C J Cherryh - Gene Wars 1 - Hammerfall Page 26

  The beshti Memnanan had ordered arrived to water, too. Marak was glad to see Osan among them: and the rest that appeared were fine animals, decked out in gear that shone with brass and fine dyes.

  Memnanan's men came to report the carts outside the city and disposed under guard of the priests. It was time to move.

  Norit slept like the dead, for all the rest she had not had, and they had not disturbed her. But now Marak shook gently at her shoulder, and met for a moment the gentle face, the sensible one. She had a frightened look, in her interludes of sanity, as Marak could only imagine. Norit's plunges into madness were deep and dark, and left her haunted by things she half remembered, half understood.

  He tipped up her face and kissed her, and Norit kissed him back, her fingers woven with his, reluctant to let go.

  "Priests have already gone down," he said gently. "With the last of the books. We'll ride, with the captain and his men. Can you get up, or shall I help you?"

  "I want to go," was her answer: Norit's answer, as if she had half heard everything until now, or as if she wished to say that going back to the tower was her choice, apart from Luz's wish.

  "Come," he said, and helped her gently to her feet. He and Hati together picked out a fine gentle beast and helped her up to the saddle before they themselves mounted up.

  Then Memnanan rode his besha to its feet, and the rest of the company got up, a good twenty men besides, good, agile riders, armed beneath their robes, and carrying heavy quirts, Marak noted, not solely for the beshti.

  "I've ordered the books to a ridge beside the road," Memnanan said, swinging in close to Marak as they walked their beasts past the fountain and through the confusion there. "And I've sent messages calling the lords of the villages and the tribes there to hear us. If I were doing it, I'd have the Ila down the hill to speak to them, but she says rely on the priests to persuade the people. She sends her messages through the priests. I have less confidence."

  "In the priests?" Marak said. "I have none at all." The visions momentarily haunted him with sights of fire and destruction to come. then failed entirely, and even the imagination of the next handful of moments eluded him, leaving him bereft of any resource. From instant to instant he believed what he saw. and then saw only disaster in attempting to get all this mass of people on the road in any orderly fashion, without fatalities even in the process itself. He imagined no one would take the books. No one would care. He and Memnanan had deliberately let rumor loose, foretelling the movement of a caravan, and fear became a bitter dose at the fountain, where rumor spread.

  Now a tide of worried people shouted questions at them: "Where are the caravans going?" and: "What will the Ila do?"

  Marak had no idea on the latter and wanted no pause for questions, not yet, not here, disorderly as the road through the camp proved to be. "Wait," he shouted at the importunate. "Your leaders are going down to hear. Stay here! Pack your belongings!"

  There must be a fervor to carry them, a wild, a mad, an unstoppable urge: he stirred it, and knew what he did. he reminded them of their belongings. He hinted of movement. If the leaders denied him, the people themselves would be behind, pushing, demanding answers of their leaders, who had only one place to get answers. But it was a dangerous action. It could end in looting, in murder, in people trampled, or robbed, or stabbed and shot. Any leader knew it. Any leader who had not gone out to the summons would know he had to go, he had to find out the truth of their situation.

  And it could not wait another day.

  "You're running a risk," Memnanan said.

  "They have to move," he said. "They have no choice." More people crowded in on them. Three times more he told them the same, before the rumor was running the camp on so many legs that their appearance was only confirmation, the outflow of authority, the imminence of movement.

  The road poured them out of the camp and onto the vermin-hazard of the open sands, a fast-moving company of riders. A relatively few curious had come, the anxious, the frightened, representatives of households joining their leaders on the flat. They came in their hundreds out to the ridge, a mobbing not for blood but for news, and pressed outward in greater and greater numbers, hysteria in their faces. In some areas of the camp behind them, tents were already collapsing.

  A ridge of sand along a face of rock: that was where Memnanan had ordered the priests and the au'it to take their cargo of precious books, and that was where Memnanan had told the lords and the leaders to meet. The Ila's men had gone out to protect the priests and the au'it, and spread out across the ascent to prevent others.

  The priests tried to make themselves heard, trying to take authority to themselves, crying out that the judgment was on the city.

  "The god has sent this!" they shouted out to believers within hearing. "The god has decreed a judgment! Repent of your rebellion and your greed, and the Ila will intercede for you!"

  "We have to silence that," Marak said as they came within earshot. "They don't know a damned thing, and they have no authority over anything but the books. Quiet them."

  Memnanan had a worried look, but he gave orders to his men as they reached the ridge: the guards went to the priests and ordered their leaders off the ridge, down at the base, where the carts were. There the junior priests had spread out and made a useful defense of themselves, a line of bedraggled white between them and the press of the crowd.

  A greater and greater crowd gathered, both from the edge of the camp and from the far side of the city perimeter. There were thousands afoot, and tribesmen mounted on beshti, all pressing toward one point, one source.

  "This is dangerous," Hati shouted at him above the noise of the crowd. "They all want to know what's happening. What will happen when they know?"

