Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

  "I did not save the young man,” Liall reminded him. “That was his doing."

  "But you saved Annaya, and you saved me from Cadan."

  "Only because I was there,” Liall disagreed. “I could just as easily have been twenty leagues away."

  "But you weren't,” Scarlet persisted. “Deva put you there, and so Deva places the debt on me."

  Liall tilted his head to look down on Scarlet. His tone turned subtly mocking. “Ah, so it was the will of your gods. Why thank me at all, then?"

  "Because you had a choice,” Scarlet returned plainly. He was unaccountably annoyed with Liall's logic. “You could've turned away, but you chose to help. You did. The gods had nothing to do with that part of it."

  Liall grunted, eyeing him skeptically. “I do not believe in gods. If they exist at all, they do not answer my prayers, so what good are they?” He spat over the edge of the platform. “I piss on all of them."

  This was such blasphemy that Scarlet gaped in shock. “You should not say such things,” he whispered, scandalized.

  Liall laughed and the skin around his eyes crinkled in merriment. For a moment, Scarlet was angry. Liall put his hand heavily on Scarlet's shoulder.

  "Your goddess Deva commands you to remain chaste and to do good in the world, to be charitable to strangers, generous to travelers, kind to children, and respectful of all beasts, yet she fills her world with cutthroats and slavers and rapists and foulness of every sort. She looks on and does nothing while you Hilurin are beset on all sides by animals. Om-Ret converts more and more followers in Morturii and even Byzantur, and meanwhile you and your kind, faithful worshippers of Deva, are a pitiful minority slowly being swallowed alive by the world.” He removed his hand. “No, boy, I fear no god's revenge. I am far more afraid of the cruelty of men."

  Liall's words were like whips cutting into his wavering faith. “Still,” he muttered, “I owe you a life debt and I will pay it somehow, on my honor."

  Liall shrugged and looked at the sky, squinting as he assayed the clouds. “Honor does not concern an atya, only sky and wind and keeping his krait fed and an open road in front of them. You have nothing now, either way."

  "One does not pay such a debt in coin alone,” Scarlet said primly. “There is also service."

  "Service?” Liall's pale eyebrows rose and his interest returned. “Do you wish to be my servant? To wait on me like Peysho's women, fetching and carrying my food and laundry. Is that it?"

  "No!” he snapped. Gods, was the man totally ignorant?

  "Then you will have to demonstrate this odd notion of service to me. I have no doubt it will be interesting.” Liall turned suddenly sober. “But now, I have something to show you. Come with me."

  Liall strode off, expecting to be obeyed, and Scarlet had no choice but to follow. They walked quickly through the camp with many eyes on them, but Liall spoke to no one. Scarlet saw that they were headed toward the atya's red platform, and his boots slowed. Liall ascended the short steps and looked back over his shoulder to see Scarlet still on the ground.

  "Are you coming?"

  Scarlet did not want to follow him inside. Sleeping in Peysho's yurt was one matter, being alone with Liall was quite another. Yet, as he was in the man's debt, he did not wish to offend. Liall looked at him steadily for a long moment, then opened the flap and ducked inside his yurt, leaving him to follow or not as he chose.

  Feeling the eyes of several curious Kasiri on him, Scarlet went haltingly up the stairs and into the yurt. Liall was standing by the small, smoking brazier. A large, hinged box rested on a table beside him, and Liall had his hand on it. The box was painted in many colors and had a crimson vine crowned by a white flower inscribed on the lid, the Byzan symbol of the Flower Prince.

  "I have this for you,” Liall said as Scarlet let the canvas flap drop behind him. Liall's face was troubled and he patted the lid of the box before withdrawing his hand. “But I confess I do not know what to do with it."

  Scarlet studied the box and stepped forward and would have touched it, but Liall seized his hand. “Do not open it,” Liall said gently.

  Scarlet stared at him, utterly at a loss. He shook his head, wondering if this was some new game, and if the old Wolf was back.

  "I thought ... it did not seem fitting to leave them there,” Liall said.

  The box seemed to loom darkly on the table. “What is it?"

  "The bones of your parents."

  It was a long moment before Scarlet was able to speak. “How?"

