Children of Chaos

seventeen

BENARD CELEBRE

was already hammering marble when the priests began their morning psalms. That was the last possible moment he could leave if he was to reach the palace at sunrise; keeping a Werist waiting was a sure road to unhappiness. Reluctantly he tossed maul and chisel into the shed, exchanged his smock for the new secondhand loincloth he had purchased with the copper Ingeld had given him, absentmindedly wiped his hands on it, weighted down the drape with the chunks of rock he used for that purpose, and set off at a trot.

In Benard's absence, Thod was supposed to help Sugthar the potter, which meant he would mostly ogle his adored Thilia.

Satrap Horold's orders that Benard visit the Whiterim quarry had seemed like deliverance from certain death at the time, but there had been no signs of Cutrath since then, so the matter no longer felt urgent. In fact, the trip was unnecessary. He could tell the priests what he needed and they would send word to the quarry master to cut the block and deliver it on the next spring flood.

Furthermore, Benard had started work on the third block of marble. If it could not be holy Weru, it must serve for another god. No sooner thought than realized—he had hardly begun to consider the matter when holy Anziel flooded him with inspiration. Never had he felt Her divine fire so strongly, as if the stone had become transparent and he saw the goddess Herself standing inside it, looking just as he had seen Hiddi that night at the temple. Without models or sketches or even guidelines on the block, he started cutting away everything that was not Hiddi to expose his statue of Anziel. Already he had the rough shape outlined. To leave it like that was agony; he was going to be thoroughly miserable every minute he was away from his work.

♦

Having gone around the long way rather than cut through the palace, he arrived breathless at the stable yard. Even there he kept a wary eye open for Werists, for they would not consider mere toe-tramping or sucker-punching covered by Horold's edict against violence.

A car and team stood ready, with the onagers being comforted by a young Nastrarian; their eyes were closed and the long ears drooped in bliss. The standard, workaday chariot was merely a battered wicker box on two wheels, lacking the fancy trimmings and webbed floor of vehicles driven by people like Ingeld. Benard had been taken on four chariot trips in his life and been sick to his stomach on all of them. The inside was already crowded with somebody's personal bindle and two plump wineskins. Wine could only mean that his driver and custodian was to be Flankleader Guthlagson, who seemed an odd choice, but would be more pleasant company than any other Werist. Being no admirer of the satrap's son, he had practically congratulated Benard on humiliating the lout so epochally.

Benard climbed in and sat on the bindle to think about Hiddi—Hiddi the statue, not the flesh-and-blood one, whom he had not seen since their first meeting. He had decided to show her with her chin a little higher than she had held it when she posed for him at the temple. This would produce minor changes in her neck, and...

Old Guthlag came hobbling across the yard, his pall already rumpled. Beside him trudged a hulking Werist cadet carrying a leather bag. Benard stood up. The hunk said "Here!" and swung the bag up to him, but the artist's eye had noted how far the titan had been tilted as he walked and how much effort was needed to lob that load. Benard caught it with both hands and against his thighs instead of where it had been aimed, so he did not drop it and it did not disable him. The chariot rocked, provoking snorts of protests from both onagers and Nastrarian. The Werist had the grace to look impressed as well as disappointed.

Benard lowered the bag to the floor. It chinked. What in the world did they need so much gold for?

Guthlag said, "Ready?"

"Ready, lord."

"No baggage?"

Benard just shook his head. He gave the old man a surreptitious hand up, gripping his wrist and not his arthritic fingers. He was surprised to find himself on the left side.

"You expect me to drive? Lady Ingeld used to say it would be easier to teach onagers to paint. The only time she ever let me try by myself, I nearly tipped the car over. Wow! You 're going to let me drive?"

"Boy, it's time you grew up!" The growl came in a gale of beer fumes. Beer was the old man's usual tipple, but beer could not be transported in chariots. Neither the beer itself nor the crocks would stand the bouncing. It was a surprise that Guthlag thought he could.

