Perhaps tonight she would do both.
“I shall help lay out the feast,” Kalie said to the group of women. Then, to Otera, “Perhaps you’d care to help. Unless you’ve forgotten how to do that as well.” She left before Otera could respond.
Much to everyone’s surprise, the evening went extremely well. People from both cultures crossed the bridge throughout the evening, joining into the festivities of each. The folk of Stonebridge celebrated as they had the year before, with music, food and dancing, much to the delight of the warriors—and many of the women—of Aahk.
And the nomads, too, celebrated in the same three ways. But the dancing was unlike anything the people of the Goddess had seen before: men danced in groups, with swinging spears that met and struck with sounds like thunder and simulated battle, yet also held a kind of alien beauty to those watching. The hunters had killed a huge boar, which had begun making trouble for the local farms. The meat was delicious, and, like the dancing, different to the palates of the western folk. Then someone—Kalie never knew who—got the idea of inviting musicians from both sides to meet at the bridge, and play together.
The music they created that night was haunting and magical. The story of the endless grass and forbidding sky of the steppes, told with drums and sticks and bone flutes, blended with the wooden flutes and harps that told of trade routes and the earthy smells of forest and field. Men and women of Stonebridge played together, while the few female musicians of the tribe kept well away from the men. But the music was too intoxicating for the players to keep apart for long. Musicians, as they always will, want to know how a new tune is played; how another instrument works. After meeting in the middle until the bridge was impassible, they played with great enthusiasm to a large audience on each side.
Then leaders from both sides came with food and drink and much applause, and asked them all to clear the bridge, but please continue the concert in an open space on the side of the nomad camp. This, of course, brought more people, and the dancing soon moved to where the musicians played. The dancers, too, combined the various styles. Kalie and Riyik had more practice at this than most, and were soon in the center of the crowd. Kariik and Alessa had also practiced, but lacked the stamina to stay for long. Or perhaps it was just that their concentration was divided between showing their peoples what was possible, and watching them, to make certain there was no trouble.
Kalie was soon called away, at Kariik’s request to tell stories to the warriors.
“I truly am slipping back and forth in time,” Kalie said, and then finished her wine and followed the young warrior who brought her the king’s request. Request, she thought. Not command.
Riyik escorted her to where the audience waited—once again made up of people from both sides of the river—and said, “Plain water is better than wine for this kind of work.” Then he handed her a drinking bag made from a leather covered sheep’s bladder, filled with cool water.
“Your first gift to me!” cried Kalie. “I thought I’d lost it!”
“I found it when we were helping Varena pack her things. Tonight seemed the right time to give it to you again.”
Kalie grinned, suddenly feeling all was right with the world. “You should probably wander and keep an eye on the crowd,” she said, somewhat reluctantly.
“I think I should be here, listening to you tell stories,” said Riyik, the love he felt plain in his rain gray eyes.
So Kalie walked proudly to the space reserved for her between the tents, and surveyed her audience. For a moment she wondered if she still knew how to tell the tales the warriors liked. Then from across the years came the memory of the first story Kalie had created for her captors. “It was on a day like this, in early spring, when the two mightiest of the clans of Aahk were on their way to the great summer gathering,” she began, and launched into the still popular, “Battle of Spring Trail.”
It was dark when Kalie finished, but the festivities were still in full swing. She walked with Riyik for awhile, always on the lookout for trouble. But once again, there was none. To Kalie’s surprise, many nomad women, including a few of the new brides, were also out and about, many without veils, enjoying food and conversation, or dancing for their men.
Then one of the brides looked up from the small group of women she was speaking with, and Kalie gasped. “Kestra!”
Fear sparked in the woman’s eyes, and for a moment it looked like she might run. Then she collected herself, calmly pulling her veil over her hair and around her shoulders, but leaving her face uncovered.
The other women backed away. Kalie gestured for Riyik to continue without her. Without a word, he did.
Kestra met her eye, and then looked away. “You are Kalie,” she said, although it seemed more a question.
“Yes, Kestra. We left a town very much like this to travel together—“
“My name is Jalisa!” Kestra snapped. “My first husband, the great warrior Saryk, honored me by giving me the name of his beloved first wife, who died shortly before he married me.”
Kalie rocked back in surprise. Alessa had not told her about this. Unsure how to proceed, she asked, “Do you remember when your name was Kestra?”
Kestra’s face grew hard. “I know I was once a dirt-eater. I remember very little. I did not want to return here, but our king said we must. I did not want to marry again, but I knew I must.”
“Kariik said you had to marry another beastman?” Kalie was outraged. How could he? And why didn’t Alessa tell someone so it could have been prevented?
“The king said nothing of my marriage, other than to bless it. But I knew if I did not, I would have nowhere to go but back…there.” Kestra glanced with distaste across the bridge. She put her hands protectively on her bulging middle. “And the great Saryk’s son would be raised to be…” She shuddered and did not finish the thought.
