Vault of the Ages (2 page)

“Come,” one of the boys said eagerly. “I’ll show you to the barn and then we’ll eat and talk.”

He was the elder of John’s two sons, a lean, red-haired, freckle-faced lad of about Cart’s age. His brother, who followed them, was perhaps a year younger, short and stout and blond. “I am Tom,” said the older boy, “and this is Owl.”

“Owl?” asked Carl.

“His real name is Jim,” said Tom, “but nobody ever calls him anything but Owl. He looks like one, doesn’t he?”

“It is because I am so wise,” smiled his brother.

The farm buildings were long and low, made from rough-hewn timbers chinked with clay and moss. Within the barn there were several horses and cows, and a twilight thick with the rich smell of animals and hay. Tom led Carl’s pony to a vacant stall while Owl brought water.

“You have a big place here,” said Carl. “I wouldn’t have thought it. You live right on the edge of the great forest and the border of the Dales.”

“Why shouldn’t we have a good farm?” asked Tom.

“Well—a place like this would tempt raiders, I should think.”

“There are none,” said Owl. “The woods-runners around here were driven away a hundred years ago. You should know that.”

“I do,” answered Carl gravely. “But there are worse than woods-runners—and they’re on their way.”

“You mean the Lann.” Tom’s voice grew flat. “We can speak of them later.”

Carl shrugged, but there was a sudden bleakness in him. It had been this way all the time, everywhere he went. So few would believe the story, so few could rise above the narrowness of their lives and see that the Dales faced a threat beyond their worst dreams.

He clamped his mouth shut and helped care for the pony. When the three boys came out, the sun had set and twilight stole from the east, rising like mist between the high trees. They walked across the muddy yard toward the cheerful fire-glow of the house.

The long room inside was bounded by curtained beds at one end and a stone hearth at the other. John’s wife, a tall woman in the long-skirted dress of the Dales, was cooking supper there. She smiled at Carl and greeted him in a friendly way, but he saw the worry in her face and knew that she was not altogether deaf to the stories of the Lann. Besides John, who sat at the plank-table smoking a corncob pipe, there were two young men who were introduced to Carl as Arn and Samwell, workers on the farm.

It was a handsome and comfortable house, thought Carl, letting his eyes travel around it. The soft light of home-dipped tallow candles fell on skin rugs, on a loom with a rich, half-woven tapestry stretched across it, on pots and bowls of baked clay and hammered copper. It slanted over weapons racked against one wall and the weapons threw back the light in a fierce iron blink, deflecting it off a faded picture of a man, one of the marvelous works which must have been handed down since the Day of Doom. And all this could go up in flame when the Lann arrived!

The Dalesmen did not think it polite to talk of serious matters before a guest had been fed, so they spoke of weather and animals and neighborhood gossip. Unreal, thought Carl, swallowing his impatience. They sat and gabbled about rain and crops when the storm of conquest even then roared down from the north. The food, when at last it was served, was tasteless in his mouth.

After the dishes had been cleared off and the fire built up against the cool dampness of early summer night, John gave him a shrewd glance across the table. A wavering red light danced through the
room, weaving a pattern of huge rippling shadows in the corners from which Arn looked superstitiously away. The farmer’s eyes gleamed out of a face that was half in darkness, and he puffed a blue cloud of smoke into the air.

“And how are things in Dalestown, Carl?” he asked.

This was the time to speak!
“The men are gathering,” answered Carl, choosing his words slowly, with care. “In the east and west and south the Dalesmen have heard the war-word of their Chief and are sending their fighting men to join him. Dalestown has grown noisy with men and weapons. Only from this part of our northern lands have no men yet come.” He raised his eyebrows. “You will march soon, of course?”

“We will not march at all,” said John calmly. “The men of the northern Dales are staying at home.”

“But—” Carl checked his words. After all, this was no surprise; Ralph’s messengers had brought back the answer of these landholders already. Finally he said slowly, “But you are in the very path of the invaders.”

“Perhaps,” replied John. “And in that case, should we abandon our homes to their plundering, leave our women and children and animals unshielded while all our warriors are at Dalestown?”

