Empire of the East (3 page)

“Have you there—” Rolf's voice choked, so he was forced to start over, but then the words came out strong. “Have you there in your pack anything that can be used to track men down and kill them?”

On hearing this question the peddler only looked more gloomy than ever, and at first gave no answer. As he walked he kept turning his head to shoot glances of apparent concern at Rolf.

“Killing and more killing,” the peddler said at last, shaking his head in disgust. “No, no, I carry no such things in my pack. No—but today is not your day for being lectured. No, no, how can I talk to you now?”

They came to a branch in the road, where the right-hand fork led to the clearing where Rolf's home had been. Rolf stopped suddenly. “I must go back,” he said with an effort. “I must see to it that my parents are buried.”

Wordlessly, Mewick went with him. Nothing had changed in the clearing except for the lengthening of the shadows. What had to be done did not take the two of them long, digging with shovel and hoe in the soft earth of what had been the garden. When the two graves had been filled and mounded over, Rolf gestured at the pack which Mewick had laid aside, and asked, “Have you anything there that…? I would put some spell of protection on the graves. I could pay you for it later. Sometime.”

Frowning bitterly, Mewick shook his head. “No. No matter what I said before, I have nothing here that is worth the giving. Except some food,” he added, brightening just slightly. “And that is for the living, not the dead. Could you eat now?”

Rolf could not. He looked around the clearing, for the last time, as he thought. Lisa had not answered to his renewed calling of her name.

Mewick was slowly getting into the harness of his pack again, seemingly hesitant about just what to say or do next. “Then walk with me,” he offered at last. “Tonight I think I know a place to stay. Not many kilometers. A good place to rest.”

The sun would soon be setting. “What place?” Rolf asked, though he did not feel any real concern for where he was going to spend the night.

Mewick stood considering the lay of the land, as if he could see for a distance through the woods. He looked to the south and asked a couple of questions about the roads that skirted the swamps in that direction. “It will be shorter, I think, if we do not go around by road,” he said at last.

Rolf had no will now to debate or even to think. Mewick had helped him. Through Mewick he was maintaining some hold on life and reason, and he would go along with Mewick. Rolf said, “Yes, we can go cross-country if you like, and come out on the road near the swamp.”

True to this prediction, they emerged from the scrub forest to strike the south-going coastal road, just as the sun was redly vanishing behind a low cloudbank on the sea-horizon. From the point where they struck the road it ran almost perfectly straight south for about a kilometer over the level land ahead of them, and then curved inland to the left to avoid the beginning of the swamps.

The woods having been left behind, there were open fields stretching on either side of the road, all unplowed and untended. In two places Rolf saw houses standing deserted and half-ruined in their abandoned gardens. He kept walking on beside Mewick, feeling himself beyond tiredness, feeling floating and unreal. He could generate no surprise when Mewick stopped in the road and turned to him, slipping the pack from his own back and holding it out to Rolf.

“Here, you carry for a little while, hey? Not heavy. You be an apprentice magic-salesman. Just for now, hey?”

“All right.” Indifferently he took the pack and slipped it on. Gee-gaws and trash, his father had said, speaking of the things that the smooth-talking magic vendors peddled from farm to farm.

“What is this, hey?” Mewick asked sharply. He had spotted the outline of the handle of the little kitchen knife, made visible now by the pack straps tautening the shirt around Rolf's waist. Before Rolf could make the effort of answering, Mewick had pulled the knife out, exclaimed in disgust, and pitched it far away into the tall roadside weeds. “No good, no! Very much against the law here in the Broken Country, to carry a weapon concealed.”

“The Castle law.” The words came in a dead voice through a closed jaw.

“Yes. If Castle soldiers see you have a knife—ha!” Apparently anxious to defend his action in throwing away Rolf's property, Mewick seemed to be making an effort to scowl fiercely. But he was not very good at it.

Rolf stood with shoulders slumped, staring blankly ahead of him. “It doesn't matter. What could I do with a little knife? Maybe kill one. I have to find a way to kill many of them. Many.”

