The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

  They started on again. The wind blew, never ceasing, and all at once Fenn’s horse lifted his head and snorted, pulling against the rein. The others snuffed the wind and they too began to go aside from the straight line they followed. A kind of madness seemed to have come over them. Their dragging pace quickened to a shambling gallop.

  A raw scarp of rock lifted from the desert. The ground sloped downward to form a ragged basin at its foot. Fenn saw that a sullen river ran from a cleft in the scarp and spread into a great marsh before the thirsty desert drank it up. He set his heart on that vivid patch of green that seemed so far away and would not come closer.

  Then he saw the men riding toward them—leathery sun-bitten men, well mounted and riding fast, carrying long spears that glinted red in the angry daylight.

  There were half a dozen of them. They swept up and ringed the three fugitives round and made them stand, holding the plunging horses. They looked at Fenn and Arika and Malech and when they saw Malech their lips drew back as though they were wolves about to tear their prey.

  One said harshly, “Numi!”

  “Half-blood—slave.” Malech’s voice was a croaking whisper. He turned to let them see the old scars of the lash across his back and Fenn tried to crowd between him and the hungry spears.

  “They saved my life,” he said. He too was almost mute with thirst. “They saved me from the temple.” Then, angrily, “Let us drink!”

  They studied Fenn a long time without answering. Their hesitation alarmed him and he knew that Malech was the cause of it—Malech, who looked so much like the hated creature that had fathered him. The green marsh tortured Fenn with the promise of water. He looked at Arika’s drawn face and the suffering horses and he became so furious that he lost all caution.

  He reached out to the man who was holding his horse and caught him by his long hair and pulled him out of the saddle, shouting as loud as he could out of his swollen throat, “If we die, no one will ever find the Citadel! I know where it is. Do you hear that? / know!”

  Arika whispered, “The Numi priests are hunting us to get the secret. We ask protection.” She managed the ghost of a laugh. “What are you afraid of? We are only three.”

  The cold suspicion did not leave the face of the outlaws but Fenn saw that they were uncertain now. The leader said, “No one knows that secret.”

  Fenn met his hard gaze fairly. “All right. Kill us. Let the Numi rule forever over slaves and outlaws. You haven’t the courage to be free.”

  The leader looked again at Malech saying, “You travel in bad company for an honest human. But I’ll let Lannar decide this one. Give me your swords.” When he had them he reined his horse around. “Come on.”

  They started on again toward the marsh. It spread for several miles along the base of the scarp, wide, lush, dotted with islands of higher ground on which there were trees and thick scrub. It was beautiful, green, soft and moist under the red haze of the desert.

  They were allowed to stop beside a shallow pool, to drink and wallow in brackish water that tasted to Fenn like the wine of heaven. Then they were made to mount again.

  “Keep your horses exactly in line,” said the outlaw. “One slip and you’ll never be found again.”

  He began to thread an invisible path through mud and quaking bog and green water. Here and there submerged bridges had been laid, narrow things of slippery planks that could be taken up, Fenn guessed, to make the marsh impassable.

  At first he saw no signs of any dwelling places. Then as they got deeper and deeper into the marsh he saw there were huts of mud and wattle under the trees of the larger hammocks. Men and women watched the strangers pass and naked children splashed out through the mud to shout at them.

  They came onto dry ground again, on a long narrow island close under the scarp. A man stood waiting for them. There were others behind him but Fenn saw only the one, a lean dark laughing man who looked all fire and acid and steel, controlled and shaped by a keen intelligence.

  Fenn knew that this must be Lannar. He began to hope again. The man who had brought them in from the desert dismounted and began to speak. While he talked Lannar’s gaze moved slowly over the three.

  The man finished, pointing to Fenn, “He says he knows the secret of the Citadel.”

  Imperceptibly the muscles of Lannar’s face tightened until the lines of it were hard as iron. He looked up at Fenn, a gaunt parched man sitting on a jaded horse and waiting now with a strange sort of patience.

  “Is that true?” asked Lannar.

  “It is true.”

