“That is all?” Adria frowned. “Are you certain? Did... he give you some kind of... signal?” There was not a good translation for what she meant.
“I walked with him awhile, and he said nothing more,” Mateko answered. “Finally, I thanked him for his message and made my way here to scout, as Watelomoksho had asked me.”
“Came here? You went ahead of Tabashi?”
Mateko shook his head, not understanding. “Tabashi was going northwest, and very quickly. I had to turn east to make it here.”
Adria blinked several times, also not understanding. That is why the ground is undisturbed, she realized. The swords were already buried here.
She tried to formulate some sort of logic in her mind, imagining Preinon and Tabashi planning the whole scenario ahead of time, like some joke at her expense. But it didn’t sound quite right.
Perhaps the Moresidhe have… prophets. Perhaps they knew, well before he did, what Preinon would ask. Perhaps he already knows where and when we will meet.
Adria shivered, then pushed the possibilities from her thoughts and focused on the present.
“Thank you, Mateko,” she said simply.
He bit his lip, tilted his head, and looked up at the sky, hoping to find the half-remembered Aeman answer among the budding stars.
“You are welcome,” she whispered.
“Yu ah hwekomuh,” he repeated as best he could, then asked, “What does this mean?”
Adria smiled, thoughtfully. “Actually, it means ‘I am happy for you to be here.’”
“That doesn’t make much sense.” He shook his head, incredulous. “The people of your birth speak a strange language.”
“True,” she admitted. “But... much of what we say would sound strange to an Other.”
She thought of Tabashi all that day, as well as Mateko, while they went about separate tasks. Finally, that night, when the last watch had settled, they had a few moments to speak together again, after the late meal, while others told stories or chatted among themselves.
“There is something I have been wondering...” she began. They sat beside each other — close, but not so close that anyone gave them knowing looks. Adria had learned that lesson quickly.
“Tell me what you wonder,” he said. They watched the fire or others around it as they spoke, though she liked to look at him whenever his eyes turned away. But now, she had more serious thoughts.
Strangely, Adria only then knew what she was going to say. She pictured her tent flap opening into sunlight, and...
“Last night I dreamed of fire, and of smoke, and of falling into water. Of a black tree and of crows.”
He blinked several times, and looked away into the fire.
I understand... she realized. I cast my bow into... Mateko was the one to…
“You... saw the last Sun Dance,” she realized aloud, nervously. He did not react with alarm, so she continued. “You were there when my father came with his Hunters, at the first great slaughter of the People. You swam across a lake where arrows fell, and if you turned and looked back, you may have seen Fire Heart himself die upon my father’s sword, upon the Holy Tree. You... might have seen the flames, and the smoke...”
“It is true,” Mateko nodded sadly, glancing her direction briefly, then back to the fire.
“So then I must ask you, Mateko…. do you want revenge?”
He drew his knees up and rested his chin upon them thoughtfully, nodding as he considered her question.
“What is revenge?” he asked finally, frowning and turning to meet her eyes. “Does it mean I should kill? Whom should I kill? There were... so many soldiers... How many should I kill? How many would be enough? I have hated your father, it is true. I have feared the Others. But I would not become one of them to destroy them.”
Adria shook her head, a little awed, a little embarrassed now that she had even asked the question, but he turned and leaned over to catch her eyes again, smiling.
“This is why tribes are turned one upon another and destroyed. This is why the people of your birth live behind walls and in fear. If we take one life, they will take three, and we will take five, and, more... and... more... Is it not so?”
“I don’t know the path. I don’t see the ends.” She shrugged. “I am torn, always, in waking and in dreams. I have had to choose between my father and my uncle, between the Others and the People. And now, there are Runners and there are Hunters in Rows.”
“You think strangely sometimes, Lilene...” he said, smiling again in the firelight. “You have mastered the bow and both blades. You can weave baskets and you clap to the music of drums. And still, you forget you have two hands.”
She blinked, and then laughed. “Is that Shísha speaking with your mouth?”
He frowned with exaggerated indignity. “I have grown wise while you’ve been running about making armies.”
Adria only smiled, then grew overwhelmed, and embraced him suddenly, with a bit more than friendship affection, and no matter who was watching.
For the rest of the season, their camps were fireless, as they stalked back and forth along the border like impatient wolves, making every effort to hide their movement. Rain came, dampening spirits and making the balmy nights even that less hospitable.
Preinon tried for some days to maneuver his army into a striking position, but with little success. It was chess on a grand scale, and coordinating his Hunters and the Runners in the forest against the opposing village militias and Knights on horseback — who held the advantage of mobility in the open fields and roads — proved rather more difficult than it had the season before.
Shísha’s appearance, then, reinvigorated their efforts, and even Preinon, despite their disagreements, gave a steady smile when a scout brought word that she had set up camp nearby.
“She reads the signs before I do. Guesses storms from the sounds of the birds. Thunderheads, hoof beats, marching Knights.” Preinon nodded, considering the message Mateko brought to him from the Lichushegi. “I envy her vision.”
