Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  “In the trees.”

  “Can you see it now?”

  Audrun crawled out from under the wagon even as he did. “No. But it was back in the trees.”

  Davyn rose. In the Maiden’s moonlight, Audrun saw the brief sheen of naked knife blade. “Guide me.”

  She hesitated. “Should we go back there?”

  He looked down at her. “Well, either we go see if whatever it is has departed, or we spend the rest of the night huddling under the wagon, too frightened to sleep.”

  His point was well taken. Audrun sighed and moved beside him, remaining on his left so as not to impede his knife-arm. “This way.”

  “Lantern?”

  Quickly Audrun found and relighted it, hoping this time it would remain alight. Davyn nodded and stepped out.

  She was no happier going toward the place where she had seen the eyes than when she backed away. But Davyn had always been a man who went to potential trouble, who resolved things rather than ignoring the problems and hoping they would go away.

  Audrun stopped him at the big oak. Both of them kept their voices low. “I was here.” She searched the darkness. “The lantern went out; it looks different, now.” She opened the small door to provide more illumination and raised the lantern. She heard the quiet breath expelled abruptly from Davyn’s mouth. “Are you laughing?”

  “Audrun, you saw the oxen.” He gestured with the knife. “See?”

  The flame guttered slightly as she turned the lantern so the open door faced the direction Davyn indicated. She saw the shadowed bulk of two fawn-colored bodies and the glint of huge bovine eyes as they looked toward the light.

  But she was certain. “It wasn’t the oxen.”

  “Audrun—”

  “It wasn’t the oxen. I know oxen, Davyn! And besides, the lantern went out; how am I to see the reflection of the oxen’s eyes in the darkness without a lantern? Under the trees, there isn’t enough moon for light.” She pointed to her left, away from the oxen. “It was there, Davyn. Over there.” Before he could respond, she added, “The oxen are hobbled. I would have heard them had they moved from there to here. They’re not quiet beasts.” It struck her as ludicrous that they would be arguing in whispers over draft animals in the middle of the night, but she stood firm. “What I saw came from there.”

  “And is it there now?”

  She clenched her teeth, hearing the note in his tone that divulged his continuing doubt. “No.”

  Davyn said nothing for long moments, as if sorting through responses that wouldn’t hurt her feelings. “Well, it’s gone now. I guess we can go back to bed. Tomorrow we should reach the turnoff.”

  Audrun didn’t budge. “I did see something, Davyn. Something that was indisputably not oxen.”

  “All right. I believe you. Let’s go back.”

  But he didn’t believe her, she knew. He still thought she had seen the oxen. And either they could continue to argue out here in the darkness or they could return to the wagon and attempt to salvage the remainder of their sleep.

  “Here.” Audrun thrust the lantern toward him. “Hold this.” As he received the lantern, she began to gather up blanket and skirt folds.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I came out here to relieve myself,” she said sharply, “and I’m going to finish the task. The least you can do is stand guard, in case the oxen with glowing eyes decide to come trample me.”

  Davyn’s laughter this time wasn’t so suppressed.

  Chapter 39

  RHUAN CAME BACK to himself, aware of Brodhi speaking. The first few words meant nothing because of passing disorientation, but as Brodhi assured him the vow would hold, that he would give Ferize the Hearing with no opinions expressed, he felt a sense of relief. Brodhi was one who highly valued the rituals of their people; if he swore a vow, he maintained it. And now the Hearing was completed, and he felt an overwhelming peacefulness in his spirit coupled with the weariness of a long-ignored duty discharged.

  He opened his eyes, smiling, just as Brodhi said, “You are a monster.”

  Smile, relief, and peacefulness fled.

  “What—” But his kinsman was ducking under branches to vacate the space between trunk and low branches. “Brodhi!” Rhuan thrust a hand against the blankets and pushed himself upright, ripping aside the swaying branches. “Brodhi, wait—” Free of tangled branches at last, he saw his kinsman’s back, held very straight, as Brodhi strode away.

  A monster?

  You are a monster.

