The Glass Bridge (Bell Mountain #7) Read online

No one, except for the Griffs in the army and a few of the Wallekki who’d been that way with trading caravans, had ever seen anything like it. Maybe the tall brick smokestacks at the old refinery in Silvertown had once resembled it, before the Thunder King’s troops knocked them down. But this was taller and more massive, much more. It stood all alone, with a few black holes in it that were like dead eyes staring out at the landscape.

  When you got closer, you could see it was built of white stone blocks, maybe granite, cut precisely, joined so closely, that the tower might have grown out of the earth like a living thing. But it was deeply scorched and blackened, from top to bottom. Not even a thousand years of sun and rain and ice and wind could wipe away the scars left by the Day of Fire.

  “It would not have been nice to be inside that tower on that day,” said Perkin.

  Now they saw the Zeph, in their bulls’-horned headgear. The Zeph camp wasn’t fortified—no sense trying to defend it. They stood in battle array, two dense ranks. Somehow they’d gotten wind that another army was approaching. They must have good scouts, able to elude detection by the Attakotts.

  Ryons’ chieftains halted the army a little distance from the Zephites. “Let them see that we outnumber them,” Shaffur said. But first the Hosa made way for Obst to come out, on foot, and speak to the enemy. Behind him rode Ryons and Gurun, so the Zeph could see them.

  “Men of the Zeph!” said Obst—and they heard him in their own language because that was God’s gift to him. “We call on you to depart in peace from Griff-land. We have no quarrel with you.”

  A big man stepped out in front of the Zeph. He had no paint on his face; he was an ordinary chieftain, not one of the Thunder King’s mardars.

  “Who are you,” he demanded in a deep voice, “to tell us to go or stay or get out of your way?”

  “We follow Ryons, King of Obann by the grace of God, and we come here in the name of God—the living God who made the heavens and the earth.”

  “We know of no such god. Our gods are dead. There is only the Thunder King.”

  “God has judged the Thunder King and numbered his days. We are here to proclaim His judgment and to proclaim deliverance to all nations: for God will set you free. Go back to your own country in peace, and rejoice. For God will deliver you from the Thunder King.”

  The big man bellowed out a laugh. “Ha! What nonsense! I am Jiharr, a bull among bulls. I will not go away! I’ll stand right here and fight—if there’s anyone among you who will dare to fight me, man to man. If he can kill me, then my people will go home. But if I kill him—and I will!—then you turn around and go back the way you came.”

  “He knows they can’t win a battle,” Shaffur said. “He’s trying to get off cheaply.”

  Once it became understood what Jiharr had proposed, there were a hundred volunteers to fight him. He stood there with his brawny arms folded across his powerful chest, laughing at them.

  “Your Majesty must decide,” said Shaffur. “Who is to have the honor of fighting this fellow? If they keep his word, it’ll save us a battle.”

  Ryons had never felt more helpless in his life. How could he choose a man to fight this monster? It made him feel sick. Gurun watched him, not knowing how to help.

  Uduqu made a loud noise and forced everyone to listen to him.

  “Pipe down, all of you! It’s my right to fight this fight. I’ve been with King Ryons longer than any of you, except for Obst—and I don’t think our teacher ought to try it.”

  “You’re too old!” Shaffur growled. “That Zephite is a warrior in his prime.”

  Uduqu unlimbered the great sword that had belonged to Shogg the giant, slain by Helki. Even a strong man like Uduqu needed both hands to lift it.

  “Yes, I’m old,” he said, “and my legs are tired of walking—but I’ve got a few more fights left in me. We’ve wasted enough time jawing about it.”

  Ryons couldn’t think of any way to stop Uduqu. He would have, if he could. He felt like he’d known the Abnak subchief all his life. But he didn’t know what to do. Maybe no one knew how to turn Uduqu aside, once he’d set his will on something. Ryons could only sit still and let it happen, as if he were watching from a distance. He didn’t notice when Gurun pressed his hand.

  Jiharr, when he saw the giant’s sword, called for a great wooden club studded with sharp chips of volcanic glass. He and Uduqu advanced to meet each other in the space between the armies. At that moment Angel chose to launch herself from Ryons’ shoulder, and with a shrill cry, circled overhead. Cavall let out an angry bark, but then fell silent.

  Showing off his agility, his footwork, and the skill of his hands, Jiharr danced around, brandished the club, and baited Uduqu in Tribe-talk.

  “Were you the best they could do for a champion—a played-out old crock like you? Do you think that ridiculous big sword will help you, when you can hardly raise it off the ground? Why, man, you’re old enough to be my father!”

  But his dancing took him one step too close, and with an effort that tore a scream from his lungs, Uduqu swung the sword with both hands in a vicious arc. Jiharr tried to throw himself out of its path: few men would have been able to react quickly enough even to try. So a blow that would have otherwise cut him right in half chopped a deep gash in his side and felled him bleeding to the earth. He lay still, in the shadow of the Tower.

  “You ought to respect your father,” Uduqu said.

