Treasures of Fantasy - Margaret Weis [59]
Aylaen had chosen to walk with the warriors. Acronis had first decreed that the women should stand on the deck of the Venjekar. Aylaen had told him defiantly that he might as well kill her now, for she would sooner die.
“You should have seen the fire in her eyes,” Acronis would later tell Zahakis. “The set of her jaw, how she held herself. It was at that moment I conceived the idea of fighting her in the Para Dix. I will call her the Ogressa. The Barbarians and the Ogressa. Has a nice sound to it, doesn’t it?”
Keeping this in mind, he told Aylaen she could walk with Skylan and the other Torgun males. Now she wondered if she had made a mistake. She stared in dismay at the narrow, twisting streets, the enormous buildings that seemed to enclose her like the walls of a tomb. She was appalled at the size of the city and at the sheer numbers of its people. But what she noticed most and what she would never forget was the smell.
Thousands of unwashed bodies pressed together in the blazing heat of a summer’s day. Garbage rotting in the alleyways. Gutters overflowing with brown, stinking water. Smoke from forge fires and cook fires hung on the breathless air. The stench made her sick to her stomach. She felt bile rise in her throat and she feared she would vomit.
“How do they stand it?” Erdmun asked, gagging. The Torgun stood beside their ship, waiting for the orders to haul on the traces. “This is worse than a shit hole!”
Aylaen tried to block out the smell by pressing her nose and mouth into the sleeve of her tunic, but when the time came that they had to start hauling on the ropes, she had to breathe it in.
The people stared—particularly at her, as she stood among the ranks of the men—and jeered and hooted. Aylaen’s face burned, her body shook, her legs trembled. She thought she would die of shame. She wished she could die. She saw that she was not alone. Skylan’s face was pale and strained, his lips compressed and his jaw clenched.
But then he lifted his head and licked his lips and raised his voice in an old, old song.
“We sing our praise to Torval.
We ring his name with our bright steel.
The name of Torval sounds in the clash
Of sword on shield
Hammer on the stone walls of our enemies.
Strong and mighty though they be
We are stronger.
Torval puts flame in our hearts
And spear tips catch the god’s fire.”
Skylan’s voice grew louder and more confident as he sang. He gave a heave and the rope line tightened and the other Torgun joined him, tugging on the rope and lifting their voices in the song that was often sung by those standing in the shield wall to give them courage.
Aylaen had never sung this song, for it was a warrior’s song, a man’s song. Skylan was at the head of the line, standing alongside Sigurd. He looked back at the Torgun and his look embraced them, as his song embraced them, and they were one, all of them standing together, as in the shield wall, their foe despair.
The Torgun raised their voices in a defiant shout. Skylan led them in another verse. The Venjekar lurched forward. The Torgun broke into a run, startling the soldiers marching ahead of them. Sigurd started to grin, that crazed grin he wore only in battle. Bjorn ran beside Aylaen. He was yelling himself hoarse. She began singing—somewhat tentatively—and Bjorn smiled his approval. Grimuir, in front of her, looked back and nodded.
The Torgun refused to let hope die. They chose to bear their burden with jaws outthrust and heads high. They chose to sing to their god, Torval, though he might be bloodied and battle-scarred and besieged. They shouted his name as they ran defiantly through the streets, pulling their ship, keeping uncomfortably close on the heels of the soldiers, forcing them to set a swift pace or be run down.
The Torgun would pay for this moment. This sense of exultation could not last, for they were slaves