The Mammoth Book Of Warriors and Wizardry (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Sean Wallace

  Her hands and her mouth worked, put magic into him, but she turned her head away.

  At Bao’s ten-week ritual, her extended family and almost everyone else from the village had crowded into their house or peered in from outside, through the door and windows. They had prepared a feast. They had sung and beat on the fox-hide drums brought out only for this day: small drums, with threads as white as snow and as grey as rocks criss-crossing the deep, rich russet of the fox. Ten weeks! They had hung ten amulets in the house, to keep the ten child-spirits sweet, and they had stamped ten times to send death away. Stay, ten-week baby! They had named her.

  “For ninety healthy years,” Za said, unable to keep the tremor from her voice. She imagined her family gathered around her son, and tears rolled over her face like an icicle melting.

  “For a hundred healthy years.”

  She sewed the braid fast with sun-yellow thread, brought the thread round and round and round the join so that it bulged like a strange stone. She kept her hands steady, though her tears splashed on her son’s face.

  Her son, who needed a name.

  Possibilities tangled in her head: Hma names, good names, beautiful names, Nu names. Little half-Nu boy who no one but her – and Bao, who remained by the door, probably just curious about a part of her life she couldn’t remember – would acknowledge. Her mother wasn’t even speaking to her anymore. A Nu name would suit him. Why couldn’t he look Hma? Why couldn’t the stories she’d poured into him with milk and powdered fox-bone, a uniquely Hma magic – why couldn’t her milk, her fully Hma milk – why couldn’t all of it make him Hma and not Nu?

  Za picked up her son, held him out – to the family that wasn’t there. Her hands shook. “Your name,” she managed, before sobs replaced the name she’d picked at random. She thought, wildly, I’ll drop him and he’ll die and my family will talk to me again.

  “What’s his name?” a small voice said.

  Old enough to want to be helpful, little Bao put her hands under Za’s son, steadying Za’s hands. Such a serious expression for a three-year-old’s face.

  “Your name,” Za said softly, “is Cheu.”

  “Cheu!” Bao said excitedly. It was a common name; Za suddenly remembered that a boy Bao’s age had that name. His parents wouldn’t like her for this. Za decided she didn’t care.

  “Be strong, Cheu. Be brave, Cheu. Be loving, Cheu. Be healthy, Cheu.”

  Bao echoed her words as closely as possible and kissed Cheu’s head afterwards.

  He wouldn’t tolerate being held up for much longer; his face scrunched and he cried for milk. Za returned to the edge of the room, where her blankets and cushions made a far more comfortable place to nurse, and rearranged her jacket around him. It didn’t take long for Bao to grow bored of watching. The girl wandered away and Za was alone once again, with the fox hide around her son’s head scratching uncomfortably at her chest and only the drip-drip of her tears for company.

  Fox teeth. For tearing enemies to pieces.

  “We must move the village,” said Yi, the old woman who took charge in times of difficulty. She sat on a little wooden stool in the open space between houses, where early winter sun fell on the gathered villagers like an offering. Everyone stayed silent as she talked. “It was last done when my grandparents were children, also to escape the Nu. We must gather our possessions tonight and leave at first light tomorrow, and when the Nu soldiers arrive they will find only empty houses to burn to the ground. If they find our mines, they will have to work the silver themselves.”

  Or have other Hma work them, Za thought. Or us, caught while we’re fleeing.

  She bit her fingers, reluctant to speak out – to have the entire village stare at her, with her son fidgeting in her arms. But she couldn’t let them agree to this.

  “Mother-Yi, may I talk?”

  When everyone stared at her, she did her best to ignore them, focusing on old Yi with her smile empty of teeth.

  “Of course, child. You have brought us such valuable information. Speak up!”

  Murmurs spread. Not everyone agreed with Yi’s generosity. Za clutched her son tighter and spoke.

  “They are only days behind us and I probably didn’t take their only map. They know where our village is. With a hundred of them, they’ll find it. And they’ll find our trail – not even we can hide the movement of a whole village. A stray heel-print here, a dropped thread there, and they’ll follow us into the mountains, and we’ll never be able to live in safety.

