Treason Read online

  We were only thirty kilometers from the Great Bend when the most important information of all came from someone we had never thought to see again."

  "Homarnoch," Father whispered as he saw the man madly driving a wagon along the road we had just come down. "Homarnoch! Here!" he cried, and the old doctor was soon beside us. We called a rest; the soldiers stopped on the road.

  "No use," Homamoch said. "I've killed a brace of horses coming to tell you. The Nkumai didn't take your bait. They only sent Dinte and his force to Mueller-by-the-Sea, and when you turned southeast the rest of them were ahead of you all the way. Not five kilometers off they're waiting for you. They've been at the Great Bend for days."

  Father called his commanders and gave them orders to have our men prepare for a much faster march.

  "We'll fight them and win," Harkint insisted.

  "We'll escape and survive," Father answered, and Harkint went off in a rage.

  While the preparations were going on, Homarnoch told us how and why he had come. "They were going to take everything-- all our work for thousands of years. I wouldn't have that. Not those tree-dwelling apes."

  I didn't bother telling him that those tree-dwelling apes had given faster-than-light travel to the rest of the universe.

  "So I poisoned the rads," Homarnoch said.

  Father was shocked. "Killed them!"

  "They were five tons worth of iron on the hoof, Ensel, and I couldn't let the inkers have that. So I poisoned them. Not even their fingenails'll be worth a gram of iron in trade."

  I said nothing, but remembered a time when I had had five legs and an extra nose and still believed I was a man.

  "I also got the library. The essential records. The theory. It's all in that wagon, " he said, "and I burned the rest. With Dinte's men in charge of the city, nobody even thought to keep me in."

  "A master stroke," Father said. Homarnoch beamed with pride.

  "'Having the books with us doesn't answer the real question, " I said. "What do we do now?"

  "Harkint wants to attack," Father said with a wry smile.

  "Harkint's a heroic ass," I answered. "But I can see why he wants to do it. There's nowhere else to go. Dinte's men are between us and the sea, and there's nothing in the north but Epson. They won't be inclined to provoke Nkumai by taking us in."

  "Dinte's no match for us."

  "He outnumbers us five to one. With odds like that they don't need a competent commander."

  We sat in silence. Homarnoch mumbled something about needing to check the horses. And then Harkint came back. The troops were ready. "And what I want to know is, are we going into battle or running from it?"

  "Running," Father said. "The question is, which way."

  Harkint snorted. "I never thought the day would come when the Mueller would be a coward. I've followed you through everything that's gone wrong, including harboring this Class A bastard" --meaning me-- "but I'll be damned if I'll turn tail and run from a fight. And there's others that feel like me."

  If he'd had any sense of the theatrical, he would have stormed off then. But he hadn't. So Father answered. "Go through the troops then, Harkint, and ask for all who want to go with you. But tell them that the Mueller is withdrawing, and asks all men to come with him. You tell them that, and take all those who'll go with you."

  Harkint nodded and left. I began scratching out a rough map of Mueller and the surrounding territories.

  "South and west is out of the question," Father said. "Everyone in Mueller would kill you, and everyone in Helper, Cramer, and Wizer would kill me."

  "And north is impossible," I answered, "because Epson is too weak to protect us, and too strong for us to force them to take us in."

  "And we can't reach the East because Nkumai's army is in the way."

  "How desperate," said Homarnoch lightly, looking over a sheaf of papers as he returned and stood a few meters off. "We have no hope. Let's throw ourselves in the river and drown."

  It was time for me to broach my final, desperate plan. "There is a direction we haven't tried."

  Father wasn't slow. "Ku Kuei. But there are too many legends about the forest, Lanik. The men wouldn't go in."

  "I've been through the forest. Not just around the edges. Through it."

  "And they'll follow you anywhere."

  I laughed.

  "Even if we got them in there, Lanik, what would we do? Nkumai rules the East, and the Singer armies are ruining the far north. What do we do in Ku Kuei?"

