The Redemption of Althalus

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

  “Maybe not,” Salkan conceded, “but how can you tell the real priests from the false ones? They all wear the same clothes, don’t they? I’ll stick to taking care of my sheep. I don’t think I’d make a very good priest. I’ve never learned how to cheat.”

  I wouldn’t push it, Bheid, Althalus suggested silently. Salkan’s not ready yet—and neither are you.

  What’s that supposed to mean? Bheid demanded.

  Your theological position changed quite a bit last summer, as I recall. I think you’d better have a long talk with Emmy before you dash out to start converting the heathens. Then Althalus looked across the table at Eliar. “Your Sergeant needs us, Eliar,” he said, speaking aloud.

  “All right,” Eliar agreed, standing up and coming around the table.

  “What’s Bheid up to in there?” Althalus asked once they were out in the hall.

  “I’m not really sure,” Eliar admitted. “His thinking’s sort of scrambled right now. Emmy left a big hole in his mind when she told him that astrology’s pure nonsense, and things got a lot worse for him when Leitha dragged him into the family.”

  “That ‘family’ notion might have been a mistake,” Althalus conceded.

  “It’s fairly accurate, though. I didn’t really think it was such a good idea at first, but after Leitha, Andine, and I got back to the House, I started getting more comfortable with it.”

  “You’ve changed a bit since you got swallowed up, Eliar.”

  “Didn’t you change after Emmy swallowed you?”

  “I suppose I did at that. It takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes,’’ Eliar said fervently. “You had it easy, Althalus. The only one you had to deal with right at first was Emmy. I had three of them crawling around inside my head.” He changed the subject. “Just exactly what is it that Sergeant Khalor needs me for?”

  “He wants to talk with Kreuter and Dreigon, and he isn’t sure just exactly which part of the House they’re wandering through. You don’t need to make an issue of this, Eliar, but I think the House still makes your Sergeant a little uncomfortable. Your doors are fine—as long as you’re the one who opens them. I don’t think Khalor wants to take any chances. He got a quick glimpse of Nahgharash when Gelta ran up behind you with her ax, and he’d really rather not make a mistake and open that particular door.”

  “They believe that they’re camped on the west shore of Lake Daso in Equero,” Althalus told Sergeant Khalor as Eliar led them along the east corridor toward a fairly extensive encampment. “We probably shouldn’t say anything that disagrees with that. Let’s not confuse them.”

  “I’m fairly confused,” Khalor said. “Why should they be any different?” Then he smiled. “Sorry, Althalus. I couldn’t resist that one.”

  They met with Kreuter and the kilted Dreigon in a canvas tent in the center of the corridor, and Khalor handed over the map he’d carefully prepared for them.

  “You draw good maps, Khalor,” the silver-haired Dreigon noted. “Are these distances close?”

  Khalor nodded. “As close as I could get them. The map I was working from wasn’t too accurate, so I had to make a few corrections.”

  “Can those three cities hold out?” Kreuter asked.

  “Kadon’s good for probably three months,” Khalor replied. “Laiwon’s holding that one, and he knows how to make things expensive for besiegers.”

  “That he does,” Dreigon agreed.

  “I’m going to put Koleika Iron Jaw in Mawor,” Khalor continued. “The Duke of Mawor evidently decided to make his city stand out as the best-fortified place in the world. The houses inside are a little shoddy, but you wouldn’t want to take a run at those walls. I think the combination of walls like that and Koleika, the most stubborn man in the world, should stop the invaders dead in their tracks.”

  “What about that other city—Poma?” Kreuter asked.

  “That’s where we’ve got a problem” Khalor admitted. “A light spring breeze would probably tumble the walls of Poma. I’m going to put Twengor there. I’m positive that there’s going to be house-to-house fighting in Poma, and Twengor’s very good at that sort of thing.”

  “If he’s sober,” Dreigon added.

  “Does this Twengor have problems with drink?” Kreuter asked.

  “No, not really,” Dreigon replied. “He can usually polish off a barrel of good ale before lunchtime. Of course, he can’t stand up in the afternoon, but he doesn’t see that as a problem. He has a tendency to wreck every town he enters, though. He’s as big as a house himself, and he bumps into things when he walks. Usually, whatever he bumps into falls down.”

