Hammerfall

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Here.” Marak made his decision and handed Lelie up to her mother, live or die, the best he could do: then he went and mounted up, the same. He turned Osan to follow the Keran, and Hati went with him, and Norit did, and Tofi and Patya, and the whole camp and the whole caravan began to set out.

  The wind fell. The afternoon grew hot, and the air utterly still as they traveled. The edge of the world was in front of them, a horizon unnaturally clear now that the wind had let the air clear.

  “Talk to me,” he said to Hati. “Distract me.”

  Marak, Marak, his voices said to him, and he saw a vision, the fall of a great star, as it seemed, and the earth splitting, and fire running in the cracks.

  “I think it’s coming,” Hati said, offering no comfort. “Something much bigger than the rest.”

  “It’s coming,” Norit confirmed, catching a breath. She hugged Lelie close. “In the bitter water. Not yet, but soon.”

  Conversation was no comfort, except to know the tormenting vision was the same for all of them. They saw the vision over and over and over, with the sun shining at their backs as clearly and as brightly in a clear sky as if there were never a threat.

  And by late afternoon the edge of the world developed a crack, and by evening that crack became a cliff edge, bright red with sunset where they were, and shadowed beyond, until the distant sand caught the light again.

  It was the edge of the Lakht. It was the way they had to go down, and they were not yet where Marak hoped to reach, not near their former descent: that was southward, toward all the hazards of Pori.

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  “The climb down is at a notch,” he said, riding up to Aigyan before Memnanan or any of the rest could question him. Only Hati came with him, and now he quickened the pace ahead of the Keran, and took the lead himself, with Hati, and then with Norit and Tofi and Patya, and last of all the au’it, all of them that had come this road before.

  The light was leaving. The smallest stones cast strange, long shadows on sand turned red as fire. They were running out of daylight and farther from a downward path than he had hoped they would be.

  But they rode up on a depression along the cliff edge, and there was their path, just as the sun was shining its last, there where the sand had slipped away down the edge of the plateau, and rocks thrust up like giant sentinels.

  “There it is!” Hati exclaimed: trust the an’i Keran to recognize a landmark she had once passed. This was the place. East, the voices still urged them, and now east was possible. Marak turned Osan about and looked back to the long line of tribesmen that followed them, and to the red among white that was the Ila’s household, and Memnanan, and the dark of the Haga.

  All the tribes would follow without question. All the villages had to, for good or for ill. The descent showed treacherously steep, a winding stair of sand and rock where they had lost a besha on the last descent: bad enough the last time, and now they had the old and the sick to get down.

  Marak, his voices called out, demanding, urging him down that trail. His heart hammered in the disturbance the makers created. But he and his house all waited until Aigyan had reached them.

  “Will you go first?” Aigyan asked, offering him the honor of the leader of all of them, and he shook his head, knowing that was not his place.

  “I’ll wait, omi. Go down and set the edge of the camp closer to the cliffs than a sane man would dare, and drive down the deep-stakes and take every precaution: I don’t think the sand will fall down. I think the wind will carry it to the ends of the earth. There’s a storm coming. It’s all I know—a wind stronger than any wind. Better be closer to the cliffs than not.”

  Aigyan heard him, and thought about it, and nodded, frowning in that consideration. He thought Aigyan understood him.

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  But he had second thoughts of Tofi and Patya, and when Aigyan and the Keran had started down that slope, he wanted to see his own charges go down early and be safe. “Take care. You’ll have our tent.

  See to it. Don’t make any mistakes.”

  “Yes, omi, ” Tofi said, and asked no questions. But Patya did.

  “When will you come?” she asked.

  “When I’ve seen the most of our own camp come down. And the Haga. Don’t worry about us. If anyone knows the time to go down, we do.” He knew, when he had just said it, what compelled him to stay above, the simple drive to see what was coming, whether he was right about the choices he had made all along, and about what he had just asked Aigyan to do—to violate a basic rule of safety in all storms before.

  But he could not overstay the margin of time they had. “Just take precautions,” he said to Tofi. “I know there’ll be a storm. The earth may shake. I don’t know if the cliffs will stand, but they’re all the windbreak we have. Be very sure of those stakes!”

  Patya went with her husband. He was not easy until he saw the both of them pass that place where the besha had died, and until he knew they were down on the easier part of the trail.

  Vision flashed across his senses, blinding him. Rock hit sphere.

  Norit’s besha started forward, compelled by so many beshti it saw moving. But Marak still reined back. “Go down with her,” he said to Hati. “See she doesn’t break her neck, or the baby’s.”

  “She doesn’t need me,” Hati said, defying him. The au’it, also, was having trouble holding her besha, but she held it, and Hati did: two stubborn, purposed women, each with their own intentions. But Norit—and Luz—left them.

  Orders could not send Hati away. He knew that Norit had obeyed her voices. He had second thoughts about his own judgment, and wished now he had intervened to keep Lelie and give her to Hati, but Hati was in as much danger, staying with him . . . all of them up here were in danger, on the rim, when the wind came.

