The notary favored me with a ferrety scowl as I wandered back to my place beside him. “You are compounding your felony!”

“If I am to die for a dog, then you may see I am suitably punished for this offense afterward.”

“Don't blame me for your troubles!”

 

 

I took a long draught and wondered if I dared wipe my mouth on the sleeve of the doublet I was wearing, or whether I would catch rabies from it. Then I turned my attention to the pedant. He was not a type to excite admiration, the small man who wraps himself in the authority of the law and believes he has thereby achieved majesty. His eyes were restless as flies and as hard to catch, his nose long and coarse, peppered with pox and blackheads, his jowls ten years lower than they should be.

“Why not? You set yourself up as my judge.”

He flushed all the way to his biretta. “I certainly did not! I merely gave my opinion that no secular authority claims jurisdiction here.”

“And therefore the group of you appropriated that authority to yourselves.” I took another gulp. The mulled ale was scalding, hot enough to raise a sweat from my scalp to my toes, but I was disinclined to linger over it.

“The gods judge all men and know all men,” the clerk said stiffly. After a moment he added, “But overt manifestation of their omniscience is rare.”

I noted that the wind was not wailing so loud, that the ferns on the floor no long stirred, the shutters had almost ceased their rattling. Climate in the Grimm Ranges is a matter of hours more than years. The storm might have departed, but snow and cold were still waiting out there.

A heavy tread announced the return of our host, bearing a clay flagon and two small pewter mugs. While the merchant inspected the seal and all eyes were on him, I pulled out the note. The stable key is on the beam above the door, it said. I thrust it back out of sight and drained my stein while Fritz's back was still turned.

Fair enough. If I was still able to walk when he had done with me, the stable would be a warm sanctuary from the storm. But I would leave tracks. I could not replace the key without leaving the door unlocked behind me, so in the morning he would find me there. It would not work.

I decided I would do better worrying about how I could respond to Marla's malarkey. At least one person had dropped me a strong hint in the last few minutes.

The merchant pronounced the wine acceptable. The actress's face twisted when she tasted it, but she agreed it was delicious. The dowager graciously allowed her maid one piece of fruitcake. The fire was stoked again. The audience settled down to listen.

“Have we not had enough of the Land Between the Seas?”

the old soldier suggested. “Can you tell us a tale of some other place, Master Omar?”

“Indeed I can, Captain, and I was planning to. Mistress Maria has told us of a gallant rescue. I shall recount a deliverance of another sort. Harken, gentle lords and fair ladies, as I unfold for you the strange Tale of the God Who Would Not Speak.”

 

 

9: Omar's Response Actress's Tale In the reign of the great Emir Mustaf II, the island city of Algazan flourished as it never had before, reaching a pinnacle of wealth that made it the envy of the world. Its ships reached out to lands previously known only in legend, trading in rich fabrics, scented woods, pearls and jade, slaves and spices, oils and perfumes, jewels, artifacts, and wondrously worked ivory. Kings flocked from the mainland to marvel at the glory of its many fine palaces and fabled gardens, merchants thronged from the ends of the earth to its bazaars.

A hundred gods dwelt within its temples. Any who dared oppose it on the shores of three oceans, whether they be prince or pirate, were swiftly humbled by the might of its fleet and the armies hired by its gold.

But not all its avenues were paved with marble nor all its denizens dwellers in palaces. Men and women of a dozen races huddled in slums and tenements, in putrid alleys the rich never saw. For centuries, a human stream had trickled into the cesspits of Algazan: adventurers come to seek their fortunes, refugees from political oppression, malcontents yearning after their own gods. Few had prospered, most had sunk into dismal poverty. Their descendants congealed in lumps beneath the surface of society, enclaves of foreigners existing under uneasy tolerance—distinct from the natives, banned from the benefits of citizenship. The Algazanians discriminated but rarely persecuted. What the foreigners did to one another was worse.

 

 

 

One was a boy named Juss. He was Algazanian by birth but not by right. His skin and hair were a little lighter than those of the True, his accent faulty and thereby subject to ridicule. On the day of which I shall speak, he was approaching the threshold of manhood. He checked his height frequently against the doorpost, and on the rare occasions when he found himself both unobserved and close to a mirror, he would inspect his upper lip in it, although with more amusement at his own optimism than real hope of encouragement. He was wiry and unusually healthy for the neighborhood in which he lived. His dark eyes were quick and bright. He smiled more than his circumstances would seem to warrant, and the few adults aware of his existence tended to think well of him.

He was employed, after a fashion, by Gozspin the Purveyor of Fresh and Nutritious Vegetable Materials, meaning that Juss was allowed to stand with several other boys outside Gozspin's grubby little store from dawn until an hour before sunset. Whenever a customer departed, having purchased some of Gozspin's moldy roots and soggy leaves, Juss would try to outshout the others in offering to carry them home for her. Four or five times a day his offer would be accepted. He would then follow the lady around the bazaars until she had completed her acquisitions and he was so laden with packages that he resembled a walking bazaar all by himself.

Upon arriving at her door, she would grant him whatever gratuity she deemed fitting. He was cheerful and respectful and had a sunny smile; many days he collected ten or even twelve copper mites.

 

 

He was expected to turn over half of them to Gozspin, and did. In return, Gozspin would allow him to buy some of the moldiest and soggiest wares at a sizable discount. If Juss had enough money left over, he would also purchase a stale loaf from the bakery next door. After that, he had the problem of conveying his supper, plus any remaining cash, safely home.

He lived in a very small room in a very high tenement in what was generally known as the Godless Quarter. To reach it, he had to pass through the territory of the Drazalians, the Jorkobians, the Alfoli, and the Children of Wuzz. Native Algazanians were another problem altogether.

On the evening of which I tell, Juss carried one loaf, two soft mangoes, and a bundle of almost edible spinach.

Detouring up a particularly noisome alley to avoid some Jorkobian youths, he ran afoul of a gang of teenage Alfoli.

When the brief encounter was over, he was bereft of his two remaining copper mites and had been kicked in various places for not having had more. Furthermore, his loincloth and sandals reposed in the sewer, and his supper lay in the mud.

It was a discouraging ending to a hard day, but not an unusual one. Juss gathered up his clothes and the food and walked on. His belly hurt, his right eye was swelling, and he had painful scrapes on his back. It could have been worse. He was later accosted by seven young Children of Wuzz.

Concluding from his repugnant appearance that he was unworthy of their attentions, they let him past, promising to see him again the next day.

He felt relieved but very weary when he arrived at the Mansion of Many Gods. He plodded through a dark tunnel into the central courtyard that held the water trough and the toilets. The sun never shone there, except for a few minutes at noon. Those who lived on the outside of the Mansion despised those whose abodes overlooked the smelly court.

The insiders retorted that the streets smelled worse. The two groups had separate stairs and walkways. Juss lived in an inside room on the seventh floor.

He washed himself, his supper, and his clothes in the communal trough, then headed for the stair. Not unexpectedly, a group of boys mostly older than he were sitting on the bottom step, barring his path. Several of them were chewing dream rope. Behind them sat Flower, their current leader. They all scowled at Juss.

“Let me by, please,” he said.

“Who got you this time?” Flower demanded.

“The Emir's guards.”

For a minute nothing more happened, but Juss was not worried. They all knew he was Ven's brother, and in the Mansion of Many Gods that was defense enough. They disliked him because he refused to join the gang and play his part in molesting Drazalians, Jorkobians, Alfoli, and the especially despicable Wuzzians.

Eventually Flower said, “Let him,” and two boys wriggled aside to open a space. Juss climbed through, alert for hands grabbing his ankles, but today there was none of that.

He climbed one flight, went along the walkway, up the next flight...

Old folk sitting by their doors greeted him and he responded. He paused to talk with Moonlight, who was growing prettier and more interesting all the time. He had an even longer chat with Joyful and Intrepid, his closest buddies, and they commiserated with him on his new bruises. On the fourth floor ancient Fine-jade asked him if he would fill her water pail for him, so he left his supper in her care and trotted all the way back down with the bucket. On the sixth floor, Storm-blast, who was even older, asked Juss to take his slop bucket down and empty it, so down he went again ... It took him a third of an hour to reach the room he shared with Ven.

Someone had been rummaging in his absence, but that was not unusual. A quick check of the secret place under the floorboards told him that it had not been discovered. That was where the treasures lived: the book, and the money, spare clothes, and of course the family god, who kept it safe.

Nothing else in the room had any value: two thin sleeping rugs, a water pot, an old box that served as a table. None of those had been removed.

Having divided the loaf and the other victuals into two unequal halves, Juss took the family god out of the secret place and set him on the box. Then he sat down wearily on his mat and waited until Ven arrived, a short while later. Ven had brought a bag of onions.

Ven was nine years older, and considerably larger than Juss would ever be. Like many large men, he moved with slow diffidence, as if constantly frightened of breaking something or hurting someone. His gray eyes and unusually light brown hair had caused him much grief in his younger days among the darker multitudes of Algazan, and he had learned then that his strength must be used with caution, even when righteously provoked. His stubbly reddish beard and crooked nose made him look much fiercer than he really was. In troth he was a stolid, deliberate young man, although he could be fierce when roused. He had been father and mother to Juss since their parents had died ten years earlier, and Juss worshipped him with all the fanatical zeal of a boy who has only one relative in the world to love and admire.

Ven worked as a porter at the docks, puffing his great strength to good use. He frequently earned thirty mites or more in a day, although half of that went to the gang boss, of course, and another five to the porters’ guild.

The brothers smiled at each other. They asked after each other's day, and each responded that it had not been too bad, nor especially exciting. Ven pretended not to notice Juss's swelling bruises. He remarked that the meal looked good, although he was a truthful man when truth was important. He knelt down before the god on his box, and Juss knelt beside him, taking comfort from his brother's nearness and strength.

“Most Holy Father Kraw,” Juss said, “we thank you for keeping us safe this day and for giving us our food.” It was the prayer he could remember their father speaking, and he said it every evening.

The god did not reply. The god never did.

The Godless had earned their name because they never attended any of the hundred temples on the island. They had no need to, for every family owned its own god, like Kraw.

 

 

Kraw was a dragon's tooth, old and black and about the size of both of Ven's fists together—quite frightening if one thought about how big the dragon himself must have been.

But he never spoke. Other boys told Juss that their family god spoke to their fathers, or even to them sometimes, but Kraw did not speak. Still, a dragon's tooth was a much more impressive god than any mere figure of pottery or metal or stone, and Juss was proud of him.

They ate their meal in silence, Juss taking the smaller portion because he was the smaller brother. They chewed hungrily and did not take long. They did not experience the feeling of bloated satisfaction that a large repast will give.

Never having known that sensation, Juss did not miss it. The light from the little window was fading already and soon it would be time to curl up on the mats. Most nights the brothers would talk for a while then, in the dark. Ven would tell Juss a story about their parents, whom Juss could barely remember. After that they would sleep, preparing for another day.

There being no dishes to wash, and neither of them feeling thirsty enough to run all the way down to the trough for a drink, Juss went to the secret place and brought out the book.

Next to Kraw himself, the book was their most precious possession. Ven had been taught to read by their mother, more or less. He had taught Juss, also, and in the evenings they would read the book together. Juss was a now a better reader than Ven was, although he concealed that fact from his brother as far as he could. Neither of them was truly expert. The book was difficult; it related the history of the land their parents had come from long ago, and it was written in the language of the Godless. Although they spoke that tongue with their friends and neighbors, in their daily lives they conversed in Algazanian, which was very different.

Neither brother understood much of the book.

Ven smiled an apologetic smile and shook his head. “Not tonight,” he said. “How much money do we have?”

Juss turned away quickly so that his sudden worry would not show. Although he already knew the answer, he scrabbled on his knees over to the loose plank and peered in the secret cache. “One silverfish and four mites.” There had been four silverfish a few days ago, but Ven had needed a wisdom tooth pulled. The pain of it had been driving him crazy.

He sighed. “Tomorrow is Pearl's birthday.”

Juss said, “Oh. I didn't know.”

