by Jo Clayton
Rane rubbed at her chin. “Well, the Kulaan treat their linas like members of the family. They don’t kill them for meat ever, even if their own children are starving; when they’re so old they can’t get around any more and don’t produce fleeces, they’re very gently smothered and burned on a funeral pyre and the ashes are collected and kept till spring, then scattered over the Downs with drum and song and dance, whole clans going to celebrate the passing of their friends. You can see how they’d feel when Floarin sent her tithe gatherers to the winter steads and claimed whole herds of linas to feed her army. Those that hadn’t brought the linas down yet are waiting until the army leaves Oras, hoping the beasts won’t starve or freeze before then. Kalaan might put on Follower black for policy’s sake, but even before the raids there’d be few convinced among them. Now, there’s no question of that. Floarin has made herself an enemy for her back when she marches south. They’re a dour, proud people, the Kulaan, they don’t forget injuries and they never leave them unpunished.”
“Are we going to stay at a stead?”
Rane shook her head. “I have acquaintances among them, but I wouldn’t be welcome now. Besides, there’s no point in it. Yael-mri knows all she needs to about their state of mind.” Again she passed her hand across her face. “Shayl, how I’d love to be dry. Just a little, even an hour.”
As the day oozed toward its end, Rane angled more directly westward until they were riding almost directly into the veiled red blob of the setting sun. Tuli began to feel a strain in her thighs and back, realizing after a while that they were riding downslope considerably more often than up, leaving the hills and aiming for the Bottomland. When she asked, Rane nodded. “We’re due to hit the river about a day’s ride east of Oras.”
“Why not closer?”
“Traxim. The army. Floarin’s norits. Any one’s a good enough excuse to stay far away from the place.” She slanted a tired grin at Tuli. “And that’s our chance, Moth. Who would figure we’d be so crazy as to sneak into the jaws of a sicamar?”
The punishing ride went on, and on, three days, five, seven. The grain sacks were almost empty and the macain were almost at the end of their strength. On the eighth day the snowfall stopped. On the ninth day they were making their way through the thickly timbered bottomlands, able to hear the sigh of the river they couldn’t yet see, a sort of pervasive brushing that got lost among the creaks and cracks of the denuded trees. They rode through trees stripped bare of leaves, silent, brown-gray-black forms harsh against the blanket of snow. Here and there the snow was marked by the calligraphy of wild oadats, lappets and other small rodents, chorainin and limbagiax and other predators small enough to run on the crust. They saw nothing alive, not even kankas sitting like wrinkled brown balloons in the empty trees.
Near the river, the ground under the trees was a thorny tangle, a mix of saplings, many split open by the sudden cold, suckerlings, hornvines like coils of black wire stark against the white of the snow. Rane got as close to the river as she could, rode west along it for some time. About mid-afternoon, she called a halt. “Give the macain some grain, Moth.” She slid from the saddle, worked her fingers, tugged her cap down farther over her ears. “I’m going to climb me a tree, have to check on some landmarks before it gets dark.”
She went up an aged brellim with an agility that surprised Tuli. While Tuli flattened a sack on the snow and dumped a meager ration of grain on it, Rane sat in a high fork, her head turning as she scanned the river and the bank across from her. After about a dozen minutes she swung out of the fork and came dropping down the trunk, landing beside Tuli with a soft grunt as her boots punched through the snow.
“Find what you want?”
“Uh-huh.” Rane moved to her macai, stroked her gloved hand down over the beast’s shoulder, watched him lick his rough tongue over the sacking, searching for the last bits of grain.
“Well?”
Rane looked round at her, laughed, “A place to sleep and leave the macain while we’re in Oras.”
“A kual stead?”
“No, none of them this close to Oras. Bakuur. Charcoal burners. This time of the year they usually have a camp not too far from here.”
Tuli retrieved the sacking and began rolling it into a tight cylinder. “You seem to know everyone.”
