Read Online The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) by Lee Duigon - Free Book Online

forgive her for acting like a queen and a prophet, when she was no such thing. “I know these Blays are skreelings, ignorant Heathen,” she prayed, “but I can’t see that they are evil. They are the protection you have given me in this strange land. Please, All-Father, help me to do right.”
    As poor as the people were in the northern islands, they were rich in Scriptures. They’d made very many copies on sheepskin, although they were not rich in sheep. There were True Copies, which only sages knew how to read, and Common Copies, rendered into the people’s own language so everyone could read them. Bertig owned common copies of all the books of Scripture. When the reciter visited, he taught Bertig’s children out of those books. But of course only the true copies were authoritative, and sometimes common copies had to be burned because a copyist had deviated too far from the original.
    Before the end of the day, Tim and Shingis returned from the village.
    “They’ve invited us to stay the night with them,” Tim said. “They want to meet you and to question you. I suppose that’ll be all right.”
    “Nice village,” Shingis said. “Like villages back home.”
    They all went down to the village. It had a mill on a stream that would eventually find its way south to the Imperial River, barns for the cattle, chicken coops, and little thatch-roofed houses. As small as it was, it was bigger than any settlement on Fogo Island. Low, forested hills looked over its fields.
    The people were gathered to see them, the men all holding rakes and scythes—meant as weapons, Gurun thought. There were more of them than there were of the Blays, and the women and children stood in a crowd behind the men. If Gurun had known anything about warfare, she would have recognized the villagers as easy prey. The Blays did.
    An old man with a wispy white beard stepped forth to greet them.
    “Welcome to Jocah’s Creek,” he said. “We are told you come in peace. We would not have believed this, but the man of Obann swore that it was true.”
    “Of course it’s true,” Tim said. “This is Gurun, who comes from a far country in the North that I never heard of. Came here on a boat, across the sea, if you can believe it. And these men are the Blays, who come from far away in the East. We’ve been with them for a while, and they’ve done us no harm.”
    “I can see the girl is as you said: not Obannese,” the old man said. “My name is Loyk. I’m headman here. There’s no one else to speak for us. The nearest chamber house is in a town called Humber, fifteen miles down the creek. The reciter hasn’t come here for two weeks. No one knows when he will come again.”
    “What’s the nearest city with an oligarch and a militia?” Tim asked.
    “You’d have to go all the way to Trywath.”
    Gurun spoke up. “Loyk, my people come in friendship. If you let us stay, you may have need of us someday. My Blays can work, but they can fight, too.”
    “They came to Obann as enemies,” Loyk said. “They came here in the army of the Heathen.”
    “They’re on their own now,” Gurun said.
    Loyk gave her a cold, hard smile. “I’m afraid we all are, these days.”
     

     
    Gurun, Tim, and Shingis supped with Loyk and his sons and their wives and children. There was hardly room for all of them in Loyk’s house, although it was the biggest house in the village. The rest of the Blays, by twos, were guests at other houses. Shingis promised Gurun they’d behave themselves.
    “Usually it would be impossible for us to feed so many guests,” Loyk said, “but this year’s harvest was the best we’ve ever known. We have more than enough to carry us through the winter.”
    “Provided we’re not burned out by brigands,” Loyk’s eldest son said.
    Already several villages that they knew of had been wiped out by marauders. From Obann, the Thunder King’s host had fled in all directions. There wasn’t enough militia to protect any but