Robert Adams - The Death of a Legend

“But then, from out of the eastern lands, will come riding a champion. He and his forces will help in driving the brutal, untrustworthy men from out your land, and because of him and those who love him, the Good will be victorious in the Last Battle with Evil.

“You will have passed all this knowledge on to your sons, and they to theirs. You also will have passed the signs by which this champion may be known. He will be big for a true-man, this champion, a proven warrior and leader of warriors; he will be a hereditary chief in his own lands and the eldest of either nine or eleven sons; he and his followers will ride through a wall of fire to reach you, and the champion will shed Teenéhdjook blood ere he mindspeaks your grand-son and that grandson plumbs his mind to learn that the long-awaited champion is at last arrived.”

“And so,” said old Elmuh, speaking slowly and obviously having difficulty in voicing certain consonants, “this Eyeless Wise One, this Hari of Krooguh, rode on westward with the next dawning. My father and one of his brothers journeyed with their guest, the cats and the horses until, with the first snows, the western foothills were reached. Then did my father and my uncle begin their trek back into the high mountains. No Teenéhdjook ever saw him again, this Eyeless Wise true-man.”

“So, you see, Cousin Bili,” said Prince Byruhn, “this is why our Elmuh hailed you, back in that little vale where you all had camped, as the champion. After all, it might be said that you and your force rode through a wall of fire to reach my lands, and you did shed a measure of Teenéhdjook blood, when the haft of your thrown axe broke our Djehree’s big nose. You are a proven warrior and a leader of warriors, as well as a duke and a chief, in your own holdings. Are you the eldest of nine or eleven brothers?”

“Both, really,” answered Bili wonderingly. “My mothers bore my father eleven boy babes, but two died in or near infancy. There were nine of us until last year, then the next eldest to me. Djef Morguhn, was killed leading a sortie against the Ehleen rebels who were besieging my hall. Two others of my brothers were with me back on that plateau before the earthquake and the fires, but they are not with me now and I know not if they made it down safely or if they escaped the flaming forests.”

“Steel grant that your brothers be safe,” the prince said feelingly, then went on, “but back to the Prophecy, cousin. You see, everything about you was foretold long years ago, so how can you be aught else but this champion who will bring us victory over our foes?”

Bili was beginning to feel the jaws of some nebulous trap closing inexorably about him, so he demanded, “Just how much of the rest of these prophecies have really come to pass, Master Elmuh? When did your ancestors leave their cave home, and why did they leave? Simply because of the Prophecy?”

Elmuh mindspoke Bili, beaming in preface. “Please, Lord Champion, let us two converse silently; I am more than half Teenéhdjook, and our mouths and throats were never truly made to speak the words of true-men.

“But, in answer to your question, a little more than seven years after Hari of Krooguh left it, the thunder and lightning of a summer storm precipitated a rockfall from above which partially buried the entrance of the cave and seriously weakened the ledge outside it. No sooner had the Teenéhdjook cleared enough of the blockage to get out onto the ledge than did the most of that ledge slide crashing down into the abyss, taking with it to their untimely deaths an adult male, a female of breeding age and two adolescents.

“Without the ledge and the path below it, access to the cave was made so difficult that the Eldest decided that he and his must leave and seek another dwelling place. Any direction would perhaps have been as good, but he and his sons recalled the predictions of Hari of Krooguh, so they set out to the southwest. Before the last of the leaves had fallen, they came into New Kuhmbuhluhn, wherein they found living a few pureblooded Teenéhdjook, some Kleesahk, a small group of very large true-men and many Kuhmbuhluhners, all ruled over by the grandfather of Prince Byruhn.”

The Eldest and his family had heard and scented the men and horses and squeaking wagons of the approaching column long before it came into sight along the winding forest way. They had journeyed far since leaving the cave, now ruined, which had been their home for so many years, and they had been camped and resting near a bubbling little spring for a week—hunting, foraging and building weathertight shelters, since they intended to winter in the sheltered spot, for they had found hereabouts no recent traces of mankind, the ancient and pitiless enemy.

None of the shelters were at all visible from the track, even to the keen eyes of the Teenéhdjook. Nonetheless, the chary beings, all adult males and females, fanned out in a rough circle about the site and began to range out their beams, seeking the minds of true-men in order to cloud from them any notice of the huge nonhumans.

At last, after perhaps a quarter-hour, the head of the column came into sight and began to toil past the place where the Eldest stood partially concealed. Some of the true-men rode horses—about half of those horses bigger and beefier than had been the horses of Hari of Krooguh, the rest being domesticated mountain ponies—some were afoot and goading on spans of lowing oxen, the broad backs of these supporting coils of heavy iron chain and thick ropes, while yet another span drew a rough wain filled with axes, adzes, saws, and more ropes and chains.

But the men and various animals were not what suddenly drew and held the fascinated attention of the Eldest, what attracted his eyes was the three who walked behind the lumbering, creaking wain. Although clothed like the full-men in cloth and leather, the keen vision and keener nose of the Eldest assured him that the two smaller, less hirsute of them were at least related to his kind and that the third, who was almost as tall and as massive as he, could be nothing but an adult male Teenéhdjook!

“Correct, Old One,” this strange Teenéhdjook who wore the coverings of a true-man beamed into the Eldest’s wondering mind. “I am known as the Fowler, from my skill at downing birds in flight with my slingstones. These two runts here are my get by a true-woman, a Ganik—it’s their dam’s blood makes their pelts so thin and ratty. But they’re good sons, all the same.”

“You live with true-men, breed with them, and they do not seek to do you harm, Fowler?” Despite the words of the long-ago prophecy, avoidance of savage, cruel true-men was ingrained and made the Eldest dubious. “How can this be so?

True-men have always hated and hunted Teenéhdjook.”

“And most of them do still,” the stranger agreed blandly. “But not these who call themselves Kuhmbuhluhners. We have lived in safety and peace among them since first they came to these mountains, fleeing enemies who had robbed them of their former homes and lands, somewhere to the north and east. They respect us for our great size and strength and our skills at hunting, and they protect us and the big Ganiks from the small Ganiks, most of whom hate and fear us.

“It is tiresome to hold the mind-cloud for long, Old One. Why do you not drop yours and I will introduce you to Duke Fillip, the short, thick man up there on the dark-red horse. He is a full brother of the king, Byruhn III of Kuhmbuhluhn, and both he and his royal brother are firm friends to all Teenéhdjook and Kleesahks. There have never been enough of us—of your kind and mine—here in the kingdom, and you will be made most welcome.”

“No!” the Eldest stated firmly and unequivocally, his innate caution prevailing. “My family depend upon me, I cannot place them in jeopardy. Were you alone, Fowler, or wim only a few true-men, it might be different, but…”