Kavin's World (8 page)

Two were down; but they had heard the roar, and now they suspected something from the river. Some came splashing into the water, and died there under our arrows.

“Enough!” Thuramon called out. “Hurry… row for the castle! The jar is emptying!”

Our bows slid along the narrow walkway near the water gate, and the jar ceased to fume at that moment. The riders caught sight of us in the same moment, and a concerted yell of fury went up. Dozens of them plunged into the swift stream, struggling to reach us; while the ponderous water gate began to creak, lifting. Someone with sense enough to recognize us as Doradans had given the order swiftly.

Even as we drew oars, pulling through the narrow way, hands lifted from the water, swords striking at our stern. Then the gate
fell
shut behind us, with a crash, and we were in Granorek.

And there, on the plankway, in battered armor, stood Uncle Malvi, bellowing like a madman, with a dozen others whom I knew crowding down into the water gate passage, noisy and cheerful. They looked well fed enough, though some bore scars; and they greeted us as if we were an army instead of a mere boatload.

Uncle Malvi, to my vast embarrassment, dropped to a knee, and greeted me formally as Prince of Dorada; then forgot all manners, and drew me with him into the upper courts, thumping me in the ribs and talking with loud cheeriness. Yet, under it all I detected another, less assured, note.

“We’ve held them off, and we can hold them a year, if need be,” he assured me. “We’ve food and water aplenty, and when the snow comes, they’ll freeze.”

“They are hardy folk,” I said, shaking my head. “They’re used to cold. And they’re willing to stay a long while.”

“Then we’ll stay too,” Malvi said. “While one of us is able to stand, we hold Granorek. And the last of us will fire the place over his head.”

“I would not be Prince over a field of dead men,” I said. “We are few, and they’re many. We need craft more than boldness.”

Malvi glanced at me, under his shaggy brows. We were now in the great hall, where a table was spread with food and wine to greet us; my men were already falling to, with appetites sharpened by a day and a night’s hard rowing.

“You were a boy when I saw you last, Prince,” Malvi observed, and clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, we’ll put an old head and a young one together, and see what uncourtly trick we may find. Ha! Remember when you were young and a mighty thief of new pears? I thumped you well for that, too, though you managed the theft as cleverly as the Thief God himself.” He glanced down at the table. “The meat is salt beef, but the wine is good. Sit, and eat.”

Five

The situation at Granorek was not as good as it had seemed at first. True, there was enough to eat and drink, and feed for the few horses. But barely sixty men were in fighting condition, with the same number lying wounded to one degree or another. The earth ramp still menaced the lower wall, though we set about at once raising the wall itself with barriers. And there was always a ring of encampments enclosing the castle completely on all sides. The river itself was guarded too well.

But I had not come so far through my bleeding land to sit in Granorek and glower at the enemy.

I stood on a battlement, the sun red in the west, and gazed down the valley, seeing the ravaged farms and burned orchards in the distance; and seeing also, that which I had hoped to see. The dry pine woods lined the rising hills on either side, and through the valley, along every dale, ran seams of forest, nearly down to where the larger farms began, ten miles away. Where the land was more open, the fields of unharvested wheat showed yellow and dry. But there was much forest below Granorek, for we of Hostan loved the hunt, and had kept much land in forest to preserve the stocks of game.

And in that forest, the whole northern part of the invader horde lay camped. And the north wind blew steadily… the cleansing wind.

Young men are cruel, it is said, and I was young. My hate for that enemy was strong, and till now, throughout my life, I had seen no war.
But looking there over the forest, the thought came to me that these were also men.
I remembered the father’s agonized cry as his son broke on the earth beneath the wall, and I remembered again the face of the maddened barbarian woman as my sword cut her down.

They had been hungry, I thought, and their land dry and dead, their cattle dying.

And yet… they had swept down over green Dorada, and made it too a desert, and when they had eaten all, they would ride on to make more deserts. And I was Prince of this land.

If I could have fought them, sword to sword, shield on shield, as an honorable man in courtly combat fights… but this was no combat of that sort. I was weak, without resource except to use the evil that I knew: not the clean sword, but the dark knowledge I had often sworn I would not touch.

Tonight, before the second moonrise, I would use it.

I heard Thuramon’s soft footfall behind me, and spoke without turning.

“Tonight,” I said.
“On this place, where we may look out.
Bring the tools and the book, now.”

“You have set your mind on this,” Thuramon said.

“Yes.”

“You grow older very quickly, Prince. Remember the Laws of the Art, as I taught you.”

“I remember well,” I said, still staring into the darkening landscape. “I must be as a god, seeing all but not giving my heart to any one thing, when the Work of the Art is done. I must look without laughter or sorrow, on all that happens.”

“Can you do this?” Thuramon asked.

