Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  “Were they from the caravan?” the boy asked his sister as the door slammed shut again behind them.

  Attavaia drew a deep breath. No sound of battle. The narrow alley was still and silent, almost night-dark.

  “What tone of voice? I don’t have a tone of voice, not one you need to talk about in that tone of voice.”

  “Really?” Enneas led the way up the alley towards the street, stopped just before it opened out, hand on her sword.

  Attavaia joined her and they waited, while a man who looked like a caravan-mercenary ran past, coming from the direction of the town. Someone sent to find out what was happening? The gate of a caravanserai further along opened a crack to admit him.

  “No Jerusha.”

  “No.”

  They set off towards the market square, jogging. Passing another caravanserai, they had to slow down and keep to the side of the street to avoid an emerging caravan.

  “Have you heard what’s happening?” Attavaia asked one of the riders.

  The desert-tattooed woman shrugged. “Don’t know. Fighting, I guess. The boss decided we’d better pull out. I’d stay away from it if I were you.”

  Attavaia ignored that, resumed her trotting pace. Once they were away from the clanking bells and protests of camels, new noises began to seep through the twisting lanes: human cries, the shrill squeal of angry horses, and dogs barking, muffled, behind the mud-dun walls of the houses and their courtyards. And the clash of metal, not so different from the camel-bells.

  People, mostly men but a few women among them, were leaving their houses, hurrying into the town.

  “Is it fire?” one man asked.

  “It’s the Lake-Lord,” Attavaia said. She didn’t believe anything else. “Go home, if you’re not armed.”

  But most of them seemed to have come to that conclusion on their own; they carried sabres and spears and even hatchets and forks, all heading towards the market. From the babble she picked up different theories—desert raiders, some of the outlying septs attacking the Rostvadim and Sevani, the Sevani and Rostvadim fighting one another, how this or that one had woken from sleep just knowing something was wrong…

  The fools were going to block the streets, run straight into whatever was happening, and get themselves killed.

  “Where are the sept-warriors?” someone asked, and that seemed a good question. The crowd began to thin out, many of the cautious or the merely curious dropping back as the uproar grew.

  There was fighting in the market, and a rough barricade of some of the handcarts and barrows of early-arriving vendors had been erected across the end of the street, a scatter of melons, broken underfoot, attracting wasps.

  “Serakallashi,” Enneas said, and there was relief in her voice. Serakallashi fighting Serakallashi, sept-warriors, a snarled knot of them before one of the big compounds that bordered the market. Some defending the gate, some trying to break through. At two of the other streets into the market, more clustered tangles of battle, Serakallashi horsemen scattered among them. How they told friend from enemy…Attavaia saw Jerusha, then. She had taken a sword from someone and, bareback on a bright bay stallion, was trying to break away from another horseman and two on foot, who had her pinned back against a wall.

  They went over the barricade together, swords drawn, dodging the scattered battles.

  “Grasslanders,” Attavaia said. “There.” She pointed to the broadest street.

  “And coming in from the west, not the mountains. Attalissa keep us. I’ll take the fat one.”

  “He’s not that fat.” ’Vaia turned a little to the side, watched for the stouter of the two afoot to catch Enneas in the corner of his eye and turn to leave her a clear path—he never did, oblivious to his danger. Enneas slashed him low across his leather-clad legs, hacked at the side of his head as he fell. Attavaia stepped in towards the other man on foot as he looked over his shoulder at her, gawping when he should have been moving. Her blade turned on iron plates reinforcing a leather jerkin, but the man stumbled and she kicked him in the back of the knee. He collapsed and his comrade’s swerving horse kicked him in the face with a horrible crunching noise. She blocked the horseman’s sabre as he swung round to her. As he backed his horse away from Jerusha’s harsh cry and swinging blows, Enneas dropped her sword, grabbed his leg, and flung herself backwards, hauling him from the saddle. Slashing weapon or not, Attavaia hammered the tip of her blade into his throat along the edge of his high collar.

  Jerusha slumped, shaking. She was cut badly on her left arm and hip, bleeding.

  “Damn Siyd Rostvadim,” she said, stammering. “Sh-she knew your Lake-Lord was coming. S-sent her warriors to stop the bell and they attacked everyone else who came to answer the alarm. Got away from them,” she added proudly. “Got to Firebird and got this f-far.”

