Requies Dawn

by J L Forrest

  “Nothing. Your horse will trail mine.”

  “His name?”

  “Turo.”

  They observed no ceremony for the departing, no long goodbyes. The E’cwn community gathered, the Ahtros raising his hand in parting. Behind him, Cirje watched but made no sign. For a short time the children paced the horses, the mottled dog barking beside them. Nyahri slipped the silver coronal onto her head, its feathers dancing in the breeze, and wearing it her mane now appeared almost as dark as yw Sabi’s. She rode Kwlko along the arroyo, upstream toward the trees, and the gelding followed.

  Among the elders a few turned their backs.

  “What’re they doing?” the Atreiani asked.

  “They do not believe they will gaze on us again. To turn the back is to mourn the dead.”

  The Ahtros lowered his hand and entered his tent. Nyahri turned from the camp, bracing her spear across the saddle, and she did not look back again.

  ◆◆◆

  She led them beside the Bhar River until afternoon, when she stopped to drink and eat, stretching to test her injuries. The clinging film had washed away, with water or sweat, but faint scars remained on her thigh and across her spine. A dull ache reminded her how deep the wounds had gone, damage which might have killed her, which should have taken months to heal.

  Throughout the day the Atreiani asked no questions about horses, but Nyahri felt her watching: how Nyahri tilted her hips in the saddle, how her legs angled against the stirrups, the exact press of the reins in her hands. Nyahri waited for some sign of saddle-soreness in yw Sabi, but she suspected it would never appear.

  Behind them the plains opened beyond the treetops. A distant storm darkened the yellow horizon, blowing eastward with a rainbow in its wake. To the southwest, temperate forests blanketed the foothills.

  “Two roads, nay, Atreiani?”

  “North and west.”

  “Which?”

  “West. We’ll keep to the Bhar.”

  “It will bring us past Abswyn. There may be Oudwnii there. The valleys will be thick with them.”

  “Let them see us. In any case we must go this way—I must return to Abswyn, find what remains of the Citadel, if anything. It’ll be instructive.”

  “Yea, mistress.”

  Yw Sabi frowned at Nyahri. “That’s twice now—don’t mistress me, Nyahri, you haven’t the right.”

  “How might I earn that right, Atreianii?”

  The frown deepened into a glare. “Not now, girl.”

  “Yea, Atreiani.” Nyahri grumbled.

  Before dark they followed the familiar path, passing the glade where yw Sabi had sheltered them to tend Nyahri’s wounds. Nyahri glanced toward it, then back at the Atreiani, who showed no sign she recognized that place or, if she did, that she cared.

  Soon after, the way worsened. Fallen trees and branches barred the path, debris cluttering the woodland.

  In the evening they camped off road, eating a cold meal, lodged in the cleft between two boar-backed hills. They burned no oil or wood. Only a thousand horse strides lay between them and the Red Valley, the heart of Abswyn’s destruction. Here, while many trees still stood, detritus covered the ground, and the explosion had stripped most branches of leaves. After dark, cricket songs trilled through the valley, a chorus of night insects in millions, and early-autumn wapiti calls resounded from the far hillsides, a whining tune first high and ending in lower cries.

  “Colder weather will come soon,” Nyahri said.

  After she filled the water skins and tended the horses, she sat beside yw Sabi.

  “If you wish to rest, Atreiani, I will watch.”

  “You’ll sleep.”

  “I am not tired. The ride was an easy one.”

  “No matter, you’ll sleep. If I’m weary, E’cwni, I’ll let you know.”

  Nyahri cleared wood chips and splinters from a patch of soft grasses. She lay down, curled within her blankets, her coronal on the saddle with her bow and spear beside her. Yw Sabi sat calmly, and the crickets lulled Nyahri to sleep.

  ◆◆◆

  The Atreiani nudged Nyahri into wakefulness. Bright stars clung to the sky, soon to be swept away by sunrise.

  “Day’s coming,” yw Sabi said.

  “You never slept?”

  “It was good to sit and think.” The Atreianii stood and stretched. “I almost forgot—traveling with humans, how it makes me take time to reflect.”