  Rhuan broke into a ragged run. As he reached Brodhi he put out a hand, clamped down on a forearm and yanked his kinsman partway around. It was the best he could do.

  Brodhi shed the grasping hand easily, jerking his arm away, but he did stop and turn to face Rhuan fully. The campfires in the tent settlement were behind him, outlining his shoulders, glinting off braid ornamentation. They were nearly clear of the trees. “Oh, did you not hear me?” Brodhi asked with exquisite scorn.

  Rhuan, nearly swaying with exhaustion, kept to his feet by sheer nerves and strength of will. “I heard you.”

  “And you want to know why I would call you such a thing?” The tone remained delicately contemptuous.

  “Brodhi—”

  But Brodhi raised a silencing hand. “Let me ask this: How can you claim yourself the get of your sire? He is a lord over lesser lords …a primary, Rhuan! Yet you dismiss his blood and heritage as if they had no meaning, no weight in the world. Our world, Rhuan! This one is not. It belongs to the humans, given to them thousands of years ago, as the humans count time. This world is not for us. We are of different blood. We are of better blood. We are made to rule—”

  Rhuan cut him off. “I don’t wish to rule.”

  “And that’s part of it,” Brodhi declared, habitual self-control falling away. “You wish to be a servant. A plaything. A gamepiece on the board, instead of a primary working the board.”

  “Not a servant,” Rhuan answered. “Precisely otherwise, in fact. I want freedom, Brodhi—”

  “The kind the humans know?” Brodhi turned his head aside and spat. “I am ashamed of you. Shamed by you—”

  Exhaustion dissipated in the rush of anger. “What I want has less than nothing to do with you, Brodhi! There is no shame when a man makes his own choices.”

  “A dioscuri,” Brodhi stated. “The moment your sire’s seed took root, you were a dioscuri. More than man.”

  “Not my choice,” Rhuan said evenly. “But I am given a choice now—or will be, when my journey is completed. In the confines of the Hearing, you know what that choice is.”

  “Monster.”

  “No, Brodhi—”

  But Brodhi, ablaze with righteous fury, overrode him. “You shame your sire, you shame me, you shame my sire! You shame every one of our people!”

  “I do no such thing! I make a choice, nothing more. Do you think I am the first to do so? To make such a choice?”

  “Millennia!” Brodhi used the human term. “Not in millennia has such a choice been made.”

  “But the point of the journey is to make that choice, Brodhi. To know fully what one wishes. To understand what one is. To select a future.” Rhuan barely managed a casual half-shrug. “It shouldn’t matter to you what my choice is. Our sires have many children.”

  “But not dioscuri,” Brodhi said. “You know that. We were born to be what our sires are, not what the other children are. They are as nothing.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Let them remain as they are. Servants. Unblooded. Impure. But we have the blood, Rhuan! There is only one choice for dioscuri. And you throw it away!”

  “While you throw away the value of the choice,” Rhuan retorted. “You devalue the journey, the meaning of the word. We are sent on this journey so that we can be certain of our futures, of our self-worth.”

  “I was certain of my future and my self-worth from the time I was a youngling,” Brodhi declared. “I told the primaries that. I told them there was no need.”

>   “And perhaps that’s why they set you on the journey.” Rhuan grinned reflexively, though it held little humor. “They don’t want you swearing yourself to them, to be one of them, when you know nothing else.”

  “From the cradle I’ve known what I am meant to be.”

  “What you think you’re meant to be,” Rhuan corrected. “Your arrogance blinds you to anything else.”

  Brodhi expelled a blurt of incredulous laughter. “Arrogance? I’m dioscuri.”

  “And thus superior to everyone else in the world save the primaries. Save your own sire.”

  “Yes,” Brodhi said.

  Rhuan sighed. Weariness threatened his ability to think, to speak clearly. “Take comfort, then, in your conviction. Know before completion what choice you will make. Be certain that you will one day be a primary yourself.”

  “I do. I will be.”

  “And I will complete an honest journey, so that when the day comes to tell the primaries what I wish for my future they will know I make that choice out of experience, out of understanding, not out of self-delusion.”

  Brodhi shook his head. “You shame me.”