  A muscle began to twitch in Lannar’s cheek. “Dismount. I want to talk to you.” His gesture included all three. He turned away toward a large hut, first giving a rapid order or two that Fenn could not hear.

  Fenn and the others got stiffly down and followed him. The men who had been with Lannar stared at them with a mixture of hostility and wolfish eagerness as they went with the three into Lannar’s house.

  The shadowy interior was furnished with a haphazard richness. Bright silks, rugs and furs and bits of ornate furniture and dishes of crystal and gold—the loot of the caravans that went between the Numi cities, consorting oddly with the mud walls and floor of beaten earth.

  Women came from somewhere in the back, bringing bread and dried meat, water and wine. Fenn and the others ate and drank voraciously. The portions seemed very small.

  “You can have more later,” Lannar said. “Too much now will make you sick.” He leaned forward, his wiry body poised and unrelaxed in a gilded chair. “Now! What is this about the Citadel?”

  Fenn told him, speaking without haste. Lannar listened. His eyes glowed with a still hot light. The men in the shadows listened too. Fenn could hear their breathing, tense and short. From time to time Arika spoke and Malech. At last the scroll was spread out at Lannar’s feet, showing the island that was lost in the Great Dark.

  “There is the Citadel,” Fenn said and was silent.

  Lannar voiced a harsh sigh. He rose and began to move back and forth, a catlike man suddenly drunk with hope but suspicious nonetheless, too old and hard to take anything for granted.

  Abruptly he took Fenn’s head by the hair and bent it back, studying his face with those hot shrewd eyes that saw everything.

  “You tell the truth,” said Lannar. “But perhaps it is a truth these Numi spawn have put into your head, so that you believe it.”

  “It is the truth,” said Fenn steadily.

  “Memories—dreams!” said Lannar, and let him go. “You cannot prove these things. There is no bone and flesh in them for a man to get his hands on.”

  Arika said, “I can open his mind again. Then you can hear him speaking of the past he knows.”

  He glanced at her half contemptuously. “I know the tricks of the Numi, the things they can do with a man’s mind. I would hear words but they would not prove themselves.”

  Malech asked quietly, “What have we to gain by such a deception?”

  “I don’t know. I cannot see a gain now but there may be one that is hidden from me.” He faced the half-blood, saying with a vicious softness, “I learned so long ago, with so much blood and pain, never to trust a Numi!”

  “Numi,” whispered Malech. “Numi!” He got up. He was a big man. He towered over Lannar. His eyes blazed with such a passion of fury that it seemed he would take the smaller man between his hands and tear him to bits. He laughed.

  “Numi. That’s funny, Lannar. You don’t know the humor. of it. All my life I have lived with that joke. The Numi spit upon me because I’m human and the humans want to kill me because I’m Numi.”

  He glanced at Arika with a flash of sheer hatred that startled Fenn. “My sister is more fortunate. She looks human.” He turned again to Lannar, who had not moved or even raised his hands. Malech seemed to sense contempt in that very lack of fear. He laughed again, a short harsh ugly sound.

  “If I stood over you, full-furred and bearded and wearing the trappings of a Numi, it woul
d be different, Lannar. Oh, yes! But I am naked and shorn and therefore nothing.” He sat down again abruptly, hunched sullenly over his knees. “Try your courage on RhamSin, Lannar. See if you can face him down!”

  Lannar said, “RhamSin?” From the tone of his voice it was obvious that he held that name in great respect. Fenn rose.

  “Yes,” he said. “RhamSin. I have told you all the story, and it’s a true one. RhamSin will prove it to you. He has followed me from the city to get the secret back.”

  He paused to let that sink in. And Lannar said to himself, “He would not do that for any ordinary captive nor for any slave.”

  He began to pace again, more slowly. Fenn moved to stand before him. “Give us the things we need, Lannar, and we’ll go on alone.”

