Savi snorted. ‘I am a chieftain’s daughter myself, with no need to kiss anybody’s pretty bum! And but for that last answer, high and mighty, I might have taken you by your long hair and shaken you!’
The girl turned away. ‘Your petty rank can hardly be compared with the serene blood of Chaquan. But you may address me as Lady Ulie, if you wish, respectfully.’
Savi lowered her voice. ‘I might be more respectful, my lady, if it wasn’t so obvious you wet yourself thoroughly a while back! Keep up a bold face, if you wish; but I don’t think it was for any fine treatment they spared you and I what they gave poor Kaqual. They don’t seem too worried about any troops following, either. More likely we’re to find ourselves under some hairy old high priest, or smoking on an altar. Best we accept that, and make common cause.’
The compressed lips, still reddened by bright salve at the corners, showed a sudden tremor. ‘But what can we do?’
Savi tried to collect her own panic-ridden thoughts. ‘Keep our heads. Find out more. Get around some of them, if we can. Captains, men who count.’
Ulie’s face crumpled. ‘Get around … You mean … but I am a virgin!’
‘So am I,’ sighed Savi; and again the image of Alya welled up in her mind. ‘Unfortunately. But better bed with a brute than be a baked offering. That’s what these folk go in for, at times. The lesser evil you might at least shake off, eventually.’
Ulie burst into silent shaking sobs. Savi sighed. So much for finding other strengths; she had only shattered what little this woman had. She did her best to comfort her. The princess’s skinny body, short on muscle, felt like a dry stick in Savi’s arms, slender though she herself was. More like a princess in a tale than a real ruler. No spirit. But then, neither had the rest, the village women.
Savi herself had never been so scared in her life; but something, somewhere seemed to be sustaining her. In part, the memory of her father; in part, sheer anger at the fate that had dogged her and others so cruelly. And the worry she could not dismiss was also, against all sense, an insistent source of hope. She found she could not abandon Alya to memory just yet. He was too alive for her; and perhaps, somehow, she might return to him still. Whatever it took, that she would do. When she thought of it like that, it almost made life simpler.
The ascending sun soon showed them that the Ekwesh had taken a new and more northerly direction. Savi, as usual thinking hard to keep down her fears, found herself puzzled. The raiders were riding as if they had something urgent to deliver, urgent and precious. Yet there were not that many of them, forty in all perhaps, a fraction of the whole band; and not that much booty – apart from the women. It was as if they themselves were the main point of these raids.
One thing soon became clear. They were following the wide river, very black and chill to look at, that flowed more or less southward, though from where and to where Savi could only guess. Towards midday they halted briefly, by a sheltered hollow on the bank. Reaching the bank seemed to please the raiders, who drank great toasts in captured wine and beer, as well as some thinnish grey mess of their own, that left them reeling merrily in their saddles when they started out again. Snatches of song ran along the line, and Savi was not too surprised to see the stinking hide cover flung open at the tail, and a leering guard climb into the cart, belching a gust of wine. She knew him, one of the men who had raped Kaqual and others. He floundered forward, and a lurch sent him on top of the princess, who pushed him off in a hysterical panic that would not have deterred a fly. But by chance she caught the man a sharp blow in one eye, knocking him sprawling back over Savi’s legs, howling with rage. He nursed the eye frantically for a few minutes, while the women shrank back. Savi struggled to push him off, back out over the tailboard, but the others were no help.
He recovered, still clutching his eye, glaring malevolently from the other. It lit on Kaqual. He lurched up and over her, hauling at her skirts as she tried to roll away from him, flinging her arms about and shrieking. Savi grabbed at the guard, but he lost patience suddenly and seized Kaqual by the hair, dragging her back to the tail with him. Savi and the princess were hauled along with her. He dropped back to the ground, trotting to keep up, and yanked Kaqual out after him. She landed on the rough road with her bare feet, stumbling to keep up, still screaming. Savi tried to haul her back in, the princess too; but the guard, springing up again to sit on the tailboard, knocked their hands away and drew his sword threateningly. Kaqual was forced to run at the pace of the cart. She managed it, but before long, inevitably, she began to trip and falter. With a sudden impatient laugh the guard lashed out a foot, and kicked the legs from beneath her. She fell flat, and Savi and Ulie were almost hauled out after her. Clinging to the tailgate, they saw her bounced and dashed over rut and rock, her head banging on the stones.
