‘Eric,’ Lahiru said. ‘Let me introduce my family. In the corner there looking glum is my brother Chatura. Don’t worry that you’ve offended him – he hates everyone equally. Beside him is his delightful wife Amanthi. Now the reason she looks so gloomy is that she’s married to Chatura.’
There was a slightly manic tone to the other man’s voice. Eric realised that Lahiru was nervous and that made his own doubts return full-force. He swallowed to moisten a suddenly dry throat as he nodded at the couple in question, who looked perfectly normal to him. They nodded cautiously back.
‘And this is my lovely wife, Babi,’ Lahiru continued. Eric could hear the slight quaver in his voice as he gestured at a pretty woman with plaited hair and a dainty nose. She looked puzzled but pleasant as she smiled a greeting at Eric. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. When Lahiru had talked about her … Well, he hadn’t said much, but he’d left Eric with the impression she was a bit of a battleaxe.
After that Lahiru introduced Eric to his children. Eric forgot their names as soon as he was told them, but there were three of them. Three! There was a toddler, who could have been a girl or a boy, seated on a high chair beside Babi. The five-year-old was clearly a girl, as pretty as her mum, and the boy was in the awkward process of turning into a man, his voice warbling between high and low and the first hint of hair sprouting on his face.
‘A pleasure to meet you all,’ Eric said in his best posh voice, then slipped into the seat beside Lahiru.
The other man rested a hand against his thigh and Eric did his best not to jump at the unexpected contact. But he was glad it was there as the meal progressed. It was torture. There must have been about a thousand different knives, forks and spoons in front of him, and how was he supposed to know which to use?
He’d hoped Lahiru might give him some guidance, but the other man was busy talking to his kin. They were discussing the crop planting for next year and Eric had left his farming days far behind him. He kept quiet and watched those around him to see what he should do. The food was delicious – vegetables and roast meats, fresh not salted like he’d have had back home – but he was so nervous about doing the wrong thing he didn’t get much of it inside him.
Through it all there was Lahiru’s hand on his leg, warming the skin beneath his trousers. As the meal progressed, the other man’s fingers began to tense and claw so that soon what had been a comfort became a painful distraction. Would he send Eric away as soon as the meal was over? It hardly seemed like he was enjoying having him around.
‘So, Eric,’ Babi said, ‘how did you and my husband come to know each other?’
It was a polite enough question, but it made all thoughts flee from Eric’s head. He had no answer prepared.
‘Don’t quiz the poor man,’ Lahiru said. ‘He’s had a long journey to get here and you’ll have plenty of time to question him once he’s rested. He’ll be staying a while.’
‘Will I?’ Eric asked. The hand on his leg was bruising now, but the smile Lahiru gave him was sweet and real.
‘You may remain here as long as you wish, Eric.’ Lahiru looked round the table as if daring anyone to contradict him.
It appeared as if several of them wanted to. His wife’s expression had shifted from puzzlement to the beginnings of suspicion. His children seemed sulky, unwilling to entertain this stranger in their midst. And some of his relatives, the more worldly of them, looked purely horrified.
But Eric made himself not care. Lahiru wanted him, and that was enough. ‘I’ll stay then,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re stuck with me.’
9
Dae Hyo knew they were being hunted. He felt it as surely as a rabbit feels the shadow of the hawk before it strikes. There were eleven wagons in the train and seven men to guard them, counting him. A wagon train this size needed at least double that number to be safe, but the merchants had been reluctant to part with the coin. They might regret their meanness soon, but he’d regret it more. If the bandits attacked in force, the merchants could lose their livelihoods; Dae Hyo and his fellows would be expected to lay down their lives.
He particularly disliked the valley they were moving through now. It was green and pleasant enough, certainly greener than the mine, though the plants had a defeated quality. Their ragged stalks looked like they’d paused for breath after pushing through the stony soil and never bothered to start growing again.
The cliffs at either side, though – they made a nice little trap, if anyone cared to spring it. The merchants seemed happily oblivious, leading their horses and chattering as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Their voices merged with the clatter of the wagon wheels into a constant meaningless rumble. But Dae Hyo could see the other guards darting uneasy glances all around.
