Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  They followed him again, this time east along the periphery of the bloodied battleground, until they found another, smaller confusion of hoofprints, this one leading away in much the same direction, but in a slightly wider angle.

  “What do you say, daughter?” he asked the smallest of the trolls.

  She got down on one knee to touch the grass. “Men who took Eolair Count,” she said.

  “Just so,” said Binabik. When he saw the look on Porto and the Erkynguardsmen, he grimaced. “The more small troop—the men who took Eolair—have passed this way. It is my guessing that they did not wish to come with much closeness to the ones who attacked our camping place, but they follow toward the same direction. Spirit Hills.”

  “You think the ones who took Eolair might be another clan or something like?” asked Levias. He seemed to be viewing the trolls a little more respectfully now.

  “It is being possible. Not all grasslanders are being the same—not all are even being part of the horse-clans.”

  “Then we must follow them,” said Levias. “Perhaps we can wait until they sleep and steal back Count Eolair.”

  “But what about the prince?” Porto said in dismay. “What about Prince Morgan? Didn’t you say he’d gone back into the forest? We can’t just leave him to the bears and wolves!”

  “And that is being exactly the puzzle we must solve.” In the light from Ordwine’s torch, Binabik looked tired and miserable. “We should not be surrendering either of them, Morgan or Eolair.” He made a gesture with his fists against his chest. “But no matter how I fear for Count Eolair, I cannot be leaving Morgan the prince. He is my true friend’s grandson and I am sworn to protect him.”

  “So am I!” Porto declared. “I’ll go with you.”

  “But so were we, his guards,” said Levias. “The troll is right—we cannot desert the heir to the throne.”

  “We cannot leave Eolair to the Thrithings-men either,” said Porto. “Sergeant Levias, you take your men and follow the tracks of the ones who took him. I’ll go with the trolls.”

  Binabik shook his head. “I am sorry, Sir Porto, but if Morgan is not to be found just within the forest border, your horse will not be able to follow us to all the places we will go searching for him. I give salute to your brave heart, but you should be riding with the guardsmen after Count Eolair. You tall men and your horses will have better traveling on the open plains than in the deep woods and undergrowth. Also, I am having some knowledge of the woods where the Sithi live, but you are not. Distances and directions there can have a most deceptive appearance.”

  “But the prince—!” Porto began.

  “Will have best service from those of us who can be following him in tangled woods,” said Binabik. “And experienced trackers some of us are, too. Also, Vaqana’s courageous nose will be of great usefulness as well.”

  Porto was not happy. “Lord Chancellor Pasevalles himself said that I must protect the prince at all times! I can’t leave him and go after someone else. I can’t. It would betray my trust.” And despite his genuine fear for the prince, he could not help thinking of the gold he had been promised, too, gold that would have saved his failing years from wretchedness. Who would support a soldier who was too old to fight and who had failed his only mission?

  Binabik turned from a quiet conversation with his family to look him in the eye. It was strange to feel intimidated by one so small. “Good Sir Porto, we are all understanding your unhappiness,” the troll told him. “This is not a choice any of us wished to have. But you will only be making us move with more slowness if you come with us. If you do not wish for following Eolair with the sergeant and his men, then at least you must ride back to the Hayholt with all the speed that is possible.”

  “Back to the Hayholt?”

  “Prince Morgan lost in the forest and the lord steward stolen by Thrithings-men, who also killed many of the royal Erkynguard—this must be told to the king and queen!”

  “I cannot do it.” Porto shook his head, so empty inside he thought a strong wind might blow him over. “I cannot leave the prince and the Hand of the Throne both. Send one of the guardsmen back to Erchester instead.”

  Binabik frowned, thinking, then began to search in the bag he wore over his shoulder. He came up with a piece of dried and polished sheepskin. “That twig, Snenneq—give it to me.” Stick in hand, Binabik held it in the flame of Ordwine’s torch—the guardsman had to bend so he could reach it—and then began to write with the charred end on the scrap of pounded skin. It took a long time, and Porto had to force himself to be patient.

