The Hammer of the Sun (28 page)

"Why, so we do here also!" chuckled Trygkar. "Do you think those towns you've seen are of any size? Then it's clear you've never looked upon Kerys! Kerys itself, Kerys the City, Kerys the Golden; not the largest of the towns we've passed, not Keruelan of the Five Castles in the South can stand compare with Kerys itself. What d'you call cities over sea, then? Ten cottages and a byre?"

Though the raillery was kindly enough, Elof could not help bridling. "There's no denying the breadth and richness of this land, shipmaster; it's a legend among us. But so is Morvan the Great, that the Ice laid waste; and Roc here and I have walked among its ruins. It took us a day to cross its southern quarter alone."

Trygkar raised his brows. "A right noble place then; a fit match for Keruelan, or better, perhaps. But Kerys, now, just its port quarter - but why do I waste my spittle, eh? Only another se'ennight and you shall see for yourselves."

"A week!" exclaimed Roc, when he had digested the unfamiliar expression. "But… we've been six days in this damned boat already!"

Trygkar shrugged. "Such is Kerys, my lad, and I can nor widen nor shrink it to suit you, nor speed my ship; she makes some nine knots already, by the mean, and that's as fast as you'll find of her build."

"No offence to her or you, shipmaster," said Roc, abashed. "I was startled, that's all, the more so because I knew we were sailing swift. Nine knots! But that makes the distance…"

"Some four hundred leagues and fifty," confirmed Trygkar soberly.

Roc whistled. "As long as the old Southlands and Northlands together!"

"And that is only to Kerys the City; the lands extend beyond that perhaps half as much again, perhaps more. Boundaries are uncertain, out in the furthest east where prowl the eaters of men."

"The east?" Elof caught the old shipmaster by the arm. "The Ekwesh, you mean?"

"Aye, who else? That's where the devils first appeared, and then all along the Northlands that were my kinsfolk's once, skulking along the margins of the Ice. A few at first, then small raids and sharp assaults, larger raids that were harder to beat back, a hundred years of harrassing us and dividing us - till a great force worked their way westward and fell upon the Gate, that we never dreamed they'd dare. But east's where they came from; some say their homeland's out that way, far upon far. I wouldn't know; I've no desire to go visiting there, I'll tell you…"

"
But in our land they came from the west
!" blazed Elof, not caring how he overrode the old shipmaster; he was boiling like a lidded cauldron. "Over the sea, across the Ice… but always from the west! Where their homeland was said to be…" he swallowed. "You do see, don't you? How they came to be on the Seas of the Sunrise, without first passing through our land. East one way, west the other…"

"Oh no!" exclaimed Roc hollowly. "In Hel's name, do they hold so much of the world already, those savages, that they can spread two ways around it?"

"They do not," said Elof quietly. "But the Ice… yes, it does. And whither it can send them, they will go.
A great change is coming
, she said,
and it totters in the balance
... Powers!"

"Powers indeed!" said Roc darkly. "This is their fight, not ours; what's there for such as we to do against the likes of… that force? Might as well fight one of these fire-mountains! Halfway around the world… The more I learn of it, the lesser I feel."

Elof shook his head. "In yourself, perhaps; who wouldn't? But as a folk, as a kindred, no, Roc, we're not small. Remember this; where there's been unity and order, free men with free minds, there the Ice has made little headway. It fears the strengths that makes us human! And if Morvanhal can resist it, if this vast realm of Kerys can only stay both ordered and free -"

"Aye," said Trygkar quietly. "If. If, indeed." They looked around at him, but his taciturn mask had dropped like a gate of blank iron. The only answer he would give to their question was "You'll see, lads; it's not for the likes of me to say. You'll see it, soon enough."

The week that followed was all days of hot sun and cool wind, brisk but easy sailing that sent the cog skipping ponderously along the riverine coast, like an old horse released into green fields and acting the colt once again. Green fields indeed carpeted the banks, pastureland whose well-tended richness contrasted with the empty lands westward; towns, however, were few. It seemed rather to be divided up as were the lands around Kerbryhaine, into a few great farming estates whose manor-houses dominated the landscape. One such they approached quite closely, an ancient-looking and nobly proportioned building of age-darkened stone perched atop a hill-spur overlooking the river; below it at the bank a fortified tower, squat and brutally ugly, huddled over a well-sheltered landing stage. But as the cog drew nearer the house took on a very strange aspect, and they soon saw why; it was no more than a facade, a ruin gutted and stripped from the back, hardly higher than the ground.

