The Torian Pearls rb-25 Read online

  Blade nodded silently. He could not help wondering where else he could eat and drink among the Kargoi, if not with the warriors. If the Kargoi were migrating, they and their chiefs might be scattered far and wide across a plain extending for many days' march. Blade didn't particularly want to fast until five chiefs could be tracked down and assembled in one place to judge his worthiness.

  Something of this must have shown in his face. Paor smiled. «It will not be so hard to find four baudzi or perhaps even more. All six clans of the Red People are together. We will be up with them once more before it grows light.»

  «I understand,» said Blade. «Do not worry. You ask of me no more than a warrior should be prepared to face, if he is worthy of the name.» He did not say that in a boastful tone, but as quietly and politely as if he was discussing the weather. Blade's eyes met Paor's and held them for a moment. Paor smiled and turned away. In a few minutes they were on the move again.

  They rode on through the empty, silent darkness for the rest of the night. One more time they swung off the trail to let the drends graze. The warriors dismounted, but neither ate nor drank.

  An hour after that the sky began to turn gray. Blade watched the eastern horizon, to see if sunrise in this Dimension would match the sunset. He saw that the forest no longer marched parallel with them to the east. There were scattered groves and isolated trees, but much of the land was open. Once he saw what could only be the ruins of a small castle, with a stone keep rising blackened and grim against the lightening sky. Half a dozen cattle were grazing in the shelter of a half-tumbled wall. Once they must have been part of the castle's herds. Now they were wild things that galloped clumsily off in all directions as Blade and the Kargoi rode past.

  The light to the east grew and began to flare. Once more Blade saw the sky lit up with a dozen different colors and a dozen different shades of each color, a display so overpoweringly beautiful that it was almost terrifying to watch as it grew steadily. It grew until it was possible to imagine that the colors would spread all across the sky, then pour down on the world and swallow it entirely.

  Blade watched the faces of the Kargoi as the sunrise grew. He would have liked to ask them about the colors, but this might not be wise. So far they seemed to think that he was merely a wanderer from some other part of this Dimension. If he said anything to hint that he was not familiar with the Dimension's spectacular sunrises and sunsets, at least the sharp-witted Paor might wonder.

  The baudz watched the sunrise in silence, until its raw beauty began to fade as daylight came to the land. Then he turned to Blade.

  «What do your people say of the colors at the rising and the setting of the sun?»

  «The sky is the face of the Worldmaster,» he said with glib assurance. «The Worldmaster feels a mighty anger toward us below, his servants. From that anger the colors come, that pass across his face at the dawn and the sunset.»

  Paor laughed grimly. «There were those among us who said the same thing, when the sky changed after the shaking of the land and the burning of the mountains. But then the waters began to rise. Slowly they ate up our homeland so that we had to seek a new one. Then we no longer worried about what anger the gods might be showing in the sky. It was enough that their anger was on the earth-or rather, in the waters that were swallowing it.» He paused, then fixed Blade with a not quite friendly stare. «Is your land yet uneaten by the waters?»

  «Part of it,» said Blade. «Some remains. But what remains is only enough for those people who live there now. Our hearts are not hard, but our swords would be swift against anyone else who came seeking a home among us.» He laughed, to take the harshness out of his words. «There is also this. I sailed to this land in a ship that traveled for thirty days and nights before it was wrecked. Can the Kargoi ride their drends and haul their wagons across such a width of sea?»

  Paor relaxed visibly. «No, I think your land is safe from the Kargoi, if not from the gods. It is in our power to take our beasts and our wagons and ourselves across small rivers and perhaps large ones. So much water as you have crossed would stand in our path forever.» He frowned. «Or at least until we learned the art of building ships. That is an art we may well wish to learn, when we have found our new home. If the gods take from the land and give to the sea, those who can sail the farthest may live the longest.»

