The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) Read online

  Martis had had a horse killed out from under him by one of the birds, which ambushed him in the forest. He’d also been chased by a pair of them, out on the plain. He’d never been so terrified in all his life.

  “I guess that means they’re here to stay,” Jack said. “I wonder if that’s true for all the other strange animals we’ve seen. But where are they all coming from? No one’s ever seen animals like that before.”

  “I’ve traveled much,” said Martis, “but never saw the like of some of those birds and beasts that are in the country now. Never heard of any of them, either.”

  “God’s not ending the world,” Ellayne said. “It’s more like He’s starting it over, if you ask me—with all new animals. Maybe after the war, if everyone’s been killed, He’ll put in all new people, too.”

  Jack looked sharply at her: it seemed like she actually knew what she was talking about. But how could she be right and grown-up scholars all be wrong?

  They watched until the birds had finished their mating ceremony. Then the pair of monsters stalked away on their stiff, powerful legs, bobbling their fearsome heads up and down and making odd little clucking noises, almost like domestic chickens. And the weary humans went back to sleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  King Ryons’ Charge

  Lord Gwyll harbored a prophet in his house.

  “Hear the Word of God, Lord Gwyll! Take your family and your treasures and flee this city, and the Lord will save your life. If you stay, and try to save this city which God has given over to destruction, you and all your house shall die. The true God has spoken it.”

  That was old Nanny Witkom letting him have it as soon as he came through the door. He’d been all day at a meeting of the council; he was tired and hungry, dying for his wine and supper—and here was this cracked old crone in her black dress, hunched over in the rocking chair, haranguing him.

  “Nanny, be quiet!” he said. “I’m in no mood for it right now. Besides, it’s treason. Judge Tombo’s been hanging people for saying things like that.”

  Gwyll’s wife, Rhianna, came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron. She and her husband exchanged a kiss. He was a big, burly man with a dense black beard shot full of grey. She was little and gaunt, with her grey hair tied back in a bun. They had three children, all grown up with homes and families of their own. There was no one left in the general’s townhouse but himself and his wife, a maid, an orphan boy who helped the maid, and Nanny.

  “She’s been on and off all day,” Rhianna said.

  “On and off what?” demanded Nanny. She was never aware of her own prophetic outbursts and could never remember making them.

  “Never mind, Nanny,” Gwyll said.

  “Stuff and nonsense,” Nanny muttered, and began to rock the chair, humming to herself.

  Lord Gwyll took his wife by the hands and said, “Cardigal has fallen.”

  “I know,” she said. “Everybody knows. Come sit in the kitchen, and tell me about your meeting.”

  When he was settled at the kitchen table with his wine, and Rhianna put the finishing touches on their stew, Gwyll said, “It was fire that did it, say the reports. The enemy had catapults that hurled fireballs into the city, and once the fire got going, discipline broke down on the walls. And that was that: the city burned to ashes, most of the men killed, and the women and children marched off to slave markets in the East.

  “It shouldn’t have happened. Cardigal had strong walls and more than enough men to defend them. It seems the fire-fighting teams weren’t properly prepared. I’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen here.”

  “You’re doing everything that can be done,” Rhianna said. “And no city in the world has walls like Obann’s.”

  “If only Nanny wouldn’t rave!” Gwyll said. “It’s getting under my skin.”

  But of course Nanny couldn’t help it, and of course there was no question of putting her out of the house—not after all those years of minding the children, tending to Rhianna when she was sick, being a pillar of strength to the whole family while Gwyll was a young officer, not yet an oligarch and a lord of the city. Those were many years, and some of them were lean years. It had been a long time since anyone in the family had thought of Nanny as a servant. Maids and footmen and grooms might come and go, but Nanny was always there. She’d grown old in her service to Gwyll’s family.

