The Sword Of Bheleu

CHAPTER FIVE

The encampment was fully as disorganized as Garth had feared. He was halfway from the wall to the camp before anyone even noticed his presence, and no effort was made to stop or slow him before he reached the cleared area in front of the tents, though he was obviously out of place in his battered mail and drooping trader's hat, his warbeast laden with bundles, so unlike the clean, sleek, new appearance of the other overmen.

There was no sign of Galt or Thord, but there were various overmen standing, sitting, or walking about, and Kyrith stood in front of one tent, listening to a young warrior Garth did not recognize. The two turned when someone called out a warning of Garth's approach.

The young overman started to demand an explanation, but Kyrith's hand on his arm stopped him. She scribbled something on the wax-coated tablet she carried. He glanced at it, then looked back at the new arrival.

"You're Garth?" he asked.

"I am Garth, Prince of Ordunin. Who are you?"

The warrior blinked his red eyes and replied, "I am Thant, son of Sart and Shenit "

"I never heard of you. Are you helping to run things here?"

"Yes."

"Have the sentries been called back, as I told Thord to do?"

"Well, no. You see, we could not be certain…"

"I don't care why. If you want to make yourself useful, Thant, son of Sart and Shenit, then you can go run around the village and fetch back all the sentries that you fools have posted. I'm putting an end to this absurd siege before it brings the wrath of all humanity down on us.

Thant blinked again, then looked at Kyrith. She nodded. He hesitated a moment longer, until Garth bellowed, "Move!"

He moved. Garth called after him, "And when you get back here with the sentries, we'll break camp! I want us out of here before sunset!"

When the warrior was well on his way, Garth dismounted, swinging himself easily to the ground, and strode toward Kyrith. She met him halfway, and they embraced briefly. There was no passion in their embrace, and they did not kiss; for overmen and overwomen, marriage was a matter of convenience and companionship; sex was an involuntary function that occurred when an overwoman was in heat. Their mouths were virtually lipless and hardly suited to kissing. Had Kyrith been in heat, Garth's attentions would not-have been so perfunctory.

When they released each other Garth asked, "Where are Myrith and Lurith and the children?"

Kyrith pointed northward. Garth asked, to be sure he was not misinterpreting her gesture, "You left them to take care of the house?"

She nodded.

"That's all right, then. Why did you come here, though? What did you want to stir up trouble for? Didn't Galt tell you that I'd be back by the end of the year?"

She reached for her tablet. Garth stopped her. "Never mind. We'll discuss it later." Communicating with Kyrith was annoyingly slow and inconvenient ever since the accident that had put shards of ice through her throat and destroyed her voice. He knew that she found it as frustrating as he did, and she resented it when he let his irritation interfere with their conversations; ordinarily he would have been more tactful about declining to let her write out her answer, but he did not want any unnecessary delays now. The people of Skelleth might well have been stirred up by the siege or his own ride through town. He said, as a partial explanation, "We have to straighten out the situation in Skelleth. Thord told me that Galt is your co-commander. Where is he?"

She pointed to one of the tents and made a sign indicating sleep.

"He's asleep? It's after noon!"

She scribbled on her tablet and showed him the words: "Night watch."

"I need to talk to him."

Kyrith signed for him to wait and headed for the tent.

Garth waited and looked about. There was no organization to the camp at all, it seemed. The warbeasts were off to one side, in a rope enclosure that obviously wouldn't stop them for more than five seconds should they decide to leave; there was no sign of any food supply for them, and a hungry warbeast was as dangerous to friend as to foe. Had the overmen been letting them hunt their own food? That was fine for one, two, or maybe even three, but there were half a dozen in the pen, and more still out on sentry duty. A dozen warbeasts hunting in the same territory could strip it clean in a matter of days and might well start fighting amongst themselves over the game they found. Furthermore, most warbeasts weren't picky about what they ate so long as it was sufficiently large and fresh; they would hunt humans as readily as anything else, and that would hardly be good for interspecies relations.

He couldn't judge just how hungry the penned beasts were, but they did not look as if they had been fed in the last day or two; that was good, as it implied they had last hunted somewhere to the north, where humans were rare and uncivilized and wouldn't be missed by the people of Skelleth. It was also bad, however, because it meant they would demand feeding soon.

The tents were apparently placed at random, wherever their owners' whims had chosen; most were clustered loosely about a large, square-framed one that Garth assumed must serve as a command post. Some were not set up properly; pegs were left hanging or lying on the ground.

There was no sign of any central supply; it appeared that each tent held its own stocks of food and water and its owner's own weapons and armor.

In short, the camp displayed all that was worst in the behavior of overmen. Garth knew from his studies of the history of the Racial Wars that the humans had not won solely because they had never outnumbered his kind by less than five to one; they had had superior organization, as well. Humans were naturally social animals; though they tended to be careless, sloppy, and stupid, they were able to function well in groups. A single competent military commander could organize a thousand humans and get them to fight with some semblance of efficient cooperation.

