by Marc Secchia
“Ummtak t’tak ra Thos?” shouted the rider to my right. “Samt’k no rrassak? Lar shilita mish!”
I glanced either side in shock and confusion. Two riders, men of the desert nomads, briskly keeping pace with me on their tough desert ponies. Sprung from nowhere! One was a young man, the other, perhaps his father. They were bare from the waist up, so dark of skin that when they spoke their teeth gleamed startlingly from their shadowed faces, and so tall they had to tuck up their legs on the small ponies. Each rider had a huge, wicked-looking curved sword belted at his left side, and on the right, a quiver of short javelins clearly meant for throwing at animals–or enemies.
“Ordak gives greeting,” shouted the younger, “in the name of Thos, God of Warriors, and bids you speak your business, or die on the point of his shilita.”
“I am El Shashi, and I’m ploughing the desert!” I shouted back, without slackening my pace in the slightest.
Words were fired rapidly over my head before he asked, “What does this mean? Is the great dragon hunting us, your beast?”
I spread my hands and panted, “If by ‘great dragon’ you mean the Wurm, whose cry you may have heard this makh past–twice–then ay, it is mine. It hunts me.”
“We’ve heard of El Shashi.” Again, the older man commanded the younger in his tongue. “What is this ploughing you speak of?”
“The Wurm let the waters of the Nugar through the northern hills,” I replied. “Soon, this ground will become a lake.”
When the young warrior translated my words, Ordak became visibly furious and laid his hand on the hilt of that huge sword. I had no need of translation to grasp the gist of his words. With a hard face, the young man fired at me, “He says these lands have belonged to our people for a thousand gantuls! The Nugar lies beyond the hills, a hundred leagues distant. You’re a liar!”
I pointed ahead. “I will keep running until the beast abates–even if it takes me over those mountains.”
“No man could run that far.”
“Then you don’t know El Shashi.”
“Our people are close by. We need an athocary.”
I scowled at Ordak. “If I lead the Wurm to your people, it will devour them. Not even the white bone will it leave.”
Much discussion ensued. In the end, they shadowed me until the time of dioni orison, by which time their ponies were tiring, and my pace had slowed to a steady, league-eating jog-trot that belied the pains spearing through my joints and bones with every step.
It was the sixth day, and Hakooi seemed a lifetime away.
A desert morn is wondrous. The stillness hovering over vast empty spaces, the colours of Mata’s infinite palette radiating across the sky; breathtaking. Picked out by the rising sun, countless mauve and lavender peaks stretched across my path in solemn majesty, sharp-toothed with youth and on their flanks, dusted with the first hint of green I had seen since crossing the Nugar. A desert eagle soared effortlessly across my path. As the yellow sun vaulted into the sky the two warriors peeled away and by that magic innate to the desert-born, vanished into the wilderness.
I noticed these things only in the periphery of my consciousness, for the greater part of my existence was concerned with fighting the acute fatigue which threatened to fell me at each step. I had to somehow tear from my body the will and the strength to keep one foot moving ahead of the next. The land rose imperceptibly; it took me makh to notice. I began to pass the odd dead tree. A scrubby tan grass, which whipped against my calves, had here won the fight against the encroaching sands. I swung to a more westerly direction, following the natural lie of the land, and by noon, found myself upon the banks of what could only have been an ancient watercourse–dry as a fossilised bone, but clearly identifiable. I wondered where the flow out of this area must have disappeared, given the great range blocking my path.
The desert warriors had spoken with awe and reverence of a ‘Great Erg’ that lay beyond the mountains–greater even than the desert I had crossed. Did they venerate their desert home? Why? Drawn by my curiosity, my path turned again to parallel the watercourse, and I followed it through eventide and into a brilliantly starlit night until the dawn following.
By now I was high in the mountains. The dry riverbed lay nine or ten trins below my right hand in a gorge that grew more spectacular by the makh. There were birds flying down there, dark dots against a pebbly texture. Having slowed down during the night for fear of pitching over the edge, I sensed the Wurm’s nearness. Its energies crackled around the edge of my mind like an Eldrik Warlock’s blue lightning.
