Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge Read online

  They felt rather than knew the warning. For a year now they had dwelt on the mountaintop as on a drum, knowing the events in their lost city only through the resonance of the earth and stone below their feet. Now the breath caught in their throats and their mouths were dry. Those who had been sitting or lying on the ground stood into the cool winds. Then they heard it from above as well as from below. The tramp of shod feet, creak of wagon-axles, bleating of sheep, hoofbeats, clatter of weapons and the angry, ominous rumbling of men. Louder the din grew, echoing off the cowl of rock and the high walls of the Palace; it was joined by the tolling of the guardsmen’s bell. And in the sky beyond the cowl a bright tawny cloud of dust billowed up in a great fist-like ball.

  The refugees shrank into the depths of the tents. Some were quick to stoop and intone prayers to the sun. They trusted in Her; but She lighted the way of the invaders too, and Her rays, sifting gently through branches of pine, had nurtured the refugees’ destruction.

  III

  Disgrace

  EMSHA DID NOT KNOW what to do. The Queen’s old nurse walked in the rooms of the White Tower peacelessly, and a hundred times she blamed her frailty, that she could not bring herself to attend her mistress in the slaughtering-yard of the Palace. And a dozen times she had been on the verge of setting forth, when something held her back. She went to the private shrine and prayed to Goddess to spare her mistress what pain She could. Then Emsha rose and roamed the empty chambers, until through the thick stone of the walls the scream of Gundoen assailed her ears. She stopped, her old eyes big and dark.

  ‘Dear Lady,’ the old nurse breathed; ‘And did I pray to You on behalf of that?’

  Shortly thereafter the maidens returned, their hair half undone, tears and terror in their eyes. Emsha stood by the doors as they passed her, and she chastised them sharply for having forsaken their mistress, heaping abuse on them in her own fear.

  Then there was a stillness in the floors below. Emsha saw a lone, small figure standing like a shadow inside the Palace doors. It was the Empress.

  Hastily the old nurse went down. But the Empress moved out of her nurse’s embrace.

  ‘Do not touch me, Emsha,’ she said. ‘I am unclean.’

  ‘Majesty, majesty…’

  ‘I must be purified,’ the Empress said, moving to the steps to the bath-chambers. ‘Until that hour when it is done, no hand is to touch me, no eye behold me. Emsha, see to the cleansing of the maidens. They have borne more this waking than I could properly ask.’

  But Emsha followed her mistress and sat on a couch in the chamber outside the bath. She felt in the air about her, like the breath of some enormous beast of prey, the anger of Goddess.

  Then footsteps sounded on the stair. A man appeared, Ampeánor, the Charan of Rukor. Emsha rose – their eyes met and parted – his went to the doors behind her.

  ‘You will not see her,’ Emsha said, moving into his path. Hatred surged within her for this man. He had done all this.

  He scarcely looked at her. ‘I will see her,’ he muttered. Only then did Emsha see the madness in his eyes.

  ‘Her majesty is bathing in the ritual.’

  ‘I will see her.’

  ‘She is alone and unattended.’

  ‘That will not bother me.’

  ‘My lord, she is unrobed!’

  He looked down at her. Annoyance flashed across his eyes. He caught her up and threw her aside. Truly, Ampeánor had recovered all his manly strength: the old nurse struck the wall and fell on the floor, the breath knocked out of her lungs. The man flung open the doors and entered the bath.

  Emsha lay on the floor, trying to breathe. She heard the man’s steps; she heard the voice of her mistress:

  ‘Greetings, my lord. Do you come to take me prisoner now? What secrets would you wrest from me?’

  Then his voice: ‘It was needful.’

  ‘Again that word?’

  ‘It was needful for another reason. One I did not tell you. I knew you would not believe it without proof. Do you not recall how once I spoke of a traitor among us? You did not believe it then. But in Tezmon I saw a map the Gerso had marked for me. You know his hand? Not another in ten thousand writes in that manner. I found another map. It was a map detailing all the defenses of this Citadel. It was written in the same hand. I found it, my Queen, in the tent of Ara-Karn.’

  ‘Why do you not leave? Do you think I take pleasure in your company?’ Emsha had heard those tones before, but only when her mistress addressed Dornan Ural.

