by J. S. Bangs
The halls of the Ushpanditya were in chaos. Servants ran every which way while the courtiers had withdrawn into niches and doorways, watching the commotion with nervous faces and muttering into their beards. No one guarded the inner doors, so Daladham cautiously crept into one of the central halls, peering here and there for someone to speak to.
“Where are we going?” Amabhu asked him.
Daladham gave him a helpless look. “If we’re to stay here… the house-master of the Ushpanditya must have a place for us. But who that is, or where—”
His question was interrupted by a shout from the far end of the hallway.
“You!” someone said.
Daladham spun. His face grew hot. Sadja marched toward him in the middle of a throng of scarlet-clad officers.
Daladham dropped to his knees and heard Amabhu and Caupana do the same behind him. His hands began to shake. He bowed his face to the ground as Sadja approached.
“Did Teguri-dhu send you?” the Emperor demanded. His voice sounded just above Daladham’s head.
“No, my Emperor,” Daladham said without looking up.
A little growl of annoyance in Sadja’s throat. “Tell her to come,” he commanded one of the officers next to him. “Now tell me, dhorsha, what happened today in the Majavaru Lurchatiya?”
Daladham’s heart beat faster, and a nervous sickness crept up his throat. “What do you mean, my Emperor?”
“The Amya dhorsha assured me that the power of Lord Am would overcome the Mouth of the Devourer. Did they succeed?”
“My master…” Daladham did not now how to begin.
“Did you perform the sacrifices?”
“Yes, to every perfection,” Daladham said. “The Lord was present with us. His power was overwhelming.”
“And yet,” Sadja said, his voice bubbling with anger, “at about the hour of noon—”
Daladham let out a whimper. He knew.
“What is it?” Sadja said.
“At the hour of noon,” Daladham said, “my division of dhorsha entered the inner sanctum and offered a ram to Lord Am in accordance with dhaur. The blood of the ram ran black. The sanctum was filled with a foul smell, and the presence of the Lord dispersed.”
Sadja was quiet. The officers around him muttered.
“The spears of the Red Men burned with the might of Am,” Sadja whispered, just loud enough for Daladham and the others to hear. “I did not think that any greater sign of the Lord’s power was possible. But the Mouth of the Devourer destroyed them.”
One of the thikratta stirred behind Daladham. Caupana’s deep voice resonated in the hallway.
“The power of Am is broken.”
Daladham’s heart twisted.
“Tell me, farseeing thikratta,” Sadja said. In the mouth of any other man Daladham might have taken those words for mockery, but Sadja was deadly sincere. “What do you prophecy?”
“I only read the signs, my Emperor,” Caupana said. His voice had the depth and surety of the roots of the mountains. “Am is lord of the rice stalk and the spear. But the rice has withered in the fields, and the spear has failed. There will be no deliverance for us from the Right-Handed.”
For a moment all was quiet.
“Well,” Sadja said at last, “there is still stone in the walls of the Dhigvaditya and bronze aplenty inside. We have the prophecy which the thikratta of old made, that no army will breach the walls of the Dhigvaditya without possessing the foundation stone. And Kushma has not yet been exhausted.”
But Daladham heard fear in his voice.
“Rise,” Sadja said.
Daladham rose cautiously to his feet and heard the thikratta behind him do the same. The Emperor was only a pace away from Daladham, and he saw the Emperor’s face clearly for the first time. He was young, his face unlined, his eyes clear and bright. There was fear in them, but also determination as hard as bronze and a cunning that Daladham would not want to fall afoul of.
“Call for Teguri-dhu and the rest of the chiefs of the Majavaru Lurchatiya,” Sadja said. “If there is any use to their dhaur at all, they’ll have to find it before the Mouth of the Devourer ruins all of us.”
Mandhi
Jhumitu stirred. His whimpers tickled Mandhi’s ears, brushing aside the fog of sleep that lay heavy across her mind. She rolled to the side and found the boy where he lay swaddled at the side of the bed. The whimper rose into a cry, plaintive and piercing in the night darkness.
