Warlord

by Elizabeth Vaughan

  So I told her, about the war and the tents of healing and Simus’s wound and Keir. She listened intently, occasionally asking a question or two, but mostly listening, her eyes sparkling with her interest. She didn’t criticize, or condemn, just listened. I talked about Anna the cook, and the kitchens under her control, of my Master Eln, and how he’d taught me everything I know. I even described the old cheesemaker and her cart in the market back in Water’s Fall.

  “Which reminds me.” I dug around in my satchel. “I have a jar of joint cream here. It might help your hands.”

  “Eh?” Keekai leaned forward and reached across for the jar, settling back into her blankets as she looked at it carefully. “Some of your magic?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have any magic, Keekai. Just herbs and knowledge of their uses.”

  Keekai sniffed at the contents, then looked at me with half-closed eyes. “So, you claim no magic?”

  “None,” I said firmly.

  She grunted, dipped into the jar, and started to work the salve into her hands. We sat in silence for a moment, the flames in the brazier crackling. I looked up where there was a smoke hole cut in the tent, and saw the stars above us. It was late.

  “I thank you.” Keekai made as if to return the jar, but I gestured for her to keep it.

  “I hope that it will help.” I looked at her for a moment, then bit my lip.

  She snorted, softly. “Do you wish for my token?”

  “I might need it,” I responded. “Keekai, why does Keir hate the warrior-priests so much?”

  Keekai sighed. “That is a long tale, and not easily told.” She yawned. “Still Waters will have us up at dawn yet again. But this time I will stop us at the nooning and tell him that a hunt is needed.” She cackled. “They will hunt, and you and I will talk.” She rose to give me privacy.

  I shook my head at her. “What kind of name is that? And how can you tell them apart?”

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘When they become warrior-priests, they take on a new name, not the one that the elements gave them, but a name to signal that they are warrior-priests.” She snorted again, reminding me of Marcus. “They take them from the plants and animals or the elements. Still Waters, Gentle Breeze, pah. Why not Dead Deer, or Rutting Ehat?”

  I laughed out loud at that, and she grinned back at me. “As to telling them apart, look at the tattoos around their left eyes. There the pattern always differs.” She raised the flap of the tent. “Get into your bedding and close those eyes, Lara. The sun will be up before we wish it.”

  Still Waters had us up even before the sun rose.

  I stood, holding Greatheart’s reins, sipping kavage as the camp was broken. Keekai was talking to one of the warrior-priests, announcing her craving for fresh red meat.

  I ignored it, and watched the sun rise. Truly rise, on a horizon as wide as my eyes could see, seeming almost to leap up into the sky.

  No wonder these people worshiped the elements, and swore by the skies. It was such an enormous part of their lives, affecting everything that they did, every moment of the day. Living in a castle, in a city, I was not attuned to it the way they were. I watched in awe, and wondered. What would a storm be like? What would winter be like?

  My stomach tightened. It was all so new and frightening. I gazed out at the horizon, and wished for some nice, safe mountains to cut the openness. I felt so exposed … .

  “As frightening as a land where one is constantly surrounded by huge mountains of stone that restrict your sight and block the sun.” Keir’s words came back to me, and I smiled. Was he watching the sunrise? Or hassling his warriors to work faster so that he could follow us?

  I had to chuckle, since both Keir and Marcus were probably driving everyone around them to work as fast as possible. Goddess knew, Marcus would drive them hard.

  I turned a bit, letting Greatheart shield me from the others, and tried the hidden blade. I’d used the privacy of Keekai’s tent to strap it on. I jumped when it popped out and tried to clasp it tight in my hand. It would take practice to get it to work right. I pressed it back in as I heard someone come up behind me.

  “Mount.” It was Iften, leading his horse, his usual morning scowl on his face. I rolled my eyes, and then turned, but he must have seen my face. His lip curled, and he spit at my feet. A small piece of something brown hit my shoe.

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he’d turned away, and my warrior-priest guards were moving into position. In the confusion, I reached down, scooped whatever it was, and tucked it into my satchel.

