by J. S. Bangs
Her footsteps receded behind the curtain setting off the women’s alcove, and there was a creak of leather hinges as she opened one of the chests. The floorboards groaned as Rada shifted his weight from one side to another. His affection for Uya was genuine, though Saotse judged that Uya’s reluctance for him to leave was mostly feigned. Uya had never seemed to care that much for Rada, though it had been a profitable match for both families. She seemed primarily glad for the rank that her pregnancy afforded her among the aunts.
Uya returned a moment later. Rada let out a little shout of surprise as she approached him.
“I made this,” she said. “Carved it myself from bone and set the abalone in its mouth. Do you like it?”
“Of—of course,” he stammered.
Saotse’s attention was broken by the sound of soft steps crossing the lodge toward her. Not Uya or Rada. Nei. The bench creaked as the Eldest lowered herself onto the end next to Saotse, and her hand clutched Saotse’s.
“The gift is a carved orca,” Nei whispered. “Very fine. Did you know she was making it?”
“I had heard her working on it,” Saotse said. “For Rada, though? I’m a little surprised.”
Nei chuckled.
Uya had begun whining again. “I’m sick of being pregnant, and I’m sick of eating honey cake all day. And when you’re gone, who will distract my mother long enough for me to be able to go down to the bay?”
Rada laughed. “You seem to do pretty well at it without me. And once the baby comes, you won’t be able to leave the lodge for a while anyway, so you might as well get used to it.”
“Oh, don’t remind me. You make me feel as old and useless as Saotse.”
Saotse stiffened. She turned to Uya, hoping the girl would notice how she had stung Saotse. But no, Uya continued talking, her girlish voice rattling all the corners of the lodge. In a bluster of frustration, Saotse rose from the bench and stumbled out the door alone.
She got four strides from the lodge before her shins struck a basket and she tumbled to the ground. Curse the filthy caravan and its goods. I can’t even find my way out for air. She rose to her feet, beat the dust from her skirt, then began to feel her way through the haphazard stacks of gourds and sacks.
A soft, gentle hand grabbed hers as she groped for the edge of a line of baskets. “Let me show you,” Nei said.
The urge to throw off Nei’s hand was nearly irresistible. Saotse’s fingers tightened over the Eldest’s for a moment, then she sighed and let the old woman lead her. A handful of steps out, her dusty feet felt the cool prickles of the bluejoint grass. Their strides swished through the grasses until Nei stopped and tugged at Saotse’s hand for her to sit.
“Here?” Saotse asked. “In the grass, like girls?”
“Sit.” Nei’s voice was firm but playful.
Saotse sat.
“You are a girl to us, or nearly so,” Nei said. “It will do you good to remember that.”
Saotse laughed. Hollowly. Bitterly. She held up her hand with its narrow, knobby fingers, creaking with arthritis, and its creased and flabby knuckles. “Do these look like a girl’s hands to you?”
“No. No, they do not.” Nei sighed. “It’s unnatural for a swift person to live with us slow people. And you are the one who pays the price for it.”
The burl of resentment twisted inside Saotse’s chest. “Is that why you brought me here? To shame me for growing old?”
“Not at all. I was hoping to offer you solace. You are close to Uya in age—a mere sixty-five years, a youth—but in body you have passed me up. I was hoping that since you cannot relate to Uya as a young woman, you might relate to me as an old one.”
Saotse broke a supple stalk of grass in her hand and worried at the stem. “I thought you were an old woman when I first met you. I guessed you were sixty or seventy.”
Nei laughed. “I was an old woman. Two hundred and eighty! I had already passed the age of childbearing.”
“But decades have passed, and you’ve gotten scarcely older. You told me yourself you might live another fifty years. In fifty years, I’ll certainly be dead. I’ll probably be dead in fifteen.”
“This is why I was trying to comfort you.”
“You’re not the one who vexed me.”
“No, but I’m the one who can understand you. I have grown old as well. I, too, count the years until I will be likely dead. But forgive Uya. She’s still a young woman, with her first child, barely married a decade.”
