Deathknight

by Andrew J Offutt

  Falc bowed low before the Holder’s smile, looking as if he too was considering a smile. It did not happen. Chasmal watched that. He felt that this strange, grim, most competent of men was capable of smiling; it was just that Falc refused to do. The man’s discipline was as a mountain: beyond any human efforts at breaking or moving. Back before the long-dead First Civilization had reduced the planet’s resources to nothing, and men to swords and riding steeds that were the result of mutations from First Civilization weaponry and “technology,” such men as Falc of Risskor should have seized all Sij. Perhaps then history, and the whole world, had been different.

  Chasmal cast off that thought.

  It was stupid to reflect on how life had been then, and what it might be like now were there oil anywhere on Sij, within Sij; or that nitrate of potassium so useful to those of the First Civilization for creating their explosive substances and devices — or if all of us were not so glued now to a slave-based economy and not so superstitious about anything even smacking of First Civilization ways, Chasmal mused. Yesterday and would-have-been were not worth tears.

  4

  And so the omo dined alone and late, waving away her who brought the repast and the later one sent, with wine (also cuffed and cross-gagged with a riding crop), by a well-meaning Chasmal. Falc removed his great crawk-wing cloak only when she was gone and his door locked. He carried out that lonely meditation rite which the Order Most Old called Walking the Way. He ate only the salad and vegetables and drank some of the beer, which was after all safer than water and hardly anything approaching serious drinking!

  He had wished to be alone in the event of a visit by the Manifestation, but it — the Messenger — did not come.

  Falc slept well, eventually, while somewhere within that keep Chazar saw to the clearing away of two corpses and their blood, and while another man suffered alone in the darkness of the Pit, all deserving, and an ajmil from Silkevare lost her tongue, deserving or no, and was readied for a journey to Drearmist of the mountains and the light-mines whence bloomed that strange glowing lichen that was a legacy of the wars of the First Civilization, and its planetary despoliation. No one understood it, even while the jar-sealed lichen lighted most of the world.

  It was expensive because the mining of lichen light was a sentence of death, usually within five years.

  Next morning Falc departed overly provisioned and gifted, having drunk a mug of hot hax, eaten only fowl and without having trimmed his beard. An early morning shower had added an empyrean quality to the air; the sky and its light. He breathed deeply of it. Astride Chasmal’s gift of a fine and well-trained darg, the omo led his own Harr.

  The moment he was over the first rise of the Old Road, he drew the dagger Chasmal had pressed upon him. Its hilt was studded with gemstones (green, all but the yellow luckstone, a prismatic, orthorhombic fluosilicate of aluminum). Doubtless it was a fine tool, aside from being handsome and valuable.

  Regarding it, Falc thought, Nevertheless...

  He wrapped it and slid it into the same knapsack from which he took his own spare Tooth of Ashah; indecently large, with a guard of dark iron and a hilt of bone-stuffed black horn. Also in the pouch were the melts of realsilver Chasmal had forced upon him. Re-formed from the debased coins of the First Civilization, these coins were enough to purchase bushel upon bushel of threshed rint or a fine slave, even a well-trained one from such as Kinneven Holding.

  What Chasmal thought a Son of Ashah might do with the pot of cvarm, product of the sea off Lango, was beyond Falc’s imagining.

  Here too was the silly pistol, and the fine aventurine belt-slide. And the message that Chasmal sent to Kinneven. The very, very old nugget of realcoal Falc did sling on a black thong about his neck. It was beautifully faceted and shining, and amused him: the thing might well start a new legend about those whom some others called “Deathknights!”

  He would trade the sack of wine for accommodation in Morazain-on-the-Lake, if he decided to spend a night inside.

  Hours later, well west of Lango and by now convinced that Chasmal had not surreptitiously provided an escort, Falc twitched a rein to leave the road. Smooth as a night-companion’s backside, this darg’s behaviour. In a grove of sel and canopytrees Falc spoke to Harr while he removed the packs from that broad green-slate back. Next he transferred the old saddle and sacks from the fine new darg to the back of surly Harr, and relocated the packs on the blue-green back of Chasmal’s gift. The beast accepted that, without even the dignity to hiss at the insult.

