Still, he remembered that reports had reached Skelleth describing wars and other disturbances in Nekutta. He had seen no evidence to support the stories—but caution would do no harm.
So far, the party had been spending long days on the road, traveling on well into the evening every day, and rising again before dawn to get an early start. Garth had no intention of slowing the pace, but he saw no reason not to move the sleeping period from nighttime to day. It might, he thought, provide a small decrease in the chance of danger.
“Old man? Do you have any preference?”
The Forgotten King shook his head and walked on, tirelessly, without looking at the overman. He had no trouble in keeping up with the warbeast. An ordinary man would have been left far behind in a single day, or else would have collapsed from exhaustion, but the King marched stolidly and silently onward, his pace always steady and matching the warbeast’s own. It was one more little demonstration of his strangeness, but one that pleased Garth because it meant faster travel.
“Very well, then,” Garth said. “Tonight we ride until dawn.”
Frima smiled; she was returning to the night, where she belonged.
The habits of years were not so easily broken, however, and she dozed off shortly after midnight, only to be awakened half an hour later by the cessation of movement.
Startled, she opened her eyes and saw that Koros had stopped and was standing motionless in the middle of the road. No inn was in sight, and the eastern sky was still black and strewn with stars.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Silence!” Garth warned in a low voice.
“Why?” she whispered. “What’s happening?”
“I see campfires ahead, where none should be,” Garth replied.
Frima lifted herself up on her hands and stared over the overman’s shoulder. As he had said, several lights were visible on the hillside ahead of them.
“Couldn’t it just be a caravan?” she whispered.
“It could be,” Garth admitted, “but I think it is not. Look how many fires there are.”
Frima peered into the darkness and tried to count the flickering lights; her hand slipped before she had finished, and she bumped down onto the saddle, losing her place.
She didn’t need to finish her count, however; Garth’s point was obvious.
“I estimate thirty fires,” the overman whispered. “At the least. And assuming ten humans to each, that means three hundred people are camped there. I have never heard of so large a caravan. Raiding parties, however, are often such a size.”
“Maybe the caravan set extra fires to scare away bandits,” Frima suggested.
Garth did not bother to reply to that.
“What are you going to do about it?” Frima asked.
“I have not decided,” he replied.
His first impulse had been to make a detour around the encampment, but the thought of going out of his way, even so briefly, annoyed him. He was tempted to ride straight through, as if nothing were out of the ordinary—and if anyone in the camp tried to stop him, well, the Sword of Bheleu could deal with such interference.
In fact, he thought it might be fun to destroy the camp, whether he was bothered directly or not; after all, the fools had settled themselves on the highway, obstructing traffic, and deserved whatever response travelers might be able to make.
He found himself considering with anticipation just how he would go about it. He might burn down the tents first—assuming there were tents—and then hunt down anyone who got out in time. He would pursue them individually, he decided, and skewer each one on the sword, so that he could watch the blood run up the blade and spatter across the ground.
“Garth?” Frima’s voice was worried.
He ignored the girl; nothing she could say would be of interest.
“Garth, the jewel is glowing,” she said.
He glanced up and realized that she was correct. The red light that had tinged the edge of his vision had been neither his imagination nor the approach of dawn, but the glow of the gem.
An instant’s worry vanished. What did it matter, he asked himself, if the stone were to glow? He had made his bargain with Bheleu, and the god would not dare to interfere with his thoughts. The urge to destroy the camp was entirely his own, he told himself.
All the glow did was remind him of the sword’s readiness and waiting power. It occurred to him that he might be able to use it to keep his prey from fleeing. A good thunderstorm would douse the fires and drive the people under shelter, making it more difficult for them to escape his anger. He reached up for the hilt projecting above his shoulder.
“Garth!” Frima said, her voice loud and unsteady.
“Silence, woman!” Garth growled in reply. His hand closed on the sword’s grip, and he felt a surge of strength.
“Old man!” Frima called. “Stop him!”
Garth bellowed and tried to draw the sword; Frima pressed up against his back, holding the scabbard down so that he could not pull the blade free.
Enraged, Garth tried to twist away while simultaneously reaching up with both hands to lift the blade out of its sheath hand over hand.
“King! Help!” Frima called.
The glow of the gem suddenly died, and the stone turned black, darker than the night sky above.
Garth stopped instantly; his hands fell, and the sword slid back into place. His irrational anger had vanished, and with it all thought of assaulting whoever blocked their way. He felt as if a haze had cleared from his thoughts, a haze that had been present in varying measure ever since he had picked the Sword of Bheleu up off the table in the back of the King’s Inn. Even when the sword had been black with soot and unable to hold him directly, he realized, his thoughts had been tainted and muddied by it. Perhaps the most frightening of the sword’s effects was that he was not even aware of its influence until it was broken; it made him believe Bheleu’s reactions and emotions to be his own.
Now, though, he was free again, at least for the moment.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Bheleu is not to be trusted,” the old man’s hideous voice rasped from the darkness. “He would have delayed us here for no good reason, and I do not wish to be thus delayed. Further, I prefer your company, poor as it is, to his.”