“I must try,” I said. My hand touched my grayed hair. “You see I already have some of the attributes of aged wisdom.”

“Remember the dangers of the practice of the Art,” Thuramon said, “not danger to the flesh alone.”

“I know them,” I said. “Go, and bring the tools; and leave word that no man may come near this wall tonight, if he wants to live.”

I watched the stars emerging, and the first moon, low in the east, red and small.

Looking at it, its strange patterned marks and lines, I thought idly about a scroll I’d read once in Uncle Hogir’s library. A scholar, in one of the schools that flourish in the great city to the west, said that men like
ourselves
might live there, on that moon. If they did, I thought, were they too forced by the gods to kill and be killed, to burn and slay or flee from slayers?

Thuramon returned. With great care, we watched a star that marks the hours of the night, and at the beginning of the third hour we began to work.

On the stone floor of the parapet we marked out the three circles, interlaced with the Great Pentacle, all with the specially prepared chalks.

We set out the vessels containing incense and lighted
them,
we set out the white staff, for Thuramon, and the black for me. Thuramon went to his place in the circle to the east, and I to mine in the west. The third, north, was for the one we called.

The necessary blood came from one of the castle’s few remaining cattle, slaughtered but an hour before sunset; Malvi had looked strangely at me when I ordered this done, but had offered no protest. I was sure he knew what work I intended—he himself had some small learning in these matters, as every gentleman should. And he, of course, had never touched such things and would have died rather than do so. Princes must both rise higher and sink lower than common men.

Then the second moon glowed bright, and we opened the scroll which contained the words.

We uttered a certain evocation, which will not be given here, and
Someone
appeared, who drank away the blood, and was satisfied. Thereafter, we spoke with that Person, and placed compulsions by means of words of power. The air about us grew smoky, and there were sounds heard, which made those below in the castle look at one another wonderingly.

And at last, near dawn, we sent that Visitor back to another place, and stood, white-faced and trembling, looking at that which he had obtained for our dark labors. It stood in the third circle, dancing slowly and turning, a tall shape made of white flames. It was the height of a man, and in the white fire two dark eyes watched, unblinking.

“It will serve us for two days,” Thuramon said, in a croaking whisper, massaging his throat. “Two days, and it returns where it came. Give it your orders, Prince.”

“Son of the Fire,” I said. “I give you hunger. Go and burn, behind the riders who camp under our walls. Give them fire, pursuing, never ceasing, wherever they flee. Drive them before the north wind, and burn. Go, Son of Fire!”

The sunrise made it pale, but it was as alive as ever. It flashed high, as if in triumph, then slid swiftly to the parapet and bounded over, and down. We went to see, and there it went, swift as a running horse, nearly invisible in the growing light; but it left a brown scar as its track, straight as an arrow,
south
toward the black tents. I buckled on my sword, and went swiftly down, to where anxious-faced men waited in the bailey court

“Open the gates,” I said. “Let down the bridge. Every man, mount and arm; we will hunt today.”

As we rode forth, I could smell smoke already. Toward the mountains, pine forests burned swiftly like torches, and far ahead of us a wheat field roared up in a tower of black smoke. Nearer, the black tents burned in a charnel of flames, a wall of fire out of which dead men fell flaming. We heard horses scream, and the thunder of hooves; beyond the fire, men were fleeing. And in the fires, hungrily, walked the Son of Fire whom I had loosed against my own green land.

We rode slowly, sometimes down lanes lined with black skeletons of trees, sometimes through still smoking fields where the horses’ hooves crackled the ashes; and sometimes a blackened horror lay, man and horse together.

Always just ahead, the fires drove south; and behind us, the north wind blew, harder now. Sometimes, a desperate handful of men rode back, through breaks in the fires, and we met them blade to blade, and slew. But the fires caught any who paused even for a moment, and the rest were driven on, unresting, past even a good horse’s best pace.

When night came at last, we drew rein on a little hill where there was still green grass for the horses and a few low trees unburned. We could see the river, cool silver on one side of us, and the mountains far to the other side. Here the north wind’s steady blast was broken a little by the trees, so we unsaddled and rested. Some, with better stomachs than I, prepared food and ate.

I stood on that hill, and looked down the valley in the twilight. The fires had formed a great crescent now, almost a half circle, moving straight down the valley, cupping the invader horde in its flaming arms. No man could ride fast enough to escape it, though some might have plunged into the river and won free thus.

And we could sleep, here on our hill, but there would be no sleep for those others, who would be driven on, like cattle, till they fell and were consumed.

Toward the evening of the second day, we had already long lost sight of the demon-driven blaze, although its track was gruesomely easy to follow. A broad scar lay through the heart of Dorada, and the sky was darkened, so that the sun was only a red wound in the grayness.

