by Lee Duigon
Overhead, a blue jay scolded them. Helki answered it, making a noise that sounded just like the bird’s. The jay fell silent.
And there, just beyond a last screen of saplings, stood the tower, what was left of it. Once upon a time it must have dominated a clearing, maybe as a stronghold for a sheriff’s woodsmen or a secret place of refuge for a rebel knight. It’s five hundred years old, at least, guessed Martis. The clearing wasn’t much of a clearing anymore, and the tower wasn’t much of a tower. The top half of it was broken off, and all around it lay heaps of hewn stone, green with moss. Over the years, outlaws must have cleared the rubble out of the inside of the tower so they could use what shelter it afforded. The stones that still stood formed a round wall. Even the ruin was as big as an oligarch’s townhouse.
No one stood guard outside. The door was just a wide hole in the wall.
Shifting his grip on his staff, Helki crept across the last few yards to the doorway. Behind him, Martis drew his dagger. This would not be the kind of fight he was used to.
“Now!” roared Helki; he bellowed like a bull.
They charged into the undefended fort. The robbers must have been sleeping. Martis was only a step or two behind Helki, but one of the outlaws was already dead by the time he passed through the doorway.
The space inside was round, with plenty of room for eight men to give a good account of themselves against eight more; but Helki gave them no such opportunity. A man confronted him with a sword; the tip of Helki’s rod shot out and jabbed him in the throat. Down he went, choking.
Martis saw two women tied with cords so they could hardly move. A robber with a knife was reaching for them. Martis launched himself at the man, who didn’t see him coming, and brought him down, landing on top of him. A sharp strike to the head, with the pommel of the dagger, put him out of action.
Martis leaped to his feet, but the fight was already over. All the men were down but two.
“Drop your weapons and yield to me, and I’ll do you no harm,” Helki said. “Or you can fight and die.” He made a threatening gesture with his staff, and a knife and a hatchet fell to the ground. “Up against that wall, face-first, with your hands up high. Don’t move until I tell you to.” The defeated men obeyed. “Friend, would you be so kind as to cut the lasses free of their bonds. Don’t be afraid, goodwives—you’re safe now.”
They were just a couple of peasant women, plain and plainly terrified, faces streaked with tears and leaf mold, homespun dresses in disorder, and their hair in wild disarray.
“Sairy of the Dale, I’m glad to see you,” Helki said. “Have they hurt you?”
“Not yet, God be praised,” said the stouter of the two women, bracing herself not to flinch as Martis cut her bonds. “But they left my Davy lying sore hurt and like to die.”
“I’ll see if I can help him, after we get you to a place of safety.”
Martis cut the last of the ropes and helped the woman to sit. She rubbed her wrists, wiped hair back from her face.
“This is my cousin, Soose, from out by the Eft-pond,” she said, nodding at the other woman, whom Martis was now busy cutting loose.
“You must be Helki the Rod,” said Soose. “I’ve heard of you. But what made you do this for us, and how did you know we were in need of you? But they do say you know everything that happens in the forest, end to end.”
Helki laughed. “Lintum Forest is way too big for that, lass! But yes, I knew you were here, and I knew who brought you here. Now let me finish my business.”
The two men up against the wall trembled, expecting to be killed.
“Turn around, you two,” Helki said. “You both know who I am.”
They nodded.
“You tell your boss, Latt Squint-eye, who wants to call himself the King of Lintum Forest, that the only crown he’ll ever wear will be this.” Helki spun his staff. “I’m a peaceable man, God knows, and I mind my own business. But I’ll be burned if I let him turn this forest upside down.
“Tell him that if he wants to live much longer, he’d best clear out and go live with his Heathen friends. The day he sees my face, that’ll be his last day on this earth. As for the likes of you, I reckon you’d best stop following Latt, because it won’t be healthy. He may have a hundred men, or two hundred, at his beck and call, but they won’t be able to protect him, and they’re apt to get killed trying. Now go, and don’t let me see you again.”
