by Jo Clayton
RANE: Any resistance organized?
HAL: Getting there. Tesc Gradin has sent some young-ties down from the mountains to sound things out, his son too, good lad from what I’ve heard. There was some resentment of his attacks on the tithe wagons, but he’s defused this by sending young Teras Gradin around with some of the grain he took and promising more. Rumor says he’s defied the more conservative outcast taroms and brought ties into the governing council of that Haven. When they heard that, my ties got a fire under their skins. There’s a lot of talk about after the war, how things are going to be different. I only get snippets of that, they won t talk much around me, well, can you blame them? And there’s Hern. (The words are a question, there is a hint of a twinkle in Hal’s faded brown eyes.) A clever man, they say. There’s almost as much talk about Hern as there is about Tesc. Though I might just be hearing more of that. There’s a large reservoir of good will for the Heslins. I’ve heard men say he’s a lazy layabout too keen on women, almost fond talk as if they admire his weaknesses as much as his strengths; it’s as if he belongs to them. They tell stories about his skill with a sword and what a fox he is at settling disputes. Funny, a lot of stories I haven’t heard for years are surfacing again. How he got the truth out of twisty Jagger; the time he settled that marriage business at Cantintar; how he led a decset of guards after that rogue band that was burning tars, backed them into a corner and whipped them though they had five times his fighters. (He chuckles.) First time I heard the story, there were only a dozen raiders. Now there’s fifty. By the time Hern returns (he raises a brow, his smiling eyes fix on Rane’s face) he’ll find a space waiting for him no man could possibly fill.
RANE: What about you, Hal? Any danger?
HAL: (shrugging) They’ve tolerated me so far because they see me as an amiable nothing. They’ve taken the tar from me, did you know? Anders is tarom now, good little Follower that he is.
RANE: Does anyone suspect you’re sending information to the Biserica?
HAL: (chuckling) Oh no, my long friend. Sweet Hallam, he’s a harmless fool. Let him potter about grinning at people, he’s entertaining now and then, cools things down sometimes. They burned my books, did you know? Took them all out and put them on a pile. Even the Keeper’s Praises, illuminated by Hanara Pan herself. Anders carried them out with his own hands and put them on the fire. (He broods at the fire, his anger so intense it was palpable; Tuli felt it powerfully.) Barbarians. They’re all barbarians. (His voice is very soft, very even, the words are flat, floating like leaves in the crackling silence.)
RANE: Hal, you don’t have to stay here. This storm will close the pass to wagons, but a man on snowshoes could get through if he had a reason to.
HAL: Oh, I think I must stay. There are still ways I can help my ties. Anders is too thick to notice when he’s being led about by the nose. (He ran a trembling hand through his silverwhite hair.) If by chance I do survive this nonsense, I’d like to live in your guesthouse and work in the Biserica Library. You might mention that to Yael-mri when you see her next.
RANE: (putting her hand over his) I will, be sure of that. Hal?
HAL: What is it, my friend?
RANE: Could you dig into your stores, get us some winter clothing? Blankets (she makes a rueful little sound, bites on her lower lip) and food; meant to get that from you anyway, grain for our macain, they’ll find little enough to eat, groundsheets, a tent, a firestriker, we’ll be sleeping out until we hit Sel-ma-Carth. It’s a lot to ask.
HAL: A lot, but not too much. It’s late. Anders and his soulmate will be sleeping the sleep of the self-justified. The attics will be dusty but deserted. Come with me. (He nods at Tuli.) The youngling should stay here. You know the bolt holes if we run into trouble. By the way, I’ve never gotten round to telling Anders about the little secrets in the walls so you needn’t fear he’ll be poking around down here. If it’s still snowing tomorrow you’d better stay. That won’t be a problem. (He gets to his feet, stretches, pats a yawn.)
Rane unfolded from the pillows, stood looking down at Tuli. “Eh-Moth,” she said. “Kick some of that straw together and stretch out between those quilts. You’re pinching yourself to keep awake.”
Tuli yawned. She nodded, got shakily to her feet. Yawned again.
Rane chuckled. “We won’t be leaving until tomorrow night at the earliest. Sleep as much as you need.”