“Killing!” Mewick made a disgusted sound. He motioned with his head and they walked on. It was the last of day, just before the beginning of dusk. Mewick mumbled in his throat, as if rehearsing arguments. Like a man forgetful, lost in thought, he lengthened his strides until he was a couple of paces ahead of Rolf.

Rolf heard the trotting hooves at a distance on the road behind him and turned, one hand feeling at his waist for the knife that was no longer there. Three soldiers were approaching at leisurely mounted speed, short black lances pointed up at the deepening clearness of the sky. Rolf's hands moved indecisively to the pack straps; in another moment he might have shucked them from his shoulders and darted from the road in search of cover. But Mewick's hand had taken a solid grip on the back of Rolf's shirt, a grip that held until Rolf relaxed. The barren fields bordering the road here afforded next to no cover anyway, which no doubt explained why just three soldiers came trotting the road so boldly on the verge of twilight.

The troopers all wore uniforms of some black cloth and bronze helmets, and had small round shields of bronze hanging loosely on their saddles. One of them was half-armored as well, wearing greaves and a cuirass of a color that dully approximated that of his helm. He rode the largest steed and was probably, Rolf thought, a sergeant. These days the Castle-men rarely appeared on duty wearing any insignia of rank.

“Where to, peddler?” the sergeant demanded in a grating voice; he reined in his animal as he caught up with Mewick and Rolf. He was a stocky man whose movements were slow and heavy as he got down from the saddle—he seemed to be dismounting only because of a wish to rest and stretch. The two troopers with him sat their mounts one on each side of the road, looking relaxed but calmly alert, their eyes more on the tufts of tall grass around them and the marsh ahead than on the two unarmed walkers they had overtaken. Rolf understood after a moment that the soldiers must be taking him for Mewick's servant or bound boy, since he had been walking two paces behind, carrying the load, and he was poorly dressed.

But that thought and others were only on the surface of Rolf's mind, passing quickly and without reflection. All he could really think of now was that these soldiers might be the ones. These very three.

Mewick had begun to speak at once, bowing before the dismounted sergeant, explaining how he was hiking on his humble but important business through the Broken Lands from north to south, being welcomed by the valiant soldiers everywhere, because they knew he had most potent charms and amulets for sale, at prices most exceedingly reasonable, sir.

The sergeant had planted himself standing in the middle of the road, and was now rotating his head as if to ease the muscles of his neck. “Take a look in that pack,” he ordered, speaking over his shoulder.

One of the troopers swung down from his saddle and approached Rolf, while the other remained mounted, continuing to scan the countryside. The two dismounted had left their lances in boots fixed to their saddles, but each wore a short sword as well.

The soldier who came to Rolf was young himself, he could have had a little sister of his own somewhere in the East. He did not see Rolf at all except as an object, a burden-carrier upon which a pack was hung. Rolf moved his shoulders to let the pack slide free and the soldier took it from him. At some time when the men of the Broken Lands still worked in the ways of peace, someone had filled and strengthened the road at this low place; under his bare feet Rolf could feel fist-sized rocks amid the sand and clay.

The sergeant was standing leaning his dull gaze on Mewick as if trying to bore through him with it; the soldier took the pack there and dumped it on the ground between them, a cascade of gimcrackery on the damp earth. There fell out rings and bracelets and necklaces, tumbling and bouncing with love-charms of anonymous plaited hair, with amulets of carven wood and bone. Most of the objects were scribbled or shallowly inscribed with unreadable markings, meaningless signs meant to impress the credulous.

The sergeant idly stirred the mess with his toe while Mewick, blinking and hand-wringing, waited silently before him.

The young soldier stuck his own foot into the scattered pile and teased out a muddied love-charm, which he then bent to pick up. With his fingers he cleaned mud from the knot of long hair, and then held it up, looking at it thoughtfully. “Why is it,” he asked of no one in particular, “we never catch a young girl out here?”

