by J. S. Bangs
“Did any get past you?”
“None. Where’s Juyut?”
“Up ahead. You stay and organize the plunder while I track him down.”
Warriors saluted Keshlik with cries of “Heya!” as he passed, waving bloodied spears over their heads. He picked his way through the path of ruined carts, wagons, and bodies. At the end, he spotted Juyut on horseback in a circle of three others, a bound but living man lying on the ground between them.
“Heya!” Juyut shouted when he saw Keshlik approaching. “We’ve crushed our enemies!”
“Enemies who fled like rabbits.” Keshlik grunted. In truth, Juyut had done well, but it wouldn’t do to praise him too much. “What is this thing on the ground here?”
“A captive,” Juyut said.
“And when did you find the time to take captives?”
“As you said, they fled like rabbits. This one was in the middle of the pack and fell back, then threw himself down and started to weep and beg. I kept him for my amusement.”
Keshlik reined his horse and dismounted. Juyut’s new slave was smeared with dust, and he appeared to have soiled himself. Beneath the dirt, he was paler than the Yakhat, his skin the color of dried yellow clay, coarse black hair cropped close to his head, and his eyes a cloudy green. Keshlik nudged him with his toe. A gush of incomprehensible gibberish spilled from the man’s mouth, combined with several fervent bows and a sob that rattled his shoulders.
“He doesn’t speak any language we know,” Juyut said. “We plan on taking him to the Guza slaves and seeing if one of them can talk to him.”
Keshlik grunted. “Why?”
“The Guza said that a city lies to the south, and he probably came from there. He can tell us how it’s defended, and whether its men will flee like rabbits the way this pack of cowards did.”
Juyut’s reasoning was exactly what Keshlik had hoped to hear. He himself had considered taking a captive for that purpose, but the raid had been Juyut’s. Taking a captive for reconnaissance was more foresight than he had expected of his brother.
But proprieties had to be observed. “Do you take him for your personal slave?”
Juyut shrugged.
Keshlik spat. “Don’t shrug. Only slaves and women shrug. You know that the value of a living slave exceeds whatever lots you were likely to draw in the division of spoils. You’d forfeit all that.”
“Fine, then he’s not mine.” Juyut grunted. “I take him for the commonwealth of the tribes.”
“And what will you do with him after he’s told you everything he knows?”
“Well, if I’m taking him for the commonwealth, wouldn’t that be for the tribal elders to decide?”
Keshlik grinned and nodded. He slips away like a serpent. “Bhaalit was overseeing the plundering, and even a laggard like you ought to be able to lead a raid and split the spoils in the same day.”
Juyut nodded and tugged his captive toward Bhaalit and the others. Something glinted in the dirt where the captive had knelt, and Keshlik bent to pick it up. Some kind of fish carved from bone, painted mostly black, with white eyes and belly, and a tall, pointed fin on its back. Its mouth was open and held a tiny chip of mother-of-pearl, polished and shining in the light of the setting sun. Tuulo would like it. He slipped it into his pack and hurried to join Juyut.
The division of spoils was quick and orderly. Bhaalit handed out the lot-sticks, and Keshlik let Juyut draw the lot for their tribe. The goods were plenty, more than they could take back to their camp: long strings of hemp threaded through purple shells, dried fish, casks of salt, carved baubles of turquoise and mother-of-pearl, sealskins, polished whalebone, and papery, dark-green sheets that appeared to be made of dried and pressed leaves. The purpose of those last items was initially mysterious, until someone tasted one and declared them to be edible, a dried form of some lowlander plant. Keshlik drew a sheaf of those to bring home and hoped that Tuulo would find something to do with it.
When the lots of plunder had been divided and moved safely out of the canyon, the band piled the remaining carts and packages and all the slain in a wide place in the ravine. The last duty Keshlik and Bhaalit did themselves. It was not a job for young men. Bhaalit brought a burning brand to Keshlik, and Keshlik set the stack aflame and sang the praises of Golgoyat. When the song finished, the flames licked the sky, and heaven was dirty with smoke.
