Storm Bride

by J. S. Bangs

  “Uya, tell me what you see.”

  She described as best she could, in broken sentences pitted with gasps and omissions and forgotten asides, how the ditch was being excavated and the wide earthen wall raised above it. “And it’s new,” she added. “Somehow—though I suppose it makes sense if every hand in the city has helped—somehow they’ve gotten this almost done. I can see the completed wall to the north, curving away just past the lodges like a levee, topped already with little huts of thatch like bird nests, and guarded by archers, as if they were frightening back the sea. It’s as if they built it overnight. I don’t see how…”

  “It’s been a month, Uya.”

  “But do we really need something so big? I don’t—”

  Saotse dropped Uya’s hand and knelt on the ground.

  “Saotse? Saotse, what’s wrong?” Uya lowered herself carefully to her knees.

  Saotse pressed her palms against the dirt as if kneading dough. A febrile moan dribbled from her lips. Her forehead bent and brushed the dirt, then she cocked her head as if listening. Her back arched. “Oh, no. Oh, no. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Saotse!”

  Saotse’s head jerked to the side. She collapsed to the ground and twitched.

  “Saotse!” Uya clasped Saotse’s hands in her own and blew into her face. Saotse’s eyes were closed, but her tongue moved as if mouthing strange words.

  Uya pleaded, “Are you awake? Can you hear me? Saotse! Someone help me!”

  Saotse screamed. Her eyes opened wide, as though she saw clean through the milk of her cataracts, and she clawed at Uya’s face. “No. No! They have ruined us. There’s too much. I can’t—”

  “Saotse, talk to me—”

  Saotse screamed again then went limp. A moment later, she convulsed and gasped as if she had nearly drowned. Her fingers clawed at the ground. She grabbed Uya’s face with both hands. “Uya? Yes, Uya. Oh, at last.”

  “Are you well? What happened?”

  “The earth weeps! Ruined! I hate all of them. Lonely, so lonely.” She curled up into a ball and began to shake.

  “Saotse, Saotse!”

  Two nearby men came running. One of them bent to grab Saotse’s mad hands. The other asked Uya, “What happened here? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. She just started shaking. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  The man looked at Uya’s belly and cheeks and shook his head. “Are you of the same enna?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll carry her back to the lodge with you. You should not be out.”

  Her irritation at being scolded melted from her worry. “Hurry,” she said. “I’ll show you the way.”

  “So Saotse’s affinity with the Powers waxes once more.” Nei sat with her legs crossed at the foot of the bed where they had laid Saotse out to sleep. One of her hands rested on Saotse’s knee. Oire had returned to the lodge with them and maintained the drum’s heartbeat, singing the dead into the west.

  “I’ve never seen such a dramatic reaction in her, Grandmother,” Uya said. Fear for Saotse mingled in her gut with the grim knowledge that the raiders waited somewhere beyond the horizon.

  “You helped us pull her out of the sea.”

  “That was nothing like this! She was weak then only because she had been at sea so many days, but she had all her wits about her.”

  “But she came from the sea, then. This time she touched the earth.”

  “What? What does that have to do with anything?”

  Nei sighed. “I should send you to the Hiksilipsi, you ignorant, superstitious girl. Perhaps you could sit still long enough to learn the lore of the Powers from them. Since you don’t seem to have noticed, I must point out to you that Saotse’s affinity has always been for Oarsa. She knew him by a different name, but once she learned our language she recognized our description of him, and she knew that it was he who called her across the sea and sent the whales to carry her.

  “This only matters because the Power who touched Saotse today is not Oarsa. You said yourself that she pressed her head to the ground and that she spoke of the earth weeping. And a few weeks ago, she mentioned the presence of a new Power in the earth, and of its loneliness.”

  Uya said slowly, with great fear that Nei was going to scold and laugh at her again, “I’ve never heard of a new Power appearing or arriving from somewhere. I thought the Powers always were.”

  “So did I,” Nei said in a low voice. She cast her eyes downward.

