by Tanith Lee
Nirri pulled a face each time she heard the news. She had been so vainglorious about their baby, their precious Dayadin named for the constellation of the Hawk. And now she was only one more mother amid a rash of heroes, as Arok was only one more father.
There must be others, he knew. How many men had sat there in that circle? Thirty? More? They had been of all races and climes – Rukar, Olchibe, Gech, as well as Jafn – even the alliance-breaking reiver Vorms and other outland scum. All had lain with Chillel. Some had even – erroneously – called her ‘wife’, though only Arok could legally have claimed that.
Chillel had said she was a wine cup; any might drink from her who would. Each who sought her she lay with, and each no doubt she impregnated. Yet and again, only one had she solicited – himself. Why?
Why?
The joyhall boomed to cheers.
Arok pulled out of his reverie and politely nodded round. The hall was packed with Holas men, and Chaiords and warriors from all the neighbouring allies, Irhon and Shaiy, Kree, Arbo and Banjaf. Even a couple of absentees had sent gifts of meat and black wine for this Holas feast.
Presently Arok would give the sign, and every fire in the House and throughout the garth be doused. Then they must sit speechless and wait to see what communication, if any, came to them from the vulnerable dark.
Last year a swarm of vrixes had invaded the Holas House and only the skill of the House Mage had seen them off. Tonight, Arok and some of his guests had seen seefs spiralling along in the fresh snow near the gate, while a corrit had soured all the milk in the garth. But you could not avoid these pests. They clustered about any Jafn festival like hothouse flies on a split orange.
In a way too Arok quite liked to see them. He had mislaid them after the Death, and pondered if, for all his new vigour and luck, he had gone psychically blind.
The company drank, and on the rafters hawks rustled their feathers. The chariot-lions still left to them, some elderly and as gap-toothed as some of the older men, padded round the tables on the off chance of treats.
The hour had come and Arok gave the signal. Three garth mages rose from their benches and stretched out their hands across the space. Every torch-flame and lamp, every glowing hearth, closed to black. Outside, taking the signal from the House, the lesser mages performed their task, and the external firelight died too in the high House windows. Darkness had all.
Troubling moment. It was always like that.
Arok could recall when he had been a child himself, and almost afraid, if he had allowed it.
They sat like wooden things. At the perimeter of the room the women did the same. In the upper room Nirri, who had stayed playing with their son, would do this also. She had said the first year Dayadin would be frightened when the lamplight went. But she reported afterwards he had not seemed so. And when she told him he must keep motionless until the fires were again lighted, he did. For an infant he had already a real grasp of concepts, and had spoken fluently since about nine months.
Conceivably this year nothing would occur.
Then Arok glimpsed, by dimmest starshine, the House Mage standing, pointing up into the roof.
No, it was not the stars at the window he had seen by. A cold blueness had begun in the black hollow above. As it solidified, every hawk positioned there took off with a sharp clap of wings. Down to the tables and the wrists of men they cascaded. The lions growled and lowered themselves on their bellies.
Whatever it was that came then was more significant than any other supernatural relay Arok had witnessed at a Feast of Embers.
In the cryopathic light a man hung upside down. He clasped a long sword against his body, which wore Jafn clothing. His hair fell loosely in a curtain. In the blue light it seemed brownish-mauve. And then they saw that it was red.
None must speak or move. A wise stricture. Otherwise there might have been pandemonium.
Most knew the vision by description. Some had watched him in the flesh as he rode across the land. A few like Arok had seen him day in and out.
Lionwolf.
It was the Lionwolf. The god-king who had drawn the Jafn people to obliteration.
There was an awesome extreme coldness in the hall. A subtraction of fires alone could not have caused it. It was like a wave from the depths of a sea of ice, and colder even that that.
Gradually, as they looked on transfixed, the image of the hanging man changed. It melded into the sword, became all a sword pointing upwards, which in turn altered its appearance. Now a blue sun levitated in the roof, and white flames tangled from it, and then, like the shutting of an eye, it all disappeared.
