Karada nudged the chain with her foot. “I learned from the Silvanesti troublesome things are less troubling when you chain them up.”
She sat down cross-legged in front of Nacris, just out of arm’s reach. She and her old foe were of an age, but Nacris’s hard life had taken its toll. Nacris looked years older than her former chief.
Bluntly, Karada spoke her thoughts. “You look like a day-old corpse. What curse has afflicted you?”
“A curse with your name.”
“You made your own misery, woman. Don’t blame it on me.”
Instead of biting back, Nacris smiled. She extended her good leg and stretched luxuriously.
“I’ve learned much in the years since your friend Duranix saw fit to maim me for life. That was the start of my journey to wisdom. It’s taken a long time and much bloodshed, but I’ve nearly reached my goal.”
“What goal?”
“Your humiliation and death.” When her words brought no response from her hated enemy, Nacris added, “And a painful death for all you love, starting with Amero.”
Karada lashed out, taking Nacris by the throat and forcing her down on her back. With her free hand she brought the flint knife to her enemy’s throat.
“I am your death!” Karada snarled. “Why do you think I let you live this long? My warriors could have slain you with your green-skinned killers, but I reserved that deed to myself!”
“Then do it!” Nacris hissed. She continued grinning widely, eyes bulging from their sockets.
Karada let the flint blade bite a little. Nacris felt the sting and started to laugh. Furious, flinging the knife aside, Karada tightened her grip on the woman’s throat.
Nacris’s laughter choked off as the pressure increased. She gasped, “If I die... you’ll never... find... your brother!”
“Fool! Amero lives in spite of your plots!”
“Your other brother!” Nacris gurgled.
The world went black before Nacris’s eyes, and a terrible roaring, as loud as any dragon’s cry, filled her ears. She felt herself falling down a deep pit like the one Sthenn inhabited in his forest lair.
Then the air lightened, and she could see again and breathe. The face of her hated enemy was still above her. Nacris drew in a long, deep breath. Her throat felt as raw as an open wound.
“Speak, hag,” Karada said. “Explain your words, and I’ll grant you the mercy of a swift death.”
After another ragged inhale, Nacris rasped, “Like your dragon’s mercy – flinging me into the lake and breaking my leg in three places.”
She said nothing more, merely struggled back upright and sat glaring at Karada.
The nomad chieftain stood and regarded her without pity. “Why say these things if you don’t care whether I understand you?” she said and turned to go.
“You did have another brother, didn’t you?” Nacris finally murmured.
“What of it? He died long ago, killed by the same yevi pack that slew my father and mother.”
“Did he?” Eyes of bloodshot gray locked with hazel. “Did you see his body? No? You believed Amero dead for many years, too, didn’t you?”
Karada gave a disgusted snort. “Your lies know no limits, viper! I came here to offer you an honorable death, but I see you’re not worthy of it. I think I’ll have Pakito toss you in the lake again. If we tie a stone around your neck, maybe this time you’ll stay down.”
Nacris grinned. “You cannot kill me, Karada. Not while I know something you must find out!”
She continued to shout as Karada lifted the flap and went out. The guards were just returning, and Nacris’s obscene threats against their chief were so awful the two warriors blanched.
“No one else is to see her,” Karada told them. “No one.”
The shouted imprecations grew even louder. “I’ll send wine. Drink it yourselves or give it to her, whichever leads to peace sooner.”
*
After eating with the villagers, Beramun wandered away. Pleased as she was they’d reached Yala-tene in time, knowing the bloodshed was going to continue tomorrow oppressed her deeply.
Her mission was over, her duty to Amero fulfilled. Zannian’s plans were undone. She once vowed to see him die as payment for the deaths of her family, but her lust for blood had dimmed. Neither a resident of Yala-tene nor a member of Karada’s band, Beramun wanted most to be back on the open plain and far away from the Valley of the Falls.
So what was keeping her here? The wide world was waiting. Why not go now?
She’d wandered aimlessly away from the great central campfire, passing through ring after ring of nomad tents. By the time she looked up from her musings, she was on open ground east of camp. Cedarsplit Gap was clearly in view under the combined light of Moonmeet. The way was not clear, however.
