The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain)

by Lee Duigon

  With no action forthcoming from the mardar, Sharak and Hooq returned to their scouting duties in the mountains. The Abnak surprised Obst with the friendliness of his farewell.

  “I hope we meet again, old man,” Hooq said. “I’m sorry I wanted to kill you on the spot, when first we met; I suppose it must be a bad habit. But you’re as daft as a loon and as brave as a blackfly—just the kind of fellow we Abnaks like best. Just try not to fall afoul of the mardar!”

  “What do you think they’re going to do with me?” Obst asked Ryons, after Hooq left. “I’m beginning to think the mardar has forgotten me.”

  “You’d better hope he has,” the boy said. “What he usually does to prisoners is to cut them open and read the future from their entrails. They’re alive when he does it, tied down to the altar. He watches the way they squirm: that’s supposed to tell him things about the future, too.”

  Which delivered Obst right to the doorstep of his dilemma—when was he to start preaching God’s word to these people? And what would they do to him when he tried?

  He knew the history of the prophets. Sychas the Mighty One, in his bearskin cloak, was a terror to the corrupt kings of ancient Obann, doing miracles by the power of God. Zaydabara, old and widowed, unable to walk without a cane: she never raised her voice, and yet her words called a nation to repentance. And there was Ika, himself of royal blood, who came out of his house unscathed after wicked King Meen’s men burned it to the ground. These were God’s servants, Obst reflected, and their Lord protected them.

  But the Old Books of Scripture made mention of many other prophets who had not fared so well: prophets stoned to death by angry mobs, murdered by tyrants, or devoured by wild beasts let loose against them. Presumably their faithful souls had places reserved for them in Heaven. But the simple truth was, a prophet never knew if God was going to protect him in the flesh or not. As Prophet Menkawr said, when they were about to cut him down with swords, “At least I have obeyed my God.”

  “And where,” Obst asked himself, “is my prophetic calling? How do I know God has really chosen me? It might be all my own imagination, after all.”

  “Eh?” said Ryons.

  Obst startled. He’d forgotten he was not alone. Indeed, they were standing now beside the stream where Ryons went for water, and Obst could not remember walking there.

  “Sorry, Ryons! I must have been talking to myself.”

  “What’s all this about prophets and kings and some great god?”

  Obst sighed. “Oh, I’ve been grappling with my cowardice. Of course God has sent me here to preach His word among the Heathen. Why else would He have given me the miraculous gift of understanding and speaking all the Heathen languages? It’s just that when you got to talking about the mardar and telling me the things he does to people … I was afraid.”

  “Everyone’s afraid of the mardar,” Ryons said. “And everyone should be.”

  “So I’ve been hemming and hawing, and not getting started, and pretending I didn’t know for sure what God wants me to do, just because I’m afraid. I wasn’t afraid when Hooq and Sharak captured me, and I wasn’t afraid when they brought me before the mardar. But now I am! Isn’t that strange?”

  He saw by the expression on Ryons’ face that the boy was truly worried about him—this slave, who in all his life had probably never had the luxury of worrying about another human being because there was no one in the world who ever spared a thought for him. “Is that why I’m losing my courage?” Obst wondered. Was his love for this child reattaching him to this poor, doomed world? Had life suddenly become so sweet that he was afraid to part with it?

  “Don’t be afraid,” Ryons said. “I’ll keep you out of the mardar’s way, and out of mind. The host is going to cross the mountains very soon: everybody’s saying so. The chiefs are all as busy as ants, and I suppose the mardar must be busy, too. Once we start moving, they won’t have any time for you. Just keeping the Abnaks from lifting everybody else’s scalps and running back to their own women—that’s enough, right there, to keep all the chieftains busy, every day. Maybe, once the host is on the move, you’ll be able to run away and no one will even notice.”

  But Obst didn’t run away, or even try to. The Heathen camp was like an anthill, and he felt like a slow and clumsy beetle in it.

