The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) (7 page)

Hooq laughed, but not merrily. “Better you than me!” he said.

The two scouts walked away, leaving Obst alone with the boy. He was the dirtiest and scrawniest boy Obst had ever seen, with arms and legs like twigs and a head that seemed too big for his bony body. He wore only rags, and stood on bare, black feet. His hair was too dirty to be assigned a definite color. His only promising feature was his large, brown eyes.

“My name is Obst,” the hermit said, “but Gik is no name for a boy.” For the word meant something very foul in the Wallekki language.

“That’s all they ever call me,” said the boy. “I know what it means—what of it?”

“But surely you have another name?”

“If I do, no one ever told me what it was. I was born a slave in the household of Sharak’s father. They sold my mother after she weaned me. No one knows who my father was. Sharak says it was a dog.”

There was no slavery in Obann—except, of course, if you fell into debt and could not pay. But all the Heathen peoples practiced it, and sometimes bought Western children from outlaws. People living under the shadow of the mountains knew much about slavery.

“If you’re going to take care of me,” Obst said, “I can’t call you Gik. It wouldn’t be right. Isn’t there anything else you would like me to call you?”

The boy made a face, shook his head.

“Well, then,” Obst said, “since you leave it up to me, I shall call you Ryons, after a boy who lived a long, long time ago. He was an orphan, too; but God did not forget him.”

“They said you’ve been to see the mardar,” the boy said.

“Yes—and he has seen me. Tell me, what is he?
Mardar
means ‘chief of servants’ where he comes from, but he didn’t seem like much of a servant to me.”

The boy who didn’t seem to care what you called him sat down by the low entrance to the tent. Obst joined him.

“The mardar is here to make sure that everyone obeys King Thunder,” the boy said. “He makes sacrifices to the Great Man, and they’re all afraid of him. He can sacrifice a chief of chiefs, if he likes. He can do anything he pleases, and no one tries to stop him. He’ll probably have you cooked, and eat your heart.”

“There wouldn’t be much gain to him in that; my heart is old and all worn-out,” Obst said. Ryons laughed; he seemed to find that very funny. Obst let him go on for a few moments.

“Tell me about the Great Man, this King Thunder, whom the mardar serves,” Obst said. “Is he a man who claims to be a god?”

Ryons answered in a harsh whisper. “Don’t even talk about him! It’s dangerous even to mention him. They don’t let us talk about him.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s stronger than the gods! They all have to do what he says. He’s already captured a whole army of gods and put them in prison in his castle out beyond the lakes. That’s why the nations all have to obey him. If they don’t, he’ll call down fire on them and burn them up.”

Obst had never heard of such a thing, outside of Scripture. There were heathens in ancient times, too, with heathen gods of wood and stone, and priests who pretended to make miracles. But he realized he would have to be careful of what he said.

“Well, Ryons, I know nothing of these things, but if you’re afraid to speak of them, we won’t,” he said. “Do you think I might have a drink of water? And after that, we can talk of anything you please. I think we might as well be friends. Don’t you?”

Ryons frowned, and went to fetch some water.

How green it is!” Ellayne said, when they emerged from the wooded skirts of the mountain and saw the rolling plains.

True, Jack thought. On their way out from Ninneburky, the plains were a dreary grayish-yellow. Had they really been up on the mountain that long, or was spring just coming on fast?

“I’ve never seen it so lush,” Martis said. “As if the world were going to go out in one last blaze of glory. But let’s not get into a theological discussion! The important thing is to get to Lintum Forest in a hurry. I think we’ll be marching straight across the main invasion route.”

Jack wondered how the Heathen came to be heathen, and why they so often made war on Obann. That went back a long, long way—all the way back to Scripture days.

“You say you know about the Heathen, Martis,” he said. “What are they like? Why are they so fierce? Why do they make war on us?”