Ven was courting the daughter of Stalwart the carter. She had hinted that his attentions were not unpleasing, although her mother certainly disapproved. Juss had mixed feelings about the matter and was rather ashamed of himself in consequence. He certainly wanted his brother to be happy. He could admit now that girls were pleasant company, but they did not promote the same sense of urgency in him that they did in Ven. He understood that he would feel otherwise when he was older. Of course it would be years before Ven could save up enough money to raise the matter of marriage. A birthday gift was a more immediate problem.

“I said I would go out this evening,” Ven muttered.

Juss tried not to show his fear. “I will come with you and watch.”

 

 

“No you won't! I feel distracted if you are around, you know that! Now don't worry and don't get into mischief. I'll be all right.” With those words, Ven jumped up and strode quickly out, before Juss could start arguing. Juss was much better at arguing than he was.

They could not live on Ven's daily earnings, not even with what Juss now contributed. They had almost starved when their parents died. All the family possessions had been lost in the fire the authorities had used to cleanse the Godless Quarter of pestilence. In those days Ven had been too young to earn a man's wages, although he had been big for his age.

They had survived because Ven could earn money fighting.

He had started with boys’ matches, the preliminary events to titillate the spectators and start the bets flowing. Now he fought in main events. Sometimes he won as much as two or three silverfish in an evening.

“He has never been seriously hurt yet!” Juss said firmly, knowing that he was speaking to an empty room. But what would happen to the two of them if he ever was seriously hurt?

The thought was terrifying. Without that extra money the brothers would be forced to give up their home and move into squalid communal quarters. Without it there could never be little presents for girlfriends or hope of marriage. The only alternative would be crime of some sort—Flower's gang for Juss, worse for Ven. Sadly, an honest living for a laborer in Algazan was not a living.

Men did get seriously hurt at the fights, even died sometimes. Ven himself had once knocked out an opponent's eye and had refused to fight for months after that, although he had been promised real gold if he could manage to do it again.

Already on his knees, Juss spun around to face the box. He touched his head to the floor and said, “Holy Father Kraw, please look after Ven tonight and keep him safe!”

“I cannot.”

Juss straightened up slowly. Even more slowly, he looked around the room. What he saw was what he expected to see, and it was more frightening than a gang of the Children of Wuzz would have been. Nobody. Four walls, two mats, one box ... everything as it should be.

It might be one of his pals in the tenement playing tricks on him, but it had not sounded like a boy's voice. No, nor even Intrepid's new baritone that he was so proud of when it worked right.

“Who spoke?” Juss quavered.

“I did.”

It sounded like a very large voice, a huge voice, but a great way off. Juss suppressed a frantic need to race downstairs to the urinals.

“Who a-a-are you?” he asked the empty room.

“I am Kraw, your god.”

Juss's forehead hit the floor with an audible bump. His teeth chattered wildly and his skin went cold all over.

“Why are you frightened?” the voice inquired, sounding amused. “I am your god. You are my son. You have nothing to fear from me, nothing at all.”

“You ... You never spoke to me before!”

 

 

“You never spoke to me when we were alone, that's why.

Besides, now you are old enough to understand. Almost old enough, anyway.”

Juss sneaked a look with one eye. The big black tooth was just the same as always. He had half expected to see a misty dragon shape around it, or something, but there was just the tooth. “Why don't you speak to Ven?”

“Because he is not mine,” the god said patiently. “You are mine. Only you can worship me and I will speak to no other.”

“But Ven is my brother!”

“He is your half brother. You are Sure-justice of Kraw. I am Kraw, the god of your father and his father and very many fathers before them. I suppose I would not be too angry if you referred to yourself once in a while as Sure-justice of Verl, although you had better not make a habit of it.

Verl was your mother's god. She has no other children left but you two, so I would not mind sharing you with her. A little of you, that is. Once in a while,” the god rumbled, sounding less certain.

A very misty light dawned in the boy's befogged brain.

“Our mother? She was married to another before my father?”

The god sighed. “In a manner of speaking. Your father knew that Cold-vengeance was son—”

“What?”

“Ven, you little goose! His real name is Cold-vengeance.

Sea-breaker knew that he was not his father, but he accepted him. I did not, so tell your half brother—”

“Why not?”

 

 

The dragon rumbled ferociously. "Juss! You do not interrupt gods. Especially when they are explaining. Gods do not like explaining.”

Juss had his nose on the floor again.

“Now,” said the god, “where was I?”

“You were—”

“Yes, I know, Juss! The question was hypothetical. Tell Cold-vengeance that he must not to try to worship me. Tell him gently. He can call himself Cold-vengeance of Verl if he wants.”

“But where is his god, Verl, then? Our mother's god?”

“Very far away, but I think safe.”

“I don't understand!”

Kraw chuckled. Even at a very great distance, a dragon chuckle was not a laughing matter, and Juss felt a cool breeze chill his skin.

“Bring the book, Sure-justice.”

Juss obeyed quickly.

“Turn to the end. Now back up a few pages—until I say to stop...”

Juss sat on the floor with the book spread open on his legs, and apparently Kraw could read even from where he was on the box, although the light was fading fast from the little room. The pages of the book were not numbered, but the god told Juss how to find the passage he wanted, and then had him read it, prompting him when he stumbled over a word. The handwriting was very bad near the end of the book. Juss had avoided it in the past for that reason, and also because the story was so sad. It began cheerfully enough, with Morning-star raising the banner of freedom and chopping off King Grosail's head on his own throne. Then it grew darker.

The room grew darker and the story grew darker: the failure of the revolution, the terrible vengeance of Vandok, White-thorn ... Some of the details were gruesome. Ven never let Juss read bits like those.

“That will do,” the god said at last. “You have heard of Morning-star before.”

“Yes, Father.” Juss slid the heavy book off his shins with relief.

“And how do the people feel about him?”

A boy who rarely knew a full stomach found political affairs of faraway lands to be of very marginal importance to his life.

He had not listened much. “Some of them curse him?” he said uncertainly. “Others say we need another Morning-star to stand up and try again?”

“Very good, Sure-justice! The story in that book is not complete. Morning-star's daughter escaped.”

"Good!" Juss grinned to hear that. The brutality bits had made him feel queasy.

“She escaped here, to Algazan. But she changed her name. Why?”

“Um. Because some people didn't approve of what her father had done? They might have hurt her?”

The god chuckled again, and this time the sound was less frightening. “Ah, you are a sharp little claw! But that is what we should expect of a son of White-thorn, isn't it?”

 

 

“White-thorn was ... But then Morning-star ... My grandfather? My mother? And Ven's?”

“And Ven's, also. Think, my son! You are clever. You are more clever than Ven. Think before you ask any more.”

Juss sat back and leaned his chin on his hands for a while, unconsciously stating at the god in a way no mortal could have endured without squirming, although dragon teeth apparently do not mind. Juss thought things through in his clever, patient way, until eventually he said, “Why did she name him Cold-vengeance?”

“Why do you think, my son?”

“Because he was Morning-star's grandson! So that Ven would lead the next revolution and drive out the Horsefolk and kill King Vandok! Will he?”

“He can try.”

And why Sure-justice? Suddenly very excited, Juss scrabbled onto his knees so he could touch his head to the floor again. “Most Holy Father, can I help him try?”

The god sighed. “If you wish to. Frankly, I don't think Ven will get very far without help, and who will help him but you?”

“It is my fight, also, is it not?”

“Yes,” the god said. “Yes, it is. Are you ready to start tonight?”

Juss jumped up. His knees trembled but he said, “Yes, Father.”

“Then wrap me in your spare cloth and take me with you.

You must go and tell all this to a man who may help you. If he doesn't, I don't know who will, and your cause is hopeless.”

 

 

So Juss wrapped the god up safely and ran down the stairs and out into the city night. He never returned to the Mansion of the Many Gods.

 

 

10: The Second Judgment

 

“That is ridiculous!” the dowager snapped. “That is only half a story!”

“I promised you a tale of deliverance,” I protested. “I cannot tell you what happened next because I don't know. I can guess, roughly, but I never recount mere guesses, only undoubted truth.”

“Well, who was the man he went to?”

“Even that I do not know for certain. His real name was not divulged to me, only a nickname, lest it put certain people in danger.”

Nine pairs of eyes regarded me skeptically.

“This was two hundred years ago,” the minstrel croaked, fear of the uncanny starting to shine in his swollen eyes.

I saw that I had been indiscreet. “Forgive me. I meant that the name was not revealed to the person to whom the story was first told, and hence has not been passed down to us.”

“Contemptible!” the merchant growled. The wine had given his flabby face an even ruddier glow than before. “I detest storytellers who leave you dangling over an abyss and demand more money before they will tell you the next episode.”

“So do I!” I agreed heartily. “It is very unprofessional behavior. Unscrupulous in the extreme! However, in this case, I had no choice. I do not know the next episode. Does anyone?”

There was a long silence.

 

 

I had wagered everything on the hint I detected earlier, in the hope of learning that next episode—I can never resist the opportunity to hear a good tale, and I had been waiting for this one for two ... too long. But had it been a hint, or merely a slip of the tongue? If the person in question refused to talk, then I had lost my gamble.

The old soldier cleared his throat and straightened himself on the bench. “I may be in possession of some relevant information.”

I sighed with relief. “Then I beg you to disclose it. I have wondered about this for a very long time.”

“Fah!” the merchant growled. “The wind has dropped. It is time for godly folk to take themselves off to bed—don't you agree, my little lovebird?”

His wife smiled automatically and then stole a worried glance in my direction.

“Take the miscreant, innkeeper,” her husband rumbled, heaving himself to his feet with a great effort. “Break every bone in his body for all I care. Come, woman. Duty calls, what?” He chuckled drunkenly.

Fritz smiled hungrily at me and flexed his hands.

“How about a little bedtime story?” I suggested.

The minstrel whistled a few bars of a popular dance tune...

“Er, beloved?” the actress said, resisting her husband's urging. “I do so want to hear a few more tales, darling! I mean, if the noble captain has something to tell us, it would only be polite for us to stay and listen, wouldn't it? Just one more? Oh, we haven't finished the wine yet! We mustn't waste it, after you spent so much money on it.”

 

 

That argument made the fat man pause. With a growl, he sagged back into his chair and reached for the flagon. “A couple of quick nightcaps, then.”

The dowager had been frowning at this discussion with rank disapproval. She turned her basilisk stare on the minstrel and then on me ... and finally on the soldier at her side.

“You wish to engage in this frivolity, Captain? It is hardly the place to reveal anything of a private nature.”

There was a hint there, a nuance about as subtle as a rapier through the gizzard. My belief that he was her hired guard had just been confirmed.

The old warrior was not intimidated. He nodded curtly, then swung around to fix me with his raptor eyes. He was old but still dangerous—like his leather jerkin, scuffed and worn but still serviceable. Such a man would not wear a sword were he incapable of wielding it. At last he ran fingers over his close-cut silver hair. “Many ancient legends tell of a vagrant storyteller by the name of Omar, a man who turns up in many places and at many—”

“I have heard them.” I gave him my most disarming smile.

“Myth begets myth, Captain. Many a rapscallion has taken that name just because of the legends, and thus generated another. I didn't. I was Omar before I was a trader of tales—but mayhap the tradition influenced my choice of career.”

“You do not grow old and then young again, to and fro forever?”

“I have heard that part of it. It would be hard to make friends when going the wrong way, no? But you should not take such drivel seriously, Captain. Remember, many stories are more convincing when told in the first person. In his tale, Minstrel Gwill told us of one Omar. White-thorn gave her god into the keeping of a stranger who sounded suspiciously like another, yes? Now, were I less firmly corseted with scruples, I might have related that incident as if I had been there, had actually been that man ... This is how legends grow, Captain.”

He continued to gaze at me as if I were a prospective battlefield.

I began to wilt, although I could not remember the last time a mere stare had discomfited me. “Do I take it that the second round of the contest has been decided in my favor?”

Fritz scowled mightily.