Suddenly a robed man drew his horse up beside the cart, and shouted something angrily at the guard. He leered and shrugged. Ulie screamed words, and the chieftain barked an order. Sullenly the guard reached down and hauled Kaqual up bodily, by the rope. He was not strong enough. In only those few minutes she had become a limp weight. Savi hauled as well, the princess tried to, and the other women joined in. Sagging and bloody, Kaqual appeared over the tailboard; but the guard lifted her head, and it flopped back loosely. The chieftain spat something at him, and he simply severed the waistrope. The girl dropped back from sight. Savi and the princess sprawled flat. The other women wailed, and the guard rounded on them furiously, as if it were their doing. Then he dropped back off the tailboard, and let the cover fall once again.
Savi found she was crying with both horror and sorrow, and also, to her shame, relief. She struggled to choke it off. But Ulie, strangely enough, sat silent. ‘You understand their tongue!’ said Savi. ‘What did that dog’s-head say?’
The princess shook her head, dazedly. ‘You would understand also, if you listen hard enough. It is much like yours or mine, but with an uncouth accent, and they do not use so many words. He said … he said she was more trouble than she was worth. And the chieftain told him that was not for him to decide, that women were urgently needed, young women, as many as possible – and virgins especially. Needed – needed by – there was a name, or a title … Needed. That was the word.’
‘Needed,’ repeated Savi. She hated to think what for. It seemed too close to her worst imaginings. But as her shock and grief subsided, her anger grew. If they were going to do something that terrible to her, then she could hardly make it worse, could she?
When they made camp that night, the women hardly moved, but stayed huddled together in the carts. Savi, though, insisted on going out to wash herself in the sandy shallows, and after a little hesitation managed to persuade the princess. Together they hauled the others, lamenting, out and down to the bank. The princess washed decorously, without removing any clothes; but despite the chill water Savi took her time, under the gloating looks of the guards.
When they went back to the cart a number of the younger men came idling around it; but Savi, sitting swinging her long legs from the tailboard, refused to give them so much as a glance, until she caught the glance of one in particular. He came sidling over at once, twirling his drooping moustaches and eyeing her sidelong, leering as widely as he had when he climbed aboard the cart. She hitched up her legs, slowly, and sent him an even slower smile. He looked this way and that, obviously petrified lest a chieftain see him. Savi shot him one more inviting look, and ducked back beneath the cover. Only seconds later there was a scrabble on the tailboard, and the guard was in among them once again. The women whimpered, but he snarled them to silence, tossed his sword against the tailgate, and made a clumsy grab at Savi.
‘If you untied me, we could be more alone!’ she cajoled him.
‘And I lose head!’ he hissed. ‘Don’t mind watcher! Show what they miss, hah?’
Savi curled her legs tight around him, and ran her hands across his broad back. Then, as he fumbled at his thick belt and between her legs, unable to manage
both at once, she locked her crossed ankles tight, made as if to pull at the loosening belt, and plucked his eating knife out of its scabbard. With a quick gasping breath she clutched it in both hands, and, shuddering, rammed it deep into the spot she had chosen.
The guard screamed like a baby in tantrum, and jerked upright, out of her grasp. His face scarlet and convulsing, he grabbed frantically at his back, over the kidneys, and fell backwards through the hide flap. Ignoring the horrible heat of the blood on her hands, Savi caught up the discarded sword and lunged out after him, dragging the others on their faces through the straw. The guard rolled off the tailgate on to his feet, staggering. Savi’s thrust took him below the breastbone, and he wheeled about, wrenching the sword from her fingers. He jerked the blade loose and slumped down against the wagon, doubling over and vomiting.
