The Stricken Field (25 page)

"Pixies still exist," Rap said firmly. "My wife met some, many years ago. The imperor met a pixie!"

Three sorcerers stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses.

He was so excited now he could hardly sit still. "Don't you see? The War of the Five Warlocks? What happened at the end of it? Who won? Grunth?"

"Don't recall," she said uneasily.

"No one does!" Sagorn was beaming.

"It was the second millennium!" Rap shouted. "There was more sorcery around then than there ever has been since--until now, the third millennium. Anything would have been possible with that kind of power loose! Now do you understand? There is an aversion spell on Thume! An inattention spell, and it's directed more at sorcerers than at mundanes, although it obviously affects them, too. Shielding blunts it, because the last time I thought of this I was in a shielded house, like this one. When I went outside I forgot again."

"You were otherwise engaged," Sagorn murmured, but he was obviously relishing the mad suggestion and the audience's reluctance to accept it.

"I want you to stay close to me in future," Rap said, "and whisper `Thume' in my ear every half hour."

All three sorcerers were cold sober now.

"That kind of spell wouldn't last that long," Thrugg protested, glaring at Rap like a hungry grizzly taking aim.

"No, it wouldn't. Of course it wouldn't! So who is maintaining it?"

No one answered. What sort of power could maintain a spell over an entire country, let alone establish it there in the first place?

"Whole armies can vanish in Thume," Sagorn said gleefully. "Or not, as the case may be. Travelers disappear or return with tales of an empty, deserted land, yet not even the Impire has been able to commandeer that emptiness! And no one wonders why? Ma'am, gentlemen ... This does not make sense! Why has it never worried you before?"

Rap glanced around the group and saw the dawning of belief, the dawning of excitement, even. Could the War of the Five Warlocks have left some secret behind in Thume, a secret still active after a thousand years?

"I wonder if we could even approach it?" He looked down at his bare arm and wrote Thume on it. No, that would not be enough. "Thrugg, you're strongest, I think. Fix this tattoo for me so I can't wipe it off in a fit of absentmindedness. Give it all you've got."

The result was an explosion in the ambience that almost stunned him. It rocked the castle. The wild melee downstream came to an instant halt, shocked into sobriety. All Rap actually felt, though, was a momentary tingling.

"Thank you!" he said weakly, still dazed.

"Couldn't do it harder or the shielding would have burst," Thrugg explained apologetically.

All the other sorcerers and mages in the castle were staring at their leaders in consternation, wondering what had provoked that immense outburst of power. For some reason most seemed to have picked out Rap as the culprit. They should be informed of the new theory, but whom would they believe? Well, there was one person there who would never refuse an audience.

"Tik Tok, why don't you explain?"

Tik Tok beamed his dagger teeth and sprang to his feet in a shower of rosebuds. "Fiends and alloys!" he proclaimed. "I am pleased to denounce that we have made a significant breakdown in understudying!" He paused and glanced at Rap. "Good start?"

"An inedible performance," Rap said dryly. "Carry on."

Westward look:

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.

— Clough, Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth

"For the hundredth time, no! I will not marry your daughter! Not tomorrow. Not next year. Never! Not ever! At no time between now and the end of the world!"

Sir Acopulo spun around in a swirl of black robe to slouch against the railing. His move was too violent-the railing creaked ominously and even the balcony itself seemed to sag, as if in sympathy. He backed hastily into the room, seeking safety. The water was a long way down, and none too clean. One of the harbor's responsibilities was to remove the village sewage, but the tide was in at the moment.

"But it is your duty to marry my daughter," Shiuy-Sh wailed.

He was a scraggy little man, small even by Acopulo's standards. Years of seawater had shriveled his skin like old brown mud, and his scanty hair was turning silver to match the fish scales that embellished his arms to the elbow. His only garment was a twist of dirty cloth, although like all fauns he always seemed to be wearing furry black stockings. Now he stood in the middle of Acopulo's living room and wriggled his hairy toes in emotional agony, twisting and torturing the straw hat he held in his hands.

