Chapter 12 Simone the Soldier
“Make a stand!” howled Simone at Athlaz. “But there’s dozens of them! We’ve got to run.”
“About two dozen,” Athlaz agreed, “disorganized and fighting uphill. If we run, they’ll hunt us down like crippled rothars; but if we sting them sharply, they may back off. Besides, Snag and Snart will join us in a moment, and they’re veteran warriors.”
“There’s something I should have told you about them,” said Simone. “They’ve got a history of running off at moments like this.”
Athlaz looked at her fixedly. “Any other good news?”
“Yes, the bandits probably know I’m female. That bread seller this morning was watching me closely, and I’m sure he could tell.” Athlaz shrugged this off. “Never mind, you fight like a man. That’s right, take your pack off and put it where you won’t trip over it. Plant your feet and think kill. Abram, you’re ready? We’re prepared then. They can shout, can’t they? Tell you what, let’s go toward them now. Stay in a line. Freedom for the sons of the Forest!”
The bandits were a large but undisciplined group, rather haphazardly armed. The fiercest, or most foolhardy, were well up the slope ahead of the others and panting from the quick climb. Simone moved toward one of these with her sword drawn, thinking to stab him while he was too out of breath to defend himself. However, he blocked her sword stroke with his own blade, and she found herself fencing with him, doing automatically what she had practiced with Athlaz so often. In the back of her mind she knew she had to kill him quickly because more were coming. But what was the use? If by sheer luck she might kill two or even three, plenty more were coming to surround her.
With this thought she gave herself up to cold rage: rage at these filthy, murdering bandits, rage at this violent land, rage at Raspberry for directing her to the Fold in the first place. Using her higher ground and longer reach, she slashed across the bandit’s eyebrows, and instantly his eyes were filled with blood. Then she stabbed him through the body. Placing her boot sole against him, she pulled out her sword and sent him spinning downhill.
No time to think—another bandit was upon her. She screamed fiercely and attacked him. He was smaller than the first but a better fencer, careful to shift sideways in an attempt to get up to her level. Simone shifted too, keeping him below her, while slamming at him with all her strength, her sword an extension of her arm, as Athlaz had taught.
She could not get past his defense, and so thought that he would either kill her or keep her occupied until his friends would catch up and do it for him. His sword tip slashed her sleeve. Simone screamed “Ulrumman!” and attacked him again, determined to take him with her in the seconds she had left. At the same moment, two things happened: she heard the attacking growls of Snag and Snart at a distance, and Misu flew into the bandit’s face, scratching at him with strong talons. As he tried to tear the Lusetta away with his left hand, Simone chopped at his right and hit flesh, laying open both arm and hand. Then Misu was suddenly gone, and the bandit, his sword on the ground, turned and ran.
No time to think! Where was the next one? Simone pitched this way and that, looking for more bandits and was astonished to find none near. Rather, the horn was blowing again and the cutthroats were retreating, leaving behind their wounded.
To her right, Athlaz stood like a giant, Abram beside him, and two bloody bodies at his feet. She made her way over to them. She was electrified, still so excited that she almost felt disappointed by the breaking off of the attack. A reaction was sure to come soon, but for now she was high on forbidden emotion.
Athlaz was looking down at the two men he had apparently killed.
“What now?” she asked, and the words sounded strange to her ears, as if she had not heard human speech in years.
“I’ve never killed men before,” he said. “Only the vulture’s creatures.”
“I think I killed a man,” she said. “What do we do now?”
He forced himself to look up. “We go on. The bandit chief blew the retreat, and I don’t think they’ll be back.”
“But maybe tonight,” Abram said, “after dark?”
“Nothing doing, they’re beaten. They expected three humans, and only one a warrior. Instead, two of us hurt them, and they also had to deal with Ulrigs. Mald’s probably been using his crossbow too.”
“Here he is now!” said Abram.
