Dragon Wing

36

“This is dreadful! Simply dreadful! Unheard-of! What are you going to do? What are you going to do?”

The Head Clark was clearly becoming hysterical. Darral Longshoreman felt a tingling in his hands and was hard pressed to resist the temptation to administer a right to the jaw.

“There’s been enough bloodshed already,” he muttered, grasping hold of his hands firmly behind his back in case they took it upon themselves to act on their own. And he managed to ignore the voice that whispered, “A little more blood wouldn’t hurt, then, would it?”

Decking his brother-in-law, though undoubtedly very satisfying, wasn’t going to solve his problems.

“Get hold of yourself!” Darral snapped. “Haven’t I got trouble enough?”

“Never has blood been spilled in Drevlin!” cried the Head Clark in an awful tone. “It’s all the fault of this evil genius Limbeck! He must be cast forth! Made to walk the Steps of Terrel Fen. The Mangers must judge him—”

“Oh, shut up! That’s what brought on all this trouble in the first place! We gave him to the Mangers, and what did they do? Gave him right back to us! And threw in a god! Sure, we’ll send Limbeck down the Steps!” Darral waved his arms wildly. “Maybe this time he’ll come up with a whole army of gods and destroy us all!”

“But that god of Limbeck’s isn’t a god!” protested the Head Clark.

“They’re none of them gods, if you ask me,” stated Darral Longshoreman.

“Not even the child?”

This question, asked in wistful tones by the Head Clark, posed a problem for Darral. When he was in Bane’s presence, he felt that, yes, indeed, he had at last discovered a god. But the moment he could no longer see the blue eyes and the pretty face and the sweetly curved lips of the little boy, the High Froman seemed to waken from a dream. The kid was a kid, and he, Darral Longshoreman, was a sap for ever thinking otherwise.

“No,” said the High Froman, “not even the child.” The two rulers of Drevlin were alone in the Factree, standing beneath the statue of the Manger, gloomily surveying the battlefield.

It hadn’t, in reality, been much of a battle. One might hardly even term it a skirmish. The aforesaid blood had flowed, not from the heart, but from several cracked heads, gushed out a few smashed noses. The Head Clark had sustained a bump, the High Froman a jammed thumb that had swelled up and was now turning several quite remarkable colors. No one had been killed. No one had even been seriously injured. The habit of living peacefully over numerous centuries is a hard one to break. But Darral Longshoreman, High Froman of his people, was wise enough to know that this was only the beginning. A poison had entered the collective body of the Gegs, and though the body might survive, it would never be healthy again.

“Besides,” said Darral, his heavy brows creased in a scowl, “if these gods aren’t gods, like Limbeck said they weren’t, how can we punish him for being right?”

Unaccustomed to wading in such deep philosophical waters, the Head Clark ignored the question and struck out for high ground. “We wouldn’t be punishing him for being right, we’d be punishing him for spreading it around.” There was certainly some logic to that, Darral had to admit. He wondered sourly how his brother-in-law had come up with such a good idea and concluded it must have been the bump on the head. Wringing his wounded thumb and wishing he was back home in his holding tank with Mrs. High Froman clucking over him and bringing him a soothing cup of barkwarm[13], Darral pondered the idea, born of desperation, that was lurking about in the dark alleys of his mind.

“Maybe this time, when we throw him off the Steps of Terrel Fen, we can leave off the kite,” suggested the Head Clark. “I always did think that was an unfair advantage.”

“No,” said Darral, the rattle-brained ideas of his brother-in-law making his decision for him. “I’m not sending him or anyone else Down anymore. Down isn’t safe, seemingly. This god-that-isn’t-a-god of Limbeck’s says he comes from Down. And therefore” —the High Froman paused during a particularly loud spate of banging and whanging from the Kicksey-Winsey—“I’m going to send him Up.”

“Up?” The bump on the head was not going to come to the aid of the Head Clark on this one. He was absolutely and categorically lost.

“I’m going to turn the gods over to the Welves,” said Darral Longshoreman with dark satisfaction.

