Intimations of Evil (Warriors of Vhast Book 1)

by Cary J Lenehan

  Both the men and the women carried weapons. Looking around it seemed the entire populace either wore a weapon or were close to where one had been leant against the wall of their shop or on a hook. Ayesha had the thought that even a surprise attack here would likely fail. There was no sense of the imminence of attack—this preparedness seemed to be just a normal part of the life of the town. She was led straight down the central street and past an infidel place of worship, then escorted into a substantial building on a corner and taken to see a large bearded man.

  The boy introduced her to the man in Dwarven, “Master Nobah, t’is be Ayesha. She be from t’ Caliphate and wants a room.”

  The innkeeper looked at her. She knew what he could see. He could see a short and slender woman, veiled but well-armed, somewhat of an anomaly. She saw his eyes flick to her mace and bow and the look out of the door at the hitching rail. He had realised that, while she was equipped to fight on horseback, she had no horse with her.

  “I do not just seek a room, Master. I also seek work,” said Ayesha.

  The innkeeper’s eyes widened slightly at her grasp of Dwarven. Her accent might betray her origin, but the words and grammar were correct. What did they think Caliphate women were—uneducated?

  “I have some money, but I am an escaped slave and must make my way in the world. Do you have entertainment here? My master had me trained in this.”

  “What do you do?” asked Master Nobah.

  “I sing, I tell stories, I juggle and, in particular I dance our dances. You may have heard of them. I have been told that I am very good.” She swayed a little as she said that and batted her eyelids.

  He noticed and grunted, perhaps in some amusement. “Let me hear you t’en,” he said.

  Ayesha launched into a song in Dwarven about the defeat of Darkreach at this town.

  After a few verses he said, “T’at be good, but we do not sing it now. We get too much trade from t’ere. Let me hear another.”

  Ayesha tried one in Hindi about love.

  Master Nobah held up his hand stopping her. “Now tell me a tale.”

  She told a short funny story about a possibly mythical man called the Mullah Nas-ru-din and an inheritance and seventeen horses that had the innkeeper screwing up his face in thought as he followed it. When she finished Master Nobah laughed briefly at the solution.

  “Now juggle.”

  Ayesha produced throwing knives from several unseen places and started to whirl them through the air.

  Again a hand was held up. “Enough. I’ll give you a bed and meals for t’ night and you’ll work in t’ tavern. We’ll see if you attract customers. You get to keep all t’at people give you and after tonight we’ll talk again. Be you happy with t’at?”

  “Yes most munificent Master,” replied Ayesha. “I have one request. Do you know of anyone who is skilful with a hand drum of any sort?”

  “Yes, why do you ask?”

  “Because, oh provider to the poor, it is hard to dance without one. You have to keep the rhythm in your head, and no one else can hear it from there. Also almost all songs sound better when a beat is added behind them.”

  Master Nobah beckoned to a serving girl. “Take Ayesha up to one of t’ top rooms and let her unpack and t’en take her to see Howard. If he be not busy, and I don’t t’ink that he be, t’en tell him to get his bodhran and to do what she tells him to do.”

  Part 2

  Chapter X

  Hulagu stood still and drank in his surroundings. The sky was pale blue and clear in a dome above the flat grasslands that lay beneath. Wisps of smoke rose from centre of the ger, as the circular hide and flannel tents of his people are called, and a subdued babble of children, sheep, goats, chickens and, indeed, everything else that was in the camp could be heard. This was the day that marked Hulagu having seen seventeen years come and go. He had been initiated into the tents for a full five years. Now it was time for him to leave his tuman and set out on his Year of Discovery, the wanderjahr—to go where chance and curiosity led him, and so find out more about himself—perhaps even to visit the clans with which his own had blood feud. Rather than just wander the plains, as most did, moving from one tuman to another and often finding a partner, he had been feeling a pull to the east—to see the mountains and the forests.

  Standing on a rise above the camp with an ovoo, a shrine of stones, beside him Hulagu looked around. He had already left the blue cloth of a traveller on it and circled it three times. The wind that he felt on his cheek could be seen bowing down the ample grasses of the plains. Below in a sheltered shallow dip in the plain were the ger of his tuman spread around the start of a small creek. It emerged bubbling cold and crystal clear from a spring in the rise he was standing on and fell rapidly down the short slope to form a small stream that wound away between the low swellings of ground. Wisps of smoke rose from the cooking fires of dried dung. They showed that the evening’s feast was being prepared. Spread out around the camp the children were cheerfully riding home from a day spent looking after the tuman’s herds of fat-tailed sheep, long-horned and shaggy cattle and tough horses. A chorus of bleating and lowing arose from them and mixed with the cries of the children to mothers and siblings.

  Some carried buckets of milk from the mares and cows while others had bags of dung slung over the withers of their mounts. Although only children, all were armed, with a bow or sling at least, as the yearly truce for the Festival of the Dragon had not yet started. Besides, the plains still offered many non-Human predators which enjoyed a plump sheep as much as the tribe.

