“Where have the people gone?” he wondered aloud.
Glamiss did not reply, though he was wondering the same thing. Moving steadily along the riverbank, the troop was swiftly approaching the village. But there was no movement in the place. The mill dominating the ford in the river was deserted; the waterwheel turned, and Glamiss could see the paddles rising, dripping diamond bright in the morning sun. But there was no sound and no sign of human habitation.
Beyond the hovels, the warleader could now see the path that appeared to lead upward toward the moraine and the glacier shining ice-blue on the slope of the mountains.
He raised his monocular and studied the rocky, rising ground. He estimated the distance at no more than two or three kilometers, and in the brilliant light the rocks and shadows were sharply limned in the glass. Farther up the slope he noted what appeared to be a platform of dressed stone or ferroconcrete. He felt a tingle of excitement as he realized that he was looking at a remnant of some ancient imperial construction. The stonemasons of Vara--in fact, of Vyka or any other planet of the Great Sky--could produce no such architecture.
He handed the glass to the Navigator riding at his side and said, “Under the glacier. What do you think of it?”
Emeric studied the concrete platform, noting the broad steps and what appeared to be the Anglic inscription on the archway. His heart began to beat more swiftly. “It’s imperial. No doubt of it.”
Glamiss smiled grimly. “The lair of your warlock, no doubt.”
Emeric continued to study the construction. He could not read the inscription at this distance clearly, but it seemed to contain the word “hospital,” and if his memory of the ideographs was accurate, the word “cryonic,” which was almost meaningless to him, for he understood the concept only as “colder-than-possible,” which was but one of the many paradoxes inherent in the language of the men of the Golden Age.
Suddenly his breath quickened. As he watched, human figures seemed to materialize out of the mountain. All but one were simply skin-clad natives of the valley (explaining where the people had gone, it seemed). They were carrying a number of machines of unholy and sinful appearance and placing them on the concrete platform. Emeric made the sign of the Star as he caught the glitter of metal and glass. But it was the figure directing the operations that turned his blood to water. For it must be the Warlock himself. There could be no other explanation for the creature’s singular appearance: dressed in a robe of shimmering silvery metal that appeared flamelike at this distance, bareheaded so that one could see the very ordinary white hair of an old man. But on the Warlock’s shoulder rode a familiar of shining metal with a single, great eye of glass that gleamed in the sunlight.
‘‘Glamiss, Look!“
The warleader took the glass and his lips tightened into a hard line. “Is it a man, priest?” he asked.
Emeric wondered at the cold calmness in his friend’s voice. Even a priest, who like himself had been carefully educated to accept the dark wonders of the past, might well be stricken with terror at the look of the apparition directing the activity on the mountain. Yet Glamiss remained unmoved and unintimidated.
“A man, I think,” Emeric said. “The sorcerer of Trama, most probably. See how afraid of him the others are.”
“It’s the business of peasants to be afraid,” Glamiss said. “What I want to know is, can he harm us? What are those machines they are emplacing?”
Emeric shrugged despairingly, filled with a sense of his own and his Order’s inadequacy in the presence of the ancient science.
“I don’t know, Glamiss,” he admitted.
“Are they weapons?”
“I don’t know that, either, Glamiss.”
“They don’t appear to be,” the warman said slowly. “But I’ve heard of machines that once threw firebolts.”
The priest made the sign of the Star. “Energy weapons have all been rendered harmless by God in the Star, Glamiss Warleader--” This was a basic tenet of Navigator dogma. The Star had brought low not only the sinful men of the Golden Age, but he had also destroyed the weapons they used to break civilization down. It was one of the first things taught in the cloister worlds of Algol. But was it true--? The sinfulness of the thought was staggering. A Navigator must not doubt, ever. Still--
Glamiss said dryly, “I hope that the creature up there on the mountain has gotten the word of the Star in this matter, Emeric. Those machines look like projectors.”
Emeric remembered the fragmentary carvings and crystal solideographs he had seen among the treasures of the Order in Algol--pictures of Sin and Cyb killing men in war. Some were battle scenes from the distant Dawn Age, and the weapons were familiar, for they were essentially those used by men now. But others were of the wars of expansion fought by the men of the Empire, and in these the weapons were often energy-based: laserifles, killer beams, and bolt-guns--the very stuff of Sin and Cyb, for in those days the Adversaries were gaining strength for their final, terrible assault on the children of the Star.
“It cannot be, Glamiss. There are no usable energy weapons in all the Great Sky, nor anyone who knows how they are made,” he said with more conviction than he felt.
Glamiss lowered his glass and searched the deserted banks of the river. “Let us hope that your Warlock is as convinced of this as the Order,” he said.
“Amen to that,” muttered the priest.
Glamiss gave a hand signal, and the troop moved into extended order as they approached the ford. Across the river the mill, looking as though it had been hastily abandoned, seemed to stare at the soldiers from blank-eyed windows. Beyond it, among the few hovels of the village, a pariah-dog, its red tongue lolling, loped among the village litter. No other sound broke the morning stillness and Emeric could hear the soft lapping of the paddles in the millrace.
