Dae Hyo stood in the centre of their circle, almost negligently at ease. ‘Afraid of me?’ he asked. ‘Rat-fucking cowards.’
The taunt worked better on the men than it had on Krish, perhaps because it was less true. The two must have fought together often. They moved almost as one. One axe rose and fell towards Dae Hyo’s neck as a knife hacked at his hamstrings, while the single-edged sword swung in an arc meant to take off his head.
It didn’t seem possible to escape the suddenly sprung trap. Krish leapt forward determined to do – he didn’t know what. But he leapt into the empty space where Dae Hyo had been. His clumsy lunge took him into the path of the axe and only luck let the haft rather than the blade strike him.
His head was still ringing as he watched Dae Hyo dance away from the triple blow, leaving only a lock of his dark hair for the sword and nothing but air for the knife. His own blades were slashing at the same time, his shorter sword somehow finding an opening through the arc of the longer and cutting open his opponent from groin to neck. For a moment, Krish thought Dae Hyo had forgotten the axe-wielder, but then the man grunted and dropped to his knees beside him, hands clasped to his gut where Dae Hyo’s knife was buried deep inside.
The world seemed to draw a breath, release it and continue. Birdsong and the soft whisper of wind through the grass restarted all around them. Those sounds were shortly joined by the buzzing of flies as they descended on the three corpses that Dae Hyo was now calmly looting.
The warrior smiled when he found a leather flask tucked inside a black jerkin, downed the contents, burped thunderously and stuffed the flask inside his own shirt. Next he examined two belt knives, their blades made of sharpened flint, and threw them aside. He took the axes, the sword and a necklace of amber beads from round the neck of one of the dead men along with a silver ring from another.
‘The Chun always were showy fuckers,’ he said. Who needs a pretty necklace to tempt thieves when there’s no one to admire it but the rabbits?’
‘You’re taking it,’ Krish pointed out, standing upright on wobbly legs.
Dae Hyo frowned, then flicked the necklace to him. ‘Put it on, then. The Jorlith say amber’s lucky.’
‘It wasn’t very lucky for him.’
‘Well, let’s hope it’ll serve you better.’
Krish wasn’t sure he believed in luck, but the stones glowed pleasingly gold in the sunlight and he shrugged and tied the leather cord at the back of his neck. ‘Shouldn’t we leave? There might be more of them.’
‘If there were more they’d be here already. The Chun – the Brotherband, they call themselves now, the ignorant scum. What’s a brother without a mother or a sister? Anyway, I was told they’ve moved north, out of their own lands and the Rune Waste, to raid the Four Together. They’ve broken the Poppy Peace for the first time in fifty years. I don’t know why these three stayed behind. Maybe they didn’t like the way Brother Yong was running things.’
Dae Hyo finished his work. He stripped the black silk shirt from the man he’d gutted, though it was dripping with blood, and then they walked together back to camp. Over and over in Krish’s mind, the fight kept following its lethal course. Dae Hyo had been so quick. He hadn’t even seemed afraid. When they’d finished their breakfast and Dae Hyo called him to his feet for sword practice, he didn’t complain.
There was more enthusiasm in Krish’s strokes this time and he could see that the wooden sword was sinking a little deeper into the bark. Dae Hyo offered no praise, though, and after five minutes Krish was already tiring despite his new-found determination.
‘No no!’ Dae Hyo shouted after a blow so wild it missed the trunk entirely. ‘You’re not doing it right.’
Krish swallowed down his impatience and nodded. ‘I know. When you moved it seemed easier.’
‘I’ve been doing it longer.’
‘But it’s not just that. I saw you. You were swinging differently and the way you moved your feet … You never lost your balance. I think if you teach me how you stand, I’ll get better.’
‘How I stand? I stand like I stand. Like a man.’
‘Show me.’
Dae Hyo moved reluctantly to raise his wooden sword. He looked ill at ease, with his shoulders hunched in discomfort.
‘No,’ Krish said, ‘use your real weapon.’ He hardly noticed that he was giving the older man orders.