  “No,” said Lannar. He was silent for a time, looking up into Fenn’s gaunt face, his gaze narrowed and withdrawn. Then he murmured. “He has the stamp of the deserts on him, the same as I.” He laughed. “No, Fenn—we’ll go together. After all I gamble my life against every caravan I plunder—and even the chance of finding the Citadel is worth the risk. There are others here who will think so too.”

  Arika leaped up. She looked at Lannar but it seemed she could not speak. Her eyes were very bright and Fenn saw that there were tears in them. She turned suddenly and put her arms around him.

  “The gods are with you, Fenn,” she whispered.

  He found that he had caught her to him almost without knowing it. Over her shoulder he said fiercely to Lannar, “We will find it!”

  From outside came the heavy splashing of a horse through mud and water and a man’s voice crying, “Lannar! Lannar! The Numi come!”

  CHAPTER VII The Great Dark

  The harsh braying of horns spread the alarm across the swamp. Two or three more riders came in from the desert, the last of the patrols. The bridges were taken up. From among the trees of die island Fenn watched the company of the Numi come down to the edge of the green water and stop. Lannar laughed with savage humor.

  “They have done this for generations, trying to wipe us out. But they can’t pass the swamp.” He pointed among the hammocks. “See how our bowmen are placed? Even if, by treachery or miracle, the Numi were able to come in our arrows would kill them on the path. So they come and threaten us and offer bribes and go away again when their food runs out.”

  His brows drew down. “All in the black and silver of the temple, eh? It seems you were not lying, Fenn!”

  He turned aside, talking with rapid urgency to his chieftains. Fenn remained, watching the Numi. They were too far away to distinguish details. But there was one commanding figure robed in black and riding a black horse, and Fenn shivered.

  Arika was close beside him. Her face was worried.

  A captain of the Numi began to speak, using a trumpet of bark that magnified his voice. In the name of RhamSin, he offered pardon, power, and reward for the return of a runaway slave who had murdered a priest.

  There was no answer from the marsh. He repeated the offer three times and still there was no answer.

  The distant figure that was RhamSin reached out and took the speaking tube.

  The voice of RhamSin spoke, carrying clear across the silent marsh.

  “Fenway! There is no escape from me. I brought forth your mind and it belongs to me. When the time comes I will call— and you will obey!”

  That voice seared into Fenn’s brain like fire. He had heard it before, commanding, torturing. He had heard it and obeyed.

  RhamSin wheeled his horse and galloped away and his men turned to follow.

  Fear rose up and caught Fenn by the throat. He tried to shout defiance after the Numi priest, but the words would not come. The hot Sun burned him but he was cold and his face was damp with a clammy sweat.

  “He lies, Fenn. He lies!” cried Arika but Fenn shook his head.

  He muttered, “I am not sure that RhamSin lies.”

  He turned to Lannar and his eyes had a strange look. “How long will it take to be ready?”

  “My men are already gathering horses and supplies.” Lannar gave him a side-long glance that seemed to penetrate him like a sword-thrust but he did not mention RhamSin’s words. He nodded toward the retreating Numi.

  “They have drawn off so that we may feel free to go where we will. But they will watch and follow. However, we have a back door—a way up the scarp, hacked out long ago in case of need. The Numi will have to go many miles around to get up onto the plateau, so we’ll have that much start of them.”

  He smiled, a nervous, vulpine baring of the teeth and Fenn knew that Lannar, too, was eager to be moving.

  “I can’t spare many men,” he said. “But a light force moves faster and is easier to feed. But in the end we’ll need help. The Numi are twice our number and better armed. So I have ordered messengers to go among the other outlaw tribes, asking them to follow.”

  He paused and added, “This is all madness, Fenn. We can’t live long in the Great Dark without warmth or sight of the Sun. But the Numi will be on their own ground. Even though RhamSin’s generation may never have seen the homeland, it is the place that bred them as they are.”

  He shrugged. “Well, we shall see what madmen can do! And now you had better sleep while you can.”

  In Lannar’s house Fenn slept—a nervous slumber plagued with ugly dreams. He was glad when the time came to mount and go. Malech was of the party. No one had suggested otherwise. But he rode a little apart with a proud sullen look, speaking to no one, and Fenn saw that Lannar kept a close eye upon him.