"Yes, lord. Right away." Benard unwound the reins, remembered to check that the brake was up (handle down, remember!), took a firm grip on the rail, and yelled "Ready!" at the Nastrarian. Reluctantly the youth returned to the world of people and stepped aside, withdrawing both himself and his god's blessing. The long ears shot up. With angry brays, the brutes lurched forward against the neck straps. The chariot hurtled along the yard, heading straight for the far wall, where each brainless ass would inevitably try to turn outward and create complete disaster. A pull on the right-hand onager's reins—a stronger pull—brought the car around in a death-defying U-turn. As it settled back on both wheels, Benard aimed the team at the gate and resisted an urge to close his eyes.

Out in the alley, he could do little more than hang on as they careered down the long, winding slope to the river, through crowds, carts, wagons, and carrying chairs. Guthlag blew long warning yodels on the bull's horn. Pedestrians and livestock leaped aside, howling curses and choking in the roiling clouds of red dust.

"Which way?" Benard yelled.

Guthlag stopped bugling long enough to snap, "Left!"

Left it was. They veered madly around an oxcart, and after that life became a little simpler. True, it was there, where land and water met, that the main business of the city was conducted. Being both quay and road, the levee teemed with people buying and selling, loading and unloading, coming and going. Porters toiled like ants under seemingly impossible burdens; wagons rumbled between high piles of wares and gaudy market stalls. The wealthy rode by in carrying chairs or chariots, whose drivers screamed and cracked whips at the mob, yet went no faster because of it. But at least there was space enough to dodge and no wall for an incompetent driver to butter bystanders against.

"There!" Guthlag said as they swept out of town. "That wasn't hard, was it?"

"I'd rather chisel marble," Benard muttered under his breath, but he did feel pleased with himself. Heading upstream with the wind in his hair and the sun in his eyes, he even began to enjoy life. The traffic was light, just the occasional wagon or chariot, and his onagers had lost their first furious speed. On the rutted track the car bounced. And bounced. And bounced. It also swayed, pitched, and rocked. The trick was to keep one's knees slightly bent, so they said.

Hard as it was on him, it was much harder on Guthlag. The rheumatic old warrior clutched the rail with hands all knobbly and twisted. His brass collar bounced up and down his scraggly neck, his face repeatedly twisted with pain.

Benard eased back on the reins, and the winded onagers condescended to slow to a trot. "How far to Whiterim?"

" 'Bout a menzil."

A chariot should get there before noon. "Do we go through any interesting places?"

The Werist opened his eyes, the better to scowl with. "Only place on the plain that's interesting is Kosord—an' even that's half a finger from boredom."

"How about Umthord? Isn't that where holy Sinura's sanctuary is?"

"What if it is?" the old man snarled. "Heroes have no truck with Healers, nor them with us. Stop. Need a drink."

Discard first theory—despite his grotesquely swollen joints, Guthlag had not been sent along on this expedition so he could seek a healing in the famous sanctuary. So why so much gold?

The onagers did stop on Benard's signal, much to his surprise. Giving the old man the reins to hold, he knelt to untie a wineskin. Guthlag took a very long drink.

The sun was brutal already, the long baking of summer that ripened crops. The clouds impressed Benard—innumerable little puffy clouds scattered like grain on a slate and extending forever. Landscape was soon obstructed by hedges or houses or something, but that heavenly ceiling stretched on in all directions until it was lost in the haze of the wall of the world. To his right flowed the river, which was another and far greater highway, coils of ochre-colored oil peppered with three-cornered sails in red-browns. In the other direction lay endless green spreads of growing grain mottled with silver ponds.

"What'ch waitin' for, boy? Drive on, an' stop daydreaming."

"Yes, lord. Giddyup!" Benard slapped the onagers with the reins.

"You got the brake down."

Ah, yes...

♦

After a long period of bouncing, Benard said, "Any word of Cutrath?"

Guthlag cackled. "Pimple's still in the sweatbox. You miss him?"

"No. Who does?"

"No one I know of."

"So you don't think I'm in any danger?"

"Arr! Didn't say that. You're in plenty danger."

"Even after what the satrap said?"

"Hope so," the old man said grumpily. "Honor of the host's at stake. Course, it'll take some planning. Anything happens to you, then Horold'll have to ask a seer who dun't, right? Means the pimple wouldn't dare do anything himself, 'cause he knows his daddy'll beat him bloody for disobeying. No local Hero will, for same reason. But a twist of copper in a beer house can buy all the thugs you want, and there's Heroes coming through town all the time, heading for the Edge. Uphold the honor of the cult, see? By morning the culprits are long gone and you're feeding the eels."

