A Hero's justice d-3 Page 3

  Galloping down a hill, the horse stumbled, throwing his rider. By the time Egrin sat up again, all that remained of the horse was the sound of his hoofbeats fading rapidly into the west.

  Egrin cursed as he slowly sat up. Most of his gear had gone with the horse. All he had left were the sword and knife he wore. Ignoring his various aches and pains, he brushed dirt from his clothing and continued on foot.

  The eerie whirring, humming noise was growing louder, sounding like a chorus of dragon-sized crickets. Distracted by the noise, stumbling a bit on tired, aching legs, Egrin found himself surrounded by a score of tall foresters.

  They were armed with spears, most flint-tipped but a few sporting tarnished bronze heads. More startling than their arms was their attire. Each forester wore a long skirt made of strips of red bark. Breastplates of white whittled sticks, knotted together with cord, covered their chests. Any exposed skin was hidden beneath a paste of grease and ashes, and their heads were encased in fantastic masks made of clay, leather, animal teeth, and horns.

  Before Egrin could speak, two tribesmen came up behind him and shoved him to his knees. A quartet of flint blades ringed his face. A forester with a pair of boar’s tusks protruding from his mask uttered a sharp phrase. It did not sound kindly.

  “I am here on a mission,” Egrin said, keeping his hands out to his sides, away from his weapons. “I seek Voyarunta.”

  Boar Tusk spoke again, a longer speech, but no more helpful.

  “Makaralonga,” Egrin said carefully. “I have come to see Chief Makaralonga.”

  Even with their faces hidden, the tribesmen’s suspicion was plain. Two of them hauled Egrin to his feet, taking his sword and knife.

  A newcomer arrived, and the foresters parted ranks for him. His mask was of a particularly hideous mien, with protruding eyes, a sunken, twisted nose, and the tongue of a buck deer hanging from between its bared wooden lips. The entire mask was painted dead white.

  White Face eyed Egrin up and down. “I will take you to Makaralonga,” he finally said, his words muffled by the grotesque appliance.

  He addressed his comrades in their own tongue, and an argument broke out. Boar Tusk seemed strenuously opposed to the plan. White Face’s reply was to rap his spearshaft over Boar Tusk’s head. The blow likely would have felled a bareheaded man, but Boar Tusk staggered, merely stunned.

  White Face turned to Egrin. “Do not speak, and when I hold up my hand, look at the ground,” he ordered. The lolling-tongued face came close. “Disobey, and you die.”

  Egrin nodded, and they departed.

  As they traveled, a quarter-league at least, the throb of drums grew more distinct. Glimpses of blue sky ahead revealed they were approaching a clearing. The redbud, dogwood, and other smaller trees disappeared, leaving only the widely spaced giants of the forest. The ground around the massive tree trunks was bare, packed by the tread of many feet over many years. They reached the edge of a ravine and halted.

  The narrow, bowl-shaped gully was lined with crudely cut blocks of native stone. The stones were set in horizontal rows along the ravine’s sides, and these benches were crowded with tribesmen. Hundreds of the Dom-shu, all garbed and masked like Egrin’s captors, sat and stared at a ceremony taking place on the floor of the ravine.

  Their attention was focused on two concentric circles of foresters. The outermost ring was made up of drummers, beating a regular one-two rhythm on pairs of skin-covered drums. Within arm’s reach in front of them was a circle of flame, a ring of wood stacked waist-high. Inside this marched a circle of tribesmen wearing tiny breechcloths and a thick coating of ash and grease. They moved in single file. Following the east-to-west motion of the sun, they lifted their knees high and drove their heels hard into the cindered soil. Each dancer whirled a length of cord over his head. At the end of each cord was a slat of wood. This whirling slat was the source of the weird humming Egrin had heard. This close, the sound was deeply affecting. Not just the sheer volume of it, but the quality of the noise. The bass note seemed to penetrate the chest and make the bones shiver.

  In the center of these circles, a lone figure squatted. Alone of all the tribesmen present, he was not covered in ash, nor masked. He was naked, his long gray hair falling past his shoulders. Skin browned by years of forest life stretched tautly over his sinewy frame. On his back, scars stood out white as paint.

  “Makaralonga,” said White Face, though Egrin already had deduced as much.

