Everran's Bane (13 page)

While I wondered about directions, Beryx took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Let's begin,” he said.

* * * * *

Holym is called cattle-land with reason: save a few mines near the Mellyngthir delta marshes, and some sheep running along the Quarred border, the cattle own it all. Nor do they keep a few head on each farm as in Everran. The Holym cattle are numbered by tens of thousands, they live wild on holdings big as a Resh, they are worked with horses by men who set small value on their necks, and they are not our short hairy red breed but huge smooth-skinned whites, blacks, yellows, and brindles, with horns long as bows and temperaments to match. The towns comprise a few houses along streets widened to handle such herds, and in place of markets there are stockyards tall as houses: moreover, the cattle jump out of them. This I have seen.

Instead of kings, Holym has an annual Council in the capital Holymlase, to which every Resh elects a delegate. It is supposed to voice the people's will to the biennially elected consul. The real ruler lives permanently in Holymlase, supposedly to fulfill the consul's commands, and is called the Scribe. But there is a schism in Holym politics, chiefly over border dealings with sheep lords from Quarred. One party supports free trade and an open border, the other insists Holym should be reserved to cattle alone. Those favoring trade are called Open, those against are the Closed. Add to this schism that all Holmyx prefer tending cattle to assemblies, that the council delegates are usually ignorant of all but their own Resh, and that Holym continually suffers violent floods or extravagant droughts, and you see why it is nicknamed the quiet Confederate.

A month or so before the Council gathered we reached the first town, Savel, an Open Resh. Its collection of wooden houses is built on stilts along streets the cattle had churned to deep red dust. Assembly day was also sale day, and since no Holmyx cares who buys his cattle, the town was bursting with sleek Estarians, haughty Quarreders, bellowing Hazyx, wild-eyed Holmyx, and wilder-eyed Holmyx cattle bellowing loudest of all.

With no time for a state visit's formalities, Beryx had sent a message to Holymlase, but Holmyx rarely heed government announcements, and nobody had the slightest idea who we were. Luckily a harper and two body servants are a good deal easier to bivouac with the drovers by the stockyard than a royal entourage.

The assembly meets at the back of the tavern, just beyond earshot of the beer: northern Holym does not drink wine. The Assembly Ruand was pleased to see us, but unfortunately, all but three cattle lords were busy with buyers, or even busier with a drought. After an hour or so the Ruand apologetically told Beryx, “We don't have an assembly quota. Would you want to begin now, and we could open assembly when they come along?”

Beryx looked at the audience. One was asleep, one looking over his shoulder at the beer, and the third haggling with a Quarred buyer. He looked at me. I sighed, and unwrapped my harp.

One must admit Holmyx are good listeners. When I finished the battle-song, the entire tavern was breathing on my neck, with some of the merrier fighting each other in lieu of Hawge. By the time I finished the plaint of Everran's ruin, half Savel was weeping in its beer and the assembly was ramping to assist us. Three lords each pledged a hundred cattle that summer, the delegate would support us at Council, we were offered a variety of beds and an undrinkable quantity of beer. I thought I saw why Beryx had begun in the north.

The next town, Caistax, was a Closed Resh. It had a big assembly, but when the herald tallied seventy I realized he had counted dogs and children too. Beryx's speech earned loud applause, and the Council delegate was entrusted with several motions urging Holym to do this or that, but nobody offered cattle, and nobody mentioned gold. When we asked about notable weapons, one kind soul did offer us his cattle-dog: “Takes 'em by the nose and they follow 'im anywhere.”

This mute string merely made Beryx shrug. “We'll find it by chance,” he said. “In the songs, they always do.”

In a month we covered most of northern Holym, amassing promises of Council support, pledges of over a thousand cattle, no miraculous weapons, and no hope of gold. We reached Holymlase bronzed as drovers, accomplished beer-drinkers, with Beryx managing a horse as if he had ridden one-handed all his life. One thing I liked about Holym was that nobody seemed to notice either his arm or his scar.

