Warrior of the Altaii Page 16

  I hadn’t thought clearly about what I was going to do about Talva, but this idea sounded like a good one. “Why wouldn’t it work?”

  “Because,” Mayra said patiently, “she’s been attuned to you, not anyone else. If you sell her, no matter how well she’s trained, she’ll manage to escape. She’s an intelligent woman. Not only could she find the means to escape, if she wanted to, but I’ll wager she could avoid being retaken and possibly find some way to have the spell taken off her. She’d escape punishment altogether. As long as she’s owned by you, though, she won’t even try to escape. She might think about it. She might wish for it. If, however, she could be free by saying one word, she won’t open her mouth. If you want to make certain she pays for what she’s done, you must keep her.” There was an air about her that said she’d not only known this from the start, but intended it to end so.

  “Mayra, she owes a blood debt. Even if I forget her betrayal of me, even if I could forget her betrayal of our people, she sold six warriors to their deaths. It’s got to be paid, and you’ve fixed it so it can’t be paid. Why, Mayra? Tell me why.”

  “Because there are things more important than a blood debt, difficult as it might be to convince a man of that. No, don’t ask. The whole fate of our people still rests on the razor’s edge. In a year, none of us may be alive, and I won’t increase the chances of that by bringing in things that may never come to pass.”

  “Once again you pull me in directions I’ve not even considered,” I said wearily. “You make your spells, and I stand there too weak to do what must be done. Tell me, Mayra, do the king and the lords run the Altaii nation, or do the Sisters of Wisdom?”

  “You Lords of the Altaii command and control the Altaii nation, Wulfgar. We Sisters of Wisdom can only advise and help where we can. I advise you in this and with Elspeth, you must keep her with you always. She will offer advice critical to the Altaii survival. And as for that weakness, it’s a weakness of all men,” she said wryly. “Few men can kill a woman on her knees. I’d never have taken the chance with a woman.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “Well, whatever you’ve got planned for my future, you’ve given me more than enough to think about for now. I’m going back to my tent to consider how to tear down the walls of Lanta and open the Iron Gates with hunting arrows.”

  XIX

  A GLIMMER

  On the next morning I was still considering the hunting bow. It’s too long to be carried strung on horseback, too stiff to string while mounted and too unwieldy to use from the saddle. In short, they’re not weapons as the Altaii consider them, not instruments of combat. In the hands of a fully grown man the wire-wrapped bow can send a broad-head shaft a full fifteen hundred paces, but no one could hit a specific target at that range. It has power enough, power to drive through a fanghorn’s hide at two hundred paces, but not enough to make a mark on stone blocks five times a man’s height in every dimension.

  I took aim at a round, iron-bound shield hanging on a post a hundred paces away. The shield leaped from its peg and fell to swing from the arrow that had driven through it into the post. It did have power. I drew another shaft, fingers against my cheek. The shield leaped again when it struck. A third, between the first two, only made it quiver.

  All three shafts had driven through the shield a good two handspans or more and pierced the wooden posts at least half that distance. It wasn’t enough to make a mark on stone walls of the Iron Gates, but a glimmer of a thought was beginning to come to me.

  “My lord.” Orne lumbered up to stare at my mark in surprise. “That was a good shield to be used as a target, my lord. Do you intend to hunt fanghorn?”

  “Something more dangerous, Orne.” I pulled the shield loose, with the arrows still stuck through it. “I want you to see that every man in the tents begins to practice with the hunting bow. Everyone must work until they can draw it in their sleep.”

  “The longbow, my lord? What would we hunt with so many men?”

  “Perhaps nothing, Orne, but—”

  A rider came galloping into camp, sliding to a halt in front of my tent in a cloud of dust. He had an escort of a dozen of my lances, but they made no move to hinder him in dismounting and approaching me. He was an Altaii, and from the gold-and-green scarf tied around his upper arm I knew from whom he came.

