Freedom's Gate

by Naomi Kritzer

Tamar rubbed one of her beads between two fingers, still crestfallen. I knew my relief showed on my face, and when Zhanna looked at me I gave her a little shrug and said, “Given my aim, it would be pretty foolish to hand me venom and turn me loose.” No doubt, that was the real reason for the prohibition. “You probably shouldn’t give me any fire arrows, either.”

  Janiya’s lips quirked. “It’s a wise warrior who knows her own limitations, Lauria. No, you’re right. You’ve wielded your sword well in our service, but raids are fought with arrows more often than steel. We’ll surprise the Greeks, and most will be on foot; they’ll outnumber us, but we’ll be much, much faster. Stay well back and keep moving. They are terrified of Arachne and her venom; it won’t take long for them to lose their nerve and run. That’s when we’ll close in. Round up as much of their livestock as you can, take any weapons you can carry from their armory, and burn anything that will catch fire. Listen for my horn; I’ll blow one long blast when it’s time to retreat.”

  Everyone was listening, the vials of poison glint-ing at their belts. Janiya went on, her voice calm and quiet.

  “This is our sacred opportunity to take back some of what the Penelopeian thieves have taken from us. Prometheus and Arachne do not ask for sacrifices: there is nothing that humans have that true gods want or need. Instead, they ask us to show our faith and loyalty by striking at the gods who enslaved them, at the men who enslaved us, or our mothers, or their mothers. Revenge is what we offer on their altar. We feed Arachne’s hunger when we use her venom in her service. Prometheus stole fire for us; stealing from his enemies is our offering to him.”

  I tried to summon the eager look that I had no doubt was still on Tamar’s face, but I found myself suddenly picturing Nikon, dying from a poisoned Alashi arrow. The Alashi aren’t interested in a fair fight. They don’t want to be honorable. All they care about is killing as many Greeks as they can.

  And I threw away my opportunity to at least warn them that we’re coming.

  Though the poison was reserved in a secret store, and the arrows were dipped one at a time just before being loosed against the Greeks, we had to prepare fire arrows before the battle. Again, Zhanna provided the preparation itself, and we coated arrows with the sticky resin, propping them up carefully against a rock to dry.

  “Why didn’t we use the poison during the bandit raid?” Tamar asked Saken as we worked.

  “Venom is reserved for use against people who are not only our enemies, but enemies of our gods,” Saken said. “Most of the bandits actually worship Prometheus and Arachne, just as we do. And they certainly don’t serve the sorceresses. In their own way, they’re sort of Alashi.”

  “But they attacked us,” Tamar said.

  “Well, yes. But you know, in the past, the Alashi clans haven’t always gotten along. There have been fights, raids—but it would be unspeakable to use venom against other Alashi.”

  The Greeks would say it’s unspeakable to use that weapon against anyone, I thought bleakly, staring at the fire as I dipped another arrow.

  Maydan gathered everyone a little while later, and everyone except Tamar and me drew tokens out of a closed bag. Gulim drew the black token, and everyone gave her an apologetic pat on the shoulder. She would have to miss the raid and take the camels up to a well some distance from the garrison; we’d meet her there later. Tamar and I were excluded from this because we couldn’t be expected to find the well on our own.

  The fire arrows were made and dried; they were divided into quivers. Next we made torches. Jolay would carry a torch in each hand to allow others to light their fire arrows. “Why don’t we put the venom on the arrows now, too?” Tamar asked as we set the torches to dry. “Doesn’t it take time to dip them in battle?”

  “It takes a little time, but this way we’re less likely to bite ourselves with our own venom,” Saken said. “Besides, it’s more potent when it’s still wet.”

  When all the preparations were made, we went to bed; no kumiss tonight. I listened as the women around me fell asleep; I could hear Ruan’s snore. Tamar lay awake for a long time, but eventually I heard her breathing become deep and even.

  Even if the Greeks don’t use poison, they use spies, I thought. I’m the poison on their arrow, ready to betray from inside. They have spell-chains, they have mines full of slaves to get them iron, they have conscript soldiers from all over the Empire. It’s not as if the Greeks are really interested in a fair fight, either.

