The Ancient Enemy (33 page)

Thru got to his knees and then, a little slowly, to his feet. His shoulder ached. He was still sucking for air, but there was no time. The fight came his way again. He warded off a spear with his broken shield and the spearhead flashed just over his shoulder. He struck at the spearsman and then both he and his opponent were knocked over by a brilby tumbling back from the giant's mace.

Thru rolled free onto his back. A huge foot stamped down and pinned his shield to the ground. The giant swung the mace, Thru dodged and thrust his sword up into the monstrous thigh beside the knee. The mace smashed into the ground beside Thru's head as the giant screamed.

Then Hob brought his sword down on the giant's helm. There was a flash of sparks, and the huge brute toppled to the ground right beside Thru.

"Many thanks, friend!" he said to the brilby as he got back on his feet. He noticed that he was trembling. Death had never before seemed quite so close.

The fight was over. Most of the men were down, dead, wounded, or simply too weak to go on. A few were running away, arrows darting among them.

The mots poured forward in pursuit.

"Prisoners!" shouted Thru. "Remember to take prisoners."

They coursed through the buildings. A few small groups of men tried to resist. None would surrender. Most had to be cut down or knocked unconscious.

In the end only a dozen or so were saved. The rest were slain, and their bodies piled up in the street. Many more bodies were dragged out from the buildings. When it was done more than a hundred dead men were counted, thirty killed in the fight.

Thru ordered a mass grave dug and then set about accounting for his own forces. There were eighteen dead mots, a couple of brilbies. Even men weakened by the fever had taken a deadly toll.

The mots' bodies were to be ferried to Sonf, then buried with proper honors.

"What of the buildings?"

"We will tear them down," Thru said.

Simona had plenty of time on the gallery. The squalls and rain had driven the other women inside. She preferred it out there, in the wind and under the sun, and she could stay out there all the time if she so wished. Juguba Heuze's death had thrown the women's deck hierarchy into chaos. When it re-formed, it included Simona in a high position, because Filek Biswas had been made Surgeon General of the Fleet.

The death of the top admirals and the failure of Nebbeggebben to regain his health had created a leadership vacuum at the top. Admiral Heuze had vaulted into the leadership position.

Since they'd just consigned a third of their number to the deeps, Admiral Heuze had decided that Filek was the best thing the fleet could have as surgeon general. It was a great challenge, and he'd leaped at the chance to produce a revolution in medical practices. Admiral Heuze had backed him all the way in a cleanliness crusade.

From above her position on the stern of the great ship there came the thudding and wailing of the priests. In a frenzy they begged forgiveness from Orbazt Subuus. Their blood ran to the deck under the scourging. The priests were worried. They had thrown so many bodies into the sea that doubts about the power of the Great God had become widespread. Heresy was steadily growing among the discontented survivors. They whispered of the older gods, like the sweet Goddess Canilass, or the God of the Waters, Oonch. Louder and louder did the red tops wail, but still the seditious questions were asked. If Orbazt Subuus was really the Great God, then why did his people suffer from this terrible plague? Why were they dying in such numbers?

Simona had grown tired of the bloodthirsty Great God, too. For years she'd been ambivalent about Him. When she was in the temple in the midst of the shattering emotionalism of His rites, she believed. He was Great and Just and sat in judgment on sinful man and even more sinful woman. She threw herself down before His totem and begged for forgiveness. At other times, as she read the forbidden history books and the even more forbidden philosophers, she found the whole thing ridiculous. An all-powerful God who saw everything, everywhere, and whose symbol was the Raven and the eyeless face of Man, plucked while hanging on the punishment wheel? No it was too much, simply too tribal with its bloodthirsty threatening quality. And why did such a God, an all-seeing good God, demand blood sacrifice? The older gods and goddesses had not demanded the deaths of their worshipers.

