“We expected no resistance, but recalling the incident at the ring-of-stone, I was cautious. After a march of some twelve kilometers through the hills to the vicinity of the cliff, we fanned out in a semicircle and moved in slowly, with screechguns drawn. A few Jaenshi were encountered in the forest, and these we took prisoner and marched before us, for use as shields in the event of an ambush or attack. That, of course, proved unnecessary.
“When we reached the pyramid by the cliff, they were waiting for us. At least twelve of the beasts, sir. One of them sat near the base of the pyramid with his hands pressed against its side, while the others surrounded him in a sort of a circle. They all looked up at us, but made no other move.”
She paused a minute, and rubbed a thoughtful finger up against the side of her nose. “As I told the Proctor, it was all very odd from that point forward. Last summer, I twice led squads against the Jaenshi clans. The first time, having no idea of our intentions, none of the soulless were there; we simply destroyed the artifact and left. The second time, a crowd of the creatures milled around, hampering us with their bodies while not being actively hostile. They did not disperse until I had one of them screeched down. And, of course, I studied the reports of Squadfather Allor’s difficulties at the ring-of-stone.
“This time, it was all quite different. I ordered two of my men to set the blastcannon on its tripod, and gave the beasts to understand that they must get out of the way. With hand signals, of course, since I know none of their ungodly tongue. They complied at once, splitting into two groups and, well, lining up, on either side of the line-of-fire. We kept them covered with our screechguns, of course, but everything seemed very peaceful.
“And so it was. The blaster took the pyramid out neatly, a big ball of flame and then sort of a thunder as the thing exploded. A few shards were scattered, but no one was injured, as we had all taken cover and the Jaenshi seemed unconcerned. After the pyramid broke, there was a sharp ozone smell, and for an instant a lingering bluish fire—perhaps an afterimage. I hardly had time to notice them, however, since that was when the Jaenshi all fell to their knees before us. All at once, sirs. And then they pressed their heads against the ground, prostrating themselves. I thought for a moment that they were trying to hail us as gods, because we had shattered their god, and I tried to tell them that we wanted none of their animal worship, and required only that they leave these lands at once. But then I saw that I had misunderstood, because that was when the other four clan members came forward from the trees atop the cliff, and climbed down, and gave us the statue. Then the rest got up. The last I saw, the entire clan was walking due east, away from Sword Valley and the outlying hills. I took the statue and brought it back to the Proctor.” She fell silent but remained standing, waiting for questions.
“I have the statuette here,” Wyatt said. He reached down beside his chair and set it on the table, then pulled off the white cloth covering he had wrapped around it.
The base was a triangle of rockhard blackbark, and three long splinters of bone rose from the corners to make a pyramid frame. Within, exquisitely carved in every detail from soft blue wood, Bakkalon the pale child stood, holding a painted sword.
“What does this mean?” Fieldbishop Lyon asked, obviously startled.
“Sacrilege!” Fieldbishop Dhallis said.
“Nothing so serious,” said Gorman, Fieldbishop for Heavy Armor. “The beasts are simply trying to ingratiate themselves, perhaps in the hope that we will stay our swords.”
“None but the seed of Earth may bow to Bakkalon,” Dhallis said. “It is written in the Book! The pale child will not look with favor on the soulless!”
“Silence, my brothers-in-arms!” the Proctor said, and the long table abruptly grew quiet again. Wyatt smiled a thin smile. “This is the first of the miracles of which I spoke this winter in the chapel, the first of the strange happenings that Bakkalon told to me. For truly He has walked this world, our Corlos, so even the beasts of the fields know His likeness! Think on it, my brothers. Think on this carving. Ask yourselves a few simple questions. Have any of the Jaenshi animals ever been permitted to set foot in this holy city?”
“No, of course not,” someone said.
“Then clearly none of them have seen the holograph that stands above our altar. Nor have I often walked among the beasts, as my duties keep me here within the walls. So none could have seen the pale child’s likeness on the chain of office that I wear, for the few Jaenshi who have seen my visage have not lived to speak of it—they were those I judged, who hung upon our city walls. The animals do not speak the language of the Earthseed, nor have any among us learned their simple beastly tongue. Lastly, they have not read the Book. Remember all this, and wonder; how did their carvers know what face and form to carve?”