After the briefest instant natural warmth gushed back into the room.
The House Mage spoke out rather hastily and the fires were reborn in their places.
Men shifted, glancing at each other. Not one of them voiced his thoughts, which were generally the same: such an augur could not be optimistic.
Upstairs in the bedchamber, as a lamp rekindled, Nirri picked up her unbelievably-not-unique boy. He was handsome, already heavy with young muscle, more like a child of six, she thought.
‘How cold it was,’ she said. ‘Cold as some say Hell must be.’
The black child Dayadin, seeing she was uneasy as she had been the year before, stroked her cheek with a comforting hand.
These reiver raiders did not, as in former days, issue from the sea into the east. They rode out of the south of the continent, loaded with pillage already, but hungry for a proper scrap.
The weather and the going were undemanding. Transparent skies produced sleek hard veldts of snow.
Krandif’s fleet had unevenly divided. About three hundred warriors had cantered off on their horsazin for those desolate ruins previously bypassed – Thase Jyr, Kandexa. The move was decided in Vorm Assembly, where each man’s vote counted. Mozdif had led that band. Krandif thought it was a waste of time and energy. Thase and Kand were nothing now, but to the north-east the familiar Jafn lands, where settlements were resurrecting after the catastrophe, were worth a visit. Two hundred and thirty-three men agreed with his plan.
True, many men of the Vorms had been allied with the Jafn, under the blue-sun banner of the Lionwolf. But they were dead and that past was cancelled.
It would be a bonus too to get back to the sea – any sea. The horsazin were fractious for a swim, and the barrels of flat sea-water kept for them by now stank. The men wanted the coast for more emotive reasons. They were of the sea-peoples, and on the Vormland you could always smell the sea, unless you had, insanely, trekked to the mountains.
On the evening when they sighted the coastal ice in the distance, with a dark line of liquid ocean beyond, Krandif’s band rejoiced, and dug deep into the snow to make a hidden camp. Here they took a sleep night, the first for nine days. Unlike the Jafn, who slept a few hours every three or four nights, the Vorms, Kelps and Fazions, when they did sleep, would indulge in twelve or fourteen hours of blissful oblivion. As their sage, Gunri, had once declared, ‘Like a man who only samples his wife but once a year, when he does it he is entitled to make a pig of himself.’
They slept like logs.
The horsazin were restless at their pickets in the snow cave, but resigned, scenting the sea, shuddering and frisky with longing. Finally they slept too, on their feet.
Day came and shone over the hump of the camp, gave up and went away.
In the second night the camp woke, drunk with slumber, and blundered about heavy-headed. But by the following dawn they were actively refreshed and rode on.
Krandif had undergone a weird dream in his thirteen-hour coma. He wished Mozdif had been there, to discuss it with him. Instead he sought the chief shaman who accompanied them. The shaman did not ride. He bounced alongside the horses. A lean scarecrow, he cawed like an ice-crow in answer to any query – then showed you his meaning by conjuring a symbol in the air.
‘This I dreamed,’ had said Krandif. ‘There was a red star, like that we saw sea over. This
fell on the earth. To see it I went, and when there I got it had turned to black. I picked it up. Cooled it was – and smooth. I held it. In the dream I thought these words: I will gift to Our Lady Saftri this fallen black star.’
The shaman barked, an innovation perhaps, but all that ran up on the air was a little twiddly pattern, such as a child might doodle in stolen octopus ink on the snow.
He was a war shaman, however. One took no risks.
‘Many thanks,’ Krandif said. ‘I’m much obliged.’ He led them on into the north-east.
‘They’re coming.’
Arok nodded. His face was set in grim familiar lines. ‘Sir,’ he said to the House Mage.
The Mage had risen. ‘I’ll go send the tidings to the neighbouring clans.’
The other mages had by now gathered and together they all went into the Thaumary behind the joyhall. A dull sizzling filled the air as the sorcerous sending winged away in three directions.
