Samples from books that we have published at Eartherean Books.
This is another in a series from the fourth book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: Darkbridge.
© 2009 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
The Summons
IT WAS NOW that, in the depths of a dark tent, the great bulk of a man began to stir.
A cloak was spread across the huge body, stained where it had stuck to drying blood. At one edge a few swollen bound knuckles emerged. The cloak was slowly dragged down below the face. It was a face of horror. Bleeding, bandaged, swollen, bluish. One eye closed forever beneath a mess of black and yellow scar. The other half-shut, lacking eyebrow and every other eyelash.
Gundoen struggled up on the rude pallet. Painfully and without understanding, the half-shut eye looked out from beneath the cloak. All about him lay the bodies of dead guardsmen. It occurred to Gundoen suddenly and with great surprise that he still lived.
He had survived the torments.
He looked around with greater interest. Where was he? He did not know. But it was safe. Ara-Karn, his son, had brought him here. Gundoen had known Ara-Karn would come. He had known he would not fail him. There at least Hertha-Toll had been wrong. He had told her so.
He placed the gross round paws of his bandaged hands on the ground. He tried to heave himself up. Pain like fire ran through him; he sat back with a grunt. He shook his head. He had no more strength than a child. Slowly he lowered his head and fell asleep. He dreamed of the crossing of the Taril and all the men he left there, unvoyaged at his command. He would join them now.
§
AVLI-OAN rode out of the thunder of the encounter, past the ruins of the place and the ominous Brown Temple of Goddess. Fast as a river he rode. At the outskirts of the burned city he came upon a mass of men: in full war-gear, a thousand mercenaries reclined upon stones in the shade out of the sun. He was upon the men before he knew it. He reined in the braying war-horse, raising swirls of dust. The Eglandic war-horse pranced about, and Avli-Oan stared through the dust, the confusion of the battle still burning in his bright eyes.
Towering above him, dominating the entire quarter, was a monumental arch of grayish-white stone. Thousands of sculpted figures adorned it, surmounted by deep-cut characters that read, though the young tracker could not read them,
THE WAY OF KINGS OVER THE WORLD.
Avli-Oan looked up in amazement. It was not the monument of his people’s ancient conqueror that caught his breath. That he had seen many times. But now the way through the arch was dark with an enormous, square-based, wooden tower. It blotted out the sky, as high and broad as the archway itself. Six solid wheels as tall as the height of three men supported it; the axles passing into the wheels had been fashioned from the boles of trees centuries old. Bronze and iron spikes as big as the forearms of women had been driven into the wooden walls to hold the interlocking beams together. High overhead, just beneath the curve of the arch, the parapet of the tower was covered over with cured bull’s-hides many layers deep. Eight hundred warriors might have their quarters in this movable stronghold. Halfway up its face had been painted a large black Darkbeast tooth, the device of Ara-Karn.
Avli-Oan stepped off his horse among the mercenaries, but he did not look at them. His eyes rested raised upon the monstrous tower. Never had he dreamt of such a thing. But seeing it now, he knew straightway to what use it would be put.
‘Surely,’ the young warrior said within himself, ‘this is worthy of Ara-Karn himself.’
Then still in wonder he passed among the throngs of men, and found the leader of the mercenaries sitting on the forward lip of the tower, amid the massive bronze rings used to draw it.
‘Erion Sedeg! Nam-Rog, chief of the Durbars and leader of the chieftains of all the armies of Ara-Karn, sends me to find you and ask of you: What has held you up so long? Is there some trouble, do you need aid, or are we now to count on your promises and big words no longer? The time has come to prove your loyalty to Ara-Karn. Spur on your men and bring up what you have fashioned with all haste.’
The mercenary wore Desert-robes of black with a girdle of iron-studded leather. Beneath the head-robes he wore a bronze skullcap. Three knives were caught in the girdle, a strong-bow leaned beside him, and in his hands he held a small whip. The paint upon his face was white and red and black, the triple hues of death; the eyes were worse.
‘We wait,’ he said.
He spat out picsle juice and swatted at a fly.
‘We were not sure, after all, that you in all your thousands would have need of us. But it does not go well?’
‘We have slain them by the hundreds and twice gained the second step of the battlements. But a giant Southron has defeated us. Champions and chieftains he has slain, scattering their bones to the birds, and driven us back down the ladders. Many hours have passed and yet there is no weariness in this man. He rages on the battlements, and the men only poke at him and flee. It shames me to say this. Not even the strongest bows are of any use. Death-birds turn aside from him. Now they have begun to call him Elna-Ana and say that the Gray Priestess has blessed him so that he shall be invulnerable and unkillable.’
Erion Sedeg tossed aside the whip and gestured upward. ‘Go back now to your master, barbarian, and tell him all will be well. You have failed, but it is not yet the end. We will come now. As for this Southron—’ the mercenary smiled, baring his scarlet sharp teeth— ‘with this tower and the blessing of Ara-Karn, we will kill him.’
With that the leader of the mercenaries turned and, agile as a monkey, climbed the tower. He climbed over the wall of bull’s-hides and stood before the arch. Leaning out over the bull’s-hides, he gestured.
His men swarmed about the base of the tower. Avli-Oan was crowded back. He found his war-horse and calmed it, standing on the fringe of the throngs.
The man upon the tower began to speak. His words echoed off the stone.
‘Soldiers, your time has come, and my prayers are answered.
