The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) Page 3

  When they were alone again, just before going to their separate rooms to sleep, Tim said, “It’s just no use, lassie. We might as well turn around and go home. We can’t go to Obann now.”

  “You can go home,” Gurun said, “but I shall go to Obann. I want to see the king.”

  “Burn it all, girl, there ain’t no king! By the time we could get there, there might not be an Obann, either. Don’t you listen to what people have been telling us?”

  Gurun shrugged. “A filgya never lies,” she said, “and it’s useless to go one way when the filgya bids you go another. If my father’s grandfather had tried to avoid the man who killed him, he would only have met him in a place where he didn’t expect him.”

  “That is a heathenish superstition,” Tim said.

  Nevertheless, after they’d been in Kantreff several days, Tim set out with her for Obann.

  “I don’t know why I do it,” he grumbled, when they were clear of the town. “Maybe it’s because you remind me of my big sister. She caught a fever and died when I was just a little boy. But she sure did love me; and I loved her.”

  “You’ve been as an elder brother to me,” said Gurun, “and God will bless you for it.”

  CHAPTER 5

  An Interrupted Journey

  Summer gave way to fall. The farther south they fared, the worse the news. Even so, they still had far to go: they were only halfway to Obann.

  The towns they visited were full of refugees. There were no rooms to be had in any of the inns; but camping under the stars was no hardship for a trapper. Tim knew how to build a fire that wouldn’t go out, how to put up simple shelters that kept out the wind and the rain, and how to live off the land. They never went hungry. Gurun learned from him everything she could.

  “A hundred miles left to go, give or take a few,” he told her one day. Because of rain, they’d gotten off to a late start. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to getting there! This country hereabouts should be full of people, but we haven’t seen anyone for two whole days. They’ve all cleared out. I wonder if the city’s fallen.”

  They were in a land of grassy plains interspersed with woodlands and abandoned farms. Tim had been keeping clear of towns because they were jammed with refugees and conditions weren’t pleasant. People were getting short-tempered, and there was violence. Besides, anybody traveling south would be suspected of insanity, he said.

  “Perhaps the city has a king by now,” said Gurun.

  “That’s foolishness. Obann is ruled by oligarchs—has been for, oh, a hundred years, at least.”

  “What are oligarchs?”

  “Never you mind. They ain’t kings.”

  It began to drizzle. They put hoods over their heads and tightened their cloaks, for it was getting cold. The grass around them had begun to turn yellow, and few of the trees were still green. Their masses of red and gold leaves struck Gurun as gloriously beautiful. But already a few trees had shed their leaves and were bare.

  The cold and drizzle stopped their talk, and they plodded on in silence, making for a wide gap between two stands of trees. They were halfway through it when, with outlandish whoops and howlings, a band of men ran out and suddenly surrounded them.

  Gurun didn’t know if they were men or trolls. Darker than Tim or any of his countrymen, short and squat with crow-black hair, they menaced the two travelers with short spears and gabbled at them like a flock of ravens.

  “What are these?” Gurun asked.

  “Heathen—and they’ve got us!” Tim squeezed her hand, hard. “God help us now.”

  There were two dozen of them. They wore leather jerkins and trousers bright with colored checks, red and blue and green. They made a terrible noise, all gabbling at once. After several minutes of this, one of them jammed his spear into the ground and harangued the others, shouting them down.

  Gurun didn’t understand their language—if it even was a language. If they were trolls, it would be fatal to show fear. But it seemed that one of them ran out of patience with the speaker and cocked back his arm to hurl his spear.

  It was aimed right at Tim’s chest; and without thinking, Gurun stepped in front of him.

  “Stop this jabbering!” she cried, holding up her hand against them. “What have we ever done to you that you should harm us?”

  The first speaker knocked the spear out of his comrade’s hand and pushed him to the ground. He turned to the rest and broke out in a loud tirade. Gurun didn’t know what he was saying, but it was this:

  “Idiots! Fools! Have you learned nothing? Do you all want to die in this miserable country?

