Hammerfall

At a turn of the trail he felt the earth shake and go on shaking. Small rocks slid past and quivered underfoot.

Then Osan threw up his head and struggled for footing as part of the trail slid and larger stones came loose. Marak did not attempt to walk for the first moments of that shaking, then decided he had its measure and led on, slowly, very slowly, not letting Osan have his way.

Hati was at his back. The au’it’s besha could go no farther, and no faster, and the same with all those behind. Marak kept walking.

The shaking stopped.

Then a false dawn broke. A falling star shot past so close in the sky that the land leapt out in daylight clarity, and shadows traveled from dawn to zenith to set as if a sun had raced across the heavens.

Is that it? he wondered at first sight. Is that the hammer? Inured as they were to wonders, they could not help but watch as it crossed beyond the nighted plain, illumining the cluster of tents far out from the cliffs. Some of the tribesmen called out in alarm.

But it was not the star-fall they feared. His madness told him it was not, that it was still on its way, and he walked, the same as before. The dying star went beyond and lost itself in the distance of the eastern lowlands, where it became Luz’s problem. But Luz went on talking to him, steadily now, showing him visions that half blinded him to his sight of the road.

“A star just fell,” he said to Luz under his breath, feeling he possibly had her ear for the moment, at this time when Luz must want to know every detail of what transpired. “A star fell toward you. Did you see that? We’re going slowly down the cliffs. If we go faster, we’ll break our necks. Don’t nag me. I need to see. It’s dark. It’s damned dark and bad ground, and the earth is shaking. I’ve told them camp close to the cliffs: if there’s going to be a storm after this, I’m thinking the wind will carry the sand out, not down on us. Am I right?”

He got nothing but the ring of fire, twice repeated. Was that a wind? Was it fire? Was it anything he knew? He had no idea. He heard no answer. But he heard nothing from the voices, either, so perhaps that silence was Luz’s sign that she was thinking about it. It was almost too late for thinking.

He knew that Norit was safe. He felt her presence. He felt, he thought, Lelie’s. Tofi had gotten down and put the tent up.

Small stones slid past him, some striking his ankles, and the ground was loose under his feet, so that at the left edge the slide had bitten deeply into the trail. Panic wanted him to go on, ignore the hazard so long as he and Hati cleared it.

But he stopped. He squatted and methodically moved small stones until he hoped he had reinforced the eroded edge. He knew that tribesmen were behind him, and he hoped they would note that and maintain the trail under their own feet, to keep it fit for those that followed. He did the best he could, and when he had done what he could he got up and continued the downward course—no hurry, no haste, no risk he could avoid.

The earth shivered, and Osan, ca

A commotion came down with a grating of rock, and a besha, sitting higher up, had simply had the trail give way under it, and slid down the gravel face of a switchback, slowly, ponderously fetching up against Hati’s besha in the near dark. Hati’s besha held its place, sitting and stable, and the fallen besha slid no farther. Its master came sliding after it, not by his own choice, it seemed. For a moment it seemed more of the trail might come down; but the slide stopped. The tribesmen above had to repair the damage to keep coming. It was their task, in their reach, not his. They did as they could.

Marak ordered Osan up, and in the pragmatic way of beshti, the besha pi

The beast’s embarrassed master reached a place where he could stand, and worked his way past the besha, which stood, barrier between the tribesman and a further slide.

“ Omi,” the tribesman said, as shaken as a man of his kind was apt to appear, and Marak asked himself whether it was his repair which had given way up above.

But Hati was all right. She had her besha up, and the au’it did, by now. Marak could only keep going, with the tribesman between him and Hati now, the trail impossible for two abreast.

There had been shouting back and forth, the tribesman’s kinsmen ascertaining he was alive, and now repairing the trail above them. On their own level, they moved carefully, beshti planting their feet gingerly on ground they no longer trusted, but going on, following those ahead as the gap widened. The instinct to go with the group overrode everything but immediate self-preservation, and Marak, with the bottom of the climb in view, let Osan set his own pace.

Three more sharp turns, three more sloping, rock-cluttered stretches of trail, and they began to go among projecting rocks, in places where they had to clear fallen stones from their way. They had lost sight of the men before, who had ridden down, who had been on lower courses when the shaking came: they were in the dark, now, and the rocks had cut off the view of anyone ahead.

But they came down past rocks Marak remembered from their last descent, and in the murk of the night, in a breathless hush of air, saw the tail of the tribe ahead of them, and tents promising shelter.

Now they could mount up and let the beshti go at their pace, but those still on the climb might take the same cue, and Marak refused. He walked Osan, leading him slowly, and came out onto the flat, where the tribesman who had fallen took his respectful leave and dropped back to join his kin, and where Hati and the au’it overtook him and walked beside him on the widening trail.

A rider came toward them, and then another and a third. The first proved to be Tofi, who had been watching the trail from a distance. In the starlight, under falling stars and on a tremulous earth, Marak saw more tents going up, the camp spreading out its canvas as fast as it could, bracing itself, waiting.

The second rider was Patya, the third, Norit, and they met under the momentary flare of a falling star and a crash of ruin in the heavens.

Marak met them, touched hands, and Hati joined them, and the au’it, their own au’it, if there was justice at all. Norit stayed mounted, but Tofi and Patya jumped down to embrace them arm to arm. The beshti set to bawling and rumbling, rubbing necks and heads and snuffing familiar scents, as happy as the rest of them, weary as the creatures were, and deserving of rest.

“It’s coming. It’s coming,” Norit said. “Get to shelter, those who can.”

“Where’s Lelie?” Now he missed her, in the distraction of a hundred thousand lives at risk behind him. But this one he felt, as he felt Norit, as he felt the danger rushing down at them. “Where is she?”

“Memnanan’s wife has her,” Patya said. “The Ila’s in a fit. We’ve put the stakes down, deep, and we’ve braced the side canvas. Norit says the danger will come from the west, to dig in and put the webbings on. We hope we’re dug in enough.”

The ring of fire flashed across Marak’s vision. For a moment he failed to know where he was, whether he was floating in the air or standing… as if, having stopped defying Luz, now he suffered all the pent-up visions, the impact, the ring of fire, and now a fountain of cloud, something going up and up, fire, or cloud, or water—he was not sure.