‘You are the finest of all who have joined here. I have chosen you for this hour. He has chosen you. You have come from a score of cities, from mountains, wood and plain. You have come from the shores of the unmeasured Desert. You have come here for this deed. The King watches and knows what is done here in his name. Now his eyes shall turn upon you. You have bows, you have strength and courage – and you have the tower.
‘The barbarians have failed. A single man defeated them. The Black Citadel still stands – the false goddess Allissál still lives. This is as it had to be. Dark God smiles upon you and accepts your offerings. It rests with you now, to break apart the Iron Gate and hurl the woman from the cliff. Your master, your King, demands no less.’
Around Avli-Oan the mercenaries and Southron traitors raised their voices in a chant. ‘Ara-Karn, Ara-Karn, Ara-Karn.’
‘I do not know what were the hopes and dreams of any of you before the war. I do not care. You came some as captives who had seen your cities broken and burned, others as hostages to the pacts your cities accepted when they sued the King for peace, others as thieves and outcasts seeking plunder and to be on the winning side. And some of you, perhaps, came as I came, to serve Him and give Him glory. We were noblemen and farmers, mine-diggers, swordsmen, slaves. Now we are more. Now we are the soldiers of Ara-Karn! We have waited for this, you and I. Now it has come. It calls us on. Behind us lies the wreckage of the former age; before us if we fail wait homelessness and hunger. But if we win, then we shall live as princes over the cities of the new age, the age of Ara-Karn!’
Loudly and hatefully the hundreds cheered the words of the Conqueror’s prophet. Driving together the trains of draught horses and oxen, the mercenaries took up the weighty cables and ropes, and began to pull against the tower.
An immense groaning and creaking of wood and rope issued in the midst of the desolation. At first Avli-Oan did not see that they accomplished much. Then the tower shuddered and started – the dark walls of wood moved forth from the arch. Slowly the big wheels turned, and men and beasts drove their legs against the ropes, and the stone-clad earth began to roll beneath the black shadow of the tower.
Avli-Oan shook himself. How many hours had gone by since he had come this way? He looked up. Dark God had risen again and stood already midway through the sky. The young tracker vaulted up on his horse and rode through the ruins ahead of the lurching tower, back to the Iron Gate.
§
NOW THE FIFTH ARMY fought on the ladders, but they no more than the tribes of the fourth army were able to gain the battlements.
Not even Roguil Arn could get them there. He was young, and lacked Gorn-Tal’s cunning. And he was weary, and sweat ran from his face, and his strokes had no strength to them. So at last even he gave off and went down the rope ladders. He staggered down over the red rocks in the coomb and in his shelter was bathed and fed by his slaves, pretty girls who had won his heart in the camp long before. They led him to the dim place and sang to him. So, soothed, the champion of the Vorisals fell into a sleep as deep as a stone’s, and knew no more of battle or of strife.
Coming into the midst of the tents stretched between the blackened walls, Avli-Oan leaped from his horse and rushed to his chief.
Nam-Rog nodded to hear the words of his follower. Age and care fenced in the old chieftain’s eyes, but he held his beard firmly in his grasp.
‘I have won from the other chieftains the right to command one more assault upon the Iron Gate,’ he said. ‘They like it no better than we do, to be defeated here by one Southron. But it is to be the last assault, and only those who choose shall do battle. Maybe the sight of this thing will hearten them and swell our ranks. Only the finest will mount the ladders with us. Dark Lord and Lady, heed our wish, and I vow that the blood of one half of all the slaves we take here shall be given to you both!’
§
WHEN THE MESSENGERS of the guardsmen gave their appeal in the underground halls of the Palace slaves, they found few who would follow them. The many faces, dull and ignorant as those of animals, did not change in hearing the guardsmen’s words of the barbarians and the peril. After the guardsmen left, the slaves turned to one another. Some burst into furtive laughter; others scowled. Angry words passed among them, not without cause.
Ever had they done what was demanded of them, and for this long year they had seen to the needs of not just the many in the Palace but of the thousands of refugees as well. Now they were asked to man the Iron Gate as well! Could the guardsmen not do their job? And what of those in the high stories of the Palace? Let them go shed noble blood in defense of all their privileges. So the slaves muttered among themselves, sullenly.
But Iocantris went back to his family’s alcove with a heavy heart.
He sat down on the little bed, and let his eyes wander over the polished armor in the storage-niches. Iocantris they all called him here, Little Doughty. It had been months now since he had last heard spoken his tribal name, Kuln-Holn.
Now Kuln-Holn bent over the crib and with great gentleness bore up Bornin. He had become wise in the ways of infants now; his son did little more than gurgle.
Salizh issued out of the gloom. When their eyes caught each other, Kuln-Holn and his wife grew still. Unspoken words passed between them. Then Salizh took the baby from Kuln-Holn.
‘I came to feed him,’ she said. She sat on the bed and drew down her robes, baring the breasts. Little Bornin became excited at this. Greedily he began to suck. Kuln-Holn turned and began to take out the pieces of armor.
It was then that the young woman reached out and caught at Kuln-Holn’s arm.
‘Husband,’ she said, and at the hearing of that word Kuln-Holn shuddered as if wounded. ‘Husband, you will not go. I will not let you.’
Kuln-Holn neither looked at her nor spoke. He pulled on the padded linen tunic. He went on drawing out the shining tools of death.
‘Husband, are you afraid to look at me? Berrin was afraid. That was why, when he would follow you away to the barricades in High Town and his death, he only left me a note. But you, Iocantris, I see you now, you cannot escape my voice.’
‘Salizh,’ he said, ‘I am going.’ But he spoke it so lowly and chokingly into the depths of his beard it was doubtful she could hear.
