The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) (23 page)

The way to the city was all downhill. The wall loomed like a cliff. Shaffur arrayed the company so that the king and Gurun rode out in front where all the people on the wall could see them.

The gate that lay before them, broken during the siege, had not yet been repaired. People in the city had dragged carts into the gap and turned them over on their sides, creating a barrier. Above it, on the wall, there was a throng. It looked to Gurun, from a distance, like a swarm of bees.

What if they were enraged enough to stone their king? Chagadai’s horse-archers had their bows in hand, with arrows on the strings.

The people saw them coming and started to shout, cursing them, warning them to stay away. But when Ryons was close enough for them to recognize him, they subsided and were quiet.

Now they were within bowshot of the walls. Gurun could see the people clearly. They were just plain people, like the villagers of Jocah’s Creek: not warriors. The wrath in their faces had given way to puzzlement. Quite a few of them were pointing at her. She heard a confused murmur; again they reminded her of bees. And it was not wise to stir up bees. These bees had stones in their hands, but as yet no one had thrown one.

“Father God,” she prayed silently, “protect this boy whom you have made a king. And give me courage, so that no one can see that I’m afraid.” She’d never in her life seen walls like these, nor such a crowd of people. What if the walls fell down? What if all those people let fly with stones? Gurun let out her breath slowly. Her hands on the reins trembled, but she hid all other signs of fear. She hoped she hid it well.

Ryons reined in, and all his riders and foot soldiers came to a halt behind him.

“Sire,” said Chief Shaffur, “you are already too close to these walls, and it is not safe to venture any closer. Let us attack suddenly and clear the way.”

“Attack my own city?” Ryons shook his head. “No—I have to talk to them,” he said. And he dismounted from his horse. Seeing that, Gurun came down, too—with just enough grace so as not to fall.

The little men the king called Ghols sucked air through their teeth. “Father,” said Chagadai, “you mustn’t do this! At least let us stand before you, as your shield.”

“No. I can’t,” said Ryons. “You have to wait here. I command it.”

Chagadai stiffened in his saddle, then grinned. “When you command, we must obey,” he said. He turned and shouted something to the others, then turned back to Ryons. “Father, you’re growing up so fast!”

Gurun understood none of those exchanges. She was resolved to stay beside the king, as the filgya had told her she must.

Their hands found each other, and together they advanced toward the gate. Ryons stopped just short of it and looked up at the people on the wall. “So many faces looking back!” Gurun thought. More than she’d ever seen in one place before. But now they looked more curious than angry. “That’s something.”

“Good people of Obann,” Ryons said, “why have you locked me out of the city and locked my people in? What have we done to make you angry? But if you don’t want us here, we’ll go. Only let my men come out, and we will go in peace.”

Gurun didn’t know how it was possible, but it seemed that all the people in and above the gate could hear him. Men crouched behind the toppled wagons, armed with sticks and stones. There wasn’t room for one more person on the wall. Yet silence reigned over them all—until someone called out, “Who’s the girl?”

“Her name is Gurun,” Ryons said. “She came from over the sea, from a faraway country in the North. God sent her to us. I wanted to show her the city.”

“What do you mean, ‘over the sea’? No one crosses the sea!”

Gurun couldn’t help answering, “I did—and it was not easy! A great storm blew me south, and I landed on the coast of your country. My people live on islands far away from here. Long, long ago they came there from a southern land, seeking refuge from God’s wrath. We believe it was Obann that our forefathers came from. Our language sounds very much like yours, and our Holy Scriptures are the same.

“I do not know why God sent me here. But I do know that He sent you a king and saved you from your enemies.”

A young man climbed onto the parapet and shouted down at them: “We want our Temple! Ask this king—who burned God’s holy Temple?” Behind him, other young men grumbled their assent.

“In my country,” Gurun said, “we’ve never had a temple. But we do have God’s Scripture, and we know our God. He hears our prayers and cares for us, and that is all the temple that we need.”

The young man on the parapet was going to answer, but angry voices drowned him out.

“Get down, get down!”

“Shut up, you!”

“Everybody knows the king and his people weren’t in the city when the fire started!”

“He saved us! He rode the great beast and crushed the Heathen!”

“Let him in, let him in! Long live King Ryons!”

And someone else cried out, “Long live the Queen!” Gurun blushed and held her tongue.

Hands reached up and dragged the young man off the parapet, and he was never seen again. More hands tipped the carts right-side up and started pulling them out of the way.

Up on the wall, the crowd began to cheer. Behind the king and Gurun, the king’s men broke out singing—barbarously, in several languages all at once, tunelessly, and joyously. It was their battle anthem: “His mercy endureth forever!” The men who sang had once been Heathen and knew whereof they sang. God’s mercy had saved their lives many times over.

“What made them change their minds?” Gurun cried into Ryons’ ear.

He shook his head. “I don’t know!” he shouted: it was the only way he could be heard above the din. “Maybe they’ll tell us later.” But he thought, in his heart of hearts, that this girl’s bravery had shamed the people of Obann and brought them to their senses.

The rangers in Oziah’s Wood could only watch and wait as Heathen swarmed along both rivers and set up camps around the forest. Hundreds more came over every day—thousands. There were too many of them to attack.

As the Heathen marched down from the mountains, along the Imperial River in the south and upon their newly built road in the north, slaves managed to escape and unwilling warriors, pressed into service, to desert. The mardars had no time to send troops after them. These persons fled into the foothills east of Oziah’s Wood, where they had to struggle mightily to stay alive. The land was full of them.

Hlah met a group of them almost as soon as he set foot in the hills. Men of Obann and a few women—maybe thirty of them, all told—huddled under the fir trees around a few poor campfires, hungry and cold. The path Hlah was following, with Orth in tow, led straight up to their campsite.

