The curly-haired stallion’s name was Muku, “fleet as a deer,” and I found him far less satisfying to talk to than Talu. He had none of her responsive scorn. He walked and loped tamely, just as I told him to, by day, then grazed hungrily through the evenings without looking at me when I spoke to him. He did not stray, or run away and refuse to be caught, or lay back his ears and glare at me, or buck, or resist the headstall, or kick idly when I came near, or do any of the annoying things that Talu did. I missed her.
Traveling at good speed, I passed out of deer meadow and beaver water and hemlock forest into the prairies: open, grassy country with much sky, shallow valleys, soft-crested hills. Once, not long ago, foxes and badgers and blue hens and burrowing squirrels had lived here, and longer ago, in Sakeema’s time, the black-tailed deer, and perhaps also the gray and fallow. It was rich, pleasant land. Only because of the Fanged Horse threat did the Herders not stay there, and only because of Red Hart warriors driving them back from the edge of the Demesne did the Fanged Horse Folk not make the prairies their own. And if it were not for Pajlat’s raiders the Red Hart might have come there more often. So this goodly land was roamed by everyone and no one.
I grew no less thin as I traveled, for I was living on the redberry and onion and wild carrot in the grass, saving the provision Tyee had given me, wayfarer’s food—he had been generous, but it would be little enough to see me through the Steppes. And I was just as glad to build no cooking fires, for I felt exposed on the prairie, treeless but for small thorns and junipers.
Later I had to build fires, when grassland thinned into the Steppes, and use some of my hoarded water for stone-boiling, because biscuit root and dried fish cannot be choked down uncooked except with wickfish oil, and I had none. And I found no forage, not even grubs or toads or snakes under the rocks I lifted, not even grass seeds on the stems. The Traders’ Trail, my first sight of it at dusk, was a rocky gully worn across a flat plateau nearly as barren as the trail itself. Short, scant grass and prickly blunderbrush grew on that high plain, and nothing else.
I ate sparingly of my supplies, and saw that they would not last me the journey, and considered that I might starve. But as it turned out, the Fanged Horse Folk did not give me time to starve.
My first day on the Traders’ Trail I saw them at a great distance across the flat shadowlands. And they also saw me, for I saw the dust rise as their horses leaped into the gallop, speeding toward me. Perhaps if I had put Muku to the run at once I might have escaped them yet. And Sakeema knows every muscle of me wanted to, for even Cragsmen were less dangerous than Fanged Horse marauders. Cragsmen could sometimes be diverted by talk. The Fanged Horse Folk made a custom of striking before parleying, and they were not known for honor or mercy. But parley with them I must, if I wished to know what their tribe said of Sakeema.
I drew Alar from her sheath and awaited them, the sword’s hilt warm in my hand, her pommel stone glowing like a second sun.
They galloped near enough for me to see of them more than their dust. Six of them, their greasy black hair flopping on their shoulders as they rode, and they grinned as they saw my weapon, and let out shrill yells of mockery. They were youngsters, I saw in a sort of disgust, merest puppies. Not one of them had the withered head of an enemy hung from his riding pelt or a tassel made of an enemy’s hair swinging under his horse’s chin. Indeed they were mere striplings, beardless, the armbands sliding down the flat muscles of their arms, their chests hollow under strings of bison teeth. Pajlat must indeed be hosting all his choice warriors to the westward, if he had sent these cubs to be his patrol on his eastern reaches.
But youngsters though they might be, they were as dangerous as a nest of infant vipers, and I knew it well.
I waited. Under me, Muku waited uneasily.
The enemy bore those vicious weapons I most hated, long whips of heavy bisonhide, fit to take out an eye or stun a man and beat the life out of him. As they rushed toward me they taunted me with yipping laughter and raised the whips, eager to wrap a lash around me. Each pup of them would strive hard to take my head for his own, to wear at his knees, his first victim. They would vie with each other for the trophy.
I waited. Until they had come within a stride of striking I waited. Then, “World brothers,” I hailed them, “where is Sakeema?”
