The Gathering Storm (114 page)

They responded with frightened silence.

“He is so tall, more or less. Black hair, fair skin. He may have been blind or mute when you saw him. The hounds belong to him. Perhaps you recognize them.”

From the crowd a low voice murmured. “What kind of reward?”

Stronghand grinned, showing the jewels studding his teeth. “Your life. Is that not enough? Your freedom, which I grant you regardless. If you will have more, I must have
more. I deal fairly with those who serve me faithfully, but I also punish those who believe they can cheat me.”

A stocky young man stepped forward out of the crowd, trailed by a second, taller companion. They wore rags that shed dirt with each step; they were themselves so filthy it was difficult to make out their features. But he liked the look in their eyes: although they feared him, they each had a keen gaze and an intelligent expression. Their captivity had not beaten them down. They hadn’t given up yet.

“We came here with a fellow we called Silent, for he couldn’t speak or see,” said the stocky one. “They took him into the shafts to walk the wheel. He might live yet, or he might not. The slaves who tread the wheels don’t live long.”

The taller one nodded. “He was a decent fellow, poor lad. But the Captain would know if he still lives. I heard a rumor that the Captain had him cast into the pit in exchange for a pair of gold nomias.”

“The pit?”

“Only dead men are cast into the pit.”

The slaves shuddered, hearing these words; the pit scared them more even than he did.

“I don’t know who would have wanted him dead, though,” added the taller one, “a blind mute as he was.”

His stocky companion nodded. “He wasn’t just an ordinary prisoner. Someone was trying to get him out of the way. He knew something, I’d wager.”

“Where is this wheel? Where is the pit?”

But he already knew. The hounds whined and scratched at the lip of one of the shafts. They knew where their master had gone.

The ones who had made Alain suffer would suffer in their turn. With cold fury in his heart he turned to Last Son. “Kill every man here except the slaves we have freed. They may go free, as they wish. Burn the rest alive.”

Last Son nodded and called out to the archers. By the time Stronghand reached the shaft and turned to clamber down the ladder into the workings, the log house was already ablaze and he heard the shouts and screams of the men inside as they made their final charge, out the door, in a vain attempt to escape.

As he descended, darkness swallowed him. He had his men bring torches such as the miners used, and with rather more difficulty the hounds were lowered after him, down each level and farther down until they reached the lowest wheel. Here, by the wavering, stinking light of pitchblende torches, Sorrow and Rage snuffled all around the wheel and up a low tunnel to a cold, damp hollow worn into the stone where rags and leavings and waste had collected.

Their tails beat the walls, wagging. They stuck their noses into the garbage and whined. Alain wasn’t here, although by the testimony of the hounds he once had been.

“Hsst!” Yeshu stood beside him, head cocked. “Listen!”

They heard the clamor of metal striking stone. A shout, followed by a harsh scream. A few moments later two of his soldiers padded out of the blackness dragging an injured man with a third soldier holding a torch to light their way.

“He and his companion attacked us,” they said. “The other one is dead.”

The captured man moaned, lifting his head. “Mercy,” he croaked. Blood pooled at his shoulder and dripped to the floor. “Mercy, lord. We are only poor miners, defending ourselves.”

“Where is the pit where you cast dead men?”

The man sniveled. “I’ll show you! I’ll show you!”

“You’ll come down with me. Bind up his wound.”

He cried and pleaded as his wound was bound up, and it puzzled Stronghand to see that his fear of the pit outweighed his fear of his captors. What lay down there? Ought he to be afraid also? Yet the unknown had never frightened him. He feared only where he knew danger threatened him, and the unreasoning, babbling terror of this man made him curious.

“Please don’t make me go down!”

The workings lay eerily silent, all sound muffled, the weight of earth heavy over their heads. Water trickled down side passages. Torchlight illuminated ancient scars mottling the walls where stone had been chipped away as miners sought new veins. These rich workings could supply a great treasure-house. It would be worth a great deal to him to possess mines like this.

The captive staggered to a halt at the edge of a shaft
plunging down into the earth. Light did not penetrate far; it was pitch-black below, empty, although a faintly sulfurous wind skirled up from the depths like the breath of a buried giant long asleep.