Held a few inches above the ground, Mald’s crossbow moved toward them. The Fijat paused. “I was determined to get two and I did,” he told them. “Bolts through the neck. They won’t survive. Snag surprised and cut down two, and Snart killed one. Misu blinded another over there.” He pointed with the bow down the slope.
“She helped me to wound a man,” Simone added.
“So they have perhaps ten dead and wounded,” Athlaz said. “No wonder they gave up.”
Now Snart came up to them. “Snag’s keeping an eye on them,” he reported, “but there’s no more fight in them. They’re back in the hole they started from. Before they attacked, they were hiding down there in an abandoned quarry where even Misu couldn’t see them. Now watch out up the trail ahead. Snag says one of those he stabbed is probably still alive over there.”
Simone suddenly felt a wetness on the fingers of her left hand and at the same time recognized a terrific pain in her upper arm. Looking down, she saw blood on her hand. For one moment she thought it must be from one of the bandits she had fought, but then she realized that, of course, it was her own. She remembered that the second bandit had slashed her sleeve and, pulling back the torn material, she found the wound.
That night she lay rolled in her cloak, her face turned from the fire, and fought back sobs. It was not just the pain of her wound, though that was keen enough under her thick bandage. No, it was that she had killed a man and butchered the arm of another. Never mind that it was self defense, she felt terrible, for she knew that she had actually enjoyed it at the time. She had wanted to kill more of them.
Ever since she had beaten up Marla Collins in the fifth grade, she had been aware of her own smoldering anger and aggressiveness. But she had never guessed the depths of her ferocity, for she had never released it so totally. She who called herself a Christian! Any Christianity in her life seemed now like a tiny cottage beside the Great Forest of her rage and violence.
While she sniffled and winced, she listened to the others question the Perg prisoner they had brought with them—the man Snag had wounded.
“Yes,” the prisoner agreed, “it was Philan the bread seller who told us of travelers with a long purse. Word came up the mountain before you did. But our Captain Marz thought it was just the three of you. Who ever heard of humans and Ulrigs traveling together? Marz wanted to get up slope of you then, and that’s the right way it should be done, but the men wouldn’t take the time and trouble against so few. We just came right at you from the Den when you passed. But Zuz’s bones, how you folk can fight! Marz hasn’t lost so many in one day since the army came up here fourteen years ago to try to clean us out.”
Snag grunted with satisfaction.
“And I’ll tell you something,” the bandit went on, “because I was watching her before this Ulrig got me and Belm. The big, skinny girl—Tiras my witness—I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley. She went after poor Vezuv like a—like a—”
“Like a robalt from Gennez,” Athlaz supplied.
“Yes, like that!” the cutthroat agreed.
(‘Like a zombie bat from Hell,’ Simone translated to herself and almost laughed in her misery.)
“But your Marz won’t give us any more trouble?” Abram asked nervously.
“Not on your life! Not with his boldest men all dead or wounded. No, but I don’t mind telling you—since you’ll see how friendly I really am to you—that you’ll have to watch your steps ahead. Marz has a gentleman’s agreement with Captain Zatur, who owns the territo
ry north of here. He’ll send Zatur word that you’re coming.”
Abram asked in a strained voice, “This Zatur—another bandit captain then. Uh, how many men in his band?”
“I don’t know, but more than Marz had, even before today’s losses. Lot’s more. Maybe fifty.” Abram said nothing, but Simone could well imagine the look on his face. The bandit, who was apparently one of those people who cannot let a conversation lag, added, “Why, Zatur was even going to ally with Marz to try to attack the young Emperor’s entourage, and that takes a lot of men. He never brought it off, but it’s something he might have tried.”
Simone suddenly sat up, and they all looked at her, her face tear streaked in the firelight. “What about this Emperor? What do you know about him?”
