THIRG STARED FOR SOME SECONDS, AND THEN THE LOUVER VANES covering his ventilation inlets bristled into a puzzled frown. “Those are not soldiers,” he said to Groork as the new arrivals emerged from the trail and came fully into view. He went out and stood before the door; Groork followed warily.
Although the riders carried weapons, they were clad in rough mountain garb, with heavy cloaks of flexible laminate mail, body armor of acid-resistant and heat-absorbing organics, and knee-length boots of heavy polymer. The one who appeared to be the leader, a large, broad-shouldered robeing with rugged, weather-worn features and a heavy black beard of accumulated carbon-impregnated plating about his lower face, crossed the clearing and brought his exhaust-snorting steellion to a halt before Thirg and Groork. The others fanned out into a semicircle behind.
“Outlaws, unless I am much mistaken,” Thirg muttered to Groork. He raised his head to look up at the leader and asked in a louder voice, “Am I honored with guests, or merely treated to the rare pleasure of welcoming passersby?”
“Oh, you are indeed honored,” the leader replied. His voice was deep and firm, but his tone more jovial than harsh. “I take it you are Thirg, who asks forbidden questions. And do you find many answers?”
“As to the first, I am. And this is my brother Groork—a hearer. As to the second, each new answer comes inseparably joined to a new question of whether or not the answer is true. Thus the number of questions to be answered can never diminish, however many answers may be found.” Thirg cast an eye over the company. “But who is it that honors us with his visit, and what would bring such as you to the dwelling of a thinker and a seeker-of-truth? If you have come in search of plunder or of a body that would command a high ransom, I fear you will be disappointed. If, on the other hand, your desire is to rest awhile and conjecture upon the riddles of Nature while engaging in philosophical discourse, then I have more to offer. But I would not advise it; the King’s soldiers have departed hither from Pergassos, I am told, and have been riding since early bright.”
“We know all about them,” the leader said. “The King’s generals would better spend the royal funds buying intelligence from us than paying their own officers. But the soldiers will have found the bridge over the cable-spinning ravine blocked, which will slow them down awhile.” He paused and looked from one to the other of the two figures standing in front of him. “I am Dornvald, called by many Freer-of-Bondslaves, by others, Subverter-of-Rebels, depending on whether you pay the King’s living or he pays yours. We present ourselves here as trusty escorts for your journey through the mountains and across the Wilderness to the city of Menassim in the country of the Carthogians.”
“What makes you think that I wish to travel to Carthogia?” Thirg asked.
“I didn’t say you did,” Dornvald told him. “I just said you were going.”
“To preserve the likes of one such as I from priests?”
“If you choose not to preserve yourself.”
“Why should that be a matter of concern to outlaws?”
“It isn’t. But we enjoy freedom of passage through the borders of Carthogia and other immunities, in return for which we render certain services to Kleippur, the ruler of Carthogia. It appears that Kleippur values your casing more highly than you do yourself. I do not make it my business to question his reasons, but word is that other sorcerers who have fled to his realm have spoken well of your magic, Thirg. Thus it is that we have been entrusted for many six-brights now to watch over you for danger of the kind that now threatens.”
Thirg rubbed his power inlet housing thoughtfully while he considered the situation. Carthogia had once been a part of neighboring Serethgin, a larger country than Kroaxia. It was now ruled by a former general called Kleippur, who had led a successful uprising against the incumbent Serethginian prince, ousted the traditional nobility and clergy, and established an oppressive military tyranny. Various alliances between the remainder of Serethgin, Kroaxia, and a number of other kingdoms had waged a series of wars to free the hapless people of Carthogia from their yoke, but so far they had been unable to prevail against the Carthogian army, which though small in numbers fought fanatically because of the ruthless discipline imposed upon its soldiers, and with the advantage of innovative weaponry created by enslaved craftsmen who lived chained to their workbenches.
At least, that was the official story told by the priests and teachers of Kroaxia. But Thirg had heard rumors of a different kind—rumors of a Carthogian society that tolerated inquirers such as himself and permitted them to ask their questions openly; of a slaveless society in which even the serfs were free to own property and keep the major portion of the wealth earned by their labors; and of an army of free robeings who fought to defend themselves against what they saw as a return to the very form of slavery that Kroaxians were conditioned to believe was normal and natural—all of which the priests and teachers insisted were lies spread by Carthogian agents to undermine the faith and trust of the people.
Thirg had never known what to believe. But he did know that many of his friends had departed for Carthogia, and though from time to time he heard scraps of news of them, none had returned; on the other hand, he had never met nor heard tell of a Carthogian who had fled the other way. Did that mean they had found freedom and tolerance as Thirg sometimes suspected? Or had they been kidnapped and forced to remain in captivity as the Kroaxian teachers maintained?