  Around the camp and sometimes stalking alongside the riders—oft near as tall as their ponies—strode the occasional dire wolf; the totem animal of their tribe. Riding out to replace the children watching the flocks by night were the young adults—a job he had done himself until last night. Each was dressed warmly and was fully armed. Some waved at him and called out jests and greetings as they passed by. They would be missing out on the festivities tonight.

  Overhead a soft blue sky trailed pale pink clouds as the smaller moon, Panic, shone wanly in the east. There was a promise of a cool night, just right for mid-autumn. To the south the very top of the vast bulk of the sacred Dagh Ordu, known to outsiders as The Rock, just showed itself on the horizon as a faint dark line. The ancient ruined city that crusted the top was invisible, as was The Dragon, which lived in a vast cavern there. It still slumbered contentedly. The time for its awakening at the autumn equinox had not yet arrived. It would then be roused and fed the herd of panic-stricken offerings that made up the heart of the festival, and were a part of the pact all of the tribes of the Kara-Khitan had with the gargantuan creature. Once fed and appeased it would return to sleep and think until the next year or until all the tribes agreed on a need to wake it for its role as the destroyer of armies—the last defence of the Khitan.

  In the legends it had only been used once in this way. Because of The Dragon, Freehold, while still disputing the matter of grazing rights, no longer tried to spread its cities and towns into the domain of the Khitan. They no longer built new settlements to bind and choke the open grassland of the tribes but stayed next to the rivers, and even then they had their limits. Not even when the hordes of Hrothnog had pushed out of the Darkreach Gap had The Dragon been called, although it may have come to it if his armies had not been broken at the river and ford where was built the town that is now called Evilhalt. The Dragon had no name that was known to men. Well, to be honest, it probably had one that some of the elders knew but it was, as befits the largest and oldest of its kind, and even to its face, reverentially referred to in the third person.

  Hulagu mused whether the new army of traders coming out of the Darkreach Gap could cause the townsfolk to change their town’s name in deference to the increasing prosperity that the trades brought. Evilhalt had long been the key link for trade between the scattered northern and southern villages, strung along the coasts like beads, the Dwarves of the mountains and hills, the Khit
an, the richness and arrogance of Haven and the fat complacency of Freehold. It had just assumed a new importance lately. Maybe the town would keep the name that it was given long, long ago as a constant reminder to the new and more peaceful invasion that trade was the only way that it would allow itself to be entered.

  According to rumour the inhabitants of the area around the ford spent even more time watchfully under arms than the Khitan did. Soon he would have a chance to find out as he intended to make Evilhalt the first town that he visited on his wanderjahr. The stories also said that if one searched hard in the woods you could still find many items left over from that great battle over two and a half thousand years ago. Sometimes the finders had to contest with their former owners over possession and sometimes it was with other dangers. Maybe he would spend some time searching the woods himself. He had a year to fill up after all and he was eager to start.

  The bards had told tales of the frozen north where, although free, the people spoke the speech of Darkreach and hunted with spears for fish that were many times the size of a ger. The tales said that these fish could swallow men whole and that the men could continue living inside the fish. The fish hunters were supposed to do this hunting in seas of ice mounted on hollow trees. He had heard tales of the lost city of the Dwarves. Lost twice it was, once to some fell beasts and then, during the plague century, even its location disappeared from memory. He had heard tales of the land to the east and the south, buried in the Swamp lands, where plants walked and anyone who ventured into their realm was hunted and eaten by them. Much had happened since the Great Plague, whole cities being burned as a part of the madness, most everyone had died, new creatures, or at least forgotten ones, were still being found in the wilder places and the world was almost born again. However much as he loved the tales, Hulagu refused to believe in walking plants.

  By the custom of the tribes he now had a full year of four hundred and thirty-two days, twelve full months of thirty-six days each, or two hands of months, each of which was a hand of hands of days ahead of him to find out how many of these tales, and others, told about the lands around the grass sea by the bards were true—if any. In that time he should be able to cover all of the lands west of the mountains that cut Darkreach off from the rest of The Land. He might even get into that strange land if he was lucky.

  If trade was coming out, surely some should be going in the opposite direction. After all, the Khitan were always popular with traders as guards, thought Hulagu. The town dwellers might sometimes think that our customs are odd, and we try to keep away from their bad spirits, but we are the only people that all trusted, if we have given our word, to fully keep it.

  As the first notes of music and singing drifted up towards him, Hulagu took a last long look around the seemingly endless horizons that were the familiar home range of his tribe. He looked up at the darkling sky and headed down the slope to the ger of his family for his farewell feast.

  He stepped into the well-trodden area between the ger, brightly lit now by all the means the tribe used; braziers smelling the pungent-sweet smell of dried dung, lights glowing heatless with magic, and even by smokily flaming torches soaked in tallow. He was greeted in turn by his adult family members, while the children played games around the edges.

  Firstly there came to him his adult cousins, aunts and uncles, each with words of encouragement and tales of their own wanderjahr. Most gave him something to drink, mostly kumis, sometimes wine or a stronger drink plundered from Freeholders or traded from the villages far to the south of Dagh Ordu where the sea of grass met the emptier vastness of the bitter-salt sea.

