Jango

by William Nicholson

  So let him make a fire burn in the rain, thought Sasha bitterly. Let him tell the wind which way to blow.

  One of his men rode up.

  "Do I tell the men they can rest? This smoke's a real choker."

  "Yes. Let them rest."

  Sasha Jahan sat in his tent, listening to the rain falling on the taut canvas, and stared at the forest ahead. They were in there somewhere, he knew—the girl and her people, up in the trees like squirrels. He thought maybe he should send his men into the Glimmen to drive them out. But Orlans fought on horseback, not in the branches of trees. There was nothing for it but to wait for the wind to change.

  Then as he gazed and brooded he became aware of movement among the trees. People were coming out of the forest.

  His men came running to report.

  "Enemy approaching, sir."

  "Are they armed?"

  "No, sir. Women, sir."

  "Women?"

  He emerged from his tent and mounted his Caspian. Accompanied by a dozen of his men, he rode forward to meet the party walking slowly out of the Glimmen.

  He recognized the one in the lead: it was the girl called Echo Kittle. Behind her came seven or eight women, all slender and elegant but older than Echo. Beside her walked a Caspian.

  He rode on until they were close, and then drew his men to a stop to let the women approach him at their own pace. Echo Kittle walked proudly, her head held high, but her face no longer wore the defiant look he had come to dread. Instead there was a deadness in her eyes.

  She stopped before him. Her gaze took in the smoldering pyres.

  "Your father has sent you to burn the Glimmen?"

  Her voice was flat.

  "Yes," said Sasha.

  "The Glimmen is my home, and the home of my family, and the home of my people. I offer you my life for theirs."

  "Your life?" For a moment Sasha Jahan didn't understand. "What am I to do with your life?"

  "I will be your bride. As your father wishes."

  "My bride?"

  "I ask you not to burn the Glimmen," said Echo. "Take me instead."

  Sasha's mind began to race. Could it be that his luck was changing? If he were to return with the girl, what would his father say? His father, who had himself been rejected. Sasha Jahan could still remember the thrill of astonishment he had felt as he had heard Echo's defiance of his all-powerful father.

  You think you can have whatever you want, but you can't have me!

  And this same proud girl was now offering herself to him, to Sasha Jahan, eldest son of the Great Jahan, and rightful inheritor of his prestige and power.

  "Very well," he said. "You will return with me."

  This caused a commotion among the women, which he ignored. There was sobbing and weeping. But through it all came Echo's flat voice.

  "You'll put out the fires?"

  Sasha Jahan gave the order.

  "Put out the fires!"

  "Then I'm ready."

  Sasha Jahan studied her carefully.

  "You'll obey me in all things, as a dutiful bride?"

  Echo Kittle looked back, and there was no defiance in her eyes. Nor was there any love.

  "What I have said I will do," she replied, "I will do."

  19 The Spiker Army

  AS THEY RODE EAST, MORNING STAR AND THE WLLDMAN passed a steady stream of travellers making their way more slowly in the same direction.

  "Where are you going?" Morning Star called as they went by.

  "Spikertown," came the reply.

  They were fleeing the Orlan horde, seeking safety in the sheer numbers now assembling in Spikertown.

  "We're all spikers now," said the Wildman.

  On reaching the top of the last low hill before the descent to Spikertown, they dismounted to let Sky rest. They looked down on the bend in the Great River and saw a large crowd gathering in the water meadows. Faint but clear on the cold air, they heard the uproar of raised voices.

  The Wildman scanned the distant crowd with close attention.

  "It's a meet," he said. "The tribes have called a meet."

  "What does that mean?" said Morning Star.

  "It'll be on account of the invaders. They'll be choosing a leader." It was a good omen. He had arrived at the perfect time. "But they'll never agree."

  Morning Star could see that the Wildman was energized by some new purpose.

  "You should be their leader, Wildman."

  "You think so?"

  "You'd be a strong leader."

  "Could be. We'll see."

  When they remounted, he proposed that he take the lead position. She was happy to straddle Sky behind him. She wrapped her arms round him as they began their descent, and she pressed her cheek to his back. She was doing her best to conceal it, but his nearness intoxicated her. Every contact was precious to her. She asked for nothing but to be in his company and to see him happy.

  I want him to be happy more than I want to be happy myself, she thought.

  Such a surrender had never happened to her before. It frightened her and it excited her.

  They rode down into the muddy shanty-lined alleys of Spikertown, then along the deserted main street towards the river. As they came closer they heard the roaring of angry voices in the crowd and the booming cries of the would-be leaders.

  "I'm the father of all spikers! Follow me!"

  "Not you, old man!"

  "I'm as good a man as you any day, Branko!"

  "Come and show me, graybeard!"

  The roars grew louder and more violent.

  "They'll be fighting any minute," said the Wildman. "That's all they ever do, fight each other."

  Now the back of the crowd was in view before them. As the Wildman had predicted, a fight was about to begin. A big spiker with a full gray beard was advancing grimly towards a short stocky black-haired man, who stood with his arms wide, stamping his feet on the ground. The crowd had fallen back to open up a space for the combat. On one side ranged the supporters of Mully, the older man; on the other, the mountain men who followed Branko.

