by Robin Hobb
“Sergeant, you may wait here,” my father said quietly.
Duril chewed at his upper lip, then spoke. “Sir, I’d rather be closer. In case I’m needed.”
My father looked at him directly. “Some things he cannot learn from me or from you. Some things can’t be taught to you by a friend; they can only be learned from an enemy.”
“But, sir—”
“Wait here, Sergeant,” my father repeated, and that closed the subject. “Nevare, you will come with me.” He lifted a hand, palm up, in greeting, and the Plainsman below returned the sign. Father stirred his horse to a leisurely walk and started down the rise to the Kidona’s camp. I glanced at Sergeant Duril but he was staring past me, mouth set in a flat line. I gave him a nod anyway and then followed my father. At the bottom of the rise, we dismounted and dropped our horses’ reins, trusting our well-trained mounts to stand. “Come when I motion to you,” my father said softly. “Until then, stand still by the horses. Keep your eyes on me.”
My father approached the Plainsman solemnly, and the old enemies greeted one another with great respect. Privately, my father had cautioned me to treat the Kidona with as solemn deference as I extended to any of my tutors. As a youth, I should bow my head to my left shoulder when I first greeted him, and never spit in his presence or show my back to him, for such were the courtesies of his people. As my father had bid me, I stood still, my eyes on him as I waited. I could almost feel Sergeant Duril’s stare on us, but I did not look back at him.
The two spoke to one another for a time. Their voices were lowered and they spoke in the trade language, so I caught little of what they said. I could tell only that they spoke of a bargain. At length my father gestured to me. I walked forward and remembered to bow my head to my left shoulder. Then I hesitated, wondering if I should offer to shake hands as well. Dewara did not offer his hand, and so I kept mine by my side. The Plainsman did not smile but looked me over frankly as if I were a horse he might buy. I took the opportunity to appraise him as bluntly. I had never before seen a Kidona.
He was smaller and more wiry than the Plainsmen I was familiar with. The Kidonas had been hunters, raiders, and scavengers rather than herders. They had regarded all the other peoples of the Plains as their rightful prey. The other Plainsmen had dreaded their attacks. Of all our enemies, the Kidonas had been the most difficult to subdue. They were a hard-natured people. Once, after the Gernian horse troops had defeated the Rew tribe, the Kidona had swept in to raid the demoralized people and carry off what little was left to them. My father spoke of them with head-shaking awe at their savagery. Sergeant Duril still hated them.
During his raiding years, a Kidona man would eat only meat, and some filed their front teeth to points. Dewara had. He wore a cloak woven from narrow strips of light leather, perhaps from rabbits. Some of the strands had been dyed to form a pattern like hoofprints on it. He wore loose brown trousers and a long-sleeved white robe that came just past his hips. It was belted with a bright strip of beaded braiding. He was shod in low boots of soft gray leather. His head was uncovered, and his steel gray hair stood out from his head in a short stiff brush that reminded me of a dog’s lifted hackles, or perhaps his horse’s mane. At his hip hung a short curved blade, the deadly bronze swanneck of his people, as much tool as weapon. The hilt was wrapped in fine braids of human hair in varying shades. When I first met him, I thought they were battle trophies. Later he would explain that such weapons were passed down from father to son, and that the braids of hair were the blessing of his ancestors passed down with the swanneck. Such a blade was sharp enough to be flourished in a battle charge but sturdy enough to chop meat for the pot. It was a formidable weapon and a utilitarian tool, the finest weapon a Kidona could use without resorting to iron.
After perusing me in silence, Dewara gave his full attention back to my father. They bargained in fluent Jindobe, haggling over the fee the Plainsman would charge to instruct me. It was the first time I understood that teaching me was what this encounter was about. My fledgling knowledge of the trade language meant that I had to listen carefully to understand their conversation. First, Dewara demanded guns for his people. My father refused him, but made it a compliment, saying that his warriors were still far too deadly with their swannecks, and that my father’s own people would turn on him if he offered the Kidonas distance weapons. That was perfectly true. My father did not mention that the king’s law forbade the selling of such weapons to any Plainsmen. Dewara would have thought less of him if he had admitted bowing to any rule but his own. Curiously, he did not remind the Kidona that the use of iron would cripple his magic, though I am certain the man needed no such reminder.
