Paul O Williams - [Pelbar Cycle 04]

by The Fall of the Shell (v0. 9) (epub)

  Earlier, Brudoer had found a side shaft to the outside wall. He had studied it. Craydor’s people had planned it well. Two large stones had to be slid out, leaving only the facing to be pushed away. They had even left two crowbars. With much effort, Brudoer and Ason slid the stones away. Then Ason punched the facing out with a bar. Pion crawled out. Looking up, he saw they were below the water tower.

  The Peshtak could not get many archers around that side. He began lifting the family heads out through the hole. All were subdued and silent. Faintly, they could hear the Peshtak pounding on the last intertied barrier. The Pelbar gathered silently along the wall. Then Pion began leading them across the field. The Peshtak never saw them until over a hundred were well out toward the river. A sentry sounded his horn. A puff of fire gouted out of one of the ships and riddled the sentry with shot from a Pelbar cannon. As more Peshtak rushed to the walls, the Pelbar on the field broke into a run, and cannon fire from the ships began rolling and flashing.

  Soon small boats were launched, filled with riflemen, and the Peshtak had to concede the walls and loopholes to their pecking fire. By the time the first Peshtak had slid through the last barrier, Annon knew it was too late, and that somehow the Pelbar had escaped. But at least he had taken the city.

  Brudoer was the last out. “Now,” he shouted to Ason. “Put the bar in there and pry that stone out.”

  Without thinking, the huge man did as the boy asked. The stone resisted. He threw his whole massive trunk into it, grunting. It slid, rotated, then groaned loose. For a long moment, nothing happened; then a sharp crack split the stone above. The wall gave a slight grinding sound, raining grit, as Brudoer and Ason ran across the field. Brudoer fell with an arrow through his leg. Ason scooped him up and stumbled on.

  Behind them, the wall groaned again. More fragments spattered down. Then the diamond pattern in the wall shifted. In a row, the facing stones showered off like falling play squares. The whole wall collapsed in a rush and fell out with an enormous roar. The water tower tilted, turned, and fell through the upper terraces. In the first morning light, the high north wall of the city disintegrated, falling outward with a deep rumble. After that, the entire city fell inward in a continuing thunder, burying the entire Peshtak invasion force in tons of falling rock and rising dust As they arrived at the shore, Ason set Brudoer down. “Good suffering Aven, Brudoer. You’ve tom the entire city down. Everything. Now we’ve got nothing.” He screamed in exasperation and disbelief.

  “No Peshtak, either,” Bival said by his shoulder. She laughed almost hysterically. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe it.”

  Brudoer lay on the ground, his face contorted with the pain of the arrow. “Craydor built it that way,” he gasped. “Craydor meant that it should come down if it had to.”

  ‘The Protector was right,” Cilia shrilled. “You should have been whipped to death!” She made for Bmdoer, but was blocked by a Pelbarigan rifle barrel. “Get away!” she screamed.

  “Much more from you and we stow you in the hold with the potatoes,” Ahroe said. “He just saved you all and you don’t like it. Now, everybody, get in the boats. We’ll think this out on the ships. There might be a few more of these rabid skunks around.”

  But as the dawn grew, the city lay still, a great pile of broken rock, up through which thrust a steep pyramid, near the tip of which lay Craydor’s tomb. And on the very end the Broad Tower rested, balancing. Bival leaned on the rail, musing. “Another of Craydor’s jokes,” she said to Pion. “She said the city would never fall until she left it. She has.” Bival laughed ruefully.

  “She didn’t go far,” Rotag said.

  As they watched, the main door of the Broad Tower swung open. They could see a tiny figure in it. The door then shut, and as it did, the Broad Tower seemed to rock a little, then slid rumbling down the side of the pyramid to the rubble at its base.

  “It’s amazing it’s still intact,” Bival said. She could see the guardsmen trotting across the field toward the tower. “I imagine that if the tip hadn’t been trimmed off the pyramid, it would still be up there.”

  By the time the guardsmen arrived at the Broad Tower, which was tilted but still unbroken, the door swung open again, and Dardan stood in it, shaken and braised. The guardsmen lifted her down and stepped inside. Everything was jumbled, the furniture all piled at one end of the room. In the middle of it, Udge sat in her favorite chair, a broken cup in her hand. A guardsman slid down the floor and lifted a table off her lap.”

