‘What will we do, Father?’ Asook asked, as meek and dutiful as ever.
Uin’s gaze didn’t waver from Krish. ‘What will we do, great lord?’
‘I didn’t tell them to leave their fields,’ Krish said, and saw the betrayal on Ensee’s down-turned face. ‘I didn’t tell them to, but they were right to do it. This is Rah land, the whole tribe’s. What comes from it should belong to you all.’
‘I never heard that was the Ashane way. Or does your father the king share all he has with his goatherds?’
‘It’s the Dae way,’ Krish said, with more conviction than he felt. ‘And the Rah can change. Isn’t that what my coming means, a time for change? Perhaps you thought it would only change for other people, but you were wrong!’
Krish rose abruptly from the table, upset by the anger in his own voice. It wasn’t wise to show it to Uin. The other man was always in control. He could only see Krish’s loss of it as a victory.
‘Excuse me,’ Krish said as calmly as he could, ‘if there’s nothing to eat, I think I’ll go outside.’
But once he’d closed the door behind him, he didn’t know what to do. He should find Olufemi, he supposed. The mage needed to know what was happening. She needed to help, though she’d laughed at him when he’d suggested using her runes to cure the slaves. He’d been so angry with her then that he hadn’t sought her out since. But he couldn’t afford to be angry with everyone.
Her hut lay at the end of a narrow walkway between a cornfield and another lying fallow. He was halfway along it when he heard footsteps on the wood behind him. Uin, he thought, waiting until he could catch me alone. He felt foolish and afraid as he turned to face his pursuer, but it was only Dinesh.
‘No more for now,’ Krish told him. ‘You can have another pill before you go to bed.’
But the boy just stood in front of him, arms loose and eyes vacant.
‘What is it?’ Krish asked. ‘Did Uin send you?’
Dinesh shook his head. ‘I’m not Uin’s.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘I’m yours.’
‘You’re not anyone’s, Dinesh. You’re free.’
‘I’m yours. Uin thinks I came back to him. I came, I came, I came back for you. And he doesn’t, he doesn’t see me. He speaks in front of me.’ Dinesh grasped Krish’s arm, his grip surprisingly hard. ‘He speaks in front of me. Do you see?’
Krish thought he did. ‘What has he said? And who has he said it to?’
‘A man like you. Like my mother.’ There was no sadness in Dinesh’s face when he mentioned her. Perhaps he’d forgotten her death.
‘An Ashane?’ Krish asked.
Dinesh shrugged. ‘A man from another land. Uin will, he will, he will sell you to their king and let him kill you.’
Dae Hyo’s eyes didn’t seem to be working properly. He opened them when he heard Krish’s voice, but someone had made the sun much brighter than it was meant to be. It stabbed painfully into his head and he shut them again and groaned.
‘Get up,’ Krish said. ‘I need you.’
‘I’m sleeping, brother,’ Dae Hyo told him.
‘You’re lying in the middle of a rice field. Your feet are wet.’
He opened his eyes again, placing his fingers over them so that he could see stripes of Krish, stripes of sky and blessed stripes of darkness. ‘It’s comfortable.’
‘Get up, please. This is important.’
Even from the bits and pieces he could see of him, Dae Hyo could tell that his brother was upset. He sighed and rolled into a sitting position, cradling his head in his hands until it stopped whirling.
‘It’s Uin,’ Krish said, crouching beside him. ‘He’s planning to sell me to my father – my real father, the King.’
Anger instantly flared. ‘I tell you what, he won’t live to do it!’ Dae Hyo said, but Krish grabbed his arm and kept him from rising.
‘No. We can’t just kill him. He’s got an ally, an Ashaneman. We need to find out who that is. We need to stop him telling my father where I am.’
‘Ah, that’s simple then. We’ll track him like the animal he is. Those two must meet and once we catch them at it we can kill them both.’
Krish’s eyes were shadowed. They’d always been too full of thoughts, which never did a man any good. ‘Do you think this is my fault?’
‘Well …’ Dae Hyo sighed and slung an arm about his shoulder. ‘You might not have chosen the smoothest path, but you’re not to blame for the rocks on it. That Uin was a rat-fucker before you came here and he’ll be one to his grave. Now remember what I’ve taught you. Move slow, move silent, breathe with the wind and listen with your body.’