Keshlik spoke the final words: “Until the Sorrow of Khaat Ban is repaid.”
They answered him in one voice. “Till the sorrow is repaid.”
A river trickled out of the mountains to the east like a line of molten silver, throwing off sparks of light from the reddening sun. On either side of its curls stretched yellow-green pasture, its colors as sweet as butter, cradling in its ripples charcoal-black, brown, and amber specks that barely moved against its tides: the cattle and the cow-maidens on their horses.
Juyut let out a whoop and charged forward, leaving a wake in the grass like a rutting bull. Keshlik tugged at the bound slave, leading him down the gentle slope into the midst of the herds. The slave had slowed Keshlik’s pace all the way back to the Khaatat encampment at the mouth of the Gap, but Keshlik was ready to forgive him now that they had arrived. The girls ululated and waved their wide-brimmed caps at the warriors passing by, while the cows grunted and moved slowly to the side. Keshlik looked back once and saw that the slave’s eyes were wide with terror, staring at the shaggy cows as if they might be monsters.
If the lowlanders were afraid of cows, then it was no wonder that the raiding band had torn through them like a knife through cheese.
The semicircle of yurts was on the near side of the river, in the center of the herds. The smoke of cooking fires drifted over the flags on the yurts’ crowns, and when Keshlik finally entered the crescent, he found Dhuja crouched over a pot of milk above a fire, slowly stirring it with her spoon. The sight of his wife’s midwife awoke a throb of longing in his chest.
Juyut had already tied his horse to the corner of their yurt, and he stood with his feet far apart. “We’ve come; we’ve come! Heya, we’ve come with plunder and a slave! Heya!”
“Dhuja may be an old lady, but she isn’t deaf,” Keshlik said calmly as he dismounted Lashkat in the half-circle. “You don’t need to shout just for her.”
Juyut looked momentarily abashed, but his embarrassment turned quickly back to pride as faces began to appear at the doors of the yurts. The elders came out, along with most of the women, and Juyut began showing off the portions of turquoise, mother-of-pearl, and the sheaves of pressed leaves that they had brought back. Keshlik untied the slave from his bridle and handed the other end to Juyut, who was recounting the story of the raid with exaggerated emphasis on his own prowess. Lashkat nickered.
“I’m getting there.” Keshlik quickly untied the leather straps holding the saddle and bridle in place, then he slipped the tack off her shoulders. She tossed her head and trotted away toward the pasture. Keshlik laid the tack in his yurt then returned and crouched next to Dhuja.
“Is Tuulo well?” he asked.
The old woman picked a fleck of straw from the surface of the milk. “Your wife grows better every day. She complains about having to eat curds all the time, but you’ve heard that as often as I have. She remains strong; she’d come out and take this spoon from my hands if it weren’t for the taboo.”
“May I speak to her?”
Dhuja nodded. She called another woman away from the crowd to stir the curds, then led Keshlik into the east horn of the encampment, to a small earth-colored yurt set just outside the semicircle. A ring of grass around the yurt had been pulled up, bound into sheaves, and burnt to create a circle of charcoal on the ground, with green grass on both sides and the yurt in the center. Keshlik stopped just outside the line.
“Tuulo!” Dhuja cried as she crossed into the circle and lifted the flap over the doorway
. The door closed behind them and muffled Tuulo’s response. A second later, Dhuja reappeared with the pouch of sacred salt and sprinkled it lightly along the path from the door to where Keshlik waited. Then Tuulo finally opened the flap and ran across the salted grass to her husband.
“Finally! You took so long, I thought maybe you had been turned into cattle and had gone grazing instead of raiding.”
Her belly seemed to have grown, though it had only been a few days. Her face was ruddy and beautifully fat, and her gait was starting to wobble. She wore silver rings and combs studded with coral and jewels, the prizes of past raids, which Keshlik had given to her for their wedding. Keshlik smiled and felt like a young man coming to his wife’s tent for the first time. “Juyut led the raid. You’ve compared him to a cow more than once.”
