by K V Johansen
He was foreign, a Westgrasslander, a traveller but not, from the look of him, a godless and rootless man. And a warrior. Otokas let the Blackdog’s awareness slip into the stranger, intruding deeply on unguarded mind and memory.
The man stayed where he was, swaying slightly in the saddle, his green-flecked hazel eyes gone wide, pupils swallowing them black.
He was Holla-Sayan, of the tribe who farmed among the folded hills of the god Sayan, the Sayanbarkash. He had been a restless youth, midmost in a family of five brothers. The folk of the Western Grass were not nomads like those of the Great Grass in the north, but they did not build towns like the folk of the Desert Road or the Westrons. They linked their lives in extended families and tribes, lived in solitary homesteads rather than villages. They depended mostly on their sheep, but also planted wheat and rye, bred some horses, a few woolly, two-humped camels, and the blue-grey cattle they valued as much as draft animals as for their meat or milk. Their flocks meant more than their fields; they were always a few dry springs away from picking up and moving, still possessed of the nomad’s ease with drifting.
Holla-Sayan had left to work as a mercenary, a guard with the caravans that tied the kingdoms of the north to the distant eastern lands. He had come up to Lissavakail the day before, while his caravan halted to rest a few days and water its beasts at Serakallash’s oasis. He came looking for a woman, the weaver Timhine, but she was gone, her brother told him, scowling. She had married a man from a village in the higher valleys last autumn and gone, tired of breaking her heart over a homeless swordsman who never came by but a few days in the year. So Holla-Sayan had gone to Lissavakail’s one wineshop instead, and settled in to getting drunk on the thin mountain beer. Imported wine was beyond his current means, since he had given all his wages from his last trip to his youngest brother, who wanted to marry.
But then the bronze bells of the temple began to ring.
Holla stood with the defenders until sometime in the darkness of the night, when it was clear the island town was lost. The raiders were no small band, intent on the most gain for the least loss. There was something unnatural in the way they pressed on, ignoring their own fallen. They made him think of the berserkers of Northron tales, or the drug-mad assassins of southern Pirakul’s tiger cult: some band of obsessed devotees of a mad god. But they were of no one village or clan and could have no one god. Among them were brown- or olive-skinned, dark-haired folk, mountain men as well as tattooed men and women of the deserts and the Western Grass like himself, but their tattoos, the glimpses he had time to recognize, named them of several score disparate folk. Most were men and women of the Great Grass to the north of the deserts, a few of those with bear-masked helmets, bear’s-tooth pendants, or ritual scars on their cheeks imitating the slash of a bear’s claws, a new cult that had begun showing up among Grasslander travellers. A good few were tall, pale, prow-nosed Northrons with eyes like the sky, blue and cloud-grey, and a very few were gold-skinned Nabbani.
Whatever had brought them together, they were too many and too unrelenting to be overcome by Lissavakail’s fishermen. There had been a handful of Attalissa’s sisters among the defenders at first, but they had been singled out and cut down early on. No more had come from the temple, though among the militiamen there had been pleas and prayers cried out to the lake.
While the surviving Lissavakaili scattered to make separate stands or flights in the narrow streets, Holla-Sayan reclaimed his borrowed horse from the bear-masked Grasslander who was trying to steal it from the inn’s fowl-yard, rode over the Grasslander’s body into the lake, and swam ashore. It was not his town, they were not his people, and nobody was paying him to die for them. The best thing the people of Lissavakail could do would be to come to terms and pay the raiders off. Dying on the terraces of Lissavakail once it was lost did no one any good.
Holla waited out the rest of the night in the shelter of a walnut grove, wet, cold, and shivering. His coat, which had been bundled behind his saddle, was lost, as was his hat. A cut on his right forearm throbbed, wrapped in a cotton headscarf that had been meant as a gift for Timhine.
She was well out of it, at least.
