Requies Dawn

by J L Forrest

  “This is brigands’ land here,” Dhaos said.

  The company burned no more fires and, once within the thickest copses, yw Sabi taught no more lessons in language or astronomy. She, Nyahri, and every Oudwni knew the risk they took, crossing the divide during the wrong time of year. At night the Atreiani sat motionless, attentive to every sound. The evenings passed in horse-tending and small talk, but the Oudwnii bantered less as the nights wore on.

  On the fourth night the wind howled. Lwn and Stashwn, slipping toward crescent, drowned in the clouds. Nyahri built a lean-to of pine branches against a copse, and she and yw Sabi bundled furs and blankets beneath it, keeping the horses close by. After their meal, Nyahri lay on her side under the covers, propped on her elbow, with Yw Sabi cross-legged beside her, and for a long time they said nothing.

  “The scar,” yw Sabi said, “on your arm. What did that?”

  Nyahri raised her head, looking at the jagged mark as if for the first time. “I did it myself.”

  “Why?”

  “When my mother died.”

  “Hmm. What about the newer one above it?”

  “When my brother died.”

  “Not so long ago.”

  “This last spring.”

  Yw Sabi knit her eyebrows, giving a sympathetic frown. “And the longer one on your shoulder? I know you didn’t do that yourself.”

  “My uncle gave that one to me.”

  “No accident, I’m guessing.”

  “Nay—a longknife. He managed to turn me, thought to make a deathblow of it.”

  The Atreiani leaned back, her concern plain. “Whatever for?”

  “I was trying to kill him,” Nyahri said.

  “Why?”

  “Any other man does to me what he did, I will kill him too.”

  Yw Sabi nodded. “Did you kill him?”

  “In front of my father, my brother, my uncle’s wife, his children, everyone.” Nyahri’s chest tightened. “He outweighed me twice over and fought a lifetime longer, but it was my right to try.”

  “I see.”

  “You judge me, Atreiani?”

  Yw Sabi’s voice softened. “Not at all.”

  “He offered to marry me,” Nyahri said, “to atone. No one offered to marry me after that day.”

  “Until Suhto.”

  “Yea, until Suhto.”

  Yw Sabi leaned across the short gap between them, drawing the backs of her fingers along Nyahri’s hair, then she pulled back, glancing Nyahri’s cheek with her fingertips. Nyahri turned her face to the touch before lying back again, beyond yw Sabi’s reach.

  Do not touch me so, or do, or do not. Gods! Which is it?

  “Ahtros’s daughter?” yw Sabi said. “You’re a middle child, you weren’t expected to lead.”

  Nyahri shook her head.

  “You never wanted the role.”

  “Nay,” Nyahri said.

  “If you don’t return to your tribe?”

  “If I die, out here, in these mountains? Cirje must prove she can lead, or marry some man who can.”

  Yw Sabi leaned back on her hands, furthering the distance between them, taking a long breath. “Do I still look like a devil to you?”

  The Atreiani’s clothing was loosened, the strange clasps from her neck to her navel unfastened. Her alabaster skin shone, neck and face white even to her lips, rounded by shadow. Her hair appeared as clearly for its seeming absence, erasing all light where it fell. Undone, those plaits unfurled to yw Sabi’s waist, even darker than the night. Frost kissed the bison furs, and both women breathed plumes into the cold, though yw Sabi showed no sign she felt it, no gooseflesh or shivering.

  “Nay, Atreiani, you look like a goddess to me.”

  “I’ll get it through your head—I’m no goddess.” Yw Sabi half smiled. “Though I must still seem something strange.”

  “Yea, but beautiful.”

  “Long time since I heard someone say beautiful the way you do.” Yw Sabi reached for Nyahri again, and Nyahri remained still. With a sigh, this time the Atreiani held back entirely. “It’s cold, it’s late. We should both sleep.”

  {15}

  When Nyahri opened her eyes, the night still blackened the forest. The Atreiani breathed steadily, sleeping for once. They lay together in the tiny shelter, wrapped in the blankets. Outside, only the wind showed any life at all.

