by Lee Duigon
You might have thought he would immediately tell Ellayne and Jack what he’d discovered, so that Whiteface—Martis—could deal with the man, but he didn’t. He fully intended to, but his kind takes little notice of the passage of time. Having to live inside a colony of Big People made him more cautious than he would be otherwise. But he did share the news with the old rat under the porch.
The rat was not happy that an enemy was in town. He had a tolerant view of human beings. None had ever chased or screamed at him, and they were, after all, the source of those delicious tidbits from the kitchen. To learn that some of those large, two-legged creatures could be dangerous unsettled him.
“Whiteface and I, we will kill him someday soon,” Wytt said.
The rat shivered. Rats fought and killed each other, occasionally. He was just barely able to imagine a kind of rat-fight involving human beings, and he didn’t like it.
“We kill him somewhere else, not here,” Wytt promised. And the rat was reassured.
Back in Lintum Forest, Fnaa suffered from a sense of being left out of important doings.
Some of the adults at Carbonek teased him by calling him “Your Majesty,” as if being the king’s double were a joke. He’d enjoyed himself in Obann, holding the king’s place until Ryons should turn up again; but at the same time, he’d understood that he was doing something tremendously important, and that if he didn’t do it well, there would be trouble like he couldn’t imagine. But now the few people who’d appreciated his work—Queen Gurun and Uduqu and Obst—had all marched off with Ryons. And he missed the king especially, who’d become the best friend he’d ever had.
Do what is in your heart, Jandra had told him, back in Obann: for God is with you.
“When are you going to do some more prophecy?” he asked her, the morning after the army set out from Carbonek. Jandra only giggled and didn’t know what he was talking about. She was just a little girl and didn’t even understand the word “prophecy.” She just did it sometimes, and didn’t know she did it.
“That’s as it should be,” Obst always said. “She is pure. She’s not old enough to make up any of the things she says. By this we can be sure it’s God’s spirit speaking through her.”
“They shouldn’t have left me behind,” Fnaa said. But Jandra just said, “Look at bugs!” She pointed to some ants going around in circles.
Fnaa sighed, but he couldn’t help looking. Someone who knew about ants might have told them that these had somehow lost their scent trail and couldn’t find their way back to the anthill. “Ants are supposed to know what they’re doing,” Fnaa said, “but these don’t. What’s the matter with them?”
Jandra’s toothed bird squawked, and she got up and merrily chased after it. She didn’t toddle anymore, Fnaa noticed. She’d learned how to walk properly. When had that happened?
From the castle wall, a cardinal chirped to its mate. City-born and bred, Fnaa enjoyed listening to the birds in the forest. But just now he ignored it.
“There’s nothing for me to do around here,” he grumbled to himself. “And if anything happens to Ryons, and he doesn’t come back, I can’t just keep on pretending to be him for the rest of my life!” He was sure God would not be pleased with that.
“I can at least go as far as Ninneburky,” he thought. He wanted to see Jack and Ellayne again, even if he couldn’t catch up to Ryons and the army. “Yes—I’ll go.”
CHAPTER 10
The Chieftains and the Gold
All the city of Obann was agog. A couple of trappers had come down from the north and set up an exhibit in a corner of High Market Square—three sets of gigantic antlers, impossibly huge, mounted on a wooden frame atop a cart. For a penny they would let you touch the antlers and see that they were real. And for the coins people tossed into their oaken bucket, the trappers told wonderful stories.
Gallgoid went to see for himself. They weren’t ordinary antlers, from ordinary deer. Venison used to appear often enough on Lord Reesh’s table for Gallgoid to recognize the difference. These antlers were flattened, spread out almost like moose antlers, but their points were long and sharp. The deer that carried them must have been as big as houses. Gallgoid paid his penny and ran his fingers over them. They were real, all right.
“Well, no, the critters aren’t as big as you might think,” said one of the trappers, a squat, grey-bearded man. “They’re bigger than your regular deer, sure, but not that much. When you see one, you wonder how he can hold his head off the ground with all that artillery up there. But he does—and heaven help you if you get too close! They move like lightning.”
Gallgoid dropped a silver coin in the bucket, and the younger man took up the tale. But it wasn’t animal stories that captured Gallgoid’s interest.
“Oh, yes,” the trapper said, “Lord Chutt has pretty much straightened things out, up north.” Chutt was the only survivor of the old High Council of the Oligarchy. He ran away from Obann City when the Heathen armies came. “He’s got the people organized, you see.” Indeed, Chutt had raised his own militia, swelling its numbers by taking into his service fugitives from the Thunder King’s scattered horde.
Gallgoid went on to bear this news to Baron Hennen, but Hennen had already heard it.
“I’m going to have to march up there with at least two thousand men,” he said, “and see if I can make Lord Chutt swear allegiance to the king. It sounds to me like he has ideas of setting up his own kingdom in the north. That might be a danger to us.”
