by K V Johansen
“The shrines,” he said aloud. “The land is the god’s and not for selling, held of him, not owned. Can the priests deal justly, as stewards of their god?”
“They’re human,” Ghu said.
“Many are dead,” Ontari said. “Killed in their shrines for speaking against the empress’s cult. Or they’ve run to hide, or they’ve abandoned the gods to serve the empress.”
“It’s a place to start, though,” Ghu said. “Ahjvar is right. And the slaves must be free. There is land enough. The towns are great enough for those with other trades. They will have their places; they must. I say again, they must go or stay with those who’ve been their masters as they will, and with fair return for their service.”
“Prince Dan said so, but to do it—”
“Do it. There is wealth enough in this land.”
“Have you any idea . . . ? In the imperial treasury, maybe.”
“Then we will take the imperial treasury,” Ghu said. “Because I will have no slaves in my land, Ontari. And no one needs to wear six layers of silk.”
“My lord.” Another fallen at Ghu’s feet? Those who truly were seeking their god knew him, but—no. This one seemed more to simply feel himself outnumbered, since he found the heir of the gods had the support of his hoped-for ally Daro Korat. They would all bear watching. Ahjvar did not like to have anyone armed and riding between them.
The gates of the camp stood open, their herald riding on towards the town. Yeh-Lin stirred herself, ordering more of her own riders ahead, engulfing them. A word from Ontari to his niece put Prince Dan’s folk to the rear, which made Ahjvar’s skin crawl, but he supposed those bee-coloured banners ought to follow, not lead. He did not trust, was all.
“Lord Ontari, pardon me . . .” Yeh-Lin turned a bright smile on the Dwei nobleman. “But before we come to the castle I need to report to the holy one all I’ve set in place since I took the town. If you would be so good . . .?”
Ontari made a courteous brief bow to Ghu and reined back to join the Grasslander wizard. Ahjvar closed Niaul in before Yeh-Lin could get between them, though perhaps she had not meant to try; she took position on Ghu’s other side.
“I duelled and killed Zhung Musan’s lieutenant with the town and all Choa as the stakes,” she said in Praitannec, without preamble. “It seemed most efficient. It was a fair fight, Nabban, my word on it. Daro Korat is on his feet and holding his lordship again, and the town in some order after the riots—”
“What riots?” Ahjvar asked.
She shrugged. “These things will happen. It’s quiet now. Officers I don’t think we can trust have been imprisoned—and I still do not know what those tattoos mean, but the few who bear them are among those I will not trust, save your wizard Nang Kangju who so mutilated himself to be rid of it. Most of the officers seem willing enough to follow their lords, though, and we hold, for now, the service of enough of their lords . . . they come to Daro Korat, most of them, not to rumour of the holy one, but that will do. The soldiers and townsfolk care little so long as someone feeds them. . . .”
Ahjvar let her talk, drifting.
“. . . I’ve formed a company of foresters and sent them to the western uplands with most of the draught-animals of the army. Zhung Musan at least saw those were fed, no matter how he neglected his men. And another company of those who know the rivers. They’re working at that village—what do you call it? The one you can see from the castle. They were up to their waists in water half the time but none have drowned yet, and now that the flood is dropping all is going better, save moving the logs. I would dig a canal so far as the highway, at least, were I lord of the province. A short stretch; it could be done in a season.”
“Not this season,” Ghu remarked.
“No.”
“And why?”
“Why?” she echoed.
“Why build rafts?”
What rafts? He had not drifted so far away that he lost half the conversation, had he? Not this time. Their thoughts chased one another on some track he did not see.
“What rafts?” Ahjvar asked aloud.
“Can we live off this land that is already so warred over? We must move, we must keep moving, not sit here waiting for our enemies to come to us. We go over the river or down it, do we not, Nabban?”
“Maybe.”
“On rafts?” Ahjvar asked. “With horses?”
“No. But we can move no faster than our provisions, yet when we do move, when we know where to move, we must go with speed. We may need your style of warfare after all, dead king, or as close as we can come with our barefoot infantry. Look at these soldiers. Would you take them into the field?”