  But poison. I thought again of Nikon. And they don’t know we’re coming. They don’t know. Even if Kyros hadn’t done anything about Sophos, that wasn’t the fault of the Greeks at the garrison. Most were probably conscripts like the guards at the Elpisia gates.

  Maybe the djinn is outside. It’s not too late to warn them. After everyone had fallen asleep, I slipped quietly out of the yurt and went beyond the edge of the camp to see if Kyros’s djinn approached me. I waited there for hours, hugging myself in the cold night air and hoping that no one would notice my absence, but saw no sparkle in the air. Kyros had not sent his djinn tonight. I had missed my chance to warn the garrison.

  We rose the next morning when it was still dark, and broke camp; Gulim wished us all good hunting, and headed north as we headed south. As the sky lightened to twilight gray, we urged our horses to a run. The sun broke across the horizon as the Greek garrison came into sight.

  I had half hoped that we’d raid the garrison guarding the mine I’d visited with Sophos, so that at least the soldiers I’d be attacking would be defending the interests of someone I hated, but this wasn’t it. The garrison was completely unprepared for us. I could see the soldiers running out, hastily buckling on armor. Some were stumbling as they pulled on their boots.

  Jolay’s torches were blazing, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Tamar light one of her arrows and loose it, a keen look on her face. I plucked one of my own arrows out of the quiver and managed to steady myself in the stirrups enough to get one arrow off. It went completely wild. At least I was unlikely to wet my own weapons with Greek blood, even if I wasn’t deliberately aiming high. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, in excitement or fear. I wondered if the djinn was watching me now, and what it would tell Kyros about this raid.

  The soldiers formed a ragged, panicked line in front of the garrison. Their bows lacked the range of ours and most of their shots fell short. I watched as they were cut down, one after the other. I saw the buildings around them go up in flames. Just run, I wanted to scream. We have poison—if you stand and fight, you’ll die. Nikon had stayed and fought, and had died seeping black poisoned blood from his wounds. I should have warned them. Should have warned them.

  A few of the Greeks had managed to get on horses and were riding out to meet us; I drew my own sword and miserably urged Kara up to meet one of them. I have to do this. If I don’t, I’ll fail at my mission, too. Besides, at that moment I longed for the simple focus of face-to-face fighting. The soldier had a sword; Kara dodged us both aside as he approached, and I swung my sword at the soldier’s back as he passed. I missed him and nearly fell off Kara. He wheeled his horse around, I raised my sword, and ours eyes met.

  “Lauria?” he choked out.

  It was Thales, the soldier who used to guard the Elpisian gate. He pulled his sword back abruptly. “Just run away,” I hissed at him. “They won’t follow you, just run!”

  He looked from me to the other Alashi. “What are you doing with them? Do you need help?”

  “No. Now get going!”

  Zhanna was looking my way. I need to make it look like we’re fighting. I gave Thales a shove and knocked him off his horse. He went sprawling, and his sword was briefly knocked from his hand. “Run,” I said again. “Thales, run away!”

  He stood up and picked up his sword. “Kyros told me to remember your face. I can’t just leave you here!”

  “I don’t need your help. I’m ordering you to run!”

  But Thales, the fool, made a grab for my horse’s re
ins. Kara whipped her head away from him and pranced away a few steps. A moment later I saw a quick blur and heard the thunk of an arrow striking its target. Thales screamed and looked down at the wound in his thigh. Oh. Oh no.

  “Come on!” It was Zhanna, breathless, at my side. She took Kara’s reins. “They’re running, it’s time to move in!”

  Thales was moaning. I can’t help him anyway. There’s nothing I can do for him, nothing. I followed Zhanna in toward the burning buildings.

  “Was that arrow poisoned?” I asked Zhanna.

  “Which arrow?” I pointed back toward Thales. “Of course not! He was much too close to you for that. Don’t worry, Lauria, we don’t hold the lives of our sisters that cheap.” She reached out briefly and squeezed my arm.