  We’d see what the warrior-priests’ ‘magic’ consisted of. We’d just see …

  7

  “Blind hatred is a weakness.”

  I said nothing, just watched as Keekai reached from her pallet to add fuel to the brazier. The flames rose and made the light flicker and dance over the walls of her tent.

  She’d called a halt before the nooning and ordered a hunt for fresh meat. The camp was guarded, and Iften was roaming the perimeter, keeping watch over me from a distance. Keekai had us warm in her tent, bells in the flap, and a pot of kavage between us. Her warriors were without, with instructions to make sure that no one came near. We were as private as we could be on the Plains.

  It was just as well she’d ordered that we make camp early. We’d ridden into a fine mist of rain, and the damp and the cold had seeped into my bones. I could imagine what it did to Keekai’s body.

  “I do not know the truth of all that has been, and can only speak the truth that I know.” Keekai looked at me from her nest of blankets. “You understand?”

  I nodded, unwilling to interrupt.

  “I am no Singer, but you must know of the past before I can say more.” Keekai rubbed her knees beneath the covers. “Long ago, a Warlord claimed the first Warprize. Together, they united all the tribes of the Plains. They created the Council of Elders as the wisdom of the Plains, the Singers as the knowledge, the Theas as the spirit. The Warrior-priests were supposed to be its strength.”

  Keekai sighed deeply and her shoulders slumped under the blankets. “It worked well, for a time. But something happened. The warrior-priests began to claim to speak for the elements, to have magic that they alone wielded.”

  Keekai paused, adjusting her blankets, and I poured us both more kavage. She pulled her hands out and held the mug in her blanket-covered lap.

  “Now, Keir has always had the strength of a warrior. But he also has a heart, a caring for his people. It hurts him to see people suffer, and it infuriates him to see one in pain and another stand by and do nothing.”

  “Is that what the warrior-priests do?”

  Keekai nodded. “They only use their magic on those they decide are worthy.” She fixed me with an intent stare, as if trying to find the right words. “With Keir, the reason for his anger,” she hesitated, “there was a woman—”

  My heart froze in my throat. My face must have reflected my feelings, for Keekai stopped and frowned. “No, not a binding. A young woman raised beside him, eh? Of his tribe. Do you understand?”

  “Like a sister?”

  Keekai looked puzzled. “I do not know this word.” I explained, and her face cleared. “Yes, yes. One does not lie down with a member of one’s tribe. We track the blood of all, to insure strength in the children.” Keekai pulled the blankets off her shoulder to show me her tattoos. “We do not mate or bond with the tribes of the ones that made us.”

  “Yes.” I relaxed. “I understand.”

  “So.” Keekai adjusted her blankets again, pulling them up and over her shoulders. “There was a woman of his tribe, who was bearing her first. It did not go well, and the woman died. I think, in the end, she was given mercy.

  “Keir was enraged, for a warrior-priest refused to use his magic to aid her.” Keekai looked over my shoulder, staring into the past. “Marcus had him dragged off and restrained, lest he challenge every warrior-priest and die in trying to kill them all. Keir saw reason. Eventually. But he vowed to
destroy them.” Keekai stopped, and took a drink of kavage, then set the mug down. “Destroy them all.” She shook her head. “His hatred blinds him to his danger. And yours.”

  “And Marcus?” I asked. “What did the warrior-priests do when he was injured?”

  She grimaced. “I was not there, but this truth I know, that it only added fuel to Keir’s rage. Keir commanded Marcus to live, and Marcus obeyed.”

  “What is Marcus’s tribe, Keekai?”

  “Marcus has no tribe, Lara.” Keekai’s eyes were filled with sorrow.

  I sucked in my breath.

  She nodded. “I did not think you truly understood what you did, choosing him as Guardian. Marcus is no longer of a tribe, no longer of the Plains.”

  I chewed my lower lip, trying to remember. “When I first met Marcus, he said that he was ‘token-bearer and aide to the Warlord’.”