  “Look at her! Any fool can see she’s different. Is she not exactly what we’ve been looking for? Look at her eyes, her hair, her skin! And she stood between her servant and your spear, Bolok. Would an ordinary maiden do that? Can there be any hope for us without her?”

  The men all looked ashamed. One of them muttered, “You’re right, Shingis. See if you can speak with her.”

  “If she’s not the one, we’ll know soon enough,” added another.

  The man turned to Gurun and made an odd kind of half-bow, half-crouch to her, with his hands balled at his hips. He spoke to her in a fractured Obannese, which both she and Tim could understand.

  “Be no angry with us, maiden. I sorry we scare you. My name Shingis; I chief to this band. We are all Blays. We come here from country far-far away. Thunder King send us to fight Obann.

  “We fight hard, but we lose. Army all broken now, chased away from city. Boy riding great beast, he scatter us like dust. All Blays died but us.”

  He paused to see if she understood. She nodded.

  “My name is Gurun,” she answered, speaking slowly. “I come from far away, from the North. Over the sea. This is my friend, Tim. We were going to Obann.”

  “No go there now—stay away!” He looked scared; they all did. “Obann god very angry. He sent great beast to trample us. Thunder King be angry with us, too. He take away our gods, so we think he is a god. But Obann god kill-kill his army.

  “Please, maiden—you stay with us. Be queen. We take good care for you. You pray for us, maybe find gods to take care for us.”

  Tim looked like he wanted very badly to say something, but didn’t dare. But Gurun could see for herself that it would have been dangerous to decline the invitation.

  “If I am to be your queen,” she said, “then you must obey my commands. A queen should be obeyed, or she is no queen. Then I will stay with you, and pray for you.” Why they would need someone to do their praying, she couldn’t imagine; but now was not the time to ask.

  Shingis turned to his fellows and translated her words. There was some discussion about it.

  “You’d better accept her,” he said. “We can’t survive without gods to protect us. We’re all alone in the country of our enemies. This maiden is our only chance—and I say the gods sent her to us: whatever gods there be that the Thunder King has not destroyed. Or would you rather wait for his spells to find us out and kill us one by one?”

  “We shall see how well she prays, Shingis,” answered one of the men. “But it’s true that in the beginning the Old Gods came out of the North.” The others murmured their agreement.

  “If she came over the sea, the gods must have sent her,” said another man.

  “Maiden, we agree,” Shingis said to Gurun. “You be queen for us, and we obey you. Then we live, and not die.”

  He bowed again, and Gurun curtseyed. And so Gurun the castaway became queen of a strange people in a strange land.

  Maybe these men would help her get to Obann and see the king. For the time being, she would have to make the best of things.

  CHAPTER 6

  The King and His Council

  Tim was wrong about there being no king in Obann. There was indeed a king, now. The old oligarchy, what was left of it, had ceded its power to him.

  Two of the city’s gates were broken. They would be repaired. But in the heart of the city was a ruin t
hat could not be repaired.

  The Temple, the great Temple that had been erected centuries ago, lay in ruins, destroyed by fire, collapsed under its own weight. Not one stone of it remained upon another. It was all a heap, a mountain of rubble. The First Prester, Lord Reesh, lay dead somewhere beneath it—or so men believed.

  Nevertheless, the Heathen host was scattered, the siege lifted, the danger past. And Obann had a king.

  The king didn’t even know how old he was, but he couldn’t be much older than ten. A boy king, born into slavery in Heathen lands beyond the mountains; who could neither read nor write; whose closest advisers were a clique of Heathen chiefs, a hermit, and a wild man from Lintum Forest; who by the power of God rode a great beast to the rescue of a city that he’d never seen before—this was Ryons, King of Obann.

  On the same day Gurun met the Blays, King Ryons sat in audience in a great black tent pitched before the city, on a throne that had belonged to the late governor-general of Obann, slain when the Heathen broke into the city. The throne was too big for Ryons, and he would have dearly loved to be elsewhere.