  He raised an open hand in salute. “Lord Wulfgar, it’s good to see you alive.” He pulled out a scroll. “This is for you, my lord, from King Bohemund. Another like it has been sent to Lord Harald.”

  “Harald is still in the hands of our enemies,” I said.

  “Then it will be given to whoever leads in his stead. It’s urgent, my lord. I was told to see that you read it at once, without a moment’s delay.”

  The scroll had been pierced in three places for cords, and each cord sealed with three lead seals. If the scarf had not been Bohemund’s, the seals would still have identified the message as from him. I cut the cords, unrolled the scroll and read the message hurriedly. Then I read it again, more slowly, in surprise.

  “It’s addressed to me,” I said finally, “or to whoever commands in my place if I am still missing. If I still haven’t been found, the search is to be called off immediately.” I looked at the messenger. “If a similar message has been sent to Lord Harald’s tents, then they’re being ordered to abandon the search for him.”

  “I’m sorry, my lord, but it is urgent.”

  “I am to proceed south to join the king at the last fork of the River Varna. I must be there in no more than two tendays.”

  “Two tendays!” Orne shouted.

  “If they will slow the march too much, the herds are to be abandoned. In the last extremity the lances will leave the rest of the march and press on alone. No matter what stands in the way, every Altaii capable of seating a lance must be at the Varna in twenty days.”

  “It’s an ingathering of the lances, my lord,” the messenger said. “Word has been sent to every encampment from the mountains to the fertile lands, and from the snow country in the north to the dunes in the south. Most couldn’t make it if they left their herds and tents on getting the message and rode with nothing but changes of horses, but the message is the same.”

  “But why? What’s the reason? Is it the Lantans and Morassa?”

  “I don’t know, my lord, but there was a verbal message to be delivered after the other was read. ‘Ride, or the Altaii nation dies.’”

  “Then we ride. Orne, send a messenger to Bohemund—”

  “I can return, my lord,” the messenger said.

  “Are you sure? You can have a meal and a breath here and ride with us.” He shook his head. “Well, then, tell Bohemund we’ll be there in twenty days, all of us. Orne, get him a fresh horse, and a string of five or six for changes.”

  Orne quickly turned the messenger over to a warrior who would see to his needs and was back at my shoulder. “Twenty days, my lord. I don’t see how we can make it.”

  “We’ll make it, Orne, every one of us, just as I said.” For a moment I felt again as I had on the Plain outside Lanta, awaiting Harald, with Loewin in the sky and the Wind coming early. “The earth moves, Orne. The sky is shaking. The Nine Corners of the World are collapsing. Nothing is certain. All drifts on the wind.”

  “My lord?”

  “See that we leave no women and unbranded youths to die alone. We take everyone with us. And since the herds can move as fast as the baggage animals, we’ll not abandon them either. We may yet die, Orne, but we’ll not die like tabaq fleeing before the Wind.”

  “It is good, my lord.”

  “Send word to Harald’s camp. Tell them to join us on the march. And spread the word to break camp. In an hour I want nothing here but hoofprints and the holes of our tent poles.”

  We made that hour limit, though with nothing to spare. I chivvied the camp from horseback to see that it was met, and, with the cries that tents could not be folded so quickly and the complaints of herd guards that the animal
s couldn’t be gathered and put on the move in so short a time, it was.

  On the third day the people of Harald’s tents joined us. They faded quickly into the march, our column simply becoming larger, the trailing mass of the herds swelling. The lances rode in three main masses, one on either side of the column, one to the head of it. A cloud of single warriors was spread around the whole, and at the head of the march, almost out of sight of the rest, rode a dozen lances.

  If our formation on the move resembled a lance, they are the point of the lance. They guard the way, finding the path to water, avoiding the forty types of sand that can kill, the one hundred and eight that can slow the march to a crawl. To them also goes the honor of first contact with an enemy. I spent most of my waking hours on the march with the point.