  He wondered if his travels would take him to that. All his life the most water that he had seen could be ridden across or, rarely after heavy rain, floated across clinging tight to his horse. He had heard that people travelled on this water in giant hollow trees, bigger even than those used in the north but, much as Hulagu wanted new experiences, he was not sure that he was ready for that. With a horse under you, you knew where you were going and what you were doing. You could even sleep on a mount and it would keep travelling. If you went to sleep on a floating tree, who would direct it and keep it afloat?

  His mind was still wandering as he gave responses to his well-wishers, kissed aunties and girl cousins, hugged and joked with the younger men, agreed to follow the advice of his uncles and, back to his aunties again, promised faithfully not to take as bride someone they would not approve of. The younger members of the tuman had already started beating drums, playing flutes, harps and dirge pipes and begun dancing well before he had spoken to everyone.

  Eventually he reached Nokaj. A familiar figure all through his youth, Nokaj was not only the senior shaman of the tuman, but also his grandfather. Age had him stooping a little now, with his long, once black hair now bound back in a grey pigtail from the top of his head. Amulets and magic talismans hung about him and a single green dragon was embroidered on the right side of his leather jacket and on each of his boots to mark his rank.

  Hulagu was surprised by how his grandfather greeted him. Instead of the happy face of an elder seeing a younger off, he had a surprisingly grim expression as he spoke.

  “Hulagu, I must now tell you what I have seen in the wind and in my dream-trance,” he said. “You must consider these words tonight and then reach a decision. You know that it is our custom that when a major decision must be made you must decide it both when drunken and when sober. The signs say that this is such a decision, not just for you, but also for the tuman, the tribe and possibly for all of the tents.”

  “But, Grandfather,” said Hulagu in wonder at this sort of news. “I am young and just setting out on a wanderjahr as the youths of the tribes have done ever since we were created by the sky spirits and set down on the plains. How could anything I choose to do be so important? Many have set out who are better riders than me, better trackers, mightier warriors, more in touch with the gods.”

  “My grandson, you know that you are the youngest child of my youngest child. Know also that you are the seventh son of a seventh son, all born living. Some regard this to be an auspicious birth. I know not why I have had these visions, but perhaps this is the reason. One way or another, this is a destiny that is fated for you. I just know that I have to tell you today your choices. You may choose to ride directly to a walled village on a river, which I believe to be Evilhalt. If you choose this path then you are to brook no delay. Having said that, you should also know that you may yet meet a person along the way, one who will be meant to join with you on your journey.

  “The signs are unclear on this. Once you are there you should join a group of other young folk, from all over The Land, each of whom has left their people to travel, as you do. Do not despise them as folk of the walled places for, if you do accept this fate then you, as a group, will be the subject of many tests, as each member of the tribes must do when they become an adult, but different. Like our tribe members, if you fail the tests, then you will die. If you undertake this path and fail these tests, then I have a sense of great foreboding for us all. Eventually you will face a dire challenge and it is on the success of this that your geas will be fulfilled. This challenge is a great evil. I know little of it, but I do know that it somehow threatens to overwhelm us all.” He paused and thought a little before continuing.

  “You may also meet a woman, not of the tents, fall in love with her and marry her, but the signs are unclear on this. The dreams sometimes present us with forks in our paths. I have such a fork for you. If you do not choose this first path, I have also seen that you will live a long life both as a tribesman and as a father, without note and without being distinguished in any way, but happy. I am not sure that this way is the best for the tribes, but it is the safest for you. The choice is thus clear for you, you may have a geas and danger or you may have safety. What you decide to do is up to you. If you choose the first path, I think you should not reveal the destiny ahead to the others you meet until you fully trust them not to f
lee their course.” He paused and looked around.

  “Now you must go and see you parents, they have tokens of wandering and other things for you and only hold back out of deference to my age and to the fact that I speak so seriously to you. Remember, that you must get drunk tonight, that should be no problem, it never has been on such a night, and you must make one decision. I will speak with you tomorrow for your second choice.” With these words Nokaj smiled and hugged his grandson fondly before he turned and went into his ger.

  Hulagu next turned and saw his mother and father, looking at them with fresh eyes. Sparetha was tall for a Khitan woman. Her mother had been a thrall taken in a raid to the east and then had become a leman of a tribesman. Her still slender build concealed her strength. She was still a master archer and almost unsurpassed as a rider. Today, in concession to the formal leave-taking, she had put aside her normal riding leathers and wore a low-cut divided dress of dark-red silk with an embroidered waistcoat of golden dyed linen. The waistcoat had garnets sewn onto it, and a ruby hung from a chain on her forehead with other rubies mounted in a network of fine golden chains around her throat and dangling into her cleavage. Her skin was lighter than was usual in the tribes, despite a life spent outdoors. Her eyes were green and straight, rather than the far more common dark and slanted eyes of the rest of the tuman.