This would be the first reiver attack for some while, but they were always a possibility. It would seem these raiders had already beached their jalees up on the western coast and gone to try the wreckage of the Ruk before travelling here.
Soon the sword, kept horizontal in peacetime, was anointed with animal blood, and fixed upright on the Holas House above the door.
Men stared at it. Arok knew their thought and thought it too. The vision of the Lionwolf on Embers Night must have predicted a raid, for the accursed hero had hung upside down and the sword in his clutch therefore had pointed upright for war.
This would be then a special fight.
A Holas hunting party had spotted the reiver band about fifteen miles off – Vorms, striped purple and charging about the shore, pausing only to allow their homed fish-horses to swim. Despite their horseplay, if left unchecked they would be on the garth before nightfall. That must not happen. Arok and his men were kitted out in mail, the chariots stood in the yard on burnished runners, with the youngest chariot-lions positioned to draw them. The beasts had been dressed in their war collars. Everything was in order.
Arok’s charioteer, a boy of sixteen, sprang up ahead of him, breastplate wobbling a little; it had been the boy’s great-uncle’s and he had not yet quite grown into it. It should have been Arok’s younger brother who drove him. But none of Arok’s brothers lived.
Yes. Everything in order: a Jafn host of forty men, nine of them each old enough to be someone’s grandsire, and the rest, aside from Arok, barely out of boyhood. And the reivers? Oh, just two hundred or so. A snack for any hungry warrior.
If only they had come in along the north-eastern sea, as normally they did. Then the strategically placed watchtowers would have given warning sooner.
How much time before Arok’s cunningly attached allies – Arbo, Banjaf and Kree being the nearest – could catch up to him? Some hours … a day …
‘Face of God,’ Arok muttered. ‘Prick of God,’ he augmented. His charioteer shuddered at the blasphemy.
‘It’s well, my boy. God understands.’
The three remaining war mages had come out and climbed in their vehicle, stony-mouthed. As well they might be. The House Mage, who must stay behind to protect the garth, came out too, his sending done.
‘We will hold the Thought of Victory for you, by all our craft.’
Arok expressed thanks.
Women drooped over the yard, trying to seem fierce and resolute, some holding their babies. A couple of the older ones were tearful, but the very oldest not, putting a brave face on for the honour of their elderly husbands in the battle chariots. Nirri walked out now. He had told her she must set an example, and was glad to see she did. Her head was held high; she wore all her necklaces, and was confidently smiling, and by the hand she led the boy.
Seeing him, a susurrus of intuitive relief wafted across the yard. And by the gate others pressed closer.
‘Dayadin!’ Arok theatrically and gladly cried. He lifted the boy up so everyone there should behold him. This garth had a hero. They were blessed. How could any harm befall them?
Dayadin smiled too. He looked at his father and said, ‘Take me with you.’
Arok almost choked. Where the idea of defeat and perhaps death only depressed him, this now filled him with terror.
He tried to laugh it off.
Great God – with all the garth practically watching.
‘No, son. You stay here with our Mage to guard your mother and the women.’
Dayadin frowned. He seldom wept, but frowning was sometimes a prelude to it.
God – forgive my bloody blasphemy – don’t let him cry – not now!
In fact Dayadin was not upset. He was thinking. Already nearly two, he had begun to learn that adults must now and then be outwitted.
A hovor flicked abruptly in over the House wall.
Foul abomination. But at such moments one must have a care for everything, as Arok well knew.
‘Look!’ said the child. He stretched out his hand and the hovor, swimming down on some current of air, flipped something into his palm. Then it flitted away.
‘Let me see.’
Dayadin showed his father, and everyone else, a single smooth chip, probably the shed tooth of a small whale, with which the hovor had gifted him.
Arok heard the murmurs around them. ‘A good sign.’ ‘Even the spirits honour Dayadin.’
Arok kissed his son on the forehead and lowered him from the chariot to the yard. Dayadin seemed content. Did he even fully grasp where Arok was going – or that he might not be back?