Quiet; the leaders of the children of Bakkalon looked back and forth among themselves in wonderment.
Wyatt quietly folded his hands. “A miracle. We shall have no more trouble with the Jaenshi, for the pale child has come to them.”
To the Proctor’s right, Fieldbishop Dhallis sat rigidly. “My Proctor, my leader in faith,” she said, with some difficulty, each word coming slowly, “surely, surely, you do not mean to tell us that these, these animals—that they can worship the pale child, that He accepts their worship!”
Wyatt seemed calm, benevolent; he only smiled. “You need not trouble your soul, Dhallis. You wonder whether I commit the First Fallacy, remembering perhaps the Sacrilege of G’hra when a captive Hrangan bowed to Bakkalon to save himself from an animal’s death, and the False Proctor Gibrone proclaimed that all who worship the pale child must have souls.” He shook his head. “You see, I read the Book. But no, Fieldbishop, no sacrilege has transpired. Bakkalon has walked among the Jaenshi, but surely has given them only truth. They have seen Him in all His armed dark glory, and heard Him proclaim that they are animals, without souls, as surely He would proclaim. Accordingly, they accept their place in the order of the universe, and retire before us. They will never kill a man again. Recall that they did not bow to the statue they carved, but rather gave the statue to us, the seed of Earth, who alone can rightfully worship it. When they did prostrate themselves, it was at our feet, as animals to men, and that is as it should be. You see? They have been given truth.”
Dhallis was nodding. “Yes, my Proctor. I am enlightened. Forgive my moment of weakness.”
But halfway down the table, C’ara DaHan leaned forward and knotted his great knuckled hands, frowning all the while. “My Proctor,” he said heavily.
“Weaponsmaster?” Wyatt returned. His face grew stern.
“Like the Fieldbishop, my soul has flickered briefly with worry, and I too would be enlightened, if I might?”
Wyatt smiled. “Proceed,” he said, in a voice without humor.
“A miracle this thing may be indeed,” DaHan said, “but first we must question ourselves, to ascertain that it is not the trick of a soulless enemy. I do not fathom their strategem, or their reasons for acting as they have, but I do know of one way that the Jaenshi might have learned the features of our Bakkalon.”
“Oh?”
“I speak of the Jamish trading base, and the red-haired trader Arik neKrol. He is an Earthseed, an Emereli by his looks, and we have given him the Book. But he remains without a burning love of Bakkalon, and goes without arms like a godless man. Since our landing he has opposed us, and he grew most hostile after the lesson we were forced to give the Jaenshi. Perhaps he put the cliff clan up to it, told them to do the carving, to some strange ends of his own. I believe that he did trade with them.”
“I believe you speak truth, Weaponsmaster. In the early months after landing, I tried hard to convert neKrol. To no avail, but I did learn much of the Jaenshi beasts and of the trading he did with them.” The Proctor still smiled. “He traded with one of the clans here in Sword Valley, with the people of ring-of-stone, with the cliff clan and that of the far fruit tangle, with the waterfall folk, and sundry clans fa
rther east.”
“Then it is his doing,” DaHan said. “A trick!”
All eyes moved to Wyatt. “I did not say that. NeKrol, whatever intentions he might have, is but a single man. He did not trade with all the Jaenshi, nor even know them all.” The Proctor’s smile grew briefly wider. “Those of you who have seen the Emereli know him for a man of flab and weakness; he could hardly walk as far as might be required, and he has neither aircar nor power sled.”
“But he did have contact with the cliff clan,” DaHan said. The deep-graven lines on his bronze forehead were set stubbornly.
“Yes, he did,” Wyatt answered. “But Squadmother Jolip did not go forth alone this morning. I also sent out Squadfather Walman and Squadfather Allor, to cross the waters of the White Knife. The land there is dark and fertile, better than that to the east. The cliff clan, who are southeast, were between Sword Valley and the White Knife, so they had to go. But the other pyramids we moved against belonged to far-river clans, more than thirty kilometers south. They have never seen the trader Arik neKrol, unless he has grown wings this winter.”
