by Hugh Cook
In the crowd, someone tittered.
'That's enough from you, whore,' said Chonjara. 'We can cut you open and rip you apart here and now.’
'We?' said Yen Olass. 'You and who else? How many others do you need to help you? I would've thought you could've managed on your own. After all, you managed all right in Mentigen.’
There was a roar of laughter from the soldiers. Yen Olass knew all the army gossip, including the rumour that a small tribe in Mentigen had made Chonjara stand at stud to a mare to save his life when he had been their prisoner.
Chonjara charged.
Yen Olass cowered down, as if in fear. Then snatched up a handful of mud and threw it. She ducked sideways as Chonjara kicked and flailed, fighting blind, bellowing, his eyes full of mud. Yen Olass took him from behind, her arm sweeping up between his legs. Crunching into his testicles. Lovely.
As Chonjara went down, Yen Olass followed through, putting in the boot. Then stopped, panting. Should she kill him? She wanted to, yes. But the army would feel obliged to destroy a woman who killed a man.
And if she let Chonjara live? Was the army ready to be persuaded that Chonjara was a fool, that Khmar would punish mutiny, that there was no evidence to condemn her?
'Take your boot off his throat,' said Volaine Persaga Haveros, stepping forward.
He looked ill; he was still shaking off the effects of the nataquat which had been used to drug him. But his voice, when he shouted, could be heard by everyone.
'There!' shouted Haveros, pointing at the looming mass of Castle Vaunting. 'That's the enemy. Armed men. Hundreds of them. But that's not all. Wizards. Three wizards have come from the south.
'So look at our heroes! Fighting in the mud! While up there -- power is gathering. Every hour we delay gives those forces more time to gather their strength. I've been there. I've seen them. I can name the wizards for you: Phyphor, Garash, Miphon.
'You think I came here from choice? To Argan, from choice? I could have fled to Ashmolea. Or to the Ravlish Lands. A hundred kingdoms would have hired my sword. But I came here. Because the Lord Khmar gave me my orders. Because he knows -- and you know, if you think about it. There's powers here which might be enough to finish us.
'That's why I came. Risked my life. Across the Pale, through the forest. Months here. Learning the castle, learning the ways. And now I'm here to tell your danger. And what do I find? Mud fighting! Over a woman. An army -- fighting over this. Over this?’
Haveros took hold of Yen Olass. She was wet, soggy, muddy, her hair bedraggled. Her furs, covered with mud,
emphasized the unyielding broad-shouldered bulk of her heavy-boned body, so typical of women of Skanagool race.
'What are you going to fight over next?' said Haveros. 'The local washerwoman? A sack of stinking fish?’
There was laughter. Haveros gave Yen Olass a little shake. She let herself be shaken, suspecting that he might be saving her life -- but she hated him all the same. She wished she could have been beautiful. And she wished she could have annihilated Haveros with a glance. And she wished she had taken her chance to kill Chonjara, who was now dragging himself up from the mud, slowly, painfully.
'The girl stays with me,' said Haveros. 'We can't have her running round on the loose, punching out our commanders. As for anything else . . . that can wait till we've taken the castle. We've got work to do.’
A siege marshal took the hint and lifted his voice in command. Slowly, the crowd began to disperse. Nan Nulador helped Chonjara away, and Lord Alagrace, his own authority at least partially restored, began to issue orders.
The army was functioning again; trampling horses, bootshod men, oxen, cartwheels and falling rain completed the transformation of the occupied ground into a quagmire. Preparations for a rapid attack got underway. The leadership crisis was temporarily resolved, and everyone was back at work.
And Yen Olass understood that Haveros had intervened precisely to obtain this result. It hardly mattered to him whether she lived or died, but he refused to allow the army to amuse itself at the expense of the business of war. In all the army, nobody cared about the ultimate fate of Yen Olass Ampadara: except perhaps Karahaj Nan Nulador.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The army was camped on open ground between the Hollern River and Castle Vaunting. This must have been a reasonably pleasant spot when the advance guard had arrived. Now that some five thousand men had trampled over it, dug holes and fireplaces, put up earthwork defences, unloaded carts and driven in hitching posts for oxen and horses, it looked ugly. The town of Lorford, just to the west, was now mostly burnt-out ruins; what remained was being demolished for firewood. Soldiers had already crossed the bridge leading north from Lorford to fell trees for extra firewood.
What would happen once Estar had been conquered and subdued? Yen Olass knew engineers and surveyors attached to the army were investigating the possibility of digging a canal from the Pale to the Central Ocean -- a canal right through Trest and Estar, so ships could journey from Tameran to the Central Ocean without daring the notoriously dangerous waters of the Penvash Channel. No doubt Estar would become a garrison town writ large, a chunk of territory consecrated to military use.
Yen Olass pitied the people who lived in Estar: but only a little. After all, they would be better off than the inhabitants of Monogail. The Yarglat had thought their land worthless, not worth a garrison, and Monogail had been depopulated. Which was why, whatever Yen Olass dreamed of, she never dreamed of going home: she had no home left to go to.
