The Hammer of the Sun (27 page)

So they passed downriver, sped along by the swift wind behind them and the current beneath, and saw the wide lands of a great realm open out upon either hand; yet the works of man in it were few. By the next morning the only trees in sight were the tali willows, set at clear intervals along the bank; beyond them the steep forested vale had opened out into the green hills they had seen from the cliffs, low and rolling. In the course of that day these in turn flattened out into a wide grassland country, so dismally flat and featureless and so thickly carpeted with green that even the Eran was almost invisible beyond the next bend. Yet though the grasses bent and nodded in waves under passing windrows,
so that
the
cog seemed to
ride
not the river but
an ocean of green, still they lacked the ocean's boisterous thunder, yielding only a soft rattling hiss, the dry play of stem against stem, husk upon husk. It soon grew monotonous, even with the birdsong. Never before had he heard the trilling songs of larks arising but they were poor substitutes for the wild gull-cries of his homeland. Nor could he warm to the harsh merriment of raven and carrion daw, and the scream of raptors stooping for the kill. Of other creatures, or of men, they saw none; the land, though rich, seemed unpeopled, and though once or twice towers had lifted from hill top or river promontory their windows gaped empty as skulls. They did not look that old, but to most of those on board they might have been made with the stones of the cliffs, things too impossibly ancient for any man to know their history. Only when they passed one such tower, and saw that still visible among the grass at its foot were the blackened remains of a village, did the travellers begin to understand.

"Don't tell me that Ekwesh have struck this deep into the land!" exclaimed Elof grimly. "And so long ago? That's been ruined many a year…"

"Never believe it!" said Trygkar behind them, in the northern tongue. "That's not reiver's work, more's the shame of it. That, now, gentles, that was put down in the times of the last Ysmerien kings, maybe even when my grandsire was young. A bloody business they say it was; but then the Line of the Bull would never spare chick nor child in such a matter. Called it breeding rebels if somebody did. Never recovered properly from those times, did this region…"

"The last Ysmerien?" Elof pricked up his ears. "Then what line rules here now?"

Trygkar blinked casually around before replying, but the sergeant was, for once, not on deck. "Did you not hear? Lonuen, the Line of the Bull. And well named!"

"We've none of that name in our land," said Roc. "Still, at least it's not the Bryherens - or Herens, as they were."

Trygkar whistled. "Have a care, my lads! There's a connection. The Lonuen are a bastard offshoot of the Ysmerien, but they've Heren blood; why, the king's own mother was almost the last of them. Their line's gone now, too."

"And good riddance, I don't doubt!" muttered Roc.

"They had some bad lots, aye; on your side of the ocean also? Though they stood up to the Bulls as they had to the Ysmerien, and that was something; but the Bulls broke them -" He stopped. Aurghes had surfaced again, and though he was to far off to hear, the old shipmaster fell silent and would say no more.

All through that long summer day they glided across the grassy plain under a sky in which sunlight and cloud contended, and saw never another work of man. As night came the clouds thickened, and the air became cooler; after the evening meat Elof and Roc sat by the brazier only a short while before returning to their deck-tent, which was considered better quarters than the noisome lower troop-decks of the cog. So the next morning they were already awake and shivering before dawn, eagerly gathering by the brazier again to claim fried hunks of some kind of peppery blood-sausage and bowls of small ale mulled and spiced. In the gloom the clouds hung in grey overcast, shot with streaks of darker grey, as if to mirror the grassland beneath. The sunrise took them unawares; a rift had opened in the clouds, and the sun came pouring through it in radiant glory, turning the air to hazy gold. And looking out across the yellow-green waves of the grassland, it seemed as if they now mirrored the clouds. For among them also a golden seam opened, threading away in rippling fire along the eastern horizon.

"Yskianas!" said Trygkar quietly. "But 'twill be even ere we reach it, gentles. Harder sailing from thence, not like on this mild wee stream."

Elof smiled. "I think we may endure that, shipmaster, having survived the open seas." Trygkar shrugged, and said no more for that time; only long after did Elof wonder what deeper meaning might have lain behind his words.

