“Shut up and listen.”
In a moment, Ransel muttered, “Who tramples through the frog lands, eh? And at an hour when ghosts go wandering? This is a mighty strange silence.”
Zanja had already put on her boots, and went around the katrim’scircle, awakening all she could while Ransel tied his boot straps. The katrimwere less than pleased with her for disturbing their sleep, but ceased their grumbling when she said sharply, “The people may be in danger.” A precious fool she’d look like later, if her panic was caused by nothing but a froggish whimsy.
“Let’s go see what’s on the frogs’ minds,” said Ransel.
The two of them ran full tilt across the crowded plain. They tread on embers, trampled fragile pottery, and tripped over peaceful sleepers, who uttered cries of fear that turned to shouts of outrage in their wake. Babies marked their passage with startled wails. Zanja could see Ransel’s teeth in the darkness. Perhaps he was amused, or perhaps this was no grin, but a grimace, as he considered his lifetime of experience with Zanja’s whims—which rarely, if ever, turned out to be mistakes.
Let me be mistaken now, she thought, or prayed, to whatever god might be paying attention. Let this disturbance we’ve created be on my head. Let me be a laughingstock. Just let me be wrong.
They left the summer village and ran through cultivated fields, along a track of pounded dirt with ditches on both sides to channel the rainwater. Corn tasseled to the left, and to the right lay mounded squash plants, their buds ready to twist open with the dawn. Crickets sang in the cropland, but ahead lay silence. Zanja and Ransel slowed to a walk and cautiously approached the edge of the long downslope, at the bottom of which journeyed the river.
It was called the Asha River both within and without the borders. Its cobbled banks kept trees from thriving at its edges, and so Zanja could see its glimmering water, which was cold with melting snow even at midsummer, and the horde of soldiers that waded through it. They dragged their equipment and armor behind them on little rafts, and those that had completed the crossing drew on their boots and buckled their cuirasses in haste and silence. Even the war horses, which must have crossed first, as their riders were already mounted and standing guard, uttered no sound, and stood still except for the nervous twitching of their bobbed tails.
“Oh, my brother,” Zanja breathed, and groped for Ransel’s hand.
His fingers clenched hers. “Is it Sainnites?”
“Yes, it is.” She pulled him back from the edge of the slope. They stood for just a moment, staring at each other in the darkness. Zanja thought there might be as many as fifty war horses, which meant a full battalion, with twenty heavily armed foot soldiers for every horse. They outnumbered the katrimby ten to one, and the katrim’s daggers would be no match for the Sainnites’ armor and weaponry.
Zanja said, “The people must flee for their lives.”
“Then we’ll need to defend the northern trail, so they can climb the cliffs into the forest.”
“You go back and shout the alarm. You have the voice for it. Take half the katrimto defend the trail, and send half to me, so we can delay the Sainnites to give our people time to escape.”
For a moment, Zanja thought Ransel would actually waste precious time in argument. But then he bared his teeth in a bitter, mocking grin. “My commander speaks and I obey.”
“Honor to you, Ransel na’Tarwein.” She forced herself to release his hand.
“Honor to you, Zanja na’Tarwein.” He gestured a brisk, graceful salute, and dashed into the darkness. She watched until she could not distinguish him from the shadows. I will never see him again, she thought. For a dreadful moment, she could not bear it. She almost called after him. The two of them would flee … and live in shame forever after. She took a breath and turned to face the enemy.
The soldiers below efficiently and silently crossed the river. Fifty war horses she counted, and three hundred or more foot soldiers. The Ashawala’i numbered some 1,500 souls, but only a hundred of them carried weapons. The katrimwere fine fighters, and fought with each other incessantly: neat, graceful, courteous encounters that rarely drew blood. To the Sainnites they would seem like children who merely played at war.
Trembling now, Zanja heard Ransel’s voice, clear despite the distance. “Rise up, Ashawala’i, and flee for your lives! The enemy is upon us!” Three times Zanja heard this cry, until Ransel’s voice was swallowed in the rising uproar.
