Lyonesse

by Jack Vance

  The chasm at Aillas' feet dropped sheer to the floor of Vale Evander. Below the castle torches lit a parade-ground, now unoccupied; other torches, in parallel rows, marked the parapets of a wall across the narrow neck of the Vale: like the parade-ground devoid of defenders.

  A mile to the west, along the ridge, another spatter of camp-fires indicated a second encampment, presumably Ska.

  The scene was one of weird grandeur which affected Aillas with awe. He watched for a period, then turned away and descended through the moonlight to his own camp.

  The night was unseasonably cool. Aillas lay on his bed of boughs, shivering under cloak and saddleblanket. Presently he slept, but only fitfully, waking from time to time to watch the progress of the moon across the sky. Once, with the moon halfway down in the west he heard a far contralto cry of misery: something between a howl and a moan, which brought up the hairs at the the back of his neck. He huddled deep into his bed. Minutes passed; the call was not repeated. At last he fell into a torpor which kept him asleep somewhat longer than he had intended, and he awoke only when rays from the rising sun shone into his face.

  He rose lethargically, washed his face in the stream and considered how best to proceed. The trail to the summit might well lead down to join the Trompada: a convenient route, if it avoided the Ska. He decided to return to the summit the better to spy out the lay of the land. Taking a crust of bread and a knob of cheese to eat along the way, he climbed to the top. The mountains below and behind fell away in humping spurs, gulches and wallowing folds almost to the verge of the forest. As best he could determine the trail descended to the Trompada and so would serve him well.

  On this clear sunny morning the air smelled sweet of mountain herbs: heather, gorse, rosemary, cedar. Aillas crossed the summit to see how went the siege of Tintzin Fyral. It was, he reflected, an episode of great significance; if the Ska commanded both Poelitetz and Tintzin Fyral, they effectively controlled the Ulflands.

  Approaching the brink he dropped to his hands and knees to avoid impinging his silhouette on the skyline; nearing the brink he went flat and crawled, and at last peered out across the gorge. Almost below Tintzin Fyral reared high on its tall crag: close, but not so close as it had seemed the night before, when he thought he could fling a stone across the chasm to the roof. Now it was clear that the castle lay beyond all but the strongest arrow-flight. The uppermost tower culminated in a terrace guarded by parapets. A swayback saddle, or ridge joined the castle to the heights beyond, where the closest vantage area, reinforced from below by a retaining wall of stone blocks, overlooked the castle well within bowshot range. Remarkable, thought Aillas, the foolish arrogance of Faude Carfilhiot, to allow so convenient a platform to remain unguarded. The area now swarmed with Ska troops. They wore steel caps, and long-sleeved black surcoats; they moved with a grim and agile purpose, which suggested an army of black killer-ants. If King Casmir had hoped to create an alliance, or at the very least a truce with the Ska, his hopes now were blasted, since by the attack the Ska had declared themselves his adversaries.

  Both the castle and Vale Evander seemed lethargic this bright morning. No peasant tilled his field nor walked the road, nor were Carfilhiot's troops anywhere visible. By dint of great exertion the Ska had transported four large catapults across the moors, up the mountainside and along the ridge which commanded Tintzin Fyral. As Aillas watched they dragged the engines forward. They were, so he saw, heavily built devices capable of tossing a hundred-pound boulder the distance to Tintzin Fyral, to knock down a merlon, break open an embrasure, rupture a wall, and eventually, after repeated blows, to demolish the high tower itself. Worked by competent engineers, and with uniform missiles, their accuracy could be almost exact.

  As Aillas watched, they worked the catapults forward to the edge of that vantage overlooking Tintzin Fyral.

  Carfilhiot himself strolled out upon the terrace, wearing a pale blue morning gown: apparently he had just risen from bed. Ska archers immediately ran forward and sent a flight of arrows singing across the gorge. Carfilhiot stepped behind a merlon with a frown of annoyance for the interruption of his promenade. Three of his retainers appeared on the roof and quickly erected sections of metal mesh along the parapets so as to ward away Ska arrows, and Carfilhiot was again able to take the morning air. The Ska watched him with perplexity and exchanged ironic comments, meanwhile proceeding to ballast their catapults.

