The Redemption of Althalus (55 page)

“I’ll explain it all to you later, my son,” Bheid assured him. “This isn’t exactly an ordinary war, and there are things happening that can’t be explained in ordinary terms. When Althalus tells you that something’s going to happen, it
will
happen, whether it’s natural or not.”

“Are you some kind of magician?” Salkan asked Althalus.

“Something like that, yes,” Althalus admitted.

“Our priests tell us that magicians are in league with Daeva.”

“Not all of them,” Bheid told him. “Althalus has his faults, but when you get past them, he
is
a servant of God. We aren’t endangering our souls by associating with him.”

“Are you sure, your Reverence?”

Bheid nodded. “Absolutely, Salkan. Our enemies are the ones in league with Daeva. We’re on the good side.”

Salkan shrugged. “If you say so. I’m not really very religious, but I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“Don’t dawdle when you and your boys get down there, Salkan,” Althalus instructed. “Light up your torches, set the grass on fire, and then join the last of Sergeant Gebhel’s men down at the bottom of the slide. I want you and your boys to bring up the rear. A few Ansus might be able to avoid the fires, so keep your slings limber, just in case. Then follow the last of Gebhel’s men up the slope, and cut the ropes behind you as you come up.”

“Anything you say, Master Althalus,” Salkan replied as he turned to rejoin his friends.

“When this is all over, I think I’ll steal that boy from Yeudon,” Bheid said speculatively. “He might just be very useful on down the line.”

“You can worry about that later,” Althalus said. “For right now, let’s concentrate on living long enough to see the sun go down. Let’s go back to your ledge. I need to see what’s going on out there, but I don’t want Gebhel standing there watching when I kick up some wind.”

It only took Salkan and his boys about a quarter of an hour to ring the tower with fire, and then they ran back to join the last few battalions of Gebhel’s men at the foot of the rock slide.

“Here she comes,” Gher said, pointing toward the north.

Althalus looked out past the sluggish grass fires. Gelta’s Ansus, looking much like ants in the distance, were racing across the grassland toward the tower. “I hope this works the way it’s supposed to,” he muttered, drawing in a deep breath. Then he exhaled the word
“peta”
sharply toward Gelta’s charging cavalry.

A soft breeze stirred the grass fires on the leeward side of the tower.

“The fires are starting to spread, Althalus,” Gher called, peering over the edge. “We need a stronger wind, though.”

“I’m working on it.” Althalus drew in another breath and repeated the procedure.

The fires off to each side of the tower flared up, and dark smoke began to stream off to the north. The fires at the foot of the north side of the tower still seemed sluggish, though.

“The tower itself is blocking your wind, Althalus,” Bheid reported. “I don’t think this is working the way it’s supposed to.”

“Why don’t you point your wind right down the cliff here at those fires that aren’t burning as good as the ones at the sides?” Gher suggested.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wind blow straight down.”

“Try it.”

Althalus gave up and sent
“peta”
howling down the sheer side of the tower.

The sluggish grass fires on the sheltered north side of the tower exploded, boiling out across the plain like some vast tidal wave of flame.

Gelta’s Ansus reined in, gaping at the swirling wall of fire bearing down on them. Then, almost as one man, they turned and fled at a dead run.

“I think you can turn your wind off now, Althalus,” Bheid shouted over the howling of the gale as he clung to the rocks behind him to avoid being swept off the ledge.

“I’ll do that, Brother Bheid,” Althalus shouted back, “just as soon as I can think of a way to manage it.”

“I don’t know, Althalus,” Gher admitted. “It just seemed right, for some reason. We work for Emmy, and so does the Book. It wouldn’t make any sense for it to start getting nitpicky, would it?” Then the boy frowned slightly. “That really doesn’t quite fit, though, does it? I can’t read very much, so I don’t know too much about books. Maybe it was something else that gave me the idea.”

“Such as what?” Althalus demanded over the diminishing gale.

“Emmy doesn’t want to talk to you, because you might find out some things she doesn’t want Koman to pickpocket out of your head. Maybe it was Emmy who stuck the idea into my noggin—sort of the way Mister Khalor was using Salkan to pass lies to Koman when we were back at the ditch.”

