The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) (30 page)

In the great hall the mardars had a banquet every night, with the silent Thunder King presiding behind his mask of gold. Armies of slaves from forty nations labored night and day to keep supplies coming up the mountain from the East: the banqueters wanted for nothing. Roasted fowl and pork and beef, rich soups, sweet dainties, sparkling wine—all kept the mardars in a happy mood.

“Why so glum, First Prester?” Mardar Kyo asked Lord Reesh one night when they sat down to feast, after praying to the Thunder King. “We are warm, well-fed, and comfortable. Indeed, we occupy the center of the world.”

“It’s my age,” said Reesh, which was a lie.

In truth he hated being in that hall. He hated the infernal cat chained to the Thunder King’s throne, hated the way its green eyes always sought him out and watched him the whole time he feasted. Reesh had always had a cultivated palate. He appreciated good food and was a connoisseur of wines. But with that glaring monster contemplating him as a meal, even the fine fare tasted as bland as peasants’ porridge.

He hated the unnatural silence of the Thunder King, who never said a word; but most of all he hated the fear that had settled over his own heart like a skin of ice. All the mardars said the Thunder King read their thoughts as plainly as if they spoke to him. Against his lifelong skepticism, Lord Reesh found himself beginning to believe it.

His servant Gallgoid certainly believed it. Gallgoid spent most of the day conversing with the mardars’ servants. He spoke several Heathen languages and was quickly learning more. Reesh wondered what he got up to during the day. When he helped his master to bathe and dress for the banquet every evening, Gallgoid talked about the things he’d heard during the day—talked without really saying anything, Reesh thought.

“I don’t know how it’s done, the Thunder King getting into his mardars’ heads, but everybody knows he does it,” Gallgoid said. “Wherever a mardar is, he might as well be there, too. The Thunder King knows everything they know, and he knows as soon as they do. Everybody up here has seen it done a thousand times.”

“Do you believe him to be a god?” Lord Reesh demanded, as he sat in a hot bath that couldn’t seem to warm his bones and Gallgoid laid out his clothes—an assassin serving as a valet.

“Well, he can’t be, can he?” Gallgoid said. “Not unless the Scriptures are all wrong. But he does things that no ordinary man can do. They all say so. But what about you, my lord? What do you think? You’ve seen him face to face, and I haven’t.”

“He’s a man,” said Reesh. That bordered on being a lie. There was a part of him that couldn’t believe the Thunder King was just a man. “A god wouldn’t sit on a chair.”

“Well, my lord, you never believed in the real God,” the assassin said.

“It’s my age,” Reesh grumbled. Maybe, he thought, this last year of his life had simply been too much for him, and his mind, tricked by the feebleness of his body, was playing tricks on him. He’d never been on top of a mountain before, and it had been many years since he’d traveled any distance from the Temple. Yes, that was it—too much stress and strain on an old man.

He wasn’t sinking into a foolish belief in the Thunder King’s divinity. And a cat, no matter the length of its fangs nor the width of its shoulders, was just a cat—just an animal. Neither it nor its master could eavesdrop on his thoughts.

And Gallgoid, he thought, never answered my question, did he? Burn the fellow! He never let you know what he was thinking: a desirable trait in an assassin, but an annoyance in a servant.

Farther west, below the mountains, it wasn’t snowing anywhere near as hard. Between the Imperial River and King Oziah’s Wood, Helki and his men were fighting.

Helki couldn’t get into the forest, but the rangers could venture out and shower the Heathen with arrows. The rangers’ scouts kept careful watch. They knew at all times where Helki’s little band of warriors was; they understood how badly outnumbered he was; and they did their best to help. And all the Abnaks still in the area flocked to him. Before three days were out, Helki had four hundred men.

Santay, the Abnak chief, was delighted.

“Very funny, Abnaks fighting for Obann!” he said. “The Thunder King’s Wallekki won’t dare enter the forest without us, and the mardars don’t know what to do.”

“I thought they always knew what to do,” Helki said. “I heard they always know just what their master wants them to do, by some black magic that he does.”

“That’s what they told us,” Santay said. “But if it were true, they wouldn’t be in such trouble as they are today. They wouldn’t have accused us of murder and witchcraft; they would have known what to do when the little devils plagued them—and they wouldn’t be getting beaten by us in every fight!”

That afternoon they clashed with a hundred Wallekki horsemen and quickly routed them. The Abnaks scalped as many as they could lay hands on, but Helki was able to preserve a few, unharmed, as prisoners.

“If you boys talk to me, I might be able to save your skins,” he told them. They knew what the Abnaks would do to them if they had the opportunity, so they were eager to cooperate with Helki.

“It’s all gone bad!” said the man they picked to be their spokesman. “At night the devils come and kill us in our sleep. The mardars dance and sing spells, but they can’t stop it. They said it was the Abnaks making witchcraft, but the Abnaks have left us and still the devils come.

“We know who you are—Helki the Rod, Helki Giant-killer. The mardars promised to make magic that would cause you to die: but here we are, your prisoners. And the bowmen shoot at us from the shelter of the wood, and we can’t get at them! Nobody knows what to do.”

“Why should we have made witchcraft?” Santay said. “That was a lie! Some of the men killed by the devils were Abnaks. And yet you Wallekki turned on us!”

“It was the mardars. It was the Thunder King. The mardars said he willed it,” the prisoner said.

There were many Heathen camps between the forest and the river, Helki thought: if they ever came together under one commander, they’d wipe us out in two days. Aloud he asked, “Why haven’t your people regrouped?”