  Gurun had never seen anything so horrible. By the sound he made when he swung the sword, she was sure Uduqu’s heart had burst. She loved the old warrior. He’d been her companion in Obann, in Durmurot, and back in Obann when they’d escaped the destruction of the Palace: she and Uduqu and Fnaa.

  Before she quite knew what she was doing, she was out of the saddle, racing to Uduqu’s side. No one had a chance to hold her back. Uduqu’s face seemed deathly pale, under his tattoos. He bent all his strength to not letting the sword slip from his hands.

  She stopped short when he grinned at her.

  “Easy, girl—I’m all right. Just a little winded.”

  She heard the crowd of Zephites muttering. It made her look at Jiharr.

  “Is there any chance he will live?” she asked.

  “Not likely.”

  A bubble forced its way out between the fallen man’s lips. It moved Gurun to pity such as she’d never known before. Why, she couldn’t say.

  “Poor fool!” she said. “There was no need for this to happen.”

  She dropped down to one knee. She wanted to try to comfort him, if there was any life left in him. The fighting men on both sides had fallen silent. Gurun could hear the last few breaths the Zephite took. She picked up his hand and held it between her two hands.

  And then Jiharr opened his eyes and saw her and tried to smile.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  “My name is Gurun.”

  “Your champion has won the fight.”

  “I am sorry that it came to this,” she said.

  With a gasp and a groan, Jiharr sat up. She was so startled that she dropped his hand. There were loud yelps of amazement from everyone who saw this.

  His bleeding had stopped. He looked down at the deep wound in his side, touched it with his fingers, and winced. “I’ll need some stitching up!” he said. And to Uduqu, looking up at him, “Give me your hand, old warrior, and help me up! I want no one but you to help me to stand. You beat me in a fair fight, and we will keep our word and go away.”

  “By my scalp! Are you alive?” Uduqu cried. Loud exclamations broke out everywhere. All these men were warriors. They knew a fatal wound when they saw one.

  “He lives!” cried some man among the Zeph. “The maiden has healed him! She put her hands on him, and he was healed!”

  Only then did Gurun realize that something had happened that should not have happened—and in front of all these men, too. Jiharr should have died. Now he wanted to stand up. And everyone was saying she had performed a miracle.

  �
�Hail, hail, the lady of Obann!” the Zephites roared. “Our goddess has come back to us!”

  This horrified her more than anything. Gurun sprang to her feet, backing away from Jiharr. She didn’t know that the Zeph, before the Thunder King took away their gods and made them worship him, had had a goddess that they worshipped, and to whom they made offerings when they were sick. All she understood was that suddenly they were calling her a goddess, and it made her blood run cold.

  When they perceived that she was trying frantically to speak to them, the men went quiet.

  “Please! You don’t know what you’re saying!” Gurun cried. “It wasn’t me—I didn’t do anything! I’m just the same as you: no goddess, but only flesh and blood. I am only a girl!

  “What you have seen was God’s doing, not mine! Give Him the glory, not me. Give Him your thanks! You will not see something like this every day.”

  Uduqu helped Jiharr to his feet. He reeled a little, but not too much. His leather leggings were bathed in blood, but the wound itself bled no more.

  “Is it true, what the lady says?” he asked Uduqu.

  “Oh, it’s the truest thing you’ll ever hear—no two ways about it. If you knew of only half the things God has done for us since first we heard His name, you wouldn’t have been too surprised to see another miracle.”

  “But it’s not my miracle—not anything by me!” Now tears flowed from Gurun’s eyes. “Don’t say that anymore! You must try to understand!” It shocked the men of Ryons’ army to see her weeping. But Obst came forth and took her into his arms.

  The Zeph were men of war. They knew Jiharr’s wound should have killed him on the spot. For him to be alive and on his feet, and not bleeding anymore, took all the fight out of them. They sat down and ate and drank with Ryons’ army.

  They wished to crowd around Gurun and marvel at her, but she wouldn’t let them. Obst and Uduqu made them leave her alone. She withdrew to the edge of the camp and wouldn’t let anyone come near her but Ryons and Shingis, the chief of her Blays.

  She sat on the grass and wept. Ryons had never seen her like this, and it frightened him.

  “Why you so sad?” said Shingis, who had learned to speak a little Obannese. “You do a good thing.”

  “I didn’t do anything!” she said. “I want to go home. I want my father and my mother. I even want my brothers!”

  “Please don’t cry, Gurun!” Ryons said.

  Shingis reverted to his own language, because he couldn’t find the words he wanted in any other. But Gurun, like Obst, had the gift of understanding all languages spoken by men and of being understood.

  “Listen to King Ryons, my lady. He makes good sense! You’ve told us many times how God brought you to Obann from far across the sea. Well, think of what God did to Ryons—made him the king of a great nation. He didn’t want to be a king; he’s just a boy.

  “But he must do his best—and so must you. He needs you. My men and I need you—what would become of us without you? Please think! You have taught us to believe in God. The Lord is mighty, and it’s foolish to resist Him. It was God who healed Jiharr, even as you’ve said. You should not be ashamed that He used your touch to do it.”