“My father,” said Carl desperately, “is gathering all the men of the tribe together so he can have an army of proper size with which to meet these Lann and drive them back where they came from. Do you few border dwellers expect to stop the enemy alone?”

“We stood off the woods-runners long ago,” said John. “I don’t think the Lann will be any worse.”

“But they are!” cried the boy. “We know!”

John raised his brows. “And what do you know of the Lann? I thought there was no traffic northward.”

“Very little,” said Carl. “We get what we need for ourselves in the Dales, and our traders carry what extra we have south to get fruits and tobacco or east for fish and salt. Still, travelers have gone into the cold lands from time to time, and they have told us that the tribes living there are poor and backward, but very fierce. Someone brought word back a couple of years ago that these tribes had united under one Chief and were talking of coming south.”

“Why should they do that?” asked Tom. “It’s a long way from their homes to ours.”

“We live better,” said Carl. “Our land is rich, our forests are full
of game and timber, our ancient cities yield so much metal that we can even trade it with other people—oh, I can see where these northerners, these Lann as they call themselves, would envy us. Their own scouts and explorers have visited us now and then, you know.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Also,” he went on, “this is a matter which I do not understand very well, but some say the world is getting colder. Old men all tell how the summers were warmer and the winters shorter in their youth, that their grandfathers had told them things were still better. Old Donn, the High Doctor at Dalestown, who keeps the ancient wisdom, says that the wise men before the Doom knew of such changes too. Anyway,” he finished lamely, “if the weather really is getting colder and stormier, it would strike the north first and hardest. They have had several bitter years and thin harvests, my father’s spies have told, and are themselves harried by desperate raiders from still farther north. So all in all, it is easy to see that the Chief of the united Lann may want to lead a host which can conquer the south and take its lands.”

“That would take a great army,” said Owl.

“It is a great army,” said Carl grimly.

“But why should they fall on us?” asked John. “There are weaker tribes, easier prey.”

“I don’t know,” said Carl, “but my father thinks it’s just because we Dalesmen are the largest and strongest of the tribes that they want to overrun us first. Once we are beaten, our neighbors will have no chance.” He scowled. “Even so, those other tribes won’t join with us. They’re afraid to stir up the anger of the Lann. We stand alone.”

“And where is this northern army?” asked John.

“I don’t know,” said Carl. “Nobody does. They could be anywhere in the great hills and forests to the north, and will move almost as fast as any scout of ours could bring word of their coming. I suppose they’re scattered through the woods, so they can live off the country better, and will join forces again when they come out into the farm lands. There’ve been fights elsewhere in the northern marches between some of their advance guards and men of ours, so they must be near.”

“But no one can tell how near, eh?” John knocked out his pipe. A tiny coal glowed in the ashes for a moment and then went out like a closing eye. “I thought so. You see, Carl, it isn’t at all sure that the
Lann will come out of the woods just hereabouts, or if they do that it will be a force too big for us to handle, or even if it’s their whole army that it will waste time attacking the gathered warriors of this neighborhood. So all in all, we men of this district voted to stay at home and defend our own hearth-fires.”

“It was your right under the law,” admitted Carl gloomily, “but a divided tribe is a weak tribe.”

He sat for a while in a stillness broken only by the crackling of the fire and the whisper of the loom where John’s wife worked. Somewhere outside, a wild dog howled, and Bull stirred where he lay on a deerskin and snarled an answer.

“It isn’t so bad,” said John kindly. “We’ll win out. There may not even be a war.” He smiled. “Besides, lad, I don’t think you’re here as Ralph’s messenger to us border men.”

“No,” said Carl, brightening in spite of himself. “I’m really heading north to the City.”

“The City!” whispered Owl, and a stir of awe ran about the room. John’s eyes narrowed, Tom leaned forward with his thin, sharp face drawn tight, Arn and Samwell looked at each other, and the woman at the loom stopped her weaving for a startled instant.

“It isn’t far from here, is it?” asked Carl.

“Only about a day’s ride,” said Tom slowly. “But none of us have ever been there. It’s taboo.”

“Not completely,” Carl told him. “The Chief of a tribe can send men to bargain with the witch-men smiths there. That’s me.”

