prairie, a puddled filthiness. When the silver thing saw Dismé, it crowed like a cock and came swiftly toward her, knife hands clicking, but Dismé roared at it, and it turned to run after the other silver warriors who were moving up the nearest rise. Dismé turned and trudged back up the slope to the drumhead where she struck the drum once more, just to be sure. The sound fled; only the echo sped in return. The ouphs were gone.

  "What did Dezmai do with the drum?" asked Michael, from behind her.

  "She broke the bottle walls," Dismé said. "All of them, I think. If any are left, in Bastion or elsewhere in the world where Gowl's missionaries have been making conversions, we will need to break those, too. Camwar's drum was made for that thing alone. Now we have only Gowl to deal with."

  They spun around, their momentary relief ebbing as the army, diminished but still numerous, came over the last rise with the general at its head. They were confronted by the line of silver warriors. The demon who had come with Wolf was waiting to one side, and without a moment's hesitation, he went at a dead run directly into the army, past groping hands and gaped jaws to reach up and pull the general from his horse.

  Atop that distant ridge, the general howled at his captor. "We have a treaty! Don't kill me. I can give you information. Don't..."

  "Think, Gowl!" said the demon. "Don't you remember me?"

  "Remember you? Why should I remember you?"

  "You should remember the friends you betrayed, Gowl. Don't you remember little Sandbur Fortrees?"

  Gowl did not. Gowl gazed into the eyes before him, searching, searching, coming at last to one, far back memory of a white horse carrying a man all in white and five boys hidden in the straw bales...