  “There,” the troll said at last, and handed the strip of hide to Porto. “Send this with whom you are choosing. It is for taking to the king and queen. It tells them of what has happened. Now we must go to our different ways.”

  “But . . .” Porto began, but he had no good argument against the troll’s pitiless reasoning. “Very well,” he said at last, though it felt as though his heart was splintering, “if it must be so, it must be.”

  “You are a good man in truthfulness, Porto,” Binabik said. “But now we can waste no more breath and no more moments.” The troll waved to his family, who urged their rams into movement once more as he followed on his wolf. “Ride well—and hunter’s luck,” he called back to the knight and the three Erkynguards. “May happy fortune be watching over you all and bring you home with safety again.”

  Porto, suddenly not just melancholy but fearful that he was watching some terrible thing happening, something he did not entirely understand, only raised his hand, but words of farewell caught in his throat.

  What have we done? he wondered. We were a large, fine company—a company of soldiers guarding the prince and one of the highest nobles of all Osten Ard. Now we are a tatter, a few threads, and they’re all being pulled in different directions.

  The trolls rode off north toward the great forest, a spectacle that at other times would have been almost comical—several small, stocky people mounted on sheep and wolves, like a proverb illustrated in the margin of a religious book. Levias and the other two soldiers began to discuss what they should do next, but their quiet, halting words sounded to Porto like children’s fearful voices in the darkness.

  * * *

  In Morgan’s dream the outcropping had become a thousand times larger, a true mountain. At the top, beyond his sight but not beyond his hearing, she was speaking to him again:

  The others cannot hear me now, not even the blood of my blood. Why can you?

  I don’t know. I don’t even know who you are! Part of him wanted to climb the great stone, to come face to face with this creature haunting his dreams, but he could feel her power and her age and it frightened him.

  You know me, child. I spoke to you in the place of my helpless rest and you heard me. But here, where I stand in the doorway, there are no names. I cannot give you what I do not possess.

  He woke suddenly, startled by the noise of wolves howling outside of his stony refuge, but after a heart-pounding moment he realized no animal could make a sound so loud. It was the wind, risen to a fierce pitch, moaning and shrieking, and even the forest seemed terrified. The trees he could see bent and waved their limbs. He could hear cracking, and the sound of branches falling.

  The first light of dawn was coloring the violet sky, just ahead of the sun itself. The rain had weakened a little, but still blew sideways like the arrows of an attacking army. He had only a moment to feel grateful for his small portion of shelter, and another moment to worry about what would happen to him if the storm did not abate, then he heard another sound that pierced even the shrill anger of the wind.

  “Reeeee! Reeeee!”

  It was nothing he had heard before, not loud but clear even through the storm, so he knew it must be close by. It sounded like a hawk calling, or perhaps like some small animal screeching its terror as a predator snatched it up. He pushed himse
lf as far back in the shallow crevice as he could manage. Whatever might be hunting out there in such unholy weather, he did not want to meet it.

  He was only just starting to slide back into uneasy sleep when he was startled again, this time by a loud crack and what sounded like several branches falling, or perhaps even an entire tree brought down by the wind. He squinted out into the dim dawn light and saw a tangle of ash limbs that had just crashed to the ground near his rock, and in the midst of all the limbs and flapping leaves something small, round, and solid. It began to scream again—Reeee! Reeee! Reeeee!—but it did not crawl out of the fallen branches.

  Morgan watched the pile of branches for what seemed a very long time. The shrill cries of distress grew fainter but did not stop. Dismay clutched at his stomach—not fear for himself, but at the clear sound of distress, of a small, terrified thing in pain. Still, he did not move, though every cry hurt him.