“That
would
explain it, Althalus,” Bheid agreed. “Dweia can’t really hide anything from you, because your minds are too closely linked. Gher would be a perfect vehicle. He’s
always
coming up with strange ideas, so you wouldn’t even think there was anything very peculiar about his suggestion.”

“I probably should have guessed,” Althalus admitted. “There was something very Emmyish about the way Gher kept repeating ‘Try it’ over and over again. I don’t really care
where
the idea came from, though, just as long as it worked.”

The sun, made bleary by the smoke from the grass fires, rose almost timidly over the eastern horizon as the howling gale subsided to a gentle morning breeze.

“There’s not a sign of them anywhere out there,” Chief Albron said. “Those grass fires might well have chased them all the way back to Ansu.”

“That’s probably too much to hope for, my Chief,” Khalor said. “It’s more probable that they all ran back to that cave.” He pulled thoughtfully at one earlobe. “I’d give a pretty penny to know what they’re planning, but there isn’t much chance of finding out now that Leitha’s gone. I can make a few guesses, but I hate to work that way.”

“It’s something to start with,” Althalus said. “What are they most likely to try next?”

“Probably something conventional. I’m fairly certain that they didn’t expect us to pull back this way. We’d just bloodied their noses to a fare-thee-well back there in Gebhel’s trenches, and under normal circumstances, we’d have held our position. It’s highly unusual for an army to turn and run after it’s won the kind of victory we pulled off back there, and unusual things on a battlefield tend to make commanders very nervous. It’s my guess that they’ll send out a few probing attacks to feel us out. They don’t want any more surprises, so they’re likely to move very carefully for a while.”

“You don’t expect anything exotic right at first, then?”

Khalor shook his head. “Not for the first few days. We’ve been springing surprises on them at every turn, Althalus. They didn’t expect Gebhel’s trip lines, they didn’t expect the shrub from Hell, they didn’t expect shepherds with slings, and they didn’t expect that attack from the rear by Gebhel’s reserves. So far, every time they’ve come up with something, we’ve come up with something better. They’ll approach our new position with a great deal of caution, I think. I know
I
would.”

It was midday by the time the last of Gebhel’s men reached the top of Daiwer’s Tower, and Salkan’s shepherds came up behind them. “Should we cut the ropes, General Khalor?” the young redhead called when he reached a spot several yards from the top of the rock slide.

“Why don’t you see if you can just pull them up, Salkan,” Khalor called back. “Good rope’s expensive, so let’s not waste it unless we have to.”

“We’ll try it, General.”

“Sergeant Khalor’s an Arum through and through, isn’t he?” Bheid said to Althalus. “He absolutely hates to waste anything that costs money.”

“That doesn’t bother me in the slightest, Brother Bheid, since I’m the one who’s paying for all of this.”

Gher came across the rocky plateau from the place where he’d been throwing rocks off the edge. “I just thought of something,” he said.

“Spit it out, boy,” Khalor said. “Have you come up with a way to set fire to burned-off grass, by any chance?”

“I don’t think you could do that, Mister Khalor—not until next year, anyway. No, this is about the doors.”

“We don’t
have
any doors right now, Gher,” Althalus said.

“No, but the bad people do, and they’ll try to use them to hop out right up close to the top of that rock slide, and then, after all of Mister Gebhel’s men get real busy trying to hold them back, they’ll come popping out someplace behind our people, the way they did back there at the ditches, won’t they?”

“That’s more or less the way
I’d
do it—if I still had doors,” Khalor conceded. “What do you think we should do about it?”

“Well, I got to looking at that bunch of rocks where the cave is. Isn’t that a whole lot like a tower stuck on top of another tower? If some of Mister Gebhel’s men stayed at the top of the rock slide rolling big rocks down on the bad people and stuff like that, couldn’t the rest of them build some sort of fort around the front of the cave and some others could climb up to the top of that bunch of rocks so that they could throw spears and shoot arrows at any bad people running up the slope toward the cave? Wouldn’t that tower on top of this big tower be an even better place to fight the bad people than the top of the rock slide?”

“Name your price, Althalus,” Khalor said. “I’ll pay anything you ask for this boy.”