In front of her was a ring of stakes and vines, like a temporary ox pen. Huddled figures filled the ring, most lying on the ground under scraps of hide. Nomads on horseback rode slowly around the ring.
She accosted one rider. “What is this?” she asked.
“Raiders we caught today,” said the nomad. “We spared them when they threw down their arms.”
The surrendered men, no more than forty in all, looked utterly beaten. Stripped of face paint, weapons, and horses, they had ceased to be fearsome raiders.
Beramun slowly circled the pen, studying the men she’d feared for so long. She wondered if the ones who’d killed her family were present. She tried to see their nightmarish faces in the tired, pathetic prisoners before her.
Most of the captured men were sleeping, curled up in tight groups for warmth. A few, sick or wounded, whimpered and coughed. Near the fence, one man sat alone. He’d removed his torn leggings and was patiently trying to mend them by the light of the two moons.
Seeing her, he called out a greeting. She moved quickly to get past him. He stood and started paralleling her on the inside of the fence, but she kept her eyes straight ahead and walked faster.
“You look like you’re escaping from someone,” he called. “With a face as beautiful as yours, it must be a lover.”
“Mind your own troubles!” she snapped, halting.
He was tall and well made, with hair almost as long as her own, though somewhat lighter in color and tied back with a scrap of leather. His feet and ankles were badly scraped. No wonder his leggings were in tatters, she thought.
“You look kind, fair one,” he said. “I need to mend my leggings. Have you a bone needle to lend a wanderer like yourself?”
She snorted. “You should have stayed a wanderer, raider.” Beramun resumed walking, though she couldn’t remember where she’d been going.
“My name is Harak, fair one! I come from Khar land, in the south.”
She stopped, turned around, and came back. Without explanation, she unwound her own leggings. Harak watched silently, and when she handed them to him, he smiled and thanked her.
Just then a guard rode up. “What are you doing?” he asked Beramun.
“This man needs leggings,” she said. “I lent him mine.”
“He’s a raider!”
“Not by choice!” Harak declared. He placed a hand over his heart. “Taken by Zannian, I had to join them or become a slave. I couldn’t bear being held captive, so I rode for Zannian as a scout. Is that so terrible?”
“Pay him no mind,” said the guard. “He’s been talking like that since we caught him. Anyone who speaks so well must be a liar.”
“I think you’re right,” she said dryly, and started to walk on.
“Where are you going?” asked the guard. “The mountains are not safe yet, what with ogres in the valley.”
Beramun looked back at the moonlit camp and the walled town beyond it. “I was just out walking. I’m going back to camp.”
The guard nodded and rode away. Harak pressed against the vine fence and said, “What’s your name, lovely one? You know mine now. You saved my feet and I’d like to thank you.”
She cast a glance ov
er her shoulder. “Beramun.”
*
When she was gone, Harak sat down and wound the buckskin strips around his legs. So that’s Beramun, he thought. Zan wasn’t a total fool. If he had to be obsessed with a female, at least he’d found a pretty one – beautiful in fact. Fortunately for Harak, she also had a good heart. The leggings were a little short, but they would do.
Harak stretched out on the ground and tucked his hands behind his head. Clouds were creeping in from the east, blotting out the stars and softening the glory of the two blazing moons. Thoughts of the lovely nomad girl gave way to more practical concerns.
Clouds like those meant rain was coming. Harak sighed. He hated being out in the rain. Maybe he could talk his way into a tent tomorrow or one of those piles of stone the villagers lived in. He’d like to see the inside of one of those.
*
Hoten studied the encroaching clouds. “Storm coming,” he said.
He and the surviving captains sat around a crackling fire, passing a skin of pulpy wine back and forth. There was little talk, and no boastful war songs were sung.
They’d left Almurk with a thousand fighting men and over four hundred slaves. The Master, their own green dragon, had flown overhead, terrifying everyone in their path. No one could stand against them – single families and entire bands alike fled or succumbed. The raiders had taken weapons, oxen, goats, and anything else they had wanted. Everything had been fine until they’d entered this accursed valley.
