The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  They flew north, sweeping over the forest so Reyad could get a good look at a place he should have seen during his training. Seeing the beauty and complexity of the land from this vantage never failed to make Dannarah’s spirit swell with amazement and joy.

  The forest had layers: birds fluttering above the canopy, the topmost layer of leaves and reaching branches, the dense canopy zone and the emptier mid-tree regions, and beneath all flashes of ground cover or bare earth. As with people, it was hard to see what lay underneath.

  Weldur the Heart.

  Somewhere in a faded chronicle buried away in a temple dedicated to the Hundred goddess Sapanasu the Lantern, King Anjihosh had discovered references to the vast forest using this appellation. There was even a line in one of the tales of the Hundred: Weldur the heart that has fallen silent. The heart of what? How can a living, breathing forest be silent?

  The phrase had the feel of a dusty remnant from an older time when the temples to the seven gods were newly built, a time memorialized in ancient tales. Her father and her brother had let the Hundred’s customs continue untouched, and their respective queens, Zayrah and Yevah, who had both been born and raised in the empire, had kept their Beltak worship private.

  Under Jehosh and Chorannah that time was over.

  Recent logging cut into the forest like gouges into flesh. Circles of ash marred the ground where wood had been piled and burned to make charcoal. The ugly sights disturbed Dannarah as much as if she were looking down on a wounded body. It hadn’t been like this before.

  She spotted the distinctive reddish-tinged columns of a redheart grove not too far from a clearing slashed out of the trees. Although reeves could fly over the Wild, the eagles always refused to fly directly over redheart. Leaving the other two aloft she landed, unhitched, then walked the edge of the clearing looking for a trail that would allow her to approach the redheart grove.

  At the clearing’s edge grew wild sweet-thorn, lovely when trimmed in a garden and so fearsomely thick here she doubted a machete could hack through it. The impenetrable sweet-thorn blocked her way, and the people living in the Wild killed trespassers. Yet for redheart wreaths to make their way to the doors of newlyweds, there had to be some communication among people who in the ancient stories were considered siblings born from the Four Mothers. The wildings were one of the eight children of the Hundred, as the old teaching song said: These are the eight children, the dragonlings, the firelings, the delvings, the wildings, the lendings, the merlings, the demon-hearts, and the blind-hearts.

  Blind-hearts was the ancient name for humans, and today she felt she wasn’t seeing something that ought to be obvious to her.

  She strode back to Terror, who was clawing at the dirt with her talons, perhaps disturbed by their proximity to the redheart. Every instinct told her this was a place to avoid, and yet she wanted so badly to explore. This was not the time.

  She hooked in and whistled the raptor up.

  Eagles could fly in a morning what took soldiers days to march.

  Soon they reached the spot where the River Ili flowed in a bow curve around the town of River’s Bend. In the shadow of the forest a huge Beltak shrine was going up, swarmed by laborers, but what drew her eye was a flight of eagles circling the town. One broke away from the flight and descended toward the banners that marked the town’s assizes court. To her amazement the eagle wore the gold-painted harness of Chief Marshal Auri.

  Why in the hells had Auri left Farihosh to come to this out-of-the-way place?

  Every town assizes was fitted with an open space with perches, a loft sufficient for a few raptors, and a shelter with a raised floor for reeves to overnight. As Terror circled in, Dannarah saw that an assizes was in session in the judge’s amphitheater. Folk spilled out from under the roofed area as more people crowded in to hear the proceedings than the amphitheater could hold. The assizes was surrounded by soldiers wearing the red-and-white tabards of the Spears.

  Terror braked, wings wide and talons extended, and thumped onto a perch. Reyad followed her down while Tarnit stayed aloft. Dannarah meant to wait for Reyad to unbuckle his own harness before she went into the amphitheater but Auri was actually struggling to get out of his gear like a fledgling reeve who has never hooked in before.

  Seeing her, he peremptorily beckoned her over. As if she were a fawkner whose job was to serve him!

