Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  But Kendic could not, would not. He spat at the ground, repudiating them, then roared his challenge to the Hecari and waded into butchery.

  Bethid, mouthing prayers, turned her face away.

  “Fool,” Brodhi murmured as the Hecari closed in.

  Mikal was on his knees. His face was a tear-wetted mask of grief even as Bethid wrapped her arms around his head and turned his face against her abdomen, murmuring words meant to soothe that were nonetheless empty.

  Brodhi, dispassionate, looked upon the massacre and absently counted bodies. Neither gender nor age mitigated the Hecari; the goal was to decrease the number of Sancorrans in one place and to teach by example that anyone, anywhere, could be struck down.

  Even as Kendic was, smashed beneath the warclubs, feathered with darts.

  In the midst of the culling, warriors dismounted to appropriate goods from the tents, then kicked over cookfires to set the oilcloth ablaze. Again, one in ten.

  Bethid’s words of comfort to Mikal were broken off abruptly. She stared in horror at Brodhi. “The karavan!”

  Brodhi held his tongue.

  “Would they track the karavan, do you think? Decimate it as well? It’s only been a handful of days since they departed.” He knew she expected something of him. Some word. An action. When he neither moved nor replied, she raised her voice. Its tone now was accusing. “Your kinsman is with them. Will you let him be a one in ten to die?”

  That question he could answer in such a way as she would understand. Brodhi shrugged. “He’s Shoia.”

  “So?”

  “He may be killed, but it won’t be a true death. A permanent death.”

  “And what if he only has one life left?” Bethid countered. Below her cropped cap of upstanding hair, her face was a tight, pale mask of grief and shock. “You can’t be so cold, Brodhi. Not even you!”

  He could. He was.

  “You can do nothing here, that I know, not and live,” Bethid said. “But the karavan should be warned. You can’t know what this party might do once it leaves here.”

  Mikal’s tone was frantic as he rose. “You’re a courier; the Hecari will let you go. Ride, Brodhi! Warn them!”

  He felt neither urgency nor urge to do so, even in the face of Bethid’s and Mikal’s stunned disbelief. But it occured to him that perhaps this was a test. Another of many tests that had passed already, with as many or more to come. In the name of a test, then—in the name of the possibility that this was a test—he would surrender himself to human expectations.

  Ride? No need. He had other options.

  But then he recalled that Ferize was gone. Brodhi believed it likely she had done as he, in his anger, commanded her to do, and returned to Alisanos. Demonkind, so long as they were kin-in-kind, had the ability to touch one another’s minds; it would be a simple thing for Ferize to inform Darmuth of the Hecari actions, who would then inform Rhuan.

  But she was gone, because he had dismissed her.

  Even riding would be too slow if the Hecari sent a detail to follow him, and that was likely. It had happened before. As a courier, and a foreign-born courier at that, he was subject to neither decimation nor whim, inviolate because of his duty, but the Hecari did not trust him. Not yet.

  Nor would they ever, if they learned what he could do.

  Grimly Brodhi unsheathed his knife. Two pairs of tear-reddened eyes watched avidly, hopefully, following his movements. But puzzlement crept into their expessions and he knew what question was asked inside of their heads: Why was he not going for his horse?

  Brodhi placed the tip of the knife against the ball of his left thumb, applied pressure, then broke the flesh against the point. As blood ran, he raised his hand, thumb extended, and dabbed both closed eyelids.

  “What are you doing?” Bethid breathed.

  A tremor ran through his body. Within, the blood-bond rose up singing.

  Bethid repeated, “What are you doing?”

  Brodhi said quietly, “Lending my eyes to a kinsman.”

  HIS AWARENESS OF the sun’s continued kindness and his body’s longing for it now displaced by duty, Rhuan rode back up the line of stopped wagons at a slow trot, marking strained looks on faces, the stiffness of bodies as the karvan-folk, following instructions, took their places along the verge of the track. From the oldest to the youngest, the fragile to the robust, Jorda’s people formed a living line that stretched from Jorda himself at the head of the column to the oxen-pulled conveyance of the farmsteaders at the end.