  Now that Ryons had mentioned it, he could see the army was just about ready to march. Horses were being examined, the weak and the unfit slaughtered and their meat smoked over slow fires so that it would keep. Drums of all kinds were being beaten, throbbing day and night. Riders clattered in with urgent messages. Warriors sharpened their weapons, mended their footwear.

  And one day at noon, harsh horns blew, horns with the voices of devils; and when Ryons took a few steps forward to see what was the cause, two warriors came along and snatched him up, one by each arm, so that his feet were lifted from the ground.

  “He’ll do,” said one.

  Ryons screamed and struggled as they carried him off toward the center of the camp. Obst, who had just emerged from a meditative daze, stared after them for a moment. Then he shot to his feet and gave chase for all he was worth.

  “Stop, stop!” he cried. “What are you doing, where are you going with him? Put him down, I say!”

  They halted, glared at him. Obst didn’t know what nation they belonged to. They were tall, extremely swarthy men, with wolfskin caps and leggings.

  “Who are you, old man?”

  “Never mind him!” said the other. “Come on, the mardar’s waiting for his sacrifice.”

  Obst tried to hold them back, but they pushed him to the ground. He got up and scrambled after them. A cramp in his leg made him hobble. Other warriors got in his way. He bumped into them, received more than a few abusive words, but kept on going. He just barely managed to keep Ryons’ abductors in sight.

  Warriors were flocking to the center of the camp, to the mardar’s tent, and to the altar. They were intent on what they were going to see, and ignored Obst. He struggled past them like a man swimming against a heavy current. Drums boomed, and over their booming rose the shrill scream of a horse.

  The crowding slowed Obst’s progress. Over the men’s shoulders he saw the top of the big black tent and the standards planted around it. He couldn’t see Ryons anymore. His feet seemed to stick to the earth, as in a dream. He pushed on.

  Through a solid wall of Heathen warriors, Obst fought. Someone struck him on the side of the head, making him see stars; but he didn’t stop for that. And at last he broke through, ahead of the front line of men gathered before the altar.

  Ryons was already tied to it, his single miserable garment torn away. The altar was already drenched with blood, and on the ground beside it lay the fresh carcass of a horse.

  Chieftains in fantastic finery stood before the big tent, and before them stood the mardar, brandishing a bloody knife. He was bare-chested, spattered with blood; and all that host of Heathen men kept silence, and the beating of the drums died down.

  “Hear me, ye gods, and obey!” the mardar roared. “Reveal to me the secrets of the heavens and the earth, the water and the fire: the Thunder King commands you. Drink deeply of the blood of sacrifice—”

  And Obst said, “Stop!”

  The mardar froze. That anyone would dare to interrupt him, let alone presume to command him, was more than he could take in all at once: the greatest chieftain in the army would not have dared to do so. His mouth hung open, but no words came out. The many-colored feathers in his hair trembled violently. His face was painted red and blue; his white eyes stared.

  “Murderer, idolater, and servant of false gods, who are no gods!” Obst said. “The true God hates your sacrifices; they are an abomination to Him. Your Thunder King is but a man whose breath is in his nostrils, whose flesh shall wither like the grass. Every word in your mouth is lies and blasphemy. Don’t you dare lay a filthy finger on that boy! The true God has seen your wickedness, and you shall do it no more.”

 
No one lifted a finger to restrain Obst. No one spoke, not even a whisper. The only sound that could be heard, when Obst stopped to catch his breath, was the rustling of the tribal standards in the wind.

  The mardar could not speak. His jaw trembled fitfully. Tics broke out on his body, on his face. His eyes rolled upward. He looked like a man choking on a windpipe-full of gristle.

  His free hand reached for the base of his throat, but he toppled to the earth before it got there.

  A tall, bearded chief with a gleaming golden breastplate stepped forward silently, stood over the fallen mardar. By and by he knelt, touched the body, rolled it onto its back. His hands felt for a pulse, a heartbeat. After a moment, he looked up.

  “The mardar is dead,” he said.

  And Obst, who hadn’t thought to pray for a miracle, and certainly hadn’t expected one, fainted.