  Aillas knew that he must depart, but could not bring himself to leave. The stage was set, the curtains drawn, the actors had appeared: the drama was about to begin. The Ska manned the windlasses. The massive propulsion beams bent backward, groaning and creaking; stone missiles were placed into the projection chutes. The master archers turned screws, perfecting their aim. All was ready for the first volley.

  Carfilhiot suddenly seemed to take cognizance of the threat to his tower. He made an annoyed gesture and spoke a word over his shoulder. Underneath the catapults the stone abutments supporting the vantage collapsed. Down toppled catapults, missiles, rubble, archers, engineers and ordinary troops. They fell a long way, with hallucinatory slowness: down, down, twisting, wheeling, bounding and sliding the last hundred feet, to stop in an unpleasant tangle of stone, timbers and broken bodies. Carfilhiot took a final turn around the terrace, and went into the castle.

  The Ska assessed the situation, stern rather than angry. Aillas drew back, beyond the Ska range of vision. High time for him to be on his way, as far and as fast as possible. He looked toward the stone altar in a new spirit of speculation. Carfilhiot was clearly a man of wily tricks. Would he leave so tempting a lookout point for presumptive enemies unprotected? Aillas, suddenly nervous, took a final look toward Tintzin Fyral. Ska work-gangs, evidently slaves, were dragging timbers along the ridge. The Ska, though bereft of their catapults, were not yet abandoning the siege. Aillas watched for a minute, two minutes. He turned away from the edge of the cliff and found confronting him a patrol of seven men wearing Ska black: a corporal and six warriors, two standing with bows drawn.

  Aillas held up his hands. "I am a traveler only; let me go my way."

  The corporal, a tall man with a strange wild face, gave a guttural croak of derision. "Up here on the mountain? You are a spy!"

  "A spy? For what purpose? What could I tell anyone? That the Ska are attacking Tintzin Fyral? I came up here to find a safe route around the battle."

  "You are quite safe now. Come along; even two-legs* have their uses."

  *Two-leg: a semi-contemptuous term applied by the Ska to all other men than themselves: a contraction of "two-legged animal," to designate a middle category between "Ska" and "four-leg." Another common pejorative, nyek "horse-smell" made reference to the difference in body odor between Ska and other races, the Ska seeming to smell, not unpleasantly, of camphor, turpentine, a trace of musk.

  The Ska took Aillas' sword and tied a rope around his neck. He was led down from Tac Tor, across the gorge and up to the Ska encampment. He was stripped of his garments, shorn bald, forced to wash using yellow soap and water, then he was given new garments of gray linsey-woolsey, and finally a smith riveted an iron collar around his neck, with a ring to which a chain might be attached.

  Aillas was seized by four men in gray tunics and bent face down over a log. His trousers were dropped; the smith brought a red-hot iron and branded his right buttock. He heard the sizzle of burning flesh and smelled the subsequent odor, which prompted him to droop his head and vomit, inducing those who held him to curse and jump aside, but they continued to hold him while a bandage was slapped down over the burn. Then he was hoisted to his feet.

  A Ska sergeant called to him. "Pull up your trousers and come over here." Aillas obeyed. "Name?"

  "Aillas."

  The sergeant wrote in a ledger. "Place of birth?"

  "I don't know."

  Again the sergeant wrote, then he looked up. "Today luck is your friend; you now may call yourself Skaling, inferior only to a natural Ska. Acts of violence a
gainst Ska or Skaling; sexual perversion; lack of cleanliness; insubordination; sullen, insolent, truculent or disorderly behavior are not tolerated. Forget your past; it is a dream! You are now Skaling, and the Ska way is your way. You are assigned to Group Leader Taussig. Obey him, work faithfully: you shall have no cause for complaint. Yonder is Taussig; report to him immediately."

  Taussig, a short grizzled Skaling, half-walked and half-hopped on one straight and one crooked leg, making tense gestures and squinting through narrow pale blue eyes as if in a state of chronic anger. He gave Aillas a brief inspection and clipped a long light chain to Aillas' collar. "I am Taussig. Whatever your name, forget it. You are now Taussig Six. When I yell ‘Six' I mean you. I run a tight squad. I compete in production. To please me, you must compete and try to outdo all the other squads. Do you understand?"