Near the mouth of the Heryonas they at last began to see the distant wisps of smoke that marked human habitation, and here and there the grassland flecked with herds of horses or cattle. At length they passed by their first village, a straggle of houses in a shallow deli that was evidently home to drovers or herdsmen, by the great spread of animal pens that surrounded it. Beyond that a plume of smoke arose; but as they came closer it became evidently too big to be a town, or anything of human origin. "Why, it's a fire-mountain!" exclaimed Elof. "Just like in the Nordenbergen of my old home! But not so fierce, I hope!"

For once the sergeant joined in the conversation he was listening to. "Wouldn't be so sure of that, gentles!" he said grimly. "My home village was in the shadow of another such, for there's many in the land; we'll be passin' a good few. Well, that village is under a man's height of ash now, and it seems there's vines being planted on top already. Fierce enough for yer, sirs?"

"It'll serve," said Roc dryly. "Why'd your people build so close to it, in this wide land?"

The sergeant scratched his head. "Now that's a thing I used to ask as a lad. Seems that an awful time back, three hundred years even, that mountain wasn't near 'alf that size. And I can believe it, by Verya, for I've seen others spread too. But that's the way of 'em, isn't it?"

Not long after that they sighted the first town, or rather the grim castle that dominated it; the scatter of streets was hardly visible behind its walls, until they drew much closer and could make out the roofpeaks. And these walls were manifestly not new; they looked as old as anything over the oceans. The whole community was first a fortress and a place of strength, clearly placed to dominate the rivermouth, around which white sails flocked like so many wings. As they drew nearer two longboats with five oars a side, flying a flag of purple and white and heavy-laden with men, detached themselves from the flock and steered towards them; but at Trygkar's order a dark bundle was sent soaring to the masthead and there broke out into a long pennant striped in black and gold. At once the longboats went about and vanished among the other ships. "No tolls to levy on a king's ship," grinned Elof. "Do you note our colours, the same as Kermorvan's?"

"I noted more the numbers of men under theirs," said Roc sourly.

"That's the Holder of Berheryon," said Trygkar, tilting his white head at the castle. "A hard hand he lays on such trade from the uplands as goes not through his town and his tolls."

"And the king permits that?" asked Elof in surprise, knowing how Kermorvan would react if any noble of his sought such advantage.

Trygkar glared around, but the sergeant was watching them with a benign bloodshot eye. "The king needs peace and loyalty from the lords of outlying burgs," he said, and turned pointedly to his helm once again. Elof and Roc exchanged glances, but they too chose to guard their tongues. For that time, though, hard thoughts were forgotten; they were beyond Berheryon town now, and Yskianas the Great opened up before them.

It was more like the approaches to the sea itself, thought Elof; gulls flocked screaming about the banks, and the freshening wind carried an unmistakable tang of salt coasts in the clear air. More like wide estuary or sea-lake than river the waters looked, already some two thousand paces between banks and still widening, save that the current ran so clear, even near the banks where it was slowest. It seized the cog as
it
cleared the inflow and swept it onward, swaying and wallowing till Tryg-kar's crewmen trimmed the sails; the spray that reached Elof s lips tasted salt. With the wind at their beam now even the unwieldy cog could race the clouds above, and the banks swept by them at a great rate. Ere the light left them the lie of the land was changing, and when they rose at dawn it might have been another country altogether they sailed through. The grasslands had gone, and in their place the river shone between steep hillsides, riven by deep valleys through many of which other tributaries flowed. It was often at such confluences that they came upon more towns. "Or more castles!" muttered Elof, as the channel carried them close beneath age-blackened fortifications. "It seems they're the same thing here. Never one without the other!" They had been two days now upon the great river, and he was growing sick of the sight of them, from the smallest tower perched high on a promontory above the water, the nest of a marauding osprey, to the vast and sprawling fastness that filled whole hilltops, or hunched upon the Sower lands like some beast snarling over its kill.

