The Door in Crow Wood, Page 4

Chapter 3 The Ruins of Lucilla

  Crat stiffened halfway through the scout’s report and allowed a pained expression to briefly cross his face. Ulrigs here? Ulrigs, and strangely dressed humans with them! The Ulrigs he could hardly believe, not five hundred miles from their mountains. They were as out of place here as Dragons. But his blood had chilled along with everyone else’s when they had heard a howl just a short time ago.

  As if he didn’t have enough troubles! Rumor had it that the Quintusian army was coming to rout the slaves out of these ruins. That was a fairly permanent rumor, but lately it was sounding more convincing. As the leader of the hundreds of refugees at Lucilla, Crat was responsible to foresee such a disaster and get the people well hidden. But fully eight out of ten in this shabby community were escaped slaves, and such were notoriously poor at keeping discipline. At night, rather than stay in the tunnels and cells beneath the ruins, they came out into the open. And they would light fires for cooking.

  Crat was near one of these fires now, smelling the aroma of a vegetable stew. He sighed. Who could blame them? One can’t hide under Lucilla’s stones every night, rumors or no rumors. The Quintusians had recaptured escaped slaves from this site many times over the years, and their attacks had always caught the refugees by surprise. This year would probably be no different. Still he was responsible to foresee an attack.

  He also had to deal with any new faces that might show up, like these Ulrigs.

  “Five Ulrigs, you say?” he asked. His blood pressure had lowered again now. He was in control.

  “Roper says five,” said the scout, a tall, lean man with gray hair hanging down the sides of his face. “But we couldn’t catch them. Don’t want to. We got the two humans. They’re comin’.”

  A sound like claws clattered on the stone slabs nearby, and presently a figure bounded into the circle of firelight. It was one of the dog-folk of the south, a Looper. He stood three and a half feet tall on his hind legs, his tongue lolling out. His long fur was matted and dirty. On a belt around his middle hung a short sword. This was Roper, the only non-human among the Lucillan refugees, and Crat’s most valuable scout.

  He snuffled a quick report in his flawed Gellene. “Got ’em just round corner, Kroz Crat. Young ones, but adult height. Look harmless. You want see ’em?”

  Crat nodded. Roper disappeared and returned with the captives and at least forty of Crat’s people, a ragged crew of both sexes and all ages. Happy with their small victory, they made a great deal of noise, and the many torches they carried were enough to draw attention from miles away. Crat hoped the Quintusian soldiers were not out tonight! He looked over the two captives, a tall, skinny girl and a tow headed boy. Obviously brother and sister. Very scared. And yes, they were dressed oddly.

  “Sit them down,” he ordered, and they were placed on two of the large building stones that were scattered all over the ruins. Crat could not place them. Not escaped slaves, certainly. Not ordinary Quintusian citizens, either. A Quintusian freedman has a downtrodden look about him, but for all their fear, these two looked back at him squarely. Nobility? Hardly possible, and yet…. No, they must have come out of the Forest Obscure, one of those mysterious states down south.

  “Ursans,” he demanded, “or from Ahremos?”

  They hesitated. “Neither. We’re not from around here,” said the girl in a strange accent.

  “The Forest Obscure is hardly what I’d call around here,” he said sharply, unhappy with himself for apparently guessing wrong. “What’s your story?”

  The boy looked to the girl. “We’re on the run,” she said, searching for words, “to escape the black Magi.”

  The crowd around them stirred.

  Either she was a wild story teller, or this was more than Crat could afford to get involved with. But Crat knew a thing or two about liars and this girl was no liar by the look of her.

  “On the run from where, to where? And why do they want you?”

  “Um, to the mountains,” she said, answering only his second question. “The Middle Range, I think they called them. But we—took a wrong turn.”

  The refugees exploded with laughter.

  “Preposterous,” Crat said drily. “Where from?”

  The boy stirred anxiously and said a few words to his sister in some strange language.

  Crat guessed the meaning. “Boy, you’d better both answer everything. Count yourselves lucky. You’ve arrived somehow at the only place in the Plain of the Silent Cities where you’ll get a fair hearing. In Quintusia you’d be put in chains just for being foreign. I’m Crat, formerly Lord Crat of Quintusia, and like many others here, I was unjustly accused of crimes and had to flee to keep my freedom. I know what it is to be judged unfairly, and I don’t intend to do it to others. Now, where do you come from?”

  The boy hung his head. “You won’t believe us.”

  “Speak up, anyway.”

  “From the Old World,” the girl said. The crowd got quieter at this. “And—we can’t go back there. The Magi would find us there. We have to—”

  “Why? Why will they look for you?”

