Epic: Legends of Fantasy

by John Joseph Adams

  He absorbed the shock quickly enough. He was a man who knew how to adapt when the tide of battle turned against him; his cunning retreat in the face of superior numbers that he had twisted into a flanking ambush as the enemy galloped in reckless pursuit had defeated the Torkay, a tale everyone knew. He swung his gaze away from Kereka and addressed the bearded man, punctiliously polite.

  “Honored sir, I address you. I, who am Prince Vayek, son of the Pechanek begh, scourge of the Uzay and Torkay clans, defender of Tarkan’s honor, Festival champion, slayer of griffins. If you please, surrender. Therefore, if you do so, we will be able to allow you to live as a slave among us, treated fairly as long as you work hard. If we are forced to fight you, then unfortunately we must kill you.”

  “You are not the man who arranged to meet me here,” said the woman, her voice so resonant and clear that it seemed the wind spoke at her command. Had she always known their language? For unlike the foreigners enslaved by the clans, she spoke without accent, without mistake, as smoothly as if she had taken someone else’s voice as her own.

  Belek coughed again, and Kereka glanced his way as he opened and closed his mouth impotently. Was this the payment—or maybe only the first of many payments—the witch had ripped out of him? Had she stolen his voice?

  “Women are consulted in private, not in public among men,” Vayek continued, still looking toward the bearded man. “I do not wish to insult any woman by so boldly addressing her where any man could hear her precious words.”

  “Alas, my companion cannot speak your language, while I can. Where are my griffin feathers? For I perceive you have them with you, there, in that bundle.” She gestured with the crossbow.

  Kereka had all this time been staring at Vayek, not because the conical helm seemed shaped to magnify and enhance the shapely regularity of his features but rather as a dying person stares at the arrow of death flying to meet her. But now she looked in the direction of the gesture to see one horse whose rider was slung belly-down over the saddle, a bulky bundle of rolled-up hides strapped to his back.

  Fool of a stupid girl! How was she to free herself if she could not pay attention, observe, and react? She was still on the hunt. She wasn’t married yet.

  Vayek’s warband rode with a dead man. And it was this man, apparently, who the witch had been waiting for. Kereka and the others had merely had the bad fortune to stumble upon their meeting place.

  “I am willing to pay you the same reward I offered to the man I first dealt with. I presume that the bundle on his back is what he was obliged to deliver to me.”

  Vayek struggled; he truly did. He was famous among the clans for his exceptional courtesy and honor, and he made now no attempt to hide his feelings of embarrassment and shame, because true warriors expressed rage and joy and grief in public so that others might live their own struggles through such manly display. He looked again toward the bearded man, but the bearded man made no effort to intercede.

  “Very well.” As unseemly as it was to engage in such a conversation, he accepted the battleground, as a warrior must. “I will speak. I pray the gods will pardon me for my rudeness. I discovered a Berandai man skulking westward through the land with this bundle of griffin feathers. It is forbidden to trade the holy feathers outside the clans. He has paid the penalty.” He gestured toward the body draped over the horse. “How can it be that such a meeting transpired, between foreign people and a plainsman, even one of the lowly Berandai, who like to call themselves our cousins? How can any foreigner have convinced even one of them to dishonor himself, his clan, and the grass and sky that sustains us?”

  “Have your ancestors’ tales not reminded you of that time, long in the past, when the Quman clans as well as the Berandai and the Kerayit made an agreement with the western queen? When they sent a levy to guard her, so the sorcerers of their kind could weave paths between the stones?”

  “Women do not rule over men. We clansmen do not send our warriors to serve foreigners as slaves.”

  But Kereka had seen the flash of light in the stones. Could it be true that the witch and her companion had used sorcery to weave a path into these stones from some other faraway place? That they could cross a vast distance with a single step? The old tales spoke of such sorcery, but she had never believed it because the Quman shamans said it could not be accomplished. Yet what if they had only meant that they could not weave such magic?

  “Maybe you do not remember,” the witch went on, “but some among you have not forgotten the old compact. This man had not. He was one among a levy sent into the west by his chiefs ten years ago. I saved his life, but that is another story. His debt I agreed could be repaid by him delivering to me what I needed most.”