The Sainnite commanders, certainly hearing the noise, shouted sharp orders. The soldiers, working with terrible speed, began to form a battle line. Zanja stood alone between her people and disaster, trying to hold it back by will alone. She imagined Ransel and the katrim, running ahead of the fleeing people to secure the northern trail, the only route up the cliffs that could safely be climbed in the darkness. She imagined the Ashawala’i, confused and disorganized, with panicked children and crippled elders in tow, running across the grassland. And how many of the katrimwould have the courage to run the other way, towards the river and the enemy?
Oh, but the katrimwere arrogant. Zanja had scarcely begun to doubt them when they began to arrive, breathless and excited, with their boots on their feet and their blades in their hands. Some hunters arrived as well, with their deer bows and longest arrows. They could see well enough to shoot the horses, they assured her, and she chose not to tell them that the horses were wearing armor. Their courage came from ignorance, and she wished that she had more of both.
She locked her terror into a distant dungeon where it could do whatever it liked, unnoticed, and hastily sorted the katriminto a battle line. A few of them had lances, and she put them first, to try to stop the horses. The hunters she poised behind them, and the katrim, with their daggers, standing to the rear to await the foot soldiers who would follow behind the cavalry. She took a lance herself and stood in front, not from courage but from eagerness for the excruciating wait to end. She noticed, with relief and horror, that the cavalry had begun its charge.
How much time had passed? How quickly could the tribe climb up that single, narrow path and flee into the safety of the forest?
Even though they had to run up slope, the horses picked up speed, and she saw ephemeral sparks flash from their iron hooves.
The katrimbegan to shout: an eerie, shrill, challenging cry. Zanja felt a jolt of pride. Perhaps, she thought, we will survive.
She screamed defiance at the monstrous shadows that reached the top of the slope and blotted out the stars. Arrows clattered uselessly on the horses’ iron plates, but the katrimshouted with satisfaction as one rider fell. And then the dust washed over them like smoke. Choking, Zanja felt a wave of riders veer past as her lance point jarred off a horse’s armored side.
Like a fist through parchment, the cavalry punched through the line of katrim, and wheeled around, sparks showering where iron struck stone. The clenched groups of horses opened up like hands and formed a line, and part of Zanja remembered how she had once watched Sainnite horsemen practice this very drill. At her back now, the foot soldiers were running up the slope. The katrimwere trapped, like a fly between two clapping hands.
Zanja cried, “Ashawala’i!” She charged a horseman with her lance and dove between the horse’s hooves to drive its point into the underbelly. The rider’s ax shrilled past her ear. The horse screamed. She rolled away as the monster fell, hooves thrashing, the rider tangled in the stirrups. She jerked her dagger from its sheath and turned to face a foot soldier, whose blade clashed upon hers once, twice, three times. She never even gained her balance, but simply moved her weapon to block his, with the rest of her body tumbling after it, whichever way it happened to go. There was no grace in it, she thought sorrowfully. She pierced him with a blow that was more luck than talent, and saw him fall to his knees with her dagger still caught in his ribs.
She leapt forward to snatch her dagger back, but a horse bore down on her. Empty-handed, she dodged spiked hooves and gnashing teeth. The horse reared, and wheeled. Choking in
dust, Zanja found the fallen soldier and jerked her gory dagger from his chest. The horse was on her once again. Horse and rider both bared their teeth at her, laughing, no doubt, for she was no more than a bee trying to sting them with her little blade. The rider’s ax came whistling down at her. She fell to the ground and felt its edge slash across her tunic. His lance, held in his other hand, glimmered faintly. She rolled, jumped back to her feet, and ran under the horse.
The horse reared. She tripped, and saw the big, iron-wrapped hooves come down at her. She felt a moment of stunning pain, like a blacksmith’s hammer striking her head over an anvil. The dust-masked stars went out like candles.