  Memnanan rode over to them, right at the edge of the descent, as the Ila’s servants began to pass onto the downward trail.

  “It’s bad news from behind us,” Memnanan said. “We’re hearing that vermin have moved in, right on the line. The priests absolve the living of the duty to bury the dead, and some have just sat down by the line of march. They’re out of water. The vermin take them. It’s all 6710.01 5/31/01 11:53 AM Page 347

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  grim news back there. We’re losing the ones we’ve saved. For the god’s sake, Trin Tain, can we let them camp down there? The priests ask. How soon will there be water?”

  “Two days,” he said. He lied. He had no idea whether they could make that speed to the tower, or what would happen, or how long they would be encamped and under siege from the heavens once the hammer came down. “A storm’s coming. There’s no chance up here.

  The Keran will establish their tents down below.” He added, calmly,

  “Your mother and your wife and your aunts have gone down with Keran tribesmen to watch them. Aigyan’s in charge, below. Get yourself under shelter once you get there and then set up tents to welcome in those that have just come down. Then give them the same word, everything calm, but push as hard as you can to get canvas up.

  We will lose lives. The hammer is coming down. It’s on its way now.

  I don’t know what may happen next.”

  “It’s coming.”

  “It’s coming,” Marak said. He grew calmer in saying it aloud, to a man who understood him. “There’s no other consideration.”

  “The Ila wishes to talk to you, once we’re down there.”

  “I’ll come when I can,” Marak said. The Ila was, at the moment, the least of his concerns. “Go down with her. Get off the cliff face.

  Give whatever orders make sense down there, and listen to Aigyan about the camp. I’ll be there.”

  Memnanan left them, then, and all the while the sky weighed on their backs, heavy with disaster. The sunlight in a natural sunset had diminished to no more
than a faint intimation of light, the sun long behind the western ridges. Below them the head of the column began to unload their tents, a little outward, but not that far from the cliffs, as he had said.

  After Memnanan and his men the Haga began their descent: the trail was only wide enough for one at a time, one at a time, one at a time . . . for everyone alive in the world. For everyone who would survive.

  The last of the Haga went down.

  “Go down now,” Marak said to Hati.

  “You go,” Hati said in a voice scarcely louder than the steady tramp of feet and the occasional complaint of beshti long on the trail and miserable with thirst. “Marak, come with me. Let’s not both die here. What are you going to do? Leave Tofi in charge?”

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  There was an appalling thought, clever as the young man was.

  Tofi would not forgive him. Tofi would curse him to hell. Patya would not forgive him, for settling the Ila on her husband.

  The vision leapt up, the rock and the sphere, only now it was true, and imminent: it filled the sky and the ground. He was somewhere above it all, and saw it coming.

  “It’s coming down,” Hati said. “It’s coming down. This is our chance. Please! Come with me!”

  Marak, Marak, Marak, his voices said to him, and to Hati, perhaps . . . perhaps to all the mad in the world at once, for all he knew.

  And he did not want to go, following the voices. All his life he had resisted the voices.

  “Get down there,” he said to Hati. It was not yet. There was still time.

  “You can’t help anyone anymore up here. Get down yourself, or I’ll stay here, too, I promise you. You’re being a fool!”

  He looked back at the throng of tribes, not even with a sight of the villages yet, the villages with all they held, all the lives, their whole way of life. The line seemed to go on forever in the dusk, and Memnanan had warned him of increasing desperation and decreasing strength back there. He feared far, far worse might be happening just beyond his view: if the horde at Pori had heard the whisper in the earth of so much movement, caught scent of so many helpless and dying among the dead. What did it take from the heavens, to kill them? The vermin sufficed.

  And only the tribes had thrown away their extra weight. To villagers, to the dwellers in houses, everything was precious, everything was necessary. And he could not even pass the word to the first of them, to send sanity back through the line.

  “They don’t know,” he said in despair. “They’ve no experience—”

  Rock hit sphere, and the ring of fire went out and a fountain of cloud went up, and that sphere was lands and water and the sky where the sun was coming over the rim of vast water . . .

  It hit. In the vision it hit. It was still coming. But in his foresight it had come down.

  And there was such a silence . . .

  Soon, Luz said to him, one clear word. Soon.

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  had written only what they said, in the last of the sunlight of an ordinary day.

  “Listen to me,” Hati said. “I know what you’re doing. I know why you’re still up here. But the rest need you to be down there, or it’s just them, fighting each other. You can’t stand up here like a fool waiting for the sky to fall on us. Come on. Come down.”

  He had made up his mind. He knew he had to admit it was over, and go. But was it what he had wanted to hear, was it that he knew he wanted too much to listen, and save his own life?

  “They’re not all going to die up here, if they’ll just toss the excess weight off the packs and walk the beshti down—”

  “And some don’t have the sense, and if we wait long enough, they’ll slip off the trail and fall on us and damn the whole rest of the caravan! We can’t help it!”

  Osan wanted to move. He wanted to, and even knowing better, could not find a way to abandon his responsibility. He searched the rocks, the sand, the sky for an inspiration, and he saw the au’it still writing, by the last of all light in what might be the last day of all the world.