  “But I have already declared that it is forbidden! Perhaps an explanation is necessary. Griffin feathers are proof and purchase against sorcery. They are too powerful to be handled by any man except a shaman or a hero. They cannot be allowed to leave the grasslands. Long ago, griffin feathers were stolen from our ancestors, but the fabled begh Bulkezu invaded the western lands and returned the stolen feathers to their rightful place.”

  “Bulkezu the Humbled?” Her laughter cut sharply. “I see your clans do not learn from the past, as ours do in our careful keeping of records.”

  “Bulkezu was the greatest of beghs, the most honored and respected! He conquered the western lands and trampled their riders beneath his feet, and all the people living in those days knelt before him with their faces in the dirt.”

  She snorted. “He died a hunted man, killed by the bastard prince, Sanglant of Wendar. How small your world is! What tales you tell yourself! You don’t even know the truth!”

  Belek squirmed and grimaced, looking at Kereka with that excitable gaze of his, full of the hidden knowledge he had gleaned from the shamans who favored him and had shared with the sister he loved so well that he had secretly taught her how to fight.

  She was accustomed to silence in the camp, but the witch’s confident tongue emboldened her: how small your world is. Her own voice was harsh, like a crow’s, but she cawed nevertheless, just to show that not all Quman were ignorant and blind. “I heard a different tale! I heard the great begh Bulkezu was killed by a phoenix, with wings of flame!”

  Vayek’s bright gaze flashed to her, and maybe he was shocked or maybe he simply refused to contradict her publicly before his waiting men because such correcting words would shame them both. Maybe he just knew better than to reveal to his enemy that he knew their prisoners. No doubt he was waiting to attack only for fear of risking Kereka’s life. He himself need not fear the witch’s sorcery; with his griffin wings, he was protected against it.

  “Lads,” he said instead, pretending not to recognize Kereka in her male clothing, “where did the witch come from?”

  “Prince Belek was already wounded.” Kereka choose her words slowly. Through desperate and thereby incautious speech, she and her brother had already betrayed their chiefly lineage, so all that was left them was to conceal Vayek’s interest in her specifically. Yet she could not bear for Vayek to think she had given up, that she was returning meekly to the clans having failed in her hunt. “He was wounded taking a head. We had to help him reach his father the begh so he could die as a man, not a boy. Any other path would have been dishonorable. When we were riding back, we saw a flash of light like the sun rising. After that, we saw the witch standing up among the stones. We didn’t see where she came from.”

  “Prince Vayek!” the witch cried, laughing as would a man after victory in a wrestling bout. “And this lad, the one whose spirit is woven with magic, he too is a prince!” Her gaze skipped from Belek to Kereka, and as the woman stared, Kereka did not flinch; she met her gaze; she would not be the first one to look away! But the woman’s lips curved upward, cold and deadly: she was no fool, she could weave together the strands lying before her. She looked back toward the begh ’s son. “Why are you come, Prince Vayek, son of the begh of the Pechanek clan, scourge, defender, cha
mpion? How have you stumbled across my poor comrade who so dutifully gathered griffin feathers for me? Were you out here in the western steppe looking for something else?”

  He could not answer in words: he was too intelligent to give Kereka away, too proud to show weakness in public, too honorable to reply to a charge cast into the air by a woman who by all proper custom and understanding must be deemed insane and her life therefore forfeit.

  He was a hero of the clans, seeking his bride. He had a different answer for his enemies.

  He signaled with his spear. His riders shifted from stillness to motion between one heartbeat and the next. His own horse broke forward into a charge.

  But the witch had guessed what was coming. She flung a handful of dust outward. When the first grains pattered onto the scarred earth sown with Edek’s blood, threads of twisting red fire spewed out of the ground. Their furious heat scorched the grass outside the stones, although within them the air remained cool and the breeze gentle. Within two breaths, her sorcery wove a palisade impossible to breach.

  Except for a man wearing griffin wings.

