The Chalk Giants (36 page)

The King also stared. Spittle flecked his beard; but the blindness that had made him a red man striking shadows, was gone. He saw the maimed eye, the blood that brightened the grubby dress, the fingers from which the torn flesh stood in spikes. The woman crouched, quivering; and he turned, hands to his skull, and blundered from the kitchen. They heard his long cry fall and rise as he climbed the Tower stairs.

The Queen was waiting for him in a dress of blue, decorated with silver thread. Her hands were clenched at her sides, and her voice when she spoke was low. ‘I heard ... cries,’ she said. ‘What has happened, my Lord?’

Marck stared at Her. ‘I have been riding,’ he said. ‘I rode to the beach. But it was empty. The hills were empty, and the sea. You emptied them.’

She said, ‘My Lord...’ But he cut her off.

‘In all my life,’ he said, ‘I lived here at the Gate as a King should live. When the poor cried, I heeded them. Where other hands fell heavy, mine was stayed. Now I face the Gods with a sin of blood. An evil has come to us. You brought it.’

‘I?’
she said. ‘My Lord, I... do not understand...’

‘I waited,’ he said. ‘Waited, and watched. Then I returned, to punish. But he had gone ...’

‘King Marck,’ she said, ‘hear me ...’ -

He shouted at her.
‘Why did you not ask?’

‘What?’ she said.
‘What?’

‘I would have given,’ said Marck. ‘Anything. Do you not understand? Him, anything ... To keep you here, and happy ...’

She stared a shocked instant; then a change come over her face. She said, ‘So it has come to this.’ She walked forward, eyes blazing. ‘All my life,’ she said, ‘I have been plagued by men. Old men, and fat men, and men who bought and sold. For
these,
and
this
... Can I help them?’

‘Why?’ he said.
‘Why?’

‘I asked nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing of anybody. To ... smell the air, and see the summers come, and lie in peace. But no. No, no, no ... By the Gods, I could be sick. Yes, throw up all the mess and filth men brought me...’

She faced him, fists clenched; and he moaned, pressing his hands to his head. He said, ‘I brought you love...’

‘And I gave it,’ she shouted. ‘All there was to give ...’ She caught her breath; then her expression altered once more. ‘What else did you expect?’ she hissed. ‘Caging me here like a Midsea bird, with none but loutish girls for company, in a room that stinks of old men’s piss ...
What did you expect?’
He lowered his hands, slowly.

‘And now he’s gone,’ she said. ‘You drove him away. So you can lie in peace again. It’s over.’

But Marck shook his head. He said, ‘It will never be over.’

She tried then to dart past him to the door. He caught her, flinging her back. She fought with him; and he struck her. She fell across the bed; and he leaped upon her, gripping with his knees. First he tore away the gift of Atha King, then her belt and dress, raking her shoulders with his nails. He crushed her to the fleeces, but she kicked and cried; so he beat her again. After which he took her, with the vigour of his rage. She lay quiet when he had finished, trembling a little and with her eyes tightly closed. And so he left her, reeling to his chamber. He closed the door behind him, dropping the heavy bar, and sank to the floor.

Through the Tower and all its rooms, silence prevailed. Torches burned, lighting empty corridors; but no man stirred. Across the baileys, moon-whitened, stretched ragged shadows of gatehouse and wall; and the gates themselves stood open to the empty Heath. An enemy could have crept in from the misty trees; but no enemy came.

It was dawn before one stirred. There came the click of the stable gate, the creak of harness. A horse snorted, stamping. The hooves sounded again, by the gate and on the trackway beyond; then the noise was swallowed up. The morning was silent once more.

From the shadows by the outer gate, one man kept vigil. Spindly he was of shank; and the furs with which his body was swathed accentuated its curious bulkiness. For a time he watched the empty Heath to the north, lips parted; then he turned away, staring up at the high face of the Tower. ‘Now I have thee, King, and all thy tribe,’ he muttered. ‘For this is no minstrel’s tale ...’

Dendra lounged on the high chair of King Odann. His long legs sprawled indolently across the dais; his hair, braided and greased with butter, hung to his shoulders; and he gripped a heavy winecup in a hand that gleamed with rings. Round him clustered his fighting men; and below him on the littered floor of the Hall stood Miri. The cloak she wore hung open; her dress was splashed with mud to the hips, and the pallor of her face accentuated the great bruise that had spread across her cheek.

‘I have left him,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and that is enough. Now I seek shelter of a kinsman, as all our laws demand.’

