The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) (16 page)

The champion must have been sitting down, Jack thought; otherwise everybody would have seen him right away. Now he rose up, and he towered over all the Heathen warriors.

Ellayne watched in horror as he strode forth. This was not right, she thought—there are no men like that! Only in storybooks; but then she remembered that there were giants in the Scriptures.

Helki was a big man, but now he looked like a little boy too stupid or too petrified to run away from an angry man. His staff looked like a toothpick.

The giant carried a round shield with an evil eye painted on it in garish colors. It was as big as the wheel of a full-sized oxcart. On his head was a helmet with a nodding horsehair crest and two sharp horns; you could take a bath in it, Jack thought. In one hand the giant carried a sword that an ordinary man could hardly lift, let alone use. His face was dark, and a massive, curly black beard rippled down his chest. He wore a leather corselet and a white tunic, with his arms and legs left bare—arms and legs like tree trunks, a brooding mountain of a man. No wonder Helki’s army stopped singing when they saw him.

“It isn’t fair!” Ellayne muttered. But Jack could still say nothing. He heard Obst praying and wondered what good that would do.

The giant stopped a few paces in front of Helki and made a speech. It was in the language of a distant country. Obst, who had the gift of understanding every language, understood the speech.

The giant’s name was Shogg, the son of Sezek, from the country of the Zamzu on the eastern shores of the Great Lakes. He boasted about being a special favorite of the Thunder King, and a killer and eater of men. He promised to eat Helki’s heart for supper.

All this Obst understood, but didn’t translate it for the children.

When the giant finished speaking, he flourished his sword over his head, cleaving the air with a whoosh, then held it in both hands, waiting. Helki answered him, and his words carried all the way back to the cart.

“I didn’t get a word you said,” Helki said, “but I don’t reckon there was much in it worth getting. I suppose a big fellow like you has killed a lot of little men, but the times are changing. I may not be much, but the God I serve is the real God, and yours is nothing but a bug posing as a man. Now are you going to talk some more, or fight?”

The giant couldn’t have understood him, but he let out a roar that was like the earth being torn in half and swiped at Helki with his sword. That blow would have felled a full-grown oak tree, had it landed; but it didn’t. Helki ducked—and then, too swift to see, his staff lashed out and cracked against the giant’s shinbone, just below the knee. It was solid white oak, hard, patiently and skillfully aged—hard enough to shatter even the bones of giants.

With a hideous wail Shogg fell; and he never got up again. The rod cracked down across the bridge of his nose, then smashed his temple. His mighty legs thrashed violently, and then he lay still.

The whole world was silent. Who could say a word? Jack couldn’t even breathe.

Out from the ranks of the Heathen sprang a man, bare-chested, with his face painted bright red. He screamed a few words, and his army moved. It was the mardar, launching the attack. And the foremost pack of human wolves was coming straight for Helki.

“They broke their promise! I knew they would!” Jack cried.

But the chieftains had anticipated this. The mardar fell with a Ghol’s arrow in his breast. The Wallekki swung into their saddles and launched a countercharge. Abnaks and Fazzan raced forward at a run to rescue Helki.

Burly Uduqu reached him first, a step ahead of the enemy. He snatched up the giant’s sword in both hands and in one blow cut down the first two men who came close enough, cleaved them both in half. The others froze in their tracks, aghast.

Wytt swarmed up from the bed of the wagon and pulled at Ellayne’s hand, screeching.

“More men are coming, that way!” Jack called down to Obst, pointing to a cloud of dust in the south, with a mob of men under it. “Wytt smelled them an hour ago.”

“But what men are they, Wytt?” Ellayne asked.

Wytt didn’t know, but they didn’t have to wait long to find out.

It was Martis, on Dulayl, with his escort of six Wallekki riders—and behind them, at a run, seven hundred spearmen from the city of Caryllick—armored, trained, and disciplined.

Already shaken by the fall of their champion, the death of their mardar, and the awesome blow struck by Uduqu with the giant’s sword, this new shock was too much for the Heathen. Those who could, threw down their encumbering weapons and fled into the west as fast as their feet would carry them, thinking only to get back to Obann and the vast numbers of the besieging host. The city was many days’ journey distant, but they were too terrified to think of that.

Those who tried to stand and fight were soon cut down; and before the sun was much higher in the sky, all that remained of the Heathen army were a couple of hundred prisoners pleading for their lives before the man who’d slain their giant.

Ryons fell asleep shortly after the sun went down. He was tired and sore from riding the horse all day; and he fell off once, too. What would his Ghols say, if they could have seen that?

He saw not a single human being all day. He was somewhere southeast of Obann; that was all he knew. It was a fruitful country, much better than any lands the Wallekki had. Ryons passed through an abandoned apple orchard and filled his canteen twice at springs Cavall found. It was good, sweet water, and around one of the springs grew blackberries. Birds had gotten most of them, but there were still a few delicious handfuls left.

Birds were everywhere, kinds he’d never seen before. The only animal of any size he saw was some kind of big, round, roly-poly creature that ambled into a huge briar patch before he could get a good look at it. The mare snorted and fidgeted and acted like she wouldn’t take one step closer to the beast, whatever it was. Cavall growled, and his hackles stood up. Ryons expected him to run after the creature, but he didn’t. Any animal Cavall wouldn’t chase, he thought, was surely best avoided.

So he fell asleep early, and he had a dream. It was the same dream he’d had once before: he saw a host of warriors fleeing in terror as he looked down on them from some great height. They ran hard, but for all their effort they weren’t getting any farther from him. It was as if Ryons were pursuing them like an eagle from the sky; but it didn’t feel like he was flying. Not that he knew what flying really felt like—but in a dream you would know a thing like that.

