The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (39 page)

With the Temple in ruins, the conclave assembled in the Great Hall at the palace. More delegates were expected to arrive during the next few days, but the deliberations would begin this morning.

Constan remained at the seminary, supervising the work on the books. Whatever the conclave decided in the end, this was more important. So he was there when Hlah and May came in a cart with Sunfish, and the student found him at his desk in the scriptorium.

“Preceptor, there’s someone you should see. I’ve had him brought here so you won’t have to leave the building.”

“Whom ought Ito see, Clemen?”

The student explained as best he could, which was enough. “Bring him into my office,” Constan said. “I’ll join you there.”

Constan took all the time he needed to see that the morning’s work was well under way. Only then did he proceed to his study. There he found Sunfish slumped in a chair, with Clemen, Hlah, and May assembled around him. The sight of the babe in May’s arms provoked one of the preceptor’s rare smiles.

“We don’t often see a baby in the seminary,” he said.

“Your pardon, sir! I couldn’t leave him; and as this poor man is dear to us, I couldn’t stay behind, either,” May said.

Clemen introduced them. Constan studied their faces. Urged by Clemen, Hlah told as much of Sunfish’s story as he knew. Constan listened silently and stood as motionless as a great stone.

He stood so still because he was using his eyes and ears, and thinking about what they told him. This man called Sunfish was a big, powerful-looking man, unkempt, with a wild mane of hair and a beard that badly needed barbering. Hair and beard were black, shot through with grey. Constan didn’t speak because he was sure he’d seen this man before, and trying to remember where.

“Aren’t you going to ask us any questions, sir?” Hlah said. Constan only held up a finger, compelling silence. Clemen gave Hlah a look that said, “He means it.”

Constan listened to Sunfish whisper sacred verses: word-perfect, just as Clemen said. But his eyes gave the more important witness.

He knew this man. Slowly, carefully, his imagination cleaned the dirt off him, dressed him in fine clothes, cut his hair and trimmed his beard, and made allowances for the effects of hardship and suffering. There were not many who could have done this, but the preceptor had the most orderly mind in all of Obann City. Still, he would not rush to a conclusion.

Minutes marched by. Just when Hlah was beginning to fear this stolid man had fallen asleep on his feet with his eyes open, Constan spoke.

“Clemen, bring this man to my house on Temple Street. You know where it is. Tell my servants to bathe him, wash his hair, and put him to bed. My bed. But first send Anastys to me.”

Clemen went back to the scriptorium and returned with another student. Meanwhile, Constan sat at his desk and wrote a note, which he folded shut and sealed with wax. He handed it to the second student.

“Go to the Great Hall now and deliver this, in person, to Prester Jod—and no one else,” he said. “Make sure he reads it right away, no matter what he happens to be doing at the moment.”

“Yes, Preceptor.”

“Clemen, take these good people to my house with you and wait for me there.” He turned to Hlah and May. “Thank you for bringing this man for me to see.” And to May, “And thank you for bringing your baby. You have reminded me that we work for the future of God’s people. All of them.”

Chapter 47

How Gorm Blacktooth Was Routed

You would think that men who lived in Lintum Forest all their lives would be expert woodsmen; but in spite of the trust that Wusu put in them, this was not true of Lintum Forest’s outlaws. Those men were predators who hunted easy prey—peaceful settlers and if all else failed, each other. Each band knew its way around its own particular territory, but no bandit could hope to match Helki in woodcraft.

In the days following the fire, Helki often came close to the army. They never once caught sight of him, nor found his tracks. Many times Wusu’s scouts came within arm’s length of him without knowing he was there. When scouts who did that came alone, they never came back.

Helki plagued the Heathen. He raised alarms at odd hours of the night, fraying the warriors’ nerves. He brought Andrus along one night, and Andrus brought down a fine-looking Hosa warrior with a single arrow. That caused a stir. The scouts ransacked the neighborhood, but Andrus had slipped away before his arrow reached its mark.

Helki’s rangers felled trees across paths that the army was likely to use, necessitating the hard labor of clearing them out of the way. An army used to forest campaigns might have shrugged these off as pinpricks, but this was not that kind of army. The Hosa especially hated their predicament.

“This is an accursed venture,” Xhama said, “and no good can come of it.” But Wusu wouldn’t listen to him.

Sometimes Helki brought Cavall with him. He didn’t know the Zamzu had a superstitious fear of dogs, but he soon learned it. When Cavall howled in the middle of the night, it upset the Zamzu terribly. Then it was the Hosa’s turn to dole out mockery.

“If we could only bag that mardar,” Helki said to his six men, “the rest of them might just give up and go home. It’d be risky, though. He keeps himself in the middle of the crowd, and there wouldn’t be time to get off a second shot at him. We mustn’t let them catch even one of us alive—too big a risk to the king.”

But of course they wanted to try it. “We’re all good shots,” Andrus said. “If we shoot six arrows at him all at once, one of them is bound to hit him. And that might well be the end of our troubles.”

Or the beginning of new ones! Helki thought. “If all six of us go,” he said, “then where do we put the king? I won’t bring him within a mile of that army.”

“But if you could make them leave the forest without a battle?” Ryons said. “Couldn’t you leave me in a safe place, Helki, while you try to get the mardar? I promise I’ll stay put!”

Helki’s men pressed him hard, and he listened to them for a long time before he finally gave in.

“All right,” he said, “I reckon it’s a chance we have to take. I’ll choose King Ryons’ hiding place myself, and none of you will know where it is: safer, that way. The hawk and the hound will watch over him while we’re gone.