At that moment the mounted man had his head turned away, looking back over his shoulder. Rolf, without an instant's foreknowledge of what he was going to do, moving in a madness that was like calm, bent down and picked from the roadbed a rock of killing size, and threw it with all his strength at the head of the young dismounted soldier.

The young man was very quick, and managed somehow to twist himself out of the way of the missile. It flashed in a grazing blur past the astonishment of his fishwide eyes and mouth. With a sensation of deep but calm regret at having missed, Rolf bent to pick up another stone. Without time for surprise, he saw from the corner of his eye that the stocky sergeant was slumping folded to the ground, and that Mewick's arm was drawn back, about to hurl a small bright thing at the man who was still mounted.

The young soldier who had dodged Rolf's first rock had drawn his short sword now, and was charging at Rolf. Rolf had another rock ready to throw, and the tactics he employed with it came from children's play-battles with clods of mud. A faked throw first, a motion of the arm to make the adversary duck and doge, then the real throw at the instant of the foe's straightening up. This way Rolf could not get full power behind it, but still the rock stopped the soldier, crunching into the lower part of his face. The soldier paused in his attack for just a moment, standing as if in thought, one hand raised toward his bloodied jaw, the other still holding out his short sword. And in that instant Mewick was on him from the side. A looping kick came in an unlikely-looking horizontal blur to smash into the soldier's unprotected groin; and as he doubled, helmet falling free, Mewick's elbow descended at close range upon his neck, with what seemed the impact of an ax.

Two riderless beasts plunged and reared in the little road, and now there were three of them as the last of the troopers finally dismounted, in a delayed slumping fall, clutching at a short knife-handle fastened redly to his throat. In another moment the three freed animals were galloping back along the road to the northeast, in the direction from which they had come.

Rolf was aware of the sudden strident calling of a reptile in alarm, high overhead. Still he could do nothing but stand watching stupidly while Mewick, his short cloak flying, hopped back and forth across the road, cutting one throat after another with the practiced careful motions of a skillful butcher. The last of the three soldiers to die was the one who had been first to fall, the stocky sergeant; he seemed to have been ripped from groin to navel in the first moment of the fight.

Rolf watched Mewick's knife make its last necessary stroke, be wiped clean on the sergeant's sleeve, and then vanish back into some concealed sheath under Mewick's cloak. His mind beginning to function again, Rolf looked about him, noted how one black lance lay useless and unblooded at the side of the road, then bent at last to pick up the young soldier's short sword.

With this weapon in his grip Rolf followed Mewick at a run, going south along the road, and then off the road on its western side, pounding across a weed-grown fallow field toward the nearest arm of swamp. Twilight was gathering, and the reptile's cries grew fainter.

Even as he and Mewick ran splashing into the first puddles of the bog, Rolf could hear distant hooves and shouts behind them.

 

The Castle-men made no long pursuit—not at night, not into the swamps. Still the fugitives' way had been anything but easy. Now at midnight, wading through hip-deep water, sliding and staggering amid strange phosphorescent growths, more than half asleep on his feet, ready to fall but for the support of Mewick's arm, Rolf became suddenly aware of an enormous winged shape that drifted over him as silent as a dream. It was certainly no reptile but it was far bigger than any bird that he had ever seen. He thought it questioned him with words in a soft hooting sibilance, and that Mewick whispered something in reply. A moment later as the creature flew behind and above him, Rolf could see its rounded and enormous eyes by their reflection of some sharp new little light.

Yes, on the land ahead there was a tiny tongue of fire. And now the ground rose to become solid underfoot. The winged questioner had vanished into the night, but now from near the fire there stepped forward a huge blond man, surely some warrior chieftain, to speak familiarly with Mewick, to look at Rolf and offer him a greeting.

There was a shelter here, a camp. At last Rolf was able to sit down, to let go. A woman's voice was asking him if he wanted food….

Yes, my parents are dead and under the earth—so Rolf told himself in the instant after awakening, before he had so much as opened his eyes to see where he was lying. My mother and father are dead and gone. And my sister—if Lisa is not dead, why she may wish she were.

