Chapter 40
There was a wide drainage ditch cut through the town, separating the casteless quarter from the homes of the whole men. The ditch had been filled by the torrential rains and partially iced-over during the night. The only way across was an old stone bridge that was completely covered in thick ice. Ashok crossed with an untouchable child cradled in each arm, and his bare feet leaving a smear of blood with each step. The girl had passed out. The boy was still crying. They weighed nothing.
All of Jharlang seemed dirty and run down, but this quarter was far worse. The worker’s roofs were made of shingles, the casteless of straw. There was no order here, just haphazard buildings stacked deeper and deeper, until there were only narrow channels for bodies to pass through. The worker’s main street was paved with stone, the casteless didn’t have an open space wide enough to call a street, and the path Ashok found himself on was nothing but ruts and frozen mud puddles.
Always on the lookout for trouble, the casteless had seen him coming and gone into hiding. They probably didn’t know what to make of a whole man in a fine merchant’s coat carrying two of their own, so they’d retreated. He saw frightened eyes peeking out from behind slats. “Who is in charge?” Ashok’s shout broke the early morning stillness. The sound startled a stray dog from beneath a pile of rotting timbers, and it ran away, tail between its legs. “Come out.”
He continued through the maze, shouting. If they didn’t answer soon, he’d pick a shack and leave the children inside. That thought angered him, and he wasn’t even certain why.
The barracks didn’t have doors, just curtains made of hide. One of those curtains parted and a hunched-over old female came hobbling out, using a knotted old stick for a cane. Her hair was wild and white, her skin was yellowed and had the same texture as the leather curtains. She stopped a few feet from Ashok, and he thought that she looked so brittle that if a strong wind pushed her over she might shatter.
“These folks heed me.” Her voice was stronger than her appearance suggested it would be. There was something too proud about this one. She wore her rags like a Thakoor would wear their finest silks. “I’m Mother Dawn.”
“Casteless don’t have titles.”
“Mother is more of a nickname than a title.” Her eyes were so clouded and gray that Ashok thought she might be blind, but then she looked right at the children in Ashok’s arms. “Poor little things.”
“I saved these.”
“How unexpectedly kind of you.”
Ashok had never been accused of kindness before. “Take them.”
Then she put her fingers to her lips and whistled. It was a surprisingly sharp noise. Another curtain opened and two casteless women hurried over to Ashok and relieved him of the bodies. For a reason he couldn’t begin to understand, he was hesitant to let go.
“I assure you they’ll be tended to.”
He relented, and the meager weight was lifted from him. Ashok watched as they were taken inside a barracks and the curtain closed. It was over. Ashok owed the casteless no explanation and turned to go.
“We’ve been expecting you.”
Ashok kept walking. “You know nothing of who I am.”
“You are Fall.”
He paused.
“All of the youngsters speak of you, at night, in the barracks, where their overseers can’t hear. Some don’t believe, but others do. It has been a long time since we’ve had a hero.”
“Hero is an inappropriate description. Command them to stop.”
“I’m not talking about these here, but all of us. Word of your existence has traveled across all the houses to every barracks and slum. It is good to have a new story! The few of us who’ve lived long enough to get old have been telling the ancient stories, hoping the day will come, and if we hope hard enough, sometimes the Forgotten shows us things. He showed me you would come here.”
Ashok’s curiosity got the better of him. “What did your false god have to say about me?”
“Say?” The crazy old casteless cackled. “I’m no Oracle.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“A title from the old days. Prophet I suppose they call it nowadays, though I think that’s just inexperienced Keepers mixing up jobs. I’ve not heard the Voice. I don’t get the words! Couldn’t write them down even if I did, so why waste perfectly good words on someone who can’t read or write like me? I got no Keeper here to scribble them down! Everybody knows an Oracle always has a Keeper in tow. How else would the Forgotten’s words get recorded for his people?”
He shrugged.
“But I saw! The gods showed me two paths. You take one, we all die. You take the other, we live—for a bit—but you might not. It weren’t clear.”