  The baby kicked. Uya startled and put her hand on the place where she had felt the flutter of movement.

  Nei glanced at Uya and continued in a quieter, more cautious voice. “Saotse told me once that many of the swift people think that the slow races are actually immortal. Because our lives are longer than theirs, they assume that we last forever. I wonder if the same might be true of the Powers, with respect to us. Perhaps we think them to be changeless merely because they change so infrequently. Perhaps they even die.”

  “I’ve never heard of a Power that died.”

  “Neither have I. In any case, this is just speculation.” She smoothed the bottom of Saotse’s skirt and looked with pity over the swift woman’s wrinkled face. “Saotse herself may be able to tell us, but she should sleep for now.”

  “And what does all of this have to do with the raiders?” Uya asked. “Why was Saotse stricken right when we came to the earthworks?”

  “Saotse might know,” Nei said. “But we can’t do anything about it now. The construction is almost done. May the Powers help us hold it.”

  Chapter 5

  Keshlik

  “It’s all bad news,” Bhaalit said. “We let too many get away to warn the city, and we moved too slowly afterward.”

  The speakers of all eleven Yakhat tribes had gathered at the encampment of the Khaatat for a council. The afternoon had wasted away in drinking, eating, boasting, and telling jokes, but with nightfall, the council had grown serious. A small fire smoked in the center of the ring formed by the seated speakers, with the other attending warriors standing behind them like pines.

  Dheijit of the Tanoutut shouted in response to Bhaalit, “None from our raids escaped. We were sure of that.” He tossed a blade of grass into the fire to underline his point.

  Keshlik grunted. No one had escaped from the raids he led, either, but he didn’t need to remind the men of that. He spoke not for the Khaatat, the tribe he shared with Bhaalit, but as leader of the war band for all the Yakhat. “So what?” he asked. “What defenses did they make? What do I care?”

  Bhaalit replied, “I saw this myself: They raised a moat and an earth wall all around the northern perimeter of the city. The moat and wall aren’t very high, and they were put up in a hurry. A child could shoot an arrow over the top of it. But it would stop a mounted charge, which is all it needs to do.”

  “We can fight our way over the top on foot if we need to,” said Danyak, the speaker for the Chalayit tribe. He jabbed his fingers into his open palm for emphasis. “These people are used to peace and unfit for warfare. We’ve seen them scattering like field mice in every raid we’ve done.”

  “Yes,” Bhaalit said, “but they outnumber us. And in the city, at least, they’re prepared to defend themselves. Look how quickly they raised their wall.”

  “Bhaalit is right,” Keshlik said with a sigh. Bhaalit’s caution was correct, as usual. “In a siege or a melee, we might lose. Golgoyat gave us horses, and as long as we remain on horseback, he fights among us.”

  “Then how do you propose we continue?” Danyak asked. “We can’t ride our horses over a moat.”

  “We could simply ignore the city and continue raiding along the river,” Bhaalit said. “There are more farms and villages that we haven’t plundered yet.”

  “Bah,” Keshlik said. “Farms and villages are cheese crumb
s. And most of them have been abandoned at the news of our coming.”

  The circle of warriors muttered in agreement. They had been raiding along the River Prasa for weeks, and they had picked up every scrap of value already. The younger warriors were grumbling that there was no fighting left to do. But all the scouts who had ventured farther west told the same story: the plains rose and crumpled against a range of white, toothy mountains, which forced them to the south, where the city lay on the shores of a great bay. If they were going to continue moving at all, they would have to move south or west, which meant that the city lay in their path.

  “Farms are cheese crumbs,” Keshlik repeated. “We’re going to the city, and we’ll plunder it and burn it to the ground. But we’ll take it from the south, where there is no wall.”

  There was a moment of quiet, then Dheijit asked, “And how are we supposed to do that? The river is too wide to shoot an arrow across, much less swim with horses.”

  Keshlik nodded to his right. “Bhaalit knows. He remembers how we crossed the marshes between the Bans during the rains.”

