by Zach Hughes
A sense of panic filled Tambol. Many of those whom he had taught personally were gone. Only a few real believers remained, and they were filled with fear and doubting, so that his urgings for hope, for action, went unheeded. When the edict came down to the pens that there was to be no breeding, there was a general wail of despair.
"It is evident," Tambol told a selected group, "that the Devourers' intent is to wipe out all knowledge of what happened here. They are going to kill all of you, so that no one will be able to tell others that here pongs fought and killed their masters. There is only one thing to do. We must help as many as possible to escape. This will be possible in the confusion, for so many are being killed that a few more who do not return, for example, from their work outside the city walls will not be missed." Singly and in groups of two to five, those who saw the hopelessness of staying in Kooh began to move toward the west. In their desperation, knowing that they faced certain death if they stayed in Kooh, they ate as Tambol had instructed them to eat. Most lived to survive the winter march, and many found the valley where they were welcomed by the growing force under the command of Duwan the Elder.
If the Master was dead, and Tambol began to believe that he was, his dream was still alive, not burning brightly as it had burned when an army marched and slew the enemy, but flickering, nevertheless. Winter had also come to the northern canyon where Duwan had made his last stand. The snows were deep there, and, although the canyon floor was shielded from the worst of the cold winds, the stream was frozen and the tall and other fixed brothers were laden with snow and ice. Jai had accumulated firewood and food in the cave where she had wintered with Duwan before they had made the trek to the valley of the Drinkers. There she had her memories. She had intended to leave the valley before the snows, but another change, a puzzling one, had kept her there. When the change first began she had screamed out in horror. She had noticed it first on the second day after Duwan's death. She'd spent the night in the cave, shivering with loss and the cold, too tired to build a fire, and she'd made her way to where he was standing, planted in the earth, shortly after sunrise to see that things, living things, were attacking his thighs just above where they disappeared into the earth. The things seemed, actually, to be growing in his dead flesh, absorbing the congealing liquids that had seeped from his exposed cells. She screamed and reached out to jerk them away, but she could not bring herself to touch that mass of horror. That was Duwan, his remains, but it was not the Duwan she'd loved. His orange eyes, now burned to a dull rust by the heat of the sun, were no longer the eyes into which she'd loved to gaze, picking out the little individual flecks of color.
She could not see the things growing, but by the end of the second day they had extended upward a full handspan on his thighs. She was led to remember the think vines, the living green that could be directed by the minds of the valley Drinkers to form their huts. She had seen Duwan's grandmother and many others of the valley oldsters return to the earth. In fact, as chance would have it, Elnice of Arutan had chosen an opening in the very grove where Sema the elder grew. Was this, Jai wondered, the earth reclaiming her own? Was Duwan to become one of those whisperers?
She lay on the cold earth before him and watched as, little by little, his peeled flesh was taken by the thick growth of tendrils. The growth spread as it reached upward, and there formed a moss-like fuzz, an all-covering blanket that gradually began to obliterate the shape of separate legs and arms.
With the coming of the first serious snow Duwan's body was no longer recognizable. It was a fuzzy mass, rounded to a point at the top, an odd growth, but a part of the earth, so much so that birds landed there to preen themselves and once she saw a small ground creature standing on its rear legs nibbling at the moss-like covering. Then the snow began to hide the mass, drifting against it, lodging on it, and soon there was a white pillar standing there in the grove.
She had conflicting emotions. She felt a need to be away from the reminder of her sorrow, but, when she thought of going, the emptiness inside her grew and engulfed her so that she would go into her cave, curl into her bed of boughs by the fire and weep until she fell asleep. Then the snows were too deep, the weather too cold, to consider traveling, so she settled in and would not leave the cave for days, for she could supply her need for water by eating the snow that drifted into the entrance. In the quiet winter nights, with the cold so brittle that the smallest sound seemed to reverberate throughout the entire canyon, she relived every moment she'd had with Duwan and as she remembered there were the whispers, indistinct, distant but comforting. To her knowledge she was the only one, other than valley Drinkers, who could hear them now that Duwan was dead. The whisperings renewed her speculation about what had happened to Duwan. Had the earth claimed him? Other dead bodies moldered, rotted, were eaten by scavengers. (It was more pleasant in the valley since the snows, for the grisly reminders of death were, at least temporarily, covered by a blanket of pure white.) Was he, like the ancestors and those oldsters from the valley, alive? She could not understand how. His heart had stopped. When Sema the elder and the others went back to the earth they had been living, if hardening. No, she told herself, he was dead, deprived even of that doubtful existence as a tall brother.
She had not yet accepted that aspect of being a Drinker. To think of half-burying oneself in the earth to become a tree seemed almost as horrible as being killed and left to become a part of the earth through decay. But now that Duwan was of the earth, she began to wonder, and, as she heard the confused, indistinct whispers, she told herself that, when her time came, she would return to the canyon and join Duwan there, to be by his side for—how long? Forever? Did the tall brothers die? She'd seen them killed by Devourers, cut for their wood. How could anything, even a tree, live forever?
