Chapter 22 me, hero, you must eat a little, at least.” Kitishane held the soup spoon up to Culaehra's lips. “How will you slay Bolenkar for Illbane if you die of starvation before you meet him?”
Culaehra looked up at her, frowning and blinking, trying to puzzle out-the meaning of her words. The whole world seemed darkened, and had for days, ever since they had left Illbane's grave. Sounds came to him dimly, as if muffled in a snowbank—the snow that mounded high on Illbane's grave. After a few minutes, though, he managed to remember her words, then puzzle out their meaning. He nodded, took the bowl from her, and sipped. She rewarded him with a bright smile, then seemed disappointed that he did not return it.
She was indeed disappointed. Sighing, she returned to the campfire and told Lua, “He cannot love me if my smile will not pull him out of this morass of self-pity in which he wallows.”
Lua nodded agreement. “It seems he enjoys his sorrow more than your company.”
But Yocote shook his head. “It is not self-pity, ladies, but only grief, though very deep.”
Kitishane frowned. “We are no ladies, Yocote, but only ordinary women of our own kinds.”
“No longer,” Yocote contradicted. “You ceased to be ordinary when Illbane chose you for Culaehra's companions.”
“Chose us?” Kitishane stared.
“Well, perhaps it was Rahani who chose you,” Yocote conceded, “but did you really think it was accident that led you to Culaehra? I mistrust accidents of that sort, ladies. A shaman learns that coincidence only seems accidental. And yes, you are ladies, for your experiences have elevated you above the ordinary—or will.”
Kitishane frowned. “I do not feel special—or elevated!”
“Then you are remarkable indeed,” Yocote said sourly, “for everyone feels themselves to be special—or should. Anyone who does not has had her own picture of herself crushed or debased—or is somewhat less than honest about her feelings.”
Lua frowned. “You are bitter tonight, my shaman.”
“It is my way of showing grief,” Yocote replied, “so I will ask your pardons right now if my remarks become so tart and sharp as to be offensive. I will strive most earnestly to prevent that, but strong feelings must show in some way.”
“You are pardoned indeed,” Kitishane said softly. “Believe me, I feel the grief, too.”
“And I,” Lua murmured.
“I am sure that you do,” Yocote said, “but I also suspect that something within you is stifling the worst of the feeling, for it realizes that you cannot give way so long as Culaehra is so numb.”
Kitishane gazed at him, then looked down at the fire. “Perhaps.”
Yocote nodded. “When the darkness that surrounds him dissipates, it will be your turn to be prostrate with grief.”
“I do not doubt you,” Kitishane said slowly, “but I wonder if Illbane meant as much to me as he did to Culaehra.”
“Well might you wonder, for Culaehra certainly did not know it until the old man died.”
“There is some truth to that,” Kitishane admitted, “but I am a woman, so I was protected against trying to be like Illbane, to some extent. Culaehra was not.”
“A deep and proper insight,” Yocote said. “He was your protector and your teacher, yes, but he taught you only to fight and to forgive. He taught me also how to be a man as well as to be a shaman; he taught me how to be my true self, but I began by trying to be him.”
“So you know that now.” Lua looked up at him keenly.
“Now, yes,” Yocote agreed, “though I did not see it until he had begun to tell me that I was turning into something he had never been, and could never be, for he was not a gnome. Still, for all of us, he was only a teacher. He taught us skills, taught us to become ourselves, set us on the road to becoming all that we can be—but he did not need to redeem and transform us.”
“As he did with Culaehra,” Kitishane said softly.
Yocote nodded. “In these few months, he has become as much a father to Culaehra as the man who sired him.”
“So it is not Illbane alone whom Culaehra mourns,” said Kitishane, “but himself, too.”
Yocote looked up, startled. Then he said slowly, “I think you are right, maiden. But how shall we prove to him that he is alive?”
“I thought I could do that by my mere presence,” Kitishane said with a sardonic smile, “but it appears not—and I am reluctant to take stronger measures.”