  The sisters were darting in and out of the buildings, piling armloads of loot into sacks to carry off. Zhanna had me hold her horse while she dismounted to snatch up a clay jar. Then we heard Janiya’s horn; Zhanna tossed her torch into the building and jumped back onto her horse, and we wheeled back toward the steppe.

  A handful of soldiers followed us on horseback, but they broke off the pursuit as soon as it was clear that we weren’t coming back for a second pass. We stopped to catch our breath, check for wounded, and see what the looters had found.

  And that was when everyone noticed that Tamar had taken my whispered advice. I hadn’t actually seen any slaves in the garrison part of the mining camp, but Tamar apparently had spotted one, thrown him across the saddle, and galloped after everyone else. The slave was taller than Tamar, filthy from working in the mine. For one terrifying moment I thought it was someone I knew—a girl that I’d hunted down for Kyros. But then he turned his head and I saw that it was a young man, and not Alibek or one of the other young men I’d brought back to Kyros. Safe, for now.

  Everyone looked at him, and he shrank back against Tamar. Janiya looked at Tamar, who lifted her chin and glared back defiantly.

  “We don’t—” Janiya said.

  “Maybe you don’t, but I do,” Tamar said.

  “What are you going to do with me?” he asked. He spoke with a heavy Greek accent.

  “I don’t know,” Janiya said. “What do you think we should do with you? Send you back?”

  “No. Please! Don’t send me back there—I’ll do anything you ask.”

  Janiya closed her eyes and shook her head; I felt the suppressed groan that rippled through the circle. “You throw yourself on our mercy as if you expect to be our slave. What makes you think we’re kinder masters than the Greeks?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered, averting his eyes.

  “We’re not sending you back,” Janiya said. “We’re not sending you anywhere, and you are certainly not our slave.” She started to say something else, then broke off. “Tamar, you decided to take him with you; you can arrange for his transportation back to our camp.” She turned away.

  “She just means that you can ride double with me,” Tamar said consolingly, and helped the boy back onto her horse. His cringing fear made it hard to think of him as anything other than a boy, though he might have been as old as sixteen. She flashed me a quick triumphant smile, as if to thank me for my suggestion. I managed a sickly smile back. It was nice to see Janiya thrown so completely off her stride, but I had to admit that there was a logic to the Alashi practice of not freeing slaves. In addition to the limited resources of the Alashi and the need to spread out the arrival of “blossoms,” there was the problem of slaves who simply could never learn to live as free men and women. This boy seemed like an awfully good candidate for being offered the choice of killing himself or being sold, like the former slave Zhanna had told us about.

  Aside from the unplanned rescue—Tamar was the only one who saw liberating a slave as a victory—it had been a very successful raid. None of the sisters was injured. We’d taken a few horses, and someone had found the armory and collected an entire basket of Greek helmets, and a dozen sword belts with short Greek swords on them. The jar Zhanna had grabbed turned out to hold honey; someone else had grabbed a jar of wine. Probaby the most valuable find was a sack of pure white salt. We sorted it out and loaded it onto the stolen horses, and headed up to the meeting spot. We glanced back a few times and saw no pursuers, but a hazy column of smoke was still rising; we congratulated ourselves and continued on our way. The freed slave never looked back.

  I didn’t look back, either, but I thought about the devastation we’d left behind us—about Thales. That wound. Even if it wasn’t poisoned, the arrow had gone deep. In the chaos of the raid, he could bleed to death before anyone helped him. Or die from infection, even if the arrow hadn’t been poisoned. His blood was on my hands, even if it wasn’t on my sword. I stared at the horizon, knowing that I had to try to act cheerful; I couldn’t pass off my guilt as nervousness about the raid now that the raid was over.

  We reached Gulim as the sun was setting. She’d built a fire and made dinner, but she hadn’t put up the yurts—that required several people. Zhanna, Saken, and Jolay set to work putting up the yurts while Tamar and I watered and groomed their horses. It was fully dark by the time we sat down to eat.

  “Where’s your slave?” I asked as we sat down.

  “He’s no one’s slave,” Tamar said, but she started guiltily and looked around. “I don’t know where he is. I’d better go look for him . . .”

