Chieftain of Andor

by Andrew J Offutt

  But there was no need to tell the man of the Orimors above. One dropped into the little room, formed by a shallow pocket in the mountainside hardly meriting the name “crevasse.” The creature alit on its furry, padded-soled feet, and it emitted an Orimor shriek as it landed, crouching. Its sword swung up. And Cleve shot it with the strange Oridorn ray-gun.

  It collapsed across the body of its fellow, the sword clanging. The other man snatched it up. His big eyes went from Cleve to the opening above; their vault was perhaps ten feet deep and seven or eight feet on a side, slightly wedge-shaped. Cleve looked up.

  The iceball, fortunately, went low and struck him in the right shoulder. But even through the furry clothing he wore, the impact of that hard-packed missile from a distance of no more than eleven or twelve feet was heavy and painful. His arm jerked. His fingers opened spasmodically. The deathbox slipped from his grip; he heard the little click of rock on rock as the counterbalanced “door” swung shut.

  The Orimor who had flung the icy missile sprang up from where it crouched on the lip of the pit. It leaped down on Cleve.

  He had no time to roll from its way. That tall, heavy body struck him full force, and he gasped and fought desperately for breath even as his hands leaped out to grasp his attacker. Its hands, too, came for him — arching for his throat. Cleve tore ineffectually at is furry pelt as those powerful fingers, three of them fully six inches long, closed like iron bands about his neck. Cleve grabbed the shaggy arms and exerted all his strength in an effort to push them away.

  He might as well have sought to change the direction of the wind blowing across the mountain. His head began to feel swollen, hot, and he knew he was being strangled.

  The Orimor’s mouth opened wide, revealing teeth more animal than manlike, with long, yellowish canines. From that red-tongued maw came a gargling scream. Almost at once blood bubbled forth. The fingers loosened about Cleve’s throat; sucking in a great breath, he shook his roaring head, and hurled the hairy arms away. He scrambled from beneath the body as the other man withdrew his bloody sword from its back.

  For a moment they looked at each other, two men without names or countries, who had met suddenly and violently on a mountainside. They might be enemies or brothers; at another time and another place they might have passed each other without a word — or they might have fought. Here they were allies: Both were blackhaired, copper-skinned men, and the Orimors were a deadly, inhuman enemy that united them.

  “There are more?”

  Cleve nodded, picked up the deathbox with his left hand while he held his right fist close to his mouth and huffed warm breath on it. “There are more.”

  They stood there, waiting in panting silence, staring up at the square opening to the sky.

  “Cleve! Cleve!” The voices were tenuous riders on the howling wind.

  “Here!” Cleve shouted.

  “We have slain them all!” The shout came back, faintly.

  “Then get back inside before you freeze,” Cleve bellowed. “I’ll make it down; I have found another Outsider!”

  He turned a grinning face on the other man, who was staring at him with a puzzled frown. Cleve’s mind raced; he did not want to begin their camaraderie by lying, but he did not want, either, to tell this man or any other about the Oridorns.

  “Friends,” he said, and waved the deadly little box he held. “They have these. We are free to get out of here.”

  “Sorcery,” the other shrugged. “But — how do we get out?”

  Cleve looked around. “I am afraid we are going to have to use the bodies of our late enemies,” he said. “How long will it take them to freeze?”

  They climbed out, Cleve and Barke of Sharne, on the semifrozen corpses of the two Orimors they had slain. Bracing themselves against the wind, they looked about.

  There were no corpses. Cleve’s guides must have heard the Orimor roars and screams and come running to help their friend, despite the cold that must affect their pale, cool bodies far worse and far more quickly than those of normal men. Perhaps they had seen his plunge; perhaps not. But they had slain the remaining members of the Orimor band that had attacked him, then called his name until he answered, indicating he was unhurt.

  Then, while he and Barke had waited, stamping their feet and slapping their arms and exchanging names, for the cold to stiffen the bodies of the Orimors they had slain, the men of Oridorna had collected the corpses of their own kill. They had taken, also, the two Cleve had slain on the mountainside with the Oridorn sidsorn.

