The Tangled Lands

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  But by the fourth week, he stopped saying that and moved on to: “Maimed.”

  After we fought, we’d run to catch back up to the caravan, sitting on the most rearward defense wagon, panting and catching our breaths.

  I slept in a bunking wagon, filled with slat beds mounted onto the walls. Ten women shared the tiny space, but I hardly knew them, even after four weeks. Except for Anezka. She’d been there as I woke up from my bramble sleep and kept to my side, helping me understand the world of the wagons.

  When I had asked her why, she tapped the tattoos on her forearms. “It’s an investment.”

  I always came to the wagon tired after Bojdan’s training. I would crawl right into my bunk and fall asleep.

  Bojdan and his men never saw me weaken. I’d worked among men in the butcher shops enough to know their minds. To know that to show weakness, tears, or anything other than humor and rage was to invite judgment.

  But alone in the bunks, when sleep failed me and I was alone with nothing more than the sounds of snoring women and the darkness that pressed against me, then I would sometimes surrender to tears as I thought about Set and Duram.

  Because of that, I feared being alone with my mind. So I trained every moment I could, worked every second I could bear.

  At first the women in the bunking wagon did not speak to me, or even meet my eyes, until the oldest, a lady with a leathery weathered face called Alka, asked if maybe I was fighting with Bojdan because I was not really a woman.

  “I bore two children that the Paikans took,” I told her. “Torn from me like the old healer tore them from my body when they both refused to come easily. Would you have me expose myself to everyone in here to prove you wrong?”

  I grabbed the hems of my skirts to raise them.

  Alka shook her head quickly, scandalized, and the younger girls in the wagon laughed at her. “Of course she’s a woman!” Anezka shouted at them. “She is the Executioness, remember? Not the executioner!”

  I shook my head at Jal’s name for me. “Don’t call me that,” I asked. “I am just Tana.”

  The women settled at Anezka’s berating. Anezka was, I had found out, a quartermaster. The large mass of caravaners in the trailing edge provided the needs of the whole human train. Anezka and others like her handled accounting for supplies, and kept the trade goods under lock and key.

  “There’s the roadmaster,” she had explained once over a stewpot hanging from the balcony of the bunking wagon as we ate, “and then there’s the quartermasters. We really run it all.”

  The more I listened to the women chat in the wagon, the more I realized they were the grease that kept the caravan’s wheels from seizing. And Anezka, with her silver-streaked dark hair, piercing dark eyes and purple tattoos, was the shadow ruler of the whole caravan.

  There were questions and pieces of information constantly bandied around me between the bunks: Whose aurochs needed better feed? How fast was the caravan going? By the way, Anezka had noted a couple days ago, the flour was getting low, if they didn’t get some barrels refilled, they’d run out in a week.

  All these things and more these women knew.

  Jal directed the caravan, but my bunkmates made the caravan a living creature.

  And I was not one of them, though they all treated me with careful politeness.

  At the start of the fifth week, Bojdan sent me out with Anezka and three other women for water, as one of the casks had sprung a leak.

  “We are near a small river that runs beside the road,” he said. “Keep a guard. It’s a safe area, but be careful.”

  Up and down the caravan, flags whipped up onto small wooden masts at the rear of the wagons, giving the order to slow their pace.

  Anezka and her three companions pulled along a two-wheeled cart that had three empty barrels on it. They laughed and joked as we moved down a narrow dirt path through the trees, out of sight of the caravan, and toward the babble of the tiny stream.

  “I like to oversee where the water comes from,” Anezka said. “Sometimes these three get timid and don’t want to wade clear out to the center where it’s freshest.”

  “It was just once,” one of them protested.

  “We all suffered for it for a week,” Anezka said. She looked over at me. “Will you leave us, when we get to Paika?”

  “Yes.” I walked beside her, and I looked around the forest as she talked.

  “That’s a shame. You could spend forever in that strange city, and never find someone,” she said.

  “You’ve seen it?” I asked.