“Know? Just a hundred soldiers on wagons with him, that’s all! The whole lot of them pulled by oxen all the way—none of them walking. Oh, my wound hurts! Let me think. He was going to Dowerkass. Going to go east from there and claim the Empire at Colonia. A strange boy, they say. Our Captain has something from him that was three times sold before Marz stole it: a small button of the most perfect roundness you’ve ever seen, and no one can say what it’s made of.”
“Pl-plastic,” said Simone. “If it’s Clay, then it’s plastic.”
“I don’t know the word.”
“Never mind. Do you know anything else about the boy? His name?”
“No, Miss, nothing. This is all word of mouth.”
Simone looked around at the others. “I know, don’t get my hopes up.” She lay down and again turned away from them.
“In the morning,” Athlaz said to the bandit, “we will let you go.”
Blumma had been watching them half the morning from a crag high above, watching long enough that she felt she knew all parties concerned. She had assigned them roles, as in a play. The hunters—probably Zatur’s band—she had cast as villains. Two Ulrigs, unmistakable even at this distance, were of course her heroes, since Blumma herself was an Ulrig. Therefore, the three humans with the Ulrigs must be good too, and also the Lusetta that soared over them, sometimes flying down to report to them. These five were the prey and very clever and resourceful. Several times she had seen them elude the bandits by some desperate trick while snaking their way down Brigand Mountain, along the valley, and up Gold Cloud (on which Blumma was perched). Such twistings and turnings, such sudden reverses! Once they had left behind a bag of money, easily recognizable by the effect it had on the robbers when they came up to it. That had been good enough to get them out of one trap. Twice they had burst out of a circle of hunters with a flurry of echoing swordplay, each time at the weakest point in the net. Blumma thought they had killed at least three.
Now, however, the play appeared to be ending in tragedy. The prey were moving more slowly, climbing a steep, smooth way below her, while the hunters were laboring to encircle them again. The Ulrigs and their friends had no choice but to be driven up Gold Cloud in plain view, and with a few arrows glancing off the rocks close to them. Blumma watched several robbers head off to the right and another group to the left, no doubt to hurry around to the back of the mountain and cut off the prey’s last hope; that is, the hope of scaling Gold Cloud and escaping down the far side.
The Lusetta came sailing by above Blumma, watching these new movements of the robbers, and Blumma stood and shook her stout walking stick in the air. “Psst! Hey, you! Come down and talk to me. Bless it, how can it not see me? It’s flying back to them now.”
But in the following minutes the prey climbed straight toward Blumma, proving that the Lusetta had seen her. When they were struggling on the slope just below her, Blumma came down off her crag and waited for them. She smelled a Fijat nearby and guessed that it must be one of them. Her keen ears heard a scrambling not far off, and presently the Sarree spoke to her.
“Good Ulriga, we’re in desperate danger. My friends down below need a hiding place and quickly. Can you take us to some cave?”
Blumma shook her gray-flecked snout back and forth.
“Might I point out,” the Fijat added in a strained voice, “that you’re being surrounded the same as we are? If there’s no cave, then how do you plan to escape?”
“Uff, I’ve had a long time to think about it,” she said. “I know of an old mining shaft away over here to the right. I’ve never been down it, but it might do. Depends on how far down it goes.”
“One of us at least must be hidden in that shaft,” he said. “She must be made safe there.”
“She? There’s a woman with you?”
“No time to explain,” he said. “I’m going back down to tell them about the shaft. That news may give them a little more strength. They’re played out with running and fighting.”
When at last the others came up, the bandits were too close behind for Blumma to waste time talking, though she did look for the woman and saw that she was dressed as a soldier and taller than most men, her young face pale and set in lines of pain. Blumma led them along a trail that ran level across the side of the mountain for some hundred yards, and then guided them down a short distance to the old shaft. Hidden behind a few pines was a hole about three feet across and narrowing as it went down. Blumma left them to consider this while she ran to get a few branches to pull over the opening after they would descend. She was only a minute about it, but when she returned found only one of the group, an Ulrig, still standing outside the shaft. The rest had disappeared except for a small man descending into the hole, his head and shoulders still above the ground. She noticed blood on his shoulder.
