The Northerners stopped at the edge of the trees. Moril did not at first know why.
“The Lord of Mark, I think,” Keril said to his captain. “Tholian must have set him to watch for the cart.”
Moril leaned round Egil, and his stomach fluttered at the number of the horsemen drawn up across the pass in the distance. They were clearly Southerners, and in war gear, and there were at least twice as many of them as there were Northerners in Keril’s band.
“He can’t be expecting us,” said the captain. “I’ll take an oath no one saw us come through. It’ll give him a fair old shock when we ride out at him.”
“I know,” said Keril, “but I’d be more comfortable if we were twice the number.”
“Oh come!” said someone else, laughing. “One Northerner’s worth ten Southerners. Any day.”
Moril thought for a moment. Yes. Everyone believed that. None of the band was particularly worried, and even Brid was looking confidently at Keril, sure they would get past the Lord of Mark without trouble. Northerners were famous fighters. But Keril was evidently thinking it was more important to get through to the North than to get courageously killed on the way.
“Would you like there to seem more of us?” Moril called over to him. “I think I can do it.”
Keril made a bit of a face. “I only wish you could.”
“I bet he can,” said Kialan.
Moril slung the cwidder round his neck and began to play the “Eighth March.” It was never played in the South, for obvious reasons. But, as Clennen often said, it went to such a brisk time that only the North thought of it as a march.
“We are the men of the North, the North,
And I’ll tell you how much we’re worth, we’re worth—
One man is as good as ten Southern men
And each of us marches as ten.”
For a moment, until the cwidder began to hum, Moril was afraid he had got it wrong after all. But the hum increased and became almost like a lighthearted whistling, and the wood was suddenly full of men, horses, and wagons. Some of the Northerners cried out in alarm.
Kialan burst out laughing. “Oh, well done, Moril! Only nine more pink carts are a bit much!”
Moril glanced from side to side and could not help laughing. There were indeed nine more pink carts. One of them had a tree apparently growing through it. And a false Moril sat in each playing an illusory cwidder. What he had done was to reflect their own band nine times over, just as the song said. After all, it was an illusion that one Northman was worth ten Southerners. And the riders and wagons were exactly that, like reflections in a mirror. The Northmen realized. People began to laugh and wave at their own reflections. Consequently, the false nine-tenths waved and laughed also.
Keril laughed with the rest. “Keep playing, Moril. Off we go.”
Moril played on gaily, and they moved out from among the trees, the real and the false men together. They rode among the bushes and stumps under a stormy sky, toward the road, and the real men had to go round saplings and the larger stumps, but Moril’s illusions went straight through everything in their path. When they reached the road, there was a good deal of confusion and much laughter. The Northmen tried to get out of the way of their own shadows, until they grasped that there were four reflections on the left and five to the right, and that the fifth band from the left was the real one, entitled to use the road. Once they had sorted that out, they trotted on in fine style, many of them singing the “Eighth March” as Moril played. And on either side the nine repetitions went straight through the landscape, pink carts through bushes and horses through saplings.
Moril sat in the midmost pink cart beaming with elation. It was the most splendid proof that he had done his thinking right. The whistling hum of the cwidder in his hands, calling the strange army into being, took on an extra note, like a sort of purring, as it reflected Moril’s pleasure and amusement. Behind him, Brid and Kialan thought it one of the funniest things they had seen. They thought it even funnier when Olob sensed enemies near and began prancing about, setting the nine other Olobs prancing, too, and the nine other Kialans grabbing at his bridle to help Brid control him.