  “Don’t you dare faint,” Attavaia snapped, as ‘Rusha, pale under her tattoos, swayed and clutched at her horse’s mane, head bowed to breast. “Enni, get up and hold her on.” Keeping her own back to the wall, she gave Enneas a boost up with difficulty, as the horse stamped and sidled away. She handed Enneas’s sax up, slapped the horse’s rump. “Go. I’ll follow you.”

  The other horse had wheeled away. No time to chase it. With a roar of triumph, Tamghat’s mercenaries poured into the square through the two south-leading streets.

  And the wind roared out of the north in answer, lifting dust, flapping the coats and scarves of the fallen so that they seemed to struggle to rise. Red sand beat on her skin like the piercing of a thousand needles. Attavaia, eyes shut, struggled to pull her scarf over her face, stumbling blind into the wind. Worse than a blizzard. With her eyes open the narrowest slit, she could see little better. Shadows. Something big and dark whirled past and smashed. A door torn loose. She stumbled over a fallen body, which yelped.

  Any street leading north, towards the desert and away from Tamghat’s army, and then she could find a doorway, an alley, something to shelter behind. She came into the lee of a building, crowded with Serakallashi warriors and townsfolk, all keeping some truce. Sera, some whispered, not so much in prayer as in awe. She blinked until her tearing eyes could see again. Out in the red, dark, glass-edged fog of sand, a figure towered, dimly shaped, solid as a flock of blackbirds or a swarm of bees, arms spread. Even through the roar of the wind, and the sand like a river on rocks, she heard screaming.

  Siyd Rostvadim, Elaxi Rostvadim, Narkim Sevani, Hashim Sevani, Bellova Sevani, I curse you as traitors to my folk. You have sold them to the wizard. I name you outcasts and godless, and with you those who followed you, if they do not stand against Tamghat now.

  From the looks on the faces around her, every man and woman there had heard that deep whisper in the mind. But the goddess’s sand-shadowed form was wavering. Something, like the weight of a thunderstorm, pressed on them from the south. Small red lightnings crackled into the wind, flushing the square with a sickening dried-blood colour.

  The goddess screamed aloud, a sound that felled everyone in the crowd still standing. Most cowered with their hands over their ears, praying or weeping. The force of the wind dropped to a mere dust-carrying breeze. Time to flee.

  Attavaia recognized the building: it was the one with the bell-tower, and she had somehow passed the street she wanted. On her hands and knees she scrambled over prostrate Serakallashi.

  “Get up!” she snarled at one, who blocked her way. “Tamghat’s here. Stand and fight for your goddess or tomorrow you’ll be no better than a slave!”

  The man swung a shaky fist at her and she found her feet, stumbled away. Her ears still rang from Sera’s shriek of terror.

  She saw the wizard, Tamghat himself. His horse stood placid as if sleepwalking, with its forefeet atop a small dune of red sand and white—Great Gods, it was a lattice of scoured bones that held the sand. An arc of mounted noekar and mercenaries formed up behind him, and more mercenaries—no, they were all young Lissavakaili men, his conscripts formed into one company of archers—wai
ted beyond, afoot.

  He would have left many to hold the mountains, but still, there had to be a lot more of his warriors somewhere. Likely the herding septs were already fighting their own battles.

  A gate opened from the compound where the civil fighting had concentrated and a cluster of well-dressed Serakallashi stepped hesitantly out, their own guards close around them. They all looked grey-faced, shaken, as they crossed the square to Tamghat.

  “Lord Tamghat,” the leading woman said, pitching her voice to carry, to make her point to the onlookers. “Thank you for your help with the rebels. If you could have your people camp on the horse-fair grounds by the mountain road—”

  Tamghat ignored her, riding towards the house over the drift that held the bones of his own men and women. His noekar followed and the sept-chief scurried after him.

  The man Attavaia had snarled at had found his feet, leaning on a pitchfork. No sept-warrior but someone’s stablehand.

  “Get up,” he urged those around him. “You going to let Silly Siyd hand us over to a foreign wizard?”

