Hammerfall

“And another Ila?” This was no good thing to the tribes. “Hell with that, sister’s weanling!”

“A rich land. Water. Palms thick as you please. It’s Oburan, before the city rose. It’s the heart of a new land, uncle, the heart of the people the tribes will supply with goods and trade. What have you left here? What will you have left, if the Lakht becomes a smoking waste—as it will! As it will, uncle! More than the mad have seen it now. All of you have seen what we warned you would come down, and now we tell you there’s a way to live, and live well, rich as the Ila, every one of you, if only you get there with the people’s gratitude. The people’s gratitude is better than gold, far more powerful. Live! Don’t despise what I tell you. The people need you now. Who else can we look to save us?”

“Flatterer!”

“I’ve become a prophet, uncle. And I tell you both the truth. Keep the peace, and be there, by the Besh Karat!”

He kept nothing from them. If he had resources, he poured them out to those that knew how to use them.

But he believed his own urging, and delayed no longer. “Hati!” he shouted. “Norit!” He gave Osan a whack of the quirt, trusting him to find its way down from the ridge, trusting the two feuding lords to find their way to their own tribes, Memnanan to find the Ila, and the two women with him to stay behind him.

But another rider barred his path. He saw his sister among the Haga riders, and his sister saw him, there at the very foot of the ridge.

“Patya!” In utter astonishment he reined Osan to a halt and dropped to the ground by the mounting loops. His sister slid down, her feet within knee height of the ground, but Patya, silly girl, failed to know it, and held on.

He simply swept her up in both his arms like a child, flung her rightwise about to look at her, and hugged her breathless.

“Marak!” His mother, Kaptai, dismounted beside them, a plummeting of brown veils and a clash of bracelets. He caught her, too, and swung them both around, veils flying. He pressed their faces against his, and he smelled the smells of home and hearth about them, everything that had kept him alive on the trek to Oburan.

“You’re safe,” he said. “The Ila kept her promise!”

“They said you were back,” Patya said, still hugging him. “No one believed you’d come back, but we believed.”

“I love you,” he said to her. “I love you,” to his mother. As far as he remembered he had never said that word to either of them, and least of all to his father, but now it had become a word he owned; and when he said it he knew he had forgotten Hati in a moment in which he was home again, before Hati, before everything had changed.

“You came back,” his mother said. “You said you would come back, and you did.”

What had he said? He had made a hundred promises when he left them, all lies; but unlikely as they were, he had kept them all, every one.

Hati had gotten down. He felt her familiar arm slip around him. He took her hand, and put it in his mother’s. “This is Hati,” he said in utter, untrammeled joy—then saw the dismay, the look from head to foot.

An’i Keran, tribal enemy under this foreign sky.

But his mother, of the Haga, hesitated only for a heartbeat, and gave her an embrace, his mother rattling with the wealth of a lord’s daughter, a lord’s wife: she had come away with everything, and Hati with only the bracelets he had given her.

Patya embraced Hati, too. “For Marak,” Patya said. “For him.”

There was another rider near them. Norit was there, and her, too, he showed to his mother. “This is Norit, from Tarsa. I have twowives.”

“Two?” said Patya, a child of the west. But his mother never blinked. “Daughter,” Kaptai said, while the earth shivered. She reached up a hand, the token of an embrace, but Norit for whatever reason did not get down, and Menditak had come down, urgent to be away.

“Damn this shaking!” Menditak said. “Bargains with the omi Keran! Come on, there! Will you delay for a damned festival?”

“Up.” Marak heaved his sister up to her saddle. His mother, like Hati, needed no help. He made Osan extend a foreleg, and caught the strap and got up, recklessly, pridefully mounting like a tribesman in front of this arrogant old man, and Hati did the same.

“Away!” Menditak shouted, above the rumble from the skies and the earth, and the earth shuddered as Menditak took his company toward the north and east and Marak rode ahead of Hati and Norit toward the north and west.

“The god’s vengeance on the Ila’s enemies!” some lingering priest cried from the side of the ridge. “Salvation for the righteous! Pray for the Ila! Pray for our salvation!”

Tents were already begi

Someone recognized them as they rode. People ran at them. Hands caught at their legs, at their beasts’ harness. People shouted questions, what they were to do, what the Ila might do. The lifesaving frenzy he had helped create threatened to overwhelm them.

“Pack and get to the south road!” Marak shouted, and brought his quirt down sharply on his beast’s hindquarters.

Osan leapt forward, scattering men who were closing in ahead of them, and Marak took that gift, rode after, trusting Hati to keep Norit with her and both of them behind him. A man went down, knocked aside: it was not his concern. He had held the visions at bay, he had spilled out everything he knew to two tribes of twenty, and now that the need to speak was past, he could no longer think, or see anything but the ring of fire.

Marak, the voices cried, wanting, demanding something more of him, urgent with this new, this ill-timed vision. Marak!

He and Memnanan had created this panic. They had primed the people with fear and uncertainty and the sense of one essential escape from their plight, one door by which they might exit, and it to the south. He had used every tactic, every wile he had, he had said he knew not what in the urgency of saying something, promising something to get the people to move. He had abandoned his own mother and his sister to the safety they could find, and now his only companions were companions in the madness: he was through with dealing with sane people, ignorant people, desperate people.

Tofi, who had seen the tower, Tofi, who had the tents, was the missing piece, of all the structure he still had to assemble, and he knew where Tofi had said he would be, one young man and a handful of beasts and two slaves, on whom he depended, out across the flat, to the southwest of the city and imperiled by men desperate for tents and transport.

Leave me alone! he raged at the voices and the visions, and rubbed his eyes until they were shot full of dark and red stars. Let me alone! Let us alone! Let me see and hear!

“There’s Tofi!” Hati cried, riding up even with him and pointing ahead, on the flat where Tofi had said they would be.

There, through a haze of dust and the ru

“Omi!” Tofi cried, as they rode in. “Omi, we’re here. We have everything. What are we to do?”

“Stay where we are,” Marak said, though Tofi was clearly ready to load on the instant. The ex-slaves, Mogar and Bosginde, were with him; so were older, hard-faced men, carava