Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  “Hold it. Keep it safe.”

  “It’s a stone.”

  “It’s a magic we know, we folk who go wandering. So we always know our home, and our gods know us. We take it with us. See?” He hooked a finger in the neck of his jerkin, drew out a leather amulet-pouch on its thong, loosened the neck, and tipped out a white pebble. “That’s from the crest of the Sayanbarkash, where I’m from. Where my god walks, sometimes. So my hills are always with me. You carry that, you’ll always be with your lake.”

  The goddess looked close to tears again. But dog…

  “My name’s Holla-Sayan, of the Sayanbarkash. Not ‘dog.’ And you need a new name yourself, love.” So easy, sliding into Otokas’s affectionate familiarity. Damn him.

  And even if he could do so, if he was not drowning in madness, fighting to throw the spirit from his soul, that did not mean he was any kind of willing, chosen successor to the Blackdog. Only that he did not walk away from lost children. Only that.

  “What kind of name?” she asked, distracted.

  “A good name. I’ll think about it.”

  Holla swung her to the horse’s back again, mounted up behind her, and turned the stallion’s head to the track. After a mile or so the child relaxed and settled back against him, trusting, a warm weight that was already seeming familiar.

  Now, as all should know, the gods and the goddesses of the world live in their own places, the high places and the waters, and aid those who worship them, and protect their own. And though the demons may wander all the secret places of the world, their hearts are bound each to their own place, and though they are no friends to human folk, they are no enemies either, and want only to be left in peace.

  But the devils have no place, and in the early days of the world they came from the cold hells and walked up and down over the earth, to trouble the lives of the folk. And the devils did not desire loving worship, nor the friendship of men and women. They did not have a parent’s love for the folk. The devils craved dominion as the desert craves water, and they knew neither love nor justice nor mercy. And the devils razed the earth and made war against the heavens of the Old Great Gods themselves, and were cast out, and sealed in the cold hells once more.

  It took nearly all of two days to come to Serakallash. The girl had slept most of the long, nervous ride out of the mountains, waking when Holla stopped to rest the horse, eating the unleavened bread and dried dates from his saddlebag when he told her to, and remaining silent, watching him. The chip of lakeshore shale never left her clenched fist, till he fashioned a crude amulet-pouch for it from the bloodstained headscarf with which he’d bandaged his arm.

  Within a few miles of leaving the ramshackle shed the cut had healed, leaving a pale pink scar.

  Where the road curved around and left the lake, beginning its downward scramble, they found the bodies of two indigo-clad priestesses, hacked and dismembered by Northron axes. Attalissa wailed and turned to hide her face against him.

  Kayugh’s messengers to Serakallash.

  It hit Holla-Sayan, with the force of a blow, tears starting in his eyes, that Kayugh must be dead. A woman he had never met, and he cared with all Otokas’s heart.

  He knew the names of both these sisters. Yana and Niyal. He knew Yana an orphan and Niyal youngest of five, a runaway from an arranged marriage. Yana sang. Niyal had kept pet finches.

  From the trampling and the blood-muddy churning of the road, he did not think they had died alone, though their killers had taken their own wounded or slain away with them. Probably by boat, since they had met no raiders on the trail. More evidence of Tamghat’s careful planning, and a core of followers who were a chief or lord’s sober retainers, not a booty-seizing bandit rabble.

  He let Attalissa murmur blessings over them, touching each in farewell, and refused outright her demands and the Blackdog’s sense of what was appropriate, leaving them lying unburied, though they sprinkled a handful of earth over them. It was what any passerby might do to keep their ghosts from lingering, trapped in the world. They could not afford to leave any more obvious sign that someone who knew the women and cared had come this way.

  Holla rode always with an ear to the road behind, but there was no pursuit. No armed folk, no folk of any sort passed them while they camped the night, cold and fireless, a good ways off the trail amid a thicket of young cypress. The child huddled into the circle of his arms as he lay wakeful through the night, listening for the noise of boots or hooves on stone. It was her dog she clung to, not him, and the sooner he could send her off to his mother, the better. And he tightened his grip on her, the Blackdog denying that he could ever leave her in another’s care.

