“Speak respectfully of the inVotaro warleader,” my father told him, his tone severe, but he said to me, “But Keyova is not wrong. No one argued we should not try.”
“But—” I began, but I did not know what to say. Finally I said, “All those warriors and the inKera women are still trapped.”
“Their situation is not the same,” my father said firmly. “Do not argue with me.”
I closed my mouth.
We came out into a clearing and climbed a long slope and went back into the forest, and there was a tethered pony, and a fire, and Aras sitting by the fire, wrapped in furs so that only his eyes were visible. I slid off my pony and went to him, and knelt, and said, my voice husky, “I failed completely.”
“Ryo,” he said, and stopped. All the lies lifted out of my mind.
I stared at him. Then I covered my face with my hands.
He stood up and set his hand on my shoulder. “You should be given time to recover,” he said gently. “But there is this battle, and I need to concentrate on that. I hope the worst is over for you, but I need you now.”
I was still shuddering, but I lowered my hands and began to breathe deeply, trying to put everything that had happened at a distance so that I could pay attention to the present moment.
“Good,” Aras said. He stepped back, tugging the furs more closely around his body. “I need you to protect me, Ryo. Lorellan is going to try very hard to kill me now, and you will be able to recognize and resist his sorcery better than anyone else.” He turned to my father and went on, “I am mostly watching with my mind, not my eyes, but it would help me if you could see; I would like to use your judgment to help me assess the changing situation. I need you to find a place with a good vantage.”
“Yes,” said my father, his tone unreadable.
“Later you may have the opportunity to judge all my acts,” Aras told him. “If the gods are kind.” He mounted his pony, closed his eyes and covered his face with the furs. Even bundled in furs, he looked strange on the pony, with his long legs coming down much farther than an Ugaro’s legs. He did not touch the reins, but left his animal free to follow the others.
I also mounted again. I tried not to meet anyone’s eyes, but not even Rakasa seemed remotely amused any longer. My father chose which way to go, and eventually we came to a rise and turned east and found an open place where stone fell away to a small cliff. We all dismounted and walked forward to the edge of the cliff so we could look out over the trail the Lau were following. The Lau were walking fast, along the ridge. Arrows stood in some of the Lau shields. Other than that, nothing seemed to have come of the earlier attack, except that I was here and not there. I wondered if Lorellan thought that a significant loss. I could not see why he would. I wondered if Royova, wherever he was now, thought it gain enough for the risk that had been taken. That also seemed unlikely.
Aras uncovered his face. He glanced out at the Lau, but most of his attention was obviously turned inward. He said to us, “Soon many things will happen. Some of those things will be real, but some may not be. When you are not certain what is true, trust your body to know. If you cannot tell, then trust Ryo to tell you.” Then he wrapped himself in his furs until he once more disappeared completely, and became still.
After a few moments, Rakasa said to my father, his tone faintly questioning, “The young men and I should go down and find my father?”
“No,” my father said curtly. “Stay here. If I need warriors at all, my need will be greater than your father’s. He has plenty of warriors.” As though it came in counterpoint to the order, the long singing cries of wolves began again.
“Lord,” Rakasa said, acceding.
“Our people will not be able to break those formations,” I said.
“No,” my father agreed. “We can harry them and prevent them from resting, but if they are determined, we cannot stop them.”
“Lorellan—” I stopped. Something else was happening. The inKera women were trying to break through the inner edge of the Lau formation, the western edge, where the line was closest to the forest. All of them together, all at once. The soldiers should have thrown them back without effort. Instead the precise lines of the Lau formation bowed and rippled. I could hear the hoarse, alarmed cries of men from where we stood, and the line broke.
The women surged into the gap, those who were strongest clearing the way for the children and the girls. I clearly saw how one woman threw herself onto wavering swords to make a way for others to break through the line. I could imagine how the women would snatch at bows and try to pull knives from belts. They were women, but they were Ugaro and they would fight hard. They did fight hard. The entire westernmost line of that formation dissolved into confusion.