  Keekai’s face grew grim. “That is all he is. If not for Keir’s protection …”

  “Marcus would die,” I finished.

  Keekai nodded. “Just so. By his own hand, like as not.”

  I stared into my kavage. “That is not right.”

  “Life on the Plains is hard.” Her voice sounded so much like Marcus’s, I lifted my head, almost expecting his eye to be glaring at me. But instead, Keekai’s blue eyes blazed at me, sending shivers down my spine. “Harder than you know,” she continued. “For hear now the truth that the Elders know, and will not speak of. The People of the Plains are dying.”

  I sat upright, and sloshed my kavage in my lap. “Why?”

  “We do not know why. Warriors in battle, that is to be expected. But there are more deaths during the snows, more women are dying in childbirth. Worse, our babes are dying without reason. Half the children born do not see the first true blades.”

  “Keekai, that’s—” I swallowed hard. “Children do die, of fevers and accidents and the like, but not at that rate.”

  She nodded again, still grim. “None outside the Council know this, although I think that Keir has come to his own understanding of our plight. When he was named Warlord this spring, the lots awarded him Xy. He stood before all, the Elders and the Eldest, and announced that he would conquer Xy. With the intent of learning and absorbing their ways and knowledge.” A grin flashed over her face, so much like Keir my heart skipped a beat. “So imagine their faces when word comes on the wind that Keir of the Cat had claimed a Warprize, one who holds a healing magic of her own. The news rolled like a storm over the Plains.” Keekai’s arm emerged from the blankets to sweep the air before her.

  I smiled back in answer to her grin, but then I remembered something that Keir had said. “Keekai, what is a ‘Warking’?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Now, where would you have heard that word?”

  I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly dry. Keir had said to trust her, but had I said too much? Regardless, the goats were out the gate now, and eating corn. “From Keir. He was ill and raving when he spoke the word.” Even now I could see him, in my mind’s eye, fighting the restraints and howling. ‘Fear the day Keir of the Cat is named Warking!’

  “Raving?” Keekai asked.

  “Like the battle madness,” I responded, not wanting to have to give a lengthy explanation.

  “Ah.” She tilted her head to the side, and studied me. “Not a word to use lightly. Nor would I say it outside the bells. I am not surprised to hear that Keir’s thoughts move in that direction now.”

  I waited, nervous.

  “A Warking is a warrior that stands above all, even the Council.” Keekai rubbed a finger over her eye. “There have been only two in the past, who rose when we of the Plains faced dire threats.”

  “You think Keir intends to become one?” I asked.

  “I do not pretend to know that one’s truths.” Keekai was deadly serious, her eyes never leaving mine. “But speak of this only to him and to Marcus. You understand?”

  “I do,” I answered quietly.

  Keekai shook her head again, as if in despair. “I have told that fool of a warlord that blind hatred of the warrior-priests is a dangerous thing. But that one, he is stubborn. Knows what he wants, and gets it.”

  I blushed and looked away, knowing that trait in Keir very well.

  Very well indeed.

  The hunters returned, with an odd looking deer that they soon had spitted and roasting. Keekai and I emerged to hear the tale of the hunt.

  The warrior-priests seemed no different from the other warriors in their excitement over the hunt and the kill. I watched closely, trying to see the differences in the details of the tattoos.

  Iften, grim and brooding, wasn’t far away. He’d seated himself off with a group of older warrior-priests, and he was talking. From the glances that came my way, he was spilling his hatred into their ears.

  I gritted my teeth, and tried not to think of going over and spitting on his shoes. I reminded myself that it would be mean-spirited. That it would bring me down to his level.

  That it would feel really good.

  “We spotted some warriors of the Plains when we returned from the hunt.” One of the warrior-priests was talking to Keekai. “They kept their distance, followed us for a time, then disappeared over a ridge.”

  “They didn’t identify themselves?” Keekai asked.

  “No, Elder.”

  “Odd,” Keekai said.

  Still Waters was beside her. “Not so odd these days. The old ways of the plains, the courtesy of the land and of the tents, is gone.”

