The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) (28 page)

Gallgoid left the chamber, leaving Reesh alone with his old friend.

The army made good time on the River Road, and now the chieftains thought they were close enough to Obann to be attacked. But the scouts said otherwise. Chagadai himself, captain of the Ghols, led a party all the way to the hills just west of the city.

“They have eyes for nothing but Obann, my brothers,” he reported to the chieftains. “They pay no heed at all to us. They have no scouts patrolling west of the city. We could march right up to the walls, if we wanted to. But if you ask me, it’s because they expect to take the city very soon.”

“How?” said Shaffur, frowning. “The last we heard, they were doing very badly—couldn’t use their fire-throwing machines.”

Chagadai shrugged. “We saw nothing that gave us any hint of what they mean to do. But that whole vast multitude is like a wildcat bunching up his muscles to pounce.”

Their council was in the open air, beneath the stars. The chieftains sat on their stools in a ring—even Hawk, who was chief over just his three brothers. Nanny was there, too, comfortably seated in her cart.

“Now would be a good time for a word of prophecy,” said Zekelesh. Obst translated for Nanny, and she laughed.

“Tell Mr. Wolf’s-head it’s not up to me, but God, when those words come,” she said. “It’s quite funny. At home they always tried to silence me; but here everybody’s always trying to get me to talk.”

“It sounds to me as if we’d better hurry, or the city may fall before we get there,” Captain Hennen said. “It would crush my heart to see that! How can God let His Temple be profaned?”

“Peace—you don’t know what you’re saying!” Obst said. “As it was in the days of Ozias, after he was driven from his throne, and as it was on the day the Empire fell, so it is now. The Temple has already been profaned, and not by any Heathen. The whole city is under judgment because it has turned away from God. The rulers have shed the blood of prophets. They have built a fence around God’s word—and that fence is the Temple. No power on earth can save it.”

Hennen shook his head and frowned. “Then I’m burned if I can see why we’re marching our legs off just to get there,” he said, “if there’s nothing we can do to help.”

“We go because God commands it,” Obst said.

Helki spoke up. “Hennen wasn’t with us to hear Jandra’s prophecy—don’t be too hard on him. He hasn’t seen the things we’ve seen. He can’t understand what a miracle it is that we’re still alive.” He turned to Hennen. “We have to go; God sends us; but if you’d rather not, I don’t reckon anyone here will force you to.”

“My men and I will go anywhere the rest of you go,” Hennen said. “It’ll be to our deaths, by all my calculations—but who wants to outlive his country?”

“It’s settled, then,” said Helki. “Tomorrow we march faster.”

Chillith decided to march upriver for a day or so before crossing the Chariot. Where it joined the Imperial the river was too wide and deep, the current too strong.

All the little unwalled towns and villages in the country were abandoned. The people must have fled to Cardigal, Martis thought. He wondered how many of them had survived the destruction of that city, and where they could have gone from there.

“Your honor has dealt harshly with my country,” he said to the mardar, “and yet I’ve never heard that Obann ever did any evil to the Griffs.”

“We but obey our master the Thunder King’s commands,” Chillith said. “All who stand against him are destroyed. He will rule all nations from the farthest East to the Great Sea in the farthest West.”

“And what would he want to do that for?” Jack thought, but didn’t dare ask. But Ellayne was thinking of a verse from Scripture, from the Book of Beginnings: “To every king his own kingdom, to every nation its own land.” This Thunder King desired all the kingdoms, all the lands. Sheer wickedness, she thought.

“And does your honor know,” Martis asked, “what your master the Thunder King intends to do with all those nations once he has them, and how he means to rule them?”

You could see from the look on Chillith’s face, even under all the paint, that he’d never heard that question asked before. Jack thought it was a burned good question and that Martis was of sharper wit than he made out to be.

“Who can answer such a question?” Chillith said. “I marvel that you dare to ask it, Martis. Do you think my master shares his thoughts with ordinary men? Do you think there’s any man who dares instruct him, or can demand an accounting from him? What answer can I make to such deep ignorance?”

“It seems to me, in my ignorance, that a man would wish to know such things,” Martis said. “Since the world began, the people of Obann have lived one way and the Griffs another, each and every people to its own way. But how are we to live once your master has established his dominion over all the nations?”

“I can’t waste time with such talk!” said Chillith, and spurred his horse away.

“He doesn’t know,” Jack said.

“I don’t suppose his master is one for answering questions,” Martis said. “I served such a master—Lord Reesh, the First Prester. With a master like that, you get out of the habit of asking questions. You might even stop thinking of any.”

Wytt rode inside a saddlebag on Ham’s back: he’d snuck into it during the night. There was nothing else in the saddlebag, and no reason for anyone to reach into it.

He’d learned that these men feared him, discovered it the night he’d shown himself. His mind was not a human mind, so he never asked himself why they feared him.

