The Burning City

by Jerry Pournelle

  Willow looked startled. “You don’t either.”

  “I’m helping now.”

  “Well, yes, thank you. You don’t do it often. Well, it’s because the ponies don’t like you.”

  “What I meant was, you don’t seem to notice,” Whandall said. “Morth has lived in Tep’s Town longer than I’ve been alive, but he’s a looker. Do you see him as a…?”

  “Yes. Maybe.” Willow laughed uneasily. “He’s a funny-looking Lordkin? Crazy and dangerous, and sometimes he can do something we can’t.”

  They set off with the wagon. They saw Morth rock hopping downstream until the river turned.

  Late afternoon. Whandall heaved upward while the ponies pulled. The wagon lurched, rolled, and was back into riverbed that was shallow and flat.

  “I quit,” Willow said.

  Whandall looked up. She was riding, he was walking… but she was exhausted. The restive ponies had worn her out.

  “We have to get the wagon on shore,” he said.

  “Do we really?”

  “The water thing that hunts Morth, it’s coming up the river. We don’t want to be in the way. And there isn’t any shore yet…”

  So they wrestled the wagon through another eighty paces of rough water. Then there was a strip of sand and a sloping bank they could push the wagon up, and Willow could sleep forty feet above the water.

  Whandall had worked hard too. Had worked. He was new to that.

  It was good to lie down on warm earth. The children lay about him, all asleep. Willow was curled up with a tree root for a pillow, comfortably distant from the Lordkin, with ponies tethered on either side, one rope strung between two trees. Whandall watched her for a time, his mind adrift.

  The ponies looked up at him. He felt the heat of their stare.

  They stood. They pulled in opposite directions, a steady pressure. The rope parted silently. They walked directly toward him.

  Whandall scrambled to his feet, already choosing a tree to climb, but a stallion trotted to block it. He picked another and that was blocked. The rocks? Yes, the rock slope behind him: he ran toward it ahead of a pair of ponies charging at full tilt, their horns lowered.

  It all had a dreadful familiarity. He knew exactly what to do because the ponies behaved exactly like a pair of Bull Pizzle bullies, and if he couldn’t get around them he’d be dead. He was climbing the rocks before they reached him, and then the rocks impeded their hooves. But the slope was steep. Stones rolled—a pony screamed—he kicked a few loose on purpose, and now he was high above them. He’d have taunted them like frustrated Bull Pizzle Lordkin—

  But ponies didn’t act like this!

  Ensorcelled?

  He reached into his pants, into the concealed pouch, and found Morth’s handful of gold dust. He tossed a cloud of gold over them.

  The ponies went mad, scrambling at the slope, risking their hooves and their bones and their lives. Then they paused… looked at each other… turned and trotted, then galloped back toward the wagon.

  Wild magic would strengthen a spell but disrupt it too, Morth had said. But who could have spelled these ponies if not Morth of Atlantis? Whandall scrambled down the slope, chasing the bonehead ponies.

  Willow was standing in the wagon bed holding a sever. Morth stood out of range, laughing, ignoring the ponies who were now menacing him. The air around him seemed to sizzle.

  Whandall called, “Willow!”

  She was near tears and glad to see him. “He wanted—I don’t know what he wanted, I didn’t let him get that far.”

  Morth was offended. “No woman would have reason to be insulted! I’d never have offered if I hadn’t seen something of lost Atlantis in you. I have gold!” He held a yellow chunk the size of a child’s head in each hand. He stood as if bracketed by suns.

  “Willow Ropewalker, I have power! I can protect you from whatever dangers await us. Can you hold a man when you lose your youth? You don’t have to get old! And I don’t either!”

  The heat rose up in Whandall, but only the merest flicker. He reached for Yangin-Atep, but Yangin-Atep was gone. He drew his knife. He saw Morth’s hands rise. Willow raised the sever as if she would throw it. “Stop!” she commanded.

