by Stewart Ross
She gave him a curious glance. “Maybe. In which case, I’ll take that young friend of yours.”
“Sammy?”
Was there no end to her guile? Not so long ago she’d said Sammy was unfit to be an archer because of his eyesight. Now she wanted him on a high-risk patrol with her. It was a tricky one. He didn’t like the thought of putting his friend in unnecessary danger, but Sammy was pretty resourceful and would be ideal to find out what the patrol was really all about.
“Yes, Sammy,” she repeated.
He thought for a moment longer before agreeing. “Alright. He’s my choice, too.”
The other two members of the patrol were quickly agreed. One was Jannat, the tall archer who had befriended Taja. The second was Potr, a man Cyrus hadn’t met. He was, Sakamir assured him, a reliable and brave warrior.
The rest of the plan fell into place almost too easily. Yash raised no objection when Sakamir proposed leading a small, six-day patrol to investigate suspicious movements reported close to where Cyrus’ mission had first entered Alban territory. Sakamir recruited Potr without difficulty. Neither Sammy nor Jannat liked the idea of going beyond the walls with their Emir’s scornful copemate, but they accepted after Cyrus had spoken with them privately – and assured Sammy that he would look after Corby. It might be an interesting mission, he suggested.
“Interesting, Cyrus?” questioned Sammy, glancing at Jannat.
“I think it might have time to look for, er, something that’s missing, Sammy.”
A broad grin spread across the young man’s face. “Got it! So it’s a bit of a secret?”
“Yes. You may tell Jannat what Sakamir may be looking for, but please no one else.”
“Sealed like the Soterion, Cyrus. ‘Silent Sam’ – that’s what my mates called me back home.”
Cyrus smiled. “And Sammy – this applies to you as well, Jannat – please take care.” He paused. “I’m not sure how to say this, and I may be wrong of course, but Zeds might not be the only danger out there.”
Jannat frowned. “You mean –”
“Yes,” interrupted Cyrus. “No names, but you know who I mean. She’s pretty poisonous.”
“Don’t you worry,” said Sammy. “Thing about poisonous snakes is to watch where you’re walking.”
If only it were so easy, thought Cyrus. Some snakes you can’t see until it’s too late.
4
The Head
For six days after the capture of Jamshid and Giv, Malika Xsani’s eunuchs stood before her door, as still and smooth as pieces on a Long Dead chess board. Only the faithful Jinsha was permitted to pass. Each morning, Tarangala and Yalisha, the other senior Zektivs, waited outside for the day’s orders. Of the Malika herself there was not a whisper, not a glimpse, not a shadow. The sole indication of her presence was a cloud of woodsmoke billowing from broken windows beside the balcony overlooking the piazza.
Unlike the Grozny, the Kogon were tightly disciplined. When not on the move, they lived to a fixed and severe routine. This was the key to their survival – and to their Malika’s power. From the age of five, when they were branded with their Z tattoo, the tribe’s two hundred females were taught to fight. Not for them the wild Grozny charge. Under Xsani’s leadership they went into combat only when necessary and always from an ambush. The tactics never changed: identify a force smaller than their own, surround it and goad its members to death or submission. As with all Zed tribes, victory was celebrated with a feast. For the Kogon’s male opponents the ceremony involved their prisoners’ most intimate and delicate organs.
Of all this, the two Grozny prisoners knew nothing. During Xsani’s retreat, they were kept literally in the dark, chained to the concrete floor of a shed in which the Long Dead had kept pigs. Their only glimpse of daylight came when a shuttered window was opened wide enough for food – largely unwashed root vegetables – to be thrown in.
Though they saw nothing, Jamshid and Giv heard much. From a pen on the other side of the piazza came the howls and curses of the Kogon’s six male breeding slaves, all Zed prisoners. On the second day, they recognised the sounds of a woman giving birth in a room on their left. And each morning, shortly after the first light of dawn had filtered under the door of their cell, they were aware of a mysterious ritual in the piazza outside.
“What that?” muttered Jamshid the first time he heard the shuffling and flapping of bare feet on the cobblestones. “Flabtoads dancing?”
