Hammerfall

Once he had been terrified of the visions for themselves. Now he had a warm weight against his side, and village lords telling him, if he asked, that they understood everything, oh, yes, and all their precautions were enough.

He began to understand a diffuse sort of fear, not acute, but widespread, a sense of disaster shaping about them. He began to understand he cared in more than the abstract, that he cared for the weight in his arms, and that it was all too large. He had not been able to ride all the way to the back of this mass of people, and that there was more to be done to save the people than one man could do, more to be done than any ten men could suffice to do.

His father had one answer. The Ila might have one. Luz had, and moved to execute it. There were all these competitors, when the vermin were gathering to feed on their corpses.

The best thing he could ask was for his father to gather all the discontent, the core of the abjori, and trail the column, so that perhaps the fact that the column reached refuge and the fact that the things Luz warned of came about would make Tain understand, and change his tactics, because after the caravan entered sanctuary, there would be no caravans to prey on. Ever.

And no one out here yet understood that. No one understood that where the producers of affluence went, those that ate the scraps would follow after, more and more desperate. The land would not be the same, and such as Lelie would not inherit anything her elders would recognize.

That was what he held in his arms. That was what breathed and wriggled and fretted against his heart. It was time-to-come. It was After. It was what-next, insistent with its sole question and tearful in its protests about its situation.

It made him aware that his own vision stopped at Norit’s hammerfall, again, and again, and again repeated in his sight: it reached that point and stopped, just stopped, with the scouring of everything he knew from off the face of the earth. Antag and his brothers asked him questions, What will we do? Where will we trade, when we’re there? and he could not answer any of them, except to laugh hollowly and say that he supposed they would lie under palm trees in paradise and eat until they had an idea.

Antag laughed at the joke, somewhat desperately, gallantly. Marak reached inside his coat and held his hand on Lelie’s back, and felt her breathe, quiet as she was. Now he was afraid of what-next. What about Lelie? What about the children? What about the books, safe in the hands of every elder?

Antag had asked him, “What do we do when we get there?” and he had said, “Lie under the palm trees,” but what resounded in his brain over and over again, with the visions of damnation, was the building of a city, a city like Oburan, around the Tower.

We make a city. We grow strong. We build, woman, and we make, and we do, no matter this enemy we never asked to have. We fightagainst our ruin, woman. And we get children to inherit what we build, and we live, woman. I give youa vision. This is what we have to have.

Marak, Marak, Marak, hurry, the voices said now. We’re waiting. Keep coming. Weather’s moving in. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

He picked up the pace as they came across the first camp of the tribes. The caravan still waited, lashed down tight against the storm that was coming. And if that stayed true, Osan would have his rest at the end of the ride, and if it was not, if he had to stop to rest, then he would camp beside the moving caravan and wait until Osan was fit. Antag and his brothers asked no questions of his intentions. But they kept with him; and “Mama,” Lelie wailed against his heart.

Had she never ceased to call that, in all the time since the Ila’s men had taken her mother away?

And had the man in Norit’s songs waited so little time before taking another wife?

“Hush,” he said to her, just beneath the wind, just beneath what his companions could hear. “Hush.”

Your mother’s waiting, he said to Lelie in his mind. Luz won’t have all her attention now. It’s not fair, what she does to your mother.

“Be still,” he said, “be patient. It’s only the wind, and the beshti can see the way, if we can’t. They always know the way.”

They passed camp after camp, and now the beshti had some recognition in their heads, or some sense in them that said their own bands were close. They began to move faster and faster, and they passed alongside the tribal camps, one and the next.

They reached the Rhonan, and there Antag and his brothers reined back their beshti from the goal they wanted, only for a word or two.

“Good luck to the mother of the child,” Antag said. “And good luck to you, Marak Trin, wherever we go.”

“My thanks to you and your lord,” Marak said. “My tent will always shelter you and your tribe.”

It was what friendly tribes said. They were pleased: despite the veils, he could see that.

“And ours, yours,” they answered with the ritual courtesy. “At any time.”

The storm battered them. They had said all that had to be said. He was within easy reach of his own camp, and he gave Osan the signal to move.

“He may be out there,” Antag said to his back. “Tain is a clever man. Be careful.”

“I will be.” He gave Osan his head, and they rode beside the column, he with Lelie, at a traveling clip. People in the Haga camp had put up the tent sides. Warnings about the weather had passed from Norit, or the tribes sensed it themselves, and not empty fear, either. From moment to moment the dust cut off all view: the sun was on the horizon now, at his back, and cast no shadow at all in the thick air.

He rode finally alongside his own tents, and Osan made a jogging, eager approach to the beshti he knew, the comfort of his own herd. The side flaps of these tents, too, were down: the wind was cold, and he hoped for help as he rode Osan in among the beshti of his own tent and began to get down.

A gun went off. He stopped in mid-dismount, with Lelie in his arm, and was thinking of having to unsaddle Osan on his own when that strange thing happened: he was still thinking of it as a bullet tore through him where he held Lelie. Osan shied, finishing the motion, and went out from under him.

He fell toward his back because Osan’s motion had flung him that way, and the shot had, and he was conscious of holding Lelie, but not being sure he had her as he went down. He was astonished at the turn of fortunes.

Then he hit the sand full on his back, and hit his head, and heard Hati shout and swear… he thought it was Hati. He lay there winded, dimly trying to find out whether he held the child, and aware that she was wet and hot, and trying to cry, not fretfully, but in earnest—but she was as winded as he was, and could not somehow get her breath.

“Get them!” Hati shouted at someone, and immediately a hand came under his head and an arm tried to lift him.

“It’s a baby,” someone said. “It’s shot, too, right through the leg.”

He was shocked, and angry, and tried to see the damage the bullet had done, but he could not get his head up. He would not let go of Lelie. He had held her, he had protected her, and he went on doing it until Hati pried his hand off the baby. Her, he trusted. Norit, he would trust.

If he was shot, it was his father’s doing. There was no one else. They were all in danger.

“Get him,” he tried to tell Hati. “Get under cover. Someone get him.”

“The captain’s men are going after him,” Hati said. She understood him. Someone was trying to press a cloth against his side, where Lelie was lying, and wanted to pick her up. “Let go,” Hati said. “Marak. Let go. Let them take her.”

“It’s Norit’s baby,” he said. “It’s that Lelie she asked for. Her baby.” But he was not at all sure Hati heard. He had no idea where anyone was, and that was unusual, as regarded his wives. His voices failed him. His whole sense of the world was fading. Their sense of presence had faded. He was sinking, and they tried to turn him over, which further confused his sense of the world.