by J. S. Bangs
“I hope this means we’re done with this ridiculous river-work,” Juyut said. “This isn’t what Golgoyat called us to.”
Keshlik patted him on the shoulder. “Golgoyat gave you a head, too. It doesn’t do any of us a lick of good to go charging into the strongest defense.”
Juyut grunted. “We could have made it.”
“Then next time I’ll let you try it alone.” He looked ahead to the west. “But for now, we ride straight to the city.”
Dawn. The grass was dewy around their horses’ ankles, the air heavy with the threat of rain. Ribbons of mist wound around the trunks of trees and slipped through the ravines.
The cool air kept the horses alert. The men atop them were taut with nervous energy, like coils of twisted rope ready to lash out. Keshlik was glad for it. He had wound them up carefully over the past two days, moving them quickly, as quietly as three thousand horsemen could move, through the wooded wild on the south shore of the river. Last night he had not slept. He’d spent the night in contemplation and mental preparation, and he had roused the men before dawn. They streaked their faces with lines of black and red, their energy threatening to boil over. Keshlik rode the perimeter of the camp, keeping quiet. The war band’s fury mustn’t peak too soon. There were still two hours to ride.
The sun had breached the horizon in the east, drawing deep shadows of purple across the stripes of milky mist. Two miles ahead of them lay a cluster of small lodges, as described by their scouts, beyond which rose walls of pine broken up by larger and larger dwellings, until at last the city lay before them entire. A short ride through the woods would bring them from the camp to the city’s outskirts, and from there they would strike like a spear into its heart.
Next to Keshlik and Lashkat, Juyut’s horse snorted. “What are we waiting for?”
“Bhaalit. He’ll send up his signal before he attacks, and we must not precede him.”
Juyut grunted in response and gripped the reins tighter than he should. The poor youth. He still had not learned patience.
The dawn drew gradually brighter, and the mists dissolved. Then Keshlik pointed—a line of black smoke trickled into the sky to their north.
Juyut tensed. “Now?”
“Bhaalit’s just begun. Wait a bit longer.”
While he was still speaking, a drum began to sound in the north, as quiet and urgent as a heartbeat, the sound whispering through the morning air. Someone had raised an alarm in the city. “Draw the men up around me,” he said to Juyut. “I will remind them why we fight.”
Juyut nodded. He whistled and shouted the order, and the whistles rippled away through the crowd. The men pulled closer, dismounted, and grew quiet. They were a forest of black-and-red-striped faces, with the bronze teeth of their spears above them, a force vast and unstoppable.
Keshlik’s heart began to pound. His voice carried clearly through the still morning air. “Warriors of the Yakhat! Warriors of Golgoyat! Let us remember why we are here!”
Grim attention sharpened their faces. Every Yakhat child knew the history he was about to recount, but their hunger to hear it again gleamed in their eyes.
Keshlik pounded the butt of his spear on the ground. “In a moment, we will ride into a great city, which has been built here by a civilized people unknown to us. Most of you do not remember when we ourselves lived in settled villages on the marshes and hills of the Bans. Most of you are too young to recall when the Kourak, who lived in cities such as this one, came and evicted us from our homes, destroying our villages, and casting us away to the edges of the marshes, where we lived like rats and wished to die. You do not remember it, but I do. They came to Khaat Ban during the Wedding of Golgoyat and Khou, when all of the tribes were gathered under the bond of peace, and they broke our peace and shattered the sacred marriage.
“You have heard this story from your fathers and grandfathers, but I was there, and I need no one to tell me about it. I saw Khou’s maiden stolen from her bridegroom, and I saw her raped and killed and her body cast naked into the marsh. I saw my brothers and uncles and grandmothers slaughtered. I saw the marsh water run red with the blood of every Yakhat tribe. I stand before you as a witness of the Sorrow of Khaat Ban. Hear and remember, warriors of the Yakhat!”
The men shouted agreement and stamped their feet.