  Nyahri curled against the Atreiani’s back, nuzzled the gossamer of her hair, pleasant for all its strangeness. She breathed the scent of yw Sabi’s skin. The flutter in Nyahri’s chest told her what she wanted.

  Who she desired, for days now building within her, perhaps even since the first moment. Not three weeks since she awakened, injured, with yw Sabi tending her. Not three since that first fear and excitement.

  What is the right time for desire? Nyahri thought.

  Then, She is not even human.

  Then, Does it even matter?—Then, What is human?

  She remembered Suhto.

  Suhto.

  Cold air stirred against Nyahri’s cheek, evoking the vast forest, the emptier world. Like ice, that emptiness solidified, and all else misted into nothing. For all the world’s wonders, all Nyahri understood and all she hadn’t yet learned, some things would never again exist beneath the sheltering sky. Suhto, who had desired her, was gone forever; her brother, forever; her mother, forever.

  Even her uncle, forever.

  The rest of the night, Nyahri slept in fits, until the sky lightened from black to indigo. A handful of birds whistled, those few wintering the forest. The Atreiani lay quietly in front of her, also on her side.

  As Nyahri had woken before with desire, now she awoke with sorrow.

  Suhto.

  Her tears welled and flowed, her sobs beginning as tremors. Suhto. All the grief came.

  Stupid, stupid Suhto. Stupid, stupid me.

  “Shh,” came yw Sabi’s voice as she turned. “What is this?”

  Nyahri attempted to stifle those tears, and failed, laying against yw Sabi’s arm. “Suhto is dead. He is dead and it is my fault.”

  “No.”

  “I miss him.” Her tears poured.

  “Of course you do.”

  “I am so angry.”

  “Why angry?”

  “I—” Nyahri clenched her teeth.

  A knife would hurt less than this, she thought.

  “Whisper it to me,” said yw Sabi.

  “I dared him and he took it. So stupid, he took it.”

  “Not your fault. Nor his, either. The ignorance of youth.”

  “I am angry, yw Sabi, angry. I wish he had not died.” Rage and sorrow crashed over her, one after the other.

  “Pour it out.”

  “Angry,” Nyahri said, her fingernails biting into her closed fist. “Angry, so angry.”

  Sad, so sad.

  “I know,” the Atreiani said, all the husk and power of her voice gone, replaced by something softer, more yielding, “you just hadn’t let it out yet.”

  “I am sorry,” Nyahri said, sniffling, snot running from her nose onto yw Sabi’s arm. “I am sorry, Suhto.”

  Yw Sabi set her arm around Nyahri’s shoulders, nudging her closer. “I’m here.”

  Yea, you are! Nyahri laid her arms over yw Sabi’s, fingertips curled against the Atreiani’s skin, skin soft and warm, not at all like the pale quartz it appeared to be.

  ◆◆◆

  The next day the drizzling clouds gathered earlier. Temperatures dropped, icing the path, and white plumes choked the mountain crowns. Nyahri bundled into her thickest clothes, bracing furs about her as she rode.

  During the fifth night in the high canyons, the snow fell at last. Gentle and windless, it clung to the pines and settled on the earth, a handspan deep before halting at midnight. The forest granted some protection through the early dark hours, but the air had teeth.

  Once more, Nyahri fashioned a shelter, and neither waking desires nor grief came to her that night. The Atreiani sat awake,
lost in her own thoughts, and she mentioned nothing of Suhto or Nyahri’s shed tears.

  To Nyahri’s relief.

  Embarrassing, she thought. She had not wept in anyone’s arms for years, and she feared she had lost some respect.

  The next morning she ached most for the warmth of a good E’cwn tent. Her muscles protested the saddle, frost in her bones. As the march renewed, Nyahri stiffened behind the saddlebow, sore with the distances traveled. The thin air sapped her, and to her the canyons resembled cages, too narrow and confined.

  She caught yw Sabi looking at her, a moment’s concern on the Atreiani’s face.

  Nyahri turned away, glancing over her shoulder, and she clenched her teeth at their tracks over the mud-trampled ice and slush. As the morning passed, the tenacious snow remained, leaving their trail for anyone to find.

