by Hilari Bell
When Tobin was dressed, Vruud tipped a polished shield toward him. “What do you think?”
Tobin gazed thoughtfully at his distorted reflection. “I look like me with black hair. A lot of those warriors got a good look at me. This won’t work.”
“Those young louts have the brains, and attention span, of flies,” Vruud told him. “And it will be a while before they see you again.”
But it wasn’t until after they’d crept out of the quiet camp, Vruud riding a mule and Tobin leading a pack mule behind him, that they came to the top of a low rise, and Tobin realized how long it might be before they returned.
The sun had risen. The endless clusters of round barbarian tents spread over the plain, out and out till distance alone shrank them to invisibility. And in the clear air of the Southlands, that was a long way.
It was a sight to strike dismay in any Realm knight’s heart. “How many men do you have here?”
“There’s no precise count,” Vruud told Tobin. “No way to make one, really. But there are eight greater clans and three lesser. A greater clan will have about fifty to sixty camps like ours, and we field about eighty warriors. The lesser clans aren’t that much smaller—say, ten thousand men among the three of them. I’d put the total at around fifty thousand Duri.”
The Duri were their warriors. Fifty thousand warriors. Tobin didn’t know the exact count of the Realm’s army, but he thought it was around thirty thousand.
He swallowed, trying to fight down rising panic. This was why the Realm was relocating, after all. Using the great wall to the north as a barrier, a much smaller army could hold off any number of enemies. As long as the relocation went forward, the Realm would survive. But for Tobin himself, the odds were worse than he’d thought.
“How far are we from the border? Are there camps like this the whole way?”
If there were, he’d never make it, even with Vruud’s help. And after the man’s frank declaration of indifference, Tobin wasn’t sure he could trust the storyteller. Or rather, he was certain he couldn’t trust him, to do anything except look out for himself. If Vruud hadn’t needed him, he’d have sacrificed Tobin in a heartbeat. At least he’d been honest about it.
“No,” the storyteller answered his question. “There’s about twenty miles of disputed ground between your camps and ours. Both sides patrol their own borders—and for a week or so, ours will be thick with people looking for you. We’d better get going. I need to set that search into motion.”
“Isn’t it crazy to tell your Duri to go looking for me?” Tobin demanded. “With me standing right there?”
“Ah, but I’m telling them to look for an escaped Softer knight,” said Vruud. “It’s my servant who’s standing there. Or better yet, tending the mules, arranging for my dinner, and laying out my bedroll in the guest tent.”
Tobin foresaw dozens of problems with this scenario, not least that while the amulets translated what was said in the listener’s mind, they did nothing to change the words that reached the ears.
But Vruud was right. As Tobin later learned, each of the eight greater clans had a completely different language base, and even within the clans many camps had their own dialect. Some of them were so different that warriors within the same clan often found it hard to communicate. They were all so accustomed to letting their amulets translate for them that they paid no attention to the actual spoken language.
Further, the idea that the escaped knight might be traveling with the storyteller who was spreading word of his escape was so ridiculous that no one thought of it.
The clans, and even some camps within the clans, had different customs too. No one found it odd that the storyteller’s servant wasn’t sure where the mules should be tethered, or which tent housed travelers, or whose cooking pot he should go to for their meals.
And while servants in their own camps weren’t allowed to wear amulets, a servant traveling from one camp to another had to have one if he was to be of any use at all, so both Tobin and Vruud wore their amulets openly despite being chan. If a chanduri in his own camp needed to communicate with Tobin— “Don’t lead your mules past that cage; the Kabasi camp owns a hunting leopard”—he’d simply lay a hand on Tobin’s amulet so he could understand what Tobin said.
Despite some difficulty with the leopard, whose scent made the mules nervous even from a distance, no one even blinked at Tobin’s many mistakes. After the third camp he began to relax into his role—although the Duris’ reaction to news of an escaped Softer was far from reassuring.
