Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

  Shai studied the movements within the camp. Now, he saw that the soldiers took care of their own horses and tack, and that the grooms and “camp men” were either youths not quite old enough to be regular army men, men with a minor disability that might prevent them from fighting effectively, or foreign men who tended to their work with the brisk efficiency of those who are proud of what they do. No idling slaves here. No one lounging while others waited on them.

  “Oh. Can you do everything yourself, then?”

  Mountain gestured toward Cornflower, who waited about twenty paces away, hands clasped and head lowered in perfect submissiveness. “That one will help me.”

  Shai shut his eyes, making a face. “Hu! What am I supposed to do with her?”

  “She is commonly used by Father Mei and the uncles, Master Shai.”

  “I know. But I am not my brothers. I have not forgotten what happened to Girish.” He spat on the ground for the offense of saying the dead man’s name. “Even if they pretend they have forgotten.”

  “Forgive me, Master.”

  “Just set up the tent, if you will. I want a blanket. She can start by massaging me. After that, she can sleep outside.”

  Mountain unrolled a blanket on the ground and Shai sat down, wincing. No wonder the Qin soldiers were tough, if they had to endure this every day!

  “Cornflower, work on my legs. They hurt.”

  She came over, slung her pack onto the ground, and pulled a flask of oil out of the pack. He slipped off his trousers and, in only his loincloth, let her massage some of the ache out of his muscles. Her hands were strong and sure. If they only strayed a little farther up . . .

  “Enough!” He grabbed for his trousers. With no change of expression, she scooted backward and bowed her head. Mountain scratched his bald head, then fanned himself with his cap.

  “If you do not want her, Master Shai, then perhaps I can sell her services to the soldiers. She and Priya are the only females out of a hundred or more men. It would be a way for you to make a few extra zastras on the journey. It never hurts to have a little extra coin. Just in case.”

  Shai looked at Cornflower. Like his brothers, Shai found her sexually attractive and utterly fascinating, and it annoyed him. He was stirred by her touch, and it didn’t help with her kneeling so submissively a few strides away, with pale skin and ripe breasts concealed beneath her slave’s shift, knowing she could not say no if he took her. Indeed, he could do anything to her at all, but he hated to be like his brothers. Mountain’s suggestion had merit. It was wise to plan ahead, cultivate a nest egg. Mountain would take a cut, and the rest would fill Shai’s sleeves. Just in case.

  “Find an out-of-the-way place, then. Charge a reasonable rate, and not too many men any one night.”

  Mountain nodded. He was a big, big man, a little stout with middle age, and missing his left eye and two fingers on his left hand. “Not more than five a day. I hear from Tailman Chaji that it’s twenty-five days’ or so ride to the border, if we run into no delays. If every man in the company wants a piece of her, they’ll each have one try. That’ll keep the price high, if any wish to outbid the others for a second chance.”

  Shai nodded. After a glance toward the silent Cornflower, he put on trousers and his best silk knee-length jacket and walked over to the awning where Captain Anji sat on a three-legged stool, on a rug, studying a scroll. A low camp table inlaid with alternating strips of ebony wood and ash-blond wood sat before the officer; a narrow, cushioned divan about an arm’s length long stood to his right, with two stools folded up and leaning against it. A black flag trimmed with gold streamers fluttered from each corner of the awning. Two soldiers stood to either side, arms folded, surveying the camp. They tracked Shai’s arrival with flat gazes as the captain looked up.

  “Sit down,” he said. “My men will bring food.”

  One of the men opened up a stool, so Shai sat down. “Where is Mai?” he asked.

  The old village had about a dozen structures remaining, all built out of mud brick and mostly intact except for the roofs. Captain Anji’s escort numbered over one hundred soldiers and two dozen grooms and hired men, together with the slaves who accompanied Mai. The soldiers had set up an outer perimeter, with their precious horses clustered in the innermost protected area of the village and the captain’s awning and rug beyond that. The old well and two crumbling houses stood directly to his west. Listening, Shai heard Mai speaking to Priya from within the sheltering walls of one of the those houses, where his niece had sought privacy.