By the pass the Lord of Mark’s force drew uneasily together, seeing five hundred apparent Northmen riding merrily toward them. As Keril’s band drew nearer, they could see the enemies’ uneasiness mounting. Ordinary Northerners maybe they could face. But what was to be done with enemies who went straight through small trees and seemed none the worse for it? When they were near enough to distinguish faces, and only a hundred yards from the camp the Lord of Mark had set up to the right of the road, a group of the Southerners panicked and had to be brought back by some others. Moril could see a man who must be the Lord of Mark riding up and down imploring his men to keep calm. He laughed. Then two shadow wagons and a pink cart went right through the camp without disturbing so much as a guy rope. A number of the Southerners wailed with terror. Moril thought, Why not? and threw in the lowest string. Run! it boomed beneath the gay tune.
The Lord of Mark broke and ran, and his men with him. They galloped frantically away to right and left along the mountains and vanished in the bushes, leaving Flennpass open. A roar of laughter went up from Keril’s band.
Brid’s voice cut through it. “Moril! Look!”
Moril glanced back. Huge numbers of horsemen were on the dark edge of Mark Wood, and more were among the trees. The horses’ legs were all moving steadily, but they were too far away for sound to carry, and the riders seemed to glimmer along as if they were an illusion, too. Only they were no such thing. They were the forefront of Tholian’s army.
13
Moril gave the alarm with a sweep of his hand on the cwidder. Though Keril also looked over his shoulder, it was only to confirm what the cwidder said. In that same moment they were all going hell for leather for Flennpass and Fort Flenn at the other end of it. The ghostly nine-tenths had gone as if they had never been. Moril knew there was no time for illusions. As the cart bucked and wove along, he hung on to the side and looked back.
Tholian’s army was coming at a steady speed across the cleared stretch. If anyone saw the cart, or the sudden decrease in the size of their band, there was no sign of it. The host of horsemen simply came onward. It might be pursuing Keril, but it looked more as if their band would be merely the first incident in the invasion. Tholian had no need to hurry, since the North was unprepared. Olob knew the army was behind and Brid could not control him. Kialan had taken the reins and was dragging him along with Egil’s horse. Moril thought this might well make Olob worse. Olob had never really accepted Kialan. But there was nothing Moril could do.
They swept into the pass with a gathering thunder of hooves. It held a good road between clifflike walls, which narrowed at the Northern end. They had to string out as they went, with the cart and the wagons bouncing in the rear. Egil and the other drivers were using their whips. Brid was smacking Olob. Moril thought they would just make it to the fort, though it would be a close thing—and it seemed closer every second. The army behind had no wagons with the vanguard to slow them down. They were catching up steadily. As Keril’s troop came to the narrowest part of the pass, where the fort stood chunkily above on the skyline, Moril looked round to see the first line of Tholian’s cavalry coming into the wide end of the pass, and multitudes of others milling behind.
Keril had reached the fort, when Moril looked back, and was shouting to the people inside. There was a moment’s delay. But the defenders must have seen all that happened. A sudden black space appeared where the great gate had been, and some of the Northmen rode into it. The space between the cliffs was filled with noise, the huge drumming of a mass of hooves, and some sharper sounds. Moril thought the fort was firing on the enemy.
Things began to fall around the cart and bounce off the wagons. They were not from the fort, but from the advancing army. Moril could do nothing but hope. It was long-range, and he thought it must be difficult to fire from a cantering
horse. But to Olob, struggling against Kialan’s impatient hand on his bridle, it was the last straw. In his terror, he turned clean round, dragging Kialan and Egil’s horse with him. Brid lurched and hung on to his mane. A number of the Northmen saw what was happening and turned back to help. And the narrow end of the pass at once became a dangerous bottleneck, full of riders trying to go two ways at once. Egil roared out a curse and pulled the cart up. Moril jumped down, with the cwidder slung across his shoulders, and ran toward Olob.
“Let him go!” he shouted to Kialan. “Olob, stop it!”
Luckily, Kialan had the sense to let go. For, as Moril ran up, Olob reared, frightened out of his wits. There were just too many enemies for him. Moril had to dodge his lashing front hooves, and Brid slid helplessly down his back, over his tail, and onto the ground. And as Olob stood high above them, screaming and slashing, an unlucky bullet took him clean through the head. His great brown body came down between Moril and Brid with the force of a falling oak. He was dead before he hit the ground.