  ‘You do not seem surprised,’ the man’s voice said.

  ‘Tell me then Ampeánor, when you were a young man full of dreams, did you ever dream that one pass you would order and watch what you have ordered and watched this pass? Or did somewhat nobler things fill your thoughts?’

  There was silence. Then Emsha heard the plash of waters in the bath. ‘I came,’ she heard him say in a voice like struck iron, ‘to show you this.’

  ‘It is properly bloodied. Did you descend into the crypts to finish the work, then?’

  ‘You will be also. Did you think this soap would take the guilt from your head and heap it all on mine?’

  ‘What was it you did in the Eglands?’

  ‘What was it you did here, while I was a prisoner in Tezmon? Since then nothing has been right between us. Did you think I would never know? About you? And the Gerso? And the traitor?’

  At those words, spoken so wildly, Emsha strove to go to her mistress’ aid, but she could not rise. The thought came to her to cry out to the guards above – she did not. Was it not enough that one man had seen the Empress in her nakedness?

  ‘So,’ said the man’s voice, deadly calm and weary, ‘now you wear the stain of his blood as I do, here beside this other mark, which far too many eyes have seen.’

  The doorway darkened and the man returned. From within came the voice of the Queen: ‘From this moment on, Ampeánor, you are no longer the High Charan of Rukor, nor a citizen of Tarendahardil. If you ever attempt to see me again, your life will be forfeit. You are denied all water, food, shelter and fire within the frontiers of the Empire. Go prosper among the barbarians you so admire, if you can.’

  The man stopped and turned. Emsha saw the palm of his hand was smeared with blood. For a moment, she feared for her mistress’ very life.

  ‘Do you think I’d even want to serve you again? You whore, I will go with pleasure once I have cut the life out of the Gerso’s body and proclaimed him for the traitor that he is.’

  ‘You are the traitor here.’ For the first time Emsha heard passion and fear in her mistress’ voice. ‘Never in your life were you so true as he.’

  At that the rage showed in the Rukorian’s face like the bursting of a wound. He caught the door and slung it shut so that two of the hinges burst on their bronze pins.

  Ampeánor stalked out. He stormed through the Palace. He went to the rooms of the Gerso, but they were empty. So he went through the Black Tower into the Southern Wing, to Rukor’s floor. Once within his own chambers he tore the garments from his body, threw lances from the wall, upset couches and shattered coffers, roaring and screaming. Pharnor Bittan stood by the door and watched his lord in fear and awe.

  At last it ended, and like a chill rain shaken and chased by scattering winds, the mad childish rage left the body of the lord of Rukor. He lay on the floor, and awareness left him with his madness.

  * * *

  When he woke, Ampeánor looked at horror at himself. He lay on the floor. In his hands were the bunched, torn carpets. His left hand was black with Gundoen’s blood. Its stain was all over him.

  Ampeánor beheld his retainer. He started up, at which Pharnor Bittan stepped back. Ampeánor fell back on the floor. Tears formed in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, do not run from me, Pharnor Bittan, I beg you! What have I done, what have I ordered, what have I dreamed, since I reached here from the fields beyond the city? Tell me, do you know? It has all passed from me, whatever it may have been. It w
as the fault of that half of me that comes from Vapio, maybe, or else the venom of the Darkbeast. Is Melkarth to be proven right then, in spite of all I can do? Pharnor Bittan, take pity on me. What state is this for a lord of the realm? Help me please, my old friend. Take these rags from me and gird me in my armor. Have the barbarians attacked? I would relish battle now. It is my only freedom.’

  ‘Aye, my lord,’ said Pharnor Bittan. There was no pity in the voice of the old master of the hunt, only dignity and respect. The sound of it helped bear up Ampeánor’s spirit.

  ‘There, that is better, surely,’ he said, borne up by the armor that now cased him. His eyes ran over the disordered rooms. He glanced at the painting of the Queen done by Qhelvin of Sorne. On a small sword-stand in a corner lay a longsword of blue Raamba steel. The handle was bossed with gold and worked with rubies, the blade shone sharp and cold as a warrior’s song. It was the most beautiful sword he had ever seen.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked, marveling at its quickness and balance.

