The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) by Lee Duigon Read Free Book Online

city.
    “Why aren’t you scared?” Hooq demanded, as they covered the last mile to the encampment.
    “Why should I be?” said Obst.
    “Don’t you know what our people do to westmen prisoners? Sometimes we roast them slowly in a fire, alive. Sometimes we throw them to wild dogs and watch them get torn to pieces. And if you think that’s bad”—he jerked a thumb at Sharak, the Wallekki—“his lot do worse.”
    “No worse than the westmen do to us when they take one of us alive,” Sharak said.
    “The human heart is cruel, ours no less than yours,” Obst said. “From it come all wars, murders, and the boiling evils of this world.”
    “That’s a funny way to talk,” Hooq said.
    They walked right into the encampment, there being no barricade, no sentries posted. Its air was heavy with a mixed reek of horse and cattle dung, cooking fires, and the sweat of men. The warriors for the most part ignored them, but a few inquisitive ones formed a small procession after them.
    There was a great black tent in the midst of the camp, rising as high as a house and surrounded by tribal standards fixed on poles: skulls of men and animals, ox and horse tails waving in the breeze, round leather shields fringed with human scalps, and long red socks billowing in the wind. In front of the big tent was a stone altar, not unlike the ones described in the Old Books. At the entrance to the tent stood a pair of spearmen.
    “We’ve brought a prisoner,” Sharak announced. “He is an unusual man, who speaks all languages, yet claims to know only his own. Our chief thought the mardar would wish to see him.”
    “Wait here,” said a guard, and the other went into the tent.
    He returned a minute later with a most outlandish figure of a man. Feathers of every kind and color imaginable crowned his head, and some kind of sharp white bone pierced his nose. A necklace of human teeth added to the natural fierceness of his expression—that, and the fact that half his face was painted red and the other half a ghastly blue. He wore a feather cloak of red and purple, and boots and garments of deer hide with the furry side out.
    “O Mardar,” Sharak said, “we found this old man wandering alone upon the mountain. He has the rare gift of being able to speak any language known to man. He says a god gave it to him.”
    The mardar, whatever a mardar was, came up for a closer look. He smelled of rancid animal fat. He looked as if he would be just as pleased to eat a prisoner as question him.
    “The gods do the bidding of the Great Man, who has power over them,” the mardar said. “The westmen’s god shall also be made subject to him.” He glared at Obst. “What have you to say to that?”
    It was blasphemy, of course: no two ways about it. But you could hardly expect a Heathen medicine man to have a right notion of God, Obst thought.
    “Who is the Great Man, sir?” he asked. “I’m ignorant; I’ve never heard of him.”
    “You understand my language and speak it well enough,” the mardar said. “But look around you! Do you see all this warlike host? The Great Man called it into being, and it is only one of many armies that obey him.
    “The Great Man bears the sword of the War God, which the god threw down from Heaven in obedience to his will. With it he shall subdue the world. He bears on his breast the mark that proclaims him the One Who Lives Forever. King Thunder is his name.”
    Obst wondered how he was to preach against such twaddle. Time enough for that by and by, he thought. If the truth be told, the mardar frightened him a little.
    “Sir, I know nothing of these things,” he said.
    “Can you speak Ro-Ko?”
    “Sir, I have never heard of Ro-Ko.”
    “And yet you answer me in Ro-Ko!” said the mardar. “It cannot be that any westman should know a single word of it: it is the secret language of the priests, among the Mighty People.” He turned to Sharak and Hooq. “Take him away and keep him safe for now. I must devote