“Ayeh,” Cypress muttered. “Cedar, put down the willow. If you kill him, you may bury him.”
Cedar dropped the servant at once.
Yotam didn’t seem to have paid attention to this, but as soon as the soles of his servant’s feet touched the earth he brushed between the glowering Cedar and Thorn to bow to Cypress. “Master of troops, we have some need of employment. Can I and my friend offer you decent service?”
The leader of the band raised an eyebrow, and looked Yotam up and down. Snow doubted that anything escaped him, from the fineness of the younger man’s linen tunic to the way that Yotam had picked him out as the leader. “In truth, I could use you. There are rumors of unrest in the hills—there will be fighting to do soon enough.”
“Thus. Now that Abimalk son of Yerubba’la has declared himself king in the Refuge, I am certain he intends to collect tribute from the nearby cities,” Yotam agreed.
“Ah? We hadn’t heard.” Cypress shot Cedar an ironic glance; the giant hunched his shoulders. It was part of his work to collect news of conflicts and wars so that Cypress could offer their services to the combatants. “Come, tell me everything you know about Abimalk and his army.”
“Why ask him?” Vine asked belligerently.
“Because he knows,” Thorn hissed, smacking Vine on the back of the head. “Go make yourself useful—find some wood for the fire.”
“Make him do it, he’s a servant,” Vine protested, jerking his head toward Yotam’s companion.
“I’ll go,” Snow said at once. She would be glad to get away.
It would be a pity, she thought, if Vine managed to drive Yotam off. She liked his kindness to Fig; and Yotam didn’t seem to be easy to offend, which would make him a more comfortable companion than Vine.
She was gone for some time. When she came back, toiling along with a great bundle of acacia to be turned into charcoal, she nearly ran into Yotam, who was coming up the hill festooned with waterskins. “They sent you for water?”
“Why not?” He reached over to pull the top bunch of sticks from her bundle and balanced it on his shoulder. “I can’t lose myself between there and here. And it gives them time to talk about me.” He smiled at her, and she smiled back before she remembered that she shouldn’t. Even with a dirty face her lips were too womanish.
“But you’re a man who’s had servants, and now you’re doing servants’ work,” Snow tried to explain. She could only imagine how her cousin would have reacted to being asked to pick up sticks or draw water.
“All necessary work is honorable. How not, since the Overpowerer made it necessary?” He poached another of her bunches of sticks, walking on the slope so that she could walk on the path.
“A wise saying,” she said dryly. “A pity that no one believes it.”
“Far be it from me to contradict—but does no one believe it? Are you shamed because you gathered sticks?”
No. I’m shamed because I struck a man to the ground, Snow thought with a shiver. “No more than you are by stealing them.”
“Eh. Having taken service with Master Cypress, I am now a bandit and a mercenary,” Yotam said. “According to the deeds of a bandit must I do.” He made an unsuccessful grab at her bundle; she switched it to the opposite shoulder.
“Then you will be shamed like the rest of us,” Snow said with a pang. She didn’t want to see this young man turned into a blood criminal like Thorn and Vine.
“Protecting flocks and defending villages won’t be shameful.”
“And if you’re told to raid flocks and attack villages?”
“Then I will refuse,” he said, as if there were no other possible answer.
Snow shook her head. “If that’s what you’ve planned in your heart, you should leave now. If you disobey Cypress, he might kill you.” As he might kill me. Yet my life is only a murderer’s life; your life is the life of an honest man.
“If thus, thus. My service is first to the Overpowerer.”
“But why not just go?” Snow asked, frustrated with him at last. What possible reason could he have for staying here?
“Every tree is planted according to its purpose,” he said with a singsong rhythm. “The olive may seem to be the lord of trees, yet its fruit is pressed and its blood burned for the honor of gods and men.”
“What—” is that supposed to mean, Snow would have finished.
“Are those sticks too heavy for you?” asked Yotam, with a sudden lunge at her bundle.
With a gasp she yanked it away, then ran up the path with the acacia twigs hugged tight to her chest.