  ‘He left it for you a year ago, my lord. It is the gift of the Lord Ankhan and Lady Lisalya of Ul Raambar. Father Ennius said it was meant for a wedding-gift for your lordship and her majesty.’

  ‘I will have to thank him for it personally,’ Ampeánor said.

  At that a distant sound came to penetrate the stone walls.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘The guardsmen’s bell, my lord. The enemy is at the Iron Gate again.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ampeánor, pleased. ‘For this I owe thanks to dark God. I will go to this battle – and let them beware, all those who come against me now!’

  Calmly as he passed, he brought up the virgin Raamba sword and in a score of strokes split the wooden panel of Qhelvin’s masterwork and left her scattered upon the floor in a hundred jagged bits.

  * * *

  So the armies of Ara-Karn came.

  They filled the square below the Iron Gate and spilled out along the edge of the plateau to either side. They filled courtyards and stood on the low remnants of palace walls, a hundred rows deep. No single glance of the eye could have held them all. Behind them the slaves drove up sheep and cattle and the wagons weighted with armor, grain, tent-cloth, ladders and swords. Dense clouds of death-birds showered over the battlements. Yurling stood beside Forun in no clear order. All the tribes were mixed; the renegades with the siege-ladders could not make their way through the masses of men. The warriors did not care. Drunk with fear and eagerness, they stamped their feet, brandished their weapons and roared open-mouthed at the gaping, unmanned line of the parapet.

  But Nam-Rog stood upon a block of stone at the rear and called Durbars to him, a score of young trackers whose worth he knew. These Nam-Rog sent forth to find the other chieftains and have them raise their standards and totems so that all the warriors of each tribe might come together and be ruled by their chief. The trackers raised their spears and plunged into the seething mass of metal-clad men.

  Atop the Iron Gate, at the rearward parapet of the battlements, Berowne stood in the thick of the showering arrows and bellowed down his orders into the yard between the gates. There the guardsmen bent their strong bodies to the task and pried up the massive stones they had stockpiled. Tossing basket-lines around the stones, they hoisted them up to the long arm of the Beak. The Beak spun about its greased support-poles; the stones swung out over the heads of the men on the battlements. Even as the Beak swept past the parapet, the men loosed the lines. They were expert at it now. The huge stones hurtled outward and down, crashed into the square, and men were mowed down, thrown skyward and crushed. Circling still, the dark-laughing Beak swung back round. The men in the yard caught the trailing basket-leads; the others bent again, driving their long pries beneath the next stones they had chosen. Again and again the Beak fulfilled its deadly circle; the barbarians pushed back, crowding away from the paths of the huge bounding blocks.

  But now the standards and totems of the tribes gathered their followers, and the tribes of the first army moved to the forefront. Through open lanes the mercenaries ran, upbearing long ladders. A thousand hands grasped them and the ladders shot upward, bending hugely – upward, until they fell forward and their metal-shod tops clanged off the black stone of the parapet.

  The first men leaped up on the lower rungs of the ladders. They were younger men, those most fired with the eagerness for blood and fighting and to be done with fear.

  They steadied themselves on the rungs.

  Then they began their race into the sky.

  Lightly they ran up the ladders high above the heads of their comrades. Closer and closer approached the black sweep of the Beak. The dark line of the parapet loomed to meet them; above it suddenly appeared a line of gleaming shields, half-seen helms and out-thrust lances.

  The young barbarians scampered up the last few steps, bending beneath and warding off the darting lances with their small shields. The bloodstained wall was in their faces; behind them the ruins of the huge city spread away into the bright distance. They tore free their eager weapons, axes, swords and spears. Metal broke on metal, and the cries of the wounded joined the tolling of the bell and the roar rising from below.

  So the battle was joined, and Goddess blazed like fire off the burnished blades and battle-gear.

  Gorn-Tal, the last Orn, ascended behind the younger men. He climbed to the uppermost steps of the middle ladder, the most honored and most dangerous place of battle. In his hands he held a strange weapon, one he himself had devised and forged on the stones of the smiths’-pits among the tents of the renegades. He had made it in the likeness of a lance, but with the addition of a cruelly-barbed hook a hand’s span below the iron leaf of the spear-point.

