Icefalcons Quest Page 18

  In another life, he thought ... One of those other little boys had been this cold. Maybe several. He didn't recall clearly, and sometimes he knew that he didn't want to.

  He put on his mittens. He was trembling, and the dull ache in the pit of his stomach that never seemed to go away was a churning agony now, but he knew he didn't have much time. Hethya would be back, at least.

  He wadded up his pillow and a blanket to make it look as if he were still buried under the covers. Then he slipped to the back of the wagon and listened.

  The guard was there. After several minutes he heard him cough. Somewhere a mule brayed, mournful despite its blankets in the icy cold. The scrunch of footfalls, and a man's voice said, "Ugal," in greeting, the guard's name, the big handsome young man who'd given him the dates.

  "Pijek." Pijek was one of the sergeants.

  Sometimes after Lord Vair had mistreated Tir, Ugal sent him bits of dried fruits or sweets but had never actively taken his part-in fact he sometimes explained why what Lord Vair was doing was for Tir's own good. Tir didn't blame him, but he couldn't eat the sweets. Most of the time he felt so sick with terror that he couldn't eat at all.

  Ugal asked, "Has he finished?"

  "Still making the rounds." At least that's what Tir thought Pijek said; the man had an accent of some kind, and Tir's grasp of the ha'al, though enormously improved, was far from perfect. "He's asked Yantres and Nicor and Tuuves, Hastroaal and Ti Men . . ." Tir knew most of the men of whom they spoke. "Near a score."

  "There going to be another fight?"

  "Seems like. Nicor said they caught sign of savages. If"-there was a phrase Tir didn't know-"we're going to need all the men we can get."

  Savages. White Raiders.

  Tir groped his way back along the long side of the wagon, carefully shifting the sacks of parched corn and beans aside. His small body wriggled easily between them, until his hands encountered the wooden side itself. It took only seconds to work loose the inner coverings and worm up under them, over the side of the wagon, under the outer covering, and to let himself drop.

  The drop wasn't nearly as far as it had been when the wagonbox was up on wheels. The runners provided better cover, too. After the wagon's dark, the reflected torchlight from the camp seemed bright, the cold cosmic. Tir crouched in the shadows, heart pounding so hard he could barely breathe, orienting himself.

  He was on the outside of the circle of wagons. He knew he would be-they always brought them around in a ring the same way. Slunch glowed on the dark slopes of the flooded valley through which they'd worked their way for the past three days. Above them the glacier towered, not a single wall like St. Prathhes' Glacier in Renweth Vale, but a rampart of ice, a universe of cold, slowly devouring the world. He could see where it lay between the Big Guardian and the Little (and some other boy whispered in his mind the names they had borne all those years ago), the land at its feet drowned in milky, shallow pools. The Ice in the North.

  Men stood guard around the perimeter of the camp. Lord Vair's men, his chosen legions, loyal to him, loving him despite what he did to them. Their black helmets were decorated with his bronze peacock crest, through which their hair-white or black, like horsetails-rose in fluttering pennons.

  The last of the tethyn had died yesterday afternoon, though they'd been stumbling for days. Tir thought about the White Raiders, and the fewness of the men left.

  Dimly, Tir was aware that a magician, with the right equipment, could make tethyn out of men. Someone in another life, someone in the dark of his memory, had seen it done.

  As he watched Lord Nargois walk from guard to guard, touching this man on the shoulder, speaking gently to that man, he knew that was what the old man was planning to do now.

  He'd seen it done. He knew he'd seen it done. Somewhere ... someone ...

  And he knew he didn't ever want to see it again.

  But he had to, so he could tell Ingold what was going on.

  That was what Janus, and Gil, and the Guards all said, when they talked about war and scouting in the watchroom after training was done.

  "If you're alone and can't do anything else," Gil had said once, gesturing with those thin strong hands-broken fingers taped together, wrists strapped up in leather-"don't be a hero. Don't get yourself killed. Just observe everything you can in as much detail as you can, so you can report back."

  She'd been talking to a couple of the new kids, the young men and women just being trained in the hard school of warfare; she hadn't even been aware of Tir sitting quietly in the corner by the hearth. "Something that may not look important to you may be a critical piece of information to someone who knows something else." Ingold would know how to save the Keep.