  He tossed his spear to the ground and, drawing his sword, rode for the gap, where Edek’s body, encased in white fire, did not quite seal the sorcerous palisade.

  The bearded man released an arrow, the shot flying through the narrow gap.

  Vayek rose in his stirrups and twisted, feathers flashing, and the arrow shredded to bits in the metal wings. He settled back into the saddle, lashing the horse, and with a leap they cleared the opening between the fiery palisade and Edek’s burning feet. Again, and again, the bearded man released arrows, and again Vayek’s quick reflexes shielded him as the arrows shattered in the feathers. He pressed hard, slamming a sword stroke at the bearded man, who hastily flung up his wooden shield to protect himself, taking such a solid blow that his legs twisted away under him and he stumbled back. Yet he was a strong and canny fighter, not easily subdued; he threw himself behind one of the great standing stones for cover as Vayek pulled the weight of his horse around in the confined corral made by the stones and the ring of sorcerous fire. Carrying a crossbow, the witch ran down to Edek’s body and with her stone knife scraped the drying dregs of his blood out from Edek’s head toward the far end of the scar. She meant to close the circle.

  Kereka tugged at her ropes, hating this helplessness. All her life she had hated the things that bound her, just as poor Belek had hated his warriors’ training so much that their father had once joked angrily that it would have been better had they swapped spirits into the other’s body. Now, too—of course!—Belek had given up trying to break free; he had even shut his eyes!

  “Belek!” Kereka whispered, hard enough to jolt him. “Is there no magic the shamans taught you? Anything that might help us—?”

  Hoofbeats echoed eerily off the stones. She heard the snorting of a horse and then the horse loomed beside her, Vayek himself leaning from the saddle with a griffin feather plucked from his own wings held in his gauntlet. His gaze captured hers; he smiled, the expression all the more striking and sweet for its brevity.

  “Boldest among women!” he said admiringly. “You have a man’s courage and a man’s wit! You alone will stand first among my wives, now and always! This I promise!”

  What promises he made, he would keep. How could it be otherwise? He was a hero.

  And so he would rescue her, and the tale’s fame and elaboration would grow in the telling to become one of the great romantic legends told among the clans: his story, and she, like his noble horse, attendant in it.

  A bolt like a slap of awakening clattered on the stone’s face above Kereka’s head and tumbled down over her body: another arrow. He sliced with the feather toward her. Ropes and magic slithered away. As she collapsed forward, released from the stone, he reined his steed hard aside and clattered off at a new angle to continue the fight. Kereka’s hands and shoulders hurt, prickling with agony, but she shoved up against the pain. She had to watch. Movement flashed as a spear thrust from behind a huge stone monolith standing off to her right; steel flashed in reply as Vayek parried with his sword.

  Over by the fiery palisade, the witch cursed, rising with blood on her knife, the gap between Edek’s head and the scar now sealed. She raised the crossbow and released a bolt, but the missile slammed into stone to the right of the two warriors as they kept moving. She cursed again and winched in another bolt, then spun around as a bold rider tried to push through the remaining gap but was driven back by the intensity of the sorcerous flames.

  Vayek fought the bearded man through the stones, using the stones and his wings to protect himself while the bearded man, with the agility of a seasoned fighter, used the stones to protect himself, trying to get close enough to hook his axe into Vayek’s armor and pull him off the horse.

  But in the end, the foreign man was just that: a man. He was not a hero. He was already bleeding from several wounds. It was only a matter of time before Vayek triumphed, yet again, as victor. What glory he would gather then!

  All for him, because that was how the gods had fashioned the world: hawks hunted; horses grazed; marmots burrowed; flies annoyed. A man hunted glory while a woman tended the fires.

  So the elders and shamans said. Their word was truth among the clans.

  What tales they told themselves! How small was their world?

  Legs burning as with a hundred pricking needles, Kereka staggered to the pile of gear and grabbed the haft of the griffin’s feather Edek had found. Where her skin brushed the lower edge of a vane, blood welled at once. She grabbed the first leather riding glove that came to hand and shoved her bleeding hand into it, and even then the griffin feather bit through it; tugged on a gauntlet—Edek’s—and at last she could grasp it without more blood spilling. She sliced Belek free and hauled him up, the farmer’s head bumping against his thigh, still tied to his belt. She shoved him toward the flames consuming Edek’s corpse.