Ashok studied the crone’s milky eyes. “No wonder.”
“Two paths before you, Fall. Before you pick, know there are five hundred of our kind here, innocent, and we’ll all be punished for what you done. Our only use in Jharlang is to work the terraces. Everything else is above us. No terraces to work during the winter, but we still eat up the food stores. Only this was a poor year, and there’s not enough food. The workers don’t like going hungry to keep us around. Spring’s a way off still. Winter’s long. They won’t need much other excuse to kill off most of us, and you just gave them one.”
There was shouting on the other side of the bridge. He called upon the Heart to focus his senses. Some villagers were telling the tale of the beaten workers, trying to rile up the others. Angry cries echoed through Jharlang.
“It is not right for them to punish you for something I did,” Ashok muttered.
“We are all still being punished for something our ancestors did hundreds and hundreds of years ago. This comes as a surprise?”
There was a clang clang clang noise a villager began beating on a kettle. That would serve as their alarm. Retribution had to be sought. Justice demands blood.
“These two paths you saw, where did each one lead?”
“Both end in blood. You were born into this world to kill. That can’t be helped, Fall. The question is, whose blood will you spill first? Gather your friends and flee, or stay and fight? Will you help your brothers and sisters here live, or will you abandon us to the mob so that you can continue to pretend to be something you are not?”
“I don’t want to hurt these workers.”
“Workers?” The Mother tilted her head to the side. “If only it were so easy! We can hide from workers until their rage cools. We have far more patience than they do. No, Fall, I was shown that something much worse is coming. The Forgotten doesn’t care how many innocents must perish to convince you, only that you are convinced. Of the many different gods the tribes worshipped back in the old days, I’ve been told that some of them were merciful, even kind and loving. The Forgotten was not one of those.”
More noise was coming from the worker side of the village. Angry cries for vengeance were answered. Clubs banged a rhythm against walls. They were coming.
The Law demanded that he continue on his way. He may have made a foolish, emotional mistake getting involved earlier, but orders came first. Now he had time to think clearly, and knew he had to get to Akershan and find the prophet. But Ashok couldn’t move, torn between duty and something else. Shame? Doubt? He didn’t know what to call it, but the unfamiliar emotion gnawed at him. He looked around the humble casteless quarter, and knew that if he did what he was supposed to, this place and its inhabitants would be reduced to ash.
“Yes, Fall, life would have remained simpler if you would’ve just let those children die.”
“Only I didn’t.” He started for the bridge.
She called after him, “The Forgotten didn’t show me that he’d pick someone too dumb to wear shoes after an ice storm!”
“I was in a hurry.”
Chapter 41
Keta had been awake long before sun up, nervously watching Thera sleep. Though they pretended to be husband and wife when they stayed at inns, they had neve
r shared a bed. Suggesting otherwise was likely to get him knifed, so the Keeper of Names always insisted upon sleeping on the floor. He was after all, extremely used to it.
It wasn’t like Thera to sleep in this long. Normally she was alert and sharpening something by the time Keta stirred, and it wasn’t as if someone who’d once been a hard-working butcher was prone to slumbering long past sunrise. Regardless of how poorly she slept, they needed to discuss this new complication. “Thera?”
She immediately snapped awake and pulled a dagger from beneath her pillow. She lowered it when she saw it was only Keta. “What?” she asked, rubbing her eyes, then she must have noticed the concerned look on Keta’s face. “Oceans…Was it the Voice again?”
The Keeper of Names gave her a sad little smile. “I’m afraid so.”
“There’s no escaping that damned thing!”
Then he averted his eyes as Thera climbed out of bed, heedless of his presence, and began throwing her clothing on. The warrior caste didn’t get too hung up on modesty. It wasn’t as if someone who’d grown up living in crowded casteless barracks worried about such things either, but looking away seemed the polite thing to do. “The message was short.”
