Gene Wars - Hammerfall Part 25

They're city folk. They don't know the desert."

"Apportion the important ones like the books, a few to every band. If there are too many walkers, they go last, enough strong hands to drive stakes, a besha to carry the canvas and keep them headed right if they drop behind." The beasts would smell the way to those in front, given any breath of an east wind or a lingering scent above the trail. A caravan this large would a.s.suredly leave scent. It would leave a trail of waste, breakage, vermin, and all too many lives.

Memnanan, like him, was a man in authority, one who saw bitter necessities when they were laid in front of him, who knew how to make a rule for the good of the many. Individual compa.s.sion, for the two of them, was a vice secretly practiced.

"It's a chance," Memnanan said. That Memnanan knew the desert, Marak suspected, as the Ila's men generally knew enough of it to live... knew it as a place where they were strangers, being on their way to a place, on their way from a place, never at home in it. The villages existed within the desert: they had never quite lost their skills. When the big winds blew and ten men could die going out to secure an orchard netting, when sand could choke an unprotected well, when hunters caught in the open could easily die, if they failed to take the right steps... the knowledge of the desert was not that far removed.

"If you have a household," Marak said to the Ila's captain, "put them with the tribes. Or in my tent, with Tofi and his men. I trust you'll be busy with the Ila's company, and I'll have room."

Memnanan gave him a look. "Too many old, who can't walk. A wife six months pregnant. The city has far too many."

"Put them with me," Marak said. "Get beshti for them. We'll get them up and down. Save your worry for the Ila. Be selfish, man. Give yourself this one gift. You're due it. I've asked several. We'll need to get the books down to the gathering. Give them to the leaders. Leaders survive. They have a duty to do that."

Memnanan said not a thing to that. He walked, and led him back through the veils, where he found another subordinate, in the chamber with his desk. "Bring the an'i Keran," Memnanan said, "and the village woman, the prophet."

But Hati came on her own, through the other curtain, expecting him and Memnanan, trailing an embarra.s.sed guard. Madness had its advantage, in that regard, that no one had struck her; Hati reached him unhindered, seized his arm, wound his fingers into hers as Memnanan dismissed the confounded guard. In a moment more, Norit followed her, guard-led, with that calm, still face that told him Luz was entirely in the ascendant. Memnanan dismissed that man, too.

"We're going outside the camp," Marak said to Hati and Norit, "to talk with the leaders. We'll be moving this evening, with the Ila, with the tribes."

They did not question what he said. The three of them walked out of the tent with Memnanan, under a sky slate-colored and menacing. The water-gatherers at the Mercy of the Ila moved about their business.

A handful of wretched people carried bundles out of the gates of the city, bent beneath their load. It was all useless, that gathering of resources.

Memnanan sent men for beshti and for wheeled carts to carry the precious books to the edge of the camp. "The priests moved them here," he said. "They can bring the books down. We'll rest here until they're ready. The G.o.d knows there'll be no rest tonight."

There was a little shaking as they waited. They sat on mats, under an awning, as wealthy folk pa.s.sed time, while filling of the Ila's household waterskins and the watering of the Ila's herds took precedence at the Mercy of the Ila.

Servants brought them food and drink during a second tremor. The poles of all the tents shook, and the canvas shook. Behind his eyes, Marak saw a lake of fire spreading outward and flowing over desert rock. He saw the falling stars. But he ate and drank, and took his ease, the last that any of them might see in their lives. Memnanan went aside now and again to pa.s.s particular orders to his men, then came back to join them.

A rider came up, perched like a boy, bareback. Welcome sight, Tofi came riding up, clearly not expecting to see them disposed as they were, like a handful of wealthy enjoying the afternoon breezes, with the Ila's Mercy pouring out its abundance of water nearby and the searchers still busy in the rubble of the city beyond the ruined wall.

A flash of recognition preceded an immediate solemnity and formality in Memnanan's presence, and Tofi dropped from his saddle to stand the ground, light and quick as he was, wide-eyed and anxious.

"Men said to come, omi."

"That they did," Memnanan said.