Dae Hyo sighed theatrically, then dropped the wooden blade and pulled out the metal from its sheath on his hip. Instantly, his posture altered. His spine straightened as his knees bent, one foot shifting in front of the other. He was rooted, Krish now saw, precisely over the midpoint of his body.
‘That’s it, stay just like that.’
Dae Hyo tensed and almost moved, but he looked at Krish and waited until he’d put himself into the same position. His eyebrows rose as Krish lifted the point of the wooden sword, which now felt much lighter in his hand.
‘You look almost like a warrior,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘Take a swing.’
Krish did, and instantly lost his balance, falling forward on to his front foot so the sword once again clattered uselessly against the trunk.
Dae Hyo’s face fell. ‘Oh well, it was a good idea.’
‘It is a good idea. I just need to learn how to move first. Show me how you go forward holding the sword.’
Dae Hyo looked doubtful but did as Krish asked and then watched, half-amused but gradually more impressed, as Krish spent the next hour practising what he’d been shown.
They travelled on a little after that. Krish’s horse hugged the side of a small stream as he led Dae Hyo’s beast and the other man scouted ahead for danger. He found nothing but two large fish, which he presented to Krish for cooking. Their silver scales gleamed in the sunlight and flaked against his palms.
When they’d eaten, Dae Hyo brought out his bow and they repeated the morning’s exercise. He showed Krish how he drew the weapon, its string kissing his lips as his shoulders expanded to draw it, and then Krish took it and spent another hour imitating the move until his shoulders were in agony. But the bow had begun to feel a little more natural in his hands.
Supper was more cheerful that night, though Krish once again refused to wrestle, this time with the excuse that he’d do better when he was stronger. After they’d eaten the smoked remains of the fish he lay back on his elbows and watched the animals of the plain slinking through the twilight while the stream burbled to their left. He held still as a tiny rabbit emerged from the grass to sniff at his feet. Its liquid brown eyes met his in complete trust for a moment. Then Dae Hyo came trudging back through the grass with a filled water pot and the baby rabbit hopped away, its white tail bobbing as it retreated into the mouth of its burrow.
Krish frowned. ‘I never thought before, but it must just be men they hunt.’
‘What?’ Dae Hyo crushed some aromatic leaves in the water and set it over the fire to boil.
‘The …’ Krish was reluctant to give them the name he’d heard in children’s stories, afraid the other man would mock him. ‘There are ash-skinned people, monsters, living below the ground.’
‘Oh, the worm men. No, they take horses too. I’ve seen them in the mines. And they ate Jasper the Nose’s best hunting dog.’
Krish digested the information that others knew the creatures were more than legend. ‘But the rabbits live in the dark, underground.’
‘Mmm …’ Dae Hyo frowned as he poured the tea. ‘I tell you what, you’re right. And it’s not just rabbits. Foxes too, and badgers and moles.’
‘It must only be men and men’s servants they hate.’
Dae Hyo sipped his tea. ‘Can they hate? Can they think? They never seemed to have much on their minds except feasting on the nearest flesh.’
Krish remembered the attack in the ruined city. The creatures, the worm men, had seemed mindless in their violence, but they’d chosen to spare him. There must have been some intelligence behind the decision. He didn’t want to share that experience
with the other man, though. He was afraid of what Dae Hyo would think. His fingers played with the amber beads of his necklace as he thought, soothed by their smooth coolness.
‘It suits you, boy,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘You Ashane aren’t pretty, no one could accuse you of that. A man can’t love skin so dark or noses so like a hook. And as for those eyes of yours – just like the worm men. As I’m sure you know.’ He smiled at Krish’s startled look and Krish was reminded that the other man had a sharp mind when he wasn’t drowning it in alcohol. ‘At least with the necklace you look civilised. Better than those ugly bracelets round your wrists, anyhow.’
‘They’re not bracelets,’ Krish said, worrying at one of the manacles, which had chafed the skin raw beneath.
‘No?’ Something in Dae Hyo’s expression suggested he’d already guessed this.
‘I was … chained,’ Krish admitted.
‘A slave? Well, good for you for escaping. No man should own another. They say the Janggok sell their captives to the Rah, but what else can you expect of men who cut off other men’s cocks and a people who’d rather weave than hunt? You weren’t taken in a raid, were you?’