  Does she sleep? Nyahri wondered, but she withheld the question. The Atreiani, it seemed, answered few questions outright.

  They ate, then departed with the sunlight crowning the treetops. Yw Sabi rode with a measure more confidence, and Turo responded to her reins. Soon they broke into the open, Nyahri marveling at a great clearing where none had existed before.

  Trees by the thousands littered the landscape, flattened away from Abswyn, their trunks broken like grass blades and their limbs stripped of bark. Deep cracks scarred the sandstones of the Gate, which had once flanked the House of Hell, boulders crumbled at their bases. Of the palanquins of the dead, none remained, nor any sign they had ever existed—no bones, no staves, no tattered remnants. The Feather Stone had ceased to exist. Blackened earth and burnt mesquite radiated from a crater wider than an arrow shot, its edge swollen and bowled with disgorged stones. Slag, shattered more like glass than iron, lay twisted on the fire-scored ground.

  The horses struggled to cross the beaten terrain, but Nyahri brought them to a vantage which overlooked a deep void, its basin charred and wrecked.

  “Abswyn!” Nyahri said.

  “Indeed.” A smile fleeted across yw Sabi’s face.

  Satisfaction, Nyahri thought.

  The Atreiani gestured to the basin. “It’d be foolish to go closer.” She retrieved a device from her bag, ghost-fires lighting its surface. “No radiation.”

  “Yw Sabi?”

  “The cores of the Citadels aren’t nuclear, but I worried there’d be free isotopes—” Her voice trailed.

  “I still do not understand?” Nyahri shook her head.

  “Perhaps you’ll need lessons in particle physics someday, but not today.”

  Yea, Nyahri thought, much to learn.

  They took two hours circumventing the crater’s edge, past the debris and half-burned animal corpses and still-smoking spot fires. On the far side, human footprints appeared in the ash.

  “Those,” Nyahri said, “are recent.”

  Yw Sabi shifted in the saddle, turning, looking in all directions. “Today?”

  “Within hours.”

  “Oudwnii?”

  “Yea.” Nyahri studied the hillsides and loosened her longknife in its scabbard. “Let us get out of the open.”

  “Lead on,” the Atreiani said.

  Nyahri gave a quick nod, choosing the best route.

  {Interim: Love Letters}

  Beloved Ekaterina—

  The steppes, golden green.

  The shadowed falcon which lives over her, who never leaves her ranges, can hunt everything which lives upon her, every mouse and roe

  But she cannot hunt the steppes themselves.

  They touch the infinite sky,

  And who can hunt the sky?

  The steppes below, the sky above,

  These you are to me.

  I am only the falcon. I can never be anything more.

  Why would I ever want otherwise?

  Love,

  —S

  From The Collected Letters

  Tsaritsa—

  What but the first time I saw you? What would be better than when you entered the great hall in your splendor and I knew beyond reason I’d be yours? What could exceed this, except all which followed, every season of your claime?

  Mistress, though you host Council in Giza and I play the Sydney concertos, we’re never apart. Borea threads us: I listen across half a world to your heartbeat; I feel your struggle to out-politic the Congress; I share your frustrations, weariness, thirsts, lusts; I know thes
e when no one else dares presume your slightest mood.

  You are with me this moment, yet I write with quill on vellum a letter you’ll not receive for days. You’ll open it, smell my perfume, and smile at the mess which is my handwriting. Every thought we entertain, everything we do, is a love letter to one another. How beautiful this is! You may declare, mistress, that you never were a Romantic, but I know better.

  Love,

  Ekaterina

  From The Collected Letters

  {10}

  Nyahri guided yw Sabi into the still-standing trees, climbing the western foothills. Spear in hand, she walked Kwlko, finding yet more Oudwn sign: an abandoned camp, a broken arrow. The forest thickened, broad ferns overhanging the path.

  Before nightfall, cold clouds descended, and Nyahri pulled a pelt coat over her serape. Yw Sabi wore only her own clothing and a light cloak, its hood shielding her face from the mists. An E’cwn gift, the cloak seemed at odds on the Atreiani, something of one world wrapped about something of another. Relaxing more in the saddle now, she still grimaced at Turo’s unexpected sidesteps and canters. She was learning the horse quickly, true, but Nyahri worried as the tapered canyon grew steeper.