"This camp will move tonight." Marak rose from his seat under the awning and came out into the wan, clouded sun. "You're to go among the first in a caravan of all these camps. You're to go in among the tribes. You can spread the word to the other caravan masters in the camp: if it gets out to the tribes, no harm done. There'll be no hire given but the lives of all of us, and you know the truth as well as I do: tell it to them. Rumors can fly, for all I care. Gather up all your tents, every beast, every man."

"Where shall we go, omi? Back?"

"Back, as fast as we can. You'll carry those persons the Ila bids you carry: the aui'it, the Ila herself, her servants and her men. Have you kept the freedmen?"

"I paid them wages," Tofi said, "and I don't know how they found it. There's not a tavern working, but they're drunk."

"Hire them or not, but get skilled help, first, before the rest of the masters get wind of it. Where are you camped?"

"To the southwest edge," Tofi said. "On the flat. There's no other out there. Some have let their beasts go forage. I haven't. I waited."

"Good. We'll use our tent, the same we have used. It was a good size. Give the best one to the Ila and the aui'it. Her men will camp with us, with their households, I take it, in tents they will provide."

Memnanan, standing close by, failed to contradict him, so he supposed the instruction stood. The Ila would move from this white grandeur into ordinary brown tents two men could have up and down again in haste, and her men would have the tents the Ila's men used in the desert. "Go see to it."

Tofi bowed, and bowed again. "Omi," he said. "Captain," he said to Memnanan, and ran to scramble up to the saddle of the waiting besha, making him extend a leg.

In an instant more Tofi was off down the street, vigorously plying the quirt.

Chapter Sixteen.

The book of an au'it may not be opened except by an au'it and it may not be read to the people except an au'it read it. If a village wishes to know what is in an au'it's book, let them ask the au'it.

-The Book of Priests The priests came to the ila's tent with theirbesha-drawn carts, and the chief priest, a haughty old man, strode angrily past Memnanan, went into the Ila's tent and came out again with his hauteur aimed solely at the junior priests and with a very chastened demeanor toward Memnanan.

"We are," the chief priest said, every word labored, "to take the library in our charge. Where shall we dispose it?"

"Men of mine will guide you down," Memnanan told him, and with a nod of his head toward Marak: "He has the Ila's authority in this matter."

The priest looked at Marak in dismay, and turned to the junior priests to give orders. Aui'it came out, bearing books; and so priests went in, and servants, so that it became a hand-to-hand stream, loading the leather-bound books into their arms, one to the next past the veils and curtains of the interior, and servants pa.s.sed books on to priests and soldiers outside, and they laid them carefully onto carts which would have fared very well on the pavings of the city. Now, with the increasing loads, they bogged in the wet sand around the Ila's Mercy, and required the beshti to labor to move them. "Not so many in a load," Memnanan said, and added under his breath, "fools."

"To the outside," officers shouted as they filled each cart. Memnanan sent an officer down with precise instructions, while Marak and his companions sat on mats in the shade of the awning and rested, truly rested in the bawling confusion. Norit slept longest, curled up in a knot. Hati waked and sat sharpening a knife. Neither of them had use in what proceeded. Marak himself let his head down and catnapped in what should have been the heat of the day, but was in fact cool and pleasant.

Important men and women arrived at the tent, and Marak lifted his head, overhearing that rumors were suddenly rife in the camp, regarding caravans leaving. "Caravans may indeed leave," Memnanan told them. "And if I were you I'd see to my herds, and have the beasts watered before the Mercy grows crowded."

Priests' white robes were now brown-edged with soil from the spring, dusty and stained by the moldering dye of the books; but on they worked, better men than they looked, in Marak's estimation.

The aui'it labored with them so far as loading the last carts, and two of them in their red robes went with the carts, down the sole straight road that led from the Mercy through the camp, and if rumor was not now running the circuit of the camps, nothing less than a star-fall in their midst would rouse curiosity.

Servants hung about in the doorway of the Ila's tent with worried looks on their faces. They had sent all their treasure out, at the Ila's order, under a sky leaden and disheartening. The guards themselves looked desperate, expecting further calamity, and looked about them as the ground shook, as if they now realized that cataclysm had reached the heart of their lives.

Traffic around the fountain increased to a point of panic, slaves of the caravans restoring their supplies, servants of households taking up water in jars, jostling with common folk and villagers: if one house was watering, then all would. Beshti moved in and out, with their handlers, snarling and grumbling.