  Brave dead man. Attavaia found the wall at her shoulder and followed it, keeping behind the crowd of Serakallashi. At the street she turned and ran in the shifting new sand, keeping to the shadows. Behind her, the Serakallashi were shouting ragged war cries, sept names and their goddess’s, working themselves into a fool’s charge. And the bows began singing.

  No sign of Jerusha and Enneas. They should be safe back at Mooshka’s.

  Her eyes grated and ran, blurring her vision, and despite the scarf her mouth and nose were full of grit. She clawed the cloth from her face and spat, but it didn’t help. Armed men and women ran or galloped through the streets in twos and threes, all heading for one point to the west. Warriors mustering to their chiefs, or on urgent duties that would come to nothing. Perhaps they meant to regroup and attack in a more coherent fashion. The Great Gods’ luck to them. Tamghat was in the town, and if Treyan Battu’um could come galloping at the head of a Battu’um warband—she would be very joyously surprised.

  “Get inside, you damned fool!” one shouted to her. “We don’t need camel-drivers underfoot!”

  She kept to her course unheeding, cut down a lane an arm’s width across where poorer-looking townsfolk still clustered in doorways, talking urgently. An old man grabbed her arm, demanding to know what was happening.

  “Tamghat—the Lake-Lord,” she gasped, remembering their name for him, and found her throat raw from the sand. “The deposed chiefs were expecting him, tried to stop the alarm being given, killed the person who rang the bell. A lot of people died. Sera raised the sand against him but he’s a wizard, he drove her back. He’s in the market still. Big house, with a tower.”

  “The Chiefs’ Hall?” someone else asked.

  “Don’t know.” She pulled her arm free and went on. Let the truth loose, and see what followed. They’d know it wasn’t their goddess’s will and invitation, at least. And the lie about the bell-ringer’s death might protect Jerusha from any petty vengeance by Siyd or her followers against the one who’d raised the alarm.

  “They’ll be gathering at the Zaranim Hall,” a man said. “Let’s go.”

  Brave folk. She left them to choose their own fate as best they saw fit.

  The caravanserai ridge was a battleground. A company of Lissavakaili led by Grasslanders had run into what must have been several fleeing caravans as they entered the town from the north. Half a dozen panicked camels bolted past her, riderless, still roped together. There was no order, no line of defence or attack she could identify to put herself on the right side, just a jumble of people and animals. A dying camel spasmed in the street, knocking another to its knees. A Northron woman riding a mountain pony careened from another lane and shouted back over the kicking beast, “Go around, you fools, or kill the thing.” And then she wheeled on Attavaia.

  “Don’t just stand there gawking, boy. Have at them.”

  Attavaia swung even as the woman’s eyes narrowed. The mercenary raised her shield, hauling savagely at the pony’s head and striking awkwardly down to her left with her long Northron sword. The shield splintered under the sax, a shock Attavaia felt up her own arm, and she kept moving, shieldless and unarmoured, kept the short, swift blows beating on the woman until she slid and tried to crawl, one foot still twisted in the stirrup. A camel careened into the pony, which went down on Attavaia and its rider both, and the cameleer’s long lance thudded into the ground by Attavaia’s head.

  “Hells,” that swarthy man said, as the pony kicked and squealed in terror. “You’re one of ours.” He withdrew the lance, held it over her. “Sorry. Grab on.”

  She hardly felt the sudden dull pain as a hoof connected, hauling herself with the caravaneer’s help from under the pony. The Tamghati had taken most of the animal’s weight, and wasn’t moving. The pony found its feet and fled in white-eyed panic and Attavaia let go the lance, nodded thanks the man didn’t see as he swung his camel round and went loping back along the ridge.

  Attavaia fell again, a sharp, flaring agony climbing her right side. She levered herself up with her sword, looked down expecting to see some bloody mangled mess, but there was nothing to see, only torn and scuffed trousers and a few bleeding scrapes. Just a headache of a bruise to look forward to.

  Tamghat’s Lissavakaili were retreating. Probably half in terror of the camels.

  She could put no weight on her right leg. Not a bruise. She picked an abandoned spear from the street and leaned on that. Mooshka’s mulberries were an unbearable distance away, and for a moment her vision went red and her ears rang.