He sidled up to the nearest man, a sour and entirely bald Ashane. ‘You feel it too?’ Dae Hyo asked.
The Ashaneman nodded.
‘How many, do you think?’
He shrugged and Dae Hyo gave up on the conversation. They seemed a good bunch, though, the guards. A more promising outfit than the fucking miners, that was for sure. Despite the present danger, he’d made the right decision to earn an honest wage this way rather than searching for another mine. Only desperate men risked the hunt for metal underground.
The sun disappeared early in the valleys and, as the sky turned a pleasant violet, the merchants spotted a flattish field beside the river and decided to make their camp there. No attack had come, but Dae Hyo didn’t find that reassuring. If he were in charge of the raiders, he’d strike at night.
The guards congregated as the merchants unhitched their horses and pitched their tents, while their wives boiled water for tea and the two babies wailed. The smell of manure spread as the horses unloaded their bowels and some of the other men wrinkled their noses, but Dae Hyo liked it. His youth had smelled just so.
‘Three sleeping and four guards, one at each point,’ said Balkaran, the leader of their little crew.
There were a few groans but no protest. Balkaran might be so young he looked like he shaved once a month, but he knew his trade. He chose three men to take the first rest and they began to set out their sleeping mats, swords laid carefully beside them. The merchants would rest under canvass but not the guards. They needed to be ready when trouble came. And it would, Dae Hyo was sure of it.
He found himself assigned the north-west corner until moonset. A drink would have been nice to warm him during his watch, but he’d been more than two months without. The shakes had gone and he felt good for it. He didn’t even need the purple sorghum any more, which was just as well, since he had none left. He should have waited until this point to venture down the mine, he saw that now. A man changing himself was all well and good, but you had to allow the changes a chance to bed in. The boy preacher should have been clearer about that. Well, this wagon train was heading to intercept Smiler’s Fair, which was now pulled to pieces and travelling through the Blade Pass. When they reached it, Dae Hyo might pay the boy a visit to tell him so.
Without booze, his attention failed to wander and the minutes passed very slowly. He spent a while admiring the shape of the wagons, silhouetted against the twilight sky. They looked like ships, as they were designed to. The Ashane fancied themselves sailors still, despite the many centuries since their ancestors had crossed the ocean to come here. They carved anchors on their wagons and wore them on chains round their necks. Anchors brought them luck, they said, and Dae Hyo supposed he could understand why. An anchor held you to your home. Without it you’d just drift away.
He looked at the wagons until the growing darkness took their shapes. The merchants had left a few glowing embers in their fires, and by that light Dae Hyo saw the glint of drawn swords to south and east. He wasn’t so green, though. If he held his axes out for his whole watch, he’d be too tired to use them when needed.
The night was very noisy. There was hooting and water splashing over rocks and chittering insects and that baby again, which must be
driving its poor mother to distraction.
And then there was another sound. He might not have heard it if he hadn’t been paying attention, which just went to show the benefits of a clear head. It was the sound of a gentle tread on rock. He was certain it wasn’t an animal. That foot was shod, or he was a Maeng knife woman.
The noise had come from his left, but if the attackers had any sense – and why wouldn’t they? – the camp would be surrounded. Dae Hyo considered quietly alerting the others, waking the three sleeping guards and setting an ambush of their own, but there were too many ways the plan could go wrong. Besides, stealth wasn’t his way.
‘Attack!’ he shouted, loud enough to scare the horses. They whinnied as merchants cried out in alarm. Lamps were lit, the three sleeping guards stumbled to their feet, the waking men turned to look at him in shock, and for a moment it seemed that was all that would happen.
Then the raiders did what they’d come to do. The kindled lamps and hastily poked fires shed little light, so it seemed as if a cluster of shadows detached themselves from the rocks all around to attack. It was impossible to tell how many, but there was no doubt the guards were outnumbered. It was clear to the merchants too and the brawniest among them grabbed their own weapons and threw themselves into the fray. Dae Hyo didn’t rate their chances, but the more warm bodies between him and a blade, the better.