That was addressed to him.
They were come to the camp of Zhung Musan’s army in the horsefair, inside a palisade still new and yellow, pales stripped of bark. The soldiers were a poor lot, thin and bandy-legged, for the most part, as if they’d grown up half starving.
“What? No. I wouldn’t set them to herd sheep.”
“I have sent a party over the border into Denanbak, to see if we can trade some of the castle’s store of silks for sheep and seed, in fact. Rather more valuable pound for pound than cloth to us, at present. There will be no trade with the caravans this year.” She considered. “I doubt they will return in time, and those caravans that have fled have lost most of their goods to Zhung Musan’s expropriations already. They will not be back this year, maybe not next. We must gather what we can and hope that we can supply camps in the south from Shihpan and Alwu. Dwei Ontari is the man to deal with for that. But the town and the villages must also eat and, just as urgently, have flocks in the pastures again. Zhung Musan seems to have wanted to leave Choa a wasteland, incapable of rising again once he and the greater imperial army spread out into Alwu and Shihpan. I wonder what he did with the flocks and herds of Choa? He doesn’t seem to have fed his own folk on them. Driven south, I suppose, though they’ll be butchered and salted and fed to the lords and the empress’s officers by now; nothing you can go raiding to bring home again, dead king. The central provinces and the south are all croplands, not pasture. I imagine meat will buy a great deal of love for the empress, for a time.”
“You think she’ll come north?” he asked.
“Choa was clearly only the start of a greater campaign to retake the northwest. More would have come north with the summer. I think they will not, now. I would not. The southern tribes are causing trouble, for which we should be thankful. Regardless of what is happening around the Golden City, we must move what force we can down to the southern border with Shihpan and to the ferry above the Dragon’s Gorge. We don’t know if the empress may move against us out of Numiya or up from Vanai or what high lords may decide to act on their own against us, to seize what lands they can; we don’t know how firm Dan’s hold on Shihpan actually is, since his folk have apparently misplaced him.”
Ghu was looking dark and abstracted. Yeh-Lin fell silent, watching him. Frowned. “Is it well done, Nabban? I see nothing for certain, but—”
“Yes,” he said, focussing on her again. Gave her a nod. “Sheep. Good.”
And seed.
They needed to put some flesh on these men. They could do with cloth, too. Not silks, though. Ragged, dirty uniforms. The little armour, on those who held the gate—standing stiff and, yes, proud—was no more than lacquered leather breast and back and a helmet. Square shields were marked variously with the Zhung or Daro or Min-Jan characters, meaningless now. Such wealth pouring into Nabban, the great lake that fed and received the rivers of the caravan roads, and they could equip their soldiers no better? There was gold somewhere, and silk such as the castle’s slaves spun and wove, and jewels and rare things. Most of these—boys, really—were armed with spear and knife, no more. Barefoot, some. Yeh-Lin had not been exaggerating in that. They were not only on formal display at the wooden gate in the palisade. They lined the broad road through the camp, drawn up in ranks—warned by Ti-So’aro. They were still assembling
at the far side before the town wall. Officers and banner-lords and -ladies. Men and women who had served Zhung Musan. Spells drifting, like ash, settling around him, tickling on the skin, subtle and strong.
“Protections against arrows,” Yeh-Lin said, looking over at him. “Let her. Leave them.” The Grasslander.
“Don’t trust your prize, old woman?”
“I could hardly swear each one to Nabban in person. They made their oaths generally.”
“It’s all right,” Ghu said. “Trust Ivah, Ahjvar. She’s my friend. She helped me in Marakand. It’s all right.”
Trust the Grasslander, maybe. Trust these conscripted men and their masters? Not likely. Even Ghu watched them warily, still and deep, though the wariness was not fear. Sizing up a burden, Ahjvar thought. They were still themselves, or went so, rank on rank. Silenced the whispering, the muttering. An officer fell to her knees. Some young conscript right before them was scrubbing at his eyes with a grubby fist, hardly the only one in tears. What did they see?
A cloudy day and a sudden gust of wind driving a curtain of drizzle over them, and streaks of sun following.