As Tobin soon figured out from the comments around him, the camp that had so carelessly allowed him to escape had forfeited half their right to his sacrifice. If a different camp captured him, a complicated negotiation would take place to determine how many warriors from which camp would reap the benefit of his death. The only reason they reported his escape at all was that if Tobin was recaptured by a camp that hadn’t been alerted to look for him, that camp would have complete ownership of Tobin’s blood death. The camp that had found him in the first place would have no rights at all.
“If you think that’s complicated,” Vruud told him cynically, “wait till you see what happens when someone locates a spirit. There are strict laws/traditions for possession of an area where an uncaptured spirit lives. After all, you can always find someone so old, or a servant so lazy, that you can afford to give them up. Spirits are a lot harder to come by.”
Despite his own disgust at their customs, Tobin had wondered at Vruud’s willingness to betray his own people. He wasn’t surprised by it now. The Duri generally weren’t bad masters, but the chanduris’ knowledge that the Duri would slaughter them the moment it became expedient colored every aspect of their lives. Many of the servants quietly hated their superiors—especially those who’d seen a loved one’s veins laid open by the sacrificial knife. But few tried to run, for the Duri were skilled at tracking them down. In almost every camp there were one or two chanduri so badly scarred from the beatings the Duri gave to those “blood traitors” that they were almost crippled. And those who were useless were next in line for the knife.
Yes, Tobin understood Vruud’s determination to escape. But that didn’t mean the storyteller’s nebulous plan to observe the next battle—“so I can make the bravery of the Morovda camp a legend for the ages”—and thus get them closer to the border before they made a run for it, would work.
“Because even if your chief . . . Morovda, was it? Even if he agrees to let you ride with the Duri, and take your servant along with you, we can’t simply start running from your side of the battlefield to the Realm’s. Because first the Duri will shoot us full of arrows, and then the Realm knights will take us for attacking warriors and kill us before we can identify ourselves.”
They were traveling down the dusty road to Vruud’s home camp when he brought up the subject. The open road was the only place Tobin could be certain no one could overhear them.
“It’s not perfect,” Vruud conceded. “But we’d only have to cross a few hundred yards, in the midst of the chaos of battle, instead of twenty miles of open territory with every patrol on the alert. And when the time nears, something might occur to give us an opportunity.”
Tobin was dubious about that, but he had to admit that Vruud’s mad scheme had worked so far. His steps still began to drag as they mounted the rise and the Morovda camp appeared below them. After spending the last few weeks touring Duri camps, Tobin realized how small and isolated it was. Morovda had quarreled with a couple of other chiefs on the Heron Clan council and had chosen to set his camp apart from the others.
“Did I mention how many of the Duri got a good look at me?” Tobin said nervously. He was walking beside his “master” now and had to look up to see his face. The mule Vruud rode had been named Mouse, not only for his gray hide but because he was remarkably timid for a creature who was almost as tall as a horse.
“You’ve been around the Duri for weeks,” Vruud told him. “You know they neve
r look at a chanduri’s face. And there’s no reason for anyone to look twice at a servant I hired from another camp.”
That was true. The Duri regarded the chanduri like a farmer regards livestock he knows will be slaughtered—he might treat them kindly, but he’d never allow himself to form an emotional attachment. And, like livestock, servants were traded from one clan to another.
Along with their daughters. The Duri were careful not to become too inbred, lest it weaken the warrior lines. In fact, Vruud told him, in some clans it was forbidden for a woman to marry a man of the camp in which she was born. In others it was frowned on, and young women were expected to go to men from another camp, but they weren’t exiled if they didn’t. In yet another clan all girls were fostered to different camps at the age of thirteen, and returned to their childhood homes only to visit.
The Realm was much bigger than the Duri army, and its population was scattered across a large area, but it had a common language, common customs and laws. Had the Seven Bright Gods given them this gift when the church was founded? If so, Tobin owed them more prayers than he usually offered.