  "Ya ha!" roared Mully, smacking his great hands against each other as he advanced.

  "Ya ha!" responded Branko, pounding the earth.

  "Go, Star," said the Wildman.

  Morning Star slipped off the Caspian's back. The Wildman rode alone into the empty space.

  "Heya, bravas!"

  Astonished heads turned and gaped. Mully lowered his hands to stare. Branko swung round, and was fixed to the spot.

  The Wildman spread his arms wide on either side and cried out his familiar call.

  "Do you lo-o-ove me?"

  Smiles broke out on all sides. Big Mully laughed out loud.

  "You crazy Wildman!" he said. "Where'd you get that beast?"

  The Wildman swung himself to the ground and tossed back his long golden hair.

  "More where that one comes from," he said.

  He stroked the Caspian's neck. She had been ridden hard and was now pulling in deep shivery breaths.

  "I see you've all come out to welcome me home," he said, looking round. "I call that friendly behavior."

  "We're not here for you," growled Branko. "We're here to pick a war leader."

  "A war leader?" said the Wildman. He spread his arms wide once more and turned about and about, showing himself to the crowd. "Here I am!"

  "Out of the way, boy!" Branko had no time for this gaudy youth and his antics. He swept the Wildman aside with one muscular arm. But instead of giving way, the Wildman took hold of his arm and turned the mountain man round to face him, then fixed him with his eyes.

  "You love me, brava?"

  He used no force. But to the surprise of the onlookers, Branko reached out his arms and hugged him.

  "Sure I love you, Wildman."

  The Wildman then turned to Mully.

  "Branko votes for me," he said. "You vote for me too, old man?"

  "I'm not dead yet, boy," replied Mully. "The day I vote for you is the day
—"

  The Wildman was staring at him. Mully faltered and fell silent.

  "You love me too, brava?"

  Mully sagged. His head bent in a bow of submission.

  "I love you, Wildman."

  "Then, heya!" The Wildman turned his laughing face on the assembled spikers. "Everyone loves me! Anyone here have a problem with that?"

  He swept one hand through the air, and everyone who saw it felt the thrill of his power like a wind in their face.

  "Wildman! Wildman! Wildman!" they cried.

  Morning Star stood quietly by the Caspian's side and gloried in the change that had come over the Wildman. He was glowing with power: power shone from his beautiful face, power laughed in his smile and burned in his brilliant eyes. Here before a captivated crowd, he had become in public what he already was in her secret heart—someone whose every motion was perfect. He had shed all self-doubt. He was intoxicated by the love of so many people.

  Now the whole crowd was calling his name, chanting his name, their eager faces laughing back at him.

  "Wildman! Wildman! Wildman!"

  He jumped up onto the hull of an overturned riverboat and spoke to them, finding the very words that were in their hearts, because in this moment, everything was easy and he could do no wrong.

  "My friends! I'm a spiker like you. We're the people who don't belong. We have no country, no place of safety. We're called beggars and thieves. We're feared and despised. But we're everywhere! We're tramping down every road in every land. We're from every race and every tribe. We are everyone!"

  Morning Star listened to the Wildman and she shared his pride, as she saw everyone in the great crowd sharing his pride.

  So I'm a spiker now, she thought, and she smiled at the thought.

  "Spikers have nothing," cried the Wildman, "but spikers are free! Will you fight for your freedom?"

  "Yes!" answered the crowd, in one great shout.

  "Will you fight together, bravas? All the tribes in one army?"

  "Yes!"

  "With me as your war leader?"

  "Yes!"

  "Then there's no warlord in the world can overcome us!"

  The crowd cheered and cheered.

  "Wildman! Wildman! Wildman!"

  There came then a scuffling at the back and a shout of anger. The crowd parted to reveal a tall lean young man dressed in heavy furs but bareheaded and hairless. His skull was painted from his eyebrows to the nape of his neck with dark vertical stripes of yellow and black. Behind him came a large band of evil-looking men, all painted in the same fashion. The stranger strode forward with a spike in one hand, pointing with the forefinger of his other hand at the Wildman.

  "I want you," he said.

  "Tigers!" cried fearful voices in the crowd. "It's the Tigers!"

  The stranger jabbed the air with his spike: the challenge to a fight. The Wildman jumped down from his boat and approached the stranger.

  "I don't have a quarrel with you," he said.

  The stranger's men gathered round him. The band known as the Tigers was big, more than a hundred men, all well armed with spikes and blades.

  "Maybe I have a quarrel with you."

  "Here I am."

  The stranger moved closer to the Wildman. Morning Star, watching the Wildman's eyes, expected to see the stranger yield to the Wildman's will. Instead, the stranger spoke one word in the Wildman's ear.

  "Chick," he said.

  The Wildman started, as if he'd been stung, and staggered back, staring at the stranger. The stranger reached out one hand and rumpled the Wildman's hair, then broke into a laugh.

  "You don't know me, do you?"

  The Wildman stared some more and slowly a grin of recognition formed on his face.

  "Snakey!"

