The Kar-Chee Reign Page 8

  And all the while the proud-nosed old Knowers bent to their tasks, from preaching their word to pouring melted deer fat into dried deer bladders — dutiful, efficient, coordinate; and all the very while rebellion simmered below the surface. It took the form of advocating the blasphemy of resistance to Devils, but it might have taken another or other forms. Once, in ultra-ancient Byzantium, at a time when religion and chariot-racing were the national preoccupations, each faction in the church had had a corresponding faction in the hippodrome; historians had tended to believe that those who supported the chariots of the greens did so because they were Monophysites: but it might well have been that those who supported the doctrines of the Monophysites did so because they were Greens. So perhaps it was here. The younger and rebellious among the Knowers may perhaps have most resented, say, the ban on “unqualified” cohabitation — or the earnestly endless solemnities of their elders — or the fact that they themselves were tired of being reproved for levity — or excluded from making any but the most minor decisions.

  But it was not such terms that Rickar used when he and Fateem and Cerry, Lors, Liam, and a few others found themselves together and unobserved one middle morning. Their official mission there was the bringing down of a supply of choice seed-corn from a granary high up above the uncultivated thickets. When people are determined to be together for any reason the events of life lose much of their casual nature and occur only either to gather or to separate them. So it was now. The mission was a chance to be free of being overlooked and overheard. It was seized upon.

  The llamas would much rather have been allowed to remain loose to gambol and nuzzle and dance about, and did not submit without protest to having the paniers laden onto them. Up the trail they all went, lighter of heart than any of them might have been willing to admit.

  Lors said, almost as though the words were unsafe, “We haven’t seen anything more of the Devils since you came. I think it was a lucky thing for us that you did.” Rickar, determinedly grim, said, “It may be luckier for us … for some of us, anyway.”

  “I think that Father Gaspar is right in one thing, anyway,” Liam considered. “It’s better to keep away from them, generally speaking, than not to keep away from them.”

  Rickar grunted, probably annoyed to think that his father could be right in anything. Cerry was thinking that it was a relief to be away from the eternal self-righteousness of the arkfolk. She looked down to where the vessel lay harbored, but only undisturbed greenery met her eye. Gaspar had seen to the work of concealment well. She said so.

  Fateem shook her head of soft, brown curls. Everything about her was small and clear and, somehow, managing to seem at the same time delicate and sturdy. “Conceal,” she said, bitterly. “Hide. Run. Preach.”

  She flung up her head and looked at Rickar. “Why do we stay?” she asked. “We don’t have to. When the ark, when all the arks, are ready to leave, why don’t we just stay behind?”

  He was more than startled, he was shocked. In a moment he seemed to have withdrawn, not only from what she had just said, but also from everything which he himself had said. He half-turned to look back down at where the ark was concealed, then quickly looked back, embarrassed. His eyes met no one’s. “That’s a rather big decision to make,” he said, in an uncertain, unhappy voice. Then, a satisfactory answer to her question occurring to him, he looked up and said with more assurance, “It will be a while before anything can be ready to go. That gives us a lot of time to think about it…. Anyway, we’ve got this seed corn to load. It’s very different from our Serran-type of corn, isn’t it, Fateem?”

  She blew out an angry breath, but made no other answer. Nor did she answer him afterward, either, until, annoyed, he switched his conversation to Cerry. “We saw no such lighthaired women as you before we saw you,” he told her; “although we had heard about them. And how red your skin was from the sun! But now you look exceedingly well.”

  Lors, from time to time, seemed on the point of saying something, but never did. They filled basket after basket of the thick and twisted ears of corn, so different from the thin and slender ones of the type of Serra, and dumped them into the painers. Presently they paused to eat and drink, and Liam found himself sitting apart with Fateem under a tree. From time to time Rickar would look up at them, his face an unsuccessful mixture of anger and unconcern; then he would turn to say something to Cerry and laugh.