“I won’t give you the sword,” Garth insisted. He was wary, and his thoughts had not had time to reorder themselves fully, so he stated his position directly to avoid confusion, on either the King’s part or his own. The old man had made a longer speech than usual, which was, in Garth’s experience, often a sign of trouble. The extra words might be part of a subtle scheme, or a result of the old man’s excitement—and anything that excited the Forgotten King was likely to be unpleasant for mere mortals.
“As you please,” the King replied.
Garth relaxed very slightly. It could be, he told himself, that the old man had spoken the exact truth and that his motives were just as he said—but why had he bothered to explain them?
Frima did not worry herself about that. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” Garth answered, though he was not yet completely certain himself.
The party had continued onward as these events had taken place; when Garth had reached for the sword, he had urged Koros forward, and the warbeast had obeyed, undisturbed by the actions of its riders. The Forgotten King had marched alongside. Now, Garth realized, they were drawing near to the most easterly of the campfires; furthermore, they had been shouting at one another.
“Wait,” he called softly as he signaled the warbeast to stop.
Koros stopped. Garth looked off to the side and saw no sign of the King’s yellow mantle. He looked back, in surprise, wondering where the old man had gone.
Something rustled; he whirled to face forward once again, and found himself looking down
the shaft of a spear.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“An overman!” exclaimed an unfamiliar voice very near at hand—the voice, Garth was sure, of an overman, deeper and more resonant than any human’s.
“Who are you?” Garth demanded. He looked up from the spear poised at his throat and saw that it was clutched in double-thumbed hands below a noseless, red-eyed face. Two other figures stood nearby, one of overman size, the other smaller; both held their weapons ready.
“Who do you think we are, idiot?” the smaller figure asked in unmistakably human tones.
“More importantly, stranger, who are you?” the overman with the spear inquired.
Garth considered his situation and decided that he did not care to admit his identity yet. “I’m just a traveler heading west. Why does it concern you?”
“You travel at night?”
Garth shrugged. “Why not? It’s cooler. I mean you no harm, whoever you are. If you prefer, I will go around your camp, rather than through it. It matters little to me.”
“It may be that you won’t be going anywhere for some time,” the overman who had not previously spoken remarked.
“Why not? Who are you?”
“Who do you think we are?”
“I don’t know,” Garth said. “I didn’t think there were any overmen in Nekutta. Either I was wrong or you have come here from somewhere else—but I have no idea where or why.” This was not exactly true, of course; it did not take much intelligence to guess that the camp was a raiding party from the Yprian Coast, and that these three had been sent out to investigate the noise on the road.
“We didn’t think there were overmen native to Nekutta, either, which is why you still live,” the second overman said. “You may be a spy, perhaps a loner hired by some village to direct us away from it—but we have not previously encountered such a thing. Why would humans hire an overman, when surely they know we have both species among us? And I might suspect you to be a scout for one of our rivals, save that we had thought ourselves the most easterly party; why, then, would you be approaching from the east? Did you circle around unseen, and then become careless on the way back? It seems unlikely. Therefore, stranger, we are puzzled, and want to hear your explanation of yourself before we do you any permanent harm.”
“And I want to know,” the human interjected, “what that thing is you’re riding, and who that is behind you.”
“The animal is a warbeast,” Garth replied, unsure how much of the truth it would be wise to admit. “The girl is Dûsarran and has hired me to escort her home.” That story seemed as good as any and certainly more acceptable than the truth. He could not know what attitude this group had toward the cult of Aghad.
“Ah,” the second overman said. “And who is this Dûsarran? Who are you, that she should trust you enough to hire you?”
“Her name is Frima, Baroness of Skelleth,” Garth answered. He hoped that the title would impress his questioners. He did not care to reveal his own name yet; they might have heard it one way or another. “As for why she should trust me, that is her own concern—but I have been known to her for some time, and my word is good.” He felt an uncomfortable twinge at that last statement, knowing it to be less than the truth.
“Skelleth?” the spear-carrier and the human exclaimed in unison.
“I think we’ve got a real prize here,” the overman added.
“Think what a hostage she’ll be, if she’s really the Baroness!” the human said.
Garth had not considered that. He had assumed that these Yprians would not want to interfere with the friendly relationship between Skelleth and their own land.
“That would not be good for trade,” he said.
“That, fool, is the whole point!” the human declared.
The second overman held out a hand, gesturing the human to silence. “I think I understand,” he said. “You aren’t Yprian, are you?”
“You mean he really is Nekuttan?” the human asked, surprised.
“No! Silence!” The overman’s hand struck the human’s helmet with a dull clunk. Turning back to Garth, he asked, “You’re from Eramma?”
“No,” Garth replied. “I come from Ordunin, in the Northern Waste.”
“Ah, yes. That explains everything.”
Annoyed, Garth said, “Perhaps it explains everything to you, but it does not to me.”