"Aye, it's a crying shame," agreed Roc. "A grand-looking place, yet it's that toad of a tower they've chosen to rebuild first!" Even as he spoke the cog had drawn close enough to the tower to make out the high scaffolding lashed together out of stripped wooden poles, writhing with the shapes of men like ants in a tree. But Elof peered at the construction for a moment, and shook his head grimly.

"Rebuild be damned!" He pointed at the wall as they glided past. "Build! Look at that wall; see now where the chequerboard pattern comes from? Those stones, they've been well weathered, but not where they lie now!"

"You mean…" Roc brushed back his red hair with both hands. "Hella's tits, d'you mean they're tearing down a good sound hall to build that overgrown jakes? They must be running daft!"

"Or fearful."

"Daft, I still say. If they're so afraid why don't they get together with a neighbour or two and build a proper-sized castle? One they might just be able to defend properly?"

Elof grimaced. "Well, even in our lands not everyone cares overmuch for neighbours. And here it seems they don't trust them -"

"Wait you, though!" said Roc sharply. "We've seen that pattern on half the walls along the river - can't all…"

"Not all," mused Elof, "but many, I think; casualties of a time when men need strength more than comfort or fair craft. And too long a time to blame on the Ekwesh, I fear."

"Aye. There's trouble in this land, right enough. Look where the despoilers come now!" A long dray, drawn by a team of many horses, was labouring down a road that wound from hill to shore; it flexed strangely as it rode, for it was made of many sections, each with its own wheels. Even at this distance there was no mistaking the stone it bore. As it arrived at the foot of the tower a gaggle of men slouched out and scrambled up to begin unloading. Elof could not see what happened next, but there was a sudden confused swirl at the side of the dray, and a rumbling crash drifted out over the water. Its load was indeed stone; but a good half of it lay in a heap to one side, amid a rising fountain of dust. Evidently its unloaders had been careless. Men were sprawled among the mess, or groggily picking themselves up; others strove to calm the startled horses. More men came running; but not to help. Roc leaned over the rail and cursed aloud at the sight; Elof was too shocked. The fallen were being kicked and pummeled to their feet, cowering under a rain of blows to head or body from what might have been cudgels or short whips; even some of the horse-holders were being dragged away and thrashed till they sprawled upon the ground. Then the cog passed beyond the curve of the tower, and the scene was hidden from them.

Roc glared at Elof, his face turned so white with anger that the freckles blazed beneath his tan. "Well," he said with dangerous evenness, "What d'you make of that, then?"

Elof felt the muscles of his own face tighten. "Much as you, I guess. Do you say it."

Roc growled. "Those farm-workers, and now these. Maybe they're free folk swinking for pence, ready to swallow a blow; but I wonder. Hel's gape, but I wonder! You never had a chance to know Kerbryhaine, ere the Ekwesh changed all, and then Kermorvan. But there were many reckoned it was heading down a bad road, with no strong lord to rein in all the little lordlings on their own land. Hiremen and tenant being bound to the land, to their masters, ever more closely till they were free men no more."

Elof whistled softly between his teeth. "And of all our lands Kerbryhaine was ever said to be the most like Kerys…"

"Aye. So perhaps what was happening there had already happened here, grown from the same roots maybe." He snorted. "Villeinage, serfdom, whatever they chose to call it; common thralldom's my name for it, and this place stinks of it!"

Elof glanced around, and nudged Roc; he had almost felt the eyes on the back of his neck. There in the sterncastle stood the sergeant, apparently exchanging a few words with Trygkar; but his gaze was unwavering in their direction. "Maybe. Maybe. But best we say no more of this for the moment. Mouth shut -"

"And eyes open!" grunted Roc. "As you say, Mastersmith! I'm not sure I can find fit words, anyway!"