“I see that I must learn to be a better bandit,” he called after her.
A chuckle squeezed out of her throat, and she ducked her head so that no one should see her smile.
**
Yotam opened his mouth in a silent laugh. The bunch of twigs prickled against his shoulder, the cut ends of the slender branches leaving faint trails of sap on his skin.
He lifted his eyes to the clouded sky. Overpowerer, what do you desire of me? And what is your plan? The god had brought him to a very forest of mercenaries, each called by the name of a different tree. Was this somehow connected to his dream?
He closed his eyes, the misting rain cool against his cheeks. Do these trees of your forest burn for you, Overpowerer? Or do they refuse your fire? He did not think that the mercenaries were all hard-hearted despite Elishama’s cryptic warnings.
He thought of Snow, scrambling back down the slope to attack the white-clawed bear with nothing but a dagger. Glory to you, Overpowerer, one who gives us strength to overcome our foes.
He had found his forest; and unless the night watches brought some clearer dream, in this grove of men he would remain.
**
The Avenger of Blood strode through the army camp. He wore an embroidered strip in his turban and a bronze cuirass on his chest—plunder from the towns around the Refuge. He dodged a group of men casting lots in the mud and aimed a venomless kick at a man with gold earrings. “Azri.”
The man twitched away from the Avenger’s sandal, bounding to his feet like a startled gazelle. “Master Zeb!”
“Thus,” the Avenger said coldly.
“I’ve spoken to the men from the northern villages. They have no word of her.”
“The northern villages? Why should they have word of the woman? Didn’t I tell you to speak to the men of the east and west?”
“And so I have, and so I do, Master Zeb,” Azri said, bobbing his head frantically. “No word of her!”
“More men have come in with Zebul’s band. Question them.”
“Thus, my lord, thus.” Azri flinched away from the Avenger’s gaze and scuttled off.
The Avenger did not watch him go. There were many villages and towns to be brought under Abimalk’s hand—almost enough to make him forget the woman he chased.
He reached up to touch the ragged scar hidden under his neckcloth. But not quite enough. Never quite enough.
Vav.
Four months later.
Yotam braced his foot against the rough side of a boulder, the pale lichen smearing under his sandal. “Psh psh,” he crooned coaxingly. “Psh psh. It is well.” How the goat and her two kids had managed to trap themselves in the tumble of rocks he did not know. If only they would come closer to this end of the gap—he was sure he could get the kids out, at least—but no. They shrank away from him, the mother goat shaking her ears skittishly.
He leaned his weight against one of the rocks. If he rocked it thus, and then straightened his legs, he could lift it a handspan. He tried to push a smaller rock under it with his knee, but the rock he was holding twisted in his grasp and crashed down again. He hissed faintly and shook his scraped hands. “That would make a suitable proverb,” he told himself. “He who tries to hold a thing and prop it at the same time will succeed at neither… though the words don’t run well.” A good proverb had a certain rhythm to it.
He positioned the smaller rock and held it in
place with his knee. He heaved at the bigger stone, but since he was balanced on an uneven surface with his weight on only one leg he couldn’t hold it. Instead it slid sideways, trapping his hand for a moment before he wrestled it off again. He winced, studying his fingers.
Perhaps if he found a rope, he could tie it around the bigger rock and pull the rock away while standing at a distance, on solid ground—or perhaps, he thought, spotting Fig toiling across the hill with a black-eared hare slung over his shoulder, he should simply ask for help.
He gave a wordless shout and waved at the other man. Fig didn’t call back, but lifted his hand and turned toward the tumble of rocks. He didn’t ask Yotam what he wanted, but climbed up beside him and looked around until he spotted the goats.
“If I lift this rock, and you put this other one underneath, we may be able to brace the stones far enough apart to draw the goats from the crack,” Yotam explained.
Fig gave a crisp nod. He took off his half-cloak and laid it on a flat stone with the hare on top of it. He watched Yotam trying to grip the stone with bloody fingers and frowned. “Stop. I’ll lift it.”