“Apparently no one is ready to deliver you to justice yet,”

the dowager agreed, glancing around to see if anyone dared to disagree with her.

No one did. Gwill flashed me an approving grin in the midst of his sneezing. The maid studied her hands. The notary seemed close to sleep.

Somewhere outside there was a sudden crack!

The actress jumped. “What was that?”

“Frost, ma'am.” Fritz glanced at me to make sure I understood the implications. “When the wind drops, the temperature begins to fall. We are very high here. That noise was a tree splitting in the sudden cold.”

Marla said, “Oh!” and took a sip of her wine. Her face went rigid with the effort of swallowing the muck.

“It is late!” the dowager announced sternly. “I trust you can be quick, Captain?”

 

 

 

At last he turned his gaze from me, as if satisfied. “I shall be as brief as I can, my lady. I am generally a man of few words, as you know.” He reached deep inside his doublet. “All my life, I have been a free sword, a mercenary. I have fought for good causes and bad, although I tried to choose the good whenever circumstances permitted.” He produced a small package wrapped in what seemed to be brown silk. “My name is not of consequence ... No, to be more truthful, my name was once of great consequence. My father abandoned it, lest he bring disrepute upon nobler members of our house. As a youngster taking up the profession of arms, I became known by a foolish nickname, ‘Tiger.’ I did not disavow it, of course, and it stuck. I am a toothless old pussycat now, I fear, but still remembered as Captain Tiger in some parts.

“Perhaps my constant companion here may have encouraged the practice, although very few persons have ever seen it.” He held out his hand with the cloth opened upon it, and upon the cloth lay a small carving, little larger than one of his own big thumbs.

We all leaned forward to peer at this gem. It seemed to be carved from amber, for it glowed in the firelight. It had no stripes, of course, and yet the shape was undoubtedly that of a tiger, prone, but with its head raised as if some noise had just roused it from sleep. The eyes were inset with tiny green gems. In the right market it would have brought a man comfort or even luxury for the rest of his days. I, for one, was seized by a fierce desire to reach out and touch it.

 

 

The actress was the first to speak. She seemed awed, and I did not think she was dissembling. “Is that one of these gods we have been hearing about?”

“In these parts I would call him a mascot, my lady. His name is Bargar. He is not the original, of course. When my father, being the youngest of many brothers, set off to find his fortune in far lands, the original Bargar foretold that he would never return to the ancestral hearth, and permitted a copy to be made.”

“Does it ... talk to you?”

The leathery old man smiled noncommittally and wrapped the amber tiger away in its cloth. “I have lived a long life for a professional soldier, my lady. My good fortune has been remarked on more than once.”

Whatever his merits as a warrior, he certainly had the makings of a teller of tales. Even the fat merchant, sprawled back in his chair like a rolled-up quilt, was blinking attentively.

The tiger was returned to its secret abode. Another tree trunk cracked in the forest like a sharp stroke of thunder, and this time I heard a faint echo from the cliff across the valley.

The soldier gestured for Fritz to refill his stein and the innkeeper jumped to obey.

“As to the matter Master Omar was narrating ... Many years ago, I had occasion to visit my father's homeland, and naturally I called upon the current head of the family to pay my respects. At first I was regarded with some suspicion.

When I produced my little Bargar, of course, I was welcomed with joy and great hospitality. I was even presented to the original Bargar—and yes, he spoke to me! It was a very moving experience.”

With a superb sense of timing, the soldier paused then to take a swallow of ale. He chuckled. “My so-splendid relations found me a rather rough companion, I fear. I did not fit well into their balls and banquets, and my conversation was more direct than they favored among themselves. But I struck up a friendship with a couple of the younger sons, who took me off hunting. That was more to my taste, and more to my abilities, also. We got along famously then.

“Our journey led us eventually to the ancestral home itself, a moldering old pile now lost in the woods. There, one night, I was shown some rather curious documents.”

I sat up straighter.

Captain Tiger noted the movement and smiled drolly. “May I offer you a stein of ale, Master Omar?”

I accepted gratefully. Fritz went to draw it—a rather skimpy measure. Having teased us enough, the old rogue resumed his story.

“One of my ... cousins, I suppose they were ... the younger of my new friends, anyway, was indiscreet enough in his cups one night to remark that, for all their airs and graces, for all their titles and orders and ribbons, my grand relations were every one descended from a mere soldier of fortune like myself. He found that fact inexpressibly amusing.

At least, that night he did. Eventually he went away to some distant attic and returned with a very decrepit wooden box. It was Algazanian work, ibex and cheetahs ... no matter.

 

 

“Within this box reposed memoirs written by the founder himself. They were incomplete. Many sheets had been lost and many were so faded as to be illegible, but parts were quite detailed. Over the next few days ... I should mention I had sprained an ankle. Long reading is not my favored occupation, but I was temporarily housebound and so I worked my way through most of the pile. And some of it was certainly interesting stuff.

“It confirmed much of what Master Omar just told us, even in detail. My ancestor's full name, for example, was Great-memory of Bargar, but the exiles in Algazan found these cumbersome names inappropriate and subject to ridicule.

They shortened them, as you said. As I am Tiger, he was known as Memo.

“When young, he had fought in Morning-star's failed revolution. He was wounded, although not seriously. He escaped from Kylam in the very same ship as Sea-breaker.”

The rest of us all looked at the actress. I was surprised to see she had enough shame left to blush. I waited eagerly to hear the true story of White-thorn's escape from Vandok's torments, but it did not come. Either those details had not been included in Captain Tiger's mysterious box, or he was too respectful of the actress's feelings to discuss the subject further.

“So Master Omar left us dangling over the abyss, as His Honor puts it. I have read an eyewitness account of a meeting that transpired that night. I shall report it as well as my memory serves. If you require a title, then I suppose this would be called the Tale of the Improbable Pretender.”

 

 

 

11: The Soldier's Tale

 

At twenty-five, Memo had been a penniless exile on crutches. At fifty he was an honored citizen, famous, wealthy, and miserable. Or if not quite miserable, then discontented.

Unsatisfied.

He had been fortunate, perhaps too fortunate. He knew of hundreds who had fled his homeland at the same time as he.

They included men of skill and wit, men of courage and character, but very few had prospered as he had. He enjoyed respect and reputation, a luxurious home with many servants.

He loved his wife and daughter and received their love in return.

If he had achieved all this by courage, exertion, and endurance—or even by simple fortune, chance flight of arrow or stroke of sword in battle—then he could take some pride in it, but he feared it had all been a blessing from Bargar. If so, then he was grateful, and that was not enough.

Just before Memo had arrived on the island, the Emir had approved an expansion of the Algazanian Foreign Legion. On the strength of his experience fighting the Horsefolk and the wound he had received at Mill Creek, Memo was accepted into the ranks. He proved himself brave, loyal, and obedient, but he also paid heed to his family god, whose warnings frequently steered him aside from death or disaster. In the next twenty years he rose to the uppermost ranks of the Emir's army, leading the Algazanian forces to victory on more than one field.

 

 

At some point he found the time to woo and win the daughter of a prominent merchant. Their marriage was still a joy to them. Memo sometimes wondered if his many long absences had helped there—if the two of them had never been long enough together to grow bored. But at least he had not worn out his wife with childbearing as most men did.

Now he was too old to be a soldier; he had no other skills.

Trumpets announced his entry when he chose to visit the Emir's palace, but he detested the intrigues of court. His brothers-in-law ran the family business competently. If they were no more than average honest in their dealings with outsiders, still they did not cheat their sister, so money was no problem.

At fifty Memo could hope for another ten years of life, or even more. What was he to do with it?

Free his homeland, said his conscience. The tales from the Land Between the Seas were heartrending. Vandok the Ruthless ruled it still, striking down any who might ever threaten him-even, it was said, many of his own sons. His killers roamed at will across the country, randomly ravaging and slaying, competing in atrocity. The surest way to the king's favor was to perpetrate some new horror upon the population south of the ranges, or at least stir up a desperate revolt that would provide sport for the army. Month after month, gangs of youths and maidens were led north in chains to be sacrificed to Hool.

The seven cities lay in ruins, the countryside was devastated. Foreign merchants shunned the ports, because the people could offer nothing in trade. The only exceptions were slavers, who had only to open their hatches to have the holds filled with eager volunteers.

The exiles in Algazan provided what help they could, but it was insignificant. Few of them had money to spare. Once in a while they would charter a ship and offer free transportation overseas-not often to Algazan itself, for the Emir reasonably feared the flood that would have ensued had he permitted it.

Even this small effort was rarely a kindness. The lot of the emigrants in whatever land they reached was likely to be little better than serfdom. That was well known, and yet vessels had foundered in the harbors under the weight of refugees clambering aboard.

Not everyone had fled or would flee if given the chance.

Memo knew of several inhabitants of the Land Between the Seas who were distantly related to him. He had offered them refuge and been declined; he had done what he could to help them, although gold never arrived safely.

Always the exiles talked of gathering an army of liberation and invading the Land to drive out the barbarians, but such a campaign would need far greater resources than they could ever muster. Moreover, no one could seriously believe that the attempt would succeed. Vandok was too expert a tyrant and Hool too strong a god.

Thus, a few days after his fiftieth birthday, Great-memory of Bargar, known as Memo to his family and friends, to the government as Memo Pasha, was a restless, uneasy man.

Late one night, having bade farewell to the friends he had been entertaining, he paced his house in darkness, unable to rest. His wife had long since gone to bed. As always, the talk that night had been of the sufferings of the Land Between the Seas. As always, the news had been bad. As always, the solutions suggested had been wild-eyed and impracticable.

Memo Pasha had seen enough causes in his time to know a hopeless one, and every plan proposed at the table had been more desperate than the one before.

A man could not pace forever. He came at last to his study and the niche where Bargar resided. It was time for bed, and hence time to say his nightly prayer. He sank down to his knees, as he had done so many times before, and he made offering as he had seen his father do, long ago. Where his father had offered copper, Memo now offered gold, adding the coin to seven already lying there before the god's paws.

Sometimes the hoard would increase to a score or more, but sooner or later Bargar would speak on the matter, ordering Memo to buy his wife a new coach with it, or impose sudden wealth on a certain beggar, or any one of a dozen inexplicable things. It was the god's gold to do with as he pleased.

When the nightly offering was over, Memo would speak of his gratitude and his unhappiness. Always he would end with the simple prayer: “Tell me how I can help them, Most Holy Father.”

Sometimes the god would answer, sometimes he would not-gods and tigers both tend to be unpredictable. When he did reply, the reply would always be much the same: “I am your god, my son, not the god of your people. You I can guard and prosper, they are not my concern. I cannot stand against Hool, for I am only a little god. Small gods should not strive to be great gods-your ancestors discovered the folly of that. Be content with the passing pleasures of life.”

That night Memo stubbornly spoke his prayer again: “Tell me how I can help them, Most Holy Father.”

That night Bargar said simply, “Go out to your gate and find the boy who is waiting there. Bring him in, hear him, and believe.”

He looked about thirteen or fourteen years old-skinny as a fishing pole, not notably clean, but seemingly bright and healthy. He wore a grubby loincloth and clutched a small bundle in his puny arms as if it were more precious than the Emir's crown. His hair hung in tangles around his pinched features, one eye was puffed and discolored from a blow. He stood in the light of Memo's lantern, grinning up at him, gasping huge breaths as if he had been running, but Memo had been observing him for several minutes through the spy hole and knew that the lad had not been running. He had been sitting cross-legged in the dirt as if content to sit there all night. He might have been there for hours.

“Pasha, I was told to come and see you!” He spoke with a childish treble, in the tongue of the Godless.

“Who are you and who told you?”

“I am Juss, Pasha. Sure-justice of Kraw is my real name.

And Kraw told me.”

Kraw? Memo had a vague remembrance of a god by that name, but could not recall whose he had been. “Then you had best come in, Sure-justice. I am Great-memory of Bargar.”

Kraw? Kraw?

 

 

The youngster had caked blood on his back. He had obviously been in a fight recently. He stank of onions. He knew enough to remove his sandals at the house door, although they could not have been dirtier than his feet.