  “I hate working with a drunkard,” Kreuter said.

  “I’ll sober him up,” Althalus promised.

  “I don’t know,” Kreuter said dubiously. “I’ve never known a confirmed drunk who was able to put it aside.”

  “Trust me on this one, General Kreuter,” Althalus said.

  “How’s Astarell?” Kreuter asked Sergeant Khalor.

  “Oh, she’s doing just fine, Kreuter. My Chief’s absolutely smitten with her.”

  “Really? That’s something we might want to think about. I suppose I could just go ahead and kill her rascally brother and the old fool who tried to buy her, but that’d probably start wars all over Plakand. Maybe I should talk with her and see how she feels about the idea. Your Chief is a handsome sort of devil, and maybe she has feelings for him as well. Let’s keep it in mind, Khalor. It might just solve a lot of our problems.”

  “My thought exactly, Kreuter. If I can get my Chief married off, maybe he’ll stay home and get out of my hair.”

  Chief Twengor was roaring drunk when Althalus and Khalor came down the north corridor of the House the following morning. The burly Arum Clan Chief was sprawled out in a massive chair at the head of a long plank-and-trestle table in the center of his encampment with an open ale keg in front of him, and he was singing—sort of.

  “It’ll take us all day to sober him up,” Khalor muttered to Althalus as they were escorted into the drunken man’s presence.

  “Maybe not,” Althalus disagreed, rummaging back through his education.

  “Ho, Khalor!” Twengor bellowed, waving his drinking horn. “Sit you down and get started! You’ve got some catching up to do!”

  “You’ve got quite a big head start, Chief Twengor,” Khalor agreed.

  “I should have.” Twengor chortled. “I’ve been working on this one for three days now.”

  That was useful. If it had taken Twengor three days to drink himself into his present condition, it might be quicker to take him on out through the far end than it’d be to turn him around and take him back. Althalus looked at Twengor’s beet-red face and muttered “egwrio” under his breath.

  Chief Twengor’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he slid limply out of his chair. His snores began to rumble under the table.

  “I think our Chief just outran you altogether, Khalor!” one of Twengor’s sub-Chiefs declared, roaring with drunken laughter.

  Althalus expanded the idea—and the ancient word—that had just struck down the vast-bearded Twengor, and a sudden silence, punctuated only by snores, fell over the encampment in the north corridor.

  “What did you just do?” Khalor demanded.

  Althalus shrugged. “I think it’s called ‘speeding things up,’ ” he replied. “They were all wandering off in this direction anyway, but it might have taken them the rest of the day to get where they are now.”

  “It’ll still take them a day or so to sleep it off,” Khalor pointed out.

  “No, not really,” Althalus disagreed. He turned to look back along the corridor. “You can come on in now, Eliar,” he called.

  The blond young fellow joined them. He waved one hand in front of his face. “They don’t smell too good, do they?” he said.

  “Take shallow breaths,” Althalus suggested. “Which door would put us on the road right outside Poma?”

&
nbsp; Eliar pointed to a nearby door. “That one right there.”

  “Go ahead and open it. I’ll start these men moving.”

  “They’re all asleep, Althalus.”

  “You and I know that, Eliar, but they don’t.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all, Althalus,” Khalor protested.

  “It will in a minute, I think.” Althalus squinted at Eliar. “I’m going to need the door to last week as well as the door to the Poma road,” he said.

  “Last week?” Eliar asked in a puzzled tone.

  “Time’s the only thing that’ll sober a drunk man up, so I’ll need a week at least. I’m going to start our sodden friends here to walking in their sleep. Then I want you to lead them into last week and back. Then we’ll take them through the Poma road door.”

  “Wouldn’t it be simpler to just make it the same door?”

  “Can you do that?” Althalus was startled.

  “I think so,” Eliar said. He put his hand on the hilt of the Knife and concentrated. “Yes,” he said confidently. “Now I remember how to do it. It’s the door frame. I always have to remind myself about that. Place is in the door, but time’s in the door frame.”

