Exile's Children

by Angus Wells

  “You told me that,” Baran said carefully. “But that was surely this matter of the maiden Arrhyna and the killing of—Vachyr, was that his name?”

  “Yes.” Colun nodded. “But do you not see?”

  Baran said, “No. Those are flatlander affairs, and I do not understand them.”

  Colun sighed. “It seems plain enough to me. In some ways, at least; in others …” He shrugged. “I brought warning of the invaders to the flatlanders and they ignored it when they fell to squabbling amongst themselves. Racharran heeded me, and Yazte … But the rest.” He shrugged again. “They’d sooner not know. They quote their Ahsa-tye-Patiko like a warding charm and believe that by ignoring the danger they dismiss it.”

  “They’re flatlanders,” Baran said. “They believe themselves safe behind our mountains.”

  “Yes.” Colun ducked his head, slowly as a wearied horse. “And we Grannach, are we any better? We fight the invaders, but still argue that the fight is only for our own lands. That we are the Guardians of the mountains and nothing more. And the Kraj and the Genji argue one way, and the Basanga and the Katjen another, which is so much like the flatlanders, it frightens me.”

  “What do you say?” Baran asked.

  “That there is a kind of horrid pattern in all this,” Colun said, and sighed. “That invaders come against us and will doubtless move against Ket-Ta-Witko if we are defeated, and that our people and theirs seem equally divided. As if some fell wind blows over us all, to baffle us and confuse us, so that we dither and argue while all the time the enemy gains ground.”

  Baran turned his head to study Colun, frowning at the expression he saw. It seemed to him fatalistic, as if the creddan already accepted inevitable defeat. “We’ve always argued,” he said. “It’s our nature; but our arguments now are not about the invaders. All the families fight them.”

  “True.” Colun smiled grimly. “But how do we fight?”

  Baran wondered if the question was rhetorical and hesitated to respond. Then, when Colun said no more, he answered, “As we’ve always fought, family by family.”

  “Exactly.” Colun nodded. “Each family to its own territory. As Javitz and Kraj and Genji and Basanga and Katjen; not as Grannach.”

  “We are all Grannach.” Baran said, confused.

  “Which comes first,” Colun asked, “Grannach or family?”

  “Surely,” Baran said, “they are the same thing.”

  “Are they?” Colun drew dusty fingers through his beard. “I am not so sure.”

  Baran said, “I do not understand.”

  “Suppose,” Colun murmured, “that the invaders succeeded in breaching our tunnels, suppose they entered the Javitz cavern. Would the Kraj or the Genji come to our aid? Or would they leave us to our fate? Would they say the Javitz fall because I brought flatlanders into the mountains and the Javitz suffer for my sin and so our fate is none of their affair?”

  Baran paused before replying. Then he said, “Surely they’d aid us …” But his voice lacked conviction.

  “We’d aid them,” Colun said. “But were it the other way around, I wonder.”

  Baran said, “Surely …” And let the sentence die unspoken, aware he had no sound answer nor any sound conviction.

  “That’s what I mean,” Colun said, “about the pattern—about an evil wind. Listen. The flatlanders are bound by what they name the Ahsa-tye-Patiko, which is like the Order. But that all fell apart at their Matakwa; and for all I brought them warning, still they fell to squabbling amongst themselves and paid no heed to the larger danger. It was as if they could not see straight, but only see petty envies. And I fear the same might apply to us.”

  “Do you say the invaders ensorcel us?” Baran asked. “That they send some magic against us?”

  Colun sighed and shrugged. “I do not know; I can only wonder. But I tell you this, my friend—I believe we must stand together, that save we fight as Grannach—as a people undivided—we shall likely fall. And also that”—he barked a harsh and humorless laugh—“the other families would dismiss that fear. Or bring it to debate so long the invaders come before any resolution be reached.”

  “We hold the tunnels still,” Baran said defensively, not liking the turn of this conversation.

  “We hold the tunnels,” Colun agreed. “But for how long? The invaders are deep into the mountains now, deeper than any have ever penetrated, and they are so many.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Baran shook his head. “You frighten me with this talk.”