“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” Thera muttered as she pulled her shirt over her head. “What did it say this time?”
As was required, he’d written it down, but there was no need to get the paper out. He remembered exactly what it said. “Here the path is set. Let my general begin his war. The world must remember what has been forgotten.”
“What does that mean?” Thera lashed a small knife to the inside of her wrist and hid it beneath a sleeve. “Bunch of cryptic nonsense is all. That’s it?”
“That was all.” Keta lied. He’d written down two more lines, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Thera about it yet. This was not the time to have a crisis of faith, but Keta was afraid to tell her the rest.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this. You should have woken me sooner. Let’s grab Ashok and get out of here.”
There was a commotion outside of their room and shouting downstairs. Someone ran down the hallway, passed their room, and thundered down the stairs. Keta listened closely as the panicked messenger’s noise woke the entire inn.
“Did I hear that right?”
Keta hadn’t been sure himself. “I think he said there’s a riot.” The Keeper got off the stool, carefully tucking the piece of paper containing the transcribed holy vision into a pocket and went to the window. The inn was too poor to have glass, so he had to untie a thick cord before he could pull the insulating curtain open. A harsh winter chill rolled into the room as Keta threw open the flimsy shutters.
The world was blinding and bright. The early morning sun was reflecting off of every iced-over surface. He’d heard of ice storms, but they didn’t have such things where he was from. It was rather impressive in person. Keta lifted one hand to shade his eyes. The people of Jharlang were gathering in the streets as excited runners went from house to house, proclaiming news of some injustice. Workers rushed past below, carrying axes, hammers, and pitchforks. Some fool had begun ringing a bell. In the distance he could see a much larger group forming.
Thera joined him at the window. “Looks more like an angry mob than a proper riot, but workers tend to exaggerate. I scouted around last night. That’s the casteless quarter they’re heading toward. Looks like some poor untouchable slob is about to get executed.”
He’d personally witnessed that sort of thing a few times over the course of his life. That many angry people meant that the crime had been something serious, and infuriating enough to not wait for a proper judgment. He’d heard of whole casteless barracks being burned down with all of their inhabitants inside to avenge the murder of a single worker. The casteless quarter was nearly as big as the rest of the village, and was kept separate by a wide irrigation ditch spanned by a single bridge. They were agitating about in front of it, but for some reason the mob hadn’t crossed that bridge yet. Keta squinted and tried to make out what was going on.
There was a lone figure blocking their way.
Chapter 42
Ashok stood alone before the angry mob, Angruvadal still sheathed and hidden beneath his long coat. He held a miner’s pick in one hand. The worker he’d taken the pick from was crawling away with a broken elbow. That’s what the fool deserved for taking a swing at him.
“I warned you,” Ashok told him as he tossed the pick onto the ice, before turning his attention back to the assembled villagers of Jharlang. They’d seen him mercilessly incapacitate two strong men so far, and it appeared that nobody wanted to be the next to try. “Leave the untouchables be.”
“Stand aside, merchant! They murdered one of ours!”
Ashok frowned. He’d not meant to kill any of them. Perhaps the one he’d put into the fence had broken his neck? Either that, or rumors flew faster than truth, and later they’d find that no one had actually died at all, but by that point the quarter would be in flames. “These casteless didn’t kill anyone. I’m the one who fought those men.”
The crowd began to shout, some for him to be arrested, others to have him killed. The local warriors hadn’t arrived to restore order yet, and the workers were mad now. The people here were poor and lived a hard life, but they were proud, and the proud didn’t take insults well. The roar began to build as those in the back—who hadn’t seen how quickly he’d eliminated the last who’d tried to cross the bridge—pushed their way forward. The anger was building. Soon it would overcome sense and he’d have no choice but to really hurt them.
“Turn back. This isn’t justice,” Ashok shouted to be heard over the rumble.
“You’re no judge! Kill him!”
“Break that barefooted outsider’s skull!”