They stayed in the secret cellar for three days while the storm raged outside. Tuli grew heartily bored with the place. This wasn’t what she’d expected, wasn’t the kind of adventure the old lays sang of.
She and Rane worked over the gleanings from Hallam’s attic, got them sorted into packs for each of the macain, then cut up old worn blankets and sewed them into coats for the macain-no time to let them finish their winter changes. Tuli spent a good part of her days scrubbing a stiff-bristled brush across the itching thickening skins of the beasts, raking away the dead slough. What should have taken a month or two was being pushed into a few days and the good-natured macain were miserable and snappish. The brushing helped. And it kept her temper more equitable, gave her something to do with the long empty hours.
Though Hal seldom visited them during the day, he would come strolling in late at night, usually after Tuli had crawled into her quilts and slid into sleep. Sometimes she woke and saw the two of them head to head by the dying fire, talking in low tones, always talking, more of what she heard the first night. She didn’t bother listening, it was all too boring. She’d enjoyed hearing about her father and Teras, had glowed with pride when Hal praised them, the rest of it seemed a waste of time.
She didn’t quite know what to make of Hallam. He wasn’t like her father, or her uncles, or even old Hars. He seemed a lazy man; too indolent to tend to anything but his own needs, drifting indifferently along as the Agli and the Followers took away everything he had. When she thought about it, though, she saw he was defeating them in his own way by not letting them change him. If they caught him spying, he’d go to his death mildly appreciating the absurdity of what both he and his murderers were doing. Gentle, shambling, incompetent in so many things, he was right, he had no place in the world that was coming. She liked him well enough, but she was glad she didn’t have to live around him, could even understand why Anders had done his best to be as different as he could from his father.
It was easy to let her mind wander as she scrubbed at the macai’s back, scraping loose the fragments of dead skin. Might meet up with Teras as Rane and she wandered about the Plain. She felt a sudden pang of loneliness. She missed Teras more than she wanted to think about, wished he was here, now; it would be so good to have him along, sharing all this, she’d have someone her own age to talk to. She began to see what Rane meant when she said Tuli was too young to interest her any way but as a friend and daughter. Rane was about Annic’s age. Tuli thought about her parents up in the mountain gorge, wondered how they were coping with the snow and the cold. It was interesting to hear from Hallam that her father had got the ties onto the council in spite of the Tallins, seemed things were getting settled in odd ways up there, but settled for sure and in the way her father wanted. Teras and old Hars shuttling messages back and forth between the tars and the gorge. What would Sanani be doing with her oadats, how would she keep them from freezing? Seems like a hundred years since I saw Da and Mama and Sanani. The Ammu Rin, she said it took ten years to be a healwoman. I don’t know if I could take that. I think I’d like being a healwoman. The two men she’d killed, she dreamed about them sometimes, though she didn’t want to. They’d almost forced her to kill them, but they wouldn’t get out of her head. If I can’t be a healwoman, I could always work in the fields; I wouldn’t mind that, I like making things grow, or maybe the Pria Melit would let me help with the animals. She shivered as she heard again the soft whirr of the sling, the faint thunk the stone made against the temple, saw again the guard crumpling with loose slow finality, saw the young acolyte swing round and stretch out on the
ground, felt against her palms the empty flaccidity of his legs as she helped carry him to the fire, saw the grime on his feet, the crack in the nail of a big toe, his shaven head, the round ears like jug handles sticking out from his head. She scrubbed at burning eyes with the back of her hand. I won’t cry, not for them, they asked for it. She sniffed again, swallowed, and scrubbed fiercely at the macai’s back.
Late on the third night, Rane woke Tuli. “Wind’s gone down,” she said as Tuli rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Some snow still falling, but that’s just as well, it’ll cover our tracks when we leave here.” Tuli crawled out of the quilts and started putting on her winter gear.
Carrying a lantern Rane walked ahead of her, plowing through the drifts, vanishing repeatedly in the swirls of gently falling snow. There was no wind but tiny flakes kept drifting down and down, with the persistence of water wearing away stone. Hal followed with another lantern, leading the two macain and leaving behind him a wallow a blind man could follow, but when Tuli looked back, she could see that the snow was already filling it. By morning there would be no sign anyone had ever passed this way.