From time to time he rose to the mouth of the bag and sniffed the air. Somewhere, not far away, there was a very large animal with an unrecognizable scent. The men drew ever nearer to it, like blind men walking toward a precipice.

Because the men were his enemies, Wytt greatly desired that they should meet the animal and find it in an angry mood. He saw a picture in his mind of men running right up to the animal, making noise and brandishing weapons, and the startled beast attacking them.

Cautiously he poked his head out of the bag. A short distance up ahead grew trees. The beast was somewhere inside those trees; a breeze brought its odor to his nostrils. He observed that the horses smelled it, too, and were displaying signs of nervousness. The men didn’t notice that. But if the wind shifted, the big animal would catch their scent and probably move off before they even saw it.

Wytt knew what to do. With infinite care not to be seen, just yet, he crept out of the saddlebag, hung on for a moment, and then dropped to the ground.

The monotony of the march was broken suddenly. Ellayne heard someone yelp in pain—and in the same instant, the Omah’s shrill screeching.

“Wytt!” she cried. He must have jabbed somebody’s foot with his sharp stick.

Griffs chased him through the tall grass, Wytt zigging and zagging and sometimes disappearing. Chillith roared commands, but no one obeyed him. At least a dozen warriors were trying to catch Wytt, and they wouldn’t stop.

“The demon, the demon!” they shouted. “Kill it—don’t let it get away!”

They ran after him into some trees, where they could never hope to find him; and they no sooner entered the trees when there arose a deep rumbling roar from the heart of the glade—and the men came running out again, in terror.

Jack thought at first that it was the biggest bear the world had ever seen, pursuing them. But no—it was too slow for a bear, and too big, and behind it trailed a long, thick tail. It was hairier and shaggier than any bear, a rich red-brown.

The Griffs rallied and threw spears at it. That stopped the beast’s charge; and then, just like a bear, it reared up on its hind legs and roared at them. It was propped up by its heavy tail, and its neck was longer than a horse’s, and its face was not like any other animal’s. Ellayne thought it looked like the face of one of her dolls, turned by black magic into a gigantic ogre.

The Griffs would have killed a bear—any bear. But although many of the sharp spears found their mark, none of them penetrated very far into the beast’s flesh, and quite a few of them bounced off. The Griffs made a fearful racket, yelling and cursing.

With a few sweeps of powerfully clawed forepaws, the animal batted away the spears that had stuck in its hide, landed back on all fours with a crash that shook the earth, spun around ponderously, and retreated back into the woods. The spears thrown after it bounced off its hindquarters. It vanished among the trees, and no one dared pursue it.

Chillith bellowed at his men. He made them gather up their spears. Many of them paused to look at the points, while others studied the ground. They were looking for blood and didn’t find any. When the men were finally calm again, and order restored, Chillith rode up to Martis and the children.

“It was another one of your little hairy friends that started this,” he said. “But what was that creature that came out of the woods? We’ve seen the giant birds—we even killed one, once. But this creature turned my men’s muscles into water. You saw how feebly they threw their spears.”

Martis shrugged. “I never saw such an animal before,” he said. In truth, he had, once—but he was keeping that to himself. “In these days there are many strange beasts in the land, which no one’s ever seen before. I know a holy man who says they’ve been sent by God, as a sign of His judgment. But beyond that, your honor knows as much as I do.”

“My men are all brave warriors, tested and approved in battle,” Chillith said, frowning thoughtfully. “Now they will be troubled by the thought of beasts that cannot be killed by weapons. They will think it was some witchcraft worked by the little hairy demons who are your friends. They will not love you for it.”

“But we’re not witches!” Ellayne cried, and added hastily, “your honor. There’s all kinds of crazy animals around, everywhere you go. We thought it meant the end of the world. But we do know that God has promised to protect us!”

Chillith didn’t respond to that reminder, but you could see he took note of it. He sighed. “It’s a long way to Kara Karram,” he said. “Once I would have prayed to my gods to protect us, and been content. But now there are no gods left to pray to.”

“We pray to ours,” said Martis.

“Then pray for me,” said Chillith.

Lord Reesh woke to the day he was to open his city to the enemy. He had gone to bed half-hoping that he wouldn’t wake at all.

He had his breakfast. If his hands shook a little, anyone who saw it would put it down to age and infirmity, and being upset by Judge Tombo’s funeral the day before. Everyone knew how hard the First Prester took the loss of his old friend.

The twenty men who were to be saved with him were ready. Because they were to be the foundation for a new Temple, he’d chosen them with care, and chosen well: not one had lost his nerve. Attracting no notice to themselves, they’d packed into chests such books and archives as they would need for the new Temple in the East—which of course would be the same Temple in a different building. Gallgoid assured Reesh that everyone and everything was ready, and his word could be trusted.