A Handful Of Men - The Stricken Field Part 18

There was an ugly pause, then Shandie said tactfully, "I can see how the discussion could become quite prolonged." It would take hours, or weeks, and achieve nothing. "What are you suggesting?" Raspnex growled, but there was a sudden glint in his stony eyes.

"I think that a push might work better than a pull, your Omnipotence. I think the man who gatecrashes the Directorate should be Zinixo himself."

Shandie said, "Holy Balance!" and started to smile. The two goblins laughed aloud.

Then so did Raspnex. He guffawed. "Have you been talking to elves, ma'am? I see! Well, this could be more fun than I thought! A lot of them will remember . . . I wonder if I can match his taste in foul language? Insults? Threats? Absolutely forbid them to tell anyone about the new protocol, of course?"

"Make it up as you go along," Inos said. Now the tension was flooding out of her and she was beginning to shake. "Don't forget that rockbrained bit."

The warlock glanced around at the others, the sorcerers. "Any arguments? Good. Then let's try it. Help me with the change."

He flickered and became Zinixo. Inos caught her breath. It had been almost twenty years, and he was no longer a youth, but she would never forget that sneer, that vicious face.

"Well, swine?" He laughed sepulchrally, and she remembered too how incredibly low-pitched his voice was, even for a dwarf.

"You're not dressed for the part," she said shakily. "Gold chains and jewels."

"He doesn't! I mean, I don't."

"But it will impress the Directorate."

"So it will, so it will. There!"

Gems and silksa"now the fake usurper glittered in glory. He couldn't quite match dear Azak, perhaps, but he would certainly rile any dwarf who saw him. Frazkr looked nauseated already.

"Any last advice?" the imposter rumbled. "No? Jarga, why don't you take the mundanes down to the s.h.i.+p right away, just to be on the safe side? Then I'll go and tell those moneygrubbers what I think of them and what I'll do to them if they help me, er, you. Us, that is."

"Don't threaten their profits," Shandie said weakly. "Or you really will scare them off."

"Ha! By the time I'm done with them, they'll be so mad they'll take up a collection!"

As Inos rose, Gath jumped up and banged his head on a beam, which was a remarkable error for him to make. He used a word she hadn't known he knew. Rubbing his yellow mop, he turned around in a crouch and grinned at her. "Well done, Mom! I knew you'd do it!" He reached the door at the same time as the imperor. "Are we really going to the Nintor Moot, sir? I get to come?"

Shandie smiled at Inos, wearing a very appropriate shamefaced expression. "You'll have to ask your mother. She's the strategist."

It was a fair apologya"she bobbed a curtsey.

He bowed her out ahead of him, and they blinked in the daylight and drizzle. The air was about as fresh as it ever was in Gwurkiarg, and welcome after the stuffy cottage.

Shandie glanced behind him and then said quietly, "That was brilliant!"

She grinned at him, still s.h.i.+vering a little with relief. "Oh, it was nothing, Sire! Live with Gath for a while and you begin to think backward and sideways."

"No, that was brilliant, too, but the Zinixo thing! Of course they'd never have listened to us. As you said, the best way to move a dwarf forward would be to try to push him back. How did you ever think of it?"

"Just muddled female thinking," Inos said demurely. She was tempted to explain that she'd been married to a faun for eighteen years, but it would sound disloyal.

Gath emerged behind them, still gabbling with excitement. "Mom? I don't have to fight Vork, do I? I mean, you don't mind that he calls you a fraud, anda"and worse things?"

"What are you . . . who's Vork?"

He pulled a face, showing the broken tooth that always annoyed her so much. "Red-headed idiot. I mean, you told me not to listen when Brak insulted Dad, so you won't mind if I ignore what Vork says about you, will you? You should hear what he calls me . . . Never mind. He spits on my feet!"

Inos clenched her fists. "Who is Vork?"

Jarga had appeared also, ducking under the lintel. "Vork," she said, "is the terror of the four oceans, five years from now, my youngest half brother. He's about your son's age, and if Gath would just break his neck quickly, he would be doing us all a favor."

Signifying nothing: Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

a" Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, v INTERLUDE.

Spring was mellowing into summer in that fateful year of 2999, and people were on the move all over Pandemia.