  Morth turned toward her, his back toward Whandall. “What must I do to convince you I mean no harm? Willow, forget what I spoke—”

  “Leave her mind alone!”

  Morth laughed. His hands wove invisible threads. A great calm settled on Whandall. He knew that this was the spell that had killed his father.

  Smiling gently, he strolled toward Morth. Morth watched with interest. Whandall was well within range. Now… but first he gave warning.

  “Morth, do you think that I can’t kill a man without getting angry first?”

  “Seshmarl, you surprise me.”

  “Leave us. We’ve helped each other, but you don’t need us anymore.”

  “Oh, you need me,” Morth said. His eyes flicked away and back, and he laughed again. Whandall held his pose. Morth would be dead before he had spat out the first syllable of a spell.

  “You need me elsewhere, Seshmarl! So, here is more gold, refined.” Morth dropped the gold and danced away. He was ten paces uphill from Whandall’s reflexive lunge, dancing between bouquets of swords and slashing laurels faster than the plants could move. In the gathering dusk he paused on the rocky crest and shouted downstream.

  “You!”

  A wave was rolling up the river.

  Tidal bore, a later age would call such a thing. It followed the river’s meandering path, growing taller as it came. It would drown this camp. Morth watched it and laughed.

  “You! Aquarius!” Morth was tiny with distance, but they heard him clearly. “You great stupid wall of water, do you know that you’ve made me rich? Now see if you can follow me!” And Morth ran.

  The fastest Lordkin chased by the most savage band had never run so fast as Morth. The wave left the river’s course and tried to follow him, straight up a hillside and along the crest, dwindling, slumping. Morth’s manic laughter followed him down a hill and up another, straight toward the distant white-topped cone of Mount Joy, until he was no more than a bright dot on the mind’s eye.

  They waited until evening before going to the river for drinking water. The river roiled with white froth and weird currents even where there were no rocks.

  CHAPTER

  39

  At dusk Whandall tried to start a cook fire, but the power had left him. There was plenty of cooked meat from Morth’s feast, but there would be no more cooking until they could learn to make fire.

  The absence of Yangin-Atep was loss and gain, like a toothache gone and the tooth with it.

  Carver rejoined them by the light of a setting half-moon.

  Whandall was ready to kill him even after he knew that the sound of a mare and wagon thrashing through brush wasn’t a dozen coyotes. Fool kinless! Maybe the mare’s magic led him through that maze of death.

  Willow spoke before Whandall could. “Brother, have you been traveling through chaparral by dark?”

  “Willow! I was worried—”

  Her voice was low and her speech was refined, and Whandall listened in awe and dread. He never wanted to hear her speak to him that way.

  Carver lay between them. In the night, when Willow might be asleep, he rolled toward Whandall and said, “I was afraid for her. I was afraid.”

  Whandall whispered, “I hear you.”

  Silence.

  “You missed all the excitement. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  There were stretches of narrow beach. Elsewhere they could rock-hop or wade. But the moment came when they reached a deep pool with vertical walls on either side.

  Carver said, “I’m going to teach you to swim.”

  At first it seemed the cold would kill him. Its bite eased quickly. The bottom was soft mud, a delight to the toes. The water came to his chin. He couldn’t really drown. Still, for a time it felt like Carver and Willow had decided
to drown him. Sweep your arms to push the water back and breathe in while the water isn’t in your face. Breathe out anytime….

  He began to feel the how and why of it. But already the trees hid the sun, and he was exhausted and shaking with cold. And ahead was the river, with no way up the bank. They would have to go on. How far Whandall didn’t know.

  There was no fire. They ate cold meat and berries by the light of a growing moon.

  The night closed down while the elders described their river trip, and the swimming lesson, amid much laughter.

  Presently Whandall asked of nobody in particular, “What do you think is out there?”

  “We never get lookers from the other side of the forest,” Carver said. “Maybe there’s nothing. Maybe nothing but farms or herdsmen.”

  “Or more forest, or nothing at all,” Whandall said.