Come the first lightening of the sky, Holla began to follow the winding trail along the steep southern shore of the lake, to work his way around to the east and the long, twisting track down to the foothills and the Red Desert in the north. There was no more direct route. The mountains of the Pillars of the Sky were savage, blade-edged towers, and offered few paths even to those bred to them; none he was fool enough to risk in the dark. There were still fires on the island, and the shouts and whoops of drunken raiders. The sooner he was out of the mountains, the better. He had no desire to find himself pressed into mercenary service for some bandit warlord.
But he could not ride on past the child.
Holla’s anger at those who would ignore a crying child by the road was almost as great as that at the raiders, who had ruined a good bout of self-pity and slain honest folk in their own streets and homes and left him feeling half a coward, for leaving them—
—but anger seeped out of him now, and a thick, autumn-lake fog filled his mind, drowned him, turned everything cool and distant. He slid from the stallion and collapsed on the spring-damp earth.
Holla could hear voices, soft, urgent, whispering in his head.
You can’t die! The girl crouched by the dog, which was larger than any sheepdog he had seen, and more wolflike, though the head she wrapped in her arms was broader. Its flanks and muzzle were crossed with newly healed scars, but the stump of what looked like a spear-shaft was lodged under a foreleg, and blood soaked its black fur, puddled where it stood. Unnaturally yellow-green eyes, it had, too, unsettling even in this distant, floating dream. You can’t let Otokas die.
The dog licked the girl’s tear-streaked face.
I can’t live with this. It’s beyond my—the Blackdog’s—healing. He’ll look after you, this one. I know. The Blackdog always knows. So do you. Trust yourself.
“Dog, dog!” she wailed, her weeping silent no longer. And, “Otokas, no!”
It was not her voice, the girl’s voice, in Holla’s head, but one older and richer, a woman’s voice. And the other…
It’s a hard thing to ask of a lowland stranger, unprepared. Will you look after her? Guard her and love her and keep her safe, and bring her home to the lake when the time is right?
The dog’s eyes were burning into his own, a yellow-green fire he distantly hoped was some nightmare dreaming.
Holla-Sayan found he could move, the fog in his mind clearing, and he rolled upright, squatted on his heels. Hesitantly, he put a hand on the dog’s head.
“I know this story,” he said, his voice unsteady. “I’ve heard…there is a demon dog guards the incarnate goddess here, and it possesses men.”
The dog…laughed, maybe, hacking, and coughed blood on his boot.
Spirit. Not demon, Grasslander. There’s a difference. When did a demon ever deign to serve any but the Old Great Gods themselves? My name’s Otokas. The Blackdog.
“She’s the goddess of the lake? She’s Attalissa?”
The girl, all childish wounded dignity, scowled at him. “I am.”
Please. The Blackdog spirit needs a human host.
Holla-Sayan lurched to his feet, a hand on the stallion’s neck to support himself as the world heaved and tipped under him. “What, me? No! I’m not from Lissavakail. I’m not one of Attalissa’s folk! I know my own god. I don’t belong here.”
She can’t stay here. Tamghat—the warlord who leads the raiders—is no ordinary man. You didn’t see him, I know. I did. I don’t know what he is. Wizard, at least, and more. Nothing I could fight and survive.
“Then what do you expect me to do about him?”
Hide her. Protect her till she comes into her full strength, and can face Tamghat herself.
Run away. Ride away and leave the child to die at the hands of the raiders, or be sold into the Nabbani a
bomination of slavery, which tore a soul from its god and its place in the world?
No. He means to destroy her. Make her strength his own. Maybe…make himself a god in her place. I don’t know. Something worse than mere death.
Something from a tale, but the dog sounded convinced of it.
“Stay out of my thoughts! I don’t care. She’s a goddess, she can fight her own battles.”
Damn priest-ridden mountain folk. In the Four Deserts and the Western Grass, they did not clamour after their gods and goddesses so. The priests sapped the will of the deities, Holla had always thought, and made them weak and helpless as any city lord, too propped up by servants to ever stand on their own. Look at the Lady of Marakand, who had not been seen by her folk in a generation and left her Voice to rule the city unchecked.
It was not the goddess who would die, but the black-eyed child. She stared at him, a round, mountain-folk face, wet and tousled dark hair cropped at the level of her jaw, mountain fashion, hoops of gold in her ears. Black dress clinging to her, bare feet scratched. She did not look like any divine power.
