Eric John Stark

by Leigh Brackett

  Stark looked down. His exalted mood, with its dreams of godlike vengeance, had left him. Reality came crowding back upon him, and reality was a slim and ragged girl with black hair and large eyes as yellow as a cat’s. She held a leather bottle in her hand. She smiled and said, “I’m Thanis. Will you drink more wine?”

  He did, and then managed to say, “Thank you, Thanis.” He put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. It was surprisingly strong. He felt light-headed and strange, but the wine was fusing a spurious sense of well-being into him and he was content to let that last as long as it would.

  The crowd was still churning around him, growing larger, and now he heard the tramp of military feet. A small detachment of men in light armor pushed their way through.

  A very young officer whose breastplate hurt the eye with brightness demanded to be told at once who Stark was and why he had come here.

  “No one crosses the moors in winter,” he said, as though that in itself were proof of evil intent.

  “The clans of Mekh are crossing them.” Stark answered. “An army, to take Kushat, a day, two days behind me.”

  The crowd picked that up. Excited voices tossed it back and forth and clamored for more news. Stark spoke to the officer.

  “I will see your captain, and at once.”

  “You’ll see the inside of a prison, more likely!” snapped the young man. “What’s this nonsense about the clans Mekh?”

  Stark regarded him. He looked so long and so curiously that the crowd began to snicker and the officer’s beardless face flushed pink to the ears.

  “I have fought in many wars,” said Stark gently. “And long ago I learned that it was wise to listen when someone came to warn me of attack.”

  “Better take him to the captain, Lugh,” cried Thanis. “It’s our skins too, you know, if there’s war.”

  The crowd began to shout. They were all poor folk, wrapped in threadbare cloaks or tattered leather. They had no love for the guards. And whether there was war or not, their winter had been long and dull and they were going to make the most of this excitement.

  “Take him, Lugh! Take him! Let him warn Old Sowbelly!”

  The young officer winced. And then from someone made anonymous by the crowd there rose a louder cry.

  “Let him warn the nobles! Let them think how they’ll defend Kushat now that the talisman is gone!”

  There was a roar from the crowd. Lugh turned, his face suddenly grim, and motioned to his soldiers. Rather reluctantly, Stark thought, they levelled their spears and moved toward the crowd, which shrank back away from them and became quickly silent. Lugh’s voice rang out, harsh and strident.

  “The talisman is there for all to see! And you know the penalty for repeating that lie.”

  Stark’s small start of surprise must have communicated itself through his tightened fingers to the girl, for he saw her look at him sharply, with something close to alarm. Then Lugh had swung around and was gesturing angrily at him. “See if he’s armed.”

  One of the soldiers stepped forward, but Stark was quicker. He slipped the thongs and let the cloak fall, baring his upper body.

  “The clansmen have already taken everything I owned,” he said. “But they gave me something in return.”

  The crowd stared at the half-healed stripes that scarred him, and there was a drawing in of breath, and a muttering.

  The soldier picked up the cloak and laid it over Stark’s shoulders. And Lugh said sullenly, “Come, then. I’ll take you to the captain.”

  The girl turned to help him with the cloak, leaning her head close to his while she fastened the thongs. Her voice reached him in a quick fierce whisper.

  “Don’t mention the talisman. It could mean your life!”

  The soldiers were reforming. The girl stood back, casual, finished with her small task. But Stark did not let her go.

  “Thank you, Thanis,” he said. “And now will you come with me? Otherwise, I must crawl.”

  She smiled at him and came, bearing Stark’s unsteady weight with amazing strength. And Stark wondered. Camar certainly had not lied. Otar and Ciaran, certainly, had well known that it was gone. Yet here was this young popinjay bellowing that the talisman was there for all to see and threatening the suddenly-cowed mob with a penalty for denying it.

  He remembered that Ciaran had said something about the nobles of Kushat being afraid to let their people know the truth. They would be, Stark thought, and a substitution would be the surest way of covering up the loss. In any case, he decided to heed the girl’s warning, and began forcing his weary brain to the task of eliminating from his story not only all mention of Camar but also of Otar and of Ciaran’s references to the naked state of Kushat. A wrong word to the wrong person…. He was too numb with exhaustion to think out all the possibilities, but he was suddenly and ironically aware that the talisman might prove to be more dangerous to him here in Kushat than it had been in Ciaran’s camp.