“She watches the Others still?” Adria asked. “I did not think she would support this plan.”
“I asked her to. She respects that I bury my pride, and answers what I ask,” he answered, shaking his head as he peered out into the forest, as if trying to see through two miles of trees. “They are moving again. Two ways.”
Adria nodded and sighed.
“They seem to know when and where we would strike,” she said, and she remembered Tabashi’s seeming prescience. Still, she said nothing more.
“I know,” Preinon replied. “At first, I believed there to be a spy among us, as impossible as it seems. Now, I think they simply have changed commanders, and this new one knows how to move his contingents and deploy his scouts better than those we have faced before him.”
A stalemate is the perfect game, she thought, but instead asked, “Are you better than this enemy, Uncle?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “He is good, but eventually he will make a mistake.”
“Perhaps it is a woman,” she smiled, half-joking, and half wondering if a Sister might be leading them. ...or assisting somehow, she considered. Even as Shísha assists us. It is said that Taber knows the future, after all. I did not believe as a child, and yet, now…
He shook his head after a moment. “This one thinks like a man.”
Adria flushed, though she wasn’t entirely certain why.
Shame? she wondered. Anger?
Regardless, their conversation changed as others approached.
The Hunters are all men now, she reminded herself.
While the army was on the march, Adria and Mateko saw each other only seldom, and almost never alone. Though she felt they needed to speak privately about their growing affection, she was also glad the conversation had to be delayed. She felt guilty for it, but nonetheless enjoyed ente
rtaining the possibility of love.
When she had maintained her distance from others, she had only felt a mild desire for such physical affections. But as soon as he... she struggled to give thoughts to her feelings. As soon as we kissed, I very nearly forgot who I was, who we are.
“But... I am forsworn,” she told herself, and forced her thoughts to still, then, as she stared at the rain-soaked hide flap of her tent and tried to sleep — tried not to keep thinking of the ends of things.
As the days passed, and the pace of their movement grew more hectic, relations more strained, Adria felt more and more divided. Two hands or not, she felt stretched, each hand holding on to one of two extremes — Runner and Hunter, Aeman and Aesidhe, and the ideologies of Shísha and Preinon.
She felt less and less at home as her time with the Hunters in Rows went on. Her place at her uncle’s side was accepted, even assumed, and she had trained with them — even trained some of them — and yet, she was still somehow on the outside.
New rites and ceremonials began among these Hunters, as the traditions of the People and the teachings of Preinon began to reconcile. Those Who Stood Above initiated these, not Watelomoksho, and Adria watched as several of them were brought into their ranks, through what was called Holo Waktoyayo, The Path of Thorns.
“When we meet the Others,” Lemanako said. “We will not fire an arrow then flee. We will not strike from the trees, unseen. We will stand against them, and defeat them in the open, and suffer their blades, their spears, and the hooves of their horses. We will learn pain in a new way, and hold despite this, for the sake of our brothers.”
And they learned this one step at a time. The new Shémaphho Chetopaya were sent to walk among brambles, among places where thorny vines hung thick between trees. Naked, they walked among them, slowly, without clearing the way, so that they were pricked and cut, step by step, and the pain and the blood lingered long upon their limbs.
“Now you stand above,” they were welcomed on the other side, and one among them with skill marked the breast of those who passed the trial with a quill and ink made from ash, tapping it, bit by bit, into the flesh of their chest, the shape of an eagle’s talon, a shadow of the Sun Dance which would never fade.
Not one among them failed the Path of Thorns.
Preinon was watching, as well, the first time Adria saw the marking done. She saw a shadow upon his face, but they did not speak of it.
And still, something in this appealed to her. Something in the ritual, the willingness to sacrifice what they had known, what they were, for the greater need of the People.
Would I leave them to save them, and is this path the same as leaving? she began to wonder. I have not chosen the Hunters above the Runners. They think I am here for my uncle and not for them. Can I blame them their lack of faith?
And except for Mateko, she felt certain that similar reservations were growing between her and the Runners, just as they seemed increasingly more uncomfortable with Preinon’s designs.
“He makes difficult choices with little counsel,” Chasebatu confided, after having reported from a scouting mission.
“I understand,” Adria nodded as she escorted him for a way as he left the camp. “He must react quickly to the enemy.”
Chasebatu nodded, but seemed unconvinced, though he embraced her as a friend in parting.
But then... if I am not convinced myself, why should I even try to convince him? Why apologize for Preinon, when I would yet change his mind instead?
It was not until the Runner had left her sight that she thought to tell him how much she missed his voice, his humor, his music. She nearly followed him.
“Come with me,” Preinon instructed just as Adria finished setting up her tent for the fifth time in as many days.
She nodded, shaking the joined branches at the front one last time to test their strength.
They did not walk far before the ground rose and the trees thinned, revealing a tall knot of a hill, bare and rocky above the surrounding landscape.
