First Cycle, page 4
There would be long static periods, when progress would slow down or stop its forward direction, allowing it to spread laterally among all the people, and allowing complete exploration of all the ramifications of some new discovery. Then some new fact would be discovered in a totally new direction, and there would be a frantic burst of invention to exploit it. The news of such discoveries fairly flew from gang to gang. There were those who made it their life's work to carry such news, and they were welcome wherever they journeyed.
Talato Isleeta-Blazehead the Wanderer-had received his first name in childhood, from the wedge-shaped splash of pink fur that began at a point between his eyes and widened to cover the top of his head. He had made the second for himself; in his thirty years he had travelled completely around the Central Peak and up into the valleys of most of the rivers that flowed into the chaplet of lakes surrounding them.
Usually, as now, he rode alone; his red-and-yellow lance pennon marking him as a wanderer, and therefore the carrier of no grudges, friendly to all who would have him visit, a non-participant in local feuds. He was usually welcome as a trader, story-teller, exchanger of information and news. Occasionally he would have to fight some outcast or small gang of marauders, as had happened only two sleep-periods ago; more occasionally some gang, for a private reason, would indicate that he was not, then, welcome in their midsts; but these happenings were rare, and he had enjoyed the hospitality of many gangs.
At the brow of the ridge, he reined in hissorth; the two plodding pack-animals behind him stopped also.
There was a village in the valley below, as he had known there must be; the road had been freshly mended with logs and broken stone.
It seemed to be a mining and iron-working village; the mountains on both sides of the white-flecked, rocky river were gashed by the red scars of ore-workings. There was a bridge over the stream, lifted above flood level on log piles, and at the far end of it the village huddled around an open square, houses on three sides, and on the fourth two stubby furnace-stacks and a long forging-shop. The stacks were smokeless now, and covered; the anvils were silent, but there was considerable banging and clattering from the long shed that projected to the river, the far end overhanging with a water-wheel projecting from below. He could see figures working on the slanting roofs of the houses. The sun was approaching zenith-in a little while it would be eclipsed by Shining Sister, which was now lost in its glare, and then it would pass over the top of Skystabber Mountain, and the hot time would come, and the storms would follow.
Shaking his reins, he whistled softly between his teeth. Thesorth moved forward, and the twotoulths followed obediently, placid under their loads of oilskin-wrapped packs. The bridge swayed gently as they passed slowly over it. A villager met him on the far side, as he passed between the houses and reined up in the open square. He wore a leather apron, a loincloth, and high buckskins, and his fur was smudged with soot and scorched in spots.
"I know you," the villager grinned. "I never saw you before, but I know your name."
Talito passed his lance through the holding-strap and slipped the butt into the socket on his stirrup before dismounting. "Yes, I carry it with me," he said, touching the pink blaze on his forehead.
"We have a couple of Talitos in our gang, too, but there's only one Talito Isleeta. It is our pleasure to meet and speak with you. There was a girl wanderer here a couple of hot-seasons ago who told us about you. She camped with you in a cave on Hornpeak through a storm."
Talito smiled. "Reeva Baleena," he said. "She plays a small harp and sings. She knows about medicines, and cures sick children. And she understands how animals must be bred for the qualities one wants."
"The same," the villager replied.
"A wonderful girl," Talito said. "I remember the three sleep-periods we were trapped by the storm with great fondness."
"We are the Tortromma Gang," the villager told him. "My name is Chwalvo. You want something to eat? We have a pot of stew on a fire in the forging shop. We're all staying there through the coming storm. It's the safest place, and we can make a fire without choking ourselves in the smoke. You can put your pack and things in there."
"Is there anything I can do to help you prepare?" Talito asked. "Mysorth isn't any good for tethered work, but mytoulths are broken to cart-harness."
Together they started for the long shed. "We have a lot of grain to cut and bring in," Chwalvo said. "It was late ripening this season. Our fields are as far up the road as you can drive a cart while you singThe Song of the Four Foolish Hunters."