“No, of course not. Come, then, and I’ll explain.” He sheathed his sword and held out a hand in friendship.
Hesitantly, the human returned his own sword to its scabbard, while the first overman lowered his spear.
At the second overman’s urging, Garth dismounted and led Koros, with Frima still astride, into the camp. There was still no sign of the Forgotten King.
Once inside the circle of light from the nearest fire, Garth was able to get a good look at his captors. As he had thought, they were obviously Yprian, wearing the brightly enameled, flaring helmets and gaudy, enameled armor customary on the Coast.
They were not, however, exactly like the Yprians who had traded in Skelleth. The designs and colors on the armor were different, the accents, he realized, subtly altered.
When they had drawn near the fire, Frima was lifted off the warbeast, and both she and it were placed under polite but thorough guard—though Garth was sure that the Yprians were underestimating the warbeast’s strength and that Koros could easily leave anytime it chose.
Garth himself was treated solicitously, led to a comfortable folding stool by the fire, and offered a cup of mulled wine. Wary of drugs, he refused the beverage, but seated himself and waited politely while the other overman made himself comfortable.
When both were settled, the other began his explanation. Garth, upon seeing the differences between this group and those who had come to Skelleth, had already guessed part of it.
The Yprian Coast, it seemed, was not a single united region living at peace with itself, but rather a patchwork of squabbling tribes, some human, some overman, most mixed.
For the last century or two, the situation had been relatively stable; each tribe had its area staked out, and borders were only rarely violated. Raids were not unheard of, by any means, but full-scale wars were a thing of the past. The tribes traded with one another and formed elaborate networks of allies and trading partners, the better to get what they needed. Goods not obtainable on the Coast were bought from the most southwesterly tribe, the Dyn-Hugris, who traded with Dûsarra, and who were consequently the most powerful of the various groups. The Dyn-Hugris, however, were kept in check by an alliance of half a dozen other fairly large and wealthy tribes in the central part of the region. All in all, there had been a stable balance of power and an acceptable division of the available wealth.
Then, almost simultaneously, two things had occurred to disrupt this situation.
Dûsarra had been stricken by plague, its marketplace and warehouses burned and much of the city evacuated. Trade had collapsed. The Dyn-Hugris lost their power base overnight; their control of the trade routes to Dûsarra was suddenly worthless.
In the east, a party of traders had come through the badlands from Eramma and offered to trade with anyone who was interested. The first tribe they encountered had been little more than a small company of bandits, but the second had been the Chuleras, a large and ambitious group previously limited by their poor location and meager resources.
Now, abruptly, the Chuleras had gold, large amounts of it, and were able to hire mercenaries, bribe allies, and generally assert themselves. They had done so with none of the tact the Dyn-Hugris had developed over the centuries and were in the process of driving the six Alliance tribes out of their central homelands.
Even without the resources of Dûsarra, the Dyn-Hugris were a formidable enemy, so instead of retreating westward the six tribes had come south, making the hard trek over the mountains, looking for ne
w homes, new lands, and new wealth.
The Dyn-Hugris, not to be outdone, had sent armies south along their now-useless trade routes.
The old alliances had collapsed under the new strains; now the six tribes, and the Dyn-Hugris as well, were all rivals, gobbling up as much of Nekutta as they could. It had been a pleasant surprise to find it all so poorly defended. Usually a company of Yprians could take over as much land as they pleased by simply moving in and declaring themselves the owners. The local inhabitants, mostly farmers, rarely dared protest.
Conquest was so easy, in fact, that the Yprians became nervous, certain that there had to be a catch somewhere, some dire threat that would arise to thwart them. So far, no such thing had appeared—but Garth’s arrival had been very suspicious. The camp was the foremost outpost of the army of the Khofros, most easterly of the six tribes, and just recently come around the central mountains hoping to claim the entire eastern region of Nekutta. The presence of an overman to the east of them was an unwelcome surprise.
Garth listened to this explanation silently. He realized that he, virtually single-handed, had managed to disrupt completely the society of the Yprian Coast and had thereby caused the invasion of Nekutta by these semibarbaric tribespeople. Both the destruction of Dûsarra and the rise of the Chuleras had been his doing.
Once again, actions he had thought beneficial had led to mass destruction. He wondered if it was possible for him to do anything significant at all that Bheleu and fate would not twist and pervert.
The Yprian, done with his story, asked, “Is that girl really the Baroness of Skelleth?”
Garth had been waiting for this question. “I wanted to impress you,” he replied. “I thought the whole Yprian Coast traded with Skelleth, not just one tribe.”
“Is she the Baroness?” the other persisted.
Garth realized that he was not going to be allowed to dodge the question. “Not anymore,” he said. “She was the Baroness; her husband was recently murdered by his enemies. I doubt that anyone would care much about the widow of a deposed baron. There were no children to claim the title; she was left alone and decided to return to her home in Dûsarra rather than risk her life by staying in Skelleth.”
The Book of Silence Page 28