“A decade.” A cool wind picked up briefly, coming down from the mountains. Saotse listened for Chaoare’s voice and heard nothing.
“Why did you choose to stay with us?” Nei asked.
“I’ve answered this before.”
“I know that Oarsa called you across the sea and summoned the whales to carry you. But when he fell silent—”
“How do you know that?” Saotse had few secrets, but that, at least, she did not speak openly of.
“You forget that I am an old woman, Eldest of the enna, and that I watch all my younger charges.”
“Does everyone know?” If everyone in the enna knew she had been abandoned by Oarsa, she might die of shame immediately. The measure of privilege or pity she got as one chosen by the Powers was the only comfort she had.
But Nei said, “No. They’ve gotten used to having you around. And even those of us who hear the spirits only faintly can perceive that you are gifted.”
“It’s not as though I can bring them good omens or command the Powers with my voice. Just today Uya asked me if Chaoare had passed by with a blessing for her child, and I can’t even tell her if the answer is yes or no. Oarsa is gone. I feel the other Powers, but they don’t speak to me. And they aren’t mine. I had to learn their names from you because they aren’t the Powers that we knew in my home, except for Oarsa. And he has vanished.”
“Nonetheless,” Nei said, “we want you here. You are immensely useful to us during negotiations. I adopted you as my granddaughter and have not regretted it for even a single day. No one considers you a burden.”
“Good, because I have nowhere else to go.” Her chance to return home had long since passed. When first she had tried to return with the swift traders, the superstitious sailors had refused to take a woman aboard. And now, even if she found a ship to take her, she feared her aching bones would not survive the journey.
Nei groaned, and the swish of grasses signaled that she had risen. “I seem to have failed at my goal of comforting you. Let me offer you this, at least: Uya won’t vex you while Rada is gone. I’ll ensure that she is kept busy, and any careless word that she speaks to your hurt, I’ll repair. I can promise you that.”
She helped Saotse regain her feet and guided her back to the lodge. But when Saotse’s foot struck the bare ground near the lodge, she stopped. Something was wrong.
“Come on,” Nei said. “Just a little—”
“No,” Saotse said.
The ground trembled. It groaned. It wept. Alone. It felt for a moment like the beginning of an earthquake, though the dust that lay on her feet was undisturbed. Saotse’s toenails scratched at the ground. A gust of wind stirred the tops of the trees.
“What do you hear?” Nei asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t understand.” She took two unsteady steps forward. The soft sound of wings passed overhead, and Saotse turned toward the top of the lodge.
Nei drew a breath.
“What do you see?” Saotse begged.
“A white owl.”
The owl mourned hoo hoo twice from its perch on the peak of the lodge. An owl was an evil omen in the best of times. An owl in the day even more so.
Nei’s hand closed over Saotse’s and pulled her forward. The cheer in the Eldest’s voice sounded forced. “Let’s find our hammocks in the women’s alcove. Let the omens worry about themselves.�
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Chapter 3
Keshlik
The traders’ road was little more than a horse path that wound up the bottom of a ravine toward a low point in the bluffs, guarded by sage and horsebrush and shaded by blood-colored rocks. The little creek that ran beside the path wormed through a narrow defile at both ends of a green-floored gully, creating a convenient choke point for ambush. Yet there were no sentries apparent in the caravan’s train, no spears or bows ready beside the drivers of the front and rear carts, and no nervous glances upward to the crevices in the stone.
“Perhaps they’re just reckless,” Juyut said. “Or very greedy.”
“Reckless, maybe, but not because of greed,” Keshlik said. “Greedy ones carry double sentries to ensure that their goods aren’t stolen.”
“Do you think they’re just stupid?”
“They’re reckless with peace. Like the Guza.”
Juyut grinned. “Then they’ll fall easily.”
