Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  “I did, I did!” Rudur seemed pleased with the answer, grinning, though the rest of his expression remained cold. “I thought, ‘How could the Thanemoot pass without meeting this one I have heard so much about?’ And here you are.”

  “Yes,” Unver agreed. “Here I am.”

  A quiet moment passed while the two men regarded each other. “Take a cup of wine with me,” said Rudur at last. He clapped his hands and a trio of women appeared from his huge tent, each carrying a silver tray that, by its intricate design and fine workmanship, suggested it had been looted from the home of some Nabbanai noble. Instead of allowing himself to be served by the women, Rudur leaned out and picked up a cup and one of the ewers before pouring for himself and swigging it down. He then poured for Unver and each of the thanes sitting at his feet, who drained their cups without the slightest show of welcome or celebration.

  “Fear not,” Rudur said, “there is no poison here, only good red wine from the southern hills.”

  Unver took his and stared at it for a brief instant, then swallowed some and swirled it around in his mouth. “Wine?” he asked. “Have you given up drinking yerut like your father and grandfather did?”

  Rudur laughed. “Do you call me soft because I like to drink what the Nabbanai drink? And am I less of a clansman because I make Nabbanai noblewomen into my bed-slaves?”

  “If you fell in love with one and turned away from your people, then yes—you would not be much of a clansman.”

  “Hah!” Rudur drained his silver cup and waved it for more. One of the women hurried forward and poured for him. “That is a rich jest, friend Unver, coming from one who is only half a clansman at all!”

  Unver shrugged. “I am not responsible for my blood—or my father’s decision to go back to the stone-dwellers when I was young. I have lived my life as a clansmen, riding, raiding . . . and drinking yerut.” He handed his cup to the nearest serving woman, who looked to Redbeard for permission before taking it from him. “This drink of yours is too mild for my stomach. I will wait for something more to my taste.”

  Rudur nodded as if at a well-shot arrow. “Then we will waste no more time on courtesies and speak of other things. I am told you call yourself the new Shan, like Edizel come again.”

  Fremur felt his men suddenly grew tense as drawn bowstrings, and one or two dropped their hands to their sword hilts.

  “I call myself nothing but a man,” said Unver. “I am no more to blame for what others say about me than I am for the stone-dweller blood that runs in my veins.”

  “You are not the reborn Shan, then? You do not claim that title?”

  “I claim nothing.”

  “Then you must answer your accusers like any other clansman.” Rudur clapped his hands; the serving women took their trays and scurried back to the tent, then Rudur clapped again and called, “Volfrag!”

  The man who came out of the tent wore a shaman’s robes. His black and gray beard was longer than Rudur’s and hung all the way to his waist. A star had been tattooed on each of his cheeks just below his temples, and a staring eye on his forehead.

  “Yes, Thane of Thanes?” the shaman asked in a deep, rumbling voice that might have come from an unsettled bull.

  “Bring our other visitor.”

  Volfrag nodded and returned to the tent, then reemerged a moment later leading a man who wore a tattooed insignia of the Crane Clan on his arm. The newcomer looked at Unver, Fremur, and the rest, but would not meet their eyes for more than a moment.

  Fremur leaped to his feet. “Gezdahn Baldhead! What are you doing? Have you betrayed us?”

  At Fremur’s movement the half dozen thanes sitting around Rudur all rose to their feet. The men behind Unver did the same, curved swords rasping out of scabbards. For an instant or two it seemed that bloodshed was unavoidable, but Rudur stood and glared at all of them.

  “What has happened to you? Have you forgotten our way of justice? Gezdahn of the Crane Clan will speak and you will listen. No swords will drink here beneath my roof.” He pursed his lips then and whistled, a single shrill blast like the call of a thrush, and suddenly a couple of score of Black Bear clansmen came spilling onto the shaded field from behind the wagons and around the side of Rudur’s tent. Clearly they had been hiding and waiting for the signal. Fremur damned himself for a fool, and Unver too. These clansmen had bows and took only a few steps toward Unver and the rest before setting arrows on strings and taking aim.

