Part 8 (1/2)

”Lord,” said the bridge-keeper, ”I'm a poor man. My back is broken from the labor of the bridge. My children starve.”

”Your children,” said Amnir, ”are as fat as hogs and twice as dirty. As for your back, it's fit enough for thieving.”

The bridge-keeper spread his hands. ”Lord, I'm greedy. I saw a chance for profit and I took it. Any man would do the same.”

”Well,” said Amnir, ”and that is true. Or nearly so.”

”You can slay us, of course,” said the bridge-keeper, ”but then who will do our work? Think of the time it will cost you. Think of the wealth you will lose.” He shuddered. ”Think of the Gray Feeders. Perhaps even you, lord, might make your end upon their hooks.”

”It does not become you, at this time, to threaten me,” said Amnir, and thrust a little harder with his lance.

The bridge-keeper sighed. Two large tears formed and rolled down his cheeks. ”Lord, I am in your hands,” he said, and wilted inside his furs.

”Hm,” said Amnir. ”If I spare you, will you keep the covenant?”

”Forever!”

”Which means until the next time you think you can safely break it.” He turned in the saddle and shouted. ”Back to your sties, filthy ones! Go!”

The villagers fled. The bridge-keeper wept and tried to embrace Amnir's off-side knee.

”Free pa.s.sage, lord! For you, no toll.”

”I'm touched,” said Amnir. ”And pray remove your dirty paws.” The bridge-keeper scuttled, bowing himself backward, into the toll-house. Amnir dismounted and came to Stark and his party. Halk, bloodied and furious, had been helped to his feet.

”I warned you,” said Amnir. ”Did I not warn you?”

”You did.” Stark looked past him at the riders, seeing how they had moved quietly to form a half-circle of lances that pinned the unarmed Irnanese against the end of the open bridge. ”You must have ridden hard to overtake us.”

”Very hard. You ought to have waited, Stark. You ought to have gone with my wagons. What was the matter? Didn't you trust me?”

Stark said, ”No.”

”You were wise,” said Amnir, and smiled. He motioned to his men. ”Take them.”

13.

The Three Ladies were remote, withdrawn, scarcely showing their faces. The Lamp of the North, like a burning emerald, dominated the sky. The short days of the darklands were little brighter than the nights. Old Sun's dull gleaming stained the sky rather than brightened it. The white snow turned the color of rust, and the vast plain, strewn with the wrecks of abandoned cities, tilted upward to a distant wall of mountains all dabbled in the same red-ochre. The line of great wagons creaked and crawled across this unreal landscape, sixteen of them with canvas tops booming in the wind. From long before sunrise until long after dark the wagons moved, and when they halted they made their own fort, with the beasts and the people inside.

Stark and the Irnanese rode their own mounts and were fed from the rations they had bought at Izvand. Amnir was delighted that their transportation was costing him nothing. Each mount was led by an armed rider. The captives had their fur-gloved hands bound and their fur-booted ankles tied together with a thong under the animal's belly. The bonds were arranged expertly to hold without impeding circulation, so that the extremeties should not freeze.

Uncomfortable as this was, it was an improvement over the first days, when Amnir kept them close in the wagons, away from curious eyes. Other parties of armed merchants were on the roads, and Amnir had business at two or three centers where itinerant traders like the Ha.r.s.enyi nomads brought their wares. These places were like blockhouses, with crude shelters around them where travelers might find some respite from snow and wind. Amnir stayed away from the shelters. He seemed to have no friends among the darkland traders. His men did not mingle with men of other wagon trains, but remained aloof and perpetually on guard.

At the last of the centers there was an altercation with some wild-looking people bringing in a string of little s.h.a.ggy beasts loaded with bundles. These people called Amnir unpleasant names in a barbarous dialect. They threw stones and clots of ice. Amnir's men stood ready but no real attack developed and the wild ones withdrew once they had worked off their bad tempers.

Amnir was not disturbed. ”I took a large portion of their trade away from them,” he said. ”It was necessary to kill some of them. Let them gabble at me, if it gives them pleasure.”

After that they left the marked roads and went off into this enormous emptiness, where the wagons followed a dim and ancient track that was only apparent when it went through some cut or over a causeway that showed an engineering skill long lost on Skaith.

”An old road,” said Amnir. ”Once, when Old Sun was young, all this land was rich and there were great cities. This road served them. Folk didn't ride on beasts in those days, or drive clumsy wagons. They had machines, bright s.h.i.+ning things as swift as the wind. Or if they wanted to they could take wing and rush through the sky like shooting stars. Now we plod, as you see, across the cold corpse of our world.”

But a note of pride was in his voice when he said it. We are men, we survive, we are not defeated.

”For what purpose,” asked Stark, ”do we plod?”

