Pekari -The Azure Fish

by Guenevere Lee

WAR IS COMING

  The higher they climbed, the colder it became. Tersh hated leaving their fire in the mornings, even though the embers were burned down and could no longer give off much heat. Tuthalya laughed at her, remarking that complaining did little to melt the snow.

  “The Matawega are born with ice in their veins. We feel no cold. Whisperers are all fire; you can’t survive in the mountains.”

  “I thought the snow was melting,” Tersh said through chattering teeth.

  “Yes, melting,” Tuthalya agreed. “Melting is not melted. The cold will bite until summer.”

  Summer. And how many turns of the moon was that? The only thing that urged Tersh on was the thought that once she finished with this damn mountain and their damn kings and queens, she could go back to the hot sand, the fiery embrace of Ka’rel, and the warm laughter of her children. For now, she scraped at the ice that formed on her cloak every night, wrapping it tighter around herself.

  She bundled up her skins and grabbed her spear. There was a notch in the middle where she’d blocked a sword the night she had been ambushed and was saved by Tuthalya. She had patched it the best as she could, filling the open space with mud and wrapping leather tightly around it. It would be a shame to lose the weapon. Ka’rel had handed her the spear the night she had left him. She didn’t remember much of what was said between them, but she remembered his words as he stamped the spear into the sand before her.

  “Come back alive.”

  They continued along the jagged rocks on the mountain pass. The pass was wide but not well-kept. Often, they had to maneuver around piles of rocks, which had fallen in landslides. Tuthalya explained how sometimes the changing temperatures caused the mountains to crack and fall to pieces. Whenever they made camp Tuthalya made sure there were no outcroppings above that might crush them as they slept.

  The pass zigzagged up the side of the mountain, and sometimes they could see Hattute beneath them—the many rivers connecting and forming the Hiperu and the grasslands that stretched out to the horizon. She was sure if they were high enough, and the sky was clear enough, they would be able to see the city of Nepata. Sometimes, she was compelled to stop and stare. She had never seen a sight from so high before.

  “I think we’ll start the descent today,” Tuthalya remarked.

  “Descent? I thought Nesate was high in the mountains.”

  Tuthalya chuckled. “Yes, it is, but you must go up and over several mountains, through valleys, and over peaks. You will see. There are a thousand thousands mountains. This is only the first descent.”

  They reached the peak before midday, and finally, Tersh saw the countless tips of mountains that were far taller than the one they’d climbed, laid out in several jagged rows. Behind them, to the east, was only flat grassland, but before them, to the west, was a seemingly endless mountain range. These were the Kerlra Hal’gepe, Tersh reminded herself, the Teeth of the Gods, and they only stood on a single tooth. She squinted, trying to see the valley below.

  “Is Kuwana Tak at the bottom?”

  Tuthalya smiled. “No, it will be a few days before we reach the first great valley.”

  “Or the last great valley,” Tersh suggested, and when Tuthalya looked confused she added: “When I come back this way, it will be the last great valley I pass through.”

  Tuthalya’s smile widened, and Tersh could see his white teeth beneath his greying goatee.

  Tersh had assumed the descent would be easier than the climb, but it made her feel uneasy. Too often the remains of rockslides forced them to walk along the edge, which fell away into mist, and she would cling to the wall of the mountain, her legs shaking and her head feeling dizzy. The heights obviously did not bother Tuthalya. He would whistle as they walked and skip from one rock to the other while Tersh crawled along on her knees.

  “You’ve taken this pass many times?” Tersh asked during one particularly narrow edge, trying to take her mind off the tiny pebbles that kept tumbling over and disappearing from sight.

  “Oh, a few times.” Tuthalya patiently waited on the other side of the rock pile, where the pass opened up again. “I used to bring the sheep to Hattute every summer with my family. You remind me of them.”

  “Your family?” Tersh asked, her breathing increasing as one of the boulders rocked beneath her.

  “No, the sheep.”

  Tersh grit her teeth and finally made it to Tuthalya. She looked at the rockslide angrily. “How does anyone herd anything through this damn pass?”