Blumma spoke to the Ulrig beside her, a soldierly type. “Why do you stay with these humans? Any Ulrig in good health can dash past a line of these human bandits and save his own fur. In fact, that’s what I plan to do now.”
The stranger Ulrig showed little interest. He grumbled something and began to follow the little man into the shaft.
“Well, what’s so important to risk being trapped and smoked out?” she asked, leaning over him.
“The girl,” he said. “She’s the Lila-me.”
Blumma felt a chill in her paws, and her tail bristled. “I heard the rumors,” she said, “that she was coming this way, but I didn’t believe it. Are you sure?”
“It’s sure.” He was well into the shaft now, and she could hear the bandits nearby, shouting to one another. She took a deep breath, tossed aside her walking stick, and climbed in, tugging the branches over her.
Athlaz squeezed past Snag in the tunnel and moved slowly down the incline until his feet stopped against something solid—and yet not all solid for he could feel air moving past his face. Even through his boots he could tell that the surface was flat and smooth with long regular grooves in it. He stomped and it rang of metal. A grating then, as Snag had said, put there by man or Sarr.
“What do you think?” asked Snag.
“I’m too big to twist around and reach it with my hands,” Athlaz said, “and I can’t see it. But we have to break through and get lower; we can’t yet be more than twenty yards from the surface.”
“It’s very old,” said Snag. “The rust of it’s on my paws. Maybe you can kick the bars out.”
Athlaz said nothing but drew his legs up and kicked with all his strength. The grating did not give.
“Wait a minute,” said Mald as he climbed down over Athlaz. “Don’t kick for a moment, Athlaz, let me check things over. Humph, an old grate. Embedded in the solid rock all around, from the feel of it—but that’s impossible, it had to be put in somehow. Let me reach through. Yes, there’s a sill of rock on the underside, but not on our side. You don’t suppose it could be lifted? Probably not. I think they bolted it into the stone to prevent that. Athlaz, take off your belt and I’ll tie it to the grate. Then you can pull up and perhaps break the bolts. Come to think of it, if we string our belts together, we can all pull on it at once.” r />
This they did, attaching the end of their belt rope to one point on the grate and then another, until they had success. Thick but ancient bolts broke and the grate lifted part way. Athlaz pried at it from underneath with his boot toes, and another bolt cracked. Then they pulled again and the grate turned in the opening.
“I’m through!” Mald said. “I think you can all fit through now.”
Down they went with no sounds but their own scraping and breathing, in total darkness, and without even a guess as to where they were going. This was no mining tunnel, as Blumma had thought. It served no apparent purpose. And yet it went down and down for what seemed thousands of feet, until they all began to wonder and then to be amazed.
Often they had to stop and rest, mainly for the sake of Simone and Abram. Besides her arm wound, Simone had received a fresh nick on the leg during one of their morning breakouts and a scratch on the cheek near the ear during another. An arrow had creased Abram’s shoulder. The others could do little to help them in the narrow tunnel.
Their packs they had abandoned in the morning’s chase, and they began to be hungry and thirsty.
At last Mald, who was scouting ahead, reported a change. “It’s not far to another grating at the bottom,” he said. “But don’t fear! This one is already broken through. Beyond it is a very large cave room, so large that I couldn’t take time to explore it. It’s well made though; the floor of it is perfectly flat. The place gains in mystery.”
Within a few minutes they crawled out at floor level and stood up in the dark.
“What’s next?” asked Abram.
“I could make a fire,” Blumma volunteered, “if we could find something to burn.”
“The place seems well ventilated enough for a small fire,” said Mald. “Why of course it’s well ventilated! It just struck me that we must have come down a ventilation shaft. Just think of the scale of this work! What is this place?”