Instead of guns and powder, my father offered loom-woven blankets, bacon, and copper cooking pots. Dewara replied that the last time he had looked, he himself was not a woman to care about blankets and food and cooking. He was surprised that my father bothered about such things. And surely a respected warrior such as my father could obtain at least powder as he wished. My father shook his head. I kept silent. I knew that the law forbade selling gunpowder to any Plainsmen. They finally came to an accommodation that involved one bale of the best western tobacco, a dozen skinning knives, and two sacks of lead ball suitable for slings. Despite his expressed disdain for such things, I saw that what really finalized the bartering was my father’s offer of a hogshead of salt and one of sugar. Many of the conquered Plainspeople had acquired a taste for sugar, an item almost unknown to their diets before then. Added to the previous goods, they made a handsome fee. I risked a sideways glance at his women. They were gleefully nudging one another and talking behind their splayed hands.
My father and Dewara finalized the agreement Kidona-style, by each tying a knot in a trade thong. Then Dewara turned to me and added a personal codicil to the contract in gruff Jindobe. “If you complain, I send you home to your mother’s house. If you refuse or disobey, I send you home to your mother’s house with a notch in your ear. If you flinch or hesitate, I send you home to your mother’s house with a notch in your nose. I teach you no more then, and I keep the tobacco, salt, sweet, knives, and shot. To this, you must agree, stripling.”
My father was looking at me. He did not nod, but I read in his eyes that I should assent. “I agree,” I told the Plainsman. “I will not complain or disobey or refuse your orders. I will neither hesitate nor flinch.”
The warrior nodded to this. Then he slapped me hard in the face. I saw the blow coming. I could have dodged it or turned my head to lessen it. I had not expected it, and yet some instinct bade me accept the insult. My cheek stung and I felt blood start from the corner of my mouth. I said nothing as I straightened from the blow. I looked Dewara in the eye. Beyond him, I saw my father’s grim look. There were little glints in his eyes. I thought I read pride there as much as anger. He spoke.
“My son is not a weakling or a coward, Dewara. He is worthy of the teaching and training you will give him.”
“We will see,” Dewara said quietly. He looked at his women and barked something in Kidona. Then he turned back to my father. “They follow you, get my goods, and go back to my home. Today.”
He was challenging my father to question his honor. Would Dewara keep his end of the bargain once he had his trade goods? My father managed to look mildly surprised. “Of course they will.”
“I keep your son then.” The look he gave me was a measuring one, more chilling than anything I had ever beheld. I’d endured my father’s stern discipline and Sergeant Duril’s physical challenges and chastisement. This look spoke of colder things. “Take his horse. Take his knife, and his long knife. You leave him here with me. I will teach him.”
I think that if I could have begged quarter of my father then without humiliating both of us in front of the Plainsman, I would have. It was as if I were stripping myself to nakedness as I took my sheath knife from my belt and handed it over to my father. I felt numb all over, and wondered what Dewara could teach me that was so impo
rtant that my father would leave me weaponless in the hands of his old enemy. My father accepted my knife from me without comment. He had spoken of the Kidona ways of survival and understanding one’s enemy as being the greatest weapon any soldier could have. But the cruelty of the Kidona was legendary, and I knew that Dewara himself still bore the scar of the iron ball that had penetrated his right shoulder. My father had shot him, manacled him with iron, and then held him as prisoner and hostage during the final months of King Troven’s war with the Kidona. It was only due to the cavalry doctor’s effort that Dewara had survived both his wound and the poisoning of his blood that followed it. I wondered if he felt a debt of mercy or of vengeance toward my father.
