Throne of Stars (34 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Tell me again what you heard,” the Gastan said. He peered at the fortress through the device, the
binoculars,
the humans had given him.

“The merchants all quit Nesru at once,” the Shin guardsman said. “All at once. A messenger arrived from Queicuf with word that Shesul Pass was under attack from the rear, or that it had fallen. He said at first that a small force had arrived and taken it with demons. But no one believes him.”

Of course no one believed him, the Gastan thought wryly. After all, only a tiny handful of the Shin knew about the humans. Most of his tribesmen believed that his binoculars had been produced by Krath craftsmen from far up the great valley, and none of them recognized the enormous difference between the artisans who could produce them and the most skilled craftsman the Krath had ever produced. But any Shin who ever saw human weapons used would have every right to believe he looked upon demons.

“And now Queicuf heats its oil,” he mused aloud, trying to get more detail out of the image the binoculars showed him. He and the guardsman stood on the edge of an ash cone to the north of Mudh Hemh. It gave an excellent view of the Krath stronghold without going to the trouble and danger of crossing the river. Of course, a view was all it gave him, and the way things were going, the time might come when he would have to carry his banner to Nopet Nujam. Which would be . . . inconvenient.

The danger which might impel him to do that was that the Krath seemed to have found a way through the Fire Lands. It was obvious that whatever path they had found was difficult and not suited to the movement of large numbers, but the Scourge raiding parties which had used it had inflicted painful losses. Very painful ones.

The problem was that the discovery seemed to have convinced the Krath that it was time to take Mudh Hemh at last, while the Vales were distracted by the knowledge that the Scourge had found a way into their rear. If they were determined to make a fresh attempt, the main thrust would come—as always—through the Battle Lands, and he would have no choice but to oppose that attack.

Yet if he took his banner to Nopet Nujam, he would face two problems. The first was that the motley mass of raiding parties that always gathered around Mudh Hemh would feel constrained to follow him, which would make the trip a logistic nightmare. But in many ways, that would be better than the alternative, because if they indicated a willingness to stay behind, he would have to assume it would be to do some casual raiding and looting in his own lands during his absence.

Unfortunately, if they chose to follow his banner, he would face his
second
problem. He would have to leave the Vale too lightly covered against the Krath who might creep through the Fire Lands along their new, secret path, because he would need his clan to control the hangers-on among his own “allies.” And that didn’t even consider the possibility that the clan would get into a feud with one of the Shin raiding groups, resulting in who knew how much bloodshed and who knew what political headaches with other clan-chiefs.

Being the “king” of the Shin was like juggling live coals.

Not for the first time, he felt sorrow for the loss of his daughter Pedi, and not just the natural grief of a father whose daughter had gone to the Fire. She’d been headstrong and stubborn as the mountains, but if he’d sent her to Nopet Nujam to be his eyes and ears, she would have returned with a concise and correct report. He really didn’t have anyone else he could trust to do that; they all “embellished.” And not one in a hundred of them could read. It was like pulling teeth to get them to study anything but raiding and hunting.

He felt a stronger pang of grief—and guilt—as another thought crossed his mind. Grief that he had lost her . . . and guilt that he wished he had lost Thertik instead.

He raised the binoculars once more, using them to hide his eyes from Nygard lest they reveal too much, but he could not hide the truth from himself. Much as the Gastan loved all of his children, it was . . . unfortunate that only Thertik and Pedi survived out of their litter and that Thertik was male. Perhaps even worse, his eldest son was the perfect model of a Shin warrior. Fearless in battle. Skilled with every weapon. Able to drink the most hardheaded of his fellow tribesmen under the table.

And utterly devoid of any trace of imagination. If only Pedi had been his heir! Or if only Thertik had been a weakling he could have convinced the clan to set aside in favor of Pedi or a consort carefully chosen for her. But she hadn’t been, and Thertik wasn’t. And so at a time when the very existence of the Shin hung from a thread, he dared not trust his own heir’s discretion sufficiently to tell him about the clans’ one, slim chance for survival.