  Maybe the Qin didn’t allow women to eat with men. Better not to ask. He hoped his question hadn’t been taken as an insult. The Qin were notoriously easy to insult.

  Captain Anji’s chief of staff arrived and opened a stool for himself. He was ten or fifteen years older than Anji—well into middle age—and the two men had an easy relationship; even their arguments gave them pleasure.

  “I still don’t like it, Anjihosh. The road is flat enough and there’ll be moonlight late. We could have made it the entire way. Out here—ghosts, bandits, sandstorms, scorpions, demons, witches. Leopards. There could be anything.”

  Anji scanned the darkening village with narrowed eyes. “No ghosts, anyway, Tuvi-lo,” he said so casually that Shai’s heart stuttered and seemed to skip a beat. No ghosts? “If we got in late, the horses and bearers wouldn’t get a full night’s rest. They’ll need it at this stage, to get accustomed to the travel. I want them well rested. They’ll need strength to manage the worst part of the journey.”

  “So you say.” Chief Tuvi rose from his stool abruptly as Mai halted at the edge of the rug. She looked calm and composed. Priya waited behind her.

  Anji stood, took Mai’s hand in his, and led her to the divan, a queenly seat, certainly, and far more comfortable than the men’s utilitarian stools. He released her; she sat; Chief Tuvi whistled, and four young Qin soldiers—tailmen, all—came forward with platters of dried fruit, yoghurt, and strips of sizzling meat just now roasted over a campfire.

  Shai waited for the captain to begin the conversation, but they ate in silence until the platters were empty. Only when hot da was handed round in painted bowls did the captain speak.

  “You have traveled well, Mai’ili?” he asked.

  She nodded, glanced at Shai, and after a sip at the sharp da ventured a few words. “My heart is the only part of me that is bruised, Captain. It is difficult to leave your family behind.”

  “So it is,” he agreed. “Is it well that your uncle Shai accompanies you?”

  “It is well.” She bit her lower lip, took in a breath as she glanced at Chief Tuvi, and tried again. “Will we always camp like this? What can be expected?”

  He had a steady gaze, kept on her but not intrusive and greedy, more watchful. “Mostly we will stay at posting houses, which have corrals for livestock and some fortification. We should have traveled farther today, but I don’t want to push the horses and bearers at this stage. We’ll have to take some night journeys once we reach the borderlands.”

  Mai laughed suddenly. Her laugh could charm water out of sand. “I had my chest packed, but my mother and aunts insisted on repacking it. There was nothing I could do. I’m sorry we left so late. I know you came at dawn. Would we have reached a posting station if we’d left earlier?”

  Anji exchanged a glance with Chief Tuvi. “We would have. No matter, Mai. The Qin have a saying: When the river changes its course, get out of the way or drown. This is not the first time my plans did not go exactly as expected.”

  Mai blushed abruptly, responding to a certain passionate tremor in his voice, to his ardent gaze, and she looked away from him. No doubt she was afraid.

  Shai cleared his throat and groped for a topic of conversation to draw attention off of her. “Have you made this particular journey many times, Captain Anji? You seem to know the way well.”

  “Only once, and that traveling west,” said the captain. “But every troop such as mine takes scouts. They’r
e soldiers trained to know the routes and water holes and landmarks along every road our armies travel. Chief Tuvi has been this way before.”

  “So I have,” said Tuvi, an entire world of implication flowering in three words.

  “May we know where we are going?” asked Shai, feeling bolder as the conversation unfolded so amiably. “Where we are traveling so far?”

  “No. Not now.” Anji’s tone did not invite further questions on the topic.

  There was an awkward silence, broken by Mai. “How could you only have traveled once, and that west? The Qin come from the west. You would have to have gone east and come back.”

  “Ah,” said the captain with a pleased smile. “You have caught out the flaw in my story.” He offered the barest nod to Chief Tuvi, whose answering frown seemed resigned and amused.

  Mai had a most charming way of looking puzzled, eyebrows drawn together, cherry lips pressed together winsomely. Much of her beauty was her lack of self-consciousness. Other beautiful women could not compare because they arranged their faces to suit the needs of their audience. “Will you explain it to me, or is it something I’m not meant to know?”