Holymlase straddles the Mellyngthir and Histhira river junction, a big town full of splendid white town houses and less splendid mining depots, stockyards, and slaughterhouses which stink to the sky, pierced by a long line of wharves. It is busy, fast-moving, and violent, which comes of miners, drovers, and sailors mixed in taverns that sell wine as well as beer. The Council would meet that new moon. Looking back on our northern tour, I entered the chamber full of hope.

I never knew cattle were such problems to keep or to sell. For two days the Council droned over wild dogs, red fever, lung-rot, iniquitous Confederate and slaughterhouse buyers, drovers wanting higher wages, and shippers who charged exorbitant freights. The third day, when all the Council was hung over and two thirds of it asleep, the consul called, “the Everran delegate.”

Gauging his audience's patience, Beryx offered a summary of Hawge's deeds, a tally of its demands, and a bald request for help. “Everran cannot raise the cattle, let alone the gold. If we do not, the dragon will ruin us. Then it will move on the other Confederates.”

Some delegates favored sending cattle. One thought they might spare “a gold ingot, at least.” Several woke up. Then a Closed delegate jumped up with a passionate opposition to any government action, right down to accepting Everran immigrants. This roused the Open party. Southern delegates began to rumble about “leases” and “export-balance.” In the midst of it, the Scribe rose to speak.

First he gave a recital of Holmyx finances at such low pitch and high speed that he lost most of the Council on the spot. I gathered there were fifty ingots in hand and three hundred due, but then we modulated into a tale of desperately needy government projects and more desperate government expenses, after which Holym was not merely living on credit but head over ears in debt. There followed an elucidation of the Confederacy pact which left me in the dark as well. Finally he moved to dragons, which were not covered by any clause of the pact, not being famine, pestilence, corsairs, or floods. It was unsure they could cross mountains. And, most clinching argument, there had never been one before.

At this Beryx rose and said clearly, “Their favorite food is cattle. Everran's are running out.”

That caused a stir. One Open delegate moved that “help be sent.” The Scribe claimed this was too vague. “What help?” Beryx caught the delegate's sleeve and whispered, “Three hundred cattle and five gold ingots a year.” The Scribe re-sang Holmyx finances and concluded, “It can't be done.” Then the Closed delegates rose in arms crying that stock sent must include sheep as well as cattle, the southern Opens grappled them over involving Quarred, the delegate altered his motion to “help on a voluntary basis,” and the Council voted against.

Our Savel Ruand was also their delegate. He overtook us outside, saying awkwardly, “Our fellows will send the cattle; I'll throw in another hundred myself.” Beryx gave him a smile I could see would probably double it, then he grinned and said, “Better than I expected.” The Holmyx looked startled. But then he grinned too, and they shook hands on the pact.

* * * * *

From Holymlase to Quarred's capital is further than round Everran. I wanted to ship downriver, then sail along the coast to the Hazghend isthmus, but Beryx said, “No time.” We crossed south Holym's plains at the limit of horseflesh, riding long into the night, resting in the oven noons, while the trees thinned and the heat-waves jumped on the horizon and the grass turned to sheets of silvered beige that hurt the eyes.

In four days we reached the Quarred border, whence to Heshruan it is seven days' ride: first through the Hasselian marshes, cracked black soil, withered reeds, shepherds complaining bitterly of fever from a summer denied them in Everran, and then over Heshruan Slief, wider than Everran itself. We rode parched and wordless across tussocks of blonde taskgjer grass mixed with prickly shrubs, covered with flocks like huge gray earthbound clouds, and dotted with innumerable windmills about the steadings of Quarred lords.

There are no towns in northern Quarred, but these enormous steadings are towns in themselves, with palace, household, shepherds' barracks, and all a town's other trappings. Some even maintain a potter's shop. We reached the first at sunset, dusty, unshaven, filthy, and a'horseback. Quarred nobility rides in carriages. We followed the long avenue of matched black imported morhas trees to the palace, a low, green-roofed place, set in luscious gardens, with verandas wider than an audience hall, but the housekeeper, a sort of female chamberlain, met us at the outer gate and consigned us to “the men's quarters,” without a second glance.