Ghu simply—watched them. Each and every one, and saw them. Each and every one. Bowed gravely from the saddle. Then he rode on. Yeh-Lin did not find words again until they were riding through the town gate, and the road was barred—or at least filled, with lords and officers come to meet them.
“Any chance of alliance with the southern tribes?” Ahjvar asked. “I suppose there’s no way of negotiating with them. All Nabban between us. What would we have to offer, anyway?”
“Barbarians,” Yeh-Lin said. “Buy them for a season, they’ll come back wanting more the next year.”
The corner of Ghu’s mouth lifted. “My mother,” he observed, “would have said the reverse, Dotemon. They’ve ceded and ceded their lowlands, and the border keeps creeping south.” Eyed her. “All Nabban between, and only the winds to bridge it? Maybe we should send an ambassador to offer them what they want, Ahj. Darru and Lathi and the old border kept.”
“That’s—!” Definitely a yelp from Yeh-Lin. “Which old border?”
“The true one. The one the land knows. The watershed of the Little Sister.”
“Asagama and half Upper and Lower Lat on top of Dar-Lathi? They have been Nabbani since before my time, and Taiji—”
“Little of Taiji was ever Lathan. But the rest, yes.”
“No one will let you give away—”
“We will run our old courses again, hold our old names and new names . . .” Ghu’s voice, very soft, trailed off. Ahjvar had thought he was teasing Yeh-Lin. No. “You’ll go for me, Dotemon. Not yet. Not while we have Buri-Nai and her lie of the Old Great Gods yet to deal with. But when I send you to the queens, you’ll go and speak as I have said.” He added, as if it somehow followed, “They never told me what my mother’s name was. I wonder if anyone ever knew?”
“Nabban.” She bowed low. “As you will.”
In the town they cheered, the people, pinch-faced, crowding what was probably a market square. Cheered as though a conqueror rode in. Ghu paled, his mouth tight.
“They need to see you, Nabban,” Yeh-Lin said, and added, with a return of her usual manner, “Be glad I have cleared the gallows away and buried all the exposed dead.”
Ghu turned Snow abruptly and Ahjvar moved to guard him, not certain what he’d seen. Nothing of threat. Stone wall, with a burnt ruin of scaffolding about it and burnt beams and posts beyond. Children had climbed the wall, ruined or unfinished, and stared down. Ghu smiled up at them, and startled, shy, they stared, and then smiled back. He turned again, across the square and to the south, weaving through the crowd that shifted and flowed to be out of his way, not afraid, but cautious, and all the cavalcade that had preceded and followed them waited, watching.
“They’ve destroyed the Father’s shrine,” he said, when Ahjvar came up beside him.
It was only the entry porch to another earth-walled courtyard house like all the rest of the town, but the gates were broken down, and beyond, the pillars of the gallery were scorched, its posts and railings charred, one side of the gallery consumed and a ruin of tile and blackened timbers edging a square of mud and weeds and broken stone, a pine tree hacked down and left lying.
“The priestess is dead,” he said.
“Aoda,” Ivah said behind them. “She—spoke a prophecy and jumped from the wall of the empress’s temple. They hanged her corpse. They burnt her library, but I have a book. . . .”
“Aoda, yes. I remember her. She fed the beggars, always. Every day.” Ghu took a breath, wheeled Snow. Light in his eyes again. “I have your book, Ivah. But I lost your sword.” He added, when she said nothing, “Sorry.”
Half-wit boy. Ahjvar didn’t say it. Ghu gave him half a grin for it anyway, and called, “Captain Lin, Castellan. Who governs the town?”
It was Yuro who answered. “We’ve set Lord Zhung Huong, Lady Ti-So’aro’s brother, over the guild-masters and the magistrates, for now. There’s been much ruined. But he’s with the Kho’anzi waiting for you. Holy one.”
“Who’s seeing people fed?”
Uncertainty.
“Houses burnt and robbed, and storehouses burnt and robbed, and landless lawless lost folk everywhere? Are there even granaries unlooted?”
“Only the castle.”