“Understandably; I can imagine how you would feel if they failed.” Yocote nodded. “No, we must wake him and revive him before we seek to bring him to embrace life again.”
“How shall we do that, though?”
Lua said, with complete certainty, “Revenge.”
“Revenge?” Yocote protested. “How can he revenge himself upon the Star Stone when it no longer exists? For it was that which slew our Illbane!”
“No,” said Lua. “It was Ulahane's malice within it that slew him—and those same traces of evil exist still, within Bolenkar's mind.”
“And through Bolenkar, in everything and everyone he has corrupted,” Yocote said, musing. “Yes, I think you are right, Lua. How could I have failed to see it?”
“So we must find some agent of Bolenkar's for him to fight,” Kitishane inferred.
“Where shall we seek?” Lua wondered.
“Oh, I would not be concerned about that, sister. I do not think that will prove difficult at all.”
They came down from the mountains into the foothills. There they camped for the night, then set off in the dawn. As they crested a rise they saw a column of smoke rising against the washed blue of the sky.
“If that is not a campfire close by,” Yocote said, frowning, “it is a very large fire indeed.”
“I mislike large fires,” Kitishane said, her face dark. “It might be a woodlot burning—or it might be worse. Let us hurry to see.” She caught Culaehra's hand and pulled him along behind. He followed, uncomprehending.
They came in sight of the village at noon—or what was left of it. It lay in a little valley, and every hut was reduced to charred timbers and ash. Lua moaned in distress, and Kitishane cried, “What has happened here?”
“I would say that was clear enough,” Yocote said sourly. “Raiders have burned this village. I think you have found the agents of mayhem you sought, Kitishane.”
“Down! We must see if any still live!” she cried, and tugged furiously at Culaehra's hand before she set off running down the slope. He looked up, startled, then kept pace with her, looking about him as if wondering where he was and how he had come to be there.
Kitishane skidded to a stop in what had been the village green, and was now only churned mud. “Is there any still alive? Look about you!”
They looked, but all they could see were corpses—dead bodies of men, some so young as to be scarcely more than boys, some gray at the temples.
“Did they kill all the males?” Lua gasped.
“Yes.” Kitishane's face hardened. “But none of the women or children.”
Lua looked up, eyes wide behind the mask. “Why not?”
“Imagine the worst, sister,” Kitishane snapped. “What could have churned the center of this village so, Yocote?” She gestured toward the central ring.
“Hoofed animals of some sort.” The little shaman pointed. “See the sharp edges? And here and there a whole mark?” He stepped closer. “No cleft prints. These were horses.”
“Did they pen their plough animals here?” Lua wondered.
“Either that, or the raiders drove a herd through, to trample the villagers.” Kitishane turned livid. “The cowards and poltroons! Peaceful villagers these, but they dared not fight them without a herd of horses before, and twice as many men as the folk who lived here coming after!”
Yocote still studied the mud. “The only footprints are those wearing buskins ... No! Here are harder edges! And long trails ... wheels? The invaders were fewer, or they rode in wagons!”
“Either way, they were experienced fighters, reivers who live by plundering peaceful folk!” Kitishane raved. “Oh, that I had them within reach of my bow! Cowards indeed, to war upon those who were not their equals in arms! Vile lechers, to steal a whole village of women! Despoilers and corrupters, to steal all the children! They are heartless, they are vile!”
“They are servants of Bolenkar,” Yocote suggested.
Culaehra's head snapped up as if he had been slapped.
“Is this the kind of evil the son of the Scarlet One spreads?” Kitishane said. “No wonder Illbane made us swear to stop him! This is no wickedness of greed alone, but cruelty that delights in pain!” She swung on Culaehra. “You, warrior! O Bearer of Corotrovir! Will you let these reivers carry away the innocent? Will you let them despoil these folk unpunished? Will you not revenge?”