  He did not even shudder. Man or beast, the Orimors were not such gentle, friendly people as the Oridoras. And the Oridorns needed meat.

  He hoped Jaire would make something pretty for herself from one of the pelts; a snowy little loincloth, perhaps, such as the one that had so fetchingly decorated the hips of Siraa of Orisana.

  The other man looked around. “They are gone,” he said. “The other Orimors, and your friends.” He looked questioningly at Cleve.

  Cleve nodded. “Pai,” he said.

  “You are certain there were others?”

  “I killed two of them,” Cleve said. “You can see the splotch of blood over there, on the snow.”

  “But now all are gone.” Barke gazed at him. “Sorcery,” he said, without sarcasm or shudder. Andor was not Earth! “Are you going to vanish now, too?”

  “I wish I could,” Cleve grinned, shaking his head. “No, I have my sidsorn, but I must climb and slide down the mountain, just like you. We’d better get started; your face isn’t protected.”

  “I am more than ready,” Barke said. “I wish you could vanish — and take me with you. What is a sidsorn?”

  Cleve held up the deathbox, the Andorite ray-gun. “Ah. The sorcerous thing that slew that Orimor — I’ve never seen death hurled so quietly and so swiftly. And so fierily — it burned his pelt!”

  “It is deadly. Please, please don’t touch it. It — ” Cleve was going to say “is complicated,” but his new friend interrupted.

  “I assure you,” Barke said with feeling, “I won’t touch it! I’ve no touch for sorcery — and I’ve never met a Starpowered man before. Well met, Cleve of Earth. I am glad we met as friends; you would not make a pleasant enemy. Where is Earth?”

  Cleve shook his head. “Far away,” he said. “I cannot even tell you its direction.” Which was true; all Cleve knew was that Earth was somewhere up there, in the Andorite sky. And he had even less idea where lay his Andorite home — or rather that of Doralan Andrah. Which reminded him: “Do you know the name Doralan Andrah?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “I suppose not.” They were moving downward, carefully, several feet apart. “Where is Sharne?”

  Barke nodded: “Below those clouds. Once we’ve climbed below them, we will see it, and the ocean. You don’t know Sharne?”

  “No. Should I?”

  Barke laughed. “Of course,” he said. “But — you must not go there with me. We must part, Cleve, once we’re down below the snows and can see — for many miles. Many miles,” he added, dreamily.

  “Part? Why? Perhaps in Sharne I can find a way to get home. Surely I can find some clothes and something to eat.”

  “No, Cleve,” Barke said quietly, and his words barely came to Cleve’s ears; they’d have been lost had Barke not been upwind of him. “You must not go with me to Sharne. There is only one kind of stranger, only one kind of visitor, to mighty Sharne.”

  “Yes?” Cleve slid down several feet, reaching for the hand Barke extended. Barke gripped it in his own icy fingers, and his dark eyes drilled sadly into Cleve’s.

  “Yes,” Barke of Sharne said. “The only kind of newcomer to Sharne is — a slave.”

  PART III

  Doralan Andrah

  18 - The Freedman of Sharne

  They sat together on the mountainside, in the warming rays of Andor’s red-orange sun. They had been careful, clapping their hands and thrusting them within their furry garments to warm them ben
eath their arms. Neither of them was certain that his fingers were not frostbitten, or that those stiff little lumps at the ends of his feet were not going to come off with the boots.

  They had struggled and slid and fallen and rolled and cursed and stumbled their way down the mountainside. They had entered the clouds and gasped and struggled on, ever downward, until they emerged dripping. Dripping; the clouds were not ice-laden, not snow-laden. They were just clouds, and temperature mist. The temperature had risen steadily as they made their way downward. Below the clouds it must have leaped upward another ten degrees.

  Cleve thrust back his white-furred hood and laughed and went on; the slope was dotted with out jutting rocks and monster boulders that had rolled and slid down long ago, and were now anchored in place, baubles decorating the mountain’s lower, gentle slopes.

  Now they sat on a flat shelf of rock, warmed by the sun that bathed it most of each day. Slowly, gradually, piece by piece, they loosened and then stripped off the heavy clothing they no longer needed.

  Directly below was Sharne.

