Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 3 The Iron Gate Read online

  The barbarian eyed Ampeánor coldly. Ampeánor caught up his sword.

  ‘Free me, let us eat and be gone,’ Gundoen growled.

  Ampeánor untied him from the root. ‘And how did your sleep go, barbarian? Not comfortably, I hope.’

  The massive shoulders shrugged as if in pain. ‘I dreamed of my wife, Hertha-Toll.’

  * * *

  The barbarian stumbled, and Ampeánor rode distractedly. They made poor progress. Ampeánor was not sure which way to go. After the fifth meal, he was reluctant to start again. The half-rotten wood of his fire burned poorly, with a great deal of smoke.

  Ampeánor looked from the flames to the barbarian. The blood of Ampeánor’s kill had run over the barbarian’s beard and further stained his filthy, bug-ridden tunic. Even so the chieftain was impressive, even dignified.

  ‘Northman,’ Ampeánor said at length, gazing back into the flames. He spoke, but he would have preferred to remain silent.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your fellows have abandoned you.’

  Gundoen snorted. ‘They set trackers on our trail. They were fine men, among the best trackers of the far North.’

  ‘You recognized them?’

  ‘I knew their calls.’

  ‘Those men are dead. I killed them.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Ampeánor looked up. ‘You saw their heads.’

  ‘It was not an unworthy deed,’ the barbarian said. ‘But how do you know you took then all?’

  ‘If there were others, they lost our trail long ago. No one pursues us now.’

  ‘Others will come.’

  ‘They will never find you. There are only the two of us here. If we parted, you would be as lost as I am – more so.’

  ‘I know my way through woods.’

  ‘What would you do if I freed you?’

  ‘I think first I would crack your ribs between my arms. That was a wrestling-hold I ever liked.’

  ‘Chieftain, I am in earnest.’

  Gundoen frowned. ‘You would free me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cut loose these bonds? Let me sleep and walk as a man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let me go back to my warriors?’

  ‘No.’

  Ampeánor rose and walked around the fire. The smoke stung his eyes, drawing water.

  ‘What then, Southron?’

  ‘What has gone on in the world these past weeks? The lamed pace we keep is too slow. If you were free, we could go faster. You could help me hunt.’

  ‘And how will you know I won’t murder you in your sleep?’

  ‘You will swear an oath to remain and work me no ill.’

  ‘An oath upon the head of your Empress?’

  ‘An oath upon your people, your wife, and the first chieftain of your tribe.’

  The barbarian growled. ‘And how do you know our ways so well, that you can pick the oath I would never break?’

  ‘Will you swear?’

  ‘As soon as we reach your land, I will be bound by no oaths. I will not go like a mare into the dark grove of your city.’

  ‘When we reach the Eglands, Tarendahardil will not be far. Then I will bind you again, and release you from your oath. It is only while we are here in the Sontil I will have your word.’

  The barbarian shook his head.

  Ampeánor sighed. He went to see to his poor horse. He stretched out beneath his cloak. The fire was now reduced to a few wan embers, and the dark, damp Sontil was cold with winter’s heralds.

  ‘Southron.’ Now it was Gundoen who spoke reluctantly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I will swear your oath.’

  The silence of the wood filled the little space. ‘Then speak it.’

  ‘By my people, by my wife, and by Tont-Ornoth, first chieftain of my tribe, I will not harm you or try to flee while we are in these woods. Cut me free now, that I may sleep in ease.’

  Ampeánor rose and cut the barbarian’s bonds. Then he returned to his place, drew his cloak over him, and closed his eyes.

  Across the fire, Gundoen chafed and slapped his wrists and ankles. Then the barbarian went to the stream by which they had camped. He splashed in the water and beat his tunic on a rock to dry. He scratched a bed out of the moss and bark and began to snore.

  Ampeánor, lying moveless with war-knife in hand underneath the cloak, got no rest at all that sleep.

  When the time came for the end of sleep Ampeánor rose. Gundoen rose as well. The two men regarded each other.

  Something had happened, but Ampeánor did not like to think what it was.

  He had begun to trust the barbarian.