Her gorge rose, but she struggled to reach the blade. She managed it, and began to hack at the rope, but the row had drawn other guards. One ran up and smacked the hilt from her hand with the flat of his broad spearblade. Others seized her, hurled her down with spearblades at her throat. But at a sharp command they fell back, and the cold-eyed chieftain came striding over.
‘What has happened here?’ he demanded, in clear speech. He kicked the writhing man, who howled louder, then stared at her bloodied hands. ‘You, bitch! Did you do this?’
Savi sat up, none too eager to look. ‘He murdered one of my people, cruelly! I am a chieftain’s daughter!’
The guards threw back their heads and roared with laughter. The chieftain chuckled, more coolly. ‘Better you should have been his son! No man would have challenged you till you were old and grey. I was not wrong, it seems.’
‘You?’ she demanded. ‘Not wrong? How so?’
He contemplated her, with no intention of answering. His bored eyes sparkled with amusement. He dipped a finger in the spattered blood, and drew a second sign on her forehead. ‘Do not wash it off! Now,’ he said to the remaining guards, ‘fetter her with iron, but easily, padded.’ He kicked the dying man again. ‘To remind the new guard of his obedience, let him drag this carrion over to the marsh and sink it. I will have these women left in quiet by all, even chieftains.’
Savi picked herself up. ‘Give me back my sword, then!’
Again they roared.
‘No!’ The eyes narrowed, but not, as she thought, with wrath. ‘Take mine!’ The chieftain drew his short sword and tossed it to her.
Savi was so startled she nearly dropped it. But the guards laughed again as she seized it neatly by the hilt. It was a crude, weighty blade in dark pitted iron, of the kind called sax, single-edged save at the recurved point, and bright only along that edge. She hefted the sword under that cynical look, and found in it a kind of admiration, however distorted. She had no doubt this dead-eyed, depraved creature would have raped her, if he were free to, or worse. He had given her a sword mostly to discourage any further assaults. But his own? She had touched his humour, such as it was, and perhaps even some remnant of admiration.
Had she done right, if it pleased such a one?
She swished the heavy blade back and forth once or twice, surprised at the fierce joy she felt. She had never taken any delight in weapons, but in her present plight this felt as though it gave her back some fragment of herself. Even as they clamped an iron belt about her waist, binding it first in soft hide, she held herself proudly, and slapped away hands that probed too close. And when she was returned to the cart, the other women hugged her and wept, even Ulie. From that day forth she was their champion and chieftain; though the new guards, whatever their eyes held, kept their hands and all else strictly to themselves.
The sword was a support she needed; for as they journeyed on, at a cruel pace, across these wide lands, the country became so different from her own that it felt like another world. She saw less than she would have liked, for the guards kept the cart’s cover fastened now. Whether fearing escape or temptation, they were quick to thrust back anyone who looked out, and she could only spy about her by stealth, through the tiny gaps beneath the cover’s edge, or by their brief daylight halts. The world seemed to pass by in hurried glimpses.
The great cold river was always with them; when the road seemed to move away from it, it was only to return. Along its banks the scrubby trees gave way gradually to huge clumps of cane, tall and rattling, and then to greater canebrakes, and at last, as far as they could possibly see, cane everywhere. Cane ahead, at their sides, between them and the river, bowing and rushing like the sea under the passing gusts of wind, rustling and chattering as if it had a mind and spirit. They heard things stirring in it, small scuttling things by day and once or twice larger, blundering masses by twilight; the warriors rode close by the carts, and at night they built fires and fences of sharpened canes.
Something happened in that time, though what, Savi was never sure; but the guards grew still more distrustful, riding with readied spears, and looking around them continually. The princess noticed that at least one guard had been replaced, as she remarked, by another even dirtier; but where the first one had gone, they never found out.
The canes lasted for some days, long enough to lose track; but they seemed to end quite suddenly, and give way to a greener land beyond. Few would have called it lush, but to Savi, used to hard stony ground with little water and grudging growth, the sombre greens of this riverine landscape seemed overwhelmingly full and fertile, well watered by driving fronts of rainclouds and heavy with tall grasses, and bursting with a richness of life she found startling.