Talito mentally ran through the song, with its twelve stanzas sandwiched between the three repeating verses. The field, he estimated, must be about ten hundreds of lance-lengths away. "You'll have your work cut out to get it all in before the storm," he said.
"Most of the children and old people are up there now," Chwalvo said, "cutting, threshing, and bagging.
The pre-adults drive the grain carts."
Talito helped himself from the stew-pot on the fire and looked around the shadowy interior of the forge.
A dozen or so able-bodied members of the gang had dismounted the water-wheel and were hoisting it above the anticipated flood level of the river. He saw something which interested him immediately-a framework of heavy beams supporting an iron hammer bigger than the body of asorth , with a great log for a handle, pivoted more than halfway back, and set to be raised and released by a large, hooked cam operated by the water-wheel.
He gestured with his dagger, which had been halfway to his mouth with an impaled cube of meat. "That,"
he exclaimed. "That pounding contraption. I never saw anything like that before!"
Chwalvo grinned proudly. "I thought of it myself," he said proudly. "Ask any of the gang if I didn't. Are you going to make a picture of it? Reeva told us that's what you do when you find anything new; you make a picture of it with charcoal on skins and then tell people about it."
"I will probably do that," Talito said, going over to take a closer look at the apparatus. "It is very clever."
Chwalvo beamed. "Don't forget to say it was Chwalvo Tontrommo, at Red Gap Village, on Little Hoon River, who thought of making it. Are you going to make the picture now?"
"No, I'll have to see to my animals first. Then I'll take a cart out to the fields. Plenty of time for drawing after the work's done, when we're all in here together."
He helped the Tontrommo Gang get in their grain. When he was hungry, he ate from the big stewpot; when he was tired he spread his bedding on a pile of fresh straw and slept. The eclipse came while he was in the fields loading his cart with grain; the sun slid behind the disk of Shining Sister, the other world so like this one, so far away. The two worlds were flat plates, according to the best Hetairan theory, piled up with mountains in the middles. The sun went around them both, first one way and then the other.
Shining Sister must be covered, at least on the bottom, with something bright, like silver. Talito wondered if there were people there too, and supposed that there probably were. They must be very different from his own kind; Shining Sister was so much closer to the sun that the heat there must be terrible.
The little river rose as the mountain glaciers began to melt. Everybody worked continuously until all the grain was harvested. The wind began blowing toward the advancing spot of heat as the sun slid over Skystabber; there was a period of calm while the sun was at zenith which lasted for a whole waking-period. Then the wind came howling down from the mountains. Broken branches and bits of debris rattled on the roof and hit the sides of the long forge-shop. Inside, it grew so dark that torches were lit. The children, frightened at the unaccustomed absence of light, whimpered and mewed, and the women and older youngsters comforted them. The rain came, first in wind-driven spattering, and then in a steady drumming, and finally in a continuous roar that drowned out even the thunder.
The rain continued for five sleep-periods. They sat around the fires, talking; they gathered to look at the things Talito produced from his trade-packs. Like all thesorth-riding wanderers, he carried only the lightest and most valuable wares, leaving the heavier and cheaper goods for the wagon-trains. There were several bolts of cloth he had gotten at a weavers' village across the ridge, but that was less than one waking-period's journey away, and the people of Tontrommo Village could get all of that sort of cloth they wanted.
They were fascinated, however, by the jars and cups and bowls of translucent, muddy-colored glass he had carefully packed in one of the oilskins. They had never seen glass before. They had never even heard of the village where the glassware had been made.
"Look, I'll show you." Talito took a roll of skin from a pack and opened it, spreading it before them.
"Here, in the center, is Skystabber, with the other big mountains around it. The red arrow shows the direction the sun moves when the Bright Spot is in the sky with it; the black arrow shows the direction it moves when the Bright Spot appears as the sun sets. Here is where this village is." He took a small bottle and uncorked it, dipped a splinter into it, and made a few black marks on the map. ' 'And here is Singing Trees Village, where I got that cloth. And Sand Hill Village, where they make vessels out of melted sand, is down here."
