Icefalcon's Quest (Darwath) (24 page)

“Of a certainty it is,” replied the mage, but his long fingers emerged from the muff to tangle and twist the snowy lovelocks of his beard.

“We need men.” Vair’s voice was hard now, though no louder than the whisper of the ice wind razoring from the crumbling ramparts above. “The savages gather around us, and it is still some days to our destination. Once we get on the ice we can be taken at a disadvantage. And we must needs still have enough men at our disposal to
consummate the taking of Dare’s Keep. Now, can it be done as I wish or not?”

“My most illustrious Generalissimo …”

“Every machine can be tinkered with, sorcerer, by those who truly understand them. You say this Harilómne did it, this heretic whose studies of the ancients taught you in your turn. Don’t treat me like a commoner. Every expert can adjust and change.” His voice was like the grip of the hooks in Tir’s collar, in Tir’s flesh. “This is why one brings experts, instead of leaving them to perish at the hands of those hypocrites who wish to foist blame for their own crimes upon the heads of their tools. Not so, sorcerer?”

Bektis bowed his head. “It is so indeed, Lord.”

“Then I trust you will make the necessary adjustments?”

“I will do so, Lord.”

“Good,” Vair said softly. “Good.”

He walked away toward the tent where he slept; Bektis to the camp’s central fire, where Hethya stood, warming her gloved hands. Hethya, Bektis, Vair, Shakas Kar, Nargois … Tir counted them off on his fingers, then wriggled along the hard-frozen ground to the back of the largest wagon-sledge.

Even the three sides of the wagon-box had been given a petticoat of canvas and goat-hair cloth so that the space beneath, if not precisely warm, was at least protected from the winds. The legs of a table were visible in the long flat rectangle of reddish light burning within, surrounded by a horrible jumble of carrion shapes. On one sledge lay the pitiful sheep, with cut throats and blood drying on their wool; on another, a lumpy mass, covered with a goat-hair blanket, that stank and dripped. A third sledge, behind the others, was heaped with random things, brush and cut wood and even piles of dirt.

Tir crawled to the edge of the wagon-box where the curtains began. There were at least four layers of them, to cut both cold and any possibility of light seeping out. He crawled between them, like a mouse in a bed curtain, until
he was behind the sledges with their gruesome burdens, where the smell was awful but the light of lamps and candles did not penetrate. Then he chinked the curtains a little and peeked through.

The iron tub up in the wagon-box, arches looming over it like the ribs of an unknown beast. Two big lumps of gold-woven crystal set at angles to its unarched end and the jointed canopy of glittering mesh suspended above. Steps went up from the tent to the wagon-box, but even after the men who’d hauled in the dirt and corpses departed, Tir dared not emerge to have a closer look. In the main part of the tent there was a folding table, with what looked like a box on it.

He tallied it all in his mind.

And pounding him, tearing him, whispering in the blackness of the back of his brain was the knowledge that he’d seen all this before. That he knew what was in the box on the table.

The curtains covering the entrance heaved and blew. Tir let the hanging fall shut to almost nothing. He had to know. There had to be somebody who knew, who could tell Ingold.

It was Bektis and Nargois. With them was Ugal, big and handsome and friendly, taking off his spiked helmet and looking around him with awed gray eyes. Tir’s heart stood still with horror and grief.

No. Not him
.

But there was nothing that he could say or do.

At Bektis’ direction (Bektis never did any work) Ugal and Nargois carried two dead sheep and a great quantity of wood and dirt up the steps, the planks creaking under their weight. They went down for another load, and Tir looked away when they pulled back the cover over the other sledge. The stench, the horrible bloated black bodies with the flesh falling away …

He knew he should be brave and look but he couldn’t. He kept his face buried in his arms while their feet creaked up the plank steps. He tried not to hear the noise the things
made when dropped into the vat. If he threw up they’d find him. That awareness was the only thing that kept him from doing so.

Then he heard Vair’s voice.

“Ugal, is it?” There was gentleness in his tone, and affection, like a strong father addressing a son.

“Yes, my Lord.” Ugal was delighted with the recognition, delighted that his generalissimo knew his name. He was always telling Tir,
My Lord praised me
or
My Lord spoke to me—I think he knows my name
.