“Many thanks.” Yotam shifted out of the way.
Fig was a much shorter man, and no broader in the shoulders than Yotam, yet he lifted the rock with a smooth movement that bespoke much practice. Yotam carefully pushed the bracing stone into place. “Have you any barley in your pocket? If we can coax them nearer, we can lift them out.”
Fig studied the rocks for a moment. “I have none. Why don’t you go back to the camp and get some.”
It was a sensible idea, and Fig was a man of sensible ideas. Yet Yotam had the distinct impression that Fig was trying to get rid of him. He tilted his head, trying to understand why he felt so. “Why do I think that, if I go away to fetch the barley, you will have them out of there as soon as I go beyond the sight of your eyes?”
The smaller man tensed, then relaxed—a deliberate movement. “I may be able to bring them out. Vine would laugh—he would say that the animals love me too well.”
Truth, Yotam judged, but not all the truth. “Well, I won’t laugh.”
Fig gave him a flickering glance. Then he crouched down by the gap between the rocks and held out his hand. “Come,” he said, then made a strange chirring sound. There were almost words in it, though they were words in a language that Yotam did not know.
The mother goat flicked an ear as if a fly were sitting on it. Fig chirred at her again—this time with added squeaking—and she started toward him. She poked her brown nose into his hand and snuffled warily. Apparently deciding that she liked his smell, she lifted a front hoof to paw at the rock and gave a strident maaa!
Fig turned awkwardly to one side, stretching his arm along the rock wall until he could get a hand under her belly. He lifted her until she gave a sudden wriggle and pushed through the gap, leaping free. Her twin kids began an unhappy chorus from the hole. Yotam threw himself down on his belly and pulled them out. They did not care for his touch and showed their displeasure as well as they could, but they cared more for reaching their mother than for getting away from him.
“I would have done that,” Fig said, looking at Yotam’s newly filthy arms. His lack of expression reminded Yotam of Elishama and the look he wore when most insistent on his servant status.
“Should I not grow dirty as well as you? One man is no better than another,” Yotam answered lightly, getting to his feet. He did not brush the dust off his tunic. He did not want to touch his clothing just now. “And did you not once kill a man for treating you as a servant?”
Fig raised a dark eyebrow as he picked up his hare and put it on his shoulder again. “Thus.”
“But there is more to that tale,” Yotam suggested.
“There is always more to every tale.” Fig looked Yotam up and down—from his filthy arms to the fine sandals on his feet. “He did no wrong in treating me as a servant. I was his servant, and his father’s servant before him.”
“Are you the son of more years than I think?”
“I was born a servant, as all my people are: to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the Yeshurnim. The price of our fathers’ lives.”
“Ah,” Yotam said, with a nod, placing that elusive southern accent at last. “The tricksters, the Gibe’anim.”
“Thus.”
“But you say he did no wrong in treating you so. Perhaps he did not treat you as a servant, but as a dog?”
Fig shrugged one-shouldered, as if to say, thus, but what can you expect?
“Then it was not how he treated you that angered you. It was how he treated some other.”
Fig stopped short and dropped the hare to the ground. He turned, fists clenched. For a moment, Yotam thought that he might attack him; then the quiet man began to laugh. It was a harsh sound. “How do you know that? Not even Cypress knows that! Are you a seer?”
A dream or two did not make a man a seer. “No. It was only—there was a girl, perhaps, whom you loved?”
“My sister,” Fig whispered, the laughter leaving his lips as quickly as it had come. “Thus. It is hard for a maidservant—harder than for a man. How could she flee? Where could she go, that she would be safe there? But how did you know there was a girl?”
“Because of the way you treat Snow,” Yotam explained. Fig always seemed to keep an eye on her, even picking fights with Vine when the wild youth seemed determined to torment her.
Fig’s face went blank. “I don’t understand you.”
Yotam paused. “Ayeh,” he said. “I keep forgetting she’s supposed to be a boy. I almost gave her away that first night, but I heard Cypress call her him.”