  He saw the tall pillar of rock that marked the way down, and the au’it, and he rode close to her and took the ink-cake from her hand, and rode close to that rock. He spat on the ink-cake, dry-mouthed as he was, and drew a line on the rock as high as his chest, and spat again and wrote, as Osan fretted and jolted his writing: No pack higher than this. Lead the beshti. Walk—

  The ink-cake, half-used, shattered and left fragments in his hand.

  The coming night would obscure his warning. But all through the night the villages would come to this edge, and the slowest, the less adept would still be coming to it at dawn, if the sun ever rose again, and if the wind delayed, and some of them would listen.

  He rode over to a passing tribesman, and showed him the writing, such as it was.

  “It marks the safe height of a pack. It says lead the beshti and walk down. Make this the rule! Tell the next tribe! Tell the villages!

  Leave anything but your tents and your food and water, whatever you have!”

  “Yes, Marak- omi, ” the tribesman said, and looked up at the rock and the message, and rode and told another of his tribe. Among the villages, many read.

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  He had done all he could then. And knew it. He rode toward the gap, the start of the descent, and Hati and the au’it followed him as he rode down onto the trail.

  But there, with tribes yet to come, with terror rushing at him in visions, he gripped sanity with both hands and followed his own just-made law, despite the others below him riding down the switchbacks. He slid down afoot, to lead Osan down, and Hati and the au’it dismounted, and so they walked the difficult, shadowed track, a trail only lit by the last glow in the sky.

  Behind them the tribe was necessarily slowed in its descent.

  More, they dismounted and began to do the same, pride cast aside and prudence taking charge at this hazardous edge of night.

  After all his worry and agony about the weak and the unskilled, it was that simple. If the tribes began to follow that one prudent example, the villagers would not be more daring or faster, and in the morning the sun would show those still to come the writing on the rock—surely the sun would come up, as surely as the fall of the hammer-stone had to make some change in the world.

  Surely that would go on. And the line would come down as long as anyone could.

  But it was as if his vision had cleared, as if all the self-made wall against Luz had broken down, and he heard the voices clearly, and he felt himself obeying the pull of the madness he had resisted—all the world seemed in motion again, and Luz was at last content. He walked, and walked with deliberation, thinking not what he could do, but sure now that he set the pace, and that he must not spread panic or make a misstep of his own.

  At a turn of the trail he felt the earth shake and go on shaking.

  Small rocks slid past and quivered underfoot.

  Then Osan threw up his head and struggled for footing as part of the trail slid and larger stones came loose. Marak did not attempt to walk for the first moments of that shaking, then decided he had its measure and led on, slowly, very slowly, not letting Osan have his way.

  Hati was at his back. The au’it’s besha could go no farther, and no faster, and the same with all those behind. Marak kept walking.

  The shaking stopped.

  Then a false dawn broke. A falling star shot past so close in the sky that the land leapt out in daylight clarity, and shadows traveled from dawn to zenith to set as if a sun had raced across the heavens.

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  Is that it? he wondered at first sight. Is that the
hammer? Inured as they were to wonders, they could not help but watch as it crossed beyond the nighted plain, illumining the cluster of tents far out from the cliffs. Some of the tribesmen called out in alarm.

  But it was not the star-fall they feared. His madness told him it was not, that it was still on its way, and he walked, the same as before. The dying star went beyond and lost itself in the distance of the eastern lowlands, where it became Luz’s problem. But Luz went on talking to him, steadily now, showing him visions that half blinded him to his sight of the road.

  “A star just fell,” he said to Luz under his breath, feeling he possibly had her ear for the moment, at this time when Luz must want to know every detail of what transpired. “A star fell toward you.

  Did you see that? We’re going slowly down the cliffs. If we go faster, we’ll break our necks. Don’t nag me. I need to see. It’s dark. It’s damned dark and bad ground, and the earth is shaking. I’ve told them camp close to the cliffs: if there’s going to be a storm after this, I’m thinking the wind will carry the sand out, not down on us. Am I right?”

  He got nothing but the ring of fire, twice repeated. Was that a wind? Was it fire? Was it anything he knew? He had no idea. He heard no answer. But he heard nothing from the voices, either, so perhaps that silence was Luz’s sign that she was thinking about it. It was almost too late for thinking.

  He knew that Norit was safe. He felt her presence. He felt, he thought, Lelie’s. Tofi had gotten down and put the tent up.

  Small stones slid past him, some striking his ankles, and the ground was loose under his feet, so that at the left edge the slide had bitten deeply into the trail. Panic wanted him to go on, ignore the hazard so long as he and Hati cleared it.

  But he stopped. He squatted and methodically moved small stones until he hoped he had reinforced the eroded edge. He knew that tribesmen were behind him, and he hoped they would note that and maintain the trail under their own feet, to keep it fit for those that followed. He did the best he could, and when he had done what he could he got up and continued the downward course—no hurry, no haste, no risk he could avoid.