Madbond

by Nancy Springer

  Astonished, I saw Tassida sidestep an attacker’s charge, turn and seize Calimir’s tail, vaulting over the gelding’s rump to sit behind Kor. Saving his own life? Perhaps, but it was well thought of. With his heels and his shouts the boy directed the horse to greater advantage, and his back protected the king’s. And there were now two knives instead of one—

  And at last I was there, sinking my sword deep into the side of an attacker—the man’s face took on a surprised look as he died. And Kor caught up his great club as it fell.

  After that no one could come near him. He was strong, and roused, and as skilled a fighter as I had ever met, and his steed swifter and lighter of foot than any heavy-headed mare the high plains had ever fed. Tassida defended his back with a knife in either hand, urging Calimir on with a high, chilling yell. As for me, I struck down the Fanged Horse raiders one after another as coldly as if I were cutting down targets of straw. Pajlat kept away from me. He was afraid of the strange weapon, the sword, and so were his men, but they were afraid of their king’s lash and his wrath as well, so they fought more bravely than he. No one knew I was the most terrified of anyone there. I had gone into a trance of killing, thinking only to clear this enemy out of the way, but all the while I stood aside and watched myself and cowered in fright.

  Kor told me afterward that my coolness was terrifying. They stood against us so long, he thought, only because they were ashamed to leave us triumphant, the mere three of us against all of them.

  But when I had hacked and whittled them down to five plus one, the one being Pajlat, they fled.

  I could not comprehend it at first. Talu wanted to pursue them, and we did so for a short while, but then I pulled her to a halt and blinked. Kor! Where was Kor?

  He was not badly hurt. He had walked Calimir aside from the heap of bodies strewn amidst the blunderbrush and the short grass. He had dropped his club. But he still sat the gelding, and his face looked stricken.

  “Help me with Tass!” he shouted at me.

  The youth sat slumped against Kor’s back—dead? There was blood everywhere, drenching the boy’s clothing. I leaped down off of Talu, stumbling in my haste, surprised to find that my legs were shaking under me, and as gently as I could I got Tassida down from behind Kor. I laid him on the stony ground. At once Kor was beside me, kneeling and reaching over to feel at the pulse of the throat.

  “He’s breathing,” I said.

  “Yes, he lives.… Is he wounded? So much blood, he must be!” Frantically the two of us tore open his tunic, searching for the wound. For some reason Tassida wore a strip of binding around his chest. Kor yanked it away—

  “Dan,” he whispered in a small, stunned voice.

  I saw in the same moment. Round, perfect breasts, pink-tipped, uninjured. Tassida was a maiden.

  He—she might yet be hurt. Kor knelt by her as if frozen, useless. Clenching my teeth, I tore away her trousers, found no wound, pulled her up against my chest to look at her back. Three ugly whip weals, but they had not drawn blood. No, she was not wounded, or not badly, and as I moved her she groaned and pulled away from me. I laid her down, took off my cloak and put it over her. Within the moment she opened her eyes and stared up at us.

  “Did you kill Pajlat?” she demanded of me.

  I moved my mouth to reply, discovered I was speechless, and shook my head.

  “Blast.” Tassida muttered a curse of pain as she sat up, then looked down at herself and burst into louder profanity. “Bowels of Sakeema! Was it necessary to strip me?”

  “We thought you were half killed,” Kor whispered. He seemed quite shaken. “There was so much blood.…”

  “I was hit on the head, that was all. It must have been someone else’s blood, horse blood—Calimir! How is Calimir?”

  I got up and went to look at the gelding, for I was glad enough of the excuse to get up and move around, clear my mind. Calimir bore many slashes from the fangs of the enemy steeds, and he had bled much, but a horse can bleed a puddle’s worth and take no harm from it. None of the wounds looked deep. As for Talu, there was not a scratch on her.

  “Flesh wounds,” I called back over my shoulder to Tass. “He carries his head high enough.”

  Kor finally stirred where he knelt by her side. “Bring her some clothes, Dan,” he called to me. His voice sounded strained.