  It began at the mountain’s foot — indeed, some homes, those of the wealthy, dotted the first slopes. The city then sprawled out across the plain to the banks of the ocean. It stretched out, a purplish, barely ruffled surface, to join hands with the horizon: the Placid Sea. The dock was full of ships; sailing craft with a single square sail and a small, forward-leaning sail that thrust out over the bow. And there were galleys, with one and two banks of oars, low-slung vessels whose midsections seemed to kiss the water lapping just below their gun-whales.

  Sharne was bright, a city built of colored stone and stucco and painted brightly, like a great scintillant jewel left on the shore by some long-ago giant who’d removed it before wading out into the sea. Most of the buildings were low; Cleve assumed some stiff winds came in from the ocean now and then, and a towered city would be endangered.

  Barke of Sharne quickly corroborated that; many towers had been constructed, in the old days, and had been destroyed with tremendous loss of life within and beneath when they crashed down to shatter the buildings at their feet. There was a law now, prohibiting buildings above two stories or a certain height. That sprawling, Y-shaped collection of snowy white was the royal palace of Shaman Vreen, Andorgrof.

  “Andorgrof!” Cleve echoed, turning wide eyes to his new friend.

  Barke nodded. “Andorgrof,” he repeated. “Ruler of the world. And so he believes. And so they believe, most of them. It is the mightiest city in the world, Sharne. The mightiest navy. It trades far, far asea. Sharnese ships have gone farther than any other. We touch many ports whose ships have never durst come here.”

  “So they believe, you said. But yourself?”

  “I know that Sharne is the mightiest city in the world, yes,” Barke said. “But no one rules the world. Shaman Vreen is Grof of Sharne, nothing more, and that is entirely enough! Surely Sharne is also the world’s wealthiest land.”

  “I can believe that,” Cleve said. He had no basis for comparison, after all. He had never seen another Andorite city — that he could recall. He wondered what Barke would say if he were told he was the first truly human human Cleve had ever seen — that he could recall. “But — if they believe it, Barke, why don’t you?”

  “I am not Sharnese. Not by birth, I mean. I am a citizen, now, and a freedman. I am mate on a ship … I do not see it in harbor. But I came here as a slave. Do you know of Eth?”

  Cleve shook his head.

  “It is far to the north; I am not even certain where it lies. It is a land but recently up from what some call barbarism. Many of us were unable to accept the new life. There are probably more men of Eth scattered across the world than from anyplace else. They are mercenaries, lovers of fighting. Sixty-eight years ago Eth conquered its neighbor to the south, Valnyra. Valnyra is a farming land, a country of arbors and superb wine. But Eth did not hold it long. The Ethites were driven back, mainly by the clansmen from Elgain, which lies south of Valnyra. Eth signed a treaty with both nations, but that did not mean the men of Eth settled down to become farmers. You will find them all over the world, as mercenaries.”

  “Is that how you came to Sharne?”

  “Not exactly.” Barke gazed down at the brightly colored city below. “When my father left Eth, my mother insisted on accompanying him. I was born in some country whose name I forget — we moved on. In Jamuga, my father sold his services to the king and fought against the Syrhanese. When that war ended, he still could not settle; he took employment in the Syrhanese marines. He sailed on their merchant ships, with a band of other warriors, to defend the ships if need be. On his last voyage I joined him. I was thirteen. We were struck by a storm at sea, and the ship and most hands went down. My father died, but he is back on Andor, I know. After such a life he was not granted a warrior’s death! His crimes in previous lives must have been fearsome, for Daron to have denied him eternal retirement.”

  “Perhaps in this life he is less a wanderer,” Cleve said, “and happier. And perhaps he will have the opportunity to die a warrior’s death and thus join Daron’s legion of heroes in the Final Life.”

