Eric John Stark by Leigh Brackett

Author:Leigh Brackett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-61242-445-3
Publisher: Phoenix Pick
Published: 2019-02-20T21:22:17+00:00

IV

He stood in a large square lined about with huckster’s stalls and the booths of wine-sellers. Beyond were buildings, streets, a city. Stark got a blurred impression of a grand and brooding darkness of stone, hulking huge against the mountains, as bleak and proud and quite as ancient as they, with many ruins and deserted quarters.

He was not sure how he had come there. He had a vague memory of the city gate. It had been open and he had passed through it, he thought, behind a party of hunters bringing home their kill. After that he could not remember. But now he was standing on his own feet and someone was pouring sour wine into his mouth. He drank it, greedily. There were people around him, jostling, chattering, demanding answers to questions he had not heard. A girl’s voice said sharply, “Let him be! Can’t you see he’s hurt?”

Stark looked down. His exalted mood, with its dreams of godlike vengeance, had left him. Reality came crowding back upon him, and reality was a slim and ragged girl with black hair and large eyes as yellow as a cat’s. She held a leather bottle in her hand. She smiled and said, “I’m Thanis. Will you drink more wine?”

He did, and then managed to say, “Thank you, Thanis.” He put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. It was surprisingly strong. He felt light-headed and strange, but the wine was fusing a spurious sense of well-being into him and he was content to let that last as long as it would.

The crowd was still churning around him, growing larger, and now he heard the tramp of military feet. A small detachment of men in light armor pushed their way through.

A very young officer whose breastplate hurt the eye with brightness demanded to be told at once who Stark was and why he had come here.

“No one crosses the moors in winter,” he said, as though that in itself were proof of evil intent.

“The clans of Mekh are crossing them.” Stark answered. “An army, to take Kushat, a day, two days behind me.”

The crowd picked that up. Excited voices tossed it back and forth and clamored for more news. Stark spoke to the officer.

“I will see your captain, and at once.”

“You’ll see the inside of a prison, more likely!” snapped the young man. “What’s this nonsense about the clans Mekh?”

Stark regarded him. He looked so long and so curiously that the crowd began to snicker and the officer’s beardless face flushed pink to the ears.

“I have fought in many wars,” said Stark gently. “And long ago I learned that it was wise to listen when someone came to warn me of attack.”

“Better take him to the captain, Lugh,” cried Thanis. “It’s our skins too, you know, if there’s war.”

The crowd began to shout. They were all poor folk, wrapped in threadbare cloaks or tattered leather. They had no love for the guards. And whether there was war or not, their winter had been long and dull and they were going to make the most of this excitement.

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