“Do you understand the help I need from you? The magnitude of the task I’m asking you to do?”

“I—I think I do, my Lord. None of us really …”

“None of you really knows. No. That is as it should be, but it makes your help—your willingness to help—a gift of trust doubly to be treasured. Please understand how much I value that.”

Tir raised his head and looked. The shadows behind the dead sheep were dense as night, and he could open quite a slit between the hangings. He saw Lord Vair touch the young man Ugal’s face with his left hand, like a caress.

“Thank you, Lord.”

“You understand this will hurt a little.”

Behind Lord Vair, Shakas Kar entered the tent, silently.

Vair went on, “It isn’t much, but sometimes men have cried out—you remember.”

“I won’t cry out.”

“Sometimes men do,” said Vair. “There is a drug, you understand, that weakens the subject; would you be willing to wear a gag? That way there can be no fears, no apprehensions on the part of your friends.”

“I am willing to do whatever you wish, Lord, but I promise you, I will not weaken.”

“Good man.” Vair stepped forward and embraced the young soldier. “Good man.”

No!
Tir screamed, despairing, silent.
Run away, Ugal! Run away!

Tir watched as the young man stripped, and Shakas Kar
stepped forward with a gag of metal and leather. Bektis offered the young man a cup first, which he drank as if it were sacramental wine. They gagged him then, and Hethya came in, with the haughty mien of Oale Niu, her eyes like stone. She and Shakas Kar brought from the table the black stone box, which contained—as Tir knew it would—a set of needles, some crystal, some silver, some iron, eight or ten inches long and tipped in jewels or beads of glass. These they drove into the young man’s flesh, at certain points—
thohar
points, whispered one of those distant memories, bringing with it a shudder of blackness, a desperate desire not to see anything further—while Ugal stood tall and beautiful, naked, head thrown back, wincing a little at the stabs but silent and proud. He had a knotted war-scar on one thigh and another on his left arm, and with his long white hair hanging about his shoulders he seemed like a splendid animal, like a father or an elder brother Tir had always craved.

When the needles were all in his flesh Hethya and Bektis helped him climb up the wooden steps and lie down in the great iron vat with the carrion and the wood and dirt—as a warrior Ugal would have encountered worse. They adjusted something inside. Maybe, thought Tir, so that the needles sticking out of his back wouldn’t be pushed crooked when he lay down.

He knew what was going to happen. In the dark of his mind he knew. Some one of his ancestors, under circumstances Tir could not imagine, had seen this done.

Bektis walked over to the head of the tub and stood beneath the hanging swags of iron and crystal net. He closed his eyes. Tir saw Hethya look away.

He was glad it all happened in the tub, where he didn’t have to look. He was glad Ugal was gagged, and drugged, too, though the young man did make noises through it, stifled screams and worse sounds, body sounds: squirtings and gushings; horrible, sodden, elastic pops, like leather exploding under pressure, and blood spraying up. Once Ugal’s head bounced up over the rim of the tub and Tir
had to clap his hands over his mouth, press his eyes shut, swallow back the bile that came dribbling then out his nose.

I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this
, and he clung desperately to consciousness, unable to breathe, his mind screaming.
I have to do this
.

Ingold had to know.

But he couldn’t look, while footfalls creaked—Bektis’ or Hethya’s—and there was a soft noise of squishing, and the plop of something dripping where it had been spattered up onto the canopy. All he could remember was the taste of dates, carried and treasured with a young man’s cravings for sweets, all the way up from the devastated South.

Then there was another sound, a muted, deadly whickering, like fire but thinner; an aura of power that raised the hair on Tir’s head. He bit down on his own sleeve, sinking his teeth into the dirty-tasting leather to keep from fainting, screaming, crying. In front of him he saw Hethya hand Shakas Kar something—the iron gag. Shakas Kar wiped it down with a rag. From the vat Tir heard the sounds of movement, thrashing, and saw the wagon-bed rock.

Don’t scream
, he told himself.
Whatever you do, don’t scream
.

A man’s voice cried out random strings of sounds. An identical voice answered,
“Atuthes! Atuthes!”
Tir recognized the ha’al word for
father
. Something bleated, like a sheep with human vocal chords.