A lash curled around my neck. I steadied Muku with my bearing and did not move, though the sword flared bright in my hand. The blow had been aimed for my face, but the youngster’s hand had jerked at my words, I had seen it. The attackers swirled around me, but I did not turn. Then their dust coiled up like a squat serpent as they’ brought their horses to a halt in front of me.
“Where is Sakeema?” I asked again into the heartbeat of silence that followed.
They opened their mouths wide and hooted their derision. “We do not speak of Sakeema!” one of them cried, his head flung back so that he yelled up at the sky.
And another shouted at me, “You ask us of Sakeema! You, who killed our tribesmen with your bright knife!” He drew back his lash hand to attack me, but the one who had shouted at sky stopped him with a hand to his forearm.
“Where did you get that strange, long blade?” he asked, not entirely taunting, and looking back at him I saw him with an odd clarity, his small eyes narrowed and bright on me, like a ferret’s sharp eyes, or a pine marten’s, and his grin—or grimace—his teeth were brown, they must have been causing him some pain.
“Out of black water,” I told him. “Why do you not speak of Sakeema?”
He spat. “Whoreson bastard,” he said, and I did not know if he so named me or the god.
The spittle fell against Muku’s curly-haired forehead, and the little horse shook it off, as he did everything, tamely, and the Fanged Horse youngsters laughed. There was no fire in Muku, only a humble obedience. Red Hart ponies are meant for walking sturdily through long journeys, standing quietly while the deer are stalked and shot, hauling the fresh, bloody meat calmly on their backs. Hot temper helps for none of these things, but only wastes strength and makes noise. Small wonder Muku had no such mettle as a fanged mare might, though if I demanded it of him he would die as he had lived: steadily, bravely.
One of the Fanged Horse cublings told me, to mock me, “Our old tales say that Sakeema will return riding a fanged steed.”
Under the scorn in his voice I heard the wistfulness I knew well. It was because I had spoken of Sakeema that they had not yet attacked me, say what they would of me or the god. With softened voice I asked, “What else say you of Sakeema?”
“Whoreson!” the one with the aching mouth burst out, and this time I knew he spoke of the god. “We tell the tales no more. Where is the bastard oathbreaker now, when the world is dying?”
“He sleeps,” I said when I should have kept silence. I spoke, and far too quickly, because my own dark doubts were muttering and fingering their whips like the enemies I faced.
“He sleeps no whit!” cried out one of them who had not yet spoken.
And the one who had cursed Sakeema said, “The stable stands empty, it always has. Yet the wise women say he is not dead.”
“No more is he,” I declared, speaking like a fool again when I should have kept silence. “I have been to the Mountains of Doom, and I have spoken with spirits. Sakeema is not in Mahela’s realm.”
Five of the six who faced me stared and murmured. But the one with the bitter mouth took no pause. He thrust his jaw toward me, and his eyes glittered marten-hard.
“Better he would be dead,” he said. “For if the god is not dead or asleep, he is awake, and our betrayer.”
And all my own half-formed doubts rose up and lashed my heart. If Sakeema was awake and roaming the world somewhere, why was Mahela having her way with us all? Had the god forsaken us? Was there a devourer in him?
Our betrayer—as my beloved father had betrayed me—
“No!” I roared, a madman’s bellow, and kicked Muku hard, so that he leaped forward like a startled h
are, blundering into the one with the hurtful mouth. Alar blazed, lifted. Before the youngster knew what was happening, I felled him with a single stroke to the throat.
Life is a twisting dance. These Fanged Horse whelps, they had gone against all their warlike dreaming and training to parley with me, and I, a treacherous outlander, had attacked them. I was their betrayer.