“I’ll take her with me, get her away from here,” Holla-Sayan said. “That’s all. You can’t ask more than that.”
She needs more than that.
“Sayan help me, no!” Holla said, and his voice was rough and ragged. “No. She’s not my goddess. This isn’t my place. I’ll take her away for you, find a safe place for her until she’s capable of driving that wizard out. Nothing more. Not that. You find one of her own folk for your cursed magic.”
None stopped to help her, the Blackdog said. They’re not fit to carry the Blackdog’s spirit.
“There were plenty dying for her, in the town.”
Dying for the town, I think, save the sisters. Besides, they’re dead, or trapped. And they’d know less than I do of life beyond the mountains. ‘Lissa needs you, Holla-Sayan of the Sayanbarkash. She can’t hide in the mountains.
“No.”
But you’ll take her away?
“I’d do that anyway, damn you, if there were no one else to take her in. Sayan knows I couldn’t leave a lone child here to die.”
I’m dying. Nothing the dog can do can keep life in me any longer. The Blackdog must have a host.
“Then it can find one elsewhere, and hide and wait until she comes back. I’ll keep her safe, and send her back when she’s ready.” Holla-Sayan put a hand on the dog’s head again, made himself meet those unnerving eyes. “I’m sorry…Otokas? Otokas. I can’t do anything more than that.”
Go with him, ‘Lissa, the dog said. He’s a good man. He’ll look after you.
The girl gulped a wordless sob.
Be brave, love.
Holla heaved the girl up to the dun stallion’s back, surprised at how light she was. His hands were shaking. A caravan was no place for a child, but they were at least heading into the easier half of the route, from Serakallash up to At-Landi, leaving the true deserts behind. He might be able to find someone travelling across the white-water river, the Kinsai-av, who would deliver her to his family in the Sayanbarkash. Might talk the caravan-mistress Gaguush into letting him go himself. His mother had always wanted a daughter, and so far his brothers had given her only grandsons. She’d be overjoyed to take in this waif.
I’m sorry, Holla-Sayan. The Blackdog…not my will…does what it must. You’ll understand.
As he turned back to it, the great dog rose into black fog, swift as an exhaled breath, and settled on him, tearing through his skin, his eyes, roaring like blood in the ears, burning like water in the lungs, fire in the heart. He screamed, fell, bit his tongue, choking on blood and bile. In mindless flailing he found a man’s hand and seized it, clung, until he could breathe again, dragging at air through clenched teeth.
He did understand, Sayan help him, in the space of a heartbeat: a night’s memories of horror and death. The man’s love for the girl, the Blackdog’s devotion to the goddess. The panic both felt at the goddess’s uncomprehending certainty that Tamghat intended to devour her.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” a man was muttering. “It’ll be all right, I’m sorry. You won’t go mad. It won’t kill you. You accept the dog. You must.”
He could breathe, could see…shapes, blurred, the world turned sideways in growing light, a face. Could…smell, dizzyingly, water and weed and stone, blood and fire, and the dun stallion’s frozen, sweating fear. Could hear waves, loud on stones, the girl’s quick breath and the bubbling rasp of a man’s, hear his own heart, the clatter as the horse backed a step, blowing through its nose.
Could feel the goddess, a warmth like the egg beneath a hen’s breast, sun on the skin, but within his own heart. This was what it was like to carry a child, was the confused shape of his thought: women knew this.
The rough hand he gripped, cold, tightened on his own, then loosened to let him push himself up. Holla rubbed his face clean, frowning at the slurry of blood and dirt on the back of his hand.
Broken spear in the man’s chest, the overlapping bronze squares twisted, torn. Otokas. He was soaking wet, black and slick with slow-oozing blood. He tried to push himself upright, crumpled, and Holla caught him, almost as weak, crouched there holding him, feeling the racing, staggering beat of his heart, chest to chest, feeling its faltering. He didn’t know the face, round mountain-man’s face with its earrings and fringe of black beard and shaggy-cropped hair, a crooked nose that had been broken once. Just the dog’s intensity, in brown human eyes.
