The Raven Warrior

by Alice Borchardt

  I looked back and was surprised to see we were already out of sight of the cave where the slaves were kept. We were alone. I wasn’t alarmed, but wondered why he’d brought me here.

  “You must go,” he said.

  “Yes. And as soon as possible, before the great families regain their ambition to imprison me.”

  “I thought of doing that myself,” he said bluntly.

  I began to reply, but he held up his hand in a stop gesture.

  “No. I gave up the idea when I saw what you could do. And when I spoke with Albe. I would say to you, remain here, become chieftain of our guild. Rule over us. But she tells me you are under a powerful geis.”

  “I think my destiny was written before I was born,” I said. “I dare not deny it.”

  “Will you take her with you?” He looked as though his life hung on the answer to the question.

  “No,” I answered. “I must fly.”

  “Ahaaaa. So that is the meaning of Ilona’s prophecy.”

  “Yes.”

  “The sun capes. You will want one. Think you can use it? They are more difficult than they look.”

  “I can try,” I said. “I must reach the gates to the Summer Country. In my world they lie off the coast and are open only in the season of storms. And only birds can get to them now.”

  His strange eyes gazed into mine. “Over the mountain,” he said. “You must fly over the mountain. As to the sun cape, . . . we must steal one.”

  “Goric!” I said. “Slaves know . . .”

  “Everything,” he filled in.

  “Why?”

  “We are so frightened of our masters, what they do affects us so much, we keep track and consider. What else have we to do but entertain ourselves with their intrigues? So I will put out the word among my people that a sun cape is needed. Someone will come forth with a suggestion, a workable idea. Have faith. The other question I would ask you is . . . do we allow the herds to be brought back into the city tonight? Do you think we can fool the great families one more day?”

  “No. On balance I think you must take no chances. One night might make the difference between success and failure. If you are correct, the fanged antelope are the main meat supply for the city. Your ability to withhold them gives you the whip hand. The guilds would not easily forgive the great families for a disruption in the food supply. The great families may not understand justice, but they comprehend power. Most do. Demonstrate that you have it.”

  He saluted me, raising his arm high.

  “And,” I continued, “arm your people and as quickly as possible. There is no time to be lost, because as soon as they realize their predicament, they will attack you.”

  “You would have been a great chieftain,” he said.

  “I must find Arthur!” I told him.

  We walked quietly back to the rest. I found the advice I had given him about his people arming themselves was not needed. They were making spears at fires within the caverns. They were hardening the tips. Others were making knives and spearheads from flint. They were turning hides to make slings and melting bead for shot.

  When I paused to speak to them, I heard the words, “We want our freedom and are willing to pay the price.”

  “The price is sometimes rather high.”

  I had a good many requests for my touch, and in the end a whole wheelbarrow of chain went to the river. A lot of these were upper servants from the great houses, but another large percentage looked as down-trodden as the first woman I had helped this morning. Many had bruises, some had recently been flogged. Seems these were the newly captured from their own world, men and women who were given the dirtiest and most dangerous tasks in the hope of beating them into submission.

  I could see that in a number of instances it hadn’t worked. Most were angry and rebellious, willing—in many instances more than willing—to die fighting for their freedom. The upper servants were less sure of themselves. They had loves and loyalties among their erstwhile masters. But most, however well treated, were filled with anger at the usurpation implied in their servitude, and I thought they would stand by their decision. Others were to some extent loyal to their masters but very much afraid that when the defection of so many of their kind became apparent, their masters would take out their rage on those few remaining slaves.

  I spoke with the weapon makers and found my words respected far more than they would have been among any comparable group of human men. I acquainted them with the bolo, the spear thrower, and the bow, compound and simple. They in turn demonstrated the effectiveness of their stone tools and weapons. Flint takes a vicious edge, and obsidian is even more lethal.

  At length I felt I had said and done all I could. By nightfall it was clear that no further slaves would be able to find their way here tonight. I drank a bit of wine and found myself drowsing over my food, so I curled up against the wooden partition and went to sleep. Albe and Goric joined me, and I was briefly aware of them. Whatever they were doing, they were . . . hell, I knew what they were doing. But they were quiet about it. I didn’t think Albe would be a screamer; and Goric, whatever he did, he was as quiet as a cat. So I enjoyed a good, long rest.

  My dress—yes, I was still wearing it—woke me deep in the night. “Someone comes,” it whispered.

  The woman I had freed yesterday crept silently into the stall and crouched down near me. But she was careful not to get close enough to touch me.

  “My lady,” she whispered. “My lady!” she spoke a little louder.

  I rolled over. It had been a smart move not to touch me. My sword was in my hand.

  “What?” I asked, and added, “Don’t wake the rest.” I knew it was late. How did I know? I can’t tell; I just knew. The stillness was profound. Almost everything, even the night hunters, slept.

  “I am Micka,” she said.

  “We are well met, Micka,” I replied. She blinked. I don’t think she expected a courteous greeting. “I am Guinevere.”

  In addition, I noticed she was clean. Her hair was cut short and she was wearing a fresh linen tunic. She no longer stank but had the warm-bread smell of a woman who has recently bathed.