“They’re like us, Jack—just people. Some live in cities. Others roam about and live in tents. There are many different nations. The only thing they have in common is, they’re not us. They don’t worship our God, and they don’t hold allegiance to the Temple. And they attack us because we are richer than they are and we have things that they want.”

“But our God
is
God, isn’t He?” Jack said. “Ashrof says their gods are just make-believe gods. They must be very silly people, to worship make-believe gods.”

“They don’t think they’re make-believe,” Martis said.

“Tell us about them,” said Ellayne. “It’s dull, just walking on and on all day.”

“I couldn’t possibly tell you about all the Heathen gods. There must be tens of thousands of them,” Martis said. “The people who gave me Dulayl”—his horse—“worship horses and the moon. And because their country is an arid land, they also worship rain and springs.

“There’s one nation that has a different god for each day of the year. The Abnaks say their gods live inside the trunks of trees. Many of the nations make idols out of wood or stone or brass and worship them as gods. And I’ve heard of a people far out beyond the Great Lakes who say their god is a gigantic disembodied head at the bottom of Lake Sarmeen who dreams perpetually; and the people are his dreams. If the head ever wakes up, they’ll all cease to exist. So their priests have to sing lullabies to it day and night, all year round.”

Jack laughed. “How could anyone believe a thing like that!”

“They would say the same about us,” Martis answered.

With the children riding Dulayl and Martis leading him, it took them three days to cross the plain and reach the fringe of Lintum Forest. Several times they passed families on foot or with ox-drawn wagons, fleeing the mountains.

“We all know there’s going to be a big war,” said a grey-bearded man whose wife and three spinster daughters rode in a wagon. “We don’t want to be around when those murdering Heathen come across the mountains. They’re already lifting scalps, burning people out of their homes. Cusset Abnaks are the worst—but then they always were.”

These people were making for the river, hopefully to find refuge in a walled town before it was too late. The lean, long-nosed daughters only fidgeted, but the plump wife had some choice words for Martis.

“Now is no time to be traipsing around with small children,” she said, “and here is not the place for it! What can you be thinking of?”

“We’ll be safe in Lintum Forest.”

“Hah! You’ll find more robbers than honest folk in Lintum Forest.” And she might have had even more to say, had Wytt not stayed in hiding under Ellayne’s coat.

They went their separate ways. “I wonder if they’ll be all right,” Jack said.

“As long as they don’t run into a Heathen raiding party,” Martis said.

They were relieved when the great green mass of the forest loomed up in the south, and even more relieved when they actually entered it. Only Ellayne voiced some misgivings.

“I don’t like to think about all the outlaws in this country,” she said. “I felt safe with Obst: most of the outlaws were his friends. But what are we going to do if we run into a gang of them?”

“Some of them might show respect for a servant of the Temple,” Martis said. His clothes had suffered badly during his travels, but he still bore his Temple insignia. “Of course, they might show more respect for weapons.”

With his dagger as his only tool, he spent some hours fashioning weapons. He sharpened some nicely balanced sticks for throwing and shaped a stout staff for closer fighting.

“Have you killed a lot of people?” Jack asked.

“More than would please God, Jack. I killed because my master commanded it. Now I’ll kill only to protect the two of you.”

Ellayne wondered about it. Her hero, Abombalbap, slew robber knights and werewolves, giants, witches, and evil barons. But it was all so different when it happened in a story! Remembering the outlaw Wytt killed, and how he lay sprawled under the stars, she shuddered.

The forest was greener than they’d left it and alive with birdsong. Their first night in camp under the trees, they were almost deafened by another kind of music.

“Ho! The peeper-frogs are out in force already,” Jack said. “There must be thousands of them. Hop-toads, too.”

“I don’t see how we’re going to be able to sleep with all that racket,” Ellayne said.

“Shh!”

Martis jumped up, staff in hand, and waved them to silence. Their campfire crackled. Jack hadn’t heard anything but that and the frogs.