The war horse trampled her into the stones and dust. The katrimdied all around her. The peaceful history of the Ashawala’i reached a bitter, bloody conclusion. Zanja lay with the others, her blood soaking the dry soil, and the dust slowly settled around her.
She opened her eyes to the heavy mist of dawn. Far away, muffled voices called in Sainnese. She struggled to her knees, vomited from pain, and fainted. She regained consciousness with her head resting on the cold flank of a dead horse. Without moving, she raised a hand to feel her bloody head. The morning breeze blew the smoke of the burning village across the valley. In the rising light of day, she saw Sainnites working their way methodically across the battlefield, claiming their dead, finding their injured, killing any enemies found alive. She could not stand, but crawled across the bloody bodies of her kinsmen, into the smoke.
When she opened her eyes again, she lay wrapped in a fine woolen blanket, in a neat hollow guarded by giant stones. Overhead, the sky was a deep blue, with the stars starting to come out. “My sister,” Ransel said, “a dozen times today I have thought you were dead.”
“I amdead,” she rasped, in a voice harsh with smoke and blood.
“So are we all. Here.” He tilted a gourd cup to her mouth. She drank. He said, “You breathed too much smoke, and you have some burns and bruises, but your head is your worst injury. A horse trampled you, I think.”
“How did you find me?”
“You found me,” he said. “I was looking for you, and you came out of the burning village.”
“What happened to our people?”
“When they heard my warning, they left their belongings and followed me and the other katrimto the cliff path. Sainnites lay in wait at the top of the path. We fought them. But they were many, and they have strange weapons that explode with fire.”
“Names of the gods!” Zanja groaned.
“We fought them a long time,” Ransel continued quietly. “What was accomplished I do not know. Did even one of our people escape? I wish I knew the answer, but I do not know. I and some other katrimfled when the Sainnites came up the path behind us. The cliff path is now choked with bodies. The village is a smoking ruin. I walked through the valley hunting for you, and everywhere I went, I saw our people slain: elders and children, warriors and farmers. The only people alive are those you see here.“
Zanja saw that other katrimwere gathered in this hollow, and that many had drawn close to hear the conversation. Her vision was blurred and she could not count them, but it seemed there were fewer than twenty.
“I was pinned under a fallen horse,” one of them said. “I lay there all night, watching the butchery. The Samnites did not rest until no one was left alive. Finally, I pulled myself free and escaped in the smoke, as you did, Speaker.”
Others also told their stones, in voices as harsh and lifeless as the voices of ghosts are said to be. Zanja listened, thinking that surely she also had witnessed the horrors they described, but she only remembered a sensation of chaos and then of stillness. To have forgotten so much surely was a mercy, but it also was dreadful to gaze at these shattered tribesmen and feel confusion rather than sharing their horror.
“The Sainnites must have taken the long path through the mountains,” one of them said. “For they have wagons and horses that could not have surmounted the steep passes.”
“They must have killed the watchers before they could spread the alarm,” said another. “Though the watchers were hidden and it should have been impossible …”
“No, they knew exactly where the watchers were,” said Zanja. “Tarin must have told them—told his friend in the woods, in payment for smoke. He betrayed his entire people.”
They were silent then, for this was something they had not known, and could scarcely begin to understand. But Zanja understood that if she had only taken action immediately to find out what exactly had happened to Tarin, rather than delaying to let her anger cool, she might have discovered his betrayal immediately and been able to forewarn her people of their danger. Not for the last time, Zanja wished that the war horse’s kick to her head had been harder.
Ransel did not know of how she had failed the Ashawala’i, and she was too stunned by shame to tell him. He gently tended her wound and gave her more water to drink. She could not resist sleeping again, and in her sleep she dreamed of Sainnites. She dreamed that they sat around a fire where they roasted a slaughtered goat. In their own language, they talked about the hard work they had done and about the dreary journey home that lay before them.
When she opened her eyes, she saw stars burning. The katrimroasted river trout over a small fire, and talked about revenge. Ransel hovered nearby, and drew close when she stirred.