Sthenn had abandoned them. The mud-toes of Arku-peli were beaten in the field, but they refused to submit like normal folk and hid inside their stone pile. What sort of fight was this, Hoten grumbled silently, with women, children, and old people throwing rocks down on your head? Real men, real warriors, got on horseback and did battle face to face.
Only three hundred raiders were left. The rest were dead or had deserted. True, Ungrah-de and his ogres were still there. Six of the brutes had perished in the fighting, leaving twenty-four ready for the final battle. The raiders could hear the ogres in their own camp on the stony hill, pounding their drums and grunting like the beasts they were. Though astonishing fighters, twenty-four ogres weren’t any guarantee against hundreds of hard-riding nomads – and Karada.
Hoten shook his head. Karada herself stood against them! Many of the raider captains around the fire would have preferred to ride with her than with Zannian, even before fortune had brought them to this sorry state.
He drank and remembered his own days in Karada’s band. He’d been at the battle of the Thon-Tanjan, when Silvanesti cavalry stole victory from Karada’s hands. He’d ridden away with the rebel leaders Sessan, Hatu, and Nacris, all of them thinking Karada would perish fighting hordes of armored elves. Sessan had died in single combat with Karada, and Hatu had vanished one day, just after they left Arku-peli; his blood-spattered mount returned riderless a day later.
Karada survived, of course. She always survived. Many plainsmen believed she was a spirit and couldn’t be killed. Mutterings to that effect could be heard this very night in the raiders’ camp.
Nacris was gone now too, probably dead. Hoten did not grieve for his mate. She was so consumed with hatred that death would be the only rest she could know. Tomorrow he would join her. Their spirits would dwell together forever on the endless, high plain of the sky.
Zannian walked into the circle of firelight. He glittered from head to toe in bronze armor and bright body paint. The sullen raiders, eyes downcast, turned toward him, like flowers to the sun.
“Well, here’s a proper funeral,” he said. “Who’s dead?”
“We are,” groaned one raider.
Zannian drew a long sword from his scabbard. The scrape of metal made the assembled warriors flinch. A few edged away.
“Then leave!” Zan shouted. “Pick up your packs, mount your horses, and be gone! I would not die in the company of such weaklings and cowards!” He smacked the blade against the elven breastplate he wore. “You heard me! Leave! If I have to fight tomorrow with only Ungrah-de at my side, I shall!”
“We’re not cowards, Zan,” said a weary captain. “Six hundred nomads and the villagers! The odds are too great against us.”
“And when were they not? When we began our ride, the whole world was against us! How has anything changed?”
“But Karada —”
He laughed. “Are you scared of a scarred old woman? I’m not! She bleeds and dies like anyone. Ungrah has sworn to take her head home to his mountain lair. Anyone here want to wager against the ogre chief?”
No one spoke. Zannian laughed again.
“What did you think your lives would be like?” he went on, walking round the fire. When he found a raider nodding with drink or sleep, he kicked the man awake. “Did you think you would grow old riding the plains, fighting and taking the land’s bounty in your hands? Idiots! Any of us, any day, could stop a lucky spear thrust. So what if we die tomorrow? What does it matter, so long as you’ve lived as a true warrior?”
The chief dragged a burning limb out of the fire and held it up. “Better to see death coming than let it sneak up on you,” he declared.
Their leader’s words began to sink in. The raiders lost their slouch and regained some of their confidence.
Hoten asked quietly, “Have you any regrets about the way things have gone, Zan?”
Zannian’s wild grin fled. He tossed the flaming brand back on the fire. “Only one – the black-haired girl. I would’ve liked to have had her, at least a while.” He shrugged broadly, then said, with another grin, “Will you let the ogres outshine us? Listen to them rant and roar! Can’t the Raiders of Almurk do better than that?”