They kept off the walkways, moving through the fields on either side. The crops were blooming with summer and the cover was good. It was easy, easier than it should have been, even though his head was still so heavy with drink his legs didn’t always move in precisely the way he told them to.
‘Those Rah are a lazy bunch,’ Dae Hyo whispered to Krish when he realised that every field they’d passed through had been empty. ‘These crops won’t tend themselves.’
‘They’re Uin’s fields,’ Krish said. ‘His workers have decided they won’t harvest another man’s grain any more. They’ll only return when they’re given a share of the fields.’
His brother looked guilty and Dae Hyo asked, ‘Your idea?’
Krish shook his head and then shrugged. ‘In a way.’
‘Good. It’s the Dae way: the land is the tribe’s, not any woman or man’s. Only the things that move on it can be owned and the things you grow from it yourself.’
‘It’s the right way. I should have listened to you. I am Dae.’
‘So you are, brother,’ Dae Hyo said, ruffling his hair. He felt a hope that he hadn’t since they came to this ugly, water-clogged land. So Krish had walked in a wrong direction for a while. It was Olufemi’s fault for leading him astray and Dae Hyo’s duty to show him the right path.
They came to the field bordering Uin’s house without any troubles. It was filled with tall, purple flowers. Dae Hyo didn’t know what crop would one day come from them and didn’t care. He crouched low and pulled Krish down with him. They were only just in time – here was that shit-eater Uin now, pausing by his lizard stables as if considering whether to saddle one, and then setting off on foot instead.
‘You were right – he’s up to no good,’ Dae Hyo whispered to Krish. ‘Afraid he’ll be too visible mounted.’
The other man certainly seemed to be trying to move stealthily, but he was making a shockingly bad job of it. He placed his feet slowly and carefully, lifting each one too high like a horse picking its way through rocks. Thanks to that, the imprint each left behind was as clear as day. A child could have followed his tracks. And he kept glancing back over his shoulder, a sure way to show anyone who cared to notice that he was afraid of being followed.
But however often Uin looked, he didn’t truly see. Dae Hyo and Krish moved like distant shadows, twenty paces back in the fields, and the Rah man’s eyes never hooked on them. Dae Hyo nodded approvingly at Krish. His brother was a little late to the skills of a man, but he was a fast learner.
Uin was walking a bloody long way, though. He led them both beyond any place Dae Hyo had travelled to, far inland. The fields became more ragged and less fertile, the plots assigned to the poor. Their huts lay scattered about and here the people were at last, sitting outside, laughing and singing as if they were all having a party.
Then they were out of the fields altogether and into a wilder land. Here the Rah had allowed fingers from the jungle that enclosed them to poke into their territory in a messy way that seemed unlike them. Perhaps its presence made them feel safer. It was one of these fingers that Uin entered; Dae Hyo and Krish had to follow. This was where the snakes were and all the other nasty things the Rah chose to live alongside. Vines trailed from the trees to grab them as they passed, or crawled on the ground to snare their feet. Birds turned beady eyes on them
and shrieked.
Luckily for them, Uin didn’t go too deep in. Ahead appeared a clearing like a piece of Rah land within the wild. The trees half-hid the little house that sat on stilts in its centre and the man perched on a stool outside the house. He looked up when Uin approached and smiled.
As they crouched among the big-leafed plants that ringed the clearing, Krish stared at the man, shocked. ‘That’s Marvan,’ he whispered to Dae Hyo.
Dae Hyo shrugged.
‘The man who tried to kill me in Smiler’s Fair.’
Dae Hyo growled low in his throat. He could picture the deep cuts all over Krish’s legs, still half-healed. Those had been the gift of a man who liked giving pain and Dae Hyo would be delighted to return the favour. He put his hand on his knife hilt, but Krish clasped his own over it.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘We should hear what they say.’
The two men were talking quietly, but this was a watery land and sound travelled well over water.
‘… stay here?’ the one called Marvan said.
Uin smiled, a savage expression Dae Hyo had never seen on his face before. ‘Not long now. Not long at all.’
‘And word has gone out to Sang Ki in what’s left of Smiler’s Fair?’