  “These cakes are good,” Liam said. “We didn’t have this corn at all in Britland — just rye and barley and wheat…. Come,” he said, “don’t stay angry at your young friend. Give him a chance to adjust to your ideas. Think what it means for him to leave all his family and friends and — ”

  She burst out, “It should mean no more to him than it means to me!”

  “Well … there’s that.”

  “He was the first to talk of this among us, and he talked the longest and the most. I was contented, before. I would probably be still contented — believing what I was taught, doing as I was told. Receiving the wise words of the ancient elders, humbly accepting everything. But I can’t, anymore — and it’s all Rickar’s doing! If he wasn’t willing to face leaving the Knowers, why — well, what did he think?” She sat up, facing Liam indignantly. “Did he think that a miracle would occur? And his father and his mother and all the others would suddenly come around to his way of thinking? — when they haven’t any of them the slightest notion in the world of the things he’s been thinking of! And now for me to find out that it was all just thinking — and all just talk!”

  Again, Liam was pacific. “Be patient — ” he began.

  But this was what she could not be. “No. No. But it’s just as well that it’s happened. I should have known better — I will know better — than to trust a boy!” She threw a fleeting, disgusted glance at the unfortunate lad, then turned her face, alive with indignation and disdain, to Liam again. “But you,” she burst out — “you are a man!”

  “True …”

  But he said nothing more; after a moment, she demanded, “Then don’t tell me that you are really going to become a Knower and run meekly off with the rest of them? You’d better not tell me that! I wouldn’t believe it, but I’d hate you for lying to me!”

  He took the small hand she had held out to him. “No, don’t hate me,” he said. “I can’t tell you for certain sure, Fateem, what I will do. I rather incline to doubt that good Father Gaspar will be wanting me on his next voyage. And I wouldn’t want you to make up your mind, and make it up not to change it … now … that you’ll be leaving your people so certainly — not on the chance of anything I might be going to do.”

  Something like despair came into her golden brown eyes. “Oh, but I thought I might depend on you,” she said, low-voiced. She frowned, slightly. “Is it because of her? Cerry? Because …” She stopped, confused.

  He rose, still holding her hand, and pulled her to her feet. “It’s not. You can talk to her as you talk to me. If you want … from me … any more than that, I’m sorry. I don’t speak of forever or for never, but for now. But this I can tell you, Fateem: as I will tell her of what my plans may be, when I have a better way of knowing what my plans may be, so I will tell you. And just as she will be, as she is now, free to decide if she will go or stay, or whatever, so, Fateem, will you.

  “And now, let’s go back to our corn. Whatever happens, and wherever it happens, there must be seed to sow.”

  It was on the way back that Rickar, carefully not looking toward Fateem, said, in a determined voice, “Liam, what you said about learning more of the Devils — ”

  And Lors, in a relieved tone: “Ah — !”

  • • •

  None of the party was willing to stay behind with the laden beasts; none wanted even to risk it by drawing straws. So the llamas were “deposited” in a small blind-end barranco and the narrow mouth of it plugged with stones and branches. Then, free, they followed Lors at a rapid pace which soon took them far from the main trail, and
after that the pace was no longer quite so rapid. They clambered over fallen trees, scaled boulders hot from the sun, plunged through obstructive thickets; came at last to a sort of slot in the rocky face of the hill through which not more than two of them at a time could look down a long stretch of deep and narrow gorge.

  A hawk rode upon the air, floating, rising, falling softly, rising again. “It would be nice if we could do the same,” Liam murmured. Then: “What’s beyond the end, there?”

  Lors said, “Wait.” They waited quite a long time, looking at the stretch of empty ground beyond the farther end of the gorge. At length he clutched Liam’s arm. Something which perhaps both of them had assumed to be a tree now detached itself from a shady mass of obscurity and moved across the landscape. They could not see it at all clearly, nor could they see clearly the shapes which followed it. But they could see them move and pass and vanish. It was certain that they were large, certain that they were strange, certain that they could not be trees. Nothing more moved, down and afar off, though they waited a long time further. But at last they felt the breeze in their faces, and the breeze told them that what had been known without proof was indeed true.