How much magic could mortal flesh support, I wondered? If the Wurm was indeed mortal! Was there no limit, as Eliyan the Sorcerer had averred, to the process of collecting and concentrating magic’s potency? Or must it perforce spill over–causing this unnatural thunder and lightning which marked the Wurm’s passage? Would such a surfeit of magic disturb the fabric of Mata’s creation itself?
My head hurt too much to give these thoughts due attention.
I pushed myself harder again along what I surmised was a cliff top animal track. I was sick from a bone-deep weariness, and no longer had reserves left to heal myself. I tried to vomit, many times, but there was nothing in my stomach. Pain from my joints stabbed through my body with every jolt upon the rocky surface. My legs grew heavier than I could bear. Healing myself did not make a dyndigit’s difference to my condition. I startled a herd of gazelle during the morning, and later, stepped right between the coils of a cobra sunning itself on a flat rock. I fled before it could strike.
Here and there bushes grew, stubby and hardy characters all, and moss and lichens sheltered in the shady cracks between the rocks. Gone was the cool of the north. In some hundred and fifty or two hundred leagues, the climate had changed utterly.
Groves of bragazzar trees, tough masters of the mountains, had also found purchase, and pomegranates which were not yet in fruit. It was vegetation enough to support a variety of bird and animal life. I sobbed with relief when I happened upon a small pool of brackish water standing in the lee of a huge boulder. Precious water! I flung myself upon my belly. Though stagnant, it tasted sweeter than honey upon my lips.
But too soon, the Wurm’s approach made the ground tremble against my stomach. I stumbled on.
The water was refreshment enough to see me into the late afternoon, at which time the lack of nourishment finally overcame me. My vision was too bright at the edges, swimming in and out of focus, and a terrible light-headedness descended. I swayed and stumbled upon the trail as if too far gone in my cups. I fell many times. But each time, I somehow picked myself up. My existence was reduced to fleeing the Wurm, to the next step, and when I could no longer walk, I crawled. I slithered on my belly when crawling no longer served, dragging my body forward with hands clawing rock and sand.
It was in this state that I pitched over the cliff’s edge.
I fell about ten paces before being struck in the stomach by something hard, and hung there doubled over and panting, my legs dangling in space. For a makh or more, I know not, I hung like a dead thing.
At length, my eyes focussed weakly. Here, sitting among the rocks as innocently as if a hand had placed it there precisely for my succour, was a bird’s nest holding five eggs each the size of my hand. Mata be praised! I reached out. Taking but one, I cracked it carefully on a sharp rock and guzzled the contents as though I were a greedy porker buried to the jowls in its slops.
Where was the Wurm? Gone? The magic was absent.
My stomach heaved. Too many days without food, now it rebelled. I clamped my jaw shut, screwed up my eyes, and willed my body not to expel the precious load. Finally I subdued my gut, and soon after, felt strength trickling into my being–precious, tiny strength. I opened my eyes and cautiously looked around.
I promptly wished I had not.
The ground was about half a league beneath my dangling feet. In at least a dozen places, the fiery red of lava showed clearly through the basal rock. Smoke
curled lazily into the cooling eventide air. No wonder ulules spun tales of such places, I told myself. And here I was, caught by a single bragazzar tree below the lip of the caldera, on a rocky outcropping that was literally the last bastion of the trail I had taken. Perhaps it continued along the top, I did not know. But I did know I had never been so grateful for a tree. Truly told, it was one of many rooted in the sheer cliff-face, but this particular tree and I became lifelong friends in an instant.
Clearly Mata had plans for me other than death.
Hanging on white-knuckled, my wondering gaze was drawn outward. The caldera was a league in diameter by my estimation, and its southern rim-wall stood noticeably lower than my perch. Beyond the sheer cliff face I saw a desert of onyx boulders; glinting black rock as far as the eye could see, punctuated by conical volcanoes, some smoking and even lighting the clouds from beneath with the fiery breath of their eruptions. A scalding breeze, as arid as the salt-pan I had crossed, ruffled my curls. I imagined it sucking the moisture out of my skin. Under Belion’s glare at Doublesun, this land must be intolerable. Was this the Great Erg? This replica of Nethe? What man could survive in this hellish place?
