The wizards and the warriors tcoaaod-1

by Hugh Cook

  'No!' said Blackwood, it would be murder!'

  'They're only gooks,' said Alish.

  'Mister, I value them as my own.'

  'That's nothing to me,' said Alish. 'Come on, Morgan, let's get everyone into position. I want to start -'

  'Hold a moment,' said Hearst.

  'What's this hold a moment?' said Alish. 'We're sworn to this quest. We have to go downriver. If we have to kill to cut the way clear, we do. The mountains to east are impassable unless we travel by way of Ep Pass – and that lies downstream.'

  'There's more than one way to scalp a scat,' said Hearst. 'We can backtrack a little, slip through the forest and join the river further downstream.'

  'Blackwood?' said Alish. Then, as Blackwood hesitated: 'He knows the answer to that. His love-hearted Melski will follow us if we leave to make sure we head back home.'

  'Perhaps,' said Blackwood, 'but they might miss a small group that slipped away while the rest of us stayed here.'

  'No!' said Alish. i'm not travelling with a fist of five when I can travel with an army. We might meet more Melski downstream, so we need our numbers.'

  'Alish,' said Hearst. 'Let me go and scout out the land with Blackwood and one or two others. Then we can talk possibilities.'

  'As you wish,' said Alish. 'Who will you take?'

  'Blackwood, Durnwold, Miphon. Weil be back by dayfail.'

  'Good speed,' said Alish.

  ***

  Watching Hearst's scouting party slip away into the forest, Alish thought Hearst's life-debt to Blackwood was clouding his judgment. And Alish was disturbed that Hearst had taken Miphon to help him. Miphon, sensing things unseen by ordinary men, might well be useful in the forest – but a Rovac warrior should never become dependent on a wizard.

  Alish had already made his decision. He had to do his duty, no matter how painful. His duty was to the Code of Night and the destiny of Rovac; his duty was to secure the death-stone for the highest purpose, to avenge the ancient wrongs and set history to rights -and no gabble of waterway gooks could be allowed to stand in the way.

  Quietly, moving from man to man to advise each individually, Alish began to give his orders.

  ***

  Elkor Alish, son of Teramont the Defender, warrior of Rovac, blood of the clan of the eagle, a man born into a free people and sworn to the cause of the Code of Night, stood with his hand on the hilt of his sword Ethlite, looking at the river, the rafts, and the eastern mountains tipped with snow that shone white-bright as the sun, great world-candle, lit and warmed the entire continent of Argan.

  So it was killing time again. Voice would be raised against voice and blade against blade, making more corpses to rot down to maggot-filth. Well, there was no helping it. They were faced by the bare necessity. Delay would give Heenmor a better chance to escape or perfect defences against the pursuit he evidently expected.

  – Mine is the highest duty, the cause which forbids doubt. Mine is the cause which overrides even an oath sworn by steel and blood. I am of the Code of Night.

  Alish looked round. Were the wizards ready? Phyphor gave him a nod: Phyphor and Garash were ready to help out if they must, though they would prefer to conserve their strength to fight Heenmor. Since the loss of the mad-jewel, the wizards had spent as much time as possible deep in the Meditations, building up their powers.

  Outwardly, everything seemed normal. Some men were making a pretence of cooking; others sat on the river bank watching the rafts. Alish began to walk down to the jetty. Four warriors joined him: he hoped this fist of five could reach the headman's raft without alarming the Melski. The men talked softly and joked together, but Alish walked in silence, and the wind walked with him.

  A few Melski children were playing about the camp making happy whistling and grunting noises. They would die. So? They were not human. They were only gooks. The children chased each other, and the wind snatched at their cries and flung them away. , Alish walked on, and he remembered walking to other battles, ah, so many battles, and once he had sworn it would never happen again. Yes, when he had seen Hearst holding her head he had sworn that enough was enough: he had seen too much killing. But then there had been war at Castle Vaunting, fighting in the swamps, butchery at the High Castle: and now it would happen again. And who could deny that his hands remembered the skill of slaughter?

