by Lee Duigon
“Prester Jod—if he can get here in time,” said Gallgoid. “No one else has the prestige to do it. But the people will obey him, I think.”
“I believe Hennen left a legate named Ullun in charge of the troops,” Constan said. “It’s a far cry from Lord Gwyll.” It was Lord Gwyll who had led the defense against the Thunder King, but he’d died in the battle. “Our city is not what it once was.”
“There will be worse in store for it,” Gallgoid said, “if the people think they’ve lost both their First Prester and their king. We need Prester Jod.”
“He will come,” Constan said. “But let us pray for the others.”
Gallgoid would soon learn that Hennen was a prisoner in Market City. But Hennen’s officers were under orders not to fight except in self-defense and, if it could be safely done, to march back to Obann without him.
“I won’t have Chutt come into possession of my troops!” he told them. “I don’t think he’s well-enough organized to attack you, if you retreat promptly. Get back to the city and make ready to defend it.”
So Hennen went into Market City to parley with Lord Chutt, who invited him to dine with him, saw there was no budging the general from his allegiance to the king, and so had ruffians bind him and lock him in a cellar. But by then Hennen had already seen and heard enough to convince him Chutt was a fool.
Chutt had six thousand men, more than half of them stragglers from the Thunder King’s defeated armies. These had joined him because they had nowhere else to go, and he was feeding them on stores that would soon run out. He would have to move them south, where they would be able to pillage farms and towns. Hennen doubted Chutt would be able to control them then. In the meantime, the man was putting on airs.
“I am the last of the High Council of the Oligarchy,” he said over dinner. “Obann hasn’t had a king for a thousand years, or two thousand—it doesn’t matter which. But there wouldn’t even be an Obann for this boy king of yours to pretend to rule, if it weren’t for the oligarchs.
“We put this shattered nation back together. We reunited all the petty lords and fiefdoms. For three hundred years, sir, the oligarchs have governed. It’s truly the only way to govern such a large country. Kings are all right in fairy tales, but this is the real world.”
Hennen saw no point in arguing with him. He would have returned to camp that evening and led his troops home the next morning, confident that Chutt would prove to be his own worst enemy, but Chutt had him thrown into a cellar before he’d finished his dessert.
“And you can sit in the dark,” Chutt said, from the top of the stairs, “until you decide to join me and do what’s best for your country.”
“You can’t afford to wait that long,” said Hennen.
CHAPTER 20
Ysbott’s Plan
Omah don’t live in the mountains, and although Wytt had climbed Bell Mountain and ascended the Golden Pass—the only one of his kind ever to do such things—the novelty of the environment appealed to him and tempted him to go exploring. While his human companions huddled in their shelters, Wytt went out alone, traveling under the thick brush and not caring much about the rain.
Around his neck he wore a lock of Ellayne’s hair. He couldn’t have told you why: only that it was “sunshine hair,” which to him seemed reason enough to cherish it. Many other Omah would have felt the same.
Probing a rotting log for tasty grubs, he nearly lost his head when a pair of strong jaws suddenly snapped shut at him, just missing his face. His reflexes saved him, but he didn’t know what to think of the strange creature to which the jaws belonged.
Jack would have said it was a salamander—but what a salamander! It was as big as a boy’s arm, glossy black with flaming red stripes up and down its body, and a head the size of a man’s fist. The salamanders Jack knew were no bigger than his finger.
From a safe distance Wytt chattered at it, brandishing his sharp stick and hurling insults. “Son of a snake! Legless vermin!” In truth the beast had legs, but they were so disproportionately small, they hardly counted. “Come and fight—I’ll pin your flat head to the ground!” But the salamander only stared unblinkingly, having defended its hunting ground. Wytt was forced to move on.
Above him, in the trees, there was some other creature hunting in the rain, bigger and more dangerous than any salamander, and a lot hungrier. Wytt stayed keenly alert. He couldn’t see this hunter, but he could hear it whenever it stirred, no matter how stealthily. His nostrils wrinkled at a scent he’d never known before. As rich as it was in grubs and edible tubers, and even purple berries that were as sweet as anything he’d ever tasted, this was a country full of hidden dangers—to all of which the humans were oblivious. They were big and strong, but all but useless in the wilderness. Wytt thought he would be hard put to protect them.
As the rain began to slacken, Ysbott the Snake moved camp.
“We don’t want the baron to find us here, do we?” he said. “We’ll find a place close to the gold we’ve brought down and sit tight while he marches right past us.”
Half a mile from the road, they set up a new camp in a small clearing. Ysbott expected to be there when Roshay Bault came back down the mountain. There were sure to be stragglers. Maybe there would be a chance to grab more gold.
Not surprisingly, Ysbott’s men were nearly at the end of their strength. He didn’t want them collapsing just yet, so this time he helped them put up shelters. But everything was too wet for a fire.
“We’re almost out of food, Tobb,” the cobbler said. “What I wouldn’t give for hot roast beef!”