“Yet we survived,” Keshlik continued. “We fled to the hills, without the zebu our parents raised, with only the memories of the Bans we had loved. We salted our food with our tears and cried out to the Powers we served, despairing that they would hear us. And there, where the storm clouds rolled off the high plains and poured themselves into the marshes, Golgoyat came to my father Keishul. He blessed him with the strength of the thundercloud, and commanded him to lead the Yakhat to avenge his sorrow.”
The army roared. “Avenge the sorrow!” and “Remember Khaat Ban!” tore the air.
“Tell me, warriors of the Yakhat, was our sorrow avenged when we rose up from the place of our despair and seized the herds of the plainsmen?”
“No!”
“Truly, we were not avenged! With the herds we merely fed ourselves that we might not starve. But were we avenged when we struck the Kourak who had persecuted us and burned their city to the ground?”
“No!”
“Truly, we were not avenged! With their deaths we merely paid back a tenth of the debt of blood they owed us. But were we avenged when we made war against all of the tribes of the plains, wherever they turned their faces against us?”
“No!”
“Truly, we were not avenged! For their arrows slew my father Keishul, the chosen of Golgoyat, and added fury upon fury to his anger. But were we avenged when I took up his spear and turned us to the west, and we passed with much labor over the mountains into the land of the Guza?”
“No!”
“Truly, we were not avenged! For the wrath of Golgoyat has no end, even as the thunderstorm has no end until it has passed from one horizon to the other, and you can no more stand against it than you can catch a thunderbolt in your hand. We must hold every land guilty of the Sorrow of Khaat Ban until Golgoyat’s hunger for vengeance is sated. So tell me, warriors of the Yakhat, does Golgoyat still rage?”
“Yes!”
“Does Khou still weep?”
“Yes!”
“Then today we fight! Remember Khaat Ban! We run with the strength of the thundercloud! Golgoyat himself fights among us! Go!”
A gale of screams and shouts rose up from the army. Keshlik raised his spear and pointed it toward the city, then spurred his horse into a gallop. Behind him pounded the hooves of the Yakhat, beating the earth with a rumble like thunder. The trees of the forest flew past. The last mile between them and the city passed under Lashkat’s legs in what seemed no longer than a heartbeat.
The outermost lodge of the city appeared through the pines. Beneath its eaves, women were waiting. They looked up, their eyes lit up with fear, and they fled like leaves driven before a storm.
Keshlik’s heart pounded. His spear was ready. The strength of Golgoyat was in his blood, and the fury of the thundercloud was on his lips. He screamed, and his spear found its first victim.
Chapter 6
Saotse
The voices in the lodge whispered like dying men’s breaths, and beneath them pounded the ragged heartbeat of the drums, the warning drum on the wall meeting the mourning drum in the lodge. The air shivered with plaintiveness and urgency.
Uya and Saotse huddled on a bench. Uya squeezed Saotse’s hand and stroked the back of her palm in nervous inattention. Around them floated the scraps of the rest of the enna’s conversation, underlaid by the droning of the women who continued the mourning song.
“They all ride horses, they say. Big, vicious horses, bigger than ours—”
“It must hold. There’s no way they could breach that wall—”
> “The drums, the drums. I wish they’d stop—”
“At least we’re far from the fighting.”
Through the flux of human voices, the Powers stirred. The little spirits of the rivers, trees, and winds danced in the air, anxious and wordless. Above them, the greater Powers sang, growing more discordant by the minute. Saotse pled silently, hoping to touch one of those whose names she knew, hoping at least to know that they were present, but she met only a vast and angry darkness, before whom all the other Powers churned like a gale. In desperation she sought even the weeping Power, the one whose touch had stricken her so terribly when she went to the wall, but she was too distant to hear.
Uya sighed and pinched Saotse’s hand. “I hope this is over soon.”
Saotse squeezed Uya’s palm again. Something helpful, something hopeful should be said. She tried to think of it, but every word that came to mind was a lie. She was saved by Uya’s sudden twitch.
“Om! The baby kicked again. It’s been trying to tickle my kidneys all morning.”
