God Stalk

by P. C. Hodgell

  Instead, she and Jorin had gone on with the business that had brought them here in the first place: learning how to hunt. Night after night, they stalked rabbits, quail, and roebuck. Blind Jorin's ears and nose were keen enough to guide him toward the mark, but the quarry nearly always took fright long before he was in striking range. When it broke, Jame (who had been creeping up on the opposite side) would leap to her feet and try to turn it back toward the cat. They could sometimes keep it boxed between them for several turns, both chirping excitedly, but so far success had always evaded them in the end. Tonight, a doe bolted straight into Jorin, knocking him over, and then streaked off into the darkness with the ounce in wild pursuit. A few minutes later, he came trotting back, panting and obviously pleased with himself. It was all a game as far as he was concerned: the instinct to kill had not yet ripened in him. They drank at a mountain stream, then climbed the highest nearby hill to watch the sun rise over the eastern plain.

  The sky had turned the color of wild honey. Golden light permeated the air, transforming the blades of grass that waved about them into a living bronze relief peopled with small animals and insects stirring after the long night. Far to the south, a gray-prowed rack of clouds sailed through the glowing air. Lightning flashed in its belly and the mutter of distant thunder reached them, but little rain would fall, for Tai-tastigon was experiencing days of growing drought. Below, the city rode at anchor in a sea of mist, pinnacles catching the clearer light that was already turning the peaks above to rose.

  It was time to be getting home.

  They trotted side by side through the gray streets of the waking city. For the ounce, there was only the anticipation of breakfast; for the girl, as always the fear that someone from the nearby catteries would recognize the cub's quality through his stained fur and raise the unanswerable cry of thief. This morning they hardly met anyone, which made the shock all the greater when, turning under the old gatehouse, they found their way blocked by a single burly figure.

  Jame had just time to note the eye patch and the broad, cruel grin when a footstep behind her made her whirl. Her raised forearm went numb with the blow but did not fully block it. The iron head of the club glanced off her right temple, seemed to lift her sideways off the ground. She was on the pavement with her back to the inner wall of the arch. There was a great roaring in her head, and blood dripped down on the cobbles by her hand. Jorin crouched before her, terrified. Someone was laughing. A dark form strode forward, bent and caught the cub by the scruff of its neck. Steel glinted. A knife . . .

  Jame screamed and sprang. The old war cry echoed deafeningly off the archway stones. For a moment she saw Bortis's startled expression, and then he was gone. In his place, something cowered against the opposite wall, hands over its face, gurgling.

  This time she did not hear the other man approach nor recall his presence until the back of her skull seemed to explode. She found herself lying face down on the cobbles without remembering having fallen. Two boots were very close to her face. He was standing over her, poised for the killing blow.

  Rapid, heavy footsteps echoed under the arch, approaching. Something struck her left arm lightly. "Pardon," said a deep, preoccupied voice up somewhere near the ceiling, and the boots in front of her both left the ground simultaneously. Overhead, there was the sound of teeth clattering together, with a screech diced fine between clicks. The club fell, narrowly missing her hand. A moment later, some much larger object crashed to earth a good twelve feet away. The shriek, trailing after it, ended abruptly on impact. Large, gentle hands turned her over. The movement unleashed pain and red-shot darkness.

  She was being carried . . . no, she was in the kitchen on the floor. The same hands were taking off her cap, probing carefully at the knot of pain beneath. , ". . . would have cracked the skull if not for all this hair," a deep voice said.

  Above, a bearded, frowning visage; beyond, other faces, another voice: "Did you see what that cat did to his face?"

  "It wasn't Jorin!" Her own voice, shrill, wild, "It was. . ."

  The Kendar's palm pressed lightly on her mouth. Over it, she saw Marplet standing at the street door. .

  "I'm sorry," he said, quite distinctly.

  Darkness closed in again.

  * * *

  "IT WAS THE RATHORN battle cry that did it," said Marc, sitting down rather stiffly on the floor so she would not have to look up at him. "That sound would have raised anyone who ever fought under the Gray Lord up off a pyre, much less out of whatever fog it was that I'd managed to lose myself in."

  "Well, all I can say is that you must have risen—or descended, in this case—pretty fast to have gotten to the gatehouse so quickly. What did you do, jump out the loft window?"

  "No," said the big Kendar, quite seriously. "I climbed down two stories and then, to save time, fell the rest of the way."

  Jame started to laugh, then stopped suddenly, making a grab for her head. This gesture also ended abruptly, with a half-stifled yelp of pain. She hardly knew which hurt more, her head or her arm, which was mottled black and blue from elbow to wrist and should by rights be not only bruised but broken. It was now four days after the attack. She had slept off the worst of its effects and was left only with a raging headache, occasional double vision, and a scar forming just under the hairline of the right temple that would be with her the rest of her life. She had gotten off far more lightly than she deserved, and she knew it.

  "Maybe you should get some more sleep," said Marc, regarding her critically. "We can talk later."

  "No, now—if you don't mind. I've too many questions hoarded up, and you know what a rocky pillow those make. Tell me this much at least: where were you going that night I ran into you in the alley?"