  “When the armies come through, they clear the rocks away. I was still a babe in arms the last time a true army marched through this pass, when the…Queen tried to take Hattute. The armies plundered all our crops and slew more animals than we could spare. We had a famine for two years after that march. And it did no one any good when she made it to the city only to find two kings, one claiming Hattute and the other Nesate, nestled safely behind their walls,” Tuthalya shrugged. They continued walking down.

  Tersh tried to imagine an army trying to take Hattute from the mountains. The mountain pass from the city had a large gated wall, and it was far too narrow to house a powerful host of soldiers. They would have had to take a different pass, one that led to the grassy fields around the city.

  “Why did the attack fail?”

  “I’m not sure how long the siege lasted,” Tuthalya scratched his beard as he thought, “but they couldn’t break the walls, and they couldn’t afford a long siege, so they took their army and ran back to Nesate.”

  “So while you were a soldier, your army never marched anywhere?”

  Tuthalya laughed. “Not my army, the kings’ army. No, we never marched. All Matawega become soldiers at some point in their lives. But the kings are not ready to march, not until the moment is right.”

  “Maybe you’ll have peace instead,” Tersh smiled at the sudden thought that maybe this civil war was part of the reason she’d been sent here. End this civil war and turn to the old ways. Perhaps if the kings and queens did not listen, she was meant to find another way to bring peace to this land.

  Tuthalya only laughed. “There is no peace here. Maybe they don’t march their armies these days, but they fight by…less noble means.” Tuthalya cleared his throat and spit over the edge. The motion made Tersh’s stomach turn and she went closer to the safety of the mountain wall.

  “Why leave Hattute then?” she asked, looking up at the cloudy sky, trying to steady herself.

  “Soldiering is no life. I want a family, so I will go back and become a sheep herder and have a wife and fat babies and hopefully die in my bed and not on the bloody walls of Hattute.”

  Tersh nodded. That made sense to her. Children were more important than wars. “And…will you start your family right away, or—?”

  “Or?” Tuthalya looked at her curiously.

  “It’s only, Kuwana Tak is not Nesate, and I must reach Nesate.”

  Tuthalya nodded. “Don’t worry about the second step before you finish the first,” he answered, but he gave no reassuring words.

  “Do you know the way to Nesate?” Tersh asked cautiously. She had learned long ago it was never good to appear too eager.

  Tuthalya nodded, pushing a few loose rocks over the edge with his foot. “I do.”

  Tersh weighed her options in her mind. She could try to persuade him with gold and jewels, but a man returning home after long years away, a man with thoughts of family on his mind, might not be drawn away by the promise of trinkets, and Tersh really only had a paltry assortment of rings and bangles. Not to mention, Tuthalya seemed the type who was too proud to accept gold over family. Then she remembered what Tuthalya said about the mountain lion.

  “It gets colder every day,” Tersh said, pulling her cloak about her, hoping to get him to focus on how cold he was.

  “The higher we go, the colder it gets,” he smiled, “but the further we descend, the warmer it will be. The valleys are high but protected. It will be warm in Kuwana Tak.”

&
nbsp; “Yes, but until then…” Tersh tried to make herself shiver, chattering her teeth loudly. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a few more skins at night?”

  Tuthalya looked at the Whisperer thoughtfully. “It would be nice. If we see a mountain lion, you should prove just how nimble you are with that spear of yours.”

  “And if I do?” Tersh tried to keep the smile from her face, but it crept to the sides of her mouth ever so slightly.

  “You really think you can kill a mountain lion?” Tuthalya laughed.

  “Sure, why not?” Tersh shrugged as though the matter were unimportant.

  “I’d like to see that.” He shook his head, clearly not taking her seriously.

  “How about a wager?”

  Tuthalya paused thoughtfully. “All right. If you can kill a mountain lion and give me its pelt, what is it you want in return?”

  “Show me the way to Nesate.”

  “I can write it down for you.”

  “No.”

  “My maps are very good,” he smiled reassuringly. “Honest.”

  “No. Guide me there.”