Keshlik did not raise his eyes from the line of the caravan below. The traders gave every indication of being as indolent and incautious as the Guza, who had been poorly defended and quickly slaughtered. The Guza had fallen to Keshlik and the Yakhat war bands just before the first snows, in time for the Yakhat to take shelter in their homes straddling the Gap. The raiding party that Keshlik led today was the first to descend to the plains on the far side of the mountains since the spring thaw. Judging by appearances, the land on this side of the Gap hadn’t seen war for so long that the people had nearly forgotten how to wage it.
But he would assume nothing. The leopard’s soft paw hides its claws.
Half of the carts had entered the defile and continued on the narrow shore of the creek. Their ponies were fat and slow. The traders might carry knives at their waists, but he saw no bigger blades.
“So shall I set out with my half of the band?” Juyut asked.
“Go. Save your boasting for when the battle is over.”
“Ha!” Juyut smiled viciously. “A single caravan plundered barely gives reason to boast. I’m going.” He pushed away from the edge of the ravine and ran crouching to where his horse waited, quietly grazing. He leapt onto her back and spurred her forward with a tap of his heels. Juyut and his mount were swift but silent, Keshlik noted with pride. Juyut had learned well.
Keshlik crawled back from the cliff’s edge, dusted off his pants, and walked slowly to Lashkat, his horse. She was nibbling on the spring growth that was greening even here on the higher grasslands, and she gave him a look that suggested he not disturb her just yet. There was good, sweet grass here. It reminded Keshlik of the summer grasses between the Bans, and he hoped that the Yakhat women would find it acceptable for the cattle. The herds had thinned in the last winter, and neither the Guza nor these lowland folk seemed to have any stock that might replace them.
He rested his hand on his mare’s flank. She whinnied and wagged her ears at him, then lifted her head and gave him a doleful stare. She shook her head, the yellow cords of her mane dancing like lightning bolts around her head, then stepped forward and touched her nose to his face.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Lashkat chuffed. She seemed to smell the battle on him, in the lines of rouged and blackened grease drawn on his face, in the incense of sweat and blood that rose from his skin. Battle was an old friend to them. Keshlik would trust her to carry him alone into battle with a thousand foes, and she would drag his dead and broken body back to the yurts rather than flee without him. Only Juyut was a better companion in battle, though he spoiled it by being proud and wrathful and too quick with his tongue. The horse at least knew when to keep quiet.
Keshlik climbed onto her back, and she loped forward with her head low without any nudge from him. A short ways to the south, in the shade of an outcropping of rock, waited the other three of Keshlik’s party. At the sound of his approach, they scrambled to their feet and grabbed the spears that rested beside them.
Bhaalit, the eldest of the band, stepped forward. “Are we going?”
Keshlik grunted. The three mounted their horses and fell in behind him.
There was no path along the top of the ravine, but they did not require one. The plain was a sea of grass, yellow billows undulating like waves across the surface, with outcrops of sandy stone peeking above the surf like the fins of monsters. Green showed at the roots of the waves, where the wind bent the heads of the winter grass to show the upsurge of spring, and here and there an early flower made itself known as a stripe of purple or yellow. A gentler plain for the horses to tread Keshlik could hardly imagine.
He couldn’t figure why the traders kept to the ravine. On a plain like that one, you could see your enemy approaching when he was still on the horizon, and you could give your horses rein to gallop at wind speed, to flank and circle back with all the martial skill that a well-trained mount should learn.
The ravine, on the other hand, was an invitation to be ambushed. It saved them a few hours of walking, but why would that matter to these people? Their languid pace suggested they were in no hurry. The horses moseyed down the gentle incline that led to the entrance to the ravine. The rutted trail that the caravan followed grew clear in the broad plain below, and the last of the wagons’ dust drifted to the ground. Keshlik pointed forward, tapping his mare’s ribs with his boots. She broke into a run, tossing her mane and stretching her legs, and the other mounts followed. With a brief skip, their horses leapt the wagon ruts and turned to the left, following the trail into the entrance of the ravine. Dust stung Keshlik’s eyes. The stone rose above their heads, hiding the sun. Ahead he could see nothing but the dust following the wagons, but he heard the distant clattering wheels and shouting voices that echoed off the canyon walls. Keshlik slowed his mare to a trot, then a halt. Behind him, the other three drew up and stopped.