The Tontrommos stared at the map in happy surprise, exclaiming over it.
"Look, the squares are villages! And the wavy lines are streams, and the jagged lines are mountains. And these things, the circles with wavy lines in them-they must be lakes! Aren't they lakes, Talito? Why, this is wonderful! He has made a picture of the whole world, and whenever he finds a new place, he just marks it on; and he can see where everything is, and how to get from one place to another!"
"But what are all the strange squiggly marks that you have made all over the skin?" a girl asked, leaning over his shoulder.
"They're a kind of reminding-mark," Talito explained to her. "See what I made for this village? Atlinka-leaf. Tlinka leaves are red. And this notched mark is my reminder for a gap. And here, by the water-mark, ahoona with a line over it, to show that it's little. Red Gap Village, on Little Hoona River.
And a hammer under the village-square to show that this is an iron-working village."
"Look, Singing Trees Village!" The girl pointed. "There's aghinkeen , becauseghinkeens sing, and two trees next to each other, and the square village-sign. Singing Trees Village. And a loom under it!"
"Let me see!" one of the youths said, pushing forward. "Let me see if I can figure it out." He put his finger down on the map. "There's a village sign, with asorth next to it-how clever; just three lines, and you can still tell it's asorth -and wavy lines next to thesorth. Let's see; the wavy lines are water. Thesorth is-what is asorth ? Green. Green Water Village?"
Talito smiled. "Nice try," he said. "And very close. You have the process right, you just guessed wrong about what asorth means to me. Many things are green. What asorth is, in my mind, is fast. That is Fast Waters Village, next to Fast Waters River. The river is very shallow, and the water in it moves very rapidly."
"Talito!" an elder toward the rear of the group cried out. "You must make us a world picture like this. If you do, we'll make something fine for you. What do you want in return? We could make you a dagger and a lance of a fine carbon-iron we have developed; many times stronger and a little lighter than the ones you now carry."
"The weight of my dagger is not excessive," Talito told him, "and my lance is of a strong, light wood and does not need to be of metal. But there is a weapon that I have wanted for some time, if it could be built."
"Well, if itcan be built," the elder said, "we are the gang that can build it. What does it look like?"
"A long knife," Talito said, "with a blade as long as my leg from hip-joint to heel, double-edged, ridged in the middle to keep it stiff, and pointed. And a grip long enough so that I can swing it with both hands if I want to."
"For fighting onsorthback ?" someone asked. "That sounds like a good idea. And you could use it with both hands on foot."
"But it would be too unwieldy," someone else objected. "It would be much too blade-heavy to move quickly."
"Why not lengthen the handle?" another Ton-trommo suggested eagerly. "That would put weight at the rear to balance the blade."
"But the handle can't stick out too far in back." the first person said. "You'd have to hold your arms too far out to use the thing."
"A weight!" Chwalvo said, thumping his left hand into his right. "A ball of iron at the end of the handle to counterbalance the blade!"
"Copper instead of iron," the elder suggested. "It's heavier, so you'd need a smaller ball; and when it's polished, it's prettier."
Talito watched and listened curiously as this dialogue went on. It was rewarding to listen to such craftsmen as they went about solving problems. It was a pleasure to hear competent people display their competence. "I hadn't thought of that," he admitted. "The balance would be a serious problem. But now you've thought of it and solved it all in the space of time it takes asorth to run ten lance-lengths. That isexactly what I'd like: a long iron knife counterweighted with a copper weight at the handle-end."
"We shall go to work on it right after the storm," the elder said. "We'll do a model in wood first, and weight it with lead to get the right balance. That way we can see how the shape should be for the best handling.And we'll find you a nice smooth white skin to make the world-picture on."
Talito dug into his pack and pulled out a big jar. "Here's something else I have," he said, taking the leather cover off. "Look at this."