Despite his nerves, and despite the fact that he recognized half a dozen of the Duri, when Tobin entered the Morovda camp and Vruud introduced him as “a servant I picked up from a Bear Clan camp to tend the mules,” no one looked at him twice.
He knew without asking that Bear would be one of the clans with a very different language base. Vruud might not be his friend, but Tobin never underestimated the man’s intelligence.
In a way, he thought, as another chanduri showed him the horse line and gave him instructions about where to go for grain, he was grateful to the storyteller for keeping their relationship on a remote, aid-traded-for-aid level. He would take the one-eyed man with him if he could, but Vruud wasn’t Tobin’s first consideration any more than Tobin was his. For once there was no younger brother, no Realm, no goblin children whose safety Tobin had to put before his own. This time it was simple—Tobin would save himself, and save Vruud only if it wouldn’t damage his own chances. Which meant that he might actually survive after all.
Acting as Vruud’s servant was trickier in the storyteller’s own camp, because Tobin was supposed to make himself useful to the camp as well as caring for his master. He helped the woman who cooked for Vruud, chopping vegetables and cleaning fish and fowl. He carried horse and mule dung to the midden and fetched water from the burned-out village’s well.
None of these tasks was mysterious to someone who’d been raised on a country estate, and Tobin had been traveling among the Duri camps long enough that he made few mistakes. He’d begun to think that Vruud was going to be right yet again . . . when he looked up from the pool where he was washing Vruud’s clothes and met the startled gaze of the woman who’d brought food and water to his cage.
Her expression left no doubt that she’d recognized him, astonishment giving way to fear. She opened her mouth and drew in a breath to scream.
“Please,” said Tobin. “Please don’t.”
She couldn’t understand him, but she didn’t scream. By sheer chance they were the only ones working at the series of shallow, stone-lined pools the chanduri had created to do their washing. The woman dropped the bundle of cloth she carried and backed away, one step, then another.
It was barely possible that Tobin could leap to his feet and knock her unconscious, but then what? Run, with every Duri in camp on his trail? Even if he could bring himself to kill her, his masquerade would never survive a murder investigation—particularly in a camp where he was the only stranger.
Tobin slowly pulled the amulet from under his shirt and held it out to her, his palm open, his posture as unthreatening as he could make it with every nerve in his body shrieking for action.
She stopped backing away and watched him warily, but she hadn’t turned to run. She wasn’t screaming.
“Please,” Tobin repeated, trying to summon a reassuring smile. “I’m sure we can reach some understanding.”
He wasn’t sure, but since she couldn’t understand what he said, it didn’t matter. Vruud had told him a chanduri was expected to learn the language of a new camp, and surrender the amulet he’d no right to wear, within a year of his arrival. He’d started to give Tobin lessons, but Tobin didn’t plan to stay for the summer, much less a year, and he hadn’t paid attention. Now he wished he had.
“Vruud took you in,” the woman said thoughtfully. “He’s hiding you. He must have been the one who got you out of that cage. You didn’t find the cracked bar by accident.”
“I hope you didn’t get in trouble for it,” Tobin said.
She grimaced incomprehension and looked with distaste at the amulet he held out. “I don’t want to come that close to you.”
The only words of this camp’s Heron Clan language Tobin had learned so far were “no,” “yes,” and “I don’t speak Marshok.” For a miracle, one of those phrases fit the situation.
“I don’t speak Marshok,” Tobin said in that tongue.
Humor ghosted over her tense face. “You certainly don’t.”
He lifted the amulet once more, in silent plea. Even if he could promise her safety, with all the eloquence that panic and the amulet could lend him, there was no reason for her to trust his word. Except . . .
“Vruud,” said Tobin urgently. “Vruud, yes?”
She snorted. “You mean that Vruud spared you, so I should too? That arrogant old weasel would do anything that . . .” Her voice trailed off. She stared at Tobin in furious speculation. “Anything that served his own purpose. What could you do for Vruud?”