“Brave,” applauded Keyova.
My father clicked his tongue in disapproval, not of the women, but of the poor courage the Lau showed in failing to stop them. “Pidila,” he said with contempt.
I said, “I think those soldiers are seeing something other than Ugaro women attacking them.”
“Even so,” said my father. But everyone, even I, glanced at the still form we guarded.
Our own warriors were stepping out from behind trees, shooting at the soldiers to distract them as the first women and a handful of children broke free and disappeared into the blowing snow, and then more after them. But then our warriors ceased shooting, calling out in horror.
“Now our people see something that is not real,” Bara observed, his tone grim.
The Lau began to sort themselves into better order, but the mounted Ugaro warriors rode back out of the forest, driving their ponies hard and screaming in high, thin voices, like the cries of the small lions. The Lau formation wavered again, but enough of them managed to raise their spears, and then suddenly they were moving much more decisively and I knew they now saw the truth and not whatever lie Aras had put into their minds.
The ponies would not run against the spears, but turned sharply and went around, pouring back into the forest on the eastern side of the formations. But the mounted warriors drew their bows three or four times on the way, which was enough of a distraction that our own warriors caught themselves out of whatever terror Lorellan had shown them and began to shoot again. Some of the women were dead or wounded, but I thought more had gotten away.
“This is much better than I thought—” I began.
My father reached over and cuffed me lightly. “Would you tempt the gods to be unkind?”
He was right. I observed instead, “The Lau still hold all those warriors.”
“They did not even attempt to break out,” my father agreed.
Tyo began, “Even bound as they are, I can hardly believe Ugaro warriors would be so meek! I wonder—”
I realized the mistake we were all making. “They are his dogs!” I said sharply. “He holds them with his sorcery. Even if he did not, they are unarmed and helpless. How many women are dead? Count them! Put your attention on that.” I began to count the sprawled bodies myself. There were not so very many, but enough to make me very angry. I made no attempt to push aside the anger and grief.
My father took a breath and let it out. “So. I am sorry for the women, with such useless men for their husbands. If inKera does not survive as a tribe and inGara survives, we will take in the inKera women who live.”
“I am certain Yavorda would say the same,” Rakasa said immediately, not to see his people outdone in generosity. “The inGeiro would do the same.”
If it came to that, the offer was a generous one, especially for a tribe that had been an enemy not long ago. The enmity had not been settled: they were still enemies. But what I had told Soro inKera was the truth: it was hard to think of them that way now. I began to say so and then Lorellan said, sharp and pleased, “There you are. There you both are.”
I spun, and he was there, smiling. Markas was with him. He came forward, running the whip through his hands. Lorellan said, “This time he won’t stop at five hundred, Ryo. Y
ou’ll die screaming.” He gave me a mocking salute, his hand to his heart, and disappeared.
Markas walked toward me, exactly as I remembered, not smiling at my fear and rage, but indifferent. My knife was in my hand, but Aras was suddenly there also, not huddled silently in furs, but standing beside me in the light clothing of the summer country. He told me urgently, “This isn’t real, Ryo,” and I snapped, “I know that, I killed him, I am not completely stupid,” and Aras said, “If you forget, trust yourself anyway. I’ll do what I can, but Lorellan is so much stronger than I am. As soon as you can, see if you can take me south.” He disappeared.
Markas stepped forward and seized my arm, but I did not stab him. Someone was gripping my arm, someone I did not want to fight. I could not remember who was actually with me, but my muscles did not want to deliver the blow. My memory stuttered, uncertain images of the Lau and the captive inKera coming and going. I said, “I see an enemy here.” The grip immediately vanished.
I took a breath, let it out, and my memory smoothed out, lies lifting and becoming transparent. My vision cleared. I blinked, blinked again, and shuddered.