  Around him in a semicircle, on their ivory stools of office, sat his councilors in all their finery, Heathen chiefs who now believed in God. Tall, bearded Wallekki; little Attakotts; tattooed, shaven-headed Abnaks; men in furs and feathers, men with painted faces; men as black as buffaloes; men from all the countries of the East—they were Ryons’ chieftains.

  Behind him stood twenty men of his bodyguard—swarthy, bowlegged horsemen with almond-shaped eyes: Ghols, who had adopted King Ryons as their father.

  Off to one side, leaning on a staff, stood a big man dressed in patched-together rags of many colors, his head crowned with a wild mane of straw-like hair. You wouldn’t have been surprised to find mice nesting in it. This was Helki the woodsman, Giant-killer, Ryons’ general, whom men called the Flail of the Lord, but who called himself Helki, son of nobody in particular.

  Before the king stood his teacher, and the teacher of all his formerly Heathen army, Obst, the hermit: Obst, who had climbed Bell Mountain and descended with the gift of tongues. He understood everything that was said to him in any language, and whatever he said, the hearer understood it in his own language. He was an old man, tall and lean and straight, with iron-grey hair and beard. It was Obst who was speaking now.

  “The Heathen armies have been driven from the city—but now they’re on the loose, all over the country. There must be hundreds of bands of marauders spreading out in all directions, thousands of men! And yet the thousands who were killed here are still waiting to be buried or burned. It had better be done soon, or we’ll have a pestilence.

  “Somehow, someone must clear away the ruins of the Temple. More importantly, a better temple must take its place—built not of stone, but of the word and spirit of God. A temple not built by human hands cannot be torn down by human hands.

  “And still there is one more thing that may seem to some of you a small thing, but which must not be overlooked. We do not know what has become of Jack and Ellayne, God’s servants, and Martis, their protector. They were left behind in a walled town for their own safety, but the children ran after the army—and never found their way to us. Martis followed them and has not been heard of since. All three have vanished.

  “It must be remembered that these three went all the way to the summit of Bell Mountain, where Jack and Ellayne rang King Ozias’ bell so that the whole world heard it. And it was these three who recovered for us the lost books of Scripture, written by Ozias in his own hand. But for those three, none of us would be here today. I would have died a hermit in the forest; you, my chieftains, would all be Heathen; and Obann would not have her king. We must find them!”

  The wild man, Helki, sighed loudly, drawing attention to himself.

  “Say the word,” he said, “and I’ll go out and find them. I reckon if anyone can do it, I can. But the longer we wait, the harder a job it’ll be.”

  “But then who will command the king’s armies?” Obst said. “There’s much to do! Those remnants of the Thunder King’s armies must be rounded up and either brought to God or expelled from the country.”

  Helki laughed. “Hah! This tent is full of men who know more about managing a war than I’ll ever be able to learn. Twelve of them are sitting right in front of you. But I don’t think any of them can match me for tracking. What do you think, Your Majesty?”

  Ryons wasn’t ready for a question. Why had Helki asked him? He stammered, hunting for words.

  He’d met Jack and Ellayne, but he didn’t know them well. He knew Obst set great store by them and that they’d done great things, although they were only children like him. From what he’d heard of them, they were heroes.

  Of course, Ryons himself was special, too. They’d made him their king, hadn’t they? And the great beast that was like a mountain walking had plucked him off the ground and set him on its back and chased the Heathen from the city. All the chieftains said he deserved to be king and that they would have no other.

  “I don’t know how to decide, my lords,” he said at last. “You’ll have to decide on what’s the wisest thing to do. We’ve done all right so far! But, Helki, do you really think you can find them?”

  The woodsman shrugged. “It won’t be easy. But we can’t send the whole army out looking for them, that’s for sure. As it is, we’ll need a bigger army to do all that needs doing around here. It might as well be me who goes hunting for them.”