But she could not forget the cold northern wastelands of her childhood, and she could not help thinking how things would have been if the invaders had never come. Her people would have admired her black hair, her grey eyes,
her strong shoulders and her eloquent speech. They would have thought her an ideal woman, perceptive, intelligent, strong enough to master animals to her will, and properly padded against the winter cold.
She would have been reindeer woman by now, or maybe a mind-healer like her mother. In any case, she would have had her own grenderstrander and her own grey hunter. No cats, of course, not in Monogail (no cats, no trees, no apples, no snakes) . . . but she might have had a man. Or she might not -- it would have been for her to choose.
Above all else, she resented the loss of the right to choose. As an oracle, she had been a pivot, a device to insert into a deadlocked conflict to allow opposing forces the chance to move toward a mutually acceptable compromise. The Rule of the Sisterhood, though it had forbidden her many things, had protected her with a certain aura of holy mystery.
Now, it seemed her career as an oracle was over. The word had been spoken: 'dralkosh'. Just by saying that word, Chonjara had marked her. He had branded her. Haveros had saved her life, at least for the moment, but Yen Olass knew she would be risking her own destruction if she ever spoke again in public.
So what was she now? A slave, no more. If she managed to cling to Haveros, she might keep her life a little longer. If he died or gave her away or sent her away, then the best she could hope for was that someone would find her a useful object, to fetch and carry, to honour and obey, to worship and respect, to be mounted and fucked on demand, to bear children as her owner wished, or to be probed and aborted as he wished.
And if she stayed with Haveros, could she hope for anything better?
And even if the world forgot that she had been called a dralkosh, and even if (by a miracle) Haveros persuaded the Sisterhood and the Ondrask to renounce their claims to her life and her body -- would she be free? She would be free to beg, or starve, or live in rags and work as a washerwoman, or give herself to one man or many as a wife or a whore, meaning a slave for life or a day.
In the Collosnon Empire, women did not have their own choices or their own voices. The men were trained from their earliest days to be conquerors; they practised their skills on women at home, then went off to foreign wars to use their skills against outsiders, returning to their women with those skills now per
fected and in need of constant practice to keep them so.
Yen Olass knew her wit was a match for most men, and her strength a match for many. But she could not take on a whole society organized for conquest at home and abroad. She had won her fight with General Chonjara, but if Haveros had not stepped forward to end the matter, she might have lost. She might have mastered the crisis with her eloquence, if nobody opposed her. But a single shout -- 'Three cheers for the dralkosh', say -- would have been enough to have her torn to pieces.
No matter how strong she was, and no matter how intelligent, she was weak because convention was against her. She was a woman, hence, by definition, an object to be used in all those interesting ways men had invented.
In the Collosnon Empire, a man was a fish swimming down a great river, able to tap vast energies by a little intelligent navigation. Yen Olass, on the other hand, was a strange fish from a foreign sea, sheltering in the lee of a rock as she wondered if she could live long enough to force her way a little further upstream. Despite her intelligence and strength, she could not hope to outlast the river.
When Yen Olass dared to visit the translation section, it was made clear to her that her services were no longer wanted. She had expected this. Wiping someone else's spittle off her face, she grabbed her pack and fled.
Yen Olass stayed well clear of Lord Alagrace, who had endangered her life by his foolishness. Knowing the dynamics of ambition and hatred amongst the high caste warlords of the Collosnon Empire, Yen Olass expected that there would soon be a three-way power struggle for command of the army. Either Chonjara or Haveros would be the victor. Lord Alagrace would certainly lose, dying in a duel or a mutiny, unless he was murdered in his sleep.
Motivated by fear and necessity, Yen Olass did her best to play the woman's game and ingratiate herself with her rock, Haveros. She stayed in the background while he supervised the erection of a command tent for himself, and talked to those officers who came to greet him. There was not much Yen Olass could offer Haveros, but, once he was free of other concerns, she offered him what she had: the talking monster. To her disappointment, Haveros already knew about the Melski. So Yen Olass told him about Resbit. He laughed when she told him Resbit belonged to the prince of the castle.
'Someone's confused you,' he said. 'She's some woman one of the mercenaries used to sleep with. She's not important. But if you're worried about your friends, we'll bring them here.’
Yen Olass had not been worried at all, but supposed she should have been concerned, at least for Resbit.
'Not the monster,' said Yen Olass. 'We don't want a monster here.’
'You don't,' said Haveros, 'but I do. The Melski can be useful to us, if we treat them right. They'll work for us on the river, if we pay. If we use force they'll disappear into the wilds, never to be seen again. You say you can talk to this one?’
'It speaks Galish.’
'None of them speaks Galish,' said Haveros firmly. 'They've got their own language, which is all they speak.' 'This one is different.’
'Maybe so,' said Haveros. 'Or maybe it's a survival technique. Handy to know what people are saying when they don't think you can understand, yes?’
Yen Olass hastened to agree.
'Only I wouldn't think monsters had much trouble surviving,' she said.