‘Husband. Husband! One man I lost to all this, when he left me pregnant and alone. Must I lose another? What have I done to anger Goddess so? Are you the new weapon of Her vengeance, Iocantris?’
At this Kuln-Holn started. A deep blood-color spread across his face. But he went on girding the armor about him.
‘Husband, look at me. See my eyes. I tell you, I will not let you go. Have any of the others gone? Then why should you? Leave this to the soldiers, whose job it is. Why must you go?’ Tears were dripping from her eyes. ‘Is it your master who commands this?’
Kuln-Holn shook his head. He felt compassion at the suffering of his wife, but he did not embrace her. Had he done so, perhaps then he could not go.
‘Salizh,’ he said thickly, and repeated the word, louder so that she might hear his words above her sobs. The sobs were racking her body so that the baby had turned away from the swollen nipple. The shiny metal attracted his little eyes, and he stretched his little hand out toward the bright blue Raamba sword.
‘Salizh, do you think I want to go?’ Now Kuln-Holn was weeping too, and in his voice was terror. ‘Do you think I have become again the man I was on the barricades? He died on the steps of the Brown Temple. They are my people on both sides of the battlements: can I rightly lift a sword against either? One master I served, then forsook him to join the service of the Divine Queen. But it was she who commanded the torment of Gundoen. Now I serve neither.
‘The noise of the battle turns my stomach so I cannot eat or sleep; the thought brings sweat to my hands. I do not want to fight. I am frightened, I have never been so frightened. But I must. It is no order of the great ones. It is no wish of Goddess. It is not even my doom, for that is a part of an unmeasured weave, while this thing stands apart.
‘Listen. Just now I stood among the others, and they said why they would not fight to save their lives. This is not a thing the women and children of the tribes would say. Even if fear later drove them away, they would first go and do all their courage allowed, for the sake of their village and their tribe. So I was thinking as I returned here, all unaware of what was awaiting me. But I saw the armor, and I knew. There is something I will see there, something I will do.
‘Maybe I will see you again, maybe not. I have no sense of the doom. But need has taken hold, and it will drive me to the Iron Gate no matter what Kuln-Holn might want or choose. So I obey. With Her Sign I bless you both, Salizh and Bornin. May She smile on all you do. Farewell – I love you.’
‘Iocantris, husband,’ she moaned, ‘I am carrying another child. This one is yours.’
Kuln-Holn opened his mouth, but did not speak. There was a hardness about his face such as was strange and new to his wife. In the far North, the tribesmen did not stay at home merely because their wives or concubines were full once more.
His loud steps sounded hollowly down the underground passages. Many faces turned his way. After twenty paces he turned back for one last look at his wife and son. But Salizh had dashed out the tallow candle and the alcove was lost in darkness. Kuln-Holn sighed. Even there beneath the earth he felt the burden and unanswerable power of the immortal sky-borne gods, and he felt, too, how little and how weak a thing he was.
§
NOW A DOLEFUL CRY arose behind the shield-wall. Guardsmen recoiled from the parapet, pointing above their great shields. The shield-wall sundered.
The warriors on the ladders, however, took no advantage of the opening. They too broke off fighting and turned. The clash of swords died away along the Iron Gate. The tribes watching from the square called up to their fellows, wonderingly.
‘What goes on up there, hey? Why did you stop fighting?’
There was no answer from the men upon the ladders. The men in the square climbed on the disks of the fallen pillar. Then they all came to see it, from Ampeánor and his officers to the slaves standing among the shelters.
Dark against the burning jade sky, at first glance it seemed to be some building like the Brown Temple, which had somehow escaped unscathed the fires which had raged that way. But for a year now they had fought here and had not noticed it.
And then they saw it moved.
In confusion the men on the ladders descended, but in the square messengers went from the Durbars to the chieftains. In the absence of battle, an untoward silence consumed the scene. With awe in their hearts the barbarians watched the ominous structure inch up the slope; the guardsmen watched with fear. So slowly did it move that it seemed rather to grow. Its shadow stretched across the long lines of men and beasts laboring to draw it on. The noise of that labor grew – grunting and cursing of men, whinny and bellow of beasts, creak of the rope lines, squeals and thunder of huge wheels.
In the square a chant began to issue from a thousand savage throats. Weary, wounded and defeated, the tribesmen raised spears, swords, axes and bows and chanted out the name. The chant swelled, resounding off the Iron Gate into the ears of the defenders. They too had seen the black device on the forefront of the tower.
‘Ara-Karn, Ara-Karn, Ara-Karn!’
Thousands of mercenaries descended from the square. They surrounded the huge wooden base and bent their backs against it. They, more than the barbarians, knew the value of this thing and felt their hearts cheered. With shoulders and beams of wood they drove the tower into the square. Others ran ahead and began to clear the massive stone disks out of the way. Step by step, the thousands pushed the tower to the lip of the square. First to reach it were the horses; then the lines of horses and oxen were unhooked from the tower and driven back into High Town.
Gradually the gap closed between the tower and the blood-streaked Iron Gate. The square ended where the Imperial engineers had torn down the ancient bridge to the stronghold. Now the heap of stones filling the coomb began there. The stones fell into the shadow of the structure.
Then, at last, it halted.
The wide wheels could not surmount those stones. The mercenaries could impel the thing no farther. They took huge hammers as big as themselves and pounded blocks of wood beneath the wheels, fixing the tower in place some fifty steps from the face of the Iron Gate.
So, drawn on by his thousands, did Erion Sedeg make his appearance at the battle.