"It would be blasphemy for me to marry your daughter. Or your nephew. Or your grandmother!" Acopulo wanted to weep. He had been over this argument thousands and thousands of times, and he knew it was useless. He never got anywhere. Arguing with fauns was like trying to eat marble.

Raw.

"But my grandmother is already married," Shiuy-Sh said, seeming puzzled. With the widespread nose and large mouth of his race, he looked none too intelligent at the best of times.

"I wish she had never been born!" Acopulo wiped sweat from his brow. Ysnoss had a wonderful natural harbor, or so its inhabitants claimed. The price of that harbor was that the village nestled at the bottom of a gorge, a notch cut in high cliffs. Steep rocky walls beetled up on all sides, capturing the noon sun and deflecting the wind. Ysnoss was a gigantic oven. Perhaps "stew pot" was a better description, if one considered the foul steamy stench arising from the harbor itself.

There was no road out of Ysnoss. Most of the shanties were built on stilts, because the land was so steep. Acopulo had been given one of the finest houses in the whole village, two rooms directly over the water.

He had been there a month, and expected to remain there until he went utterly insane, in about another ten minutes ...

"Tcch!" Shiuy-Sh exclaimed in annoyance. "Bad dog, Imp! This is the priest's house! Where is your shovel, Father?"

Imp was the size of a small pony, filled with the jubilation of youth and totally lacking in manners. Twice already he had stolen the gift of fresh bass Shiuy-Sh had brought, and he had eaten half of it before the faun rescued it the second time.

Wearily Acopulo pointed to the shingle he retained for such needs. That was another curse of living with faunsthere was livestock everywhere: dogs, cats, pigs, chickens, parrots. No faun ever seemed to go anywhere with less than his own pack of hounds and a couple of tame macaws. Monkeys and geese were the worst pests. Fortunately there was not enough flat ground in Ysnoss to stand a cow or a horse on.

"My brother has promised a whole pig for the feast," Shiuy-Sh remarked cheerfully as he scraped the offensive mess through a gap in the floorboards. "And his wife is preparing wreaths of purple and white-"

"I don't care!" Acopulo screamed. "It is nothing to do with me!"

He stared miserably out over the water to where the sea shone in the gap between the cliffs. About five weeks ago the Ilranian authorities had finally given him permission to leave. He had taken the first available boat out of Vislawn--Curly Nautilus, a smelly little faun fishing dory blown off course and forced into port for repairs.

For a fee so reasonable that it should have made him suspicious right away, Nautilus's crew had promised to deliver him to a port in Sysanasso. There he had expected to catch a more reasonable craft to carry him east to Qoble, or perhaps even all the way to Zark. He would have sailed in a basket to get away from those elves. Fauns, he had soon discovered, were much worse.

Ysnoss was a port, of course. He had not stipulated the port he was to be taken to-like most imps, he had no clear picture of Sysanassoan geography at all. The fact that nothing but the locals' own small craft ever stopped in at Ysnoss was not a violation of the contract. Nor had the negotiations considered the fact that Ysnoss had no priest and both its neighboring villages did, although that had turned out to be a very material detail.

Shiuy-Sh completed his small chore, tossed the shingle back out on the balcony, and wiped his hands on his furry thighs. "If you do not wish to come to my house, Father," he suggested with the air of a man making a significant compromise, "then my daughter and nephew will be most honored to be marred here, in your residence. Unfortunately . . ."

"Unfortunately what?" Acopulo demanded, scowling at the little man's woebegone expression.

"Unfortunately, this house is one of the oldest in Ysnoss. Even my grandmother cannot recall who built it. The whole village will be coming to the wedding. Do you not feel we shall be tempting the Gods by filling this place with people? Your faith is very ennobling, Father, but you must forgive the rest of us our doubts."

"I forgive the rest of you nothing! I have told you a million times that I am not a priest!"

"But you dress like a priest!"