“At least it’s well.”
“I won’t be well until we’ve finally driven back these raiders.”
Saotse drew in her breath. A rumble murmured outside the lodge. “Do you hear that?”
“No. Oh, wait—”
The voices in the lodge petered out as the commotion grew outside. A tough, strangling silence rose, thick with fear.
The sound of rustling furs announced Nei rising to her feet. “Look out the door, Chrasu,” she rasped.
The boy’s feet pounded against the floorboards. The fear in the lodge stretched as taut as a thread before it snapped. Chrasu gasped.
“There are horses,” he said. “Horses, hundreds of them coming up from the south, and men with bloody spears and—”
The lodge erupted into a cacophony of shouting voices. The sound hit Saotse like a fist. The room seemed to spin, words leaping in every direction through the air, giving her nothing to seize for direction or meaning. Uya pulled her to her feet, shouting something incomprehensible.
Nei’s voice split the chaos like a knife, hard and sharp with authority. “Stop! Chrasu, they come from the south?”
“Yes, Eldest, and quickly!”
“On horses?”
“Yes!”
“Then bar the door. Don’t let them in. Bring the knives from the chest. If anyone tries to come in, we’ll fight.”
The room shifted into nervous action. The hasty prodding of their aunts shuffled Saotse and Uya toward the center of the room and tucked them onto a bench with Nei. Around them pattered tense footsteps underlined by whispers.
Something pounded at the door.
The lodge was silent. The pounding sounded again, and brutish male voices shouted incomprehensible words. The cedar planks of the door held, and the leather hinges barely budged. The voices outside said a few more words then seemed to fade.
A few moments of audible movement followed, then the sounds of their horses retreated. The sound outside died down, except for the continuing, far-off thunder of hooves. No one moved in the lodge.
“Did they leave?” Uya whispered.
Saotse tasted the air. “Worse.”
The others sensed it a moment after her. Smoke.
The enna burst into movement. Shouts crossed the lodge as the women searched for the source of the fire. Saotse drew closer to Uya. If the fire could not be smothered, they would need to run, and soon. She wrapped her hand around Uya’s.
“Quiet,” Nei shouted. The smoke was beginning to choke the air. “Saotse, is there anyone still outside? Lying in wait at the door?”
She rose to her feet and felt forward with her toe.
“Let me help you.” Uya laid her hand on Saotse’s shoulder and gently steered her through the crowded bodies of the rest of the enna.
She smelled the old cedar of the door beneath the smoke, and she pressed her ear against the soft, worn-down grain of the wood. Silence. Hoofbeats, but far away, and no voices nearby. Her breath hissed out between her teeth. “No. They lit the fire and left.”
“Then we flee. To the north, across the bridge. Now listen, children! If you see an unmolested lodge, take refuge in it. Otherwise, we’ll try to reach the earthworks. Powers have mercy on us.”
“But Eldest,” one of the aunts said. “That’s where the battle is.”
“The battle is also here, it seems. And we would be better off closer to the men with arms. Now drop everything and follow.”
Uya pulled Saotse into her chest, her belly bumping against Saotse’s hip. “Stay close to me. Hold my hand.”
The lodge was like a tumbled basket as Uya pulled Saotse through it. All the aunts and cousins jostled around them, Nei’s voice slashing through the chaos. Saotse’s feet didn’t find any of their familiar places. Wasn’t the bench supposed to be three steps further to the left? But her shin knocked against it anyway. The voices of the panicked women bounced off the walls in weird and impossible ways.
How long could it possibly take them to get out? Yet it seemed as if Saotse followed Uya for hours while the enna pressed its way through the door, until at last she tripped over the threshold. Someone caught her—she felt Oire’s broad, firm hands.
“Thank you, Oire,” she said. “Where is Uya?”
“I’m right here, Saotse,” Uya said from just to her right, and she seized Saotse’s wrists again. “Follow me.”