  “If the other lords knew what I have to listen to every day, at home, they’d vote me off the council,” he said. “They might just haul poor Nanny off to jail, and that’d be the end of her. I wouldn’t mind so much, only …” He faltered, then recovered. “Burn it, she’s making it hard for me to pray! Whenever I’m in the Temple for prayers, I think of her. And then I can’t follow the reciter, and my whole prayer is ruined. That’s what troubles me the most. I’m going to need my prayers. This whole city needs its prayers.”

  Rhianna stopped stirring stew and looked at her husband. “It’s that bad, then?” she said.

  “That bad, and then some.”

  Commanding King Ryons’ army, with the consent of the various chieftains, Helki kept scouts on the plains: sly little Attakotts on foot, Wallekki on horseback. They shadowed the movements of the Heathen hosts. It was all in the general direction of Obann; the multitude of them was too great to march in one mass. They would have drunk the river dry. From time to time the Attakotts would slip into a camp at night and slit a few throats. And the Wallekki often found kinsmen and allies scouting for the enemy. Those occasions, the war was set aside, and they all sat down to eat and drink together. Much valuable information was obtained this way.

  So it was that Helki knew the city of Cardigal had fallen and guards were driving the women and children eastward, to the mountains and beyond. He also knew his own fighting men couldn’t stay in the forest and sit out the war until the enemy decided to come for them.

  “I’d kind of like to bust up that column and rescue all the prisoners,” he told the chieftains in their council. “It’ll make the Great Man mad, and it might disorganize the enemy’s plans. Besides, our boys need to fight once in a while. Planting crops and working on the castle keeps our settlers busy, but the warriors don’t enjoy it much.”

  The chiefs still met in the big black tent they’d brought with them from the East. The settlers had made a clearing for it. And King Ryons now sat on the ivory-legged stool that used to belong to the mardar—the medicine man who’d commanded the army as the Great Man’s deputy, until God struck him dead in front of all the chieftains. They sat on their stools in a circle, listening to Helki’s plan.

  “What would we do with all those prisoners?” asked Shaffur, chief of the Wallekki. “There’s hardly enough food here for us.”

  “I reckon we could get ’em across the river, and they could spread themselves out among the towns along the north bank,” Helki said. “The enemy can’t cross the river in force and lay siege to Obann at the same time. Besides, they don’t have boats.”

  There were four black men in the army, from a faraway country that no one in Obann had ever heard of. Although there were only four of them, four brothers, the eldest had been given a seat among the chiefs. Because no one could pronounce his name, they called him Hawk: that was what he said his name meant. Now Hawk spoke. Old Obst, who had the gift of tongues, translated.

  “Well, why not!” Hawk said. “Let’s wash our spears whenever we can. Strike them every chance we get!”

  “Yes, yes!” agreed the other chieftains. A mardar put an evil spell on their cattle to force Hawk’s people to fight for the Thunder King; he and his brothers had a grievance. But the other chiefs had not forgotten that the Great Man had sent an army to attack them before they’d rebelled against him. With God’s help they destroyed that army. Now they were ready to fight again.

  Helki turned to Ryons. “Is this plan agreeable to Your Majesty?” he asked.

  Ryons nodded. He was only a boy, and he didn’t know what to do.

  So R
yons found himself mounted on his horse, trying not to fall off, riding out of the forest to lead his army into battle. It wasn’t really leading, of course: he was just there. He wasn’t going to fight in the battle, but his chiefs all wanted him to be present.

  He had around him some fifty men from a distant country in the East, far out beyond the Great Lakes. They called themselves his children. Their chief, Szugetai the horse-lord, gave these men to Ryons before he died. They were Ghols, wiry, hard men with slanted eyes and coarse black hair, more at home on horseback than on foot. They could sleep without slipping off the saddle, stand erect on the back of a galloping horse—they could even dress themselves on horseback. And they were deadly archers.

  Most of them had learned enough of the Tribe-talk to make themselves understood; but several of them worked tirelessly to teach Ryons to speak Gholish.