"What follows forever?" she asked, aloud.
"Eternity," came the answer, clearly.
She jumped, startled. She came to her knees on her bed of boughs and looked around. The fire had burned low. She threw on dead branches and the light flickered. The entrance was almost totally blocked by snow.
"Who?" she asked. "Is it you, Sema? Speak to me. Tell me of Duwan." Silence. Massed whisperings.
With the morning she went to the green pillar that had been Duwan and brushed away snow with a fresh bough. The moss-like covering was denser, and seemed to glow with life. She touched it. It was not unpleasant to the touch.
"Duwan," she whispered. "Do you live? If you live tell me, and I will join you now."
The silence activated her pain and in a frenzy she began to dig away at the snow until she reached the frozen earth and broke fingernails trying to dig a hole into which she would plant herself.
"Peace, daughter," the voice said inside her mind. "It is not your time. Rest. You will go with the coming of the change of seasons." She kept her vigil through the coldest months. There was no change. The green pillar did not grow. Was that to be his last and final form? She asked and received no answer.
"You're hateful," she told the whisperers, one night when she'd called and called and prayed to Duwan's Du without answer. "You can speak. You can tell me, and you won't. You are cruel. I will leave this place with the first thaw."
When it came, the change of season, it came suddenly. She awoke one morning to find that she was not, as usual, shivering with the cold. There was a sound of dripping water. Since the cave was dark, lit only by the fire and a slit for ventilation at the top of the newly banked snow, the coming of morning meant nothing to her, and she slept, often, until midday. She saw a trickle of melt water running down the inside of the snowbank at the entrance to wet the dry floor of the cave. She pushed an opening through the snow and looked out to see a wet, bright, dripping world. A mass of snow fell from the laden bough of a tree and made a wet, soggy sound. She went to the green pillar. Its snow covering was melting, too, exposing the rich, dark green color. The sun had a hint of warmth. She bared her arms and drank of it. Soon, she told herself, she would set out for the
west.
There was little preparation to be done for leaving. She would carry only Duwan's swords. They had been cast aside by the enemy and she'd stored them in the cave, keeping them bright during the winter by rubbing them with sand.
On a day that dripped a new layer of melting snow, snow deposited by what she felt would be the last of the late winter storms, she buckled Duwan's swords to her hips and emerged from the cave to take one last look at the valley and the green pillar. The sun was just beginning to light the top of the canyon's sides. She walked to the pillar and stood there, remembering.
"I go now, Duwan," she said. "I will come back, someday."
"It is not yet time," the voice in her mind said. Anger flooded her. "Now? Now you speak?"
"You will go when Du warms the earth so that the new, green grass comes."
"I will go now," she said. "Why must I wait?" There was no answer. "May the dus curse you all," she shouted, and her voice echoed back to her. She fell to her knees and faced the green pillar.
"Duwan, Duwan, they torment me so."
She would have spoken more in complaint, but her eyes fell from the pointed peak, where his head had once been, from the point where once his fiery eyes had flashed, down to a point not far above the ground. A small movement had drawn her eyes. She gasped. The mossy green covering split before her eyes and she saw one finger. A finger! And it was not raw, or decayed. It had pale green, healthy, living skin.
"Duwan," she screamed, reaching for the spot, finding that the mossy covering was tough, so tough that she could not tear it.
"Peace, daughter," said the thought voice of Sema the elder. "Do not disturb him, for he still sleeps."
"He's alive?"
"He is with us. Be patient, daughter."
Chapter Eight
"It is not a full conqforce," Dagner told Duwan the Elder. The old Drinker had not weathered the winter well. He moved with difficulty. The hardening had reached past his hide and was affecting his joints, his flesh, his bones. "The scouts have all returned, and fresh ones have been sent out. They estimate that there are more than two thousand armed men, with a support group of more than two hundred slaves guarded by lightly armed conscripts. Their movements indicate that they are making a methodical search. They send out groups of about one hundred in various directions, surrounding a given area, a valley, for example, and then sweep all toward the center. One of our scouts was thus encircled and did not escape."
"Was he a good warrior? Would he have talked?" Dagner shrugged wearily. "Who can say what a Drinker will do or say when he is peeled rapidly? We must assume that he talked. Du knows that I probably would if they were taking my hide."
Duwan the Elder nodded gloomily. He could field an armed force of less than a thousand warriors. He was not ready, and he had feared the coming of the thaws and the warm, sunny weeks that followed. But he had no choice, or, at best, some doubtful choices. During the winter he had questioned the free runners who were now a part of his force. He had learned that to the west were the impenetrable, high, always snow-capped mountains. To the southwest, the desert. To the north, he knew, were the dense forests and beyond them the tundra. He could not move west. He could not move to the south. Should he move to the north?
"We will attack the separate groups," he said.
He called in his group leaders. "To kill the enemy, to prevent him from chasing us down here in these hills and throwing all his strength at us at once, we must move quickly."
A young leader moaned. He remembered the grueling training marches of the winter, through the snow and cold, when Duwan the Elder had pushed them to the limit of their endurance and beyond by reminding them that it was the enemy's mobility that had trapped the army in the canyon.