  “Do you have any idea at all what he’s talking about?” Khalor asked Althalus.

  “Sort of,” Althalus replied. “Twengor and his men will go to last week and back while they’re passing through the doorway. They’ll be drunk as lords here, and sober as judges there, because they’ll have had two weeks to get sober during that single step through the doorway. And, since they’ll be walking in their sleep, they won’t really know what’s happened.”

  “Just do it, gentlemen; don’t explain it,” Khalor said. “Sometimes you two are as bad as Gher is.”

  “They’re not serious!” Chief Twengor exploded when he first caught sight of the walls of Poma.

  “Duke Bherdor doesn’t have much in the way of a backbone, Chief Twengor,” Sergeant Khalor admitted. “The local merchants don’t really want to pay taxes, and Bherdor’s too spineless to insist.”

  “I want a free hand here, Althalus,” the now-sober Twengor said flatly. “Don’t interfere with me.”

  “Just exactly what did you have in mind, Chief Twengor?”

  “I’m going to make those merchants pay their taxes in sweat. They’re the ones who are going to reinforce those walls.”

  “I don’t think they’ll agree to that.”

  “I’ve got a whip someplace,” Twengor said darkly. “They’ll agree, Althalus. Believe me when I say they’ll agree. Let’s go talk to this jellyfish Duke.”

  They entered the city, and Chief Twengor grew more and more irritated as they passed through the commercial district, where the shops more closely resembled palaces than places of business. Twengor’s face was steel hard when they entered Duke Bherdor’s run-down palace.

  “This is Chief Twengor, your Grace,” Khalor introduced the hulking Arum to the weak-chinned Duke of Poma. “He’ll be defending your city.”

  “Praise the Gods!” the young Bherdor exclaimed in his tremulous voice.

  “I’m going to need a few things, your Grace,” Twengor said brusquely. “We are going to cooperate with each other, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, of course, Chief Twengor. Of course.”

  “Good. I want every citizen of Poma in that square in front of your palace in half an hour. I need to talk with them.”

  “I don’t know if they’ll come, Chief Twengor. The merchants don’t like it when I do anything that interrupts normal business.”

  “Oh, they’ll come, Duke Bherdor,” Twengor said confidently. “Tell them that my clansmen will hang anybody who refuses—right from the signs that stick out over the front doors of all those fancy shops.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Watch me.”

  “He’s a different man when he’s sober, isn’t he?” Eliar said quietly to Sergeant Khalor.

  “Oh, yes,” Khalor agreed. “This is the way he used to be—before he started swimming down to the bottom of every ale barrel he came across. His mind hasn’t been this clear for the past ten years.”

  Twengor sent some of his men to accompany the palace guards out into the city to summon the citizens to the square, and by noon, more or less everybody in Poma had gathered there. The richly dressed merchants seemed quite indignant, for some reason, and they were talking among themselves angrily.

  “Ah—excuse me,” Duke Bherdor said weakly from the balcony at the front of his palace. “Excuse me.”

  The crowd ignored him.

  “Let me do this, your Grace,” Twengor said. Then, ax in hand, he stepped to the front of the balcony. “Be silent!” he roared in a huge voice.

  All sound in the square stopped immediately.

  “The lands of the Arya of Osthos have been invaded by the Kanthons,” Twengor announced briskly. “Some of you may have heard about that, but no matter. I’m Twengor of Arum, and I’ve been hired to defend your city. This means that I give the orders, and I’ll hang any man who doesn’t obey.”

  “You can’t do that!” one of the merchants exclaimed.

  “Try me. Look around you, city man. The men with swords and axes are my clansmen, and they do as I tell them to do. This puts me in charge of Poma, and our first order of business is to do something about your walls.”

  “That’s Duke Bherdor’s responsibility, not ours,” another merchant declared.

  “What town do you live in?” Twengor asked bluntly. “If the Kanthons break down the walls, they’ll burn Poma to the ground and kill everybody who lives here. Doesn’t that make those walls your responsibility?” Twengor paused to let that sink in. “You all cleverly advised your Duke that you couldn’t afford a ten-percent tax. The Kanthons are likely to impose a one hundred–percent tax. After they’ve looted the city, you won’t have anything left. But dead men don’t need anything, do they? Now, let’s go to work on the walls.”

