The Sword of the Spirits (13 page)

We had covered scarcely a quarter of a mile. I said, panting:

“It is true, I might find help. There was a village where the river forked—do you remember? It cannot be more than a few miles north. I could bring men back with me.”

Hans looked up from where he crouched in the snow.

“Yes. I will be all right till then.”

I handed him the gun. He tried to refuse it, but I said:

“They know we can wound or kill them from a distance. Therefore they will keep clear of both of us while it is light. But after that you may need to hold them off for a time. I will return as quickly as I can.”

I set off before he could make further protest. The polyhounds also moved. Half followed me while the rest kept their places around Hans. I went a hundred yards, a hundred and fifty. Then Hans' voice came to me, urgently shouting:

“Back, sire! Come back!”

I had already seen it: the ones that had followed me were closing in. They moved to head me off as I doubled back. I saw one brute loping in toward me and cursed the hampering snowshoes I wore, though I would have been little better off without them. He must intercept me. But the Sten gun chattered and he dropped with a scream of pain. The others fell away and I reached Hans.

It took me some moments to gather breath to speak.

“Cunning indeed,” I said. “They know there is only one gun, and saw me give it to you.”

“You must take it,” Hans said. “And you must go on. The gun is only of use while there is light. After that, nothing will stop them.”

The polyhounds had taken up the same circle as before, just out of range. I said:

“I will get some of them, even in the dark.”

“But it serves no purpose, sire. Remember, you have a mission.”

A mission? He meant, of course, the task laid on me by the High Seers. As if that mattered compared with the life of someone who had twice saved mine. But there was something else, deep in the darkness
of my mind. Hans was right in saying that I could not save him by staying: I would only lose my own life along with his. Yet it was not that which filled me with despair and bitterness. It was the thought of dying with my revenge unaccomplished.

I think he read uncertainty in my face. He said:

“Go, sire. You must do your duty as a Prince. Nothing else matters.”

I had left him before in the hope of bringing back help. There was nothing like this now; they would be on him, tearing him to pieces, as soon as I was gone. I shook my head, to clear the black madness from it. I said harshly:

“I am staying, Hans. That is a Prince's duty; and a friend's.”

I looked past him to the polyhounds. They had ceased their howling and were silent. They seemed to be listening to something. There was no sound but that of our breathing and the wind's distant sighing in the pines. Or was there a noise, faint and far off? I strained my ears and heard it. Scarcely audible, it rose and fell with the gusting wind: a tiny jangling tinkle of bells.

The polyhounds had heard it, too. They barked,
one to another like men in council. Then the circle was broken as they ran round us to re-form their pack on the slope above. They ran, silent again, into the cover of trees and disappeared.

•  •  •

I saw figures come into view, bearing down the slope from the north, below the tree line. They were men, but traveling so fast over the snow that I wondered if some sort of machine carried them. But as they came nearer I saw that they were sliding on long thin planks. I waved and shouted and they changed course, dipping down the valley's side toward us.

They were more than a score in number. They were dressed in furs and looked strong and healthy, well nourished. They greeted us amiably and asked what help we needed.

I told them of the polyhounds and they nodded. They often warred with these beasts and had their measure. One of them, smiling, tapped a wicked-looking knife in his belt and showed a fur cap with half a dozen polyhound tails dangling from it.

They had ropes, and made a litter to carry Hans. Some went on down the valley, moving fast on the thin planks which they called skis, but the rest
accompanied us at our slower pace. We traveled south a couple of miles; then west up a side valley. Their village was there. The huts were stoutly built of wood. Blue smoke rose from chimneys and there was an appetizing smell of food cooking.

People came out to greet us. These too were healthy and had smiling faces. The women took Hans and saw to his wounds, replacing my rough bandages with others of clean linen, smeared with a healing ointment. Others poured hot spiced ale into pots for the returning hunters, and for me also.

Unlike that other village in which we had stayed, this one was pleasant, and so were its inhabitants. There were many items one could note: the stoutness and cleanliness of the huts, the signs of good husbandry and prosperity—bins brimming with fat corn, smoked hams and sides of salmon hanging from the roof beams—the comeliness of both men and women, the vigor and merriness of the children. But I felt there was more to it than the sum of these parts. There was a sense of warmth and ease which went deep. It was not quite like anything I had known.

I was concerned at first about their reaction to
the Sten gun. Either they might, as would have been the case in the lands of the south, regard it as an evil thing and Hans and me as deserving of death for possessing it; or they might covet it for its power. But neither was the case. They looked at it with scarcely even curiosity, and no desire for possession.

They were altogether strangely incurious. I told them, in explanation of how we got there, that we came from the south and were traveling to Klan Gothlen and the court of King Cymru. They nodded, indicating that they had heard of the city and the king, but asked no other questions.

It was plain that we must stay with them for some days, while Hans' wounds healed. I offered gold for our lodging. They glanced at the coins with as little interest as they had shown in the Sten gun, and handed them back. Hospitality needed no payment. They might have added, but did not, that in any case they had no use for gold.

During the days that followed I came to know them, and their way of life, better. There was one man, older and bigger than the rest, to whom—it seemed to me—some deference was paid. I guessed he was their chief, and addressed him as such. He
denied it, smiling. His name was Jok, and he had no title. None of them did. They had heard of kings and chiefs and such, but there was none here.

I did not believe him at first, thinking it some pretense of modesty or custom. I asked who made decisions among them. He said the Tribe did. But what, I asked, if the Tribe were divided among itself? Jok laughed. That could not be! One might as well speak of a man's left arm being divided from his right.

This did not convince me. I did not see how any group of people could live together without dissension, always in agreement. It made no sense. But as time passed, though I looked for discord among them, I found none.