  Auri’s eagle had a soft golden-brown color, a perfectly formed head and hooked beak, and eyes so gold they gleamed. Slip had a gentle nature; she’d known the man who had been harnessed to Slip before Auri, a skilled reeve who had died of a fever. The eagle had flown away, as eagles did after the death of their reeve. It had always griped her when Slip had shown up later in harness to such an asswipe.

  The arrival of the bigger and more aggressive Terror caused Slip to lower his head defensively. Dannarah paused outside his strike range and with her baton gestured the signal for at -rest. Slip bobbed restlessly, then settled his feathers.

  Auri finally got the hooks undone and dropped to the ground. He stepped out from under Slip’s shadow and raised a hand to gesture to Dannarah to hood the bird. Just then he saw Reyad. The young reeve had already hooded Surly and stepped away to wait, but the way Reyad stood so tensely with gaze fixed on the ground and hands in fists was a signal.

  Auri’s smirk on seeing the young man really disturbed her.

  “I’m surprised to see you here, Reeve Reyad,” called the chief marshal. “How is your pretty wife?”

  Dannarah needed only one look at Reyad’s whitened lips. “Reyad, go to the loft and see if there’s any harness oil.”

  He stalked away toward the loft. Terror and Surly settled under their hoods.

  “What’s he doing here?” Auri sauntered over, leaving Slip unhooded.

  Did he truly not know better after eighteen years as a reeve than to leave an unhooded bird amid such commotion?

  She pitched her voice louder than necessary so as many soldiers and people in the crowd as possible could hear. “Greetings, Chief Marshal. You need help hooding your bird?”

  The double-pronged insult made him flush, and he turned back. His eagle shifted huge feet nervously but accepted the hood meekly enough, however hastily the man pulled it over the raptor’s head and scooted out of reach of the talons.

  Before Auri could say anything else, Dannarah struck again, offering her blandest smile like the last rice cake on a platter. “I’ve seconded Reyad to my wing, Chief Marshal. With your permission.”

  Auri gave way just as she knew he would. “Much good you’ll have in him. I have discovered him to be troublesome and incompetent.”

  “Incompetents are the worst sort, I’ve always found. But I’ll be glad to have him transferred to Horn Hall, for I am short on reeves what with all the unexpected and unannounced transfers going on from one hall to another these days. That’s settled then.”

  Auri changed color, realizing she had just boxed him in.

  What a useless ass he was! A man as lazy as he was never had time to do the work that needed doing.

  “Why are you here in River’s Bend, Marshal Dannarah?”

  “Scouting out demons, Chief Marshal, just as you ordered. Why are you here? I thought you were accompanying Prince Farihosh to the dedication in Olo’osson.”

  “No, I was just taking his young lordship a message from his mother. I’m here to accompany Prince Tavahosh. As part of his training in the priesthood he has come here to pass judgment on cases brought before the court for blasphemy and for rebellion against the god’s edicts. Queen Chorannah always requests that I escort one or the other of the princes when they leave the palace.”

  “You are Chief Marshal of the Reeve Halls. Not a bodyguard.”

  “I serve the palace,” he said stiffly.

  “Odd, for I was sure the chief marshal serves the reeve halls first before anything.”

  “You are a naive old woman, lost in the past.” He relished the words as they dripped off his ton
gue. “But we will not have to tolerate your kind of reeve much longer.”

  “My kind of reeve? What in the hells does that mean?”

  Auri practically bounced on his toes, so eager was he to tell her. But then, more ominously, he controlled himself. “You’re not worth my notice, as you’ll soon discover.”

  He turned toward the amphitheater. The tone of the crowd altered as a new case started. People murmured angrily. She didn’t like the crack of tension any more than she liked Auri’s threatening demeanor.