Two of the captains stood, a little unsteady from minor wounds and raw brew. Arms linked around each other’s shoulders, they began to sing. Their voices were ragged as they wove their way through “The Endless
Plain,” but Zannian circled around the fire and joined them. One by one, raiders still sober enough stood and joined in. In the rest of the camp, sleeping men awoke to the sound and crawled out of their bedrolls to lend their voices. Soon all the remaining raiders were bellowing out the old song – all but one.
Hoten had no voice left. He stared into the fire and nourished his nerve with dreams of his own death. It could not come too soon.
*
From the walls of Yala-tene, restless Amero heard loud singing rising from the raiders’ camp. It drowned out the inhuman rumble of the ogres and echoed weirdly off the cliffs behind the village.
Alone on a hillock outside her camp, Karada heard it too. She’d gone out alone to prepare herself for battle. Stripped to the skin, she washed in cold spring water. While her hair was still damp, she applied spirit marks to her face, stomach, thighs, and feet. Without realizing it, she hummed along with the song the raiders were singing. The strangeness of it struck her as she finished applying the last of the marks to her feet. “The Endless Plain” was a song her mother, Kinar, used to sing to her children to cheer them on their wanderings. Strange she should hear it now, after so long.
Her damp skin dimpled with gooseflesh. Donning her buckskins, Karada sat down to await the rising sun.
Chapter 12
Beramun woke slowly. The small tent, normally stifling in the summer, was pleasantly cool. She turned her head and saw the top flap waving in a stiff breeze. Clouds were rushing past in the patch of sky she could see.
She got up, disentangling herself from Mara. The girl had crept in silently late last night, lain down beside Beramun, and gone to sleep. She remained huddled against Beramun’s back all night and did not wake even when Beramun pushed her aside.
Her left shoulder twinged when she stood, and Beramun drew in breath sharply at the sudden discomfort. She must have strained her muscles during the hard ride here, or perhaps she’d slept awkwardly on her arm. She’d hardly been able to move at all, so close to her had Mara slept. With a glare at Mara, Beramun worked her arm in slow circles and walked o
utside.
The whole camp was stirring. Dawn was breaking, and the nomads were on their feet, grooming horses and gathering their weapons.
As she looked around for Karada, Beramun noticed the nomads weren’t preparing their bows and arrows as they usually did. A chilly, damp gust of wind swirled past her, and she realized why. A storm was coming. Rain made bowstaves soft, strings stretch, and warped arrows, rendering the weapons useless. Karada’s band would have to fight the old way, with spear and sword.
A stronger gust of wind rattled tents and snuffed cooking fires. The peaks south of the waterfall were partially obscured by low, white clouds. In their wake came heavier plumes of gray, gravid with rain. The cold wind made Beramun’s aching shoulder throb. She made a disgusted face. The old folks always complained of pains when the weather changed.
North of the nomads’ camp, the Silvanesti had finished their preparations for battle. Armed and ready, they stood in a neat line behind their lord. The elves had made a banner from a scrap of white doeskin. Tacked to the skin was the starburst crest from Balif’s helmet. Though fighting under Karada’s command, they would go into battle under the standard of their sovereign, Silvanos, Speaker of the Stars.
Beramun saw the elves arrayed and was struck by their calm manner. Behind her the nomads fairly boiled with activity, and she was sure the raider camp was in a similar state. These elves were curious folk.
Pakito’s voice sounded, booming orders. Where the amiable giant was, Karada was sure to be near, so Beramun headed in that direction.
Amero arrived with a small group of villagers to fight beside his sister. Though he looked bone-weary, he walked confidently at the head of his little troop. With him were Lyopi, Hekani, and forty-eight villagers still willing and able to lend their lives to the final battle. They were raggedly dressed and armed with a motley collection of weapons, but one glance at their determined faces told the nomads the villagers were not to be discounted.
Amero led them to the high ground west of Karada’s camp, a stony knoll formed by years of rain washing gravel down the valley. Once the villagers were in place, the Silvanesti marched out, taking up a position on the north side of the same hill. The two groups looked at each other across open ground, awkward and curious at the same time. Still, it was comforting to have the ordered ranks of Silvanesti standing with and not against them.
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