Darvo, a young farmer who had escaped during the original attack was going to try to rescue his family, and perhaps atone for running from the fight in the first place. Riana had insisted on coming, and was joined by Selima, recently escaped. They had no trouble looking the part. It seemed to Kalie that only their burning hatred of the tribe and desire to rescue those still captive kept them from collapsing under the weight of their fear.
The nomad camp was still waking when the women, carrying firewood approached. It was a slave’s job, and no one would question a few industrious slaves getting the wood early in the hopes of pleasing the women whose moods meant life and death to them. The men would have a harder time slipping in among the field workers. Kalie offered up one last prayer, and hurried to her work. She built up the first cooking fire she came to as high as she dared on this hot summer morning. At least this time she would be posing as a slave for less than a day, and not more than a year.
She passed the morning working among women too exhausted and dead inside to notice a new face. But when she whispered to them that help had arrived, and to be ready to run to the forest as soon as the signal was given, they noticed, and they began to spread the word. As she cooked a porridge made from the grain and fruit the true owners of this land had grown, keeping her head low, Kalie felt, more than heard the message spreading among the people of the Goddess.
“We will have to put the plan into effect soon,” said Malana. “The wives can already see the change in their slaves.” It was true; the mood in the camp was shifting like the warm wind blowing through. But the wind was blowing toward the dry wooden buildings of Starfall, just as it had the last few days. As long as it continued like that, their plan had a chance to succeed.
“The horsewomen and their children are nearly finished eating,” said Kalie. “Selima and I can clean up. Go arrange the distraction like we planned, and tell Riana to get the strongest ready to help the weakest. Then get into position.” Everyone nodded and went to their posts.
By now, Riyik and the others would be helping to store the harvest. Hopefully in sheds that were upwind, but there was no help for that. A scream made Kalie drop the pot she was scrubbing. A beastwoman was beating a slave—but it wasn’t the slave who was screaming. The skinny bald woman had risen up, grabbed the switch from her startled mistress, and struck back. And kept striking. While horrified wives began screaming and rushing to help their friend, other slaves, armed with sticks and rocks turned on their tormenters.
It was a sight anyone who had ever been a slave dreamed of seeing, and Kalie wished she could stand there and watch it. It was the distraction she had ordered; the easiest one for these desperate women, fueled by rage, to create. But Kalie’s part was crucial. With a burning stick in each hand, she ran to the tent farthest from the town. The wind was strong at her back as she plunged the first brand into the felt tent. Heavily impregnated with the natural oil of sheep’s wool, the tent caught fire at once. With the second brand, she set the next tent on fire.
Malana, meanwhile had run with her two brands to the edge of the wood-built town of Starfall. The wind carried the fire as they had hoped, and soon the proud conquerors were reduced to a screaming mass of confusion. “This way!” Kalie shouted, determined to lead as many people as she could to the temporary safety of the forest, and the warriors waiting to cover their escape. But the distance seemed so much greater than it had this morning when she’d arrived.
No matter, these people knew their land, and there were enough level headed women here to help lead. “Come with us if you want to live!” she shouted to the screaming horsewomen. They were past the last of the tents, coughing on oily black smoke, when the first warriors opened fire. An arrow knocked Riana off her feet. Another pinned a fleeing captive to a burning tent.
Fools, thought Kalie, dodging more arrows as she tried to free the woman trapped against the tent. They should be saving their families and their horses, not killing warriors who were finally fighting back. Weren’t they supposed to respect their enemies?
The newly freed slave was dead, her body already burning. Kalie started to go to Riana, but was stopped by a sound from within the tent. A baby was screaming.
“No!” she moaned. She had to get out of here. She had promised Riyik; promised everyone, and the plan was actually working. But as the flames licked the tent, the cries growing more desperate, Kalie took a deep breath, covered her face with a rag torn from her clothes, and ran inside the tent. Flames were everywhere and the tent would collapse into a bonfire at any moment. But there was the baby, miraculously untouched, and nearly within reach.