  Tir crawled forward among the shadows, circling until he reached the largest wagon, the one that was connected to the black tent. He'd seen Lord Vair already, coming out of the tent, pausing to talk to Nargois and to Shakas Kar, the southern Truth-Finder with his shaven head and his nasty little hard smile and his crimson belts. Men were dragging a sledge across the camp from the supply lines, the smell of carrion suffocating: it contained the bodies of all the tethyn who had died, some of them many days ago.

  "Take it in." Lord Vair gestured with the whip that never left him. He never used his right hand, his hook hand, keeping it instead in the folds of sleeve and cloak, as though that whole arm had been consecrated to evil and shame.

  Ugal and others had told Tir that their lord had lost his hand in cavalry training in his youth, which had for years disbarred him from military command, until the coming of the Dark. "He would have had honor and glory years ago but for that," Ugal had said, apologizing for the commander he loved. "You can see why he is angry."

  The tent stirred already with activity, and Tir smelled from it the dusty stink of the dead sheep and the thick loamy pong of dirt, choking in the fire-touched dark.

  "My Lord, I must protest." Bektis appeared from between the wagons, bundled in a velvet coat lined with mammoth wool that came down to his heels. He had a muff of white fur on one hand, the hand where he wore the jeweled Device all the time now, and a dozen sables wrapped around his neck.

  "We know how to operate the dethken iares.. ." Only that wasn't the real name of the thing in the tent, thought Tir. It was called a chknaies. Who had known that? ". . . with a single ... ah"-he glanced at the young guardsman standing nearby-"source." He took Lord Vair's arm, led him a little apart, closer to the wagon beneath which Tir crouched. More softly, he went on, "My Lord, I cannot vouch for what might happen."

  "It is your business to know what will happen," snapped Vair. "I thought you claimed expertise in this matter, sorcerer. I thought you said you knew everything of such machines and of the mages who created them." The razor-edged voice sank soft, turning Tir's belly cold and sick. "Is this not then the case?"

  "Of course it is the case," Bektis replied quickly. "It's just that it was not considered safe . . ."

  "Flesh is flesh," replied Vair. "Did you not say that the dead flesh is multiplied within the vat? That it can only duplicate itself so far with the substance of the victim, but that the machine knows the image of that which is to be created? Is this not then how it works?"

  "Of a certainty it is," replied the mage, but his long fingers emerged from the muff to tangle and twist the snowy lovelocks of his beard.

  "We need men." Vair's voice was hard now, though no louder than the whisper of the ice wind razoring from the crumbling ramparts above. "The savages gather around us, and it is still some days to our destination. Once we get on the ice we can be taken at a disadvantage. And we must needs still have enough men at our disposal to consummate the taking of Dare's Keep. Now, can it be done as I wish or not?"

  "My most illustrious Generalissimo..."

  "Every machine can be tinkered with, sorcerer, by those who truly understand them. You say this Harilomne did it, this heretic whose studies of the ancients taught you in your turn. Don't treat me like a commoner. Every expert
can adjust and change."

  His voice was like the grip of the hooks in Tir's collar, in Tir's flesh. "This is why one brings experts, instead of leaving them to perish at the hands of those hypocrites who wish to foist blame for their own crimes upon the heads of their tools. Not so, sorcerer?"

  Bektis bowed his head. "It is so indeed, Lord."

  "Then I trust you will make the necessary adjustments?"

  "I will do so, Lord."

  "Good," Vair said softly. "Good."

  He walked away toward the tent where he slept; Bektis to the camp's central fire, where Hethya stood, warming her gloved hands. Hethya, Bektis, Vair, Shakas Kar, Nargois ... Tir counted them off on his fingers, then wriggled along the hard-frozen ground to the back of the largest wagon-sledge.

  Even the three sides of the wagon-box had been given a petticoat of canvas and goat-hair cloth so that the space beneath, if not precisely warm, was at least protected from the winds. The legs of a table were visible in the long flat rectangle of reddish light burning within, surrounded by a horrible jumble of carrion shapes.