I unbuckled the worn belt that supported the old cavalry sword. I bundled it around the sword to offer it to my father, but at the last moment Dewara leaned forward to seize it from my hands. It was all I could do to keep myself from snatching it back. My father stared at him, his eyes expressionless, as Dewara drew the blade from the sheath and ran his thumb along the flat of it. He gave a sniff of disdain. “This will do you no good where we go. Leave it here. Maybe, someday, you come back for it.” He took a tight grip on the hilt and thrust the blade into the earth. When he let go of it, it stood there like a grave marker. He dropped the sheath beside it in the dust. A chill went up my spine.
My father did not touch me as he bade me farewell. His paternal gaze reassured me even as he told me, “Make me proud of you, son.” Then he mounted Steelshanks and led Sirlofty away. He rode away along a gentler path than we had come by, out of consideration for the women who followed him in their high-wheeled cart. I was left standing beside the Kidona with no more than the clothes on my back. I wanted to gaze after them, to see if Sergeant Duril abandoned his watch post and followed them, but I dared not. For all the times I had resented the sergeant’s eagle-eyed supervision, that day I longed for a guardian to be looking down on me. Dewara held my gaze, measuring me with his steely gray eyes. After what seemed a long time, for the sound of departing hoofbeats and wheels had faded, he pursed his lips and spoke to me, “You ride good?”
He spoke broken Gernian. I replied in my equally awkward Jindobe, “My father taught me to ride.”
Dewara snorted disdainfully, and again spoke to me in Gernian. “Your father show you, sit on saddle. I teach you, ride on taldi. Get on.” He pointed at the three creatures. As if they knew we spoke of them, they all lifted their heads and gazed at us. Every single one laid its ears back in displeasure.
“Which taldi?” I asked in Jindobe.
“You choose, soldier’s boy. I teach you to talk, too, I think.” This last comment he delivered in the trade language. I wondered if I had gained any ground with him by trying to use the trade language. It was impossible to tell from his implacable face.
I chose the mare, thinking she would be the most tractable of the three beasts. She would not let me approach her until I seized her picket line and forced her to stand. The closer I got to them, the more obvious it became to me that these were not true horses, but some similar beast. The female did not whinny, but squealed in protest, a sound that did not seem horselike at all to me. She bit me twice while I was mounting, once on the arm and once on my leg as I swung onto her. Her dull teeth didn’t break the skin but I knew the bruises would be deep and lasting. She snorted, plunged, and then wheeled in the midst of my mounting her. With difficulty, I managed to get a seat on her. She turned her head to snap at me again and I moved my leg out of reach. As I did so, she wheeled again, and I felt sure she was deliberately trying to unseat me. I gripped her firmly with my legs and made no sound. She plunged twice more but I stayed on her. I tried to ignore her bad manners, for I did not know how Dewara would react to me disciplining one of his mounts.
“Keeksha!” Dewara exclaimed, and she abruptly quieted. I did not relax. Her belly was round and her hide was slick. The only harness she wore was a hackamore. I had ridden bareback before, but not on a creature shaped like her.
Dewara gave a grudging nod. Then he said, “Her name is Keeksha. You tell her name before you get on, she knows obey you. You don’t tell name, she knows you are not allowed. All my horses are so. This way.” He turned to one of the other taldi. “Dedem. Stand.”
The beast he spoke to put his ears forward and came to meet Dewara. The Plainsman mounted the round-bellied stallion casually. “Follow,” he said, and slapped his animal on the rump. Dedem surged forward, leaping out in an instant gallop. I stared in surprise, and then copied him, giving Keeksha a slap that set her in motion.
For a time, all I could do was cling to Keeksha’s mane. I jolted and flopped about on her back like a rag doll tied to a dog’s tail. Every time one of her hooves struck the ground, my spine was jolted in a different direction. Twice I was sure I was going to hit the ground, but the mare knew her business better than I did. She seemed to shrug herself back under me. The second time she did it, I abruptly decided to trust her. I shifted my weight and my legs, swaying into her stride, and suddenly we moved as one creature. She surged forward and I felt that we almost doubled our speed. Dewara had been dwindling in the distance, headed away from the river and into the wastelands that bordered my father’s holding. The land rose there, the rocky hillsides cut by steep-sided gullies prone to sudden flooding during storms. Wind and rain had carved that place. Spindly bushes with gray-green leaves grew from cracks in the rocks carpeted with dull purple lichen. The hooves of his mount cut into the dry earth and left dust hanging in the air for me to breathe. Dewara kept his horse at a dead run across country where I never would have risked Sirlofty. I followed him, sure that soon he must rein in his mount and let the animal breathe, but he did not.
