Empire of the East

by Fred Saberhagen

  He did not remember crawling into this shelter. Maybe someone had put him to bed here, like an infant. But that did not matter. He raised himself upon one elbow, crackling the dead leaves that he had slept on. The movement awakened a dozen aches in his body. His clothing was all rips and mud. His stomach was hollow with hunger.

  Lying real and solid on the leaves beside him was the short sword that he had taken yesterday from the dead soldier. He saw again in his mind’s eye the thrown stone from his own hand crunching into the soldier’s teeth and bringing out blood. He put out a hand and gripped the captured weapon for a moment by the hilt.

  Somewhere close by, quite near outside the lean-to, a few voices were murmuring together in a steady businesslike fashion; Rolf could not quite make out the words. In another moment he got up to his hands and knees and, leaving the sword behind him, crawled out of the shelter. He emerged almost within the group of three people who sat talking around a small smokeless fire.

  Mewick was one of the group, sitting cross-legged and at ease, his cloak laid aside. Also at the fire was the big blond man that Rolf remembered seeing the night before, and beside this man a woman who resembled him enough to be his sister. When Rolf appeared all three of them fell silent and turned to look at him.

  Once outside the lean-to, Rolf got stiffly to his feet. He addressed his first words to Mewick: “I am sorry, for starting that fight yesterday. I could have gotten you killed.”

  “Yes,” Mewick nodded. “So. But you had reason, if not excuse. From now on you will be sane, hey?”

  “Yes, I will.” Rolf drew in a deep breath. “Will you teach me to fight like you can?”

  Mewick had no quick answer, and the question was allowed to drop for the time being.

  The woman by the fire wore man’s clothes, which was natural enough for camping in the swamp, and her long blond hair was pulled back and bound up into a tight knot.

  “So, your name is Rolf,” she said, hitching herself around to face him more fully. “I am Manka. My husband Loford here and I have had something of your story from Mewick.”

  The blond man nodded solemnly, and the woman went on: “There’s a pool safe to wash in on the other side of the hummock, Rolf. Then come back and have some food, and we’ll talk.”

  Rolf nodded and turned away, going around the lean-to and the little clump of trees which occupied the center of this island of firm ground, some fifteen or twenty paces across. On the side of the hummock away from the fire a steep short bank dropped down to water which looked deeper and clearer than that of the surrounding swamp.

  Only after Rolf had washed, and dressed himself again, and climbed the bank meaning to rejoin the others, did he see a living creature perched high in the biggest of the central trees. Right against the trunk a brownish-gray mass of feathers rested, big as a small man crouching. So dully colored was this form, so motionless, so shapelessly folded upon itself, that Rolf had to look twice to be convinced that it was not a part of the tree. When he thought to look for the giant bird’s feet he saw that they were three-toed, bigger than a reptile’s and armed with even more formidable talons. He still could not see how, under all the feathers, the bird’s head had been folded down out of sight.

  He was still turning his own head to look up into the tree as he rejoined the others around the fire.

  “Strijeef is our friend,” Loford told Rolf, seeing where Rolf’s attention was fixed. “His kind have speech and thought; they call themselves the Silent People. Like our friend Mewick here they have been driven from their own lands. Now they stand here with us, their backs like ours against the sea.”

  Manka had ladled stew from a cooking-pot into a gourd for Rolf. After thanking her and starting to eat, he motioned with his head toward the bird and asked, “He sleeps now?”

  “His folk sleep all day,” Loford said. “Or at least they hide. Full sunlight is a great strain on their eyes, so by daylight their enemies the reptiles will find and kill them when they can. By night it is the birds’ turn to hunt the leatherwings.”

  “I’m glad to hear that someone hunts them.” Rolf nodded. “I wondered why they went flapping back to the Castle every day at sunset.” And then he busied himself with the plentiful good food, meanwhile listening to the others’ talk.

  Mewick was bringing word to the Free Folk in the swamp from other resistance bands who lived and fought along the coast to the north of the Broken Lands. That portion of the seaboard was now also occupied by men and creatures from the East, under the rule of Ekuman’s peer, the Satrap Chup. This Chup was supposed to be even now on his way south to marry Ekuman’s daughter in the Castle.