  * * *

  They made good progress thereafter. Ampeánor rode while Gundoen ran alongside, leaping like an animal. They hunted together and took counsel on their way. They even found a path, bare and hard as a stone, and three fathoms wide.

  Ampeánor was thankful for it for a boon of Goddess, but Gundoen shook his head.

  ‘What troubles you?’ Ampeánor asked.

  ‘Lend me your knife.’ The barbarian thrust the blade into the ground. He pried up a chunk and crumbled it in his fingers. A bit of it he tasted, then spat with a growl. ‘I do not like this trail.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Taste the dirt yourself.’

  Ampeánor smelled it. The dirt did give off a strange odor. It seemed to Ampeánor he had encountered the odor long before, and yet he knew he never had. ‘What do you fear?’

  Gundoen grinned like a calynx baring its teeth. ‘I do not fear my death much, and yours even less.’

  ‘Gundoen, I will follow this trail. I know not what men or beasts may have formed it in the past, and I do not care. It goes the way we want, and will bring us faster out of the wood.’

  ‘Then kick your horse’s rump and move, Southron.’

  For two passes they followed the trail. The path remained the same width and for the most part ran straight before them like the nether half of a manmade tunnel. Now and then it curved one way then the other, like a wriggle, before taking back its constant course.

  They found no beasts near that path. They were forced to consume dried meat from past kills.

  On the third pass the trail began to slope downward. At first Ampeánor thought they were descending the side of a hill, but when the two men lay down for the longsleep the land still fell before them and the light was dimmer, so that Ampeánor knew they were descending into a great valley.

  All the next waking they followed the path down into the earth. Only vague forms could be perceived beyond twenty paces in the darkness. Ampeánor was uneasy, but little minded to admit that he had been wrong and the barbarian right. Besides, the memory of Melkarth hung upon his mind. He had begun to feel a dread of this wood, and longed to be free of it.

  After the fourth meal, the barbarian spoke. ‘We better go faster, Southron.’ Ampeánor had slowed their pace. In the growing darkness he feared for his horse.

  ‘Why? Will you still not tell me?’

  ‘You will know that sooner than you please.’

  ‘I’ll not risk my steed.’

  ‘He is dead now, Southron.’

  ‘He soon will be if I make him go faster with his burden.’

  ‘Then give me its burden.’

  The barbarian unslung the pack from the horse’s flank. The wood-axe clanked against one of the pans, and the lance swung through the air. Gundoen threw the heavy pack across his shoulders and started down the path in long strides.

  ‘Not so quickly!’ Ampeánor cried, but the barbarian paid no heed. ‘Stay, curse you! What of your oath?’

  The barbarian was lost in darkness. Weirdly muffled by the packed earth of the black trail, his voice came back to Ampeánor:

  ‘Oaths mean nothing when dead men hold them!’

  Ampeánor cursed, and pricked the horse. The horse stumbled and fell and Ampeánor struck the hard, slimy earth. He heard the horse trotting down the path. It nickered
as it went, though from what, fear or anger? Ampeánor could not tell.

  He pushed himself to his feet. His leg, which had been wounded in the wreck of Elpharaka’s ship, was numb with pain. He glanced about in the darkness. Barbarian and horse were gone. Ampeánor was alone. The silence was as deep as the darkness, deaf as well as blind. He still had his sword and his war-knife. The barbarian had the lance, the great bow, the woodaxe, and the last of their food.

  If it came to a struggle between them now, the barbarian would win an easy kill.

  Ampeánor limped down the path. He had to get back his captive. He would not return to Tarendahardil alone.

  There was a movement in the stagnant air, full of an alien, repellent odor – the odor of the earth below his feet, greater by a hundredfold.

  He was aware of a monstrous presence in the darkness.

  The true nature of the danger now occurred to him. He began to run.

  A frightful bellow shook the earth behind him.

  IV

  The Sending

  WHEN WORD of the Empress’ refusal was conveyed to Ennius Kandi, he went down from the Palace halls into the open air of the courtyards.

  All about him stretched grounds which once had been lovely with the statues and walkways of the Imperial Gardens. Now refugees huddled upon the small heaps of their belongings, awaiting the next sleep or meal.