  Wrong, wrong, wrong, that he could fear and mistrust his own mother. He sweated, and was cold, and ground his teeth on curses, arguments that had no weight against the dog’s need to keep the goddess close.

  It was late on the hot afternoon of the following day that they rode into Serakallash, and Holla-Sayan was swaying in the saddle, floating in a shadow-eyed fog of exhaustion, near three days with no sleep. Attalissa seemed little better, her face pinched and wan.

  Serakallash was a ragged sprawl of mud-brick and sandstone houses, each within its own walled compound, while the pastures and tilled fields of the dozen or so septs to which all Serakallashi belonged ran out east and west along the foothills, between the mountains and the desert. The caravanserais straggled out from the town into the desert itself, along a stony ridge that offered a long view of the caravan road in either direction. There were deep wells in Serakallash, but it was named for the spring among the red rocks on the caravanserai ridge, which trickled away to lose itself in the Red Desert, and for Sera, the spring’s goddess, to whom the caravaneers would offer the last water in their gourds, before filling them again.

  Attalissa had not spoken at all since they left the mountains for the desert hills, but huddled smaller and smaller against Holla. All the Blackdog’s need to protect her howled against the world, so vast and strange.

  The Red Desert, named for the colour of its sand and stone, was flushed with green, sweet with the melting of the winter’s snow, and swept scarlet with tulips and the silken ripple of poppies. Its rolling hills were scattered with stocky pistachio trees, buds just breaking, and tangled groves of saxaul with their leafless green twigs hanging like a yak’s—a camel’s shaggy hair. It should have eased his mind, the familiar beauty, the great open reach of sky. The goddess moaned and turned her face against him.

  She was a goddess, and it was not her place. The strangeness of understanding, sharing her fear, made him almost angry, bewildered with it. What was worse, Holla felt the place watching him, all the living powers, the little demons and the greater who wandered the desert and the foothills, and the goddess Sera. She was aware, with something that felt very like anger and fear in equal measure, of Attalissa’s presence. And of his own. It was as though he stood naked, while hostile people stared from somewhere behind his shoulder, never quite showing themselves.

  We should speak with the goddess Sera at her spring. We shouldn’t trespass here unannounced.

  The Blackdog agreed that Attalissa must approach Sera at once.

  Holla-Sayan clenched his teeth. “Sera can wait. First we go tell my friends I’m back. Gaguush will want to know there are raiders in the mountains, and the sept-chiefs need to know. Remember—” Remember you’re no goddess here. It wouldn’t be usual at all for us to go to the spring, when I’ve only been gone a couple of days. I’ll take you and show you later, tonight or tomorrow. That would be more natural. Remember you’re a child. My child. Call me dog or even Holla out loud and I’ll box your ears.

  She peered up at him, wide-eyed, and he scowled at his own guilty discomfort. She was not one of his cheerfully noisy nephews, who would weigh the threat as mostly jest and take it in stride. ‘Lissa had known nothing but too much respect and too little family. Otokas’s memories did not tell him she had ever screamed with laughter or run yelling through
the gardens with sheer childish joy, or talked back to the priestesses, sulked, or refused to go to bed. He remembered only the frustrated, near-silent tears, all the tantrums she had dared, when she was unable to act, to stop some fisher-drowning storm or turn an avalanche or drive the fever from an ailing sister. Poor brat.

  Had they even told her when her own mother died? The Blackdog did not remember that they had.

  What do I call you, then? And you never said what I should be called now. Stiff and cold, hiding unhappiness.

  Father? Papa? Sayan, not Papa, too close and personal. She was no utter orphan; she should be thinking of her own father as that, if she had ever been allowed to meet the man at all.

  Of course she had not. Attalissa never left the temple islet, and men were not permitted there.

  The Old Great Gods damn the lot of them.

  Father, I suppose.

  “Father.” She tried it out in a whisper.

  He did not think the faintness was all fear of the unknown, or of himself. An unhealthy pallor that was not mere weariness had crept over the girl’s skin as they rode down the mountain.

  She was a human child; she should not be bound to a place like a god. Holla began to have the horrible conviction she was, and that no small magic or mere reassuring superstition, no piece of lakeshore shale, was going to help.