Acopulo put his face in his hands. He knew exactly what was coming if he persisted with the conversation: "But the elves said you were a priest." "But it is very impious to dress like a priest if you are not." "But if we believed that you had been guilty of such sacrilege we should have to hold a court . . ."

There was no way to argue with fauns. One might as well wrestle trolls, trust djinns, throw oneself on jotunn mercy, or beg charity from dwarves. A race that had gained a worldwide reputation for stubbornness was not going to start listening to reason now. There were dozens of small boats in Ysnoss. Acopulo had offered more gold than the entire population would see in centuries just for passage around the headland to Ushyoas, and not one owner was willing to take him. Ysnoss needed a priest. Other villages had priests.

"I will not marry your daughter! That is final."

"But that is most unkind of you, Father! Would you have her live in sin with my nephew? We have given you a fine residence and we bring you ample provision-"

"Report me to the authorities!" Please!

Shiuy-Sh sighed and shrugged his shoulders, causing fish scales to twinkle like sequins. "But," he said-most faun sentences began with that word-"but I have explained many times. Several princes claim to have authority here." "Any of them will do!"

"But to favor one over another might cause trouble." "Then choose the nearest!"

"But I don't know which is the nearest, Father. We pay no attention to any of them."

Acopulo uttered a heartfelt groan. The humiliation was unbearable. That he, a distinguished scholar, a widely traveled man of letters, a trusted confidant of the imperor, should prove incapable of delivering a letter! Almost six months had gone by since he left Hub on a simple journey to Zark, and yet in those months he had gone barely a third of the way and looked likely to die of old age before he went any farther.

He spun around to the skinny little fisherman and gripped him by the shoulders. They felt like iron. At close quarters his stink of fish made Acopulo's eyes water. Shiuy-Sh was a nasty little runt, yet when Acopulo tried to shake him, his skimpy form proved quite immovable.

"I am not a priest!" the scholar yelled in his face. Shiuy-Sh blinked in astonishment, as if he had not been told that hundreds of times before. "But the elves said . . ."

The first thing Gath did when he awoke most mornings was to think over what was going to happen in the next few hours. Probably everybody did that, but in his case he knew. Sometimes he was reassured and just went back to sleep. Other days he came awake with a rush, foreseeing events that had sneaked up on him in the night.

This morning the first thing he thought about was a very smelly foot in his face. He rolled over, and there was another one on that side. Vork was up to his silly tricks again, obviously. Gath selected the best future, chose a toe at random, and bit it. It tasted really bad, but the yell was just as satisfying as he had seen it would be, and so were the thump and yelp as Vork jostled one of the sailors and provoked a jotunn reaction. He was going to have a thane-size bruise. Serve him right!

The crew slept in the hold, on top of the cargo. Vork could have had the floor in his father's cabin, and the imperor had offered Gath the spare bed in his, but bunking down with the sailors had a lot more appeal. There was something manly about it, even if a load of shovels and picks was not the most comfortable mattress in the world. The talk at night was manly stuff, too, all about sailoring, and being a raider, and women. Gath had learned a lot of new things and confirmed some things he had suspected but not been sure of. Very educational.

Then he saw what the morning had in store for him and woke up with a rush. Holy Balance! God of Madness! Wow!

For three weeks, Gurx had been riding the spring flood on the Dark River. She was a wallowy old tub. Most of the officers were dwarves, because that was the law in Dwanish, but Thumug the bosun was the real captain, and the hands were all jotnar. The ambassador regarded them with downright contempt, calling them discards and freshwater fish, and of course Vork did, too, although he was careful not to let the men hear him. The crew's ability or lack of it had mattered little on this trip. The current had carried her like a leaf in a gutter, whirling past the dirty, dismal Dwanishian towns. Today she arrived at Urgaxox. All sorts of things were going to happen at Urgaxox.

