“Mother of Moons,” he murmured as Darmuth rode up beside him.
The demon made a hissing sound of derision as he reined in his mount. “You know very well what gods were responsible for this. Not the humans’ puny ‘Mother.’”
Rhuan ignored that, shaking himself out of shock and into action. “Ride back to Jorda and tell him he’d do best to put his karavan on the other side of the settlement for now. We can use the spare oilcloth for putting up temporary tents, and I daresay break down some of the wagons for their wood.” He saw Darmuth’s raised brows. “Yes, I know it won’t please those of the karavan, but until new supplies can be brought in, there’s little choice. They’re going nowhere this season, so they may as well help rebuild the settlement.”
“And bring the Hecari down upon this place for a second culling?”
Rhuan bared his teeth at Darmuth in a humorless smile. “Which is why it’s your task to speak with the Watch and any other men people will listen to, to sort out how to prepare for another Hecari party. Sentries, for one, to report back if an approaching party is seen. Jorda’s karavan increases the population the Hecari just reduced; the most obvious plan should be a way to hide them.” Rhuan glanced around. “For a start, save as much of the burned tenting as can be salvaged, and the wood. It’s time the inhabitants learned to transform themselves to ground rats.”
“Ground rats?”
“Have them dig holes,” Rhuan replied succinctly. “Holes large enough to hold several people. But no mounds to mark the burrows; place wood or oilcloth over the top, and dirt over that; air shafts can be kept small and covered with brush.” He pointed with his chin toward the karavan grounds. “If each burrow hole has a wagon over the top, the Hecari may not even think to search. They come only to kill.”
“Rhuan.” Darmuth said it sharply enough that it stopped Rhuan’s thoughts. “This is not a village. It’s not a city. It’s just a transient place where people meet the karavans. It counts for nothing. Why not tell them all simply to go elsewhere? Nothing ties them here.”
Rhuan reined in his temper, replacing it with clipped conciseness. “Have you ever thought about how villages and cities are born, Darmuth?”
The demon frowned. “Why waste my thoughts on such a thing?”
“For you, perhaps it is a waste. But not for me.” Rhuan’s gesture encompassed the settlement with its gaping holes of lost tents. “This is a village. There are people who came here, thinking to move on elsewhere, who remained. There are diviners, and whores, and ale-keepers. A Watch, men who have taken responsibility for keeping people safe. A bathing tent. A common tent for couriers. Cook tents. As karavans come through, usually one or two people remain here. Babies are born. Old folk die and are buried or burned, according to their rites. Sickness can be treated by two different moonmothers. What more do you ask of a village, Darmuth?”
The demon watched Rhuan in evident puzzlement. “But why do you care?”
Rhuan sighed deeply, shrugging as he looked across the denuded settlement. “It appears to be my nature.” He glanced over a shoulder, then lifted the reins of his horse. “I’d best go tell Jorda to lead the wagons to a different place.”
“Wait, Rhuan.”
He briefly halted his mount. “What?”
Darmuth searched his eyes and face. Slowly the pupils of the demon’s eyes elongated. His upper lip lifted, displaying the tips of his teeth. Nostrils flared. After a moment, the face Darmuth showed the world again resembled that of a normal man. “Your nature,” he said, “is polluted by humans.”
Rhuan laughed outright, then tamed it to a grin.
Darmuth did not find the reaction amusing. “You are dioscuri,” he said tightly. “You can choose.”
“Oh, I will choose,” Rhuan said, “when all the tests are completed. When I am completed.”
EVEN SEVERAL DAYS after the Hecari decimation, custom remained slow in Mikal’s ale tent. Now and again a man would come in and ask for spirits, but there was no lingering, no loud, laughing parties inhabiting battered tables, passing early evening before retiring to tents. They came, they drank quickly, they left, as if looking for strength, or relief, or escape in the liquor and gaining none. They brought with them the odor of death on their flesh and in their clothing.
Mikal tenanted the area behind the plank bar as usual, greeting each customer, but the words of welcome lacked sincerity. There was no life in Mikal’s tone, no spark in his eye. Bethid, slouching once again upon a bench at a table near the bar, watched as the big man made every attempt to be himself, and failed.