  “Now,” said Rudur, “we shall have peace to hear what this Gezdahn fellow has to say.”

  “Peace? Curse you, Redbeard!” cried Fremur, for the moment more angry than he was fearful. “We are guests beneath your roof!”

  “And if you offer no harm, no harm will come to you,” Rudur replied. “Any man has the right to defend himself in his own camp. If any of you move from that spot, my men will kill you.”

  Gezdahn Baldhead had clearly not expected to complete his treachery in full view of those he was betraying and stammered so under Rudur’s questioning that one of Redbeard’s pet thanes stood up and held a knife against his ribs to encourage him to speak more loudly and plainly.

  “I will ask again,” Rudur asked, and pointed to Unver. “Do you know this man?”

  Gezdahn nodded. “He is Unver Long Legs. He killed our thane, Odrig, and the groom at the wedding where all were celebrating, then named himself Thane of the Crane Clan.”

  “Liar!” cried Fremur. “Unver fought only to defend himself, and both fights were fair!”

  “The crows helped Unver to win!” offered one of Fremur’s men. “The spirits were for him, just like Edizel Shan. We all saw it!!”

  “Silence,” said Rudur. “I am the thane giving justice here. And I declare that this Unver is an outlaw and no true clansman. He can be no guest, since he came to me under a false name and on false grounds. Bind him.”

  While the rest of the Black Bear clansmen kept arrows trained on Fremur and his band, several stepped up and pulled Unver’s wrists behind his back, then tied them with rawhide. “Now bow to Rudur,” said the one who knotted the cord. “Bow to the Thane of Thanes.”

  Unver spat on the ground. “I would rather bow to the king of the demons.”

  “And so you may soon enough.” Rudur nodded. Unver’s captor lifted his sword, and in despair Fremur lurched forward, not even thinking of the certain storm of deadly arrows. But instead of taking Unver’s head off, the man reversed his blade and struck him on the skull with the heavy pommel, toppling Unver senseless to the grass.

  “You call this treachery justice?” Fremur shouted. “Attacking those you have invited to guest under your roof? The spirits of the grasslands will judge you and condemn you!”

  Rudur examined Unver’s supine form with a ghost of a smile before answering. “It is nothing but justice. And as to the spirits—well, Fremur-also-called-Rabbit, we will see what the Forest Growler and the rest think in truth. I will not do anything so crude as behead this pretender, much as he might deserve it for his murdering ways. No, the spirits themselves will judge him.”

  “What nonsense are you talking?” Fremur demanded, but a sudden memory had come to him and the icy knot in his stomach pulled even tighter.

  “You believe he is the Shan,” Rudur said loudly enough for all to hear. “And he did not discourage those who named him so, however little he had done to deserve it. Edizel Shan and many others before him who claimed Heaven’s favor were all put to the test of the Summer Rose and the Long Night. Only Edizel survived. So we will give Long Legs the same tests, and the spirits of Heaven themselves will decide his fate.” He turned to the shaman. “Volfrag, is the hour for the ordeal come now?”

  “It will be here soon, Thane of Thanes,” the bearded man rumbled.

  “Good.” Rudur stretched his limbs like a man who had been kept from his real business too long, then looked down again at the man
lying stretched before him. “Throw some water on him and get him to his feet. He will be taken out to where all those who bark his name can see his fate with their own eyes. They think Unver Long Legs is the Shan returned, do they? Let us see how he likes the kiss of the Summer Rose.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Two open wagons, flanked by Rudur’s warriors on horseback, rolled along the main road of the camp, circling the lake so Redbeard could show off his prisoners. Fremur and the rest of Unver’s followers had been shoved into the second wagon and sat on the damp boards, bound and tumbling against each other with every bump of its wheels. Unver was in the first, still senseless, with Rudur standing over him. Because the Thane of Thanes was with him, the crowd hurled only insults at Unver, but Fremur and the rest, not so lucky, were pelted with mud and offal.