They stared at one another over the huge corpse.
“Olob now,” said Brid.
“Right!” said Moril. “That does it!”
Keril’s captain had been sorting out the bottleneck. Now he galloped up and held down his hand to Brid. “Catch hold, lass! Up you come!” Brid caught hold and scrambled up behind him.
Kialan shouted to Moril and held down a hand to him, but Moril did not attend. He raced to the cliff at the side of the pass and climbed it like a maniac with the cwidder bumping and booming on his back. He was at the top in seconds—how, he never knew. Heaving deep breaths, he went scrambling along the cliff edge until he had a view down into the pass. He saw Kialan, not very far below him, at the gate of the fort, waving and shouting something. He seemed to mean there was a door in the fort at the top of the cliff. Then he went into the fort, and the gate shut.
But Moril, now he knew the Northmen were in the fort, was not interested in the door. He looked Southward along the pass. It was packed with Tholian’s horsemen more than halfway along. They were going more slowly now, because of the narrower space, and beyond the wide end of the pass, as far as he could see, there were more riders coming. It was truly an invasion.
Moril stood up and slung the cwidder in front of him. He felt a spatter of rain. There looked to be a storm coming, which was all to the good. For a second he gazed up at the heavy bruiselike clouds, feeling a little awed. He thought anyone would who was about to use the cwidder as Osfameron had used it.
Then he looked down into the pass where Olob’s body lay in the middle of the road. The nearest riders were not so far from it now. He struck one sharp, rolling chord, and the power in the cwidder swelled with it. There was no humming, but he could feel the power. “You’re not coming North,” he said to the jostling riders. “And this is why.” He struck two more chords. The power almost choked him. The answer was a great dagger of lightning, green and perilous, lancing down over the cliffs. A peal of thunder followed, and Moril led it on, pealing the lowest note of the cwidder, so that the power in it could grow. When it stopped, he spoke, in the way the singers spoke an incantation. He said:
“Kialan and Konian were caught in a storm.
The one you hanged in Holand had not harmed anyone,
Nor had Kialan when you caught him. This is for Konian first.”
He struck another chord, followed by a swinging, hanging, frantic phrase, and felt the power in the cwidder grow again. Then he said:
“Unlucky Clennen lies by a lake in Markind,
The singer you stabbed on suspicion only
And prevented him performing. This is for the Porter Clennen.”
He struck a sharp chord and a rolling one. The first horsemen were now right beneath him. They did not pause when they came to Olob but trampled over him and on. Moril saw, but he looked beyond them, to the center of the pass. Tholian was there, jostled on either side by his favorite friends. Moril waited, quite confident and implacable, and let them come on while the power in the cwidder grew yet again. Then he spoke his last stave:
“There was no mercy shown by the magistrate in Neathdale
To Dastgandlen Handagner. There was death in the South
And weeping in the Uplands. Now war comes North,
And all through Tholian. This is for Tholian.”
He struck the cwidder again, and again, and yet a third time, vengefully. The power grew enormous, until it possessed Moril, the sky, the clouds, and the entire pass. Then, as Moril had known they would, the hills began to walk.
They started mildly and slowly, as if the mountains on either side of the pass were shrugging their shoulders. But in a second or so, the shrugging was a deep rhythmic jigging. The tops of the cliffs bent and marched, regularly inward and downward, walking, piling, inescapably trudging together to fill the pass. The thunder pealed and was drowned in the grinding of ton after ton of rock, moving and jogging inward. Almost lost in the greater din was the lesser screaming of men and horses. At the far end of the pass Moril could see riders swirling and struggling to get back or get out. But leisurely, sleepily, rhythmically, the mountains were filling the center. The cliff Moril was on marched with the rest, downward and forward. Moril leaned backward to keep his balance and let it take him, until he was standing at the head of a heap of jumbled rocks, almost over the place where Olob had been shot. The rocks were piled into the rift, choking it so that it was no longer a pass.