But thenceforth there were no more alarms, few excitements of any kind; the mantlets were never again raised, and no more towns avoided. The sailing was calm, and save for the fire-mountains the sergeant had promised, they saw no more such disturbing sights upon the shore. In fact there were few excitements of any kind; they saw little that was new, and what there was, such as a lava-stream that flowed right down into the waters and turned them to steam, they could not stop to explore. Roc sought to make the best of his enforced idleness, but Elof paced like a wild beast caged; however much rest the delay gave his body, he could find none in his heart. The appearance of any town, however small, was a welcome distraction; they would lean over the rail and strain their eyes to make out more of this enigmatic land. But they learned little, till the first time they passed a town by night; it struck Elof then how few lights showed, given its extent. "Just like Morvannec when the Ekwesh held it!" he remarked to Roc.

"You're not ruddy well suggesting -"

"No, no, not this deep within the land. But Morvannec had already been struck by plague, and lost two third parts of its folk. Here also it seems there are fewer folk than there should be - than there were, for they would hardly build whole streets of houses they do not need. Empty land at the borders, empty towns in the heartland…"

Roc grew thoughtful. "Not nice. But there's other things than plague could cut down a folk thus. War, for example. Not necessarily with outsiders. Remember that burned-out village?"

Elof nodded. "Though we've seen no more. It could simply be that Kerys the City has drawn too many folk, leaving the rest bereft and dwindling, as Morvan did to Morvannec."

"Mmnh. Which'd go some way to explaining border banditry; nobody who counts cares much about it, 'cause they all live weeks away. Could be, could be. But we'll just have to wait and see, won't we? Not long now!"

"No!" said Elof explosively. "Not long! And then…"

"What then? You've something in mind?"

Elof tapped the rail with his clenched fist, gently; but
it
was the gentleness of iron restraint. "I don't know…I can't be sure. So much depends on what they're prepared to do - and why they haven't already done it… If I only knew more about this land!" He gazed in anguish into the night, as if seeking upon the horizon some distant glimmer of the lights of Kerys itself.

But he was given no such forewarning. Six nights later they took to their tent, expecting they might see the city in the distance the next day. But around dawn they were both sharply awakened by a clamour of voices and the creak and rumble of tackle, unusually loud; when they scrambled out into the cool air they found the cog hove-to in the midst of a flock of other sails. These were of many types and colours, but they spared them scarcely a glance, for above them towered a vast squaresail, golden in the grey dimness, bellied out by the wind. Yet no such wind blew, then or ever, for the sail was of stone, and rode not upon a mast, but two slanted pillars of like stone that flanked a vast portcullis gate of dark metal, meshed very close; the waves of the Yskianas slapped about its bars and boomed hollowly in the arch behind. A great Seagate it was, in a wall of the same golden stone higher than the highest of the masts now gathered before it.

The breeze drew cold fingers across their skin, but they stayed; for even as they watched a light golden as the stone climbed up the cloudy sky, and golden also came the cry of distant trumpets, and a call in answer from the wall. Trygkar bellowed to his crew, and other shouts echoed him from neighbouring ships as the ponderous clank of a ratchet winch echoed out of the arch, and the gate began to lift. Water poured from clumps of weed draped over the bars, but the full sheen of the metal beneath was untarnished. Elof nodded quietly to himself; there was fine smithcraft in that gate, such as all the tales said flourished in this land. A sudden excitement arose in him beneath all his other concerns, taking fire at the thought of all the rich smith-lore he might find here, and some of the discoveries he might himself unfold. He felt a sudden surge in the deck underfoot, heard the rigging creak overhead as the sails were angled to catch the wind once again, and forgot even that in his eagerness to see beyond the gate. All the other ships were making ready, beamy merchantmen of all shapes and sizes laden with merchandise, other cogs crowded with armed men and what seemed to be military stores, and a host of barges and lighters of all sizes. In between them slid long lean war galleys, some ornate and blazing with colour, even with ornate canopies on their decks. But the cog, flying the royal pennon, was suffering no dispute over first entrance to the gate; the prow dipped and rose gently as it got under way. Elof and Roc grinned at each other like excited boys, and as one they made a run for the mast shrouds and went swarming up the laddered rigging to the masthead. Most ships had only a spar there to sit on, and possibly a loop for a rope or one's belt; but being a ship of war the cog had shielded platforms for archers, and the travellers could stand in relative ease to take their first sight of the City at the Heart of the World.