  The captain of the guards was a fleshy man with a smell of wine about him and a face already crumbling apart though his hair was not yet gray. He sat in a squat tower above the square, and he observed Stark with no particular interest.

  “You had something to tell,” said Lugh. “Tell it.”

  Stark told them, watching every word with care. The captain listened to all he had to say about the gathering of the clans of Mekh and then sat studying him with a bleary shrewdness.

  “Of course you have proof of all this?”

  “These stripes. Their leader Ciaran himself ordered them laid on.”

  The captain sighed and leaned back.

  “Any wandering band of hunters could have scourged you,” he said. “A nameless Vagabond from the gods know where, and a lawless one at that if I’m any judge of men—you probably deserved it.”

  He reached for the wine and smiled. “Look you, stranger. In the Norlands, no one makes war in the winter. And no one ever heard of Ciaran. If you hoped for a reward from the city, you overshot badly.”

  “The Lord Ciaran,” said Stark, grimly controlling his anger, “will be battering at your gates within two days. You will hear of him then.”

  “Perhaps. You can wait for him—in a cell. And you can leave Kushat with the first caravan after the thaw. We have enough rabble here without taking in more.”

  Thanis caught Stark by the cloak and held him back.

  “Sir,” she said, as though it were an unclean word, “I will vouch for the stranger.”

  The captain glanced at her. “You?”

  “Sir, I am a free citizen of Kushat. According to the law, I may vouch for him.”

  “If you scum of the Thieves’ Quarter would practice the law half as well as you grate it, we would have less trouble,” grumbled the captain. “Very well, take the creature, if you want him. I don’t suppose you’ve anything to lose.”

  Thanis’ eyes blazed but she made no answer. Lugh laughed.

  “Name and dwelling place,” said the captain, and wrote them down. “Remember, he is not to leave the Quarter.”

  Thanis nodded. “Come,” she said to Stark. He did not move, and she looked up at him. He was staring at the captain. His beard had grown in these last days, and his face was still scarred by Thord’s blows and made wolfish with pain and fever. And now, out of this evil mask, his eyes were peering with a chill and terrible intensity at the soft-bellied man who sat and mocked him.

  Thanis laid her hand on his rough cheek. “Come,” she said. “Come and rest.”

  Gently she turned his head. He blinked and swayed, and she took him around the waist and led him unprotesting to the door.

  There she paused, looking back.

  “Sir,” she said, very meekly, “news of this attack is being shouted through the Quarter now. If it should come, and it were known that you had the warning and did not pass it on…” She
made an expressive gesture and went out.

  Lugh glanced uneasily at the captain. “She’s right, sir. If by chance the man did tell the truth…”

  The captain swore. “Rot. A rogue’s tale. And yet…” He scowIed indecisively, then shrugged and reached for parchment. “After all, it’s a simple matter. Write it up, pass it on, and let the nobles do the worrying.”

  His pen began to scratch.

  Thanis took Stark by steep and narrow ways, darkling now in the afterglow, where the city climbed and fell again over the uneven rock. Stark was aware of the heavy smells of spices and unfamiliar foods, and the musky undertones of a million generations swarmed together to spawn and die in these crowded tenements of slate and stone.

  There was a house, blending into other houses, close under the loom of the great Wall. There was a flight of steps, hollowed deep with use, twisting crazily around outer corners. There was a low room, and a slender man named Balin, who said he was Thanis’ brother and who stared with some amazement at Stark, his long thief’s fingers playing delicately with the red jewel he wore in his left ear. There was a bed of skins and woven cloth and Stark’s body yearned toward it. But he fought off the darkness, sitting on the edge of the bed while Thanis brought him wine and a bowl of food, making quick explanations to Balin while she did so. Stark was too tired for the food but he drank the wine and it cleared the cobwebs out of his mind so that he could think rationally at least for a little while.