Gath emerged on deck and looked around, shivering. He dressed like a sailor now, in leather breeches and nothing else. He did sailor things when he was allowed to-pulled on ropes and scrubbed decks, and it was a lot of fun. He'd developed some good calluses and he thought he had a little more muscle in his arms, or at least his biceps felt harder. Of course it took rowing to make real sailors' arms, and Gurx was no longship. Unlike Vork, he wouldn't want it to be, but any ship was better than a dwarf wagon. A jotunn was a jotunn. Even half a jotunn.

There was frost on the deck. The sun was just over the horizon. The Zogon Mountains had disappeared two days ago, and now the Kalip Range was in sight to starboard. At Urgaxox the river turned east in its final rush to the sea, and this was the end of Dwanish. Urgaxox was a frontier post of the Impire and the start of Guwush, gnome country. It was where Gurx would unload her cargo, and her passengers.

Vork was forward, just tipping a bucket of water over himself. For a moment Gath stood and studied him, sizing him up in view of the very surprising things that were going to happen in the next couple of hours. After three months away from Krasnegar, Gath pined for some friends of his own age. A girl or two would be especially welcome because it was time he got some practice in talking with girls, but Vork could have been an acceptable fellow traveler. So far he had been anything but.

He was Ambassador Kragthong's son, the youngest of Jarga's six half brothers and the only one still living with his father. He was a year older than Gath, but not as tall.

He still had his puppy fat and he still spoke soprano. He was one of those freakish jotnar with red hair and green eyes. His nose was well flattened already-and he seemed to think all these misfortunes were Gath's fault.

Vork had three aims in life and would talk of nothing else. On a scale of years, he planned to be a great raider like his unlamented cousin Kalkor. More immediately, he longed to go home to Nordland and especially to visit the great midsummer moot at Nintor. Gath could agree with him on that one, although he had some reservations about watching men chop each other to bits with axes. Once, maybe, just so he could say he'd seen a reckoning.

Vork's short-term ambition was to smash Gath to jelly. He missed no chance to pick a fight, and Gath's refusal to cooperate riled him frantic. Traditionally, fighting must be done ashore. Gurx had tied up only twice in the last three weeks, and both times Gath had stayed on board. Vork called him a coward and Gath didn't care-much. He knew he could beat Vork if he wanted to.

Clenching himself up to hide his shivering, he stalked over to Vork, then stepped back quickly as Vork tried to drop the bucket on his toes.

"Know what happens today?" Gath said, snatching the bucket.

Vork paid no attention, squeezing water out of his red hair.

"Clean your ears out, you've got fish in them." "I don't talk to cowards."

"I'll tell you what happens today, then. We tie up at Urgaxox."

Vork swung around with a gleam in his blue-green eyes. "And?" The bruise on his cheek was a great pinky-yellow lump already.

"Time you came ashore with me," Gath said, blandly giving the sailors' challenge in shrill falsetto.

Vork flushed scarlet. "Time? ... I've been trying to get you ashore for weeks, you jelly-boned half-breed!"

Gath smiled. "And the other thing that happens today is that I rub your face in the dirt." He put a foot on the line and tossed the bucket overboard.

It wasn't quite certain. He had a very faint foresight of Vork kneeling on his chest and pounding with both fists, but he wasn't going to mention that.

"You're a seer!" Vork said, suddenly wary.

"You don't have to come if you don't want to. I mean, if you're scared."

Vork was jotunn. That settled that.

There wasn't much time. Gath sluiced himself off sailor fashion and rushed down to the galley to grab some breakfast and turn from blue back to pink. Then he hurried up on deck again, still dripping, still gnawing on a hunk of gritty black bread.

Already Gurx was approaching the docks. Urgaxox was even larger than he'd expected, but the river was so high that much of it was hidden behind the shipping. He saw sunlight flashing off metal on the quays and guessed it came from legionaries's helmets. There would be gnomes, of course, and dwarves, and jotnar, because this was one of the greatest ports in the world. But he wasn't interested in the people at the moment. There were more ships in sight than he'd ever seen in his life-river craft like this one, and oceangoing galleys. They clustered along the piers like suckling piglets. Here and there he saw longships, low and sinister. Not the longship, though-not quite yet.