“Hush,” she said. She picked him up and tucked him against her chest.
Kest rolled over on the other side of the bed, separated from her by the narrow band of inviolate space between them. Jhumitu woke him once or twice a night—he had not yet learned to sleep through the baby’s cries, and the Kaleksha considered it impossible for a wife to sleep separately from her husband, even if that wife was a mother with a maid and a child to be nursed.
He pawed at her breast as if to nurse, but she had no milk. One of the Kaleksha women nursed him when he had to, but she was with Aryaji, and Mandhi was loath to wake her. She cooed and brushed Jhumitu’s head to calm him back to sleep.
There was muttering outside the hut. Amuran. Jauda’s men on patrol. Kest rolled back to his position next to her. He hadn’t opened his eyes, but his breathing suggested that he did not yet sleep.
Another Amuran voice outside. Someone far away shouted. Shouldn’t they be quieter? Even if Mandhi had to wake twice a night, there was no need for them to wake the whole clanhome.
Another shout in Kaleksha. In a heartbeat Kest was upright.
“Something is wrong,” he said.
The door of the hut creaked. Kest ducked out, silhouetted against dim starlight. Darkness returned.
Muttering in the distance. A chain of shouts, then a clear cry in Amuran: Fire!
Mandhi jerked. Jhumitu cried out and pawed for her breast again, but she hushed him and rose to her feet. He cried out in frustration.
“Wait a moment,” she said. She opened the door with Jhumitu slung at her waist.
Fire, someone shouted again, and the cry was repeated in Kaleksha in all corners of the clanhome. She saw a burning beam arc through the air from over the palisade and fall among the huts, sending up a shower of sparks. More coals were launched from beyond the walls. From behind her, a terrified shout.
She turned and gasped.
The roof of the lodge had caught fire. The flames licked at the dried thatch of the roof and leaped with terrifying alacrity toward the peak. In two breaths a quarter of the thatch was ablaze, sparks and flecks of ash raining down on the village.
Mandhi stood transfixed, unsure of where to move. A dark shape came running from the lodge, her hands over her hair. Hrenge, Mandhi hoped. Jhumitu screamed in her arms, and she looked down and saw a speck of burning ash that had landed on his cheek.
“We must get out,” a voice next to her said. She turned.
Nakhur, holding Aryaji’s hand. He pushed Aryaji toward Mandhi.
“You two, out the north door of the palisade. Jauda said the os Tastl are in the south. All of his mercenaries and the men of the os Dramab are going to fight. Go!”
Mandhi grabbed Aryaji’s hand. Aryaji ran ahead of her, leading Mandhi through the huts. Ahead, the pointed teeth of the palisade showed in the starry sky. Kaleksha women and children darted through a gap in the darkness, their hands on their heads.
Mandhi and Aryaji followed. A cordon of widely-spaced mercenaries and Kaleksha guarded the women on two sides, with the gurgling river on their left and the palisade behind them. In the darkness there were no faces, only shapes and anguished voices. Mandhi and Aryaji reached the huddled mass of os Dramab women and were received with exclamations of surprise and relief.
“Mandhi!” Shadle’s voice called out. A moment later the woman had crushed Mandhi into a hug, squashing Jhumitu into her belly. The boy cried out.
Shadle exclaimed in surprised and back away. “We weren’t sure where you were. Is Kest with you?”
The last of the words died in her throat. The lodge burned like a torch, lighting up the pines at the walls of the valley, flames reaching twenty yards into the sky. The thatch had burned mostly away and left the beams which upheld the center, a red and black skeleton of the former heart of the clan. In the grim orange light cast by the flaming lodge, men could be seen shooting arrows and brandishing swords in a battle to the south and east of the lodge.
Hrenge’s voice called out. A moment of relief—Mandhi hadn’t seen the woman escape—but it was short-lived. The other women understood Hrenge’s words and began repeating her in sorrow. Mandhi followed their pointing to the south.
Fire at the mouth of the valley. Dry grass burning. The fields were consumed.
“Ulaur save us,” Aryaji said.
Shadle swore quietly.