Kalie took a deep breath and let it out. Then another. “Your child, Kestra, uh, Jalisa, boy or girl, could grow up to be any number of things in Stonebridge. Including a warrior, if that’s what he wanted.”
“Well, now I don’t have to worry about it. Alrik is one of Kariik’s most trusted advisors, and his greatest warrior. He has promised to name my child Saryk if it is a boy, and raise him as his own son. And my status shall be higher than any woman’s in the tribe, except for Alessa. What more could I wish for?”
Kalie stared at the woman who had followed her into the beating heart of their enemy so long ago. “When you find out, Jalisa, come to me, and I will help you find it.”
She turned and walked away. Kestra did not call her back, but Kalie doubted she would have heard. She wandered the two camps for the rest of the night, stopping only briefly at her home, to nurse Melora and settle her and Yarik for the night. Then she resumed her wandering. Kalie didn’t know what she was looking for, yet somehow, little by little she found it.
Shortly before dawn, a mist arose, and Kalie felt as if she were an invisible spirit. She watched bleary-eyed warriors stumble back to their tents, sleeping children carried home, and the few who managed to get drunk enough to pass out, helped inside homes, or in the case of the warriors, left snoring on the ground.
First light found Kalie sitting on the highest ground in the area. She could see all of Stonebridge laid out before her like a magnificent carved toy emerging from the rising mist. The nomad camp was barely visible in the distance. When she turned around, Kalie could glimpse the sea, still covered in its pearly shroud.
The previous day and night had been a time of balance, when day and night were of equal length—something that happened only twice each year. When the sun rose today, it would stay just a little longer, and tonight would be just a little shorter.
A tipping point had been reached.
And as Kalie breathed in the cool morning air, and watched the sun come up in a glory of pink and gold, she knew that another tipping point had been reached. A time of great change was at hand. She didn’t know where it would all lead, but fo
r once, Kalie felt no fear, nor any guilt that she was the cause of what would come to pass.
She knew only that she wanted to be part of it, and to live to see the new world that would be born.
Chapter 24
The season that followed the Spring Festival was as different from past springs as the festival itself.
True, many hunters and merchants left the town as they had in years past. But many more did not. And even those who did travel carried messages and weapons, or escorted those who would train fighters or swell their ranks.
Many of Kariik’s warriors returned east to find family they had left behind to be cared for in the smaller villages, further reducing the strain on resources in Stonebridge. To the relief of many, Elka and her new husband were among those who left. Kestra (Kalie refused to call her Jalisa) remained. Her husband, Alrik, was indeed one of Kariik’s closest advisors, and soon proved to be one of the best teachers of riding and fighting for those who arrived almost daily to learn the arts of war. Alrik also worked tirelessly with the more advanced students who had learned everything Riyik and Borik could teach them.
The town of Stonebridge began to look like a military camp. Of the eighty warriors who remained with Kariik, many continued to live in their tents across the river. Others, however, came into the town to give settled life a try.
“It’s the way of the future,” a young warrior explained to his wife, mother-in-law and former slave who was now his second wife. “You will learn the skills of cloth-making and bread-baking, and I will grow closer to those who run things here. And we will all enjoy the wealth of this new land!”
Several houses in town opened up as a few families decided to move west, away from what would likely be the site of a major battle. Borik also left the large house where he had been living alone, to return to life in a tent with Kariik’s warriors.
“He’s never really been comfortable living in a house,” Riyik told Kalie.
“After all the time he’s lived here?” Kalie was baffled. “But he seemed so…content. I don’t recall him saying a word about not liking…well, anything, really.”
“He’s never been much of a complainer, either.”
“That’s certainly true,” sighed Kalie. She watched Borik pack his few belongings, while a large nomad family waited to move in. “How will he fend for himself without a woman in his tent?”
“He won’t have to,” said Riyik. “Ah, here she is.”
Kalie looked to where Riyik was looking, expecting to see one of the women from Kariik’s group, perhaps encouraged by Alessa. To her utter shock, it was Ilara the priestess who walked with a pack on her back to stand with Borik. The head on her petit frame barely reached his chest.
“She wants to learn more about the tribe,” said Alessa, stopping to explain, and smiling at Kalie’s expression.
“This is…well…this is certainly one way to do it,” Kalie said.
“And as Borik’s woman, she can go anywhere safely, and speak to anyone. No one wants to be seen as offering insult to someone belonging to a warrior of his size and strength,” Riyik said.
Kalie insisted on making a meal for the couple’s first night in their new tent. The brief time she spent with them, between the lavish compliments of her cooking, Kalie became convinced that this was yet another insane step toward a happy outcome to the war they faced.
Spring was barely past full flower when the messages began to arrive. The horde was on the move. They would reach the eastern border of the Goddess lands before summer. And they were bringing the entire tribe.