The two outlaws looked at each other, stared once more at Helki, and then scuttled out of the tower. Martis heard them crashing through the underbrush.
“Goodwives, I hope you can walk a ways because we can’t stay here,” Helki said. “I have a place where you can be safe. And after we get there, Sairy, I’ll go for Davy and see if there’s anything I can do for him.”
“What about this one?” Martis said, pointing to the man he’d knocked unconscious.
“Leave him be, we don’t have time for him. You knocked his wits out but good, didn’t you?”
“He’ll thank me for it later, when he sees he’s still alive,” Martis said.
CHAPTER 14
The Chieftains’ Council
The sudden death of the mardar threw the whole camp into confusion. As there were twelve nations represented in the army, the highest-ranking chiefs of all twelve met in the big black tent to decide what to do next.
The Abnaks placed Obst under their protection, in care of a subchief named Uduqu, who was the father of one of Hooq’s wives, and, as he put it, “fond of the boy as if he was my own.” Uduqu was the proud owner of a conical tent of cowhides sewn together and set over a frame of poles, twice as high and roomy as most of the others. There he kept Obst until the chieftains should summon him into their presence.
Their meeting started in the early afternoon and ran into the night. By then Obst had had an Abnak supper—roasted rabbit, wild onions, and a kind of bread made from acorns. He wondered how they cooked the bitter taste out of the acorns, but Uduqu couldn’t tell him. He’d always had slaves or wives to do his cooking for him.
He was a squat, brawny man covered all over with tattoos and scars, with a rough knot on his forehead where someone had once clubbed him with a stone hatchet, and the wound hadn’t healed neatly. But the man who’d done that was dead.
Having eaten his fill, and with sundown coming on, Uduqu relaxed. He lit the end of a long, brown bean—Obst didn’t know what it was called—and sucked smoke into his mouth, blowing it out in rings. Obst had never seen anyone do such a thing before.
“I don’t know what the big chiefs need to talk about,” Uduqu said. “Either we’re going to cross the mountains, or we aren’t. But chiefs love to talk.”
“Was the mardar your general, or just your priest?” Obst asked.
Uduqu didn’t know what a priest was and had only a hazy notion of the function of a general. “The mardar was the eyes and ears of King Thunder, way out East,” he said, “and his mouthpiece, too. That’s how the Great Man commands his armies and knows if they obey. There’s a mardar with each army, and even though King Thunder is weeks’ and weeks’ journey distant, a mardar can still hear his voice. Don’t ask me how! But you’re a shaman—you must know how those things are done.”
“But I’m not a shaman,” Obst said.
“Tell that to the mardar!” Uduqu laughed at his own joke. “But we won’t shed any tears for him. Truth to tell, you’d have been burned at the stake already, except every man in this camp was scared silly of the mardar; and whether they’ll say so or not, they’re happy to be rid of him.
“But now they don’t know what to think. They’re glad he’s dead, but they’re afraid of what the Great Man will do about it. They’re afraid of you, too, I guess. After all, it was you that killed him.”
Obst shook his head. “Please understand: I haven’t killed anyone. I never have, and I hope I never will. It was God who struck down the mardar. Someday God will strike down King Thunder, too.”
Sitting beside hi
m as his servant, Ryons gasped.
“It’s all true, brave one!” he blurted out. “Obst has been telling me about his god. That was the god’s voice we all heard that was like a great bell ringing in the height of heaven.”
Uduqu blew a puff of smoke at him. “Bah! What do we Abnaks care for the westman’s god? It’s just another god, when all is said and done.”
“Try telling that do the mardar,” Ryons said. Having his own joke turned on him made the subchief roar with laugher, until he coughed. He pressed his smoking bean to the ground to put it out.
“Right pert and sassy for a born slave, aren’t you?” he said. “And to think you were all trussed up on the mardar’s altar, just this morning. There’s not many can say they lived through that. It’s made you bold, boy—bold enough to speak just like an Abnak. I’ll never blame you for that.