  "They will know," Norit said in a loud voice: Luz shouted. "This is the day of judgment! Hear Marak! Hear the messenger! Listen to him!" But even Luz could not make herself heard, and the soldiers plied their quirts, driving back those the crowd behind shoved forward.

  In that moment Marak feared for their lives, knowing he had set too much in motion too fast. The beshti they rode snuffed the scent of the crowd, the palpable scent of fear, and swung their heads this way and that, ready to fight, sensing a mobbing and knowing only one answer to that. Madness was not the sole property of the mad, not now. The crowd stretched now almost as far as the tents, under the clouded sky. The leaders who came forced their way to the base of the ridge, the tribesmen and some few village lords riding, most afoot, pushing, shouting, arguing with the priests and pushing at the soldiers, whose whips only frustrated the press, and did nothing to hold it back.

  Then Memnanan drew a rifle from his saddle gear, and fired several rounds into the leaden sky. The reports echoed off the cliffs, startling beshti, bringing a moment of relative silence.

  "Marak Trin Tain!" Memnanan shouted out. "The Ila's answer to your questions. Be quiet! The god speaks through the Ila, and the god has appointed an escape for his people! Be still. Stand still!"

  "That's Aigyan," Hati said, edging her beast close to Marak's, pointing. "The man with the red sash. Lord of the an'i Keran. He sees me. He may suspect revenge. There is trouble."

  They could not be heard in the mutter around the ridge. Marak saw the veiled tribal lord, one of a handful of the deep Lakht tribes he most wanted well-disposed to them-and one that he least wanted against him. He knew the challenge he would face; but Memnanan had given him his moment, his only moment, and he rode Osan to the center of the ridge, looking out on thousands of misgiving, mistrustful faces. Men below looked up, a moment, a single moment in which the crowd expected an outcome, a miracle.

  "Safety!" Marak shouted out in the inspiration of his heart. "Safety! That's become more scarce than water on the Lakht! The refuge you came here to find, all of you, water, food, and shelter enough for every household! I, Marak Trin, I've come in from across the Lakht with a caravan and we're going out again, to bring you all to a place where one refuge for you exists, off the edge
of the plateau, beyond the village of Pori! I've seen it! I've seen a river green-sided with palms. I've seen beshti wandering free of harness. I've seen craftsmen in their tents, working for the pride of their craft! I've seen the heart of the tower that provides this place and keeps the star-fall away from its land! I've been inside it, and I know it exists!"

  Cries rose up to him, one and another just out of earshot trying to position himself to hear and the attempt crushing those nearest.

  "I say safety," Marak repeated for those who were in earshot of a shout. "I say a caravan leaving the holy city, going to an oasis where you and your children will live!"

  That created its own babble, repeated mouth to ear among the crowd, and now, caught in the press of bodies forward, riders controlled irritated, snappish beasts.

  "The tribes will move first," Marak shouted, while the fire boiled and bubbled within his vision, while the stink of heated rock assaulted his imagination. "The Keran and the Haga, of the deep Lakht, will go first. Then the Ila's caravan. Then tribes beyond that. And the villages! Let every tribe, let every village, let every man forgive their feuds! What is the law of the Lakht? What is the god's law? That when the wind rises, any man may come into a tent, regardless of feuds, to the number the tent will bear! No just man can deny shelter!"

  Grim veiled men nodded. It was the law. And now for the first time there was a hush over the crowd. Those who could possibly hear leaned close.

  "The Keran are the kinsmen of my wife, the Haga are the kinsmen of my mother," Marak shouted, as loudly as he had in him, "and to them I entrust the guidance of the caravan. The Ila will go with me, in my band. Then the rest of the tribes, in their honor, as they determine precedence, then the villages, as they determine precedence. Those of the city, you with no tents, no knowledge of the desert, each tent of the villages will take one or two of you, and those who have to walk, will walk following the beshri, with riders to guard you and to set the pace. Each lord of a tribe will govern his tribe, each lord of a village will govern his village." Fire, the visions said to him, overwhelming all sense of what he had to say. Random words welled up in him, not his own, warning of this disaster and that, and he smothered them, fighting for his sanity and his own sense. "More,-more! each strong and reputable and god-fearing man will carry, besides his day's water, the wisdom of the au'it, on his person, one book! These strong men will bring the wisdom of the au'it to the new land and they will have their names and the names of their houses written down forever! One book, one book with a man or a band or a tribe will assure the carriers of it a welcome in the paradise the Ila will rule! If a man of the tribes and of the villages wishes to carry that burden for himself, let him come forward now to the priests and present himself to the au'it, who will entrust him with that honor! Spread that word! Paradise for the bearers of the books!"

  The priests had by no means realized what sacrilege he intended. Perhaps they imagined they alone would carry those books, pulling their carts through the deep desert. Perhaps at very least they expected more order about it, a making of orderly lists: but the mood and tenor of the crowd was not in favor of long lines and meticulous recording of names.

  "No!" the chief priest shouted at him, and a murmur went out from the ridge, all the way back, over the grumbling complaint of beshti and a lone, frightened voice shouting above the rest, "What did he say, what did he say?"