“Everyone?” Kalie asked at the meeting where the messenger had just brought his news. “Families? Herds? Everything they own?”
“We knew it was a possibility,” said Orin. “Kariik described the conditions on the steppes as desperate.”
“But we expected warriors!” said Garm, away from his smithy only because of the importance of the meeting. “Families and flocks will slow them down—“
“Giving us more time to prepare,” Nara said.
Those who once called themselves warriors of Aahk looked at each other nervously.
“What is it?” asked Nara.
“This means they are coming to stay,” Kariik explained. “They plan to take this land. Not wealth and food and slaves, but the land itself. They mean to rule here.” He glanced at the priest. “As Orin said, they are desperate. Even as the most powerful tribe on the steppes, these so-called Wolves, will have no place to return to if they fail.”
“Which will make them even more dangerous,” said Martel, stating the obvious.
Amid whispers of how this might change things, a girl on the verge of womanhood spoke up. She sat beside Sirak, and was known as the only girl to ever beat him in a fight. “You’re forgetting the most important thing in all this,” she said.
“And what would that be, Analie?” asked Orin.
“How we are to make room for all of those women and children after we kill all of their men,” Analie said simply.
Sirak grinned. “She’s right, you know. No one here will allow them to die, or be sold as slaves next trading season.”
“Assuming we can keep them from killing their children and then themselves after their men are defeated,” Alessa added.
Sirak nodded, deep in thought. “But now we’ll have to kill their men, not just drive them back. The women will have nowhere to go, nor any way to support themselves here. I suppose we can show the folk of the Goddess the pleasures to be had in taking many wives…”
Analie batted his head playfully—at least Kalie hoped it was playful. She liked the confidence with which the two young people, soon to be a couple she suspected, spoke. Everyone would need that confidence soon. But she also knew that for many at this meeting, the war they faced had just become real for the first time.
“The spring rains were light this year,” Janak said.
“Even if they’d been normal,” said Alessa, “this river would have still been too low by summer to create any real barrier to the horses.”
A large group of people stood on the bridge, looking down at those who waded in the shallows. For now, the bridge was the only way into the town on the hill. But that would change by summer.
“Horses will cross it easily by then,” said Riyik.
“There’s always the chance that the horde will be defeated before they get this far west,” Sarella began, but stopped at the looks cast her way.
“This is actually the ideal place to defeat them once and for all,” said Riyik. He began to tick off reasons on his fingers. “There is the forest the warriors must ride through—a perfect place for traps and ambushes. There’s a large, well-armed population atop high ground. And there’s this river, which, if it would just cooperate, could trap the horde as if between a pair of pincers.” He glanced at the Janak to see if he had the right word.
The smith nodded, and smiled grimly. “So what you’re saying is all we need to do is devise traps which no one on either side has ever thought of, make a lot of arrows, and find a way to raise and lower a river at will?”
A few people chuckled, and Riyik seemed to be searching for an appropriate reply when Varena spoke up.
“If one person can create horse-killers, then enough of us working together should be able to come up with a few clever traps. And we’ve already got a huge supply of bows, arrows, and the people to use them.”
“And more being made every day,” said Orin. “The problem is the river.”
“Maybe not,” said Varena, staring upstream from her place on the bridge.
After waiting a few heartbeats, while Varena stared, deep in thought, Orin prompted gently, “What are your thoughts, my dear?”
Varena came out of her daze, blushing crimson as she realized how she had just spoken to an important leader—and a man.
“Don’t worry if it will sound foolish, or even impossible,” said Nara. “Those are likely to be just the ideas we need.”
“I
t’s just…” Varena now looked toward her new home, the farm that was not quite visible from the bridge. “I know I’m new at this, but the first thing I learned about farming was the need to bring water to the seedlings; that sometimes rain is not enough. So people learned to dig ditches to carry water from a watercourse to the fields.”
“Irrigation,” Otera said impatiently. “What do you think you can do? Bring water to the river instead of from?” While her tone was mocking, it was clear Otera’s own words caused her to stop and think—along with most of the people who heard.
“Not quite,” said Varena. “It would be…what do you call it when you put stones across flowing water to create a pond, or to dry up some land for building?”
“A dam,” said several voices at once.
“I don’t know where the source of the river is, or if there would be enough water,” said Varena. “But if we could…capture enough of it, and lower the river right here to something the warriors would find easy to cross—“
“We could release the water when we chose to!” cried Janak. “Varena, you’re a genius!”
“I agree,” said Kalie, smiling proudly at her daughter. “But there will be much to learn before we discover if this plan will even work.”
“And if it does not, then another one will,” said Nara.
Janak conferred with Garm and a few of the other crafters, as well as some farmers. Kalie went to the rocky beach to sit and nurse Melora while dipping her bare feet into the cool water, as the day was unusually warm.
Keepers of the Ancient Wisdom (Kalie's Journey Book 3) Page 20