  Ryons rode in the midst of them, and Obst rode beside him on a white donkey. He, too, would be excused from the fighting, being much too old for it. Besides, he was God’s minister to the entire army. They needed him to teach them God’s ways. The Ghols would protect him as zealously as they would protect their king.

  “We’re almost there, aren’t we?” Ryons said: for the scouts had closely shadowed the Cardigal women and their captors, and the chieftains had chosen the precise place where the battle should be fought.

  Helki would lead the men who fought on foot, charging down a grassy slope. As soon as the enemy moved to meet him, the horsemen would sweep around the flanks.

  “I don’t know. I suppose so,” Obst said. “We shouldn’t worry. Shaffur’s scouts say we’ll outnumber the force guarding the captives. They won’t be expecting us.”

  The eldest of the Ghols, whom Ryons had made captain of the band, Chagadai—he wore a black patch over one eye, and his front teeth were missing—trotted up and made a speech. Obst translated.

  “He says you’ll soon be old enough to lead a charge—so you should watch closely and try to learn something.”

  “I will,” Ryons said in Gholish. He didn’t want to see a charge, or any other aspect of a bloody battle, but he’d never say anything to discourage these men who were devoted to him. “They will gladly die for you,” Szugetai said; and Ryons knew he spoke the truth.

  “See that rise, up ahead—all the nice, green grass?” Chagadai said. “We’ll stop before we get to the top. The enemy won’t see us until we charge. We’ll be rushing downhill; it’ll be over very quickly.” He shrugged. “It won’t be much of a fight.”

  Helki massed the infantry on the slope. He would lead their charge himself. A lone scout lay prone on the crest of the rise, waiting to give the signal to attack. Behind the footmen, a few hundred men on horseback checked their bows and blades. Last would come the king, protected by his Ghols, with nothing to do but watch. Some of the Ghols groused about having no part in the fighting. Very softly, from deep in their throats, some of them began to sing. It sounded like great cats purring.

  “It’s a song that promises the spirits of our ancestors that we’ll be brave: we’re not afraid to join them,” Chagadai explained. He turned to Obst. “Will God be angry with us for singing to our fathers?”

  “God knows what’s in your hearts,” Obst said. “He understands you have a lot to learn. But you ought to learn to pray to Him, not your ancestors.”

  “God likes to hear us pray?”

  “Yes.”

  Chagadai slapped the nearest rider’s shoulder with his quirt. “Pray to the real God, you sons of wild asses! He wants to hear you—our teacher says so.”

  The deep purring stopped, but only for a moment before starting up again. Chagadai smiled and nodded. “That’s better!” he said. “Now we promise God that we’ll be brave.”

  Just then the scout at the crest of the ridge rolled over and came running down the slope toward them, waving his arms. Helki raised his staff and led the infantry to the top of the rise and over it with a shout.

  Ryons and his bodyguard followed at a slow trot, stopping at the top to look down on the battle. The horsemen were already beginning their sweeps around both flanks of the enemy.

  There was a tightly packed mass of women and children, forced close together and guarded by men with spears. Halfway up the rise, some hundreds of spearmen were forming a defensive line: but they would not have time to finish before Helki and his footmen hit them. Behind them stood some archers, already firing arrows over the heads of the defenders. The Abnak war cry, shrill and ululating, rang out over the battlefield; and the boy king’s Wallekki horsemen were already in position to hit the defenders in the rear.

  “It’ll be over in a minute!” Chagadai said, shaking a clenched fist without knowing he was doing it.

  But he was wrong.

  Some of the riders shouted and pointed westward, and then they were all shouting. When Ryons looked, he saw a sight that almost stopped his heart.

  Like a torrent of floodwater, a great wedge of Wallekki horsemen—enemy cavalry!—came pouring over the plain, hundreds of them: who could count them? Straight for the undefended flank of Ryons’ army they came. They would hit it like a thunderbolt. Helki would not have time to turn and meet them.

