The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) (4 page)

Ryons and his bodyguard followed at a slow trot, stopping at the top to look down on the battle. The horsemen were already beginning their sweeps around both flanks of the enemy.

There was a tightly packed mass of women and children, forced close together and guarded by men with spears. Halfway up the rise, some hundreds of spearmen were forming a defensive line: but they would not have time to finish before Helki and his footmen hit them. Behind them stood some archers, already firing arrows over the heads of the defenders. The Abnak war cry, shrill and ululating, rang out over the battlefield; and the boy king’s Wallekki horsemen were already in position to hit the defenders in the rear.

“It’ll be over in a minute!” Chagadai said, shaking a clenched fist without knowing he was doing it.

But he was wrong.

Some of the riders shouted and pointed westward, and then they were all shouting. When Ryons looked, he saw a sight that almost stopped his heart.

Like a torrent of floodwater, a great wedge of Wallekki horsemen—enemy cavalry!—came pouring over the plain, hundreds of them: who could count them? Straight for the undefended flank of Ryons’ army they came. They would hit it like a thunderbolt. Helki would not have time to turn and meet them.

And just at the same time, the mob of captive women came alive and overwhelmed their guards, pulling them down, snatching their weapons from their hands, throwing themselves into the fray. Madness! What could women do? But there were so many of them, and their guards were far too few to hold them—and they were directly in the rear of what defense the enemy had left. They fell upon the archers, trampling them underfoot.

But that was all that Ryons saw because his horse suddenly bolted straight down the slope, and he couldn’t make it stop. It was all he could do just to hold on and not fall off. With a loud cry of dismay and rage, his Ghols spurred their horses after him.

After that, it was all a blur—dust in the eyes, horses screaming, men cursing, and the clash of blade on blade, the hard thump of colliding bodies. Ryons clung to his panicked horse’s mane. He had a sword girt to his belt, but he didn’t dare to reach for it. All he could do was hold on, as he was carried right into the middle of the battle.

He expected at any moment to be thrown out of the saddle and pulverized by hooves. By God’s grace he kept his feet in the stirrups and his legs clamped for dear life against the horse’s flanks. There was so much noise around him that he couldn’t hear himself crying for help at the top of his lungs. All he could see, anywhere, was a swirling mass of bodies, men and horses, and the gleam of flashing steel.

And just as suddenly as it had begun, it was all over. His horse stood panting under him, held in place by a dismounted Ghol grasping the bridle. The dust settled. Men on horseback milled around him, not fighting anymore. All around him, men and horses gasped for breath.

Chagadai came to him, his horse plodding wearily. There was a great splotch of blood across his chest, but it wasn’t his. In labored Tribe-talk he addressed his king.

“Be glad, my father! The battle’s won; the enemy has run away. And it was you and your children who won it—us, and all those crazy women.”

There were bodies scattered all over the field, including not a few women. But the enemy defenders were all dead, and those who sought to rescue them all put to flight. Loudly, with hoarse, unlovely voices, the Ghols began to sing again.

“They are giving thanks to God,” said Chagadai.

Helki, untouched by any weapon, strode up with his staff in his hand. The Abnak Hlah, son of old Chief Spider, was with him: he had a fresh scalp tucked into his belt. Behind them came the burly old Abnak subchief, Uduqu. He would have some fresh scars to show for this fight.

Helki grinned at Ryons. He cut a fantastic figure, with his wild mop of hair and his clothes that were nothing but a stained and grimy crazy-quilt of patches in every color you could think of.

“Well, Your Majesty!” he said. “I don’t know whether to bow down to you or turn you over my knee and tan your hide! What the devil were you thinking of? But you saved the day, no doubt about it. When you and your lads piled into them, and they never expecting it, they lost their heads and took off like scared rabbits.”

“I didn’t mean to do it!” Ryons said. His throat was sore. “The horse just ran off—I couldn’t stop him.”

“And I think you’ve had enough of horseback riding for one day, Majesty,” said Uduqu. He tucked his bloody tomahawk into his belt and plucked Ryons from the saddle, holding him off the ground. His scarred and fierce face showed tenderness. “From the moment you were first brought into my wigwam and made sassy comments while we old chiefs smoked tree-beans, my heart went out to you. And when I saw you charge into the enemy and disappear among them, I grieved for you.”

“You should have seen him, Your Majesty!” Hlah said. “He fought like six men, trying to get over there to save you. Old fool!” And Uduqu threw back his head and laughed.

They all laughed, out of pure relief, and some of them shed tears; but they fell silent when Obst came riding down the slope on his white donkey and joined them.

“He’s all right, Obst,” Helki said, “not a scratch on him.”

Obst nodded. He looked around at all the warriors.

“This day you have seen the salvation of the Lord, accomplished by the means of a boy and captive women,” he told them. “Remember it! And give thanks in your hearts to the true God, who has given you another victory.”

Prayers went up in a dozen barbaric languages. But Helki said, “Our work’s not done. We have to see these women safely across the river, and then get ourselves safely back to Lintum Forest. I want trees over my head again!” And under his breath, he added, “Can’t help feeling naked out here under all this sky.”

Wytt could find water by sniffing the air for it. Sometimes he seemed to find it by watching birds in the sky or studying the aimless maneuverings of insects.