  "I suppose I was trying to reach the caravan grounds," he said slowly. "I was going to take passage across the Ebonbane. Another journey. Sweet Trinity, how many there have been."

  He was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on memory. Jame, watching him, realized that her question had sent him much farther back in time than she had intended.

  "Ah, it's a long road that I've walked," he said at last, quietly, as if to himself. "Mile after mile, league upon league. And when I first set out, I thought it would only be for a few days, just a little hunting trip by myself to escape the other boys' teasing. That was nearly eighty years ago. Even then I stood head and shoulders over all of them, too big a target for laughter to miss. It was quiet enough when I came back, though. The gate stood open. The guard lay across the threshold with his throat cut. Inside, dead, all dead, my lord, my family, betrayed by a hall guest who had opened the gate one dark night to tribesmen from the hills. I tracked that man down," he said, sounding almost surprised by the memory. "I took my great-grandfather's war axe, which the hall guest had stolen, out of his hand and split his skull with it. His kin hunted me through the mountains half that winter. I killed most of them. Ah, but it was a red, red time. Then I came south into the Riverland and grew to manhood there, searching for a Highborn who would give me hearth space, a new home to replace the one destroyed."

  "Surely someone must have been willing to take you in," Jame protested. "After such a loss, it would only be fair."

  Marc shook his head regretfully.

  "Fairness isn't a consideration anymore," he said, "not, at least, for most Kendars. Too many holdings have been lost in recent years, too many lords killed, their people rendered homeless. The surviving Highborn can make their own terms now. The only choice for many of us is to become yondri-gon, threshold-dwellers, in the house of some lord who often makes us pay our way by leasing us out as warriors, craftsmen, or scholars. Some of us go for years without seeing the threshold we supposedly occupy or gaining any pledge of eventual acceptance there. That was my situation. For thirty-six years, I soldiered from one end of Rathillien to the other as a yondri of the Lord Caineron. Not that I cared much for fighting; that winter in the mountains had taken away my taste for bloodshed. Few care to meet a man my siz
e in battle, though, and it helps to feign an occasional berserker fit. Oh, I was worth something to my lord and hoped finally to win a permanent place in his household. The fall of Ganth Gray Lord changed all that."

  "Ganth of Knorth?" said Jame. "Dally told me a little about him, but it was pretty garbled. Who was he, anyway?"

  "Why, Glendar's heir, Highlord of the Kencyrath. He raised the central houses under the rathorn banner to fight the Seven Kings and would have won too if the border keeps had supported him, his allies had proved true . . . and he hadn't gone mad. Anyway, there was a pitched battle, defeat, and exile for the Gray Lord.

  "I didn't fare much better. My Lord Caineron was slain in the fight and I was cast adrift again, no light thing for a man nearing middle-age. No Riverland lord would so much as look at me after that, so I came east. More than thirty years ago, that was. Harth of East Kenshold took me in, one more graying yondri to warm himself by his fire. Ah, he was a fine man, a lord of the old stamp. He only sent his threshold-dwellers out once, when the Five asked for help during the Lower Town crisis. Old Ishtier was high priest then."

  "He still is," said Jame.

  Marc stared at her. "But that was seven years ago, and he'd already been here a good twenty years before that! He must have refused recall again, Trinity only knows why. I shouldn't think that any priest would care to stay in this god-infested place beyond his term. Have they at least sent more acolytes to help him?"

  "I don't think so. What happened to the ones he had?"

  "All dead, drowned trying to round the Cape of the Lost in storm season, trying to get beyond the Ebonbane. We passed them coming out of the city as we marched in, but not a word did they have for us. I've never seen Kencyrs look so scared."

  "That is odd. There's the Lower Town Monster, of course, but if it didn't panic me, why should it them? Do you know of any other reason?"

  "None," he said, shaking his head in bewilderment. "After that greeting, you may be sure we kept our eyes open; but none of us saw anything but fire and street fighting, the Thieves' Guild having just been set on its ear by the last Council session and the assassination of Master Tane, the Sirdan's chief rival. No, all we got out of that trip were burns and a topic for five years of winter eves."

  "Then one night the riders came down on us from the north, yes, out of the Haunted Lands. Three score of them there were, all in black, and they were Kencyr, though I've never seen their like before. Their armor was like something out of an old song, all hardened leather and steel, hacked and dented, and their swords were black with blood. They tore into us without so much as a word. We were fighting for our lives before most of us were fully awake, and a long battle it was, under torch and moon. They were devilish hard to kill. When we did draw blood, it ate into our flesh and pitted our weapons. They penetrated every room in the keep, had a look around, and then fought their way out again. And all that time their leader sat his brute of a horse on the hilltop, watching. Then the cocks began to crow. We saw their banner as they rode away, a black horse on a red field."

  Jame whistled softly. "The device of Gerridon, Master of Knorth. Do you suppose that's who it really was?"

  "If he got the immortality he was after, yes. But he's not had everything his own way for all of that: his left hand was missing."