The sea-breeze filled his black robes. High above the square he stood, the lone inhabitant on the tower’s crown, worshiped, as it were, by the thousands chanting below him. Pleased, he rested his hands on the bull’s-hides and looked upon the defenders across the gap below him. From where he stood he could see over the rows of shields and helms to the rearward parapet of the battlements, even to a small brass door within the inner gates.
§
NOW IT WAS as Nam-Rog had foreseen, and the tribes flocked round, clamoring join this new attack. The prize of victory reared again before their eyes with the Darkbeast-tooth of Ara-Karn. The old chief smiled grimly, choosing out those men he thought the best fighters. The chosen ones laughed and rushed to their shelters to gird on armor and pick out their finest blades.
Roguil Arn pushed through the crowds and shouted, ‘Old chieftain, no man here among us doubts your valor, but you are greater with your counsel than a spear. Give me the center.’
When it was heard the Vorisal would lead them, the warriors cheered. But Nam-Rog answered, ‘Three armies now you have led against the Iron Gate, Roguil Arn. You have fought for hours without rest. Are you now taken with the same sickness that took Gorn-Tal?’
‘No, no madness dances in my veins,’ the champion answered, laughing. Young and eager as a boy he seemed before the chief of the Durbars. ‘I have slept deep since I last fought. And there is a man there on that Iron Gate, a warrior after my own heart. Three times now I have gone in search of him – each time the luck of battle parted us, but I have seen him fight. It was no whim of dark God that he slew Poran-Dilg. Now the need is upon me. I must match my strength against his! And then you will see a fight such as no man will soon forget!’
Nam-Rog lowered his head, giving his assent. ‘And may dark God take your side, Roguil Arn. For if you kill that one, then surely you will be deemed the greatest among us, and the man deserving of the hero’s share of what we take.’
‘For Poran-Dilg I will kill him,’ the Vorisal promised. ‘Now that he is dead I confess I begin to miss the Eldar’s boastful tongue. I never fought so strongly as I did to prove myself his better; now I will be hard-pressed to do so well.’
So Roguil Arn made his way through the crowds, cheered by the hundreds girding themselves for war. Proudly he accepted their praise, glorying in the awareness that now no man denied Roguil Arn first place among the champions. There was some sadness, too – for where among all the others would he find one even to rival him?
In front of his shelter the Vorisal chief found a man waiting for him. It was the bastard-born Pes-Thos chieftain, Estar-Brin.
The Pes-Tho stepped in Roguil Arn’s way. The man’s eyes burned like flames, and the growl of the wolf ran in his voice. ‘Vorisal,’ he said, ‘the word among the tribes is that you have been promised great treasure if you slay the Southron Elna-Ana, and that you have won from Nam-Rog the right to take the center line, where the Southron will stand.’
‘It is so,’ said Roguil Arn.
‘Vorisal, that man slew Aln-Brin-Daln my brother. Now I claim the sacred right of blood-vengeance. Give to me and my brother the center, and keep away from the Southron until either he or we lie dead.’
With knife-eyes the Vorisal appraised the older man. ‘Yes, I know you brothers of Brin,’ he said. ‘Aln-Brin-Daln was by far the best of you. Never did any of you fight alone against any man of strength. You two by yourselves have not the greatness to kill this Southron. He will kill you instead, if you have the luck to find him. I know myself that to go in search of Elna-Ana is not always to find him.’
‘That will fall with the pleasure of dark God,’ answered Estar-Brin. ‘But Vorisal, we bore down the body of our brother from battle. He still lived but had no mastery over his limbs and his body was deformed. How then could we pass our years if we were not the ones to kill his slayer? He would have reproached us rightly. Even now I would have gone to the old Durbar and claimed from him the right of the center, but he is as hateful to me as the Southron himself.’
The tall champion threw back his gleaming hair. ‘Estar-Brin, that was well spoken. Take what you want. I will go to the right end in your place. Nor will I seek the Southron – but if it falls out that he and I come face to face, then to the Darklands with my promises! I will lay on then with all my strength. See that you manage to kill him before his path crosses mine.’
‘That is well,’ growled the Pes-Thos. ‘Roguil Arn, when I have slain the Southron, I will make you a present of the spoils. The armor I will strip from his corpse, for that is vowed to my dead brother. But the wondrous sword he wields I will give to you.’
Roguil Arn nodded, and entered his shelter smiling. ‘There is more greatness in Estar-Brin’s little body than I guessed,’ he said. ‘Have I found myself another Poran-Dilg, and so soon? Well: battle, and Elna-Ana, will tell. If the Pes-Tho wins, all to the good! – and if he falls, then I will meet the Southron yet. The treasures are owed me now, for I led the fourth and fifth armies as I vowed – so whatever the cast, it shall be Roguil Arn who wins!’
But the Pes-Tho went back to his little shelter deeper among the ruins. Grimly and unspeaking he entered to behold his brother bent over the corpse of Aln-Brin-Daln and weeping.
From the heap of arms and armor by the tent-wall Estar-Brin picked up the heavy iron helmet of his brother and let it fall with a clangor on the stones by Kan-Brin’s feet. ‘Get up and gird yourself for battle. You have not moved since I left. Will all the army wait for us, do you think? And stop sniveling. Shed not tears but blood for Aln-Brin-Daln.’
Kan-Brin did not take his eyes from the face of his dead brother. ‘Go on and fight as you must, nor fear that there will be none to see to your voyaging. But I will fight no more.’
‘What you are saying? Will you not avenge him?’