‘Better than that,’ Uin said.
Even from their hiding place, Dae Hyo could read the expression of dismay on the murderer’s face. ‘There’s nothing better. I told you to tell Sang Ki!’
‘You came to my lands, Ashaneman, asking favours of me. You don’t tell me what to do.’
‘I’m sorry, friend.’ Marvan did a good job of sounding like he meant it. ‘It’s only that Sang Ki’s forces are the nearest. You don’t want to let this troublesome lad slip your net, do you?’
‘I won’t. I’ve sent to tell his own father of his whereabouts. Though if I can, I’d rather present him a corpse than a living boy. But we can’t be seen to do the deed ourselves – too many here love the fool, even among the better men.’
‘I don’t want to tell you your business,’ the Ashaneman said, clearly intending to do just that, ‘but it sounds to me like your opposition to the boy is known. When he goes missing or turns up dead, there are sure to be suspicions.’
‘Yes, that’s why I’ve taken some good clothes from the store we use to feed the crocodiles. We feed them meat dressed like the men of the Four Together. I’ll tell the men I’ve selected to dress in those clothes when they take Krish, and they’ll be sure to let a few people see them at it. I’ll throw the Four Together as Krish’s killers to the common people like red meat, and they’ll devour it. The war will be fought even more fiercely with Lord Krish as its victim than it would be with him as its leader. And our workers will be fighting for the right to return to their fields and looms and sow and weave in Lord Krish’s name.’
‘Well,’ the other man said, ‘you have thought it through. And no qualms about killing your own god?’
His tone was playful. Everything he said he made sound a bit of a joke, but Uin answered him seriously. ‘Gods sometimes die for their people’s sake. If you knew more of the ways of the tribes, you’d know that.’
Beside Dae Hyo, Krish had grown more and more tense with every word spoken. ‘Have we heard enough now, brother?’ Dae Hyo asked him.
‘They’ve sent word to my father already,’ Krish said. ‘It’s too late.’
‘Too late for that maybe. Not too late to stop the nearer half of their plan.’ Dae Hyo took his brother’s hand and placed it on the pommel of his belt knife. ‘I’ll take the Ashaneman and you take that scum Uin.’ The Ashaneman had a dangerous look about him, but Uin was no fighter; he was one who liked to order other men to get their blades wet.
When he knew his brother was ready, in his mind as well as his body, Dae Hyo held up three fingers, two, one and then he sprang from cover and his brother was running beside him – just how it was meant to be.
For the first moments of their charge, their targets were frozen in shock. An instant later they acted – in exactly the opposite way from that Dae Hyo had predicted. The Ashaneman took one look at them, turned on his heel and fled, while Uin snarled and drew his own belt knife.
Dae Hyo hated to leave Krish facing that steady blade. But the Ashaneman was already at the border of the clearing and they had their targets. Changing a plan mid-skirmish only ever made a bad situation worse. He flung himself after the fleeing Marvan and left his brother to fight his own fight.
The Ashaneman was very fucking fast. He ran like a deer fleeing a wolf and Dae Hyo charged after like a bull in heat. The underbrush parted for the fugitive and was crushed beneath Dae Hyo’s feet and for a short while that’s how it was, the distance between them neither opening nor closing.
But Dae Hyo was a warrior, and his brother’s life was the wager here. He could throw more money on the table. His legs burned with it but he forced them faster, and though the Ashaneman tried to do the same, he was shorter and weaker and Dae Hyo was going to have him.
Only Dae Hyo was still drunk, and the Ashaneman wasn’t. The root caught under his foot and tipped him straight over and he didn’t have enough of his wits about him to put out his hands and stop the fall. Belbog’s malice put a rock right where his head landed and for a short while all he knew was pain.
When he returned to himself, he realised he was lucky the Ashaneman had been too frightened to come back and finish him off. He followed the other man’s trail to the edge of the wilderness, but there was no hope now of finding him. In open Rah land he could have gone anywhere, and if he’d used the wooden walkways that criss-crossed it, there’d be no way of tracking him. Dae Hyo was trying all the same when he remembered what he should have thought of immediately: Krish facing Uin with nothing but a knife and his own not too impressive training.