“Why, so I shall.” That suddenly, Culaehra's mind returned. He loosened the great sword in the scabbard on his back and stepped forward to Kitishane. “It is even as you say—such evil must be stopped, and the innocent rescued before they are harmed any worse. Where have they gone?”
Kitishane stared at him in surprise, then ran to throw her arms about him. “Oh, I was so afraid you would never awaken!”
“It is as if I have stepped forward from a land of mists and darkness, where I wandered,” Culaehra admitted. He embraced her, briefly but thoroughly, then stepped back and called out, “Ho! If any still live, come forth! Tell us who we fight, how great their strength is, and where they have gone!”
The village stood quiet all about them. Then a burning beam broke and fell.
“Come forth!” Culaehra cried again. “If we venture on this chase in blindness and ignorance, it is more than likely that the enemy will slay us, and your womenfolk and children will be lost for good!”
His voice rang through the blackened beams; then the village was still again.
“Well, we must go, but go carefully,” Culaehra said in disgust, and was turning away when an old woman rose from behind a pile of char.
“There!” Kitishane pointed, and Culaehra turned back.
The woman was old and bent; her clothes were stout cloth, but rent here and there, and singed at the edges. She came toward them, trembling, her eyes rheumy and red-rimmed, quavering, “All my pretty ones! My little chicks! Can you wrench them back from the hawks?”
Culaehra stood stiff, feeling dread prickle his scalp; the woman was mad! Scarcely surprising after what she must have witnessed, but still enough to make him shy away.
Kitishane, though, stepped closer. “Save thee, grandmother! What hawks were these?”
“Vanyar,” the woman cried. “They were Vanyar, hard men with long moustaches and beards, with sheepskins for clothing and wheeled carts to ride in! They came upon us out of a peaceful sky, shrieking and riding down the hillside behind their horses, brandishing their axes and calling upon Bolenkar to give them victory!” She collapsed sobbing into Kitishane's arms.
But an old man came around the corner of a wall that had not quite fallen in, nodding. “It is even as old Tagaer says. They were all of them men in the primes of their lives, and they rode their devil carts through our village, slashing with their horrible double-edged axes before our men could even bring up their staves and spades to ward themselves. The rest of the men came running in from the fields, their forks and scythes at the ready, but there were three of the reivers for every one of them, and they had horses! They rode around and about, they cut our men off from one another, they struck down their tools and split their heads with those evil axes! And all the while they kept up that screaming, that dreadful warbling shrieking, to drive us mad!”
“It is even so.” Another oldster came hobbling up, swatting at her smoking hem. “They slew all the men, and there were fifty of them, a hundred of them, or more! Then they set fire to the houses and caught the women and children as they ran shrieking out. The older women they raped right there, in front of their children; the younger they plagued with ribald insults, telling them they would save them to warm their beds at nightfall! Then they bound them all, hand and foot, slung them over their horses' backs and rode away, laughing and singing their triumph and praising their vile god Bolenkar!” She shuddered as she told them.
“I tried to stop them,” another old man said, coming up to them. He held up a broken staff. “They cut this through with one blow and felled me with a swat, then left me to lie, dead or alive.”
“They cared not!” another woman said, and looking up, Culaehra discovered that there were a score of the ancients all about them. “We all of us tried to stop them, to drag back our daughters or one or two of our grandchildren at least, but they beat us all away and told us that the little ones would have the honor of being raised as slaves to the Vanyar! The girls would grow to whore for them, the boys to guard them as eunuchs!”
An old man shuddered. “The weeping and wailing of mothers and children was horrible, horrible! And we could not stop them, we could not!”
“But you can!” An ancient caught Culaehra by the arms. “You are young and strong, you have armor and a sword! You can stop them, young man! You must!”
“Be sure we shall!” Kitishane strung her bow. “We shall find them, we shall slay them all! What vile things are they to wreak such havoc, to reap living men, to make such grief and take delight in it! We shall teach them what pain they have wrought! We shall see how they die, how they delight in captivity, what pleasure they take in their own pain!” She set off toward the plain, and Lua ran beside her, drying her eyes.