Viewed under the many lamps of the study, he seemed even bonier and grubbier than before, and the nits in his hair showed. His eyes were huge with wonder as he inspected the furniture, the rugs, the pictures, the drapes. His gaze came to rest on the niche with its amber tiger and its gold. He bowed to it and then shot a worried glance at Memo, wondering if he had offended.

“Bargar, my god,” Memo said. “He told me to bring you in and hear what you have to say, Sure-justice.”

The gamin grinned with delight, his adult teeth seeming far too large for his emaciated face. “Then perhaps my god has been speaking with your god, Pasha? Holy Kraw never spoke to me before tonight and what-”

“Wait!” Memo laughed. “Serious business takes time. You sit...” He chose a plain wooden chair that could be washed later and pulled it forward. “...here. Now, may I offer...” Wine would knock the kid out cold. Food? Of course food! “I will order something for you to eat. What would you like?”

Already perched on the chair, the boy just gaped at him.

“Come on!” Memo said. “What would you like most?”

Sure-justice of Kraw glanced around the room again and whispered, “Meat?” as if he were asking for the Emir's throne.

He licked his lips.

Memo reached for the bell rope. “When was the last time you tasted meat?”

 

 

“Don't remember. Had fish last summer, twice!”

“Mm. May I ask what you are carrying?”

“Kraw, Pasha. He said to bring him.”

Memo had just settled on a chair-a padded silk one-but he sprang to his feet at that news. To bring two gods into one room was generally regarded as disrespectful at best and unwise at worst, although it seemed that in this case the gods themselves had arranged this meeting. He wondered what correct protocol could be in such a situation. Nobody crowded a tiger.

“Perhaps he should be unwrapped and put in a place of honor. That shelf?”

Nodding eagerly, the boy proceeded to unwrap the cloth and reveal what appeared to be a black rock. “Kraw's a dragon's tooth!” he said proudly. He laid it on the shelf, bowed to it, then hurried back to his seat.

Nobody crowded dragons, either. What a combination!

A suspiciously sleepy-looking servant knelt in the doorway.

Memo ordered meat and bread, sweet cakes and fruit-nothing rich, just simple and plentiful, enough for two men. And quickly. Then he sat back and smiled at the bright dark eyes.

The boy would burst if he was not allowed to speak soon.

“Now, Sure-justice of Kraw, what did your god instruct you to tell me?”

Words exploded out of the boy, words that in two or three minutes turned his listener's world on its head. Sea-breaker of Kraw! Of course!

Memo did not have time to absorb one revelation before another lit the sky. As a boy, he had fought in Sea-breaker's troop at Mill Creek. They had fled into exile on the same ship, but in those days Sea-breaker had been a magistrate's son and Great-memory merely a farmer's. A year or more later, on returning from his first campaign with the Legion, Memo had heard quiet rumors that Morning-star's daughter had escaped and was in Algazan, also. He had even heard her mentioned as one of the casualties in the Great Pestilence, ten years ago. Nothing more, nothing since.

Hear, his god had told him, and believe.

“And he said you would help, Pasha!” The tale was ended, the boy staring at Memo with agonies of hope racking his face. Despite the hour, the majordomo himself now stood in the doorway to indicate that the supper was ready.

“Come and eat, Sure-justice, while I think.” Memo conducted his young guest through to the dining room. “Sit down. Tell the man what you want to start with. Water the wine well, Mustair. Some of the red for me.”

The pasha was famous for his hospitality. When the pasha said “enough for two men,” his staff would interpret that to mean that they would be shamed and disgraced if any two men in Algazan, hand-picked for their capacity, could possibly find the offering insufficient. The boy stared in total disbelief at the loaded boards, the golden dishes, then hesitantly pointed at a platter heaped with fat pork. The footman lifted it close, expecting to serve a few slices from it. As soon as it came within reach, Juss scooped up the entire contents with both hands and crammed them into his mouth.

Hear and believe!

 

 

Memo had heard. Memo could believe the tale-indeed he was satisfied that traces of Sea-breaker's features showed in that starving ragamuffin. Memo could believe that a war of liberation led by a grandson of Morning-star would have a vastly greater chance of success than just any old uprising.

Uprisings were ten a penny under Vandok. He encouraged them. But could Memo believe that it would succeed? Could he believe that it would help the people? Another failure like Morning-star's would turn the land to desert.

The next move, obviously, was to locate the older brother, the unschooled longshoreman who was the designated Liberator. The way Kraw and Bargar seemed to be cooking things up between them, Memo had been granted the job of training this unknown laborer into a patriot hero and war-winning general.

That'll teach me to complain to a tiger!

Memo ordered his coach made ready and his guards alerted. He paid his staff well; if he demanded service in the middle of the night, that was no more than his due.

The boy had reported that the elder brother was prizefighting at the Snakepit, the most notorious dive in the dockside area. Full marks for courage, low marks for brains!

Admittedly that was not a sissy's way of spending an evening, but what about leadership, charisma, the totality of the dozen character traits a successful revolutionary must display? A son of Morning-star's daughter could be expected to have courage. In fact White-thorn's legend might be even more of an asset than her father's. And the boy's father, Sea-br-No...

Great-memory of Kraw almost dropped his wine goblet.

 

 

 

"How old is Ven, did you say?”

Juss gulped down a fistful of something. “Twenty-three, Pasha. He'll be twenty-four in two months.”

Servants were rushing in with more dishes. The kid had cleared the first lot completely. He would probably be violently ill in a few minutes, all over the rugs. Memo was feeling almost that way himself, as if a camel had kicked him in the belly.

“Did your god tell you who Ven's father was?”

Still chewing, Juss shook his head, but the frightened expression in his eyes showed that he suspected.

Even a dragon would not want to break that sort of news.

The Snakepit was already emptying, its patrons staggering along the alley in a welter of drunken argument and singing: losers and winners respectively. Memo's guards closed in around their employer and forced a way through the raucous, stinking mob, then convoyed him downstairs to a cellar, almost dark now, suffocatingly opaque with tallow fumes. Not a few bodies lay amid the litter and overturned benches, most of them snoring heavily.

Juss screamed and rushed over to a corner where a group of six or seven men and boys had been laid out to mend. Two or three had recovered enough to sit up. One lay with his head at an impossible angle and would never move again.

They had all given their customers good value, and most looked as if they had been marched over by the entire Algazanian army.

 

 

By the time Memo arrived, Juss was frantically embracing the largest of them, heedless of what he was doing to his new garments.

That first sight of Cold-vengeance settled any doubts about the older brother's paternity. His fairish hair and reddish beard were unmistakable evidence of Horsefolk blood in his veins, and Vandok was reported to be a very large man. The rest of Cold-vengeance's appearance was distinctly discouraging. He was a dazed and bloody ruin. Breathing obviously hurt him; his face and hands were pulp. Even with help, he had trouble standing. He peered at Juss as if unable to recognize this beaming, happy youth.

Sighing at the thought of the new upholstery he had just had installed in his coach, Memo sent a rider home with orders to find a doctor.

Juss began to explain to his brother. Then he changed tactics and blatantly ordered the giant to trust him and do as he was told. Ven accepted that insolence meekly-astonishingly so. Even granted that he was not completely conscious, his deference to a slip of a boy hinted that Juss was going to be the brains of the family, if he wasn't already.

It was Memo's first inkling that he had been given two pupils, not one.

By the time he had brought his charges home, dawn was breaking and the house was in turmoil. Even his wife was up and dressed and demanding explanations, which he refused to give.

The doctor examined the fighter with distaste. Concussion, extensive bruising, loss of blood, cracked ribs, and broken fingers ... Ven even had two broken toes, so his opponent had not escaped unscathed.

Memo ordered him washed and deloused, bandaged, fed, and put to bed. Mustair had prepared two rooms for the guests, but Juss insisted on sharing with his brother, and took the family god in with them, also. Memo sent everyone off about his duties, using much the same technique on his wife that the boy had used on his brother. Peace returned.

Then he shut himself in his study and touched his forehead to the floor. “Most Holy Father, is he really the son of Vandok and White-thorn?”

No reply.

“Am I expected to turn that dockside lout into a revolutionary?”

Silence. Gods did not explain.

“Holy Father, the people will never trust him! He does not look like one of us! He can barely speak the language intelligibly. He is uneducated, ignorant, probably simple!”

More silence. Tigers were stubborn.

Desperate now, Memo said, “I grant you, Father, that he is a fighter. I can teach him to use a sword, but whatever brains he had to start with have all been knocked out of him already!”

At that Bargar growled, a blood-chilling sound Memo had heard only once before in his life. He apologized abjectly and hurried off to bed.

He left his guests to their own devices for three days.

The doctors had prescribed rest and a light diet for the invalid. On the first day, Mustair reported that the two brothers were consuming more food than the entire staff of the mansion. Memo told him not to skimp, and include lots of red meat.

On the second day, Mustair passed word that the older brother was fretting about his sweetheart.

“Tell him to write a note and we shall see it is delivered,”

Memo said, being fairly sure that neither brother could write.

“Meanwhile, can you lay a little temptation in his path?

Nothing blatant, of course ... A couple of youngish ... Pretty

... I mean, if they understand that they will be rewarded ...?”

Being a perfect majordomo, Mustair frequently knew his employer's mind before he did. With no change of expression at all, he said, “As the Pasha has commanded, so it is.”

Being a perfect majordomo, Mustair also knew the difference between gossip and relevant information. On the third day, he reported that the bait had been taken and the other girl sent back to her normal duties. With the merest hint of a smile, he added that the man had almost certainly been a virgin.

The note never appeared.

In retrospect, the fighter's injuries were a blessing. He was incapable of working, which meant that Memo's miraculous intervention had saved him from starvation. The brothers might realize that they were effectively in jail, but the alternative was far worse. They would not have been human had they been able to resist the sudden luxury, food in an abundance they had never known, respite from labor and worry.

 

 

Three days would give Juss time to break the news to his brother that his father had been the monstrous Vandok.

They gave Memo time to plan a war.

To mount an invasion he would need money, weapons, fighters, and ships. An uprising of the population would need money, weapons, and leadership. Both would need superb intelligence and perfect timing, and those in turn required an organized underground in the Land itself. Both! That was where the endless dinner table chatter had gone astray. The would-be plotters had never stood back far enough from the problem to appreciate the sheer size of it, the scale, the time it would take.

Memo had the ear of the Emir, friends in the palace and the army, relatives in the Algazanian mercantile community.

If it could be done at all, then he was the one to do it. Most important, he now had the grandsons of Morning-star as figureheads to rally the people.

After three days’ hard thought, he decided that it looked possible, from a purely secular point of view. It would take at least five years. Vandok himself was aging and he allowed no obvious successor to thrive, so someday there might be a chance to profit from a disorderly succession. Memo could raise and train an army in exile and a resistance movement in place. He could strike in winter when the passes were closed: Morning-star's primary error had been to underestimate the speed of the Horsefolk's response.

But that was the secular view. Memo could do nothing about Hool, the god of Vandok. History proved that the little gods of the people could not withstand Hool.

 

 

Realistically, therefore, the whole thing was impossible.

Memo did not think he could explain that to a tiger.

On the morning of the fourth day, he summoned the sons of White-thorn to a meeting in his garden, which was private and informal. He ordered that they be clad in the garb of their ancestors, so that he could see how they would look to the people if he did decide to proceed. Knowing that they would feel awkward in it, he dressed the same way himself, although he had not donned motley more than five or six times since he came to Algazan. He discovered that he had either lost the knack or lost a third hand, which seemed to be essential. He had to call on his body servant for assistance.

Even then, he had an uneasy feeling that it would all fall off him if he made one rash move.

He had arranged three chairs in a secluded arbor, with refreshments laid out on a table between them and a smaller table placed at the side. He brought Bargar out to lie on that, so the god could listen to the discussion.

Memo rose to his feet as the brothers approached along the path. The boy's sharp eyes noticed the god; he bowed to him first, then to his host. The man copied him, a fraction of a second later each time.

