The Right Hand of God (33 page)

'Awake, Gem of Faltha!' rasped the mocking voice, in the way he had taken to calling her.

Awake, my Morning Star! I have something to show you!' As always, the power of the voice was enough to pull her to her feet and send her stumbling out into the bright morning, still in her hated silken nightclothes.

Before them lay a tattered village, nestled in a dell that obviously protected the few buildings from the winds here on the northern plateau. The houses had seen better days. Old stone walls had been more recently supplemented with animal skins, or with timber, and more recently still with sticks scavenged from the woods nearby. In all, twenty or thirty ramshackle dwellings huddled together as though awaiting a beating.

As Stella watched, the villagers were dragged from their homes and assembled on the rutted track that passed for a main street. The men, women and children were clothed in oft-mended garments; some of the children clinging to their parents went shoeless on the frozen ground.

Fear rimmed their eyes and hunched their shoulders, as though even the children knew what was about to happen.

Stella knew. This was the village which refused to supply the Bhrudwan army. Late the previous afternoon the great army had turned to the south, away from the westward road, and followed a seldom-trod path through a low range of ice-striped hills. They were here to punish the village, to make a point to the soldiers in this dark army, to teach them ruth-lessness. And, chillingly, to make a point to Stella herself. Would the Destroyer put this village to the sword just to impress me? She tried to make her stiff limbs move, though she knew what the penalty would be if she tried to flee. - Before she could take more than a step from where she stood, hands clamped down on her shoulder blades, sending shockwaves of pain through her body.

Better this . . . better this than accepting what is to come ...

When she came to, the women were being led away. She

could see the last of them walking into a small glade, spear at her back, trying to take a final despairing glance over her shoulder at the loved ones she would never see again. There were two ragged, bloody shapes on the ground in front of the men and the children, and one of the shapes moved still, making noises like a newborn kitten. Someone had resisted.

Soldiers set fire to the houses, and Stella watched. They took the children and cut off their hands and feet, and Stella watched, hollowed out by the sight. She watched as they made an obscene pile of the off-cuts in front of the men. She watched as the soldiers brought pieces of wood - doors, walls, tables - up from the burning village and stretched the men out on them, nailing them to the wood like shoes to a horse's hoof. She listened to the crackling and roaring of the flames, and to the crashing of the timbers as the houses caved in. She listened as the children shrieked and the men shouted out their pain and frustration. She listened as the soldiers cheered and cried with inhuman glee. She could hear other cries in the distance, and tried not to listen to them.

The voice coming from the round-faced man beside her gave her a running account of what was happening, and she was compelled to listen. The voice passed comments on the accuracy of his archers as they stood the pieces of wood up in a row and loosed arrows at human targets. He described in detail the agony the villagers would be experiencing, and how long it might take them to die. With every word he needled her with the inescapable fact of her own power-lessness.

The long hours blurred together into a tableau of blood and suffering, a shattering vision of a Bhrudwan future. Far

more directly even than her capture and mistreatment, first by Deorc and then by the Destroyer, this day spent watching the slow death agonies of an innocent village brought home to Stella the fundamental evil of life. Once she had thought the world a fair and pleasant place. Such self-indulgent folly! Now she saw more clearly. The world was a place of power and powerlessness, where the few who had power made the lives of everyone else a hell of cruelty and hate. To think anything else was to deny the truth, or perhaps to not recognise one's own place of power. People in power could do anything they wanted to the powerless.

Anything.

Leith's Falthan army continued on its eastwards march. Two days from Instruere to the time they left Mercium, then five more days to Sivithar, a large city on the south bank of the Aleinus River. There they halted to replenish their supplies, much of which had been barged up the great river from Instruere. More and more Leith learned the wisdom of his generals, who all agreed their success in the coming war depended as much on the provisioning of their soldiers as it did on the tactics debated every evening.