Warman Quant, riding just behind Emeric and the warleader, mumbled an audible prayer. Emeric turned in time to see several others making witchsigns and he felt a pang of exasperation mixing with his apprehension. How were men ever to pull themselves out of this endless barbarism, laden down as they were with all the superstitions a thousand or more years of darkness could produce?
Even the ritual of his own Order, thought the Navigator, was so filled with signs and sigils that a man couldn’t tell what was the true knowledge of the ancients and what was pure warlockry. The Chinese of fabled Earth were said, however, to have had a proverb: The longest journey begins with a single step. To bring the race back to the height it had once scaled, to unite the men of the thousand suns again, would surely be a journey of the longest and bitterest sort, one lasting many lifetimes. But it must begin with a single step.
The question was, is this the first step forward?
The valley of Trama, mute and foreboding, might hold the answer.
Glamiss took the first crossing of the river for himself. That was like him, Emeric thought. If there were danger in that silent village, it was Glamiss who would face it first.
Blue Star picked her way daintily through the shallows, her slender legs flashing wetly in the sunlight. When she stood on the opposite bank near the mill, Glamiss signaled for the troopers to cross, two by two, with the remainder holding their lances and crossbows at the ready.
But the crossing was uneventful. The last to ford the river was Vulk Asa, leading the dead warman’s mare and her mournful burden.
The scouts had crossed the river some half kilometer upstream and now they appeared, their mares’ flanks glistening and still wet from the swim.
“Nothing in sight, Glamiss Warleader.”
Emeric unconsciously raised his eyes to the glacier that seemed here to loom over the village. From his position near the mill he could not see the moraine and the high platform built into the mountain, but he was ever conscious of it. For it was there, he was certain, that the folk of Trama had taken refuge with their Warlock.
“They seem to have scattered most of the flocks,” the second scout reported. “The hill
sides were swarming with weyr. Fat ones. But no people anywhere.”
“We will scout the village,” Glamiss said. He, too, knew where the folk had gone, Emeric realized. But he would not chance an assault on the mountain until he knew that the village was clear at his back. Emeric thought about Ulm and the entire levy of Vara landing behind them, pinning them all against the moraine with a volley of quarrels and throwing spears, and shuddered. A man in this time must always be prepared to die in battle, the Navigator thought, but it was a bitter thing to be caught and killed in so treacherous a little affair on this barbarous planet so far from Rhada--
“Stay with me, Emeric,” Glamiss ordered, turning Blue Star toward the open space among the hovels that apparently served Trama for a marketplace.
From here one could see the platform high under the glacier. Metal glinted there, and that terrible, silvery clothing the Warlock wore. But Glamiss paid no heed. In the field, Emeric thought, his friend became a military machine: each tactical problem being attacked with precision in its proper place, until the strategic plan of whatever battle must be fought lay cleanly and clearly defined. Glamiss was a military genius and only his lowly estate prevented him from exercising his talents to the full. What would he be able to do with armies instead of warbands, with nations and planets instead of fiefs and barbarous berserkers to command?
The dream again, Emeric thought. It was only last night between the rising of the moons that Glamiss had told him of it. Yet here he was, as caught up in the strange wonder of it as Glamiss himself. Was this the force of the power men called destiny?
He shook his head exasperatedly. He had been in the hinterlands too long. Glamiss was only a lowborn mercenary leader of troops--not some great conqueror. He was a boy, really, barely even old enough to claim a man’s state and weapons. Still--didn’t every true conqueror begin this way? In Algol he had learned the legends of Philip of Macedon, of Temujin, whom men called Genghis Khan, of the man known as Bonaparte. All of these and others had begun as simple soldiers. The Navigator smiled thinly. If Glamiss should ever become what he imagined he might become he would have to prohibit the teaching of such legends lest other simple warmen dream of empires. . .
“What are you grinning about, Emeric?” Glamiss asked, as they moved between the buildings to the market square.
“Daydreaming, Glamiss,” the priest replied.
“Save it for when we are safe within the mountain, my friend,” Glamiss said.
“In the mountain, Glamiss Warleader?”
“Do you see anything outside the mountain worth taking?”
Suddenly, as if in answer to Glamiss’s rhetorical query, the silence was torn by a screaming blast of sound: voices, brassy music, and the throb of great military drums. Glamiss wheeled Blue Star and signaled the troopers to take cover.
Emeric tried wildly to discover the source of the thundering noises, but there was nothing. Then his body felt a growing, icy chill of dread as he saw the swirling darkness forming in the marketplace. It was a blurry shadow that covered the width of the entire square, and it seemed alive with flashes of light that, curiously and terribly, seemed to be developing substance.
Glamiss sat astride the snarling Blue Star, his flail and sword drawn and ready. The warmen had melted into the alleys between the hovels, terrified (as was Emeric) but responsive to Glamiss’s discipline.