Memo was astonished by the improvement in the boy. Juss had already lost some of his skeletal thinness, and in the clear light of day his quick intelligence was obvious. With the slight frame and dark coloring of his race, Sure-justice was a believable grandson of Morning-star. He was grinning nervously, but he clutched a small bundle that must certainly contain Kraw, his dragon god, so he had foreseen the possibility of being thrown out on his ear at the end of the interview. A realist!

Ven's battered face was halfway back to being human. His hands and right foot were bandaged and more bandages showed through the low neckline of his motley. He was undoubtedly built on a heroic scale, slabbed with muscle, and the stolidity that had seemed like dull wits before now hinted more at steady nerve and courage. In the proper setting he might impress, but he was quite obviously of Horsefolk descent. Why should the people ever trust him?

Memo offered his guests chairs. They sat down diffidently, glancing around with wonder at the flowers and shrubbery.

His home must be more luxurious than anything they could ever have imagined, although it was very modest by the standards of the Algazanian nobility.

He bowed to them before taking his own seat. “I honor the grandsons of Morning-star and the sons of White-thorn, his heroic daughter.”

The boy grinned. The man said nothing, watching his host with bleary, puffed gray eyes and an air of wary distrust.

Memo poured wine, watering the boy's. “Is there anything you lack? My house is yours.” That was a formula that he hoped they would not interpret too literally. “My servants will gladly provide anything you ask.”

Juss glanced sideways at his brother and smothered a grin.

“You are most generous, Pasha,” the man said.

Small talk was going to be difficult, obviously. Pasha Memo had absolutely nothing in common with these two, nothing to discuss except business.

 

 

“I assume that Kraw is in there?” He pointed to the package.

Juss nodded, suddenly worried. He glanced uneasily at the tiger figurine on the side table.

“You are not familiar with these odd costumes? This is what people wear in our homeland, the Land Between the Seas. They use the upper part to carry things, especially their family gods, when they need be transported. That way they are next their hearts, you see.”

The boy grinned. He snatched up his bundle and tucked it into his motley. It gave him a notable bosom on one side.

Memo turned to the elder. “I trust you are feeling better, Cold-vengeance?”

“I am very grateful for what you have done, Pasha.” The big man spoke in a guttural parody of his forefathers’ tongue.

“I am honored to aid the sons of White-thorn.”

Juss shot his brother a worried glance.

Something about Ven's face suggested that it might have flushed had there been any of it not covered with beard or bruises. “Even the son that Vandok bred on her by public rape?”

“The guilt is not yours. Tell me how you feel about Vandok.”

“I am inclined to kill myself for being his spawn,” the big man growled. “He is a monster.”

“Given the chance, would you make war on him?”

The big man twisted his swollen lips. “Gladly!”

“Can we?” the boy demanded eagerly.

 

 

Memo sighed. “I have thought about nothing else for three days. To be honest, I don't think we can. The barbarians are strong. To raise the people again and fail again would be a terrible crime. To finance and organize a war, if it can be done at all, would take years. I admit, though, that the sons of White-thorn would rally more support than any other leader.”

“The son of Vandok?” Ven said contemptuously.

Either the dockside lout was not as stupid as he looked, or his quick-witted brother had coached him. He had certainly gone to the heart of the problem.

Memo sipped his wine. No, the older brother was impossible. Shave off his beard and dye his hair black and he would still look like a Horseman.

What of the younger, then? He was bright and young enough to learn, although the list of things a successful revolutionary must know was mind-boggling: strategy, tactics, ordnance, finance, economics, rhetoric, politics, leadership ... At the moment the lad would not know what the words meant. He did not even speak the language well.

How long? Juss was barely fourteen. Ten years might do it-but Memo was fifty. He might not have ten years, not ten good years, not in Algazan.

“I asked my god what I could do,” he said sadly. “Bargar told me to listen to Juss and believe him. I did believe you, lad! I still do, and I honor my god. But his interest is not the welfare of our people. He is the god of my own family, not anyone else's. He may just be trying to ease my unhappiness by giving me a cause to believe in, and I find that I cannot believe in it. It will fail.

 

 

“Much as I would love to throw out the barbarians and restore freedom and democracy, my answer is no.”

Two young faces stared at him in horror and disappointment.

“You two are welcome to remain here, in my service. I promise your lives will be much more pleasant than they have been to date.”

“But Kraw told Juss...”

“With all respect to Holy Kraw, Cold-vengeance, and to my beloved Bargar, also, they are little gods. All the gods of the Land of Many Gods, as it once was, cannot stand against Hool.”

Seeming puzzled, the man looked to his brother.

The boy was grinning triumphantly. “You have forgotten the oracle, Pasha?”

Memo's heart skipped a beat. “What oracle?”

“Hool himself!” Juss shouted. “When he ordered Hannail to invade the Land, he promised that his seed would rule it forever, didn't he? Well, then! Why do you think our mother got Vandok to rape her?”

For a long moment, that outrageous question left Memo speechless. Then he said, “Did Kraw tell you this?”

“No,” Juss admitted. “I worked it out. It's obvious, isn't it?”

 

 

 

12: Interlude

 

Another tree cracked open in the forest. The fire still roared, but frost glimmered on the hinges of the shutters and I could feel a steady chill on my back. Had I been in a superstitious mood, I might have taken that for an omen.

“The rest is history,” the soldier said. “It took him six years, of course. But the results are well known.”

The merchant had fallen asleep with his head on the back of his chair. His snores gurgled disgustingly. The actress was feeling more confident, eyeing me with an intense dislike I had done nothing to earn.

I glanced uneasily around the group. Was the contest still continuing? Could even I top that tale? “Not known to all of us, I'm sure, Captain. The authenticity of your narration is inspiring. Pray tell us of those six years.”

“They were missing. The pages may have been lost, or they may have been somewhere else in the box, out of sequence. I did not find them.”

“That is indeed a pity.”

The old soldier had made his ancestor come to life for me.

He had made Great-memory of Bargar seem very much like Captain Tiger. I suspected that Captain Tiger also had found a cause to promote in his declining years. I even thought I knew what it was, but we were not quite ready for that story.

Fritz stretched, smiling sleepily, somewhat like a lion waking to go in search of supper.

 

 

The dowager smothered a yawn and replaced her hand in her muff. “I suppose Master Omar should be given a chance to respond. Can you make it brief, storyteller?”

I could try to make it last until springtime. “Of course, ma'am. Gentle lords, fair ladies, this one is called the Tale of the Homing Pigeon.”

 

 

 

13: Omar's Response to the Soldier's Tale Thirty years after Morning-star's failed revolution, forest had swallowed the ruins of Kylam.

After sacking all seven of the cities of the Land Between the Seas, Vandok returned to the site of his father's murder.

He rounded up the surviving natives and set them to collecting fuel—trees, furniture, boats, books, fences, fishing nets, anything that had not already been burned. With all this, he built a pyre on the spot where his father had died and where he had first abused White-thorn. He did not order a halt until the great hall was packed to the roof and not a twig remained within a day's ride.

Then he set fire to it, and it burned for days. The roof collapsed, of course. Much to the king's disappointment, not all the walls did. When the embers were cool enough to approach, he discovered that the stone had fused into a hard green glass that defied all efforts at further destruction. He rode away in disgust, and there is no record that he ever returned to the site.

A small fishing village eventually grew up a few miles farther south, but Kylam itself was abandoned. Trees seeded where it had stood. The ashes within the old hall had made fertile soil, but either it was not deep enough for tree roots, or perhaps the drainage was poor. For whatever reason, the forest shunned the interior of the basilica, leaving it open to the sky, but carpeted with grass and flowers, mostly a form of pale wild rose. This natural garden was walled by grotesque shapes like a frozen dance of giants—ropy, shiny pillars of bizarre form, spikes and fists, on which not even creepers could find purchase. It was a strange, unworldly monument to sad events.

One summer afternoon, two men converged upon this site from opposite directions. Neither knew the forest well, but each knew of the glass garden and contrived to find his way there. They had never met, they had never corresponded, and yet they came somehow to the right place at the right time.

They moved with caution, because the Land Between the Seas was perilous country. When Horsefolk warriors came of age on the grasslands, they were sent south in bands to ravage for a year. They were expected to return with a collection of gruesome relics to show their prowess as killers, plus a gang of youths and maidens to sacrifice to Hool. Then they would settle down to breed more warriors. Every few years, the king himself would lead a larger expedition around to demonstrate what real brutality was.

The native inhabitants were hardly less dangerous, a bitter people. Who could blame them? Anything they created in their lives became automatic hostage to the Horsefolk's spite.

Their crops and hovels might be burned without reason, their children carried off. They dwelt in secret places among the hills, cultivating hidden patches within the forests. Many had abandoned civilized life altogether, living like beasts and preying upon anyone weaker than themselves. The travelers’

caution was merely prudence.

 

 

The first to arrive at the garden was a youngster of around twenty. Specifically, his age was twenty years and one month, give or take a day or two. He was of middle height, slim, sinewy. His hair and close-trimmed beard were black, his eyes dark but bright, and although he had a ready smile, he could be dangerous. He wore the standard motley of the country, but in somber and inconspicuous hues, mainly brown. At this season of high summer, he had left his arms and legs bare. A sword dangled at his side and he could use it.

Having located the ruins, he leaned against the trunk of a beech to study them. He heard birds chirping, insects buzzing. Only when he was completely satisfied that there was nothing more did he approach the walls, moving cautiously to the lowest point he could find. Even that was higher than his head. He clambered some way up an ash tree nearby, being careful not to make it sway. From there he could see the interior. It was deserted. He waited.

The other man, meanwhile, had reached the far side. He took fewer precautions, although he was wary. The two men were of similar type, with much the same trim build and, to casual observation, of much the same age. This one was brown-haired, gray-eyed ... clean-shaven, as I recall. He, too, wore motley of inconspicuous shades, but in his case mostly greens, and he carried a package or two tucked in the front of it, making the cloth bulge oddly. He was unarmed except for a long staff over his shoulder, from which dangled a wayfarer's bundle.

 

 

Green-motley was either more fortunate or better counseled in his choice of approach than Brown-motley, for there was an easy entry on that side. Whether it had originally been a door or a window was impossible to determine. Now it was a blob-shaped hole at waist height on the outside, but slightly higher inside. Having inspected the interior for ambush, the newcomer clambered through and dropped to the ground.

He then advanced cautiously through the flowered shrubs, parting them with the edge of his staff and moving carefully.

To the watcher in the ash tree, he seemed to be looking for something. Soon, though, having reached a glassy boulder, he sat down with his back to the entrance. Reaching inside the folds of his motley, he brought out a crusty roll, a hunk of cheese, and two peaches. These he proceeded to eat, while the sun dipped toward the treetops.

Brown-motley climbed down from his perch and set off around the outside of the ruin to take Green from the rear.

When he reached the porthole, a quick glance established that his quarry was still sitting on the boulder, apparently lost in thought and unaware of the challenger creeping up behind him. Brown drew his sword and jumped into the aperture.

Then things went slightly wrong.

First, the glassy wall was extremely slippery. Second, he had failed to observe that the interior was in shade and the sun was behind him, so his shadow could hardly fail to alert his intended victim. Third, Brown had forgotten that the interior was lower than the ground outside, and he landed roughly. Fourth, he came down in a tangle of wild roses. As far as thorns were concerned, he was wearing nothing between his shoes and his crotch. He stumbled, staggered, and swore luridly. Green's staff cracked down on his arm, sending his sword spinning into the shrubbery.

Brown stood there unarmed, within reach of a second stroke that could split his skull. The two men studied each other for a moment.

Green smiled as if satisfied, lowering his staff. He sat down and gestured at a rock in the sunlight nearby. “Pull up a boulder and make yourself at home.”

His attitude was unnervingly confident. Brown glanced around, listening, rubbing his tingling arm, and wondering if he had just walked into a trap. Hearing nothing suspicious, he retrieved his sword and picked his way through the thorns, parting them with his sword just as the first man had done with his staff. He did not go to the indicated seat, though. He approached the other and put the blade close to Green's eyes.