  “But if we kill them all, or send them running, by the time they try to find us again, our tracks will have faded. Winter is coming, in only a month or two. Perhaps the snow will fall again.” And they would go into it, towards those higher reaches where people were no longer supposed to dwell, where mountains birthed icy winds and spirits slept. How far did they need to move to be safe forever? How far would the mountains let them?

  “So keen to kill the people who are just like your baby’s father!” one of the men exclaimed.

  Laughter fell around her like slung stones.

  Since her son’s birth she had stayed away from the other people of the village, had split her time between household work and going far from the village on patrol. They laughed and she wanted to run back into the forest with her son, wanted to throw him aside and beg their forgiveness. Hated herself for both thoughts. Hated them.

  Yi glared at the villagers and reached for her staff, no doubt to stamp it on the ground and demand their respect.

  Someone mentioned trust and whether spreading her legs for a Nu man made her Nu too.

  “Shut up!” Za screamed, and realized it had been Pao and that their mother had smacked him so hard he lay on the ground, moaning. “He’s not—” He was. Little half-Nu boy, ugly little boy, from loose-legged Za. She felt it all, rattling around in her skin like knuckle-bones in a cup. “He’s Hma!” she shouted, as Yi drew the conversation back to its main subject. Some people went quiet. “He’s Hma! He’s Hma and he’s mine and I’m Hma, I fed him fox-bone, I told him all our stories while he drank my milk, and if you don’t shut up you can drink my piss!”

  Everyone stared at her in silence.

  She shook, held Cheu to her chest, said, “Why don’t you ever shut up?” And for once, they did.

  Her mother put a hand on her shoulder. “I think Za is right. If we all flee together, they will follow us. Some of us must defend the rest – but not by killing them. We cannot. Count every healthy adult in the village who possesses enough skill and power with the fox-bones to fight, and you will not find fifty, or forty, or even thirty. We could surprise them, and then they would recover, and kill us, as our finite power fades.

  “However, there is something else we can do: destroy their supplies, and perhaps kill a few of them, to put the fright in them. Without their supplies they cannot follow us. It will be dangerous and difficult, and perhaps each soldier sleeps beside their food . . .” Her voice faltered there, at the difficulty of their task. “But I think this is our best chance. And I will be honoured if Za is with us.”

  Whatever Pao might have said next was silenced by Tou, who kicked him in the ribs.

  As the village agreed with Za’s mother’s plan, Za wiped away tears with the fox-fur on her sleeve and returned to the ground, tucked away among other people.

  Later, her mother murmured angrily, “You are Hma, even if your son isn’t, fully.”

  Za stroked his hair.

  The village split in two, its very walls taken apart – small parts bound to backs, transported ahead to be the first walls, shelter for the young, the elderly, the infirm. Its nearby stores were opened and emptied, sacks of rice put on to two wagons, sacks of dried corn added to the wagons where possible, added to baskets and hefted by all but the weakest of the group who departed. The two buffalo, used to plough the lower-altitude rice terraces at certain times of year, were brought from their pens and tied to the wagons, touched fondly by passing people. Be steady. Be strong. The f
urther food stores, kept separate from the village for safety, were not touched. In safer times, people would return and find what remained. Children accepted bags of pots, herbs, any spare clothes. Adults hefted baskets full of not just food but fabric, medicines, silver. The graves of the dead were honoured one last time.

  The group who departed began their journey throughout the day: wagons and children and the elderly and infirm and adults who possessed little ability with the magic and some adults who did, protecting their mobile village.

  Za watched Tou walk away with her son in a fabric-filled basket on his back. “Time to go,” her mother said.

  “Yes.”

  With pouches full of fox-bone, they left the village behind.

  The forest opened to them like a fox-ear pouch and they pierced their tongues with teeth. They swallowed foreleg bones and hindleg bones and skull.