Kalie pushed a leather cauldron into the fire that was trying to reach the baby, slowing it only a moment, as the hungry flames worked to devour the tough leather. Scooping up the baby, she ran back out, full tilt into a screaming warrior with a lance raised and poised to strike the woman at his feet. With her free hand, Kalie slid one of her knives from its sheath at her thigh, dropped to her knees and replaced it—point first—into the matching thigh of the warrior. He screamed again and drove his lance at Kalie, who barely scrambled out of the way in time. He made a grab for her, and would have caught her by her hair—if she’d had any. Pulling the sobbing woman to her feet, Kalie dragged her from the inferno, knowing that if another attack came, she would have no free hands with which to fight.
But now the captives had their own warriors to cover their escape, and the enemy was too busy fleeing the fire to do much damage. But the desperate screams from within the town made clear that many would not escape. Kalie could only hope that most of them were enemy warriors, and kept running.
In the midst of the heat and stench, Kalie felt something warm dripping down her front. Tearing away her rags, she searched for the wound, only to find her milk was flowing. The baby’s cries had awakened it.
She pushed its tiny rosebud mouth onto the breast that felt heaviest. The cries stopped and a wonderful feeling flowed through Kalie. She dropped the hand of the woman beside her, who by now was able to keep up on her own, and kept the baby balanced and nursing through the whole run back to safety and freedom.
They regrouped in the forest, but only briefly. The wind was keeping the fire at bay, but that could change any moment. Under Kariik’s direction, over six hundred warriors fought to protect the injured and the newly freed captives, and to force Varlas and his superior numbers toward the green path to the west.
It worked better than any of them had hoped. While the fighting was hard, and both sides took casualties, Varlas seemed eager to go exactly where his enemy wanted him to.
“That seems strange,” Kalie said, finally able to sit down, clean the soot from herself and the baby, and begin to search for the child’s mother.
“Not really,” said Ealak, a warrior who had come with them in their flight from the steppes nearly two years ago, and settled in a village just a few days away. “Varlas is a greedy man who wants to rule his people from a place where he can impress them.”
“A rich town, high on a hill, surrounded by pasture is too good to pass up,” said Riyik.
Something still sounded wrong to Kalie’s storyteller’s ear, but she was too busy being grateful that she and Riyik were alive, and mourning those who didn’t make it to have time to think on it. Besides there was this baby… “A girl!” Kalie cried, when she finally had time to look.” Cleaned and fed, the child, about six moonspans, seemed healthy enough. “Could she belong to one of the captive women?” she asked Selima.
The younger woman shook her bald head. “None of our babies were allowed to live. Only children over three years, and few enough of those. And our women have long since lost our milk.”
“A horsewoman’s then,” said Kalie. “No matter. A life saved is a sign from the Goddess.”
“You will keep her?” Malana, conscious, but injured lay on a blanket nearby, being treated by a healer. Of the eight who had infiltrated the enemy stronghold this morning, Riana was dead, and Cresson like
ly to follow. At least sixty of those they had gone to rescue were dead or unaccounted for. But over two hundred had made it alive to freedom.
“If we can’t find her mother.” Kalie looked at Riyik. “What do you think of another daughter?” she asked.
“She’s already done us the favor of keeping your milk flowing,” he said, smiling through weary eyes. “Something Melora will appreciate when we get home. What shall we call her?”
“Riana,” said Kalie. Many of the freed captives, still mourning those they had lost, seemed pleased by Kalie’s decision.
“Would you have kept the baby if it had been a boy?” Otera asked.
“Of course,” Kalie said, wondering if Otera was serious, or trying to provoke another argument. But she seemed genuinely curious.
“Raising the child of my enemy,” Otera mused. “I’m not sure I could.”
“I already have,” Kalie said. “Have you forgotten Varena?”
