The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) (17 page)

He read some more from the scrolls, then led the people in a prayer and dismissed them with a benediction. It was then, when the people from Gilmy were getting ready to go back to their boats, that Jack and Ellayne received a command from Helki that they didn’t like.

“Sorry, young ’uns, but I think it’d be best for you to go back to Gilmy with them,” he said. “This army’s going to Obann, and I wouldn’t feel right about taking children there. You’ll be safe in Gilmy; and if any of us come back alive from Obann, we’ll stop for you.”

“Who are you to tell us that we have to stay behind!” Ellayne cried. Her father would have paddled her for it, had he been there. “You never had any children, and you’re not my father. You can’t do this!”

“We want to stay and learn everything that’s in the scrolls,” Jack said. “It’s not fair to send us away!”

Helki shrugged. “I don’t know what’s fair or not,” he said, “but I know that where we’re going is no place for the likes of you.”

“Martis!” Ellayne called. “Martis, where are you? Come here!”

He wasn’t far away. He wasn’t much help, either. “I spoke against this,” he told her, “but Helki is the commander of this army, and he has to be obeyed. I’ll stay at Gilmy with you.”

Jack thought that was one of the stupidest ideas he’d ever heard. “You’re going to leave Martis behind, too?” he said. “It shows how much sense you have! Martis knows the city better than anyone. He can get in and out whenever he likes. You might need him!”

“I know,” said Helki, “but Martis swore an oath to protect the two of you, and that’s that.”

“But you’re taking Obst,” said Ellayne, “and he’s an old man!”

“The army won’t go anywhere without its teacher.”

“Obst said we could go,” Jack said.

“He’s changed his mind.”

Martis looked gravely at the children. “It’s best not to argue,” he said. “Come, it’s time we were going. I’ll take you to say good-bye to Obst.”

Protesting to Obst didn’t get them anywhere. He was sorry to part with them, but not sorry at all that they wouldn’t be going to Obann, where the Thunder King’s whole host was gathered.

“But what are we going to do in Gilmy?” Ellayne said.

“Rest,” said Martis. “Play. Be children, while you can. We’ll find a place to stay. Many of the people are gone, and there are plenty of empty houses. And I’ll find some work to keep us provided for.” The people of Gilmy did not know that the only work he’d ever done in his life was to serve as a spy and an assassin for Lord Reesh.

As he led them away to the boats, Ellayne asked, “What’s gotten into Helki? He never used to be like this.”

“What’s gotten into any of us?” Martis said. “Obst never wanted to be anything but a scholar and a hermit, and look at him. You and Jack were just a couple of kids in Ninneburky, and look what you’ve done.

“Helki would like nothing better in the world than to go back to wandering his forest all alone, talking to the squirrels. He never asked to be the general of an army. He clings to his patched rags and his staff as all that’s left of the man he used to be. Don’t be angry with him.”

That made some sense, Jack thought. “But what about you, Martis?” he said.

Martis laughed, not a laugh with much mirth in it. “I don’t want to hold on to anything that’s part of the man I used to be,” he said.

Ryons could tell north from south and east from west, but that didn’t help him much. The plain was uninhabited, and he didn’t know exactly in which direction Obann lay. Somewhere to the northwest, that was all.

Maybe because the people who lived in that country had all deserted it, the plain teemed with life. Cavall caught rabbits, woodchucks, and once a little brown horsey-kind of creature with white stripes and spots. There were more birds than you could count, all different kinds, and big yellow and orange butterflies, and little blue ones, that fluttered above the multitudes of wildflowers. Here and there grew isolated stands of trees, sometimes crowning gently rounded hills; and you never had to travel very far before you came to water. To Ryons, used to the arid steppes of the East, it seemed a land of plenty. A native could have told him that no one had ever seen the country bloom as it had bloomed this summer; but he didn’t meet any natives. Fear of the Heathen had driven them all away.