But he could have told Pedi. If she’d been his heir. Or if he had been willing to betray Thertik by trusting his daughter with information he dared not entrust to his son.

I should have told her anyway, he thought. Not that it would have made any difference in the end.

“So Shesul Pass might be under attack,” he said aloud, letting no trace of his thoughts shadow his voice. “Or may be fallen. Any word who the enemy was? Aside from ‘demons,’ of course!” he added with a grunt of laughter.

“No, Gastan,” Nygard said. “The messenger from Queicuf didn’t know.”

“Who could have penetrated to the Shesul?” the chieftain mused. “None of the raiders that I know of could scratch those walls.” He thought about that statement for a moment. It was true enough, as far as it went, because he
didn’t
know of any ‘raiders’ who might have taken the pass. And if he could think of anyone else who it might have been, this was not the time or the place to share that thought with Nygard.

“Enough,” he said instead, with a gesture of resignation, “I have too many other problems to worry about to consider this one in depth.”

He straightened and took a sniff of the air, heavy with the scent of brimstone, wafting down from the Fire Lands to the north. It was one of the Vales’ many products. Brimstone for gunpowder, ores, hides, gems, and raw nuggets of gold—all of them flowed out of the Vales and through Mudh Hemh. And everyone wanted it. The other Shin, yes, but especially the Krath. Mudh Hemh was the most populous Vale, since the fall of Uthomof, and it was also the richest, acting as a conduit for trade with the entire eastern half of the Shin Range. Which was why it was the Vale above all Vales the Krath wished to seize.

They had tried at least a dozen times, from as many directions, to invade the Shin Range and wipe out the Shin once and for all. The destruction of Uthomof had been the result of one such war, and he could smell a change in the air, a danger as faint and sharp as the hint of sulfur on the wind, but just as real . . . and growing stronger. War was coming; he could feel it in his bones.

But until it did, he had heads to crack and disputes to settle. It generally came down to the same thing.

Roger swung up onto the
turom
cart and waved at the valley spread out before them.

“Tell me what I’m seeing, Pedi.”

It was obvious that the Vale of Mudh Hemh was a pretty complicated place, geologically, as well as politically. The valley was at least partially an upland glacial cirque, with some evidence of blown volcanic caldera. The various geological catastrophes had created a sort of paisley shape, broken by regular hills and surrounded by rearing volcanic mountains. The Shin River cut across the valley almost due east and west, and its course was flanked on both sides by a mixture of fields and fortifications.

To the east, on the nearer side of the river, two massive fortresses faced each other across a large, torn sward. Each was easily as large as the main temple in Kirsti, and each sealed off the entire width of its respective vale from mountain to river. The fields in between them were large—it was at least ten kilometers from the nearer fortress to the further one—and they’d clearly been cultivated until fairly recently. At the moment, however, they were occupied by an army.

The nearer fortress had a new, raw look to it, as if it had been thrown up in haste, but it was holding its own against the force spread out before its walls. The army (it could only be the Krath regular forces) spread across the fields, filling the vale from side to side. A tent city to the rear was laid out in widely spaced blocks, while massive squares of infantry closer to the fortress awaited their orders to assault the Shin walls. They were moving forward against the nearer fortress in regular waves, but reinforcements for what Roger assumed were Shin defenders could be seen crossing a covered causeway behind the fighting and moving down side roads in the protected lee of the fortress.

Both fortresses had companion forts on the far side of the river, or perhaps they could more accurately have been considered overly large outer works, protecting the farther shore. There was no open ground on that side, just a broken mass of rubble, fallen basalt, and flood ravaged shore. But neither side seemed to consider it uncrossable.

To the west, behind the fighting but on the nearer side of the river, lay the ruins of what had once been a fair sized city. It might not have been much compared to Kirsti or K’Vaern’s Cove, but it had been larger than Voitan. Now it was a tumbled ruin, clearly being mined for the stone of its buildings.