“Ah, yes. I had forgotten. Not the girl herself—she’s quite memorable. But that you found her among the beastmen. I actually like the idea of raising their girls. It’s a way of saving them. But a boy?”
“We’ll save them, too. Many, I hope. Raise them to respect women, honor the earth, value peace…they’re not born violent you know.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” said Otera, deep in thought.
“It’s time to split up,” called one of the battle leaders. Riyik and the others working in the field had managed to “liberate” most of the food stores before fleeing both fire and angry warriors. They had enough supplies to allow the exhausted refugees a chance to rest and recover for several days, with enough left to get them to a place of safety, in this once rich land, where the resources had been almost completely stripped, or begin rebuilding Starfall if they chose.
Kariik would lead the bulk of the warriors back toward Stonebridge along a route which would parallel that of Varlas, collecting more warriors as they went. If all went according to plan, this army would reach the enemy’s flank just as the first warriors crossed the shallow stream into Stonebridge. Then, at the signal of three flaming arrows, those guarding the dam would breech it, causing a flood which would both sweep away many men and horses, and trap half the horde on the far side of the river, where the second army would be waiting.
Even if everything went according to plan, the outcome was uncertain. And how often, Kalie thought, did anything go according to plan?
But she bundled baby Riana under her breast and joined Riyik and the other twenty or so riders who would head west along a different route from Kariik’s, raising the call for warriors and taking out any scouting parties they might meet along the way. The baby might be a complication, but no one said anything.
It was good to be going home, Kalie thought, as they traveled west that evening. They stopped to eat their share of the rations taken from Starfall, and get a much needed night of sleep. Kalie nursed Riana again, and then settled into her blankets with Riyik, feeling that life was almost normal.
They broke camp early the next morning, hoping to travel a great distance this first day; perhaps even reach Stonebridge in less than ten days.
As they prepared to leave, a hunter from one of the lost villages of Starfall, came back from checking his traps, sucking his bleeding hand. “We would have had rabbit stew at mid-day,” he called. “But that little beast turned out to be a fighter! He chewed through the snare, and attacked me when I tried to pluck him up.”
A few people laughed. One called out, “Never underestimate your opponent!” which drew more laughter.
But Kalie froze. From across the land, Kestra’s words from the day Kalie left returned to her, and at last Kalie recognized the story the broken woman had been babbling. It was one of Kalie’s own from when she led her group of volunteers across the wilderness to pose as slaves among the Aahk. She had wanted to keep up the other women’s spirits during the grueling journey that had killed so many of them. So she told stories in their own language about how they would trick their enemies and destroy them from within.
But concerned that one of the warriors might have learned their tongue, Kalie had hidden them in the metaphor of children’s stories. Like the arrogant hunter, killed by a tiny rabbit. “All those stories were all about defeat coming from where you least expect it!” she said aloud.
“Kalie?” asked Riyik. “What is it?”
“A trap, I think.” She explained to Riyik what Kestra had been saying, and as she did so, suddenly recalled what Kestra had been doing. “She was playing with piles of stones, like a child or a madwoman. At least that’s what I thought at the time. But she was slipping sticks in among the stones, and then pulling them out so the rock pile would collapse.”
“The dam!” cried Riyik. “She was trying to warn you. But of what?”
“That our confidence that the dam will save us is misplaced? That someone we trust or underestimate…”
Borik approached, looking concerned. “What is it?” he asked. “Everyone is ready to leave, and they can see something is wrong.”
Kalie turned and look at the rest of the party. Suddenly, everyone seemed suspicious to her. There were only three women besides herself. Most of the men, as well, were local people, trained by the warriors who had come here with Kalie. Besides Borik and Riyik, only Ealak and Malor were from that group. “Did any of these men arrive here with Kariik this winter?” she asked.
Borik shook his head. “All of those are with Kariik now, or back in Stonebridge. What is it?”
“Someone has warned Varlas about the dam,” Riyik said, putting it together.