  Colun said, “I frighten myself. Ach, perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps I’ve dealt too much with flatlanders. So!” He pushed away from the parapet, grunting as he straightened his back, and clapped the golan on the shoulder. “Do we go find some beer to wash the dust from our mouths?”

  Baran nodded eagerly: it was far easier to fight than contemplate his creddan’s abstruse and frightening philosophies.

  They descended the great stairway to the cavern’s floor and followed the paved way beside the stream until they came to a curving road that lifted up past the honeycomb terraces to a vaulting bridge spanning a crack in the mountain’s belly, then along another walled roadway to Colun’s dwelling.

  Marjia met them on the balcony with a smile that grew wider as she saw her husband was unharmed.

  “It went well?”

  Colun said, “They died. Baran brought the tunnel down on them. It was thirsty work.”

  Marjia laughed and bussed his cheek. “It always is. Come, I’ve a keg ready. And hot water.”

  She beckoned them inside, past the low-arched doorway to an antechamber where a steaming bowl rested on a shelf of rock, soap and cloths beside.

  “You’ll wash first,” she warned. “Then slake your thirst.”

  Dutifully, they obeyed. Colun set his helmet and ax aside and they went through the inner door to a wide room that shone all gently golden save where a fire burned cheerfully in the hearth, lending flickering overtones of red to the light emanating from the rock. Bright rugs covered the floor and two deep and amply cushioned chairs stood before the fire, a wooden table between. Colun ushered Baran to one and crossed to where the keg sat inside a niche. He filled two mugs and looked inquiringly at Marjia. She shook her head and told him she’d business below, did he want his dinner, so he brought the mugs to the table and set them down, then sank into the empty chair.

  Both Grannach drank deep, and neither spoke until the mugs were emptied. Colun refilled them and Baran ventured an opinion.

  “These … fears … you have. Should you not voice them?”

  Colun wiped foam from his lips. “I did,” he said. “When I got back from Ket-Ta-Witko I sent word to all the creddans, speaking of my thoughts. The answer was they’d contemplate my words and give their answers in due course. Ach, Baran, old friend! You know what ‘in due course’ is to us.”

  Baran nodded. “We Grannach were ever a slow-moving folk.”

  “But now,” Colun declared, “time moves fast. Perhaps too fast! I suspect we’ve not enough for lengthy contemplation.”

  “You sound,” Baran said, “like a flatlander—all swift and hurrying.”

  Colun chuckled. “So Janzi claims. He says I’m tainted by contact with the Matawaye.”

  Baran shrugged: how to argue against time-honored tradition? The Grannach lived long, slow lives and were not given to swift decisions. That was the province of the flatlanders, all brief and hurried because they lacked the time to ponder things. They were fast-running water to the Grannach’s stone. He wondered if Colun’s stone had been worn down by the flatlanders’ water.

  “What do you think?”

  Colun’s question surprised him and he hid awhile behind his mug. Then, carefully: “I think we must fight as best we can.”

  “And does that mean breaking with tradition?”

  Baran felt pinned by Colun’s eyes; guilty for his doubts. He drained his mug and said to Colun’s back as the creddan rose to fill both their tan
kard, “I think that these invaders are such a threat as we’ve not known before. I’d not see our mountains fall to them.”

  Colun sighed and was about to speak, when a clarion rang, belling loud through the outer cavern, softer in the chamber but nonetheless imperative. Both men sprang to their feet. Baran groaned. “Again? So soon?”

  Colun said, “Things change apace, my friend. And do we not change as swift …”

  He left the sentence dangling as he snatched up his helm and his ax and they both ran to the bridge, across that to the roadway and the battle awaiting them.

  The tunnel was wide, a transport route between the different family caverns. It was not roofed so high the invaders’ war beasts could fully raise their heads, and so they could not fight to fullest advantage. But still their slashing claws and darting, many-fanged jaws wrought terrible slaughter on the Grannach. And they came apace, slithering and scurrying so swift the golans had not enough time to bring down the rock but must fall back as they chanted their spells. And behind them, unhindered by the tunnel’s roof, came the strangelings in their rainbow armor, like a bright flood intent on drowning all before it.