When the Navigator looked again at the square, he was shocked to see that it was filled with warriors: strange men in armor not unlike his own iron mail, but decorated with brilliant tabards and surcoats bearing devices he had never before seen. The soldiers were gathered about a handsome young man with hair the color of gold, shimmering in the sunlight and blowing strangely to an unfelt wind.
Emeric looked about him desperately. Where had the soldiers come from? The square and the village had been deserted only an instant before and yet now the place swarmed with these brilliantly caparisoned and armed warriors. Glamiss signaled him to take cover with the others, but he himself sat astride Blue Star, watching the hundred or so soldiers in the square through narrowed eyes. He would have spoken to them, demanded to know whose men they were and what business they had in a village belonging to the lands of Lord Ulm --but the words died in his throat, for the richly armed company was paying not the slightest attention to him, nor to the remainder of the troop--which they surely could not have avoided seeing.
“Emeric!” Falling back into the mouth of a narrow way leading into the square, Glamiss signaled to the Navigator.
“Holy Star protect us!” Emeric said fervently, making the same witchsign that had only a short while before so irritated him when made by the men.
“Emeric, listen!”
The sound of military trumpets and drums had faded and the words the strange warriors spoke came clearly across the square.
“What language is that?”
Emeric strained to make out the words. He had no trouble hearing, for the talk was now clearly audible, and the phrases and words perfectly pitched. But the language--Holy Star, it wasn’t Empire Anglic--exactly. Yet it was so similar that it tantalized the listeners ear with familiar words and cadences.
“I don’t know, it--”
“Listen!”
Emeric turned to stare. The fair-haired boy was addressing his soldiers. It was obvious that he was the greatest personage in that strange gathering, for when he spoke, all listened with respect.
--No, faith, my coz, with not a man from England: God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honor, as one man more, methinks, would share from me, for the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, that he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his passport shall be made, and crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to die with us--
Emeric studied the soldiers at the edge of the group. There was a strange and shadowy quality to them, as though one could almost see through their bodies. The Navigator shivered and made the sign of the Star. This was the Warlock’s witch-work, and yet--and yet--those words the handsome boy warleader was speaking. He knew those words, or some very like them.
“Glamiss--”
The Vykan gripped his mailed arm to silence him, listening. The boy now stood atop what appeared to be a magnificently decorated brass cannon. His voice had risen in pitch and timbre. The surcoat he wore glittered in the sunlight and his flaxen hair blew in that unfelt witch-wind.
This day is called the Feast of Crispian: he that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispian. Fie that shall see this day, and live old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, and say, “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian: “ Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars and say, “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day. “ Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, but he’ll remember with advantages, what feats he did that day!--
The words and rhythms were becoming clearer in Emeric’s mind. Anglic it was, yes, but not the language of the Empire. No, it was far older than that, it was the tongue called English, after the ancient island in the Atlantic Sea of mythic Earth. It was the way men spoke in that place in the beginning of history--in that legendary time called the Dawn Age!
--then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son; and Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered; we few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother. Be he ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition. And gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispian’s day.
Emeric was startled to h
ear the sudden shout from Glamiss. The Vykan dug his heels into Blue Star’s flank and galloped out into the marketplace toward the strangers. Emeric was shocked to see that Glamiss was waving his weapons to assemble the troop. And he was laughing, shouting with laughter, making the square echo with it.
“Emeric!” the Vykan called. “Out! Come out here!”
The Navigator eased Sea Wind forward warily. Glamiss turned to face him, his teeth showing white in an insane grin. “It’s a play, Emeric! They’re actors’.’’
The realization was like a burst of light to the Navigator. He remembered now the vague allusions to the image-projections, the holographic films of the Empire. It was very like the navigational holographs produced by the starships.
Then the significance of the images in the marketplace began to broaden. So the Warlock had at his command the magic (call it science, Emeric, he told himself) of the Empire --some of it, at any rate. Functioning machines. The implications were staggering. Did Glamiss understand them as well?
The Navigator looked at his friend, who was galloping Blue Star around the marketplace--passing through the projected images with shouts of delighted laughter. The warleader was behaving like a truant boy, swinging his flail through the holographs in glittering arcs while the fair-haired actor declaimed: “I pray thee, bear my former answer back ... the man that once did sell the lion’s skin while the beast liv ‘d was killed with hunting him--“
The warmen of the troop moved cautiously into the square, half-frightened and bemused by the sight of their leader galloping through the seemingly-solid substance of the martial host.
Glamiss stopped Blue Star in the center of the marketplace and raised his eyes toward the looming glacier. “Warlock! Warlock!” he roared, his voice tinged with wild delight. “I know your secrets, Warlock! I’m coming to take them!”
There was not, Emeric realized, a chance that the silver-robed sorcerer on the mountain could hear Glamiss, and the Vykan knew it. But it was fitting to the marvelous insanity of the moment that Glamiss should shout a challenge like that. Emeric felt it and so did the others in the troop; the marketplace filled with their clamor. The men who were still apprehensive and wary of the shadowy warriors in the holofilm were sustained and buoyed up by their leader’s defiance.
The Warlock of Rhada Page 9