We none of us can be ourselves, after witnessing the culling.
It had been Bethid’s first, to watch from start to finish. Once before she had come upon a smaller settlement where the Hecari had culled, but it was as the warriors rode away, as the grieving began, not during the killings. The painted warriors had eyed her openly as they departed, fingering bloodied warclubs, but the rich blue courier’s mantle hanging off her shoulders bought her freedom.
The freedom to see what had been done.
And it was that memory, coupled now with everything she had witnessed the day before and today, that had brought Bethid back to Mikal’s tent. Once again she sat with a platter of bread before her and a tall tankard of dark, pungent ale. As countless others had done before her, Bethid used her meat knife to carve a design in the wooden tabletop, a series of sharp, jagged angles, as if she carved her emotions into the wood. She had seen Mikal put a stop to it when others did it, but he said nothing as she cut, nothing as she flicked splinters away with the edge of her knife hand. The sun now was down, and Mikal lighted the tin lanterns, setting them out on the tables. Bethid found the scent of lamp oil and tallow candles more bearable than the odor of burned bodies.
Mikal set a lamp before her. He noticed but did not comment on the mess she had made of the bread loaf, the pelleted crumbs crushed and rolled in clamping fingers, the piles of shredded crust. That destruction had come before Bethid had taken her knife to the table, but nothing soothed the ache of despair in her soul, the fear that accompanied the anger, the conviction that organizing a rebellion was necessary. She knew Brodhi was correct about the risks. She understood and acknowledged that the couriers must be willing to kill to keep their plans safe. But that was the portion of her that burned as fiercely as the fires consuming the ruins of tents, of bodies. There was another portion of her that was ice cold.
Like Brodhi? But she broke off the thought abruptly. Speak of the demon. Brodhi was slipping through the door flap.
Lantern light played across his face, gilding his skin, glinting off ornamentation, bathing the sheen of his hair. And then with a start she realized it wasn’t Brodhi at all. Shoia, yes. But Rhuan.
He was unaccountably grim—and then she remembered that all men would be grim, coming through the tent settlement. Rhuan had not been present for the decimation, but the stench of death and desolation, the odor of desperation would lead him to ask what had happened the moment he arrived. He didn’t come to Mikal’s to find out; he knew.
Then Bethid remembered how he knew: Brodhi had somehow, some way, communicated with Rhuan without leaving the settlement.
Bethid heard the faint clinks and muted chiming of glass and gold as Rhuan walked toward the bar, the quiet tone as he asked for ale. It was not often that she saw the two Shoia together, and less often that she noted the differences between them because there were so many obvious similarities in the long, ornately woven braids, the color of skin and hair, the likeness in build and posture. Rhuan was alone, but his expression now echoed what she witnessed so often on Brodhi’s face. She saw no dimples, no light of laughter in Rhuan’s eyes, no easy grace in his movements.
He turned as Mikal handed him a tankard, saw her, and took the two paces that placed him at her table. She saw the question in his eyes and nodded, gesturing invitation with her knife. Rhuan kicked a stool over and sat down. Long, slender fingers wrapped around the dented pewter ta
nkard, sliding through the curved handle. Foam spilled over the rim and dribbled down to wet his flesh. It painted channels in the dust coating his hand.
She said, “Brodhi reached you.”
Rhuan nodded, lifted the tankard. He drank at least half of the contents before setting it down to foam ale onto the table.
“Will you tell me how he did it?” she asked. “He said it had something to do with being Shoia.”
Rhuan wiped his lips free of foam against the back of his wrist, then nodded. “It’s a Shoia thing, yes. But mostly because we’re kin-in-kind.” He paused. “Cousins.”
Bethid realized his gaze was doing more than looking at her. It was an evaluation. “Yes,” she said flatly, “I’m all right.”
The corner of his mouth jerked in a brief smile, but faded back into thinned grimness. “Jorda turned the karavan around when he heard.”
She had believed he returned on his own because of Brodhi’s message. Now, startled, she sat up straight on her stool. “The whole karavan?”
“There was no choice,” he told her. “Jorda has friends here.”