  They fell into each other's arms. The hard men of the Tiger band now all started grinning, too. The tension in the crowd relaxed.

  "Snakey!" said the Wildman again. "Is it you, Snakey?"

  "Nobody else," said the stranger.

  "What have you done to yourself?"

  "Grown up, Chick. Same as you."

  And he rumpled the Wildman's hair once more.

  ***

  They took themselves off arm in arm to the fat man's bar to celebrate their reunion, and a great crowd went with them. As soon as they were gone, the cheers faded, and the spirit of unity gave way to renewed bickering. Morning Star hung back with Sky, and saw all too clearly the waves of suspicion that rippled through the clusters of spikers. She saw it in their colors. Each group, their passions once more heightened by the sneers of rival groups, took on its own dominant color. It was a phenomenon she had never noticed before. There was the graybeard called Mully at the center of a large crowd of his own people, and all of them were wrapped in a shared aura that was dirty red in color. The color itself was no surprise: it showed the resentful anger of a group that felt itself threatened and underrespected. But never before had she seen a single dominant color form like a misty blanket over so many individuals.

  Near Mully's band there was a crowd of mountain men, and they were wrapped in an aura that was orange in color. Where the two bands pushed up against each other the auras wavered but did not merge. It was the clearest evidence there could be that the spiker tribes were not united yet, but it was evidence that only Morning Star could see.

  Sky pushed her nose against Morning Star's back, seeking her attention. She turned and stroked the Caspian's neck and spoke to her softly.

  "You need water, don't you, Sky?"

  The Caspian nodded her lovely head, and Morning Star rubbed her coat and saw her own colors slowly merge with Sky's colors, as they had done before. It struck her then that if she could share colors with a horse, she could do it with a person. She remembered how her combat teacher's colors had flowed out and wrapped round her, and how she had realized that one person's colors could change another's. An idea began to form in her mind.

  She found him in the bar, drinking with the stripe-headed stranger. He called to her gladly as she pushed her way through the crowd.

  "Heya, Star! This is Snakey. I told you about Snakey."

  "I remember."

  "Snakey looked after me when I was a kid."

  "When you was a chick," said Snakey, and burst into laughter.

  "That's what they called me," said the Wildman, blushing. "Chick."

  "He was so small," said Snakey, "and he had this fuzzy golden hair."

  He reached out his hand and ran his fingers through the Wildman's hair.

  "And look at him now! He's the Wild Chick now."

  He ducked as the Wildman took a swing at him.

  "Watch yourself, Snakey. I'm the man."

  "That's what I see. And to think you used to run round after me calling, 'Snakey! Don't leave me!'"

  "Until you left me."

  "I never left you."

  The Wildman turned to Morning Star.

  "Snakey got snatched by slavers. I thought he'd run out on me."

  "I'd never do that, Chick."

  "He was taken away in a cage to a faraway country to be sold for a slave. But they got more than they knew when they took Snakey. Soon as they let him out of the cage he slit their throats and off he ran. Nine years old."

  "Eight, Chick. Eight."

  Snakey stroked both hands over his smooth painted head and showed his uneven teeth.

  "Those were hard days," said the Wildman.

  "I don't see the days getting any softer," said Snakey.

  "Wildman," said Morning Star. "There's something I want to show you."

  On the Wildman's orders two large bands gathered in the main street of the town, one of northerners and the other of mountain men. The Wildman spoke to them, with Morning Star by his side.

  "This is Morning Star," he said. "Whatever she tells you to do, you do. Just as if it was me telling you."

  Morning Star then spoke to them.

  "The warlord is on his way," she said, "and the spiker tribes hav
e agreed to fight together under one leader. But you're not united. In your hearts each tribe is saying, When the battle comes, we'll fight better than the others. So you won't stand together as one great force. And that way, you'll lose the battle."

  The men didn't like being told what to do by a girl. They scowled and muttered to each other. Branko spoke out loud.

  "Who's she to lecture us?"

  "You listen," said the Wildman, "or you answer to me."

  Morning Star continued.

  "I have a way to bring you together."

  "We've had truces," said Mully. "We know all about truces."

  "This isn't a truce."

  She looked from one group to the other. Their colors were clear and distinct, heightened by the challenge she laid before them.

  "This is a bond."

  She walked forward and placed herself between the two bands. Then turning first to the mountain men, she spoke to the one nearest to her.

  "Don't move. I'm going to hold you."

  She put her hands on his shoulders and looked up at the aura that reached over him and all his companions. She let his colors flow round her. As she did so, she felt herself fill up with all the fierce sensations that were surging within the mountain men. Then she turned to the second band and put her hands on the shoulders of one of Mully's tribe. There came a shuddering of emotions within her and of colors round her, and she saw the two competing colors swirl and stream in tangled threads of orange and red. She felt a giddy sickness as the two currents of anger seethed like waves within her. She closed her eyes and held her breath and tried to empty herself of all her own feelings, so that she became no more than a channel for the passions of the two bands. She felt them soak into each other and flow out from her again, and the nausea passed. She opened her eyes and could see it clearly: the two bands were merging into a single aura that embraced them all.