“The Sainnites will march out at first light,” said Zanja.
The other katrimabandoned their meal to come over and hear what she had said. “Speaker, how do you know?”
“They told me in my dreams.”
“Then we will follow them, to haunt them like ghosts, to kill as many as we can.”
“If we do this, we all will die.” She could see them more clearly now: some fine warriors and some she had long considered fools, but with the foolishness burned out of them now.
“What does it matter, so long as we can die in honor?” said Ransel.
They all murmured agreement, their voices empty and bitter with loss.
“Then we shall follow them,” Zanja said. She did not understand how she had become their leader, or why they listened to her, when her certainty might be nothing more than the delirium of a broken head.
She shut her eyes and slept the night through. At dawn, they began hunting Sainnites. Zanja went with them, leaning on one or another shoulder, carried sometimes, as they ran lightly across the mountaintops while the Sainnites, burdened by armor and horses and wagonloads of supplies, trudged below. The Sainnites did not realize what haunted their journey until that night, after the katrimslipped into their camp like the ghosts they were, and used the hay the Sainnites carried for the horses as tinder to set fire to all the supply wagons. Zanja could not make that raid with them, but despite her blinding headache, she told them where to find the hay wagons and how to avoid the pickets, and only two katrimwere killed. Fifteen remained, including herself, but they bore the weapons of dozens more dead companions, and they knew how to survive in these ungenerous mountains. They waited a few days to let the Sainnites lower their guard, and they struck again, once or twice a night, night after night, and during the day made it impossible for the weary Sainnites to safely forage for food, or use the latrines, or even take off their armor. While the katrimate roots and greens and berries and trout, the Sainnites began butchering and eating their starving horses.
Zanja and her companions lived ghost lives. They did not speak of the past, or of the dead, or of their own deaths. They watched the Sainnites, and slipped through the mountains like shadows, and from time to time let fly a precious arrow, or cut the throat of a straying soldier. One by one, Zanja’s companions disappeared. Like the Sainnites, the katrimwere leaving behind them a trail of abandoned bodies that they dared not try to find and had no time to burn. The mountain vultures and ravens followed them. Zanja could walk on her own feet now, but was often disabled by dizziness or blinding pain. The Sainnite soldiers continued to speak in her dreams, telling her all
their secret plans and terrors and blood lusts.
The fifteen katrimbecame twelve, and then seven. The seven became five. With more warriors and more time, they might have eventually destroyed the entire Sainnite battalion. But now, with only five of them remaining, and only one more pass to climb before the Sainnites could safely exit the mountains, they knew their time for vengeance would soon come to an end. None of them wished to survive. They camped among stones, high above the miserable Sainnites and their disgusting horsemeat. They ate sweet trout flesh and sucked on the transparent bones. They ate tart berries and crunched the seeds with their teeth. They tallied the Sainnite dead and were satisfied.
Only Zanja had ever traveled so far east of the Asha Valley. She told about a treacherous canyon they soon would pass, and suggested that one of them might lure the Sainnites into the canyon, while the others dislodged stones to fall down on their heads. They drew lots, and Zanja chose the longest stick. That night, Ransel put his arms around her and said, “Wait for me in the Land of the Sun, my sister. I will not be far behind you.” She fell asleep with her head in the hollow of his shoulder.
She would always remember the moment when the mountain fell on her. It was her second death, and far more satisfying than the first. She would remember the Sainnites gleefully chasing her up the canyon, the four katrimlevering the rocks overhead, and the canyon wall collapsing onto the people below. Mercifully, she would not remember much else: She would not remember when the surviving Sainnites dragged her out from under a boulder with her back broken. She would not remember how they tortured her, when they realized she was still alive. She would not remember when they killed Ransel, who might have been trying to either rescue her or deliver her with a merciful blow of the dagger. She would not remember that she mistakenly thought she was already dead, and he was coming to join her. She would not realize for a long time that in fact he had left her behind among the living.
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