Carefully, shaking from head to toe, I levered myself up onto the bole of the tree, and from there, with painstaking care, I crept back up the way I had come. When I reached the top my legs would no longer hold my weight. On hands and knees I crawled like a crippled beggar to the lee of a nearby rock, shaded by a massively gnarled bragazzar tree that had to be older than mankind’s presence in the Fiefdoms. Here I curled up, and fell into the deepest and most wonderful slumber imaginable.
I did dream strange dreams, however.
My legs kept wanting to run, even in my sleep, so I awoke aching abominably in every muscle and bone of my body. And when finally I suffered one eye to open a crack, I beheld a most amazing sight.
Beyond a small line of ants marching across the rock about three dyndigits from my nose, lay the hindquarters of a large cat. But they were entwined in the coils of a moon python, so named for the distinctive reddish crescent-patterning down its spine. At first I thought the python about to make its meal. How, of such a massive cat, I cannot say, but I have read some snakes are able to dislocate their jaw, the better to ingest a huge meal. But as I found my feet and limped around the site of the strange battle–for battle it must have been, judging from the scrapes and marks on the ground and the puncture-marks in the python’s skin made by the cat’s great claws and teeth–I found the python’s head caught firmly in the cat’s mouth. The cat’s front canines were the length of my forefinger. One had driven through the skull into the snake’s brain.
I scratched my stubble fitfully, trying to force coherent thoughts through the mush left of my brain. Both dead? An extraordinary portent indeed! And what kind of cat? An ocelot by the tufted ears, a tygar by size, and tan coat with no patterning? Pupils round and not slit in the manner of cats? However, as I bent closer to examine the mortal foes, I detected a very slight quiver of the cat’s eyelids and jerked my head back. I laughed at my fright.
I had barely a trace of power left after digging so deep for so long, yet, I touched the cat and attempted to find out what had happened. And here I unearthed a further strangeness. It was at least partially paralysed by the snake’s venom, but still alive. Definitely alive.
Sitting back on my haunches, I said to myself, “And if you heal it, Arlak–as you should–then will it not turn and sup upon your flesh?” Ay, I have a good rapport with animals, but I am not crazy. Not most of the time, truly told!
Instead, I collected some sticks and dry leaves from beneath the tree. I had a small chunk of sparkstone in my pocket. After several attempts, I managed to husband a spark and nurse it gently into flame. Once I had a little blaze going, I drew my belt knife and sawed off a chunk of python for myself. A massive chunk! My mouth watered as I spit the meat on a dry stick and set it at a comfortable height above the flames. Snake meat is delicious, a delicacy in my native Roymere. Janos had taught me how to trap mountain adders, I remembered, and how spit and cook them in just this way. The Faloxx and the Frenjj taught me much, but the greater portion of my survival skills came from Janos.
That a man should have two fathers, is a treasure indeed.
Still, once the meat was cooking, I could not withstand. I moved over to the cat, and laid my hand upon its muzzle. “You do not deserve to die so.”
I returned to my cooking, but kept glancing over at the cat. Within the makh its muscles were twitching, and the large sallow eyes blinked. Its pupils contracted against the bright sunlight. The tail flicked back and forth.
“Here.” I nervously placed a chunk of cooked meat within reach.
Suspiciously at first, then with that fastidiousness peculiar to all felines, the cat began to eat. I stuffed my mouth, thinking I could eat the whole python myself.
Indeed, I had closed my eyes in carnivorous bliss with meat juices running freely down my chin and a mouth chock-full of tender meat, when the cat nosed my hand and a great rumble arose from its chest. It is the kind of fright that makes one lose anna off his life. But once I realised the rumble was really a purr and the cat was after the meat rather than my hand, I fed it the hunk I was holding and made to get the rest. The cat immediately appropriated the larger piece too, leaving me with precisely nothing.
“Why, you’re nought but a thief!” I chuckled. The cat blinked at me as if to say, ‘I’m infinitely more important than you in Mata’s world.’