“We’ll need rope,” said Stronghand, understanding the risk he took. If his men were not loyal, they could strand him there. But OldMother wanted Alain; he wanted Alain. He had to take the chance. And, in truth, the gamble made his blood sing.

With rope lashed around his torso, he allowed himself to be lowered down and down and down, using his feet to balance himself away from the sheer wall and probing ahead with his spear until he found rock beneath him. He untied himself and tugged twice on the rope, then waited as both hounds, the miner, young Yeshu all strung about with coils of rope, and a Rikin soldier laden with four torches, an ax, and more rope arrived.

They were ready to explore. They tied more rope to the main rope and strung it behind them as the hounds sniffed forward into a labyrinth of passageways, blind alleys, one breakdown where blocks of stone littered the passageway, and a dead end—a sloping cavernous chamber ridged with ledges where the hounds snuffled with great interest for a long while before turning and leading them back in a different direction.

They scooted down a steep incline while the miner moaned under his breath until the sound so grated on Stronghand’s nerves that he whirled around and brought the edge of his knife to the man’s throat.

“There’s nothing here.” He knew the words as truth as he spoke them. No living scent touched his nostrils. He heard no echo of footfalls, no whisper of scuttling movement, no monster’s slither or the fluttering breath of an ancient evil lying in wait.

The pit lay empty. Deserted.

He snarled, low, and the hounds echoed his anger with growls of their own. They, too, knew the truth, but they led the party on regardless as the miner gulped down his sobs and Yeshu exclaimed at every pillar and shaft and new texture
of rock. A new smell assailed them as they scrambled up a ramp into a large cavern.

“Bread!” Yeshu exclaimed as he ventured forward into the space, the light of his torch dancing over a field of mushrooms. Spoors settled where their feet kicked dust up.

“Corpses!” said Far-runner, the Rikin brother who accompanied them. “They’re growing mushrooms on corpses!”

The miner fell to his knees and vomited.

“There was someone here, then,” said Yeshu. “Someone who could think, and drag these bodies to this place, and plant them. There is an old legend among my people of a race of men who delved under the earth because of a curse placed on them by their enemies. I know lots of old stories, most of them nonsense. Maybe this one is true!” He laughed, delighted, and probed among the field with his staff, shifting bones, uprooting a clump of the fleshy white growth that was bound to a rib cage with pale tendrils.

“God protect us!” wept the miner, and retched again.

“Come,” said Stronghand, because the hounds were pulling him on, padding to the limit of the light and yipping, eager to move forward.

He quickly outpaced the others, hearing Yeshu’s voice behind him exclaiming over some marvel or another as they passed through glittering caverns and skirted sinks and trenches that gave out into other levels beneath. Another day he might wonder, but he felt himself close—so very close. Torchlight illuminated a wide cavern peculiarly ornamented with low structures constructed out of bones, but the hounds trotted down a path and he hastened after them even as Yeshu and Far-runner came out of the passage and broke into startled exclamations at the sight of this city of bones.

In the darkness the ceiling met the floor; where they met, a tunnel ramped down. The hounds scrabbled forward, Rage pressing into the tunnel with Sorrow nudging at her hindquarters, tails lashing. Then they barked and in some confusion backed out of the tunnel. He got down on hands and knees and, thrusting the torch before him, pushed into the tunnel.

A foul-tasting water had swallowed the passageway. The route was blocked.

The others came up to him as he stood and furiously kicked at the nearest house of bones, sending it rattling and clattering down. He would have smashed them all, if he could have.

“Is that wise?” asked Yeshu. “There might be a spell on those bones.”

“Gone,” he said. “Out of my reach. There’s no one down here, and Alain is gone.”

The walls ate the sound of his voice, but the rock could not absorb his anger and the blinding grief that, for the space of ten breaths, took hold of him. He choked out a breath and sucked one in, then turned to the miner.

“Pray you can swim,” he said. “We’ll tie a rope to your ankle and you’ll go in. If you reach the other side, you may flee, if you dare, or you may tug on the rope and we’ll haul you back. If you succeed, if there is a way out, then I’ll reward you with silver and riches, as much as you can carry.”