“You don’t suppose we’re in the Leb Nashraksa?” Snart said.
“Yes, yes,” Snag sneered, “and no doubt Quintus’ ghost will give us a tour.”
“Why don’t Snag and Snart and I spread out and investigate the place while the others rest?” said Mald.
When the three Sarrs had left, Athlaz located Simone in the darkness. “It could be worse,” he said to her. “We’re alive.”
“Buried alive,” she said. “Have you thought that the way we came in may be the only way out? I thought about it all the way down.”
“You’re very tired,” he said. “Don’t listen to fears. Think about something pleasant.”
“I don’t want to think about something pleasant.”
“Are you crying?”
“No, I’m mad. I’m mad at the whole stinking Fold. That Dragon Zeeba has the right idea—slash and burn. Let it all go to Gennez.”
“Right,” he said, “let it go, for tonight anyway. Tomorrow we’ll try again.”
“Hey, Blumma!” Snag shouted out of the darkness, and the echoes were startling. “Come here. Follow my voice.”
The Ulriga left them and in a few minutes they could see sparks in the distance, then real fire. Snag had found something to burn. As the group reunited, the fire spread about in the middle of the chamber floor, feeding on large pieces of wood incredibly ancient and decayed, apparently the remains of a great table. The travelers looked about at the suddenly illumined hall and were stunned by its size and majesty. Far above their heads were ornate designs carved in the arched ceiling. In the walls were massive half-columns of marble; that is, in the facing walls near enough to be seen. But the chamber itself was tunnel-like, so that the narrow ends disappeared in darkness. Shadowy statues stood in niches in the walls, and something like a throne dominated the largest niche high above them—an empty throne. They also saw that ruin had been here. Much of the walls and ceiling were blackened as if by fire, and trickles of water seeped from cracks in their smooth surfaces. They were glad at least for the water.
Too soon the fire devoured the paper-like, desiccated wood, and the circle of light shrank. Finally, they stood by the embers, barely able to see each other.
“So it is the Leb Nashraksa,” Blumma said. “Only a few old members of the Nash Shabremet—our council—share the secret of how to get here. The place is forbidden. Some say no one has been allowed in since the Emperor Kuley woke the Vults from their sleep long, long ago. Since then, the Vults sleep again.”
“Whether forbidden or not,” said Mald, “I’m sorry we’re here. This Great Tunnel is a part of our past—I say it for you humans’ sake—a part of us Sarrs’ past that we would wish to forget. So beautiful in conception, and yet its delving was part of the horrors of the Early Days. You Ulrigs did right to seal it. That throne on the wall makes me shiver.”
“What is the story of this place?” Athlaz asked.
“It’s a private affair of us Sarrs,” Mald said shortly. “I won’t say any more unless the Empress herself requires it.”
“The Empress just wants to sit down,” said Simone. “Do you think we could find a little side chamber, someplace small enough to feel safe in?”
They settled in a side room just beneath the high throne niche. At the back of this room a narrow stair ascended, probably to the throne itself; but the Sarrs were too awed to climb it and the humans too tired. Here they planned to wait and rest till nightfall. Then Mald would go back up to the surface and scout for signs of Zatur’s men. If all was clear, they would climb out and go on their way.
Gloom seemed to have settled on the whole company, but especially on Simone. She considered that even if their way above was clear, they would have to go on without food, unless Blumma could supply some. Maybe Blumma could, maybe their luck would turn and they would trudge on to the Iron Valley and beyond. What then? More dangers, more impossible demands upon her. Other roads were possible. This Great Tunnel might take them to the east side of the Titans, and there a road ascended the Valley of Thunders. Yes, she had seen the maps at the Palace of Reflections and knew that Crow Wood was in that valley. In that wood was the Door that led home to Indiana.
They waited and rested in complete darkness. To pass the time, Blumma began to tell them about herself.