Vair climbed the plank steps, swinging his whip a little in his gloved left hand. “Perfect,” he whispered, looking down into the vat. “Perfect.”

Tir watched—Tir made himself watch—while the
tethyn
all came down from the vat. This part wasn’t bad, except that they all had Ugal’s face, they all had Ugal’s body, though without the scars. Like the Akulae they were hairless, and their skin looked funny, though in the lamplight it was hard to tell what was just tricks of shadow and moisture: patchy, smooth in places and rough in others.

There were eleven of them.

Nargois brought clothing out of the bales along the walls and gave it to them, but they only stood there staring at it stupidly, and he had to show them how to dress. This troubled the second in command. He passed a hand before the face of one Ugal and addressed him. The man answered with a faint, bleating grunt.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Vair shortly. “They’ll fight. That’s all that matters. Ugal!” he said, in a voice of command, and they all turned their heads at once, in a single movement.

“It is good,” he said to Bektis. “It is good.”

The men filed out when they were dressed, lumbering and shuffling in heavy coats, in wrapped rawhide leggings, Nargois nudging them along like a skinny black pale-eyed sheepdog.

Eleven
, thought Tir. There had never been more than four of any group of
tethyn
. He remembered—out of where he didn’t know—that four was all you could get, sometimes only three. Eleven was bad.

When Nargois brought in another young man—when Vair said in that warm, friendly, fatherly voice, “Hastroaal isn’t it?” and Hastroaal replied eagerly, “Yes, my Lord”—Tir worked his way, with infinite slowness, back through the curtains, out into the darkness under the wagon, and so through the petticoat around the wagon’s bed and out to the outer blackness.

“You understand the help I need from you? The greatness of the task I’m asking you to do?”

“You know I’d follow you to the ends of time, my Lord …”

“Good man. Good man …”

Tir relieved himself away from the wagons—his bowels were liquid with disgust and fright—and then climbed back into his own wagon, snaking through the provisions to return to his nest of furs. His hands trembled so badly he could barely take off his mittens and coat, and he felt cold through to the marrow. The cold stayed with him, even
under his blankets, growing deeper and deeper so that Tir wondered if he were dying. He tried to stay awake because he knew that when he went to sleep he’d remember fully, remember when he or that other boy had actually seen the whole thing, actually seen what happened in the iron vat (which was called a
draik
, he remembered, and wanted to scream at them,
Stop telling me these things!)
.

He woke up screaming, being shaken by a guard, an older man named Mongret, to whom he clung, sobbing, feeling as if his body would tear itself apart.

“Is all right,
Keshnithar,”
the man soothed him, calling him by the name some of the guards used when Vair wasn’t there to hear: Keshnithar, Little King, though sometimes in good-natured jest they called him
Drazha
, Scarface. “Is all right. Oniox,” he called out to another man who had come by, “get the lady, would you? Our boy’s had a nightmare.”

The other guard glanced back at the black tent and grunted. “Small blame to him. The very air’s evil tonight. She’s over there.”

“Oh.” There was silence, the men looking at each other through the thrown-back curtain at the back of the wagon. “Ah. Well.” Mongret hugged Tir again, reassuring, but Tir knew that nobody was going to get Hethya. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to see her, for her clothing would smell of carrion and power and lightning, and he didn’t know if he could stand that. “Is just dreams, Little King,” he added, in broken Wathe. “You all right?”

Tir sniffled, fighting hard not to seem a coward, and said, “I’ll be all right,” in the
ha’al
, which made both men smile.

“That’s my little soldier.” The men liked him, though none of them would stand up to Vair for him. He didn’t blame them for this. Neither commented on the fact that his hands weren’t tied. “You want me stay a little, till you sleep?”

Tir nodded. The man didn’t speak the Wathe well enough to learn anything if he talked in his sleep. Mongret
dried his tears with a rough, mittened hand, and Tir lay down, though he didn’t sleep. There was an odd comfort in knowing that whichever of his ancestors it was who had, willing or unwilling, witnessed what he had witnessed—who had seen the skin peel back, the organs burst, the head swell and pop like an overripe grape—had been as sickened, as appalled, as terrified as he; had wished, like him, that he had never seen it. It was as awful for a grown man as it was for a little boy.