The man wept and gibbered, but Stronghand himself tied the rope to his ankle and drove him forward into the water. The rope paid out, and paid out, and paid out, and Yeshu said:

“No man can hold his breath that long.”

It ceased moving, then slackened slightly. They waited far past the point where a man might live so long underwater.

“Draw him in,” said Stronghand at last, and Far-runner took the line in hand over hand, hauling with all his strength, but a weight fetched up somewhere within the tunnel, and although all three of them yanked, they could not dislodge it.

“He’s fled, or drowned,” said Stronghand.

“That’s an awful way to go,” said Yeshu. A spark of fear brightened his expression as he looked at the creature he served.

Stronghand nodded. “I am not like you, Yeshu, but I deal fairly and I use the tools I have. Come. There’s nothing for us here.”

His loyal soldiers hauled them up; outside, in the blessedly fresh air, the log house was still smoldering, ringed by a garden of corpses. His men had methodically looted what they could, and as dawn shaded the trees from black to gray, scouts raced out of the forest.

“A war band approaches, flying the banner of the hawk.”

They had nothing to wait for, nothing to fight for. They had taken the chance and lost the gamble. Alain was still alive—he knew that—but the hounds had lost his trail and he did not have a strong enough force to fight off determined and organized resistance.

They ran west, and when three days later they reached the ferry, four ships waited by the far shore, just out of sight of the garrison. The merfolk had come when called and brought him a swift means of escape.

“What do we do now?” asked Last Son as they set sail, letting the current sweep them downstream toward the distant ocean. Oars beat the water to keep them in the main current. Stronghand stood at the rudder, watching the shoreline pass. The hounds lay at his feet, heads on their forelegs; they seemed as despondent as any creature he had ever seen, but they trusted him enough to return with him to the ships. At the stem, Yeshu and Far-runner had gathered an audience while they told their tale of wandering among the dead bones of the Earth. Men and Eika huddled together, shoulder to shoulder, comrades rather than enemies as they listened appreciatively. Because he looked closely, he saw two new faces among the assembly.

“Aren’t those two of the slaves we freed at the mines?”

“So they are. They followed us and were strong enough to keep up. They desire to join the army.”

“Is that so?”

“Will you take them?”

As he watched, he saw the stockier one, the more talkative of the two, raise his voice to add to the story being woven by Yeshu and Far-runner. The others did not shout him down. “It seems I already have. A man bold enough to run in our pack is bold enough to fight with us.”

Last Son nodded. “They call themselves ‘Walker’ and ‘Will.’ I’ve kept my eye on them.”

As he had not. He had thought of nothing except Alain, except how water and rock had defeated him, who was mortal and short-lived, unlike the Earth. Stronghand considered while oak forest slid past on the banks. In battle it was usually necessary to act precipitously, but in council a measured decision gave the best results. It was necessary to always
keep your eyes open, to examine your position from every side before you chose your course of action.

He had not kept his eyes open.

But Last Son had.

“Why did you not take a name?” Stronghand asked.

Last Son grinned, displaying his teeth. “Last Son is a good name, too,” he said. “It’s the name I want. What do we do now?”

“My brother Alain wanders out there. To find him, I must plan carefully and not overreach. The Salians will fight us. The Wendish are strong. We will use Medemelacha as our foothold and we will push step by step inland, consolidating as we go, just as we are doing in Alba. That way we will find Alain but also gain more land for our empire. Piece by piece.”

“Yes,” said Last Son, nodding. “That is a good plan. That is why we follow you, Stronghand. Because you are not like the chieftains that came before you.”

“THEY say the end of the world is coming, Sister Antonia,” said the empress.

Adelheid gripped the railing of the balcony, knuckles white as she stared out over the city of Darre from the second story of the royal palace. Roof tiles baked under the sun. Heat shimmered. At this time of day, in the middle of the afternoon, the streets were deserted but the stink never abated; on a day like today, with no wind, it only subsided a bit with no breeze to spread its miasma over the palace hill. Perhaps the stench wasn’t quite so bad this year because so many people had fled the great earthquake and returned to the villages and fields of the countryside, where they felt safer.