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"What's inside there?" asked Father Basil. "Some sort of figures?" "Keep back!" Bryennius screamed. Behind him, the man who had been unhorsed tried frantically to catch his mount. If he can't ride, I'll have to abandon him, Bryennius thought. Even as he recoiled from the idea, he shouted for the man to unload one of the packhorses. "Stay back, priest!" he cried again. With almost his last words, Li Shou had warned Bryennius to keep his people clear of Mount Li. He had to get them away! As the light about the cave brightened, as if a spectral dawn had come, the shadowy figures that Father Basil claimed to see shuddered, as if waked from their twelve hundred years' sleep. Ch'in Shih Huang-di might be dead that long, but he had set his guards before his Page 128 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html death, and set them well. Now, alerted by the chaos and the thieves of silkworms that some . . . some spirit perceived as a threat to Ch'in, his guards waked. Living men? Revenants? Bryennius shuddered and bile gushed into his mouth. "Statues . . ." breathed Alexandra from beside him. Years ago, me/chants had shown him statues stolen from a tomb in Egypt. He had marveled at their precision, their completeness, and the miracle of their long survival. But those statues had been tiny. These . . . they were as tall as the men and horses that had posed for them a thousand years ago. Chariots drawn by four terra-cotta horses, their nostrils eternally flared in rage, their manes sculpted into windblown shapes, rumbled down the ravaged slope. In each stood a charioteer, his bronze and wood weapons ready for use. "An army of statues!" Bryennius cried. Siddiqa screamed, then bit her lip until it bled. He turned his horse's head savagely, gesturing for everyone to flee. Single horses could outrun chariots, and if not, the twisted ground might stop them. The chariots jerked and rolled down the slope. One toppled and rolled downslope; its fellows drove by as if it had never existed. Behind the chariots emerged archers, who took up positions on either side of the gaping cave, arrows already nocked on their bowstrings. They fired as one creature. The man who had been unhorsed fell with a scream and an arrow in his eye. A slinger whirled its weapon with unnatural strength and speed, and a Varangian fell, his skull shattered. Behind them marched a troop of warriors, their headgear and scaled armor modeled down to the last knot or nail, their bronze swords real and deadly. Their eyes, the gelid eyes of lifeless clay, gleamed in the violet light: purpose smoldered there, and a vengeful rage. The statues would pursue them throughout Ch'in. Bryennius galloped down the cracked road. He could feei each step of the terra-cotta army at his back shudder down upon the earth. He tried to reason his way out of his panic. If the figures were slow, they might be outrun. Since they were mindless, "knowing" only that they had been set to chase enemies the way a hound is set after its quarry, perhaps they could be outguessed. They were clay: Perhaps a catapult could pound them into shards. But, unless the earth opened to swallow them into the clay from which they were formed, they would not cease their pursuit. Bryennius remembered the endless, agonizing miles of the journey through savage land ahead of them, then thought of the mindless, tireless enemies behind them, and despaired. Behind him, the army of Ch'in Shih Huang-di trampled the dead soldiers into the mud. Susan Shwanz They rode west, ate in the saddle, and begrudged every brief pause; the warriors behind them had no such need to eat or rest. Bryennius felt himself reel in the saddle. Remembering the passage east across the Takla Makan, he signaled a stop, just long enough for the riders to bind themselves to their saddles. Siddiqa's haggard face, with purplish shadows beneath each eye, tore at his heart, but he dared not strain his horse by riding double. Mud splashed underfoot as they fled past empty fields. Gradually the rain stopped. By afternoon, people had emerged from their houses and the caves cut deep into the loess, the slopes formed centuries ago by blowing earth. Though a rope drawn across their path might have brought half of them down, the villagers did not intervene. "Guards up ahead."" gasped Alexandra. Page 129 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html Bryennius heard the hiss of blades being drawn, though what good that might be against archers, he didn't know. "They're riding away," Haraldr spoke. Bryennius turned around in the saddle. He could not see even the chariots at the vanguard of the lifeless army. But he thought he could sense each step that the First Emperor's clay warriors took by the way the earth quivered. "We're unclean," said Father Basil. Despite the need for haste, Bryennius drew rein to look at the little monk. "You know how good the messengers are in Ch'in," he explained. "Do-you think that the guards don't know who we are, and what pursues us? They think we are as good as dead already." "Or they fear to be caught between us and the statues," said Alexandra. "I think they trample anything in their path." Unclean. Bryennius had seen a leper once, abhorred even by the guards sent to drive her off. He remembered commenting that it would have been merciful to kill her, but "Who wants to get that close?" asked a scared mercenary. He had survived to be old-but not by touching what was already condemned. We are ghosts, undeads ourselves, Bryennius thought. We ride through the paths of the living, and they flee us. Haraldr chuckled, an incongruously bright sound. "Then supplies should be no problem. We can take what we need." Bryennius remembered that he had been a trader and that, among the Northerners, the distinction between trader and pirate was frequently blurred or forgotten altogether. Bryennius signaled for them to slow their horses to a walk. They would rest them, then speed up again, riding west until they dropped, Bryennius foresaw, or until they were overtaken. If they outraced the statues, they faced other perils: the desolation of the land itself, solitude, bandits perhaps, who might decide that a small band racing across a frozen desert must carry treasure that outweighed the risk of taking it. "Perhaps once we are outside the borders of Ch'in," Father Basil suggested, "the statues may not be able to move." "First we have to get there!" snapped Bryennius. Alexandra shook her head. "This is ... unbalanced," she began. "Set a guard to protect Ch'in: well and good, if vindictive. One might expect that of the First Emperor. But this visitation . . . this is not ordered." She shivered and struggled with one hand into a heavier cloak. "It is too harsh. And law perverted turns to chaos, which has no law at all . . ." She stopped herself before she could finish, looking guilty and terrified. They rode through village after village, and none would face them. The fields shone with ruddy stubble; harvest had come and gone. From time to time, they saw animals: rabbits, a stray goat that some family would regret losing. Twice, Alexandra wasted energy and breath to point out a fox to Siddiqa. Only the foxes seemed unafraid. The air was cold. Soon it would be winter. Perhaps the statues would crack and break, but Bryennius doubted it. Susan Shwartzj "Up ahead!" Siddiqa called. Bryennius had not real" ized she had kept enough strength to speak. Ahead of them glinted the twisting, silted coils of the Huang He River which heavy rains had swollen until thick waves crested against Page 130 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html the dikes, tearing at them hungrily. "Can they cross running water?" Alexandra questioned Father Basil. There was no need to ask who [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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