“Better we feed the people here now, and the soldiers too, than hoard it longer. Call these masters of the town together, and tell them both these shrines, the true one and the false, must be made places where the folk who have nothing can come, to share out what there is. They must eat, Yuro, and the soldiers too, or how are any of us going to stand?”
The dogs came trotting after them, panting, muddy, but looking well content with something, as they rode over the bridge.
The old lord had come to meet them, afoot, with his granddaughter grave at his side, her face black with healing scabs, her cropped hair uncovered, unashamed.
They saw that, the folk who crowded at the town end of the bridge to watch through the open gates, saw the high lord of all Choa creak down to his knees and Ghu, a ragged beggar with the sun still catching him, leap down and offer a hand up, and speak, and turn to say something to the stable-hand who came to take Snow’s reins, too.
Yeh-Lin knew the play of a court. All a game, a display, here, before the soldiers, and the town, and now the castle, because Ghu had not let her make a show of him in the aftermath of the castle’s fall. And yet she was right: the folk must see their god and know their god had come among them, and that their lord acknowledged and honoured him. . . . With a word and a pat, Ahjvar left Gorthuerniaul to a shy-smiling woman and strode after Ghu and Daro Korat.
No surprise to find the Grasslander moving to the other side, as if she belonged there. Gewdeyn of the god, maybe. What would her folk call it? Noekar? A lord’s vassal. She offered no oath; Ahjvar found he accepted her there as Ghu did. Wondered at it.
The dogs are not what they were. . . .
Neither was he.
Long meetings, after greetings, and introductions, and oaths given again unasked. Food, plain and simple fare; perhaps the Kho’anzi had after all begun to take thought for provisioning town and army through a long, hungry spring. The day spun away. Ahjvar was rihswera of the god and stood at his back, and kept silent, mostly, since words grew too heavy. It had been too long since he was a king’s councillor, and the law he had made a study of in the Five Cities was not the law of this empire. Yeh-Lin was better fit to understand what they must deal with. Ghu said little, but listened, and patiently drew them back to his points when they strayed too far. The folk, the folk of the land, always first and foremost, and what they would do, they must begin here in Dernang and Choa now, not later, not someday—now, here.
There was no grace given to a land whose folk were chattels.
Lady Daro Willow came to order her grandfather away to his bed, with a smile at her new-declared uncle that suggested conspir
acy, and Ghu and Ahjvar were harried out, in the end, from argument—debate—with Lord Ontari about the possibility of bringing barley across the Wild Sister from Alwu on rafts, since boats seemed in short supply, by unexpected small tyrants whom Yeh-Lin declared her pages. The holy one, they said, must bathe and sleep and in the morning ride again to the town, to bless and reconsecrate the shrine of the Father his father. And to be seen again by more of the folk. She did not have the children say that, but she might as well have done.
Ghu seemed very small and weary, following the children down more stairs. Bathhouse, very grand, cedar-panelled, wall-carvings of willows and dragons and naked women with streaming hair, goddesses. The Wild Sister—who was, now, Ghu? That made Ahjvar’s head ache. The pools were tiled, blue and green and white, and there would be some stove beyond the wall where the water was heated before it was allowed to flow in; no doubt slaves tended it and had been told they were greatly honoured to heat the holy one’s bath and probably believed so. Which also made his head ache. Slaves no longer. The Kho’anzi would declare it tomorrow, and set proclamations through the town and the baileys of the castle, even. No branding of freedom, either. Just—free, and taking on the name of the Daro Clan, which—he was not sure he would want, if he carried that brand on his shoulder. And their service to their lord would continue as folk of the lord’s household, and maybe . . . all else would be worked out, later. Ahjvar did not think the family connection of tribe, that brought folk to serve in the king’s hall for their keep and gifts and mutual honour, would work in a land of cities and long oppression, no matter what the Kho’anzi himself said about all being the family of the castle, but for now, for tonight . . .
Steaming water. Though he had washed, repeatedly, in the cold spring of the Wild Sister’s rising.
“Not,” Ghu said, “the slaves’ bathhouse.” A wry smile. “Have you asked Yeh-Lin about the rancid rykersyld?”