  "I understand your words," said Aillas.

  "That is not proper! Say ‘Yes sir!'"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Already I feel resentment and resistance in you. Be wary! I am fair but not forgiving! Work your best, or better than your best, so that we all make grade. Slack and shirk, and I suffer as well as you, and this must not be! Come now, to work!"

  Taussig's platoon, with the addition of Aillas, was now at its full complement of six. Taussig took them down into a stony sun-baked gully and put them to work dragging timbers up to the ridge and downslope to where Ska and Skaling worked together to build a timber tunnel along the saddle toward Tintzin Fyral, through which a battering ram might then be swung against the castle gate. On the parapets Carfilhiot's archers watched for targets: Ska or Skaling alike. Whenever one such exposed himself an arrow instantly darted down from above.

  When the timber passage reached halfway across the saddle, Carfilhiot raised an onager to the turret, and began to launch hundred-pound stones at the timber structure: to no avail; the timbers were elastic and cunningly joined. The stones, striking the timbers, crushed bark, splintered the surface, then tumbled away down into the gulch.

  Aillas quickly discovered that his fellows in Taussig's platoon were no more anxious to elevate Taussig's grade than himself. Taussig, hence, ran bobbing and limping back and forth in a state of frenzy, calling exhortations, threats and abuse. "Shoulders into it, Five!" "Pull, pull!" "Are you all sick?" "Three, you corpse! Pull now!" "Six, I'm watching you! I know your kind! You're dogging it already!" So far as Aillas could determine Taussig's squad achieved as much as the other, and he heard Taussig's outcries with indifference. The morning's calamity had left him numb; the full scope was only just beginning to make itself felt.

  At noon the Skalings were fed bread and soup. Aillas sat on his left buttock, in a state of numb reverie. During the morning Aillas had been teamed with Yane, a taciturn North Ulf, perhaps forty years old. Yane was of no great stature, sinewy and long-armed, with dark coarse hair and a pinched leathery face. Yane watched Aillas a few minutes, then said gruffly: "Eat, lad; keep up your strength. No good comes of brooding."

  "I have affairs which I can't neglect."

  "Forget them; your new life has started."

  Aillas shook his head. "Not for me."

  Yane grunted. "If you try to escape everyone in your squad is flogged and drops in grade, including Taussig. So everyone watches everyone else."

  "No one escapes?"

  "Seldom."

  "What of yourself? Have you never attempted escape?"

  "Escape is more difficult than you might think. It is a subject no one discusses."

  "And no one is freed?"

  "After your stint you are pensioned. They don't care what you do then."

  "How long is a ‘stint'?"

  "Thirty years."

  Aillas groaned. "Who here is chief among the Ska?"

  "He is Duke Mertaz; there he stands yonder... Where are you going?"

  "I must speak to him." Aillas rose painfully to his feet and crossed to where a tall Ska stood brooding down upon Tintzin Fyral. Aillas halted in front of him. "Sir, you are Duke Mertaz?"

  "I am he." The Ska surveyed Aillas with gray-green eyes.

  Aillas spoke in a reasonable voice. "Sir, this morning your soldiers captured me and clamped this collar around my neck."

  "Indeed."

  "In my own country I am a nobleman. I see no reason why I should be treated this way. Our countries are not at war."

  "The Ska are at war with all the world. We expect no mercy from our enemies; we give none."

  "Then I ask that you abide by the rules of warfare and allow me to ransom my freedom."

  "We are not a numerous people; our need is labor, not gold. Today you were branded with a date-mark. Thirty years you must serve, then you will be freed with a generous pension. If you attempt to escape, you will be maimed or killed. We expect such attempts and are alert. Our laws are simple and admit of no ambiguity. Obey them. Go back to your work."

  Aillas returned to where Yane sat watching. "Well?"

  "He told me I must work thirty years."

  Yane chuckled and rose to his feet. "Taussig summons us." Across the downs convoys of bullock-carts brought timbers from the mountains. Skaling squads dragged the timbers up the ridge; foot by foot the timber tunnel thrust across the saddle toward Tintzin Fyral.

