Hammerfall

“It’s that simple.”

“Nothing can be simpler. The Lakht is the Lakht. It’s never different, no matter who asks.”

The Ila lowered her joined hands to her lap. “Captain.”

“Ila,” Memnanan said from back near the curtains.

“Assist him in this undertaking.”

Marak blinked, thinking, Surely not, not that easily, not that quickly.

Not me, not over all this.

But silence followed. He understood dismissal, with that, and began to back away.

“Marak!”

He stopped. “Ila,” he said, as Memnanan did.

“When will this people set out?”

When did not rest in his hands. Whenrested in the star-fall and the calamity in the earth.

Marak, Marak, the voices clamored, suddenly riotous with urgency. Norit knew what was agreed. He was sure she knew. And then he was sure that Hati did.

“Tonight,” he said, and took his life in his hands, for what had to be said. “I would advise, Ila, that you yourself use a common tent, one that two men can raise and pack, for your own safety. That you carry more food and water than weapons.”

An implacable face met that judgment. “You would leave each segment of the caravan to its own decisions.”

He had not asked himself why he chose as he did. It had seemed evident. Now he did ask. “The line of march will stretch too long. The leaders can’t be everywhere along the line. The fastest have to go first. I will, however, give them advice, such as I have. Shelter, water, food, and then weapons. Beshti won’t take the Ila’s orders: they limit their loads.”

The au’it stopped writing. Everything stopped.

The Ila lifted a hand and made a gesture toward the second au’it, a command to rise, a second command less apparent.

The au’it went to the curtain behind the Ila’s seat, and drew it back, and there sat, pile after pile, books, books of the au’it’s recording, hundreds, thousands of books, leather covers, canvas covers, stained books, ornate ones tattered with age and use.

“This is the knowledge,” the Ila said. “And what will this Luzgive to have it? And how will you move these, Marak Trin? Tell me how you will do it.”

He was stu

“This is my condition,” the Ila said as the earth shuddered, a small thump, like a heartbeat. “Not the tent, not this piece of furniture. They can go to hell. Where I go, thisgoes. Can you find beasts enough?”

“I’ll find a way,” he said on a deep breath.

The Ila regarded him thoughtfully. “Do that,” she said, and moved her fingers in dismissal. “Do it by tonight.”

That was all.

Marak, the voices said. He tried to manage his retreat. Memnanan guided him, held the curtain aside for him, took him by the arm. He saw fire, and ruin.

By tonight.

“I need the two women,” he said to Memnanan.

“Not your father?” Memnanan asked. “Not your mother?”

“I have no time,” he said. He remembered his father’s parting with him and had no desire to see him. And for his mother and his sister there was no time.

Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said, let loose, given sudden free rein. In his vision the rings of fire spread again and again: pools glowed red as iron in a forge, and he could all but smell the smoke.

He struggled to think and make lists. “I need Tofi. I need Hati and Norit. I need every leader of every tribe and village to meet me on the edge of the camp, on the caravan road to the south, inside an hour.”

Memnanan looked at him, then passed the order to a subordinate who waited nearby. “See to the meeting,” Memnanan said, with a wave of his hand, and that man gathered two others.

So the matter would spread, without their help. But Memnanan stood fast. “The two women. Luz’s eyes and voice.”

“One is Luz’s voice,” Marak said. “The other is an’i Keran. That tribe of all tribes will survive to reach the tower. If my mother and sister are here, let them go to the Haga. If they’re there, that’s all I need to know. They’ll be safer than I can make them.”

“And Tofi for his skills? He’s a boy.”

“Not since his father died. I want him, and his two men. He of all the masters understands exactly what’s out there. I want him to manage the Ila’s tents. Our tents.”

“Beasts to carry the books?”

The captain might have his own estimate how many that was, a massive caravan unto itself, able to carry neither food nor tents.

“In the deep desert,” Marak said, “we lost a besha on a slide and it started a mobbing. The mob left not a bone, not a scrap of leather. The besha was taller than either of us. The largest of the vermin in it didn’t top a man’s knee. We didn’t wait to watch, but I’ll imagine a man could watch it vanish.”

“A remarkable sight,” Memnanan said. “The god’s wonder you lived. What do you mean?”

“That you don’t need beasts to carry the books. You need the strongest, the likeliest men to live, of every village, every tribe.”

Memnanan said nothing for a moment, frowning, but with thoughts sparking within his eyes. “Allow the books into the hands of the tribes?”

“Do you want these books to come through?” Marak asked, and saw that Memnanan listened to him intently. “Will these books pitch tents and manage a half a hundred beshti? Men do that far better. The books will have thousands of feet, and if one is lost, they won’t all be lost.” He drew a breath, space to think. “This caravan can’t camp in a ring. They’ll be strung out like beads on a necklace. We can’t help that. If fools drink all their water, we can’t help that. Water the beasts to the full. Feed them. Fill every waterskin in camp. Even the bitter wells are uncertain.”

“That saves the villages. Oburan itself has few tents at all… few beasts, except the breeding herd. They’re city folk. They don’t know the desert.”

“Apportion the important ones like the books, a few to every band. If there are too many walkers, they go last, enough strong hands to drive stakes, a besha to carry the canvas and keep them headed right if they drop behind.” The beasts would smell the way to those in front, given any breath of an east wind or a lingering scent above the trail. A caravan this large would assuredly leave scent. It would leave a trail of waste, breakage, vermin, and all too many lives.

Memnanan, like him, was a man in authority, one who saw bitter necessities when they were laid in front of him, who knew how to make a rule for the good of the many. Individual compassion, for the two of them, was a vice secretly practiced.

“It’s a chance,” Memnanan said. That Memnanan knew the desert, Marak suspected, as the Ila’s men generally knew enough of it to live… knew it as a place where they were strangers, being on their way to a place, on their way from a place, never at home in it. The villages existed within the desert: they had never quite lost their skills. When the big winds blew and ten men could die going out to secure an orchard netting, when sand could choke an unprotected well, when hunters caught in the open could easily die, if they failed to take the right steps… the knowledge of the desert was not that far removed.

“If you have a household,” Marak said to the Ila’s captain, “put them with the tribes. Or in my tent, with Tofi and his men. I trust you’ll be busy with the Ila’s company, and I’ll have room.”

Memnanan gave him a look. “Too many old, who can’t walk. A wife six months pregnant. The city has far too many.”

“Put them with me,” Marak said. “Get beshti for them. We’ll get them up and down. Save your worry for the Ila. Be selfish, man. Give yourself this one gift. You’re due it. I’ve asked several. We’ll need to get the books down to the gathering. Give them to the leaders. Leaders survive. They have a duty to do that.”