"My lord is kind," Benard said, but he said it to himself. If it happened it happened.

He still did not know why Guthlag had brought a fortune in gold along on a simple two-day outing, but he knew better than to ask. Besides, there were more interesting things to think about. The Anziel statue was like a sore tooth, impossible to ignore for long. The angle of Her gaze would be critical—

♦

After the second wine break, Guthlag's painkiller began making him talkative. "That drawing of your'n really took me back," he mumbled. "Handsome man, then, Satrap was."

"Even when I knew him. Must have been a vision in his youth."

"He wash at that, lad. Spec I wound be here if he hand bin."

"My lord is kind," Benard said blankly.

Guthlag cackled and elbowed his arm. "Stuff that! You ever heard tell of the fall of Kosord?"

"Just scraps and rumors." Much more than he had ever wanted to hear, in fact, but he was obviously about to hear more. Perhaps he would learn how Guthlag had survived when the rest of the defenders did not.

"Aye. Well the pyromancer foresaw it, o' course, lady Tiu. She saw Stralg's horde on its way. He'd seized Skjar an' Yormoth an' a few other cities already, and Kosord would give him control of the plains, so no surprise. Hordeleader Kruthruk had been predicting he'd try for Kosord next. Fine man, Kruthruk." Guthlag spat nostalgically. "Course Stralg was running 'bout a host an' a half by then, 'bout twenty sixty. Kruthruk couldn't field even a couple of hunts, so the odds would ha' been at least five to one."

"Would have been?"

"Aye. Well, the lady read it in the fire and announced the news, and State Consort Nars was the light of Demern on Kosord. A Speaker has to give true judgment, no matter what his own interests—his blessing and his corban are the same. Nars judged his city would fare better if it didn't resist. He ordered Kruthruk to take his men and go over to Stralg. Kruthruk refused."

Benard had heard that tale before and decided then that he would never understand Heroes. He still thought so. "Better death than dishonor?"

"Some of that," Guthlag admitted. "More that his brother had been a candidate for bloodlord, so Kruthruk wanted Stralg's guts for rat bait."

"Even if that meant all his men dying, too?"

"Their duty. Said he would let Weru decide. Stralg drew up his horde on the plain and they agreed to fight it out that night. Then the state consort insisted Kruthruk give his men the choice. 'Bout half of them went over to Stralg—knowing, o' course, that he would send them into battle first to let them prove their new loyalty."

Ouch! "That doesn't sound like very good judgment to me."

"Then you're no Speaker!" the old man barked. "Stralg was bound to win, see, and he razes cities that defy him. He'd be in a better mood if his own losses were lower."

"You're right, I'm no Demernist." Benard had often wondered if his father's title of doge had been the Florengian equivalent of a state consort. Who else but a Speaker could give his children away to a monster? "That's too cold-blooded for me."

"Thaz what been a Speaker izzle bout." Guthlag hic-cuped. "The cause was hopeless, so Nars's god told him he'd best serve his city by dying 'longside his troops."

Benard pointed to a mound in the distance. "What place is that?"

"Umthord."

"I thought we went through there? A priest told—"

"Naw. Stay on the levee."

Benard drove on, passing a line of near-naked peasants wielding hoes in the everlasting war against weeds. He waved and was ignored. The sky seemed oppressively big, out here on the plain.

"And the lady Tiu chose to die with her husband?"

"That she did. She drove the chariot and brandished a sword so that they would treat her like a combatant. Knowing what Stralg's horde did to women."

"Why? Surely even Stralg would not dare touch a Daughter of Veslih!"

"She said it'd be best for the city, because Stralg would never trust her and she couldn't trust him. Nils tried to tell her she was wrong and he couldn't do it! Saw him standin' there with tears running into his beard and he couldn't tell her she was wrong. So they went off together. But they had Kruthruk assign one man to guard Ingeld until the new overlord took over the city."

Ah! "How old was Ingeld?"

"Sixteen." Guthlag sighed.