  “Why,” he asked Thanis, “is it dangerous to speak of the talisman?”

  He was aware of Balin’s brilliant gaze upon him, but he watched the girl’s face.

  “You heard Lugh when he answered the crowd,” she said. “They have put some bit of glass in the shrine and called it the talisman, and those who say they are liars are made to regret it.”

  In a light and silken voice Balin said, “When the talisman vanished, we very nearly had a revolution in Kushat. The people resented losing it, and blamed the folk of the King City, where the shrine is, for not taking better care of it. Narrabhar and his nobles felt their high seats tottering under them, and the substitution was quickly made.”

  “But,” said Stark, “if the people don’t believe…”

  “Only we in the Thieves’ Quarter really know. It was one of us who took it.” There was an odd mingling of pride and condemnation in his tone. “The others—the artisans and shopkeepers, the ones with a little fat under their belts—they would rather believe the lie than bleed for the truth. So it has worked.” He added, “Thus far.”

  Looking Stark very steadily in the eye, Thanis said, “You’re an outlander, yet you know about the talisman and you knew that it was gone. How?”

  The old instinct of caution held him quiet. He understood now, quite clearly, that the possession of the talisman could be his death-warrant. So he said with perfect if fragmentary truth, “Ciaran of Mekh said it. There is an old man with him, a man of Kushat. His name is Otar…”

  “Otar!” said Balin. “Otar? We supposed that he was dead.”

  Stark shook his head. “He has told Ciaran the talisman was stolen and because of that Kushat is ready for the taking.” He recalled Ciaran’s words and repeated them. “Like a man without a soul.” He paused, frowning. “Does this bit of glass really have such power?”

  Balin said, “The people believe that it has, and that is what matters.”

  Stark nodded. His brief period of grace was over now and the darkness was sweeping in. He stared at Balin, and then at Thanis, in a curiously blank and yet penetrating fashion, like an animal that thinks its own thoughts. He took a deep breath. Then, as though he found the air clean of danger, he lay back and went instantly to sleep.

  Hands and voices called him back. Strong hands shaking him, urgent voices speaking his name. He started up, heart hammering and muscles tense, with a confused idea that he had slept only a moment or two, and then he saw that the light of a new sun was pouring in through the window. Thanis and Balin were bending over him.

  “Stark,” said the girl, and shook him. “There are soldiers coming.”

  V

  He shook his head, groaning with the stiffness of his body as he moved to rise. “Soldiers?” There was a clamor in the street outside, and a rhythmic clinking of metal that meant armed men marching. Full consciousness came back with a rush. His gaze swept the room, marking the window, the door, an archway into an inner chamber, his muscles flexing. Balin took him by the shoulder.

  “No. You can’t escape. And anyway, there’s no need. Think Old Sowbelly made his report, and now you’ll be taken to the King City to answer more questions.” He faced Stark, speaking sharply. “Now listen. Don’t mention Otar or what Ciaran said about the city. They won’t like it and they might well take your head off to keep you from repeating the story to others. You understand? Tell them exactly what you told the captain, nothing more.”

  Stark nodded. “I understand.” Air from the window curled icily around his body and he realized for the first time that he was naked. He had been shaved and washed, his wounds rubbed with salve. Thanis handed him his boots and trousers, carefully cleaned, and a garment he did not recognize, a tunic of golden fur tanned soft as silk.

  “Balin stole it from the baths where the nobles go. He said you might as well have the best.”

  “And a devil of a time I had finding one big enough to fit you.” Balin looked out the window. “They’re coming up now. No need to hurry. Let them wait.”

  Stark pulled the clothes on and looked in quiet panic for Camar’s belt. There came a pounding on the door and the remembered voice of Lugh demanding entrance. Balin lifted the bar and the room filled with soldiers.

  “Good morning,” Balin said, bowing with a flourish and wincing visibly at the light dancing on Lugh’s breastplate. Lugh ignored the mockery. He was very soldierly and important this morning, a man with a duty to perform. “The Commander of the City will question you, stranger,” he said to Stark, and gave a peremptory nod toward the doorway.