  Colun swung his ax, sinking the blade deep into the paw that quested for his chest, and laughed as the beast screamed and snatched back the lusting claws. It limped on three legs then, and he saw his brave Javitz warriors run in to hack at the creature. He saw one taken by the fangs, and raised his ax high, swinging the blade down into the scaly snout, the jaws burst open by the blow so that the warrior was tossed loose. But he was still dead, his armor all pierced by the pressure of those dreadful teeth. Colun twisted his ax loose and struck again even as noisome breath gusted foul against his face. He felt the force of his blow in his arms and shoulders, as if he struck steel against stone. Then the ax was wrenched from his hand, the beast tossing its pierced head and screaming shrill as it writhed. He sprang back, but not quite fast enough to avoid the paw that caught him and flung him down—luckily, the Maker be praised, back clear of the creature’s death throes.

  He was hauled to his feet and dragged back down the tunnel. He struggled free of the helping hands and snatched up a dead man’s ax. His head spun and his vision wavered, and in his ears he heard the Stone Shapers’ chanting all mingled in with the roaring of the living beasts and the screaming of the dying creatures. He saw the one he’d struck fall down, hind legs kicking, front scrabbling for purchase, even as the next came clambering over the body, and moved toward it. But hands clutched him and impelled him away, and then the roaring of the beasts was joined by the roaring of the mountain as the roof collapsed under the weight of the golans’ chant and dust blew in a stormy cloud down all the remaining length of safe tunnel.

  “… little way. Likely not enough to halt them for long.”

  He shook his head, yawning to unblock the stoppage of his ears, and blinked until he saw Baran’s mouth moving.

  “What?” His own voice sounded distant.

  Baran leaned close and said, “We could drop the tunnel only a little way! The Maker help us, but it was built too strong. They’ll likely clear it before long.”

  “Then we fall back.” Colun narrowed his eyes, forcing them into focus. Rubble spilled like a ramp from the bulk of stone plugging the tunnel, all hazy in the roiling dust. “Drop the rest while they dig that out.”

  Baran nodded and beckoned his fellow golans to him.

  As they began their chant, Colun called up his warriors.

  “We drop the tunnel.” He saw their eyes all wide with disbelief and horror and mouthed a curse. “Fall back!”

  They retreated down the tunnel, leaving the golans to their work as a youngling came running up.

  “Creddan! Colun! They’re coming in all over!”

  “What?” Colun felt chill fill his belly. “What do you mean?”

  The youngster said, “They’re entering the cavern.”

  For an instant Colun rejected the news: it was too large to comprehend, too impossible. The caverns were inviolate, no matter what he’d said: surely the Maker would not allow it, could not allow it. Then he looked at the youngling’s stricken face and knew it was so.

  The world was turned on its head, all topsy-turvy.

  He shouldered his borrowed ax and began to run, his fighting men on his heels.

  And all the way he thought: Marjia, be alive. Maker, let her be alive.

  He found chaos.

  Rainbow-armored invaders spilled from the tunnels, pouring down the stairways like floodwater, all pushing one against the other in their haste so that some were pitched off to fall and crash onto the stone below. They seemed uncaring of their dead and wounded, for when one fell, none went to his aid but only passed, often treading on the fallen so that the wounded were crushed under the weight of their fellows. Some halted on balconies and bridges, nocking long shafts to great bows and sending arrows down like rain on the Grannach below. And from several of the wider thoroughfares came the beasts, all snarling and slavering, their belling joining the battle cries of the Javitz and the howling of hurt folk and the screaming of women and children.

  Colun halted his men where a wide, walled ledge afforded clear view of the cave, assessing the situation. He could not see Marjia, nor had the time to seek her, for a cluster of the invaders came charging at his position and he raised his ax to meet them.

