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Chapter Twenty-four


The virtue of adversity is fortitude.

Francis Bacon
“On Adversity”


It was a peninsula of struggling, sunburned orchards and crops. Springbuck’s poor vision gave him only the vague details of modest white huts fronting a bleached, broad beach. Fishing nets had been draped to dry, and long canoes were pulled above the tide’s mark. The flotilla was on full alert; there was little information about this side of the Central Sea. The strand was unnervingly quiet, with no sign that their arrival had been noted. Unwelcomed, unopposed, they were used to no third alternative.

Hightower ascended the aft castle. “Someone must go ashore, and there is not much time for it.” The Ku-Mor-Mai agreed; an alarm might already have gone out. The Warlord finished, “It is my intention to do so.”

“I’m sorry, my Lord, but you are too valuable to risk at preliminary scout. Send someone whom you trust.”

Brodur, a pace behind the old man, offered himself at once. Hightower insisted, “I will take any others you choose, Lord, but mean to go myself. It will fall to me to give the command to disembark. I must see what is there for myself first.”

The younger man couldn’t dispute that. He conceded the point, and Hightower was soon in a longboat with Brodur and a dozen other volunteers. Springbuck followed them through a spying tube, squinting elaborately to make the scene come clear, but after they’d secured their boat and gone past the first line of houses, he lost them.

A half-hour passed. Springbuck ordered more boats readied, selecting a larger party to come ashore with him. Just then the longboat put out again from the beach, and in its wake came the canoes. Men of Coramonde loosened swords and tested bowstrings, but heard no war cries and saw no weapons or armor flashing.

Hightower’s boat pulled alongside the flagship, but the others stood back. Their occupants had been warned that Coramonde, come to wage war, would be quick to misconstrue an act as provocation.

The people were small, brown-skinned folk whose boats were painted in bright colors and fanciful designs. Most wore a sort of short kirtle; many had flowers woven in their hair, and there was a good deal of simple jewelry, childlike works of coral or shells. The Ku-Mor-Mai noticed, at this close range, that many were scarred, missing a limb, maimed, bereft of an eye or ear, or otherwise afflicted. Still, they sang a happy-tempoed tune of greeting, for all the fact that their faces were sad and wary.

The soldiers and sailors didn’t know what to think of these little people, but called to them good-naturedly.

Hightower and Brodur brought a representative to the Protector-Suzerain, a slender brown man older than most of his people, wearing a dignified chiton. He was in awe of Oakengrip. “O Ku-Mor-Mai,” Hightower boomed formally, “I present Kalakeet, who is Speaker of these people, which call themselves the Yalloroon.”

The Speaker smiled, but clearly had misgivings. Springbuck was to learn these people had good reason to fear strangers. Kalakeet told him, “The great Lord Hightower has said thou art called Protector-Suzerain, and we beg thee to take us under the soldierly wing of Coramonde.”

Springbuck was stuck for reply. Could he, in fact, be a Protector? “Why do you ask it of me?”

The Speaker’s face lost composure, as if a hope faded. “We are tormented by an enemy, as beasts of the pasture or cooped fowl. In our whole history we have been unable to throw off the collar of Shardishku-Salamá, and we had thought, when the Trailingsword lit our sky night after night . . . ”

Thinking what it must have meant to have the Masters blight their lives for generations, Springbuck’s impulse was to tell Kalakeet’s people deliverance had arrived. But he had no wish to lie, and he spoke the only thing a Ku-Mor-Mai could dare to, the truth.

“There is no wing mighty enough to preserve you in surety against Salamá, but if you will it, you have found determined allies.”

Those listening thought it a good response, except Hightower, who clenched the hilt of his greatsword. Kalakeet seemed as if he were awakening from a dream. “I should have foreseen this; no plight like ours is thrown down in a day. My people saw this arrival with too much optimism, I should say, without meaning to offend.” He squared his thin shoulders. “There are many items we can tell one another; wilt thou come ashore?”

“Thank you, yes.” He took a map from an aide. “First, we would like to know precisely where we are. Can you tell us?”

They’d been blown east of their destination. That event was benificent, in that the Yalloroon were hospitable. While Kalakeet was apprising Springbuck’s navigators and pilots of inaccuracies in maps and charts, the Ku-Mor-Mai took his Warlord aside. Hightower confirmed that the city was empty of armed men. Springbuck gave the order that unloading begin at once.

Arrangements were formulated for some vessels to beach and others to unload by boat. Warships dropped back to form a defensive cordon. Blocks creaked and tackle groaned as supplies and equipment piled up on the beach. Those craft transporting horses took high priority; armored fighting men were the backbone of warfare.

The town had no walls or defensive works at all; those had been banned by the Southwastelanders. Springbuck ordered three ships to disgorge their full cargoes of infantry, an augmented brigade of hardbitten pikemen from the late Bonesteel’s legions. The Ku-Mor-Mai would feel better when he had a ring of them around the city of the Yalloroon. Sharp-eyed archers of Rugor positioned themselves and their mantlets, hammering in their stakes, for supporting fire.

Leaving the rest of the operation to subordinates, Springbuck repaired to Kalakeet’s austere little home. Gabrielle came along, and Balagon, Divine Vicar of the Brotherhood of the Bright Lady, Angorman’s rival. But Hightower said he had off-loading to supervise.

When they’d gone, the Warlord turned and stalked away, his visage fierce. He’d heard the story of the Yalloroon’s suffering; it had lifted him to a pinnacle of rage. He nearly trampled Bodur, who jumped from his way. Hightower scarcely registered it. “Brodur-Scabbardless, commandeer me the first twoscore horses off the ships. Then handpick thirty-eight more men, best of our very best. We are going riding.”