  Birc’s pack had been loaded on Talu. I untied it and took it to Tassida, then touched Kor on the shoulder. Dazedly he looked up at me, then came with me to see to the bodies. They were all killed and already growing cold, the other three who had been with us. So also were all of Pajlat’s men dead, and most of them beheaded. The sight made me uneasy, and hastily I went to the place where I had laid down my weapon, wiped the blood from it and sheathed it in the leather scabbard Kor had made me.

  After a short while Tassida walked up to us, clothed in Birc’s spare tunic and leggings, to all appearances a boy again, except that she had not bound her breasts. They made a small, soft showing under the fine wool of her tunic, and I tried not to stare. She handed my cloak back to me with a nod.

  “Your head?” Kor asked hoarsely. He had not spoken to me at all—he seemed stupid with shock or fatigue.

  “Hurts,” Tassida said briefly. “It was a glancing blow, or I would be dead.”

  “You saved my life,” Kor said. She looked at him in surprise.

  “And my own.”

  All was awkwardness, for there was a matter that had to be broached. “Tass,” I asked her, “why did you not tell us you were a maiden?”

  She shrugged. “I always travel as a youth. It is more comfortable than sleeping with a knife in hand.”

  “My men are honorable,” Kor said, too hotly.

  “Were honorable. But all men are not so.” Something passed across her face, some memory’s shadow, quickly hidden. She faced Kor, appearing sure of herself to the point of arrogance. “And would you have taken me with you, Korridun King, if you had known I was a woman?”

  He made no reply—I had never seen him so floundering. “We of the Red Hart welcome maidens as our fellow warriors,” I blurted, just for something to say. Tass looked me full in the face and grinned.

  “I understand you welcome maidens at all times and in all places, Dannoc,” she mocked. “You nearly caught me with my trousers down, that night in the blue pine forest. Must I take a knife to my bed, now that you have had them off me?”

  “Of course not!” Kor flared at her. Such vehemence was not needed, or usual in him—what was the matter with him? Quickly I spoke to Tassida again.

  “Will you tell us your real name, now?”

  “You know my name,” she said. “What name I have.”

  “And where you are from, of what tribe—will you tell us that, now that we know your secret?”

  “I cannot.”

  “Will not, you mean,” I retorted, though not harshly, for I felt no anger at her.

  “Not so. Dannoc, I cannot tell you what I do not know myself.”

  “What?” I stared at her, flirting with an unlikely thought. “You mean you cannot remember?”

  “That is your problem, Dannoc, is it not?” She shot a crooked smile at me. “No, I remember well enough. I have traveled most of my life, far beyond the thunder cones, beyond the vast plains, even, seeking my tribe. I have found the ruins of ancient dwellings, but I have never found a people like me, or any people except those meager six with their stone knives. So I have no tribe, to my knowledge.”

  “But where were you born?” I insisted. “Of what mother?”

  She turned away from me, and that was all the satisfaction we had from her.

  We took what we could use from the bodies, and especially we searched out all the water they bore. The bodies of Pajlat’s raiders we left for the kites, but we took the bodies of our comrades to a place apart and piled the loose stones over them to shelter them—it was all we could do for them. Then we marked the place with a broken spear and thought we were finished, but there was
one more pitiful thing left to be tended to.

  We did not know it until Kor went and caught himself a new mount. At a distance a fanged steed had been caught in gorse by its trailing reins. Kor strode over, untangled it and vaulted on with a fierce, set look on his face that silenced me when I would have cautioned him—I felt sure the half-wild mare would throw him or, worse, slash at him. But he rode it over to where Tass and I stood by the cairn, waiting, and he made his fanged mare stand while he cut at some fastening on the bearskin riding pelt at his far knee. Not until he lifted a shriveled trophy head into our view did I comprehend his haunted glance.

