by K. Johansen
Commander Balba prepared to lead an expedition to seize the mountain watchtower and destroy the dam, opening the road to Lissavakail and the wealth of the mountain mines. A small company. The warrior-priestesses of Attalissa were legend, he said, not a truth to be feared.
Not like the death-worms of the sands.
Perhaps Prince Dimas had taken his wiser commanders on to Marakand.
The air was heavy, hot, and they did not even have a wizard’s light to find their way. Not that there could be any turning aside, or any hazard left to trip over that they had not left themselves. Jolanan was sweating and not sure whether it was the close air or the darkness itself that was so stifling. She felt she could hardly breathe, as if something squeezed her like a giant fist about her ribs with every inhalation. A good horse under her and a lance cradled in her arm…here she was a beetle under a stone, waiting for someone to step on it and crush her.
Tashi, beside her, touched her arm. “All right?” A whisper. A breath. The streets were too close above them.
She took a deep breath, aware, then, how her heart raced; she was almost panting. She had avoided the tunnel, had always been in the warehouse, carrying the baskets of rubble, filling the emptied grain-bins, first, and then raising the floor, layer by layer, till there were a few places where the tallest men had to duck under the beams of the attic floor above, where they ate their cold meals and slept in their exhausted shifts, lying alongside one another, men and women, friends and strangers, so many dust-coated corpses laid out, awaiting burial—
She wrenched her mind away from that thought, wiped her hand on the skirt of her coat, crawled on.
“Yes,” she told the young miner. “Sorry.”
Hand touched hand. She didn’t suppose even the miners, folk of villages from the territories of both Lissavakail and the Narvabarkash, felt at home in this utter dark.
This was blindness. This was the axe taking both her eyes.
“Steady,” Rifat whispered, ahead of her. “Low place here. You’ll fit, but keep down. Just keep going, don’t panic. It’s not far.”
Was her fear so obvious ?
They had been warned of this low place, where the digging had hit stone the miners said should not be cut away, for some mysterious miners’ reason. Twenty paces long, Tashi had said. Not far at all, if you could stand upright and pace it. Crawling on your belly like a worm, with a mass of stone over you, a town, streets, buildings, weight pressing down…
“Sera is with us,” Tashi said. Not his goddess, not hers, but she took a deep breath and repeated it, voiceless, but shaping the words like a prayer in her mouth. Sera is with us. Horse-goddess of Serakallash. Lady of the undying waters, who had survived a devil’s conquest and been born again from a stone. Whisper of wind past her. The presence of the goddess.
Sera, and Attalissa and her brother Narva of the deep mines, who sent them here. And memory of Jayala, give her strength. She touched her temples, her cheeks, feeling not for scars, just touching the tattoos. She was of the Jayala’arad. She had fought wolf and bear and devil’s scouts alone. She had ridden into battle at the Blackdog’s side. She was not afraid of…a little dark, a little close space. She would not be.
“I’m beside you,” Tashi said.
He always was. Jolanan was not certain how she felt about that.
Plenty of room, they had been told, those who had not yet been down the tunnel. You don’t want to rear your head up, or your rump—a bit of weary laughter, a bit of poking at the stouter among them—but you won’t get yourself hung up, even with your gear. Just go carefully, no more than two abreast, don’t shove the person ahead, not everyone’s easy in the dark, just keep going and we’ll all get through fine. Everything’s solid, everything’s propped and braced where it needs to be propped and braced, the folk of Narva know what they’re doing and the gods are with us.
Grit pattered down on them. Something happening, up above. It was night. Nothing should be passing in the streets. The earth itself, moving…no. Nothing to worry about. Rifat and the priestess with him were gone, an emptiness she could feel ahead, and Tashi’s hand brushed her face, reaching back. Jolanan drew a deep breath, started after him. The hand that still clutched her ankle released her. Someone else taking a breath, nerving themself.