Dendra swilled the wine in his cup. ‘Your kinsman is dead,’ he said at length. ‘I mean, your father.’

A shout of laughter greeted the words. She swayed, closing her eyes. ‘Then justice and mercy are likewise dead,’ she said. ‘I see that now.’ She swallowed, and moistened her lips. ‘What is your will,’ she said, ‘King Dendra?’

Another smothered laugh; and Dendra scowled, raising a hand for quiet. ‘Not my will,’ he said, ‘but the Gods. You come here, to my Hall, asking for justice. Perhaps you will receive it.’ He drained the cup, and set it aside. ‘Why did you leave the Tower of the Gate?’

She stared round, in the torchlit gloom; then drew herself erect. She said, ‘Its lord put shame on me.’

‘Shame?’ said Dendra. ‘Shame?’ He raised himself on the throne, gripping its arms, and peered about him. ‘Friends,’ he said, ‘hear a wonder. The daughter of King Odann talks of shame ...’

When the noise was done he leaned toward her. ‘Here is the justice you came so far to seek,’ he said. ‘Your crime we will not name; but you will be taken from this place, and heavy stones laid on you. Also, here is my mercy. Your veins will be cut, so that life will run out quickly.’

She shrank at that, as though struck afresh; but when the priests moved forward she rallied. ‘Does my uncle,’ she said above the rising clamour, ‘pass sentence for the Gods, or for himself? My uncle who came to me, a child, the very night my mother died?’ She flung away the hands that were laid on her. ‘Ever after that,’ she said, ‘I slept beside the King. And ever after that you raged and wondered. But you will never know ...’

Uproar, in the Hall. Dendra leaped forward, his face suffused; and she shouted him down again. ‘Nor may you take my life,’ she said. ‘The life I carry is not yours to claim.’

The King had halted, fist raised; now he scowled. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What is this? What life?’

She stared back, mocking. She said, ‘The Heir of the Gate.’

He stared in turn; at her heaving breasts, the faces of his followers. Then, slowly, he remounted the steps of the throne. He snapped his fingers, and the winecup was recharged. He drank; and when he put the thing aside none there could read his eyes. He said, ‘What say my priests?’

A hurried muttering; and a withered, grey-robed man piped up. ‘This is true, by all our Sealand laws,’ he said falteringly. ‘You may not harm her.’

The King sat back, still with the unfathomable stare. ‘Then to these laws I bow,’ he said. ’Ruling justly, and mindful of the Gods. No man of the Plain shall injure her.’

Miri pulled the cloak about her throat. She said, ‘And the child?’

Dendra put his head back then and laughed. ‘The child will be born,’ he said. ‘My subjects will wish to meet him.’ He signed, impatiently, to the men about her; and she was hustled from the Hall.

The winter that followed was bad, as bad as any in memory. For weeks the sun stayed hidden, while bitter winds scythed across the Plain and through the great gap in the chalk. The lengthening days brought no relief; instead snow fell, great silent shining hills that clogged the narrow ways a spearshaft deep. Wolves came down, howling night after night round the scattered villages of the Southguard. Horses stamped and snorted in their quarters, children wailed; men peered from gatehouses and walls, pulling their beards and frowning into the dark. The Towers were cheerless; but none more so than the Tower of the Gate.

The King was now seldom seen. Servants carried food to the door of his high chamber; but as often as not the platters were left untouched. From the courtyards Marck might sometimes be descried, a vague, hunched shape staring out across the speckled waste to the north; but what the thoughts were that possessed him no man could say.

The summer was cold, with gale after gale sweeping in from the sea. Grain rotted in the square fields clustering round the village walls; what little grew was flattened by the wind. Only autumn brought relief. Then, curiously, the land smiled once more. Flowers bloomed, on the banks of the little brook; reeds were cut for winter flooring, what remained of the harvest gathered under cloudless skies. Days were warm, nights misty and mild. The storm-battered Hall was repaired and patched; but the gloom that had gripped the household remained. For a rumour had come, brought first by a travelling tinker; that round the Tower of Odann were many crows.

The sun was setting in long banners of red when a stranger rode to the Tower. The gate guards marked him far off on the Heath; a Serjeant was summoned and the walls fresh-manned, so that when he came within hail many curious heads regarded him. He turned his horse casually, in the dusty road beyond the outer bridge. His hair, which was fair and long, blew round his face. He wore greaves and a cuirass of Midsea workmanship; heavy gold bangles circled his arms, a long cutting-sword hung at his hip. But what attracted the onlookers’ eyes was none of these things. Round his waist, and hanging to the knee, was knotted a thick scarlet sash. It glowed in the sunset light; the war-lanyard of the Sealand Kings, unseen now for a generation.