  "At any rate, that's the last action I fought for my Lord Harth. He was a brave old man and stood with us shield to shield all that long night. Their blood was his undoing. I've seen men burned less on their own pyres. The horrible thing was that he lived nearly two years after that, the flesh slowly crumbling away from his living bones. When he finally died, his son told us yondri that we no longer had a place there. Six of us started out for Tai-tastigon. I was the only one who arrived."

  Silence fell between them for a long moment. Marc stared at the floor and Jame at him, not knowing what to say. Then he gave himself a shake like a dog leaving deep water and smiled at her.

  "Enough of that. They tell me below that you come from East Kenshold too, though I could have sworn I knew everyone there."

  He undoubtedly had, Jame thought, and was perfectly aware that she had never crossed its threshold. This was simply his way of giving her room to maneuver around the truth if she wished to. It took a genuine effort not to do so.

  "They say that because it's the only answer that makes any sense to them," she said. "In fact, I came down out of the Haunted Lands, from a keep near the Barrier."

  Marc regarded her with amazement. "But the only thing up there is North Kenshold, and that was abandoned nearly three centuries ago."

  It was Jame's turn to look confused. "Do you mean to say that my people weren't the original settlers? But then who in all the names of God were they?"

  "Perhaps I know," the big Kendar said after a moment's hard thought. "You see, when the Gray Lord rode into exile, it was for the Eastern Lands that he was bound. But the report is that he died crossing the Ebonbane. Most of his people turned back then. A few went on, however, passing Tai-tastigon in the dark of the moon and were never heard of again—until now. Those must have been your people."

  "But if that's true," Jame protested, "why didn't they tell me about it?"

  "Ganth would have wanted it that way. When the Kencyr lords, his own allies, let the Seven Kings strip him of power, he threw down his name as well, in a sense leaving it and his shame with them in the Riverland. His people, including your father, must have honored his wishes after his death. How many of the household are left?"

  "Only myself, and possibly my twin brother Tori. Like you, I came back to a dead keep. Marc, what's a rathorn?"

  "Why, it's something like a horse except that it has two horns, scale armor on its chest and belly, and fangs. Some of them also have a taste for man-flesh. Beautiful creatures they are, but nothing more vicious walks the earth—which may be why Glendar adopted one as the family crest when he took over from Gerridon."

  Jame had removed the loose stones in the wall behind her and drawn out the knapsack. Now the small, oblong package was in her hands, and she was gingerly unwrapping it.

  "Does it look like this?" she asked, holding out its contents to him on the cloth.

  Marc examined the ring with its engraved emerald, which encircled what appeared to be a small bunch of twigs held together with brown parchment. "Aye, that's the beast," he said at last, "and this, I think, is the seal of the Gray Lord himself, lost these many years. But what's stuck through it?"

  "A finger," said Jame, not looking at it. "My father's. I tried to pull the ring off to take it to my brother. All the fingers on the other hand went as I was prying loose the sword hilt. I looked up into his face, and he was staring down at me—without eyes." She shuddered. The thing slid off the cloth onto her knee. Marc picked it up quickly and held it cupped in his big hands so that she could not see it.

  "By rights, the ring and the sword shard should go to Ganth's son, Torisen Black Lord," he said thoughtfully. "Your father must have been greatly trusted to have been given charge of such precious things. I don't really think you have to take the—uh—remains to him as well. A bit of fire would be best for them, and more respectful too. What's that other package you have in there—the big, flat one?"

  "Oh, just a book I picked up somewhere. But what's this about a son? You didn't mention one before."

  "I gather he came as a surprise to a lot of people, turning up so long after his sire's death. How he made them believe who he was without seal or sword I don't know, but he did. Now he's the most powerful lord in the Kencyrath. Of course, all we ever heard at East Kenshold were rumors, some of them years old; but from the sound of them, it looks as if he's taken up his father's work. If so, there should be lively times ahead for us all."

  "This Torisen . . . how old is he?"

  "In his mid-thirties, I think," said Marc. "Why?"

  "Nothing. Just a mad idea." A flicker of pain crossed her face, and she touched her forehead tentatively.

  "That's enough for now
," said Marc firmly, getting up. Something slipped out of his belt and fell to the floor with a clatter.

  "Your friend with the incomplete foot must have been here," said Jame, picking up the guard's truncheon.

  "Who . . . oh, Sart Nine-toes. No," he said, accepting it back, "this one is mine."

  "What?"

  "Well, it looks as if we're going to be here awhile, so I thought I'd better get a job. Sart suggested the guards."

  "Oh, did he?" said Jame grimly. "I owe him for that." And then, much sooner than intended, she told Marc about Master Penari, Ishtier's judgment, and the Talisman, watching anxiously for his reaction.

  "You say a priest approved of this?" he said at last, looking puzzled. "Odd. Just the same, it could mean trouble. I've made a commitment to the Five that isn't easily broken, and you've probably done the same with your master. If we were sensible people, we would separate and stay out of each other's sight until it's time to leave this city. Are you a sensible person?"