by Paul Cook
“The villagers will not come out,” he said. “Eight are dead, and many more are hurt. How could this happen?”
“Envy,” said Nianki. “Envy, jealousy, and spite. Nacris spread her lies in the band and turned more of them against me.” She nodded at Pa’alu’s corpse. “I see now she enlisted this mad fool to hurt me through you.”
Pakito’s broad shoulders shook with grief. Amero put a hand on his back and offered a few words of comfort.
The rumble of approaching horses grew louder. A column of mounted nomads appeared through the dust. Leading the column were three riders: Tarkwa on the left, Hatu on the right, and Nacris in the center. Three-quarters of the nomads had chosen to follow their new leaders. At the sight of her nemesis, Nianki drew back the boar spear, ready to cast.
“Stay your hand, Karada!” Tarkwa cried.
Nianki neither relaxed nor lowered her weapon. Pakito and Amero stood by on either side, ready to defend her.
“Get down off that horse, Nacris,” Nianki said. “I’d hate to scratch a blameless animal when I kill you!”
“You’re not going to kill anybody,” Hatu replied. “We’re done with you, Karada. Your cruel, mad ways have hurt the band long enough.”
“I made this band!” she said. “You were nothing but lone scavengers, running scared on foot from elf hunting parties. I made you into a band of free men and women. We took horses from the elves and made the plains ours. Is this how you repay me?”
“No one is more important than the band,” said Nacris. “You never understood that, Karada, and now you’re out. We don’t need you. We’re taking what we want from this valley and going far away from you, the elves, and your dragon-master. Stay here if you like, live in unnatural love with your brother, and serve that beast!”
Nianki flung the boar spear, but Tarkwa and Hatu put up their own weapons and blocked it. Nianki snatched the flint knife from her belt, but before she could advance toward her foe, she found herself held back by Pakito and Amero.
“Let go of me!” she cried.
“No,” said Amero. “I’m not ready to watch you die.”
“Very wise,” said Hatu, lowering his spear. “Continue your wisdom and give us what we want from your stores.”
“My people will starve over the winter without stored food,” he said.
“You’re in no position to resist,” Nacris retorted. “If you get in our way, we’ll burn your gardens, drive off your oxen, and flatten this village to the ground!”
Amero’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. Duranix was away and crippled. Though the villagers outnumbered the renegade nomads, Nacris’s followers were seasoned fighters, and with their horses to give them mobility and force, how could Yala-tene withstand them?
He felt Nianki’s taut muscles relax in his grip. Amero let go of her arm. Pakito did likewise.
“Here’s my offer,” Nianki said. “Leave, now. If I ever see any of you again, I’ll hamstring the lot of you — all but you, Nacris. I promise I’ll gut you like the yevi-spawn you are.
“You’ll take nothing from Yala-tene. Ride out now, each with your horse, spear, and tent. You’re nomads. I taught you how to survive on the plains and in the forests. Leave, and live. Take, and die. That’s your choice.”
Coming from anyone else in this situation — on foot, armed with a single knife, surrounded by enemies — such a declaration would have earned mocking laughter. However, the words, deadly calm and utterly serious, came from Karada. No one laughed.
Tarkwa, ever practical, broke ranks first. He rode past Amero without a word, heading out of the village. Slowly, others followed, guiding their horses in a wide, wary circle around Nianki. Nacris glared, but she didn’t bother trying to stop them. She knew she did not command the respect — or the fear — that Karada did. When Hatu joined the stream of riders, Nacris could he silent no longer.
She said, “You too? I thought you had more spine than this!”
“I’ve walked away from many previous lives,” Hatu said, urging his mount onward. “If I live, I can make another. Dead, I’m just carrion.”
Nacris was alone. The odds had shifted so completely against her, Nianki felt bold enough to reclaim her thrown spear. Scowling fiercely, Nacris twisted her mount’s head around and trotted after Hatu. She cast one glance backward as she rode. Nianki reversed her grip on the spear and jammed it forcefully into the sand, in the hoofprints of Nacris’s horse.
