The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) (18 page)

“I came to tell you something, gentlemen,” Ashrof said. He looked just as exhausted as the younger men who’d fought all day.

“If it’s bad news, we don’t need any more,” said one of the captains. Another rose and offered his chair to the old man, but Ashrof waved it aside.

“Be of good cheer, all of you!” he said. “God will save our city.”

“What makes you say that?” Roshay said.

“I don’t know! I mean, I think I dozed off for a minute or two, and then suddenly I was wide-awake, and it was in my mind that God was going to save our city. It was as if I’d been praying, and God had answered my prayer. Only I was so busy with all those wounded men, I’m sure I had no time to pray.”

As Roshay searched for words with which to dismiss him gently, Vannett came back into the room with a mystified look on her face.

“It’s snowing,” she said.

It was not unheard-of for it to snow in Ninneburky, even this late in the spring; but it had never yet happened in Roshay’s lifetime. At Vannett’s urging, he and his captains trudged out to the back porch.

“Will you look at that!” said the senior captain.

The ground was already white, and the night bitterly cold. It was a hard snow, almost ice-pellets. You could hear it striking the porch roof.

“I can’t stay out here without my coat,” Vannett said. “Why, my teeth are chattering!”

Roshay looked Ashrof in the eye. “Well?” he said.

“Well what?” the old man answered. “Is this how God will save us? I don’t know.”

“It’ll take more than snow to drive away those fiends out there,” grumbled a captain.

And there was more than snow. At first it turned to ice and then, without the air getting the least bit warmer, freezing rain. Just to scramble across the street from one house to another, in that rain, was more than most could stand. It was the kind of rain that was colder than snow or ice, that froze you right down to the marrow in your bones. And the longer it went on, the harder it came down. Roshay and his captains could hardly hear each other speak, for the rattle of the rain on the roof.

Harder and harder, all night long, it rained, not so much water as liquid ice. Those who had fireplaces, and wood to burn, used them. The sentries on the walls had to be muffled up in coats and served hot drinks. They steadfastly stood their watch, but they couldn’t see anything. The enemy camp was hardly two bowshots from the town, but no one could see that far.

So it was that when the darkness of that long night had passed, and the new day dawned grey and miserable, and the surviving defenders of Ninneburky climbed wearily back to their posts on the walls, and finally it stopped raining, having filled the moat with water and enisled the town—only then could it be discovered that the Zeph had struck their camp and gone away.

Men stared until their eyes ached, but there was no enemy to be seen. Roshay sent out some scouts, who needed no skill to read the trodden, churned-up earth: the Heathen host had marched away to the south, leaving behind the corpses of wounded men who’d frozen to death in the night. In the little time it took the scouts to learn this, the sun came out, the air grew warm again, and vapor began to float up from the chilled and sodden earth, now rapidly thawing.

“Let the people gather in the chamber house,” Roshay told his captains, “and let songs of thanksgiving be sung: for God has saved us.” And to Ashrof, “Be prepared to lead the town in prayer.”

From Caristun to Cardigal they made good time, Jack, Ellayne, and Martis, on the road that marched along the south bank of the river. But those who went down the Imperial on boats and barges made better, and they brought news—news that they shouted to anyone ashore who was close enough to hear them.

At first it was all bad news. A Heathen host had crossed the mountains north of the river and was driving west, destroying all in its path. “Men with bulls’ heads and horns!” was the wildest rumor.

Ellayne could hardly go on: she knew her hometown lay in the path of this army. While she was safe and free, her father and mother and brothers were likely to be killed by savages, and the whole town burned to the ground. It made her sick, and the sickness wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t help wondering, Is this how God repays me, after I’ve climbed the mountain and rung His cusset bell for Him?

But then, just before they reached Cardigal, the tenor of the news changed. Some men on a clumsy log raft were the first to tell the tale.

“The bulls’-heads have been beaten!” they cried. “They went up to Ninneburky and got their horns cut off!”

They didn’t get the full story until they stopped for the night, just outside of Cardigal, and a family in a boat came ashore to rest. They weren’t from Ninneburky, and Ellayne didn’t know them; but they’d stopped there briefly and had the tale from people in the town. Half a hundred refugees gathered around them to hear it.

“They couldn’t get over the wooden wall,” the man of the family said, “though quite a few of them died trying. And that night, out of nowhere, came an icy rain. It was too much for them! They struck camp and headed south to the plain, getting away from the weather.”

“And where are they now?” someone asked.

“Beats me—out on the plain somewhere,” the man said.

Ellayne couldn’t stand; she had to sit down. Martis carried her back to their own campfire. The night wasn’t especially cold, but she was shivering. Wytt crept inside her coat and cuddled up to her.

“Men with bulls’ heads,” Martis mused. “That’d be the Zeph, a northern people. It’s been hundreds of years since any of them came over the mountains. The whole East must be stirred up.”