It was hard, crawling. Like swimming, legs splayed. Pushing with elbows. She kept her eye shut. Opening it made no difference and her face was covered in dust. It gritted between her teeth. Her breath huffed in her ears. Coat caught. Something tore. Sabre’s weight still there, all that mattered. It was his, Holla-Sayan’s, a good weapon, heavier than her own, the blade much worn, the scabbard scarred. She had given hers to a boy of Serakallash, a caravanserai-mistress’s son who had no weapon of his own. His parents and elder sister had been killed in the fighting when the town fell. That might be him behind her, young Sayid Sevanim, with Sister Dorji. Like Tashi and Rifat, he and Dorji stuck close. As if she were someone to follow. Her own little band of raiders. If all failed, they could steal horses, take to the wilds…
If all failed, they would be dead. And probably before the sun rose.
Twenty paces? Cold hells, she had been squirming through this crack for far too long, quarter of a mile, surely, and the rock was growing heavier, lower, over her, the ground beneath shifting, loose. She gasped, clenched her teeth. Felt someone tap her foot. Sayid or Dorji. She had stopped. Been lying still. Old Great Gods. Please. Hand seized her wrist.
“Nearly there, Jo.”
Tashi. She surged towards him, heard something whimper. Herself. Crawled out into his arms, his hand on her head to stop her braining herself, trying to get up to hands and knees too soon. Shivering, kneeling there with her face pressed to the gritty leather of his jerkin.
Have to keep moving. More behind. Make space. Not leave Dorji and Sayid in that tight place. Sayid was like her, child of big skies and long horizons. Her mind shaped the thought but she couldn’t make herself move till Tashi tugged her on.
Got control of herself. This was nothing. This was mere darkness. Fear of it only served their enemy. The tunnel was broad and high, high enough to crawl, broad enough not to bang shoulders and hips with Tashi, though they kept close enough they were touching regardless. Crawled. And crawled. She wasn’t the only one found terror in that close, low passage, she was certain. Sayid, when he emerged behind her, was muttering, “Sera with me, Sera with me, Sera my shield and my strength and the spear in my hand, Sera with me…” the words all broken, rapid panting, while Dorji kept murmuring, “Not far, not far now, not far,” as much to herself as to him.
At least they wouldn’t be going back that way.
The assembly area had been the easiest part of the tunnel. They were a small party—and Old Great Gods, she wished she hadn’t felt obligated, for the honour of the Western Grass, or because Rifat had, or Tashi—whatever had driven her—to volunteer to be part of it. But sixty men and women seemed too few, in their planning, and far too many, crawling up this tunnel. Sixty-two, they were, beginning to sort themselves, standing, straightening backs, checking weapons, moving as swiftly as they could left or right, hands on a guide-rope, knowing their company. Cellars. Storerooms, once, of two cousins of the Rostvadim sept. Not even a whisper, now. They found places by touch, in their pairs. No spears: too awkward, too dangerous. Sabres, some of them, Serakallashi and ferry-folk of Kinsai. The sisters of Attalissa carried short-swords, the men and women of the mountains axes or long-handled hammers or clubs. And the wizards, Rifat, two others of Kinsai’s folk, and Sister Pehma, who was wizard as well as priestess and commander of the tunnel expedition, bore baskets with fire, of a sort, sealed within clay. A secret of the folk of Kinsai.
Still no light. They could not risk any open flame down here and there were a few surviving priests of the sixth circle in the fort; the making of wizards’ light might be detected, Pehma thought, though the wizards of Kinsai were dismissive of the Westrons’ understanding of wizardry. Leave that for
the last moment. Which was now.
There. A soft white-gold glow grew with a word from Rifat, echoed by a man in the other cellar. Almost blinding, though it was so very dim. Those who had shuffled into place facing the wrong way realigned themselves.
The wizards were the first up the ladders, two to each. Cautious, still. No furious rush, not yet. A careful lifting, shifting. Cool air flowing down, heavy with the scent of horses.
Time to move. She and Tashi were the nearest to Rifat. Up, into darkness. Stronger scent of horse and manure and dust. As promised, they were in the block of stables within the fort, where the horses of the knights were kept. Restless beasts. Snuffing and blowing at the strangers crawling like marmots from a burrow. Jolanan went, the smallest glimmer of wizards’ light drifting to follow her as Rifat saw her intent, to where a man slept in a hammock hung by the door. Knife ready. But he held up a hand and rolled himself out, tall, lean Serakallashi, horse-tattooed face. Nodded to her and removed a sabre from beneath a heap of straw. Grinned, white teeth catching the light.