I shall come back. Didn’t I live through the White Death?
But Arok was not sure. To Arok, the blade of a knife or sword was a more certain and different matter from any Rukar magic. Besides, he had served Chillel’s purpose now. Perhaps invulnerability had worn off.
Nirri, when she had seen to her queen’s duties about the beleaguered hold, trod up the ladder-stair to the upper room of the house.
In her belly was a cold weight. She was afraid Arok would die, and also that the whole garth would be overrun by bloodthirsty reivers. The notion of being murdered frightened her. But so did that of being taken off as a slave to northern lands. She had spent so much of her life living in affectionless, unvalued poverty before Arok found her. She did not want to return to it.
The room was cheering enough. Rainbow hangings and polished weapons on the walls, a mattress heaped with furs, and a fire-dancing brazier. Two of her women were there, trying as she had to seem buoyant and assured.
‘The gates are shut fast,’ Nirri announced. ‘And soon enough the Banjaf at least will be with Arok. Over fifty warriors. Ours too is a vigorous garth, and we still have twelve young men to defend us.’
This was mere ritual, and the ‘young men’ were aged between seven and fourteen, but the women brightly agreed.
Nirri looked for her son. Something had perplexed her slightly. It was the whale tooth the hovor had given him. Surely, Dayadin already had a tooth just like it? One of the garth boys had found and carved it for him …
‘Where’s my boy?’
‘Oh, he went back to hall, Nirri lady.’
Nirri turned involuntarily, aware instantly Dayadin had not been in the hall.
She now felt, along with all the rest, a gripe of fear in her stomach, and told herself not to. Dayadin was always off about some business of his own. He had been like that since he was one year old.
And Nirri was quite right. Dayadin was off about his own business.
That particular hovor had been a pet of his for months. He had told it therefore, using only words in his mind, that it must come, lift the whale tooth from the ledge where it lay and present it to him in the yard. Faultless parent-fooling distraction. Once Arok and his men had ridden off, Dayadin waited briefly. Then, evading everyone, he made his way down the lanes between the many vacant houses of the Holasan-garth. If the garth had not been so unpeopled it was doubtful no one would have seen him, for he was unique to them and caused a
loving prideful interest wherever he went.
He again met the hovor which, as instructed, awaited him by one of the high outer walls. Below the terrace dropped steeply for three man-heights to the ground. But Dayadin, though unusually mature in intellect and body, was still a child, and the hovor raised him over the wall and safely over the platform to the snow with enormous ease. Thereafter Dayadin broke into a firm indefatigable run in pursuit of his father and Arok’s tiny army.
All the clumps of little villages gave the clue. Deserted and dilapidated, they carried the emblem of a parading seal – a Jafn marker. One of the garths would be close.
Krandif’s men were in high glee, their horses sea-washed, newly striped and up for anything.
Then came some cliffs, and the way through conducted them into ice-forests of glassy cedar and blanched, knotted tamarisk trees tufted with raw silver. Huge boulders of ancient snow, with translucent icy eyes, watched their progress. Jafn sprites whiffled in the winds. But the Vorms were not nervous of any of these elementals, who anyway they could rarely see – and then barely. They had their own more immediate and concrete divinity at home.
Descending the tumulus of a snow hill, they looked at a scoop of open land several miles across. At the western end of it a hint of organized smoke showed on the sky – too much for any village. That must be the garth.
Then they saw a Jafn pack coursing out of the distance towards them. Lion chariots raced, sending up a haze of sprayed top-snow.
Dismayed, Krandif controlled his jinking horse.
‘Is that all of them, Krandif?’
Someone called, ‘A mistake they’ve made – they thought only their own kind had come against them, so didn’t bother.’
‘No. That’s all there are of them left.’
‘Then excuse me that speaks, but it’s no fight.’
‘Courage,’ said Krandif. ‘Perhaps when we get over the bodies of these ones, their women in the house will give us a better combat.’