  A dark-haired head, either Otter or Seal, with a contorted face telling how the person had died in pain even though it was so withered that little else could be told, whether it was man or woman, old or young, warrior or slave. Kor cradled the gruesome thing in both his hands, as if to somehow soothe it with his touch, then leaned down from his mount and gently set it atop the cairn. All the dignity of a king was in that gesture, and all his inborn comity, so that the thing seemed laid to rest even before Tass and I covered it with slabs of stone—I could scarcely bear to look at it, let alone touch it as Kor had done, stench of death clinging to his hands, and had it been a yellow-haired head hung to the bearskin by knotted braids I think I would not have been able to come near it.

  What was this king, this Kor? It no longer seemed remarkable to me that the fanged mare, his new mount, obeyed him.

  With a low, sweet whistle Tassida called Calimir to her, and in silence we journeyed on southward and eastward.

  We rode until dusk, uneasy, anxious without reason to leave the strewn bodies of the Fanged Horse raiders far behind. The hot wind blew at our backs without ceasing. Tass suffered more than she would admit from her hurt head, and when we stopped at last she lay down at once, without eating. Heedlessly she went to sleep, though we were benighted in a place with no shelter of any sort—not even a juniper stood near us. There was nowhere to hide, not even a dry waterway or a ravine. I ate, and tried to talk with Kor but got not much sense out of him except that he would keep watch. That said, I also went to sleep.

  Sometime in the moonlit mid of night I awoke and saw that Kor was gone. Half alarmed, I got up and went looking for him. At no great distance from the camp I found him sitting as if a demon rode on his shoulders, with his head bowed to his knees.

  I sat next to him and waited.

  “The toll is paid,” he muttered after a while.

  “I should hope so,” I said fervently.

  It did not occur to me that more troubled him than loss of life. He loved his folk, I knew that, and it hurt him to give them over to death. As for me, I had my own feelings to deal with. In my right mind, I had never enjoyed killing.… I sat by him, silent, glad of his presence, for a long time.

  When the moon was low he lifted his head, faced me, and spoke. “I am in thrall,” he said. His eyes were dry, so dry they seemed to burn, his face quiet and grave. “I am doomed, as doomed as was Birc at his first sight of the deer maiden. Tassida has enslaved my heart.”

  If it had been anyone else, a younger brother, a shy youth such as Birc, I would have smiled. But it was Rad Korridun, and I felt my own heart stop. The hot wind blew through the night with a sound like a sigh.

  “Kor—”

  “I will never be able to love any maiden but her.”

  “But Kor,” I faltered, “how can you say that? You have only just today—met her.…”

  “You know as well as I, what I say is true. It is fated.” He dropped his head to his knees again. “Ai, Dan, I am sick and stupid with longing. I go hot and cold. I ache. What am I to do?”

  I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Court her,” I said.

  “I am afraid.”

  “Why fear? Only good can come of it.”

  As if to make a mockery of my words, something came in the way of the moonlight. Three devourers rippled through the night as we huddled to the ground in fear at the sight of them. I had never felt so nakedly exposed to danger. But they skimmed over us without a sound, flying eastward, casting their shadows over our camp and over the place where Tassida lay sleeping before they were gone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Three of them,” said Kor heavily, in the morning.

  “Three of what?” It was Tass, stumbling to her feet, still hazy from sleep.

  “Devourers.”

  Her eyes snapped fully open. “Here?”

  “Over the camp, last night.” If he was smitten with her, he was not showing it at that moment. His mind was on peril, and so was mine.

  “Things cannot be well with my father’s tribe,” I said, “if they have let Pajlat and his raiders range so near the Demesne. And seeing the devourers does not comfort me, either.”

  “So much for our thought that there might be but the one,” Kor muttered.

  Tassida was rolling her gear into her blanket with some haste. Her face was taut.

  “Tass,” Kor asked her suddenly, “what do you know of the devourers?”

  She stiffened where she kneeled with her bedroll, stopped what she was doing, and looked at him. The look showed nothing to me, but it must have to him.

  “I can tell you have encountered them,” he said very gently. “What was it that they tried to do with you, as you are a woman?”

  A panicked, stricken glimmer in her eyes, though her face had not moved. Quickly gone, like the shadow of a flying thing, but Kor nodded as if she had answered him.

  “Knives are of no use against them,” he said.