“Not just the dam,” said Kalie. “The entire plan. That’s why he took all his men west so easily. All he needs to do is prevent the dam from breaking, and his men—his entire remaining horde—will ride into Stonebridge like children jumping over a puddle.”
“And with over a thousand warriors,” said Riyik. “He will never be dislodged. All the advantages that made Stonebridge so easy to defend will belong to Varlas.”
“If that’s what’s happening!” Kalie shook her head in frustration. Riana sensed her distress and began to whimper. “It could just be wild imagining!”
“I’ve never known your instincts to be wrong, Kalie,” said Riyik.
“Nor I,” said Borik.
Their faith in her helped calm her, and allowed her to trust herself. “But how? And who? If we could find the traitor—“
“We won’t,” said Riyik. “And it might not have been a traitor. One of the spies we sent to ingratiate himself with Varlas might have been tortured into revealing what he knew.”
“Or, one who rode with Kariik,” said Borik, “changed sides for real. It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting to the dam in time to break it when Varlas reaches the river.”
“How many are guarding the dam?” asked Riyik.
“Only about thirty when I left,” said Kalie. “They only thought they were waiting for a signal to open it. They’re strong, many are warriors, but they’re not any kind of fighting force.”
“Let’s go,” said Borik.
Chapter 34
They rode as never before. Even those raised to the saddle as nomads had never ridden this desperately. For those who had learned to ride only in the last year it was a nightmare. Yet no one gave up.
On the second day, Kalie was forced to leave Riana behind in a small village, mercifully untouched by the war. The pace they were keeping was not safe for a baby. Kalie nursed the child she was already beginning to think of as hers one last time, grabbed a few hours sleep, and left Riana with a kind mother of three who had plenty of milk.
“I will return for you,” Kalie promised the little girl as she rode off.
Wherever they stopped for food and rest, their numbers swelled. Newly made warriors who had stayed to protect their homes joined Kalie’s band once they learned what was at stake. Messengers and scouts who found them joined as well.
On the day they kne
w they would reach the dam, their numbers had tripled. So it was a band of sixty, mostly exhausted, mostly inexperienced warriors who reached their destination, just after midday. The sickening sounds of battle reached the band before they could see anything. But soon enough, all were swept into it.
“Varlas must have sent a hundred warriors!” Kalie cried in horror as she leapt into the fray. Most of the men and women stationed at the dam were already dead, but the last few fought on with courage that would be remembered forever. At the sight of their deliverance, they fought even harder, while Kalie, Riyik and all the others surged forward.
Arrows flew, fighters and horses fell, but most of the fighting was hand to hand. Kalie found a somewhat protected spot to fire arrows from. She chose her targets carefully, as forces from both sides slipped on the rock piles that made the dam, or grappled with each other along the top. The rocks were slippery, and each time someone lost his footing or a body was pushed over the edge, rocks fell in showers, and the dam was weakened.
Kalie fired her last arrow and saw it fatally strike an enemy warrior through the neck. As she drew her dagger and waded into where the fighting was thickest, she nearly laughed at the irony of it. Neither side could afford for the dam to break. Varlas’s men had orders to keep it intact at all costs, while Kalie’s side needed to hold it until the order came to breech it. Yet they were fighting in the middle of it; right on top of it, even. An untried piece of construction that would kill them all if they knocked out the wrong support in the course of the battle.
Laughter bubbled up in Kalie’s throat, and for a moment she thought she was going to run as mad as Kestra. They would all die together, and for nothing!
The next thing she knew, a grinning warrior wearing the blackened leather armor of the Wolves lunged at her with a lance, as if he were still on horseback. Thoughts of madness fled as Kalie dodged the lethal tip and tried to move in close to score him with her knife. Long though it was, the weapon left her at a decided disadvantage against a lance.
Keepers of the Ancient Wisdom (Kalie's Journey Book 3) Page 28