But the combat was now well joined, and I thought no such thoughts at the time. I saw only enemies, and I thirsted for their blood as much as my sword did. I kicked Muku again, pulling at his reins, and he almost toppled, trying to whirl and lunge at the same time. I cursed him and forced him into an unsteady charge. A whip whistled toward my face—Alar cut it off in midair, so that the severed section fell like a snake, writhing. I saw the frightened face of the not-yet-man as he struck at me with the butt, and Alar found her swift way to his heart. Fanged Horse fools, they scorned those who fought with their women at their sides, valiant and well-grown relentless women, yet did not scorn to send their half-grown children into danger! I turned Muku to face another one, aware of the beating of their whips on my back and sides, but not yet feeling pain or weakness—my wrath had taken me out of such feelings. I was crazed with battle fever.
Three more died before Muku slowly sank away under me, his knees folding as he lowered me gently to the ground.
Tough little mount, he had gamely done all I had told him as the fanged mares cut him through his thick fur, so that his neck and chest and flanks ran red with blood, his curly sand-colored hair lay flattened into an ugly fen of blood, until at last a slashing fang had found the large veins of his throat. But he had not fought back by so much as striking with his forehooves.
There he lay on the Steppes, dying, the little stallion my brother had entrusted to me. One enemy yet left to deal with.… Why had Sakeema let Fanged Horse Folk be in the world?
It was as Tyee had said, I decided bitterly. The god was dead. No, worse, as that aching other had recently said: the god was our betrayer.
The thought chilled me worse than the whips had. Standing beside Muku’s body, my wrath running out of me like my blood, suddenly feeling all the pain of my wounds, I let Alar sag to my side. I no longer cared if I died there on the spot. If Sakeema was so cruel, it did not matter.
One more Fanged Horse stripling yet faced me.
I stared up at him stupidly, not moving, and he stared down at me from the back of his fanged mare. By all my forebears, but he was ugly, he with his low forehead and the black hair hanging down in oily strings, his sharp nose, his sharpened teeth between lips that never seemed to meet. He still carried his long whip coiled in his right hand, and his mare stamped and pawed in her eagerness to run me down. But he held her on tight rein, and he had not moved, no more than I had, though I could not comprehend the look in his too-small eyes.
“Go away,” I told him thickly. “I no longer feel like killing you.”
He said in his harsh Fanged Horse speech, he who had not spoken to me before, “Who are you?”
Why did they always ask that? And what, for the god’s sake, was the right answer? And what did it matter? I laughed, I stood there laughing, for all my life seemed like a joke big as the world. “I am a fool,” I told him, still laughing. “I am Sakeema’s fool.”
If he had charged me at that moment I think I would not have raised Alar to cut him down. He could have had my head for his trophy. The world is ending, I seemed to hear Tyee’s sardonic voice say, Dannoc no longer eats meat or kills Fanged Horse shitbottoms. The scum.
The youngster swung his mare around and loped her away. Until he was very small on the distant Steppes I watched after him.
Finally I turned and wobbled away, afoot in a vast, arid plain.
There were fanged mares running loose. No use trying to catch one, I could tell merely by a look at their tossing heads and rolling eyes. I had no strength left to subdue one, and they wanted only to tear at the bodies of their former masters with their yellowbrown tusks, eat the sweet red meat and the sweeter guts. I staggered away and did not look back at them. All powers be willing, when they were done, and finished eating Muku as well, they would be too gorged to come looking for me to rend me and eat me in my turn. Yet they might come and stand around me, waiting like vultures until I died.
The thought enabled me to stumble a considerable distance down the Traders’ Trail before I fell.
After that, all is clouded. I remember that the sunlight shimmered down far too hot, the night seemed too chill. I remember crawling on again from time to time, then giving it up and lying in the dirt. I remember thirst. I remember calling on Sakeema for succor—for I had not yet ceased to love my god, despite my dark thoughts—whispering his name with lips that would scarcely move.
Sometime, perhaps after only a day, I entered into a dream. It seemed to me that Kor was somewhere nearby, just around the hip of the mountain, but I was afraid, the Cragsmen were going to see him and slay him, I had to warn him, yet I could not shout.
Kor! I shouted within my mind.
No answer. Odd, he had answered me that other time. It was how we had learned mindspeak.
Kor!
Where was he? He had to be nearby, within tongueshot and therefore within mindspeak’s range. We had never been far apart since we had met.