  "Survive. Dinte can't last forever."

  "You're serious about us going there, aren't you?"

  I could see that he was as afraid of Ku Kuei as anyone. Hadn't I been? And hadn't strange things happened in the trees, time seeming not to move, my body wearying beyond all expectation? Still, it was our only hope.

  "There are legends about Schwartz, too," I said. "Yet I went in and came out again, alive."

  "Do you think there's still a Ku Kuei Family in there? Do you think they might have something valuable to offer?"

  "The forest is strange and dangerous, even maddening. I met no one in there, Father, and I don't expect to find anyone to help us this time. But even a faint hope is better than no hope at all."

  Father chuckled. "Lanik, I think such mad hope is the way you show despair."

  His amusement meant that he was softening. I pushed harder.

  "Would Dinte follow us into Ku Kuei?"

  "Dinte? He believes all the legends. He closes his windows at night. He won't cross water under a cloudy sky. He sings when the shadow of another man's horse touches him. He's a fool."

  "The Nkumai are not fools," I said, "and they don't go into Ku Kuei either. Forests are their native habitat. Ku Kuei scares everybody till their snot freezes. So if we can keep from panicking ourselves, we'll be safe."

  More than we had expected chose to follow Harkint into battle. We formed the rest into a double column all the same, and began to march northeast. It was not a pleasant leavetaking. Some of the troops with us called abuse at Harkint's men for abandoning the Mueller. Harkint's men cried coward in return. The march was dismal as we went on our way, only five thousand men or so, with deserters dropping off all along the way. I couldn't blame them, but forced those I caught to get back in line. They didn't mind. They knew they'd get away in an hour or so, when no officer was watching.

  We came to the fork in the road where escape to the north would mean following the main way left, while the smaller road east could only take us to Ku Kuei. Father's speech was impressive. But we lost two thousand men right there, just as word reached us that Harkint's forces had been slaughtered within a few hours of our having left. The Nkumai were close behind us, and they had rested for days while waiting for us at Great Bend-- they were fresh and we were not.

  We filed hopelessly up the narrow road leading through the rough eastern hills. There was little desertion now; in these hills, the best source of food was our wagons, and deserters would have httle hope of surviving with the enemy so close behind. Besides, the men who were still with us now were the hard core of Father's supporters. The kind, we thought, who would die before they'd abandon him.

  "I'm toying with an idea," Father said to me as we headed the column along the twisting road. "My idea is to pick a good spot here and go down fighting."

  "That's a stupid idea," I said cheerfully.

  Father smiled. But it was a grim smile. "I'm reahzing, the closer we get to Ku Kuei, that I'm a bit superstitious, too. Are you sure you got through there safely?"

  "I'm here, aren't I?"

  "You're here, but what does that prove? Lanik, my son, I'm a blathering old man, but unless I'm mistaken, you knocked down a wall of my palace without so much as a small rock or a catapult."

  "I learned some things in Schwartz."

  "Lanik, I don't doubt you. But don't you realize that what is possible for you might not be possible for anyone else? You might be safe enough in Ku Kuei, but what makes you sure any of the re
st of us will live?"

  "Anything I learned, I learned in Schwartz. I was an ordinary boy when I went into Ku Kuei, and I came out weary but unchanged."

  He sighed. "What are we going to do in Ku Kuei?"

  "Survive." What other plans did he expect me to have?

  The road veered north, and in the distance to the east we could see the trees of Ku Ruei begin. There was not so much as a path leading toward the forest-- it wasn't the usual direction for travelers to go. So I picked out what looked like a reasonably good route, and started overland.

  The troops didn't follow.

  Not that they said anything, or rebelled. The front ranks just sat there on their horses, watching me, not speaking, not moving.

  Then Father left the road and came after me, his horse at a slow walk, and one or two others started, too. But while Father came on until he joined me, the others reined in and stopped a few meters from the road.

  Father turned to face them. "I won't command any man to come," he said. "But that's where the Mueller's going, and all the Mueller's true men will come with him. Stay with me and you will live as long as I do."