My little mare steadily gained on them. As we entered rougher country, climbing toward the plateaus of the region, it was harder to keep them in constant view. Hollows and mounds rumpled the plain like a rucked blanket. I suspected he was deliberately trying to lose me, and set my teeth, resolved that he would not. I well knew that one misplaced step could break both our necks, but I made no effort to pull Keeksha in, and although her sides heaved with her effort, she did not slow on her own. She followed the stallion’s lead. Her rolling gait ate up the miles.
We were climbing, in the almost imperceptible way of the Plains. We emerged onto the plateau country. The flats gave way to tall outcroppings of red or white rock in the distance. Scattered trees, stunted and twisted by the constant wind and the erratic rains, offered clues to watercourses long dry. We passed a disconnected towering upthrust of crumbling stone like rotted teeth in a skull’s jaw or the worn turrets of the wind’s castle. Hoodoos, my father called them. He’d told me that some of the Plainspeople said they were chimneys for the underworld of their beliefs. Dewara rode on. I was parched with thirst and all of me was coated with dust when we finally topped a small rise and I saw Dewara and his taldi waiting for us. The Plainsman stood beside his mount. I rode Keeksha down and halted before him. I was grateful to slide from her sweaty back. The mare moved three steps away from me and then dropped to her knees. Horrified, I thought I had foundered the beast, but she merely rolled over onto her back and scratched herself luxuriously on the short, prickly grass that grew in the depression. I thought longingly of my water skin, still slung on Sirlofty’s saddle. Useless to wish for it now.
If Dewara was surprised that I had caught up with him, he gave no sign of it. He said nothing at all until I cautiously asked, “What are we going to do now?”
“We are here,” was all he replied.
I glanced about and saw nothing to recommend “here” over any other arid hollow in the Plains. “Should I tend to the horses?” I asked. I knew that if I had been riding Sirlofty, my father’s first admonition would be to look after my mount. “A horse soldier without his horse is an inexperienced foot soldier,” he’d told me often enough. But Dewara just wet his lips with his tongue and then casually spat to one side. I recognized that he had insulted me, but held myself s
ilent.
“Taldi were taldi long before men rode on them,” he observed disdainfully. “Let them tend to themselves.” His expression implied I was something of a weakling to have been concerned for them.
But the Kidona animals did seem well able to care for themselves. After her scratch, Keeksha heaved herself to her feet and joined Dedem in grazing on the coarse grass. Neither seemed any the worse for their long gallop. Had I put Sirlofty through a similar run, I would have walked him to cool him off and then rubbed him down thoroughly and given him water at careful intervals. The Kidona taldi seemed content with their rough forage and the grit they had rubbed into their wet coats. “The animals have no water. Neither do I,” I told Dewara after a time.
“They won’t die without it. Not today.” He gave me a measuring look. “And neither will you, soldier’s boy.” Coldly he added, “Don’t talk. You don’t need to talk. You are with me to listen.”
I started to speak again, but a brusque gesture from him quieted me. An instant later, I recalled his earlier warnings about what he would do if I disobeyed. I sealed my dry lips and, for lack of anywhere to perch, hunkered down on the bare earth. Dewara seemed to be intently listening. He bellied quietly up the side of our hollow, not so far that his head would show over the lip of it, and lay flat there. He closed his eyes and was so still that, except for his intent expression, I would have thought him sleeping. His intensity warned me to keep still in body as well as voice. After a time, he sat up slowly and turned to me. He gave me a very self-satisfied smile; the row of pointed white teeth in his mouth was a bit unnerving. “He is lost,” he said.
“Who?” I asked, bewildered.
“Your father’s man. Set to watch over you, I think.” His smile was cruel. I think he waited for an expression of dismay from me.