“You’re going to get me in trouble talking like that, Sergeant Khalor,” Althalus replied.

“It
is
feasible, Khalor,” Gebhel conceded reluctantly, “and it’s likely to take a lot of the heart out of the attackers. They’ll lose thousands fighting their way to the top of the rock slide, and when they
do
get there, they’ll see
another
fort they’ll have to attack. I think most of them are going to start getting homesick along about then. I know
I
would.” He squinted at Khalor. “What are you going to come up with next?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Khalor said. “I suppose we
could
build a tower of some kind on top of that crag, if you want.”

“And then a tower on top of
that
one? And another, and another? And we just keep on going up and up until we finally have to build a tower with hinges on the bottom?”

“What would we need with hinges, Gebhel?”

“We’d have to be able to tip it over to let the moon go by, wouldn’t we?”

“Very funny, Gebhel,” Khalor said drily.

“I’m glad you liked it.” Gebhel chuckled.

By late afternoon, Gelta’s Ansus had returned across the fire-ravaged grassland and totally encircled the tower. Gebhel’s men soon discovered that a boulder rolled off the edge of the tower onto the rocks a thousand feet below bounced a long way out from the base of their fortress. They found that to be enormously entertaining.

The Ansus, however, weren’t particularly amused, so they withdrew about a half mile.

Sergeant Gebhel came back from the barricade at the top of the rock slide. “Why are those shepherds flinging pebbles down the rock slide?” he demanded.

“For the fun of it, probably,” Khalor replied, shrugging. “Why worry about it? The pebbles are free, so it’s not costing us anything.”

Gebhel grumbled something and went back to rejoin his men.

“Why
are
they doing that, Althalus?” Chief Albron asked.

“It was my idea—sort of,” Gher told him. “I got to thinking about doorways. Stuff goes both ways through an open door, doesn’t it? And the fellow who opens a door almost has to be standing right behind it, doesn’t he? If there’s a rock zipping down that slide when Khnom opens his door, it
might
just hit him right smack in the face. If Khnom gets his brains knocked out, the bad people won’t have doors anymore, and things go back to being even. I told Salkan that bouncing rocks around among all the boulders on the slide would sooner or later whack into somebody and make him yelp. That way, Mister Gebhel’s men might get a little warning that bad people are trying to sneak up on them. Salkan thought it was a real good idea, so he did it.”

“How closely were you watching when Pekhal came through Khnom’s door back there behind Gebhel’s trenches, Bheid?” Althalus asked that evening.

“I
was
paying fairly close attention,” Bheid said. “Why do you ask?”

“Did you notice anything at all peculiar just before he came charging out?”

Bheid frowned. “Are you talking about that little flicker?”

“Exactly. I wanted to be sure it wasn’t just my imagination. How would you describe it?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Bheid groped for a word. “It seemed almost as if some very brief shadow passed over the sun, didn’t it?”

“That comes close,” Althalus agreed. “I can’t confirm this, because Emmy won’t talk to me right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens every time anybody uses the doors.”

“It
could
happen because the light’s not quite the same on both sides of the door, Althalus. It’s darker—or lighter—on one side than it is on the other.”

“That might explain it. Anyway, I’ve got a strong suspicion that it happens every time. We’ve never noticed it before because we were always right in the middle of it, but that flicker might just be all the warning we’re going to get before an enemy attack.”

Sergeant Gebhel’s men spent most of the night building a substantial wall in front of the cave mouth and extending it out to the east and west sides to the tower.

“They work awful fast, don’t they?” Gher noted.

“They’ve had a lot of practice,” Althalus replied.

“That’s sort of what wars are all about, isn’t it?” Gher suggested. “One side builds walls or barricades, and the other side tries to get over the top of them.”

“It’s part of the long, sad history of man,” Bheid told him mournfully. “Sooner or later, everybody tries to come up with some way to keep others out.”

“Emmy took care of that a long time ago, didn’t she?” Gher said. “
Nobody
gets into
her
House unless she wants them to.”

Bheid nodded his agreement. “That chasm at her front door
does
sort of discourage visitors, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s a variation of the moat that surrounds many fortresses.”