“You can buy all the roast beef in Ninneburky when we get back home,” Ysbott answered, “and the best Durmurot wine to wash it down. Meanwhile, get what rest you can. We can’t work while the baron’s up there.”
The Abnaks wanted to show the holy man that they could fight. A few dozen of them went out one night and came back two days later with a gory haul of Wallekki scalps.
“Fifty! We slew at least fifty of them!” exulted the leader of the raid. “And we burned their camp down when we were done. Look at all the horsemeat!” For Abnaks prize horsemeat as a delicacy, especially when taken from an enemy.
Orth didn’t mind their feasting on horsemeat, although it would be frowned upon in Obann, but he had to look away from the warriors’ scalp dance. “God help me,” he prayed silently, “what kind of people are these? And what am I to do among them?” He could hardly ask them to abandon all their customs.
The chiefs and subchiefs had retired into a long house sheathed with bark—the closest Abnaks ever came to erecting a permanent habitation. Now they came out, while the dance was still in progress, and Orth startled when Foxblood came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t like it, do you?” the chief said. “Well, I didn’t think you would. But it’s an ancient custom of ours, a way of great rejoicing. If you could understand what they’re singing, you would know they were thanking the God of Obann for giving them this victory. Besides, the men who used to own those scalps are well past taking any further harm.”
“My own ancestors used to do things like this,” said Orth. “But that was a very long time ago.”
“There’s a great camp of the Zephites further down the hill,” Foxblood said, “a wooden wall with five hundred warriors inside it. That’ll be the next place we attack. They’re not used to seeing us come in great numbers. I’m telling you this because this time you’ll be coming with us to the battle.”
“I won’t be any use to you,” Orth said.
“Our people think otherwise. We want you to pray for us, and keep on praying until we win.”
“I am a man of peace, Chief Foxblood.”
“That we all know, Prester. I don’t hold it against you.”
“To think of men killing one another distresses me,” said Orth. “To see it would distress me more! But who am I to try to be holier than God? He is a God who is mighty in battle. Your people fight to st
ay alive and to keep the land that God has given them for their own. Furthermore, the Abnaks have called upon His name, even if only through me, His servant. What do I matter, after all? Your people have a righteous cause, and I believe that God will bless it. Of course I’ll come with you to this battle. I only hope I don’t faint while I’m praying for your victory.”
Foxblood took Orth’s forearms in his hands and looked long into his eyes. Orth didn’t know that this, which would have been poor manners in Obann, was how the Abnaks showed respect. He didn’t avert his eyes from that searching look. Once upon a time in his life, it would have made him much more uncomfortable than it did today.
“There is no man like you among all the Abnaks,” Foxblood said, “nor has there ever been a God like yours among us. I can’t tell whether it’s love or fear that makes you obey Him, when I can easily see you’d rather not. Probably a lot of both—eh? I would despise a son of mine who fainted at the sight of blood. But you agree to do things that terrify you. If you faint, Et-taa-naa-qiqu, I’ll tell the people it was because your spirit left your body to commune with God. They’ll understand that.”
Orth’s eyes brimmed with tears, but he smiled. From that day on, he and the Abnak chief were friends.
The rain stopped. With all his men tired and wet and complaining, and a dull ache in the small of his back that wasn’t there before, Roshay Bault resumed his march to the Golden Pass—at a brisk pace, too, to make up for lost time.
They marched right past Ysbott’s hiding place, with Ysbott and his men watching, unseen and unsuspected. And as he watched, a plan took form in Ysbott’s mind.
“I now know what we must do,” he told his men. “We’ll rest another day, and then move up close to them without being seen or heard. At night I’ll steal into their camp as just another fool from Ninneburky. I’ll sit with them round their fire, and I’ll tell them stories—about the Thunder King and all those men of his that died there and how their ghosts hover over the place, guarding their gold. With the kinds of noises the wind makes up there, it won’t be hard to scare those people. You would have been scared, yourselves, if it hadn’t been raining so hard.”
Ysbott knew what he was talking about. The baron’s daughter had escaped, when he had her, by terrifying his men with stories of witches and the like, so that when she finally performed an act of witchcraft on them, they ran off in every conceivable direction. Ysbott himself would have run away, if the cuss’t girl hadn’t struck him blind. Ysbott couldn’t perform any magic, but he imagined how he might do something just as effective.
“When the moon goes down,” he said, “you lads will be hiding in the woods—not too close, but close enough for them to hear you. I want you to start screeching and wailing and caterwauling as loud as you can.
“No words, mind you—just nonsense. Like this: Yibba nan-ibba kamassi! It’s just drivel; it has no meaning. But I’ll say it’s a Heathen language, and it means they’re warning us off, threatening to take revenge if we take their gold. Heathen ghosts, you see! Two or three nights of that ought to break their spirit—that, and maybe a few men found with their throats cut, ear to ear. But that part you can leave to me.”