  "Paradise!" he shouted. "Water enough and food enough for you and your children!" He lifted his arms and shouted with all the strength that that was in him, half-kneeling on Osan's saddle as he did. "When men think they will all die, they gather together, not to die alone. You all came here to die, and not to die alone, but we have better news! We know the path to paradise! We move at sunset. We're not going to die. We refuse to die! Those who survive this journey are all going to live, in a paradise on this earth!"

  A young caravanner of the tribes leapt up onto his feet, standing barefoot on his saddle, waving his arms and shouting in excitement.

  He was not the only one. Men waved their arms and cried aloud. Those at the back of the gathering were still trying to find out what was said; but those near the front saw the books and rushed at them, overwhelming the priests as men took books for themselves, snatched two and three in their passion for rescue. Pages were imperiled in squabbles. A cart axle cracked in the press of bodies, and spilled its load of books onto the sand, priests scrambling to save them as the crowd utterly mobbed the carts.

  Norit screamed above the cries of the crowd, wild-eyed, a madwoman beyond any doubt. "The hammer of heaven is coming down!" Norit cried. "Listen to Marak Trin! Prepare to move!"

  The priests shouted to their own wild-eyed hearers, "Respect the god, in the Ila's name!" Believers cried out, "The god and the Ila, the god and the Ila his regent!" while fire rained down in Marak's vision.

  Now he knew the city folk would follow, and follow with the passion of belief, never mind what they believed, only that they believed, and drove their bodies with the strength of that belief. It was the god that would save them, because they would go, and go, and go, believing in paradise.

  Marak, Marak, Marak, his voices dinned at him, ill timed, goading him, urging precipitate action, urging him to lead this mob, when he most wanted to use his wits.

  "A judgment on the earth!" Norit cried over all the tumult: "The hammer of heaven is coming! Do you see it, Marak, do you see it? It's coming! We're losing time!"

  Luz was afraid. Luz herself was gripped by fear. He saw in his vision a falling rock, saw it strike, saw a ring of fire spreading out from it; and a taste like copper came into his mouth. Haste, haste, haste dinned in his head until he could scarcely think, as if a message had held off as long as it could and now that the essential thing was done, Luz told them, unveiled what unnerved even her.

  He saw Hati similarly afflicted by the vision, her hands clamped over her ears, and he fought to still his own shrieking voices, trying to use his wits for what still had to be done.

  "Captain!" he shouted at Memnanan. "As soon as you can get there, bring the Ila to us where Tofi's camped, at the southwest corner, on the flat. He's waiting for us. He'll need help there: he has the beshti, and he has to keep them!"

  "Do you want a detachment with you?" Memnanan asked him.

  "You'll need them for your own safety!" Marak yelled back. "Go!" He turned Osan's head, tried to speak coherently to the tribal lords, less bothered by the shouting below, at the carts than at the noise in his head, the flaming rings that obscured his sight.

  Memnanan led his men off to the north, off the edge of the ridge. But to the face of the ridge, coming up toward them, was the lord of the Keran, still among the foremost, and he looked no happier.

  "Norit, stay with us!" Marak said, and turned Osan's head, suddenly within close-range shouting distance of the veiled man, in the surrounding tumult, both of them mounted, over the heads of the pandemonium below. "I'm Marak Trin Tain," he shouted out across the racket. "I've married this woman. She's never complained of your fairness. And I've heard nothing but good of the Keran, and I want you to the lead, omi! Forgive me for putting it forward without begging your goodwill, but the sky gives us no time for such courtesies."

  The veiled man glared back, looking at him, not at Hati. "What is your request, villager?"

  "Lead a caravan east, past Pori, past the rim of the Lakht, where there's safety from the star-fall. No one knows the eastern desert better than the Keran. She proves that."

  The eyes above the veil were hard as black stone, and no more revealing.

  "Marak Trin Tain, is it?"

  "All the world's come here expecting to die. If someone doesn't lead all the world away from here, they'll starve, if the stars don't destroy them first. The crops will fail. The star-fall will only get worse. Soon there'll be no food to sustain this mass of people."

  "I bleed from grief. We'll ride away safe."

  You came here, it occurred to him to say. You came here because every
one else was coming.

  But that was not the way to win this man. Not this man.

  "I'm amazed your pride isn't sufficient," Marak said, leaning an elbow on his knee. "Hati had said you'd want to lead, not follow."

  "Lead this refuse?"

  "To lasting glory. A caravan. A caravan of everyone in the world, toward safety. No one will forget your name. Aigyan, they'll say. Aigyan-omi, the great tribesman, the most famous man in all the tribes. You can't be famous if there's no one to tell the tale."

  "I hear you're mad as she is." It was Aigyan's first acknowledgment Hati existed.

  "At least as mad as she is," Marak said, "but both of us have the Ila's forces under our command. That's Memnanan himself that's just left here. Do you know the name?"

  "Marak Trin Tain commands the Ila's army, and Captain Memnanan takes his orders. The Ila's mad, too."