  We have seen no true test of horsewomanship yet, mistress—

  “We could go on,” Nyahri said, “but there has been a sharp drop or two and, without light, the horses will know this path no better than I.”

  “The Bhar is below us to the left. You may not be able to see it, but I still can. Nothing but rocks and cold water down there.”

  “You make my point for me.”

  “I could give us light.”

  Nyahri wondered what light would be so bright as to help. It will not be a torch, she thought, and she wished no witchcraft that night.

  “Nay, mis—” Nyahri caught her words and reined them back. “Please, I would we draw no attention.”

  “Very well, but our visibility’s worsening.”

  “We should move out of this weather.”

  “Can we find a copse, thick evergreens at the least?”

  They followed the ruins of an ancient highway, crowded with pine. The path’s cut and fill had washed down the mountainside, torn by the ages. Nyahri dismounted, walking ahead, testing the way. She discovered a wide plateau, too open for her liking, but they crossed into a stand of dense ponderosa.

  “We can stop here,” yw Sabi said.

  After Nyahri unsaddled them, the horses stood abreast, hindquarters turned to the wind. Nyahri sat beside the Atreiani, her back to a granite slab, and the dry ground beneath the trees offered meek comfort as they ate their cold rations. After their meal, Nyahri paid homage to her ancestors, thanking the heron god that the storm blew without more malice.

  “You wish me to keep watch?” Nyahri asked.

  Yw Sabi scowled at the clouds, her shoulders dropping. At last she closed her eyes.

  “I am a little sleepy. Just a few hours’ rest, no more, then wake me.”

  “Yea.”

  Yw Sabi laid back her head, with her blanket, cloak, and scarf wrapped around her. After more than a week, it was the first time Nyahri had seen the Atreiani tire. Nyahri moved from the rock and, exposed, the cold sharpened her senses.

  Yet after an hour she also faded, her mind wandering, and she shut her eyes. Forcing herself to wake, she planted her spear in the dirt, fighting to keep it upright as the mists wetted her face, the wind blowing in her ears.

  Kwlko startled and Nyahri’s eyes snapped open at a soft, quick rhythm in the trees.

  Perhaps wolves.

  No need to fear wolves, who’d find guarded horses too risky a meal and look elsewhere. The stallion snorted and stepped. A tree branch cracked.

  Not wolves! Nyahri crouched, her spear in both hands.

  “Lo, Atreiani,” she whispered and, a moment after, yw Sabi knelt beside her.

  “Three men downslope,” yw Sabi said, her lips close to Nyahri’s ear. “They’re nearer the river, under some pines.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I can see them.”

  Nyahri strained her eyes at only spruce and mist and darkness. “Weapons?”

  “Bows.”

  “Nocked?”

  “They’re only watching. I’m not sure they can see us.”

  “What do you wish to do?”

  “Give them time.”

  For long minutes, nothing moved save the worried horses and the bitter gusts. Then a rustle, mistakable for wind. Nyahri tensed, raising her spear.

  “Relax,” yw Sabi said, “they’re going.”

  “By tomorrow night we will have permanent shadows.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  The horses settled. As yw Sabi reclined again by the stone, Nyahri stretched and yawned, for the moment reassured.

  “Go back to sleep, yw Sabi. I can watch awhile longer.”

  “I’m rested. I want you alert come morning. Lay down. Keep warm.”

  Three hours’ sleep in a week! A notch for the inhuman in Nyahri’s talley. She frowned at this, but settled into her bedroll with her blankets packed about her, and her mind turned toward more immediate and practical considerations. If the weather worsens, we will need lean-tos and windbreaks.

  On those plans, though, the thick skins warmed her and she slept.

  ◆◆◆

  Despite Nyahri’s concerns, the weather cleared the next morning, light snow melting by midday. On horseback she and yw Sabi rounded a series of wide meadows, the pines walling the short, dry mountain grasses. The valley led them for three days and, all the while, Nyahri sensed the Oudwnii following them. A tumble of stones down a slope, a sudden alarm of starlings: the land told a story.