“I’ve been drifting about the mijloc for a lot of years, doing this and that for the Biserica.” She watched as Tuli tied the sacking to the saddle. “Never had a real ward after the first time, Merralis and I.” She swung into the saddle, waited for Tuli to mount. “Getting a little old for all this rambling though.” She started her macai walking. “Biserica’s going to be needing someone familiar with the round, might be you if you choose that way, Moth.”
Tuli looked at her, startled. “Me?”
Rane smiled at her again, wearily, affectionately. “Who better?”
The camp was set up inside a palisade of poles pushed into the ground long enough to have taken root and sprouted new branches, branches that wove together in a complicated bramble along the top of the fence. The poles were set about the length of a forearm apart with hornvine woven through the uprights, hornvine rooted and alive with withered black fruits dangling like tiny jetballs from the fruiting nodes, the thorns long and shiny and threatening enough to keep out the most persistent predator. Inside this formidable living wall more poles had been pushed into the soil, set in parallel lines and their tops bent together to form the arched ribs that supported sewn hides; five of these structures were spread around a stone firecircle like the spokes of a wheel.
The Bakuur were a small dark shy people. They welcomed Rane and Tuli with chuckling cordiality, a spate of words in a language Rane understood but Tuli found as incomprehensible as the murmur of wind through leaves. They stabled the macain with their eseks in one of the longhouses, set out straw and grain for them with a lavishness that oppressed Tuli; she felt she was somehow going to have to repay the favor and at the moment she didn’t see how.
Later, after a meal of baked fish, fried tubers and a hot, pungent drink cooked up in kettles that produced a mild euphoria in Tuli, Rane took out her flute and began playing. They were in one of the longhouses seated before a smoking fire, all the Bakuur crowded in around them to listen to the music. After a short while Ildas leapt off Tuli’s lap and went to dance on the fire, weaving in and out of threads of smoke, dancing joy on threads of air. Tuli watched dreamily, the drink working in her, opening her out until she felt one with the one the Bakuur had become, men, women and children alike. One. Breathing together, swaying together with the dance of the fireborn, with the music of Rane’s flute. A while after that a slender woman neither young nor old, with bracelets, anklets and necklace of elaborately carved wooden beads came up out of the Bakuur meld to dance her counterpoint to the fire and the fireborn, twisting and swaying without moving her feet, curving flowing movements of arms, hands, body, that painted on the air the things the music was saying to her and her people. Tuli felt warm and alive and welcomed as a part of a whole far greater than the mere sum of its units. Gradually she relaxed until she drifted into a sleep, a deep sleep filled with bright flitting dreams that left her with a sense of joyful acceptance though she remembered none of them when she woke sometime after midnight.
Her boots were off, blankets were tucked about her. The longhouse was empty except for three ancient Bakuur, two men and one woman, sitting with. Rane beside the dying fire, talking in low voices. She heard a little of it, snatches of tales about the state of feeling in Oras. They spoke in concrete terms, no abstract summaries like those Hal and Gesda and some of the angry taroms had given Kane: Toma Hlasa cursed a guard and was dragged off; the jofem Katyan complained of the taxes, eyes darting about to see she was unheard, and bought only two uncsets of charcoal where once she’d have bought ten; a hungry-looking man whom they didn’t know tried to steal from them and almost killed Chio’ni before Per’no and Das’ka drove him off. As far as they could see, there was n
o unity anywhere, man against man, each bent on preserving his own life and possessions, no zo’hava’ta…
Tuli blinked. They were speaking in the rippling murmuring Bakuur tongue, something she only realized when she came up hard against that word zo’hava’ta that on its surface meant life-tie, but that carried on its back wide-ranging implications that permeated all of Bakuur life, the bond that tied mother to child, tied all Bakuur to the trees they burned for their living, bound friend and enemy against all that was non-Bakuur, bound present generations to the dead and to the as-yet unborn, that affected everything every Bakru did from the first breath he drew until he was returned as ash to the breast of the Mother. Ildas, she thought, he danced the words into me. She reached down to the warm spot curled against her side and stroked her hand along the curve of his back, smiled at the coo vibrating in her head, then settled to listen carefully to what was being said, mindful of the resolution she’d made at the Center when she knew she might have to take word back without Rane.