  And the Satraps of other neighboring lands were said to be coming here, too, for the festivities. Each of them, like Ekuman and Chup, held power in his own region, ruling with the soldiers and under the black banner of the East.

  When there was a pause in the talk, Rolf asked, “I’ve wondered—what is the East? Or who is it? Is there some king over it all?”

  “I have heard different things,” said Loford slowly, “about those who are Ekuman’s overlords; I know almost nothing about them. We are in an odd corner of the world here. I don’t even know much about the higher powers of the West.” Rolf’s face must have shown a dozen more questions struggling to be formulated, for Loford smiled at him. “Yes, there is a West, too, and we are part of it, we who are willing to fight for the chance to live like men. The West has been defeated here. But it is not dead. I think Ekuman’s masters will be too busy elsewhere to send any great new power to his aid—if we can find a way to bring down the power that he has already.”

  There was a little silence. Rolf’s heart leaped up at the thought of bringing down Ekuman, but he had seen the sobering reality of the Satrap’s strength—the long columns of soldiers on parade, meant to overawe, hundreds mounted and thousands more on foot; and the strengthened walls of the great Castle.

  Loford, having finished some private thought of his own, resumed his speech. “If Ekuman can expect no help, neither can we. The people of the Broken Lands will have to break their own chains or continue to wear them.” Shaking his great head sadly, he looked at Mewick. “I had hoped you might bring us word of some free army still in the field in the north. Some prince of the West still surviving there—or at least some government trying to be neutral. That would have been a good encouragement.”

  “Prince Duncan of Islandia survives,” said Mewick. “But I think he has no army on the mainland now. Perhaps beyond the sea are other independent states.” His mournful mouth gave a tiny twitch upward at the corners. “I am here to help, if that encourages anyone.”

  “It does indeed,” Loford said. Then, with a visibly quick change of thought, he threw a narrow-eyed look at Rolf. “Tell me, lad, what do you know of the Elephant?”

  Rolf was taken by surprise. “The Elephant? Why, it’s some wizard’s symbol. I don’t know what it means. I have seen it—maybe six times in all.”

  “Where and when?”

  Rolf thought. “Once, woven into a bit of cloth, that I saw at a magic-show in town. And there is a place up in the Broken Mountains where someone has carved it in the rock—” He went on, enumerating as best he could the times and places where he had glimpsed the strange image of the impossible beast with its prehensile nose and swordlike horns or teeth.

  Loford listened with close attention. “Anything else? Any talk you might have heard, even, especially during the last few days?”

  Rolf shook his head helplessly. “I spent those days plowing in the fields. Until…”

  “Aye, of course.” Loford let out a groaning sigh. “I grasp at straws. But we must try every chance to find the Elephant, before those of the Castle find it.”

  Rolf supposed that the big man was talking about another magically important Elephant-image. “Ask help of a wizard?” he suggested.

  Loford’s jaw dropped. Mewick’s eyebrows went up, his face took on an odd expression, and he made odd choking ga
sps—it took Rolf another moment to realize that Mewick was laughing. Manka’s eyes seemed to flash angrily at first, but then she too had to smile.

  “Have you ever heard of the Big One, child?” she demanded of Rolf, in a voice half-irritated, half-amused.

  A light dawned. Once, long ago, Rolf had been sitting in a market town on Social Night, resting from his play to listen to the talk of men. The amateur wizards of the countryside had been assembled, discussing the feats of the professionals. The Big One from south of the delta would have done such and such a thing easily, someone had said, using the name as a standard of excellence. And the men listening had nodded soberly, their farmer-beards bobbing. Yes, the Big One. The name impressed them all, and for the little boy Rolf it had for a time afterward called up a mental picture of an enormous and powerful being, nodding benignly over farm and hill and marsh.

  “No, it is all right,” Loford, now smiling himself, assured Rolf. “You give me good advice. I must keep in mind that I am far from being the greatest wizard in the world.” His smile vanished. “I am just the best one we now have available, since the Old One was taken under the Castle to die.”

