Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  Cocky, Sova thought. Even Chevenga. But still she half-disbelived what she’d seen. “But he’s supposed to be the Invincible and Immortal and all that. I mean, if anyone had a right to be cocky ... And you ... how?”

  “You already felt how,” he said, a touch impatiently. “Today, did striving-miracle yourself; just don’t know it. Maybe you’ll notice when we saw next log ... how it got easier because of whaht you were thinking.”

  She remembered. Because I was thinking it was more than half-done. “But that’s not the same as ... !”

  “Oh, yes it is! Exahctly tseh same! You got lots more logs to saw before you understahnd, tsough. You got time for a thousahnd thousahnd more before you my age. Anotser one waits.”

  “But ... how could you tell it was his time to get thrashed?”

  “Easy! He was splitting wood with one hahnd!”

  “But!” This was getting almost exasperating. I can’t say what I’m thinking. Well, yes I can. Why not? “You’re hiding something from me! You know more about him!”

  The old man’s grin went sheepish. “Ayo, ’tax, yes. You caught me. I know his weak points like my own wrinkles. I only been trying to train him out of tsem for seventeen yearrhs, Spirit-inmse-me-for-tseh-sake-of-Yeola-e.”

  “You’re his war-teacher?” Somehow Sova had never imagined an Invincible could have one.

  “Yep.” The log delivered, they turned back to the woods, and Azaila cast a glance over his shoulder, his light old eyes full of affection. Chevenga was holding a double-weight axe, with both hands. “Good lahd, heart of crystal. Love him like my own child. His kind you got to keep in line.” The old man skipped ahead, like a boy. “Tsere’s more wood, Sova Far-Traveller! A few more pieces like tsaht ahn’ we’ll hahve done our share, I think.” Sova followed, numb.

  He said nothing as they sawed the next log, and neither did she, her head bursting with thoughts, so many she hardly noticed the agony in her arms. Her old refrain rang over and over in her mind, cracked like a bell with doubt.

  She’d first learned it from her father: The strong eat the weak. And it was true, the one common thing she’d learned from both homes, that ran like a song in her head: “Pa hits Mooti, Mooti hits ’Talia, Franc and I hit Piatr, khyd-hird hits me!” She’d learned it deeper and wider as she’d got older, found reason for her old questions. What had happened to her had nothing to do with fairness; it was only children who expected that, as khyd-hird kept saying. Her adopted mothers had just been better climbers and archers, that was all. So they kicked us good, and the world would now say that they were better people, the hardest kick. The strong wrote history, she’d learned that, too. She had another rhyme: “Arko kicks the rest of the world, one by one. But we gang up on Arko, and Arko’s ass is done!”

  Yet by the same principle, no one should be able to kick Chevenga, least of all a skinny old man who said, “We small weak people,” meaning himself as well as her, who’d let her call him by his name and speak freely.

  He’s one of those legendary Yeoli masters who live up on mountains and can kill people with one finger and that kind of thing, she thought, as they rolled the next log to the splitting-place. He must be, teaching the semanakraseye. Should I ... Why not? People probably ask him things like this all the time. “Azalia, sir,” she’d said, as they rolled the fourth log. “I ... I have to decide something. My khyd-hird says I could be a ...”

  Out of modesty she chose against the word “great.”

  “... a really good warrior.”

  “Yep,” he said casually. “She right.”

  How does he know? He’s never seen me spar ... has he? The thought was terrifying.

  “But I’m learning other things, as well, for other trades. I have to choose which to do. How do I decide?”

  She thought he’d think for a bit, but he just said, “Simple. Ahsk yourself two questions. One: does duty require it? Duty means, whaht’s best for yourself ahn’ tsose you love.”

  She remembered what Shkai’ra had said, that there would be fighting in F’talezon. She wasn’t sure she was going to stay there, though, when she grew up. “I ... don’t know.”

  “Don’t tell me, it’s none of my business—think it out ahn’ answer for yourself. Question two: do you like doing it?”

  Stink and fear and pain and meanness; smooth clear motion, comrades as one, victory ... She didn’t know the answer to that one either.

  “Ahnswer tsose two questions, ahn’ you will know,” said Azaila. “Simple!”

  “Ya,” she said bleakly. “Simple.” Azaila just grinned.