  «Perhaps,» said Blade politely. «But the wrath of the gods is abroad on the sea. Remember that although my ship came thirty days from my homeland, it was wrecked in the end. A storm overthrew it, a storm that made me think the bowels of the earth were being torn up. Then the creatures of the sea fell on my comrades, so many of them did not even live to drown.»

  Blade could now be reasonably sure what had happened in this Dimension. His guess about volcanic dust in the air causing the sunset colors had been right. There'd been a period of seismic activity, with volcanoes erupting all over the world and spewing dust into the air. That dust not only colored the sunsets and sunrises, it made the world warmer. Somewhere massive icecaps had begun to melt and gone on melting, pouring water into the seas until they started to rise and swallow the land. One by one, the people whose lands were vanishing beneath the water had to flee, fighting their way along as they searched for new lands. A grim picture.

  Blade let no hint of his thoughts appear as he went on. «I shall gladly teach you as much as I can. I have little chance of returning to my homeland. By the time the Kargoi have learned to build great ships, I will be dead or far too old for the voyage. Perhaps by that time the anger of the gods will also be no more, so that when the Kargoi and my people meet, they will do so in peace.»

  «We can indeed hope for an end to the anger of the gods,» said Paor with a sigh. «I wish we could do more than hope.»

  They rode on in silence for another hour. Then the horizon ahead began to show squat black shapes. In a few more minutes they were in sight of the camp of the Red People of the Kargoi.

  Chapter 6

  The camp was laid out in a circle, a circle formed by more than three hundred immense wagons. Each wagon was a high-sided rectangular box, about thirty feet long and ten feet wide, set on four pairs of large solid wheels. The two pairs in front were smaller than the pairs in the rear. They were attached directly to the yoke and could swivel to steer the wagon. Each wagon was covered by a straight-sided canopy of heavy canvas.

  The wagons formed a double circle nearly a mile in diameter. Between the inner and outer circles was a space about a hundred feet wide. In that space Blade saw tents with decorated poles from which banners flew, campfires whose smoke reeked of dung, blacksmiths and wheelwrights and other craftsmen hard at work. Warriors greased boots and weapons, mothers nursed babies, older children ran about, naked or wearing only leather breechclouts.

  In the center of the circle Blade saw a solid mass of drends. They were unmistakably the same species as the beasts the warriors were riding, but obviously bred for pulling instead of riding. They were half again as large as the riding drends, thicker in the legs, and with only one blunt point on each horn. Their necks and shoulders looked as massive as the Rock of Gibralter and were galled and darkened by yoke and harness.

  Blade started to count the wagon drends, reached three hundred, then gave up. With six or eight drends to each of the wagons, plus spares, that meant between two and three thousand wagon drends.

  Two or three riding drends were tethered to each of the wagons in the outer circle. At least twenty mounted warriors were riding slowly around the whole circle. Blade noticed that each carried a staff with a red pennant on the end and a small skin drum slung on one hip. Paor called one of the riders to him and sent the man off to bring word of a stranger's arrival to the other baudzi.

  Paor and Blade rode on toward the wagons. Halfway around the circle, a party of nearly naked men was at work under the supervision of several guards. They were pulling away piles of brush from between two pairs of wagons, leaving a gap. Half a dozen mounted warriors rode in through the ga
p and started herding the wagon drends out to graze. The great beasts lumbered out slowly, swaying like drunkards and making little hoots and muttering noises from deep in their throats.

  Blade had somehow expected that the wagons of the Red People would be painted that color. The wagon bodies and wheels were actually dirty brown or gray, and the canopies were ugly blotched patterns of brown and green. Ugly, but also good camouflage. The wagons would be hard to see from far away, and at night they would be almost invisible from any distance. Only the wheel hubs were painted red.

  Definitely the Kargoi seemed to be a people well organized to search out a new homeland and fight to win and hold it when they arrived. Blade began to suspect he was in for a more than usually interesting time, here among the Kargoi in this Dimension of drowned lands and spreading swamps.