But He Who Eats needed blood on His altars. That way He felt His people's love. He felt it in the death of their enemies and those they anointed for sacrifice. He was the Wise God, the One who ate His enemies. He Who Eats demanded hundreds of hearts be tossed onto His altars. All unbelievers were to be annihilated. That was the first commandment given by Kadawak, the first emperor of all Shasht. And despite the Reformation undertaken by great Norgeeben, unbelievers were still given only one choice, convert or die.

But what, wondered Simona, if the believers became the unbelievers?

"He bound them and he baked them and he sat right down and ate them..."

Let He Who Eats strike her down dead if He existed. That was her challenge, and so far she was still alive.

Which thought did not exactly cheer her. She stared out, not really seeing the waters stretching to the horizon.

The fleet had moved offshore after the news of the loss of the settlement at New Hope Harbor. While the plague raged, the admiral had taken the ships out into deep water, well away from a lee shore. With their numbers severely reduced, plenty of running room was essential. They sailed up and down just as they had for months before, while the New Land was being spied out and the coastline mapped.

Despite the enormous improvement in her circumstances, Simona's heart was a desolate place. There was no message from Rukkh, and she had no way of sending him one. Filek was obdurate and would not listen to his daughter's plea that he have Rukkh brought to the
Anvil
. Filek would not even find out for her if Rukkh still lived. And while her status had improved aboard ship she was still a "red-mark girl," and no man of her own age and class would want her. But Filek's improved position meant that some older man might take her. Now he expected her to marry for his sake. He'd as much as told her so.

"You have to understand that whether we like it or not we have to found a colony. We have a duty to those who come after us. We must put duty above our personal feelings."

Duty? What he meant was establishing a dynasty. He had a position to protect. His daughter would marry well, even if it meant marrying some old fellow in his dotage. It was an appalling thought. Simona wanted a man her own age, not some filthy ancient with withered flesh and fumbling fingers. She wanted Rukkh, a man she could love. Filek would not listen.

So she would be the young wife of some aged admiral or other. She thought she'd rather die.

Oh, Great Nebbeggebben, you will have to do without me.

The cold blue water beckoned just thirty feet below.

When Melidofulo and Toshak entered the room used to interrogate the men, they found that the prisoners were chained to their chairs. They had to be, for given their freedom they invariably sought to attack their guards and interrogators. They had shown unrestrained viciousness from the very beginning. Some had had to be tied down while their wounds healed to stop them pulling out their stitches to make the blood flow. One even managed to smash his own skull against the wall. He just suddenly stood up, snarled a few words to the other men, and hurled himself into the wall, facefirst with enormous force. He never came to, although he lived for three days in a coma.

The room had once been the royal racquet court, for a game that had long since gone out of favor. Since those days it had been kept in good repair and used occasionally for a party or royal frolic, with silks upon the wall. Now it was down to bare walls, with the light of a dozen lamps. Now it was a room for examining Man.

As the prisoners recovered from their wounds, so they were brought there and weighed and measured and poked and prodded while they hissed angrily and shook in their bonds.

Once they'd been measured, the men were put on comfortable chairs and Melidofulo and his team of mot questioners tried to get them to communicate. They had tried everything. The men would not respond other than through curses and spitting.

Melidofulo had finally resorted to the arcane arts of the Assenzi, soft-spoken spells and hypnotic tricks, but these men were even resistant to that. Those that did fall under the spell spouted some gibberish, but did not respond effectively. After a while they would fall asleep, or just curl up into a fetal ball. None would ever accept that he was speaking to them, attempting to communicate with words to them. Using language, just as they did. Their disdain was clear. You are animals, no more worthy of speech than dogs.

In desperation they tried to communicate by writing on the blackboard, demonstrating the alphabet of the Land, and putting simple words up. They brought in objects that were surely common to all cultures, like shovels and a pail, and wrote their names. But none of this brought any response whatsoever.

Now, weeks after the battle at the Man-Place, they were still without any way of speaking to the men. And it was true that this group of men were an exceptionally uncommunicative lot. They rarely spoke among themselves, and that only sullenly and in few words.