‘No, I will not go. When we last strove against the wall of shields and the Southron fought Gorn-Tal on the parapet, then I looked into the Southron’s face and saw there, in the bright helm’s shade, the face not of a man but of a woman – the Gray Priestess! Even as she swung in the fiery ruins of Gerso, I saw her. You remember her face, for we three were among the Warlord’s guard that pass, and we all refused his order to murder her. Even so her death runs clutching after us. And after me most of all, for as we bound her wrists, I stole a gold ring off her finger. I never told this to you or Aln, but it has burned in my heart ever since. The ring I got rid of long ago. I threw it into a lake in the North, and gave lambs and golden bowls to Goddess with the promise of more. But my offerings were answered here in this accursed city, when I saw her face again. Now fear has taken me, and I do not have the heart to go into battle lest I perish unforgiven, and my bones roll forever on the floor of the Ocean of the Dead.’
‘Brother, this is a new thing you tell me.’ Estar-Brin spoke the words with a slow and heavy tongue. ‘The anger of Goddess is no little thing. But it is an old saying indeed, that no man can flee his doom. It is only by facing it that a man gains honor – only by laughing in its face that he wins glory. Come now with me, and if you die I will give you a voyaging that would do Ara-Karn himself justice. I will give Goddess so many offerings out of our treasures that She will have to guide your spirit to the world beyond.’
‘It may be so, that I will die here in spite of all I do,’ Kan-Brin groaned, miserably, ‘but I only know surely that if I face again the Southron I will die. And brother, I am afraid. Fear, fear – what do you know of it? Go on, and may you triumph! But I would be no help to you.’
The other gazed out onto the square. ‘They are gathering, soon they will be ready,’ he growled. ‘Brother, why snivel like a child? Do you want them all to have the proof that our father was a Gerso? We were called three, but that was a lie. We were one hand, one heart, one face. Can I go up alone now, and face the killer of Aln-Brin-Daln all by myself? Will you drive me to that shame?’
So once more Estar-Brin labored to win his brother’s heart to battle; but Kan-Brin, shaking with shame and fear, still would not go. With a thoughtless curse Estar-Brin left him – nor did either of them think that this would prove their final parting.
Now all along the end of the square, lines were forming, many rows deep between the dark base of the tower and the rock-filled coomb. There were some from almost every tribe there – the strongest, the most wild-hearted, the most famous. Ven-Vin-Van led the greatest Borsos, Sur-Pal and Bel-Kor Jin were there, with many Fire-Walkers, the strongest Durbars, knife-wielding Loit-Garni, Vorisals under the leadership of Roguil Arn; Pes-Thos, Jalijhas, Archeros, Kamskals, men of Gundoen’s tribe, led by Kul-Dro; Fulsars, Bolk-Girns, Sirgols, Erin-Gar-Birn and his finest Roighalnis, Gise-Nathos, men of the Goat-Tribe, Kagions, Gerinthars and Necistrols. Never before, never more, would such men fight together.
In deep rows they stood before the ladders, shifting helms, tightening straps and clasps, sharpening blades, loosening the thongs of arrow-sacks. The ash and stone dust had by now crept into their beards, nails, skin and wounds in spite of all their efforts to clean themselves. They stood discolored like the stones heaped about them. By degrees they ended their preparations. Their voices fell away. They looked up along the narrowing lines of the ladders to the dark cliff of the parapet. They were violently still.
Gigantic, primordial, they leaned against the sky and cast their eyes inward to the center, to the grimmest of them, Estar-Brin the Pes-Thos.
High above them, Erion Sedeg rested his hands on the bull’s-hides and looked upon the defenders somewhat below him. Erion Sedeg could see into their eyes, which dimmed with doubt and fear.
Erion Sedeg reached into a barrel that was by him. He drew an arrow. He strung his bow with care, as if the act were a pious observance. He drew the arrow to his ear. He cast his eyes over the men there, men with no armor who held their shields improperly. The death-bird flashed through the air and buried itself in a man’s belly – he screamed as he fell and died. Instantly the shields clashed together.
Erion Sedeg smiled. That scream had been more pleasing to his ears than the chanting that had gone before.
‘O my master,’ he whispered, ‘hear that, and know that I consecrate every death to you.’
He plucked another arrow out of the barrel. The barb plunged into a bare shoulder. His third shot tore off one guardsman’s ears. His fourth burst through a stout man’s throat. The defenders were surging about now, despite all the calls and curses of their commanders. Behind Erion Sedeg his men strung bows and set to work. Some used arrows wrapped with oil-soaked rags. Passing the arrows through the flames of the torches set along the sides of the platform, the bowmen sent them burning into the thick of the defenders.
The guardsmen and Tarendahardilites fell underneath that rain of fiery iron. The bitter smoke clouded their eyes. Fear like sickness caught them at the belly. They did not dare raise their heads above the rims of their shields. On their knees, they listened to the clatter of the iron rain. They shrank back a pace or two behind the parapet; the line of the shields was ragged; the lances lay useless on the stones.
Suddenly the barbarians were over the parapet and on the battlements. The rain of arrows went on, passing over the heads of the barbarians to afflict the rearmost guardsmen. Fifty shafts grew out of the poles of the Beak, setting it on fire. The barbarians swept the shield-wall back. The guardsmen drove desperately against the onrushing black forms, but their efforts were confused and did little. Shattering weapons and breaking shields thundered about them. The manfall was the heaviest yet in the battle, and on both sides. There were no voices raised save for grunts, screams, or groans. There was no order. Only madness, like a sea.