“One thing worries me, Cavall,” he said, as they rested beside a water hole. He talked to the dog all the time now. There was nobody else. “I can see we’re drawing near the end of summer, but I don’t know if we’re getting nearer to Obann or farther away. I wish we could find some people.”

At least, he thought, he was getting better at staying on the horse. Just getting into the saddle was a triumph. He was small for his age, and the saddle was made for a grown man.

“Oh well, let’s go on,” he said, and once more clambered aboard the horse. Ryons usually got on well with horses, but he had yet to reach a real understanding with this Obannese mare. He started her into a walk and resigned himself to an afternoon of fruitless wandering. But it didn’t turn out that way.

He hadn’t gone far when the mare suddenly shuddered, neighed, and bolted. He couldn’t make her stop, and it was all Cavall could do to keep up with them. And then the mare jumped a gully, came down hard, and spilled Ryons out of the saddle. He hit the ground and tumbled like a ball, and the horse just kept on going.

Ryons heard Cavall growling. He sat up, his head spinning. The dog stood beside him, stiff and snarling; and something with a deeper snarl answered.

When Ryons saw what it was, his head stopped spinning and his heart just stopped. He didn’t know what manner of beast it was, but he didn’t have to know its name.

It was a big dog, a gigantic dog—much bigger than Cavall, who was big enough to take down an elk by himself. But maybe this thing wasn’t a dog. It had a long, stiff tail and a huge head with two sharp fangs protruding from its jaws: no dog had fangs like that. It was walking toward them slowly, stiff-legged, with slaver drooling from his mouth. It had stiff little pointed ears and big black eyes, and it was tensing its muscles to attack them. Cavall wouldn’t last a minute—Ryons knew that at a glance—and then it would be his turn. This dog was death. Its smooth, slick, dark-brown fur with livid white stripes looked like the color of death.

Ryons couldn’t move a muscle. Cavall stood by him to defend him. He wouldn’t have a chance.

But then a louder noise drowned out the growling of the two dogs: a bellow, like the bellow of a bull—if there were bulls as big as mountains.

Automatically, Ryons turned to see what made it, but all he saw was grass and flowers and a low hill just behind him.

The death-dog stopped in its tracks, raised its head, sniffed the air and pricked up its ears. It whined—a ridiculous noise from so terrible a beast. And then it wheeled and fled away, faster than a horse.

The unseen monster bellowed again. The whole landscape was filled with the sound of it. And yet it seemed to Ryons that this giant beast, whatever it was, must be some good distance away. The sound it made was like the sound of an approaching thunderstorm. If it were anywhere nearby, Ryons was sure he’d be able to see it.

There were only the two bellows, and no more. The countryside seemed to be waiting for more. All the birds had fallen silent; even the crickets and the grasshoppers.

Cavall sat down beside Ryons, panting. Ryons put his arms around his neck and obeyed an impulse to bury his face in his fur. For now he understood that the dog had been prepared to die for him.

“Good dog! Good dog! You should’ve been a chief among the Ghols!” he said. “But what in the world was that awful thing that chased us? No wonder nobody lives out here!”

Cavall lay down to rest, still breathing hard. Ryons could feel his heartbeat. He wondered what kind of creature made the noise that scared off the death-dog. But if it were coming their way, Cavall would not be resting with his head pillowed on his paws. Clearly the danger was past.

“But for how long?” Ryons wondered.

In Obann Judge Tombo took his midday meal with his friend, Lord Reesh. They dined in Reesh’s private sitting room on silver platters, drinking wine from golden cups. Servants waited on them, but it was Reesh’s custom to dismiss them after they’d brought in all the dishes and poured the wine. “Servants gossip,” he said. The judge didn’t mind. Reesh knew he liked dainty delicacies—crayfish tails on ice, wild pheasant and walnuts, the costliest fruit sherbets for dessert—and saw to it that he got them. The First Prester contented himself with plainer fare, if anything could be called plain that was served on silver or in gold.