  “Where can we find building stone?” someone in the crowd asked.

  Twengor looked out over the city. “I can see all sorts of building stone from right here: houses, shops, warehouses, that sort of thing. You may all be living in tents when this is over, but you’ll still be alive. That’s the best offer I can make. Now, let’s get cracking.”

  “Good speech,” Khalor noted.

  “I’ve always had this way with words,” Twengor replied modestly.

  ———

  “You’ve got to see this, Master Althalus!” Gher was chortling from the window when Althalus, Khalor, and Eliar returned to the tower. “That Argan fellow’s trying to sneak into the fort to get to Smeugor and what’s-his-name. His face is probably going to fall off when he finds out that they aren’t really there.”

  “How did things go at Poma?” Andine asked.

  “Twengor was moderately offensive, little lady,” Khalor replied. “But he managed to get the point across. The citizens are all practicing a new trade now. They aren’t very good stonemasons, but they’re enthusiastic about it.”

  “Will the walls hold?”

  “Not a chance.” Khalor snorted. “I snitched some of Salkan’s shepherds from Dreigon and Gebhel, so Twengor’s got slingers as well as his own archers. What he’s really doing in Poma is opening up avenues to give those boys clear shots at the enemy after they get inside the city. He’s giving himself fighting room, and there won’t be much left of Poma when he’s done.”

  Althalus and Gher were looking out at the hilltop fort where Smeugor and Tauri were supposedly hiding. “Where’s Argan?” Althalus asked. “I don’t seem to be able to see him.”

  “He’s hiding in that clump of bushes on the west side,” Gher replied. “He sneaks real good. He’s waiting for it to get dark before he goes inside to tell Smeugor and what’s-his-name to stop setting fire to those wheat fields. He won’t find them in there, of course, but he will find the note Eliar and I put there.”

  “Note?”

  “Didn’t Eli
ar tell you about it? I thought he was going to take care of that.”

  “It must have slipped his mind. Why don’t you tell me about it, Gher?”

  “Well, we were talking about Smeugor and what’s-his-name the other day. I was asking Eliar why those two Generals didn’t just go ahead and kill their Chiefs, since they really don’t like them. Eliar explained that if they did that, it’d start an awful fight. Arums seem to have a lot of funny ideas about that sort of thing, don’t they?”

  “Arums have a lot of funny ideas, Gher. Why don’t you tell me about the note?”

  “Oh. Right. Anyway, I got to thinking about how we told Smeugor and what’s-his-name that Ghend was real mad at them for setting all those fires, and a whole bunch of stuff sort of clicked together. If we fixed it so that Ghend believed some wild story about Smeugor and what’s-his-name, then he really would want to kill them, and if Ghend kills them instead of the Generals doing it, there wouldn’t be any fights among the Arums. They’d be mad at Ghend instead. Does that make any sense at all?”

  “The note, Gher,” Althalus said firmly. “Tell me about the note. Stick to the point.”

  “I was only trying to explain why we did it, Master Althalus,” Gher said defensively. “Anyway, that Argan fellow sneaks so good that he is going to get inside the fort, no matter how many guards there are, so Eliar and I put together a note that’s supposed to have been wrote down by Sergeant Khalor. Eliar put it down on paper, since I don’t write too good yet. We had to do it about four or five times to make sure we got it just right. The note tells Smeugor and what’s-his-name to keep on pretending that they’re still working for Ghend and to blame their Generals for all the fires that’re burning up Ghend’s food. Then it tells them to weasel Ghend’s war plan out of some of Ghend’s other sneaky people and to pass it on so that we’ll know what they’re going to do before they do it. Then Eliar and I put in some stuff about how much gold we’re going to pay those two. Then we fluffed it up by saying that our side’s really worried about the war and stuff like that, and we finished it up by saying some real nasty things about Emmy’s brother. Do you think it might work, Master Althalus?”