  CHAPTER 12

  Obst Among the Chieftains

  When Obst came to, he found himself lying on his back with something tucked under his head for a pillow, looking up at a patch of sky framed by fierce, tattooed faces. Among them was another face that was not tattooed, just dirty.

  “He’s come back!” Ryons said. They must have untied him, let him off the altar, and given him back his ragged garment. “I told you he would.”

  Those were Abnak faces looking down at him, Obst thought. But where was the mardar? And what would happen now? Dread came flooding into his heart.

  “Do you hear me, old man?” asked one of the Abnaks.

  “Yes, I can hear you.” Obst’s own voice sounded cracked and hoarse. “If you’d just let me sit up …”

  Ryons helped him, and took the opportunity to whisper into his ear. “The mardar’s dead. So be careful what you say!”

  Dead? How could that be? They were still in front of the mardar’s big black tent, on hard ground from which all the grass had been worn away, surrounded by chiefs from a dozen Heathen nations. But all the men clustered most closely around him, Obst observed, were Abnaks.

  Ryons spoke to them. “See, my masters—it’s just as Hooq said. This old man is a mighty shaman, and his god is a mighty god. You all saw how he struck down the mardar. None of your gods could do that.”

  “It’s so,” growled a burly Abnak with more tattoos than skin. “The old man is indeed a mighty shaman. The mardar should have obeyed him when he spoke.” All the other Abnaks grunted their assent.

  But not all the Heathen agreed. One of the chiefs in wolfskin caps spoke up: “Bah! What sorcery is this? The mardar was the servant of the Great Man. Through his eyes, King Thunder watched us; through his ears, King Thunder heard us. Now what are we to do? His wrath against us will be terrible!” And a great howl went up for that.

  “They’re upset,” Ryons whispered to Obst. The boy raised his hands and begged leave to speak. More from curiosity than anything else, the chieftains made silence for the slave.

  “Hear me, brave ones! You all know that this old man can speak in all your languages at once, so that each and every one of you can understand him, just as if he were only speaking in your own language. And he understands whatever any of you say to him. There’s no one else in all the world who can do that. But he can, because his god gives him understanding and makes him understood.

  “The mardar was a mighty man, but this old man’s god made short work of him. It would be just as easy for this god to do the same to you! Be wise, therefore, and be instructed: your own eyes have seen it.”

  Obst startled: the boy had quoted Scripture, a line from one of the Sacred Songs. How could that be?

  “Help me to stand,” Obst said. And when Ryons had him back on his feet, “Hear me, you brave men of war. It was not of my own doing that I came to you. My God sent me, that is the true God who made the very earth you stand on. He sent me as His messenger to you.

  “I have no power in myself. I’m only a man of flesh and blood, like you. But my God is God, and He intends that you should know Him better.”

  “The Great Man is greater than the gods!” shouted one of the Wallekki.

  “Then how is it that his servant lies as dead as a rock?” answered one of the Abnaks.

  The chieftains began to shout at one another. Fingers sought the hafts of weapons. “What do we care for any Thunder King beyond the lakes, where none of us has ever been?” an Abnak chieftain roared. Men of other nations roared back at him. Obst had been given the gift of understanding, but he had not been given the power to make himself heard over this din.

  They might have come to blows, had not a squat, black-haired chief with black eyes hammered on a round brass shield with the pommel of his dagger. He clattered and clanged until the other chiefs subsided.

  “You all know me,” he said. “I am Szugetai, chief of horsemen, from the wide lands far beyond the lakes. My people, the Ghols, breed horses and camels second to none.

  “We have come a long, long way, my men and I—farther than any of you. And we haven’t come all this way to argue about a lot of foreign gods.

  “No, my comrades—we came to get rich! By all the ghosts of all my ancestors, have you forgotten why this great host was assembled? Have you forgotten why the mardar was going to sacrifice that boy today?

  “I don’t care who’s a shaman and who isn’t. We’ve shamans aplenty in our own country, if it comes to that. I care about making war. I care about sacking cities, carrying off cartloads of plunder, and winning great fame that will never die. I care about crossing those mountains, just as we said we would.

