Hammerfall

Marak climbed the steep sand to the ridge and looked back on wealth greater than he had ever imagined, on green-edged water, on the white, cooling tents, hundreds of them, and hundreds of individuals ripped up from their lives and set down in paradise… but it was a paradise without loved ones. All the villages, all the city, all the tribes had no warning, no knowledge of Luz and this place.

The hammer will fall, he heard in his head, and all at once the vision came, the rock and the shining sphere.

Marak, it said. Marak, Marak, the old refrain, the old restlessness. Peace here had no comfort.

“I have to go back,” he said to Hati and to Norit and the au’it. “The madness won’t stop for me. I have to go. I have to report what’s here. My mother and sister, that man’s wife… who’s to tell them, if I don’t go?”

He walked away down the slope, recklessly downhill toward their own camp, and under the white tent, Hati and Norit with him still trying to follow: he could not shake them with a declaration of madness. The au’it, too, fell in with them as they went, a small force that knifed straight to the heart of their small camp. He expected to be alone. He wantedto be alone in his folly.

Tofi was there, with a costly cup in his hand, and lifted it cheerfully. “So you’ve seen the sight from the ridge. They say we’ll join the rest. Perhaps we were waiting for you. Sit, sit down and drink.”

“I need two beasts,” Marak said, “mine, and two pack beasts, irons, and canvas.” He was more and more sure of his choice, however much it hurt. He had led the mad and the lost to safety; and with the alarm Luz had set seething inside him, and the voices di

But going? Luz wanted his unquestioning acceptance, his absolute belief; and his own father had never gotten that from him. Who were Ian and Luz to ask it?

The cup had stopped in its course from Tofi’s lips, and hesitated: Tofi lowered it to his knee, immediately sober. “Where are you going?”

“Back,” he said, and Tofi looked dismayed. “Back to Oburan.”

“With no guide?”

“I know the stars,” he said. “I can find my way.” He was aware of Hati and Norit, standing near him, but they said nothing. He left Tofi, having informed him what he was taking, and went out to find Osan among the idle beasts.

He led him back toward the place where the saddles were stacked, supported on their untouched baggage.

Hati walked from that place, as he was arriving. She carried her saddle in one arm and hauled Norit’s in the other hand. Norit walked behind.

“Where do you intend to go?” he asked.

“To Oburan,” Hati said. “Norit, too. Where are yougoing?”

He stood wordless for a moment. Then he shrugged, with a tightness in his throat. “I suppose to Oburan.”

Hati went to find her beast and Norit’s. That was that.

He found his saddle, and set out three of the pack saddles, and chose a bundled tent he knew was their own, and waterskins, still filled with Pori’s water.

Tofi came and brought the slaves.

“One tent,” Marak said to him. It was Tofi’s property he proposed to take, but he saw no reason for Tofi to deny him the use of what lay for the most part unused, u

“You’re going to Oburan, you say.”

“Yes,” Marak said. “Hati and Norit, too, and the au’it will go. One tent. Five, six beasts.”

Tofi frowned and looked at the horizon and at him as if he prepared to bargain. “I’m a fool,” Tofi said with a sigh. “But my father told the Ila he would come back. He won’t give me peace otherwise. He’s a cursed stubborn old man. So are my brothers.”

Tofi spoke of them as if they were still alive, and gazed into an empty horizon, but perhaps saw something in it. There was more than one kind of madness.

“The people in the tower say the world is ending,” Marak said. “And we have to warn everyone else.”

“We’ve heard that,” Tofi said.

“I see it,” Marak said. “Hati, and Norit, and I, we all three see it.”

Tofi shrugged. “I don’t. But I’mnot mad.”

“Then stay here. This place will be safe. They say so, at least.” This with a glance toward the tower. “They’ll let you stay. You don’t have to be one of us.”

“Maybe not,” Tofi said, “but I’m not one of this batch, either. I’m scared. I don’t say I’m not. But there’s nothing here for me until I finish this trek. I keep hearing the old man… like your voices. He says, ‘Get up, get up, get up, boy. You’re not done here.’ He’s ashamed of me. If there’s anyone going back to finish the contract, and I don’t, I know him: he’ll give me no peace.”

Rock hit shining sphere, again, and again, and again.

Marak blinked, feeling an inward chill. “You may die. The people in the tower say there’s some calamity already on its way, whatever it is. We may not make it to the city, let alone back again.”

“That’s all right,” Tofi said. “Everyone else is dead.” He was still grieving, and the grief broke through for a moment in a tremor of his chin. “I’ll do it, I say. Then my father will shut up.”

“Five of us, then,” Marak said.

“Seven,” Tofi said. “The slaves are my father’s. Now they’re mine. I won’t ride off and leave them. They owe me. They owe me their wretched lives. They’ll damned well pay their debt, wherever we end up.”

Chapter Eleven

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The Ila neither ages nor suffers illness: from her all life flows, and life and health is her gift to those who keep her law.

—The Book of Priests

Tofi argued with the slaves. He cajoled, he raised a quirt, he threatened.

“Pack up,” Tofi said. “You’re fools here. You haven’t a trade, you don’t have relatives.” That availed nothing. “I’ll free you when we get to Oburan,” Tofi said. “You’ll be freedmen when you come back.”

There was no movement.

“Damn you, I’ll pay you wages when you’re free!”

The slaves looked at one another, then began to get up, one and the other. “Move!” Tofi said, and they moved, and went to work.

They took all the beshti, all Tofi’s goods. The beasts complained about being roused out for service, but not beyond the ordinary. They were well rested and well watered, and had eaten all they wished for the several days of their sojourn here. Gorging to their bellies’ contentment and moving on was the sum of what they did all their lives, and now the packs were lighter, the gear distributed out over those beasts that had no riders, by the simple change of ru

The mad turned out to stare at the process. Some of them, understanding where they were going, even professed a thought of going with them.

But after all was said and settled, to a man, they chose the rich tables and the promise of safety. Only as the seven of them rode away, their former companions lined the cool edge of the tent, waving, calling out well-wishes to them. One, Maol, one of Tofi’s two women ran out to offer them fresh fruit for their journey and to shed tears at the parting. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for our lives.”

But the rest simply stood back to watch them go, as much as if to say that of all the mad, they counted their former guides the most afflicted.

Beyond the tents the beasts stretched out fully into that natural walk that could eat up so much ground a day. The slaves rode hindmost, loaded with food, which they ate with abandon, no one forbidding it. They had more than enough water to reach Pori, they had food enough for their whole journey: they had all Tofi’s wealth of tents.