  “No Lordkin, anyway,” Willow said.

  “Doesn’t mean there can’t be…”—Carver searched for a better word, then gave up—”… thieves. Or old stories about Lordkin. We don’t know that they don’t know about Lordkin. Tomorrow you stay with the children, Whandall. They couldn’t keep up anyway—”

  “Carver, I can swim! You taught me!”

  “You learned fast too,” Willow assured him. Her hand was on his arm; she hadn’t done that before. “Now you know how to swim in a pool, Whandall. If you ever fall in the water, you might even get out alive. But we’ll be wading in a running river—”

  “You shouldn’t come anyway,” Carver said. “You shouldn’t be seen.”

  “We’ll take Carter and the severs… better leave you one sever for the coyotes, Whandall. We’ll come back when we know where the river goes.”

  Whandall wished he could see their faces. He was just as glad that they couldn’t see his.

  For two days Whandall kept himself and the children busy widening the path to the river, giving them more safe space to roam. Whandall and Hammer found unwary prey at the edges of the scorch. Hammer knew how to fish. He tried to teach Whandall, and Whandall caught two. They ate them raw.

  Feeding the ponies was difficult. They couldn’t be let loose to graze, because no one but Willow could catch them. Whandall gathered anything that looked like grass or straw, and the children carried the fodder up to where the ponies were tethered. They had to carry water as well. If Whandall came near the ponies, they menaced him with their horns and strained at the ropes holding them to trees. More than once Whandall was grateful that the Ropewalkers knew their craft.

  But all three of the Ropewalker family were gone, leaving him with the four Miller children and one of the wagons. The wagon with the bottles and the gold.

  Whandall knew nothing of kinless families, loyalties, infighting, grudges. It worried him.

  Carver and Willow and Carter Ropewalker might cease to need him very soon. It might have happened already. A Lordkin with a knife would be all he was and all he had, for whatever that might mean to strangers on this side of the forest.

  In Tep’s Town, a Lordkin with a knife need be nothing more.

  He could go back. What could stop him?

  But strangers guarded the Placehold, men brought home by Placehold women during the past few years. They could protect the house if they had the nerve; they might have lost it already; they had little in common with Whandall Placehold. Elriss and Wanshig were friends, but they were together with their children most of the time. Wess had another man, and another after that, and never came back to Whandall. Other women were friends for a day or a week, never more. Alferth’s wine wagons had nothing to carry. What was there to hold Whandall in Tep’s Town?

  Here on the other side of the forest, Lordkin might be unknown.

  He did not know how he would survive where he could not simply gather what he needed. But kinless knew how to make things happen; it wasn’t all luck and a Lordkin knife. They could teach Whandall, as they’d taught him to swim. He’d brought them out of the burning city. They owed him.

  And there was Willow. If only. A Lordkin could have a kinless woman, but only by force, and he could not force Willow.

  He could treat her—he had treated her—with the respect he would give a Lordkin woman. She seemed to have lost her fear of him, and he was glad of that. But why would Willow look at a Lordkin male?

  It was not too late to go back. Take the Miller children. Give them over to the first kinless he met.

  These thoughts played through his mind while he hunted food for the children and tried to keep them out of trouble.

  At the next noon the Ropewalkers were back.

  “A road,” Willow told them. “And a long way up the road are some houses.”

  “How far?” Whandall asked.

  “We can be to the road tomorrow afternoon if we start now.”

  Whandall thought about that. “What are the people like?”

  “We didn’t see any people,” Willow said.

  “We didn’t want to be seen,” Carver said. “So we didn’t get very close.”

  “What are the houses like?” Whandall asked.

  “Squarish, made of wood. Solid looking, well made. Roofs like this.” He held his hands to indicate a peaked roof, unlike the flat roofs that were more usual in Tep’s Town. “Very solid.”

  “Interesting,” Whandall said. “Like Lords’ houses? Made by people not afraid of burning?”

  “Yes!” Willow clapped her hands. “I never thought of that, but yes!”