Tuli plodded along between the two lights; in spite of her heavier clothing she was beginning to shiver. So much snow. There ought to be more sound with that much falling, but there was only the crunching of all their feet, a hoot from a macai, the soft hiss from the lanterns.
Rane stopped outside the gate, took the lead rope from Hallam and gave him her lantern. “You can get back all right?”
“I’m not in my dotage, woman. Have a care, will you. Who have I to talk to if you get yourself killed? And give my best to Yael-mri when you see her again.”
Rane watched him disappear into the veils of falling snow; when he was gone, she pulled herself into the saddle, waited until Tuli was mounted, then started east along the lane. The rope tied between them tugged Tuli’s macai into a slow dance, crunching through the drifted snow. She slumped in the saddle, tucked her gloved hands into her sleeves and, half-dozing, followed the shapeless blot in the darkness ahead of her.
Night Camp
Silence between the woman and the girl.
The snow had stopped falling about an hour before they made camp. In the small clearing it came nearly to Tuli’s knees, under the trees it was about half that, where the wind blew the drifts were almost to her shoulders. Using Hal’s shovels they dug away the snow between two trees and put up the tent, dug out another space for the fire and a place to sit by it, fried some bread, made a stew and some cha for supper, the hot food a warm comforting weight in their bellies. Now they sit on piles of brush by the fire, sipping at the last of the cha. Rane is staring at the coals, her reddened, chapped hands wrapped about a mug. Her face is drawn and unhappy. Tuli watches her, wondering if she is grieving again for her dead lover or worried about Hallam or even looking with despair at the future she sees for the mijloc.
Tuli watches the fire in between the times she stares at Rane. §he thinks about Teras. About her father. She sees their faces looking at her from the coals. Ties on the council, she thinks, and wonders how she feels about that. She has never been comfortable with ties. We share a shape, but that’s all, she thinks. She can’t follow their jokes and when they laugh, more often than not she feels that she is the butt of their jokes. Even when she finds out this is not true, the feeling still lingers and doesn’t help her like or deal well with them.
She looks at Rane, wonders if she should say something, but has a feeling it would be an intrusion into places she has no business poking into, so she says nothing.
Still not speaking, Rane stands, kicks snow over the coals, gathers up the supper things she and Tuli have already cleaned and piles them before the tent. She waits for Tuli to crawl inside, wriggles in after her. They share the blankets and the quilts, sleeping side by, side in their clothes, their boots under the blankets with them so they’ll be wearable in the morning. There are some awkward moments at first, working out wrinkles in the covers, finding a comfortable way to share the narrow shelter of the tent. Rane sleeps almost immediately, but Tuli stays awake for some time, listening to the ex-meie breathing. The feel of the lanky strong body pressing against hers disturbs her in ways that remind her too much of what Fayd had done to her not so long ago. She is growing up in her head, that doesn’t bother her, in fact she’s rather pleased by it, a lot of the confusion is clearing away, though more mysteries are still appearing. But she is gaining confidence in her ability to deal with those. What worries her is growing up in her body. The rages she gets are beginning to be more manageable, it is as her mother said, she is growing out of them, but there are other things, things she doesn’t want to feel. It isn’t just the menses, she never has much trouble with those, not like other girls, they are just a mess she hates having to deal with. Sometimes she is so restless she can’t stand herself, sometimes she can’t stand anyone else either, she isn’t mad at them; she just doesn’t want anyone around her, especially boys. Not Teras, he is different, he doesn’t make her feel funny. She wishes he were here now, it would be a lark, they could race with each other, hunt lappets with their slings, maybe spy on people as they did before. Was a time they worked together so well, they didn’t even have to talk much. But that is gone. Teras isn’t that way anymore. He’s changed. Well, that isn’t quite right. He acts like she’s the one changed. Rane can be fun, but she needs to explain things to Tuli and Tuli needs to ask questions and have things explained to her. That is interesting sometimes, learning about people and places and other ways, but Rane is so much older she sometimes forgets how it is to be young and not sure of anything and too proud to ask. Tuli begins to feel depressed, but she is very tired, even the turmoil working in belly and brain has to retire before the waves of exhaustion that roll over her. She sleeps.