More messenger birds flew north from Dronned to Highnoth. A few days later other birds brought answers from the north.

And so Melidofulo brought Toshak to the room again. Toshak was good at solving problems.

"All they have ever shown me is dumb passivity or furious rage."

Toshak nodded. He had been less than hopeful about this part of the exercise.

"They think of themselves as already dead. It doesn't seem that they accept the concept of surrender."

"They might respond to pain, to extremes of agony," said Melidofulo.

"We considered torturing them. But, well—" Toshak spread his hands.

"Mmmm," said Melidofulo. "You doubted that we could come up with tortures capable of breaking these men. There is a cultishness to their appearance, the patterns of shaving of their heads, the scars on their bodies that tells me they will attempt to sing their death song, even while we slowly burn their feet off."

"It is hard at times to understand how such a culture can succeed so well."

"Because it rewards aggression, craft, and cunning. These men are accustomed to cruelty and pain. They will laugh at us while we try to hurt them."

"They fought like demons, even though they were dying of that fever."

"And we know that it does not kill all of them. I am afraid that you are right, Toshak. They will never give up. There will be war."

Toshak's pulse jumped; Melidofulo had seen the light at last. He understood now that it was a fight to the death and not easily ended.

Melidofulo chewed his lip thoughtfully. War was such a waste of everything that Melidofulo believed in. He had thought it was something they would never see again, as extinct as Man or the dinosaurs of faraway Urth.

"By our count we deduce that the disease may have killed about a third of the men in the Man-Place."

"Well, we know a little more about our enemy, but there are still huge gaps in our understanding. We know there are forty large ships. There are at least twelve smaller vessels, which act as scouts for the main fleet. These small ships are very fast and have beautiful lines. All our fishing boat captains have commented on that.

"Their largest ships may hold as many as a thousand men, certainly they're big enough. There might have originally been thirty thousand in the whole fleet. Now, after the plague, perhaps only twenty thousand. Some of my staff think they might still be able to put an army of nine or ten thousand into the field, supposing that they have one soldier for every other person aboard the fleet. Right now we could not face anything larger than a force of perhaps three thousand."

Melidofulo had tented his slender fingers toward the tip of his long nose. Toshak didn't disagree. He had barely five thousand troops, of which half were still in the very earliest part of their training. They certainly could not match the enemy one on one.

"Let me say one thing here. If we are correct about the social status of the warriors, then we might expect that their armed force will not be that large. For every warrior there will be several noncombatants. We can see that these men are exceptional, they are all tall, powerfully built, all marked with scars and brands. Lesser men probably sail the ships and take care of menial duties."

Toshak nodded.

"So a standing army of perhaps only five thousand would be your conclusion?"

"Something in that region. The men we captured are all hyperrobust specimens, and cannot be the norm."

"How do we know that?"

"Assenzi memory is long. We remember Man."

"Well, five thousand men like these would be too much for our own forces to handle right now. We are still working on very basic drills."

"How long will it take before our army is ready?"

Toshak shook his head slowly.

"We will fight long before we're ready. The men will always be better trained than we. When we fight them, as I am convinced we must, we will lose many mots."

"And the Land will be saddened by their loss forever," said Melidofulo.

"One thing I cannot decide, is what kind of society these men have come from. I wonder if they are outlaws. Perhaps they have suffered some terrible wrong, and that has made them so savage."

"Oh, it is a great empire, Toshak. It can be nothing else. The size of their ships betrays that. They have the resources of a large society behind them."

"Then we have to learn their language and learn everything we can about them. They will come again and again, and we have to know how to defeat them."

"Do we have any idea where they might strike next?" asked the Assenzi.

"No common view has developed. I think they will come to Dronned next. They burned Tamf to terrify us, but then they used the ruins to build those sheds. They want to use our own cities as raw material for theirs."