The warrior was hailed from the gate, and bidden enter; but he shook his head arrogantly, setting his long hair flying. ‘Here I remain, chalkdwellers,’ he said, ‘I bear a message for your master.’

The Serjeant flushed at that, fingering his beard. ‘Our King receives no strangers,’ he said finally. ‘Neither are messages welcome, save from the Gods. Tell it to me.’

The stranger spat. ‘The first is this,’ he said. ‘A son was born to Marck, Lord of the Gate. The rest is for his ears.’

If the consternation caused by the words reached him he gave no sign. He sat the horse calmly, staring past the Tower at the brilliant light, while men ran back across the turf of the outer bailey. A further wait, a stirring by the inner court; and Marck himself appeared, with Thoma in attendance.

All were shocked by the gauntness of the King. His eyes gleamed bird-bright in his sunken face; a soiled robe flapped round his calves and he walked as if with difficulty, clinging to the seneschal’s arm. He climbed the steps to the gate parapet hesitantly; but when he spoke his voice, though thin, was clear. ‘What is this news you bring?’ he asked. ‘Say what you must; then come inside, and we will find refreshment.’

The other shook his head again. He stared up, eyes pale.

‘These are the words of Dendra of the Plain,’ he said. ‘Hear, and mark him well. That shame was put on him by the Gate, blood of his House being bartered for unworthy gold. That he will have a window on the sea, as fits his Line; that he will seat him in your Chair, as penance for his shame; and that his arm is strong. For the horses of chalkdwellers breed faster than their Kings.’

A hubbub rose at once from the watching men. More than one soldier dropped a hand to his side, nocked an arrow to his bowstring; while round Marck Tower and gatehouse seemed suddenly to spin. Thoma gripped him; but he shook his head, pushing the other away. He raised his arms; and by degrees the noise was stilled. ‘All this is strange to me,’ he said, when he could once more make himself heard. ‘I seek no war with Dendra; nor with any man in all the world, having given my life to penitence for great crimes. But tell me of my son, if this was the message you brought. Tell me and I will pay you well, with gold.’

The other turned his horse contemptuously. ‘No Chalk King pays a Plainman save with blood,’ he said. ‘As for your son, this also my master bade me say. The child was born high, according to his station;
and there were many midwives.’
He waited for nothing further but drove his heels at the horse, with a long yell.

The watchers saw the Gate King reel; but next instant his hand was up. They heard his voice rise cracked and high.
‘Take that man...’

Arrows flew, hissing. It seemed the messenger swayed in the saddle; but he collected himself, spurring the horse and bending low. Feet pounded on the gantries and wooden steps, the gates squealed back; and a stream of cavalry thundered in pursuit, fanned out across the Heath.

It was midnight before they returned. They brought back a man blinded and two others ashen and groaning, their limbs wrapped with makeshift dressings; for the Plainman, though wounded, had fought well. The messenger, or what remained of him, they dragged behind a horse. They hauled him to the gatehouse; and from its wall they hung him, by the heels.

A Sealand war-drum is a vast affair, big as two wine barrels and with a skin of tight-stretched hide. Its throbbing in still weather carries many miles; and it was such a drum that spoke, all night and all next day, from King Marck’s Tower. Everywhere throughout the Southguard the beat was taken up; till the weary drummers, resting beside their great instrument, heard the answers thudding back like echoes in the hills. The Sea Kings heard them far to the west, and turned uneasy in their beds; the lands beyond the Black Rock heard them, and the Marsh Folk to the north. But fast as the summons spread, the news spread faster; that the Queen was dead, the Heir of the Gate given to the crows. Cressets blazed, on walls and watch-towers, till it seemed the Southguard was aflame. Men marched and rode, armed and grim-faced, converging on Marck’s Tower. Two days passed, and a third; then from the hills an army poured, like wasps from a shaken hive.

The winter that followed lived long in minstrels’ stories. The Plain was wasted, from south to north; for what the hill folk happened on, they slew. Everywhere across the land, from Long Creek to the marshes of the west, went the red lanyard; behind it followed terror, fire and death. Atha’s messengers rode in vain; Towers were sacked, whole vassalages destroyed. Dendra’s wild horsemen fought like devils; but the men of the hills fought better. The Plainmen were forced back, raging; and every step was a life. Till there came a day, in an unwanted spring, when King Marck once more entered Odann’s Hall.