Having reassured himself that he was capable of coping with these thoughts, Rolf did open his eyes. He found himself looking up through the small chinks in the slant of a lean-to shelter, an arm's reach above his face. The higher side of the low shelter was braced upon some slender living tree trunks, and it seemed to have been made mainly by the weaving together of living branches with their leaves. The interstitial chinks of sky were pure with bright sunlight; the day was well advanced.

He did not remember crawling into this shelter. Maybe someone had put him to bed here, like an infant. But that did not matter. He raised himself upon one elbow, crackling the dead leaves that he had slept on. The movement awakened a dozen aches in his body. His clothing was all rips and mud. His stomach was hollow with hunger.

Lying real and solid on the leaves beside him was the short sword that he had taken yesterday from the dead soldier. He saw again in his mind's eye the thrown stone from his own hand crunching into the soldier's teeth and bringing out blood. He put out a hand and gripped the captured weapon for a moment by the hilt.

Somewhere close by, quite near outside the lean-to, a few voices were murmuring together in a steady businesslike fashion; Rolf could not quite make out the words. In another moment he got up to his hands and knees and, leaving the sword behind him, crawled out of the shelter. He emerged almost within the group of three people who sat talking around a small smokeless fire.

Mewick was one of the group, sitting cross-legged and at ease, his cloak laid aside. Also at the fire was the big blond man that Rolf remembered seeing the night before, and beside this man a woman who resembled him enough to be his sister. When Rolf appeared all three of them fell silent and turned to look at him.

Once outside the lean-to, Rolf got stiffly to his feet. He addressed his first words to Mewick: “I am sorry, for starting that fight yesterday. I could have gotten you killed.”

“Yes,” Mewick nodded. “So. But you had reason, if not excuse. From now on you will be sane, hey?”

“Yes, I will.” Rolf drew in a deep breath. “Will you teach me to fight like you can?”

Mewick had no quick answer, and the question was allowed to drop for the time being.

The woman by the fire wore man's clothes, which was natural enough for camping in the swamp, and her long blond hair was pulled back and bound up into a tight knot.

“So, your name is Rolf,” she said, hitching herself around to face him more fully. “I am Manka. My husband Loford here and I have had something of your story from Mewick.”

The blond man nodded solemnly, and the woman went on: “There's a pool safe to wash in on the other side of the hummock, Rolf. Then come back and have some food, and we'll talk.”

Rolf nodded and turned away, going around the lean-to and the little clump of trees which occupied the center of this island of firm ground, some fifteen or twenty paces across. On the side of the hummock away from the fire a steep short bank dropped down to water which looked deeper and clearer than that of the surrounding swamp.

Only after Rolf had washed, and dressed himself again, and climbed the bank meaning to rejoin the others, did he see a living creature perched high in the biggest of the central trees. Right against the trunk a brownish-gray mass of feathers rested, big as a small man crouching. So dully colored was this form, so motionless, so shapelessly folded upon itself, that Rolf had to look twice to be convinced that it was not a part of the tree. When he thought to look for the giant bird's feet he saw that they were three-toed, bigger than a reptile's and armed with even more formidable talons. He still could not see how, under all the feathers, the bird's head had been folded down out of sight.

He was still turning his own head to look up into the tree as he rejoined the others around the fire.

“Strijeef is our friend,” Loford told Rolf, seeing where Rolf's attention was fixed. “His kind have speech and thought; they call themselves the Silent People. Like our friend Mewick here they have been driven from their own lands. Now they stand here with us, their backs like ours against the sea.”

Manka had ladled stew from a cooking-pot into a gourd for Rolf. After thanking her and starting to eat, he motioned with his head toward the bird and asked, “He sleeps now?”

“His folk sleep all day,” Loford said. “Or at least they hide. Full sunlight is a great strain on their eyes, so by daylight their enemies the reptiles will find and kill them when they can. By night it is the birds' turn to hunt the leatherwings.”