“Because we can’t! Our own chief was killed by an archer yesterday. The Zephites who were with us killed their own mardar and ran away. Nobody knows who’s supposed to be in command.”

Good news to us, Helki thought. Their morale was fading fast.

“Well, now,” he said to the prisoners, “I want to help you men, but I reckon there’s only one way to do it. If you swear an oath on the honor of your clan to ride with us and fight for us, I guess these Abnaks will let you live. We could use horsemen. There’s already thousands of Wallekki fighting for the king of Obann, so you wouldn’t be the first. What do you say?”

The prisoners looked at Santay and at the burly Abnaks around him, standing bare-chested in the snow because the battle had heated their blood. Steam rose from their skins: a daunting sight, thought Helki.

“We would be agreeable to that,” the spokesman said, “if we could trust the Abnaks—and if they can trust us.”

“There’s treason in the service of the Thunder King,” Helki said, “but not in the service of the living God. In His service every man starts with an honorable name and is judged by what he does from then on.”

“But what do the Abnaks say?” asked the prisoner.

Santay frowned. “You Wallekki turned on us when we were serving with you. Maybe the Thunder King’s mardars led you into folly. If you swear to obey Helki the Rod, as we do, you’ll have nothing to fear from us. We have already taken many scalps in payment for the wrong done to us, and we will take more. But not yours.”

Helki ordered the prisoners cut from their bonds, rearmed, and given horses: the Abnaks had captured several dozen fine horses and didn’t know what to do with them. These riders would make useful scouts, he thought, and maybe more Wallekki would join him later on. He would need every man he could get, to drive the Heathen out of this land between the forest and the river.

Angel flew down and settled on his shoulder. The Wallekki saw it and bowed their heads and kissed their fingertips, saluting him.

“Among our tribes,” said one, “only the greatest and most noble chiefs have hawks.”

“I’m not great and I’m not noble,” Helki said. But Tiliqua the Griff, standing beside him, grinned and said, “He doesn’t have to be great or noble—he’s Helki the Rod, the Flail of the Lord!”

The men cheered, and Helki sighed.

Most of the rangers rushed to the southern fringe of King Oziah’s Wood to harass the reeling Heathen army. They left a screen of bowmen in the north, but the hot fighting was all in the south. In the north, those Heathen who weren’t still hunting Abnaks were trying to make their way around the forest to reinforce the units in the south.

Martis longed to join the fighting, but wouldn’t leave Jack and Ellayne. They, with Chillith, remained some safe miles away from the forest’s edge. Huell and most of his men had gone to battle, leaving only four men to guard their camp and run messages from north to south.

It was quiet in the forest now, Jack thought. He supposed most of the birds had flown south for the winter. The birds that remained had maybe gone to watch the fighting. Jack wished he could go. It’d be better than watching the light snow fall, on and off, every day.

Wytt was off somewhere in the woods, doing they knew not what. Chillith sat over his campfire day and night, brooding. Ellayne had not yet spoken to Martis about following Chillith up the mountain. “Not much point in doing that,” she told Jack, “until we see Wytt again.”

One night everyone in the camp went to sleep; and when Jack woke early the next morning, he found himself alone in the shelter.

Ellayne had gotten up first, he thought: nothing to that. When he crawled out of the shelter, he didn’t see her anywhere around the camp. Chillith’s fire was out. One of the rangers was up, engaged in restarting his own campfire.

“Have you seen Ellayne?” Jack asked him. The man said no. “How long have you been up?”

“An hour. I got up just before sunup.”

“Now where the mischief is she?” Jack wondered. If she’d gone a little distance into the woods to do her morning business, she would’ve returned by now. The ranger would have seen her. It was mighty cold this morning to be just fatzing around in the woods.

Maybe he should worry. He went to the shelter where Martis and Chillith slept, and called for Martis to come out. Fortunately Martis was the kind of man whom it was easy to awaken.

“What’s the matter, Jack?”

“I can’t find Ellayne.”

Martis had crawled out of the low shelter, but at those words he shot to his feet. He looked all around.

“Where’s Chillith?” he said. “Have you seen him?” Jack shook his head. He’d thought Chillith must be in the shelter, sleeping. Martis gripped him by the shoulders. “Tell me what this is all about—quickly!”

“I don’t know!” Jack said. “Chillith said he had to see the Thunder King. He had to go. He wanted Wytt to take him up the mountain, but Ellayne said Wytt would never leave us, so all three of us would have to follow Chillith without him knowing—” Jack stopped himself. Suddenly his stomach clenched. “Roast her hide! They’ve gone without us!”

Martis searched the powdery snow around the children’s shelter. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for: Wytt’s tiny footprints. That made the story plain.

“She said she believed Chillith. I guess she really did,” Jack said. “But why would she sneak off without us? I’ll knock her down when we catch her!”

Martis shook his head. “She meant well, Jack,” he said. “The fewer who go, the fewer who can get caught. Foolish, but it shows a noble spirit.” Jack snorted, but Martis said, “Get something to eat and fill your pack. We’ve got to go after her.”

Martis was right. For all three of them to go chasing after Chillith would be stupid, Ellayne thought. All along it had been her plan to be the only one to go.

When Wytt crept into the shelter that night, Ellayne had shushed him and crawled outside, careful not to wake Jack. After she told Wytt what she wanted to do, she sent him to wake Chillith. Everyone else in the camp remained asleep. Not a soul stirred, not even when Ellayne stepped on a piece of firewood and snapped it.