  Devils!

  But they saw nothing more.

  Cerry said, “We can’t learn very much about them at that distance, can we?”

  “We can’t learn anything at all about them at that distance,” Liam said. “Except that they’re there. Or at least that some of them are there. No —

  “Lors, is there a way through? A safe way? Or at least safer?”

  “A safer way to what?”

  It was not the words of the question which brought them up short, dismayed, nor the tone of voice in which it was asked, for the tone was mild enough. But they were so thunderstruck at seeing Gaspar, the Father Noah, up here that astonishment made them all for a moment mute.

  Rickar it was who broke the short silence. “A safer way, in case one should ever be necessary, through to the coast, father…. But what brings you here? Is anything — ”

  “Wrong? No. But it is well to look about on all sides and to know what lies behind as well as before. Indeed, is this not the very motive which inspired the question of Liam? And a good question, too. Is there an answer, Lors Rowan?”

  “Not the way we have just been,” Lors said. “But it’s possible that there may be one by other ways. If we might take time out to look …?”

  Gaspar stroked his beard and pursed his lips reflectively. He nodded. “Speak to Lej,” he said, after a moment. “He is this week’s Orderer of Schedules…. But I see that you are all here. Where, in that case, are the animals? Not unguarded, I hope? And the seed corn? What of that? Lors Rowan’s father’s generosity should not be repaid with carelessness.”

  He was somewhat appeased on being shown the effectively-blockaded animals, all comfortably sitting down and ruminating their cuds. Lors took the occasion to deliver a running lecture on the intelligence and habits of llamas, which occupied the rest of the return trip and which (they hoped) effectively prevented the old Knower from entertaining suspicions.

  “Clearly,” he said, when Lors at last paused, dry-mouthed, and at a loss for further comment, having already repeated himself at least twice; “clearly, we must take a breeding stock of these intelligent and useful creatures with us.”

  “There is another breed related to them that runs wild in the Uplands — guanacos. They’re smaller, but the fleece is softer.”

  “We must have those, too. I will make a note of it.”

  They watched him leave as they started unloading the seed-corn. They indicated neither by word nor conscious expression any fears not yet laid quite to rest. But evidently nothing more than a routine inspection of yet another aspect of the work of preparation had brought Gaspar up to look at them. It was probably fortunate that the inspection had not been made by someone with younger legs and keener eyes who might have traced them up the vantage-point and overheard what they were saying there.

  Thus, as on the raft, consultation awaited the fall of night. When they were together again Lors said, “My brother — Duro, my younger brother — has an idea which might bring us to a safer way through the hills.”

  But Rickar was feeling somewhat discouraged. “I did speak to Lej, but he said that three people were enough for a scouting trip. Not that the others are especially needed for anything else; it’s just the Knowers’ frugal way: if three are enough, then only three will go.”

  Liam, in the darkness, felt someone settle next to him, felt an arm touch his — a smooth and not a hairy one. A woman. He reached, gently, and his hand encountered a soft mass of curls. Fateem. He patted them, and heard Rickar ask, “What now?”

  Liam said, “Now we ask Lors to think of where we’ll all rendezvous … after he arranges for the rest of us to start out for the Uplands to see about those — what did you call them? Ah, yes. Guanacos. Can’t a rendezvous be set for — where is this place your brother has in mind, Lors?”

  Out of the darkness Lors said, “We call it the caves….”

  VI

  THE SCHEME had worked … so far. Rickar, Duro, and Cerry had gone off to the caves. Lors, Liam, Fateem, a raftsman named Dunal, and Seqah, one of the young and crypto-heretical Knowers, were the Uplands party. Lej had felt himself obviously less certain as to the number required for the unprecedented task of seeing to the acquisition of guanaco breeding-stock, and Lors had been insistent. Lej’s final statement — “Since they are smaller animals, then, five people should be enough” — seemed to indicate that he perhaps thought they would each carry one of them slung across their backs!