“I'm glad to hear that someone hunts them.” Rolf nodded. “I wondered why they went flapping back to the Castle every day at sunset.” And then he busied himself with the plentiful good food, meanwhile listening to the others' talk.

Mewick was bringing word to the Free Folk in the swamp from other resistance bands who lived and fought along the coast to the north of the Broken Lands. That portion of the seaboard was now also occupied by men and creatures from the East, under the rule of Ekuman's peer, the Satrap Chup. This Chup was supposed to be even now on his way south to marry Ekuman's daughter in the Castle.

And the Satraps of other neighboring lands were said to be coming here, too, for the festivities. Each of them, like Ekuman and Chup, held power in his own region, ruling with the soldiers and under the black banner of the East.

When there was a pause in the talk, Rolf asked, “I've wondered—what is the East? Or who is it? Is there some king over it all?”

“I have heard different things,” said Loford slowly, “about those who are Ekuman's overlords; I know almost nothing about them. We are in an odd corner of the world here. I don't even know much about the higher powers of the West.” Rolf's face must have shown a dozen more questions struggling to be formulated, for Loford smiled at him. “Yes, there is a West, too, and we are part of it, we who are willing to fight for the chance to live like men. The West has been defeated here. But it is not dead. I think Ekuman's masters will be too busy elsewhere to send any great new power to his aid—if we can find a way to bring down the power that he has already.”

There was a little silence. Rolf's heart leaped up at the thought of bringing down Ekuman, but he had seen the sobering reality of the Satrap's strength—the long columns of soldiers on parade, meant to overawe, hundreds mounted and thousands more on foot; and the strengthened walls of the great Castle.

Loford, having finished some private thought of his own, resumed his speech. “If Ekuman can expect no help, neither can we. The people of the Broken Lands will have to break their own chains or continue to wear them.” Shaking his great head sadly, he looked at Mewick. “I had hoped you might bring us word of some free army still in the field in the north. Some prince of the West still surviving there—or at least some government trying to be neutral. That would have been a good encouragement.”

“Prince Duncan of Islandia survives,” said Mewick. “But I think he has no army on the mainland now. Perhaps beyond the sea are other independent states.” His mournful mouth gave a tiny twitch upward at the corners. “
I
am here to help, if that encourages anyone.”

“It does indeed,” Loford said. Then, with a visibly quick change of thought, he threw a narrow-eyed look at Rolf. “Tell me, lad, what do you know of the Elephant?”

Rolf was taken by surprise. “The Elephant? Why, it's some wizard's symbol. I don't know what it means. I have seen it—maybe six times in all.”

“Where and when?”

Rolf thought. “Once, woven into a bit of cloth, that I saw at a magic-show in town. And there is a place up in the Broken Mountains where someone has carved it in the rock—” He went on, enumerating as best he could the times and places where he had glimpsed the strange image of the impossible beast with its prehensile nose and swordlike horns or teeth.

Loford listened with close attention. “Anything else? Any talk you might have heard, even, especially during the last few days?”

Rolf shook his head helplessly. “I spent those days plowing in the fields. Until…”

“Aye, of course.” Loford let out a groaning sigh. “I grasp at straws. But we must try every chance to find the Elephant, before those of the Castle find it.”

Rolf supposed that the big man was talking about another magically important Elephant-image. “Ask help of a wizard?” he suggested.

Loford's jaw dropped. Mewick's eyebrows went up, his face took on an odd expression, and he made odd choking gasps—it took Rolf another moment to realize that Mewick was laughing. Manka's eyes seemed to flash angrily at first, but then she too had to smile.

“Have you ever heard of the Big One, child?” she demanded of Rolf, in a voice half-irritated, half-amused.