Then Wyatt bent again, and set two more statues on the table, and pulled away their coverings. One was set on a base of slate, and the figure was carved in a clumsy broad manner; the other was finely detailed soaproot, even to the struts of the pyramid. But except for the materials and the workmanship, the later statues were identical to the first.
“Do you see a trick, Weaponsmaster?” Wyatt asked.
DaHan looked, and said nothing, for Fieldbishop Lyon rose suddenly and said, “I see a miracle,” and others echoed him. After the hubbub had finally quieted, the brawny Weaponsmaster lowered his head and said, very softly, “My Proctor. Read wisdom to us.”
“THE LASERS, SPEAKER, THE LASERS!” THERE WAS A TINGE OF HYSTERICAL desperation in neKrol’s tone. “Ryther is not back yet, and that is the very point. We must wait.”
He stood outside the bubble of the trading base, bare-chested and sweating in the hot morning sun, with the thick wind tugging at his tangled hair. The clamor had pulled him from a troubled sleep. He had stopped them just on the edge of the forest, and now the bitter speaker had turned to face him, looking fierce and hard and most unJaenshi-like with the laser slung across her shoulders, a bright blue glittersilk scarf knotted around her neck, and fat glowstone rings on all eight of her fingers. The other exiles, but for the two that were heavy with child, stood around her. One of them held the other laser, the rest carried quivers and powerbows. That had been the speaker’s idea. Her newly chosen mate was down on one knee, panting; he had run all the way from the ring-of-stone.
“No, Arik,” the speaker said, eyes bronze-angry. “Your lasers are now a month overdue, by your own count of time. Each day we wait, and the Steel Angels smash more pyramids. Soon they may hang children again.”
“Very soon,” neKrol said. “Very soon, if you attack them. Where is your very hope of victory? Your watcher says they go with two squads and a powerwagon—can you stop them with a pair of lasers and four powerbows? Have you learned to think here, or not?”
“Yes,” the speaker said, but she bared her teeth at him as she said it. “Yes, but that cannot matter. The clans do not resist, so we must.”
From one knee, her mate looked up at neKrol. “They…they march on the waterfall,” he said, still breathing heavily.
“The waterfall!” the bitter speaker repeated. “Since the death of winter, they have broken more than twenty pyramids, Arik, and their powerwagons have crushed the forest and now a great dusty road scars the soil from their valley to the riverlands. But they had hurt no Jaenshi yet this season, they had let them go. And all those clans-without-a-god have gone to the waterfall, until the home forest of the waterfall folk is bare and eaten clean. Their talkers sit with the old talker and perhaps the waterfall god takes them in, perhaps he is a very great god. I do not know these things. But I do know that now the bald Angel has learned of the twenty clans together, of a grouping of half-a-thousand Jaenshi adults, and he leads a powerwagon against them. Will he let them go so easy this time, happy with a carved statue? Will they go, Arik, will they give up a second god as easily as a first?” The speaker blinked. “I fear they will resist with their silly claws. I fear the bald Angel will hang them even if they do not resist, because so many in union throws suspicion in him. I fear many things and know little, but I know we must be there. You will not stop us, Arik, and we cannot wait for your long-late lasers.”
And she turned to the others and said, “Come, we must run,” and they had faded into the forest before neKrol could even shout for them to stay. Swearing, he turned back to the bubble.
The two female exiles were leaving just as he entered. Both were close to the end of their term, but they had powerbows in their hands. NeKrol stopped short. “You too!” he said furiously, glaring at them. “Madness, it is the very stuff of madness!” They only looked at him with silent golden eyes, and moved past him toward the trees.
Inside, he swiftly braided his long red hair so it would not catch on the branches, slipped into a shirt, and darted toward the door. Then he stopped. A weapon, he must have a weapon! He glanced around frantically and ran heavily for his storeroom. The powerbows were all gone, he saw. What then, what? He began to rummage, and finally settled for a duralloy machete. It felt strange in his hand and he must have looked most unmartial and ridiculous, but somehow he felt he must take something.