  “Ah.” Rhuan nodded. “Well, be pleased, then, that we will not share status—nor one another’s presence—when we have achieved completion. Your path leads one way, mine another.”

  Brodhi’s tone was clipped. “As it does now.”

  Rhuan watched him spin and walk away. He let him go, making no more attempt to hold him back. Brodhi at his most stubborn was impossible.

  Monster.

  “No,” he said aloud in the wake of Brodhi’s departure. “My worth is not measured by you. My decision is not to be questioned by you. There is no shame attached to the choice I will make at the end of the journey. There is no shame.”

  Rhuan pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He could barely think straight.

  Well, Brodhi had taken himself and his ritual objects away, but the blankets and oilcloth remained. Rhuan made his way back to the tree and pulled branches aside, ducking down into the womblike area between limbs and trunk.

  He knelt down with care upon the blankets, facing the tree trunk. With equal care he set both hands and his brow against the trunk in supplication.

  Rhuan closed his eyes. So weary … “Elderling,” he said shakily in the tongue of his people, “bear watch over me this night. Share with me your tranquility.”

  A HORRIFIC HOWLING startled Audrun out of the light doze she had eventually achieved following the incident with the eyes. She started to sit bolt upright and very nearly smacked her head against the floorboards of the wagon before recalling there wasn’t enough headroom. Davyn too was awake, attempting to untangle himself from blankets.

  The howl climbed in pitch until it was very nearly a screech, similar to the almost humanlike shriek of a hare caught by a predator, but markedly louder, stronger, and of greater duration. Yet as she and Davyn both crawled out from under the wagon, the noise stopped as if cut off. Now Audrun could hear Megritte inside the wagon crying in fear, Ellica’s unsuccessful attempts to quiet her, and Torvic’s immature voice asking over and over again what the noise was.

  “What is it?” Audrun whispered tensely to Davyn.

  “Some kind of animal. Not human.”

  Audrun’s outstretched hand on the sideboards guided her to the rear of the wagon, where she peeled aside folds of oilcloth and climbed up into the high, huge conveyance, yanking skirts out of her way. “Meggie, it’s all right. I’m here. Gillan, go ahead and light the lantern. Meggie—I’m right here.” The floorboards were a nest of thin pallets and blankets. She found her youngest daughter curled into a ball in her bedding. Audrun knelt and folded back the shielding blankets, then pulled Megritte up so she could wrap arms around her. “It’s all right, Meggie. We’re here. Shhhhhh.”

  Gillan struck sparks with flint and steel and lighted the lantern hanging from the Mother Rib. All the faces were visible now, showing fear and apprehension.

  Davyn stood outside at the back of the wagon, holding oilcloth aside. “It’s just an animal,” he said reassuringly. “And it’s not even that close—”

  He was interrupted as the howling began again, once more ranging up into an ear-piercing shriek. Ellica clapped her hands over her ears as Gillan winced. Torvic, silenced, was wide-eyed and staring. Megritte, predictably, held onto her mother more tightly than ever, adding a thin wail to the cacophony. Fortunately most of her contribution was muffled against Audrun’s shoulder.

  Ellica lifted her voice over the unearthly shriek. “It’s going to deafen me!”

  The noise broke off as abruptly as before. Audrun somehow found a smile and offered it to Torvic. “It sounds rather like you used to, when you didn’t get your way. Last week, I think it was, wasn’t it?”

  He blinked at her, most of his mind on the noise, but then natural defensiveness reasserted itself. “It does not!”

  She glanced at Davyn, still standing at the back of the wagon. She opened her mouth to say something more when the night was broken a third time by the wailing howl. Davyn grimaced, then climbed up, wagon planks creaking. Pitching his voice to carry over the noise, he said, “Well, if this continues we’re none of us going to get any more sleep. So, shall we tell stories?” He settled down next to Audrun, setting his spine against one of the traveling trunks. “Meggie?”

  She lifted a tear-stained face, voice still choked. “I don’t want to!”