  A few men gave Alish sly glances as he and his shadows walked down to the jetty. Every man had weapons within grasp or snatch. They were greedy, excited, over-eager. If all went well, the Melski headman would be first to die. They would charge the rafts before the Melski – now leaderless – had time to arm and organise. If all went well, the surviving Melski would stand and fight: they were noted for stubborn courage in battle.

  But what if cowardice or good tactical sense took the Melski into the water? That was their element, where they could breathe through their gills and their green skins, and swim with their webbed hands and feet far better than any human. Things might get difficult, especially when night came and the rafts floated down the dark river with the enemy grouping silently in the water…

  A couple of men were cleaning their helmets, needing to keep their hands busy while they waited. Those were the nervous ones. There were always nervous ones. What if the charge faltered or failed? What if the men turned and ran in panic? Could that happen? With this rabble, of course it could happen.

  There was someone coming up behind. Alish stopped and turned. It was Gorn.

  'What are you doing here?' said Alish, startled. 'You're supposed to be in charge of our rear party.'

  'You don't need me there,' said Gorn.

  It was true. Truth was, Alish did not want to see Gorn in action again: Gorn at war, battle axe amok, eyes manic, lips parted as if in the pleasure of lust. If there was a pause, a lull in the battle, Gorn would wipe his hands over his head, leaving blood in his hair. Worst of all, after the fighting, Gorn would go round finishing off the wounded. He never made a clean kill: he always used five strokes of the axe for the ending. Left foot, right foot, left hand, right hand – then the throat. And all this time he would sing a wordless moaning dirge, eyes by this time blank slaughter.

  T sent you where I wanted you,' said Alish. 'Go!' i want to be in at the kill,' said Gorn.

  It was no time for argument. Everyone was waiting for them, and Gorn could be stubborn when he chose.

  'Come on then,' said Alish, 'but do nothing until I strike the first blow.'

  The first raft rocked beneath their feet. Three rafts away sat the Melski headman and the rest of the Melski elders.

  Alish was tempted to look back; he was afraid the men on the shore might betray the plan by grouping for the charge. The Melski were not experienced warriors, but their natural suspicion of strangers would make them wary.

  But it was too late to look back now.

  The wind sang in his ears. The trees across the river spired up into the wind. Green, dark green, rising to blustery blue. There will be screams on the wind and blood in the screams. Soon. It is happening. It cannot be stopped.

  A few Melski were swimming, turning lazy circles in the water. Others were dozing on the rafts in the sun; some were inside the cabins. Alish could hear Gorn panting. The sound repulsed him.

  The sun: too hot. Wind brisked about him. Glare from the water. He narrowed his eyes. He could smell Gorn. Sweating. Alish blinked. He was breathing too quickly. He tried to control his breathing.

  What was wrong? It was hardly his first battle. He was Elkor Alish, warrior of Rovac, veteran of the Cold West. Now he was starting to sound like Hearst when the drink was doing his talking. But it was true. He was a professional, a veteran of countless battles of blood and slaughter.

  Was it going into combat without helmet and shield that made him so uneasy? To avoid arousing the suspicions of the Melski, they wore no armour but a little chain mail. Without armour, was a man more vulnerable to his memories?

  They were almost there.

  They step
ped onto the headman's raft. The headman, a big muscular Melski, stared at them intently. There was a pause. Alish felt his heart pounding. His mouth, dry, tasted of metal.

  The Melski headman slowly stood up, the better to protest at the intrustion of so many strangers onto his raft. His chest inflated, then sank as he delivered a belch of discontent. He was preparing himself for oratory. There was plenty of time to observe his heavy muscles, his sunken eyes, his prodigious neck.

  'You've upset him,' said Gorn, grinning. 'Come on, you'd better say something. Let your sword do the speaking.'

  Alish said nothing. He knew they were all waiting for him.

  'Hor-hurop!' said the Melski headman. Gorn looked at Alish.

  'Hor-drup! Muur-muur. Muur hulp! Mulsk!' Alish stood there, trembling. And Gorn attacked.

  'Yar!' screamed Gorn, hacking his axe to the headman's chest.