The High Froman paid a visit to the prison vat to announce the captives’ punishment—an announcement he reckoned must strike terror into their guilty hearts.

If it did, the prisoners gave no outward sign. Hugh appeared disdainful, Bane bored, and Haplo impassive, while Limbeck was in such misery that it was doubtful if he heard the High Froman at all. Getting nothing from his prisoners but fixed cold stares and, in Bane’s case, a yawn and a sleepy smile, the High Froman marched out in high dudgeon.

“I presume you know what he’s talking about?” inquired Haplo. “This being given to the ‘Welves’?”

“Elves,” corrected the Hand. “Once a month, the elves come down in a transport ship and pick up a supply of water. This time, they’ll pick us up with it. And we don’t want to end up prisoners of the elves. Not if they catch us down here with their precious water supply. Those bastards can make dying very unpleasant.”

The captives were locked up in the local prison—a grouping of storage vats that the Kicksey-Winsey had abandoned and which, when fitted with locks on the doors, made excellent cells. Generally the cells were little used—perhaps the occasional thief or a Geg who had been lax in his service to the great machine. Due to the current civil unrest, however, the vats were filled to capacity with disturbers of the peace. One vat had to be emptied of its inhabitants in order to make room for the gods. The Geg prisoners were crowded into another vat so as to avoid being placed into contact with Mad Limbeck. The vat was steep-walled and solid. Several openings covered with iron grilles dotted the sides. Hugh and Haplo investigated these grilles and discovered that fresh air, smelling damply of rain, was flowing in through them, leading the men to assume the grilles covered shafts that must eventually connect with the outside. The shafts might have offered a means of escape except for two drawbacks: first, the grilles were bolted to the metal sides of the vat, and second, no one in his right mind wanted to go Outside.

“So you’re suggesting we fight?” inquired Haplo. “I presume these elven ships are well-manned. We’re four, counting the chamberlain, plus a child, and one sword between us. A sword that’s currently in the possession of the guards.”

“The chamberlain’s worthless,” grunted Hugh. Leaning back comfortably against the brick wall of their prison, he drew out his pipe and stuck the stem between his teeth. “The first sign of danger, and he faints dead away. You saw him back there during the riot.”

“That’s odd, isn’t it?”

“He’s odd!” stated Hugh.

Haplo could remember Alfred’s eyes trying desperately to pierce the cloth covering the Patryn’s hands, almost as if the chamberlain knew what was beneath. “I wonder where he got to? Did you see?” Hugh shook his head. “All I saw was Gegs. I had the kid. But the chamberlain’s bound to turn up. Or rather stumble up. He won’t leave His Highness.” The Hand nodded at Bane, who was talking away at the misery-stricken Limbeck. Haplo followed Hugh’s gaze and focused on the Geg.

“There’s always Limbeck and his WUPP’s. They’d fight to save us, or, if not us, their leader.”

Hugh glanced at him dubiously. “Do you think so? I always heard Gegs had the fighting spirit of a flock of sheep.”

“That may be true now, but it didn’t used to be so. Not in the old days. Once, long ago, the dwarves were a fierce, proud people.”

Hugh, returning his gaze to Limbeck, shook his head.

The Geg sat huddled in a corner, his shoulders slumped, arms dangling limply between his knees. The child was talking at him; the Geg was completely oblivious of the conversation.

“He’s been walking along with his head in the clouds,” said Haplo. “He didn’t see the ground coming and got hurt in the fall. But he’s the one to lead his people.”

“You’re really caught up in this revolution of theirs,” observed Hugh. “Some might wonder why you care.”

“Limbeck saved my life,” answered Haplo, lazily scratching the ears of the dog that was stretched out at his side, its head resting in his lap. “I like him and his people. As I said, I know something about their past.” The mild face darkened. “I hate seeing what they’ve become. Sheep, I believe, was how you put it.”