“What now?” Bhaalit asked. “We wait?”
“We wait,” Keshlik said. “Juyut has his company at the canyon exit. They’ll attack the head of the caravan and drive them toward us. We just make sure no one gets away.”
Bhaalit nodded. He prodded his horse to the far side of the canyon floor and leaned forward to watch the approach. The other two, Rushyak and Danut, were young warriors, not even a hundred years old. They would fight like a whirlwind once the time to draw spears came, but they shared Juyut’s impulsiveness and fervor. Bhaalit was older than Keshlik, the only one so old who still carried a spear, who still remembered Khaat Ban.
The dust fell and the sounds of the caravan receded. Crows cawed overhead. Rushyak and Danut began to fidget, but Bhaalit, with more than a century of practice with patience, was as still as stone. The sun rose higher in the sky and began to tickle the lip of the canyon.
Quickly now. Keshlik could fight in the shade and he could fight in the sun, but he didn’t welcome the prospect of a battle with men weaving in and out of the canyon’s shadow.
Someone was running toward them on the road ahead. As soon as he heard it, he snapped to attention. A young man, on foot, his pace wild with terror.
To his left, the two young warriors tensed and glanced at him. Keshlik nodded and pointed forward. Rushyak cantered his mare forward, his spear held ready. He aligned the runner with the spear, crouched forward, and tensed. The lad at first didn’t seem to see them, then he began to shout and wave his arms as if seeking their aid.
Keshlik saw the moment the boy spotted the stripes on their faces, the speed with which the mounted warrior approached, and the glint of the spearhead. He froze in mid-stride, fell to a knee in the dirt, then attempted to scramble to the right.
It was far too late. With a flick of his knees, Rushyak angled the horse to intercept then split the lad’s back with a spear-strike. He pulled his spear loose from the victim’s back as his horse thundered over the boy, and he circled back and planted three more holes between his victim’s ribs.
A rumb
le sounded off the canyon’s walls as the main body of the retreat approached. Two men on foot running toward them, with a wagon driver frantically beating his draft ponies not far behind them. Keshlik nodded at Danut, the other young man, then trotted his own mare forward. Bhaalit moved of his own accord. Keshlik’s mare trotted, her ears back, ready to charge, waiting for the cry.
It was time to fight.
Keshlik raised his spear and screamed, and his horse bolted forward. He leaned forward into his horse’s neck, one hand in her striped mane, the other clutching his spear. A man retreating on foot had peeled off to the right, and Danut chased after him into the dimness of the dust. The wagon driver, his face white with panic, saw Keshlik approaching and veered to the creek bank, but Keshlik’s spear found his throat anyway, driving him from his saddle. The riderless horse fled, and Keshlik wheeled back toward the center of the melee.
Rushyak and Danut flanked the overturned cart, stabbing at the others who came fleeing down the ravine. Bhaalit had already felled two runners and was advancing on another.
Keshlik charged past them and impaled two panicked men with one spear, then trampled a third under his mare’s hooves. Further up the canyon, a man was screaming at his frothing ponies to budge an overturned load. Keshlik relieved the man of his concerns by driving a spear into the man’s eye.
The battle-glad war cries of his brother’s band suddenly surrounded him. He had reached Juyut’s band advancing from the other side, and when he turned to the center of the road, he found himself riding into a reef of bleeding men and crushed wagons. Some fighting still remained, as a few of the caravan drivers had armed themselves with clubs or knives. Keshlik crossed the battlefield twice, stabbing the windpipes of those he saw still moaning on the ground, then found Bhaalit at ease atop his horse.
“Heya!” he shouted and smacked the shaft of his spear. “Did you fight well?”
“Golgoyat himself fought among us,” Bhaalit said, with a laconic gesture at the carnage of blood and dust around them.