So I trimmed the python a second time.
I was blowing upon my portion to cool it when the cat suddenly sprang away, and in two massive bounds vanished amidst the rocks.
Ordak’s son rose from a narrow draw nearby, holding his throwing spear and looking shamefaced. Ordak appeared a little ways down the trail, marched up, and clouted his son across the back of the head. From this I inferred that the cat had been the target and the boy had failed his test.
“Welcome!” I cried, waving my hand. “Come and eat! The meat is just ready.”
The old man and the boy came over and stood next to the fire. “What were you doing with the lyrakosh?”
“Feeding it,” said I, assuming they meant the cat.
“We are welcome at your fire, El Shashi?”
I nodded. “Please, sit and share with me.”
By this simple act, I unwittingly defined an anna of my life.
After the three of us returned to the tent-camp bearing the python in two separate parts upon the backs of the ponies, I learned that in the desert to share food–or one’s kill–is to share life. I had brought enough life to feed the entire tribe.
We were now bound by reciprocal obligations. The tribe had to honour their debt, as they saw it, and I had to learn to behave so as not to spurn their gratitude. My protestations availed me nought. I was the man who spoke with a lyrakosh, making me some kind of Sorcerer in their estimation. Were it not for my status as a generous stranger, my protestations might have cost my life. A proud people ever-hasty with the sword, these nomads!
The desert peoples have huge tribal lands within which they move. These lands are governed by complex laws and traditions, for example, that peoples can travel from one area to another, but must declare each animal hunted, down to the smallest mouse, and pay fair price to the landowner. Disputes are common and bloody. Feuds apparently run for gantuls. And I, clever ploughman of the desert, had in one fell stroke removed the better part of two thirds of their tribal allotment.
My tribe were regarded as numerous, at about seventy adults, but poorer than most. They could ill afford another mouth to feed. And when it was revealed I was the architect of the new lake, I came within a hairsbreadth of losing my head–only the stroke of Ordak’s sword stayed the fatal blow. So doing, he severed the warrior’s hand at the wrist. I picked it up, walked over to him, placed the man’s hand back against its stump, and willed the flesh whole.
The tribe gasped as one man.
&nb
sp; Thus commenced my athocarial work amongst the Benka, as they called themselves. From warts to cataracts, from tapeworm to bowel canker, I worked long makh and hard, and finally earned their trust. I won the fond moniker ‘the little big man’–for even their women were by and large my height, and the men, up to a head taller. Did I mention the women go as bare-chested as the men? They thought my embarrassment hilarious.
Ay, the day they procured me a companion! There had been a fight with another tribe. A man was given as blood-payment, along with his wife and two daughters. The Benka practice a formalised system of slavery–this man would work three anna for the tribe to expiate the blood-debt, before returning to his people. The two teenage daughters were paired off with unattached men–Ordak’s son Ordakay, with whom I had become fast friends, was allocated the older sister, and I, the younger. Ordakay was patently delighted with his acquisition.
When it became clear I was less than agreeable, the chosen girl drew her knife and made to slit my throat. She had to be held back by her mother and sister. Her father and the men of our tribe started screaming abuse at me. Ordakay dragged me off into a tent for a man-to-man discussion–at the point of his shilita, snarling, “What’s the matter with you?”
“I cannot bind with another!”
“What’s wrong with Shalima?” he shot back. “She’s a very great gift! Did you not see her strong legs, her able hands, and the proud tower of her neck?”
“I’m a Matabound man!”
Ordakay’s sword pressed against my throat. “Have I not have seen your eyes move upon women with desire? Is this not true? What is this ‘Matabound’ thing you say?”
As I explained, the heat of Ordakay’s anger simmered down until he lowered his mighty shilita blade. He grinned. “Our customs are not as yours,” he said. “This is our tribe’s best gift, for have you not given us life? It is a high honour! Shalima will belong to you for not more than one anna and a day. After that, she must return to her people and choose for herself a mate. You must train her well. Otherwise, she will be heaped high with dishonour. None would keep her. She would better kill herself first.”
