Читать книгу The Face of Heaven - Brian Stableford - Страница 7

Chapter 3

Chemec followed the four aliens along the contour of the hill. Their incredible stink was still filling his nostrils, but he had already become used to it, and it was no longer painful or sickening. It was, in the final analysis, only slightly unpleasant. Its pervasive quality made him feel exposed. He felt that he would not be able to smell a harrowhound at close quarters. This scared him, though he must have known that the smell would send a harrowhound running.

In consequence of his fear, Chemec walked with his ears pricked and his eyes—normally quiet and idle—flicking furiously from side to side. Sometimes he brought both eyes forward at once to focus and give him stereoscopic vision, but that was little enough use in the dim outdoors—he considered it a child’s trick, or a device for reading by lamplight.

Superficially, the strangers resembled men. Men Without Souls, chiefly. But their clothing was not man-like, if it really was clothing. They were hairless—bald as eggs. They had bulky packs on their backs and they carried things—not axes, not spears, nor knives, but most definitely the produce of Heaven Above. But there was more to their presence here than a visitation from Heaven Above. They were more alien than that. They wore masks, but not painted man-masks after the fashion of the Ahrima. Small masks, with eye- and nose-pieces. They moved like nothing on Earth, walking high and slow, with no semblance of care or caution.

Their strangeness was frightening to Chemec. He stumbled once and disturbed a flight of ghosts. They fluttered madly up into the air and a big bat swooped out of nowhere to snap one of them into its mouth. The rest clicked softly as they spiralled back into the shelter of the silkenhairs, swaying in mid air as their huge papery wings jockeyed for position.

The aliens saw neither the flight of the ghosts nor the swoop of the bat, although no real man could possibly have remained unaware. Chemec could even smell the incident, despite the scent of the aliens. The panic of the ghosts had oozed from their pores into the night air—a warning to all who lurked nearby. But not the strangers.

A few moments later, the aliens did come to a halt—suddenly—and Chemec’s heart seemed to recoil as he thought that they might have known he was following all the time. But he was not that old—his heart did not stop, and his body froze into perfect stillness. He might have smelled of fear...just a little. But he was entitled to that, while he was dogging the footsteps of the unknown.

But the strangers had not seen Chemec. Instead they had seen Stalhelm, for the first time, nestling in the valley beyond the hill. They had not realized it was there, despite the fact that the slopes on which they now walked bore the unmistakable signs of human usage. Chemec realized that the aliens were idiots. They were crippled in the senses—lame in the very being.

While he was still, a crab walked from the shadow of a cranebow and crossed his path. It was only a few feet away, and he could have picked it up, ripped away its claws and cracked its shell between his teeth in a matter of seconds. But he let it go. He often did. He thought of himself as Chemec the crab. Bent-legged Chemec, who preferred other meat as a matter of distinction and self-pride.

The strangers moved off again, walking straight toward Stalhelm. The villagers knew by now that an enemy—they had to be presumed enemies—was approaching, and they would also know that Chemec was following. They would be sure that he was doing his job, holding his stone axe ready for action. Twice, or maybe more, Orgond and Yewen had brought up the idea of his being made Star King, but he had always been ready to be tested, and he had always passed the test, bent leg notwithstanding. Even Old Man Yami was something of a friend to him, despite the fact that he was crippled. But there had to be limits on friendship for the Old Man. The only certain thing in life was the fact that the Old Man would one day be the Star King, and the Old Man was ever more ready to submit someone else to the test in his place. Nobody wanted to be starshine when his closest friend was sitting by the fire. Friendship had limits.

The strangers walked all the way to the earthwall as if they expected the gates to be opened before them and the people of the village to come out crying welcome. But the gates remained firm, and half a hundred arrows were already notched to bowstring. The warriors of Stalhelm waited, but they were anxious, and when the smell took over their nostrils they would be keen to kill. The aliens had no chance at all of life. If they had not worn masks....

Yami, brave Yami, testing his own patience and his own courage, because he was full of confidence, let them come to the very threshold of his village.

It was a fine and beautiful gate that opened the way into Stalhelm, sown with the bones of a hundred and fifty men, with every skull set in the wall on the grand curve. Every skull was an honest one—or no man would admit otherwise, if it were not so. (In Walgo, so Chemec and every man in the village firmly believed, they sowed their gate with the bones of their own dead. Even their women. But the men of Walgo had no Souls, by definition, and so—to them—it probably did not matter.)

The strangers muttered among themselves as they stood before the skull-gate. Chemec was astonished to hear that they spoke his own language. Real Ingling. He could understand every word they said.

How, he wondered, could aliens know the language of the Underworld? Even the men of the Underworld could not all speak Ingling—not good Ingling, at any rate. The Cuchumanates, for instance, had only a few words, and the harrowhounds had some foul barking-language that was exclusively their own (or so it was said).

Chemec moved closer to the strangers, confident by now that they were practically deaf and without the sense of smell, and they would not know that he was right behind them unless they turned round. They did not turn, but they did stop talking before he had caught the real thread of what they were saying. The great gate of Stalhelm was opening, just a crack.

Chemec had not expected it. He stopped dead, and waited.

Old Man Yami...brave Yami...came out. Only Camlak, hardly more than a boy, was with him. Yami felt the need to stand a test. Perhaps it was wise, bearing in mind the rumors about Ermold’s bloodthirst. It did seem that much time had gone into memory since the last Communion of Souls. Yami was preparing in advance for the inevitable challenges. He was dressed in his Oracle clothes, and he was emptyhanded. (But his boy-son Camlak carried a long steel knife. Heaven-sent tool to carve Heaven-come meat.)

A row of faces gradually filled itself in along the earth-wall, fleshed faces mingling with the ice-white skulls. A few children climbed bodily on to the stockade, greedy for the sight and smell of some Heavenly blood. It was probably the only chance they would ever get.

Yami sat on the ground, and indicated that Camlak should sit beside him. Camlak, who was studying the art of leadership in preparation for the day when he would try to take the Old Man’s place, took up his assigned position with alacrity, showing no fear whatsoever.

The bone-woven gate oozed shut behind them.

Chemec crouched, eager to see with what kind of mockery the Old Man was going to taunt the strangers before they were slaughtered.

The strangers squatted in a semicircle, waiting for Yami to speak.

“We have come here from the world above,” said one of the strangers, pointing, first at himself and then at the sky, as if he thought that Yami was a fool.

“I know that,” said Yami calmly.

“My name is Ryan Magner,” said the stranger.

“And what have you brought to give us?” demanded Yami.

“We have come to talk to you,” said Ryan. “We want to learn about you.”

Yami laughed, sharply at first, and then authoritatively, until the warriors on the wall, and the women behind it, and the children swarming everywhere all took up the note and screamed their derision.

The laughter went on for a long time.