For some reason, running away from the priests of his own volition would have been, in his own mind, a betrayal of all that he felt he stood for. But, if forced to leave by a band of armed brigands...well, that wasn’t the same thing at all, was it? He looked up again at Dornvald and asked, so as to be able to justify everything to himself later, “Have I a choice, Kidnapper-of-Thinkers?”
“Most certainly, for have I not presented myself as an agent of the Land-That-Gives-Freedom?” Dornvald answered heartily. “You can mount a steed and ride with us freely, or you can be placed on a steed and ride with us bound—a perfectly free choice to decide how you get there.”
“In that case I’ll come with you,” Thirg said.
“Wisest, without a doubt,” Dornvald agreed solemnly.
Thirg glanced at Groork for a moment, then looked back at Dornvald. “My brother is passing by on his way to the Wilderness, where he goes in search of his voices,” he said. “Our roads will run together for a while. Besides, we could not in good conscience abandon him to the mercies of King’s servants unlikely to find the disappearance of their quarry a source of any great amusement.”
“We have spare steeds,” Dornvald said, looking at Groork. “Would you travel in company as far as the village of Xerxeon, Hearer, though I should warn you I have no ear for holy words?”
“Arghhh!” Groork shrank back into the doorway of the house and covered his imagers protectively with an arm. “Wouldst thou defile me with the stain of thy followers, Henchman-of-Unbelievers? I will travel my road in solitude, for thine leads not upward to the Lifemaker, but downward to the precipice of doom.”
Dornvald shrugged his shoulder cowlings. “As you will. But I doubt that your voices will afford you the same safety on your journey.” He looked back at Thirg. “There is one pack-mount for the possessions you would bring with you. Kleippur has given particular instructions for the charts and records belonging to the mapmaker, Lofbayel, to be preserved. If you have a safe hiding place, I suggest you use it for anything else of value. Who can foretell when the strange workings of fate might bring you this way again?”
“Kleippur knows of the charts?” Thirg sounded amazed.
“Kleippur makes it his business to know many things,” Dornvald replied.
Thirg spent a short while selecting personal belongings and some of his more highly prized books and journals. While a couple of Dornvald’s outlaws were packing these items into bundles with Lofbayel’s charts and securing them, Thirg covered the remainder of his books, his study samples, and his finer measuring instruments in oiled wrappings and locked them in chests which two more outlaws carried to a concealed hole, sealed by a boulder, at the base of the cliff a short distance from the house.
Then Thirg stood to take a last look around his garden while the outlaws who had been helping him remounted. Another led forward a sleek, powerful-looking mount with a dark, copper-tinted sheen and titanium-white flashes around its head and neck. Thirg eyed it apprehensively as he stepped closer—riding was not one of his greatest skills—and then cocked an imager-shade curiously as he noticed the royal crest etched into its rear flank. Dornvald followed Thirg’s gaze and laughed. “Until recently the swift carrier of one of His Majesty’s messengers, who has departed for a place to which that steed could not take him. We must make haste now, Collector-of-Books-and-Objects-That-Mystify-Me, or His Majesty’s servants will be here to take his property back for him.”
Thirg mounted carefully while one of the outlaws held the animal’s harness to steady it. Then the riders formed up with Dornvald at the head, Thirg next with Rex waiting suspiciously but faithfully alongside, and the remaining dozen or so falling into a column behind. Groork crept out from the shadows at the back of the house and watched. They had left behind one steed, which Dornvald had ordered to be tethered to a pillar at the edge of the clearing.
“Which officer is it who leads the soldiers?” Dornvald inquired casually to Geynor, his lieutenant, as the riders moved off. “Do we know of him from encounters past, or by repute, perchance?”
“Oh indeed,” Geynor replied, speaking just as loudly. “Captain Horazzorgio, no less, whose rage causes even his own soldiers to tremble, or so I have heard tell.”
“Not the Horazzorgio whose inventions of tortures and torments are beyond the ability of even the keepers of the King’s dungeons to bring themselves to speak?”
“The same. Tis said heretics have been slowly melted, starting at the toes.”
“Really? How awful!”
The column filed out of the clearing into the gully of the stream, and began following the narrow trail that led upward toward the High Country. They had covered only a short distance when Fenyig, the rearguard, called to attract Dornvald’s attention. A lone mounted figure, holding well back to keep its distance, had come into view lower down the trail. It halted when it saw that the column had stopped to wait. Groork’s voice came floating up hollowly from below. “Thy demons have damned thee, Thirg. Even now doest thou go willingly with the servants of Darkness to deliver thy soul into eternal bondage. Heed my words, for surely wilt thou melt in the Great Furnace.”
Thirg smiled to himself as he turned back, and Dornvald ordered the column to resume moving. From there on he kept his eyes on the peaks of methane-capped ice looming in the distance ahead. His future lay beyond the mountains now, and that was where he should look.