  Mewick said to him, “You must take over the Old One’s leadership in magic. But who is going to lead in other matters, now that he is gone? I speak plainly. You are not—not too practical, always, I think.”

  “Yes, yes, I know that I am not.” Loford sounded irritated. “Thomas, perhaps. I hope he will lead. Oh, he’s brave enough, and as much set against the Castle as anyone. But to really lead, to seize responsibility, that’s something else again.”

  The talk went on. Manka ladled out more stew for Rolf, and he went on eating and listening. Always the thoughts and plans of the others came looping back to the mysterious Elephant. Rolf came gradually to understand that they were speaking of something more than an image, that the name meant some thing or creature of the Old World still existing, here somewhere in the Broken Lands. And this creature or thing loomed in the near future with terrible importance for East and West alike. This much—but, maddeningly, no more—could Loford’s powers tell him of the Elephant.

  Mewick suddenly stopped talking in mid-sentence, his eyes turned skyward, one hand shot out and frozen in a gesture meant to keep the others still. But it was too late, they had been discovered from above, in spite of the trees’ shelter.

  Overhead there sounded a clangorous shouting of reptiles. A dozen of the flying creatures were diving to the attack, coming in at an angle under the trees, talons spread, long snouts open to bare their teeth.

  Rolf dived into the shelter and jumped out again with his sword. Mewick and Manka had already caught up bows and quivers from their small pile of equipment beside the fire; in another instant one of the attackers was flopping on the ground at Rolf’s feet, transfixed by an arrow.

  The main target of the attack, Rolf saw, was the bird huddled in the tree. The bird roused itself as the reptiles, momentarily baffled by branches, came whirling around it; but it seemed to be blinded, rendered stupid by the light.

  Before the scaly ones could work their way in among the branches, their attack was broken up. Arrow after arrow sang at them, hitting more often than not. And Rolf leaped right in among the lower branches, sword thrusting and slashing high and wide. He could not be sure that he wounded any of the reptiles, though he harvested leaves and twigs in plenty. But between sword and arrows the leatherwings were forced to retreat, whirling upward in a shrieking swarm of gray-green rage. Arrows had brought down four of them, and these Rolf now had the satisfaction of finishing with his blade. They screamed words at him as they died, half-comprehensible curses and threats; still the slaughtering meant no more to him than killing beasts.

  Having risen out of bow-shot, the surviving reptiles maintained a flying circle directly above the hummock, cawing and screaming mightily.

  “When they do that, it means there’s soldiers coming,” Manka said. She had already slung her bow on her back and was moving speedily to gather up the rest of the camp’s scanty equipment. “Quick, young one, go and uncover the canoe.”

  Rolf had seen the dugout, camouflaged by branches, floating against the bank near the pool where he had washed. He ran now to load things into it. Manka called to the bird. Following her voice it descended from the tree, impressive talons groping blindly and clumsily as it walked, feeling for the prow of the canoe. With one surprising extension of its wings it mounted there and perched, muffling itself in folded wings so that it resembled some badly-stuffed figurehead.

  Mewick, a bow still in his hands, was trotting anxiously from one side of the hummock to the other, trying to learn from which direction the soldiers were approaching. Loford, standing ankle-deep at the water’s edge beside the canoe, kept bending and scooping up massive handfuls of grayish swamp-bottom muck. Each time he muttered over the glob, and then let it dribble back into the water. At last one string of droplets veered from the vertical, went spraying out sideways as if caught by a strong blast of wind.

  Loford pointed in the same direction. “They come from that way, Mewick,” he called out softly.

  “Then let us go the other way, quick!” Mewick came running to the canoe.

  But Loford was now muttering faster than ever, and making odd sweeping motions with his arms, like a man trying to swim backward through the air. His fingertips threw droplets of muck. He kept up this gesticulating even while Manka was guiding him to take his seat in the dugout, so that he nearly swamped it in his clumsiness, for all the others could do to maintain balance. And I thought him a warrior! said Rolf to himself with a pang, looking back impatiently from his position in the foremost seat. Then Rolf’s jaw began to drop. He saw ripples growing in the swamp-water, swells that came from no wind or current. Growing in amplitude with each motion of the Big One’s steadily sweeping arms, the waves followed the timing of those arms; and they did not spread like ordinary waves but instead, gathered together building higher.

