The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) (35 page)

“We’re running short of water,” Ellayne said.

“Fill the waterskin with snow and leave it lying near the fire,” Chillith said.

After she did that, they cuddled up together under the blanket and the wolfskin, and Ellayne tried to tell the Griff one of the old tales of Abombalbap, from the book her father once gave her for a birthday present. She told Chillith about the single combat fought at the ford of the River Frewly, somewhere in Lintum Forest, between Abombalbap and the Green Knight who slew every man, woman, or child who crossed the river.

“They fought all day,” Ellayne said, “and along toward evening they were so cut up and gored that their armor lay all in pieces in the river, and birds flew in and out of their wounds—and straight through some of them.” But then she noticed Chillith was snoring, and his chin lay on his breast, so she stopped.

The silence of the woods came down on them like a blanket. They were only a stone’s throw from the road, but for all the stillness of that night, they might have been a hundred miles from any human habitation. “And maybe we are, at that,” Ellayne thought.

She flinched when Wytt hopped into their earth cave. He crept into her arms and chattered. As near as it can be rendered into human speech, this is what he said.

He’d been scouting, and caught a shrew and ate it. “Big people living in these woods, all over,” he chirped softly. “Maybe bad, maybe good. Not see any, but they leave scent everywhere.”

“Any sign of Jack and Martis?” she whispered, not wanting to wake Chillith.

“No Jack. No White-face,” Wytt answered. “When they come close, I know.”

Ellayne frowned. She hadn’t meant to get too far ahead of them. “We’ll have to slow down tomorrow,” she thought. And then Wytt fell asleep, and she lay awake, listening to the silence of a winter night.

She saw to it that they got off to a later start than Chillith would have liked.

“We have to be careful,” she said. “Wytt says there are outlaws in these woods, and it wouldn’t do you any good to be captured by the likes of them. They wouldn’t take you to the Thunder King. They’d only kill you.”

“Too bad we don’t have your friend Abombalbap to travel with us,” said Chillith with a smile. So he had heard some of the story, at least—although he’d missed the most exciting part.

A little before noon they were on the road again, trudging through the snow, uphill, always uphill. The clouds drifted apart and let the sun peek out. The new snow glistened. Ellayne hoped she wouldn’t go snow-blind. “We’d be in a fine fix then,” she thought, “if neither one of us could see.”

On and on they plodded. She stopped worrying about getting too far ahead of Jack and Martis: at this rate they wouldn’t outmarch anyone. But Wytt ran along on top of the snow, finding the crusty parts and never breaking through. He was either far ahead of them or far behind, usually out of sight, scouting out trouble.

“It’s warmer today,” Chillith said.

“That’s because the sun came out.”

“I like the feel of this day. We Griffs don’t mind the cold. Winter is much colder in our country than it ever gets here.”

“It’s cold enough for me,” Ellayne said. Despite the boots she wore, her feet felt like two blocks of ice. What would she do if she got frostbite?

Just then Wytt came racing back to them from up ahead with news.

“One man comes, all alone. Very tired! Maybe sick, too. You like to see him, or you like to hide?”

“Maybe this man can tell us something useful,” Chillith said, when Ellayne had translated Wytt’s chirps and chitters. “You hide. I’ll go on ahead and meet him.”

Ellayne didn’t like to leave him alone, but his idea made sense. “I’ll be watching from the woods,” she said, and Chillith nodded.

She followed Wytt into the trees and labored to keep up with Chillith. Somehow he managed to stay on the road; and before long, a man came into sight.

“He’s just about had it,” Ellayne thought. He came toiling along, barely able to lift his feet out of the snow, with a grey blanket wrapped around his head and shoulders. Chillith heard him panting and stopped to wait for him. The man almost blundered into him before he saw him. Deeming the stranger no threat at all, Ellayne came out of the woods to join them; but Wytt stayed out of sight.

“Who are you?” gasped the stranger.

“A blind man trying to get up the mountain,” Chillith said. “I have business with the Thunder King.”

The stranger’s jaw dropped. If he’d had any strength at all, Ellayne thought, he’d run away. The poor devil was terrified. She felt sorry for him.

“It’s all right!” she said. “We won’t do you any harm. We won’t tell anyone we saw you, so don’t be afraid. Chillith, give this poor man a little something to eat. And I think we’d better try to build a fire somewhere.”

A fire turned out not to be practicable: everything was too wet to burn. They sat together on a tree-trunk beside the road, and the stranger had a biscuit. The sun was strong now, thankfully.

“What’s your name?” Ellayne asked. “Who are you, and what are you doing out here all alone?”