  Paor took Blade to his own wagon and left him there, under the politely watchful eyes of several of Paor's clansmen.

  «The women of my wagon know that you may eat meat at their fire if it is your wish,» he said. «You may also drink from the water skins that hang below the wagon. Do not drink the kaum-the fermented milk of the she-drend. That is only for proven warriors.»

  «I do not think it will be long before I drink kaum and eat meat at the fire of the warriors,» said Blade with a polite smile. «I will drink the water, but I think I would rather not eat with the women.»

  «Is that wise, if you wish to be strong enough for your test?»

  «It is wise enough. The Kargoi seem an honorable people, and their baudzi more honorable still. Therefore I judge they will not wait until hunger makes me weak, but will test me soon. If this is so, I can hardly fail the tests.»

  «You have great faith in yourself,» said Paor. His eyes narrowed. «Or perhaps you have some doubts about the strength of the Kargoi. Do not let such doubts grow, Blade. That would be unwise, and there is no place for the unwise among warriors of the Kargoi.»

  «That is as it should be,» said Blade. «I have no doubts about the strength of the Kargoi. Neither do I have doubts about the strength in war of my own people, the English. Often they have fought off opponents greatly outnumbering them. I was a principal warrior among the English. Not a chief, but the most valued warrior of one of the great chiefs. So I do not think I will seem weak or helpless, even facing warriors as strong and wise as the Kargoi.»

  Blade crawled under Paor's wagon and drank from the water skin until he was no longer thirsty. Then he climbed into the wagon and tried to make himself comfortable inside.

  He didn't succeed. The air inside the wagon was thick with a dozen different odors, each one worse than the last. Dry rot poorly-cured leather, rancid grease, spoiled milk and still more spoiled cheese, human sweat, and human filth-at that point Blade stopped trying to pick out the separate odors. He also felt half a dozen different kinds of vermin that crawled, leaped, or crept about.

  Ignoring the tempting smell of roasting meat, Blade climbed out of the wagon. He picked a patch of dry grass that was reasonably free of drend-dung, lay down, and went to sleep.

  He awoke in the middle of the afternoon, feeling hungry but otherwise refreshed, and strong enough to fight three Kargoi warriors with one hand tied behind his back.

  He drank some more water and looked around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to him, so he started to explore the great camp, looking and listening as he went.

  No one could mistake Blade for one of the Kargoi, not with his full head of hair, his beard, and his fairer skin. Everyone also appeared to believe that anyone wandering around the camp, Kargoi or not, had a right to be there. No one stopped him, and few were at all careful of what they said in his hearing. So Blade learned a good deal that afternoon.

  The Kargoi were divided into three Peoples-the Red, the Green, and the White. The Greens and the Whites were following routes across the plain farther to the west. That was to ensure ample grazing for all the many thousands of drends. Mounted messengers rode back and forth among the three columns each day.

  The Kargoi numbered about twenty-five thousand, divided almost equally among the three Peoples. Each of the Peoples was in turn divided into five to eight clans, each with its own baudz or War Guide and traung or Wagon Guide.

  Of the twenty-five thousand, about a quarter were warriors. About half of these could be mounted on riding drends, while the rest fought on foot or from the wagons themselves. There were also free craftsmen and a class of laborers who were hardly better than slaves. There were women in proportion to the men, many children, but only a few babies.

  There seemed to be no old women, and the only old men were those highly skilled in some craft that did not demand strength or swiftness. Blade thought he knew what had happened to the old people, and it was not a pleasant thought. When the Kargoi started off in search of their new homeland, the old people had been left behind, to drown or starve. Or perhaps the Kargoi had shown more mercy and killed them outright?

  So the Kargoi had set out in search of their new home. Each wagon was virtually a self-contained home for twenty to thirty people. It carried tools, clothes, bedding, weapons, household shrines, everything they'd chosen to carry away from the homes now sunk beneath the rising sea.