  As the shriek died out again, Audrun sighed and stroked Megritte’s sleep-tangled pale hair, exchanging a rueful glance with her husband. But she couldn’t blame Megritte; if she didn’t have to be brave for her children, she might prefer curling into a ball with the blankets pulled over her head as well.

  “Meggie?” Davyn reached out to touch his daughter’s head. “All will be well,” he told her in his deep, soothing voice. “It’s just noise. It doesn’t concern us.”

  Gillan, who looked no more pleased than his youngest sister, said forcefully, “I’ve never heard anything like that!”

  Audrun could feel Davyn’s shrug against her. “Well, we haven’t seen every animal in the world,” he said reasonably. “Different kinds live in different areas.”

  The intentional lightness in his tone did not fool Audrun. He was attempting to put them all at ease, but she knew he was concerned about the very thing that had leaped to the forefront of her mind.

  Each revolution of the wagon wheels, each step forward, brought them closer to Alisanos.

  Or brought Alisanos closer to them.

  AS HE NEARED the fringe of the tents, Brodhi had to stop. His anger at Rhuan had not cooled, and he dared not permit any humans to see him. His vision had hazed so that he saw the world in reddish hues, and his flesh, including his scalp, stung and tingled unpleasantly. He needed his self-control back in place before he returned to the couriers’ tent.

  It crossed his mind that ale might help, but that would require him to walk into Mikal’s tent where others drank. Unwise, in his present state. Best he just go to the couriers’ tent and try to get some sleep.

  He closed his eyes and attempted to will away the anger, but it remained very near the surface of his emotions. He almost never lost his temper or self-control, but Rhuan had managed to kindle both. And every time Brodhi listened to the exchange in his mind, the anger heated again. At this rate he’d never be able to return to the tent.

  Brodhi swore inventively in the human tongue, switched to his own, then at last ran out of invective. To replace it, he began to tell over the Names of the Thousand Gods. If nothing else restored his sense of self and cooled his anger, that should.

  By the time he reached the twenty-first Name, he felt better. At thirty-two the worst of the anger was banished. By thirty-six he felt much more himself, so he set off for the tent. He continued the Naming as he followed the familiar pathway through the remaining tents, and as he reached the courier tent he ended the ritual on the forty-second Name. The anger was burie
d, though not the contempt.

  As Brodhi pulled back the loosened door flap, he found Bethid standing in the center with her back to the entrance. Startled, she spun around. Eyes widened as she identified him. “I thought you were dead!”

  She had lighted the lantern. He could see her expression clearly, the residue of horror. “No.”

  Bethid gestured. “All this blood …”

  He looked where she indicated. Yes, there was blood splattered across the oilcloth sidewalls. “Not mine. Rhuan’s.”

  “Is he dead?”

  Brodhi found himself regretting his answer. “No.”

  “What in the name of the Mother happened here?”

  He was disinclined to enter into a lengthy conversation, but Bethid was due some explanation. It was her pallet that had taken the brunt of Rhuan’s blood, even if he had replaced it with his own. “Two men thought they would kill Rhuan for his bones.”

  Bethid blinked at him, brass ear-hoops glinting in the lamplight. “Did you kill them?”

  “Of course.”

  “Both?”

  “Of course.” He set his beaded bag at the foot of the space where his pallet had been, recalling with annoyance that his blankets remained at the tree. Well, he had his mantle, even if it was summerweight.

  “’Of course,’” Bethid echoed blankly. Then she shook herself out of startlement. “Is he all right now? Did he revive?”

  “He revived.” Brodhi took his mantle down from its hook. The Hearing had tired him and he wished to sleep, pallet or no. He draped the cloak over a shoulder and sat down on packed dirt, preparing to pull off his boots. He could use his beaded bag and a doubled arm as a pillow.

  After a moment Bethid sat down on what was now her pallet, beginning the effort to take her boots off as well and arrange them at the foot of her pallet. “We told Rhuan about our plans,” she said in a subdued tone. “He was less than enthusiastic.”

  Boots shed, Brodhi settled his bag at the place where his head would rest. “What do you expect of a man who refuses to accept responsibility?”

  “He laughed at us.”