  “There are men at our flanks,” Nyahri said. “Not sure how far or how many.”

  “There were three last night,” yw Sabi said. “I count six now, give or take.”

  “They are surrounding us?”

  “They’re only pacing us.”

  “We could outdistance them. Give the horses their heads. The lea is open.”

  “And ride headlong into what?”

  “We could lose them.”

  “Or blunder. We never believed we’d get anywhere close to Sojourn Temple without meeting the Oudwnii, did we?”

  As they crossed wider fields, Nyahri appreciated the Atreiani’s better judgment. Rivulets fingered through the grasses, stagnating in marshes. What seemed solid ground sometimes hid mires, the stallion and gelding struggling till Nyahri brought them higher into the trees. With swamp-stink on the horses’ legs, she thanked the cottontail god, lord of lucky choices.

  A gallop might have been the death of a horse.

  Yet she cursed the trees too. They confounded her sense of direction, and she lost the path. Only after a noontime stop did she rediscover it along an expanse of golden aspens. At last they made better time.

  We are quick, she thought, but not so quick the Oudwn trackers will not catch us.

  While they could, she pushed the horses faster.

  ◆◆◆

  During the afternoon’s ride, Nyahri shot three hares. That night she made camp within a glade of spruce, a sheer granite cliff guarding them from the north wind. Knowing the Oudwnii already trailed them, she lit a fire and roasted the rabbits.

  “You seem well, Atreiani.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Yw Sabi sat with her back to the granite, hands folded in her lap. She looked up from the fire at Nyahri.

  “A handful of hours’ sleep in more than a week, and you have been some days in the saddle? Most people, when they have not yet learned the horse, they can barely stand by the third day.”

  “Uncomfortable animals. Smelly. Dirty. I don’t much understand the point in them.”

  “A horse is a precious thing, Atreiani. Tribes without them are always worse off.”

  “Worse off is a relative term. In any case, Nyahri, I’m fine.”

  A guttural huff sounded from uphill. The horses
raised their heads. The trees swayed, creaking in a gust, and a half-fallen ponderosa cracked against the boughs supporting it.

  Yw Sabi stood, gazing into the darkness between the pine stands.

  “Do you see anything, mistress?”

  The Atreiani shot Nyahri a glance but suffered the title. “Not in my line of sight.”

  “I smell it.”

  “It’d be hard not to.”

  The huff sounded again, a low, emptying bellow. Foliage shook, nettles rustling, and something heavy hit the ground. Stones rolled downhill.

  Nyahri rushed forward, snatching her spear from its place by the fire. She grabbed the horses’ leads and walked them between the fire and the high granite wall. The horses kicked nervously, pulling their tethers, and Nyahri tied them to the closest tree.

  “I see it now,” yw Sabi said.

  “Coming?”

  “It is.”

  Gods! It sounds big. And the Atreiani stands there without a weapon—she is strong but not so strong.

  Nyahri returned to the Atreiani’s side. The pungent stink of wet fur weighted the air.

  A bear, Nyahri thought, but no black bear. Small bears often wandered the edges of the open plains, but the beast in the darkness outweighed a black bear by many times.

  Nyahri raised her spear, bracing for a shattering blow. The bear lumbered closer. Yw Sabi stood with her hands at the back of her waist, head tilted, a gesture of pure curiosity.

  First the firelight glistened against the bear’s nose and jowls and teeth. Then the rest of it emerged from the shadow. Its brown-black coat rippled as its forepaws swept before it, scraping the dirt, claws more than a handspan long. It raised its head, drawing long breaths, scenting.

  “Atreiani,” Nyahri said, “get behind me. I will protect you.”

  The bear stood, twice Nyahri’s height, and when its forequarters hit the earth, the ground thumped. Sweat chilled Nyahri’s skin.

  I might get one strike, she guessed, maybe two, before my spear breaks.

  Yw Sabi laughed, truly delighted. “Ursus spelaeus! You are beautiful!”

  “Atreiani, step back.”