“You are watching our love stars,” she said.
“The myth may be wrong. They may be death stars.” Joesai was sour.
“You read too much, old man,” she replied affectionately, adding a stick to the fire.
“Reading mellows me like mead in a burned cask.”
“You’ve been thinking of thirst that isn’t slaked by mead,” said Eiemeni.
“I’ve been thinking of the ironies of life. You’ve been with me for a while now, Eiemeni. You saw me drive Oelita to madness. I forced her to believe in God, to see Him and to know Him. In the meantime I’ve become an atheist who slobbers over the philosophy of nonviolence.”
“Joesai,” said Riea, “cease such riddles. We are plain talk people.”
“There is no God of the Sky.”
Riea laughed. “You’ve been without your wives too long.” And put her arms around him.
Gently he cuffed her.
She only snuggled closer. “Keep your eyes to His Sky. You do not see God? In a moment you will see His Streak overhead.”
“God is a rock.”
“Do you believe everything you read? Even God plays jokes.” Eiemeni laughed, whacking his bond master with the back of his hand.
“I’ve re-read my pages of The Forge of War so often by now I can almost think in the ancient language. They have strange words. There are battlegods and helicopter gungods and airgods and sailing gods and steamgods. Language sneaks through time like a miser on new adventures in old cloths. Our word for ship is their word for boat. Our word for God is their word for ship. Their word for sky is our word for highest. Their word for sun is our word for star. If we said ‘sky’ to our ancestors they would think of the night sky, the stars. ‘God of the Sky’ translates to ‘ship of the stars’. Think about that for a while.”
“You’re mad!”
“Yes.” And he laughed the great laugh, understanding completely Oelita’s madness.
“God is intelligent!” admonished Riea.
“God reasons!” stated Eiemeni.
“God is silent,” said Joesai, “and His Sky is full of pin-bright points of death-without-nourishment. Perhaps they cross the void even now with a cargo of sunfire for our cities. We may not be ready when they reach us.”
“The Forge of War drives you mad!”
“It has already driven me mad! I see dark visions among the futures. Kalothi can be overwhelmed. Poisoned. Trampled. Snuffed out. All of it.” He began to pile wood on the fire by fistfuls.
“Stop it!” said Eiemeni holding him. “All of Mnank will see us!”
“Kalothi shall burn brightly! The beasts of Riethe are driven away by fire, so says their book. Tomorrow we turn course and march on Soebo. The pettiness of such as the Mnankrei will destroy us! The Kaiel shall rule! All power to the Kaiel!”
“Eighty of us shall burst upon Soebo and slaughter the lot of them?” chided Eiemeni quietly.
“Ho! Do not think slaughter! Then you become as the Insect Lords of Riethe. Think of kalothi receiving its wood! The Last of the List, those Mnankrei who dare call themselves priests, shall die for the Race. Through their Contribution we shall bring Oelita’s gentleness to our world. How can the brutality we saw at the granary fire in Sorrow survive the acid juices of our bellies?”
42
The priest who is a trader will do better than the priest who is a philosopher.
LIKE THE CLASSIC Nairn thrust of kolgame, they came out of the mountains through the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves to challenge the suzerainty of the Stgal. Teenae was astonished at the difference of style between one-husband and three-husband. Gaet was no Joesai hiding under covert masks and concealed action. He was Gaet maran-Kaiel in formal clanwear making use of conditions created by the Mnankrei before the Mnankrei were in a position to exploit them.
Even in the wilderness Gaet insisted on the life of wealth that Joesai discarded willingly. He ate with his wife in elegance off an inlaid table with stubby legs that was loaded with the best mead, flowers, and steaming food. They slept in a tent near a pot of coals to warm them. He was never too tired to court her, or to lift up the spirits of the lean hags they met with a little flattery that filled the heart if not the belly.
Teenae recalled a road long ago when she had been a sullen waif off the auction block and he had been wooing her with luxuries that had both tempted and frightened her. With Gaet along, this road did not seem as stark as the road she remembered trodding with Joesai on her first trip to Sorrow. Then their only luxury had been a palanquin.
They found that the foothill wheat crops were being devastated by the underjaw. The people were lean and in a hoarding, frugal mood. Food prices were high. As yet there was no starvation, but cases of profane poisoning were on the increase. The Stgal were calling up the Low on the List for their Contribution and meat was more available than usual. Events had created a perfect mood for Kaiel penetration — the desperate moment before hope metamorphosed into resignation. The Stgal offered the Discipline of the Famine, a martyrdom ingrained in the Getan soul because it had saved them so many times before, but the Kaiel offered food. Gaet came in all his riches to tempt them.
When Gaet negotiated he fed his guests. The welcome tent was a large one, erected wherever they moved, now sitting in a field of the foothills among the wildflowers. It was not a busy morning. Two curious farmers representing a local Nolar tribe had passed through the flaps and been given bean sauce on bread with a bowl of soup. Only after their plates were clean were they led to a young Kaiel clansman who squatted on a mat with them in the open air, exploring their goals.
Where had the Stgal failed the Nolar? How were the roads? Did an adequate supply of medicines reach the hills from the Stgal chemical cloisters? Did the Stgal pay well for the women they bought? How many of the Nolar clan members did they think they would lose to the underjaw famine by starvation? by Contribution?
The Nolar men clutched their robes about them and complained that the Stgal did not give back as much meat to the countryside as they took from it. The Kaiel youth nodded and made note. This gripe he had not heard before, though Stgal distribution irregularities were a constant complaint, so much so that Gaet had set up a special committee to overhaul goods distribution to the newly recruited.
Gaet was designing his support staffs along the Hoemei model. All of his administrative groups had to predict the effect of their efforts, and if their predictions failed to come true, the group was dissolved, inducing Gaet’s followers, like this young man interviewing the Nolar, to make reliable promises. It was too soon for change to be noticed yet, but they all knew that Gaet would long remember the good predictors and would not fail to give latrine duty to his incompetent seers.
On this morning Gaet had dispatched the five fingermen of his Left Hand Council, with their groups, on a recruiting foray into the territory of a small hill temple that seemed undermanned. He was preparing for a major move downslope into well-defended Stgal territory. He sat on a carved wooden stool in his own tent in conference with his Right Hand Council and a local Ivieth chief who had come in from Sorrow under cover of night.
Oelita’s general contract with the Kaiel was explained carefully to the giant by the pale light of a bioluminous globe hanging from the tent poles. Teenae fed the glowing bacteria of the globe and listened, learning.
Gaet was meeting representatives of each coastal clan and setting up committees, loyal to the underclans, to monitor the contract, to spot violations and inevitable flaws. First he had been concentrating on wooing the farmers near his lines of supply but was now swinging his attention to the Ivieth who were the most mobile clan of Geta and the people most accustomed to shifting loyalties. Ivieth from Kaiel-hontokae were to be brought in and Ivieth from Sorrow, first those who were Low on the List, were to be sent back along the newly refurbished road.