  Practically everything else the Kargoi needed was provided by the drends. The beasts drew the wagons and carried the mounted warriors. Their meat and milk fed everyone, from warriors down to newly weaned infants. Their hides became clothing, harness, and a hundred other things. Their sinews became thread, their bones and horns were tools and needles. Nothing was wasted. Even a slaughtered drend's tail usually ended up as the tassel of some mounted herder's staff.

  In short, the Kargoi seemed to have everything-except the hope of a future that would have made them happy. They were launched on a journey into the unknown. At the end of that journey there might be a new homeland, as good as the one they'd left. There might also be nothing but a barren desert, a steaming, disease-ridden jungle, or a battle against a people who could sweep the Kargoi away like children.

  In spite of all this, Blade heard a good deal of laughter as he walked around the camp. But it was brittle laughter. The Kargoi seemed to be a people who laughed because otherwise they might weep. That was courage of a very high order, and more and more Blade began to hope he could do something important to help them.

  Blade returned to Paor's wagon as the raw colors of sunset began to spread across the sky. Again he drank water, ignored the smell of roasting meat, and got ready to sleep on the ground.

  He was just pulling the cloak over himself when Paor returned. He looked down at Blade, amusement flickering across his face.

  «You fear the clan ghosts in our wagon?» The smile took any insult out of the words.

  Blade sat up. «No. The warriors of England worship the Earth Wisdom, among other things. So before a battle or an ordeal, we sleep upon the ground, to draw upon the Earth Wisdom.»

  «I see,» said Paor. «Well, you would do well to draw on it-heavily. We will be staying in this camp for some days, to prepare for our march along the shore. So your testing will take place tomorrow.»

  Chapter 7

  «That is good,» said Blade. «Indeed, the baudzi of the Kargoi are men of honor. They will not make even a stranger wait for his testing.»

  Paor nodded, but there was a look of doubt on his face that provoked Blade. «Or do I have too much faith in the baudzi of the Kargoi? I would not doubt them unless I have to, but-«

  Paor raised a hand to stop Blade. «You must know that two of the baudzi had no wish to see you tested. One would have had you cast out of our camp, with food and water, while the other would have had you slain in the night. The decision went against them, so there is nothing they can do against you by law or custom. Still, there will be danger to you from their anger. Rehod, the one who would have had you slain, will be standing against you in the testing tomorrow.»

  «Then I will see to it that Rehod can do nothing against me without danger to himself. If I can
do that, I think it will be enough. I know the ways of men like Rehod. They seldom strike at those who can strike back.»

  «I hope you are right, Blade,» said Paor. «We can do nothing against Rehod ourselves, not without risking a blood feud with his kin. That we cannot have, when we need all our warriors standing together. But I would not rejoice to see you slain by treachery and the honor of the Kargoi stained with your blood.»

  «You will not see that,» said Blade. «Not while I have eyes in my head, breath in my body, and arms to strike at my enemies.» He made a contemptuous gesture. «Now, enough of this Rehod. What is the testing?»

  It was much as Blade expected. He would be tested as an archer, both mounted and on foot. He would be tested as a rider of the drend, a runner, and a wrestler. Last of all he would be tested as a swordsman.

  «You shall fight twice with the sword, once mounted and once on foot. There will be no great danger to either you or your opponents, for the swords will be blunted.» Paor drew a longsword from a scabbard across his back and held it out to Blade.

  Blade examined the sword carefully. A long heavy strip of boiled leather reinforced with drend bone was tied along the edge and around the point. A strong blow with this sword would bruise painfully and possibly break bones, but it would not leave gaping, deadly wounds.

  Blade stepped back and begin swinging the sword. He went through every movement that could be made with such a sword, then repeated the whole sequence twice more, faster each time. The padding made the sword considerably heavier and less well balanced, but not unwieldy. Blade was quite sure he could handle it well enough to prove himself a first-class warrior. For once his life didn't depend on the outcome of the fight.