“Who are you?” Brown was young and he had just made a fool of himself. He was annoyed by his own clumsiness and even more annoyed by his opponent's apparent lack of concern.

“I was here first, so you introduce yourself.”

“But I have the sword.”

Green shrugged. “Again. You display a regrettable lack of manners in the way you keep flaunting it. If I have to disarm you a second time, I am liable to break something. Well, my name will mean nothing to you, but in your dialect you would pronounce it Homer. And yours?”

“I prefer not to give it at the moment.”

 

 

“Then I will address you as Juss.”

Brown flicked his sword angrily. “How do you know that?”

“Rumors swarm over the countryside like ants.” Homer was not concealing amusement. “The sons of White-thorn have come to raise the banner of liberty and so on. Juss is the name of the younger brother, short for Sure-justice.

You're too young to be the elder.”

Juss glared suspiciously.

Homer's eyes twinkled with devilment. “And you don't look the way I expect him to look. Now why don't you sit down and exchange stories in civilized fashion?”

“How do you expect him to look?”

“Sit down.”

Juss moved his sword closer. “Answer my questions!”

“Go to Hool.”

The sword flicked again, this time opening a tiny slit on Homer's chin. The wound was little more than a shaving nick and hence an impressive display of skill with a yard of steel, but not in the best of taste.

The victim recoiled angrily. “The locals term these bushes white thorn. Did you know that?”

“What of it?”

Pressing the fingers of one hand to his chin, Homer gestured with the other. “The gods raised this place to her memory. This was where it happened. Right here.”

Juss looked around the walled garden and then stared at the other man with disbelief. “How do you know that?”

“Because I saw it. I saw your brother conceived.”

“That is impossible! You are far too young!”

 

 

“I may be older than I look. Now sit down, stripling.”

This time Juss obeyed, taking the other boulder. The sunlight had moved off it. Homer smiled approvingly.

Scowling, Juss sheathed his sword. “Why are you here?”

“Because of a dream. Several dreams. I saw this place, and I saw you. I knew then that it was time.”

“Time to do what?”

“First tell me why you are here.”

“Because my god told me to come.”

The Homer man nodded, seeming pleased. “Then you admit that you are the son of White-thorn? Don't bother to deny it. You look very like your father, Sea-breaker. Not as tall.”

Brown frowned disbelievingly. “I am Juss. And who are you?”

“A footloose trader of tales, a vagabond. I met her here in this hall, when it was a hall, one morning thirty years ago.

She gave me something to look after, and I have guarded it ever since. When she had done that, she went to find her revenge and I watched.” He sighed and for a moment the shadows seemed to deepen around him. “Such courage!” he murmured.

“Will you tell me about it, please?”

“I could, but I think another will tell you better. Why did your god order you to come here?”

“He didn't say why. Gods don't explain.”

Homer raised his eyebrows. “They can be annoying, can't they! Very well. I have a question. Will you ask it for me and tell me the answer if you get it?”

 

 

“What is it?”

“You don't give up easily, do you? White-thorn carried a knife that day, a stiletto. Vandok assumed that she intended to kill him. I think she used the knife as a decoy. I think she expected it to be found. I want to know if she planned all along to bear Vandok's child. I must know! The question has bedeviled me for thirty years.”

Juss smiled wryly. “It has bedeviled me for six. If I am told the answer, I shall tell you.”

Homer nodded and reached again inside his motley, this time producing a small bundle. “You know what she is?”

"She?"

“I have always thought of her as female. It does not matter with gods. Her name?”

“Verl. But I don't know what she—he—is.”

“A dove.”

Homer handed over the parcel. Juss took it reverently and unwrapped it. He could not conceal a flicker of surprise, or perhaps disappointment.

“She is nothing much to look at,” the trader of tales murmured. “I have sprinkled grain before her once in a while, so she would know she was not forgotten, but of course she will not speak to me. Nor to you while I am here. So why don't I take a stroll while you attend to your prayers?”

Leaving his bundle, the man in green picked his way back to the entrance and clambered out, while the other laid his little god on the rock and knelt before him.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, Homer scrambled in through the hole again. Juss had wrapped up the god and tucked her away next to his heart. He was smiling, but his eyes were pink and shiny.

“Well?” Homer demanded.

“He says that White-thorn would have killed Vandok if she had the chance, but she did not expect to. She was counting on the oracle.”

The storyteller nodded with satisfaction. “That was what I suspected. I hope your brother is worthy?”

“He certainly is!” The young man cleared his throat and held out a hand. “Does this complete our business, Friend Homer?”

“Not at all! I want to hear all the details! How did she escape, and where did she go, and what happened to her, and who organized this revolution?”

Juss glanced up at the darkening sky. “Some of that I do not know. Some I cannot reveal. The rest I will tell you willingly. Verl says you may be trusted.”

“I should hope so, after all these years!”

“Then we can go back to our stronghold and I shall introduce you to a few of our locals. Why don't we talk on the way?”

So we did that. This was the beginning of the revolution, the Winter War. Vandok came south just before the passes were closed by the snows, but the countryside rose against him. The Resistance was aided by the little gods, who could pass word of all the tyrant's movements. By spring he was fighting a retreat, and he lost most of his army withdrawing through the mountains. Cold-vengeance was then proclaimed king of the Land Between the Seas, which henceforth was to be known as Verlia, and—

"That is not correct,” the notary said.

 

 

 

14: Argument

 

“Foul!” I yelled. “You interrupted me!”

“You were misrepresenting the facts,” the clerk retorted, recoiling from my anger.

“You quibbling, bug-infested, ignorant hair-splitter! I will squeeze your grubby little throat until the blackheads pop out of your nose. I was telling a tale on which my life depends and you have the audacity to interpose your ignorant—”

“Gentlemen!” the dowager snapped. “The intrusion was ill-mannered, the response excessive. Continue your improbable fable, Master Omar.”

“Improbable fable? What sort of leading remark is that when the matter is still sub-judice? You have prejudiced my case, my lady! And how can I possibly recapture the magic, the air of wonder, rebuild the rising mystery, the unmistak—”

“The unmitigated claptrap!” interposed the merchant, who had now wakened and was glowering sourly at me from his chair by the fire. “You were dropping hints that the ‘Homer’

character was yourself, two hundred years ago. You think us so gullible or superstitious that we can be frightened into saving you from our host's righteous wrath? You remain a dog killer and a would-be horse thief, and all your sly hints of immortality will not keep your backside from freezing out there in the snow. Begging your pardon, ladies.”

The actress smirked.

“We have already agreed,” I said coldly, “that my name has been used for centuries as a generic term for storytellers.

 

 

One such was involved in the events I was attempting to recount.”

“You said ‘we'!” the actress remarked.

“I may have let myself be carried away by the drama of my own narrative. It happens.”

Gwill shot me a worried look, although I had thought him more nearly convinced than any. “I do think we should let Master Omar continue,” he croaked.

“I refuse! This round of the contest must be declared null and void.”

The old soldier smiled like a cat with an especially obese canary. “How seldom roles are invoked by winners!”

“If Master Omar truly believes in his own immortality,” the actress remarked acidly, “then I fail to understand why he is so obviously worried by our host's hostile intentions.”

I had never claimed that I did not feel pain. Besides, there is only one way to prove you are mortal, which is why I have never attempted it.

Leering, Fritz rose. “I need go out and fetch more wood, lords and ladies. Do not let the thud of my ax or the howling of wolves disturb your conversation.” He took me by the collar of my doublet with one hand and lifted me effortlessly right into the air. “Say good night to the nice people, Omar.”

“Just a moment!” The dowager was frowning intently at the notary, her forehead shriveled like a skin on hot milk.

“What exactly were you objecting to in Master Omar's wild yarn?”

Wild yarn! Had I been breathing at the moment, I should certainly have objected to that affront.

 

 

The clerk pursed his lips. “He omitted certain curious matters that intervened between the military campaign and the establishment of the kingdom of Verlia.”

I made a memorably horrible noise.

“Put him down, innkeeper,” the dowager said.

Fritz lowered me until my toes touched the floor again.

“I am just coming to that,” I wheezed, sounding even worse than the minstrel did.

Fritz raised me again. “No you aren't.”

“What do you know about those affairs, master?” The dowager glared at the notary with open suspicion.

His smile was low in humor, high in smugness. “It is a privileged matter, ma'am.”

The merchant beamed complacently. “Master Tickenpepper is an authority on the subject. He has been researching it for me.”

“Indeed?” The old crone exchanged glances with the soldier. “And you know something of the matter, also, Omar?

Omar? Innkeeper, please!”

Once more Fritz lowered me until my toes touched the floor. I managed to nod as I dragged in some air. I had not realized that the notary was associated with the burgomaster and his talented bride, but just then I had more urgent matters to worry about, especially the way Fritz was quietly twisting the collar of his second-best doublet.

The dowager still had control of the room. “Then perhaps you will relate those events to us, Master Tickenpepper? And I suppose we may as well let Omar contribute, just in case he does know anything relevant.”

 

 

Fritz thumped me back down on the bench like a landed fish. He stalked over to the wood bin and tossed the last couple of logs on the embers. Then he also resumed his seat, scowling promises at me.

I recalled how the beloved Osmosis of Sooth always taught us to love our enemies, but preferably at a safe distance.

The merchant leaned back, stretching out his feet and folding his hands over the gold chain on his paunch. The actress had assumed her most demure expression, which would have uncurdled cheese. As my wits returned, I began to sense a new tension in the room. The soldier was intent; even the lady's maid was clasping her hands so tightly that the knuckles showed white. Like me, they had not associated the notary with the other two until now.

“If my client wishes me to discuss the matter,” the clerk said primly, “then I can attempt an exegesis of the salient points. You may find it a bizarre record. The precepts and precedents of foreign jurisprudence can hardly compare with those of civilized realms like the...” He coughed faintly. “I must say that the fire has made my throat a trifle dry, Burgomaster.”

The merchant nodded grumpily to the innkeeper. As Fritz went to fill the stein, Master Tickenpepper recounted his education and qualifications. He was apparently the leading legal mind of Schlosbelsh, which I found an unnerving revelation. Then he launched into a windy, desiccated account of a great historic catharsis, missing all its pathos and drama.

 

 

I hope no storyteller of his caliber ever addresses a court on my behalf—that would guarantee a death penalty, no matter how minor the offense.

Had I been telling the tale, it would have gone more like this.

 

 

15: The Tale the Notary Did Not Tell I caught up with the army again in the valley of the Dubglas, just below Cemetery Pass. With evening falling and the weather throwing a tantrum, the beetling crags ahead beetled unseen. Snow blew in my face, so that I almost walked onto the first sentry's pike. Fortunately I knew a password good enough to get me to his sergeant and a lantern. My credential was signed by Juss himself and validated with some highly ornate seals to impress the illiterate. I don't know if Sergeant Blood-oath could read or not. It didn't matter, because he remembered me from Redberry Pond and Lone Oak Hill. I soon found myself by a campfire with old friends, sharing a stew worth more for heat than meat, but still very welcome.

“Here's trouble!” Private Horse-hater proclaimed. “Any time Homer turns up, you can tell there's going to be trouble.”

It was true I often wandered off to more interesting places during the long dull days of waiting that make up most any war. Armies are only part of the story. I could usually count on my knack for timing to bring me back when important things were about to happen, and now felt about right. So Horse had a point.

Nevertheless, I told him he didn't need me to get into trouble. He'd been promoted to sergeant three times in the last half year, hadn't he? And been busted every time?

 

 

Four times, he admitted, grinning with a mouthful of broken teeth. Twice in one day at Redberry Pond.

Now that had been an interesting day, the others agreed.

They could use more days like that one. All those prisoners bound to trees with their own intestines—what more could a man want? Well, plenty. They began to reminisce about what they had done with the next lot, and the ones after, and then moved on to consider techniques for the future. I sat and gathered tales.