The army was kept well to the south of the city, to prevent desertion, drunkenness and other temptations common to soldiery. Kurr, however, insisted the Company take lodgings at a tavern in the heart of Sivithar. In the hour before sunset he walked them around the city in which he had been born and raised, the city he had fought for in uprisings nearly half a century ago. A bittersweet homecoming indeed for the old farmer. In the many years he had been absent, making a life for himself in the cold north of Firanes, many of the places he remembered were changed beyond recognition.

Some of the damage had been done, he admitted, in the uprising itself, but what surprised him most was how many of the beautiful fountains for which the city had been justly famous had fallen into disrepair. Indeed, on the site once occupied by the best of them, the beautiful Fountain of Diamonds, a squat wooden doss-house now stood, filled with rowdy sailors from the docks. Some of the city's beauty remained, but to Leith and the others even the smell of the place was of something gone slightly to seed.

That night Leith sat on a hard-backed wooden chair, poring over a detailed map of the Aleinus River. He had found a small storeroom at the back of the tavern, empty except for a few dusty mats, and took the opportunity to spend a little time there alone, away from the clamour of the army and all the people trying to get his attention. He stationed a servant at the door with instructions to refuse all callers.

According to the map, the Aleinus seemed to wander over a large area of the Central Plains.

He could make out a main channel, broader and straighter than the minor streams, though even this main channel wound back and forth like a worm seeking soft earth. Long curved lakes, channels ending in swamps and streams winding in and out of each other completed a complex picture. His generals had explained to Leith how the army would march west to Vindicare, well away from the river, to avoid coming to grief in this difficult land.

His finger traced its way up the river to Vindicare. There the river seemed to behave itself, keeping to one channel. Disciplined, easier to deal with. He laughed to himself. He knew which type of river his parents wished him to be.

A soft knocking intruded on his thoughts. Without

waiting for permission his mother opened the door and stepped into the room.

'Hello, Leith,' she said brightly. 'We've missed you this last week. How have you been?'

Leith bridled at her words. How have I been? You meant to ask me where I have been.

Keeping his thoughts to himself, he set aside his map, stood up and offered Indrett his chair.

'I've been busy.'

'Anything we could help you with?' His mother smiled still, though the lines around her eyes had tightened. He knew the signs.

'Not unless you can explain this map to me,' he said. 'But thank you for offering.' It was a dismissal. Rude, far too early. He should give her a chance to speak, but he had so looked forward to time alone.

Her eyes tightened further. 'You may not want help, son, but you need it. The Company wants to be reassured you know how to use the Jugom Ark. More importantly, I want reassurance you are going to apologise to Hal for the hurtful things you said to him.'

'You are seriously telling the leader of the army of Faltha how to treat his brother?' Leith was determined not to lose his temper.

'You may hold the Jugom Ark, but you're still my child.' Instantly a look of regret passed over her face.

'Child? Mother, you cannot have it both ways. In one breath you tell me to grow up, in the next you call me a child. How long since you called Hal a child?'

'He's not a child,' Indrett said, her voice rising. 'But he can still be hurt. Promise me you'll seek him out and talk to him at least. Please, Leith.'

'I will,' he said, and his mother breathed a sigh of relief.

'I will,' he repeated, 'when I hear you have gone to him and given him the same message.' He moved to the door. 'Now, I'd be grateful if you could allow me some time to myself. I have much to think about.'

He had left his mother no choice but to leave. I was right to speak this way to her, Leith told himself as he closed the door behind her. If I give in and make peace with Hal, everyone will forget the issues I have raised.

He sat on his chair, but left the map untouched. I am not a child. But she is partly right: I must seek Phemanderac and find out more about this Arrow.

For the hundredth time he thought about asking the Arrow's voice, but didn't know what would be worse: a smug answer designed to draw him further away from his own will, or silence.

Leith sighed. Phemanderac had behaved oddly towards him in the last few days. Why did everything have to be so complicated?

Farr couldn't sleep. The small room above the tavern closed in on him as he lay on a sagging pallet. He'd offered the better pallet to the Haufuth, who snored loudly next to him. For a while he imagined he lay under a canopy of trees, but there was less comfort in the tavern bed than any bed of moss and tree roots he'd found in Withwestwa Wood. Eventually he shrugged aside his blanket and went to explore the tavern, leaving the room to the resonating throat of the big Firanese man.