  “I don’t care if we have to do it without the mardar. What does it matter if he’s dead? We’ve been given a new holy man to take his place.”

  It took some moments for those words to sink in. The Abnaks were the first to cheer; they cheered uproariously. Then the others worked out Szugetai’s meaning. One by one, it dawned on them; when it did, they cheered, too.

  Ryons looked up at Obst and grinned. “You’ve done well, old man!” he said.

  “But what have I done?” Obst said. He wished the chieftains would stop cheering; he couldn’t hear himself think. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, I understand that I’ve just had the best good luck that ever I had in my life,” said Ryons. “You’re the mardar now, and it’s my good luck to be your faithful servant.”

  CHAPTER 13

  A Rescue Mission

  Martis slept, dreaming strange dreams of new cities rising from the old ruins on the plains. They did not look like cities as he knew them. Slender buildings rose to impossible heights, and there were no walls. He startled when Helki woke him.

  “Shh!” the big man said. “Don’t wake the bairns. Come outside.”

  They crept out of the cave. It was still dark, with a sharp chill in the air.

  “You’re a man who knows how to use weapons, I think,” Helki said. Martis nodded. “Well, then, we have some work on hand. Hope you’re not squeamish.”

  “No one ever accused me of that,” Martis said. “What’s to do?”

  “It’s another one of Squint-eye’s wolf-packs, eight men. They’ve kidnapped a couple of women, wives of honest settlers. They’re holed up in an old stone tower that used to be someplace important. It’s just a ruin now, but still safer for them than camping in the open. I aim to take those women away from them. Want to come?”

  Martis smiled, imagining what Lord Reesh would think of this. He wondered what Helki would say if he knew he was enlisting the help of an assassin. He wondered what God would think of it.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you needed any help against just eight of them,” he said.

  “Best to be careful,” Helki said. “I don’t want to take the chance of the women getting hurt.”

  Wytt popped out of the cave and chattered at them. Helki made some unintelligible noises, and the Omah went back in.

  “You can speak with him?”

  Helki nodded. “More or less. I told him to keep an eye on the kiddies. Come on, let’s go. It’ll be
daybreak soon.”

  He led the way through the dark woods, Martis following as best he could. For such a massive man, Helki made barely a sound. Martis stepped on twigs that snapped, brushed against leaves that rustled, and stubbed his toe on roots. But Helki seemed to have eyes in his feet.

  They crossed a stream from which wisps of vapor were beginning to rise. The sky showed a hint of grey—not that they could see much of it from underneath the trees. A stillness lay over the forest: too early for the morning birds, too late for the callers in the night. Everything in sight was shades of grey.

  “How did you know about this?” Martis asked. “Did the Omah bring you tidings?”

  “I have them scouting for me now, all around the neighborhood,” Helki said. “Makes it hard for Squint-eye’s men to take me by surprise. But don’t talk. Sound carries far, this hour of the morning.”

  How far they hiked, Martis couldn’t tell. They kept on going, and pale light spread over the sky, and subdued colors returned to the forest. Birds began to call. Martis guessed he and Helki had marched at least five miles. Once upon a time it would have been a hardship for him; but he’d gotten used to walking, by now.

  Just as Martis resigned himself to hiking on till noon, Helki stopped. He drew Martis close and whispered in his ear.

  “The tower’s just ahead,” he said. “The lads haven’t started their breakfast yet, and their fire’s gone out; otherwise, I’d smell smoke. I expect they’re still asleep.

  “We’re going to get as close as we can, going as quiet as we can. When I give a holler, we rush right in. Use your knife on every man you can reach. Don’t waste time making sure of a kill. We have to settle them before they hurt the women.”

  Helki crept forward in a crouch, quiet as a cat stalking a mouse. Martis followed closely, unable to imitate Helki’s technique; and the little noise he made sounded like a racket to him. When it came to stalking a victim through the city by night, through streets crowded or deserted, Martis had no peer. But here in the forest, he was clumsy.