  Gorn-Tal held himself low against the steps of the ladder. Then with the swiftness of a snake the long lance leaped upward and darted through the gap between two bright shields. The spear-point struck and wounded; the curved hook caught a guardsman’s arm.

  Gorn-Tal hauled down on the lance-haft with all the strength in his gray-veined arms. The guardsman was dragged forward, over the parapet; suddenly before his eyes the dark supporting stone gave way to air and the distant crowds below. Again Gorn-Tal pulled, and the guardsman pitched forward. There was now a slight opening in the line of shields, and the guardsman to the right stood half-revealed. Gorn-Tal slipped the hook underneath the man’s corselet just in the opening under the armpit. And now this one too looked down, and beheld Gorn-Tal’s eyes in the moment before he fell. Then his body smashed like thunder on the stones filling the coomb; the armor bent in and the ribs burst, and death freed his spirit as it had freed his fellow’s, like the snapping of a thread.

  These were the first defenders to die in this assault. They had lived through almost a full year of battle there and had faced a thousand foes apiece; but Gorn-Tal was their doom. Their names are forgotten, but it is said that they were both Fulmineans. So, far from the hills of their homeland, they fell from a great height to their deaths.

  Now the break in the shields was large enough for a big man to stand into. Gorn-Tal leaped up and elbowed his way into that opening. With both hands he swung his weapon before him, uttering the death-cry of Orn. From below a great shout rose up at the sight of him. It had been rare in the course of that year for any of the warriors to gain the parapet, and those who had had mostly been slain straight away.

  Now Gorn-Tal stood there, last chieftain of Orn. So terrible was he that the guardsmen fell back before him; he swept back the heads of their lances scornfully. Nakedly he stood before them on the edge of the parapet, scarcely holding his balance; but even so none of the guardsmen dared challenge him. Gorn-Tal laughed, and raising his strange weapon on high to God, brought it crashing down on the shoulder of one of his foes.

  On the ladders on either side of him stood Sur-Pal of the Maurpongils and Bel-Kor Jin of the Naur-Kolds. With long, fire-hardened lances the two chiefs struck back guardsmen, supporting Gorn-Tal. Together they cleared enough spac
e for the Orn to step down onto the first level of the battlements.

  But now Berowne shouted to his men, encouraging them; they took heart and pressed forward. Against them Gorn-Tal drew back his weapon and hurled it. Full through the shield of one guardsman the weapon crashed; the lance-point stuck into the man’s throat, severing the veins and breaking into the windpipe. The guardsman fell, and death like sleep shut fast his eyes. Then Gorn-Tal drew his sword against the press of lances; and the battle broke over him like a storm-wave.

  The first wave of men upon the ladders ceded to the second. The young warriors, those few who still lived, took hold of the rope ladders. These trailed from the metal peaks of the wooden ladders down the face of the Iron Gate. The wounded men went down slowly. They clambered down the piled stones in the coomb, through the corpses, and were received with cheers. Their wounds were bathed and dressed by slaves; the filth was sponged from their brows and arms, and they ate heartily, regaling one another with their tales of the encounter, laughing and glad to be still living. But the others, those men too weakened by blood-loss to descend the rope ladders, were swiftly slain by the guardsmen. Or else their own comrades, those behind them, smashed loose the clutching hands and shoved the bodies over, to die on the stones below.

  It was the order of battle there. The man who did not choose to live deserved to die. The warriors of the second wave climbed up to take their places.

  These were the chiefs and champions of their tribes. Ven-Vin-Van of the Borsos rose on the southernmost ladder and Ren-Tionan of the Foruns on the northernmost: these with heavy blows of their axes beat back the guardsmen at the ends of the lines. And Bur-Knap of the River’s-Bend tribe was eager in battle: he had stood by Gundoen’s side in the years before Ara-Karn’s coming, when only a handful of the tribes dared oppose Gen-Karn’s rule. Even Ren-Gora of the Raznami stood upon his ladder and gave the defenders blow for blow. And at Sur-Pal’s right Nam-Rog wielded his sword – old as he was he beat back the guardsmen above him.