  Another man, a human man, riding along that line, might offer jovial words to bolster courage, to promise everyone safety, to dismiss the potential for danger and thus their fears. Rhuan did not. Nor would Jorda, he knew, whose responsibility now was to accede to the demands of the Hecari patrol without provoking the warriors to further action. This task was not new for the karavan-master, had not been since the Hecari invasion, but there was no sense of impatience, annoyance, or complacency about Jorda. And by such unflagging care and thorough preparations had the human karavan-master earned Rhuan’s respect.

  Rhuan would not lie to the people, nor dismiss their fears. But neither would he attempt to fan those fears into a conflagration of panic.

  He reined in briefly at a wagon to answer a question, smiled at a young, curly-headed girl held in her worried mother’s arms at another, then headed once more up the line toward Jorda’s wagon. Despite Darmuth’s efforts the Hecari patrol could arrive at any time, and he—

  Blood.

  Bodies.

  His vision hazed red.

  Bodies everywhere.

  Bodies he recognized, faces he knew, names he had spoken.

  The horse trotted three more steps, then slowed to a walk. Stopped. The taut reins were clamped in Rhuan’s spasming hand.

  He was no longer with the karavan, but in the tent-village instead. He was deaf to the cries, to the screams, to the begging for mercy, though he saw the moving mouths. Odor was nonexistent, as was the sense of touch and the awareness of time. But he had eyes, eyes with which to see, eyes that could not close and shut away the horror.

  Not his. Not his, those eyes. His eyes, were they to open, to look, to see, would fill his mind with images of bright-painted wagons, halted; with the faces of anxious humans, waiting. No blood here. No bodies. Only living souls waiting for Hecari.

  Hecari.

  That, too, he saw; them he saw: painted warriors, scalp-locked warriors, black-eyed and browless men with warclubs in their hands, with blowpipes at their lips; men of no mercy, of no compassion, merely warriors efficiently culling the old, the young, the man, the woman; the people of Sancorra who, most of them, coming to the tent settlement near the border, intended to leave what once had been their homeland. To escape such depredations as found them now.

  Butchery.

  Blood everywhere, and broken heads. Smoke rising in twisting columns.

  Not his eyes, these. Not his, there to see, to look upon burning tents, to register burning bodies, to recognize the faces of the dead and the living. Not his eyes, though they rested in his head.

  Brodhi’s.

  Rhuan was aware of voices, of his name being called. Aware too that he had no control of his body, no sovereignty over the physical reactions to what his eyes viewed. The spotted horse nervously sidled a step or two and Rhuan, slumping forward, slipped sideways over the gelding’s sweat-slick shoulder. Another day, another moment, he would recover self-control, but not this day, and not this moment. He would fall …

  Arms reached up, hands touched him, and he did fall; sagged against a man he did not know because he could not see him; because what he saw behind his lids was blood and bodies and burning.

  “Brodhi,” he murmured.

  Bile rose, and saliva filled his mouth. Hands and arms attempted to help him, to hold him, to guide him to such comfort as might be found when a man lacked all control over limbs that had always served him. On his feet, if wobbling, Rhuan attempted to stop the hands and
arms that held him upright, to push them away, to beg the well-intentioned humans to leave him be to sort out for himself what horrors filled his eyes. But they caged him, those arms; trapped him, those hands.

  He lurched against them, twisting away, pushing against their importunities. The words he said, the words of his mouth if not of his mind, spoke a language no one knew, who was not as he was. Darmuth did. But Darmuth was absent.

  Darmuth, by now, was among Hecari.

  Hecari, here.

  Hecari, there.

  His lungs burned. “—I see …Brodhi—stop—”

  Brodhi could not hear him.

  Now he spoke to them, to those who were here: to the voices, to the hands, to the fingers on his flesh. Bade them let him go. Shouted at them, commanded them, to let him go. Found enough self-control to wrench away at last and to kneel, to slump on the verge between rut and turf, to bend his back and dig trembling fingers into soil.

  Buttocks resting on heels, Rhuan rocked forward. Held himself upright against braced arms.

  His eyes were closed, and he saw. Still he saw. If he could sort out the images, control what he saw …if Brodhi would give him the time to comprehend those images and assign them understanding …

  Brodhi looked, and Rhuan saw.