  What they did carry, slung across their backs, were several days’ rations apiece. And so, when they came across him, was Tom-small.

  Tom-small shrugged. “My popa has been building canoes in a fury. He claims that even though the strangers seem to have taken over the country, at least they’ve attracted enough fools — your pardon, friends — so that he can handle the rest of ours who’ve stayed faithful. Then (he says) if it’s really necessary to flee, he’ll find out where the arks intend to go, and he (that means us) will make damned sure to go somewhere else…. He won’t admit, but he’s following Knowers’ advice in at least one way. We’re living in brushwood shacks now, for the most part, because he’s having the houses pulled down for boat-timbers.

  “He says that if we’ve got to leave, then the houses won’t be of any use to us. And if we haven’t got to leave, we can always build new ones. Any news of the thick-and-thins?”

  Lors exchanged quick looks with the others. They raised their eyebrows, shrugged, leaving the decision to him. He said, “The two kinds of Devils, you mean…. Well, Jow’s son, we have some hopes of our finding out some news before very long. But it’s got to be private news … if we get any … for the time being, at any rate. Understood?”

  Tom-small straightened the skin bag of supplies slung across his broad shoulders. “Understood. Where’s Duro, then?”

  “We’ll meet up with him at the caves, later on.”

  “But this isn’t the way to the — ”

  “The longest way around is sometimes the straightest way there. A saying from the wise wisdom of the knowledgable ancient old Knowers, which I just made up…. What do you know about chasing down the wild guanaco, shorty?”

  Jow’s son grinned. “Not a thing. Why?”

  “You’ll soon know something. Knowledge is contagious. And now, talk more if you like, but I’m going to save my breath for climbing.”

  The thickets thinned out, were succeeded by farmlands, which in turn gave way to moor. The winds began to nip at them, and they were glad for the extra clothes Lors had had them bring; and, when night began to settle, glad for the warmth of the fire in the grove they picked for their camp: not only did it serve as a windbreak, but it was naturally supplied with wood. They ate, drank hot infusions of herb, and, well-tired, turned to sleep.

  After a while someone came and lay down n
ext to Liam and he felt arms close softly around him. There was a whisper: “It is me — Fateem.”

  He grunted. “I’m relieved it’s not one of the boys, behaving so.”

  She breathed angrily. “ ‘Behaving so — ’ Silent hero, cautious, careful, stiff, and aloof! Should we all behave the same? I won’t. I can’t!”

  He sighed. “What do you want, then?”

  Her whisper trembled, broke — perhaps still with anger, perhaps with cold — but went on again. “I don’t know what you — I can’t go along, waiting forever. I can’t be alone like this any more. Before, there was the safety of the family and the folk. Then there was the ark … and Rickar. What’s Rickar? Very little. I — Tomorrow the entire ground may give way beneath our feet. And you go on, as if — What do I want? I want to know that I’m not alone, not just one of a band of brothers or something like that. I want to know that I’m something special to some special person. Not forever. I don’t know about forever. I know about tonight —

  “Tom has his father, Lors has his brother, you have your secret dreams, I — what do I have? You know what I have. Tonight is not for dreaming! Aren’t you a man, made like other men? Ah … yes … there … so … I knew that you were — ” Her voice broke off, then began again, even lower, without words.

  • • •

  Morning was cold and wet and there was very little in the way of talk until more hot herb tea was made and drunk; then they went on, following the path with lowered eyes, the dim light of sunrise made further dim by the thick mists.

  And then, as a portion of the mists blew away, they saw three figures: as strange to all but Lors as they were suddenly come upon … and even somewhat strange to him.

  Three men stood athwart the trail, tall, each one with a tall staff in the crook of one arm and a bow as tall as himself resting, unstrung, in the crook of the other. The pelt of the wild, fleet guanaco was their clothing, and the mists and dews distilled in droplets in their thin, dark beards.