by Dave Duncan
"Homer!" I said quickly.
He relaxed. "Ha! Now I know we have trouble. You always turn up at the critical moments, don't you?" He laughed shrilly.
"What critical moment is this?"
Juss was almost unrecognizable as the pert youth of the previous summer. His beard was wild and bushy, he had added beef to his slight frame, and his eyes were the eyes of a killer. He was swathed in woolen blankets until he looked like a two-legged bullock, caked with snow. To the army he was "General Brains" and his brother was "General Brawn." It was a fair distinction, but Brains was brawnier than before and Brawn had learned a lot.
"Council of War. Come with me, Trader of Tales." He gripped my arm and half dragged me along as he strode through the snow.
"What's the problem?"
"No problem! The war is over for now. Vandok has withdrawn into Cemetery Pass."
"So you have him bottled up? You can starve him out?"
Juss chuckled and pushed me ahead of him into a large tent. There was no table, no stove. One dim lantern hung from the ridgepole and the floor was a mess of trampled mud, snow, and grass. A circle of miscellaneous bundles served as chairs. Ven sat on one, conferring with a couple of his Algazanian advisors. None of them looked up as we entered.
Ven was the only man in the army who shaved his face every day, and he always kept his hat on. Without those precautions, he would have looked so much like one of the enemy that some maniac would have surely killed him. At first I had been inclined to underestimate the big man, with his battered features and slow talk. Like the army, I had assumed that Juss had all the family brains. Now I knew that Ven just liked to think things through at his own pace. He usually arrived safely at the right decision. In battle he did not need to think; with a sword in his hand he moved like sunlight on water.
More men came stumbling into the tent, shaking snow from their robes, wiping it out of their eyes and beards. Shadows flowed over the walls.
Armies are attentive to their gods, always. They carry holy relics, chant hymns, make sacrifice, consult auguries. I once saw a god lead an army in person, but this was the first I had ever met where the gods were almost as numerous as the mortals. How much they had intervened in the actual fighting, I have no way of knowing. I suspect very little. Household deities would be out of their depth in battle, and they may have feared that they would bring down Hool's wrath on themselves if they meddled in great affairs. They certainly gave advice, though, and they passed on valuable military intelligence. Vandok could not brush his teeth without Ven hearing of it. The Council of War had been adjourned so that each member could go off and consult his family god. Now it was about to resume.
"We've won!" Juss said in my ear. There was a squeak of hysteria in his voice. "We can just leave a garrison here and go! Go south, to warm baths and clean clothes! And beds. Food! Oh, my ancestral gods! Women! Vandok can't mount another attack. He's beaten."
"You can starve him out?" I asked again. I did not add "Without starving yourselves, as well?" but I was thinking it and Juss knew I was. Only a sizable garrison could be sure of balking an attempt at breakout.
"For certain. We can keep him bottled up at this end."
"Can you really? He has plenty of horseflesh to eat. The weather will break soon, it must. What will a sudden thaw do to the pass?"
Juss's dark eyes blazed at me. Then he pulled a face and sighed in surrender. "Thaw or no thaw, Vandok himself can escape. He will have to abandon his horses and his wounded, but he can cross the pass on foot, back to the steppes."
"And next summer?"
"He'll be back, or we can go to him … Homer, we can't go in there after him! The men are dying on their feet! A break will help us as much as Vandok."
Would it? Physically, both sides needed rest and regroupment. Granted that the two exhausted, starving armies facing off in impossible terrain were equally incapable of fighting anymore, in terms of morale Vandok had far more to gain from a respite. At the moment he was beaten and retreating. He would benefit materially, also, for he could call on a fresh and healthy population, while Ven's land lay in ruins. To withdraw now was to concede both this campaign and the next.
As I thought about the choice, though, I saw what Juss meant. The alternative was worse. Vandok himself was the only one who really mattered, and he would certainly escape. For Ven to try to follow—leading a frozen, starving rabble over the mountains into his enemy's home territory—would be a desperate, suicidal maneuver. He would risk everything on one stroke, and what could he gain except leagues of empty grass? There were no cities there to pillage, no castles to storm. Vandok would vanish over the plains, or circle around and cut the invaders off.