  “It’s some kind of prophecy,” she said. “I don’t understand it! Clay and I are Sisskames. There was a Princess named Lila—”

  “Quiet! No more!” Crats eyes were blazing. He looked to the refugees. “All of you! Go out to the perimeter and watch for soldiers. See how many you’ve brought down on us with your cursed torches and clamor. These two are mad, plainly. They’re telling old Fijat stories, need to be locked up. No, now go, all of you! Roper, you stay, and Azco and Pollo.”

  Presently, all had departed except the sturdy Looper and the two trusty men Crat had chosen. Crat sat down wearily in front of the foreigners. Nothing, nothing was going right today. Pretenders to the throne of the Empire were said to be numerous out east, but he had never expected to meet with any here. Worse yet, they sounded genuine.

  “Now go on,” he said quietly.

  “Don’t lock us up,” the girl mumbled.

  “I won’t. Just tell me your story.”

  A log settled on the fire, and then all was quiet.

  “There will be big wars,” said the girl, “unless Clay here can keep peace. He’s the Emperor, the Lila-me. The Ulrigs were going to take us somewhere and proclaim it. That’s all I know.”

  Crat felt very tired. What kind of responsibility had he had before compared to this? He hoped desperately that they were lying.

  “I wish to Thoz we had let you go,” he said. “I don’t want to deal with you, and if what you’re saying is true, then no ruler in the Fold has the authority to judge you.” He had a happy thought. “I’m sending you away. Pollo, get two food bags. Give them everything they need to go south.”

  At that same moment many trumpets sounded in the distance, and they heard men shouting. Crat moaned and sank his bald head down on his hands. Worse yet! The worst had come and he was unprepared. The Quintusian army was upon them. He must make an instant decision.

  “Pollo! Bring up my mount and put them on it, both of them.”

  “Yes, Kroz Crat.”

  He thought of a major hitch in his hasty plan. “I don’t suppose you can ride?” he asked the girl. She seemed the more competent of the two.

  She nodded. “A little.”

  Crat looked at her quizzically. “Then ride like Gennez that way, south. Find those Ulrigs and have them guide you, if they can. Make for Ursa.” He turned away. “Azco, Roper, run the perimeter and make sure our people are all headed into the tunnels.”

  The trumpets blared again. They sounded closer.

  Holding a torch, Pollo led the Gareths through the ruins. The teens had been supplied with food bags which each carried under an elbow, the strap being slung over the opposite shoulder. Hurrying through the ruins in the dark, Simone could not see much, but even in the midst of her fear and haste, wh
at she did see astounded her. Remnants of walls rose high above her head, and broken pillars seemed impossibly big around. Lucilla in her day must have been vast of scale and breathtaking in grandeur. She felt like an ant, scurrying in the shadows of something far beyond her comprehension.

  Once Pollo paused in the midst of the rubble, and directly beneath the light of his torch lay the enormous hand of a statue. The broken off hand was bigger than Simone, its curled and beringed fingers like tree trunks. Pollo had merely been getting his bearings, but he noticed Simone’s wide eyes.

  “It’s from the statue of Lucilla,” he explained. “She that founded this city and was a great-granddaughter of Quintus himself.” Pollo hurried on, and as he did, Simone saw the dim outline of a recumbent stone torso. It was so gigantic that she would not have known it for a statue if she had not been prepared by seeing its hand. She gladly left it behind, for the moment more afraid of the statue than of the soldiers attacking the city.

  They came to a place where the ground seemed to fall away in a steep slope. “This was the amphitheater,” Pollo told them. “Stay here, and I’ll bring it up.” He took the torch with him, and the darkness closed around them. He was rather longer at it than Clay and Simone liked. In the meantime they watched hundreds of torches moving nearby and heard orders shouted.

  “He’s probably just saddling it,” Simone said to Clay, trying to reassure him.

  “What are we so afraid of, anyway?” Clay asked. “These people here seem to be escaped criminals. Sure, they run from the government, but why should we?”

  “Crat said they make slaves of foreigners.”

  A great roar reverberated around them, seeming to come from the amphitheater. They grabbed each other’s shaking arms.

  “What was that?” Clay gasped.

  “It sounded like a lion!”

  “No, it sounded bigger than a lion. I want my flashlight. Where are our bags from home?”

  “I don’t know,” Simone said. “We lost them when they surrounded the Ulrigs and us and we started running.”

  “We need that stuff. That’s important stuff. I wish I had a gun.”

  “You didn’t bring a gun. You don’t own one.”

  “I said I wish I had one, that’s all.”