  When the wind at last began to die and the diminished rain was falling at a more ordinary angle once more, Morgan crawled out of his crevice. The entire slope in front of the limestone outcrop was covered with fallen limbs and great piles of leaves that had been ripped living from their twigs, but the clutter of ash branches and the thing which had fallen with them had finally gone still. Morgan approached with caution, sword in hand. As he drew nearer, he saw that what had fallen was a single large and crooked limb that had brought down several others with it. He leaned over the tangle of broken branches at its outer end and saw something small and brown prisoned inside them, something that was still alive, because it turned its round, dark eyes toward him, semicircles of white showing along their edges. Then it began to thrash, but with the helpless weakness of something that had already tried and failed to escape more times than he could imagine.

  It was no larger than a human baby, but he could see little else of the creature except its reddish-brown fur and a hint here and there of pink skin, because most of it was covered in mud and leaves. He reached out with the tip of his sword and lifted one of the covering branches, then broke it off near its base. The thing watching him did not stir, but the wide, terrified eyes never left him.

  Within a few moments he had cut or broken enough branches to free the small creature. He stepped back to allow it to make its escape, but it did not move. He wondered if it was frightened of him or badly injured. He looked around, but the rest of the slope seemed empty of anything but the wreckage left by the storm.

  “Reeeee,” the little thing whined, and this time it seemed like the bleat of something dying.

  Caught up by something he could not have explained even to himself, Morgan slowly and carefully lifted the rest of the twigs off it until he could see the creature whole. He was no master of woodcraft, but the animal was utterly unfamiliar, and when he saw the tiny, long pink fingers on its forepaws, he had a sudden start. This, or something like it, must have been what touched him during his first escape into the forest. He guessed it must be one of the treetop watchers that had followed him through the woods.

  Despite its almost human hands, the creature was no ape. It had the harelip and long, flat front teeth of a rat or squirrel, but its large eyes were set too far forward for either of those, and its small, round ears were low on its head, giving it a curious, manlike appearance almost as unsettling as the pink fingers. Its small chest was pumping in and out, in terror or its last extremities, but he feared it would bite him if he tried to help it any more, so he sat back on his haunches and watched. Still the little animal did not move.

  He was about to give up and let it live or die on its own, but when he stood, the creature suddenly bared its teeth and screeched “CHIK!” loudly, then “Reee! Reee! Ree!” again, startling him so that he took a step back. He heard movement in the trees and looked up. He thought he saw a glimpse of red but couldn’t be sure.

  “Chik!” the little thing barked once more, but then its head lolled back as though it had exhausted its final strength.

  He bent toward it, this time wrapping his cloak several times around his hands. When he lifted it loose from the last branches it hissed and chiked again, struggling weakly in his grasp, but did not try to bite him, although he suspected that if it had been stronger it might have. Now that it was in his hands Morgan could feel it trembling through the wool of his cloak, and without thinking he wrapped it up and lifted it into the crook of his arm. He heard more movement in the trees overhead, but no voices answered the little thing’s quiet ree-reeing. He carried it back to the crevice, wrapping the cloak so that the little beast’s head protruded but its limbs were held against its sides, like a swaddled infant. When he reached his sanctuary he sat down with it in his lap. The struggling gradually ceased and the thing’s large eyes closed, but its chest was still rising and falling beneath his hands.

  “Reeeeeeee . . .” it breathed, then fell silent again but for the thin whisper of its breath. He held it against his chest to warm it, and remembered the days when his sister Lillia had been a baby, when the only thing that had brought him even a moment’s relief from the horror of his father’s death was to hold her and watch her innocent face.

  For a little while, he even forgot his hunger.