Dead man folded into the corner. His fellow in this watch on the stable.
The other trapdoor was out in the courtyard, but hidden close by the wall, where sand always drifted thick. Tashi and Rifat came to the door by her side.
The watch in the corner towers looked outward. Why should it do otherwise?
Boredom, perhaps. Some chance careless sound, though she had heard none. The wizards’ lights were out, people only following close on one another and enough light from the full moon—they had planned it so—that they needed none in the courtyards.
A cry from the nearest tower. Rifat stepped past her and Tashi, loading a sling as he went. For a moment all was still, save for the whisper of the whirling sling in the air.
The top of the tower exploded into flame.
No need for command. They went, then, with a rush and a roar. Too late for silence. The burning tower was one that looked outward to the desert, not over the town. It might serve as distraction.
Two gates. She led the charge on the one that opened on the town. The soldiers posted there were a handful, overwhelmed as they rushed out of their guard-room. Only two on watch above and Sister Pehma and a trio of priestesses were up the stairs and dealing with those as Jolanan, with Tashi and a pair of heavyset mountain men, wrestled the bar of the gate free. Many hands hauled its leaves wide, and more fires broke out, Rifat and others, now, hurling the fire-globes into doorways and unshuttered windows.
Red light and whirling shadows, rushing figures, voices crying out on their gods. Soldiers of the All-Holy threw some internal door to make a brief bridge over flame and poured from their barracks, but the outer gate was open and hooves were pounding, pounding up the moon-silvered ridge-road out of the desert night.
Warriors of the septs from the far pastures. Not only hooves, but the softer thudding of the camels. Tribesfolk of the further reaches of the Red Desert, and of the Black. From the town, they swarmed afoot, spears glinting in firelight, and the wind blew with them, the fires climbed to pillars, to the flickering forms of horses, rearing, dancing, racing. Two buildings dark, still: the stables, and the squat square tower that was the dormitory and schoolroom of the captive children.
The shrieks of those still within the burning buildings was terrible.
The soldiers who had escaped did not flee, not then. Some officer kept them under control. They formed a close company and tried to break for the gate into town. Sensible, maybe. Seize some smaller defensible place, try to get a message away to the garrison of the Lower Castle on the Kinsai, or wait for Knight-Commander Balba to return victorious from his expedition into the mountains. They met with a shock and a clashing of steel. Armed, but few in any armour. Few enough, in all. They had marched out two days ago, now that the snows that had sealed the mountain road had melted, to take Lissavakail.
Jolanan was not used to fighting afoot and missed Lark’s height, that feeling that she and the horse were one creature, a thing of mass and movement, a dance. Tashi had never fought for his life before. He swung his club with ferocity, yelling, but didn’t see what moved around him, how his rush took him into the enemy, left him surrounded, and she yelled and went after him, shielding him. They were beset, turned back to back, and she had no shield to her blind side, could steal frantic glances, swing wide, but she realized Tashi was watching for her, trusting her to take the other two quarters, ahead and aside to the right, and so she kept those clear and the Westrons fell back from them, leaving the bloody dead.
Serakallshi face, horse-marked woman, leaping over a body, spear thrusting. And more, and more, and camel wheeling around them, a dark man, braids flying, crying something in a speech she didn’t know, and she and Tashi leaned on one another. Gasping, the miner was, chest heaving. She, too. He wiped his face on his sleeve. The courtyard swirled with people, with torches, now, small embers against the burning buildings. Horses were whinnying, a child crying, but not in pain or even terror, only confusion. Someone had them safe, she thought, or that was the plan; they were to be hurried away out to the hall where the sept-chiefs met, where several elderly wizards of the Lower Castle of the ferry-folk, armed with tattooing-needles, were changing the design of the initiation tattoo into some pattern that, they promised, would undo the binding meant to steal their souls, if what they had quietly tried to work on the ink itself in the first days of the conquest had failed.
