Hammerfall

“Are we really going to the end of the world?” Patya asked, as if she of all these leaders and all these people could have the precise truth from him. “And is that woman with you a real prophet?”

“You mean Norit,” he said; he was aware of Norit having followed him, also at a distance. “Her name is Norit. She’s my wife. Is that what the priests say?”

“For what the priests are worth.” There was never any great reverence for priests in Kais Tain. “But if you say she is, I believe it. And your wife, too. You’ve joined the tribes like us.”

Tribesmen might have more than one wife.

“I suppose I have,” he said.

“She’s very pretty,” Patya said, meaning, he thought, Hati, but Hati said nothing.

“Where did you meet her?”

“On the road,” he said. “After the Ila sent us east.” He found there was a great deal he dared not tell his sister, not about Luz, not about the tower, not the least detail from his own mouth. Now he regretted he had come up here, or that the questioning had taken this direction. Let Tofi gossip, let Hati, if she chose: but what he said, men would repeat as coming from authority, and that was substance: men would debate it, dispute it, argue over it, dice it fine and begin to reject parts of it or to substitute their own notions. He could not.

“Did Father send you away,” he asked Patya, “or did you just go?”

“Oh, we were going to, but Father—” Patya hesitated, trouble shadowing her brow. “But the Ila’s men came and arrested us. And we rode to Oburan.”

“Did they treat you well?” He had not riddento Oburan: that, at least, indicated that Patya had fared better.

“Oh, they gave us everything. You never saw such food. And fine clothes, and everything. But Mother wanted to leave.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Then the sky started doing what it does.” Patya was brimming with things she likely had no words to say. “And everybody was scared. Why does it do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, which was only the truth.

“The tribes started coming in. And the villages and all. Father packed up Kais Tain and left. That’s what we learned, anyway. We were living in the Beykaskh until it shook down, and then we lived in tents, and then the servants told us we were free and we could go to the Haga, outside the camp.”

“That was what I asked Memnanan to do.”

“What’s going to happen to us? Isthere a tower?” His sister knew he could lie. His sister wanted the truth the Ila and the tribes and all the villages might not get from him. And would repeat it.

“There is a tower. I promise you there’s a tower.”

Patya looked relieved at that. “I’ll tell Mother.”

“Good.”

“You can ride here a while,” Patya suggested, falling a little behind as he quickened Osan’s pace. “You could ride over and see Mother.”

“She knows you’ll tell her. I have a job to do.” He put the quirt to i

“She seems a fine girl,” Hati said. Around them the sun had brought color to the land. The desert had acquired detail while he talked with Patya, so rapid the sunrise was on the Lakht.

“So she is. But full of questions.”

“The same with Aigyan,” Hati said. “I won’t answer him, either. I’d rather not go that far.”

He saw that clearly enough.

“Have you a mother? A father?”

“Both gone,” Hati said. “Gone in the war, with my uncles. We fought the Migi for the southern wells. The Migi are dead. But so are most of Aigyan’s house. Don’t go there yet. Don’t talk to him. He’ll only argue. Don’t talk to Menditak this morning, either. You’ll only make Aigyan suspicious. Let them settle out, on the trail. Let Aigyan declare his camp with no one advising him. That will be soon enough.”

Marak, the voices di

The vision was back, the star-fall, the ring of fire.

He took the warning. He reined back, to the side of the column. They need only wait there as the column proceeded, until they could simply set the beshti in motion to rejoin Tofi and Norit.

“Is everything all right?” Tofi asked.

“Well enough,” he said, and the au’it, closely attending them, wrote.

They rode through the morning. There was a minor shaking, and toward noon a star fell on the horizon, a bright stuttered trail beneath the scattered clouds, then a loud boom. It frightened Tofi’s slaves. The two freedmen and Tofi had grown accustomed to such sights.

Noon came with the sun a white spot in gray cloud, and the sand was hotter than the air as the column stopped, the decision of Aigyan, far ahead of them.

The Haga stopped, and they stopped. All down the column, camps would set themselves where they could, in whatever circumstances they might manage, all the way back to the city, it might be: the line might still stretch to there.

The air was cool. It was a question whether they even needed use the tents, and the tribes might choose not; but it was better to work out the hesitations of a new party in quiet air rather than in a rising gale, which tomorrow’s camp might bring: better, too, to let new tentmates find their places and settle in. He gave Tofi the order, and they unpacked the tents and pitched them as the soldiers did.

Memnanan came to their tent and brought his pregnant wife and four old women: the wife’s name was Elagan, and the old women were Memnanan’s mother and three widowed sisters.

Those were the additions to their tent, suffering as new riders did, and Elagan six months pregnant. The women wanted to do little but sleep, the old women were already miserable and would wake unable to walk, Marak was sure. He urged them to use liniments and use them abundantly before they slept.

He lay down on his own mat. The warm sand and the cool air and freedom from the city combined made a strange sort of luxury; and having Hati and Norit close by him was better still. For the first time in days he slept like the dead—waked once as the earth gave a little shiver, then wondered whether it was that illusion of movement that exhaustion brought.

It was their first sleep on the road, and so many unaccustomed riders and so many that had worked feverishly to get them under way were equally abandoned in rest. In all the camp there was no sound but the restless grumble of a besha, and one answering far away.

In late afternoon Marak waked, roused up off his mat, and went out. The Haga had stirred forth. Hati and Tofi joined him outside, and the two slaves and a couple of the hired men.

“Pack up,” Marak said. “We’ll move. In this, we order the Ila.”

Tofi gave him an uncertain look, but ordered his men to work, and the beshti began their usual complaint. Soldiers stirred forth from their open-sided shelter, and so did a handful of priests. The Ila had not stirred yet, but before the first tent, their own, billowed down, the Ila had sent an au’it to complain.

“Tell the Ila we are behind, and ru

The au’it went into the Ila’s tent. In a few moments, back came the au’it. Now their own au’it was on her feet, and the two of them put their heads together and talked in voices so soft as to be inaudible in the flap and shake of the nearby canvas as the slaves rolled it.

The Ila’s au’it went back inside.

In a matter of moments Memnanan came out to report the Ila was not pleased.

“But I have advised her that this move is necessary,” Memnanan reported. “I trust that it is.”

“Necessary now,” Marak said, prepared to be utterly obdurate, “and it will be necessary, every day for the next thirty to fifty days, regular as can be, and after that if we haven’t come to the tower, we may die out here, so there will be no further requests. Tell her she has to learn to sleep in the saddle. We all do. She may rule in Oburan, but she doesn’t rule the Lakht, or the heavens.”