The beshti Memnanan had ordered arrived to water, too. Marak was glad to see Osan among them: and the rest that appeared were fine animals, decked out in gear that shone with bra.s.s and fine dyes.

Memnanan's men came to report the carts outside the city and disposed under guard of the priests. It was time to move.

Norit slept like the dead, for all the rest she had not had, and they had not disturbed her. But now Marak shook gently at her shoulder, and met for a moment the gentle face, the sensible one. She had a frightened look, in her interludes of sanity, as Marak could only imagine. Norit's plunges into madness were deep and dark, and left her haunted by things she half remembered, half understood.

He tipped up her face and kissed her, and Norit kissed him back, her fingers woven with his, reluctant to let go.

"Priests have already gone down," he said gently. "With the last of the books. We'll ride, with the captain and his men. Can you get up, or shall I help you?"

"Iwant to go," was her answer: Norit's answer, as if she had half heard everything until now, or as if she wished to say that going back to the tower was her choice, apart from Luz's wish.

"Come," he said, and helped her gently to her feet. He and Hati together picked out a fine gentle beast and helped her up to the saddle before they themselves mounted up.

Then Memnanan rode his besha to its feet, and the rest of the company got up, a good twenty men besides, good, agile riders, armed beneath their robes, and carrying heavy quirts, Marak noted, not solely for the beshti.

"I've ordered the books to a ridge beside the road," Memnanan said, swinging in close to Marak as they walked their beasts past the fountain and through the confusion there. "And I've sent messages calling the lords of the villages and the tribes there to hear us. If I were doing it, I'd have the Ila down the hill to speak to them, but she says rely on the priests to persuade the people. She sends her messages through the priests. I have less confidence."

"In the priests?" Marak said. "I have none at all." The visions momentarily haunted him with sights of fire and destruction to come... then failed entirely, and even the imagination of the next handful of moments eluded him, leaving him bereft of any resource. From instant to instant he believed what he saw... and then saw only disaster in attempting to get all this ma.s.s of people on the road in any orderly fashion, without fatalities even in the process itself. He imagined no one would take the books. No one would care. He and Memnanan had deliberately let rumor loose, foretelling the movement of a caravan, and fear became a bitter dose at the fountain, where rumor spread.

Now a tide of worried people shouted questions at them: "Where are the caravans going?" and: "What will the Ila do?"

Marak had no idea on the latter and wanted no pause for questions, not yet, not here, disorderly as the road through the camp proved to be. "Wait," he shouted at the importunate. "Your leaders are going down to hear. Stay here! Pack your belongings!"

There must be a fervor to carry them, a wild, a mad, an unstoppable urge: he stirred it, and knew what he did... he reminded them of their belongings. He hinted of movement. If the leaders denied him, the people themselves would be behind, pushing, demanding answers of their leaders, who had only one place to get answers. But it was a dangerous action. It could end in looting, in murder, in people trampled, or robbed, or stabbed and shot. Any leader knew it. Any leader who had not gone out to the summons would know he had to go, he had to find out the truth of their situation.

And it could not wait another day.

"You're running a risk," Memnanan said.

"They have to move," he said. "They have no choice." More people crowded in on them. Three times more he told them the same, before the rumor was running the camp on so many legs that their appearance was only confirmation, the outflow of authority, the imminence of movement.

The road poured them out of the camp and onto the vermin-hazard of the open sands, a fast-moving company of riders. A relatively few curious had come, the anxious, the frightened, representatives of households joining their leaders on the flat. They came in their hundreds out to the ridge, a mobbing not for blood but for news, and pressed outward in greater and greater numbers, hysteria in their faces. In some areas of the camp behind them, tents were already collapsing.

A ridge of sand along a face of rock: that was where Memnanan had ordered the priests and the aui'it to take their cargo of precious books, and that was where Memnanan had told the lords and the leaders to meet. The Ila's men had gone out to protect the priests and the aui'it, and spread out across the ascent to prevent others.

The priests tried to make themselves heard, trying to take authority to themselves, crying out that the judgment was on the city.

"The G.o.d has sent this!" they shouted out to believers within hearing. "The G.o.d has decreed a judgment!

Repent of your rebellion and your greed, and the Ila will intercede for you!"