Overmen, unfortunately, were less gregarious. Each, when pressed, would invariably put his own well-being before that of anyone or anything else, including the very survival of the species. They resented taking orders, and, in fact, usually wouldn't obey even direct commands without an explanation of why they should. An army of overmen didn't function as a single unit, but as a collection of individual warriors, each ferocious enough in his own right, but with no sense of loyalty to his comrades, and prone to go off on solo adventures at the first opportunity.

What little cooperation overmen did display had been forced upon them by events, and its forms had usually been learned from the humans they despised. Marriage was a human invention that overmen had adopted because it simplified family responsibilities and inheritances. Cities facilitated trade and government-but even so, the overmen had only one in all the Northern Waste, and it sprawled over several square miles of coastline and hill with a population of less than five thousand, the houses strewn randomly about the countryside rather than laid along streets.

For that matter, nobody actually knew what the population of Ordunin or of the Waste was, as, there had never been sufficient cooperation to conduct a census.

This camp, then, seemed typical of overmen when there was no strong organization and leader forcing them to behave. He knew, from his own military experiences in battling the pirates who occasionally raided Ordunin, that overmen could be made to form a coherent fighting unit-but it was extraordinarily difficult. Where one human officer might reasonably hope to manage a hundred soldiers in an emergency, each overman had commanded no more than ten, at the very most; three was better. Every two or three officers then needed a commander.

And here, sixty overmen were under two co-commanders with no intermediate organization apparent.

Had the expedition been set up properly, there would have been a supply train accompanying it, including a herd of goats to feed the warbeasts and a good stock of replacement armor and weaponry. There would be three captains, he thought, each with two lieutenants, each with two sergeants, each with three or four soldiers. The tents would have been set up in some pattern and the warbeasts tethered in a ring around the camp, to serve as the first line of defense.

Kyrith and Galt emerged from the tent, and he put aside his thoughts. Galt blinked at the daylight; the sky was finally beginning to clear. "Greetings, Garth," he said.

"Greetings, Galt. What are you doing here? What is this so-called siege supposed to do?"

"Don't blame me for the siege; that was Kyrith's idea, and I was overruled."

"What are you doing here in the first place?"

"We came to speak with the Baron of Skelleth. Kyrith didn't believe that you had gone off on your own willingly; she thought that the Baron had you prisoner somewhere in Skelleth or had killed you, and she gathered these volunteers to come find you. The City Council sent me along. We had intended to ride into the village, confront the Baron, present our demands, and settle the matter on the spot, preferably by gracefully accepting his capitulation."

"You needed sixty armed overmen for that?"

"As we both know, Garth, the Baron of Skelleth takes a great interest in military matters. Your disappearance gave us sufficient excuse for a show of force, which, it was felt, might serve to convince him where simple negotiation would not."

Galt's smooth manner irritated Garth. He snapped, "It didn't work?"

"It might have succeeded, had the Baron met with us. Unfortunately, we were told, with much sincere regret, that he was sick in bed and could not see us. We did not care to force the issue then and there, but Kyrith was unwilling to do nothing; hence the siege."

"The Baron refused to see you, and you simply left town?"

"We set up the siege."

"Siege! You call this farce a siege?"

Galt shrugged, and Garth's annoyance grew.

"You accepted the word of the humans that the Baron was ill? You did not insist upon seeing him?"

"No. The captain of the guard swore by half a dozen gods I never heard of and by various parts of his anatomy that the Baron was ill in bed. I spoke last night with the man called Saram, whom you know and whom I believe you trust, and he told me that the Baron's illness is legitimate-a side-effect of his madness."

"Did it not occur to any of you that it would be far more effective to camp in the marketplace, where you could not be so easily ignored or put off, rather than to establish a siege you cannot possibly maintain? Furthermore, a single message slipped past your pitiful line of sentries could bring the wrath of the entire Kingdom of Eramma down on you and on the Northern Waste, since a siege is undeniably an act of war. Had you camped peacefully in the square, you would have been honest petitioners, breaking no laws."

Galt was slow to reply. "Such an audacious action did not occur to me."

"Audacious? The Baron of Skelleth is the audacious one! He dares to dictate terms to overmen as if we were mere peasants? To refuse your embassy an audience? It is time that we showed him the error of his ways. I propose that we march back into town; if he will still not speak with us, we will camp in the market until he does."

"I am not sure that would be wise. I did not approve of the siege, but I think that your plan faces the same objections. We dare not push the Baron too far; we need this trade with Skelleth."

"No, we don't. We can trade anywhere we please. The Racial Wars are over, Galt, whatever we may have believed while isolated in the Northern Waste, and regardless of what the Baron of Skelleth may have told us. I have just returned from a city called Dыsarra, where overmen are an everyday sight. The humans have forgotten their fear and hatred; remember how short their lives are! To them, three centuries are a dozen generations, almost five lifetimes."

"How can overmen be a common sight anywhere outside the Northern Waste?"

"Ah, this is the best news of all! There are overmen living on the Yprian Coast. We are not the only survivors."