  Some slept in makeshift tents, others beneath cloaks lain over their faces, others in the shadow of the cowl of rock. They slept fitfully, turning and moaning. Through the veil of sleep, groans of anguish and hatred reached from the depths of the hard dark soil into their dreams, as from the long-buried bones of Elna’s barbarian slaves, promising vengeance to the last Tarendahardilites.

  Ennius Kandi smiled and walked on by. In his fingers he toyed with the death-bird that he never shot but kept always with him, even apart from the Iron Gate.

  The exotic flowers, bushes, spice-plants and shade trees of the Imperial Gardens, so carefully tended for generations, were no more. A small corner of the groves had been spared, it was said at the special instance of the Empress herself. The rest had been butchered to make room for horses, cattle, pigs, chicken, dogs, and men.

  ‘Charan Ennius! Charan Ennius!’

  Some ragged people crowded around the Gerso, tugging at his cloak, their faces pleading. Some held babies out for him to bless. Others touched his shoulders for luck.

  ‘The battle, Charan Ennius! How did it go?’

  The Gerso halted. ‘Well, they came to us,’ he answered. ‘They wanted death. We gave them some.’

  An old man laughed and clapped his hands.

  ‘Like as two brothers,’ he told the man beside him.

  ‘Like as two fellows!’ the other replied.

  In their gloom, the people clung to but one hope. It was to see the Iron Gate open again, so that they might venture once more among the streets of their city. That hope, however, required faith, and faith required a figurehead. The barbarians had Ara-Karn. Against that one, shadowy and terrible, whom might the refugees hope to pit? The captains and charanti of the South were gone. Ghezbal Daan failed them before Egland Downs. The High Charan Farnese, already ancient, had fallen prey to a wasting sickness. The High Charan Ampeánor had vanished in midsummer. Prince Elnavis was a corpse somewhere amidst the ashes of High Town.

  There remained only Ennius Kandi.

  The beginning of his fame had come when he gained the shelter of the Citadel, the last man to do so. Riding out of the flames and smoke of High Town, with a great leap he had gained the narrow outcropping of stone at the foot of the Iron Gate. There, at the risk of his own life, he helped a half-score – some said a half-hundred – refugees mount to the battlements above the closed, towering gate. Only when the last of them reached safety did he think of himself. By then fifty barbarians were raining arrows upon him.

  Once in the Citadel, the Gerso Charan organized the defenses and oversaw the distributions of food. He had a kind word for everyone save those taken with fear: with those he was stern and terrible. He seemed the only man on the mountain who had neither doubt nor fear of the outcome of the siege. Whenever anyone spoke of the strength of the barbarians in battle, Ennius Kandi smiled. It was not a smile of despair or of fear.

  He was a member of the nobility of two cities, Gerso and Ul Raambar. Among the people, those were two names of power.

  Gerso had been the first city to fall to the barbarians; Ul Raambar held Yron Ghadil against the Madpriests for centuries. In the person of one man were thus represented vengeance and might.

  It was said that Ennius Kandi had seen Gerso fall, and Ancha, and Eliorite, and Carftain, and the city-states of the Delba. The rumors of his prowess had grown huge among the Tarendahardilites. It was said he had fought Ara-Karn three times, with each combat fiercer than the last. It was said that Ara-Karn offered fifty thousand golden Elnics for the Gerso’s head, and feared him more than any other living man.

  There was this as well: of all the defenders, Ennius Kandi alone was visible to the people when the barbarians assaulted the Iron Gate.

  The high inner gates and the cowl of rock hid the central battlements from the view of those within the grounds. Only the twin lance-towers could be seen. The deeds of the guardsmen were hidden, but all men saw the Gerso charan and his bow atop the southern lance-tower.

  He had thus become, by his deeds, his history, his race and his position, a living symbol of defiance against the barbarians.

  Once during an assault the jade eye of God had risen above the inner gates beside the southern lance-tower. For a space the watchers below stood enthralled as they saw the hooded man wield his bow against the dark pallor of God. It was seen how, as the bow was drawn back, its outline mirrored all the changes the face of God made in a single pass: a sliver when nearest Goddess Sun, a wedge overhead, and all but a globe gleaming atop the dark horizon. And one old man said, There stand two brothers.

