Snare

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘At times I still think like a Kazrak,’ Zayn said to Dallador. ‘It’s strange to see the women doing the buying and selling.’

  ‘Why would men want to? Haggling is women’s work.’

  ‘But doesn’t it trouble you to have nothing to leave your son?’

  ‘A man always knows who his mother is. But his father? Who knows what women will do in the dark? So they’re the only ones who know who the blood-kin are, and it’s your blood-kin who should have your horses.’

  Preparations for the trip took days. While the women cut grass and spread it to dry into pale blue hay, the men hunted. The big grassars avoided this rough shrubby terrain, but a smaller species, the orange-and-grey striped browzars, flourished in the valleys. Every time someone made a kill, the men stripped the carcass down to bone and smoked the meat into jerky. Zayn spent several days learning how to cut the raw flesh – a job that he found irritating beyond belief. It was tricky work, using the long knife to slice leather-thin strips of meat. Sweat ran down his forehead and got into his eyes. Shiny magenta flies and the ever-present yellabuhs swarmed around, stinging and stealing.

  His turn to hunt came as a welcome relief. In the downs, the browzars sought shelter in the valley thickets; once they got into the underbrush, the men would have to take their spears and follow on foot – a dangerous kind of hunting, thanks to venomous snakes and other such creatures in the dense thorn thickets. The best tactic, or so Dallador told him, was to look for a herd that was grazing part-way up the slope of a hill, then get below and chase them towards the crest and open land.

  They left camp just at noon. Riding single-file the six hunters worked their way upstream along the riverbank. In a shallow valley, they spotted at last a small herd. The men looped their reins around their saddle horns, then took their bows from their backs. With their quivers on one hip, they walked the horses, guiding with their knees, until they were close enough for the noise to alarm the dominant bull.

  It threw up its orange head and bellowed, slapping the ground with its tail. The hunters kicked their horses to a gallop and charged, shrieking a warcry. The browzars lashed out with striped tails, then bounded away, turning uphill. The men loosed their first volley and grabbed for second arrows while the well-trained horses sped after the fleeing prey.

  Zayn loosed an arrow, missed badly, and rode hard for the main herd. Arrows arched overhead as the other men shot again. Bleeding and howling, a young female browzar fell. Zayn aimed for another, missed again, and pulled another arrow as they raced up the side of the hill. He swore under his breath – his reflexes were simply all wrong for this sort of bow. Almost directly in front of him a young bull, smarter than most, broke from the herd and headed downhill. With a curse Zayn loosed, missed, and shifted his weight in the saddle to turn his horse after it.

  Down through the treacherous tall grass they raced. Zayn was hoping that the thorny brush along the stream would stop the bull and force it to stay in range. He was determined to hit at least one target for the day, and the determination got the better of his common sense. When they reached the flat, Zayn’s horse gained ground, but even from this close a distance Zayn’s arrow sailed wide. The bull gave one last leap and charged into the tangled cover. Cursing, Zayn let his horse come to a halt and swung himself off.

  Shrubs rose waist-high among the nodding frond-trees in an infuriating orange and red tangle. Zayn could see the bull pushing its way through ahead of him as it struggled to reach the stream. He would have gone after it with his last two arrows, but from behind him he heard someone yell.

  ‘Stay right there!’ Dallador shouted. ‘Don’t go in!’

  Zayn obeyed. He mounted his horse, but he let it rest while the others rode down. They surrounded him, and he could see the concern on all their faces.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Zayn said.

  ‘Firesnakes, that’s what,’ Dallador said. ‘Don’t you remember what I told you? We’ve already made a kill. You don’t need to risk getting bitten and poisoned to make another one.’

  ‘Sorry. It just makes me so damn mad that I can’t hit anything with this bow.’

  ‘You’ll get it eventually. Come on, let’s get the kill back to camp.’