'The water people are soft,' said Haveros. 'Let's go.’
And he went with her to the security section. Yen Olass expected that Resbit would be glad to see her. She looked for some sign of welcome when they entered the tent, but was not rewarded. When Resbit saw the state she was in -- Yen Olass had not had a chance to clean herself or her clothes -- she burst out laughing. Yen Olass was furious.
But fear replaced anger when she saw Haveros cutting the monster loose. Yen Olass, thinking that most unwise, backed away, measuring the distance to the exit.
'Don't be alarmed,' said Haveros. 'I know these people. Remember, I've lived in Estar for months. They're a peaceloving breed.’
'If you say so,' said Yen Olass, speaking in Eparget, which the Melski was most unlikely to understand. Then: 'Is it a he or a she, or is it an it?’
'A he,' said Haveros, slicing away a rope. 'The females are smoother, and they've got a slit between the legs like our own.’
'If it's a he, then where's its
'The male organ retracts when not in use,' said Haveros. 'They live much of their lives underwater, especially when they're young. They don't want dangling things for fish to bite at.’
Yen Olass laughed. The Melski now looked less like a monster and more like a sad and slightly ludicrous parody of a man. She was glad to have something to laugh at, was glad to have a little laughter to help occlude her stark vision of the use and abuse her world was going to make of her. Soon, given the chance, she would soothe herself with stories, and construct wishing-dreams in which she could take shelter; that would help keep her sane.
Haveros cut the last of the ropes free. The Melski tried to move, but could not. Resbit began to massage it limbs, working on it just as the Princess Quenerain had worked on Haveros earlier in the day.
Watching Resbit, Yen Olass felt, for the first time, some empathy with her. Now she realized why Resbit had laughed. She, too, was in an almost helpless position; she, too, needed some laughter to help her cope with the world. Tentatively, Yen Olass began to help succour the monster. Its flesh was unpleasantly rough and dry; maybe, as a water monster, its health required frequent dips in the river.
Soon the Melski could walk, and they all started out for the tent. On the way, Haveros began to ask the Melski questions about the last Galish convoy which had gone up the Hollern River toward Lake Armansis, far to the north in the Penvash Peninsular; at first he tried to use Yen Olass as a translator, but found his own Galish much better than hers.
Haveros had a small tent erected near his own for the use of Resbit and Hor-hor-hurulg-murg.
'Is it safe for a woman to sleep with a monster?' said Yen Olass.
'Melski males are incapable of sexual desire for human females,' said Haveros.
He was about to tell her more when he was interrupted by the arrival of a messenger.
'What is it?' said Haveros.
'Sir. The drawbridge had been lowered. An embassy is coming down the hill.’
Haveros acknowledged the message. Then he drew Yen Olass to one side and spoke to her quietly.
'The princess,' said Haveros.
'What about her?’
'You have to keep her away from me. When we meet this embassy--’
'I'm not coming! It's dangerous! People will spit on me and--’
'Hush,' said Haveros. 'You'll be safe. Everyone behaves themselves when the army meets an embassy. Besides, I'll be keeping an eye on you. Now, when we meet the embassy, warn the princess off if she comes near me.’
'Don't you want her?' said Yen Olass, hoping.
'Of course I want her,' said Haveros. 'But she has to be a little discreet. Take her aside and tell her so.’
So now Yen Olass knew why Haveros was being so good to her. She was going to be his mouthpiece amongst the women, bearing messages to the Princess Quenerain, arranging assignations, standing guard while Son-son stuck Suggy's teni with his slippery wet medi-vedi. Yen Olass saw it all. Still, as fates went, it was not so bad. Not bad at all, considering the alternatives.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The embassy consisted of one man, a hard-faced professional soldier who announced himself as Morgan Gestrel Hearst, son of Avor the Hawk, veteran of the wars of the Cold West, Chevalier of the Iron Order of the city of Chi'ash-lan, warrior of Rovac, dragon-killer and blood-sworn defender of the Prince of Estar, Johan Meryl Comedo.
'. . . in which capacity I claim the right to meet in combat the man I see there sitting amongst you, Volaine Persaga Haveros. Oathbreaker! Sworn to the service of the prince, he proves himself a liar, a trust-breaker, a traitor. If this assembly has any regard for its own honour, it will grant me his head, either by handing
it to me or by giving me the chance to take it, man against man, blade against blade.’
This, translated from Galish into Eparget for the benefit of Lord Alagrace, his senior officers and siege marshals and all their attendants and immediate subordinates, failed to make a stir. The Collosnon Empire, an immensely self-confident and self-absorbed organization, had little regard for the accusations and the histrionics of outsiders.
'This is not the time to challenge,' said Haveros, 'whatever the provocation. We should be talking terms. We can at least arrange for you all to escape with your lives.’
'Such generosity!' said Hearst, with a sneer, 'I don't require or desire any favours from you. Once you've bloodied yourselves against the castle walls, you'll start to get a better idea of what's yours to give and dispose of.’
