Keepers of the Ancient Wisdom (Kalie's Journey Book 3)

by Sandra Saidak

  Forcing her attention away from the amazing view in the distance, Kalie focused on the eight riders below her. Arrows, spears, and rocks rained down on them. Bolos tangled the legs of two of the horses, and their screams as they went down, crushing their riders, were the only ones Kalie regretted.

  Four mounted men made it out of the forest alive, though all were wounded, and one slumped in his saddle and lagged behind. Kalie slid from her tree and followed him almost leisurely. Then she saw Trisa, pinned down by a rapist, who despite the knife in his back, twisted Trisa’s hand and planted the girl’s own knife into her throat.

  Otera, only an instant too late to save Trisa, uttered a scream unlike anything Kalie had ever heard as she smashed in the back of the man’s skull with an axe before he had a chance to look up.

  With a bolo, Lanara toppled the horse of the wounded man who was trying to flee. Kalie stared a moment, then returned to the fight. She had not thought the healer would pick up a weapon of any kind. But from the corner of her eye, she saw Lanara made no move to harm the warrior, only wept as she cut the throat of the screaming horse whose leg she had broken.

  Three men escaped on horseback, one pausing to pick up a wounded companion. Of the rest, nine lay dead or dying, while the three remaining were tied up to await interrogation.

  Standing in shock for a moment, the reality of their victory began to seep in. A ragged cheer arose from deep inside them, filling the land. But it died as the bodies of four young women were laid out before Lanara.

  Trisa and Area were dead. It was clear from the look on Lanara’s face that Derona would be soon. Lanara gave Kalie a cup of wine mixed with syrup of the poppy, nodded toward Derona, and hurried to tend Griva, who despite the blood that covered her from a dozen different wounds, might yet live.

  While Malana and Valeska assisted Lanara, Kalie gently lifted Derona’s head and fed her the pain-killing drink in tiny sips. On her other side, Otera held her hand. It was only then that Kalie noticed Otera’s other arm was broken. When Derona slipped into a deep sleep—one from which she would not awake, but would at least be free of pain—Kalie took hold of Otera’s good arm. “Let’s get that arm splinted, shall we?”

  Otera did not seem to hear her. “She was with me from the first day the world changed. And she never left my side.” Otera’s voice was raw with emotion and unshed tears.

  “And she never regretted even one of those days.” Kalie felt stupid; she didn’t even know if that were true. But it was all she could think of to say. “She lived to see her dream of revenge. To make it happen.”

  “It’s all any of us dreamed about,” said Otera. “Just now, when we killed those men, when the others went running back to their chief, beaten by women, I felt…I don’t know how I felt. Whole, perhaps. I dreamed of it ever since…. But I never thought that living that dream would mean losing three of my sisters.”

  Kalie was about to point out that no one fought a war without losing friends, but thought better of it. Then Lanara, finished with Griva, who now slept fitfully, came and sat beside Otera. “I need to fix your arm,” she said.

  “Leave it!” snapped Otera, but eventually allowed Lanara to splint it, accepting nothing for the pain but a stick to bite on. Kalie suspected that Otera might require pain for sustenance as much as she needed food, but again kept her thoughts to herself.

  By then, the three prisoners were fully awake and becoming noisy. One, Kalie knew, couldn’t help himself, although, as any warrior of the steppes, he was trying to keep silent. He was the one Lanara had felled from his horse, and he was bleeding badly, with at least a few broken bones. The second had been hit on the head, and was just now regaining consciousness, and looking around in confusion. The third, and youngest, was badly bruised and probably had a broken bone or two, but even so, his words surprised Kalie.

  “Get that bitch who heals over here!” he shouted. “And bring some wine!”

  At that, Otera nearly smiled. She started to move in the prisoner’s direction, but Malana held her back while Lanara finished her work. It was Kalie who reached him first. She squatted on her heels, staring intently into his eyes. They were hazel, and filled with hate.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, gritting his teeth against his pain. “Can’t you half-demon cunts understand me?”

  “Unfortunately for you, some of us can,” Kalie said. She put the point of her knife against his chin, and slowly moved his head up, until the position was painful, and fear began to replace the hate in the young warrior’s eyes.

  “I want to ask you something,” she continued. “If you answer truthfully, you might live through the night. Or at least be granted a warrior’s death.” She leaned closer, pricking the man’s skin enough to draw a few drops of blood. He held his breath.

  “You came to our land, murdering and raping, stealing from real men and women like the lowest scavengers that you are. Now you attacked what you thought were helpless women, and finally got a small part of the justice you deserved. So why do you think anyone here is going to help you?”

  Those hazel eyes were wide with shock. Kalie pulled her knife away and waited. When he could speak the young man’s voice was respectful and tinged with fear. “We were told that dirt-eaters were weak fools who try to make friends with everyone. And that your witch-women are under some kind of spell that forces them to help everyone, even enemies. I…I thought I need only command you.”

  “In part, you are right,” said Lanara coming to stand beside Kalie and her prisoner. Malana stood beside her, translating everything the two had said. Kalie translated the healer’s words for the prisoner. “But we help everyone, even cowards like you, because it is our sacred calling. Because it is the right thing to do. Do you even know what that means? Kalie, do those words even translate?”