"We have to silence that," Marak said as they came within earshot. "They don't know a d.a.m.ned thing, and they have no authority over anything but the books. Quiet them."

Memnanan had a worried look, but he gave orders to his men as they reached the ridge: the guards went to the priests and ordered their leaders off the ridge, down at the base, where the carts were. There the junior priests had spread out and made a useful defense of themselves, a line of bedraggled white between them and the press of the crowd.

A greater and greater crowd gathered, both from the edge of the camp and from the far side of the city perimeter. There were thousands afoot, and tribesmen mounted on beshti, all pressing toward one point, one source.

"This is dangerous," Hati shouted at him above the noise of the crowd. "They all want to know what's happening. What will happen when they know?"

"They will know," Norit said in a loud voice:Luz shouted. "This is the day of judgment! Hear Marak!

Hear the messenger! Listen to him!" But even Luz could not make herself heard, and the soldiers plied their quirts, driving back those the crowd behind shoved forward.

In that moment Marak feared for their lives, knowing he had set too much in motion too fast. The beshti they rode snuffed the scent of the crowd, the palpable scent of fear, and swung their heads this way and that, ready to fight, sensing a mobbing and knowing only one answer to that. Madness was not the sole property of the mad, not now. The crowd stretched now almost as far as the tents, under the clouded sky. The leaders who came forced their way to the base of the ridge, the tribesmen and some few village lords riding, most afoot, pushing, shouting, arguing with the priests and pushing at the soldiers, whose whips only frustrated the press, and did nothing to hold it back.

Then Memnanan drew a rifle from his saddle gear, and fired several rounds into the leaden sky. The reports echoed off the cliffs, startling beshti, bringing a moment of relative silence.

"Marak Trin Tain!" Memnanan shouted out. "The Ila's answer to your questions. Be quiet! The G.o.d speaks through the Ila, and the G.o.d has appointed an escape for his people! Be still. Stand still!"

"That's Aigyan," Hati said, edging her beast close to Marak's, pointing. "The man with the red sash.

Lord of the an'i Keran. He sees me. He may suspect revenge.There is trouble."

They could not be heard in the mutter around the ridge. Marak saw the veiled tribal lord, one of a handful of the deep Lakht tribes he most wanted well-disposed to them-and one that he least wanted against him. He knew the challenge he would face; but Memnanan had given him his moment, his only moment, and he rode Osan to the center of the ridge, looking out on thousands of misgiving, mistrustful faces. Men below looked up, a moment, a single moment in which the crowd expected an outcome, a miracle.

"Safety!" Marak shouted out in the inspiration of his heart. "Safety! That's become more scarce than water on the Lakht! The refuge you came here to find, all of you, water, food, and shelter enough for every household! I, Marak Trin, I've come in from across the Lakht with a caravan and we're going out again, to bring you all to a place where one refuge for you exists, off the edge of the plateau, beyond the village of Pori! I've seen it! I've seen a river green-sided with palms. I've seen beshti wandering free of harness. I've seen craftsmen in their tents, working for the pride of their craft! I've seen the heart of the tower that provides this place and keeps the star-fall away from its land! I've been inside it, and I know it exists!"

Cries rose up to him, one and another just out of earshot trying to position himself to hear and the attempt crushing those nearest.

"I saysafety ," Marak repeated for those who were in earshot of a shout. "I say a caravan leaving the holy city, going to an oasis where you and your children willlive !"

That created its own babble, repeated mouth to ear among the crowd, and now, caught in the press of bodies forward, riders controlled irritated, snappish beasts.

"The tribes will move first," Marak shouted, while the fire boiled and bubbled within his vision, while the stink of heated rock a.s.saulted his imagination. "The Keran and the Haga, of the deep Lakht, will go first.

Then the Ila's caravan. Then tribes beyond that. And the villages! Let every tribe, let every village, let every man forgive their feuds! What is the law of the Lakht? What is the G.o.d's law? That when the wind rises, any man may come into a tent, regardless of feuds, to the number the tent will bear! No just man can deny shelter!"

Grim veiled men nodded. It was the law. And now for the first time there was a hush over the crowd.

Those who could possibly hear leaned close.