Hugh sucked thoughtfully, silently on his empty pipe. The man sounded good, but Hugh found it difficult to believe this Haplo was that concerned about a bunch of dwarves. A quiet, unassuming man, you tended to ignore him, forget he was around. And that, said Hugh to himself, might be a very big mistake. Lizards that blend in with the rocks do so to catch flies.

“Somehow we’ve got to get some backbone into your Limbeck, then,” remarked Hugh. “If we’re going to save ourselves from the elves, we’ll need the Gegs to help us.”

“You can leave him to me,” said Haplo. “Where were you headed, before you got caught up in all this?”

“I was going to return the kid to his father, his real father, the mysteriarch.”

“Damn nice of you,” commented Haplo.

“Hunh,” Hugh grunted, his lips twisting in a grin.

“These wizards who live in the High Realm. Why was it they left the world below? They must have enjoyed a large amount of power among the people.”

“The answer to that depends on who you ask. The mysteriarchs claim they left because they’d advanced in culture and wisdom and the rest of us hadn’t. Our barbaric ways disgusted them. They didn’t want to bring up their kids in an evil world.”

“And what do you barbarians say to all this?” asked Haplo, smiling. The dog had rolled over on its back, all four feet in the air, its tongue lolling out of its mouth in foolish pleasure.

“We say”—Hugh sucked on the empty pipe, his words coming out between the stem and his teeth—“that the mysteriarchs were afraid of the growing power of the elven wizards and beat it. They left us in the lurch, no doubt of it. Their leaving was the cause of our downfall. If it hadn’t been for the revolt among their own people, the elves’d be our masters still.”

“And so these mysteriarchs wouldn’t be welcome, if they returned?”

“Oh, they’d be welcome. Welcomed with cold steel, if the people had their way. But our king maintains friendly relations, or so I’ve heard. People wonder why.” His gaze shifted back to Bane.

Haplo knew the changeling’s story. Bane himself had proudly explained it to him. “But the mysteriarchs could come back if one of them was the human king’s son.”

Hugh made no response to the obvious. He removed the pipe from his mouth, tucked it back in his doublet. Crossing his arms over his chest, he rested his chin on his breast and closed his eyes.

Haplo rose to his feet, stretched. He needed to walk, needed to work the kinks out of his muscles. Pacing the cell, the Patryn thought about all he’d heard. He had very little work to do, it seemed. This entire realm was overripe and ready to fall. His lord would not even have to reach out his hand to pluck it. The fruit would be found lying, rotting, on the ground at his feet. Surely this was the clearest possible evidence that the Sartan were no longer involved in the world? The child was the question. Bane had evinced a magical power, but that might be expected of the son of a mysteriarch of the Seventh House. Long ago, before the Sundering, the magics of those wizards had reached the lower level of both Sartan and Patryns. After all this time, they had likely grown in power.

Or Bane could be a young Sartan—clever enough not to reveal himself. Haplo looked over to where the boy sat talking earnestly to the distraught Geg. The Patryn made an almost imperceptible sign with his wrapped hand. The dog, who rarely took his eyes from his master, immediately trotted over to Limbeck and gave the Geg’s limp hand a swipe with his tongue. Limbeck looked up and smiled wanly at the dog, who, tail wagging, settled down comfortably at the Geg’s side.

Haplo drifted over to the opposite end of the vat to stare in seeming absorption at one of the air shafts. He could now hear clearly every word being said.

“You can’t give up,” said the boy. “Not now! The fight’s just beginning!”

“But I never meant there to be a fight,” protested poor Limbeck. “Gegs attacking each other! Nothing like that has ever happened before in our history, and it’s all my fault!”

“Oh, stop whining!” said Bane. Scratching at an itch on his stomach, he looked around the vat and frowned. “I’m hungry. I wonder if they’re going to starve us. I’ll be glad when the Welves get here. I—”

The boy fell suddenly silent, as if someone had bidden him hold his tongue. Haplo, glancing surreptitiously over his shoulder, saw Bane holding the feather amulet, rubbing it against his cheek. When he spoke again, his voice had changed.