  "Even in such a fire, something remains,” Liall said. “I had my men sift the ashes of your father's house. This is the result."

  Words failed Scarlet. He shook his head, aware that Liall still held his hand. Scarlet did not pull away. “Why?"

  "I know how it feels when those you love suddenly die, and there is no opportunity to bury them or say farewell.” Liall cleared his throat, embarrassed of his confession. “There are many Byzan customs of burial, but I am ignorant of Hilurin tradition. I did not know what to do with them."

  Scarlet gazed at the box and had absolutely no desire to open it. Liall looked at him with pity.

  "Please tell me how to honor them."

  Scarlet's voice shook. “We take the bodies of our dead to the priests of Deva."

  "If there are no priests?” Liall prompted. They had all fled the raiders and were safe in Patra or Khurelen. “What then?"

  "They're buried deep in the fields to nourish the soil. Scaja's father and mother are buried in the wheat field we sow every spring, the field where the family templon is."

  "Shall we do that?” Liall asked, his voice uncommonly gentle. “Shall we bury them?"

  * * * *

  The heavy rain clouds were perched over the valley by the time they made it on foot down the mountain path to Lysia. Peysho and Kio went with them, and Kio offered twice to carry the box, but Scarlet would let no one else bear it. He still could not bring himself to open it.

  Liall was surprised that Annaya did not come with them. “She's a girl,” Scarlet said, which explained nothing to a Kasiri. “Her business is bearing, not death. You can't expect her to do both. What kind of people are you?"

  The matter was beyond Liall and he said so, but declined to argue the point. Out of respect, Scarlet supposed, and marveled.

  Liall and Peysho had brought shovels, and together they dug a hole in the earth as deep as a man, just a few feet from where the fence used to be, now trampled into the ground like everything else. A chilly, stinging rain started up just as they were finishing the hole, and Scarlet handed the box down to Liall.

  "I will just open it and place it in the bottom of the grave. Is that well?” Liall asked. His bright hair was spattered with black mud and his face was filthy.

  Scarlet nodded. It was a poor funeral, but he could think of nothing else. It seemed impossible that this man helping him put his parents to rest was the same man he had cursed as a brigand and murderer.

  Scarlet helped Liall out of the grave, and thankfully Kio was shoveling rocky earth back into the hole before he got a clear look at the open box. Scarlet took up a shovel and joined Kio in his task, and Liall stood aside with Peysho, who watched the pedlar sympathetically with his strange, fractured eye.

  When the grave was filled, Scarlet knelt on one knee in the mud, his head bowed as he carded through his memories: Scaja laughing as he taught him to seat a horse for the first time, Linhona waking him in the morning for breakfast, Scaja's soft eyes as he handed him his pipe in the evening, the feel of Linhona's warm hand on his cheek.

  "Do you want to say something?” Liall asked, rousing him from the dark well of memory. The rain was cold on their heads and their clothes were soaked through.

  "What is there to say?” He knew he sounded defeated and morose. “I'm not a priest. I only know the cantos that Scaja taught me to sing to Deva."

  "Sing it,” Liall urged.

  He thought about it for a moment in the fading light, then look
ed up at the gray sky and began to sing in a pure, clear voice:

  "On danaee Deva shani,

  You brought us here,

  You take us home

  On danaee Deva shani

  Noe drashen mor Anshali."

  It was a simple song and he did not consider himself to be much of a singer, but Liall was staring at him.

  "That was beautiful, Scarlet."

  He shook his head and got to his feet.

  Liall touched his arm as the rain drummed on their skulls, little needles of cold. “Come. Your sister will be waiting."

  There was nothing to do but follow him. They marched back up the hill in silence. Finally, when they were about to turn the last bend that would take the field out of his sight, Scarlet stopped and looked back at the shallow depression in the earth. The raked soil was rapidly returning to mud. Soon, heavy rains and spring weeds would erase all evidence that they had disturbed the ground there. For a moment, it felt like Scaja and Linhona had never lived at all.

  Liall was beside him. His hand was surprisingly warm on Scarlet's neck. “Would you like me to find a marker for their grave?"

