The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) Read Online Free Page A

south again, and they still had more than half the journey yet to go. They stopped again in another town, this one with a high log fence around it—more timber than was found in all of Fogo Island. Kantreff, it was called. There they heard bad news.
    “You can’t get into the city anymore,” a townsman said, “and no one can get out. Haven’t you heard yet? The Heathen are all around it in a siege—miles and miles of countryside depopulated, people running away in all directions. It’s the end, I say.”
    They found a place to stay, an inn with little stuffy rooms. They had supper in the common room with other travelers. These all had the same tale to tell.
    “The prophets were right, but no one listened to them,” said a merchant from a place called Cardigal. “My city’s been destroyed. Good thing I was traveling when it happened! But around Obann the barbarians are as thick as flies on a carcass. If you killed a hundred of them every day, they wouldn’t even notice. The prophets warned us, but the presters just said they were crazy and to pay them no mind. Now it’s too late!”
    When they were alone again, just before going to their separate rooms to sleep, Tim said, “It’s just no use, lassie. We might as well turn around and go home. We can’t go to Obann now.”
    “You can go home,” Gurun said, “but I shall go to Obann. I want to see the king.”
    “Burn it all, girl, there ain’t no king! By the time we could get there, there might not be an Obann, either. Don’t you listen to what people have been telling us?”
    Gurun shrugged. “A filgya never lies,” she said, “and it’s useless to go one way when the filgya bids you go another. If my father’s grandfather had tried to avoid the man who killed him, he would only have met him in a place where he didn’t expect him.”
    “That is a heathenish superstition,” Tim said.
    Nevertheless, after they’d been in Kantreff several days, Tim set out with her for Obann.
    “I don’t know why I do it,” he grumbled, when they were clear of the town. “Maybe it’s because you remind me of my big sister. She caught a fever and died when I was just a little boy. But she sure did love me; and I loved her.”
    “You’ve been as an elder brother to me,” said Gurun, “and God will bless you for it.”
     

CHAPTER 5
An Interrupted Journey
    Summer gave way to fall. The farther south they fared, the worse the news. Even so, they still had far to go: they were only halfway to Obann.
    The towns they visited were full of refugees. There were no rooms to be had in any of the inns; but camping under the stars was no hardship for a trapper. Tim knew how to build a fire that wouldn’t go out, how to put up simple shelters that kept out the wind and the rain, and how to live off the land. They never went hungry. Gurun learned from him everything she could.
    “A hundred miles left to go, give or take a few,” he told her one day. Because of rain, they’d gotten off to a late start. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to getting there! This country hereabouts should be full of people, but we haven’t seen anyone for two whole days. They’ve all cleared out. I wonder if the city’s fallen.”
    They were in a land of grassy plains interspersed with woodlands and abandoned farms. Tim had been keeping clear of towns because they were jammed with refugees and conditions weren’t pleasant. People were getting short-tempered, and there was violence. Besides, anybody traveling south would be suspected of insanity, he said.
    “Perhaps the city has a king by now,” said Gurun.
    “That’s foolishness. Obann is ruled by oligarchs—has been for, oh, a hundred years, at least.”
    “What are oligarchs?”
    “Never you mind. They ain’t kings.”
    It began to drizzle. They put hoods over their heads and tightened their cloaks, for it was getting cold. The grass around them had begun to turn yellow, and few of the trees were still green. Their masses of