However he did it, without him, they would have died of thirst. Those plains south of the great river and west of Lintum Forest, which in good times fed the whole country, were now depopulated. The Heathen were coming; the people had fled, deserting their villages, abandoning their farms. They took all their livestock with them. Worse, they stopped up the wells so the enemy couldn’t drink from them. So there was no water, except where Wytt found it seeping from the ground or bubbling up in little springs. Neither Jack nor Ellayne had the slightest idea where to look for water in a country where there were no people.

“It’s funny,” Martis mused, as they trekked on eastward. “This is Obann, my own country; but if I go any distance from the river, I discover that I don’t know Obann very well. Traveling along the river, you don’t have to worry about finding water.”

Finding food was easier. There were peach orchards coming into fruit, blackberry patches, and plenty of rabbits running wild. The young ones were not as cautious as they would have been, had people and dogs remained in the country. Borrowing Jack’s slingshot, Martis had some success providing them with meat.

“It’s so beautiful out here!” Ellayne said. Mounted on Dulayl with Jack, she had a good view of the plain in bloom—rippling waves of green grass, purple heather, pools of deep yellow where goldflowers clustered, and red and pink and white and powder-blue queens-slippers, babyblossoms, daisies, and bluebells. “But the barns and farmhouses look sad. Where did all the people go?”

“To Obann,” Martis said, “to hide behind the walls and to other towns farther west.”

But Jack had something else on his mind. “I’ve been thinking and thinking,” he said, “about those scrolls.” He meant the ones they’d found in the cellar of the First Temple, in the ruins of Old Obann. “I can’t see why God had King Ozias write them, and then keep them hidden for all those years and years with no one to read them.”

“Two thousand years,” Martis put in.

“But why write them if no one’s going to read them?” Jack said.

“Obst is going to read them,” Ellayne said. “That’s why God sent us to find them in the first place. And we did it!”

“I just wonder what it’s all about. I wonder what the scrolls really say. That scholar of yours, Martis—the one who tried to steal them from us—said he couldn’t understand them. What if no one can understand them?”

Hiking over the plains all day, talking made the time pass faster, and they did a lot of it. Martis had never done so much talking in his life. He wouldn’t have believed it possible to have such talks with children. Idiot, he chided himself: whatever gave you the idea that children couldn’t talk? It was certainly more pleasurable than talking with Lord Reesh, who only told you what he thought you needed to know.

“You’re asking the wrong man, Jack,” he said. “I grew up on the city streets—what could I know of Scripture? And then I went into the service of the Temple, where nobody believes the Scriptures. I don’t think many of them even believe in God.”

“But it’s the Temple!” cried Ellayne. “What are they all doing there, if they don’t believe in God?”

“That’s the Temple,” Martis said. “Anyhow, we’re taking these Scriptures to people who will believe in them. That’s an errand I can believe in.”

They did not know that Cardigal had fallen, nor that Caristun, to the north beside the river, and Caryllick, to the south, had stood off terrible attacks. These would have fallen, too, had the enemy stayed longer. But now the Thunder King’s mardars were abandoning lesser projects and driving all the armies on to Obann. By keeping to the middle of the plain, Jack and his friends stayed clear of those armies.

Martis estimated they were halfway to Lintum Forest. “We’d be there by now if we had another horse,” he said.

As the end of the day drew near, they saw something that surprised them, a little wisp of smoke rising in the distance. Martis made the children dismount.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go on ahead and see what that is.”

“It’s dangerous,” Ellayne said.

“More dangerous not to know.” Martis swung into the saddle and trotted off. Jack and Ellayne sat down by Ham. Wytt climbed up on top of the donkey’s pack and sniffed the air.

“What’s out there, Wytt?” Jack asked.

Wytt chattered: one man with a little fire, he reported. He didn’t seem agitated. “If he’s not scared, then I won’t be,” Jack said. “I’m hungry, though. Wish we had some chicken!”

“You’ve gotten skinnier,” Ellayne said. “Or maybe taller.”

“Taller? Do you think so?”

“Boys do grow.”

Jack thought it over. Had they really been wandering around so long that he’d had time to grow? At least six months, he thought. It seemed an age ago that he’d been living in a little house in Ninneburky with Van, his stepfather. Van used to say Jack was small for his age—which never stopped him from working Jack like a slave.

“I wonder what they’re doing back home,” he said. They knew, of course, that Ninneburky had miraculously survived a savage attack by a Heathen army from the north, that Ellayne’s father, Chief Councilor Roshay Bault, had organized the defense. But people got killed even in successful battles. Jack wondered if anyone he knew had died in the defense of the town.

“They’re fine,” Ellayne said. “The Heathen came and my father beat them. He probably has all the men working to make the walls stronger, in case the Heathen come again.”

“Do you really think I’m taller?”

“Stand still a minute. We’ll see.”

Ellayne stood in front of him, up close, and put her hand on top of her head, and slid it forward to touch the middle of Jack’s forehead.

“You weren’t that much taller than me when we started out,” she said. “Burn it, I wish I’d grow! Do you think I have, any?”

Jack could only shrug. “I can’t tell,” he said; and Ellayne sniffed at him. “Boys don’t notice anything,” she said.

“Well, you’re stronger—I’ve noticed that,” he answered. “You can walk or ride all day and not get tired.”

“Oh, I’m tired, all right! And I want my supper.”

A few minutes later, Martis returned.