Fig’s face was still blank, and his hand was on his knife.
Yotam eyed him. “Ah, Fig. Will you kill me for knowing her secret?”
Fig stood still for a long moment. Then he sighed, and his hand fell from the handle of the knife. “You have not betrayed her yet.”
“No.”
“And you will not.”
“Thus.”
Fig picked up the hare again. It was growing rather battered. “If you harm her, flesh or heart, I will cause your death.”
“It is well.” Yotam thumped Fig on the shoulder. “I’m glad she is protected.”
Fig peered up into his face, then shook his head. “You really are, aren’t you? I’ve changed my mind. You’re no seer—just a madman.”
Shoulder to shoulder, they walked down the slope.
“Now,” Yotam said conversationally. “What was that language you were speaking to the goats?”
**
“The soldier is drunk in the morning, and at eve lies dead on the battlefield,” Yotam’s servant sneered as Cedar trudged back into camp with an empty beer jug in his hand and fresh dust on his head. The giant growled at him but said nothing. The servant—now called Willow by all the band—hardly spoke but in proverbs; it made it hard to argue with him.
Snow set another stitch in her torn cloak, her lips pressed tightly together. Willow was as bad as Vine—though he insulted others less frequently, his insults were so much cleverer.
Thorn, who knew perfectly well what task had taken Cedar to the bone-cave with beer and would two weeks ago have sharpened his own tongue on the big Anaki, snapped back, “Like the fool who loses his way in daylight is the man who has knowledge without wisdom!”
“Thorn,” said Cypress, and “Willow,” said Yotam, in tones so identical that Snow almost swallowed the bone needles she held in her mouth.
Thorn snorted, then frowned, his gaze moving up the valley. “Someone’s coming. Three men with staves—no other weapons that I see.”
“Not soldiers,” Cypress assessed after a look of his own. “I smell the fine aroma of work.”
“Do they want us to attack or defend?” Thorn asked gruffly. He locked eyes with Cedar and gestured: a tenth-shekel on attack.
Two-tenths on defend, Cedar gestured back. “They look afeared. If they wanted a raid, they’d look m
ore pleased wi’ themselves.”
The men did look frightened, Snow thought. Their tunics were a little finer than ordinary farmers’ clothes—there was even fringe on the oldest man’s hem—which meant that they were important. If they’d felt confident, they would have sent a messenger to the band and asked Cypress to come to them.
Cypress went out to them with Cedar looming on his right and Yotam in Thorn’s usual place on his left. Thorn didn’t seem to mind the usurpation, fading sideways to circle around behind their unexpected guests.
Snow followed Yotam. She wanted to know what service these men would ask for—the better to run if they asked for a violence she couldn’t bear. But could I bear to run away and be alone in the hills again?
“Master Cypress?” asked the oldest man, plucking nervously at his fringe. “Are you the—warrior called Cypress?”
“Behold me. Who are you?” Cypress was completely calm, beginning a dance he had danced many times.
“We are the elders of Qir Qatina. We want to hire you and your warband.” The man glanced warily around, as if expecting dozens of bandits to spring up from the dust. “You—do have more men than these?”
“I fill my hand with as many as are needed for the task,” Cypress said blandly. “What is the task?”
“And what’re y’ willing t’ pay for it?” Cedar rumbled. He wrung his long beard as if imagining the necks of non-paying employers in his hands. The oldest elder leaned away, his eyes wide.
The man at his right squared his shoulders and looked down his nose at Cedar. “Our town is going to be attacked. We have received definite word. We desire you to defend it.” He spoke in clipped sentences, as if not certain that landless men would understand him otherwise. Snow wondered how much extra silver Cypress would demand to pay for this man’s pride.
“Advance word of an attack? How convenient. And does your definite word name your attacker?” Cypress murmured. He was smiling faintly at the proud elder; if the man had had any sense at all, he would have backed away. Alas, it seemed that he had no sense.
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