A light dawned. Once, long ago, Rolf had been sitting in a market town on Social Night, resting from his play to listen to the talk of men. The amateur wizards of the countryside had been assembled, discussing the feats of the professionals. The Big One from south of the delta would have done such and such a thing easily, someone had said, using the name as a standard of excellence. And the men listening had nodded soberly, their farmer-beards bobbing. Yes, the Big One. The name impressed them all, and for the little boy Rolf it had for a time afterward called up a mental picture of an enormous and powerful being, nodding benignly over farm and hill and marsh.

“No, it is all right,” Loford, now smiling himself, assured Rolf. “You give me good advice. I must keep in mind that I am far from being the greatest wizard in the world.” His smile vanished. “I am just the best one we now have available, since the Old One was taken under the Castle to die.”

Mewick said to him, “You must take over the Old One's leadership in magic. But who is going to lead in other matters, now that he is gone? I speak plainly. You are not—not too practical, always, I think.”

“Yes, yes, I know that I am not.” Loford sounded irritated. “Thomas, perhaps. I hope he will lead. Oh, he's brave enough, and as much set against the Castle as anyone. But to really lead, to seize responsibility, that's something else again.”

The talk went on. Manka ladled out more stew for Rolf, and he went on eating and listening. Always the thoughts and plans of the others came looping back to the mysterious Elephant. Rolf came gradually to understand that they were speaking of something more than an image, that the name meant some thing or creature of the Old World still existing, here somewhere in the Broken Lands. And this creature or thing loomed in the near future with terrible importance for East and West alike. This much—but, maddeningly, no more—could Loford's powers tell him of the Elephant.

Mewick suddenly stopped talking in mid-sentence, his eyes turned skyward, one hand shot out and frozen in a gesture meant to keep the others still. But it was too late, they had been discovered from above, in spite of the trees' shelter.

Overhead there sounded a clangorous shouting of reptiles. A dozen of the flying creatures were diving to the attack, coming in at an angle under the trees, talons spread, long snouts open to bare their teeth.

Rolf dived into the shelter and jumped out again with his sword. Mewick and Manka had already caught up bows and quivers from their small pile of equipment beside the fire; in another instant one of the attackers was flopping on the ground at Rolf's feet, transfixed by an arrow.

The main target of the attack, Rolf saw, was the bird huddled in the tree. The bird roused itself as the reptiles, momentarily baffled by branches, came whirling around it; but it seemed to be blinded, rendered stupid by the light.

Before the scaly ones could work their way in among the branches, their attack was broken up. Arrow after arrow sang at them, hitting more often than not. And Rolf leaped right in among the lower branches, sword thrusting and slashing high and wide. He could not be sure that he wounded any of the reptiles, though he harvested leaves and twigs in plenty. But between sword and arrows the leatherwings were forced to retreat, whirling upward in a shrieking swarm of gray-green rage. Arrows had brought down four of them, and these Rolf now had the satisfaction of finishing with his blade. They screamed words at him as they died, half-comprehensible curses and threats; still the slaughtering meant no more to him than killing beasts.

Having risen out of bow-shot, the surviving reptiles maintained a flying circle directly above the hummock, cawing and screaming mightily.

“When they do that, it means there's soldiers coming,” Manka said. She had already slung her bow on her back and was moving speedily to gather up the rest of the camp's scanty equipment. “Quick, young one, go and uncover the canoe.”

Rolf had seen the dugout, camouflaged by branches, floating against the bank near the pool where he had washed. He ran now to load things into it. Manka called to the bird. Following her voice it descended from the tree, impressive talons groping blindly and clumsily as it walked, feeling for the prow of the canoe. With one surprising extension of its wings it mounted there and perched, muffling itself in folded wings so that it resembled some badly-stuffed figurehead.

Mewick, a bow still in his hands, was trotting anxiously from one side of the hummock to the other, trying to learn from which direction the soldiers were approaching. Loford, standing ankle-deep at the water's edge beside the canoe, kept bending and scooping up massive handfuls of grayish swamp-bottom muck. Each time he muttered over the glob, and then let it dribble back into the water. At last one string of droplets veered from the vertical, went spraying out sideways as if caught by a strong blast of wind.