  “A pelt is not much to be your guide through armed mountains. You forget I worked for the queens’ enemies. They will not smile to have me in their valleys.”

  “Not just the pelt. Don’t forget all the meat underneath.”

  Tuthalya’s smile widened. “If you give me the meat and the pelt, I promise you will have a guide to Nesate.”

  Tersh narrowed her eyes uncertainly. “A guide? Not you?”

  “Come now. I am finally going home. I can’t promise myself to you, no matter how tasty the reward. Accept what I can give you. I promise someone will take you to Nesate.”

  Tersh thought a moment longer. Someone else might not be trustworthy, someone else might take her a little ways into the mountain just to rob her—or worse. Then again, there wasn’t much reason for her to trust Tuthalya either. Tuthalya had saved her from the men who had attacked her before winter, but that didn’t mean Tuthalya would always be willing to risk his life for the Whisperer, or even care about her well-being.

  “All right,” Tersh stopped walking, holding her hand out to him. “The wager is set.”

  Tuthalya stopped smiling and looked grim as he clasped arms with the Whisperer, perhaps too tightly. “Be careful Rattlecloak, you can make wagers with me all you like, but the lion’s claws are sharp, and its belly is hungry.”

  They made camp when they reached the end of the descent. The sun was setting and Tuthalya didn’t want them to be climbing when night fell. The pass was treacherous in the shadows, but deadly in the dark. There were enough tough bushes along the pass to make a fire every night, though having not hunted, they were still eating the dried meats and pickled vegetables they had brought with them. Tersh lay down under her cloaks, trying to get close to the warmth, and stared up at the night sky.

  The next day, they took a break before the next ascent to hunt—though not for a mountain lion, but a goat. The animal was nearly the size of the horses in Mahat, only covered in white shaggy fur, its head crowned with two thick curving horns. It stood slightly downhill from them, happily munching on a thick, thorny bush. Tersh crawled out onto an outcropping, her spear strapped to her back.

  Throwing a spear wasn’t just about aim. Anyone could hold a spear correctly and line it up with their target. What made a good spear throw was the strength in one’s arm. She needed to make sure the spear’s tip would cut through skin and muscle and make its way into the organs. If the spear didn’t go deep enough, the prey would run. Even wounded, it might escape.

  Tersh stood. She had to be slow and very quiet. She was a little above the munching goat, but should she make any sudden movement or sound the animal would notice her and gallop away as gracefully over the boulders as Tersh could only be over flat land. She would never be able to chase it down.

  She gripped her spear tightly and pulled back her arm, remembering two full cycles practicing with a spear nearly every day—usually on much smaller targets. She threw it, grunting with exertion. The goat looked up, startled, but it was too late to bound away. The spear found its mark, entering the neck, the tip emerging with a gush of blood, and the shaft becoming stuck halfway through. The goat made a gurgled choking sound, then fell over, its legs thrashing. It breathed only a few moments longer and became still.

  Tersh carried the bloody carcass over her shoulder. She tried to angle the neck away from herself, but blood ran down one of her legs, soaking her bindings. She left a single bloody footprint for every two steps she took. Tuthalya had made camp a little way downhill, and laughed merrily as Tersh threw the goat down by the fire.

  “I do believe roasted goat will go quite nicely with my lion,” he remarked cheerfully.

  “Lion meat I promised you, not goat,” Tersh said simply, as she began to skin the animal.

  Tuthalya kept laughing, but narrowed his eyes slightly. “You are careful with your wagers, aren’t you?”

  Tersh did share the goat, though. Tuthalya helped her skin and cut the meat. They threw away the hide, and some of the meat went right onto the fire for an evening’s roast, but most of the goat was cut into strips to dry or was covered in salt and wrapped as a meal for another day. Much to Tuthalya’s surprise, Tersh also took an empty water skin and filled it with the goat’s blood.

  “You are a strange people,” Tuthalya remarked, shaking his head in wonder.

  The next day as they walked, Tersh kept sprinkling the blood on the path they took, and a few times she took some of the meat and left small pieces behind. She was leaving a fine trail anyone, or anything, could follow. In the evening, they made camp and settled in for the night.