  Manka shoved off from shore, and then paddled from the rear seat, while the nexus of disturbed water raised by the Big One’s magic followed sluggishly after the canoe. Rolf paddled in the front, his sword in the canoe bottom ready to hand. Mewick, still holding the bow with a long arrow nocked, was in the second seat, whispering Rolf directions on which way to steer among the rotting tree-stumps and the small overgrown hummocks of firm land. Rolf kept glancing back. In the third seat, Loford still labored to build his spell. He shifted his great weight awkwardly and once more nearly rolled the canoe. Rolf thought that they were going over, but a muddy projection like a sheeted hand bulged up above the surface of the water to hold, briefly but strongly, against the gunwale. Then Rolf understood that he was witnessing the raising of an elemental, and his respect for Loford jumped to a new high.

  The reptiles had seen the first of the raising too, for one of them now left the circular formation that was holding over the canoe, and flew back over the big hummock the canoe had just left, crying out a warning.

  But the warning might be too late to do the pursuing but still invisible soldiers any good. Urged on by the ever smaller and more precise movements of Loford’s hands, the disturbance in the shallow water behind the canoe had become a slow, fantastic boil, which mounted higher and higher and now raced away, sweeping back around the big hummock, beyond which the enemy must be drawing near.

  Now the water around the canoe was grown quite still again. As if by some command, Rolf and Manka had both ceased to paddle. All but the blinded bird sat looking back and waiting.

  Loford’s hands were still outspread. “Paddle!” he urged, in a sudden fierce whisper. For a moment Rolf was unable to obey—because he saw now, on the other side of the big hummock, and mounting almost instantly to the height of its central trees, a great upwelling structure of mud and slime and water. Shouts greeted the elemental, the startled and fearful voices of men enough to fill many canoes. Rolf could not see those men, but beyond the trees he could see the thing of mud march
ing among them ponderously. It was gray and black, and shiny as if with grease, and what little shape it had oozed from it as it moved.

  Screams rang out that came from no reptilian throats, and then sharp splashing told of men floundering clear of overturned boats. There followed more confused yelling, and then the rhythmic work of paddles straining in retreat.

  “Paddle!” Loford said. “It may turn back now after us.”

  Rolf paddled, at Mewick’s direction steering into a channel of sorts that ran between half-formed banks of earth.

  “Paddle!” Loford urged again, though Rolf and Manka were already hard at work. Rolf’s hasty glance over his shoulder showed him that the elemental, shrunken but still tall as a man, had come racing back around the hummock and was in full pursuit of its creator and the boat that bore him. The wave-shape jetted watery, unintelligible sounds in little bursts of spray; it shrank still more as it closed the distance between itself and the canoe. Loford was soothing the thing he had raised up, soothing and destroying it, his voice whispering to it once more, his hands working with firm, down-pressing gestures.

  Such life as the elemental had went ebbing away from it with its volume. What finally came purling under the dug-out was no more than a sluggish wave, roiling the tiny green plants that scummed the water’s surface. As it passed, lifting him, Rolf saw turning within it the thonged sandal of a Castle soldier. He watched in vain to see if any more satisfying trophy might be displayed.

  Screaming in rage, but staying impotently out of bow-shot, the reptiles still followed the canoe. In a little while, trees began to close more thickly over the waterway the craft was following, and a mass of swamp-forest ahead promised almost complete shelter. Now in their frustrated fury a few of the reptiles dared to dive, screeching, at the bird which still perched motionless upon the dugout’s prow.

  Rolf was quick to drop the paddle and grab his sword again. With Mewick’s arrows flying at them and the sword-blade singing past their heads, the leatherwings had to sheer away. They climbed again, and disappeared above what was becoming an almost solid roof of greenery.