  “What we need is to get out of here to someplace safe. Did you notice that Crat got all shook up when we told him why we’re here? And everyone here seems to know something we don’t.”

  “They know we’re hot property, that’s what. So we turn ourselves over to the army, and maybe—maybe they’ll be glad to see us. We’re the Sisskames they’ve all been waiting for.”

  “But Crat said we should run like Gennez from the army,” Simone insisted. “He knows things we don’t, so he must have had a reason.”

  “I wish I had just my flashlight,” Clay said. “What are we—we—?”

  He paused, for Pollo had reappeared, leading a huge beast. He commanded it to sit, and it did so, but even seated its head was on a level with theirs: a huge bird’s head with slowly blinking eyes.

  “My God, what is it?” Simone asked.

  “Don’t be afraid of it,” said Pollo. “What, didn’t you tell the king you can ride?”

  “She meant a horse,” said Clay.

  “A horse? What nonsense! Those hoofed things that people rode around on in old stories? I suppose next you’ll be telling me you’ve seen a horse? Now just get on.”

  “What is this thing?” said Clay, hanging back. “It’s like an ostrich but a lot bigger. Does it talk?”

  “Talk? It roars, didn’t you hear it? Get on it and ride. Is it nothing to you that the Kroz gives you his only korfy to escape on, which he might have used for himself?”

  Simone spoke quickly to Clay in English. “There, you see, Scudball? We’d better trust Crat. He could be escaping on it himself right now. For that matter, maybe he could have turned us over to the army for a reward, but he didn’t try.”

  “I’m not getting on that thing.”

  “I am, come on.”

  They forced themselves to climb onto the korfy’s huge, broad back and found its feathers surprisingly comfortable. Pollo hastily thrust their feet into stirrups and showed them where to hold on to the harness. He handed a stick to Simone where she sat in front.

  “Poke it here,” he pointed, “to hurry it. Tap the left side of the neck to go right and vice versa. Taps, mind you; don’t abuse it. Hee-gah!”

  He did something to the bird and it stood up abruptly. Simone held on dizzily.

  Pollo’s voice continued from below them. “Ride south, straight ahead of you. Look for humans. They say there are some down there still. Who knows? Gah! Gah!”

  He whacked the monster’s tree-trunk legs strategically, and it started forward. At the same moment, Simone saw a man, helmeted and carrying a torch and spear, appear around a boulder not fifty yards away. He could see them by the light of Pollo’s torch. He began to yell something, but Simone was too busy hanging on to hear what it was. Then the trumpets sounded again, and the korfy picked up speed, dashing around boulders and over rubble, and once leaping a ten foot wide ditch. Simone would have tried to steer if she had not immediately lost all sense of direction. Several times the bird roared, and each explosive bellow seemed as if it would blow her hair off her head.

  They were racing directly toward a grouping of many torches which quickly proved to be a company of soldiers—all with frightened expressions. Most of them scattered, but a handful stood their ground, swinging swords and pitching spears as the korfy burst through them. Someone screamed close behind Simone. The korfy pounded on wildly, perhaps hurt. Through several long seconds the thought formed in Simone’s mind: that scream was Clay. Clay had screamed! She twisted around as well as she could with her feet in the stirrups and saw Clay on the ground. Even as she watched, soldiers were lifting him up. His legs held, he was alive!

  “Clay!” she screamed. “Clay!”

  He turned himself in the soldiers’ grasp, reaching his arms out to her. Perhaps he was shouting her name. The next moment she was jolted by a bump and fell forward against the korfy’s stout neck. She felt sick, and could do nothing but hang on, weeping and praying.

  No more torches, all was dark now. At some point the ruins had given way to grasslands. Pollo had not told her how to make the korfy stop. She began to tap its neck with the stick, trying to turn it back to the city. It trotted slowly now, and just as she had it pointed the right way, stopped moving completely. The bird continued to breathe like a windstorm, and its back heaved under her. She placed the point of the stick near the place she had been shown at the back of the korfy’s neck, ready to urge it forward. She hesitated.

  “What in the world are you doing?” she said aloud to herself.

  She did not know. She had had a brief idea of rescuing Clay, but had no means to do so, not against an army. And even if Clay was to be made a slave, he might be better off than herself. What did she face but threat of starvation and unknown dangers; she who was headed south supposedly, but who had no compass; she who must find a place called Ursa where Pollo had said there just might be some humans? Or perhaps not.

  Only one thing was clear: she and Clay must not be separated. She had to go back. If the soldiers kept her apart from Clay, they just would, that’s all. But at least she would do all she could to get back to him.

  “Go,” she said to the korfy, and poked it.