Which only the dead might know.
Perhaps thinking it did not bind them had been a comfort to the living, at least. There were Serakallashi dead in this yard, and certainly no one who had remained in the town had escaped tattooing.
Archers still shot from the flat roof of the central hall. Sisters of Attalissa shot back. Sera strode among them, a tall woman, desert-brown, her hair, red as the sands, streaming back like the mane of a running horse. She stopped at Sister Pehma’s side. The earth trembled. Jolanan clutched at Tashi to keep her balance.
The roof of the burning hall collapsed. The walls fell.
Spring, the wizards of Kinsai had said. Hope grew, in the spring.
Hope was a small thing. The All-Holy might yet look back at what happened in his rear. A small thing, but sharp as a blade.
“You’re going back to your own folk,” Tashi said. His voice was hoarse, smoke and dust and probably a craving for water as desperate as her own.
“Yes.”
His hand was on her face, brushing back her hair, which was free of the thick braid she had put it in and stinging her eye, prickling her scars. She had lost her headscarf somewhere after they left the stables.
“I know—” he said. Dropped his hand and looked away. Not even dawn yet, though the moon was sliding down in the west. Not even dawn, and there were fire-tubes launching red and green flowers from somewhere to the south. Painting a victory on the skies. Signalling to those who watched in the dry hills. The sounds of people, voices loud. Singing.
Too soon, she thought. Too soon, too late—
“I’ll come with you. To your land. Your folk. If you want me to.”
“Leave the mountains? Your god?”
Tashi shrugged. Fingered one of the beads of turquoise he wore at his ears. “I can carry Narva in my heart, wherever I go. Travellers do.”
“The Western Grass is a ruined land. Occupied. Even if Reyka and Lazlan have survived the winter—most of our gods are dead.”
“If you’re going, you shouldn’t go alone.”
She took the hand he had let fall, touched it to her lips. Taste of mud and sweat and blood that was probably not his.
“Tashi.” Tasting, too, his name. “I don’t—I’m not promising anything. I can’t yet. I just don’t know—” Know what? Herself, maybe. But—she would miss him, achingly. As she missed Holla, still. “Can you ride?”
“They’re coming,” Attalissa said. Iarka only nodded. She should not be here, but she had ignored the old women—cousins in this degree or that, for the most part—w
ho wanted to hide her and her precious belly away. Precious baby, not belly, and she was an active one, now, pummelling Iarka from within, as if she were angry. Rose, Iarka called her. Little Rose, because…Rose. Not lovers, the two of them. Only the best of friends and…yet it was Iarka and the surgeon Rose whom Kinsai had called to her, of all the couples she might have asked; them she had asked, to do this thing. So they had lain together in the river and found they might have been lovers after all, that between them there could be not only friendship, but passion they had never suspected.
A strange and heartbreaking thing it had been to realize that.
So the baby was Little Rose, whatever other names she might come to carry, and she was angry now, but she would grow to be wise, and a healer, like her father, of hearts and souls.
Assuming Iarka did not get herself skewered with a Westron arrow first. That thought did make her duck down again, safe—safer—below the line of boulders that looked some natural tumble of the mountains, but was not. A parapet, of sorts. Notches for archers. Caverns, behind.
Below, the lake. Not the Lissavakail, the lake of Attalissa. The new lake, which had so taken her aback, exhausted, grief-stricken as she had been, when it barred her way to the sanctuary of the goddess’s town.
Ice still held it, though the snows had melted, save on the unmelting heights, and the rivers and brooks had thawed.
A bad winter, it had been. The worst in living memory. Attalissa, and Narva of the further valleys too, had gathered cloud and storm about them, but they had only shaped, a little, the direction of the storms, not spun them from nothing. The ice of the still lakes was thick.
“You should go back now,” Attalissa said.
From her, Iarka didn’t mind it. It wasn’t fussing; it was just an opinion.
“I’ll stay by you.”
“Hm.”
She needed to be here. She needed to fight, and if the cousins couldn’t see it, couldn’t understand—