  Bethid. Mikal. Kendic’s body.

  Kendic’s body.

  Rhuan spat. And again, convulsively emptying his mouth of bile and flooding saliva. He released his grip in turf to apply sleeve to mouth, then to clamp palms over his eyes. “Brodhi …no more.”

  The blood-bond of kinsmen, of kin-in-kind, renewed by Ferize. Cuts carved, hands clasped, blood commingled.

  “Let be,” someone, male, said with rough authority. “Let be, leave us room…”

  Jorda?

  Hands upon him again, but this time not grasping, not insisting, not attempting to order his body. Merely hands upon his shoulders, urging him upright.

  A woman’s voice said, “Rhuan,” then demanded, “Darmuth, thank the Mother—what’s wrong with him?”

  Rhuan managed, “Brodhi …” It seemed to be the only word he could utter.

  Without insistence, a man asked, “What’s happened?”

  He knew that voice. Knew that name. Darmuth?

  A shudder took him, violent enough that his joints ached from it. “—sending—”

  The woman again. “What can we do?”

  “Rhuan …” He was aware of movement, of the hands withdrawing from his shoulders to cradle his head between warm palms. So warm, those palms, as if the blood ran hot in the veins. “Rhuan, find your way. Walk the path away from Brodhi and back to yourself.” Yes. Darmuth.

  It was a struggle to make his mouth form the words. “I’m not here,” Rhuan blurted. Then, with greater insistence— Darmuth would understand— “—not here.”

  “What does he mean?” the woman asked.

  Darmuth’s hands continued to cradle his head. “You are Rhuan, not Brodhi. You are here with the karavan. With Jorda, Ilona …with me, Rhuan.”

  So he was. Rhuan, not Brodhi. Not there, but here.

  Coming out of a living nightmare, from the helplessness of blood-bound trance, Rhuan looked into the eyes of the demon he called companion. Their gazes remained locked until Darmuth was satisfied. He released Rhuan, who blinked himself back into his own skin and looked at those around him. Darmuth, of course. And Jorda, holding the reins of his spotted horse. But also Ilona, a crease of concern drawing dark brows together. Others gathered, too, those whom he guided, but none of them, now, stood close, or put their hands upon him. They gathered in an anxious cluster and spoke among themselves. But though they would guess, they could not know what he had done.

  Seen with and through another man’s eyes.

  Rhuan looked at Jorda, Darmuth, Ilona. His eyes, now, not Brodhi’s. “The settlement.” He said at last what his kinsman intended them to know, the purpose for which Brodhi had used the blood-bond linking them, he who despised it. “Hecari are killing people.”

  BRODHI FELT A hand tentatively touch his arm. Then fingers closed. A woman’s fingers. “Brodhi?” He knew that voice. Bethid. “Brodhi—come back.”

  He turned from the killings to look into her face. Worry shadowed her eyes. A glance at Mikal showed similar concern.

  “You went away,” Bethid continued. “Standing here, you went away. I could see it in your eyes. They were empty.”

  He was vaguely aware of sobbing, of wailing, of pleas for help. He smelled the reek of urine and excrement, the thick, throat-catching odor of blood, the stench of burning oilcloth. Columns of smoke amid the tent-village rose into the air

  Words came slowly. He felt detached and sluggish. “You told me to go to the karavan. To warn them.”

  Mikal nodded, dark brows knit. “But—you just stood here.”

  “Oh, no. No, I did as asked.” With immense mental effort Brodhi banished the lingering disorientation of the sending. “Rhuan knows now. He’ll tell Jorda. They will be prepared if the Hecari track them.” He saw the mystified expression on Bethid’s fine-boned face. “I told you. I lent my eyes to Rhuan. He saw …this.” Brodhi’s gesture encompassed the gruesome results of Hecari decimation.

  “It’s a Shoia thing, then,” Bethid’s tone made it as much a question as a statement.