As a rock falling in a pond raises a wave, the goblins' attack had sent a catastrophe of refugees pouring southward, and all roads led to Hub.

Behind the fugitives, the goblin horde zigzagged across the deserted landscape, burning empty farms and deserted towns. Death Bird and Karax had agreed upon a brilliantly simple strategy. Goblins moved much faster than dwarves, so Death Bird would let the Imperial Army catch his scent and thus lure it northward. Then the goblins would be the hammer and the dwarves the anvil.

Like most brilliant ideas, it did not work. They had not considered the refugees.

Four legions stood across the ways to Hub, the wall of bronze Emthoro had described to the Senate. When the human tide surged down upon them, they moved aside to let it pa.s.s, but it choked every road and lane with people. Cohorts stood as islands in the flood, unable to advance upon the enemy even had they wished to. The army's own supplies could not get through. Soon the wall of bronze itself was in danger of starving. Hub trembled as the torrent of frantic humanity swirled into its streets.

Deprived of rape and torture, the invaders became bored. The imps' apparent inactivity made them apprehensive. Goblins had no tradition of discipline or loyalty to supreme authority; they began grumbling about returning home.

Feeling his control weaken, Death Bird abandoned the agreed plan and struck out southwestward, apparently hoping to outflank the legions. His messengers never reached Karax.

He eventually crossed the Ambly River into Ambel, and continued south. Had he turned east, the capital would have been easy pickings, and his reasons for not doing so were never established. Perhaps he suspected a trap. Perhaps he preferred a rapid advance into virgin country because it fed his men a satisfying supply of victims. The horde raced southward, meeting no resistance. Death Bird was undoubtedly one of the greatest military geniuses ever to torment Pandemia, but he was also a savage, and limited in many respects. Had he known more history, he would never have led his host within range of the worms of Dragon Reach.

General Karax, hearing nothing of his unreliable allies and being unable to transport any more loot, turned his army around and headed back toward Dwanish. The Directorate later judged this eminently sensible act to be treason and put him to death.

Couriers had already poured out from Hub like hornets to summon the legions. Men in thousands shouldered their burdens, formed up in columns, and began marching. Day after day they wore out their sandals on the endless straight roads of the Impire.

In Gwurkiarg, capital of Dwanish, the former warlock Zinixo burst in upon a meeting of the Directorate, ranting about an obscure conspiracy of sorcerers no one had ever heard of and denouncing the warlocks for attempting to amend the Protocol. Two of the directors were observed to fall on their knees when he entered the hall. They knew that this was merely an occult projection of some sort, of course, but they did not question the actions of their beloved leader. A couple of other Covin agents in the city detected the release of power, but they, too, refrained from interrupting the Almighty. By the time Hub inquired what was happening, the apparition had vanished, leaving no trail to follow. Word of the outrage spread rapidly throughout the land.

By that time the riverboat Gurx had been riding the spring flood down the Dark River for two weeks. That inconspicuous little craft was later to be the subject of a famous ballad, for during those fateful days it bore an imperor, a queen, a thane, two princes, and the second largest collection of sorcerers in the world.

In Thume the rainy season had ended and the dry season begun. Life went on there undisturbed by the clamors of war, as it had for a thousand years. Novice Thaile pursued her studies in the College.

Sir Acopulo, released at last by the elvish officials, took pa.s.sage on the first available southbound s.h.i.+p, which happened to be a smelly little fis.h.i.+ng boat from Sysana.s.so.

In Zark, the caliph learned of the Impire's troop movements and hastened his preparations for invasion.

In fara"off Krasnegar the unusually bitter winter drew to a close. The royal council ruled in the queen's absence under the efficient chairmans.h.i.+p of the deputy she had appointed before her mysterious departure. His authority was often challenged, but he remained undeposed because the council could never agree on a replacement. In one of the few actions it did agree on, it ordered the racka"boned herds driven across the causeway to the hills of the mainland, the traditional first rite of spring.

The people of that barren little land would have been very surprised to know that their king was fighting his way through the jungles of the Mosweeps in the company of a jotunn and two trolls.

The torrent of refugees that poured into Hub had released a second flood, heading east and south. Racing in advance of them on the road to Qoble went a onea"horse phaeton, bearing a man, a woman, and a child. After they had been traveling for over a month, they arrived one night at an inconsequential hamlet called Maple, where the man pulled up in the middle of the only street and gestured to the inn signs displayed on either hand.