It seemed an afterthought, as if it had been left behind by the Steps of Amos, still more than a few miles to the north. With nothing but scrub to block the wind, the earth of the hill had eroded almost to its stony bones, providing a beautiful view and an ideal place of watch.
The river drew her attention first, running from the west parallel to the foothills, making its way east and a bit south to find the sea. Perhaps two miles north of the hill, an Aeman village lay upon the north riverbank, surrounded by fields on both the near and far side of the water.
Most of the summer fields were being harvested — probably oats. Others were plowed and ready for the planting of winter wheat. Most of those to the south of the river lay fallow. The village itself looked to be wood and thatched huts, though a small water mill lay beside a slender bridge across the river.
“It is called Palmill,” he answered. “They named it for the fog that clings to the river in the mornings. With any luck, it will prevent any of their scouts from seeing our advance.”
“We... attack them?” Adria shook her head. “...a border village?”
Preinon nodded, frowning. “There is a weakness in the line here. A single lance of Knights guards the village.”
“They are unaware of us?” Adria scanned the horizon more closely. To their right, downriver, Adria could just make out a shape in the haze which rose above the tree line. “That fort is much too far to be of any help.”
“Look to the left.”
To the north and west of Palmill, perhaps twenty miles distant, another fort rested against the foothills. And although a thick covering of forest lay between the fort and the village, Adria could just make out a break in the canopy at several points.
“Not as simple as it seems,” she nodded. “A road runs from that fort — likely several banners of Knights, perhaps a full squadron. A hundred armed and mounted men in all, maybe more.”
She shook her head, trying to penetrate Preinon’s logic. Although she felt motivated to argue outright, she kept her tone even. “We could take the village, but then what? Could we hope to hold it against a squadron of men-at-arms? Do you mean to take villagers prisoner... for ransom...?”
“We are going to make ourselves known,” he said quietly. “We have been the Wilding Ghosts that haunt their children’s dreams for too long. They will see our faces. They will learn that we are capable of war and not simply subsistence theft and resigned retreat.”
Adria shook her head as he finished his rhetoric, now ready to argue outright. “It is surely a trap. Once we secure the village, in two or three hours we are surrounded by violet and black...”
“Of course it is a trap,” Preinon nodded.
“If their commander is as good as he seems, why would he make a trap so obvious?”
“In order to gauge our reaction,” he said. “He is speaking to me. It is a nod of recognition, even an invitation... a challenge. He has taken our measure as we have taken his.”
He thinks of this war as a dialogue... and he makes it his own? But she said nothing. His face held such assurance, his voice. How can I speak against his pride and anger? How have they grown so strong? Is he so like my father?
“Could it simply be a gambit?” she wondered aloud after a moment. “Perhaps he is willing to sacrifice for position. If we take the offered pawn, he can maneuver behind us.”
“Into the forest? And go where? And regardless, it would not be a sacrifice but an exchange, for we will gain position as well.”
Adria blinked. “Perhaps, but only if we chose to... advance...”
He said nothing.
“Uncle,” she whispered ardently. “Making ourselves known is one thing, but... are you actually planning to advance?”
“I have not decided,” he answered, a bit too quickly. “Nevertheless, so long as he believes we are capable of advanci
ng, then he can be countered. We must take the bait. It is time.”
Adria swallowed and half turned away. He is lying, she realized angrily. He has decided. And he is well capable of making sacrifices himself. But am I ready to challenge him? Can I even challenge him alone, truly?
As she considered if and how she would respond, Adria followed the line of the river up to the mountains of its birth, over which the sun was already beginning to descend. There was another village of sorts further up, she remembered, really more like a series of camps nestled in the corner where the foothills joined the mountains themselves.
It was called Cloville, and here the Aeman mined for iron and harvested wood. They floated what they gathered down the river, beyond Palmill and east, to towns where it could be sold and cut into lumber or smelted into steal.
The Runners had worried for a time, as this settlement had grown significantly in the past year, but they were not yet threatening the nearest Aesidhe camp, Watemicha Teleniya, which lay further into the valley.
But the Knights had not yet felt the need to erect another fort. Mines did not always prove out, and the workers had not yet brought families to Cloville. There was not even a road to the settlement, though Adria knew the Knights could scramble along the foothills to protect it if need be.
Mateko had visited the Aesidhe camp earlier in the summer. It was one of few near the border which remained self sufficient, and he had admired the tenacity of the Watemicha Teleniya, who had resolved not to move, despite the urging of the Runners.
We would not even have urged the elders, Adria remembered. Except for the emergence of Preinon’s Hunters... the likelihood of escalating conflict.
“Have you spoken with Shísha?” She nodded resolutely, gaining some courage. “I think Metehãloweye will not be wholly in agreement with this plan.”
He said nothing for a moment, gave no expression. When he did speak, he was her teacher again. “Adria, you don’t need to hide your doubt behind the Runners or your Imatéli.”
Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Page 53