In her homeland large beasts were rare; but here great herds grazed wide across the rolling hills, especially strange long-haired oxen whose shaggy backs and curiously bowed horns, like saddles, she knew only from old carvings. And there were beasts that fed on these herds. In her own land the largest were the great wolves, though they were rare, and a smallish hill cat, usually starveling and mangy, a peril chiefly to children for lack of easier food. So were the great carrion birds, black-winged, evil heads naked and grey; but they were rarely seen now. Other than that, snakes were the chief peril, and not hard to avoid.
But here, for the first time, she glimpsed bounding bear-dog packs, and once or twice even pairs and prides of fearsome daggertooths loping across the rainy fells, thick-bodied, heavy-legged, their shaggy coats making them even bulkier. One stopped and roared as it saw the caravan, and in the dull stormlight the stabbing fangs gleamed briefly huge and menacing, in a massive head held man-high from the ground. Her heart leaped with the fear and the majesty of the beast, and she gripped the sword more tightly. But whatever the raiders had feared, it was not this. They jeered and rattled spear against shield, spun their helms on their swordpoints and raised a great clamour. The beast turned and loped off into the drizzle, behind its mate. Savi imagined such a brute carrying off whole oxen, until she saw, still further off, the herd these beasts were really shadowing.
The caravan was passing along the rim of a wide shallow valley, above the course of a meandering stream; and she peeped out from below the cover to look down on a carpet of rich grass, still with a few faded flowers. But she was puzzled by the massive boulders strewn along it, like some ancient toppled tower. Almost at once, though, one stirred at the sound of hooves and wheels, tossing back its great hummocked head and brandishing serpentine tusks, almost all that was visible in that hill of earth-hued hair. The trunk she had seen depicted, and hardly believed, curled upward, and its trumpeting cry of warning sent the whole band of them plunging away, their stiff-legged gait rolling like boats in a rapid, while she watched in utter wonder. For a time she even forgot her pain.
Before long, though, that same wonder brought it back to her renewed. Why was this land as it was? By the stars she could guess they had come some way west, now, as well as north. It was colder; the wind that bore the life-giving rains bit more keenly. Yet it was richer land than her own, and all this plenty, that could have fed a host of towns far greater than the Citadel, stood deserted, whi
le her kind grubbed a scanty living among dust and stones. Her suspicions were confirmed at last, when she saw lines of hummocks in the grassland, too regular to be natural, and among them, where the earth had slipped away, vast stone blocks one upon another. These really had been walls and towers, walls many times taller than the Citadel was deep, perhaps the very ones Alya had dreamed of. Long ago, in the days of legend, men had lived here; but their work had been overthrown, and they were driven out, never to return. War, or plague? Or some worse force, the same one even that had brought her here now?
She had time to ponder this, more than she desired. The answer came to her sooner than she wished, and bearing an even deeper chill. The rivers they had crossed flowed mostly southward. The wind blew harshest from the north. She knew much, from her father and from Alya. She knew that across the north of this land there was only one ultimate source for anything. This blossoming of life, denied to the wider, warmer lands, was fed by the outflow of meltwater from the Ice.
It seemed a horrible jest, that so much life should subsist beneath the shadow of its greatest enemy, living on its casual leavings, like gold dust dribbling unregarded from a stolen purse. But through the long and jolting hours, silent and brooding among the stinking straw of the cart, she came to understand. For all its hatred of living things, the Ice had to maintain its living thralls, these Aikiya’wahsa as they were called, or shortened in her own speech, the Ekwesh. They could hardly grow food on its icy plains, and it was well known they despised the tilling of the land, as they did all high arts of civilisation. This enclave must be their preserve, a tolerance to let them hunt and gather.
And more than that; for as the caravan forded the stream somewhere and followed the black waters northward, she saw what could only be cultivated fields go by. They passed through several of the miserable little communities that farmed them, a scatter of blind hovels huddled along the flat and marshy banks. The riders paid them no heed whatsoever. Savi herself would not have known them for houses, save for the smoke threading up from their rooftrees; and, here and there amid the misty glooms, an occasional burst of dim yellow light from low door or blocked window, hastily put out.
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