Slapping the reins against her horse’s neck, Nacris sped her departure.
It was nightfall before the villagers felt it was safe to leave their houses. The wounded were brought out for treatment, and the dead, who included Amero’s old friend and counselor Valka, were laid upon the cairn for cremation. Pakito gently added Pa’alu to the line atop the platform. Some of the villagers grumbled at a nomad being honored along with their dead, but Amero silenced them and applied the first torch to the pyre.
Standing side by side, watching the flames leap skyward, Amero said to Nianki, “Pa’alu told me about the amulet.”
She said nothing, only stared at the flames.
“I’m sorry,” he added.
“Why?” she replied. “Nothing has happened, and nothing will.”
“I’m sorry you had to suffer the way you did.”
She shrugged. “It’s nothing. Another scar. I have many.”
He wanted to comfort her, put his arm around her shoulder or take her hand in his, but he didn’t. Nianki had climbed a mountain to escape her feelings, and the last thing she’d want would be for him to climb up beside her and be within reach again.
Amero clasped his hands behind his back and moved away from his sister.
The glow of the funeral fire could be seen in the next valley, where the rebel nomads gathered to chew hard jerky and swig water from gourd jugs. At Hatu’s order, they were allowed only one small campfire to keep off the worst of the chill night air. It was a quiet and subdued band of plainsmen that camped around this small fire.
Nacris lay on her back at a distance from the campfire. Though she appeared to be staring at the starry sky, her mind was not on the jeweled heavens. Nacris was furious. She was so angry she couldn’t stop her hands from trembling.
Nacris’s eyes flickered over to where Hatu walked among their comrades. He seemed completely unconcerned by their shameful defeat. She couldn’t hear his words, but whatever he was saying caused low ripples of laughter among the nomads gathered in this small valley.
Tears of fury welled up in Nacris’s eyes, and she dashed them away with one hand. She turned her face away from Hatu.
A line of red fire across the night sky made her blink, and she rubbed her eyes.
Another streak of light traced a path across the stars. And a third. And a fourth.
Several of her nearby neighbors noticed the display. A wave of exclamations worked its way across the band, until all eyes were turned upward.
The plainsmen were a superstitious lot and they fell silent as they watched. Even Hatu’s talk was stilled. The lights continued their frantic display for several long minutes, then began to decrease in number.
The plainsmen began to mutter fearfully. Many voiced the thought that the dragon had somehow caused this, that he was angered by their rebellion against his son and would wreak his vengeance on them.
Nacris wasn’t fearful. In fact, the sight of the racing lights brought an upwelling of joy to her leaden heart. She leaped to her feet, her eyes shining as brightly as the stars above.
“Don’t be stupid!” she said. “The dragon doesn’t control the stars! Such signs in the sky are omens. Don’t you see? The stars fell directly over our camp! It was a sign meant for us!”
The plainsmen looked unconvinced. Hatu stepped close to the fire, so its light illuminated him for all to see.
“Nacris is right,” he told them. “The mudtoes are feeling good right now. They think they’re rid of us, but they’re not. We needed this first fight to separate our people from Karada’s and
to get rid of that fool Pa’alu.” Raising his voice, he added, “Now we know who’s with us, and who’s not!”
There were nods and grins around the campfire now, and Hatu’s words were passed along to those camped farther from the center.
Nacris hurried to him. “You mean to go back!” she exclaimed. “You always meant to!”
“Yes, we’re going back!” His face was hard, lines of anger etched in its surface. “I want my horse groaning under the weight of all the beef he can carry! I want my waterskins so full of wine they leak red on the trail behind us! I want that dragon’s head, but if he’s not around for killing, I’ll have the head of the Arkuden!”
“What about Karada?” asked Tarkwa.
“What about her?” Hatu demanded. “She’s no spirit-warrior, despite what some of you think. She bleeds the same as any of us. Are we going to slink away from her like a pack of whipped dogs, or will we be warriors and take what our might can get for us?”
The rebel nomads roared their approval. Even Tarkwa seemed fired with the fervor of revenge. “When do we strike?” he asked.