"The Yprian Coast? That barren wasteland?"

"Is the Northern Waste any better?"

Galt did not answer that. Instead, he asked, "Are you sure we could trade elsewhere?"

"At the very least, we could trade with the Yprians and with Dыsarra. I think we could probably go anywhere we pleased without interference; humans care more for gold than for ancient hatreds."

"Still, any overland trade route would have to go through the Barony of Skelleth; it extends from the Yprian Gulf to the Sea of Mori."

"What of it? Do you think the Baron's thirty-odd guardsmen can patrol the entire border?"

"It would still be preferable to have the Baron's permission."

"Yes, it would be preferable, but it is not necessary, and it would also be preferable to make plain to all that overmen are not to be treated with the disrespect the Baron of Skelleth has displayed."

While Galt digested this, Kyrith scribbled on her tablet, then handed it to Garth. It read, "What disrespect? Why not go home?"

He handed it back. "No, Kyrith, I can't go home yet. I can't go back to Ordunin until the Baron releases me from my oath."

She made a questioning gesture.

Garth said, "What are you asking?"

She wrote and handed him the tablet. It read: "What oath?"

"Galt should have told you," Garth replied. "He was there. I swore an oath to the Baron of Skelleth when last I saw him. He proposed that in order to remove all legal impediments to trade between Skelleth and the Waste and to put a formal end to the war with Eramma, I, as Prince of Ordunin, should surrender and swear fealty to him, thereby making Ordunin and its territory-which is to say, the entire eastern half of the Northern Waste part of the Barony of Skelleth. He called this a simple and reasonable thing, but we both knew he devised it to humiliate me, as I had humiliated him once before. He insisted that I swear to present this proposal to the City Council as soon as I returned to Ordunin. I was unarmed, on a peaceful trading mission, and caught off-guard; I swore the oath he demanded. I will not present any such disgraceful scheme to the City Council, however. Therefore, if I am not to break my sworn word, I cannot return to Ordunin until the Baron releases me from my vow. This is one reason we must confront him, quite aside from trading concessions or my exile from Skelleth; he must release me. He will release me. He will release me, or I will kill him."

Garth's voice had gone flat and toneless during this speech, which was a sign of mounting anger among overmen. Galt and Kyrith both noted it, and Kyrith put a hand on her husband's arm, attempting to calm him.

Galt noticed the gesture, and something else caught his eye as well. Koros stood behind its master, and an immense two-handed broadsword, easily six feet in length, was thrust horizontally through the warbeast's harness, along the creature's right flank. A huge red jewel was mounted in the weapon's pommel, and the gem was glowing with an eerie, bloody light of its own.

"Garth," he said, "that's an interesting sword there. Where did you get it?"

Garth turned to glance at the sword and froze when he saw the crimson glow. He had been working up to a murderous fury, imagining himself using the sword to impale a cowering, whimpering Baron of Skelleth; visions of blood and fire had been flashing, through his mind. Now, he struggled to suppress those urges.

For a moment he regretted leaving Frima in Saram's care; had she been there, she would probably have warned him sooner.

When he thought he had himself more or less under control, he said, "I found it in Dыsarra, in a ruined temple. It appears to have some sort of enchantment to it." He found himself curiously reluctant to speak of it, and therefore did not explain the nature of its power over him and did not mention Bheleu or any other deities.

"It's magical? Is that why it's glowing?" Galt was fascinated; he had heard of magic, but had never before seen any at first hand. He looked more closely. The glow seemed to have dimmed somewhat, but it was still clearly visible.

"Yes"

Galt stepped around the other two, to get a better view of the strange gem.

"Don't touch it!" Garth roared.

Startled, Galt stepped back. "I wasn't going to."

Garth was annoyed with himself; there had been no need to bellow at Galt. He was unreasonably touchy about anything having to do with the sword, it seemed; he told himself that he would have to keep that in check. He would also have to get rid of the sword, and quickly; its hold on his emotions seemed to be getting stronger and had been quite dangerous enough before. It would not do to go into a killing frenzy while negotiating with the Baron of Skelleth.

On the other hand, it was a beautiful weapon, a magnificent blade; it would be a very impressive thing to have along during negotiations. He would take it, he decided, and keep himself under careful control. After all, he could not safely leave it lying around untended and he would not trust it in the hands of any of these idiotic volunteers. He would worry about disposing of it after he had settled with the Baron.

He had turned away as he reached this decision and therefore did not see the glow flare up brightly once more. Galt saw the increased brightness, but did not realize it had any significance and said nothing. His attention was distracted from the sword when Garth announced, "I want the entire company packed up within an hour, so that we will have time to reach the market square and set up camp there before full dark." Galt turned away to help in breaking camp and paid no more attention to the great sword or the shining jewel.

He had a curious feeling, however, that he was being watched.

Garth had lived with that feeling almost constantly for more than a fortnight and no longer noticed it, but he, too, was slightly troubled. He seemed to sense mingled amusement and triumph without actually feeling either emotion himself.