  Scarlet shook his head, shaking raindrops from the ends of his hair. Liall ducked his head a little to look Scarlet in the eye. His hand moved on Scarlet's neck in a soothing caress, his fingers kneading the tired, clenched muscles there.

  Scarlet did not push him away as he would have a day ago, but he suddenly felt disturbingly vulnerable to that seductive alien countenance. In pure self-defense, he turned his face away and stared blindly at the summit of the Nerit. “All of Lysia is a grave."

  * * * *

  Two days passed before Annaya and Shansi were well enough to make the trip to Nantua. The previous night, Shansi had made known his plans to take her to his father's house across the river, far from where the Aralyrin raids were occurring. Scarlet had argued with him briefly, nurturing a forlorn hope that life could continue in Lysia.

  "Scarlet, the place is a tomb,” Shansi said gently. “Let it rest in peace."

  "It's our home,” Scarlet insisted. “Scaja wanted to see his grandchildren grow up there."

  "That's not the point, now."

  "Linhona wanted the same."

  "Linhona had no love for Lysia, she only wanted us to stay close by,” Annaya said. “She was no more happy about me going to live with Shansi than she was with you going off with the caravans."

  "Still,” he argued. “It's what they would have wanted."

  "I'm not going to live in a slaughterhouse out of guilt,” Annaya declared, putting an end to the debate. “I'll never go back to Lysia."

  Scarlet saw from the set of her chin that it would be a battle to cross her. He gave in and went to sit with Liall and Kio on the steps of Peysho's yurt. There he sat quietly and twirled a stick in his hand as the two men conversed in an unknown dialect, some patois of Falx and Qaha that he could follow if he listened carefully, but he did not. The sun was setting and the Kasiri camp was in a shambles. All the oxen and horses had been brought out of their shelters and were tethered to half-filled wagons as the Longspur krait pulled up stakes and made ready to move on. Men cursed and trudged through the camp with heavy trunks and boxes on their backs as the last of the winter snow and ice slowly churned to gray slush under their boots. Not only had Lysia—the only nearby village to pressure tolls from—vanished into smoke, but the Aralyrin had genuinely hurt the Kasiri. Scarlet was ashamed to realize that he had not even asked Liall the names of the Kasiri who had died with Lysia.

  "None who will not be mourned,” Liall answered shortly. “How is your sister?"

  He asked about her every day. Scarlet tried to wipe the glum look from his face as he snapped the stick in two. “Much better. Shansi will be taking her to Nantua."

  "And do you approve of her choice?"

  He shrugged. “She's got to marry someone, I suppose. Shansi will find another blacksmith to finish out his apprenticeship, and a smith makes good wages. A sensible lad and a sensible match."

  "And will you go with them, make your new home in Nantua?"

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I don't think so."

  "What will you do, then?"

  "I hadn't thought that far ahead."

  "Yet, you must do something,” Liall pressed, and for a dizzying moment, Scarlet believed Liall was going to ask him to remain with him and the Kasiri.

  "Masdren is going to teach me leatherwork and tanning in Ankar,” he said quickly. “He's got a shop in the souk."

  "Masdren,” Liall repeated oddly.

  "Friend of my father's,” he explained, then was angry at himself for explaining. What did he care what Liall thought? “He's old enough to be my dad."

  Peysho strode past them as they sat in the orange light of dusk and motioned for Kio to follow him. Kio went without a word and Scarlet stared after the two men, biting his lip.

  "Curious about them, are you?"

  Scarlet stared at the ground and said nothing. There were questions he wanted to ask, but they seemed scandalous when he thought about saying them. He settled for a shrug. “They make a ... comfortable pair,” he allowed. “Or they seem to."

  "What an unromantic lot you are,” Liall observed.

  Scarlet sensed Liall was laughing at him again. He could do that without cracking a smile. “Why do you say that?"

  "Comfortable, sensible, suitable,” Liall quoted. “Have you never heard of passion?"

  "Passion never put crops in the field.” It was a saying of Scaja's.

  "Never a Byzan field, at any rate. I'm sure of it."

  Scarlet had no idea what Liall was on about, but then, he rarely did. The man had a mind like a weevil's path, all crossings and curls. “All I meant was they seem easy with one another."