  When the men left for the hunt, Ammadin had taken her crystals and walked out into the grass. Over the past few days, she’d been trying at every pass of the Riders to contact Water Woman, but so far she’d failed. On this occasion as well she heard nothing but the mysterious ocean waves that seemed to emanate from somewhere inside Long Voice. Finally she gave up, took Spirit Eyes, and scanned, sweeping outward from the camp in a spiral. Off to the east, at the very limit of the spirit’s power, she saw three figures who looked like ChaMeech, but the image was too indistinct to reveal their gender.

  Ammadin did, however, find the hunting party. On one of her sweeps she saw the tiny figures of men on horseback, driving browzars along the crest of a down. All at once a bull broke free and charged downhill with one of the men riding hard after it. She recognized Zayn’s sorrel gelding.

  ‘Closer!’

  Spirit Eyes obliged. The view shifted, and she was looking down as if from a height of some fifty feet. It was Zayn, all right, risking the horse’s legs and his own neck. By the time he reached the flat, the browzar had plunged into the brush, just under mark twelve on the crystal. Zayn started to follow, then pulled up to wait for the other men, riding more cautiously down the hill after him.

  ‘Go to twelve.’

  In the red and gold tangle of foliage she saw the bull shoving its way through the brush. It tossed its head from side to side, raised its muzzle as if it were bellowing, and thrust with its thick shoulders. At last it splashed across the river, burst out on the other side, and rushed off into the grass. The hunters had lost it. Some yards downstream, however, something moved. Someone stood up – a Kazrak, the same older man with a black beard she’d seen before. He held a hunting bow, and he was visibly angry.

  ‘Long Voice,’ Ammadin said. ‘Listen for.’

  Dimly she heard his voice, humming in the bone behind her left ear. Arkazo, come on, we might as well give it up.

  Another Kazrak, the young man with the beaky nose, rose from his hiding place some feet away. Although he spoke a few words, his voice was too faint to understand. Apparently Spirit Eyes could see farther than Long Voice could hear. When she shifted the focus back in Zayn’s direction, she saw that he and the other men were riding away, leading a pack horse burdened with a dead browzar cow. They would be heading back to camp, most likely. She closed the vision down.

  In about an hour the hunting party rode in. Ammadin hurried out to meet them and watched while they turned their horses into the herd. The younger men, carrying their saddles over one shoulder, led the pack horse with the kill back to the tents. Zayn and Dallador followed more slowly, their arms full of horse gear.

  ‘I need to talk with you, Zayn,’ Ammadin said. ‘I happened to scan you, and that bull you were chasing? It was leading you into an ambush. I saw your enemies on the far side of the stream.’

  Zayn muttered something in Kazraki under his breath.

  ‘One of them is named Arkazo,’ Ammadin went on. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I don’t, but I’ve heard the name. It’s not all that common.’ Zayn paused, thinking. ‘I can’t place it, though.’

  He looked at her blandly. She could smell the change in his scent, but she would have known he was lying even without her shaman’s talents – Zayn with his phenomenal memory, not remember where he’d heard a name? In front of Dallador she said nothing, but she was beginning to regret her earlier gesture, when she’d promised Zayn that she wouldn’t pry into his private affairs.

  As for the sorcerer, she had been spending every available moment on working with her crystals, trying out new commands and exploring different ways of using them. Sooner or later, she knew, she would have to test her new knowledge and challenge him.

  ‘He was so close!’ Arkazo was
scowling at the bow in his hands. ‘We had a shot at him. Why –’

  ‘Five other Tribesmen just happened to be close, too,’ Warkannan said.

  ‘They were still on top of the hill! And they would have had to dismount, and we could have been out of the underbrush and across the stream before they could come after us.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten that they have bows. The arrows could have crossed the stream easily enough.’

  Arkazo winced and looked down at the ground.

  ‘Listen, Kaz,’ Warkannan softened his voice. ‘I know how much you want to avenge Tareev, but you won’t do his memory any good if you’re dead.’

  Arkazo threw the bow on the ground and strode off to tend to the horses. Warkannan shook his head and turned to Soutan.

  ‘He’s young,’ Warkannan said in a near-whisper. ‘But he’ll learn.’

  ‘This is true,’ Soutan said. ‘Well, now what? If Zayn’s going to go everywhere in a pack of Tribesmen, we’re not going to have much of a chance at him.’