  “You’ve never seen me pick up a blade,” she said. It was starting to get dark, the work nearly done; she held down a pang of disappointment at the thought of saying good-bye to him. “How can you tell whether I’m any good?”

  “Naht so!” he said grinning. “I did so see you pick up a blade. Half of one, anyway.”

  “Huh?” She blinked. “When?”

  He chuckled. “A riddle for you. A lesson. You figure.”

  * * *

  XVI

  Images and sensations drifted through the Ri’s word-bereft but flicker-quick mind, inspired by his surroundings, his instincts, his hungers, happily ignorant of past and future, knowing only now, as he crept noiselessly towards the Arkan camp.

  Night dark, sniffwind, wind come to me, me. Lie down, downdown in bush. Night warm/safe/blackdark, manetailsilver on bushes. Sniffwind; small life all around. Furryjumper, littlescurry, run, run, hide. Men; men, men, men, men, horses, horses. Blondprey. Tallowsmell, deadcowsweat smell. Horses. Stallion, mares. Mareinheat, likeRinotlike. Bare fangs. Clawsgrip, down hill, sneaksneaksneak. Menmeat. Bigherd, men, men. Blondprey infields alone. Stomp, stomp, loudclumsystupidhardfeet.

  Steepplace, flatplace, bush, bush. Redmaneherdmarenothere, nothere. Sadsadwhimpermoanhissss! Twoblondprey. Rottengrapesmell. Loudnoise, ba-ba-ba peoplemouthnoise.

  “Fikken kaina marugh miniren, Kemmas where’d you get that wine?”

  “Fikken officer’s baggage cart that turned over in the ditch today, where else? Celestialis’s crapholes, we’re still carrying their gear on our fikken backs, aren’t we? Here, have some; no fikken barehanded okas-piss ration swill for them. Or for us, tonight, ha ha ha.”

  “Honest Laboring fikken God, that’s good!”

  “Strong stuff. Dinare wine. Fikken sheephairs’ve got it now, fikken officers get us all killed and then the killer mountain boys ream our assholes anyway.”

  Mysound. Makesound, clawrock.

  “Shhh, thas’ fikken flogging talk. Gimme. Ahhh ... Hey, Kem, you hear that?”

  “Fikken kaina sergeant sneaking around again. Quick, under the fikken bush with it, Akinas.”

  Blondprey freeze, hide rottengrapesmellbad.

  Hehehehe.

  Mysound, turnrock. Blondprey stand, standstiff, pace-pace. Sneak ... closeclose. Standquietquiet, openmouth.

  “Akinas, I don’t think that was the sergeant. Sounded more like an animal. God, what’s that fikken smell? Like rotten horsemeat ...”

  Hehehehehe. Fearsweatsmell.

  “Shit, it’s dark.”

  Stepstepstep, rear, hisssssssshriek! Grabblondprey. Stomachgrabripcloth. Screamscreamsfunfunfunfun. Gutpullouttwisttwist. Hehehehe. Tastegood. Yum. Dodgespear, pullgutlonglonglonglong.

  “Help me, Akinas, don’t nooooooooooo—”

  “Sergeant! It’s got fikken Kemmas, the demon’s got Kemmas! Oh, kaina marugh miniren, it’s got Kemmas! Sergeant? Sergeant?”

  Yum. Muzzleinbitelungstwistpullslurp. Blondpreyherd muchnoise. Go, sneaksneak. Hehehehe.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Burp.

  Megan lay awake. No matter; Sova would wake her up anyway, either by coming to bed in good time, or by not coming to bed in good time. Past midnight, the faint cool brightness of the moon touched her tent-wall; shortly after came the sound of a greeting meow from the ridgepole, and the Thane-girl trying to hiss silently, “Shh! S
hut up you stupid animal you’ll wake the dead not to mention zhymata.”

  “It’s all right, Sovee, I’m awake,” Megan whispered. “How was your evening?”

  The girl sat in the opening to pull off her boots. “Oh, good.” Megan could hear her smile. “Hook, in.” The wing-cat dropped onto the girl’s knee with a brief flutter of wings, hopped inside and curled comfortably in the center of Sova’s bedding, beginning a tick-tocking purr. “And yours, zhymata?” she said, as she pulled off her clothes and slid down under the blankets, shoving an annoyed wing-cat off from underneath.