An hour before dawn the Bakuur hustled about harnessing eseks in teams of four to a pair of wattle-sided carts. Rane handed Tuli a large, coarsely woven sack. “Get into this, Moth,” she said. “We’re going into Oras as sacks of charcoal.”
Tuli looked at Rane and giggled. The ex-meie raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She climbed into one of the carts and began easing her long body into a sack.
Tuli hopped into the other cart, stepped into her sack and pulled it up around her, then crouched in one corner while the Bakuur piled bags of charcoal around her. They were light enough that they didn’t overburden her, but drifts of char-dust came filtering through her sack, getting into eves, nose, mouth, every crevice of her body. Even after both carts were loaded, the Bakuur seemed to take forever to get started, each of those going with the carts taking elaborate leave over and over with every other Bakru not going on the expedition to Oras. Finally though, the carts creaked forward and passed from the palisade into the snow under the trees. The eseks labored and brayed their discontent; a Bakru walked beside each of the leaders singing to him, clucking to him, urging him on. Other Bakuur followed behind and put their shoulders to the wheels and the backs of the carts whenever they threatened to get stuck, all of them laughing and talking in that murmurous language that sounded much like a summer wind among the leaves. The three-toed feet of the eseks crunched down through the crust, the carts lurched and complained, the beautifully carved wheels squealed and groaned, the trees around them creaked to the light wind and above Tuli the charcoal sticks chunked together, rattled dully and showered more dust on her. And through it all the Bakuur went on their leisurely way, in no hurry at all, content to proceed as circumstances allowed.
It was still dark out when they left the trees and started up the rolling hills to the high plateau where Oras sat. The road wound up and up, curving back on itself when the slope was too steep, straightening out now and then, almost flat, only to pitch upward after the eseks managed to catch their breath. The extra weight of Rane and Tuli made things more difficult for the shaggy little beasts, but the Bakuur coped with more laughter, a lot of shoving and joking; the tough little eseks dug their claws in and the carts lumbered on. By the time they reached the flat again, Tuli felt a lightening in the dark, saw bits of red-tinted light coming through the coarse weave of her sack.
The Bakuur circled wide about the army encampment. Tuli could hear noises from the herds of riding and draft stock, and sentries calling to one another, but it was all very distant and placid and she couldn’t get excited by any of it. She was sneaking into a city that was the heart of the enemy’s territory and what she mainly felt was discomfort. The commonplace presence of the Bakuur wove such a protection about her, she almost fell asleep.
The sounds from the army dropped behind, the cart tilted up, then the wheels hummed smoothly over the resilient pavement of the Highroad. She waited for the challenge of the guards at the gate, but the carts went on without a pause, the sound of the wheels changing as they moved from the Highroad onto the rougher cobbles of the city street. The gates were already open. If there were guards, they were so accustomed to the coming and going of the charcoal sellers that they didn’t bother challenging them. The carts wound on and on until she was so tense she felt like exploding, when were they going to get out? how? where? what was going on? Not that she was afraid or anything like that, she just wanted to get out of that damn sack. Only the soothing coo of Ildas in her head kept her crouched in her corner.
The cart turned and turned again, winding deeper and deeper into the back streets of Oras, then shuddered to a stop. Tuli lay still forcing herself to wait, forcing herself to trust the Bakuur and let them release her when they were ready.
She heard the backgates being taken off, felt the sacks of charcoal being swiftly unloaded. When she pushed the sack down, small hands fluttered about her, helped her up, urged her out of the cart. They were in the deep shadow at the far end of a blind alley, the carts and the shadow hiding them from anyone passing the alley’s mouth. While she worked her arms and legs, did a few deep bends, following Rane’s example, the Bakuur were piling the sacks back in the carts, working swiftly but taking moments to grin broadly at Tuli and Rane, savoring their part in this tricking of Floarin and her guards. Before Tuli managed to get all the kinks out of her limbs, the Bakuur were clucking the eseks into motion, heading out of the alley.