“What about all of the karavaners? It’s end of season … there are no more karavan-masters readying to go out.”
“They’ll stay,” Rhuan said. “They’ll help rebuild.”
“With what? No supply trains will be here for months.”
“The karavan itself will be the supply train. Each wagon carries the means to begin homes elsewhere, so instead they’ll do it here. There is seed. Livestock. Oilcloth. Wood. People to do the planting and harvesting. People to help, Bethid. Come next season they can restock and go on with Jorda, when he’s ready. Since he returned their fees, it won’t be a hardship.”
“They can’t be happy about it, Rhuan! To lose a whole season because of strangers?”
“Perhaps not,” he agreed, “but they were given a choice: to go on alone or to turn back. All but one family came here when Jorda explained what had happened, especially on the heels of our own encounter with Hecari. But in our case, the warriors were culled. Every one of them.”
She knew better than to ask if he had done the killing. One had only to look at his eyes to know the truth. “Did the Hecari kill anyone there?”
“Only me.” Dimples flashed, framing a white-toothed grin. “But I recovered.”
Bethid shook her head. She could not grasp how it was that a man might die and come back to life. She had asked Brodhi about it more than once, but remained ignorant be- cause he refused to address how it was done. It just was, he’d said.
But for the moment she didn’t care. One in ten people had been killed a few days before, and none of them would recover from it.
“Have you talked to Brodhi?” she asked abruptly.
“Here, I mean. Did he tell you what we plan?”
Rhuan shook his head. “I haven’t seen him.” He drank more ale, the motion of swallowing visible beneath the smooth, sunbrowned skin of his throat.
With her knifetip, Bethid traced the design she had cut into the table, thinking hard. The jagged, sharp, angry design.
After a moment she lifted her eyes to meet his. “Then let me tell you.”
He wasn’t a courier. But he was Brodhi’s kin, and a man who could survive death. Such an individual might come in handy during a rebellion.
Chapter 36
BRODHI, ALONE IN the couriers’ common tent as the sun dropped below the horizon, was at his personal devotions, telling over the Names of the Thousand Gods. He sat on his bedding with legs crossed, flattened palms upturned, eyes closed, murmuring syllables no human had ever heard, and likely could not pronounce. He was on the four hundred and thirty-sixth name when a noise at the drooping door flap interrupted.
Laughter.
Quiet, more of a gust of breath, but laughter all the same. He opened his eyes, expecting Timmon or Alorn, who, like Bethid, had gone to drink, to think, to discuss if they had the belly for rebellion. They were not in the habit of laughing at him—all men and women had one deity or another they served—but Brodhi supposed if they were drunk they might find it amusing to discover him in such a vulnerable position. He did not worship in front of anyone.
But it wasn’t Timmon or Alorn, or even Bethid, who was far less likely to laugh at him anyway.
Rhuan. Of course.
The door flap was only partially pulled back, so that half of Rhuan was obscured by drooping oilcloth. With the darkness behind him and the single hanging lantern in the tent sputtering for want of fuel, he was in flickering chiaroscuro, painted black and ocher.
The grin was wide and white in his pale copper face, dimples deeply shadowed. “You,” Rhuan said. “You. Aiding humans? Planning a rebellion against the Hecari? Guiding the well-intentioned but untrained couriers in revolt? Why Brodhi, if I weren’t so certain they would be killed, I’d say you had changed your colors and are taking an interest in the welfare of humans.”
“They are fools,” Brodhi agreed, resolving to begin anew with his devotions once Rhuan was gone, “but not stupid. They are thinking things through.”
“With your advice?” Dimples flashed again. “You’ll get them killed more quickly than they would themselves.” Rhuan shook his head. “Bethid told me—”
From behind, from the darkness, Rhuan’s head was abruptly jerked back. Brodhi saw the knife blade flash, saw the cut in Rhuan’s throat, saw the drenching gout of blood.
He was on his feet then, his own knife drawn. He grabbed a handful of Rhuan’s tunic as his kinsman sagged and yanked him aside, cursing the impediment; one step outside the door flap and he saw the two men, one with bloodied knife in hand.