  ‘Yes, I have to agree.’ Warkannan paused, thinking, but no clever ideas occurred to him. ‘We may have to leave him be and ride on ahead. He doesn’t know about Jezro, after all, so if we reach the khan first, we can give him the slip and head back to Andjaro by a different route.’

  ‘Maybe, but that sounds risky to me. Risky and extremely stupid.’

  ‘Oh, does it? Suppose you tell me why.’

  Soutan merely smirked. Warkannan took one step forward. Soutan squeaked and flinched.

  ‘Oh very well,’ Soutan said. ‘This Zayn, suppose he finds out about Jezro. Will he try to kill him?’

  ‘Mostly likely, yes. Do you think he will find out?’

  ‘If he asks the right questions of the right people, he could. That’s why it would be better to dispose of him now.’

  ‘Of course it would be better. The question is, can we? If not, we’ve got to reach the khan before Zayn does.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Soutan hesitated, his eyes rolling like a spooked horse’s. ‘But –’

  ‘We can’t leave the khan unguarded.’ Warkannan interrupted him. ‘Now, if you figure out a better way to kill our spy, just let me know. I’ll give you one more day. If you can’t think of anything, then we’re leaving the comnee behind.’

  Zayn had been working at learning the language of the Cantons with a zeal that surprised everyone in the comnee. All the adults and older children knew some of the trade talk; many had picked up words and phrases beyond those necessary for the selling of horses. Veradin, who had travelled east often in her long life, spoke it very well indeed. Zayn went from one person to another, learning what they knew and badgering everyone to let him practise. Finally Ammadin asked him why he was putting so much effort into learning Vranz.

  ‘I hate to be in a strange country and not understand a damned word,’ Zayn told her. ‘A man could be insulting you, and here you wouldn’t even know.’

  ‘It sounds like you travelled a lot before you joined us.’

  ‘The Great Khan’s business keeps his cavalry on the move.’

  ‘Oh? How many languages do people speak along the border?’

  Caught – Zayn gave her a sickly sort of smile. ‘Ah well,’ he said at last. ‘I was just speaking generally.’

  ‘I see.’

  He arranged a fake smile, she waited. At length he muttered something about helping Dallador prepare jerky and walked away fast. If I only hadn’t given him my damned word I wouldn’t pry! Ammadin thought. With a growl of irritation she got up and fetched her saddlebags.

  Ammadin left the camp and found a quiet spot near a stream, where she could sit in the cover of a pair of frond-trees to wait for the Riders. Lately she’d had no luck scanning for Zayn’s enemies. Every time she focused the crystal upon them, the sorcerer would chant command words that clouded her crystal. She had, however, managed to hear his chant of power several times, a strange triad of words in the ancient spirit tongue.

  It was time, Ammadin decided, that she tried using her new magic against him. She opened her saddlebags and took out not only the spirit crystals, but four brass cases. Each held a wand about a foot long, carved from Kazraki oak, wound round with red and gold threads, and decorated with two hawk feathers and three golden spirit beads. She left the shade and cleared a place to work out in the full sun. While she chanted a prayer to the six gods, she stuck the plain ends of the wands into the ground to mark a square, roughly four feet on a side. In the middle she laid Long Voice and Spirit Eyes close together, each on top of their pouches, to let them feed while they waited. She laid the other crystals out in the sun, too, but beyond the wand-marked square so they could feed in peace.

  Exposed to the sun the spirit beads began to glow. At first they merely glittered as any gold would in sunlight, but after a few minutes they seemed to catch fire. A pale blue spirit danced upon the surface of each one like a flame fanned by some hidden breeze.

  ‘Link,’ Ammadin said in the spirit tongue. ‘Link and reroute.’

  The spirits bound into her crystals sang aloud to welcome the unbound spirits of the beads. Abruptly Sentry chimed. The Riders were beginning their long gallop through the sky above. Ammadin knelt on the ground in the centre of the square formed by the wands and opened Spirit Eyes. Inside the sphere she saw the Kazraki camp as if she floated high above it. Another command, and she sailed down close. With the wand-spirits lending their power to those bound in her crystals, she could see more detail than before and hear better as well.