  The phrase was caught up and repeated until it became a catchphrase among them. From time to time, in the midst of squalor and the moans of hungry children in the middle of a sleep, the phrase ‘like as two brothers’ could be heard repeated over and over, like a prayer to Goddess.

  Whenever Ennius Kandi walked among them, the Tarendahardilites clustered around him. He smiled on them and answered their questions gently, like some father greeting his children clutching at his legs. He knew each man by name; knew the gossip of the camps and what the Palace cooks prepared for the next meal. He told them how comically the fearsome savages had died. He saw to the children, the sick, and the aged.

  Upon this occasion, however, he remained among them for only a brief time. His manner seemed distracted. Soon he passed into the courtyard of the guardsmen between the inner and outer gates.

  The off-watch guardsmen sat in the sunlight seeing to their blades or casting dice bones. Cheerfully they hailed the Gerso charan and bade him join their game. He promised them another time to try to regain their losses, and passed on. He entered the south barracks, cut deep out of the cowl of rock. There the burly master armorer had his workshop piled with broken armor, swords and lances awaiting work, and bins filled with char-wood and coal. The forges roared, and smoke mounted through holes cut in the rock.

  The armorer greeted the northern lord with a broad grin. ‘And have the cranes you bade me fashion worked to your satisfaction, Charan Ennius? Ah, but those were cunning designs of yours!’

  ‘They worked well,’ the Gerso answered him, ‘which is a tribute to your craftsmanship as much as to my design. I have a notion for another instrument, rather smaller, which I think you will find even more clever.’

  * * *

  Upon the following pass, two men met outside the Hall of Justice. They wore ragged, filthy tunics, and their dirty faces were unshaven. The one was short and of late middle age, the other huge, all muscle and hard bulk. The huge man smiled and gave out a rueful laugh.

  ‘Take it not unkindly, friend,�
�� he said, ‘but a more villainous or greasy pair I never saw in the Thieves’ Quarter. Well, and it is wise, I suppose – though Kiva vowed she’d not so much as let me enter her chambers before I’ve shaved twice and bathed three times. She would not even grant me a farewell kiss.’

  ‘Should we not go?’ the short man said.

  ‘Now you will not take fright, will you Little Doughty? Speak out now, if it is so, I’ll do without you rather than be betrayed by your fear. And yet they speak brave tales of your fighting on the barricades.’

  ‘I will be well enough,’ the other answered mournfully. ‘The Queen asked me, and I told her I would.’

  ‘That is the saying of a man. Come then, and before you feel the danger we’ll be on our way back.’

  They descended among the throngs of refugees. On the fourth lower terrace of what had been the Imperial Gardens, they walked below the black cliff of the cowl of rock. There they came upon a dark grove of trees, the last unscathed, and most ancient part of the famous Gardens. In silence the two men plunged into it.

  Among the trees it was dusky, almost black. The stink of the pines and herbal trees and roots was thick about them. There had been a light rain during the third meal, and wet leaves and needles drenched the ragged tunics of the captain and Kuln-Holn. At the grove’s end, beneath the rocky wall, the two men stopped.

  Before them the trees shrank from a small dead circle of ground. In its center stood a squat, rough-hewn stone.

  The stone was crusted over with ancient stains. Berowne spat over his shoulder and made the Sign of Goddess.

  ‘In truth,’ he said, ‘this is such a thing that might well arouse the neck-hairs of any who saw it, even if he were ignorant of the purpose it once served.’ Warily he touched the dank stone. ‘This is old, very old,’ he breathed. ‘Older, I think, than the city herself. Do you know what it is, Iocantris?’

  ‘I know,’ Kuln-Holn said miserably.

  ‘And it is said that in those times, it was not a loathsome thing, but even Elna and his captains made sacrifice to dark God, and drank the filled bowls until what they had drunk writhed and jumped in their bellies, and made them mad to shed what they had just consumed. Perhaps they enacted the rites even here upon this very stone. It sickens me even to look upon it. And yet here before us is the doorway of our passage.’