  And just at the same time, the mob of captive women came alive and overwhelmed their guards, pulling them down, snatching their weapons from their hands, throwing themselves into the fray. Madness! What could women do? But there were so many of them, and their guards were far too few to hold them—and they were directly in the rear of what defense the enemy had left. They fell upon the archers, trampling them underfoot.

  But that was all that Ryons saw because his horse suddenly bolted straight down the slope, and he couldn’t make it stop. It was all he could do just to hold on and not fall off. With a loud cry of dismay and rage, his Ghols spurred their horses after him.

  After that, it was all a blur—dust in the eyes, horses screaming, men cursing, and the clash of blade on blade, the hard thump of colliding bodies. Ryons clung to his panicked horse’s mane. He had a sword girt to his belt, but he didn’t dare to reach for it. All he could do was hold on, as he was carried right into the middle of the battle.

  He expected at any moment to be thrown out of the saddle and pulverized by hooves. By God’s grace he kept his feet in the stirrups and his legs clamped for dear life against the horse’s flanks. There was so much noise around him that he couldn’t hear himself crying for help at the top of his lungs. All he could see, anywhere, was a swirling mass of bodies, men and horses, and the gleam of flashing steel.

  And just as suddenly as it had begun, it was all over. His horse stood panting under him, held in place by a dismounted Ghol grasping the bridle. The dust settled. Men on horseback milled around him, not fighting anymore. All around him, men and horses gasped for breath.

  Chagadai came to him, his horse plodding wearily. There was a great splotch of blood across his chest, but it wasn’t his. In labored Tribe-talk he addressed his king.

  “Be glad, my father! The battle’s won; the enemy has run away. And it was you and your children who won it—us, and all those crazy women.”

  There were bodies scattered all over the field, including not a few women. But the enemy defenders were all dead, and those who sought to rescue them all put to flight. Loudly, with hoarse, unlovely voices, the Ghols began to sing again.

  “They are giving thanks to God,” said Chagadai.

  Helki, untouched by any weapon, strode up with his staff in his hand. The Abnak Hlah, son of old Chief Spider, was with him: he had a fresh scalp tucked into his belt. Behind them came the burly old Abnak subchief, Uduqu. He would have some fresh scars to show for this fight.

  Helki grinned at Ryons. He cut a fantastic figure, with his wild mop of hair and his clothes that were nothing but a stained and grimy crazy-quilt of patches in every color you could think of.

  “Well, Your Majesty!” he said. “I don’t know whether to bow down to you or turn you over my knee and tan your hide! What the
devil were you thinking of? But you saved the day, no doubt about it. When you and your lads piled into them, and they never expecting it, they lost their heads and took off like scared rabbits.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it!” Ryons said. His throat was sore. “The horse just ran off—I couldn’t stop him.”

  “And I think you’ve had enough of horseback riding for one day, Majesty,” said Uduqu. He tucked his bloody tomahawk into his belt and plucked Ryons from the saddle, holding him off the ground. His scarred and fierce face showed tenderness. “From the moment you were first brought into my wigwam and made sassy comments while we old chiefs smoked tree-beans, my heart went out to you. And when I saw you charge into the enemy and disappear among them, I grieved for you.”

  “You should have seen him, Your Majesty!” Hlah said. “He fought like six men, trying to get over there to save you. Old fool!” And Uduqu threw back his head and laughed.

  They all laughed, out of pure relief, and some of them shed tears; but they fell silent when Obst came riding down the slope on his white donkey and joined them.

  “He’s all right, Obst,” Helki said, “not a scratch on him.”

  Obst nodded. He looked around at all the warriors.

  “This day you have seen the salvation of the Lord, accomplished by the means of a boy and captive women,” he told them. “Remember it! And give thanks in your hearts to the true God, who has given you another victory.”

  Prayers went up in a dozen barbaric languages. But Helki said, “Our work’s not done. We have to see these women safely across the river, and then get ourselves safely back to Lintum Forest. I want trees over my head again!” And under his breath, he added, “Can’t help feeling naked out here under all this sky.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Faces in the Fire