  After midday the clouds regained their strength, the chill deepening, and a new front gathered into a gray firmament which roiled over the peaks.

  Dhaos scowled. “An early storm.”

  “Bigger than last night’s?” yw Sabi asked.

  “Much.”

  “Your advice?”

  “Find an eastern slope, and soon. Build our shelters well. These clouds are slow.”

  “If they’re slow, we should make time.”

  “Nay, Atreiani. Light winds and dark clouds mean heavy snow. We need cover now.”

  Yw Sabi scowled at the sky, her double fangs fully bared. “How long will the storm last?”

  “To—” Dhaos faltered at the site of her teeth. “Tonight till dawn, likely as not. Sunshine will follow—or another storm. No way to know, Atreiani.”

  “Then where to?”

  “This path tightens ahead—it is no use to us. Less than an hour ago we passed rounded slopes with thick firs, and those will do. We have time to make shelters, even for the horses.”

  Yw Sabi nodded, turning Turo around. Nyahri kept beside her. Dhaos waved the archers downslope and they retraced their steps, men and horses alike sometimes slipping on the iced earth, tortuously slow.

  A scout’s whistle arose and Dhaos called a halt. The forerunner returned, gulping breaths, exhaling mist.

  “We went ahead a thousand paces,” he said, “and checked the overlooks. On the path we found new footprints.”

  “Whose?” Dhaos asked.

  “Thick-booted, armed. A blade print left in the snow where a man knelt. Not Oudwn, but no telling who.”

  “They would know of our passing, yea?”

  “Only the blind would miss our tracks.”

  Dhaos’s frown deepened. “Keep two guards ahead, two at rear. Everyone keeps his bow at the ready.”

  Nyahri strung the longbow and hooked her quiver to the saddle horn.

  “Maybe nothing,” Dhaos said to her, “a man or two crossing our path.”

  “Or a dozen or two,” yw Sabi said, her voice deepening to a growl, “or a score or two, or a hundred or two, anywhere in these mountains.”

  Dhaos signaled the party forward. Nyahri studied the forest, bringing the stallion closer to the gelding. She stayed at the Atreiani’s left shoulder, where her arrows could best protect them should enemies take their flanks.

  The Atreiani also remained vigilant, assessing their risks. “What do you think, Nyahri?”

  “I think you chose a poor guide, for mountains, when you chose me.”

  “Nonsense, and there’s nothing we could have done differently unless we’d grown wings and flown.”

  The company halted on a lee and, before nightfall, the flurries arrived. The Oudwnii cut trees and assembled lean-tos.

  Nyahri thatched spruce limbs into a shelter for herself and yw Sabi, and Dhaos helped set a windbreak for the horses. For warmth the company risked small half-hidden fires. With their knives and bows at hand the archers watched the darkness, and the waning crescent moons above the clouds shone between clouds only in the briefest moments, the entire forest quiet save for murmured conversations.

  “Warm enough?” the Atreiani asked.

  “For now.” Nyahri looked out across the camp, a landscape obscured by shadow and snowfall.

  Yw Sabi sealed their enclosure with a tarp, a cloth of Atreian witchery which reflected their body heat inward. She settled into the blankets, her gaze lingering on Nyahri.

  “What is it?” Nyahri asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Nyahri turned away, hoping the darkness hid her blushing, knowing the Atreiani saw much better than she. For no good reason, Nyahri braided the saddlebag ties, only a distraction, anything to settle her thoughts.

  “Nothing, mistress?”

  “Mistress again,” yw Sabi said, this time with a surrendering sigh. “You do puzzle me.”

  “How?”

  “There was a word spoken in your people’s camp, one I haven’t heard since, one I haven’t quite been able to work out, one spoken about you.”

  “What word?”

  “Safi.”

  “Ay.” Nyahri redoubled her attentions on the leather ties.

  “I made you uncomfortable.”

  “Nay.”

  “We can talk about it some other time.” Yw Sabi turned away, resting her head on her arm.

  Nyahri’s heart beat far too fast.

  Let us talk of it now! she thought, but of course she said nothing.