  They were tall as the flatlanders, these strangelings, and hard-armored. But height is not always an advantage and armor has weak spots: Colun need only duck his head to avoid the long sword that swung above him and then send his ax slicing against the invader’s knee, all his Grannach strength in the blow.

  The man—he supposed it was a man, but could not tell for sure—loosed a shrill cry and fell down as if kneeling before the creddan. Colun reversed his stroke and sent a scarlet helmet rolling away across the shelf, the head it protected still inside. Then he must spring back as the serrated blade of a pike stabbed at his chest. He turned, catching the pole between his left arm and ribs, and smashed his ax against it. The Grannach steel severed the pole and its user was pitched off balance. Before he had opportunity to draw the long knife he carried, Colun sank his ax into the bright yellow breastplate and roared in triumph as red blood spilled out. He shouldered the dying man aside and went in search of another victim.

  There were none left: bodies littered the shelf, both invaders and Grannach, but where all the strangelings were dead, the Grannach had wounded they carried limping with them.

  Colun ordered off the least hurt, leaving them to tend the worst, and led his remaining warriors at a run for the closest bridge, where invading archers stood. The Grannach swept them away, as many tossed down into the depths of the cavern as were slain by steel.

  A pause then as he surveyed the cavern. There were not so many invaders as he had first thought. It was as if their shining armor, all so bright and light-reflecting, tricked the eye into a multiplication of their numbers. That, and perhaps the sheer fact that they were in the ancestral cave. Certainly no more emerged from the tunnels, and the Javitz drove those on the bridges back, or over, and all down the walks along the stream there were glittering bodies like poisonous beetles.

  Some yet lived, fighting in tight groups along the terraces, surrounded by massing rings of Grannach. Colun thought they must soon fall, for they were heavily outnumbered by the Javitz.

  He looked down and saw three of the dreadful beasts still living, and then a cry burst from his throat and he was running for the nearest descending road.

  Marjia stood by the stream, a house at her back and a pike in her hands, a group of women with her, all armed with poles and swords taken from the fallen, presenting a steely wall to the creature that spat and snarled and pawed at them as if it were some monstrous nightmare cat confronting a hedgehog whose spikes were sharp steel. From the doorway and the windows of the house, children stared wide-eyed at the beast, and even as he raced toward his wife, Colun saw the invader lurking behind the creature and s
urmised something of their nature.

  It was a kind of symbiosis, he realized, the monstrous beast controlled in some fashion by the man, as if it were a fighting dog and the invader its handler, urging it on. His armor was not of the brilliant hues that marked his fellows, but only black, with bright crimson sigils on chest and back. He carried a tall pole that ended in a long spike from which protruded a recurved hook, and for all the beast needed no prompting in its bloodlust, still he poked at the hindquarters as if the carnage it wrought was insufficient to satisfy him.

  Colun saw bodies littering the floor, some male but most women, slain in defense of the sanctuary, of the children hiding there. He saw Marjia thrust her pike at the beast and propelled himself desperately forward, his soul filled with a terrible dread.

  He found the cavern’s floor and charged the dark-armored invader. His ax rose and sank into the armored back. The invader jerked and stiffened, arms flung wide, the goad dropping from his hand. Colun swung the ax again, this time striking deep between the joindure of breastplate and tasset. He saw the man’s head fling back and hooked it down as if he gaffed a fish. The armored figure was tugged onto its back and Colun sank his ax into the frontage of the jet helmet.

  The beast roared then, and slowed as if it were struck, and turned from its attack to face the Grannach. It seemed confused and, as it roared and lashed its scaly tail, Colun darted past the wide-mouthed head to spring onto a shoulder as if it were a ladder and sink his ax into the backbone.

  He was flung clear as the thing reared up, but his men were with him and attacked from all sides, hacking and cutting until the beast lay bloody and dead. He rose, wincing as bruised limbs protested, and said, “Marjia?”

  “I’m here.” She came to his side and put her arms around him, which hurt his ribs somewhat, but he said nothing. “That was brave.”

  He said, “You’re safe.”

  “Yes.” She nodded and he saw her eyes wander frightened about the cavern. “But how many are dead?”