  I don't know whether Father's little speech would have been enough to persuade them by itself. Much more convincing was the flight of arrows that sailed toward our column. The aim was not good-- the distance was too great for accuracy. But the message was clear: the Nkumai had flanked us, and the entire length of our column would soon be exposed to enemy arrows.

  Father cried out, "To me, Mueller!" and then whispered loudly to me, "Lead, dammit!" I took off at a totally unwise canter over broken ground; my horse and I were lucky, but others were not, and many horses spilled their riders before they reached the shelter of the woods.

  The trees were tall, but the branches were often low, and it was hard to pick a clear path. I had to dismount, and that meant that our forces would also have to pause at the forest edge, exposing themselves to Nkumai archers as they waited for those ahead of them to move under the trees. We lost more than two hundred men there; but when I had led us two hours into the forest, the rearmost men called ahead that the Nkumai pursuit had withdrawn.

  The urgency of flight was over, but we couldn't stop there. The trees were so dense that no decent forage for the horses could grow. I decided to lead the men on to the shores of the narrow lake where I had first stopped. There the trees broke into enough meadow to keep the horses for a few days, at least.

  Our passage through the forest was silent. I didn't look behind me at the men-- it would have made them even more nervous to know how nervous I was about them. I kept waiting for our strength to fade while time seemed not to pass, as had happened to me before. This time, however, nothing was happening to our endurance, but the very silence of the forest despite the steady tramping of the horses' hooves and the soldiers' boots was unnerving. It was as if the sounds were swallowed up in the silence, a bit of ourselves stolen away by the trees and not reflected back to us.

  We spent a hard night in the forest. The ground was soft enough, and there was plenty of food in the saddlepacks, but by morning hundreds of men had disappeared. Gone off into the night or turned away first thing in the morning, but gone. We knew they had merely deserted (and more than a few who had stayed were no doubt wishing they had gone, too), but the feeling that men could simply vanish in the night did little to promote calm.

  We lived out of our saddlebags, and it took us more days than I thought possible until at last we found the lake. Hadn't I reached this place-- exhausted, yes-- but after only a single day of running? Sunlight poured down and birds skirted the edge of the water and the horses grazed openly on the meadow and I thought we had made it to safety. I counted the men. Fewer than a thousand. And with this we hoped to return to power in Mueller.

  The men bathed in the lake, splashing each other with water like children. They laughed loudly. They were safe now, and had no urgent need, neither men nor horses. Father and I decided to leave Homarnoch in charge of our peaceful, happy troops, and go off searching for a place where we could camp, and build huts, and plant crops. Unspoken was the faint hope that in the process we might also find the Ku Kuei, if any such people lingered here.

  Saranna clung to me and told me I mustn't go. But Father and I left her anyway, and went searching through the forest. It seemed wise at the time.

  Chapter 8 -- Ku Kuei

  It could have been a holiday in one of the Sweet River woods. Father walking briskly along (he isn't old at all, I realized) and I following only a little behind, watching as his hands reached up to touch leaves and branches, down to pluck grass or flowers, out in wild gestures as he talked. Once I had thought those gestures were flamboyance, showing off-- or worse, a way of striking out, reaching out to control me and everyone else around him, to beat us into submission. That was when I was a child, though. Now I saw that the waving, slashing, jabbing of his arms was a sign of exuberance. His body wasn't large enough, didn't move swiftly enough to contain all his life and joy.

  Ironic, then, that I realized this only now, when his joy was so out of place. It should have been contagious, but to me it seemed forced. Now instead of wanting to laugh and move and shout along with him, I wanted to weep for him. I would have, too, except that it would shame him. There were things that could be wept for, like long-lost sons come home, but for the losses a Mueller didn't weep. Didn't even give grief for the loss of a kingdom. My father was still alive, but already I mourned for him, because his true self was the Mueller, the ruler, the man so large that only a kingdom could contain him; and now here he was, confined into the space of his body, his kingdom a strange forest and a few men who loved, the memory of what he was, and so continued to serve this shrunken remnant of himself. Ensel the Mueller was dead. But Ensel Mueller insisted on being alive, on carrying a kind of greatness with him even in defeat.