Moril did not spend long looking, because the rain came down, and the torn surfaces of the rocks were black with it. But he knew, as he turned round to keep the cwidder from the worst of the wet and stripped off his coat to cover it, that Tholian was underneath somewhere and Barangarolob had plenty of company. He looked across to see that the fort was safe, as he had intended. It was there, standing on a steep-sided block of steady rock, and Keril was picking his way over the ruin of the cliff toward him.
“I’ve just done something really horrible,” Moril said to him. “Haven’t I?”
Keril jumped from one rock to another and then onto the one where Moril stood. “I don’t think we had much chance of holding the pass otherwise,” he said.
“You don’t understand,” said Moril. “I did it because of Olob.” He leaned against Keril and burst into tears. Keril took off his own coat, wrapped it round Moril, and led him quietly back over the rocks to the fort.
They left the fort the following day, after a big force of men from the North Dales arrived there to make sure the Southerners did not attempt to attack over the fallen rocks. Moril did not see as much of the journey to Hannart as he would have liked. He was exhausted and spent most of the time asleep in one of the wagons. Every so often he woke to find they were on a green road, or in a wood where the trees were still only budding in the later spring of the North, and went to sleep happy. He was awake to see the Falls at Dropwater, which he would not have missed for worlds. And by the time they reached Hannart he had come to himself again.
He was disappointed, but not really surprised, to find Hannart a city far larger than Neathdale, in the center of a big valley. Flags were flying in honor of their arrival. There were crowds of people carrying flags or flowers. Hannart was full of flowers in fields, in gardens, on trees, and growing wild, thick as the grass, on the steep sides of the mountains. Moril could smell them as soon as they entered the valley. At the end of the valley was a great tall thing, like a castle four times life-size, picked out in gold and blue and green.
Moril stared at it. “Whatever is that?”
“That’s the steam organ,” said Kialan. “Haven’t you heard about it? They’ll probably play it tonight. It makes the most splendid noise.”
“I wish someone had told me,” said Moril.
There was a feast that night, in their honor, and as Kialan had thought, the steam organ played. In a strong steamy smell of coal and oil, it thundered out well-known tunes, like a mountain singing, or the grandfather of all music, and made
Brid and Moril laugh. It seemed most fitting that Hannart should own such a thing, because the place was full of music, not only then, but at all times. Cowbells clinked in the steep meadows. Women called the cows home in a kind of song, not unlike Brid’s “Cow-Calling” song. In the city there were tunes for crying everything that was on sale and for telling the hours of the watch. There was singing and dancing somewhere almost every night. The saying was that you could tell someone came from Hannart because whatever they did, they sang, and if they did not sing, they whistled.
Keril lived right in the center of the city, in a house twice the size of Ganner’s. Unlike Ganner’s house, it was always open. The cheerful people of Hannart seemed to use its front courtyard as another part of the main square. There was always someone there, gossiping or selling something, and, if anything unusual happened, they came on into the rest of the house to tell Keril about it. Since there were also large numbers of people who actually lived in the house, Moril found it almost impossible to sort out who came from where.
Brid loved it. She had never been happier in her life. “I often remembered it, but I didn’t think it was real!” she was fond of saying.
Moril enjoyed it, too. He liked the liveliness, the carelessness, and the way people rushed up to Keril and said what they pleased. He could not imagine anyone doing that in the South. Moril liked Keril. He liked Halida, Kialan’s mother. He enjoyed being with Kialan, and he loved the perpetual music. But he was too hot in the city and far too hot in the house. He kept having to go out on the hillsides. At night it was worse, and he slept in one of the gardens when he could. When Halida realized this, she gave him a room on the ground floor, opening on one of the gardens. Moril was grateful, but he hardly went into the room, and he only slept there if it was raining.
Cart and Cwidder Page 15