She pulled Saotse over paths that should have been familiar but seemed as twisted and warped as the lodge had been. The Powers all around her were strange, their movements drunken, and they pressed against her as if to suffocate her. She heard the cries of more women from their enna ahead and Nei scolding someone else for falling behind.
“Do you see?” Chrasu called out. Screams answered him.
“What is it?” Saotse asked. “What do they see?”
“Horses,” Uya said between heavy breaths.
Saotse realized that Uya was tiring quickly. She was close to childbirth, and she was no more ready to flee than Saotse was.
And then she smelled them. The aroma of grass and animal sweat and manure, and the tang of blood and smoke.
Their hooves battered the earth, and screams and ululations followed them. They were coming. They were a multitude—could the others actually see how many there were?—but Saotse only heard them, and what she heard was a vast and furious army, implacable and unstoppable. The crackle of fire grated in the distance. Uya had Saotse’s hand and nearly stumbled.
“Run!” Nei demanded, a few steps behind them.
“Faster, Uya!” Oire prodded. “Can’t you see them coming?”
“I can, Mother, but—” Her breath was coming in fits like gusts of wind, but she kept moving, and Saotse ran to keep from falling behind.
They reached the footpath that led to the bridge and into the heart of the city. The hard-packed dirt of the path slapped against her feet, and she counted paces as the rumble of horses’ hooves grew behind them. She ran, though her old bones protested and her heart complained.
Beside her Uya cried. “It’s no use.”
She felt the trembling of the ground as the horses thundered by, the hollering of their riders blotting out all other sound. Behind them, a scream—two, three—the gurgle of blood-filled throats, and the sound of bodies hitting the ground.
Uya screamed, but not the scream of death. “Nei!” She dropped Saotse’s hand. “Nei! No, Nei!”
“Leave her!” Oire shouted, a pace ahead of them. “Get to the trees, Uya!”
Saotse couldn’t hear where Uya had gone. The screams and the horses confused all the sounds and distances. “Uya! Please, where are you?”
Uya and Oire’s voices clashed and muddled.
“Nei! Nei! I’m right here, Saotse. Just wait—”
“—Leave her, Uya
! She’s gone, and we have to get to the trees, their horses won’t—”
“—Can’t leave her!”
“They’re coming back. Run!”
The charge that had passed them the first time was returning. The thundering of their hooves grew louder; the cries of their warriors pierced the air like arrows. The ground seemed to roll under her feet. She began to crawl toward the sound of Uya’s voice.
Oire’s hands seized her by the shoulders and wrenched her around. “The woods are that way, straight ahead. Can you go? Can you keep a straight line? It’s only a hundred yards.”
“But what are you and Uya doing?”
“We’ll be behind you as soon as I pull her off Nei. Go!” She gave her a gentle push.
For a heartbeat, Saotse was paralyzed with fear and doubt, but she would obey Oire, Oarsa help her. She crawled forward and plunged into short, hard grass that scratched her palms. Behind her was a maelstrom of screams and shouts.
Straight ahead. Straight ahead. One hundred yards was how many paces? But she couldn’t count paces while she was crawling.
The ground under her palms dropped away into a little depression, a tiny hollow in the earth, and she pitched forward, scraping her forearms against the weeds. Which way was forward now? Her head had turned in the fall. All she could hear were horses and yelling and—
The horses were coming. The pounding of the hooves was close, too close. They’d be on her in moments. She flattened herself against the earth.
The ground around her roared with hoofbeats, and the air was suddenly thick with warriors’ wails and the stench of furious mares. For a moment, all was confusion and movement, then she heard their cries receding again on the other side.
They had galloped right over her.
They must have thought she was dead, or maybe they couldn’t be bothered to cut down a helpless old woman. But she was alive. Now she had to move.
She wobbled to her feet, crouched low, and charged recklessly ahead, not caring whether she was following Oire’s directions. Away from the line of battle, that was all that mattered. Her hands and feet stung with scratches from thorns and burrs. She stumbled into a dip but clung to her balance and continued to run. Her hands stretched in front of her in the desperate hope that she would feel the needles of the pines before she crashed into a trunk.