Giv frowned. “What dancing, Jamshid?”
“Giv not know? Giv ratbrain!” To confirm his superiority, the Captain aimed a kick in Giv’s direction. The manacles round his ankle brought him up short and he growled in pain and frustration.
Giv said nothing. For a while they sat in silence. Outside, the slapping and panting continued, punctuated by the occasional cry of pain.
Jamshid finally said, “Ratbrain not asking?”
“Who ratbrain?”
“Giv ratbrain.”
Again Giv did not reply. Eventually, Jamshid could contain himself no longer. “Flabtoads dancing. Boom-boom leaping like spitfest.”
“Ah!” The definition, though hardly scholarly, was clear enough. To dance was to throw oneself about in a wild, rhythmic manner as the Grozny did during a feast of the spit that celebrated victory. Giv enjoyed spitfests.
Jamshid was wrong about the noise. It was not dancing but training. To keep up her tribe’s fighting power, the Malika insisted every morning be devoted to battle skills. Only the tattoo-less under-fives, the heavily pregnant, those on lookout duty and those in their Death Month were exempt. Wearing short leather skirts, the scarred, hard-faced warriors skipped, lunged and hissed until they could take no more. Every movement was precise and concerted. The heavy-footed and clumsy were identified shortly after their zed-branding and either disposed of or set aside for breeding. When success depended on perfect teamwork, there was no room for imperfection.
After their tenth winter, pairs of warriors might become ‘Eyes’. These were lookouts positioned deep in the woods. They were responsible for telling the Malika immediately when any hostile force approached. She then decided whether to fight or flee. If fight, the intruders were ambushed and eliminated. Flight meant slipping silently off into the forest like wraiths, leaving not a wrack behind. This explained why the Kogon were largely unknown to both Constant and Zed. No one ever saw them; or, if they did, they either died or disappeared. Some Constant communities told stories of mysterious ‘Fairy-Zeds’ living in the woods.
Among male Zeds, only the Malik and his successor were educated. The Kogon were different. Captured Constants taught all Zektivs to speak clearly, count and, to a certain extent, think logically. The Malika was careful to limit this learning so it didn’t threaten her dominance. The exception was Jinsha. The youngest and smartest of the Zektivs, she was Xsani’s kumfort and her heir.
On the fourth day of her seclusion, Xsani summoned Jinsha and gave her a curious task. “You’ll find them growing bethide the wall, Jintha,” she said. “Eathy to thee. Bring me a bathketfull.”
The bright-eyed young woman followed the command without difficulty and by mid-morning had handed a brimming basket to her mistress. “Perfect,” she smiled, laying a cool palm against the smooth face of her kumfort. “Tho thweetly reliable.”
Jamshid and Giv’s isolation ended on the fifth evening of their captivity. At sundown, the door of their cell opened to admit Tarangala and Yalisha carrying an iron grate looted from a Long Dead fireplace. Carefully they placed it in the centre of the room, just out of range of Jamshid’s thrashing feet. Giv stared in bemused silence. When the grate was in place, the two women left.
Jamshid stared at the purple-brown scabs covering his ambush wounds and sulked. “Flabtoad breeding slaves laugh at me!” he grumbled.
Giv ignored him. “What that?” he asked, nodding towards the grate.
“Jamshid not know; Jamshid not care!”
“Oh? Who ratbrain now?”
When all was prepared, Jinsha herself came in carrying a flaming brand. The two Zektivs stood beside her, one on either side.
“Timur lives!” said Tarangala quietly.
“Timur comes!” said Yalisha, a little louder.
“Timur speaks!” chanted Jinsha.
As she did so, the youngest Zektiv knelt and lit the sticks under the grate. The three women left, locking the door but opening the shutter just a fraction. Soon the small room was filled with thick, acrid smoke. It hovered and curled round the heads of the two bewildered Zeds before drifting lazily out of the opening into the evening air.
“Flabtoads cook us,” coughed Jamshid.
Giv appeared not to hear. “They say Timur live,” he muttered, staring wide-eyed into the dancing flames. “Timur live!”