  On one sledge lay the pitiful sheep, with cut throats and blood drying on their wool; on another, a lumpy mass, covered with a goat-hair blanket, that stank and dripped. A third sledge, behind the others, was heaped with random things, brush and cut wood and even piles of dirt.

  Tir crawled to the edge of the wagon-box where the curtains began. There were at least four layers of them, to cut both cold and any possibility of light seeping out.

  He crawled between them, like a mouse in a bed curtain, until he was behind the sledges with their gruesome burdens, where the smell was awful but the light of lamps and candles did not penetrate. Then he chinked the curtains a little and peeked through.

  The iron tub up in the wagon-box, arches looming over it like the ribs of an unknown beast. Two big lumps of gold-woven crystal set at angles to its unarched end and the jointed canopy of glittering mesh suspended above.

  Steps went up from the tent to the wagonbox, but even after the men who'd hauled in the dirt and corpses departed, Tir dared not emerge to have a closer look. In the main part of the tent there was a folding table, with what looked like a box on it.

  He tallied it all in his mind.

  And pounding him, tearing him, whispering in the blackness of the back of his brain was the knowledge that he'd seen all this before. That he knew what was in the box on the table.

  The curtains covering the entrance heaved and blew. Tir let the hanging fall shut to almost nothing. He had to know. There had to be somebody who knew, who could tell Ingold.

  It was Bektis and Nargois. With them was Ugal, big and handsome and friendly, taking off his spiked helmet and looking around him with awed gray eyes. Tir's heart stood still with horror and grief. No. Not him.

  But there was nothing that he could say or do.

  At Bektis' direction (Bektis never did any work) Ugal and Nargois carried two dead sheep and a great quantity of wood and dirt up the steps, the planks creaking under their weight. They went down for another load, and Tir looked away when they pulled back the cover over the other sledge. The stench, the horrible bloated black bodies with the flesh falling away ...

  He knew he should be brave and look but he couldn't. He kept his face buried in his arms while their feet creaked up the plank steps. He tried not to hear the noise the things made when dropped into the vat. If he threw up they'd find him. That awareness was the only thing that kept him from doing so.

  Then he heard Vair's voice.

  "Ugal, is it?" There was gentleness in his tone, and affection, like a strong father addressing a son.

  "Yes, my Lord." Ugal was delighted with the recognition, delighted that his generalissimo knew his name. He was always telling Tir, My Lord praised me or My Lord spoke to me-I think he knows my name.

  "Do you understand the help I need from you? The magnitude of the task I'm asking you to do?"

  "I-I think I do, my Lord. None of us really..."

  "None of you really knows. No. That is as it should be, but it makes your help-your willingness to help-a gift of trust doubly to be treasured. Please understand how much I value that."

  Tir raised his head and looked. The shadows behind the dead sheep were dense as night, and he could open quite a slit between the hangings. He saw Lord Vair touch the young man Ugal's face with his left hand, like a caress.

  "Thank you, Lord."

  "You understand this will hurt a little."

  Behind Lord Vair, Shakas Kar entered the tent, silently.

  Vair went on, "It isn't much, but sometimes men have cried out, you remember."

  "I won't cry out."

  "Sometimes men do," said Vair. "There is a drug, you understand, that weakens the subject; would you be willing to wear a gag? That way there can be no fears, no apprehensions on the part of your friends."

  "I am willing to do whatever you wish, Lord, but I promise you, I will not weaken."

  "Good man." Vair stepped forward and embraced the young soldier. "Good man."

  No! Tir screamed, despairing, silent. Run away, Ugal! Run away!

  Tir watched as the young man stripped, and Shakas Kar stepped forward with a gag of metal and leather. Bektis offered the young man a cup first, which he drank as if it were sacramental wine.

  They gagged him then, and Hethya came in, with the haughty mien of Oale Niu, her eyes like stone. She and Shakas Kar brought from the table the black stone box, which contained-as Tir knew it would-a set of needles, some crystal, some silver, some iron, eight or ten inches long and tipped in jewels or beads of glass.