  The Place of Birthing, the Karad-shu had called it. Egrin understood a little better what the forester had meant. The chief wasn’t witnessing the birth of a child or grandchild; it was Makaralonga himself who was being reborn.

  At some unseen signal, the seated onlookers rose in a body and shouted. White Face lifted a hand. Egrin dropped his gaze to the ground, covering his eyes with his hands for good measure. The shout resolved into a chant. Only four words, the chant was repeated again and again. Egrin felt the hair on his neck prickle. Sweat beaded on his brow.

  “Do not look, if you value living.” White Face punctuated his words with the point of a metal dagger in Egrin’s ribs.

  By regulating the whirling of their sticks, the dancers produced a concerted pulse, matching it to the machine-like regularity of the drummers. To Egrin’s surprise, he felt his own heartbeat quicken to match the rhythm. The blood pounded through the great vein in his neck, as though he was engaged in strenuous exercise. Even more astonishing, he realized he could feel White Face’s heartbeat as well, transmitted through the blade of the dagger he still held to Egrin’s side. The forester’s pulse matched Egrin’s own. He had no doubt the heart of every soul present was hammering now in perfect unison.

  Gradually, the dancers allowed their music to slow to a less frenzied tempo. The drummers changed their rhythm as well. White Face’s dagger was withdrawn.

  Given leave by the forester, Egrin looked up. Makaralonga stood in the ravine below, donning a deerskin robe. Pale wisps of fog drifted around him.

  The flaming ring of wood was no more than glowing embers, and the scene was washed in the ruddy light of the setting sun. Egrin was puzzled. He was certain only one mark had passed since his capture, yet if sunset had come, half a day must have elapsed.

  White Face guided him away from the Place of Birthing. They followed a wide, well-marked path eastward, deeper into the Great Green. Scores of masked Dom-shu trod silently on either side. It wasn’t until they reached the foresters’ village that the masks were removed and the foresters began to speak among themselves.

  Egrin was taken to a sod hut of considerable size, with a steeply pitched thatched roof. The top of a boulder by the door had been hollowed out to serve as a lamp, the hollow filled with burning animal fat.

  A boy came out of the hut. About seven years old, he had curly dark hair, a high forehead, and skin paler than most Dom-shu.

  Nodding toward Egrin, the boy asked, “Who’s the old grasslander?”

  “Mind your tongue, Eli!” White Face snapped. “He is an Ergothian warrior of great renown.”

  The boy’s face showed skepticism, but before he could say more, White Face removed his fearsome headgear and Egrin’s mouth fell open in shock.

  “Kiya!”

  Eldest daughter of Makaralonga and a warrior of the Dom-shu, Kiya had been given to Tol years ago as hostage and wife, along with her younger sister Miya. The formidable pair had never been wives in the usual sense, but looked after Tol, his household, and his affairs. When Ackal V drove Tol into exile, Kiya and Miya were the only ones who dared go with him.

  Egrin’s head was reeling. “By all the gods, Kiya!” he exclaimed. “I never suspected it was you in that getup!”

  Kiya pulled her long horse-tail of blonde hair from the neck of her tunic, where it had been concealed. She and the old marshal clasped arms, warrior fashion.

  “I could not reveal myself until now,” she explained. “You entered a sacred area at a most critical time. If I hadn’t come along, you migh
t be dead in the greenwood now. Why do you seek my father?”

  “To ask his help in finding Tol.” He gripped her shoulder. “Where is he, Kiya? Where’s Tol?”

  In answer, she held up the leather door flap and gestured for him to enter the sod hut. The boy Eli scampered in ahead of them.

  The long narrow room within was smoky and ill lit by a fire burning fitfully on the rock hearth in its center. Egrin scoured the shadows, looking for the face he so longed to see, but it was Miya who emerged from the rear of the hut.

  “Egrin!” she cried. “You look older than dirt!”

  “He is older than dirt.”

  The comment came from a blanket-draped figure stirring by the hearth. Egrin saw brown eyes gleaming through a long shock of dark brown hair.

  “Egrin Raemel’s son,” Tol said and extended a broad hand.

  Abandoning restraint for once in his life, Egrin sank to his knees with a glad cry and embraced his friend.

