The 100th Millennium by John Brunner

Author:John Brunner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 0345306813
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 1982-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

IX

“Sit,” instructed the lord, and they did so awkwardly. Chalyth,

shivering from her dip, pressed close to Creohan for warmth, while

Hoo, his dark face brooding, set his chin in his palm and his elbow

on his knee to stare at the brown man who had so completely taken

control of their destiny.

“W’at were you doing in da city?” the lord asked, and

Creohan, hoping that his guesses were good ones, answered.

“You look for cities to conquer. We—who are done with

cities—seek to conquer a star.”

The statement made so bluntly filled the lord’s face with

sudden awe, and he clasped his heavy axe and laid it across his

knees again as if it would protect him from—from whatever he

feared about these people bigger than himself. Delighted, Creohan

went on, and felt Chalyth squeeze his hand to show that she

understood what he was doing.

“You have searched up and down this coast—the one from

which this river runs inland—and you have found only empty

cities. Is not that so? Why then do you go on searching?”

Pleased to find something these people did not know, the lord

shrugged. “It is among our people dat before a lord can become a

king he must prove himself and conquer a city of da biggest

people. For ten, for maybe twelve generations we uv ad no

king—my fader, like myself, was only a lord. For dere are no more

cities to conquer.”

“You come from an island far out in the sea,” suggested

Creohan, making another reasonable guess, and the lord nodded.

Creohan continued; before they had reached the river’s

mouth, he had established all he needed to know. Far to the north

and south the coastline stretched unbroken; a short way inland lay a

line of hills which these people had never crossed—they were tied

so closely to the sea and to their boats, and they had found so many

cities on or near the sea, that they had made the tacit assumption

no one could live elsewhere. For the sake of his home city he was

very glad; a band of these men arriving by the route he and Chalyth

had taken would have laid the place waste in a day, and this lord

would have become a king.

Soon the man’s tongue was loosened, and he began to tell

them of the legendary exploits of his ancestors. Creohan was

shaken, but not altogether surprised, to find them similar to tales

he had heard from Historians at home. The race of which these

few boatloads of warriors were the last remnant must once have

made a tremendous mark on the world.

“And where do you go now?” Creohan demanded at last,

when the sky was greying towards dawn and the sound of surf on a

beach had announced that they were about to change from fresh

water to salt.

“We go on,” said the lord hopelessly. “Somew’ere—maybe

even now—dere remains a city.”

Creohan rose to his feet slowly, and looked down on the lord.

“We will guide you to a land where you have never been,” he said

solemnly. “We will show you the way to a victory such as your

people have never seen!”

The lord, disliking to look up to Creohan, and yet afraid to

stand up in his turn in case he lost his balance on the thick soles

strapped to his feet, shifted uneasily.

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