Springbuck and Gabrielle made themselves as comfortable as possible in Kalakeet’s dirt-floored common room, along with Balagon. The Ku-Mor-Mai had not had much chance to acquaint himself with the ageing warrior-priest. The Divine Vicar was a figure out of fables, leader of the renowned One Hundred. Well along in years, like Angpnnan, he was a canny and vigorous man. His sparse white hairs were gathered by a simple leather circlet, and he wore black ringmail under his white vestments. On his right forefinger was the heavy seal ring of his station, and at his hip hung his famous two-handed blade, Ke-Wa-Coe which, in the Old Tongue, means Consecrated of the Goddess.

It was strange for the son of Surehand to be in Gabrielle’s company again without Hightower. She, on the other hand, gave no indication that she felt the same.

The food the little Speaker put out for them was pitiful, crusts and oddments of meat scraps, and runtish vegetables along with some puny fish. Kalakeet apologized, explaining Salamá didn’t leave much. Springbuck expressed surprise that the Yalloroon didn’t live under closer control.

“At times we do, in closest arrest, and at other times not, according to the whim of the Five. Yet, there are worse things than short rations, or going homeless, or coming to steely harm, Ku-Mor-Mai.”

Gabrielle asked what he meant. Kalakeet elaborated. The Yalloroon had lived under Shardishku-Salamá for an uncertain time, since they were forbidden records. Once, they’d lived peacefully at the ocean’s shore. Thus, they’d been unable to resist armed conquerors, adherents of the Masters who’d ground them down with painstaking intimidation, torture and execution. The Yalloroon had fought back once, disastrously. None who’d taken up arms were punished, but every other man, woman and child was, and many of them were killed. Some rebels committed suicide out of remorse and others simply became despondent; no uprisings occurred again. Several groups set out to escape, by land and sea, but all were brought back, saying they’d found no place not controlled by Salamá.

The Yalloroon became playthings in a game of transcendent cruelty. They suffered ever-new terrors, humiliation and pain, being tested, they concluded, in some cold experiment to learn how to separate people from pride, from hope, from any other quality that might inhibit total submission.

They’d considered racial suicide. But one woman had stood up at one of their meetings, saying, “There is only one reason they could wish to erase us so utterly. They know we are better than they.”

The weaker and less angry knew they couldn’t bear it. Many took their own lives or each other’s by agreement. Those who were angriest, though, vowed to keep the things Salamá wished to destroy. So, while the Masters could quite easily have them killed, or broken with physical torture, or compelled by direct duress, separating the Yalloroon from their self-worth had met insurmountable resistance.

Springbuck was amazed. In some way, Shardishku-Salamá itself had lost face, its clinical subjects refusing to behave as they ought. The Yalloroon had been unshakable in their belief that they were being tormented simply because they were better. From it had flowed the strength to resist. Erring, the Five had converted these unimposing people into a human alloy capable of being shattered, but never bent, the diametric opposite of the intended result.

“But then,” interrupted Balagon, “as far as you know, we could be of Salamá, and all this, even the Trailingsword, a ruse.”

“As happened generations ago,” responded Kalakeet. “An army came, and declared us liberated. There were celebrations and thanksgivings. After a week, they revealed the terrible truth, a sudden and subtle blow that started a more severe round of atrocities.”

“You have little reason to believe us then,” Springbuck observed, “but you are no longer alone.”

“And whether that is true or false, Ku-Mor-Mai, we welcome thee. If it is betrayal, that is thy crime, not ours.” He said it in an old, formidable dignity. The Ku-Mor-Mai bowed homage to that.

“When deeds are tallied,” he answered, “none will match those of the Yalloroon.”

Balagon voiced agreement. Splendid Gabrielle took Kalakeet’s hand and inclined her head over it.

Springbuck began asking questions about the area. He answered Kalakeet’s questions about Coramonde, but told nothing of his actual plan; information could be extracted from the bravest man. A cartographer arrived with revised maps for the Speaker’s review, and the Protector-Suzerain ordered the expedition’s healers to move among the Yalloroon and be of whatever service they could. Night and the Trailingsword came on, and Kalakeet lit hoarded stubs of candle.

The door banged open. Hightower filled the frame, reeking of the fight, with new damage to his armor, eyes smouldering. The first engagement with the Southwastelanders on their own soil had already been fought.

He sat, to tell them about it. Hearing Kalakeet’s story, he’d become infuriated. Seeking release, he’d reconnoitered the countryside with Brodur and select men at his back. They’d encountered three times their own number in enemy cavalry, stumbling into them by chance in a winding pass. The Southwastelanders had been astounded but Hightower, with no more hesitation than it made to drop his lance level, had gone in among them, irresistible. His men, with scant choice, had borne in after. The southerners, less heavily armored and without room to maneuver, had stood their ground.

The Warlord had driven completely through their ranks. Springbuck could picture that; he’d seen the old giant in combat, where getting in his way was tantamount to suicide. Gabrielle’s face wore a pride the Ku-Mor-Mai couldn’t begrudge.

Hightower and his men had cut the Southwastelanders to pieces, and sent them reeling back down the pass, shivering in fright of these terrible new foemen, found where there ought only to have been helpless Yalloroon. The men of Coramonde had ridden back to the city singing, with a foeman’s head on every lancetip.

Springbuck set his hand to the Warlord’s hilt, pulled the greatsword from its sheath. It was streaked with the dark blood of enemies, red coming to brown in the candlelight.

“Lord Hightower has delivered the first statement of our long communiqué of war.”

The Speaker reached out timidly. The very ends of his fingers reached the cold blade, rested there for a second. He drew them back as if burned, awed at the brown stains on them. Then he buried his head in his hands, weeping.

Wrestling within the son of Surehand were loathing of the squander of war, against satisfaction in the delivery of the Yalloroon.



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