“Now! Tonight!” insisted Nacris.
Hatu shook his head. “Tomorrow. Let them sleep and think they’re rid of us. When the sun rises over Vulture Gap, we’ll hit Arku-peli like an avalanche!”
Chapter 20
Amero didn’t sleep that night. So many things crowded his mind — the riot, Pa’alu’s death, the final revelation of the cause of Nianki’s distress — he found no peace in the quiet solitude of the great cave. After a fruitless session of open-eyed brooding, he chose to pass the night in lonesome toil, trying to figure out how to melt bronze.
Copper melted at a certain intensity in the fire. He reasoned that since bronze was harder than copper, it would require more fire to soften it. He built a hardwood fire on the hearth and, lacking a gang of children to fan for him, made his own “gang” of fans by boring holes in a long, straight plank and inserting eight reed fans in them. He hung the plank by thongs from a tripod of poles. By pushing it back and forth, he created a significant wind.
He set a clay pot on the fire and filled it with strips of bright copper from his last experiment. In short order the strips collapsed into reddish metallic beads, which in turn coalesced into a fist-sized ball of molten copper. Amero scratched out a long, thin trench in the damp sand at the other end of the hearth, then, lifting the hot pot with a convenient pole, poured the molten copper into the trench. The wet sand hissed, and gouts of steam arose.
The cavern slowly brightened to the pale hue of predawn. Weary, Amero went to the pool and dipped his sooty hands into the chill water drawn off the falls. Now to try his fire on a few of Duranix’s bronze scales.
A clinking sound from overhead caught his ear. The apex of the cave was lost in shadow, but a sprinkle of dirt floated down, easily visible by firelight. Darker, larger bits came down with the dust. Amero went to where the debris fell and pressed a damp finger to it. It was moss — green moss, such as grew on the banks of the river above the cave.
He was still trying to fathom this puzzle when the sound of horns, muffled by cave walls and the rumble of the falls, penetrated to him. An alarm! Amero rushed to the opening.
The sky outside was barely light, but he could see some disturbance at the upper end of the valley near the cattle pens. A panther after a young calf, perhaps? Dust rose, and he saw people moving.
There was another noise behind him. Amero turned. Something was sweeping the floor halfway between the hearth and Duranix’s sleeping platform. He frowned, trying to understand what he was seeing. It was a pair of rawhide ropes, braided and knotted. His eyes lifted, following the ropes upward. Descending the ropes in rapid hand-over-hand fashion were two men, nomads, with spears strapped to their backs.
Amero was so astonished by this sudden intrusion he froze for the two or three heartbeats of time that it took for the men to finish their descent and drop to the floor.
“What do you want?” he asked.
They whipped the flint-headed spears off their shoulders.
“Your life!” said one of the men.
His first impulse was to jump into the hoist and flee, but that would simply make his attackers’ job easier. They would certainly cut the rope, leaving him to plummet conveniently to his death. He was unarmed, and there were no weapons in the cave. He never imagined, he’d need them here.
Amero ran to his hastily-made tripod of poles, thinking he could pull one of them free to use as a quarterstaff. By the time he got there, the two nomads were already upon him, thrusting with their spears. Amero grasped the suspended plank in the center and shoved it first at one man, then the other. The second nomad was a little slow, and the stout plank caught him on the chin, sending him reeling. Amero had no time to celebrate, as the first nomad’s flint spear point tore through the reed fans and buried itself in the plank by Amero’s hand. With a yell, the nomad pushed the tripod over, and Amero had to scramble not to be trapped under the contraption.
Now he was empty handed, facing a wary foe. The nomad — a dark-eyed fellow about his own age — held his spear in both hands and made short, vicious lunges toward Amero’s belly. The floor, as usual, was littered here and there with Duranix’s shed scales, and Amero fervently wished he at least had a sharpened scale to fight with.
He backed up a few steps, keeping just ahead of the nomad’s jabs. Outside, the sounds of conflict grew louder.