“I’m a naturalist,” she said, “and my great love is the wildflowers of the mountains. I’ve been studying a little wonder called the stickstar for nearly two years, to determine when and why they flower. They don’t flower every year, you see. Well, when our local leaders told us to seal all our caves on this side of the range, so as to keep the plague crazed humans out, I just couldn’t comply. To leave my stickstars for who knows how long would have ruined my study. All my work wasted! I pretended to do what they said, I sealed my cave; but only after moving everything I needed to another little cave that only I knew about. It’s over on Firebreath not far from here. You might think I’d be lonely, but I keep to myself at most times anyway. Not many Ulrigs understand the flowers.”
“Or many humans either,” Athlaz said. “But I’ll want to see your stickstar tomorrow.”
“No, they’re not blooming now—they almost never are. That’s what I’ve been watching for. Still I’ll show you the plant and the moss campion they grow in.”
Athlaz thanked her. “Someone tell a story,” he said. “We need to keep our minds diverted.”
No one said anything. Simone suspected they were all thinking about food.
“Misar Mald?” Athlaz said. “Won’t you tell us about this place now? There’s no harm in it.”
“No harm,” agreed Mald, “but no good either, not even as a diversion. I wish I’d never seen the Tunnel with my own eyes. I’m sure I’ll have bad dreams about it now.”
Athlaz whispered to Simone. “Oh, all right,” she answered him. “Mald? Out with it.”
“At your request, Empress, but forgive me if I keep it brief. To begin with
, you already know that we Sarrs were in the Fold long before you humans were. In those Early Days we knew by prophecy that the man Quintus would come to us from your world, and since we ourselves had once lived in your world, we had some idea of what humans are. Knowing that he would come, and still guided by our prophets, we built a road to carry him across the continent from west to east. This Leb Nashraksa was a part of that road, built over hundreds of years.
“But though the Ulrigs were marvelous delvers and builders, the Hagards of the west were not so capable. When the Ulrigs completed this tunnel, the Hagards were not finished yet away west. In fact, they had not come half the distance to the mountains. So the Ulrigs took their burdenbeasts and rode down to the plain to build westward. Riding on their nashards, the Hagards met them and told them to turn back, that the western part of the road was their own affair, not to be interfered with.”
Mald fell silent, but Simone said, “I can guess the rest. Lord Razaber told me that the Hagards were slaughtered to extinction by the Ulrigs and the Dragons.”
“True, Empress. Small provocations led to greater ones, and eventually all the species suffered terribly. We were all drawn into it, yes, the Fijats too, and the slaughter was unimaginable—the greatest war in our history, the Leblok. When it was over....”
“Well, what?” asked Simone impatiently.
“The road was abandoned,” Snart supplied. “No more Knights of the Road. The species were scattered and estranged, never to recover.”
“That’s all?” said Simone. “What about when Quintus came?”
“Please don’t talk of it, your Eminence,” Mald begged. “We simply weren’t ready when he came, that’s all. You humans suffered for our sins.”
“Oh, for that matter, we can sin well enough on our own,” said Simone. “But you’re right, Mald, that was a miserable, pathetic story and not much worth telling. Someone else tell a better one.”
“You, Simone,” said Athlaz.
“My stories are from my world and won’t make much sense to you. But maybe there is something....”
She told about the life of Harriet Tubman, whose biography she had studied in school the previous spring. Strange as it was to her hearers, they seemed to understand everything—the plight of the slaves, their escape routes, the Civil War. Everything except pistols.
“Things looked worse for her and her people,” commented Athlaz, “than they do for us. But Thoz set them free.”
“Don’t be optimistic, Thaz; it makes my head hurt. You tell something.”
Athlaz also told a story of Simone’s world, the story of the Ten Thousand Greeks who fought their way back two thousand miles from Babylon until they came again to the sea. Then Abram was asked, but oddly, he would take no turn. Perhaps his wound pained him too much.
“Let’s try to sleep a little,” he said.