“I don’t suppose a little girl can hurt me,” he said, “and it’s pleasant to hear someone speaking Obannese. As for me, my name is Gallgoid, and I was a servant of the Temple.”

North and south of the great river, and from the east to the west, bands of Heathen roamed Obann, remnants of the vast host that had been shattered before the city. As Ryons and his small army marched east, fragments of King Thunder’s hordes came and made submission to him.

“I don’t think this is what King Thunder had in mind when he challenged you to come to him,” said Hennen to his king.

They came by pairs, by tens, by dozens: Abnaks and Griffs on foot, Wallekki riders, Fazzan in their wolf’s-head caps, and even a few Zeph.

“Why do you come to us now?” Obst asked a Wallekki chief who’d brought thirty riders with him.

“The great beast destroyed us,” said the chief, “and the winter, we know, will starve us. We can’t go home because we failed the Thunder King, and he will not forgive us. Our gods have been taken away from us, and Obann’s God is against us. What are we to do, and where are we to go?

“But a man came to us yesterday and told us that the King and Queen of Obann will spare us, and the God of Obann will protect us, if only we submit to them of our own free will. What other deliverance can we hope for?”

Ryons exchanged a look with Gurun. She hated being called a queen, he knew that—but what man was this? Who could it be?

“What did the man look like, who spoke to you?” Gurun asked.

“An ordinary man—one of us, in fact. He never gave his name, nor told us his clan. He rode a beautiful white horse. He was old, and venerable, and I supposed he was a chieftain.”

“Nobody we sent out!” thought Ryons.

“You have been told the truth, friends,” Obst spoke up. “You and your men may march with us, Chieftain, under God’s protection. Or else swear friendship to King Ryons and go your way, and do your best to return to your homes.”

The chief and all his followers drew themselves up straighter.

“If he will have us,” said the chief, “we will ride with the king!”

So these Wallekki were inducted into the army, and while Chief Shaffur was seeing to it, Gurun said to Ryons, “It must have been a servant of the Lord who spoke to those men, for it was no servant of yours. But I don’t know why even these Heathen should call me a queen.”

“If I’m to have a queen,” said Ryons, “I’d like it to be you.” He blushed violently as he said this. “I mean, who else should it be?”

“First we have to survive the malice of the Thunder King—and those mountains are still a long way off,” Gurun answered. But Ryons noticed that she didn’t say “no.”

Helki would have liked to go faster, but all the snow on the ground made it hard for Cavall to hold on to Jack’s scent. But Cavall was a keen tracker, and he never lost the scent for long.

Angel flew above the trees where Helki couldn’t always see her. She understood that he was hunting some quarry. She couldn’t help him do that, but she would give warning if anyone were hunting him.

The forest was his natural habitat, and he reveled in it. After the war, he thought, he would return to Lintum Forest and never again set foot outside of it. “But first find Jack and Ellayne!” This close to catching up to them, he’d never turn back until he did it.

Helki had no way of knowing it, but by now he’d made up most of the ground and was only a day behind Jack and Martis. And they had just struck the Thunder King’s new road.

“I think those must be their tracks,” Martis said, studying the snow. “Some of this has melted, so I can’t be sure; but I am sure two people made these tracks.”

“They just look like holes to me,” Jack said.

Martis soon proved to be right. The tracks went off the road and led to an uprooted tree nearby, under which they found the ashes of a campfire.

“Here is where they must have spent the night,” he said. “I hate to stop while there’s still a bit of daylight left, but we’ll never find better shelter than this.”

“I don’t want to spend another night out in the open,” Jack said. The rangers had given them blankets, woolen socks, and caps, but the last night had been brutal. “Even my bed at Van’s house would look mighty good to me right now.”

He was wondering if he would ever see Ellayne again. She made him as mad as a flea sometimes, but he missed her. At their age, spending a year together was like knowing someone all your life. And he missed Wytt, too.

Would it ever be over? He supposed Ellayne’s book never told you that adventures could be such cuss’t hard work. A few more days of this and his legs would fall right off.

“Lord God,” he prayed silently, after he and Martis had their supper, “will you ever be done with us?” And he imagined that he saw Obst’s face smiling at him and heard Obst answer, “No, Jack, no—the Lord is never done with us. We belong to Him forever. Rejoice in it!”

But it was a little cold for rejoicing, Jack thought.

It was quite a story Gallgoid told: how the First Prester betrayed the city and let the enemy in through the Temple; how the Thunder King built a new Temple, way out East, and Lord Reesh was to be First Prester there; how they’d traveled up the mountain in a coach, Gallgoid and his master—and found the Thunder King himself waiting for them at the summit in a golden hall.