  They scrambled up the steep trail to the plateau, twenty men armed with sword and bow and axe, and from every island in the swamp the eyes of men and women watched in fear and hope and wonder.

  At the crest of the scarp, Fenn looked back across the vast emptiness of the desert, a wind-tom desolation under a copper sky. He had survived it and now it seemed familiar to him. He felt almost a sadness at leaving it to go into the trackless dark that was forbidden to humankind.

  He saw the dusty plume that marked the march of the Numi following the scarp, knew that they had already begun the chase.

  Ahead, the plateau stretched to the short horizon. The rusty clouds seemed lower here, scudding close over the earth. Stiff grasses bent before the wind. They had climbed a long way up from the desert and it seemed to Fenn that the wind had an edge to it, a memory of cold.

  They formed their ranks for the long trail, twenty men and forty horses, heading outward toward the Shadow and the Great Dark.

  It was a strange and timeless journey. For some distance the way was known to Lannar. There was game on the plateau and good forage at certain times of the year and the men of the marshes made use of both. But they were soon beyond those limits, plodding across an endless dreary upland of tumbled hills. The shadows grew longer and the Sun sank lower and lower at their backs and the teeth of the whistling wind grew sharper.

  The country was too rough to let them see far along their backtrail. But they would spot from time to time the distant smoke of cooking fires and Fenn thought that they drew always closer.

  The desert horses were small but tough and enduring and more used to short rations and hard work than the Numi beasts. Fenn loved the rough ill-tempered little brutes and that gave them this one advantage over the Numi.

  “Wait though,” said Lannar. “Wait until we are all on foot.”

  The wind boomed ever stronger and colder and there were bursting storms of rain and then, at one sleep period, Fenn roused to find the whole earth mantled with a chill whiteness. From that time on the men grew more morose and silent and he knew that they were afraid.

  He was beginning to be afraid himself.

  Arika clung close to him. She seemed very strong for her slight body, riding as long as the men and never complaining. When they slept, huddled together around the fires, it seemed natural that she should be near Fenn. They did not talk much—no one did. They rode and ate their meager rations and slept
and were too weary for anything else.

  Malech kept always apart. He seemed to have taken a dislike even to his sister, who was tolerated if not welcomed by the humans. His beard had grown and his hair was longer. He was wrapped in fur and leather like the others and with his body covered it was impossible to tell him now from a true Numi. He did not seem to need the warmth of the fire and he slept alone with an air of contemptuous strength.

  And as Malech grew more like a Numi the tribesmen’s distrust and hatred of him deepened. But Malech’s strength and unhuman endurance helped enormously in the tight places of the trail. That held their aversion to him in check.

  One of the horses died. They flayed him and dried the meat.

  “They will all die,” said Lannar grimly. “They will give us hides and food for the rest of our journey.” He was a desert man and did not like to watch the death of horses.

  The Sun became a red ember on the horizon behind them. They went down into a valley filled with snow and darkness and when they reached the other side the Sun was gone beyond the higher hills. Arika whispered, “This is what men call the Shadow.”

  There was still light in the sky. The land began to slope gradually downward, flattening out. Here there were no trees, nor even the stunted scrub that had grown to the edge of the Shadow. The windswept rocks were covered with wrinkled lichens and the frozen earth was always white.

  One by one the horses died. The frozen meat was hidden by the way so that there should be food for the return march— if there was to be one. The men suffered from the cold. They were used to the dry heat of the deserts. Three of them sickened and died and one was killed by a fall.

  The Shadow deepened imperceptibly into night. The rolling rusty clouds of the dayside had become the greyer clouds of storm and fog. The men toiled through dimming mist and falling snow that turned at last to utter darkness.

  Lannar turned a lined and haggard face to Fenn. “Madmen!” he muttered. And that was all.

  They passed through the belt of storm. There came a time when the lower air was clear and a shifting wind began to tear away the clouds from the sky.