The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (35 page)

“It’s going to be pretty busy in Obann by the time you get there,” Roshay said. “They’re holding a conclave, and the city will be full of presters and their families, their servants, and people looking for favors.”

“What’s a conclave?” Hlah asked. But Sunfish knew what a conclave was and listened intently.

“Well, as you know, the Temple lies in ruins and we have no First Prester. So the clergy will assemble and elect one. But what they’ll decide to do about rebuilding the Temple, who can say?”

“If they rebuild it at all,” Vannett added. “Our prester here in Ninneburky says things are going to change, and maybe there won’t be a Temple anymore. He has gone to the conclave to find out; he left yesterday.”

“How could they not rebuild the Temple?” May wondered. News from Obann reached the hill country very slowly, if it got there at all.

Sunfish felt a mounting urge to scream, and didn’t know why. He could only grind his teeth and fight it.

Chapter 42

The Invasion of Lintum Forest

Mardar Wusu marched his army down from Silvertown to Lintum Forest, as fast as it could go. He sent agents on ahead to rally his allies among the outlaws, to make them ready for their best chance to rid themselves of Helki. He also sent word that whoever delivered King Ryons into his hands, alive, would be rewarded beyond his wildest dreams.

In all of this he acted wisely. With better than two thousand warriors of his own, and hundreds of outlaws at his beck and call who knew the forest well, he looked forward to a swift and successful campaign. He wouldn’t be caught in an ambush like the last mardar to invade the forest—not with all the scouts he meant to employ.

But in other things he’d acted most unwisely.

The Zamzu were big men, feared as cannibals, favorites of the Thunder King and his most loyal subjects. They were equally at home under the trees or out in the open, on horseback or on foot. They were anxious to slaughter any enemies they found.

The other half of Wusu’s force was Hosa—black men from the distant South, plainsmen who knew nothing of forests, peace-loving herders of cattle, who had been terrorized into serving the Thunder King. They were strong fighters because they had rapacious neighbors who preyed upon their herds. But they loathed the Zamzu, and hated and feared the Thunder King. And the Zamzu despised them.

Their chief, Xhama, came to Wusu every day with complaints about the Zamzu. Because he couldn’t pronounce the man’s name, Wusu paid no attention to his complaints. Xhama’s warriors, longing for their far-off homes and families, were already on the edge of mutiny.

To all of this, Wusu was blind.

“Back to Silvertown before the leaves fall!” he promised himself. With Helki’s head, and the king of Obann as his prisoner, his master would reward him well. “Wusu the Great, mardar of mardars!”

He marched his army nearly to exhaustion.

News spreads quickly throughout Lintum Forest, in spite of its vast extent. Before Wusu’s army came in sight of the trees, Helki knew it was coming, and knew that his enemies among the outlaws were working together to destroy him.

“The whole forest’s in an uproar,” he told his Griffs. This much and more, they’d learned from men they’d captured. “I reckon we’d better get back to Carbonek before someone else does.”

The last thing he wanted to do was stand at Carbonek and wait for his enemies to attack him there. Alone, he could melt into the forest and they’d never find him. But he was not alone. By now a hundred families had settled at Carbonek. How could he move them? They’d built homes, and their crops were almost ready for the harvest. And what of all the wives and children? He turned it over and over in his mind as he and his rangers hurried back to the settlement.

“We can’t stand and fight, and we can’t run away,” he said. Last time, he led a thousand men to the eastern half of the forest and ambushed and defeated ten thousand. But he didn’t have a thousand men anymore, and he couldn’t leave Carbonek undefended.

“We should have wiped out all those outlaws during the winter,” said Tiliqua, the chief of the little band of Griffs. “So what shall we do, your honor?”

“Fried if I know!”

When they came to Carbonek, the king was there.

“It never rains but it pours!” Helki thought, as the boy king flung his arms around him. They didn’t quite encircle his waist.

“Helki, Helki!” Ryons cried. “Oh, I’ve missed you! Are you surprised to see me?”

“Downright flabbergasted,” Helki said. “Why aren’t you in Obann City, where it’s safe?”

“God called me here.”

The great hound, Cavall, stood up and slobbered Helki’s face. The hawk, Angel, flew to his shoulder and perched there. All around him, the settlers rejoiced. “As if I could save them!” Helki thought. “Folks are going to be mighty disappointed in me, before all this is over.”

Nothing would do but to hold a feast that very evening. Ryons told the story of his trek from Obann; Perkin introduced Helki to Baby in his corral; and everybody reveled.

Helki let them enjoy themselves. Tomorrow morning would be time enough to tell them the bad news.

There was another army, King Ryons’ own, on its way to Lintum Forest. But knowing nothing of the urgency of the situation, the king’s army came on slowly. They liked to make camp early so that Obst could teach them in the evening. Attakotts on foot and Wallekki on horseback scouted ahead of them, but so far had neither seen nor heard of anything to provoke haste. If they could have known their king was in the forest, they would have rushed to join him.