He took one final look behind him to check that the women were safe, the babies hidden, and then the first bandit was on him. The man overtopped Dae Hyo by a head and stank like an unbathed mammoth. A great waft of the stench came over Dae Hyo as the raider raised his sword over his head and swung it down.
The bandit was big but slow. There was more than enough time to dodge the blow, and when the sword missed and hit the rock below it snapped. The bandit had a moment to share a look of astonishment with Dae Hyo and then an axe cut through his throat and the smell of his blood overpowered the stink of his body.
The next man was shorter and swifter, but his axe was made of flint and his technique left much to be desired. One blow parried, another turned aside, and Dae Hyo had taken care of that one. He hopped over the two corpses and went in search of more foes.
A broad-shouldered Ashaneman had broken in as far as the wagons themselves and was dragging one of the younger women from them by her hair. The woman screamed and Dae Hyo did too as he grabbed the assailant by his own hair and threw him to the ground with the full strength of his fury. He hacked at the Ashaneman’s neck, smiling in pleasure as the bandit’s head separated from his shoulders even while his eyes pleaded for mercy.
The woman had gone by the time Dae Hyo was finished, hopefully fled to safety. Another bandit stood a few paces back, staring at Dae Hyo with wide eyes. Dae Hyo felt his foe’s blood dripping from his face. He darted out his tongue to lick it from his lip and the bandit turned and ran.
They were all fleeing, leaving five of their number behind dead or dying. But they’d left behind other corpses too. Dae Hyo saw one of the merchants curled up on the ground, embracing the spilled tangle of his guts. His wife’s head had rolled to lie beside him. Their six-year-old child stood above them, eyes uncomprehending.
Dae Hyo roared and set off in pursuit of the raiders. He heard yelling behind him, calls to come back, but he wouldn’t let these rat-fuckers escape. He wouldn’t give them the chance to do the same again to anyone else.
The night was very dark away from the fires, but fleeing, the raiders were far noisier than they had been stalking. Dae Hyo soon picked up the sound of footsteps crunching over the rocks. He grinned, gripped his axe and slipped after them.
The chase was as satisfying as the earlier waiting had been wearing. Dae Hyo was faster than the man he was pursuing, catching him up step by step, and he could hear his quarry’s desperate gasping breaths. It felt good to be the hunter. Pretty soon he was close enough to make out the little whimper at the end of each exhale that suggested the other man was injured as well as terrified. And then his quarry was in front of him, his outline blotting out the stars above the crest of the hill. Dae Hyo yelled, raised his axe and flung himself forward.
The fucker was fast, though. He got his own axe in the way of the blow, Dae Hyo’s body barrelled into his and then he was lying on his back with Dae Hyo on top of him. They were face to face, breathing in each other’s stale air, and all Dae Hyo’s went out of him. He knew this man.
‘Min Ki,’ he said.
He saw the moment when recognition replaced fear on Dae Min Ki’s face. ‘Tall Hyo,’ he said.
They stared at each other awkwardly a moment before Dae Hyo shook his head, dropped his axe and rolled off the other man to sit beside it.
Min Ki sat up too, his arms wrapped tight round his legs as if he meant to make himself as small as possible. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I would never have – if I’d known you were one of the guards … I wouldn’t – I would never have attacked you.’
‘I tell you what, I don’t care about that,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘I never thought to see you again, brother. We parted so long ago, and I heard nothing of you. I thought you must have died of grief.’
Min Ki had been out hunting with him and the others when the attack came. It had been his first hunt as a man. And Min Ki had been with their band when they returned to the camp and saw the slaughter. At thirteen, he had found the murdered corpses of his mother and his four sisters, the oldest with a baby killed inside her belly.
‘I thought you were dead for sure,’ Min Ki said. ‘You were so angry, and you talked of nothing but revenge. I thought you’d thrown yourself against a Chun blade somewhere and ended it.’