In the dark confusion Ampeánor was pushed back and lost in the midst of the defenders. Then he rose up and drove through the crowds. For a while he was as voiceless and unconscious as the rest. Then he found his voice.
‘For Rukor!’ he cried. ‘Rukornai! Rukornai!’
Desperately Ampeánor tried to peer through the press of men, the waving arms, smoke and flames, to make out what was going on. At the center the grim man with the long sword raged and fought like a maddened beast; to the south the tall barbarian matched him stroke for stroke, backed by Vorisals like him and seven Fire-Walkers, men terrible and unwoundable. Only beneath the southern lance-tower did the defenders stand firm, where Berowne and Ullerath fought like brothers against Sur-Pal and Bel-Kor Jin.
The press of men forced Ampeánor back; the tides of blood and steel set his place. Below the southern lance-tower, the guardsmen had all but despaired. At any moment they might be routed or slaughtered. Already they had given back to the door of the lance-tower, midway on the third step – less than three paces more, and they would be fighting on the steps down to the yard. If the barbarians gained the lance-tower door, they might descend into the Citadel grounds, storming the inner gates from within.
Ampeánor made his way back out of the press. He forgot the grim man with the long sword. He drove men out of his way, and reached the door of the southern lance-tower.
There the sword-blows rang like broken bells the high carven walls. Corpses littered the steps, making the footing treacherous. A knot of men followed at the lord of Rukor’s heels. Ampeánor and his men drove the barbarians back, adding to the heaps of the dead. Like stalks of grain in the mowing-time, when the farmer takes his bright sharp scythe in his weathered hands and sets to flailing in the easy rhythm the long years have taught him, and the stiff stalks go down in windrows – so the men fell there, heavily on both sides. In the end the corpses mounted waist-high, defining paths as obscure and tortuous as those of a Vapio pleasure-thicket. And Ampeánor alone of the defenders there was left alive, bent over, leaning gasping on his shield, sweat streaming over his face, his back against the door.
Before him, the barbarians hung back behind the sheltering bodies of the dead.
Only one moved forward: the huge man with the heavy battle-axe. Delight shone in his eyes. He stopped before the Rukorian, on the other side of a pile of bodies, and smiled.
‘So this is how He will have it,’ the giant said in the tongue of the far North. ‘Like this it is better.’ He spoke not boastfully, but loudly enough so that his onlookers could hear. ‘Only when the smaller trees have been lopped down do the tall ones on the hills stand out in their true glory.’
‘Barbarian,’ growled Ampeánor in that same coarse tongue, ‘have you lost all sense? These were good men who lie here, and their passing is a sadness and a waste.’
‘That is nothing,’ the giant said. ‘Their deaths add to our honor. Do not speak false, pious words, Southron – you feel it as I do. I see in your face how your hearts wants to laugh for the delight of victory and the deaths of your enemies by your hands: so laugh, and then we fight! By your death I will win my greatest victory. I will have my men bear your armor and sword around the camp three times to proclaim my strength. Who knows? I may even gain the Warlordship in my age! Listen if you do not already know it, and learn that I am Roguil Arn the Axe-Bearer, chief and champion of the Vorisals, a tribe that gives place to none other!’
‘Enough talk.’ Ampeánor was weary. He was tired of both the smell of death and the big man’s boasting. He raised his sword. The blue Raamba steel did not even have a bite broken from its long edge, after all the lives it had taken. ‘Come fight then, if you dare.’
Roguil Arn threw back his head laughing. ‘Southron, you speak like a tribesman! Why is it we have never heard of you before now? I deem it a shame to kill you, but such is the way of God.’
The Vorisal brought up his axe, as the Rukorian brought up shield and sword.
Then they fell upon each other.
Like rains in the hill country, like stallions waging war over a lovely, heated mare, like combat-gerlins, the two came together. The shock of it reached into the thick of the battle – even to the center of the barbarians’ lines – even to the ears of Estar-Brin.
The Rukorian fought with the Raamba sword and round shield; the Vorisal with his war-axe and a small targe of bull’s-hide and iron. The massive head of the axe crashed on Ampeánor’s shield, and any other shield would have burst into shivers from that blow. But Ampeánor’s shield held.
The blow of Rukor fell a heartbeat after the barbarian’s – the sword-blade struck off the haft of the axe and was driven down, so that it slashed open the leather at Roguil Arn’s left hip, drawing blood.
Again the barbarian swung his weapon, back-handed. Ampeánor ducked below the sweep of it, rose and slashed upward. But the blow caught on the Vorisal's small shield. Sparks flew from the iron, lighting in the barbarian’s sparse beard. Both men laughed, stepped back, and tore into each other anew.
So it went on, blow for blow.
The barbarians thereabouts fell back in awe of the combat they were witnessing. Any one of those blows would have been the death of lesser men. How long it lasted, no one there could say, but it seemed that surely hours passed while the two champions stood and hewed at each other. Now the Vorisal raised his axe over his head and struck down furiously, grunting, leaning into the blow – now the Rukorian twisted, and his swirling sword-blow flashed like smoke before Roguil Arn’s face. And at last, in the end, the blue blade met the down-rushing handle of the axe, and the wood was shattered. The huge axe-head broke off the handle and flew on twisting, to slam flatways with hideous force against the Rukorian’s naked shoulder.
Roguil Arn grunted, and looked bemusedly at the stump of his beloved weapon. The metal-studded wood had been sheared clean through. He blushed. It was as if he had been found naked among a strange tribe’s women.
Ampeánor was in a worse state.