  “Right after I joined the caravan to see the world, and Jal was negotiating the rights to travel in their territory,” Anezka said. “Building on building crammed into mazes of leaning streets. It’s on a hill, and everything looks ready to fall over on top of everything else. And it goes on and on, from the foothills and up.”

  We reached the river, and I helped her pull a barrel from the wagon and roll it into the river with a splash. Anezka guided it to the center, her skirts knee-deep in the strong current. “Well, if they are there to be found, I will find them. And if they are not to be found . . .”

  “Then what?” Anezka asked.

  “I will kill the bastards that killed them,” I said quietly.

  “That is good,” said one of the other women. “You do what few of us can. Most of us lost families or our husbands to the Paikans. That’s why we joined the caravan. What else were we to do?”

  Anezka nodded. “They cull us. Or they take our youngest to large camps on some of the islands in their harbors, and off the coasts, where we can never get to them. It’s there that they teach them the Paikan ways and thoughts.”

  Everyone nodded. “Paikan ways: they’re spreading,” I said.

  Anezka stopped the barrel back up. I moved to help her roll it, but she pointed.

  Five men had slipped out of the shadows of the trees on the opposite bank, hardly twenty feet from us. I hadn’t noticed them. They held old, rusty swords and were dressed in little more than rags.

  Realizing they had been seen, they splashed awkwardly across the hip-deep water at us, swords raised.

  I picked up my axe. “Run for the caravan, but if they catch you, resist them any way you can!” I shouted. I saw the grins on the men’s faces as their splashing steps soaked their torn clothes. “Go!”

  So much for vengeance, I thought, my heart pounding. I would die slowing these attackers down enough so that Anezka and her friends could get to safety.

  Well, there were worse things to spend a life on.

  I only hoped my sons would forgive me.

  The men did not realize I’d picked up an axe. I let my body shield it from their view.

  Until they got close. I drew it from behind me and swung at the nearest man. His compatriots ran past us, leaving him alone to deal with me. I misjudged his running, and missed. Although surprised and uncertain about my axe, he attacked.

  After blocking his swing, I slid the axe down the blade, then shoved it forward, puncturing his stomach with the spike at the top of the axe’s curve.

  We both looked surprised that it had worked, and then I shoved him free to lie in the river, crying and groaning as his stomach spilled into the formerly clean river water.

  The four other men had caught themselves four struggling women and were laughing.

  I ran, almost tripping over my skirts, and raised my axe up into the air and buried it into the lower spine of the first man I caught up to. Anezka, pinned underneath, screamed loudly enough the three remaining men paused. They looked over as the man on top of her rolled off. He spasmed and gushed blood after I yanked the axe free to face our attackers.

  The three others shoved the women away and began to move at me.

  Bojdan hadn’t taught me how to take on three opponents at once.

  But he had taught me that a fight was won before the fight began. Digging deep inside I calmed myself and met their gazes with a grin.

  It was an
anticipatory grin. As if the first two men I had just killed were no more than an appetizer, and this was about to be a course I was looking forward to.

  Never mind that I had killed one half of them because he expected no real resistance, and the other because his back was turned.

  “Who are you, lady?” one bandit asked.

  And Anezka stepped behind me. “Can’t you tell by the damned blade?” she cried out indignantly. “This is the Executioness!”

  They looked at the axe, and I wiped the blood from its edge with my thumb and tested the sharpness.

  When I looked back up at them, I saw I had won this battle, for there was fear there now. “The one who faced an entire party of Paikans,” one of them asked.

  “Yes, that one,” Anezka said.

  I walked forward, axe in hand, and the nearest man threw his sword at my feet. “I surrender my weapon,” he said.

  After a moment, the others did too.

  “Pick up the swords,” I ordered Anezka.

  She did, and handed them to the other women. “Run for the caravan,” I whispered to her. “Get Bojdan and some of his men, quick!”

  “Yes,” Anezka replied, wide-eyed. And then she spun and ran away.