  She followed Auri through the ranks of the soldiers who surrounded the amphitheater. She often regretted her lost youth but she was glad to be old enough that the palace soldiers hesitated to interfere as she passed from sun into blessed shade. In the docket below stood a man in ordinary laborer’s clothing: a faded kilt and a mended jacket. Nine local judges sat in attendance, hands folded in the sign for total obedience, mouths shut. A young man preened at the center with all eyes on his elaborately embroidered priest’s robe and the peaked gold cap worn by Sirniakan nobility. Prince Tavahosh had a loud voice and a hectoring tone. He spoke the language of the Hundred so awkwardly that she guessed he had learned it in the schoolroom.

  “The man gives his name as Geron of Five Roads Clan. By trade he is a carter. Witnesses see him blaspheme against the god’s holy law. He is commanded to dispose of criminals but he disobeys. He illegally constructs a death ladder. This savagery is forbidden by the edicts of Beltak, the Shining One Who Rules Alone.”

  Whispers raced like wasps through the watching crowd.

  Satisfaction gleamed in the prince’s expression as he pronounced the sentence. “In the case of Geron the Carter the god is merciful and does not demand death in exchange for grievous error. The prisoner owes seven years’ labor serving the god.”

  The mood spiked as people nudged each other. The angriest shook fists toward the judges.

  Dannarah hurried down the last steps but, before she reached Tavahosh, a tall young woman shoved out of the crowd and planted herself before the judges. The young person was an outlander. Instead of brown skin, hers was black. Dannarah paused at the edge of the open semicircle where the prisoner waited and the judges sat. The crowd went dead silent.

  The girl stamped a foot on the ground in the traditional way, three times to announce that she had words to say. Her hands gestured with the hand-talk Dannarah had only learned imperfectly; the girl’s fluent gestures marked her as a child of the Hundred.

  Shame. Shame. Shame. She emphasized the gesture, palm out and back of the hand shading the face. She had a bold voice.

  “This hardworking man Geron the Carter pays his tithes in coin and labor, yet you persecute him! Is there a law that prevents those who still give offerings at the temples to lay out their dead in the traditional manner?”

  Prince Tavahosh quivered, flourishing his priest’s staff as prelude to striking her. “Slaves do not have the right to speak!”

  As the girl opened her mouth to retort, the criminal Geron broke in. “Lifka is my daughter, and daughter of my clan. She is not a slave.”

  “She cannot be your daughter,” said the prince. “Anyone with eyes can see this.”

  Geron had the simple directness of countryfolk. “She is our daughter by the old custom. By our saying so, it makes it so.”

  The prince slammed his staff twice on the stone pavement to quiet the calls of agreement from the crowd. “The god commands that the children of people our armies defeat must serve their masters. She is a captive from the north. Thus she is required to bear the mark of shame. By not inking her, you have broken another law! Three years more you must serve the god. Ten years together you will serve! The girl will be inked and taken away from your clan.”

  The crowd broke into cries of protest. Above, the soldiers tightened their ranks around the amphitheater.

  With baton raised Dannarah strode across the floor. Her authoritative action cut through the crowd’s seething; she had seen people break into violence, and she refused to let that happen today. Maybe her failure to capture the prisoners in Elsharat made her want a victory, however small.

  She raised her voice. “Your Holiness, I object. What the god left undone to this child cannot be done now. Anyway you cannot prove she came from the north with the captives King Jehosh brought many years ago.”

  “Who are you to speak so disrespectfully, old woman?” demanded the prince, as if she weren’t holding a reeve’s baton and wearing reeve’s leathers inscribed with a marshal’s wings. “Inside the shrine, women are forbidden from speaking before the god and the law.”

  Two could sing that song.

  “We are in the assizes, not the shrine. By the law of the Hundred reeves have the right and indeed the duty to speak at the assizes. Furthermore I am your great-aunt, Lady Dannarah, daughter of Anjihosh the Glorious Unifier, sister of Atani the Law-Giver, aunt of your father King Jehosh. Have you some objection to my presence, grand-nephew? Must I fly to the palace and mention to your father the king that I have been treated with disrespect by his son?”

  The girl snorted, not bothering to hide her amusement. When Dannarah glanced at her to remind her to hold her tongue, the young woman sketched the hand gesture of respect that was properly offered by the young to the old.

