Hammerfall (26 page)

The priests had by no means realized what sacrilege he intended. Perhaps they imagined they alone would carry those books, pulling their carts through the deep desert. Perhaps at very least they expected more order about it, a making of orderly lists: but the mood and tenor of the crowd was not in favor of long lines and meticulous recording of names.

“No!” the chief priest shouted at him, and a murmur went out from the ridge, all the way back, over the grumbling complaint of beshti and a lone, frightened voice shouting above the rest, “What did he say, what did he say?”

“Paradise!” he shouted. “Water enough and food enough for you and your children!” He lifted his arms and shouted with all the strength that that was in him, half-kneeling on Osan's saddle as he did. “When men think they will all die, they gather together, not to die alone. You all came here to
die,
and not to die alone, but we have better news! We know the path to paradise! We move at sunset. We're not going to die. We refuse to die! Those who survive this journey are all going to
live,
in a paradise
on this earth
!”

A young caravanner of the tribes leapt up onto his feet, standing barefoot on his saddle, waving his arms and shouting in excitement.

He was not the only one. Men waved their arms and cried aloud. Those at the back of the gathering were still trying to find out what was said; but those near the front saw the books and rushed at them, overwhelming the priests as men took books for themselves, snatched two and three in their passion for rescue. Pages were imperiled in squabbles. A cart axle cracked in the press of bodies, and spilled its load of books onto the sand, priests scrambling to save them as the crowd utterly mobbed the carts.

Norit screamed above the cries of the crowd, wild-eyed, a madwoman beyond any doubt. “The hammer of heaven is coming down!” Norit cried. “Listen to Marak Trin! Prepare to move!”

The priests shouted to their own wild-eyed hearers, “Respect the god, in the Ila's name!” Believers cried out, “The god and the Ila, the god and the Ila his regent!” while fire rained down in Marak's vision.

Now he knew the city folk would follow, and follow with the passion of belief, never mind what they believed, only
that
they believed, and drove their bodies with the strength of that belief. It
was
the god that would save them, because they would go, and go, and go, believing in paradise.

Marak, Marak, Marak,
his voices dinned at him, ill timed, goading him, urging precipitate action, urging him to lead this mob, when he most wanted to use his wits.

“A judgment on the earth!” Norit cried over all the tumult: “The hammer of heaven is coming! Do you see it, Marak, do you see it?
It's coming! We're losing time!
”

Luz was afraid.
Luz
herself was gripped by fear. He saw in his vision a falling rock, saw it strike, saw a ring of fire spreading out from it; and a taste like copper came into his mouth.
Haste, haste, haste
dinned in his head until he could scarcely think, as if a message had held off as long as it could and now that the essential thing was done, Luz told them, unveiled what unnerved even her.

He saw Hati similarly afflicted by the vision, her hands clamped over her ears, and he fought to still his own shrieking voices, trying to use his wits for what still had to be done.

“Captain!” he shouted at Memnanan. “As soon as you can get there, bring the Ila to us where Tofi's camped, at the southwest corner, on the flat. He's waiting for us. He'll need help there: he has the beshti, and he has to keep them!”

“Do you want a detachment with you?” Memnanan asked him.

“You'll need them for your own safety!” Marak yelled back. “Go!” He turned Osan's head, tried to speak coherently to the tribal lords, less bothered by the shouting below, at the carts than at the noise in his head, the flaming rings that obscured his sight.

Memnanan led his men off to the north, off the edge of the ridge. But to the face of the ridge, coming up toward them, was the lord of the Keran, still among the foremost, and he looked no happier.

“Norit, stay with us!” Marak said, and turned Osan's head, suddenly within close-range shouting distance of the veiled man, in the surrounding tumult, both of them mounted, over the heads of the pandemonium below. “I'm Marak Trin Tain,” he shouted out across the racket. “I've married this woman. She's never complained of your fairness. And I've heard nothing but good of the Keran, and I want you to the lead, omi! Forgive me for putting it forward without begging your goodwill, but the sky gives us no time for such courtesies.”