  I had always expected to inherit the kingdom from him. To step into his place when he died; to become him. I thought I was capable of it. But now, following behind him through the forest, I realized that while I might have become the Mueller, had things worked out differently, I was not yet large enough to take his place, because when he died he would leave so many places empty, places that I barely knew existed, roles that I would never be large, enough to fill.

  We left the lake soon enough, without event. I was begiining to wonder if what I felt before, when I passed through Ku Kuei mad with weariness, was mere illusion. But then it began again, just as it had happened when I passed through Ku Kuei before. We walked and walked, and still the sun was high in the sky, hardly seeming to move; Father got hungry and we ate, and the sun had not moved, and we walked on until we were tired, and the sun had moved only a little, and at last we had walked until we were utterly exhausted and couldn't walk anymore, and it might have been noon.

  "This is ridiculous," Father said wearily as we lay in the grass.

  "I find it consoling," I said. "Now I know that I wasn't insane when this happened before."

  "Or else that we both are."

  "This is just what happened to me when I came here before."

  "What, you got weak and gave out after only a morning's walk?"

  "That's what I thought, only now I'm not sure." I had learned some things about the world since I last passed through Ku Kuei. That stargazers in treetops could imagine ways to make men fly faster than light between the stars. That naked savages in the desert could turn rocks into sand. Were we wearing out early? Or was the sun merely a little slow in her travels? "We see that no matter how tired we get, no time has passed, so we think we must be wearing out early. But think-- doesn't it feel as if we've been traveling forever? Maybe our bodies are fine, and it's time itself that's gotten a little sluggish."

  "Lanik, I'm too tired even to understand you, let alone think about what you said."

  "Rest, then," I said to Father.

  Father drew his sword and lay on his left side, so his right hand, which held the sword, would be free to move i
nto action the moment he awoke. He was asleep in a moment.

  I also lay on the grass under the trees, but I didn't sleep. Instead I listened to the rock. Listened through the barrier of living soil and the voices of a million trees, and heard:

  Not the voice of the rock, but rather a low, soft, almost unthinkable whisper, and I couldn't understand. It seemed to speak of sleep, or could that have been my own mind? I tried to hear the cries of the dying (though usually I tried to shut them out) and this time I heard, not a crush of voices crying in agony together, but rather distinct, low calls. Tortured, but slow. Tortured and hating and fearing but endlessly delayed and separated and distinct, and against their rhythm my own heart was quick, racing, panicking, and yet I was at rest and my heart beat normally.

  I let myself fall into the soil, which gave way only reluctantly until I was down resting against the rock. Stones slid away behind my back; deep roots slithered off to let me by; and then harsh rock gave way and cushioned me gently and I heard:

  Nothing unusual at all. The voice of the rock was unchanged, and what I had heard near the surface was gone.

  I was confused. I hadn't merely imagined what I heard before, and yet now, next to the rock, all was as it had been in Schwartz a few weeks before.

  I rose again, listening all the way, and gradually the song of the earth changed, seenud to slow, seemed to separate into distinct voices. The earth, too, seemed more sluggish to part and let me by. But at last I was on the surface, my arms spread, floating as always on what could only seem to me to be a slightly-thicker-than-normal sea.

  Father was standing, watching me, the expression on his face indescribable. "My God," he said, "what's happened to you!"

  "Just resting," I answered, because there was little else to say.

  "You were gone, and then you rose up out of the earth, like the dead coming back out of the grave."

  "I forgot to tread water," I said. "Don't worry about it. I had to find something out. I-- Father, in Schwartz I learned to do some things. Things that could never be exported through an Ambassador, because they're a way of-- thinking, and talking to-- things that other people never think of talking to."