“Maybe that’s how God’s going to end the world,” said Jack. But he was glad Ninneburky was saved, so far. “Maybe He means to set the whole world fighting.”

“Don’t be silly!” Ellayne said, through chattering teeth. “War can’t end the world.”

“Your father must have done a good job, though,” Jack said.

“He’s good at everything he does. That’s why he’s chief councilor. But it was snow and rain that drove off the Heathen, and God did that. I didn’t think He would, and now He has.” Ellayne was ashamed of herself for having thought God was ungrateful. A good theologian might have told her it was wrong to think of God as being in any way obligated to any mortal creature, but there was no theologian handy. All Ellayne could think was that God did care about her and her family, after all, and she’d been wrong to think He didn’t.

“There’s a bridge at Cardigal where we can cross to the north bank,” Martis said, “and it’s a good road from Cardigal to Obann, the best in the west. But I think we’d better stay on this south side of the river and enter the Old City without passing through the new. That road won’t be crowded, and we’ll make good time.”

“Is there a bridge between the old and new cities?” Jack asked.

“Only the ruins of a great bridge from ancient times—quite a sight to see. But there are no bridges, no ferries. No one crosses over to the ruins, except now and then a felon running from the hangman. Ordinary people wouldn’t go; they think the site is cursed. But it’s only ruins. I’ve been there myself, a few times.”

“Why did you go there?”

“Not for any purpose that’d give you a high opinion of me, Jack. The Old City is a good place for meetings and transactions that are best kept secret. I went over on my master’s business, which honest people might call crime.”

“Hard to think of the First Prester dirtying his hands with crime!” Ellayne said. “What kind of crime?”

“The worst kind—crime in the service of a good cause. I’d be ashamed to tell you about it,” Martis said.

“Never mind, then,” Jack said. “Will we be able to find this cellar that’s underneath a cellar?”

“We should be able to worm our way into any number of old cellars. I wonder if there are any Omah who might help us. I never saw or heard of any there.”

Wytt chattered. “He says all those places belong to the little hairy ones,” Ellayne said. He chattered some more. “He says they’ll help, all right—once they’ve been given some of my hair.”

Helki knew there was a Heathen army moving across the plain. He would have been amazed to learn that Obst was marching with it.

What perplexed him was that Latt and much of his band was moving through the forest as if in conjunction with the Heathen host, along a parallel course. A military man might have wondered, Was Squint-eye protecting the invaders’ flank, or looking for a chance to attack them himself? But to Helki it looked like a fox trailing a bear, hoping to get a few scraps of the bear’s next kill.

Helki and his lads, an even dozen of them now, followed Latt, unseen, unheard, and unsuspected. “I reckon it’s just about time we took care of him, boys,” he said. “I don’t know what he’s up to, but it doesn’t look good. Best we stop him before he does whatever he plans to do.”

The weeks of scouting out Latt’s paths and camps now showed their worth. Anticipating where the outlaw chief would encamp the next night, Helki and his little band got there first. By now all of the young men were armed with bows and arrows, and they were all dead shots. Helki took only the best of them.

“He has sixty of his men with him,” he said. “Once they’re settled down for the night and most of them asleep, we’ll pick off the sentries—if they bother to post any—and I’ll walk straight into their camp to kill Latt. You’ll probably have to shoot a few of them. Don’t miss! They won’t know how many of you there are, so if I tell ’em there are fifty expert bowmen drawing a bead on them, I reckon they’ll believe me. Then Latt and I will have it out, while you cover me.”

“And what if Latt wins?” Andrus said. Helki guffawed, and all the young men laughed with him.

“But what if he won’t fight?” Andrus asked.

“He’ll have to, if I call him out in front of all his men. How do you think he got to be their chief? Think his daddy left it to him?”

Andrus wasn’t done. “Why don’t we just shoot as many of them as we can, and then just melt into the woods? If they all go after you at once, that’ll be the end of it.”

“Already thought of that,” Helki said, “but decided this way’s better. Once I kill Squint-eye, and anyone else who asks for it, I’m chief. Then I’ll have a hundred men to put to work hunting down other outlaw bosses.

“They’re predators, you see, and honest people are their prey. But I’ll use ’em to prey on other outlaws. It’ll be better pickings for them, anyhow, plundering the plunderers. They won’t mind.”

So it was that when Latt and his sixty men went into camp for the night—they neglected to post sentries—Helki’s dozen bowmen were ready for them. The camp was in a sizeable clearing, and there was a full moon up above, with a dozen campfires still burning on the ground. Hiding in the trees around the clearing, the bowmen had the best conditions they could have hoped for.

“Good luck!” Andrus whispered.

“Just don’t miss your targets,” Helki said. “Burn it, I’d have done this a lot different, on my own.”

Twirling his rod, he strode into the camp.

“Wake up, Latt, you squint-eyed son of maggots!” he bellowed. “Helki the Rod has come for you! Stand up and meet me face to face, if you’ve got any man’s blood in your veins!”