  Where are the rest of my Cranes? Fremur wondered. Are they all traitors, not just Gezdahn Baldhead? And what of Unver’s own Stallions? Does Redbeard not fear to provoke a fight? But when he wiped the mud from his eyes and looked back, he saw what looked like every man from Rudur’s Black Bear Clan and hundreds more from the clans that supported him walking half a dozen abreast behind the wagons, and knew why Rudur Redbeard did not fear to display what he had done.

  The circuit of the lake took hours in the hot afternoon sun, and by the time they returned to Rudur’s camp it seemed like the whole of the Thanemoot was following them. Fremur and the rest of his men were lying down in the wagon now, weary of being splashed with filth and deafened by shouted curses. The wagons rolled past the Black Bear camp and headed toward the base of the largest and most sacred hill, called the Silent One after the nameless spirit who had created humankind from atop its crest in the days before time began.

  The horses snorted and dirt flew from beneath their hooves as the two wagons climbed the winding track. The crowd scrambled after them like ants over a fallen log, picking their way up the slope however they could, almost frenzied at being allowed on the sacred hill. The caravan stopped near the summit on a great natural shelf of grassy earth. At the center loomed a massive standing stone, said to be the place where the spirits first met to learn their places in the world made by the Silent One. Some of Rudur’s men had ridden ahead to drive a wooden post into the ground in front of the holy stone; Fremur’s blood went cold when he saw it. This was the place where enemies of the clans had been sacrificed for years beyond counting. No execution post had been mounted on the hill since the end of the last war with the stone-dwellers, but Rudur seemed bent on showing the whole of the grasslands that he was the only Thane of Thanes.

  Several more of Rudur’s clansmen climbed into the wagon and lifted Unver then carried him toward the post. He was awake now and fought them, but they were too many. They tore off his shirt, then pushed his face against the post. With several men grasping each arm, Rudur’s warriors cut the bonds on Unver’s wrists and ankles and pulled his hands to the far side of the post before retying them, so that he could only stand helplessly with his belly against the naked wood and his back exposed.

  Rudur inspected his prisoner, then walked to the front of the plateau where the crowd, following, met a line of grim Black Bear clansmen and stopped. The onlookers continued to struggle among themselves for a better view, shoving and shouting.

  “In the old days,” Rudur called out, “there was a cure for those who tried to take what was not theirs, whether another man’s horses or the title of Shan. It is called the Summer Rose.” He turned and waved his arm. “Bring it to me, Volfrag.”

  The bearded shaman stepped forward with an armload of slender branches of so dark a green that they looked almost black even in the bright, late afternoon sunshine. Rudur took one end of the rope-bound bundle, thick as a man’s wrist, and lifted it in the air. The flail of long branches dangled almost to his knees. “Wild roses blessed by the Silent One, grown on His hill,” said Rudur. “A fit punishment for one who would put his name in the mouths of the spirits.”

  The wild rose branches had been soaked in brine, Fremur knew, until they were as supple and strong as braided whipcord. But the treatment did not soften the thorns at all, his father had told him, leaving them instead as hard and fierce as fish hooks.

  “This is what the spirits think of those who would tell lies in their names, Unver No-Clan,” Rudur declared, loud enough to be heard far back in the throng. “This is what their anger feels like!” And he swung back the branches and then snapped them forward, raking Unver’s back in a broad swath. Unver did not cry out, but his muscles clenched beneath the blow like a fist, and for a moment his legs did not hold him, though the knots around his wrists did. Blood began to dribble from his back in some places, but in others the thorns had bitten more deeply, so that red streamed out in rivulets and began to drip down his legs.

  “One hundred strokes of the Summer Rose!” crowed Rudur, and the crowd gave back a noise like animals waiting to be fed. Here and there Fremur thought he heard a few of them cursing Redbeard, but they were isolated sounds in a sea of approval. “That will test his claim. Edizel Shan survived it—surely you, with your high ambitions, can do no less!”

  “That is only an old story!” cried Fremur, finally staggering to his feet to stand at the back of the wagon. His clansmen tried to pull him down but he would not be silenced.