  “You all right?” he questioned.

  “Are you addressing me?”

  The guardsman looked around. “I don’t see anybody else. Want help getting out?”

  “Protector! Protector!” she screamed at him. “Are there no manners left in Pelbarigan?”

  “Maybe not. But Pelbarigan is left. Want to get out? Or do you want to stay? We could hook some ropes on this thing and drag it down onto the field. Then you could be Protector of yourself.”

  “How can—how can you talk to me this way? It’s completely unbelievable. Where are my guardsmen?”

  “Your own? All dead. All dead, they say.”

  Udge struggled to her feet, and with the aid of the guardsmen walked, slipped, and crawled up the sloping floor to the doorway. She hadn’t even looked out before. Now that she emerged into the sunlight, staring around her at the rubble that had been the incomparably beautiful structure of Threerivers, she screamed and beat on the stone door frame with her fist. The guardsmen stood by patiently.

  Below, Dardan looked up at her. “It’s no use, Udge. It’s all gone now. Come on down. They have promised us some hot soup. If you give Brudoer back his bracelet.”

  18

  On Ahroe’s ship, the Peshtak, Red, also stared at the city ruins, unbelieving. He was fuming and cursing under his breath. “You killed them. You killed them all. You are the rottenest gang of sanctimonious sludge pits. Worse than the Innaniganis. You’re the foul swill of a thousand fishgutting slaughterhouses. You grew from the ooze like snakes. You—” He cried out and buried his face in his fists.

  “What should we have done?”

  “All my cousins. My uncle.”

  “All their city. Most of their guardsmen.”

  “We’ll pay you for this. Every drop of blood. Every shred of flesh.”

  “We’ve already paid a good deal. Now, Guardcaptain Ahroe wants to see you.”

  Red struggled and spat. Finally he had to be gagged and shoved into the guardcaptain’s room, where Ahroe sat at a long table. Red was placed on a stool opposite her.

  “Red,” she began. “We’re going to let you go—back to your people. Now will you talk? Can we take that gag off?”

  The Peshtak stared at her. Then he went limp. The guardsmen took off the gag. “Go home?” he said. “Almost everybody I know is here, under your bullgutted rock pile.” “We regret that. As much for us as for you. We .want you to tell your people we can cure the Peshtak plague, and if they come in peace, we will do it. We’ll trade with you. We’ll live at peace with you. But if you come raiding again—even one small raid on the Tall Grass Sentani— we’ll gather all the people and wipe you out. Finish you. The Shumai have agreed. So have the Koorb Sentani. We’ll talk to the Tall Grass people. You’ve seen our weapons. You know what they can do.”

  “You can do nothing, you dung heap. You fermenting maggot garden.”

  Ahroe laughed. “I’ll have to tell Stel that one. Fermenting maggot garden. I wish you’d stop cursing and think.” Red did stop. He looked at the floor a long time. Then he said, “I’d never make it through the Sentani alone, anyway.”

  “If you can hide a thousand men, you can surely hide one. Besides, we’ll give you a letter of safe-conduct. I think they’d honor it.”

  “A letter? Safe-conduct?” The Peshtak could hardly believe what Ahroe was saying. But after they talked for some time, he calmed and began to see the opportunities offered. His people could decide about the invasion afterward. I
f they really could be freed from the terrible disease, what else would matter? He finally agreed to carry the message.

  “One more thing,” Ahroe said. “Destroy all your hogs and wait at least a decade before you get any more. All of them.”

  “Destroy the hogs?”

  “We think they are carrying the disease. Not alone. We think they are a strongly contributing cause. We don’t really know. We think so.”

  Red pondered. “The hogs. We thought about that. It didn’t seem reasonable.”

  At last Red was prepared to go. “What’s your real name, Red?” Ahroe asked. “You’ve never told us.”

  “Osel.”

  “Osel. Well, good-bye, Osel. If I embrace you, will you harm me?”

  “Not if he wants to live,” the youngest guardsman said. “Please, Garet,” Ahroe said.