There was no longer any feeling in his shield-arm. It hung limply at his side, and he could not raise it. The shoulder, where it was bared above the shield-rim and below the yoke of the armor, was black as a beetle. Purple blood oozed from it. The pain was greater beneath the armor, where the bones met. They were shattered, perhaps, or else the bone had been torn out of its socket. Black rings spun before his vision; what little he saw wheeled in pairs before him, and shapes and colors ran like rainwater on a wall.
His head was bowed, he could not lift it. He looked down. He saw twin swords there, faintly. He believed that he might fall. A distant, jarring, roaring rang in his ears. He did not even know that it was the sound of Roguil Arn’s laughter.
‘O God, I give you thanks!’ the young chief cried to the sky. ‘Truly, here is an enemy to behold! He has bereft me of my axe, and yet will not press on! Southron, to you also I give thanks. This was the best fight I was ever in. I look forward to our next! We will meet again, we two!’
So saying, Roguil Arn drew back, and with him went all the Vorisals who were there. They descended the rope ladders, went in a mass through all the crowds in the square, and drank water mixed with wine in the cool shelter. Their burning bodies were sponged clean of muck and blood; Roguil Arn waved the broken haft over his head, and his followers regaled the onlookers with the tales of that combat.
On the third step before the lance-tower door, Ampeánor swayed a little on his feet. The sweat ran stinging in his eyes. He was gasping. His fury had gone. Now he knew pain. Far away from him the battle raged on, and the guardsmen were driven backward into one another. Dire cries were raised between the lance-towers, beneath the red lines of the arrows.
Ampeánor shook his head. He felt sick, and his knees were trembling. He might have had some rest behind the lines, maybe. But that too was denied him. He was the sole guardian of the tower door. Slowly he raised his head, blinking away the tears.
A man stood before him, a barbarian.
Ampeánor recognized the grim warrior of the long sword.
Estar-Brin nodded. ‘So you are back,’ he said. His voice was thick; he might have been drinking. ‘Good.’ He lifted the great iron sword two-handed, and swept it up behind his head.
Only at the last moment was Ampeánor aware of the danger. Then he turned, bringing up the shield – so little, but enough. The staff-like blade struck off the metal, showering sparks. The force drove Ampeánor to one knee. His mouth was open and loose with pain, and dark tears sprang from his eyes like blood. Perhaps he cried out, a groaning prayer to the Mother Goddess; it went unheard in the clangor of the blow.
Again Estar-Brin drew back the blade. He swung it in a wide, easy loop into the sky, over his head and down. The sword smashed into the metal and slashed the Rukorian’s leg above the knee. Estar-Brin grunted, and gathered back the blade. He struck again. And again. Hatefully he did it, not to slay but to smash, not to eliminate but to destroy. At any time the Pes-Thos chief might have aimed his blows differently and killed. Instead he went on pounding on the crumpling shield.
The Charan of Rukor huddled helpless beneath those blows. Long since then had he lost the Raamba sword. He could not even move out of the way. The blows burst over him, echoing off the walls. Beyond the flawed circle of the shield he could see the barbarian draw back his arms and drive them forward again, bending his body into the blows. So might a man have done with a ponderous hammer, driving tent stakes into unyielding soil. Behind him the flaming arrows flew in long flat curves over the battle, orange and red against the blue-black of the southern lance-tower.
Then the shield split open on Ampeánor’s arm, even to the leather bands, and the pieces flew to either side. The force drove Ampeánor down so that he half lay on the bloodied stone. Around him the piles of corpses hid the battle. Awkwardly he leaned upon his left arm. That arm was all blue and gray. A long gash opened there. Only the locking of the bones of the elbow supported the weight of the upper body.
Estar-Brin paused. Drawing off his helmet, he wiped the sweat from his brow. He leaned against his sword then, and exulted in his triumph over his fallen foe, the killer of his brother:
‘So now at last I have you and you cannot run from me, Southron. No, there is no escaping for you now! I wish I could drag you even as you are before the deathbed of Aln-Brin-Daln and slay you at his feet. Then we would be sure to see his face smile in death. Then Kan-Brin would know there are no such things as portents. So I delight in your death, for it grants me not only vengeance for one brother’s life but the way to return courage to the heart of the other as well! He will see your severed head at least, stuck over the feet of Aln-Brin-Daln: and he will know that all he foresaw and feared was nothing but a lie.’
So Estar-Brin of the Pes-Thos vaunted his victory and lifted his sword for the death-blow; but his words were empty and even then death hung over him like a tent-roof, inescapable. Even as the sword was at its highest, an arrow shot by one of Erion Sedeg’s bowmen strayed and bit burning into Estar-Brin’s arm. The Pes-Tho swore, distracted; but Ampeánor with his last strength rose up and drove his war-knife to the hilt into the barbarian’s belly. Estar-Brin twisted away, and the blade tore free from his middle.
The High Charan staggered to his feet, ready to duck and lunge as he had learned as a boy, when a master seaman of the Rukorian Isles taught him the arts of knife-fighting. But the barbarian ignored his foe. Silently, holding his hands in vain over the opening in him, Estar-Brin left the fighting. At the parapet he encountered Sin-Galk and Tarestir Aln, two tribesmen of his. These he stopped and said,
‘I die. Dark God has forgotten me and all the blood-offerings I gave Him. Three were we, one hand, one heart, and one face; and when we fought together none could beat us. Now we are only one, and he I think will not survive me, if he prove a man. But I have done all that a man might ask of me, and sought vengeance for my brother. See that my body is brought to our shelter, for Estar-Brin will take passage in the barge of Aln-Brin-Daln, and together we will seek the World Beyond. As for my brother Kan-Brin, tell this to him from me: that a barge that holds three is not a thing unheard-of.’