He took out a pinch of white powder and mixed it carefully with about an equal amount of charcoal-dust.
Then he scraped a flint along the roughened flat of his dagger to strike a spark. The mixture caught the spark about the third or fourth time he did it, and it sputtered, and then burned with a sputtery, smoky flame for four or five seconds.
"What do you think of that?" he asked.
"Will the flame catch dried grass?" a townsman asked.
"It will."
"Amazing! Tinder that blows itself on. Talito, where did you find such stuff?"
Talito pointed with his dagger to the map. "Down here on the Big Arrowwood River. It's found on the walls of caves. Do you want some?"
Chwalvo picked up a hammer from beside a small anvil. "Here, Talito, give us the weight of this, and we'll give you ten weights in worked steel: arrowheads, spear-heads, knife-blades, whatever you think you can use," he said. "This will be something to show people!"
"Well, don't eat any of it," Talito advised. "The Gobbilene Gang, who scrape this stuff off the cave walls and trade it, claim that if you eat it the girls will be disappointed in you for a while."
The girl beside Talito snuggled closer. "You haven't been eating any of it, have you, Wanderer?" she asked.
So the sword and the alphabet came to Hetaira, too. Talito's reminding-marks became ideographs; from them developed phonetic symbols. Talito's rolled skins were scraped down to parchments and vellums.
Vegetable pulp was mashed up and spread on frames of finely-woven cloth for paper, and a variety of pens and inks were devised. And Talito's sword changed as it journeyed across Hetaira; the simple cross hilt became an elaborate basket-guard to protect the hand; and the blade assumed many different forms in different places, as the use of it and the method of handling it evolved. And then somebody added powdered sulfur to Talito's saltpeter and charcoal, and the sword became obsolete.
* * *
Chapter Six
The Bronze Age came more slowly to the Uplands of Thalassa, and to the veldt beyond the High Ridge.
Forests gave way to fields; flocks and herds increased. Houses of adobe and kiln-hardened brick replaced log huts, behind walls of mud and stone. The nomads came in through the gaps of the High Ridge, driving herds of cattle and riding stock and pack animals to trade for tools and weapons of bronze, or slipped in small bands into the Navvadrov country to raid. They found deposits of copper and tin in the mountains of the second range, beyond the plains, and raiders brought back kidnapped Navvadrov miners and smiths, and in the process discovered and institutionalized slavery.
The Upland villages became towns and small cities, and the Upland tribes grew, slowly and without planning, into nations. As the nomad raids increased, permanent war-chiefs were appointed in each area, and patrols of warriors drawn from levies among the tribes. After a while the warriors were permanent also, supported by taxes paid to the war-chiefs. And so the war-chiefs became kings, and the warriors became a feudal nobility, each given a small area to live in and off of. These new kings quarreled bitterly with each other. Mud-walled towns were besieged, defended, taken, and retaken. The farmers sank into peasantry and, in some areas, to serfdom. The nomad raiders, growing more numerous, and thus stronger and more impudent, raided deeper and longer into the Upland while the kings and nobles fought among themselves.
Beyond the High Ridge, the nomad bands and tribes were combining, forming alliances and confederations. It remained for Krushpan the Shebb to unite them all under his leadership. He skillfully played tribe loyalty against tribe loyalty, and promises of loot from the Uplands, and position in his new federation of tribes, to get all the tribal sheiks to agree to come together under his supreme leadership.
When he had assembled an army of twenty thousand, he led them through the passes of the High Ridge.
The moment was propitious. The army of Liapur had just taken, and was sacking, the town of Prehipur.
Falling upon Liapur in the absence of its prince and its army, Krushpan's nomads looted it and enslaved its people. Then, rushing ahead of the news, his hard-riding warriors fell upon the victorious army of Liapur while it was still within the walls of Prehipur and still occupied with executing the last of Prehipur's defenders. Krushpan captured both the city of Prehipur and the army of Liapur without a struggle, his surprise was so complete, and annihilated both.