Then he was off, toward the place of the waterfall folk.
NEKROL WAS OVERWEIGHT AND SOFT, HARDLY USED TO RUNNING, AND the way was nearly two kilometers through lush summer forest. He had to stop three times to rest, and quiet the pains in his chest, and it seemed an eternity before he arrived. But still he beat the Steel Angels; a powerwagon is ponderous and slow, and the road from Sword Valley was longer and more hilly.
Jaenshi were everywhere. The glade was bare of grass and twice as large as neKrol remembered it from his last trading trip, early that spring. Still, the Jaenshi filled all of it, sitting on the ground, staring at the pool and the waterfall, all silent, packed together so there was scarcely room to walk among them. More sat above, a dozen in every fruit tree, some of the children even ascending to the higher limbs where the pseudomonks usually ruled alone.
On the rock at the center of the pool, with the waterfall behind them as a backdrop, the talkers pressed around the pyramid of the waterfall folk. They were closer together than even those in the grass, and each had his palms flat against the sides. One, thin and frail, sat on the shoulders of another so that he too might touch. NeKrol tried to count them and gave up; the group was too dense, a blurred mass of gray-furred arms and golden eyes, the pyramid at their center, dark and unmovable as ever.
The bitter speaker stood in the pool, the waters ankle-deep around her. She was facing the crowd and screeching at them, her voice strangely unlike the usual Jaenshi purr; in her scarf and rings, she looked absurdly out of place. As she talked, she waved the laser rifle she was holding in one hand. Wildly, passionately, hysterically, she was telling the gathered Jaenshi that the Steel Angels were coming, that they must leave at once, that they should break up and go into the forest and regroup at the trading base. Over and over again she said it.
But the clans were stiff and silent. No one answered, no one listened, no one heard. In full daylight, they were praying.
NeKrol pushed his way through them, stepping on a hand here and a foot there, hardly able to set down a boot without crunching Jaenshi flesh. He was standing next to the bitter speaker, who still gestured wildly, before her bronze eyes seemed to see him. Then she stopped. “Arik,” she said, “the Angels are coming, and they will not listen.”
“The others,” he panted, still short on breath. “Where are they?”
“The trees,” the bitter speaker replied, with a vague gesture. “I sent them up in the trees. Snipers, Arik, such as we saw upon your wall.”
“Please,” he said. “Come back with me. Leave
them, leave them. You told them. I told them. Whatever happens, it is their doing, it is the fault of their fool religion.”
“I cannot leave,” the bitter speaker said. She seemed confused, as so often when neKrol had questioned her back at the base. “It seems I should, but somehow I know I must stay here. And the others will never go, even if I did. They feel it much more strongly. We must be here. To fight, to talk.” She blinked. “I do not know why, Arik, but we must.”
And before the trader could reply, the Steel Angels came out of the forest.
There were five of them at first, widely spaced; then shortly five more. All afoot, in uniforms whose mottled dark greens blended with the leaves, so that only the glitter of the mesh-steel belts and matching battle helmets stood out. One of them, a gaunt pale woman, wore a high red collar; all of them had hand-lasers drawn.
“You!” the blond woman shouted, her eyes finding Arik at once, as he stood with his braid flying in the wind and the machete dangling uselessly in his hand. “Speak to these animals! Tell them they must leave! Tell them that no Jaenshi gathering of this size is permitted east of the mountains, by order of the Proctor Wyatt, and the pale child Bakkalon. Tell them!” And then she saw the bitter speaker, and started. “And take the laser from the hand of that animal before we burn both of you down!”
Trembling, neKrol dropped the machete from limp fingers into the water. “Speaker, drop the gun,” he said in Jaenshi, “please. If you ever hope to see the far stars. Let loose the laser, my friend, my child, this very now. And I will take you when Ryther comes, with me to ai-Emerel and farther places.” The trader’s voice was full of fear; the Steel Angels held their lasers steady, and not for a moment did he think the speaker would obey him.