So he died calmly, who had lived so fiercely, bastard-born and despised by the others of the tribes. He died unavenged and unavenging, but he knew neither hatred nor regret for the battle around him or for the man who had slain two brothers and unmanned the third. Estar-Brin thought only of his brothers, and died gladdened at heart that he should not leave the world parted from them, alone, but go in the company of one at least.
Sin-Galk and Tarestir Aln did all he had bid them, but not for all their strength could they unbend the dead fingers clutching the handle of the famous sword. And even when he heard his brother’s dying words and knew that all the camp would know them also, Kan-Brin shook his head and clasped his hands and would not go into battle.
And still the barbarians of the last army swarmed over the parapet and flung themselves against the dwindling defenders. Ampeánor had regained his sword and gotten another shield off one of the corpses.
He fell back into the lance-tower and bolted the door behind him.
‘Now,’ he said, only dimly aware that there was no one there to hear him, ‘you will pass this way only after I am dead.’
§
ONCE MORE Gundoen awoke. Slowly he wrung the sleep from his head. In the shelter of the dark cloak, he might have been some big, misshapen bear, rousing itself from its long winter bed. Resting on the rags the huge bandaged paws swelled and shrank. He did not know where he was; he had forgotten this place from his last waking and thought he was back in the little stone cell beneath the ground.
‘If I die, my son, do not forsake Hertha-Toll. Even as I am your father now, so too is she your mother. She was a good wife to me, little complaining. Never did she mistreat my concubines except when they deserved it. You will see to her needs, lord?’
‘Why should I have to, when you will be sitting beside her into your great age? But yes, Gundoen: I will see to her. You have the word of Ara-Karn on that.’
It seemed he had seen his son when he had first awakened here. Or had that been a dream? Just now, Gundoen had been dreaming of Hertha-Toll. That was what reminded him of the words. But what had the dream been like? He could not remember.
It was then that a woman of the Tarendahardilites, who was helping carry in the dead, halted before the awakened man’s pallet. Busy with all the newly-dead guardsmen, they had forgotten this one that Father Ennius had borne in. Now she was surprised to see that the dead man lived. But when she beheld that face uplifted below her, then words choked in her throat. She moved back, her face pale as the clouds of High Summer. Not even all the blood and slaughter of that red tent had readied her for what she had just then beheld.
Gundoen looked about him rather stupidly.
He had not seen the young Tarendahardilite, but it did seem to him that a woman stood before him. She was an old woman, leaning on a staff, and dressed in ragged robes adorned only by the leaves of autumn.
It seemed to Gundoen that Melkarth stood before him.
The old seeress regarded the chieftain searchingly. Her old eyes were dark with tears.
‘Gundoen Strong-In-Girth, I bring you a message from your wife. Hertha-Toll says, your hour has come. Rise up, go forth and kill your enemies.’
She let the tip of her staff touch thrice his twisted knee. Straightway a burning coursed through his body, as from spiced hot ale after a long hunt in wet snow. The pain waned, strength came back.
The chief opened his mouth as though to speak. But he saw only the back of the old woman as she walked away. Had she been afraid to say it? But Gundoen was not afraid to die.
From beneath the cloak he took up a large clay wine-jug, the gift of Ara-Karn. ‘Drink no other drink, but only this wine,’ the black-eyed man had said. There must be strong healing here, then. Gundoen unstopped the jug and drank, letting the juice run over his beard and chest. It was good biting wine, of the sort that came from the first southern city they had conquered, when the army emerged from the Taril.
Gundoen belched. He felt almost a man again. A light gleamed in his good eye. Again he searched among the rags of the pallet, and drew forth the second gift of his son. It was a sword, but not a small sword such as they used here in the South. This was a heavy sword of war from the far North. Gundoen laid it across his knees, and ran one of the bandaged paws along its clean edge: the layers of bandages opened in a sharp cut. A well-made blade, hardly used.
‘It was your birthing gift to me. Do you not remember? This is that blade you had forged upon the hilt of Tont-Ornoth, whose sword tasted the blood of Elna. I have kept it for you. It has scarcely been bloodied. I give it back to you. You are its rightful owner, chieftain.’
Gundoen let his two hands close about the massive hilt. All the chieftains of his tribe had kept this hilt, the treasured relic of their tribe’s founder. Now it had been forged anew to blade. Now it was whole again. Through all the generations the hilt had bided, waiting for this hour and for Gundoen.
And then Gundoen underwent the greatest trial of his life. He tried to stand up.
The pain burst upon his limbs and he knew again his mortality, and fell back gasping. Four times he essayed it, and only on the fifth succeeded. Only the words of his wife drew him on. Then he knew that it had been she who had somehow saved his life from the torments. She had saved him so that he might now hold this sword and die fighting.
Never had anyone granted him so fine a gift: he loved her all the more for it. ‘Thank you, Hertha-Toll. Thank you.’
He stood swaying as though he might fall. The cloak remained upon him, stuck fast to the wounds. Drawing the cloak about him, he trudged past the pallets of the dead.
He came out close by the inner gates. There a crowd of Tarendahardilites had gathered, many of them children. Gundoen pushed past them. The high inner gates were shut, but next to them a small brass door was open.
This is like Gerso, Gundoen thought, and went through. He entered the yard between the gates, and approached the shadow of the great battle raging above.
It was there that Kuln-Holn saw him.