  Whandall got up. “I’ll load the wagon. You’ll have to hitch the ponies.”

  PART SIX

  The Bison Tribe

  CHAPTER

  40

  The ponies were as big as Lords’ horses now, and each had a spiral horn, larger than a Lordkin knife, growing from his forehead. Outside conditions had bleached them: they were as white as chalk, with long silky manes. They looked nothing like the kinless ponies they’d been. The mare was nearly as big as the stallions, but her horn was smaller, and she hadn’t lost the gray coloring. She was tame.

  The stallions were not tame. They went frantic when Whandall or Carver approached them. They wouldn’t attack the children, but only Willow could bridle them and hitch them to the wagon. If she tried to ride on the wagon they stopped and waited until she walked ahead again.

  One more night on the river. Whandall sat and stared at the water. What would they find ahead? What would Willow do? She lay asleep next to her brother. Her straight black hair was a tangle and she slept from exhaustion, and Whandall thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He wondered at that. Magic?

  They started early the next day, and at noon they came to a bend in the river. Carter pointed excitedly. “The road is just up there.” He pointed up the steep slope.

  There were trees in the way. Whandall scouted out a route to the road. By going around they could avoid most of the trees, but finally there was no choice. They’d have to cut two trees to get through.

  Neither tree seemed to be guarded by other plants. There were few plants in the forest, and those were just bushes and leafy plants, without thorns. They didn’t move when approached.

  This tree was broad-leafed, the trunk thinner than a man’s body. Whandall bowed to it as he’d seen Kreeg Miller do, then chopped a deep notch on one side in the direction he wanted it to fall. Then he and Carver chopped on the other side until it fell, not quite where he wanted, but out of the way.

  The other, larger tree dropped exactly where Whandall aimed it, and they were free to go to the road. Willow brought up the horses and wagon. “You bowed to the tree,” she said.

  Whandall shrugged. “Woodsmen do that.”

  Willow giggled. “To redwoods,” she said. “Not to all the trees. Just redwoods.”

  “There aren’t any redwoods here.”

  Willow’s smile faded slightly. “I know.”

  “You care?”

  She said, “Grandmother loved them. I think we protected each other, humans and redwoods, before the Lord
kin came. Here they’re gone.”

  “Maybe we’ll find more,” Whandall said. He looked at the trees he’d felled. “We won’t run out of wood, anyway. Maybe someone will have a fire.”

  “I hope so,” Willow said. “Bathing in cold water. Ugh.”

  Kinless women took baths every day, Whandall had learned, even when there wasn’t soap or hot water, nothing but a stream. It seemed a strange custom. He’d jumped in himself, and whooped and thrashed like the others, to show that he too could stand cold.

  The road was no more than a deeply rutted track, but while the river itself wandered in sweeping curves like a snake, the road was straight. Here and there the river had changed course to undermine the road. There the road curved away from the river, then straightened out again.

  They had jerked meat, and bread they’d baked when they had fire. Evening found them on the road. Just after dusk Carver looked at the night sky. “We’re going north,” he said.

  “How do you know that?” Whandall asked.

  “Stars,” Willow said. “Father taught Carver how to read stars.”

  “It’s hard,” Carver said. “I looked last night, and I couldn’t tell. There are more stars here. Lots more, too many to recognize! This early in the evening it looks right. But when it’s dark there are thousands and thousands of stars.”

  “What are stars?” Carter asked.

  “Dargramnet…” Whandall hesitated. “My mother’s mother. She said the stars are cook fires of our ancestors. Cook fires and bonfires to Yangin-Atep.”

  “You hesitated,” Willow said. “You do that when you speak of your family. Why?”

  “We—the Lordkin—don’t talk about families to strangers,” Whandall said. “Or even close friends.”

  “Why not?”

  Whandall shook his head. “We just don’t. I think part of it is certainty. You know who your mother is, but not always your father, and your mother might go off anytime. Even when you think you know—but you know, don’t you? How?”