Less than a year before, Ven had raised the banner of freedom, promising to restore democracy and overthrow the tyrant. He had launched his war with an elite corps of ex-patriots, Algazanian by birth and training, a professional army. The natives then were raw animals, crushed by lifetime despair into something less than human. But they knew how to hate. Men, boys, even women with babes on their backs, flocked in thousands to join the revolution. The war gave them purpose, skills, respect, and revenge. They had swallowed up the elite, swelling into a huge national uprising, willing to drown the tyrant in their own blood or starve to death trying.

Those men were as tough as any I have ever seen, which is no small commendation. They hated their foes with suicidal intensity. They would follow horsemen into half-frozen rivers—I saw that, more than once. If a dozen freedom fighters must die to kill one of the enemy, two dozen would volunteer on the spot. Vandok could not bring up reinforcements as long as the passes stayed closed; he was outnumbered, running out of fodder and arrows and men.

 

 

Soon he would be the only one left. For once, a war of attrition had favored the infantry.

Pitting foot soldiers against cavalry is usually a futile business, for neither side is capable of striking a decisive blow. The sloggers can hold a stronghold but not a country.

The riders can cut their opponents’ supply lines, but rarely do enough damage to drive them away. Neither side can ever win. Eventually one or the other gives up, when there is nothing left to fight over.

In this case the Horsefolk had an enormous advantage because their women and children were safely out of reach beyond the peaks, but they were up against the only army I had ever seen fight cavalry by lying down. No horse will charge over a human carpet. The Horsefolk also ran into trip wires, hidden ditches, and needle-sharp caltrops, which the Algazanians had provided by the shipload. Ven had few cavalry of his own at the beginning, but every captured horse was recruited. I told you what happened to human prisoners.

I have witnessed many savage campaigns, but none more bitter than the Winter War.

After an hour or so, I began to grow fidgety. I rose and wandered off into the camp. Fires glowed blearily through the driving snow. I passed within earshot of oxen, horses, and mules, downwind of the cookhouse and the latrines.

Eventually I located the leaders’ quarter. I slipped unobserved past a sentry and almost stumbled over a man kneeling in the snow, muttering. I hurried by him, avoided another doing the same, and came upon a third just rising to his feet. As he began to walk, I recognized Juss and called out to him. He spun around, reaching for his sword hilt.

“Homer!” I said quickly.

He relaxed. “Ha! Now I know we have trouble. You always turn up at the critical moments, don't you?” He laughed shrilly.

“What critical moment is this?”

Juss was almost unrecognizable as the pert youth of the previous summer. His beard was wild and bushy, he had added beef to his slight frame, and his eyes were the eyes of a killer. He was swathed in woolen blankets until he looked like a two-legged bullock, caked with snow. To the army he was “General Brains” and his brother was “General Brawn.” It was a fair distinction, but Brains was brawnier than before and Brawn had learned a lot.

“Council of War. Come with me, Trader of Tales.” He gripped my arm and half dragged me along as he strode through the snow.

“What's the problem?”

“No problem! The war is over for now. Vandok has withdrawn into Cemetery Pass.”

“So you have him bottled up? You can starve him out?”

Juss chuckled and pushed me ahead of him into a large tent. There was no table, no stove. One dim lantern hung from the ridgepole and the floor was a mess of trampled mud, snow, and grass. A circle of miscellaneous bundles served as chairs. Ven sat on one, conferring with a couple of his Algazanian advisors. None of them looked up as we entered.

 

 

Ven was the only man in the army who shaved his face every day, and he always kept his hat on. Without those precautions, he would have looked so much like one of the enemy that some maniac would have surely killed him. At first I had been inclined to underestimate the big man, with his battered features and slow talk. Like the army, I had assumed that Juss had all the family brains. Now I knew that Ven just liked to think things through at his own pace. He usually arrived safely at the right decision. In battle he did not need to think; with a sword in his hand he moved like sunlight on water.

More men came stumbling into the tent, shaking snow from their robes, wiping it out of their eyes and beards.

Shadows flowed over the walls.

Armies are attentive to their gods, always. They carry holy relics, chant hymns, make sacrifice, consult auguries. I once saw a god lead an army in person, but this was the first I had ever met where the gods were almost as numerous as the mortals. How much they had intervened in the actual fighting, I have no way of knowing. I suspect very little. Household deities would be out of their depth in battle, and they may have feared that they would bring down Hool's wrath on themselves if they meddled in great affairs. They certainly gave advice, though, and they passed on valuable military intelligence. Vandok could not brush his teeth without Ven hearing of it. The Council of War had been adjourned so that each member could go off and consult his family god. Now it was about to resume.

 

 

“We've won!” Juss said in my ear. There was a squeak of hysteria in his voice. “We can just leave a garrison here and go! Go south, to warm baths and clean clothes! And beds.

Food! Oh, my ancestral gods! Women! Vandok can't mount another attack. He's beaten.”

“You can starve him out?” I asked again. I did not add

“Without starving yourselves, as well?” but I was thinking it and Juss knew I was. Only a sizable garrison could be sure of balking an attempt at breakout.

“For certain. We can keep him bottled up at this end.”

“Can you really? He has plenty of horseflesh to eat. The weather will break soon, it must. What will a sudden thaw do to the pass?”

Juss's dark eyes blazed at me. Then he pulled a face and sighed in surrender. “Thaw or no thaw, Vandok himself can escape. He will have to abandon his horses and his wounded, but he can cross the pass on foot, back to the steppes.”

“And next summer?”

“He'll be back, or we can go to him ... Homer, we can't go in there after him! The men are dying on their feet! A break will help us as much as Vandok.”

Would it? Physically, both sides needed rest and regroupment. Granted that the two exhausted, starving armies facing off in impossible terrain were equally incapable of fighting anymore, in terms of morale Vandok had far more to gain from a respite. At the moment he was beaten and retreating. He would benefit materially, also, for he could call on a fresh and healthy population, while Ven's land lay in ruins. To withdraw now was to concede both this campaign and the next.

As I thought about the choice, though, I saw what Juss meant. The alternative was worse. Vandok himself was the only one who really mattered, and he would certainly escape.

For Ven to try to follow—leading a frozen, starving rabble over the mountains into his enemy's home territory—would be a desperate, suicidal maneuver. He would risk everything on one stroke, and what could he gain except leagues of empty grass? There were no cities there to pillage, no castles to storm. Vandok would vanish over the plains, or circle around and cut the invaders off.

All the seats but one were filled now.

“What does Kraw say?” I demanded.

Juss snorted. “Kraw is a dragon.” He stalked away to take his place at his brother's side. I remained standing in the corner, and no one paid me much heed. That was one of the nice things about being friends with a god. Verl had told both Juss and Ven that I could be trusted, so I was trusted. It was her way of thanking me, I suppose. I wondered what advice she had given Ven.

The brothers had divided their two gods between them.

Juss was Sure-justice of Kraw, his father's god. Ven was Cold-vengeance of Verl, his mother's. He would not claim his father's, for obvious reasons.

“We will resume,” Ven said, and the mutter of conversation died at once. “Bright-hope?”

 

 

“Gardilf says we should withdraw,” the first man said.

Something in the way he said it told me that he did not agree with his god's advice.

“Many-virtues?”

“Lokir says attack,” the next man said, even more glumly.

“Straight-blade?”

Ven quizzed every one in turn. The two Algazanian advisors watched with expressions so noncommittal that they spoke volumes. It soon became obvious that the gods were just as divided as the mortals. Finally:

“Sure-justice?”

Juss shrugged. “Kraw says attack, of course! What did Verl say?”

His brother ignored the question for a moment. Ven's thought processes were like ice floes, slow and irresistible.

Then he rose to his feet, and of course his size and winter clothing made him loom enormous over everyone else. I guessed what was coming. Men do not stand up to announce withdrawals. Ven was a fighter.

He glowered around with his ugly bruiser's features. “Verl said that the problem is Hool. Hool has not intervened so far.

The little gods do not know if he will, or how he will. She said that life-and-death decisions should be made by mortals. You are equally divided and your gods are equally divided.

Someone must break the deadlock. Does anyone question my right to do that?”

One man began to speak and quailed under his leader's scowl.

 

 

“Very well,” Ven concluded. “I say that wars are not won by retreats. We will advance into the pass at dawn. We will continue to engage the enemy as long as there is an enemy.

We will fight to the last man, whichever side he may be on.”

He did not pause to let them cheer. That was not his style.

Nor would he tolerate argument once he had made a decision.

He began to talk logistics: priorities in the baggage train, the commissary, tents, and ordnance. I studied the eyes around the circle. I saw little admiration, much fear and doubt and anger. Juss and a few others had crumpled in despair. And these were the senior officers! If Ven could bring his army into battle on the morrow, he would have dragged it there himself, by brute strength of will.

In some ways he took after his father.

The next morning the army of liberation advanced into Cemetery Pass in a blizzard, filling the gorge from wall to wall. Losses on both sides were heavy, but the weather and terrain were impossible for cavalry. The human tide drove the Horsefolk relentlessly before it. By nightfall the barbarians had abandoned their mounts and were fleeing up rocky slopes on hands and knees. Ven led his warriors in pursuit.

The clouds cleared and the battle continued by moonlight, moving even higher up the glacier. The temperature dropped precipitously. Fingers stuck to ice or steel. Men tumbled into crevasses. Many dropped in their tracks and froze to death.

There was little real fighting now. The Horsemen fled, the army of liberation pursued, and it gave no quarter.

If there was anything in the melee that could be called a battlefront, it crossed the height of land as the sun rose. The glare brought on snow blindness and triggered avalanches. A human cataract slithered and slid down the incline, fighting when the opportunity presented itself, otherwise merely struggling to survive. There could be no going back now.

As evening fell, the horde spilled into a forest below the snow line. Men lay down in heaps and slept. It hardly seemed to matter, for there was no enemy left. After eighty years of subjugation, the people of the Land Between the Seas had driven the Horsefolk back across the frontier.

So far as was known, Vandok was still alive, although his army had been destroyed. The Horsefolk were certainly capable of raising another, probably very quickly. He might counterattack the invaders; he might break through an easier pass and outflank them.

Even Ven must have wondered what he was going to do next. That problem was in the lap of the gods.

I wish I had been there to witness all that I have just described. I did not arrive until the middle of the following day.

Ven had left Juss in charge of supplies, and he organized a human baggage train more than four thousand strong. It snaked through the pass, over the glaciers, and down the other side like a line of beetles. If you have never crossed a mountain range with a sack of meal on your back, then I strongly recommend that you try it. It is an experience without equal. On the way up I was convinced my heart would burst. At the top I thought my lungs would. By the end, I was certain I should never stand up straight again.

 

 

The worst part, though, was arriving too late to see the band of Horsefolk elders that approached under flag of truce and delivered Vandok bound into the hands of his son.

Nor did I see the argument that followed. Ven could never have displayed greater leadership and power of command than he did then, just saving his prisoner from being ripped to shreds. The accounts I was able to gather later were so contradictory that I could make no sense of them. By the time I staggered in with my sack of meal, the principals had all departed for Hool's cave.

I set off at a run. The valley was only a few leagues away and I am happy to report that I caught up with the rearguard after a few hours.

I had a good pair of boots.

The holy valley is a forbidding place, a winding gorge whose sides are steep slopes of rock debris, holding very little vegetation. Above them rise vertical cliffs, sculpted into bizarre shapes and jagged buttresses. I doubt if the sun ever penetrates it, even in summer. At dawn, early in the year, it was a river of cold darkness under a lid of pallid sky. The wind wailed among the high rocks, each successive gust announcing its coming with a chorus of dismal howls that set my teeth on edge.

The mouths of many caves showed as darker patches in the precipices. Hool's cave was the largest, marked by a white apron of bones spilling all the way down to the valley floor. Until Vandok, the Horsefolk had sacrificed only beasts to their god, but for thirty years the offerings had been youths and maidens brought from the Land Between the Seas.

 

 

Scores of vultures floated overhead or perched on the rocks, waiting for us to depart and let them enjoy their customary feast.