“Better? Can you hear me?” my father asked. He had stepped back from me. He watched me closely, but he also gestured, and the four young men with us, who had been staring at me, all turned to watch the forest around us instead.
“I think so.” I turned my back to the others, taking my share of the duty to watch for enemies, checking again and again that the things I thought I saw felt real to both my mind and my body. “I saw an enemy,” I said, though perhaps I had said it before.
“Yes,” said my father. “He wanted you to strike me down, so you would be crippled by the guilt of the blow.” His voice was perfectly level. He added in exactly the same tone, “That sorcerer should die every death.”
“We cannot stay here,” Rakasa said urgently. “He knows we are here.”
I nodded. He was a warleader’s son: of course he had realized we needed to move quickly from this place. “Aras said so as well.” I looked at Aras, sitting in the snow wrapped in furs. “He said he must go south.”
“My pony is the wisest for a man who cannot guide him,” my father said. He lifted Aras bodily, and put him on the pony. This was a stallion, snow-colored. He tried to bite when my father settled Aras on his back. My father slapped him lightly on the nose and gave Keyova a look, and Keyova took the reins and made the pony turn his head to the side. The rest of us mounted as well. We turned south. Everyone else watched for real enemies. I watched for the sharply vivid images of sorcerous visions and lies.
We jogged south for some time. The deep snow made speed difficult, and the ponies blew hard. They tried to turn aside into every kind of cover we came to, except for the snow-colored stallion, who pinned his ears back, but was too proud to notice hard going. I listened to the forest and waited for Lorellan to do something terrible. Perhaps Aras protected us, because nothing of that kind happened—yet.
The land sloped here, rising and then rising more steeply. The Sun blazed down, not with the power he showed in the summer country, but brilliant and almost warm. Firs stood tall to either side, carrying heavy loads of snow. The land was very quiet. The only sounds were the muffled thuds of our ponies’ hooves and occasional distant shouts behind us.
The land climbed and climbed, the trail weaving to follow the easiest slope. Then we crested the long hill and jogged down and down. The forest spread out below us, white and dark green, endless and silent, brilliant as the snow cast back the light of the Sun.
Suddenly, when we had come nearly to the foot of the hill, Aras straightened and said sharply, “Here will do.” I was so startled I embarrassed myself by flinching sideways, as though a dead man had suddenly moved and spoken. The only thing that saved my pride was that everyone else flinched too, except my father, who only grunted in response and gestured the way he thought we should go.
We made our way through the heavy snow until we found a good place, higher on a neighboring slope, at the base of a leaning spruce, sheltered from the wind, with a good view of the trail as it came down the face of the long hill. We might have gone eight bowshots, probably not more than ten or twelve.
Aras slid off the pony, staggering as he caught his balance, looking first up the long hill and then down the trail to the south. He looked at the sky, measuring the distance lying between the Sun and the western horizon, and asked, “How far from here to the borderlands?”
We all looked at each other. My father said at last, “We are perhaps half a day from the borderlands.”
Aras nodded. “How long before our enemy reaches this position?”
“If I had known you would ask, I would have measured their position and pace more carefully,” my father said drily. “Four hand’s-breadths of time. Six. Eight.”
“Can your people delay them a little?”
A short pause. Then my father said, “I have no doubt we could do that.” He looked at Rakasa. “Now is the time to find your father. Take the stallion; he is the strongest.”
Rakasa gave Bara a sign to stay with us, took the reins, pulled the stallion’s head around when he tied to bite, swung into the saddle, and rode away, the pony breasting the deep snow with great, heaving lunges.
“A very good stallion,” Bara commented. “But hard-tempered.”
“Bred by the inVotaro,” my father said absently. Everyone knew the inVotaro bred good ponies, but did not value good temper in their animals. They trained them to trample enemies, which is something an easy-tempered animal does not like to do.
Aras sat down again and pulled his cloak across his face. I tried not to sigh.