Had they never seen the gold, and been bewitched by it, those Ninneburky townsmen would never have agreed to such a thing. They probably wouldn’t have believed Ysbott, would’ve thought he was just trying to impress them with big talk, but they had learned to be afraid of him. Having spent this much time under his leadership, they were not at their best anymore.
“Can you really do it, Tobb?” asked Hrapp. “It sounds mighty risky.”
“Of course I can do it! Just give me a loud enough chorus of moans and shrieks and gibberish, and I’ll do the rest. I can’t wait to see the look on Bault’s face when all his men desert him! And it’ll mean a lot more gold for you and me.”
“But we already have a lot of gold,” said Gwawl.
Before he could say another word, Ysbott knocked him down, sprang onto his chest, and had a sharp knife glinting just a hair’s breadth from his eyes.
“I think you will obey me, Gwawl,” he said. “There’s no backing out of this business. Do you understand that now?”
“Yes, Tobb! Yes!”
By and by Ysbott let him up. “You’ll all obey me, won’t you?”
The townsmen were strangers to violence; and a man like Ysbott, who used it without a second’s hesitation, seemed to them unnatural—not a man, but some kind of wild beast, dangerous and deadly. They didn’t know how to respond.
So they all promised to obey, and Ysbott was content.
CHAPTER 21
In the Shadow of the Tower
Looth’s scouts found the Zeph. They weren’t far away and had made camp at an unusual location.
“Everyone knows that place,” said Tiliqua, when the Attakotts made their report. “It’s the Tower of Griff-land, at the exact center of our country.”
“I never heard the Griffs built towers,” Uduqu said.
“We didn’t. It’s always been there, since before we first settled in this land. There used to be a god living in it, but the Thunder King took the god away.”
“A relic of ancient times, I suppose,” Perkin said, standing with his arm across Baby’s back. “Obann’s full of them.”
“The Zeph are less than half our number,” Looth said. “No men with horses, no archers—we can easily destroy them. The Griffs would thank us for it.”
“We haven’t come here to destroy!” Obst said.
They’d destroyed a Zephite army once before, in Obann. The Thunder King had sent that army to wipe them out because they’d thrown off their allegiance to him. “The Zephites are to have their freedom, too,” Obst said.
“If they want it,” Shaffur added.
The chieftains arranged the army with the Hosa in the center and the Griffs right behind them, with the Attakotts to go before them as skirmishers with poisoned arrows and Wallekki horsemen on the wings. The center would fix the enemy in place while the cavalry would envelop them on two sides. “This is how we do battle whenever we have numbers,” explained Xhama, chief of the Red Regiment of the Hosa, “only our wings are on foot instead of horseback. It has always served us well.” The chiefs saw the advantages of the plan and at once adopted it.
“Maybe the king’s brave little hawk will fly overhead and start the battle for us,” Xhama added, “as she did when we took Silvertown.” The Hosa honored Angel for that, but for the time being she seemed content to perch on Ryons’ shoulder.
Ryons and Gurun, with the Ghols and Blays around them, were to ride behind the main body of the infantry. Should the need arise, the Ghols and Blays would function as a small but powerful reserve.
“Our place is to guard our father the king,” said Chagadai. “But we do hate to be idle while our brothers fight!”
“There’s to be no fighting, if it can possibly be avoided,” Obst said. “I’ll speak to the Zephites and tell them why we’re here. It’d be foolish of them to try to give us battle.”
“Who ever heard of Zephites not fighting when they had an opportunity?” Shaffur said.
Gurun didn’t trust herself to speak. She rode beside Ryons, tall and upright in the saddle. What had she to do with battles? There were no battles on Fogo Island. Sometimes a blood feud would break out and groups of men would fight each other, but the only battles her people knew of were the ones they read of in the Scriptures—battles long ago and far away. That masses of men should clash in arms was something no islander had ever seen.
“You’re calm!” King Ryons said to her. “I wish I could be so brave.”
“Calm? I’m frozen!” Gurun thought. But the boy’s anxious young face sent a little wave of tenderness through her and made her laugh softly.
“I suppose you have been in many battles, Your Majesty,” she said.
“Enough so that I’d be happy to skip one, if I got the chance! But maybe the Zeph will listen to Obst and not want to fi
ght.”
“Our father is too modest, honeysuckle,” Chagadai said. “When he was even littler than he is now, he charged an enemy force singlehanded and put them all to flight.”
“That was an accident!” Ryons cried. “My horse bolted, and I couldn’t make him stop.”
“And it was the worst two minutes of my life,” the Ghol said. “But, oh, you should have seen him—a little boy like that! But he won great glory that day.”
Perkin, walking after them with Baby, said, “Don’t be afraid, Your Majesties. Wherever you go, Baby will go with you. Between him and this ferocious hound of yours, I don’t think anyone would be fool enough to stand before you.”
Cavall barked, as if he understood.
They saw the Tower before they saw the Zeph.