So did Benard. He couldn't imagine Ingeld at sixteen, for he kept seeing her as she had been six years ago, when they were lovers.

"Kruthruk picked me," Guthlag said, "oldest man in the host. Talkin' makes me thirsty."

Benard reined in again. The night battle outside the walls had been a massacre, they said. He hadn't known about Kosord's Werists fighting on both sides and slaughtering one another, but he could believe it. After that, even, the citizenry had tried to contest Stralg's entry, leading to riots, retaliation, and the bloodshed Tiu had died to avert.

"Drive on!" Guthlag belched and wiped his mouth.

Benard remembered the brake, whapped the onagers. "How much defending did you have to do?"

"Enough." Such modesty was unheard of in a Werist.

"The rioters broke into the palace, didn't they?"

"Faugh! The rioters were just extrinsics with spears. I splattered some gobs of flesh around an' after that the rest stayed well back. But Stralg's warbeasts was more serious. I took out three of them before their packleader got there and called them off. When Stralg himself arrived, I was still blockin' the door, still in battleform, all reekin' of gore. He had Horold in tow. Told me he wanted to talk to Ingeld, an' she came out."

The lady had seen much trouble in her life, but that interview must have been one of the worst moments. She had never told Benard this. He had not even been born then. It was shocking to realize all the things that the world had gotten up to before he was there to see.

"This was the jade stair?"

"Naw, the west door."

Benard tried to conjure up the scene. He knew the passage well enough ... narrow and straight, about fifteen steps ... he counted them in his memory and there were fourteen ... darkness, rushlights flaming and smoking, making shadows dance. Much blood, Stralg and his men crammed in at the bottom, perhaps a few bodies... Ingeld defiant at the top and the monstrous Guthlag-thing crouching beside her. Or looming over her—it would not be wise to ask the man to describe his warbeast. Bleeding...

Guthlag growled. "Stralg said she could marry his brother and swear to be loyal, else he'd give her to the troops, which was it to be?"

"So she accepted the handsome Horold?"

"No. Ah, you'd have been proud of her, lad! She laid out some terms of her own. One of them was that I be spared. So I was. Stralg himself said I'd earned that."

"Praise indeed!"

Guthlag sighed nostalgically for what must have been the greatest moment of his life. "Ah, the Fist's a Hero's Hero. 'Member you asked about battleform? Well, here's your answer: Yes, we can put it on anytime we want, but snot allowed. Man changes form without orders, he's headin' for a load of what your friend the Pimple's goin' through right now. And, my lad, changing's not something done lightly. It hurts! All your joints grind, your bones bend. A man needs to be mad to go through with it. Or really scared. Doesn't matter which in a real fight, because them already changed will turn on shirkers, so when the leaders form, we all form."

"What other terms did Ingeld demand for her marriage?"

"Hard to say." Guthlag scratched busily. "In battleform, anything more'n simple words gets pretty tricky. Lost a lot of blood, too. An' I was trying to watch half a dozen Werists, wondering what to do if they all came up the stairs at me at once. So I didn't get much of it. Something to do with sons ... And her husband was to go free."

"Her what?" Benard squealed, causing the onagers' long ears to pivot in alarm. The old man's chuckle told him he'd reacted as required.

"So wash it to you if lady was married before, my lad?"

"Nothing." He glanced at Guthlag and saw that his denial did not convince. How many people knew or suspected that he'd once been Ingeld's lover? "What was his name?"

"Ardial Berkson. A Speaker, o' course. Nars's chosen heir."

"How long had they been married?" Had she had any say in her father's choice? Had she loved him?

" 'Bout a sixday. He was standin' on other side of her, cool as bronze. Anyway, when Stralg balked at something, she said, 'Packleader, kill me.' I was packleader of the red, then, see?"

"No! Oh, no, that's too much! I've known I've swallowed a lot of whoppers in my time, but that one chokes me."

"Watch your teeth, boy," Guthlag growled. "I'm telling you Mayn's truth. We had it agreed. I was to kill her rather than see her taken alive. That wasn't the final code word, though."

Ingeld was capable of it, Benard decided, like her mother. Whether she would have been capable at sixteen was another question. "Obviously Stralg believed her."