Amnir had refused to tell them what he intended doing with them. It was obvious from the pleased speculative looks he gave them that he had large plans. Whatever they might be, Kazimni had certainly had a part in making them and would share in the profits. Stark bore Kazimni no ill-will for that. He had done his task honorably, getting the party safely to Izvand. Nothing had been said about getting them safely out again.

Knowing perfectly well what Stark wanted, Amnir smiled and evaded.

”Trade,” he said. ”Wealth. I told you that I trade farther into the darklands than others, and this is the way of it. Metal ingots kept appearing in the market-places of Komrey and Izvand, ingots unlike any I had seen before. Ingots of a superior quality, stamped with a hammer mark. My centers of greed are highly developed. They began to deliver certain juices which stimulate curiosity and the ability to scent profit. I traced these ingots back through a long and complicated chain of trade carried on by such as you saw back there with their bundles. Men died in that tracing, but I found the source.”

He was riding, as he often did, beside Stark, whiling away the long cold hours with talk.

”These people of the ingots love me. They look upon me as their benefactor. Formerly they were at the mercy of many things: accident, loss, theft, stupidity, the haphazards of going through many hands. Now that I give them direct and honest trade, they have become so rich and fat that they no longer have to eat each other. Of course, because of this, their population is growing, and one day some of them will have to leave Thyra and find another city.”

”Thyra,” said Stark. ”A city. One of those marked with a death's head?”

”Yes,” said Amnir. He smiled.

”But they no longer have to eat each other.”

”No,” said Amnir, and smiled the wider. ”Pray that we reach it, Earthman. There is worse between.” And he added fiercely, ”No great profit is made without risk.”

Stark kept a watchful eye on the landscape. As they went farther on he was sure that he saw, in the rusty gloom, pale things slipping furtively behind hillocks and into ravines. They were distant. They were silent. Perhaps they were only shadows. In this light, vision became confused. In the moonless mornings and afternoons, one could be sure of nothing. Still, he watched.

In those moonless hours, Amnir would now and again stare up at the stars, as though for the first time in his life he was thinking of them as suns with families of planets, other worlds with other people and other ways. He seemed not entirely happy with the thought, and he blamed Stark for having brought it home to him.

”Skeg was a long way off. We had heard about the s.h.i.+ps, and the strangers, but we thought little of it. We never quite believed. It was too large a thought, too strange. We had enough to think about without that. Eating. Drinking. Begetting children. I have six sons, did you know that? And daughters as well. I have wives. I have family matters. I have property. Many people depend upon me for their livelihood. I have matters of trade to consider, to judge and act upon. These things take up my days, my years, my life. They are quite sufficient.

”Like the Izvandians, we of Komrey are descended from folk who came originally from the high north, who did not wish to go farther south than was necessary to sustain our way of life. We remained in the Barrens by choice. We consider the people of the city-states, like the Irnanese, to be soft and corrupt.” He glared at the stars as though he hated them. ”One is born on a world. It may not be perfect, but it's the world one knows, the only world. One adjusts, one survives. Then suddenly it appears that there is no need to struggle because one has a choice of many worlds. It's confusing. It shakes the whole foundation of life. Why do we need it?”

”It isn't a question of whether or not you need it,” said Stark. ”It's there. You can use it or not, as you please.”

”But it makes everything so pointless! Take the Thyrans. I've heard all their ballads, The Long Wandering, The Destruction of the Red Hunters, The Coming of Strayer-he's the folk-hero who is supposed to have taught them how to work metal, though I suspect there were many Strayers-The Conquest of the Mountain, and so on. The long dark years, the courage, the dying and the pain, and finally the triumph. And now we see that if they had only known it, they could have run away to a better world and avoided all that.” Amnir shook his head. ”I don't like it. I believe in a man staying by what he knows.”

Stark refused to argue this. And then Amnir's curiosity would betray him and he would ask how it was on other worlds, how the people ate and dressed and traded and made love, and if they really were people. Stark took a wicked pleasure in answering, unst.i.tching Amnir's self-a.s.surance, opening up the wide heavens to show him a thousand places where Amnir-out-of-context would not exist.

Amnir had a way of setting his jaw. ”I don't care. I am myself, I've fought my fight and made my place. I ask for nothing better.”

Stark played the tempter. ”But it makes you a little dissatisfied, doesn't it? You're a greedy man. Do you see the great s.h.i.+ps coming and going between the suns, bearing cargoes you haven't got a name for, worth more money than your small horizon can hold? You could have a s.h.i.+p of your own, Amnir, just for the asking.”

”If I set you free. If you succeed. If, if. The odds are too long. Besides-I am a greedy man, yes, but a wise greedy man. I know my small horizon. It fits me. The stars do not.”

As a matter of policy, Amnir kept his captives apart. There was less likelihood of mischief, and he knew that the thought of escape was always in their minds. Stark could see the others, hooded and wrapped in furs like himself, riding their led beasts, but he had no chance to talk to them. He wondered what Gerrith would be thinking now about the prophecy.