  “You call the history of our people only a story, Fremur-the-Rabbit?” Rudur shook his head, still swinging the rose-branches slowly back and forth. “Do you envy this traitor so much you wish to join him? We can always put up another stake.”

  “If you like stories, Redbeard,” shouted Fremur, “then remember what happened to the thanes who were false to Edizel!” If his men hadn’t been tied they would have clapped their hands over his mouth to silence him, but as it was they could only jostle him and try to kick his feet out from under him as he kept shouting. “Remember what the spirits did to those traitors!”

  Rudur nodded to someone Fremur couldn’t see, and a moment later a large hand seized his neck and slammed his head forward against the rail of the wagon. His wits swirled in a dark whirlpool, and he tumbled backward, feeling as if the entire hill had fallen on him.

  As he lay helplessly on the wagon bed he heard Rudur say, “Next time I hear your voice, Crane-man, you will join this weak-blooded fool.”

  Unver’s whipping went on and on. Fremur heard Rudur bring others of his chosen thanes in to take turns, but he did not see it, since he could not get his legs to support him. It was only as the last of the strokes was falling that he managed to climb to his feet again. Unver, who had not cried out once, was now far beyond making any noise at all. He hung limply by his tied wrists, his back a hideous, red-smeared mass of deep furrows and tattered skin. Even the crowd had fallen silent.

  “Take him down,” said Rudur. “Volfrag, does he live?”

  The shaman bent over Unver and held a small, shiny object before his face. “He still breathes, Thane of Thanes.”

  Rudur laughed. “Then the spirits decree he has not suffered enough yet. They want to take a hand! Tie him with his back to the post.”

  Unver did not resist as his tattered, bloody back was pushed against the stake, and his hands were tied once more. Now Fremur could hear a voice screaming curses at Rudur from somewhere in the crowd.

  “One of Unver’s women does not like the entertainment,” said Rudur to the other thanes. “Or perhaps she is already searching for a new man.”

  “I’ll kill you myself, you coward!” the woman cried, and now Fremur could hear others trying to make her stop. “You are no bear, Redbeard—you are an ox! You gave up your balls to the city-men years ago!”

  Rudur was clearly annoyed by the woman, but the disruption was far enough back in the crowd that he could not easily silence her. “I made peace, you bitch—peace for all the clans! I saved our lands!”

  “The stone-dwellers take more of them every day!” s
omeone shouted from another part of the crowd. “The Nabban-folk push us out of the places our fathers rode!”

  “Silence!” Rudur bellowed. “You mewling children know nothing. Any more braying from any of you and we will water this sacred ground with your blood as well.” He barked an order to his thanes and several gathered their men and waded out into the crowd, pushing and even hitting those who would not get out of their way fast enough, but the onlookers were crushed too close together and Rudur’s men had to stop after penetrating only a little way.

  Rudur Redbeard seemed to recognize that the spectacle had gone on too long. He strode to the front of the level place and stared down at the throng until those nearest him fell into uneasy silence. The sun had dropped behind the rounded top of the Silent One; for most of the observers he could not have been much more than a dark shape, like one of the spirits’ first attempts to make people.

  “Unver No-Clan will hang here through the night,” announced Rudur, then strode to where the prisoner slumped at the base of the post. Rudur lifted Unver’s head and seemed to like what he saw in the man’s face, for he laughed then.

  “I think the blood is already drying,” said the Thane of Thanes. “That will never do. We want the wild creatures of the Spirit Hills to know that a gift has been left for them—an offering.” He bent and pulled a long knife from his belt, slashed at Unver’s cheeks and forehead, then made three horizontal cuts across his chest. Even after all the blood that had coursed from Unver’s back during the whipping, more flowed from these wounds.

  Rudur straightened. “Spirit Hill will be surrounded by armed men tonight,” he said, voice booming out over the now quiet, uneasy crowd. “Any one who tries to bring this traitor water or anything else will be killed. Only the spirits themselves will decide if he lives or dies. Now go! Back to your camps! You will see the results tomorrow at dawn.”