"Well, so is it with us," Roc pointed out. "Everywhere larger than a village has its own walls, its own strong place or citadel."

"Yes, but as a refuge,
•a
, defence chiefly, never to dominate the place as do these. Every one built as both palace and garrison, as was Morvannec at the first; a home for a lord, and the stony kernel of his power. Even the larger towns herd like sheep around the feet of the fortresses. And they cast a long shadow over the countryside; nobody, villager, cottager or outdweller, could hope to live free of it." He nodded his head at the blanketing of fields beyond the walls, and the rows of minute figures who toiled in them. "Do you look there! Never an orderly chequer of single fields and farm-holdings, such as you'll see around any town of ours. Just a great sprawl of huge fields, and a few small strips at their edges; the same with the vineyards on the hillsides, always the same. A lord's holding, a master's portion!"

"Aye, and who works it for him, I wonder?" Roc gazed at the toilers under the hot sun. "I wonder. But I'll be damned careful how I ask."

They passed by many more towns in the days that followed, and large or small, all wore the same aspect. Strong fortresses of yellow stone or a curious patchwork of yellow and brown, their peaked roofs usually red-tiled or of black slate, gathered their flock of lime-washed houses tight within high yellow walls; beyond those walls the larger towns might have a quarter of ramshackle huts, but never more, save where here and there some ancient and august ruin arose. In those towns many of the houses rose several stories high, as if they were plants constrained to shoot upward; they had few windows on their outside walls, and looked somewhat fortress-like themselves. The Great River was widening swiftly now, and the towns of the southward shore had long been no more than blurs even to Elof's keen sight. However, the cog kept close to the northward bank, and so brought him closer sight of those there, the more so as by many of them Trygkar would slacken sail, or even heave-to altogether, till flag or trumpet gave him the signal to proceed. But by some, notably those on the offshore islands, he would clap on all sail and steer swiftly out into the choppier open waters; evidently there were places the king's pennon was no passport. At one point, where a pair of squat square forts sat flanking the channel between a town on a promontory and an offshore island, he called the soldiers on deck and raised strong mantlets along the side. The travellers were ignored, but Elof loosened Gorthawer in its sheath, Roc fetched his heavy bow from the deck-tent, and together they joined the watchful sergeant on the sterncastle. His coarse face seamed with surprise when he saw them, and he unbent slightly. "You do well to 'elp us, sirs," he said, his pale bloodshot eyes weighing them up. "For this one, I doubt not, would slit the throats of emissaries as freely as common soldiers."

"Fitting we share in the defence, then," answered Elof crisply, as the towers glided by above the slatted screens, staring down with blank slit eyes. "For I doubt not we'd bleed the same colour."

The sergeant eyed them with even sharper surprise. "True enough, sirs. But there's many that might not 'ave said that," he added, and strode stiffly off to order some mantlets shifted astern. The old shipmaster nodded approvingly.

"Bleed the same colour! Aye, that's the right line to take with that one; or myself, for that matter. Told him you were worth twice the popinjays we're used to deal with. The same colour!" He laughed quietly. "Well, let's hope it won't come to that. Shouldn't, if we seem hard enough; he's no fool; this lordling here. Pays his dues, sends his levies to the king, not a word out of place; but still from time to time boats vanish along this stretch, and he fares better than that starveling townlet of his can afford him. Most often such boats as are too weak or too unwary to defend themselves; easy enough to make such a one vanish utterly, if you've a swift shipyard to strip the timbers and no scruples about the souls on board. He's not the only one doing it, by all accounts. No wreckwood to float ashore, and no corpses neither…" The shipmaster leaned out beyond the mantlet to check the progress of the channel. "Ah, but he'll not try anything now, we're well by him already and the next town's not so far ahead. Still, no harm in keeping the mantlets up for now."

Elof looked back at the suspect town; it seemed quite large. "An evil thing, if it's true. Unlikely it could happen in our land; there we tend to gather in one great city, and the outlying towns and holdings are small and weak by comparison."