  She stopped crying. For a moment that seemed long to them, she simply looked at Ryons and Shingis. But then she suddenly kissed them both.

  “Thank you!” she said. “I’ll be all right now, once I get some sleep.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Ysbott’s Campfire Tales

  Roshay Bault was the first to see the gold gleaming in the noonday sun, and when his men saw it, too, they came on faster. At last they gained the top of the Golden Pass and halted before the ruins of the golden hall.

  Roshay was the richest man in Ninneburky, and he knew the value of gold. If he sold his house, his logging business, and everything he owned, he would get only an infinitesimal fraction of the wealth that lay before him here. It was just possible, he thought, that there was more wealth here than in the entire city of Obann.

  “I never imagined there would be so much,” he said. “I would need a thousand men to load it onto carts and bring it down the mountain.”

  “How do we even begin?” Sergeant Kadmel wondered. “My lord Baron, this is more than anyone expected!”

  “It’s enough to make a fortress of every town in Obann,” Roshay said. “Well, we’ll just have to get started as best we can. But first make camp.”

  While the men busied themselves with that, Roshay and his captains dismounted and explored the edges of the ruin.

  “We’ll have to work from the outside in,” he said, “and very carefully, at that. This will be like trying to take apart a blowdown. Those heavy timbers are all tangled up and resting on each other. I don’t want anyone trying to climb around on top of it.”

  “There’ll be dead bodies under it,” someone said.

  “They won’t do us any harm,” the baron answered.

  Helki had to wait for Hlah to come home from Ninneburky. He finally arrived on a mule that the baroness had insisted he ride.

  “I suppose it would have taken twice as long, if I’d walked,” Hlah said. “But I think my seat would be the better for it.”

  He told Helki how Lord Orth had spoken to the Abnaks and how they’d taken him away with them.

  “Maybe I ought to go after him,” Helki said.

  “He doesn’t want to be rescued.”

  “How are the Abnaks doing in their war against the Thunder King?”

  Hlah shrugged. “There’s been no word since Lord Orth left. I don’t think any more Abnaks will be coming over to this side of the mountains for a while. Now that they have the First Prester with them, this will be their supreme effort. They’ll either win the war, or die.”

  “I hate those supreme efforts,” Helki said, frowning. “It’s always better to back off and try something else when things aren’t going well.”

  “That’s not Chief Foxblood’s way,” said Hlah. “It’s not the Abnak way, either. You know that.”

  Helki sighed. “I do. I do,” he said. You could kill an Abnak, he thought, but you could never force him to serve you.

  Trout slipped on a loose stone and turned his ankle.

  “It wouldn’t have happened if you’d been riding the horse,” Fnaa said. No one thought that was funny.

  Trout grimaced, trying his best not to show pain. It must really hurt, thought Jack, for him to make a face like that. Martis examined the ankle.

  “You’ll have to ride, now,” he said. “It’s not broken, but it’s going to be sore and swollen for some days. You’d be a fool to try to walk on it.”

  “At home I’d be expected to fight on it,” Trout said.

  “We’re at least halfway up the pass by now,” Ellayne said. “My father will be at the top with all his men. You can have a good rest when we get there, Trout.”

  “Cut me a strong stick to lean on, and I’ll walk.”

  “You can have a stick,” Martis said, “but you’re still going to have to ride. We’ll go slowly, so you don’t fall off.”

  “If I fall off the horse and land on this ankle, it’s going to snap like a dry twig!”

  Wytt looked to Jack and chattered at him.

  “He doesn’t like us stopping here,” Jack reported. “He says it’s not safe: bad men have been this way.”

  “But they’re the baron’s men,” Martis said, but Wytt growled at him.

  “He doesn’t mean the baron’s men,” Jack said. “These passed this way ahead of the baron. There’s hardly any of their scent left, but Wytt doesn’t like what he’s picked up of it.”

  “They’ll be sorry when my father catches up with them,” said Ellayne.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if there were outlaws in the neighborhood,” Martis said. “The gold will draw them like spoiled meat draws flies. I had hoped to catch up to your father before we ran into any of them.”

  “But we don’t have anything that outlaws would bother to steal,” Fna
a said. Trout gave him a stern look.

  “We have two horses,” he said, “and three children. There’s many an outlaw who’d kill for that much. And a few Abnaks that I know of, too.”

  By nightfall Roshay had come around to the idea that it would be best to remain at the top of the Golden Pass with a strong force to guard the gold and send some of his captains back down the mountain for more men and more carts. “Scare up as many as you can,” he said. “I’m amazed the Thunder King hasn’t sent an army to retrieve his gold. But sooner or later he will.”

  While the baron conferred with his captains, and the militiamen enjoyed their rations and rested by their campfires, Ysbott found it easy to infiltrate the camp and take a seat among the townsmen. He soon found someone he knew—Donn Decker, who was surprised to see him.