Hrenge babbled in a droning, mournful tone. The aunts of the clan gathered around her. Shadle came a step closer to Mandhi and translated in intermittent bursts. “The lodge can be rebuilt… but the loss of the fields at the same time is fatal. No excess money for food, they’ll be slaughtering sheep to get through to spring.”
Mandhi’s palms twitched. She did a quick calculation: she could buy food and pay her mercenaries through the spring. But they had already been in Kalignas for months, and if she also started supporting the os Dramab, they would run out.
And she had Jhumitu. She couldn’t let them starve.
A crackle sounded from the direction of the lodge. All the women of the clan looked to see the beams holding up the roof split, and with a crash and a fountain of sparks they collapsed to the ground. The sparks spiralled toward the sky on a tower of black smoke. Cheers and groans mingled where the men were fighting.
“I think they’re retreating,” Aryaji said. She pointed to the shadows moving in the fading light of the fire.
“They achieved what they wanted,” Shadle said. “I wonder how many there were.”
They watched for a moment as the last of the attackers dissolved into the night. The sounds of shouting died down, leaving only the hiss of wind and the crackle of the burning lodge.
“I’ll find out,” Mandhi said. “Let’s find Jauda and Kest. Aryaji, take Jhumitu. He’ll probably go back to sleep now.” She handed the baby over, then took off down the grassy hill toward the battle.
Shadle shouted after her. “You can’t—oh, goat’s ass, of course you—will you slow down?” She huffed after Mandhi. “A woman with a baby shouldn’t be charging into the middle of a battle.”
“But the battle’s over,” Mandhi said. “And the baby’s back with Aryaji.”
“You—” Shadle swore again.
The mercenaries were bringing in the injured and the dead through the south gate of the palisade. They hailed Mandhi as she approached. Jauda stepped out of the shadow of the palisade gate and into the light of the fire.
“Your husband is with the Kaleksha men,” he shouted as she approached.
“Where?”
“They ran to the bottom of the valley to see if anything could be saved.”
“And these?” She pointed to the men being carried in by the Amuran mercenaries.
Jauda scowled and spat. “We gave as good as we got. Better, actually. We have only two dead, I believe, and a few with good cuts. We took down six. But they still got the lodge.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“Who else could it be?” Jauda said. “The os Tastl, and probably some allies of theirs. Couldn’t tell in the dark.”
“What about their fallen? Did they carry them out?”
Jauda sighed. “No, some are still in the field. I don’t know what we do with them. Ask Shadle.”
A drawn-out murmur from Shadle. “I don’t know enough about the clan-law to say for sure. Best ask Hrenge. Anyway, here she comes.”
Glancing behind her, Mandhi was surprised to see Hrenge and Aryaji approaching at the head of the whole mass of Kaleksha women. Tears ran down Hrenge’s face and her jaw trembled, but she held her hands in tight fists. Shadle greeted her.
A moment of conversation between them. Then Shadle said to Jauda, “Keep the bodies. The os Tastl will want to ransom them. We can use the ransom money for food.”
“Will we need it?” Mandhi asked.
Jauda looked at her with a grim scowl.
No one wanted to go back through the palisade. They gathered on the hillock looking down at the valley, watching the fires spread and die down. Gradually they heard voices returning through the dark, Kaleksha men calling out to their wives and daughters, mingled with the swearing of the mercenaries. Mandhi finally made out Kest’s voice.
“—than we thought,” he said to Jauda. “They got two of the herds, too.”
Mandhi pushed forward until she she found Kest. There was blood on his arms and soot smeared across his forehead and cheeks. He wore a weary, defeated expression. As Mandhi lay a hand on his forearm, he nodded at her, his lips pressed together in silent despair.
“What did you find?” she asked him.
He hung his head in quiet exhaustion.
“They got nine tenths of the grain,” Jauda said. “And two thirds of the sheep. Burning the lodge was mostly a distraction, I’m guessing. They really wanted to get the fields.”
“They want us to starve,” Kest growled softly.