  There were mulberries growing along the wall of Mooshka Rost-vadim’s caravanserai, newly leafed out, and black and pink starlings singing in them. Holla-Sayan rode through the gateway to be met with a whoop from young Bikkim Battu’um, whose swirling-horse tattoos in red and blue proclaimed him native Serakallashi.

  “Holla’s back! Thought you weren’t going to make it in time.”

  “I thought so too.”

  “You look terrible, you know. What’s happened?”

  “Raiders have sacked Lissavakail. An army of raiders. You haven’t heard?”

  That brought the rest running. They were Gaguush’s gang of caravaneers. Mercenaries, some would call them, because they bound themselves to a loyalty for pay. Wanderers, but not godless; most, like him, carried some charm to tie them to their home, a pebble or carved god’s symbol. They knew who they were, where they belonged, and so they could go anywhere.

  “Did a bit of sacking yourself, too,” Bikkim said, and tried to chuck the goddess under the chin, yelped at the force with which Holla struck his arm away. “Take it easy! I’m not going to eat her.”

  “My daughter,” Holla snapped, angry at his own reaction. He knew Bikkim, and the dog could damn well learn to trust his knowledge.

  “Daughter! Since when?” demanded old Doha, who like Holla was of the Sayanbarkash, a cousin to his grandfather. “Does your mama know, Holla my lad?”

  “I didn’t know,” he told Doha pointedly, and let him snigger.

  Holla had been visiting Timhine in Lissavakail ever since he let curiosity draw him up into the mountains on his first journey along the desert edge; almost long enough to explain the girl, who looked, to a taller lowlander’s eye, younger than she was. Let them think Timhine had farmed her out for shame at a mixed-blood child, so that he never knew of her existence till now. Mountain folk were notorious for distrusting those who married out of their own god’s reach, and made rumours of lowlander blood, even four generations back, an excuse for any oddity or deviation. Probably fear of that as much as his wandering had turned Timhine away in the end.

  “Yeah?” Bikkim scratched at the wisp of beard he was trying to grow. “She doesn’t really take after you. Lucky for her,” he added, dancing out of reach of another, more comradely, swipe. “What raiders? Are you sure? There haven’t been any large parties take the mountain road in months. I mean, everyone’d be talking of it in the market, if there had.”

  “Some warlord calling himself Tamghat, a wizard—I mean, I think I saw…” Explaining grew too complicated. “A warlord, and just about an army. Slaughtered half the town and I think he burned the temple.”

  “Oh.” Bikkim subsided, offered the goddess a wary smile. “Sera prevent that they come down here, if they’re capable of taking on Attalissa’s sisters, whoever they are.”

  Bikkim obviously thought Holla was exaggerating. He would have thought so, if it had been Bikkim telling tales of armies where no army could be.

  “Uh, your woman up there, Timhine…?”

  Holla shrugged. “She’s safe, I guess. Married and gone to the high valleys, and left the girl for me.”

  Gaguush strode over, red-dyed coat swirling around her, waist-length black braids caught up in glossy loops. She was mistress of the caravan, gang-boss, as well as owner of most of their camels.

  “I heard. A warlord with a raider army in Lissavakail, you say? How in the cold hells did they get up there, without going through here?”

  At least Gaguush didn’t question their existence. Holla shrugged. “Passes from the west, maybe? Magic? I don’t know. But they’re there.”

  “Yeah, I trust you didn’t end up looking like that just getting drunk and falling over. I don’t suppose it matters where they came from. They likely to come here, you think?”

  “They might.” Holla dismounted and lifted the goddess down. “We should get out of here, be gone before they do. See to the horse for me, Bikkim? And maybe you should borrow another and ride out to tell your parents about the warlord and the raiders. The Serakallashi council will want to know.”

  There were no priests in Serakallash, only a council of sept-chiefs. Bikkim’s parents counted among them; the boy didn’t need to work as a caravan guard, but he was young enough to think the roving life an adventure.

  The council would doubt, of course, and say Holla’s fear turned a dozen desperate men to an army. If they sent scouts to investigate, he hoped they would go warily.

  “Bikkim? Don’t mention the brat, all right?”

  “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.”