  “No pride,” Falc muttered to Harr. Man and darg had been together for years, and trusted each other. “Well, and look what we have here,” he said, plucking up a dainty little three-petaled flower from amid violet-hued shume in deep shade. “A harr.”

  Immediately his darg’s head came around. Seeing only a flower he did not want, Harr head-nudged his master and turned away. Obviously his master had no need of him, and these butterflies and little moths were both interesting and tasty.

  Again Falc swung about himself the voluminous white, hooded robe, although the farmlands between here and Morazain were hardly desert. He had another reason. One of the worst of many difficult aspects of the Order was the required clothing. Unalleviated crawk-hue did draw attention and turn folk away in nervousness. On the other hand, it did not daunt the sun’s heat. Indeed, the black clothing attracted the sun unto itself as crellies to the firelight.

  Slupp! That from Harr, and two more pretty butterflies, yellow and pink with black, vanished forever. Falc gave the beast’s flank a friendly slap. It was the conqueror Sar Sarlis who had carried — or rather ridden, and led — dargoni all over Sij. They served well and bred well, these mutations from the deadly northern area beyond the mountains. They had appeared after the Deathfire war that had been the beginning of the end of the First Civilization. (The middle of the end had come after those folk, mostly yellow-brass of skin and extremely pale blue or even off-white of hair, had tried to live on after they had depleted the sources of energy for all those things they felt necessary. The end of the end was simply the extirpation of that people by the bronze and copper-red races who alone now populated Sij.)

  And good, well-meaning Chasmal actually presented me with this foolish ‘lectric pistol, Falc mused, turning the thing about in his gauntleted hands and shaking his head.

  Naturally one accepted; how could one tell a well-meaning Holder that one thought too much of one’s safety to trust such a thing, but could use a decent crossbow? Falc of Risskor, however, would no more depend on this sort of First Civilization evil, with its sometime efficiency and range of eight or ten meters, than one would depend on... on another person in a fight. But Falc aborted that thought, knowing himself for a bigot, even though a competent one who tried to be charitable in opinions.

  He tossed the little zinger away.

  He started to mount but paused, feeling the tremor of a minor quake. They were a part of life, but this one gave Falc time for uncharacteristic second thoughts. Strange and bulky in many cubic centimetres of long white derlin, he paced over to pick up the weapon — or rather, in his judgment, so-called weapon.

  A gift I might make to an enemy, perhap, he mused, as he thrust it into one of two empty stiff pouches on his saddle. “Harr lead walk,” he muttered, and was already swinging up when Harr jerked up his head in response.

  While Falc drew the robe around him, leaving it gaping rightward at the waist in front so that he could get at his weapons, Harr turned and paced back to the road. The gift-darg let the lead-rope tauten before he followed, with a hiss of mild complaint. At the road Harr paused and Falc flexed the muscle in his right calf. Harr turned right toward Morazain and Shoe Lake, and thence Secter in Juliara, and eventually Lock.

  A wavy shadow moved over the land, and he looked up to watch, briefly, a soaring crawk. Wings aspread, it rode currents of air that men did not even know existed. Falc saw no significance in the overhead passage of the big black bird of prey. He return
ed his gaze to the way ahead.

  “Ashah ride with me,” he muttered, and gave Harr’s neck a pat.

  The omo rode loosely, thinking about Chasmal and Faradox and the oddness of the plot and Alazhar’s action, and after a while he picked up the rein. Harr affected not to notice. He walked on, leading.

  TWO

  The members of a society have a vested interest in its stability, its preservation. A society owes to its members preservation of its stability. That is the meaning of Social Order. Anything else is Social Disorder. The previous societies of this world were destroyed by governments; by those very people entrusted with the maintenance and preservation of the social order!