  Prince Tavahosh glared, no doubt calculating the damage Dannarah could do him in the complicated politics of the palace. His silence gave her a chance to examine the young outlander.

  On his final major military expedition into the north fourteen years ago, when he had at last completely conquered the kingdom of Ithik Eldim, Jehosh had brought back thousands of prisoners to be sold into servitude and thus help finance his expedition. Most of the northerners had pale skin and brown hair. But Ithik Eldim was also famous for its thriving ports, bustling with outlanders in all their varied clothing, customs, and looks.

  Still, it was jarring that a girl so obviously foreign-looking as this one bore the Mothers’ inked bands on her right forearm and left calf to mark her as fire-born, just like any ordinary Hundred girl.

  “I am not a slave,” the girl said in a clear voice. “Therefore it is my right to offer myself in my father’s place, to serve out his sentence as a laborer.”

  “Lifka! You must not!” cried Geron, but it was too late; the offer had been made before witnesses.

  Prince Tavahosh slammed his staff onto the ground. “A woman’s service is worth half that of a man’s. You are offering to indenture yourself for twenty years.”

  “By Hundred law a woman’s service is worth exactly the same as a man’s,” she objected.

  Dannarah admired her boldness.

  “I make the ruling under the auspices of the Glorious Beltak, the Shining One Who Rules Alone. Twenty years.”

  “Fourteen, which is twice seven,” said the girl at once, as if she were bargaining in the marketplace!

  By the way Tavahosh’s jaw was clenched Dannarah guessed he was getting cursed angry at the girl’s defiance.

  “I beg you, Your Holiness, the fault is mine, not hers,” said the father. “She is young. Let her stay with the clan and I will go peacefully.”

  “She cannot stay. She is a slave. You have defied not just the god but the king by pretending she is your daughter. Let her be arrested and inked with a slave’s mark, as is required.”

  “She is the clan’s daughter, not a slave, whatever you may say, you whose ancestors came from foreign lands to rule this one,” said Geron the Carter with a scorn that agitated the crowd.

  “I took you for an outlaw the instant I laid eyes on you.” Prince Tavahosh’s expression gritted into a rage-filled grin. “For defiance, a further two years of service to the shrine. Guards! Take them both away.”

  The local judges said nothing; they had no authority to countermand a prince.

  Dannarah saw the young woman hoist her staff with the grim confidence of a person who knows how to fight. Trouble was coming, and it would be bloody.

  “Pri
nce Tavahosh!” Dannarah stepped between them. “By bargaining with the girl over the length of her indenture you have implicitly recognized her right to be treated as a daughter of the clan.”

  The crowd laughed, relaxing a little, but the girl was still as taut as a pulled bowstring.

  “I am not to be trifled with and mocked in this way!” the prince said to Dannarah, switching to Sirni even though it was both rude and stupid to speak in a language the crowd could not understand. He turned to the nearest guard. “Call Chief Marshal Auri to silence this reeve. Tell the soldiers to silence the crowd! Such disrespect is unacceptable.”

  “Is this what you call an expedition to hear the voices of the common people?” she prodded. “That you expect everyone to acquiesce to you trampling on their old customs?”

  “Are you turned outlaw, too? Defying the palace with such rebellious words? The priests have argued for years that women are not fit to be reeves, and now I see the truth of it!”

  “Who do you think chooses reeves? The eagles choose us.”

  “Then they choose wrong.”

  A scream rent the air, followed by shouts of alarm. Terror chuffed a warning even though blinded by the hood. On the plaza above a weight whumped down, its impact shuddering through the ground. People shrieked and scattered. Shoving broke out as the frightened crowd stampeded down onto the floor of the amphitheater, trying to get away from something horrible.

  The press of bodies staggered Dannarah, and she stumbled. Abruptly a hand braced her up; the girl stepped in beside her. Together, Dannarah with her baton and the girl with her staff, they carved a path up the steps to see what disturbance roiled the courtyard.