  “Not bad. I spent some of the evening thinking about you.” Megan turned on her side, propping her head on her elbow. The half open tent-flap let in the night breeze with the odor of drowned fires, canvas and tramped grass.

  “Uh-huh. C’mere, Hook.” A long smooth arm pulled the more-or-less compliant cat, still purring, under it, and stroked the folded wings.

  Wanting to talk as much as she wants latrine duty. Megan sighed. “Is there anything bothering you, Sovee?”

  “No. I mean yes, well ... I mean no, aside from how can’t there be when khyd-hird’s missing?”

  “I just thought you seemed disinclined to talk to me much, and I wondered, that’s all.”

  “Sorry, zhymata. No, nothing’s bugging me. She’ll come back. I mean, if she died, wouldn’t you be able to ... tell? With manrauq?”

  “Not necessarily. My manrauq isn’t that shape; we all shared minds on the ice last year only because of someone else’s manrauq. Sometimes it comes back, in extreme emotion; sometimes it doesn’t. And she might be too far away.”

  The girl said nothing to that. There was nothing for Megan to do but respect her right to keep her own counsel. “Koru hear you.”

  Megan lay still with her eyes closed, but even though she was dog-tired, sleep wouldn’t come. The moon brightened; wind rustled the leaves of a nearby copse, and someone in the next tent over tossed and murmured. Her mind ran in circles; she was too tired to stop it.

  “Zhymata,” came a tiny whisper, after a long while. “You’re still awake, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” The words had been pitched not to rouse her, were she asleep. If she was planning to sneak out ... “How could you tell?”

  “Right after you fall asleep, you usually have the twitches for a while. Like, I should say as if something inside you was having a fight. But now you’re lying still. You’re worried about khyd-hird, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” It was true enough. Worried about whether she can do it, and in time ...

  “I’m sure she’ll be all right and come back because she’s too tough to get killed and Koru help her and I’d never mean her when I said this, but ... some people who go missing are never found, are they?”

  “Some, yes.”

  “So their family never know whether they’re dead or alive, do they?”

  “It happens.”

  The girl was silent for a time, hard in thought. “That would be really terrible,” she said finally.

  “I’d rather know for sure she were dead than never know what happened,” Megan said. She knew both. Mourning is black, for a time. Uncertainty is grey-black, forever.

  “Me, too,” the girl said gravely.

  It’s my tiredness, Megan thought. She doesn’t mean it that way. But the flare of anger rose. She strangled it down. She has a right to think what she thinks. “Sovee ... some part of you would be glad if you knew she were dead, wouldn’t it?” Megan said, as gently as she could.

  She sensed the girl freezing. “Glad? Zhymata, whatever gave you that idea?”

  Megan felt the chill she always felt, witnessing the telling of a bare-faced lie. She feels she has to, she thought. For my sake. It’s not as if she wished it wholeheartedly; just part of her does, and you can’t blame her. “Just a thought.” Megan thumped her pillow and settled down again. “I’d be an idiot if I thought you loved us completely after what happened between your family and us, wouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t think you’re an idiot, zhymata,” the girl said, stroking Fishhook with deliberate attention. “Niiiice Hook.”

  “Not many parents get to hear that, from adolescents,” Megan said drily.

  “Here, Hooky-hooky-hooky. Niiiiice kitty.” Sova yawned conspicuously.

  Megan let her anger snap into words. “Don’t you dare ignore me!” She propped herself up on her elbows. “If you don’t want to talk about it, say so!”

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because ... because she’s your akribhan.”

  Megan sighed. “I suppose that’s reasonable. But since you don’t have anyone else here to talk to, you can always ask whether I could hear you objectively.”

  “Could you?” The girl’s whisper was full of suspicion. “You’re not usually very objective.”

  Megan bit back a retort. “If I promised then I’d have to do my best. If I couldn’t, I’d go away for a while to cool down, afterwards. So: I promise.”

  Sova drew up onto her elbows suddenly. “Vat if I told you I hated her? What if I told you I did vish she vass dead?” Excitement brought out her accent. “I’m not saying I do! But vat if I did?”

  “I’d do my best to understand.”