  The construction approached the castle walls. Carfilhiot's warriors on the parapets dropped bladders of oil upon the timbers and sent down fire-arrows. Orange flames roared high; at the same time drops of blazing oil seeped through cracks. Those who worked below were forced to retreat.

  Special contrivances fabricated of sheet copper were brought forward by a trained squad, and fitted over the timbers, to form a protective roof; flaming oil thereupon flowed off to burn harmlessly on the ground.

  Foot by foot the tunnel approached the castle walls. The defenders displayed a rather sinister lassitude.

  The tunnel reached the castle walls. A heavy battering ram, shod with iron, was carried forward; Ska warriors crowded the tunnel, ready to surge through the ruptured portal. From somewhere high on the tower, a massive ball of iron swung down and around at the end of a chain, to strike the timber construction fairly, at a spot thirty feet from the tower wall, to sweep timbers, ram and warriors over the edge of the saddle and down into the gully, another tangle of timbers and crushed bodies on top of the tangle already there.

  From the ridge the Ska commanders stood in the light of sunset, contemplating the destruction of their works. There was a pause in the business of the siege. The Skalings gathered in a hollow to evade the steady wind from the west. Aillas like the others crouched in the wan light, back to the wind, watching sidelong the Ska silhouettes along the skyline.

  There would be no further action against Tintzin Fyral on this night. The Skalings trooped down-hill to the camp, where they were fed porridge boiled with dried cod. The corporals marched their platoons to a latrine trench, where they crouched and voided in unison. Then they filed past a cart where each took a coarse woolen blanket and bedded himself on the ground.

  Aillas slept the sleep of exhaustion. Two hours after midnight he awoke. His surroundings confused him; he sat up with a jerk, only to feel a sharp tug on the chain at his collar. "Stop short!" growled Taussig. "It's on the first night that the new ones try to run free, and I know all the tricks."

  Aillas fell back into the blanket. He lay listening: to the cold wind blowing across the rocks, to a mutter of voices from Ska sentries and fire-tenders, to snores and dream-sounds from the Skalings. He thought of his son Dhrun, possibly alone and unprotected, possibly at this very instant in pain or danger. He thought of Never-fail under a laurel bush on the slope of Tac Tor. The horse would break its tether and wander off to find fodder. He thought of Trewan and stone-hearted Casmir. Requital! Revenge! His palms sweated in a passion of hatred... Half an hour passed, and again he fell asleep.

  Somewhat before dawn, at that most dismal hour of the night, a far rumble and crashing sound, as of a large tree falling, awoke Aillas for the second time. He la
y motionless, listening to staccato calls among the Ska.

  At dawn the Skalings were aroused from their rest by the clangor of a bell. Sullen and torpid they took their blankets to the cart, visited the latrine, and those who elected to do so washed at a rivulet of chilly water. Their breakfast was like their supper: porridge and dried cod, with bread and a cup of hot peppermint tea mixed with pepper and wine to stimulate their energies.

  Taussig took his platoon up to the ridge, and there the source of the predawn sounds was revealed. During the night defenders from the castle had fixed hooks into that portion which still remained of the timber tunnel. A windlass high above had tightened the line; the passage had been overturned and toppled three hundred feet into the gulch. All the Ska effort had gone for naught; worse, their materials had been wasted and their engines destroyed. Tintzin Fyral had suffered nothing.

  The Ska now were intent not on the destroyed passageway, but on an army camped three miles west along the vale. Scouts returning from reconnaissance reported four battalions of well-disciplined troops, the Factoral Militia of Ys and Evander, consisting of pikemen, archers, mounted pikemen and knights, to the number of two thousand men. Two miles behind, the morning light twinkled on the metal and motion of other troops on the march.

  Aillas considered the Ska: a contingent not quite so numerous as he had first estimated, probably no more than a thousand warriors.

  Taussig noticed his interest and gave a harsh chuckle. "Don't count on battle, lad; waste no false hopes! They'll not fight for glory, unless there's something to be won; no risk of foolishness, I assure you!"

  "Still, they'll have to break the siege."

  "That's already been decided. They hoped to take Carfilhiot unawares. Bad luck! He tricked them with his knaveries. Next time affairs will go differently; you'll see!"