He woke in the middle of the night, safe on the ground with Cavall curled up and sleeping next to him. His heart was racing, just as if the dream had been a real experience. And that was the second time he’d had it! What could it mean?

Obst could have told him from the Scriptures: “In those days My servants shall dream dreams; and I will exalt the meek and lowly, and bring down the proud.” Jack could have told him it was a dream, the same one over and over, that had sent him and Ellayne to Bell Mountain.

There were dreams being dreamed in many places that night.

In the city of Obann, old men and old women, stable boys and beggars in rags, dreamed of fire and destruction; and those who were prophets told their dreams to the people of the city, to warn them. Judge Tombo’s men arrested them wherever they found them, but there were always more to take their place.

In Lintum Forest at the castle, Jandra had the same dream Ryons had—exactly the same one. It frightened her and made her cry. Abgayle picked her up and sang to her. This time there was no voice of prophecy in the child, and she was too young to know how to describe her dream to Abgayle.

“Hush, little one,” Abgayle said. “Daddy Helki will come home again someday, and God is watching over us and him.”

No one was asleep yet at the site of Helki’s battle. The victors were resting, rejoicing, and tending to their wounds while their chiefs considered what to do about the prisoners.

“The Zamzu should be killed,” said Shaffur. “They’re savages and cannibals. We may be thankful the Thunder King has not yet raised an army of them.”

The Abnaks were for killing all the prisoners, just because that was what they always did. “Uduqu can behead them, two at a time,” Chief Spider said.

“Chieftains!” Obst cried. “You aren’t heathen anymore. Do you think God gave you victory today so you could slaughter helpless prisoners? If that was what He wanted, He would have told us! Do you think He has saved you out of so many dangers so you could do that? You are a new people now, my lords. You have to learn new ways of doing things—ways that honor God.”

“He would not be honored by a scalp dance?” Spider said.

“No, no, no!” said Obst.

“We can spare the Wallekki prisoners,” Shaffur said. “They can be convinced to join us, and they will keep their word, once given. But if we are now God’s people, those others are only heathen.”

“And so were you!” Obst answered. “All of you! As you have received mercy, be merciful yourselves. The prophet Ika said, ‘The weak, when they prevail, are cruel, but the strong show mercy. For God who is strongest of all is most merciful of all.’ You’ll have to do as you see fit, my lords. But I’ve told you what is pleasing in the sight of God.”

For some long moments no chieftain spoke. Then Helki raised his voice.

“We have men in this army who’ve fought against us, and not so long ago. You and your brothers, Hawk”—Hawk was one of four black men from a country so far away no one else in the army had ever heard of it—“invaded Lintum Forest as enemies. Yet here you are, like brothers to the rest of us.

“I say we ought to enlist those prisoners who want to fight for us and send the rest under guard to Caryllick to labor on the walls. I reckon there’ll be men who feel right grateful when they find out they won’t be the main attraction in an Abnak scalp dance. Grateful men make loyal soldiers.”

Shaffur glared at him. “How would you know that?” he said. “You were never a soldier. You’re a crazy man who wears ridiculous patched clothes and kills giants.”

Helki threw back his head and laughed, and all the chieftains laughed with him, even Shaffur. They approved his plan, and no more men were killed that night.

As the army drew near to the Imperial River, Obst persuaded the chieftains to send messengers to towns and cities that had survived attacks or just been bypassed by the great invasion.

“We have been given these lost Scriptures for a reason, my lords,” he said, “and what better reason than to make them known to as many people as will hear us?”

Two nights later, the entire surviving populace of the town of Gilmy, on the north bank of the river, crossed over on rowboats and rafts to hear Obst preach. By now the army was more than halfway to Obann, in a country marred by orchards hewed down and cornfields burned and trampled by the Heathen. The people of Gilmy were hungry. They’d suffered much from raids and incursions and a quick attack against their walls that would have finished them, had the enemy stayed another day. But they’d heard of Helki’s victory over the giant, and they wanted to see the giant-killer for themselves. They lined up to marvel at the giant’s sword, displayed by Uduqu who’d kept it as his trophy.

When they were settled down, Obst preached to them, telling them of King Ozias’ wanderings in the East and his return to Obann: where, in the cellars under the ruins of the Temple, he wrote new Scriptures and hid them away for a remote posterity. Everyone knew the old stories of the Warrior King who wrote the Sacred Songs, the last anointed king of Obann—of his boyhood in the forest, his adventures as the leader of an outlaw band, and how he regained his throne at last, only to be driven from it by the treason of his enemies. That much they knew, and no more.

And they, like all the rest of the world, had heard the tolling of Ozias’ bell from the summit of Bell Mountain—heard it, but knew not what it was, nor what it meant.

“Now, listen to what Ozias himself wrote about the bell,” Obst preached. “It comes from one of the scrolls he wrote in the cellars of Obann.

“‘For the Lord said to me, I will surely hear the bell when it is rung; and on that day I will set aside My wrath and remember My people of Obann, and all the nations of the earth that dwell in darkness. And on that day I will begin to lift the darkness, and do works unto them such as they have not known, and they will know that I am God.’”

Obst paused, wiping a tear from his eye. Many of the people listening shed tears themselves, although few of them could have told you why.

“Look around you, people of Obann,” he said. “These men you see, who bear arms in your defense, entered this country as her enemies, as Heathen. But they aren’t heathen anymore.

“For the Lord your God has done a new thing in the earth. Remember what He promised Prophet Ika: ‘Someday all the nations of the earth shall know Me for their God.’ These men you see are the first fruits of that promise, the pinch of yeast that will leaven the whole loaf—heathen no more, but sons of God.”