All the seats but one were filled now.
"What does Kraw say?" I demanded.
Juss snorted. "Kraw is a dragon." He stalked away to take his place at his brother's side. I remained standing in the corner, and no one paid me much heed. That was one of the nice things about being friends with a god. Verl had told both Juss and Ven that I could be trusted, so I was trusted. It was her way of thanking me, I suppose. I wondered what advice she had given Ven.
The brothers had divided their two gods between them. Juss was Sure-justice of Kraw, his father's god. Ven was Cold-vengeance of Verl, his mother's. He would not claim his father's, for obvious reasons.
"We will resume," Ven said, and the mutter of conversation died at once. "Bright-hope?"
"Gardilf says we should withdraw," the first man said. Something in the way he said it told me that he did not agree with his god's advice.
"Many-virtues?"
"Lokir says attack," the next man said, even more glumly.
"Straight-blade?"
Ven quizzed every one in turn. The two Algazanian advisors watched with expressions so noncommittal that they spoke volumes. It soon became obvious that the gods were just as divided as the mortals. Finally:
"Sure-justice?"
Juss shrugged. "Kraw says attack, of course! What did Verl say?"
His brother ignored the question for a moment. Ven's thought processes were like ice floes, slow and irresistible. Then he rose to his feet, and of course his size and winter clothing made him loom enormous over everyone else. I guessed what was coming. Men do not stand up to announce withdrawals. Ven was a fighter.
He glowered around with his ugly bruiser's features. "Verl said that the problem is Hool. Hool has not intervened so far. The little gods do not know if he will, or how he will. She said that life-and-death decisions should be made by mortals. You are equally divided and your gods are equally divided. Someone must break the deadlock. Does anyone question my right to do that?"
One man began to speak and quailed under his leader's scowl.
"Very well," Ven concluded. "I say that wars are not won by retreats. We will advance into the pass at dawn. We will continue to engage the enemy as long as there is an enemy. We will fight to the last man, whichever side he may be on."
He did not pause to let them cheer. That was not his style. Nor would he tolerate argument once he had made a decision. He began to talk logistics: priorities in the baggage train, the commissary, tents, and ordnance. I studied the eyes around the circle. I saw little admiration, much fear and doubt and anger. Juss and a few others had crumpled in despair. And these were the senior officers! If Ven could bring his army into battle on the morrow, he would have dragged it there himself, by brute strength of will.
In some ways he took after his father.
The next morning the army of liberation advanced into Cemetery Pass in a blizzard, filling the gorge from wall to wall. Losses on both sides were heavy, but the weather and terrain were impossible for cavalry. The human tide drove the Horsefolk relentlessly before it. By nightfall the barbarians had abandoned their mounts and were fleeing up rocky slopes on hands and knees. Ven led his warriors in pursuit.
The clouds cleared and the battle continued by moonlight, moving even higher up the glacier. The temperature
dropped precipitously. Fingers stuck to ice or steel. Men tumbled into crevasses. Many dropped in their tracks and froze to death. There was little real fighting now. The Horsemen fled, the army of liberation pursued, and it gave no quarter.
If there was anything in the melee that could be called a battlefront, it crossed the height of land as the sun rose. The glare brought on snow blindness and triggered avalanches. A human cataract slithered and slid down the incline, fighting when the opportunity presented itself, otherwise merely struggling to survive. There could be no going back now.
As evening fell, the horde spilled into a forest below the snow line. Men lay down in heaps and slept. It hardly seemed to matter, for there was no enemy left. After eighty years of subjugation, the people of the Land Between the Seas had driven the Horsefolk back across the frontier.
So far as was known, Vandok was still alive, although his army had been destroyed. The Horsefolk were certainly capable of raising another, probably very quickly. He might counterattack the invaders; he might break through an easier pass and outflank them.
Even Ven must have wondered what he was going to do next. That problem was in the lap of the gods.