  “Not now. Uncle Shai, have you traveled well?”

  “I am a little sore,” he said, rubbing his thighs.

  “It will be worse tomorrow,” said Chief Tuvi with a laugh. “But you stuck it out well for a flatfoot.”

  “You must learn to ride as well, Mai’ili,” said the captain. “The palanquin slows us down, but it was expected by your family.”

  “Learn to ride? A horse?” She stared at him. “But that’s forbidden! There was a man in Kartu Town who was hanged for riding.”

  “So there was, but you and your uncle are under my command now. I need you to learn to ride.”

  “Do Qin women ride?” Shai asked.

  Anji’s smile had a pleasant tilt. He seemed an easygoing man in some ways, and yet Shai did not think he was. “They do. My mother taught me to ride. It is a mother’s duty to teach her children to ride. When we have sons, Mai’ili, you must be the one to teach them, not me.”

  She put a hand to her mouth and glanced toward the palanquin, racked across parallel rows of fallen stones to keep it off the ground for the night. The twilight shadowed her expression, but Shai guessed that she was frightened, thinking of what normally passed between man and woman on their wedding night.

  “Ah.” Anji raised his forefinger. Chief Tuvi set his da bowl on the table and retreated, strolling out into camp. “Uncle Shai, stay please.” He rose and went into the dusk.

  Priya crept forward and knelt at Mai’s feet. Mai clutched her hand and wiped away a tear, and the slave whispered into Mai’s ear words Shai couldn’t hear.

  “Is it wrong of me to be frightened, Shai?” Her voice was so steady, but her hands, gripping Priya’s, shook. “How will he treat me? I’m afraid, but I know I have to endure whatever happens. He is my master now. I will not shame Father Mei and our clan.”

  Shai did not know what to say. No one ever asked him for advice.

  “Shhh, Mistress,” hissed Priya. “He returns.”

  Her hiss lengthened strangely. From out of the night erupted a shout of alarm and a series of sharp slaps. An arrow skittered over the ground, coming to rest at Shai’s feet. He gaped. Mai’s eyes widened. Calls and shouts rousted the camp, and men went running out of sight but well within hearing. That whistling hiss was the song of arrows rushing out of the dark, and Qin arrows—white death—streaking outward in reply.

  “Down!” Priya pushed Mai down between couch and fire. “Crawl over to the house! The walls will give protection.”

  Captain Anji appeared at the edge of the fire’s light. “Mai! Take shelter!” He tossed a glittering object toward her, and it smacked into the dirt beside her. A knife in a sheath, curved at the tip. Jewels studded the hilt, catching the firelight. “That’s for you, Mai. Shai! Come with me!”

  Shai grabbed the arrow and staggered after Captain Anji. His thoughts were disordered; he couldn’t think straight. The captain brought him to a mud-brick wall eroded to chest height, where Chief Tuvi oversaw the chaos. Out in the gloom, figures circled on horseback, keeping just at the edge of the distance arrows could reach. At intervals one would ride in, shoot, and turn hard to dash back out again. It was impossible to judge how many there were, but surely there were more than twenty, and less than fifty.

  “Can you use a bow?” asked the captain.

  “No.”

  “A sword?”

  “It’s forbidden.”

  The captain snorted. “A staff? You shepherds haven’t even sparred with your staffs up in the hills where we can’t catch you?”

  Shai burned with shame and anger. “It’s forbidden, Captain. Men were hanged for weapons training.”

  “Sheep!” said Chief Tuvi with a bark of laughter. “No wonder they were so easy to fleece.”

  “Take this spear.” Captain Anji thrust the shaft into Shai’s hands. “Don’t disgrace my bride by showing yourself a coward.”

  Then he was gone, moving off into the ruined village to direct the fight elsewhere.

  Shai found he had moisture enough in his mouth to speak. “Are they bandits?”

  “They’re not ghosts, but they might be demons.” Tuvi lifted his bow, tracked one of the circling horsemen, and released the arrow. It flew, its white fletching visible as it streaked through the dusk and buried its point into the breast of one of the riders. The man reeled but did not fall.