“Go,” the man said. “Leave me and go, before the godless wizard comes looking for her again.”
“Oto!” the girl cried, and struggled to squirm down.
Stay there, ‘Lissa! Holla heard himself snap, hard and urgent, his own mind giving words to the dog’s fear and anger and pain. She sat still, sniffing back more tears. You can’t help him.
“Knew you’d be the one. You look after her, Holla-Sayan,” Otokas said, and the words were only a failing breath, life sighing out with them, the body too broken to endure now that the dog’s spirit had left it.
Holla felt, saw, delirium or dream, a faint shimmer of light. Smelt it, like a fresh mountain stream, clear and cold, the soul going, hesitating, balanced on the edge before its long journey to the land of the Old Great Gods beyond the stars.
Safe journey, Otokas, our dog, the goddess whispered. Bless you. She cried silently, clinging to the saddlebow.
Most of Holla-Sayan seemed somewhere very far away, still screaming. His body hurt, ached with remembered deathly pain, his head pounded like he had succeeded in the night of hard drinking that had been so early interrupted, leaving him sick and dizzy. Golden sun found the edge of a mountain, flooded them with full light of day, and birds sang in uncaring cheer.
He could find no easy words. The Blackdog enveloped him, a spirit intelligent but inhuman, more foreign to a man’s mind than the demons of the wild places, who at least spoke among their own kind. Language was a remote and alien thing; the dog’s thought was urge and need and emotion, a fierce protective passion fixed on the goddess. Any understanding of the human shape of the world was learnt from the men it had known, and that was submerged now in an apprehension mounting to panic. Too near the enemy, the wizard. Too long a delay. Too vast: the world, the future. It could form no certain plan of how to save Attalissa from a warlord who could follow them into the higher valleys tied to the Lissavakail by their streams and snows. It was Otokas the man who had decided on flight from the mountains when a lowlander turned back to rescue the girl, and who overruled the Blackdog’s fear of that unknown.
Holla knew this. The Blackdog’s memories, those of Otokas, of others, stretched back through generations, running through his own, streams merging, blending, lost in one another. But the Blackdog spirit would not let him think. It mistrusted, feared…his failure, his lack of that devotion to the goddess.
The girl slid clumsily down the horse’s side and stood with a hand on the back of Holla’s neck.
The Blackdog seemed to quiet, easing back a little.
Holla-Sayan did not look at her, flinched away from her hand.
The long head of the spear in Otokas’s chest resisted pulling. Holla braced a knee below the jagged shaft, eyes fixed on those empty, staring eyes. He would not want to go to his grave with his enemy’s weapon still in him. Holla heaved; the still-warm body bucked, flesh tearing again, and seemed to groan as dead air escaped the lungs. He hurled the spearhead away, clattering on the rocks. Gathering the man up, he felt only an angry grief, like he held a brother with whom he had quarrelled. He slid and half-fell down the steep lakeshore and waded out to lay Otokas in the water. An unburied body bound the spirit to the world for as long as the bones endured above ground, preventing it from finishing its journey to the gods, it was said, but deep water, earth, fire, all were fit burials. The man floated a moment, his eyes open as if he still watched, and then slid, drawn down, disappearing.
Thank you, dog, Attalissa said.
Gods could not leave their place. Hers was here. And damned if he was going to wait here with her for a wizard to kill them both. What did you expect me to do about that, Otokas?
No answer. The mountain-man’s soul was gone.
Not all wanderers were godless, rootless. Most still knew where they belonged. He scrabbled in the stones of the lakeshore, found among the flat pieces of shale one small enough to hold easily in a child’s hand, sharp edges blunted by seasons grinding in the waves.
It was like clawing through burial in snow, an avalanche—an image that was not his memory—to find his way to words and his own voice, when he regained the road.
“Here.”
The girl was small and forlorn, standing with her arms folded close to her chest, shivering. Afraid. Of him, of the horse, of the wizard, of the world. Holla pressed the piece of shale into her hand, awkwardly.