‘I wasn’t a slave. I was a prisoner. They arrested me for …’ He’d been about to say a crime I didn’t commit, but if he was ever going to tell Dae Hyo the truth, now was a good time for it. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ Krish said. ‘I’m the Ashane king’s son. There was a prophecy I’d kill my father, so he’d planned to kill me first, but someone got me away to safety when I was a baby. I didn’t know who I was until the King’s justice found me this winter. He recognised me by my eyes.’
Dae Hyo’s delighted guffaw wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. ‘Really, boy? And there I thought you looked like that because your mother let some worm man have his wicked way with her.’
‘It’s true!’ Krish protested. ‘I’m going to build an army and kill my father. I’ll be a king myself and you can be the general of my army.’
Dae Hyo shook his head, still laughing. ‘I’m honoured,’ he said, and Krish realised he didn’t believe a single word of it. It did sound absurd, he knew that. He wouldn’t have believed it himself if his ma hadn’t told him. He twisted the manacle on his left wrist and wished he had some way to get it off his arm. Maybe then he’d seem less like a common criminal.
‘Leave it,’ Dae Hyo said. ‘A man should have something to remember his enemies by, whoever they are.’
‘Who are yours?’ Krish asked. ‘You seem to have a lot of them. The men today, and those ones when we first met – and you don’t seem to like any of the other tribes very much.’
‘Each tribe likes its own best. The others have their own ways; it doesn’t have to make them enemies. And those men I killed when we first met, they were like a wolf or a flash flood: a natural thing a man battles against because he has to. There’s no hate in it.’
‘But you hated those men today.’
Dae Hyo’s face twisted and he looked away. ‘The fucking Chun. We’d always fought, us and them. A blood feud here, a raid there – you know, nothing out of the ordinary. Their land was poor, just scrubby grass and giant rats the uncivilised scum bred to eat. They envied us our deer and rabbits and sometimes they tried to steal them. The first time I wetted my blade it was in Chun blood.
‘Then came the year of the great murrain. The disease struck their rats and our deer. The creatures’ eyes gummed up and they moved slower and slower until they ended their lives bleeding from every hole. I remember the stink of it. It was worse from the ones who were still alive, a mix of pus and shit, and the crying they made was like a baby that needs feeding. Nearly all the deer died and all the Chun rats too. But the sickness spared our rabbits, so we still had a little food. The young and the old suffered, but most of the Dae lived. It was different for the Chun. They had nothing. Their elder mothers sent to beg us for some of our stock, but what could we do? We didn’t have enough to feed our own and they’d never been our friends.’
He was quiet for a long time, watching the stick he used to stir the spitting embers of the fire. ‘The Chun men came in force from their lands and fell on our winter camp where the women and the children were,’ he said finally. ‘That bastard Chun Yong led them. The Dae warriors were hunting in the hills for what game we could find. Only a few were left to defend the camp. The Chun killed the elder mothers and our wives and knife wives and sisters. They killed our children. And when we returned, a band at a time, they killed us too.’
‘But you survived,’ Krish said softly.
‘My band was high in the foothills of the Black Heights, hoping to steal game from Seonu lands. We found nothing, and when we returned the Chun were gone. I wanted to hunt them down but we were only seven, and the others said we needed to bury our dead. We spent days at it, until the rot was too great and we had to leave them for the wolves.’ There were tears in Dae Hyo’s eyes and Krish looked away. ‘No man should take his blade to a woman or a child, but the Chun had stopped caring what a man should do.’
‘All your people were killed?’ Krish asked after a moment.
Dae Hyo dashed away his tears and coughed to clear his voice. ‘Near enough. A few were taken as slaves. And there were those in my hunting band, my brothers. I thought we were the seed of a new Dae nation. I thought they felt the same.’ He spat on the grass. ‘They’ve all forgotten who they are. Not me, though. So when I heard the Chun had moved on, I came home where I belong.’
He stared into the fire for a long while, as the sunlight faded and the sounds of night crept in to fill the silence. ‘But the land’s just dirt without the tribe. And the Chun still haven’t paid for what they did. They will, though. I’ll take a sword to all their futures, the way they took one to mine.’