"The Keran are the kinsmen of my wife, the Haga are the kinsmen of my mother," Marak shouted, as loudly as he had in him, "and to them I entrust the guidance of the caravan. The Ila will go with me, in my band. Then the rest of the tribes, in their honor, as they determine precedence, then the villages, as they determine precedence. Those of the city, you with no tents, no knowledge of the desert, each tent of the villages will take one or two of you, and those who have to walk, will walk following the beshri, with riders to guard you and to set the pace. Each lord of a tribe will govern his tribe, each lord of a village will govern his village."Fire , the visions said to him, overwhelming all sense of what he had to say.

Random words welled up in him, not his own, warning of this disaster and that, and he smothered them, fighting for his sanity and his own sense. "More,-more! each strong and reputable and G.o.d-fearing man will carry, besides his day's water, the wisdom of the aui'it, on his person, one book! These strong men will bring the wisdom of the aui'it to the new land and they will have their names and the names of their houses written down forever! One book,one book with a man or a band or a tribe will a.s.sure the carriers of it a welcome in the paradise the Ila will rule! If a man of the tribes and of the villages wishes to carry that burden for himself, let him come forward now to the priests and present himself to the aui'it, who will entrust him with that honor! Spread that word!Paradise for the bearers of the books!"

The priests had by no means realized what sacrilege he intended. Perhaps they imagined they alone would carry those books, pulling their carts through the deep desert. Perhaps at very least they expected more order about it, a making of orderly lists: but the mood and tenor of the crowd was not in favor of long lines and meticulous recording of names.

"No!" the chief priest shouted at him, and a murmur went out from the ridge, all the way back, over the grumbling complaint of beshti and a lone, frightened voice shouting above the rest, "What did he say, what did he say?"

"Paradise!" he shouted. "Water enough and food enough for you and your children!" He lifted his arms and shouted with all the strength that that was in him, half-kneeling on Osan's saddle as he did. "When men think they will all die, they gather together, not to die alone. You all came here todie , and not to die alone, but we have better news! We know the path to paradise! We move at sunset. We're not going to die. We refuse to die! Those who survive this journey are all going tolive , in a paradiseon this earth !"

A young caravanner of the tribes leapt up onto his feet, standing barefoot on his saddle, waving his arms and shouting in excitement.

He was not the only one. Men waved their arms and cried aloud. Those at the back of the gathering were still trying to find out what was said; but those near the front saw the books and rushed at them, overwhelming the priests as men took books for themselves, s.n.a.t.c.hed two and three in their pa.s.sion for rescue. Pages were imperiled in squabbles. A cart axle cracked in the press of bodies, and spilled its load of books onto the sand, priests scrambling to save them as the crowd utterly mobbed the carts.

Norit screamed above the cries of the crowd, wild-eyed, a madwoman beyond any doubt. "The hammer of heaven is coming down!" Norit cried. "Listen to Marak Trin! Prepare to move!"

The priests shouted to their own wild-eyed hearers, "Respect the G.o.d, in the Ila's name!" Believers cried out, "The G.o.d and the Ila, the G.o.d and the Ila his regent!" while fire rained down in Marak's vision.

Now he knew the city folk would follow, and follow with the pa.s.sion of belief, never mind what they believed, onlythat they believed, and drove their bodies with the strength of that belief. Itwas the G.o.d that would save them, because they would go, and go, and go, believing in paradise.

Marak, Marak, Marak, his voices dinned at him, ill timed, goading him, urging precipitate action, urging him to lead this mob, when he most wanted to use his wits.

"A judgment on the earth!" Norit cried over all the tumult: "The hammer of heaven is coming! Do you see it, Marak, do you see it?It's coming! We're losing time !"

Luz was afraid.Luz herself was gripped by fear. He saw in his vision a falling rock, saw it strike, saw a ring of fire spreading out from it; and a taste like copper came into his mouth.Haste, haste, haste dinned in his head until he could scarcely think, as if a message had held off as long as it could and now that the essential thing was done, Luz told them, unveiled what unnerved even her.

He saw Hati similarly afflicted by the vision, her hands clamped over her ears, and he fought to still his own shrieking voices, trying to use his wits for what still had to be done.

"Captain!" he shouted at Memnanan. "As soon as you can get there, bring the Ila to us where Tofi's camped, at the southwest corner, on the flat. He's waiting for us. He'll need help there: he has the beshti, and he has to keep them!"