  There was a long silence. Fishhook shifted, and carefully licked her wings. Finally Sova said, “Khyd-hird likes to hurt people who are already hurt. Even if she wasn’t the one who defeated them. I don’t think that’s right.”

  “Yes. I was already in love with Shkai’ra before I found out that her people taught her that anyone helpless deserved to be kicked. She’s trying to learn that the rest of the world doesn’t think that, but it doesn’t come easy to her to admit she has to learn anything. You can still love someone and yet disagree with them and the way they were brought up.”

  “How old are people when they stop being the way they were brought up, and start being the way they decide?”

  Megan started to answer, stopped, thought. “When they decide to decide; at age ten or one hundred, or never. It takes work, though. The first step is seeing how.” She grimaced in the dark. “Next there’s the choice of what kind of person to be—and then you have to be strong enough to stick to a course that leads toward that.”

  “You’ve shown me all the problems with the way I was brought up,” Sova said. “That women shouldn’t be weak or stupid or illiterate or pacifistic ...” She went on listing the Zak and Kommanz counter-prejudices to Thanish prejudices, by rote. “But she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the way she was brought up. Or why would she brag about it so much?”

  “That’s a way of hiding how much it hurts—the ‘see-I’m-tough’ ruse. She doesn’t always know there are other ways to see the world. Saying, knowing in your guts, and acting are three different things. You can say women aren’t weak, stupid and so on, but when it comes down to it, it’s how you feel.”

  “I feel weak and stupid a lot when she’s training me. I only feel strong when I’m somewhere else. I sometimes feel strong when I’m fighting; I’m getting used to it. I don’t know whether I feel like me or not because I don’t know who me is anymore.” In the slight light, Megan could see the girl’s face turned mask-like again; hiding emotion, like Shkai’ra.

  “Everyone wonders who they are at fourteen. I was telling myself I wasn’t ‘the captain’s slut.’ I suppose you’re imagining parallels between Shkai’ra and Sarngeld ...” Megan faltered for a moment, stopped short by the thought. “Sarngeld, who owned me, because she can be tyrannical, and maybe because of things I’ve said, though you know Shkai’ra would never abuse you. In that sense I can understand part of you being glad she’s missing; perhaps dead.”

  She made the words sound sure; but felt her hands trembling. Why? I know Shkai’ra. After all this time, there can’t be anything I don’t know, any hidden darkness in her I haven’t seen ... can there?

  Silence held for a while. Finally Sova said quietly, �
��It’s not things you said. It’s things she said.”

  “Oh?” The night suddenly got quieter, and hotter.

  “You weren’t there.” The girl’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “What did she say?”

  “She ... she made us take off all our clothes. In front of the crowd. You didn’t see; you were helping Piatr. And she ... she said I was too young, but the way she looked at me ... that was two years ago.”

  “Too young. Too young for what?” Megan felt the edge creep into her voice, the shrill of tension, roiling up out of the pit of her stomach. No one knows anyone, one of her teachers had once said. Entirely. She set her teeth, pressed her hands on her knees to stop their shaking.

  “Too young for ... you know! We were ... we were naked. She said it was about time she got some of her own back. She says that happened to her all the time ...”

  “Damn her.” Megan heard her own voice: black, thick, Dark Lord-toned. The girl wasn’t making it up to sow discord, she was sure. For one thing, she was too honest; for another, those things had Shkai’ra’s stamp. “Damn her! When she gets back, I’m going to ... Sova, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “She vass your akribhan! Besides ... ven we came into the Kchnotet Vurm, ve were naked und had welts all over us. You saw dat! She only shows you her nice side, but you saw dat!”

  Megan flinched, swallowed bile. “Shkai’ra’s very careful with me. She never ... she didn’t ... she loves me very much, and she’s never seen me as weak. She eased up on you when she started seeing you as people, didn’t she?”

  “Ven ve could do fifty push-ups, more like. She doesn’t really think anyone’s a person unless they’re a warrior.”

  “Sova. Did she ever carry through on that threat?”

  “No. But I always figured it was because I was still too young. I kept wishing I wouldn’t grow, or get breasts ...”

  The words fell dully into Megan’s head, echoing. I wouldn’t grow. Get breasts. For her it had been the other way round, hoping she would grow, would get breasts, so Sarngeld would be less interested.