“Away with you! We kill!”

A few half-frozen men stood in the way, brandishing sticks.

“We come in peace, in God’s name,” Hlah answered. “I come from Obann City, where my lord King Ryons has crushed the Heathen host. But who are you? We came this way because I thought this country would be empty.”

A hollow-cheeked man in ragged clothes answered, “You’re not from Obann—I know an Abnak when I see one. Accursed Heathen!”

Hlah was not afraid. These men looked barely strong enough to stand on their feet. But he was moved to pity.

“Abnak I am,” he said, “but heathen I am not. I serve the living God. My companion is Obannese, but he’s out of his wits and I make neither head nor tail of him. Maybe you can! But first you’ll need hotter fires and food and better quarters than those flimsy lean-tos that I see. Who are you, and how came you here?”

Before anyone could answer, Orth gave a great cry and sank down to the ground. He sat in the snow with his legs spread like a child’s, wailing. But then, suddenly, he spoke.

“Hear, O my people, hear the word of the Lord. If you will humble your proud hearts, my people, and turn to me, and call upon my name; then I the Lord will hear you, and remember you, and deliver you out of your distress.

“O my people, why will you walk in darkness, and dwell in the shadow of death? Remember your God, whom you have forgotten, and I will turn to you. Cry out to me, you who have been silent, and I will hear you as a father hears the crying of his children. Why have you forgotten me so long? Return to me, return!”

Orth fell silent then and sat as a man in a daze. His words went echoing off among the trees.

“That’s something from the Scriptures,” someone said. “I’m sure I’ve heard it before, in the chamber house.”

“Prophet Ika, Fifth Fascicle, eleventh verse,” Orth said. “Will someone help me up? I seem to have fallen, and there’s a weakness in my legs.”

Hlah helped him, and after a moment’s shakiness, he was able to stand.

“Who are you, mister?” a man asked.

That struck Orth as a very good question; and he didn’t know the answer. When he searched for it, it wasn’t there. His name, his career in the Temple, Lord Reesh, the city—it was all gone from his memory, without a trace.

“It’s a very strange thing,” he said, “but I truly don’t know who or what I am, or what I’ve been. Even stranger, I don’t care! I feel as though I’ve been sick, gravely ill, for a long time; and now I’m well again.

“But I do know all the Scriptures. And I know that you are persons who’ve been evilly used by the Heathen and only just escaped. There are many like you in these hills, aren’t there?”

They all stared at him, and Hlah stared harder than anyone. Was the fellow talking sense, all of a sudden, or was this just another kind of madness?

“Don’t be afraid!” Orth said. “You’re starving and you’re cold, but God has not forgotten you. This young man—” he clapped Hlah on the shoulder and made him jump—“is wise and strong. Something tells me that I owe my life to him, although I don’t remember how. But he knows how to find food in any kind of country and how to build warm shelters and fires that don’t easily go out. And he is a servant of God. He’ll be a great help to you.”

“How can someone not know who he is?” a woman asked.

Orth shrugged. “The Lord has taken away such knowledge from me. Someone will have to give me a new name, for I’ve forgotten my old one. But I made no jest when I said that I was sick and now I’m well. I do feel very strongly—indeed, I know—that I have received God’s mercy. Why I stood in such dire need of it, He has caused me to forget. For that I give thanks!”

He turned to Hlah. He looked perfectly sane now. Whatever had been haunting him was gone. There was no denying the change in him. It went clear through him.

“Friend,” Orth said, “I know you have been good to me, even as you’ll be good to these poor people here. But I’ve forgotten your name, too.”

“I’m Hlah, the son of Spider.”

“Hlah, these folk need a hotter fire, and they’re hungry. And I think that after needful things are seen to, as you order them, there will be time for prayer.”

“How can we pray?” someone said. “Are you a prester?”

“I don’t know that I am or ever have been,” Orth said, “but I do know that nowhere in the Scriptures, nowhere at all, does it say God’s people need a prester if they wish to pray. I know the whole body of Scripture. The Lord has taken away everything else—and I don’t want it back. I’m well now and have no desire to be sick again.”

Enough of this, Hlah thought. The day was moving on, and it would be cold and dark tonight. He clapped his hands, startling the refugees.

“First thing, let’s build a big fire that’ll make everybody warm!” he said. “I see plenty of wood available. And then we’ll have to build some better shelters; those lean-tos are no good for a winter night. There’s just enough time to get it done, if we start now.”

“Show us what to do,” a man said; and Hlah did. By nightfall they had a bonfire in the middle of their clearing and several Abnak wigwams arranged around it—conical frames of saplings, held together by leafy branches woven among them, insulated by many, many armfuls of dead leaves. These would do, Hlah thought, until they could build something better.

There had been no time to find food. That would have to wait until tomorrow. No one would die of hunger overnight. It would be crowded in the wigwams, but that would only make them warmer.

Standing before the fire after sundown, when it had grown too dark to do any more work, Orth recited several of Ozias’ Sacred Songs, then raised his arms and spoke a prayer. It was the noblest and most moving prayer that Hlah had ever heard. Obst himself could not have done better. The refugees, doubtful at first, eventually closed their eyes and bowed their heads and crossed their hands on their chests; and not a few of them wept silently. When Orth at last said “Amen,” they all echoed him.

“You must have been a prester, to know how to pray like that,” a man said. “If not, you should have been.”

“I don’t know,” said Orth. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But what’ll we call you?” asked a woman.

“You may call me whatever you please.”

Someone said to Hlah, “You know him best. Give him a name.”

Hlah was young and had never named a human being before. Abnaks often take new names—when they married, or took an enemy’s scalp, when there was a death in the family—to mark occasions in their lives. Hlah as a little boy had been named Salamander.