"Stralg had a seer with him. Asked if she was bluffing. Seer said she wasn't. So he agreed. She went to his brother whose looks musta' helped some. Handsome as a god, he was. Ardial wash an ugly cuss an' fishy cold, like all Speakers. He just bowed and walked away between the Werists, stepping over corpses. I was allowed to swear fealty to Horold. First thing he did was order me never to put on battleform again."

It took Benard a moment to realize what his companion had just said. He glanced again at the twisted hands and knees, the pain-racked face. Werists had no need of Sinurists because they could heal themselves in battleform.

"He's probably long forgotten that order. Can't you ask to try?"

"Werists don't beg, boy."

Surely self-defense must be a permissible excuse? Had Guthlag brought the gold along as bait for an ambush so he could battleform in a fight with bandits? No, that was absurd. Was Benard supposed to try and run away with it and be hunted down?

"This journey isn't easy for you, lord. Why didn't you send someone else?"

The resulting pause was so long that Benard thought the old man wasn't going to answer, but eventually he growled, "Came along because Satrap told me to. Said I was the one who had to keep track of you anyway, and I was the only man in his host he could trust not to gut you soon as his back was turned."

"That was kind of him."

"Aye. He wants to do it himself, see?"

Benard knew that. "At least Horold's honest. Did he mention when?"

"Naw. He did say I gotta run you down if you try to escape."

"I have no intention of—"

Guthlag cackled unpleasantly. "Just as well, because it shard to think about anything in a chase sept the game, un'stand? Catch something an' not kill it—snot likely."

Benard stared straight ahead, but his stomach was churning. "I do not intend to try running away."

"That's what her ladyship told me." The old man affected a prissy falsetto. " 'I'm just afraid dear Benard will never abandon all that marble,' she said. 'The darling boy thinks of nothing except his art.' "

"Ingeld did not call me a darling boy!"

"No. She called you a bullheaded idiot."

At last, Benard saw the plot. How could he have been so blind? She had said marble to the Werist, but marble was not the problem and they all knew it. The problem was Horold wanting to kill him. She wanted Benard to run away.

"So the real reason you came was because Ingeld asked you to and this gold came from her, yes?" Meddlesome woman!

The old man cackled drunkenly. " 'Gotta do something to save him,' she says."

A kind thought, maybe, but Benard was hurt that she had tried to buy him off, even if she had not seen it that way. He would not go unless she went with him. Why couldn't they see that sometimes it took more courage to do nothing? True, he rarely went to see her, because the satrap undoubtedly spied on her through his seers, but the thought of never seeing her again was unbearable. One day she would understand that the only way to save his life was to run away with him.

He waited until Guthlag needed another drink, which was not long.

He reined in. There were several boats in sight and more coming, all with bare masts and oars out as they let the current swing them around a great curve, close in to the bank. As the Werist raised the almost-empty wineskin to his mouth, Benard leaped from the chariot. He went down the bank in three great strides that almost smashed his ankles, and launched himself in a dive that should have cleared the fringe of reeds and landed him in the water with a spectacular belly flop.

Something intercepted him in midair. It must have beaten him to the water's edge and turned there, because it threw him sideways and landed him flat on his back in the reeds. He looked up at monstrous open jaws and fangs like chisels, eyes glaring, talons out, and a foul blast of hot wine fumes.

He was going to die. It was going to tear his face off. Guthlag had warned him what happened in a chase, warned him a warbeast was too stupid to understand language. But there were brays of terror in the background and a frenzied rattling. The onagers had panicked at the sight or smell of the warbeast.

"The chariot!" Benard screamed. "The gold! Get the gold!"

The talons touched his forehead and stopped. Benard lay petrified, staring up at the horny, hairy paw that would be the last thing he would ever see. The Guthlag-thing raised its head to look after the fleeing team and chariot. It uttered a snarl of fury and was gone, flying up the bank and racing off after the onagers like a giant cat.

Benard went the other way, hit the water, and started swimming with all the power he had, foaming through the water toward the nearest boat. It would give him a ride back to Kosord. Guthlag would not abandon the gold to follow him. No matter what Ingeld wanted, Benard Celebre was not going to run away from a little turd like Cutrath, nor a big turd like his father either, and she would just have to learn to live with that fact.