  “Shoia have many abilities.” Brodhi briefly pressed a finger against his forehead as the first throb of a looming headache made itself felt. But he knew Rhuan was in worse straits; the one who received a forced sending had a significantly more difficult time coming back from the bond. “So. Rhuan knows. Jorda knows. There is nothing more we can do to prepare them.” He watched Hecari warriors riding the pathways, making certain those assigned to death were in fact dead. Survivors hung back in the shadows of unburned tents, unwilling to place themselves in harm’s way. “These warriors will leave,” Brodhi said. “Their duty is completed. And then those people who were not chosen to die may begin to live again.”

  Mikal’s tone was rough. “Until the next time. Because they’ll come again, won’t they?”

  “Yes.” Bethid’s words sounded pinched and thin. “To see if the lesson was learned. It could be a day from now, a week from now; it might be a year.”

  “And if I stay, I might be chosen to die the next time they come?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  Mikal set his jaw. “This is my home. I choose to be here.”

  Brodhi nodded. “It should always be a man’s choice.”

  “And a woman’s?” Bethid’s tone was bitter. “Ah, but I’m a courier. The warlord has some use for me, even if I am female. I’ll never be a ‘one in ten.’”

  “They’re leaving,” Mikal said, surprised. “Just as you said.”

  Brodhi watched the warriors as they departed single-file, horse after horse after horse, paying no mind as the survivors began to come forward to find their dead and attempt to beat out flames. Women’s voices rose in a keening Sancorran lament.

  “Shovels,” Mikal said. “And buckets. We’ll need to gather shovels for the graves, and buckets of water to put the fires out.” He nodded jerkily. “I have both in my tent.”

  As the one-eyed man walked away in rigid self-possession, Bethid looked at Brodhi. “If the Hecari go after the karavan …is Rhuan enough to stop them?”

  “Unlikely,” Brodhi replied promptly. “Probably he’ll do something foolish and get himself killed.”

  Bethid, eyes red-rimmed from tears, looked beyond him to the people now battling flames, or searching for their dead. “Like Kendic. Except Kendic had only one life to lose.”

  RHUAN’S GRASP ON self-control was tenuous in the aftermath of the forced bond, and his head ached abominably. He was aware of Jorda sending those who had come to his aid back to their wagons, to their places along the road. That brought a question through the pain in his skull. “Where are they?”

  Darmuth’s mouth twisted in irony. “Our Hecari, you mean?”

  Rhuan, who
had recaptured his horse’s reins from Jorda before the karavan-master headed back to his wagon to await the patrol, realized Ilona had not yet returned to hers. She watched him in a fixed, concentrated way, pupils contracted, that threatened to distract him. “Ours, yes. The patrol.”

  “Half a mile up the road, when I turned back. There was no need to delay them; they stopped along the road to eat something.”

  Rhuan massaged his forehead with rigid fingertips. “But they’ll reach us in no time.”

  Darmuth agreed. “At any moment, yes.”

  Rhuan thought his head might burst into flame. But he turned to his horse and swung the reins up over the gelding’s neck. “Then I had best go to Jorda to help him greet them.”

  “Rhuan, wait.” Ilona’s tone was imperative enough that he did not immediately mount, but turned his attention to her. “I know the look of pain,” she said. “I have a tea that will help.”

  “I don’t need tea,” he returned curtly. “I need to help Jorda.”

  Calmly she countered, “You are bleeding from your left ear.”

  Rhuan put a hand up and felt the trickle of wetness. “No matter.” He shrugged and turned back to his spotted horse.

  “It will keep.”

  Ilona appealed to Darmuth. “Of what help will he be if he collapses in front of the warriors?”

  His lips twitched. “In truth, Rhuan unconscious is often more helpful than Rhuan awake.”

  The maligned subject mounted, blinking away briefly doubled vision. He hurt too much to employ courtesy. “Ilona, go stand beside your wagon. Do as the others. If Hecari are killing people at the settlement, who is to say the patrol won’t do the same here?”

  “You,” she said.

  He scowled down at her. “What?”

  “You will prevent the patrol from doing any such thing.”

  He was too distracted and his head ached too much to parse out Ilona’s meaning. Instead he jabbed a finger in her direction, then aimed it at the line of wagons meaningfully.

  Ilona turned on her heel and walked stiff-backed toward her wagon.

  “Nicely done,” Darmuth murmured dryly.