  5

  The Pool

  Dragging, pulling, and shoving a live, bound dragon down a mountain, even with huge Goh Gam Gar doing most of the work, seemed a nearly impossible task. Despite the giant’s laboring from hours before the sun rose and into the darkness after it had set, at the end of the first day’s efforts the huge, trussed worm had been moved only a demoralizingly short distance down the mountain. Dragging its monstrous bulk over obstacles and across patches of rocky ground between the snows had left Goh Gam Gar exhausted, and the dragon’s groans and gurgles of pain through its bound jaws almost made Nezeru feel sorry for the great worm. Its eyes, each as big as a serving platter, rolled desperately in its sockets, froth dripped from its vast mouth. The Singer Saomeji was careful to keep it insensible as much as possible with compounds of kei-vishaa that he forced between the dragon’s massive jaws. Even in stupefied slumber the great beast writhed and groaned like a sleeper beset by nightmares. As Nezeru listened to the ropes that bound the monster creaking with its every shudder and twist, she wondered what would happen to them if Saomeji’s store of kei-vishaa ran out.

  If the captured dragon was suffering, Nezeru and Jarnulf were not much better off. They had spent the day carrying the burned and crippled body of Hand Chieftain Makho in a sling made from Jarnulf’s cloak. Despite what must have been hideously painful injuries from dragon’s blood, Makho had remained senseless all day, giving no more sign of life than the occasional moan or small movement. Nezeru did her best to ignore the growing misery of her cramped fingers. Jarnulf was not Sacrifice-trained as I was, she thought. The pain must be worse for him.

  Only Saomeji had not carried anything down the mountain, keeping his hands free at all times to threaten the giant with the pain he could summon from the stone rod. As a Sacrifice, Nezeru had been taught always to bow before authority; as a survivor of a crippled expedition, she was less enthralled that one of their number—a half-blood like herself, too!—should go free of burdens. But as long as Saomeji controlled the giant, he was the leader, and Nezeru’s unhappiness remained unspoken.

  * * *

  • • •

  When they finally stopped for the day, Saomeji ordered Jarnulf off to hunt for food. “Make sure you bring back enough for the giant and the worm, Huntsman. The rest of us can get by on very little, but we need both animals alive.”

  Jarnulf scowled. “I am nearly falling over after carrying Makho all day. You could do it yourself, Singer.” He pointed at the giant. “Look. He’s too weary even to stand. He is no danger to us.”

  Saomeji looked back at him with a flat, unconcerned stare. “You would never have survived the first day in the Order of Song, mortal. The other acolytes would have fed on you like the dumb brut
e you are. Nobody watches over the giant but me, and now that the hand chieftain has been struck down, I am also the one who gives the orders.” He turned to Nezeru. “You, Sacrifice—tend to Makho. Give him water. I do not think he will want food for a while, but he must have water. Clean his wounds with snow, but be careful. I will look him over later, when I have rested. And you, mortal—why are you still here? I said go and find something to eat.”

  Jarnulf hesitated, anger clear on his face.

  “If you speak another word,” Saomeji said, “I will make the giant swipe off your head. He is not too weary for that.”

  Jarnulf turned away and walked into the woods.

  * * *

  • • •

  Hours later, when the Lantern was high up in the midnight sky and the Wolf was chasing its tail toward the horizon, Nezeru sat on the cold ground and watched as Jarnulf finished pounding the last of the snow rabbits and grouse into an ugly paste of meat, bones, fur and feathers so that he could push it into the dragon’s bound jaws. Nezeru’s own charge, Chieftain Makho, slept on. His burns were still bright crimson, but the livid patches of skin between them were beginning to take on the dull look of death.

  Saomeji bent over the wounded chieftain to shake droplets of something from a small jar into Makho’s gaping mouth. Nezeru could not understand the point of this: surely, even if the chieftain survived such dreadful burns, he would never be able to serve the queen again. One of his eyes was gone, nothing left but a hole surrounded by angry red flesh, and ragged holes pierced his cheek and chin where the blood had burned through the skin all the way to his teeth, like a candle flame through old parchment.

  On his way back from feeding the dragon, Jarnulf paused to stare down. “Are we truly supposed to carry him all the way down the mountain? He’s as good as dead.”