  They spread out. The forest crunched under Za’s feet and she knew it crunched under twenty-one other pairs of feet, knew that her mother ran nearby, that Pao and Xi ran together, her with a tiny child curled in her womb like a fleck of dust. This fight would determine the new lives of many, and Xi did not consider her new life more important than those, though she hoped it would survive.

  Za bared her teeth, thinking of the village’s future – and of her son, more distant with every step. She felt Tou, who had swallowed fox-skull to sense the forest around the fleeing villagers, holding him.

  She knew when Xi killed a Nu scout, tearing his chest open before he even realized she stood in front of him. She knew when another scout fell, and another.

  She knew when the first of their group found the army, camped on a flat place where, generations ago, their village had grown rice.

  “There are small tents, for the soldiers,” her mother said, and everyone heard despite the distances between them, “and bigger tents. Perhaps they contain supplies. We must burn them – and burn the small tents too, if possible, in case they also contain supplies, and because the soldiers will not survive the high-hill nights without them if they still pursue us.”

  At her wordless yell, they burst from the forest as one.

  The first soldiers ran, terrified, and two of the larger tents shone in the night. But the soldiers regrouped, with weapons no one had anticipated. They gathered together to defend their remaining two large tents, holding swords like teeth, and threw gourds full of something that exploded and tore apart even fox-fast limbs. Za felt two deaths – brief agonies that left her gasping. Nearby, Xi screamed. Pao lay lifeless in his blood. The soldiers readied to throw more of their gourds, and Za dashed forwards, grabbed Xi, pulled her away to safety.

  If only the fox-bones let them throw their fire like gourds, over the soldiers’ heads, on to the tents.

  “We need to lure them away!” Za’s mother said.

  Their group crouched among tents and the old ridges between rice paddies, holding themselves still, putting more fox-bone on their tongues. Xi’s tears dripped on to her fingers and she chased the smeared bone with her tongue. Za hurt, too – she hadn’t wanted Pao to die, hadn’t wanted to see a former friend torn open. “We’ll get them,” Za whispered – to Xi, to all of their group. Movement. “Look. Those men by their tent.” Not all of the soldiers were in big, safe groups after all. Za and Xi ran forward, pounced on three men, killing one of them – and dragged the other two away, towards the forest, and others ran out of cover to circle them, tracing fire-shapes in the air as if they planned to torture the screaming men all together.

  Several soldiers broke away from the two groups. Shouts told them not to, but they ran forwards and they were captured too, or killed. Even more followed.

  Za felt her mother and six others emerge from hiding, and in the fear and frenzy they reached the tents, and the fires began to warm the night. The soldiers scattered, afraid again, and the Hma ran through the camp, laughing, igniting the smaller tents. “Run south!” Za yelled at the soldiers who fled her fire. “Run south!” And give us enough time to escape!

  Someone screamed.

  Za knew that scream. It was as if Tou stood beside her, as if he had come down from the fleeing village, but—

  No. No.

  They slowed, they looked up into the hills, as if they could see clearly the ambush falling on their moving village.

  They ran.

  A fox’s heels. Mixed with certain herbs, an abortifacient.

  Throughout the pregnancy, Za knew where to find the necessary herbs: carefully dried, hanging from the ceiling. They wafted in the breezes that drifted through the house, as if beckoning her. Once, she tore off enough leaves and held them over a pot of boiling water, and imagined how easily the barely developed baby would leave her body. No half-Nu child.

  When only she knew about the pregnancy, she had found happiness in the thought of a child, though it hadn’t come according to her plans. But neither had Koua’s death; neither had meeting Truc. She had accepted it. Then – shouting, fists, silence.

  She didn’t know what to do. She dropped the herbs to the floor.

  She didn’t decide and then it was too late, and her son came out of her, bringing with him a knifing hurt at the way his eyes folded more like a Nu than a Hma, the months of silence from her mother, the looks and the comments from her village all the way down to the trading town, from people who had always smiled at her.

  A fox’s pelvis. Used in several healing remedies.