The hallway creaked, as all hallways do, no matter how carefully Farr trod in his stockinged feet. The tavern below him was quiet. He had no idea how late the hour was, but was surprised to hear a thin sound on the stairs. Someone

else was awake. Wounded? He rushed forward. No. Someone was sobbing.

Indrett sat on the top stair, her head bowed, tears falling on to her lap. A pale light filtered under a door to her right, gently illuminating her shaking frame. She seemed completely unaware he stood a few paces from her.

'Indrett? Lady?' he whispered, then spoke her name again more loudly. 'Indrett? Can I be of assistance?'

She raised her swollen face. 'No,' she said. 'Not unless you have some magic word to unlock the stubborn will of the Arrow-bearer.'

Slowly the proud woman unburdened herself to the most unlikely of counsellors. Fair tried to understand how a lad like Leith could argue against a destiny so clearly given him by the Most Highhimself. The more he listened to the story, the more his incredulity grew. In his experience men faced their tasks square-on, without resorting to sophistry to excuse them from their duty. If only the Most High had chosen Wira, or he himself, for such an honour. He would not have taken a backward step! He would have taken the Jugom Ark and faced the Destroyer in single combat, if need be!

'Indrett, we must talk with the Company about this,' he said to her. 'Leith must be made to see sense, or to relinquish his task to someone more worthy.' Righteous anger filled his voice, making it husky. 'Let us call a meeting and make everyone aware of your concerns. What you have said tonight is far too important to keep to yourself. I will organise it at the earliest opportunity.'

Indrett nodded her agreement. Farr patted her shoulder a couple of times, then made his way back to his room and his pallet.

* * *

The Company took their accustomed position at the head of the ranks early the next morning.

Leith turned in the saddle and looked back at his fighting force, then lifted his arm, letting the Flaming Arrow blaze out, occasioning a mighty shout from fifty thousand throats and signifying the start of the day's march. Shaking his head, he turned his face to the east.

Already his great army had suffered casualties. Two days ago a horse threw a shoe, apparently, tossing its rider into a ditch. The resultant broken wrist invalided the young man back to Instruere. Leith had seen the youth leave: he'd tried to put a sad face on his misfortune, but a week with the army had taught him, like many other volunteers from Instruere, just what an undertaking they were marching towards, and he was unable to keep his relief from showing. His captain reported the mishap to Leith himself, taking the opportunity to see the Jugom Ark at close quarters, and commented on the difficulties he was having maintaining discipline among his young charges. He looked Leith in the eye and spoke deprecatingly, but in a voice devoid of irony, about the callowness of youth. Leith watched the youngster walk slowly away in the direction of Sivithar's docks with more than a little envy.

Of many other mishaps, the worst was perhaps a drunken brawl in which two hard-bitten men from south of Mercium were beaten senseless by a number of as-yet-undiscovered assailants.

The blame was being laid squarely at the door of the losian army, but Leith seriously doubted this, guessing suspicion of the losian was inflamed by their seemingly lax discipline. Maybe he'd have to say something about that.

As was their custom, the generals of his army rode close by early in the morning, passing on any important information about their men. It was merely an act of politeness, Leith knew. The group of stalwarts who served as leaders of the Instruian, losian, Deruvian and Straux forces managed not to be condescending only by the barest margin. The Captain of the Instruian Guard was the youngest of the group, the most willing to hear anything the Company might wish to say, but also the lowest in the informal pecking order. Excepting the losian leaders, of course, who were treated with polite indifference. Axehaft made the point privately to the Company that of the War Council only he himself, Kula of the Widuz and the Fenni warrior Nutagval had any real experience in fighting an enemy. The Instruians had fought amongst themselves, not the same in losian eyes. From the look of them, the Westrau additions would be more trouble than they were worth. Only the Deruvians seemed to have the bearing and dedication necessary for proper soldiering, according to Axehaft of the Fodhram.