Jamshid blinked. By now the swirling smoke was distorting his vision. His fellow prisoner was no longer a battered body pierced by scabbed wounds but a warrior-bird, swelling and rising magnificently into the air. Jamshid himself rose, shaking off his chains and flying around the room like an enormous black bat.
“Timur come,” he whispered. “Timur set Jamshid free!”
“Timur set Giv free!” echoed his companion, his face split by an idiotic grin.
Lost in wonder, Jamshid lay on his back repeating, “Timur come, Timur come, Timur come!” over and over again. Above him, the ceiling cracked open to reveal the vast and purple canopy of the sky.
For a while, the two men lay there wreathed in vapour, muttering incoherently. Neither was aware of the door opening. But gradually, through the smoke, they sensed a third presence in the room. Some distance from the fire, shrouded in dense fumes, a hooded figure stood motionless. With arms outstretched, as if offering a gift, it held forth a wrinkled orb draped about with a lank blackness. Jamshid rubbed his bloodshot eyes and stared. Slowly, very slowly, the figure glided silently nearer the fire. As the flickering light played on the orb, the Captain noticed three dark holes, deep and unfathomable, in its surface.
Giv, unsure whether he was awake or asleep, stared open-mouthed at the apparition. The black openings grew larger, drawing him in. The smoke was thicker, more opaque. His mind reeled. He shivered. What was that? A voice. The thing was speaking to him!
“Giv! Giv! Giv!”
From far off, he heard himself answer, “Here. Giv here!”
“Do you not know me, Giv? I am come back! Look on me! Look!”
Giv peered into the blanket of the dark. The shape was familiar, but the colour… White had become black, smooth had become wrinkled. He looked closer. Yes, changed but the same!
“Ma-li-k!” he cried in a strangled combination of terror and ecstasy. “Malik Timur come back!”
Jamshid, slower of mind than the younger Grozny, took a little longer to grasp what was happening. When he did, he too was reduced to idiotic quivering and dribbling.
“Ti-mur, Ti-mur! Ti-mur!” the two men chorused until the phantom interrupted them.
“You see, Giv and Captain Jamshid? I am Malik Timur and I am returned in my head from the dead. Keep my head. Guard my head. Follow my head. Listen to it!
“My power made you save me. My power brought you to these flabtoads. They are good flabtoads with whom I am well pleased. Join with them, fight with them, kill with them! I am in their Malika – follow her! Follow her and you follow me!
“I am Timur the Terrible! I live for ever! Hear me! Hear me! Hear me!”
The phrase grew quieter and quieter as the spectre retreated into the obscurity and vanished.
Even for someone as clever as Malika Xsani, it was a stroke of brilliance. Jamshid and Giv, befuddled by the smoke from the burning leaves, were totally taken in. Though never permitted to go around unescorted and still locked in their sty at night, they were for the time being among Xsani’s most devout supporters.
Giv, smitten by Xsani the first time he saw her, regarded her with an almost religious devotion. She was, after all, the living embodiment of Timur – the head had told him so. He stood by her door at dawn every morning, whatever the weather, waiting for her to appear. During the day, he was delighted to fetch, carry, dig and delve at her command. To eliminate any risk he might pose, Jinsha suggested he be castrated and added to the ranks of the bodyguard. The Malika agreed to keep that as an option. For the time being, though, she wanted him intact as a sort of experiment: could a Zed dumbman ever be trusted?
Jamshid, older and less imaginative, had simply taken his blind, lumbering obedience to Timur and extended it to the leader of the Kogon. As he had been prepared to die for the Malik, so now he was prepared to die for the Malika. After the vision in the sty, he believed them to be one and the same. Though potentially more dangerous, he was left alone for the time being. Xsani had work for him.
Just four of the Kogon – Jinsha, Tarangala, Yalisha and the Malika herself – understood the deception carried out that night. Only Xsani and her kumfort knew its full secrets. The leader had learned of the power of the leaves from a Constant prisoner. The idea of preserving Timur’s head by smoking it was Jinsha’s. To ensure it never rotted, she had hooked out the brains through the nose, and for several weeks after the miracle of the sty she hung it in wood smoke to complete its preservation.