The veiled man glared back, looking at him, not at Hati. “What is your request, villager?”

“Lead a caravan east, past Pori, past the rim of the Lakht, where there's safety from the star-fall. No one knows the eastern desert better than the Keran.
She
proves that.”

The eyes above the veil were hard as black stone, and no more revealing.

“Marak Trin Tain, is it?”

“All the world's come here expecting to die. If someone doesn't lead all the world
away
from here, they'll starve, if the stars don't destroy them first. The crops will fail. The star-fall will only get worse. Soon there'll be no food to sustain this mass of people.”

“I bleed from grief. We'll ride away safe.”

You came here, it occurred to him to say. You came here because everyone else was coming. . . .

But that was not the way to win this man. Not this man.

“I'm amazed your
pride
isn't sufficient,” Marak said, leaning an elbow on his knee. “Hati had said you'd want to lead, not follow.”

“Lead this
refuse
?”

“To lasting glory. A caravan. A caravan of everyone in the world, toward safety. No one will forget your name. Aigyan, they'll say.
Aigyan-omi, the great tribesman, the most famous man in all the tribes.
You can't be famous if there's no one to tell the tale.”

“I hear you're mad as she is.” It was Aigyan's first acknowledgment Hati existed.

“At least as mad as she is,” Marak said, “but both of us have the Ila's forces under our command. That's Memnanan himself that's just left here. Do you know the name?”

“Marak Trin Tain commands the Ila's army, and Captain Memnanan takes his orders. The
Ila's
mad, too.”

“No. The Ila's gone sane. She wants to live. I ask you: lead. You'll go first, the other tribes, then the Ila with my company.”

“That white whore! In her billowing white canvas!”

“None of the big tents: small ones, fit for the desert. It's our only chance.”

“And what's at the other end? There's no oasis beyond Pori!”

“Have you been beyond Pori? I have.”

“My father was there. And there's nothing there.”

Pieces came together. Made sense. “Thirty years ago. This began thirty years ago. There was another Descent. And I've seen the tower. I've seen the river. A green oasis, past Pori and off the Lakht a few days.” He had only the eyes to reason with, above the veil, dark and fierce as Hati's, but they were attentive, and he took a chance. “I tell you this well knowing you could find your own way there and leave the villages to die. You came here because you hoped the Ila had an answer for the star-fall. You came because you know how bad it is out there. Well, so do we. We just crossed the Lakht. And we know that a skill like yours is the best help we could get.”

The eyes narrowed above the veil. For the first time they swept across Hati, acknowledging her existence. “This
is
Marak Trin Tain.” That was a question, flatly stated.

“Marak Trin, no longer Trin Tain,” Hati said, “because
Tain
is a fool. Be patient. He'll make you an honest grandfather yet.”

What
had he just heard?

The an'i Keran swept aside his veil and spat to the side. It was a superstition, ridding the place of devils, and Aigyan stared across at them, unveiled, a man the sun had weathered about the eyes, a man whose face showed deep scars and an unforgiving mouth.

“Daughter of a devil. So now I'm to follow
you,
is it?”

“Join me,” Marak said urgently, before things flew out of hand. “Lead the caravan. Take the place of honor across the edge of the Lakht. Can a man ask more?”

“Your mother is
Haga
.”

Aigyan might as well have spat as said that word. There was an old feud, old as water boundaries.

“Damned right his mother is Haga!” rang up from below, where other tribesmen had had forced a way toward them, brown and green, Haga riders, six or seven of them.

One rider suddenly drove his besha up toward them.

“My enemy,” Aigyan said, unveiled, and Menditak, lord of the Haga, likewise unveiled himself as he arrived.

“Water thief!” Menditak hissed.

“Hold off,” Marak said, and drove Osan between the two. “To you, omi, the lead.” This he said to Aigyan. “And Hati goes with me.—And you, omi, mother's cousin . . .” The last was for Menditak of the Haga, heartfelt. “I've reserved a place of honor for you. I hope you have my mother and my sister. I knew if there was any safety for them, it was with you, and I know if anyone will bring all his tribe through, you will. That's why I want you on the one side and the Keran on the other, because you're the wisest, the canniest, and the quickest leaders alive, and I
need
you both, not one, not the other, but both of you in your right minds and your good judgment! Your peoples' lives, all our lives depend on it!”