The training continued: running in the morning, swordwork after that and the bow before supper. Once Krish had realised he needed to tell Dae Hyo what to teach him, he could see the point to the lessons. It was slow, but he could feel himself getting better. On the fourth day, he ran for almost twenty minutes before he tired. On the fifth day his wooden sword finally bit through the bark and released the sap beneath. His bow work was best of all. He rarely missed the target now, though he could still loose fewer than a dozen arrows before his shoulders tired and locked.
On the eighth day, he felt the fluid dance of the sword movements for the first time. And for the first time he was facing Dae Hyo himself, rather than the chestnut in whose shade they’d made camp.
The other man attacked and Krish parried, slapping the wooden sword aside then lunging in to put the point of his own blade against Dae Hyo’s heart. He grinned and backed away, raising his sword again as Dae Hyo had taught him, never letting his guard down. But Dae Hyo just sighed and dropped his own sword to the grass. There’d been rain in the night and it fell into a puddle, splashing his trousers with mud.
‘What’s the matter?’ Krish asked, still not lowering his own sword. He wondered if this was a test. ‘That was better, wasn’t it?’
‘Much better,’ Dae Hyo agreed. ‘You’re a fast learner. With a mind like that, good reflexes, you could be a great warrior.’
Krish smiled.
‘But you never will be. You haven’t the strength for it. Look at those arms.’ He clasped Krish’s shoulder, then moved the grip downward, testing the muscles. ‘As thin as twigs and that’s after seven days’ work. But the problem’s all here.’ His hand moved to Krish’s chest, pressing in and expelling all the air. ‘There’s not enough breath. You can train all you want, but you’ll never have the wind to keep going long enough. I wouldn’t fight with you at my back now and I wouldn’t do it in a year’s time. This body’s only fit for herding goats.’
Krish glared at him. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being a goatherd. The goats had more kindness than most of the people I’ve met since I left them.’ Without thinking, he raised his sword to press the tip against Dae Hyo’s throat.
The other man laughed. ‘Now there’s
the heart. You’ve got heart enough for ten men, but it isn’t enough. ‘
Krish wanted to be angry but felt only a kind of dull despair. Dae Hyo spent half the day and all of the night drunk, and he seemed to attract trouble like shit attracted flies, but he was the only person Krish knew in the thousand miles of the plains. ‘You want me to leave?’
‘Leave? Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘But … You said I was no use to you if I didn’t fight.’
‘Did I?’ Dae Hyo frowned. ‘Well, not everyone’s a warrior. If you’d been born in the tribe we’d have raised you right and you’d have been fighting like a true Dae since your balls dropped. But it’s no use lamenting the arrow that missed. You’ve got a mind, boy. You think. As for me – I’m a man of action. But I see now that I need someone like you, someone who’ll ask the right questions. If I’m to get my revenge, I’ll need a thinker as well as all of the fighters.’
Krish’s chest felt hollowed out with relief, but he couldn’t help asking, ‘What fighters? I thought it was just you.’
‘Well, at the moment. I’ve been considering paying others to join me, since my own brothers won’t. I need weapons for them first – I was working for iron when those rat-fuckers at the mines kicked me out.’
‘But wouldn’t a real warrior already have his own weapons? If you’re planning to train the men yourself you’ll end up with an army like me.’
‘There you go, you see: your mind’s nearly as sharp as a woman’s. If you’d been born in the tribe they’d have seen that straight away. When you reached your twelfth summer they’d have made you a knife woman and one day you could have joined the elder mothers instead of sweating to swing a sword you can barely lift.’
‘A knife woman?’
Dae Hyo made a horrifying snipping gesture at his privates. ‘A gelding, you know, so you never grow into a man and lose the brains you were born with.’
Krish took a step back. ‘But I wasn’t born in the tribe.’
‘No.’ Dae Hyo kicked his wooden sword back into his hand and twirled it, then rested the blade against his shoulder. ‘Tell me, how do I get men to fight for my cause and women to lead it?’
Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods Page 32