Across the bare downs above Astorin, the fire had driven the last of them into the tents of their comrades, and there encircled and seized them. What the fire fed on by that time, I do not know; there was little enough to burn, but flame must have come out of the very earth.

By the time we reached sight of the walls of Astorin, the Son of Fire had returned, full-fed, to his own place. Small fires still flickered here and there on the bare earth, but there was nothing left.

Twice we thought we caught sight of two or three horsemen through the smoky air, but our reddened eyes in the failing light could not be sure. Some surely escaped, we thought, but these were of no matter now.

Smoked like so many herrings, on horses staggering with weariness as great as their riders, we must have seemed like demons ourselves as we came out under the walls. We led our horses over the piled rubble in the West Gate, and through the fetid air of the square, past the wreck of barricades, toward the castle, where we saw lights. There were no guards atop the wall, and the town was dark.

Uncle Malvi, walking beside me, glanced about the square as we passed through, and sniffed uneasily.

“We did well at Granorek, compared to this,” he said, a note of uneasiness in his voice. “We’ll need all Nine to aid us, cleaning all this away.”

And then, past the two cannon which still blocked the castle’s lower gateway, Isa came running, her long red hair lifting behind her. Straight to me she ran, knowing me even as I must have
seemed,
a grimy ghost.

“Lord Prince…” she cried out, and wept, clinging to me, and babbling.

Then others came out, and
torches,
and we went into Astorin hall like the bedraggled conquerors we were. Few there were to help us off with armor, and bring us food; I saw that the plague was taking more now. But for me, there was Isa, who tended me eagerly with quick and gentle hands.

In the morning, I called council in the hall, where the few who still lived among the city’s elders came, and also my kinsmen from Granorek, and Uncle Malvi. The high priestess came also, alone, gray-robed and silent, but seeming very weary. I was told by another that the plague still raged, even in the courts of the Temple where the sick lay, that even priestesses were dead or it. But a strange wonder; not one of those who had touched the figurehead of the
Luck
was ill. Tana had power, it seemed.

“Of all the folk of Dorada, we few here, and a few in Granorek, are all,” I said. “Maybe there are some who managed to hide, or who fled into the hills, but surely not many. Our city itself dies, as the plague burns on. What food we have must last awhile; there will be no harvest this year, except what may be gleaned from ruined farms. And in the spring, there will be few to plant. Nevertheless, we have won.”

An old man nodded, grinning toothlessly and bitterly.

“Hail to the victory, Lord Prince,” he cackled, and laughed, most unpleasantly.

I looked at him, until he suddenly ceased his laughter, and dropped his eyes.

“Old man,” I said, “I’ll have no man slain in this place for a while; especially not one so old that I’d be merely speeding a near time. But be warned: I have come to be Prince at a hard time, and I shall be also hard. Let none cross my will.”

There was silence at that; then, at last, one asked, “What can we do?”

“Work, while strength lasts,” I said. “The gates made strong again, the dead cleared away. Also, the fish run in the sea beyond the harbor. We have
boats,
and nets enough. Dried fish is good food, man. I’ll live on it myself, as you’ll see. Then, parties of men to scour the countryside, seek what harvests may be left… and slay what invaders may still roam. I saw orchards beyond Tagel hills, and there may be wheat there too. Find any folk who live, and bring them back to our land again.”

“The plague…” someone began.

“To that, we can only wait for an ending,” I said grimly. “Trust to our priestess’s skill, and the Goddess’s mercy. Or go and touch my Luck.” I finished, grinning at them all; and they, learning to be courtiers, laughed at the weak joke.

“Now,” I went on, leaning back, “speak out, and tell me what you think: what more can we do, what stores we have, and anything else. I will listen.”

Indeed, I listened. They talked, one at a time, and then all together, till I was very weary of it. But this too is a prince’s work, so I nodded, and smiled, and yawned through it.

Nothing that any of them said was of use, but it made them all feel much better to say it. Then, at long last, they talked themselves out of wind, and one by one went away. Only the high priestess, who had said nothing at all, still sat waiting.

“Well, Lady,” I said, “the best for last? Have you no word of profound advice, such as I’ve heard so many of?”

She regarded me as dourly as ever.

“No word,” she said. “Not for one who would take no advice, if it came from the
Nine
themselves.
But news, of a sort.
Least first; the boy you left us
is
mending, and will live. His father has been told this, and sends word that he gives you his gratitude.”

“When there’s a rope on his neck, let him be grateful then,” I said crossly. “I want none of his breed alive here.”

“You said there’d be no manslaying except at need,” she said, in a level voice.

“My own folk, not vermin.”
I looked at her face, and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Let him live. Sell him to a western trader for the oars,
teach his son
to catch fish. Or let them both walk home to wherever they came from. I care not.”