On the far side of the river there was a large embayment, or secondary valley, with a walled town built into the side of an ash cone. The ash cone, in turn, was the outrider of a large area of geothermal activity. A small stream, tinged bright blue with minerals, flowed down from the ash cones, geysers, and fumaroles.

A massive bridge, wide enough for four
turom
carts abreast, crossed from the town to the ruined city. Obviously, it was the conduit for the majority of supplies and reinforcements for the newer fortress.

“The two main forts are Nopet Nujam and Queicuf,” Pedi told him. “The area between them is usually a trade city, Nesru, full of Krath and Shin traders. The far forts are Nopet Vusof and Muphjiv.”

Roger nodded. He still didn’t know why her father might have concealed any contact he had with the human at port from her. Which was fair enough, since she hadn’t been able to think of any reason, either. Although it was probable that O’Casey was right about the reasons the Gastan felt impelled to keep it a secret, but why conceal it even from Pedi? She might be stubborn, impulsive, and personally reckless, but Roger and the rest of the
Basik
’s Own had seen more than enough of her to realize that she was also highly intelligent and possessed of an iron sense of honor. Her father should have trusted her with his secret.

Then again, Mother should have trusted me instead of finding trumped-up excuses to send me away from court, he thought. Not that I’d ever given her the sort of proof that she could trust me that Pedi must have given her father.

He shook the thought aside and returned his attention to Pedi.

A part of him wished that she’d conducted this briefing sooner than this, but she’d been very little in evidence since the sojourn at Shesul Pass. Part of that was because of how much of her time had been devoted to nursing the now clearly recovering Cord, but she’d been nearly invisible even when she wasn’t attending to the shaman’s needs. In fact, she’d spent much of her time sleeping in the back of a
turom
cart, which Roger put down to recovery from all the time she’d spent with the ailing Cord. She’d certainly earned the downtime, at any rate, and she appeared to be on the mend as well. Her energy levels seemed to be up today, anyway, and at the moment, happiness at being home was written in every line of her body language.

“The city across the way is Mudh Hemh, and the closer one, the ruined one, is Uthomof. It fell to the Krath in the time of my great-grandfather, and they passed on to besiege the walls of Mudh Hemh itself. But in my grandfather’s time, we drove them back to Queicuf and built Nopet Nujam. They lost heavily in that battle, and they’ve rarely sent great forces against us since.”

She looked down at the attacking army and shook her head in one of the human gestures she had absorbed.

“I fear we have, as you humans would say, ‘ticked them off,’” she added. “May I borrow your binoculars, please?”

Roger handed them over. They were clumsier than his helmet systems, but they were also more powerful, and Pedi observed the nearer fortress through them for several moments. Then she nodded.

“My father’s emblem is on the walls, along with those of virtually all the clan-chiefs. I wonder who defends Mudh Hemh?”

“I imagine we should go find out,” the prince said, updating his map to reflect her information and dumping it into the network. Pahner had decided that the humans could make use of the low-powered, low probability of intercept, inter-toot network. It was unlikely that the standard communications and recon satellite that was parked over the port would be able to pick it up.

“Father is not going to be happy about any of this,” Pedi warned him.

“Not even about having you back?” Roger asked lightly. Then he smiled. “Well, in that case, we’ll just have to see if we can’t persuade him to be happier.”

It took nearly three hours to arrange the meeting. The sun was on its way down by the time Roger, Pahner, and a cluster of Marines and Mardukans—including Pedi and an adamant, if barely ambulatory, Cord—were brought into the presence of the Gastan.

Pedi’s father was short for Mardukan, not much taller than an average Mardukan female, but broad as a wall. The double swords which were the customary armament of a Shin warrior were slung across his back, and between those and the gaggle of trophy-covered chieftains at his back, he was quite the picture of a barbarian war chief.

Roger waved Pedi forward, and she stepped in front of her father, a leather bag in one hand, and bowed her head.

“Father, I have returned.”

“So I was told.” The Gastan spoke quietly, sparing the humans barely a glance. “
Benan
,” he added.

“
Benan
, Father,” she agreed. “And allied to the
humans
.”