  It did not move. Several more pokes did no more; the bird merely turned its great head and looked down at her, rather frighteningly. Maybe she had missed the right spot, or maybe it was injured. She decided to get down and look it over, if anything could be told in the dark. She did not know how to make it sit down, but she was not dangerously high up. Besides it would feel good to touch the ground again. She pulled her sneakers from the stirrups and, gripping the harness, slid over the side, h
ung for a moment, and dropped lightly.

  She looked at the dark hulk beside her and spoke aloud, “Can’t see you, birdy. If you’re hurt, you’re going to have to spray out some blood or something. I just can’t see. Hey, what do I think I’m going to do for you anyway? I don’t even have a bandaid.”

  She began feeling around for a wound, and as she did so, thought of Raspberry’s hot blood on her hands, in the dark by the fence row at home. It seemed impossible that that had been only a few hours ago. Would this night never end? Her chest was quivering, and she was so tired, and everything had gone wrong. To keep herself from crying again, she sat down and felt in the bag Crat had provided.

  “Don’t suppose these people have any candy bars. What is this stuff? I wish I could see it.” She slowly ate an unidentifiable piece of fruit, and then another. Suddenly, her back stiffened as growls and howls broke out nearby. The korfy stirred and trotted forward a few steps. Simone leaped up.

  “No, you don’t! You’re not leaving without me!” She ran after it, but it pivoted away from her and pounded off into the night, away from the sound of the growls. Simone could run like a deer, but in the high grass she could not keep up with it. She stopped, her heart pounding. The growling had ended, but she thought she could hear, almost see, approaching figures. Then someone spoke.

  “Lady Simone, how glad I am to see you.”

  Sudden, unexplainable anger poured over her. “Snag! You miserable cur. A fat lot of good you’ve done us. Why don’t you—”

  “Speak in Kreenspam, Lady. I can’t understand you. Here, Snart and I have come to help you. We’ll escape these westerners. We know where we are now.”

  “Not on another planet,” Snart put in humorlessly.

  “And do you know they got Clay?” she demanded.

  “We know lady,” Snag said. She could see his eyes now and a hint of his fangs. “We were watching when the two of you rode out on the nash korfilash. Wherever did you find such a thing in these lands? Our lore says the Great Non-Flyers walk the far north.”

  “Never mind, it’s gone now. You scared it away. Why did you do that? We need it. It’s strong enough to carry all three of us.”

  “But I doubt it would carry Ulrigs, Lady,” said Snart.

  “No? So you scared it away to be sure I couldn’t get away from you? Well, what do you think you’ll do now?”

  Snag walked forward in a direction away from the distant torch lights of Lucilla. “We go on this way, my Lady, south to the Seelkir pin Rom.”

  “The Forest Obscure? That’s where Crat wanted me to go. But why? And what about Clay?”

  “He’s lost to us. I am sorry. They’ll make a slave of him; that’s the way of the Silent Cities. We’d like to rescue him, but what can we do against so many? And if we somehow summoned an army of our own kind to fight them, these men would have long since taken your brother downstream. They come from far away, from Quintusia by the great ocean, and they’ll take their prisoners back there with them. Don’t cry, my Lady. Steel yourself to come with us. You shall be declared Empress over all the peoples of the Fold. Then you can demand that Clay be given over to you. That’s the way. Come with us.”

  “Why?” Simone asked wretchedly. “Where are we going?”

  “To the Forest,” Snag repeated patiently. “We can’t go directly east to our mountain homes. That would mean going many hundred miles without a friend to help us. The way is barren; we would be vulnerable to attack and to hunger. But we believe the Forest Obscure is not far south, perhaps a few days march. Many Sarrs live there: Loopers and Lusettas and such. They’ll help us, bringing us through their friendly lands to the mountains.”

  Simone wanted to ask, “Then what?” But she was too tired to think anymore. That they had to get to safety, she knew; and she knew Clay was beyond their help.

  “Well, where are the other two?” she asked dispiritedly, meaning Cruel and Drool.

  “Very likely dead,” said Snart. “We’ve seen no more of them since we all were scattered by the human soldiers. So of the ten Ulrigs who left the Middle Range three days ago, only we two remain. Three of us died fighting the humans of Crow Wood who serve Tsawb, and three more were slain by witches outside Tsawb’s temple. But we slew five or more of Tsawb’s people and three witches.”

  “Come now,” Snag said, pushing at her with his paws. “Dear Lady Empress, it’s dangerous to remain so near the soldiers. We will go. We’ll march by nights and sleep in the day, for secrecy’s sake.”

  Snart took up her bag.

  Then Simone allowed herself to be led away into the night, one Ulrig before her and one behind.