“Well, there may be something to what you say. I wouldn’t mind if there was a god somewhere who didn’t bow down to King Thunder. What have we Abnaks to do with some new god out beyond the lakes? Our own gods stay inside the trunks of trees where they belong. I never did like the idea of foreigners chopping down those trees and hauling them east to be put into a prison.”
“The true God is not like that,” said Obst; but before he could make a lesson of it, a tattooed warrior thrust his head into the tent and spoke to Uduqu.
“Bring the old man,” he said. “The chiefs will see him now.”
Ryons went along with them to the big tent. Obst wondered whether it was safe for the boy to go anywhere near that tent again, but he supposed Ryons knew the ways of the Heathen infinitely better than he did.
“Look how busy everybody is,” Ryons said. “They aren’t usually busy at night.”
“The army’s ready to move west,” Uduqu said.
Men and boys were leading horses this way and that; women were snatching meat off drying frames; and children—most of them slaves—scurried about like ants, on a thousand different errands. Warriors sharpened their weapons.
Inside the big tent the air was thick with smoke and unusual odors. The light, provided by torches and braziers and fat-burning lamps, was feverish and fitful. Uduqu forced his way through a crowd of chiefs and subchiefs and halted before a group of heavily decorated chieftains sitting on stools. Obst recognized Szugetai, the chief of horsemen, and a clan chief of the Abnaks whose name was, simply, Spider.
“Here’s the old man,” said Uduqu, and the murmur of voices in the tent died away quickly. A tall, bearded Wallekki stood up from his stool.
“We, the high chiefs of this host, have taken counsel together,” he said. “Each of us speaks for all his people in this camp. There are twelve of us. Together, from now on, we will consult for the good of the army. Whenever there is great need, we shall choose one of our number to be chief of chiefs until the need is past.”
With stiff formality, each of the twelve rose and made a speech. Spider spoke last.
“I am Spider, son of Dloq; I speak for the Abnaks. If my people don’t like what I say, they’ll choose another speaker. We are here of our own free will. Now I will let Shaffur speak again.”
That was the tall Wallekki chief, an imposing figure of a man, Obst thought; but of them all, Szugetai the horseman and Spider the Abnak struck him as the most dangerous.
“Tomorrow we go west,” Shaffur said. “We have lost our mardar, but we will march without him. It is what we all came here to do, and the other armies expect it of us.” He grinned. “They might get nasty if we don’t do our part.”
He pointed to Obst. “The mardar is dead because of this old man, who serves a powerful god. This god of his has not yet been subdued by King Thunder, so we’d be foolish to offend him.
“You, old man, shall speak to your god for us. Find out what sacrifices he desires, and we’ll provide them. Ask him how he’d like us to pay him due respect. We shall treat you well, for we are going into your god’s country. Ask him to help us to make wise decisions and to favor us in battle.
“But if you pray to him to curse us or if you try to run away from us, know that your manner of death shall be as unpleasant as we can make it. Is all this agreeable to you?”
Obst was speechless. The harder the chieftains glared at him, the harder it was to find words. Surely they had no inkling that what they proposed was outrageous beyond words.
“My chieftains, please be patient!” Ryons said. “My master even now is communing with his god, and he will answer you as soon as the god answers him.”
One of the chieftains nodded to another and remarked, “Just like the mardar—only not so ugly.”
Obst had to say something. Ryons was going to get himself roasted on a spit if he didn’t learn to hold his peace. Didn’t the fool boy realize he was playing with fire?
“Brave warlords,” Obst stammered at last, “my God is Lord over the whole earth, from one end to another, and everything in it. He is not to be appeased by sacrifice. What can you give Him that He doesn’t already own?
“God has heard every word you’ve spoken, all of you, from the time you were infants. Because He is all-powerful, He can afford to be all-merciful. He understands that you don’t know Him. He sent me to you so that I might make Him known to you, according to my own poor knowledge.