  “I know it.” She turned back to her bedroll, tying it savagely tight.

  “I would sooner die than be attacked by one again,” she added in a low voice.

  “Has it happened to you more than once?”

  “No.” She turned back to him, and this time her look was quiet—she had yielded a trust to him. “But I have seen the devourers as many as twelve at a time.”

  “Sakeema help us!” That sent him to his feet. “Where?”

  “Over the western sea.”

  “It is my thought,” I said, rising also, “that we had better come to my father in all haste.” A child’s hope was in me that he would somehow be able to help us, though I could not have said how. I always thought well and warmly of my father, those days, and I thought of him often.

  Kor, I now know, expected no aid of Tyonoc of the Red Hart Tribe. But he was mindful of Pajlat and his raiders, and therefore quite willing to ride hard. So was Tassida. We rode, the three of us, with the hot wind at our backs like storm of passion.

  Kor had little chance for courting that day. We rode for the most part in a trance of misery, the sun scorching us out of a sky that glared so blue we saw it as a white shimmer of heat, while the wind licked at us like flame. Sweat oiled our faces and salted our lips and eyes. We drank water as sparingly as we were able, but still we emptied waterskins, slit them open and gave our mounts to drink, threw the spent skins away. The horses lagged, their heads nodding low, the tender skin of their faces blistered and bleeding from sun and hot wind, even the fanged mares as sapped as we were. Kor’s captured mare was a homely nag the color of yellow clay but for her reddish legs. Blowing sand had scoured the legs so that raw skin showed through the russet hair. Still the nag walked on willingly.

  “You have not yet named your mare,” Tassida remarked to Kor.

  He shook his head at her, smiling in spite of his cracked and swollen lips. All his love for her showed in that smile, but if she saw it, she gave no sign.

  “Name her! She will go even better for you.”

  “There is no time for a vigil,” Kor said.

  “And no need! Name her now, as we ride.”

  “Is that how you named Calimir?”

  A quiet. There was only the clopping of the horses’ hooves on stony ground.

  “Would you tell us sometime, Tass, how you came by him? And where?”

  She shook her head violently. “You people,” she
burst out, hot as the wind, “you believe nothing I tell you!” Then she put heels to Calimir’s sides and sent him trotting some distance ahead of us, flinging her hair back in the proud gesture that already we well knew.

  I watched her with rueful admiration. Kor rode silently beside me, and I could tell that he was watching her as well. “The mettle of her,” he murmured. “It must take courage for her to play the boy among men.”

  “That, and a strong bladder!” I blurted. “She has never made excuses for a halt, gone off among bushes.…” Then I recalled how many times I had bared my cock before her as before the others and relieved myself against a trailside tree, and I felt flaming heat take my face, as if I had drawn too near a hearth. Kor was regarding me curiously.

  “I have never known you to blush, Dan,” he remarked.

  “Mother of Sakeema!” It was a new-learned curse, and I was fond of it.

  “Not even when Birc surprised you and Lumai up in the spruces, and teased you in front of Winewa.”

  “My modesty is of a different sort,” I retorted.

  I thought at the time that I was telling him the truth. Not until the second day did I let myself admit I had blushed for love of Tassida.

  There were many passions in me, clashing like surf: sorrow for Birc and the others we had lost, longing for my father, worry about him and my people lest all did not go well with them. And the aching wound I could not name but had borne for months. And care for Kor. Above all, that fear and hope for Kor. If only Tass would return his regard …

  So it was a new grief to me when I heard the song throbbing in my blood—I could no longer help hearing it—and knew that I myself might be his rival.

  It did not have to happen, I told myself. I had known many women, and sometimes even denied myself one, or been denied, and all such passions had passed. I would say nothing, and this one would pass also.

  The hot wind still blew.

  “A day or so more of this,” I told Kor and Tass, “and we ought to be out of sparse grass and into green again.” Neither of them answered me—a day or two seemed all too long, at the time. Talu snorted, perhaps in scorn, then snorted again, surging forward, and this time I heard her rightly. It was fear.