Their temper was as hot as the morning was cold. Ashok didn’t know much about the life of a poor worker village, but an ice storm couldn’t be good for their livestock. Life here was harsh enough anyway, but this village had woken up in a bad mood, and the first news they’d heard was that some of their own had been beaten by casteless. Of course they were upset, and they were going to take their frustrations out on someone.
No matter what, Ashok wasn’t going to let them through.
Behind him the casteless were either hiding or gathering their meager belongings and fleeing into the terraces. Had his people tried to run when Bidaya had sent her warriors to eliminate them? Were they as frightened as these casteless were now? Or had they been taken by surprise, when Vadal troops had set their barracks on fire and erased everyone he’d ever known?
Such thoughts put him in a foul mood. “Return to your homes.”
A miner ran forward and hurled a rock at Ashok’s face.
Ashok caught the rock in one hand. It stung his palm. The miner had a good arm. But he immediately launched it back twice as fast. The rock struck the worker in the forehead with a sick crack, bounced off, and he collapsed unconscious into the snow. That gave them some pause, but more rocks were being pried off the frozen ground.
“Who are you to tell us what to do?”
Enough of this nonsense.
“Who am I? I am Ashok Vadal.” He opened his coat and drew his sword. Somehow the air became even colder. The villagers gasped in fear as the unmistakable black steel seared their eyes. “And the casteless are under my protection.”
The men of Jharlang began to flee, crashing into each other, slipping and sliding across the ice, trampling their neighbors in order to get away. They were in such a hurry that they left their injured men behind.
“That’s better,” Ashok muttered as he put his sword away.
Despite the Mother’s predictions of inevitable bloodshed, it seemed that he’d solved this issue without murdering anyone. It was shaping up to be a successful morning.
* * *
“You told them who you are?” Keta shouted. “Are you insane?”
After he’d found the others, the three of them had retreated ba
ck to the barn to hide and plan their next move. Keta clearly didn’t approved of Ashok’s actions, but to be fair, Ashok didn’t approve of what he’d done either.
“If I hadn’t said who I was, eventually I would have had to kill some of them.” Ashok was sitting on the back of the wagon, and winced as he shoved his bloody foot into its boot. If he’d had more time he’d apply a clean foot wrap, but they needed to get out of town fast. “I had to let them know that their behavior wouldn’t be tolerated.”
Keta was clearly agitated. The Keeper had been patient and helpful this whole trip, but this had pushed him over the edge. “I asked you to avoid notice!”
Thera seemed annoyed, but she was being a bit calmer about the whole thing than the Keeper. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why spare the lives of workers? Since when do any of those lower types matter to you?”
“They still don’t.” But that was no longer quite true. He thought about it while he pulled his other boot on. The ice had removed a lot of skin, leaving the soles of his feet bright red and burning. It was a good thing the Heart of the Mountain would keep the wounds from corrupting and rotting his feet off. “I don’t know.”
“You put us all at risk, and you don’t even know why?” Keta shouted.
He really didn’t, and that was truly bothering him to the core of his being. “I just couldn’t abide it.”
“You have no idea how important our work is, and this foolishness jeopardizes everything! You had no right to endanger our lives.”
Keta was correct, but that only made Ashok angrier. “You supposedly speak for the untouchables, Keeper. You should be filled with joy. Is your false god not pleased that I saved a few?”
“I don’t know why the Forgotten chose you, yet still tolerates your constant mockery. Your pride threatens our entire movement, everything we’ve accomplished. You have to understand—”
“You claim to want rebellion, Keeper, so there was a taste. Or was all that just talk?”
That seemed to hit Keta hard. All during this journey he’d preached about his people remembering their gods, rising up, and stopping their oppression. He seemed truly chastised by Ashok’s harsh words. He took a deep breath, and when he exhaled the small man seemed to deflate a bit. “I may not understand it, but the Forgotten has a plan. There is a time and a place for everything. I’ll be happier to stir up a revolt when we’ve got an army of faithful at our back and we’re not surrounded by enemies.”
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