  These they drove into the young man's flesh, at certain points-thohar points, whispered one of those distant memories, bringing with it a shudder of blackness, a desperate desire not to see anything further-while Ugal stood tall and beautiful, naked, head thrown back, wincing a little at the stabs but silent and proud.

  He had a knotted war-scar on one thigh and another on his left arm, and with his long white hair hanging about his shoulders he seemed like a splendid animal, like a father or an elder brother Tir had always craved.

  When the needles were all in his flesh Hethya and Bektis helped him climb up the wooden steps and lie down in the great iron vat with the carrion and the wood and dirt-as a warrior Ugal would have encountered worse.

  They adjusted something inside. Maybe, thought Tir, so that the needles sticking out of his back wouldn't be pushed crooked when he lay down.

  He knew what was going to happen. In the dark of his mind he knew. Some one of his ancestors, under circumstances Tir could not imagine, had seen this done.

  Bektis walked over to the head of the tub and stood beneath the hanging swags of iron and crystal net. He closed his eyes. Tir saw Hethya look away.

  He was glad it all happened in the tub, where he didn't have to look. He was glad Ugal was gagged, and drugged, too, though the young man did make noises through it, stifled screams and worse sounds, body sounds: squirtings and gushings; horrible, sodden, elastic pops, like leather exploding under pressure, and blood spraying up.

  Once Ugal's head bounced up over the rim of the tub and Tir had to clap his hands over his mouth, press his eyes shut, swallow back the bile that came dribbling then out his nose.

  I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this, and he clung desperately to consciousness, unable to breathe, his mind screaming. I have to do this.

  Ingold had to know.

  But he couldn't look, while footfalls creaked-Bektis' or Hethya's, and there was a soft noise of squishing, and the plop of something dripping where it had been spattered up onto the canopy. All he could remember was the taste of dates, carried and treasured with a young man's cravings for sweets, all the way up from the devastated South.

  Then there was another sound, a muted, deadly whickering, like fire but thinner; an aura of power that raised the hair on Tir's head. He bit down on his own sleeve, sinking his teeth into the dirty-tasting leather to keep from fainti
ng, screaming, crying.

  In front of him he saw Hethya hand Shakas Kar something-the iron gag. Shakas Kar wiped it down with a rag. From the vat Tir heard the sounds of movement, thrashing, and saw the wagon-bed rock.

  Don't scream, he told himself. Whatever you do, don't scream.

  A man's voice cried out random strings of sounds. An identical voice answered, "Atuthes! Atuthes!"

  Tir recognized the ha'al word for father. Something bleated, like a sheep with human vocal chords.

  Vair climbed the plank steps, swinging his whip a little in his gloved left hand. "Perfect," he whispered, looking down into the vat. "Perfect."

  Tir watched-Tir made himself watch-while the tethyn all came down from the vat. This part wasn't bad, except that they all had Ugal's face, they all had Ugal's body, though without the scars.

  Like the Akulae they were hairless, and their skin looked funny, though in the lamplight it was hard to tell what was just tricks of shadow and moisture: patchy, smooth in places and rough in others.

  There were eleven of them.

  Nargois brought clothing out of the bales along the walls and gave it to them, but they only stood there staring at it stupidly, and he had to show them how to dress.

  This troubled the second in command. He passed a hand before the face of one Ugal and addressed him. The man answered with a faint, bleating grunt.

  "It doesn't matter," said Vair shortly. "They'll fight. That's all that matters. Ugal!" he said, in a voice of command, and they all turned their heads at once, in a single movement.

  "It is good," he said to Bektis. "It is good."

  The men filed out when they were dressed, lumbering and shuffling in heavy coats, in wrapped rawhide leggings, Nargois nudging them along like a skinny black pale-eyed sheepdog.

  Eleven, thought Tir. There had never been more than four of any group of tethyn. He remembered-out of where he didn't know-that four was all you could get, sometimes only three. Eleven was bad.

  When Nargois brought in another young man-when Vair said in that warm, friendly, fatherly voice, "Hastroaal isn't it?" and Hastroaal replied eagerly, "Yes, my Lord"-Tir worked his way, with infinite slowness, back through the curtains, out into the darkness under the wagon, and so through the petticoat around the wagon's bed and out to the outer blackness.