I wish I had been there to witness all that I have just described. I did not arrive until the middle of the following day.
Ven had left Juss in charge of supplies, and he organized a human baggage train more than four thousand strong. It snaked through the pass, over the glaciers, and down the other side like a line of beetles. If you have never crossed a mountain range with a sack of meal on your back, then I strongly recommend that you try it. It is an experience without equal. On the way up I was convinced my heart would burst. At the top I thought my lungs would. By the end, I was certain I should never stand up straight again.
The worst part, though, was arriving too late to see the band of Horsefolk elders that approached under flag of truce and delivered Vandok bound into the hands of his son.
Nor did I see the argument that followed. Ven could never have displayed greater leadership and power of command than he did then, just saving his prisoner from being ripped to shreds. The accounts I was able to gather later were so contradictory that I could make no sense of them. By the time I staggered in with my sack of meal, the principals had all departed for Hool's cave.
I set off at a run. The valley was only a few leagues away and I am happy to report that I caught up with the rearguard after a few hours.
I had a good pair of boots.
The holy valley is a forbidding place, a winding gorge whose sides are steep slopes of rock debris, holding very little vegetation. Above them rise vertical cliffs, sculpted into bizarre shapes and jagged buttresses. I doubt if the sun ever penetrates it, even in summer. At dawn, early in the year, it was a river of cold darkness under a lid of pallid sky. The wind wailed among the high rocks, each successive gust announcing its coming with a chorus of dismal howls that set my teeth on edge.
The mouths of many caves showed as darker patches in the precipices. Hool's cave was the largest, marked by a white apron of bones spilling all the way down to the valley floor. Until Vandok, the Horsefolk had sacrificed only beasts to their god, but for thirty years the offerings had been youths and maidens brought from the Land Between the Seas. Scores of vultures floated overhead or perched on the rocks, waiting for us to depart and let them enjoy their customary feast.
To clamber directly up that hill of skulls and ribs would have been very difficult. It would also have been unpleasant in the extreme, even for the faithful. A path began some distance away along the valley, angling gently up the stony incline to the base of the cliffs and then along to the mouth of the cave. While the army watched from the floor, the leaders began the ascent. Ven went first, followed by a group of his senior officers and one trader of tales. Vandok followed amid his guards, and the elders of the tribes brought up the rear. We were all bundled to the ears in fur and blankets, a procession of trolls. Bitter wind snatched the plumes of steam from our nostrils.
I was surprised to find myself trudging along beside Juss, whom I had believed still back in Cemetery Pass. He looked as if he had not slept since I had, which meant he looked two-thirds dead. He also looked extremely worried.
"What," I puffed, "is Ven planning?"
He scowled at me from red-rimmed eyes. "You tell me. You're the storyteller. I think he's gone crazy."
"What does Kraw say?"
"Kraw thinks he's gone crazy."
Oh? That was not comforting. I panted a few times. "He's been consulting Verl?"
I did not catch what Juss replied, but it sounded a bit like "Bloody pigeon!" Probably not—I can't believe he would have spoken of his mother's god like that.
We came at last to the mouth of the cave. The interior was black. Far below us, the assembled army was a beach of pale faces, staring up. Above us towered a rotting trellis or rock, pitted and weathered. Wind heaved in and out through the aperture, gurgling and sighing like the breath of a great monster. I wished I had not thought of that simile.
Ven sent the Horsefolk elders to the far side. Then he advanced to the center with Vandok.
It was my first clear glimpse of the tyrant since that day in Kylam, thirty years before, when he had publicly assaulted the child of his slain enemy—a disgusting public rape of a helpless woman to herald a generation of abuse of an entire people. Then he had been a striking figure of young manhood—brutal and vindictive, yes, but physically enviable, tall and muscular and exultant. In all his cruelty he had blazed like an evil god. Now he was merely big. Stooped and bloated in winter garments, worn out by years of excess and months of relentless warfare, Vandok walked with a heavy, flatfooted gait. His beard was white. Only the crazy eyes glaring out under the brim of his hat hinted at the sadistic madness that had murdered so many thousands and ground a nation into the mud.