II. A Report From Oras
Two men sit at each end of a narrow table, hunched over a shallow lamp, a wick floating in oil and burning with a fishy stench. Blankets are hung over every aperture, the air is thick with smells: old fish, the oil in the lamp, man-sweat, a lingering hint of incense too redolent of norit for the comfort of either. Outside, the wind is blowing hard; the boat rubs against the wharf, breathing and flexing and creaking, caught by the tail of a storm passing out to sea and flicking at the edges of the estuary.
Coperic smoothed a hand along the thin tough paper (a waterproof membrane, the innerskin of a kertasfa, and the small closely packed lines of glyphs on it written in waterproof ink) and read in a low drone the words written there. The fisher Intii, Vann, was illiterate by choice, but his memory was phenomenal. If he had no chance to pass on the written report, he could whisper it into the ears of that member of Coperic’s web who came for it. He listened, eyes hooded beneath brows like tangled hedges.
“The Army is complete. No arrivals for the past three tendays. These are the numbers. Five bands of youngling Sleykinin. About a score in each. Say a hundred, hundred ten in all. Full Assassins, hard to say, scattered like they are, no more than two or three in a bunch. Maybe another hundred. I have to depend on remembering mask patterns and can only count those I happen to see. In the streets and around the camp, maybe a hundred as I said, probably more. Small band of Minark nobles and their attendants, three sixes of nobles, five attendants each, three-score ten in all, keep to themselves except when they go roaring through Oras, chasing whomever they take a notion to hunt. Wild card, might break through where more seasoned and disciplined troops can’t. Watch ’em. Four bands of mounted archers, majilarni from the eastern grasslands. Their rambuts are fast and maneuverable, give a steadier seat to bowmen than macain do. Disciplined within the band; outside, it’s ragged. Very apt to take offense at a look or a word and start a brawl. So far Nekaz Kole has them under control, but it’s a weakness that might be exploited. Nekaz Kole of Ogogehia has taken over as Imperatora General of the army. From what I hear, Malenx, whom Floarin appointed Guard General after Hern took out Morescad, resents the man and would work against him if
he dared but he’s terrified of the minark norit who’s running Floarin. Kole brought two thousand picked men across the Sutireh Sea with him, the best, I hear, from the mercenary bands of Ogogehia-across-the-Sea. They’re going to be the toughest to face, got their own officer cadre, sappers, engineers expert at building and working siege engines. Two thousand light armed foot soldiers, fast and flexible, many of them competent archers and slingers, all of them expert with those short swords they carry, handle a pike better than a master reaper swings his scythe. Been watching them work out and got a shiver in my belly. Expensive, too. Floarin’s beggaring the mijloc to pay them. Next most dangerous, the Plaz Guards. They’re being used mostly to officer the conscripts from the Cimpia Plain. About two thousand of these. Farmers, clumsy and unskilled, just meat to throw against the Wall, far as I can tell. A few exceptions. Two bands of slingers, ragged slippery types, look to me like landless poachers, but they’re good and accurate. Just how much use they’ll be in a battle is hard to say. About thirty of them. A few others are archers, can hit a target before it bites them. Maybe another thirty. The rest they give pikes to and shields and set to marching until they sweat off a lot of suet and can more or less keep together. About a third of these look sullen and slack off when they can, maybe wouldn’t fight if their families weren’t hostage for their good behavior. The others are convinced Followers. Won’t stop before they’re dead. Norits and norids. I didn’t bother trying to separate these; it’s hard to tell them apart unless you see them in action. Anyway, of the Nor, there are maybe five hundred. One last thing, the army goes through food like a razimut gorging for its winter sleep, so Floarin keeps the tithe wagons rolling, the butchers up to their necks in blood, the fishers hauling their nets. The outcasts up in the mountains are really hurting her when they take the wagons. If we could free the fisher villages, that would be another telling blow against her. She rides out in her warcar whenever she gets worried, harangues some of the men about the moral principles they’re defending. They hear her patiently enough, considering that most are there for her gold and don’t give a copper uncset who rules in the mijloc or why. Oras-folk get out to listen, that’s about the only time we can pass the gates, officially at least; generally me and the others, we’re out to see what we can and only listen for the look of it.” He lifted his head. “That’s all that’s on here.” He looked a last time at the paper, rolled it into a tight tube and passed it across the table.