  Zekelesh, chieftain of the Fazzan, who wore wolves’ heads as helmets, spoke up. His tribe-talk had improved. Obst didn’t have to translate for him anymore.

  “How will you hunt them, Helki? One man, with a whole country to search! Will you talk to the birds? Will they tell you where to look?”

  “Birds can tell a hunter many things,” said Helki. “You just have to learn how to listen.”

  Captain Hennen from Caryllick, whose mail-clad spearmen had saved Ryons’ army once, then joined it, spoke: “If ever those Heathen recover from their fright and get back together again, they might be strong enough to seize the country. Obann’s general, Lord Gwyll, is dead. Most of the oligarchs are dead. We must raise and train an army to take the field as soon as possible—no later than the springtime. The army we have here can only be a cadre. Where are we to find a general?”

  “We can start by making you a general,” Helki said.

  “If there are any Abnaks on the loose, they’ll join us,” added old Chief Spider, who spoke for his people. “That is, unless they just decide to go back home. I’m sure they’ve had their fill of fighting for the Thunder King.”

  “Many of the Wallekki will join us, too,” Chief Shaffur said. He commanded Ryons’ cavalry and spoke for the Wallekki in the army. “With enemies scattered all over the country, a thousand horsemen will do us more good than ten thousand men on foot.”

  Hennen nodded to him. “Very true, Chieftain! But do any of you truly believe the Thunder King is finished with us? Having sworn to do it, do you think he’ll ever rest until he sacks Obann? I tell you he cannot! To give up would destroy his slaves’ belief in him. Come spring, there will be Heathen hordes moving west again—depend upon it. We’ll need those ten thousand infantry, my lords. And fifty thousand would be better!”

  Around and around went the discussion. Ryons listened intently and did his best to understand. Someday he would grow up, and then he really would have to make decisions. He was not looking forward to it.

  In the end, they decided to let Helki go and see what he could do, provided he returned before the spring if he couldn’t pick up the missing children’s trail. In the meantime, the chieftains would cooperate with Obann’s surviving officials and army officers to reorganize the defenses of the country and put the new king on a solid footing.

  Just as the audience was about to be dismissed, a young Abnak begged leave to speak—Hlah, the son of Spider.

  “One more thing, my lords!” he said. “I hope nobody thinks that
any army can get across the mountains without the cooperation of the Abnak tribes. A big enough army might force its way across, but it would have to pay a heavy price in blood. We hold all the best passes leading into Obann.

  “We Abnaks joined the Thunder King because he tempted us with the glory of sacking the city and the great plunder we would take. He could not make good on that!

  “I ask leave to go back home, before the winter comes, and make sure all the tribes know what happened here. More—my people must be told the truth, that Obann’s God is the God of all peoples, everywhere. Our God has saved us many times, as He has saved this city. Each one of us knows that for the truth! I won’t rest until I make this known to all our people back home. It is a shame to us, to serve the Thunder King!”

  “Don’t try to keep him here—he’ll just sneak away,” put in the scarred old subchief, Uduqu. “I’d go with him, only I’m not so sure my legs would carry me that far.”

  “He has my blessing,” added Spider. “Hlah is a warrior, and he knows his own mind. He has taken enemy scalps; he can speak for himself.”

  “Then go with the Lord God’s blessing, too, young man,” said Obst. “May you be the first of many missionaries.”

  CHAPTER 7

  What Can a Blind Man See?

  Jack and Ellayne, with Martis, had been captured by a band of one hundred Griffs somewhere between Obann and a town called Gilmy. Now they were some little distance up the Chariot River—the three of them and the captain of the Griffs, who had been struck blind in his sleep. Terrified by the omen, the Griff warriors had all run away and left them.

  Chillith was more than just the captain of a band. He was a mardar, too—one of the Thunder King’s medicine men. These performed sacrifices in the Thunder King’s name and served as his eyes and ears among his captive nations. But now Chillith was blind, and his men had deserted him.