“I’ve got an idea, Limbeck,” said the prince, scooting forward to be very near the Geg. “When we leave this place, you can go with us! You’ll see how well the elves and the humans live up above while you Gegs slave down here below. Then you can come back and tell your people what you’ve seen and they’ll be furious. Even this king of yours will have to go along with you. My father and I will help you raise an army to attack the elves and the humans—”

“An army! Attack!” Limbeck stared at him, horrified, and Bane saw that he had gone too far.

“Never mind about that now,” he said, brushing aside world warfare. “The important thing is that you get to see the truth.”

“The truth,” repeated Limbeck.

“Yes,” said Bane, sensing that the Geg was, at last, impressed. “The truth. Isn’t that what’s important? You and your people can’t go on living a lie. Wait. I just got an idea. Tell me about this Judgment that’s supposed to come to the Gegs.”

Limbeck appeared thoughtful, his misery fading. It was as if he’d put on his spectacles. Everything that was blurry, he could now see clearly—see the sharp lines and crisp edges. “When the Judgment is given and we are found worthy, we will ascend to the realms above.”

“This is it, Limbeck!” said Bane, awed. “This is the Judgment! It’s all happened just like the prophecy said. We came down and found you worthy and now you’re going to ascend into the upper realms!”

Very clever, kid, said Haplo to himself. Very clever. Bane no longer held the feather. Daddy was no longer prompting. That last had been Bane’s own idea, seemingly. A remarkable child, this changeling. And a dangerous one.

“But we thought the Judgment would be peaceful.”

“Was that ever said?” Bane countered. “Anywhere in the prophecy?” Limbeck turned his attention to the dog, patting its head, attempting to avoid answering while he tried to accustom himself to this new vision.

“Limbeck?” pushed Bane.

The Geg continued to stroke the dog, who lay still beneath his hands. “New vision,” he said, looking up. “That’s it. When the Welves come, I know just what to do.”

“What?” asked Bane eagerly.

“I’ll make a speech.”

Later that evening, after their jailors brought them food, Hugh called a meeting. “We don’t want to end up prisoners of the elves,” explained the assassin. “We’ve got to fight and try to get away, and we can—if you Gegs will help us.”

Limbeck wasn’t listening. He was composing.

“ ‘Welves and WUPP’s, wadies and gentle . . . No, no. Too many ‘wahs.’ ‘. . . Distinguished visitors from another realm’—that’s better. Drat, I wish I could write this down!” The Geg paced up and down in front of his companions, mulling over his speech and pulling distractedly on his beard. The dog, trotting along behind him, looked sympathetic and wagged its tail. Haplo shook his head. “Don’t look for help there.”

“But, Limbeck, it wouldn’t be much of a battle!” Bane protested. “The Gegs outnumber the elves. We’ll take them completely by surprise. I don’t like elves. They threw me off their ship. I nearly died.”

“Distinguished visitors from another realm—”

Haplo pursued his argument. “The Gegs are untrained, undisciplined. They don’t have any weapons. And even if they could get weapons, we don’t dare trust them. It’d be like sending in an army of children—ordinary children,” Haplo added, seeing Bane bristle.

“The Gegs aren’t ready yet.” He put an unconscious emphasis on the word that caught Hugh’s attention.

“Yet?”

“When father and I return,” struck in Bane, “we’re going to whip the Gegs into shape. We’ll take on the elves and we’ll win. Then we’ll control all the water in the world and we’ll have power and be rich beyond belief.” Rich. Hugh twisted his beard. A thought occurred to him. If it came to open war, any human with a ship and the nerve to fly the Maelstrom could make his fortune in one run. He would need a watership. An elven watership and a crew to man it. It would be a shame to destroy these elves.

“What about the Gegs?” suggested Haplo.

“Oh, we’ll take care of them,” answered Bane. “They’ll have to fight a lot harder than what I’ve seen so far. But—”

“Fight?” repeated Hugh, interrupting Bane in mid-dictatorship. “Why are we talking about fighting?” Reaching into his pocket, he drew forth his pipe and clamped his teeth down on it. “How are you at singing?” he asked Haplo.