I raised my brows to Beryx. He grinned wickedly. We used the communal bath-house, shaved, and went to eat.

It was the apprentices' mess, also used for needy travelers. Shepherds, steading workers, and Ruands like treasurer and smith and carpenters have another mess, and shearers a special one of their own. When we finished the roast mutton, Beryx caught my eye.

The battle-song's applause brought in the shepherds' mess. My marching song produced a roar that drew the steading Ruands and the housekeeper's palace cohorts, and after Everran's plaint a flustered underling begged us, “Come up to the big house. There's been a mistake.”

We were ushered off to the main audience hall where the sheep lord himself made amends like the prince he was, even producing a ten-years-matured Everran wine. He had Holym holdings and already knew our errand. Moreover, he had lost so much face over sending a king to eat with his apprentices that he passed us on with letters of urgent support to the Clan patriarch in Heshruan, and introductions to Clan steadings along the way. Luckier still, his patriarch was the current Ruand of the Tingrith as well.

In some way or other most Quarreders spring from eight enormous clans, but they are so intermarried and interbred it is impossible for an outlander to comment on any Quarreder without another taking umbrage for “the Family.” Their government is called the Tingrith: the Eight. A person from each clan, usually an elder, often the patriarch, lives in Heshruan and holds the Tingrith seat until he dies, when a relative replaces him. It is more efficient than Holym, but it produces ferocious clan rivalries and an obsession with birth. In Quarred, if you are not “born” into the upper ranks of one of the Eight, you may as well emigrate at once.

Heshruan is most splendid, however: a brand-new capital—corsairs burnt the old one—full of elegant buildings, green parks, scented and flowering trees, and innumerable fountains fed from an artificial lake. You see the city for miles ahead, a vast green and white splash on the tawny uplands, appearing and vanishing with the movement of the earth.

The Clan Ruand first invited us to stay at the Ruler's palace, and then to the horse-races that afternoon. Beryx refused the first in favor of the Clan palace, and accepted the second. Quarreders love horses, which, unlike the Holmyx, they keep for sport and war. They are bred on the huge southern cape of Culphan Skos: I made a song of how we saw them as we sailed to Hazghend, great skeins of bronze and chestnut and mahogany running loose on the green southern uplands, above gray-blue cliffs and bright southern waves.

They looked quite as beautiful on the race-track. Beryx's eye brightened. I was more taken by the crowd: the men in dark clothes and huge white turbans—the higher the rank, the bigger the head—the women in filmy summer dresses with equally immense flowered hats. I thought it a pretty conceit, before I found the flowers were of cloth. Garlands should either be precious, or real. I saw Sellithar in her gold terrian coronal, and lost interest in the formalities, which were as numerous as the crowd.

Heshruan is extremely formal: greetings, clothes, precedence, all is significant and rigidly observed. There is also a massive load of ceremony. The Ruand drags a fifty-man entourage, the Lords' days are celebrated with processions, bands, strings of prancing cavalry, carriage loads of Clansmen, officials, and bedizened generals. When I asked where the soldiers were, Beryx grinned, “Ask Ragnor. Or wait till we head for Estar.”

There are also daily banquets, horse-races, and afternoon entertainments, but never a harper plays. The populace are government scribes or Clan potentates, and soon I would have traded them all for one rowdy Holmyx in high-heeled boots and harpoon spurs, or a single shepherd cook with greenhide to uphold his trousers and salt under his tongue. In Heshruan everybody is climbing, up or down, and the ladder they use is words.

The Clans did receive us well, for if you cannot be “born” in Quarred the next best thing is to be visiting royalty. Especially Everran's, since the Eight drink our wine. But there were questions about Beryx's arm, a thing unheard of in Holym, and many open stares, especially from the unmarried girls. Being “unborn,” I did not count, but Beryx collected a court wherever he went, one of whom confided to me that his scar was “so romantic,” whatever she meant by that.

Recalling Astarien, I doubted our definitions would agree. But a few mornings later I woke from a dream of Sellithar, and going along the cavernous upstairs corridor in search of fresh air, met Beryx farewelling the nymph in question at his bedroom door.