“Whoever you are,” Martis called into the night, “if you come in peace, show yourself!”

Jack was about to ask what all the fuss was about, when there was a noise in the underbrush and a man stepped out of the shadows into the firelight: a small, fidgety man in ragged clothes, with burrs and leaf-litter stuck to his hair. He held up empty hands.

“I mean you no harm,” he said. “It’s just that I saw your fire, and I hoped it might be honest folk.”

“What are you doing, walking around at night?” Martis demanded.

“Just trying to save my skin—that’s all, I swear. I won’t do you any harm. I’m all alone. If I might come and sit down … and if you have a bit of food to spare …”

The only weapon he had was an ordinary woodsman’s knife in a sheath on his belt. Martis nodded, and he joined them at the fire, holding out his hands to it to get them warm. Wytt picked up his sharp stick and slunk behind Ellayne, making not even the ghost of a noise. The newcomer never spotted him.

“Give him those scraps of squirrel we have left over, Jack,” Martis said. The man wolfed them down as soon as he took them from Jack’s hands. “Now tell us about yourself, stranger.”

“Not much to tell,” said the man, as he gulped down the last morsel of meat. “The whole forest’s all topsy-turvy, isn’t it? I’m not the only one running for his life.”

“Running from whom?” Martis asked; and Jack was suddenly glad Martis was with them. He, too, remembered the man who’d tried to sell them into slavery.

“Latt Squint-eye has done some kind of a deal with the chiefs of the Heathen,” the visitor said. “It’s going to be a different kind of war, this one. They mean to go all the way to Obann—maybe all the way to the sea. But it seems they don’t want to trouble themselves about Lintum Forest. They’ve got Latt for that. With him on the warpath in the forest, they won’t have to worry about the government handing out pardons and raising some kind of army to bother them from this direction. I suppose he gets to be King of Lintum in return. But that’s what he’s always wanted, isn’t it?”

“Why would a king chase you?” Martis asked.

“Oh, it’s not just me. They’re chasing everybody. A lot of the bands have joined up with Latt. Them as hasn’t, he’s putting out of business. Rousting all the settlers, too. It’ll keep the oligarchs from raising any troops out here.”

“Are you one of those he’s putting out of business?”

“Only in a small way.” The fugitive belched and sat up straighter. “Had my own band, though, didn’t I? Budric’s Bluejays. Not exactly the terrors of the forest, but we did all right: reiving, thieving, trading with the Abnaks now and then. And Budric, which is me, never would pay scot to Squint-eye. So now they’re out to get poor Budric, who never did them any harm.

“But there’s one thing Squint-eye didn’t count on. A little something he left out of his big plans. And that little something is going to turn out to be a big something! Mark my words—”

Before anyone could mark his words, he fell forward, face-first into the campfire, with the feathered shaft of an arrow protruding from his back. Someone in the dark yelled, “Don’t move, we’ve got you covered!”

But Jack did move because two little hairy hands seized his, and Wytt’s voice chattered, “Hurry!” So Jack rolled off the log he was sitting on and bolted into the darkness, even as heavy feet crashed through the underbrush and harsh voices warned Martis not to make a fight of it.

Jack couldn’t see at all. He blundered into a sticker bush and just kept going, tearing his skin and almost putting out an eye. He tripped over a root and kept on crawling on his hands and knees. He crawled through a nasty puddle of cold water.

Behind him, around him, men’s voices rang out. They were hunting him. They made quite a racket, crashing through the foliage, with here and there a spate of cursing.

But they weren’t going to find him. Jack finally stopped when he blindly crawled under an arch of briars, into a deep hollow where they wouldn’t find him in broad daylight. He had the good sense to stop there. Almost out of breath, he would have had to stop soon, anyhow.

What was he going to do, all alone? What was going to happen to Ellayne, and Martis? Martis couldn’t fight off a whole gang of robbers by himself, no matter what his skills as an assassin.