“I should know more about this,” Gallgoid said. “I’m afraid I’ve neglected the north.”
“I thought Chutt was dead, like all the others. I’m sorry, Gallgoid, but I can’t spare any men for the Golden Pass.”
Gallgoid nodded. It couldn’t be helped. But at least the city itself was quiet. His agents had assured him of that.
He returned to his office. He had a feeling Hennen didn’t quite believe in the great store of gold that lay unguarded at the pass. Gallgoid was the only man in Obann who’d seen it with his own eyes.
“It’s going to breed trouble, all that gold,” he thought.
Helki made his way quickly down the river and arrived in time to join the king’s army while it camped outside Ninneburky. After paying his respects to the king, he visited Jack and Ellayne.
It seemed strange to have him in the baron’s parlor. He was as out of place there as a wild boar would be, and he felt it, too.
“Believe it or not,” he told the family, “this is the first time I’ve ever been inside any place that could properly be called a house.” But the children were overjoyed to see him again, and he them. “You’ve grown, the pair of you,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time I saw you, you were all grown up.”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” said Ellayne, “and the king and queen and Obst had supper here last night! Oh, how I wish we were going with them when they leave tomorrow!”
Her father flashed her a stern look. “Watch out for these two, Helki,” he said. “Their adventuring days are over, but sometimes I don’t think they know it yet.”
“We know it!” Jack said with a smile.
“We have to have a pow-wow, Baron—you and me and all the chieftains,” Helki said. “Tonight, I mean. In the chiefs’ black tent, with no one else.”
“Bad news?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that!” Helki grinned. “Might even be good news, if we can find the right thing to do about it. We’ll talk about it later.” He turned to Ellayne. “How about Wytt? Is he still with you?”
“Come on,” Ellayne said, “we’ll find him.”
Now gold has a way of making itself known even when people try to keep it a secret. And it was gold that Helki wished to discuss with the chieftains. Except for Roshay Bault himself, no one else from Ninneburky was invited to the chiefs’ big tent that evening, nor any soldier in the army.
This was the tent they’d brought with them when they’d invaded Obann in the service of
King Thunder. It had room in it for a good two hundred men and women, but Gurun was the only woman there tonight, and most of the space was empty. The chieftains posted guards at the entrance, two of Helki’s own most trusted Griffs. Obst was there, of course, but the king had been sent to spend the night at the baron’s house.
“There’s more gold at the top of the Golden Pass,” Helki began, “than any of you have seen in all your lives. It’s lying there for the taking. No one’s guarding it. The hill-folk are sure the place is haunted, and the Thunder King sends no one near it because he doesn’t want anyone to see what happened to that hall and the king who built it. You’ve never seen such a ruin in your lives, either. And the former Thunder King lies dead there, under a mountain of gold.”
The chieftains muttered excitedly—they knew what gold could buy—but Obst shook his head.
“We have not been called by God to gather gold,” he said, “but to go down into Heathen land and proclaim Him in countries where He has not been known. What good is all that gold to us? The previous Thunder King owned all of it, and you see what good it did him.”
Helki shrugged. “As for me, I’ve never held a gold coin in my hand for as long as I’ve lived,” he said. “But you ought to decide what to do, before your men see all that gold and make some decisions of their own. Some of them might have a powerful hunger for it. They might not want to come down from the mountain without it.”
Hawk stood up. He and his brothers were the first Hosa men to join King Ryons’ army. By now he’d learned to speak good Obannese.
“What do we care for gold!” he said. “The Thunder King sent his mardars into our country. They poisoned our springs. They made our cattle cast their young. Our own babies were born dead. They forced us to march far away, to make war on people who had never done us any harm, in countries we had never even heard of. They made us slaves! But the God of Obann made us free again. We will never turn aside, not to the right nor to the left, until there is no more Thunder King at all.”
When the applause died down, Chief Shaffur said, “Everyone knows my people have a lust for gold. It buys good things. Why else do you suppose Wallekki traders cross the desert and risk their lives in savage and uncouth countries?” For some reason, that made Helki smile to himself. “When my men see that gold,” said Shaffur, “they’ll desire it with all their hearts. As will I!” He paused to glare at the other chiefs. “But we will ride right past it, every single one of us. You have my word.”
Attakotts had no use for gold, said their chosen leader, Looth, and the Griffs said they could do without it, too. Then it was Roshay’s turn to speak.
“If the gold is there,” he said, “we ought to have it. With it we can raise and equip new armies, which we’ll need. We can repair the damage the enemy has done to our towns and farms. We can fortify towns and build new chamber houses. We ought to bring it down before the Thunder King can find a way to get it back.”