  The heavy-set bearded man stood arguing with the sorcerer. Ammadin opened Long Voice and heard them clearly through the bone just in back of her ear.

  Have you come up with some way to kill our spy? the Kazrak was saying.

  I’m afraid not. Not yet, anyway. I have the germ of an idea, but –

  We don’t have time to waste on fancy ideas that might not work.

  The sorcerer drew himself up to full height and glared at him.

  We’re moving out tomorrow, the Kazrak said. Whether you like it or not.

  The bearded man turned and walked away, leaving the sorcerer scowling after him. All at once his sentry crystal chimed, and the sorcerer threw up his head like a startled horse. He grabbed his belt pouch, fumbled briefly, then drew out a spirit crystal and held it up to the sun. Ammadin saw him lick his lips as if to loosen them for work; he was beginning his chant. She got in before him and chanted the stolen command.

  ‘Oh Verr Ride!’

  She heard the sorcerer’s snarl, an animal sound of pure rage. Without being told, Spirit Eyes swooped down close enough for her to see into his crystal. The spirit inside shrank to a silver line.

  ‘Sleep,’ Ammadin intoned. ‘Sleep till wakened. Wake to my voice only.’

  The spirit shrank further; she could barely see a faint line like a captured hair. The sorcerer snarled again and began chanting commands. At his voice, the view widened as her spirit flew up high to escape him.

  ‘Oh Verr Ride,’ Ammadin intoned. ‘Oh Verr Ride all.’

  Ammadin’s spirits swooped down close to the enemy crystals. She saw the sorcerer throw back his head and heard him howl like a wounded animal. The bearded man spun around and ran back.

  Are you all right? What’s wrong?

  Oh shut up, you stupid fool! The sorcerer shook his mane of grey hair back from his face and turned to face him.

  Well, for the love of God! You screamed. Do you need help?

  As if you – The sorcerer stopped, breathed deeply, and began again. I’m sorry, Warkannan. But leave me alone, will you? I have important work to do.

  Have it your way, you wretched infidel!

  The sorcerer turned on his heel and strode out of the camp. The man called Warkannan raised a fist, then shrugged, as if calming himself. Ammadin could guess what the sorcerer meant by work to do. She considered fighting another skirmish, then decided to leave him wondering about her strength. She closed down Spirit Eyes, then picked up Sentry and began
to chant the ‘hide’ command.

  ‘Wait. Can cell.’

  At the new command the spirit chimed and spun to show it understood. If she hid herself from magic, Ammadin realized, Water Woman would be unable to reach her. She picked up Long Voice and settled in to wait.

  Weary and haggard, especially about the eyes, Soutan came back to camp at sunset. Warkannan and Arkazo had already eaten, and Arkazo was building a fire when the sorcerer walked slowly out of the high purple grass.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Warkannan said.

  ‘Nothing,’ Soutan snapped.

  ‘Really?’ Warkannan raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re damn near staggering.’

  Soutan merely scowled for an answer. Arkazo sat back on his heels and watched, his head cocked to one side.

  ‘I think I understand,’ Warkannan said. ‘That spirit rider’s pulled some trick on you, hasn’t she?’

  ‘You bastard.’ Soutan’s voice sounded more tired than angry. ‘But you’re right. She’s taken steps of some kind.’

  ‘Steps? What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t have the slightest ability to understand such a recondite secret.’

  ‘Am I the only one who can’t?’

  Soutan swore at him – in Vranz, Warkannan supposed, since he couldn’t understand a word of it.

  ‘I warned you that these people were powerful, didn’t I?’ Soutan went on. ‘She’s managed to injure the spirit in my crystal.’

  Warkannan allowed himself a moment of inappropriate gloating, then squeezed out a few sympathetic noises.

  ‘This is very bad,’ Soutan said. ‘I won’t be able to scan till I can heal it.’

  ‘Not even for ChaMeech?’ Arkazo joined in.

  ‘Not even for ChaMeech.’ Soutan paused, glancing Arkazo’s way.