“Well.” She halted just before the line of charcoal, reaching toward him but stopping short of touching. She smiled. “But Golgoyat fought among you.”
“He did. None of our men fell, and none of the traders escaped. They didn’t even suspect we were coming. And I brought you something.” He reached into the pouch at his chest and brought out the carved fish that he had found, the only thing he had claimed for his private use from the plunder. The nacre in the fish’s mouth seemed to glow in the evening light.
Tuulo drew in a sharp breath. She reached to take it from Keshlik’s hand, but Dhuja appeared as if sprouting from the earth and slapped her hand away.
“Foolish girl,” she said. “It’s as if Khou’s protection means nothing to you.” She snatched the bone from Keshlik’s hand and dipped her thumb in the pouch of salt hanging around her neck, then she rubbed the whole surface of the sculpture down. “Here.”
“Thank you.” Tuulo picked up the handspan of bone and lifted it up to the light, turning it over so the shard of mother-of-pearl caught the sun’s last rays, examining the colors and the shape. “Do the lowlanders have fish that look like this?”
“I don’t know,” Keshlik said. “We brought a slave back, hoping that he could speak to the Guza. I’ll ask him, if you’d like.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to take time away from the important things you have to ask.” She continued to turn the sculpture over in her palm. “Whatever those are.”
“The Guza say that there is a city to the south, along a great river. Presumably the man came from there and can tell us more.”
“A city? An actual city, or a mere settlement, like the flock of Guza villages?”
“A city. That’s what they say.”
Tuulo frowned. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
Dhuja chided Tuulo with a look. “You are in Khou’s circle and aren’t supposed to concern yourself with what the war bands are doing.”
“Even if my husband leads them?” She gave Dhuja a glare that was equal parts affection and scorn.
Keshlik resisted the urge to cross the blessed line and caress Tuulo’s face and belly. “You have a wise midwife and a valorous husband. You worry about our son, and I’ll worry about the war.”
Keshlik lingered too long with Tuulo, and still he left unsatisfied. For the sake of their child, he would not cross into Khou’s blessed circle, but he ached to touch his wife’s hand again.
When he returned to the center of the encampment, he found that Hetsim, a Guza slave, had already been brought out from Bhaalit’s yurt to translate for the new captive. Juyut, Bhaalit, and a few of the elders sat around and listened. Keshlik stood at the edge of their circle and listened.
“—No walls, because they have no enemies,” Hetsim said. “The plains north of the river are uninhabited, except for the Guza who lived in the Gap, and the Prasei who live in the forest valleys have no interest in the high plains.”
The captive spoke voluminously, his eyes wide and pleading, as if by complying perfectly with his Yakhat captors he might earn his freedom.
“What is the occupation of these Prasei, if they have no enemies?” Bhaalit asked.
Hetsim repeated the question to the captive. The answer was long and eager.
“The people of Prasa are fishermen, traders, and craftsmen,” the translator said. “They have an alliance with the great king to the south, with whom they trade in great volume, and they trade also with the swift people who come in boats from the north. All of their livelihood is spent in friendship and trade. Why should they have enemies?”
All the gathered Yakhat laughed.
The captive seemed agitated by their laughter. He looked up, saw Keshlik, then glanced through the semicircle of yurts toward Tuulo’s secluded circle. He posed a long question to Hetsim.
Hetsim spoke hesitantly. “This man says that he noticed that you spoke to your wife who is pregnant.”
Keshlik tensed. “What about it?”
Another brief interchange. “He says that his own wife is also pregnant and that he hopes you will have pity on him for the sake of their shared condition and allow him to return to his people.”
Juyut laughed, and the elders smirked. Keshlik fingered the handle of the knife in his belt. He didn’t think that the slave’s glance would break the circle of Khou’s blessing around Tuulo, but the fact that the man had noticed him and had seen his wife raised his ire.
“Ask him,” he told Hetsim, “why I should let him return to the city and warn them about the Yakhat horde.”
After a moment, the translator responded. “He says he cares only for his wife and his family, and he doesn’t need to warn anyone about anything.”
