Free The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) by Lee Duigon Page A

stick.
    “It’s not so empty now,” Jack said. “He smells men around us, half a dozen of them. And they’re close.”
    So close, indeed, that they rose up out of the tall grass before Martis could even draw his sword. There were six of them, wiry little men with curly hair, barefoot, clad only in loincloths, with slings in their hands and stones in the slings. They’d smeared their skins with dirt and the juices of crushed plants: otherwise Wytt would have smelled them before they got so close. Two of them had fresh scalps dangling from their loincloths.
    “Easy, easy!” Martis said to the children. “These are Attakotts. I don’t speak their language.”
    One of the Attakotts spoke to Martis. To Jack it sounded like jabbering, but Martis understood it: it was Tribe-talk. His eyes lit up, he smiled, and his whole body relaxed. He replied in the same language, and they had a conversation. Wytt sat down on top of the pack, no longer alarmed at all.
    “We’re safe!” Martis told the children. “These men are ours, scouting for King Ryons’ army. They say the army’s on the move again, heading west. That’s odd! But they’ll take us to Helki, and then we’ll know what it’s all about.”
    “Will Obst be there, too?” Ellayne asked. “He’s the only one who’ll be able to read the scrolls.”
    “Yes, Obst is with the army. We’ll soon be seeing all our friends. And then Obst will read the scrolls.”
    “Which means we’ve done it!” Jack said. “We’ve done the mission God gave us—we’ve found the lost books and brought them back. Our work is over.”
    “We thought that once before,” Ellayne reminded him, “and we were wrong.”
     

     
    While Jack rejoiced, King Ryons was in the middle of his fourth day in the forest, hopelessly lost and out of food, hungry and weary and scared.
    He didn’t see what good it did for God to be with him as he wandered around until he starved. But such thoughts fled away when he came unexpectedly upon a clearing with a little cabin in it.
    “People! At last!” he said aloud—someone to give him something to eat. He breathed a prayer of thanks, as Obst had taught him, and hurried toward the cabin.
    “Hello, hello!” he cried. “Is anybody there?” He made the forest ring with it, and before he arrived at the cabin’s doorstep, an old woman tottered out from the shadows within, leaning on a cane.
    If he’d been brought up, like Ellayne, on stories of Abombalbap, he would have been afraid: he would’ve thought the woman was a witch. In those stories there were always witches in the woods, and they cast spells on children, or ate them. This old woman had a long, sharp nose, a mane of crazed white hair, filmy blue eyes, and was clad in a dirty black dress. Her sandaled feet were even dirtier.
    “Who’s there?” she said. “Don’t bother to wave—I’m almost blind, can hardly see a thing. Speak up, whoever you are! There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”
    Ryons slowed to a walk. “I’m lost!” he said. “I’ve been lost in the woods for days and days, and I’m hungry.” And because slaves learn early on not to tell the truth if they can help it, he added, out of force of habit, “My name is Gik.” That was what his Wallekki masters called him before Obst named him Ryons.
    The old woman cackled. “Gik? That’s not a nice word! What kind of a name is that?”
    They were both speaking Tribe-talk, but it seemed the old woman knew at least a few Wallekki words. Maybe she knew more: he would have to be careful.
    “Well, what’s your name, then?” Ryons said.
    “Me? I’m Mary—although there’s some as calls me Merry Mary. It makes kind of a joke in Obannese. But you don’t want me to call you Gik, do you? Not a kingly little boy like you!”
    Kingly? Why had she said that?
    “They call me Ryons.”
    “That’s better! Why don’t you come in out of the hot sun and sit down?”
    He didn’t see what else he could do, so he followed