They had no marriage as such, and no paternity. The children were children of the Tribe, not of a particular couple. They called all women Mother, all men Father. In a similar fashion those of adult years, when they did not use given names, called each other Brother and Sister.

Most of the things they did seemed to follow one person's prompting, the rest falling in with whatever notion was put forward. Nor was it always the same
person, or group of people, who suggested things. It was almost as though they thought with a single mind, so that it did not matter whose voice it was first uttered any project.

The men were hunters; the women cooked and cleaned for them and cared for the sick and old and, of course, the children. In summer, men and women worked together in the fields, sharing the labor of sowing and planting and harvesting. I saw there were no polymufs or dwarfs among them, and asked about that. I was told they were smothered at birth. This was not out of revulsion or in obedience to the behest of Spirits, but from kindness. It would be cruel, they felt, to let a crippled child live, different from his brothers and sisters and deprived of the fullness of activity which they enjoyed.

And what, I asked, if a man or woman were crippled later in life: in the hunt, perhaps? Again it was Jok I was talking to, and he shook his head. Such a person would be well cared for, in hope of recovery. Should the time come when he knew he would not regain his true strength, he would bid farewell to the Tribe and leave the village. There was an herb growing in the woods which brought a quiet death.

The whole village was a place of cheerful noise. They talked and laughed much, and apart from that there were the bells. They had a passion for them. They wore small bells on their clothes, and larger ones hung outside the huts, to jangle with each puff of wind, and inside on intricate arrangements of cords which could be agitated by the touch of a hand or even by the chance pressure of a footstep. They were so delicately balanced that they would go on sounding long afterward.

Hans' wounds healed fast: perhaps because of the ointment the women put on them and perhaps to some extent through the happiness and contentment we found here. I had often heard it said that a wound stays angry where a warrior has an angry wife. It may be the opposite is true also.

The days passed easily. I practiced wearing these skis of theirs and in due course went out with the men to hunt, following clumsily and falling a lot in the snow but managing on the whole to keep up with them. We killed deer and boar, stabbing them with long sharp knives—even in deep winter this was good country for game. (While hunting they silenced the bells they wore with strips of cloth.) We saw the
tracks and spoor of polyhounds, too, but the trails were old ones.

One night, having watched the women see to Hans' leg, I said to Jok:

“He is well enough to travel. It is time we bade you farewell.”

He was silent and I did not think he had heard me: the tintinnabulation of the bells was very noisy. I started to repeat myself but he said:

“I was not born of the Tribe.”

It did not seem to have anything to do with my own remark but I listened politely. He went on:

“Sometimes strangers are accepted among us. I was such a stranger once.”

I still did not take his drift and remained silent. He looked at me, smiling:

“Stay with us, Luke.”

I was astonished. I said: “It is a kindness and an honor. But should not the rest of your people be consulted?”

He laughed. “Do you know us so little yet? Each speaks for all.”

I said awkwardly: “Then I am grateful for the offer. But I cannot stay.”

“Why not? You are happy here.”

He spoke with calmness and certainty. And there was more to it than the words by themselves might convey. He meant also that among his people a man would know happiness of a kind that he would find in no other place; and wild though the boast might seem, I could not disbelieve it.

I said: “And Hans?”

“He, as well.”

“A dwarf?”

“We would not keep a babe so stunted, but he has grown to manhood. His legs are short but his body is strong. We welcome Hans also.”

I shook my head. “It is no good. I must go on.”

“For what reason?”

At last he was curious—curious that any should refuse the gift of their comradeship. I hesitated. The hopes and plans of the High Seers would make no sense to him—they meant little enough to me at this moment. So I said nothing of that, but spoke of the wrongs I had suffered: of friendship and trust betrayed, that city lost which was mine by right. Jok listened. At last he said:

“We can heal you of this sickness, Luke.”

“Sickness? I am not sick.”

“Very sick. Those who have been born in the Tribe would not understand you, but I do. I remember things like jealousy and pride and hatred of one's fellow man. Or woman. They are distant memories, almost forgotten but not quite. The Tribe healed me, and can heal you. Already these wrongs you fancy were done you are less important: is that not true?”

I could not deny it. During recent days I had scarcely thought of Edmund and Blodwen and Harding. My nights had been unbroken, my dreams happy.

“Stay with us,” Jok said. “Forget your ambitions and angers. We have much to give you: an end to loneliness and misery, a peace of heart such as you can only guess at now.”

That too was true. Even after this short time of living with them I knew it to be so. It was absurd on the face of it that I, who had been Prince of three cities, should be tempted by the thought of living, with neither rank nor glory, among a primitive tribe of hut-dwellers; but I was tempted. To forget all wretchedness of the past, for the first time in my life to be at peace . . .

But I summoned up two faces, hers and his, and summoned my resolution with it. I said harshly:

“You mean well, and I thank you for it. But it does not serve my purpose.”

“No?” He put his hand on mine, the touch in itself a token of all he had promised. “Then stay only for a few days longer. Your revenge will wait.”

It would wait, but waiting it might die, withered by this warmth of giving and sharing. And I knew that in my deepest heart nothing—no peace or happiness or goodness—counted with me as this did.

I said: “We leave tomorrow.”

“So be it.” He shook his head slightly. “We could have healed you. Go in what peace you can know. Maybe in the end you will heal yourself; but you will suffer for it.”

•  •  •

Since Klan Gothlen was a city without walls, there was no guard to challenge us as we entered it. We walked through the streets, with the domed and spired and turreted buildings rising on either side, their colors looking more gaudy still against the snowy hills beyond. People looked at us with interest as we passed, but that meant nothing. The Wilsh
were always inquisitive about new things, new faces. Dirty and travel-worn as we were, it was scarcely likely that we would be recognized as Luke, the slayer of the Bayemot, and his servant Hans.