“Nacris!” Amero exclaimed, understanding dawning. “She led you back here to raid the village!”
“I am Hatu’s man,” the nomad spat. “We’ve come to take what we can!”
“Then take what you want and be gone! Why kill me?”
“Hatu commands it. He wishes to injure the dragon as the dragon once injured him.”
Amero backed up to the wall. The nomad grinned and set himself to run the village headman through. Amero carefully braced himself to dodge. This would require fine timing on his part. The nomad raised his spear to shoulder height and, with a yell, attacked.
Amero twisted aside and grabbed the shaft in both hands. He wasn’t strong enough to wrestle the weapon away from the nomad, but that wasn’t his plan. He pulled the warrior in the direction he was already moving, straight at the cave wall. Unable to stop in time, the nomad slammed into the hard sandstone. His spearhead snapped off, and the man slid to the floor, stunned.
Amero turned toward the second warrior. If he was still unconscious, Amero could tie him up before -
Lip swollen and bleeding, the second nomad got up on one knee. He spied Amero, and met his shocked look with a glare of pure hatred.
“I’ll have your head, Arkuden!” He spat the name like a curse.
Lying on the hearth a few steps away was the copper bar Amero had made during the night. It was only a trifle longer than his arm and not edged like a sword, but it was better than nothing. Amero sidled around, drawing the angry nomad away from the hearth.
“I’ve no quarrel with you,” he said with as much calm as he could muster. “None at all. We welcomed you, shared our food with you — ”
“Shut up! You’re as bad as the elves! You would make us into cattle! Men aren’t meant to grub the earth or squat under a pile of stones. A plainsman must be free, must roam!”
He held his spear loosely in his right hand, and without any warning, he swung it in a wide, flat arc. Amero felt something catch and rip on his chest. His goatskin vest hung in tatters, and red blood welled up from a long cut across his breastbone.
Though he was shocked by the suddenness of the injury, Amero retained enough presence of mind to use it to his advantage. Feigning greater harm than he’d actually suffered, he groaned and staggered to the hearth. With a dramatic gasp, he draped himself across the cold end of the fireplace and dug his fingers into the sand, closing them around the copper bar, now cool and hard.
The nomad approached and put down his spear in favor of a wide stone axe hanging from his belt. He raised
the axe high.
Amero tore the copper bar out of the sand and presented the tip to his oncoming opponent. He meant only to use the bar to ward the fellow off. However, the shallow end of the trench had formed a narrow tip on the end of the bar, flat but sharp. The ax-wielding nomad ran right onto it, and it penetrated his chest, to their mutual astonishment.
The axe fell to the floor. Clutching the copper bar, the nomad tried to wrench it from his body. Amero released his end of the bar as though it had scorched him. As the color drained from the nomad’s face, so too did horror whiten Amero’s features. The nomad’s knees buckled, and he fell facedown, driving the bar through his chest and out his back.
Amero’s mouth hung open as stared at the fallen man and the widening pool of blood around him. Though he’d seen men die many times before, he’d never killed anyone in his life.
He continued to stare at the dead man. He tried to bring a hand up to wipe sweat from his brow, but the hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t control its motion. Amero slumped on the edge of the fireplace and clasped his hands together tightly to stop their violent trembling. A hitter taste filled the back of his throat. He swallowed hard.
His paralysis was ended by the other nomad. The man grunted and began to stir against the wall. Amero jumped upright as though pulled by a string. He cursed himself as a fool — sitting here trembling like a child when the lives of his people were at stake.
Amero kept his eyes away from the dead man and concentrated on the living warrior, who could still pose a threat to him. Taking up a length of cord from his fallen apparatus, he went over and bound the semiconscious man’s hands behind his back. He then dragged him to the hoist and looked out.
Smoke was rising from the village — more smoke than from ordinary campfires. Though close to the deafening waterfall, Amero’s experienced ear caught other sounds: screams, shouts, the sound of animals and people in distress. He shoved the inert nomad into the basket and climbed in beside him. Once the counterweight was free, he sank quickly to the brewing battle.