  Arrows hit all at once around them. Shai ducked down behind the wall as a half-dozen arrows struck the uneven top, flipped end over point, and slid down to land at his feet. Chief Tuvi didn’t move but calmly sighted with his bow again and loosed a second arrow. Shaking, Shai rose to his feet in time to see a second man take the impact. This one fell, but his foot caught in the stirrup. His body flopped and dangled from the stirrups as the horse galloped out into the night.

  Behind them, on the other side of the village, Captain Anji shouted a command.

  His soldiers, all together, cried out: “Hu! Hu! Hai!”

  The shout resounded; it echoed off distant hills. Shai shivered down to his feet. The Qin were the fiercest warriors in the world. They had swept in from the west as a wave of black banners and white death.

  Now that shout faded into the night, but surely it had given the bandits a better guess at their numbers. The riders circled once more before vanishing into what was now night. The moon’s glamour illuminated the hills and flats, but the shadows swallowed the bandits so quickly that Shai would have doubted whether they had ever been there at all, except for the evidence of the arrows scattered throughout camp.

  Captain Anji appeared beside Tuvi, holding a bow and a lantern.

  “They hadn’t more than thirty men,” said the chief. “But we’ll keep a double watch for the rest of the journey. I’m surprised that group hasn’t been tracked down and slaughtered like the wolves they are.”

  Anji shook his head. The wind fluttered the ribbons in his hair. “They weren’t bandits. They were demons, pretending to be men. I saw at least ten take hits, but we’ll find no bodies in the morning.”

  “If they are demons, then why would arrows stop them?” Shai demanded, finding now that he was shaking as relief hit. Still alive! He would see the new dawn! “How can you tell the difference between men, and demons pretending to be men?”

  “Demons fight silently. Sometimes they use bone whittled down for the shafts of their arrows.” He picked up one of the bandits’ arrows and twirled it through his fingers with the ease of a man who has long familiarity with weapons. “But this is common sapwood, a little heavy for arrows but one of the few woods that can be found up in the northern hills. Maybe there were a few men among them.”

  “Men ride with demons?”

  Anji glanced back toward the tidy row of tents set up as the night’s camp. “Your concubine is demon’s get.”

  “She’s not my concubine!”

/>   Chief Tuvi laughed. “If not now, she will be soon! Or else what’s that stirring in your drawers?”

  Nothing to say to that! Why should even talk of Cornflower get him hardening?

  “Tuvi-lo,” Anji said gently, “demons’ get are difficult to resist. They have their spells and charms, a perfume to them, that tugs a man even if he doesn’t want to go that way. But they’re poison in the end. I can have the creature killed, if you like, Shai. Leave the body at the edge of the desert. Her kinfolk will collect her at the full moon.”

  It was tempting. Just thinking of how easy it would be to let Captain Anji remove the burr that chafed him made him sweat. But he couldn’t do it.

  “No. It’s not her fault she’s demon’s get. My brother bought her in the marketplace two years back. Just like any other slave. He even had a holy man cast a seeing over her, and the holy man said she was as human as you or me.”

  Chief Tuvi shook his head, exchanging a knowing glance with the captain but addressing Shai. “These demon get are good at disguise. They look just like humans, but they’re not. There’s a whole tribe of them who live west of my ancestors’ lands. Out there demons rule. No one dare ride past the sunset. No man who rides that way ever returns.”

  “What about women?”

  Tuvi hesitated, glancing toward Anji, but the captain just nodded his head, giving some kind of permission.

  Tuvi shrugged. “The demons fear human women, but they’ll sleep with them just the same and spawn their demon get in their bellies. Some women go that way to capture a lover. Hu! I suppose the demon males pull women by their jewel the same way the demon women catch us men by the cock.”

  Shai flushed. To cover his embarrassment, he bent to pick up arrows. Among such men, he would always be at a disadvantage. After a moment he straightened. “Is it true you would teach me to fight? That I’d not be executed for it?”

  Chief Tuvi gave his amused bark.