  Yi led the defence: burning bright with her fire, tearing away pieces of wall-wood and hurling them in flames at the soldiers. Others – old, young – clustered around her and in smaller groups, protecting anyone unable to fight.

  Bodies lay along the ground like rocks.

  Za’s mother directed the returning group: encircle the attackers, kill as quickly as possible. “Do not look down. Later we will mourn the dead.”

  They all looked.

  Two little girls lay on the ground. Not Bao. Za blinked away tears at the sight of such young deaths – and there were babies, too. But though she ran faster than storm-winds and left soldiers clutching their burnt throats behind her, she couldn’t find Tou or Cheu.

  Her father and grandparents stood with Yi, and Bao hid at their feet. Za circled around them, fending off soldiers, who scattered, finally outnumbered.

  As her fox-bone ran out, as her senses and speed and fire-hot fingers returned to normal, the cold night fell on Za and she collapsed. “Cheu,” she gasped. Around her, the village rearranged itself for the next few hours: healing those who could be saved, honouring those who could not.

  Za’s father brought a bowl of hot stew made with ground pelvis and helped her drink.

  “Tou felt Pao die,” he said, “and then they attacked us. He ran after some soldiers, away into the forest, and he hasn’t come back.”

  “Cheu.”

  Her father stroked her hair. “He was with Tou.”

  Though every part of her body protested, stiff and sore, Za got to her feet.

  “You need to rest, Za.”

  “No.”

  The forest kept its secret for so long that she stopped crying. She forced one foot in front of the other, knowing that eventually she would find their bodies, and bury them, and move on into the mountains with the rest of her village. Branches scratched her face. The cold ached in her fingers. Battle-wounds worsened; she limped, but she could still walk. The moon gave her poor light to see with. High above, the orb had finally dimmed, and the other soldiers hadn’t carried a replacement – or it had been destroyed. Za managed to smile. Maybe the village had enough time now.

  Something cried.

  She looked to one side, at a dark shadow: a cave.

  In it, still-breathing Tou curled unconscious around the basket. Cheu cried hungrily.

  “Oh.” Za sank to the ground, to pull him from the bundled cloths and silver and hold him close.

  As the village moved into the whitening mountains, Za felt as though some looked at her and Cheu with mistr
ust as often as snowflakes fell around them. She carried a basket as heavy as anyone else’s, she cried together with Xi at the memory of Pao’s death, she hunted and cooked and sat with everyone else, turning hides into mountain clothes – yet the looks didn’t stop.

  Most of the time she walked with her mother, who out-glared them all, and stayed utterly silent.

  Cheu babbled sometimes, apparently fascinated by the cold, exhausting, hungry process of fleeing. Wrapped in hide and spare fabric, nestled in a child’s basket padded with pine needles for extra warmth, fed as much meat as she could spare, he didn’t feel any of it. Za made sure of it.

  No soldiers had attacked; with a week between the village and the ambush, many began hoping for safety. Many began to talk more decisively of where to build their new village. They needed to survive the winter, but then their lives could begin anew.

  In a few months, Cheu’s noises would be words. Mama. Papa? Za wrapped her arms around his basket, torn between shushing him – how they looked at her whenever he babbled, how they looked at him – and letting him practise his infant-babble.

  He deserved better. And not just, Za thought, from the village. From her. That old woman had called him handsome. A handful of people looked at him differently. Limping Tou ruffled his short hair. Xi gave him pine cones to play with, snapping off some of the scales to make them look like people. Za’s mother started smiling at him in the evenings, when he pottered around their fire pointing at sparks. Za’s grandmother winked at him as she carried her remaining chickens.

  One night, Za couldn’t sleep for crying, so angry at herself.

  The next morning, as she heaped snow over the ashes of their fire and hoisted her baskets on to her back and front, she began to sing to him. People glared at her. She flushed and fell silent. But as the village began to walk, they looked away; quietly, so that only Cheu could hear, she gathered up her courage and sang,

  I ground the fox-bones