  The headman staggered, belched blood. Gorn hacked for the neck. Alish lugged out his sword Ethlite. Around him, blades were lunging and slicing. And suddenly it was all over: they stood panting on the raft with corpses at their feet.

  'Alish,' said Gorn. 'You were too slow to eat with us.'

  And he laughed, and wiped his hands through his hair. With whoops and yells, the men on the shore were charging onto the carpet of rafts. There was a clamour of pain, of Melski bellows, clashing metal, whirring arrows. Shield and sword, the charge swept forward. Sleepers and sunbathers were cut down. Bewildered Melski stumbling from their cabins were killed in the doorways. A few dived for the water, but most stood their ground and fought.

  Some charged Alish and his fist of warriors, isolated on the headman's raft.

  'Alish!' shouted Gorn. 'Back to back!'

  They stood back to back and braced themselves. The Melski came in a rush, green muscles swinging clubs, swinging sunglitter swords. They shouted as they came: 'Huur!'

  'Gaar!'

  'Horg-hulg!'

  Alish took out the boldest: stabbed for the gut, drew free, then swung for the neck, shouting as he swung. The wind whipped away his shout. The boldest went down, then the onslaught was upon them.

  Alish struck at a face. It slipped away. Ethlite swung free, slewed to slice at a leg. A falling Melski crashed against his hip. Alish went down on one knee. A Melski loomed over him. A club swept down.

  Alish parried, rose to his feet. Again the club swung. His sword sliced air to meet it. His blade slid along the wood and carried away the hands that held it. Alish stepped back for room to move, then hacked at the head. He spun, and his sword met flesh. A spurt of blood. He turned again, meeting a face with the edge of his blade.

  Again he wheeled, to find a Melski driving at him with a sword. Alish parried. Their blades locked hilt to hilt. Face to face they struggled, close enough to kiss. Alish slammed his forehead into his enemy's face. The Melski reeled backwards. Alish chopped sword to ribs. Again. Again. Hack through, hack through.

  His blade pulled free from the bloody shatter of ribs and arced up for the throat. Something struck him on the back of the head. He fell.

  Alish saw water snatch his sword. Then he embraced the cold shock of water. Chain mail jerked him down. Briefly, he glimpsed his blade, a thin thread of blood wisping away as it twirled down into the depths.

  In slow motion, he struggled with the chain mail, as one may struggle with a monster in dreams. Pressure hurt his ears. His struggles snapped the thin gold round his neck, which fell away, bearing the red charm down into the depths. Then the jerkin came free. Alish rose, feet kicking slow and clumsy in his waterlogged boots.

  Looking up, he saw a raft just above him. Contact! Volumes of green slime broke free and filtered away as he clawed along the underside of the raft. He surfaced, gasped air. A Melski glanced down in surprise, then stamped on his face.

  Alish went down. Under, under. He looked around the shadow-green underwater world. In the depths, a wounded Melski turned slow, bloody circles towards darkness as it tried to swim away from agony. Bright surface was the sun. Smudged green shadows were the rafts. Alish swam, then surfaced.

  He threw back his head and engulfed an ocean of air.

  A small frightened Melski, perching on the edge of a raft, threatened him with a knife. The knife was pitted with rust. There were dried fish scales on the blade.

  'Muur!' said the Melski.

  Alish screamed at it. The Melski dived in panic.

  Alish pulled himself from the water, still gasping in buckets of air. The combs which had held his long black hair in place were lost: his hair fell free. He wiped it out of his face.

  Alish snatched up the first weapon he saw – a Melski club – and stood in the sunlight, blinking and gasping. He coughed. The sun was a slash of light in the blue sky. Clouds boiled in the wind. He glanced around and was dazzled by the sunlight on the water. Men, shouting, were plunging from raft to raft, but where were the Melski? Some – little ones – sat in shock, rocking from side to side, moaning. Elsewhere there was still some fighting, but here it was over.

  Many of the cabins were burning where cooking fires had been scattered from their foundations of sand and rocks. Smoke streamed across the rafts, driven by the wind, confusing everything. There was fighting somewhere in the smoke. Alish could hear shouts, screams, the thump of boots, the whirr of arrows, the groans of the wounded. He heard the quick crackle of flames sprinting through bamboo cabins, occasional explosions as joints of bamboo heated up then burst.