“Where they going?” she whispered.
“Market. Middle of the city. Rane’s voice was harsh, abrupt.
Tuli was thirsty, there was char-dust packed in her nose, clogging her throat, more than anything she wanted a glass of water, but she looked at Rane’s taut face, streaked like hers with black dust, and kept her peace. Rane leaned against one of the building walls and waited until the squealing of the cart wheels had died to a faint scratching, then she went to the mouth of the alley and looked into the street.
There was no snow falling. The streets were cleared here as they’d been in Sel-ma-Carth. Dawnlight was reddening the roofs high over them. Rane beckoned and began moving along the street at a fast walk; Tuli had to trot to keep up with her. With Ildas scampering before them, they wound swiftly deeper into Oras, through narrow alleys that smelled of rotten fish and urine and cheap wine, over all that the indescribable but pervasive stench of poverty. The gloom was thick in these winding ways in between houses that leaned together and seemed too rotten and worn to stand on their own. Rane never hesitated as she turned from one noisome street into another, stepping over ragged bodies of sleeping men and a few women, or loping around the piles where they’d huddled together against the cold in the meager shelter of a doorway. In some places they were thick on the ground as paving stones, gaunt, groaning men, sleep coming as sparely to them as the scraps they ate. Hunger and destitution in the city seemed more devastating than in the country, perhaps because there the hungry and the failures were more scattered and hidden from view and because it was easier to get food of a sort and shelter of a sort in the groves and outlying herders’ huts.
They came to a rickety structure several stories high. It was backed onto the great curtain wall and stretched out its upper stories close to the building on either side as if fearing a moment’s weakness when it could stagger to one side or the other and need help to keep standing-or so it seemed to Tuli as Rane loped across the street and plunged into a narrow alley along one side of the building.
The ex-meie stopped before a door with corroded hinges and a covering of muck dried on it so thick it seemed the door hadn’t been opened in years. She reached into a hole in the wall beside the door, groped about a minute, then jerked hard on some invisible cord. She pulled her hand out, stepped back and waited, the tension draining from her lanky form, the weariness suddenly increasing as if she’d suddenly gone slack.
A moment later the door swung open, slowly, carefully, but with no suggestion of furtiveness. Doesn’t want to disturb the camouflage, Tuli thought. The smallish man
who stood in the doorway scowled at her, then turned to Rane. “You bleeding-heart meien, always shoving children on me; well, get in before the traxim fly and spot you.”
IV. The Jump
Poet-Warrior/Kingfisher
1
Julia lay groggy with pain and drugs, trying to convince herself she should ask Grenier to give her enough to kill her in the next shot. Trouble was, she couldn’t yet bring herself to give up so very finally. I am the distilled essence of what this country used to mean, she thought, making phrases to take her mind off the pain. Unquenchably optimistic in the face of disaster, absurdly expecting something to come up and change everything if only I work hard enough and wait long enough. Logic says die and save the drugs, the care, the strength spent on me for those they can help. But I’m not logical about this. This dying. Say it, Julia. Dying. Not logical. Half of what I think is fantasy. She stirred restlessly and the young girl who sat reading in the bar of light coming through the tent’s door put her book aside and come over to her.
“Time for another shot, Jule?”
Julia smiled at her. “No. Maybe a glass of water though?”
As the girl helped her sit up and drink from the glass, she heard an outburst from the meeting place loud enough to reach them through the trees and the heavy canvas of the tent. She sputtered, turned her head away. The girl set the glass aside and eased her back down on the pallet. “Lyn,” she said. “Go find out what that’s about. Please?”
Lyn looked dubiously at her.
Julia gathered herself, lifted a hand, touched the girl’s arm. “What a hoo-haw. Lyn, if I have to lie here and listen to all that without knowing what’s happening out there my curiosity will drive me up the wall.”
Lyn got slowly to her feet. “You be all right?”