"We seem to have a choice of two," he observed with a roguish smile. "The Imperial Crown, or the Daffodils." And Es.h.i.+ala, who may have become bolder during the past few weeks or perhaps merely tired of resisting the inevitable, blushed and announced, "I think I'd like to try the Daffodils."

So it was in Maple that Ylo gained his reward and Es.h.i.+ala learned how an expert made love. It was a very prolonged affair, at times gentle, at times extremely energetic. It began with her toes, and involved a lot of laughter and eventually tears that were not tears of sorrow, and it lasted until dawn.

By coincidence or divine irony, it was during that same night of rapture that a solitary rider thundered through Maple without stopping, pa.s.sing below the chamber window. He thus drew ahead of his quarry. He had always known that this absurdity might befall his solitary pursuit, but he had heard Ylo speak of a warmer climate and guessed that he planned to return to Qoble. There were very few pa.s.ses into Qoble, and they were all guarded by detachments of the XIIth legion. Its officers would listen to Centurion Hardgraa; every man in the ranks knew Signifer Ylo.

In Qoble the child would be recaptured and the traitor who had abducted her would pay the penalty.

SIX.

Westward look

1.

The forest giant had toppled years ago, and its trunk was thickly encrusted by moss of an especially nasty green. Higher than Rap's head, it lay across his path like a wall. "Path" was a misnomer, of course. There was no path. There was almost no light to see by, or solid ground to stand on, or s.p.a.ce to squeeze between the branches and suckers and vines. The rain did stop sometimes, briefly, but such momentary droughts made no difference at the bottom of that sea of vegetation, where water dribbled and dripped continuously. He had been clawing his way through this nightmare for more weeks than he could bear to think about. Had there been any way to give up, he would have given up long ago. Even fauns were not that stubborn.

Thrugg had found handholds somewhere and swung his great form onto that fallen trunka"peering up, Rap could see his enormous feet and calves like flour sacks. The rest of him was hidden in leaves. Then he crouched down, coming into view with the usual spray of water. He bared teeth in a grin. "Coming?"

He went naked and there was not a single mark on his doughy hide. Rap was swathed in garments of stout linen, yet he had almost no undamaged skin left between scars, sc.r.a.pes, rashes, bruises, and insect bites. He had renewed his entire outfit from hat to boots just three nights ago, and put a preservation spell on it, but already it was rotting and falling apart.

The surprise was not that the Impire had never conquered the Mosweeps; the surprise was that it had ever wanted to.

Stop! He was veering perilously close to an attack of self-pity, and he seemed to be doing that far too often recently. Go on, or sit down and diea"those were the choices. Or use sorcery and be snapped up by Zinixo, of course, which would certainly be a worse ordeal than this. Fauns did not sit down and die! Nor did jotnar.

Thrugg's big paw was waiting. Rap grabbed it with both hands and felt a familiar humiliation as the young giant yanked him effortlessly skyward. A rush of wet leaves in his face, and he was standing at the troll's side, feeling childlike and helpless.

Thrugg pushed aside vegetation and peered at him with an expression of b.e.s.t.i.a.l ferocity that would have given a professional torturer nightmares for months. Rap could identify it now as mild concern, just as he had learned to make out the slurred mumble of trolls' speecha"the words were all in there, if you listened carefully enough.

"Not long now. You manage?"

Was his frailty so obvious? "Sure I can manage! Race you to the next castle . . . if you'll just tell me where it is." Thrugg chuckled, a deep rumbling noise inside the barrel of his chest. He thumped a friendly hand on Rap's shoulder in approval. The moss crumbled under Rap's feet, and he shot down into a soggy, crumbling paste, coming to rest with his arms on the green carpet and the troll's h.o.r.n.y toes in front of his face. Oh, G.o.ds! Again he felt black blankets of despair envelop him. What was the use?

"Not down there!" Thrugg said.

Rap summoned his resources. Fight on! There would be humor in this situation somewhere, if he could find it. "I think you're cheating!" he moaned. "Do troll rules let you nail your opponent into the ground?"

"Sure. Now I stamp on your head."

"It's not fair, you know! You must outweigh me three to one, and I'm the one who falls through?"