  “Goric says you want a sun cape. Well, I know where one is. If you come with me, I will take you there.”

  “Where?”

  She looked baffled for a moment, then said, “I’ll show you.”

  The dance, I thought.

  You see, we use the dance not simply to convey inner meaning, but also to map the external world. Ure had danced the location of the Saxons on and along the coast. Both Maeniel and I understood him perfectly.

  When the river left the lake, the water wandered away in many different streams into the badlands. Over the centuries when this world had an ocean, the stone was carven away by deep, fast currents as the ocean retreated and then tried to reclaim what it had abandoned in the wild jumble of rocky hollows, grottos, and caves that was left. Then at length when the ocean was gone, the river formed a chain of fens, swamps, ponds, and small lakes, all thickly overgrown with the desert plants I had seen on my way to the city.

  Many of these were edible, and when the fanged antelope were penned up to be fattened for slaughter, she, Micka, and other foreigners were sent out to collect wild fruit and vegetation to keep them fed during the brief time it took for the meat to reach the desired level of tenderness. This was very dangerous work. The big cats prowled the badlands. More than one of her fellow slaves disappeared while foraging.

  It was also possible in dry years to get lost in certain areas and die of thirst. The plants were not lilies, either. Most were venomous enough to cause anything from a rash or a scald to a deep ulceration on the skin of anyone forced to collect them.

  All this she told me while we were on our way to what she called our helpers. I halted in surprise when I saw them: two of the big-fanged antelope. These two wore muzzles and had bits in their mouths. They were tethered. They try to gore you when they aren’t. Yes, they had the long, spiral horns
, muscular bay bodies, and sharp, cloven hooves. But both wore blanket pads on their backs, held in place by thick straps.

  Mine tried to bite me when I grasped the reins. Micka slapped it on the nose and it quieted. But when I mounted, it threw me by rearing, and when I was down, it tried to kick and then step on me. Micka slapped it on the nose again, and again it quieted. But when I mounted the second time, it tried to scrape me off against a rock.

  Micka slapped it cross-eyed this time, and I stayed on its back. I could see why they weren’t tethered by the reins but rather with a chin strap attached to a stake. Micka turned it loose with some trepidation on her part.

  It reared again and hopped three times on its hind legs. Then the forelegs dropped and it decided that since that didn’t unseat me, I must be tough. Temporarily at least, it decided to behave. We took off at a gallop, a blistering pace.

  “Won’t we use them up?” I called out to Micka.

  “No. It’s the only way to stay on their backs. You have to tire them out. Even so, we must let them go at dawn, because there is no water for them beyond that point. We will be in the desert. Watch out! They are full of tricks.”

  Indeed they were. Mine tried throwing its head back and braining me with its skull. I corrected that by slapping its face with the long end of the trailing reins. It gave up on that and tried to break my knees in the narrow passages between rock formations. I had control of the bit and made the beast sorry every time it did it.

  By dawn the beast was lathered and tired, still running fast. Truth to tell, I was almost as tired as it was. I had to hold on with my thighs and knees, and my legs and buttocks were sore. I was sure from the slick feel that I had brush burns on my inner thighs and buttocks. I would have given anything for one of our four-horn saddles that held the rider in place and allowed him or her to pick the safest route.

  The sun was well up when our mounts quit on us. Or rather, when they wouldn’t respond to slaps and kicks or curses. Micka and I climbed down from their backs with a distinct feeling of relief, at least on my part. I was simply unbelievably sore. Once I was down, my mount tried to rear and crush my skull with a forehoof. I jerked its head down and gave it a truly terrible blow across the nose.

  “You’re getting the hang of it,” Micka said.

  “I’d just as soon not,” I told her.

  She unbuckled the girths and let the saddle pads fall to the ground. The halters were made of rope. She simply cut them loose with an obsidian knife. Our mounts still had enough energy to bolt. In that rocky, broken country, they vanished from sight in under a minute.

  I wanted to rest, but knew it might quite literally be fatal if I allowed myself to get stiff. So we set out walking down the bottom of a narrow ravine that grew deeper and deeper. At first it was dark, but when the sun got higher, there was more light. Not that there was anything to see: layer on layer of eroded sandstone with outcroppings of darker rock, granite, and spongy lava. Where the wind had blown away the sand, it laid bare calcareous limestone packed with shells and the remains of other sea creatures, many the likes of which I had never seen before.

  “Life is certainly more interesting with you than with the Fand,” my unseen companion said. “Why are we doing this?”

  “I want a sun cape.”

  Micka was walking a little ahead of me. She turned and glanced suspiciously at me. “You talk to yourself?”

  “Mmmm, sometimes.”

  She seemed satisfied.

  “You will need instruction,” my companion said. “All I can give you are the basics.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Take off into the wind and in the sun. The sun gives the cape life, its motive, power. The air will buoy you up. Understand, this air is only another ocean. You cannot feel its force in the wind.”

  I didn’t understand, but I nodded as if I did.

  “Hot air rises. The air in this desert gets very hot. The sun cape will allow you to ride the rising hot air higher and higher, but as you rise, you will feel the air cool.”