  Never again must this beast called government be allowed to grow so powerful. The social order is individuals, who must be cherished — so long as they cherish the social order.

  — the Writings of Sath Firedrake

  *

  The sun was a bright flame-yellow coin and Falc wore the derlin, the intelligent traveller’s choice. So it was called: der-lin-suma. The phrase had got itself shortened to “derlin,” which was meaningless, except that now it meant long voluminous hooded robe or button-cloak, white.

  Willingly trailed by the gift-darg, Harr waddled his twisty way along the Old Road. He was pacing due west from Lango on a continent 540 kilometres wide and either 450 or 600 long, depending on whether one measured from the mountain called Granitewall down the western coast to the tongue of land below Mersarl, or from the far northeastern Burning Lands — not that anyone would enter that area of poison death to measure! — down to the east coast’s lowest point. That was Risskor, perched on a hurricane-buffeted spit that was like a nipple thrusting into the World Sea.

  They had left the area Langomen thought of as their territory. They had passed the rich, more than independent ardom or barony of Synaven Darg-breaker; he who was as often called Syneven the Darg, but not within his hearing. Now the omo and his two dargoni were within Zain.

  To their right, on the north across a rising meadow dotted with the violet blooms of shume, rose and rose the towering and vasty Bluemoss Wood, which sprawled larger than Lango. On Harr’s southward flank rolled away farmlands in their tender blue or aquamarine beauty, crowned in great rusty-red bursts with the ripe heads of rint and barley and decorated as well by coralgrass. The latter had nothing at all to do with coral, but in late summer it shot up spears that topped out in orangey-coralline seedpods. Coralgrass was a friend. Coralgrass held the land. It also served the purpose of attracting cutworms and thus birds away from the food crops.

  They evaded a wound in the roadway: a man-deep gash left by one of the minor quakes that plagued the land. They passed patches of the beauty of that purple-blooming turnip some mistook for shume, which grew anywhere and everywhere and was considered by many to be a message and a lesson to men. They paced past whole fields of it under cultivation; a plant whose flowers were enjoyable and provided colour; whose tubers were eminently edible, raw or cooked; whose flowers and seeds pressed into an excellent vegetable oil; whose plants provided fodder.

  The fat sun was turning bronze. It was being steadily overhauled by a mean-looking bank of comminatory cloud, like a creeping slate-hued fungus shot with deepest blue and charcoal.

  The sun, Falc mused. He knew that the Studiers, back in the First Civilization, had said that the other light of day, the tiny one that was often invisible or nearly, was also a sun, companion to The sun; and called each of them one with the myriad stars of night. And old stars at that, as Sij they said was an old world, second from the weary sun that was not larger but closer — so they said — and still warmed it more than many would prefer.

  “We’re going to get wet, Harr.”

  Harr turned his head a little in acknowledgment of his name. If he understood, he was surely delighted. He probably was anyhow, in anticipation. Dargs could smell moisture at impossible distances. Dargs loved rain, or indeed water in any form. And mud.

  Falc glanced back at the gift-darg. No one had thought to mention whether it had a name and he had failed to ask. He called it nothing. Falc blinked, glanced up at the encroaching clouds, and again at the rather gloomy deeply blue, purple-and-black barrier of the taboo forest. Many preferred to believe the legend that it contained the First Civilization, as a corral contained animals. It was true that many First Civilization remnants existed back in Bluemoss Wood; ruins and worse along with a few intact buildings and artefacts. Another legend held that Bluemoss was haunted. Certainly its dark deeps housed dangerous beasts and reptiles. Visiting there was forbidden, much less hunting or chopping. Old documents claimed that forests would somehow reduce the heat and raise coastlines — by lowering the sea — but no one knew why, or was sure that it was so.

  The notion seemed unlikely. Still, many things that men thought they knew were not so, while many rumours and unlikely seeming suppositions proved true; it was just that the reasons had been lost, along with millions of Sijmen and their civilization. In any case, tradition and legend had grown up around Bluemoss and other broad areas of woodland. They were left untouched. At least no one could gainsay their virginal beauty, sunless gloom or no!