  Bhaalit stared back at him in surprise and responded cautiously, “It’s been a very long time since anyone reminded me of the Bans.”

  Keshlik grinned, relishing the rare chance to take Bhaalit off-guard. “But you remember how to bring the zebu from one mound to another.”

  “I suppose my memory might go back that far. Ah,” he said, raising his hand with a smile. “I see.”

  The other warriors looked at them in incomprehension. None of them were old enough to remember the marshy Bans, to have guided the herds of white zebu with heavy ears and wet noses. They remembered only the high plains furrowed with little creeks and the cattle the Yakhat had captured to replace their old abandoned herds.

  “Then call the tribes together—all the tribes, all the warriors—to the bluffs two days west of the city. Do you know the place?”

  Most of the men around the circle nodded. Their scouts knew the land above the river well by now.

  But Dheijit spat, “What is the plan, then? We swim across the river?”

  “We float. We will build rafts.”

  Surprised grumbling flared up around the circle. The Yakhat had never built rafts within the memory of most still living. “Are our warriors reduced to boat-building, now?” called someone at the far side of the ring.

  Keshlik watched the objections melt away beneath his glare, feeling Bhaalit’s wordless support beside him. Once the warriors’ grumbles faded, he cleared his throat. “Are we done, then?”

  They nodded.

  Dheijit scowled but said, “We’ll follow you, Keshlik.”

  “Then return to your yurts and prepare your warriors. Come to the rendezvous ready for war.”

  The council broke up into quiet, private conversations. Keshlik rose and strode away from the firelight into the darkness. It was a cold, clear spring night, with a wind that tasted like melting snow and new grass. He stopped a few paces away and stared into the starry darkness, stretching his legs and arms. He ached from sitting on the cold ground. And though he would never say a word of it to the warriors, he felt a little weary and stretched after battle these days. Sometimes he thought it would be good not to have to carry a spear again. Sometimes. But he remembered Khaat Ban and their unfulfilled vow. The only route to rest lay through victory.

  Footsteps rustled in the grass behind him. Bhaalit’s voice said, “Do you really think that we can bring an army across the river as if they were zebu? Horses and warriors aren’t heifers.”

  “No, they’re not. Warriors are quite a bit easier to lead. Or did you have more obedient zebu than me?”

  Bhaalit chuckled. “It’s been a long time, though. And the bangag trees don’t grow here.”

  “The willows that grow by the rivers will do.”

  “I hope so.”

  A gust of wind stirred the grass and died down. “I’m riding out at dawn with Juyut and the rest of the Khaatat,” Keshlik said. “I should say goodbye to Tuulo before we go.”

  “Go, then. I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”

  The night was moonless and perfectly clear, and the yurts rose like black grease smears against the backdrop of stars. Keshlik weaved through them to the edge of Khou’s circle and called out, “Tuulo! Tuulo!”

  Dhuja stuck her head out of the yurt, letting a blade of lamplight spill out. “What do you want?”

  “To see my wife before I go to war.”

  Tuulo’s voice came from inside the yurt, sounding tired and vulnerable. “Let me go, Dhuja. You’re my midwife, not my nursemaid. I can stand for a little bit.” She emerged a moment later, her hands in the small of her back, leaning away from her steps to balance out her belly. Her gait looked uncomfortable. “So you’re off again.”

  “We’re moving against the lowlanders’ city. It’ll be ten days, maybe twenty before I can come back to camp.”

  She nodded. “Dhuja tells me that we’re going to move the camp, as well.”

  “Really? I hadn’t heard.” He had been too involved with the warriors and coordinating the speakers of all the tribes. Fortunately, the women knew how to look after themselves.

  “The cow-maidens decided this afternoon,” Tuulo said. “We’ll probably be going south. So perhaps your return trip won’t be so long. After we’ve pitched camp, we’ll send a pathfinder to tell you our new position.”

  “And you? Can you travel in your state?”