Giv’s remark about Timur’s head being ‘very powerful’ had set Xsani thinking. Inspiration had come from studying the image of the pale dumbman in the peculiar yellow hat. Gradually, the pieces had come together to form a plan of infinite subtlety. With the cult of Timur established, she would cast its spell over her own people and over the Grozny. After that, she would spread the net wider and wider until it covered a mighty coalition of Zeds. In the face of such power, Alba would fall and she would seize the ‘Sotion’. Where even the mighty Timur had failed, Malika Xsani would triumph. On that glorious day, all Zeds and all Constants would be under her supreme command.
The Kogon were easily brought on board. On a moonlit evening a week after the first presentation of the head, the tribe assembled in the piazza. Only the Eyes and three women nearing the end of their Death Month were missing. The unbranded were positioned at the front. The Zektivs, strategically placed round the edge in case of trouble, maintained strict discipline with leather whips. To prepare them for their part in the show, Giv and Jamshid were given a second infusion of leaf smoke.
When it was quite dark, the eight bare-chested eunuchs of Xsani’s bodyguard emerged onto the balcony carrying flaming torches. A short while afterwards, to the sound of a long-drawn-out hiss from her people, the Malika joined them. She wore the same gown of blue silk she had been wearing on the day of the ambush. By torchlight it flashed and shone like polished stone.
She raised her arms and the hissing subsided. “Thith ith a thpecial time,” she began, speaking slowly and deliberately.
“The Thedth are rithing up – and we thall lead them!” Once again the Kogon’s sinister snake noise filled the piazza. “The dumbman prithonerth have brought their leader with them. He thpeakth to me. Thee!”
The bodyguard stood back a little and Jinsha emerged on to the balcony carrying a long spear. Spiked on the top, its long, thin hair waving gently over its black and sunken cheeks, was the smoked, hollow-eyed head of Timur.
The Kogon were too astounded to make a sound. “Thith ith the Malik of the Grothny Thedth,” explained Xsani. “A living-dead dumbman.” She paused. “My friend.”
The crowd, struggling to take in what they saw and heard, remained completely silent. “Now,” Xsani went on, “bring in the Grothny!”
At her command, Tarangala and Yal
isha unlocked the sty where Jamshid and Giv were held and led them out. Still under the influence of the leaves, they stumbled and stared wildly about them.
“Grothny!” cried Xsani. “What do you thee here?”
The two men looked up at the balcony. “Timur!” they gasped in unison. “Malik Timur!”
On orders from the Malika, they were guided to the front of the balcony and told to kneel before the head of their leader. The posture was another idea Xsani had picked up from the strange images on the walls of her headquarters.
“Repeat after me,” she said quietly but firmly. “Mighty Timur…”
“Mighty Timur.”
“Who livth for ever…”
“Who livth – er, lives – for ever.”
“You and the Malika are one.”
“You and the Mailka are one.”
This done, Xsani went through the same process with the entire Kogon tribe. It was strange, she thought, how reassuring chanted repetitions were.
The ceremony concluded with Jamshid and Giv telling the company how they would obey Timur and follow Malika Xsani as the Kogon did. As she lay down beside her young kumfort that night, the leader of the elusive Fairy-Zeds smiled to herself in the darkness. So far, it had all gone better than she had expected. Further progress depended on Jamshid and Giv. After this evening’s performance, she was sure they would not fail her.
It was several moons since Timur had left the Grozny and set off for Alba in a desperate attempt to get hold of the Soterion. His tribe had never been left leaderless for so long. Not only was their Malik absent, but his two Captains, Jumshid and Jamshid, had gone too. Navid had slain Jumshid as he tried to prevent the Constant mission from crossing the deadly River No-Man; Jamshid, like his master, had simply disappeared.
Kamal had been left in temporary command of the tribe. He was a scrawny, skull-faced man of seventeen winters with an ulcerous sore where his right hand had once been. His disposition was ugly, even for a Zed. From his master he had learned cruelty but not subtlety. For the first moon, this did not matter much. He sent out pillaging parties to bring in food, regulated access to the breeding slaves and punished with exemplary viciousness anyone questioning his authority.