  “Run! Quickly!” She pushed him before her, and after a few clumsy steps he broke away from her and, clutching his belly, limped in a staggering run as he choked down cries of pain. Kereka easily kept pace beside him, and as the witch swung around, braids flying, bringing her crossbow to bear, Kereka leaped in front into the line of fire.

  “Do not kill us!” she cried, “and in exchange for my brother’s life and his debt to you, I will fetch you the griffin feathers you seek. I swear it on the bones of my father’s father! I swear it on the honor of Tarkan’s arrows.”

  A sword rang, striking stone, and sparks tumbled. A male voice shouted; a thump was followed by the straining howls of men grappling.

  The witch stepped aside.

  With the griffin feather held before her to cut away the searing heat of the palisade, Kereka dragged Belek through the breach. The cool breeze within the stones vanished and they ran through a haze of hot smoke and blackened grass to burst coughing and heaving into clearer air beyond. The sky throbbed with such a hollow blue like the taut inside of a drum that she wondered all at once what the sky within the stone circle had looked like. Had it even been the same sky? She looked back, but smoke and the weave of fire obscured the area.

  The Pechanek men closed around them, spears bristling, faces grim.

  “Don’t harm us!” Belek cried. “I’m the son of the Kirshat begh!”

  She gave Belek a shove that sent him sprawling in the grass. Waving the griffin’s feather, she shouted in her crow’s voice.

  “The foreign witch is almost vanquished, but her magic must be smothered once and for all! I come at Prince Vayek’s command to take to him the bundle of griffin feathers he captured. At once!”

  Women did not command warriors. They sat beside their fathers, or brothers, or husbands, and a man knew he must listen to the advice they dispensed lest he suffer for having foolishly ignored female wisdom. Yet a begh’s daughter cannot be trifled with, however unseemly her behavior. Nor would a common warrior wish to offend the future wife of his future begh.

>   The horse with its corpse and cargo was brought swiftly, the thick bundle wrapped in leather cut free. She grabbed the cords and hoisted the bundle onto her back, its weight oddly light given the power of what lay concealed within. Brandishing the griffin feather to cut a path for herself through the witch’s sorcery, she ran back into the smoke before they could think to question her, although which one would have the courage to speak directly to her, who was neither kin or wife, she could not imagine. Grass crackled beneath her feet; soot and ash flaked and floated everywhere; the tapestry of flames rose as if to touch the pastures of the heavens, but she did not hesitate. She plunged into the maelstrom of scalding magic. Stinging hot ash rained on her cheeks and forehead.

  “Sister! Don’t leave me!”

  But her and Belek’s lives had been severed on the day Prince Vayek had ridden into the Kirshat clan with her bride price. It was the only reason cautious Belek had agreed to let her hunt with him: he was more afraid of losing her than of being beaten for taking her along where no one intended her to go.

  Blessed breathable air hit her chest so unexpectedly that she was gulping and hacking as tears flowed freely. She blinked hard until she could see.

  At the far edge of the circle, Vayek had caught the bearded man and pinned his axe against stone with his spear. The witch, her back to Kereka, loosed a bolt toward his magnificent profile, but he could not be taken by surprise. He twisted to bring his wings around to shield himself, and with the motion cut his sword down on his hapless prey.

  The bearded man crumpled.

  The witch shrieked.

  Kereka shoved the bundle against the woman’s torso and, when the witch flinched back, grabbed the crossbow out of her hands.

  “You’re not warrior enough to defeat him!” she cried. “Even I am not that! And there’s no glory for me in being dead! Here are your griffin feathers. If you want to escape, pretend to fall at my feet.”

  She tossed the crossbow to one side as she screamed in as loud a voice as she had ever used. “Husband! Husband! The witch weaves an evil sorcery even now. She means to wither my womb! Hurry! We must escape this wicked, evil trap or I will be barren forever, no sons born from your siring to join the Pechanek clan! Hurry!”