  The mountains were as black as the sky, so it looked as though someone had ripped jagged pieces out of the starry cloth. It made Tersh feel as though the stars were somehow closer, as though they were something small she could reach out and grab, like an Ancestral Cloak made from beads of light instead of bones. She loved watching them as she fell asleep and always hated to close her eyes, but the stars always seemed to hypnotise her into sleep.

  She was just drifting off when two stars seemed to break off from the sky and move over the darkness of the mountain. It took a moment to realize the moving stars were not silvery and sparkling, but a sort of shifting amber, and although they moved, they stayed perfectly parallel to each other. Eyes, she realized. They were eyes, staring at Tersh from a distance—the eyes of a great big cat reflecting the dying firelight of their camp.

  A brief feeling of fear rose up in her half-asleep mind, but then suddenly, the eyes disappeared. The cat must have turned away. Tersh was fully awake then and kept staring at the spot where they had disappeared, but they never came back, and soon, she fell back asleep.

  When they awoke the next morning, Tersh said nothing about the eyes in the dark, but as they made their way up the zig-zagging mountain climb, Tersh kept looking back to see if a lean, sandy cat was following them, continuing to sprinkle the goat’s blood on the boulders, though she only caught sight of black rocks and the distant white figures of mountain goats.

  As they made camp the next night, Tersh made a point to stay up a little later, her eyes scanning the dark cliffs surrounding them. She had nearly settled down to sleep, beginning to feel reassured of their safety, when she saw the eyes again. They were closer than the night before. Tersh could make out the shape of them, though they were still too far off to be a real threat. Still, the doubt was gone. Even when the eyes eventually disappeared again, she knew. They were being hunted.

  “I’ll kill the lion today,” Tersh said to Tuthalya as he woke up the next morning.

  Tersh had already broken her fast on bread and salted goat and had wrapped her skins up tightly. She stood by the dead fire, holding her spear firmly in her hand, her eyes set on the place where the pair of starry eyes had disappeared the night before.

  “The lion?” Tuthalya’s voice had the gruffness of morning, and his eyes
were half-closed. He stretched under his heavy wool blanket, yawning. “What under the Moon God’s gaze are you talking about? What lion?”

  “The lion that’s been following us,” Tersh’s face was stern.

  Tuthalya sat up, still rubbing one eye. “You mean there was a lion stupid enough to follow your little bloody trail?”

  “All beasts are stupid,” Tersh smiled.

  “Ah,” Tuthalya grinned. “You think mountain lions are stupid? You’ll end up dead if you think so.”

  “Don’t forget,” she pointed her spear at Tuthalya, “I bring you its pelt, and you bring me safe to Nesate.”

  “And its meat. Don’t forget the meat.”

  In the desert, they hunted lizards and big scavenger birds. Hunting those meant you had to be able to, as the saying went, hit the jasper in the sand dune. Hunting a big cat was different. Before you could be accepted as a great hunter or a chief, you had to kill one of the great cats. Either the leopard in Mahat, the jaguar in the Grey Mist of the jungle, or the mountain lion in the Kerlra Hal’gepe.

  When she was still a girl, living in the Sea Mahat, one man decided to hunt the leopard. Tersh and other children her age had followed him from a distance, even though their parents had told them to keep away. This was a sacred moment for the man. They didn’t care. They had all made spears of their own, small sticks with barely sharpened ends, dreaming they might see and kill a leopard of their own.

  They watched in eagerness every time the man found some trace of the leopard, and they would go and look at what he had found once he had moved on. A patch of trampled grass, trees that bore claw marks, or four-toed paw prints in tracks of mud. The children had been giggling and playing hunter right up until the man had found the leopard. They had watched from the treetops, silently cheering the man on.

  In the end, the leopard wounded the man and ran away, and the man limped back towards the tribe, his head hung in shame. The other children ran back ahead of him, bored with the game. Tersh was the only one still around when the man stopped walking, leaned back against a tree, and closed his eyes. Tersh watched in confusion as blood pooled around him and his breathing stopped.