  The Melski club felt heavy in his hand. He dropped it. He saw a sword, but did not pick it up. Ethlite was gone, Ethlite, Ethlite, his sword, his lover, snatched by the river, drowned too deep to dive for.

  The weariness that came over him then was sudden and absolute. Without looking any more at the flames and the smoke, without listening any more to the fighting, he started walking back toward the shore. Rafts rocked underfoot as he stepped from one to the other. Some water moved inside his left ear; he shook his head to try and get rid of it. His nose was bleeding. The wind knifing through his wet clothes felt cold.

  Alish passed a few of the men who had already begun to plunder the dead. They had all been fighting: they were all hot, red-faced and sweating still. Most were bloodstained; a couple were wounded, but only lightly. Water squelched in Alish's boots as he walked.

  On the shore, the two wizards of the order of Arl, Phyphor and Garash, stood watching the battle with detached interest.

  'Alish!' said Phyphor. 'That was well done. That was very well done.'

  Alish ignored him, and walked past without answering. Wizards! This slaughter was all their fault. A plague on all your houses, then, if you have houses.

  In the camp site were the dismembered remains of a few Melski children; one body had fallen into a fire and was charring with a foul stench. Alish threw himself to the ground, threw himself to the earth, wet though he was. He was the leader, and to collapse was not one of his privileges, but he collapsed all the same. He would have wept, except he was too proud to weep, ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  In the evening, they set off down the river. That night they heard Melski in the water, exchanging recognition signals. Alish feared an attack, but none came: the Melski seemed content to drift downstream with the rafts. When dawn came, there were none to be seen in the water – but soon afterwards, the leading raft saw one asleep on a rock. It woke, and dived into the water, and the current carried it away.

  Alish feared the Melski might go downstream ahead of the rafts to organise an ambush. The river banks were growing progressively steeper: soon it would be possible to drop rocks from above.

  He also worried about Hearst, who sat apart, brooding. Why? Because he had failed to help Blackwood's Melski friends? Because Alish had lied to him? Or because he had missed the battle?

  Whatever the problem, Alish hoped Hearst would not do anything reckless – he did not wish to have to kill the best warrior in his command. However, if it did come to a confrontation, there was no doubt who would
win: they had matched blades in practice often enough to know that Elkor Alish was by far the better swordsman.

  Another who worried about Hearst was Durnwold, who valued the Rovac warrior above all because he had shown that the world could dispense with the governance of the Favoured Blood. The common wisdom throughout the continent of Argan was that the world would collapse in chaos without the guidance of its traditional rulers, but Hearst had proved that a common warrior could be both wiser and stronger than a prince. When Comedo had grovelled in helpless fear as the Collosnon attacked, Morgan Hearst had dared the lopsloss, secured the mad-jewels – and had then gained victory for Alish by using his judgment and opening the lead box holding the mad-jewels.

  However, one man cared nothing for Hearst, and that was Blackwood, who believed that Hearst had conspired with Alish to get him out of the way so the attack on the Melski could proceed without possibility of betrayal. As survivors of the court intrigues of Chi'ash-lan, about which they sometimes told outrageous stories of treachery and deceit, the Rovac were entirely capable of such a stratagem, and Blackwood knew it.

  Hearst, for his part, was brooding on the distance separating him from Alish. It had come as a shock to know that he had been excluded from the secret councils which had decided to use a mad-jewel to stand sentry at Castle Vaunting, but now Alish had deceived him, had in fact told him a direct lie – and that was something entirely different again.

  Hearst had blurred memories of an argument in Castle Vaunting. He had been drunk at the time, but he thought he vaguely remembered Alish threatening to kill him. Had that really happened? And if Alish had really said that, had he really meant it? Was it possible that they might one day match steel against steel, with lethal intent?

  No. That was impossible.

  In the Cold West, they had been inseparable. They had shared the same tent, and sometimes the same woman… and then… and then everything had changed…