To clamber directly up that hill of skulls and ribs would have been very difficult. It would also have been unpleasant in the extreme, even for the faithful. A path began some distance away along the valley, angling gently up the stony incline to the base of the cliffs and then along to the mouth of the cave. While the army watched from the floor, the leaders began the ascent. Ven went first, followed by a group of his senior officers and one trader of tales. Vandok followed amid his guards, and the elders of the tribes brought up the rear.

We were all bundled to the ears in fur and blankets, a procession of trolls. Bitter wind snatched the plumes of steam from our nostrils.

I was surprised to find myself trudging along beside Juss, whom I had believed still back in Cemetery Pass. He looked as if he had not slept since I had, which meant he looked two-thirds dead. He also looked extremely worried.

“What,” I puffed, “is Ven planning?”

He scowled at me from red-rimmed eyes. “You tell me.

You're the storyteller. I think he's gone crazy.”

“What does Kraw say?”

“Kraw thinks he's gone crazy.”

Oh? That was not comforting. I panted a few times. “He's been consulting Verl?”

I did not catch what Juss replied, but it sounded a bit like

“Bloody pigeon!” Probably not—I can't believe he would have spoken of his mother's god like that.

 

 

We came at last to the mouth of the cave. The interior was black. Far below us, the assembled army was a beach of pale faces, staring up. Above us towered a rotting trellis or rock, pitted and weathered. Wind heaved in and out through the aperture, gurgling and sighing like the breath of a great monster. I wished I had not thought of that simile.

Ven sent the Horsefolk elders to the far side. Then he advanced to the center with Vandok.

It was my first clear glimpse of the tyrant since that day in Kylam, thirty years before, when he had publicly assaulted the child of his slain enemy—a disgusting public rape of a helpless woman to herald a generation of abuse of an entire people. Then he had been a striking figure of young manhood—brutal and vindictive, yes, but physically enviable, tall and muscular and exultant. In all his cruelty he had blazed like an evil god. Now he was merely big. Stooped and bloated in winter garments, worn out by years of excess and months of relentless warfare, Vandok walked with a heavy, flatfooted gait. His beard was white. Only the crazy eyes glaring out under the brim of his hat hinted at the sadistic madness that had murdered so many thousands and ground a nation into the mud.

Ven was as tall but not as thick. There was no flame to Ven, and never had been. He was a slogger. He bore a sword in his hand, and another in his scabbard. Seeing that, I guessed what was about to happen.

The wind gurgled and moaned in the dark cave.

“Holy Hool!” Ven cried. “Hear my prayer!”

 

 

For a moment there was only the wail of the wind. Then the cavern seemed to draw breath. It roared: “WHOOO—

ARE—YOOOO?”

My hair tried to push my hat off. I have heard oracles before, and I had expected no more than an ambiguous wail containing hints of speech that only priests could understand and interpret. Instead, there was no doubt about that terrible voice. I fell to my knees on the stones, and all those about me did the same.

Ven stood his ground, holding his sword aloft. “I am the son of Vandok and White-thorn, bred from rape, raised for vengeance, inspired by hate. Acknowledge me!”

This time the pause was longer. Then the cave sucked in wind and the great voice sobbed again: “YOOOO—ARE—

WHO—YOU—SAY—YOU—AAAARE.”

Vandok screamed. He tipped forward on his knees and lifted long arms in supplication. “Holy Father! I am Vandok, your son, whom you recognized as the seed of Hannail, your chosen one!”

“YOU—AAARE.”

“I have given you sacrifice!” Vandok bellowed, even louder than before. “Every day for a lifetime, I have offered blood to your honor! Do not desert me now!”

The wind moaned, chilling my bones. It fell silent. We waited, until the voice came again, quieter, less certain.

“I am tired of blood. I am sick of blood, GO AWAY! GO

AWAAAAY, all of YOOOOO!”

 

 

“I also am your son!” Ven declaimed. “Acknowledge me! I claim the Land Between the Seas by your ancient oracle. I claim the kingship of the Horsefolk by right of conquest.”

This time the pause was longer still.

Whatever had happened to democracy and freedom?

“Yes, he's completely crazy,” Juss muttered. “Kraw defend him! Verl defend him!”

Then a gigantic bellow:

“PROOOOVE it!” the god said.

It was what Ven had hoped for, obviously. He hurled the sword down in front of the tyrant and drew his own.

The spectators in the valley might not have made out the mortals’ voices, although I am sure they must have heard Hool. But they could recognize the gesture, and a moan of anger roiled up from the canyon.

Vandok did not rise. He turned his head to grimace at the challenger. “You would kill your own father, upstart?” He did not mention the sons he had slain without mercy.

“I will avenge my mother! I will avenge the thousands you have butchered. Stand up or die on your knees, animal!”

Vandok hurled a human skull at Ven, snatched up the sword, and lurched to his feet. Ven dodged the missile and parried the stroke. The clang of steel echoed from the cave and then, fainter, from the far side of the gorge. By that time another was ringing on its way.

For a moment the duelists exchanged monstrous, two-handed blows, any one of which would have felled an oak.

The valley rang like a smithy. Then Ven shifted his stance. His footing failed in the litter of bones. He fell. Vandok swung.

 

 

Ven rolled, and went on rolling. His father followed him, leaping and plunging down the slope. The wind roared and moaned in the cave, drowning out the cries of the spectators.

Ven stopped and from his prone position swung a scythe-stroke at Vandok's legs. Vandok parried it: Clang! He kicked bones down the slope at Ven's face. Ven hurled a pelvis, which struck the older man's head a glancing blow. Then Ven was on his knees, blocking another wild stroke. Clang! sang the echoes ... On his feet again, but Vandok still higher...

Clang! Clang! Clang! Vandok kept striking downward, Ven partied and swung at the other man's legs. Why the impacts did not tear their arms from their sockets, I cannot imagine.

Ven edged sideways, Vandok kept blocking him. Slowly, slowly, step by step, the younger challenger drove the old tyrant uphill. Their breath streamed in the wind. I could hear the rasp of their lungs. Clang! Clang! Clang! Ven had lost his hat, his hair flew free, and his sweat-soaked face was a mask of hate.

All around me men gabbled prayers, but I did not think the little gods would dare meddle here, not so close to Hool.

The fighters were almost back where they had started.

Sinew and muscle could only hake such punishment for so long, and inevitably it was the older man who faltered. He misjudged, or else his arms just failed him. The point of Ven's sword glanced off the guard and dug into Vandok's fist. Steel clattered into the rubble of bones and the awful clanging died away in its own echoes.

Even the wind seemed to draw breath then. Clutching the bleeding remains of his hand, Vandok stared at his executioner. Ven's shoulders heaved with his efforts to breathe and he seemed to lack the strength or the will to deliver the final blow. Then he raised his blade.

Vandok spun around and plowed over the bones toward the cave, reeling, staggering, clattering. Ven just stood and watched. The tyrant vanished into the dark abode of his god.

The wind surged. One vast howl exploded out of the cavern and reverberated along the canyon. I think it was Vandok's death cry, magnified by the rocks, but perhaps it was all Hool.

Ven sank to his knees, partly in worship, partly in exhaustion. We onlookers bowed our heads. His opponent did not emerge, and nobody who had heard that dreadful shriek would ever have expected him to.

We stayed where we were, huddled low and shivering until Ven could struggle to his feet again and sheath his sword with shaking hands.

“Father Hool, we leave you in peace!” he cried. “No more will men desecrate your mountain with blood. But one day my son will come and hold you to your promise, and his son after him. My seed will reign over the two lands for all time.”

Silence ... The wind had shifted. And then one last, hollow moan: “SO—BEEE it!”

A roar of triumph rose from the army below and filled the valley, making the echoes ring, on and on. Those men had viewed the drama and heard the god concede. They had not heard Ven proclaim himself their king.

 

 

I turned to Juss and we fell into each other's arms. He was laughing and weeping at the same time. So was I. So were all the others.

I was thinking of White-thorn, who had sacrificed herself for this. After thirty years, she had her revenge.

 

 

16: Interlude

 

That was how it should have been told. Instead, the notary quoted interminable legal texts, political commentaries, and religious tracts, with no eyewitness account at all. Any story is improved by the authority of personal testimony. Unethical tellers of tales sometimes stoop to attributing their narratives to fictional onlookers, just to gain that effect. Present company excluded, of course.

My reverie ended. I was back in the dim coolness of the inn, in the flickering firelight. The rafters upstairs clicked and creaked as they adjusted to the plummeting temperatures.

And Tickenpepper had not done yet.

“Cold-vengeance united the Seven Cities and the steppes in the Kingdom of Verlia...”

How easy the little hack made that seem! It took a lifetime, and it was Juss who did it, not Ven. Juss was the politician of the family. His brother, after all, had promised to restore democracy to the Land Between the Seas and then contrived to have the god proclaim him king. Revolution simmered below the surface for a long time because of that.

Juss devised a compromise whereby the monarch ruled with the guidance of elected representatives. The system was cumbersome, but not without merit. The people had someone to cheer in good times and someone else to throw out in bad.

I did not stay to see all that. I watched the king's wedding procession from a distance and heard news of Juss's engagement on the very day I sailed away. Many years later, 177

 

 

 

 

in a far land, I learned from a chance remark in a spice bazaar that both marriages had been fruitful.

Still the notary droned. “Following the precedent thereby established by Cold-vengeance, his son Bright-dawn returned to the cave on his accession, and Hool confirmed him as true heir.”

No mention of the rebuilding of the cities, the civilizing of the Horsefolk, the great capital that sprang up at Uthom in the Middle? A lot of that was done by later rulers, of course. It took more than a century.

“The death of True-honor without living issue established two other tenets.”

I perked up half an ear.

“The rival claimants were prevailed upon to present themselves together before the god, and he made judgment between them, thus establishing both his willingness to decide such disputes among the direct descendants and the primacy of primogeniture. A further precedent was set at the accession of Fair-pearl, whom the god accepted as queen regnant—'to the surprise of many and the chagrin of her cousins,’ as the learned Doctor Forstein put it.”

I lost interest again. The fire was smoldering low, starting to smoke and stink up the room. The shutters rattled as if the storm had just been having a rest and was about to return. I considered strategy. Some person in this room knew something I very much wanted to know.

The merchant and his wife seemed extraordinarily smug. If Master Tickenpepper's tedious dissertation was so pleasing to them, his fees must be extremely reasonable.

 

 

On the other hand, the dowager's arid visage was all scowl surrounded by the folds of her hat. The maid sat in her usual inhuman rigidity—what was the matter with her? The old soldier wore an expression of dangerous inscrutability, leaning back in his chair with arms folded and his long legs stretched out before him.

The lines had been drawn, the teams were facing off. Only Gwill the minstrel was a bystander, and he had his chin down.

His puffy eyelids drooped. Every now and again he made snuffling snoring noises.

“Burgomaster?” the dowager said sharply. “May I ask what your interest is in this?”

The merchant chuckled sepulchrally. “The religious customs of distant peoples have a certain intellectual appeal, my lady, do they not? At least they can inspire in us a sense of relief, that we are not expected to follow them. In this case—”

I coughed politely. Uniformly unfriendly eyes turned toward me.

“If my learned friend has completed his address—I mean story—then it must be my turn again, yes?”

“Fiddle!” the old harridan snapped. “The time for trivial diversion is past. This is serious business.”

Fritz rubbed his hands together with a gruesome scraping noise. He rose to his feet, huge and ominous.

“Indeed, my lady?” the merchant inquired, lowering his busy brows. “And just what business is that?”

 

 

 

“I thought,” I said hastily, “that since I had occasion to visit the fair land of Verlia a few years ago, I might be able to comment on recent conditions.”

“Fiddle!” the dowager said again, ignoring me and glowering at her opponent across the fire.

“Omar and I are going out to the woodshed,” Fritz remarked, reaching for my collar. “I shall be back shortly.”

“Sweet-rose!” I shouted.

All the eyes came back to me again. Even Fritz registered the effect. He paused with his great paw poised over my neck.

It was the old soldier who spoke first.