  “I won’t harm you,” Osel muttered.

  Ahroe put her arms around him and placed her cheek against his. “May Aven go with you, protect you, and bring success to your journey,” she said. “May you always prosper, and if you return, may we be friends.”

  Osel pulled away and looked at her. “You see,” she added, “it isn’t we who are enemies. It’s the concept of hostility. There is no reason why the invaders and the Threerivers people couldn’t have been having a feast together right now—except for their concepts. It helps to separate the whole unsuccessful complex of Peshtak ideas from the people. I reject the Peshtak ideas, but not the people. Sometimes, unfortunately, we have to combat the people who push these absurd ideas.” She remained wary and unsmiling, however.

  “Good-bye, then, guardcaptain,” Osel said, turning away. “We’ll see what happens.”

  “You’re welcome back here anytime—without an army.” “Yes.” Osel looked back at her, a swirl of emotions welling up in him. Then he turned toward the shore.

  Ahroe, too, had mixed feelings as she watched him being rowed ashore. “I hope this works out, Garet. I hope.”

  “There doesn’t seem a better idea.”

  “Now,” she said, sighing. “I supposed I’d better see Udge, the ex-Protector.”

  Udge was brought by the same boat that had taken Osel ashore. She puffed up the ladder and over the side with difficulty.

  “Very inconvenient,” she said. “Very inconvenient. I should think you could have greeted me ashore.”

  “You need to understand right now, Udge, that you are not in command of anything anymore. You have no constituency, unless the survivors of Threerivers are foolish enough to reelect you. You need to understand, too, that Pelbarigan will oppose it and will offer no further aid if they do choose you again.”

  Udge’s mouth fell open. “I—I will see you reported. I will talk to Sagan.”

  “Sagan’s last message from Threerivers was a blot of blood on a scrap of paper brought by a message bird. If you wish to talk with her, we can do it now with the radio. We even have a voice system now, though the dome people say they will be able to do much better with it.”

  “Face to face will be good enough,” Udge said, turning her head.

  “Provided Sagan sees fit to receive you. You ought to know that you will never be a family head in Pelbarigan. You have been tentatively assigned a place working in the laundry.”

  “In the laundry!” Udge shrieked.

  “The laundryworkers objected, of course, but we prevailed on them.”

  “The laundryworkers objected!”

  “We had to promise the men you would be giving them no orders. They—”

  “You promised the men!” Udge took her hair in her hands and shook her head back and forth.

  “We nearly had a mutiny. Some said they would rather go north to the new colony, but we told them that you would have to scrub in silence if you were allowed to come at all.”

  Udge opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “You must understand that all of Pelbarigan really holds you responsible for destroying this beautiful city. It would still be here, full of life and happiness, if you weren’t so rigid.”

  “Put me ashore. Right now. I don’t have to listen to any of this.”

  “Very well. But no one seems in a mood to take care of you—perhaps a few old-fashioned women. But they are of little use to themselves. However, we will see what the people decide. What they decide will be honored, of course.” Ahroe rose and urged Udge out onto the deck.

  At that point a longhorn sounded from the lookout on the mast. “Boats, Guardcaptain Ahroe,” he shouted down. Quite a flock of them.”

  “Peshtak?”

  “Can’t tell. A strange group. Someone’s waving.” He Squinted through his long glass. “What? How did Brudoer get down there? No. It isn’t Brudoer.”

  Ahroe cried out and scrambled up the rope ladder. “It must be the twin, Gamwyn,” she yelled. “Blow the hom again.” As Ahroe looked through the glass, a guardsman Mew the longhorn of greeting.

  Ahroe saw a dark-skinned man pick up a white thing, and faintly they heard a hollow hom sound in return. “Good Aven,” she said. “I’ll be a snakeskin in the mud. It is Gamwyn. What a strange group. There must be over a hundred people.” She leaned back and let out a long, quavering Shumai yet! that startled everyone used to the modest and ordered guardcaptain. “They’ll be hungry. What do we have to eat. Any game? We need a wild bull,” she called down.

  “We have one, guardcaptain.”

  “Roast it up, then. Radioman, tell Pelbarigan. Cooks, we’ll have a feast on shore. Aven, look,at that crowd.”