-30-
Our warriors must have delayed the Lau, because it was at least ten hand’s-breadths of time before we heard them coming. We could not see them at first, only hear them. They were not shouting or cursing or singing as my people might have done in their place. They were only walking in step, all those boots striking the snow at once. I thought that they would be very intimidating to any opponent just for the sullen quiet and the power of their steps.
Then they crested the hill, and yes, they were very intimidating.
The Lau must surely have been angry and tired now. Yet they still moved with the same precision, all together, in those two long formations. The Lau wounded were being carried on litters in the middle of the rear formation; the Ugaro captives walked in the center of the front formation. Some of the warriors were carrying wounded women. No one had given them litters. They carried their wounded as carefully as they could, in their arms or on their backs. Fortunately, there were not many Ugaro so badly wounded they could not walk.
Our people rode down from the north, shooting at the formation, and then racing away again to the east and west. Others leaned out from behind great spruces and shot, then stepped back into cover. But they were not shooting as fast or aggressively as they had at first.
“They will soon run out of arrows,” I observed. Warriors normally did not ride to war with fewer than sixty arrows apiece, but a long running battle like this would use many arrows. If as many as one arrow out of sixty had actually struck home in Lau flesh, I would be surprised.
“So will the Lau,” my father returned.
I shrugged. This was probably true. That would be a good thing, but it would not help us break those formations. That, we could not do. Unless Aras could do it by putting visions and lies into the minds of the Lau. It seemed to me that if he could defeat them that way, he would have done it already.
The Lau were not out of arrows yet. While we watched, arrows struck an Ugaro pony and the animal went down, screaming like a child, its rider falling hard. Though another warrior tried to take up the fallen man, both were struck, and struck again as they tried to rise. They both fell, sprawling in the snow.
“Such things happen in war,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else.
My father nodded. His face was like stone. “Their heads will be set into the
tombs of their people. We will cut down all the Lau and leave their bodies for the wolves—”
I was bound between the posts, the pitiless Sun above in a blank and brilliant sky, the whip coming down, and down, and down again. I could remember nothing but the Sun and the whip; the world beyond was lost in endless pain. I could see Aras watching, his face expressionless, his mouth set hard. My pride broke, it had broken long since, I cried out, begging him to do anything, to make them stop—
The memory shattered and I was in the winter country. I had fallen to my knees. My father was gripping my arms, staring into my face. I had never seen him so utterly furious.
He let me go and spun, drawing and throwing his knife in one movement, his arm snapping through a short, hard arc. The warrior who had been hurling himself toward Aras dropped like an arrow-shot deer, crashing into the snow and rolling.
There was another warrior behind the first, but Bara took him, and others beyond that, but now I was up, my own knife out. The man I faced did not want to stop to fight me; he wanted to get past me to Aras. I took him down into the snow and drove my knife into the base of his throat and flung myself up again, staggering. Other warriors were coming, but suddenly I could not see, I was blind. I caught my breath and stilled my mind, and when my body wanted to twist to the side and move and reach, I let it happen, and caught a man’s wrist. He grunted. I dropped to my knees and twisted hard, throwing my whole body into that move, bringing my opponent down, forcing him to drop the sword he held. I thought I was blind, but somewhere behind the blindness, my body knew I could see; when my opponent tried to gut me with his knife, I caught that wrist too. But he was stronger than I was and I could not hold him—he was forcing me back, the knife touched my chest, just below my collar bone—
The strength went out of him. For an instant I thought that, too, was a lie. But I pushed him off me and then my sight came back, and I could see that Aras had come to his feet, snatched up one of the scattered swords, and driven it into the warrior’s back. Now he was fighting yet another warrior, one who had overwhelmed Tyo and come near killing him. Aras was using his skill and his superior reach to keep the man at bay, but there were others, too many, Tyo had put his back to his brother’s, but he and Keyova were plainly overmatched and my father was fighting two men himself.
Tuyo Page 40