Ven was as tall but not as thick. There was no flame to Ven, and never had been. He was a slogger. He bore a sword in his hand, and another in his scabbard. Seeing that, I guessed what was about to happen.
The wind gurgled and moaned in the dark cave.
"Holy Hool!" Ven cried. "Hear my prayer!"
For a moment there was only the wail of the wind. Then the cavern seemed to draw breath. It roared: "WHOOO—ARE—YOOOO?"
My hair tried to push my hat off. I have heard oracles before, and I had expected no more than an ambiguous wail containing hints of speech that only priests could understand and interpret. Instead, there was no doubt about that terrible voice. I fell to my knees on the stones, and all those about me did the same.
Ven stood his ground, holding his sword aloft. "I am the son of Vandok and White-thorn, bred from rape, raised for vengeance, inspired by hate. Acknowledge me!"
This time the pause was longer. Then the cave sucked in wind and the great voice sobbed again: "YOOOO—ARE—WHO—YOU—SAY—YOU—AAAARE."
Vandok screamed. He tipped forward on his knees and lifted long arms in supplication. "Holy Father! I am Vandok, your son, whom you recognized as the seed of Hannail, your chosen one!"
"YOU—AAARE."
"I have given you sacrifice!" Vandok bellowed, even louder than before. "Every day for a lifetime, I have offered blood to your honor! Do not desert me now!"
The wind moaned, chilling my bones. It fell silent. We waited, until the voice came again, quieter, less certain.
"I am tired of blood. I am sick of blood, GO AWAY! GO AWAAAAY, all of YOOOOO!"
"I also am your son!" Ven declaimed. "Acknowledge me! I claim the Land Between the Seas by your ancient oracle. I claim the kingship of the Horsefolk by right of conquest."
This time the pause was longer still.
Whatever had happened to democracy and freedom?
"Yes, he's completely crazy," Juss muttered. "Kraw defend him! Verl defend him!"
Then a gigantic bellow:
"PROOOOVE it!" the god said.
It was what Ven had hoped for, obviously. He hurled the sword down in f
ront of the tyrant and drew his own.
The spectators in the valley might not have made out the mortals' voices, although I am sure they must have heard Hool. But they could recognize the gesture, and a moan of anger roiled up from the canyon.
Vandok did not rise. He turned his head to grimace at the challenger. "You would kill your own father, upstart?" He did not mention the sons he had slain without mercy.
"I will avenge my mother! I will avenge the thousands you have butchered. Stand up or die on your knees, animal!"
Vandok hurled a human skull at Ven, snatched up the sword, and lurched to his feet. Ven dodged the missile and parried the stroke. The clang of steel echoed from the cave and then, fainter, from the far side of the gorge. By that time another was ringing on its way.
For a moment the duelists exchanged monstrous, two-handed blows, any one of which would have felled an oak. The valley rang like a smithy. Then Ven shifted his stance. His footing failed in the litter of bones. He fell. Vandok swung. Ven rolled, and went on rolling. His father followed him, leaping and plunging down the slope. The wind roared and moaned in the cave, drowning out the cries of the spectators.
Ven stopped and from his prone position swung a scythe-stroke at Vandok's legs. Vandok parried it: Clang! He kicked bones down the slope at Ven's face. Ven hurled a pelvis, which struck the older man's head a glancing blow. Then Ven was on his knees, blocking another wild stroke. Clang! sang the echoes … On his feet again, but Vandok still higher …
Clang! Clang! Clang! Vandok kept striking downward, Ven partied and swung at the other man's legs. Why the impacts did not tear their arms from their sockets, I cannot imagine. Ven edged sideways, Vandok kept blocking him. Slowly, slowly, step by step, the younger challenger drove the old tyrant uphill. Their breath streamed in the wind. I could hear the rasp of their lungs. Clang! Clang! Clang! Ven had lost his hat, his hair flew free, and his sweat-soaked face was a mask of hate.