  “They translate,” she said. It was clear from the man’s face he understood a woman had just called him a coward.

  “Tell that ugly crow she will die for those words!” he shouted.

  “Before or after she heals your wounds?” Kalie asked as Lanara went to help the man with the most serious injuries. “Really, coju,” she uttered the insult mildly, which made it worse. “Why do you speak to us this way? Are you wishing for an even more painful, humiliating death than what you dole out to your victims?” She nodded to Otera. “That one wants to castrate you before she even starts asking you questions. Do you think after what you did to these women, anyone will stop her?”

  Again the fear was back, and this time Hazel Eyes couldn’t push it away. “You can’t do that!” he whimpered. “We…we are your masters. We were only doing what warriors do. And you’re just women. You shouldn’t even be allowed to hold a weapon! Where are your men? I demand to speak with the person in charge!”

  Kalie grinned as Otera’s shadow, longer than usual in the westerning sun, fell over them. “As you command, Master. She’s right here.”

  Chapter 31

  In the end, Otera castrated Hazel Eyes and the man who had been knocked out briefly. Then she stabbed Hazel Eyes in the gut, cutting his throat when his screams no longer pleased her. Lanara would not let Otera near the man she was tending, but it proved to be unnecessary. He provided enough useful information about the details of Starfall and the forces occupying it that at last Otera was persuaded by her own followers—many of whom had been sick during the interrogation—to leave the two men behind in the morning.

  Kalie, who once might have enjoyed watching Otera work—or even participated in it herself—now wished only to walk far away from the sights, sounds and smells in front of her. But Malana had already done that, so Kalie was forced to stay and translate.

  “How many warriors are in Starfall?” Otera asked the injured man whose name, Lanara had learned, was Talik.

  “About twenty four satraps,” Talik said, seeming puzzled as to why a woman would want to know.

  “A satrap contains forty warriors,” Kalie explained.

  “And how many captives?
”

  Talik drank the wine Lanara gave him and shrugged. “Not even one in each tent. The wives have been complaining. They expected many slaves.”

  Kalie caught Otera’s good arm to stop her from striking Talik. “You’ve caused enough pain for one day,” she said roughly. “Ask your questions so we can be gone from this place!”

  “How long do you mean to remain in Starfall?” Otera asked.

  “The last of the food will be used in a great feast in about two hands of days. Some will remain to rule in our king’s name. The rest will ride west, to complete our conquest.”

  “Where?” Otera looked like she was about to leap out of her skin.

  “A rich town, near a great water, with enough grass for our horses, and room for our tents.” He drank more wine and began to drift off to sleep.

  “Wait!” Otera shook him. “Will you travel as one horde, or in many groups?”

  “I don’t know,” said Talik, and this time, Otera let him sleep.

  “We have learned much,” Otera said, looking ready to drop from exhaustion.

  “I’m surprised he spoke so easily. Even after what you did to his spear-brothers.” Kalie looked up and saw that Malana had returned, and was looking away from the mutilated corpse of the arrogant man whose name they did not know. “Warriors like him will usually die under torture before giving up information to the enemy.”

  “Perhaps he thought we were too weak or stupid to do anything with it,” said Otera. “Or perhaps keeping his balls was more important than his so-called honor.” She stood up and began to speak to her warriors about their great victory today, and the loss of friends who would never be forgotten. Kalie walked away, into the gathering shadows of dusk until the only sounds were the soothing murmur of crickets. She sat, watching the sky grow dark, and the campfire light up in the distance, until Lanara came to join her.

  “How’s Otera?” Kalie asked.

  Lanara shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about Otera.”

  “How about the others, then?”

  “Fine. At least as fine as anyone who’s experienced such violence, and committed it themselves can be.” Lanara’s tone suggested no one was fine now, or should be. After a long silence she asked, “Why did he speak to us that way, do you think? The rude one, giving orders and shouting insults while he was tied up?”

  “Yet another question I don’t have an answer for, although I really wanted to know. I meant it, when I asked him. Perhaps Malana would know.”

  “I’ve already asked her. If she knows, she’s not saying.”

  “I suppose…did anyone get his name?” Lanara shook her head. “I suppose he answered as truthfully as he could. Nothing in his experience prepared him to see women as anything but subservient and easily frightened. And everything he was told about us must have convinced him that no matter what happened—even a defeat he couldn’t believe in—he could bully his way out of it.”

  Lanara cocked her head, considering. “Like his rudeness was a kind of weapon after he’d lost all his others? That even tied up on the ground we’d bow to his natural superiority if he just pushed hard enough?”

  “Something like that.” Both sighed, still mystified. Kalie asked, “How are you, Lanara? You used a weapon, lost friends and then used your skill to save a man who did things that surely made your skin crawl. It can’t have been an easy day for you, either.”

  She could sense Lanara smiling in the darkness. “It wasn’t easy for any of us. But if someday I can tell my grandchildren about it, and it’s nothing to them but a scary story on a winter’s night, it will have been worth it.”