There was another little silence after that. Of all the people Dae Hyo might have expected to meet in this way, Min Ki would have been the last. He’d been a gentle boy and not much suited to hunting. ‘So,’ he said eventually. ‘Banditry? It’s a low profession, brother. Hardly fit for a Dae.’
Min Ki shrugged. ‘The world doesn’t have much use for a warrior without a home or a tribe. And these Ashane, they have enough coin to spare us a little.’
‘And the women? Did they have spare what your friends meant to take from them?’
Min Ki lowered his eyes and Dae Hyo felt a sudden dropping in his stomach and an awful doubt. ‘Or did you mean to take it from them too?’
‘No!’ Min Ki looked up, fierce but still red with shame. ‘I would never! I’m no Chun.’
‘No Chun, yet you ride with men no better than the Brotherband.’
‘I stop them when I can.’
‘Let’s leave it in the past, brother. You’ll ride with me from now on. I should never have let you go off on your own. The fault was mine. When you and the others said to forget revenge, I was angry, but I understand now. You didn’t see how revenge could be had. But I’ve been working all these years, getting us weapons, staying strong. We can pay back the Chun for what they did.’
Dae Hyo didn’t understand Min Ki’s expression. ‘Weapons?’ he asked.
‘Well … There were weapons. I’ll be honest with you, the rat-fuckers I mined with took them from me. But I mean to have them again. I just need to work a while, earn enough to buy more weapons and fight to get back the ones I already had.’
Min Ki smiled suddenly. ‘I missed you, brother.’
‘So you’ll join me? Let’s leave the merchants behind. The danger’s past, since you were the danger. We can loot a few of your fellows and head back to the mine. They won’t stand against two Dae warriors.’
‘I can’t. I have … I have a child. A daughter.’
‘A daughter?’ Dae Hyo felt joy as strong as vodka jolt through him. ‘A girl. The first new Dae girl.’
Min Ki’s smile was so bright it made him look like that untroubled thirteen-year-old again. ‘You should see her, brother. She’s beautiful. When she was born I couldn’t believe it, that there could be a whole person that little. You’ve never seen fingernails so small! Her mother’s Ashane, a cook at High Water Fastnes
s. She’s so pretty, it’s no wonder her daughter turned out perfect. And her skin is dark – almost as dark as an Ashane’s.’
‘That doesn’t matter. You’re her father: she’s still Dae.’
‘No, you don’t understand. Her skin is so dark she can pass for Ashane. No one would know her father is a foreigner, not just by looking at her. She’s four now. Sometimes she asks why I look different from the other men. I tell her I caught a fever and it turned my skin pale.’
‘But – but why?’
‘Why would anyone want to be Dae? We were the unluckiest people on the plains. And the Chun are still out there, thousands, and more every day. Have you not heard how the Brotherband is growing? Don’t you wonder if one day they’ll decide to finish the job and come looking for the last few of us? Little Gursimrah is safer if she’s never heard of the Dae.’
‘You called your daughter Gursimrah? What kind of name is that?’
‘An Ashane one.’ Min Ki seized his arm, fingers tight and expression intent. ‘The Dae are dead – let them rest. The spirits of our people haunt me. Why should they haunt her? Why shouldn’t she live free of a past that brings nobody happiness?’
Dae Hyo pulled his arm away. ‘Because it’s a lie! She is Dae! She’s our hope for the future and she needs to know who she is.’
For a moment they stared at each other and Dae Hyo thought the other man might bend. But then Min Ki shook his head and stood. ‘There are no Dae, not any longer. You call me Min Ki. I haven’t gone by that name in a long time. The Ashane call me Manvir, after their long-ago king.’
Dae Hyo stood too, shaking. ‘That’s you, then, if you want to forget who you are. What about Chin Ho and Kwan and Suk Chul and the others? There were seven of us in that hunting party and we weren’t the only survivors.’
‘I see Chin Ho sometimes. He married an Ashane too. Suk Chul was taken into the Butterfly Band of the Maeng and Kwan is dead. There are no Dae any longer.’
Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods Page 12