Today Tombo was in a good mood.

“Finally!” he said. “No more crazy prophets in the streets! It’s been two days since anybody’s seen one—and believe me, my men have been looking for them.”

He paused to sip more of Lord Reesh’s wine. The First Prester kept the best wine cellars in the city; it would be a sin to guzzle it.

“I imagine it was the hangings that finally shut them up,” Tombo said. “I knew that’d do the trick in the end. Still, I’m willing to admit that the strong defense of our city makes anyone look like a fool who says we’re about to fall. The barbarians can’t take this city. Everyone can see that now.”

Reesh nodded. His own people told him that the prophets had fallen silent. Not that they were truly prophets—he doubted true prophets had ever existed, Scripture notwithstanding.

Even so, Tombo had been jailing them and hanging them for months, and that hadn’t stopped them. Yet now they’d stopped. It troubled Reesh. Why should they stop? He didn’t know, and he didn’t like not knowing.

“Your men have done a very thorough job,” he said.

“It took us long enough. I can tell you now, my lord First Prester, those prophets were my biggest worry for this city. They might have easily destroyed morale. I wonder what ever got them started.”

“Delusion,” Reesh said. “Everybody knows the stories from the Scriptures. The lives of the prophets are dramatic. It would appeal to an unbalanced mind to emulate the prophets.”

“Maybe some of the old prophets had unbalanced minds themselves,” said the judge. “But that’s heresy.”

Reesh just shrugged.

“Something’s on your mind, old friend,” said Tombo. “You ought to be feeling cheerful, but you’re not. Your mind is miles away. Is it the bell? Are you still gnawing on that old bone?”

Yes—that thrust hit close to home. He knows me too well, Reesh thought. I must be careful.

“You’ve never been easy in your mind about that,” Tombo said. “We all heard it, but very few knew what it was. You knew, or thought you knew. But you didn’t, really, did you? Even now you don’t know what it was, or what it meant.”

That was true; but it wasn’t the tolling of an unseen bell, so many months ago, that tormented Reesh today. It was the thought that this good friend of his would be killed when he and Prester Orth let the Heathen into the city.

“They said the bell was ringing in the end of the world,” Tombo said. “Maybe that’s what got the prophets started. But the world hasn’t ended, has it? And soon enough will come the winter; the enemy will run out of food and go back East, and all will be the way it was.”

Reesh let him talk, while he thought. He’d sent out his best man, Martis, to stop the bell from being rung. But it had been rung, and he’d never heard from Martis ever again.

What would have happened had Martis succeeded in his mission? Was it the bell that called the Thunder King and brought his hosts across the mountains?

I’m weary, Reesh thought. So very weary. But now is not the time for rest. He wondered if that time would ever come.

The army marched on, following the river. Five hundred of the men from Caryllick stayed with Helki, and three hundred Heathen prisoners swore allegiance to him. All told, he had now nearly four thousand men. He didn’t even know how to count that high, but it was nowhere near enough to lift the siege of Obann, or even disturb it.

“First we have to get there,” he said to Obst. “After that, who knows? If this is God’s plan, He’ll have to make it work. I don’t even know how we’re going to cross the river.”

They marched past the ruins of Cardigal. None of its people had come back. There was nothing for them to come back to.

“I’ve lost count of how many years it’s been since I was in a city,” Obst said. “I studied in the seminary in Obann, you know. I wonder how much it’s changed.”

“The way you’re going through those scrolls,” Helki said, “it doesn’t look like you’ve forgotten much of what you learned.”

Obst shook his head. “Oh, no! It’s no great scholarship of mine that permits me to read these ancient writings. Not my doing, but the Lord’s.

“When I tried to climb Bell Mountain, my strength failed me and I lay down to die. I made Jack and Ellayne go on without me because I knew they had to go on to the top. But I didn’t have the strength to go any farther. Sometimes I think that maybe I did die up there, for a little while.