Brodhi bloodied his own knife by shoving the blade up under the nearest man’s breastbone. The stranger fell, wrenching the handle from Brodhi’s hand. The second man, mouth agape—they had likely neither of them counted on two Shoia present—turned to run.
Brodhi spun back, took three paces, knelt briefly at Rhuan’s body and yanked from baldric loops two of his knives. At the door flap he threw. One knife. Another. The retreating man fell.
That man’s partner, the one in whose body Brodhi’s knife still resided, wasn’t quite dead.
“Why?” Brodhi asked, leaning over him.
The man’s life was ebbing, but fear stood paramount in blue eyes. “B-bones …”
Of course. Shoia bones.
Brodhi reached out and closed a hand around the horn grip of his knife, jerking the blade free. With a brutal efficiency he slit the dying man’s throat from ear to ear, then went to the body lying facedown upon the ground with Rhuan’s throwing knifes in his spine.
Brodhi flipped him over, driving the short-bladed knives deeper. He bent, once again slashed throat flesh, cleaned his knife on the dead man’s tunic, then turned. Four long strides brought him back to his tent, and to the lake of blood flowing across the packed dirt floor. To the slack, tumbled limbs, the fanning out of multiple braids. Rhuan’s face was obscured by the woven plaits.
Brodhi sighed. “You’re making a proper mess of things. That’s Bethid’s pallet; I suppose I’ll have to give her mine.” With a booted foot he scraped a film of dirt from the packed earth and tried to dam the blood flow before it reached his pallet. “One of your more dramatic deaths, I believe.”
Rhuan’s limbs jerked. He coughed weakly, groaned, then rolled over onto his back. Braids fell aside, baring a pale, blood-spattered face and the slowly healing flesh of a riven throat. He clamped a hand to the wound, then swore in the same tongue Brodhi had used to name off the Thousand Gods. After a moment he levered himself up to a seated position. Bloodied hands pushed braids behind his shoulder; then he saw the cascade of blood staining the front of his tunic.
Rhuan made an inarticulate sound of annoyance, frustration, and disgust, then lifted his eyes to Brodhi’s. “That’s twice!” he said aggrievedly. “Twice in a matter of days!”
“Apparently you make enemies more often than friends.” Brodhi wiped at his own fac
e, realizing that it also was splattered with Rhuan’s blood. He gestured. “Get up. You can be useful by cleaning up after your own mess; bring in some loose soil to cover all this blood.”
Rhuan, face twisted, was feeling at his scalp. “He almost ripped the hair out of my head.”
“It wasn’t your hair he wanted.” Brodhi made a more definitive gesture. “Get up, Rhuan. The others don’t need to come back and find a lake of blood in their tent.”
“Oh. Bones.” Rhuan rose, though he was as yet not quite steady on his feet. He stepped to the door flap and pulled it open. “Ah. Two of them. Well, let Hezriah have their bones, not mine.”
“Hezriah’s dead. Culled.” Brodhi picked up Bethid’s pallet by the soggy end and dragged it toward the opening. “And don’t bother with the Watch, because Kendic’s dead, too.”
Rhuan moved out of the way as Brodhi pulled the blood-soaked pallet out of the tent. A hand on the door flap found dampness; he looked and saw blood. A generous spray had spurted across the tent and stained the oilcloth walls.
Brodhi reappeared. “You’re wobbling,” he noted. “Lie down on my pallet for a moment. I’m going to drag these bodies and Bethid’s bloodied pallet away from the tent, so they don’t draw predators too close.” He paused. “There’s a waterskin there, and a washing cloth there, by my bed. Clean yourself up. If Timmon, Alorn, or Bethid come back any time soon, they’re likely to drop dead of shock, and then I’ll have more bodies to deal with.”
He waited as Rhuan once again frowned down at his ruined tunic, brushing ineffectively at the still-wet stains. Muttering imprecations against men who ruined his clothing as well as killing him, he managed to sit down without falling over.
Considering he and Rhuan had as little to do with one another as possible, Brodhi realized he had of late done more than his fair share of looking after his kin-in-kind. Shaking his head in disgust, he departed the tent to tend to men, human men, who lived only once, and remained dead when killed.
Karavans Page 31