  Falc thought about that, and about the First Civilization. It was better than thinking about the coming rain. He had given away his wide-brimmed hat two weeks ago.

  Once on Sij, up in the northeast where nothing remained, a different race had developed; people with unusually pale skin and hair of an extremely light colour. Eyes the colour of emerald and aventurine and pale new leather, legend had it. Over centuries and centuries and more centuries, that people had spread over and conquered much of the planet. They were arrogant, and strong, and always they came as conquerors bent on rule. For the past century or so, Studiers had sought reasons for such behaviour.

  A restless folk, some said. They fared south and westward because they were cold, some said; and angry, perhap, at having such odd hair and weird eyes. Their kind was in the minority by far. Yet they conquered, by arms and tongue-twist and elsewise, most of the other peoples and area of the world, and so came to domination. Of the three continents and few islands, Sijmen now had reason to believe that this continent was all that remained of the world. The conquerors had seen to that, and the War, and the Day of Sun-death that left the planet called Sij worse than restless, complaining of the injuries done it. The planet’s quakeful restlessness continued to this day.

  Now those people were most often referred to as “the Mechanists.” They had progressed into industry, into industrialisation, and then...

  The thing called technology had proven not to be progress. It had nearly conquered them, and nearly conquered the physical Sij itself. Eventually, through dominating along with using and misusing and Using, they became dependent on the rest of the world. And then they had become its prey, and prey of their technology.

  Now they were gone. Annihilated. Yes, true, there had been some assimilation, through interbreeding; a mingling of genes. Yet now no one had eyes the colour of emerald or aventurine or new-leather tan, or hair of the truly pale blue of the Mechanists. Now those long-faced, straight-nosed people were gone. Gone.

  They had not quite taken Sij with them. Sij came back.

  The only azure or cerulean hair now came from mis-dyeing. There were no green eyes aside from that pale blue-grey with a greenish tint. Far more rare were eyes of almost-green. In the language called Sijye the greyish bluish brownish colour was azar; brue or brown-blue.

  Chazar’s eyes were truly unique, and Falc’s skin like old copper was darker than many people ever saw. Despite the heat, no truly black race had ever developed on Sij. The equator was barren of land.

  Sijye was the only tongue on this vast continent and was said to be universal on Sij, if others survived; if other land did. The language had been carried across the world five hundred years ago by the conqueror Sar Sarlis. His empire lasted three hundred years, by which time it had grown huge, impersonal, hereditary of rule and de
voted to favouritism; unwieldy, more and more in need of more and more funding; sybaritic, weak, and plain bad. Intolerable.

  Enter Sath Firedrake.

  Even now the Master of the Order Most Old assumed, on taking that post, that old sobriquet of Sath the farmer’s son: Firedrake. The present Firedrake was quite old, and Falc was sure he suffered in the kidneys and perhaps in his bowels. Now and again Falc wondered who would someday be called Master, and Firedrake.

  He was thinking about that when he was interrupted by nature, and Sij:

  Ninety-meter treetops on his right whispered and waved restlessly while thunder grumbled across the sky with the sound of a vast empty belly. Harr twitched and hissed, swinging his head to and fro in quest of the source of that noise; of danger. Falc sighed, and rode. He would not hasten. Rain was often preferable to a quake. Patting the darg’s neck to instil confidence and calm, he spoke rather than sang the first verse of “Destiny Wears a Black Cloak,” in a low, calming voice:

  Troublous time and woe, tyranny of the hoe;

  How these inspire and flame my desire

  To seek the Order Most Old!

  Ashah accept me!

  Ashah ride with me!

  Ashah deliver me!

  Sath guide me!

  Falc sighed, and rode. He would not hurry.

  “We just plod on, Harr. We’ve been rained on afore.” He patted Harr’s neck and muttered a line from Markcun’s Soliloquy: “Rain brings unhappiness to some and happiness to many.”