“Remember—one shot each, and only one, all at the same instant: and then we skedaddle out of there. No one is to be taken alive. You’d be fools to let that happen, anyhow. What the Zamzu don’t do to you, the mardar will.”

“We know it,” Andrus said.

The same day, Martis and the children came to Carbonek with six prisoners. Bandy quickly put them under guard.

“Yes—King Ryons, he was here,” he answered their questions, “but he not here now. He go with Helki, go to other end of forest so they can fight Heathen. Maybe they come back soon, I hope.”

The defenders of the castle had not been idle, meanwhile. Gorm Blacktooth and his men had come too close, so Bandy found one of their camps and let Baby loose on it. One of the outlaws was killed, and four fled screaming into the forest. Bandy himself, and his tomahawk, accounted for two others. But they didn’t know where the rest of Gorm’s men were.

“How you catch six Ysbott men?” the Abnak wondered.

Ellayne was about to blurt out, “I did it!” but Martis didn’t let her.

“I think that’s something better kept a secret for the time being,” Martis said. “I’ll tell you about it later.” It wasn’t until after they were settled in the camp and given supper and getting ready to sleep that Ellayne had the chance to ask Martis why it had to be a secret.

“You can’t go around telling people you’re a witch or the servant of a witch,” he said. “If we encourage people to believe these ancient objects have magical powers, we’ll be doing the Thunder King’s work for him.”

“We’d be taking Noma’s place,” said Jack, who quickly saw what Martis was getting at.

“You didn’t complain when I made those men surrender,” Ellayne said. “You went right along with it.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have!” Martis said. “Those devices, you know, were made by people who perished in the Day of Fire. Lord Reesh practically worshipped those people and the works of their hands. It just seems to me that we shouldn’t be too eager to make use of those works.”

“The prisoners will talk about it,” Jack said. “You know they will.”

“Then we’ll have to be careful about what we say, when people ask us to explain what we did.”

Ellayne didn’t argue, but it took her a long time to get to sleep. Thinking it over, she remembered a time, early in their journeys, when she and Jack explored a kind of tunnel made by the people of the Empire times—a tunnel that ended in a massive blockage made of dead men’s bones. That, too, was something left over from the old days.

Now she wished she’d never touched the cusset thing; but it was much too late for that.

Wytt finally found the Forest Omah. They’d moved out of the area to avoid the gangs of outlaws tramping all around the woods. Very few of the human beings in Lintum Forest ever see the Omah, who make it their business not to be seen. But most of those humans believed all kinds of stories about the Little People—who could give a hunter good or bad luck as they chose, put a fatal curse on a woodcutter, or keep a person under an enchantment for a hundred years, to turn instantly to dust the moment they lifted the enchantment.

Wytt showed the Omah the lock of Ellayne’s golden hair that he wore around his neck. That was all they had to see, to be convinced to follow him and help him. These Omah didn’t know how to sharpen sticks as weapons, but they learned quickly.

“We take things from big men, stick them with points when they sleep: scare them and make them go away.” That was Wytt’s plan, as best it can be rendered into human speech. These Omah had never thought of doing such a thing; but they would do it now, as a service to the Girl with Sunshine Hair. No human being, not even Ellayne or Jack, could explain why. It is something that is between the Omah and the God who made them.

Several dozen of them followed Wytt back to the outlaws’ stamping grounds. They found the campsite where the children and Martis had been captured. When that trail led to Carbonek, Wytt realized that his friends were safe and he could carry out his plan.

Gorm Blacktooth had a camp some ten miles from the castle. He moved it every two or three days, sometimes closer, sometimes farther away, and Bandy hadn’t found it yet. He had twenty men with him, more or less, with a few out scouting.

This camp was in a clearing by a little pool of fresh water. A huge black tree towered over it. Fires burned at night to discourage bears. Around the biggest fire sat Gorm and a dozen of his men, dining on roasted possum and stolen corn. Gorm was a small, stocky man with a hideous black tooth, much esteemed by other outlaws for his cleverness.

“When Ysbott and his lads join us tomorrow,” he was saying, “and we all sweep down on that castle at once—now that we know Helki’s not there!—it’ll be easy pickings. We’ll be living high on the hog for a long time after that, my boys!”

While he boasted, Wytt and a few of the Omah scrambled up the tree, unseen, and settled down to wait. The others hid among the underbrush, careful to avoid three men on sentry duty. The night wore on, the fires burned low, and eventually the men lay down to sleep. With their chief asleep, the sentries sat down and nodded.

Wytt imitated the call of a whip-poor-will, and the Omah came out of hiding. By twos and threes, and silently, they picked things up and carried them into the forest, whatever they could manage—weapons, boots, food, a cooking pot, and one man’s fur cap that lay beside him. When they were done, Wytt signaled for the Omah in the tree to go down and take up their positions. He clicked once: and half a dozen Omah jabbed their sharp sticks into a sleeping sentry. They shrieked as they stabbed him, a noise to wake the dead. Certainly it woke the camp. The stricken man sprang to his feet, bleeding from half a dozen little wounds, and howling with pain and alarm. But except for Wytt, concealed in the tree, all the Omah had already run away.

“I’ve been stabbed!” cried the sentry. “Somebody stabbed me!” The whole camp was in an uproar, and Gorm had to knock a few heads together before he could get the fires lit again. Only then did they discover that many of their possessions had been stolen.

“But who could have done it?” someone said. “If it was Helki and his men, they would have killed us while we slept.”