  We didn’t stop our march except when the herds had to be rested, and then only for the hours needed and no more. If they lost weight, it could be regained at the Varna. Sleep was taken in hammocks slung on frames hung between the horses, or more frequently, in the saddle. Women and children slept on top of baggage piled on draft animals. Food was dried meat and raiding cakes. There were no stops for cooking.

  On the tenth day we did stop, for to have continued would’ve meant the end of our march. I was riding with the point. The wind was blowing strongly, carrying sheets of dust, and coldly for all that winter was a mild thing that far south. Because of it we didn’t hear the warning hoots and whistles until we neared the top of a rise, barely enough to hide our march from what lay on the other side.

  Quickly I signaled, and we all fell back from the rise. Many of the older warriors were pale at the narrowness of our escape, if escape it was to be. The younger men were more excited. A warrior rode back to the march to warn them. Behind us movement stopped.

  Dismounting I moved forward, some of the men of the point with me. The calls, like some eerie temple chant, grew louder. A rhythmic pounding vibrated in the ground. I looked over the edge of the ridge. Below me a blue mass flowed across the Plain. Runners.

  XX

  THE LAST FORK OF THE VARNA

  They were tall, taller than any man, and their skin glistened in the sun like finely tempered steel. If the wind or the cold affected them I couldn’t tell it, but then I couldn’t tell a male from a female. The Sisters of Wisdom say they aren’t sure there are two sexes. They don’t like to make visions concerning the Runners. It makes them queasy and gives them pains in the head.

  They ran at a steady pace, in ranks like soldiers from some city on parade, each in perfect step with the other. It was as if a huge, many-legged insect was rippling by, chanting a ululating combination of hoots, clicks, whistles and moans. If it’s a language, no one knows. Whether it is or not, it’s still enough to make the hair on a man’s neck stand up straight.

  None of them wore any kind of clothing, but they weren’t animals. Each wore a belt with its possessions in crude pouches hanging from it. In three-fingered hands each carried a club or war hammer, tipped with stone or jagged metal, the last taken from someone they’d killed.

  They have no knowledge of metalworking, taking what they use from their victims, nor any knowledge of fire. Their food, and anything that moves is their food, they eat raw.

  They’re primitive, but their fierceness makes certain they’re left alone. When they encounter any living thing, they attack, human or animal the same. If the Runners win they eat the dead, their own included, and leave no survivors. To be defeated they must be killed, every last one in the pack. They neither surrender nor retreat. Worst of all, Runners can take a dozen wounds that would kill a man without any effect on them.

  There’s never been the slightest peaceful contact between Runners and humankind. Now and again some ruler has gotten the idea of making allies of the Runners, or at least negotiating a peace. The human emissaries are eaten, often alive. If a Runner is subdued, it will neither eat nor utter a sound, eventually starving to death.

  Such are the reasons for avoiding Runners. Many marches have suffered terrible casualties fighting them, and many encampments have disappeared forever beneath a mass of chanting blue death. Only young men see anything useful in them. It’s a game with them, and well I remember it, to ride out and entice a pack of Runners to follow. Running the Runners is a way to show bravery for youths not yet old enough to raid. They call it sport. I wanted no sport on this day.

  “How many do you think, my lord?” Orne asked.

  “Five thousand, perhaps six. Everyone keep low. They can spot the flicker of an eyelash at this distance.”

  “I’m just glad they don’t hunt by ear or smell, my lord, or the same wind that nearly put us in among them would’ve told them of us by now.”

  “A cheerful thought, Orne.”

  “I’ve never seen so many in one place before,” a young warrior said softly. I barely caught his words. “It’d be great sport to run this pack, as great as ever there was.”

  “Dice with death another time,” I said. “We’re delayed enough just by their passing.”

  The last of the Runners trailed from sight into a depression ahead. I held my breath until I saw by the dust that their line was away from our march. They travel a straight line, diverting only for some natural barrier or because they sight prey. So long as they didn’t catch sight of us, we’d be safe from an attack. I rose and signaled for us to move forward.