  ◆◆◆

  In the night a bowstring twanged. From the woodland a shout erupted, a man’s dying cry. More arrows flew. An angry bark echoed from the frost-dampened forest and the Oudwnii exchanged calls, bursting from their foxholes in pursuit. The torches they carried blazed ghostly over the fresh snows.

  “Do not follow him far!” Dhaos called.

  Nyahri tightened her knife grip. The Atreiani crawled into the open, and Nyahri scowled as she followed yw Sabi into the cold. The archers gathered at the edge of the camp as two returned.

  “What did you see?” Dhaos asked them.

  “Two men,” an archer reported. “We felled one.”

  The second archer hefted an axe. “The weapon is a northerner’s make, and he wore this—” The Oudwni raised a necklace, its iron pendant shaped like a broad hammer.

  “C’naädi,” Dhaos said.

  “The second man fled.”

  “Did you wound him? We might follow come morning.”

  “No way to tell by dark. We found no blood trail.”

  Yw Sabi’s low lioness voice filled the camp, “Do your men make a habit of shooting before conversation?”

  Dhaos stepped back. “Atreiani?”

  “Those may have been enemies. Now it’s certain they are.”

  “They were C’naädii,” he said, as if in explanation.

  “Something you didn’t know till after you shot him.”

  “No honest men would have been in these woods so near our encampment. Of course they were C’naädii.”

  “Presumptive.”

  “Had we killed the other—”

  “That means nothing, and your men didn’t kill him, did they?”

  “Mayhap it was only the two, those whose tracks we saw this afternoon.”

  “Or mayhap the survivor will die in the snow?” Yw Sabi sneered. “Or he might return and let you take a few more shots, or he will come into camp and dance for you, along with a bear wearing a silly hat.”

  Dhaos leaned from her, off guard.

  She continued, “Either, Dhaos, you needed to talk with these men, even if only to lure them, or you needed to kill both.” She looked into the woodland. “We won’t make it anywhere till dawn, if even then, not in this weather. Keep a sharp eye out tonight, archer.”

  “Atreiani, I will bid my men to take no chances, to follow every precaution, for your sake.”

  “For my sake? You think me weak?”

  “For the E’cwni.”

  “You think her weak? We’re not well defended here, boy, pinned between the forest, sixty meters of canyon, and a river of ice. Those men were scouts, and you know it
.”

  He checked his frustration. “What else would you have had us do? There is nothing but pines and ice water a full day’s ride in either direction!”

  She scoffed, turning from him.

  The archers shared nervous glances, then took their posts once more. Yw Sabi returned to the shelter, leaving Nyahri shin deep in the snow. She met Dhaos’s eye and he frowned—

  Handsome frown. Nyahri’s heart ached for him, guessing yw Sabi’s words would have been harsh no matter his actions, no matter the outcome. What does yw Sabi know of men, she who is not human? Ay, what do I know of men? I must become a better judge of men’s hearts, she thought, recalling her father’s words, if even so I can counsel yw Sabi.

  Dhaos lingered as if waiting for Nyahri to speak, but she waited too long and he turned toward cover. The archers, too, melted into the nightscape.

  “Gods!” she said, finding herself alone, and she stomped back to the lean-to.

  ◆◆◆

  Nyahri dreamed of her brother.

  She walked hand-in-hand with him by a slow river where they once swam. Springtime greenery adorned the sheltering cottonwoods, and pussy willows choked the banks, waving in an easy breeze.

  “You look so sour?” Erhde said to her.

  She lifted a shoulder. “I hate decisions.”

  “Good thing you will not be Ahtras then.” He laughed. “That is all an Ahtras does—makes decisions all the time.”

  “Do not tease! Why must I make these decisions?”

  A deer appeared between distant trees. Nyahri and Erdhe watched it for a few moments, letting it graze, then it wandered on its way. All throughout her childhood, until he died, Nyahri revered her brother. No beast existed he could not hunt; no enemy, he could not kill. Yet he loved life, not only his own but all others, and she remembered that lesson. He smiled at the deer’s departure.

  “What decisions are those?” he asked his sister.

  “To go with the Atreiani or stay with our people?”