Tobin lifted the amulet once more. “Yes?”
She cast the amulet a look of loathing that gave Tobin some hope, then stalked forward and laid her hand on it.
“Talk,” she commanded.
He had only to close his hand and yank her down as he raised his left fist. And then what?
Tobin seated himself cross-legged, so he was even less threatening, and told her what had passed between him and the one-eyed storyteller after he’d freed Tobin from the cage. Tobin tried to keep back some of the details, like Vruud’s whole escape plan, but she saw the gaps in his story and refused to let him gloss over them.
“You talk, Softer. Or I’ll talk to the others.”
In the end, it was a relief to reveal all of it, including his doubts. “Because you’re right,” Tobin concluded. “Vruud’s only looking out for himself. I don’t even know how much of what he told me is true.”
He’d picked up some confirmation listening to the chanduri in other camps—but since they couldn’t understand him unless they were touching his amulet, it was hard to casually bring the conversation around to the hunt for the missing Softer, the nature of blood magic, or any of the things about which Tobin desperately needed assurance.
“Oh, he told the truth,” the woman said now. “If you wear that blood trust outside one of the camps, the patrols will sense magic moving alone, just as they’d sense a spirit or some other magical creature. They’d track you down with ease. But I’m not sure his plan to accompany the Duri into battle so he can make a story about them will work. Nine-tenths of his tales are lies anyway. Why shouldn’t this one be? And why would he need his servant there?”
“He didn’t say he was certain it would work,” Tobin admitted. “But it was the best idea he had. He’s really only interested in his own escape. If he didn’t know that he’ll need me when he reaches my side of the lines, I’d still be in that cage. He made no pretense of anything else.”
“Maybe I can think of something better,” the woman said. “Since I’ll be going with you.”
Tobin’s jaw dropped. He’d been about to propose that the storyteller would pay lots of money to keep her quiet.
“Vruud will never agree to that,” Tobin told her. “He’s going to be furious that I told you about this at all. He’d never jeopardize his chance by taking someone else with us. If he didn’t need me to keep him alive when he r
eaches the Realm, he wouldn’t take me!”
“And you think Vruud’s the only one prepared to be ruthless?”
Her expressive face was closed now, but Tobin could see thoughts moving behind it.
“My mother was slain to make a few dozen of those amulets, just three years ago,” the woman said. “That’s why I didn’t want to touch it. I’ve no way to know, but it might be her very blood and death that we’re using to talk right now.”
“It’s the only way I can speak to you,” said Tobin apologetically. “But my own people, our church, declared them unholy when they found out how they were made. They forbid anyone to use them, except in cases of dire necessity.”
“Like going to spy on the enemy?” she asked.
“Spies are one of the exceptions,” Tobin admitted. “But I didn’t come to spy. I really am here by accident.”
How had Makenna managed to get past the magic drain and create the gate they’d shoved him through? Had she made others? Had she too been captured, and were she and Regg and Onny, all his goblin friends, being held in some other camp’s captive cage?
If they were, there was nothing Tobin could do about it. His job was to get himself and Vruud to safety . . . and perhaps one other?
“I don’t know if Vruud will agree,” Tobin said honestly. “I don’t even know how I can get myself to our lines, much less you and Vruud. But if you don’t tell the Duri about me, I’m willing to try.”
“What about Vruud?” the woman asked. “Will he try as well?”
“What choice does he have? If you open your mouth, it condemns him too.”
“It would be many years,” she said slowly, “before I need to fear the knife myself. If I ever did. Most of the chanduri die of age or illness, just as we used to.”
Used to? Had there been a time when the Duri didn’t practice their sacrifices? What had changed?
“But in those years I stayed alive, how many of my friends, my loved ones, would I see screaming their way to death?” the woman finished. “I want out, young . . . I can’t call you Softer, not if we’re working together.”