  When Gamwyn got within range of a megaphone, Ahroe had a big guardsman boom out, "DID YOU GET THE SHELL?” They saw Gamwyn wave a cloth sack in the air. The guardsmen on the ship cheered.

  Brudoer was helped, limping and pale, up on the deck to see his brother coming. “Bring Misque,” he said. “Misque should see.”

  The reunion took place on shore. The twins held each other in a long, laughing embrace. Gamwyn was rangy and sunburnt, Brudoer pale from his months inside. Gamwyn was astonished to see the city in ruins, and when the whole group from the south sat around eating and listening, they all grew more and more silent with amazement as the story unfolded.

  Gamwyn was worried about his brother, but Brudoer assured him that he would be all right soon enough. Misque was silent and preoccupied, just waking from a long sleep below decks.

  “Not glad to see me, Misque?” Gamwyn asked.

  “Oh. Yes. Amazed. Now there are two of you, when I—I thought there would be none. Now that I’ve recovered some, I’m worried, Gam. It’s Jaiyan and Jamin. A few of us still have them. West of here. You have to save them.”

  Gamwyn instantly became serious. Misque explained everything to Mm. He spoke to Ahroe. She frowned and stared off at the sky, her mouth straight. She was suspicious of Misque still. But then she summoned some of the guardsmen, and Misque explained everything to one side of the gathering. As the sun went down, thirty-two well-armed guardsmen rowed across the river. Soon the boats returned without them.

  That evening, a feast was held, and all heard the crackling greetings from Sagan on the radio, welcoming the strangers to Pelbar country. They finally settled down for the night with many questions open. What would they all do now? Could they settle here? Should they move on?.

  Bradoer and Gamwyn had much to tell each other. Artess stayed close to Gamwyn all the time, especially when Misque was present, but the Peshtak girl seemed not to notice. Her arm still pained her sharply. Her conscience lay in fragments she could not seem to piece together. Ahroe suggested she go to Pelbarigan long enough to mend because there was no shelter left at Threerivers. Brudoer, though, saw no need for her to go. “We can all live here in the caves,” he said, “until we decide what to do.”

  “What caves?” Ahroe asked.

  “Behind the city. In the rock. Craydor’s people lived in them when they carved out the city. I’m sure we can move enough rock to get in there. I think I know just where to start.”

  As dawn
slowly sifted its first light down on the prairie west of the Heart the next morning, one of the six Peshtak guarding the two Sentani sighed and rolled over. “How long we going to have to keep these two pigs alive?”

  “Just until we are sure Misque kept her agreement.”

  “What’s holding them. It’s a long time now.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough. Where’s Aroth? Still on guard? Why didn’t he wake me?” Both were instantly awake and on their feet, looking around.

  “Drop the swords,” a voice called, waking the other two off-watch Peshtak. One lay still on the ground, but the second started to crawl off.

  “Stop right there,” a voice called from another direction.

  The Peshtak sat up to flick an arrow at the voice, but a longbow arrow pierced him instantly and he pitched forward, snapping the shaft.

  “Drop your swords,” the voice called again. “We have your two friends tied.”

  The three Peshtak looked at each other, then at their dead comrade, then lay down their swords.

  An unarmed Pelbar guardsman came into view. “You understand that you will die as soon as he did if you move to pick up one of those swords.”

  One of the Peshtak spat.

  “Stand over there,” the guardsman said. Neither moved. “Do it now or we will kill you.” They moved. Two more guardsmen appeared from the brush and picked up the Peshtak swords, thrusting them into their quivers.

  “You,” the guardsman said to the other Peshtak. “Stand up.” The man rolled upright and rushed the guardsman, who jumped aside as another arrow thwacked into the man’s leg. He went down, writhing. “All right,” the guardsman said, “You’ll be something for the others to carry.”

  “Loathsome pile of unwashed hide scrapings!” one of them said, spitting.

  “Come on,” the guardsman replied. “At least let me be washed hide scrapings. Now. We’ll take our Sentani friends, and your weapons, and leave you with your dead man and your wounded. You’re free to go home. You might as well know. Annon and all your men are dead. Misque alone is alive.”