  I remembered the fierce sea eagles hovering over the coast and I saw what my friend was trying to say. They seemed to fly without moving their wings.

  Yes, I thought. So that is the way of it.

  “When you feel the air catch another rising column of air, or if the day is hot, by then the cape will have absorbed enough of the virtue in the light to carry you forward. Turn in the direction in which you wish to go. If you go against the wind, expect a bumpy ride. If you go with the wind, take the best advantage you can of it and soar. You can’t go too high, I think, but beware if you do, this ocean of air ends high above this world. Don’t stop when you fly. If you do, it is much the same as in water. You will sink and the cape will drag you down. If you overshoot your objective, circle back. But I warn you, don’t try to stop.”

  “Here!” Micka said.

  She paused beside a narrow overhang that cast a light shade into the ravine. I glanced up and saw the sun was nearly overhead. It isn’t good to travel at noon.

  “There are gourds a little further on.”

  I sat down in the shade gratefully. She returned with what looked like a melon with a horny, segmented skin and spines, one spine to each segment.

  “This is a big one. I don’t know if I can get it with my knife.”

  I drew my sword and sliced the thing in half lengthwise. It had pink pulp with a nasty taste.

  “Don’t eat it,” she said. “Just tear out the pulp and squeeze it into your mouth.”

  I followed her suggestion and quenched my thirst with the pulp while chewing jerky. It made enough of a meal that we were able to walk along the shadowed side of the ravine until dusk. As the sun was going down, the sides of the ravine began to grow lower and lower, until it played out, vanishing into a sea of low-growing plants that I recognized as the same kind that produced the dreaming jewels, Gorias Purples. These appeared stunted.

  “Don’t go near them,” Micka warned.

  “No,” I said. “I encountered them when I first came here. I know how dangerous they are.”

  “Yes, well, these are worse,” Micka said. “They used to send sacrifices here from the city, but the elders among my people tell me they died too fast. Only a few ever managed to get more than half a dozen.”

  The evening breeze began and the mass of vegetation stirred oddly in the soft rush of air and seemed to whisper, sounding to my ears like the distant murmur of a curious crowd. Yes, they were stunted. While the first I had seen were over a foot tall and had leaves the size of a platter, these were only a few inches and the leaves no bigger than a cup, a small cup.

  “He is out there with the sun cape. Nobody knows about him but me,” she said.

  In an odd sort of way, the view was beautiful. The dying sun washed the leaves on the ocean of plants with deep orange and made the violet margins of the leaves near the stem seem to be black. The small white flowers glowed gold.

  But there, out in the center of the lake of vegetation, I saw something flash and glitter. I shaded my eyes with my hand and saw the spread of the sun cape among the plants.

  “So you can crash them?” I said.

  “Oh, very easily,” my companion said.

  “Think the one who piloted this one is still in it?” I asked.

  “Very likely,” my companion said.

  “Oh, yes,” Micka answered also. “You can see his bones from the top.” She pointed to the low bluff above, where the ravine ended.

  Micka had a small pack. She opened it while I made fire. As you know, this is not difficult for me. What I burned were last year’s melon vines. Withered and dried, they lay in profusion along the sides of the ravine. Micka had a leather vessel, and she filled it with dried berries of some kind, a few wild onions, and more jerky. She had two stiff leather bowls that she filled with the resulting soup.

  I ate and drank what tasted like the best soup I’d ever had. I was so tired that when I rose to walk back up the ravine to reliev
e myself, I found that I could barely stand. The few feet back to a bend in the ravine seemed like a mile, and the heat of my own urine scalded me. My body was so cold. I had barely enough strength to walk back. But I did.

  “Cats?” I asked Micka. “What about the cats?”

  “They don’t come here. No one, nothing, does. It is a very dangerous place.”

  “What happened to the one riding the sun cape?” I asked.

  Micka shook her head, but my companion said, “It could have been any one of a number of things. Maybe he tried to push the cape too far and he was caught by the oncoming darkness. Maybe he tried to fly too high and perished when the air grew too thin for him to breathe. Or he grew so cold from trying to fly high up that he froze. Any number of things. See, the sun cape is like me. It tries to take care of its rider. It has a strong sense of duty, so if he perished high up, it would try to bring him down safely to where his friends could help him. But by then, it may have been too late.”

  “Micka,” I said as she rose to go down the ravine herself. “Stay close.” In the far distance I heard a cat scream. The last of day was only an iridescent blue line on the horizon. “One of those cats might pick up our spoor and think she has herself an easy dinner.”

  She nodded and returned quickly when she finished her necessary actions. I made her sleep on the inside between me and the ravine wall.

  “I have,” I explained, “weapons that don’t show. You are more vulnerable.”

  When we were settled, I asked, “Micka, I think I can easily pluck a dozen or so of those dreaming jewels before I must fly away. Show them to Goric and Albe. They will help you sell them. You could become a wealthy woman and buy anything you want.”

  Oddly, she began weeping quietly, but with deep, gulping sobs.

  “What I want, I can never have,” she mourned. “My own world back again.”

  I thought of Albe. Albe, whose family had been killed and whose life had indeed been stolen by the pirates she licked.