“We won’t let them,” Mandhi said. She hummed. “We won’t let them. We can counter-attack. We have men—”
“They brought in allies for this attack,” Jauda said. “I counted how many I saw. More men than the os Tastl had.”
“And will they always be there?”
Jauda shrugged.
Mandhi heard Shadle huffing up from behind her. “It’s bad, I hear,” she said to Jauda.
Jauda nodded.
“I’ve been talking to Hrenge,” Shadle said. “The bodies must be ransomed within three days to be rightly buried. Your men brought them in, right? Now what’s this about the sheep?”
“Shepherds driven off, two flocks stolen,” Jauda said.
“Stolen,” Shadle muttered. “Any hopes of recovery?”
“When we get the ransom,” Mandhi said. Her blood burned with anger. “Three days, we give them back their dead, they give us back the sheep. Kest, will we survive the winter if we have the flocks?”
Kest lifted his head suddenly, looking around as if roused from a stupor. “Perhaps,” he said softly. “Ewes don’t give much milk in winter. We’ll be butchering a lot of lambs.”
“But we won’t starve. Even without most of the grain. And we’ll have my money…” So long as we can still pay the mercenaries.
Kest swallowed and nodded his head. The glassy, half-dead look in his eye did not disappear. “It’s a good idea. Their dead for our sheep. In the morning we’ll send a messenger.”
* * *
Kest stood between Hrenge and Mandhi with Jauda on their left. Behind them marched a trail of Jauda’s mercenaries in tandem with the os Dramab men, dragging the bodies of the fallen between them on crude biers made of pine boughs. The revolting stench of rot hung heavy in the air.
The patriarch and matriarch of the os Tastl waited in the gate of their palisade. Behind them stood a crowd of people with darkened, angry faces. Mandhi spotted sickles and clubs in a few of their hands.
Shadle translated for them in sullen bursts. She didn’t attempt to match the elders’ angry, contemptuous tone, but it came through anyway.
“Oath-breakers,” she said. “False allies, who abandon us to defend our enemies at the first opportunity.”
“We never swore an oath,” Mandhi insisted. “We were your allies for one raid, and when it was done I took my child.”
Muttered translation. The os Tastl elder bellowed something in response that could only have been a curse. “Stand down, false woman,” Shadle translated. “Eventually we overcame you any
way.”
Kest spoke in Kaleksha. For a moment he carried on a conversation with the os Tastl elder in angry bursts. Shadle pulled Mandhi close and whispered, “He’s negotiating. Leave him alone.”
Finally Kest turned to Mandhi and said, “It’s done. We’ll give them the bodies of their men, and they’ll give us our sheep. They’ve penned them behind the palisade.”
Mandhi and the others stepped aside and let the men drag the bodies to the gate. Six dead were lined up there, their faces wrapped in white cloth, tied to the pine bough biers. The patriarch bent down and lifted the cloth over each of them, looking at the faces one at a time to confirm their identities. Wails of sorrow sounded from deeper within the os Tastl clanhome.
The patriarch muttered something to Kest. A pair of burly os Tastl men stepped out and gestured for Kest to follow them.
They went around the edge of the palisade toward the far side where the sheep were penned. At first Mandhi saw only a crude pine fence lashed together with strips of cedar bark. There was no sound of sheep, but only the buzzing of flies. A tremendous stench of blood and rot overwhelmed her, stronger here than anywhere else.
“Here are your herds,” one of the os Tastl men said smugly, looking straight at Mandhi.
A step closer and she saw the inside of the pen. She gasped.
They had been slaughtered. Every last one.
The inside of the pen was a swamp of entrails and blood. Black clouds of flies buzzed over the gore, as thick as a winter fog. The sheep were gutted, their sides slit open, their legs broken. Every scrap of wool was soaked in blood. The bodies were heaped up in great piles, unmoving eyes open above slashed necks, innards and muscles and gristle sliding out of the bodies and dripping blood into the fly-covered pools. The stench was unbearable.
“What is this?” Jauda growled, his voice choked with revulsion and fear.
“You brought us back the bodies of our clanmates,” the os Tastl man said. “Now take the bodies of your sheep.”