  “Leave him,” Zhanna said. “He’s free, right? If he doesn’t want to come have dinner, who are you to make him come eat?”

  “I’m not going to make him do anything. I thought I’d invite him to come eat,” Tamar said. “And he does have a name—Zosimos.”

  “A Greek name,” Ruan said.

  “Lots of us have Greek names,” Tamar said, glancing at me and quickly looking away. She stood up and went to find Zosimos, returning a few minutes later with the boy trailing behind her. She dished him up some food and sat back down. He took the bowl and vanished back to wherever he’d been lurking; Tamar sighed but didn’t go after him this time.

  “Maybe you should talk to him yourself,” I said. “Explain to him about the Alashi, and how to act like a free person . . .”

  “I guess I could try,” Tamar said sadly. She set her bowl down. “I wouldn’t have been like this. If an Alashi woman had thrown me over her saddle and ridden off with me . . .”

  “You wouldn’t have been scared?” I asked. “You wouldn’t have begged them not to send you back?”

  “No, you’re right. But . . .” She bit her lip. “I guess I’ll talk to him.”

  When we finished eating, Tamar asked me to come along; I am the other blossom, after all. I shrugged and acquiesced. I found him huddled in the shadow of the yurt, his bowl scraped clean.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Thirteen,” he said.

  Even younger than Tamar, then.

  “Have you been a mine slave your whole life?”

  “I was sold there a year ago, I guess. Last summer.” He shuddered. “Are they going to send me back there?”

  “No,” I said gently. “They’re not going to send you anywhere. Tamar grabbed you in order to free you.”

  “Both of us used to be slaves of the Greeks,” Tamar said. “Lauria even has a Greek name, like you do. We escaped this spring.”

  “The Alashi don’t usually free people. They welcome slaves to escape, but they don’t take steps to help them get out. But they won’t send you back or sell you. Unless you’d be happier with a new master than as a free man. It’s your choice.”

  “Are all the Alashi women?” Zosimos asked.

  Tamar giggled. “How do you think the Alashi make babies? Of course there are Alashi men. And children, and old people. We’re one of the fighting sisterhoods. Each summer the childless men and women spend their time training to be warriors, stomping out bandits, and raiding Greek outposts. We’re separated by sex because, well, I think it’s rather obvious, don’t you?”

  “We’re heading back to
a clan camp to pick up most of our livestock,” I said. “I expect we’ll leave you there. They’ll either send you to spend the rest of the summer with a sword brotherhood, or you can just spend the summer with the children. Thirteen is kind of young for a sword brother anyway.” And he seemed so young. Years younger than Tamar, who apparently had been born fighting.

  “Would you like to learn how to fight?” Tamar asked.

  He laughed under his breath, in an oddly unguarded moment; the first flash I thought I’d seen of who he really was. “Oh yes,” he said a moment later. “I’d love to learn how to fight.” A moment later the frightened slave boy was back. “Just don’t send me back to the mine.”

  “We’re not going to,” I said. “No one’s going to.” Thinking of Ruan, I added, “And if anyone says they’re going to, they’re lying to upset you.”

  A pained smile flickered across his face, very different from the harsh laugh of a moment before.

  “Was the mine very bad?” Tamar asked.

  He looked away from her for a moment and his face hardened slightly. “They were about to kill me when your women attacked.”

  “Kill you?” Tamar shook her head. “For what?”

  “I attacked one of the guards. He was . . .” Zosimos shrugged a little. “They think it’s funny to make us dishonor Arachne. One of the guards caught a spider; he doused it in oil and told me to light it on fire. Always before when this happened I just did it, but today . . .” His voice shook. “I kicked him in the nuts and knocked out one of his teeth.” He showed us his hand; there was a cut on his knuckle. “I don’t know why I did it. If I’d thought about it even for a moment I would have known that it wasn’t worth it. Three guards were on me in moments and they hauled me outside. They were going to have the other slaves come watch while they beat me to death, to show them the price of defiance. They’d already gotten out the whip.” His voice was ragged. “If you take me back there, they’ll kill me.”

  “No one is going to take you back there,” Tamar said.

  “Please,” he whispered. “I’ll do anything you ask.”