“I know in my heart he’s there,” Chagadai said to Obst. “Isn’t that what Gurun’s message meant—the one about setting the throne in Lintum Forest? We Ghols would go on ahead and look for him. But then we’d only get lost in the forest, and you’d have to rescue us.”

“Who knows where King Ryons is?” said Obst. “God has hidden him.”

They would have hurried, too, if they’d known Jack and Ellayne were in the forest, instead of being safe at home in Ninneburky. And they would have worried, if they knew what Wytt knew.

Four men were hunting Martis and the children, and the Forest Omah were nowhere to be found. One man went on ahead, purposely leaving tracks that Martis followed. With a hundred of the Forest Omah to help him, Wytt could have driven off the hunters. But the Omah had left that part of the forest, and Wytt was alone.

These men, he could tell, lived in Lintum Forest and knew it well—but not as well as even the dullest Omah. Without having to put it into words, Wytt perceived that they were enemies. If they had good intentions, Martis would have said, “They’d have come out to meet us by now.” The hunters followed the travelers stealthily, and Wytt had not yet warned the children. He had another plan.

When he judged his opportunity had come, and having diligently prepared for it, he stole up on the three who were behind the travelers and jabbed one with his sharpened stick—right in the calf, as hard as he could—and shrieked.

The man shrieked, too, and yelled a curse as he grabbed his punctured leg. Wytt paused to brandish his stick and chatter at them, making sure they saw him.

“Sons of bats! Eaters of filth! Worms that walk!” would be a close approximation of what he said. Then he turned and fled down a side path.

“Cusset little rat!” cried the man who’d been stuck.

“A Skrayling!” said another. “After him, lads!” And the three men, enraged and distracted from their business, chased after their tiny enemy.

Wytt had already scrambled up a tree he’d climbed earlier, and ventured out onto a branch that overhung the trail. When the men appeared a moment later, he screeched to attract their attention.

“Botflies! Here I am, up here! Come and get me!”

They heard him and stopped to look up, trying to see him through the foliage.

Before they could pinpoint his location, he thrust with his stick and pried free a hanging hornets’ nest. It fell straight down and landed at the hunters’ feet. A cloud of maddened hornets flew out of it, looking for something to sting.

The men ran off in three different directions, each pursued by a mob of furious hornets that stung and stung again. The victims’ screams and curses echoed through the forest long after the men themselves were out of sight; and Wytt was satisfied.

Chapter 43

When You Tread Among Fools

Helki told everyone the bad news first thing in the morning, and then conferred with Perkin, Ryons, and the headmen among the rangers and the settlers.

“We can’t stay, and we can’t run away,” he said. “All I can think of doing is to take just a few of our sneakiest rascals with me, and go out and raise the biggest ruckus we can. Everybody else will have to stay here and do the best they can in case there’s an attack.”

“How many is ‘a few’?” asked one of the settlers.

“Half a dozen, tops.”

The other man laughed out loud. “Against an army? That’s crazy even for you, Helki!”

“Ain’t much of a plan, that’s certain,” Helki said. “If anybody has anything better, I’m listening.”

“Take me with you,” Perkin said, “and Baby. I think Baby might be able to start a panic or two.”

“Take me, too!” Ryons said. “And Cavall and Angel. I don’t want to be left behind.”

Helki shook his head. “You’re not a woodsman, Perkin. You’ll step on sticks and make noise, and spoil everything. And as you’re the only one who can handle that bird, I reckon he’d better stay here, too. He’ll come in handy if there’s fighting. But the hound and the hawk might do as much as a dozen good men, so I’ll take them.”

“But what about me?” Ryons cried. “Cavall’s my dog, and Angel’s my hawk—and everybody tells me that Obann’s my kingdom. So maybe this time I ought to fight for it.”

Some of the settlers smiled and shook their heads; but Helki didn’t.

“That’s just the kind of loopy thinking that appeals to me, Your Majesty,” he said. “Carbonek might be a safer place for everybody else, without you and me in it. And I was there when Jandra told us you were the king chosen by God. I haven’t forgotten that! But if you do come with me, you’ll have to stick close and do everything I say. And I do mean everything.”

“I will. I promise.”

There were protests against this, but the more Helki heard against it, the better he liked the idea. The discussion went on into the afternoon before he reached a final decision.

“Here it is,” he said. “Bandy will stay here, in command. Everybody must obey him. He’s an Abnak, and he knows this kind of fighting.”

“I take many scalps,” Bandy said. “We make them afraid to come to Carbonek.”

“I’ll go out with Andrus”—this was a young man, the very best of Helki’s woodsmen, whom he’d trained himself—“and the other five I’ve mentioned, and with King Ryons, his hawk, and his hound. We’ll leave right after we have a bite to eat: I want to be far from this place when the Heathen army enters the forest. Along the way we’ll kill as many outlaws as we can. And when we get a look at the army, we’ll see what we can do.

“But you be careful, Bandy! Ysbott the Snake and Gorm Blacktooth are never far away. Between them they must have forty or fifty manslayers.”

Bandy nodded. “I know it,” he said. “But soon they won’t have so many. Maybe we feed some to the big bird.”