  Chapter 2

  Waves Breaking on a Distant Shore

  Tol sat silently by the fire in the sod house, listening to Egrin’s recital of the grim events engulfing Ergoth. This deep in the Great Green, news of the outside world was scarce. A refugee talked to a traveler, who exchanged news with a roving hunter, who brought information to the land of the Dom-shu. Not even this hearsay reached Tol’s ears. He had only superficial interactions with those outside his family circle. The Dom-shu respected him, but even after six years among them, he was still an outsider.

  Miya passed around more food, a simple meal served in gourd bowls, as Egrin related the bakali’s defeat of the First Fifty Hordes at the bend of the Solvin River.

  Swallowing a mouthful of smoked venison, Tol asked, “Was Relfas killed?”

  “I’m certain he will be,” was Egrin’s grim reply. Relfas and a handful of his warlords had survived the battle and returned to Daltigoth to report on bakali strength and tactics. Egrin expected they would not long outlive their men. Two centuries before, Ackal Dermount had created a law stating that no warlord could live if his horde was defeated. Seldom applied back then, the harsh decree suited the current wearer of the Iron Crown. Ackal V had employed it before, and there was little hope he’d be inclined to leniency after such a stunning defeat.

  “Your emperor had best take care, or he’ll run out of generals,” Miya said. Motherhood and village life had rounded her face and figure, but her brown eyes were as penetrating as ever.

  Remnants of Relfas’s army, led by Lord Hojan, had retreated to Juramona. As Hojan recruited more soldiers and prepared for an attack, the bakali instead struck southwest, toward Caergoth, second largest city in the empire. Its governor, Wornoth, owed his position to the emperor’s patronage. Although an imperial lackey, he tried to do the right thing, summoning all the hordes in his domain. Seventeen thousand Riders mustered outside the walls of Caergoth, under the command of General Bessian.

  Tol knew Bessian; his reputation as a fine soldier was well deserved. Unfortunately, Bessian’s horsemen faced over one hundred thousand bakali-nearly six times their own strength. The Ergothians caught the enemy host while it was divided by the East Caer River, and many lizard-men fell to their sabers, but the bakali eventually regrouped and surrounded Bessian’s army. Not a man had been left alive.

  Silence descended as Egrin finished his account. For a time, the only sound was the hiss and pop of the fire as Tol and the Dom-shu sisters took in this second disaster. The First Fifty, the cream of Ergothian warriors, defeated at the Solvin, and Bessian’s seventeen thousand wiped out completely.

  Egrin explained that the bakali, having no weapons with which to destroy Caergoth’s walls, had simply marched on, desolating the countryside in their path. What they could not carry off or consume, they put to the torch.

  “With no warlords surviving the second battle, I suppose the emperor had to settle for taking the governor’s head,” Miya said with gallows humor.

  Egrin replied, “Wornoth survived.”

  Desperate to deflect his patron’s wrath, Egrin explained, Governor Wornoth had sent General Bessian’s entire family, in chains, to Ackal V. Shocked by the twin disasters, and placated by the arrival of the slaves, the emperor had thus far neglected to order Wornoth’s execution.

  The last Egrin had heard, the bakali were ensconced in an enormous camp north of the Ackal Path, halfway between Caergoth and Daltigoth. Nearly every warrior in the western half of the empire had been called to battle, including garrison troops. As a result, one hundred and eighteen hordes had mustered on the west side of the Dalti River, and stood ready to defend the capital.

  “To defend-he doesn’t plan to attack the invaders?” Tol inquired sharply. Egrin’s silence was reply enough. Tol shook his head. “He’s ceding the richest half of the empire to them!”

  “He fears losing his remaining loyal warriors in another battle. You know how he mistrusts the landed hordes.”

  Ackal V had summoned only the western hordes to defend the capital. Living in the east and north were the so-called landed hordes, comprising warriors, retired for the most part, who had been granted estates by Ackal V’s predecessors, Pakin II and III, and the short-lived Ackal IV. As they did not owe their positions to him, the current emperor did not trust the landed warriors. Steeped in the intrigues and plots that were a part of everyday life in the capital, Ackal V was certain these “provincial lords,” as he termed them, would like nothing better than to plan his downfall. He preferred that they and their armed retainers remain scattered on their holdings.

