Hammerfall

It was the first time he had said it in those terms. The slaves fell into silence. Tofi did, and after the beasts were unladed and the tent was up, Tofi on the spot untied a wrapped string and counted out gold rings. “If you have any sense,” Tofi muttered to the new freed-men as he did so, “don’t spend anything on drink. Buy goods when we get to Oburan and sell them where we’re going. You know how it’s done. If the world is ending, one can still make a profit. Think of what the white tents don’thave, buy it cheap as you can and sell that.”

“Master,” they still called him, when they were happy with him. They went away and compared the rings they had, content, as if the world might, after all, go on.

Marak settled down with Hati and Norit, and, taking some cheer from Tofi’s pragmatic wisdom, he stretched himself out to sleep. Meanwhile the au’it, tucked up with her book, settled against the tent pole and unwrapped a new cake of ink: she had written up the old one until there was nothing left but the corners. She sharpened a new pen.

They all were exhausted, after chasing panicked beshti and watching the heavens come down in fragments: they had used deep-irons to tether the beasts this time, and they slept more deeply in that confidence.

Marak, the voices began; and Norit shook at him, and waked him.

There was still ample light. He looked at the angle of the shadows and grimaced, incoherent with sleep, but Norit had waked Hati, too, and then Tofi.

Haste, the voices said, too disquieting for rest. Tofi looked like the risen dead. Hati scowled, and the slaves-now-freedmen moaned and resisted. But they were awake. There was reason, so Marak said to himself, and gathered himself up to his feet, out under a sun only a quarter down the sky and a heat still shimmering on the sand.

It was no good to curse. Norit did as Luz did, and was, herself, exhausted. They struck their sole tent, loaded the beasts, and dug up the stakes, sweating.

Then they began their daily trek to the west, under a sky still too bright for stars. Marak slept, nodding. So Hati did, and Tofi, from time to time, until they acquired a better mood and had some sense of rest. Norit managed: at least her head drooped, and Marak kept an eye on her for fear she might fall off; but she stayed, and waked, and rubbed her eyes, adjusting the aifad to shade them. There was little talk, little to distract them in a monotony of riding.

Hati pointed after a time to something Marak’s eye had begun to pick out far to the west, in the sunset, a particularly bright seam of light. But they had no notion, any of them, what that was. The au’it wrote, clutching her book and her pen and her ink-cake despite the lurch of the beast under her, in the absolutely last of the light.

As the sun faded and the stars showed, that glow persisted.

“Like fire,” one of the freedmen said. “What’s out there to burn?”

None of them knew. In the dark, stars began to fall again, none of the noisy sort, only a steady, gentle, remorseless fall.

“Will they all fall?” Hati asked at last in distress, sca

“They are not stars that fall,” Norit said. “Almar won’t be among them.”

“What are they, then?” Marak asked, angry not at Norit, but at Luz. “What are they? Are they the vision?”

“Water,” Norit said. “Water, iron… stone and metals. A wealth of iron.”

Perhaps it was Norit that answered him, out of her madness. Or Luz told them the unlikely truth.

They never knew what the burning was. That next day, when they pitched the tent and lay down on their mats, Norit turned her back to both of them and lay apart.

Marak looked at Hati, questioning, and Hati at him, but neither of them knew what to do for her. He knew that within Luz’s will, Norit suffered, and that knowledge left him sleepless as they rested.

He thought about it. He tried to think what to do.

The au’it slept. Tofi and the men slept. There were no witnesses. He gave Hati’s hand a squeeze, one comrade asking leave of another, and moved to Norit’s side, stroked Norit’s arm, and after a time moved her hair aside from her ear to whisper into it: “Norit. Do you want to make love?”

Norit flinched and covered her eyes, turning away.

He was given a no, but not, he thought, from Norit, who had no choice about Luz, or the visions. He had never forced himself on a woman. But he knew the ravages of the madness, how it ate up sleep and gave no rest, and wore out the body without giving it any useful ease. He saw it happening to Norit, and he gathered Norit up in his arms and kissed her on the lips.

“Let me go!” Luz cried. She struck him with the heel of her hand, trying to break free.

“Let Norit go,” he retorted, and did not abate his attentions, not though Norit’s body struggled and her mouth cursed as Norit never had, with words that made no sense in any dialect.

Her struggles, her outcries, waked Tofi and the slaves and the au’it, who stared in dismay. Had he not disapproved the soldiers for the very same act?

He spent no time explaining his actions. He swept Norit up and carried her out of the tent kicking and struggling. Gently, for Norit’s sake, he set her down on the shaded sand outside and proceeded to what he intended.

“Damn you!” Luz cried.

Only when Norit pounded him with her fists and began to gasp after breath did he turn gentle with her, and then Norit simply lay in his arms and cried and sobbed. He had least of all intended to hurt her.

“You hate me,” she wept. “You hate me!”

“Never, Norit,” he said, and added honestly: “I’m not that sure about Luz.”

She struck at him, and he caught her fist easily within his, she was so small and her violence so slight. He lifted her face and tried to make her look at him, but she shut her eyes.

“Tell me the truth, Norit. Tell me the truth. Do you hear me? Look at me and tell me the truth. What do you want, and what does Luz want?”

Her eyes squeezed shut. She made no other struggle, no other response, either, as he tucked her clothing back to rights and smoothed her hair gently into place. He had no idea what he had won, or if he had won any relief for Norit—he had hoped if he could bring her back for an hour, Norit might have a chance, and he knew by what seethed in his own mind that she had less of a chance if Luz was always there.

But now he regretted doing what he had done. He had tried to help Norit. He had no idea now whether he had scared her instead of Luz, or offended her, or what vengeance he might have brought down on them all.

He led her back into the tent and let her go, and she sat down on her own mat. She sat staring at the wall for a long while before she lay down again and tucked her clothing tightly about her.

Tofi and the men likely were awake with all the commotion, but they were pretending otherwise. The au’it certainly had waked, and wrote, silent in her preoccupation.

Hati lay with one arm beneath her head, gazing at the sun through the canvas as he lay down beside her.

“Luz has her all the time,” he said. “I don’t know which I dealt with. I tried to help. I don’t think I did.”

“Norit knows what you do,” Hati said. “Norit wants help.”

“I think she does. But she can’t push Luz out.”

“Norit can’t say no to anyone, least of all to Luz. But she wants you. She wants you more than anything.”

“What can I do? What cure is there for her?”

“None,” Hati said, “until Norit says no to Luz.” Hati rolled over and opened her arms to him, and drew him in despite the heat.

At that small move, Norit moved, and leapt up, and shoved the au’it out of the way and sent the au’it’s pen into the sand in her rush out of the tent.

Marak leapt up, and Hati did, dodging the au’it, half-stumbling over Tofi and his helpers, hurrying to stop her as she raced out of the shade of the tent.