“He will surely defend you from this false god, this blaspheming Thunder King, if you put yourselves under His protection. But it won’t be in return for roasted bulls or horses. It won’t be in return for gold or silver.”
“What does he want, then?” asked Szugetai. “Women?” The other chiefs laughed, and it took all Obst’s self-control to remember that the man was only a Heathen who didn’t know any better.
He prayed they wouldn’t kill him, or Ryons, for anything he said.
“No, my chieftain, that’s not what He wants,” Obst said. “From each and every one of us, He wants devotion—to Him and to His laws, which He laid down of old. He wants you to know Him and put your trust in Him: in Him alone.”
“What are this god’s laws, old man?” Shaffur asked.
Obst spread his palms. “How can I teach you, in a single night, the wisdom of the ages? His laws are many, and yet they come down to only two. You are to love Him and fear Him and honor Him as the only true God; and you are to observe all His laws in your dealings with one another, doing no evil, even as you wish no evil to be done unto you.”
“That’s all?” wondered a chief of a faraway people.
“It’s a very big ‘all,’ warlord.”
“Yet if we do these things you’ve mentioned,” Shaffur said, “your god will protect us from the anger of the Thunder King?” Obst nodded, and the chieftains all stood up.
“I think we have our answer, comrades,” Shaffur said. “The army moves tomorrow, so let us get what sleep we can.”
CHAPTER 15
A Marvelous Material
To be invited into Lord Reesh’s private study was a mark of singular favor. Reesh made sure Orth knew that before he had the preacher come up.
“It’s my own little museum, Prester Orth,” he said. “Look around, take your time. I’m interested to know what you think of it.”
“I am honored, First Prester,” Orth said.
It was a small room, with all four walls lined with shelves packed solidly with books and scrolls; a thick, felt carpet on the floor; and a single narrow window through which a shaft of afternoon sunlight slanted down at an angle. A wide table took up most of the floor space.
Upon this table Lord Reesh displayed his relics, his curiosities, collected from all over Obann, but most from in or near the city itself. Orth stood over the table, marveling at them. Reesh kept silence, letting the preacher’s thoughts take wing.
Some of the artifacts, the really fragile ones, were under glass. Others simply lay on the table; Reesh had found them to be durable.
Finally Orth spoke. “My lord, what are these things?”
“Shards and fragments of a bygone age, prester. As
to what they were—who knows?” Reesh moved closer to the table and picked up an object, displaying it in his hands. He offered it to Orth, who hesitated to touch it. “Don’t be afraid, Orth. You couldn’t break it if you wanted to.”
At first glance it might have been a wheel, albeit a very small one. It had a hub, rounded on one surface and flat on the other, and only two thick spokes that connected seamlessly to the rim. Its color was a shiny dark blue, of a shade that few men had ever seen before, with an unreadable symbol in red and white inlaid in the center of the rounded surface of the hub. The whole was just a foot and a half in diameter. Orth handled it gingerly.
“What would you say it was made of, prester?”
That was a question no one had ever been able to answer; nor could Orth, although he examined it carefully, turning it over and over in his hands.
“My lord, I cannot tell,” he said. “It’s not any kind of metal, nor is it any kind of wood or stone, or leather. One might guess polished horn, but there’s no grain to it. Nor does the blue color appear to have been painted on. There’s a chip, right here, that shows you that the thing is blue all the way through. And it’s not heavy.”
“Try to bend it,” Reesh said; and of course Orth couldn’t.
“It’s an exceedingly strong material, my lord. I suppose it might have been a wheel for some kind of small conveyance that had to bear a heavy load. I can’t imagine what.”
“We haven’t even a word for this material, Orth. But it must have been in common use throughout the Empire. People are always finding pieces of it, digging in their gardens, tearing down an old house.
“As you can see, I have other relics made of the same material. It has been found in every color you can think of—and some you can’t—and in all kinds of shapes. Look at this.”