“Be assured, we shall do all this and more,” Culaehra told the ancients. His blood was singing in his veins again, and the prospect of action delighted him; he was alive once more! “We shall bring your daughters and your grandchildren back to you, if they still live!”
“They do—the Vanyar will not kill them until they have taken their pleasure,” an old woman said. “But find them ere nightfall, young man, if you can!”
“Shorten our journey, then! Did anyone see which way they rode?”
“Down toward the plain, where your shield-maiden goes,” an old man said. “Belike they will follow the river, for it has already cut through the hills for them, and there is something of a trail along its banks, though there were more deer who made it than people.”
“Many thanks, old one!” Culaehra turned away. “Find a hearth and keep a fire burning, to guide us back if we come by night!” He set off, striding quickly to catch up with Kitishane, who was moving quickly enough herself. Yocote ran beside him; the warrior said, “Your pardon for my long strides, Yocote, but I must catch Kitishane before she goes too far.”
“I think she has gone too far already.” The gnome wasn't even breathing hard. “What the devil is she thinking of, pitting us against a band of fifty wagon riders with axes!”
“ 'Chariots,' I think they call those carts,” Culaehra said, musing. “Do you really think your magic is not equal to their axes, shaman?”
“Be sure that it is!” Yocote snapped. “The question, though, is whether or not they will slay you while I am spell-casting.”
Culaehra reached back to touch Corotrovir's hilt, and grinned. “Be sure they shall not.”
When they caught up with Kitishane, Culaehra asked, “Do you have any plan for what we shall do when we find these Vanyar?”
“Slay, stab, slash, and maim!” Kitishane snapped. “What else need we know?”
Culaehra glanced at Yocote. The gnome shrugged, and Culaehra turned back to his avenging Fury. “We might wish to set some sort of a trap for them.”
“Why not merely let them try to capture us?”
“Possible,” Culaehra said judiciously, “but you might let your anger carry you away and drop your bow in favor of the satisfaction of plunging your knife into their bodies.”
“An excellent idea! I know just where to plunge it!”
“Valiantly said,” Culaehra approved, “but if you come that close to their
axes, they might cleave you—and I would be heartbroken if you lost your head.”
Kitishane snarled at that, but her snarl faltered. “Devise a strategy, then, if you are so keen for it.”
“I shall set my brain to it.” Culaehra glanced at Yocote, and the gnome nodded.
The four companions came to the crest of a hill and looked down into a long, twisting valley. “There!” Kitishane cried, pointing.
“Be still!” Yocote hissed.
“What, do you fear they will hear me at this distance?”
“The air is clear, and it is only a mile,” the gnome grumped. “Are there more than fifty?”
Culaehra looked down at him, surprised that he asked, then noticed anew the goggles Yocote wore. He remembered that gnomes usually saw no farther than a dozen yards underground, and turned back to count.
The Vanyar were still singing their victory song—doubtless at the tops of their voices, since the sound came to the companions' ears over the distance, though very thinly. The tone was gloating, and Culaehra suspected the words spoke of blood and maiming. They rode their chariots in an oblong with the captives stumbling along in the center.
Culaehra nodded. “Fifty-four, yes. Two men to a chariot.”
“Forget the chariots; they will,” the gnome told him.
“Shall we charge upon them now?” Kitishane asked, eyes glowing.
“Not unless you wish us all to be slain,” Yocote replied, “and yourself and Lua used as toys first.”
Kitishane's head snapped up; she stared at him, appalled.
Culaehra frowned. “I am sure I can kill ten of them, Yocote.”
“Yes, and I can take another dozen with my magic, and the ladies can bring down a dozen more with their bows, perhaps two—but that still leaves eight alive, and after they bring you down, they shall slay me, and I do not need to tell you that Kitishane and Lua cannot run as fast as a horse. If we wish to slay these murderers, we shall have to do it by cunning as well as strength.”
The Sage Page 30