  “Fine. I won’t. But she’s nothing to be ashamed of. Are you, sweetheart?”

  Attalissa, clinging close to Holla’s side, gave Bikkim a cold stare. He laughed at her, leading Master Mooshka’s weary dun off towards its stable. She switched her stare to Gaguush.

  “She’s yours?” Gaguush’s generous mouth thinned. She had always been sour about Timhine; she had never stopped him riding up to Lissavakail, either. “Are you sure? Doha, go tell Mooshka Holla-Sayan’s news. He’ll want to know. Tell him we’re leaving early.”

  “He’ll hear. Half the yard heard.”

  “Go!”

  “Fine, fine. I’m going. Try not to break any of the boy’s limbs, eh, boss? If you don’t want to marry him, you can’t complain when he goes looking for one that might.” Doha left them, pulling a face at Gaguush’s back.

  “What are you planning to do with her?”

  Holla shrugged. “Bring her along. What else can I do?”

  “Send her to your kin.”

  The Blackdog felt a surge of panic, enough to throw Holla-Sayan off balance, make him lose words for a moment. He stood blinking, confused, before he found them again and could marshal an argument.

  “I can’t send her off with strangers, not after what she’s been through. She barely knows me, and to hand her off to someone else again…Look at her, Gaguush. She’s never been out of the mountains in her life. She’s terrified.”

  “Fine. Take her yourself then, if it’s the only way to get rid of her. You can cross on the ferry when we’re below Five Cataracts, and cut up to meet us at At-Landi, once you’ve taken her home. I can manage that stretch along the Kinsai-av shorthanded, this once. But don’t expect me to pay your way.”

  “Well, no. Of course not.” That was what he had been angling for, Gaguush’s order to go, rather than outrage that he asked to do so. And even more than that, time. It would take them a couple of weeks to get to the lowest of the Five Cataracts and the ferry over the Kinsai-av. Time to wrestle the Blackdog into some sort of compliance. ‘Lissa would be far better off wi
th his parents. But he needed more than that.

  “But I was wondering—”

  Gaguush scowled. “Bashra help me! I suppose you want to take one of my camels?”

  He shrugged, gave her a faint, apologetic smile.

  “You’re more trouble than you’re worth, Holla-Sayan. The Great Gods help you if you ever go running off after townswomen again. Expecting me to sort out your problems with your bastards.”

  Gaguush’s gaze dropped to the goddess, staring up at her, dark eyes wide. She had the grace to blush. “Huh. Well. Don’t look like that, child. It’s not your fault your papa’s a fool.” Her glower returned to Holla. “But I told you not to go running after mountain women, didn’t I? Told you you’d only get hurt. They want their men home, ploughing.” Another guilty look at the girl, in case she heard the weight of innuendo that went into the word, beyond merely the herder’s contempt for the farmer.

  “I know, I know. I’ll be sure to take the advice of my elders next time.”

  Gaguush’s mouth thinned again and she cuffed his ear. Holla just grinned at her, not bothering to dodge because all his effort at her sudden movement went into preventing the dog’s reflexive reaction to any threat, keeping his hand from his sabre, or worse. Gaguush had expected him to duck, and blinked at him, uncertain, opening and closing her hand. She looked down at the girl again.

  “What’s her name?”

  Holla shrugged. “She had some mountain name, but I’m through with the mountains. I’m going to call her Pakdhala, for my grandmother.”

  “Pretty name,” Gaguush said, wavering between kindness and a tone that suggested the girl did not quite measure up to the name.

  “You going to tattoo her for Sayan? You should, if you really want to put the mountains behind you, make her Sayanbarkashi.”

  A challenge, there. Maybe she had minded Timhine more than she let herself admit.

  Attalissa stared in something like horror at Gaguush, whose face and hands were nearly solid colour, the black and red bands of geometric pattern used by the Black Desert tribes. Much of the rest of Gaguush was similarly decorated beneath her baggy striped trousers and long, loose cameleer’s coat. Her dark skin proclaimed a princess’s wealth and rank in the desert fashion; she was the daughter of the chieftain of the Bashrakallashi, but a divorce followed by a quarrel with a brother had sent her into exile and the mercenary’s life.