“Does he expect me to believe such a blatant lie?”
Hetsim flinched. He mumbled something to the captive, who didn’t respond.
“Tell him,” Keshlik said, “that when the Yakhat reach Prasa, the whole city will surely perish. So even if we did let him escape, it would only be a matter of time before we killed him anyway.”
Hetsim repeated the words, and the man began to blubber. He threw himself on the ground before Keshlik and began to beg. Hetsim hesitated, apparently uncertain how to translate the incoherent babble.
Keshlik waved aside his attempt. “We obviously can’t let him return to the city. Bhaalit, when you’re done questioning this man, kill him.”
“I took this man for the commonwealth of the tribe,” Juyut said. “Isn’t that a matter for the elders to decide?”
Keshlik glared at the elders. “Do any of you think we should keep a weak and cowardly slave alive, once he’s told us everything he knows?”
None of them said a word.
Hetsim began to speak again to the slave, but Keshlik cut him off. “Don’t translate that. You’re alive because we may still need you, but your use could expire in a moment. Let this fool talk if he thinks he can buy his life with it, and let him find the knife at his throat after that.”
Chapter 4
Uya
“Come to the lodge,” Oire said.
Uya was resting in the hammock on the Earth side of the lodge, and a spiteful refusal came right to the tip of her teeth. But her mother’s expression killed the thought, and she followed. Most of her aunts and cousins were already assembled inside, sitting on the floor or on the wooden benches along the walls of the lodge. Nei sat in the Eldest’s chair beneath the ancestor totems. She never sat there except when conducting Elder business. Uya’s heart skipped a beat. Saotse sat on one side of Nei beneath the ancestors, and a young man she didn’t know stood waiting on the other side.
Uya was the last to arrive, and she lowered herself gently onto a bench. Sitting on the floor was too hard with her belly. Nei glanced at her then addressed the stranger. “Jeoa, this is my enna. Tell us again what you just told me.”
Jeoa cleared his throat. “Yes, Eldest. As I said the first time, my enna set out on a trade mission to the Guza three days after your own left. Your enna is perpetually the first to leave once the spring snows have cleared off t
he high roads, since your scouts are the swiftest and your men ready themselves so quickly—”
Nei’s lips twitched. “You may omit the flattery. I’ve heard this once already. This is for their benefit.”
“Yes, Eldest.” He kept his eyes downcast, and he spoke barely loud enough for Uya to hear him. “We set out three days after your caravan, loaded just as heavily, and we caught no sight of your caravan on the road aside from the bits of refuse that they discarded. Then when we came to the place where the Saoleka River cuts through a ridge—I don’t know if you know it—but there is a small ravine, less than a mile long, where the river channel carved its way through. And there we found them. What was left of your caravan.”
He took a short, unhappy breath. His clothes rustled as he fidgeted.
Uya’s heart began to pound.
“We found parts of a broken wagon, broken wheels, and torn sacks. Then, further into the canyon, we found the pyre. The ground was all charcoaled and muddy, and the air stank. Every wagon from the caravan had been gathered together and lit on fire. And when we poked through the ashes, we found bones. Long bones, horse skulls, human skulls. We fled back to Prasa as quickly as we could. They sent me to tell you as soon as we arrived.”
The air in the lodge was still and closed. No one spoke. Uya’s hands trembled. Rada was gone. Her father was gone. Were they dead? Would they even know? Her knees weakened, and she grabbed her mother’s hand. Silent tears were running down Oire’s face.
“Did you count the skulls?” Nei asked.
“We didn’t stay long enough to count anything. We were afraid that the murderers of the first caravan would fall on us as well. We didn’t even light fires on our return.”
“So you don’t know if anyone escaped? Or was taken captive?”
“We don’t know, Eldest. I’m sorry.”
Another long, morbid pause encumbered the air of the lodge.
Nei asked Jeoa, “Why would the Guza do this? We’ve traded peacefully with them for centuries.”
“I don’t know,” the man said. “If you don’t know, Eldest, we have no way of guessing.”