  The next morning, the women packed up, riding the horses of the men who had attacked them. The two surviving men were left untied by the stream with food, medicine and water bags, but no weapons.

  “Can’t you leave Morik a knife?” asked Talik. He stared at them, especially Otera, through haunted eyes, as if they were demons from a nightmare who stubbornly refused to let him wake up. “After what you did to him…” Talik paled and turned his eyes away from his spear-brother with the bloody bandage between his legs, who starred with empty eyes into the sky. “He cannot live this way. Could you not…?”

  “And the women you’ve raped?” Danarie asked. “Did you ever ask them how they would live with it? Did you ever ask the parents whose children you murdered if they wanted to live? Or cared about the answer?”

  “But that’s different!” Talik began. “Those things are just a part of war. This—“

  “This will be a part of war from now on, for as long as your people choose to wage it,” said Otera, calmly mounting the horse which had once belonged to the party’s leader. “Please tell your people that, if you ever see them again. And tell them that, from now on, a man who does not know how to use his penis properly will have it removed. I’m sure if you give it some thought, you will see the logic of it.” With that, she signaled her people and headed east.

  They were soon back to hiding in whatever cover could find, which was limited. As they approached the town of Starfall, it became clear that everything that would burn was now a smoldering pile of ashes, and small trees and bushes that survived the fire had been pulled out by the roots. From a rocky hillside, Kalie and two other scouts saw the forest that had once nestled the villages surrounding the town. Most had apparently resisted burning, perhaps because the unseasonably damp weather of late. Several large trees had been brutally hacked to death, stumps standing like jagged teeth; a testament to the rage of men who could not abide anything they could not control, but most of the forest still stood.

  Kalie looked away, and got her first look at the enemy, firmly settled in their new home—and her old one.

  Varlas’s men rode a perimeter around the outer villages that had once clustered around the town like baby ducks around their mother. Most were deserted, some burned to the ground. In the distance, a large group of rag-clad, skeletal men and women worked to bring in the last of the grain from a wheat field, under the watchful eyes of mounted warriors. Similar work seemed to be going on at the edge of Kalie’s vision. In empty fields and in open land outside of the town, warriors drilled, exercised their horses or enjoyed food and women under the few remaining stands of trees. None, Kalie saw at once, would provide cover for an attack, which was probably why they still stood.

  Where two villages once stood, over a hundred felt tents squatted bleakly. Because it was mid-day, most of the horsewomen were busy preparing food for their men. Kalie finally got her first look at the women and children of Starfall to be spared the beastmen’s slaughter. She could see only a few, and from a distance, but it was clear that they were hungry, sick, ill-used, and something more; something she could not identify. She watched as a nomad woman knocked a little girl down for some invisible infraction, and then began beating her with a switch.

  Kalie had seen enough. She ghosted silently down the hill, disturbing not a single pebble. Danarie and Malana did the same. Back in camp they gave their report.

  “The forest is nearly intact,” Danarie told them. “Room enough to shelter us all for several days. And hopefully, feed us.” Their supplies were nearly gone.

  “There are probably at least one thousand warriors spread out there. And others out scouting or raiding,” said Malana

  “There are not enough tents for all of the people gathered here,” said Kalie. “At least half of them, men, women and children, must be living in the town.”

  “Strange,” murmured Malana. “Those men hate being enclosed. And the women distrust anything new.”

  “Perhaps not so strange,” said Lanara. “The houses were designed for comfort, and are filled with luxuries. Soft beds, rich furs, even fragrant wood for burning, given the types of trees that grew here. And still grow,” she added hastily.

  “Could they be trying out a new way of living?” Danarie asked with a worried frown.

  Otera shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. For now, we must reach the fo
rest, find food, and plan our next move. We will wait until dark.”

  Kalie wanted to go home. She had not nursed a baby since leaving the marsh-dwellers, and Alessa’s tea was nearly gone. Each day she seemed to express less milk. She missed her children, and did not support the belief that twenty women, some injured, could take on a horde of over a thousand brutal, well-trained fighters with nothing but anger, determination and metal weapons.

  But turning around now and making her way home alone seemed like a worse idea. When night fell, Kalie was ready with the others.

  Since the invaders had little experience with the forests of the west, they lacked the tools and experience to successfully remove large trees. But they had done enough to create a clear area over three hundred paces wide between the space they occupied and the nearest cover. The quarter moon and cloudless sky helped the women find their way quickly, and without stumbling over exposed roots, but made it harder to blend in with the night.

  They were nearly to the woods when a shout made their blood run cold. “More target practice!” called a voice in the language of the east.

  “These dirt-eaters never learn,” laughed another.

  As one, the women ran for the safety of the trees, not daring to wonder if the beastmen might have overcome their fear and be waiting for them inside the forest as well. But it wasn’t likely any of those on foot could outrun horses and find out.

  Kalie, one of the few on horseback, knew it was her job to cover the escape of those on foot. When the pursuers were close enough, she turned in her saddle and fired an arrow—a trick the horsemen had yet to perfect. Me as well, she thought as the shot went wide.

  But she tried again, along with Otera and the three others who rode, while the rest went screaming toward the forest.