  Thanis lifted Stark’s cloak from a peg on the wall, revealing the belt under it. She brought them both to Stark. “You mustn’t keep the Lord Rogain waiting,” she said demurely, and smiled. She was wearing a red kirtle and a necklet of beaten metal intricately pierced, and her dark hair was combed out smooth and shining. Stark smiled back and thanked her, and buckled on the belt. Then he threw the cloak over his shoulders and went out with Lugh.

  There were people in the street below watching as Stark went down the crazy stairway with the soldiers in single file before and behind him and Lugh walking ahead of all like a young cock-pheasant. This time the people only watched and did not say much to the soldiers. The detachment formed up in the street, eight soldiers and an officer to escort one man. Stark thought that they would have been better used to patrol the Wall, but he did not say so. The crowd left them plenty of room. Stark could see the intent faces peering at him and hear the muttered undertone of talk, and he knew that the word he had brought of Ciaran’s coming was all over the Quarter now, and probably over half the city.

  Lugh did not speak to him again. They marched through the narrow twisting streets of the Quarter, and then left it for the somewhat broader but even more crowded avenues where the shops of the weavers and the armorers, the silversmiths and the potters, the blacksmiths and the stonemasons, all the multifarious crafts and trades necessary for civilized living, lined the ways that led to the King City. People passing by stopped to look curiously at Stark, and he looked at them, thinking of the riders of Mekh and wondering what their prosperous shops and neat houses would look like after another sun or two had passed.

  Kushat was built in the immemorial pattern of Martian cities, a sort of irregular, sprawling wheel enclosed by a wall at its outer rim and with the King City at the hub, a walled enclave of its own containing the great towered hall of the king and the houses of the nobles. The dark
turrets, some of them ruined and partly fallen, all of them stained and blackened with time, stood up grim and dreary in the cold sunlight, the faded banners whipping in the wind that blew down from the pass. Beyond them, blotting out the northern sky, were the black and ice-seamed cliffs for a backdrop.

  Stark shivered, with more than the cold. He hated cities anyway. They were traps, robbing a man of his freedom, penning him in with walls and the authority of other men. They were full of a sort of people that he did not like, the mob-minded ones, the sheep-like ones and the small predators that used them. Yet he had been in cities that were at least exciting, the Low-Canal towns of Valkis and Jekkara far to the south, as old as Kushat but still throbbing with a wicked vitality. Perhaps it was the northern cold that cast such a pall over these streets.

  Or was it something more? Stark looked up at the cliffs and the notch of the pass. Was it living so close under the Gates of Death, and fearing whatever it was that lay beyond them?

  They passed into the King City through a narrow gate, challenged by the strong guard mounted there. Here the buildings of carved stone stood wide apart, with paved squares between them. Some were no more than skeletons, with blank archways and fallen roofs, but others showed rich curtains in their slitted windows and signs of activity in their courtyards. Lugh marched smartly, his back straight and his chin in the air, making precise military turns at the corners, going toward the towers of the king’s hall.

  They came out abruptly into the wide square in front of it. And Stark slowed his pace, staring.

  The men behind him swore, stepping wide to avoid running into him. Lugh turned to see what the trouble was, prepared to be irritable. Then he saw what Stark was looking at, and decided instead to be condescending to the barbarian.

  “That,” he said, “is the shrine of the talisman, and the statue of Ban Cruach, who built Kushat.”

  The statue was the height of three tall men above its pedestal, massively and simply carved, and the weathering of centuries had smoothed away much of the finer detail. Yet it was a powerful portrait, and somehow Stark felt that just so had Ban Cruach looked in his ancient armor, standing with the hilt of his great sword between his hands and his helmeted head uplifted, his eyes fixed upon the Gates of Death. His face was made for battles and for ruling, the bony ridges harsh and strong, the mouth proud and stern but not cruel. A fearless man, one would have said. But Stark thought that he saw in that stone face the shadow of something akin to fear—awe, perhaps, or doubt, or something more nameless, as though he stared at the portal of some dark and secret world where only he had ventured.