“You’re after iron weapons, I suppose?”

“Yes. Every Dalesman has his own war tools, of course, but we need things like catapults and horse armor to fight the Lann. I’m supposed to get them from the smiths in return for the usual payment—meat, salt, cloth, furs, you know.”

A wild dog howled again, closer this time. The woods were full of such packs, descendants, it was said, of tame animals which had run loose when the Doom scattered men. They were among the most dangerous beasts these days. Arn grunted, took a brand from the fire for light, and went out with Samwell to check the sheepfold.

Carl sat letting his mind run over what he knew of the City. He had never been there, and his being sent on this errand was a proud sign that the son of the Chief was becoming a man.

Once there stood towns and villages even in this region of the
Allegheny Mountains. They had been abandoned during the Doom or shortly thereafter and had moldered to ruin. After early smiths had plundered all the metal in them, they had been left for the wind and the forests to bury, and today their fragments, thought to be haunted, were left alone by the tribes. As the other ancient metal—from houses, rusted machines, and the mysterious old railroad tracks—was used up, men looked toward the vaster ruins of the old cities.

But by that time, taboos had grown up. Early explorers venturing into some of the empty metropolises—those which had been wrecked and burned by the terrible fury from the air which was the Doom—had often died of lingering sickness, and many thought that the “glowing death” was the sign of godly anger. So today the ruins, like other ancient works, were forbidden to tribesmen.

Still, metal was needed. A hundred years, or perhaps two hundred, after the Doom, little groups of outcasts had drifted into the cities and lived there. Not belonging to any of the great tribes, they had not been kept from going; but today they were shunned and feared as witch-men, in spite of being usually a timid and unwarlike folk. It was they who salvaged steel and copper from the huge ruined buildings, sometimes forging it themselves into tools and weapons, sometimes selling the metal as it was. Tribesmen were allowed to come and buy from them, providing that afterward a Doctor said magic over the things to take the curse off.

In all this region, only one such city remained—
the
City. No one remembered its name today. It lay some distance north of the Dalesmen’s territory, screened by the hills and forests which reached farther than anyone had ever traveled. Carl had long been eager to visit it, but this was the first time Ralph had allowed him.

He spoke again, his words seeming loud in the quietness: “I need a guide. Will anyone come with me?”

John shook his head. “The City is a bad place.”

“I do not think so,” said Carl. “It was a great and glorious world before the Doom smashed everything. The ancient people were wiser men than we. Why should their works be evil?”

It was a new thought, and they sat turning it carefully over in their minds. “Taboo,” said John at last.

“I have leave to go there,” answered Carl.

Tom leaned forward, his eyes alight, shivering a little. “Yes—Father, I can guide him!” he said.

“You?”

“And I,” said Owl. “It’s a shame, our living a day’s ride from the City and never having seen it.”

“We’ll be back in two days,” cried Tom.

“The Lann—” muttered John.

“You said they were nowhere near,” grinned Owl.

“But—”

“It is the tribe which asks you,” said Carl urgently. “All the Dalesmen need those weapons.”

John argued for a long time, but when Carl went to bed he knew he had won.

They were up with sunrise, Owl groaning and complaining at the earliness of it. “He’s like that,” smiled Tom. “He won’t be really awake till after breakfast.”

Carl rubbed his eyes, yawning. “I know how he feels.”

They went out in a cool gray mist and helped with the morning’s work. When they came back to the house, leading saddled horses, breakfast was waiting, and Carl ate as hungrily as his new friends.

John’s wife, Mary, hovered over the boys. “Be careful,” she whispered. “Be careful, Tom, Jim, and—oh, come back to us!”

“Yes,” rumbled John in his beard. “I shouldn’t let you go, but—the gods go with you.” His rough hand brushed their shoulders and he turned away, blinking.

The three were too eager to be off to pay much attention. It seemed a long time to Carl before he was riding into the woods, but the mist was still not quite off the ground and dew was shining in the grass.

“I know the way,” said Tom, “even if I’ve never been there myself. We follow this trail till we get to a brook, then it’s due north across country to one of the old roads, and that’ll take us straight in.”