“You haven’t seen the place,” said Helki. “It’d take this army the whole summer to carry it down the mountain.”
“Maybe my people could do it,” Roshay said, “while this army marches into Heathen lands.”
“We had hopes you might march with us,” Shaffur said. “How many spears could you add to our force?”
“A thousand, at the most. I’d have to hold back at least that many for defense.”
“A blade of grass,” said Tiliqua, the Griff, “compared to the tens of thousands commanded by the Thunder King.”
“Warlords!” cried Obst. “Please put out of your minds any thought of conquering the Thunder King’s dominions with this tiny army! Our enterprise is in God’s hands, not our own. It makes no difference whether we march east with three thousand men or three hundred thousand. It will be by God’s power whether we stand or fall.”
So it was decided that Roshay and his militia should stay behind and do what he thought best. He thought it might be possible for him to come up after the king’s army and haul the gold back down to Ninneburky. But even that, said Shaffur, would be dangerous.
“You’ll find it a hard thing to maintain your men’s discipline, Baron,” he said. “I know the people of Obann. They’re as bad as we are when it comes to gold. Your men will want to keep it for themselves.”
“Even that would be better than letting the Thunder King get his hands on it again,” Roshay answered.
The army marched the next morning, with King Ryons at its head and Jack and Ellayne waving to him in the crowd that assembled to see him off.
How can gold be kept a secret? By the end of the day, everyone in Ninneburky knew there was a treasure waiting for anyone who’d come and take it. Even before the baron could send out riders to call up his militia from all along the river, Ysbott the Snake had heard the rumor.
As yet it was only a rumor, a garbled tale of gold and jewels somewhere in the mountains. Ysbott had never heard of the Thunder King’s golden hall and its destruction by an avalanche. Having lived all his life in Lintum Forest, where immense wealth is unknown, he had only a vague idea of what a treasure could buy. But the very vagueness of his ideas set his mind on fire. If he had gold, he thought, he could hire every outlaw in Obann and have a bigger army than the king. He would live in a palace and sit on a throne. He could buy Helki’s scalp to decorate his belt. He, Ysbott, would be the lord of Lintum Forest. And while he was at it, he would avenge himself on Baron Roshay Bault and all his family.
But Ysbott was not such a fool as to think he could do this all by himself.
“Send word to my men,” he told the cobbler, who was his uneasy host. “Tell them that I won’t be coming back for quite a while yet. Tell them they can now do as they please—I want them to enjoy themselves. Tell them the country is going to be emptied of militia soon and that they must feel free to help themselves to whatever they can get.”
The silly beggars, he thought, were sure to go on a rampage and just as surely would be caught. Ysbott didn’t care. If they were all caught and hanged, the baron would think he’d solved his bandit problem. Ysbott needed better men than these, if he hoped to gain a treasure.
“Will you be staying here for very long?” asked the cobbler.
“Much healthier for you if you don’t know,” said Ysbott. And after that there were no more questions.
CHAPTER 11
How the Army Climbed the Pass
Ryons’ army had to cross the plain between the Imperial and Chariot rivers. Where the sources of the Chariot tumbled down from the hills, they would strike the Thunder King’s road leading up to the Golden Pass. This they accomplished in good time.
The passage of invading armies had driven out the shepherds and cattle drovers who normally made use of the plain and left it a lonely country. To the west lay King Oziah’s Wood, upon whose borders the Thunder King’s host fell into disunion and the Abnaks mutinied. Ryons would have liked to visit this small forest, which had once sheltered his ancestor, King Ozias, from his enemies. Here Ozias had met the prophet, Penda, who’d assured him that if he erected a bell atop Bell Mountain, God would hear it when it rang. But many generations had passed before that happened.
Scouting for miles ahead of and around the army, Looth’s Attakotts found no sign of enemies. But they did find game, and plenty of it. Their poisoned arrows brought down beasts that no one had ever seen before.
There was a big, clumsy grass-eater that gathered in small groups around the springs and waterholes: so big that they had to cut one into many pieces before they could bring the meat back to the army. It had a divided lip, like a rabbit’s, but stood as tall as a horse on legs like tree trunks.
“Is it safe to eat when you kill it with poisoned arrows?” Obst wondered.
“Safe and good,” said Looth, “if you drain out all the blood and don’t eat the liver.”
There were great hunting birds, like Baby, and smaller kinds that ran but didn’t fly; these made good eating. Once Looth brought back a kind of antelope wit
h three forked antlers on its head instead of two. The wiry little Attakotts sang the praises of the country as a hunters’ paradise. They didn’t know it had never been like that until quite recently.
“Maybe someday we would like to live here,” Looth said, “if the king will give us the land.”
“I don’t see why not,” Ryons said.
Soon enough they reached the road, a bare swath that stretched up into the hills as far as the eye could see. At the top was the Golden Pass.