  I turned back. Were there more men out in the woods? If I let these three go, would they come back for their revenge? “You three, see those barrels?” I asked.

  They nodded.

  “Get them aboard that cart, and pull it over here,” I ordered. They did so, quickly and with some grunting, and once the cart was in front of me, I hopped on. “Now follow those women back to the road. Do not give me any excuses to take your heads.”

  They again nodded.

  Sitting on top of a barrel, I watched them closely as they pulled the cart through the forest to the road. I remained calm outwardly, but inside my heart raced, my breath came short, and I was terrified of every shadow in the trees.

  When we broke out onto the road, the caravan was still slowly passing us by.

  Bojdan and three of his men rushed up to us. They looked at my prisoners with some shock.

  I leaped down from the cart, my bloodied axe over my shoulder, and grabbed Bojdan by the arm. “I would talk to you over here,” I said, and lead him around to the other side of a wagon, dodging the aurochs.

  Then I let my legs fold, and my breath come in staggered gasps. “Piss on them,” I spat, my voice breaking with fear. “There were five of them and one of me. Five!”

  Bojdan held me up. “Come, you need to go lie down,” he said gently. “You’ve done enough.”

  He walked me back down the road to a bunk wagon, empty of occupants. “What are you . . .” I asked.

  But he shoved me up onto the platform. “Go inside, rest for a moment, gather your thoughts. I will deal with these remaining men.”

  My hands shook, and I watched him pace along the wagon for a moment, then dart through the caravan and disappear.

  I crept into the darkness and curled up on someone’s unfamiliar-smelling bunk. I kept curling up until my body could bear being squeezed by itself no more.

  When Bojdan finally came back, it might have been after half a day. All I’d done was stare at a chipped piece of wood on the wall. I’d felt that the wagon had stopped. Maybe the whole caravan had. I knew dimly something was going on, but until that moment, hadn’t cared about finding out.

  Bojdan said nothing, but sat in the back of the wagon and waited until I rolled over to look at him.

  “It was different,” I finally said. “Not like the execution, or when I went for the raider in anger.”

  Bojdan just sat there.

  I continued. “I had to stay in control, and calm. I had to win the fight first.”

  “You did well,” said Bojdan. “Never doubt it. You are a good fighter.”

  “Why did the caravan stop?” I asked. “It’s not supposed to stop, right?”

  Bojdan grimaced. “Our way is blocked by a scouting party. Somewhere out in the woods, north of us, a man called Jiva has been raising the discontented to fight against the Paikans. You met five of their number earlier. They’re all from culled villages and towns out there.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Food, weapons, anything we have that we can trade. Their stores ran low in the march south through bramble and forest. They look hungry enough to attack us for our stores. And Jal is reluctant to trade with them, as the Paikans will be upset. So . . . negotiation continues.”

  “Ah.” I turned back over.

  After many long moments I twisted around and found Bojdan still there.

  “I will be fine,” I said.

  But the warrior shook his head. “Few are ever truly ‘fine’ after what you just did, after what we do. We can get back to being a reflection of our former self, but it’s somehow not quite the same. And only another like us understands what we mean.”

  “I know, but I want to be left to myself for now,” I told him. “Just for now.”

  “I will send for you when it is time for the night watch,” he said. “I will need all the warriors I can fetch by my side. Particularly if Jal and the scouts can’t come to an agreement.”

  I felt the wagon shake as he stepped out onto the road.

  3

  ANEZKA CRAWLED INTO THE WAGON as the sun left its place in the sky and woke me up. “Bojdan needs you.”

  “Thanks.” I crawled out of bed, and before I could leave the wagon, Anezka grabbed my shoulders.

  “Thank you for saving us,” she said, and tapped her tattoos. “I would say my investment in you has been more than repaid, and that I am in your debt now.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I hugged her back. “You should carry a dagger, and practice how to stab someone,” I whispered to her. “All of you should.”