  "They are that. They're both former soldiers. Peysho will make a good atya when I'm gone, and Kio will help him."

  Scarlet's head jerked up. “Gone? Where are you going?"

  He may have said it too quickly, for Liall gave him an arch look. “Why do you want to know?"

  "I just ... I don't want to know,” he said stubbornly. “If it's a secret, keep it to yourself. What do I care?"

  "As you said, you are going to live in Ankar.” Liall was staring at him blandly.

  Scarlet scowled. “I thought these were your people."

  "My people,” Liall pursed his lips, seeming to mull the notion over, “I am their leader, if that's a distinction you care to make. But, in many ways, I suppose I am a Kasiri by now."

  "Then why are you leaving?"

  "I've been called back to my homeland."

  "Where's that?"

  "Too far away for little Byzans ever to have heard of it,” Liall assured, which annoyed him more. Liall grinned, but it seemed strained to Scarlet. “It is Norl Udur, as has been rumored, and I will get there by traveling to the port of Volkovoi across the Channel. I told you the word is a wide place. Where I come from, all men are giants like me and the land is wrapped in ice."

  He could well believe that. “I have trouble seeing you as a journeyer."

  "Kasiri are journeyers."

  "That's different."

  Liall chuckled a little. “Meaning thieving nomads are not the same as noble pedlars? You don't say much, Scarlet, and even when you do, what you don't say could fill a book."

  Ha! Talk about pots and kettles. “When are you leaving?"

  "In the morning."

  Scarlet strove for a light tone, shaken for no reason he could name. “There's to be no celebration for the departing chieftain?"

  Liall shook his head curtly. “It would not be proper after we have lost so many men. Also, it would mark a division between my rule of the krait and Peysho's, and I don't want to weaken his new stature by comparison."

  Scarlet tossed the ends of the stick away, not knowing what to say. Just then, Kio whistled from across the camp, calling Liall to a spot where several men were gathered to right an overturned wagon. Liall stood up and slap
ped his palms together.

  "Ready to get your hands dirty?"

  Scarlet snorted and followed him. Hands dirty, indeed. Seven strong men had their hands knotted in ropes slung over the wagon's top on the other side of the camp, ready to pull. Liall took his place beside Kio and handed Scarlet a rope.

  "This isn't a good idea,” he said, taking his place beside the men and bracing his legs.

  Torva, an elder tribesman with a scarred nose, laughed at him. “Kasiri have been traveling by wagon and yurt since Deva left the Otherworld to walk among mortals. What would you know about it?"

  Liall was watching Scarlet with interest. Scarlet stole a quick peek under the wagon, saw the angle of the wheels, and then straightened. “At least one wheel will break on the felled side if we right the wagon this way,” he judged. “Maybe both."

  The Kasiri laughed and Peysho sang out a loud note. The men heaved and pushed. Minutes later, Scarlet was dusting off his hands and the Kasiri were casting him sheepish looks.

  Kio walked over and gifted Scarlet with one of his rare smiles as he slapped dirt from his breeches. “One wheel snapped, the other cracked.” He chuckled. “The pedlar knows his wagons.” Kio watched Liall standing beside a knot of men, pointing and giving directions as Peysho listened with his customary solemnity that was never far from amusement.

  "So,” Kio said casually. “You'll be following the Wolf, then?"

  Scarlet stared. “Why would I do that?"

  Kio only smiled knowingly, as if he knew a secret, and left just as Liall walked up. The uppermost rim of the sun was sinking below the horizon and its dying light cast a final reddish glow on the mountain peaks all around them.

  "This is your last night with the Kasiri,” Liall said. “Mine, as well. Will you have dinner with me? I have more of that scented che you like."

  Liall's gaze was unreadable and his neutral words gave Scarlet nothing to interpret. He swallowed in a dry throat. Not only was Liall his host, he was his sister's savior, and on the surface it was only a dinner invitation. Still, he thought nervously, he wants more than company for a meal. He knows it and so do I and ... gods, why must he be so plain that all he wants from me is to get between my legs? Why does he ask so damned little?