"The enemy moves swiftly," Duwan the Elder said, "but we can move even more swiftly. We will move as a body, and attack as a body. Behind us will come the females, the young, and those who do not, as yet, have arms. Their function will be to strip the battlefield of all weapons, all scraps of metal. We kill, they salvage, and as weapons are captured, our force will grow."
"Run, run, run," a young warrior complained, as the first elements of the army left the western valley. "I'd rather fight than run. Run all day and all night and then fight. Does he think we're dus?"
"He thinks you are Drinkers," an officer bellowed. "Save your breath for the running."
The encirclement was made with some units at a full run so that they arrived at their assigned points panting, out of breath, dripping sweat. The unit that had had to run faster and farther met the enemy first, a group of just over eighty well disciplined guards, and in their exhausted condition they took quick losses until Duwan the Elder, driving his unit hard, closed on the enemy's rear and the swords were aimed at enemy throats from two sides. It was quickly over. Leaning on his longsword, realizing that he was not as young as he once was, Duwan the Elder stiffened when a scout came pounding onto the battlefield.
"Two escaped," the scout panted. "Come, you can see them." Duwan the Elder followed the scout to a sheer drop, a precipice of faulted stone, and looked down into a river valley to see two blue uniforms, dim dots in the distance, moving rapidly. He had to look harder to see Drinkers in pursuit, so far behind that it was hopeless, for in the distance he could see the massed blue of the main enemy force.
He summoned his leaders. Old Dagner was grunting with the effort of walking. "They know we are here," Duwan the Elder said. "Now our only advantage is that we can pick our own ground."
He chose well. At the western end of the valley the stream had eroded its way down through native rock to form an outlet. On either side the slopes rose steeply. The slopes were stony and barren of heavy growth near the valley floor, slanting upward to a tree line where a dense evergreen forest offered protection and cover.
"We will be outnumbered," Duwan the Elder told his leaders. "We will have to kill two for one. We will entice them to us by exposing ourselves on the barren slope and falling back gradually, making them fight uphill until we are in the tall brothers, where their formation will be broken and the action will favor us. Our bowmen will be concealed in the trees, and will choose targets of opportunity as we draw the enemy near." The Devourers advanced in two columns, coming up the valley on either side of the stream. Their scouts had seen Duwan the Elder's battle formation on the barren slope and they were advancing at quick pace, their guttural chant reminding veterans of the northern fighting of the sounds of a charging conqforce. Duwan the Elder, noticing the nervousness among his force, strode back and forth in front of the formation.
"Our withdrawal must be orderly," he shouted. "Keep the lines straight. Keep your eye on the warriors on either side of you. Should there be a breakthrough, close up and cut off the enemy. Fight as you back up slowly. Remember that you are Drinkers, and more than a match for a Devourer. Those of you who kill one enemy on the slope will have only one left to kill in the melee among the tall brothers."
And, as the enemy reached the foot of the slope and, chanting, swung into a broad front, an attack formation, he yelled, "For Duwan, for Du, and for the land of our ancestors."
Duwan the Elder had no way of knowing that this force of guards that he faced had been hand-picked. They were all veterans of the northern fighting, and they'd undergone the most intensive training that Hata could organize. Moreover, before their departure from Arutan the High Mistress, herself, had addressed them, and had told them that their expedition was more than an effort to punish escaped pongs. She had, against the advice of Hata, told the guards of the special abilities of the pongs, who called themselves Drinkers, had given them a short lesson in history, and, perhaps most effective of all, had promised a bonus to each man based on the number of pong killed during the campaign. There had not been a more motivated force of Devourers in the field since the days of the conquest, and it showed as the enemy came charging up the hill with dismaying speed and energy to strike the formation of Drinkers a blow that sent them reeling.
So fierce was the assault that there was no question of a slow, orderly retreat. The Drinker line began to give way rapidly on the left, and Duwan the Elder shifted strength there only to see the center crumbling.
"Fall back," he bellowed, fighting for his life as two snarling enemy pressed him hard.
Panic struck on the left, and Drinkers turned their backs, and ran. Many died as they were overtaken. Screams and the clash of blades filled the air. Dust billowed up from the dry, rocky soil. Duwan the Elder's vision was limited by the dust so that he didn't know what was happening to his far right.
"Fall back to the trees," he bellowed, fighting as he backed up the slope, leaving enemy dead behind him. But once more he was reminded that he was not a warrior in his prime as his longsword arm grew weaker and weaker with fatigue and he found himself relying, dangerously, on his shortsword.
There would be many who claimed to have seen the miracle first. It came from the left, where the panic had begun and where the Drinker line was dissolving.
Two figures emerged from the tall brothers, moving down the slope not in haste but with long, purposeful strides. The taller of the two uttered a powerful cry as he launched himself at the enemy flank and his blades sang and hissed and thudded and caused a ripple in the enemy line, then a pause, and then the shout began.
"The Master!"
It came from someone on the left. It was repeated.
"The Master!"
"The Master has come!"