  “We’re just talliers and cooks and supply keepers, we’re not . . . you, Executioness.”

  I sighed. “I’m just like you. I’m in the middle of my life. A mother who helped in a butcher shop. There is nothing special about me, I swear to you.”

  But I could see Anezka didn’t believe me.

  I crawled out of the wagon and got to the road, where lantern light showed a small group of muddy men in tattered peasant’s clothes carrying crates of vegetables and dried meats. Trudged quickly down the road, weaving in and out of the caravan as they did so.

  They all carried simple swords. I saw a single crossbowman in blue cloth farther down, surcoat slapping the backs of his knees.

  Their faces did look gaunt as they slipped off into the shadows just past the caravan’s edges.

  At the front of the stalled caravan, Bojdan stood with Jal by the roadmaster’s wagon. They welcomed me into their discussion.

  “One of those scouts says there are Paikans coming down the road,” Bojdan told Jal. “They are a half hour away. We need to get moving again so that everything looks normal.”

  “Don’t fret, Bojdan. The Paikans have always respected the neutrality of the caravan. I’m more worried about Jiva’s men here. If a few hungry idiots rush our wagons for stores, or loot, and we fight back, this will be an expensive mess,” Jal snapped. He eyed the passing remnants of the scouts. “Is that the last of them?”

  “Yes,” Bojdan said.

  “Good. Send the command. We’re moving along. Relax, Bojdan. Relax.”

  “I’ll relax when the Paikan party moves past us to their destination,” Bojdan said. “If they know about Jiva, we don’t want to get caught in the middle.”

  “Yes, yes,” Jal said quickly. “I know. So let’s get those command flags snapping, guardsman.”

  Bojdan ran forward, shouting orders. The fire wagon to the front lurched forward, and then Bojdan’s wagon of guards followed. A green flag with a triangle in the middle lurched up the pole with a swaying lantern at the top. All along the column the same flag raised, and the caravan began to move.

  I went to follow Bojdan, but Jal grabbed my shoulder.

  “We have a Paikan p
risoner in a wagon, and everyone in the caravan knows about it. I want you to guard him. I don’t want to ransom him until we get to the city, we get more for him that way.”

  I lowered my voice. “I couldn’t raise my hand against someone from the caravan.”

  Jal laughed. “Oh, you won’t have to, Tana. If I let it be known the Executioness is guarding our prisoner, then I doubt anyone in the caravan will be interested.”

  “I don’t like that name,” I protested, but Jal held up a hand.

  “That is too bad, it has stuck. Now take your axe and go,” Jal ordered. “What in all the damned halls are we doing moving so slowly! You said it was urgent we get out of here, Bojdan, not something to do in our damned spare time.”

  “You have come around to my way, I see!” Bojdan shouted back.

  Jal grumbled and climbed up on the roadmaster’s wagon while I stalked back down the length of the caravan for guard duty.

  After I’d climbed into the wagon and sat on the bench against the wall, the Paikan stirred. He crawled to the bars that kept him prisoner and looked out into what he could see of the night from his prison.

  “I saw those scouts,” he said evenly. The dull red flicker of lanterns swaying in the wagon’s ceiling pulled the Paikan’s figure out of the dark.

  I said nothing.

  The man sat, his side against the bars. “Have it your way. They are angry at us, for what we did. And yet they still haven’t learned the lesson we strive to teach the world. They think they can take us in battle, but all they will do is throw away their lives.”

  I didn’t want to talk to the man. I felt like he would force that old me, the unskilled me, the unblooded me, to reemerge from where she’d been pushed over the last weeks. The me that would be scared of him.

  But I felt calm sitting there in the dark, the axe across my lap. I was a deep river, unhurried and powerful, not a frothy shallow stream. “And what lessons do you think you teach the world,” I asked. “Other than your barbarism.”

  He jumped back. “You’re a woman.”

  I smiled. I had control of this conversation, not him. There was no fear in my voice when I said, “Yes, so I’ve always been told.”