  Keekai shot him a look. “Or perhaps they thought warrior-priests would not welcome an intrusion. Still, it is unusual.”

  A grunt from Still Waters was the only response.

  “A belly-full of meat, and kavage.” Keekai sat on her pallet and patted her stomach. “Well worth the stop, eh?”

  I nodded, drinking the last bit of kavage from my cup.

  “And look.” Keekai raised her hand into the air, and flexed her fingers for me to see. “The stiffness eases.”

  “Good.” I smiled, pleased at the relief the salve gave her. Stiff joints and crooked fingers could be a source of terrible pain to the old. “Keekai, how old are you?”

  “Eh?” she asked, tucking herself into the blankets.

  “How many years do you have?”

  “You count years?” Keekai looked at me as if I had grown horns.

  I clenched my teeth. Honestly, how did these people manage? I thought for a moment. “How long did it take you to have your children?”

  There was an odd look of remembered pain, but her voice was light when she answered. “Popped them out one after the other after my moon times came upon me.”

  “Were you late getting your courses?”

  “Moon times?” She shrugged. “They came when they came.”

  “How many campaigns have you served in?”

  Keekai’s face lit with pleasure. “My first was under Rize of the Hawk … .” She proceeded to use that memory of hers to detail her military history. I counted out the campaigns, figuring that would come close to a year if the armies were disbanded before each winter.

  “Then I became an Elder, and I have served to select the warlords seven times since then.”

  I blinked, rechecked my figuring, and then looked at her in shock. Keekai wasn’t nearly as old as I thought she was.

  She tilted her head to the side. “Your curiosity is satisfied?” She took my silence as such. “Then we must sleep. Still Waters will insist on an early start tomorrow, and I doubt he’ll agree to a halt until the sun is down!”

  I stretched out under the blankets, listened to Keekai’s breathing, and thought about what I had learned.

  Life on the Plains was hard. I knew that, or at least, I’d thought I’d known what that meant. But I didn’t, not really. I’d had all the comforts of city life, plus the advantages of living in a castle. I didn’t have a daily struggle for food and warmth, things I took for granted. But on the Plains, life itself was hard,
harder on the body. Which meant that Keir wasn’t as old as I’d thought. Perhaps we were closer in age than I’d realized?

  I turned onto my side, and pulled the covers up over my shoulder. The brazier was not putting out as much heat now, and the air felt colder. A slight breeze moved the side of the tent, and if I turned my head and looked up, I could see the stars through the smoke hole. I shifted deeper into the warmth of my bed.

  Did they live in tents in the snow? How did they find food in the winter? Even with raiding, how could they have enough?

  What did bearing five children do to a woman’s body?

  Suddenly, I understood the depths of Keir’s desire to bring change to the Plains. And just how valuable he thought my skills were. But even more than that, how pleased he’d been that I’d treat any that came to me. Tend the wound of an enemy. Set the broken leg of another.

  A snort from the other side told me that Keekai was finally asleep. I reached out my hand and pulled my satchel closer. Quietly, so as not to awaken Keekai, I dug in a side pocket and took out the damp piece of something that Iften had spit on my shoe. There was just enough light for me to study it. A mushroom, that I was certain. I smelled it carefully, but it didn’t have a strong odor. I rubbed it on my skin and waited, but there was no effect. I shrugged. Only one way to know for sure. I put it in my mouth and bit down.

  An odd sweetish taste filled my mouth, and I swallowed. My heartbeat seemed louder, and the tent began to spin …

  I spat it out into my hand. A medicine, akin to lotus leaf, but far more powerful and fast acting then any I knew. If it had this effect after Iften had chewed it for a time, what would it be like fresh? What uses could I put it to?

  I studied the damp bit in my hand, then placed it back in my satchel. Maybe the light of day would let me determine which mushroom.

  I settled back down, lost in thought. Was that the power of the warrior-priests? Using herbs to mask the pain, instead of treating it? No wonder Iften could still use his hand. No wonder they refused to help, probably where pain drugs offered no help.