  “It is good to think so,” Barke said. “Thank you — but he was happy, as I was, and my mother. At any rate, some eleven of us survived. We drifted for days, and were barely alive when a Sharnese merchantman picked us up. That is how I learned that one comes to Sharne only as a slave. The Sharnese believe that they are superior to everyone else in this world. I went again to sea — as a slave. I made six voyages as such, until I saved my captain’s life one day. I am not sure why. He had a man whipped, and a few days later I looked up to see the man stealing up behind the captain with a dagger. I shouted and sprang on him. I was freed that day, at sea, and the captain signed the papers when we returned to Sharne. He then employed me. I made four more voyages with him, and on the fourth I was made first mate when the first mate was killed in a pirate attack. Strange — the pirates were mostly Syrhanese.”

  “What happened to the man who was about to slay your captain?” Cleve asked.

  Barke shrugged. He waved at the sea. “Overboard, of course.”

  “Of course,” Cleve said, wondering why. “And how came you to be a prisoner of the Orimors?”

  Barke’s face clouded and his lips firmed. “I came up this mountain with six others,” he said. “They were all killed. I am not certain why I was not. Perhaps the Orimors eat people. I think I am a little stringy. I suppose they wanted to fatten me.”

  Cleve chuckled, eyeing the other man. Both of them had now stripped to breechclouts and arms belts, retaining their boots. Barke was as muscular as himself, and a trifle darker. I come from north of here, Cleve thought. That river I was on — it floats from north to south. I’ll bet it empties into this ocean! Yes, Barke would be stringy eating — but more muscular than stringy.

  “Why?”

  “What? Why what?” Barke asked.

  “Why did you and six others climb to the domain of the Orimors?”

  Again Barke’s face closed in on itself, stormily. “We came — we went after an Orimor pelt,” he said.

  “Should I ask why?”

  “No. But I will tell you. Each of us saved the other’s life, and there is no debt between us, but our bond will last through all future lives we may live out. I cannot be offended by you, Cleve.” Barke raised his head and gazed at him a moment. “Although of course it is unlikely that we will see each other again. You must not, as I said, accompany me farther. You must climb across and down, avoiding Sharne … and slavery. But — we came up White Mountain for an Orimor pelt, for a sorceress. She must have one for her spelling.”

  “Um. I should not ask why again?”

  “No.” Barke brooded without glancing at him.

  “It is personal, then. The spell was for you. All right, then — you have your pelt.”

  Barke looked at him. He was a not unhandsome young man in his early twenties, or perhaps late teens — people matured ra
pidly on Andor, and often died young — with a shock of curly hair and a short, dark beard just as curly. “I have — hmp! We had two, and left them both up there. They made fine ladders.” He shook his head. “No, I am not going back for them, Cleve. Although … it will cost me my happiness.” Cleve leaned out and punched his shoulder. “Ah, Barke! You tell me it is personal, and say that I should not ask — but that sounded to me like an invitation: Ask me, Cleve, and let me relate my sad story.” He chuckled. “Anyhow, you have a pelt.” He reached over and picked up the clothing the Oridorn women had sewn for him, with fishgut and bone needles. He dropped it over the other man’s thighs. “Here. Your pelt. Give it to the Starpowered One.”

  “But — ” Barke gazed down at it.

  “A gift,” Cleve said. “Between friends. I have no further use for it. I may not be going to Sharne — but I assure you, I am not going back up this mountain, either!” Barke grasped the pelt, lifting it to gaze at its snowy fur. “I wonder … She did not say a fresh pelt … Perhaps … ” He turned to Cleve, and the storm clouds had left his face. “Now I am in your debt!”

  Cleve shrugged. He nodded at Barke’s hand. “Is that your father’s ring?”

  Barke looked at the ring. He flourished the hand. “This?” He laughed. “I won it dicing in an inn in the harbor of Jamuga!”

  “I will sell you the pelts for it.”

  “But it isn’t — I see!” Grinning broadly, Barke drew the bauble off. He handed it to Cleve, who slipped it on his left hand; it fit remarkably well. He now possessed a Jamugan ring given him by a Sharnese, a fishbone necklace presented him by Shilaat of Orisana, a white Orimor breechclout from the same strange land, and a weapon from Oridorna. And a Sharnese sword.

  “Now we are even.”

  “In the first place, the ring is iron,” Barke said, examining the sewn pelts. “In the second, it is hardly of value, and you must know this fur is of great personal value to me — if Lahri can make use of it in her ensorceling.”