  * * *

  On the ninth day after our encounter with the Runners, the nineteenth after leaving Lanta, tired and dirty, we sighted the last fork of the River Varna. From there the river rapidly disappeared into the dry courses leading into the Plain. From there south it supported a lush belt on its banks all the way to the sea. And there lay the gathering of the lances.

  For as far as the eye could see there lay tents, tents by the thousands, arranged in the three-point around the tents of their lords. Around the tents in a huge mass were the herds, the herd guards constantly moving them lest they crop the forage to the roots. On the horizon to the south in two places, and in one each to the west and the east, faint clouds of dust proclaimed more lances coming. Already there had to be at least forty thousand in the camp ahead. The last time so many had gathered had been to march to the Heights of Tybal.

  I sent Bartu back to get Elspeth and Mayra. Both would be needed for the information I had to give the king. When they joined me we left the others and rode toward the center of the encampment. The entire spread of tents formed a giant three-point around one central three-point. That one looked no different from the others, except that its largest tent was larger than any other tent ever seen on the Plain, and in front of it stood the nine-horsetail standard of the King of the Altaii.

  Riders met us before we reached that tent, warriors yelling and shouting, slipping from their saddles to do tricks. They’d heard I was dead, and it was their way of welcoming me back to the land of the living. It gave me a good feeling that they felt so, and their spirit began to infect me. I kicked my horse into a gallop, and when he reached full speed, stood up on the saddle and let the reins drop.

  On a dead run I approached the king’s tent. The men in front of it watched at first, laughing. Then they began to get nervous. As they began diving out of the way I dropped back into the saddle, grabbed the reins and pulled to a halt in the middle of the fifty standards taken from Basrath at the Heights of Tybal.

  The others were slower in coming to the tent. Mayra was laughing as much as any of the warriors, but Elspeth was glum, almost grim-faced. Orne and Bartu waited with the horses and were deep in talk with the men who’d jumped out of my way by the time I led the two women inside. I took two steps in and stopped.

  Fierce black eyes regarded me from a scarred black face, and I wondered what an Eikonan did in the tent of the Altaii king. Before I’d entered he appeared to have been studying a problem in the Game of War. He watched as I pushed on past the hanging that had once been the Raven Banner, the Holy War Standard of Telmark. Their attempt to push their holdi
ngs inland at our expense had failed.

  On the other side they were waiting: Odoman, the king’s seneschal, Moidra, the Sister of Wisdom who traveled with his tents, and Bohemund, King of the Altaii and my foster father.

  XXI

  TO BREAK THE RULES

  “Wulfgar,” he said, throwing an arm around me, “it’s good to see you. If only Harald was here, too.”

  “You’ve no word of him, then?”

  “Nothing, Wulfgar. It’s as if the sands have swallowed him.”

  “Hasn’t Dvere been able to find him?” Moidra asked. Her voice was deep and throaty.

  “No,” Mayra replied scornfully. “She failed to form a bond before he was taken, and by the time she tried his presence was clouded.”

  Moidra shook her head at Dvere’s failure. Bohemund was studying Elspeth.

  “This Wanderer, Wulfgar. I assume she’s here for some reason?”

  Quickly I told what Mayra had seen with the rune-bones, and what Elspeth had told me after I returned from Lanta. Moidra looked to Mayra for confirmation, and Mayra nodded.

  “I’d seen some things about a young woman, a Wanderer, who would be important to our people, and so had some of the others, but there’s been nothing specific. Certainly nothing as certain as what you’ve seen. But then,” she added ruefully, “we couldn’t expect to, could we?”

  I started asking what she meant, but Bohemund was leaning forward eagerly. “Have you thought about how this thing is to be done, Wulfgar? With all that’s happening, it may have to be tried even if the Sisters of Wisdom decide it’s not required.”

  “I’ve thought about it, and I have some ideas.” I tugged at the beard I still wore. “This, and hunting bows and breaking the most basic rules of war, may give us what we need. But what is happening? Mayra’s been able to tell me there’s a plot between the Lantans, the Morassa and the Most High, but no details of it.”