  Priestess. This way.

  She went, blind and halting, along a narrow way between caravanserai walls, down the western side of the ridge.

  Priestess. Hurry, before he comes for me.

  She blinked, rubbed away the grit that accumulated in the corners of her eyes, looking around. She was on the side of the ridge; it dropped steeply below, where some grey-green trees dripping hairy tendrils clustered, and water chimed over rocks. She did not remember walking so far.

  The water reared up into the figure of a woman her own age, a body solid as her own, with Serakallashi horses tattooed not only on her face, but every inch of her. And they flickered and ran over her skin.

  Attavaia dropped heavily to her knees. Not reverence, but she could not stand. White pain stabbed through her, blinding her a moment.

  “Sera,” she whispered.

  “Priestess of Attalissa, you will help me.”

  She looked at her bloody hands. Flexed her fingers and it cracked and flaked away, a thick paste of it drying.

  “Tell me about Tamghat. I didn’t understand, I thought he would not come here unless he was following her, and she is not here. What is he, Priestess of Attalissa?”

  “A wizard.”

  “There are wizards with the caravans and he is nothing like them. Your child and her dumb slave are blind and in their blindness they’ve doomed my folk with yours. He is something escaped from the cold hells. He is going to destroy me—I am no powerful lake that can bide my time and take vengeance at my leisure on such a power. I am small, weak, against that. He has wounded me. He will kill me, unless you act for me.”

  The goddess looked like she had been through a battle, gaunt, sunken-eyed, her hair a wild snarl. Her body ravelled away into a mist hanging over the water and a restlessness of ripples even as Attavaia tried to speak.

  She desperately wanted a handful of that water, and could not touch it, not put her bloodied hands in Sera’s sacred spring.

  “We didn’t bring him here, Sera.”

  No. I was wrong, I was wrong, I should have listened to the Blackdog. But there is no time. The Lake-Lord’s warbands ride against my folk; they came in the grey dawn to the longhouses of the chiefs of the pastures, they have killed them and chained them and burned the houses, the pastures are aflame, do you understand?

  “He’s conquered Serakallash.”


  And he comes for me. Now! He will kill me as the hawk kills the sparrow. I am too weak to be any use to him; he despises me as too powerless to be even a tool, I saw it as we fought.

  Attavaia drew a deep breath. She did not think she could walk anywhere. So she would die, defending a goddess not her own, as she had not died at the water-gate, and Lissavakail must seek its own doom doing what to it seemed best, as she had thought of the Serakallashi commoners gathered in that lane.

  “Did not one of your own folk come here to defend you?”

  “I sent them away. They can’t help me, now.” The goddess took form again, kneeling in the water, holding herself up with her hands on the red stone of the bank. “Wash your hands, Priestess of Attalissa.”

  Attavaia obeyed, leaning awkwardly, and the goddess caught her hands with hands cold as the dead, that felt to Attavaia as though they would melt away if she so much as gripped them firmly. Sera guided her hands down, palms against the stone.

  “He will kill me, so before he does I’ll die a death of my own choosing, from which I may awaken.” She laughed, sounding wholly human and as though she tasted some bitter irony. “Your child is all my hope now. She’s no weak water-spirit, if she could only free herself from her stupid mortality. You should pray she doesn’t get a taste for the life of the road, for all our sakes.”

  “Die?” Attavaia tried to jerk her hands away, but the frail goddess was surprisingly strong.

  “Die. Sleep. A sleep that seems death, as the toads that die when the desert pools dry, and are reborn when the spring snowmelt softens the mud of their tombs. And you will take me to your mountains and give me to the priests of my brother Narva, where Tamghat will never think to search, if he ever dreams what I have done. And when your Attalissa does come home to kill the monster, you will bring me back to my waters and free me here.”

  “To the priests of Narva?” Attavaia repeated stupidly.

  “I’m not ignorant. The rivers of the snowmelt carry tales. Narva is mad and has turned his back on the world. Mad, but he was strong once, before your goddess defeated him. Whatever monstrous thing Tamghat is, he will not attack hidden Narva as he has me or your mortal child, not yet. Like you, he thinks Narva no more than the ghost of a god. Narva’s priests will keep me safely.”