Kor!
Was he already dead? No, Sakeema was dead. No, Sakeema was Kor. I had thought that once.
Sakeema, bond brother, answer me!
Something—something strange. No mindspoken answer, yet I felt, I sensed—a passion I could not name. Something.
Sakeema!
Moving warily, somewhere near.
Sakeema! Help me, help us all!
Even the Fanged Horse Folk? Yes, if the world were to remain, they would have to be on it. They also were his creatures.
Sakeema!
I felt presence, like a mind’s skin lying next to mine … no, more like a frightened animal, shy but curious, snuffling the air, not yet daring to show itself, to see. Some animal with speaking eyes and warm fur.
World brother, come to me. It is all ending, I need comfort.
Fear.
Yes. I, also, am afraid. Kor?
But Kor would not have been afraid to come to me. He was nowhere near. I began to weep, quietly, scarcely moving—perhaps it was only within my mind that I wept. But I remember a blur, as of tears. I remember lifting my head with great effort, trying to look around me, seeing nothing but flatness and the thunder cones in the distance. The mountains, my beloved snowpeaks, had been only in my dreams. Perhaps Sakeema had been only in my dreams, too, all this time.
Sakeema, I mindspoke, not in pleas any longer but in heartache. And with great clarity and tenderness someone answered me.
Dan. Be still, I am coming.
Voice I knew well, yet knew not at all … my mind spun, and vision faded into blackness.
Awakening came slowly. Aware that someone was with me, wondering who, yet I could not gather strength to open my eyes and see. Afraid, perhaps. So often I had seen the god in vision, or thought I had seen him in truth, and then heartbreak had followed.
Feel of furs under me, softening the hard ground, covering me, shielding me from chill air. Thirst, gone. Someone had given me water. Bindings—my wounds had been tended. Taste of food, bread and berries, in my mouth.
When at last I found strength, or daring, and opened my eyes, I saw only blackness. My hands jumped in alarm, my legs thrust at the ground, and I sent daggers of pain through myself even as I realized it was only the clean blackness of night. Eyes clenched shut against pain, but my gasp had brought someone to my side. Gentle hands felt my forehead, straightened the pelts that covered me.
“Kor?” I whispered.
But it was not Kor. I could feel the presence, the being of this person, and it was not the being of Kor. He was all loving courage, but in this person there was an edge like the edge of an eagle’s wings in flight, and a distance, and a lonesome singing. And a bit
ter wound not yet healed, and a daring, a venturing, despite it. I felt it all, yet I had never been able to feel the being of any person other than Kor.…
I centered myself, opened my eyes again and looked. Warm glow of embers, the coals of a cooking fire, somewhere not far away. But the person bending over me was only a shadow in the night.
Who are you? I mindspoke.
Fear, the other person’s fear, I sensed it at once, though I myself felt no fear. I fumbled a hand out from under my covering, raised it to touch or comfort or try to keep the other by me, but the shadowy one edged away.
Too weary, or weak, to persist or wonder much longer, I drifted back into sleep.
I awoke to a feeling of peace and healing. Head and upper body, I lay not on furs but in someone’s lap and arms. Warm glow over my still-lidded eyes told me it was daylight, and a sunlit day. I blinked my eyes open, squinting, and a hand appeared to shield them from the rays. Dark eyes looked down at me.
Dark eyes in a proud, fine-boned, handsome face. Tendrils of light brown hair curled down, taking the shape of hawk flight, around shoulders clothed in patched doeskin. I sighed with love and relief, laying the side of my face against a small, firm breast.
It was Tassida.
Chapter Eight
Hunger and my whip wounds had left me very weak, in need of nursing, though as always when Tassida was near I recovered far more quickly than seemed fair to expect. There was plenty of food, for (as she told me acidly) there had been quantities of it on the bodies of the Fanged Horse marauders I had killed and on their horses. Stoup’s worth of oats and dried salmonberries. Glutton’s share, and still Pajlat cried out that his people had not enough, and struck with his raiders to take from other folk.
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