  She stuck her tongue out. “They’ll make me sit in a travois. I certainly can’t ride. Instead I get to bump along with the yurts and the luggage.”

  “Be careful.”

  “You and Dhuja! I’ll be fine. But tell me, what will you bring me from the city, whatever it’s called?”

  “Prasa. And you tell me what you want. The Guza said that it was a rich place, a center of trade, so it probably has anything you could imagine. And they say that there are cities beyond the river that are even wealthier, and all lulled into complacency by too many years of peace. I’ll make you an empress with all the plunder we gather.”

  “I’d settle for being a mother with a soft bed.”

  “Then I’ll bring you a soft bed. A blanket of mink and a cushion of silk.”

  “Oh, Keshlik.” She laughed. “Come back victorious, and avenge the Sorrow of Khaat Ban. That will be plenty.”

  They watched the river from atop the outcrop of yellow stone, looking down on the sandbar that nestled in the riverbed and slumbered beneath a stand of willows.

  The willows were what Keshlik needed. The pines provided ample wood, but the supple willow branches would serve in the place of scarce rope. His band encamped among the pines and set a perfunctory watch, though Keshlik expected no counterattack. The only possible threat could come from the city, and every scout reported that it readied only for defense.

  Keshlik and Bhaalit descended to the sandbar. The willows were enormous, stretching overhead nearly to the top of the sandstone cliff that formed the bluff’s edge, and their leaves filtered the light into a murky green incandescence. Bhaalit stroked a leafy branch. “Like a woman’s hair,” he said.

  “Not quite the same as the bangag,” Keshlik said, “but it should work.”

  “Can we make them big enough to carry a horse, though?”

  “If the old rafts could hold a bull zebu, then they can hold a horse and a rider. The hard part will be getting the men to stand on it.”

  Bhaalit chuckled. “The hard part will be building them. Everything after that is just standing and pulling.”

  The next morning, Keshlik sent Bhaalit and half of the warriors with axes to fell the lodgepole pines that grew a few miles upstream. The men were warriors, not loggers, so it took excruciatingly long for the first log to appear in the stream, bobbing to an eddy where Juyut and a half-dozen other young warriors plunged into
the water and wrestled it to shore. On the shore of the sandbar, they cut it into sections and laboriously tied the pieces together, using the longest willow branches they could find. Keshlik barked orders up and down the line of warriors, trying to teach them the knots he had learned as a boy, trying to get them to remember that the willow branches would not bend infinitely, and listening to their grumbling at being made to tend trees and do slave work.

  More warriors arrived from different tribes. As other tribes’ warriors arrived, riding single-file across the curves of the landscape, Keshlik set them felling more trees, weaving, scouting, and hunting. The copse of cottonwoods grew full of the bedrolls of the Yakhat.

  It took two days to finish the first raft, and once it was completed, a brave, terrified pair of warriors poled the raft across the river, carrying their only length of rope that was long enough to reach all the way across the river. Once across, it was easy enough to affix the rope to trees on opposite sides of the shore and pull the laden raft from one side to the other. Keshlik sent a few scouts across to explore the south side of the river and set the rest of the men making a second raft. The men seemed to think themselves experts by this time, and the second raft was completed only one day later. And with the pair of rafts ready, the ferrying began.

  Another full day passed as they did nothing but ferry warriors and their horses from one side to the other, one raft crossing while the other returned. The camp began to take shape on the far bank of the river, though the warriors’ behavior was more nervous and circumspect once they passed to the side of the river where the Prasei still roamed. Keshlik made them sleep without fires and posted sentries far from the camp, to give them plenty of warning should someone approach.

  The next day dawned on thousands on both shores, an army anxious to be done with river-work and back atop their horses in the fight. The third day of ferrying passed, then Keshlik called for a halt.

  Bhaalit remained with a quarter of the gathered tribes on the north shore. He and Keshlik shared a few words before parting. Juyut was waiting for Keshlik when he crossed the river with Lashkat. The two of them were the last to use the raft.