“New land, you say! Paradise!” The last was mockery from Menditak of the Haga. Few of the tribes believed in the god behind the Ila. They had their own ways, their own paradise, their own devils, and one of the latter
was
the Ila.

“To each his own!” They could all but hear one another normally, with the sudden ebb of the crowd from around the ridge. Tribesmen had drawn swords and villagers and priests alike scrambled out of the vicinity, not that they were targets, but that a tribesman had as soon ride over them as around them. “Water and safety is what I offer! I came back to save as many as I could! It was beyond my hope to get word out to the tribes, but here you are, and now I see a chance for the rest of the lives out here under this unfortunate sky! It's gotten worse, and it will get worse than that, rapidly, trust me that I know. Paradise of water, of shade, of everything material, and honor! Not forgetting honor, and the respect of all the villages as well as the tribes.” They were both there, they were both listening, and neither had ridden at the other. “Will you ride away from honor? Will you ride away from renown greater than any man has ever had? Or will you ride at the front of the greatest caravan the world has ever seen?”

“We go first,” Aigyan declared.

“And you next the Ila's men,” Marak said before Menditak could take umbrage at that, “and not less in honor. It takes
two
of you, setting aside water feud, to demonstrate to all the tribes how great-souled men can behave! One isn't without the other! It takes you both, and both of you will have that reputation. Ever after this, whenever men talk about wise agreements, they'll say, Like Aigyan and Menditak, after their example. You'll become a proverb for wise men. You'll put all the rest to shame, never yourselves.”

They hesitated. If the wind blew contrary, if a besha sneezed, if anything tipped the balance the other way, it was calamity. But the wind stayed still.

“My fathers,” Marak said, in the way of the tribes with other men, paying his respect. “We need you.”

“To Pori,” Aigyan reminded him. “And how do we move these city-bred fools?”

“As the tribes move. If men fall behind, they fall behind. Take the south road tonight and wait for me by the Besh Karat, do you know it?”

“As I know my own backside,” Menditak said.

“I trust you to know,” Marak said—whatever and any flattery to keep the peace. “I have to gather the Ila's beshti. If anything should happen to me, leave, lead as many as you can keep alive and go to the village of Pori. Do you know a northern route? It's safer.”

“It's reputed there's a northern track,” Aigyan said. “Our oldest may remember. If not, I can still find my way.”

“Ha!” Menditak said.

“Go for Pori, then east, down off the Lakht, east still, and ten marks off east to the south. There's the refuge!”

“There's nothing out there!” Menditak protested.

He resisted the voices' cry for haste. Resistance was all that gave him sanity.

“There is now. A second Descent.”

“And another Ila?” This was no good thing to the tribes. “Hell with that, sister's weanling!”

“A rich land. Water. Palms thick as you please. It's Oburan, before the city rose. It's the heart of a new land, uncle, the heart of the people the tribes will supply with goods and trade. What have you left here? What will you have left, if the Lakht becomes a smoking waste—as it will! As it will, uncle! More than the mad have seen it now. All of you have seen what we warned you would come down, and now we tell you there's a way to live, and live well, rich as the Ila, every one of you, if only you get there with the people's gratitude. The people's gratitude is better than gold, far more powerful. Live! Don't despise what I tell you. The people need you now. Who else can we look to save us?”

“Flatterer!”

“I've become a prophet, uncle. And I tell you both the truth. Keep the peace, and be there, by the Besh Karat!”

He kept nothing from them. If he had resources, he poured them out to those that knew how to use them.

But he believed his own urging, and delayed no longer. “Hati!” he shouted. “Norit!” He gave Osan a whack of the quirt, trusting him to find its way down from the ridge, trusting the two feuding lords to find their way to their own tribes, Memnanan to find the Ila, and the two women with him to stay behind him.