  Kiya and Miya argued strategy, while Egrin finished eating. He listened with half an ear to the women, but most of his mind was on the man who sat quietly next to him, by the fire.

  Six years was a brief span to a long-lived half-elf like Egrin, and even for a human it was not so great a length of time. Yet, the six years that Tol had passed in the Great Green seemed to have wrought many changes on him, Egrin thought. Some were physical. Tol seemed bigger. Not taller, but broader in the chest and shoulders. He’d allowed his beard to grow and it now reached his chest. His hair, likewise untrimmed, hung loose past his shoulders and was threaded here and there with gray. New lines feathered out at the corners of his eyes, and bracketed his mouth. His eyes, however, were just the same. In them, Egrin saw the memory of the boy he’d watched grow into the finest soldier in the empire.

  Other changes were less obvious. Tol seemed somehow quieter than Egrin remembered, less given to speech, more introspective. As the Dom-shu sisters enjoyed one of their all-too-frequent arguments, Tol sat and stared into the fire, giving no sign he even heard the sisters. It was as though he had withdrawn into himself.

  Egrin ate the last of his meal and set aside his empty bowls. “There’s more,” he announced.

  The Dom-shu ceased their wrangling and Tol looked up from the dancing flames.

  “There’s been a second invasion.”

  Miya swore. “More lizard-folk?”

  “Nomads. The bakali invasion displaced tens of thousands of them. Having lost everything to the lizard-men, they formed an army and now they’re trying to seize as much Ergothian territory as they can. The Eastern and Mountain hundreds are crawling with their warbands, and Hylo is threatened. Some isolated garrisons sent out small detachments, demi-hordes, to stop them, but these were swept aside.”

  Tol shrugged, saying, “Who can blame the nomads? For centuries Ergoth has taken their land and slaughtered them in battle.”

  “They’re savages!” Egrin exclaimed. Miya snorted, and Kiya gave him a dry look. Embarrassed, Egrin cleared his throat. “Beg your pardon, but the plains nomads are far more barbarous than any forest tribe.”

  “Grasslanders,” said Kiya, shaking her head. Egrin didn’t know whether she meant the plainsmen or himself.

  Soft snores from Eli, who had fallen asleep with his head in Miya’s lap, recalled them to their surroundings.

  Tol rose and carried Eli to bed, a pile of furs in the dar
kest corner of the hut. Rejoining his comrades, he said, “The chief will have supped by now. He should be told of these events. Let’s pay a visit to Uncle Corpse.”

  Kiya and Egrin preceded Tol out, but Miya remained where she was. Only warriors could enter the chief’s great hut. However, Tol gestured for her to accompany them.

  “You fought beside me for twenty years, Miya. That should make you warrior enough. If anyone protests, we’ll fight them. That’s tribal law, too.”

  Miya stood, hitching a patterned shawl up around her shoulders. “That’s my old husband!” she said, grinning down at him. “I’ve missed him!”

  Tol gave her a friendly shove through the door flap.

  The Repetition of Births ceremony was the Dom-shu’s most important ritual, celebrated every three years once the chief’s hair turned white. The rites would continue for nine days, with exhausted dancers and drummers being replaced by fresh ones to keep the spirit level high. Voyarunta’s great hut, six times the size of any other structure in the village, was crammed with sweaty, noisy warriors. Most were seated on the hut’s blanket-covered floor. When Tol and his companions entered, the sight of Miya brought the revels to a sudden halt.

  “Son of My Life, why have you come here?” said the chief, peering through the haze of hearth smoke at the newcomers arrayed inside the door.

  “Father of My Life, a visitor has come from Ergoth. He seeks to deliver a message to us,” Tol answered.

  Several of the warriors called for Miya to be sent out. She didn’t budge, but cast a wary sidelong glance at Tol. With his own gaze fixed on Voyarunta, Tol declared, “All here are warriors. Both of the daughters of Makaralonga have fought at my side. Does anyone care to dispute this with me?”

  He shrugged off the bearskin. His shoulders, arms, chest and stomach were impressive, rippling with muscle.

  Noting Egrin’s wide eyes, Kiya whispered, “He chops wood every day.”