Dae Hyo followed his own trail back through the undergrowth, uncaring when it ripped his clothing and cut his skin. If Krish was dead, his brother, his only brother … He couldn’t bear to think of it.
He burst back into the clearing, throat dry with fear – and saw Uin on his back, blood on his face and Krish’s knife at his throat, with Krish crouched on top of him. Dae Hyo bent over, hands on his knees, and gasped out his relief.
‘Marvan?’ Krish asked.
‘I tell you what, he got clean away.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Krish said after a moment. ‘There’s no use lamenting the arrow that missed.’
‘This one found its target true.’ Dae Hyo strode over to the two of them. ‘Well fought, brother.’
‘It was easy,’ Krish said contemptuously, though there were cuts on his arms oozing blood.
Dae Hyo looked down at Uin. ‘No need to prolong the moment, brother. He plotted to kill you. The elder mothers would say you had a right to kill him in return.’
Dae Hyo could see Uin’s hands shaking, but he managed to look straight in Krish’s face and say, ‘You can’t kill me. You need me to bring my people to your side. Your peasants alone can’t protect you, not from what’s coming.’
‘From what you’ve summoned,’ Krish said, and Dae Hyo sighed. Once a man started talking he found it much harder to go back to killing.
‘I can unsummon it,’ Uin said.
‘And why would you do that?’ Dae Hyo asked.
‘To save my life.’ He eyed the hand holding a knife to his throat. ‘There’s no point pretending I’ve discovered a sudden love of you.’
‘He’ll promise he’ll do it to save his life,’ Dae Hyo told Krish. ‘Saying and doing have never been the same, or poor men would eat deer liver every day.’
Krish nodded, but he didn’t slide the knife to spill all Uin’s blood. ‘I know. There’s a way to make them the same, though.’ He eased himself off the other man’s chest and gestured for him to stand.
Dae Hyo pressed his own knife against Uin’s back, right where it could slip in under a rib and find his heart. ‘Are you certain, brother? I wouldn’t trust this one if he swore the rain was wet.’<
br />
‘I wouldn’t either. That’s why I’m giving him this.’ Krish reached beneath his shirt to pull out a pouch, and from the pouch a red pill.
It took Dae Hyo a moment to realise what it was, but not Uin. The man jerked in shock and despite the knife pressing against his back, tensed as though he meant to try to get up and run.
‘Hold him,’ Krish said.
Dae Hyo tried, sheathing the knife to hook his arms under the other man’s and lift him off the ground. His legs still kicked, even when Krish pressed his knife against Uin’s jugular. He struggled until Krish said, ‘Swallow it or die,’ with a firmness Dae Hyo wouldn’t have thought him capable of.
Even so, Uin seemed to take a moment to decide which he preferred before wilting all at once in Dae Hyo’s arms. Krish hooked a finger in his mouth to open it, put the pill in and then held it closed along with his nose, stroking his throat until he was sure he’d swallowed. It looked like something he might once have done for his goats, forcing down medicine they didn’t want.
When it was done, Dae Hyo released Uin. All the fight had gone out of him, though the bliss couldn’t be working quite that fast. He let them push him ahead, through the undergrowth, back along the wooden walkway and past the huts where his workers turned unfriendly eyes on him.
He let them push him nearly all the way back to his home. His steps began to stumble as they drew closer and Dae Hyo thought the drug must be taking effect. He stopped a moment to look in the Rah man’s eyes and Uin grinned back at him.
‘It’s done, brother,’ he said and Uin laughed.
‘Done, done, done,’ he giggled. ‘Yes you are.’
A man who’d heard battle didn’t forget the sound of it. But the sound Dae Hyo heard now was worse than anything he’d been a part of. The death of the Dae might have sounded like this, if he’d been there to witness it. There were shouts and screams and the clash of weapons everywhere.
While Dae Hyo looked frantically around, trying to find the source of it, Uin pulled away from him, still smiling and laughing like this was all some joke. Dae Hyo could see a little of what was happening. There were men mounted on lizards fighting men on foot. Men with metal against men with flint, but there were far more of the men with flint and women among them too. The whole of the Rah tribe seemed to have chosen this moment to go to war with each other and it looked like they didn’t mean to stop until most of them were dead.
The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods Page 19