"Standing with feet wrong way."

"Well, it is restful, like a warm bath."

"That's good! Dead trees usually full of many-legs. No bites? Stings?"

At once Rap's skin began to crawl with a million tiny feet, real or imaginary. "Get me out of here!" he yelled, close to panic.

Thrugg lifted him out and jumped, still holding him like a child. They came down on the far side of the tree with a splash, knee-deep in mud. The brief stay in the rotted wood had been long enough for Rap's clothes to be invaded by the many-legs, and several no-legs also. With howls, he began stripping them off.

"Use sorcery?" the troll asked urgently. He hated to see anyone else suffer, although he had endured months of slavery at Casfrel rather than wield his power against another human being.

"No!" Rap said. The Covin seemed to have abandoned its search, but the fugitives had agreed to continue their avoidance of magic in the open, and he would not be the first to give in. He clawed at something squishy feeding on his thigh. "Ugh!"

"Next castle's s.h.i.+elded."

"Wonderful! How'd you know that?"

"Been there before. Almost there now." How Thrugg found his way through this impenetrable maze was a complete mystery. Rap thought he did it by smell. He could navigate just as well in the dark during a thunderstorm. He never lost his sense of direction, and he invariably found some sort of shelter for the nighta"not that he needed shelter, but the visitors did. He did not use sorcery, for Rap would have detected that.

"Then I'll clean up there. Lead the way." Leaving his infested clothes where they were, Rap set off in only his boots and a bare minimum tied around his middle. When he wore clothes, he sweated to death in the steamy heat. When he didn't, he was stung and scratched unbearably. He could never decide which was worse. But if there was s.h.i.+elding ahead, then he could put everything right in a few minutes. New clothes, new skin. Cold beer!

Today they had crossed a single ridge, covering less than a league, and Witch Grunth's home was a long way off yet. Insidious voices whispered that this expedition was a terrible mistake. The moon was past the full again, so Rap had been floundering around in the mountains for more than two months. He had no idea what was happening outside in the real world. He had no way now to communicate with Shandie or the warlock. For all he knew they might both have been captured, leaving him to fight a hopeless single-handed battle against the Covin. At the present rate he was going to die of old age before he achieved anything at all.

Krasnegar itself might no longer exist. He could not bear to think of Inos and the children. In the letter he had sent with Shandie, he had urged Inos to leave and take refuge at Kinvale. She might have sent the kids away, but he doubted she would have abandoned her kingdom. She took her royal responsibilities more seriously than anything else in her life, and at times she could be as stubborn as a faun.

Would he ever see her again? More likely he would die of old age in this Evil-begotten mora.s.s. What had ever possessed him to come here? Lith'rian would have been a far better bet than Grunth.

And always, that haunting half memory that whispered he had forgotten something important and was overlooking a winning move . . .

Thrugg had been right again, though. In a few minutes they heard running water and the ground dipped steeply. Rare was the stream that had no castle on it. Trolls spent their lives home-making, building huge edifices of rock, almost always straddling running water. A cataract in every room seemed to be the most desired feature in domestic architecture, except possibly incompleteness. As soon as he saw his work nearly finished, a troll would wander away and start again somewhere else. A man's gotta do something, Thrugg said, and what else was there to do in the Mosweeps? Most of the jungle was edible for trolls, so there was no need to farm. Once in a while they would run down a deera"usually just for sport, but rarely for a taste of meat. Wood and paper and cloth turned to mush in days. Fires would not burn. Heaving rocks around creatively was better than doing nothing.

Every stream bore abandoned castles, many so ancient that they were buried in jungle. A surprising number of them showed evidence of occult s.h.i.+elding. That abundance of s.h.i.+elding was the only encouraging thing Rap had discovered on this mad pilgrimage. It confirmed his theories about the best places to look for sorcery. For untold centuries, the gentle folk of Faerie had been exploited for words of power. The Nogids and the Mosweeps were barriers on the road home to the mainland. Many geniuses and adepts must have been s.h.i.+pwrecked, and words of power outlived their transitory owners. He had a.s.sumed that the trolls and anthropophagi would include more than their share of mages and sorcerers, and so far his guess seemed to be working out.

Gathering them together, even with Grunth's help, would be another matter altogether. One lifetime would never be enough.